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diff --git a/41947-0.txt b/41947-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..053df2f --- /dev/null +++ b/41947-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1380 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41947 *** + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 41947-h.htm or 41947-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41947/41947-h/41947-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41947/41947-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + http://archive.org/details/boucherocad00macfuoft + + +Transcriber's note: + + The oe-ligature is represented by [oe] (example: Ph[oe]nix). + + + + + +Masterpieces in Colour +Edited by T. Leman Hare + +BOUCHER +1703-1770 + + * * * * * + + "MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES + + + ARTIST. AUTHOR. + BELLINI. GEORGE HAY. + BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS. + BOUCHER. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY. + CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY. + CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY. + CONSTABLE. C. LEWIS HIND. + COROT. SIDNEY ALLNUTT. + DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL. + DELACROIX. PAUL G. KONODY. + DÜRER. H. E. A. FURST. + FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON. + FRA FILIPPO LIPPI. PAUL G. KONODY. + FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY. + GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD. + GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN. + HOGARTH. C. LEWIS HIND. + HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE. + INGRES. A. J. FINBERG. + LAWRENCE. S. L. BENSUSAN. + LE BRUN, VIGÉE. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY. + LUINI. JAMES MASON. + MANTEGNA. MRS. ARTHUR BELL. + MEMLINC. W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE. + MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY. + MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER. + MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + PERUGINO. SELWYN BRINTON. + RAEBURN. JAMES L. CAW. + RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY. + REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS. + REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND. + ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO. + RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + SARGENT. T. MARTIN WOOD. + TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND. + VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER. + VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN. + WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND. + WATTS. W. LOFTUS HARE. + WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD. + + _Others in Preparation._ + + * * * * * + + [Illustration: PLATE I.--MADAME DE POMPADOUR. Frontispiece + + (In the National Gallery of Scotland) + + Edinburgh is fortunate in possessing this, one of the + world-famous examples of Boucher's exquisite portraiture. He + painted with rare charm more than once this wonderful woman, + "the king's morsel," Jeanne Poisson, Madame Lenormant d'Etioles, + who became the notorious Marquise de Pompadour. He gives us + perhaps too dainty a butterfly; for, of a truth, this woman's + prettiness masked an iron nerve, an unflinching courage, and a + capacity and talents which must have reached to fame in any + human being whose frame they illumined. Nor is there hint of + those hard qualities that robbed her of mercy, nor allowed her + to bend an ear to suffering.] + + + + +BOUCHER + +by + +Haldane Macfall + +Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour + + + + + + + +London: T. C. & E. C. Jack +New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. + + + + +CONTENTS + + Page + + I. The Small Beginnings 11 + + II. The Student 16 + + III. Venus and Marriage 27 + + IV. Le Monde qui s'amuse 35 + + V. The Châteauroux 42 + + VI. The Pompadour 55 + + VII. The End 75 + + + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Plate + + I. Madame de Pompadour Frontispiece + In the National Gallery of Scotland + + Page + + II. Madame de Pompadour 14 + In the Wallace Collection + + III. Diana leaving the Bath 24 + In the Louvre + + IV. Pastorale 34 + In the Louvre + + V. Pastorale 40 + In the Louvre + + VI. Portrait of a Young Woman 50 + In the Louvre + + VII. Interieur de Famille 60 + In the Louvre + + VIII. La Modiste 70 + In the Wallace Collection + + + + +I + +THE SMALL BEGINNINGS + + +The year after good Queen Anne came to rule over us, Louis the +Fourteenth being still King of France, on an autumn day in the October +of 1703, that saw the trees of Paris shedding their parched leaves as +a carpet to the feet of the much-bewigged dandified folk who stepped +it swaggeringly down the walks of the Palais Royal, swinging long +canes, and strutting along the shaded promenades of the more +fashionable places of the city, there stood in the vestry of the +parish church of Saint Jean-en-Grève a little group of the small +burgess folk, gathered about a little infant, whilst the tipstaff to +the king's palace, one François Prévost, signed solemnly as witness to +the birth-certificate and as acknowledged godfather to the aforesaid +morsel of humanity, which, as the certificate badly set forth in black +and white for ever, was henceforth to be known for good or ill as +François Boucher, first-born son, on the 29th of September, four days +past, of the tipstaff's friend, Nicolas Boucher, "maître-peintre," who +stood hard by, and of his wife Elizabeth Lemesle. + +The worthy tipstaff's writing done, he bowed in the best Court manner +to Mademoiselle Boullenois, daughter to yonder consequential fellow, +the law officer from the Police Court; and handed her the inked quill +to bear witness in her turn as godmother. + + [Illustration: PLATE II.--MADAME DE POMPADOUR + + (In the Wallace Collection) + + Here we have one of the handsomest portraits of his great patron + and friend, the notorious Marquise de Pompadour, painted by + Boucher at the most brilliant phase of his art. It is a + glittering achievement. The figure is superbly placed in its + surroundings. The play of limpid light upon the beautifully + gowned woman, of which Boucher was such a master-painter, proves + it to be of his best period. The Pompadour stands, wreathed in + smiles, as the mistress of a great domain; and masks as usual + behind her pretty ways all hint of that calculating hand and + remorseless will that sent her enemies without a sigh to the + Bastille or banishment or worse--she who was past-mistress of + the art of the _lettre de cachet_.] + +The sand being flung upon the wet ink, and the blotting done, +there was exchange of compliments in the stilted manner of +good-fellowship of the day between priest and party--tapping of +snuff-boxes and taking of snuff, with more than a little gossip of the +Court and some shaking of heads, and under-lips solemnly thrust forth; +the gossip is not without authority and weight, for is not godfather +Prévost tipstaff to the king's majesty, therefore in the whirl of +things? + +The child, indeed, was born into a Paris agog with stirring affairs. +Well might heads be shaken solemnly. The French arms were knowing +defeat. The Englishman, Marlborough, was flinging back the French +armies wheresoever he gave them battle. Europe was one great armed +camp. France was suffering terrible blood-letting. Defeat came on +defeat. These were sorry times. On land all went wrong. Good generals +were set aside; intriguing good-for-nothings led the veterans into +disaster. But there was still France upon the high seas. + +Then the women folk, bored with high politics, would draw back the +talk to the infant François, and there would be genial banter about +the morsel; for was he not a Saturday child, therefore bound to be a +bit of a scamp! + +And so, off to Monsieur Boucher's modest little home in the Rue de +Verrerie to a glass of wine and further compliments and banter, and +more vague surmises as to what lay upon the knees of the gods for +little François Boucher. + + + + +II + +THE STUDENT + + +Yes, the sun of the Grand Monarque was setting. Louis Quatorze was +nearing the end of his long lease of splendour. Our little François +was not a month old when Admiral Rooke whipped Château-Renaud off the +high seas, destroying the French and Spanish fleets in Vigo Bay, and +carrying off some millions of pieces of eight from the galleons as +treasure. The child's first year saw the English troopers ride down +the French at Blenheim--a day that made "Malbrook" a name of dread to +every French child, a name to frighten into good behaviour. To the +little fellow's home came the horror-spoken talk of Ramilies; then of +Oudenarde; then of Lille--to his six-year-old ears the terrible