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Masterpieces in Colour
Edited by--T. Leman Hare
FRAGONARD
* * * * * *
IN THE SAME SERIES
ARTIST. AUTHOR.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN.
REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND.
ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND.
GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS.
ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO.
BELLINI. GEORGE HAY.
FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON.
REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS.
LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY.
RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY.
HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE.
TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY.
CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY.
GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD.
TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
LUINI. JAMES MASON.
FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY.
VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER.
FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL.
_In Preparation_
WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD.
RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY.
J. F. MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER.
CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY.
HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
BOUCHER. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
VIGÉE LE BRUN. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND.
MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
AND OTHERS.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: PLATE I.--CHIFFRE D'AMOUR. Frontispiece
(In the Wallace Collection)
Fragonard, like his master Boucher, soon found that the pompous,
historical, and religious pictures which the critics demanded of him,
pleased no one but the critics. It was a fortunate day for him when he
turned his back upon them, and employed his charming gifts upon the
statement of the life of his day. And in few paintings that created
his fame has he surpassed the fine handling of this scene, in which
the girl cuts her lover's initials on the trunk of a tree--the dainty
figure silhouetted against the dreamlike background of sky and tree
that he loved so well. There is over all the glamour of the poetic
statement supremely done.]
Fragonard
by
HALDANE MACFALL
Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour
[Illustration]
London: T. C. & E. C. Jack
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
TO
MY FRIEND
WALTER EMANUEL
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I. Chiffre d'Amour Frontispiece
In the Wallace Collection
Page
II. The Music Lesson 14
In the Louvre
III. L'Etude 24
In the Louvre
IV. The Schoolmistress 34
In the Wallace Collection
V. Figure de Fantasie 40
In the Louvre
VI. Le Voeu à l'Amour 50
In the Louvre (new acquisition)
VII. The Fair-haired Boy 60
In the Wallace Collection
VIII. Le Billet Doux 70
In the Collection of M. Wildenstein, Paris
[Illustration]
I
THE BEGINNINGS
High up, amongst the Sea-Alps that stretch along the southern edge of
France, where romantic Provence bathes her sunburnt feet in the blue
waters of the Mediterranean, high on the mountain's side hangs the
steep little town of Grasse, embowered midst grey-green olive-trees.
In as sombre a narrow street as there is in all her dark alleys, on
the fifth day of April in the much bewigged and powdered year of 1732,
there was born to a glovemaker of the town, worthy mercer Fragonard, a
boy-child, whom the priest in the gloomy church christened Jean Honoré
Fragonard.
As the glovemaker looked out of his sombre house over the sunlit
slopes of the grey-green olive-trees that stretched away to the deep
blue waters of the sea, he vowed his child to commerce and a thrifty
life in this far-away country place that was but little vexed with the
high ambitions of distant, fickle, laughing Paris, or her splendid
scandals; nay, scarce gave serious thought to her gadding fashions or
her feverish vogues--indeed, the attenuated ghosts of these once
frantic things wriggled southwards through the provinces on but
sluggish feet to the high promenades of Grasse--as the worthy mercer
was first in all the little town to know by his modest traffic in
them; and that, too, only long after the things they shadowed were
buried under new millineries and fopperies and fantastic riot in the
gay capital. As a fact, the dark-eyed, long-nosed folk that trudged
these steep and narrow thoroughfares were a sluggish people; and
sunlit Grasse snored away its day in drowsy fashion.
But if the room where the child first saw the light were gloomy enough
within, the skies were wondrous blue without, and the violet-scented
slopes were robed in a tender garment of silvery green, decked with
the gold of orange-trees, and enriched with bright embroidery of
many-coloured flowers that were gay as the gayest ribbons of distant
Paris. And the glory of it bathed the lad's eyes and heart for sixteen
years, so that his hands got them itching to create the splendour of
it which sang within him; and the wizardry of the flower-garden of
France never left him, casting its spell over all his thinking, and
calling to him to utter it to the world. It stole into his colour-box,
and on to his palette, and so across the canvas into his master-work,
and was to lead him through the years to a blithe immortality.
The small boy with the big head was born in the year after François
Boucher came back to Paris from his Italian wanderings on the eve of
his thirties and won to academic honour. The child grew up in his
Provençal home, whilst Boucher, turning his back upon academic art on
gaining his seat at the Academy, was creating the Pastorals,
Venus-pieces, and Cupid-pieces that changed the whole style of French
art from the pompous and mock-heroic manner of Louis Quatorze's
century of the sixteen hundreds to the gay and elegant pleasaunces
that fitted so aptly the elegant pleasure-seeking days of Louis the
Fifteenth's seventeen hundreds.
