Paul Barroilhet (1810-1871) (see Note);
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, March 12, 1855, lot 71 (préface of the catalogue by Charles Blanc);
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, March 10, 1856, lot 69 (préface of the catalogue by Théophile Gauthier);
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, April 2-3 1860, lot 128;
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, March 15-16, 1872 (sold for 8650 francs);
Léopold Double;
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, May 31, 1881, lot 22;
Mademoiselle Marie Allez, until 1962;
With Cailleux, Paris;
Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, October 23 1998, lot 80, where purchased by the present owner.

W. Thoré-Bürger, "Exposition de tableaux de l'école française ancienne, tirés de collections d'amateurs", in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, September 1, 1860, p. 271 and November 15, 1860, pp. 231-232;
E. de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau, 1875, p. 28;
P. Eudel, L'Hôtel Drouot en 1881, 1882, pp. 225 and 233;
P. Mantz, Antoine Watteau, 1892, p. 164-167;
H. Adhémar, Watteau, sa vie, son oeuvre, 1950, p. 213, no. 104;
K. Parker and J. Mathey, Catalogue de l'oeuvre dessinée d'Antoine Watteau, 1957, II, p. 354;
J. Mathey, "Two Rediscovered Paintings", in Apollo, June 1958, p. 205, fig. VII;
J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau, peintures réapparues, 1959, pp. 48-49 and 78, no. 120, reproduced;
M. Roland Michel, "Watteau and his Generation", in "L'Art du Dix-Huitième Siècle", an advertisement supplement edited by J. Cailleux, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CX, no. 780, March 1968 p. vi, fig. 4;
P. Rosenberg and E. Camesasca, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Watteau, 1970, p. 110, no. 147, reproduced;
J. Ferré, Watteau, 1972, mentioned in I, under the years 1855, 1860, 1872, 1878, 1881 and catalogue III, p. 1058, B. 94, pl. 1017;
M. Roland Michel, Tout Watteau, 1982, p. 78, no. 220, reproduced;
M. Roland Michel, Watteau, un artiste au XVIIIème siècle, 1984, pp. 152, 269, 270, fig. 136, pl. XXXIII;
D. Kocks, "Le Monument Watteau de Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux à Valenciennes", in Antoine Watteau: the Painter, His Age and His Legend, 1987, p. 322, note 3;
R. Temperini, Watteau, 2002, p. 144, no. ಞ65, 🔯as dated '1715-1716?'.  

Although more famous for the highly finished and elegant fêtes galantes that he painted, a genre which he invented and popularized, Watteau also painted a small number of more traditional subject pictures, of historical, allegorical and even erotic themes.  The Nymphe de Fontaine fuses together many of the best of all of the artist’s essays in these differing areas, combining the grande manière♈ of history painting with the gentle eroticism of ꦰthe French rococo.

The Nymphe de Fontaine would appear to have once formed part of a series of canvases that comprised a decorative scheme for a fashionable Paris salon.  Watteau is recorded as having painted a number of such paintings, and in fact had specialized in the production of canvases for interior schemes early in his career, painting figures to populate the elaborate arabesques and singeries that were the specialty of Charles Audran III in whose studio the young artist worked.  He continued to take commissions for such paintings even after he became an independent artist in circa 1708; Watteau furnished a set of eight such panels for the hotel particulier of the Marquis de Nointel, apparently commissioned soon after he acquired the property in 1705 (of these only two are extant: La Faune and L’Enjoleur, both private collection).¹ Undoubtedly such projects furnished theဣ young artist with a needed source of income and had the added advantage of exposing his work to a fashionable audience of pote🐬ntial clients.

However, Watteau did not stop painting such pictures even after he achieved international acclaim.  The most important of these dating from the artist’s maturity was the set of four canvases representing the seasons that he painted for the connoisseur and collector Pierre Crozat for his elegant townhouse on the rue de Richelieu.  The only surviving painting of that group is the magnificent Summer (Ceres) now in the National Gallery, Washington, DC. That painting depicts the goddess Ceres seated on a cloud, holding a sickle and surrounded by the symbols of the zodiac appropriate for the season.  The painting exhibits Watteau’s interest in earlier artists—it is an amalgam of the influence of Rubens and Veronese, whose works Watteau would have known from Crozat’s own collection.  The exact dating of the commission remains unclear, but it seems reasonable to date it to circa 1715/16 based on stylistic as well as other considerations.² Whatever the exact date of the painting, the Ceres demo🧸nstrates Watteau’🐭s unquestionable mastery of the formal language of grand history painting.

