Rise of European Schools

The Brothers Le Nain.

For long it appeared impossible to allocate individually amongst the three brothers Le Nain the works which have come down to us under their common signa ture. The present writer believes that some years ago he was able to contribute to the elucidation of this problem. Antoine Le Nain (1588-1648) who studied at Laon under a "foreign painter" (probably from Flanders) painted, in a manner and with a colour ing more or less derived from Flemish models, little panels where persons are assembled in interiors, modest, but rather of the town than of the country. His style was still slightly archaic, but we may already discern in him that love of humble truth from which springs the inspiration of the most original works bearing the signature, those of Louis (1593-1648), the man of genius, the breaker of new ground. It is he who produced (164o-48) those gatherings of peasants which are painted with such freedom, filled with such dignity, sobriety and humanity and which, in a word, are so different from treatments of similar subjects by contempo rary Spanish and Italian followers of Caravaggio on the one hand and by the Flemish and Dutch on the other. Mathieu (1607-77), the youngest of the brothers, who survived the others by almost 3o years, has less depth but painted family gatherings in which he shows himself almost as good a judge of human physiognomy and expression as his brother Louis.

Royal Patronage.

Af ter this generation of originals the con dition of French art was completely changed by the action of the absolute monarchy in setting out to patronize and develop but also to organize, discipline and centralize this force amongst others, for the furtherance of its great designs. King and nation became one. The French saw no better way of advancing their own reputation than by making themselves the architects of the royal glory. Charles Le Brun (1619-9o) has none of the qualities by which true lovers of painting set most store. Although he has given proof of merit in every genre, not one of his works gives us that emotional satisfaction which inspires us with such affection for more unassuming work. Nevertheless his role is an important one, and this father of modern academic tradition did work which is perhaps alone comparable with the mediaeval cathedrals or the Acropolis. At Versailles he was the master brain commanding an army of architects, painters, sculptors, goldsmiths and up holsterers. He had the true genius for decoration; the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles and the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre bear glorious witness to it and, secure in the king's esteem, he reigned for 20 years over the kingdom of the arts. Pierie Mignard (1610-95) on his return from Italy where for 2 2 years he had enjoyed the most brilliant successes, alone sought to dispute his supremacy. It was, moreover, a purely personal rivalry, for both were soaked in Italianism and, while claiming descent from Pous sin, were followers of the Bolognese, and one of them, Le Brun, possessed the energy, ambition and clear-sightedness of a leader.

Le Brun had no sooner disappeared than signs were manifested of a reaction against academic and Italianate art. This is what is called the Querelle des Rubenistes et des Poussinistes, Poussin's name having been wrongfully invoked by the followers of Le Brun. A part of the French school then discovered that the Italian ideal was not the only one possible, that colour is as im portant as design, and that grace, intimacy and freedom have their place in art as well as sublimity and grandeur.

Jean Jouvenet (1644-1717), Antoine Coypel (1661-1722) and Charles de la Fosse (1634-1716) were all pupils and collaborators of Le Brun, but as regards colour and feeling were already pre cursors of the i8th century. This reaction was equally marked amongst the portrait painters, from Jean Francois de Troy (1679– 1752) to Nattier (1685-1766). The animal painters Desportes and Oudry (1686-1755) render Snyders' hunting scenes in French idiom ; to us their greatest merit is perhaps an already very modern sense of landscape.

Watteau.

Watteau (1684-1721) incarnates all the grace, all the intelligence, all the poetry of the i8th century, when French taste was triumphant throughout the whole of Europe. He, as did

Poussin, stood alone; had he not existed things would doubtless have been no different in the realm of painting, only the lesser masters—Lancret, Pater, Bonaventure de Bar who were his im mediate disciples and produced very charming variations on his subjects—would have had a different destiny. But how would it have changed the general trend of the century from Boucher to Fragonard—not to mention Chardin, that great painter of little things? We should no doubt have seen the development of the same decorative taste, the same bright, clear painting with amor ous nudes and agreeable mythological subjects not at all in Wat teau's tradition but corresponding to the transformations of architecture. The immense galleries and stately apartments be loved by the "Grand Roi" were then succeeded by salons and boudoirs designed with a view rather to elegance and convenience than to display.

On the other hand if Watteau had never lived, France and the world would have missed a unique enchantment ; he certainly had a Flemish atavism which fitted him peculiarly to understand the lesson of Rubens, and he found, as has already been said, the first idea of his Fetes galantes in Rubens' charming variants of the d' Amour. When he was employed in Audran's studio at the Luxembourg he studied the great Antwerper's Vie de Marie de Medicis; later at Crozat's he copied his drawings and placed them side by side with those of the most illustrious Venetians, of which that amateur of unerring taste possessed an incomparable collec tion. We can see in Jupiter and Antiope (Louvre) how Watteau succeeded in blending and adapting the influences of Antwerp and Venice. But all that may hereafter be said about Watteau's youth, all that may be added about his teacher Gillot, who himself drew and painted masquerades, will be completely inadequate to account for his work. He alone possesses that genius for colour which con veys a sense of softness and mystery even in brilliant light, a sense of music everywhere ; that vigorous draughtsmanship which pro claims him equal to the greatest; that natural poetry arising from the dreams which perhaps he never confessed even to himself ; that enigmatic atmosphere of melancholy brooding over his land scapes—tall trees in parks and glades with marble fountains and statues—and the drooping glance of lovers' eyes; that high-born grace of his Indifferents, his Finettes, all these young men and women clad in satins and laces to whom he gives unconsciously something of his own long, slim silhouette of a sick man marked out by approaching death, something of his own strange nature as depicted by his friends, alternately ironic and tender, with mo ments of dark moodiness—a child as regards his own affairs, and with all a child's innocence and ingenuousness; finally this idea that fairyland, play-acting, with its actors and actresses, fantastic disguises and clandestine serenades, fair unknown ladies wooed by tremulous swains uncertain of their bliss, walks without aim and departures for unexplored isles, all this is lovelier than our everyday life and just as true. All this which was so new and charming would suffice to establish his fame. But only two or three years before his death this young genius who had no time to lose showed himself more and more audacious. L'Embarque ment pour Cythere is an end, not a beginning; it is the master piece of romantic fairyland. Watteau was not content to remain the painter of the Fetes galantes; he felt that he could create poetry with subjects drawn from everyday life. He painted Gilles: still a character from the stage, but the spirit has changed. Then came the Enseigne de Gersaint. Persons in the dress of the period are inspecting pictures in a shop, a scene which might have made a genre picture. Watteau aims much higher and at the first attempt achieves, in a masterpiece without precedent and which bore no fruit until long afterwards, the new manner of which the 19th century dreamed and to which it came back incessantly with Courbet, Degas, Manet. French taste succeeded in reconciling style with the realism inherited from the old Flemings.