Antoine Watteau, The Pleasures of the Ball (Les Plaisirs du Bal), c. 1715–17, oil on canvas, 65.2 x 52.5 cm, DP156 (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)
Rococo artworks are often dismissed as frivolous, but they contain deep worlds of meaning. In the 18th century, the Rococo was known as “the modern style” (le style moderne), and it challenged long-held beliefs about art, identity, and social class. The French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau’s Pleasures of the Ball is a case in point. At first glance, it looks like a straightforward fête galante: a new type of painting that Watteau invented, featuring elegant elites enjoying each other’s company in an idyllic outdoor setting. Like many examples of Rococo art, it takes the depiction and experience of pleasure quite seriously, since pleasure, as well as leisure, were considered important forms of aristocratic self-expression. But on a deeper level, the artist’s inclusion of two apparently enslaved Black figures makes us question whose pleasure is being represented here, and at what price.
From Versailles to Paris
Between 1715, when King Louis XIV died, and 1723, France was ruled by a regent until the new monarch (Louis XV) could come of age. The regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, moved the court from the Palace at Versailles (from 1682 this had been the main residence of the French Court and government) to Paris, and members of the nobility who had been obliged to live at the Sun King’s palace and take part in elaborate royal spectacles moved to Paris with him. Among them were many recently ennobled French aristocrats, including wealthy bankers who had helped the king fund his endless wars and colonization campaigns in the Americas and elsewhere. Flush with money and ambition, they bought and furnished fancy Parisian mansions known as hôtels particuliers and engaged in more intimate, less court-directed forms of social interaction. The Rococo emerged as an art form that embodied this new mode of elite living.
Thanks to this painting, Charles Le Brun won the admiration of King Louis XIV who confirmed him as First Painter of the King. Charles Le Brun, The Queens of Persia at the Feet of Alexander, also called The Tent of Darius, c. 1660, oil on canvas, 453 x 298 cm (Palace of Versailles)
Rococo art patrons rejected the classical subject matter and moralizing spirit of the grand manner history painting that had flourished under Louis XIV (like the painting above by Charles Le Brun). They preferred smaller easel pictures suitable for the stylish rooms of their new hôtels that prioritized modern themes and subjects. Fête galantes were particularly popular, and, although their lush parkland environments can appear dreamlike, they evoke real-life gatherings that these aristocrats—among them Pierre Crozat, a rich financier and art collector who was one of Watteau’s chief patrons—were hosting at their garden retreats on the outskirts of Paris.
Antoine Watteau, La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat), c. 1715, oil on canvas, 46.7 x 55.3 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
The multisensory Rococo
In Pleasures of the Ball, a large group of men and women dressed in colorful, shimmering fabrics congregate on an open-air terrace. The painting contains many hallmarks of the Rococo, including an emphasis on pastel hues, loose feathery brushwork, and an overall lack of symmetry and focus that invites our eyes and imaginations to wander. To the left of center, we see a couple performing a graceful dance known as the minuet, while other partygoers flirt behind fans or enjoy refreshments served to them in lavish silver and crystal vessels. We can almost hear the soft sound of violins and the tinkling of glass, just as we can “feel” the light breeze in the air. This feeling is intentional: Rococo artworks aimed to engage not just vision but all of the senses, in line with period ideas which claimed that knowledge is derived not from innate or received wisdom, but from ephemeral sensory impressions.
Couple dancing the minuet, with the commedia dell’arte characters Pierrot and Harlequin at the top left (detail), Antoine Watteau, The Pleasures of the Ball (Les Plaisirs du Bal), c. 1715–17, oil on canvas, 65.2 x 52.5 cm, DP156 (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)
This multisensory experience extends to the painting’s delicate, tactile surface, which appropriately captures the fleeting nature of the scene but also looks as if it might disintegrate if touched. As the art historian Oliver Wunsch has argued, Watteau’s elite patrons appreciated this fragility because it fit their view of art: not as something that had to stand the test of time, or teach a lesson, but that could be admired in the moment for its ability to give pleasure. [1] It may have also spoken to the precarious wealth and social standing of these patrons, who had to rely constantly on new forms of sociability and consumption (including art buying) to keep up appearances and demonstrate their worth. Watteau makes this delicate “dance” of social performance look easy, and that’s one reason why Crozat and other clients loved his work.
Partygoers and musicians, with a woman being served refreshments at left and a young Black boy positioned between the two women holding fans at right (detail), Antoine Watteau, The Pleasures of the Ball (Les Plaisirs du Bal), c. 1715–17, oil on canvas, 65.2 x 52.5 cm, DP156 (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)
All the world’s a stage
One of the foremost art theorists of the day, Roger de Piles, captured this new definition of art when he wrote that the purpose of a painting was to “seduce” or “call the spectator, to surprise him, and oblige him to approach it, as if he intended to converse with the figures.” [2] If we follow de Piles’s instructions and move in more closely, we see that the women are dressed in up-to-the-minute fashions—including chic striped dresses that are still today described as having a “Watteau” back because they appear so frequently in the artist’s work—while the men wear flamboyant capes and hats that give them a theatrical air.
