The French Comedians

c. 1720

Oil on canvas, 22 1/2 × 28 3/4 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Here the actors are French, not Italian: formal, old-fashioned costume and a repertoire apart from the Italian comedy Watteau favoured.

Look at

The figures stand in a row like a tableau, on a checkered floor that runs straight back under a classical arcade.
The central man's silver brocade and plumed hat take the light; the women at left are paler and softer.
The architecture is drawn with ruled precision, unlike the loose trees elsewhere in this part — an underdrawing the Met thinks was probably done by a specialist architecture painter.

No known play fits the scene; at the right the stock character Crispin is coming on from the wings.
The Jules Bache Collection, 1949.