The Triptych of Moulins.
Maître de Moulins.
View larger image

We make our way to the small but increasing collection of French Primitifs possessed by the Louvre, along the Grande Galerie as far as Section D. and, turning R., enter Rooms IX.-XIII. Beginning with Room X., devoted to fifteenth-century masters, on the L. wall is 995, Martyrdom of St. Denis, ascribed to the Burgundian Jean Malouet, court painter of Jean sans Peur, and owing its completion to Henri Bellechose, after the former's death in 1415. To L. of the main subject, the saint is seen in prison, receiving the sacred Host from the hands of Christ; 996, a Pietà on the L. wall has also been attributed to Malouet. 999, L. wall, a portrait group of Jean Jouvénal des Ursins and his family, by an unknown fifteenth-century artist, is admirable in execution and important for contemporary costumes. Below (1005A) is the fine picture so admired in the exhibition of the Primitifs in 1904 by the Maître de Moulins,[213] St Mary Magdalen and Donatrix, eminently French in feeling. 1004 and 1005, portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, are now catalogued under this master's name. The realistic Pietà (1001B) on the L. wall is assigned to the school of Nicholas Froment of the papal city of Avignon. 288 and 289 at either end of the R. wall, portraits of Guillaume Jouvénal des Ursins and of Charles VII., are by the well-known Jehan Fouquet of Tours, who unites the gentleness of the Tuscan school with the vivacity of the Gallic temperament. 998D, Virgin and Donors, is now tentatively ascribed to the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula. We next note a Crucifixion, the famous altar-piece (998A) of the Parlement of Paris recently transferred from the Palais de Justice. To the L. are St. Louis and the Baptist, R., St. Denis and Charlemagne; in the background are seen the old Louvre and the abbey of St. Germain. 998C is a similar altar-piece from St. Germain des Prés, painted about 1490, Descent of the Cross; in the background are other representations of the old Louvre, St. Germain and Montmartre. 304A, portraits of good King René and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, by Nicholas Froment of Avignon. (1001D) St. Helena and the Miracle of the Cross, by an unknown artist, about 1480. R. of entrance, Christ, St. Agricola and Donor, school of Avignon; below this hangs 997A, portrait of the sinister Jean sans Peur, and 997B, portrait of Philip le Bon of Burgundy, artist unknown. We pass to

Room XI.

which contains a series of most interesting historical portraits. Among the sixteenth-century painters cited by Félibien,[214] the Vasari of French painting, most of whom are but names to us, we may distinguish the Clouet family of four generations. The senior Jehan, born in Flanders in 1420, came to France in 1460 as painter to the Duke of Burgundy. His son, also, named Jehan, figures in the Royal accounts in 1528 as valet and court painter to Francis I., and was known as Maître Jehan or Jehanet. To him, an artist of great simplicity and charm, are attributed 126 and 127, R. wall, portraits of his royal master. Sons of the junior Jehan were François (1500-1572), the best-known and most talented of the Clouets, who was naturalised in 1541, and Jehan the younger, known as Clouet de Navarre (1515-1589), court painter to Margaret of Valois. By the former, who assisted his father during the last ten years of his life and succeeded him as court painter, are two admirable portraits, 128 and 129, of Charles IX. and his queen, Elizabeth of Austria; 130, Henry II., and (on the end wall) 131, the Duke of Guise, are also attributed to him. To the latter artist is ascribed 134, Louis of St. Gelais. Each of these elusive personalities, whose Flemish ancestry is evident, was known as Maître Jehanet, and much confusion has thus arisen. We now turn to some portraits by unknown artists of the period, among which may be noted: 1033, Henry III.; 132, Charles IX.; 1024, Diana of France, legitimised daughter of Henry II.; 1030, Catherine de' Medici; 1035, Ball given by Henry III. in celebration of the marriage of his favourite minion, Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, with Margaret of Lorraine in 1581; the king is seen seated with his mother, Catherine de' Medici, and his wife, Louise of Lorraine; the Duke of Guise (le Balafré) leans against his chair. On the same wall are 1015, François, Duke of Guise; and 1007, King Francis I. On the end wall, 1032, Henry III.; by the window opposite, 1022, the young Duke of Alençon (p. 178), by no means ill-favoured; and 1023, Louise of Lorraine, queen of Henry III. By a contemporary of the later Clouets, Jean Cousin (1501-1589), is 155 on the L. wall, The Last Judgment. Cousin was a versatile craftsman, and some stained glass by him still exists at S. Gervais and in the chapel at Vincennes. Among other artists mentioned by Félibien is Martin Fréminet (1567-1616), whose Mercury commanding Æneas to forsake Dido, 304, hangs on the end wall.

Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria, Wife of Charles IX.
François Clouet.
View larger image

The two years' sojourn of Solario in France at the invitation of the Cardinal of Amboise, of Da Vinci at the solicitation of Louis XII., and the foundation of the school of Fontainebleau in 1530 by Rosso (1496-1540), Primaticcio (1504-1570), and Nicolo dell' Abbate (1512-1571), mark the eclipse of whatever schools of French painting were then existing; for the grand manner and dramatic power of the Italians, fostered by royal patronage, carried all before them. This room possesses by Rosso, known as Maître Roux, 1485, a Pietà, and 1486, The Challenge of the Pierides, and Primaticcio is represented by some admirable drawings exhibited in cases in the centre of the room. Readers of Vasari will remember numerous references in his pages to Italian artists who went to serve, and agents employed to buy Italian works for, the gran re Francesco nel suo luogo di Fontainebleo. But the sterility of the Fontainebleau school may be inferred from the fact that when Marie de' Medici desired to have the walls of the Luxembourg royally decorated, she was compelled to have recourse to a foreigner, Rubens. Neglecting for a moment Room XII. and turning to

Room XIII.

we come upon some charming works by the brothers Lenain, whom Félibien dismisses in a few lines, while giving scores of pages to artists whose names and works have long been forgotten. So little is known of the brothers Antoine and Louis, who died in 1648, and Matthieu, who survived them nearly thirty years, that critics have only partially succeeded in differentiating their works, which are usually exhibited under their united names. Obviously dominated by the Netherland masters, their manner is yet pervaded by essentially French qualities—a love of Nature and a certain atmosphere of poetry and gentleness alien to the Flemish and Dutch schools. Nine of their works are here seen. A Smithy, 540; Peasants playing at Cards, 546; and Return from Haymaking, 542, are good examples. Skied in this room is 976, portrait of Louis XIII. by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), leader of the new academic French school of the seventeenth century, an artist of prodigious activity and master of the army of court painters who served Louis XIV. Vouet, who had worked in Italy, acquired there the grand and spacious manner of the later Venetians, which was admirably adapted to the decorative requirements of his royal patrons. To his pupil, Eustache Lesueur (1617-1655), is due 586, St. Bruno and his Companions bestowing Alms, one of the famous series illustrating the life of St. Bruno, of which the greater number are in

Room XII.

whither we now return. This eminently religious and tender artist is well represented in the Louvre, and the sympathetic student will appreciate the austere and sincere devotion expressed in these pictures, painted for the brethren of the Charterhouse in the Rue d'Enfer. The finest, a masterpiece, both in beauty of composition and depth of feeling, is 584, The Death of St. Bruno. The artist's careful application to his monumental task may be estimated by the fact that 146 preliminary drawings for this series are preserved in the Louvre. Lesueur's modesty and high purpose went almost unheeded amid the exultant prosperity of the fashionable courtier-artists of his day. We retrace our steps, pass through Room XIII., turn R., and enter the spacious

Room XIV.

