Monique Watteau

Last updated
Monique Watteau
Born
Monique Dubois

(1929-12-23) 23 December 1929 (age 95)
Liège, Belgium
NationalityBelgian
Other names
  • Alika Watteau
  • Alika Lindbergh
Occupation(s)Writer, artist
Known for Fantasy fiction, cryptozoological art
Spouses

Alika Lindbergh (born Monique Dubois, 23 December 1929), commonly known by her former name Monique Watteau, is a Belgian fantasy fiction writer and artist.

Contents

Early life

Watteau was born Monique Dubois [1] in Liège on 23 December 1929. Her father was Hubert Dubois, a playwright and poet with ties to Surrealism. [2]

Watteau studied painting and drawing at the Académie royale des beaux-arts de Liège, and then went on to the Royal Conservatory of Liège to study theatre. At twenty, she left Belgium for Paris, where she met the Belgian scientist Bernard Heuvelmans, famous for his work in cryptozoology. [2] In 1951, she appeared under the name Monique Watteau in Jean Anouilh's film Two Pennies' Worth of Violets  [ fr ]. [3] She also worked as a photography model. [2]

Career

Watteau's first novel, La colère végétale, was published in 1954. Critics praised it as a striking literary debut; [4] [5] Albert-Marie Schmidt wrote that Watteau had created "a new kind of fantasy" (un nouveau fantastique). [5] Watteau was reportedly considered for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Femina, but she was removed from the running of the latter prize in 1954 when the jury discovered that she had posed for nude photographs. [2]

Her following novels, La nuit aux yeux de bête (1956), L'ange à fourrure (1958), and Je suis le ténébreux (1962), cemented her reputation as one of the foremost Francophone fantasy writers of the twentieth century. [4] Her work is marked by its sensuality of expression and its ecological, Taoist, and Surrealist themes. [4] The writer Anne Richter  [ fr ] described Watteau's novels as prime examples of feminism in twentieth-century fantasy. [5]

Her first three novels were written under the name Monique Watteau; her fourth gave her name as Monique-Alika Watteau. After its publication, she abandoned the name Monique altogether, [4] going by Alika Watteau [6] and later Alika Lindbergh. [4]

After publishing four novels, she turned to painting as a career. [4] Her output as a painter includes a notable corpus of cryptozoological art, [7] including her work as the primary illustrator of Bernard Heuvelmans's books. [4] When the cartoonist Hergé, researching Tintin in Tibet , asked Heuvelmans for details on the yeti, Watteau supplied a "graphic reconstitution" of the creature for Hergé's reference. [8]

In the 1970s, Watteau published two new books, Nous sommes deux dans l'Arche et Quand les singes hurleurs se tairont. [2] She published an autobiographical work, Le testament d'une fée, in 2002. [4]

Watteau also worked as an animal rights activist. [6] In the early 1990s, she was the president of the Cercle national pour la défense de la vie, de la nature, et de l'animal (CNDVNA), a conservation advocacy group within the French National Front. [9]

Personal life

Heuvelmans was Watteau's first husband; [4] they divorced in 1961, [2] but remained friends and collaborators. [4] According to her autobiography, Watteau was romantically involved with actor Yul Brynner from 1961 to 1967. [2] It was after this affair that she changed her first name to Alika, which she and Brynner had used as her nom d'amour . [10]

She married zoologist Scott Lindbergh, [2] son of aviator Charles Lindbergh, in 1968. [1] In 1972, Lindbergh and Watteau established a grant-funded primate research center on an 82-acre estate in the Dordogne valley in France, where they raised and studied dozens of South American monkeys. [11] Watteau and Lindbergh separated in 1983. [2]

During Watteau's marriage to Lindbergh, the couple arranged for Heuvelmans, then in poverty, to live in a small house on the grounds of the Dordogne estate. [10] Watteau attended to Heuvelmans during his final years, [12] and was with him at his death in 2001. [2] In accordance with his last wishes, Watteau was in charge of his private funeral in Le Vésinet. [12]

List of works

The following list comprises the original publications of Watteau's works. Because Watteau used multiple names, each entry includes the name under which the work was published.

As writer

As illustrator

Other works

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<i>The Country Dance</i> Painting by Antoine Watteau

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<i>Actors of the Comédie-Française</i> Painting by Antoine Watteau

Actors of the Comédie-Française, also traditionally known as The Coquettes, is an oil on panel painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Variously dated within the 1710s by scholars, the painting forms a compact half-length composition that combines portraiture and genre painting, notably influenced by Venetian school, the Le Nain brothers, and Watteau's master Claude Gillot; one of the rarest cases in Watteau's body of work, it shows five figures — two women, two men, and a black boy — amid a darkened background, in contrary to landscapes that are usually found in Watteau's fêtes galantes.

