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diff --git a/42118-0.txt b/42118-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..22ca9e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/42118-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1451 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42118 *** + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 42118-h.htm or 42118-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42118/42118-h/42118-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42118/42118-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive. See + http://archive.org/details/fragonardocad00macfuoft + + + + + +Masterpieces in Colour + +Edited by--T. Leman Hare + +FRAGONARD + + * * * * * * + +IN THE SAME 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. + FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL. + + _In Preparation_ + + WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD. + RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY. + J. F. MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER. + CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY. + HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + BOUCHER. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + VIGÉE LE BRUN. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND. + MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + AND OTHERS. + + * * * * * * + + +[Illustration: PLATE I.--CHIFFRE D'AMOUR. Frontispiece + +(In the Wallace Collection) + +Fragonard, like his master Boucher, soon found that the pompous, +historical, and religious pictures which the critics demanded of him, +pleased no one but the critics. It was a fortunate day for him when he +turned his back upon them, and employed his charming gifts upon the +statement of the life of his day. And in few paintings that created +his fame has he surpassed the fine handling of this scene, in which +the girl cuts her lover's initials on the trunk of a tree--the dainty +figure silhouetted against the dreamlike background of sky and tree +that he loved so well. There is over all the glamour of the poetic +statement supremely done.] + + +Fragonard + +by + +HALDANE MACFALL + +Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour + + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + +London: T. C. & E. C. Jack +New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. + + + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +WALTER EMANUEL + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Plate + I. Chiffre d'Amour Frontispiece + In the Wallace Collection + Page + II. The Music Lesson 14 + In the Louvre + + III. L'Etude 24 + In the Louvre + + IV. The Schoolmistress 34 + In the Wallace Collection + + V. Figure de Fantasie 40 + In the Louvre + + VI. Le Voeu à l'Amour 50 + In the Louvre (new acquisition) + + VII. The Fair-haired Boy 60 + In the Wallace Collection + + VIII. Le Billet Doux 70 + In the Collection of M. Wildenstein, Paris + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +I + +THE BEGINNINGS + + +High up, amongst the Sea-Alps that stretch along the southern edge of +France, where romantic Provence bathes her sunburnt feet in the blue +waters of the Mediterranean, high on the mountain's side hangs the +steep little town of Grasse, embowered midst grey-green olive-trees. +In as sombre a narrow street as there is in all her dark alleys, on +the fifth day of April in the much bewigged and powdered year of 1732, +there was born to a glovemaker of the town, worthy mercer Fragonard, a +boy-child, whom the priest in the gloomy church christened Jean Honoré +Fragonard. + +As the glovemaker looked out of his sombre house over the sunlit +slopes of the grey-green olive-trees that stretched away to the deep +blue waters of the sea, he vowed his child to commerce and a thrifty +life in this far-away country place that was but little vexed with the +high ambitions of distant, fickle, laughing Paris, or her splendid +scandals; nay, scarce gave serious thought to her gadding fashions or +her feverish vogues--indeed, the attenuated ghosts of these once +frantic things wriggled southwards through the provinces on but +sluggish feet to the high promenades of Grasse--as the worthy mercer +was first in all the little town to know by his modest traffic in +them; and that, too, only long after the things they shadowed were +buried under new millineries and fopperies and fantastic riot in the +gay capital. As a fact, the dark-eyed, long-nosed folk that trudged +these steep and narrow thoroughfares were a sluggish people; and +sunlit Grasse snored away its day in drowsy fashion. + +But if the room where the child first saw the light were gloomy enough +within, the skies were wondrous blue without, and the violet-scented +slopes were robed in a tender garment of silvery green, decked with +the gold of orange-trees, and enriched with bright embroidery of +many-coloured flowers that were gay as the gayest ribbons of distant +Paris. And the glory of it bathed the lad's eyes and heart for sixteen +years, so that his hands got them itching to create the splendour of +it which sang within him; and the wizardry of the flower-garden of +France never left him, casting its spell over all his thinking, and +calling to him to utter it to the world. It stole into his colour-box, +and on to his palette, and so across the canvas into his master-work, +and was to lead him through the years to a blithe immortality. + +The small boy with the big head was born in the year after François +Boucher came back to Paris from his Italian wanderings on the eve of +his thirties and won to academic honour. The child grew up in his +Provençal home, whilst Boucher, turning his back upon academic art on +gaining his seat at the Academy, was creating the Pastorals, +Venus-pieces, and Cupid-pieces that changed the whole style of French +art from the pompous and mock-heroic manner of Louis Quatorze's +century of the sixteen hundreds to the gay and elegant pleasaunces +that fitted so aptly the elegant pleasure-seeking days of Louis the +Fifteenth's seventeen hundreds. + +Gossip of high politics came trickling down to Grasse as slowly as the +fashions, yet the eleven-year-old boy's ears heard of the death of the +minister, old Cardinal Fleury, and of the effort of Louis to become +king by act. Though Louis had small genius for the mighty business, +and fell thenceforth into the habit of ruling France from behind +petticoats, raising the youngest of the daughters of the historic and +noble house of De Nesle to be his accepted consort under the rank and +honours of Duchess of Chateauroux. All tongues tattled of the +business, the very soldiery singing mocking songs; when--Louis +strutting it as conqueror with the army, got the small-pox at Metz, +and sent the Chateauroux packing at the threat of death. He recovered, +to enter Paris soon after as the Well-Beloved, and to be reconciled +with the frail Chateauroux before she died in the sudden agony in +which she swore she had been poisoned. + +[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE MUSIC LESSON + +(In the Louvre) + +Fragonard had a profound admiration for the Dutch painters. Whether he +went to Holland shortly after his marriage is not known; but he seems +suddenly to have employed his brush as if he had come across fine +examples of the Dutch school. "The Music Lesson" at the Louvre is one +of these, and the Dutch influence is most marked both as to subject, +treatment, and handling of the paint, if we allow for Fragonard's own +strongly French personality.] + +At thirteen the boy listened to the vague rumours of a new scandal +that set folk's tongues wagging again throughout all France. The +king raised Madame Lenormant d'Etioles, a daughter of the rich +financier class, to be Marquise de Pompadour, and yielded up to her +the sceptre over his people. + +The nations, weary of war, agreed to sign the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle +in 1748. In this, our artist's sixteenth year, the Pompadour had been +the king's acknowledged mistress for three years. From this time, the +peace being signed, Louis the Fifteenth laid aside all effort to +fulfil the duties of the lord over a great people; gave himself up to +shameless and riotous living, and allowed the Pompadour to usurp the +splendour of his throne and to rule over the land. + +For the next sixteen years she was the most powerful person at court, +the greatest personality in the State--making and unmaking ministers +like a sovereign, and disposing of high offices, honours, titles, and +pensions. The king squandered upon her some seventy odd millions of +the public money as money is now valued. Her energy and her industry +must have been colossal. Her intelligence saved the king from the +boredom of decision in difficult affairs. She made herself a necessity +to his freedom from care. Every affair of State was discussed and +settled under her guidance. Ministers, ambassadors, generals, +transacted their business in her handsome boudoirs. She dispensed the +whole patronage of the sovereign with her pretty hands. The prizes of +the army, of the church, of the magistracy, could only be secured +through her good-will. As though these things were not load enough to +bow the shoulders of any one human being she kept a rein upon every +national activity. She created the porcelain factory