The Chord (painting)

The Chord (), alternatively known as The Serenader () and Mezzetino (), is an oil on panel painting in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, by the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau, variously dated . Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, "The Chord" passed through numerous private collections, until it came into possession of Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, son of King Louis Philippe I; as part of the Duke of Aumale's collection at the Château de Chantilly, "The Chord" was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1884.
At 24 by 17 cm, the painting forms a single-figure full-length composition that depicts a male guitarist in theatrical costume, sitting amid the landscape. The guitarist, widely associated with the commedia dell'arte character Mezzetino, is a recurring subject in Watteau's art; based on a red and black chalk drawing owned by the Louvre, it is also present in two other paintings by Watteau, "The Surprise" (now in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles) and "Pleasures of Love" (now in the Alte Meister Gallery, Dresden).
Provenance.
The recorded provenance of "The Chord" begins in the mid-18th century, when it was in possession of the "fermier géneral" Marin Delahaye (1684-1753); at the sale after his death, held in Paris on January 1, 1754, the painting was lot 47, described as "un tableau peint sur bois, représentant Mezetin par Vatteau, de 10 pouces de haut sur 7 pouces de large, dans sa bordure dorée," and sold for 300 livres to the certain Beauchamp. Soon after that sale, it entered the collection of the painter and art dealer (1748-1813), the husband of the prominent portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun; Lebrun put "The Chord" on sale twice, as lot 58 at a May 1765 auction, and as lot 40 at a November 1778 auction respectively. 
In the 1780s, the painting belonged to Antoine Claude Chariot (1733-1815), the "commissaire-priseur du Châtelet"; at a sale in January 1788, "The Chord" and another Watteau painting in the Chariot collection, "The Worried Lover", were lot 44 sold back to Lebrun for 221 livres. Lebrun didn't keep the pair for long, and put it at auction on April 11, 1791, only to have them bought back for 132 livres. For a brief time, "The Chord" was owned by the art dealer Alexandre Joseph Paillet (1743-1814), and was sold as lot 25 at auction for 120 livres on February 13, 1792. Decades later, the painting resurfaced as lot 150 at auction in Paris on March 20-22, 1824, before entering the collection of Marquis de Maison; with part of that collection, it was sold in 1868 to Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, the fifth son of King Louis Philippe I. As part of the Duke of Aumale's collection at the Château de Chantilly, "The Chord" was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1884.
Among Watteau scholars, "The Chord" is generally attributed to the middle years of the artist's career. In the 1950 catalogue raisonné, the Louvre staff curator Hélène Adhémar listed the painting as a Spring-Summer 1716 work; in a 1959 study, the painter and connoisseur Jacques Mathey attributed it to c. 1714. In the 1968 catalogue raisonné, the Italian art historian Ettore Camesasca dated the painting c. 1715; in the 1980s, the French scholar Marianne Roland Michel suggested a ca. 1715–1716 dating. In 2002, Renaud Temperini gives a slightly later dating of ca. 1716–1717.
Analysis.
"The Chord" is an oil on panel painting, shaped as a vertical rectangle that measures 24 by 17 cm. It shows a full-length single figure of a male guitarist in a theatrical costume, seated tuning a guitar amid a landscape; the man's head, turned to the left, is barren. He wears a rose-colored coat and knee-britches slashed with yellow, embellished with blue ribbons and shoes with blue rosettes.