Claude Gillot (1673 - 1722)

Wandering at Night
 Is It an Enchantment

The Feast of Bacchus
 Feast of Pan
 Feast of Diana
 Passion for Gambling
 Passion for Wealth
 Passion for Love
 Passion for War
 Festival of the God Pan

The Birth
 The Education
 The Marriage
 The Funeral

Adolescence (engraved by Jean Audran)
 Youth (engraved by Jean Audran)
 Manhood (engraved by Francois Joullain)
 Old Age (engraved by Francois Joullain)
 Witches' Sabbath

The Witches' Sabbath

The Witches Sabbath (detail)
 Feast of the God Pan

Celebration in Honor of the God Pan
 The Stalled Procession
 Adolescence (study)
 Passion for Gambling (study)

Passion for Love (study)
 The Passion for War (study)
 Mythological Scene
 Scene of Sorcery

"Claude Gillot was instrumental in putting the wit back into French art. With novel subject matter and a spontaneous decorative style, Gillot foreshadowed the Rococo and helped to free French painting from the academic conventions imposed by Charles LeBrun. Moreover, Gillot pursued his career in the margins, beyond court taste and royal patronage, maintaining individualism and reviving the sly spirit of Jacques Callot. Gillot's first teacher was probably his father, a painter and embroiderer. He learned to paint and etch in academic painter Jean-Baptiste Corneille's Paris studio. Gillot entered the Académie Royale in 1715 but made his living as a decorator and painter of arabesques. He also designed book illustrations, tapestry cartoons, and sets and costumes for the opera. The popular theater was Gillot's greatest artistic inspiration, particularly the commedia dell'arte, and he showed that fiction could be as true as reality. His paintings are rare, for after about 1709 he devoted himself entirely to drawing and engraving, working in a nervous, mannered spirit.

Gillot's contemporaries recognized his role in developing the fête galante, which was brought to maturity by his famous student Jean-Antoine Watteau. Despite this recognition, Gillot died impoverished and unappreciateded." - quote source

Artworks found at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The British Museum.