diff options
Diffstat (limited to '41621-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 41621-0.txt | 1316 |
1 files changed, 1316 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/41621-0.txt b/41621-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e0e099 --- /dev/null +++ b/41621-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1316 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41621 *** + + MASTERPIECES + IN COLOUR + + EDITED BY + T. LEMAN HARE + + + + + WATTEAU + + 1684-1721 + + + + +"MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES + + ARTIST. AUTHOR. + + VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN. + REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND. + ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND. + GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN. + BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS. + ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO. + BELLINI. GEORGE HAY. + FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON. + REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS. + LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY. + RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY. + HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE. + TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY. + CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY. + GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD. + TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + LUINI. JAMES MASON. + FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY. + VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER. + LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL. + RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD. + HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY. + VIGÉE LE BRUN C. HALDANE MACFALL. + CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY. + FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + MEMLINC. W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE. + CONSTABLE. C. LEWIS HIND. + RAEBURN. JAMES L. CAW. + JOHN S. SARGENT. T. MARTIN WOOD. + LAWRENCE. S. L. BENSUSAN. + DÜRER. H. E. A. FURST. + MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER. + WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND. + COROT. SIDNEY ALLNUTT. + + _Others in Preparation._ + + + + +[Illustration: PLATE I.--A PASTORAL. Frontispiece + +(In the Louvre, Paris) + +The attribution to Watteau of this pretty pastoral has been questioned. +It is thus described in the Louvre catalogue, "At the foot of a knoll, a +shepherdess, with a yellow dress and a red bodice, sits turning to the +left, to listen to a shepherd, seen from the back, wearing pink breeches +and a violet vest, who plays on the flute; on the right a sheep and a +dog. Landscape in the background."] + + + + + Watteau + + BY C. LEWIS HIND + + ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT + REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR + + [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.] + + LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK + NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO. + + + + +CONTENTS + + Page + + Prologue 11 + + I. His Life 18 + + II. His Art 36 + + III. His Place in Art: Predecessors and Influence 48 + + IV. His Critics and Admirers 63 + + Epilogue 76 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Plate + + + I. A Pastoral Frontispiece + In the Louvre, Paris + + Page + + II. The Ball under a Colonnade 14 + In the Dulwich Gallery + + III. L'Indifférent 24 + In the Louvre, Paris + + IV. The Embarkment for Cythera 34 + In the Louvre, Paris + + V. Jupiter and Antiope 40 + In the Louvre, Paris + + VI. The Fountain 50 + In the Wallace Collection + + VII. Fête Champêtre 60 + In the National Gallery of Scotland + + VIII. The Music Lesson 70 + In the Wallace Collection + + + + +[Illustration] + +PROLOGUE + + +The apparition of Watteau in France in the early eighteenth century may +be likened to the apparition of Giotto in Italy in the early fourteenth. +Each was a genius; each broke away from the herd; each gave to the world +a new vision; each inspired a school. But there the resemblance ends. +Giotto's art was Christian, Watteau's Pagan; or, in other words, Giotto +lived in an age when the aim of art was to teach religion, +Watteau--well, his pictures were designed to delight. Giotto sought to +remind men of Christianity, to bring them humbly to their knees with +representations (marvellously fresh in those days when art was still +groping in the Byzantine twilight) of the life of the Founder of +Christianity, all its pathos, pity, and promise. Watteau gave joy and +exhiliration to a generation temporally dull and morose, chilled by the +academical art of the period, and apparently content with it. Watteau +appeared: the little world about him looked at his pictures and, what a +change! "Paris dressed, posed, picnicked, and conversed à la Watteau." + +Poor Watteau! He gave, he gives joy, but he was sad, discontented, +distrustful of himself and others. Sometimes Nature makes a great effort +and unites genius to the sane mind and the sane body, as in a Titian, a +Leonardo, a Shakespeare, a Goethe; more often she breathes genius into a +fugitive and precarious shell, as in a Keats, a Francis Thompson, a +Watteau, and ironically, or perhaps blessedly, gives them the phthisical +temperament so that they crowd youth, adolescence, and age into a burst +of hectic performances before they depart. + +[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE BALL UNDER A COLONNADE + +(In the Dulwich Gallery) + +This picture has suffered somewhat from time. But how delightful it is +still; how gracious and debonair are the two dancing figures; how +fascinating the colour in the woman's green striped rose skirt, and in +the man's blue butterfly dress. There are seventy-three figures in this +small canvas 1 ft. 7-3/4 ins. by 2 ft. 1/4 ins.] + +In the following pages the life and art of Watteau are considered, also +the curious effect of that life and art upon his biographers, also, +frightening word! his technique, his marvellous technique, which is a +veritable tonic to painters, who know the almost intolerable +difficulties of expression. + +His life? Why, it could be told in a page. His art? It is all stated in +any one of his significant pictures. He belonged to that class of +unfortunates who are never at rest in this world. Life to him was a +wandering to find home. Always beyond the hills, any place where he did +not happen to be at the moment, gleamed the spires of the City of +Happiness and Contentment, beckoning, waiting, rising against the sky +like the towers of New Jerusalem in Taddeo di Bartoli's "Death of the +Virgin." He fled from the boredom of his home in Valenciennes, yet he +died longing to return. + +Watteau revealed his temperament, on the wing as it were, in his +masterpiece "The Embarkment for Cythera." These ethereal and butterfly +pilgrims of love should be happy enough in their enchanted garden on +the border of the azure sea, but no! they are preparing lackadaisically +to depart, to be wafted in the ship with the rose-coloured sail to the +Island of Cythera, the abode of Venus, whom they worship for the joy of +worship, without any desire of possession. On those lovely shores they +will find no continuing city. Watteau knows that. Oh! but he was a cynic +was this Watteau whose palette was a rainbow, and whose vision was like +the flash of a kingfisher's wing in sunlight. Do you remember his "Fête +Champêtre" at Dresden, with the little exquisite figure of a woman +seated on the ground turning away from the spectator? Oh, her bright +hair, and the dress--I am a man; but what a dress! What skill and +knowledge in the drawing and painting of it! This little lady is +essentially Watteau, who loved pretty clothes and budding figures, and +whose drawing was as dainty as the frocks he composed; yet I do not +think she is the real Watteau. Cast your eye to the left of the picture +where stands an elderly, disdainful dandy. You meet this looker-on again +and again in Watteau's pictures; he is in the Fête Champêtre and yet +not of it; he knows how little all this affectation of gaiety really +signifies; how transient is this commerce with joy, and yet he lingers +there because in Watteau's world there is naught else to do. Yet he +himself was always doing--a great worker. He knew, like Zola, that work +is the anodyne for the "malady of the infinite" or of self, whichever +you like to call it; but he had no wish to teach. He used his art to +escape from the world to a dream-realm, where the sun always shines and +where Monday morning never comes. + +What was he like, this "exquisite little