Gossip of high politics came trickling down to Grasse as slowly as the
fashions, yet the eleven-year-old boy's ears heard of the death of the
minister, old Cardinal Fleury, and of the effort of Louis to become
king by act. Though Louis had small genius for the mighty business,
and fell thenceforth into the habit of ruling France from behind
petticoats, raising the youngest of the daughters of the historic and
noble house of De Nesle to be his accepted consort under the rank and
honours of Duchess of Chateauroux. All tongues tattled of the
business, the very soldiery singing mocking songs; when--Louis
strutting it as conqueror with the army, got the small-pox at Metz,
and sent the Chateauroux packing at the threat of death. He recovered,
to enter Paris soon after as the Well-Beloved, and to be reconciled
with the frail Chateauroux before she died in the sudden agony in
which she swore she had been poisoned.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE MUSIC LESSON
(In the Louvre)
Fragonard had a profound admiration for the Dutch painters. Whether he
went to Holland shortly after his marriage is not known; but he seems
suddenly to have employed his brush as if he had come across fine
examples of the Dutch school. "The Music Lesson" at the Louvre is one
of these, and the Dutch influence is most marked both as to subject,
treatment, and handling of the paint, if we allow for Fragonard's own
strongly French personality.]
At thirteen the boy listened to the vague rumours of a new scandal
that set folk's tongues wagging again throughout all France. The
king raised Madame Lenormant d'Etioles, a daughter of the rich
financier class, to be Marquise de Pompadour, and yielded up to her
the sceptre over his people.
The nations, weary of war, agreed to sign the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1748. In this, our artist's sixteenth year, the Pompadour had been
the king's acknowledged mistress for three years. From this time, the
peace being signed, Louis the Fifteenth laid aside all effort to
fulfil the duties of the lord over a great people; gave himself up to
shameless and riotous living, and allowed the Pompadour to usurp the
splendour of his throne and to rule over the land.
For the next sixteen years she was the most powerful person at court,
the greatest personality in the State--making and unmaking ministers
like a sovereign, and disposing of high offices, honours, titles, and
pensions. The king squandered upon her some seventy odd millions of
the public money as money is now valued. Her energy and her industry
must have been colossal. Her intelligence saved the king from the
boredom of decision in difficult affairs. She made herself a necessity
to his freedom from care. Every affair of State was discussed and
settled under her guidance. Ministers, ambassadors, generals,
transacted their business in her handsome boudoirs. She dispensed the
whole patronage of the sovereign with her pretty hands. The prizes of
the army, of the church, of the magistracy, could only be secured
through her good-will. As though these things were not load enough to
bow the shoulders of any one human being she kept a rein upon every
national activity. She created the porcelain factory of Sèvres,
thereby adding a lucrative industry to France. She founded the great
military school of Saint Cyr. She mothered every industry. She was
possessed of a rare combination of talents and accomplishments, and of
astounding taste. But her deepest affection was for the arts.
The Pompadour had gathered about her, as the beautiful Madame
d'Etioles, the supreme wits and artists and thinkers of her day;
Voltaire and Boucher and Latour and the rest were her friends, and the
new thought that was being born in France was nursed in her
drawing-rooms. As the Pompadour she kept up her friendships. She was
prodigal in her encouragement of the arts, in the furnishment of her
own and the king's palaces and castles. And it was in the exercise and
indulgence of her better qualities that she brought out the genius
and encouraged to fullest achievement the art of Boucher, and of the
great painters of her time. So Boucher brought to its full blossom the
art that Watteau had created--the picture of "Fêtes galentès"--and
added to the artistic achievement of France the Pastorals wherein
Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses dally in pleasant landscapes, and
the Venus-pieces wherein Cupids flutter and romp--a world of elegance
and charm presided over by the Goddess of Love.
II
ROME
All this was but Paris-gossip amidst the olive-trees and steep streets
of far-away Grasse, where the large-headed, small-bodied lad was
idling through his fifteen summers, living and breathing the beauty of
the pleasant land of romance that bred him, when, like bolt from the
blue, fell the news upon him that his father, tearing aside the fabric
of the lad's dreams, had articled him as junior clerk to a notary.
But the French middle-class ideal of respectability meant no heaven
for this youth's goal, no ultimate aim for his ambition. He idled his
master into despair; "wasting his time" on paint-pots and
pencil-scribblings until that honest man himself advised that the lad
should be allowed to follow his bent.
So it came about--'twas in that year of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
the year that saw the Pompadour come to supreme power (she had been
for three years the king's acknowledged mistress)--the youth's mother,
with all a French mother's shrewdness and common-sense, gathered
together the sixteen-year-old lad's sketches, and bundled off with him
in a diligence to Paris.
Arrived in Paris she sought out the greatest painter of the day, and
burst with the shy youth into the studio of the dandified favourite
artist of the king's majesty, Pompadour's Boucher--large-hearted,
generous, much-sinning, world-famed Boucher, then at the very
summit of his career--he was at that time living in the Rue
Grenelle-Saint-Honoré, which he was about to leave, and in which
Fragonard in his old age was destined to end his days.
