Part 21
It was perhaps fortunate that he failed in the competition for the Prix de Rome in 1709, and was dissuaded from going to Italy. He was received by the Academy in 1717, when he painted his “diploma picture.” _The Embarkation for the Island of Cythera_ (No. 982, Plate XXXIX.), which may be considered an epitome of his art. Sketchy as it is, this picture, which he painted in seven days, exceeds in poetic charm and in the beauty of its entrancing sparkle of mellow tones the more highly finished later version in the German Emperor’s collection. It is the most striking instance of a purely imaginary scene of unworldly happiness, tinged with that peculiarly Watteauesque vague melancholy,—the consumptive’s _maladie de l’infini_ to which M. Mauclair has drawn attention,—represented with such absolute atmospheric truth as to make it appear an incomparably beautiful reality. Technically, this picture, like _L’Indifférent_ (No. 984) and _La Finette_ (No. 985) in the La Caze Room, embodies in germ the theories which in the second half of the next century were scientifically worked out by the French Impressionists.
Some time in 1719 or 1720, Watteau was in England to consult a famous physician. But his illness took a turn for the worse, and he had to return to his native country. After six months spent in Paris, he went to live at Nogent-sur-Marne, where he died on July 18, 1721. Watteau’s influence upon eighteenth-century art was prodigious; but his work remained unapproached by any of his followers and imitators, who too often sacrificed artistic considerations to a desire to please the lascivious tastes of a corrupt, pleasure-loving society. The _Faux Pas_ (No. 989) is one of the rare instances where Watteau allowed a certain suggestiveness to enter into his work; but even here “the smallness of the subject is swallowed up in the greatness of the painting.”
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.—ANTOINE WATTEAU
(1684-1721)
FRENCH SCHOOL
No. 982.—THE EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA
(L’Embarquement pour Cythère)
On a mound in the foreground, under a group of trees on the right, by a garlanded terminal figure of Venus, are seated a young woman and a pilgrim; at their feet is Cupid, whose wings are covered by a black cape. To the left a cavalier helps a young woman to rise from the lawn. In the centre of the composition another pilgrim leads away his partner, encircling her waist with his arm. On the left, in the middle distance, is a procession of lovers in pairs moving towards a gilt barge with a chimera at the prow and two semi-nude rowers. Cupids are floating in the air above the barge. In the background a lake surrounded by bluish mountains.
Painted in oil on canvas.
4 ft. 2 in. × 6 ft. 3½ in. (1·27 × 1·92.)]
THE WATTEAUS IN THE LA CAZE GALLERY
It is a strange fact that but for the generosity of La Caze, _The Embarkation_ would be the only example at the Louvre of the greatest master produced by France. The reason for this extraordinary neglect may be found in the scant esteem in which Watteau was held until his eclipsed fame was resuscitated by the de Goncourts. The superb life-size painting of _Gilles_ (No. 983), one of ten pictures by or attributed to Watteau in the La Caze collection, was sold at public auction in 1826 for £26; whilst _L’Indifférent_ and _La Finette_ together realised the sum of £19 at the Marquis de Ménars’ sale! Of the eleven pictures in the La Caze collection that were originally attributed to Watteau, _L’Escamoteur_ (No. 622A, formerly No. 987) is now acknowledged to be by his imitator Philippe Mercier (1689-1760), who was born in Berlin of French parents, and spent the most productive years of his life in London, where he died in 1760. The still-life piece _Dead Game_ (No. 993), officially assigned to Watteau, has rightly been doubted; but the aspersions thrown upon the authenticity of the delicious _Pastoral_ (No. 992) do not seem sufficiently justified. The profound influence of Rubens upon Watteau’s art is nowhere more pronounced than in the sketch _The Judgment of Paris_ (No. 988), and in the beautiful oval composition _Jupiter and Antiope_ (No. 991), which has, however, also much in common with Titian. The superb nude figure symbolising _Autumn_ (No. 990), and another _fête galante_, entitled _Gay Company in a Park_ (No. 986), are no less creditable to the master’s genius.
