Part 24

Daubigny belonged to a family of artists. He received his first instruction from his father, and afterwards studied under Delaroche. Before he began to paint landscapes in the neighbourhood of Paris, he gained his livelihood by painting sweet-boxes! He found his best subjects on the banks of the Oise, but worked also in other districts of France, in Italy, and in England. Of his sojourn in England we are reminded by _The Thames at Erith_ (No. 2821), one of the thirteen Daubignys bequeathed to the Louvre by Thomy Thiéry, which also include the sun-flooded _Weir Gate at Optevoz_ (No. 2818, Plate LI.), _The Pond with Storks_ (No. 2815), _Les Péniches_ (No. 2820), _Morning on the River_ (No. 2824), and _The Banks of the Oise_ (No. 2823). _The Vintage in Burgundy_ (No. 184), which was bought by the State at the ridiculously low price of £400, is a picture of unusually large dimensions for an artist who generally needed but a small surface to express his ardent worship of nature. The delicious _Spring_ (No. 185), with its blossoming apple trees and young grass, must be counted among his finest achievements. It is a picture that fills the heart of the beholder with the joy and contentment engendered by the blithe atmosphere of a bright spring day in the country.

MILLET

The Louvre is fortunate in possessing no fewer than a dozen pictures by Jean François Millet (1814-1875), the great painter of the peasant’s unceasing struggle with the forces of nature to gain his livelihood from the soil. Millet himself was the son of a peasant, and was kept busy with farm work until he had attained the age of twenty, when he began to study art at Cherbourg. His studies were repeatedly interrupted before he definitely took up art as his profession. Before he went to Barbizon, in 1849, to devote himself exclusively to the genre in which he was to achieve immortal fame, he gained popular favour and admission to the Salon by following the eighteenth-century tradition of mythological art, and painted a number of nude studies of nymphs, goddesses, and cupids, not unlike in style to those of Diaz, but already marked by that firmness of design and by the monumental character that are so remarkable in his later work. The study of _Bathing Women_ (No. 642) belongs to that period.

[Illustration: PLATE LI.—CHARLES FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY

(1817-1878)

No. 2818.—THE WEIR GATE AT OPTEVOZ

(La Vanne d’Optevoz)

In the limpid clear water of the river, in the foreground, are reflected the blue sky and the opposite river bank, which, from a grassy slope on the left changes abruptly, near the weir gate, into a steep, low, sandstone cliff, on the crest of which some trees and bushes are silhouetted against the sky. On the left some ducks are swimming on the mirror-like water.

Signed on left:—“DAUBIGNY, 1859.”

Painted in oil on canvas.

1 ft. 7¾ in. × 2 ft. 4¾ in. (0·49 × 0·73.)]

After he had settled at Barbizon, Millet, whose peasant origin was probably the cause of his intense sympathy with the struggles and hardships of the field labourers’ fatiguing work, devoted his brush to creating that profoundly moving record of labour and toil which constitutes his claim to be considered one of the world’s great masters. He knew how to invest scenes of humble life with truly monumental grandeur, and brought out the hopeless monotony and cruel hardships of the life led by the tillers of the soil with such incisive strength, that he was accused of propagandist tendencies. Nothing, however, was further from his aim. He was an artist pure and simple, who, in following his own unpopular ideal, preferred to suffer neglect and extreme poverty to a compromise with the taste of the vulgar.

The _Women Gleaning_ (No. 644, Plate LII.) may be considered his supreme achievement, and an epitome of his whole art. Millet alone could have invested so bald and unpromising a subject with so much epic grandeur. There is in the rhythmic repetition of the action of the two women in the centre of the composition a sense of the inevitable hopeless monotony of labour in the fields, even if the picture is not “a plea against the misery of the people.” The same struggle for existence and the resulting physical fatigue are admirably expressed in the statuesquely silhouetted figure of _The Weed-burner_ (No. 2890). _The Woodcutter_ (No. 2895), _The Strawbinders_ (No. 2892), and _The Winnower_ (No. 2893) all exemplify this phase of Millet’s art. The domestic life of the peasantry is treated with equally profound sympathy in _Maternal Precaution_ (No. 2894), _La Couseuse_ (No. 644A), and _La Lessiveuse_ (No. 2891). Among his comparatively rare pure landscape subjects _The Church of Gréville_ (No. 641), which was found in an unfinished state in the artist’s studio after his death, takes very high rank. It is as remarkable for the simple telling truth with which the normal aspect of the landscape is rendered, as the _Spring_ (No. 643) is for the realisation of a more uncommon effect—a rainbow and the shrill accent of sunlight in the orchard under the leaden grey of the departing thunder clouds.

