Rise of European Schools

Perroneau is neither impeccable in the structure of his faces nor impassioned in his analysis of expression ; but what charm he possesses at his best ! He is a born colourist, and had not the same reasons for his illustrious predecessor and rival for preferring pastel. He painted a number of excellent portraits in oils. But La Tour had made pastel fashionable, and Perroneau and many others followed suit. Pastel, which charmed all eyes by its light ness and unalterable freshness, seemed an invention peculiarly suited to the spirit of the times, the light wood-work of interiors and pale dresses. But Perroneau alone had the gift of making it subserve his charming discoveries in colour.

In this women's century, it is natural that we should see women painters win a place which had not yet been accorded to them. Their talents were principally devoted to portraiture. In Wat teau's time the Venetian, Rosalba Carriera won a great success in Paris and helped to create a fashion for pastel. She subse quently carried her chalks and amiable mannerisms into every European capital. In Fragonard's time it was a Frenchwoman, Madame Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842), who held the palm for portraiture and immortalized in her pictures of queens and great ladies, and especially in those canvases where she has depicted herself with her own daughter, the graces of the dying century.

Fragonard and His Contemporaries.

A movement which had arisen in Sweden, a country hitherto unknown, or almost so, in artistic geography, ended at Paris where it flourished with the portrait-painters and miniaturists Roslin, Hall and Lafrensen (known in France as Lavreince). The two latter had the honour of giving a decisive impetus to an art which had already enjoyed several brief periods of fashion in earlier times but which. revivi fied and full of grace, finish and life became one of the most charming expressions of 18th century taste. No one could be more Parisian than these Scandinavians. Lavreince had also a very important share in a no less characteristic development of this likeable century, the gallant, sometimes licentious, but always witty work of the lesser lights—such chroniclers and illustrators as Baudoin, the Saint Aubins, the Cochins, Moreau-le-Jeune, and Debucourt.

In this gay and pleasant society there suddenly arose one who was, at least in some respect, a great painter. Fragonard 18o6) closes with a burst of fireworks the curve of the 18th cen tury opened by Watteau with his fairy poems of love and melan choly. Watteau is aerial and profound; Fragonard is merely light. He amuses us while amusing himself ; he is never moved.

But how he understands the art of pleasing, and what charm he imparts to everything he touches ! He has even so much grace that we forgive him the daring gallantry of certain subjects which would be intolerable in another man. Sometimes he dashes off a canvas in an hour, with the brio of an improvisatore (he takes the trouble to inscribe this impressive fact on the back of a stretcher), sometimes he pursues to the point of the most delicate affectation a little picture full of charm and mystery. Then we find him at Grasse decorating a house with five great panels in which he shows himself the worthy rival of Tiepolo and Goya, the Goya of the cartoons for tapestries.

In landscape Fragonard had almost a rival in the person of his fellow-sojourner in Rome, Hubert Robert (1735-1808). This latter conceived landscape principally as a decorative theme more or less derived from the views of antique ruins of the Italian Panini, but he imbues it with a romantic charm unknown to the latter and with luminous harmony, a distant reflection of Claude.

In spite of the residuum of convention in his pleasing works, we see in them the first signs of a change. A return to simplicity and truth heralds a new conception of landscape which will be that of the loth century. Vernet 0714-80 in his Ports de France and numerous other pictures is a brilliant and facile narrator; but the views of Rome, the Ponte Rotto and the Château St. Ange are links between the Campo Vaccino painted by Claude from nature and the most charming of Corot's Italian studies while Louis Moreau (174o-18o5) is a precursor of Th. Rousseau.

French Influence in Europe.

Whether in painting, architec ture or furniture, French taste spread throughout the whole of Europe. Numerous artists working in Paris received royal sum monses to Spain and Russia, to Sweden and Germany. Frederick II. at Potsdam, Gustavus III. at Stockholm, Catherine II. at St.

Petersburg, formed magnificent collections of French pictures, and while a goodly number of artists followed their works abroad, Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Swedes, Italians, Swiss and Russians came to pursue their studies in France. Thus, under French influ ence several countries saw the birth or revival of painting. Swit zerland had conscientious and pleasing portrait-painters : Wyrsch, Liotard and Angelica Kauffmann. In Sweden, while Roslin, Hall and Lavreince lived in Paris, others still faithful to their native land, showed no less talent : Pilo (i7i i-93), Elias Martin, Wert miiller. The Danish Jens Juel is a lesser painter but a good por traitist.