Pierrot stares directly back at us, while Harlequin appears below, raising an arm above his head (detail), Antoine Watteau, The Pleasures of the Ball (Les Plaisirs du Bal), c. 1715–17, oil on canvas, 65.2 x 52.5 cm, DP156 (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)
To the left of the man dancing the minuet, we see actual stage actors from the commedia dell’arte, a form of lowbrow Italian theater popular among Parisian elites. The character of the sad clown Pierrot, with his trademark white satin costume and straw hat, stares directly back at us while another character, the impish servant Harlequin, appears below, dramatically raising an arm above his head. Their presence mobilizes the Shakespearean metaphor “all the world’s a stage,” but it also reveals a colonial subtext that pervades Watteau’s work.
Harlequin appears in blackface, an attribute meant to signal his devilish nature and peasant origins that may have contributed to 18th-century racist stereotypes. This was notably the case when he played the role of an enslaved African in a theatrical production, which happened during the 1720s, as the French Crown and its financial elite paid increasing attention to developing France’s slaveholding colonies in the Americas. These developments were already well underway, however, when Watteau painted Pleasures of the Ball. In 1716, the monarchy relaxed restrictions against allowing colonists from Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Louisiana, and other territories to bring enslaved individuals with them to metropolitan France, allowing them to do so as long as they pledged to train these individuals in a trade, like hairdressing, that they could practice back in the colony.
Colonial Watteau
Colonial connections are also embodied by two young Black men (most likely African or Afro-descended) who appear in the painting. One of these young men cranes his neck and peers out from the crowd at right, while the other stands alone atop a balcony and gazes down on the revelers below. They too wear striped costumes, probably in this case to denote their servant status, and the boy on the balcony wears a feathered turban to highlight his exoticism. Although it is hard to tell, they may be wearing gleaming metal collars that mark them as enslaved.
Left: young Black men in the crowd; right: young Black man on the balcony (details), Antoine Watteau, The Pleasures of the Ball (Les Plaisirs du Bal), c. 1715–17, oil on canvas, 65.2 x 52.5 cm, DP156 (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)
Many scholars have overlooked the presence of these Black figures, but some have suggested that Watteau modeled them on paintings by the Venetian artist Veronese. It’s possible, however, that they are meant to refer to, or even portray, real-life enslaved individuals. If so, who are these young men? How did they get here? What was Watteau’s attitude towards their subjugation, and why did he include them in this work? What does it mean that he seems to have made them, and the boy on the balcony in particular, into surrogate spectators?
The costs of pleasure
Watteau’s most important patrons—Pierre Crozat, Jean de Jullienne, and Claude Glucq, who owned Pleasures—amassed fortunes from colonial investment and the slave trade. Pierre Crozat’s brother and business partner Antoine Crozat was one of the richest men in France, and when Watteau painted Pleasures he held a monopoly on trade in French colonial Louisiana. These patrons could easily have had enslaved men and women living in their households, and if so, Watteau would have encountered these individuals, since he himself was living at Pierre’s Parisian hôtel around this time. Drawings that he made as studies for paintings suggest he had access to live Black models that he drew with sensitivity and humanity, even if the depiction of these Black individuals in his fête galante scenes oscillate somewhere between individual and type. [3]
Antoine Watteau, Three Studies of a Young Man, n.d., gray, black, and red chalk on paper, 24.3 x 27 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
It’s unlikely Watteau would have opposed the enslavement of these young Black men. Abolitionist sentiment was not common in early 18th-century France, and the artist’s livelihood depended on his patrons, who at one point rescued him from ruin following his own failed experiment with colonial investment. Still, the recurring depiction of Black figures in his work draws attention to their subjugation and alienation, and makes viewers consider the forced labor on which all of this “carefree” pleasure depends.
Antoine Watteau, The Charms of Life, c. 1718–18, oil on canvas, 67.3 x 92.5 cm (Wallace Collection, London)
Certainly, Watteau’s patrons saw no condemnation of their lifestyle in his work. Pleasures of the Ball passed through the hands of several of France’s most eminent collectors with colonial ties during the 18th century, before ending up in London during the French Revolution. Nor did these aristocrats hide their status as enslavers; on the contrary, they flaunted it in portraits they commissioned alongside African and Afro-descended attendants, including a painting now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art by leading court artist Nicolas de Largillière. It is the discipline of art history that has, until fairly recently, been unwilling to “see” these individuals and fully confront the profound, disturbing ways they contributed to the visual and material splendor of 18th-century France. Their presence also invites a reassessment of Rococo art, whose deceptively shallow beauty belies a more complex reality beneath the surface.