WATTEAU’S FOLLOWERS
Although Watteau indicated the direction that French art was to follow in a century when it had to cater no longer for the stateapartment but for the boudoir, he left no follower worthy to carry on his tradition. Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), who had studied under Dulin and Gillot, based his style upon Watteau, whom he almost rivalled as a draughtsman. But he was an inferior colourist, and wholly lacking in poetic inspiration. One has only to compare his _Actors of the Italian Comedy_ (No. 470) with Watteau’s _Gilles_ (No. 983), or his _Music Lesson_ (No. 468) and _Innocence_ (No. 469) with their prototypes created by that master, to realise the inferiority of these thin, vulgarised versions of Watteau subjects.
Jean Baptiste Pater (1695-1736), who, like Watteau, was born at Valenciennes, became a pupil of his fellow-townsman in Paris, and benefited considerably by his guidance. Although inferior as a draughtsman to Lancret, whom he did not rival either in originality, he far surpassed him as a colourist. With Lancret, colour was generally an afterthought; with Pater, it entered into the primary conception of the picture. His Academy diploma piece, the _Fête Champêtre_ (No. 689), is painted in the Watteau manner with true pictorial feeling, even if it lacks the master’s precious, jewel-like quality of pigment. The _Fête Champêtre_ (No. 203), by Bonaventure Debar (1700-1729), holds promise of a considerable talent in a similar direction, cut short by a premature death.
THE VAN LOO FAMILY
No fewer than five members of the Flemish Van Loo family, which flourished in France from about 1660 until the death of Julius Cæsar Van Loo in 1821, are represented in the Louvre collection. The most distinguished among them were Louis Van Loo’s sons, Jean-Baptiste and Charles André, better known as Carle. Both of them were brought up in the academic tradition; but their Flemish blood and the taste of a time that had seen the master-work of Watteau, gave their art more vigour and sensuousness than is to be found in the paintings of their academic precursors. Still it is unnecessary to linger over their historical and mythological compositions. The picture which does most credit to Carle Van Loo (1705-1765) is _The Hunt Picnic_ (No. 899), which, in spite of a certain crudeness of colour, attracts by the science of the composition, the Watteau feeling of the landscape background, and by its fascinating reality as a record of contemporary life among the leisured, pleasure-loving classes.
François Le Moine (1688-1737) constitutes a link between the decorative style of the preceding generation, which had become dull and ponderous, and the art of Watteau and his followers. In this position he heralds his great pupil François Boucher, whose characteristics, deprived of his elegant grace and suave rhythm of design, are more than hinted at in the _Juno, Iris and Flora_ (No. 536). The _Olympus_ (No. 535), the sketch for a ceiling, recalls in its joyful decorative colour and bravura of brush work the art of Tiepolo and Ricci.
FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
Whilst such painters as Jean Restout (1692-1768) still continued to follow the tradition of the Bolognese eclectics, as may be seen in his _Herminia and the Shepherd_ (No. 775), the art of the Louis XV. period was given its final stamp by François Boucher (1703-1770). This favourite of Mme. de Pompadour, having gained the Prix de Rome in 1723, went to Italy in 1727, whence he returned to Paris four years later. At the age of thirty his _Rinaldo and Armida_ (No. 38A) caused him to be “received” by the Academy—the first of many honours that fell to his share, as he became in turn First Painter to the King, Director of the Academy, and Inspector of the Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory. He was the ideal painter of the age that was dominated by the personality of the Pompadour, who kept him employed with commissions for the decoration of her boudoir. Boucher was the true child of his time—licentious, pleasure-loving, light-hearted, and without moral scruples. The astonishing thing is that his pursuit of pleasure did not affect his enormous productivity. His art is in perfect harmony with his character—frankly sensual, exuberant, and unreliable; at times rising to superb decorative splendour of the airy, graceful type demanded by his patrons, and then again careless to the point of slovenliness.
