K-'.'V- FREDERICK GARRI SON HALL^ EX LIBRIS CHARDIN Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/chardin00furs_0 CHARDIN By HERBERT E. A. FURST WITH 45 PLATES METHUEN & GO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W. G. LONDON First Published in iqii PREFATORY NOTE O WING to the difficulty experienced in trying to provide a large number of illustrations, which after all it has not been possible to obtain, this book has been in the press rather longer than expected. Reading it over now, I feel that its attitude to modern art, more particularly towards Whistler and the Academy — now a topic devoid of actuality it seems — needs perhaps some definition. The new manner of seeing exemplified, amongst others, by Whistler, has relieved the modern artist of a great deal of grinding labour ; he produces his illusions with considerable effect and inconsiderable effort. Whistler’s Protests in Pigment have been the cause of a great deal of slipshod workmanship, because the mental labour which preceded each stroke of Whistler’s brush is not so apparent as the patient toil of Van Eyck’s pencil, for instance. We have now all over Europe a host of painters, who, pleased with their ability to pro- duce effects, seem to think that that is due to their exceptional abilities. That, however, is a great fallacy. Careful scrutiny of seventy-five out of a hundred ‘ modern ’ painters’ work will reveal less knowledge of the painter’s craft than some of the most discredited of the early and mid-Victorian painters possessed. The Academy, I think, has in the past committed a great many sins, mostly of omission, but it has at least insisted on good vii CHARDIN craftsmanship. It has been slow and suspicious in its acceptance of ‘ the new manner of seeing ’ — on the whole, I think, wisely, for craftsmanship is the touchstone of Art. Nothing is commoner than individuality. Even a lunatic can produce a piece of individuality — but that is not Art. The ridiculous overestima- tion of the ‘ Ego ’ is the cause of bizarreries and banalities without number, and is the cause, too, of the unfortunate estrangement between the artist and his legitimate employers — the public, either individually, as the man of wealth, or collectively, as the Muni- cipality or the State. If only the artists would remember that painting is a metier, amply rewarded at the rate of so many pence an hour ; if only the public would learn once more that painters should be employed like builders and upholsterers by them ! The great artist, who, like all great men, is typical rather than individual, needs no encouragement, is deterred by no obstruc- tion ; he comes amongst us when we deserve him, and that, as things go, is rarely more than once or twice in a century. HERBERT E. A. FURST February 1911. viii CONTENTS PAGE PREFATORY NOTE, ..... vii LIST OF PLATES, ....... xi I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES, ...... 1 II. FRENCH ART, . . . . . . .14 III. CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER, .... 26 IV. HIS WORK : ITS ESSENCE AND INFLUENCE, . . 70 V. CONCLUSION, . . . . . . .110 APPENDIX, .113 CATALOGUE OF CHARDIN’S PRINCIPAL WORKS, . . 118 INDEX, ........ 139 IX LIST OF PLATES (Arranged chronologically — as far as possible) PLATE I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. La Fontaine (Salon 1737), ..... Frontispiece From the picture in possession of Sir Frederick Cook, Bart. FACING PAGE The Surgeon’s Signboard (about 1724), . . . 1 From the engraving by J. de Goncourt, after the sketch de- stroyed during the ‘ Commune ’ in Paris, 1870. Deux Lievres (1726), ...... 5 From the picture in the Carlsruhe Gallery. Photo, Bruckmann. Le Petit Granger (172- ?), ...... 8 From the picture in the Carlsruhe Gallery. Photo, Bruckmann. La Raie (1728), ....... 12 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Neurdein. Le Buffet (1728), ....... 16 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. Jeune Femme occupee a Cacheter une Lettre (Die Briefsieglerin, 1733), ........ 18 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Berlin Photo- graphic Co. La Blanehisseuse (Place Dauphin, 1734), . . . .20 From the picture in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Photo, Hanfstaengl. Une Dame prenant son The (1735), . From the picture in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. Photo, Annan. Un Jeune Garmon jouant avec des Cartes (Salon 1737 ?), . From the picture in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Photo, Hanfstaengl. 23 26 XI CHARDIN PLATE FACING PAGE x. Le Garmon Cabaretier (Salon 1738), . . . .29 From the picture in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. Photo, Annan. xi. La Recureuse (Salon 1738), . . . . .31 From the pictui-e in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. Photo, Annan. xii. L’Enfant au Toton (Salon 1738), . . . . .32 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xin. Le Jeune Homme au Violon (Salon 1738), . . .36 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xiv. La Gouvernante (Salon 1739), . . . . .40 From the picture in Prince Liechtenstein’s Gallery, Vienna. Photo, Hanfstaengl. xv. La Pourvoyeuse (Salon 1739), ..... 45 From the picture in the possession of the German Emperor. Photo, Berlin Photographic Co. xvi. Le Benedicite (Salon 1740), . . . . . 49 From the picture in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Photo, Nikolevski. xvii. La Mere Laborieuse (Salon 1740), . . . .50 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xvin. La Toilette du Matin (Salon 1741), . . . .53 From the picture in the National Museum, Stockholm. xix. Les Tours de Cartes (Salon 1743), . . . .56 From the picture in the National Gallery, Dublin. Photo, Annan. xx. Les Amusements de la Vie Privee (Salon 1746), . . .60 From the engraving by L. Surugue (le pere). Photo, Neurdein. xxi. La Garde Attentive (1747), . . . . .63 From the picture in Prince Liechtenstein’s Gallery, Vienna. Photo, Hanfstaengl. xxii. La Serinette (Salon 1751), . . . . . .64 From the engraving by Laurent Cars. Photo, Neurdein. xxiii. L’GEconome, ....... 67 From the engraving by P. J. Ph. Le Bas. xii LIST OF PLATES PLATE FACING PAGE xxiv. Still-Life (1754), ...... 69 From the picture in the National Gallery. Photo, Hanfstaengl. /Metsu’s ‘ Die Kochin,’ ...... 70 From the picture in the Berlin Gallery. Photo, Hanfstaengl. XXVl | Chardin’s ‘ La Fontaine,’ . . . . .70 From the picture in Mme. Jahan — Marcille’s Collection. Photo, Braun. 'Chardin’s ‘ La Ratisseuse,’ . . . . .72 From the picture in Prince Liechtenstein’s Gallery, Vienna. Photo, Hanfstaengl. Netscher’s ‘ Die Niiherin,’ . . . . .72 From the picture in the Royal Gallery, Dresden. Photo, Hanfs- taengl. XXVII.. ''Maes’ ‘ Le Renedicite,’ ...... From the picture in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Photo, Hanfstaengl. Chardin’s ‘ Le Benedieite,’ . From the picture in the La Caze Collection, Louvre. Photo, Neurdein. 'Hondecoeter’s ‘ Dead Fowl,’ . ... . From the picture in the Royal Museum, Brussels. Photo, Hanfstaengl. xxviii.-; Chardin’s ‘ Dead Partridge,’ ..... From the picture in the Carlsruhe Gallery. Photo, Bruckmann. Metsu’s ‘ White Cock,’ ...... From the picture in the Prado, Madrid. Photo, Hanfstaengl. 75 75 76 76 76 XXIX. /Chardin’s ‘ Raisins et Grenades,’ .... From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Neurdein. jDe Heem’s ‘ Fruchtstiick,’ . . . . From the picture in the Royal Gallery, Dresden. ' Hanfstaengl. Photo, 78 78 xxx. Portrait of John Hunter (?), From the picture in possession of P. M. Turner, Esq. 81 xiii CHARDIN PLATE facing page xxxi. Pipes et Vases a Boire, . . . . . . 83 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xxxii. Still-Life, .... 84 From the picture in the National Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo, The Studio. xxxiii. Still-Life, ....... 87 From the picture in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. Photo, Schwarz. xxxiv. Le Gobelet d’Argent, ...... 88 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Braun. xxxv. Le Bocal d’Olives (1760), . . . . .90 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xxxvi. Poires et Verre de Vin (1768), . . . . .93 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Braun. xxxvii. Panier de Peches et Noix (176-), . . . .94 From the picture in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xxxviii. Chevres et Satyrs (1769), . . . . .96 From the picture in possession of Dr. Tuffier, xxxix. Portrait of the Artist (1771), . . . . .98 From the pastel in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xl. Portrait of the Artist, ‘ A rAbat-Jour’ (1771), . . 101 From the pastel in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Neurdein. xli. Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1775), .... 102 From the pastel in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xlii. Les Porteurs de Chaise (La Vinaigrette), . . . 104 From the drawing in the National Museum, Stockholm. xliii. L’Homme a la Boule (1760), ..... 107 From the drawing in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. xliv. Tete d’Homme Coiffee d’un Tricorne (1774), . . . 108 From the drawing in the Louvre, Paris. Photo, Giraudon. XIV CHARDIN ATE I CHARDIN i GENERAL PRINCIPLES Beauty is that little something which fills the whole world, and is neither contained in a straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue moun- tain. Some see it in a leg of mutton ; others in a compound fracture ; and to expect others to accept one’s own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush. W. M. Hunt’s 'Talks about Art’ L OOKING down the list of names in d’Argenville’s Abrcge de la Vie des plus Fameux Feintres one is struck by the fact that amongst all the French Painters of the time there are so many, who, to us of non-Gallic extraction, seem nothing more than — names: Michel Corneille, Jean Jouvenet, Nicolas Colombel, Louis Dorigny, Blain de Fontenay, Nicolas Bertin, Pierre- Jacques Cazes, and many others. These amongst the plus fameux peintres'l D’Argenville expressly says in his Avant-Propos, ‘ the title of this compendium itself permits us only to treat of the great artists, such as Poussin, Le Sueur, Le Brun, Bourdon, Jouvenet and Le Moine, who preserve after their deaths the esteem which they so justly acquired during their lifetime.’ He does not include in this Abrcge names of men then still living, for, although the book was revised and augmented in 1762, the biographies of Boucher, Greuze, and Chardin do not appear. Or can it be that d’Argenville did not believe in Boucher, for example, as a great artist. Sixteen pages are devoted to Jean CHARDIN Jouvenet, nine pages to Jean Raoux, and barely six to Watteau ! It seems strange to us. Watteau, of whom a hundred years later the Brothers Goncourt were justified in stating that ‘ with one solitary exception all the pictures of the age, which are not devoted to the Greeks and Romans, revive the attitudes, the airs, the style of the coiffures, the colouring, the drawing, the touch of the master! Watteau imposes himself, Watteau reigns every- where.’ The inference we are ready to make is that Watteau had not been dead long enough to rank with the great Masters, from the closer point of view which a man like d’Argenville in the nature of things was compelled to take. One would imagine that a hundred or a hundred and fifty years should suffice to rectify such error of judgment. Amos Dean , 1 writing in 1869, though not as an Art critic, and therefore more truly echoing the generally accepted opinions of his time, states bluntly and naively : ‘ The great period of French Art, or rather of the Art of Painting as practised by Frenchmen, lies in the last half of the seventeenth century, in the reign of Louis xiv.’ The age of Louis xv. does not exist at all for him, for the next painter he mentions after the Le Bruns, Le Sueurs, etc., is David. There is something then ‘ quits manquent ,’ these great painters of the ‘ Siecle de Louis xv.,’ something that makes their art suspicious, and if we examine this something closer we find that it was not consacre aux G?'ecs et aux Romains. The French art of that period was not academic. We have changed all this since. We have only a faint echo of this opinion, as when M. Gaston Schefer , 2 writing in the com- mencement of the twentieth century, knows ‘ the void that ignor- ance of (classic) antiquity leaves in the soul of even the most gifted of artists.’ The use that classic antiquity had for the painters of the great Renaissance, painters who were born and bred on ancient soil, became, as one might easily show — were this 1 Amos Dean, History of Civilization, 1869. 2 Gaston Schefer, Chardin, Paris, 1904. 2 GENERAL PRINCIPLES the place — an abuse in almost every other country. Raphael, the arch-plagiarist, the first eclectic, is at the bottom of it all. Since his sweet draughtsmanship and fair design first smiled upon admiring multitudes the studious painters have sought to equal him, not to do justice to themselves : ‘ Wie er rauspert und wie er spuckt Das habt Ihr ihm gliicklich abgeguckt,’ as Schiller says. This pseudo-antiquity of Raphael is the origin of academic art ; and academic art an imitation, mostly a base one, of Raphael’s peculiar feminine qualities. Voltaire, tilting, as was his pleasure, at every accepted ‘ truth,’ knocks it over with these words : ‘ not a single piece of work that may be termed academic, in whatever branch of art one likes to mention, has ever yet been the work of a genius.’ But then, the vast majority of non- academic works are not ouvrage s de genie either. The only advantage of the non-academic man over the academic is that he at least has a chance of developing his genius, which the other has not — has not and cannot have — because his individuality is bound, like Gulliver, from his feet and hands to the very hair of his head, by the red tape of tradition. In spite of the high-flown language, the ingenious thought and the philosophic finesse that have been uttered on the subject of Art, Art is primarily un metier — a handicraft — and inasmuch as handicraft is a question of skill — skilled labour in fact — it is also acquirable by study, and in that sense academic — teachable. Speaking of the French painters, Lacroix says : ‘ Most of them, those above all who had a special reputation, and an accredited name, belonged to families of painters, who had succeeded one another from father to son for several generations — Art, like le metier, being hereditary in France .’ 1 This obviously means that the profession, not the genius, was hereditary. Art has been hereditary to a lesser extent in almost every country, but it has invariably been in 1 Lacroix: XVIII s Siecle, Paris, 1878, p. 285. 3 C H A H D I ]S T the first place a handicraft. We may speak of a Clothmakers’ Guild in the same breath as of a Painters’ Guild, and if any one were likely to take offence at that, it would in all probability have been the Clothmakers. Having thus put the painter (and implicitly the sculptor likewise) into his proper place, that of the skilled labourer, we shall have to find a place for the artist — for what the German calls so beautifully Kunstler. This German word is nearly related to another beautiful Teutonic word, viz., Kdnig or king, both having the verb ‘ can ’ ( konnen ) for their parent. Can — to be able. The king, then, was the ablest of his people ; the Kiinstler, the ablest in his profession. When we are speaking of an artist we are speaking in the superlative, we are speaking of the exception, not of the rule. If we may in good English use such an expression as a bad king we are surely com- mitting lese-majeste, or else such king was not a true king ; or if it is pardonable to speak of a bad artist, why then, such artist — qua ‘ Kunstler ’ — is not an artist. The point of this seeming digression is this: the painter, as such, is not necessarily an artist at all, one does him an injustice in applying a standard far beyond his measure, complaining that a thimble will not hold a pailful nor a pool the ocean. Yet this is what we are constantly doing; and worse still, we do not even demand that at least the thimble should be brimful before we compare its measure with the pail. Because a man wields a brush with paint we are content to call him a painter. W e are much more particular with sculpture and architecture, for a stonemason, though he does sculptor’s work to a certain and much greater extent than the house-painter does the picture-painter’s work, dare not call himself a sculptor, and a builder is not an architect . 1 * * 4 It is not sufficient then, to be able to 1 Our indulgence with painting goes still further. Month after month, year after year, we allow painters to cover hundreds of square yards of wall-space with their pictures in innumerable exhibitions. Should we, but for the cost, not be equally indulgent with architects or builders, and allow them to cover available spaces with buildings ? There would be no object in it ; but neither have the painters any legitimate object ; they are like tailors making clothes which are not ordered and do not fit. 4 DEUX LIEVRES FROM THE PICTURE IN THE CARLSRUHE GALLERY SEE PAGES 83, 93 GENERAL PRINCIPLES paint, but one must paint for a purpose. No great painter, academic or other, has achieved anything without a definite purpose — and the Genius, the Artist par excellence, has this one and perhaps unconscious purpose : self-expression ; that is, he paints because he cannot help it, because it is his nature, not ‘ for a living,’ not for fame — regardless of consequences. It is of fundamental importance clearly to realize that painting is a teach- able metier , that as such it should be employed only for a definite purpose, and that if this purpose be ‘ self-expression,’ such self- expression is only Art when the £ self ’ expressed is that of a Genius. Lest it appear, however, that these affirmations beg the question, we will take them one by one. Painting has been taught in Japan for so many generations, so generally and so thoroughly, that the whole nation is practically a nation of artists (in its wider sense). The Islamitic substitute for painting, viz., Carpet making, has been taught so admirably that every carpet maker in the East appears to us an artist of the first order. The artists of the Great Renaissance were one and all properly apprenticed craftsmen, with so little self-expression that we justly speak of the Florentine School, the Venetian School, the Bolognese School, or say that a Giorgione has been mistaken for a Titian, a Bellini, a Catena, a Basaiti. Will posterity be in equal doubt when confronted by a picture of the Barbizon ‘ School,’ or will not Corot be distinguished from Rousseau, and both from Diaz — and easily too ? Traditional teaching, then, is quite evident in the ‘ Old Masters.’ But the academic Tradition of France as well as England is Italian. Every British painter, as well as every Frenchman, has to wrestle with this Tradition of a foreign Spirit long since in- active; for we have now no national Equivalent for the Vatican, for the Pisan Camposanto, for the Doge’s Palace, for the Medici, and their rivals ; for Francis i. or Louis xiv. Our style is therefore either unsuited to our purpose, or else we have no purpose. Our Abderitic city fathers and county councillors have 5 CHARDIN of late years taken it into their heads that a supply of 4 Artists ’ will create a demand for ‘ Art,’ thus confounding 4 Art ’ with ‘ Artist,’ the product with the producer. If they demanded ‘ Art ’ the supply of 4 Artists ’ would regulate itself. All of our ‘ Art ’ bears the blight of aimlessness, with but very few exceptions, and this in spite of the fact that we have Artists among us who in another direction surpass even the best and ablest amongst the 4 Old Masters.’ However that may be, our official Art is 4 academic,’ consists of cool reasoned juxtaposition of figures produced according to the academic 4 Canons of Beauty.’ A few lucky 4 Artists ’ succeed in getting their pictures purchased — often at ridiculously unjust prices — for the nation, and the public is permitted to perambulate a Tate Gallery, bewildered by an incongruous mass of very un- equal works, in which it cannot honestly take intelligent interest. Is it really 4 a consummation devoutly to be wished ’ that pictures of this description should end in a picture gallery ? That was, at any rate, not the idea in 4 Renaissance times.’ Such subject-matter as we call academic was invented and employed for the decoration of vast wall-spaces. The easel picture is a Northern invention, Gothic architecture and climatic conditions making the use of wide wall-spaces and light interiors impossible. Northern people were in conse- quence compelled to approach pictures within at least four or six feet. Seeing them so closely they could examine them carefully, and very naturally expected to see 4 for their money ’ as much as possible. In fact Northern people, true to the evolutionary principle of their Art, expected to read a picture, not merely to look at it. At first they read the Bible in their pictures, and after the Reformation, when iconoclastic zeal succeeded in ousting the picture from the church, the Northerner took his pictures into his home, and read them there with profane instead of sacred love — that is all the difference, so far as treatment is concerned. 6 GENERAL PRINCIPLES Northern art having a totally different purpose from Italian art, assumes a totally different aspect. Northern art is essentially V Art intime. The Northern painter was therefore helpless vis-a-vis les Grecs et les Romains, who were to him not forefathers but foreign invaders ; and just as the Anglo-Saxons learnt Norman French, so the educated Northerner spoke Latin, the language of the spiritual foreign invader and conqueror. But he speaks it badly — you can detect the foreign accent. Venus Anadyomene rose not from the German Ocean. We have therefore two streams of European art, apparently flowing from one and the same spring in Asia (‘ the Light of Asia lighting all the world ’ *) and apparently tending to seek their level in the same sea — the ocean of optic truths. However widely at times these two streams seem to diverge, or however closely they at other times seem to overlap and intermingle, they seem destined to merge into one another completely. Art, at times either decorative or didactic in its aims, now shows its drift very clearly, viz., the truthful rendering of an emotion; that is to say, whether decorative or didactic, whether realistic or mystic, its prime concern is the satisfying of the optic sense. At first sight this may seem applicable to all pictorial art from the beginning : but it is not so. At least we have reason to say that the origin of Art lies in the intellect, not in the organ of sight. Even decorative art seems to have been originally only distinctive. Primitive man made signs in order to distinguish the ego and all it conveyed to him from the non-ego. A stone of some distinctive shape became the symbol of the non-egos, i.e. a god, and a pot marked with a sign became symbolic of the ego, i.e. mine. Further advances in Art were afterthoughts, added possibly not even by the individual who made the first mark. At a much later stage several incidents were incorporated in one picture : this could not possibly have 1 It is a curious reflection, that although the theory of the Asiatic origin of the people of Europe is exploded, yet the vehicles of civilized thought are exclusively Asiatic. 7 CHARDIN been the case if the painter had been conscious that he was primarily addressing the eyes and not the intellect. So soon as a new idea takes possession of a nation or a group of nations, they are first of all bent on finding symbolic expression for this idea. It is only after the idea has become familiar that the symbols lose their original significance, and the individual artist, and with him the nation, devote their attention to the manner instead of the matter. So the critic will eventually criticize not the subject but the method : will say, I care not what you do, but how you do it. Be the subject as old as the world, a ‘ love-story ’ if you like, it is not the fact which will be the criterion of its render- ing. The rendering itself is the thing that should ever be new. It follows — and this is the point of the argument, that there can be no canon of Art : — that Rodin cannot in the nature of things conceive in the same manner as Praxiteles, and that Michel- angelo must of necessity be different from both. Yet Rodin’s ‘ Penseur,’ Michelangelo’s e Moses,’ and Praxiteles’ ‘ Hermes ’ are surely all works of sublimest art. If that be really so, we have practical demonstration of the futility of ‘ canonized art.’ If we add further that Michelangelo was nourished on Greek art, and Rodin assimilated both Classic and Renaissance ideals, we must admit the truth of evolutionary progress, and assuredly admit that Rodin’s ‘ Penseur ’ is a more complex, therefore less primitive, work of art. But what does ‘ more complex ’ mean ? It means that it must needs contain more points of value. As we are all contem- poraries of Rodin, there will be many who will deny Rodin his greatness : the place of Praxiteles and Michelangelo is safe, all that I can be accused of is having chosen the wrong man. Still the fact remains that modern sculpture must in its best form be of fuller value artistically than the finest works of the ancients. To put it otherwise : even a less fine modern work, in so far as it is the sincere expression of a mind, and not conscious imitation, must still contain more points of value than any of its predecessors — though the points may not harmonize so perfectly. 8 PLA1E III LE PETIT ORANGER FROM THE PICTURE IN THE CARLSRUHE GALLERY SEE PAGE 8; GENERAL PRINCIPLES I have instanced sculpture, because in pictorial art the link with classic antiquity is practically missing, and the painters of the Renaissance had to have recourse to the sculptors and not their fellows’ art. Raphael’s lament, that Diirer should have been ignorant of classic antiquity is, therefore, even if authentic, some- what unjustifiable. It does not follow that because Raphael, under the spell of the Belvedere Apollo, the Laokoon, the Antinous (all then recently discovered), based his art on the tenets of the sculptor, all painting must necessarily be based on an art which has three dimensions at its service. That conclusion were as limited and narrow as the acceptance of Diirer’s principle, that pictorial art should be confined to the illustration of holy writ and the preservation of man’s features after his death. The unbiased picture lover will therefore accept anything and everything as a work of art provided only that it is well done and optically truthful , 1 according to the optic evolution of the age in which it was created. The intellectual value of a picture, in so far as it is not part of the design, does not belong to Art, but finds its place in History, Kultur-Geschichte, as the German would say. We have now reached a point beyond which we dare not inquire ; already we can see an impatient question rising, which we could not answer : What is Art ? It were sheer waste of time even to stop and think of a reply — and how much time has not been wasted on it ? It can only be stated that any attempt to define Art confines it, and the confines of Art are at the mercy of the next genius who may drive his coach and six through the close meshes of such metaphysical fence-work. An answer cannot be found until that greater problem has been solved, that question of questions : What is Life ? Meanwhile all we can be sure of is : That Art is a manifestation of life ; that an ant-heap, a spider-web, or the weaver-bird’s nest is as much Art, as the Inca’s feather dress, the Calmuc’s tent, or Giotto’s campanile. Neither 1 In all its meaning — not merely as an optic delusion. 9 CHARDIN must we condemn the heathen Calmuc because he could not build like Bramante, nor the spider-web because it is built on principles entirely contradicting the principles of an ant-heap — we must not lay down universal building laws. But we must acknowledge as Art only that which is well done : we must look at workmanship first, at subject after, and very much after, and we may raise to the pinnacle of genius only him who adds a new and worthy element to the proudest works of his precursors. From our point of view we shall appreciate a well-painted carcass of beef more than an indifferently painted ‘Venus re- clining ’ ; we will infinitely prefer Murillo's guttersnipes to the most immaculate of his Madonnas. This mental attitude of ours is the result of a gradual widening of our horizon. Our taste is become more catholic, in the same measure as our knowledge of this world is increasing. We may stand in Fiesole and look down upon Florence and behold a vision beautiful ; we may gaze across the wilds of the Essex coast and realize a vision no less enchanting, and a mirage of fairyland may rise before us by the banks of the muddy Thames anywhere between Battersea and Wapping. Subject is irrelevant. W e have in this age of steam and electricity — those wellnigh miraculous civilizers — gained centuries of knowledge in decades. Botticelli and Velazquez, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, Diirer and Watteau, Hiroshige and Constable, Menzel and Carri&re, Masters all ! Ex ungue leonem. You shall know the Artist by his hand ! ‘ The work of the Master reeks not of the sweat of the brow, suggests no effort, and is finished from its beginning.’ Thus Whistler, the much maligned ; and that is all. So far, so good ; Whistler’s explanation of the ‘ masterpiece ’ being an artist’s own explanation, is not readily understood by others, for the ‘ effort ’ and the ‘ finish ’ are questions of execution ; his explanation deals only with one point of view, the technical 10 GENERAL PRINCIPLES point ; but there is another essential point, that is, the historical one. Thinking is a sub-conscious association of ideas grouped con- sciously to suit a special purpose. When Whistler says ‘ Velaz- quez,’ he is not necessarily thinking of the whole history of painting, from Giotto to himself, but his opinion is governed by his knowledge of his own qualities and of art in general; when the much abused man in the street hears the word ‘ Velazquez,’ at any rate in this country, he is probably thinking principally of the back- view of a nude woman, painted on canvas, framed in gold, hanging against a red wall in the National Gallery, and having recently cost £ 45 , 000 , and will add to this mind-picture, his opinion on the wicked waste the price suggests. Neither point of view — though perfectly justified — is just — the artistically educated, but non -practising person — the potential artist as it were — has the most disinterested, and therefore the justest position. He is the Tertius gaudens. It behoves us consequently to consider our subject historically as well as technically, and it will be necessary to examine how far exactly the painter is his own free agent, or whether and to what extent he is a creature of his time. Let us reply at once — we cannot find any proof that he is free at all — excepting in his technique, this technique or the ‘ hand- ling,’ being more particularly dependent on his individuality; but inasmuch as the individual is a child of his age, even that part of a painter’s (or sculptor’s) vocation is already mapped out for him. Sitting in the quiet Sacristy of San Lorenzo, in the company of Michelangelo’s creations, the spirit of the Renaissance comes upon us and the genius of its great sculptor makes its presence felt, filling the modern pilgrim with a tremendous sense of awe and veneration. Here we have the spirit of a great age materialized by one of its greatest children. The age and the man are one. The Medici were as essential to Michelangelo 11 CHARDIN as he to them — yet Michelangelo the Genius belongs to all times and to all European nations. The morbid decline and death of Louis xiv. was the sine qua non for French aristocratic art, and Watteau either under the all- powerful Sun-king or the Petit Caporal an impossibility. The ruling classes had to sink morally, so that Watteau might sail his barque to his Fairy-land Cythere across that putrescent pool called French Society. Who can doubt that Meunier the sculptor and Millet the painter belong essentially to their own age? To Teniers, to Ostade, the labourer, the tiller of the soil was a clown, a magot as Louis xiv. chose to call him ; to Millet the labourer was a hero, and without Manchesterdom Meunier would have failed to recognize the dignity, ay, and the martyrdom of labour. So we might ‘ ransack the ages ’ and always discover the same law, viz., that Art depends on the evolution of life. Art is a natural growth ; any artificial attempts at grafting tradition or anticipating time there- fore must end in failure ; and yet even the failures have their uses in the scheme of things. W e have tried to explain certain aspects of Art ; we have endeavoured to clean the windows of our outlook, as it were ; and though we each of us are gazing upon Art through the windows of our different souls, yet we are at least agreed that certain general but obscuring surface precipitates have had to be removed. Before plunging in medias res let us therefore once more inspect the different obscurities that we have cast out. We are firstly agreed, that Art is above all a metier acquirable by apprenticeship and founded on tradition. We are secondly agreed, that being a metier , it is natural and logical that it should be employed for a purpose. We are thirdly agreed, that self-expression is only Art when the self expressed is that of a genius, and that a genius is only he who adds a new note to the highest expression of Art which has preceded his work. 12 PLATE IV LOUVRE, PARIS GENERAL PRINCIPLES We are likewise agreed that ‘ subject’ is no criterion of Art. But we are also aware that the artist is not a free agent. That in the most favourable circumstances he is the most able exponent of the Spirit of his age. So that ultimately Art is an immediate inevitable consequence of life, confined strictly to the evolution of life, yet undefinable so long as life itself remains undefined. 13 FRENCH ART ‘ Watteau s’irnpose, Watteau regne partout.’ — Goncourt ‘ Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre vrai.’ — Greuze U NTIL the inception of the spiritual reign of Watteau, French art was either Teutonic in character — the Maitre des Moulins, and the Clouets, for example, suggesting slightly softer and more elegant versions of Van der Goes and Holbein — or, since the time of Francis i., a handmaiden of Italy, emancipating itself for a short while in the interesting art of the brothers LeNain, only to be subdued and completely enslaved by Louis xiv. The French painters at that time became no more than the tools of this great monarch, who could have produced his painters and decorators, his gardeners, sculptors, and architects in Italy, in Spain, had he ruled there or anywhere else, with as much ease and the same results. The painters under the Roi Soleil were national only in the sense of their king’s ‘ L’Etat c’est moi.’ Luckily for France and for the progress of the world, this hothouse civilization could not last. His decline and death made Watteau and his period possible. Relieved of the incubus of that overpowering personality, French society was passionately endeavouring to forget in love-making, that they were dancing on a volcano, that below the parquet flooring of their boudoirs and ball-rooms yawned an abyss, hungering for their bodies and their riches. ‘ Books, engravings, letters, furniture, art,’ says Gaston Maugras, ‘ they all tell us of a life of pleasure and voluptuous- ness, in which woman plays the principal part. The reign of 14 FRENCH ART woman brings the reign of love. Love becomes the only passion, le but unique, the only aim of life .’ 1 This but unique was visualized by Watteau ; his immediate successors, whether they copied his style intentionally or pretended to continue classic traditions, were with but one exception, wholly under the influence of his genius. To understand the age of the Rococo means to understand Watteau. It is useless to complain, like Lady Dilke’s ‘ distinguished amateur ’ : ‘ L’art du dix-huiti^me passionne les jeunes ; pour celui qui a vdcu cela manque de profondeur.’ The sole aim of French society was to drown the terrible voices that rang out De profundis. ‘ Mon peuple, sous ta main coupable Languit, gemit amerement Quoique la misere l’accable Sans espoir de soulagement. Dimittis ’ 2 It has been stated that during this time more people perished in France in one year than during the whole of the wars of Louis xiv . 3 Hence the frantic desire to forget in a carnival of sensual pleasure the wrongs they were doing, and were too weak to remedy. Watteau opened its first ball with a delightful minuet, dainty, decent, and delicate, as was his nature. He struck the right note — his victory was an easy one. We hail in Watteau a genius ; we base this opinion not only on his tremendous influ- ence on his successors, but on his genuine workmanlike qualities. He for the first time proclaims that a picture is not a counterfeit of nature, not a solid fact, but a vision. He for the 1 ‘ You are entering into the world,’ said M me de Montmorin to her son ; ‘1 have only one counsel to give you, and that is, love all women (c’est d’etre amoureux de toutes les femmes.’) — Le Due de Lauzun. 2 From an anonymous poem addressed to the Regent, in which each verse ends with the words of the c Nunc Dimittis.’ 3 II est positif, qu’il est mort plus de Fran^ais de misere depuis deux ans que n’en ont tue toutes les guerres de Louis xiv. D’Argenson, Voyage de Marie Leszceynska, 1725. 15 CHARDIN first time in French art makes his figures take the stage so as to form a picture behind the frame : he for the first time delights in colour pure and simple, creates chords and harmonies, like the Venetians, like Correggio; he for the first time makes composition, nay the whole of art, a question of feeling and not only of rule of thumb ; he, picking the roses of his season, is no longer a laudator temporis acti, a spokesman of past glory. Watteau’s art is remarkable in that it takes its fancies from lyrical inspira- tion, without disdaining to go to outside nature for its facts, and using both fact and fancy in producing a perfect picture. That little gem in the Wallace Collection, ‘La Fontaine,’ is perhaps the most interesting, because least pretentious, example of his art, representing as it does something entirely new, entirely unprecedented, entirely personal and entirely typical. His pictures may be described as dreams, as visions, but a glance at his drawings reveals the solid foundations upon which they were built. So sure, so slight, so telling; one knows not what to admire more, the facts that he states, or those that he suggests. Here in these drawings the deep meaning of Whistler’s words is manifest : ‘ The work of the master ... is finished from its beginning.’ W atteau’s appearance signalizes the approach of a new era, the supersession of the Siecle de Louis Quatorze and his Le Brun. Le Brun s sole task had been the glorification of his monarch. We may safely assume that without Francis i., and without Louis xiv. the whole of French art would have been changed, the natural leaning of this Latinized race being — strange to say — towards Teutonic, and more especially Netherlandish, art. The artistic ancestors of Watteau were Rubens, Teniers, and Brueghel, as indeed this Frenchman of Frenchmen was Flemish by birth. The return to Watteau, the flight from Latin perversion is nothing more or less than the return to the Frenchman’s true nature. Primitive French art was Teutonic in its conception, even Louis LeNain recalls Frans Hals. David the painter of 16 PLATE V LE BUFFET FROM THE PICTURE IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGE 82 FRENCH ART ‘Marat assassinated ’ was French, and true to himself — David as Napoleon’s court painter was neither. The pendulum of Art seems to swing continually between two points: over one is written, Le Vrai c’est le Beau; over the other, Le Beau c’est le Vrai. ‘ Truth is beauty, and beauty truth.’ Generalizations do not commonly hit the nail right on the head, but this much seems tolerably correct : the South stands by beauty, the North stands by truth. Le Brun — planted with both feet on Latin soil — knows only one goddess, beauty ; only one truth, the majesty of his monarch. The two became interchange- able, just as Raphael manages to serve both Pagan and Christian ideals alike — with this difference, however, that if Raphael’s skill had not been the greater, at anyrate his ideals were. After the sun of the great monarch had set behind clouds of mystic pseudo- religious vapours, and when pomp and circumstance found an ignominious end in the panic and confusion of the Regent’s reckless financial experiments, W atteau came to Paris with Flemish and Dutch traditions. But Watteau was a genius; he moulded what he had learnt and what he had experienced into something new: something which was neither Netherlandish nor Lebrunnish-Italian, something which was far more beautiful than truth, more truthful than beauty. In point of fact not one of his compositions was truthful, not one of his figures beautiful in the strict sense of the word. All his world is a stage, all his actors and actresses creatures not of the world but of his brain. He was a sick man ; he longed, but could not possess : he was never, there- fore, disillusioned ; his only reality was his imagination. He had no need of ‘ the Greeks and Romans ’ ; any youth, any maiden sufficed him for his art, and he clothed them in richer raiment than the classic folds of Greek drapery. His imagination capti- vated the aristocratic Spirit of his Age — which had every reason to dread reality. Hence his enormous influence ; hence also the success of his imitators, for his conception was truly in accord CHARDIN with this same Zeitgeist. But the very fact that he succeeded in typifying his times made him hateful to the apostles of the revolution. And no wonder : for every single figure that he painted was aristocratic to the very fingertips ; the charming little snub-noses of his heroines sniff defiance at that fearsome if ineffectual engine of human happiness : Liberty, Equality, F raternity. Watteau was a genius not only because he was the inventor of a new formula in painting, but because his conception, his subjects, represent a new stage in the evolution of Art. He has forsaken Venus and the Madonna, forgotten his native Housvrouw, and sits worshipping at the feet of a tightly laced, high-heeled, powdered and beauty-patched damsel — at one time personified in ‘La Montague.’ Just before his death he quarrelled with this, his ideal ; he came to blows with ‘ La Montague,’ his waning spirit fighting against the newer democratic spirit of the age. To a great master Disillusionment means Death. He was followed by a galaxy of amusing imitators, men who all more or less trod in his footsteps — until the art of the ancien regime came to an absolute end in the brilliant fireworks of Fragonard. One man only stands aside, does not really belong to this age : Chardin, the first of the Moderns. 1737 There can be no better manner of judging the work of an artist than to make its acquaintance in the midst of other work of the same time ; for this reason one might dearly wish to possess that Time-Machine, which would transport one back to France and the days of Louis the Well-Beloved. Alas ! that this should be an impossible wish. Alas ! that one may not mingle in the crowd ascending the ‘ small escalier,’ now no longer extant, which led into the Salon Carre — then called the ‘ Grand 18 PLATE VI JEUNE FEMME OCCUPEE A CACHETER UNE LETTRE (DIE BRIEFSIEGLERINN) FROM THE PICTURE IN POSSESSION OF THE GERMAN EMPEROR SEE PAGES 38 AND 79 FRENCH ART Salon’ — on that famous 18th of August of the year 1737, when the doors were thrown open after more than a generation. No exhibition had taken place since the year 1704, in the days of the Grand Monarque. How things had changed since ! Largilliere and Rigaud are almost the only great ones left, and amongst the obsequious crowd of Academicians that we may imagine, advancing to receive their Protector, the almighty Cardinal Fleury, we shall not find the greatest of the new school; Watteau had died in 1721, henchman Pater in 1736, and Le Moine committed suicide on the 4th of June in this very year 1737. But let us indulge in a flight of fancy and conjure up the scene. Orry, the Directeur des Batiments and Head of the Academy, makes his deep bow to the Cardinal, who smiles benevolently on him and the other Academicians, amongst whom we might notice. Nattier, de Troy, Latour, Lancret, Boucher, and Carle van Loo, the new professors, the latter the brother of that Jean- Baptiste van Loo, whom the aftermath of Scotch Law’s lawless financial operations had driven to seek his fortune in London, where he succeeded in drawing the sitters from Hudson’s studio. Be it remembered in passing that Art in England was then at very low ebb. Thorn- hill had recently died, and his son-in-law, Hogarth, was at the beginning of his career, having as yet only painted his e Harlot’s Progress.’ Reynolds and Gainsborough were boys of fourteen and ten and Richard Wilson a young man of twenty-four. Lely and Kneller, Ricci and Verrio, though dead, still stood for repre- sentative ‘ British ’ art. 1 But let us back to the famous Salon. There were also Charles Antoine Coypel ; Oudry and Desportes, the animal painters, Parrocel the Detaille of his age, the engravers Le Bas, and C. N. Cochin, Lepicie the new Secretaire and Historiographe of the Academy, something of a poet too. Stiemart, Le Moine’s brother-in-law, was the ‘ Hanging Committee,’ for the arranging 1 D’Argenville mentions amongst the famous painters of the ficole de Flandre. the following four f Anglois,’ Dobson, Lely, Kneller, and Thornhill. 19 CHARDIN of the exhibits was left to one man. These were the Academicians, but their guests were numerous and distinguished, and it is said that the privilege of the private view was as eagerly sought after then as it is to-day. We may therefore legitimately imagine the Marquise du DefFand and Madame GeofFrin, whom nothing flattered more than the commerce avec les Grands and other divinities of the Bureaux d'esprit, following the Cardinal. The mighty, oddly dressed, and much disliked Caylus, Watteau’s friend and biographer, archaeologist and arbiter of taste, must have put in an appearance also ; likewise Crozat, the banker and magnificent collector of over four hundred pictures, amongst which three Raphaels, ten Titians, eleven Veroneses, nine Rembrandts (nearly all his pictures of the first order, as Mariette states), of numerous statues, busts and terra cottas, and 19,000 drawings. Whether the famous Diderot found means of entering this august assembly we know not, nor is it likely, for he was at that time forsaken by his father, unknown, and eking out a scanty living by teaching. But Mme. Boucher — une fort jolie personne — was surely there admiring Latour's brilliant pastel-portrait of her, which he exhibited by the side of his own laughing and Voltaire-like features. Let us add to this colourless enumeration of persons and personalities the splendour of the Rococo costumes and the ceaseless, animated, and gesticulating vivacity of a French crowd, and we may almost dispense with the desired time-machine. But to complete the scene, we must yet mention at least some of the principal works exhibited. The general pattern of the picture-hung walls cannot have been so pleasing even as a modem Burlington House Exhibition, for the large pictures were skied, which made the wails appear top- heavy — on the other hand, the whole exhibition comprised no more than about two hundred works of all kinds — which gave the individual artist more chance. As to the pictures themselves, it will be very instructive for us of the twentieth century to glance through the catalogue — the proceeds from its sale, 20 PLATE VII LA BLANC HI SSEUSE FRENCH ART by the by, formed the only source of income to the Academy, for the exhibition itself was free, and although the Academicians were frequently employed and paid by the king, like the artisans and mechanics that they originally were, the Academy as a body had no funds. Carle van Loo exhibits two pictures under these titles : ‘ Le grand Seigneur (the Sultan of Turkey) giving a Concert to his Mistress,’ and ‘ The Grand Seigneur having the Portrait of his Mistress painted ’ ; also ‘ Jupiter and Juno. ’ Jean Marc Nattier has a dessin representing ‘ M lle de Clermont en Deesse des eaux de la Sante,’ and a picture measuring 6 feet by 5 feet : ‘ M lle de Lambesc of the [Royal] House of Lorraine, in the guise of Minerva arming and instructing the Count de Brionne, her brother, in the Arts {metier) of War,’ and another one, ‘Justice Chastising Injustice.’ Lancret shows amongst others ‘ Un Sujet Champetre ’ and ‘A Village Wedding-Feast.’ De Troy has these six pictures under his name: ‘A Hunt-Breakfast’ and the ‘Death of the Stag,’ ‘ After the Ball’ (Deshabillee de Bal), a ‘ Petite Liseuse,’ ‘ Before the Ball ’ (Toilette de Bal), and a large canvas measuring 14 feet by 10 feet : ‘ Esther fainting before Ahasuerus.’ Boucher shows four paintings, representing ‘ divers sujets champetres,’ and two little ovals representing ‘ The Four Seasons.’ But what can we make of the following prosaic titles: ‘A Girl drawing Water from a “Fontaine,”’ ‘A Little Girl Washing,’ ‘A Little Girl seated, eating her Breakfast,’ ‘ A Painted Bas-relief made to resemble Bronze.’ Surely the very titles suggest the gulf that separates Chardin’s art — for these titles were given to Chardin’s pictures — from the work of his colleagues. It is true enough that his- torical painting had fallen into disfavour, and that practically the only historical pictures painted were those ordered by the king. But, — one remembers Goncourt’s phrase, ‘ Watteau s’impose,’ — even kings cannot go against the spirit of the times, and this was sick of the grand manner. Yet customs die hard, and nearly twenty years later poor Greuze was mortified by the decision of the Academy, which rejected him as an ‘ historical,’ 21 CHARDIN but accepted him as a 4 genre ’ painter. 1 De Troy in his large canvases reminds me somehow of Piloty and the Munich School one hundred and fifty years later. But in his smaller pictures his eminent craftsmanship is more apparent. The 4 Death of the Stag,’ for instance, and the 4 Hunt- Breakfast,’ both now in the Wallace Collection, are painted with an almost insolent ease, and a light Frans Halsish touch. Carle van Loo, in his 4 Grand Seigneur ’ subjects, unspeakably dull, awakens to a semblance of life in his 4 Dejeuner de Chasse,’ which is ably drawn and com- posed, carefully coloured, good in perspective, pitched in a bright key, but quite without style. Lancret’s pictures we all know, they resemble Watteau’s closely, but there is just that difference— the master-hand of Watteau glides over the canvas, creating a vision, never troubled with 4 solidity,’ on which Lancret and the others seem to lay such stress. One can immediately tell the difference between Lancret and his master, by the insistence of one and the desistance of the other, by Lancret’s timidity which clings to non- essentials, by Watteau’s sovereign ability in dispensing with all but essentials. Amongst his brother artists of this 1737 Salon Lancret, however, stands out on account of one quality, which he also borrowed from Watteau. He, with only one exception, creates an illusion, not a delusion. If one looks from Lancret’s canvas at, say, Carle van Loo’s 4 Dejeuner de Chasse,’ one can realize the difference immediately. With Lancret the ensemble is the picture — with van Loo a hundred and one carefully 4 realistic ’ details build up the picture, every figure, every tree, every blade of grass is by itself, stands by itself, is finished in itself ; Lancret’s work seems playful, van Loo’s work shows great and earnest labour. The use of these words calls to mind some- thing that a great modern painter once said : ‘To say of a pic- ture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest 1 To this very day the unlucky students of the Royal Academy in England are given such subjects as ‘ Moses in the Bulrushes,’ or the ‘ Marathon Victory ’ for the 'Gold Medal’ competition, for our Academicians — as a body at least — are still convinced that, whatever Fine Art may be, historical subjects must be still Finer Art. 22 LATE VI II UNE DAME PRENANT SON THE FRENCH ART labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view .’ 1 Many of the ‘ Historical ’ paintings were, on the other hand, merely destined for models in the Gobelins, and for such purposes Bachaumont, I believe, thought some of Boucher’s work ‘ good enough.’ Nattier’s ‘Mile. Clermont as a Goddess of the Waters of Health,’ the original of which is now in the Musee Conde, has certainly not the faults of either Van Loo or De Troy ; it is softer and much more pleasing than their work, and although this painter is generally shallow, he has a sense of purity and refinement of which even the very much abler Boucher could not boast ; Nattier, L'fileve des Graces et le peintre de la Beaute , may paint the Princesses of France en deesse with little or nothing on, and we are not shocked, because he somehow contrives to endow his pictures with a suavity and modesty which others did not possess. If we now turn to the pastels of Latour, we shall have to admit at once that these are the works of a great master. Latour was an interesting man, a man of tremendous ability, a philosopher as well as a painter, and outspoken almost to the degree of rudeness. It was said that he had two styles of workmanship, one for the artists, and one for the public. One was ‘ slick,’ such as his own portrait here in this exhibition, ‘ thrown ’ on the paper as it were, the other carefully finished. But no matter in which of these manners his work was done, it was instinct with life. His characterization is stupendous, ex- ceeding Frans Hals in refinement, because Latour was a more complex nature, a man of deeper education and greater insight. By the side of Latour all pastellists sink into insignificance. Rosalba Carriera, the celebrated, seems a mere bungler ; she has a certain grace and charm, but her principal claim is really that she re-introduced and elaborated the art of pastel painting. Perroneau, with his timid, feminine, punctuating touch and yellow- greenish flesh-colour, though preferred by the ladies of his age, will also not compare favourably with Latour, whom in fact only 1 The Gentle Art of Making Enemies: Propositions. — No. 2, by Whistler. 23 CHARDIN Chardin in his old age, that is, forty years later, did equal. But Latour had his faults : he bestowed the same minute finish, the same spiritual cleverness on the rendering of a brass button, or a piece of lace as he would on the human form, which clearly proves that he too, like nearly all his contemporaries, sought to create a delusion ; the spectator was to be deluded into a belief of reality ; some aimed at the delusion of a stage scene like Watteau and his followers, others endeavoured to obtain reality by painting not what they saw, but what they thought they saw. Not so Chardin, whose work we must now consider, for Boucher, in spite of the applaudissements that followed him from this first exhibition to the end of his life, was, all things considered, only a great artisan. Boucher’s work shows no love for his craft, only supreme craftsmanship. There is no personal interest in a single piece of work of his hand ; and from this point of view he is as uninteresting as Ricci, and infinitely below Le Brun — he is no more than an artisan of genius. Or what else shall we call him by the side of Fra Angelico, a Michelangelo, a Velazquez, a Millet, or a Watts ? Chardin’s work is characterized by infinite seriousness — hence his indifference to ‘ subject.’ The humblest thing in this world is glorified by the light that falls upon it. Of the ‘ Fille tirant de l’Eau a une Fontaine ' there is a replica in the National Gallery, not a very good one perhaps, and certainly not the first one. However it is still a great work of art, for here we may see, what his contemporaries certainly did not see, viz. : that Chardin was the only one who attacked a problem which Velazquez had solved, but in which the Netherlandish painters had failed. It is strange : to the great public and even to many critics the title of a picture is the principal sign-post on the path leading to the understanding of a picture. Whistler, to whom we should turn again and again, because his opinions are instructive without being dogmatic, precise without being narrow, recognizing the foolish habit, endeavoured at least to make his titles truly indicative 24 FRENCH ART of his aims — we know with what disastrous results. For this reason Chardin was not fully understood by his contemporaries. His first works, reminding the Academicians of certain Dutch pictures, were consequently hailed at first as the work ‘ d'un bon peintre jiamand ’ — and the public, led by the critics, placed him near Teniers, but below him. Mariette says plainly : ‘ he grasps pose and character well, and lacks not in expression. That, in my opinion, has up till now principally contributed to the vogue his pictures are enjoying, which has gained for them a place near Teniers and other Flemish painters who have painted similar subjects, whatever thq distance between their works and his may be ! ’ Attitudes, characters and expression ! as if these were the essentials of Chardin’s art. They are mostly mere by -play, accidental ! It is because his figures are doing such things as Teniers’ Magots that he is classed with, if below, him. Had he painted queens and princesses, they would still have been ‘ Chardins,’ but what would the Mariettes have said ? Chardin’s, like Velazquez’, brains were in his eyes, the others had their eyes in their brains. To Chardin as to Velazquez painting was a physical effort, to others it has been (and still is) a mental one. This may not be good physiology, but it is none the less good sense. The ‘ Little Girl eating her Breakfast,’ or the ‘ Maid draw- ing Water from a Fountain,’ are therefore not what his contem- poraries supposed them to be — genre subjects in the Flemish taste — but they represent Chardin’s earnest endeavour to reproduce the splendour of a scene viewed in the miraculous magic of light. 25 Ill CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER e On peint souvent son caractere dans ses propres ouvrages.’ — D’Argenville S HOW me a man’s House, and I will tell you his character; show me a man’s Work, and I will do the same. From this point of view there is not only deceit and candour, method or slovenliness, industry or sloth, but also morality and immorality — goodness and badness in Art. Those who maintain that Morals have no place in Art, or, on the contrary, that good morals and the best art do go, or should go together, are simply bringing certain ideas into an impossible relationship. A beautiful tree, say an aged gnarled oak, may be very bad timber, and in looking at it we may be conscious of both facts. In the same manner we may express our preference for a poodle over a bull-dog, but it would surely be senseless to demand the good points of a bull-dog to be repeated in the poodle. Some may therefore very properly prefer moral art to immoral art, only, whether moral or immoral, it may be equally fine art, just as both poodle and bull-dog may be equally fine animals. This seeming digression was, I am afraid, necessary, because one meets the confusion of these ideas continually, in which the one camp seems to be often as hopelessly wrong as the other. If personal qualities were not intimately connected with the expression of Art, biographical details would be altogether super- fluous in a book such as this ; but such details are, as a matter of 26 PLATE IX UN JEUNE GARCON JOUANT AVEC DES CARTES FROM THE PICTURE IN THE HERMITAGE, ST. PETERSBURG SEE PAGE 47 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER fact, of very great interest, because they help us to estimate a man’s work more truly, telling us why it had to take just that form in which it actually appears. And the investigation of the events of a painter’s life and traits of character are as instructive and fascinating as the examination of his sketches and studies — it is the Man that makes the Artist — the driving power behind the brush. On the 2nd of November 1699 the King’s billiard-table maker, Jean Chardin, escorted his wife, Jeanne Frant^oise David, and a little party from a house in the Rue de Seine to the neigh- bouring Parish Church of Saint Sulpice, for the christening of his second son, who was to receive the names Jean Baptiste Simeon. Little seems to have changed since that day in the appearance of that quarter of Paris. Tall houses rise on either side of narrow streets, as they did two hundred years ago, and save for a different and much less becoming costume, we might be in the Paris of Louis xiv., so far as the parish of St. Sulpice is concerned. We seem to have no documents relating to Jean Baptiste’s youth ; all we know is that his father troubled little about his education, intending the son to continue in his business : a custom which used to be prevalent, as we have already mentioned, with the artisans of old France. Some writers have extolled the virtues of such a system, taking it for granted not only that the father’s experience would benefit the son, but also that the son’s inclinations would be the same as his progenitors.’ It seems, however, very probable that a mediocre craftsman would transmit his mediocrity to his offspring, and that many a son, whose real talents would have lain in other directions, had to waste his life in unloved labour. The secret of success is love of labour, but that love cannot be bestowed on any labour at the bidding of another. Much as old Chardin would have wished to surround himself with billiard-table-making sons, he did not succeed in the case of our Jean Baptiste Simeon. We need not despise the father’s trade, 27 CHARDIN which was not devoid of artistry , 1 in order to rejoice that his second son was strong enough to follow his nature rather than his father’s wishes, so that he ultimately overcame the parental objec- tions, and was allowed to enter the studio of Pierre-Jacques Cazes, member of the Academy of Painting. I made it my special business to inspect this painter’s work in St. Germain des Pres. I hoped to gain some knowledge of his conception and his execution — and I failed : the pictures, though still hanging on the walls of this church, are practically invisible, owing to their awkward lighting and two centuries of dirt. In the Louvre is a small picture of his , 2 it is not exhibited, but stowed away in one of the offices. It seemed to me, if not excellent in conception and expression, at any rate much more pleasant in quality than much contemporary work, and I feel con- vinced that Chardin profited from this painter’s knowledge of the technicalities of art — inasmuch as there is a certain dry quality in Cazes’ paint, which became so characteristic of his pupil’s execution. Cazes, at that time professor, later rector — director — and ulti- mately chancellor of his Academy, is supposed to have been so poor, that he could not afford to pay for models, and his numerous pupils, consequently, had nothing but their master’s old studies and drawings to copy. This practice was not very exceptional. In fact, for a certain kind of art it was usual; there is very little nature and very much rote in certain phases of 6 classical ’ paint- ing. Sir Joshua says, in his twelfth discourse : ‘ Our neighbours the French are much in this practice of extempore invention, and 1 The billiard-tables in those days were more or less elaborate affairs, with thin turned legs, and upholstered with brocade fringes. The game itself was beloved by Louis xiv., who, according to the following contemporary verses, created Chamillard minister on account of his skill : ‘ Ci-git le fameux Chamillart De son roy le protonotaire Qui fut un heros au billiard Et un zero au minist^re.’ It is interesting to note that the game was played with cues resembling a cross between a golf club and a toy shovel. 2 St. Peter and Tabitha. 28 / TE X LE GARCON CABARETIER FROM THE PICTURE IN THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, GLASGOW SEE PAGE 95 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if not envy ; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished pictures ! ’ How rarely ! but still sometimes, apparently, even Reynolds could admire such work. However this may be, Cazes gave his pupils no opportunity to study nature, and as we shall see in another chapter, even those who are supposed to have ‘ studied ’ nature only saw what they had been taught to see, and not what they would have seen had their eyes been open. Again we have to admire Chardin’s confidence in his own inclination; he quitted Cazes because he could not acquire from him that knowledge which he most desired. It is a matter of great regret that the data of Chardin’s early life are so very scanty ; none of his biographers seem to indicate the period that lay between the time of his leaving Cazes and helping Noel-Nicholas Coy pel, by whom he was next employed. Coypel is supposed to have asked Chardin to paint a gun in a picture representing the Pleasures of the Hunt. It is not quite clear why he should have chosen Chardin for the purpose. We must imagine that Coypel had some reason to believe Chardin a suitable assistant. At any rate, we are told that Coypel gave Chardin as his first task the painting of a gun in a huntsman’s portrait. This gun was Chardin’s salvation, it taught him the first important lesson of his artistic life — the relevancy of the unimportant. The position of this accessory in the portrait was a matter of careful consideration to Coypel, much to his pupil’s astonishment, who, we must assume, had not been in the habit of bestowing as much thought on the expression of the curve of a neck as his master on the straight line of a gun barrel. After much dusting and polishing of the metal, and repeated changes in the position of the gun, Chardin was at last put to the task of copying exactly what he saw. We may be sure he succeeded more than well, for we find him in 1724 employed in assisting the celebrated Jean Baptiste van Loo, who was entrusted with the 29 CH ARDIN restoration of Primaticcio’s work in the Grande Galerie of King Francis i.’s Fontainebleau. Voila tout ce quest Chardin jusquici — that is all Chardin is up to now, says Goncourt, meaning to imply that Chardin was nothing— a mere journeyman, paid amply by the hundred sols and the dinner van Loo ‘ stood ’ him and the other assistants after completion of the work. At about this period we must place a little anecdote, recounted by Haillet de Couronne, showing Chardin’s simpleness. It appears that Chardin was at the time sharing a studio with Jacques Andre Joseph Aved, a young painter who, having studied art in the Netherlands, had just recently arrived and settled in Paris. 1 One day a lady entered the studio and proposed that Aved should paint her portrait for four hundred livres. Chardin, painting away at one of his still-life subjects, in this case it was his own lunch, consisting of a brace of sausages on a table laid with a white tablecloth, hearing his friend’s refusal to paint a portrait for so low a figure — at once remonstrated with him, and told him not to let an opportunity to make money slip. £ Ah ! ’ replied Aved, ‘ if only a portrait were as easily painted as a sausage ! ’ Nettled by these words, Chardin is supposed to have forsaken still-life and to have devoted himself to figure-painting. This episode, if it happened at all, must have occurred after 1722, because Aved did not arrive in Paris until then, and before 1726, because the known pictures of this date show a far greater experience in execution than the ‘ Saucissons,’ 2 a poor picture, painted — in my opinion — neither franchement nor bellement nor de sa large touche , as Goncourt will have it. Chardin, now a young man of twenty-five years, had done nothing to make a name for himself, but again we find him seizing an opportunity which another might have allowed to escape him. 1 Aved became a fashionable portrait-painter ; but his art was of no great merit, and deserves notice only on account of the fact that many of the portraits ascribed to Chardin are pronounced by modern critics to be his work. 2 Now in M. Michel Levy’s Collection. 30 TE XI LA RECUREUSE FROM THE PICTURE IN THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, GLASGOW SEE PAGE 95 CHARDINS LIFE AND CHARACTER A surgeon, whose shop was in the same street in which he lived, commissioned him to paint a signboard. Watteau before him had painted a masterpiece of the same kind for his friend the picture dealer Gersaint, nor have other great painters before and since disdained such humble work. A genius ennobles any- thing he touches, and so it happened that Chardin created a work of art, and one of surpassing quality, if the scanty records that are in existence do not exaggerate its worth. Mercier, in his delightful Tableau de Paris (1781), gives a striking description of such old French signboards, which I cannot refrain from quoting. ‘ The signboards are now fastened against the walls of the houses and shops, whereas they used to be suspended formerly from long iron gibbets, in such a manner that in high winds both signboard and gibbets threatened to drop on the passer by. ‘ When the wind blew all these signs groaned and crashed and clashed against each other, making a plaintive and discordant noise which no one could imagine who has not heard it. Further- more, they cast great shadows across the street, obscuring the feeble light of the street lamps.’ Such a sign then, fourteen feet long by two feet three inches wide, Chardin had to execute for this surgeon. But, instead of painting a still-life of surgical instruments, crucibles and similar objects, he painted a subject picture. This sign has disappeared, and even the sketch for it which used to be preserved in the Musee Carnavalet, perished during the Commune; all that is left is an etching by J. de Goncourt, very slight. From this and his description, one may gather, however, that it repre- sented an animated scene of an everyday occurrence in Parisian life. A young man, wounded in a duel, has been taken to the surgery door. The wounded man, naked to the hips, and supported by a sister of charity, is being bled by the surgeon, whilst a gesticulating and excited crowd is kept at bay by the gendarme. Goncourt, in his inimitable manner, gives a vivid 31 CHARDIN description of the scene, which, however, is of no great interest excepting that it conclusively proves, not only that Chardin knew how to create a dramatic interest when he desired to do so, but principally that the young artist showed that he had cut himself adrift from the dry classic style upon which he had been brought up. Needless to say, this manifestation of artistic independence did not at first satisfy the surgeon, who desired and expected the orthodox trade-job. Seeing, however, that his new signboard attracted attention he was reconciled — it fulfilled its purpose, what more could he want. But the matter did not end there. The sign became the talk of the parish, and gradually its fame reached even the ears of the Royal Academicians. Chardin had ascended the first rung of the ladder of fame. Four years of quiet study must have followed this point of success. Chardins name apparently did not come before the public again until 1728 — which year proved perhaps the most eventful one of his long life. Crossing the Pont Neuf from the Louvre side of the Seine to the He de la Cite, one turns just opposite the Henri iv. statue into the Place Dauphine — a triangular space, the background of which is formed by the Palais de Justice. In Chardin’s days the church of St. Barthelemy stood here. This Place Dauphine formed the last stage of the Corpus Christi Day procession, which ended here before an altar erected in the centre of the square — now planted with rows of shady lime-trees. At six o’clock in the morning, two hours before this pro- cession was due to arrive, carpets and draperies were hung on all the walls, and against these were suspended all manner of pictures. In the early days — the procession dates far back : how far does not appear to be known — sacred pictures only were thus exhibited ; ‘ Old Masters,’ but gradually living artists began to participate, 32 PLATE XII L ENFANT AU TOTON (fils de m. godefroi) CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER and the exhibition lost its entirely religious character. This annual exhibition was in fact the only chance the artists of the day had to bring their works under the eyes of the public, the Academy Exhibitions having fallen into abeyance since 1704. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that these picture shows of the Place Dauphine were immensely popular, and were visited by an enormous number of people, not only because the altar erected in the centre of the square was the finest piece of ecclesiastical improvisation in Paris, but because of the neigh- bourhood of that main artery the Pont-Neuf. Mercier gives the following vivid description of the scene, well worth citation, as he witnessed it towards the end of the ancien regime'. ‘This is a double-faced day,’ he says; ‘the morning is a holiday, the houses are draped and the town decorated, but the moment the procession has passed, up go the ladders, down come the draperies, the altars are taken to pieces, shops are opened. The shopmen begin their work, the grocer’s pyramids of soap, the vice of the sword cutler, the forge of the locksmith, the last of the shoemaker, the mortar and serpents of the apothecary, peep out from behind the remains of the decora- tions. In half an hour all has changed. The pictures and the statues of saints are precipitately removed, to make room for the baubles of luxury. The bustle of business succeeds to the peaceful order of religion. Were it not for the flowers with which the pavement is strewn, and which still bear witness to the passing of the Holy of Holies, one would not guess that but half an hour ago the invisible God was borne by the priests in presence of a kneeling multitude.’ The exhibition lasted only about two hours. The following notice from the Mercure, a kind of magazine in 16mo size, will serve to give an idea of the quality of the work shown in 1723, e.g . : — ‘ According to custom, a number of pictures, by the best old and modern masters, have been exhibited, and have attracted a 33 C— 3 CHARDIN great crowd of the curious, the connoisseurs, and all those who teach the art of painting.’ Amongst those living masters who exhibited in that year were Le Moine (a battle scene from Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata ), Oudry, the pupil of Largilliere (a hunt- ing subject), furthermore Lancret, Rigaud, and others. At this Place Dauphine Chardin exhibited, in 1728, two pictures ‘La Raie ’ and ‘ Le Buffet,’ large still-lifes, the former with a cat, the latter with a dog and a parrot ; also a number of other still-lifes. They immediately attracted attention. The public and the painters were united in their praise, and in fact his friends urged him to submit them to the Academy. Two months later Chardin took courage, and on the 25th of September, the Academicians passing through the anteroom of the Academy found a number of pictures exhibited which greatly interested them. 1 ‘ Good Flemish paint- ings ’ they appeared to be, and perhaps one or the other Academician may have hesitated between a Kalf or a Maes. Upon inquiry they discovered that these pictures belonged to J. B. S. Chardin. Largilliere, the great survivor of the Sun-king’s age, having carefully inspected them, tells the candidate, who had been waiting in the adjoining room, that he had done well to study Flemish art for the sake of the good colouring in this school. ‘ And now,’ says he, ‘ where are your own pictures ? ’ ‘ You have just seen them,’ Chardin replies. ‘ Do you mean that these pictures . . .’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Oh!’ says Largilliere — ‘ Go and present yourself — my friend — present yourself.’ His old teacher, M. Cazes, at first also deceived, paid him marked compliments, not knowing that they were his pupil’s works, but he soon forgave him this little ruse, and with many an encouraging remark took it upon himself to present Chardin. Chardin, in consequence, was agree, i.e. accepted, with general applause. But that was not all. When M. Louis de Boullogne, the Director and Painter to the King, entered the assembly, 1 Eloge de Chardin, par Haillet de Couronne. 34 CHARDINS LIFE AND CHARACTER Chardin suggested that he might accept his ten or twelve pictures, and that then the Academy might dispose of them as they thought fit. ‘ He is not even yet agree, and he already speaks as if he were repu. Never mind,’ Boullogne added, 4 you have done well to mention this to me ’ — he was in the habit of using this phrase. Boullogne reported Chardin’s proposition, which was accepted with pleasure. According to ancient custom, Chardin was balloted for with beans, and was consequently both accepted and received at the same time, 25th September 1728. Of the dozen pictures he had offered, the Academy retained two, the ‘ Buffet’ and the * Raie,’ as his 4 Diploma’ pictures. Both of these are in the Louvre. Chardin was now a full-blown Academician. But we must not be misled by the modern distinction of this title. In the old days and in France, this good fortune might happen to any one whose work came under the eyes of the Academy, so long as its merits were sufficient. At the same time, a member of the Academy received in many cases a yearly salary and lodging from the King, and was, moreover, sure to be favoured with com- missions from the Court. Some time before, his father had caused him to be received as a master-painter in the Academy of St. Luke — a sort of painter’s guild. But though Mignard and such men had once been members of this guild, it did not count for much artistically — 4 Those who could not succeed elsewhere, joined the Academy of St. Luc.’ At about this period of his life Chardin went to a dance, such as the inhabitants of each parish used to get up — something perhaps like our 4 Shilling Hops ’ at the town-halls. There he met his fate, in the guise of Marguerite Sainctar. Marguerite was the daughter of a neighbour, and possessed of a little wealth. For that reason she seemed a desirable match for old Chardin’s son, and for the very same reason Chardin appeared a rather undesirable match for M. Sainctar’s daughter — he had no money. Unfortu- 35 CHARDIN nately, the consent of both parents being necessary in France, Chardin was forced to wait and hope for better luck. Shortly afterwards Marguerite’s father and mother died, and it was found that they had left their daughter penniless. Meanwhile Chardin had become an Academician, and his proud father already saw him rising to the highest honour. Much to the father’s regret, Chardin was ‘ generous ’ 1 enough to remain constant to Marguerite, whom he succeeded in leading to the altar on the first of February 1731. Foolish man! Marguerite, though agreable , 4 was weak, languishing, a valetudinarian,’ as well as poor. Chardin would probably never have become the master we know had he followed more prudent advice. The official record up till now of Chardin’s work is, 4 La Raie,’ ‘Le Buffet,’ and ten or twelve other pictures, all still-life subjects ; and, if we except the 4 Surgeon’s Signboard,’ it seems probable that he so far had never painted anything else but still-life and animals — dead or alive, such as dogs, cats and monkeys — a picture called ‘ Le Singe Peintre ’ bears the date 1726 — and Chardin was thirty-two. In the same year his wife bore him a son, Pierre-Jean Baptiste, and two years later a daughter — and the very first official record of Chardin’s work, the catalogue of his pictures exhibited in 1732 at the Place Dauphine, mentions ‘ Des Jeux d’Enfants’ (Children at play), also 4 Une jeune Femme qui attend avec impatience qu’on lui donne de la Lumiere pour cacheter une Lettre ’ (a young lady impatiently waiting to be given a light in order to seal a letter), and fourteen other subjects, animals dead and living, trophies of music. Fanfares ! Love has opened Chardin’s eyes to the joy of living. What could Cazes and Coypel and Van Loo teach him about life ! Artificial artistry, St. Luke, masked and strutting in cothurni ! So the man had turned to his cats and dogs and dead things, whose beauty was not marred by human faults and falseness. Then Marguerite 1 Thus Goncourt. I observe that Chardin’s necrologist of 1780 argues that Chardin obeyed his father when he became engaged : le jeune Chardin s’attacha d’abord a elle plus par devoir que par amour. I do not believe him. 36 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER Sainctar came and the painter began to look on the world with the eyes of love. The woman and the child become hence- forth the centre of his art. But he looks upon woman and child — the wife and the potential parent. Chardin was innocent, and himself simple and childlike. These Jeux d’Enfants refer to a picture representing a cast painted to resemble bronze : this work was executed so perfectly and with so much truth that Michel van Loo offered to buy it for two hundred livres, somewhat less than seven pounds sterling, an amount which appeared so vast to our artist that he was pre- vailed upon with great difficulty to accept it. He was indeed simple and childlike, as we said. But Chardin’s happy home life was not of long duration ; his wife and daughter both died in April of the year 1735 and he was left with his little four-year-old son. The wish to provide for him must have prompted Chardin to compete for the place of an assistant professor in the Academy. Whenever vacancies occurred the candidates were obliged to submit their works of the current or preceding year. These works were formed into an exhibition, and the vacancies filled according to the merit of the work and the votes obtained in consequence. Chardin was unsuccessful in this case, and Boucher was duly elected ; whilst Michel and Carle van Loo became professors at the same time, and Lancret and Parrocel Councillors. Though his wife was dead, Chardin was compelled to ‘ have a woman about the house,’ in order to have his little son cared for, who also desired the company of other children. It is not astonishing then, that with the exception of the Bas-relief subject already mentioned, all the pictures which he sent to the famous inaugural exhibition of the ‘ Salon du Louvre,’ were scenes of home-life; such as ‘La Fontaine,’ ‘La Blanchisseuse,’ ‘Le Chateau de Cartes ’ (possibly the picture in the ‘ Hermitage,’ St. Petersburg), ‘ Une petite Fille jouant au volant,’ ‘ Une petite Fille assise s’amusant avec son Dejeuner,’ ‘ Un petit Enfant avec 37 CHARDIN les Attributs de I’enfance,’ ‘ Un Chimiste dans son Laboratoire ’ 1 (a portrait of his friend Aved). His success was marked ; the Mercure de France of September 1737 thinks that his pictures hold their own against the works of the greatest masters. And we may find a proof that the exhibitions of the Place Dauphine were considered of importance in the fact that the Mercure says, painters and critics knew that Chardin could paint animals, dead and living, ‘ in a manner as peculiar as it is truthful,’ but they did not know that his talent went even further. It must have been extremely gratifying to a man of Chardin’s somewhat difficult and diffident nature to find his ideals so readily accepted by the public, and therefore to be justified in continuing this genre without fear of stricture from the worldly wise. The ‘Salon’ of 1738 thus finds him represented with the following nine pictures : ‘ Un Garmon Cabaretier qui nettoie un Broc,’ ‘ Une jeune Ouvriere en Tapisserie,’ ‘ Une Recureuse,’ ‘ Une Ouvriere qui choisit de la Laine dans son Panier ’ ; and its com- panion, ‘Un jeune Ecolier qui dessine’; a picture measuring four feet square, representing ‘ Une Femme occupee a cacheter une Lettre ’ (this we already know as having figured in the Place Dauphine, four years before) ; further, the ‘ Portrait of a Son of M. Godefroy, Jeweller,’ watching a top spinning ; ‘ Un jeune Dessinateur taillant son Crayon,’ and lastly, ‘ The Grand-daughter of M. Mahon, merchant, playing with a doll.’ The next year, 1739, he exhibits six pictures only, ‘Une Femme qui prend du The,’ a companion picture to the ‘ Lady sealing a Letter ’ of the year before ; beneath it, ‘ La Pourvoyeuse,’ 1 It must be remembered that this age was the age of words ; even the titles of pictures were spun out into sentences or verses, or whole poems. This, and the fact that Chardin repeated his subjects so many times, makes it awkward to mention the titles without con- fusing the English reader ; neither would it be expedient to give them English titles. ‘ La Blanchisseuse’ must not be made into ‘ The Laundress,’ just as Millet’s picture will always remain ‘ L’Angelus,’ or Manet’s ‘ Portrait of the engraver Belot,’ ( Un bon Bock.’ 38 CHARDINS LIFE AND CHARACTER then a small picture ‘ representant lAmusement frivole d’un jeune homme faisant des Bouteilles de Savon ’ (the ‘ frivolous ’ amuse- ment of a young man blowing soap-bubbles) ; further, ‘ La Gouvernante,’ the ‘ Tours de Cartes,’ and lastly ‘ La Ratisseuse de Navets.’ In 1740 he exhibited only five pictures, the 4 Petite Maitresse d’Ecole,’ the ‘Singe qui peint,’ and the ‘ Singe de la Philosophies both of the latter were probably old works of his, and one may note in passing, that unless Chardin had some particular motive in conceiving and executing such subjects, they are as un- interesting and as badly painted as a good painter can paint ; but against these t\vo he set off ‘ La Mere laborieuse ’ and ‘ Le Benedicite,’ perhaps the most complete and the most generally satisfying work he ever did, with the exception of the ‘Gouvernante’ of 1739 and the ‘Neglige’ of 1741 — though the present state of the latter only faintly suggests its original beauty. May we again indulge in a little flight of fancy : and watch ‘ M. Chardin de l’Academie royale de peinture et sculpture ’ dress in his best suit of clothes, see him put on his short wig, such as we know him to have worn from Laurent Cars’ engraving after C. N. Cochin’s drawing, and go, on Sunday, the 17th of November 1740, to Versailles, in order to be presented by M. le Controleur General, to His Majesty, who had expressed the wish to see two of the painter’s pictures, ‘ La Mere Laborieuse ’ and ‘ Le Benedicite ’ — both of which were examined by his Majesty and duly purchased. Chardin had now reached the height of the average artist’s ambition : he had become fashionable. The King of France showed himself anxious to possess some work of his brush. Frederick the Great, who had just come to the throne, had purchased, as Crown Prince, the ‘ Pourvoyeuse,’ the ‘ Ratisseuse,’ the ‘ Dame cachetant une Lettre,’ and the ‘ Jeune Dessinateur taillant son Crayon.’ The famous connoisseur and Ambassador of 39 CHARDIN Sweden, Count Tessin, bought for himself and the Queen Louise- Ulrique, the ‘ Neglige,’ and the ‘ Blanchisseuse,’ and continued his purchases from time to time. Prince Liechtenstein had purchased the ‘ Gouvernante ’ of 1739, the picture which absolutely made his reputation, as Mariette says. During this time he must have been extraordinarily busy with commissions, for 'whilst he was able to send sixteen pictures to the Place Dauphine in 1734, and nine pictures to the Salon of 1738, his contribution in 1741 had dwindled to two, the ‘ Neglige ’ and ‘ Le Fils de M. Lenoir s’amusant a faire des Chateaux de Cartes,’ and in 1742 he is not represented at all. Perhaps, how- ever, the absence of his work from the Salon of this latter year is explained by the fact that he had fallen ill. If it be correct to state that Chardin’s second marriage was dictated by a desire of his friends to see his affairs put in order, we may be pardoned for preferring to believe that a man of Chardin’s character would not allow himself to be married at the prompting of a third person. The man who had been ‘ generous ’ enough to marry for love in the first instance would probably still be 4 generous ’ ten years after, and not choose a wife simply ‘ pour remettre un peu d’ordre dans ses affaires.’ Moreover in the following year he lost his mother, and it is probable that his illness and her death would weigh most strongly in favour of venturing on a second marriage. He is now forty-four years of age, and since September 28, 1743, Councillor 1 of the Academy. His son, now twelve years of age and following his father’s profession, needs supervision less and less, so that really Chardin begins to feel lonely, and by the end of the next year, on the 26th of November 1744, again 1 The personelle of the Academy consisted of the Director, the Chancellor, four Rectors, twelve Professors, a number of Assistant Professors, a Professor of Anatomy, and one for Geometry and Perspective, the Treasurer, two classes of Councillors, viz.. Honorary Councillors, who were persons of some distinction, connoisseurs and dilettanti, and six Academicians of talens particuliers, lastly the Secretaire Historiographe. Further, there were attached to the Academy two ushers and two male models. ( Description de t Academie Royale des Arts de Peinture et de Sculpture, par feu M. Guerin. Paris, 1720.) 40 LA GOUVERNANTE FROM THE PICTURE IN PRINCE LIECHTENSTEIN’S GALLERY, VIENNA SEE PAGE 86 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER at Saint Sulpice, his wedding takes place with Francoise- Marguerite Pouget, aged thirty-seven, widow of Charles de Malnoe. Widow Pouget has a little money, but, chose singuliere ! it does not seem to have gone very far, as we shall presently see. Chardin must indeed have been an uncommonly bad manager, for in spite of his patrons amongst the crowned heads and aristo- cracy of Europe, in spite of his friends amongst bankers and collectors and even his own colleagues, he sells at ridiculously low prices. The king pays him fifteen hundred livres for one picture and that is the highest he reaches — less than sixty pounds. Wille pays thirty-six livres for two small pictures, and explains in his diary, ‘ c’est bon marche, aussi me les a-t-on cedes par amitie.’ He is no business man, that is evident. Yet even so, there must be some reason for his perpetual lack of funds. Whether his son cost him more than he could afford, or whether he works so slowly, as was usually and for good reason said : ‘ There is some difficulty on the part of M. Chardin, who natur- ally (!) protests that he could not give two pictures in a year from now. His slowness and the trouble he takes must be, says he, already known to your Excellency ( i.e . Count Tessin) the price of twenty-five louis d’or is very little for him, who un- fortunately works so slowly.’ And the letter ends with the statement that Chardin never undertakes more than one picture at a time. But the most puzzling is an assertion made by two different writers at just about this period. One says, ‘1’auteur ne peignant que pour son amusement et par consequent tr£s peu ’ (the author only painting for his amusement and consequently very little), the other ‘ M. Chardin . . . qui n’a besoin de son art que pour son amusement’ (M. Chardin, who does not need his art except for his amusement). Unless these two statements are downright libels, there must be some reason for them, and their context proves that Chardin must have given some cause for the belief 41 CHARDIN that art was his ‘ amusement.’ 1 However that may be, for a long time his contributions to the Salon remain insignificant ; his imagination seems to have exhausted itself as people say. Hence- forth his familiar scenes of private life become fewer, and mostly repetitions of the earlier pictures ; he exhibits a number of portraits, and from 1753 onwards his oil pictures are almost exclusively ‘ still-life ’ paintings. The year 1743 saw a ‘Portrait de Madame Le . . .’ and two children-subjects : ‘ Des Enfants qui s’amusent au Jeu de l’Oye,' and its companion ‘Des Enfants faisant des Tours de Cartes.’ In the following year, that of his marriage, he does not exhibit at all. The next year is noteworthy, because in it the Chevalier de La Roque’s sale took place and gives documentary evidence of the small prices Chardin, ‘ ce grand imitateur de la Nature,’ fetches : ‘ La Fontaine’ and ‘ La Blanchisseuse,’ painted eight years earlier, fetched together four hundred and eighty-two livres, ‘ L'Ouvriere en Tapisserie ’ and its companion, ‘ Le Dessinateur,’ of the Salon of 1738 only one hundred livres, and ‘ Le Toton,’ painted in the same year, not more than twenty-five livres. In 1746 he exhibits a repetition of the ‘ Benedicite ’ with an addition as ‘ a companion picture to a Teniers in the collection of M. de la Live ’ ; also a Lady in her Boudoir called ‘ Les Amuse- ments de la Vie privee ’ ; furthermore a portrait of M. . . . with his hands in his muff, and another of the Surgeon M. Livret. The following year is still less fruitful, for it adds only one picture to the number, but this a beautiful one : ‘ Les Aliments de la Convalescence,’ for Prince Liechtenstein of Vienna. 1748, again, only shows one picture, ‘ L’Eleve studieux,’ and this a simple, and very roughly painted one. This study of an art student in a studio leads a contemporary critic to observe that amongst all the painters exhibiting at the Salon : ‘ celui d'entre eux 1 No real artist ever works pour son amusement , which latter word must not be con- founded with joie ; the joie de vivre alone inspires thejoie de peindre. 42 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER dont le genre approche le plus I'histoire, c’est M. Chardin’ ; perhaps the shrewdest piece of art criticism — if carefully analysed— in the whole of the eighteenth century, for it does obviously not mean that the subject-matter of Chardin’s pictures approaches historical subject pictures. After that there is a lapse of three years, when Chardin’s work reappears with ‘ Une Dame variant ses Amusements,’ supposedly a portrait of the second Mme. Chardin. The next exhibition did not take place until 1751, and thenceforward only biennially, partly because the interest flagged (in fact there had been a great complaint about the paucity of historical painting, which had quite been ousted by genre pictures), partly because so many of the artists were employed by foreign courts and private clients. And now Chardin, until the end of his life, exhibits either repetitions of his former figure subjects or still-life subjects only, 1 also a few portraits. We have already seen that for some reason or other Chardin had contrived to give the impression that he did not take his work seriously. This year, 1751, in which his sole con- tribution is ‘ Une Dame variant ses Amusements,’ his critics became still more insinuating. I cannot forbear to give an excerpt from a criticism of our painter and his work, which appeared at Amsterdam. 2 ‘ If it is permissible,’ the critic says, ‘ to compare small things with great, I should say that there is no one who sees nature better than M. Chardin, and no one who possesses like him, the art of “ taking her on facts. ...” After this praise, dictated by truth, he must permit me to say that nature in heaping upon him her favours, has wasted them on an ungrateful son (a travaille pour un ingrat). The public is angry never to be given more than one picture at a time from a hand so skilled (d’une main si s^avante). I have 1 He apparently rarely repeated his still-life subjects. 1 Juyement sur les principaux onvrages exposes au Louvre, le 27 aout 1751. 43 CHARDIN been told that lie is at present painting another subject, which proves his. singularity. He is painting himself with a picture at an easel before him. A little genius representing Nature is bringing him paint-brushes which he takes, but at the same time Fortune is taking one part away from him, whilst he, looking at Laziness, who is smiling at him with an air of indolence, drops the others. ‘ What satisfaction it would be for all the art lovers if M. Chardin, with all his talents, were also as industrious and fruitful as M. Oudry.’ 1 Vainly we search the records of Chardin’s life for the mystery of these allusions. Was it the ‘ Veuve Pouget ’ who absorbed his interests ? W as it the vagaries of his unfortunate son ? W ere his duties of a treasurer to the Academy, a post to which he had been called just lately (1752), so arduous ? One of two things generally accounts for irregularities in a man’s life — woman or money — or both. We may dismiss woman in this case, for if there were no other witnesses of his domestic happiness, 2 the portraits of botli himself and his wife, done towards the end of his long life, attest by their very existence that there was no trouble in that direction. But money was the matter. Lepicie, the secretary and historiographer, feels himself justified in addressing the Marquis de Vandieres to beg for a pension on behalf of M. Chardin, whom he recommends on account of his talents as well as his probite (integrity). The marquis con- 1 To give this painter his due, he was indeed a man of astonishing activity and industry. Since 1734 he was the sole designer and manager of the newly revived Beauvais tapestry manufacture, a capacity in which it was his task to supply a great many compositions, illustrating, e.g. ‘ Amusements champetres, the Fables of La Fontaine, the Comedies of Moliere,’ etc., etc. His management was so successful thatTournehem made him Inspector of the Gobelins. In spite of this double responsibility, we are told that he found time to paint numberless pictures, exhibited in the Salons, that he made use of Sundays and holidays to gather material for landscape compositions in the country, and that he even finished up his day with drawing, and writing lectures. 