The lad glanced with wonder, we may be sure, at the great "Rape of
Europa" that stood upon the master's easel, whilst his mother poured
out in the rough accent of Provence the tale of the genius of her
son--stole, too, a stealthy scrutiny of the Venus-pieces and Pastorals
that stood about the studio, and was filled with awed admiration. The
mother besought the genius of France to make a genius of her son; and
Boucher, with kindly smile upon his lips, glancing over the immature
work of the prodigy, told the lad that he might come back to him in
six months' time, pointing out to him, with all that large-hearted
friendliness and sympathy that made him the loved idol of the
art-students, that he lacked sufficient dexterity in the use of his
tools to enter his studio or to benefit by apprenticeship to him, and
advising the anxious mother to take him to Chardin as the supreme
master in France from whom to learn the mastery of his craft.
To Chardin the youth went; and France's consummate master in the
painting of still-life, putting the palette on the youngster's thumb
straightway, from the very first day--as his custom was--and making
him use sienna upon it as his only pigment, advising him as he went,
set him to the copying of the prints from the masterpieces of his own
time, insisting on his painting large and broad and solid and true.
Young Fragonard made so little progress that Chardin wrote to his
parents that he could get nothing out of him; and sent the lad, bag
and baggage, out of his studio.
Thrown upon his own resources, the young fellow haunted the churches
of Paris, brooded over the masterpieces that hung therein, fixed them
in his mind's eye, and, returning to his lodging, painted them, day by
day, from memory.
At the end of six months he called again upon Boucher, his sketches
under his arm; and this time he was not sent away. Astounded at the
youth's progress, struck by his enthusiasm, Boucher took him into his
studio, and set him to work to prepare the large decorative cartoons
that artists had to make from their paintings for use at the Gobelins
and Beauvais looms. The artist painted his picture "in little"; he was
also required to paint an "enlargement" of the size that the weavers
had to make into tapestry--this enlargement was mostly done by pupils,
the State demanding, however, that the artist should work over it
sufficiently to sign his name upon it--the head of the factory keeping
custody of the "painting in little" to guide him; the weavers working
from the enlargement. This work upon the enlargement of Boucher's
paintings was an ideal training for Fragonard.
The Director-General of Buildings to the king (or, as we should
nowadays call him, Minister of Fine Arts), Lenormant de Tournehem,
kinsman to the Pompadour, died suddenly in the November of 1751; the
Pompadour promptly caused to be appointed in his place her brother
Abel Poisson de Vandières--a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman, a man
of honour, who brought to his office an exquisite taste, a loyal
nature, and marked abilities. The king, who liked him well, and called
him "little brother," soon afterwards created him Marquis de
Marigny--and Fragonard, like many another artist of his day, was to be
beholden to him.
After a couple of years' training under Boucher, Fragonard's master,
with that keen interest that he ever took in the efforts and welfare
of youth, and particularly of his own pupils, urged the young fellow
to compete for the Prix de Rome, pointing out to him the advantages of
winning it. At twenty, without preparation, and without being a pupil
of the Academy, Fragonard won the coveted prize with his "Jeroboam
Sacrificing to Idols." It was in this year that Boucher was given a
studio and apartments at the Louvre.
For three years thereafter, Fragonard was in the king's school of six
_élèves protégés_ under Carle Van Loo. He continued to work in
Boucher's studio, as well as painting on his own account; and it is to
these years that belong his "Blind Man's Buff" and several pictures
in this style.
Meanwhile the quarrels between priests and parliaments had grown very
bitter. The king took first one side, then the other. It was in 1756,
Louis having got foul of his Parliament, that the unfortunate and
foolish Damiens stabbed the king with a penknife slightly under the
fifth rib of his left side, as he was stepping into his carriage at
Versailles, and suffered by consequence the terrible tortures and
horrible death that were meted out to such as attempted the part of
regicide.
This was the year when, at twenty-four, Fragonard was entitled to go
to Rome at the king's expense--the Italian tour being a necessary part
of an artist's training who desired to reach to academic distinction,
and honours in his calling. He started on his journey to Italy with
Boucher's now famous farewell advice ringing in his ears: "My dear
Frago, you go into Italy to see the works of Raphael and Michael
Angelo; but--I tell you in confidence, as a friend--if you take those
fellows seriously you are lost." ("Lost" was not the exact phrase,
Boucher being a Rabelaisian wag, but it will pass.)
[Illustration: PLATE III.--L'ETUDE
(In the Louvre)
The picture of a young woman sometimes known as "L'Etude" (but perhaps
better known as "La Chanteuse" or "Song") at the Louvre is another of
those little canvases painted by Fragonard under the strong influence
of the Dutch school, as we may see not only in the handling of the
paint, and in the arrangement of the figure, but in the very ruffle
about the girl's neck, the lace cuffs to the sleeves, and the
treatment of the dress.]
Arrived in Rome, Fragonard, like his master before him, was torn with
doubts and uncertainties and warring influences. For several months he
did no work, or little work; and though he stood before the
masterpieces of Michael Angelo and Raphael, stirred by the grandeur of
their design, and eager to be busy with his brush, he was too much of
a Frenchman, too much in sympathy with the French genius, too much
enamoured of the art of his master, to be affected creatively by them.
