GENRE PAINTERS
IT is quite in accordance with the tendencies displayed by these masters, that towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century an increasing number of artists preferred to devote their talent to recording the life of their own days to the endless repetition of the “grand-manner” subjects which had occupied the energy of the preceding generations. Thus Jean Alexis Grimou (1678–1740), who was Swiss by birth and entirely self-trained, introduced into French art the drinking scenes beloved of the Flemish masters. From his painting of A Drinker (No. 385) and the two Portraits of Young Soldiers (Nos. 386 and 387), it may be seen how little he was in sympathy with the official art of his time; this is scarcely to be wondered at, since, instead of undergoing the customary course of academic training, he had formed his style by copying the works of Rembrandt and other Northern masters.
Pierre Subleyras (1699–1749) was not quite so emancipated. In his large religious compositions he still follows the affectations of the grand style. His chief work of this kind is the Mass of St. Basil, at Sta. Maria degli Angeli in Rome, of which No. 857 at the Louvre is a reduced version. Of far more artistic significance are his small genre pieces, in which he attains to a rich quality of pigment and a justice of tone-values unique in French painting of his period. Subleyras is said to have been of Spanish descent; and there are in his scenes from La Fontaine’s “Fables”—notably in The Hermit (No. 862)—clear indications of his intimate acquaintance with Spanish art. The best of all his pictures at the Louvre is The Falcon (No. 861), which, apart from its general quality of tone, contains some still-life passages worthy of the brush of Chardin.