Six Centuries of Painting Part 16

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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 courts.h.i.+p, 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 friends.h.i.+p,--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 s.e.xe 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 Cha.s.se_ (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in character similar to _Les Amus.e.m.e.nts 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 a.s.sistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friends.h.i.+p 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 lords.h.i.+p was particularly anxious to secure this picture, "Between _you_ and _I_," he writes, with the quaint regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian n.o.bility, "(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 735.

_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 ill.u.s.trating 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 princ.i.p.al work was the decoration of Versailles, it is not unnatural that Boucher should have succ.u.mbed 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 ent.i.tled _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 princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pa.s.sed 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

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.xV.--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 Gra.s.se, 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.

Fragonard's father was a glover. In 1750 the family moved to Paris, and the boy was put into a notary's office. The usual signs of disinclination for office work and a pa.s.sion for art having duly appeared, he was sent to Boucher, who advised him to go and study under Chardin. This he did for a short time, but finding it dull--for Chardin was not as great a teacher as he was a painter--he went back to Boucher as an a.s.sistant. In 1752 he won the Prix de Rome, although he had never attended the Academy Schools, and in 1756 started for Italy.

Reynolds had just returned from Rome at the date of Fragonard's capture of the opportunity of going there, and we know from the _Discourses_ how he spent his time there and what direction his studies took. Fragonard pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by Boucher, who said to him, "If you take Michelangelo and Raphael seriously, you are lost." Feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not sound on general principles, Fragonard devoted himself to the lighter and more sparkling works of Tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He also made a tour in South Italy and Sicily with Hubert Robert, the landscape painter, and the Abbe Saint Non, the latter of whom published a number of etchings he made after Fragonard's drawings, under the t.i.tle of _Voyages de Naples et de Sicile_.

On returning to Paris in 1761 his first success was the large composition of _Callirhoe and Coresus_, which was exhibited at the Salon in 1765, and is now in the Louvre. But he soon abandoned the grand style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. The beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at Hertford House, called _The Swing_--or in French, _Les Hazards heureux de l'Escarpolette_, appears to have been commissioned by the Baron de St. Julien, within the next year or two, for in the memoirs of Cotte a conversation is recorded which shows that the Baron had asked another painter, Doyen, to paint it. "Who would have believed," says the indignant Doyen, "that within a few days of my picture of Ste. Genevieve being exhibited at the Salon, a n.o.bleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like this." He then goes on to relate how the Baron explained to him exactly what he required. We cannot entirely acquit Fragonard of all blame in accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a professional artist, with the example of Boucher before him, and it would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by offending a n.o.ble patron. The whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions under which the art of France flourished in the Louis Quinze period, when Boucher was everybody and Chardin n.o.body.

For the real Fragonard we may turn to _Le Chiffre d'Amour_, or the "Lady carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply silliness. In its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures like Frith's _Dolly Varden_ or Millais' _Bubbles_.

Another of the Hertford House examples, the portrait of a Boy as Pierrot, is equally ent.i.tled to be popular for all time, and like Reynolds's _Strawberry Girl_, might well be called "one of the half-dozen original things" which no artist ever exceeded in his life's work. A comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference between the English and French Schools at this period. On the one hand--to put it very shortly indeed--we see Fragonard influenced by Tiepolo, France, and Louis XV.; on the other, Sir Joshua, influenced by Michelangelo and Raphael, England, and George III.

The mention of JEAN BAPTISTE SIMEON CHARDIN among this brilliant and frivolous galaxy seems almost out of place. "He is not so much an eighteenth-century French artist," Lady Dilke says of him, "as a French artist of pure race and type. Though he treated subjects of the humblest and most unpretentious cla.s.s, he brought to their rendering not only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmans.h.i.+p by which everything he handled was clothed with beauty." That the Wallace Collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps regrettable, but truly Chardin was someone apart from all the magnificence that dazzles us there. His was the treasure of the humble.

The effects of the Revolution upon French painting were as surprising as they were great. That the gay and frivolous art of Boucher and Fragonard should have suddenly ceased might have been considered inevitable; but whereas in Holland, when the Spanish yoke had been thrown off, and a Republic proclaimed, a vigorous democratic school arose under Frans Hals; and in England during the Commonwealth the artistic influence which was beginning to be spread by Charles I. and Buckingham utterly ceased; in France an artistic Dictator arose, as we may well call him, in the person of JACQUES LOUIS DAVID, who not only made painting a part of the revolutionary propaganda, but succeeded under the Emperor Napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the Government, and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great influence on the whole course of French painting for many years to come.

But the most remarkable thing was that it was to the cla.s.sics that this revolutioniser went for inspiration. The explanation is to be found in the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the att.i.tude of the Academy to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of Brutus synchronising with the events of 1789. He was at once hailed as a deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the Revolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.xVI.--FRAGONARD

L'eTUDE

_Louvre, Paris_]

But what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this time was his actual appointment as President of the Convention, which gave him the power to revenge himself upon the Academy, which he did by extinguis.h.i.+ng it in 1793, and to remove any inconvenient rivals by indicting them as aristocrats. Of the older painters, Fragonard and Greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under the altered circ.u.mstances be considered as rivals to the cla.s.sical David, they both saw the century out. Fragonard simply ceased painting for want of patrons, and David was good enough to procure him a post in the Museum des Arts, or he would have starved. Unfortunately he attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected from his post--ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty--and was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictators.h.i.+p of David was supreme. How it was finally overthrown we shall see in another chapter.

_THE ENGLISH SCHOOL_

I

THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS