If Raoux was the somewhat sentimental painter of bourgeois life, Jean François de Troy (1679-1752) played not infrequently the chronicler of the elegant life of the leisured classes. Unfortunately this interesting phase of his art is not represented at the Louvre, which, besides the three _Portraits_ (Nos. 886-888) in the La Caze collection, contains two of his famous designs for tapestry, representing scenes from the _History of Esther_ (Nos. 884-885); and his large historical painting, _The First Chapter of the Order of the Holy Ghost, held by Henri IV. in 1595_ (No. 883). WATTEAU The master who was to break definitely with the cold, majestic, uninspired art of the seventeenth century, and who in leading French painting into new paths reached the very limits of poetic expressiveness imposed by material means, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Born at Valenciennes six years before that city became French through the peace of Nymwegen, Watteau, the son of a poor Flemish tiler, was French, as it were, by accident only. In his early years, when he studied in his native town under Gérin, a mediocre local painter, he must have had occasion to become closely acquainted with the paintings of the Flemish masters. On the death of Gérin, in 1702, he went to Paris, where he became assistant to the scene-painter Métayer. Watteau suffered dire poverty, and completely undermined his health through privation before his talent attracted the attention of his next master, Claude Gillot, with whom he stayed until 1708, when he became assistant to Claude Audran, a decorative artist of great repute and Keeper of the Luxembourg collections. At the Luxembourg Palace he was enabled to study the masterpieces of Rubens, Titian, and Paolo Veronese, from which he benefited as much as from his work from nature in the Luxembourg gardens. It was perhaps fortunate that he failed in the competition for the Prix de Rome in 1709, and was dissuaded from going to Italy. He was received by the Academy in 1717, when he painted his “diploma picture.” _The Embarkation for the Island of Cythera_ (No. 982, Plate XXXIX.), which may be considered an epitome of his art. Sketchy as it is, this picture, which he painted in seven days, exceeds in poetic charm and in the beauty of its entrancing sparkle of mellow tones the more highly finished later version in the German Emperor’s collection. It is the most striking instance of a purely imaginary scene of unworldly happiness, tinged with that peculiarly Watteauesque vague melancholy,—the consumptive’s _maladie de l’infini_ to which M. Mauclair has drawn attention,—represented with such absolute atmospheric truth as to make it appear an incomparably beautiful reality. Technically, this picture, like _L’Indifférent_ (No. 984) and _La Finette_ (No. 985) in the La Caze Room, embodies in germ the theories which in the second half of the next century were scientifically worked out by the French Impressionists.