of Sèvres, +thereby adding a lucrative industry to France. She founded the great +military school of Saint Cyr. She mothered every industry. She was +possessed of a rare combination of talents and accomplishments, and of +astounding taste. But her deepest affection was for the arts. + +The Pompadour had gathered about her, as the beautiful Madame +d'Etioles, the supreme wits and artists and thinkers of her day; +Voltaire and Boucher and Latour and the rest were her friends, and the +new thought that was being born in France was nursed in her +drawing-rooms. As the Pompadour she kept up her friendships. She was +prodigal in her encouragement of the arts, in the furnishment of her +own and the king's palaces and castles. And it was in the exercise and +indulgence of her better qualities that she brought out the genius +and encouraged to fullest achievement the art of Boucher, and of the +great painters of her time. So Boucher brought to its full blossom the +art that Watteau had created--the picture of "Fêtes galentès"--and +added to the artistic achievement of France the Pastorals wherein +Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses dally in pleasant landscapes, and +the Venus-pieces wherein Cupids flutter and romp--a world of elegance +and charm presided over by the Goddess of Love. + + + + +II + +ROME + + +All this was but Paris-gossip amidst the olive-trees and steep streets +of far-away Grasse, where the large-headed, small-bodied lad was +idling through his fifteen summers, living and breathing the beauty of +the pleasant land of romance that bred him, when, like bolt from the +blue, fell the news upon him that his father, tearing aside the fabric +of the lad's dreams, had articled him as junior clerk to a notary. + +But the French middle-class ideal of respectability meant no heaven +for this youth's goal, no ultimate aim for his ambition. He idled his +master into despair; "wasting his time" on paint-pots and +pencil-scribblings until that honest man himself advised that the lad +should be allowed to follow his bent. + +So it came about--'twas in that year of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, +the year that saw the Pompadour come to supreme power (she had been +for three years the king's acknowledged mistress)--the youth's mother, +with all a French mother's shrewdness and common-sense, gathered +together the sixteen-year-old lad's sketches, and bundled off with him +in a diligence to Paris. + +Arrived in Paris she sought out the greatest painter of the day, and +burst with the shy youth into the studio of the dandified favourite +artist of the king's majesty, Pompadour's Boucher--large-hearted, +generous, much-sinning, world-famed Boucher, then at the very +summit of his career--he was at that time living in the Rue +Grenelle-Saint-Honoré, which he was about to leave, and in which +Fragonard in his old age was destined to end his days. + +The lad glanced with wonder, we may be sure, at the great "Rape of +Europa" that stood upon the master's easel, whilst his mother poured +out in the rough accent of Provence the tale of the genius of her +son--stole, too, a stealthy scrutiny of the Venus-pieces and Pastorals +that stood about the studio, and was filled with awed admiration. The +mother besought the genius of France to make a genius of her son; and +Boucher, with kindly smile upon his lips, glancing over the immature +work of the prodigy, told the lad that he might come back to him in +six months' time, pointing out to him, with all that large-hearted +friendliness and sympathy that made him the loved idol of the +art-students, that he lacked sufficient dexterity in the use of his +tools to enter his studio or to benefit by apprenticeship to him, and +advising the anxious mother to take him to Chardin as the supreme +master in France from whom to learn the mastery of his craft. + +To Chardin the youth went; and France's consummate master in the +painting of still-life, putting the palette on the youngster's thumb +straightway, from the very first day--as his custom was--and making +him use sienna upon it as his only pigment, advising him as he went, +set him to the copying of the prints from the masterpieces of his own +time, insisting on his painting large and broad and solid and true. + +Young Fragonard made so little progress that Chardin wrote to his +parents that he could get nothing out of him; and sent the lad, bag +and baggage, out of his studio. + +Thrown upon his own resources, the young fellow haunted the churches +of Paris, brooded over the masterpieces that hung therein, fixed them +in his mind's eye, and, returning to his lodging, painted them, day by +day, from memory. + +At the end of six months he called again upon Boucher, his sketches +under his arm; and this time he was not sent away. Astounded at the +youth's progress, struck by his enthusiasm, Boucher took him into his +studio, and set him to work to prepare the large decorative cartoons +that artists had to make from their paintings for use at the Gobelins +and Beauvais looms. The artist painted his picture "in little"; he was +also required to paint an "enlargement" of the size that the weavers +had to make into tapestry--this enlargement was mostly done by pupils, +the State demanding, however, that the artist should work over it +sufficiently to sign his name upon it--the head of the factory keeping +custody of the "painting in little" to guide him; the weavers working +from the enlargement. This work upon the enlargement of Boucher's +paintings was an ideal training for Fragonard. + +The Director-General of Buildings to the king (or, as we should +nowadays call him, Minister of Fine Arts), Lenormant de Tournehem, +kinsman to the Pompadour, died suddenly in the November of 1751; the +Pompadour promptly caused to be appointed in his place her brother +Abel Poisson de Vandières--a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman, a man +of honour, who brought to his office an exquisite taste, a loyal +nature, and marked abilities. The king, who liked him well, and called +him "little brother," soon afterwards created him Marquis de +Marigny--and Fragonard, like many another artist of his day, was to be +beholden to him. + +After a couple of years' training under Boucher, Fragonard's master, +with that keen interest that he ever took in the efforts and welfare +of youth, and particularly of his own pupils, urged the young fellow +to compete for the Prix de Rome, pointing out to him the advantages of +winning it. At twenty, without preparation, and without being a pupil +of the Academy, Fragonard won the coveted prize with his "Jeroboam +Sacrificing to Idols." It was in this year that Boucher was given a +studio and apartments at the Louvre. + +For three years thereafter, Fragonard was in the king's school of six +_élèves protégés_ under Carle Van Loo. He continued to work in +Boucher's studio, as well as painting on his own account; and it is to +these years that belong his "Blind Man's Buff" and several pictures +in this style. + +Meanwhile the quarrels between priests and parliaments had grown very +bitter. The king took first one side, then the other. It was in 1756, +Louis having got foul of his Parliament, that the unfortunate and +foolish Damiens stabbed the king with a penknife slightly under the +fifth rib of his left side, as he was stepping into his carriage at +Versailles, and suffered by consequence the terrible tortures and +horrible death that were meted out to such as attempted the part of +regicide. + +This was the year when, at twenty-four, Fragonard was entitled to go +to Rome at the king's expense--the Italian tour being a necessary part +of an artist's training who desired to reach to academic distinction, +and honours in his calling. He started on his journey to Italy with +Boucher's now famous farewell advice ringing in his ears: "My dear +Frago, you go into Italy to see the works of Raphael and Michael +Angelo; but--I tell you in confidence, as a friend--if you take those +fellows seriously you are lost." ("Lost" was not the exact phrase, +Boucher being a Rabelaisian wag, but it will pass.) + +[Illustration: PLATE III.