Minuet in Cleveland

Beloved of capitalists and kings are the works of Antoine Watteau. Few others can afford them. Of about 200 Watteau paintings in the world, three U. S. museums have been able to acquire one apiece.* Last week the fourth and one of the finest was a Christmas present to the Cleveland Museum of Art from rich Commodore Louis D. Beaumont, vice president of the May Department Stores Co.

La Danse dans un Pavilion de Jardin (see cut), painted about 1718, is one of the famous Fetes Galantes of Watteau's maturity. Watteau ran away from home, did hack work, was rescued by rich friends, resented their kindnesses, died young (37) of tuberculosis. But he lived in Paris in a graceful period and reflected its graces.

In Cleveland's painting, Watteau's favorite blonde model and a boy are mincing a lazy minuet while a company of softly shining young ladies and gents look on. This unselfconscious little idyll pleased Frederick the Great, Francophile King of Prussia, and he had his ambassador buy it. Until 1918 it hung in the collection of the royal family at Potsdam. Clevelander Beaumont got it through Dealer Joseph Duveen for $110,000.

* Metropolitan Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Jules Bache Collection.

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