master," restless, changeable, +obstinate, irritable, and misanthropic, whose influence on art has been +so great? In his portrait of himself engraved by Boucher, the slight, +nervous figure, alert, on the point of a petulant outbreak, looks a +genius, but a man "gey ill to live with." I have a keener if a sadder +vision of him in a portrait drawn by himself, "frightfully thin, almost +deathlike." It is called "Watteau Laughing." Frightfully thin, almost +deathlike, himself drawn by himself--laughing. That is Watteau. + + + + +I + +HIS LIFE + + +It should be an easy task to state the salient facts in the life of a +world-renowned painter who lived but thirty-seven years, and who died in +1721; but until the discovery by the brothers De Goncourt, in a +second-hand book-shop, of the life of Watteau, written by his friend the +Comte de Caylus and read by him before the French Academy in 1748, our +knowledge had to be gleaned mainly from the notes to catalogues of his +collected works. + +The little Flemish town of Valenciennes was ceded to France in +1677--seven years before a son was born to Jean Philippe Watteau and his +wife Michelle Lardenoise. This son was baptized on the 10th of October +1684 and given the names of Jean Antoine. Jean Philippe, his father, was +a tiler, desirous no doubt that his son should succeed him in his own +sensible occupation; but discovering Jean Antoine's predilection for +covering everything he could find with drawings, grotesque and +otherwise, of the strolling players and mountebanks that passed through +the little town, he submitted to fate and placed him with the official +painter of the municipality, named Gerin. Under him Watteau painted "La +Vraie Gaieté," his first important attempt at a picture. This was +followed by "Le Retour de Guingette," and then his master died. The year +was 1701, the age of Watteau seventeen. + +It may be said that with Gerin's death Watteau's boyhood died. His +father, seeing little return for his expenditure, refused to continue to +pay for instruction. Life at home became unbearable to the sensitive +youth to whom his calling was as the call of the sea to the sailor-born. + +If there was so much of interest in Valenciennes for a painter, what +might not the capital offer of spectacular delights? So one morning +Antoine left home and walked to Paris, where he found work with Métayer, +a scene-painter; but Métayer's patronage soon ceased, and Watteau found +himself alone in Paris. Now began his period of penury and the making of +the master; also probably, through hunger and cold, the engendering of +the disease, consumption, which was to force his genius to its rapid +development and from which he was to die. Paris, the marvellous Paris of +his dreams, was beautiful, but without heart. Watteau strolled by her +river's bank, crept for shelter into the great church of Notre-Dame, +wandered out again, and at last found work of a kind that would at least +keep him from starvation. + +On the Pont Notre-Dame there were shops, exposing daubs, painted by the +dozen, for sale. Necessity compelled and Watteau sought and obtained +employment at one of these picture manufactories. He proved himself a +facile workman, and soon his task became so easy that he could paint +from memory the head of St. Nicolas, which it was his duty to repeat +over and over again. The other journeymen artists painted skies, +draperies, heads, hands, saints, angels, to each a set task, and the +payment was proportionate to their skill. Watteau's remuneration for the +week's work amounted to three livres--a little more than three +francs--and a daily bowl of soup! A less determined youth than this +weakling might have succumbed or renounced his ambitions, but Watteau +worked and waited patiently until he could extricate himself from these +uncongenial surroundings. + +The future painter of dainty and luxurious visions of wealth and +breeding was ambitious, if miserable. + +He forgot to be hungry, because his hours of leisure from the tyranny of +the picture manufactory were filled with the joy of drawing incessantly +everything that passed before his eyes, from the turn of a head to the +flutter of a tempestuous petticoat. A bowl of soup for dinner is an +excellent aid to work, and this period no doubt intensified Watteau's +love of work and of Nature. The lifeless things he had to copy at the +manufactory sent him into the realms of the real, and his great gift of +"seeing" was storing up for him innumerable observations which were to +be the structure of his future fancies. + +One lucky day Watteau met Claude Gillot, the decorative painter, who on +seeing his drawings invited him to live in his house and become his +pupil and assistant. So ended his period of absolute want; henceforward +Watteau began to find himself, even as disease had already found and +marked him. + +Claude Gillot's influence upon the formation of Watteau's taste and +talent must not be underrated. He was a man of much ability, quite +unlike the cold and formal painters of his time. His was a gay art: the +mythology of lovers and nymphs, and the light life of the Italian +Comedy--Pantaloon, Columbine, and Pierrot--"strange motley--coloured +family, clothed in sunshine and silken striped." Gillot is certainly one +of Watteau's earliest inspirers: his revolt against convention (even if +revolt be too strong a word) influenced Watteau to the end of his life. +With this happy _rencontre_ began the serious development of Watteau's +art. Life, no longer sordid, became luxurious in thought and +application. Supersensitive, the artist mind of the pupil touched and +extracted the taste of his master, improved upon it, and strengthened +its own tendency for all that was dainty, elegant, and whimsical. +Gillot's was a good influence; a capable craftsman, he gave freely, but +the jealous side of his nature soon recognised in his intuitive pupil +not only an adaptation of his own methods, but also an improvement upon +them. In Watteau, no doubt, he saw his own faults, but he also saw his +own virtues made finer and rarer. Whatever the reason, over-much +similarity of temperament, professional jealousy, or irritability on +Gillot's side; ingratitude, sensitiveness, fickleness, or a sense of +superiority on Watteau's, this mutually helpful friendship of five years +ended abruptly. We may never know the cause of the quarrel, but we do +know that Watteau, although he always warmly praised Gillot's work and +admitted his personal indebtedness, refused to be questioned in regard +to their disagreement, and was silent about it even to his most intimate +friends. Curious to relate, Gillot ceased to paint when Watteau left +him, and became an etcher and engraver. Watteau certainly dated the +knowledge of his own talent from his association with Gillot, his first +real master. + +[Illustration: PLATE III.--L'INDIFFÉRENT + +(In the Louvre, Paris) + +Through Watteau's dream-world trips "L'Indifférent," rainbow-hued, +mercurial, his indifference assumed, not troubling to conceal the sad +thoughtfulness that lurks in his expression. Who can describe Watteau's +colour or his fashion of trickling on the paint? The technique of +"L'Indifférent" is marvellous.] + +Claude Audran, to whom he went in 1708 at the age of twenty-four (taking +his friends Pater and Lancret with him), was keeper or rather doorkeeper +of the Luxembourg Palace, and a painter of the ornamental decorations +then in vogue. Garlands and arabesques were his speciality. He taught +his system of decoration to Watteau, who, sensitive to every artistic +sensation, gleaned perhaps from Audran the sense of rhythmic line and +made it one of his own chief characteristics. + +Living in the Luxembourg Palace he had access to the pictures; he +studied them, especially the works of Rubens. Restlessly he would roam +the gardens of the Palace, enchanted and inspired by the figures +wandering down the paths and grouping themselves under the great trees. +Watteau, dallying in the gardens, remembering the theatrical methods of +Métayer, the subjects of Gillot, the flexibility and fancy of Audran, +the daring of the great Rubens, began to develop into an original. +Gradually, too, he grew restless, feeling that he was not wholly free to +paint his dreams. A vague nostalgia persuaded his artistic temperament +that it was his home he wanted to see--Valenciennes and his people. Be +that as it may, this was the reason he gave for leaving Audran, who had +always been kind and appreciative; although the wily painter of garlands +and arabesques tried to dissuade his _protégé_ from painting pictures, +fearing to lose so able an assistant in his own ornamental work. Before +parting from Audran, Watteau made his first real essay in his