"Watteau" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cabinet of gilt and glass, filled with Dresden-china figurines and toy tables and a carven Swiss musical powder-box. The fireplace was of smooth, chilly white marble, with an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, and a fire-screen painted with Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses, making silken unreal love and scandalously neglecting silky unreal sheep. By the hearth were shiny fire-irons which looked as though they had never been used. The whole room looked as though it had ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... replied his friend. "Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" "It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... father's large workroom. That delightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and the green weather-stains we have known all our lives on the high whitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard, for the coolness, in summertime. Among old Watteau's workpeople came his son, "the genius," my father's godson and namesake, a dark-haired youth, whose large, unquiet eyes seemed perpetually wandering to the various drawings which lie exposed here. My father will have it that he is a genius indeed, and ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... adapted to enhance the charms of a woman of finer proportions. The bony and scrawny, of the type of No. 58, seem to have a perverse desire to wear what makes their poverty in physical charms only more conspicuous. A woman of distinction in Boston, who is exceedingly thin and tall, wore Watteau pleats so frequently, even on reception and evening gowns that she was dubbed by a wag "the fire-escape," a title which so strikingly characterized her style, that the term was adopted by all her friends when they exchanged confidences ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... her and realised once more the dainty Watteau—like grace of her oval face and slim, supple figure. He thought of the days when they had stolen out together on to the hillside, oftenest in the falling twilight, sometimes even in the grey dawn, and his heart beat regretfully. How was it that in those days ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... went to my bank and said to a blue-eyed, Watteau type of beauty, "I want to see the manager, please. Concerning an important investment in War Loan," I added hastily, fearing lest the damsel should conclude that ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... because, being engulfed in sentiment, they had lost all sense of proportion. A miller and his donkey were rustic (Marie Antoinette adored rusticity); an abbe flirting with a miller's wife was as obviously artificial as Watteau. It would have been hard to find a happier or more expressive combination. And when Rousseau and republicanism had won the race, we find the ladies of the Directoire illustrating the national illusions with clinging and diaphanous draperies; and asserting their affinity with the high ideals of ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... cemetery attached in 1727, his tomb, it is pretended, had certain convulsions in 1730, and was the origin of the sect called convulsionists, and the scenes which occurred caused the cemetery to be closed in 1732. A picture of St. Genenieve, by Watteau, in the chapel of that saint, must be admired, having much merit. In the Rue de l'Oursine, No. 95, is an hospital which is a refuge for sinning and afflicted females (something in the nature of the Magdalen, in London), containing 300 beds. To ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... horizon and white caps to the waves, betokening perhaps a storm not far distant. Children were in the wood of Dunderave—ruddy, shy children, gathering nuts and blackberries, with merriment haunting the landscape as it were in a picture by Watteau or a tale of the classics, where such figures happily move for ever and for ever in the right golden glamour. Little elves they seemed to Count Victor as he came upon them over an eminence, and saw them for the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... especially as regards her complexion; one would say that she made up every morning with Watteau's palate, 'She is fair, and her conquering glances kindle love in every ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Elia complains that to him the merit of a MS. poem is uncertain; "print," as he excellently says, "settles it." Fifty years' toning does the same thing to a picture.' He is happier when he is writing about Watteau and Lancret, about Rubens and Giorgione, about Rembrandt, Corregio, and Michael Angelo; happiest of all when he is writing about Greek things. What is Gothic touched him very little, but classical art and the art of the Renaissance were always dear to him. He ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... by the little couple was very pretty, for the childish faces were so earnest, the costumes so gay, and the steps so peculiar, that they looked like the dainty quaint figures painted on a Watteau fan. The Princess's train was very much in her way, and the sword of Prince Rob nearly tripped him up several times. But they overcame these obstacles remarkably well, and finished the dance with much grace and spirit, considering that neither knew ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was lying, gazing up at what, surprisingly, seemed to be a ceiling festooned with garlands of roses and painted with ladies and cavaliers, idling about a stretch of greensward, decidedly in the Watteau style. Where was I? What had happened to make me feel so helpless? It reminded me of an episode of my childhood, a day when my pony had fallen and rolled upon me, and I had been carried home with two crushed ribs and a ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... foundation of truth? Apocryphal is, no doubt, that which has evolved itself from the internal evidence supplied by the Baptism of Christ of Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci; but a stronger substructure of fact supports the unpleasing anecdotes as to Titian and Tintoretto, as to Watteau and Pater, as to our own Hudson and Reynolds, and, alas! as to very many others. How touching, on the other hand, is that simple entry in Francesco Francia's day-book, made when his chief journeyman, Timoteo Viti, leaves ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... evidence of Vandyck, Watteau, Francois Boucher, and Greuze, in whose pictures they are so frequently introduced, all the toy Spaniels of bygone days had much longer noses and smaller, flatter heads than those of the present time, and they had much longer ears, these in many ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the castle resumed its splendour, and presented a striking contrast to the previous gloomy period. The terrace, with its festive groups, resembled a picture by Watteau, the courts resounded with laughter, and the velvet sod of the home park was as often pressed by the foot of frolic beauty as by that ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 'Peintres des Fetes Galantes' was derived by Blanc from the title conferred on Watteau by the French Academy. Of the artists therein mentioned, Watteau occupied the realm of poetry; Lancret that of the conventional, the fashionable; Pater that of vulgar, jovial reality; Boucher, the most distinctively French of artists, that of brilliancy, dash, and vivacity. These painters ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... nymphs, and on the wall-hangings more fairies and nymphs, and all the charming figures of the pastoral mythology—the Corydons, the Phylises, the Rosalinds—animated with their sylvan loves one of those sunny Cytherean landscapes originated by the fanciful imagination of Antoine Watteau. