Dupré, by whom there are three early works, Port St. Nicholas, Paris and Le Soleil Couchant, accompanied Rousseau in 1841 to the neighbourhood of Monsoult, where they were frequently visited by Barye, Corot, and Daubigny. There is at Chantilly by this last artist a sketch of the Château de St. Cloud, a charming record of a spot full of memories, now no more. By Diaz de la Pena, the last of this group of painters, there is a wreath of flowers and birds painted in vivid colours upon the ceiling in the boudoir of the Petit Château once used by the Duchesse d’Aumale; and by Ziem (known as the “Painter of Venice”) there is a landscape, Les Eaux Douces d’Asie, a subject magnificently treated by Diaz in a composition now in the Wallace Collection. Monticelli, Diaz’s greatest pupil, the leading painter of the Second Empire and a great admirer of the Empress Eugenie, is unfortunately not represented here; nor are there any examples of the early French Impressionists. For here the Hand of Death intervened.
Plate LXXVIII.
Photo. Giraudon.
“Concert Champêtre.”
By Corot.
Musée Condé.
With Léon Bonnat’s fine portrait of the Duc d’Aumale our description of the paintings at Chantilly comes to an end; but attention should yet be drawn to various pieces of sculpture exhibited in the apartments of the Château, on the terraces, in the gardens and in the Park. A fine figure of Jeanne d’Arc by Chapu is in the Rotunda, whilst a group of Pluto and Proserpine plucking daffodils by the same sculptor is on the Great Terrace. Here also is the equestrian statue of the Grand Montmorency by Dubois; and not far from it a life-size figure of the Grand Condé by Coysevox, surrounded by busts of Bossuet, La Bruyère, Molière and Le Nôtre. Copies in marble from the antique and the renaissance adorn the niches and plinths of the mansion and the avenues of the Park. A figure of St. Louis by Marqueste surmounts the roof of the Chapel and Jean Goujon’s reliefs ornament the Altar within. The famous portrait in wax of Henri IV is in the Galerie de Psyché; and busts in marble of the Grand Condé and of Turenne by Derbais, of Richelieu and of the last Princes of the House of Bourbon-Condé, are placed in the Cabinet des Livres and in various other rooms. Fine bronzes by Barye, Mène, Fremiet and Cain, adorn the mantel-pieces and consoles; whilst some exquisite enamel portraits by Limousin are exhibited in the Salle des Gardes.