news +of Malplaquet. + +But there was Paris a-bellringing in his ears at seven; for there was +born to the king's grandson a sickly child that was to succeed him as +Louis the Fifteenth. And François Boucher is one day to step from his +modest home and stand nearer at this child's side than he thinks. + +The boy Boucher, at sturdy twelve, would recall the death of the old +king in his lonely last years, and the setting upon the ancient throne +of France of the five-year-old child as Louis Quinze--a comely little +fellow--with Orleans as Regent. Young François Boucher was to spend +his youth and grow up to manhood in a France that lay under the +regency of this dissolute, brilliant Orleans. + +Nicolas Boucher, the father, seems to have been an obscure, honest +fellow, given to the _trade_ of art, and that too in mediocre fashion +enough, designing embroideries, covers for chairs, and the like--"an +inferior designer, little favoured by fortune," runs the recorded +verdict of his day. But he had the virtue of recognising his +mediocrity, and the desire to save his son from the sordid cares of +mediocre artistry; since, having himself given the boy his schooling +with pencil and brush, and brought the lad up in an atmosphere of art +and in the company of artists, he had the astuteness to send him to +the studio of Lemoyne, a really great painter and rapidly becoming +famous--he who painted the ceilings of Versailles with gods and +goddesses in handsome fashion. + +Lemoyne was a well-chosen master for the promising youth of seventeen. +He had founded his art upon that of Correggio and Veronese, had rid +himself of hard academic tendencies, and was painting in a sound +French fashion. The youth Boucher, with the quick and astounding gift, +that he displayed all through his life, of rapidly making his own what +he wanted to acquire, picked up from Lemoyne at once a French way of +stating what he desired to state, in a large, broad manner, without +having to go through the long years of drudgery to Italian models of +style which was then the only schooling for an artist--was therefore +enabled to free himself from the equally long years that it would have +taken him to rid the Italian style from his artistry. In short, the +youth of seventeen made Lemoyne's art his own in a few weeks; and, on +the eve of manhood, he so rivalled his master in accomplishment that +it is dangerous to attribute a picture of this time to the master or +the pupil without most careful evidence. + +Yet the youth vowed that he was but three months with Lemoyne, who, +said he, took scant interest in his pupils. But it must be remembered +that Boucher was a prodigious worker, with a passionate love for his +work that lasted until death took the brush from his fingers, and that +he had a quick and alert mind and hand, free from the hesitances of a +student, and always daring in experiment. To wish to achieve a thing, +for Boucher, was to set him to its achievement. He rested neither +night nor day until he mastered that which he had set out to do. On +the day he left Lemoyne's studio he stepped out of it a finished +artist, a sound painter, fully equipped with all the craftmanship, +trade-secrets, and tricks of thumb that it had taken his master his +life to learn--and a facile copyist of his style and handling. It was +the sincerest form of flattery; and Boucher, to the end of his days, +held the art of Lemoyne in the greatest reverence--as is proved by his +answer, when at the very height of his fame, to one who asked him to +complete a picture by his master: "Such works are to me sacred +vessels," said he--"I should dread to profane them by touching them." + +Lemoyne's admiration for his pupil was not lacking in return. The +youth painted, whilst with his master, a picture of a "Judgment of +Susanna," before which Lemoyne stood astounded, then burst into +prophecy of Boucher achieving greatness in the years to come. + +From Lemoyne's studio, the young fellow went to live with "Père Cars," +the engraver, whose son, Laurent, was a friend of the youth, and who +engaged him to design the drawings for his engravers, allowing him in +return his food, lodging, and sixty livres (double-florins) a +month--some twelve pounds. Boucher accounted his fortune made. + +The cheery youth went at his work with energy and enthusiasm, blithely +setting his hand to anything that was wanted of him, bringing charm +and invention to all he did--tailpieces, frontispieces, emblems, coats +of arms, freemason's certificates, first-communion cards, initial +letters. He was soon set to work upon important designs for +engravings. He searched out the publishers of books, and let no +chance escape of working for them. + +Thus and otherwise he filled his scanty purse--that needed filling, +for he was quick at its emptying, being of a free hand and generous +disposition. And hard as he worked, so did he play. Work and pleasure +were his joy in life. + +And all the time he was taking part in the students' competitions for +the Academy. + +It was in his nineteenth year that, in this same Paris, in the house +of one of its rich families, was born a little girl-child who was to +come into Boucher's life in after years. The father, a financial +fellow, one Poisson, was a man of shady repute; indeed he was under +banishment for mis-handling the public moneys at the time of the +birth of the little girl-child, christened Jeanne Antoinette +Poisson--destined to be the Jane of the scurrilous street songs of the +years to come. But the careless student knew little of it as yet, nor +that destiny had put into the pretty child's cradle the sceptre and +diadem of France as plaything. + +Boucher, on the eve of manhood, took as little heed of the child's +coming as did the thirteen-year-old lad who sat upon the throne, and +who, in little Jane Poisson's first year, was declared to be of man's +estate and ruler of France, no longer requiring Regent Orleans to +govern for him. + +It was in this his nineteenth year that Boucher took the first prize +at the Academy with his picture of "Evilmerodach, son and successor of +Nebuchadnezzar, delivering Joachin from chains, in which his father +had for a long time held him." + +This success set the collectors buying pictures by the brilliant +youngster. But François Boucher needs no paying orders to make him +work--he paints for the love of the thing, declares that his "studio +is his church," and seeks to display his art and spread the repute of +it abroad. And his fame grows apace, if at a cost. Nay, he courts fame +even to the extent of hanging his pictures upon the tapestries and +carpets and such like draperies that the police oblige the citizens to +hang out from their houses along the Place Dauphin and the Pont-Neuf +during the procession of the Fête-Dieu--called the _Exposition de la +Jeunesse_. + +There was a thing happened about this time that was to be of large +significance to the young fellow's craftsmanship. Watteau had lately +died, his eager will burning out the poor stricken body. His friend De +Julienne, anxious to publish a book to Watteau's memory, strolled into +the engraving-studio behind "Père Cars'" shop, where Boucher and his +comrade, Laurent Cars, were wont to spend a part of their time; and he +commissioned Boucher to engrave 125 of the plates after the dead +master. Watteau's essentially French influence was the impulse above +all others to thrust forward the development of Boucher's genius along +its right path, and sent his art towards its great goal. The business +was a rare delight to the young artist, and in the doing of it he +learnt many lessons which added greatly to the enhancement of his +style; whilst the payment of twenty-four livres (double-florins) a day +still further increased his delight and contentment. + + [Illustration: PLATE III.