Boucher was not a great colourist in the sense in which this term is applied to masters like Titian or Rubens. Indeed, more often than not his application of purely local colours unaffected by their surroundings is apt to result in the crudeness noticeable in his _Pastoral_ (No. 33), and in the domestic scene called _The Breakfast_ (No. 50A). Other pictures like the _Pastoral_ (No. 34) owe their present tapestry-like mellowness to the fading of the pigments. But it would be unfair to disregard the artist’s intention and to judge his capacity as a colourist from the present appearance of his works at the Louvre or in their usual environment in a public gallery. They were intended for definite decorative purposes, and in their proper Louis XV. setting fulfilled their function in admirable fashion. Few artists excelled Boucher in rhythmic harmony of composition, although it must be confessed that his emphatic insistence on triangular design is apt to become monotonous. This predilection is to be noted in the _Rinaldo and Armida_ (No. 38A), _Venus disarming Cupid_ (No. 44), _The Rape of Europa_ (No. 39), the _Pastorals_ (Nos. 33, 34, and 35), _Vulcan presenting Arms to Venus_ (No. 36, Plate XL.), and, indeed, in the vast majority of his twenty-two exhibited pictures at the Louvre. His mastery in flesh painting is best illustrated by the more unconventionally designed _Diana leaving the Bath_ (No. 30), and the brilliant sketch of _The Three Graces_ (No. 47) in the La Caze Room. Among his other masterpieces at the Louvre, _Venus demanding Arms from Vulcan_ (No. 31), which like No. 36 was designed for execution in tapestry, and the charming _Portrait of a Young Woman_ (No. 50), deserve special attention. It is unfortunate that they are not hung in the rooms that contain the magnificent furniture of the period, instead of being piled sky-high among pictures that seem to be primarily regarded by the officials as mere museum specimens of the art of painting. Boucher is better hung, and so may be much more effectively studied in the Wallace collection in London.
[Illustration: PLATE XL.—FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
(1703-1770)
FRENCH SCHOOL
No. 36.—VULCAN PRESENTING ARMS TO VENUS
(Vulcain présentant à Vénus des Armes pour Énée)
On the right, Vulcan, seated on a tiger-skin with his left elbow resting on an anvil, presents a sword to Venus, who, supported by a nymph, is resting on a cloud in the centre of the composition. In the background, over the head of Vulcan, are two cupids carrying a helmet with a blue plume; between them and Venus, two nymphs on clouds under a rock. Cupids and doves are fluttering around the central group. In the foreground, on the left, are the chariot of Venus, doves, and cupids, one of whom, immediately below the goddess, is holding a garland of white roses.
Painted in oil on canvas.
Signed:—“F. BOUCHER.”
10 ft. 6 in. × 10 ft. 6 in. (3·20 × 3·20.)]
A little drier in touch than Boucher’s nudes, and considerably less coherent in design, but still painted with remarkable ability, are the figures of the goddess and her attendants in _The Triumphs of Amphitrite_ (No. 863), by Boucher’s contemporary, Hugues Taraval (1728-1785).
SIMÉON CHARDIN
If Boucher and the army of painters of _fêtes galantes_ and boudoir decorations reflect the tastes of the corrupt society of Louis XV.’s age, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) is the painter _par excellence_ of the lower bourgeoisie. His was an uneventful, colourless life of unremitting work after the completion of his studies under Cazes and N. N. Coypel. He never went to Rome; he never sought after distinction in the “grand manner”; he never hankered after Court patronage. He simply devoted himself to recording with the utmost technical perfection the peaceful and domestic life of the lower middle class, to which he himself belonged, with all his tastes and habits of life, and to the painting of still-life, in which branch of art he stands without a rival. There are among his thirty-two pictures at the Louvre twenty paintings of _Still-life_ (Nos. 89, 90, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 105-116, and the doubtful No. 118), all equally remarkable for their inimitable skill in the rendering of the most varied textures and reflections; for subtle observation of the mutual effect of coloured objects upon each other through the interchange of coloured rays; and, above all, for that “sense of intimacy, of life behind the scene,” with which he knew how to invest even inanimate objects.
This same sense of intimacy and of absolute pictorial unity is also the great merit of his domestic genre pieces, into which enters, in addition, the element of spiritual unity, of the absorption of each person in his or her occupation. In the deservedly famous _Grace before Meat_, at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, of which the Louvre owns two admirable replicas (No. 92, Plate XLI., and No. 93), the most casual observer cannot fail to notice that intimate bond between the mother and the two children, which gives the impression of a scene accidentally overlooked, without anybody being aware of the intruder’s presence. _La Mère laborieuse_ (No. 91), _La Pourvoyeuse_ (No. 99), and even the cat in the still-life piece _The Cat in the Larder_ (No. 89), are equally innocent of “posing,” and absorbed in their respective occupations. _The Boy with the Top_ (No. 90A) and the _Young Man with the Violin_ (No. 90B), under which titles we have the portraits of the two children of the jeweller Charles Godefroy, were bought by the Louvre in 1907 for £14,000. These two pictures and the _Castle of Cards_ (No. 103) are sufficient to establish Chardin’s supremacy in child portraiture.