--L'ETUDE + +(In the Louvre) + +The picture of a young woman sometimes known as "L'Etude" (but perhaps +better known as "La Chanteuse" or "Song") at the Louvre is another of +those little canvases painted by Fragonard under the strong influence +of the Dutch school, as we may see not only in the handling of the +paint, and in the arrangement of the figure, but in the very ruffle +about the girl's neck, the lace cuffs to the sleeves, and the +treatment of the dress.] + +Arrived in Rome, Fragonard, like his master before him, was torn with +doubts and uncertainties and warring influences. For several months he +did no work, or little work; and though he stood before the +masterpieces of Michael Angelo and Raphael, stirred by the grandeur of +their design, and eager to be busy with his brush, he was too much of +a Frenchman, too much in sympathy with the French genius, too much +enamoured of the art of his master, to be affected creatively by them. +His hesitations saved him, and won France a master in her long roll of +fame. He escaped the taint of learning to see through the eyes of +others, evaded the swamping of his own genius in an endeavour to utter +his art in halting Italian. Rome was not his grave, as it has been the +grave of so many promising young sons of France; and he came out of +the danger a strong and healthy man. Tiepolo brought him back vision +and inspiration, and the solid earth of his own age to walk upon. And +the French utterance of his master Boucher called back his dazed wits +to the accents of France. At last the genius that was in him quickened +and strove to utter itself. + +The bright colours of Italy, the glamour of her landscapes, these +were the living lessons that bit deeper into his art than all the +works of her antique masters; and the effort to set them upon his +canvas gave to his hand's skill an ordered grace and dignity that were +of more vital effect upon his achievement than the paintings of the +great dead. + +So it came about that Natoire, then director of the royal school in +the Villa Mancini, having written his distress to Marigny at the young +fellow's beginnings, was soon writing enthusiastically about him, and +procured a lengthening of his stay in Rome. + +Here began that lifelong friendship with Hubert Robert, already making +his mark as an artist, and with the Abbé de Saint-Non, a charming +character, who was to engrave the work of the two young painters, and +greatly spread their names abroad thereby. Saint-Non's influential +relations procured him free residence in the Villa d'Este, where the +other two joined him, and a delightful good-fellowship between the +three men followed--the Abbé's artistic tastes adding to the bond of +comradeship. So two years passed pleasantly along at the Villa d'Este, +one of the most beautiful places in all Italy--the ancient ruins hard +by, and the running waters and majestic trees leaving an impression +upon Fragonard's imagination, which passed to his canvases, and never +left his art--developing a profound sense of style, and a knowledge of +light and air that bathed the scenes he was to paint with such rare +skill and insight. Here grew that love of stately gardens which are +the essence of his landscapes, and which won to the heart of a child +of Provence. + +In distant Paris the making of history was growing apace. Gossip of it +reached to Italy. A backstairs intrigue almost dislodged the Pompadour +from power. D'Argenson and the queen's party threw the beautiful and +youthful Madame de Choiseul-Romanet, not wholly unflattered at the +adventure, into the king's way to lure him from the favourite. The +king wrote her a letter of invitation. The girl consulted her noble +kinsman, the Comte de Stainville, of the Maurepas faction or queen's +party, a bitter enemy to the Pompadour. De Stainville, his pride of +race wounded that a kinswoman of his should be offered to the king, +went to the Pompadour, exposed the plot, and forthwith became her +ally--soon her guide in affairs of State. + +In the midst of disasters by sea and land the Pompadour persuaded the +king to send for De Stainville, and to make him his Prime Minister. +He was created Duc de Choiseul in December 1758. He had as ally one of +the most astute and subtle and daring minds in eighteenth-century +France--his sister Beatrice, the famous Duchesse de Grammont. The king +found a born leader of men. Choiseul brought back dignity to the +throne. He came near to saving France. Choiseul was the public opinion +of the nation. He founded his strength on Parliament and on the new +philosophy. He became a national hero. He could do no wrong. He rose +to power in 1758; and at once stemmed the tide of disaster to France. + +The Parliament men took courage. Philosophy, with one of its men in +power, spoke out with no uncertain voice. All France was listening. + +Fragonard had at last to turn his face homewards; and dawdling through +Italy with Saint-Non, staying his feet at Bologna and Venice awhile, +the two friends worked slowly towards Paris, Fragonard entering his +beloved city, after five wander-years, in the autumn of 1761, in his +twenty-ninth year, untainted and unspoiled by academic training, his +art founded upon that of Boucher, enhanced by his keen study of +nature. He reached Paris, rich in plans for pictures, filled with +ardour and enthusiasm for his art, ambitious to create masterpieces, +and burning to distinguish himself. + + + + +III + +THE DU BARRY + + +When Fragonard came back to Paris on the edge of his thirtieth year it +was to find that a great change had come over his master Boucher. The +old, light-hearted, genial painter was showing signs of the burning of +the candle of life at both ends. His art also was being bitterly +assailed by the new critics--the new philosophy was asking for +ennobling sentiments from the painted canvas, and the teaching of a +moral lesson from all the arts. Boucher stood frankly bewildered, +blinking questioning eyes at the frantic din. Old age had come upon +him, creeping over the shrewd kindly features, dulling the exquisite +sight. He could not wholly ignore the change that was taking place in +public taste. The ideas of the philosophers were penetrating public +opinion. The man of feeling had arisen and walked in the land. They +were beginning to speak of the great antique days of Greece and Rome. +Fickle fashion was about to turn her back upon Dresden shepherds and +shepherdesses and leafy groves, and to take up her abode awhile with +heroes and amongst picturesque ruins. + +Arrived in Paris, Fragonard at once set himself to the task of +painting the historic or mythologic Academy-piece expected from the +holder of the Prix de Rome on return from the Italian tour. He painted +"The High Priest Coresus slaying himself to save Callirhoë," which, +though badly hung at the Salon, and still to be seen at the Louvre, +was hailed with high praise by the academicians and critics. The only +adverse criticisms of coldness and timidity levelled against it sound +strange in the light of his after-career, which, whatever its +weaknesses, was not exactly marked with coldness nor eke with +timidity. + +For two years thereafter he essayed the academic style. + +But the praises of Diderot and Grimm failed to fill his pockets; and +he decided to paint no more academic pieces for the critics' praise. +He had indeed no taste for such things, no sympathy with ancient +thought nor with the dead past. He was, like his master, a very son +of France--a child of his own age, glorying in the love of life and +the beauty of his native land. + +Having done his duty by his school, he turned his back upon it +gleefully, as Boucher had also done before him, and set himself +joyously to the painting of the life about him. + +His great chance soon came, and in strange guise. + +It so happened that a young blood at the court, one Baron de +Saint-Julien, went to the painter Doyen with his flame, and asked him +to paint a picture of the pretty creature being swung by a bishop +whilst he himself watched the display of pretty ankles as the girl +went flying through the air. Doyen had scruples; but recommended +Fragonard for the naughty business. + +Fragonard seized the idea readily enough, except that he made the +frail girl's husband swing the beauty for her lover's eyes, using the +incident, as usual, but as the trivial theme for a splendid setting +amidst trees, glorying in the painting of the foliage--as you may see, +if you step into the Wallace galleries, where is the exquisite thing +that brought Fragonard fame--the world-famous "Les hazards heureux de +l'Escarpolette." + +The effect was prodigious. De Launay's brilliant engraving of it +popularised it throughout the land. Nobles and rich financiers, and +all the gay world of fashion besides, now strove to possess canvases +signed by Fragonard. Boucher was grown old and ailing; and just as +Boucher had been the painter of the France of fashion under the +Pompadour, so Fragonard was now to become the mirror of the court, of +the theatre, of the drawing-room, of the boudoir, of the age of Du +Barry. + +Finding a ready market for subjects of gallantry, he gave rein to his +natural bent, and straightway leaped into the vogue. Pictures were the +hobby of the nobility and the rich; and France under the Pompadour, +and particularly at this the end of her reign, was madly spendthrift +upon its hobbies and fickle fancies. The pretty house, delicately +tinted rooms, fine furniture, dainty decorations, and charming +pictures, were a necessity for such as would be in the fashion. + +[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE SCHOOLMISTRESS + +(In the Wallace Collection) + +After his marriage Fragonard's brush turned to the glorification of +family life; and one of the most beautiful designs he conceived in +this exquisite series was the picture of the schoolmistress and her +small pupils--here chasteness of feeling has taken the place of +levity; and purity of statement is evidenced even in the half-nude +little fellow who is receiving his first lesson in culture.] + +You shall look in vain for the affected innocence, the naïve +mawkishness, the chaste sentimentality of Greuze in the master-work of +Fragonard. He knew nothing of these things--cared less. His was an +ardent brush; and he used it ardently; but always you shall find him +using his subject, however naughty, as the mere excuse for a +glorious picture of trees. He is one of the great landscape-painters +of France. + +He had many qualities that go to make a decorative painter. Indeed, it +is to the