--DIANA LEAVING THE BATH + + (In the Louvre) + + The "Diana leaving the Bath with one of her Companions" is + amongst the most beautiful of those so-called Venus-pieces that + Boucher created and painted in large numbers with decorative + intent. It shows his art at its most exquisite stage, when his + painting of flesh was at its most luminous and subtle + achievement; and his treatment of the human figure in relation + to the landscape in which it was placed, at its most perfect + balance.] + +He completed the series with his wonted fiery zeal and rapid facility, +and thus and otherwise, hotly pursuing his study of nature and his +art, he arrived at the moment when his education should receive its +inevitable finishing state in the Italian tour; so to Rome he went +with Carle Van Loo and his two nephews, François and Louis Van Loo. + +Of Boucher's wander-years in Italy little is known. He seems to have +shown scant respect for the accepted standards of the schools and the +critics, to have found Michael Angelo "contorted," Raphael "insipid," +and Carrache "gloomy." He, in fact, was drawn only to such artists as +were to his taste, and he had the courage to say so. However, whether +he were kept idle from ill-health or not; whether his stay were short +or not, he appears again in Paris in three years--suspiciously like +the three years' conventional Italian study of a first-prize winner of +the Academy--with a large number of religious pictures to his +credit--pictures that were hailed by the Academicians and critics +alike for their beauty, their force, and their virility--pictures +which, perhaps fortunately for Boucher's repute, have vanished, or +hang in galleries under other names. + +Here we see Boucher grimly putting aside his own taste and aims in +art, and doggedly bending his will and hand to a prodigious effort to +win the reputation and standing of a "serious painter," without which +he could not hope to attain academic honours. He won them; for, in +this his twenty-eighth year, on his return to Paris, he was +"nominated" to the Academy. He had but to present an Historical +Painting in order to take his seat as an Academician. + + + + +III + +VENUS AND MARRIAGE + + +Back in his beloved Paris again; thrilled by the atmosphere and gaiety +of its merry life; in the full vigour of manhood on the eve of his +thirties; amongst congenial friends; done with the drudgery of winning +to Academic honour, Boucher saw that the public were not falling over +each other to purchase religious or historic pictures; he straightway +turned his back upon these things, and on the edge of his thirtieth +year he gave to the world his "Marriage of the Children of God with +the Children of Men," in which Venus is the avowed mistress of his +adoration. It caused a fine stir, and greatly increased his repute. + +In this picture he ends his Italian period and strikes his own +personal note. Both this and the "Venus asking arms for Aeneas from +Vulcan," together with the "Birth of Adonis" and the "Death of +Adonis," of about the same period, still show Boucher strongly under +the influence of his master, Lemoyne. Indeed, the "Birth" and "Death +of Adonis," their record lost during the scuffle and confusion of the +Revolution, for long hung side by side as pictures by Lemoyne, until, +being cleaned about 1860, Boucher's initials were discovered upon +them, and, contemporary engravings being hunted up, still further +proved their origin. But in the Venus that now figures in all his +works there is that flesh-painting of the nude, and that rosy touch +upon the flesh of the female figure, that are a far more certain +signature of Boucher's handiwork than any written name. + +Unfortunately the Salons were closed during Boucher's earlier years +until he was thirty-four, and the record of his work during these +years is difficult to follow; but with his service to Venus his +personal career begins, and the stream of his Venus-pieces steadily +flows from his hands. + +He came to her service rid of all prentice essays in craftsmanship, a +finished and consummate artist. He found in his subject a goddess to +whom he could devote his great and splendid gifts. He painted her +dainty body with a radiant delight and a rare colour-sense such as +France had never before seen or uttered. He remains to this day the +first painter of the subtle, delicate, and elusive thing that is +femininity; he caught her allure, her charm, as he was to catch the +fragrance and charm of children and flowers; and he set the statement +of these things upon canvas as they have never been uttered. + +The whole of his life long, Boucher gave himself up with equal and +passionate devotion to work and to pleasure--working at his easel +often twelve hours of his day without losing, to the end when the +brush fell from his dead fingers, his blitheness of heart or his +generosity of act, and without weakening the pleasure-loving desires +of his gadding spirit. Out of his splendid toil he made the means to +indulge his tastes for pleasure; and the gratifying of his tastes in +turn renewed and created the ideas that made the subjects of his +artistry. He brought to all he did a joy in the doing that made of his +vast labour one long pleasure--of his pleasures a riot of industry. He +played as he toiled, scarce knowing which was play and which toil. + +The gossip of his love-affairs makes no romantic story--they were but +commonplace ecstasies with unknown frail women. But hard as he worked +and lived and played, he found time to get himself married in his +thirtieth year to pretty seventeen-year-old Marie Jeanne Buseau, a +little Parisian--and for love of her, so far as he understood the +business; for she brought him no dowry. + +The young couple settled down for the next ten years in the Rue +Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. Here Boucher lived through his thirties. + +Madame was a pretty creature, if we had but Latour's pastel portrait +alone to prove it. But the pretty features were the crown to as pretty +a body, for she sat often to her lord; and it is clear from his +correspondence with a friend, Bachaumont, that she is the Psyche of +his illustrated fable--and Psyche runs much to the Altogether. +Marriage, however, was not likely to imprison Boucher's gadding eyes; +and it did not. Madame Boucher seems to have had as frail a heart, and +avoided strife by amusing herself, amongst others, with the Swedish +Ambassador, Count de Tessin, who, to gain access to the lady, +commissioned Boucher to do the Watteau-like illustrations to +_Acajou_--a dull affair. Boucher's pretty wife, herself no mean +artist, worked in his studio, and painted several smaller canvases +after his pictures, gaining some fame as a miniaturist and engraver. + +Nor did Marriage turn Boucher from his art. Two years were gone by +since his nomination to the Academy; he had now to paint the formal +Historical Picture and present it in order to take his seat as +Academician; and it was in this his thirtieth year that he painted and +won his academic rank with the "Renauld et Armide" now at the Louvre. +Here he sufficiently subordinated his own style to the academic to +ensure success; and the work was hailed by Academicians and critics, +including Diderot, with enthusiasm. But even here we have his cupids +peeping round the mythologic event; and Armide herself has pretty +French lips that knew no Greek. + +Once secure of his position, he straightway flung the last remnants of +the academic style out of his studio door; and it is a grim comment on +criticism that it was just exactly in proportion as he developed his +own personal genius and uttered the France of his day, that he was +attacked; whilst the stilted things that he knew were third-rate, and +which he wholly rejected from henceforth, were exactly the things that +were praised! + +His election to the Academy, and the enthusiasm over the picture that +won him his seat thereat, brought his name before the young king; the +following year he received his first order from the Court whose +painter he was destined to become. The decorations in the queen's +apartments were gloomy and had grown black; and he painted in their +stead the "Charity," "Abundance," "Fidelity," and "Prudence" still +there to be seen. Indeed, with his gay vision, his pretty habit of +culling only the flowers from the garden of life, and his quickness to +set down the pleasing thing in every prospect, Boucher was the +destined painter of a Court weary of pomposity and the pose of the +mock-heroic, and which was wholly giving itself up to pleasure and the +elegances. + +But neither his new dignity of Academician nor the royal favour, kept +him from the bookshops; and he illustrated, with rare beauty and a +charm worthy of Watteau, the great edition of the _Works of Molière_ +in his thirty-first year. It is true that he made as free with +Molière's world as with the Gods of Olympus; he peoples the plays with +characters of his own day, arrayed in the dress and habit of that day, +and moving in surroundings that he saw about him. + + [Illustration: PLATE IV.