A Concise History of

French Painting
 A Concise History of

French
Painting
Edward Lucie-Smith

Praeger Publishers
New York Washington
-
BOOKS THAT MATTER
Published in the United States of America in 1971
by Praeger Publishers, Inc.

in Fourth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003

© 1971 in London, England, by Thames and Hudson Ltd

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the Copyright owner

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-135514

Printed in Great Britain

Contents

CHAPTER ONE
The Middle Ages

CHAPTER TWO 3 I

Renaissance Fantasy

CHAPTER THREE 5I
Painters of Reality

CHAPTER FOUR 71
In Arcadia

CHAPTER FIVE 9
The Sun King

CHAPTER SIX II7

FetesChampetres

CHAPTER SEVEN I33

The Feast of Pleasure

CHAPTER EIGHT I 55
A Moral Climate

CHAPTER NINE I73

Roman Virtue
CHAPTER TEN 1 89
Romantic Passion

CHAPTER ELEVEN 209

The Triumph of Ligh:

CHAPTER TWELVE 239

Symbolists and Modernists

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 26
The School of Paris

Bibliography 280

List of Illustrations 281

Index 286
For Masud and Svetlana with love
anonymous Profile ofJean II (Jean le Bm
 CHAPTER

The Middle Ages

This book is a history of French painting in a particular sense. When

peak of 'painting*, we use this word to cover a multitude of

techniques, used upon a variety of surfaces. The historian of Italian
art, for example, must take into account frescoes as well as c

pictures, because so many of die greatest achieveme: ^lian

artists are to be found on the walls of palaces and churches. Though

the historian of French art has to take decorative painting into account
(as it was used, for example, at Versailles and Fontainebleau), and

though he must occasionally glance at the considerable achic

of French illuminators, many of whom, in the late medieval per
men who also painted upon panel, easel-painting.
. main
concern. Essentially, easel-painting is what this book is about, and I

intend to tell the story of its development from the late fourteenth
century, when we meet the earliest surviving French easel-paint:
: '.'r.- :::>:::: zv.
T'r.t ::r : rr.r.r.r.j: v. r.::'r. hi? : : rr.e i :
v.:: : : u- :• :r.c rr :':.: 7 ; m::
of die second Valois King of France, Jean II, k: Jean le Bon.
which is now in the Louvre. This dates from about 1355. The k:: g
seen in profile, and he is presented simply and without trapp:: a
even die costume is plain. We have here the medieval concept of man,
a being naked before God, presenting himself to the Cre^ I
-

as to the artist's, unsparing scrutiny. We also have the quality which

Edouard Manet once told Proust v. ry essence of French art - z

the sens du vrai, the feeling for reality, which has characterized French
painting throughout the ages. This sens du vrai is something which
differs from the characteristic realism of Dutch and German ar
just as it differs from the idealism of the Italians. The French artist
neither exalts nor caricatures, he observes. French art frequ-.
seems to combine detached observation with an invo! '.nth

the very substance of life. The image is presented as an aspect

thing much larger and more important, a carefully selected facet of
the complexity of human experience. The portrait of Jean II. even
though it is the portrait of a monarch, is a triumph of dispassionate
observation, and the unknown artist's conclusions are not entirely
favourable to his sitter.

The II was not an easy time for France. From the end
reign of Jean
of the twelfth century onwards, commerce had been constantly
developing, and in consequence the towns had grown. But in the
1270s the economic situation had altered. The growth of prosperity
slowed down, stagnated, and then reversed itself. Times became hard
for Frenchmen, and the countryside in particular tended to revert to
a subsistence economy. Economic decline was accelerated by the
outbreak of the Hundred Years War in 1337, its official cause being the
change of dynasty from the Capetians to the Valois, and the English
monarchy's determination to press its claim to the French throne. The
conflict soon established a cycle of war, famine and pestilence. The
Black Death ravaged France and the rest of Europe. Jean II was
captured by the English at Poitiers in 1356, and an enormous ransom
had to be raised for him. Under the stress of war the organization of
the royal financesbecame more efficient but also more oppressive.
Feudalism increasingly became an empty show, and the conflict
between the classes was sharpened.
Yet the next picture we come to in the story of French painting
suggests the degree to which the medieval world retained its original
unity. This picture is the Parement de Narbonne, painted for Charles V,
who was Jean II's son and successor, in the early 1370s. The Parement
is an altar-frontal, painted in grisaille on
and originally intended
silk,

for use in the royal chapel during Lent, when colourless vestments
were also worn. The same workshop no doubt created the copes and
mitres too the painter did not yet claim to be the superior of other
;

craftsmen.
The surviving shows five scenes of the Passion, followed by
frontal
the Descent into Limbo and the Noli Me Tangere. The central scene,
the Crucifixion, is flanked by a pair of allegorical figures on one side :

the triumphant Church accompanied by the prophet Isaiah, and on

the other the defeated Synagogue, with King David. In panels below
these kneel the King and Queen of France, and the King's initial,
K for Karolus, appears in the borders.
The schemeis a traditional one, and part of its purpose is to

emphasize the traditional medieval view of royalty, with the King as

intermediary between God and his people. Every monarch in

10
2 anonymous Parement de Narbonne c. 1370

Christian Europe saw himself in this role, and kings, despite the fact
that they waged war on one another from time to time, recognized
a

kind of unity in monarchy which transcended the idea of nationhood.

The Parement is a French painting, but it comes from a world which
was only just discovering what national distinctions were about. In
fact, the style employed is what scholars now label
'International

Gothic', the mannered, elegant, linear, Late Gothic style which pre-
vailed almost everywhere in Europe except for Italy (and even there
it had a firm foothold in the rich cities of the Lombard
plain). Other-

11
wise, International Gothic stretched from Bohemia to Catalonia. At
the centre of this stylistic empire lay France, still, despite her troubles,
the richest and most powerful state in Europe, and a place where
artistic fashions were made.
As the Parement shows, the artists of the French Court were
conscious of their own were
sophistication; and, simply because they
sophisticated, they could be affected by influences from outside. The
influence one sees here is that of Italy, and especially that of Siena. In
the Parement, the mannerisms are disciplined and restrained. The
figures have mass as well as outline; the limbs are organically
articulated.
Looking at the picture, we also catch the first breath of the changes
which were to affect the medieval mind in a very much more funda-
mental sense than the way in which the art of Italy was eventually to
alter the art of France. In the thirteenth century, men had rediscovered
the philosophers of paganism, and particularly Aristotle. Though
many of Aristotle's ideas could be assimilated to the medieval world
view, others could not. Now, a hundred years later, the rupture
between faith and reason was being universally felt. For many people,
reacting against the uncertainties and the questions which the use of
reason introduced into their lives, the mystical illumination recom-
mended by some of the Fathers of the Church became the only way of
attaining to God. The alternatives were too risky and too suspect.
Painters (naturally upon the side of direct illumination) reflected the
strains which were imposed upon all the men of their time. Compared
to earlier work - the sculptures at Reims, for example - the Parement
is extreme: extreme in its tenderness and in its violence.

Charles V was himself a new kind of French monarch, partly by

temperament, partly thanks to the situation which he inherited.
Sickly, but intelligent and tenacious, he made good. much of the
damage which France had suffered under his father. Unlike his
predecessors, he preferred a retired and sedentary life, though he also
had a certain taste for luxury: he loved jewels as well as books. To
supply the Court, which mostly fixed its residence in Paris, merchants
and artists flocked to the city from all over Europe, and it more than
ever became the great European mart of styles and ideas. Paris
continued to flourish when other towns stagnated or declined.
The following of Charles VI (13 80-1422), administered
reign, that
a check to the predominance of Paris, and was the most humiliating

12
3 limbourg brothers January, from the 'Tres Riches Heures' c. 1410
that France was ever to experience. All that Charles V had won back
was lost. When his father died, Charles VI was left in the charge of his
uncles, the Dukes of Anjou, Burgundy and Berry. Anjou, after
plundering the royal treasury, left on foreign adventures. The other

two remained to quarrel with one another, and, after the King's
attack of madness in 1392, with his ambitious young brother, Louis of
Orleans. The country drifted towards civil war.
To the arts, the new regime was at first a stimulus. There were now
a number of princely patrons, instead ofjust one. The sheltered Court
life created by Charles V protected a small group of privileged people
from the horrors of the world and gave them the leisure to
outside,
cultivate the arts. The of these patrons was Jean, Duke of
greatest
Berry - no match for his abler brother the Duke of Burgundy in the
struggle for political power, but his successful rival in this sphere.
Berry attracted to himself the ablest painters of the age, among them
many Flemings: Andre Beauneveu, Jacquemart de Hesdin, Jacques
Coene, the Limbourg brothers. The Duke had a passion for sumptuous
illuminated manuscripts, and one can get an idea of the luxury with
which he surrounded himself from the miniatures he commissioned.
A famous example is the miniature for January in the Tres Riches
Heures now at Chantilly. Painted by the Limbourg brothers, it shows
us the Duke himself, seated at table and surrounded by his retinue.
At this time it is scarcely possible to make a distinction between the
styles employed in manuscript illumination and in painting on panel.
The same artists practised in both fields, and some of the most
beautiful work of the time is to be found in books. It was only with
the invention of printing that the illuminated book gradually lost its
importance. The images to be found in books are often more varied
and more inventive than those to be found in the few surviving
panel-paintings, which tend to be limited in their range of subject-
matter.
Typical of the 1390s and 1400s are a series of small panels which are
stylistically very close to the manuscript illumination of the same
period, a similarity which is emphasized by the similarity of scale.
These panels are variously assigned to the school of Paris and the
school of Dijon, a meaningless controversy both because Burgundian
influence was strong in Paris throughout the period (for political
reasons) and because Paris, despite the troubles of the time, continued
to be a magnet for artists. Perhaps the most beautiful of these panels,

14
4 ANONYMOUS
Small Circular
Pieta c. 1390

and certainly one of the best preserved, is the so-called Small Circular
Pieta, now in the Louvre. With its delicate forms and flowery
colours,

this exemplifies the taste of the time, which inclined

towards Christian

mysticism tempered by elegance. We can see a further, indeed a final,

development of this style in the rather later Large Circular Pieta. This
is often attributed to Jean Malouel, uncle of
the Limbourgs, and it has

on the back of the panel the arms of the Duchy of Burgundy. It seems
to have been painted about 1410.
The Hundred Years War entered a particularly cruel phase for

France in the second decade of the fifteenth century, when England

actively re-entered the conflict. Henry V of England inflicted a
crushing defeat on the French at Agincourt in 141 5; and in 1420 the
Treaty of Troyes was signed, under the terms of which the Dauphin
was disinherited and Henry of England was declared the heir to the
15
 5 Attributed to
JEAN MALOUEL
Large Circular Pieta
c. 1410

throne. The Dauphin, who two years later was to become Charles VII,
withdrew to the valley of the Loire, and set up his Court in Bourges.
The story of Charles's slow recovery of power, and of the part
played in it by Joan of Arc, needs no re-telling here. But it is worth
pointing out the degree to which Charles's Court differed from that
of his father and grandfather. The throne remained the focus of power,
but the nobility who had remained faithful were now intermingled
with new upstart office-holders, of bourgeois origin. Particularly
prominent was Jacques Cceur, Charles's financial adviser until Cceur
was ruined in 1453. It was men such as this who were the art patrons
of the new reign, and the artist whom they chiefly patronized was
Jean Fouquet.

16
 r

6 jean fouquet The Melwi Diptych: Virgin and Child c. 1450

17
 It was Fouquet who painted the superb portrait of Guillaume

Jouvenel des Ursins, Chancellor of France under Charles VII and

Louis XI. From the evidence of the hairstyle, it was painted about
1455. There is an instructive comparison to be made between this
painting and the portrait of Jean II, which dates from a hundred years
earlier. Where Jean II is seen in profile, Jouvenel des Ursins appears in
three-quarter face - a view which allows for much greater psycho-
logical subtlety. While the presentation of the monarch is simple, the
commoner is shown against an elaborate background which em-
phasizes his wealth and importance. Prominently displayed in the
background is the coat of arms of the princely Roman family of
Orsini, which hints at nobler origins than the sitter in fact possessed.
What one sees in these two portraits is the distance which the medieval
conception of man had shifted in the course of a century. It is no
longer a matter of showing a man naked before God; we have moved
on to the modern notion of man as a kind of synthesis of the spiritual
and the material, of inborn personality and worldly trappings.

7 JEAN FOUQUET
Guillaume
Jouvenel des
Ursins c. 1455
 8 JEAN FOUQUET
Charles VII c. 1445

Fouquet's art shows revealing affinities, and also revealing con-

trasts, with that of his Flemish and Italian contemporaries. The

Flemish art of the time is rich mportraits: those of Rogier van der
Weyden. Jan van Eyck. and Memling. In contrast to these artists.
Fouquet tends to smooth out surface details - folds and wrinkles - and
to generalize his forms, while emphasizing their massiveness. But he
does not carry the process of generalization as tar as does Piero della
Francesca. the Italian painter who most clearly influenced him. It
seems likely that Fouquet visited Italy between 1443 and 144". when
he is thought to have painted a portrait of Pope Eugenius IV which has
now disappeared. Certainly Fouquet knew something of the new
Italian science of perspective, and the sculptural grandeur of his figures
is in itself Italianate.
Fouquet's work seems to reflect the clash between medieval ideas
and the oncoming scepticism of the Renaissance. For example, his
portrait of Charles VII shows that Fouquet was capable of pitiless
objectivity, even in a work which is clearly earlier than the portrait oi

19
9 ROHAN master Man before his Judge 1420-25
 .

p*r~ ip»

L. i^i

io Attributed to jean chapus The Altarpiece o/Aix: Annunciation 1445

Jouvenel des Ursins. The composition is less sophisticated; the half-

length figure is cramped between curtains, which make everything
seem fusty and airless. The head itself is subtly but coldly described:
timid, melancholy, secretive, self-doubting. Such an approach to
reality was bound to produce some curious effects when applied to a
religious theme, asit is in the Melun Diptych.

The Melun Diptych was commissioned by another bourgeois

functionary of Charles's Court, Etienne Chevalier, Ambassador to
England in 1445, Treasurer of France in 145 1, and afterwards Secretary

21
of State. The left half of the picture, now in Berlin, shows Chevalier
with his patron, St Stephen. The right half, now in Antwerp, shows
the Virgin and Child - perhaps the most secular Virgin ever to appear
in a medieval picture. There is a tradition that this is in fact a portrait
of Charles VII's mistress, Agnes Sorel, and authenticated likenesses of
the lady bear this out. A mid-eighteenth-century inscription on the
back of the panel relates that Chevalier had the picture painted in
fulfilment of a vow, on Agnes's death - which would make the date
about 1450.
The Virgin, with her shaven forehead, high-pushed breasts, narrow
waist and out-thrust stomach, conforms to the then fashionable idea
of beauty. Her slightly pinched, impassive face and the barbarous
glitter of her throne and crown seem designed to put religion out of
our minds altogether. One detects in the picture a deliberate with-
holding of emotion which chills the spirit.
But perhaps it is not simply the first breath of Renaissance scepticism
that is to be detected in Fouquet's work, but also the effects of all those
bitter years of war when France sank deeper and deeper into misery.
The events of these years would either harden a man's heart or wring
it unbearably.
There was one artist who reacted in a different way to contemporary
events the : Rohan Master. Among all the gifted book-illuminators of
his time, this painter stands out through the power and pathos of his
work. His principal masterpieces are some of the large illuminations
in the book from which he takes his name, Les Grandes Hemes du
due de Rohan. The date, the place of origin, and the patron for whom
the book was executed, are all in doubt. It seems probable that the
date is about 1420 to 1425 (just at the worst point in the war), and that
the patron was a member of the House of Anjou. Few images could
more vividly symbolize the misery of the times than the miniature of
Man before his Judge. The visionary pathos of this and other illustrations
of tragic themes - the Pieta in the same manuscript, for instance - make
the greatest possible contrast with the rational art of Fouquet.
The Rohan Master strikes us now as an individualist, someone who
stands apart from the main current of development in French painting,
which runs through Fouquet and the Master of Moulins. Another
individualist, but of a very different kind, also worked under the
patronage of the House of Anjou. His connection with them is in fact
more firmly established than that of the Rohan Master, as he was the
22
illustrator of a romance called Le Liurc du Cuer d' Amours espris,

written by no person than Rene of Anjou himself, who was at

less a

one stage of his career simultaneously Duke of Anjou, Bar and

Lorraine, Count of Provence, and King of Sicily and Naples.
The individuality of theRene Master is to be found not so much in
the emotional atmosphere of his work, as in its technique. The
miniatures which illustrate the romance are startlingly realistic, with a
feeling for space, atmosphere and perspective, the state of the light
and the time of day, which are quite unlike anything else to be found
in the painting of the period. In one scene, Amour comes to the love- u
sick king as he lies in bed, and takes his heart away. The way in which
the incident is treated hints at the romantic realism of an early
seventeenth-century painter such as Adam Elsheimer (an impression

1 1 RENE MASTER
Amour Takes Away
the King's Heart
12 enguerrand charonton Coronation of the Virgin 1454

reinforced by thefact that it is a night scene, one of Elsheimer's

specialities).Compositions such as this are important because they
remind us that the French artists of the period were quite capable of
dealing with subjects outside the limited repertoire of sacred scenes
and portraits to which they mostly confined themselves when work-
ing on panel. If we still possessed the wall-paintings and tapestries
which are now lost, we should be more keenly aware of this.
The extreme disregard of pictorial convention shown by the Rene
Master has given rise to the suggestion that King Rene himself
illustrated the romance which he had written. The Neapolitan artist

24
Colantonio is said by one source to have learned 'the art of painting in
the manner of Flanders' from King Rene. Since Colantonio is in turn
reputed to have been the master of Antonello da Messina, one of the
key figuresin the development of Venetian art, this would give Rene
an exceedingly important place in the development of Italian as well
as of French painting.
As Rene of Anjou enters the story, so does the difficult subject of
southern French painting. One effect of the closing years of the
Hundred Years War was to put an end to the preponderance of Paris.
In 141 8, the city had gone over to the Burgundians, and tor nearly
twenty years thereafter found itself in the midst of an area disturbed by
warfare. Charles VII continued to live in the Loire valley even after
peace was restored. Royal residences outside Pans, such as Tours,
acquired a new importance, and so did regional centres such as Dijon,
Aix-en-Provence and Moulms. Southern France at this period was a
cross-roads of artistic influences. The prolonged residence of the Papal
Court at Avignon had already brought with it an influx of Italian
artists. Simone Martini worked at Avignon during the pontificate of

Benedict XII (1334-41), and Matteo di Giovanetti painted the

frescoes that still remain there in the Palais des Papes, under that of
Clement VI (1342-52).
Later, with the removal of the Papal Court to Rome, the Popes
were replaced by the Angevins as the principal artistic influence in the
region, though Rene did not make Aix his principal residence until
1470. The mixed stylistic character of the famous Altarpiece of Aix, 10
though it dates from considerably earlier (1445), can nevertheless be
most satisfactorily accounted for by looking at the extraordinarily
varied character of the Angevin domain, as represented in the long
roster of Rene's titles. Attempts have been made to connect the picture
both with Flemish art (the Master of Flemalle and the van Eycks), and
with Italy (through the stylistic connection with Antonello da
Messina). What is Italian about the picture is its sweep and colour; but
the forms are Flemish, and the type of the Virgin in the central
Annunciation especially so. The likelihood is that the painter was a
native of the region. Documentary evidence suggests that he was one
Jean Chapus, born at Avignon and resident at Aix. The donor of the
altarpiece is definitely known: he was Pierre Corpici, a draper.
Other impoitant works were also commissioned in this region
during the fifteenth century by men who were not aristocrats. The

25
13 Virgin of Mercy, by Enguerrand Charonton or Quarton (c. 1410-
c. 1466) and Pierre Villatte, was commissioned in 1452 by Pierre
12 Cadard, son of a former physician to Charles VII; the Coronation of the
Virgin, by Charonton alone, was commissioned in 1454 by a priest
named Jean de Montagnac. Charonton provides another example of
mixed stylistic influences. He came from Laon, but his work is un-
mistakably Italian in feeling; his Virgin of Mercy is close to Piero della
Francesca's version of the same subject in Borgo San Sepolcro.
Charonton also felt the influence of his adopted region. The Coronation
of the Virgin is bathed in clear, hard, Provencal light, and has for its
background a lovingly painted landscape in which Cezanne's
Montagne Sainte-Victoire is clearly visible.
Charonton's collaborator, Pierre Villatte, is otherwise unknown as
an artist, but he has sometimes been suggested as the possible author of
a painting which is perhaps the greatest masterpiece produced in
France during the fifteenth century: the Pieta of Villeneuve-les-
Avignon. It has also been suggested that the painting is not French at
all, but is the work of a Catalan or even Portuguese master. The

14 Avignon Pieta is in some ways a rougher, less sophisticated picture

than the Altarpiece of Aix, or than the work of the Charonton-
Villatte partnership. The gold ground is a feature which was already
archaic in the 1460s. Yet, in its harshness, this is one of the most moving
religious images in French The visionary intensity ot the Rohan
art.

Master is here revived, and endowed with a new earthiness. Note, for

13 ENGUERRAND CHARONTON AND PIERRE VILLATTE Virgin of Mercy I452

26
H school of avignon Pieta ofVilkneuve-les-Avignon c. 1460

example, the matter-of-fact air with which the donor attends

the
sacred event, and the contrast between this and the
agonized arc of
Christ's body.
The difference in mood between this and the art of the second half
of the fifteenth century in other parts of France is extreme.
Basically,
the art of central and northern France developed
little after the
departure of Fouquet. The age of Louis XI was one of intellectual
stagnation, and painting stagnated also. This is visible in
the work of
Fouquet's chief heir, the Master of Moulins, who takes his name from
a triptych in Moulins Cathedral.
17
The donors, who appear in this work, which was painted about
H98/9, are Pierre de Bourbon and his masterful wife, Anne de
Beaujeu, the daughter of Louis XI and sister of Charles VIII.
She had

27
 acted for some years as her brother's regent. By the time the Moulins
triptych was painted, Charles had already made an expedition into
Italy, the first of several by successive French kings; but the Master of

Moulins seems, if anything, less Italian than Fouquet. He still has a

good measure of Fouquet's clarity of form, simplicity and dignity,
but where Fouquet fell under the spell of Piero, the great foreign
influence on the work of the Master of Moulins, as we can see from
the types he chooses for some of his figures, is Hugo van der Goes.
It is interesting to see how he reinterprets the style of this great

Flemish neurotic. Where Goes's work conveys a feeling of inner

tension and anguish, the Master of Moulins is placid and self-assured.
But the assurance does not spring from faith the painter seems to have
;

less genuine religion even than Fouquet. The Fouquet Virgin shocks

because both trappings and presentation are secular. The Master of

17 Moulins' Virgin in Glory is much more conventional - an idealization,

15 MASTER OF MOULINS 16 MASTER OF MOULINS

Portrait of a Child 1498-99 Cardinal Charles dc Bourbon

28
17 master of moulins The Moulins Triptych 1498-99

not a portrait- but she is without inner life, and has become a mere
symbol which has lost its meaning the portraits of the donors are
;

much livelier and more convincing.

The Master of Moulins belonged to a world in which the aristo-
cratic principle was successfully reasserting itself. France once more
had a strong central government. The troublesome Duchy of
Burgundy had been reincorporated into the Kingdom in 1477, and the
new men of Charles VII's day were now assimilated into the old
nobility. The patrons for whom the Master of Moulins worked were
aristocrats, like the patrons of Malouel and the Limbourgs. We see
this in his portraits: the Portrait of a Child in the Lehman Collection 15
carries us back to the atmosphere of the Tres Riches Hemes. This is
especially true of the beautiful castle we glimpse through the window
the Limbourgs show us many such. Equally refined and elegant is his
portrait of a handsome young cardinal, now in Munich. In this case 16
we know the sitter to be Charles II de Bourbon, of the royal blood of
France.
Despite the influence of Hugo van der Goes, the Master of Moulins
is not as 'northern' in style as the other leading French painter ot the
time. This was Simon Marmion, who was probably born in Amiens

29
 i8, 19
SIMON MARMION
St Bert in Altarpiece:
Soul of St Bertin
carriedup to God;
Choir oj Angels

and who spent his working life in Valenciennes: he is said to have lived
in this town from 1458 until his death in 1489. Marmion represents the
closest approach made by French fifteenth-century painting to the art
of the Low Countries, and he reminds us more of Memling than of
Fouquet or the Master of Moulins. He is graceful but superficial. His
pictures are sparklingly bright in colouring, and they show how much
he enjoys the details of everyday life. His principal surviving work is a
18, ig set of panels depicting the Life of St Bertin, which demonstrate the way

in which Flemish religious art was already preparing the way for the
genre painting of the seventeenth century. Marmion's work is not
entirely humdrum: fragment such as the charming Soul oj St Bertin
a
Carried up to God shows
that he could strike a vein of poetry. But the
music being played is the swan-song of the departing Middle Ages.

30
 CHAPTER TWO

Renaissance Fantasy

The sixteenth century marks a turning-point in the political history of

France, and in the development of French culture. The first half of the
century was an era of foreign wars, a continuation of the adventures
which had been embarked upon by Charles VIII. This period comes
to an end with the Peace of Le Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, whose
purpose was to adjourn the struggle so that men, both in France and
elsewhere, might turn their attention to the religious question.
In painting, the transition from the world of the Middle Ages to
that of the Renaissance seems especially abrupt, though one reason for
this may be our own lack of information. We know very little, for
example, about either Jean Bourdichon (c. 1457-1521), or Jean Perreal
(d. 1530), who seem to have been the most important French painters

in the earliest years of the century. Bourdichon is known to us chiefly

thanks to the illuminations of the Hemes d'Anne de Bretagne; the book
was finished in 1508. The pictures make it clear that Bourdichon
remained within the Gothic tradition, but they also show a marked
Italian influence. Certain architectural details can be traced to the work
which Bramante did in Milan, and the figure-types and compositions
also tend to have an Italian impress. Perugino, in particular, is one of
Bourdichon's sources, and there is a miniature of St Sebastian where 20
the pose is copied directly from a design which Perugino had been
using some ten years earlier.
Since Bourdichon's sources are large-scale works, sculptures and
paintings, rather than other illuminations, his miniatures tend to look
like reproductions of bigger originals. The exception is to be found
in the naturalistic representations of flowers and insects, which are
also included in the book. These have a stereoscopic vividness. The
fact that the two styles can coexist in a single volume suggests that the
artist himself was a man
divided, uncertain which current to follow.
We do not find any great power of personality in his work.
Perreal is an even more shadowy figure. We know that he served
Charles VIII, Louis XII and Francois I that he visited Italy three times
;

3i
 that, in addition to being a painter, he bore the responsibility for large
sculptural undertakings, made designs for festivals, and even designs
for the medals which were struck on such occasions (medallic
portraits of Charles VIII and Louis XII survive). Yet the only picture
21 attributed to Perreal with any certainty is a portrait of Louis XII
which is now at Windsor. This still belongs to the fifteenth-century
tradition ofFrench portraiture, but the modelling recalls contemporary
Milanese work.

20 JEAN BOURDICHON
St Sebastian 1508

32
 21 JEAN PERREAL
Louis XII c. 15 14

The man who was dominate the artistic enterprises of the first
to
half of the century in France was Louis XII's successor, his cousin
Francois I, who came to the throne in 151 5, at the age of twenty.
Ambitious and high-spirited, Francois meant to change the way
things were done in his kingdom, and, in particular, he meant to
revive the arts. His mother was a princess of Savoy, and he already
looked towards Italy. He made up his mind to attract the greatest
Italian artists to his Court. At first, he was not very successful. He
wanted Michelangelo, but failed to get him. Leonardo da Vinci came,
and for the last three years of his life (1 516-19) resided at the French
Court. Andrea del Sarto also came, but stayed for only a year (i5!8-
19). Meanwhile, Francois involved himself ever more heavily in the
wars in Italy. At he was fortunate; the victory of Marignano
first

marked the first year of his reign. Later, when he found himself at
grips with the wily Emperor Charles V, his luck deserted him.
Francois was humihatingly defeated by the Imperial forces at Pavia
in 1525, and taken as a prisoner to Spain.

33
 Pavia did not cure Francois or his Court of their passion for all things
Italian, and it was only on the King's release that the real hegemony of
Italy over the visual arts in France began. The significant event was the
arrival of Rosso in France in 1530, followed by his fellow countryman
Primaticcio in 1532. Francois, after having resided for much of the
time in the Loire valley during the earlier years of his reign, now
wanted to be closer to Paris, and started to build new palaces and to en-
large and redecorate old ones round the city. One of the buildings to be
transformed was the old medieval fortress of Fontainebleau. From
Rosso 's arrival must be dated the rise of the so-called school of
Fontainebleau, which was to dominate decorative painting in France
for the rest of the century.
The of the school of Fontainebleau abruptly swept away the
artists

remains of the medieval tradition. Art was no longer to be primarily

religious. Instead, it was to be secular, and pagan allegories in large
part replaced the sacred themes of the Master of Moulins and his
predecessors. French art moved from the world of the Late Gothic to
that of Mannerism, with no intervening phase of High Renaissance
classicism. Mannerism, which had only recently begun in Italy, con-

22 il rosso Pieta 1530-40

23 il rosso Venus Chiding Love

quered France as it was soon to conquer the rest of Europe. It soon be-
came an international style of a kind which had not been seen since
the heyday of International Gothic.
Mannerism and International Gothic had certain qualities in com-
mon, and these were what helped the new style to establish itself so
swiftly. Both were essentially 'Court' styles: fantastic, wiltul,
luxurious, amusing. Both were designed to appeal to people with a
sense of the fashionable, an appetite for the new. This was particularly
true of Mannerism and its public; the Renaissance had bred contempt
for what was traditional, and a corresponding respect for 'invention',
and most unexpected ways of presenting things to the eye.
for the latest
II Rosso (Giovanni Battista dijacopo, 1494-1540) belonged to the 22, 23
earliest and most vehement phase of the style. A Florentine, he was a

member of the first generation of Mannerists. Pontormo was his exact

contemporary. His early influences were threefold: Andrea del Sarto,
whom he learned from but reacted against; Michelangelo; and the
German engravers who also influenced Pontormo, notably Diirer.

35
 Rosso's early works are religious paintings - moving, tight-strung,
neurotic in the fashion of the time. In1 523 he went to Rome, where he

was able to see the new of 'grotesque' ornament, combining

style
animal and vegetable forms and ancient Roman motifs, which
Raphael and his workshop had evolved for the Vatican. Rome was
sacked in 1 527 by Imperial troops, and Rosso fled. He spent three years
of increasing financial difficulty, moving from one town to another.
Eventually, he arrived in Venice and met the celebrated humanist
Aretino, who in turn recommended him to Francois I.

Rosso's task was to provide a new and more splendid kind of royal
environment. Though his work at Fontainebleau has been largely
destroyed or overpainted, enough remains to show us the kind of
problems he was set, and the ways in which he solved them. His
principal work is the Galerie Francois Premier. A long gallery of this
sort was and decorative tradition. Its
alien to the Italian architectural
chief defect, from the point of view of the decorative artist, was that
it could not be looked at as a whole (though, as Rosso, like all Man-

nerists, tended to shun narrative clarity and indeed anything which

disclosed itself simply and at once, this may have seemed an advantage)
The solution was to divide the walls into an upper and a lower half.
The lower part was filled with panelling, the upper became an en-
larged version of the deep frieze already familiar in some Italian
decorative schemes. This half was filled with stucco and painting. The
stuccos are in exceedingly deep relief, so as to offer variety and interest
to the eye as one proceeds down the length of the gallery.
23 The paintings framed by the stuccos were light, elegant, parodistic.
The compositions juggle with the notion of space sometimes they are
:

packed with figures, so that space is tightly compressed or abolished;

sometimes the eye is led away to infinity. The colouring - so far as we
are able to judge after thorough nineteenth-century overpainting -
was unrealistic, with subtle shot-silk effects and clashing hues. The
figures are filled with frenetic vitality or with erotic lassitude. The
female nudes represent a new type, based on Michelangelo, but elon-
gated, twisted into serpentine poses, with elaborate hairstyles and
sudden, fluttering swags of drapery.
Rosso also remained capable of his old religious fervour, as can be
22 seen from his beautiful Pieta, now in the Louvre, which was painted
for the Constable of France, Anne de Montmorency, and which
originally found its place in Montmorency's chapel at Ecouen. But

36
24 Francesco primaticcio Ulysses and Penelope c. 1560

here, too, we find some of the characteristics of the Fontainebleau

style: the compression of space, the feverish energy, the startling
colours. This eloquent painting is the best preserved of all the works

which Rosso left behind him in France, and gives the true measure of
his gift. But it was the Fontainebleau compositions which were in-

fluential. French artists assimilated them through the medium of prints,

and these prints were also much studied abroad.
Rosso's principal collaborator, Francesco Primaticcio, had a more
placid talent. He came from Bologna, and worked with Giulio
Romano in Mantua, when Giulio was engaged in decorating the
Palazzo del Te. He remained in Giulio's workshop until 1532, when
he moved to Fontainebleau. Through Giulio, who had been Raphael's
principal assistant, Primaticcio inherited the tradition created by
Raphael. In Mantua, Giulio was already combining stucco-work and

37
 painted decoration, and it that, though the over-all
seems likely
responsibility for the decorative scheme in the Galerie Francois
Premier was Rosso's, Primaticcio had much to do with the sculptural
part of it. Though Primaticcio's work, like Rosso's, has suffered
heavily, one or two pictures survive to give an idea of his manner of
24 painting. The Ulysses and Penelope illustrated here is a repetition,
probably by the artist himself, of one of the panels in the now-
destroyed Galerie d'Ulysse at Fontainebleau. We see from it that
Primaticcio was less vehement than his collaborator. The picture
demonstrates particularly clearly the debt which Primaticcio owed to
another leading Italian Mannerist, Parmigianino.
Rosso died in 1540, a suicide according to Vasari. Primaticcio, who
had been buying antiquities for the King in Rome, was recalled to
complete the works which Rosso had left unfinished. It was not until
about 1552, when Francois's son Henri II "was on the throne, that he
acquired another collaborator. This was Niccolo dell'Abbate (c. 1 5 12-
71), who came from Modena. Primaticcio does not seem to have
begun his association with him very enthusiastically, as he wrote: 'If
there had been others in Paris who could have done the work as well as
he, I should not have engaged him, but there was no one capable.'
However, the collaboration was as successful as the previous one.
Niccolo brought the latest ideas in Italian art to France he reinforced
;

the influence of Parmigianino, and he owed something, too, to Dosso

Dossi and to the Venetians. His art is lighter, more painterly, less
intellectual, than Rosso's. His most attractive surviving works are two
26 large mythological landscapes, one in the National Gallery, London,
and the other in the Louvre. The plunging bird's-eye view is typically
Mannerist (we also find it used by Pieter Bruegel the Elder), and so is
the glittering, rather tinselly colour. And yet these airy landscapes are
the predecessors of some of the most poetic works of Claude Lorrain.
Other artists, Italian and French, clustered round these three
25 principal figures, but their personalities remain shadowy. A fine Diana
in the Louvre is sometimes attributed to Luca Penni; and Giulio
Camillo, Niccolo dell'Abbate's son, has been suggested as the author
of some landscapes showing rustic occupations. These look forward
not to Claude but to Boucher. A French painter who was apparently
influenced by the Italians of the school of Fontainebleau, without be-
coming completely identified with them, was Jean Cousin the Elder
(c. 1490-1560), who came from Sens but moved to Paris in 1538 and
 pp
25 Attributed to luca penni
Diana
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 27 SCHOOL OF FONTAINEBLEAU
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Eva Prima Pandora c. 1550

^^^^^ 29 MASTER OF FLORA

1 Birth ofCupid c. 1540-60

28 made a successful career for himself. An Eva Prima Pandora in the

Louvre is traditionally attributed to him. His son and successor, Jean
Cousin the Younger (1522—94), is known from engravings and from
32 another picture in the Louvre, a Last Judgment.
A lairly large number of anonymous works continue to be labelled
'school of Fontainebleau' by art historians, and most of these seem to
be the work of French The most attractive are those generally
artists.

2g grouped together aswork of the so-called Master of Flora, a

the
specialist in erotic mythological scenes. His figures are even more
elongated and sinuous than those of Rosso and Primaticcio. The com-
positions characteristically show a static central figure surrounded by
whirling attendants. Flowers are scattered everywhere. The unknown
painter offers us a naive, almost primitive version of Mannerist style:
the academic solidity of Primaticcio is nowhere to be seen.
Another popular type of composition among the anonymous
painters of the school was a half-length female figure, nude or trans-
parently draped. The type originated in Leonardo's studio, with the
unclothed version of the Mona Lisa. Old inventories sometimes des-
cribe them as 'courtesans'. One of the most attractive examples of
27 the type is the coolly self-possessed Sabina Poppaea which has
incongruously found a home in the Puritan city of Geneva.

