M. Rouquet's book is a rare duodecimo of some two hundred pages, bound
in sheep, which, in the copy before us, has reached that particular
stage of disintegration when the scarfskin, without much persuasion,
peels away in long strips. Its title is--_L'État des Arts, en
Angleterre. Par M. Rouquet, de l'Académie Royale de Peinture & de
Sculpture_; and it is "_imprime à Paris_" though it was to be obtained
from John Nourse, "_Libraire dans le_ Strand, _proche_ Temple-barr"--a
well-known importer of foreign books, and one of Henry Fielding's
publishers. The date is 1755, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign
of His Majesty King George the Second--a reign not generally regarded as
favourable to art of any kind. In what month of 1755 the little volume
was first put forth does not appear; but it must have been before
October, when Nourse issued an English version. There is a dedication,
in the approved French fashion, to the Marquis de Marigny, "_Directeur &
Ordonnateur Général de ses Bâtimens, Jardins, Arts, Académies &
Manufactures_" to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate
headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family),
where a couple of that artist's well-nourished _amorini_, insecurely
attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a
coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-François Poisson,
Marquis de Marigny et de Ménars, was the younger brother of
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour.
Cochin's etching is dated "1754"; and the "Approbation" at the end of
the volume bears his signature in his capacity of _Censeur_.
Of the "M. Rouquet" of the title-page biography tells us little; but it
may be well, before speaking of his book, to bring that little together.
He was a Swiss Protestant of French extraction, born at Geneva in 1702.
His Christian names were Jean-André; and he had come to England from his
native land towards the close of the reign of George the First. Many of
his restless compatriots also sought these favoured shores. Labelye, who
rose from a barber's shop to be the architect of London Bridge; Liotard,
once regarded as a rival of Reynolds; Michael Moser, eventually Keeper
of the Royal Academy, had all migrated from the "stormy mansions" where,
in the words of Goldsmith's philosophic Wanderer--
Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May.
Like Moser, Rouquet was a chaser and an enameller. He lodged on the
south side of Leicester Fields, in a house afterwards the residence of
another Switzer of the same craft, that miserable Theodore Gardelle, who
in 1761 murdered his landlady, Mrs. King. Of Rouquet's activities as an
artist in England there are scant particulars. The ordinary authorities
affirm that he imitated and rivalled the popular miniaturist and
enameller, Christian Zincke, who retired from practice in 1746; and he
is loosely described as "the companion of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, and
the wits of the day." Of his relations with Foote and Garrick there is
scant record; but with Hogarth, his near neighbour in the Fields, he was
certainly well acquainted, since in 1746 he prepared explanations in
French for a number of Hogarth's prints. These took the form of letters
to a friend at Paris, and are supposed to have been, if not actually
inspired, at least approved by the painter. They usually accompanied all
the sets of Hogarth's engravings which went abroad; and, according to
George Steevens, it was Hogarth's intention ultimately to have them
translated and enlarged. Rouquet followed these a little later by a
separate description of "The March to Finchley," designed specially for
the edification of Marshal Foucquet de Belle-Isle, who, when the former
letters had been written, was a prisoner of war at Windsor. In a brief
introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as
"_Mr. Rouquet, connu par ses Outrages d'Émail_."
After thirty years' sojourn in this country, Rouquet transferred himself
to Paris. At what precise date he did this is not stated, but by a
letter to Hogarth from the French capital, printed by John Ireland, the
original of which is in the British Museum, he was there, and had been
there several months, in March 1753. The letter gives a highly
favourable account of its writer's fortunes. Business is "coming in very
smartly," he says. He has been excellently received, and is "perpetualy
imploy'd." There is far more encouragement for modern enterprise in
Paris than there is in London; and some of his utterances must have
rejoiced the soul of his correspondent. As this, for instance--"The
humbug _virtu_ is much more out of fashon here than in England, free
thinking upon that & other topicks is more common here than amongst you
if possible, old pictures & old stories fare's alike, a dark picture is
become a damn'd picture." On this account, he inquires anxiously as to
the publication of his friend's forthcoming _Analysis_; he has been
raising expectations about it, and he wishes to be the first to
introduce it into France. From other sources we learn that (perhaps
owing to his relations with Belle-Isle, who had been released in 1745)
he had been taken up by Marigny, and also by Cochin, then keeper of the
King's Drawings, and soon to be Secretary to the Academy, of which
Rouquet himself, by express order of Lewis the Fifteenth, was made a
member. Finally, as in the case of Cochin, apartments were assigned to
him in the Louvre. Whether he ever returned to this country is doubtful;
but, as we have seen, the _État des Arts_ was printed at Paris in 1755.