DAUMIER

What Millet did for the life of the country, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) did for the life of the town, of which he was a shrewd and critical observer. But his long practice as a caricaturist made him look upon the types that engaged his brush with a certain cruel bitterness which is far removed from Millet’s human sympathy. With a palette restricted almost to black and grey, Daumier yet proved himself a great colourist through the infallible accuracy of his tone-values and the suggestion of rich colour in his almost monochrome schemes. His design is as massive and monumental as Millet’s. The touch of the _macabre_, which is so characteristic of Daumier’s art, is very evident in _The Thieves and the Donkey_ (No. 2937). The _Portrait of the Painter Théodore Rousseau_ (No. 2938) holds a hint of the caricaturist’s vision.

COURBET

Equally far removed from, and hostile to, Classicism and Romanticism was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), who as head and founder of the Realistic school exercised a prodigious influence upon nineteenth-century art. He was essentially a fighting spirit, determined to overcome official hostility to his revolutionary principles. Excluded from public exhibitions, he held a private show of his own works, and defended his theories by spoken and written arguments. His just claim was that it did not matter _what_ you paint, but _how_ you paint what you actually see; and in conformity with his loudly proclaimed principles he often chose subjects that were offensive to the taste of his day. At the same time we can see now that he was endowed with a keen instinctive feeling for pictorial fitness, and that most of his pictures are far from being haphazard snapshots of actuality. In his student years he had copied many masterpieces by Rembrandt, Velazquez, Hals, and Van Dyck. How much he benefited from the example of the old masters is to be judged from his portrait of himself, known as _The Man with the Leather-belt_ (No. 147).

[Illustration: PLATE LII.—JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

(1814-1875)

No. 644.—WOMEN GLEANING

(Les Glaneuses)

In a harvest-field three female gleaners, seen in profile to the left, are occupied with picking up blades of corn. Two of them are bending right down, with their right hands touching the ground; the third woman is half erect. In the background some ricks, a cart and horses, harvesters, a farm building, and a horseman.

Signed on right:—“J. F. MILLET.”

Painted in oil on canvas.

2 ft. 8¾ in. × 3 ft. 8¼ in. (0·82 × 1·12.)]

By far his most famous picture is the gigantic _Funeral at Ornans_ (No. 143), which, as a study of the life and types in a small French provincial town, has aptly been compared with Flaubert’s great novel _Madame Bovary_. Each individual head in this vast composition is a marvellous study of facial expression. In his landscapes, again, he was by no means photographic, and he never failed to consider the decorative effectiveness of his pictures. His influence upon Whistler’s early work is to be judged from _The Wave_ (No. 147A). If his landscapes retain to a certain extent the atmosphere of the studio, such pieces as _La Remise des Chevreuils_ (No. 145A) and _Le Ruisseau du Puits noir_ (No. 146A) clearly show that he possessed a sound understanding of the way in which colours react upon, and modify, each other. Courbet’s revolutionary tendencies made him take part in the political movement of the Commune, and forced him to leave his native country. He died in Switzerland in 1877.

MEISSONIER

It was realism of a very different kind that made public opinion place Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) on a pinnacle, from which he has only in recent years been transferred to the more modest position due to him, for the exquisite minute care he bestowed upon the working out of insignificant details. Meissonier was a draughtsman and an illustrator rather than a painter. As a colourist he does not count. He had no appreciation of values, textures, substances, and surfaces. Nothing could be more to the point than Manet’s mordant remark that in Meissonier’s pictures “everything is of iron except the cuirasses.” Still, the mind that finds delight in small things will dwell with pleasure upon the microscopic details of his little costume pictures _The Flute Player_ (No. 2887), _The Poet_ (No. 2889), and several similar “gems” at the Louvre. Strangely enough the _Portrait of Mme. Gerriot_ (No. 2965), which he painted at the age of nineteen, has more breadth and real character than any of his later works. The chief task of Meissonier’s life was the glorification of Napoleon I.’s campaigns. Of this famous series the Louvre includes no example. On the other hand, the collection owns three important historical pictures from his brush in _Napoleon III. at Solferino_ (No. 2957), which long hung in the Luxembourg Gallery, _Napoleon III. surrounded by his Staff_ (No. 2958), and _The Siege of Paris_ (No. 2969), in the painting of which he had at least the advantage of personal experience, as he had followed the Emperor’s army on the Italian campaign, and was in Paris during the siege. Altogether the Louvre owns no fewer than twenty-nine paintings by Meissonier.