40
 The best known of the identified French painters of the school of
Fontainebleau isundoubtedly Antoine Caron (c. 1520-c. 1600),
whose works sums up the atmosphere of the Court of Catherine de
Medicis, Henri H's widow, as Rosso's does that of the Court of Francois
I. Caron is first mentioned in the royal accounts in 1540. He becomes

more prominent after 1 559, just at the time when the Wars of Religion
were beginning. Caron was a sympathizer with the Catholic faction,
31 and a remarkable painting of the Massacres under the Triumvirate (1 566)
gives us his reaction to the troubles which were shaking France. It is a
strangely heartless work of art. The immensely elongated figures are
set against a wide background of fantastic architecture. Their horribly

violent actions are swallowed up in the hugeness of surrounding space;

the brilliant colour contradicts the sombreness of the theme.
Caron was a skilled designer of the elaborate fetes in which the
Valois Court delighted, and his more typical works tend to reflect the
festive, irresponsible mood of these occasions. In a few of his pictures,
we also find a reflection of Catherine de Medicis's obsessive interest in
the occult: one of the most fascinating of Caron's paintings is his
30 Augustus and the Sibyl, which is simultaneously naive and sophisticated,

30 antoine caron Augustus and the Sibyl 1575-80

31 ANTOiNL caron Massacres under the Triumvirate 1566

32 jean cousin the younger Last Judgment 1585

 credulous and learned. Caron has some of the primitivism of the
Master of Flora, the lack of real amplitude of form, the contempt for
minor details.
realism, the interest in
The one branch of art which resisted the influence of the Italians and
pursued a course of its own was the art of portraiture. Unfortunately,
we are here, as elsewhere, bedevilled by the lack of firm attributions.
The leading portrait painter in the early years of the century seems
to have been Jean Clouet the Younger, who probably came from the
Low Countries. He is mentioned in a poem written in 509, where his
1

name is coupled with of Perreal, and his name appears in the royal
that
accounts from 15 16 onwards. He seems to have died about 1541. Few
works which can certainly be attributed to him survive: one is the
34 portrait of Mme de Canaples which is now in the National Gallery of
Scotland. This can be identified because it is based on a drawing now
at Chantilly, one of a group connected to Jean Clouet by a chain of
circumstantial evidence. These give us the feeling that, despite his
Flemish origins, Jean Clouet had been touched by the ideas of the
Italian High Renaissance. He is interested in mass rather than in line, in
broad effect rather than in details.

Jean Clouet's son Francois (before 15 10-1572) seems to have been

the most eminent portraitist of the next generation. In 1541 Francois I
appointed him to succeed his father. The signed portrait of the apothe-
35 cary Pierre Quthe, dated 1562, uses a pattern which was much

33 FRANCOIS
CLOUET
Lady in her Bath
c. 1550
jean clouet Mine de Canaples c. 1523 35 fran<;ois clouet Pierre Quthe 1562

favoured by Italian Mannerist portraitists, such as Bronzino and

Salviati. The warmer and less metallic than theirs, suggests
colouring,
the influence of Domenico Moroni. There is, however, something
typically French about the picture, and that is its sobriety; its deter-
mined search for the human essence. There is still something here to
remind us of Fouquet.
Clouet of the Italians at Fontainebleau, per-
also felt the attraction
haps more any other French portraitist, if we are to judge by
so than
the curious (and signed) painting of a Lady in her Bath. It has been sug- 33
gested that it represents Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri II, but
more probably the subject is Marie Touchet, mistress of his son
Charles IX. The basic pattern is one we have met previously: the half-
length female nude which originated in the studio ol Leonardo da
Vinci. Other details show a mixture of Italian and Flemish influences.
For example, the woman in the background appears in similar guise
in the work of Italian painters as dissimilar as Titian and Giulio
Romano, while the old nurse resembles a type used by Quentin
Matsys. The whole composition, with figures behind a balustrade,

45
 36 SCHOOL OF FONTAINEBLEAU
Three Minions c. 1580-90

37 Attributed to marc duval

One-eyed Flautist 1566
 38 CORNEILLE DE LYON
Portrait of a Young Man

may well be a blasphemous echo of a pattern used for Holy Families

by Joos van Cleve. We know that this Flemish painter visited the
French Court to make portraits of Francois I and his second queen.
If we have some information about the Clouets, including, in the

case of the son, a few signed pictures, we have almost none about
Corneille de Lyon (active 1533-74). A man of this name is recorded as
a portraitistof high reputation, but there is no document to link him
to the group of portraits usually attributed to him. These are smaller
in scale and more naturalistic than those given to Clouet, and less
eclectic. They belong within the sphere of northern painting, but
with a characteristically French simplicity and directness.
Portraiture was as popular in the France of the sixteenth century as
it was among the Elizabethans in England. The age also produced a

small handful of human images by anonymous masters which are

intensely memorable as works of art, so that we find ourselves longing
to know more about the concerned and the circumstances in
sitters

which the picture was painted. One of these images is the portrait of a
One-eyed Flautist in the Louvre, dated 1566 and sometimes attributed 37
to a painter called Marc Duval. The sitter holds a transverse, or, as it
was then called, a German flute, and it has been conjectured that he
was a German musician in the service of Charles IX, who was especially
interested in music. Another is the recently discovered Three Minions, 36

47
 a triple portrait which evidently represents three of the decadent
favourites of the homosexual Henri III, last of the Valois kings. These
two paintings, especially, tell us much about the state which was ruled
by Catherine's sickly children.
Henri III was assassinated in 1589, and his great cousin Henri de
Navarre succeeded him, to rule as Henri IV until he too fell victim to
an assassin. Henri IV might revive national life in France, but it was
beyond his power to revive French painting, which had fallen into
the depths of mediocrity we find in the second school of Fontainebleau.
The three principal painters of the school were Ambroise Dubois
(1542/3-1614), Toussaint Dubreuil (1 561-1602) and Martin Freminet
(1 567-1619). Much of their work has been destroyed, but enough re-

mains to show how the feverishness of the earlier Fontainebleau

masters became tempered by an inclination towards classicism.
39 Dubreuil's A Sacrifice in the Louvre represents the highest level of their
talent. Of his two colleagues, Dubois, who was born in Antwerp,

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40, 4i Jacques bellange Virgin Annunciate; Angel of the Annunciation

showed the influence of Flemish Mannerism, while Freminet (who

returned to France only at Dubreuil's death) was under the spell ot
Italian painters such as the Cavaliere d'Arpino, dreariest yet most
popular of late sixteenth-century artists. Freminet had been in close
contact with him during a long stay in Italy.
Mannerism was livelier and more inventive in the provincial city of
Nancy, capital of the Duchy of Lorraine. The leading figures of the
school of Nancy are Jacques Callot, Jacques Bellange and Claude
Deruet. Callot (1592-163 5) was the most celebrated in his own day,
and has remained so. But he was a draughtsman and engraver, not a
painter. After a period at the Court of Florence, he returned to
Lorraine in 1621. Having begun as a pure Mannerist, he now, in this
second phase of his career, begun to turn towards an objective realism,
a determination to depict life as it really appeared to him. His last
work, a set of plates called the Grandes Miseres de la Guerre, prompted
by a French invasion of the Duchy, shows how he mingled compas-
sion with dispassionate observation. Caron had reacted differently to
basically similar experiences.

49
 42 CLAUDE DERUET Fire l600

Jacques Bellange (active 1600—17) is again mostly known to us as an

engraver, one who seized upon the apparently frivolous tradition of
Parmigianino and used its forms to express passionate religious emo-
tion. Mannerism here returns to its beginnings: hypersensitive reli-

gious feelings find a voice through exaggerated elegance and formal

discontinuity. But Bellange is also documented as a painter, and a

40, 41 signed Annunciation diptych by him survives. This is very like the en-
gravings in mood, and shows the same tendency to look towards the
past: the diptych is a characteristically medieval format. In addition to
this, the Virgin Annunciate is an adaptation from Diirer, who was a
source of ideas for Bellange just as he was for Pontormo and the
young Rosso.
Claude Deruet (1 588-1660) was a less interesting artist who has left

a much greater number of paintings behind him. A decorative paint-

42 ing, Fire, gives some idea of his style.
Deruet must, in his later years, have felt himself to be a survivor
from During the first half of the
a totally different artistic universe.
seventeenth century, French painting was to make another radical
change in its assumptions. Mannerism was swept aside, only to return
in the following century, in a new and different form, with the artists
of the Rococo.

50
 CHAPTER THREE

Painters of Reality

Italy remained as important to French artists during the seventeenth

century as during the sixteenth. But now it was one Italian city in

particular that drew them to itself: Rome. Rome was the centre of
experiment, the creative melting-pot of the time. It was not
artistic

only French artists who made their way to Rome (and stayed, some-

times, to create their whole life's work), but artists from all over
Europe. So many foreign, and especially northern, painters flocked to
the city that they formed a recognizable colony, a community within
the city, with its own accepted customs. These customs were free and
easy. It was in seventeenth-century Rome that the notion of the
Bohemian became clearly established for the first time, among
artist

painters who were living a long way from home, and who found
themselves correspondingly free from social and family responsibilities.
The great revolutionary painter of the time was Michelangelo
Merisi da Caravaggio (i 573-1610). Caravaggio began his career with
pictures of a shocking realism, often scenes of low life or parodies of
mythology. For Caravaggio realism was thus at first a Mannerist
device, a means of titillating and startling the spectator. Later, he came
into contact with the Congregation of the Oratory, which had been
founded by St Philip Neri. Neri was a religious reformer; he believed
that God should come to men directly and unostentatiously. Cara-
vaggio could never be entirely unostentatious (he was one of the great
stormy petrels in the history of European art), but under Oratorian
patronage he developed a new and extremely direct style of religious
painting. His famous altarpiece of the Entombment, painted in 1604 for 43
the Oratorian Church of S. Maria in Vallicella, shows how Cara-
vaggio used realism for religiou: ends. The dramatic chiaroscuro we
see in this painting was to influence painters throughout the century,
and it was to appeal especially to northern artists.
The alternative to Caravaggio was offered by the Bolognese painter
Annibale Carracci (1 560-1609), who was summoned to Rome in
1595 to paint frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese. If Caravaggio was a

5i
 realist, Carracci has usually been defined as a classicist. But it is im-

possible to exclude the notion of realism from the new manner which
Carracci evolved in revolt against the excesses of Mannerism. Direct-
ness was among Carracci's aims, but a cooler, more balanced personal-
ity than Caravaggio's informs his work. Carracci, too, was responsible
for concepts which were to be very important to European painting,
notably that of the which can serve as a setting for
'ideal landscape',

44 either mythological or religious incidents. The Flight into Egypt,

painted for the Chapel of the Palazzo Aldobrandini between 1600 and
1604, shows that this type of painting was already fully developed in
his hands. The frescoes of the Palazzo Farnese were of even more im-
portance. The vigorous, heroically proportioned figures which Car-
racci invented, and the way in which he deployed them in the spaces
at his disposal, moulded the thinking of every Baroque decorative
painter. Caravaggio had no pupils, only imitators. Annibale Carracci

43 CARAVAGGIO
Entombment 1604
 VP"

44 annibale carracci Landscape with the Flight into Egypt 1600-4

and his brother Agostino created a school which was to dominate

painting in Italy for the next century, and which was to have a pro-
found influence on the many French painters who pursued their
studies south of the Alps.
The northern painters working in Rome also evolved an influential
style of their own, one which owed a little to Caravaggio, but yet re-
mained essentially distinct. They did not create altarpieces and large
decorative schemes, and often they did not work directly on com-
mission, but painted instead for a market which was supplied by
various professional art dealers. Their speciality was realistic scenes of
low life. The man regarded as the pioneer of the style was the Haarlem
artist Pieter van Laer (1 592-1642), nicknamed 'II Bamboccio', a word

which means 'doll' or 'puppet', and which refers both to Van Laer's
dwarfish appearance and to the small size of the paintings he produced.
His followers were known as the bamhoccianti. Van Laer influenced
French as well as Dutch artists, among them theyoung Sebastien
Bourdon.
It is possible to relate most of the developments which took place in
French art during the half of the seventeenth century to one or
first

other of the influences I have just described.

53
 45 VALENTIN DE
BOULLONGNE
Soldiers and Musicians

The two French artists who seem first to have felt the impact of
Caravaggio were Simon Vouet (i 590-1649) and Claude Vignon
(
I 593-!67o). Vouet was in Rome from about 161 5 to 1627. The

46 Lovers, off. 1618, shows how close he came to Caravaggio at one

moment in his development. But Vouet soon sheered away towards a
more eclectic style. On his return to France in 1627, he embarked on a
successful career as a decorator, and a discussion of his later work
belongs to a later chapter (p. 92).
Vignon was important and even more eclectic artist: he was
a less
subject to Caravaggio's influence, but also to those of Adam Elsheimer,
the Venetian painter Domenico Feti, and (from a completely different
sphere) Rembrandt. Perhaps his leading characteristic, especially when
one compares him to the other French painters of his time, was the
fact that he was anti-classical. A typically tense and crowded picture

47 such as Death of a Hermit, painted about 1620 - that is, in the middle of
his period in Rome, which lasted c. 1616-24 - shows that basically he
remained a Mannerist, though one whose Mannerism was diluted
with Caravaggesque and northern ideas.
The short-lived Valentin de Boullongne (c. 1 594-1632), who spent
the whole of his career in Rome, absorbed the lessons of Caravaggio
more thoroughly, but followed them perhaps too slavishly. The
45 Soldiers and Musicians now in Strasbourg shows how close he came to

54
 46 SIMON VOUET
TwoLovers c. 1618

47 CLAUDE VIGNON
Death of a Hermit c. 1620

55
 Caravaggio's early manner. But Valentin, because he never returned
to France,had little impact on the course of French art.
Another French follower of Caravaggio, but one who did return
to his own country, was Nicolas Tournier (i 590-1657). Tournier was
in Rome at the same time as the three artists I have just mentioned:
1619—26. He, like Valentin, remained taithtul to Caravaggio's in-
fluence, though his work is altogether more personal. Tournier has a
restraint and classicism which seem typically French if we compare
him, for example, to the Italian followers of Caravaggio who worked
in Naples. His work also has a lingering trace of Mannerism. He, too,
like Valentin, remained outside the mainstream of the French painting

48 of his time; he settled in Toulouse. His masterpiece is the Pieta,

formerly in Toulouse Cathedral, which bears comparison with
43 Caravaggio's Entombment.

48 NICOLAS
TOURNIER
Pied
c. 1656-57
 49 GEORGES DE
LA TOUR
The Penitence of
St Jerome c. 1620-25

The greatest provincial of them all, and Caravaggio's most gifted

disciple in France, was Georges de la Tour (1 593-1652). He is as indi-
vidual as that other artist from Lorraine, Jacques Bellange. Bellange
worked for the ducal Court in Nancy; La Tour spent most of his
career in Luneville, where he worked for a prosperous bourgeoisie. It
is presumed by art historians that he went either to Italy or to the Low

Countries at one point in his life, and on the whole it seems more
likely that it was in the north that he came into contact with the ideas of
Caravaggio. His early works show the impact ot the startling Dutch
Caravaggist Hendrik Terbrugghen.
La Tour is mysterious in many senses, and art-historical arguments
still rage about his development. The most generally accepted theory

is that he moved from descriptive naturalism towards a greater and

greater degree of simplicity. The Penitence of St Jerome, which exists in 49

57
 50 Georges de la tour Nativity

two versions, shows a degree of naturalistic detail which is still present

31 in parts ofJob Taunted by his Wife; but this painting is largely resolved
into bold planes of glowing colour and clear-cut, sweeping outlines.
The source of light, and also of shadow, is the candle which the woman
carries a device which is typical of Caravaggio's Dutch followers, who
:

liked to provide a common-sense explanation for the violent chiaro-

scuro they preferred. Later, and more simplified, is St Joseph in the
53 Carpenter's Shop. This painting, it has been pointed out, comes the
closest of all La Tour's works to Caravaggio himself, since the figure
ofJoseph seems to be an adaptation of the servant holding the horse in
Caravaggio's Conversion of St Paul. The greatest degree of simplicity
52 and monumentality is achieved with paintings such as the Magdalen
50 with the Lamp in the Louvre, and the Nativity in Rennes.
These pictures make it clear that the artist's feeling for composition
was put at the service of genuine religious emotion. Boldly, we may
choose to read the increasing austerity of La Tour's work as an index
of spiritual progress. The time was one of religious revival in France.

58

51 Georges de la tour Job taunted by his Wife

 52 GEORGES DE LA TOUR
Magdalen with the Lamp

After the Wars of Religion a great intellectual effort was made by

French Catholics to rediscover both the essence and the true founda-
tions of the Faith. The situation thus created was similar to that which
the Oratorians made for themselves in Rome. Georges de la Tour was
a product of the culture which also produced St Francis de Sales. Even
today, in a very different cultural situation, it is possible to see his
paintings as the product of a heroic and concentrated effort to find a
road going straight to God.
Another striking characteristic of La Tour's work is the way in
which it joins this concern with the sacred to the ordinary. In quite a
number of his paintings it is only the solemnity, the hushed stillness
of the figures, that inform us that we are witnessing a sacred event,
and not merely an incident taken from life. This is true, for example,

60
 53 GEORGES DE LA TOUR
St Joseph ill the Carpenter's
Shop c. 1645

of the Rennes Nativity, which used to be called simply The New-horn 50

Child. The picture leads us to see the divinity of the Saviour in all
children, and the tenderness of the Virgin in all mothers.
It is a feeling for the dignity and importance of quotidian events

which links Georges de la Tour's work to that of the Le Nain brothers.

The Le Nains are not in the orbit of Caravaggio, but that of Van Laer;
they give a new and striking interpretation of his bamhoccio style. There
were three Le Nain brothers, and the exact apportionment of their
work is a matter of controversy. It seems likely that they worked to-
gether on many of the pictures now attributed to one or another of
them - the possibility seems the more likely because the signature on
a signed work tends to be simply 'Le Nain', without the addition of a
forename.

61
 54 louis le nain The Traveller's Rest

The Le Nains were born in Laon, and spent most of their careers in
Paris. The eldest brother, Antoine (i 588-1648), is now generally re-
garded as a painter of small pictures, rather naive in composition,
whose subject-matter is usually a bourgeois family group. The
youngest and longest-lived brother, Mathieu (1607-77), is thought to
have come the nearest to Dutch genre-painting of the kind practised
56 by artists such as Anthonie Palamedesz. His Reunion of Amateurs in the
Louvre, generally supposed to have been painted after the deaths of
histwo elder brothers, supports this view. Other paintings ascribed to
55 Mathieu, such as the Travellers at an Inn in Minneapolis, show people
who are lower in the social scale than those who figure in the Reunion,
and indeed come close to the paintings assigned to the middle brother,
Louis Le Nain (1 593-1648), now generally considered to be. the
dominant member of the family partnership.
To The most
Louis, at least three types of composition are assigned.
'typical',and the ones from which, because of their striking beauty and
individuality, most experts would like to exclude the possibility of

62
55 mathieu le nain Travellers at an Inn

56 mathieu le nain Reunion of Amateurs

 collaboration, are the scenes of peasant life. The grey, quiet tonality
and the technique owe something to Van Laer, but the great originality
of these pictures is the attitude they adopt towards their subject-
matter. The humble people who appear in these pictures are treated
with complete objectivity, yet with penetrating sympathy. There is
not a trace of exaggeration or caricature. In the most famous, such as
54 The Traveller's Rest, we are struck by the air of serenity, the poise of
the figures. These are not, as so often happens in Dutch genre scenes,
actors upon a stage, performing for the benefit of the spectator. Their
self-contained calm reminds us of Greek statues, though there is no
overt classicism. Analysis of the compositions reveals how carefully
the artist has balanced one figure against another, and how sure his
sense of interval is.
The Le Nains also worked on a larger scale, and here they were
usually less forcetul. Perhaps for this reason, it is customary to treat
works of this kind as joint efforts. The mythological pictures, such as
58 Venus at the Forge of Vulcan, are usually more successful than the sacred
scenes: there is a striking resemblance between this picture and the
Apollo at the Forge of Vulcan which Velazquez painted in Rome in 1629,
and the Le Nains sustain the comparison with their great Spanish
57 contemporary. On the other hand, a picture such as the Nativity in
London, beautiful though it is, does not benefit from the comparison
with Poussin which the composition invites. Set beside Poussin's
work, the forms seem uncertain and their arrangement clumsy.
Nevertheless, when they stay within their own limits, the brothers
Le Nain produced a number of undoubted masterpieces, and they
typify an important aspect of the French national sensibility. The
qualities which they possess are those of objectivity and contained
emotion, those which we encounter again in the still-lifes of Chardin,
in early landscapes by Corot, and even in certain portraits by David.
Historians have often expressed bewilderment about the question
of who patronized the Le Nains, as their subject-matter, or rather their
treatment of it, seems contrary to the taste of the time. But they were
successful enough not only to make a living, but to invite imitation.
The closest of their followers appears to have been Jean Michelin
(c. 1616-70), about whom very little is known. His work has often

been confused with that of the Le Nains. Jean Tassel (c. 1608-67) was
another artist who tried to acclimatize the bamboccio style in France.
He is known to have visited Rome in 1634, and to have frequented the

64
57 LOUIS LE NAIN
AND
ASSISTANT
Nativity

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58 LOUIS AND MATHIEU LE NAIN
Venus at the Forge of
I 'ukan 1 64

^^
 59 JEAN TASSEL
Catherine de Montholon

northern painters who lived there. Like many minor artists, he was
uneven and eclectic, but he was capable on occasion of producing a
trulymemorable painting, such as the terrifying portrait of Catherine
59 de Montholon, who was the foundress of the Ursuline convent in
Dijon. This has the dignified but pitiless truthfulness of medieval
portraiture.
A special, if humble, place in the history of French painting during
the seventeenth century is filled by the painters of still-life. Painting
was, theoretically, divided into rigid categories, and the still-life

painters ranked lowest of all; theirs was the least-regarded branch of

art.Yet their achievements were not neglible. The kind of sensibility
which we find expressed in the still-lifes of this period is often recog-
nizably the same as that which appears in the work of the Le Nains.
61 One or two Le Nain-like paintings, such as the Overturned Wheel-
barrow in the Louvre, exist to prove an actual link. But the genre
tended to follow a course of its own.

66
6l SCHOOL OF LE NAIN
Overturned Wheelbarrow
1640-50
62 sebastien stoskopff Pate and Basket of Glasses 1630-40

63 FRANgois garnier Gooseberries and Cherries 1644

 ; Hi

64 louise moillon Nectarines 1674

A whole colony of Netherlandish artists settled in Paris during the

reigns of Henri IV and Louis XIII, and many of them were specialists
in the kind of still-life painting which had established itself in the Low
Countries at the end of the sixteenth century. Paintings of this kind
characteristically have a high viewpoint (rather as in Mannerist land-
scape), and clear-cut forms are regularly distributed over the whole
picture-surface, with the objects arranged so as not to conceal their
neighbours. Often these pictures were allegorical; a common theme
was the transience of human life, as symbolized in the genre known as

the Vanitas.
This style persisted in France even longer than it did elsewhere, per-
haps because its clarity appealed to French taste; the picture illustrated 60
here, which was painted by an artist named Baugin somewhere about
69
 1630, shows what the French did with the still-life formula they had

inherited. They simplified reduced the number of objects in the

it,

composition, and made their arrangement clearer and more logical.

They also paid more attention to subtle transitions of form. The
objects shown are thus given an intensified feeling of reality.
Other French still-life painters of the period, who show the same
63 preoccupations as Baugin, include Francois Gamier (active c. 1 627-5 8)
his step-daughter Louise Moillon (1609/10-96), Jacques Linard
(c. Rene Nourrisson (active 1644-50), Pierre Dupuis (1610-
1600-45),
64 82), and Sebastien StoskopfT (1 597-1657). Louise Moillon is perhaps
the one of these who could most easily be taken for a Fleming. Precise
and delicate as she is, her bowls of fruit shimmer under a veil of atmo-
sphere. Since she was the longest-lived of all the painters of the group,
her work shows the final stage of development of the kind of painting
they practised. A more inventive artist, whose paintings are, un-
62 fortunately, much rarer than hers, was her contemporary StoskopfT,
who came from Strasbourg and was trained in Hanau. He was thus in
direct contact with the Netherlandish tradition. StoskopfT is less
archaic than Baugin, but manages to preserve the same reticence and
innate classicism within the framework of a more natural looking
composition.

70
 CHAPTER FOUR

In Arcadia

The two greatest French painters of the seventeenth century made

their careers in Rome. Though their subject-matter is often super-
ficially similar, Nicolas Poussin 593/4-1665) and Claude Lorrain
(i

(1600-82) make a curious contrast. Poussin's career was that of an

artist who increasingly aimed to make his work both more con-
centrated and more rational; Claude, on the other hand, tended to
abandon solidity in favour of the illogical and the magical. Neither
painter is in any sense a realist each invents an apparatus and a pictorial
:

grammar to suit himself, and uses it as a vehicle for the expression of

personal ideas and feelings. That is, each of them has a vision of the
world which is projected outwards, and imposed upon the everyday
experience which is shared by and spectator alike. With Poussin,
artist

this vision has an internal consistency which is missing in Claude.

Poussin takes a theme or subject and examines its implications
pictorially, while Claude tries to embody sensations. Sir Anthony
Blunt has defined the difference between them as that between an
artist (Poussin) who was interested in the subject-matter of his pictures,

and one (Claude) who was more interested in their content.

Poussin came from Normandy, from a family which reckoned
itself as noble, but which the civil wars had reduced almost to the level

of the peasantry. He seems to have decided to become an artist when

he came into contact with a minor Late Mannerist painter named
Quentin Varin, who came to the nearest town, Les Andelys, to paint
a series of altarpieces. This took place in 1611. In 1612 Poussin left
home, apparently against the will of his family, to pursue his chosen
career. The years between 1612 and 1624 he seems to have spent
mostly in Paris, working under various masters. He also seems to have
made a profitable study of the paintings and antique marbles in the
royal collection, and particularly of the prints after Raphael and Giulio
Romano in the royal library. He worked on the decorations being
done at the Palais du Luxembourg for the Queen Mother, Marie de
Medicis, and the young Philippe de Champaigne was one of his com-

71
 panions in the task. Eventually he attracted the attention of the Italian
poet Giambattista Marino, who was at that time enjoying a great suc-
cess in Paris. Poussin had made two previous attempts to go to Rome;
Marino now encouraged him to make a third. We first hear of Poussin's
presence in Rome in March 1624.
At this time, the kind of work he was doing was still heavily in-
fluenced by the painters of the second school of Fontainebleau. The
65 Dido and Aeneas, now Toledo, Ohio, which is clearly a very early
in
picture, looks like a work from the hand of Toussaint Dubreuil. The
long, slim nudes are of the accepted Fontainebleau type.
Once established in Rome, Poussin lost no time in freeing himself
from these old-fashioned influences. He began to purify his style; and
he came under the influence of Raphael, whom he was now able to
study at first hand, and of his own Italian contemporary Domenichino
(1581-1641), one of the most important heirs of the classicist tradition
66 established by Annibale Carracci. The Parnassus now in the Prado
gives us an idea of the effect which these influences had upon Poussin
during his first years in Rome. The picture seems to date from 1 626-27.

65 nicolas poussin Dido and Aeneas c. 1634

66 nicolas poussin Parnassus 1626-27

Marino introduced Poussin into the circle of the powerful Barberini

family. In 1628 Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of the reigning
Pope Urban VIII, got Poussin the kind of commission which most
artists then longed He was asked to paint a large altarpiece for
for.

St Peter's. The was the Martyrdom of St Erasmus. We can now

result 67
admire its grandiose design, but the picture met with a somewhat cool
reception from the contemporary public. Poussin himself may have
sensed that his future did not lie with these great Baroque show-
pieces, which his Italian competitors were so skilful at producing.
On the other hand, he did not, by temperament, belong among the
bamboccianti.
He began to produce a new kind of picture for what was, relatively
speaking, a new kind of patron. One of the finest works created at
this time, just at the end of the 1620s, is the first version of the Shepherds 68
of Arcady. The principal figures are, as the title two shepherds
suggests,
in classical dress, who press forward to read the inscription on a tomb.
This reads et in Arcadia ego, which is generally translated to mean

73
 67 NICOLAS POUSSIN
Martyrdom of St Erasmus
1628-29

'And I too lived in Arcadia'. Though the subject is slightly mysterious,

the general meaning is plain : death obtrudes, even in the happiest of
existences.
The kind of clientele
likely to appreciate a painting such as this had
tobe a reasonably well-educated one. Those who belonged to it would
not be solely 'public men' they would have the leisure and the taste for
;

reading and meditation. One of the most steadfast of Poussin's patrons

henceforth was Cardinal Francesco Barberini's secretary, Cassiano del
Pozzo. Cassiano del Pozzo was intensely interested both in con-
temporary art (Lanfranco and Pietro da Cortona were his friends), and
in antiquarian study. A team of artists made drawings for him of
ancient sculpture and architecture, in order to make as complete a
picture as possible of ancient Rome.

74
68 nicolas poussin Shepherds of Arcady c. 1630
 At this time, Poussin was under the spell of the Venetians, and in
particular Titian and Giovanni Bellini he copied the latter's Feast of
:

the Gods. Gradually, as the decade wore on, his colouring became
cooler, his modelling more precise, the equilibrium of the composi-
6g tion more carefully worked
out. The Childhood ofJupiter at Dulwich
is an example of this of emphasis. The picture dates from about
shift

1637. Though the picture is demonstrably different from what he had

been doing earlier, the artist remained faithful to some of his earliest
influences. The figure of the child Jupiter being suckled by a goat is
borrowed from an engraving after Giulio Romano.
During this period, Poussin's reputation established itself firmly. By
1635 he was dispatching paintings far and wide: to Turin, to Naples,
and to France and Spain. That year, Louis XIII's all-powerful minister
Cardinal Richelieu ordered five important paintings from him. Soon
efforts were being made to lure him back to his own country, and in
1640 Poussin succumbed to these blandishments and set out for Paris.
He had been offered an excellent salary, an extremely honourable
position, lodgings in the Louvre - everything, so it seemed, that he
could wish for.
To start with, things went well for him in France. By January 1641
he was hard at work. He was to decorate the Grande Galerie in the
Louvre, make cartoons for tapestries, paint altarpieces, design frontis-
pieces for books. Furiously jealous, all his colleagues in Paris began to
intrigue against him. Poussin disliked not only this, but the coldness of
the climate, the pressure which was put upon him by his eminent
patrons, the waste of his gifts upon what he considered to be trivial
tasks. He thought his assistants were of poor quality, and it is also clear
that he discovered that Baroque schemes of decoration were not his
forte, any more than Baroque altarpieces had been. On the pretext of
fetching his wife, he slipped away from Paris. By November 1642,
he was once more in Rome, secretly determined never to leave it
again.
had had one good effect upon his career, however. It confirmed
Paris
the friendshipswhich he had already made with a number of French
patrons, and he made new friends and new patrons in the same circle.
They continued to support him after his return to Rome. For the
most part they were neither very rich nor very aristocratic they were :

solid merchants, well-established but not plutocratic bankers, and

civil servants.

76
69 nicolas poussin Childhood ofJupiter c. 1637

During the ten years after his return, Poussin's art deepened and be-
came more concentrated and more serious. He still painted classical
scenes, but now they were not illustrations of Ovid but allusions to
Stoical philosophy: incidents which showed the will triumphant over
the passions. Scholars have pointed out the resemblance to the themes
which Pierre Corneille was using in his tragedies at the same time.
Poussin also returned to the central themes of the Christian myth.
He had already painted a series of Seven Sacraments for Cassiano del
Pozzo; now he painted a second series on the same theme for his 70, 71
Parisian patron Paul Freart de Chantelou. These paintings have an
extraordinary concentration; the artist leaves only the essential.

77
 ™
**J^tB»

0/

70 nicolas poussin The Eucharist 164J

In some of the works (The Eucharist and Penitence),

in the series
Poussin treats the composition kind of bas-relief. The extremely
as a

restricted range of colour contributes to the sculptural effect. In The

70 Eucharist, the figures seem to be compressed into a narrow space just
behind the frontal plane: the curtain which hangs behind the main
group contributes to this effect. In the remaining compositions,
Poussin treats the area of action as a kind of box, a definite, three-
dimensional space occupied and articulated by the three-dimensional
solids of the figures and the buildings in front of which they move.
71 A painting such as Ordination reflects Poussin's laborious method of
work. First, a sketch. Then a peepshow with a painted backcloth and
miniature figures modelled in wax. Then another sketch, followed,
perhaps, by alterations in the model. Finally, lay figures on a larger
scale. We can see this logical, orderly process at work even in the
pictures where the figures take a secondary place, such as the Diogenes
72 Throwing down his Bowl, painted in 1648.

78
7i nicolas poussin Ordination 1647

Poussin had by this time come to believe in the absolute power of

reason, at least where was concerned. He wished his work to be
his art
the rational expression of ideas which were both serious and elevating.
Since it was to be a means of intellectual communication, the seduc-
tions of colour and atmosphere were to be eschewed. Poussin leaves
nothing to chance; every detail is made to contribute to the final
effect. The subject dictates the stylistic treatment: solemn subjects
must have aproper solemnity. Ideas of this kind were to have a
persistent influence on the painter who succeeded him.
In his last phase, Poussin became less and less interested in gesture or
expression. The paintings take on a marble stillness. The Baroque
spiral finally disappears; the underlying design is basically rectilinear.
Strangely, this severity can transform itself into a kind of expression-
ism. At the very end of his career, Poussin painted a series of landscapes
representing The Four Seasons. They occupied him from 1660 to
1664. Winter, or The Deluge, is painted in a manner that suits the 73

79
subject: rough, coldly monochrome, deliberately awkward. Despite
its strangeness, the painting has always been admired. Diderot, the
great eighteenth-century critic, was moved by it; and so were

Romantics such as Turner and Delacroix. Indeed, it has an odd affinity

with some of the most extreme of Turner's landscape visions. One
idea is taken and projected with manic force. The stylistic extremes
are linked.
Claude Gellee, usually called Le Lorrain in French and Claude
Lorrain in English, was born in a village not far from Nancy. Accord-
ing to legend, he went to Rome as a pastry-cook, and took service in
the household of the landscape painter Agostino Tassi (1581-1644).
Tassi headed a team of artists who produced decorative landscape
frescoes for Roman palaces. His style derived from Annibale Carracci
via the landscapes of the northerner Paul Bril (d. 1626). Though we
find in Tassi's fanciful, insubstantial work the full repertoire of sub-
jects which Claude was afterwards to use, Claude's early work comes
closer to Bril, from whom he clearly learned a great deal. Other

72 nicolas poussin Diogetics Throwing down his Bowl 1648

.*'

*£.

6P> Md
73 nicolas poussin Winter, or The Deluge 1660-64

artists who influenced Claude were Adam Elsheimer and, later,

Domenichino.
Claude seems to have been in Tassi's service about 1620-25. In
April 1625 he left Romeand went back to Lorraine, where he was
taken on as an assistant by Claude Deruet. He returned to Rome in
October 1627, and stayed there for the rest of his life.
He first emerges as a considerable artist in the 1630s. By the end of
the decade he was already well known. From 1636 onwards we have
an exceptionally complete view of his work, thanks to the so-called
Liber Veritatis, a book containing a drawing of every painting he did.
Claude is an artist who does not change, in any essential respect, in
the course of a long career. His paintings concern his reaction to one
particular tract of landscape: the countryside around Rome. Often
there are figures. In many cases there is no ostensible subject, but some-
times these figures will act out an incident from mythology or
Scripture. The pictures where this is the case are the most complex
and highly charged that the artist produced. The function of these
incidents is to intensify the mood of the landscape which surrounds
them, and to bring it into focus for the spectator. In his later years,
at least, Claude chose his incidents very carefully, both for their
relationship to the patron who had commissioned the painting, and
for their appropriateness to the mood which he himself wanted to
convey. Thus, it is clear that the poetry of Virgil meant a great deal to
him; in the last ten years of his life he painted six canvases showing in-
cidents from the story of Aeneas. But not one of these illustrates a
scene which was used by another artist, even though the Aeneid was a
popular source of subject-matter for the painters of the time.