His hesitations saved him, and won France a master in her long roll of
fame. He escaped the taint of learning to see through the eyes of
others, evaded the swamping of his own genius in an endeavour to utter
his art in halting Italian. Rome was not his grave, as it has been the
grave of so many promising young sons of France; and he came out of
the danger a strong and healthy man. Tiepolo brought him back vision
and inspiration, and the solid earth of his own age to walk upon. And
the French utterance of his master Boucher called back his dazed wits
to the accents of France. At last the genius that was in him quickened
and strove to utter itself.
The bright colours of Italy, the glamour of her landscapes, these
were the living lessons that bit deeper into his art than all the
works of her antique masters; and the effort to set them upon his
canvas gave to his hand's skill an ordered grace and dignity that were
of more vital effect upon his achievement than the paintings of the
great dead.
So it came about that Natoire, then director of the royal school in
the Villa Mancini, having written his distress to Marigny at the young
fellow's beginnings, was soon writing enthusiastically about him, and
procured a lengthening of his stay in Rome.
Here began that lifelong friendship with Hubert Robert, already making
his mark as an artist, and with the Abbé de Saint-Non, a charming
character, who was to engrave the work of the two young painters, and
greatly spread their names abroad thereby. Saint-Non's influential
relations procured him free residence in the Villa d'Este, where the
other two joined him, and a delightful good-fellowship between the
three men followed--the Abbé's artistic tastes adding to the bond of
comradeship. So two years passed pleasantly along at the Villa d'Este,
one of the most beautiful places in all Italy--the ancient ruins hard
by, and the running waters and majestic trees leaving an impression
upon Fragonard's imagination, which passed to his canvases, and never
left his art--developing a profound sense of style, and a knowledge of
light and air that bathed the scenes he was to paint with such rare
skill and insight. Here grew that love of stately gardens which are
the essence of his landscapes, and which won to the heart of a child
of Provence.
In distant Paris the making of history was growing apace. Gossip of it
reached to Italy. A backstairs intrigue almost dislodged the Pompadour
from power. D'Argenson and the queen's party threw the beautiful and
youthful Madame de Choiseul-Romanet, not wholly unflattered at the
adventure, into the king's way to lure him from the favourite. The
king wrote her a letter of invitation. The girl consulted her noble
kinsman, the Comte de Stainville, of the Maurepas faction or queen's
party, a bitter enemy to the Pompadour. De Stainville, his pride of
race wounded that a kinswoman of his should be offered to the king,
went to the Pompadour, exposed the plot, and forthwith became her
ally--soon her guide in affairs of State.
In the midst of disasters by sea and land the Pompadour persuaded the
king to send for De Stainville, and to make him his Prime Minister.
He was created Duc de Choiseul in December 1758. He had as ally one of
the most astute and subtle and daring minds in eighteenth-century
France--his sister Beatrice, the famous Duchesse de Grammont. The king
found a born leader of men. Choiseul brought back dignity to the
throne. He came near to saving France. Choiseul was the public opinion
of the nation. He founded his strength on Parliament and on the new
philosophy. He became a national hero. He could do no wrong. He rose
to power in 1758; and at once stemmed the tide of disaster to France.
The Parliament men took courage. Philosophy, with one of its men in
power, spoke out with no uncertain voice. All France was listening.
Fragonard had at last to turn his face homewards; and dawdling through
Italy with Saint-Non, staying his feet at Bologna and Venice awhile,
the two friends worked slowly towards Paris, Fragonard entering his
beloved city, after five wander-years, in the autumn of 1761, in his
twenty-ninth year, untainted and unspoiled by academic training, his
art founded upon that of Boucher, enhanced by his keen study of
nature. He reached Paris, rich in plans for pictures, filled with
ardour and enthusiasm for his art, ambitious to create masterpieces,
and burning to distinguish himself.
III
THE DU BARRY
When Fragonard came back to Paris on the edge of his thirtieth year it
was to find that a great change had come over his master Boucher. The
old, light-hearted, genial painter was showing signs of the burning of
the candle of life at both ends. His art also was being bitterly
assailed by the new critics--the new philosophy was asking for
ennobling sentiments from the painted canvas, and the teaching of a
moral lesson from all the arts. Boucher stood frankly bewildered,
blinking questioning eyes at the frantic din. Old age had come upon
him, creeping over the shrewd kindly features, dulling the exquisite
sight. He could not wholly ignore the change that was taking place in
public taste. The ideas of the philosophers were penetrating public
opinion. The man of feeling had arisen and walked in the land. They
were beginning to speak of the great antique days of Greece and Rome.
Fickle fashion was about to turn her back upon Dresden shepherds and
shepherdesses and leafy groves, and to take up her abode awhile with
heroes and amongst picturesque ruins.
Arrived in Paris, Fragonard at once set himself to the task of
painting the historic or mythologic Academy-piece expected from the
holder of the Prix de Rome on return from the Italian tour. He painted
"The High Priest Coresus slaying himself to save Callirhoë," which,
though badly hung at the Salon, and still to be seen at the Louvre,
was hailed with high praise by the academicians and critics. The only
adverse criticisms of coldness and timidity levelled against it sound
strange in the light of his after-career, which, whatever its
weaknesses, was not exactly marked with coldness nor eke with
timidity.
