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This is one of Watteau’s earliest studies of soldiers. It is less technically sure than his later drawings, but his interest in the mundane aspects of military life is already evident. The marching soldiers face slightly different directions, each encapsulating an individual encounter between artist and model. None of the figures exactly matches those in any known painting.

The figure on the left appears as the central figure in Halt of a Detachment, an engraving of which is in this exhibition.

This tightly packed scene shows soldiers and their hangers-on resting and socializing in a military camp. Various groups are spread out somewhat haphazardly across a stage-like terrain, which is anchored by a towering tree. The composition’s disunity makes the figures stand out individually, focusing our attention on their various interactions as they trade glances across the space of the picture. The poignancy of the painting derives from the way these looks do not seem entirely reciprocated, leaving the status of their relationships unresolved. The Line of March, also in this exhibition, is its likely pendant.

Whether wives, mistresses, or prostitutes, women were not an uncommon sight in early modern military camps. Watteau used the seated woman with a veil, whose elegant demeanor would seem more suitable for a fête galante, in The Halt.

Watteau’s only known guard scene (as opposed to a march or camp scene), this is one of his best preserved paintings of military life. Suffused with golden light, two pairs of soldiers converse across the space of the picture, while the three other figures in the foreground have withdrawn into sleep or reverie. The enigmatic exchanges among these men transform an otherwise prosaic moment into a moving image of the social conditions of military life and the fragility of human connection. Despite its title, added in 1912, there is little evidence that the painting depicts the artist’s hometown of Valenciennes, where he returned for a brief visit in 1710.

This drawing and Two Studies of a Soldier Viewed from Behind seem to depict the same model and may have been executed during a single session.

Executed with a nervous, almost electric line, this scene of marching soldiers is a rare etching by Watteau after a now-lost painting. Watteau constructed the composition out of a series of studies (two of which are on view on either side of the etching) showing a soldier in three poses. He extracted individual figures and combined them in pairs along a graceful arabesque. The result makes little sense as a march — with the soldiers’ counterposed balletic movements, their procession would soon break apart — but the lack of connection between the pairs of soldiers, almost mirror images of each other, infuses the work with formal and psychological tension. The plate was later reworked by the engraver Henri-Simon Thomassin the Younger (1687–1741).

This painting, which, like most of Watteau’s paintings, has darkened and abraded with age, is probably one of Watteau’s last military works. Formerly in the collection of Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga (1725–1808), a celebrated eighteenth-century art collector, it was only recently rediscovered. The disordered composition conveys something of the aimlessness of camp life, yet, as always, Watteau’s detached approach carries no moral judgment about war or its participants.

*Print: 8 3/8 × 13 3/8 in. (21.2 × 33.9 cm), Plate: 16 15/16 × 12 5/16 in. (43 × 31.3 cm). In Figures de différents caractères, de Paysages, et d’Etudes dessinées d’après nature par Antoine Watteau, vol. 2. Paris: Audran & F. Chereau, 1728