The Courtship party (French: Fête galante) is a term referring to a category of painting specially created by the French Academy in 1717 to describe Antoine Watteau’s (1684–1721) variations on the theme of the fête champêtre which featured figures in ball dress or masquerade costumes disporting themselves amorously in parkland settings. When Watteau applied to join the French academy in 1717, there was no suitable category for his works, so the academy simply created one rather than reject his application.

Watteau specifically created the fête galante painting style as a compromise between two drives. On the one hand, most of his funding came from private individuals, rather than from the government. On the other hand, Watteau wanted recognition from the government-appointed Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Académie ranked scenes of everyday life and portraits, the paintings most desired by private patrons, as lower than morally educational paintings illustrating history and mythology. By portraying his patrons in scenes reminiscent of the mythologized land of Arcadia, where humans had supposedly lived in leisurely harmony with nature, Watteau was able to get his paintings the highest ranking at the Académie and still flatter his buyers.

Gradually, the term “gallantry” spread to the lifestyle in general. “Galant” recognized a man whose manners, speech and costume were impeccable, whose knowledge spoke about the interest in science and the arts. Following this postulate, children from the aristocratic environment received a diversified, but superficial education. “The gallant cavalier” and “gallant lady” thought through every gesture, look, word to the smallest detail. Subsequently, this style of life was the basis for dandyism.

Gallantry as the basis of the relationship between man and woman. This concept included such sharply opposite tendencies as the proclamation of a woman as a “goddess” and a “master of doom”, and, on the other hand, the use of her as a disenfranchised object, an “instrument” for obtaining pleasures.

Jean-Antoine Watteau:
Jean-Antoine Watteau depict the unabashed frillery of aristocratic romantic pursuits,in contrast to the Rococo whimsicality and licentiousness cultivated by Boucher and Fragonard in the later part of Louis XV’s reign, Watteau’s theatrical panache is usually tinged with a note of sympathy, wistfulness, and sadness at the transience of love and other earthly delights.

Watteau was a prolific draftsman. His drawings, typically executed in trois crayons technique, were collected and admired even by those, such as Caylus or Gersaint, who found fault with his paintings. In 1726 and 1728, Jean de Jullienne published suites of etchings after Watteau’s drawings, and in 1735 he published a series of engravings after his paintings, The Recueil Jullienne. The quality of the reproductions, using a mixture of engraving and etching following the practice of the Rubens engravers, varied according to the skill of the people employed by Jullienne, but was often very high. Such a comprehensive record was hitherto unparalleled. This helped disseminate his influence round Europe and into the decorative arts.

Watteau’s influence on the arts (not only painting, but the decorative arts, costume, film, poetry, music) was more extensive than that of almost any other 18th-century artist. The Watteau dress, a long, sacklike dress with loose pleats hanging from the shoulder at the back, similar to those worn by many of the women in his paintings, is named after him. According to the 1911 Britannica, “in his treatment of the landscape background and of the atmospheric surroundings of the figures can be found the germs of Impressionism”.

Background of the gallant age:
The notion of “Gallant Age”, which gave the name of an entire era, was primarily related to the relationship of a man and a woman from an aristocratic environment. Gallantry, translated from French, means exquisite politeness, extraordinary courtesy.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries, chivalry meant not only an extreme degree of respect for a woman, but also the worship of female beauty, a kind of “service” to a lady, the fulfillment of all her desires and whims. However, there was a significant difference between the medieval courtesy and the gallantry of the court dandy: the latter was not obliged to perform feats in the name of the Lady. Knight tournaments also became the property of history. However, as in the Middle Ages, the woman remained virtually disenfranchised, and her well-being depended entirely on the man .

The role model, of course, was the ruler – the king, the elector, the duke, who was certainly like God . It was considered a good idea to support the favorite, give in her honor balls, concerts and masquerades.

A number of researchers see in this system “the degenerate medieval cult of the Beautiful Lady”. The basis of gallant relationships is an exquisite flirtation, often not transcending the framework of decency. For these purposes, there was a special communicative system: “language of fans”, “language of flies”, “language of flowers”.

The “Gallant Age” European monarchs spent more money on maintaining their households than even on military expenditures (and this is in the conditions of frequent wars of the XVII-XVIII centuries). A rare exception was the kings of Prussia.

After the death of Louis XIV in 1715, the aristocrats of the French court abandoned the grandeur of Versailles for the more intimate townhouses of Paris where, elegantly attired, they could play and flirt and put on scenes from the Italian commedia dell’arte.