second +manner, a picture of "The Departure of the Troops," a reminiscence of +the life at Valenciennes. This work he sold to the dealer Sirois for +sixty livres, and with the money he started for home, despite Audran's +protests. + +Valenciennes at that time was gay with soldiers and _dames galantes_ and +Watteau painted several military pictures--groups marked with truth, yet +full of grace; he also filled his sketch-books with incomparable +drawings. But he could not long resist the call of Paris. Valenciennes +seemed to have grown smaller, less interesting. The painter fretted in +the narrow sphere of the provincial town; once again his wayward feet +were set towards the capital. He arrived in Paris in 1709, and before +long persuaded himself that he would like to visit Rome. With this end +in view he competed for the _Prix de Rome_, but succeeded only in +obtaining second prize. Soon recovering from the disappointment, he +painted a companion picture to the work he had sold to Sirois for sixty +livres, but for the companion he asked and obtained two hundred and +sixty livres. These two pictures he borrowed from Sirois and hung in a +room, where he knew they would be seen by the Academicians as they +passed from one apartment to another. The painter De la Fosse, impressed +by their colour and quality, paused and asked the name of the author. +He was informed that they were the work of a young and unknown man who +craved intercession with the king for a "pension" in order that he might +study in Italy. De la Fosse sent for Watteau, whom he found modest, shy, +and deprecatory of his work. Watteau stated his desire to study abroad. +He was told--the episode in these days seems hardly credible--to his +astonishment and joy, that there was no need for him to study with any +one; that he was already master; that he would honour the Academy if he +would consent to become a member, and that he had only to present +himself to be enrolled. This he did and was duly elected, the +inauguration fee in consideration of his circumstances being reduced to +one hundred livres. And so in 1712, at the age of twenty-eight, the poor +unknown, who failed to win the first prize in the _Prix de Rome_, was +made free of the Academy, was given the new title of _peintre des Fêtes +Galantes_, and became, almost in a bound, famous. + +Ill and moody, he worked incessantly at his drawings and the pictures +which were making it possible for him eventually to produce his +masterpiece, "The Embarkment for Cythera." Always dissatisfied with his +work, he did not ratify his election to the Academy by sending in his +diploma picture until 1717. The patience of the Academy being exhausted, +he was reminded of the rule that each newly elected member must present +a picture. In a brilliant dash he finished "The Embarkment for Cythera," +which was accepted on August 28, 1717, as his _pièce de reception_. + +No longer was there poverty to contend with. Success followed success. +The Academy had set its seal upon him. Everybody wanted Watteaus. In +1716, the year before he sent in his _pièce de reception_, he had gone +to live with M. de Crozat, whose beautiful house in the Rue Richelieu +and his country mansion at Montmorency were filled with works of the old +masters, drawings and paintings. We are told that Crozat possessed four +hundred pictures of the Venetian and Flemish schools, thousands of +drawings, of which two hundred and twenty-nine were by Rubens, one +hundred and twenty-nine by Van Dyck, one hundred and six by Veronese, +and one hundred and thirteen by Titian. In these luxurious houses of his +admiring friend and patron, Watteau might have lived with delight and +profit. The park of the country house at Montmorency became the +background which inspired his Pastorals, the perfection of his art; this +perfection the study of the old masters aided somewhat, no doubt, but +Watteau was now master himself, and in knowing them confronted his +peers. Here too, for the first time, he met his models as an +equal--untrammelled. This man of "medium height and insignificant +appearance," whose eyes showed "neither talent nor liveliness," was on +familiar and friendly terms with the company gathered at M. de Crozat's +house--ladies of fashion, from whom in old days he tried to steal for +his note-book a line of neck, a turn of wrist, furtively and hastily, +asked nothing better than to be party to his pictures in gardens gay +with mondaines, male and female. He observed and painted. We can almost +hear the frou-frou of their garments in his pictures. + +M. de Julienne, another patron, was full of enthusiasm and eager to +possess his works; it was for him that Watteau painted the replica, +carried farther and more finished, of the "Embarkment for Cythera," +which is now at Potsdam. All the world smiled upon Watteau, but the +world's favours only made the more capricious and melancholy this +incurable brooder over the unattainable. Loving no woman as he loved his +art, he longed for tenderness, yet was afraid of it. Cold, shy, +fastidious, reserved, ill, he shunned society now that it sought him, +and drugged himself with work as a refuge from ennui and from nostalgia +for no earthly country. + +He left M. de Crozat's house, independence being more vital to him than +luxury, and found a companion in Nicolas Vleughels, whom he had met at +M. de Julienne's. The two lived together until 1718. Once more the +desire for solitude assailed him. M. de Julienne, who seems always to +have been his devoted friend, admonished the ailing painter and begged +him to be more careful about his material welfare, as indeed all his +other friends did, to whom he retorted, "At the worst there is the +hospital; no one is refused there!" His friends advised him to travel. +Of all places he chose London, and arrived on these shores in 1719, +finding lodgings at Greenwich. + +In London his physician, Dr. Mead, presented him to the king, for whom +he painted four pictures, which are now at Buckingham Palace. His health +showed no improvement, and the English climate aggravated his illness. +In a letter to Gersaint he wrote of "_Le mauvais air qui regne à Londres +à cause de la vapeur du charbon de terre dont on fait usage_." + +Dr. Mead, aware no doubt that his condition was hopeless, advised him to +return to Paris. This he did, and settled in the house of Gersaint, +son-in-law to Sirois, for whom he painted the delightful picture called +"Gersaint's Sign,"--"just to limber up his fingers," as he expressed it. + +Restlessness again seized him. He believed that he would recover in the +country. His friend the Abbé Haranger asked M. le Fèvre to find him +accommodation in a house at Nogent, and thither he went in 1721. + +But the end was near, and Watteau, realising it, proceeded to set his +house in order and to make amends for his shortcomings of friendship and +of temper, the importance of which the dying man magnified. He sent for +his townsman and pupil, Pater, asked forgiveness for having in the +past retarded his advancement through fear of rivalry, and made ample +amends by giving Pater daily instruction and revealing to him his +intimate knowledge of his craft. Pater said, after Watteau's death, that +this was "the only fruitful teaching he had ever received." His townsman +no doubt brought back to the dying painter thoughts of home. Ever +hopeful, like all consumptives, he was sure that a change of air would +cure him! + +[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE EMBARKMENT FOR CYTHERA + +(In the Louvre, Paris) + +In 1717 Watteau finished, after a long delay, his _pièce de reception_ +for the Academy, the famous first study for "The Embarkment for +Cythera." This picture was painted in seven days, and elaborated, but +hardly improved, in the Potsdam version. Behold these ethereal and +butterfly pilgrims of love preparing lackadaisically to be wafted in the +ship with the rose-coloured sail to the abode of Venus. On those lovely +shores they will find no continuing city. Watteau knows that.] + +He instructed Gersaint to sell everything, and to make preparations for +the journey home. He made the journey home, but not to Valenciennes. He +died suddenly in Gersaint's arms on July 18, 1721. + +He was artist to the end. "Take away that crucifix," he said to the +priest; "it pains me. How could an artist dare to treat my Master so +shockingly." It is said that one of the last remarks of this sensitive, +ill-balanced, disease-stricken man of genius was to beg the Abbé +Haranger to forgive him for having used his face and figure for his +picture of "Gilles." + +So at the age of thirty-seven he escaped finally from reality--that +reality which his art had always avoided so delightfully and so +convincingly. + + + + +II + +HIS ART + + +Watteau's art appeals to everybody, and fascinates all who study it +attentively. The lovely decorative pictures tell their own story; and +for those who require more than a story in a picture, there is his +craftsmanship, his originality, his personality; the delight of +comparing one alluring achievement with another, and the interest in +noting the inferiority of his followers--Lancret, Pater, and the +rest--who annexed his manner but who could not annex the flame of his +genius. Visit the Dulwich Gallery, study and enjoy Watteau's "Ball under +a Colonnade," then go to Hertford House and examine Pater's copy of +Watteau's "Ball." The fire of genius and glory of colour are gone. It is +as stolid as Paul Potter's "Bull." + +I have an especial affection for "The Ball under a Colonnade" at +Dulwich; for until the regal gift of Hertford House to the nation, with +its nine Watteaus, this little "Ball under a Colonnade," and in a +lesser degree its companion picture at Dulwich, a "Fête Champêtre," were +my first wanderings in the lyric land of Watteau. The National Gallery +which, before the present Director came into office, treated the French +school with an indifference that almost amounted to disdain, does not +possess a single Watteau. Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Cambridge own examples +of varying merit, and there is one in that treasure-house of rare and +strange things, Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is +probable that the nation possesses yet another example. "A Watteau in +the Jones' Collection" was the surprising heading of an article in a +recent number of the _Burlington Magazine_ by Mr. Claude Phillips, who +claims that the little Watteau-like picture called "The Swing" in the +Jones' Collection at South Kensington is a veritable Watteau. + +Germany is rich in Watteaus, with ten at Potsdam and five in Berlin. +France, which should be the richest, is poorer in number and importance +than either Germany or England, although there are ten examples in the +Louvre, including the original "Embarkment for Cythera," +"L'Indifférent," and "Jupiter and Antiope." + +[Illustration: PLATE V.--JUPITER AND ANTIOPE + +(In the Louvre, Paris) + +"Jupiter and Antiope" suggests Titian and Rubens filtered through +Watteau. This nude studied from life, not painted from his drawings, is +more laboured than his other pictures, but the loss of spontaneity in +the colour is compensated by the truth and beauty of the abandon of the +beautiful limbs in repose. Brown Jupiter, blonde Venus--no attenuation +of the truth here--lights loaded, browns rich with pearly reflections on +the fair skin.] + +Let us return for a moment to "The Ball under a Colonnade" at Dulwich, +which from its own inherent charm and from its position in that quiet +and reposeful gallery may fitly serve as an introduction to the art of +Watteau. Take a chair--they permit it at Dulwich--and seat yourself +before it. The picture has suffered, alas! somewhat from Time, which has +almost obliterated the fairy-like fountain. But how charming the picture +is still; how gracious and debonair are the two dancing figures; how +fascinating the broken colour in the woman's green-striped, rose skirt +and in the man's blue butterfly dress. There are seventy-three figures +in the small canvas, 1 ft. 7-3/4 in. by 2 ft. 1/4 in. You can almost +hear the musicians playing, the fall of water from the fading fountain, +the rustle of leaves, and the ripple of laughter. Think of the painters, +dead and gone, who have loved this "Ball under a Colonnade." Constable +was one of them. He was not afraid to praise a picture when he liked it. +Listen to this--Constable's criticism of a copy that Leslie had made of +Watteau's "Ball." He asked Constable what he thought of the copy, +and the great man answered:-- + +"Your copy looks colder than the original, which seems as if painted in +honey--so mellow, so tender, so soft, and so delicious; so I trust yours +will be; but be satisfied if you but touch the hem of his garment, for +this inscrutable and exquisite thing would vulgarise even Rubens and +Paul Veronese." + +The amount of work done by Watteau, accused by his friend De Caylus of +idleness, was enormous. A chronological list is almost impossible, +because many of his works are lost or were destroyed during the +Revolution. + +Watteau painted anything and everything, during his connection with +Gillot and Audran, from pictures to powder-boxes, never considering that +his art was too high and lofty for the embellishment of any object +suitable for painting upon. His work may be divided into three classes: +first manner--Italian Comedy and decorative work; second--Military +Scenes; third and finest manner--The Pastorals. + +As a boy he produced some military pictures, and he reverted to them +while with Audran. It is difficult to place chronologically any given +subject, for while we may arbitrarily classify a picture as belonging to +one period or another, his Italian Comedy scenes, belonging to the first +period, persisted to the end. + +With the exception of his boyish endeavours, inspired by Teniers before +he visited Paris, his first manner was almost entirely decorative, and +included paintings on screens, coach panels, and furniture. The military +pictures belong to a short period dating from his success in selling +them to Sirois and their approval by the Academy. They are few in +number--thirteen only were engraved. + +The year 1712 was the beginning of his recognition and the end of +poverty. Between this date and 1716 he produced his marvellous nudes. Of +all Watteau's pictures the nudes seem undoubtedly to have been painted +from Nature and not from drawings. They are too true to life, too well +observed. All his other pictures, even the greatest of his Pastorals, +have the air of being imagined. His drawings were his documents, and +these, like the nudes, were of course made direct from Nature. The +fantasy of his pictures is founded on fact, but it is fantasy which sees +only what it wishes to see--the rhythmic line, the rainbow colour, the +happy melancholy. + +The year 1716 was big with significance to Watteau; he awoke in his own +land--dream-land of his Pastorals. Then he began to live, and there were +before him but five short years of life. He never again left this land +of fantasy--except when, on his return from London, he painted +"Gersaint's Sign," that model of modishness and grace, painted in eight +mornings, representing Gersaint's shop where _élégantes_ buy +masterpieces from shop-keepers as elegant as themselves. This picture, +which is now in the possession of the German Emperor, has for some +mysterious reason been divided into two portions. + +In 1717, as I have related, he finished after a long delay his _pièce de +reception_ for the Academy, the famous first study for the "Embarkment +for Cythera." What can be said of this picture, or of the more finished +replica at Potsdam, that has not already been said a score of times? It +is referred to and described in the Prologue to this book as one of his +significant pictures. It moves in a rhythm of life, of love, of colour; +rose reds, golden yellows, faint purples, greys of every gamut, meeting +and melting--one perfect whole, and over all is a lingering regret of "I +know not what." This picture was painted in seven days, and elaborated, +but hardly improved, in the Potsdam version. + +Turn from this consummate work to his early "La Vraie Gaieté," inspired +by Teniers, which in essence is the same picture as "The Ball under a +Colonnade" at Dulwich, and even the "Amusements Champêtres" and the +"Champs Elysées" at Hertford House. The clothes are changed, the +handling has become lighter and more accomplished--that is all. The +observer, that saturnine, detached, cynical figure, who appears in so +many of Watteau's pictures, is already present in "La Vraie Gaieté." +'This solitary figure is, as I have already said, the symbol of Watteau +himself, ever aloof, ever contemptuous, even when sharing in the scenic +world of Watteau, where life, if not really true, is certainly not +false. His people are lotus-eaters, who are come to a land where it is +always afternoon, where "the charmed sunset lingered low adown in the +red west ... and many a winding vale and meadow, set with slender +galingale." A mild melancholy possesses the inhabitants of this +dream-world, for they are happy and yet a little sad, musing on what can +never be. Through this dream-world "L'Indifférent" trips lightly, +typical of Watteau, rainbow-hued, mercurial, his indifference assumed, +not troubling to conceal the sad thoughtfulness that lurks in his +expression. We do not believe in his snapping fingers