Dancers in a Pavilion

Jean-Baptiste Pater's Dancers in a Pavilion dates from the 1720s and exemplifies the fête galante genre pioneered by his teacher Antoine Watteau. Pater was Watteau's only formal pupil, and after Watteau's early death in 1721, Pater became one of the principal carriers of his legacy. These scenes of elegant figures amusing themselves in parklike settings — dancing, flirting, making music — captured the hedonistic spirit of Regency France and found eager buyers among aristocratic collectors. Pater's version of the genre tends toward a lighter, more decorative mood than Watteau's more melancholic originals.

Pater employs the shimmering, feathery brushwork inherited from Watteau, with delicate passages of silk rendered in flickering touches of color and a soft, atmospheric landscape backdrop that dissolves into pearly distance.