WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - WATTEAU: TALKIN' 'BOUT

'THE ROCKFORD FILES'
"IRVING THE EXPLAINER"

From the IMDb:
Rockford gives himself a headache trying to solve the connection between a 30 year old murder, a valuable missing painting and Nazi Germany. 

IMDb Trivia:
The Watteau painting at the heart of the plot, "Pilgrimage To Avignon", is not real. Watteau did a painting, named "Pilgrimage To Cythera".

From Wikipedia:

Jean-Antoine Watteau (baptized October 10, 1684 – died July 18, 1721), better known as Antoine Watteau, was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in color and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical, Rococo. Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet.

In 1709 Watteau tried to obtain the Prix de Rome and was rejected by the Academy.  In 1712 he tried again and was considered so good that, rather than receiving the one-year stay in Rome for which he had applied, he was accepted as a full member of the Academy.  He took five years to deliver the required "reception piece", but it was one of his masterpieces: the "Pilgrimage to Cythera", also called the "Embarkation for Cythera".

Watteau lacked aristocratic patrons; his buyers were bourgeois such as bankers and dealers. Among his most famous paintings are the two versions of the "Pilgrimage to Cythera" (one in the Louvre, the other in the Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin). 

And so we have another trivial example of the difference between the life of an historical figure in the real world and in Toobworld.  Watteau may not have painted "Pilgrimage to Avignon" in our world, but he did in the Television Universe.

It's not as interesting a discrepancy as Dennis Rodman being an extraterrestrial or Willie Mays a warlock, but 'twill serve.....

BCnU!