Like his teacher Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater, the son of the sculptor Antoine Joseph Pater (1670–1747), was born in Valenciennes, France. He probably followed Watteau to Paris in 1710.¹ Yet Watteau, that brilliant inventor of dreamlike fêtes galantes reportedly had little patience for his young compatriot, who was left largely to study on his own. Pater apparently remained in Paris until 1715, when he tried to establish himself in his native town, but he ran afoul of the painters’ guild, the Corporation of Saint Luke.² By 1718 he had returned to Paris and was eventually reconciled with Watteau; he touchingly recalled a month of intensive instruction spent with the older painter before his death in 1721.³ Pater apparently finished many of the works left in Watteau’s studio,⁴ and he continued to follow his master so closely that his own paintings often have been misattributed to Watteau. Yet Pater’s correctly attributed works were highly sought after by enthusiastic collectors in the later eighteenth century, including Frederick the Great of Prussia, who owned forty-eight.⁵ Pater remained in Paris for the rest of his life, having been accepted as a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1728.⁶

Establishing a chronology of Pater’s work has proven difficult. Since the publication of Florence Ingersoll-Smouse’s catalogue in 1928, many works have surfaced, putting the total known works at around five hundred, and there are furthermore numerous works whose whereabouts are unknown.⁷ Definite attributions are often complicated since many works were copied in the later eighteenth century, yet nothing is known about assistants or students of Pater, and signatures often cannot be trusted.⁸

Although Pater’s painting titled A Pastoral Concert is not included in Ingersoll-Smouse’s comprehensive catalogue of the artist’s works, its authenticity was firmly established by its presence in the collection of Richard Codman in 1796.⁹ This delightful small painting embodies the very essence of Rococo refinement. Three young people have gathered in a park for a little flirtatious outdoor musical entertainment. The young lady and her two admirers are seated informally on the ground, communing with nature in a manner unthinkable for gentlefolk of the previous, more rigorously formal period. The figures’ typically Rococo, asymmetrical arrangement is balanced by a stele with a satyr’s head at right, a silent yet fitting witness to the pastoral pleasures taking place in the foreground. As in many of Watteau’s compositions, Pater’s figures seem to sway to a gentle rhythm, virtually embodying a melody in paint. Pater’s palette also follows that of his master. The young man with the guitar is clad in a dark brown suit whose cut recalls the time of Henri IV, while the gentleman at left, holding a tambourine, wears a silvery gray ensemble. The most prominent figure, the young lady, whose lips are slightly parted as though singing, wears a somewhat theatrical dress with a pink bodice and a saffron yellow skirt that resounds cheerfully against the more hushed tones of the gentlemen’s garb and the differentiated greens of the forest glade, emphasizing her role as principal player of the trio. The figures are rendered with delicate brushstrokes (the lady’s bodice with its changeant coloring is a tiny tour de force), in contrast to the landscape elements, which are brushed with a freer and livelier touch.

The work shares a number of elements with several works by Pater, including Watching the Dance and The Dance (fig. 41.1), both in the Wallace Collection, London, a major repository of his works.¹⁰ Both are much more complex compositions of groups of people disporting themselves in an idealized landscape, but the central couple in each recalls the guitarist and young lady of the Straus painting, now stepping out to dance. Their costumes are virtually identical, as are their flirtatious and amorous attitudes.

Although there are no firm dates for these works, there are indications that they stem from the artist’s output of the 1730s.¹¹ The Straus painting is also from Pater’s later period, but probably a few years younger. However, as mentioned above, Pater’s chronology is difficult to establish, in part due to his practice of reusing the same figures in different compositions and in different configurations. It is interesting to note that he continued to follow his teacher in this practice even at so late a stage in his career.

Acquired by the Strauses relatively late, in 1935, this music-themed work was displayed not in the music room of their Park Avenue apartment, which was given over to their major Italian Renaissance works, but in the boudoir. There, it complemented other mostly French eighteenth-century paintings, sculptures, and works on paper.

—Helga Kessler Aurisch