and his jaunty +air. What colour are his beautiful garments? Rosy white, greeny white, +lavendar white with rose red knots, and rose red mantle lined with +bluebell blue, white frills falling over the sensitive hands, his +butterfly decorations rustling as he passes--"L'Indifférent." The +technique of the picture, in its modern chromatic use of colour, is +marvellous. The hues of the rainbow meander through it all. Who can +describe Watteau's colour or his fashion of trickling on the paint, as +fascinating in its way as the method of Frans Hals, whose seduction is +"the way he paints," not what he paints? Hals, the great master of +character, frank, open, plebeian, is akin in technique to Watteau. What +æsthetic joy these masters of technique give us as we study the +manipulation of their paint. Hals flicks on his ruffles frankly, +joyously--brutally. Watteau, seemingly just for joy in the colour, +trickles--there is no other word for it--one luscious colour over +another, like liquid jewels embedded in gold. One may stand for hours at +Hertford House in front of any of his pictures and quite forget the +subject in delight of the workmanship. + +Consider "The Music Lesson." In colour it is rose and white. The man's +garments are neither rose, nor white, nor yellow, and yet they are all +three. The rose of the woman's rosette repeats the carmines of her +complexion. The composition is charming. The movement, pose, and costume +of the players is the same as the musicians in the "Musical Party," also +at Hertford House. Delightful too in "Gilles and His Family." Gilles is +dressed in thin, white, supple satin, lined with rose and striped with +faint blue, and his white mantle is lined with blue. The dark bias of +the guitar binds the group of people together, all of whom it touches or +crosses. A seated woman nurses a little black and white dog, while a +child nestles up to her, peeping beneath the guitar; the faces are more +alert and smiling than usual, and the picture, although less pearly than +"The Music Lesson," is not less beautiful in colour. + +"Jupiter and Antiope" at the Louvre suggests Titian and Rubens filtered +through Watteau. This nude studied from life, not painted from his +drawings, is more laboured than his other pictures, but the loss of +spontaneity in the colour is compensated by the truth and beauty of the +abandon of the beautiful limbs in repose. Brown Jupiter, blonde +Venus--no attenuation of the truth here--lights loaded, browns rich, +with pearly reflections on the fair skin. + +The attribution of the delightful "Pastoral" at the Louvre, although +generally accepted, has been questioned. The elegant little lady +shepherdess is in rose red, a red that seems to belong only to Velazquez +and to Watteau; she sits watching, not the flock of one sheep and one +wondering dog, no! she is listening to the Arcadian shepherd playing his +flute. Very Watteau-like is the landscape. + +Turn from these little works to the larger pictures, such as "The Return +from the Chase," painted for his patron M. de Julienne towards the end +of his life--a marvel of rhythmic line and tone; and to "Les Amusements +Champêtres"--a bouquet of colour like no other colour, old rose, old +blue, silvery yellow, prune purple, all partaking one of the other. In +the distance people are sitting and standing and dancing in colours +unrivalled. + +So we may pass through the whole range of his production finding +constantly some new surprise of colour, some new mastery in the weaving +of his webs. Call Watteau, if you like, a painter of the frivolous side +of life, but you must also call him one of the few originals whose +pictures vivify because they stimulate, and because they excite interest +in his method which marked a new epoch in art. "We consider Watteau," +says his countryman, M. Camille Mauclair, "the most original and most +representative master of French art; Watteau, Delacroix, and Monet are +the three beacons of that art." + +[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE FOUNTAIN + +(In the Wallace Collection) + +One of his smaller pictures, 17-1/2 ins. high by 13-1/4 wide, called +also "La Cascade." It attracts attention by reason of the somewhat +theatrical way in which the dainty silhouette of the figures is set +against the opening between the trees. But how charming are these +figures bathed in light and mirrored in the pool that ripples at their +feet.] + + + + +III + +HIS PLACE IN ART: PREDECESSORS AND INFLUENCE + + +If I were asked what new thing Watteau gave to the world, I would answer +that he humanised the art of his country and century, and drew men +from pomposity to his own intimate and dream-like reality under the +symbols of gallantry and masquerade. He was also the pioneer of +impressionism, the discoverer of the decomposition of tones, and the +link, to quote M. Mauclair, that connects Ruysdael and Claude Lorrain +with Turner, Monticelli, and Claude Monet. + +The eighteenth century in France which he inaugurated is a sunlit garden +full of flowers compared to a cold court in some prison palace, to which +the seventeenth century of academic imitation of the lesser Italians may +be likened. Correct, pompous, lifeless, Le Brun, Le Sueur, and his other +forerunners, have left us little but a sense of boredom, a warning how +not to paint, and the assurance that, unless a school is founded on a +personal study of Nature, that school dies with its founder. The +decadence of Italian art is said to date from Raphael. Certain it is +that bombastic art dates from the greatest artist--Michelangelo. The +father of the chromo is Correggio. + +Watteau, a "little master," as some are pleased to call him, has had an +influence on art that persists to-day, an influence intimate and human. +Certainly he made life more beautiful. Departing for Cythera with +Watteau's dames and gallants means more to us of intelligence in art +than acres of classic pictures of gods, temples and heroes untouched by +the warmth of personality and incisiveness of observation. We are +fatigued and unconvinced in the rooms at the Louvre devoted to Le +Sueur's series of pictures depicting the life of St. Bruno. We are glad +before the little earnest portraits of Corneille, Clouet, and Fouquet +hanging in the next room. The love of beauty and the simple religion of +the Primitives is transferred to us. We feel it to be true that "Nothing +can wash the balm from an anointed king," in looking at the portrait of +Charles I., king, dandy, and gentleman, touched as it is with Van Dyck's +great gift of personal vision; but Le Sueur and Le Brun say nothing, +except perhaps to make us grudge the wall space their pictures occupy. + +Watteau is the lure that led France back to Nature; his real-unreal +pleasances are the gardens where grew the flowers (slips from older +stock, if you will) called Modern Movement, Impressionism, and +Pointillism. "The Embarkment for Cythera" has been called the first +impressionist picture. Once again through Watteau the natural art of the +North prevailed over the art of the South as in the time of the +Burgundian Franco-Flemish renaissance. + +Watteau is true successor to his masters Teniers and Rubens. Teniers' +subjects may be said to persist to the end of his short but full +artistic life, and his _Fêtes Galantes_, those perfect expressions of +his matured art, are Teniers' subjects made his own; but the uncouth +Flemish peasants become graceful dames and gallants. Teniers' boors +rollick through the day and night boisterously, leaving nothing for +to-morrow, unless it be a headache. Watteau's dames and gallants are +touched with happy melancholy. Their light malady of heartache for +unattained desires is obviously more beautiful pictorially than the +headaches of hilarious boors. + +Your true artist has delicate _antennæ_ and is sensitive to everything +that he sees and feels; but when he retires within himself, the memory +of all that he felt, of warmth or cold, fine or unfine, returns to him. +The influence of many men Watteau felt. I place them in the order of +their influence--Teniers, Rubens, Gillot, Audran, Titian, and Veronese. +The example of each taught him something, but the artist in him selected +ingredients of their genius and combined them into a new and original +one--his own. + +The wholesome influence of Rubens on painters has been enormous. He did +not make imitators, but he inspired many great men to "get the look of +their own eyes," not the look of his; robust, normal, and generous of +nature, the contagion of his truth is so immediate that all who come in +contact with it must look at Nature unblinkingly, and receive a fresh +impulse from his bravery. Velazquez was a better painter after he had +talked and worked on the