"Watteau" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assistant dives into the Christmas Card Basket, and produces RAPHAEL TUCK AND SONS,—"Tuck," a schoolword dear to "our boys,"—who lead off the Christmas dance. Daintily and picturesquely got up, their Cards are quite full. Their Watteau Screens will serve as small ornaments afterwards. These "Correct Cards," with few exceptions, are not particularly for Christmas, but for all time. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... day and genial, yet with hints of rain on the 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 first ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... 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 ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... low life as well as high life in Pompey the Little, sketches after Hogarth, no less than studies a la Watteau. But the high life is by far the better described. Francis Coventry was the cousin of the Earl of that name, he who married the beautiful and silly Maria Gunning. When he painted the ladies of quality at their routs and drums, masquerades, and hurly-burlies, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... printed in imitation of the half-light (abat-jour); this is used principally for a ground, covering the whole surface of the glass, within which (the necessary spaces having been previously cut out before it is stuck on the glass) are placed medallion centres of Watteau figures, perfectly transparent, which derive increased brilliancy from the semi-transparency of the surrounding ground. This is by far the cheapest method, though involving extra trouble, as the plain grounds printed in sheets are only a fourth the price of the sheets which contain the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... his studio Andre Watteau, whose very name spells sophisticated pastorals of exceeding loveliness. Watteau worked with Audran when he was producing his most inspired set of tapestry, on which we must dwell for a bit for pure pleasure. This set is called the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... more friars; for, though no friend of the Jesuits, he was zealous for the Faith, and was rarely without a missionary in his journeyings. Like Hennepin, the three friars were all Flemings. One of them, Melithon Watteau, was to remain at Niagara; the others, Zenobe Membre and Gabriel Ribourde, were to preach the Faith among the tribes of the West. Ribourde was a hale and cheerful old man of sixty-four. He went four ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Boucher's etching after a drawing by Watteau (plate 216 in Jean de Julienne's compilation of Watteau's work, Figures de differents caracteres, ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... elegance worthy of the great Mrs. Barry; the suitor bowing low, with his white hand pressed against that "odious proud heart" which is gently breaking at the thought of departing. What a nice painting it would make for a Watteau fan. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... me. There were fine gentlemen with swords and silk waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer gowns. Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not got beyond Watteau. As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and Watteau then, and we could only stare in astonishment. And for once we saw an officer of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that might have served ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Think of the gallops over those leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the roots of your hair, the coming close to the earth and learning over again the stories of the growing grass and the little wild flowers without names! Glorious is what it will be. Shall I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the latter. And they'll have my picture, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... most part languorously calm, was in a state of excitement quite without her customary aplomb. She sank into a seat, fanning herself with a vigor which threatened ruin to the precious slats of a fan which bore the handiwork of Watteau. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... cried, "this masquerade? Some figure for to-night's charade, A Watteau shepherdess or maid?" She smiled and begged my pardon: "Why, surely you must know the name,— That woman who was Shakespeare's flame Or Byron's,—well, it's all the same: Why, Lord! ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the meal that evening when Nancy entered; a new Nancy, and one so wondrous to behold that Sandy and I started at the sight of her. She wore a gown of yellow crepe embroidered in gold, low and sleeveless, with a fold in the back, after the fashion of the ladies of Watteau, and a long train falling far behind. Her hair was gathered high and dressed with jewels which sparkled as well upon her throat and hands. The thing that marked her most, an alluring touchableness, was doubly present as she came toward us, laughing, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... stigmatised as extravagant, mannered, as just equal to painting cupids, nymphs, and parroquets. In the last century he experienced the effect of the profound discredit into which the whole of eighteenth-century art had fallen. In France, David had obliterated Watteau; and the reputation of Pompeo Battoni, a sort of Italian David, effaced Tiepolo and his contemporaries. When the delegates of the French Republic inspected Italian churches and palaces, and decided what works of art should be sent to the Louvre, they singled out the Bolognese, the Guercinos ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... carrying the elegance of the 18th century through the storm into the period beyond, notably Prud'hon, who has been called the Watteau of the Revolution. His portraits of the women of the Bonaparte family, Josephine, Hortense, Pauline, have all the grace and fascination of the earlier age, merge with it the abandon of the Directoire period, and touch the ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... and reason were not in accord, he restrained himself, for him marvelously, and neither made love to her in earnest nor flirted with her in jest. Indeed, Leam was too intense to be approached at any time with levity. As well dress the Tragic Muse in the costume of a Watteau shepherdess as ply Leam Dundas with the pretty follies found so useful with other women. She did not understand them, and it seemed useless to try to make her. If Edgar paid her any of the trivial compliments always on his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the philosophy and science of their time, than to bid for a cane-bottomed chair that