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the women, in their new Parisian toilets, under their bright parasols, stood out like wondrous bouquets of moving flowers. The whole atmosphere was a delightful mingling of idle gaiety, flirtation, and graceful sensuousness. A modern Watteau would have seized upon the ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... out a couple of Sevres candlesticks; a painted Chinese screen, all pagodas and parrots; two portraits of patched and powdered beauties in the Watteau style; and a queer old clock surmounted by a gilt Cupid in a chariot drawn by doves. If these failed to make him happy, thought I, he must indeed be ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... Malesherbes had not yet laid their enterprising hands upon the old fabric of French administration, and already painting, sculpture, architecture, and music had shaken off the shackles of the past. The conventional graces of Vanloo, of Watteau, of Boucher, of Fragonard, had given place to a severer school. Greuze was putting upon canvas the characters and ideas of Diderot's Drame naturel; but Vien, in France, was seconding the efforts of Winkelman and of Raphael Mengs in Italy; he led his pupils back to the study ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Romanticists. And these two reactions are counterbalanced by a return to the French ideal, to the realistic and characteristic tradition which commences with Jean Foucquet and Clouet, and is continued by Chardin, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, Watteau, La Tour, Fragonard, and the admirable engravers of the eighteenth century down to the final triumph of the allegorical taste of the Roman revolution. Here can be found a whole chain of truly national artists who have either been misjudged, like Chardin, or ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... famous old Philipse house,—Washington's headquarters,—in the town of Yonkers. The fireplaces, worthy of the wide-throated central chimney, were bordered by pictured tiles, some of them with Scripture stories, some with Watteau-like figures,—tall damsels in slim waists and with spread enough of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or musical swains of what everybody calls the "conventional" sort,—that is, the swain adapted to genteel society ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... on, then the Seigneur, who had been to Montreal, came back with the news that Rosalie was looking as beautiful as a picture. "Grown a woman in beauty and in stature; comely—comely as a lady in a Watteau picture, my dear messieurs!" he had said to the Cure, standing in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there has been another method which has been adopted by many men of a very real poetical genius. It was the method of the old pastoral poets like Theocritus. It was in another way that adopted by the elegance and piety of Spenser. It was certainly expressed in the pictures of Watteau; and it had a very sympathetic and even manly expression in modern England in the decorative poetry of William Morris. These men of genius, from Theocritus to Morris, occupied themselves in endeavouring to describe happiness ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... dreamy time for a girl. Her body is formed at last, but her mind is only half formed. There is a pleasant mist over it. Very well, I don't wish to brush the mist away. If I did that I would take half that charm away from you—that elusive incompleteness which Fragonard and Watteau tried to imitate, Heaven knows with how little success. No, I shall always let you live your own life. All that I ask for, my dear, are certain meeting places. Let us establish them before it is too late, or you will find one day that you have ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... life in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi, a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third rate Parisian theatre. A story as dainty as a Watteau painting. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... on the bench in the third room, opposite the colonnade by Watteau, to which his thoughts frequently went, while telling her how, when cruising among the Greek Islands, he had often seen her, sometimes sitting in the music-room playing the virginal, sometimes walking in the ornamental park under a wet, grey sky, a somewhat desolate ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... carpet was soft inches deep with fern and moss. As for the flowers—Jacqueline wanted to pluck them all, to wreathe the wondering fawns, as ladies with picture hats do in the old frivolous rococo fantasies. And as to that, she might have been one of those Watteau ladies herself, so rich was the coloring there, and she in the foreground so white, so soft of skin, so sylvan ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the garden and the building, a mist starred with patches of white and dazzlingly green leaf. And, above all, there was an evening sky, peaceful and luminous, from which a light wind blew towards the two girls sitting by the open window. One, the elder, had a face like a Watteau sketch, with black velvety eyes, hair drawn back from a white forehead, delicate little mouth, with sharp indentations at the corners, and a small chin. The other was much more solidly built—a girl ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she retorted laughingly. "After all that has taken place? Mon Dieu! You remember I advised you against this madness—I told you in the beginning it might not all be like Watteau's masterpiece—the ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birthday; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! What an air breathes from the name! what a rustling of silks and waving of plumes! what a sparkling ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Duran that was—now one of our most dashing—I should