Jean-Baptiste Pater was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 painter.

Born in Valenciennes

Valenciennes

Valenciennes is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded...

, Pater was the son of sculptor Antoine Pater and studied under him before becoming a student of painter Jean-Baptiste Guide. Pater then moved to Paris, briefly becoming a pupil of Antoine Watteau

Antoine Watteau

Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...

 in 1713. Watteau, despite treating Pater badly, had a significant influence on him. However the two quarreled and Pater returned to Valenciennes, where he remained for two years. In 1721, Pater and the dying Watteau reconciled; subsequently Pater became a student of Watteau once again, although only for a month before the latter's death. Pater later claimed to have learnt everything he knew during those few weeks with Watteau. He was accepted into the Académie

Académie de peinture et de sculpture

The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture , Paris, was founded in 1648, modelled on Italian examples, such as the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. Paris already had the Académie de Saint-Luc, which was a city artist guild like any other Guild of Saint Luke...

 in 1728, presenting a large military work in the popular Watteau style - La Rejouissance des Soldats (Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

).

Pater adopted the popular Fête galante

Fête galante

Fête galante is a French term referring to some of the celebrated pursuits of the idle, rich aristocrats in the 18th century—from 1715 until the 1770s...

 subject matter, heavily imitating his teacher Watteau, indeed he directly copied some of his figures. Pater used a traditional Rococo pastel palette. His most characteristic difference in style from other artists of the time surrounded his use of shimmering lines. His most prominent customer was Frederick the Great, who sat for two portraits in the "Turquerie" style: LeSultan au Harem and Le Sultan au Jardin. One of Pater's most renowned works is Landscape with a Cart (Schloss Charlottenburg), which is considered to display a feathery application of paint that anticipates Francesco Guardi

Francesco Guardi

Francesco Lazzaro Guardi was a Venetian painter of veduta, a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of painting....

. The delicately constructed subject matter and figures subordination to the buildings represent a movement away from fête galante, however this development was cut short by Pater's death in 1736.