--PASTORALE + + (In the Louvre) + + The "Pastorale," painted a few years after the famous "Diana," + also belongs to Boucher's greatest years, and is another of the + glories of the Louvre. It is one of his masterpieces in the + realm of the Pastoral which he also created--those pleasant + landscapes of France in which he places handsomely dressed + Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses playing at a dandified + comedy of the Simple Life.] + + + + +IV + +LE MONDE QUI S'AMUSE + + +The Homely had come upon the town out of Holland, painted with most +consummate artistry by Chardin, and was soon in the vogue. Boucher had +a quick eye for the mode. And he straightway set himself to the +painting of "La Belle Cuisinière." Still-life and homely subjects need +an accuracy of realism and a Dutch sense of these things, a sense of +sincerity and an appreciation of the dignity of the work-a-day life of +the people, in which Boucher was wholly lacking. Above all, it calls +for a sense of "character," which, in Boucher, was always weak. It was +a sneer against him that his very broomsticks called for pompons and +ribbons--and there was more than a little truth in the spite. He is +more concerned with the accident of the kissing of a kitchen-maid than +with the kitchen's habit. He cannot even peep into a scullery without +dragging in Venus by the skirts, and tricking her out in a +property-wardrobe of a scullery-wench, in which the girl is clearly +but acting the part. + +However, these passing vogues and experiments in different methods +were only gay asides--he was working the while upon his own subjects; +and, to the display by its several members ordered by the Academy, he +sent four little paintings of fauns and cupids which won him the +honour of election as deputy-professor. His brain and hand were very +busy, and he turns from one thing to another with amazing facility, +bringing distinction to all that he does. + +But he painted about this time two pictures of infants, "L'Amour +Oiseleur" and "L'Amour Moissonneur," which were the beginning of that +host of cupids that he let fly from his studio; they frolic across his +canvases and join the retinue of Venus, peeping out from clouds, over +waves, round curtains, painted with a perfection that has never been +surpassed in the portrayal of infants. He painted their round limbs, +their lusty life, their delightful awkwardnesses, their jolly fat +grace, their naïve surprise at life and glory in it, as they had never +been painted before, and have never been painted since. + +He also gave forth in this his thirty-third year a "Pastoral" and a +"Shepherd and Shepherdess in Conversation," with sheep about them and +in a pleasant landscape, which were his first essays in the style that +he created and which made him famous. + +His friend Meissonnier, the inventor of the rococo, stood godfather to +Boucher's first-born son in the May of 1736. + +From the very beginning Boucher seems to have been engraved. And these +engravings, done by the best gravers of his day, greatly extended his +reputation and popularised him; he fully realised the value of the +advertisement as well as his profits from it. Before his thirty-third +year was run out he published his well-known "Cries of Paris." +Boucher's description of them, "studies from the low classes," holds +the key to that something of failure to realise the dramatic verities +that is over all; it gives also the attitude of the France that he +knew towards the France that he did not, and could not understand. He +created that dainty, pleasant atmosphere that comes floating up to the +windows on a fresh morning in Paris from the musical cries of +the street vendors; but of the deeper significance of the +street-sellers--of the miserable accent in their life, of their weary +toil, of the dignity of their labour--he knew nothing; his brush could +not refrain from making elegance and fine manners peep from behind the +street-porter's fustian or the milkmaid's skirt. + +But his thirty-third year was to contain a more far-reaching +significance even than the creation of his cupid-pieces and pastorals. +The "Cries of Paris" were scarce printed when Boucher's illustration +to "Don Quixote" appeared--"Sancho pursued by the servants of the +Duke." This design was to have far-reaching results that Boucher +little suspected. + +The painter Oudry had been called to the conduct of the great tapestry +looms at Beauvais a couple of years before; and in his efforts to +furnish the looms with good designs, he now called Boucher to his aid, +whose original and fresh style, colour, and arrangement, together with +his personal vision, and the enthusiasm and zeal with which he threw +himself into the work, at once increased the reputation and the +products of the famous looms. This large designing for the tapestries +was, in return, of immense value to the development of the genius of +the man, enlarging his breadth of style and giving scope to that great +decorative sense that was his superb gift. Thenceforth he was destined +to play a supreme part in the history of the world-famed factories. He +now produced painting after painting for the Beauvais looms. + + [Illustration: PLATE V.--PASTORALE + + (In the Louvre) + + This Pastoral, known as "The Shepherd and Shepherdesses," is + another canvas painted at the height of Boucher's career, in + which dandified shepherds and shepherdesses seem to have stepped + out of the Opera in order to play their light comedy of + beribboned simple living in a pleasant landscape of France. It + was of these pastorals a waggish critic complained that the + shepherds and shepherdesses look as if they must soon be off to + the Opera again. But what the carpers omitted was to praise the + painting of the pleasant lands of France in which these dainty + comedies were set. Boucher has never received his meed of honour + as one of the finest landscape-painters of eighteenth-century + France.] + +Life is now one long triumph for Boucher, only disturbed in this year +by the sad news of the suicide of his old master, Lemoyne. It was in +this, Boucher's thirty-fourth year, that the Salon was opened for the +first time since Boucher's infancy, and he contributed several +canvases to it. + +Rigaud, the old Academician, now close upon eighty, straggling through +the great galleries, might well blink and gasp at the change that had +come over French art since he last exhibited there, thirty-three years +gone by; but his scoffs and regrets held no terrors for the younger +Academicians gathered about. He stood in a new world. A new generation +was in possession. The grand manner, the severe etiquette, formal +mock-heroics, and solemn pomposity of Louis the Fourteenth were +vanished, and the Agreeable and the Pleasant Make-Believe of Louis the +Fifteenth reigned in their stead. Old Rigaud might blink indeed! Just +as the imposing and stilted etiquette of the reception-room had given +place to the easy manners and airy etiquette of the dainty boudoir, so +had light chatter and gay wit and the quick repartee usurped the heavy +splendours of a consequential age. France, weary of an eternal pose of +the grand manner, was seeking change in joyousness and amusement. +Gallantry and gaiety were become the object of the ambition of a +dandified and elegant day. France became a coquette; dressed herself +as a porcelain shepherdess; and with beribboned crook and sheep, +seeking pleasant prospects to stroll through, gave herself to +dalliance--her powder-puff and patch-box and fan a serious part of her +unseriousness. + + + + +V + +THE CHÂTEAUROUX + + +At thirty-five Boucher has arrived. He is in the vogue; in favour at +Court--as well as in the fashion. In his three years from taking his +seat at the Academy to the opening of the first Salon he has created a +new and original style--his cupid pieces, his pastorals, his +Venus-pieces, his tapestry. Boucher's kingdom lay in the realm of the +decorative painter--and he has found it. Torn from the surroundings +for which he designed them, as part and parcel of the general scheme, +his pictures are as out of place as an Italian altarpiece in an +English dining-room, yet they suffer less. Several may still be seen, +as he set them up in frames of his own planning, as overdoors in the +palace of the Soubise, now given up to the national archives. + +The ghost of the Prince of Soubise, who commissioned them, may haunt +his palace, but his kin know the place no longer. The overdoors +wrought by Boucher's skill look down now on the nation's collection of +historic documents. The "Three Graces enchaining Love," the fine +pastoral of "The Cage," and the pastoral of the "Shepherd placing a +Rose in his Shepherdess's Hair," were to see a mightier change than +the usurpation of Louis the Fourteenth's pompous age by the elegant +years of Louis the Fifteenth. But this was not as yet. Here at least +we see Boucher's art rid of all outside influences, and at the full +tide of creation; here we have the inimitable lightness of touch, the +figures and landscape bathed in the airy volume of atmosphere. + +He seems at this time to have played with pastel, due probably to his +friendship with Latour, who sent a portrait of Boucher's wife to this +Salon. Boucher showed in the use of chalks the artistry and skill that +were always at his command. + +He also was putting to its full use his innate sense of landscape, +raising to high achievement that astonishing balance of landscape and +figures in his design--a balance that has never been surpassed; his +figures never override his landscape; his landscape never overpowers +his figures. His earnest counsels to his pupils and his constant +deploring of the lack of the landscape art in France prove the great +stress he laid upon it. + +The designing of a frontispiece for the catalogue of a personal +friend, one Gersaint, a merchant of oriental wares, started Boucher in +his thirty-third year upon that series of Chinese pictures and +tapestries known as the "Chinoiseries," in which he frittered away +only too many precious hours, for they were received with great favour +by the public. The paintings of Chinese subjects designed for the +looms of Beauvais are still to be seen at Besançon. + +But busy as were his brain and hand in the exercise of his wide and +versatile gifts, pouring out "Chinoiseries," illustrations for books, +tapestries on a large scale, landscapes, models for the gilt bronze +decorations of porcelain vases, scheming handsome frames for his +pictures, designing furniture and fans--Boucher was true, above all, +"to his goddess," and painted the famed "Birth of Venus," which, +thanks to the Swedish Ambassador's fondness for Madame Boucher, now +hangs at Stockholm; our amorous Count de Tessin, to be just, seems to +have had a rare flair for the artistic--besides artist's wives. It was +on the 15th of April in 1742, the last year of his thirties, that the +Royal favour was marked by the grant of a pension of 400 livres +(double florins) to Boucher with promise of early benefits to follow. +Two years afterwards it was raised to 600 livres. + +This was the year that he painted the beautiful canvas of "Diana +leaving the Bath with one of her Companions," now at the Louvre. It +was also the year that saw his landscape, the "Hamlet of Issé" at the +Salon. This "Hameau d'Issé" was to be enlarged for the Opera, proving +him to be decorator there, where he was arranging waterfalls, +cascades, and the rest of the pretty business, without staying his +hand from his art. + +At forty Boucher has come into his kingdom. The ten years of these +forties were to be a vast triumph for him. He was to produce +masterpiece after masterpiece. His art had caught the taste of the +day. He was at the height of his powers. He had done great things--he +was to do greater. During these ten years of his forties he poured +forth vivid and glowing works of sustained power and originality. + +We have a picture of him as he was in the flesh at this time--the +pastel portrait by Lundberg, now at the Louvre--a gay, somewhat +dissipated, handsomely dressed dandy of the time, smiling out of his +careless day, the debonnair man of fashion, the laughing eyes showing +signs of the night carousals, which were the rest from the prodigious +toil of this vital and forthright spirit. + +It was in this our artist's fortieth year that the gifted old Cardinal +Fleury, who had guided the fortunes of France with rare skill, died, +broken by his ninety years and the blunders of the disastrous war that +he had so strenuously opposed; and Louis, essaying the strut of +kingship, became king by act. His indolent character, unequal to the +mighty business, his indeterminate will fretted by the set of +quarrelling and intriguing rogues that he gathered about him as his +ministers, he fell into the habit that became his thenceforth, the +only thing to which he paid the tribute of constancy--he ruled France +from behind pretty petticoats. He had early shown the adulterous blood +of his great-grandfather; two, if not three, of five sisters of the +noble and historic house of De Nesle had yielded to his gadding fancy; +the youngest now ousted her sister De Mailly from the king's favour, +was publicly acknowledged as the king's mistress, and became Duchess +of Châteauroux. Boucher painted her handsome being as a shepherdess in +one of his pastorals. She was no ordinary toy of a king. A woman of +talent, with hot ambitions for the king's majesty, fired with the +pride of race of the old French noblesse, it was during her short +years of ascendancy over the king that he roused from his body's +torpor and made an effort to reach the dignity and eminence befitting +to the lord of a great and gallant people. He stepped forth awhile +from his drunken bouts and manifold mean adulteries, and set himself +at the head of the army in Flanders, and strutted it as conqueror. +Poor Châteauroux only got the hate of the people for reward, Louis the +honours; for the people resented the public dishonour of her state. +Power she found to be a dead-sea apple in her pretty mouth. The glory +of it all, the splendours, were not the easily won delights for which +she had looked. She had to fight a duel, that never ended, with the +king's witty, crafty, and scurrilous Prime Minister, the notorious +Maurepas--and Maurepas willed that no woman should ever come between +him and the king--Maurepas who knew no mercy, no decency, no chivalry, +no scruple. At Châteauroux's urging, Louis placed himself at the +head of the army; and France went near mad with joy that she had +again found a king. Crafty Maurepas urged on the business; the +Châteauroux suddenly realised his cunning glee--it separated her from +the king. + + [Illustration: PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN + + (In the Louvre) + + Of the rare portraits painted by Boucher, it is strange that the + sitter to this finely painted canvas is now wholly forgotten. + But the picture remains to prove to us the wide range of + Boucher's genius.] + +Out of the whirl of things Boucher's fortune was ripening, little as +he might suspect it. + +He was painting masterpieces that make his name live. To his fortieth +year belong the famed "Birth of Venus," the "Venus leaving the Bath," +the "Muse Clio," the "Muse Melpomene," and the three well-known +pastorals now at the Louvre--"The Sleeping Shepherdess," the "Nest," +and the "Shepherd and Shepherdesses." Of the many famous Venus-pieces +that his hand painted during these years it is not easy to write the +list. But having signed the "Marriage of Love and Psyche" at +forty-one, he turned his experimental hand to the homely, realistic +Dutch style that was having a wide vogue, and painted the +"Dejeuner"--a family of the prosperous class of the day at +breakfast--showing with rare charm the surroundings and home life of +the well-to-do of his time. + +All goes well with Boucher. He changes into better quarters in the Rue +de Grenelle-Saint-Honoré, where he lived for the next five years, +until 1749; but his eyes are fixed upon a studio and apartments at +the old palace of the Louvre, though the hard intriguing of his +powerful friends at Court on his behalf failed for some time. He had, +indeed, to make another move before he arrived at his longed-for goal. +Pensions Boucher, like others, had found to be somewhat empty affairs; +but rooms at the Louvre were a solid possession eagerly sought after +by the artists. + +In this year of 1744 Boucher created a new fashion at the annual Salon +by sending studies and sketches instead of finished pictures; and it +set a value upon such things not before realised by artists, for +success was instant and loud. + +Towards the end of the next, Boucher's forty-second year, the Swedish +Ambassador, Count de Tessin, who was to take his leave of Paris, +commissioned four pictures to represent the day of a woman of fashion, +and to be entitled "Morning," "Midday," "Evening," and "Night." +Boucher painted one of these for him, now known as the "Marchande de +Modes." The others were painted later, and all had a wide vogue as +engravings. The correspondence has interest since it reveals Boucher's +business habits; he was paid for a picture on its delivery, and for +each of these he was to receive 600 livres (double florins or +dollars)--about a hundred and twenty pounds. + +In an official document of the Director of Buildings to the king (or +Minister of Fine Art, as we should say), written in this year of 1745, +Boucher being forty-two, is a "list of the best painters," in which +Boucher is singled out for distinction as "an historic painter, living +in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honoré, opposite the Rue des Deux-Ecus, +pupil of Lemoyne, excelling also in landscape, grotesques, and +ornaments in the manner of Watteau; and equally skilled in painting +flowers, fruit, architecture, and subjects of gallantry and of +fashion." + +Not so bad for dry officialdom; the critics could learn a lesson. For +he was nothing less. What indeed does he not do? and wondrous well! +this painter of the age. + +And the mighty rush of events is about to sweep him into further +prominence; the very things which he probably passed by with a gay +shrug are to enrich him, to help him to his highest fulfilment. + +Poor Châteauroux saw that she must lose the king's