say, charitable, ladies. Plenty of men at Service's church now. She's dressed in Watteau-fashion to-night, so if you see any one skipping around, looking as though she had just stepped from the Embarkation for the Island of Venus, set her down for the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... has fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers. She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau peasant-girl—nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint of a cruche cassee. She is as fresh as a March wind. Let us believe that she found a true man to relish her ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... woman and find herself—isn't that the phrase? I hope the reverse now; that she and her husband will philander along to the close of the chapter. But I prefer your word,—to the close of the "comedy," say. It implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that impression,—as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive the flimsiness of their pretty bows and ribbons! But I think of your one o'clock in the morning of the masquerade ball, and frankly I am afraid. I look at the three ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... lines and then dreaming for half an hour. Sometimes he hired a rickety bicycle and rode along the dusty road that led to the forest, and then lay down in a clearing. His head was full of romantic fancies. The ladies of Watteau, gay and insouciant, seemed to wander with their cavaliers among the great trees, whispering to one another careless, charming things, and yet somehow oppressed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... ancient brocades from a chest in the garret, the dowager Marquise of the proverb just played. And a little further, in the shadow of the doorway, stood Angelot in powdered wig, silk coat, and sword, looking like a handsome courtier from a group by Watteau, and his eyes showed plainly enough what woman, if not what cause, attracted him at the moment. As to causes, Monsieur Joseph and the Vicomte des Barres were deep in talk close by; two Chouans consulting in the ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... polished floor; nothing can be more cheerful than the old fashioned chintz hangings and curtains with red Chinese figures upon a white ground, and the panels over the door painted with pastoral scenes in the style of Watteau. A clock of Sevres china, and rosewood furniture inlaid with green—quaint and portly furniture, twisted into all sorts of grotesque shapes—complete the decorations of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... was hung with French engravings mostly after Watteau, and boasted a faded Aubusson carpet, a tea-table was set out. Lord Buntingford, having pushed forward a seat for his guest, went towards the tea-table, and then thought ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... picturesqueness, Neapolitan Claude the atmospheric enchantments, Carlo Dolce the effeminate grace, Titian the voluptuous energy, Guido the placid self-possession, and Raphael and Correggio the religious sentiment of Italy; Watteau put on canvas the fete champetre; the peasant-life of Spain is pictured by Murillo, her asceticism by the old religious limners; what English rustics were before steam and railroads Gainsborough and Moreland ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Some Japanese Watteau must have mapped out this Donko-Tchaya, for it has rather an affected air of rurality, though very pretty. It is well shaded, under a shelter of large trees with dense foliage, and a miniature ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... else. But the boy contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten shillings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would give L100 ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... honeyed hour Spent with this unmanly male! Sommerville became a bow'r, Alston an Arcadian Vale, Breathing concentrated otto!— An existence la Watteau. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Chief among the painters who interpreted the refined sensuality and more pleasant vices of the age, yet not of them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des Scenes Galantes. These scenes of coquetry, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... you choose to place Murillo in the first class of painters, founding his claim upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I am your humble servant. Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the Angels after his fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try historical subjects? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads will fetch 1,000L., 1,500L., 2,000L.—as much as a Sevres "cabaret" of Rose du Barri. If cost price is to be your criterion of worth, what shall we say to that little receipt for ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very light which filters through the dense foliage is tinged with green. The marbles are velvety and moist with moss, and the maidenhair fern drips lush and dank. Here Liszt drew inspiration from the harmonies of water notes blended with the chiming of distant bells, and Watteau showed in the many studies which he made in the garden how potent was its influence in investing his fetes champetres with the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... This was a sort of pantomime. The actors were grouped like a picture of Watteau. Count Pourtales was a dancing-master and was really so witty, graceful, and took such artistic attitudes that he was a revelation to every one. Prince Metternich (his bosom ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... at the court to fascinate him, to keep him amused by a thousand diversions suggested by art or intellect, to make him happy and contented in a circle of ever-changing enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau-like country, plays, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual embarking for Cytherea, that would have been the setting she preferred. But once she had set foot on the shifting soil of the court, she could only realize her ideal imperfectly. ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... blonde creature about twenty-five years old, dressed in a floating Watteau-like garment of vaporous blue, painted with faded pink roses. She was seated in a large carved and gilded chair, opposite an excessively Louis-Quinze mirror, while her pale golden hair was being brushed ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... her wide black hat, and the eyes which glowed from the small pointed face beneath it; the tumbling masses of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow, the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl, but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified—her ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