That it was suggested--or "commanded"--by Mme. de Pompadour's
connoisseur brother, to whom it was inscribed, is a not unreasonable
supposition.
In any case, M. Rouquet's definition of the "Arts" is a generous one,
almost as wide as Marigny's powers, already sufficiently set forth at
the outset of this paper. For not only--as in duty bound--does he treat
of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, but he also has
chapters on Printing, Porcelain, Gold-and Silver-smiths' Work, Jewelry,
Music, Declamation, Auctions, Shop-fronts, Cooking, and even on Medicine
and Surgery. Oddly enough, he says nothing of one notable art with which
Marigny was especially identified, that "art of creating landscape"--as
Walpole happily calls Gardening--which, in this not very "shining
period," entered upon a fresh development under Bridgeman and William
Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet
must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the
innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London
and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or
Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his
pages--if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who
played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_;
or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly"
over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so
neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's
curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any
consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been
dead seven years when the _État des Arts_ made its appearance.
If, for lack of space, we elect to pass by certain preliminary
reflections which the _Monthly Review_ rather unkindly dismisses as a
"tedious jumble," M. Rouquet's first subject is History Painting, a
branch of the art which, under George the Second, attained to no great
excellence. For this M. Rouquet gives three main reasons, the first
being that afterwards advanced by Hogarth and Reynolds, namely,--the
practical exclusion, in Protestant countries, of pictures from churches.
A second cause was the restriction of chamber decorations to portraits
and engravings; and a third, the craze of the connoisseur for Hogarth's
hated "Black Masters," the productions of defunct foreigners. And this
naturally brings about the following digression, quite in Hogarth's own
way, against that contemporary charlatan, the picture-dealer:--"English
painters have an obstacle to overcome, which equally impedes the
progress of their talents and of their fortune. They have to contend
with a class of men whose business it is to sell pictures; and as, for
these persons, traffic in the works of living, and above all of native
artists, would be impossible, they make a point of decrying them, and,
as far as they can, of confirming amateurs with whom they have to deal
in the ridiculous idea that the older a picture is the more valuable it
becomes. See, say they (speaking of some modern effort), it still shines
with that ignoble freshness which is to be found in nature; Time will
have to indue it with his learned smoke--with that sacred cloud which
must some day hide it from the profane eyes of the vulgar in order to
reveal to the initiated alone the mysterious beauties of a venerable
antiquity."
These words are quite in the spirit of Hogarth's later "Time smoking a
Picture." As a matter of fact, they are reproduced almost textually from
the writer's letter of five years earlier on the "March to Finchley." To
return, however, to History Painting. According to Rouquet, its leading
exponent[19] under George the Second was Francis Hayman of the "large
noses and shambling legs," now known chiefly as a crony of Hogarth, and
a facile but ineffectual illustrator of Shakespeare and Cervantes. In
1754, however, his pictures of _See-Saw, Hot Cockles, Blind Man's Buff_,
and the like, for the supper-boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, with Sayer's
prints therefrom, had made his name familiar, although he had not yet
painted those more elaborate compositions in the large room next the
rotunda, over which Fanny Burney's "Holborn Beau," Mr, Smith, comes to
such terrible grief in ch. xlvi. of _Evelina_. But he had contributed a
"Finding of Moses" to the New Foundling Hospital, which is still to be
seen in the Court Room there, in company with three other pictures
executed concurrently for the remaining compartments, Joseph Highmore's
"Hagar and Ishmael," James Wills's "Suffer little Children," and
Hogarth's "Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter"--the best of the four,
as well as the most successful of Hogarth's historical pieces. All
these, then recently installed, are mentioned by Rouquet.
Note:
[19] This is confirmed by Arthur Murphy: "Every Thing is put out
of Hand by this excellent Artist with the utmost Grace and Delicacy, and
his History-Pieces have, besides their beautiful Colouring, the most
lively Expression of Character" (_Gray's Inn Journal, February
9, 1754_).
It will be observed that he says nothing about Hogarth's earlier and
more ambitious efforts in the "Grand Style," the "Pool of Bethesda" and
the "Good Samaritan" at St. Bartholomew's, nor of the "Paul before
Felix," also lately added to Lincoln's Inn Hall--omissions which must
have sadly exercised the "author" of those monumental works when he came
to read his Swiss friend's little treatise. Nor, for the matter of that,
does M. Rouquet, when he treats of portrait, refer to Hogarth's
masterpiece in this kind, the full-length of Captain Coram at the
Foundling. On the other hand, he says a great deal about Hogarth which
has no very obvious connection with History Painting. He discusses the
_Analysis_ and the serpentine Line of Beauty with far more insight than
many of its author's contemporaries; refers feelingly to the Act by
which in 1735 the painter had so effectively cornered the pirates; and
finally defines his satirical pictures succinctly as follows:--"M.
