Part 20

Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) studied first under Vouet, but, attracted by Poussin’s stronger personality, followed that master to Rome in 1642, and continued his studies under his guidance. When Le Brun returned to Paris four years later, his reputation was already firmly established. Patronised by Louis XIV.’s powerful minister, Colbert, he was placed at the head of the newly founded Academy of Painting, and of the Gobelins Manufactory, became First Painter to the King and “Prince” of the French Academy in Rome; and was, in fact, given absolute power in all matters concerning the fostering of the arts and art industries. This despotic power explains how it was possible that Le Brun, who notwithstanding his brilliant executive skill and extraordinary facility never rose above the level of mediocrity, could impose his uninspired personality upon every phase of French artistic activity of his time.

His enormous canvases at the Louvre, which probably occupy more space than has been allotted to any other painter, vainly endeavour to conceal the lack of real emotion and of a central motif by theatrical gestures and overcrowding. His masterpiece at the Louvre is _The Tent of Darius_ (No. 511), which represents the family of Darius imploring Alexander the Great for mercy. But even here one feels the absence of dramatic inspiration and concentration. Less successful are the other scenes from the history of Alexander: _The Passage of the Granicus_ (No. 509), _The Battle of Arbela_ (No. 510), _Alexander and Porus_ (No. 512), _Alexander entering Babylon_ (No. 513). The whole series was painted between 1661 and 1668 for execution in tapestry and was exhibited at the Salon in 1673, the year in which for the first time an official catalogue was compiled. Besides many scriptural and mythological subjects, and a few portraits from Le Bran’s brush, there are at the Louvre his decorative paintings on the ceiling of the Galerie d’Apollon in which the magnificent centre panel was added two centuries later by Delacroix.

PIERRE MIGNARD

Le Bran’s successor in the direction of the Academy and the Gobelin works, Pierre Mignard (1612-1695), called “Le Romain” owing to his long domicile in Rome after the completion of his studies under Vouet, did not have his precursor’s large decorative faculty and sweeping ease of execution. Yet the excessively affected grace and the careful finish of his pictures, of which _The Virgin of the Grapes_ (No. 628) is a thoroughly characteristic instance, helped to raise him to an exalted position in the opinion of his contemporaries. To this day the affected style of prettiness of which he was the high priest is known as “_mignardise_.” His power was altogether insufficient for the ambitious decorative tasks he set himself in emulation of Le Brun. If he has any claim to the esteem of posterity, it is for having left the world a portrait gallery of the notable men and women of his time—portraits which are by no means free from flattery and mannered grace, but constitute, nevertheless, a valuable historical record. Of these the Louvre owns the _Portrait of the Artist at Work in his Studio_ (No. 640); the _Portrait of Françoise d’Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon_ (No. 639); and the life-size group of _Louis of France, Son of Louis XIV., his Wife, and their three Children_ (No. 638).

Colbert and Le Brun had succeeded but too well in carrying out the powerful minister’s ambition to direct French art towards industrial and decorative aims, to train an army of capable producers, and to place the whole organisation on what may be called a business basis. The system was, however, not favourable for the growth of independent genius. With few exceptions, the whole generation of painters that grew up under Le Brun’s régime are of no significance to the history of art. There were among them many capable craftsmen, but they only repeated in a feebler way what Le Brun had done on a more imposing and dazzling scale. Whole dynasties of painters arose, like the Boulognes and the Coypels, who, under official patronage, filled acres of canvas with florid, theatrical renderings of scriptural subjects, and with the bombastic mock-heroics of classic history and mythology seen through baroque spectacles.

