“De deux talens exquis l’assemblage nouveau
Rendra toujours Chéron l’ornement de la France;
Rien ne peut de sa plume égaler l’excellence
Que les graces de son pinceau.”
For different gifts renowned, fair Chéron see,
Ever of France the ornament and pride;
Equaled by none her pen’s great works shall be,
Save when her pencil triumphs at their side.
Mademoiselle Chéron made many studies from Raphael and the Caracci. Among her historical tableaux are enumerated, “The Flight into Egypt”—the Virgin represented in a wearied sleep, with angels guarding the babe; “Cassandra inquiring of a god the doom of Troy;” “The Annunciation;” “Christ at the Sepulchre”—after Zumbo; with “The Demoiselles de la Croix”—her nieces and pupils; and a grand portrait of the Archbishop of Paris, placed in the Jacobin school of the Rue St. Jacques.
Madelaine Masson was the daughter of Anthony Masson, a celebrated engraver, and was born in Paris, 1660. She received instruction from her father, and engraved portraits in his fine style. Among these is the picture of Maria Teresa, Queen of France, and of the Infanta of Spain.
The Marchioness de Pompadour engraved and executed small plates after Boucher and others. She engraved one set of sixty-three prints, after gems by Gay.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Two different Systems of Painting in the North.—The Flemish School represented by Rubens.—The Dutch by Rembrandt.—Characteristics of Rubens’ Style.—No female Disciples.—Unsuited to feminine Study.—Some Women Artists of the first Part of the Century.—Features of the Dutch School.—A wide Field for female Energy and Industry.—Painting de genre.—Its Peculiarities.—State of Things favorable to female Enterprise.—Early Efforts in Genre-painting.—Few Women among Rembrandt’s immediate Disciples.—Genre-painting becomes adapted to female Talent.—“The Dutch Muses.”—Another Woman Architect.—Dutch Women Painters and Engravers.—Maria Schalken and others.—“The second Schurmann.”—Margaretta Godewyck.—The Painter-poet.—Anna Maria Schurmann.—Wonderful Genius for Languages.—Early Acquirements.—Her Scholarship and Position among the learned.—A Painter, Sculptor, and Engraver.—Called “the Wonder of Creation.”—Royal and princely Visitors.—Journey to Germany.—Embraces the religious Tenets of Labadie.—His Doctrines.—Joins his Band.—Collects his Followers, and leads them into Friesland.—Poverty and Death.—Visit of William Penn to her.—Her Portrait.—Her female Contemporaries in Art.—Flower-painting in the Netherlands.—Its Pioneers.—Maria Van Oosterwyck.—Her Birth and Education.—Early Productions.—Celebrated at foreign Courts.—Presents from imperial Friends.—Enormous Prices for her Pictures.—Royal Purchasers.—The quiet Artist at work.—The Lover’s Visit.—The Lover’s Trial and Failure.—Style of her Painting.—Rachel Ruysch.—The greatest Flower-painter.—Early Instruction.—Spread of her Fame.—Domestic Cares.—Professional Honors.—Invitations to Courts.—Her Patron, the Elector.—Her Works in old Age.—Her Character.—Rarity of her Paintings.—Personal Appearance.
While the academicians and naturalists of the Italian schools contended through the seventeenth century, and while in France and Spain the works of art exhibited as great contrasts, modified in each country by national peculiarities, two different systems in the North came into notice. These, as in the time of Von Eyck, had great influence upon the development of art in other lands besides that where they originated. One was the Flemish school, represented by Rubens; the other the Dutch, in which Rembrandt was regarded as the mighty master.
The style of Rubens, brilliant, luxuriant, and full of vigorous life, it may be thought would commend itself peculiarly to the attention of women. This school, however, in which the healthy and florid naturalism of Flemish art reached its highest development, seems to have been without any female disciples of note. The passionate and often intensely dramatic character of the works of Rubens and his scholars, and the physical development of his nude figures, were, indeed, scarcely suited to feminine study, though their fullness of life and warmth of coloring afterward won to imitation an artist like Madame O’Connell. We may also mention Micheline Wontiers, a portrait painter in the first half of the seventeenth century. An engraving was made from one of her productions by Pontius, who busied himself with the works of Rubens. The name of Catherine Pepyn, too, is found inscribed as a portrait painter in the St. Luke’s Society of Artists at Antwerp, about 1655.
In Holland, on the other hand, the new school of painting owed its marked features to the political and religious revolution that had been the fruit of the reformed doctrines. This change offered a wide field for the exercise of female energy and genius. With the progress of the new faith kept pace the rapid advance of literature; the great questions at issue and the more earnest domestic life of the Hollanders furnishing ample materials for thought and description. Painting came under the same influence, and this was evident when the depth and power of feeling in his works marked Rembrandt as one of the greatest masters of all time.
A novel species of the art was called painting de genre. Herein life was represented in all its rich and varied forms, and the world and real humanity became objects of attention where hitherto only idealized representations had been tolerated. A new arena was thus opened, in which there was promise of noble achievement, and the rudest and meanest aspects of common life soon appeared capable of being invested with an ideal fascination. The painter de genre, armed with the wand of humor, often succeeded in such attempts, and success led to the adoption of that wonderfully poetical chiar’ oscuro in coloring, which, till this period, had never attained the same degree of favor either in the North or the South.