Fête galante paintings are an important part of the rococo period of art, which saw the focus of European arts move away from the hierarchical, standardized grandeur of the church and royal court and toward an appreciation for intimacy and personal pleasures. Nonetheless, the lush, outdoor settings of fête galante paintings were often mined from earlier paintings, especially from Venetian paintings of the 16th century and Dutch paintings of the 17th century.

Gallant age Aesthetic ideal：
The standard of beauty for 130 years has been constantly changing, however, you can trace one unchanging trend: the beautiful is recognized as a subtle sybarite. This “ideal” could be majestic and orderly, as in the Baroque era of Louis XIV, but could have a fragile, and at the same time, a plump body – in rococo taste, but the meaning still comes to the fact that it is the beauty of a person who does not who knows no difficulty. Training, tanning, rough features were considered unacceptable even for a man, for these are the features of a despised worker .

The man of the gallant age was calm about his lack of natural beauty. “Beautiful appearance is only a game of chance” – a quotation from the epistolary novel “Dangerous Liaisons” fully reflects public opinion. Beauty is quite achievable with the help of blush, powder, flies, wig and corset. There were even “caviar caviar” for men, and some ladies put special balls for the cheeks to give people roundness.

In a woman is not valued “cold” beauty, not the right features, and piquancy: an aspen waist, narrow hips, small feet, round face. A woman of the gallant age was supposed to resemble an elegant statuette.

The desire for uncomplicated pleasures, for the constant holiday of life, gave rise to the cult of “eternal” youth. As a result, thanks to the active use of decorative cosmetics, everyone seemed to be about the same age. Portraits of the gallant age practically do not give us an idea of the elderly .

Gradually feminization of the man’s appearance took place. In the arsenal of the court gentleman – bright cosmetics, and powdered wig and an abundance of lace even more emphasized the femininity of the image. Sometimes the male toilet was superior in its luxury and cost to the female .

As a result, outwardly everyone was not only of the same age, but also of the same sex. This unique unisex fashion has made possible the emergence of such a phenomenon as the famous cavalier de Aeon, whose sex is still the subject of research disputes.

Gallant age Fashion:
Never was the suit of the aristocracy so beautiful and picturesque as it was in this era. The fashion of the gallant age is refined and maximum unnaturalness. The costume does not emphasize, but rather distorts the natural lines of the body. Silhouette of the era – two “triangles”, the tops of which are connected in the waist. The basis of “gallant” aesthetics is a corset (it was worn not only by women, but also by many men). It visually narrows the waist, expands the shoulders and makes the back perfectly straight. Apparel is multi-layered and consists of a large number of parts that create a single image. The costume of the gallant age is clothing, as if specially created for idleness. Lace cuffs, almost completely concealing hand brushes, high heels, lush jabots, narrow camisoles and pants-culottes do not allow even for vigorous movement. The main feature of the women’s fashion of this period is femininity and emphatic eroticism.

Gallant Age Psychology ：
The main psychological feature of the man of the gallant age was infantilism. He was not just afraid of old age – he did not want to grow up. The constant desire for a holiday, the lack of productive activity, the thirst for daily change, the awareness of the possibility of living at the expense of others, is the norm of childlike behavior. No wonder one of the favorite words of the Gallant Epoch is a whim, that is, a child’s reaction to an unsatisfied need.

The main enemy of the man of the gallant age is boredom. For the sake of overcoming it, he is ready for anything: the Marquise de Pompadour establishes the so-called “Deer Park” for Louis XV – the meeting place of the king with young girls. Anna Ioannovna arranges the wedding of clowns in the Ice House. The man of the Gallant Epoch, like the child, lived this afternoon: “after us, at least a flood!”.

In the Gallant Epoch there was also an original masquerade culture, which has nothing in common with the ritual carnival of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The gallant age has a love for disguises. Numerous plays and comic operas of that period beat the following situation: the girl changes into a jacket, the young man “turns” into a girl, the servant into a mistress … and so on. Catherine II in her memoirs describes the masquerades at the court of Elizabeth, during which men dressed in a woman’s dress, and women – in a man’s. Another favorite word of the Gallant Age is a game. That is, a person did not live, but, one might say, played into life.

Psychologists note that such infantilism is typical for people who are afraid of responsibility and before making volitional decisions. In the conditions of absolutism, this behavior of the aristocracy is understandable: it was not only their career that depended on the royal caprice, but, often, life too. At the same time, the monarch was the only protector and patron of the aristocrat, a kind of “father”, who is allowed to punish, but also should patronize. In this you can see the echoes of the medieval system of suzerainty – the vassalage.

Development of Fête galante:
Among the painters who have practiced, following Watteau, the gallant festivals as a pictorial style, are Pater, his pupil, Lancret, Troy, Fragonard, Norblin de La Gourdaine, Keelboat.