gadding favour in +the conflict with Maurepas unless she joined her lord, now with the +army. She realised full well that she had created the new Louis of +Ambition--that her going must bring the people's hate to her. But she +dared not lose the king. And she went. Maurepas had overdone his +jibings. The indiscretion at once rang through the land; became the +jest of the army--and Maurepas was not far from the bottom of the +business. The discreet indiscretion of covered ways between the king's +lodgings and hers only added to the mockeries, and increased the +people's hate against, of course, the Châteauroux. Then upon a day in +August the small-pox seized Louis at Metz; poor Châteauroux fought for +possession of the king in the sick room, until his fear of +death--Louis' sole piety--sent her packing--shrinking back in the +hired carriage at each halting-place for change of horses, lest she +should be seen and torn from her place and destroyed by the populace. +But Louis recovered; Paris rang with bells at joy on his recovery, and +he entered the city amidst mad enthusiasm, hailed as The Well-Beloved. +He sent for the Châteauroux to find her dying, Maurepas having to +deliver the message of recall. She died suddenly and in great agony, +swearing that Maurepas had poisoned her--died in the arms of her poor +discarded sister, the De Mailly. + +But this year of 1745 Boucher hears a mightier scandal that is to mean +vast things to all France--and not least of all to François Boucher. + + + + +VI + +THE POMPADOUR + + +A young bride had become the gossip of the rich merchant society of +Paris--that class that was ousting the old noblesse from power. She +was a beautiful, a remarkable woman; her wit was repeated in the +drawing-rooms, she had all the accomplishments; her charming +name--Madame Lenormant d'Etioles. + +Draw aside the curtains of the past and we discover our little Jeanne +Poisson--grown into this exquisite creature. It has come about in +strange fashion enough. The father--a scandalous fellow--having +fingered the commissariat moneys in ugly ways to his own use, had been +banished for the ugly business. Nor is Jeanne's mother any better than +she should be; and the wags wink knowingly at the handsome and rich +man of fashion, Monsieur Lenormant de Tournehem, who has been the +favoured gallant during the absence of the light-fingered Poisson. +And, of a truth, Lenormant de Tournehem takes astonishing interest in +the little Jeanne--watching over her up-growing and giving her the +best of education at the convent, where she wins all hearts, and is +known as "the little queen." The truth spoken with wondrous prophecy, +if unthinkingly, as we shall see. Complacent Poisson came home, and +took the rich and fashionable, bland and smiling Lenormant de +Tournehem to his arms. Has he not wealth and estates? therefore as +excellent a friend for Poisson as for Madame Poisson. The girl Jeanne +leaves the convent to be taught the accomplishments by the supreme +masters of France, the wits foregather at Madame Poisson's, and the +brilliant Jeanne is soon mistress of the arts--coquetry not least of +all; has also the most exquisite taste in dress. Under all is a heart +cold as steel; calculating as the higher mathematics. She has but one +hindrance to ambition--her mean birth. Lenormant de Tournehem rids her +even of this slur by making his nephew, Lenormant d'Etioles, marry +her, giving the young couple half his fortune for dowry, and the +promise of the rest when he dies--also he grants him a splendid +town-house, as splendid a country seat. And consequential +self-respecting little Lenormant d'Etioles is lord of Etioles, amongst +other seignories. So Jane Fish appears as Madame Lenormant d'Etioles, +seductive, beautiful, accomplished, to whose house repair the new +philosophy, the wits, and artists. She has a certain sense of virtue; +indeed openly vows that no one but the king shall ever come between +her and her lord. But, deep in her heart, she has harboured a fierce +ambition--that the king shall help her to keep her bond. She puts +forth all her gifts, all her powers, to win to the strange goal; +confides it to her worldly mother and "uncle," Lenormant de Tournehem; +finds keen allies therein to the reaching of that strange goal. The +death of the Châteauroux clears the way. At a masked ball the king is +intrigued as to the personality of a beautiful woman who plagues him +with her art; he orders the unmasking. Madame Lenormant d'Etioles +stands revealed, drops her handkerchief as by accident; the whisper +runs through the Court that "the handkerchief has been thrown!" The +king stoops and picks it up. A few evenings later she is smuggled into +the "private apartments." She goes again a month later; in the morning +is seized with sudden terror--she daren't go back to her angry lord +lest he do her grievous harm; he will have missed her. The king is +touched; allows her to hide from henceforth in the secret apartments; +promises the beautiful creature a lodging, her husband's banishment, +and early acknowledgment as titular mistress--before the whole Court +at Easter, says the pious Great One. But he has to join the army to +play the Conqueror at Fontenoy; and it is later in the year +(September) before Madame d'Etioles is presented to the Court in a +vast company and proceeds to the queen's apartments to kiss hands on +appointment. Thus was Jeanne Poisson raised to the great aristocracy +of France in her twenty-third year as Marquise de Pompadour. + +Boucher had been one of the brilliant group of artists of the +d'Etioles' circle. That the Pompadour's influence had much effect upon +his position at Court for a year or two is unlikely; for she had to +fight for possession of the king day and night, as the Châteauroux +had done, against the queen's party and the unscrupulous enmity of +Maurepas. To set down Boucher's favour at Court to her is ridiculous. +He was painting for the queen's apartments at thirty-one when the +Pompadour was a school-girl of twelve. But in the year following her +rise to power, Boucher painted four pictures for the large room of the +Dauphin, which were "placed elsewhere"; and, the year after that, he +was at work upon two pictures for the bedroom of the king at the +castle of Marly. It is likely enough that the Pompadour directed this +order. She had almost immediately secured the office of the +Director-General of Buildings, which covered the direction of the +royal art treasures, for "uncle" Lenormant de Tournehem, who was also +a friend of the artist. And from this year it is significant that +Boucher paints no more for the opposing camp of the Queen and Dauphin. + + [Illustration: PLATE VII.--INTERIEUR DE FAMILLE + + (In the Louvre) + + Boucher had a quick ear for the vogue. Twice he found the Home + to be in the artistic fashion; and each time he painted Home + life in order to be in the mode. This interior, showing a + well-to-do French family of the times at the midday meal, is not + only rendered with glitter and atmosphere, but it is valuable as + a rich record of the manners and furnishments of his day.] + +He was now giving all his strength to the "Rape of Europa" that he +painted for the competition ordered by the Academy at the command of +Lenormant de Tournehem in the king's name, in which ten chosen +Academicians were to paint subjects in their own style for six prizes +and a gold medal, to be awarded in secret vote by the competing +artists themselves. Boucher won, by his amiable nature, the good-will +of them all by proposing that they should so arrange as to share the +prizes equally, and thus prevent any sense of soreness inevitable in +the losers. + +But greatly as he won the good-fellowship of his fellow-artists by it, +this picture caused a murmur to rise amongst the critics who, +aforetime loud in his praise, now began to complain of his "abuse of +rose tints" in the painting of the female nude. The fact was that +Diderot and the men of the New Philosophy were turning their eyes to +the whole foundations upon which France was built, art as well as +society, and were beginning to demand of art "grandeur and morality in +its subjects." They were soon to be clamouring for "the statement of a +great maxim, a lesson for the spectator." Diderot, with bull-like +courage, picked out the greatest, and turned upon Boucher, blaming him +for triviality. + +The nations, weary of war, concluded the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in +the October of 1748. No sooner was peace concluded than Louis +relapsed into his old habit of dandified indolence and profligate +ease; and, putting from him his duties as the lord of a great people, +he gave himself up to shameless intrigues. He allowed the Pompadour to +usurp his magnificence and to rule over the land. He yielded himself +utterly, if