Excerpt from Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) This brief study does not pretend to analyse the deepest secrets of Antoine Watteau's art, soul, and genius. My strict duty as a biographer obliges me to omit none of the chief circum stances of the artist's life - none, at any rate, which help to throw any light on his work, or to define its meaning and conditions. The Object and the format of this series compel me to restrict myself to generalities. It is, more over, impossible to display any brilliant erudi tion in relating the story of so well-known an existence, which has been told in many previous books with abundant documentary evidence, and especially in the Memoir of the Comte de Caylus, a work which leaves no room for further research. I have therefore confined myself to summarising the most significant features of Watteau's life but this, together with the analysis of his works and technique, takes up the greater part of my book. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.