It is a curious phenomenon that England in the 18th century should of a sudden develop a group of important portrait painters, such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, Allan Ramsay, John Opie, Hoppner, Sir Thomas Law rence and Sir Henry Raeburn. Demand undoubtedly had a great deal to do with it. Their work reflects a refined, healthy, self contented atmosphere that makes one feel as if one were moving in the best society. This, perhaps, explains the popularity of these pictures. Healthy complexions and beautiful clothes gave the artists an opportunity to make colourful pictures but there is little research into character. Shop methods prevailed. Like Van Dyck, Reynolds painted only the head. In this way he was able to paint about i5o portraits a year for several years.
Gainsborough's was the most artistic nature but he was more interested in a silk gown than in the sitter. Only an extravagant wife kept him from abandoning lucrative portraiture for landscape painting which he loved. (F. T. W.) France.--Jean Fouquet (1415-1485), is the first of our great French portrait painters. Without departing from the technique of the miniature painters, with their golden background and atten tion to minute detail, he none the less treats the face and costume more broadly.
Jean and Francois Clouet (their dates are, approximately, Jean, 1485-1545; Francois, 1510-72), attached to the court of Francis I. and his three successors, have bequeathed to us the physiognomy of these princes and their counsellors. Sharing in the Italianism which dominated manners at the period of the Renaissance and representing the old feudal order on which they rested their claims, these men are at once subtle and fierce ; their sparkling glances, their flashing or gloomy eyes, their humble or haughty characters, their brilliant or sober costumes, all are studied with scrupulous detail, all speak to us of their hates, their fears, or their hopes. We look at their paintings like historical documents whose truth heightens their pictorial value.
Antoine Lenain (1598-1648), along with his brother Louis (1593-1648), are two portrait painters of high rank. The period which they represent is less violent ; the power of royalty has triumphed over feudalism. But the realistic tradition of the Middle Ages still survives and resists the more decorative and more impersonal academic tendencies.
Philippe de Champaigne (1602-74), portrait painter of Louis XIII. and Richelieu, introduces a new element—the pomp of courts and the fashion of the official portraits. He portrays the majesty of royalty, flattering his models a bit in the way of nobility and dignity, and he paints the glowing colours of their royal vestments. Mignard (1610-95), and after him Tocque (1696-1772), in his great portrait of Marie Leczinska, amplify and enrich the opulent style of the official portrait.
The sweeping lines of materials in rich folds become still more decorative in the eighteenth century. They give an air of awk wardness to the persons set off by them. Rigaud (1659-1743)
less cold and simpler in his art, one of the fine talents of the end of the XVIIth. century, is surpassed in brilliance by Nattier (1685-1766), whose famous "blue" has become celebrated; and especially by Largilliere (1656-1746).
The latter returns to the naturalistic tradition with all the opulence of a palette worthy of Rubens at the service of a rather subtle understanding of the human soul. He defines the features clearly, he selects the characteristic detail to mark a momentary state of soul. He has left us a considerable number of magnificent portraits. His portraits of women have all the charm, all the grace and all the sumptuousness of that delightful century. The stiff school of Mignard is definitely vanquished by charm and light. It is not yet the famous "rayon rose" of Boucher. It is simply the harmonious balance of all, the joy of painting materials and beautiful flesh. Largilliere, like Oudry, is often influenced by Snyders and he knows how to enliven a portrait with a remarkable bit of still life, without going contrary to the spirit of the composi tion.
Carl Van Loo (1705-1765), in the portrait of Louis XV. at the Chase, introduces the element of landscape more extensively than ever before in portrait painting. Watteau (I684-1721), Chardin (1699--1779), Boucher (1703-177o), Fragonard (1732 1806), Greuze (1725-1805), are not actual portrait painters, but who would pass them without mention? Their varied palettes, the delicacy of their composition, their expressive design, compel us to note them and to class them among the greatest portrait painters. Perroneau and Latour, most famous of pastel painters, both broke deliberately with the tradition of official portrait painting. Latour is never constrained. All his portraits give the impression of having been fixed on the canvas at the moment when the subtlest smile of the subject is responding to a witty word. Madam Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842), with her charm and grace, concludes the achievement of this brilliant century and fittingly introduces the next. (C. MAs.) Already under Louis XV. the classic reaction had begun, due largely to the influence of the scholar Winckelmann. In 1764 the translation of his "History of Art Among the Ancients" appeared in which he exhorts the artists to take their models from antiquity. Piranesi's prints also served to draw attention to the art of ancient Rome. Philosophers and writers such as Diderot and Caylus attacked artists for their subservience to fashionable tastes. Dur ing the Revolution, just as in politics, theorists went to the limit of the absurd declaring that beauty could be obtained only through calculation by knowledge of the antique. Louis David (1748– 1825) who became the apostle of this creed painted some truly fine portraits in which, however, reason takes the place of passion. Gerard, Girodet and Gros were not his equals. Prud'hon alone had an artist's vision, but due to the use of bitumen his paintings deteriorated.