either of these two ladies had adorned. The same thing might be said, in a different sense, of Voltaire; while, as every one knows, the money-value of any hand-stroke of Watteau or Hogarth, Nattier or Sir Joshua, is out of all proportion to the importance of the men. Society seemed to delight in talking with solemn conviction about serious values, and in paying fantastic prices for nothing but the most futile. The drama acted at Peking, in the summer of 1900, was, in ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... costumes that she wishes a few particular friends to don, sufficient in number to form one or more quadrilles to open the ball. Each set must be carefully arranged as for instance, a court party, costumed after the time of Louis XIV. A group of Watteau Shepherds and shepherdesses, or a hunting party garbed after any ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... that there was displayed an unseemly length of thick ankle rising solidly above the old pair of men's side-boots that encased her feet. The battered hat perched rakishly atop her knob of gray-white hair gave her a jaunty, sporting look, as of a ponderous, burlesque Watteau. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... white and silver. The carpet is pink, and feels like moss, as you step. The wall is covered with pink and silver brocade, except where there are panels with Watteau-like pictures. The curtains are foamy lace, with the pink and silver brocade falling over them. The furniture looks as if it were made of ivory; there's a mirror in three parts, reaching from the floor half way to the ceiling, so that you see yourself in front, and two profiles, like astral ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... lenient a view of the case ... otherwise ...! They were quite certain in their own minds that poor Owen had been culpable, if not guilty. They were married six months later. The Directoire hats were out of date, of course, but Louis Quinze, with Watteau trimmings suited the six bridesmaids marvellously, and the "Non Angli sed Angeli" choir rendered the Anthem and the "Voice that ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... WATTEAU, ANTOINE, celebrated French painter and engraver, born at Valenciennes; his pictures were numerous and the subjects almost limited to pseudo-pastoral rural groups; the tone of the colouring is pleasing, and the design ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Pompeian designs, elegant scrolls, delicate tracery of blue, red, green, &c. These colours strongly opposed as in the remains of paintings at Pompeii. Here are some other precious little pictures, a small Gerard Dow, a Watteau, a Moucheron, and a Polemberg. He merely noticed them, and then led us into ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... and portraits of the King and Marie Antoinette. The Cabinet de Travail of the queen was a cabinet given to her on her marriage by the town of Paris; in the Salle de Rception are four pictures by Watteau; the Boudoir has a Svres bust of the queen; in the Chambre—coucher is the queen's bed, and a portrait of the Dauphin by Lebrun. These simple rooms are a standing defense of the queen from the false accusations brought against her at the Revolution as to her extravagance in the furnishing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... or a hue grown dim, into words as exact and vivid as the objects which he beheld. If his imagination recomposed things, it was in the manner of some admired painter; he looked on nature through the medium of a Zurbaran or a Watteau. The dictionary for Gautier was a collection of gems that flashed or glowed; he chose and set them with the skill and precision of a goldsmith enamoured of his art. At Athens, in one of his latest ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... thought it good taste to admire the rustic and naive. The idyls of Gessner and the pastorals of Florian were the favorite reading, and Watteau the popular painter. Gentlefolks, steeped in artifice, vice, and intrigue, masked their empty lives under the as sumption of Arcadian simplicity, and minced and ambled in the costumes of shepherds and shepherdesses. Marie Antoinette ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... rest. Master Rowland, as in courtesy bound, limped with the stranger over his helmets and gauntlets, his wooden carvings, his black-letter distich; and, although she was not overflowing in her praises, she had seen other family pictures by Greuze, and she herself possessed a fan painted by Watteau, to which he was vastly welcome if he cared for such a ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the foot-lights. In 1900 at the Paris Exposition a collection of his works, four being representative, opened the eyes of critics and public alike. It was realised that Monticelli had not received his proper ranking in the nineteenth-century theatre of painting; that while he owed much to Watteau, to Turner, to Rousseau, he was a master who could stand or fall on his own merits. Since then the Monticelli pictures have been ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... with the average intelligent critic in concluding that such various accomplishment must needs be superficial. It was not credible that one and the same pair—par nobile fratrum—could be not only close observers of contemporary life, but also authorities on Watteau and Outamaro, on Marie Antoinette and Mlle. Clairon. To admit this would be to emphasize the limitations of all other men of letters. Again, the uncanny element of chance which enters into every enterprise ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... 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 figure hurrying ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... itself?