Old world masters in new world collections

We have now come to the age of elegance in painting. In the preceding sections of this book we have passed through many periods and many schools and have brought forward superb examples of great masters of several countries, but we now come to a time when the Art of Painting may be said to have reached perfection. The French Painters of the Eighteenth Century show us something entirely new in manner and in subject. They have grace, elegance, delicacy, style, beauty, brilliancy, clarity, and translucence of color. What can, for instance, equal the lightness of Watteau and Fragonard, or the dewy freshness of Greuze?

There are such things as the floating silk of the thistle’s parachute; such things as the feathery dust on the wings of “painted butterflies”; such things as the velvet pile on the petals of flowers; such things as the purple bloom on the plum and the grape; such things as the down on the breast of the cygnet; such things as the roseate gleam of the Oriental pearl; such things as the prismatic twinkle of the morning dew; and such things as the liquid silver of the moon’s bright ray.

All these most precious and evanescent beauties Watteau, Lancret, Pater, Fragonard, Drouais, Chardin, and other painters of the Eighteenth Century caught upon their palettes.

It was the genius Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) who opened the magic casements into this new world of fairy-like color and fairy-like lightness.

In the reaction from the heavy solemnity and gloom of the last years of Louis XIV, when the Sun-King was setting under the dark clouds of the bigoted and severe Madame de Maintenon’s influence, French taste swung to the other extreme of gaiety, fancy, gallantry, and caprice. Law’s Mississippi Bubble, while it lasted, enabled a great many persons to become suddenly rich; and, as is always the case with a new state of society, new styles of fashion came to meet its requirements. Moreover, the tastes of the Regent—the Duc d’Orléans—and the young King Louis XV were gay and playful; and, consequently, they were both glad to see all the traditions of Louis XIV swept away. The Art nouveau of the period was most graceful and charming in its early expression. The playful curves and fantastic motifs from the Far East—pagodas, mandarins, umbrellas, monkeys, little bells, dripping water, and strange, wreathing vines, were all transmuted by the great decorative artists and designers into that delicious and delightful French mélange known as Chinoiserie, which is, perhaps, more French than Chinese. The riotous curves, most of which were derived from the volutes of the shell, the shell itself, and the dripping water (or hanging icicles), were used so prolifically and so universally that their name rocaille (rock and shell) or rococo, is almost synonymous with that of the “style Louis Quinze,” although it does not include all the motifs nor all the spirit of the age.

Watteau was followed in his fascinating portrayal of pastorales galantes, fêtes champêtres, and all the light pleasures of society and its beautifully dressed men and women, by Nicolas Lancret (1690–1743) and Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater (1695–1736); and to this group belongs Jean Baptiste Huet (1745–1811), who in his first years followed Watteau closely; and as a decorative designer, he also expressed the taste of the Directoire and Empire period through which he lived.

Of the portrait painters, Jean Marc Nattier (1685–1766) stands first as Court-Painter and portrayer of lovely ladies in flowing draperies, rose-colored or blue scarfs, and wreaths and garlands of flowers, appearing as Hebe, Diana, Flora and other goddesses of Grecian mythology. Close to him comes Maurice Quentin de la Tour (1704–1788), who early abandoned oil-painting for pastels (his masterpiece, the portrait of Madame de Pompadour is now in the Louvre), was called a magician by Diderot and his work is described by de Goncourt as “a magic mirror, in which is seen all the talent, all the glory, all the wit, and all the grace of the reign of Louis XV.”

Carle Van Loo (1705–1765) is another portrait-painter of delicate and distinguished taste and performance. François Hubert Drouais (1727–1775) also expresses all the beauty, charm, and grace of the day in his presentations of the fashionable world.

François Boucher (1703–1770), the friend and successor of Carle Van Loo as first painter to the King, is so idyllic and fanciful that he has been characterized as the “Anacreon of Painting.”

Alexandre François Desportes (1661–1743), painter of hunting-scenes and animals, and Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755), painter of hunting-scenes, animals, flowers, fruit, and still-life, blazed the trail for Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), one of the greatest colorists in the entire history of painting. Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), full of grace, charm, and freshness, painter par excellence of pretty girls, and Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), pupil of Chardin and Boucher, famous for his delicate color and lightness of touch, lived into the new régime and their work became unappreciated. Hubert Robert (1733–1808), painter of delicate and highly decorative garden-scenes and classical ruins, and Madame Labille-Guiard (1749–1803) also lived into the Directoire and Napoleonic period when they were forced to leave their quarters in the Louvre formerly accorded to them by Royal permission. Madame Labille-Guiard was in her day ranked with Madame Vigée LeBrun (1755–1842), wife of the grand-nephew of the great painter, Charles LeBrun, who won distinction for her portraits, her brilliant salon, and her charming personality.