74 CLAUDE
LORRAIN
Pastoral Landscape
c. 1636
 earn

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'
.—»
,

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75 claude lorrain Landscape with a Rustic Dance 1639

Space is of Claude's concern, and his attitude towards

a large part
the depiction of space is very different from Poussin's. Claude's
space is not enclosed and finite; it stretches out, it escapes from the
confines of the picture. He works by means of a series of receding
planes, one linked to another. Often the composition is not logically
constructed: the artist juggles with the relative proportions of trees,
figures and architecture, contracts space or expands it to suit himself,
violates the laws of perspective. But these departures from strict
naturalism are never forced upon the spectator's attention. Claude
lacks both Mannerist unease and Mannerist self-consciousness.
A Pastoral Landscape in the National Gallery, London, which dates 74
from about 1636, is representative of Claude's first phase. The classical
note contributed by the figure is very discreet, and the trees are

83
IE
-Tim
'in^app^

m 1
K» I H H| Bi i. -

a 1-

la ^IiI'j 4
76 claude lorrain Seaport with the Embarkation oj St Ursula 164.1
 #*#

77 claude lorrain Landscape with the Adoration of the Golden Calf 1653

observed from nature. Taken as a whole, the picture creates a model

which was to be very influential in English art; early Gainsborough
and John Crome both come to mind. A slightly later painting, the
75 Landscape with a Rustic Dance in the Louvre, which is dated 1639,
represents a rather more ambitious of composition, but the way
sort
the figures are grouped is not yet as subtle and assured as it was to be
later on. In type, the figures owe something to the bamboccio style of
painting.
76 Richer and more assured in composition and handling is the Seaport
with the Embarkation of St Ursula, which dates from 1641. Claude had
painted harbour scenes of this type before this one, but this is both
more complex and more festive than its predecessors. The handling of
the passage on the right, where the masts of a ship are shown against
the branches of a tree, is especially notable.
Bythis time, Claude had little to learn about his craft. During the
rest of his career he was to concentrate on giving a deeper and more
77 poetic meaning to his work. The large and impressive Landscape with
the Adoration of the Golden Calf, dated 1653, shows a consummate skill

86

79 claude lorrain The Landing of Aeneas at Pallanteutn 1675

78 claude lorrain Landscape with the Angel Appearing to Hagar 1668
 in the handling of the figures - they include Moses, who is about to
destroy the tablets, and Aaron sacrificing to the new idol. The figures
surrounding the calf are the most elaborately orchestrated group in
the whole of Claude's work. Claude was later able to unify the figures
78 still more thoroughly with their surroundings, as we see in the Land-

scape with the Angel Appearing to Hagar of fifteen years afterwards. Two
trees are used to set group of Hagar, her son, and the angel: the
off the
more prominent of these is twisted to echo both Hagar's posture and
the intensity of her suffering. The rugged rocks on the left also help to
express the nature of the story.
The artist's last phase can be represented here with two paintings
79 on classical themes. The more elaborate and earlier is The Landing of
Aeneas at Pallanteum. Aeneas stands on the prow of his ship, carrying a
palm-leaf as a sign that he comes in peace, and is addressed by Prince
Pallas, who stands on the shore. The elongation of the figures is typical

80 claude lorrain Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia

 OMj

81 gaspard dughet Landscape after 1650

of Claude's larger works at this time: we see it again in the artist's last

picture, Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia. In these late 80
works Claude achieves an unusual combination of force and serenity.
The handling is refined; the atmosphere clear, silvery and serene; but
the compositions tend to be bold and unconventional. The trees and
rocks are as eloquent as the figures, if not more so. The artist has long

ago absorbed everything his surroundings have to teach him, and is

able to create an imaginary world of exceptional completeness.
Ascanius embodies features which are characteristic: the trees on the
left bend in an ominous wind; the great gap which sunders the land-

scape (with Ascanius on one side of it and the stag on the other) creates
a feeling of tension which corresponds to the tension of the story,

where the shooting of the stag brings disaster.

Claude's imaginative world, like Poussin's, was self-referring; but,
also like Poussin's, it was fruitful for other artists. The classical land-

89
 scape, which Claude created upon the foundations provided for
him by Annibale Carracci and Paul Bril, was to form part of the
stock-in-trade of European painting for the next century.
One talented early practitioner of the genre was Nicolas Poussin's
81 brother-in-law, Gaspard Dughet, otherwise known as Gaspard
Poussin (1615-75), whose work combines elements taken from
Claude and Poussin with others drawn from the romantic landscapes
of Salvator Rosa. Dughet is a direct and masculine artist, more prosaic
and less subtle ,than Claude, and, perhaps for this reason, he proved
easier for other painters to absorb and imitate directly.
Another French classical landscape painter of the same period was
82 Pierre Patel the Elder (c. 1605-76). Patel never went to Rome, and
therefore did not know the landscape of the Campagna at first hand,
as Claude and Dughet did. In his hands, classical landscape again
became conventional and decorative: that is, it returned to the state
of affairs which the young Claude had discovered in the studio of
Agostino Tassi. Patel participated in the decorative schemes which
will form part of the subject-matter of the next chapter, just as Tassi
had plied his trade as a decorator in the princely palaces of Rome.

82 pierre patel the elder Landscape with a Goatherd

90
 CHAPTER FIVE

The Sun King

Up to this point we have barely touched upon what the men of the
seventeenth century would have considered to be the main line of
development in French painting: the work done for the Court and
the great men who surrounded the King - with
altarpieces, paintings
historical and mythological subjects, and, in particular, decorative
schemes. The reigns of Louis XIII (1610-43) and Louis XIV (1643-
171 5) span an authoritarian age of Court patronage and official art.
The first great cycle of decorative paintings done in France after the
second school of Fontainebleau had flickered out was the work of a
foreigner, Peter Paul Rubens (1 577-1640). This was the so-called
Marie de Medicis cycle, created in 1622-25 for the Palais du Luxem-
bourg. These paintings form one of the most impressive schemes of
Baroque decoration in existence, and they were to have a great impact
upon artists of a later period, from Watteau to Delacroix; but at the
time they had curiously little effect.
The story of the official painting of the French seventeenth century
really begins with the return of Simon Vouet to Paris in 1627. He
quickly established himself as the leading decorative painter in France.
Though Vouet's talent was by no means comparable with that of
Rubens, he has perhaps been underestimated by art historians. The
first version of Time Vanquished by Hope, Love and Beauty, painted 83
just before the artist left Rome, shows how accomplished he was at
this period. Caravaggio has been almost entirely abandoned; what we

see, instead, is an amalgam of Baroque influences - those of Guido

Reni and Guercino, in particular. Vouet imbues the figures with a

typical elegance: the spirit of Fontainebleau survives, without its
forms.
Contemporary French taste, however, seems to have imposed a
upon his development. The Allegory of Wealth in the
certain constraint 85
Louvre, apparently painted in the early 1630s as one of of
a series
allegorical paintings for the royal Chateau Neuf at Saint-Germain-
en-Laye, is a cooler, more linear picture altogether. This development

9i
84 continues, and the second version of Time Vanquished by Hope, Love
and Beauty, painted in the late 1630s or early 1640s, is a striking

contrast with the first. The colour is pale and transparent, the forms
are flattened, with the figures pressed forward into a shallow space by
the classical architecture of the setting.
Exactly the same pattern of development is to be found in Vouet's
86 religious works. The Lot and his Daughters in Strasbourg, which dates
from 1633, shows the feeling for female beauty through which, while
remaining unquestionably a Baroque artist, he links the Mannerism of
Fontainebleau to the Rococo of Fragonard and Boucher. By contrast,
87 the very late Assumption of the Virgin is Vouet at his chilliest and least
atmospheric.
Nevertheless, Vouet dominates official painting during the first

half of the seventeenth century, just as Charles Le Brun was to

dominate it during the second. Even Poussin's arrival in France in

92
 84 SIMON VOUET
Time Vanquished by Hope, Love
and Beauty c. 1640

< 83 SIMON VOUET

Time Vanquished by Hope, Love
and Beauty 1627

85 SIMON VOUET
Allegory of Wealth
1630-35
86 SIMON VOUET 87 SIMON VOUET
Lot and his Daughters 1633 Assumption oj the Virgin 1644

1640 did not shatter Vouet's position, despite Louis XIII's malicious
remark: 'Voila Vouet bien attrape!' ('Poor Vouet's had it!'). The
leading artists of the next reign studied in Vouet's studio, among them
Le Bran himself, Eustache Le Sueur, and Le Bran's rival Mignard.
It was not Poussin's visit, nor the death of Louis XIII in 1643, but

the founding of the new Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648

that marked the real end of Vouet's influence. The Academy was
joined by Le Brun, Le Sueur, and even by Vouet's old associate
Francois Perrier. Vouet did not join, but became, instead, the 'Prince'
of the rival Academy of St Luke; he died shortly afterwards.
Other artists worthy of attention were at work in Paris during
Vouet's heyday. The most considerable of these, the Fleming
Philippe de Champaigne, will be discussed later (p. 102). Among the
others were Jacques Blanchard (1600—38), Francois Perrier (1590-
1650), Jacques Stella (1 596-1657), and Laurent de la Hyre (1606-56).
All except La Hyre studied in Italy. Blanchard was influenced by

94
 Jacques blanchard Holy Family

Titian, Perrier by Lanfranco and Pietro da Cortona; while Stella was

among the first to be influenced by Poussin, with whom he was on
terms of friendship.
Blanchard was and is especially celebrated for his paintings of the
Holy Family (sometimes this becomes a Charity), which have a delicate
individuality and sentiment. Perrier's oenvre defines itself less easily,
but his mythological compositions are among the most Italianate of
the time, as can be seen from his animated if rather disorganized
Acis and Galatea in the Louvre.
Stella and La Hyre are alike in showing the impact of Poussin,
but La Hyre is much the more original artist. The Death of the Children 89
of Bethelshows the extreme point of his development: it was painted
in 1653. More attractive is the less complex painting recently acquired
by the National Gallery, London. This allegory of Grammar shows go
a curious blend of extreme classicism and naturalism: the effect is
almost Surrealist (it recalls the deadpan manner of Rene Magritte).

95
 4

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The artist who was to dominate the second half of the century was
only slightly younger than La Hyre. He was Charles Le Brun (1619-
90). Le Brun was precociously gifted. He studied first with Perrier,
later with Vouet. He accompanied Poussin to Rome in 1642, and
returned to France in 1646. Though his stay in Italy was comparatively
short, the encounter with Poussin was decisive, and set the pattern for
Le Brun's subsequent development; as it turned out, he was to be
successful at those very tasks which had defeated Poussin himself.
Le Brun was a man of violent temperament, as can be seen from
9' the early Hercules and the Horses of Diomedes, painted just before he left
93 for Italy. The Brazen Serpent, painted in about 1649-50, shows the
extent to which he renounced his earlier manner, and adopted the
classicism learned from Poussin. But he retained his energy. In 1657,
the powerful Minister, Fouquet, began to build, at Vaux-le-Vicomte,
the palace which Louis XIV was to consider 'too good for a subject'.
Le Brun was called in to undertake the decoration. For the bedroom

96
i 89 LAURENT DE LA HYRE
The Death of the Children
of Bethel 1653

90 LAURENT DE LA HYRE
Grammar 1650

91 CHARLES LE BRUN
Hercules and the Horses
of Diomcdes 1638-39

97
 set aside for the King at Vaux, Le Brun devised a style of decoration

which owed much to the work which Pietro da Cortona had been
doing in Italy, yet remained, after a fashion, faithful to classical
principles. Painting and stucco are combined, but there is no confusion
between what is painted and what is three-dimensional. Startling
perspective effects are avoided.
When Fouquet showed the splendours of Vaux to the King, he was
disgraced. His successor Colbert had already made up his mind that
Le Brun was the man he needed in order to impose a unified policy in
the visual arts. Le Brun's major efforts were henceforth reserved for
the royal service, and his pre-eminence was unchallenged until
Colbert's death in 1683. The Academy (with which he had quarrelled)
now became his complaisant instrument.
The painting which established him with Louis XIV was the so-
92 called Tent of Darius, with its implied (and flattering) comparison
between Alexander the Great and the King himself. The style shows a
more picturesque and more colourful than that
loosened classicism,
of Poussin. The various personages are extremely carefully differen-
tiated: each has a gesture and an expression suited to his role in the
drama which is being enacted. The painting, in fact, is an example of
emotion imposed from without, systematically and as the result of
rational study. The Academy, under Le Brun's direction, was to
preach just such a method.
Le Brun himself was a more varied and indeed a more personal
artist than the doctrines which he professed might suggest; he imposed

them on his contemporaries and juniors, but not always on his own
work. In the years after 1683, when he 'was struggling to maintain his
mounted by Mignard, and the hostility
position against the intrigues
of Mignard's protector Louvois, he had more time to devote to easel-
painting. Among the paintings which the artist presented to the King
94 was his Moses Defending the Daughters ofjethro, which was brought to
Versailles in 1686. The picture is composed according to the theory of
modes, which Le Brun had learned from Poussin: since the subject is
violent the rhythms too are violent, the composition is based upon a
sequence of obliques and curves. The artist has taken great care over
the details: palm-trees and dromedaries; in the sky two ibises pursuing
a winged serpent. Yet these details contribute to an emotional as well
as a theoretical unity; the forcefulness which appeared in the early
Hercules here breaks out asain.
 pi*

^*h-|v

92 charles le brun Tent of Darius 1660-61

93 charles le brun The Brazen Serpent c. 1649-50

 It is particularly difficult to do justice to Le Brun the painter because,
in his most active years, Le Brun was so much more than most
painters aspire or wish to be. Histwo instruments 'were the Academy
and the Gobelins; and the was perhaps even more effective than
latter
the former. This tapestry factory was turned by Colbert into a place
which produced all the necessities for the furnishing and decoration
of the King's palaces. Le Brun was made director in 1663, and
supplied designs for every aspect of the establishment's activities. At
the same time, under his direction, the Gobelins served as a school for
training designers and craftsmen. His major decorative project was the
Galerie des Glaces at Versailles (finished 1684). In large measure,
Le Brun was the progenitor of the 'Louis XIV style', and this is the
achievement by which we must judge him.
The other painters of the time found their glory much dimmed by
Le Brun. Sebastien Bourdon (1616-71) has already been mentioned in
a Roman context (p. 53). After his return from Italy in 1637, Bourdon

94 charles le brun Moses defending the Daughters oj Jethro 1686-87

95 sebastien bourdon Sacrifice oj Noah c. 1635-40

worked in a variety styles the bamboccio manner, then a more

of :

ambitious north Baroque.

Italian Gradually he was drawn into the
orbit of Poussin, and at the end of his life, after a visit to Sweden in

1652-54, he was producing a delicate but rather devitalized variant 95

of Poussin's classicism.
Eustache Le Sueur (1616-55) was a more considerable figure.
According to tradition, Le Brun exclaimed that Le Sueur's premature
death had 'removed a great thorn from his flesh'. Le Sueur was among
the few important French painters of the period who never visited
Rome. Having received his training in Vouet's studio, he established
himself as an independent artist in the 1640s. He seems to have come
into personal contact with Poussin during the latter's visit to Paris, and
was certainly much influenced by Poussin's way of thinking. The
decorations painted for the Hotel Lambert in Paris between 1646 and
1649, and especially the later compositions in the series, show how
Le Sueur moved away from Vouet towards Poussin and Raphael,
without losing Vouet's sense of elegance. The charming Clio, 96
Euterpe and Thalia is representative of this aspect of the artist's work.
But there was another side to Le Sueur's art: he was a gifted painter
of religious subjects, as is demonstrated by the series of paintings 97

101
 96 EUSTACHE LE SUEUR
Clio, Euterpe and Thalia
c. 1647-49

97 EUSTACHE LE SUEUR
Death of St Bruno
c. 1648

98 PHILIPPE
DE CHAMPAIGNE
Crucifixion c. 1674

of St Bruno, done for the Charterhouse of Paris

illustrating the life
about 1648. These have the withdrawn, introspective, contemplative
quality which we find in Spanish religious painting of the same period,
and most notably in Zurbaran, who also numbered the Carthusians
among his patrons.
The religious aspectof Le Sueur also prompts a comparison with
his elder contemporary Philippe de Champaigne (1602-74). (One
g8 thinks, for example, of Champaigne's last picture, the Crucifixion.)
Champaigne was born in Brussels, trained chiefly as a landscape
painter, and came to Paris in 1621. Soon after this he met the young
Poussin. Champaigne was soon being patronized by both Louis XIII
and Richelieu. His style at this period derives from Rubens, but it is
Rubens robbed of warmth, modified in the direction of a chilly
classicism.About 1643 a significant event occurred: Champaigne
came into contact with the religious community of Port-Royal, and
became a convert to the austere doctrines of Jansenism.
102
 1

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1 1 &'&:

Jansenism was seventeenth-century Catholicism in its purest and

most heroic form. For the Jansenist, the faithful soul must humble
itself before God, be swallowed up by God and realize its own

nothingness. The doctrines which evolved from this attitude came

close to the ideas about grace and predestination put forward by
Calvinism; Jansenists believed that good must be chosen, not in the
hope of a reward on earth or in heaven, but gratuitously, for its own
sake. Such an attitude was in itself an implicit challenge to royal
absolutism, and the Jansenists soon found themselves in conflict not
only with the Society of Jesus (against whom their great champion
Blaise Pascal wrote his Lettres Provinciales) but with the Crown.
Philippe de Champaigne thus found himself in the opposite camp
to Le Brun. Where Le Brun painted for Versailles and the King,
Champaigne painted for Port-Royal and the greater glory of God.
The most personal of his Jansenist pictures, and the most memorable,
is the Ex Voto which Champaigne painted in 1662 to commemorate 99

103
 99 PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE E.X VotO \66l

the miraculous recovery of his daughter Catherine, who was a nun

at the convent. She had been suffering from progressive paralysis, but
recovered swiftly and completely when the Prioress, Mere Catherine-
Agnes Arnauld, declared a novena in the hope of an improvement.
The Ex Voto contains no vestige of the sacred apparatus which we
expect to find in Baroque religious pictures. There are two figures
only the sick nun reclines on a chair, and the Prioress kneels beside
:

her. A ray of light falling between them symbolizes the miracle.

The two nuns show Champaigne's power as a portraitist: he is able
100 to cut through to the very essence of a personality. The Unknown Man
in the Louvre, with its dignity, simplicity and unsparing observation,
is typical of the way in which he worked.

Not surprisingly, Champaigne far outdistanced in his portraits

such professional rivals as the cousins Henri Beaubrun (1603-77) and
Charles Beaubrun (1604-92), and Louis Elle (1612-89). These
specialists in portraiture continue the Mannerist tradition until a
comparatively late date.

104
 ^ in i ?
100 PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE UtlktlOWn Mail l6$0
 The history painters, however, were capable of producing impres-
sive portraits occasionally. Bourdon painted a good number, among
ioj them a memorable image of Queen Christina of Sweden, and few
likenesses could be livelier or more eloquent than Le Brun's sketch-
102 portrait of Marshal Turenne, painted in preparation for a tapestry
showing The Meeting of Louis XIV and Philip IV of Spain, or more
101 ingenious than his processional portrait of Chancellor Seguier on
horseback. In this, the sitter, surrounded by pages, becomes the
principal unit in a new interpretation of the classical frieze.
One painter practised a totally different kind of portraiture, less

admirable, perhaps, but of some significance for the future. This was
Le Brun's rival Pierre Mignard (1612-95). Mignard spent twenty-one
years in Rome; he was summoned back to France by royal command
in 1657. Once arrived, he found himself unable to make a real success
as a decorative painter because Le Brun shut him out. Such com-

missions of this kind as he received came from the Queen Mother,

L
i
4 1 01 CHARLES LE BRUN
Chancellor Siguier 1661

102 CHARLES LE BRUN

Marshal Turenne 1663-65

103 SEBASTIEN BOURDON

Queen Christina of Sweden
1652-53

104 PIERRE MIGNARD

Marquise de Seignelay
and her Children 1691
 Anne of and from the King's frivolous and homosexual
Austria,
brother, Monsieur. In fact, Mignard became the chosen painter of an
opposition party at Court, and his work reflects their tastes as well as
his own frustrated allegorical ambitions. An example is the group
1
04 portrait of the Marquise de Seignelay and her children, a curious
attempt to reconcile the demands of fashionable portraiture with
those of history painting, which was a more prestigious and indeed
'respectable' department of artistic endeavour. The picture was
intended as a kind of memorial to the lady's dead husband, Jean-
Baptiste Colbert, eldest son of the 'great' Colbert, who had at one

f ^ B ' "tJ

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io6 hyacinthe rigaud Double Portrait of the Artist's Mother i6()<

time been Minister of Marine. This explains her costume and attri-
butes: the lady, holding aloft a miniature portrait which represents
her husband, is the sea-nymph Thetis, mourning a departed hero; her
son is the infant Achilles.
Portraiture of this kind looks back towards Mannerism. But it
appealed to the courtiers of the ageing Louis XIV, men and women
who were beginning to tire of the public routine which the monarch
imposed upon them, who were ceasing to relish the formal splendours
of Versailles, and to long for a way of life which was more relaxed,
more informal, and, above all, more amusing.
Mignard's formula tound favour with other clients and other
painters, as we can tell from Hyacinthe Rigaud's portrait of Jan
Andrzej Morsztyn and his daughter. Here it is the daughter's forth- 1 05
coming marriage which is the subject of the allegory. Rigaud (1659-
1743) was a Court painter, and on the whole formality prevails in his
work. Yet he can be intimate and informal in paintings which are not

109

105 hyacinthk rigaud Jan Andrzej Morsztyn and his Daughter

 io6 official: an example is the double portrait of his mother, which is

influenced by Rembrandt. He survived successfully into the next

reign; after Louis XIV's death in 171 5 he was official painter to the
Regent, and later still to Louis XV.
The other leading portrait pamters of the time pursued much the
same course. Pugaud's principal rivals were Francois de Troy
1730), and Nicolas de Largilliere (1656-1746). Largilliere had a vast
practice among the new bourgeoisie, who were now beginning to
challenge the standards imposed by Versailles: and we can see the new
world coming to birth m his work long before Louis XIV died. It is
1 07 already present in Tlie Artist with his Wife and Daughter, which was
painted about 1700.
new trends can to some extent be explained
Largilhere"s openness to
by his unorthodox background. Though he was bom in Paris.
slightly
he received his early training in Antwerp, and later joined the work-
shop of Sir Peter Lely in England. The rich colour and fluent brush-
work of the Flemish school continued to influence him even after he
settled in Paris. Part of the secret of Largilliere's success as a portraitist

- .colas de largillieee The Artist with his Wife and Daughter c. 1700

^^m' mV

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 108 NICOLAS DE
LARGILLIERE
Elizabeth Throckmorton
as a Dominican Nun
1729

clearly lay in his adaptability. He painted the flattering, frivolous and

mythological portraits which Mignard had pioneered, and which
silly

were to become even sillier in the next generation, in the hands ot

Jean-Marc Nattier. But he was also capable of simplicity when the
occasion seemed to require it. His portrait of Elizabeth Throckmorton 108
as a Dominican Nun dates from 1729, well into the next reign. Watteau

was already eight years dead when it was painted. It is a likeness of a

recusant nun settled in Paris, intended for her friends in England. It

has the directness and truthfulness the occasion called for, and a
vigour worthy of Rubens.
If portraiture changed, so did decorative and historical painting.
During the last decade of the seventeenth century taste began to swing
towards the full Baroque style which had made its irruption into
France with Rubens and the early work of Vouet, and had then been
suppressed by the admiration for Poussin, and by the rules imposed
by Poussin's followers in the Academy. Charles de la Fosse (1636
1716) worked under Le Brun, but by the 1680s escaped from Le Brun's
tutelage and became the pioneer of a new style which led towards the

1 1 1
 Rococo. The King, sad and elderly though he was, did not resist the
1 og new current, as can be seen from the Bacchus and Ariadne which La
Fosse was commissioned to paint for Marly, the most informal of all
the Court's residences. The picture was paid for in 1699, and hung in
the Grand Salon of the Chateau.
Other artists who helped to prepare the way for a change of
artistic climate were Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), Bon de Boullongne

(1649-1717), and Antoine Coypel (1661-1722). Jouvenet evolved a

form of Baroque art which was ultimately based upon Le Brun, but,
just as Le Brun had loosened Poussin's compositions, so Jouvenet
loosened Le Brun's. A more distant ancestor is Raphael, whose large
late compositions, such as the School of Athens, continued to fascinate
French painters. What gives Jouvenet's work its particular interest,

IO9 CHARLES DE
LA FOSSE
Bacchus and Ariadne
c. 1699
 1 ?! /*» ' V^kJ?'

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no jean jouvenet The Raising of Lazarus 1706

however, is the naturalism of many ot the details: the large Raising oj

Lazarus in the Louvre has quite a different flavour from Le Brun's 1 1

large-scale works, simply for this provided a

reason. Jouvenet
starting-point for much of the religious painting done during the next
century. This is not a high distinction, if one considers its almost
universal emptiness.
Coypel offers us an example of the fact that a pioneer need not
necessarily be a genius. A highly eclectic artist, his reputation with his
contemporaries was based upon large and vapid mythological and
Biblical compositions. In many ways the antithesis of the true
'Louis XIV he painted the ceiling of the Chapel at Versailles in
style',

by Giovanni Battista Gaulli for the Gesu in

imitation of that painted
Rome; its exuberant Baroque illusionism was something quite new in
a country which had always resisted what was considered the

'irrationality' of the of the period. It is significant for the

Italian art
future that Coypel's most works look like Venetian Rococo
attractive
painting in its early phase. In this mood he has been compared to
Gianantonio Pellegrini; the Girl Stroking a Dog in the Louvre is 114
characteristically full of life.
113
112 JOSEPH PARHOCEL
 AnXANPRl-lK.\NO > DBSPORTESJ
, C. I<S99
IIJ
 114 ANTOINE COYPEL
Girl stroking a Dog

As the artistic climate changed in France, a number of other artists

started producing work which departed from the expected norm.
Often these mavericks were specialists, such as the battle painter
Joseph Parrocel (1 646-1 704), whose loose handling and strong colour
seem to anticipate Delacroix and the Romantics. It is a surprising fact
that his contemporaries made little comment on his unorthodoxy the :

1 12 painting illustrated here is one of a group of eleven, executed between

1685 and 1688 for the King's own apartments in Versailles. The yet
ill more unexpected character of some of the paintings of Alexandre-
Francois Desportes (1661-1743) is more easily accounted for: these

informal landscapes are sketches made in preparation for the hunting

113 scenes in which the artist specialized. They were therefore never
intended for public exhibition.
Nevertheless, Desportes is a forerunner even in his finished work.
Trained by a pupil of Snyders, he brought French art into contact
with an important aspect of Flemish painting, and prepared the way
tor Oudry and Chardin.

116
 CHAPTER SIX

Fetes Champetres

The eighteenth century is perhaps the most complex in the whole

history of French painting: one reason, perhaps, why it has been so
imperfectly charted. Painting was still subject to the centralized
organization which had been created during the reign of Louis XIV.
The Premier Peintre du Roi remained the spokesman of the Academy,
and advised the Directeur-General des Batiments du Roi, who over-
saw the work of such organizations as the French Academy in Rome,
and the Gobelins. Painters still looked towards Rome as the most
important source of knowledge, and most of the leading painters
of the French eighteenth century made at least one journey to Italy.
At the same time the rigid categorization of painting into various
genres was tending to break down. An artist such as Francois Boucher
could now practise his art over a very wide range: landscapes,
portraiture, genre scenes, decorative painting. In theory history
painting was granted pre-eminence. Although the best artists had
abandoned it, or no longer treated it seriously, the prejudice in its
favour remained, particularly in the minds of the new class of
philosophes who were revitalizing intellectual life in France. David's
eventual triumph was the easier because of it.
Though the King remained a very important patron of painting,
he was not the only patron by any means. The small class of officials
and financiers who had supported Poussin had now swollen beyond
all recognition: a numerous, rich and pleasure-loving bourgeoisie

supplied the painters with their opportunities, and the aristocracy

assimilated themselves to the manners and tastes of this new class. The
retreat from Versailles was an accomplished fact; people found their
pleasures in Paris, and the Court tended to be thought of as a bore.

A new style of living created a demand for a different kind of

picture small
: rooms meant smaller paintings ; a more informal way of
behaving was reflected in the works of art which provided part of the
setting for the lives which moneyed people now chose to lead.

117
 Very important events in the lives of most artists were the Salons
where they displayed their wares. The first official public exhibition
(artists had sometimes previously shown at fairs) took place at the

Palais-Royal in 1673. The second was held in 1699 in the Louvre, and
the third in 1704. In 1699 only fifty portraits were shown; by 1704
there were more than two hundred. This fact is in itself an index of
changing social conditions. After this there was a lapse of a further
thirty-three years, until the Academy revived the Salons in 1737, now
inviting artists to participate who were not members. There was an
annual exhibition until 1746, then the Salons were held every two
years. Besides this exhibition organized by the Academy, other
Salons existed, such as that of the Academy of St Luke.
The existence of the Salons led naturally to the creation of a new
function: that of the art critic. In 1746 Lafont de Saint-Yenne pub-
lished a little book entitled Reflexions sur quelques causes de Y etat present
de la peinture en France. This contained an account of the work shown
in the Salon of 1746. When, in 1753, Melchior Grimm began his
Correspondance litteraire for the benefit of foreign princes, such as the
King of Poland and the Empress of Russia, who wanted information
about the intellectual and artistic life of France, he was careful to give
information about the Salons. Denis Diderot, one of the key figures
of the philosophical Enlightenment, was Grimm's collaborator, and
in 1759 he took over the job of writing about painting. Diderot's
arrival on the scene may be taken to be one of the key moments in the
history of French art; his application of moral and social standards to
art criticism was enormously influential.
Nevertheless, great though the changes were in the years following
Louis XIV's death, one of the principal agents of the change survived
the oldKing by very few years.
This was Jean- Antoine Watteau (1684- 1 721). Watteau is one of the
miraculous figures in French art. He stands for nothing and nobody
except himself; he important in terms of taste and atmosphere,
is

rather than of style. And

yet he is a painter, like Georges de La Tour
and the Le Nains, whose work seizes our attention instantly, and
compels it in a way that more ambitious painters fail to do.
Watteau was born in Valenciennes, a town which had only become
officially French in 1678, by the Treaty of Nijmwegen. His father was
a master tiler. Watteau began to study painting about 1696. He left
home for Paris in 1702. His first contacts there were with members of
118
H5 claude gillot Quarrel of the Cabmen

the Flemish colony (it will be remembered

that some of the still-life
painters of the early seventeenth century had belonged to this). At
first he had a hard time earning a living: he was employed as an

apprentice by a manufacturer of daubs. But in 1704 he joined the

studio of Claude Gillot (1673-1722). Gillot was a painter who con-
tinually changed style and subject, but one subject which interested
him particularly was the theatre. His Quarrel of the Cabmen in the 115
Louvre demonstrates what he made of it: the picture is an updating of
the grotesqueries of the engraver Jacques Callot. Yet, in the terms of
the day, Gillot was indisputably a modern painter; he stood lor the
new, light, informal taste.
In 1707, Watteau quarrelled with Gillot, and left his studio for that
of Claude Audran III (1658-1734). Audran was a member of a well-
known family of decorators, with a successful practice; among his
patrons were the younger members of the royal family - the Dauphin
at Meudon, the Duchesse de Bourgogne at the Menagerie. He was a

pioneer of the new taste for what was light, fanciful, luxurious.

119
Audran taught Watteau the art of decorative painting in this style,
which made much use of arabesques and of figures in exotic costume.
But it was not only in this respect that Audran was important to
Watteau. He was concierge, or conservator, of the Palais du Luxem-
bourg, and Watteau was thus given access to Rubens's Marie de
Medicis cycle. He seems to have been overwhelmed by their impact;
he copied them, and he worshipped Rubens for the rest of his life. At
this time, too, he seems to have been interested by the Dutch genre
painting which was becoming a passion with leading French collectors.
Some of his earliest paintings show the influence of Teniers.
Watteau's fortunes as an artist were to be made by the collectors,
and by the dealers who supplied them. But first, he had a brush with
official art. In 1709, he won second prize in the competition for the
Prix de Rome, a scholarship awarded to young artists to allow them
to study at the French Academy in Rome. Having failed so narrowly,
he decided to return to Valenciennes. He is said to have paid for the
journey by selling a picture of a Recruit Going to Join his Regiment to
the picture-dealer Sirois.
His characteristic method seems already to have been established.
He made numerous drawings of whatever he saw about him, whether
soldiers in Valenciennes, or fashionable ladies in Paris, or actors in
some scene from the Italian Comedy. Later, he would combine these
figures into a composition. He did not rely entirely on his own
observation, but borrowed from the artists of the past; Watteau's
method is thus very different from Poussin's. Because of the way in
which he worked, his pictures have no set 'subject'; their purpose is
simply to convey a mood. The pictures showing fashionable people
amusing themselves in the open air — the fetes galantes with which
Watteau's name - seem to follow quite
will always be associated
naturally in sequence from those which show soldiers taking their
ease, leading their lives with no thought for the morrow.
But the fetes galantes have their roots in the painting of the past.
Their sources are to be found in Venetian painting - notably Gior-
gione's Concert champ etre in the Louvre, which was already in Paris in
the early eighteenth century - in his friend Crozat's collection of
Titian and Campagnola landscape drawings, and in Rubens's Garden
of Love, one version of which belonged to a celebrated Parisian
collector of the time, the Comtesse de Verrue. The Garden of Love
shows fashionable couples in a garden, which is adorned with a

120
n6 jean-antoine watteau Assembly in a Park 1717

fountain dominated by a statue of Venus. But, despite its mythological

apparatus of cupids, the Rubens is much more earthy and realistic than
most of the paintings of Watteau. The latter did not care to depict how
fashionable society actually behaved; he created instead a dream
world where characters from the Italian Comedy mingle with men
and women in masquerade costume and in ordinary fashionable dress.
Watteau's friends often appear in these pictures. The attractions of the
Italian Comedy, so far as Watteau was concerned, seem to have been
its atmosphere of dalliance and amorous intrigue, and its atmosphere

of improvisation. The Italian comedians based their entertainments on

characters with fixed identities - Pierrot, Columbine, Harlequin,
Mezzetin, Scaramouche - acting in unscripted variations on a number
of stock situations. By using these familiar figures, Watteau could
121
 often hint at a story without actually telling it. In turning to the
theatre for material, he began a tradition in French painting which
lasted until the time of Toulouse-Lautrec.
By 1712 he was a painter of established reputation. He presented
himself to the Academy on 30 July and was accepted (his sponsor was
Charles de la Fosse). He was also in poor health, showing signs of the
consumption which was eventually to kill him. Contemporaries
speak of his restlessness and irritability, and his disease has been taken
by subsequent historians as the reason for the atmosphere of melan-
choly which seems to pervade so much of his work.
The means by which Watteau obtains an atmosphere of solitude,
loneliness and withdrawal are interesting. In a picture which contains
a number of figures, many will be turned away from us, looking into
u6 the depths of the landscape: this is conspicuous in the Assembly in a

Park now in the Louvre. A serenader, such as the solitary figure in

117 Le Mezzetin, will play to someone who is not present. But the mood

117
JEAN-ANTOINE
WATTEAU
Le Mezzetin
1717-19
1 1 8 JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU
Lady at her Toilet 171

prevailseven in unexpected circumstances. The Lady at Her Toilet 1 1

in theWallace Collection is perhaps the nearest that Watteau came to

painting the licentious subjects which were on occasion favoured by
Boucher and Fragonard. But even here we are conscious of the
woman's languorous melancholy.
Three paintings have helped to confirm Watteau's
in particular
reputation as a These are the Departure from the Island of
great artist.

Cythera in the Louvre, the Gilles, also in the Louvre, and the Enseigne
de Gersaint in Berlin. Only one of these can be regarded as entirely
typical. The Departure was Watteau's long-delayed reception piece 119
for the Academy. He presented it in August 171 7. It is the apotheosis
of the fete galante, the most authoritative statement to have been made
in the genre.
The picture seems to have been long in gestation. It is based upon,
or alludes to, a comedy by Florent Dancourt called Les Trois Cousines,
which was first performed in 1700. It is probable that Watteau saw a

revival of it in 1709. The play contains songs and dances, and there is

one song in the final scene which seems to have haunted the artist. Two
123
ii9 JEAN-antoine watteau The Departure from the Island o/Cythera 1717

lovers have decided to make a pilgrimage to Cythera, accompanied

by their friends. They sing the folio wing verse:

Venez dans Vile de Cythere

En pelerinage avec nous,
Jeunejille n'en revient guere
Ou sans amant ou sans epoux;
Et Von yjait sa grande affaire
Des amusements les plus doux.

'Come to the island of Cythera

In pilgrimage with us,
No young girl returns from there
Without a lover or a spouse
And the business of the place
Is the most charming kind of pleasure.'

