La Camargo Dancing

c. 1730

Oil on canvas, 30 × 42 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington

A real celebrity, La Camargo, steps into the fête galante: Watteau's follower turns the dream party into a fashionable portrait.

Look at

The white dress is the brightest shape on the canvas, set against dark trees so it reads from across a room.
Her raised arms and lifted foot make a diagonal that the partner's red echoes; everyone else sits in low curves.
Feathery trees fill about two-thirds of the picture under a pale wash of sky — the Watteau formula with a sharper, drier touch.

The NGA notes that she shortened her skirts for more active footwork and was possibly one of the earliest to wear ballet slippers.
Owned by Frederick the Great at Potsdam; sold by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1927 and given to the National Gallery by Andrew Mellon in 1937.