Chapter L: Costa F (6)

A truer perception of nature came to France from the North, whence, indeed, throughout the history of French painting vitality was infused into an art that was cramped by officially imposed canons of Italian perfection. As far back as the time of Le Brun, Félibien and Roger de Piles had begun in the field of literary polemics the long struggle between the _Poussinistes_ and _Rubenistes_, the adherents of an art dominated by design and perfect drawing, against the partisans of colour as a vital element. During the whole seventeenth century the Poussinistes, who commanded all the official support, held the field, though the Netherlandish strain was represented by some of the finest painters of that period, like the brothers Le Nain, C. Lefebvre, and Philippe de Champaigne. In the eighteenth century the Northern influence became supreme through Watteau and Chardin on the one hand, and on the other through Boucher and Fragonard, both of whom were powerfully influenced by the study of Rubens’s works.

DESPORTES

In landscape the healthy opposition to the prevailing classic style appears first in the work of the Flemish battle painter Van der Meulen, whose backgrounds, sketched on the spot, show a fine feeling for aerial perspective and atmospheric effects. But his example apparently attracted no followers. Though not, strictly speaking, a landscape painter, François Desportes (1661-1743), who owed less to his early training under Nicasius, a third-rate Fleming, than to his habit of using his own eyes and studying nature direct, treated landscape with similar freedom in the backgrounds to his portraits and pictures of the chase. In his paintings of animals, dead or alive, limp bodies of hares and birds arranged as still-life with flowers and fruits, or in a very frenzy of movement in his hunting pieces, he endeavours to emulate Snyders, without quite rivalling the Flemish master. Of his twenty-five pictures at the Louvre, twenty-three (Nos. 225-248) belong to this genre, but not all of them are actually exhibited. The _Portrait of a Huntsman_ (No. 224), and the _Portrait of the Artist_ (No. 249) seated under a tree, holding a gun in his right, and caressing with his left hand a hound whose paw is resting on a pile of dead game, serve to prove that he knew how to manage portraiture with the same bold, frank spirit and summary breadth. He was particularly happy in rendering, without laboured detail, the varying textures of fur and plumage.

Desportes’s only successful rival as a painter of animals and hunting scenes was Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755). How closely his style resembled that of the elder painter is to be seen from his _Wolf Hunt_ (No. 667), the _Dog watching Dead Game_ (No. 668), and one or two similar pieces at the Louvre. Oudry was first taught by his father, and subsequently by Largillière, who encouraged him in the painting of still-life, and directed his study particularly to the observation of tone values and of the interchange of colour that takes place between objects in close proximity to each other. In 1734, Oudry was appointed Director of the Beauvais Tapestry Works, which took a new lease of life under his able management. It was he who supplied the designs for the _Fables of La Fontaine_, which figure so frequently in the tapestries woven at that great establishment. Perhaps his most interesting picture at the Louvre is the large landscape _The Farm_ (No. 670), signed and dated 1750, one of the earliest examples in French art of a rustic scene painted for its own sake, without any attempt at ennobling the landscape by forcing it into a formal arrangement.

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL

GENRE PAINTERS

It is quite in accordance with the tendencies displayed by these masters, that towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century an increasing number of artists preferred to devote their talent to recording the life of their own days to the endless repetition of the “grand-manner” subjects which had occupied the energy of the preceding generations. Thus Jean Alexis Grimou (1678-1740), who was Swiss by birth and entirely self-trained, introduced into French art the drinking scenes beloved of the Flemish masters. From his painting of _A Drinker_ (No. 385) and the two _Portraits of Young Soldiers_ (Nos. 386 and 387), it may be seen how little he was in sympathy with the official art of his time; this is scarcely to be wondered at, since, instead of undergoing the customary course of academic training, he had formed his style by copying the works of Rembrandt and other Northern masters.

Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749) was not quite so emancipated. In his large religious compositions he still follows the affectations of the grand style. His chief work of this kind is the _Mass of St. Basil_, at Sta. Maria degli Angeli in Rome, of which No. 857 at the Louvre is a reduced version. Of far more artistic significance are his small genre pieces, in which he attains to a rich quality of pigment and a justice of tone-values unique in French painting of his period. Subleyras is said to have been of Spanish descent; and there are in his scenes from La Fontaine’s “Fables”—notably in _The Hermit_ (No. 862)—clear indications of his intimate acquaintance with Spanish art. The best of all his pictures at the Louvre is _The Falcon_ (No. 861), which, apart from its general quality of tone, contains some still-life passages worthy of the brush of Chardin.

RAOUX AND DE TROY

Just as Subleyras should be judged by his genre scenes rather than by his scriptural subjects, so Jean Raoux’s (1677-1734) real significance lies in the intimate note he introduced into his fancy portraits, and not in his moderately successful excursions into mythology, like the _Telemachus relating his Adventures to Calypso_, at the Louvre (No. 764). The _Young Woman reading a Letter_ (No. 765), in the La Caze Room, is perhaps the most charming of many similar pictures from his brush. In sentiment it belongs entirely to the amorous century of Louis XV., which was to produce a Fragonard and a Greuze. Raoux was one of the first French painters of contemporary life. Brought up in the old tradition, he was in his last years influenced by the personality of the great Watteau.

If Raoux was the somewhat sentimental painter of bourgeois life, Jean François de Troy (1679-1752) played not infrequently the chronicler of the elegant life of the leisured classes. Unfortunately this interesting phase of his art is not represented at the Louvre, which, besides the three _Portraits_ (Nos. 886-888) in the La Caze collection, contains two of his famous designs for tapestry, representing scenes from the _History of Esther_ (Nos. 884-885); and his large historical painting, _The First Chapter of the Order of the Holy Ghost, held by Henri IV. in 1595_ (No. 883).