Representative works of this kind include, in Watteau, The Pilgrimage to the Island of Kythera, a painting of 1717 often considered as the prototype of the feast of gallant depicted aristocrats beautifully dressed visit, in the presence of cherubs , an island supposed to be dedicated to Kythera the ancient goddess of love.

In Les Deux Cousines from 1717-1718, a young galant offers a red cape to two women in white satin dresses. As in other gallant festivals, Greco-Roman statues along the lake help elevate this genre scene to the status of history painting.

The Shepherds, painted by Watteau around 1716, play on a long tradition of aristocrats posing as rural shepherds, a tradition that flourished in the eighteenth century, the most famous of which is surely the hamlet of Queen Marie Antoinette.

In the Venetian Feasts (1718-1719), a couple, where the man wears an oriental dress, dances for a crowd of onlookers mumbling in front of a statue of Venus. The piper may be a self-portrait.

In L’Accord parfait, a charming young woman holds the music for an old man who plays the flute, while other idle classes pass by. Finally, although his Mezzetin of 1718-1720 is not, stricto sensu, a gallant feast, this painting represents a touching figure of the commedia dell’arte giving the serenade to an ignorant statue.

In the Dance in Lancret Park, where richly dressed courtiers dance in front of the statue of a male heroic nude, the presence of this statue is clearly intended to elevate, as in Watteau’s paintings, the dancers with the status of subjects of history painting “, the male nudes being a favorite subject of history paintings.

In the snack where nobles frolic and pick flowers in front of a naked woman lying on a shell-shaped mound, which probably represents the goddess Venus. In A Lady in a Garden with a Coffee, painted around 1742, a woman sitting beside a fountain in a sumptuous garden gives her children coffee while two men, probably her husband and a servant, watch.

In the view taken in the gardens of the villa d’Este, at Tivoli de Fragonard, it is the classical architecture that serves as context for an outdoor meal and games. The same motive also occurs in Jean-François de Troy’s Declaration of Love (1731), whose style is much more realistic than most others.

Gallant age and Realism:
Dubois de Saint-Gelais4, in his description of the paintings of the Palais Royal, emphasized the realistic nature of Watteau’s gallant festivals by writing that “he perfectly represented the concerts, the dances and the other amusements of the civil life, putting the scene in gardens, in woods and in other rural places whose landscape is painted with great art. His drawing is correct, his color is tender, the expressions are piquant, his head looks have a wonderful grace, his dancing figures are admirable for the lightness, for the accuracy of the movements, and for the beauty of the attitudes. He has devoted himself to true dressings, so that his paintings can be regarded as the story of the modes of his time. ”

Gallant age literature:

The beginning of the 20th century was marked by a nostalgic “return” to the aesthetics of baroque and rococo, to the images of the times of Louis XIV, to the forever departed gallant epoch. This was due to the natural desire of a person (and, first of all, an artist) to find in appealing pictures of the past calming from the ever accelerating rhythm of life.

Artists of the association “World of Art” – Konstantin Somov, Eugene Lansere and Alexander Benois create a fairy, and, at the same time, sad image of the Gallant Age. In their paintings, there is a sadness of people who know the fate of Marie Antoinette and her refined courtiers. “Versailles” series of Benois, “The Book of the Marquise” by Somov, retrospective stylistic works of Lansere did not pursue the task of reconstructing the past – it was the look of a man of the 20th century into the bright and carefree world of balls and love adventures.

The pictures of “miriskussniki” give out an extremely idealized idea of the epoch, but this does not become less significant for art.

Among poets, there is also a “return” to the images of the Gallant Age. The most interesting are the ironic poems of Nikolai Agnivtsev.

Gallant age film:
Appeal to the images of the Gallant Age occurred in the era of silent cinema. At the box office there were numerous screen versions, telling of the life of Casanova, Marie Antoinette, Louis XV and his minions. Notable is the film “Madame Dubarry”, in which the stars starring silent films – Emil Jannings and Paul Negri.

In the pre-war cinema, the works of Maria Antoinette in the title role with Norma Shearer (USA) and Dance with the Kaiser with Marika Röck (Germany), The Bloody Empress with Marlene Dietrich in the role of Catherine II (USA) are interesting.

In the 1960s there was a surge of interest in costume melodramas. On the screens goes the famous “Angelica” with Michelle Mercier in the role of the brilliant beauty of the Versailles court – Angelica de Sanse.

In 1988, a well-made Hollywood adaptation of “Dangerous Liaisons” appeared on the screens. In the film, the stars of the cinema were involved – John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. Eighteen-year-old Uma Thurman also starred in this film.

With rare exceptions, films that reflect the realities of the gallant age distort the historical truth, idealize events as much as possible.