also devoted to seventeenth-century artists. Lesueur is here seen in another masterpiece; 560, R. wall, St. Paul at Ephesus, a mai[215] picture; and 556, same wall, Christ bearing His Cross. The influence of Raphael in the former is very apparent. The hierophant of the school, Vouet, is represented in this room by some dozen examples, among which hangs his masterpiece 971, L. wall, Presentation at the Temple. A work, 25, Charity, by his short-lived rival, Jacques Blanchard, (1600-1638), known in his day as the French Titian, may be seen towards the end of this long gallery on the R. wall. A talented artist too was Jean de Bologne, an Italian by birth and known as Le Valentin (1591-1634). A good example of his style will be seen in 56 (same wall), Susannah. We now turn to Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665), the greatest master of his age, whose exalted and lucid conceptions, ripe scholarship, admirable art and fertility of invention, may be adequately appreciated at the Louvre alone, which holds a matchless collection of nearly fifty of his works. The visitor, fresh from the rich and glowing colour, the grandeur and breadth of the later Italians, will perchance experience a certain chill before the sobriety, the cold intellectuality and severe classic reserve of this powerful artist. Let us however remember his aim and ideal: to produce a picture in which correct drawing and science of linear and aerial perspective should subserve harmony of composition, lucid expression and classic grace. To approach Poussin and his younger contemporary Claude rightly, the traveller will do well to free his mind from Ruskin's partial and prejudiced depreciation of these two supreme masters, in order to effect an equally partial appreciation of Turner.[216] The story of Poussin's single-minded and stubborn application to his art cannot here be told. After a life of poverty at Paris and two unsuccessful attempts to work his way to Rome, he at length reached that Mecca of French artists, where a commission to paint two pictures, now at Vienna, for Cardinal Barbarini, established his reputation. Two of his works executed about 1630 during this first Roman period hang here; 709 and 710, R. wall, The Rain of Manna, and, The Philistines smitten by Plague. In 1640, after two years' negotiations and the personal intervention of Louis XIII., he was persuaded to return to Paris to take part in the decoration of the Louvre; but in spite of his generous pay and of the fine palazzetto and charming garden allotted to him for residence, the petty jealousies, chicanery and low standard of his rivals, revolted his artistic conscience: he obtained leave to return to Rome "to fetch his wife," and never left the eternal city again. Two of his works painted during this second and last Roman period are 717 (L. of entrance), Institution of the Eucharist, and 735 (L. wall), a ceiling composition executed for Richelieu, Time rescuing Truth from the assaults of Envy and Discord, whose subjective interest is obvious; 704, L. of entrance, Rebecca at the Well, is described at great length by Félibien, who saw it in progress. It was painted (1648) for a rich patron who desired a composition treated like Guido's Virgin, and filled with several young girls of differing types of beauty. The finished picture so delighted amateurs at Paris that large sums were offered in vain to divert it from the fortunate possessor; 711, L. wall, is the famous Judgment of Solomon (1649). On the same wall are 731, Echo and Narcissus; 734, his masterpiece, Shepherds of Arcady—a group of shepherds of the Vale of Tempe in the heyday of health and beauty, are arrested in their enjoyment of life by the warning inscription on a tomb: Et in arcadia ego (I, too, once lived in Arcady); 736-739, The Four Seasons were painted (1660-1664) for Richelieu. These beautiful compositions, more especially the last, The Deluge, typifying winter, will repay careful study. On the R. wall are, 724, the well-known Rape of the Sabine Women; 740, a most perfect work of his maturity, Orpheus and Eurydice (1659); and 742, Apollo and Daphne, his last work, left unfinished. Such are some of the more striking manifestations of this remarkable genius who alone, says Hazlitt, has the right to be considered as the painter of classical antiquity. His integrity was so rigid that he once returned part of the price paid for one of his works which he deemed excessive. To the modern, Poussin is somewhat antipathetic by reason of his scholarly aloofness and insensibility to the passions and actualities of life. As Reynolds remarked: he lived and conversed with ancient statues so long, that he was better acquainted with them than with the people around him, and had studied the ancients so much, that he had acquired a habit of thinking in their way. He saw Nature through the glass of Time, says Hazlitt, and his friend Dom Bonaventura tells how he often met the solitary artist sketching in the Forum or returning from the Campagna with specimens of moss, pebbles, flowers, etc., to be used as models. When asked the secret of his artistic perfection, he would modestly answer: "Je n'ai rien négligé."

Shepherds of Arcady.
Poussin.
View larger image

Claude Gelée (1600-1682) known as Claude, and one of the greatest names in the history of modern painting, also spent most of his artistic career at Rome. He was the first to bring the glory of the sun and the sun-steeped atmosphere on to canvas. He touches a new chord in the symphony of colour and by his poetic charm and romantic feeling stirs a deeper emotion. He, too, was a strenuous, implacable worker, a loving student of Nature, passing days in silent abstraction before her varying moods.

The Louvre possesses sixteen Claudes, among which we may emphasise on the L. wall, 310, View of a Port; 311, a poetic and glowing representation of the Roman Forum, before the old Campo Vaccino, with its romantic and picturesque aspect, had been excavated by modern archæologists. 314 and 316, Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsis, and Ulysses restoring Chryseis to her father, are typical imaginary classic compositions and variations on the artist's favourite theme—the effects of sunlight on an atmosphere of varying luminosity and on the limpid, rippling waves of the sea. We now come to the grand monarque of the arts at Paris during the century, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), founder of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture that finally eclipsed the old Painters' Guild which, from the thirteenth century, had monopolised the exercise of the art at Paris. So tyrannous had the Guild become that, in 1646, it ordered the number of court painters to be reduced to four each for the king and queen. An attempt to apply this regulation to the painters lodged at the Louvre roused Lebrun's hostility, who induced the regent, Anne of Austria, to found a rival Académie Royale on the model of the famous Academy of St. Luke at Florence. Twelve anciens were chosen by lot and the new Academy, Lebrun at its head, was inaugurated on 1st February 1648. The angry Guild swooped down on the Academy on 19th March, armed with a police warrant, to seize all its pictures and effects, a blow which Lebrun parried by a royal decree annulling the warrant. Hereupon the Guild organised their own Academy of St. Luke under the leadership of Vouet and Mignard, and after some temporary reconciliations and as many bickerings and hostilities, Lebrun won Mazarin's favour by a judicious gift of two paintings, and the Académie Royale obtained in 1658 a new constitution, an increase of members to forty, free quarters, and pensions, which, under Colbert, were raised to 4,000 livres. The Guild fought hard and won some concessions, but the Académie Royale remained supreme, and both were finally overwhelmed in the revolutionary storm.

