992 - Dietrich, Christian Wilhelm Ernst, gen. Dietricy

Dietrich, Christian Wilhelm Ernst, gen. Dietricy Weimar 1712 - Dresden 1774 73 x 54 cm Fête Galante. Courtly Society in a Park. Oil/canvas, relined, signed bottom right and dated 1750. Private collection, Baden-Baden. Formerly in the Wettin family collection, where it was recorded in the Königliche Garde-Meubles-Verwaltung; Kunsthandel Wahl, Dresden; entered into the inventory of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden in 1981; returned to the Wahl family in the 1990s. Like almost no other genre in Rococo painting, the gallant, courtly scenes ‘à la Watteau’ were ideally suited to the decorative interior design of castles and palaces. This fashion had become widespread at the Saxon court from the late 1730s onwards. This trend was undoubtedly also fuelled by the complete works of Watteau’s paintings and drawings, published by Jean de Julienne between 1726 and 1735 in 795 engravings, a large number of which were also collected in the Royal Cabinet of Engravings in Dresden. Alongside the ‘peasant’ genre, the ‘courtly’ genre is therefore an area in which Dietricy was also particularly active.