Chats on Old Miniatures

by J. J. Foster

Before leaving the Clouets, I may mention that a painting, measuring sixty-one by fifty-three inches, of Henri II. was sold at Christie's in January, 1905, for £2,500. Those who were fortunate enough to have visited the Exhibition de Primitifs Français at Paris, in 1904, will remember a number of interesting portraits attributed to the two Clouets, of which they cannot have failed to admire the beautiful portrait from the Louvre of Elizabeth of Austria. The original drawing for this is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the existence of the two works—that is, the crayon from nature and the beautifully finished picture in oils—is interesting as showing the practice of the artist.

In the remarkable Exhibition just named the student will have made the acquaintance of many names probably new to him, and can hardly have failed to observe the number attributed to Corneille de Lyon, most of them dated somewhere about 1548. This is an artist who has only of late years won recognition. He, too, was a Fleming, but the only name which can be assigned to him is Corneille. M. Dimier says he was a native of the Hague who settled at Lyons. He surmises that the Royal visits to Lyons in the year 1536 were productive of Royal patronage. But M. Dimier appears to hold very conflicting views as to the merits of this artist, and discovers great divergences in his style; thus he says: "His [Corneille's] knowledge is so scanty that he can scarce fill in his own feeble design; in the best of these pictures the bust and shoulders are like students' work, and verge on the ridiculous"; yet his texture, he says, elsewhere, "is delicate, limpid, and absolutely fresh, the total effect the result of genius of a very small order." But in a portrait of the Baron de Chateauneuf, which does, or did, belong to Mr. Charles Butler, he finds work which he says is scarcely unworthy of Holbein; "in depth of knowledge, boldness of execution, and extreme beauty of colour this little work is a masterpiece, far and away superior to anything which I have ascribed to the Janets," &c.

I have quoted these opinions at some length so that readers may judge for themselves of the relative importance of this early artist, all of whose work exhibited at the Exhibition de Primitifs was small in scale, and most of it, I have reason to believe, new to some students of art.

When we leave the Court of the Valois we seem to come to a great gap in our subject; and it is not until we arrive at the names of Petitot and his followers, a subject which has already been dealt with in Chapter VIII., that there is anything of importance to arrest our attention. This book is in no sense a detailed history of miniature painting; it merely aims at discussing some of the salient points of a wide subject; and, therefore, I make no further apology for passing on to the work which was executed in the eighteenth century, when several artists of remarkable ability appear on the horizon. I propose to take a few of the most eminent of these names, and to deal with them in chronological order.

Following that classification, the amiable Rosalba Carriera will come first. She was born in Venice in 1675; and though some would deny her any extraordinary talent, certain it is that she achieved European reputation. This lady must have possessed charming manners and very endearing qualities, for she is reputed to have been plain in personal appearance. Some ten or twelve years before her death, which occurred in her native place in 1757, she became blind, and devoted her means and the closing period of her life to works of charity. She painted a good many miniatures, which are dispersed in various collections, also landscapes. But probably her fame will rest most securely upon her work in pastels, of which there are examples in the Louvre; I recall two in the Salon des Pastels which are not unworthy of the fine specimens of that kind of work which hang around them; and that is high praise indeed, for, as every one knows, work in crayons was carried by French artists of the eighteenth century to a pitch of astonishing excellence; some of the portraits in that room by La Tour, for example, can hardly be surpassed for truth to nature and beauty of drawing; with almost the strength of oil paintings, they have a character and charm peculiar to themselves. In landscape work Rosalba earned great renown, though there are some who say that she was over-praised in her day and by her generation.

P. P. PRUDHON.

MLLE. CONSTANCE MAYER.
(Eudoxe-Marcille Collection.)

Jean Baptiste Massé has been described as a link between seventeenth and eighteenth century miniature painters. He was also an engraver, the son of a Protestant goldsmith of Chateaudun, born in 1687. In spite of his religion, the Regent obtained his admission to the Academy. He worked in gouache and his style is said to have influenced Hall. The portrait of Natoire here shown gives a good idea of his powers. He lived till 1767.

In François Boucher, who was born just at the beginning of the century, in 1704, and died in 1770, we have an artist of consummate ability, whose renown does not depend upon his miniatures. He may be called the decorative artist par excellence of the century; but probably many of the little nudities (of which there are a large collection to be seen at Hertford House) which are attributed to Boucher are really by Charlier and others of his followers. The learned editor of the catalogue of the collection of French miniatures shown at the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1906 is my authority for saying that some of the miniatures which are signed Boucher are by Madame Boucher, not the wife of our painter, but a lady bearing the same name. Thus the connection of François Boucher with our subject appears to be slight, and as his other work is so well known we need not stop to discuss him further.