Study for The Feast of Love
c. 1717
Medium
Red chalk and graphite on buff laid paper
Dimensions
19.6 × 26.5 cm (7 3/4 × 10 7/16 in.)
Classification
chalk
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
48981
Art Historical Context
Welcome to the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints Drawings collection, where Jean-Antoine Watteau's *Study for The Feast of* (c. 1717) captivates its delicate elegance. Watteau, a pioneering French Rococo artist (1684–1721), is celebrated for his *fêtes galantes*—dreamy scenes of lovers in lush, pastoral idylls that blend romance, theater, and fleeting pleasure. This preparatory drawing, rendered in red chalk and graphite on buff laid paper (19.6 × 26.5 cm), likely sketches figures for his painting *The Feast of Love*, evoking the era's aristocratic escapism amid France's Regency period under t...