Hogarth has given to England a new class of pictures. They contain a
great number of figures, usually seven or eight inches high. These
remarkable performances are, strictly speaking, the history of certain
vices, to a foreign eye often a little overcharged, but always full of
wit and novelty. He understands in his compositions how to make pleasant
pretext for satirising the ridiculous and the vicious, by firm and
significant strokes, all of which are prompted by a lively, fertile and
judicious imagination."
From History Painting to Portrait in Oil, the title given by M. Rouquet
to his next chapter, transition is easy. Some of the artists mentioned
above were also portrait painters. Besides Captain Coram, for example,
Hogarth had already executed that admirable likeness of himself which is
now at Trafalgar Square, and which Rouquet must often have seen in its
home at Leicester Fields. Highmore too had certainly at this date
painted more than one successful portrait of Samuel Richardson, the
novelist; and even Hayman had made essay in this direction with the
picture of Lord Orford, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A good
many of the painters of the last reign must also, during Rouquet's
residence in England, have been alive and active, _e.g._ Jervas, Dahl,
Aikman, Thornhill and Richardson. But M. Rouquet devotes most of his
pages in this respect to Kneller, whose not altogether beneficent
influence long survived him. Strangely enough, Rouquet does not mention
that egregious and fashionable face-painter, Sir Joshua's master, Thomas
Hudson, whose "fair tied-wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin
waistcoats" (all executed by his assistants) reigned undisputed until he
was eclipsed by his greater pupil. The two artists in portraiture
selected by Rouquet for special notice are Allan Ramsay and the younger
Vanloo (Jean Baptiste). Both were no doubt far above their predecessors;
but Ramsay would specially appeal to Rouquet by his continental
training, and Vanloo by his French manner and the superior variety of
his attitudes.[20] The only other name Rouquet recalls is that of the
drapery-painter Joseph Vanhaken; and we suspect it is to Rouquet that we
owe the pleasant anecdote of the two painters who, for the sum of £800 a
year, pre-empted his exclusive and inestimable services, to the
wholesale discomfiture of their brethren of the brush. The rest shall be
told in Rouquet's words:--"The best [artists] were no longer able to
paint a hand, a coat, a background; they were forced to learn, which
meant additional labour--what a misfortune! Henceforth there arrived no
more to Vanhaken from different quarters of London, nor by coach from
the most remote towns of England, canvases of all sizes, where one or
more heads were painted, under which the painter who forwarded them had
been careful to add, pleasantly enough, the description of the figures,
stout or slim, great or small, which were to be appended. Nothing could
be more absurd than this arrangement; but it would exist still--if
Vanhaken existed."[21]
Note:
[20] Another French writer, the Abbé le Blanc, gives a depressing account
of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: "At some distance one
might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original.
Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the
most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting
the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the
same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in
those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not
painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how
to animate it" (_Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747_, i. 160).
[21] He died in 1749.]
_"La peinture à l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus
beau Que la peinture à l'eau."_ About _la peinture à l'eau_, M. Rouquet
says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour
School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in
the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however,
with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's
drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her
ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute." (Caricature,
by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As
regards landscape and animal painting, he "abides in generalities"; but
he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and
Hogarth's and Walpole's friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would
think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon
Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one
master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this
way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made
discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself.
"It is most humiliating," says Rouquet, "for the genius of painting that
it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil." Seeing that
Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to
the perfection of his art, the words are--as Diderot says--remarkable.
With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he
has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three
notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,--all foreigners. Of
these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter,
and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least
considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put
highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of
contemptuously by the Abbé le Blanc. But the first is assuredly
Roubillac, whose monument to Mrs. Nightingale, however, belongs to a
later date than the _État des Arts_, though he had already achieved the
masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other
sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of
Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington,
certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to
the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the _État des Arts_ to
the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned _Letters on
the English and French Nations_.
