Du beau sexe tant a la fois
Il charme les yeux et l'oreille.

In the little _Lady at her Toilet_ (No. 439) we see the influence of
Paul Veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he
visited London in the later part of his short life. For there is a
similar piece called _La Toilette du Matin_ which was engraved by a
French artist who had settled in England, Philip Mercier, and on whose
work the influence of Watteau is very noticeable.

_Le Rendez-vous de Chasse_ (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in
character similar to _Les Amusements Champetres_ (No. 391), is the last
by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in
1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from
making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from
his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint
Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose
from time to time.

NICHOLAS LANCRET was only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can
hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an
imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards
his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should
have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have
been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's
style--seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by
Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422, _Conversation Galante_ and 440,
_Fete in a Wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his
career, the imitation became. The latter is the _Bal dans un Bois_ which
was exhibited at the Place Dauphine, and was complained of by Watteau on
account of its close resemblance to his own work.

Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of
Watteau's influence. The _Italian Comedians by a Fountain_ (No. 465),
being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought
for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this
picture, "Between _you_ and _I_," he writes, with the quaint
regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to
no other person but you should I make this _confidence_), I must have
the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon
you for _getting it for me_. I need not beg you not to mention a word
about this to _anybod