RICARD

If Meissonier is beginning to find his proper level after having been grossly overrated, Louis Gustave Ricard (1824-1873), one of the most remarkable portrait painters of his century, has only just in recent years been rescued from almost complete oblivion. A pupil of L. Cogniet, Ricard spent several years in copying the works and analysing the technical methods of the old masters, and in travelling in Italy, Belgium, Holland, and England. It was not before his return to Paris in 1850 that he began to exhibit. Ricard was exclusively a portrait painter. Technically his early studies enabled him to arrive at a method of singular morbidezza and warm luminosity. There is a certain truth in a modern critic’s description of Ricard’s pigments as being composed of “crushed jewels, flower juice, and gold and silver powder.” The great merit of Ricard’s portraits is, however, his extraordinary insight into his sitters’ psychology. To him a portrait meant more than a correct record of the model’s superficial aspect: he endeavoured to paint the very soul in so far as it can be read from eyes and lips. In this respect he is the descendant of Giorgione and the forerunner of Watts and Carrière. The portraits of _The Painter Heilbuth_ (No. 778A), of _Mme. de Calonne_ (No. 778E), of _His Own Portrait_ (No. 778), and the badly cracked _Portrait of Paul de Musset_ (No. 778B), may be quoted as admirable instances of his art.

MANET

We must close this necessarily fragmentary survey of French art at the Louvre with the mention of Edouard Manet (1832-1883), whose _Olympia_ (No. 613A, Plate LIII.) is the first, and so far the only painting of the Impressionist school that has gained access to this gallery. It was formerly exhibited at the Luxembourg. Hung as it is now in Gallery VIII. amid the works of David, Gros, Ingres, Delacroix, Delaroche, and other early nineteenth-century painters, this _Olympia_ fully explains the sensation, but certainly not the indignation, caused by its first appearance at the Salon of 1865. It sings out with such brilliant purity of colour and is so emphatic in the patterning of its design, so daring in the placing side by side of almost unmodulated but infallibly accurate colour masses, that everything around appears more or less dingy and artificial. Manet’s _Olympia_ marks the dawn of a new era, not because it is based on a revolutionary rejection of tradition, but because it is true to the _spirit_ of the best tradition, which is not carried on by literal and mechanical imitation, but by evolution and adaptation to modern life and thought.

[Illustration: PLATE LIII.—ÉDOUARD MANET

(1832-1883)

No. 613A.—OLYMPIA

A nude woman, with blue-edged yellow satin slippers on her feet, a narrow black riband round her neck, and a gold bracelet on her right arm, is reclining on a bed, her right arm resting on the cushion. Beneath her is spread a yellowish, flowered Indian shawl. A black cat with raised tail stands at her feet on the bed. Behind the bed is seen a negress, who brings a large bouquet of flowers to her mistress.

Signed on left:—“ED. MANET, 1865.”

Painted in oil on canvas.

4 ft. 2 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (1·27 × 1·90.)]

THE BRITISH SCHOOL

If the representation of French art at the National Gallery in London is admittedly meagre and inadequate, the British section at the Louvre can scarcely be considered worthy of serious consideration. Its entire removal, with the exception of about half a dozen pictures, would not only entail no serious loss to the collection, but would be an act of justice to the reputation of several great artists who are here made responsible for pictures upon which they presumably never set eyes. Under these circumstances it is quite impossible to illustrate the progress of British art by the two-score or so examples in the Long Gallery, part of which is devoted to the English pictures. Of the leading masters, Hogarth (1697-1764) and Gainsborough (1727-1788) will be vainly looked for, since the two _Landscapes_ (Nos. 1811 and 1811B) attributed to the latter in the La Caze Room are inferior conventional compositions in Italian taste, which can no more be connected with the name of Gainsborough than the wretched _Still Life_ which has lately been added to the Louvre collection.