WATTEAU

The master who was to break definitely with the cold, majestic, uninspired art of the seventeenth century, and who in leading French painting into new paths reached the very limits of poetic expressiveness imposed by material means, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Born at Valenciennes six years before that city became French through the peace of Nymwegen, Watteau, the son of a poor Flemish tiler, was French, as it were, by accident only. In his early years, when he studied in his native town under Gérin, a mediocre local painter, he must have had occasion to become closely acquainted with the paintings of the Flemish masters. On the death of Gérin, in 1702, he went to Paris, where he became assistant to the scene-painter Métayer. Watteau suffered dire poverty, and completely undermined his health through privation before his talent attracted the attention of his next master, Claude Gillot, with whom he stayed until 1708, when he became assistant to Claude Audran, a decorative artist of great repute and Keeper of the Luxembourg collections. At the Luxembourg Palace he was enabled to study the masterpieces of Rubens, Titian, and Paolo Veronese, from which he benefited as much as from his work from nature in the Luxembourg gardens.

It was perhaps fortunate that he failed in the competition for the Prix de Rome in 1709, and was dissuaded from going to Italy. He was received by the Academy in 1717, when he painted his “diploma picture.” _The Embarkation for the Island of Cythera_ (No. 982, Plate XXXIX.), which may be considered an epitome of his art. Sketchy as it is, this picture, which he painted in seven days, exceeds in poetic charm and in the beauty of its entrancing sparkle of mellow tones the more highly finished later version in the German Emperor’s collection. It is the most striking instance of a purely imaginary scene of unworldly happiness, tinged with that peculiarly Watteauesque vague melancholy,—the consumptive’s _maladie de l’infini_ to which M. Mauclair has drawn attention,—represented with such absolute atmospheric truth as to make it appear an incomparably beautiful reality. Technically, this picture, like _L’Indifférent_ (No. 984) and _La Finette_ (No. 985) in the La Caze Room, embodies in germ the theories which in the second half of the next century were scientifically worked out by the French Impressionists.

Some time in 1719 or 1720, Watteau was in England to consult a famous physician. But his illness took a turn for the worse, and he had to return to his native country. After six months spent in Paris, he went to live at Nogent-sur-Marne, where he died on July 18, 1721. Watteau’s influence upon eighteenth-century art was prodigious; but his work remained unapproached by any of his followers and imitators, who too often sacrificed artistic considerations to a desire to please the lascivious tastes of a corrupt, pleasure-loving society. The _Faux Pas_ (No. 989) is one of the rare instances where Watteau allowed a certain suggestiveness to enter into his work; but even here “the smallness of the subject is swallowed up in the greatness of the painting.”

(1684-1721)

FRENCH SCHOOL

No. 982.—THE EMBARKATION FOR THE ISLAND OF CYTHERA

(L’Embarquement pour Cythère)

On a mound in the foreground, under a group of trees on the right,
by a garlanded terminal figure of Venus, are seated a young woman
and a pilgrim; at their feet is Cupid, whose wings are covered by a
black cape. To the left a cavalier helps a young woman to rise from
the lawn. In the centre of the composition another pilgrim leads
away his partner, encircling her waist with his arm. On the left,
in the middle distance, is a procession of lovers in pairs moving
towards a gilt barge with a chimera at the prow and two semi-nude
rowers. Cupids are floating in the air above the barge. In the
background a lake surrounded by bluish mountains.

Painted in oil on canvas.

4 ft. 2 in. × 6 ft. 3½ in. (1·27 × 1·92.)]

THE WATTEAUS IN THE LA CAZE GALLERY

It is a strange fact that but for the generosity of La Caze, _The Embarkation_ would be the only example at the Louvre of the greatest master produced by France. The reason for this extraordinary neglect may be found in the scant esteem in which Watteau was held until his eclipsed fame was resuscitated by the de Goncourts. The superb life-size painting of _Gilles_ (No. 983), one of ten pictures by or attributed to Watteau in the La Caze collection, was sold at public auction in 1826 for £26; whilst _L’Indifférent_ and _La Finette_ together realised the sum of £19 at the Marquis de Ménars’ sale! Of the eleven pictures in the La Caze collection that were originally attributed to Watteau, _L’Escamoteur_ (No. 622A, formerly No. 987) is now acknowledged to be by his imitator Philippe Mercier (1689-1760), who was born in Berlin of French parents, and spent the most productive years of his life in London, where he died in 1760. The still-life piece _Dead Game_ (No. 993), officially assigned to Watteau, has rightly been doubted; but the aspersions thrown upon the authenticity of the delicious _Pastoral_ (No. 992) do not seem sufficiently justified. The profound influence of Rubens upon Watteau’s art is nowhere more pronounced than in the sketch _The Judgment of Paris_ (No. 988), and in the beautiful oval composition _Jupiter and Antiope_ (No. 991), which has, however, also much in common with Titian. The superb nude figure symbolising _Autumn_ (No. 990), and another _fête galante_, entitled _Gay Company in a Park_ (No. 986), are no less creditable to the master’s genius.

WATTEAU’S FOLLOWERS

Although Watteau indicated the direction that French art was to follow in a century when it had to cater no longer for the stateapartment but for the boudoir, he left no follower worthy to carry on his tradition. Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), who had studied under Dulin and Gillot, based his style upon Watteau, whom he almost rivalled as a draughtsman. But he was an inferior colourist, and wholly lacking in poetic inspiration. One has only to compare his _Actors of the Italian Comedy_ (No. 470) with Watteau’s _Gilles_ (No. 983), or his _Music Lesson_ (No. 468) and _Innocence_ (No. 469) with their prototypes created by that master, to realise the inferiority of these thin, vulgarised versions of Watteau subjects.

