present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no
doubt that the appreciation of Claude in this country is never likely to
die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with
increased vigour.
Meantime, however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and
though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise
their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that
most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many
of the names of its original members ever became famous--as may be said
in our own country--but among them was SEBASTIEN BOURDON (1616-1671),
whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also,
wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of
the Academy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed
principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in
1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting
landscapes, and historical subjects. _The Return of the Ark from
Captivity_, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by
that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it
was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most
treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the
fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without
mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the
poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is
_Jacob's Dream_, by Salvator Rosa, and the other, _The Return of the Ark
from Captivity_, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those
histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style
of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur
and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear
by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no
very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic
ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have
little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those
subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a
correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the
scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without
feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the
painters."
EUSTACHE LE SUEUR, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616),
was another of the original members of the Academy, and was employed by
the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the
cloister at the monastery of La Chartreuse (now in the Louvre) of which
Horace Walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume
of the _Anecdotes of Painting_. "The last scene of S. Bruno expiring"
(he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the
youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the
Prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master.
If Raphael died young, so did Le Sueur; the former had seen the antique,
the latter only prints from Raphael; yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of
heads! What harmony of colouring! What aerial perspective! How Grecian
the simplicity of architecture and drapery! How diversified a single
quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion
the only pathetic!"
PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE was another of the original members. He was born
at Brussels in 1602, and did not come to Paris till 1621, where he was
soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. But
he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine
full-length of Cardinal Richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun
of Port Royal, both of which are in the Louvre. There are four in the
Wallace Collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the English public
is the canvas at the National Gallery (No. 798), painted for the Roman
sculptor Mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles
of Richelieu. As a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so
from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles
cecy est le meilleur." The full length of the Cardinal presented by Mr.
Charles Butler in 1895 (No. 1449), is a good example, which cannot
however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works.
But it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait
painting in France became anything like a fine art, and even then it did
not get beyond being formal and magnificent. The two principal exponents
were HYACINTHE RIGAUD and NICOLAS LARGILLIERE, both of whose works have
a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm.
Rigaud was born in 1659, at Perpignan in the extreme south of France,
and studied at Montpelier in his youth, then at Lyons on his way to
Paris--much as a Scottish artist might have studied first at Glasgow,
then at Birmingham on his way to London. On the advice of Lebrun he
devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such
success that in 1700 he was elected a member of the Academy. He painted
Louis XIV. more often than Largilliere or any other painter, and in his
later years (he lived till 1743) Louis XV. his great-grandson. He is
said to have shared with Kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of
having painted at least five monarchs.
Rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his
portraits by the French engravers. Of his brushwork we are only able to
judge by the two doubtful versions at the National Gallery and the
Wallace Collection respectively, of the fine portrait at Versailles of
_Cardinal Fleury_. The group of _Lulli and the Musicians of the French
Court_, which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1906 is not by
him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have
been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to
him.
Nicolas de Largilliere was three years older than Rigaud and survived
him by another three. He was born in Paris in 1656 and died six months
before completing his ninetieth year. Early in life he went as a pupil
to Antwerp, under Antoine Goubeau, and he is said to have worked in
England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely during the later years of that
master. On his return to France he was received into the Royal
Academy--in 1686.
In the Wallace Collection is an interesting example of his work, the
large group of the French Royal Family, in which four living generations
are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. Henri IV. and Louis
XIII., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, Louis XIV.,
the Dauphin his son, the Duc de Bourgogne his grandson, and the Duc
d'Anjou, his great-grandson--afterwards Louis XV., are all included in
this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in
painting.
II
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
ANTOINE WATTEAU was born at Valenciennes in 1684, and died near there
about thirty-seven years later of consumption. Valenciennes really
belonged to Flanders, and had only lately been annexed to France, so
that Watteau owed something of his art to Flemish rather than to French
sources. At the same time it cannot be said that his development would
have been the same if he had gone to Brussels or Antwerp instead of to
Paris to study, for though the works of Rubens and Van Dyck were from
his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the French
artist Claude Gillot, as well as that of Audran, the keeper of the
Luxembourg Palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in
determining the future course of his work.
When living with Audran, Watteau had every opportunity for studying the
works of the older masters, especially those of Rubens, whose
decorations, executed for Marie de Medici, had not at that time been
removed to the Louvre. Besides copying from these older pictures,
Watteau was employed by Audran in the execution of designs for wall
decorations, etc.
Watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be
the _Depart de Troupe_ and the _Halte d'Armee_, which were the first of
a series of military pictures on a small scale. To an early period also
belong the _Accordee de Village_, at the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, the _Mariee de Village_ at Potsdam, and the _Wedding
Festivities_ in the Dublin National Gallery.
