Chats on Old Miniatures

by J. J. Foster

In concluding these remarks upon the French school of miniature painters, I come to a very distinguished name, that of Isabey, with which two other artists may be grouped as pupils or companions; and we will take the latter first; they are Jean Guérin and Louis François Aubry.

Guérin was born in 1760, and was a companion of Isabey in David's studio. His abilities must have been early recognised at Court, as he painted the King and Queen, and, later, many of the celebrities of the Assemblée; he also lived to paint Joséphine Bonaparte in Court costume. His portrait of General Kléber is perhaps the best known miniature in the Louvre, and is a work of astonishing virility and force of character. It was exhibited in the Salon of 1798, and he made many copies of it. Although his men's portraits are remarkable for their searching modelling, he was equally successful with the portraits of women and children, which he painted with naïveté and tenderness.

The other associate of Isabey was Louis François Aubry, a Parisian, born in 1767, who lived till the middle of the nineteenth century. Contemporary criticism assigned to this artist the ability to imitate his master Isabey, and to rival him in delicacy of brush and fidelity of likeness. Although he exhibited for over thirty years at the Salon, there is nothing by him in the Wallace Collection, and I only recall one in the Louvre, and that is a large miniature, painted with great care, representing a lady playing a harp. It is highly finished throughout, and recalls the best work of Augustin. I should say that he excelled in what may be called full-dress pictures, somewhat conscious, not to say affected, in pose, but excellent work of high technical quality. Aubry was at his zenith during the Restoration; he lived till 1851, and for many years had an atelier in Paris frequented by male and female students.

In some respects Jean Baptiste Isabey is the most remarkable name in the annals of French miniature painting. He was persona grata to successive monarchs, having been peintre attitré to Napoleon, to the Allies, to Louis XVIII., and to Charles X. But the commencement of this artist's career can be taken much farther back, seeing that it was the admiration of Marie Antoinette for his work upon boites decorées that led to his first royal patronage, and resulted in his being installed at Versailles before he was of age. From that time, the very eve of the Revolution, until 1855 he produced a long series of portraits of all the most distinguished personages of his time.

The Wallace Collection is especially rich in his work, there being nearly thirty examples by his hand. With Napoleon I. he was a special favourite, and, as I have said, several of his portraits of the Emperor may be seen at Hertford House, representing him in full Imperial costume, in academic dress, with Joséphine, and otherwise. And there, too, may be seen two portraits of the Duke of Wellington from his hand. But this collection is especially rich in portraits of ladies of the Empire and Restoration, to depict whose charms he adopted a style of his own, known to French critics as portraits sous voile. These ladies are touched in with a light hand and with the freedom of a water-colour sketch.

This manner of painting, in which he may be said to have set the fashion, is the very antithesis in style to that of his master David; but the rigorous training of that severe draughtsman enabled Isabey, when he chose, to paint with a precision and minute finish which is the ne plus ultra of such work. This was shown in a large piece, twenty-three by seventeen centimetres, exhibited in Paris in 1906, and representing the children of Joachim Murat, and Caroline of Naples déjeunant sur l'herbe. This, I do not hesitate to say, is the most extraordinary piece of work of its kind that I have ever seen. It is a group of several children in velvet dresses of the period, and a certain quality of velvety softness marks the execution. The attention to detail is microscopic; all the accessories of the little picnic party are painted with elaborate care; the stalk of the flowers in the dessert dish, the tiny finger-nails of the children, are all treated as if the artist's reputation depended upon the fidelity with which he represented them. It is a veritable tour de force of finish; but such is the brilliant and luminous way in which he has handled it that there is nothing hard or laboured in its effect, in spite of the immense amount of work it must have entailed.

In this particular example there is a quality recalling the finest Flemish work; and yet, as Isabey came to the capital, as we have seen, before he was twenty-one years of age, he can hardly have been subject to Flemish influences; I should attribute it to the influence of David and the classical school. The group I have been describing is not dated, but clearly belongs to the halcyon days of the Empire.

It may have been the demands made upon the time of Isabey, owing to his numberless commissions, that made him adopt the less laboured style of most of the portraits of ladies which may be seen at the Wallace Collection—that is, his latest manner—which is so entirely different from the group of Murat's children as to make one almost doubt at first sight that it can have proceeded from the same hand.

I had intended to close this notice upon the French painters with Isabey, who, as he lived to be nearly ninety, seems to be linked on almost to our own times; but there are two or three others to whom I must briefly refer, of whom the Italian Ferdinand Quaglia is one.

He was born in 1780, and was established in Paris in 1805, where, having obtained the patronage of Joséphine Beauharnais, he became a Court painter. A miniature of the Empress by him may be seen at Hertford House; it is probably a replica, as it is dated 1814, and she was divorced five years earlier. Quaglia's work is marked by high finish, but it is uninteresting, and his style sometimes approaches the smoothness of porcelain, which detracts from its artistic value.