LE BRUN’S FOLLOWERS

It would be giving undue importance to these painters of the Louis XIV. period if we were to go beyond a mere enumeration of their leaders and their chief works at the Louvre. None of them possessed any marked individuality; and most of them were linked together, not only by similar aims and ambitions, but also by family ties. Four members of the Coypel family rose to great eminence among their fellow-artists, and to important official positions. Noël Coypel (1628-1707), the painter of the four historical compositions, _Solon defending his Laws before the Athenians_ (No. 157), _Ptolomy Philadelphus giving the Jews their Freedom_ (No. 158), _Trajan giving a Public Audience_ (No. 159), and the _Foresight of Septimus Severus_ (No. 160), all of which were originally executed for the Council Chamber at Versailles; his sons Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), whose best known pictures at the Louvre are the _Susannah and the Elders_ (No. 169) and the _Democritos_ (No. 174), which recalls Jordaens in its exuberant life, and Noël Nicolas Coypel (1692-1734), whose goddesses and nymphs already reflect the taste which dominated the eighteenth century; as well as Antoine’s son, Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), whose uninspired art may best be studied in the _Perseus delivering Andromeda_ (No. 180).

_The Triumph of Bacchus_ (No. 447) and _The Annunciation_ (No. 445), by Charles de La Fosse (1636-1716); _Hercules fighting the Centaurs_ (No. 53), by Bon Boulogne (1649-1717); and _The Marriage of St. Catherine_ (No. 55), by his brother Louis Boulogne (1654-1733), only serve to illustrate the mediocrity of their respective authors. The impersonality of Bon Boulogne’s art had at least the advantage that his teaching left free scope for personal expression to his many pupils.

Even the still-life painting of the “_grand siècle_,” which found its chief exponent in Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (1634-1699), partakes of the love of pomp and display that characterises this period. Gold and silver vases, precious stuffs and furniture generally accompany his flowers, which are painted without real appreciation of their natural beauty, and in purely local tints without a hint of the effect of each colour upon its surroundings. The _Flowers_ (No. 648), in the La Caze Gallery, may be mentioned as a typical example.

BATTLE PAINTERS

The battle painter, Jacques Courtois (1621-1676), called Borgognone and Le Bourguignon, though born in France, was so completely under the spell of the art of Italy, the country where he spent almost his entire life, that he can scarcely be reckoned as belonging to the French school. His furious cavalry _mêlées_, though entirely imaginative (as such confused encounters of horsemen piercing each other’s ranks have never taken place in actual warfare), are painted, like the _Cavalry Fight_ (No. 151), with a touch as swift as it is sure and expressive, and full of exuberant vitality.

Joseph Parrocel (1678-1704), who, during a prolonged visit to Rome had benefited by Borgognone’s teaching, could not, after his return to France in 1675, escape the current of thought which dominated his time, and introduced the stage-heroic note into his master’s sham realism. The glorification of his king is the purpose of such pictures as _The Passage of the Rhine by Louis XIV._ (No. 678). The chief interest is centred in the richly apparelled group on their prancing steeds in the foreground.

JEAN JOUVENET

_The Descent from the Cross_ (No. 437), by Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), which has been honoured by a position among the masterpieces in the Salon Carré, is certainly one of the most estimable compositions produced in France during this active but uninspired century. Not only in the general disposition of the design, but also in the use of colour as a constructive element, Jouvenet here acknowledges his indebtedness to Rubens, although he could never rival the luminous glow of the great Fleming’s palette. Most of his other pictures suffer from dull heavy shadows and exaggerated expression. His strong and honest painting of the kneeling group in _The Abbé Delaporte officiating at the High Altar of Nôtre-Dame_ (No. 440), makes us regret that he did not devote himself more to subjects taken from the life of his time.

An artist who was less tied to the tyranny of the official school, and imbued with a really profound sense of the beautiful, was Jean Baptiste Santerre (1658-1717). The delicate perfection of form of the nude in _Susannah and the Elders_ (No. 835) approaches him to David and Ingres at their best. But this very perfection carries the germ of decay, because it is incapable of progress, and stagnation in art signifies death. As regards his technique, Santerre was extremely careful and conscientious. He reduced his palette to but five colours, and waited ten years after the completion of a picture before putting on the final coat of varnish.