2 Haillet de Couronne speaks of the second Mrs. Chardin as ‘ une veuve aimable et d’un vrai me'rite.’ 44 LA POURVOYEUSE FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ERM AN 'EMPEROR SEE PAGE $6 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER sequently replies to our artist, e Acting upon my report of your talents and lights (de vos talens et de vos lumieres) His Majesty in his gracious concern for the arts, grants you a pension of live hundred livres. I have the more pleasure in informing you of this fact, as you will always find me only too delighted to oblige you in all matters that may occur in the future, so far as they depend on me.’ To mark his gratitude, Chardin begs to be allowed to dedicate the engraving of his last picture ‘ Une Dame qui s’amuse avec une Serinette ’ to the marquis, which the latter accepts. Those people of the ancien regime were, one notes in passing, at any rate deliciously and delicately polite. The artists them- selves were not only anxious to do each other a good turn, but even kings and courtiers proved by deed and word that they were ready to help when and where possible ; though his Majesty was somewhat lax in keeping his word at times. As if the five hundred livres pension had been five hundred gallons of water on the tree of Chardin’s art, it suddenly blossoms out, and in the next year (1753) we find him sending nine pictures to the Salon, more than he had sent for the last fifteen years. The year 1754, however, brought him one great pleasure: his son gained the coveted ‘ Prix de Rome.’ How many hopes had not the proud father cherished for his only son, and how sadly he was to be disappointed. The son was a psycho- logical problem. Well educated — better than ever his father had been — taught by Chardin, and by the best professors of the Academy, full of interest in his profession, possessing a keener appreciation of Art than his fellow-students — spirited and pretentious, melancholy and undecided — anxious to excel, yet unable to succeed, the poor fellow seems to have been his own greatest enemy. Preferring to unfold the life of our great painter, year by year, so far as is possible, we must reserve the mention of the son’s end until later. Let us only note the fact here that after gaining the 45 CHARDIN prize, Pierre Chardin entered with Fragonard and others the * / Royal Ecole des El&ves where he had to remain three years, in order to qualify for the actual journey to Rome. Chardin’s life was uneventful, so his biographers state, and if we judge the events by the blood and thunder standard, it certainly was. But a more modern point of view does not count the drama of life by the sabre scars of the body. The swords that pierce the soul hurt more and leave more slowly healing wounds. And Chardin was deeply wounded during his long life. He had the misfortune to be a good man without being a stupid one. We have good reason to believe that his son must have cost him many an hour of anguish, and the attacks made on him and his ‘ laziness ’ must have surely caused him greater pain than his critics could realize. The chorus of praise with which he was acclaimed was as frequently intermingled with the dissonance of unintelligent vituperation. ‘ Many people,’ says one of his detractors, 4 have remarked on the feebleness of his touches, usually so firm and bold, they have been found loose and broad and less fine, especially in his ‘ Des- sinateur ’ and the ‘ Petite Fille qui recite son Evangile,’ whilst another, on the contrary, thinks that ‘ for several years Chardin has now taken to fusing his colours ; he “ licks” and finishes his works.’ He causes in fact a veritable battle of critiques fierce and contra- dictory, his admirers referring to him generally from about this time onwards as the ‘ celebre M. Chardin,’ — the celebrated Monsieur Chardin. And it was not only on account of his talents as a painter that the ‘ celebre’ M. Chardin was esteemed. He seems to have been a persona grata with his brother artists as well as with the majority of the public. In those days the Academy was sorely troubled. We have already seen that this institution was absolutely dependent on the king, and that its only source of income was the sale of the catalogue; but even this they could apparently not rely upon. From a letter of C. N. Cochin, dated April 17, 1755, to the 46 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER Marquis de Marigny — none other than the M. de Vandieres the brother of the Pompadour — we learn that the concierge of the Academy will not give up his ‘ Right ’ to the sale of the ‘ Livret ’ or catalogue of the Salon, and Cochin consequently appeals to the authority of the Marquis to have this abuse stopped. ‘ We hope,’ he says, ‘ to pay at least our most pressing debts, such as the moneys we owe to the models, with the proceeds of the sale of this “ Livret.” Did we not make M. Chardin, whose in- tegrity is known, our treasurer, so that our “ pence ” ( nos deniers) might be safe for the future ? ’ — a reference to the dishonest pre- decessor. Chardin’s integrity again ! Others were not to be trusted. The finances had been in shocking disorder — Chardin, in this very year had been called to put them right. A few months later, Cochin begs of the Marquis again that Chardin may be appointed to ‘ hang ’ the Salon Exhibition, as M. de Portail, the keeper of the king’s pictures at Versailles and ‘arrangeur’ of the Salon, had met with an accident. No wonder that our artist’s multifarious duties prevent him from getting on with his work. His exhibits of 1755 drop once more to two pictures only : another ‘ Imitation of a Bas-Relief’ and an animal picture. This fact a writer of the time sarcastically comments on in this manner : 1 ‘ I do not know whether M. Chardin has thought to acquit himself of his duties towards the public by only giving them the fruits of his leisure ; they say that fear of praise has determined him to refrain from showing anything of importance.’ Like most true artists Chardin was, one might almost think, deliberately misunderstood. What after all constitutes the importance of a work of art ; its size ? The thoughtless speak of an ‘ important size ’ where the word 4 large ’ would be a more appropriate term ; yet the same people would not deny importance to the miniature virtuoso performances of a Meissonier, whose work is really of very little moment in the evolution of painting. 1 ‘ Lettre sur le salon de 1755 adresse'e a ceux qui la liront.’ 47 CHARDIN It is neither size nor labour that constitutes an important work, but intelligence. Chardin, for reasons which shall be dis- cussed later, was constitutionally compelled to devote his energies to the painting of still-life, and he realized in this branch of art ambitions which no one before, and very few after him, have been able to attain. And his choice of subject was put down to his laziness, his leisure, which this grand ouvrier, as a juster critic had called him, never knew. We are expressly told that Chardin — though generally the mildest of men — could uphold his convictions against any one. What if he chose, knowing his own value, to give the public what he deemed his best instead of pandering to their taste and sacrific- ing his talent to its marketable value ! During the year 1757 young Pierre, his son, departed for Rome, where he was to do no good, preferring to lead a somewhat irregular life, and causing the Director of the French Academy there, the pious Natoire, 1 much trouble. This same year relieved him of one anxiety ; the provision for his old age ; at the same time realizing one of his dearest hopes, to which his modesty scarcely allowed him to aspire. He was accorded apartments ( an logement ) in the Louvre, an honour which he shared with Oudry, Tocqud, Coypel, and other great painters. ‘ Every one knows,’ says Haillet de Couronne (who was not only personally acquainted with our artist, but had much of his information about Chardin from his intimate friend, ‘ l’illustre M. Cochin ’) — ‘ Every one knows, that when Chardin put his name down on the petition for apartments in the galleries of the Louvre, he scarcely thought he would succeed.’ ‘ Ce logement fut une des choses qui dans toute sa vie l’a le plus flatte.’ (This lodging was one of the things that, in all his life, has flattered him most.) 2 1 Natoire had to give up his position some ten years later, owing to his c exaggerated piousness.’ 2 His was the ‘ Logement, No. 12, actually situated in the Long Gallery of the Louvre, 48 ■■ LE BENEDICITE FROM THE PICTURE IN THE HERMITAGE, ST. PETERSBURG SEE PAGE 88 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER Marigny the ever affable concludes his letter, in which he acquaints Chardin of his new honour, with these words: ‘Your talents have enabled you to hope for this royal favour, but I am delighted that I have contributed to make it fall upon you ’ (Vos talens vous avaient mis a portae d’esperer cette grace du Roy. Je suis bien aise d’avoir pu contribuer a la faire verser sur vous). Again it seems as if the improvement in his financial position had caused Chardin to take a greater interest in the Salon Exhibi- tions, for we find him represented there with the following six works : a large still-life (‘ d’environ six pieds ’), and three smaller ones, a medallion portrait of ‘ M. Louis, professeur et censeur royal de Chirurgie,’ and lastly a repetition of the ‘ Recureuse,’ a subject which he had first exhibited nineteen years ago. Every two years our artist now sends a number of pictures to the Salon, nine or more on an average, still-life subjects, generally catalogued in this manner : ‘ A picture about 7 ft. in height, by 4 ft. in width, represent- ing : “ Un Retour de Chasse ” (the Huntsmen’s “ bag ”) ; it belongs to the Comte du Luc ’ ; or ‘ Two pictures of fruit, 1 J ft. in width by 13 in. in height, they belong to the Abbe Trublet’; or ‘Two little pictures 12 in. high and 7 in. wide; one representing a young draughtsman, the other a girl doing needlework. They belong to M. Cars, the engraver.’ And so for years and years, still-life subjects, new and original, or repetitions, or genre subjects, but these invariably repetitions of his earliest successes twenty years ago. The enumeration of all these would become tedious, moreover the description is generally so vague, that it does not help one to identify the subjects among the known examples of his work. One thing, however, seems worthy of which runs parallel with the river. The Louvre has, of course, seen many alterations, but a good idea of such lodgings may be obtained by ascending the stairs in the Pavilion Jean Goujon, and inspecting the rooms which now harbour the Chalcographic and the Grandidier Collection, at that time also used as logements. Here the artists apparently lived like in a residential club ; clubbing together as far as their household matters were concerned. C.— 4 49 CHARDIN note : over and over we read that pictures belong to M. Cars the engraver, M. Le Moine the sculptor (a neighbour of his in the Louvre), M. Aved (a portrait painter, and his great friend). W e are involuntarily reminded of Wille’s entry in his diary : ‘ he let me have it out of friendship ’ — and fully understand how it is that Chardin made no money. But to say that the catalogue of his work in this his later age is uninteresting, is not — by any means— to say that the work itself became unworthy of notice. On the contrary — the choice of his subject was a question of his character, his constitution we might almost call it. This, however, is a point which must be discussed in a later chapter. It is enough to state here, that the farther he advanced in his life, the more he also advanced in his art — and this is one of the proofs that he was indeed one of the great masters. It seems as if only physical infirmities could prevent great artists from improving their workmanship as they attain a greater age and a riper experience, and often even their physical limitations seem to sharpen the intelligence of their execution. Taking up the threads of our chronological narration, we go back to the year 1759, and listen to M. Natoire’s extraordinary complaint about Chardin’s son. It appears that the pious Natoire, a good man but a weak one, could not keep order amongst the students who were in his charge ; he had the rather unmanly habit of ‘telling father about things,’ ‘father’ in his case being the Marquis de Marigny. One of these letters (dated 19th Sept. 1759), the petulance of which strikes one as highly humorous, shows the unfortunate Pierre Chardin in his worst light. ‘ The rooms of the pensionnaires give rise to frequent disputes, on account of the choice which each student pretends to have a right to. I have tried to remedy this by giving each one what I considered the most suitable room, having regard to their different talents. I intended to divide the rooms generally into Painting, Sculpture, and Architectural sections, and giving the best one in 50 r L, A / A A. I'll LA MERE LABORIEUSE FROM THE PICTURE IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGE 39 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER each department to the oldest pupil. After having arranged all this, I find an obstinate fellow among them, one called ‘le sieur Chardin,’ one of the feeblest subjects of the lot, out of whom I can only get good work with the very greatest difficulty. This man says that he is being wronged because he has not been given the room which he, out of mere levity, demands, although this room is destined for an architect, and although he was quite satisfied before with the one he had, and which indeed is much better suited to a painter. I have done my best to try and make him see that he would only lose by any change, but he will not hear, and even refuses to give up the key. I had to send for the ‘ Suisse pour Favoir de force’; (I had to fetch the door-keeper to obtain it by force). The young fellow, who is of a most taciturn nature, has become obstinate, and so carried away, that he has threatened me with writing to you.’ Poor Natoire ; and the worst of it is that through this case of insubordination all the others have got out of hand, so that they have joined in and are smashing up the furniture of their rooms ‘ in spite of all my care.’ The whole letter is indeed most amusing, but is of interest here only in so far as it concerns Chardin’s son. Pierre submitted in the end, and thus all might have been well with him, but it was not, as we learn from another letter of Natoire written two years later. The Salon of 1759 became noteworthy on account of Diderot’s criticisms which began in this year. The famous Diderot owed his knowledge of Art principally to his conversations with Cochin and Chardin ( 4 Chardin est homme d’esprit, et personne peut-etre ne parle mieux que lui de la peinture’) and his letters to his friend and colleague Grimm of Encyclopaedic fame help one to under- stand France and French art better than the mere study of the pictures could do. His opinions were not always trustworthy ; he was a man with a mission, who could be just to Chardin because Chardin was not a manifest missionary; who could at times be ridiculously partial to Greuze, when this painter glorified the Tiers 51 CHARDIN / Etat, wallowing in sentimental mud all the time; who could be most unfair to all who were not of his way of thinking, like Boucher for instance. But his unfairness was only due to the fact that he — illogically — insisted on making Art a question of ethics. So long as he saw with his eyes his opinions are just, intelligent, and penetrating ; the moment his sight receded into his reason he became unreliable. Of Chardin’s pictures in the Salon of 1759 he says : 4 ... It is always nature, always truth. You could take the bottles by the neck if you were thirsty ; the peaches and the grapes give you an appetite and call for your hand (appellent la main). M. Chardin is a man of intellect (esprit), he understands the theory of his art ; he paints in a manner peculiar to himself, and his pictures will be one day much sought after. The execu- tion of his small figures is so large in conception that they might well be plastic, for the largeness of execution (la largeur du faire) is independent of the dimensions of the canvas or the size of the objects. Reduce, as much as you like the size of a Holy Family of Raphael, and you cannot destroy the greatness of its conception.’ Of Greuze he says : 4 This year the 44 Greuzes ” are not very wonderful. The execution is stiff, the colour insipid and chalky (blanchatre). I used to be tempted by them at one time; I don’t care about them now.’ Of Boucher, who was to become his pet aversion, he gives this remarkable and thoroughly piercing criticism. 4 Before passing on to the sculpture, I should not forget to mention a small 4 Nativity ’ by Boucher. I admit that its colouring is false, that it is too showy (a trop d’eclat), that the infant is too pinky rose-coloured, that nothing in a subject such as this could be more ridiculous than the elegant canopy-bed : but, the Virgin is so beautiful, so loving and touching ... I would not mind having this picture myself. Every time you came to see me, you would condemn it, but you would look at it all the same.’ Diderot’s manner of writing was spirited and most stimulating, without showing sound fundamental knowledge. On the whole 52 LA TOILETTE DU MATIN FROM THE PICTURE IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, STOCKHOLM SEE PAGE 91 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER he was enthusiastically favourable to Chardin, because, as we said, Chardin’s subjects never interfered with his pet theories about morality. We may indeed learn a great deal about Chardin’s position in the world of Art, at this time, from Diderot’s remarks. W e are told, for instance, that no connoisseur could call his collec- tion complete without at least one Chardin ; or that his earlier small pictures — by which his subject or genre pictures, not his still-lifes apparently are meant, are already — recherclies. But to get back to the events of Chardin’s life. In 1761 Chardin had been definitely appointed as tapisseur or ‘ hanger ’ of the Salon in place of Portail, who had recently died ; and again in 1763 the untiring solicitude of his friend Cochin procures him further favours. In a letter dated February 11, 1763, 1 he suggests to the Marquis de Marigny that our painter should be paid for his services as arrangenr of the exhibition, not that Chardin had made any demand in that direction, on the contrary, he seems to take this task as part of his duty, and con- siders himself already sufficiently paid, in fact, continues Cochin, ‘ he seems singularly sensitive and impatient even to excess, every time, to know whether you be satisfied. But I believe it to be my duty to think for him, especially as I can see that it costs him much more time than it used to cost M. Portail, who after having given a few necessary days to the general arrangement, sought refuge from all persecution by taking shelter at Versailles, whereas M. Chardin is obliged to be occupied continuously during the whole duration of the salon.’ In a second letter dated 28th Feb. 1763 2 he suggests that ‘ instead of an additional payment of five hundred livres ’ one of two hundred and fifty livres might be sufficient, seeing that the exhibition only takes place every two years. Finally the Marquis de Marigny experiences a ‘ veritable plaisir ’ to accord Chardin two hundred livres. 3 1 N. A. de l’Art F., 1903-4, Correspondence de Marigny, Doc. No. 333. 2 Ibid.. Doc., 339. 3 Ibid., Doc. 345. 53 CHARDIN Our painter had had an unpleasant experience of the responsi- bility of his position during the very first exhibition which it was his duty to arrange. Young Oudry, the animal painter’s son, had written an impertinent letter to Chardin, because he considered his pictures badly hung. Owing to the prompt action of the Academy the young man was, however, at once brought to his senses. He received a letter from Cochin acquainting him that the Academicians had ordered the removal of his pictures pending his apologies to Chardin, and the complete withdrawal of the insults. This threat produced immediately the desired effect. Chardin does not seem to have disappointed Cochin’s opinion that he was the very man for this difficult post, being particularly fitted ‘par son rang dans l’academie, de concilier les esprits en leur conservant les droits d’anciennete dont les artistes sont jaloux, sans prejudicier l’agrement du coup d’ceil.’ Diderot makes a sly allusion to Chardin's talents as a hanger, in his letter on the Salon of 17G1. In speaking of the work of Francisque Millet 1 he says : his 4 Repose of the Virgin ’ is placed immediately against the light where it cannot possibly be seen, and that is probably due to M. Chardin’s good offices, who has arranged the salon this year.’ ‘Ah,’ he continues, ‘Ah, M. Chardin, if Boizot" had been one of your friends you would have placed his “ Telemaque chez Calypso ” in the dark by the side of M. Millet’s “Repose of the Virgin. ” The place filled by C. N. Cochin as the Marquis de Marigny’s adviser was one of very great importance, in fact one may say that during his time Cochin was the true spiritus rector of the whole Art movement. It is he who not only proposes the different artists, but who also selects the subjects and fixes the price. Thus, for instance, Marigny consults him as to the decoration of the Chateau de Choisy. Cochin reads up his history and suggests scenes from the lives of the Romans. We learn that the painters received certain fixed prices according to the number of figures, and the degree of finish. Vernet, for instance, is proposed as a 1 Bora 1702 — died 1782, Academician since 1757. 2 Born? — died 1777. 54 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER suitable person, and he might be induced to paint a picture in his big and less finished manner, which might be got for one thousand livres instead of one thousand two hundred livres or one thousand five hundred livres; afterwards we find that Vernet was commissioned to do this picture but insisted on finishing it minutely, so that it was well worth the one thousand two hundred livres which he demands. As to the Salon des Jeux in this Chateau de Choisy, Cochin suggests that one might perhaps employ second-rate and less expensive men to do the panels over the doors, who, honoured by the commission, would seek to emulate the men of the first rank. But ‘ second thoughts are sometimes the better ones,’ he begins his second letter to Marigny on the subject, dated Oct. 25, 1764, 1 in which he thinks Chardin would be the most suitable person to select. ‘ You know,’ he continues, ‘ to what degree of illusion and beauty Chardin carries the imitation of the subjects he undertakes to paint, and which he can do from nature.’ Cochin knows our artist’s limitations, but not only that : he even minutely describes the exact composition of the subjects. ‘ One might make use of his talents,’ he goes on to say, ‘ by commissioning him to do two or three of these pictures. In one he would group various attributes of Science, such as globes, a pneumatic machine, micro- scopes, telescopes, graphometers, etc. ; in the other, he might place together attributes of the Arts, such as compasses, the square rule, the rule, rolls of drawings and engravings, palette and brushes, the mallet and various other sculptor’s utensils, etc. ; should a third picture be required, one might add the attributes of Music, various string and wind instruments, books of music, etc. These pictures, I believe, would give much satisfaction, on account of that truth which enchants every one, and the art of rendering it, which has caused his brother artists to consider M. Chardin the greatest painter ever known of this kind of subject. Finally, these pictures would cost no more than eight hundred livres each.’ 1 N. A. de l’Art F. 1903-4, Correspondance de Marigny, Doc. 433. 