(Valenciennes 1686–1721 Nogent-sur-Marne)
Escortes d’Equipages,
oil on panel, 28.2 x 31.4 cm, framed

Provenance:
Jean de Julienne (1686–1766), Paris, by 1731, (sold before 1756);
Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690–1756), Mantua and Rome;
bequeathed to his nephews, Marchese Carlo Valenti Gonzaga (d. 1783) and Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga (1725–1808);
Pietro Camuccini (1761–1833), Rome, who purchased it in 1818 with other works from the estate of Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga, by descent to his nephew, Giovanni Battista, Baron Camuccini (1819/1904), Rome;
by descent to the present owners

Documentation:
1756, Inventory Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, Archivio di Stato di Roma, Segr. Canc. R.C.A., Notaio S.A. Mariotti, vol. 1085,c. 764r, “Inventario dei beni dell’eredità del cardinale Silvio Valenti Gonzaga”, 25-29 November 1756: [484] “Altro quadro largo palmo uno e mezzo ed alto palmo uno, rappresentante un campo di soldati, dipinto in tavola, con sua cornice intagliata dorata, di Antonio Vatteau scudi 50X.”
Before 1763, Catalogue of the paintings from the gallery of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, Mantua, Biblioteca Comunale, Misc. 109/11, “Catalogo de’ quadri, tuttavia esistenti nella galleria della Ch. Mem. Dell’E.mo Sig. Cardinale Silvio Valenti”, n. 484, “Quadro di palmi 1., one 10. per larghezza. e palmi 1., once per altezza rappresentante un Accampamento di Soldati, in tavola, di Antonio Watteau”

Literature:
P.J. Mariette, Notes manuscrites sur les peintres et gravures, IX (manuscript in the Bibliothèque National, Paris, 1740–1770), fol. 194, no. 73;
Ph. de Chennevières, A. de Montaiglon, eds., Abecedario de P. J. Mariette, Paris, 1851–1860, vol. 6, p. 109;
E. de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d’Antoine Watteau, Paris 1875, p. 57, no. 56;
E. Heinreich Zimmermann, Watteau, Stuttgart/Paris 1912, no. 7, p. 17 (as a copy);
E. Dacier, J. Hérold, A. Vauflart, Jean de Jullienne et les Graveurs de Watteau, Paris, 1921–1929, III, no. 125 (as lost, known through engraving);
K. T. Parker, The Drawings of Antoine Watteau, London 1931, pp. 17, 41/2 (as lost, known through engraving);
H. Adhémar, Watteau, Sa Vie – Son Oeuvre, Paris 1950, pp. 10, 179, no. 39, pl. 20 (as lost, known through engraving);
E. Camesasca, J. Sutherland, The Complete Paintings of Watteau, New York 1968, p. 100, no. 57 (lost, known through engraving);
J. Ferré, Watteau, Madrid 1972, I, pp. 86, 89, 208, 277; IV, 1107.1120 (as lost known through engraving);
P. Hulton, Watteau. Drawings in the British Museum, London 1980, p. 22, under nos. 2 and 3 (as lost);
E. Camesasca, P. Rosenberg, Tout L’Oeuvre peint de Watteau, Paris 1983, p. 96, no. 57 (lost, known through engraving);
Watteau 1684–1721, exhibition catalogue, Washington, Paris, Berlin 1984, pp. 95, 97, under nos. 33 & 34 (as lost);
D. Posner, Antoine Watteau, Ithaca, NY, 1984, pp. 34 (lost, known through engraving), pp. 40, 279, note 44, fig. 23 (engraving);
M. Roland Mitchel, Watteau, An Artist of the Eighteenth Century, London 1984, pp. 97, 167, 169, 170, 266, 300 (as lost);
M. Morgan Grasselli, The Drawings of Antoine Watteau: Stylistic Development and Problems of Chronology, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1987;
P. Rosenberg et al., Masterful Studies. Three Centuries of French Drawings from the Prat Collection, exhibition catalogue, New York 1990, pp. 104/5, under no. 35 (as lost); reprinted as Passion of Drawing. Poussin to Cezanne, Works from the Prat Collection, Los Angeles 2004, pp. 114–17, under no. 26 (as lost);
P. Rosenberg, L. A. Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1688-1721, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan 1996, I, under nos. 177, 179, 180, 181, 301, 302 (as lost, known through engraving);
H. Börsch-Supan, Antoine Watteau, 1684–1721, Cologne, 2000, p. 44 (as lost);
D. Sogliani, Il catalogo a stampa dei quadri della galleria del cardinale Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, in: Ritratto di una Collezione. Pannini e la Galleria del Cardinale Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, exhibition catalogue, Mantua 2005, p. 314, no. 484;
R. Piccinelli, L’inventario dei beni del cardinale silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1756), in: Ritratto di una Collezione. Pannini e la Galleria del Cardinale Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, exhibition catalogue, Mantua 2005, p. 343 (as lost);
C. Michel, Le Célèbre Watteau, Geneva 2008, p. 259 (lost, known through engraving)

An engraving executed by Laurent Car, which identifies the painting Escortes d’équipages as “du Cabinet de Mr. de Jullienne”, is the first documented reference of the present painting. The print was included in the Recueil Jullienne, which was a compilation of engravings after Watteau’s paintings in the collection of Jean de Jullienne published in two volumes in 1735.

The painting passed from the de Jullienne Collection to Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690–1756) in the mid eighteenth Century. He was one of the most distinguished art collectors of the time and an active promoter of arts: The present painting was inventoried in his collection at the time of his death in 1756 and in his posthumous catalogue before 1763 with the inventory number “484”, that is inscribed in an eighteenth century hand written inscription on the reverse of the present panel: De Vattau/Sil.o.Card. Valenti/No.484.

Watteau’s hometown of Valenciennes (French Flanders) was a military base during the years of Louis XIV’s devastating war of the Spanish Succession (1701–13). During the artist’s return to his native city in the autumn of 1709, he had the opportunity to study life in a military camp. Most of Watteau’s military paintings go back to this early phase of his career between 1709 and 1710, after he left the workshop of Claude Audran. However, the present painting may be later and the last one of this genre that he executed, as the composition is more subtle and complex than those of his earlier paintings and some details, as the cloudy blue sky, the dry grass, as well as the small intricate figures, can be compared to Watteau’s painting Fête Galante (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), dated to 1716/17 (see A. Wintermute in: C. B. Bailey, ed., The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, New Haven/London 2003, p. 126). Six preparatory drawings for the present composition are known (see P. Rosenberg, L. A. Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1688-1721, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan 1996, I, figs. 177, 179, 180, 181, 301, 302).

One of these drawings (Paris, collection of Louis-Antoine Prat) shows a kneeling woman next to a baby in a basket, and has been dated to around 1715 (see P. Rosenberg, ibid., p. 480). This would suggest that the present painting was executed in 1715 or immediately after.

A comparison of the painting to Car’s engraving shows that a strip of about six centimetres of landscape has been cut off on the right side of the painting, and the dimensions recorded in the Valenti Gonzaga inventory confirm that it had been already cut in 1756. The reduction of size of the composition may have occurred after it had entered the Cardinal’s collection, perhaps to make it a pair with another work or in an effort to make the composition more symmetrical.

The painting was bought in 1818 in Rome from the heirs of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga by Pietro Camuccini, brother of the famous painter Vincenzo and one of the most prominent Roman art dealers. Later the painting disappeared and was recorded in recent Watteau literature as lost and known after the engraving, until its recent rediscovery.

The present painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Watteau’s paintings by Alan Wintermute.