THE PORTRAIT PAINTERS

The two great portrait painters who flourished under the “Grand Monarque,” Rigaud and Largillière, were preceded by an artist to whom, perhaps owing to the relative scarceness of his works, history has done but scant justice. Whilst the Louvre contains thirteen portraits by Largillière and seventeen by Rigaud, only two pictures stand to the name of Claude Lefebvre (1632-1675); but his _Portraits of a Master and his Pupil_ (No. 529) and the _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 530), are distinguished by a penetrating insight into character and an incisive vigour of style that form a striking contrast to the shallow bombast introduced even into portraiture by the fashionable painters to the Court. Lefebvre has been compared with Van Dyck. The _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 530) has more in common with the brilliant audacity of Frans Hals’s brushwork. Lefebvre worked for some years in London, where he was a favourite at the Court of Charles II.

Rigaud’s manner of portraiture has none of these serious, manly qualities, but his skill in arranging the sumptuous accessories which play so important a part in his portraits,—as important, at least, as the actual features of the sitters,—secured him the patronage of the pomp-loving, haughty nobility. Hyacinthe Rigaud y Ros (1659-1743) was born at Perpignan and educated at Montpellier and Lyons. It was the advice of Le Brun that saved him from the customary pilgrimage to Rome and its inevitable consequences. It was Le Brun who recognised Rigaud’s bent for portraiture, and launched him on the brilliant career which gained for him the title of “the French Van Dyck.” Rigaud was enormously productive. Between 1681 and 1698 he is said to have painted six hundred and twenty-three portraits. And he had then another forty-five years before him!

Rigaud’s best known picture at the Louvre is the stately _portrait d’apparat_ of _King Louis XIV._ (No. 781), a life-size full length, in which the spirit of the time, the curious blending of supercilious haughtiness, love of display, and affected grace of manner, are happily expressed in the monarch’s attitude and in the whole setting. The picture is signed and dated, “PEINT PAR HYACINTHE RIGAUD, 1701.” The same tendencies are to be noted in the full length _Portrait of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux_ (No. 783), in which it is surprising that the prelate’s personality is not completely smothered by the splendid profusion of the accessories. His gifts appear, however, in a better light in his excellent _Portraits of Marie Serre, the Artist’s Mother_ (No. 784), with the same head, honestly and soberly painted, twice on the same canvas, once in sharp profile looking to the right, and again, facing this, a three-quarter profile to the left. Wholly unexpected is the delicacy and softness of one of his pictures in the La Caze Room: the _Portrait of the Duke of Lesdiguières as a Child_ (No. 792). His solitary excursion into the domain of “grand art” at the Louvre is at the same time his last work: _The Presentation in the Temple_ (No. 780), which in grouping and lighting owes much to the study of Rembrandt.

Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) was born in Paris, but was taken when still an infant to Antwerp, where he became a pupil of Goebouw. From 1674 to 1680 he worked in London as an assistant of Sir Peter Lely, from whom he acquired the clever tricks and mannerisms in the painting of draperies and the textures of silks and velvets and other materials, which were to form so important a part of his artistic equipment. After Lely’s death Largillière went to Paris, where he not only shared with Rigaud the patronage of the Court as portrait painter, but secured many important commissions for historical paintings which, perhaps to the advantage of his fame, are now all but forgotten. Largillière was not without distinction as a brilliant and daring colourist. Nor was he incapable, on occasion, of seizing the subtleties of his sitters’ character. But his praiseworthy qualities are more than balanced by his unpleasant affectations and by the baroque squirminess of his line. This tendency carried him to such insufferable excesses as the conglomeration of lumpy bosses which does duty for a hand in his _Portrait of M. Du Vaucel_ (No. 484), in the La Caze Room.

His boastful skill in the management of the satins and velvets in the overrated portrait group of _Largillière with his Wife and Daughter in a Garden_ (No. 491), cannot atone for the singularly unfortunate and clumsy composition, and for the self-conscious affectation of each individual pose. More satisfactory, in spite of the superabundance of accessories and outward pomp, which in this case is a fitting attribute to the character of the sitter, is the _Portrait of Charles Le Brun, First Painter to King Louis XIV._ (No. 482), who is depicted in a colossal wig, seated before an easel, and wearing a superbly painted red velvet cloak.