In 1661 Lebrun was commanded by Louis XIV. to paint cartoons for tapestry illustrating the life of Alexander the Great. Five of these huge canvases hang in this room, R. and L., 509-513; 511, R. wall, The Family of Darius at Alexander's Feet, so charmed the king that he appointed Lebrun first royal painter, and granted him a patent of nobility. For thirty years the royal favourite was sole arbiter of taste and ruled supreme over the arts, until his star paled before the rising luminary, his rival Mignard. Lebrun's best work is to be seen at Versailles, but 510, R. wall, The Battle of Arbela, is an excellent example of his facile and adroit style. In 1686 the old favourite was commanded by Louis to paint a rival picture to Mignard's, Christ bearing His Cross, which was incensed with extravagant adulation by the courtiers. Lebrun set to work and in three months completed his Christ on the Cross, which the king loudly appreciated. Both pictures, 630 and 500, now hang on the L. wall a few paces from each other. Pierre Mignard (1612-1695) was a fellow-pupil with Lebrun under Vouet, and like him in early years a sojourner in Rome: his popular Madonnas, modelled from his Italian wife, added a new word (mignardes) to the French language. One such, 628, hangs a little further along this wall. In 1657 he won royal favour by a portrait of the young Louis, a branch of art in which he excelled. Mignard was a supple flatterer, and Louis sat to him many times. Once, later in the monarch's life, his royal sitter asked if he observed any change. "Sire," answered the courtly painter, "I only perceive a few more victories on your brow." A portrait of Madame de Maintenon, 639, is seen (L. wall) in this room. Mignard's greatest work, however, great in range if not in art, is the painting of the cupola of the church at the Val de Grâce, which is not only an indifferent painting, but was the occasion of a bad poem by his friend Molière.[217] Two other eminent portraitists, Nicholas Largillière (1656-1746), and Hyacinth Rigaud (1659-1743), may now fitly be considered.

By Rigaud, who was regarded as the first painter of Europe for truth of resemblance united with magnificence of presentment, are: a masterly portrait of Bossuet, 783; and a superb rendering of the roi-soleil, 781, both on the L. wall. Further along, on the same wall, are 784, portrait of his mother in two aspects painted for the sculptor Coysevox; and his last work, 780, Presentation at the Temple. Rigaud was especially successful with the rich bourgeoisie of Paris, and later became court painter, supreme in expressing the grandiose and inflated pomposities of the age. He, says Reynolds, in the tumour of his presumptuous loftiness, was the perfect example of Du Pile's rules, that bid painters so to draw their portraits that they seem to speak and say to us: "Stop, look at me! I am that invincible king: majesty surrounds me. Look! I am that valiant soldier: I struck terror everywhere. I am that great minister, etc." By Largillière, who lacks the psychological insight of his contemporary, is, L. wall, 483, Portrait of the Comte de la Chartre. He was a master of the accessories and upholstery of portraiture and painted some 1500 sitters during his long career, part of which was passed in England as court painter to Charles II. and James II. A third successful portraitist was Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766), whose ingenious and compliant art aimed at endowing a commonplace sitter with distinction and grace, and who generally was able to strike a happy medium between flattery and truth. Better represented at Versailles, he is but poorly seen here in 657, R. wall, A Magdalen, and 661A, L. wall, Unknown Portrait. 441 is an interesting portrait of Fagon, Louis XIV.'s favourite physician, by Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), known as Le Grand, a talented and docile pupil of Lebrun, whose four large compositions executed for the church of St. Martin des Champs, 432-435, are hung in this room. 434, R. wall, Resurrection of Lazarus, is perhaps the best. His works are a connecting link between the pompous spread-eagle manner of the Siècle de Louis XIV. and the gay abandonment and heartless frivolity of the reign of Louis XV. We pass from this room to the Collection of Portraits in

Room XV.

of which some few possess artistic importance and many historical interest. We bestow what attention we may desire and pass direct to

Room XVI.