In 1712 other influences began to work upon him. In this year he came
into contact with Crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became
familiar with a fresh batch of the Flemish and Italian masterpieces. It
was at this time that he was approved by the Royal Academy, though he
took five years over his Diploma picture, "_Embarquement pour l'Ile de
Cythere_," which is now in the Louvre. Meantime the influence of Rubens
and the Italian masters--especially the Venetians, had greatly widened
and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly
sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect,
transforming the actual scenes of Paris and Versailles, which he painted
into enchanted places in
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.--ANTOINE WATTEAU
L'INDIFFERENT
_Louvre, Paris_]
fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of
Louis XIV. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in France.
The setting of the famous pictures in the Wallace Collection, catalogued
as _The Music-Party_ or _Les Charnes de la Vie_ (No. 410), is a view of
the Champs Elysees taken from the gallery of the Tuileries. Who would
have thought it? And what does it matter, except to show how entirely
Watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by
investing the actual with poetry and romance.
Two other pictures at Hertford House, Nos. 389 and 391, were painted in
the Champs Elysees, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in
both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's
power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy
and refinement of conception.
Three other pictures at Hertford House are equally delightful examples
of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the
parts of actors in Italian comedy. From a note in the Catalogue we learn
that a company of Italian comedians were in Paris in the sixteenth
century, but were banished by Louis Quatorze in 1697 for a supposed
affront to Madame de Maintenon. In 1716, however, they were recalled by
the Regent, the Duc d'Orleans, and became once more the delight of
Paris. Several of the figures in the Italian comedy had already passed
into French popular drama, and in Watteau's time there seems to have
been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another
developed a part, and to Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore and Columbina
were now added Pierrot--or Gilles--Mezetin, a sort of double of Pierrot,
Scaramouche and Scapin. The vague web of courtship, dalliance, intrigue
and jealousy called up by these characters attracted Watteau to employ
them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more
sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,--as in _The Music
Lesson_, _Gilles and his Family_ and _Harlequin and Columbine_, at
Hertford House. All of these three were engraved in Watteau's life-time
or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings
are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures.
In _The Music Lesson_ we see the half length figures of a lady, seated,
reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her.
Another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little
children's faces appear at her knee. The verses are as follows:--
Pour nous prouver que cette belle
Trouve l'hymen un noeud fort doux
Le peintre nous la peint fidelle
A suivre le ton d'un Epoux.
Les enfants qui sont autour d'elle
Sont les fruits de son tendre amour
Dont ce beau joueur de prunelle
Pouvait bien gouter quelque jour.
In _Gilles and his Family_ we have a three-quarter length full-face
portrait of le Sieur de Sirois, a friend of Watteau, with these verses
under the engraving:--
Sous un habit de mezzetin
Ce gros brun au riant visage
Sur la guitarre avec sa main
Fait un aimable badinage.
Par les doux accords de sa voix
Enfants d'une bouche vermeille
Du beau sexe tant a la fois
Il charme les yeux et l'oreille.
In the little _Lady at her Toilet_ (No. 439) we see the influence of
Paul Veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he
visited London in the later part of his short life. For there is a
similar piece called _La Toilette du Matin_ which was engraved by a
French artist who had settled in England, Philip Mercier, and on whose
work the influence of Watteau is very noticeable.
_Le Rendez-vous de Chasse_ (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in
character similar to _Les Amusements Champetres_ (No. 391), is the last
by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in
1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from
making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from
his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint
Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose
from time to time.
NICHOLAS LANCRET was only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can
hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an
imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards
his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should
have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have
been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's
style--seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by
Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422, _Conversation Galante_ and 440,
_Fete in a Wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his
career, the imitation became. The latter is the _Bal dans un Bois_ which
was exhibited at the Place Dauphine, and was complained of by Watteau on
account of its close resemblance to his own work.
Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of
Watteau's influence. The _Italian Comedians by a Fountain_ (No. 465),
being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought
for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this
picture, "Between _you_ and _I_," he writes, with the quaint
regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to
no other person but you should I make this _confidence_), I must have
the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon
you for _getting it for me_. I need not beg you not to mention a word
about this to _anybody_, either _before_ or _after_ the sale." And
again, "I _depend_ upon your getting the Lancret (Watteau in the
Catalogue) for me. I have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most
likely more than it is worth, but we _must_ have it ... I leave it to
you, but I must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go
beyond 3000 guineas." He was fortunate indeed in getting it for L735.
_Mademoiselle Camargo Dancing_ (No. 393), and _La Belle Grecque_ (No.
450), in the Wallace Collection, are good examples of the Comedian
motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. The four
little allegorical pieces in the National Gallery, _The Four Ages of
Man_, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the
characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting.
JEAN BAPTISE JOSEPH PATER was actually a pupil of Watteau. He was ten
years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and
died at forty. Like Lancret, he incurred Watteau's displeasure for a
similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he
would do than what he did that was the cause of Watteau's displeasure.
At the same time, the names of both Lancret and Pater are inseparable
from that of Watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their
choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly
distinguishable to the casual observer. Watteau, it need hardly be said,
was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his
romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as Lancret and Pater--or
to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without
whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as
great as it was.
FRANCOIS BOUCHER, though doubtless influenced by Watteau, more
especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless
independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country,
choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the Court like his
predecessors Le Brun, Rigaud, and Largilliere than to devote himself to
the expression of his own ideas and feelings. Being a pupil of Francois
Le Moine, whose principal work was the decoration of Versailles, it is
not unnatural that Boucher should have succumbed to the influence of
Royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as
powerful an agent as Madame de Pompadour. Another early influence which
shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of Carle
van Loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb _vanlotiser_--to
frivol agreeably--- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a
painter of elegant trifles. There is a picture by Carle van Loo in the
Wallace Collection entitled _The Grand Turk giving a Concert to his
Mistress_ (No. 451), painted in 1737, which is a fair example of his
proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits
scattered about the country which he painted when over here for a few
months towards the end of his life. He died in Paris on the 15th July
1765, and Boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal
painter to Louis XV.
Madame de Pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! She
made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he
owed most of his advancement at Court, which continued after her death.
The full-length portrait of her at Hertford House (No. 418) was
commissioned by her in 1759, and remained in her possession till her
death in 1764. It was purchased by Lord Hertford in 1868 for 28,000
francs. In the Jones Collection at the South Kensington Museum is
another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at
Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two
magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called the
_Rising and Setting of the Sun_, she begged from the king. These were
ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture
Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue
of the Salon in 1753 when they were exhibited. They are characterised by
the brothers de Goncourt as _le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux
grandes machines de son oeuvre_; and the writer of the catalogue of
Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies
thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois
dire par l'auteur qu'ils etaient du nombre de ceux dont il etait le plus
satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid
20,200 francs for them in 1855.
Even without these _chefs d'oeuvre_ the Wallace Collection is richer
than any other gallery in the works of Boucher, with twenty-four
examples (in all), of which few if any are of inferior quality. But it
must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance
its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with
Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great
painter. With all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one
of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by Watteau on
anything like equal terms. Superficially it may be equally or possibly
more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. Let us hear what
Sir Joshua Reynolds has to say of him:--
"Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore
invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if
not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished
pictures! The late Director of their Academy, Boucher, was eminent in
this way. When I visited him some years since in France, I found him at
work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. On
my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young,
studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left
them off for many years.... However, in justice, I cannot quit this
painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was
in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a
considerable degree of merit--enough to make half the painters of his
country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in
composition, but I think all under the influence of a bad taste; his
imitators are, indeed, abominable."
Twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of Boucher and the next
painter of anything like his ability, namely, JEAN BAPTISTE GREUZE. He
was a native of Tournous, near Macon, and lived to see the century out,
dying in 1805, at the age of seventy-eight. His popularity is nowadays
due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later
life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels.
The famous example in the National Gallery is more free from the sickly
sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint
more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. He first came into
notice by pictures like _La Lecture du Bible_, _La Malediction
Paternelle_, or _Le Fils Puni_, which are now to be seen--though
generally passed by--at the Louvre, and his style was imitated in later
years in England by Wheatley and others of that school with more or less
success. It was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected
his career when the Academy censured his Diploma picture, _The Emperor
Severus reproaching Caracalla_. But for this we might have had more than
these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy
of better things. However, as Lord Hertford admired them sufficiently to
include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not
to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description of
_The Souvenir_ (No. 398) given by John Smith, in his Catalogue Raisonne
in 1837, as showing the esteem in which it was held.
"_The Souvenir._ An interesting female, about fifteen years of age,
pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet
animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety
and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance
and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly
open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is
tastefully braided
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
THE BROKEN PITCHER
_Louvre, Paris_]
with a crimson riband and pearls. She is attired in a morning dress,
consisting of a loose gown and a brownish scarf, the latter of which
hangs across her arm. Upon a tree behind her is inscribed the name of
the painter. This beautiful production of art abounds in every
attractive charm which gives interest to the master's works."
Very different, and far superior to Greuze, was JEAN HONORE FRAGONARD,
born at Grasse, in the Alpes Maritimes, in 1732. In England his name was
almost unknown until within quite recent years, and the National Gallery
has only one picture by him, which was bequeathed by George Salting in
1910. Fortunately he is well represented in the Wallace Collection,
three at least of the nine examples being in his most brilliant manner.