124
120 JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU Gilles C. I72I
 Watteau made theme one, known from
several earlier attempts at the :

an engraving, shows the lovers, as we might

expect, departing on
their pilgrimage. But the picture in the Louvre (despite its traditional
title of the Embarkation/or Cythera) shows the band of pilgrims already

there, and making ready to leave again. The figures form a sinuous
chain of linked groups moving from right to left of the picture, from
the term of Venus at one side to the gilded barge awaiting them on the
other. Rubens's amoretti make their reappearance in the composition,
and hover in the air or mingle with the lovers. The main burden of
meaning is carried by the three pairs on the right, often, and I think
correctly, interpreted as aspects of a single couple. Those nearest
the term are the most completely beneath the spell of the goddess. A
cupid tugs at the woman's skirt, but she pays him no heed. The next
couple are rising to their feet, ready for departure. The third couple,
on the crest of the slope leading down to the shore, look back regret-
fully. The relationship between figures and landscape is extra-
ordinarily successful. The sinuous movement of the figures is echoed
by the shapes of trees and mountains; the distance fades away into a
symbolic sunset. Watteau here seems to be the heir, not only of Rubens
and of Giorgione, but of Claude.
In their wholly different ways Gilles and the Enseigne de Gersaint
remind us of another aspect of French seventeenth-century art: the
1 20 Le Nains. Gilles may have been painted at about the same time as the
Departure. The picture is unique in Watteau's work because of the
large scale of the central figure; the painting of the white costume is a
technical tour de force. The relationship of this central figure to the
others in the background is a wonderful piece of psychology. He is
seen full length, and he stares out of the canvas at us in the way that
some Le Nain peasants do the woman on the right in The Cart, for
:

example. The subsidiary figures, on the other hand, are on lower

ground, so that we only see their heads and shoulders. The melancholy
Gilles, passive where they are active, towers above their merriment as
they drag the clown along on his donkey.
Recently, when the Grande Galerie of the Louvre was rehung, and
paintings of the French school replaced the Italian works which had
hitherto been shown there, Watteau's Gilles was given the place
which had formerly belonged to the Mona Lisa. One can understand
the decision Gilles has the same poetry, the same mystery, the same
:

melancholy as the Leonardo. Mystery, perhaps, above all: it is a

126
comment on the degree to which human beings can hope to know and
understand one another.
The Enseigne de Gersaint is one of Watteau's last works, painted in 122
1 72 1 after his return from a disastrous London which had
visit to

undermined further his already failing health. The circumstances in

which it was painted were afterwards related by Gersaint himself.
Edme-Francois Gersaint was a picture-dealer, and one of Watteau's
friends. The artist asked permission to create a sign for the dealer's
shop, and the Enseigne de Gersaint was the result.
Watteau's starting-point seems to have been the notion of making
an illustrated catalogue of the wares to be found in the shop, a subject

treated by painters such as Teniers and Gonzales Cocques. Since

Gersaint was only just beginning his career as a dealer, the painter
probably imagined the shop as it would look when his friend had had
some success in his business. The figures who animate the scene are
divided into two groups on one side those who discuss matters at the
:

counter; on the other, those who surround an assistant who, perhaps

symbolically, is packing away a portrait of Louis XIV.
In this instance, it is the way in which the figures are made to
balance one another within the general framework of the composition

121 nicolas lancret Mile Camargo Dancing

 122
-ANTOINE WATTEAU
Uenseigne
de Gersaint
1721

which prompts a comparison with the Le Nains. Those who look

inward are carefully set against those who look outward figures seen
;

from the back are set against those seen from the front, so that the two
halves of the painting balance one another perfectly. Of course, the
compositional arrangement is more sinuous and flexible than any-
thing we would find in a seventeenth-century painting. It reflects the
new suppleness of manners, the growing liking for what was informal.
Yet the quiet realism of the scene preserves some of the best charac-
of the century which had passed.
teristics

Watteau's work had a great impact on his contemporaries, both

through personal contact and through the engravings which were
made after his paintings. His two closest imitators were Jean-Baptiste
128
Pater (1695-1736) and Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743). Both of these
knew Watteau personally. Pater was from Valenciennes, and was
taught by Watteau; Lancret, like Watteau, worked under Gillot and
Audran. Of the two, Pater has the less personality ; his imitations of the
master are close enough to be deceptive, but they lack, in particular,
the substructure of wonderful drawing which distinguishes Watteau's
work from those who attempted to copy him.
Lancret, who isknown to have excited Watteau's jealousy, is a
slightly more individual painter. His theatrical scenes in particular,
such Mile Camargo Dancing, are not so much evocations of a mood,
as 121
in the manner of Watteau, as factual records. As such, they are
charming enough.

129
 Philippe Mercier (1689-1760), who was trained by the French-born
Antoine Pesne (1683-1757) in Berlin, and afterwards settled in
England, seems to have met Watteau in London during the latter's
disastrous visit there he afterwards made many imitations of Watteau's
:

1 23 compositions, such as the Conjurer now in the Louvre, which was at

one time attributed to Watteau himself. Watteau also seems to have
influenced the early work of William Hogarth.
Yet there is a paradox about Watteau's relationship to the sub-
sequent history of French art. All over Europe it was accepted that his
work gave an unrivalled image of French elegance and grace that it
;

held the mirror up to French civilization and the French sensibility.

Frederick II of Prussia was only one among many foreign collectors
who sought out Watteau's work. Meanwhile, his imitators found
employment all over Europe: Mercier in England, Pierre- Antoine
Quillard (1701-33) in Portugal, others elsewhere. On the eve of the
French Revolution, the expatriate French artist Jean-Pierre Norblin
de la Gourdaine (1745-1830) was at work in Poland, producing fetes
champetres for a member of the princely Czartoryski family. And yet

123 PHILIPPE MERCIER Conjurer C. I 720-2

 124
JEAN-FRANCOIS
DE TROY
The Hunt Breakfast
1737

in France Watteau soon went out of fashion. The great collectors

turned from his work to indulge their passion for Dutch genre
painting, and the intellectuals echoed this verdict. Diderot said that he
preferred Teniers to Watteau.
Of course, painting which was so original could not be wholly
without its effect on other artists. We find distinct traces of Watteau's
influence in the work of Jean-Francois de Troy (1679-1752), for
example, who began of allegorical compositions, but
as a painter
afterwards switched to genre scenes. De Troy has a robustness and a
vigour which give his work a different atmosphere from that of
Watteau. The Hunt Breakfast in the Wallace Collection demonstrates 124
the appetite with which this painter tackled scenes of contemporary
life. A similar gusto and versatility are to be found in the paintings of

Boucher and Fragonard, both of whom undoubtedly owed some-

thing to Watteau, though they turned what they borrowed to very
different uses.

131
125 FRANgois boucher The Setting of the Sun 1753
 CHAPTER SEVEN

The Feast of Pleasure

If Watteau gives a certain pervasive flavour to the French art of the

eighteenth century, most of all because he colours our response to
other painters, the main line of art-historical descent does not run
through him. Instead, we can trace it in the work of a lesser artist,
though one greatly respected in his own day: Francois Le Moyne
(1688-1737)-
Le Moyne marks the real moment of transition from the style of the
seventeenth century to that of the eighteenth, the point at which the

Baroque becomes the Rococo. From the seventeenth century he takes

his classicism and liking for allegory, and his love of working on a
huge scale; but he is eighteenth-century in his preference for what is
light, elegant, clear in colour. Many of his characteristics can be found
again in the work of his pupil Francois Boucher, and his mythological
pictures, in particular, provided the foundation upon which Boucher's
style as a decorator was built.
Le Moyne arrived on the scene early enough to receive important
commissions for Versailles, just as Le Brun had done before him: he
was responsible for decorations in the Salon de la Paix and for the vast
ceiling of the Salon d'Hercule. But he approached these tasks in a
somewhat different spirit from that of Le Brun. He responded readily
to the change in taste which was taking place in France: like Watteau,
he was an enthusiast for Rubens and for the Venetians of the sixteenth
century, particularly Veronese. He was aware of the activities of
Veronese's heirs, the contemporary Venetian decorators whose work
was being acclaimed throughout Europe, and he undoubtedly saw
himself as competing with such artists as Sebastiano Ricci and Gian
Antonio Pellegrini. When, in 1730, Pellegrini painted the ceiling of
the Banque Royale, Le Moyne, incensed that so important a com-
mission should have been given to a foreigner, produced a sketch to
show what he would have done with the job.
His contemporaries responded to him as a man who was extremely
competent in their terms, and eventually they killed him with over-

133
 work. Le Moyne committed suicide in 1737. The painting which he
126 finished only a few hours before Time Revealing Truth, tells
his death,
us much about his talent. Not only the subject, but even the com-
position are Tiepolesque, but without Tiepolo's soaring grandeur.
Le Moyne was not an isolated figure. Other artists of the period
showed much the same tendencies, often, indeed, in a more advanced
127 form. The playful Alliance oj Bacchus and Venus, by Noel-Nicolas
Coypel (1690-1734), half-brother of Antoine Coypel, is signed and
dated 1726, and is thoroughly representative of its time.
It is necessary to keep this background in mind when discussing the

work of Francois Boucher (1703-70) who, far more than Watteau,

is the representative French painter of the first half of the eighteenth

century. Boucher was far more various than Le Moyne: omnicom-

126 FRANCOIS LE MOYNE 127 NOEL-NICOLAS COYPEL

Time Revealing Truth 1737 Alliance of Bacchus and Venus 1726

134
petent, he painted mythological pictures, landscapes, portraits, erotic
scenes, religious pictures, indeed anything that was required of him.
Only the religious paintings can be dismissed as consistent failures,
though there is about all of Boucher's oeuvre a kind of airless arti-
ficiality which eventually proves wearisome.
He increasingly became identified with the Court at a time when,
under the unimpressive Louis XV, the Court was becoming more and
more unpopular; it is therefore not surprising to find that Boucher,
at the end of his life, was often the target of Diderot's strictures.
Writing about the Salon of 1765 (the year in which Boucher was
appointed Premier Peintre du Roi), Diderot said:
'I do not know what to say of this man. The degradation of taste, of

composition, of characters, of expression, of drawing, has step by step

followed the depravation of morals. What do you want this artist
to throw upon his canvas? What he has in his imagination; and what
can a man have in his imagination when he passes his days with
prostitutes of the lowest sort? ... I defy you to discover in a whole
countryside one blade of grass from his landscapes. And then a
confusion of objects heaped one upon another, so out of place, so
disparate, that it is less a picture created by a man of sense than a
madman's dream. ... I dare not say that this man truly does not know
what grace is, but I do dare to say that ideas of delicacy, of honesty, of
innocence, of simplicity, have become almost foreign to him; I do
dare to say that he has never for one moment looked at nature, at
least of a kind created to engage my soul, or yours, or that of a child

of good family or a woman of feeling I do dare to say that he is

;

without taste.'
How far did Boucher deserve these strictures? So far as his mytho-
logical pictures go, he shows greater confidence and lightness than
Le Moyne. We see him working at full stretch in the two large paint-
ings of The Rising of the Sun and The Setting of the Sun, painted in 1753 125
as designs for tapestries. The relationship with Rubens's Marie de

Medicis cycle is obvious. But despite their energy, they do not have
the pictorial weight and density of Rubens; they are essentially
exercises in virtuosity.
On a smaller scale, Boucher is more pleasing. Like Renoir atter him,
he was pre-eminently a painter of women, and in his work mythology
was turned to this purpose. The figures in Diana after the Hunt are 128
women before they are a goddess and her nymphs, but (as Diderot

135
 128 Francois boucher Diana after the Hunt 1745

sensed) the women we meet in

of an erotic dream, rather than those
real life: it might be Boucher invented the pin-up.
said that
At those times when reality impinges on his obsession with the
feminine, Boucher is at his best. His relaxed, easy portraits of his
i2g patroness, the King's favourite Madame de Pompadour, well reward
1 30 her interest in him. Even the openly salacious Reclining Girl (supposed
to be a portrait of Louisa O'Murphy, one of the minor mistresses of
Louis XV) has an air of keen enjoyment and observation - it is a real
enough girl who displays herself so flagrantly before us.
Boucher is also extremely skilful at conjuring up a wholly fantastic
dream world. It is difficult not to be captivated by the charm of his
131 pastorals and chinoiseries, but one must also admit that a world where
all painting looked like this would soon prove boring.

136
 129
FRANCOIS BOUCHER
Madame de Pompadour
1758

130 FRANCOIS BOUCHER

Reclining Girl
(Mademoiselle O' Murphy)
1751
i3i francois boucher Chinaman Fishing 1742

132 carle van loo The Grand Turk giving a Concert to his Mistress 1737

y\\

\^4
133 JEAN-honore fragonard Corcesns sacrificing himself to save Callirhoe 1765

None of Boucher's rivals has anything like his skill and versatility.
He far outshines contemporaries such as Carle van Loo (1705-65),
who was, like the Coypels, a member of a whole dynasty of artists.
Van Loo, who had a reputation with his contemporaries for personal
stupidity and vulgarity, was nevertheless capable of producing pleasing
pictures, as his exotic genre scene, The Grand Turk Giving a Concert to 132
his Mistress, is sufficient to prove.
The painter who was to continue the tradition of Boucher and Van
Loo until the ancien regime itself passed away was the pupil of them
both, and also, surprisingly, of Chardin. Jean-Honore Fragonard
(1 732-1 806) came from Grasse in Provence. He won the Prix de

Rome in 1752, and journeyed to Italy in 1 756. He travelled extensively

in Italy, in thecompany of the landscape painter Hubert Robert and
their mutual patron the Abbe de Saint-Non, returning to France in
1761.

139
 134 JEAN-honore fragonard The Gardens of the Villa d'Este, Tivoli 1760

Italy made a great impact -on the sensibility of the young artist, as

his beautiful early landscapes prove. The small painting in the Wallace
134 Collection, The Gardens of the Villa d'Este, Tivoli (Fragonard and his
companions spent the summer of 1760 at Tivoli), presents us with a
fresh interpretation of the same countryside which Claude had loved
so well. Claude's influence is certainly present, but his vision is trans-
formed Tivoli becomes a romantic dreamland, a place for lovers to
:

walk in, rather than a place which evokes the legends of the past.
When Fragonard returned to France, the neoclassical vogue was
just beginning, under the influence of Madame de Pompadour's
brother, the Marquis de Marigny, then occupying the post of
Directeur-General des Batiments du Roi. Fragonard scored a great

140
135 JEAN-honore fragonard The Pursuit c. 1771-73
ljj success at the Salon or 1765 with a large history picture, Coroesus
Sacrificing himself to Save Callirhoe. But, despite the expectations thus
raised among connoisseurs, he then abandoned history painting, to
become an of the salon and the boudoir. There could hardly be a
artist

greater contrast than between Coroesus and the painting which Frago-
nard produced for an eager client only three or four years later. This
137 was The Swing, which for so many people sums up the licentious
gallantres of the eighteenth century. The painter showed what he 'was
instructed to show the client's mistress flies high in the air on a swing
:

which is propelled by a bishop the client himself reclines on the ground

;

and looks at her admiringly as her skirts fly up. But how deliciously
the incident is treated! The light and colour which bathe the scene are
those which Fragonard had brought with him from Italy; the elegance
of the figures is purely Parisian. Love is a game no offence can be taken
;

at a lover's caprices.

136 JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD 137 JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD

The Souvenir c. 1787 The Swing c. 1766

142
 138
JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD
Inspiration c. 1769

Some clients, of course, did tend to take fright at Fragonard's daring.

A notable instance was Madame du Barry, the Pompadour's successor,
who in 1 him to do a series of decorative paintings
771 commissioned
for her villa at Louveciennes. The subject of the panels is the Progress oj
Love, and it may be that she thought they made too obvious an allusion
to her relationship with the King. At any rate, she rejected them (and
commissioned a new series of paintings from Vien). The last painting
in the series remained unfinished. These decorations are nevertheless
one of the great landmarks of eighteenth-century French painting;
their lack of intellectual content ceases to matter in the face of sheer J35
exuberance, beauty of colour and vitality of brush work.
Fragonard's handling of paint is one of the key things about his
work. His chief influences were 'painterly' painters: Rubens, whom
he (like Watteau) studied at the Palais du Luxembourg, and Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo, whom he discovered in Italy. Rembrandt, too,
played a part in creating the freedom of Fragonard's style: not surpris-
ingly, as the great Dutchman was much admired by the leading French
collectors of the second half of the eighteenth century. One sees Rem-
brandt's influence at work in the numerous half-length fancy figures
that Fragonard painted: the so-called Inspiration in the Louvre is a 138

143
139 JEAN-baptiste oudry The White Duck 1753
 $gj
140
JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY
Count Tessins Dachshund
1740

typical example. Here the brushwork is so direct and the impasto so

heavy reminds us of Van Gogh as well as Rembrandt.
that the painting
Nor did Fragonard remain entirely isolated from what was going
on around him in France. Pictures such as The Souvenir, which dates 136
from about 1787, show him essaying the vogue for sentiment, which
had been pioneered by Greuze. Eventually, however, Fragonard
found himself out of fashion, and almost entirely forgotten. His light-
ness and brio, his eclecticism and what the new generation saw as his
lack of correctness, were alien to the times. During the Revolution he
was protected by Jacques-Louis David, in all respects his antithesis as a
painter. Through David's influence, Fragonard, though the least aca-
demic of artists, was made a member of the Commission du Musee,
the body responsible for the creation of the Louvre and other museums.
He seems to have discharged his functions well.
Boucher and Fragonard, who were basically decorators but who
attempted a wide variety of different tasks, were surrounded by artists
who contented themselves with narrower specializations. One who is
not as specialized as he first appears is Jean-Baptistc Oudry (1686-
1755). Oudry began as a history painter, but later turned to painting

H5
 subjects connected with the chase, and to designing tapestries (often
with animals or hunting subjects) for Beauvais. Oudry was trained by
Largilliere, and was therefore an inheritor of the Flemish tradition.
Later, he was influenced by Boucher. Oudry painted animals with
great sympathy, as can be seen from his delightful portrait Count
140 Tessin's Dachshund, and he was a master of subtle technical effects,
ljg which are shown at their most dazzling in his famous still-life The
White Duck. From the historical point of view, however, his chief
contribution was to the development of landscape, where he offered
an alternative to the tradition ot Poussin.
Landscape painting in the eighteenth century was in any case in a
stateof flux, and, during the second half of the century, there were a
number of painters at work who foreshadowed the Romantic move-
ment. This, with its emphasis on 'nature' and the 'natural', was to find
landscape painting an especially congenial and flexible means of
artistic expression.
Prominent among these pre-Romantic landscapists was Frago-
nard's companion in Italy, Hubert Robert (173 3-1 808). During his
time there, Robert was influenced by the work of Giovanni Paolo
Pannini (1691-1765). Pannini is an important figure in the history of
European art because he was chiefly responsible for the invention of a
new subdivision of landscape painting, the 'ideal view' or capriccio, in

his case usually furnished with ruins. This was a development of the
ideal classical landscape which had begun with Annibale Carracci. By
taking real and imagined buildings, and combining and transposing
them in different ways, Pannini was able to create a world which
existed parallel to the real one. People often seem to have experienced
antiquity more intensely through Pannini's work than through their
visits to ancient buildings as they actually existed. One reason for this

was that Pannini was familiar with the work of the great theatrical
designers ot the time, such as the Bibienas, and well knew how to paint
for effect. His work can be compared to that of the Dutch seventeenth-
century flower painters, who combine the blooms of all seasons into a
single glorious bouquet.
Under the spell of Pannini's work, Robert evolved a new vision of
141 Italian landscape. His paintings, despite their apparent precision of
detail, became statements of mood rather than statements of fact: the
mood is all-important even in those canvases which present more or
less 'real' views.

146
[41 Hubert Robert Architectural Composition with Temple and Obelisk 1768

When Robert's paintings in this style were first exhibited in France,

in the Salon of 1767, they attracted high praise from Diderot: 'Oh
beautiful, sublime ruins! What firmness and at the same time what
lightness, sureness and facility with the brush. What an effect! what
grandeur! what nobility!'
Later, however, Diderot was to draw back a little from his first en-
thusiasm. His comment upon two paintings shown by Robert in the

Salon of 1771 is far cooler and more judicious: 'M. Robert visibly
demonstrates how much more difficult it is to paint landscape after
nature than it is to paint stones and columns in the studio, after

drawings, and to colour them.'

147
 That is, the critic has already begun to feel that Robert fails,
measured against ideal standards, because he has not achieved the
fusion of all the elements in the picture which would please a sensi-
bility full attuned to nature. 'Nature' is already a key word in Diderot's
writings about art, just as it is in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.
Other forerunners of Romanticism were Claude-Joseph Vernet
(1714-89), and his pupil Charles-Francois Lacroix, usually called
Lacroix de Marseille (c. 1700-82).Both came from the South of
France, both studied in Italy (Vernet was taught by Pannini and Loca-
telli), both made a speciality of seascapes and harbour views. Vernet's

1 43 A Storm with a Shipwreck in the Wallace Collection is signed and dated

1754, and provides an interesting link between the storms painted
during the seventeenth century by Dutch marine painters such as the
Van de Veldes, and those to be painted later on by artists such as
144 J.M. W. Turner. The more tranquil port scene by Lacroix, dated six

142 pierre-antoine demachy The Louvre with the Colonnade Recently Cleared oj
Buildings 1755-69
143 claude-joseph vernet A Storm with a Shipwreck 1754

144 lacroix de Marseille A Mediterranean Seaport 1760

<*rerr
 145 PIERRE-HENRI VALENCIENNES Tivoli

years later, seems to be an altered view of Genoa, and shows the appli-
cation of the capriccio style to this particular branch of painting.
But the Italianate landscapes of Vernet, Lacroix and Robert were
by no means the only kind being painted by French painters at this
142 period. Pierre-Antoine Demachy (1723-87) produced views of Paris
and its suburbs which are both delicate and accurate their documen-
:

tary interest has led to the neglect of their artistic qualities. Demachy 's
146 pupil, Louis-Gabriel Moreau, called Moreau l'Aine (1 740-1 806),
created paintings which have a more personal touch than his master's;
occasionally they even seem to anticipate Corot, as do the oil-sketches
143 of Pierre-Henri Valenciennes (1750-18 19), though these, like the
similar sketches made by Desportes, were intended, not as finished
works of art, but as preparations for larger (and much duller) paintings.

150
 I46 MOREAU L'AINE
Cabin on a Rising in a Wood

One other specialized department of painting flourished exceedingly

throughout the eighteenth century in France, and that was portraiture.
The reasons were twofold the rise of the bourgeoisie, and the new
:

interest in human individuality promoted by the writings of the philo-

sophies. Curiously enough, French portrait painters produced few

masterpieces (rather more were produced by the portrait sculptors,

such as Houdon, Pajou and Pigalle). The mythological portraits of
Jean-Marc Nattier (1685-1766), which continue the tradition of Mig-
nard, are, as I have said, risible; but he did have the gift of making a
pretty woman look her best, usually at the expense of telling us much
about her character. The late portrait of the Comtesse dc Tillieres, 147
painted when the mythological vogue was at last over, shows him at
his most attractive.

151
 147 JEAN-MARC NATTIER
Comtesse de Tillieres
1750

14*4 LOUIS TOCQUE

Jean-Marc Nattier
1762
149 JEAN-BAPTISTE PERRONEAU 150 SIFFRED DUPLESSIS
Madame de Sorquainville 1749 Augustin de Saint-Aubin 1787

Nattier's rivals, such as his son-in-law Louis Tocque (1 696-1 772)

often have greater powers of insight. When we see Tocque's portrait
of Nattier we are immediately convinced that the subject looked
exactly thus, and we almost seem to see his gestures and catch the echo
of his voice. The same is true of the men and women who appear in
portraits by SifTred Duplessis (1 725-1 802), Jacques-Andre-Joseph- 150
Camelot Aved (1 702-1 766), the Swedish-born Alexandre Roslin
(1718-93), andJean-Baptiste Perronneau (1715-83). Perronneau, who 149
was probably the least known of the group during his own lifetime,
was arguably the most gifted.
Yet, even in the hands of artists such as these, the sitters in French
eighteenth-century portraits remain poised, sophisticated and very
much on their guard. They give away nothing that they do not wish
us to know; the painter never penetrates the armour of intelligence
and worldliness. Though the fact that they often chose to be painted
in informal dress reflects a new informality ot manners, decorum
triumphs all the same.

1
>3
 151 MAURICE QUENTIN
DE LA TOUR
D'Alcmbert 1753

The most brilliant portraitist of the age does not really belong in
thisbook, as he worked exclusively in pastel. This was Maurice
Quentin de la Tour (1704-88). La Tour's sitters were no less guarded
than those of his rivals, but he spices his portrayals with a revealing
and sardonic wit. No respecter of persons, La Tour was especially
favoured by the philosophes, who admired the quality of his intellect:
151 he made portraits of Voltaire, Rousseau, D'Alembert and Diderot. He
was on friendly terms with Diderot, who recorded some of his
comments:
'He confided to me that the passion for embellishing and exaggerat-
ing nature grew weaker as one acquired more experience and skill;
and that a time came when one found nature so beautiful, so whole, so
inseparably one, even in its very defects, that one was inclined to

show it one found it an inclination from which one could not be

as :

deflected save by contrary habit, and by the extreme difficulty which

one found in being true enough to please while following this path.'
La Tour's originality of mind sometimes allowed him, without
shattering the portrait conventions of the time, to discover the hidden
truths which eluded his contemporaries.

154
 CHAPTER EIGHT

A Moral Climate

Diderot's greatest enthusiasm seems to have been divided between

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779), and Jean-Baptiste Greuze
(1725-1805). Both these painters were influenced by the Dutch and
Flemish artists of the preceding century, and both produced genre
scenes. In other respects, they could hardly be more different. Diderot's
discussion of their work shows him trying to reconcile the claims of
painting as a physical and sensual experience, and painting as a
repository of valuable moral ideas.
Chardin was in many ways an 'outsider' in the art world of his time.
His training and background were not the conventional ones of the
of the day in this he resembled Watteau. His father
successful artist :

was cabinet-maker who specialized in making billiard-tables. As a

a
craftsman himself, Chardin pere thought of his boy's chosen career as a
craft. He refused to let his son study the humanities, thus debarring
him from history painting for want of the necessary knowledge. And
he put his son's name down
for the Academy of St Luke, the successor
to the old craft guildof painters, and now very much a second-best
to the Academy itself. Chardin was later to regard this as a
bad start,
and to speak with bitterness of his father's error.
Chardin's training was not conventional: in particular it seems to
have lacked the traditional academic emphasis on drawing. His first
teacher, the uninspiring Pierre-Jacques Cazes, was too poor to pay for
amodel, and the young Chardin made do with copying his master's
work. Later, he went as an assistant to Noel-Nicolas Coypel. A com-
bination of lack of training and lack of money led the young Chardin
to opt for still-life painting, a minor genre for which
there existed a
ready market. Only later, when he realized the restrictions which
this
put upon him, was he to try his hand at figure painting; even then, it
was domestic scenes that he attempted: nothing in the grand manner.
The first thing he had to do was to
remedy his father's mistake in
putting him down for the wrong Academy. He had the opportunity
to do so when, in June 1728, he exhibited some paintings
in the Place
 152 JEAN-BAPTISTE-SIMEON CHARDIN The Ray fish C. 1 727-28

Dauphine: was the custom for young artists to show their efforts
it

there, in theopen air. Among the pictures which Chardin exhibited

152 was The Ray fish. Diderot was later to describe it thus: 'The object is
disgusting, but it is the very flesh of the fish, its skin and blood; one
would not be affected otherwise by the sight of the thing itself
Chardin's offerings impressed some of the Academicians who saw
them at the Place Dauphine; he was invited to offer himself for
membership of the Academy, duly presented himself, and was
accepted. In 729 he resigned his mastership at the Academy of St Luke.
1

Having made his reputation with his still-lifes, Chardin turned to

painting genre scenes quite early, at least by the beginning of the
1 73 os. One practical reason for this seems to have been the fact that

he thus opened up to himself the lucrative market in reproductive en-

gravings of his work. A contemporary historian complained that 'en-
gravings after Chardin are by way of becoming fashionable and, along
with those of Teniers, Wouwerman and Lancret, have dealt a death-
blow to the serious engravings of artists like Le Brun, Poussin, Le

156
Sueur and even the Coy pels'. Thus far, at least, he was able to take his
revenge on the history painters. After 1736, Chardin ceased to exhibit
his still-hfes at the Salons; they reappear only in 1752.
The still-lifes were, nevertheless, appreciated from the very begin-
ning of Chardin's career. It was not only his fellow Academicians who
admired them. Collectors sought for them; critics praised them,
though usually with the galling qualification that this was a 'low' form
of art. Diderot's praise of The Rayfish tells us what contemporary con-
noisseurs appreciated: the dazzling virtuosity of Chardin's technique.
Today, when Chardin's reputation again stands very high, this is still
a reason for admiring his work. No painter has a keener sense of the
interplay of colours, the way in which one tone affects the value of the
tone set next to it. Every colour takes life from its neighbours.
This appears most clearly, perhaps, in Chardin's simplest composi-
tions, such as the Kitchen Still-life with Cooking-pots and Eggs in the ' 53
Louvre. But there is something else that impresses us, besides the
sheer skill with which the paint is put on; and that is the stillness, the
tranquillity that the artist has imposed. The objects on their stone

ledge seem like offerings to the household gods, placed upon an altar.

153 jean-baptiste-simeon chardin Kitchen Still-life with Cooking-pots and Eggs

c. 1734
154 ANDRE BOUYS
The Kitchen Maid c. 1735

155
HENRI-HORACE-ROLAND
DE LA PORTE
The Rustic Meal
 *
<*.

m*

I56 JEAN-BAPTISTE-SIMEON CHARDIN Vase of Flowers C. I76O-63

 Chardin is by no means the only still-life painter of the French
eighteenth century, nor does he represent a sharp break in the develop-
ment of the art. But he did to a surprising extent impose his personality
154 on his rivals. An older artist, Andre Bouys (1656-1740), was not im-
mune, as can be seen from a painting exhibited in the Salon of 1737.
153 Juniors, such as Henri-Horace-Roland de la Porte (1724-93), and
Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-18 18), seem to have been entirely under
his spell. We do not have to search too far for the reasons, once we
156 have looked at a picture such as the miraculous Vase of Flowers in the
National Gallery of Scotland. This, which was probably painted early
in the 1 760s, shows the unrivalled intensity of Chardin's powers of
observation. It is a work of art before which the critic falls mute.
Our reaction to Chardin's genre scenes is not likely to be quite as
intense or as unmixed as our reaction to his still-lifes. But this is hardly
the painter's tault; it is inherent in the nature of genre painting. These
remain probably the most triumphant representations of 'ordinary'
lite that have ever been painted. The name of the Le Nains is appro-

priate here: even contemporaries were quick to make the comparison.

There is one important difference, however: Chardin's subjects are
158 predominantly taken from the bourgeoisie. Even in The Draughtsman
the young man, with his ragged coat, who is perhaps to be thought of
as a reminiscence of Chardin's own early years, is visibly not a member

of the proletariat which was to rise up with the Revolution. The alter-
native title which is given to The Draughtsman is The Basis oj The Arts.
This hints at an important aspect of Chardin's genre scenes which
tends to divide them from his still-lifes. Chardin told Diderot that the
painter needed a 'moral climate'. In still-life painting, the existence of
such a climate had to be implied; in genre scenes the means of express-
157 ing it could become more explicit. A picture such as The Morning
Toilet, which shows a mother preparing her child for church, hints
subtly but definitely at the moral lesson which the scene embodies.
We, unlike Chardin's contemporaries, are not on the look out for
such things, and tend to miss the point which is being made. What
appeals to us is the technical skill, transferred intact from the still-lifes,
and the mixture of suppleness and rigour in the composition. Vermeer
is the only artist who has rivalled Chardin as a painter of domestic in-

teriors; only these two can take the commonplace facts of existence,
and the banal objects with which we surround ourselves, and create
from them the purest of harmonies.

160
 157
,
JEAN-BAPTISTE-SIMEON
CHARDIN
The Morning Toilet c. 1740

158
JEAN-BAI'TISTE-SIMEON
CHAKDIN
The Draughtsman c. 1738
 With Jean-Baptiste Greuze, on we are in no danger
the other hand,
of missing the moral lesson. He rams it down
our throats, to an extent
which makes it difficult to echo the enthusiasm which his contem-
poraries felt for him. In part, they liked him because they were begin-
ning to react against the laxness and grossness of the times. The society
ol douceur de vivre, for which Talleyrand was to breathe such a heartfelt
sigh of regret, was also a corrupt society, sliding downhill towards
revolution. But it did not have an easy conscience. Greuze, who scored
his first success in 1755, arrived at the psychological moment. He be-
came, in the visual arts, the representative of the contemporary 'cult of
feeling'. The brilliant intellectual life of the French eighteenth century
had always based itself upon a fundamental faith in mankind: Diderot
once remarked that 'Mankind is the unique term, from which we
must set out and to which evervthin? must return.' Trust in man, as

159 jean-baptiste greuze A Father's Curse c. 1775

 \

l60 JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE

Girl it'ith a Dead Bird
1765

people came to see, means trust not merely in

but in his
his intellect
emotions. The decisive advocate of feeling was Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
who came to prominence after 1750.
In his most celebrated paintings, Greuze established the rights of
humble people, their lives and their values, in the world of art; even
Chardm had not been able to do as much. His work filled a gap of
which everyone was suddenly aware, intellectuals and broad public
alike. But unfortunately there is something intensely self-conscious
about these works, which now seems to rob them of artistic validity.
A painting such as A Father's Curse in the Louvre seems to us now to 159
be stagy, false and hollow. Staginess, indeed, was a quality which
Greuze introduced into French painting thanks to his study of the
theatre. David, too, was to take lessons from the actor, as Robert took
them from the scene-designer.
Besides his genre scenes, Greuze produced another type of picture.
He was a specialist in ambiguous representations of innocence. The
Girl with a Dead Bird in the National Gallery of Scotland is a typical 160
example. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1 765, where Diderot found it
'delicious'. But here, as elsewhere, he recognized the equivocal nature
of Greuze's art:
'The subject of this little poem is so subtle that many people have not
understood it; their belief is that this little girl weeps only for her

163
 161 etienne jeaurat The Broken Marriage Contract

canary. Greuze has painted the same subject before he placed a

: grown
girl dressed in white satin before a cracked mirror - she is full o{ the
deepest melancholy. Do you not think that it would be quite as stupid
to attribute the tearsof the former to the loss of a bird as the melancholy
of the latter to her broken mirror?'
Greuze cannot escape the libertinism of the century; he pays tribute
to it while condemning it.
The success of first Chardin and then Greuze raised up a host of
imitators. Among them were Etienne Jeaurat (i 699-1 789) and Nicolas-
Bernard Lepicie (1735-84), both of whom painted interesting repre-
161 sentations of contemporary life:Jeaurat's The Broken Marriage Contract
is a representative example. Etienne Aubry (1745-81) produced
162 pastiches of Greuze which come deceptively close to the originals. A
later and cooler exponent of story-telling genre is Louis Leopold

163 Boilly (1761-1845). In Boilly's paintings, which are technically very

refined, we see a more thorough absorption of neoclassical ideas, and,
once more, the pervasive influence of theatrical gesture.

164
 1 62 ETIENNE AUBRY
Paternal Love

163 louis Leopold boilly The Sorrows of Love c. 1790

 1 64

ELISABETH-LOUISE
VIGEE-LEBRUN
Priiiccsse de

Polignac 1783

The enormous popularity of Greuze's work saw to it that he had an

effectupon other things besides genre painting. The fashionable
portraitistElisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun(i755-i842) took his advice,
and her carefully simple and artless portraits of fashionable people,
164 such as the Princesse de Polignac, demonstrate the effect which the
cult of feeling had on Parisian society.
Nevertheless, both Chardin and Greuze outlived their own success.
Genre painting might triumph for a time, but this triumph could not
altogether suppress the desire to see the visual arts tackle more 'serious'
and more innately heroic themes. Painting could not escape the re-
formist efforts of neoclassicism, a movement which dates its rise from
the 1750s, just at the moment when Greuze himself was ready to burst
upon the scene. Indeed, neoclassicism and the cult of feeling with which
166
 i6 5
FRANCOIS-GABRIEL DOYEN
St Genevieve
Interceding for the Victims
oj the Plague 1767

Greuze was associated were by no means inimical to one another:

after all, they both attached a definite moral value to 'purity' and
'simplicity', and did not necessarily disagree in the meanings which
they attached to these words. Neoclassicism, however, was by its
nature systematic: it believed in rules. It was by following these rules
that artists could return to original principles.
Not that the story of the rise of neoclassicism in France is free from
paradox. Artists such as Francois-Gabriel Doyen (1725-1806) and 165
Jean-Baptiste Deshays de Colleville (1729-65), who treated classical
subjects more seriously than, for example, Boucher, could find no
better models than the Baroque painting of the preceding century.
Indeed, they represented the continuation of the true Baroque in the
age of the Rococo.