Likewise, The Nymphe de Fontaine is a painting which also exhibits Watteau’s skill in figure painting.  It depicts a young semi-nude nymph or goddess, holding an urn from which spills the source of the river of which she is tutelary deity.  The artist’s absolute mastery of drawing is evident throughout the figure, in the beautifully achieved face of the nymph, and in her skillfully and elegantly articulated hands. The skin tones are rendered in pink and pearlescent tones which add an airy weight to the figure itself.  Equally beautiful is the landscape and sky beyond the goddess, which is painted in fluid and loose brushstrokes.  It is clearly from about the same time as the Ceres, and demonstrates many of the same qualities.  This has lead to some amount of scholarly discussion regarding the dating of the Nymphe de Fontaine.  Some, such as Mathey, have suggested a dating to early in Watteau’s independent career, circa 1711/12, while others have suggested a slightly later dating.  These include Rosenberg and Camesasca, and most recently Temerini, who date it to circa 1716 and 1715/16 respectively.  This would date it to just at the time Watteau painted the Crozat Ceres.  Roland Michel, however, prefers a dating of 1717-18, placing the Nymphe de Fontaine slightly later than this.  This dating seems quite likely, as the picture clearly shows the same assurance of handling as the Ceres, and🤡 similar♕ artistic influences, particularly that of Rubens.

While no related preparatory drawings exist for the Nymphe de Fontaine, there is a good amount of contemporary material that survives which adds to our understanding of the picture and its original ensemble.  At least two copies of the painting exist, which suggest that whatever its original location, it must have been somewhat accessible to other artists.  One of these pictures was on the Paris art market in the late 1970s as attributed to Antoine Pesne, with a bit more of the background on the left and the right of the composition, thus suggesting that the present painting may be very slightly trimmed.³  Another copy was together with a pendant of another nymph, clearly another of the lost series.  Jacques Mathey (op cit. 1958) also noted that the present canvas corresponded to a print in the Figures de différents caractères.  The Figures was a book of prints engraved by Carle van Loo after drawings by Watteau and was produced after his death.  One of these engravings records the composition of a drawing which clearly relates to the present composition, although it depicts two nude nymphs leaning on urns.  The closeness of the composition suggests that it must in some way have been connected to the present canvas, even as a première pensée for the decorative scheme.

While the early provenance of the Nymphe de Fontaine remains tantalizingly obscure, its later history is well known and of interest.  The painting was owned by Paul Barroilhet (1810-1871), a baritone at the Paris Opera who originated a number of the lead roles in several of Donizetti’s operas of the 1830s and 40s.  The canny singer had amassed a significant collection of Barbizon pictures, advised by his friend Jules Dupré.⁴  Barroilhet also had started to collect French 18^th Century paintings, by then somewhat out of fashion, and had acquired significant works by Chardin, Fragonard in addition to two other pictures by Watteau, The Judgement of Paris (now Musee du Louvre) and The Alliance of Music and Comedy (private collection).  He seems to have been ahead of the fashion, but did make some rather good buys as a result.  He orchestrated a few sales of his collection during his lifestyle and included the Nymphe in these, but it🦋 remained with him until it♌ was offered in his posthumous sale in 1872.

1  See Watteau exhibition catalogue, 1984,  p. 249; for a lengthy discussion of the panels see J. Cailleaux, "Decorations by Antoine Watteau for the Hotel de Nointel," in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 103, no. 696 (March 1961, pp. i-v), as well as M. Eidelberg, "Watteau and Audran at the Hotel de Nointel," in Apollo, January 2002, vol CLV, no. 479, pp. 10-16.

2  See P. Rosenberg in Watteau, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1984, pp. 325-26, no. 35.  Rosenberg notes that there were ear🤪ly records that the designs for the Crozat series were originated by Charles de la💞 Fosse who passed them on at his death in 1716 to the younger artist.

3  Sale: Hotel D♋rouot, Paris, June 30♎, 1979, lot 14.

4  For a discussion of his Barbizon paintings, please see S. Kelly, “Early patrons of the Barbizon School: the 1840s," in Journal of the History of Collections, vol 16, no. 2 (2004) pp. 164  passim.