- Home Page
- Accepted
Paintings & Copies - Doubtful
Attributions - Doubtful Textual References
- Alternative
Titles - Collectors &
Museums - Bibliography
- Search Abecedario
- Watteau &
His Circle
La Musette (copy 1)
Entered February 2026
Whereabouts unknown
Oil on panel
27 × 35 cm
ALTERNATE TITLES
La Danse dans le parc
PROVENANCE
Versailles, sale, Chapelle, March 13, 1966, lot 58: “VERON A.-R. La danse dans le parc - Le repas dans le parc. Deux bois. Se faisant pendant. 27 × 35 cm.“
REMARKS
The painting is in the reverse direction of Watteau’s composition, showing that it was based on Jean Moyreau’s engraving in the Oeuvre gravé. This copy, twice removed from the original, was painted by the nineteenth-century imitator of Watteau, Alexandre Véron (1826-1897).
A sure sign of these pendants’s distance from Watteau is that Veron paired the “Watteau“ with a copy after Nicolas Lancret’s Repas italien. Here too, Veron depended not on Lancret’s canvas but, rather, on the engraving after it by Jacques Philippe Le Bas
 |
La Musette (copy 2)
Entered February 2026
Whereabouts unknown
Oil on panel
42.5 × 55 cm
ALTERNATE TITLES
Le Bal improvisé
PROVENANCE
Belgium, private collection.
Sale, Brussels, Deneyer, March 15, 1926, lot 25: “NICOLAS LANCRET. . . Le Bal improvisé. Bois parqueté. H. 0.425 L. 0.55. Dans un parc aux hautes frondaisons, quatorze personnages sont réunis. La plupart d’entre eux contemplent un homme et une femme qui dansent le menuet, au son d ’une musette. Ce tableau était, depuis très longtemps attribué à Antoine Watteau. Nous croyons devoir le restituer à Nicolas Lancret, en le situant dans la période pendant laquelle ce peintre adopta la technique et la com position du maître de Valenciennes.” Bought for 12,000 francs by Douwes Art Gallery, Amsterdam, according to an annotated photograph in the files of the Getty Provenance Index.
REMARKS
Although the painting was attributed to Lancret when it appeared for sale in 1926, it is impossible to sustain this attribution. It is just an anonymous copy after Jean Moyreau’s engraving after La Musette, without any significant changes.
|
La Musette (copy 3)
Entered February 2026
Whereabouts unknown
Oil on panel
Measurements unknown
PROVENANCE
The Hague, collection of M. Loret, c. 1830.
Geneva, collection of M. B. De L. ; his sale, Sale, Geneva, September 20, 1909, lot 46, as by . Pater (according to Referendum à messieurs les membres de la société des amis du Louvre, 1913).
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Paris, Société des Amis du Louvre, Referendum (1913).
REMARKS
No record of the 1909 auction catalogue appears in Frits Lugt’s Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques. Nor has it been possible to find any information about this sale. The painting was the central focus of a Referendum à Messieurs les membres de la société des Amis du Louvre, published in 1913. The pamphlet question the attribution to Watteau, his workshop, or Pater.
|
La Musette (copy 4)
Entered February 2026
Whereabouts unknown
Oil on canvas
56.8 × 139.3 cm
PROVENANCE
London, sale, Christie’s, July 6, 2005, lot 153: “In the manner of Jean Antoine Watteau. A fête champêtre - oil on canvas - Height 22.4 in.; Width 54.8 in. / Height 56.8 cm.; Width 139.3 cm. 3000 GBP.” Bought-in.
REMARKS
The painting is a nineteenth-century copy after the print of La Musette by Jean Moyreau. It repeats only three-quarters of Watteau’s composition , and has transformed it into an elongated rectangular format with wide lateral margins—a shape not used by eighteenth-century French painters
|
La Musette (copy 5)
Entered February 2026
Whereabouts unknown
Oil on canvas
80 × 114 cm
ALTERNATIVE TITLES
Le Joueur de cornemuse
PROVENANCE
Amsterdam, collection of G. W. Lundens van Schalken (d. by 1913); his sale, Amsterdam, Roos, November 18, 1913, lot 55: “Nicolas Lancret (Attribué à) . . . Le joueur de cornemuse. Dans un parc à riche verdure une compagnie de seigneurs avec leurs dames tous somptueusement vêtus se trouvent assemblés. Assis sur une pente en herbe, à gauche, ils prennent plaisir à écouter un joueur de cornemuse debout dans l’ombre d’un gros arbre, à droite un couple dansant, un jeune homme agenouillé devant une dame qu’il entoure de son bras, l’invite à danser aussi. Toile. Hauteur: 80 cm; largeur: 114 cm. Voir la planche. Tableau d’une grande vivacité de couleurs.”
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wildenstein, Lancret (1924), cat. 101.
REMARKS
Given its reversal of Watteau’s composition, this picture must have been based on the engraving by Jean Moyreau in the Oeuvre gravé. Although it was included by Wildenstein in his monograph on Lancret, that attribution is baseless.
|
La Musette (copy 6)
Entered February 2026
Whereabouts unknown
Material unknown
Measurements unknown
REMARKS
Almost nothing is known about this picture other than it was probably located in an Italian collection, perhaps in the Milan area. A stamp on the back of a photograph of it in the Getty Research Center indicates “Photo Perroti (Milan).”
|
Click here for La Musette