No other artist made such a mark on 18th-century painting north of the Alps as Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). In a creative phase lasting little more than a decade, he created not the large forceful works artists are often remembered for, but rather small-scale and playful pictures full of quiet charm and gentle wit. He was able to exert artistic influence because, living in a period of upheaval and decline at the end of the era of Louis XIV, he had a presentiment of what was to come: a refinement of the mind and sensory perception, the Enlightenment, and with it new ideas of social justice. The developments that led to the French Revolution at the end of the century are already present in embryo beneath the surface merriment of Watteau's painting.
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