The Death of Montcalm

Inspired by Woollett's famous engraving after West's Death of General Wolfe, Watteau concocted this even more fanciful version of the death of Montcalm, which was engraved and published in Paris in 1783. Since the artist had no knowledge of North America, he based his figures of native peoples - the man with the tomahawk and the nudes in the lower right - on barbarians found on ancient Roman reliefs, even adding a palm tree to the final engraving to define the exotic foreign locale of Canada.