167
 1 66
LOUIS-JEAN-FRANCOIS
LAGRENEE THE ELDER
Telemachus and
Terosiris 1770

Even painters who are more clearly recognizable as early neo-

166 classicists, such as Louis-Jean-Francois Lagrenee the Elder (1724-
1805), and Joseph-Mane Vien (1716-1809), are affected both by the
tradition which they inherited and by the prevailing taste of their own
day. Both men show a curious unevenness of style.
During the Revolution, Vien was to lay claim to the honour of hav-
ing regenerated the French school; but the quality of his work scarcely
supports his assertion. Like many men of secondary talent who are also
gitted with a certain originality of mind, he veers from one stylistic
167 expenment to another. When he paints Lot and His Daughters, a tradi-
tional subject in Baroque art, he produces a work which is in many
168 respects not far off from Vouet. When he depicts the Apotheosis of
Winckelmann, the great German theorist of neoclassicism is imagined
as the central figure in a composition which derives from Baroque

43 Pi ct as and Entombments; compare, for example, the Entombment by

Caravaggio.

168
 1 67 JOSEPH-MARIE VIEN

Lot and his Daughters 1747

168
JOSEPH-MARIE VIEN
Apotheosis of Winckelmann
 169 JOSEPH-MARIE VIEN
Greek Girl at the Bath
1767

170 JOSEPH-MARIE VIEN

The Merchant of Loves
1763

171 JEAN-BAPTISTE
GREUZE
Septimius Severus
Reproaching Caracal la 1769

Yet, in a different mood, Vien produced work which, if rather

1 70 bloodless, isrecognizably neoclassical. The Merchant of Loves is adapted

from a celebrated Roman wall-painting at Herculaneum, just as the
furniture of the time was beginning to be an adaptation of the models
which contemporary cabinet-makers found in Greek vase-paintings.
Not being at the mercy of ideas about practicality and convenience,
Vien's work comes closer to its model than furniture was to do until
169 the 1800s. The Greek Girl at the Bath, signed and dated 1767 and a
famous picture in its own day, is less directly dependent upon the
antique; it shows the precise degree to which the art of the period was
ready to adopt the formulae of neoclassicism.

170
 Things were on the move, however. Greuze himself sensed it, and
lyi in 1769 produced Septimius Severus Reproaching Caracalla as his belated
reception piece for the Academy. The fact that the unfortunate painter
was lectured by his colleagues on the defects to be found in this work,
and was informed by them that he would be received as a genre
painter only, does not alter its historical significance. French painting
here returns to seventeenth-century sources: antiquity and Poussin
(the resemblance to some ot the Sacraments by Poussin was unmistak-
able). The way would soon be open for another dictator of the arts, of
a kind which had not existed in France since the davs of Le Brun.

172 jacques-louis david The Combat oj Minerva against Mars 1770

172
 CHAPTER NINE

Roman Virtue

The new dictator was Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). It is no acci-

dent that David is also the painter who links the eighteenth century in
France to the nineteenth.
He was a of Francois Boucher, and the pupil of Vien.
distant relation
His earliest known work, owe almost as
curiously enough, seems to
much to the former as it does to the latter. The Combat of Minerva 1 J2
against Mars, which David entered for the Prix de Rome in 1770, is a
picture still full of Rococo influences, though it is somewhat lacking in
spirit and lightness. It gives no idea of the kind of artist that David was

to become.
He did not win the prize at his first attempt. He had to wait until
1774, the year of Louis XV's death. He left Pans for Rome in October
1775, in company with his master Vien, who had just been appointed
Director of the French Academy in Rome. It was at this point that
David's career as a painter really began. Though he had sworn not to
change his manner under the impact of Italy, the place immediately
overwhelmed him. He was to remain there until 1780. During this
period he transformed himself from a callow student into a mature
and original artist.
Yet he was also a child of his time. His first important picture, 5/
Roch Begging the Virgin to Intercede for the Plague-stricken, shows affini-
tieswith the work of Doyen, who had already taken an interest in the
young painter's career. The truly striking thing about it is the intensity
with which the dead and dying are represented. Somewhat more
chastened in style, but still very much within the Baroque tradition,
was the painting which won for David his first success at the Salon,
the Belisarius which he exhibited there in 1 78 1 1 73
Classical subjects were by this time solidly in fashion, and parti-
cularly those which related to Roman legend or history. Among those
who showed paintings on Roman themes in the Salons of the period
were painters such as Brenet, Halle, and Lagrenee the Elder. Lepicie,
whom we now think of as being primarily a genre painter, also

173
 attempted subjects from Roman history: The Courage of Porcia in
1777, Regulus Returning to Carthage in 1779, the Piety of Fabius Dorso in
178 1. Jean-Francois-Pierre Peyron (1744-1814), who won the Prix de
Rome in competition with David, and Francois-Andre Vincent
(1746-18 1 6), who like David was a pupil of Vien, were keenly
interested in Roman The new Court reacted against the
subjects.
licentiousness of Boucher, and Louis XVI's Directeur-General des
Batiments, the Comte d'Angivillier, was busy commissioning
pictures of suitably moral and heroic subjects for the royal palaces.
Needless to say, Roman virtue was well to the fore.
D'Angivillier had been a friend and patron of David's from the
beginning. He now ordered a painting for the King from his newly
174 successful protege. This, exhibited in the Salon of 1785, was The Oath
of the Horatii. It was followed by another royal commission, The
175 Lictors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, shown at the Salon of 1789.
These two pictures have often been interpreted as a prophetic sum-
mons to revolution. A recent historian labels The Oath of the Horatii
'fully republican'. Clearly, however, it did not strike D'Angivillier
174 Jacques-Louis david The Oath of the Horatii 1785

like this, and it seems unlikely that David had at this point evolved a
republican philosophy. His subsequent career, first as a member of the
revolutionary Convention, and then as court painter to Napoleon,
shows him have been exceptionally sensitive to the climate of the
to
times he lived through. It seems likely that both the Horatii and the

Brutus were subconscious reactions to what many people were think-

ing ?nd feeling. A new patriotism, a new impatience with pettiness
and self-indulgence: these were familiar reactions in France in the
decade before the Revolution, and the monarchy itself thought them
healthy and encouraged them. David expressed these emotions with
such force that they afterwards seemed to herald something else.
The Oath of the Horatii can, nevertheless, be described as revolution- 174
ary in another sense: it is a completely neoclassical picture, one in

175

173 JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID BcliscirtUS 1 78

 175 JACQUES-louis david The Lictors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of his Sons 1789

which all the elements which contributed to neoclassicism fuse and be-
come incandescent. Particularly noticeable is the effort towards
ij$ archaeological correctness (to be seen again in the Brutus) and the
abandonment of Baroque compositional devices in favour of a new
system. Instead of employing the serpentine line of Baroque, and a
compositional axis which thrusts diagonally into the picture-space,
David places his figures parallel to the picture-plane. Their outlines are
clear, each occupies an unambiguously defined spatial position, the
underlying compositional framework consists of straight li'ries and
rigid angles. In fact, pictorial science has undergone a process of
simplification, a stripping away of unnecessary clutter.
But the Horatii and the Brutus would not have had the impact they
did have, if this were all. David puts abstract design at the service of a

176
[76 jacques-louis david The Death of Marat 1793
 subtle naturalism; he wanted every part of his composition to be free
of 'mannerism', or wilful idiosyncrasy. In his own terms, he succeeded
yet there is a theatricality, a sense of strain, about these two paintings
which in the end denies them the status of masterpieces. David and the
Greuze whom David superseded were alike in at least one thing. They
were both impassioned students of the theatre, and theatricality enters
into their work by the directest route it is a reminiscence of what they
:

had already seen on stage. And both felt that the drama and painting
must make an inescapable moral point. They agreed with Diderot
that 'Every piece of sculpture, every painting, must be the expression
of an important maxim, a lesson for the spectator; without which it
remains mute.'
Events themselves rescued David from the stagnation into which,
for all his gifts, he might soon have sunk. Swept up into the whirlwind
of the Revolution, David found himself a member of the Convention,
and voted for the execution of the King. There is a world of difference
176 between the Horatii and the Death of Marat (1793). Here it was not
Roman history which was being depicted, but the history of the time.
The spectator stands, in relation to the figure of Marat, just at the spot
which Marat's assassin, Charlotte Corday, has just quitted. The figure
has an astonishing realism it is meant to shock, and it does. But it is
;

also a secular pieta,and a much more moving one than Vien's Apo-
theosis ofWinckelmann. The immediacy of this work is also to be found
1 80 in the self-portrait which David painted soon afterwards, when im-
prisoned following the fall of Robespierre. In this, as in the Marat, one
finds an impassioned scrutiny of an essentially inscrutable reality.
Though David was to continue to paint canvases with classical
subjects during the Revolutionary period and afterwards (among them
The Sabines of 1799, and Leonidas at Thermopylae of 18 14), Napoleon,
whose principal painter he soon became, had a forcibly expressed
preference for national and contemporary subjects in painting. Thus
it was that David found himself commissioned to paint, first of all the

Bonaparte at Mont-Saint-Bernard (1800), and later the Coronation

(1805-7), an d the Distribution of the Eagles (1810). The Bonaparte is a
memorable presentation of the subject's own image of himself, 'calm,
upon a fiery horse', but is too schematic to count for much as a work
of art. The two big ceremonial canvases remind me of Le Brun's Tent
oj Darius: they are immensely professional, and lukewarm. They do,

however, contain a throng of interesting portraits.

178
177 Jacques-Louis david Madame Ricamier 1800

Throughout his career, David was a master portraitist. His subject

paintings are important from a historical point of view, but
it is chiefly

claim to being a major artist must rest. He

upon the portraits that his
was able to penetrate the social surface, and reveal what lay beneath.
father-in-law) 178
His portrait of Madame Pecoul (the second wife of his
is wonderfully sympathetic without being in the least flattering. The
famous unfinished portrait of Madame Recamier shows how bril- 177

liantly David met what is perhaps the supreme challenge

for a portrait-

ist: how to show character in a beautiful woman without diminishing

But there something more to it as well. This
or denying her beauty. is

picture, above all, allows us to see how David himself had changed the

dress, the furniture, even the manners of his time.

Another way in which David was able to exercise his influence was
through his pupils. He had attracted large numbers of pupils to him
ever since his return from Italy in 1780, and some of these
became,
after David himself, the most celebrated and successful painters of the
rigid system of instruction under
day. They were subjected to a :

of and don'ts' than it had

David's iron rule painting was fuller 'do's

been under the pre-Revolutionary Academy.

179
 178 JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID
Madame Pecotil 1784

The most tragic and the most interesting of these pupils was
Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros (1771-1835). It is in Gros's work that we
see being fought out the battle between Romanticism and classicism.
David considered him his heir, and, on going into exile in Brussels at
the Restoration, left Gros his studio and asked him to continue to
direct a new generation of pupils. This in spite of the fact that the
master had previously condemned the pupil for 'still not having

painted a real history picture',and for having contented himself with

and 'topical'
'worthless' subjects. Torn between his respect for David's
and his own
theories violence of temperament, Gros eventually
committed suicide.
It is Gros, rather than David, who is the poet of the Napoleonic
epic. David's paintings invariably remind us of the authoritarian
aspect of Napoleon's rule; Gros catches the heroism of the Empire,
and the excitement which attended Napoleon's conquests. His
179 sketch-portrait Bonaparte at the Bridge of Areola, painted in1796,
renders the atmosphere of the early Napoleonic days perhaps better

180
 179 BARON GROS
Bonaparte at the Bridge
of Areola 1796

ISO JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

Self-portrait 1794
 i Si baron gros The Plague at Jaffa 1804

181 than any other painting while The Plague

; at Jaffa creates a compelling
image of courage and invulnerability, a new version of the Baroque
altarpieces which show St Charles Borromeo ministering to plague-
victims. Equally evocative of the Napoleonic Age are Gros's swagger-
182 ing military portraits, such as the Cotnte Foumier-Sarloveze in the
Louvre.
A colder and less individual follower of David was Francois-
Pascal-Simon, Baron Gerard (1770-1837), who first attracted David's
attention in 1 786. Yet even he moved gradually towards Romanticism,
and away from the strict neoclassicism of David. We see from
183 Gerard's coquettish portrait of Madame Recamier (which the subject
177 herself probably preferred to David's) how the directness and
classicism of the author of the Horatii were already being modified, by
his followers, towards that mannerism which he detested.

182
1 82 baron gros Cointc Voumicr-Sarloveze 1812
1 83 baron gerard Madame Rkamkr 1802
1 84 pierre-paul prud'hon Empress Josephine 1805
 Another pupil of David's, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson
(i767-1 824), supplies a case in point. Unlike Gros and Gerard,
Girodet was not concerned with preserving the purity of Davidian
185 doctrine. When he painted his Ossian Receiving the Warriors of the
Revolution into Paradise for Malmaison in 1801, he boasted that the
painting gave him more confidence in himself because it was altogether
his own creation and 'not inspired by any model'. The bogus epic on
which he based himself was a great favourite of Napoleon's, and
Girodet's misty interpretation of it is indeed quite unlike anything

which his master might have imagined. David openly disapproved of

the picture, but the contemporary public liked it.
The real opposition to David under the Empire, however, was
supplied by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823). Not that Prud'hon,
compared to David, was outstandingly successful. He began in
obscurity, and died in misery. In between, he knew a period of
success, as official painter to the two Empresses, Josephine and Marie-
Louise. Prud'hon's style is as far from that of David as can conveniently
be imagined, within the boundaries of the neoclassical convention. He,
like Boucher before him, was influenced by Correggio: he is all
 1 86
PIERRE-PAUL PRUd'hON
Venus and Adonis
1810

-^ 1S5 ANNE-LOUIS GIRODET

Ossian Receiving the
Warriors of the Revolution
into Paradise1801

softness and sjumato, in contrast to the definite outlines of David and

his pupils. He thus continues into the nineteenth century the loose,
melting, mysterious manner favoured by Greuze and later by Frago-
nard. Naturally, his pictures seem lacking in real content when put
beside those of other painters of the time, just as his portraits seem to
lack character. Yet this is, in a way, the clue to his originality. The
portrait of the Empress Josephine which Delacroix afterwards
described as 'ravishing', and the large allegorical mythological paint-
ings such as the Venus and Adonis in the Wallace Collection, are all of 186
a piece, part of a completely imagined and created world with its own
rules:Prud'hon dealt, not in the reproduction of reality, but in the
transformationof reality into paint. This is what makes him a true
forerunner of the Romantics. It also explains how the legend could
take root that Marie-Louise, Josephine's successor, sat for the Venus,
and Neipperg, her lover in later years, for the Adonis. There would be
small difference in the painting if this were true.

187
 ingres Grande Baigneuse i 808
1 87 jean-auguste-dominique
 CHAPTER TEN

Romantic Passion

Neoclassicism did not give way to Romanticism without a struggle.

But the Romantic spirit took a curious revenge upon the man who, as
the Romantic movement progressed, came to be regarded as the true
upholder of the classical spirit of David. This was that great but very
strange painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Ingres,
like the majority of the neoclassicists mentioned in the last chapter,
was one of David's pupils. After studying at the Academy of Toulouse,
Ingres entered David's studio in 1797. He underwent the rigorous
course of instruction which all the master's pupils received, and seems
to have made good progress. In 1800, he is said to have helped David
with the accessories in the unfinished portrait of Madame Recamier.
In 1 80 1 he won the Prix de Rome, but public money was in such
short supply that his departure had to be postponed. He did not reach
Rome until 1 806 he was not to leave Italy until 1 824, some years after
:

the Napoleonic adventure was over, and only a year before the exiled
David's death in Brussels.
Because of the long interval before he was able to set off for Rome,
Ingres had already established a personal style before he departed; it

appears most clearly in the three portraits of members of the Riviere

family, now in the Louvre. They were shown in the Salon of 1806,
and, like Ingres's other submissions in that year, were severely
criticized. Ingres was described as being 'Gothic', an adjective which
he was felt have earned upon several counts the evident influence
to :

upon him of the Flemish Primitives and of the artists who preceded
Raphael, the lack of chiaroscuro, and perhaps, most of all, the deter-
mination to establish his independence of his master. David's Madame 177
Recamier, Gerard's portrait of the same person, and Ingres's Madame 183
Riviere make a kind of sequence, in which we can see both the steady igo
development of a 'mannerist' elegance and an increasing emphasis
upon line, as opposed to volume.
When we look at Ingres's mythological compositions, which were
an attempt to rival David in the genre with which the latter had made

189
 1 88 JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES 189 JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES
Jupiter and Thetis 1811 Paolo and Francesca 18 19

his name, we are struck by the differences between the two artists,

188 rather than their similarities. Ingres' s Jupiter and Thetis has nothing
of David's logic and measure. The figure of Thetis, in particular, has
a wilful elegance which is very far from the kind of thing which David
tried to achieve: it is compressed in space, so that it forms a kind of
shallow bas-relief rather than a fully rounded three-dimensional form,
and the head is forced back at an exaggerated angle (it seems possible
that Ingres borrowed this exaggeration from Girodet). The figure of
Jupiter is huge in proportion to that of his suppliant.
Ingres also tackled compositions whose subject-matter was very
different from that selected by David. In addition to painting classical
history pictures and portraits, changing taste led him, like Gros, to
paint the kind of costume picture which was to enjoy an immense
vogue throughout the rest of the century. But these costume pictures
1 8g are informed by an unchanged sense of design the Paolo and Francesca
:

of 1 819, for example, is very close to being the composition ofJupiter

and Thetis in reverse.

190
igo jean-aucuste-dominique Ingres Madame Riviere 1S06
IQ1 eugene Delacroix The Massacre of Chios 1824
 192 JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES Le Bain UiTC 1 862

Some of Ingres's most personal, as well as his most beautiful pictures

are the female nudes, with their marvellous cold sensuality. Ingres was
to paint compositions of this type throughout his career, often using
the same elements in a whole sequence of paintings of different dates.
The Grande Baigneuse of 1808, for example, is the direct ancestress of 187
the principal figure in Le Bain turc, which dates from 1862. 1Q2
Yet, though one can detect certain obsessions in Ingres's work, he
was not confined by those obsessions. His portraits of men are equal,
ifnot superior to his portraits of women. And, conservative though
he was, he was extremely sensitive to the nuances of social change. His
portrait of Monsieur Bertin, editor of the Journal des Debats, which 194
had been the organ of the constitutional opposition under the Bourbon
Restoration, and which became the support of the liberal bourgeoisie
after the July Revolution of 1830 which placed Louis-Philippe in

193
power, is the shrewdest possible characterization of the kind of man
who was to dominate the France of the nineteenth century.
Though Ingres was to influence not only his pupil Degas, but
Renoir, the main line of development in the French painting of the
time does not run through his work. Rather, there is a direct succes-
sion from David to the Romantics, from the Romantics to Courbet,
and from Courbet and the Barbizon painters to the Impressionists.
The first link in the chain, after David himself, is the academic painter
Pierre-Narcisse Guerin (1774- 1833). Guerin was the pupil of Regnault,

193 Theodore gericault The Wounded Cuirassier 18 14

 194 JEAN-AUGUSTE-
DOMINIQUE INGRES
Monsieur Bertin 1832

one of David's rivals, who was slightly (but only slightly) less rigid in
his views on colour and technique than David himself. Guerin himselt
did not have the genius to trigger off the Romantic explosion. That
honour belonged to two of his pupils, Gericault and Delacroix.
The short-lived Theodore Gericault (1 791-1824) was by seven
years the elder of the two, and in his work we see the Romantic spirit
gradually breaking free of the past. Gericault was a child of the
Napoleonic Age. His first paintings, done before the Emperor's fall,
such as the Chasseur Officer Charging, or the Wounded Cuirassier, reflect 1 93
both the excitement and the strain of the declining Empire.
When Gericault made his way to Rome, as he did in 18 16, these
military pictures, which owed much to Gros, gave place to a more
generalized depiction of energy; he was attracted, for example, by
the riderless horse-race which was one of the events of Carnival in 1 95
Rome, an event which he made the subject of a number of sketches.
He seems to have been less overwhelmed than his predecessors by the
works of art which he found in Italy, perhaps because he had already
had access to the vast accumulation of works of art which Napoleon
had brought together in Paris as the spoils of his conquests.

195
 .iM

95 Theodore gericault Start oj the Riderless Horse-race in Rome 1817

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197 Theodore gericault The Raft of the Medusa 1819

Returning to Paris, Gericault embarked on an ambitious project:

The Raft of the Medusa. This was an attempt to give epic stature to a 197
contemporary event, a shipwreck off the west coast of Africa. One
hundred and fifty survivors were crowded upon an improvised raft;
after a mutiny and many days of suffering, only a handful reached
safety. In deciding to treat a subject of this kind, Gericault was not
innovating: he was continuing the tradition of David (the projected
painting of The Tennis-Court Oath and The Death of Marat), and that 1 76
of Gros, who had already influenced the military pictures. The Raft
of theMedusa is the successor of the Plague at Jaffa, although its motive 181
force is not hero-worship but indignant compassion.

Gericault had a tireless curiosity about the nature of man. When he

began to explore the terrible subject he had chosen, he also began to
explore the extremes of experience and feeling. He made studies of
executed criminals, and of the severed limbs he saw in mortuaries. 196
Later, after the completion of the Medusa, he was to make studies of

197

[96 Theodore gericault Severed Heads 1818

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198 Theodore gericault The Plaster-Kiln 1821-22

lunatics, in much the same spirit as Le Bran's study of the niceties of

human expression, but again breaking through the hitherto estab-
lished boundaries of decorum.
The Medusa completed, Gericault departed for England, and here,
in addition to coming into contact with the English national passion
for sport, and particularly for those sports which involve horseflesh,
he had the opportunity to observe the effects of the Industrial Revolu-
tion at first hand. This seems to have made as deep an impression upon
him as anything he encountered in Italy. A certain number of late
198 paintings, lithographs and drawings, notably The Plaster-Kiln, which
seems to have been painted after his return to Paris, sum up his
reactions to industrial occupations and landscape. Marxist critics have
rightly stressed the importance of these works in the history of paint-
ing. The realism which Gericault inherited from David is here put
at the service of an entirely fresh and different kind of sensibility.
Eugene Delacroix (i 798-1 863) came into contact with Gericault

after the latter's visit to Italy. If it was Gericault who, under pressure
from his own demanding temperament, loosened the constrictions of
academic classicism, it was Delacroix 'who now explored to the full
the possibilities which were becoming available to French painting.
All the dominant concepts of Romanticism are to be found in the
work of Delacroix nature, liberty, the love of change for its own
:

sake, the fascination with power, the search for emotion as an end in
itself. Yet, at the same time, he remained profoundly rooted in the

past, both as a man and as an artist. He faces both forward and back
he was the last great decorative painter in the French tradition, and
arguably the last great religious painter also. Yet the technical freedom
of his work leads directly to the innovations of the Impressionists, to
those of Cezanne, and even to those of the Fauves with whom
Modernism begins.
One of his earliest masterpieces, the Massacre of Chios, illustrates lgi
many of his qualities. Like the Death of Marat and the Raft of the Medusa 176, lgy
it depicts a contemporary incident, a Turkish atrocity committed
during the Greek Wars of Independence. But this is made the pretext
for what Baudelaire called a 'terrifying hymn in honour of doom and
irremediable suffering'. Delacroix had been influenced, in his hand-
and especially in his treatment of the background land-
ling of paint,
scape,by the work of the English painter John Constable, with which
he had recently become acquainted.
Another English painter who influenced Delacroix at the same
period was his friend Richard Parkes Bonington (1 801/2-28).
Bonington emigrated to France in 1 8 1 7, and seems to have encountered
Delacroix when both artists were sketching in the Louvre. His contact
with Delacroix was at its closest in 1825, when he shared a studio with
the Frenchman for a few months. Precociously gifted, Bonington
painted small landscapes and costume pieces which interested Dela-
croix because of their freshness of colour and handling. The link
appears very plainly if we compare a typical Bonington, such as his
Francois I and Marguerite de Navarre, with the small cabinet-pictures
which Delacroix was producing at this period. One of the most
beautiful is the Woman with a Parrot, which is also a perfect illustration igg

199
 of the sensuality which illuminates much of Delacroix's work: a very
different sensuality from the cool eroticism of Ingres. The same model
appears in Greece Expiring upon the Ruins of Missolonghi.
Perhaps the greatest of Delacroix's political paintings, however,
200 is the slightly later Liberty Guiding the People, painted to commemorate

the Revolution of 1830. Delacroix here depicts the aspirations of his

time as Ingres depicted its of Monsieur Bertin.
reality in the portrait
This is a political image to put beside David's Marat; themixture of
realism and allegory is made to work by the sheer energy and convic-
tion which the painter puts into it.

In 1832, an extremely important event occurred in Delacroix's

career: he visited Algiers and Morocco in the suite of the Comte de
Mornay, who was Louis-Philippe's Ambassador to the Sultan of
Morocco. Islamic Africa made a profound impression on him. Among
the Moors he discovered a classical dignity and beauty which was the
more impressive because, unlike the world of antiquity which
academic painters taught their pupils to admire, it was still alive. The
 -«3 4

StS-**"

200 eugene Delacroix Liberty Guiding the People 1830

sketches which he made during this visit were to supply him with

ideas for the rest of his life.

The authority of the famous Algerian Women in their Apartment, 201
which was one of the first and most beautiful results of this visit, lies
in the fact that it is a sober and factual record of experience. After 1832,
Delacroix achieves his mature style, which is less high-pitched and
restless than that which he had practised previously. He became

increasingly concerned with the traditional subject-matter of painting,

and intensified his efforts to achieve monumental form. The Entry 202
of the Crusaders into Constantinople, exhibited in the Salon of 1840, later

moved Baudelaire to say that 'No one, after Shakespeare, excels as

Delacroix does in mingling drama and reverie to create a mysterious

201

199 eugene Delacroix Woman with a Parrot 1827

 truth.' This phrase perfectly sums up the difference between the
lgi Entry of the Crusaders and the earlier Massacre oj Chios, which Baude-
laire also admired the Entry of the Crusaders is reflective and poetic
:

where the early work is impassioned and oratorical.

During the later part of his a number of
life, Delacroix painted

cycles of architectural decoration in Paris: for the Salon du Roi and

the library of the Palais Bourbon, for the library of the Palais du
Luxembourg, the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre, the Salon de la
Paix in the Hotel de Ville, and finally for the Chapelle des Saints-
Anges in the Church of Saint-Sulpice. He succeeded in these tasks,
where most nineteenth-century decorative painters failed, because he
was able to use colour as the very structure of his compositions; there
was no separation of colour and design. Working on such a large
scale encouraged him to still greater freedom and amplitude of tech-
nique; the freshness and brilliance of the sketches for these projects
reappears in the finished projects. Few other artists of the time were to
be offered Delacroix's opportunities: he rose to the challenge with
inexhaustible energy.

Sm^y* -^w- -jr -j*r "^^-it^p^grs."

 into Constantinople 1840
102 eugene Delacroix Entry of the Crusaders

The minor Romantics who attenaed the two major luminaries of

their art with varying
the school, Gencault and Delacroix, practised
degrees of success. Horace Vernet (1789-1863), grandson of the
landscape painter Claude-Joseph Vernet, and a
member of the first

vast battle scenes for the

generation of Romantic painters, produced
203

Women in their Apartment 1834

201 eugene DELACROIX Algerian
 historical museum which Louis-Philippe created at Versailles, and
also a number of attractive pictures with Arab subjects; some of these,
203 such as the Arab Tale-Teller in the Wallace Collection, were in fact
produced before Vernet's visit to Algiers in 1837. Oriental subjects of
this type were also favoured by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803-

60), and Edme-Alfred-Alexis Dehondecq (1822-82).

The Napoleonic legend, which had obsessed Gericault for a time,
continued to exercise a powerful spell over artists: a favourite subject
was the retreat from Russia, which had an appropriately romantic
terribilita. Among the painters who tackled this theme were Joseph-

Ferdinand Boissard de Boisdenier (1813-66), and Nicolas Toussaint

Charlet (1792-1845): Delacroix admired the 'powerful unity' of
204 Charlet's version.
Genre pictures with military subjects eventually became one of the
staplesof the academic Salon painting of the mid nineteenth century:
Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (181 5—91) produced some typical
examples, including a tiny and wonderfully meticulous painting of
203 Napoleon I and his Staff. In fact, Salon painting in general owes much to
the Romantic pioneers. The last flicker of romantic Orientalism

203 Horace vernet The Arab Tale-Teller 1833

204 nicolas-toussaint charlet The Retreat from Russia 1836

205 jean-louis-ernest meissonier Napoleon I and his Staff 1868

 206 thomas couture Romans of the Decadence 1847

appears, for instance, in the work of Jean-Leon Gerome (1 824-1904),

who also painted 'classical' genre scenes in the manner of Alma-

Tadema, and lived to teach Vuillard and Leger. A painting such as the
206 immensely popular Romans of the Decadence by Thomas Couture
(181 5-79) shows the tendency of the Salon painters to borrow wherever
they could, in the effort to satisfy public taste. Couture softens
Davidian classicism by harking back nostalgically to Greuze; and yet
the end-product remains very firmly within the Romantic orbit.
Two painters of a somewhat younger generation than that of
Delacroix deserve particular mention. One is Honore Daumier (1808-
79), by profession a caricaturist, whose paintings and drawings were
scarcely known until after his death, when they were acquired from
his widow by a syndicate of dealers. Working in isolation, and
influenced by the techniques of caricature, which call for radical
simplification, Daumier produced work of extraordinary boldness,
which has often been compared to that of Rembrandt in his last years.
It is Daumier's brilliance of observation that allows him to generalize

so successfully. Confident in his ability to pin down the essentials, he

208 has no need to search for an expressive subject: chess-players, or
people in a railway carriage, are an adequate vehicle for what he has

206
207 honore daumier The Refugees 1852-55

208 honore daumier Ciwss Players c. 1863

-
 209 Theodore chasseriau Arab Chieftains Challenging one another beneath the

Ramparts of a City 1852

to say. He is a realist not of the thing seen, but of the spirit. The paint-
ings of ordinary life are an externalization of personal feeling just as
207 much as The Refugees, which is visionary rather than realistic. The
Refugees bears comparison, in sheer intensity of expression, with the
197 studies which Gericault made for the Raft of the Medusa.
Less isolated than Daumier was the very gifted Theodore Chasseriau
(1819-56). Chasseriau was drawn from a strict adherence to the
principles of Ingres into an admiration for Delacroix. He visited
Algeria in 1846, and, like Delacroix, thought that he had discovered
among the Arabs a living equivalent of the world of antiquity. His
2og pictures with Arab which come close to
subjects are the only ones
challenging Delacroix upon his own
ground: there is, indeed, some-
thing feverish and excitable about Chasseriau's talent which gives his
work a flavour of its own, a flickering, spangled quality of colour
which was to attract Gustave Moreau. Towards the end of his brief
life Chasseriau came into contact not only with the young Moreau,

but with Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. He thus forms the link between
Romanticism and Symbolism in French painting.

208
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Triumph of Light

After the Romantic movement lost its impetus, French painters

(those, at least, who were
not content with the formulae of academic
art) found themselves faced with two possible paths of exploration.

Essentially, both of these involved the development of aspects of art

which had interested the Romantics, and which had, indeed, been
latent in French art since the middle of the eighteenth century. One
path involved the exploration, the ever-closer questioning, of the
idea of 'nature'. The real, the natural, the true, were to be defined and
redefined by painter after painter, from Corot to Cezanne. The other
choice was to see, in the visual arts, a means whereby the artist
achieved an externalization of his own and imposed them
feelings,
upon his surroundings; this path led, via Symbolism and Gauguin, to
the Nabis. The realist or naturalist movement has until very recently
been seen more important of the two. But there is a growing
as the
realization that Symbolism was the parent, not only of modern poetry,
but of Modernism as such, throughout Europe.
Even when Romanticism was at its height in France, the tradition of
naturalism was never entirely broken. This was especially true in
landscape, where a natural and informal treatment of the thing seen
could also be an expression of the Romantic spirit. A continuous
tradition links the naturalistic landscape painters of the latter part of
the eighteenth century, such as Simon Mathurin Lantara (1729-88)
and Lazare Bruandet (175 5-1 803) with those of the next century; and
the painter who bridges the gap is Georges Michel (1763-1843).
Michel goes much further than his predecessors towards informality
he rejects the 'composed' landscape of the eighteenth century in
favour of something which comes much closer to being a direct
transcription from nature. The way in which he saw his chosen
subject-matter, the landscape surrounding Paris, was undoubtedly 211
influenced by what he found in the Dutch landscapes which he dealt
in and restored for sale.
Of the landscape painters who were active during the first half of
the century, the closest to the Romantics I have already discussed was

209
210 camille corot Potite d'Augusto at Nartii 1827

211 Georges michel The Plain of St Denis

212 paul huet The Lake 1840

Paul Huet (1803-69), who was a friend of both Delacroix and

Bonington. His landscapes have a dramatic character which led the 212
poet Theophile Gautier to label them 'Shakespearean'.
Significantly, drama of this kind is not the characteristic of the
other important landscape painters of the period. The most important
of these, though his contemporaries were slow to realize it, was Jean-
Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875). It was only the fact that Corot's
parents were fairly well off that enabled him to be a painter at all, and
even then it was some time before he could overcome the opposition
of his family. Once he had done so, he was able to embark on a long,
tranquil, and end prosperous career.
in the
The striking characteristicof Corot's early work is its simplicity
and directness of approach. This is very nearly as true of the 'history
landscapes' which he began to send to the Salon in 1827 as it is of the
studies directly after nature which he made in preparation for them.
The history landscapes, for example the Ponte d'Augusto at Narni, one 210
of the two paintings which marked Corot's debut at the Salon, are a

211
 deliberate attempt to continue the tradition of Claude and Dughet;
the studies from nature, some of the most beautiful of which were
made during Corot's first visit to Italy in 1825—28, show a classical
213 concern with form, the forms themselves being articulated by means
of carefully graded tonal values.
Early in the 1830s, he felt the influence from Dutch seventeenth-
century artists, notably Jacob van Ruisdael, which was affecting other
French landscapists at the time; later still, he veered towards a more
idealized conception of landscape. He made a renewed study of
Claude, and eventually began to produce the paintings which he
214 entitled Souvenirs: nostalgic distillations of his experience, not only of
the landscapes he had spent his life in observing, but of the opera and
ballet performances which he loved. In 1856, for example, he wrote
in one of his notebooks; 'Beauty in art consists in a truthfulness in the
impression we have received from an aspect of nature. The real is . . .

one part of art; the sentiment completes it.'

As sentiment gained the upper hand in Corot's work, the public
began to flock to him. The crepuscular effects to be found in his late
work appealed to the neo-Rococo taste which was prevalent in the
reign of Napoleon III. But it is a mistake to try and sum up Corot too

213 camille corot 5. Trinita dei Monti jrom the Villa Medici c. 1826-28

ft

^«e
214 camille corot Souvenir de Mortejontaine 1864

neatly; he was a paradoxical artist, paradoxical in the admirers he

attracted (Monet was an enthusiast for his late work), equally para-
doxical because he never quite abandoned one concept when moving
on to another. The painter of the misty Souvenirs was at the same time
producing monumental figure studies, such as The Albanian Girl, 216
which dates from 1872. The comparisons which spring to mind when
we look at these studies of women - Delacroix and Manet - are the
measure of Corot's gift.

A whole school of landscape painters shared Corot's attitudes to

nature, without having his innate classicism of temperament. The
tradition of Claude, Poussin and Dughet meant less to them than did
the Dutch landscape painting of the seventeenth century. Their
landscapes are on the human scale, and filled with the breath of the
human spirit. They are, at the same time, exercises in close observa-
213
 ;

215 Theodore rousseau The Forest of Clairbois

tion : the invention of oil-paint in tubes enabled painters to work

from the motif, instead of making drawings which were later
directly
worked up in the studio. Most of these painters were afterwards to be
grouped together as the Barbizon school.
The leading spirit at Barbizon, a forest village close to Paris, was
Theodore-Pierre-Etienne Rousseau (1812-67), who settled there in
215 1836. Rousseau was typical of his colleagues both in the detailed
analysis which he made of natural forms, and of effects of light and
atmosphere, and in his dramatic treatment of them. There is a similar
feeling for drama in the work of Charles-Francois Daubigny (1817-
78) and of Jules Dupre (1812-89), whose work sometimes recalls that
of Huet. A more tranquil naturalism appears in the painting of Henri
Harpignies (1819-1916).
The most of the Barbizon school was, however,
significant painter
not primarily a Millet (1814-75) had
landscapist. Jean-Francois
already established a manner of his own before he settled at Barbizon
in 1849. The Sower, later to be his most celebrated picture, was

214
 2l6 CAMILLE COROT
The Albanian Girl 1872

217 JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET

Qiiarryincn S47-49
1
 exhibited at where Gautier saw and praised it.
the Salon of 1848,
Millet's work marks from Romanticism to the realism
the transition
217 of mid-century. His subject is peasant life, which he sees as a matter of
heroic toil and struggle: good reason why his work was later to
attract the enthusiastic attention of Van Gogh. Neglected during his
own lifetime, Millet achieved immense fame and popularity im-
mediately after his death. The dimension of spirituality in his work
was favourably contrasted with the lack of it to be found in the work
of the Impressionists. Millet, perhaps even more than his fellow
realist Gustave Courbet, lies at the end of a tradition he takes the
:

subject-matter of the Le Nains and infuses it with a Romantic afflatus,

and at the same time he is a moralist, like Greuze. If some of his
pictures disappoint, it is because, like those of Greuze, they preach too
openly; what should be implicit is made explicit.
Gustave Courbet (1819-77) seldom makes this mistake, for all his
loudly professed Socialism, for which he was driven into exile after
the Commune (the specific charge was that he had been responsible
for the destruction of the column in the Place Vendome). Courbet
was the son of a well-to-do farmer, and he came from the traditionally
independent Franche-Comte. As an artist he owed his formation less
to the masters under whom he studied than to what he found in the
Louvre he particularly esteemed Rembrandt and the Spanish masters
:

who were also to have a decisive impact upon Manet.