devoted to seventeenth-century art. Chief among the painters who interpreted the refined sensuality and more pleasant vices of the age, yet not of them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des Scènes Galantes. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He has a poetic touch for landscape and a tender, pathetic sense of the tears in mortal things which make him akin to Virgil in literature, for over the languorous and swooning air and sun-steeped glades the coming tempest lours. His success, as Walter Pater suggests, in painting these vain and perishable graces of the drawing-room and garden-comedy of life, with the delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil, was probably due to the fact that he despised them. The whole age of the Revolution lies between these irresponsible and gay courtiers in the scènes galantes of Watteau and the virile peasant scenes in the "epic of toil" painted by Millet. In this room hangs his Academy picture, the Embarkation for Cythera, 982, L. wall, its colour unhappily almost worn away by over cleaning. His pupils, Pater (1696-1736), and Lancret (1690-1743), imitated his style, but were unable to soar to the higher plane of their master's genius. The former is represented by a Fête Champêtre, 689, R. wall: the latter by the Four Seasons, 462-465, R. wall; on the L. wall, 468, The Music Lesson, and 469, Innocence, both from the Palace of Fontainebleau. The Fête Galante dies with these artists whom we shall meet again better represented in the Salle La Caze. A famous contemporary of Pater and Lancret and first painter to the king was Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), grandson of Noël Coypel (1629-1707), and son of Antoine (1661-1722), both of whom are represented in the Louvre (Rooms XIV.-XVI., 157-166, and 167-175), His Perseus and Andromeda, 180, hangs R. of the entrance of this room. Charles André Vanloo (1705-1765), known as Carle Vanloo, (whose grandfather, Jacob Vanloo, is represented by two pictures, 2451, 2452, hung among the Dutch artists in Rooms XXIV. and XXVI.), enjoyed a great vogue in his day. His facile drawing and riotous colour temporarily enriched the language with a new verb—to vanlooter. 899, on the L. wall, A Hunting Picnic, is an admirable specimen of his supple talent. The flaunting sensuality of François Boucher (1703-1770), and of Jean Honoré Fragonnard (1732-1806), who lavished undoubted genius and ignoble industry in the service of the depraved boudoir tastes of the Pompadours and Du Barrys that ruled at Versailles, are seen here and in the Salle la Caze in all their eloquent vulgarity. That Boucher had in him the elements of a great painter may be inferred from the charming little sketch, 30, R. wall, Diana, and from the excellent interior, 50A, L. wall, Breakfast. His popular pastoral scenes, executed with amazing facility, with their beribboned shepherds and dainty shepherdesses, are exemplified in 32 and 33, R. wall, and 34 and 35, L. wall. Other works by this fluent servant of La Pompadour are 31, R. wall, Venus commanding Vulcan to forge arms for Æneas, and 36, L. wall, Vulcan presenting them to Venus. Boucher with all his faults was a grand decorative artist of extraordinary versatility, but the loose habits and careless methods of his later days are reflected in slovenly drawing and waning powers of invention. Reynolds, who visited him in Paris, noted the change, and describes how he found the artist at work on a large picture without studies or models of any kind, and on expressing his surprise, was told by Boucher that he did in earlier days use them, but had dispensed with them for many years. Fragonnard, who on his return from Rome, had set about some canvases in the grand traditional style of the earlier masters, of which an example may be seen in 290, R. wall, Coresus[218] and Callirrhoe, soon perceived that fame lay not in that direction, and devoted himself with exuberant talent and unconscionable facility to satisfy the frivolous tastes and refined animality of royal and courtly patrons. For it was a time when life was envisaged as a perpetual feast of enjoyment; a vision of roguish eyes and rouged and patched faces of sprightly beribboned and perfumed gallants, playing at shepherds and shepherdesses, of luxurious sensuality untrammelled by a Christianity minus the Ten Commandments, soon to be hustled away by the robust and democratic ideals of David. Another early work of Fragonnard in this room is 291, R. wall, The Music Lesson: some of his more characteristic productions we shall meet with in the Salle La Caze. A somewhat feeble protest against the prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) and Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) in their rendering of scenes of domesticity and of the pathos of simple lives. Chardin is well seen in this room in his laborious studies of still life, 89 and 90, L. wall, diploma works, and in 91 and 92, same wall, The Industrious Mother, and Grace before Meat. The last, a delightful work, won for the artist Diderot's powerful advocacy, and made him the popular interpreter of bourgeois intimacies. Other patient studies of still life are: 95, 96, 101, and 102; and R. wall 94. On the same wall hang, 97, The Ape as Antiquary, and 99, The Housewife. If Chardin touches the border-line between sentiment and sentimentality, Greuze (end wall) in 369, Return of the Prodigal; 370, A Father's Crime; and 371, The Undutiful Son, certainly oversteps it. Each of these became the theme of extravagant eulogy and didactic preachments by Diderot, his literary protagonist, who hailed him as a French Hogarth making Virtue amiable and Vice odious. An even more equivocal note is struck (L. wall) in 372A, The Milkmaid; and 372, The Broken Pitcher, where as Gautier acutely remarks, the artist contrives to make Virtue exhale the same sensual delight as Vice had done, and to suggest that Innocence will fall an easy victim to temptation. Madame Du Barry was much attracted by the latter picture and possessed a replica of it. Other works and studies, R. wall, by the artist are in this room. 368, end wall, Severus Reproaching Caracalla, was painted as a diploma picture. But Greuze essayed here a flight beyond his powers: to his profound disgust the Academy refused to admit him as an historical, and classed him as a genre painter. No survey of eighteenth century French painting would be complete without some reference to Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), the famous marine and landscape artist, whose paintings of the principal ports of France are hung in the Musée de la Marine on the second floor. Here we may distinguish among some score of his works: 921, The Bathers; 923, A Landscape; and 932, A Seascape: The Setting Sun, all on the L. wall.

Grace before Meat.
Chardin.
View larger image

It will now be opportune to make our way to the La Caze collection. We pass out from the end of this room and descend the Escalier Daru to the first landing; then ascend L. of the Victory of Samothrace to the Rotonde, pass direct through the Salle des Bijoux, and turn L. through Room II. to

Room I.

