The French Comedy

Watteau arrived in Paris only in 1702, and was “agréé” (approved) by the Académie Royale in 1712. Only in 1717 did he deliver his Pilgrimage to Cythera (Paris, Musée du Louvre) as his obligatory reception piece, in relation to which the Académie recognised the pictorial genre of the “fêtes galantes”, originated by Watteau. Since this artist’s working technique was not especially meticulous, the original painterly quality of many of his pictures is barely recognizable. Despite this, the two Berlin theatre pictures are extraordinarily well preserved, and are among the most beautiful exemplars of his art. They owe their titles, and hence a reference to their relatedness as pendants, to a pair of reproductive engravings by Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Elder from 1734. Frederick the Great purchased both pictures before 1769 for his gallery in Sanssouci. In 1829, they were delivered to the new Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
In The French Comedy, the actors have gathered in the sunny clearing of a park. Standing and sitting on the left are a number of musicians, and among them, Pierrot and Gilles. In the middle, a couple begins a ceremonial dance, while two actors, clad as Apollo with a quiver and Bacchus with a panther’s pelt and grapevines, drink a toast. Standing between them is Colombine, who as La Folie, personifies the folly of sensuous love. The only figure to meet the beholder’s gaze is Crispin, a portrayal of the actor Paul Poisson, who wears dark garments and stands in the right foreground. The cloaked herm set above against the wall might be a reference to the deeper significance of the scene. It is interpretable as Momus, the son of Night and an emblem of foolish censoriousness. While Apollo and Bacchus embody spiritual and sensuous love, Momus and La Folie refer to the world of dark, dangerous passions. Music, dance, and mythological figures embody multifarious illusions which can however not be related to a specific theatre piece of the time. Hennig Bock | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019