Jean Antoine Watteau Valenciennes 1684 - 1721 Nogent-sur-Marne

Bourguignon de Fabregoules, Aix-en-Provence;
sold with the entire collection to Charles Joseph Barthélémi Giraud, Aix-en-Provence and Paris, c. 1840;
given with the rest of his collection to Flury Hérard (L.1015 and number 540);
Marquis Philippe de Chennevières, Paris (L.2072 or 2073), his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 4-7 April 1900, included in lot 521 (a group of 16 drawings divided into two groups, both bought by Durry);
Henri Michel-Lévy, Paris, his sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 12-13 May, 1919, lot 137 (5,000 francs to Paul Helleu);
Charles Templeton Crocker, San Francisco;
to his widow, Hélène Crocker Fagan, née Irwin, San Francisco;
by whom given to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1955

Oakland, California, Mills College Art Gallery, and Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Old Master Drawings, 1937 - 1938;
Berkeley, University of California Art Museum, Master Drawings from California Collections, 1968, cat. no. 21, pl. 98;
New York, Frick Collection and Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Watteau and His World, French Drawing from 1700 to 1750, 1999-2000, cat. no. 12, pp. 26, 114, reproduced

K. T. Parker, The Drawings of Antoine Watteau, London 1931, p. 20;
K. T. Parker and J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau, catalogue complet de son oeuvre dessiné, Paris 1957, vol. II, no. 797, reproduced;
Phyllis Hattis, Four Centuries of French Drawings in The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco 1977, no. 184, reproduced;
Maurice Sérullaz, ‘Deux dessins de Watteau,’ La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, vol. 31, 1981, no. 1,  pp. 31-32, note 8;
Margaret Morgan Grasselli, The Drawings of Antoine Watteau, stylistic development and problems of chronology, 2 vols., unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1987, p. 170, no. 131, fig. 163;
Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan 1996, vol. 1, p. 452, cat. no. 287, reproduced

This imposing sheet is one of a group of nine drawings of Persian figures that provide one of the few fixed points in a chronology of Watteau's work and a valuable insight into his stylistic development. 

Although the drawings (Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., nos. 281-289) were formerly thought to be related to the arrival of a Turkish embassy to Paris in 1721, Jacques Mathey convincingly related them to the Persian embassy which arrived in Paris on 7 February, 1715. The ambassador was granted an audience with Louis XIV in Versailles on 27 February, and then he and his entourage settled in Paris for six months.  They were granted a second audience on 13 August and left France on 30 August.  

It is not recorded how or when Watteau might have met the Persians, and some commentators in the past have suggested that the figures are in fact Frenchmen whom Watteau dressed in exotic costumes.  However, the close resemblance of several of the sitters to figures in a print which records the entry of the ambassador into Paris, and the exactitude with which the costumes are drawn seem evidence that Watteau did have contact with the Persians, of both high and lower status, and that therefore the drawings can be dated to 1715.

The drawings are a cohesive group and reveal Watteau in a period of technical innovation, in which he integrated black chalk more completely with red, thereby achieving a greater emphasis and energy.  The present drawing is unusual in the group not only for its size, but also for the use of white chalk, the full trois crayons for which he is so admired.  Margaret Morgan Grasselli has discussed the development of his technique, from his early red chalk studies, and suggests that it was his admission to the Academy and the influence of Charles de la Fosse and the study of drawings by Rubens in the Crozat collection which led him to experiment with the addition of black chalk and then to the incorporation of white as well (Grasselli, op. cit., 1987, pp.181-194).

The two figures in the present drawing are directly related to others in the series.  The standing man at the left seems to be the same as the Seated Persian in the Louvre (Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., no. 281).  He wears the same costume and large turban but is sketched more rapidly and from an angle which increases his impressive presence.  The second figure, lightly sketched in red chalk and also seen and lit from below, reappears standing and facing forward, wearing the same cap, in a drawing in the Fondation Custodia, Paris (Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., no. 286).  Watteau did not use these Persian figures in their exotic costumes in his paintings, but several of the drawings were engraved by Boucher in the Figures de differents caractères.