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<i>The Shepherds</i> (Watteau) Painting by Antoine Watteau

The Shepherds is a c. 1717 painting by Antoine Watteau, now in the Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin. It is the most finished version of a composition later reused by the same artist in Pastoral Pleasure.

<i>Pastoral Pleasure</i> Painting by Antoine Watteau

Pastoral Pleasure is a c. 1714–1716 fête galante painting by Antoine Watteau, now in the Musée Condé in Chantilly. Two other Watteau paintings survive with extremely similar compositions - the largest and most finished is The Shepherds, now in the Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin; another painting of that composition, once owned by Georges Wildenstein, seems to be a reworking of the Charlottenburg painting. Pierre Rosenberg argues that the Chantilly painting was an oil sketch for the Charlottenburg one. Three other copies of the Chantilly version appeared in 19th and 20th century auctions, but their locations are now unknown.

<i>The Worried Lover</i> Painting by Antoine Watteau

The Worried Lover is an oil on panel painting in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau. Variously dated to c. 1715–1720, the painting was among private collections throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, until it has been acquired by Henri d'Orleans, Duke of Aumale, son of King Louis Philippe I; as part of the Duke of Aumale's collection at the Château de Chantilly, The Worried Lover was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1884.

<i>Cupid Disarmed</i> (Watteau) Painting by Antoine Watteau

Cupid Disarmed is a c. 1715 oil-on-canvas painting, usually but not definitively attributed to Antoine Watteau. It is one of eight paintings kept by Watteau's friend and protector Jean de Jullienne until the latter's death in 1766. Benoît Audran engraved it in 1727 and described and reproduced it in an inventory of the Jullienne collection in 1756. After Jullienne's death the art dealer Boileau bought it for Jean-Baptiste de Montullé, Jullienne's executor.

<i>The Chord</i> (painting) Painting by Antoine Watteau

The Chord, alternatively known as The Serenader and Mezzetino, is an oil on panel painting in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, by the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau, variously dated c. 1714–1717. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, The Chord passed through numerous private collections, until it came into possession of Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, son of King Louis Philippe I; as part of the Duke of Aumale's collection at the Château de Chantilly, The Chord was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1884.

<i>Mezzetino</i> (Watteau) Painting by Antoine Watteau

Mezzetino is an oil-on-canvas painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, by the French Rococo painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. Dated within 1717–1720, Mezzetino forms a full-length single-figure composition, depicting the eponymous character in commedia dell'arte. In the 18th century, Mezzetino was owned by Jean de Jullienne, the friend and patron of Watteau who supervised the four-volume edition of prints after the artist's works, for which the picture was engraved by Benoit Audran the Elder; after Jullienne's death in 1766, it was acquired for the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, then recently established by Empress Catherine II of Russia. During the Soviet sales in the 1920s and 1930s, Mezzetino was sold to British-American businessman Calouste Gulbenkian; it was later sold to the Wildenstein art firm in Paris and New York, from which it was bought in 1934 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains; the institution also owns a preparatory study—a drawing of the man's head.

<i>Perfect Harmony</i> (painting) Painting by Antoine Watteau

The Perfect Accord, also adapted into English as Perfect Harmony, is an oil-on-panel painting by Antoine Watteau, created c. 1719, now held in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was the pendant to the same artist's The Surprise.

<i>Marriage Contract and Country Dancing</i> c. 1711 painting by Antoine Watteau

Marriage Contract and Country Dancing is a c. 1711 oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Antoine Watteau. It entered the Spanish royal collection as part of the collection of Isabella Farnese and was recorded in the La Granja de San Ildefonso Palace in Segovia. It is now in the Prado Museum, in Madrid. It shows the signing of a marriage contract in a rural landscape.

<i>Fêtes Vénitiennes</i> 1719 painting by Antoine Watteau

Fêtes Vénitiennes is a 1719 painting by Antoine Watteau, now in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, to which it was bequeathed in 1861 by Lady Murray of Henderland, widow of John Murray, Lord Murray. It takes its title from a 1732 engraving of the work by Laurent Cars and is derived from the Venetian styles of dress and dancing shown in the work, the former inspired by the commedia dell'arte. It belongs to the fêtes galantes genre created by Watteau.

Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois (1780-1846) was a French illustrator and lithographer, also an archaeologist and curator at the Louvre museum.

