Amongst the figure-painters of the eighteenth-century academicians, I consider Copley to have been far the best. When I compare his honest, manly work with that of his contemporaries, Angelica Kaufman and West, I am always struck by its immeasurable superiority. Indeed, considering that portraiture had been the only branch of the art cultivated in England since the days of Holbein, and bearing in mind how figure-drawing had been neglected, I look upon Copley’s pictures with something like admiration.
I cannot feel the same respect for Barry’s paintings at the Adelphi, although the effort evinced in these paintings is worthy of all praise. It was a much-needed protest against the all-absorbing fashionable portraiture of the day; but unfortunately the artist’s drawing was neither correct nor refined enough for this kind of work, and I fear it must be allowed that the execution of these heroic subjects is both weak and pretentious. In my opinion there are but two English figure-painters of the eighteenth century whose merit would be acknowledged by an intelligent foreign critic—by one, in short, who was ignorant of the market value of pictures, and whose judgment was, therefore, wholly unbiased. These two painters would be Hogarth and Copley. We will now see what sort of artists this century of puff and powder produced in France.
In France the seventeenth century had been a very remarkable period for art, for it was then that Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Gelée, and Lebrun all lived and died. Thus, while in England all historical and landscape painting was a complete blank, France produced some of the greatest artists that have ever lived. They (at least three of them, Poussin, Lesueur, and Claude) were great in the largest sense of the word. Classic, religious, and landscape painting must always, ceteris paribus, take precedence of homely genre and prosaic portraiture. Invention is a higher quality than power of imitation, particularly when, as in the case of these three painters, the inventive power flowed without effort and was exercised with rare taste and judgment. With these three great artists I coupled Lebrun, not because I consider him by any means their equal, but because he was the founder of a good deal of the art which found favor in France during the eighteenth century. It is with this century that we have to deal; so, without further preamble, I will begin with Jean Jouvenet.
This artist (but little known out of France) narrowly escaped becoming a great painter. His early pictures have a good deal of Poussin’s classical manner about them. Lebrun thought so highly of the young artist that he employed him as an assistant in the large battle-pieces he was executing for Louis XIV at Versailles.
Here he no doubt acquired a good deal of Lebrun’s vigor and facility, but lost the pure taste and classical feeling he had derived from Poussin. He was a very prolific painter, and all his works are either life-size or larger than life. They are remarkably well drawn and vigorously colored, but they lack the one quality which makes Lesueur’s work so attractive, viz., simplicity and reverential feeling.
It is by no means necessary that the painter of religious subjects should be an ascetic, nor even what is commonly called a religious man, but it is necessary that he should import into his work some of the spirit of Christianity, just as it is necessary for the painter of pagan heroes and nymphs to imbue himself with the spirit of classical art until it becomes a second nature to him.
In Jouvenet’s numerous pictures of New Testament subjects the action is too violent, and the painter has evidently thought more about displaying his own skill than doing justice to his subject.
In Rubens’ Biblical pictures we often find the same kind of vulgar bustle and common types, but every thing is pardoned to Rubens on account of his brilliant color.
Jouvenet’s color, though fairly good, was not of that transcendent quality which would condone his very unbiblical style of composition.
With all his faults, Jouvenet is rather a favorite of mine. I like his thoroughly masculine style of work, and I admire his indomitable pluck and industry. It is related of him that some ten years before his death he became afflicted with paralysis, which completely crippled his right arm. He then took to painting with his left, and on recovering partially the use of his right fingers he used to hold his brush in his right hand and guide it with his left. It is said that the work thus done is hardly inferior to what he produced before his paralysis. Contrast this devotion and love for his art with the tradesman-like indifference of the English face-painters, of the Knellers, the Jervases, and the Richardsons, and others who, as soon as they had acquired wealth, shirked work as much as possible.