Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

For ten years, that is to say, from 1706 to 1717, Adrienne exploited Flanders, Lorraine, and Alsace, now accepting a lengthy engagement at some important theatre, now journeying with some travelling company from town to town, acquiring in this rude apprenticeship a thorough knowledge of her art and a particularly cruel experience of life.

At Lille, where she appears to have remained for about three years, dramatic performances were during several weeks carried on to the accompaniment of the cannon of a besieging army, first, under the Duke of Marlborough, and, afterwards, under Prince Eugène, to whom the citadel surrendered on October 28, 1708. On one occasion, a shell exploded within a few paces of the theatre, notwithstanding which the performances were as well attended as in time of peace.

After leaving Lille, Adrienne accepted an engagement as "leading lady" at the theatre at Lunéville, and she is also believed to have played at Metz, Nancy, and Verdun. Finally, early in the year 1711, we find her occupying a similar position at the Strasburg theatre, one of the finest houses to be met with out of Paris, with a salary of two thousand livres, a considerable sum for those days; and here she seems to have remained until the spring of 1717, when she returned to Paris to make her début at the Comédie-Française.

The portrait of Adrienne Lecouvreur was painted by several of the leading artists of her time: Charles Coypel, Fontaine, H. de Troy le père, Jean Baptiste Van Loo, and, it is believed, Nattier. None of these portraits, unfortunately, have come down to us, though the works of the two first painters are well known through the engravings of Drevet and Schmidt.

In regard to the merits of the two portraits, there seems to be considerable difference of opinion. Michelet, in his Histoire de France, speaks with enthusiasm of the painting by Coypel, reproduced in this volume, in which Adrienne is represented as Cornélie in La Mort de Pompée, weeping over the urn of her husband, which she holds clasped to her breast. "She must have exercised a terrible power over hearts, to have been able to transform beasts into men, to have caused the feeble and mediocre Coypel to paint such a portrait. An inspired artist of our time, our first sculptor, Préault, told me that he knew not a word of the history of Mlle. Lecouvreur when he saw this engraving. He was very affected by it, enraptured, and he seized upon it greedily.... It is more than a work of art, it is, as it were, a dream of grief. Those heavenly eyes, suffused with sublime tears, the gesture of those arms clasping the funeral urn, the grief expressed by that countenance, the silent accusation which that whole figure brings against destiny, all make of this picture a unique work, an honour alike to painter and model."

M. Larruomet agrees with Michelet: "I, for my part, am of opinion that if Charles Coypel, as a rule an artist of but moderate ability, invented the pose of this portrait, he had, by chance, an inspiration of genius, and that, if he only borrowed it from the actress, she possessed that innate sense of attitude which we admire in our own day (1892), in M. Mounet-Sully and Madame Sarah Bernhardt, and which alone would have sufficed to make of them great actors." M. Larroumet declares the portrait to possess "the incontestable merit of being a superb work of art," and greatly prefers it to the one by Fontaine, which shows us the actress "en robe de chambre," with her hair dressed in the fashion of the day. In the latter he can see only a "tableau d'apparat" of but little merit.

On the other hand, Régnier, M. Maurice Paléologue, and M. Georges Monval, to the last of whom we owe the publication of Adrienne's correspondence, give the preference to Fontaine's work. "It is a truer, a more human, a more lifelike, a more familiar Adrienne," remarks M. Monval, who stigmatises the portrait by Coypel as "a fantastic and studied picture, a tête d'étude, a banal figure, under which one might equally well inscribe the name of Magdalene repentant, or of Sophie Arnould."

For ourselves, while on the whole inclined to endorse the high opinion which Michelet and M. Larroumet have formed of Coypel's portrait, we cannot but think that the latter has unduly depreciated that by Fontaine, which appears to us both pleasing and natural.

However that may be, the two portraits, in all essential respects, are far from dissimilar, and as they accord well with the descriptions of the actress given by contemporary writers, we see no reason to doubt the fidelity of either. In both we find a high forehead, fine eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, a well-shaped mouth, with the rather prominent lower lip which recalls the portraits of princesses of the House of Austria, and a rounded chin; in a word, the features of a very pretty woman.

In default of portraits painted or engraved, Adrienne's beauty would be amply attested by her contemporaries. Not that the testimony in her favour is altogether unanimous, as M. Paléologue rather boldly asserts; to expect unanimity in regard to the appearance of a celebrated actress, whose triumphs must of necessity arouse envy and jealousy in many quarters, would be as unreasonable as to look for a general appreciation of her dramatic talent. But the number of those who decline to admit her attractiveness is very small, and not above suspicion of prejudice, while the evidence to the contrary is abundant and authoritative. "Without being tall," wrote, in 1719, the author of Les Lettres historiques sur tous les spectacles de Paris, "she is very well made, and has an air of distinction, which prepossesses one in her favour; no one in the world has more charms. Her eyes speak as much as her mouth, and often supply the place of her voice. In short, I cannot do better than compare her to a miniature, since she has agreeableness, finesse, and delicacy."