JUPITER AND CALISTO.

This famous picture was first owned by the great painter Charles LeBrun. It subsequently belonged to the Collections of Baron Holback, 1789; Baron Clary, 1868; and Baron de Tournelle in Paris. Painted about 1635, this large canvas (53½ × 70½ inches), is in a fine state of preservation, the colors, in consequence, appearing richer than is usual in Poussin’s works. The greens, browns, and pinks are warm; the flesh tints are glowing; and the draperies and the sky are a deep lapis-lazuli blue.

The puzzle is to find Jupiter! In Smith’s Catalogue raisonné we read:

“The god under the form of Diana is represented sitting on a shady bank embracing the beautiful nymph, who sits by his side with a spear in her hand; seven Cupids are sporting around them, one of which, while flying, is discharging an arrow from his bow; a second is playing with the hounds of the supposed huntress; a third holds up the blazing torch of love; and two others, buoyant among the trees, are casting flowers on the heads of the lovers.

“In his very beautiful pictures illustrative of ancient mythology Poussin has treated the various subjects in a style that proves he perfectly understood the mystery of the allegories therein contained and employed with the happiest effect the numerous symbolical figures to denote qualities, places, and things. His style, although unquestionably of French origin, owes all its beauty to his subsequent study of a few of the great Italian Masters, and of ancient sculpture. To such an extent was he carried in his enthusiastic admiration of the latter, that most of the celebrated statues and monuments, both of Greek and Roman origin, may be recognized in his pictures. This fondness for the chaste beauty of the antique may have led him in some instances so far as to give to his figures a rigidity which ill accords with the elasticity of nature. This defect (if it be one), is amply compensated by the grace and dignity of attitude and the chaste correctness of drawing which pervades his works. Execution, that medium by which the conceptions of a painter are embodied, and by which the connoisseur is frequently enabled to judge of the originality of a picture, is distinguished in the Artist (in his best period) by breadth and precision of hand, and a firm and decided outline; every touch of the pencil appears the result of consideration and profound knowledge, and in this respect it is the very reverse of that rapidity and dexterous freedom of hand observable in the works of Rubens, Paul Veronese, and Giordano.”

Poussin spent almost his entire life in Rome. Born at Villiers near Les Andelys in Normandy in 1594, he went to Paris at the age of eighteen to study art, having had some training under Quentin Varin at Les Andelys. In Paris he studied under Ferdinand Elle, a Flemish portrait-painter, and L’Allemand, a native of Lorraine. In 1620 he started for Rome, but only got as far as Florence. Compelled to return to Paris he now formed a friendship with Philippe de Champaigne (also a pupil of L’Allemand) and worked with him on the decorations of the Luxembourg under Duchesne. Four years later Poussin arrived in Rome, his long desired goal, and plunged enthusiastically into the study of ancient art, also working in the studio of Domenichino. For a long time Poussin had to struggle with poverty, illness, and Italian hatred,—for the Italians and French were enemies at this time. Marriage with the daughter of a wealthy compatriot changed matters and Poussin bought with his bride’s dowry a handsome house on the Pincian Hill. Cardinal Barberini’s patronage now brought Poussin fame, for the Cardinal commissioned two paintings, The Death of Germanicus and The Capture of Jerusalem—besides other important orders. Poussin’s reputation soared rapidly and in 1640 Louis XIII called him to Paris, appointed him first painter-in-ordinary, and gave him a residence in the garden of the Tuileries for life. For two years Poussin worked industriously, producing many paintings, cartoons for tapestries, and illustrations for books; but he longed for his beloved Rome and in 1642 returned to that city, where he spent the remainder of his life in the tranquil pursuit of his art. Poussin painted for twenty-three more years and died in Rome in 1665. His works are numerous; and, with the exception of a few portraits, are chiefly devoted to mythological, classical, historical, and Biblical subjects. Titian was his idol. However, despite his Italian inspiration and taste, Poussin is regarded as the head of the French School. His devotion to classical subjects and his deep study of the antique in all its expressions make Poussin one of the most scholarly of painters.