—If the reader would revive for himself this vanished world let him seek for it in those works that have preserved its externals or its accent, and first in the pictures and engravings of Watteau, Fragonard and the Saint-Aubins, and then in the novels and dramas of Voltaire and Marivaux, and even in Colle and Crebillon fils;[2252] then do we see the breathing figures and hear their voices, What bright, winning, intelligent faces beaming with pleasure and with the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which was overhung to a vast height with woodbines, lilacs, and laburnums, and dignified by the tall shapely cypresses. On the descent of the hill were placed the French horns; the abigails, servants, and neighbours wandering below by the river; in short, it was Parnassus, as Watteau would have painted it. Here we had a rural syllabub, and part of the company returned to town; but were replaced by Giardini and Onofrio, who with Nivernois on the violin, and Lord Pembroke on the bass, accompanied Miss Pelham, Lady Rockingham, and the Duchess ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... background against which 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 scene ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... It was she who had pleaded most for the preservation of the empire grand piano. The one in the gold case with all the Watteau figures and garlands painted on it, that had been saved as one of the "white hyacinths" from the old home. After the day's work was over, it was always Helen who stole into the dim front room to listen ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... house,—Washington's head-quarters,—in the town of Yorkers. The fire-places, 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and we find the instrument fully developed at the beginning of the 17th century when Mersenne[18] gives a full description of all its parts. The chief characteristic of the musette was a certain rustic Watteau-like grace. The face of the performer was no longer distorted by inflating the bag; for the long cumbersome drones was substituted a short barrel droner, containing the necessary lengths of tubing for four or five drones, reduced to the smallest and most compact ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the air of devotion to some peculiar cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a short skirt with a peculiar hang, due no doubt to mysteries about the waist; she wears a comic little hat over one brow; there is something of Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... 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 heart.' As ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... we have here, nor Watteau: cosmetics and rosettes are far away; tunics are short, and cheeks are nut-brown. It is Teniers, rather:—boors, indeed; but they are live boors, and not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... before me, holding up their frocks, and showing me their rosebuds of hairless slits, as they also rubbed and frigged their little cunts, smiling and telling me they could. They were exquisitely dressed in the Watteau style, looking almost like Dresden figures, being so chic and delicate; then, seating themselves one on each side me on the grass, they proceeded to handle and play with my great big prick, allowing me at the same time to frig their two little cunts for ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... the Kistine Church at Falun. Outside the city wall were promenading gentlemen, in kneebreeches and buckled shoes, who carried Bengal canes. A coach was seen driving out of the gateway of the town, in which were seated ladies in powdered wigs and wearing Watteau hats. Beyond the wall were trees, with a profusion of dark green foliage; and on the ground, between patches of tall, waving grass, ran little shimmering brooklets. At the bottom of the picture was painted in large, ornate letters: "This is God's ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... with a high arcadian trellis, and between the pillars of this trellis were hung flowers and flags and lights, and all the trees about had coloured bulbs amid their leaves, so that at night it was an impression of Arcady as a modern Watteau might see it, with the crispness and the beauty of the women and the vivid dresses of the women giving the scene a quality peculiarly ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... and half hidden from the precincts of the chateau, are the Chaumiere and the Ermitage and they recall the background of a Fragonard or a Watteau. It is all very "stagy"—but, since it exists, can hardly ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... I 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 ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... there is never an unmated name in the report they bring her; and she, belike, being pleased with them, allows them to sit up late, and to have each a slice of ambrosia and a sip of nectar. But elsewhere they have hard work, and often fly back in dread of Venus' anger. At that other balustrade, where Watteau, remembering this one, painted for us the 'Plaisirs du Bal,' how often they have lain in ambush, knowing that were one of them to show but the tip of his wings those sedate and migniard masqueraders would faint for very shame; yet ever hoping that they might, by their ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... any flowers with this lace surplice? and what on earth shall I do with my hands? they're so black they will cast a gloom over the stage. Perhaps I can wrap my handkerchief carelessly round one, and I'll keep the other round your waist, considerable, tucked under your Watteau pleat. Will I do?' ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you—at first?" 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
... a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... proportion, as, in those limited subjects and peculiar forms, they introduce more or less of the expression of those passions, as they appear in general and more enlarged nature. This principle may be applied to the battle pieces of Bourgognone, the French gallantries of Watteau, and even beyond the exhibition of animal life, to the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and the sea-views of Vandervelde. All these painters have, in general, the same right, in different degrees, to the name of a painter, which a satirist, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his king. Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard painted for the frivolous nobility of the eighteenth century just what that nobility wanted, and even the precursors of the Revolution, sober and honest Chardin, Greuze the sentimental, had no difficulty in making themselves understood, until ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... as Villiers de l'Isle Adam hath it. And Villiers has also written: "When the forehead alone contains the existence of a man, that man is enlightened only from above his head; then his jealous shadow, prostrate under him, draws him by the feet, that it may drag him down into the invisible." Like Watteau, Laforgue was "condemned" from the beginning to "a green thought in a green shade." The spirit in him, the "shadow," devoured his soul, pulverised his will, made of him a Hamlet without a propelling cause, a doubter in ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... chimney-place faced with white marble, and throws its joyous light on the carefully 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
... and a shepherdess, They dwelt in Arcadee, And they were dressed in Watteau dress, Most charming for ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle |
