The Rise Of French Painting

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

The Art Of Watteau, Chardin, Boucher, Fragonard And Greuze

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Coming events in the world of politics cast their shadows before them on the field of art, and as soon as we begin to study closely the national painting of France during the seventeenth and succeeding century, we become conscious of two streams of tradition, one democratic and derived from the Low Countries, the other aristocratic and inspired by Italy.

These two French schools of painting, which mirror respectively the life of the nobles and the life of the peasants, give us warning of that sharp division of the classes which were afterwards to meet and mingle in the clash and conflict of the French Revolution.

The seventeenth century, which in its beginning and middle period had seen art flourishing in Holland with the rise of the Dutch Republic, witnessed towards its close the shifting of political interest from Holland to France, and the rapid growth and development of a group of artists who added to the glory of the court of Louis XIV. Although France had given birth to artists of considerable distinction long before the end of the seventeenth century, it was not till the reign of the Grand Monarch that she evolved a distinct national style of her own.

The earlier French painters were almost wholly under the influence first of Flanders and then of Italy. Thus Jean Clouet, who in 1516 was appointed Court Painter to King Francois I, was the son of a Brussels artist, and both he and his son Francois Clouet (c.1510-72), who succeeded him, carried on a Flemish tradition. Though the feminine grace of the drawing of the Clouets has been held to be characteristic of France, yet the style of both artists was so close to that of their great contemporary Holbein that it can hardly be accepted as distinctly national.

Flemish again in character was the work of the three brothers Le Nain—Antoine and Louis, who both died in 1648, and Matthieu, died 1667—who came from Laon and settled in Paris. The gentle seriousness of their paintings of rustics foreshadows the peasant masterpieces of Jean Francois Millet. They are the ancestors of the democratic painters of France. Another painter closely associated with the age of Louis XIV, Philippe de Champaigne (1602-74), who painted numerous portraits of Cardinal Richelieu, was actually born in Brussels, though he established himself in Paris at the early age of nineteen. His portraiture, with its clear outline and suave coloring, is also northern rather than southern in character.

Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude le Lorrain (1600-82) were great masters whose innovations left an indelible impress on landscape painting—the development of which will be traced in a subsequent chapter—but though born in France, both of them spent the greater part of their lives in Rome. Their art belongs to Europe generally rather than to France. The portrait-painter Pierre Mignard (1610-95) and his great rival Charles le Brun (1619-90), who as architect and sculptor as well as painter dominated the Louis Quatorze period, were both trained in Rome and entirely Italian in style.

None of these men was strong enough to found a distinct and national French style; and the kind of painting which we look upon today as being essentially and characteristically French was not born till Antoine Watteau left his home in Valenciennes for Paris. It was this weakling, whose frail form was prematurely ravaged by consumption, who founded the greatest and strongest of all the modern schools of painting.

Antoine Watteau was born in 1683 at Valenciennes, near the Franco-Flemish frontier. His father, a tiler and carpenter, was in poor circumstances, and the boy is said to have had an unhappy childhood. Watteau senior bore the reputation of being a hard man, and wanted his son to become a tiler like himself; and when young Antoine at last obtained permission to study in the studio of a local artist, one Guerin, who was painter to the municipality of Valenciennes, the father refused to pay the expenses of his son’s education.

After the death of Guerin in 1702, Antoine Watteau, then aged nineteen, ran away to Paris with a scene-painter called Metayer. But when they had arrived in Paris, this man soon abandoned his young companion when he had no more work to give him, and henceforward Watteau, already in delicate health and disowned by his father, was alone in Paris, without money, clothes, or resources of any kind. In desperate poverty he at last found employment in a wretched workshop where cheap religious pictures were produced by the dozen, to be retailed by country shopkeepers. Nowadays chromolithographs have saved artists form this kind of drudgery, but in the early eighteenth century even the lowest-priced colored card had to be done by hand. What was required of Watteau and his fellow-laborers was rapidity of execution in making copies of popular subjects, and for this work the pay was the equivalent of half-a-crown a week one daily meal of soup.

Yet even in this miserable trade Watteau managed to distinguish himself, and was entrusted with the reproduction of a ‘St Nicholas’ that was in great demand. One day the mistress of the workshop forgot to give Watteau the ‘St Nicholas’ to copy, and remembering her oversight later in the day, she climbed up to Watteau’s attic to scold him for idling. After she had worked herself up into a passion, Watteau amazed her by showing her his day’s work, a perfect St Nicholas, which he had completely finished from memory.

The Rise Of French Painting (continued)