Sir Joshua Reynolds says: “In contemplating his classical pictures the mind is thrown back into antiquity or remote ages; and it would be no difficult matter for the spectator to imagine that such pictures were coeval, or nearly so, in their production with the mythological metamorphosis and Bacchanalian festivals that are set before him. His shepherds, fauns, nymphs, satyrs, and Bacchanals appear a primitive progeny, the native inhabitants of the mountains and woodlands of the genial climate of Greece and of that Golden Age when Hellas and Asia Minor may be supposed to have been overspread with aboriginal forests and life was careless resignation to present enjoyment.”

From Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), landscape-painter of idealized Classic scenes, poetic in spirit and suffused with dreamful, golden light, the Eighteenth Century French painters may be said to have found their fountain-head of inspiration.

LA DANSE.

With the exception of the superb Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère, we do not think of individual paintings of Watteau. We consider his work as a whole and we have a composite picture in our minds of assemblées galantes under the trees in beautiful parks and gardens. Although he derived his themes from his master, Gillot, who was painting all the fashionable follies and fancies of the time, Watteau surpassed him so entirely in his approach to these subjects, as well as in his technique, that we are wont to look upon Watteau as the originator of fêtes champêtres, pastorales galantes, concerts champêtres, monkeys in all kinds of attitudes and costumes satirizing the modes and manners of the day, ladies and gentlemen playing Blind Man’s Buff (Colin Maillard) under the trees, ladies swinging or flirting with their fans, love-scenes beside statues in leafy dells, members of the Italian Comedy—Pierrot, Arlequin, Scaramouche, Mezetin, Columbine, and Scalpin—and charming people making music or dancing under the trees.

This characteristic picture which came from the S. R. Bertron Collection to its present owner, is a charming illustration of Watteau’s style. Here we have dancing and music and merry conversation. The light is concentrated on the chief figure—the dancer—clad in that white satin that Watteau painted so marvellously. But why single out any special object for that facile and versatile brush? Did not an eminent critic of the Nineteenth Century proclaim that Watteau was “the most brilliant and vivid painter the world has ever seen”?

Watteau created an Arcadia of his own—a Watteau world; and it is not without reason that another critic called him “the Shakespeare and the Aristophanes of Art.”

The world has long recognized that Watteau was a poet. Élie Faure asks why it is that the ensemble always produces the sensation so near to sadness, and then he gives the reason:

“The spirit of the poet is present. Watteau had brought back from his Flemish country and from a visit he had made to England the love of moist landscape, where the colors in the multiplied prism of the tiny suspended drops take on their real depth and splendor. Music and trees, the whole of Watteau is in them. The sound does not interrupt the silence, but rather increases it. Barely, if at all, a whispered echo reaches us from it. We do indeed see the fingers wandering from the strings: the laughter and the phrases exchanged are to be guessed from bodies bending forward or turning backward and from fans that tap on hands. The actors in the charming dramas are at a distance from their painter and are dispersed in the depths of the open spaces. Watteau fears to come near them, to penetrate their mystery; for to see them too close would destroy the aërial veil that trembles between them and himself. He caresses them only with his delicate tones that hover here and there as would some bee from the north flying about in the damp forests or under the lights of the fête, among the powdered gold of the hair, the rose of the costumes, the bluish, milky haze, the flower-sprinkled moss, the grass on which rest skirts and mantles of silk and satin, and the nocturnal phosphorescence given to jewels and velvets by the gleam of moonlight and the flare of waving torches. It is the irised air which makes the marble statues seem to quiver, which gives agitation to the sprightly and piquant faces, movement to the fingers plucking guitars, and to delicate fine legs in stockings of transparent silk. Watteau never comes near the scene: the vision is as distant as an old dream. Observe it in detail. The structure of the figures—solid, moving, and substantial—makes them appear as if on the plane of man. Watteau’s little personages are as large as his conception of them: he paints with the breadth, the fire, and the freedom of Veronese, of Rubens, of Velasquez, and of Rembrandt.”

Antoine Watteau, born at Valenciennes, Oct. 10, 1684, was turned adrift by his father, a tile-maker, and he went to Paris, where he gradually became a fine draughtsman. He entered the studio of Claude Gillot (1673–1722), well known for his mythological pictures, his Chinoiserie, his fêtes galantes, his singerie, and his buffoonery of the Italian Comedy. Watteau soon surpassed his teacher and left him to study for a short time with Claude Audran (1658–1734). In 1717 Watteau became a member of the Academy; in 1719 he visited England; and in 1721 he died at Nogent, near Paris.