LANDSCAPE PAINTERS

It almost goes without saying that landscape art, which, even in its most artificial and “classic” phase is inspired by the love and study of nature, was sadly neglected in so artificial an age. Among its leading exponents must be mentioned the two Patels, father and son, of whose life we have but scant knowledge, and whose pictures resemble one another’s so closely that it is often difficult to determine which is by Pierre Patel, the father (1620?-1676), and which by Pierre Antoine Patel, the son (1648-1708), especially as both adopted the signature, “P. PATEL.” In the case of the older artist’s _The Exposure of Moses on the Nile_ (No. 680), and _Moses burying the Egyptian whom he had Slain_ (No. 681), and his son’s four landscapes representing the months, _January_ (No. 684), _April_ (No. 685), _August_ (No. 686), and _September_ (No. 687), all doubts are set aside by the dates which accompany the signature. Both artists were close followers of Claude Lorrain, although their precise technique suggests the influence of Adam Elsheimer.

A truer perception of nature came to France from the North, whence, indeed, throughout the history of French painting vitality was infused into an art that was cramped by officially imposed canons of Italian perfection. As far back as the time of Le Brun, Félibien and Roger de Piles had begun in the field of literary polemics the long struggle between the _Poussinistes_ and _Rubenistes_, the adherents of an art dominated by design and perfect drawing, against the partisans of colour as a vital element. During the whole seventeenth century the Poussinistes, who commanded all the official support, held the field, though the Netherlandish strain was represented by some of the finest painters of that period, like the brothers Le Nain, C. Lefebvre, and Philippe de Champaigne. In the eighteenth century the Northern influence became supreme through Watteau and Chardin on the one hand, and on the other through Boucher and Fragonard, both of whom were powerfully influenced by the study of Rubens’s works.

DESPORTES

In landscape the healthy opposition to the prevailing classic style appears first in the work of the Flemish battle painter Van der Meulen, whose backgrounds, sketched on the spot, show a fine feeling for aerial perspective and atmospheric effects. But his example apparently attracted no followers. Though not, strictly speaking, a landscape painter, François Desportes (1661-1743), who owed less to his early training under Nicasius, a third-rate Fleming, than to his habit of using his own eyes and studying nature direct, treated landscape with similar freedom in the backgrounds to his portraits and pictures of the chase. In his paintings of animals, dead or alive, limp bodies of hares and birds arranged as still-life with flowers and fruits, or in a very frenzy of movement in his hunting pieces, he endeavours to emulate Snyders, without quite rivalling the Flemish master. Of his twenty-five pictures at the Louvre, twenty-three (Nos. 225-248) belong to this genre, but not all of them are actually exhibited. The _Portrait of a Huntsman_ (No. 224), and the _Portrait of the Artist_ (No. 249) seated under a tree, holding a gun in his right, and caressing with his left hand a hound whose paw is resting on a pile of dead game, serve to prove that he knew how to manage portraiture with the same bold, frank spirit and summary breadth. He was particularly happy in rendering, without laboured detail, the varying textures of fur and plumage.

Desportes’s only successful rival as a painter of animals and hunting scenes was Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755). How closely his style resembled that of the elder painter is to be seen from his _Wolf Hunt_ (No. 667), the _Dog watching Dead Game_ (No. 668), and one or two similar pieces at the Louvre. Oudry was first taught by his father, and subsequently by Largillière, who encouraged him in the painting of still-life, and directed his study particularly to the observation of tone values and of the interchange of colour that takes place between objects in close proximity to each other. In 1734, Oudry was appointed Director of the Beauvais Tapestry Works, which took a new lease of life under his able management. It was he who supplied the designs for the _Fables of La Fontaine_, which figure so frequently in the tapestries woven at that great establishment. Perhaps his most interesting picture at the Louvre is the large landscape _The Farm_ (No. 670), signed and dated 1750, one of the earliest examples in French art of a rustic scene painted for its own sake, without any attempt at ennobling the landscape by forcing it into a formal arrangement.

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL

GENRE PAINTERS

It is quite in accordance with the tendencies displayed by these masters, that towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century an increasing number of artists preferred to devote their talent to recording the life of their own days to the endless repetition of the “grand-manner” subjects which had occupied the energy of the preceding generations. Thus Jean Alexis Grimou (1678-1740), who was Swiss by birth and entirely self-trained, introduced into French art the drinking scenes beloved of the Flemish masters. From his painting of _A Drinker_ (No. 385) and the two _Portraits of Young Soldiers_ (Nos. 386 and 387), it may be seen how little he was in sympathy with the official art of his time; this is scarcely to be wondered at, since, instead of undergoing the customary course of academic training, he had formed his style by copying the works of Rembrandt and other Northern masters.

Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749) was not quite so emancipated. In his large religious compositions he still follows the affectations of the grand style. His chief work of this kind is the _Mass of St. Basil_, at Sta. Maria degli Angeli in Rome, of which No. 857 at the Louvre is a reduced version. Of far more artistic significance are his small genre pieces, in which he attains to a rich quality of pigment and a justice of tone-values unique in French painting of his period. Subleyras is said to have been of Spanish descent; and there are in his scenes from La Fontaine’s “Fables”—notably in _The Hermit_ (No. 862)—clear indications of his intimate acquaintance with Spanish art. The best of all his pictures at the Louvre is _The Falcon_ (No. 861), which, apart from its general quality of tone, contains some still-life passages worthy of the brush of Chardin.

RAOUX AND DE TROY

Just as Subleyras should be judged by his genre scenes rather than by his scriptural subjects, so Jean Raoux’s (1677-1734) real significance lies in the intimate note he introduced into his fancy portraits, and not in his moderately successful excursions into mythology, like the _Telemachus relating his Adventures to Calypso_, at the Louvre (No. 764). The _Young Woman reading a Letter_ (No. 765), in the La Caze Room, is perhaps the most charming of many similar pictures from his brush. In sentiment it belongs entirely to the amorous century of Louis XV., which was to produce a Fragonard and a Greuze. Raoux was one of the first French painters of contemporary life. Brought up in the old tradition, he was in his last years influenced by the personality of the great Watteau.

If Raoux was the somewhat sentimental painter of bourgeois life, Jean François de Troy (1679-1752) played not infrequently the chronicler of the elegant life of the leisured classes. Unfortunately this interesting phase of his art is not represented at the Louvre, which, besides the three _Portraits_ (Nos. 886-888) in the La Caze collection, contains two of his famous designs for tapestry, representing scenes from the _History of Esther_ (Nos. 884-885); and his large historical painting, _The First Chapter of the Order of the Holy Ghost, held by Henri IV. in 1595_ (No. 883).

WATTEAU

The master who was to break definitely with the cold, majestic, uninspired art of the seventeenth century, and who in leading French painting into new paths reached the very limits of poetic expressiveness imposed by material means, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Born at Valenciennes six years before that city became French through the peace of Nymwegen, Watteau, the son of a poor Flemish tiler, was French, as it were, by accident only. In his early years, when he studied in his native town under Gérin, a mediocre local painter, he must have had occasion to become closely acquainted with the paintings of the Flemish masters. On the death of Gérin, in 1702, he went to Paris, where he became assistant to the scene-painter Métayer. Watteau suffered dire poverty, and completely undermined his health through privation before his talent attracted the attention of his next master, Claude Gillot, with whom he stayed until 1708, when he became assistant to Claude Audran, a decorative artist of great repute and Keeper of the Luxembourg collections. At the Luxembourg Palace he was enabled to study the masterpieces of Rubens, Titian, and Paolo Veronese, from which he benefited as much as from his work from nature in the Luxembourg gardens.