TARDIF, THE FRENCH CONNOISSEUR.
Among the connoisseurs of pictures who were celebrated in France towards the end of the seventeenth century, we must place in the first rank Tardif, formerly an engineer, but subsequently secretary to the Marshal de Boufflers. He was the friend of Largillière, Watteau, Audran, and, above all, of Gillot. He was renowned for the justness of his criticisms. When a picture was finished, no one dared to deliver his opinion openly on it, until it had undergone Tardif’s inspection; his opinion was, so to say, the last touch of the artist’s brush. Watteau himself, who used to laugh at criticism, once said on laying down his brush before a fête galante, still wet, “That picture is a perfect wonder! If Tardif were here, I would sign it.” Tardif possessed, in the Rue Gît-le-Cœur, one of the first cabinets of pictures in Paris. The Marshal de Boufflers, who knew his secretary’s passion, used every year to make him a present of the work of some celebrated painter as a new year’s gift. Tardif, too, had managed to raise sufficient from his patrimonial fortune to buy pictures from his friends, the living artists, and of his friends the dead ones. His cabinet was so celebrated that the Duke of Orleans went one day to see it with Nocé: this completely turned Tardif’s head. However, if he had only been subject to this noble kind of madness, which is a proof of a sublime aspiration towards the poetry of the beautiful, the worthy creature might have lived comfortably till his death. But he, too, was afflicted with the melancholy madness of money for money; he allowed himself to be fleeced under Law’s system: in other terms, he lost in that great revolution of French fortunes all he possessed, save his pictures.
It was necessary for him to live, however. Any one else would have got rid of his chefs-d’œuvre: Tardif only got rid of his servants. “Go, my friends,” said he; “the world is before you. Go where my money is gone. At present, I can only keep those who do not want to eat; my pictures will keep me company.” Tardif was already old, the passions of life had no more influence upon his heart; all that he needed was a little sunshine in his cabinet for him to live contented. He died in Paris, May, 1728.—Philosophers and Actresses.
PAUL POTTER’S STUDIES OF NATURE.
When Fergusson, the author of the famous treatise on perspective, was asked what copies he had followed in forming his style, he answered, “The examples of great nature;” and added, “I always found nature so powerful, that to copy her was easy.” All who have attained greatness in the practice of art have followed the same course of study, but none more successfully than our own Edwin Landseer, who first learned to draw animals in the fields around Primrose Hill; and Paul Potter, his great prototype, who acquired his first knowledge of art in the bright green meadows of the Low Countries. Of the value set by the latter painter on this mode of study, we have a striking proof in the picture in which he represents himself making his first sketch. This great painter was born in 1625, at Enkhuysen, in the province of Holland. His works, which have become equally rare and valuable, are peculiarly distinguished by the effects of his sun rays upon his landscapes and cattle, in producing which he has distanced all competitors. His paintings are deemed very valuable. For one small picture in the collection of the late Marquis of Westminster, that nobleman gave 9000 guineas. Potter died in 1654.
FIDELITY IN PORTRAIT PAINTING.
It is not always well to paint the whole truth; and although sincerity is extremely praiseworthy, we can scarcely approve the somewhat brutal frankness of an old French artist, who, while taking the portrait of a lady whose face was slightly broken out, took considerable trouble to reproduce all the pimples that he saw before him. “My dear sir,” said the lady, “you are not aware what you are about; you are painting my pimples; they are merely accidental; they make no part of my face.” “Bon, bon, madame,” replied he, “if you hadn’t these you would have others.”