The de Goncourts have summed up his qualities so well that no excuse is needed for placing their analysis here:

“It is doubtless owing to the early decorative work executed by Watteau that he acquired a taste for the theatre of which in after days his cunning brush drew so many pleasing representations, so many curious pictures and that he so often depicted the Italian and French Comedians, those friends and intimates of his brush, whose motley family he painted in that beautiful and striking picture which is a companion to Comédiens Français. He painted their companion picture when Madame de Maintenon drove them out of France in 1697; he painted their amusements, their nocturnal amours and serenades, their holidays, their open-air sports. Mezetin and Columbine appear on a hundred panels. But there would be little reason to thank the chance that led Watteau at the outset of his career to work under an obscure decorator if he had only copied the silken folds of their costumes and had not conceived the idea of using these Trans-alpine types as the poetic habitants of his scènes galantes and scènes champêtres. In fact, by the introduction of these Merry Andrews, these gracious mummers, these elegant incarnations of dainty laughter and fine comedy, these men and women whose materiality is so vague and their reality so veiled beneath symbol and myth, the compositions of the painter no longer seem like pictures of a real world. The greensward of his scènes galantes seems peopled with mythical beings to whom Watteau’s imagination and lightness of touch have left nothing of the actors who served as his models; and we have the illusion of looking into a verdant country inhabited by creations of whim and fancy.”

MADAME BONIER DE LA MOSSON.

Nolhac calls the portrait of Madame Bonier de la Mosson “une des plus belles de ses Dianes ou de ses Nymphes chasseresses.” The picture (51 × 38 inches) was exhibited in the Salon of 1742. From the Collections of Debatz, Reims, and Tamvaco, Cairo, it passed into that of Mr. Berwind. This handsome lady, radiant in her leopard skin and flowers, was the wife of M. Bonier de la Mosson, who was also painted by Nattier four years later (1746), in his “cabinet of curiosities,” for M. Bonier de la Mosson was one of those amateur scientists of the age. In his rich hôtel in the rue Saint Dominique in Paris, he had a laboratory and an “apothicairerie,”—his pots, bottles, mortars and pestles and crucibles surrounded by furniture of the most superb description. The portrait of M. Bonier de la Mosson was in great contrast to that of his beautiful wife. The portrait of the gentleman is a fine work, but the portrait of the lady shows Nattier in his most characteristic aspect. Here is the real Nattier, for Nattier specialized in what was called in his day the “historic portrait,”—that is to say the sitter was represented as a mythological, or historical, personage with all the attractive symbolical and picturesque accessories. Nattier’s vogue during his lifetime was very great and all the aristocratic and fashionable ladies wanted, above all things, to have themselves perpetuated as Dianas, Floras, Hebes, and Auroras. Consequently, many old families in France cherish a fine allegorical portrait of a handsome ancestress caught as it were on Mount Olympus with the gods and goddesses.

is a tribute in some verses in 1727.

“It may seem fantastic,” Sir Walter Armstrong writes, “to bracket Van Eyck with a painter like Nattier, but a little consideration will show that in a sense they belonged to the same faction, that is to say that if Van Eyck had lived in Paris in 1760, he would have conceived a portrait much in the same way as Nattier, and so mutatis mutandis with the Frenchman. The conscious desire of both was to reproduce their sitter, choosing a moment when he or she was thinking of nothing in particular, and surrounding him with his familiar properties carefully marshalled into a design.”

Jean Marc Nattier came of a family of artists. His father, Marc Nattier, was an Academician, his mother, Marie Courtois, was a miniature-painter of reputation, and his brother, J. B. Nattier, was also a painter. Jean Marc Nattier was born in Paris, March 17, 1685, and was trained at a very early age by his father. Admitted to the classes at the Académie, he won a prize in drawing and at the age of fifteen was given a stipend. In 1715 Nattier went to Holland, where Peter the Great was staying, and painted the Czar, the Empress Catherine II, and several members of the Russian Court; but he declined all inducements to follow the Czar to Russia and returned to Paris.

In 1718 Nattier was received at the Académie and, thenceforth, devoted himself to portraiture. In 1724 he married Mademoiselle de la Roche, daughter of an old mousquetaire of the King; and it was not long before he became official painter of the court and, in consequence, the most fashionable portrait-painter in France.

Nattier was made assistant professor of the Académie in 1745 and full professor in 1752. Every year brought him more fame and more honors until his death in Paris in 1766.

Nattier depicts the delicate, charming, and aristocratic beauty of the early Louis XV period and has the gift of expressing also grace and alluring qualities. Louis XV had Nattier make replicas of many of the court portraits most pleasing to him, which he sent to European Courts; and this explains how it is that so many splendid Nattiers are hanging to-day in European galleries.

Nattier has a unique place as the painter of beautiful women, yet, although he painted individuals, his work, taken as a whole, presents the French Society woman of the Eighteenth Century with her peculiar charm, elegance, and finesse, appearing in his portraits as she really was,—experienced, flexible, high-bred, gay, witty, and accomplished, graceful in manner and in speech, perfect in the arts of the toilet and in dress, conscious of her charm, and tactful, polished, and fascinating in society.

LA MARQUISE DE BAGLION AS FLORA.

This masterpiece is also known as the “Chaponay Nattier,” from having been long in the Collection of the Marquis de Chaponay in Paris. Previously the picture graced the Collection of la Comtesse Armand née Gontoud-Biron and subsequently that of M. Nicolas Ambatielos in London. Many critics regard La Marquise de Baglion as the finest French portrait of the Eighteenth Century. Its first appearance in public was at the Salon of 1746 and it was shown in the Paris Exhibition of the One Hundred Masterpieces in 1892 (No. 28) and in the Paris Exhibition of the One Hundred Portraits of Women of the French and English Schools in 1909 (No. 85).

The picture (53⅛ × 41¼ inches) is signed and dated 1746, hence it was shown as soon as it was finished. The subject of the picture, Angélique Louise Sophie d’Allouville de Louville was born Feb. 10, 1710, daughter of Charles Augustin d’Allouville, Marquis de Louville, Gentleman-in-waiting to the King of Spain, Lieutenant-General of his armies and Governor-General of Courtray. Her mother was Hyacinthe Sophie de Bechameil de Nointel. On June 10, 1733, Angélique Louise Sophie was married to Pierre François Marie de Baglion, Comte de la Salle. After twenty-three years of marriage the Marquise de Baglion died in 1756. Her only daughter, Françoise Sophie Scholastique de Baglion (who was married to Denis Auguste Grimoard de Beauvoir, Marquis du Roure, Colonel of the Grenadiers of France of Saintonge, of Dauphine, and later brigadier), was lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine (Marie Antoinette), and was a great friend of Madame de Pompadour, whom she usually accompanied on her visits to Choisy.

In this exquisite picture, La Marquise de Baglion, an unusually beautiful woman, who has great intelligence in her face, as well as beauty, appears in a very décolleté dress, which shows her dazzling neck and shoulders. Her aristocratic hand, long and beautifully shaped, lightly holds a blue scarf—“Nattier blue”—filled with lovely flowers. Flowers are as nearly important as the Goddess of Flowers herself; and, consequently, Nattier has shown himself here the equal of any painter who specialized in flowers.

The picture was much talked of in its day at Versailles; in the boudoirs; at the toilet of the marquise; and at the petits soupers of the King, Louis XV. Many poets have sung its praises. One of the latest and best tributes is by Roger Milès called a Madrigal for a Portrait of the Marquise de Baglion painted by Nattier. In reading it we cannot help regretting that the beautiful Flora could not have read these sympathetic verses:

MADRIGAL

(Pour un Portrait de la Marquise de Baglion peint par Nattier)

LA CAMARGO.

This painting came into this country directly from the Collection of the Emperor of Germany, having long hung in Potsdam Palace, “Sans Souci,” near Berlin. It was originally in the Collection of the Prince de Carignan in Paris, from whom it was acquired in 1744 by the Count von Rothenburg, Prussian Ambassador, for Frederick the Great (1712–1786), to adorn his castle at Rheinsberg.

The picture is in oils on canvas (30 × 41¾ inches). We have here a typical scene of French Eighteenth Century life, laid in a beautiful park of emerald swards, lovely trees, and graceful foliage, a “terminal” figure of a Muse in the middle distance, and a fountain tossing its spray at the extreme right. Mademoiselle Camargo and her partner occupy the left centre of the picture dancing to music played by a small orchestra on the left. Seated and standing around them beneath the trees are groups of interested spectators; and among them at the extreme left Lancret has painted his own portrait. He is wearing a dark mantle and a biretta, and looks directly toward the observer.