At this point we may turn M. Rouquet's pages more rapidly. It is not
necessary to linger over his account of Silk Stuffs, more excellent in
his opinion by their material than their make up. Under Medallists he
commends the clever medals of great men by his compatriot, Anthony
Dassier; under Printing he refers to that liberty of the Press which, in
England, amounted to impunity. "A few too thinly disguised blasphemies;
a few too rash reflections upon the Government, a few defamatory
libels--are the sole things which, at the present time, are not
allowed." And this brings about the following lively and very accurate
description of the eighteenth-century newspaper:--"One of the most
notable peculiarities which liberty of the Press produces in England, is
the swarm of fugitive sheets and half-sheets which one sees break forth
every morning, except Sunday, covering all the coffee-house tables.
Twenty of these different papers, under different titles, appear each
day; some contain a moral or philosophical discourse; the majority of
the rest offer political, and frequently seditious, comments on some
party question. In them is to be found the news of Europe, England,
London, and the day before. Their authors profess to be familiar with
the most secret deliberations of the Cabinet, which they make public. If
a fire occurs in a chimney or elsewhere; if a theft or a murder has
taken place; if any one commits suicide from _ennui_ or despair, the
public is informed thereof on the morning after with the utmost amount
of detail. After these articles come advertisements of all sorts, and in
very great numbers. In addition to those of different things which it is
desired to let, sell or purchase, there are some that are amusing. If a
man's wife runs away he declares that he will not be liable for any
debts she may contract; and as a matter of fact, this precaution,
according to the custom of the country, is essential if he desires to
secure himself from doing so. He threatens with all the rigour of the
law those who dare to give his wife an asylum. Another publishes the
particulars of his fortune, his age and his position, and adds that he
is prepared to unite himself to any woman whose circumstances are such
as he requires and describes; he further gives the address where
communications must be sent for the negotiation and conclusion of the
business. There are other notices which describe a woman who has been
seen at the play or elsewhere, and announces that some one has
determined to marry her. If any one has a dream which seems to him to
predict that a certain number will be lucky in the lottery, he proclaims
that fact, and offers a consideration to the possessor of the number if
he cares to dispose of it."
After these come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account
of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after _Amelia_ and in the actual
year of _Sir Charles Grandison_, M. Rouquet's report is not
flattering:--"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many
masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but
miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious
letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius,
and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming
manners." It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson;
certainly they describe the post-Richardsonian novel. But that the
passage does not in any part refer to Fielding is clear from the fact
that the writer presently praises _Joseph Andrews_, coupling it with
_Gil Blas_.
Mezzotint, Gem-cutting, Chasing (which serves to bring in M. Rouquet's
countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, (_i.e._ Chelsea ware) are all
successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under
Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new
bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: "The
architect is a foreigner," says Rouquet, who considered he had been
inadequately rewarded. "It must be confessed (he adds drily) that in
England this is a lifelong disqualification." From Architecture the
writer passes to the oratory of the Senate, the Pulpit and the Stage. In
the last case exception is made for "_le célébre M. Garic_," whose only
teacher is declared to be Nature. As regards the rest, M. Rouquet thus
describes the prevailing style:--"The declamation of the English stage
is turgid, full of affectation, and perpetually pompous. Among other
peculiarities, it frequently admits a sort of dolorous exclamation,--a
certain long-drawn tone of voice, so woeful and so lugubrious that it is
impossible not to be depressed by it." This reads like a recollection of
Quin in the Horatio of Rowe's _Fair Penitent_.
Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the
eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane,
sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to
quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The
description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to
reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:--"The Vauxhall concert
takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements
in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively
considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once
spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of
the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him
liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and
exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves
periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of
their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are
infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a
prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing
themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and
there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine
and tobacco."
Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his
denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the
vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in
line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact,
the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a
pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set
his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man £100
a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one
of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage À-la-Mode_, my
Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-à-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse,
The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing
is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the
diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer
himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the
spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what
he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to
secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some
are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of
pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he
would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to
draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you
may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a
paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances,
would never have desired."
A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The _État des Arts_ was duly
noticed by the critics--contemptuously by the _Monthly Review_, and
sympathetically by the _Gentleman's_ and the _Scots Magazine_. In 1755,
the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work--_L'Art
Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin_ [toasted cheese],
_inventé pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des
facons de peindre inférieures à celles qui existent_. This, as its title
imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent _Histoire et Secret de la
Peinture en Cire_ of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under
_Émail_, in the _Dictionnaire Encyclapédique_, as "_un homme habile_."
He seems, however (like "_la_ _peinture à l'huile_)," to have been
somewhat "_difficile_"; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had
that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge),
like Zincke's, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably
those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether
he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or
whether he succumbed to the "continual headache" of which he speaks in
his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year
of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an
inmate of Charenton.