Frenchmen of the seventeen-hundreds to whom we may safely go +for pictures that make the walls of a drawing-room a delight. Unlike +the Italians, they are pleasing to live with. His painting of "La Fête +de St. Cloud," in the dining-room of the Governor of the Bank of +France, is one of the decorative landscapes of the world. + +He was now producing works in considerable numbers--it is his first, +his detailed period, somewhat severe in arrangement and style as to +composition and handling--the years of "Love the Conqueror," the +"Bolt," the "Fountain of Love," of "Le Serment d'Amour," the +"Gimblette," "Les Baigneuses," the "Sleeping Bacchante," the "Début du +modèle," and the like. + +His master, Boucher, was grown old; he could not carry out the +commissions for the decoration of rooms and for paintings with which +he was overwhelmed; and it was in order to help forward his brilliant +pupil, his "Frago," that he now introduced him to his old friend and +patron the farmer-general Bergeret de Grandcour--a man of great +wealth, a lover of art, and an honorary member of the Royal +Academy--who became one of Fragonard's most lavish patrons and most +intimate friends. Bergeret de Grandcour commissioned several panels in +this, Fragonard's thirty-fifth year--the year of his painting the +superb "Fête de St. Cloud." This is towards the end of that period of +minute and detailed painting which he did with such consummate skill, +yet without bringing pettiness into his largeness of conception. + +Meantime, Choiseul's masterly mind, having secured peace abroad, saw +that France, if she were to keep her sovereign State, must be first +cleansed from the dangers that threatened from within. He turned to +the blotting out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits, whose +vindictive acts against, and quarrels with, the Parliaments, and whose +galling and oppressive tyranny, had roused the bitter hatred of the +magistracy and of the people throughout the land. Choiseul they +treated as their bitterest enemy. He decided to blot them out, root +and branch, from France. The popular party closed up its ranks. +Choiseul had not long to wait. The chance came in odd fashion enough. +An attempt by the Order to end the Pompadour's scandalous relations +with the king was the quaint thing--the match that started the +explosion. With all his skill of state-craft, Choiseul leaped to the +weapon. In secret concert with the king's powerful favourite he struck +at them through the bankruptcy of their banking concerns in the West +Indies, caused by their losses in the wars with England; and Louis +abolished the society out of the land, secularising its members, and +seizing its property. + +The Pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. Worn-out +by her vast activities, and assailed by debt, she fell ill of a cough +that racked her shrunken body. She died, transacting the king's +business and affairs of State, on the 15th of April 1764, in her +forty-second year. + +Whatever may be said of this cold-blooded, calculating, grasping +woman, who crushed down every nice instinct of womanhood to win a +king's favour, who knew no scruple, who was without mercy, without +pardon or forgiveness, without remorse; bitter and adamant in revenge; +who turned a deaf ear to the cries from the Bastille; whose heart knew +no love but for self; it must be allowed that at least for Art she did +great and splendid service. She not only encouraged and brought out +the best achievement of her age; she did Art an even more handsome +benefit. She insisted on artists painting their age and not aping the +dead past. + +To Fragonard personally she rendered no particular service. His real +achievement began on the eve of her death, when she was a worn-out and +broken woman. Nor had Fragonard ever that close touch with the royal +house or its favourites during any part of his lifetime that meant so +much to the fortunes of his master, Boucher. + +There were two patrons for whom Fragonard was about to create a series +of masterpieces in the decoration of their splendid and luxurious +homes--works of Art which were to have strange adventures and +histories. They were both women. + +[Illustration: PLATE V.--FIGURE DE FANTASIE + +(In the Louvre) + +Here we have one of the rare examples of Fragonard's painting of a +man's portrait. It is in strange contrast to his more delicate +handling of domestic subjects.] + +For the prodigal and eccentric dancer, the notorious Mademoiselle +Guimard, he undertook the painting of a series of panels. The Guimard +was the rage of Paris--she of the orgic suppers and the naughty dances +with her comrade Vestris. Frago, who is said to have been more than a +friend of the reckless one of the nimble feet, undertook the +decoration of her house in the Chaussée d'Antin, known to the bloods +as the Temple of Terpsichore. He painted for the same room a portrait +of the frail beauty as an opera-shepherdess--the simple pastoral +life was the pose of this unsimple age. He was engaged upon the +business, off and on, for several years; and the many delays at last +fretted the light one. Fragonard, anything but energetic, liked always +to take his own time at his work. The Guimard got to pestering +him--she had a sharp tongue--and at last, one fine day, upbraided him +roundly, taunting him with a sneer that he would never get the work +finished. Fragonard lost patience and temper, goaded by her +ill-manners, her abuse, and her biting tongue. "It _is_ finished," +said he; and walked out of the house. The Guimard could never get him +back; but one day he slipped in alone, painted the set dancer's-smile +from the dancer's mouth, and placed there instead a snarl upon her +lips. + +Before this breach between them Fragonard had painted several +portraits of the Guimard. + +However, the work for the lady was to have far-reaching results little +dreamed of. For the completion of the room, Fragonard procured the +commission for David, then twenty-five; and David never forgot the +service rendered. He was to repay it tenfold when black days +threatened; and with rare courage, when even the courage of gratitude +was a deadly dangerous commodity. + +However, this was not as yet; the sun shone in the skies; and all was +gaiety and laughter still. + +The "Chiffre d'Amour," the picture of a pretty girl who cuts her +lover's monogram in the bark of a tree's trunk, the shadowed tree and +figure telling darkly against the glamorous half light beyond, was one +of Fragonard's happiest inspirations of these years, as any one may +see who steps into the Wallace galleries. Here also may be seen to-day +the exquisite "Fair-haired Boy." The boldly painted "L'Heure de +Berger" was wet upon the canvas about this year, though its boldness +of handling foretells his later manner, whilst the spirit of Boucher +is over all. + +Four years after the death of the Pompadour the patient neglected +queen, amiable dull Marie Leczinska, followed her supplanter to the +grave. The king's grief and contrition and his solemn vows to mend his +ways came somewhat over-late; they lasted little longer than the +drying of his floods of tears over the body of his dead consort. + +On the Eve of Candlemas, the first day of February 1769, at a +convivial party in Paris that was not wholly without political +significance, a Jesuit priest raised his glass _To the Presentation!_ +adding after the toast--"To that which has taken place to-day, or will +take place to-morrow, the presentation of the new Esther, who is to +replace Haman and release the Jewish nation from oppression!" + +He spoke figuratively--it was safer so. But 'twas understood. Indeed, +the pretty sentiment was well received by the old aristocrats and +young bloods about the table; and they drank a bumper to the pretty +Madame du Barry. For the Jesuits had no love for the king's minister +Choiseul--and the madcap girl was but the lure whereby the king was to +be drawn from his great minister. So religion rallied about the frail +beauty, and hid behind her extravagant skirts--one of which cost close +on £2000--and, with the old nobility, drank damnation to the king's +minister and To the devil with the new thought and with parliaments. +Long live the king and the divine right of kings! + +Our worthy priest seems to have had the ear of destiny, though he +dated his certainty near upon a couple of months too soon. + +So it came about that before a year was out the old king was become +the doting creature of a light-o'-love of Paris, the transfigured +milliner and street-pedlar, Jeanne, natural child of one Anne Béqus, +a low woman of Vaucouleurs. This Jeanne, of no surname and unknown +father, a pretty, kindly, vulgar child of the gutters, with fair hair +and of madcap habits, was some twenty-six years of age, when--being +reborn under a forged birth-certificate at the king's ordering, as +Anne de Vaubernier, and being married by the same orders to the Count +du Barry, an obliging nobleman of the court--she appeared at +Versailles as the immortally frail Countess du Barry. + +The remonstrances of Choiseul with the king against this new +degradation of the throne of France, and his unconcealed scorn and +disgust of the upstart countess, made a dangerous enemy for France's +great minister, and was to cost him and his France very dear. + +The king's infatuation brought royalty into utter contempt amongst the +people. It was to cost France a terrible price--and Fragonard not +least of all. + +One of the first gifts from the king to the Du Barry was the little +castle of Louveciennes; and she proceeded with reckless extravagance +to furnish her handsome home. Drouais, the artist, sold to her for +1200 livres (double florins), as overdoors for one of the rooms, four +panels that he had bought from Fragonard. They have vanished; but +they served Fragonard a good turn--he received an order to decorate Du +Barry's luxurious pavilion of Luciennes, which she had had built to +entertain the king at her "little suppers." + +Thus it chanced that for this wilful light-o'-love Fragonard painted +the great master-work of his life--the five world-famous canvases of +the series of "The Progress of Love in the Heart of Maidenhood," or, +as they are better known, "The Romance of Love and Youth"--the old +king masquerading therein as a young shepherd, and the Du Barry as a +shepherdess. In "The Ladder" ("L'Escalade" or "Le Rendezvous") the Du +Barry plays the part of a timid young girl who starts as she sees her +shepherd-lover to be the king; the "Pursuit" follows; then the +"Souvenirs" and "Love Crowned." The last of the five, the discarded +mistress in "Deserted," was only begun; and was not completed by +Fragonard until twenty years later at Grasse, to complete the set. + +What it was that struck a chill into the frail Du Barry's favour, so +that the masterpieces of Fragonard never entered within her doors, is +not fully known. Whatsoever the cause, these canvases were rejected by +her. It is said that the work was found to be disappointing, being +lacking as to the indecencies by the Du Barry and the king, who +preferred the more suggestive panels of Vien. It is true that +Fragonard's earlier four panels which she possessed were in +questionable taste, and that these five were pure; indeed, their +trivial story matters little amidst the massy foliage and the majestic +trees that spring into the swinging heavens. Fragonard suspected, and +somewhat resented the suspicion, that he was being made to paint in a +sort of artistic duel with Vien. At any rate, Vien was chosen. So it +came that the discarded pictures lay in Fragonard's studio for over +twenty years, when we shall see them, rolled up, making a chief part +of the strange baggage of Fragonard's flight from his beloved Paris. + +The fact was that the Du Barry was of the gutter. She had the crude +love of fineries of the girl promoted from the gutter. She loved +display. But into her home she brought the vulgar singers of the +lowest theatres, where the Pompadour had brought the wits and leading +artists of her time. The old culture was gone. Louis laughed now at +ribald songs, and was entertained by clowns. + +It is part of the irony of life that Fragonard, who never entered +into the favourite's friendship, should have become the recognised +artist of her day. It was a part of that grim irony that caused the Du +Barry, whose age he honours, to reject the most exquisite work of his +hands--in which his art is seen at its highest achievement, the tender +half-melancholy of the thing stated with a lyric beauty that displays +his genius in its supreme flight. + +A search through the Du Barry's bills--and there are four huge bound +volumes of them--reveals the list of pictures painted by Boucher, by +Vien, by Greuze, and by others, for the spendthrift woman; but of +transaction with Fragonard there is no slightest hint. + + + + +IV + +MARRIAGE + + +There lived in Grasse, with its rich harvests of flowers, and given to +the distilling of perfumes therefrom, a family that had come from +Avignon--its name, Gérard, and on friendly terms with the Fragonards. +It so chanced that a young woman of the family, the seventeen-year-old +Marie Anne Gérard, was sent to Paris, to the care of Fragonard, in +order to earn her living in the shop of a scent-seller, one Isnard. +The girl had artistic leanings, and fell a-painting of fans and +miniatures. She had need of a teacher; and who better qualified for +the business than her townsman, the famous Fragonard? What more +natural than that Fragonard should become her master? She was a jovial +girl. So they would talk of home, and the people amongst whom they had +been bred. She was no particular beauty, as her picture by Fragonard +proves; she had the rough accent of Provence; was thick-set and clumsy +of figure, and of heavy features, but she had the youth and freshness +and health of a young woman's teens, that hide the blemishes and full +significance of these coarsenesses. She and Fragonard fell a-kissing. +Fragonard, now thirty-seven, married Marie Anne Gérard in her +eighteenth year; and she bore him a much loved daughter, Rosalie--and +ten years later, in 1780, a son, Alexandre Evariste Fragonard. + +There came to live with the newly married couple his wife's younger +sister Marguerite and her young brother Henri Gérard, who was learning +engraving. + +[Illustration: PLATE VI.--LE VOEU À L'AMOUR + +(In the Louvre) + +This is an example of Fragonard in his grand-manner mood--a picture of +the large decorative years that produced such masterpieces as the +"Serment d'Amour," in which we see him ever interested above all +things in the painting of bosky leafage and the dignity of great trees +for background.] + +Fragonard's marriage at once affected his habits and his art. The wild +oats of his artistic career were near sown. The naughtinesses of +girls of pleasure gave place to the grace and tenderness of the +home-life--the cradle took the place of the bed of light adventures; +and children blossomed on to his canvases. He set aside the +make-believe shepherds and shepherdesses of the vogue; and henceforth +painted the "real thing" in rural surroundings. + +He brought to his homeliest pictures a beauty of arrangement, a sense +of style, and a dignity worthy of the most majestic subjects. He came +at this time under the influence of the Dutch landscapists, and stole +from them the solidity of their massing in foliage, the truth of their +character-drawing, the close observation of their cattle and +animal-life, their cloudy skies, and the finish and force of their +craftsmanship. Whether he went into Holland is disputed. He was too +keen an artist, his was too original a genius, to imitate their style +or take on their Dutch accent. He simply took from them such part of +their craftsmanship as could enter into the facile gracious genius of +France without clogging its grace. He is now content with his house +and garden for scenery, with his family for models. He realises that +an artist has no need to go abroad to find "paintable things." + +The "Heureuse Fécondité," the "Visit to the Nurse" (the second one), +the "Schoolmistress," the "Good Mother," the "Retour au logis," the +"L'Education fait tout," the "Dites donc, si'l vous plaît," are of +this period. + +In all he did he proves himself an artist, incapable of mediocrity, +bringing distinction and style to all that he touches. + +Fragonard also excelled in the painting of miniatures. And there are +small portraits under fancy names to be seen at the Louvre, painted +with a breadth and force that prove him to have known the work of +Franz Hals. The figure of a man, known as "Figure de Fantaisie" or +"Inspiration," is stated with a directness and vividness worthy of the +great Dutch master. Indeed, there is much in the direct handling of +the paint and the life of the thing that recalls Franz Hals--the very +arrangement of the dress and the treatment of the hand being a +careless attempt to recall the habits and fashions of the Dutchman. +"La Musique" repeats the impression. And even the more pronouncedly +French style of the pretty woman in "La Chanteuse" does not disguise +the inspiration of Franz Hals in the painting of the bodice, the +cuffs, and the details--the high ruffle is "dragged in" from Hals's +day. The "Music Lesson" at the Louvre was painted about the same time. + +Fragonard's old master, Boucher, for some time had been "going about +like a shadow of himself." The year after Fragonard's marriage the old +painter was found dead, sitting at his easel before an unfinished +picture of Venus, the brush fallen out of his fingers--the light of +the "Glory of Paris" gone out. + +Boucher died a few months before that Christmas Eve of 1770 that saw +Choiseul driven from power by the trio of knaves who used the vulgar +but kindly woman Du Barry as their tool--indeed she refused to pull +the great minister down until she had made handsome terms on his +behalf; Choiseul was too astute a man not to recognise what lay beyond +the shadow of her pretty skirts--nay, does he not turn in the +courtyard as he leaves the palace to go into banishment, his _lettre +de cachet_ in his pocket, and, seeing a woman looking out from a +window at the end of an alley, bow and kiss his hand to the window +where gazes out of tear-filled eyes this strange doomed beauty who has +won to the sceptre of France? 