218 gustave courbet The Funeral at Ornatis 1849

219 gustave courbet Good Mowing, Monsieur Courbct 1854

Courbet's first was scored at the exceptional liberal Salon of

success
1849 (it was liberal it came close on the heels of the Revolution
because
of 1848). He was awarded a medal, which placed him hors concours for
future exhibitions. In view of the hostility which he was later to evoke,
this was a real piece of good fortune; his work might be abused, but

no jury could prevent him from exhibiting it. Public and critics alike
were outraged by The Funeral at Ornans, the large picture which 21>

Courbet exhibited in the Salon of the following year. Courbet was

painting what he knew: Ornans was where he came from, and he

217
 '
i k

^ ^

220 gust ave courbet The Studio 1855

chose to paint it without a hint of idealization. 'Never', cried the art

critic of the Journal des Debats, 'has the cult of ugliness been practised
more frankly.'
Courbet was a naively self-centred man many
: of his works, such
as the delightful Good Morning, Monsieur Courbet of 1854, are an
2ig expression of his sense of the identity between the painter and his
works. He enjoyed his position as a chefd'ecole, even if he found him-
self frequently exposed to attack. In 1855, he painted a huge canvas
22 which was intended as a kind of manifesto The Studio, which he sub-
:

titled 'a real allegory'. Here we see Courbet himself seated at his easel,
with a nude model standing beside him. To the left are the plebeian
models he used in his compositions; and to the right are various
friends and supporters, among them Baudelaire and the Socialist
writer Proudhon. When The Studio was rejected by the jury of the
Exposition Universelle of 1855 (on this occasion Courbert's Salon
privileges as a medal- winner did not apply), the artist decided to hold
a separate showing of his works. He put forty of his paintings on view,
including The Funeral and of course The Studio, with the word

218
'Realism' in bold letters at the door. He also issued a manifesto, in

which he said:
'I have studied, without bias or prejudice, the art of the ancients

and the art of the moderns. I have attempted neither to imitate the
one nor to copy the other; nor have I striven for the idle goal of art
for art's sake. No! I have simply tried, by searching the records of
traditional knowledge, to arrive at a reasoned and independent
consciousness of my own individuality.
'To know in order to do, such was my desire. To translate the
manners, the ideas, the outward appearance of my age as I perceived
them: in a word, to create living art; such is my aim.'
Courbet thus staked his claim to be regarded as the successor of the
ageing Ingres and Delacroix. From 1855 until 1870, he was probably
the most discussed artist in France. His appetite for reality was
equalled by his appetite for work: his best paintings seem to be part
of a gigantic effort to devour every experience available to the painter.

221
EDOUARD MANET
Jesus Insulted
by the Soldiers
'1
c. 864
 Yet, as Edouard Manet (1832-83) was to demonstrate, an artist
could be a realist and yet practise a very different kind of art from that
of Courbet. Nevertheless, these two very different artists had some-
thing in common: Manet, like Courbet, was deeply impressed by
Spanish painting, which became available to him, as it did to Courbet,
through the exhibition of the paintings of the Spanish school con-
fiscated from the Orleans Collection after the fall of Louis-Philippe's
Orleanist monarchy in 1848. Manet came so completely under the
221 influence of Spanish art that some of his early work, such as the Jesus
Insulted by the Soldiers, come very close to pastiche. Other, more
personal works - Lola de Valence, Victorine in Espada Costume, The
Balcony- play original variations upon themes which Manet discovered
in the painting of Velazquez and Goya.
Manet's parents were upper-middle-class Parisians, rich enough to
make their son an allowance once he had overcome their objections
to his choice of career. In many respects, Manet remained true to his

edouard manet Le Dejeuner stir I'herbe 1863

223 edouard manet Music at the Tuileries 1862

origins he relished the Parisian scene and the

: amusements offered by
the Second Empire; unlike Courbet, he did not feel comfortable about
the admiration which eventually came his way from younger artists
because he did not whole-heartedly accept their view of him as a
pioneer and a rebel.

At thesame time, he remained an experimentalist almost in spite of

himself, and was frequently attacked by contemporary critics. His
technique was novel; avoiding half-tones, he flooded his pictures with
light and used strong, dark outlines. But it was not merely this which
aroused the opposition rather, it was the immorality which the critics
;

thought they discovered in his work. A well-known example is

Le Dejeuner sur I'herbe, which became the subject of an especially 222
violent outcry. The picture, as art historians have been at pains to
point out, is merely a nineteenth-century version of Giorgione's
Concert champetre, which had also inspired Watteau. The three figures
in the principal group are taken almost directly from a well-known

sixteenth-century engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi. Despite this,

221
 the critics and even the public were horrified by the combination of
clothed and nude figures, one good reason being the fact that the
clothed figures were wearing contemporary dress, which suggested
an equally contemporary context.
Before we dismiss this opposition as stupid and nonsensical, it is as

well to remember the context in which the picture was shown. Ever
since Chardin had complained to Diderot about the lack of a 'moral
climate' for painting, French artists had tried, in their various ways, to
create one. This is true of Greuze and David; it is also true of Courbet.

Manet's work is a demonstration of the fact that he thought that

moral notions of this sort were extraneous to the painter's task, which
was essentially to paint to find new ways of relating the process of
:

putting paint upon canvas to the world of appearances. Manet omits

the moral dimension in all his most beautiful and characteristic paint-
223, 22 4 ings, such as Music at the Tuileries and A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Life
itself was henceforth to be the painter's guide, not some ideal notion

224 edouard manet A Bar at the Folies-Bergere 1882

 225 EDOUARD MANET
La Serveuse de bocks

his eye. Painting was 225

of life, but simply that which presented itself to
on own terms. was
It
to be practised for its own sake, and enjoyed
its

wonder that the contemporary

a considerable revolution; it is small
public had difficulty in accepting it.
upon whom Manet's work had the most decisive
The painter
impact was Claude Monet (i 840-1926). It is not too much to say that

into the position of being a chef d'ecole.

During
Monet forced Manet
the difficult beginnings of Impressionism,
and
his long life, Monet saw
was in his work that the implications of the
then its triumph. It

movement were worked out to their fullest extent, and his late
compositions are as extreme as anything in the
whole history of
Le Havre, Monet made his first
French painting. Son of a grocer at

223
 contact with the professional art world when he met Eugene Boudin
22b (1824-98), whose beach scenes anticipate Impressionist clarity
little

of colour without adopting Impressionist techniques. In 1862 Monet's

parents (who, like Manet's, had opposed his desire to become a
painter) sent him to study in the studio of the Salon painter Charles
Gleyre (1806-76). It was in Gleyre's studio that he met the artists
who were to form the core of the Impressionist movement Pierre- :

Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley (1840-99), and Frederic

Bazille (1841-70).
Monet's god was light, and the thing which interested him most
was the movement of light. He therefore, by gradual stages, abandoned
the attempt to represent the forms which he observed, but confined
227 himself to trying to pin down the way the light changed as it passed
over the forms which happened to be in its path. In this obsession he
had been anticipated by the greatest of the English Romantic painters,
Turner, whose work he discovered when he was temporarily driven
from his home at Argenteuil-sur-Seine by the Franco-Prussian War,
and went to London. But Monet's attitude to light was basically very
different from Turner's because his object was not to arouse emotion,
but to explore matters scientifically. Colour, for Monet, is something

226 eugene boudin Empress Eugenie on the Beach at Troiwille 1863

227 claude monet The Cliff at Fecamp 1881

which can only be perceived in terms of light, and the pure colours
which he puts upon the canvas are intended to blend together in the
eye to create what is bright and what is shadowy.
The first Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, at which thirty artists
exhibited, including Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Degas and Monet
himself, was the first attempt at a public statement of new attitudes in
painting. The label coined for the group was not invented by the
artists themselves, but was accepted by them: it came from a picture

by Monet entitled Impression: Sun Rising. Subsequent Impressionist

exhibitions were held in 1876, 1877, 1879, 1881, 1882 and 1886, and
varying numbers of artists took part. Monet, however, was the one
who remained the truest to the central doctrines of Impressionism.

225
•
^s^rs* >—

228 CAMILLE PISSARRO

The Louvre in the Snow
1902
 229 auguste renoir On the Terrace 1881

Eventually he began to concentrate on producing long series of

paintings which showed the same motif under different conditions
of light and weather a group of haystacks in a field, the facade of
:

2 jo Rouen Cathedral, the water-lilies in the beautiful garden which

Monet created for himself at Giverny. Many of the early pictures were
painted entirely in the open air: Monet thus continued a practice
which had been begun by Corot and the Barbizon painters.

228

230 Claude monet Rouen Cathedral: Morning Sun 1894

 ;

-,\vV
 The huge and continuing popularity of the Impressionists with
twentieth-century collectors and gallery-goers makes it perhaps
some of them, although major painters
difficult to accept the fact that
in sale-room terms, occupy a relatively minor position in the story
of French art. One such was the half-English Alfred Sisley another,
;

somewhat more considerable, was Camille Pissarro (i 830-1903), the

kindly 'father' of the group, who painted some beautiful pictures and
many dull ones.
Undoubtedly rank were Renoir and Edgar Degas (1834-
in the first

191 7), neither of whom remained faithful to Impressionism in its

strictest interpretation. Renoir is a painter who sums up in his own
development many of the most important tendencies of the nine-
teenth century: having begun as an Impressionist, he then felt the
attraction of the severe manner of Ingres, and then, returning to
colour again, produced work which seems like a revival, in terms that
his contemporaries would understand, of the manner of Boucher and
Fragonard. Like Boucher, Renoir developed an efficient formula for
painting the female nude, and like Boucher's his hedonism can seem
cloying. In fact, of all the important Impressionists, Renoir now seems
to me the most uneven. He rebelled against the heavy, lifeless side of
nineteenth-century taste, as represented by the academic Salon paint-
ing of his time, only to fall victim to the passion for the dix-huitieme
which came in with the Empress Eugenie. There is no denying,

231 edgar degas Young Spartans Exercising i860

232 EDGAR DEGAS IVoillCIl Irotlitlg C. 1 884

Renoir offers a very beautiful vision of nineteenth- 22g

however, that
century life, a delicate compromise between realism and
idealism, in

tenderer and more opulent versions of the subjects which already 2 34

appear in some of Manet's paintings.

Degas was very different in background and temperament. Where
Renoir's origins were humble, Degas was the son of a banker.
He
began as a disciple of Ingres, and it is interesting to see what he makes
of classical doctrine in an early history picture, such as the Young
231

Spartans Exercising, which dates from i860. Already

Degas, while

231
 233 edgar degas Dancer with Bouquet, Curtseying 1878

preserving classical rigour, is rejecting the classical tendency to

young bodies have the awkwardness of individuality.
idealize: these
As he developed, it was not the play of light that interested Degas, but
233 the utterly characteristic gesture. His brilliant figures of dancers are
representations of women at work, whether practising or actually on
232 stage: they are working as hard as thewasherwomen, or women
ironing, whom he also painted. Degas was not content to reject
idealism in his figures, he also spurned the classical rules of composi-
tion. His apparently 'accidental' distribution of compositional
elements owes much to his study of Japanese prints (which also
attracted his fellow Impressionists) and photographs.

232
 ^r

234 AUGUSTE RENOIR The Box 1 874

 235 HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC At the Moulin Rouge 1 892

One thing which makes Degas important in the late nineteenth

century is the fact that he continued to emphasize the importance of
drawing. A brilliant draughtsman such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(1864-1901) could find sustenance in Degas's work for this reason.
235 Cafes and theatres attracted them both they developed the techniques
;

which Manet had already pioneered for recording ordinary life. But
in Lautrec we are aware ofjust that element of comment which Manet
had decisively rejected. Where Degas is interested in theatrical
performances as a specific kind of work, Lautrec is interested in them
as projections of the soul: he has a sardonic eye for character which

rivals that of Maurice Quentin de la Tour.

It is, however, not Lautrec but Cezanne and Seurat who mark the

236 rejection of Impressionism. Paul Cezanne (i 839-1906) started his

career as a follower of Courbet, then came into contact with the
Impressionists, and was an exhibitor at the first Impressionist exhibi-

234
tion. He was never, however, a convinced follower of Manet and
Monet; he wanted to find the way to a much more classical, archi-
tectural lorm of painting. Manet had been interested in the relation-
ship between what the painter saw and the techniques he adopted to
put it on canvas; Cezanne perceived that there was a further problem
how to unify the picture-surface so as to give the work of art an
identity as an object at least as strong as the identity of the objects
which surrounded it. The external morality which Manet had
rejected was to be replaced in Cezanne's work by a morality of
painting; art itself was to supply the moral canon.

236 PAUL cezanne Still-life with Plaster Cupid c. 1895

 This step, a decisive one of art, because it lies at the
in the history
very roots of Modernism, was backward, a re-examination
also a step
of problems which had passionately interested David and Chardin.
David's anxiety to avoid mannerism is to be found again in Cezanne:
the distinguishing mark of the large, late compositions, such as the
237 Bathers- which still seem radical today, so many years after they were
painted - is that they have no 'handwriting', no distinctive personal
touch. Every apparent distortion or departure from the norm reflects
the desire, not to express some idea or feeling or observation, but to
achieve the highest possible degree of pictorial unity. Cezanne thus
returns to the impersonality of Poussin.
Poussin's influence is equally visible in the work of Georges Seurat
(1859-91). Seurat tried to reduce Impressionism, which was already
much influenced by scientific theories about light, to a fully worked-
out scientific system. Where the Impressionists had used colour
empirically, Seurat used pure colours, spot by spot, to create colour
effects on a purely rational basis. This colour he applied to static,
architectural compositions, as firmly classical in their relationships as

237 paul cezanne Bathers c. 1900-5

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538 georges seurat A Sunday Afternoon at the Island of La Grande Jatte 1886

Poussin's and David's had been in the past. The difference lies in the
content of these compositions. Seurat makes us feel the solemnity and
grandeur of ordinary life, not that of some climactic occasion. 238
Parisians enjoying themselves beside the Seine are made the excuse for
a composition as deliberate as The Deluge or The Oath of the Horatii. 73 > 174
Thus Seurat, like Cezanne, rejects external morality in favour of a
morality of painting.
The great deliberate statements of Cezanne and Seurat bring the
nineteenth century to a fitting close. Modern art owes much to both
of them, and more essentially to Cezanne, who is the direct ancestor of
Cubism. Yet Cubism no longer seems the only ancestor of modern
art, and there is good reason for regarding Cezanne and Seurat alike

as being essentially the conclusion of something. In their work is

summed up the rationalism, the objectivity, the reticence, the pro-

fessional feeling for the metier, which had been the distinguishing
marks of French painting throughout its history.

237
239 GUSTAVE MOREAU UtlicOWS
 CHAPTER TWELVE

Symbolists and Modernists

If we are fully to understand the relationship between the French

national school of the nineteenth century and the international
Modernism which replaced and to some extent displaced it during
our own, it is necessary to look backward a little in time, and to trace
a path of development which runs through the work of painters who

are for themost part a great deal less celebrated than the Impressionists.
While Impressionism and literary Symbolism were on cordial
terms (Manet and Mallarme were friends, and Manet's 'art for art's
sake' attitude was certainly something that Symbolists could approve
of), there was also in France a tradition of Symbolist painting.

Romanticism for a moment retreated before the onslaught of realism,

but it was by no means defeated. Gustave Moreau (1826—98) is one of
the two important figures who form the link between Delacroix, at
the beginning of the century, and Gauguin and the Nabis at the end
of it. He was perfectly aware of his own position: 'I am a bridge
which some of you will cross,' was what he said to his pupils.
Moreau's intricate compositions are the very antithesis of Impres-
sionism. For its airy world of light and colour, of the life of the streets
and the countryside, he substituted the claustrophobic world of
dream, but a dream worked out in every detail. Nothing could be 239
more revealing about the difference between his attitudes and those of
the Impressionists, than Moreau's instruction to a disciple: 'You must
think colour, imagine it. If you do not imagine it, you will never make
a beautiful colour.' But Moreau could be yet more specific: 'I believe',
he said, 'neither in what I touch nor in what I see. I believe only in
what I do not see and solely in what I feel; my brain, my reason seem
to me ephemeral and of doubtful reality; my inner feelings alone seem
to me eternal and incontestably certain.'
Yet Moreau was still, in the detail of his pictures, the prisoner of
nineteenth-century naturalism his visions are cobbled together from
:

innumerable meticulously observed details.

239
240 Vincent van gogh Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889
 241 PIERRE PUVIS
DE CHAVANNES
The Poor Fisherman
1881

Lack of unity is not the reproach which can be brought against the
compositions of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98). Puvis, though
very different in style from Delacroix, was the latter's successor as a
painter of vast decorations; as the tide of realism came in, he stood out
for the epic and the monumental. But it was a peculiarly blanched and
desiccated monumentalism. J.K. Huysmans, describing Puvis's The
Poor Fisherman in an essay written in 188 1, captures its quality exactly: 241

'This is a twilight painting, a painting like an old fresco, eaten away

.'
by the light of the moon, drowned by floods of rain. . .

It is not difficult to see why the Symbolists liked

Puvis, and some of

his characteristics - 'unreal' colour, and a firm division between

colour-areas - were to be the commonplaces of Symbolist painting.

A more conscious and genuine Symbolist than either of these two
was Odilon Redon (1 840-1914); but Redon first made his name, and
fascinated the Symbolist writers, with his graphic work. His visionary
and allegorical work in colour (some of it in oils, and some of it in his
favourite medium belongs very largely to the end of his life.
of pastel)
His position in a history of French painting is a great deal more
marginal than that of Moreau.
241
 The artist who saw
to it that Symbolism was to play a genuine role
242 in the history of French painting was undoubtedly Paul Gauguin
(1 848-1903). Gauguin started his career in the Impressionist group. In

his early days, as a prosperous businessman interested in painting, it

was their works he collected. Later, he exhibited in the Impressionist
exhibitions of 1880 and 1881; and at the last Impressionist show, in
1886, he contributed no fewer than nineteen pictures. But he was not
yet a fully personal artist. The Gauguin were his
decisive events for
discovery of Cezanne and his Pont-Aven in Brittany.
visits to

His earliest truly characteristic pictures were painted in Brittany in

1888. One of the most significant of the works painted in this year is
243 the Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, where the artist tries to imagine the
Biblical episode as it might appear to the Breton peasant women after
they had heard it described to them in a sermon. The structure of the
picture shows Gauguin's attempt to achieve a pictorial unity like that
of Cezanne, and also the lessons he had learned from a recent study of
stained glass. But the colour is expressive rather than structural it is
;

in fact the colour of the women's emotions.

242 paul gauguin Nevermore 1 i

242
243 PAUL gauguin Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 1888

Before turning to Gauguin's followers, it is necessary to take a look

at theman who was a colleague rather than a disciple the Dutch-born
:

painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). Van Gogh's life-story, like

Gauguin's, has been told many times, from his beginnings with the
picture-dealing firm of Goupil at The Hague to his suicide at Auvers-
sur-Oise. The Romantic painters meant much to Van Gogh, and so
did the Romantic-realist Millet, but it was his personal contact with
Gauguin, Lautrec and Seurat which helped him to form his style. His
originality was the product, not so much of profound cogitation about
the nature of painting as of an extreme violence of temperament
which pushed him towards the use of arbitary and symbolic colour. 240
In the very numerous late works which Van Gogh painted at Aries
and Auvers we see that total commitment to the dictates of the self
which has come to be seen as one of the criteria of modernism in art.

243
 On the occasion of the Exposition Universelle of 1889, Gauguin
organized an exhibition of his own at the Cafe Volpini in Paris. The
exhibitors were the painters who had worked with him in Brittany.
Symbolist critics immediately realized the kinship between Gauguin's
newly proclaimed 'Synthesism' and literary Symbolism. A deeper
response to Gauguin's work was to follow; his followers were to
perceive in him a successful attempt to bring together the two things
which seemed to them most vital in contemporary art - the pictorial
absolutism of Cezanne, and the subjectivity of Moreau and Redon.
Gauguin's followers called themselves the Nabis (after the Hebrew
word for prophet), and their involvement with the Symbolist move-
ment was far more complete than that of the man who originally in-
244 spired them. The founder of the Nabis was Paul Serusier (1 864-1 927).
Like many of his associates he was educated at the Lycee Condorcet, a
school in Paris long famous for producing a sophisticated elite; his
schoolfellows included the actor-producer Lugne-Poe, whose theatre
was later to provide a home for the Symbolist drama, and the future
editor of the important Symbolist publication La Revue Blanche,
Thadee Natanson.
Serusier came into contact with Gauguin at Pont-Aven in 1888,
which was, as we have seen, a crucial year in the development of
Gauguin's art. Almost instantly converted to Gauguin's way of think-
ing, Serusier began to proselytize his friends. A man of systematic
mind, he tried to codify what he felt he had learned. Serusier believed
that art must return to its sources in the remote past: to the Egyptians,
the Greeks, the ancient Chinese, and the sculptors of the Gothic
At the same time, he proclaimed doctrines which were
cathedrals.
of literary Symbolism, then very much in the
essentially an extension
public view (the poet Jean Moreas had published his Symbolist
Manifesto in 1886). 'Nature', Serusier declared, 'merely supplies us
with inert materials. A human mind alone can arrange them in such a
way that, through them, it can express its feelings by means of
correspondences. That is how we arrive at style, the ultimate aim of all
art.' The notion of 'correspondences', profound affinities between

sense stimuli of different kinds, had made an early appearance in

Symbolist literature with Rimbaud's sonnet about the links between
vowels and colours.
But Serusier is more important as a prophet and teacher than as an
artist. There is something stiff and unrealized about his work, just as

244
244 paul serusier The Tapestry

there is about that of some of his closest associates, such as Maurice

Denis (1870-1943).
The same reproach cannot be levelled against the two greatest
members of the movement: Edouard Vuillard (1 868-1940), and
Pierre Bonnard (1 867-1947). Vuillard and Bonnard have subsequently
been linked together as 'Intimists', and their connection with the
Nabis almost forgotten. Yet the Symbolist milieu is the one from
which they sprang, and it is the Symbolist experience which divides
them from the Impressionists, who painted subjects which were super-
ficially similiar. The fundamental in
desire to unify the surface, so
Cezanne, makes appearance in the early pictures of Bonnard and
its 246
Vuillard in the use of a compressed and flattened picture-space. We 245
find a similar compression in Degas, but these two painters of a much
younger generation carry matters much further, to the point where
we begin to see that the mark of the brush is as important as the repre-
sentation which each successive mark builds up. Vuillard, in particular,

MS
 *>*-r

245 edouard vuillard The Artist's Mother and Sister c. 1893

carries two-dimensional patterning to extreme lengths, and thus

provides an equivalent for the word mosaic in Symbolist poetry.
The central idea of Symbolism, that it was possible to use the object
as a nexus for ideas and feelings which could then be decoded from the
clues provided in the work of art, was also to be a fundamental one in
the history of the Modernism which succeeded Symbolism. It was
248 Symbolism that taught young painters such as Henri Matisse (1869-
2 49 1954) and Pablo Picasso (b. 1881) how to reinterpret the legacy of
Gauguin and Cezanne; although eventually they reacted against
Symbolist idealism.

246
 246
PIERRE BONNARD
Woman with a Rabbit
1891
 The first great innovatory event of a period which
year 1905 saw the
was be marked by so many innovations, and which was to see the
to
transformation of French painting, as it had hitherto been understood,
into the international manifestation now usually referred to as the
Ecole de Paris. This event was the appearance of a new group of

painters, quickly dubbed the Fauves or 'wild beasts', at the Salon

d'Automne which had itself been founded only two years earlier. The
acknowledged leader of the group was Matisse, and his colleagues in-
cluded Albert Marquet (1875-1947), Georges Rouault (1871-1958),
Andre Derain (1 880-1 954), Maurice de Vlaminck (1 876-1958), Othon
Friesz (1 879-1949) and Kees van Dongen (b. 1877). The Fauves were
interested in the power of colour, and, in particular, in its constructive
power from the compositional point of view. They were, in adopting
this point of view, anxious to stress their own links with what had

preceded them.
In fact, Matisse and his colleagues saw themselves as restoring to
painting qualities which were present in Gauguin, but which Gauguin's
immediate followers had misunderstood or forgotten. Matisse was the
pupil of Gustave Moreau, so he had every reason to know where he
stood. Essentially, he agreed with Serusier; 'Composition', he said, 'is

247
ANDRE DERAIN
Woman in a Chemise
1906
 i .

"'
'-'

1 t
1
''^jPfcp'f'-' ilH
jnj
J T II

248 HENRI MATISSE 249 PABLO PICASSO

The Moroccan 191 Woman Ironing 1904

the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the

painter's disposal for the expression of his feelings.'
The revolutionary element in Fauvist theory came in the candid
acknowledgment that nineteenth-century realism was dead. As
Matisse's associate Derain remarked: 'The great thing about our 247
experiment was that it freed painting from all imitative or conventional
contexts.'
With that liberation came internationalization: Paris became the
centre of an experiment whose effects were world wide. Young
artists flocked to the city to participate in what was going on there,
just as French artists had traditionally flocked to Rome to study the
relics of antiquity. The arrival of Picasso in Paris, in the year 1900, was
a first sign. He was to be followed by many other artists Spaniards like
:

himself; Germans and Italians; Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists.

Paris was the magnet which drew them all.

249
2qg Picasso's earliest truly individual paintings, those of the Blue Period,
250 are still Symbolist in style: they owe much to Redon, for example, as
well as to Degas and to Lautrec. In subject-matter, they are close to the
paintings which Rouault was producing at the same time, though
technically they are much suaver.
But Picasso could not be content to remain in a world of poetic
sadness.He already had an immense capacity for absorbing other
men's styles, and the things which now stirred him were primitive

250 pablo picasso Mountebanks 1905

250
25i pablo picasso Les Demoiselles d' Avignon 1907

(especially African) and the achievement of Cezanne. The

art,

Cezanne retrospective of 1900 was followed by an even

more im-
Picasso began
portant memorial exhibition in 1907. Early in 1907,
work on a large figurative composition, which was to be a considered
after many
statement of his new position. This was the painting which,
transformations, became Les Demoiselles d' Avignon. In the course of 251

working upon this, Picasso absorbed, much more thoroughly than he-

forms in
had been able to do before, Cezanne's method of analysing
pictorial order.
order to release their true qualities and possibilities for
Les Demoiselles d' Avignon thus led directly to a new pictorial adventure
Analytical Cubism.
251
 Picasso's colleague in this adventure was a young Frenchman,
Georges Braque (i 882-1963). He had been introduced to Picasso by
the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and by the dealer D.-H. Kahnweiler.
In 1907 he visited Picasso's studio and saw the just completed Demoisel-
les d' Avignon; and by the summer of 1908 he was painting landscapes

which showed an exaggeration of Cezanne's propensity to reduce

everything to geometrical forms. Meanwhile, Picasso was applying
much the same principle to still-life. It was inevitable that two painters
working upon lines so similar should come together.
253 By 1909 both artists were painting pictures in which objects are dis-
sected into facets. In constructing the picture, these facets are spread
out over the surface, and are used to present successive yet simul-
taneous views of the reality which the painter experienced. At the
same time, these facets are carefully related to one another in such a
way that the surface itself is completely structured, and has the unity
which Cezanne himself had continually striven to achieve.
Gradually, structural preoccupations began to oust descriptive ones,
and Cubism entered upon a second phase: synthetic rather than
analytical. Reality was now carefully coded into a new language of
shapes and colour-harmonies. The facets are reduced to overlapping
flat planes.
But the world was not completely ousted from Cubist art. As
real

254 early as 191 Braque had begun introducing letters into his pictures:
1

immediately recognizable symbols which emphasized the deliberate

'unrealism' of the rest of the composition. From this it was but a short
step to using scraps of newspaper, imitations of woodgrain, pieces of
fabric. Cubism led to the invention of the collage, in which reality is
re-created, not by means of elaborate illusiomsm, but through a cun-
ning combination of symbol and sample, in which the oblique presen-
tation of some particular object is played off against a passage of
shocking literalism.
The whole tendency of Synthetic Cubism was, however, inexorably
towards abstraction. The painting becomes a series of juxtaposed or
overlapping areas. One plane may
be transparent, in order to allow us
to see another behind it. So far as Picasso himself was con-
which lies

cerned, this phase of the Cubist adventure lasted from 191 2 until the
256 end of the war. By 1920 he was ready for a new and different approach.
The Cubist adventure undertaken by Picasso and Braque naturally
attracted the attention of other young artists; soon a heresy developed,

252
252 henri matisse Luxury 1907
254
253 GEORGES BRAQUE
Still-life with Violin
1912

254 GEORGES BRAQUE

Musical Forms
1913

under the name of Orphism. The leading spirit in this rebellion was
Robert Delaunay (1885-1941). Delaunay's Cubism was contaminated
both by Symbolist ideas inherited from Serusier, and by notions bor-
rowed from the new and noisy Italian movement in the arts, Futurism,
which had launched itself on Pans, Italy and the world (in that order)
with a manifesto published in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. Symbol-
ism encouraged Delaunay not to scrutinize reality, as Picasso and
Braque had begun to do, but to think in terms of some ideal, and to
select aspects of realitywhich seemed to embody it. Futurism was
especially fascinated by the rhythms of modern life, the representation
of dynamism, simultaneity and speed.
Progressing through a study of three subjects which seemed
to suit

preoccupations - first the Eiffel Tower, then a tower

his particular
with a Ferris wheel, finally an almost abstract representation of the
movement, colour and light to be seen through an open window
- 255

Delaunay arrived, in 191 2, at a pointwhere his pictures became en-

tirely abstract, demonstrations of the power of colour to impart move-
255
ment and rhythm. 'Everyone', saidDelaunay, 'has sensitive eyes to see
that there are colours, that colours produce modulations, monu-
mental forms, depths, vibrations, playful combinations, that colours
breathe. Goodbye to Eiffel Towers, views of streets, the outside
. . .

world . we
. no longer want apples in a fruit bowl, we want the
.

heartbeat of man himself.'

Among the numerous foreign painters of the same generation
working in Paris before and during the First World War there were
some, such as Gino Severini (b. 1883) whose allegiance remained basi-
cally with already established national modes - in Severini's case,
Italian Futurism. Others became more identifiably part of the French
environment.
 256 pablo picasso The Three Musicians 1921

No. 4 1910-u
4 255 robert delaunay Window on the City,

257
 257 JUAN GRIS
The Sunblind 1914

258 AMEDEO
MODIGLIANI
Seated Girl c. 19 17

259 CHAIM SOUTINE

Portrait oj a Boy
1928

Amedeo Modigliani (1 884-1920) and Juan Gris (1 887-1927) moved

to Paris in the same year, 1906, but their careers had very different
patterns. Both owed something to Picasso. The Italian Jew Modigliani
seems to have found his roots in the paintings of Picasso's Blue and
Rose periods, to which he added influences drawn from Rodin and
Matisse. Cezanne, too, had much to teach him, especially about the
degree to which distortion or deformation of reality could actually
lead the artist towards a deeper understanding of what was 'real' for
himself. Modigliani is perhaps best thought of as another belated
258 Symbolist, who used the female nude in particular as a way of
exploring his conquest of the ideal.
257 Gris is much more intimately connected with the development of
French painting. Contact with Picasso led him towards Cubism; he
had fully mastered the Cubist method by 191 3. By 191 5 he had
abandoned Analytical for Synthetic Cubism, and it was Gris, indeed,

258
who pressed this aspect of the style to its furthest extreme, confessing

candidly that for him the source of the painting was subjective - the
imaginative faculty - and that he only moved towards the representa-
tion of objects as he proceeded.
Chaim Soutine (1894-1943) was a friend of Modigliani's, and a
much more Jewish artist. His characteristic achievement was to make
the apocalyptic central European Expressionist strain part of the heri-
tage of French painting. When we compare Soutine's work to that of
the Fauves, even to that of the wildest of them, Maurice de Vlaminck
(1 876-1958), we see that the thing which he possesses, while they do

not, is a sense of the transcendental. Soutine's anguished, emotional

canvases sometimes seem like a direct challenge to the intellectuality 259
of the Cubist adventure. The fact that Soutine and the Cubists could
form part of the same milieu demonstrated the degree to which the
French school had shed any kind of fixed national identity.

259
 mk
w
Wif'

260 fernand leger The Mechanic 1920

 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The School of Paris

The fullest period of internationalism only began after the conclusion

of the FirstWorld War. Some artists came as exiles, among them
Russians such as Marc Chagall (b. 1889). After spending four years in
Paris Chagall returned to Russia at the outbreak of war, only to ex-
patriate himself definitively in 1922, arriving again in Paris in the
following year. For Chagall and others Paris provided the most sym-
pathetic environment available to them, but on Chagall at least it made
little stylistic impact.
The 1920s were a time of feverish activity in Parisian studios, and of
very complex cross-currents in the development of painting. Im-
mediately after the war, it seemed as if modern painting had paused to
consolidate and draw breath. In 1920, Picasso entered upon his neo-
classical phase; Gris, a classicist by temperament, was at the height of
his powers; Braque moderated the austerities of Synthetic Cubism to
make room for a richer, more painterly style; and the former Fauve
Andre Derain seemed to be pioneering a return towards a more
also
traditional kindof 'painterly' painting.
One painter very much in tune with the atmosphere of the times
was Fernand Leger (1881-1955), who had first made his reputation as
a Cubist of a rather less stringent sort than were the creators of the
movement. By 19 18, he had achieved a more individual style, painting
pictures which took literally Cezanne's idea that every natural form is
capable of being reduced to a geometrical equivalent. Having served
in an engineering unit during the First World War, Leger had become
fascinated by technological imagery; and this preoccupation was
linked, through his interest in geometry, to the lessons learnt from
Cezanne and from the Cubists. At first Leger was included, in his
search for hieratic anonymity, to identify the human figure with the
machine. Later, he evolved towards a more traditional classicism, 260
seeking inspiration not only in Cezanne but in Poussin.
The paintings which Leger produced during the 1920s are linked to
the work of the so-called Purists, such as Amedee Ozenfant (1886- 262

261
261 marcel duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912
262 amedee ozenfant Composition 1920

1966) and Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, 1887-1965).

These were men who tried to develop the clarity, precision and
rationality of Cubism into an all-embracing order, a kind of art com-
pletely congruous with the demands of modern technological civiliza-
tion. Purism resembled the Constructivism which flourished in Russia
during the early years of Soviet rule, in that its attitudes were those of
scientific experiment and investigation, so that the work of art be-
came a mere by-product of the exploration of general aesthetic ideas.
Perhaps for this reason it had a more fruitful impact upon architecture
than it did upon painting; Le Corbusier went on to become one ol the
greatest of twentieth-century architects.
Though the classical strain seemed to triumph in French painting
during the decade that followed the war, the most important develop-
ments of the time were in fact profoundly anti-classical. The rise and
decline ot the Surrealist movement was to dominate what happened
in French art between 1920 and 1940; and even after the Second
World War, Surrealism continued to make its influence felt.

263
 Surrealism had its roots in Dada, the artmovement which first mani-
fested itself during the war in neutralZurich and in New York, and
which was in essence a revolt, not only against the horror and folly of
the war itself, but against the massive stupidity of the bourgeois
nationalism which had been responsible for its outbreak. Dada aimed
to challenge all traditional values, all criteria forjudging the worth of a
work of art. It tried to shatter the accepted pattern of stylistic change
by introducing the concept of anti-art.
The leading theoretician of anti-art was Marcel Duchamp (1887—
1967), who had begun his artistic career as a member of the Section
d'Or, which was, like Orphism, a somewhat heretical reinterpreta-

tion of Cubism. Duchamp's semi-Cubist, semi-Futurist painting Nude 261

Descending a Staircase had been the sensation of the Armory Show in
New York in 191 3. During the war, Duchamp was in New York,
together with another of the founders of Dada, the painter Francis
Picabia (1878-1953). By this time, Duchamp had already invented the
notion of the 'readymade' (the ordinary object selected from the sur-
rounding environment and accepted by the artist as a work of art
without further transformation), and was in the process of abandoning
any kind of conventional career as a painter, though he continued to
work on his large glass picture The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,
Even from 1915 to 1923. Picabia served as the link between New York
and Zurich, and became the apostle of Duchamp's ideas.
The Parisian avant-garde had become aware, at least as early as
1917, that something important and interesting was going on in
Switzerland. Tristan Tzara, one of the leading figures in Zurich Dada,
was in touch with the poet-impresario Guillaume Apollinaire. Men
who were later to become leading Surrealists, such as Andre Breton
and Louis Aragon, were, by 191 8, contributing to Dada publications
in Zurich. But it was only when the war ended that the leading
Dadaists were able to come to Pans.
In France, Dada made its first impact upon poets rather than artists.
Tzara, a Romanian who had adopted French as his language of literary
expression, became the star turn at a series of violent manifestations.
And soon enough there began to be divisions between the ranks. By
1922, Breton had emerged as the leader of a powerful faction deter-
mined to systematize the lessons of Dadaist irrationality. In that year
he and his colleagues broke formally with Dada. The first Surrealist
Manifesto was issued in 1924.

265
263 joan miro Painting on Masonite 1936

264 nicolas de stael Les Martigues 1954

 What interested Breton especially was the inner realm discovered
by Freud- the dark territories of the unconscious mind. The Surrealists
aimed to liberate art by making it free of this realm. Aragon, speaking
of early experiments with automatic writing (writing without con-
scious control, a characteristic literary technique of the Surrealists
derived from Freud's own experiments with free association), des-
cribed the creative euphoria which they induced: 'an incomparable
freedom, a liberation of the mind, an unprecedented proliferation of
images'. Obviously, it could not be long before painters sought to
claim for themselves the freedom which the new Surrealist methods
had already accorded to the poets.
The earliest work in a fully developed Surrealist vein was probably
that of the German painter Max Ernst (b. 1891). Ernst had formed a
Dada group in Cologne in 1919 - one of his collaborators there had
been the Alsatian sculptor, painter and poet Jean Arp (1887-1966). In
1922 Ernst arrived in Paris and soon joined the Surrealist camp, col-
laborating with Paul Eluard, the poet, on a cycle entitled Les Malheurs

266
4 26$ MAX ERNST
The Great Forest
1927

266 YVES TANGUY

The Sun in its Casket
1937

des Immortels. Ernst's contribution was a series of collages made from

old book-illustrations, cut up and then pieced together in a new and
fantastic order. By had invented the method offrottage, a
1925, Ernst
pictorial equivalentof automatic writing. Tracings and rubbings of
'found' objects and materials- leaves, woodgrain, fabric and so forth -
enabled him to develop new images by means of unconscious associa-
tion, the rubbings being gradually transformed into whatever scene
or thing they seemed to suggest as they evolved beneath the artist's
hand.
What Ernst concerned himself with was a version - a hallucinatory 265
paraphrase - of observed reality. Occasionally his work, too, can come
close to that of Moreau or Redon. His brand of 'Veristic' Surrealism
was also practised by other artists, among them Yves Tanguy (1900-
55), and Salvador Dali (b. 1904).
Tanguy was originally prompted to take up painting by the impact
made upon him by one of the 'metaphysical paintings' of the Italian
artist Giorgio de Chirico, in which objects take on an eerie presence.

267
 As he evolved an inflexible but rather impressive composi-
a painter,

266 tional formula. In a typical painting by Tanguy we are confronted

with a boundless desert, peopled with tumescent, amorphous shapes.
The spatial experience is preserved, but everything that governs the
articulation of space has been altered.
267 Dalf, on the other hand, specialized in the transformation and
deformation of familiar objects. His meticulous technique was put at
the service of an impulse towards pictorial rape. Dali gives up all the
gains made by Cezanne he reverts to traditional methods of represent-
;

ing space, traditional rules of perspective, but uses these to convince us

of the reality of the world ot nightmare which he presents to us.
Some Surrealist painters, on the other hand, were dissatisfied by the
reversion to discarded pictorial conventions that was involved in the
pursuit of hallucinatory imagery in Veristic Surrealism. They began
to apply the freedom of automatic writing more literally to the
canvas in front of them, so that the painting became a series of calli-
graphic signs and arabesques. Among the artists on this wing of
265 pictorial Surrealism were Andre Masson (b. 1896), Joan Miro
268 matta Being With 1945-4-6

(b. 1893), and Matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren, b. 1912). At the fall 268
of France, Masson and Matta, in company with other leading Sur-
realists, among them both Breton and Ernst, fled to the United States.

The calligraphic method took root and flourished mightily among

American painters, eventually transforming itself into the Abstract
Expressionism ot Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline.
Surrealism represents perhaps the most international phase in the
whole history of French painting. Neither the International Gothic of
the fourteenth century, nor the Mannerism of Fontainebleau, showed
itself to be so entirely independent ot political frontiers. Ernst was a

German, whose art in many respects remained Germanic; Dali and

Miro were Catalans. Matta was born in Chile of French and Spanish
parentage.
Despite its internationalism, the Surrealist movement was by no
means united. Breton's dictatorial nature saw to it that his followers
were continually rent by feuds and schisms. One expulsion followed
another. But Surrealism deeply influenced the whole outlook of the
avant-garde. Perhaps the most important Surrealist convert was
Picasso. Never an orthodox member of the movement, he yet trans-
formed his style under the impact of Surrealist ideas. In the 1930s he
discovered, through Surrealism, a way of expressing his reaction to the
desolation and violence which he saw descending upon the world, and
269

267 Salvador dali Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (A Premonition of Civil War)
1936
2jo his great masterpiece of this period, Guernica, would certainly have
taken a very different form if Surrealism had never existed.
The Second World War administered a decisive check to the Ecole
de Paris. Established masters, such as Matisse and Picasso, continued to
paint under the Occupation, but stringent wartime conditions, and
Nazi hostility to 'decadent art', made it difficult for painting and
sculpture to maintain their forward impetus. Paris was robbed of
many of its most important artists through emigration, and, though
attempts were made to carry on much as before, once the war came to
an end, it gradually became apparent that world leadership in the
visual arts had passed from Paris to New York.
This not to say that there were no developments of any interest in
is

French painting during the period from 1945 until the present day -
or, rather, in the kind of international painting which continued to
base itself upon Paris.
The attention of those who were looking for convincing successors
to the Surrealists, and continuators of the pre-war tradition of the
Ecole de Paris, was at first directed towards a group of 'middle genera-
tion' painters. The most prominent of these were Jean Fautrier (b.

1898), Maurice Esteve (b. 1904), Edouard Pignon (b. 1905) and Jean
Bazaine (b. 1904), all scarcely, if at all, younger than some of the lead-
ing Surrealists. In the work of these artists, we see an eclectic recapitula-
tion of many tendencies which had already made themselves felt in
the painting of the Ecole de Paris. The most original aspect of their

269 andre masson The Demon of Incertitude 1943

270 pablo picasso Guernica 1937

work - and this is especially true ot Fautrier - lay in the emphasis which 2 J2
had begun to be placed upon tactility, and the evocative quality of the
surface. French art was already moving towards its own, less vigorous
version of Abstract Expressionism, a style which was to be christened
art informel, or 'art without form'.

By the mid 1950s this evolution was complete, and artists such as
Pierre Soulages (b. 1919), and Georges Mathieu (b. 1921) were highly
fashionable. Mathieu, though in many respects a flashily trivial artist, 271
is interesting because he represents the nearest approach in France to

271 Georges mathieu The Capetiaus 1954.

hmh
 true Abstract Expressionism, and some of his stunts (as when, in
1956, he painted a large canvas on stage at the Theatre Sarah Bern-
hardt, in the presence of a large audience) recall the antics of the
Dadaists.
An
important contribution to the development of this calligraphic
stylewas made by two German artists who had expatriated themselves
to France. One was Wols (Wolfgang Schulze, 191 3-51), who had
been an associate of the Surrealist group before the war. The other was
273 Hans Hartung (b. 1904), whose vigorous brushwork, in bundled
sheaves of lines, has an undoubted, if somewhat monotonous, energy.
Not all French, or French-domiciled, artists were content to follow
the path marked out tor them by art infortnel. There were various
attempts to re-establish the prestige ot figurative painting. The most
convincing of these attempts was probably to be found in the work of
Balthus (Balthazar Klossowski de Rola, b. 1908). Balthus is not merely
a figurative painter; he is a realist. Cezanne has influenced him, but so

have Courbet and Piero della Francesca. He combines these influences

274 in meticulously planned works, often with a strong erotic overtone.
Another distinguished figurative painter, though in a minor key,
was the sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-66), whose spare portraits
and still— lifes seem to convey the bleak mood of the Existentialists,

272 JEAN FAUTRIER

Hostage 1945

273 HANS HARTUNG

T. 1951-52 195
some of the most prominent of whom were his friends. Giacometti
was, however, never guilty of the vulgarity of Bernard Buffet (b.

1928), who achieved an immense success by popularizing Existentialist

miserabilisme.
A significant rejection of abstract art in favour of figurative painting
was made by the Franco-Russian painter Nicolas de Stael (1914-55).
De Stael became dissatisfied with abstraction, but he did not abandon
it; he tried, instead, to reconcile its demands with the world he saw

about him. The result was a series of paintings (the most characteristic 264
are landscapes and still-lifes) which can be read either as representations
of reality, or as abstract designs in sonorous colours. These works
achieved immense success in the painter's lifetime, and just after his
death, because they were regarded as the latest flowering of the French
tradition of belle peinture, so successfully pursued in their various ways
by artists such as Matisse and Braque. At some years' distance they now
seem less the products of genius than of refined sensibility, tact and
taste. They lack the creative force of Whistler's Nocturnes, but belong
to very much the same artistic genre.
Utterly opposed to ideas of tact and taste, and, perhaps because of
this, the most important artistof the post-war period in France, was
Jean Dubuffet (b. 1 90 1 ) . Dubuffet achieved prominence comparatively 2 73
late. His first one-man show was held in 1945, when he was already in
his forties. One reason for the delay was probably that both his atti-

tudes and his art are extremely complex, and belong firmly within the
tradition of Surrealism. Interested in whatever escapes the formalities
of art history - child art, graffiti, the art of madmen, the accidental
markings to be found on any surface - and prepared to use any
material - lumps of coal, twigs, or butterfly wings - Dubuffet is a
master of indirection.
'I have always had recourse', he says, 'to one never varying method.
It making the delineation of the objects represented heavily
consists in
dependent on a system of necessities which itself looks strange. These
necessities are sometimes due to the inappropriate and awkward
character of the material used, sometimes to the inappropriate mani-
pulation of the tools, sometimes to some strange obsessive notion
(frequently changed for another). In a word, it is always a matter of
giving the person who is looking at the picture a startling impression
that aweird logic has directed the painting of it, a logic to which the
delineation of every object is subjected, even sacrificed.'

During the 1950s, the reigning orthodoxy of art informel began to be

challenged by other tendencies. One of these was the so-called 'new

274 balthus Sleeping Girl 1943

 275
JEAN DUBUFFET
Vache la belle allegre []&%
1954

'<*/

realism', sponsored by the critic Pierre Restany. The most interesting

member of the group was Yves Klein (1928-62), a wild neo-Dadaist
whose conceits sometimes have a real poetic beauty. Klein's most cele- 276
brated works are probably his blue and gold monochromes, unvaried
expanses of colour which challenge the spectator's notion of what a
painting is or should be. Many
of Marcel Duchamp's ideas were
revived by Klein, in a new form which perhaps owed something both
to his mystical studies - he was a Rosicrucian - and to his contact with
Zen Buddhist philosophy - he was a judo expert, and wrote a book on
the subject which is still a standard text.
Klein's associate Arman
(Fernandez Arman, b. 1928) perhaps gives
a clearer idea of what 'new realism' was really supposed to be about.
His most characteristic works consist of random accumulations of
objects - but objects all of the same sort - encased in clear plastic. These
seem to be a kind of illustration of Restany's remark that 'the new
realism registers sociological reality without any controversial
intention'.

275
 276 yves klein ANT 143 'The Handsome Teuton i960

Realism of a different kind also attracted a following in Paris, thanks

to the impact upon Paris-domiciled artists of American Pop art.
While there might be some reason to claim that the United States, in
embarking upon the Abstract Expressionist adventure, was still under
the spell of French ideas, Pop art was a more purely native product, a
response to the phenomenon of American consumerism. Britain,
whose culture was in many respects intimately linked to what was
going on in America, successfully bred its own variety of Pop, and
indeed British artists in some respects anticipated American ones in
making use of material drawn from mass culture. France responded
more sluggishly, and we can see, from the work of artists such as
Martial Raysse (b. 1936), and Alain Jacquet (b. 1939), the degree to
which the Pop phenomenon was misunderstood and travestied in
France. It is significant that Raysse and Jacquet tend to use other works
277 of art - Prud'hon's Cupid and Psyche, Manet's Le Dejeuner sur I'herbe -
as their source material, rather than the advertisements and newspaper

photographs which interest their American colleagues. French paint-

ing remains firmly locked within the circle ot the 'fine art bit' which
American Pop painters were determined to get away from.

276
 Significantly, the liveliest tendency in Paris during the 1960s was
that represented by kinetic art in its various manifestations. I say
'significantly' because, in the first place, kinetic art showed a deter-
mination (which also manifested itself elsewhere) to break down the
distinctionbetween painting and sculpture, and to create works of art
which fitted into no accepted traditional category. In the second place,
though many kinetic artists now live and work in Paris, the movement
is again clearly an international one, rather than specifically French. It

merely benefits Irom the long-established French curiosity about the

visual arts and the traditional hospitality of the Parisian milieu to
foreign artists.

The senior figure in Paris-centred kinetic art is Victor Vasarely

(b. 1908), a Hungarian who has lived and worked in France since the
1930s. Essentially the tradition he belongs to is alien to French art as it

He was trained at the Miihely Academy

has been described in this book.
in Budapest, sometimes known as the Budapest Bauhaus, and his
work in two dimensions bears the stamp of Bauhaus ideas. Though 278
Vasarely sometimes uses the third dimension in his work, he can still

be described as a painter. This is not true of his colleagues and asso-

277
MARTIAL RAYSSE
Tableau simple et

iioux 1965
 m m *rwr

BXX
278 vasarely Vega 1957

ciates, such as the Argentinian Julio Le Pare (b. 1928) and the Vene-
zuelan Jesus Rafael Soto (b. 1923), both of whom use metal elements
suspended in real space.
Indeed, with the 1960s I have reached a point where it no longer
makes sense to talk in terms of a national 'school', even if that school is

as central to the whole tradition of European art as the French one has
been. does it make sense to confine my explorations to painting
Nor
alone.The breakdown of the commonly accepted artistic categories
which we have witnessed since 1945 has made it impossible to discuss
contemporary art in such terms. It thus might be argued that a history
of French painting that spans, as this one does, the six centuries be-
tween the late fourteenth century and our own day, has a more than
fortuitous completeness. During those six centuries French painters
produced some of the chief monuments of European culture, and the
French school has a continuity of achievement which no other nation
can rival.

278
 Bibliography

List of Illustrations

Index
Bibliography

GENERAL WORKS Boucher: D. Ternois, Francois Grcuze: Camille Mauclair, Greuze et

Beguin, Sylvie, L'F.cole de Fontaine- Boucher, London 1966. son temps, Paris 1926.
bleau, Paris i960. Boudin: G.
Jean-Aubry, Eugene Gros: Raymond Escholier, Gros, ses
Blunt, Anthony, Art and Architecture Boudin, London and Greenwich, amis et ses cleves, Paris 1936.
in France, 1500-1700, 2nd edn, Conn. 1969. Ingres: Georges Wildenstein, Ingres,
London 1970. Bourdichon: R. Limousin, Jean 2nd edn, London 1956.
Chassii, Charles, The Nabis and their Bourdichon - peintre et enlumineur, Lancret: Georges Wildenstein, Lan-
Period, London and New York Lyons 1954. cret, Paris 1924.
1969. Braque: N.S. Mangin, Catalogue de La Tour, Georges de: Marcel Arland,
Diderot, Denis, Salons, 4 vols, I'ceuvre de Georges Braque, Paris Georges de la Tour, Paris 1953-
Oxford 1957-67. I959-; John Richardson, Georges La Tour, Maurice Quentin de:
Dimier, Louis, Histoire de la peinture Braque, London 196 1. Alfred P. A. Leroy, Maurice Quentin
de portrait an X\'I e siecle, 3 vols, Caron: J. Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, de la Tour, Paris 1933.
Paris 1924-26. peintre a la cour des Valois, Geneva Le Brun: Versailles, Chateau, 'Le
Dimier, Louis, Peintres francais dn and Lille 1955. Brim', exhibition catalogue, Paris
Xl'III e siecle, 2 vols, Paris and Cezanne: Meyer Shapiro, Cezanne, 1963.
Brussels 1928-30. 3rd edn, New York 1965; Lionello Leger: Andre Vernet, Fernand Leger,
Duthuit, Georges, The Fauves, New Venturi, Cezanne, son art, son dynamisme pictural, Geneva 1955.
le

York 1950. ocuvre, 2 vols, Paris 1936. Le Nain: Paul Fierens, Les Le Nain,
Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de, Champaigne: Andre Mabille de Paris 1933.
French 1 8th-Century Painters, Lon- Poncheville, Philippe de Cham- Master of Moulins: Madeleine
don 1948. paigne, sa vie et son ceuvre, Courtrai Huillet d'Istria, Le Maitre de
Isarlo, Georges, La Peinture en France 1953- Moulins, Paris 1961.
an XVII? siecle, Geneva 1965. Chardin: Georges and Daniel Manet: Pierre Courthion, Manet,
Janneau, Guillaume, La Peinture Wildenstein, Chardin, catalogue London 1962 and New York 1963.
francaise au X\'ll e siecle, Geneva raisonne, revised edn, Oxford 1969. Matisse: Alfred H. Barr, Jr, Matisse:
1965. Charonton: M. Marignane, Le his Art and his Public, New York
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Maitre de la Pieta de Villeneuve . . . 1951.
'Landscape in French Art, 1550- revile, Paris 1938. Monet: Raymond Cogniat, Monet
1900', exhibition catalogue, Lon- Chasseriau: Paris, Musee de l'Oran- and his World, London and New
don 1949. gerie, 'Exposition Chasseriau', York 1966.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1933. Moreau, Gustave: Ragnar von
'The Age of Louis XIV, exhibition Claude: Marcel Rothlisberger, The Hulten, L'Art fantastique de Gustave
catalogue, London 1958. Paintings of Claude Lorraine, 2 vols, Moreau, Paris i960.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1961. Moreau l'Aine: Georges Wilden-
'France in the 18th Century', Corot: Francois Fosca, Corot, Paris stein, L'n peintre de paysages au
exhibition catalogue, London 1968. 1930. XVI IIe siecle: Louis Moreau, Paris
Meiss, Millard, French Painting in the Courbet: Marcel Zahar, Gustave 1923.
Time of Jean de Berry: the Late 14th Courbet, London 1950. Picasso: Christian Zervos, Pablo
Century and the Patronage of the Daumier: K.E. Maison,
Catalogue Picasso, 22 vols to date, 1932-.
Duke, 2 vols, London 1967. Raisonne of the Paintings, Water- Pissarro: John Rewald, Camille
Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie, 'Les colours and Drawings of Honore Pissarro, London 1963.
Peintres de la realite', exhibition Daumier, 2 vols, London and New Poussin: Anthony Blunt, Nicolas
catalogue, Paris 1934. York 1967-68. Poussin, 2 vols, New York 1967.
Rewald, John, The History of Im- David: L. Hautecoeur, J.L. David, Primaticcio: Louis Dimier, Le
pressionism, 2nd edn, New
York Paris 1954. Primatice, Paris 1928.
1955- Degas: Paul- Andre Lemoisne, Degas Prud'hon: Jean Guiffrey, Musee du
Ring, Grete, A Century of French et son ceuvre, 4 vols, Paris 1946-49. Louvre: P.P. Prud'hon, peintures,
Painting, 1400-1500, London 1949. Delacroix: Rene Huyghe, Delacroix, pastels et dessins, Paris 1924.
Sterling, Charles, Still Life Painting, London and New York 1963. Puvis de Chavannes: Arsene Alexan-
Paris and New
York 1959. Fouquet: P. Wescher, Jean Fouquet dre, Puvis de Chavannes, London
Stone, Joseph C, French Painting and his Time, London and Zurich 1905.
between the Past and the Present, 1947. Renoir: Francois Fosca, Renoir, his
1S4S-70, Princeton 1951. Fragonard: Georges Wildenstein, Life and Work, London 1961.
Sutter, Jean, ed., The Neo-Impres- The Paintings of Fragonard, London Robert: Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie,
sionists, London and Greenwich, i960. 'Exposition Hubert Itobert',
Conn. 1970. Gauguin: Georges Wildenstein, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1933.
Gauguin, sa vie, son ivuvre, Paris Rosso: Kurt Kusenbcrg, Le Rosso,
INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS Paris 193 1.
1958.
Boilly: Henri Harisse, L.L. Boilly, Gericault: Klaus Berger, Gericault and Seurat: John Russell, Seurat, London
Paris 1898. his work, Lawrence, Kans. 1955; and New
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Bonnard: Annette Vaillant, Bonnard, Charles Clement, Gericault, Paris Soutine: Marcellin Castaing and Jean
London and New York 1966. 1868. Leymarie, Soutine, London 1965.

280
 )

Toulouse-Lautrec: Fritz Novotny, Painting of Simon Vouet, New Edouard Vuillard, N ew York 1954.
Toulouse-Lautrec, London 1969. Haven and London [962. Watteau: Hclene Ad hemar, Watieau,
Vouet: William R. Crelly, The Vuillard: Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, sa vie, son ceuvre, P aris 1950.

List of Illustrations

The medium is oil on canvas unless BOUCHER, FRANCOIS (1703-70) CARAVAGGIO, MICHELANGELO Ml HIM
me inurements are given in
specified; 125 The Setting of the Sun, 1753. UA (I573-I6l0)
inches, height before width.
I25ixi02. Wallace Collection, 43 Entombment, 1604. 118JX79I.
London. Gallerie e Musei Vaticani.
ABB ATE, NICCOLO DELt' 12-71 128 Diana after the Hunt, 1745.
(c. I 5 CARON, ANTOINE (c. I52O-99)
37 x 52. Musee Cognacq-Jay, Paris.
26 Landscape with Eurydice and Madame Pompadour, 1758. 30 Augustus and the Sibyl, 1575-80.
129 de
Aristarchus, c. 1558-60. 74 •
93 J. 284x22!. Victoria and Albert 50x664. Louvre, Paris.
National Gallery, London. Museum. London. 31 Massacres under the Triumvirate,
130 Reclining Girl (Mademoiselle 1566. 458x764. Louvre, Paris.
ANONYMOUS
O'Murphy), 1751.238 X282. Wallraf- CEZANNE, PAUL (1839-I906)
1 Profile of jean II (Jean le Bon), c.
RichartzMuseum, Cologne.
1355.Tempera on canvas mounted 131 Chinaman Fishing, 1742. 236 Still-life with Plaster Cupid, c.

on wood, 26 / 17J. Louvre, Paris. Paper mounted on canvas, 15x204. 1895. Paper mounted on wood,
2 Parement de S'arbonne, c. 1370. Museum Boymans van Beuningen, 274 x 22$. Courtauld Institute Gal-
Brush drawing on white silk, Rotterdam. leries, London.
30J x 1 128. Louvre, Paris. 237 Bathers, c. 1900-5. 76x51
4 Small Circular Pietit, c. 1390. BOUDIN, EUGENE (1824-98) National Gallery, London.
Diameter 6|. Louvre, Paris. 226 Empress Eugenie on the Beach at
CHAMPAIGNE, PHILIPPE DE (IOO2-74)
Trouville, 1863. 138x224. Glasgow
AUBRY, ETIENNE (1745-81) Art Gallery, Burrell Collection. 98 Crucifixion, c. 1674. 888 X 59-
162 Paternal Love. 31x40. Barber Louvre, Paris.
Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.
BOULLONGNE, VALENTIN DE (c. 1594- 99 Ex Voto, 1662. 165x334.
1632) Louvre, Paris.
AVIGNON, SCHOOL OF 45 and Musicians. 67 83 }.
Soldiers 100 Unknown Man, 1650. Louvre,
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg. Paris.
14 Pieta of I'illeneuve-les-Avignon, c.
1460. Wood, 64 x 86. Louvre, Paris. Chapus, jean (active 1437-48)
BOURDICHON, JEAN (c. I457-I52I)
balthus (Balthazar Klossowski de 20 St Sebastian, 1508. Miniature, 10 (attributed) The Altarpiece of
Rola, b. 1908) ll| <7f. From the Flours of Anne of Aix: Annunciation, 1445. Wood,
Brittany. Bibliotheque Nationale, 61 X67. Eglise de la Madeleine, Aix-
274 Sleeping Girl, 1943. Oil on
Paris, MS. Lat. 9479. en-Provence.
millboard, 318x383. Tate Gallery,
London. BOURDON, SEBASTIEN (1616-55) charonton, f.nguerrand (c. 1410-
66)
baugin, lubin (c. 1612-63) 95 Sacrifice of Noah, c. 1635-40.
12 Coronation of the Virgin, 14S4.
60 The Dessert with Wafers, 1630. 67J X898. Musee d'Arras.
c.
103 Queen Christina of Sweden, Wood, 72x86!. Hospice, Ville-
Wood, 20J x 153. Louvre, Paris. neuve-les-Avignon.
1652-53. 288X22J. National-
13 (with Pierre Villatte) Virgin oj
bellange, jacques (active 1600-17) museum, Stockholm.
Mercy adored by Jean Cadard and his
40, 41 Virgin Annunciate; Angel of BOUYS, ANDRE (1656-1740) wife, 1452. Transferred from wood to
the Annunciation. Wood, each canvas, gilt ground, 26x73!. Musee
154 The Kitchen Maid, c. 1735.
2i|xi6.'. Staatliche Kunsthalle Comic, Chantilly.
31J x 38.V Musee des Arts Decoratifs,
Karlsruhe.
Paris. CHARDIN, JEAN-BAPTISTE-SIMEON
BLANCHAKD, JACQUES (160O-38) BRAQUE, GEORGES (1882-I963) (I699-I779)
88 Holy Family. 32} x 388. Musee 253 Still-life with Violin, [912.
152 The Rayfish, c. 1727-28.
des Beaux-Arts, Cherbourg. Kunstsammlung Nord- 45*574- Louvre, Paris.
4S, 31.
rhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf. 153 Kitchen Still-life with Cooking-
BOILLY, LOUIS LEOPOLD (I761-I845) pots and Eggs, c. 1734. Wood,
254 Musical Forms, 1913.
163 The Sorrows of Love, c. 1790. Oil, pencil and charcoal on canvas, 6| x8J. Louvre, Paris.
Vj\ 21. Wallace Collection, Lon- 156 Vase of Flowers, c. 1760-63.
25§. Philadelphia Museum ot'
•

don. Art. (6. National Gallery of Scot-

land, Edinburgh.
BONNARD, PIERRE (1867-I947) CARRACCI, ANNIBAIE (I56O-1609) 157 The Morning Toilet, c. 1740.
246 Woman with a Rabbit, [891. 44 Landscape with the Flight into I9ixi5§. Nationalmuseum, Stock-
164. Mr and Mrs Eugene V. Egypt, 1600-4. Galleria Doria- holm.
Klein, Beverly Hills, Calif. Pamphilj, Rome. 158 The Draughtsman, c. 1738.

2X1
Wood, 7^x62. Nationalmuseum, COURBET, CUSTAVE (1 8 19-77) DEGAS, EDGAR (1834-I917)
Stockholm. 218 The Funeral at Ornans, 1849. 231 Young Spartans Exercising, i860.
123 J X26l|. Louvre, Paris. 43x60?. National Gallery, London.
CHARLET, NICOLAS-TOUSSAINT (1792-
219 Good Morning, Monsieur Cour- 232 Women Ironing, c. 1884.
I863)
bet, 1854. 504X58!. Musee Fabre, 294 32}. Louvre, Paris.
•

204 The Retreat from Russia, 1836, Montpellier. 233 Dancer with Bouquet, Curtseying,
43 x 82J. Musee des Beaux-Arts. 220 The Studio, 1855. 1413x234!. 1878. Pastel on paper transferred to
Lyons. Louvre, Paris. canvas, 28 1 > 30I. Louvre, Paris.

CHASSERIAU, THEODORE (1819-56) COUSIN, JEAN THE ELDER (c. 1490- DELACROIX, EUGENE (1798-1863)
209 Arab Chieftains Challenging one c. 1560) The Massacre of Chios, 1824.
191
another beneath the Ramparts of a City, 28 Eva Prima Pandora, c. 1 550. 164 x 139. Louvre, Paris.
1852. 354x46!. Louvre, Paris. Wood, 3&1 x 59. Louvre, Paris. 199 Woman with a Parrot, 1827.
10x15. Musee des Beaux-Arts,
CLAUDE LORRAIN (1600-82) COUSIN, JEAN THE YOUNGER (f. 1522- Lyons.
74 Pastoral Landscape, c. 1636. 1594) 200 Liberty Guiding the People, 1830.
20j x 16}. National Gallery, London. 32 Last Judgment, 1585. 57J x 554. 102 x 128. Louvre, Paris.
75 Landscape with a Rustic Dance, Louvre, Paris. 201 Algerian Women in their Apart-
1639. 40j x 53J. Louvre, Paris. ment, 1834. 704 X904. Louvre, Paris.
76 Seaport with the Embarkation of St COUTURE, THOMAS (1815-79) 202 Entry of the Crusaders into Con-
Ursula, 1641. 44JX58J. National 206 Romans of the Decadence, 1847. stantinople, 1840. 161x196. Louvre,
Gallery, London. 1835X3054. Louvre, Paris. Paris.
77 Landscape with the Adoration of
the Golden Calf, 1653. 58x97?. COYPEL, ANTOINE (l66l-I722) DELAUNAY, ROBERT (1885-I94I)
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. 255 Window on the City, No. 4,
114 Girl stroking a Dog. 291x251.
78 Landscape with the Angel Appear- Louvre, Paris. 1910-11. 44fx5li. Solomon R.
ing to Hagar, 1668. 42 J x 55 J. Alte Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Pinakothek, Munich. COYPEL, NOEL-NICOLAS (169O-I734)
79 The Landing of Aeneas at Pallan- DEMACHY, PIERRE-ANTOINE (1723-87)
127 Alliance of Bacchus and Venus,
tewn, 1675. 68 x 87. National Trust, 142 The Louvre with the Colonnade
Fairhaven Collection, Anglesey 1726. 40x321. Musee d'Art et
Recently Cleared of Buildings, 1755-69.
d'Histoire, Geneva.
Abbey. Musee Carnavalet, Paris.
80 Landscape with Ascanius Shooting
DALl', SALVADOR (b. I9O4)
DERALN, ANDRE (1880-I954)
the Stag of Sylvia. 47J x 59. Ash-
niolean Museum, Oxford. 267 Soft Construction with Boiled
247 Woman in a Chemise, 1906.
Beans (A Premonition of Civil War),
Oil on canvas, 39|x3ig. Statens
CLOUET, FRANCOIS (d. 1572) 1936. 43ix33&- Philadelphia
Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
33 Lady in her Bath, c. 1550. Wood, Museum of Art, Arensberg
x 32I. National Gallery of Art, Collection. DERUET, CLAUDE (1588-1660)
364-
Washington, D.C., Kress Collection. 42 Fire, 1600. 44* x 1024-. Musee
DAUMIER, HONORi (1808-79)
35 Pierre Quthe, 1562. Wood, des Beaux-Arts, Orleans.
354 X27I. Louvre, Paris. 207 The Refugees, 1852-55. Wood,
61xil|. Musee du Petit Palais, DESPORTES, ALEXANDRE-FRANCOIS
CLOUET, JEAN (d. C 1531) Paris. (I66I-I743)
34 Mme de Canaples, 1523. 208 Chess Players, c. 1863. Wood, 11x204.
c.
ill Landscape. Musee
Wood, I3|xioJ. National Gallery 9i x 12^. Musee du Petit Palais, Paris. National, Compiegne.
of Scotland, Edinburgh. 113 Portrait of the Artist as a Hunts-
DAVID, JACQUES-LOUIS (1748-1825)
man, c. 1699. 77f x 64 J. Louvre, Paris.
CORNEILLE DE LYON (active 1533/4-
172 The Combat of Minerva against
74)
Mars, 1770. 44$ x 55J. Louvre, Paris. DOYEN, FRANCOIS-GABRIEL (1725-
38 Young Man. 7J x 5 J.
Portrait of a
173 Belisarius, 1781. II3IXI224. 1806)
George Ortiz Collection, Geneva. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille. 165 St Genevieve Interceding for the
174 The Oath of the Horatii, 1785. Victims of the Plague, 1 767. 3I5 x 19 J.
COROT, JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE 130 X 168. Louvre, Paris. Louvre, Paris.
(I796-I875) The Lictors Bringing Brutus the
175
210 Ponte d' Augusta at Sarni, 1827. Bodies of his Sons, 1789. 128x166!. DUBREUIL, TOUSSALNT (I55I-I602)
26JX37I. National Gallery of Louvre, Paris. 39 A Sacrifice, c. 1602. 75x55.
Canada, Ottawa. 176 The Death of Marat, 1793. Louvre, Paris.
213 5. Trinita dei Monti from the 63?X49i. Musees Royaux des
Villa Medici, c. 1826-28. 17J X29J. Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. DUBUFFET, JEAN (b. I90l)
Louvre, Paris. 177 Madame Recamier, 1800. 275 Vache la belle allegre, 1954.
214 Souvenir de Mortefontaine, 1864. 68£x95f. Louvre, Paris. 45! * 35- Peter Cochrane Collection,
25 1 X35i. Louvre, Paris. 178 Madame Picoul, 1784. 36! X 284. London.
216 The Albanian Girl, 1872. Louvre, Paris.
DUCHAMP, MARCEL (1887-I968)
29JX25I. The Brooklyn Museum, 180 Self-portrait, 1794. 314x25!.
New York. Louvre, Paris. 261 Sude Descending a Staircase,

282
 GAUGUIN, PAUL (185I-IOO3) 212 The Lake, 1840. 37l x 50.
No. 1912. 58 x 35. Philadelphia
2,
Musee Crozatier, Lc Puy-en-Velay.
Museum of Art, Louise and Walter 242 Nevermore, 1889. 36JX183.
Arensberg Collection. Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. INGRES, JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel,
243 (I78O-1867)
DUGHET, GASPARD (l6l5~75) 1888. 283 X36J. National Gallery of
187 Grande Baigneuse, 1 808.
81 Landscape, after 1650. 488x673. Scotland, Edinburgh.
Musee de la Ville de Narbonne. 568 X 38J. Louvre, l'.iris.
GERARD, FRANCOIS-PASCAL-SIMON, 188 Jupiter and Thetis, l8ll.
DUPLESSIS, SIFFEED (1725-1802) BARON (I770-I837) I3o8xioiJ. Musee Granet, Aix-en-
150 Augustin de Saint-Aubin, 1787. Madame Ricamier, 1 802. Provence.
183
189 Paolo and Francesca, 1 8 19.
29ix23. William Hayes Akland 885 x 57l- Musee du Petit Palais,
Memorial Art Center, Chapel Hill, Paris.
i8Jxis|. Musee Turpin de Crisse,
N.C. Angers.
GERICAULT, THEODORE (179I-1824) 190 Madame Riviere, 1806.
DUVAL, MARC (c. I53O-81) 458x35'. Louvre, Paris.
193 The Wounded Cuirassier, 1814. 1862. Diameter
(attributed) One-eyed Flautist, 192 Le Bain turc,
37 17I x 15. Louvre. Paris.
1566. 243 x io|. Louvre, Paris. Start of the Riderless Horse-race
42J. Louvre, Paris.
195
Paper mounted on 194 Monsieur Benin, 1832. 453 x 37!-
in Rome, 1 8 17.
ERNST, MAX (b. l8oi) Louvre, Paris.
canvas, 17x238. Louvre, Paris.
265 The Great Forest, 1927- 196 Severed Heads, 1818. 198x268. JEAURAT, ETIENNE (1699-I789)
444 x 57I. Kunstmuseum, Basle. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
161 The Broken Marriage Contract.
197 The Raft of the Medusa, 1819.
FAUTRIER, JEAN (b. 1 897) 36^x28!. Bequest of Comtesse de
I93i x 281J. Louvre, Paris.
272 Hostage, 1945- io|x8|. Private 1821-22. Ranchoup, Chateau de Blois.
198 The Plaster-Kiln,
Collection, Sweden. 198 x 24. Louvre, Paris.
JOUVENET, JEAN (1644-I717)
FONTArNEBLEAU, SCHOOL OF GILLOT, CLAUDE (I673-I722) no The Raising of Lazarus, 1706.
27 Sabina Poppaea, c. 1 570. Wood, 115 Quarrel of the Cabmen. 1523 X261I. Louvre, Paris.
328 x 26. Musee d'Art et d'Histoire, 6O5X62I. Louvre, Paris.
KLEIN, YVES (1928-1962)
Geneva.
36 Three Minions, c. 1580-90. Slate, girodet-trioson (Anne-Louis Giro- 276 ANT 143 'The Handsome
22§x22j. Milwaukee Art Center det de Roucy-Trioson, 1767-1823) Teuton'. 828x60!. London Arts
Collection, gift of the Women's 185 Ossian Receiving the Warriors of Gallery.
Exchange. the Revolution into Paradise, 1801.
LACROIX DE MARSEILLE (CharleS-
758 x 718. Musee de Malmaison. Francois Lacroix, c. 1700-82)
FOUQUET, JEAN (c. I42O-81)
6 The Melun Diptych: and
I'irgin greuze, jean-baptiste (1725-1805) 144 A Mediterranean Seaport, 1 760.

Child, c. 1450. Wood, 36* x 33*. 159 A Father's Curse, c. 1775- 37ix653. The Toledo Museum of
Museum voor Schoone Kunsten, Art, Ohio, Gift of Edward Drum-
518 X633. Louvre, Paris.
Antwerp. 160 Girl with a Dead Bird. 1765. mond Libbey 1956.
7 Guillaume Jouvenel des L'rsins, c. National Gallery of
20J x 17}. LA FOSSE, CHARLES DE (1636-I716)
1455. Wood, 36x29. Louvre, Paris. Scotland, Edinburgh.
8 Charles VII, c. 1445- Wood, 171 Septimius Severus Reproaching 109 Bacchus and Ariadne, c. 1699.
338x28!. Louvre, Paris. Caracalla, 1769- 36x483. Louvre, 983x663. Musee des Beaux-Arts,
Paris. Dijon.
FRAGONARD, JEAN-HONORE (1732-
1806) cris, juan (1 887-1927) LAGRENEE, LOUIS-JEAN-FRANCOIS THE
ELDER (I724-I805)
133 Coroesus sacrificing himself to 257 The Sunblind, I9U- Papier
save Callirhoe, 1765. I2l|xi57|. colle on canvas, with some heighten- 166 Telemachus and Terosiris, 1770.
Louvre, Paris. ing in charcoal, 36Jx25|. Tate 164x13!. By courtesy of the
The Gardens of the Villa d'Este, Gallery, London. National Trust, Stourhead.
134
Tivoli, 1760. 14I x 18J. Wallace LA HYRE, LAURENT DE (1606-56)
Collection, London. GROS, ANTOINE-JEAN, BARON (I77I-
135 The Pursuit, c. 1771-73. 1835) 89 The Death of the Children of
Copyright the Frick Bethel, 1653. 36^x503. Musee
125JX844. 179 Bonaparte at the Bridge of Areola,
Collection, New York. 1796. 283 X23i. Louvre, Paris.
d' Arras.
90 Grammar, 1650. 40' 44 j
The Souvenir, c. 1787. Wood,
•

136 181 The Plague at Jaffa, 1804.

National Gallery, London.
9 J X7J. Wallace Collection, London. 209! X2833. Louvre, Paris.
137 The Swing, c. 1766. 328x26. 182 Comte Foumier-Sarloveze, 1812.
LANCRET, NICOLAS (l690-I743)
Wallace Collection, London. 98x684. Louvre, Paris.
138 Inspiration, c. 1769. 31JX258. 121 Mile Camargp Dancing.
Louvre, Paris. HARTUNG, HANS (b. 1904) 16JX21!. Wallace Collection,

273 T. 1951-52, 1951- 38x57!. London.

GARNIER, FRANCOIS (active C 1627-58) Kunstmuseum, Basle.
LA PORTE, HENRI-HORACE-ROLAND DE
63 Gooseberries and Cherries, 1644.
Wood, huet, PAUL (1803-69) (1724-93)
9i x 133. Louvre, Paris.

283
155 The Rustic Meal. 36^x29!. 43JX54?. National Gallery, Museum of Art, New York, Rogers
Louvre, Paris. London. Fund 1941.
58 (with Mathieu Le Nain) Venus
LARGILLIERE, NICOLAS DE (1656-I746) at the Forge of Vulcan, 1641. 57 X45J. MASTER OF MOULINS (active C. I48O-
107 The Artist with his Wife and Musee des Beaux-Arts, Rheims. C. 1499)
Daughter, c. 1700. 58J X78J. Louvre, 15 Portrait of a Child, 1498-99.
Paris. LE NAIN, MATHIEU (1607-77) Wood, I2| x By courtesy of the
9.
108 Throckmorton as a
Elizabeth 55 Travellers 49 66J.
at an Inn. Robert Lehman Collection, New-
Dominican Nun, 1729. 32 2SJ. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, York.
National Gallery of Art, Washing- John R. Van Derlip Fund. 16 Cardinal Charles de Bourbon.
ton, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund 56 Reunion of Amateurs. 45I >~J. 13J x iof Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
.

1964. Louvre, Paris. 17 The Moulins Triptych, 1498-99.

58 See Le Nain, Louis. Wood, 6i|xiiii. Cathedral,
LA TOUR, GEORGES DE (l593-l6>2) Moulins.
49 The Penitence of St Jerome, c.
LE NAIN, SCHOOL OF
1620-25. 59i:> .424. National- 61 Overturned Wheelbarrow, c. 1640- MATHIEU, GEORGES (b. 1922)
museum, Stockholm. 50. 26J X2lf. Louvre, Paris.
271 The Capetians, 1954. 112} x 236^1.
50 Nativity- 29I 354. Musee des Musee National d'Art Modcme,
Beaux-Arts, Rennes. LE SUEUR, EUSTACHE (1616-55)
Paris.
51 Job taunted by his Wife. 57x39. 96 Clio, Euterpe and Thalia, c.1647-
Musee Departemental des Vosges, 49. Wood, 514x51$. Louvre, MATISSE, HENRI (1869-1954)
Epinal. Paris. 248 The Moroccan, 1912. 57J- x 37!.
52 Magdalen with the Lamp. 50? x 37. 97 Death of St Bruno, c. 1648. State Hermitage Museum, Lenin-
Louvre, Paris. 76 51 J. Louvre, Paris. grad.
53 St Joseph in the Carpenter's Shop, 252 Luxury, 1907. 82S x 54'.
c. 1645. 59J x 40. Louvre, Paris. LIMBOURG, POL, HENNEQUIN AND Musee National d'Art Moderne,
hermant (d. before 1416) Paris.
LA TOUR, MAURICE QUENTTN DE 3 January, from the 'Tres Riches
(1704-88) 1
Hemes c. 1416. Vellum, 84 x
, 55.
matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren,
Musee Conde, Chantilly. b. 1911)
151 D'Alembert, 1753- Pastel,
214 x i8|. Louvre, Paris. 268 Being With, 1945-46.
LORRAIN See CLAUDE LORRAIN" 179JX87I. Pierre Matisse Gallery,
LE DRUN, CHARLES (1619-90) MALOUEL, JEAN (d. 1419)
New York.
91 Hercules and the Horses of (attributed) Large Circular Pieta,
5 MEISSONIER, JEAN LOUIS ERNEST (1815-
Diomedes, 1638-39. 1144x74. 1410. Gilt ground. Diameter 25J.
1. 79)
Museum and Art Gallery, Not- Louvre, Paris.
tingham. 205 Napoleon I and his Staff, 1868.

92 Tent of Darius, 1660-61. MANET, EDOUARD (1832-83) Wood, 6x74. Wallace Collection,
II7§XI781. Musee National de London.
221 Jesus Insulted i>y the Soldiers, c.
Versailles.
1864. 564 X74^. The Art Institute of MERCIER, PHILIPPE (1689-I760)
93 The Brazen Serpent, c. 1649-50. Chicago.
39|X52|. City Art Gallery, 122 Conjurer, c. 1720-25. 10IXI3J.
222 Le Dejeuner sur Vherbe, 1863. Louvre, Paris.
Bristol.
814x1044. Louvre, Paris.
94 Moses defending the Daughters of MICHEL, GEORGES (1763-1843)
223 Music at the Tuileries, 1862.
Jethro, 1686-87. 44J x 48. Galleria
30 x 465. National Gallery, London. 2 1 1 The Plain of St Denis. 1 84 26 |.
Estense, Modena.
224 A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1882. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besancon.
101 Chancellor Siguier, 1661.
375x51. Courtauld Institute Gal-
Il6x 137I. Louvre, Paris. leries, London. MIGNARD, PIERRE (l6l2~95)
102 Marshal Turenne, 1663-65.
225 La Serveuse de bocks. 29J X25J. 104 Marquise de Seignelay and her
26| x 20l. Musee National de Ver-
Louvre, Paris. Children, 1691. 76 2 x6l. National
sailles.
Gallery, London.
marmion, simon (active 1449, d.
LEGER, FERNAND (l88l-I955) 1489) MILLET, JEAN-FRANCOIS (1814-75)
260 The Mechanic, 1920. 452X345. 18, 19 St Benin Altarpiece: Soul of St 217 Quarrymen, 1847-49. 29J x 23I.
National Gallery of Canada, Berlin carried up to God; Choir of The Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio.
Ottawa. Wood, each 22 2 x27i. Gift of Arthur
Angels. J. Secor 1922.
National Gallery, London.
LE MOYNE, FRANCOIS (1688-I737) miro, joan (b. 1893)
126 Time Revealing Truth, 1737. MASSON, ANDRE (b. 1 896) 263 Painting on Masonite, 1936. Oil,
71 x 564. Wallace Collection, 269 The Demon of Incertitude, 1943. casein, tar and sand on masonite,
London. Pastel on canvas, 29JX39}. Galerie 30J X39g. Aime Maeght, Paris.
Louise Leiris, Paris.
LE NAIN, LOUIS (I593-I648) modigliani, amedeo (1884-1920)
54 The Traveller's Rest. 22x28$. master OF FLORA (16th century) 258 Seated Girl, c. 1917. 76J x 51.
Louvre, Paris. 29 Birth of Cupid, c. 1540-60. Courtauld Institute Galleries,
57 (with assistant) \ativity Wood, 41' x 518. The Metropolitan
: London.

284
MOILLON, LOUISE (1609/IO-96) 250 Mountebanks, 1905. 40^x864. RENE master (15th century)
Wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 11 Amour Takes Away the King'-:
64 Nectarines, 1674.
15x205. Musee des Augustins, D.C. Heart. Miniature, Il|X79i- From
Toulouse. 251 Les Demoiselles d' Avignon, 1007. the Livre au Cuer d' Amours espris.
96 x 92. The Museum of Modern Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek,
MONET, CLAUDE (184O-I926) Art, New York. Vienna, Cod. 2597.
227 The Cliff at Fecamp, 1881. 256 The Three Musicians, 1921.
80 x 74. Philadelphia Museum of RENOIR, AUGUSTE (184I-I919)
32x254. Aberdeen Art Gallery.
230 Rouen Cathedral: Morning Sun, Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection. 229 On the Terrace, 1881. 24X20J.
1894. 371 X24J. Louvre, Paris. 270 Guernica, 1937. 138 x 300. On The Art Institute of Chicago.
extended loan to the Museum of 234 The Box, 1874. 31IX25.
MOREAU, GUSTAVE (1826-98) Modern Art, New York. Courtauld Institute Galleries,
239 Unicorns. Oil and watercolour PISSARRO, CAMILLE (183O-I9O3)
London.
on canvas, 45! x 35?. Musee Gustave
Moreau, Paris. 228 The Louvre in the Snow, 1902. RIGAUD, HYACINTHE (1659-I746)
252 x 32. National Gallery, London. 105 Jan Andrzej Morsztyn and his
moreau l'aine (Louis Gabriel Musee des
poussin. Nicolas (1593/4-1665) Daughter. 8olx6lg.
Moreau, 1740-1806) Beaux-Arts, Cherbourg.
65 Dido and Aeneas, c. 1634.
146 Cabin on a Rising in a Wood. 106 Double Portrait of the Artist's
62x742. The Toledo Museum of
25 J x 21 1. Louvre, Paris. Mother, 1695. 32 x 39I. Louvre, Paris.
Art, Ohio. Gift of Edward Drum-
NATTIER, JEAN-MARC (1685-I766) mond Libbey 1954. ROBERT, HUBERT (I733-1818)
66 1626-27. 57s x 77!.
Parnassus,
147 Comtesse de Tillicres, 175°. 141 Architectural Composition with
Prado, Madrid.
31IX25. Wallace Collection, Temple and Obelisk, 1768. 41 i S4>-
67 Martyrdom of St Erasmus, 1628-
London. Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle,
29. 126x731. Gallerie e Musei
County Durham.
Vaticani.
OUDRY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (l686-I755)
68 Shepherds of Arcady, c. 1630. ROHAN master (15th century)
139 The White Duck, 1753.
39^x295. Devonshire Collection,
37IX24J. The Marchioness of 9 Man his Judge, 1420-25.
before
Chatsworth, reproduced by per-
Cholmondeley. mission of the Trustees of the Chats-
Miniature, Hw8J.From the
140 Count Tessin's Dachshund, 1740. Grandes Heures de Rohan. Biblio-
worth Settlement.
531x43- Nationalmuseum, Stock- theque Nationale, Paris, MS. Lat.
69 Childhood of Jupiter, c. 1637.
holm. 9471.
37ix46J. Dulwich College Picture
OZENFANT, AMEDEE (b. l886) Gallery, London. rosso, il (Giovanni Battistj di
70, 71 The Eucharist; Ordination, Jacopo, 1494-1540)
262 Composition, 1920. 3i|x39l-
1647. Each 444 x67|. National Gal-
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 22 Pieta, 1530-40. 49I : 56. Louvre,
lery of Scotland, Edinburgh, on loan
New York.
from the Duke of Sutherland Col-
Paris.
23 Venus Chiding Love. Fresco.
PARROCEL, JOSEPH (1646-I7O4) lection.
Galerie Francois Premier, Chateau de
72 Diogenes Throwing down his
112 Cavalry Officer Resting, c. 1685- Fontainebleau.
Bowl, 1648. 63 x 87. Louvre, Paris.
88. 73i x 57-J-. Musee des Beaux-
73 H inter, or the Deluge, 1660-64. ROUSSEAU, THEODORE (1812-67)
Arts, Lyons.
46A X63. Louvre, Paris.
215 The Forest of Clairbois.
PATEL, PIERRE THE ELDER (c. 1605-76) 25^x42!. Glasgow Art Gallery.
PRIMATICCIO, FRANCESCO (1504/5-7°)
82 Landscape with a Goatherd. SERUSIER, PAUL (1864-I927)
24 Ulysses and Penelope, c. 1560,
13x21. Musee des Beaux-Arts,
44 x 48. The Toledo Museum of Art,
Orleans. The Tapestry. Musee
Ohio. Gift of Edward Drummond 244 31 £ s 1 i .

Libbey 1969. du Petit Palais, Paris.

penni, luca (1500-56)
Diana, PRUD'HON, PIERRE-PAUL (1758-1823) SEURAT, GEORGES (1859-91)
25 (attributed) c. 1550
(detail). 255 x 52! . Louvre, Paris. 184 Empress Josephine, 1805. 238 A
Sunday Afternoon at the
96x705-. Louvre, Paris. Island ofLa Grande Jatte. 1886.
perreal, jean (c. I455-IS30) 1810. 81 x I20g. The Art Institute of
186 Venus and Adonis,
21 Louis XII, c. 1514. 11 > 7- By 94! x 66. Wallace Collection, Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett
gracious permission of Her Majesty London. Memorial Collection.
the Queen. The Royal Collection,
Windsor. PUVIS DE CHAVANNES, PIERRE (1824- SOUTINE, CHAIM (KS94-1943)
98) 259 Portrait of a Hoy. [928,
perroneau, jean-baptiste (1715-83) 241 The Poor Fisherman, 188 1. 361x25f. National Gallery of Art,
149 Madame de Sorquainville, 1749- 61 X75&. Louvre, Paris. Washington, D.C, Chester Dale
392 x 31 J. Louvre, Paris. Collection.
RAYSSE, MARTIAL (b. I936)
STAEL, NICOLAS DE (1914-5S)
PICASSO, PABLO (b. l88l) 277 Tableau simple el doux, 1965.
Assemblage with neon 76 x 264 Les Martigues, 1954- 1%1
249 Woman Ironing, 1904. 45! x 28JS. light, 51.
Private collection, Oslo.
Tannhauser Collection, New York. Andre Mourges, Paris.

28S
 STOSKOPFF, SEBASTIEN (1597-1657) 240 Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear, vouet, slmon (1 590-1649)
62 Pate and Basket of Classes, 1630- 1889. 23i x I9J. Courtauld Institute 46 Two Lovers, c. 1618. 384x535.
40. 19^x242. Musee des Beaux-
Galleries, London. Palazzo Pallavicini, Rome.
Arts, Strasbourg. VAN LOO, CARLE (I7O5-65) 83 Time Vanquished by Hope, Love
and Beauty, 1627. Wood, 42J x 554.
TANGUY, YVES (I9OO-55) 132 The Grand Turk giving a Con-
Prado, Madrid.
cert to his Mistress, 1737- 284X35*.
266 The Sun in its Casket, 1937. 84 Time I 'anquished by Hope, Love
Wallace Collection, London.
34ix4sJ. Peggy Guggenheim Col- and Beauty, c. 1640. 73! x 52I. Musee
lection, Venice. vasarely (Victor Vasarely, b. 1908) du Berry, Bourges.
278 Vega, 1957. 765x51. London 85 Allegory of Wealth, 1630-35.
TASSEL, JEAN (c. 1608-67)
Arts Gallery. 67 x 484. Louvre, Paris.
59 Catherine de Montholon, c. 1648. 86 Lot and his Daughters, 1633.
21x155. Musee des Beaux-Arts, VERNET, CLAUDE-JOSEPH (I7I4-S7) 63x514. Musee des Beaux-Arts,
Dijon. 143 A Storm with a Shipwreck, 1754. Strasbourg.
TOCQUE, LOUIS (1696-I772) 33fx53i- Wallace Collection, 87 Assumption of the I irgin, 1644.
London. 76|x50i. Musee des Beaux-Arts,
148 Jean-Marc Saltier, 1762.
Rheims.
31^x25 J. Royal Academy of Fine VERNET, HORACE (1789-1863)
Arts, Copenhagen. 203 The Arab Tale-Teller, 1833. VUILLARD, EDOUARD (1868-I940)
385x535. Wallace Collection, 245 The Artist's Mother and Sister,
TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, HENRI DE (1864-
London. c. 18JX22J. The Museum of
1893.
1901)
VIEN, JOSEPH-MARIE (I716-1809) Modern Art, New York, gift of Mrs
235 At the Moulin Rouge, 1892. Sadie A. May.
47* x 55i- The Art Institute of 167 Lot and his Daughters, 1747.
Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett 25i x 3 1 i . Musee du Havre. WATTEAU, JEAN-ANTOINE (1684-I72I)
Memorial Collection. 168 Apotheosis of Winckelmann.
116 Assembly in a Park, 1717.
95i * 761. Musee de Langres.
TOURNIER, NICOLAS (I59O-I657) I2| x 18J. Louvre, Paris.
169 Greek Girl at the Bath, 1767.
117 Le Mezzetin, 1717-19.
48 Pieta, c. 1656-57. l20jx6o|. 35sX76i. Private collection.
2if xi6|. Metropolitan Museum of
Musee des Augustins, Toulouse. 170 The Merchant of Loves, 1763.
371x465. Chateau de Fontaine-
Art, New York.
TROY, JEAN-FRANCOIS DE (1679-1752) 118 Lady at her Toilet, 1 71 7.
bleau.
124 The Hunt Breakfast, 1737. 17IX14I. Wallace Collection,
VIGEE-LEBRUN, ELISABETH-LOUISE London.
22 x 18.Wallace Collection, London.
(1755-1842) 1 19 The Departure from the hland of
VALENCIENNES, PIERRE-HENRI (175O- 164 Princesse de Polignac, 1783. Cythera, 1717. 50x755. Louvre,
I8I9)
382 X48. By courtesy of the National Paris.

145 Tivoli. I2£ x 18. By courtesy Trust, Waddesdon Manor. 120 Gilles, c. 1721. 725X585.
of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Louvre, Paris.
VIGNON, CLAUDE (I593-I67O) Uenseigne Gersaint,
Abbott Lawrence Fund. 123 de 1721.
47 Death of a Hermit, c. 1620. 64jxi2iJ. Staatliche Museen,
VAN GOGH, VINCENT (1853-90) 65 x 51J. Louvre, Paris. Berlin.

Photographic Acknowledgements

ACL, Brussels: 6, 176. Archives 115, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 190, 191, Courtesy of the Trustees of the
Photographiques: 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 17, 192, 200, 225, 230. Walter Klein: National Gallery, London: 18, 19, 26,
35, 82, 102, 146, 151, 178, 183, 184, 253. Galerie Maeght, Paris: 263. 57, 74. 76, 90, 104, 228, 231, 237.
185, 193, 194, 195, 199, 207, 208, 213, Mansell-Alinari: 44, 46, 67, 175. Mas, Royal Academy of Arts, London: 58,
222, 244. Archivio Fotografico, Barcelona: 66, 83. Musees Nationaux: 79, in. Reproduced by permission
Gallerie e Musei Vaticani: 43. Acts 22, 25, 30, 37, 39, 47, 52, 53. 56, 60, of the Trustees of the Wallace
Council of Great Britain: 248. 61, 63, 72, 73, 75, 85, 92, 100, 101, Collection: 103, 118, 121, 124, 125,
Bulloz: 42, 97, 128, 159, 179, 180, 106, 107, no, 113, 119, 123, 133, 138, 126, 132, 134, 136, 137, 143, 147, 186,
197, 206, 218, 220. Giraudon: I, 2, 3, 141, 149, 152, 155, 165, 172, 182, 187, 203, 205. Dietrich Widmer, Basle:
8, 10, 23, 31, 32, 54, 59, 98, 99, 114, 198, 201, 209, 232, 239, 241. By

Index Italic figures are illustration numbers.

Abbate, Niccolo dell' 38; 26 Arpino, Giuseppe Cesari 49 Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de
Andrea del Sarto 33, 35 Aubry, Etienne 164; 162 Rola) 272; 274
Antonello da Messina 25 Audran, Claude III 119-20, 129 Baugin, Lubin 69, 70; 60
Arman 275 Aved, Jacques- Andre-Joseph-Came- Bazaine, Jean 270
Arp, Jean 266 lot 153 Bazille, Frederic 224

286
 3

Beaubrun, Charles and Henri 104 Cousin, Jean (the Elder) 38; 28 Gaulli, Giovanni Battista 1 1

Beauneveu, Andre 14 Cousin, Jean (the Younger) 40; 32 Gerard, Francois-Pascal-Simon,

Bellange, Jacques 49-50, 57; 40-1 Couture, Thomas 206; 206 Baron182, 186, 189; 184
Bellini, Giovanni 76 Coypel, Antoine 1 12-13, 134, 139, Gericault, Theodore 195-9, 203-4,
Blanchard, Jacques 94-5; 88 157; 114 208; 193, 195-8
Boilly, Louis Leopold 164; 163 Coypel, Noel-Nicolas 134, 139, 155, Gerome, Jean-Leon 206
Boissard de Boisdenier, Joseph- 157; 127 Giacometti, Alberto 272-3
Ferdinand 204 Crome, John 86 Gillot, Claude 119, 129; 115
Bonington, Richard Parkes 199, 211 Giorgione 120, 127, 221
Dali, Salvador 267-0; 267
Bonnard, Pierre 245; 246 Giovanetti, Matteo di 25
Boucher, Francois 38, 92, 1 17, 123, Dancourt, Florent 123 Girodet de Roucy-Trioson, Anne-
Daubigny, Charles-Francois 214 Louis 186, 190; 1 85
131. 133. 134-6. 139, i45-<5, 167,
173-4, 186, 230; 1 25, 128-31
Daumier, Honore 206-8; 207, 208 Gleyre, Charles 224
Boudin, Eugene 224; 226 David, Jacques-Louis 64, 1 17, 145,
Gourdaine, Jean-Pierre Norblin de
Boullongne, Bon de 112 163, 173-9, 180, 182, 186-7, 189- la 130
Boullongne, Valentin de 54-6; 45 90, 194-5, 197. 199-200, 206, 222,
Goya, Francisco 220
Bourbon, Pierre de 27 236-7; 172-8, 180 Greuze, Jean-Baptiste 145, 155, 162-
Bourdichon, Jean 31; 20 Decamps, Alexandre-Gabriel 204
7, 172, 178, 187, 206, 216, 222;
Bourdon, Sebastien 53, 100-1, 106; Degas, Edgar 194, 225, 230, 231-4, 159-60, 171
245, 250; 231-3 Gris, Juan 258-9, 261; 257
95, ' 03
Bouys, Andre 160; 154 Dehondecq, Edme-Alfred-Alexis 204 Gros, Antoine-Jean, Baron 180, 182,
Braque, Georges 252, 255, 261, 273; Delacroix, Eugene 80, 91, 116, 187,
186, 100, 195; 179, 181-2
253. 254 195, 199-202, 203-4, 206, 208, 211, Guercino 91
Bril, Paul 80, 90 213, 219, 241; 191, 1Q0-2O2
Bronzino, Agnolo 45 Delaunay, Robert 255-6; 255 Hartung, Hans 272; 273
Bruandet, Lazare 209 Demachy, Pierre-Antoine 150; 1 42 Hesdin, Jacquemart de 14
Bruegel, Pieter (the Elder) 38 Denis, Maurice 245 Hogarth, William 130
Buffet, Bernard 273 Derain, Andre 248, 249, 261; 247 Houdon, Jean- Antoine 151
Deruet, Claude 49, 50, 81; 42 Huet, Paul 211, 214; 212
Desportes, Alexandre-Francois 1 16,
Callot, Jacques 49, 119 150; 111, 113 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da Diderot, Denis 80, 118, 131, 135, 180-94, 200, 208, 219; 187-90, 192,
51, 54, 56-8, 91, 168; 43 147-8, 154-5, 157. 160, 162-3, 178, 194
Caron, Antoine 42, 49; 30-1 222
Carracci, Annibale 51-3, 72, 80, 00, Domenichino 72, 81 Jacquet, Alain 276
146; 44 Dossi, Dosso 38 Jeaurat, Etienne 164; 161
Cazes, Pierre-Jacques 155 Doyen, Francois-Gabriel 167, 173; Jouvenet, Jean 1 12-13; 110
Cezanne, Paul 26, 109, 209, 234-6, 165
237, 242, 244-6, 251-2, 258, 261, Dubreuil, Toussaint 48-9, 72; 39 Klein, Yves 275; 276
268, 272; 236, 237 Dubuffet, Jean 273-4; 275 Kline, Franz 269
Chagall, Marc 261 Duchamp, Marcel 265, 275", 261
Champaigne, Philippe de 71, 94, Dughet, Gaspard 90, 212-13; 81 Lacroix de Marseille (Charles-
102-3; 99. 10 ° Duplessis, Siffred 153; 150 Francois Lacroix) 148, 150; 144
Chapus, Jean 25; 10 Dupre, Jules 214 Lagrenee, Louis-Jean-Francois (the
Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon 64, Dupuis, Pierre 70 Elder) 168, 173; 166
116, 139, 155-60, 163-4, 166, 222, Diirer, Albrecht 35, 50 La Hyre, Laurent de 94-5; 90
236; 152-3, 156-8 Duval, Marc 47; 37 Lancret, Nicolas 129, 156; 1 24
Charlet, Nicolas Toussaint 204; 204 Lanfranco, Giovanni 74, 95
Elle, Louis 104
Charonton (Quarton), Enguerrand Lantara, Simon Mathurin 209
26; 12-13 Elsheimer, Adam 23-4, 54, 81 La Porte, Henri-Horace-Roland de
Chasseriau, Theodore 208; 209 Ernst, Max 266-7, 269; 265
160; 155
Chirico, Giorgio de 267 Esteve, Maurice 270 Largilliere, Nicolas de 110-11, 146;
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellee) 38, Eyck, Jan van (and family) 21, 25 107, 108
71, 80-90, 127, 140, 212-13; 74-8o La Tour, Georges de 57-61, 118; 49-
Fautrier, Jean 270-1; 272
Cleve, Joos van 47 53
Feti, Domenico 54
Clouet, Francois 44-5, 47; 33, 35 La Tour, Maurice Quentin de 1 54,
Clouet, Jean (the Younger) 44, 47; 34
Fosse, Charles de la m-12, 122; 109
234; 151
Fouquet, Jean 16, 18, 21-2, 27-8, 30,
Cocques, Gonzales 127 Le Brun, Charles 92, 94, 96-IOO, 101,
Colleville, Jean-Baptiste Deshays de 45; 6-8
103, 106, III-13, 133, 156, 172,
Fragonard, Jean-Honore 92, 123,
167 178, 198; 91-4, 101-2
131, 139-45. 146, 187, 230; 133-8
Constable, John 199 Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard
Freminet, Martin 48-9
Corneille de Lyon 47; 38 Jeanneret) 263
Friesz, Emile-Othon 248
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille 64, 150, Leger, Fernand 206, 261; 260
209, 211-13, 228; 210, 213-14, 216 Gainsborough, Thomas 86 Le Nain brothers 61-4, 66, 118, 127-
Correggio, Antonio 186 Gamier, Francois 70; 63 8, 160, 216: Antoine 62; Louis
Courbct, Gustave 194, 216-19, 220-2, Gauguin, Paul 209, 239, 242-4, 240, 62-3, 64; 54, 57-S; Mathieu 62;
234, 272; 218-20 248; 242, 243 55-6, 58; School of 66; 61

287
Lc Moyne, Francois 133-5; 126 Perrcal, Jean 31-2, 44; 21 Serusier, Paul 244, 248, 255; 244
Perrier, Francois 94, 95. 96 Seurat, Georges 234, 236-7, 243; 238
Le Pare, Julio 278
Lepicie, Nicolas-Bernard 164, 173 Perroneau, Jean-Baptiste 153; 149 Sevcrini, Gino 256
Le Sueur, Eustache 94, 101-2, 156-7; Perugino, Pietro 31 Sisley, Alfred 224-5, 230
96-7 Pesne, Antoine 130 Snyders, Frans 116
Leonardo da Vinci 33, 40, 45, 127 Peyron, Jean-Francois-Pierre 174 Soto, Jesus Rafael 278
Limbourg brothers 14-15, 29; J Picabia, Francis 265 Soulages, Pierre 271
Linard, Jacques 70 Picasso, Pablo 246, 249-52, 255, 258, Soutine, Chaim 259; 259
261, 269-70; 249-51, 256, 270 Stael Nicolas de 273; 264
Lorrain see Claude Lorrain
Pietro da Cortona 74. 95. 98 Stella, Jacques 94-5

Mallarme, Stephane 239 Pignon, Edouard 270 Stoskoptf, Sebastien 70; 62

Malouel, Jean 15, 29 Piero dclla Francesca 21, 26, 28, 272
Manet, Edouard 9, 213, 216, 220-4, Pigalle, Jean-Baptiste 151 Tanguy, Yves 267-8; 266
231, 234-5, 239, 276; 221-5 Pissarro,Camille 225, 230; 228 Tassel, Jean 64, 66; 59
Marmion, Simon 29-30; 18-19 Pollock, Jackson 269 Tassi, Agostino 80-1, 90
Marquet, Albert 248 Pontormo, Jacopo di 35, 50 Teniers, David I 120, 127, 131, 156
Martini, Simone 25 Poussin, Gaspard see Dughet, Terbrugghen, Hendrik 57
Masson, Andre 268-9; 268 Gaspard Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista 134, 143
Master of Flemalle 25 Poussin, Nicolas, 64, 71-80, 83, 90/ Titian 45, 76, 95, 120
Master of Flora 40, 44; 29 92, 95-6, 98, 101-2, 111-12, 117. Tocque, Louis 153; 14S
Master of Moulins 22, 27-30, 34; 120, 146, 156, 172, 213, 236-7, 261; Touchet, Marie 45
15-17 65-73 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de 122,
Mathieu, Georges 271; 271 Primaticcio, Francesco 34, 37-8, 40; 234, 243, 250; 235
Matisse, Henri 246, 248-9, 258, 270, 24 Tournier, Nicolas 56; 48
273; 248, 252 Proust, Marcel 9 Troy, Francois de no
Matsys, Quentin 45 Prud'hon, Pierre-Paul 186-7, 276; Troy, Jean-Francois de 13 1 123 ;

Matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren) 183, 186 Turner, Joseph Mallord William 80,
269; 268 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre 208, 241; 148, 224
Meissonier, Jean-Louis-Ernest 204; 241
205 Valenciennes, Pierre-Henri 150; 145
Memling, Hans 21, 30 Quarton, Enguerrand see Charonton Vallayer-Coster, Anne 160
Mercier, Philippe 130; 122 Quillard, Pierre-Antoine 130 Van der Goes, Hugo 28
Michel, Georges 209; 211 Van der Velde family 148
Michelangelo Buonarroti 33, 35-6 Raimondi, Marcantonio 221 Van der Weyden, Rogier 21
Mignard, Pierre 94, 98, 106-9, III. Raphael 36-7, 71-2. 101, 112 Van Dongen, Kees 248
151; 104 Raysse, Martial 276; 277
Van Gogh, Vincent 145, 216,243; 240
Millet, Jean-Francois 214-16, 243; Redon, Odilon 241, 244, 250, 267 Van Laer, Pieter (II Bamboccio) 53,
217 Rembrandt van Rijn 54, no, 143, 61, 64
Miro, Joan 268-9; 263 145, 206, 216
Van Loo, Carle 139; 132
Modigliani, Amedeo 258-9: 25S Rene Master 23-5; 11 Varin, Quentin 71
Moillon, Louise 70; 64 Reni, Guido 91
Vasarely, Victor 277; 278
Monet, Claude 213, 223-8, 235; 227, Renoir, Pierre-Auguste 135, 194, Velazquez, Diego Rodriguez de
230 224-5, 230-1; 229, 234 Silva 64, 220
Moreas, Jean 244 Restany, Pierre 275 Vermcer, Jan 160
Moreau, Gustave 208, 239, 241, 244, Ricci, Sebastiano 133
Vernet, Claude-Joseph 148, 150, 203;
248, 267; 239 Rigaud, Hyacinthe 109-10; 105-6
143
Moreau, Louis-Gabriel (l'Aine) 150; Rimbaud, Arthur 244 Vernet, Horace 203-4; 203
146 Robert, Hubert 139, 146-8, 150, 163;
Veronese, Paolo 133
Moroni, Domenico 45 141 Vien, Joseph-Marie 168, 170, 173-4,
Rohan Master 22, 26; 9 178; 167-70
Natanson, Thadee 244 Romano, Giulio 37, 71, 76 Vigee-Lcbrun, Elisabeth-Louise 166;
Nattier, Jean-Marc in, 151, 153; 147 Rosa, Salvator 90
164
Nourrisson, Rene 70 Roslin, Alexandre 153
Vignon, Claude 54; 47
Rosso, II (Giovanni Battista di
Villatte, Pierre 26
Oudry, Jcan-Baptiste 116, 145-6; Jacopo) 34. 35-8, 40, 50; 22-3 Vlaminck, Maurice de 248, 259
139-40 Rouault, Georges 248, 250 Vouet, Simon 54, 91-4. 96, ioi, III,
Ozenfant, Amedee 261; 262 Rousseau, Theodore-Pierre-Etienne
168; 46, S3-7
214; 215 Vuillard, Edouard 206, 245-6; 245
Pajou, Augustin 151 Rubens, Peter Paul 91, 102, in,
Palamedesz, Anthonie 62 120-1, 127, 133, 135. 143
Pannini, Giovanni Paolo 146, 148 Watteau, Jean- Antoine 91, III, 118-
Ruisdael, Jacob van 212
Parmigianino, Francesco 38, 50 31, 133-4, 143, 221; 116-21
Parrocel, Joseph 116; 112 Saint- Yenne, Lafont de 118 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill 275
Patel, Pierre (the Elder) 90; 82 Salviati,Francesco 45 Wols (Wolfgang Schulze) 272
Pater, Jean-Baptiste 128-9 School of Avignon 26; 14 Wouwerman, Philips 156
Pellegrini, Gian Antonio 133 School of Fontainebleau 34, 40, 48,
Penni, Luca 38; 25 91, 92; 27, 36 Zurbaran, Francisco 102

288