Jean Baptiste Pater (1695-1736), who, like Watteau, was born at Valenciennes, became a pupil of his fellow-townsman in Paris, and benefited considerably by his guidance. Although inferior as a draughtsman to Lancret, whom he did not rival either in originality, he far surpassed him as a colourist. With Lancret, colour was generally an afterthought; with Pater, it entered into the primary conception of the picture. His Academy diploma piece, the _Fête Champêtre_ (No. 689), is painted in the Watteau manner with true pictorial feeling, even if it lacks the master’s precious, jewel-like quality of pigment. The _Fête Champêtre_ (No. 203), by Bonaventure Debar (1700-1729), holds promise of a considerable talent in a similar direction, cut short by a premature death.

THE VAN LOO FAMILY

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.

FRANÇOIS BOUCHER

Whilst such painters as Jean Restout (1692-1768) still continued to follow the tradition of the Bolognese eclectics, as may be seen in his _Herminia and the Shepherd_ (No. 775), the art of the Louis XV. period was given its final stamp by François Boucher (1703-1770). This favourite of Mme. de Pompadour, having gained the Prix de Rome in 1723, went to Italy in 1727, whence he returned to Paris four years later. At the age of thirty his _Rinaldo and Armida_ (No. 38A) caused him to be “received” by the Academy—the first of many honours that fell to his share, as he became in turn First Painter to the King, Director of the Academy, and Inspector of the Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory. He was the ideal painter of the age that was dominated by the personality of the Pompadour, who kept him employed with commissions for the decoration of her boudoir. Boucher was the true child of his time—licentious, pleasure-loving, light-hearted, and without moral scruples. The astonishing thing is that his pursuit of pleasure did not affect his enormous productivity. His art is in perfect harmony with his character—frankly sensual, exuberant, and unreliable; at times rising to superb decorative splendour of the airy, graceful type demanded by his patrons, and then again careless to the point of slovenliness.

Boucher was not a great colourist in the sense in which this term is applied to masters like Titian or Rubens. Indeed, more often than not his application of purely local colours unaffected by their surroundings is apt to result in the crudeness noticeable in his _Pastoral_ (No. 33), and in the domestic scene called _The Breakfast_ (No. 50A). Other pictures like the _Pastoral_ (No. 34) owe their present tapestry-like mellowness to the fading of the pigments. But it would be unfair to disregard the artist’s intention and to judge his capacity as a colourist from the present appearance of his works at the Louvre or in their usual environment in a public gallery. They were intended for definite decorative purposes, and in their proper Louis XV. setting fulfilled their function in admirable fashion. Few artists excelled Boucher in rhythmic harmony of composition, although it must be confessed that his emphatic insistence on triangular design is apt to become monotonous. This predilection is to be noted in the _Rinaldo and Armida_ (No. 38A), _Venus disarming Cupid_ (No. 44), _The Rape of Europa_ (No. 39), the _Pastorals_ (Nos. 33, 34, and 35), _Vulcan presenting Arms to Venus_ (No. 36, Plate XL.), and, indeed, in the vast majority of his twenty-two exhibited pictures at the Louvre. His mastery in flesh painting is best illustrated by the more unconventionally designed _Diana leaving the Bath_ (No. 30), and the brilliant sketch of _The Three Graces_ (No. 47) in the La Caze Room. Among his other masterpieces at the Louvre, _Venus demanding Arms from Vulcan_ (No. 31), which like No. 36 was designed for execution in tapestry, and the charming _Portrait of a Young Woman_ (No. 50), deserve special attention. It is unfortunate that they are not hung in the rooms that contain the magnificent furniture of the period, instead of being piled sky-high among pictures that seem to be primarily regarded by the officials as mere museum specimens of the art of painting. Boucher is better hung, and so may be much more effectively studied in the Wallace collection in London.

(1703-1770)

FRENCH SCHOOL

No. 36.—VULCAN PRESENTING ARMS TO VENUS

(Vulcain présentant à Vénus des Armes pour Énée)

On the right, Vulcan, seated on a tiger-skin with his left elbow
resting on an anvil, presents a sword to Venus, who, supported by a
nymph, is resting on a cloud in the centre of the composition. In
the background, over the head of Vulcan, are two cupids carrying
a helmet with a blue plume; between them and Venus, two nymphs on
clouds under a rock. Cupids and doves are fluttering around the
central group. In the foreground, on the left, are the chariot
of Venus, doves, and cupids, one of whom, immediately below the
goddess, is holding a garland of white roses.

Painted in oil on canvas.

Signed:—“F. BOUCHER.”

10 ft. 6 in. × 10 ft. 6 in. (3·20 × 3·20.)]

A little drier in touch than Boucher’s nudes, and considerably less coherent in design, but still painted with remarkable ability, are the figures of the goddess and her attendants in _The Triumphs of Amphitrite_ (No. 863), by Boucher’s contemporary, Hugues Taraval (1728-1785).

SIMÉON CHARDIN

If Boucher and the army of painters of _fêtes galantes_ and boudoir decorations reflect the tastes of the corrupt society of Louis XV.’s age, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) is the painter _par excellence_ of the lower bourgeoisie. His was an uneventful, colourless life of unremitting work after the completion of his studies under Cazes and N. N. Coypel. He never went to Rome; he never sought after distinction in the “grand manner”; he never hankered after Court patronage. He simply devoted himself to recording with the utmost technical perfection the peaceful and domestic life of the lower middle class, to which he himself belonged, with all his tastes and habits of life, and to the painting of still-life, in which branch of art he stands without a rival. There are among his thirty-two pictures at the Louvre twenty paintings of _Still-life_ (Nos. 89, 90, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 105-116, and the doubtful No. 118), all equally remarkable for their inimitable skill in the rendering of the most varied textures and reflections; for subtle observation of the mutual effect of coloured objects upon each other through the interchange of coloured rays; and, above all, for that “sense of intimacy, of life behind the scene,” with which he knew how to invest even inanimate objects.