'Twas four years before the small-pox +took the king--four years during which this same Du Barry, with her +precious trio, d'Aiguillon, Maupeou, and Terray, sent the members of +Parliament into banishment--years that launched royal France on its +downward rushing, with laughter and riot, to its doom, whilst the +apathetic Louis shrugged his now gross royal shoulders at all warnings +of catastrophe, which to give him due credit, he was scarce witless +enough or blind enough not to foresee. Nay, did he not even admit it +in his constantly affirmed, if cynical, creed that "things, as they +were, would last as long as he; and he that came after him must shift +for himself"? Ay; he came even nearer to the kernel of the +significance of things, when, shrugging his no longer well-beloved +shoulders, as the Pompadour had done, he repeated her cynical saying +of "_Après nous le déluge_." It was to be a deluge indeed--scarlet +red. + +Wit and ruthless fatuity were the order of the day; these folk were +wondrous full of the neatly turned phrase and the polished epigram. +Most fatuous of them all, and as ruthless as any, was Terray--he who +tinkered with finance, with crown to his many infamies the scandalous +_Pacte de Famille_, that mercantile company that was to produce an +artificial rise in the price of corn by buying up the grain of France, +exporting it, and bringing it back for sale at vast profit--with +Louis of France as considerable shareholder. Had not the owners of the +land the right to do what they would with their own? 'Twas small +wonder that the well-beloved became the highly-detested of the +groaning people--he and his precious privileged class. + +Yet Louis of France spake prophecy--if unwitting of it. The guillotine +was not to have him. In 1774 he was stricken down with the small-pox, +and the sick-room in the palace saw the Du Barry and her party fight a +duel with Choiseul's party for his possession--never, surely, was a +more grim, more fantastic warfare than that bitter intrigue to get the +confessor to the king's bedside, that meant the dismissal of the +favourite before he should be allowed to receive the Absolution--in +which the strange blasphemy was enacted of the Eucharist being +hustled about the passages, whilst the bigots strove against its +administration, and the freethinkers demanded the last consolation of +the Church. On the 10th of May the small-pox took his distempered +body, "already a mass of corruption," that was hastily flung into a +coffin and hurried without pomp, or circumstance, or pretence of +honours to St. Denis--being rattled thereto at the trot, the crowd +that lined the way showering epigrams not wholly friendly upon its +passing; and was buried amongst the bones of the ancient kings of his +race, unattended by the Court, and amidst the contempt and loud curses +of his people. + +Even the poor weeping Du Barry was gone, hustled from the palace at +the wandering orders of the dying delirious king. D'Aiguillon also, +and Maupeou and Terray were gone. And the Court was hailing the new +king and his queen--ill-fated Louis the Sixteenth and tactless Marie +Antoinette. + +The scandalous levity of the privileged class of the day, and its +ruthless vindictiveness when thwarted, had near done their work. A +proud and gallant people touched bottom in humiliation. The pens of +the wits and thinkers sent the new opinion broadcast amongst a people +wholly scandalised and punished by the corruption of their governors. +These writings made astounding and alarming way. The "intellectuals" +were all on the side of the people--Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, +Rousseau, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Condillac, the Abbé Raynal. With wit +and sarcasm and invective and argument, they stirred passions, +appealing to self-respect and dignity and honour and the innate love +of freedom in the strong; they appealed to common-sense, to the +craving for liberty in man's being, to the rights of the individual; +and the printing-press scattered their wit and wisdom throughout the +land to the uttermost corners of France. They sneered away false +aristocracy, false religion. They wrought to overthrow the old order, +and brought it into contempt. And they needed to manufacture no +evidence. France had lain supine, a mighty people as they proved +themselves when their right arms were freed--lain in chains under the +heel of a king who had been capable of setting their necks under the +feet of a trivial and foolish woman, whose nursery had been the +gutter. + +Yet Du Barry, when all her faults are set against her, suffered undue +execration. She had no grain of ill-will in her nature. During her +reign the Bastille received no prisoner at her ordering--vengeance was +not in her. She was the tool of unscrupulous men; but she came between +them and their base vengeances, and kept the Court free from the +brutalities that the Pompadour meted out to her enemies without a pang +of remorse. During the whole of her reign, she visited her old mother +every fortnight, and lavished benefits on her kin--whom most women, +thus suddenly raised to the noblesse, would have avoided like a +plague. The scoundrels who made her their toy were responsible for +every evil deed that she was accused of committing. And even the new +king, whose sharp _lettre de cachet_, written two days after he came +to the throne, banished her to a convent, soon relented, and allowed +her to go back to her home at Luciennes. The Du Barry had striven to +abolish the _lettre de cachet_; the new king brought it back, +inaugurating his reign by having one sent to the woman whose +gentleness and kindliness had shrunk from the accursed thing. It was a +fit omen of the well-meaning but incompetent king's tragic reign which +was about to begin. + +To Fragonard these things were but tattle; yet the doing of them was +to reach to his hearth; the consequences of them were to strip him +bare and wreck him--he was to see his wife and womenkind dragging +through the streets of Paris to beg bread and meat at the gates of the +city. But the future was mercifully hidden from him. He was now at the +height of his career; and was to taste wider success. + +[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE FAIR-HAIRED BOY + +(In the Wallace Collection) + +To the visitor to the Wallace collection the picture by Fragonard next +best known after the "Chiffre d'Amour" and the "Swing," is this +exquisite study of a fair-haired boy--the child is painted with a +subtle grace and consummate delicacy rarely combined with the +directness and impressionism here displayed by Fragonard.] + +Fragonard's name will always be linked with that of his friend and +patron, a wealthy man, the farmer-general Bergeret de Grandcour. +His family visited at the rich man's houses in town and country. + +Now the career of a rich man was incomplete without the making of the +Grand Tour. At the least the gentleman of means must have roamed +through Italy. And it was thus that, with Bergeret de Grandcour, +Fragonard now made his second journey into Italy in his forty-second +year. + +Fragonard was delighted at the prospect of seeing his loved Italy +again after twelve years. It was a family party--Fragonard and his +wife, with Bergeret de Grandcour and his son, to say nothing of +Bergeret's servants and cook and following. It was a happy, merry +journeying in extravagant luxury. + +Fragonard had aforetime gone into Italy as a penniless student and an +unknown man; he now travelled in the grand style as the guest of a man +of affairs, visiting palaces and churches, received in state by the +highest in the land, dining with the Ambassador of France, having +audience of the Pope, advising Bergeret de Grandcour in the buying of +art-treasures. He tasted all the delights of great wealth. He went to +a concert "chez le lord Hamilton," seeing and speaking with _la belle +Emma_--Nelson's Emma. He stood in Naples; he tramped up Vesuvius. It +was at Naples the news came that Louis the Fifteenth lay dying of the +small-pox--a few days later the old king died. + +The party at once turned their faces homewards, returning to Paris in +leisurely fashion by way of Venice, Vienna, and Germany, only to know, +at the journey's ending, one of those miserable and sordid quarrels +that seem to dog the friendships of men of genius. Going to Bergeret +de Grandcour's house in Paris to get his portfolios of sketches, made +throughout the journey, Fragonard found to his amazement and +consternation that Bergeret de Grandcour angrily refused to give them +up, claiming them as payment for his outlay upon him during the +Italian journey. The sorry business ended in the law-courts, and in +the loss of the lawsuit by Bergeret de Grandcour, who was condemned to +give up the drawings or to pay a 30,000 livres fine (£6000). The ugly +breach that threatened to open between them, however, was soon healed +by reconciliation; and Bergeret de Grandcour's son became one of +Fragonard's closest and most intimate friends. + + + + +V + +THE TERROR + + +Louis the Sixteenth, third son of the Dauphin who had been Louis the +Fifteenth's only lawful son, ascended the throne in his twentieth +year, a pure-minded young fellow, full of good intentions, sincerely +anxious for the well-being of his people; but of a diffident and timid +character, and under the influence of a young consort, the beautiful +Queen Marie Antoinette, of imperious temper and of light and frivolous +manners, who brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment. + +The Du Barry sent a-packing, and d'Aiguillon and the rest of their +crew, the young king recalled the crafty old Maurepas who had been +banished