WATTEAU, Jean-Antoine
(b. 1684, Valenciennes, d. 1721, Nogent-sur-Marne)

Studies of Women's Heads

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Drawing
Musée du Louvre, Paris

the mass of his drawings, themselves varied beyond his paintings in their range of subject-matter, the fruit of incessant study and the product of marvellously matched eye and hand. Rarely did Watteau, it seems, make preparatory studies with particular paintings in mind; but he had assembled a whole visual vocabulary from which he could select what he required for any painting. The drawings show him keenly aware of life in the streets but even more of life in a more intimate way — the life particularly of women. A sheet of sketches may contain a series of women's heads [34] at different angles.




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