For two years thereafter he essayed the academic style.
But the praises of Diderot and Grimm failed to fill his pockets; and
he decided to paint no more academic pieces for the critics' praise.
He had indeed no taste for such things, no sympathy with ancient
thought nor with the dead past. He was, like his master, a very son
of France--a child of his own age, glorying in the love of life and
the beauty of his native land.
Having done his duty by his school, he turned his back upon it
gleefully, as Boucher had also done before him, and set himself
joyously to the painting of the life about him.
His great chance soon came, and in strange guise.
It so happened that a young blood at the court, one Baron de
Saint-Julien, went to the painter Doyen with his flame, and asked him
to paint a picture of the pretty creature being swung by a bishop
whilst he himself watched the display of pretty ankles as the girl
went flying through the air. Doyen had scruples; but recommended
Fragonard for the naughty business.
Fragonard seized the idea readily enough, except that he made the
frail girl's husband swing the beauty for her lover's eyes, using the
incident, as usual, but as the trivial theme for a splendid setting
amidst trees, glorying in the painting of the foliage--as you may see,
if you step into the Wallace galleries, where is the exquisite thing
that brought Fragonard fame--the world-famous "Les hazards heureux de
l'Escarpolette."
The effect was prodigious. De Launay's brilliant engraving of it
popularised it throughout the land. Nobles and rich financiers, and
all the gay world of fashion besides, now strove to possess canvases
signed by Fragonard. Boucher was grown old and ailing; and just as
Boucher had been the painter of the France of fashion under the
Pompadour, so Fragonard was now to become the mirror of the court, of
the theatre, of the drawing-room, of the boudoir, of the age of Du
Barry.
Finding a ready market for subjects of gallantry, he gave rein to his
natural bent, and straightway leaped into the vogue. Pictures were the
hobby of the nobility and the rich; and France under the Pompadour,
and particularly at this the end of her reign, was madly spendthrift
upon its hobbies and fickle fancies. The pretty house, delicately
tinted rooms, fine furniture, dainty decorations, and charming
pictures, were a necessity for such as would be in the fashion.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
(In the Wallace Collection)
After his marriage Fragonard's brush turned to the glorification of
family life; and one of the most beautiful designs he conceived in
this exquisite series was the picture of the schoolmistress and her
small pupils--here chasteness of feeling has taken the place of
levity; and purity of statement is evidenced even in the half-nude
little fellow who is receiving his first lesson in culture.]
You shall look in vain for the affected innocence, the naïve
mawkishness, the chaste sentimentality of Greuze in the master-work of
Fragonard. He knew nothing of these things--cared less. His was an
ardent brush; and he used it ardently; but always you shall find him
using his subject, however naughty, as the mere excuse for a
glorious picture of trees. He is one of the great landscape-painters
of France.
He had many qualities that go to make a decorative painter. Indeed, it
is to the Frenchmen of the seventeen-hundreds to whom we may safely go
for pictures that make the walls of a drawing-room a delight. Unlike
the Italians, they are pleasing to live with. His painting of "La Fête
de St. Cloud," in the dining-room of the Governor of the Bank of
France, is one of the decorative landscapes of the world.
He was now producing works in considerable numbers--it is his first,
his detailed period, somewhat severe in arrangement and style as to
composition and handling--the years of "Love the Conqueror," the
"Bolt," the "Fountain of Love," of "Le Serment d'Amour," the
"Gimblette," "Les Baigneuses," the "Sleeping Bacchante," the "Début du
modèle," and the like.
His master, Boucher, was grown old; he could not carry out the
commissions for the decoration of rooms and for paintings with which
he was overwhelmed; and it was in order to help forward his brilliant
pupil, his "Frago," that he now introduced him to his old friend and
patron the farmer-general Bergeret de Grandcour--a man of great
wealth, a lover of art, and an honorary member of the Royal
Academy--who became one of Fragonard's most lavish patrons and most
intimate friends. Bergeret de Grandcour commissioned several panels in
this, Fragonard's thirty-fifth year--the year of his painting the
superb "Fête de St. Cloud." This is towards the end of that period of
minute and detailed painting which he did with such consummate skill,
yet without bringing pettiness into his largeness of conception.
Meantime, Choiseul's masterly mind, having secured peace abroad, saw
that France, if she were to keep her sovereign State, must be first
cleansed from the dangers that threatened from within. He turned to
the blotting out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits, whose
vindictive acts against, and quarrels with, the Parliaments, and whose
galling and oppressive tyranny, had roused the bitter hatred of the
magistracy and of the people throughout the land. Choiseul they
treated as their bitterest enemy. He decided to blot them out, root
and branch, from France. The popular party closed up its ranks.
Choiseul had not long to wait. The chance came in odd fashion enough.