sometimes sulkily, to her domination; and for sixteen +years she was the most powerful person at Court, the greatest force in +the state--making and unmaking ministers, disposing of office, +honours, titles, pensions. All political affairs were discussed and +arranged under her guidance; ministers, ambassadors, generals +transacted their business in her stately boudoirs; the whole patronage +of the sovereign was dispensed by her pretty hands; the prizes of the +Church, of the army, of the magistracy could be obtained solely +through her favour and good-will. Her energy must have been +prodigious. Possessed of extraordinary talents and exquisite tastes, +she gave full rein to them, and it was in the indulgence of her better +qualities that Destiny brought Boucher into the friendship of this +wonderful woman. She became not only his patron but his pupil, +engraving several of his designs. + +But this, her sovereignty over the king, easy and light in its outward +seeming, was a haggard nightmare to the calculating woman who had so +longed for it. She knew no single hour's rest from the night she won +to the king's bed. She had to fight her enemies, secret and open, for +possession of the king's will, day and night; and she fought--with +rare courage. She won by consummate skill and unending pluck. She made +herself an essential part of the king's freedom from care. The Court +party fought her for power with constant vigilance. Maurepas brought +all his unscrupulous art, all his ironic mimicry, all his vile jibes +and unchivalrous hatred to bear against her. He had made himself a +necessity to the king; and he never slept away a chance of injuring +her. He knew no mercy, no nobility, no pity. He made her the detested +object of the people. With his own hands he penned the witty verses +and epigrams that were sung and flung about the streets of Paris. + +But she had an enemy more subtle than any at the Court--hour by hour +she had to dispute the king with the king's boredom. And it was in the +effort to do so that she created her celebrated theatre in the +private apartments, calling Boucher and others to her aid in the doing +of it. Here the noblest of France vied with each other to obtain the +smallest part to play, an instrument in its orchestra, an invitation +to its performances. + +Boucher left the Opera to become its decorator in 1748, and did not +return until her death. For her, he also decorated her beautiful rooms +at Bellevue. She bought at high prices many of his greatest +masterpieces. + +The Pompadour's power so greatly increased that she openly took +command of the king's will; dared and succeeded in getting his +favourite Maurepas banished; and herself took to the use of the kingly +"we." Her rascally father was created Lord of Marigny; her brother, +whom the king liked well and called "little brother," was created +Marquis de Vandières; her only child, Alexandrine, signed her name as +a princess of the blood royal, and would have been married to the +blood royal had she not caught the small-pox and died. She amassed a +private fortune, castles, and estates such as no mistress had dreamed +of; and into them she poured art treasures that cost the nation +thirty-six millions of money. She created the porcelain factory of +Sèvres, kept keen watch over the Gobelins looms, and founded the great +Military School of St. Cyr amidst work that would have kept several +statesmen busy, and of deadly intrigues at Court that would have +broken the spirit of many a brilliant man. + +It was in her hectic desire to keep the king from being bored that she +stooped, and made Boucher stoop, to the employment of his high +artistry in the painting of a series of indecent pictures wherewith to +tickle the jaded desires of Boredom, and thereby gave rise to the +widespread impression that Boucher's art was ever infected by base +design. But Boucher was, at his very worst, but a healthy animal; and +even in these secret works for the king he did not reach so low as did +many an artist of more pious memory who painted with no excuse but his +own pleasure. + +As a matter of fact, the Pompadour has been blamed too much for this +evil act, and too much forgotten for her splendid patronage of the man +who, under it and during these great years of his forties, produced a +series of masterpieces that place him in the foremost rank of the +painters of his century. It is impossible to reckon the number of the +pastorals and Venus-pieces that his master-hand painted and loved to +paint, during these the supreme years of his genius. It is significant +that they were painted during the years that saw the Pompadour in +supreme power. + +Boucher was so firmly established in 1750, his forty-seventh year, +that he moved into a new house in the Rue Richelieu, near the Palais +Royal. Disappointed in not receiving a studio and apartments at the +Louvre, he was allowed to use a studio in the king's library. He was +now making money so easily that he was able to collect pictures and +precious stones and the gaily coloured curiosities that appealed to +his tastes. + +The critics were becoming more and more censorious; and one of them +hits true with the comment that in his pastorals his shepherdesses +look as if they had stepped over from the Opera and would soon be off +again thereto. + +In his forty-eighth year Boucher's art was at its most luminous +stage--his atmosphere clear and subtle and exquisitely rendered; his +yellows golden; his whites satin-like and silvery; his flesh-tones +upon the nude bodies of his goddesses unsurpassed by previous art. The +beauty of it all was not to last much longer. + +Lenormant de Tournehem died suddenly in the November of 1751; the +Pompadour's brother, Abel Poisson de Vandières, was appointed +Director-General in his stead at the age of twenty-five--and soon +afterwards, on the death of his father, created Marquis de Marigny--a +shy, handsome youth, a gentleman and an honourable fellow, whom the +king liked well, and against whom his sister's sole complaint was that +he lacked the brazen effrontery of the courtiers of the day. No man +did more for the advancement of the art of his time. A pension of a +thousand livres falling vacant, the young fellow secured it for +Boucher; and almost immediately afterwards, a studio becoming vacant +at the Louvre owing to the death of Coypel, first painter to the king, +Boucher came to his coveted home, eagerly moving in with his family as +soon as its wretched state could be put into repair. + +The decoration of the new wing to the palace at Fontainebleau brought +the commission for the painting of the ceiling and the principal +picture in the Council Chamber to Boucher, who had already decorated +the Dining-Room. This was the period of his painting the "Rising" and +the "Setting of the Sun" for the Pompadour, now in the Watteau +collection, two canvases that were always favourites with the painter, +bitterly as they were assailed by the critic Grimm. + + [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--LA MODISTE + + (In the Wallace Collection) + + The "Modiste" that now hangs at the Wallace is a slight + variation on the "Toilet" that went to Stockholm, commissioned + by the Swedish Ambassador as "Morning" (with three others, to + represent the Midday, Evening, and Night of a fashionable + woman's day, but which were never painted). The "Modiste" or + "Morning," was engraved by Gaillard as "La Marchande de Modes," + which adds somewhat to the confusion of its title.] + +He was turning out so much work that it was impossible to give as much +care to his pictures as he ought. For he refused sternly, his life +long, to raise his prices; by consequence he had to create a larger +amount of work in order to meet his expenditure. It was about this +time that Reynolds, passing through Paris, went to visit him and found +him painting on a huge canvas without models or sketches. "On +expressing my surprise," writes Reynolds, "he replied that he had +considered the model as necessary during his youth until he had +completed his study of art, but that he had not used one for a long +time past." + +He soon had not the time, not only to paint from nature but even to +give his pictures the work necessary to complete them. The feverish +haste which took possession of him in his frantic endeavour to meet +the vast demand for his pictures, and the eager efforts of his +engravers to satisfy the public call for engravings after his works, +gave him less and less leisure to joy in their doing. And his eyesight +began to fail. His flesh-tints deepened to a reddish hue; and he +stands baffled before his work, suspecting his sight, since what every +one cries out upon as being bright vermilion, he only sees as a dull +earthy colour. Boucher has topped the height of his achievement; he +has to "descend the other