Around 1715, Watteau painted his pendants The Cascade (private collection) and The Country Dance (Huntington Library and Museum, Pasadena) in a rectangular format, but by the mid-1780s both had been cut down to make roundels. Sometime before the 1820s, an unknown painter created these copies of Watteau’s originals.
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Title:The Cascade
Artist:Copy after Antoine Watteau (French, late 18th century)
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:Diameter 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Lillian S. Timken, 1959
Accession Number:60.71.21
The compositions are recorded among paintings by Watteau of which there are prints: La Danse paysanne, or the Country Dance, by Benoît II Audran (1698–1772) and La Cascade by Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin (1698–1733), both coming from the collection of "Mr. de Monmerqué." Originally they were rectangular. The engravings show them reversed. Each is described as "Gravé d’Apres le Tableau original peint par Watteau, de mesme grandeur." La Danse paysanne is presumably a painting on panel (43.2 x 32.4 cm) belonging to the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. The Cascade, also on panel, was last seen at public auction in Zürich more than thirty years ago (Galerie Koller, May 16–17, 1980, no. 5182, 43 x 32.5 cm, colorpl. 14). In each case, by about 1785 a roundel of approximately the same size as the Museum’s paintings had been cut from the larger surface and then later provided with a replacement surround, presumably based on the relevant print. This would suggest that the Museum’s copies, for this is what we believe them to be, must date no earlier than the end of the eighteenth century.
Katharine Baetjer 2012
John Joshua Proby, 1st Earl of Carysfort, Elton Hall, Peterborough, and London (until d. 1828; posthumous sale, Christie's, London, June 14, 1828, no. 29, "A pair, small, a Masquerade and Musical conversation," for £63); Reverend John Lucy, Hampton Lucy, Warwick (until d. 1874; posthumous sale, Christie's, London, May 1, 1875, no. 88, "Dance Champêtre," 8 in. circle, with no. 89, "Musical Conversation," for £535.10 to Wertheimer); [Wertheimer, London, from 1875]; Sir Edward Henry Scott, 5th Baronet, Westbury Manor, Brackley, and London (until d. 1883); Sir Samuel Edward Scott, 6th Baronet (1883–1924; his sale, Christie's, London July 4, 1924, no. 150, to Colnaghi); [Colnaghi, London, 1924–26]; William R. Timken, New York (1926–49); Lillian S. Timken, New York (1949–59)
Wallace Collection Catalogues: Pictures and Drawings. 15th ed. London, 1928, p. 330, identify the original painting, engraved by Scotin, as the picture in the Michel-Lévy sale and call ours a copy.
"Ninetieth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year 1959–1960." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 19 (October 1960), pp. 36–37, ill., as by Watteau.
John Canaday. "Flip of Coin Helps Divide Fortune in Art." New York Times (May 15, 1960), p. 77.
Jean Ferré. Watteau. Madrid, [1972], vol. 1, in chronology, under 1895; vol. 2, p. 763, fig. 520, no. P70; vol. 3, p. 1073, no. P 70; vol. 4, pp. 1106, 1120, 1203, as a pastiche, possibly the picture of this title in the Lucy sale, London, 1875.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 368, ill.
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell inFrench Art of the Eighteenth Century at The Huntington. Ed. Shelley M. Bennett and Carolyn Sargentson. [San Marino, Calif.], 2008, p. 389 n. 23.
Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 72–75, no. 13, ill. (color).
Conservator George Bisacca points out several physical differences: The Cascade is on a thinner piece of wood, its grain runs diagonally, not vertically, and a head of a putto is visible in x-radiograph. The grain on The Country Dance runs horizontally and no underlying composition is visible in x-radiograph.
The following have expressed the view that the paintings are not by Watteau: Pierre Rosenberg, Donald Posner, Edgar Munhall, Martin Eidelberg, Marianne Roland-Michel, Margaret Morgan Grasselli, and Alan Wintermute.
After Antoine Watteau (French, Valenciennes 1684–1721 Nogent-sur-Marne)
ca. 1740
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