Antoine Watteau, Plants and grasses with buildings in the background

In giving keen attention to these hart’s-tongue ferns, Watteau has also captured a surprising and original view of an eighteenth-century house. Judging by the way the grasses obscure the horizon, Watteau sat or lay on the ground in order to study the plants at eye level, achieving a
highly unconventional perspective almost as a by-product of his original enquiry. Watteau is famous for his numerous exquisite figure studies, but this drawing is one of very few surviving plant studies done in the open air. The Comte de Caylus, Watteau’s contemporary biographer, described him drawing ‘constantly’ in the Luxembourg garden.