xlvi
FRENCH ART.
The earliest and also the greatest painter of the 'Dix-Huitieme' is
Antoine Watteau (1684-1722), who came to Paris in his eighteenth
year to assist in the decoration of the Opera House and speedily
rose to fame by his representations of 'Fetes Galantes'. In his scenes
of rural festivals and in his figures from Italian comedy ('Embark¬
ation for Cythera'; 'Gilles'; both in the Louvre) this master is
unapproached. In both, he is the faithful mirror of his age , but
his magical colouring sheds such a poetic glamour, that we seem to
be transported into a fairyland full of roguish grace and pleasant
dalliance. His successors, Lancret and Pater, are skilful and charm¬
ing artists , but are seldom inspired by even a breath of the poetry
of Watteau. The truest representative of the Pompadour epoch is
Francois Boucher (1703-70). A study of his numerous pictures in
the Louvre is not enough for a proper estimation of this artist, for
it is chiefly as a decorative painter, in his ceilings and panels, that
he reveals his character. Next to Boucher rank Fragonard and
Baudouin, whose drawings especially are prized. The 18th century
was rich in portrait-painters also, the first place being claimed by
the pastel painter Quentin de La Tour (1704-88), 'the magician', as
Diderot calls him. The strikingly lifelike and characteristic portraits
by this master are the chief boast of the muse'e of St. Quentin,
his native town; while the charmingly graceful female portraits by
Nattier are among the attractions of Versailles.
Here also reaction set in early. Boucher himself lived to hear
the thundering philippic of Diderot, who re-christened the 'painter
of the graces' as the 'painter of demireps'. But this verdict was
moral, not aesthetic. Emotionalism was simply the transition from
frivolity to the Spartan virtue of the Revolution. Diderot had found
a man after his own heart in Jean Baptiste Greuze (1726-1805),
whose 'Rustic Bride' and 'Prodigal Son' practically synchronized
with Diderot's 'Natural Son' and Rousseau's 'Heioise'. Greuze re¬
mains to this day a popular favourite, not, however, on account of
these moral pictures with their hard colouring, but on account of
his paintings of girls ('The Broken Pitcher'; the 'Milkmaid', etc.),
in whose grace there are still traces of the sensuous charm of the
preceding epoch. More important as a painter is Greuze's elder
contemporary Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779), one of
the best painters of still-life that ever lived, an excellent portrait-
painter, and an acute, amiable, and original observer of simple
domestic scenes ('Grace', the 'Industrious Mother', etc., in the
Louvre). The true forerunners of the later classicism were, however,
at this period Vien, the teacher of David, Cochin, and Hubert Robert,
with his views of Roman ruins.
The rococo style never thoroughly permeated the art of Sculp¬
ture. Allegrain, with his nymphs, and Clodion, with his sensuously
animated terracotta groups of Bacchantes, Satyrs, and Cupids, touch
upon its outskirts in the soft grace and 'morbidezza' of their methods
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