Fragonard

by Haldane Macfall

So it came about—’twas in that year of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the year that saw the Pompadour come to supreme power (she had been for three years the king’s acknowledged mistress)—the youth’s mother, with all a French mother’s shrewdness and common-sense, gathered together the sixteen-year-old lad’s sketches, and bundled off with him in a diligence to Paris.

Arrived in Paris she sought out the greatest painter of the day, and burst with the shy youth into the studio of the dandified favourite artist of the king’s majesty, Pompadour’s Boucher—large-hearted, generous, much-sinning, world-famed Boucher, then at the very summit of his career—he was at that time living in the Rue Grenelle-Saint-Honoré, which he was about to leave, and in which Fragonard in his old age was destined to end his days.

The lad glanced with wonder, we may be sure, at the great “Rape of Europa” that stood upon the master’s easel, whilst his mother poured out in the rough accent of Provence the tale of the genius of her son—stole, too, a stealthy scrutiny of the Venus-pieces and Pastorals that stood about the studio, and was filled with awed admiration. The mother besought the genius of France to make a genius of her son; and Boucher, with kindly smile upon his lips, glancing over the immature work of the prodigy, told the lad that he might come back to him in six months’ time, pointing out to him, with all that large-hearted friendliness and sympathy that made him the loved idol of the art-students, that he lacked sufficient dexterity in the use of his tools to enter his studio or to benefit by apprenticeship to him, and advising the anxious mother to take him to Chardin as the supreme master in France from whom to learn the mastery of his craft.

To Chardin the youth went; and France’s consummate master in the painting of still-life, putting the palette on the youngster’s thumb straightway, from the very first day—as his custom was—and making him use sienna upon it as his only pigment, advising him as he went, set him to the copying of the prints from the masterpieces of his own time, insisting on his painting large and broad and solid and true.

Young Fragonard made so little progress that Chardin wrote to his parents that he could get nothing out of him; and sent the lad, bag and baggage, out of his studio.

Thrown upon his own resources, the young fellow haunted the churches of Paris, brooded over the masterpieces that hung therein, fixed them in his mind’s eye, and, returning to his lodging, painted them, day by day, from memory.

At the end of six months he called again upon Boucher, his sketches under his arm; and this time he was not sent away. Astounded at the youth’s progress, struck by his enthusiasm, Boucher took him into his studio, and set him to work to prepare the large decorative cartoons that artists had to make from their paintings for use at the Gobelins and Beauvais looms. The artist painted his picture “in little”; he was also required to paint an “enlargement” of the size that the weavers had to make into tapestry—this enlargement was mostly done by pupils, the State demanding, however, that the artist should work over it sufficiently to sign his name upon it—the head of the factory keeping custody of the “painting in little” to guide him; the weavers working from the enlargement. This work upon the enlargement of Boucher’s paintings was an ideal training for Fragonard.

The Director-General of Buildings to the king (or, as we should nowadays call him, Minister of Fine Arts), Lenormant de Tournehem, kinsman to the Pompadour, died suddenly in the November of 1751; the Pompadour promptly caused to be appointed in his place her brother Abel Poisson de Vandières—a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman, a man of honour, who brought to his office an exquisite taste, a loyal nature, and marked abilities. The king, who liked him well, and called him “little brother,” soon afterwards created him Marquis de Marigny—and Fragonard, like many another artist of his day, was to be beholden to him.

After a couple of years’ training under Boucher, Fragonard’s master, with that keen interest that he ever took in the efforts and welfare of youth, and particularly of his own pupils, urged the young fellow to compete for the Prix de Rome, pointing out to him the advantages of winning it. At twenty, without preparation, and without being a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard won the coveted prize with his “Jeroboam Sacrificing to Idols.” It was in this year that Boucher was given a studio and apartments at the Louvre.

For three years thereafter, Fragonard was in the king’s school of six élèves protégés under Carle Van Loo. He continued to work in Boucher’s studio, as well as painting on his own account; and it is to these years that belong his “Blind Man’s Buff” and several pictures in this style.