_Nicolas Lancret_ (French: 1690-1743).
Lancret, a painter of the "fêtes galantes" school, was an
imitator of Watteau, but his productions lack the airy grace
and touch of poetry which elevate even the most frivolous
pictures of that "prince of court painters" into works of
fine art. Examples of Watteau are now included among the
National treasures in the Wallace collection at Hertford House.
Lancret was the son of humble parents, and received his early
training as an engraver. Entering subsequently the studio of
Claude Gillot he came under the influence of Watteau, but his
friendship with that painter was short-lived. A rivalry appears
to have sprung up between them, and they remained estranged
until the closing year of Watteau's life. "Lancret was a
thorough _bourgeois_, and passed his time chiefly in Paris.
He was a regular frequenter of the opera and the 'Comique,'
and was a friend of the dancers La Camargo and La Sallé, whom
he frequently represented in his works" (Bryan's _Dictionary
of Painters_). In 1719 he was admitted into the Academy,
and in 1735 was elected Councillor. In 1840 he married a
grand-daughter of the comic poet Boursault.
These pictures, which are among the principal works of Lancret, are
interesting historical records as showing the ideal of life at the
French Court in the time of the regent Orleans and Louis XV. In
"Infancy" (101) children, in the gayest clothes and garlanded with
flowers, are at play under a stately portico--life being not so much
a stage as a game, and all the men and women (in that sense) "merely
players." To what should children, thus educated, grow up but to the
pomps and vanity of life, as shown in "Youth" (102)? The adornment of
the person is the chief occupation, it would seem, of the dwellers in
"the Armida Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives, lapped in
soft music of adulation, waited on by the splendours of the world."
And "Manhood" (103) is like unto youth. The business of life is
pleasure on the greensward, with shooting at the popinjay! "Old Age"
(104) has no place in such a philosophy of life. One old man is indeed
attempting a last amour. The other caresses a dog, while the old women
sleep or spin. But in "Old Age" the painter changes his scene from the
court to common life; the thought of old age is banished, it seems,
from the high life of princes. "In short," wrote an English observer at
the time when this picture was painted, "all the symptoms which I have
ever met with in History, previous to all Changes and Revolutions in
government, now exist and daily increase in France" (Lord Chesterfield:
see Carlyle's _French Revolution_, bk. i. ch. ii.).