An attempt by the Order to end the Pompadour's scandalous relations
with the king was the quaint thing--the match that started the
explosion. With all his skill of state-craft, Choiseul leaped to the
weapon. In secret concert with the king's powerful favourite he struck
at them through the bankruptcy of their banking concerns in the West
Indies, caused by their losses in the wars with England; and Louis
abolished the society out of the land, secularising its members, and
seizing its property.
The Pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. Worn-out
by her vast activities, and assailed by debt, she fell ill of a cough
that racked her shrunken body. She died, transacting the king's
business and affairs of State, on the 15th of April 1764, in her
forty-second year.
Whatever may be said of this cold-blooded, calculating, grasping
woman, who crushed down every nice instinct of womanhood to win a
king's favour, who knew no scruple, who was without mercy, without
pardon or forgiveness, without remorse; bitter and adamant in revenge;
who turned a deaf ear to the cries from the Bastille; whose heart knew
no love but for self; it must be allowed that at least for Art she did
great and splendid service. She not only encouraged and brought out
the best achievement of her age; she did Art an even more handsome
benefit. She insisted on artists painting their age and not aping the
dead past.
To Fragonard personally she rendered no particular service. His real
achievement began on the eve of her death, when she was a worn-out and
broken woman. Nor had Fragonard ever that close touch with the royal
house or its favourites during any part of his lifetime that meant so
much to the fortunes of his master, Boucher.
There were two patrons for whom Fragonard was about to create a series
of masterpieces in the decoration of their splendid and luxurious
homes--works of Art which were to have strange adventures and
histories. They were both women.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--FIGURE DE FANTASIE
(In the Louvre)
Here we have one of the rare examples of Fragonard's painting of a
man's portrait. It is in strange contrast to his more delicate
handling of domestic subjects.]
For the prodigal and eccentric dancer, the notorious Mademoiselle
Guimard, he undertook the painting of a series of panels. The Guimard
was the rage of Paris--she of the orgic suppers and the naughty dances
with her comrade Vestris. Frago, who is said to have been more than a
friend of the reckless one of the nimble feet, undertook the
decoration of her house in the Chaussée d'Antin, known to the bloods
as the Temple of Terpsichore. He painted for the same room a portrait
of the frail beauty as an opera-shepherdess--the simple pastoral
life was the pose of this unsimple age. He was engaged upon the
business, off and on, for several years; and the many delays at last
fretted the light one. Fragonard, anything but energetic, liked always
to take his own time at his work. The Guimard got to pestering
him--she had a sharp tongue--and at last, one fine day, upbraided him
roundly, taunting him with a sneer that he would never get the work
finished. Fragonard lost patience and temper, goaded by her
ill-manners, her abuse, and her biting tongue. "It _is_ finished,"
said he; and walked out of the house. The Guimard could never get him
back; but one day he slipped in alone, painted the set dancer's-smile
from the dancer's mouth, and placed there instead a snarl upon her
lips.
Before this breach between them Fragonard had painted several
portraits of the Guimard.
However, the work for the lady was to have far-reaching results little
dreamed of. For the completion of the room, Fragonard procured the
commission for David, then twenty-five; and David never forgot the
service rendered. He was to repay it tenfold when black days
threatened; and with rare courage, when even the courage of gratitude
was a deadly dangerous commodity.
However, this was not as yet; the sun shone in the skies; and all was
gaiety and laughter still.
The "Chiffre d'Amour," the picture of a pretty girl who cuts her
lover's monogram in the bark of a tree's trunk, the shadowed tree and
figure telling darkly against the glamorous half light beyond, was one
of Fragonard's happiest inspirations of these years, as any one may
see who steps into the Wallace galleries. Here also may be seen to-day
the exquisite "Fair-haired Boy." The boldly painted "L'Heure de
Berger" was wet upon the canvas about this year, though its boldness
of handling foretells his later manner, whilst the spirit of Boucher
is over all.
Four years after the death of the Pompadour the patient neglected
queen, amiable dull Marie Leczinska, followed her supplanter to the
grave. The king's grief and contrition and his solemn vows to mend his
ways came somewhat over-late; they lasted little longer than the
drying of his floods of tears over the body of his dead consort.
On the Eve of Candlemas, the first day of February 1769, at a
convivial party in Paris that was not wholly without political
significance, a Jesuit priest raised his glass _To the Presentation!_
adding after the toast--"To that which has taken place to-day, or will
take place to-morrow, the presentation of the new Esther, who is to
replace Haman and release the Jewish nation from oppression!"
He spoke figuratively--it was safer so. But 'twas understood. Indeed,
the pretty sentiment was well received by the old aristocrats and
young bloods about the table; and they drank a bumper to the pretty
Madame du Barry. For the Jesuits had no love for the king's minister
Choiseul--and the madcap girl was but the lure whereby the king was to
be drawn from his great minister. So religion rallied about the frail
beauty, and hid behind her extravagant skirts--one of which cost close
on £2000--and, with the old nobility, drank damnation to the king's
minister and To the devil with the new thought and with parliaments.
Long live the king and the divine right of kings!
Our worthy priest seems to have had the ear of destiny, though he
dated his certainty near upon a couple of months too soon.
