Jean-Baptiste Pater, Fête Galante

This type of painting, known as a fête galante, was developed by Watteau and usually shows figures in ball dress or masquerade costume dancing and enjoying themselves in an Arcadian country setting. Pater was taught by Watteau and painted large numbers of these sorts of scenes inspired by his work, which found ready buyers in Paris.

Here 28 figures are in parkland playing music, dancing and courting. A couple are dancing in the centre, watched by the crowd, who are mainly arranged in couples. At bottom left, below a statue of Venus, a lady rejects a man’s advances. A violinist, oboist and hurdy-gurdy player make music while children play with a puppy, and an enslaved Black page boy (he wears what looks like a gold collar which would denote he is enslaved) sees to the wine cooler. A number of the figures in this painting are similar, without being identical, to figures in Pater’s Dance under the Trees (Hermitage, St Petersburg). They also resemble those in paintings by or prints after Watteau. The concept of the couple dancing in parkland with musicians, companions and statuary, and especially the figure of the woman, may have been inspired by Watteau’s Fêtes Venetiennes of about 1717–19 (National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh). The Black page and the wine cooler are borrowed from Watteau’s Les Charmes de la Vie (about 1718–19, Wallace Collection, London).

The woman to the extreme right is one part of a couple that may have been used again in the foreground of a tapestry, The Dance (Ham House, Richmond), from the London workshop of William Bradshaw and woven in about 1734–40. This raises the possibility that the painting was in England by that date. ‘A large picture with Figures dancing’ by Pater was sold in London in 1739, but we cannot be sure whether it was this one.

Three things suggest that this picture is likely to have been painted early in Pater’s career, in the early 1720s. First, the many changes that he made during the course of the composition could be a sign of a considerable degree of uncertainty. Secondly, his decision to include the frieze of figures across the immediate foreground either because of doubt about how to create a sense of recession, or the need to fill a void for the sake of it. Thirdly, virtually all of the figures in the immediate foreground are copied from, not just inspired by, paintings by Watteau. All these factors tell us that Pater made the painting while he was still developing his craft.

The poor, discoloured condition of the painting has contributed to uncertainty about whether it is definitely by Pater himself. However, examination of the painting by X-radiography and infrared reflectography reveals that the number of alterations and their position are consistent with an original composition, not a copy.