Rococo1720
Gersaint’s Signboard
Antoine Watteau
Curator's Eye
"Created in just eight days, the work acts as a manifesto for Rococo taste, abandoning monarchical pomp for worldly conversation and aesthetic contemplation."
Watteau’s final masterpiece, this monumental signboard captures the transition between the reign of Louis XIV and 18th-century elegance within a Parisian art shop.
Analysis
Painted in 1720, this canvas was intended to serve as an actual shop sign for the dealer Edme-François Gersaint, located on the Pont Notre-Dame. Watteau, already weakened by tuberculosis, offers here a profound reflection on the passage of time and the evolution of styles. The most symbolic gesture lies on the left of the painting, where workers are seen packing away a portrait of Louis XIV. This portrait, resembling those by Hyacinthe Rigaud, represents the end of an era of absolutist rigor and the beginning of the Regency, which was lighter and focused on the pleasures of the mind and senses.
The work does not merely show a shop; it stages a "society of art." The figures, dressed in shimmering silks with pearly reflections — the famous "Watteau pleat" — are not just buyers but connoisseurs engaged in a social choreography. Gersaint’s shop becomes a theater where we observe the works as much as the spectators themselves. This mise-en-abyme of sight is central to Watteau’s work, which focuses here on the tactile and visual relationship the aristocracy maintained with luxury objects.
The analysis of the paintings hanging on the wall reveals immense erudition. Watteau does not paint existing works literally but pastiches the styles of the great masters he admired: the Venetian colors of Titian and Veronese, the compositions of Rubens, and Flemish chiaroscuro. Each wall of the shop is a condensed art history lesson, asserting that modern taste is nourished by tradition while reinterpreting it for a more intimate and domestic setting.
Finally, the painting subtly addresses the myth of vanity. Although the scene appears worldly and light, the presence of crates, packing straw, and the mirror scrutinized by a couple of amateurs reminds us that beauty and art are as fragile as life. Watteau, knowing he was dying, infuses this commercial scene with an underlying melancholy. Art is the only vestige capable of outliving kings and painters, yet it remains subject to the vagaries of the market and fashion, an amazingly modern vision for the time.
The most fascinating secret regarding this work is its original physical nature. Although it is now presented as a unified rectangular work, it was initially composed of two distinct panels with an arched top to fit the shape of Gersaint’s shop. It was only later, to satisfy collectors, that the upper corners were added and the two parts joined together, creating the horizontal composition we admire today in Berlin.
Another secret lies in the identity of the characters. The dealer Edme-François Gersaint himself is represented in the center, presenting a painting to a client. However, research suggests that Watteau integrated portraits of his close friends and protectors into the crowd, transforming a commercial commission into a private tribute to his inner circle. The woman seen from behind, whose silk dress is the luminous focal point of the painting, is considered one of the pinnacles of 18th-century pictorial technique, concealing the model's identity behind textual virtuosity.
The crated portrait of Louis XIV is not just a political metaphor; it is a visual pun. The name of Gersaint’s shop was "Le Grand Monarque." By boxing up the "Great Monarch," Watteau literally announces the change of name or direction of the establishment, while emphasizing that court art is now a second-hand item compared to the new "painting of gallantry." It was an incredible audacity for a painter of that time to treat the royal image with such nonchalance.
Finally, X-rays have revealed that Watteau painted the signboard directly onto the canvas without complex preliminary sketches, proof of his absolute technical mastery despite his declining health. Significant pentimenti were discovered, particularly in the position of the dog in the foreground and in the adjustment of the wall frames, showing that the artist composed "from life" to capture the immediacy of Parisian life.
Join Premium.
UnlockQuiz
What major structural peculiarity distinguishes the current state of the work from its original function as a shop sign?
Discover