hillside above the Escorial with Rubens; Van +Dyck was his pupil, and Watteau is of his artistic progeny. The feminine +taste of Velazquez, Van Dyck, and Watteau was made more virile by +contact with Rubens, whose taste many of us may condemn, and whose +influence for good we are so apt to overlook. + +From Titian Watteau borrowed warmth, and from Veronese coolness of +colour; Gillot, the decorative painter, showed him his own inherent +power; Audran, too, helped him, and the Luxembourg Gardens and Gallery +aided his artistic development. + +No doubt the great artist might be shut in a cell, and still his genius +would bring forth its work unnourished by influence or propinquity to +other talents; it might even show a rarer quality. But ninety-nine in a +hundred derive from their forebears, and it is interesting to follow the +career of a great man, to pursue the influences that formed him, and to +see in the end how his individuality asserted itself. It were churlish +in any student and lover of Watteau not to know and acknowledge the +happy effect upon him of the masters he admired. + +Watteau was of Flemish origin, for Valenciennes, where he was born, +became French only seven years before his birth. Conquest cannot in +seven years change the characteristics of a people. Watteau's art is +consequently distinctly Flemish, but modified by French taste; he became +an artistic composite of Flemish technical sanity and French +intelligence and fervour. He was an exotic that shot up in the +forcing-house of his exacting genius, extracting vitality from Rubens +the fertiliser, inspiration from Teniers, colour from Titian and +Veronese, and encouragement from Gillot and Audran. Genius is a great +gift lent by Nature to the few; but Nature is inexorable in demanding +the return of the fruits of the gift, as if man were but a casket for +its safe keeping; when the end comes he must have proved his worth as +custodian, be the time long, as in the case of a Da Vinci or a +Michaelangelo, or short, as in the case of a Raphael or a Watteau. + +The shorter the time given for the justification of the gift the +stronger often is the capacity for effort, so that the sum total of the +achievement of the short life often seems to exceed that of the long +life. + +Michaelangelo lived to be very old. When this "greatest artist" died he +left his work unfinished. Raphael died young, but his achievement was +prodigious. Watteau's short sad life of illness and discontent produced +more than twelve hundred items. + +Watteau began his artistic career influenced in technique by the +_petits toucheurs_, the sympathetic little masters of the Netherlands to +whom he was kin (M. de Julienne calls him in his catalogue "_peintre +Flamand de L'Academie Royale_"). Soon the big touch of Rubens intrudes +and the technique broadens; next Titian obsesses him, and the shadows +under the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens as he watches grow warmer to +the watcher, and colour begins to glow; Veronese intervenes, and cooler +tones are apparent--and these three great masters of breadth and truth, +of warmth and temperament, of chill stateliness, combine in the mind's +eye of Watteau. The pleasant places in the gardens of the Luxembourg are +peopled with ladies and gallants and "little ladies" and "little +gallants," and, as he walks and watches, Teniers' subjects flit across +his vision, and the forms of Rubens' rosy and ample matrons. + +How would Titian have painted yonder dark woman of the warm colour and +deep red hair walking down the glade? The leaves on the trees rustle in +the summer air. Light flickers on silken frocks, cold reflections on +green. Something whispers to his discontent "paint the scene as you see +it," draw the lady sitting on the grass, her back toward you, in the +shot silk frock of bronze and green, and the other standing near, tall +and elegant, in rose and yellow. What colour is it? "The colour of a +sun-browned wood-nymph's thigh." And her hands behind her back. What +hands! "Hands must be better painted than heads, being more difficult." + +Beyond in the gardens fountains and little children play; tall trees +throw shadows on beauty pouting, the indifferent lover tip-toes away, +not so indifferent as he would have the pouting one believe. There is +movement toward the gates of the Palace Gardens; children run tripping +over tiny dogs led by lute string ribbons; soldiers and music. + +Watteau finds himself, not wholly perhaps, but the formative period has +passed. The artist is made; is himself, gives himself. No longer will +the classicists prevail; no longer will art be cold and eclectic. The +youth from Valenciennes will call Paris back to Nature, and through a +temperament will show the world familiar things, will let his +imagination play, taking his good where he finds it, but resolving +it into something that is his own. He will see with his own eyes. He +will paint pictures as he pleases. + +[Illustration: PLATE VII.--FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE + +(In the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh) + +Bleak Edinburgh is rich in the possession of this picture of dreamy +colour. The hour is sunset; the place is where you will, but the title, +"Fête Champêtre," suits the scene of dalliance quite as well as any +other name; a similar picture at Dresden is called by M. Mauclair "The +Terrace Party." You perceive here the typical Watteau figures, and +behind is a landscape that has all the idealistic charm of his rendering +of Nature.] + +When Watteau, perhaps unknown to himself, resolved to be himself, a new +school was born in France, a school whose influence still prevails. We +are fond of taking credit to ourselves for the initiation of the modern +school of landscape. We remember with pride the day in 1824 when the +French Salon was illumined with three of Constable's pictures; we also +remember the acknowledgment by French painters of the inspiration of +Turner and Bonnington; but it would be interesting to follow back their +inspiration; and it would not be difficult to trace Monet's division of +tones and envelope of air to Watteau. + +Influence in art and inspiration is a ball that is tossed back and +forth. If Constable, Turner, and Bonnington influenced the French school +they owe allegiance to Watteau, and through him to "the bull in art," +Rubens, who was master to Van Dyck, the founder of the English school. + +Does Gainsborough's lovely "Perdita" in the Wallace Collection owe +nothing of its exquisite femininity, sweet melancholy, and woodland +background, to Watteau? Constable and Turner were but paying old debts, +for the painter of the _Fêtes Galantes_ had shown the beauty of +landscape and made it something more than a setting for figures. He +taught also that Nature is intimate and familiar with accidental beauty +of sunlight and twilight, misty horizons, and lovable little things near +to us; not swept and garnished and coldly unreal, but a world where +human beings may wander happily with Nature on a level with their own +eyes; not a world where only Titans and gods roam through +pseudo-classical scenes. + +In Watteau's pictures poetry and reality dwell in harmony. He proved +their compatibility; he showed that all the world is a vision seen +through a temperament. + +It is unjust to attribute to Watteau's influence only the frivolous +school of painters which immediately followed him; they were incidents +of the reaction of their time against the dull and the pedantic. They +copied him, but they missed his sincerity; they lacked his genius; they +were begotten of their age when dulness tired of being good and grew +wanton. But even his followers have more of life and warmth and beauty +than his predecessors, the frigid and attenuated school of Le Brun. +Fragonard is a master and lives; we are rising to a new appreciation of +him; and Pater and Lancret do not tire us even if they are "soulless +Watteaus." Le Brun and his school are dead, and must one day be buried +in the cellars of the Louvre to make way for their betters--the painters +inspired by the Flemish Frenchman--Antoine Watteau--who made possible +the modern school. From him Constable, Turner, Gainsborough, Corot, +Manet and Monet derived. What an achievement for a short life of +thirty-seven years! + + + + +IV + +HIS CRITICS AND ADMIRERS + + +Most critics of Watteau allow something of his rhythmic sense and beauty +of colour to tinge their appreciations. Ordinary statements of facts +seem inadequate to express the feeling he evokes, whether the writer be +concerned with the "outwardness" of his genius, like the brothers De +Goncourt, or the "inwardness" of it, like M. Camille Mauclair. +Instinctively language becomes