So it came about that before a year was out the old king was become
the doting creature of a light-o'-love of Paris, the transfigured
milliner and street-pedlar, Jeanne, natural child of one Anne Béqus,
a low woman of Vaucouleurs. This Jeanne, of no surname and unknown
father, a pretty, kindly, vulgar child of the gutters, with fair hair
and of madcap habits, was some twenty-six years of age, when--being
reborn under a forged birth-certificate at the king's ordering, as
Anne de Vaubernier, and being married by the same orders to the Count
du Barry, an obliging nobleman of the court--she appeared at
Versailles as the immortally frail Countess du Barry.
The remonstrances of Choiseul with the king against this new
degradation of the throne of France, and his unconcealed scorn and
disgust of the upstart countess, made a dangerous enemy for France's
great minister, and was to cost him and his France very dear.
The king's infatuation brought royalty into utter contempt amongst the
people. It was to cost France a terrible price--and Fragonard not
least of all.
One of the first gifts from the king to the Du Barry was the little
castle of Louveciennes; and she proceeded with reckless extravagance
to furnish her handsome home. Drouais, the artist, sold to her for
1200 livres (double florins), as overdoors for one of the rooms, four
panels that he had bought from Fragonard. They have vanished; but
they served Fragonard a good turn--he received an order to decorate Du
Barry's luxurious pavilion of Luciennes, which she had had built to
entertain the king at her "little suppers."
Thus it chanced that for this wilful light-o'-love Fragonard painted
the great master-work of his life--the five world-famous canvases of
the series of "The Progress of Love in the Heart of Maidenhood," or,
as they are better known, "The Romance of Love and Youth"--the old
king masquerading therein as a young shepherd, and the Du Barry as a
shepherdess. In "The Ladder" ("L'Escalade" or "Le Rendezvous") the Du
Barry plays the part of a timid young girl who starts as she sees her
shepherd-lover to be the king; the "Pursuit" follows; then the
"Souvenirs" and "Love Crowned." The last of the five, the discarded
mistress in "Deserted," was only begun; and was not completed by
Fragonard until twenty years later at Grasse, to complete the set.
What it was that struck a chill into the frail Du Barry's favour, so
that the masterpieces of Fragonard never entered within her doors, is
not fully known. Whatsoever the cause, these canvases were rejected by
her. It is said that the work was found to be disappointing, being
lacking as to the indecencies by the Du Barry and the king, who
preferred the more suggestive panels of Vien. It is true that
Fragonard's earlier four panels which she possessed were in
questionable taste, and that these five were pure; indeed, their
trivial story matters little amidst the massy foliage and the majestic
trees that spring into the swinging heavens. Fragonard suspected, and
somewhat resented the suspicion, that he was being made to paint in a
sort of artistic duel with Vien. At any rate, Vien was chosen. So it
came that the discarded pictures lay in Fragonard's studio for over
twenty years, when we shall see them, rolled up, making a chief part
of the strange baggage of Fragonard's flight from his beloved Paris.
The fact was that the Du Barry was of the gutter. She had the crude
love of fineries of the girl promoted from the gutter. She loved
display. But into her home she brought the vulgar singers of the
lowest theatres, where the Pompadour had brought the wits and leading
artists of her time. The old culture was gone. Louis laughed now at
ribald songs, and was entertained by clowns.
It is part of the irony of life that Fragonard, who never entered
into the favourite's friendship, should have become the recognised
artist of her day. It was a part of that grim irony that caused the Du
Barry, whose age he honours, to reject the most exquisite work of his
hands--in which his art is seen at its highest achievement, the tender
half-melancholy of the thing stated with a lyric beauty that displays
his genius in its supreme flight.
A search through the Du Barry's bills--and there are four huge bound
volumes of them--reveals the list of pictures painted by Boucher, by
Vien, by Greuze, and by others, for the spendthrift woman; but of
transaction with Fragonard there is no slightest hint.
IV
MARRIAGE
There lived in Grasse, with its rich harvests of flowers, and given to
the distilling of perfumes therefrom, a family that had come from
Avignon--its name, Gérard, and on friendly terms with the Fragonards.
It so chanced that a young woman of the family, the seventeen-year-old
Marie Anne Gérard, was sent to Paris, to the care of Fragonard, in
order to earn her living in the shop of a scent-seller, one Isnard.
The girl had artistic leanings, and fell a-painting of fans and
miniatures. She had need of a teacher; and who better qualified for
the business than her townsman, the famous Fragonard? What more
natural than that Fragonard should become her master? She was a jovial
girl. So they would talk of home, and the people amongst whom they had
been bred. She was no particular beauty, as her picture by Fragonard
proves; she had the rough accent of Provence; was thick-set and clumsy
of figure, and of heavy features, but she had the youth and freshness
and health of a young woman's teens, that hide the blemishes and full
significance of these coarsenesses. She and Fragonard fell a-kissing.
Fragonard, now thirty-seven, married Marie Anne Gérard in her
eighteenth year; and she bore him a much loved daughter, Rosalie--and
ten years later, in 1780, a son, Alexandre Evariste Fragonard.