FRAGONARD
Chardin for but a few months, and Boucher for two years, were the masters who taught Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) before, having gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 and worked three years under Van Loo, he set out for Rome, where under Natoire’s guidance he applied himself to the copying of old masters. More important for the formation of his style were the sketches he made in the company of his friend Hubert Robert in the romantic gardens of the Villa d’Este, and the deep impression created upon his mind by Tiepolo’s decorative paintings in Venice, which city he visited before his return to Paris in 1761. He scored his first great success in 1765 with the large and still somewhat academic composition _Coresus and Calirrhoë_ (No. 290), which was bought by Louis XV. for 24,000 livres for reproduction at his tapestry works.
[Illustration: PLATE XLI.—JEAN-BAPTISTE SIMÉON CHARDIN
(1699-1779)
FRENCH SCHOOL
No. 92.—GRACE BEFORE MEAT
(Le Bénédicité)
In the centre of a room, by a round table with a white tablecloth, stands a woman, about to pour the soup from a saucepan into a plate. She turns her head to the left towards her two little girls, who, with folded hands, are saying grace. A drum is suspended from the back of the chair on which the younger child is sitting. In the background, on the left, a dresser with pewter and crockery; on the right, a shelf with a canister, a bowl, and some bottles.
Painted in oil on canvas.
1 ft. 7¼ in. × 1 ft. 3½ in. (0·49 × 0·41.)]
Patronised by Mme. du Barry, the dancer Marie Guimard, and other priestesses of Venus, Fragonard now devoted his exceptionally facile and spontaneous talent to subjects that in licentious frivolity, voluptuousness, and suggestiveness had never been equalled even by his master Boucher. It is only his marvellous technique, ranging from the liquid transparency of his swift oil sketches to the rich luminous impasto of the _Sleeping Bacchante_ (No. 294); from the elegant arabesque of the _Bathing Women_ (No. 293), so full of _joie de vivre_ and youthful fire, to the almost brutal strength of the portrait of a writer or poet, known under the title of _Inspiration_ (No. 298). But in all these, as well as in the charming _Music Lesson_ (No. 291, Plate XLII.), _The Student_ (No. 297) and the _Young Woman_ (No. 300), Fragonard proves himself one of the greatest colourists produced by the French School. It was Fragonard’s sad fate to outlive his fame, to witness the collapse of the ancient régime and the triumph of his pupil David’s classicism, and to die in obscurity and neglect.
GREUZE
Twenty-three paintings represent at the Louvre the art of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), who trod the safe path of flattering the taste of the multitude by the mawkish sentimentality of his genre-pieces and the prettiness and half-concealed sensuality of his “fancy portraits” of young women, which in their suggestiveness are perhaps more insidious than the frank improprieties of Boucher and Fragonard. The sentimental and melodramatic side of Greuze’s art is strikingly revealed in _The Village Engagement_ (No. 369), in _The Paternal Curse_ (No. 370), and in _The Punished Son_ (No. 371), which aroused the enthusiasm of that singularly misguided critic Diderot. But it is the painting of pictures like _The Broken Pitcher_ (No. 372, Plate XLIII.), _The Milkmaid_ (No. 372A), and _The Dead Bird_ (No. 372C; a replica of the picture in the Scottish National Gallery), that has made him the idol of a certain undiscriminating section of the public, and established him among the world’s most popular painters.
PORTRAIT PAINTERS
The leading position among the portrait painters of Louis XV.’s corrupt Court was occupied by Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766), who was a good colourist, but was utterly lacking in sincerity, and placed his able brush at the service of the basest flattery. He has left a whole gallery of Court beauties posing as, and invested with the attributes of, Greek goddesses and allegorical personifications in the manner of the group of _Mdlle. de Lambesc and the Comte de Brienne_ (No. 659) as Minerva preparing the hero for warlike exploits. The _Magdalen_ (No. 657) is probably another contemporary portrait in fancy costume. His best picture at the Louvre is the _Portrait of a Young Woman_ (No. 661A).
François Hubert Drouais (1725-1775), the painter of the group of the _Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.) and Madame Clotilde, afterwards Queen of Sardinia_ (No. 266), who received a good share of Court patronage, showed considerable ability when he had sufficient strength to resist the temptation to flatter his sitters. But unfortunately he too often followed the example of Nattier in this respect.