flowery, and light and lovely words rise +spontaneously to re-echo in another medium the music of his pictures. + +According to our temperament and taste we are influenced by the +familiar-and-candid friend standpoint of De Caylus; by the De Goncourts' +searching analysis clothed in apt and sparkling words; by M. Camille +Mauclair's soul-search into the effect on Watteau's life of the disease +from which he suffered, or by the calm and cultivated mind of Walter +Pater with its rare and sympathetic insight, and that "tact of omission" +which he extolls in Watteau. + +The source of all the biographies is the memoir of the Comte de Caylus, +which was lost from the archives of the Academy, and discovered by the +brothers De Goncourt in a second-hand book-shop. While we are grateful +for the information De Caylus's memoir contains, we can but smile at the +judgment of a friend and admirer on a contemporary so far in advance of +his age as Watteau. Solemn De Caylus entirely failed to understand the +real man and artist. Apart from the details he gives of Watteau's life, +the passages which describe his method of work are the most +interesting. He informs us that Watteau could never be an heroic or +allegorical painter (thank Heaven!), not being trained academically; he +also tells us that his reflections on painting were profound, and that +his execution was inferior to his ideas; that he had no knowledge of +anatomy, having hardly ever drawn from the nude, so that he neither +understood it nor was able to express it. De Caylus also calls Watteau +"mannered," but admits that he was endowed with charm, and so on, and so +on. Watteau's nudes are studied, and, what is more, achieved. Recall any +one of them, "The Toilet," "Antiope," "The Judgment of Paris"--they are +as documentary as his drawings. The values and reflected lights of his +nude bodies are academic enough to satisfy a modern student at Julian's, +the most carping and exacting of critics. + +De Caylus, while deploring Watteau's methods of technique, contributes +the interesting information that he preferred to use his paints liquid; +that he rubbed his pictures all over with oil and repainted over this +surface; also that he was slovenly in his habits, rarely cleaning his +palette, and allowing days to pass without setting it afresh; that his +pot of medium was full of dirt and dust and the sediment of used +colours, and that he was idle and indolent. + +Well, as to Watteau's methods, I prefer to think that the surface of oil +while it mellows preserves also. The worst artists are often the most +solicitous of their mediums, and the laborious industry of the mediocre +painter is often laborious idleness. A man who can leave behind him, +after a short life, the quality and quantity of work bequeathed to the +world by Watteau refutes, by that work, accusations of indolence and +idleness. Neither can I admit that he was mannered. His manner was +different from the clique of painters then in vogue, and it is obvious +that he had a manner, but this very manner is his originality. Of course +his pictures are "invented," but invented from the accumulated facts of +his own drawings, wrested from life hurriedly, for he had very little +time, and yet showing no marks of haste. If, as M. Mauclair says, "There +exists in intellectual consumptives a condition of mind which seems to +concentrate all those preceptions of supreme delicacy conferred on noble +minds by the presentiment of approaching death," we need not grieve +that the lives of such men as Keats, Watteau, and Schubert were short. +"The body's disease caused a mystic exaltation in the soul, whose +productions, far from being touched by debility or decadence, are rather +the concentration of extreme power and violent emotion." This +intelligent and sympathetic critic goes on to say that the very +unwholesomeness of body is marked by "unmistakable health of mind," +which may indeed be a "courageous facing of earthly finality," but is +also a fertile field in which great enterprises are undertaken and +achieved. + +As I have said, according to your temperament you may take Watteau +seriously, lightly, joyously or sadly. There is recompense whether you +feel that he is the great and profound master M. Mauclair calls him, or +whether you range yourself with the De Goncourts, who describe him as "a +painter of Utopias, a beautifier, the most amiable and determined of +liars, a painter of pictures where the fiddles of Lérida play marches +that lead the way to death, where smart La Tulipe struts and swaggers, +and Manon flirts between two gun shots, and a host of little love-birds +flutter, light-heartedly, into war's stern discipline." + +The De Goncourts note that there is in Watteau's work "murmurs of vague +and slow harmony behind the laughing words," and that a "musical sadness +gently contagious exhales from these _Fêtes Galantes_. Like the +seduction of Venice, I know not what veiled poetry breathes sweet and +low to our charmed senses." + +M. Mauclair asserts that no one has ever understood Watteau so well as +Verlaine, and that "his exquisite little volume of poems _Fêtes +Galantes_ is an absolute transposition of the painter's work"; but it is +the brilliant appreciation of the De Goncourts that has had the +strongest influence on subsequent writers, so admirably do they reveal +Watteau, so like the colour of his pictures are the colours of their +words, so adequate is their exposition of one side of Watteau's +fascination. They claim Watteau as the great poet of the eighteenth +century, and then proceed to give in glittering prose a penetrating and +persuasive criticism, apostrophising Watteau's art as "a country +refreshed by fountains, decorated with marbles and statues, and peopled +by naiades, a country lovable and radiant, far from a jealous world, +where baskets of flowers swing from bending trees; where fields are full +of music, gardens full of roses and tangled vines; a France where the +pines of Italy grow, where villages are gay with weddings, coaches, +ceremonies and festal attire, and violins and flutes conduct to a +_temple Jesuite_ the marriage of Nature and the Opera." + +[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE MUSIC LESSON + +(In the Wallace Collection) + +Watteau, seemingly just for joy in the colour, trickles--there is no +other word for it--one luscious colour over another, like liquid jewels +embedded in gold. The colour fascinates. Is it rose and white? The man's +garments are neither rose, nor white, nor yellow, and yet they are all +three. The rose of the woman's rosette repeats the carmines of her +complexion. The composition is charming.] + +"_La Mode de Watteau_--that divine tailor whose artist scissors have +fashioned playfully the delight in disorder, the morning _négligé_, and +the beautiful ceremonious garments of the afternoon. Fairy scissors +dowering the times to come with fashions from the 'Thousand and One +Nights.' Beribboned scissors of Watteau, what a delightful realm of +coquetry you cut from the bigoted realm of the Maintenon!" + +How different in manner and method is Walter Pater's "Imaginary +Portrait," called "A Prince of Court Painters: Extracts from an old +French Journal." Calmly this subtle analysis begins, which shows a +deeper insight into the personality of Watteau than either the brothers +De Goncourt, or M. Mauclair, who calls Pater's "Imaginary Portrait" a +"whimsical interpretation." I have read many books about the painter of +the _Fêtes Galantes_, but I always return to Pater's "whimsical +portrait," for it gives the very atmosphere of his artistic descent and +development, from the age of seventeen to the last year of his life. +Missing no dominant event, misusing no legends, cast in the form of a +diary, the narrative is made convincingly real by Pater's sympathetic +imagination. + +These extracts are from an imaginary old French Journal, kept apparently +by an elder sister of Jean Baptiste Pater, Watteau's pupil. This lonely +and sensitive lady, who has evidently lost her cloistral heart to the +unconcerned painter, is living in Valenciennes, Watteau's birthplace. +The first entry is dated:-- + + "VALENCIENNES, _September 1701_. + +"They have been renovating my father's large workroom.... Among old +Watteau's work-people came his son, 'the genius,' my father's godson +and namesake, a dark-haired youth, whose large, unquiet eyes seemed +perpetually wandering to the various drawings which lie exposed +here. My father will have it that he is a genius indeed and a +painter born.... And just where the crowd was busiest young Antony +was found, hoisted into one of those empty niches of the old _Hôtel +de Ville_, sketching the scene to the life, but with a kind of +grace--a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to +us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own +window--which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine +seem like people in some fairyland.... His father will hear nothing +of educating him as a painter." + + "_October 1701._ + +"Chiefly through the solicitations of my father, old Watteau has +consented to place Antony with a teacher of painting here.... Ah! +such gifts as his, surely, may once in a way make much industry seem +worth while.... He is apt, in truth, to fall out too hastily with +himself and what he produces.... Yes! I could fancy myself offended +by a sort of irony which sometimes crosses the half melancholy +sweetness of manner habitual with him; only that, as I can see, he +treats himself to the same quality." + +So this gentle woman continues to record in her diary, as if musing on +the life of one she loved, the salient happenings in Antony Watteau's +career. Nothing escapes Walter Pater's sympathy and understanding, so +that at the end we come to a perfect appreciation of his reading of +Watteau. This essay, in the form of a journal, is a little masterpiece +about a "little master." Under August 1705 we find the following:-- + +"Antony, looking well, in his new-fashioned, long-skirted coat, and +taller than he really is, made us bring our cream and wild strawberries +out of doors, ranging ourselves according to his judgment (for a hasty +sketch in that big pocket-book he carries) on the soft slope of one of +those fresh spaces in the wood, where the trees unclose a little, while +Jean-Baptiste and my younger sister danced a minuet on the grass, to the +notes of some strolling lutanist, who had found us out. He is visibly +cheerful at the thought of his return to Paris, and became for a moment +freer and more animated than I have ever yet seen him, as he discoursed +to us about the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens in the church here." + +Under August 1717 she writes: "Methinks Antony Watteau reproduces that +gallant world, those patched and powdered ladies and fine cavaliers, so +much to its own satisfaction, partly because he despises it; if this be +a possible condition of excellent artistic production--he dignifies, by +what in him is neither more nor less than a profound melancholy, the +essential insignificance of what he wills to touch in all that, +transforming its mere prettiness into grace. It looks certainly very +graceful, fresh, animated, 'piquant,' as they love to say--yes! and +withal, I repeat, perfectly pure, and may well congratulate itself on +the loan of a fallacious grace not its own." + +We are shown his restless nostalgia, his progress, success, and +journeying to and fro, his broidery of the world he painted, until, as +she says of a summer, "a kind of infectious sentiment passed upon us, +like an efflux from its flowers and flower-like architecture." + + "_January 1720._ + +"Those sharply-arched brows, those restless eyes which seem larger +than ever--something that seizes on one, and is almost terrible, in +his expression--speak clearly, and irresistibly set one on the +thought of a summing up of his life." + +And then the end under date July 1721:-- + +"Antony Watteau departed suddenly, in the arms of M. Gersaint, on +one of the late hot days of July. At the last moment he had been at +work upon a crucifix for the good _curé_ of Nogent, liking little +the very rude one he possessed. He died with all the sentiments of +religion. + +"He has been a sick man all his life. He was always a seeker after +something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or +not at all." + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +The greatest gift in art is personality. But all masters are not of +equal personality. Indeed, so rare is the gift in its fulness, that in +the whole field of art there are but a few who appear as planets in the +monotony of sidereal excellence. + +Luminous examples of this quality of personality are such originals as +Donatello, Holbein, Vermeer of Delft, and Watteau, to mention only a +few of the most lovable. That something in an artist which finds a new +way to express an old thing is the rarest and most to be desired of +gifts. This gift Watteau had in the highest degree. He originated a +grace unsurpassed in its way--dare I say it?--even by the Greeks. Attic +simplicity of grace is grander, but not more beautiful, not more +intimately beautiful. The Greeks gave us the grand beauty of form; +Watteau gives us the beauty of caprice, of frills and fripperies; but +his people are adorned by garments that lend them grace; his women +walking are rhythmical lines, sitting they are silhouettes of delight, +their garments enhancing beauty, not hiding it. + +Watteau is the great master of the eighteenth century in France, a +century distinctly feminine. To say that he is the most feminine painter +that ever lived is in no sense a disparagement, for to this quality of +grace and daintiness, of coquetry and caprice, of melancholy and +longing, was united a very masculine quality of craft and originality in +craft. + +We tingle with delight in looking at his luscious colour and studying +the mastery of its application. What artist has not known the envious +desire to possess one of his drawings, the part of his achievement which +entitles him to be ranked with the greatest, so truthful, so full of +subtle distinction of line, whether it be a blackamoor's face or a +beauty's back. + +The origin of the broken tone in modern art is his. From him we may +trace the modern impressionist movement, and from him modern +pointillism. What is impressionism, and what is pointillism? + +Impressionism is the elimination of the little, the giving of the large +truth, the instantaneous impression of vision; but all vision is not the +same, and as the lens of the looking eye varies, so the impression will +vary. We may teach ourselves to see little or much, our memory may be +accurate or false, according to our gifts. Emerson says: "Our difference +of wit appears to be only a difference of impressionability or power to +appreciate faint, fainter, and infinitely faintest voices and visions." +This faculty of seeing at the first glance "faint, fainter, and +infinitely faintest," the impressionist claims. He may be so +impressionable, or so little capable of sensitiveness to impression, +that his picture in one instance may be fuller of fine truths than the +most laborious idleness of finish can make it, and in the other his lack +of sensitiveness to impression may be a mere jumble of decomposed colour +understood only by himself. + +Pointillism is the application of pure colour to the canvas in small +streaks or dots, and has become part of the doctrine of the +impressionists. To them it represents the decomposition of light; the +streak and dot--broken colour--is used to increase the appearance of the +vibration of light, which it does in a marvellous manner. The use of +broken colour was one of Watteau's characteristics, and is part of the +charm and originality of his technique. + +Even his inconsistencies have charm. His drawings were from the life; +his nudes were also from the life, so true to Nature are they, so very +modern as to reflection and value, with the added Watteau grace. But, +let me confess it, the modern craftsman more wedded to truth than +inspiration may feel less conviction of his greatness in examining his +pictures because, admire his colour and technique as much as we will, we +cannot but feel that in his "invented" pictures Watteau's inspiration +is what the student in France calls _chic_. And yet who would have them +different? His Pastorals may be "_chic'd_," but there they are, +done--unrivalled, supreme. + +Eighteenth-century art in France means, for most of us, Watteau. He is +the fitting master of a century in which women played so great a part. +He did not immortalise any woman. No Mona Lisa, no Giovanna Tornabuoni, +no Emma Lady Hamilton, lives through his brush. He immortalised +women--not any particular woman; he created a type, the Watteau +type--adorable, dainty, and fragrant as a flower. She has no name, no +place of abode since Watteau died. He saw her in his dream-life, held +her for a moment as she flitted past, so she remains: eternally young, +eternally free. + + "Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave + The song, nor ever can those trees be bare; + She cannot fade, ... + For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" + + + + +The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London + +The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Watteau, by C. Lewis Hind + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41621 *** |