<i>The Robber of the Sparrows Nest</i> Painting by Antoine Watteau

The Robber of the Sparrow's Nest is an oil painting by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau, now in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. Variously dated between 1709 and 1716, the painting is a pastoral scene that is one of a few extant arabesques in Watteau's art; it shows a young couple with a dog, sitting at a sparrow's nest; it has been thought to be influenced by Flemish Baroque painting, exactly by Peter Paul Rubens' painting from the Marie de' Medici cycle.

<i>Two Studies of an Actor</i> Drawing by Antoine Watteau

Two Studies of an Actor is the name given to a sheet of drawings in the trois crayons technique by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau. Dated between 1716 and 1721, the sheet was once in the collection of Watteau's friend, the manufacturer and publisher Jean de Jullienne; passing through a number of private collectors, it was acquired in 1874 by the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, where it remains.

<i>Holy Family</i> (Watteau) Painting by Antoine Watteau

Holy Family, also called The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, is an oil on canvas painting by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau, now in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. Variously dated between 1714 and 1721, Holy Family is possibly the rarest surviving religious subject in Watteau's art, related to either the Gospel of Matthew, or the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew; it depicts the Virgin, the Christ Child, and Saint Joseph amid a landscape, surrounded by putti.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hughes Dubois</span> Photographer of artworks

Hughes Dubois is a photographer specialized in the photography of artworks.

References

  1. 1 2 Mosley, Leonard (2000), Lindbergh: A Biography, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, p. 368, ISBN   9780486145624
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Matthys, Francis (15 August 2002), "Alika Lindbergh, construite pour l'amour fou", La Libre Belgique , retrieved 14 March 2015
  3. ↑ "Deux sous de violettes", Gaumont.fr, Gaumont Film Company, 2013, retrieved 14 March 2015
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Verthuy, Maïr (Fall 2003), "Monique Watteau: une éthique prémonitoire", Dalhousie French Studies, 64: 87–92, JSTOR   40836843
  5. 1 2 3 Richter, Anne (1995), Le fantastique féminin: d'Ann Radcliffe à Patricia Highsmith, Brussels: Complexe, pp. 21–24, ISBN   9782870275788
  6. 1 2 Lindbergh, Anne Morrow (2012), Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947–1986, ed. Reeve Lindbergh, New York: Pantheon Books, p. 240, ISBN   9780307378880
  7. ↑ Coleman, Loren; Clark, Jerome (1999), Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 208, ISBN   9780684856025
  8. ↑ Peeters, Benoît (2012), Hergé, Son of Tintin, trans. Tina A. Kover, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 272, ISBN   9781421404547
  9. ↑ Davies, Peter (1999), The National Front in France: Ideology, Discourse and Power, London: Routledge, p. 110, ISBN   9781134725304
  10. 1 2 Sykes, Bryan (2016), Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal: A Geneticist's Search for Modern Apemen, Newburyport, MA: Disinformation Books, p. 70
  11. ↑ "Son Says Lindbergh Lived for Future", The Hartford Courant, p. 23, 4 May 1977
  12. 1 2 Coleman, Loren (2001), "Bernard Heuvelmans (1916–2001)", The Anomalist, retrieved 14 March 2015
  13. ↑ "Nous sommes deux dans l'arche", WorldCat , OCLC   417468937
  14. ↑ "Quand les singes hurleurs se tairont", WorldCat , OCLC   417657398
  15. ↑ "Lindbergh, l'ange noir", WorldCat , OCLC   254970335
  16. ↑ "Bernard Heuvelmans, un rebelle de la science", WorldCat , OCLC   173273754
  17. ↑ "Le danseur du sacre", WorldCat , OCLC   37592440
  18. ↑ "Voix dans le labyrinthe", WorldCat , OCLC   77968715
  19. ↑ "Sur la piste des bêtes ignorées", WorldCat , OCLC   459306408
  20. ↑ "Dans le sillage des monstres marins", WorldCat , OCLC   491862476
  21. ↑ "Le hibou et la poussiquette", WorldCat , OCLC   1860989
  22. ↑ "Le grand serpent-de-mer", WorldCat , OCLC   716189471
  23. ↑ "En vacances avec l'oncle Antoine", WorldCat , OCLC   80426632
  24. ↑ "Les derniers dragons d'Afrique", WorldCat , OCLC   461670058
  25. ↑ "Les bêtes humaines d'Afrique", WorldCat , OCLC   8132920
  26. ↑ "Histoire illustrée du cirque à Bruxelles", WorldCat , OCLC   762866910
  27. ↑ "Le cimetière des cachalots", WorldCat , OCLC   850985663
  28. ↑ "L'agonie des bébés phoques", WorldCat , OCLC   4514031
  29. ↑ "Regards croisés", WorldCat , OCLC   84689134
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