This same sense of intimacy and of absolute pictorial unity is also the great merit of his domestic genre pieces, into which enters, in addition, the element of spiritual unity, of the absorption of each person in his or her occupation. In the deservedly famous _Grace before Meat_, at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, of which the Louvre owns two admirable replicas (No. 92, Plate XLI., and No. 93), the most casual observer cannot fail to notice that intimate bond between the mother and the two children, which gives the impression of a scene accidentally overlooked, without anybody being aware of the intruder’s presence. _La Mère laborieuse_ (No. 91), _La Pourvoyeuse_ (No. 99), and even the cat in the still-life piece _The Cat in the Larder_ (No. 89), are equally innocent of “posing,” and absorbed in their respective occupations. _The Boy with the Top_ (No. 90A) and the _Young Man with the Violin_ (No. 90B), under which titles we have the portraits of the two children of the jeweller Charles Godefroy, were bought by the Louvre in 1907 for £14,000. These two pictures and the _Castle of Cards_ (No. 103) are sufficient to establish Chardin’s supremacy in child portraiture.

FRAGONARD

Chardin for but a few months, and Boucher for two years, were the masters who taught Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) before, having gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 and worked three years under Van Loo, he set out for Rome, where under Natoire’s guidance he applied himself to the copying of old masters. More important for the formation of his style were the sketches he made in the company of his friend Hubert Robert in the romantic gardens of the Villa d’Este, and the deep impression created upon his mind by Tiepolo’s decorative paintings in Venice, which city he visited before his return to Paris in 1761. He scored his first great success in 1765 with the large and still somewhat academic composition _Coresus and Calirrhoë_ (No. 290), which was bought by Louis XV. for 24,000 livres for reproduction at his tapestry works.

(1699-1779)

FRENCH SCHOOL

No. 92.—GRACE BEFORE MEAT

(Le Bénédicité)

In the centre of a room, by a round table with a white tablecloth,
stands a woman, about to pour the soup from a saucepan into a
plate. She turns her head to the left towards her two little girls,
who, with folded hands, are saying grace. A drum is suspended from
the back of the chair on which the younger child is sitting. In the
background, on the left, a dresser with pewter and crockery; on the
right, a shelf with a canister, a bowl, and some bottles.

Painted in oil on canvas.

1 ft. 7¼ in. × 1 ft. 3½ in. (0·49 × 0·41.)]

Patronised by Mme. du Barry, the dancer Marie Guimard, and other priestesses of Venus, Fragonard now devoted his exceptionally facile and spontaneous talent to subjects that in licentious frivolity, voluptuousness, and suggestiveness had never been equalled even by his master Boucher. It is only his marvellous technique, ranging from the liquid transparency of his swift oil sketches to the rich luminous impasto of the _Sleeping Bacchante_ (No. 294); from the elegant arabesque of the _Bathing Women_ (No. 293), so full of _joie de vivre_ and youthful fire, to the almost brutal strength of the portrait of a writer or poet, known under the title of _Inspiration_ (No. 298). But in all these, as well as in the charming _Music Lesson_ (No. 291, Plate XLII.), _The Student_ (No. 297) and the _Young Woman_ (No. 300), Fragonard proves himself one of the greatest colourists produced by the French School. It was Fragonard’s sad fate to outlive his fame, to witness the collapse of the ancient régime and the triumph of his pupil David’s classicism, and to die in obscurity and neglect.

GREUZE

Twenty-three paintings represent at the Louvre the art of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), who trod the safe path of flattering the taste of the multitude by the mawkish sentimentality of his genre-pieces and the prettiness and half-concealed sensuality of his “fancy portraits” of young women, which in their suggestiveness are perhaps more insidious than the frank improprieties of Boucher and Fragonard. The sentimental and melodramatic side of Greuze’s art is strikingly revealed in _The Village Engagement_ (No. 369), in _The Paternal Curse_ (No. 370), and in _The Punished Son_ (No. 371), which aroused the enthusiasm of that singularly misguided critic Diderot. But it is the painting of pictures like _The Broken Pitcher_ (No. 372, Plate XLIII.), _The Milkmaid_ (No. 372A), and _The Dead Bird_ (No. 372C; a replica of the picture in the Scottish National Gallery), that has made him the idol of a certain undiscriminating section of the public, and established him among the world’s most popular painters.

PORTRAIT PAINTERS

The leading position among the portrait painters of Louis XV.’s corrupt Court was occupied by Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766), who was a good colourist, but was utterly lacking in sincerity, and placed his able brush at the service of the basest flattery. He has left a whole gallery of Court beauties posing as, and invested with the attributes of, Greek goddesses and allegorical personifications in the manner of the group of _Mdlle. de Lambesc and the Comte de Brienne_ (No. 659) as Minerva preparing the hero for warlike exploits. The _Magdalen_ (No. 657) is probably another contemporary portrait in fancy costume. His best picture at the Louvre is the _Portrait of a Young Woman_ (No. 661A).

François Hubert Drouais (1725-1775), the painter of the group of the _Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.) and Madame Clotilde, afterwards Queen of Sardinia_ (No. 266), who received a good share of Court patronage, showed considerable ability when he had sufficient strength to resist the temptation to flatter his sitters. But unfortunately he too often followed the example of Nattier in this respect.

TOCQUÉ, VESTIER, AND LÉPICIÉ

A portrait painter of a very different stamp was Nattier’s son-in-law, Louis Tocqué (1696-1772). Although he, too, was a favourite not only at the French, but also at the Russian and Danish Courts, the examples of his art at the Louvre suggest that he was but indifferently successful—from the artistic point of view—with his “official” portraits, like the _portrait d’apparat_ of _Marie Leczinska, Queen of Louis XV._ (No. 867), or the affected _Portrait of the Dauphin Louis at the age of ten_ (No. 868). On the other hand, when he was not weighed down by the importance of his task, he attained to a solidity of style, strength of character painting, and beauty of technique that place him at the head of the French portraitists of his period. Tocqué was apparently never in England, but such masterpieces from his brush as the _Mme. Danger embroidering_ (No. 868A), and the supposed portrait of _Mme. de Graffigny_ (No. 869), show distinct affinity with Allan Ramsay and Hogarth, with superadded French _finesse_ and suavity.

(1732-1806)

FRENCH SCHOOL

No. 291.—THE MUSIC LESSON

(La Leçon de Musique)

A fair-haired young girl in a low-cut white dress is seated, in
profile towards the right, before a spinet. A youth, standing at
her left, behind the instrument, is holding with his left hand the
score, whilst his right is clasping the back of the girl’s chair.
In the foreground a chair on which are a cat and a mandoline.

Painted in oil on canvas.

3 ft. 9½ in. × 3 ft. 11½ in. (1·10 × 1·20.)]

In the case of Antoine Vestier (1740-1824) the pronounced leaning towards the English style of the period is to be accounted for by that artist’s lengthy sojourn in England. The _Portrait of a Young Woman_ (No. 961), in the La Caze Room, might on superficial inspection pass for a work of Francis Cotes. Even in the _Portrait of the Painter’s Wife_ (No. 959), which was painted in 1787, long after Vestier’s return to his native country, the figure of a boy caressing a dog has a curiously English flavour.

Honesty of purpose and serious concern with artistic problems mark the art of Nicolas Bernard Lépicié (1735-1784), whose _Portrait of Carle Vernet_ (549A) is a picture of precious quality. He devoted himself more particularly to the domestic genre, which he treated without the sentimentality and theatricality of a Greuze. Indeed, if there is any contemporary painter with whom he shows affinity, it is Siméon Chardin. That he was a landscape painter of no mean ability may be gathered from his _Farmyard_ (No. 549), which, in spite of the predominating brown, is remarkable for its luminous transparency.

M^{ME.} VIGÉE LE BRUN

Before turning to the landscape painters Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert, we must close the chapter of eighteenth-century portraiture with Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), since her art, although her life extended far into the nineteenth century, belongs essentially to the degenerate days of the _ancien régime_—an art not devoid of grace, but exceeding in shallowness and insipidity the shallowest and most insipid productions of pre-Davidian days. Of the many masters from whom Vigée, herself the daughter of a painter, received advice, Greuze appears to be the one with whom she was most in sympathy. Married at an early age to Le Brun, a painter and picture-dealer from whom she was divorced after many years of wretched conjugal life, her career, of which she has left a full account in her autobiography, was one of adventure and truly extraordinary professional success.

She was the favourite painter of Marie Antoinette, had to leave Paris during the Terror, and made an almost triumphal progress from Court to Court before she definitely settled in Paris in 1809. At Naples, Vienna, Dresden, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, and other centres, Royalty and the world of fashion crowded to her studio; and her art even gained the unstinted approval of a judge like Sir Joshua Reynolds, which is the more surprising as Vigée Le Brun’s colour was almost invariably cold and unsympathetic. Her personal charms may have been partly responsible for her universal success, if reliance is to be placed on the questionable honesty of her flattering brush from which the Louvre owns two _Portraits of the Artist and her Daughter_ (No. 521 and No. 522, Plate XLIV.). Among her other pictures in the Louvre are the _Peace bringing Abundance_ (No. 520), her reception piece at the Academy, and a portrait of her early friend and master, _Joseph Vernet_ (No. 525).

(1725-1805)

No. 372.—THE BROKEN PITCHER

(La Cruche Cassée)

A young girl, in white dress and gauze fichu, stands facing the
spectator, holding with both hands some loose flowers in the
gathered-up folds of her dress. She carries a broken pitcher on her
right arm. In the background, on the right, is a fountain with a
crouching lion.

Painted in oil on canvas.

Oval, 3 ft. 10½ in. × 2 ft. 9½ in. (1·18 × 0·85.)]

JOSEPH VERNET

One has to realise that the art of landscape painting had become almost extinct in France, and that the art of seascape had never existed, if one wishes to account for Diderot’s enthusiasm with regard to Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), which made him exclaim, “What pictures! He rivals the Creator in celerity, Nature in truth!” Our cooler judgment cannot so easily pass over all that is cold and formal in his art. But, taken in relation to his contemporaries, he deserves respect for his emotional attitude towards nature, for a sense of the dramatic that approaches Salvator Rosa’s, and for his admirable drawing of the figures introduced into his landscapes. Vernet’s love of the sea awoke when at the age of eighteen he journeyed to Rome, where he became imbued with the classic tradition. He only returned to Paris in 1752, and soon afterwards received from Louis XV. the commission to paint the large series of _French Seaports_ (Nos. 940-954) which are now to be seen in the rooms in this collection given up to the Musée de Marine. In his other marines and landscapes (Nos. 912-939), not all of which are actually exhibited, he allowed his imagination freer play than in the _Seaports_, which were naturally of more topographic character.

Both his son Carle Vernet (1758-1836), a historical painter who excelled in the rendering of horses in movement, and his grandson Horace Vernet (1789-1863), a popular battle painter, are represented at the Louvre, the former by the _Stag Hunt in the Forest of Meudon_ (No. 955), and the latter by the _Barrière de Clichy (Defence of Paris in 1814)_ (No. 956), and the uninspired _Judith and Holofernes_ (No. 957).