CONSTABLE AND HIS IMITATORS

In view of the powerful influence exercised by Constable and the British Landscape school in general upon modern French art, it is surprising that no attempts should have been made to secure a few examples of greater importance and more certain authenticity than the ones now exhibited. Six pictures are catalogued under the name of John Constable (1776-1837); the only one that can be unreservedly accepted as the work of his brush is the little view of _Hampstead Heath_ (No. 1809, Plate LIV.), which was presented to the Louvre in 1877 by the painter’s son, Mr. Lionel Constable. It is a fresh, masterly study for the picture in the Sheepshanks collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The _Weymouth Bay_ (No. 1808), which realised as much as £2240 at the Marquis de la Rochebrune’s sale in 1873, has been enthusiastically commented upon by Bürger, but cannot pass the ordeal of searching criticism. It is incoherent, and in the details of the foreground and the painting of the figures and sheep lacks the purposeful sureness of touch which is the hall-mark of Constable’s art. _The Cottage_ (No. 1806) has the same provenance. Mr. P. M. Turner, in an article in the _Burlington Magazine_, suggests that F. W. Watts, a feeble imitator of Constable, is the real author of this timidly executed painting—an attribution which is certainly more convincing than the one in the official catalogue. The _Glebe Farm_ (No. 1810) tallies closely, as regards the superficial aspect, with the picture of the same title at the National Gallery, to which it is, however, so inferior as to put Constable’s authorship out of the question. _The Windmill_ (No. 1810A), a gift of Mr. Sedelmeyer, seems to be a copy of the _Spring_ at the Victoria and Albert Museum. _The Rainbow_ (No. 1807) may possibly be by Constable, although its authorship has been questioned by several reliable authorities.

James Webb (1825?-1895), a painter of undeniable talent for imitating the manner of artists greater than himself, is beyond much doubt responsible both for the _Landscape_ (No. 1820), which is officially given to Richard Wilson (1714-1782), and for the view of the _Pont Neuf_ (No. 1819), which is still exhibited as an example by the greatest English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). Unfortunately Turner’s name has to be added to Hogarth’s and Gainsborough’s in the list of eminent British masters who are not represented at the Louvre.

[Illustration: PLATE LIV.—JOHN CONSTABLE

(1776-1837)

No. 1809.—HAMPSTEAD HEATH

(Vue de Hampstead Heath)

A wide-spreading landscape view, with little incident, from Hampstead Heath looking in a northerly direction.

Painted in oil on canvas.

1 ft. 1¼ in. × 1 ft. 2¼ in. (0·26 × 0·36.)]

BONINGTON

That Richard Parkes Bonington (1801-1828) should be seen to better advantage in this collection, is only natural in view of the fact that by his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and under Gros he belongs to the French rather than to the English school. He was closely allied by the bond of friendship to Delacroix, and played an important part in the romantic movement. The two little pictures _François I. and the Duchesse d’Etampes_ (No. 1802) and _Mazarin and Anne of Austria_ (No. 1803) are conceived quite in the spirit of the French Romanticists. Bonington’s genius as a colourist is, however, best displayed in the sparkling and animated _View of Venice_ (No. 1805). Admirable, too, in their spontaneous freshness are the _View of the Gardens at Versailles_ (No. 1804) and the _View of the Coast of Normandy_ (No. 1804A). _The Old Governess_ (No. 1805A), one of Bonington’s rare attempts at portraiture, is remarkable for the accentuation of the modelling, which somehow suggests the broad treatment of the planes adopted by a wood-carver.

The picture which is catalogued as _La Halte_ (No. 1814), by George Morland (1763-1804), is merely a poor copy of that artist’s painting _The Public-house Door_, engraved by Ward. It was presented to the Louvre by the proprietors of the magazine _L’Art_.

When we come to the great school of British portrait painting, we have to record at least two or three masterpieces worthy of being included in a great museum. A picture of unquestioned authenticity and great charm is the _Portrait of Master Hare_ (No. 1818B) by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), who in this, as in other similar pieces, proved himself the painter _par excellence_ of childhood in all its innocence and ingenuousness, even though this picture is by no means impeccable as regards draughtsmanship. The _Master Hare_ was bequeathed to the Louvre by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild in 1905. The badly repainted _Portrait of a Lady_ (No. 1818A) in a white dress, and with powdered hair, is certainly not the work of Sir Joshua, under whose name it figures in the catalogue.

