PLATE XL.—FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
(1703–1770)
FRENCH SCHOOL
No. 36.—VULCAN PRESENTING ARMS TO VENUS
(Vulcain présentant à Vénus des Armes pour Énée)
On the right, Vulcan, seated on a tiger-skin with his left elbow resting on an anvil, presents a sword to Venus, who, supported by a nymph, is resting on a cloud in the centre of the composition. In the background, over the head of Vulcan, are two cupids carrying a helmet with a blue plume; between them and Venus, two nymphs on clouds under a rock. Cupids and doves are fluttering around the central group. In the foreground, on the left, are the chariot of Venus, doves, and cupids, one of whom, immediately below the goddess, is holding a garland of white roses.
Painted in oil on canvas.
Signed:—“f. boucher.”
10 ft. 6 in. × 10 ft. 6 in. (3·20 × 3·20.)
A little drier in touch than Boucher’s nudes, and considerably less coherent in design, but still painted with remarkable ability, are the figures of the goddess and her attendants in The Triumphs of Amphitrite (No. 863), by Boucher’s contemporary, Hugues Taraval (1728–1785).
SIMÉON CHARDIN
If Boucher and the army of painters of fêtes galantes and boudoir decorations reflect the tastes of the corrupt society of Louis xv.’s age, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) is the painter par excellence of the lower bourgeoisie. His was an uneventful, colourless life of unremitting work after the completion of his studies under Cazes and N. N. Coypel. He never went to Rome; he never sought after distinction in the “grand manner”; he never hankered after Court patronage. He simply devoted himself to recording with the utmost technical perfection the peaceful and domestic life of the lower middle class, to which he himself belonged, with all his tastes and habits of life, and to the painting of still-life, in which branch of art he stands without a rival. There are among his thirty-two pictures at the Louvre twenty paintings of Still-life (Nos. 89, 90, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 105–116, and the doubtful No. 118), all equally remarkable for their inimitable skill in the rendering of the most varied textures and reflections; for subtle observation of the mutual effect of coloured objects upon each other through the interchange of coloured rays; and, above all, for that “sense of intimacy, of life behind the scene,” with which he knew how to invest even inanimate objects.
This same sense of intimacy and of absolute pictorial unity is also the great merit of his domestic genre pieces, into which enters, in addition, the element of spiritual unity, of the absorption of each person in his or her occupation. In the deservedly famous Grace before Meat, at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, of which the Louvre owns two admirable replicas (No. 92, [Plate XLI.], and No. 93), the most casual observer cannot fail to notice that intimate bond between the mother and the two children, which gives the impression of a scene accidentally overlooked, without anybody being aware of the intruder’s presence. La Mère laborieuse (No. 91), La Pourvoyeuse (No. 99), and even the cat in the still-life piece The Cat in the Larder (No. 89), are equally innocent of “posing,” and absorbed in their respective occupations. The Boy with the Top (No. 90a) and the Young Man with the Violin (No. 90b), under which titles we have the portraits of the two children of the jeweller Charles Godefroy, were bought by the Louvre in 1907 for £14,000. These two pictures and the Castle of Cards (No. 103) are sufficient to establish Chardin’s supremacy in child portraiture.