The La Caze collection. We note on the R. wall, an excellent Lenain, 548, A Peasant Meal, and some admirable portraits by Largillière, 484-491, of which the last, Portrait of the Artist, his Wife and Daughter, is a masterly work. Among the fine portraits by Rigaud, 791-795, that of the Young Duke of Lesdiguières, stands pre-eminent. We cross to the L. wall, where the rich collection of works by Watteau and his followers is placed: 983, Gilles, a scene from a Comedy, is one of Watteau's most precious pictures. Near it are: 984, The Disdainful; 986, Gathering in a Park. 985, Sly-Puss, a charming little picture, is followed by 988, 989, 990 and 992, four other studies. 991 is a carefully finished classical subject, Jupiter and Antiope. Near these are grouped: 470-473, four small works by Lancret, and 690-693, a like number of typical variations of the scène galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with wonderful sleight of hand, 292-301. The prevailing taste of his patrons may be judged by 295, L. wall, a sketch of one of his most successful and oftenest repeated subjects. On this same wall are a varied series of Chardin's studies of still life; a poor replica, 93, of his Grace before Meat; 104, The Ape as Painter, and other similar homely subjects.

Here also are two historical revolutionary portraits by Greuze: 378, The Girondin, Gensonné, and 379, the Poet-Deputy, Fabre d'Eglantine. Among the later Venetians are some Tintorets, R. wall: 1468, Susannah; 1469, Virgin and Child, Saints and Donor; 1470, Portrait of Pietro Mocenigo. Spanish art is represented by a fine but unpleasing Ribera, 1725, Boy with a Club-foot, and to Velasquez are ascribed: 1735, The Infanta Maria Teresa, Queen of Louis XIV.; 1736, Unknown Portrait; 1733, L. of entrance, Philip IV. 1945 and 1946, R. wall, the Provost and Sheriffs, and Jean de Mesme, President of the Parlement of Paris, are excellent examples of Philippe de Champaigne's austere and honest art.

From the studios of Boucher and of Comte Joseph Marie Vien (1716-1809) there came towards the end of the eighteenth century the virile, revolutionary figure of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who burst like a thunderstorm on the corrupt artistic atmosphere of the age, sweetening and bracing French art for half a century. Shocked by the slovenly drawing and vulgarity of the fashionable masters, and nursed on Plutarch, he applied himself to the study of the antique with a determination to rejuvenate the painter's art and establish a school, drawing its inspiration from heroic Greece and Rome. The successive phases of this potent but rather theatrical genius may be well followed in the Louvre. Neglecting for the present his earlier and pre-revolutionary works, we retrace our steps through Room II. noting in passing, 143, The Funeral at Ornans (a remarkable, realistic painting by a later revolutionary, to whom we shall return) and enter

Room III.

on the L. wall of which hangs 188, David's famous canvas: The Sabine Women, over which he brooded during his imprisonment in the Luxembourg after the Thermidorian reaction. David regarded this composition as the most successful expression of his theory of art. He studied whole libraries of antiquities and vainly imagined it to be the most "Greek" of all his works. Nothing, however, could be farther removed from the tranquil self-restraint and noble simplicity of Greek art than these self-conscious, histrionic groups of figures, without one touch of naturalness. The old preoccupation with classic models inherited from Poussin and the Roman school, still dominates even this revolutionary artist, who best displays his great genius when he forgets his theories and paints direct from life, as in 199, Mme. Récamier; and 198 (opposite wall), Pius VII. David's fierce Jacobinism (he had been a member of the terrible Committee of Public Safety) did not prevent him from worshipping the rising star of the First Consul, who, on assuming the Imperial crown, appointed him court painter and commissioned him to execute, 202A, Consecration of Napoleon I. at Notre Dame. In this grandiose historic scene, containing at least 150 portraits, the eye is at once drawn to the central actor who, having crowned himself, is placing a diadem on the kneeling Josephine's brow. The story runs, that David had originally drawn Pope Pius VII. with hands on knees. Bonaparte entering the studio, at once ordered the artist to represent the pontiff in the act of blessing, exclaiming: "I didn't bring him all this way to do nothing." For this picture and for the Distribution of the Eagles 180,000 francs were paid.

Madame Récamier.
David.
View larger image

Among the painters of the new school was Pierre Prud'hon (1758-1823), whose fame was made by two pictures, 747 and 756, on opposite walls, first exhibited in 1808: Justice and Divine Wrath pursuing Crime; and the graceful but somewhat invertebrate, Rape of Psyche. 746, an Assumption, was executed for the Tuileries Chapel in 1819. Other works by this master, whose Correggiosity is evident, hang in the room. Two famous pupils of David were François Pascal Simon Gérard (1770-1837) and Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835). By the former, known as the King of Painters and Painter of Kings, are: 328, Love and Psyche; and 332, a charming portrait of the painter Isabey and his daughter. By the latter, who owed the Imperial favour to the good graces of Josephine, are: 391, Bonaparte at Arcole; 392A, Lieut. Sarlovèze, a typical Beau-Sabreur portrait; and 388, Bonaparte visiting victims of the Plague at Jaffa, a striking composition, which advanced the artist to the front rank of his profession. Gros was the parent of the grand battle-pictures of the future; the painter of the Napoleonic epos. Young artists were wont to attach a sprig of laurel to this work in which the first signs of the coming storm of Romanticism are discerned.

