_Le Rendez-vous de Chasse_ (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in character similar to _Les Amusements Champetres_ (No. 391), is the last by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in 1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose from time to time. NICHOLAS LANCRET was only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's style--seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422, _Conversation Galante_ and 440, _Fete in a Wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his career, the imitation became. The latter is the _Bal dans un Bois_ which was exhibited at the Place Dauphine, and was complained of by Watteau on account of its close resemblance to his own work. Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of Watteau's influence. The _Italian Comedians by a Fountain_ (No. 465), being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this picture, "Between _you_ and _I_," he writes, with the quaint regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to no other person but you should I make this _confidence_), I must have the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon you for _getting it for me_. I need not beg you not to mention a word about this to _anybody_, either _before_ or _after_ the sale." And again, "I _depend_ upon your getting the Lancret (Watteau in the Catalogue) for me. I have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most likely more than it is worth, but we _must_ have it ... I leave it to you, but I must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go beyond 3000 guineas." He was fortunate indeed in getting it for L735. _Mademoiselle Camargo Dancing_ (No. 393), and _La Belle Grecque_ (No. 450), in the Wallace Collection, are good examples of the Comedian motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. The four little allegorical pieces in the National Gallery, _The Four Ages of Man_, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting.