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I really do agree with many of your strictures on the Pre-Raphaelites . . . they are nowhere near the first rank. But even their odd vision is technically superior to most of what is bandied about as "art" nowadays. And Hunt is one of the most uneven. . . I prefer Waterhouse, for example, or Burne-Jones (I do think Hunt is unfairly criticized by many not because of his technical ability or lack thereof but because of the religious content of much of his work - which stood out amongst the mostly mythological-pagan-fantasy P-Rs.)

As for the French and Watteau in particular, I find them in general sort of niminy-piminy (but that may just be because he's French, and I'm visiting the sins of his putative descendants on his head.)

If we're going to backtrack into the 18th c., Hogarth is more my speed, especially his immensely perceptive portraits.

When I think of art and artists, I don't tend to think in terms of schools or movements, but rather, in terms of individuals. Watteau is one of my favorites not because he is associated with Rococo, a style and approach I personally detest, but because his conte crayon drawings are so extraordinarily wonderful and fine. Further, Watteau 'did' Rococo, I suspect, because that's the style the wealthy patrons (such as Mme. Pompadour) were buying. Artists follow the markets and the mood of their times, by and large. Watteau was no different: a man's gotta eat. That 'starving artist' business is a fool's game. So while his Rococo-style paintings, colorful and frivolous, don't exactly detract from his oeuvre, I generally don't think of them when I think of him.

(Here's an irony, though: from what I've read, Rembrandt did not paint his religiously themed pictures because of the market--the demand for religiously themed work was notoriously low in Europe at that time, except for Spain. He did them because he had to. I can appreciate that kind of irresistible impulse, that desire to tackle the truly big subjects, markets be damned.)