HUBERT ROBERT

Hubert Robert (1733-1808), of whose classic landscapes the collection contains nineteen examples (Nos. 797-815), was not, as might be imagined from the general character of his paintings, influenced by the art of Claude Lorrain, but derived his love of antique buildings and landscapes peopled with classic figures from the general atmosphere of archæological enthusiasm engendered by the excavations on the site of Herculaneum, which prevailed in Rome when the young artist arrived at that Mecca of his profession in 1754. Robert lived and worked in Italy for twelve years, and became thoroughly imbued with this antiquarian spirit. Unlike Claude, he rarely, if ever, drew upon his imagination for the details of his classic landscapes, which are faithful transcripts of existing ruined or half-ruined buildings, though not infrequently they are arranged for greater pictorial effect. Of this half-realistic, half-classic nature—the introduction of people in classic garb among the ruins of buildings, which in classic times wore a very different aspect, is a pardonable anachronism—are the _Interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes_ (No. 799), and several similar pieces at the Louvre. In his smaller pictures, of which the best are the _Fountain under a Portico_ (No. 812) and the _Winding Staircase, with three Figures_ (No. 813), in the La Caze Room, he rivals the rich quality of pigment and mellow tone of Guardi at his best. Robert was Fragonard’s constant companion in Rome, and exercised considerable influence upon his friend, as may be seen from Fragonard’s landscape drawings.

There is scarcely a trace of Italian classicism in the superb _View in the Neighbourhood of Paris_ (No. 650), by Louis Gabriel Moreau (1740-1806), which in its silvery-grey tonality, in its sense of atmosphere, and in the treatment of the receding distances, rather recalls the manner of the Dutchman Philips de Koninck. That Moreau, who also worked in England, was not always free from conventionality, is proved by the rather formal composition of the _View of the Hills of Meudon from Saint-Cloud_ (No. 651).

(1755-1842)

No. 522.—PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AND HER DAUGHTER

(Portrait de Mme. Le Brun et de sa Fille)

The artist, in a white bodice with purple sleeves and a yellow
satin skirt, is seated on a green sofa. Her head is inclined
towards her right shoulder. She presses towards her, with both
arms, her little girl, who is resting on her lap, with her head
turned towards the spectator.

Painted in oil on canvas.

3 ft. 5½ in. × 2 ft. 9½ in. (1·05 x 0·85.)]

LOUIS DAVID

The boudoir art of the _ancien régime_ came to a natural end through the great social upheaval of the Revolution, of which Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) is the very personification in the realm of painting. As a pupil of Boucher, David in his early years was essentially a child of the eighteenth century. That he became the founder and head of a new classicist school, as tyrannical in his sway as had been Le Brun during the reign of Louis XIV., was due to the teaching of Joseph Marie Vien, whom he accompanied to Rome in 1775, the year in which Vien was appointed Director of the École de Rome. Vien was an eclectic and a purist of greater ability than would appear from his two dull pictures at the Louvre, _St. Germain and St. Vincent_ (No. 964) and _The Sleeping Hermit_ (No. 965).

David’s participation in the events of the year 1789 and his ardent republicanism did not, as has often been stated, attract him to subjects from Republican Roman history. Indeed, he had already painted _The Oath of the Horatii_ (No. 189) and _The Lictors taking to Brutus the Corpse of his Sons_ (No 191), for Louis XVI., and was only following the current of taste in devoting himself to the study of the antique and to antiquarian research. These two pictures, in spite of their cold classicism and theatricality, met with sensational success on their first appearance at the Salon. It is not in such works as these, nor in the _Rape of the Sabine Women_ (No. 188), compared with which even Poussin’s version of the same theme appears like a glimpse of actual life, that David’s talent found its happiest expression, but in the unaffected and irresistibly charming _Portrait of Mme. Récamier_ (No. 199, Plate XLV.) reclining on an Empire sofa. Whatever this picture may owe to the sitter’s grace and beauty and to the fact that it was never finished, and thus retained the freshness of a sketch, it is certainly one of the most attractive masterpieces of the French school. Here, as in the group of _Three Ladies of Ghent_ (No. 200A), in which the luminous quality of the fresh tones is enhanced by the general greyness of the scheme, we have the work of a real painter, whilst David’s bombastic historical compositions are scarcely more than tinted cartoons.

THE “CORONATION” PICTURE

When Napoleon rose to power, David became his favourite painter. The erstwhile Jacobin was chosen to paint the official _Coronation_ picture (No. 202A), an enormous canvas, which, like most ceremonial pictures of this kind, has more historical than artistic significance. The lifelike portraiture of the numerous personages surrounding the central group of Napoleon placing the crown on Josephine’s head, is the chief point of interest. On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, David was sent into exile. He died at Brussels in 1825; but his influence is reflected in official French art to this day. It was he who imposed upon the modern academic school a rigid canon of formal classic beauty which is fatal to evolution and progress, because it does not permit personal emotional expression.

Less severely classic in form, and showing at least an attempt at approaching a little nearer to truth than David, is the painting of the figures of _The Three Graces_ (No. 769), by David’s rival, J. B. Regnault (1754-1829), in the La Caze collection. The worst type of academic art is represented in the bituminous reconstructions of classic antiquity by his pupil, P. N. Guérin (1774-1833), whose _Return of Marcus Sextus_ (No. 393) enjoyed, perhaps owing to its supposed political allusion to the return of the emigrants, a success which cannot be accounted for on artistic grounds.

(1748-1825)

No. 199.—PORTRAIT OF MME. RÉCAMIER

(Portrait de Mme. Récamier)

The sitter wears a white Empire dress, the train of which
hangs down to the ground from the Empire sofa on which she is
half reclining, with her left elbow resting on a pair of round
horse-hair bolsters. Her face is turned towards her right shoulder.
A wide black riband is tied round her fair curled hair. A low
footstool in front of the sofa on the right, and a standing
candelabrum of classic design on the left.