The dancer, who gives the name to the picture, is the celebrated Marie Anne de Cuppi de Camargo, born in Brussels in 1710. The Princess de Ligne became interested in her and sent her to Paris at the age of ten to be trained for a dancer. Under Madame Prevost, a dancer at the Opéra, her progress was so rapid that she made her début at the Opéra at the age of seventeen, when her extraordinary grace and her wonderful clothes caused her to be acclaimed as a star. Through the lessons of Blondy and Dupré she perfected her talents and became the most famous Parisian dancer of her time. A liaison with the Comte de Clermonte Abbé of Saint-Germain-des-Prés caused her to leave the Opéra in 1734; but she returned in 1740 and regained her former triumphs. This was the time when Lancret painted some wonderful portraits of the great danseuse, including the fine picture presented here. Mademoiselle Camargo retired permanently in 1751 and died in Paris in 1770.

Nicolas Lancret was born in Paris in 1690 and died there in 1743. He was a pupil of Pierre d’Ulin and Claude Gillot; but he adopted Watteau as his model. Indeed, his close imitations of Watteau estranged the latter. Lancret, however, won a great reputation for his beautiful sense of composition, his fine design, and his charming color. He was elected a member of the French Academy of Painting in 1719. His landscapes are always delicate and romantic, and as a painter of Fêtes galantes he almost equals Watteau and Pater.

LE DUO.

At first glance we might take this painting for a Watteau, for Lancret has shown in it the same appreciation of park scenery, leafy and fresh foliage, charming figures of grace and refinement, and, even more particularly, the suggestion of music. We seem to hear the liquid, silvery, cool notes of the flute and the sweet, clear voice of the pretty young lady who is singing from a book of music while the young gallant looks over her shoulder and plays his part in the duet. The costumes are lovely; the young lady is dressed in white and the flute-player wears a brownish-red suit. The flute-player’s pose is interesting: all his weight is placed on his right foot. Note his hands: they are properly placed on the holes of his instrument, which he is holding as a musician. The French have always been superlative flute-players and it was only natural that Lancret would select a capable musician for his model. We can make a safe guess that the music we are hearing from these musicians is an air by Rameau, whose operas and ballets were enjoying great vogue when this picture was painted. The work, oils on canvas (19¾ × 16¾ inches), belonged to the Collection of Sir William Knighton, Bart., and came from that of Mr. Pitt Rivers of London to the present owner, Mr. Emil J. Stehli of New York.

Comparing Lancret with Watteau, Eugène Langevin writes:

“First the style of the master was not adopted by him in its entirety; he modified it in accordance with his own disposition; he has played some of Watteau’s melodies, but in a lower key and with a slower movement. It is conversations galantes rather than fêtes galantes that he paints. He seems to feel that he does not possess the fire, the caprice, the vivacity, the imagination, and the supreme poetic distinction that are required for Departures for the Enchanted Isle. He halts half-way. Where Watteau painted sumptuous and impassioned eclogues, Lancret portrays rural amusements, richly adorned and at the same time frolicsome as he had seen them on the boards. Watteau revels in the most magical of fictions: he is the Shakespeare, the Aristophanes of Art.

“Like Watteau, Lancret broke with the academic traditions of the day, which were all for reddish or brown tints: he acknowledged a wholesome horror of burnt colors. And if he lacks that distinction which his master owed to his constant practice of Flemish and Venetian Art and to his own natural gifts, if he cannot produce those glowing and rutilant tonalities full of golden sheen, those rich colors, and those subtle harmonies of infinitely delicate beauty, he, at least, possessed a palette both rich and refined.”

UNE FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE.

This brilliant picture, painted in 1733, the height of the Regency period, came from the Collection of Lady Carnarvon, having been bequeathed to her by Alfred Charles de Rothschild of Seymour Place, London.

The scene is laid in a romantic landscape with the ruins of an old château and other ancient buildings surrounded by beautiful, feathery trees. Upon the green sward groups of men, women, and children have gathered to enjoy themselves in various ways. The merry assemblage, dressed in brilliant costumes of delightful colors, charmingly harmonized and contrasted, are dancing, feasting, making love, and watching actors and mountebanks perform. Even two little dogs in the foreground have partaken of the general gaiety. The movement, brio and general joie de vivre make this a veritable panorama of the Eighteenth Century. The picture is also noteworthy for being the largest ever painted by Pater.

Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater was born at Valenciennes in 1695, the son of a wood-carver who appreciated his son’s talent, taught him what he could, and then took him to Paris, where he became a pupil of his fellow-townsman, Watteau. The irritable temper of Watteau caused a separation; but in 1721 Watteau sent for Pater to come to him at Nogent-sur-Marne and gave him daily instruction.

Pater was very “modernistic” in his time, for in 1728 he was received into the Academy as a member of the new class of “peintres de sujets modernes.”

Pater was entirely absorbed in his art. He rarely left his studio, formed no friendships, painted all day and every day, and gave himself no pleasures. His feverish industry coupled with his parsimonious living—he was haunted by the fear of poverty in old age—at last told upon him and he died in Paris in 1736.

Pater is a very close follower of Watteau in subject and composition as well as in his charming and delicate color.

UNE FÊTE GALANTE.

It is interesting to compare this picture with the Fête Champêtre preceding it. We have two characteristic examples of Pater’s work. In the Fête Champêtre we look upon a large gathering and a miscellaneous crowd. In the picture represented here we have a more intimate group. There are certain elements in this picture that suggest Watteau; others that suggest Lancret; and still others that show us that the later Boucher and Fragonard did not deign to take a few ideas from Pater. The picture is very individual. The colors are soft and delicate—“pastel” tints we like to call them to-day—pale blues, and pinks, and yellows, and rich mauves, contrasting beautifully with the exquisite green of the foliage. Pater never produced a more artistic background, with its distant hills and picturesque buildings. The painting came from the Wertheimer Collection, London, to the present owner.

LA SERINETTE.

Madame de Pompadour, whose taste in art was always superlatively good, was the first owner of this charming picture, which has passed through many notable collections. The work is known under three titles: La Serinette (the Bird-Organ); the Education of a Canary; and The Diversions of a Lady. According to tradition this lady is Madame Chardin, wife of the painter. The sitting-room gives us an idea of her varied occupations and it would appear that she has just left her tapestry-work to give her canary a singing-lesson. The bird is seen in a cage, which stands on a little table near the window, and Madame Chardin is turning the handle of the bird-organ. We would like to know the tune the little music-box produces. Both as regards subject and treatment the picture is a masterpiece. Jean Guiffrey considers the work most charming and admires the way all the many accessories are brought into perfect harmony. “It would be impossible to find,” he says, “a more correct design and a better color scheme and tonality.”

Chardin sent this picture to the Salon of 1751 and again to that of 1755. After Madame de Pompadour’s death La Serinette passed into the notable Collections of Monsieur de Vandières, director of the Royal Buildings; the Marquis de Menars, Madame de Pompadour’s brother (sold in 1783); Baron Denon, Director of Museums (sale 1826); Count d’Houdetot (sale 1859); Duke de Morny (sale 1865); Mr. G. du Tillet of Paris; and, finally, to the late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.

The picture was shown in 1860 at the Exposition of the Association for the Mutual Relief of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (No. 92).

Chardin was one of the greatest colorists of the French School and one of the greatest painters of the Eighteenth Century. Few painters have equalled him in his broad and free style and in his luminous effects of color and light.

Chardin was born in Paris, Nov. 2, 1699, the son of a master-carpenter and upholsterer, who was employed to make billiard-tables for Louis XIV. After studying under Pierre Jacques Cazes, Chardin entered the studio of Noël Nicolas Coypel. Before he was thirty he had made a name as a painter of still-life. In 1728 Chardin was admitted to the Académie Royale and eventually became its treasurer. In 1752 Louis XV bestowed a pension upon him and in 1757 gave him rooms in the Louvre. In his middle period Chardin struck out in a new path—that of frank realism, selecting for subjects scenes from the domestic life of the bourgeoisie; but he treats everything, however, with the distinction and taste that belonged to France in the Eighteenth Century. Therefore, he throws a poetic glamour around a loaf of bread, a bunch of grapes, a plate of peaches, a sleeping cat, or a copper casserole. Consequently, while his subjects are similar to those of the “Little Dutch Masters,” Chardin introduces an elegance and a quality of which those painters never dreamed. Neither Pieter de Hoogh, nor Vermeer, excelled Chardin in effects of light, atmosphere, and iridescence. “Chardin,” Élie Faure writes, “did not paint much because he paints slowly with a laborious and passionate application. He has no models, but his wife, children, a few familiar animals, the everyday tableware, and cooking-utensils and then there are meat, vegetables, bread, and wine brought that same day from the butcher, the meat-roaster, the baker, and the vegetable seller. With these he writes the legend of domestic labor and of obscure life: his images speak to us after the manner of La Fontaine’s words and he is, with Watteau and Goya, the greatest painter there is in Europe between the death of Rembrandt and the maturity of Corot and of Delacroix.”