RAEBURN

Among the recent additions to the Louvre collection is the excellent life-size portrait of _Captain Robert Hay of Spot_, by Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), which still hangs on a screen in Gallery XV. and has not yet been provided with a number. It is a full-length portrait of the sitter, in uniform of scarlet coat, white breeches, black gaiters, and fur busby, his hand resting upon his gun, standing against a conventional landscape background with a sky of characteristic tawny hue. The picture was formerly in the collection of Mr. Sanderson, at the sale of which, in 1908, it was bought by Messrs. Agnew for 650 gs. To Raeburn are also ascribed the extremely puzzling _Portrait of an Old Sailor_ (No. 1817), which, in spite of certain technical affinities with the British eighteenth-century school, is so un-English in spirit that it would be rash to ascribe it to any master of that school; the negligeable _Portrait of Anna Moore, Authoress_ (No. 1817A); also the utterly commonplace and wretchedly drawn _Mrs. Maconochie and Child_ (No. 1817B), which was bought in 1904, together with the equally questionable _Portrait of a Lady and a Young Boy_ (No. 1812B), by Hoppner, for £4000.

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

The strangely exaggerated estimation in which Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) is held by French connoisseurs, is to a certain extent to be accounted for by the superb quality of the picture by which he is best known in France: the portrait group of _J. J. Angerstein and his Wife_ (No. 1813A) at the Louvre, which was acquired in 1896 for £3000. This fine group displays all his bravura and pleasing freshness and brightness of colour, without any of the vulgar tricks and shallow mannerisms of his later years. Next to it should be mentioned the charming half-length life-size _Portrait of Mary Palmer_ (No. 1813C), in a yellow dress, seated in a garden. The completely wrecked _Portrait of Lord Whitworth, English Ambassador to France in 1802_ (No. 1813), and the _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 1813D), are of no artistic significance.

Neither is it necessary to dwell upon the mediocre _Brother and Sister_ (No. 1801), by Sir William Beechey (1753-1839); the _Portrait of Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Princess of Wales_ (No. 1818), by Allan Ramsay (1713-1784); and the _Portrait of Lamartine, French Poet and Politician_ (No. 1816A), by Henry Wyndham Phillips (1820-1868). _The Woman in White_ (No. 1816) is at least a sound piece of craftsmanship, even if the attribution to John Opie (1761-1807), “the Cornish Wonder,” is subject to doubt.

OTHER PORTRAIT PAINTERS

We have already mentioned the portrait group (No. 1812B), a picture in deplorable condition, to which the name of John Hoppner (1758?-1810) has been attached without sufficient reason. No less doubtful is the authenticity of the _Portrait of the Countess of Oxford_ (No. 1812A), a meretricious picture which serves to show the mannerisms and striving after prettiness of Lawrence’s rival, rather than the more estimable qualities by which his better achievements are distinguished.

George Romney (1734-1802), on the other hand, is seen in his most serious mood in the _Portrait of Sir John Stanley_ (No. 1818C)— a thoroughly honest “likeness,” well drawn, and painted straight-forwardly, without tricky accents and mechanical recipes. On a screen in Gallery XV. has been temporarily placed a recently acquired _Portrait of the Artist_, by Romney. He is seated, palette in hand, in a landscape background. The features are well modelled, and the light and shade managed with considerable skill.

Strangely enough the most remarkable English picture at the Louvre is by a little known painter, who is not represented in any of the leading British galleries. Charles Howard Hodges (1764-1837), who was born in London, but went at the age of twenty-four to Holland, where he spent the rest of his life, was really a mezzotint engraver, in which craft he had been trained by John Raphael Smith. He produced many plates after pictures by the Dutch masters, and also painted a few portraits, among them the masterly _Portrait of a Woman_ (No. 1812), at the Louvre. At a time which was too much given to conventionality and to the desire to please by concessions to a popular craving for prettiness, this picture strikes a note of almost brutal realism. It is painted with surprising vigour and with an appreciation of correct tone-values, in a low key, which heralds the art of the Glasgow school in the later decades of the nineteenth century.