The candelabrum is said to have been painted by Ingres.

Painted in oil on canvas (unfinished).

5 ft. 7 in. × 7 ft. 10½ in. (1·70 × 2·40.)]

BARON GÉRARD

Among the numerous pupils and followers of David who rose to fame, honours, and wide popularity before Ingres became the acknowledged head of the official school, the most distinguished were Gérard, Girodet, and Gros. Baron F. P. S. Gérard (1770-1837), whilst following on the whole the principles laid down by his master, knew how to invest his work with more individual character, which stood him in particular good stead in his portraiture. That this was recognised by his contemporaries is proved by the fact that he became the portrait painter _par excellence_ of the First Empire and the Bourbon restoration, although his inclination drew him towards allegory and mythology. There is undeniable distinction and fine characterisation in such portraits as _The Painter Isabey and his Daughter_ (No. 332). The nature of the subject debarred him from showing the strongest side of his talent in the chillingly unemotional, but undeniably graceful, _Psyche receiving Cupid’s First Kiss_ (No. 328), and in the _Daphnis and Chloë_ (No. 329), which was bought in 1825 for £1000. They have their counterpart in the cold and antique French sculpture of the period.

A. L. Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767-1824) was of all David’s artistic progeny the one painter who devoted himself to the purely pictorial problem of concentrated light and shade, without, however, being able to free himself from the domination of linear design. The compromise of the two principles led to such unfortunate results as _The Sleep of Endymion_ (No. 361) and _The Burial of Atala_ (No. 362). In _The Deluge_ (No. 360), which was painted later, he shows pronounced leanings towards a crude naturalism which exceeds in horror the most cruel inventions of Ribera’s genius.

BARON GROS

Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835), though a classicist by training, was forced by circumstances, and by the patronage of Napoleon who ennobled him, to devote his brush to an important phase of contemporary life—the glorification of his hero’s warlike achievements. He was by no means a realist; and although he followed Napoleon on many of his campaigns and presumably brought back with him rich material in sketches and vivid recollections, his forceful compositions accentuate the heroic aspect and the imaginative appeal of warfare, and are not spontaneous glimpses of actuality. The whole glamour of the Napoleonic legend is expressed in the group of wounded soldiers who, oblivious of their suffering, cheer their great captain in _Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau_ (No. 389). The sense of the heroic is as pronounced in the large painting, _Napoleon visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa_ (No. 388), in the _Bonaparte at Arcole_ (No. 391), and even in the impressive _Portrait of Lieutenant-General Fournier-Sarlovèze_ (No. 392A), silhouetted against a smoke-filled battlefield. A careful inspection of this large canvas shows _pentimenti_ in the painting of the legs, of which the General seems now to have two pair! Gros’s weakness, like that of all David’s pupils, was his neglect of colour. His popularity waned rapidly after the fall of Napoleon. He became a victim to melancholia, and drowned himself in the Seine in 1835.

PIERRE PRUD’HON

Though not entirely detached from the ruling school of the period, Pierre Prud’hon (1758-1823) occupies a unique position among his contemporaries. Having absolved his preliminary studies at Dijon, he became the pupil of the old masters—of Correggio and Leonardo—first in Paris and then in Rome, where he worked for seven years before definitely settling at Paris in 1789. To his sympathy with the Italian masters he owed that mellowness of colour and understanding of chiaroscuro which escaped the grasp of the Davidists. He was a real _painter_ as distinguished from the classicist _draughtsmen_ of the official school. Even if it is impossible to share to-day the enthusiasm at one time evoked by the somewhat grotesque allegory, _Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime_ (No. 747), this picture, which was intended for the Palais de Justice, rises immeasurably above the average of the “imaginative” paintings produced by Prud’hon’s contemporaries.

Vastly superior as regards pictorial quality and the whole conception, is the _Abduction of Psyche by Zephyrus_ (No. 756). In the _Crucifixion_ (No. 744), his last picture, Prud’hon rises to telling dramatic effectiveness of colour, and heralds the advent of Delacroix. But the most masterly of his seventeen paintings at the Louvre is the magnificent _Portrait of a Young Man_ (No. 753), which the Louvre was fortunate enough to secure for £35 in 1895. It is a strangely living evocation of a personality, searching, intimate, and mysterious—a portrait not so much of the superficial features, but of the inner life of the sitter. The large _Portrait of the Empress Joséphine_ (No. 751) suffers from comparison with this masterpiece. The pose is affected, the background dingy, and the red of the shawl introduces a harsh and disconnected note of colour.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL

GÉRICAULT

The revolutionary movement of the Romanticists, which was to find a strong leader in Eugène Delacroix, may be said to have been initiated by Géricault’s epoch-making picture _The Raft of the Medusa_ (No. 338, Plate XLVI.). Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), a pupil of Carle Vernet and Guérin, was an unusually gifted draughtsman, who from the outset strove to go beyond the dead perfection of the David school, and to infuse into his work the spark of life. The _Raft of the Medusa_, which caused an enormous stir at the Salon of 1819, was inspired by a tragic incident from actual life; and Géricault was the first who dared to represent in all its horrible reality this scene of human suffering—the survivors of a shipwreck driven by hunger to madness and mutual destruction. He set aside all arbitrarily ignored canons of formal beauty and the “grand style,” and applied himself to depicting fierce passions and emotions.

Géricault was a passionate lover of horses; but his knowledge of equine anatomy did not prevent him, in his portrait of an _Officer of the Guard_ (No. 339), from exaggerating the action of the charging horse to a point dangerously near the border-line between the sublime and the ridiculous. Most of his other pictures at the Louvre are studies of soldiers, and horses on the race-course or in the stable. He died in 1824 from the effects of a fall from a horse.

