It is a strange fact that but for the generosity of La Caze, The Embarkation would be the only example at the Louvre of the greatest master produced by France. The reason for this extraordinary neglect may be found in the scant esteem in which Watteau was held until his eclipsed fame was resuscitated by the de Goncourts. The superb life-size painting of Gilles (No. 983), one of ten pictures by or attributed to Watteau in the La Caze collection, was sold at public auction in 1826 for £26; whilst L’Indifférent and La Finette together realised the sum of £19 at the Marquis de Ménars’ sale! Of the eleven pictures in the La Caze collection that were originally attributed to Watteau, L’Escamoteur (No. 622a, formerly No. 987) is now acknowledged to be by his imitator Philippe Mercier (1689–1760), who was born in Berlin of French parents, and spent the most productive years of his life in London, where he died in 1760. The still-life piece Dead Game (No. 993), officially assigned to Watteau, has rightly been doubted; but the aspersions thrown upon the authenticity of the delicious Pastoral (No. 992) do not seem sufficiently justified. The profound influence of Rubens upon Watteau’s art is nowhere more pronounced than in the sketch The Judgment of Paris (No. 988), and in the beautiful oval composition Jupiter and Antiope (No. 991), which has, however, also much in common with Titian. The superb nude figure symbolising Autumn (No. 990), and another fête galante, entitled Gay Company in a Park (No. 986), are no less creditable to the master’s genius.
WATTEAU’S FOLLOWERS
Although Watteau indicated the direction that French art was to follow in a century when it had to cater no longer for the stateapartment but for the boudoir, he left no follower worthy to carry on his tradition. Nicolas Lancret (1690–1743), who had studied under Dulin and Gillot, based his style upon Watteau, whom he almost rivalled as a draughtsman. But he was an inferior colourist, and wholly lacking in poetic inspiration. One has only to compare his Actors of the Italian Comedy (No. 470) with Watteau’s Gilles (No. 983), or his Music Lesson (No. 468) and Innocence (No. 469) with their prototypes created by that master, to realise the inferiority of these thin, vulgarised versions of Watteau subjects.
Jean Baptiste Pater (1695–1736), who, like Watteau, was born at Valenciennes, became a pupil of his fellow-townsman in Paris, and benefited considerably by his guidance. Although inferior as a draughtsman to Lancret, whom he did not rival either in originality, he far surpassed him as a colourist. With Lancret, colour was generally an afterthought; with Pater, it entered into the primary conception of the picture. His Academy diploma piece, the Fête Champêtre (No. 689), is painted in the Watteau manner with true pictorial feeling, even if it lacks the master’s precious, jewel-like quality of pigment. The Fête Champêtre (No. 203), by Bonaventure Debar (1700–1729), holds promise of a considerable talent in a similar direction, cut short by a premature death.
THE VAN LOO FAMILY
No fewer than five members of the Flemish Van Loo family, which flourished in France from about 1660 until the death of Julius Cæsar Van Loo in 1821, are represented in the Louvre collection. The most distinguished among them were Louis Van Loo’s sons, Jean-Baptiste and Charles André, better known as Carle. Both of them were brought up in the academic tradition; but their Flemish blood and the taste of a time that had seen the master-work of Watteau, gave their art more vigour and sensuousness than is to be found in the paintings of their academic precursors. Still it is unnecessary to linger over their historical and mythological compositions. The picture which does most credit to Carle Van Loo (1705–1765) is The Hunt Picnic (No. 899), which, in spite of a certain crudeness of colour, attracts by the science of the composition, the Watteau feeling of the landscape background, and by its fascinating reality as a record of contemporary life among the leisured, pleasure-loving classes.
François Le Moine (1688–1737) constitutes a link between the decorative style of the preceding generation, which had become dull and ponderous, and the art of Watteau and his followers. In this position he heralds his great pupil François Boucher, whose characteristics, deprived of his elegant grace and suave rhythm of design, are more than hinted at in the Juno, Iris and Flora (No. 536). The Olympus (No. 535), the sketch for a ceiling, recalls in its joyful decorative colour and bravura of brush work the art of Tiepolo and Ricci.
FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
Whilst such painters as Jean Restout (1692–1768) still continued to follow the tradition of the Bolognese eclectics, as may be seen in his Herminia and the Shepherd (No. 775), the art of the Louis xv. period was given its final stamp by François Boucher (1703–1770). This favourite of Mme. de Pompadour, having gained the Prix de Rome in 1723, went to Italy in 1727, whence he returned to Paris four years later. At the age of thirty his Rinaldo and Armida (No. 38a) caused him to be “received” by the Academy—the first of many honours that fell to his share, as he became in turn First Painter to the King, Director of the Academy, and Inspector of the Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory. He was the ideal painter of the age that was dominated by the personality of the Pompadour, who kept him employed with commissions for the decoration of her boudoir. Boucher was the true child of his time—licentious, pleasure-loving, light-hearted, and without moral scruples. The astonishing thing is that his pursuit of pleasure did not affect his enormous productivity. His art is in perfect harmony with his character—frankly sensual, exuberant, and unreliable; at times rising to superb decorative splendour of the airy, graceful type demanded by his patrons, and then again careless to the point of slovenliness.
Boucher was not a great colourist in the sense in which this term is applied to masters like Titian or Rubens. Indeed, more often than not his application of purely local colours unaffected by their surroundings is apt to result in the crudeness noticeable in his Pastoral (No. 33), and in the domestic scene called The Breakfast (No. 50a). Other pictures like the Pastoral (No. 34) owe their present tapestry-like mellowness to the fading of the pigments. But it would be unfair to disregard the artist’s intention and to judge his capacity as a colourist from the present appearance of his works at the Louvre or in their usual environment in a public gallery. They were intended for definite decorative purposes, and in their proper Louis xv. setting fulfilled their function in admirable fashion. Few artists excelled Boucher in rhythmic harmony of composition, although it must be confessed that his emphatic insistence on triangular design is apt to become monotonous. This predilection is to be noted in the Rinaldo and Armida (No. 38a), Venus disarming Cupid (No. 44), The Rape of Europa (No. 39), the Pastorals (Nos. 33, 34, and 35), Vulcan presenting Arms to Venus (No. 36, [Plate XL.]), and, indeed, in the vast majority of his twenty-two exhibited pictures at the Louvre. His mastery in flesh painting is best illustrated by the more unconventionally designed Diana leaving the Bath (No. 30), and the brilliant sketch of The Three Graces (No. 47) in the La Caze Room. Among his other masterpieces at the Louvre, Venus demanding Arms from Vulcan (No. 31), which like No. 36 was designed for execution in tapestry, and the charming Portrait of a Young Woman (No. 50), deserve special attention. It is unfortunate that they are not hung in the rooms that contain the magnificent furniture of the period, instead of being piled sky-high among pictures that seem to be primarily regarded by the officials as mere museum specimens of the art of painting. Boucher is better hung, and so may be much more effectively studied in the Wallace collection in London.