Meissonier’s best pupil was Jean Baptiste Detaille, the famous painter of battle-pieces. There is a picture of his at Chantilly entitled Les Grenadiers à cheval à Eylau,[140] where a gallant French officer with the cry “Haut les Têtes” leads his regiment on to victory. This is one of the chef d’œuvres of this artist, whose recent death is so much to be deplored.
Of quite a different nature are the allegorical paintings of P. J. Aimé Baudry. The excellence of this master lies principally in decoration, as may be seen by his Vision of St. Hubert in the Galerie des Cerfs; and he may be considered one of the most talented of the French artists who flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Winterhalter, who, although a native of Baden, acquired his artistic education in Paris and Rome, was one of the Court Painters to both Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. His portrait of the Duc d’Aumale at the age of eighteen, as Commander of his regiment before his victorious campaign in Algiers, is at Chantilly; and there is here also a companion portrait of the Duchesse as a young bride. She is clad in white, with a single rose in her fair hair, and her face is full of refinement and delicacy.
Landscape-painting in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century had undeniably become conventional and tame; but quite suddenly this stagnant condition came to an end, and a revolution set in, caused by the exhibition of Constable’s paintings The Hay Wain and A View near London in the Paris Salon of 1827. These pictures, purchased and exhibited in Paris by a French connoisseur, created intense interest in the French World of Art; and it is alleged that they were the immediate cause whereat French artists suddenly emerged from the studios wherein they had lingered so long and proceeding to the woods of Fontainebleau, began working from Nature herself. They awoke to recognise their own defects, already denounced by Chateaubriand, who had declared that French landscape-painters ignored Nature.
Throughout the studios French artists warmly discussed the work of Constable, upon whom Charles X, at their special desire, conferred the Médaille d’Or; and it was suggested that the Charette (The Hay Wain, now in the National Gallery) should be acquired by the French Nation.
S. W. Reynolds, Constable’s friend and pupil, whose exquisite little picture of the Pont de Sèvres hangs in the Tribune at Chantilly, at this time also removed to Paris in order to satisfy the general demand for engravings of his master’s works.
But if the Barbizon School owed much to Constable, it is also certain that Constable and Wilson owed an equal debt to Claude Lorraine; and Turner perhaps even more so.
By Corot there is but one painting at Chantilly, but it is one of his finest works. Everything in this picture breathes a spirit of peace and joy; the sky, the earth and the graceful young women—one of whom is playing a viola and another singing, whilst their companions listen or are plucking fruit—give a cheerful note to this vision of content.
It is styled Le Concert Champêtre[141] and recalls his series of paintings entitled Souvenir d’Italie. Corot appears to have commenced his studies in the woods at Fontainebleau even before Millet, Rousseau and Diaz, so that he may fairly be styled the doyen of the now famous Barbizon School.
By his pupil A. P. C. Anastasi there are several landscapes at the Musée Condé, one of which represents Amsterdam at Eventide.
That Millet is absent from this collection is much to be regretted; but by Theodore Rousseau there are several landscapes, small in point of size, but nevertheless exhibiting this artist at his best; as for example, Le Crépuscule en Sologne and Fermes en Normandie. Ary Scheffer was the first artist to understand and befriend Rousseau when he started away on lines of his own, and it was through the kind offices of this painter that one of his first pictures was bought by the Duc d’Orléans. His landscapes in Auvergne are early works; and those painted at Barbizon—such as the pictures above named—are later and more finished achievements.
Dupré, by whom there are three early works, Port St. Nicholas, Paris and Le Soleil Couchant, accompanied Rousseau in 1841 to the neighbourhood of Monsoult, where they were frequently visited by Barye, Corot, and Daubigny. There is at Chantilly by this last artist a sketch of the Château de St. Cloud, a charming record of a spot full of memories, now no more. By Diaz de la Pena, the last of this group of painters, there is a wreath of flowers and birds painted in vivid colours upon the ceiling in the boudoir of the Petit Château once used by the Duchesse d’Aumale; and by Ziem (known as the “Painter of Venice”) there is a landscape, Les Eaux Douces d’Asie, a subject magnificently treated by Diaz in a composition now in the Wallace Collection. Monticelli, Diaz’s greatest pupil, the leading painter of the Second Empire and a great admirer of the Empress Eugenie, is unfortunately not represented here; nor are there any examples of the early French Impressionists. For here the Hand of Death intervened.
With Léon Bonnat’s fine portrait of the Duc d’Aumale our description of the paintings at Chantilly comes to an end; but attention should yet be drawn to various pieces of sculpture exhibited in the apartments of the Château, on the terraces, in the gardens and in the Park. A fine figure of Jeanne d’Arc by Chapu is in the Rotunda, whilst a group of Pluto and Proserpine plucking daffodils by the same sculptor is on the Great Terrace. Here also is the equestrian statue of the Grand Montmorency by Dubois; and not far from it a life-size figure of the Grand Condé by Coysevox, surrounded by busts of Bossuet, La Bruyère, Molière and Le Nôtre. Copies in marble from the antique and the renaissance adorn the niches and plinths of the mansion and the avenues of the Park. A figure of St. Louis by Marqueste surmounts the roof of the Chapel and Jean Goujon’s reliefs ornament the Altar within. The famous portrait in wax of Henri IV is in the Galerie de Psyché; and busts in marble of the Grand Condé and of Turenne by Derbais, of Richelieu and of the last Princes of the House of Bourbon-Condé, are placed in the Cabinet des Livres and in various other rooms. Fine bronzes by Barye, Mène, Fremiet and Cain, adorn the mantel-pieces and consoles; whilst some exquisite enamel portraits by Limousin are exhibited in the Salle des Gardes.
Most interesting, and worthy of more than a passing notice, is the collection of Chantilly Porcelain, an industry founded in 1730 by the Duc de Bourbon. A set of porcelain made at that time was placed in the King’s Bedroom.[142]
In the centre of the Galerie des Peintures stands a fine bust of the Duc d’Aumale by Dubois, and in the Marble Hall lies his recumbent figure in full uniform by the same artist, a cast[143] of the marble figure upon his tomb in the Cathedral at Dreux.
And so with the death of the man his work came to a close. But his genius as a collector has furnished France with one of the finest Homes of Art in the World; and she does well to remember with gratitude this scion of the Bourbon race, who stretched out his hand to expiate much. Every lover of Art throughout the world, and every wayfarer who in his wanderings finds his way to Chantilly, may well stand amazed at this collection and praise its creator. Nor in passing out should he fail to give a last glance at the silent effigy: a glance in which gratitude should be mingled with that emotion which ever holds the thoughtful spectator of departed greatness.
INDEX
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, Z