TOCQUÉ, VESTIER, AND LÉPICIÉ
A portrait painter of a very different stamp was Nattier’s son-in-law, Louis Tocqué (1696-1772). Although he, too, was a favourite not only at the French, but also at the Russian and Danish Courts, the examples of his art at the Louvre suggest that he was but indifferently successful—from the artistic point of view—with his “official” portraits, like the _portrait d’apparat_ of _Marie Leczinska, Queen of Louis XV._ (No. 867), or the affected _Portrait of the Dauphin Louis at the age of ten_ (No. 868). On the other hand, when he was not weighed down by the importance of his task, he attained to a solidity of style, strength of character painting, and beauty of technique that place him at the head of the French portraitists of his period. Tocqué was apparently never in England, but such masterpieces from his brush as the _Mme. Danger embroidering_ (No. 868A), and the supposed portrait of _Mme. de Graffigny_ (No. 869), show distinct affinity with Allan Ramsay and Hogarth, with superadded French _finesse_ and suavity.
[Illustration: PLATE XLII.—JEAN HONORÉ FRAGONARD
(1732-1806)
FRENCH SCHOOL
No. 291.—THE MUSIC LESSON
(La Leçon de Musique)
A fair-haired young girl in a low-cut white dress is seated, in profile towards the right, before a spinet. A youth, standing at her left, behind the instrument, is holding with his left hand the score, whilst his right is clasping the back of the girl’s chair. In the foreground a chair on which are a cat and a mandoline.
Painted in oil on canvas.
3 ft. 9½ in. × 3 ft. 11½ in. (1·10 × 1·20.)]
In the case of Antoine Vestier (1740-1824) the pronounced leaning towards the English style of the period is to be accounted for by that artist’s lengthy sojourn in England. The _Portrait of a Young Woman_ (No. 961), in the La Caze Room, might on superficial inspection pass for a work of Francis Cotes. Even in the _Portrait of the Painter’s Wife_ (No. 959), which was painted in 1787, long after Vestier’s return to his native country, the figure of a boy caressing a dog has a curiously English flavour.
Honesty of purpose and serious concern with artistic problems mark the art of Nicolas Bernard Lépicié (1735-1784), whose _Portrait of Carle Vernet_ (549A) is a picture of precious quality. He devoted himself more particularly to the domestic genre, which he treated without the sentimentality and theatricality of a Greuze. Indeed, if there is any contemporary painter with whom he shows affinity, it is Siméon Chardin. That he was a landscape painter of no mean ability may be gathered from his _Farmyard_ (No. 549), which, in spite of the predominating brown, is remarkable for its luminous transparency.
M^{ME.} VIGÉE LE BRUN
Before turning to the landscape painters Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert, we must close the chapter of eighteenth-century portraiture with Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), since her art, although her life extended far into the nineteenth century, belongs essentially to the degenerate days of the _ancien régime_—an art not devoid of grace, but exceeding in shallowness and insipidity the shallowest and most insipid productions of pre-Davidian days. Of the many masters from whom Vigée, herself the daughter of a painter, received advice, Greuze appears to be the one with whom she was most in sympathy. Married at an early age to Le Brun, a painter and picture-dealer from whom she was divorced after many years of wretched conjugal life, her career, of which she has left a full account in her autobiography, was one of adventure and truly extraordinary professional success.
She was the favourite painter of Marie Antoinette, had to leave Paris during the Terror, and made an almost triumphal progress from Court to Court before she definitely settled in Paris in 1809. At Naples, Vienna, Dresden, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, and other centres, Royalty and the world of fashion crowded to her studio; and her art even gained the unstinted approval of a judge like Sir Joshua Reynolds, which is the more surprising as Vigée Le Brun’s colour was almost invariably cold and unsympathetic. Her personal charms may have been
## partly responsible for her universal success, if reliance is to be
placed on the questionable honesty of her flattering brush from which the Louvre owns two _Portraits of the Artist and her Daughter_ (No. 521 and No. 522, Plate XLIV.). Among her other pictures in the Louvre are the _Peace bringing Abundance_ (No. 520), her reception piece at the Academy, and a portrait of her early friend and master, _Joseph Vernet_ (No. 525).
[Illustration: PLATE XLIII.—JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
(1725-1805)
No. 372.—THE BROKEN PITCHER
(La Cruche Cassée)