by the Pompadour, an ill move--though the setting of Turgot +over the finances augured well. And when the great minister Turgot +fell, he gave way to as good a man, the worthy honest banker, Neckar. + +In a happy hour Fragonard was granted by the king the eagerly sought +haven of the artists of his time--a studio and apartments at the old +palace of the Louvre, as his master Boucher had been granted them +before him. + +Settling in with his wife, his girl Rosalie, his son Alexandre +Evariste, and his talented sister-in-law Marguerite Gérard, he lived +thereat a life almost opulent, making large sums of money, some eight +thousand pounds a year, at this time. He joyed in decorating his +rooms. He was the life and soul of a group of brilliant men who +gathered about him, having the deepest affection for him. + +His sister-in-law, Marguerite Gérard, was as gay and distinguished in +manners, and as beautiful, as his jovial wife was dull and vulgar and +coarse--the vile accent of Grasse, that made his wife's speech +horrible to the ear, becoming slurred into a shadow of itself on +Marguerite's tongue, and turned by the enchanting accents of the +younger sister's lips into seduction. This girl's friendship and +companionship became an ever-increasing delight to the aging painter. +Their correspondence, when apart, was passionately affectionate. Ugly +scandals got abroad--scandals difficult to prove or disprove. The man +and woman were of like tastes, of like temperaments; it was, likely +enough, little more than that. The girl was of a somewhat cold nature; +and we must read her last letters as censoriously as her first--when, +in reply to Fragonard, evil days having fallen upon him, and being +old and next to ruined, on his asking her for money to help him, she, +who owed everything to him, refused him with the trite sermon: "to +practise economy, to be reasonable, and to remember that in brooding +over fancies one only increases them without being any the happier." +But this was not as yet. + +Fragonard, happy in his home at the Louvre, free from cares, content +amongst devoted friends, reached his fifty-fifth year when he had +suddenly to gaze horrified at the first ugly hint that, in the years +to come, he must expect to hear the scythe of the Great Reaper--know +the passing of friends and loved ones. He was to reel under the first +serious blow of his life. His bright, witty, winsome girl Rosalie died +in her eighteenth year. It nearly killed him. + +But there was a blacker, a vaster shadow came looming over the land--a +threat that boded ill for such as took life too airily. + +In an unfortunate moment for the royal house, and against the will of +the king and of Neckar, the nation went mad with enthusiasm over +England's revolted American colonies; and the alliance was formed that +France swore not to sever until America was declared independent. It +started the war with England. The successes of the revolted colonies +made the coming of the Revolution in France a certainty. The fall of +Neckar and the rise of the new minister, Calonne, sent France rushing +to the brink. The distress of the people became unbearable. The royal +family and the Court sank in the people's respect, and the people were +no longer the people of the decade before--they had watched the +Revolution in America, and they had seen the Revolution victorious. +The fall of Calonne only led to the rise of the turbulent and stupid +Cardinal de Brienne; and the Court was completely foul of the people +when De Brienne threw up office in a panic and fled across the +frontier, leaving the Government in utter confusion. + +The king recalled Neckar. The calling of the States-General now became +assured. Paris rang with the exultation of the Third Estate. + +The States-General met at Versailles on the 5th of May 1789. The +monarchy was at an end. In little over a month the States-General +created itself the National Assembly. The Revolution was begun. The +14th of July saw the fall of the Bastille. On the 22nd the people +hanged Foulon to the street-lamp at the corner of the Place de +Grève--and _à la lanterne!_ became the cry of fashion. + +Fragonard was in his fifty-seventh year when he heard in his lodging +at the Louvre the thunderclap of this 14th of July 1789--saw the dawn +of the Revolution. + +The rose of the dawn was soon to turn to blood-red crimson. The storm +had been muttering and growling its curses for years before the death +of Louis the Fifteenth. It came up in threatening blackness darkly +behind the dawn, and was soon to break with a roar upon reckless +Paris. It came responsive to the rattle of musketry in the far West, +hard by Boston harbour. + +Fragonard and his friends were of the independents--they were liberals +whom love of elegance had not prevented from sympathising with the +sufferings of the people, and who had thrilled with the new thought. +Fragonard's intelligence drew him naturally towards the new ideas; +indeed he owed little to the Court; and when France was threatened by +the coalition of Europe against her, he, with Gérard, David, and +others, went on the 7th of September with the artist's womenfolk to +give up their jewelry to the National Assembly. + +But the storm burst, and soon affairs became tragic red. + +There came, for the ruin of the cause of a constitutional monarchy and +to end the last hope of the Court party, the unfortunate death of +Mirabeau--the hesitations of the king--his foolish flight to +Varennes--his arrest. + +The constitutional party in the Legislative Assembly, at first +dominant, became subordinate to the more violent but more able +_Girondists_, with their extreme wing of _Jacobins_ under Robespierre, +and _Cordeliers_ under Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, and Fabre +d'Eglantine. The proscription of all emigrants quickly followed. It +was as unsafe to leave as to stay in Paris. The queen's insane enmity +towards Lafayette finished the king's business. On the night of the +9th of August the dread tocsin sounded the note of doom to the royal +cause--herald to the bloodshed of the morrow. Three days afterwards, +the king and the royal family were prisoners in the Temple. + +The National Convention met for the first time on the 21st of +September 1792; decreed the First Year of the Republic, abolished +Royalty and the titles of courtesy, decreed in their place _citoyen_ +and _citoyenne_, and the use of _tu_ and _toi_ for _vous_. + +[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--LE BILLET DOUX + +(In the Collection of M. Wildenstein, Paris) + +Here we see Fragonard in his phase of sentimental recorder of +love-scenes so typical of the art of Louis the Fifteenth's day.] + +The National Convention also displayed the antagonism of the two wings +of the now all-powerful Girondist party--the Girondists and the +Jacobins or Montagnards. The conflict began with the quarrel as to +whether the king could be tried. The 10th of January 1793 saw the +king's head fall to the guillotine--the Jacobins had triumphed. War +with Europe followed, and the deadly struggle between the Girondists +and Jacobins for supreme power. The 27th of May 1793 witnessed the +appointment of the terrible and secret Committee of Public Safety. By +June the Girondists had wholly fallen. Charlotte Corday's stabbing of +Marat in his bath left the way clear for Robespierre's ambition. The +Jacobins in power, the year of the Reign of Terror began--July 1793 to +July 1794--with Robespierre as the lord of the hellish business. The +scaffolds reeked with blood--from that of Marie Antoinette and Egalité +Orleans to that of the Girondist deputies and Madame Roland, and the +most insignificant beggar suspected of the vague charge of "hostility +to the Republic." In a mad moment the Du Barry, who had shown the +noblest side of her character in befriending the old allies of her +bygone days of greatness, published a notice of a theft from her +house. It drew all eyes to her wealth. And she went to the guillotine +shrieking with terror and betraying all who had protected her. Then +came strife amongst the Jacobins. Robespierre and Danton fought the +scoundrel Hébert for life, and overthrew him. The Hebertists went to +the guillotine, dying in abject terror. Danton, with his appeals for +cessation of the bloodshed of the Terror, alone stood between +Robespierre and supreme power. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Eglantine +and their humane fellows, were sent to the guillotine. Between the +10th of June and the 27th of July, in 1794, fourteen hundred people in +Paris alone died on the scaffold. + +Fragonard dreaded to fly from the tempest. It was as safe to remain in +Paris as to leave the city. Any day he might be taken. Sadness fell +upon him and ate into his heart. The old artist could not look without +uneasiness upon the ruin of the aristocracy, of the farmers-general, +and of the gentle class, now in exile or prison or under trial--his +means of livelihood utterly gone. Without hate for Royalty or for the +Republic, the artists, by birth plebeian and in manners bourgeois, +many of them old men, could but blink with fearful eyes at the vast +upheaval. Their art was completely put out of fashion--a new art, +solemn and severe, classical and heroic, was born. For half a century +the charming art of France of the eighteenth century lay wholly +buried--a thing of contempt wherever it showed above the ashes. + +Fragonard's powerful young friend David, the painter, now stood +sternly watchful over the old man's welfare; and David was at the +height of his popularity--he was a member of the Convention. He took +every opportunity to show his friendship publicly, visited Fragonard +regularly, secured him his lodgings at the Louvre, brought about his +election to the jury of the Arts created by the Convention to take the +place of the Royal Academy. + +But the old artist was bewildered. + +The national enthusiasm was not in him. The artists were ruined by the +destruction of their pensions. The buyers of Fragonard's pictures were +dispersed, their power and their money gone, their favour dissipated. +Fragonard worked on without conviction or truth. The new school +uprooted all his settled ideals. He struggled hard to catch the new +ideas, and failed. He helped to plant a tree of liberty in the court +of the Louvre, meditating the while how he could be gone from +Paris--it was a tragic farce, played with his soul. The glories of the +Revolution alarmed the old man. He saw the kinsfolk of his friends +dragged off to the guillotine. He had guarded against suspicion and +arrest by giving a certificate early in 1794, the year of the Terror, +stating that he had no intention of emigrating, adding a statement of +residence, and avowing his citizenship. He felt that even these acts +were not enough protection in these terrible years. No man knew when +or where the blow might fall--at what place or moment he might be +seized, or on what charge, and sent to the guillotine. Friends were +taken in the night. Hubert Robert was seized and flung into Saint +Lazare, escaping death but by an accident. The state of misery and +want amongst the artists and their wives and families at this time was +pitiable. + +Fragonard gladly snatched at the invitation of an old friend of his +family, Monsieur Maubert, to go to him at Grasse during these anxious +times of the travail that had come upon France. + +Shortly after that Sunday in December when the Du Barry went shrieking +to her hideous death at the guillotine, Fragonard, turning his face to +the South of his birth, was rolling up amongst his baggage the four +finished canvases of "The Romance of Love and Youth," and the +unfinished fifth canvas, "Deserted," ordered and repudiated by the Du +Barry. He bundled his family into a chaise, and lumbered out of +Paris, rumbling on clattering wheels through the guards at the gates, +and making southwards towards Provence for his friend's house at +Grasse. Here, far away from the din and strife, Fragonard set up his +world-famous decorative panels in the salon of his host, which they +admirably fitted, painting for the overdoors, "Love the Conqueror," +"Love-folly," "Love pursuing a Dove," "Love embracing the Universe," +and a panel over the fireplace, "Triumph of Love." He also painted +during his stay the portraits of the brothers Maubert; and, to keep +his host safe from ugly rumours and unfriendly eyes, he decorated the +vestibule with revolutionary emblems, phrygian bonnet, axes and +faggots, and the masks of Robespierre and the Abbé Gregoire, and the +like trickings of red republicanism.... His host was the maternal +grandfather of the Malvilan, at whose death in 1903, the room and its +decorations were sold to an American collector for a huge sum of +money. + +Meanwhile, able and resolute men had determined that Robespierre and +the Terror must end. Robespierre went to the guillotine. The +Revolution of the Ninth Thermidor put an end to the Terror in July +1794. + +All this time the armies of France were winning the respect of the +world by their gallantry and skill. The 23rd of September 1795, saw +France establish the Directory--the 5th of October, the Day of the +Sections, saw the stiff fight about the Church of St. Roch, and +Napoleon Bonaparte appointed second-in-command of the army. The young +general was soon Commander-in-Chief. And France thenceforth advanced, +spite of the many blunders of the Directory, with all the genius of +her race, to the splendid recovery of her fortunes, and to a greatness +which was to be the wonder and admiration and dread of the world. + +The Revolution of the 18th and 19th of Brumaire (9th and 10th of +November 1799) destroyed the Directory and set the people's idol, +Napoleon Bonaparte, at the helm of her mighty state. + + + + +VI + +THE END + + +To Paris Fragonard crept back, he and his family, to his old quarters +at the Louvre, when Napoleon was come to power, and the guillotine was +slaked with blood. He returned to Paris a poor old man. + +The enthusiasm was gone out of his invention, the volition out of his +hand's cunning, the breath out of his career. He was out of the +fashion; a man risen from the dead. His efforts to catch the spirit of +the time were pathetic. He painted rarely now. He won a passing +success with an historic canvas or so, done in the new manner. But +what did Fragonard know of political allegories? what enthusiasm had +he for the famous days of the Revolution? what were caricature or +satire to him, any more than the heroic splendour of Greece and Rome? +The gods of elegance were dead; a severe and frigid morality stood +upon their altars. + +We have a pen-picture of the old painter at this time--short, big of +head, stout, full-bodied, brisk, alert, ever gay; he has red cheeks, +sparkling eyes, grey hair very much frizzed out; he is to be seen +wandering about the Louvre dressed in a cloak or overcoat of a mixed +grey cloth, without hooks or eyes or buttons--a cloak which the old +man, when he is at work, ties at the waist with it does not matter +what--a piece of string, a crumpled chiffon. Every one loves "little +father Fragonard." Through every shock of good and evil fortune he +remains alert and cheerful. The old face smiles even through tears. + +Thus, walking with aging step towards the end, he saw Napoleon created +Emperor of the French, his triumphant career marred only at rare +intervals by such disasters as Trafalgar--heard perhaps of the suicide +of the unfortunate but gallant Villeneuve at the disgrace of trial by +court-martial for this very loss of Trafalgar. + +In the year of 1806, on the New Year's Day of which were abolished the +Republican reckonings of the years as established at the Revolution, +suddenly came the suppression of the artists' lodging at the Louvre by +decree of the Emperor. The Fragonards went to live hard by in the +house of the restaurant-keeper Very, in the Rue Grenelle Saint-Honoré. +The move was for Fragonard but the prelude to a longer journey. + +The old artist walks now more sluggishly than of old, his +four-and-seventy years have taken the briskness out of his step. +Returning from the Champ de Mars on a sultry day in August he becomes +heated--enters a café to eat an ice; congestion of the brain sets in. +At five of the clock in the morning of the 22nd day of August 1806, +Fragonard enters into the eternal sleep--at the hour that his master +Boucher had gone to sleep. + +Thus passed away the last of the great painters of France's gaiety +and lightness of heart. + +Madame Fragonard lived to be seventy-seven, dying in 1824. Marguerite +Gérard had a happy career as an artist under the Empire and the +Restoration, but never married--dying at seventy-six, loaded with +honours and in comfortable circumstances in the year that Queen +Victoria came to the throne of England. Thus peacefully ended the days +of Fragonard and his immediate kin after the turmoil and fierce tragic +years of the Terror. + +Painting with prodigal hand a series of elegant masterpieces in a +century that made elegance its god, Fragonard disappeared, neglected +and well-nigh discredited for years, with Watteau and Boucher and +Greuze for goodly company; but with them, he is come into his own +again, lord of a very realm of beauty. + +To understand the atmosphere of the France of the seventeen-hundreds +before the Revolution it is necessary to understand the art of +Watteau, of Boucher, of Fragonard, and of Chardin. Of its pictured +romance, Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard hold the keys. To shut the +book of these is to be blind to the revelation of the greater part of +that romance. Watteau states the new France of light airs and gaiety +and pleasant prospects, tinged with sweet melancholy, that became the +dream of a France rid of the pomposity and mock-heroics of the Grand +Monarque; Boucher fulfils the century; Fragonard utters its swan's +note. The art of Fragonard embodies astoundingly the pulsing evening +of a century of the life of France, uttering its gay blithe note, +skimming over the dangerous deeps of its mighty significance, yet not +wholly disregarding the deeps as did the art of his two great +forerunners. His is the last word of that mock-heroic France that +Louis the Fourteenth built on stately and pompous pretence; that Louis +the Fifteenth still further corrupted by the worship of mere elegance; +that Louis the Sixteenth sent to its grave--a suffering people out of +which a real France arose, from mighty and awful travail, like a +giant, and stood bestriding the world, a superb reality. + + +The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London + +The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42118 *** |