DELACROIX

The topical interest of the _Raft of the Medusa_ had caused the public to receive this picture with favour, in spite of its daring departure from the generally accepted canons of the “grand style.” The case was different when Delacroix showed at the Salon of 1822 the _Dante and Virgil_ (No. 207, Plate XLVII.), which was inspired by Géricault’s great picture, but applied that artist’s principles to a subject taken from literature,—from Dante’s “Inferno,”—and was therefore considered as a direct challenge to the academic host. To-day it is difficult to understand the indignation aroused by the young artist, who became forthwith the acknowledged head of the so-called Romanticist school, although he refrained from taking part in any propaganda. In this, his first important exhibited picture, he proved himself a true painter in the sense in which Rubens was a painter—that is to say, he no longer gave primary importance to drawing, with colour added afterwards in the manner of a tinted cartoon. In the _Dante and Virgil_ colour and the actual sweep of the brush assumed at once a vital and constructive function, no longer separable from drawing and design.

(1791-1824)

No. 338.—THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA

(Le Radeau de la Méduse)

The raft of the wrecked Medusa, with the survivors of the crew,
is floating on the stormy sea. In the foreground on the left,
surrounded by dead sailors, a father is holding with his left hand
the nude body of his dying son. On the right, a corpse is partly
resting on the raft, partly floating on the water. Farther back the
officer, Corréard, is seen pointing out to the surgeon, Savigny,
the brig _Argus_, which appears on the far horizon under the
clouded sky. At the far end of the raft a mulatto and a sailor have
hoisted themselves on to some barrels to wave some rags, so as to
attract the attention of the distant ship.

Painted in oil on canvas.

16 ft. 1½ in × 23 ft. 6 in. (4·91 × 7·16.)]

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who belonged to a family that had given to France many distinguished statesmen and soldiers, was a pupil of Guérin, whose conventional teaching, however, was little to the taste of a young man whose passionate nature had been fired by his extensive reading of romantic literature, and who preferred to form his style on the works of Rubens and other old masters at the Louvre, and to benefit from his intercourse with Géricault and Bonington. The _Dante and Virgil_, which is now in a deplorable state of neglect, was bought by the State at the not very generous price of £50. Delacroix’s next Salon picture, _The Massacre of Scio_ (No. 208), caused an even greater storm of abuse of the young artist who had dared to depict the horrors of this scene from the Greek War of Independence, as it was thought, in all their crudeness, without the heroical and theatrical poses that were deemed necessary for pictorial “histories.” The magnificent atmospheric background owes its origin to Delacroix’s first acquaintance with the _Hay Wain_ and two other pictures sent by Constable to the Salon of 1824, which caused the impetuous young artist to repaint in a few days the sky and landscape. The picture was again bought by the State, the price this time being raised to £240. A superb study for the dead mother and child in the right-hand corner has been bequeathed by M. Cheramy, the present owner, to the National Gallery, where it is to be hung next to “the best Constable.”

It is impossible here to give a full account of the twenty-one paintings by Delacroix at the Louvre, to which should be added his decorative masterpiece, the centre of the ceiling in the Galerie d’Apollon. We must content ourselves with a brief reference to his more important canvases, first of which in order of date is _The 28th of July 1830: Liberty leading the People_ (No. 209), better known as _The Barricade_. The introduction of a bourgeois with a top-hat in this stirring scene of contemporary heroism was another act of defiance. But the dramatic power of the conception, which suffers but is by no means destroyed by the wretched allegorical figure of Liberty, and the artist’s appeal to political passion, caused the picture to be an enormous success.

DELACROIX’S ORIENTAL PICTURES

Delacroix’s journey to Morocco, with Count Morney’s mission in 1832, was of the greatest benefit to the artist’s progress as a colourist. Although he had no time during his travels to paint any pictures, he brought back with him a wealth of rapid sketches which, with his vivid recollections of Eastern life and colour, led to the production of such masterpieces as the _Algerian Women in their Apartment_ (No. 210), the _Jewish Wedding in Morocco_ (No. 211), and _The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople_ (No. 213). In the sumptuous scheme of _Crusaders_ the last traces of the influence of Gros’s colourless palette have vanished. The picture was commissioned by Louis Philippe for the Château at Versailles, the remuneration being fixed at £400. A copy of the picture is in one of the Salles des Croisades at Versailles, and a small sketch is at Chantilly. The _Algerian Women_ is particularly remarkable for the luminous sparkle of rich pigment through the ambient of silvery atmosphere.

Among Delacroix’s masterpieces must be counted the _Portrait of the Artist_ (No. 214), which he left on his death to his servant, Jenny le Guillon, stipulating that she should give it to the Louvre on the day of the restoration of the Orléans family—an event which never happened, though the picture reached its destination in 1872 through the generosity of Mme. Durien. _The Shipwreck of Don Juan_ (No. 212), painted in 1840, is based on Lord Byron’s epic poem, of which it is, however, by no means a literal illustration. It is one of the most stirring renderings of human passion and despair in the whole history of art, the livid light and general sombre scheme of colour contributing towards the tragic effect, as though Nature herself were entering into the mood of the horrible scene.

Although, on the whole, an unsatisfactory picture, Delacroix’s _Roger delivering Angelica_ (No. 2845) may serve to illustrate the true significance of his art in its relation to the official school, as there is in the same collection another rendering of the identical subject (No. 419) by his great antagonist Ingres, the greatest draughtsman of his century, and the acknowledged leader of the Classicist school. Comparison between the two works will show that Delacroix’s version, with all its obvious imperfections, far surpasses Ingres’s in emotional intensity and fierce vitality. The academic perfection and exquisite finish of Ingres’s picture only accentuate the dulness and lifelessness of his conception.

(1798-1863)

No. 207.—DANTE AND VIRGIL

(Dante et Virgile aux Enfers)