The real champion of the movement was, however, Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), whose epoch-making picture, 338, The Raft of the Medusa, we now observe. This daring and passionate revolt from frigid classicism and preoccupation with a conventional antiquity was received but coldly by the professional critics on its appearance in 1819, though with enthusiasm by the people. Failing to find a buyer at Paris, its exhibition in England by a speculator, proved a financial success. 339-343, are military subjects of lesser range by this young innovator: 348, Epsom Races, was painted in England in 1821, three years before his premature death. To follow on with the French school we retrace our steps by the Rotonde and the Escalier Daru through Room XVI. to Room XV., L. of which, is the entrance to

Room VIII.

We revert to David whose Oath of the Horatii, 189, exhibited in 1785; and The Lictors bearing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 191, exhibited in the fateful year 1789, hang skied on the R. wall. These paintings, hailed with prodigious enthusiasm, revolutionised the fashions and tastes of the day and gave artistic expression to the coming political and social changes. 200A on the same wall, The Three Ladies of Ghent, was painted during the artist's exile in Belgium, for the old Terrorist was naturally not a persona grata to the restored Bourbons. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1857), the most famous of David's pupils, two of whose works we have seen in Room V., was the bitterest opponent of the new Romantic school and steadfast champion of his master's artistic ideal. To him more than to any other teacher is due the tradition of clean, correct and comely drawing that characterises the French school. It is somewhat difficult perhaps for a foreigner, observing the paintings by Ingres in this room, fully to comprehend[219] the reverence in which he is held by his countrymen. More than once Professor Legros has described to the present writer the thrill of emotion that passed through him and his fellow-students when they saw the aged master enter the École des Beaux Arts at Paris. If, however, the visitor will inspect the marvellous Ingres drawings in the Salle des Desseins (p. 394), he will appreciate his genius more adequately. The master's chief work in the present room is 417, R. wall, Apotheosis of Homer, a ceiling composition in which the arch-poet, laurel-crowned, has at his footstool seated figures symbolising the Iliad and the Odyssey, while the most famous poets and philosophers of the ages are grouped below him. The Odalisque, 422B, L. wall, is a characteristic nude, and a few other subject pictures will be noted. Among his portraits, 418, Cherubini; 428B, Bertier de Vaux, are generally regarded as masterpieces. Ingres despised colour, he never appealed to the emotions; his type of beauty is external and soulless, and he leaves the spectator cold.

Meanwhile the new Romantic school of brilliant colourists grew and flourished. Ary Scheffer, Delaroche, Delacroix, cradled in the storms of the revolutionary period, are all represented around us. The sentimental Ary Scheffer (1795-1858) is seen, L. wall, in 841, St. Augustine and St. Monica, an immensely popular but affected and feeble composition. Some portraits by this artist may be also found on the walls. Greater than he in breadth of composition, opulence of colour and artistic virtuosity, was Paul Delaroche, whose Death of Queen Elizabeth, 216, end wall, now asserts itself. His greatest work, however, and one which won him much fame, is his well-known Hemicycle in the Beaux Arts (p. 319). A twin spirit with Géricault was the impetuous Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who is more fully hung in this collection. Of the brilliant compositions which with indefatigable industry he poured forth in the heyday of the movement, we may note some excellent examples: 212, L. wall, The Wreck of Don Juan; 211, L. wall, Jewish Wedding at Morocco; and, 213, Capture of Constantinople by the Venetians and Franks. Earlier works are, 207, R. of entrance, Virgil and Dante nearing the City of Dis, executed with feverish energy in a few weeks for the Salon of 1822; and 208, L. of entrance, The Massacre of Scio, a glowing canvas painted in 1834. Jean Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), the Lesueur of the century, and like him uniting artistic genius and wide erudition with profound religious faith and true modesty, is represented most poorly of all; 284, Portrait of a Young Girl being the only example of this master's work here. Flandrin can only be truly appreciated in the church of St. Germain des Prés (p. 320). Before we turn to the Barbizon painters, we note Gros' fine composition, 389, L. wall, Napoleon at Eylau; and 390, R. wall, Francis I. and Charles V. visiting the Tombs at St. Denis.

With Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), the all-father of the modern French landscape school, and chief of the little band of enthusiasts who grouped themselves about him at Barbizon, we touch the greatest artistic movement of the age. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875), the ever-young and gentle spirit, the tenderest emanation of the century; Jean François Millet (1814-1875), the inspired and cultured peasant, mightiest of them all, grand and solemn interpreter of the fundamental and tragic pathos of human toil, ever discerning God's image in the most bent and ill-shapen of his creatures; Constant Troyon (1810-1865), the grandest animal painter of his day; Narcisse Diaz de la Peña (1809-1876), once a poor errand lad with a maimed leg, painter of forest depths and of the rich hues of summer foliage; Charles François Daubigny (1817-1878), latest of the little band, faithful and tender student of nature, painter of the countryside, of the murmuring waters of the Seine and the Oise—these once despised and rejected of men have long won fame and appreciation. No princely patronage shone on them in their early struggles nor smoothed their path; they wrought out the beauty of their souls under the hard discipline of poverty in loving and awful communion with Nature. They have revealed to us new tones of colour in the air, in the forest and the plain, and a new sense of the pathos and beauty in simple lives and common things.

827, L. wall, is Rousseau's Forest at Fontainebleau, a fine effect of setting sun and loving representation of his favourite tree, the oak; 829 and 830, R. wall, are also by this master. On the same wall 643, Millet's Spring, whose coloration at first sight may seem forced and strange, is absolutely faithful to Nature, as the writer who once observed similar colour effects in the forest can testify. 644, The Gleaners, "the three fates of poverty," is, next to the Angelus, the most popular of Millet's works. Corot, the Theocritus of modern painting, is represented by 138, the lovely and poetical Morning, 141, Souvenir de Mortefontaine and 141 bis, Castelgandolfo. R. and L. are, 889 and 890, two grand and massive compositions by Troyon: Oxen going to the Plough; and, The Return to the Farm: landscapes that smell of the very earth, and rendered with a marvellous breadth of style and penetrating sympathy; 184, end wall, and 185, R. of entrance, Grape Harvest in Burgundy, and Spring, are by Daubigny.

One of the most aggressive, ebullient and individual of painters was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), whose harshly realistic Funeral at Ornans we have seen in Room II. In 1855 Courbet, finding his works badly hung in the International Exhibition at Paris, erected a wooden shed near the entrance, where he exhibited thirty-eight of his large pictures, and defiantly painted outside in big letters—REALISM: G. COURBET. Strong of body and coarse in habit, this peintre-animal, as he was called, delighted to épater le bourgeois, and painted his studies of the nude with a brutal reality that stripped the female form of all the beauty and grace with which the superior ideality of man has invested it. This swashbuckler of realism, who despised the old masters, denounced imagination as humbug, and would have great men, railway stations, factories and mines painted as the vérités vraies, the saints and miracles of the age, was, however, often better than his artistic creed, and is here represented by some pleasing Fontainebleau pictures: L. wall, 147, Deer in Covert; R. wall, 66, Source of the Puits Noir, and L., 147 bis, The Waves, a most powerful and original interpretation of the sombre majesty of the sea. For in truth the creed of Realism, whether in literature or in art, involves a fallacy, and the creations of the imaginative and idealistic faculty in man are as real as those which result from the faculty of seeing mean things meanly and coarse things coarsely. Courbet's violent revolutionary nature nearly cost him his life in 1848 and involved him in the Commune in 1871, during which he presided over the destruction of the Vendôme Column (though he saved the Luxembourg and the Thiers' collection from the violence of the people). Poor Courbet, mulcted in enormous damages for his share in the overthrow of the Column, was ruined and died in exile. A more potent revolutionist, the arch-Impressionist Manet and founder of the school, has at length forced the portals of the Louvre and is represented by the celebrated Olympia, 204, around which so many fierce battles were waged in 1865.

We proceed to supplement this small collection of Barbizon pictures by a visit to the recently acquired (1903) Thomy-Thiéry and Chauchard collections. Returning to the Salle La Caze by Room XVI., and the Escalier Daru, we issue from it, pass direct before us and continue through the rooms devoted to exhibits of furniture (in Hall II. is a superb specimen of cabinet-work—Louis XV.'s writing-table). Turning R., we then enter a series of Cabinets, containing an admirable and most important collection of drawings, beginning with the early Italian masters and following on chronologically to the later Italians and to the German, Netherland and French masters. If the visitor have leisure he will be repaid by returning at some convenient time to study these carefully. But even the most hurried traveller should not omit to glance through them, and more especially at the lovely Da Vincis in the second cabinet and the Ingres drawings further along. Arrived at the end, we shall find on our L. a wooden staircase, which we mount and reach

Room XXXVII.

the Salle Française de 1830. Here are exhibited Delaroche's Princes in the Tower; Flandrin's Portrait of Mme. Vinet and some early works of the Barbizon school; Corot, 139, the Forum at Rome; 140, the Colosseum; 141F, The Belfry at Douai and others. Millet's sketch of the Church at Gréville, 641, was found in his studio after his death; another study is 642, The Bathers; 644A, The Seamstress, 642A is a portrait of the artist's sister-in-law. By Rousseau are two small landscapes, 831 and 832; and The Landes, 830, a masterpiece. Diaz and Dupré are seen in a number of studies and paintings.

Room XXXVIII.