Boucher

by Haldane Macfall

Lenormant de Tournehem died suddenly in the November of 1751; the Pompadour’s brother, Abel Poisson de Vandières, was appointed Director-General in his stead at the age of twenty-five—and soon afterwards, on the death of his father, created Marquis de Marigny—a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman and an honourable fellow, whom the king liked well, and against whom his sister’s sole complaint was that he lacked the brazen effrontery of the courtiers of the day. No man did more for the advancement of the art of his time. A pension of a thousand livres falling vacant, the young fellow secured it for Boucher; and almost immediately afterwards, a studio becoming vacant at the Louvre owing to the death of Coypel, first painter to the king, Boucher came to his coveted home, eagerly moving in with his family as soon as its wretched state could be put into repair.

The decoration of the new wing to the palace at Fontainebleau brought the commission for the painting of the ceiling and the principal picture in the Council Chamber to Boucher, who had already decorated the Dining-Room. This was the period of his painting the “Rising” and the “Setting of the Sun” for the Pompadour, now in the Watteau collection, two canvases that were always favourites with the painter, bitterly as they were assailed by the critic Grimm.

PLATE VIII.—LA MODISTE
(In the Wallace Collection)

The “Modiste” that now hangs at the Wallace is a slight variation on the “Toilet” that went to Stockholm, commissioned by the Swedish Ambassador as “Morning” (with three others, to represent the Midday, Evening, and Night of a fashionable woman’s day, but which were never painted). The “Modiste” or “Morning,” was engraved by Gaillard as “La Marchande de Modes,” which adds somewhat to the confusion of its title.

He was turning out so much work that it was impossible to give as much care to his pictures as he ought. For he refused sternly, his life long, to raise his prices; by consequence he had to create a larger amount of work in order to meet his expenditure. It was about this time that Reynolds, passing through Paris, went to visit him and found him painting on a huge canvas without models or sketches. “On expressing my surprise,” writes Reynolds, “he replied that he had considered the model as necessary during his youth until he had completed his study of art, but that he had not used one for a long time past.”

He soon had not the time, not only to paint from nature but even to give his pictures the work necessary to complete them. The feverish haste which took possession of him in his frantic endeavour to meet the vast demand for his pictures, and the eager efforts of his engravers to satisfy the public call for engravings after his works, gave him less and less leisure to joy in their doing. And his eyesight began to fail. His flesh-tints deepened to a reddish hue; and he stands baffled before his work, suspecting his sight, since what every one cries out upon as being bright vermilion, he only sees as a dull earthy colour. Boucher has topped the height of his achievement; he has to “descend the other side of the hill.” Boucher begins to grow old.

In Boucher’s fifty-first year an ugly intrigue of the queen’s party at Court to sap the Pompadour’s influence over the king by drawing away the king’s affections towards Madame de Choiseul-Romanet, a reckless young beauty of the Court, brought about a strange alliance. The Count de Stainville, one of the Pompadour’s bitterest enemies, was shown the king’s letter of invitation to his young kinswoman; and he, deeply wounded in his pride that his kinswoman should have been offered to the king, went to the Pompadour and exposed the plot. A close alliance followed; and De Stainville thenceforth became her chief guide in affairs of state. It was at her instance that the king called him to be his Prime Minister, raising him to the Duchy of Choiseul—a name he made illustrious as one of the greatest Ministers of France.

In his fifty-second year Boucher was appointed to the directorship of the Gobelins looms, to the huge delight of the weavers and all concerned with the tapestry factory. This was the year of his painting the famous portrait of the Pompadour, to whom he several times paid this “tribute of immorality.” For the Gobelins looms he produced many handsome designs; and he was painting with astounding industry. But his hand’s skill began to falter. His art shows weariness in his sixtieth year, and sickness fell upon him, and held him in servitude now with rare moments of respite. The critics, notoriously Diderot, were now attacking him with shameless virulence. Boucher passed it all by; but he felt the change that was taking place in the public taste. The ideas of the New Philosophy were infecting public opinion; the Man of Feeling had arisen in the land; and France, humiliated in war, and resenting the follies and the greed of her shameless privileged class, was openly resenting it and all its works. Choiseul had planted his strength deep in the people’s party, and was come near to being its god. His masterly mind had checked Frederick of Prussia to the North; and the nations, exhausted by the struggle, signed the Peace of Paris in 1763. Choiseul, with France at peace abroad, turned to the blotting out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits at home. Their attempt to end the Pompadour’s relations with the king made this powerful woman eager to complete his design; the chance was soon to come, and the Order was abolished from France and its vast property seized by the state.

The Pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. Worn out by her superhuman activities, assailed by debt, she fell ill of a racking cough, dying on the 15th of April, 1764, in her forty-second year, keeping her ascendancy over the king and the supreme power in France to her last hour. Death found her transacting affairs of state. Louis, weary of his servitude, had only a heartless epigram to cast at the body of the dead woman as she passed to her last resting-place.