side of the hill." Boucher begins to grow +old. + +In Boucher's fifty-first year an ugly intrigue of the queen's party at +Court to sap the Pompadour's influence over the king by drawing away +the king's affections towards Madame de Choiseul-Romanet, a reckless +young beauty of the Court, brought about a strange alliance. The Count +de Stainville, one of the Pompadour's bitterest enemies, was shown the +king's letter of invitation to his young kinswoman; and he, deeply +wounded in his pride that his kinswoman should have been offered to +the king, went to the Pompadour and exposed the plot. A close +alliance followed; and De Stainville thenceforth became her chief +guide in affairs of state. It was at her instance that the king called +him to be his Prime Minister, raising him to the Duchy of Choiseul--a +name he made illustrious as one of the greatest Ministers of France. + +In his fifty-second year Boucher was appointed to the directorship of +the Gobelins looms, to the huge delight of the weavers and all +concerned with the tapestry factory. This was the year of his painting +the famous portrait of the Pompadour, to whom he several times paid +this "tribute of immorality." For the Gobelins looms he produced many +handsome designs; and he was painting with astounding industry. But +his hand's skill began to falter. His art shows weariness in his +sixtieth year, and sickness fell upon him, and held him in servitude +now with rare moments of respite. The critics, notoriously Diderot, +were now attacking him with shameless virulence. Boucher passed it all +by; but he felt the change that was taking place in the public taste. +The ideas of the New Philosophy were infecting public opinion; the Man +of Feeling had arisen in the land; and France, humiliated in war, and +resenting the follies and the greed of her shameless privileged class, +was openly resenting it and all its works. Choiseul had planted his +strength deep in the people's party, and was come near to being its +god. His masterly mind had checked Frederick of Prussia to the North; +and the nations, exhausted by the struggle, signed the Peace of Paris +in 1763. Choiseul, with France at peace abroad, turned to the blotting +out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits at home. Their attempt to +end the Pompadour's relations with the king made this powerful woman +eager to complete his design; the chance was soon to come, and the +Order was abolished from France and its vast property seized by the +state. + +The Pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. Worn out +by her superhuman activities, assailed by debt, she fell ill of a +racking cough, dying on the 15th of April, 1764, in her forty-second +year, keeping her ascendancy over the king and the supreme power in +France to her last hour. Death found her transacting affairs of state. +Louis, weary of his servitude, had only a heartless epigram to cast +at the body of the dead woman as she passed to her last resting-place. + + + + +VII + +THE END + + +The death of the Pompadour robbed Boucher of a friend; but her +brother, Marigny, remained faithfully attached to the old artist, and +seized every chance to honour him. On the death of Carle van Loo, +Boucher, at sixty-two, was made first painter to the king, with all +his pensions and privileges that were consistent with this the supreme +appointment in the art world. + +There had been serious intention of making Boucher the head of the +Ecole des Elèves Protegés; he had the art of making himself liked and +of inspiring the love of the arts. He was very popular with the +students and artists, owing to his kindliness, his eagerness to render +service, his readiness to encourage the youngsters or to console them. +When the riot took place, provoked by the Academicians by their award +of the Prix de Rome in 1767, the students insulted the Academicians, +but hailed Boucher with enthusiastic applause. The reason was not far +to seek. When a student came to the old master for advice he did not +"play the pontiff," and, scorning the false dignity of big phrases, he +took the brush in his hand and showed the way out of all difficulties +by simplehearted example, despising rules, and putting himself out in +order to make things clear to a young artist. + +However, the Academicians feared he would be an unorthodox master for +youth, and appointed another in his place. + +A long and serious illness thwarted his keen energies. Diderot was +giving himself up to outrageous violence against him. If the old +painter exhibited at the Salon, Diderot fiercely assailed his art; if +he did not exhibit, Diderot as bitterly assailed him for his +negligences. Above all, he attacked Boucher in that he did not paint +what Diderot would have painted--but could not. "When he paints +infants," cries Diderot, "you will not find one employed in a real act +of life--studying his lesson, reading, writing, stripping hemp." + +Poor unfortunate infants! for whom Philosophy could find no happier +joy in life than _stripping hemp_! Boucher was but an artist. He +painted his generation as far as he could see it, and, with all his +faults and weaknesses, he never debauched his art with foreign and +alien things that had no part in the nation's life; he painted fair +France into his landscapes, not a make-believe land he did not know +with preposterous Greek ruins; and best of all, to his eternal honour, +he painted infants glad in their gladness to be alive, with no desire +to send their happy little bodies to school, with no sickly ambition +to make them into budding philosophers, with no thought of making them +pose and lie as Men of Feeling. He had no joy in setting their little +bodies to toil--in making them "teach a lesson to the spectator," in +making them stoop their little shoulders to the "picking of hemp." + +He continued to paint as he had always painted--except that he painted +less well. The wreath of roses was wilting on a grey head. The blood +jigged less warmly in the frail body. The features showed pallid--the +eyes haggard. The sight failed. The hand alone kept something of its +cunning. + +He went to Holland with his friend Randon du Boisset, but health +shrank farther from him. Diderot had near spent his last jibe. + +In 1768, Boucher's sixty-fifth year, the neglected queen went to her +grave. The king's grief and contrition and vows to amend his life came +too late, and lasted little longer than the drying of the floods of +tears over the body of his dead consort. A year later he was become +the creature of a pretty woman of the gutters, whom he caused to be +married to the Count du Barry--the infamously famous Madame du Barry. + +But neither the remonstrances of Choiseul with the king against this +further degradation of the throne of France, nor his unconcealed scorn +of the upstart countess, nor the dangerous enemy he made for himself +thereby, signified now to Boucher, first painter to the king. + +Boucher was failing. His son was a prig and a disappointment. His two +favourite pupils, Baudoin and Deshayes, who had married his two girls, +died. + +To the Salon of 1769 he sent his "Caravan of Bohemians." It was his +last display. He had been going about for some time like a gaunt ghost +of his former self, afflicted with all the ills inevitable to a life +feverishly consumed in work and the pursuit of pleasure. + +They went to his studio at five of the clock one May morning, and +found him seated at his easel, before a canvas of Venus, dead, with +the paint-filled brush fallen out of his fingers. + +So passed he away on the 30th of May 1770, in his sixty-seventh year. + + * * * * * + +When Boucher died, the generation of which he was the limner was near +come to its violent end. The rosy carnivals and gay gallantries of his +age gave way to the blood-stained romance and fierce tempest of the +Revolution. The garrets of the old curiosity-shops received the +discarded canvases of the master. His shepherds and shepherdesses were +put to rout by the Romans of his pupil, citizen David. The old order +was brought into contempt and overthrown. And with it, Boucher's art, +like much that was gracious and charming and good in the evil thing, +went down also, and was overwhelmed for a while. + +For a while only. For just as, out of the blood and terror of the +Revolution, a real France arose, ph[oe]nix-wise, from the ruin, and in +being born, whilst putting off the vilenesses of the thing from which +she sprang, took on also to herself the gracious and winsome qualities +that place her amongst the most fascinating peoples of the ages; so +Boucher has come into his kingdom again--the most gracious of painters +that the years have yielded. + + +The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London + +The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41947 *** |