No fewer than five members of the Flemish Van Loo family, which
flourished in France from about 1660 until the death of Julius Cæsar
Van Loo in 1821, are represented in the Louvre collection. The most
distinguished among them were Louis Van Loo’s sons, Jean-Baptiste
and Charles André, better known as Carle. Both of them were brought
up in the academic tradition; but their Flemish blood and the taste
of a time that had seen the master-work of Watteau, gave their art
more vigour and sensuousness than is to be found in the paintings
of their academic precursors. Still it is unnecessary to linger over
their historical and mythological compositions. The picture which does
most credit to Carle Van Loo (1705-1765) is _The Hunt Picnic_ (No.
899), which, in spite of a certain crudeness of colour, attracts by
the science of the composition, the Watteau feeling of the landscape
background, and by its fascinating reality as a record of contemporary
life among the leisured, pleasure-loving classes.
François Le Moine (1688-1737) constitutes a link between the decorative
style of the preceding generation, which had become dull and ponderous,
and the art of Watteau and his followers. In this position he heralds
his great pupil François Boucher, whose characteristics, deprived of
his elegant grace and suave rhythm of design, are more than hinted
at in the _Juno, Iris and Flora_ (No. 536). The _Olympus_ (No. 535),
the sketch for a ceiling, recalls in its joyful decorative colour and
bravura of brush work the art of Tiepolo and Ricci.