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Watteau invented the popular motif of the fête galante, or courtship party, but this is a strange, even somewhat disquieting example.

This is an elegant book, with something of the stylized formality of a baroque opera or one of Watteau’s paintings of a fête galante.

This buoyant exhibition looks at the rococo genre of the fête galante — 18th century, cotton candy-colored images of outdoor, countryside parties.

Watteau is credited with the creation of the 18th-century fête galante painting style, defined primarily by costumed figures flirting and cavorting in parklands.

Idealization has been a reputable tradition in art at least since the days when the Greeks put up the Parthenon, and Rockwell’s work is no more unrealistic than that of countless art-history legends, like Mondrian, whose geometric compositions exemplify an ideal of harmony and calm, or Watteau, who invented the genre of the fête galante.