Chardin is an artist beloved by artists. In a sympathetic criticism, Armand-Dayot writes:

“It is not by accident that I am using this word métier: beauté du métier—all is comprised in that phrase. By this phrase the greater number of the French artists of the Eighteenth Century should be judged. La beauté du métier—that expresses all their efforts. And, indeed, what formula could better define Chardin than the beauté du métier? An illumination, meticulous and systematic, because it has been so well ordered and arranged; light departing from one point to appear at another and showing the various objects according to the place they occupy with relation to the distance from the luminous centre; a beautiful paste of the best composition in its own day and which time has converted into a transparent and limpid enamel; and, above all, that classical arrangement, which is like that of Poussin, Le Brun, Le Sueur and Claude Lorrain, add to the play of great sweeps of color; the enchanting reflections that cross one another and that are superimposed without breaking the original balance of the contrasting colors; and the rigorous drawing—such are the reasons why we class Chardin high in the French traditions of clarity and beautiful arrangement of light. In his richness of color he is derived from the Venetians and he became the ancestor of Fantin-Latour.”

Chardin’s vogue is increasing day by day, for he belongs to that small group of great masters who have played with light. Perhaps, more than any other painter, Chardin succeeded in producing the most subtle overtones of color. M. Armand-Dayot, as we have just seen, claims Chardin as the ancestor of Fantin-Latour. May we not also suggest that in Chardin, Matisse has found inspiration for his delicate and tenuous effects in the upper reaches of the color scale?

We get a glimpse of Chardin at work from Diderot who, after a visit to his atelier, wrote:

“Chardin, who has such a keen feeling for color, keeps his eyes glued upon his canvas: his mouth is half-open; and he breathes heavily. His palette is a picture of chaos and into this chaos he dips his brush. From it he draws his work of real creation,—birds with all the delicate nuances of tint in their plumage; flowers with velvet petals; trees of varied foliage and greenery, the blue of the sky, the spray of water, animals with their soft fur and the fire flaming from their brilliant eyes. The painter rises, walks some distance away, and throws a rapid glance upon his picture; then he seats himself again before this canvas and you soon see appear flesh tints, cloth, velvet, damask, taffetas, transparent muslin, or heavy linen. You also see the ripe yellow pear falling from the tree and the green grapes hanging on the vine.”

LES DEUX CONFIDENTES.

Madame de Pompadour was the first owner of this picture and it looks as if it might have been painted at her suggestion. It is signed and dated 1750 and measures 32 × 29 inches,—a perfect size for a boudoir or a small salon. Next the picture was in the Collections of Pillet-Will, the Marquis de Marigny, and the Marquis de Menars.

Here we have two young ladies of high degree playing at pastoral life. Their bare feet and the presence of sheep are the only suggestion that they are shepherdesses. They are, however, shepherdesses of the kind we read of in the eclogues of poets.

In every way the picture is charming. The composition is faultless, the lights splendidly concentrated and diffused, and the colors are of exquisite beauty. Against the green of the feathery trees in the background and the verdant turf in the foreground the lustrous silken dresses—palest blue and palest rose—of the young ladies who are exchanging confidences (doubtless of faithful or faithless lovers) appear to the greatest advantage. The flowers, tumbling out of the basket which has fallen down, are most sympathetically painted by one who rarely, if ever, omitted roses in any picture. All the colors melt and mingle in perfect harmony.

Boucher painted at the height of the Louis XV period and of this period Élie Faure says:

“François Boucher is its soul. Fashion is always present in his facile and fecund work—on ceilings, screens, carriage-panels, dessous portes, boxes and fans—shepherdesses and pastorales everywhere and on every thing. Charming in manner, generous, pleasure-loving and adored by both men and women, Boucher stands with the King’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, as the centre of his own revolving circle of winged Cupids and garlands of flowers.”