There came to live with the newly married couple his wife's younger
sister Marguerite and her young brother Henri Gérard, who was learning
engraving.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--LE VOEU À L'AMOUR
(In the Louvre)
This is an example of Fragonard in his grand-manner mood--a picture of
the large decorative years that produced such masterpieces as the
"Serment d'Amour," in which we see him ever interested above all
things in the painting of bosky leafage and the dignity of great trees
for background.]
Fragonard's marriage at once affected his habits and his art. The wild
oats of his artistic career were near sown. The naughtinesses of
girls of pleasure gave place to the grace and tenderness of the
home-life--the cradle took the place of the bed of light adventures;
and children blossomed on to his canvases. He set aside the
make-believe shepherds and shepherdesses of the vogue; and henceforth
painted the "real thing" in rural surroundings.
He brought to his homeliest pictures a beauty of arrangement, a sense
of style, and a dignity worthy of the most majestic subjects. He came
at this time under the influence of the Dutch landscapists, and stole
from them the solidity of their massing in foliage, the truth of their
character-drawing, the close observation of their cattle and
animal-life, their cloudy skies, and the finish and force of their
craftsmanship. Whether he went into Holland is disputed. He was too
keen an artist, his was too original a genius, to imitate their style
or take on their Dutch accent. He simply took from them such part of
their craftsmanship as could enter into the facile gracious genius of
France without clogging its grace. He is now content with his house
and garden for scenery, with his family for models. He realises that
an artist has no need to go abroad to find "paintable things."
The "Heureuse Fécondité," the "Visit to the Nurse" (the second one),
the "Schoolmistress," the "Good Mother," the "Retour au logis," the
"L'Education fait tout," the "Dites donc, si'l vous plaît," are of
this period.
In all he did he proves himself an artist, incapable of mediocrity,
bringing distinction and style to all that he touches.
Fragonard also excelled in the painting of miniatures. And there are
small portraits under fancy names to be seen at the Louvre, painted
with a breadth and force that prove him to have known the work of
Franz Hals. The figure of a man, known as "Figure de Fantaisie" or
"Inspiration," is stated with a directness and vividness worthy of the
great Dutch master. Indeed, there is much in the direct handling of
the paint and the life of the thing that recalls Franz Hals--the very
arrangement of the dress and the treatment of the hand being a
careless attempt to recall the habits and fashions of the Dutchman.
"La Musique" repeats the impression. And even the more pronouncedly
French style of the pretty woman in "La Chanteuse" does not disguise
the inspiration of Franz Hals in the painting of the bodice, the
cuffs, and the details--the high ruffle is "dragged in" from Hals's
day. The "Music Lesson" at the Louvre was painted about the same time.
Fragonard's old master, Boucher, for some time had been "going about
like a shadow of himself." The year after Fragonard's marriage the old
painter was found dead, sitting at his easel before an unfinished
picture of Venus, the brush fallen out of his fingers--the light of
the "Glory of Paris" gone out.
Boucher died a few months before that Christmas Eve of 1770 that saw
Choiseul driven from power by the trio of knaves who used the vulgar
but kindly woman Du Barry as their tool--indeed she refused to pull
the great minister down until she had made handsome terms on his
behalf; Choiseul was too astute a man not to recognise what lay beyond
the shadow of her pretty skirts--nay, does he not turn in the
courtyard as he leaves the palace to go into banishment, his _lettre
de cachet_ in his pocket, and, seeing a woman looking out from a
window at the end of an alley, bow and kiss his hand to the window
where gazes out of tear-filled eyes this strange doomed beauty who has
won to the sceptre of France? 'Twas four years before the small-pox
took the king--four years during which this same Du Barry, with her
precious trio, d'Aiguillon, Maupeou, and Terray, sent the members of
Parliament into banishment--years that launched royal France on its
downward rushing, with laughter and riot, to its doom, whilst the
apathetic Louis shrugged his now gross royal shoulders at all warnings
of catastrophe, which to give him due credit, he was scarce witless
enough or blind enough not to foresee. Nay, did he not even admit it
in his constantly affirmed, if cynical, creed that "things, as they
were, would last as long as he; and he that came after him must shift
for himself"? Ay; he came even nearer to the kernel of the
significance of things, when, shrugging his no longer well-beloved
shoulders, as the Pompadour had done, he repeated her cynical saying
of "_Après nous le déluge_." It was to be a deluge indeed--scarlet
red.
Wit and ruthless fatuity were the order of the day; these folk were
wondrous full of the neatly turned phrase and the polished epigram.
Most fatuous of them all, and as ruthless as any, was Terray--he who
tinkered with finance, with crown to his many infamies the scandalous
_Pacte de Famille_, that mercantile company that was to produce an
artificial rise in the price of corn by buying up the grain of France,
exporting it, and bringing it back for sale at vast profit--with
Louis of France as considerable shareholder. Had not the owners of the
land the right to do what they would with their own? 'Twas small
wonder that the well-beloved became the highly-detested of the
groaning people--he and his precious privileged class.