55 CHARDIN In parenthesis : how much pleasure one may derive from reading between the lines. Here we have the thoughtful Cochin, taking himself very seriously, searching tomes of ancient classics, in order to find, some wholly incongruous subject which might or might not satisfy the tastes of a profligate monarch, or suggesting minute details for the benefit of his friend Chardin; seeking to please his immediate superior by paying due regard to the artistic as well as to the economic side of the question— Au reste ces tableaux ne seraient que de 800 livres chacun. Two years later, on Nov. 12, 1765, 1 he writes Marigny, that he has seen these pictures — which had figured in the Salon of the same year — in their destined places. ‘ The pictures of M. Chardin are of the greatest beauty, and look very effective in their places at Choisy, where I have seen them ; I think that they really have been got cheaply at the price of 800 livres.’ Two further dessus portes were ordered of Chardin for the Chateau de Bellevue — representing groups of musical instru- ments . 2 Evidently Cochin was not deceived — the work had been duly appreciated — but it was not paid for until seven years after ! Meanwhile things had gone from bad to worse with Chardin’s son. He refuses to do the work he is told to do, or achieves it only with great labour; he does not know how to handle his paint, and all his work has the appearance of laboured sketches ; and the unfortunate Natoire complains that he has had to let le jeune Chardin go his own way, to let him follow the soar- ing of his imagination. He seems to have been a black sheep, of whose presence Natoire was glad to be rid. What little work of his there is shows, I believe, no genius, and if his imagination ‘ soared ’ it must have been in pictures not known, at any rate, as his work. Chardin’s son is a mystery. We know that he returned home 1 N. A. de l’Art F. 1903-4. Correspondance de Marigny, Doc. 492. 2 Exhibited at the Salon of 1767. 56 LES TOURS DES CARTES CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER and we hear that he went to Venice with the French ambassador, the Marquis de Paulmy, and that he was drowned or drowned himself there. But, M. Schafer points out that Paulmy arrived in Venice in 1767 ; he left in 1768, and there is no mention of Chardin’s son in either his or his successor’s correspondence, which seems sufficiently remarkable, as after all M. Chardin, the cel&bre M. Chardin, councillor of the Academy, was a man of importance, and one would imagine that for his sake his son’s whereabouts would have been taken notice of. On the other hand. Cochin was Chardin’s personal friend, and he ought to have had his information at first hand. M. Schefer says the discovery of a document could only solve the question. This document has still to be discovered, and, pending this, we can only form an hypothesis. Chardin refers to his son in a speech recorded by Diderot in 1765, and translated here in a later paragraph, in terms such as one would only use in speaking of a dead person. It seems therefore most probable that Pierre Chardin was dead long before the Marquis de Paulmy ’s journey. His character was such that his suicide seems almost to have been the ‘ natural ’ ending of his life — and one which a charitable point of view would anxiously cloak in mystery. This unfortunate son, this ‘ Tete malorganise ’ as Cochin calls him, who perhaps was potentially a greater artist than his father, succumbed to a world he misunderstood, being £ a raisonneur fort peu raisonnable.’ Chardin’s kindly, sympathetic, cultured and intellectual self is nowhere better seen than in his beautiful address to some men of genius, his critics, Diderot amongst them, which we have just now referred to. The great Encyclopaedist gives this speech in his Salon of 1765, and we like to think that the beautiful wording of it is not entirely due to the talent of the reporter. It loses by translation — this translation — still it is literal. We must imagine our painter, as the arrangeur, having con- ducted a distinguished party of visitors, perhaps on a private view 57 CHARDIN day, round the exhibition. He doubtless had been listening to the criticism which the amateurs, distinguished and otherwise, let fall ; many a foolish word may have been said, many a wise one too, but Chardin, who knew his metier and could talk about it, had at last felt it incumbent upon him to defend, to excuse, to crave indulgence for the practisers of his art. ‘ Messieurs, Messieurs, de la douceur,’ he says, 4 Indulgence, gentlemen, indulgence ! Amongst all the pictures you see here, find the worst one, and know that two thousand unhappy students have gnawed the handle of their brushes in despair of ever doing even as well. Parrocel, whom you call a dauber, which he is indeed if you compare him with Vernet, this same Parrocel is yet a rare painter in comparison with the multitude of men who have abandoned a career on which they had embarked with him. Le Moine used to say that he needed thirty years of practice in order to learn how to turn a sketch into a finished picture — and Le Moine was no fool. If you will listen to me, you will perhaps learn to be indulgent. 4 At the age of seven or eight years the crayon-holder is put in our hand, and we begin to draw from the flat, eyes, mouths, noses, ears, and afterwards feet and hands. We have had our backs bent over our drawing-paper for a long long time when we are placed before the 44 Hercules ” or the 44 Torso,” and you have not been wit- ness of the tears which this “Satyr,” “Gladiator,” “Venus of Milo,” or 44 Anthea ” have caused to flow. Be sure these masterpieces of the Greek artists would not excite the jealousy of the masters, if they had been made to vex the students. After having withered by day and by the midnight lamp before dead and inanimate nature, we are confronted with living nature, and on a sudden the travail of all the preceding years seems to reduce itself to nothing. One knows no more than when one had first taken up the crayon. One has to train one’s eye to see nature, and how many have never seen it and shall never see it. That is the punishment of our life. They keep us five or six years before the model, and 58 CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER then we are delivered to our genius, if we have any. Talent is not recognized in a moment. One has not the candour to own his incapacity at his first essay. How many attempts, sometimes happy ones, sometimes the reverse ! Precious years have fled when the day of disgust, of slackness and boredom may arrive. The student is nineteen or twenty years old, and now finds himself — the palette having dropped from his hands — without means, without resource and without morals, for to have incessantly nude nature under one’s eyes, and to be young, and to be wise — that is impossible . 1 What shall he do ? What is to become of him ? He is forced to throw himself into those inferior conditions of life, which open the door to misery, or else he must die of hunger. He takes up the first thing that happens to offer itself ; and with the exception of a dozen or two, who come here every two years and expose themselves to a foolish crowd, the others, unknown and possibly more fortunate, are to be found in fencing saloons with the breastplate on their chests, in a regiment with rifles on their shoulders, or in theatrical costume on the stage of a booth. Such is the life story of Belcour, Lekain, Brizard, bad comedians from despair of being mediocre painters.’ And then, continues Diderot, he narrated with a smile, how one of his colleagues whose son had become a drummer in a regiment, used to tell inquisitive questioners that his son had given up painting in order to devote himself to music. Falling back again into his former serious mood he added : — 4 All the fathers of these incapable and straying sons do not treat the matter so lightly. What you see here is the fruit of the labour of just those few who have contended with more or less success. He who never has felt the difficulties of art never does anything of value ; he who, like my son, has felt them too late, never does anything at all ; and, believe me, most of the high positions in society would remain unfilled, if they could only be 1 Chardin was a devout Catholic, and consequently put the accent on nude — instead of on nature. 59 CHARDIN gained by passing an examination as severe as that which we have had to undergo . 1 . . . ‘ Farewell, gentlemen, indulgence ! indulgence ! ’ Is this speech not worthy of a painstaking, wise, sympathetic artist, of a kind-hearted, clear, and deep-thinking man and a saddened and resigned father ? Is it likely that the reference to his son, the final verdict on his life would have been spoken, before death had ended it? Would a father be so cruel as to crush all hope out of his son’s existence ? Document, or no document, to us it seems Chardin’s speech was delivered ere yet the shadow of the wings of death had lifted from the eyes of a grieved father. At about this period Chardin’s art appears, to me at least, at its very zenith — comparable, even in its technique, to Velazquez’s later and best works. The work of the sixties shows the hand of a past master of his craft. It flows from his brush easily, effortless, and with unfailing judgment. ‘ I can do with my pencil what I know. What I see. . . . Do easily too — when I say perfectly I do not boast perhaps.’ These words which Browning puts in the unhappy del Sarto’s mouth apply to him — though his innate modesty would have pre- vented him from acknowledging this fact even to himself. 1 Diderot spoils the poignancy of this heautiful if somewhat melancholy speech by a classical defence of the critic : but for the sake of completeness I will give the conclusion in Diderot’s own words : ‘ Mais, lui dis-je, il ns faut pas s’en prendre a nous, si “. . . mediocribus esse poetis Non homines non di non concessere columnae.” ’ (‘ . . . but a mediocrity in poets Neither men, nor gods nor even the booksellers’ shops have endured.’ Horace Ars Poetica, v. 372-373 Smart’s translation). * et cet homme qui irrite les dieux, les hommes et les colonnes, contre les mediocres imita- teurs de la nature, n’ignorait pas la difficulty du metier. ‘ Eh bien ! me repondit-il, il vaut mieux croire qu’il avertit le jeune eleve du peril qu il court, que de le rendre apologiste des dieux des hommes et des colonnes. ‘ C’est comme s’il lui disait : mon ami, prends garde, tu ne connais pas ton juge. Il ne sait rien et n’en est pas moins cruel. Adieu, messieurs, de la douceur, de la douceur !’ 60 PLATE XX LES AMUSEMENTS DE LA VIE PR IV EE FROM THE ENGRAVING I)Y L. SURUGUE (i.E 1 ‘Ere) CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER Diderot must have felt this, for he becomes enthusiastic, and in spite of his remarking that the artist is growing old (1’artiste commence a vieillir) he waxes furious in his defence of Chardin and his own country’s art. No. 49 in the Salon of 1765, which gives Diderot an oppor- tunity for this defence, was ‘ Un Panier de Prunes,’ 1 a basket of plums. After giving a short description of the very simple subject of this picture he continues : ‘ This man is the greatest colourist of the Salon, perhaps one of the greatest colourists in the whole realm of art. I cannot pardon that impudent Webb, for having written a treatise on art 2 without citing a single Frenchman. Neither can I pardon Hogarth for having said that the French school possessed not even a mediocre colourist. 3 That is a lie, Monsieur Hogarth, that is ignorance or platitude on your part. I know very well that your nation has the tic of disdaining an impartial critic who dares to speak of us with praise ; but is it necessary that you should court your fellow- citizens at the expense of truth ? Paint ; paint better, if you can ; learn how to draw, but stop writing ! They, that is the English, and we have two very different manias, ours is to overestimate English productions, theirs is to depreciate ours. It is but two years ago that Hogarth was alive, he had sojourned in France — and for the last thirty years Chardin has been a great colourist.’ There is after all something in this philippic. Only just at present the ‘ manies bien diverses ’ seem reversed, so far as Art is concerned. French workmanship is, if anything, overrated in this country. Certainly Diderot’s appreciation of Chardin did not blind him to his supposed defects, for he dismisses him this year with the 1 Now in Madame Jahan Marcille’s collection. 2 Daniel Webb : An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting and into the Merits of the Most Celebrated Painters, Ancient and Modern. 3 Hogarth had said in his Analysis of Beauty, published in 1755, p. 121 . . . ‘indeed France hath not produced one remarkable good colourist.’ Diderot was, of course, not the only one who found fault with Hogarth’s writings, as is well known. 61 CHARDIN melancholy — but we will not deprive our readers of a little diver- sion, and will give them just a sample of Diderot’s amusing and, in the light of our later knowledge, very much biased criticism. The following is what he describes to his friend Grimm as ‘ The actual state of the French School ’ : Halle . 1 Poor man. Belle . 2 He ’soothing. Chardin. The greatest magician we have ever had ; his earlier pictures are already very much ‘ recherch^s ’ — as if he no longer existed. Excellent genre painter, ‘ mais il s’en va,’ but he is going off (this is the observation referred to above). Perronneau . 3 Used to be something once in pastel. Latour . 4 Excellent pastel painter. J u ill art. N othing. Voiriqt. 5 As Juillart. Baudouin . 6 Our friend Baudouin — nothing much (peu de chose). Poland de la Porte. Not without merit, there are some fruit and animal subjects, which one has no right to despise. Loutherbourg. A great, a very great artist, in nearly every genre. He is making tremendous headway, no one knows yet how far he will go. Boucher. I had almost forgotten him — he will scarcely leave any name at all, and he might have been the first of all if he had wanted to. Fragonard. He has painted a very beautiful picture, will he do a second ? I don’t know (je n’en sais rien). 1 Claude Guy Halle, born 1711 ; died 1780 ; Academician since 1748. 2 Clement-Louis-Marie-Anne Belle, born 1722 ; died 1806 ; a pupil of Le Moine. 3 Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, born 1713 ; died 1783 ; an excellent pastellist, though less virile than the following. 4 Maurice Quentin de Latour, born 1704 ; died 1788 ; almost Frans Halsish in his verve. 6 Voiriot, Academician since 1759 ; died 1782. Historical and portrait- painter, widely unknown. 6 Antoine Pierre Baudouin, born 1723; died 1769. Boucher’s son-in-law, a clever painter of ‘ naughty ’ pictures. 62 LA GARDE ATTENTIVE, OR LES ALIMENTS DE LA CONVALESCENCE FROM THE PICTURE IN PRINCE LIECHTENSTEIN’S GALLERY, VIENNA SEE PAGE 42 CHARDINS LIFE AND CHARACTER Space forbids us entering too closely into the details of Diderot’s criticism, let us therefore only note his underestimation of Boucher and Fragonard, justified in the sense that both might well have become greater painters had they been deeper men ; let us further note his overestimation of Loutherbourg, who is best remembered by us as Garrick’s scene-painter, and the maker of a diorama, the Eidophysikon, which delighted Gainsborough. But Loutherbourg’s name gives us an opportunity of mention- ing a little episode which proves the uprightness of Chardin’s nature. Loutherbourg — altogether a strange personality — was sup- posed to have been concerned in a diamond-fraud. His election as an Academician, therefore, met with some considerable secret opposition, which was ultimately overcome, but the history of which does not concern us here. The fact worth noticing, how- ever, is that although Chardin himself was Loutherbourg’s pro- poser, he ‘ spoke to him frankly on the subject,’ telling him ‘that a society that wishes to maintain itself with honour cannot suffer anything of a doubtful nature in any of its members ’ (ne peut rien souffrir de louche dans ses membres). 1 Such outspokenness was to cost Chardin many a bitter experi- ence, as we shall have occasion to observe, for the society had great difficulties in trying to maintain itself with honour, owing to party jealousy and dissension. And how little did Chardin deserve the attacks from which he had to suffer. All records go to prove that he was the mildest, most considerate and justest of men. The following little episode, though unimportant in itself, confirms our opinion : — Greuze had been accorded a lodging in the Louvre in the year 1768, and Cochin writes to Marigny complaining, 2 on January 6th, that Greuze will not give the former occupier time until the warmer season has set in, in order to effect his removal. 1 N. A. de l’Art F., 1903-4, Correspondance de Marigny, Doc. 523. 2 Ibid., Doc. 587. 63 CHARDIN 4 All those who hitherto have obtained lodgings in the Galleries of the Louvre have observed this kindly and humane custom. M. Chardin had not even been to see his rooms during the whole quarter, fearing to inconvenience those who were forced to leave.’ Our septuagenarian, however, continues in his work with unabated vigour, the Salon of 1769 containing no less than nine pictures, among them a repetition of the ‘ Pourvoyeuse,’ a subject which he had exhibited for the first time exactly thirty years ago ! The next year, 1770, shows Cochin still bent on doing his friend a good turn, for he endeavours to secure for him an addi- tional 200 livres from a share in the pension which had become available after Boucher’s recent death. In writing to the Marquis de Marigny 1 he says: ‘He (Chardin) is more than a septua- genarian and at this age it is consoling to be helped by one’s superiors, especially when he sustains the force of his talents in a degree that he wishes to uphold. This is perhaps the last favour I am asking of you on behalf of the artists, my confreres and my friends,’ concludes poor Cochin, with a note of sadness. Poor Cochin, for he is about to relinquish his position. There are factions and jealousies, and the position he was allowed to usurp by the indolent Boucher, is grudged him by Pierre, the new ‘Premier peintre du Roi.’ The old order is changing, and since our Chardin is no turncoat, since he will not forsake his old friends for the sake of his own advancement, he exposes himself to unwarranted and mean attacks. But I am anticipating. Having reached our threescore years and ten, most of us would believe our life work done. Diderot’s opinion, ‘ il s’en va ’ was re-echoed by the public — Chardin, so far as his public was concerned, might not only appear to be ‘ going,’ he had practically gone. Even modern biographers repeat the lament of Chardin’s poorness of invention, lack of imagination, and consider that he was entirely exhausted, and with manifest astonishment they chronicle the appearance of Chardin’s first pastels at the Salon 1 N. A. de l’Art F., 1903-1904, Correspondance de Marigny, Doc. 679. 64 PL A TE XXII LA SERIN EXT K FROM THE ENGRAVING IiY LAURENT CARS SEE PAGE 43 CHARDINS LIFE AND CHARACTER of 1771. To us, who have founded our belief on the testimony of Chardin’s life-work as we see it to-day, the mere change of medium brings no surprise. We have never thought that his imagination had exhausted itself, for we had seen in Chardin’s work a continued and progressive evolution, hampered and tempered only by the demands which the public made, and which Chardin had never been quite strong enough to repudiate entirely, I mean the demands for a ‘ subject.’ It seems reason- able enough to suppose that his weakened eyesight was the main reason for the choice of a new medium. The aged Rembrandt painted with palette-knife and mahlstick, and enlarged his figures beyond life-size. Turner in his old age had eliminated all detail, and sublimated as it were atmospheric colour only on his canvases, not from purely artistic considerations. Chardin’s nature, like theirs, followed the law of all strong vitality, which is to attain its maximum even under altered and adverse conditions. His own portrait of 1771, now in the Louvre, which is one of the three heads exhibited in the Salon of the same year, is a beautiful piece of work, proving that the master’s artistic faculties had not abated, although the first signs of his fatal malady were already approaching. It is curious that his finest technical achievements were reached when his life had become sadder and more troubled. In the late sixties — that is after the death of his son — he painted some of his most beautiful still-lifes, as, for instance, the ‘ Corbeille de Peches ’ of the Louvre, and its companion, the ‘ Corbeille de Raisins ’ in Baron Henri de Rothschild’s Collection ; and his finest portraits, those painted in pastels, viz., that of his wife and his own portrait ‘ a 1’abat-jour ’ (both in the Salon of 1775), were done when his fatal illness had gained a strong hold of his body. The Salon Catalogue of 1773 mentions only one picture from his easel, and this a repeti- tion of a subject which he had painted exactly forty years ago ! It looks as if he were in need of money and, plying for safety, repeated one of his earliest successes. Indeed Chardin was in money 65 C.— 5 CHARDIN v troubles again. He was forced to sell his house in the Rue Princesse. These troubles were not of his own making. The times were out of joint generally. The king granted pensions and commissioned pictures, it is true, but he did not pay the money. Chardin had to wait seven years in one instance. The Royal Academy itself was in a most parlous condition, having been in the previous year on the verge of dissolution. Chardin had the intention of resorting to heroic measures : ‘We own,’ he writes to the Marquis de Marigny, ‘ six carriage horses, of which two are broken-winded ; we have also five carriages in rather bad repair, the sale of these might produce a small amount. At any rate the up-keep of these carriages amounts to something in a year.’ This rather pitiful suggestion smacks a little of feminine resourcefulness, and we imagine ‘ La Tresoriere,’ as Chardin called his wife in a later letter, as its instigator. The Marquis de Marigny, however, in consequence of this appeal, managed, by addressing a strong protest to the Comptroller of Finances, L’Abbd Terray, Carlyle’s ‘ dissolute Financier,’ to get the Academy out of its difficulties. These continual anxieties, partly of a private, partly of an official nature, caused Chardin to resign his position as the treasurer of the Academy on the 25th of December 1774. In auditing the accounts a balance of four hundred and three livres is found missing, and this Chardin offered to pay out of his own pocket. The ever-faithful Cochin induces the Academy not only to refuse this offer, ‘ as it would not be just to make him suffer a loss,’ but also to express their gratitude to him for his faithful services and the good order in which he had put their finances. This is not irony, for, after all, the deficit of only £15 in twenty years of faithful administration seems a creditable performance, considering the disordered times in which our master lived. The year 1775 saw his last artistic triumphs, as we have already said, the pastel portraits of his wife and of himself. 66 PLATE XXI I i L'CECONOME FROM THE ENGRAVING BY J. PH. LERAS CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER They scarcely compare, as far as vitality is concerned, with Latour’s slightest efforts, but they are far above Latour as regards their unconventional and unprecedented truthfulness of visualiza- tion. In the following year, he painted two studies of a boy and a girl, now belonging to M. Foulon de Vaux, and presumably exhibited in the Salon of 1777 as ‘ Tetes d’Etudes au pastel,’ but if these are still in the state in which they left Chardin’s hands — which of course is not necessarily the case — they are disappointing, to say the least. Chardin is now practically at the end of his career. Hence- forth until the day of his death he has to suffer mortification and physical pain. Cochin, his champion and trusty friend, had in this very year laid down his pen as the secretary of the Academy, a pen that had been busy in the interest of the Academy of Art and of his king, during twenty years of faithful service. M. d’Angiviller had taken the place of the Marquis de Marigny, and the ‘ premier peintre ’ Pierre became more and more overbearing. The old order was fast changing. Poor old Chardin endeavours to do his faithful friend Cochin a good turn, and is snubbed : Cochin was, on his retirement, to be placed c a la queue de FAcademie ’ according to the statutes. This seemed to Chardin an injustice considering Cochin’s special and great deserts, and he protested, with the result that Pierre murmured : ‘ It is only those for whom M. Cochin has obtained favours from the king who raise such points ; any one could get a pension in those days (‘ ceux a qui M. Cochin avait fait obtenir les bienfaits du Roi qui levaient ce lievre-la. On donnait des pensions a tout le monde.’). Pierre, an artist of no consequence, could not be expected to see the merit of Chardin’s art. Personal and political bias prevented, in fact, even greater men from recognizing Chardin’s claims to immortality: they condemned the art of the ancien regime, unconscious of the fact that Chardin’s art far over- 67 CHARDIN reached theirs. And, irony of ironies, one of the last acts of our Master was to give his blessings and benedictions, to 4 gross David, of the swoln cheek,’ to David the contrary, the hot-headed devotee of cold reason, who, albeit a great painter, was not even manque, but merely led astray by ‘ reason.’ 4 On peint avec le sentiment’ Chardin had said; a queer ‘sentiment’ was that of David, and the testimonial to which Chardin put his name was written in order to encourage David ‘ de plus en plus a repondre aux grandes esperances qu’il donne.’ 1 Was there ever a great craftsman who more sadly disappointed ‘ grandes esperances ’ than this revolutionary fire-brand who ended ‘ en courtisan de Napoleon ? ’ Extremes meet : Chardin was a painter pure and simple. He willingly ‘ rendered unto Caesar ’ ; politics were entirely outside his purview of life. When Madame Victoire, the King’s sister, 2 admired a pastel portrait of a ‘jacquet’ (jockey or lackey) and asked the price of it, he sent word that he considered himself suffi- ciently paid by the honour she did him. This ‘jacquet ’ was in the Salon of 1770, the year of his death. To the end he remained politically a loyal subject to his king, and a faithful son of his Church. Thus his friend Doyen could write of him, on December 6, 1779. . . . ‘ M. Chardin a retpi le bon dieu,’ and ‘ il a toute sa tete ’ — leaving no doubt of Chardin’s conscious and positive faith. Having received the last Sacrament he died. His death was slow and painful — the more so perhaps because he had stubbornly refused any sort of treatment : he insisted, we are told, on trying to cure himself by drinking water in lieu of medicine. Down to the day of his death he insisted on being shaved, a fact worth recording, because it seems so very little in keeping with his character — on first thought — and yet it is truly character- 1 ‘More and more to realize the great promises which he holds forth.’ 2 Madame Victoire . . . etait belle et tres gracieuse, son accueil, son regard, son sourire etait d’accord avec la bonte de son ante . — Memoires de Mme. Campan. 68 J* '.ATE XXIV STILL-LIFE CHARDIN’S LIFE AND CHARACTER istic of his slow, methodical, painstaking, and orderly conduct throughout his life. Moreover, why should one end the story of his life with an heroic peroration. We have not sung of ‘arms and men’; we have merely had to relate the plain tale of a plain man, to whom even trivial things were full of interest and significance. W e will, however, give the last word to one who knew our Master : ‘ Chardin’s nature,’ says Haillet de Couronne, ‘ was sweet and modest, although he could be firm when needful and “show character,” as we say. His ideas were very strong, and his “ repartee” quick and unexpected. ‘ Naturally sensitive, he took certain differences of opinion between himself and others too much to heart, thought too much about them, and thus no doubt allowed them to poison the end of his days.’ Chardin was of small stature but ‘ fort et muscle.’ His portraits proved him to have been a man of plain but pleasant features, not unlike Rembrandt in general appearance. Every word of his mouth suggests a thoughtful, kindly, well-rounded nature. Unlike Latour he was not given to metaphysical speculation. We have no proof that he ever left the environs of Paris. He took no part in political life, his interests being bounded by the theory, the practice, the administration, and the propagation of Art. 69 IV HIS WORK: ITS ESSENCE AND INFLUENCE ‘ Chardin fait tout ce qu’il voit.’ — Goncourt C HARDIN’S brain was in his eyes. He is reported to have said : ‘ Art is an island of which I have but skirted the coastline.’ He imagined that he had only touched the fringe of the beautiful Garment of Life : he knew, no doubt, that had he been so minded he might have painted the Olympics of Coypel, the Madonnas of Gazes, the pastoral frivolities of Lancret and Pater, the immoral moralities of Greuze, though the arcadian theatricals of Watteau and the Bacchanals of Boucher must for ever have been as much beyond his reach, as they were outside his aspirations. What Chardin considered the coastline has become, unless we are very much mistaken, the very goal, the very port towards which nearly every modem master of the craft sets his helm. The foundations of Chardin’s art were deeply laid, so that they have proved capable of bearing as great a superstructure, or perhaps a greater one than the foundations even of a Raphael. This, on behalf of so modest and unassuming a painter, is a great claim. Can it be upheld ? We shall see. Chardin drew the inspiration of his art from the Netherlands. Neither Cazes, nor Coypel, nor Van Loo, though his masters, ever succeeded in teaching him their art, assuming that art in that sense can be taught. It was in all probability Chardin’s intimate friend the portrait-painter Aved, who first opened his eyes to the beauties of another world, this world, that is, by drawing his attention to the works of Dutch painters. Aved was, in fact, 70 PL A TE XXV W W (A 'A 2 < Id h cj a s h £ £ O S s Q § HIS WORK half a Dutchman himself, having been brought up in that country . 1 Dou, Terborch, Metsu, Maes, Netscher, Teniers, de Hooch, Vermeer, Kalf, Van Beyeren, Heda, de Heem, Hondecoeter, Jan Fyt, and Weenix were the inspiration of Chardin’s art. Even a superficial comparison will at once reveal the affinity between them and Chardin. But a superficial comparison will not reveal the differences existing even between the Dutch masters themselves; say, between Dou and Vermeer, between Kalf and Heda. Yet these differences are fundamental, and separate Dou from Vermeer very nearly as much as both these are separated, say, from Poussin. ‘ The merit of the work depends not so much on the subject,’ says d’Argenvilie, 4 but on the fidelity of expression and the intelligence of the touch.’ Unfortunately he expresses this excellent sentiment in praise of Gerard Dou, from which one can see how easy it is to mean one thing and to say another (and this makes writing on matters artistic like an attempt at handcuffing a ghost). Dou’s fidelity of expression was an elaborate juxtaposition of individual facts, each having very little relation to the whole, and none to its immediate neighbours. Dou’s intelligence of touch was a virtuoso performance with fine brushes, comparable to the writing of the Lord’s Prayer on a threepenny -piece. Vermeer had a far greater fidelity of expression and a much more adorable intelligence of touch, since he was not concerned with little individual facts, stated with indiscrim- inate fidelity. Vermeer loved daylight and sought to capture it on canvas. All other qualities of his work are made subservient to this desire. In consequence the objects he presents on his canvases are visualized from that point of view, to such an extent that his composition is mostly bizarre ; chairs projecting beyond the frame, curtains and carpets occupying much more space than their utilitarian importance would warrant, figures with their 1 He came to Paris in 1722, and shared his studio with Chardin. 71 CHARDIN backs to the light, faces entirely in shadow, in short, all manner of light problems solved for the mere pleasure of the solution. And in that Metsu and Maes, though in a lesser degree, resemble him. A corresponding relation is to be found amongst the still-life painters, in Kalf, as compared, for instance, with Heda or Abraham Mignon ; Kalf at any rate had a higher conception of Art. Chardin then has a double affinity with the Dutch School : his preference for their subject-matter, and the delight in the solution of pictorial problems, which he shared with the best of them, but raised on a higher level. In corroboration of this the reader is invited to compare his ‘La Fontaine’ with Metsu’s ‘ Die Kbchin ’ in the Berlin Gallery, and his ‘ Ratisseuse ’ with Netscher’s ‘ Die Naherin ’ at Dresden. In both cases the subject-matter and arrangements are akin, the execution widely different. But the excellence reached by Chardin is still more palpable when his achievement in the ‘ Raisins et Grenades’ is compared with the skilful and ‘ realistic (!) ’ per- formance of de Heem’s tedious and artificial ‘ Fruchtstiick ’ at Dresden. One of Hondecoeter’s celebrated trompe-Vceil is his ‘Dead Fowl’ in the Brussels Gallery, a very remarkable specimen of patient labour ; Chardin’s early ‘ Dead Partridge ’ reveals at once the similarity of subject and the dissimilarity of aim, whilst Metsu’s ‘ White Hen ’ in the Prado seems much nearer akin to Chardin than to his compatriot Hondecoeter. The mind of Nicholas Maes, on the other hand, may be likened to Chardin’s, for although his execution was not as ‘large’ as Chardin’s, the ‘Bdne- dicite’ at Amsterdam and Chardin’s ‘ Benedicite ’ are manifestly products of nearly related conceptions of life. These are only a few examples of the debt our master owes to his spiritual parents, the Netherlandish artists. From the younger Teniers, who was known as ‘ le singe de la peinture ’ on account of his imitative versatility, and who liked to paint ‘ Affen-Gesellschaften ’ (Monkey-Parties), Chardin may have had the ideas for his own ‘Singe Peintre’ and ‘Singe Antiquaire.’ 72 PLATE XXVI LA RATISSEUSE DIE NAHERIN BY G. NETSCHER HIS WORK But Teniers was a wit with a mind and a brush as glittering and pointed as a needle, Teniers was ‘ geistreich,’ a word which is untranslatable, unless ‘ Meredithian ’ may be accepted as its literary if not literal equivalent. Chardin was the very reverse. / Teniers, however, stood for all that was brilliant in the ‘ Ecole Flamande,’ Rubens always excepted, and it must not be forgotten that Chardin’s youth was no further distant in point of time from the days of the great Netherlandish painters, than our youngest masters are from the halcyon days of Preraphaelism — not so far, as a matter of fact. The ‘ Ecole Flamande ’ were in the eyes of Chardin’s times not yet ‘ old masters.’ For this reason Chardin’s art must not be considered as an artificial and archaistic revival of a dead style of painting, but rather as the direct con- tinuance of a branch of art practised originally in the Nether- lands. Teniers himself only died five years before our artist was born, and Chardin’s contemporary Rigaud may have known such men as Terborch, Maes, and Dou personally. All this proves that Chardin was not original, in the sense that he invented something hitherto unheard-of, or that he dis- regarded altogether existing traditions. Originality, or what is commonly meant by that term, is altogether a suspicious quality in Art. Forced attempts to be different from other people are foredoomed, as history has proved over and over. One must not deliberately try to be what one is not naturally. On the other hand, the greater one naturally is, the more distinct will be the manifestation of one’s self from the manifestation of one’s surroundings. The Eclectics, the Neoclassicists, the Romantics, the Preraphaelites have had their time, and their time will come no more, yet the evolution of Art goes steadily on, uninterruptedly from the beginning of time, shifting only its active element, from country to country, from people to people : for the power of evolution knows no sentiment and drops individuals and nations when they have served its purpose, irrespective of individual or national aspirations. The whole of 73 CHARDIN the civilized world knows and cherishes Shakespeare’s Hamlet ; Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques and the Danish history of Saxo Grammaticus are unread by the multitudes, and yet — without Saxo and Belleforest, Shakespeare’s Hamlet would not have been, the Apollo of Praxiteles not without the Apollo of Tenea, Raphael not without the Greeks, V an Eyck not without Byzantium, Velazquez not without the Neapolitan school, Titian not without Van der Goes and Antonello, Reynolds not without Titian and Rembrandt, Watteau not without Rubens, Corot not without Constable, Turner not without Claude, Chardin not without the Dutch Little Masters, and a whole school of modem art not without Chardin. That is the great lesson of scientific research; it teaches us not to regard the history of the world as a mere record of dis- connected events and sudden cataclysms, but as a steady evolu- tion, plain and palpable in its progress, if mysterious, to us, in its ultimate aim. Having satisfied ourselves that Chardin’s greatness is not a question of the subjects he painted, it becomes necessary to find out on what his claim as a great artist rests. Since it is not the subject of his art, it must without a doubt be the manner in which he treated his subject — i.e. his conception. What, in other words, are the characteristics of his art? In order to find an answer to this question, it will be necessary to examine such originals as may be accessible. English readers have two examples readily at hand in the National Gallery, two further ones in Sir Frederick Cook’s Collection ; three further and most excellent works are in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, and a fine work of his is in the National Gallery of Scotland, and another in that of Ireland. In addition to that the Louvre has nearly thirty works from his brush. Failing all these, there are the reproductions in black and white ; and for the purpose such reproductions may be preferable, for if left without retouching they emphasize and exaggerate the technique of our Master. 74 TE XXVII LE BENEDICITE BY NICOLAS MAES LE BENEDICITE HIS WORK Even the unexperienced in such matters will notice in nearly every case a certain dry, 4 gritty ’ quality, scrofulous some critics call it, in Chardin’s pictures, unlike any other old oil-painting, but calling to mind the rougher, drier ground of a fresco painting. This ‘ grittiness ’ is characteristic of Chardin’s manner, and gives the surface of his canvas a certain aspect, which is almost akin to the surface of unpolished marble. All great painters have of course made use of certain ‘ accidents ’ of quality, some by painting on coarsely grained canvas — Whistler, for instance, used the knots in the woof, others by their 4 impasto,’ causing the thickness of paint to cast its own shadows . 1 In Chardin’s pictures these surface qualities were not left to accident, or spread equally over the whole surface, but care- fully and judiciously introduced. Sir Joshua Reynolds favoured at times similar surface qualities, especially in his whites, and in him too, as in Chardin, these characteristics betoken a great love of pure 4 painty ’ quality, whilst, for instance, the workmanship of Sir Edwin Landseer — in common with the decadent Dutch paintings of Dou, Mieris, and van der Werff, eg . — proves how little he understood of the beauty of pure craftsmanship. Another general characteristic of Chardin’s work is his pre- ference for delicate colour contrasts. Most of his pictures, even those that are warm in tone, are reticent in colour ; all seem painted in a minor key, excepting one or two of his earliest canvases — which in that case also lack the grittiness of his other works, and excepting also certain warm, slightly orange- tinted reds, which he was fond of introducing in the colours of some of his subjects. But, generally speaking, the subdued blues, the pale yellows and pinks, the browns shot with grey, the green greys of his backgrounds, remind one of the subtle beauty of a bunch of faded flowers, with just that intenseness and mellowness which only the varnished oil painting will give. 1 The Italian painter Mancini has shown of late years, both at Burlington House and the New Gallery, canvases that are positively modelled in pigment. 75 CHARDIN But when one comes to consider the reason of these resem- blances it becomes clear that Chardin’s colour-scheme was not a deliberate intention ; he did not choose his palette in the sense that Burne-Jones, Carri&re, or Rubens may be said to have chosen theirs. When he is warm and mellow in his chromatic expression lie reproduced the effects of concentrated light like Rembrandt ; and the cooler colour-scheme is due to diffused light, as in Velazquez’ pictures. Nearly every picture by our master is an attempt — mostly a successful one — to solve the problem of light. Chardin’s habit of painting and repeating his subject-matter, and changing his manner with his subject, makes a chronological order difficult and unprofitable — and the description of every work tedious. We must therefore beg to be allowed to ‘ pick and choose ’ and begin — at random — with ‘ La Pourvoyeuse,’ a subject of which no less than four originals are known to exist. What is the subject-matter of this oft-repeated theme ? Simply / a girl of the ‘ Tiers Etat’ returning home from marketing. The canvases of this subject measure roughly 18 x 14 inches; the size is therefore unpretentious. The girl is not pretty, she is dressed neatly and becomingly, but without elaboration ; her surroundings are homely, there is not a vestige of any story, her features betray no deeper thoughts, and the action of her body is dictated solely by the relaxation of the moving and bearing muscles. There is really nothing in such a subject. Why was it painted ? To this Diderot gives the shrewdest answer, a master-key to the proper understanding of Chardin’s greatness. ‘ Looking at the pictures of others,’ he says, 1 ‘it seems to me that I have to create artificial eyes for myself, but in order to see those of Chardin I need only keep the eyes which nature has given me, and to make good use of them.’ 1 Chardin had no need to learn to see — he was gifted with an unbiased sight. Most of us have to forget that other artificial 1 Diderot, Salon de 1763. 76 PLATE XXV III HIS WORK way of looking at things, most of us have yet to learn that we have ‘ natural ’ eyes, which can tell us of more beauty in plain facts than in the fancies of our imagination — based as these are on the association of irrelevant ideas . 1 * * Sight being eternally dependent on light, it is natural that Chardin’s keener sight should have placed greater importance on light than on any other constituent of a picture. Light is the one thing that is always beautiful. But light is in itself invisible, so long as it remains unobstructed. Things presented themselves to Chardin’s brain — as we may deduce from his pictures — primarily as objects making the beauty of light visible — its refraction, reflection, and deflection. What has — under this angle of vision — become of ‘ La Pour- voyeuse ’ ? Is she still a girl of the bourgeoisie returning from market, and placing a loaf of bread on a sideboard, whilst her right hand grasps a bag with a 4 gigot de mouton ’ — or is she not rather Chardin’s homage to the majestic miracle of light ? Study the painting of the blue apron — which runs the gamut of many shades of this colour and includes as many others; study the painting of the dress, the wood, the bread, the pottery, these things are not painted for our sake, because bread is nourishing, pottery useful, wood durable, but for their own sakes, because this wonderful sun of ours transforms them into objects of beauty. And the girl was not painted because she happened to be Jeanne or Marie or Josephine, not because she was a beautiful model, or a figure in some romantic tale of fact or fiction, but simply because light clung gracefully to her youthful body — at a moment when Chardin caught sight of her. And the Vision of Beauty which at that moment entered his eyes he wished to capture, and to record. Another time Chardin sees a woman seated peeling turnips (‘ La Ratisseuse ’), or a woman standing scouring sauce- 1 Quite recently the Director of a German Gallery, lamented, in an article published in Die Woche, the inability of the German public to distinguish the artistic value of a work of art, from its historical or romantic associations. 77 CHARDIN pans (‘ La Recureuse.’) The purpose of their occupation means nothing to the painter, their sole raison d'etre from his point of view was, that they and their surroundings caught and reflected light in colours and shapes that pleased him. Aprons and hands, basins and faces are not reproduced because they were such, but because the way in which daylight fell on the obstructing objects, caused the production of beautiful effects of colour and pleasing shapes of masses. I venture to say that the prosaic and cumber- some manner in which the beauties of his art have to be pointed out argues not so much for the inability of the writer, as for the greatness of Chardin’s art. For if it were easy to express in words what Chardin painted, were it easy to rhapsodize, it would only prove that not his painting but the rhapsody would have been a better medium of expressing Chardin’s idea. There are some painters whose works are painted music, or literature, or sculpture, or architecture, or theology, or philosophy — but the painter s pictures are primarily manipulations of paint. Not what is painted, but how it is painted, matters. In Chardin’s pictures objects lose their utilitarian significance and become transformed into heralds and standard-bearers of light. That Chardin laid much greater stress on the manner than on the matter of his art the choice of his subjects amply proves. His early pictures and his late ones were almost exclusively still-life. In his young days a flower-pot with a small orange-tree, in his old age, a tumbler and a couple of apples sufficed him for his art, and when at the intervening period of his life he forced himself at times to paint portraits, he often fails. The portraits of the sons of M. Godefroy — now in the Louvre, are but a disappointing per- formance for the painter of the ‘ Garmon Cabaretier’ (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow), or ‘ IJne Guvriere qui choisit de la Laine dans son Panier’ (Baron Henri de Rothschild’s Collection), a painter who by then had reached the age of maturity (1739), yet even these portraits are amongst his best. But the falling away from excellence in certain subjects is not very difficult to account for. 78 PLATE XXIX FRUCHTSTUCK BY DAVID DE HEEM FROM THE PICTURE IN THE ROYAL GALLERY, DRESDEN SEE PAGE 72 RAISINS ET GRENADES BY CHARDIN FROM THE PICTURE IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGES 72 AND 86 HIS WORK To paint an object as a bearer of light and shade, tone and colour, is one thing, to paint a portrait is quite another. It is a common experience in every art school that the merest tyro will often succeed in ‘ catching ’ a likeness of the model, whilst artistically considered his manner of drawing or painting such likeness may be execrable. The use of the phrase ‘ catching a likeness ’ points to where the difficulty lies. One catches something that is in motion. If Chardin’s character had been agile and quick he would have succeeded — but it was not. Hence his attempts to paint portraits never lose the semblance of still-life — they are laboured and unintelligent. A dead hare, a basket of fruit remains stationary and presents the same aspect for a good many days, a china pot, or a silver goblet practically for ever. But a young boy will at best only keep still for a few minutes at a stretch. An element of unrest enters the quiet studio ; our artist, constitutionally not only sensitive but also sympathetic, endea- vours to push his work on at a greater pace than his slow nature will permit— he is anxious to get his sitter’s ordeal over — the result is a failure. Chardin was then constitutionally unfit to be a portrait-painter, a statement which is supported by the fact that none of the portraits ascribed to him are works of great merit, except the pastel portraits of his old age, and even in that case, only his own and his wife’s portraits in the Louvre 1 are really fine, whilst others that I have seen in private collections are decidedly poor. Such pictures as ‘ Une dame prenant son The ’ (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow), or the celebrated ‘ Impatient Young Lady’ (page 56 ), which are more or less portraits, cannot compare in the quality of paint with less pretentious works. As a consequence of the mental unrest caused him by this kind of work, he cannot give himself time to rub and scrape, to wipe and ruffle, to polish, and dry, and glaze, and otherwise ‘ nurse ’ his paint with brushes, palette-knife or ‘ thumb,’ as Diderot states ; this quality becomes 1 There is another portrait of himself in a private collection, but it is either sorely rubbed and badly retouched or else indifferently done from the beginning — probably both. 79 CHARDIN uninteresting and ‘ all-overish.’ The ruggedness ( rugosite ) of his manner, so much remarked on by his contemporaries, which is a positive delight in such gems as 4 The Little Girl eating Cherries ’ (Baron H. de Rothschild s Collection, where the white apron is painted as only Chardin could have done), is absent from the pictures mentioned before, or at least occurs only sporadically — as if he wished to suggest how well he might have succeeded — given his proper time. The portrait of his friend Aved (in the possession of M. Bureau), hailed by his contemporaries as comparable only to Rembrandt, was apparently twice exhibited, once as 4 Un Chimiste dans son Laboratoire ’ and another time as 4 Un Philosophe.’ The exhibition of a picture under these titles is for a man of Chardin’s nature much easier than the exhibition of a picture as a portrait of a certain individual. A portrait must be treated symbolically, i.e. conventionally; it must be painted so that all may recognize its meaning. Otherwise it becomes like a snap-shot photograph, which is nearly always unsatisfactory. The camera states facts : it does not extract and arrange the principal characteristics of the features, it reproduces only the accidental facts of light and cast shadows. The camera does not lie, but it speaks an inhuman language which we cannot under- stand because it is not subject to our conventions— it is not sufficiently symbolic. So was Chardin — unconventional to a degree. It is expressly stated that he could only paint with the model before him. 4 M. Chardin,’ says Mariette 4 est oblige d’avoir continuellement sous les yeux 1’objet qu’il se propose d’imiter.’ For this very reason he is quite unable to make use of the greatest convention in all art — line. Line does not exist — Chardin does not see it, cannot make use of it — and, as it happens, line is the greatest aid in 4 catching ’ likenesses. Hence the tremendous vitality in clever caricature. Hence also the great art of Velazquez, who pressed this convention into his service without apparently making any use of it at all in his later and best works. 80 LA TE XXX PORTRAIT OF JOHN HUNTER (?) FROM THE PICTURE IN POSSESSION OF PERCY MOORE TURNER, ESQ. SEE PAGE 130 HIS WORK It requires no great imagination to realize the great struggle that must have rent the mind of our artist in his early days on account of his natural conception of Art and the traditional one which his masters — such as they were, endeavoured to engraft. We know how little these exponents of Art referred to nature, how amply sufficient the study of other works was considered. Is there not an unpleasant note of contempt in Mariette’s remark ? And even at this present time there is here in England a great reaction against realistic impressionism. There are those who profess a supreme contempt for the painter whose imagination is so poor that he is compelled likewise ‘ d’avoir continuellement sous les yeux l’objet qu’il se propose d’imiter.’ But such contempt is not justified. As a matter of fact every artist is compelled to have the object he intends to ‘ imitate ’ continually before his eyes — the difference is merely that one type of man has his eyes in his brain, and the objects he intends to paint are consequently before his inner eyes continually, the other type has his brain in his outer eyes, and cannot see unless he uses his optic organs. Nor is there any comparison between the two — both may be equally fine painters — it is, as so many other results of human activity, merely a question of constitution. Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Rossetti are such 4 inner eye ’ men ; Pieter or Peasant Brueghel, Vermeer, and Constable such ‘ outer eye ’ men. But the great names of the latter class will be recorded by those that come after us — for, whatever may be said on behalf of the inner visionary, the relater of pleasing/acfa is a more skilful man than the relater of pleasant Jancies. It is comparatively an easier matter to shape a brain-spun world e nearer to our hearts’ desire ’ than to carve a Galatea from the rock of hard fact. Chardin was essentially an ‘ outer eye ’ visionary ; and his triumphs were won on a wellnigh unploughed field, if such mixed metaphor be permissible. Amongst such triumphs most of his later still-lifes must be counted, such as, for instance, the ‘ Panier de Peches et Noix ’ of the Louvre. All that is visible on 81 C— 6 CHARDIN this canvas are six peaches interleaved on a basket, a tumbler with wine, two nuts, one of which has been opened and partly broken, and a knife protruding over a stone ledge. The first thing one notices is, that the objects create an illusion of reality; the second, that scanty as the motif is, it yet is a perfect picture ; and the one thing one does not notice is the manner in which the purpose has been achieved. Of how many great works of art would these three statements hold true? For, mark you — those peaches are not ‘ meant for ’ peaches, they are the fruit and yet they keep their places in the picture, they remain a picture. When Diderot praises Chardin’s realism, proclaiming that the painted bottles of wine seem to invite the spectator to take them by their necks, and pour out the liquid, or that the biscuits wish to be eaten, etc., he is using a little journalistic latitude. For the beauty of Chardin’s art is that the objects represented never forget their place. The kind of realism which would deceive you into a belief of reality is on the level of Madame Tussaud’s w r axen images. Such deception was even known in the times of the Greeks, but neither Zeuxis nor Apelles could have succeeded in painting a peach like Chardin. In fact Chardin’s insistent deference to the exigencies of a framed canvas is one of his chief charms; he has an unfailing instinct for true pictorial qualities. Not more than once or twice did he dare to put his desire for fame before the demands of his art. The two cases I am think- ing of are the two large reception pictures, 4 Le Buffet,’ and ‘ La Raie,’ both in the Louvre. He was then very young, and practically unknown. These two paintings are far too small for their size ; neither the subjects nor their treatment warrant their dimensions. But he had a good excuse : even as they were they protested against the empty spirit of Oudry’s vaunted still-lifes. They gave too much. The bigger the canvas the less detail is required, yet Chardin displays here in a grand manner such subtleties as require for their appreciation an intimacy which the size forbids. That these two pictures were painted out of mere 82 TE XXXI PIPES ET VASES A BOIRE HIS WORK bravado seems probable, because during this time, or very soon after, he was painting in a very different manner ; though possibly the ‘ Buffet ’ and the ‘ Raie’ have to be placed still further back in time ; and are perhaps the work of a precocious youth. 1 How- ever this may be these two pictures are against Chardin’s nature. He was not a man who could have felt at home with the style of work such dimensions require ; and although, individually con- sidered, there are already many admirable qualities in these pictures, they lack the characteristics of a real work of art : they lack style. They share this absence of quality with two other subjects painted in a similar way, 4 Le Singe Peintre,’ and 4 Le Singe Antiquaire,’ the former of which bears in one existing original (he painted even these subjects several times) the date 1726. Apart from the fact that the man-aping monkey seems to have been a favourite literary and artistic invention of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there is very little reason for these pictures — they are not studied — ‘ Le Singe Peintre,’ for instance, displays an impossible heel — and it is the study that is Chardin’s prime quality ; the loving care with which in other works he nurses every square inch of paint. One need only compare the 4 Deux Lievres ’ of the Carlsruhe Museum, also painted in 1726, with the monkey pictures, to realize the vast difference between their quality and manner. In the Carlsruhe 4 Rabbits ’ all is precision, masterly deliberation ; and though the subject is less ambitious, these 4 Rabbits ’ are a far greater masterpiece than the intricate but ill-considered 4 Raie.’ One thing, however, is proved by all of these pictures: Chardin had gone to Rembrandt for his inspira- tion. The warm, mellow, concentrated lighting, the simplicity of the subject (I know of no real still-lifes by Rembrandt but the 4 Slaughterhouse ’ of the Louvre, the main feature of which is the suspended and skinned carcass of an ox), may have directly influenced the French follower, but the resemblance is still 1 Millais’s ‘ Capture of the Inca of Peru ’ in the South Kensington Museum is a similarly ambitious kind of paiDting by a precocious youth of sixteen. 83 CHARDIN greater, even in technical execution. As a matter of fact pages of description written by Chardin’s contemporary dArgenville might be with equal justification applied to either artist. The resemblance is so strikingly apt that I cannot forbear from quoting some of the most salient features. 4 The style of this painter is not 44 licked,” and is very different from that of his country. His pictures, coarse, rough, and dis- agreeable when looked at too closely, become soft and of an astonishing plastic effect seen from a certain distance. . . . His genius is fine, his expressions charming, his touch admirable, and he is often termed the King of Colouring . 1 . . . He loads and obscures his outlines, so that only a general harmony prevails . . . he scrupulously endeavoured to imitate nature, without trying to embellish it in any way : no elegance in design, no improving upon nature, no taste for the antique, only a great verity takes the place of all these ... he preferred simple subjects . . . husbanding his time, he yet changed and effaced Ins work incessantly. The arrangement of a likely object occupied him for days together, two or three months passed in the painting of a head, which he touched and retouched so long as there was a vestige of moisture in his colour.’ All this is equally true of Rembrandt or Chardin ; and if we except W atteau, how much more true is d’Argenville’s final remark on Rembrandt’s art, when applied to Chardin ? 4 Rembrandt makes the painters of his time appear like veritable dyers : their pictures resemble Turkey carpets (or Gobelins in Chardin’s case) ; his, on the contrary, though rough, are luminous and full of light ’ ; which in this sense would equally apply to Chardin’s still-lifes. These parallels are indeed surprising and might be continued ; suffice it to observe here that Chardin’s rough and uncouth manner of painting was noticed by his contemporaries, as well as the fact that one needed a certain distance from the pictures to gain the proper effect, and repeatedly it was 1 Diderot calls Chardin : ‘ peut-etre un des premiers coloristes de la peinture. 84 STILL LIFE FROM THE PICTURE IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND SEE PAGE HIS WORK remarked that he painted differently from any of the other painters ‘in his own particular manner.’ His scrupulous imita- tions of nature, his love for simple subjects, his infinite labour and slowness of execution — all these were noticed by contemporary critics. There is truly a resemblance in technique between the two great artists, but Rembrandt withdrew more and more into the depths of his innermost nature, whilst on the contrary Chardin extended his theory and practice and these only, being primarily a craftsman, whereas Rembrandt was ever more of a thinker and a poet. Rembrandt’s artistic evolution proceeded unhindered and in a regular manner. Chardin, who was possibly a man of weaker individuality, wavered, as the great Millais wavered (and Millais, wavering to the end of his life, never achieved any style at all). Chardin wavered, but not with the same result. He had two or three manners of painting, — one, a manner in which nearly all his portraits were done, and two for his other subjects. His portraits and large figure pictures are always poor, as we already noted, because his technique in such cases attempted direct and unre- touched painting. His very nature, however, resented such a manner, which can only be practised by sanguine and vivacious temperaments, of which Frans Hals amongst the Old Masters is by far the most remarkable instance. Chardin’s ‘ Singe Peintre ’ is a good specimen of this manner — amongst which also may be reckoned such pictures as ‘ Une Dame prenant son The,’ and others of similar dimensions — although he did not rigorously carry out his apparent intention, parts of the pictures showing signs of laboured retouching. The second style he adopted, which is the outcome of his own and real personality, is the strong and decided manner of which the Carlsruhe ‘ Orange-Tree ’ is an early stage, and the little picture he sold to Wille, representing a copper vessel, a most typical example. Lastly, we have his later manner, 85 CHARDIN which seems to have begun in the fifties of this century, and of which the ‘ Raisins et Grenades ’ in the Louvre is perhaps the most beautiful specimen. In the collection of M. Bureau is an unsigned still-life with a cut pie and some glasses by the master, probably done towards the end of his life, which shows the style of the ‘ Raisins et Grenades ’ ‘ in the making,’ i.e. it represents the first state after the canvas had been completely covered. In his last still-life pictures, the outlines lose them- selves to a still greater extent, as, for instance, in the fine ‘ Poires et Verre de Vin ’ (Louvre), and the colours are put on the canvas in a quieter manner, opposed to his early middle style, in which they appear ‘raboteux’ to a degree, such as in the ‘ Jeune Dessinateur ’ and the 4 Petite Fille aux Cerises ’ of Baron H. Rothschild’s Collection. All this, however, does not account for the peculiar manner of his most popular, and most fre- quently repeated genre subjects, such as ‘La Fontaine,’ ‘ Le Benedicite,’ ‘ La Gouvernante,’ and ‘ La Pourvoyeuse.’ To account for the fact that Chardin was able to paint his pictures over and over again, and in a manner which would scarcely show any variation from the original, excepting where such was deliberately introduced, one must suppose that he made in each case an elaborate study, in fact, a finished picture, and that of the many ‘ originals ’ in different collections one must be the original. Careful examination of his work will prove that the method by which he ‘ built up ’ his picture precludes the necessity for sketches, or studies, which indeed he did not make. We have already observed that he painted with his brain in his eyes. A jug, or a bunch of grapes, a face or an arm were to him primarily neither a utensil, nor fruit, nor parts of the human body, but simply objects which received and reflected light — the drawing of their form, i.e. their symbol, had no interest for him ; what drawing there is, therefore, ‘ happens ’ as the work proceeds. To draw as the Italians did, filling in the structural contours with colour, would be equivalent, to a mind like Chardin’s, to placing the 86 IN THE KAISER FRIEDRICH MUSEUM, BERLIN HIS WORK skeleton outside and the flesh in the gaps left by the bones. Even a blank wall, in which the structural drawing is almost eliminated, becomes in Chardin’s rendering a veritable thing of beauty, for which the ‘ Fontaine de Cuivre ’ in the Louvre — more than a mere sketch — stands witness. If we take the £ Ratisseuse ’ for instance, and examine the drawing of the woman’s right arm and hand, it becomes palpably clear that he was little concerned with the painting of an arm and a hand on the folds of an apron — instead he recorded plane against plane, light against light, and against shade, and incidentally colour and form ; for light and colour have both shades and shapes, and by this detour he gets his drawing. His method is here not quite so successful — otherwise it would not have suggested itself to the writer as a good example of pointing out the process, which Chardin had evolved, and upon which Manet built his whole art. Such being the case, a repetition of his first picture done from nature was tantamount to the ‘ finishing ’ of a study, and not merely as might be supposed a purely mechanical replica. This fact only can have made the continual repetition a tolerable task to a man of Chardin’s nature. But this finishing again would not consist in reducing the study to the generally accepted symbolizing standard — making a spade a spade as it were ; rather would he endeavour to reduce harsh- ness of transition, or to increase the concentration of light or to harmonize the schemes of colour. But inasmuch as a good craftsman cannot possibly improve much on a good and careful study, the ‘ finishing ’ does not actually imply a real improvement on the first work done under the vibrating influence of the first impression : it would frequently lose in freshness what it gained in harmony, sharp accents would be subdued, and therefore the second, third, and later copies lose their * crispness.’ As an instance, one might mention the ‘ Pourvoyeuse.’ The picture in the Liechtenstein Gallery is the coarsest of the many repetitions. The features unfinished, but the whole crisp in its accents, full of those subtle traces of a study from life. It is signed 1738 ; 87 CHARDIN the Louvre picture, which is smoother and perhaps more pleasant, as far as the girl’s features are concerned, is signed 1739, and manifestly not done from nature, but still it is next in order of precedence, the Berlin one being still less instinct with the characteristics of direct workmanship. Again take the ‘ Benedicite ’ in the Louvre ; there are two ‘originals’ of it there. The one in the Collection La Caze is the earlier and direct original ; many signs point to this fact, but they are impossible to prove excepting in front of the paintings them- selves. Let those interested compare the little accents of grada- tion, especially in the cast shadows, such as the projecting spoon’s on the tablecloth, or the tone of the chair-back, or even the sur- face finish of the faces. The La Caze picture is far the coarser — this is a word used merely for the want of a better expression — but still the better work. The mention of just this picture affords an opportunity to discuss another side of Chardin’s position as a painter. It is without a doubt the most popular of all his subjects. The picture of the little boy reminded by his mother to say ‘ grace ’ before his meal, is one which touches in its simpleness and purity of motif a tender spot in every woman and most men. But even that is only an accident ; the picture merits its fame not on account of its anecdotal qualities, high as these are, but rather because of its pleasing conception, most of his later and the majority of his earlier still-lifes being works of greater subtlety. ‘ La sceur en tapinois se rit du petit frere Qui begaie son oraison Lui, sans s’inquieter, depeche sa priere Son appetit fait sa raison.’ This is the title which Lepicie’s engraving, published in 1744, bears, and which was meant to, and no doubt did, increase its popularity. 1 1 Mariette in his Abecedario states : ‘ Prints after Chardin’s pictures have become the fashion, and have, with those after Teniers, Wouvermans, Lancret, entirely superseded the serious (!) prints of the Le Bruns, Poussins, and Lesueurs, and even (!) Coypels.’ I bat he 88 ELATE XX X i FROM THE PICTURE IN THE J OUVRE, PARIS HIS WORK It is a pretty little verse, and one which characterizes the in- cipient man’s mind to perfection ‘ Son appetit fait sa raison,’ which is another way of saying that our reason is always swayed by our impulses. Now the literary idea of the ‘Benedicite’ is indeed expressed pictorially, and therefore not a hindrance to pure artistic expression, but the features individually considered are not as full of animation as, for instance, some of the slightest pen-and- ink sketches of Rembrandt ; in fact, it is quite clear that even in this picture the psychological interest is limited to such propor- tions as are expressible by statements of pictorial facts — in not one of the three persons has Chardin surrendered optical illusion to psychological conventions. You are not expected to approach the canvas nearer, in order to ascertain what expression there is on the mother’s face, and the smile of the elder sister is pure invention on the part of the versifier. There is not the slightest doubt that our painter had accidentally seen the incident he repre- sents, and very probably also appreciated its poetical significance, but he adopted it equally without a doubt on account of its pictorial and not its poetical possibilities. It cannot, however, be denied that Chardin seems to have painted pictures with more than anecdote, viz. with a moral ; in one instance — if the auction catalogues may be credited the moral was almost Hogarthian in its severity. At the sale of Mme. X., on 20th March 1787, figured a picture of a woman upbraiding her gambling husband ; but the writer of the catalogue says that the subject ‘ parait indiquer ’ ‘ seems to indicate,’ proving that the curtain lecture was not very plainly expressed. The sale X. of the 16th of April 18G0, mentions ‘ Le Gourmand puni,’ a gourmand who has burnt his mouth — not a very severe ‘ moral.’ Both pictures are apparently began to enjoy European popularity is proved by the fact that several of his pictures were engraved hy German and English mezzotinters ; amongst the latter J. Faber published, in 1748, ‘Le Dessinateur’ of the Salon of 1737 under the title, ‘The Happy Youth’; ‘La Gouvernante,’ and ‘La Mere Laborieuse’ were mezzotinted, without skill, by T. Burford, under the titles ‘ The Governess ’ and ‘The Prudent Mother,’ and Lepicie’s engraving of ‘ Le Chateau de Cartes,’ was ‘ given gratis to the purchasers of the British Magazine for Jan. 7th, 1762.’ 89 CHARDIN lost, so that we may perhaps reasonably doubt their authenticity. The introduction of the verse is a distracting element, because the spectator instead of searching the pictures seeks an anecdote. Lepicie’s engraving of ‘ La Pourvoyeuse ’ bears this legend : ‘ A votre air, j’estime et je pense, Ma chere enfant, sans calculer, Que vous prenez sur la depense Ce qu’il faut pour vous habiller.’ What has this to do with Chardin’s intentions ? There are a thousand and one reasons why this picture is interesting — every square inch of it is instinct with Chardin’s genius as a craftsman — but the one thing which matters not at all is the thoughts of ‘ La Pourvoyeuse,’ even if the ingenious suggestion of this poetaster be a truthful one. It is true that Chardin had answered a beginner who made anxious inquiries about the sort of colours he painted with, e My friend, one does not paint with colours, one uses them, but one paints “ avec le sentiment.” ’ This sentiment, however, must not be translated into the English sentiment, but by the word feeling. As water-lilies open out under the rays of a beneficent sun, so the artist’s soul opens out under the influence of a beautiful sight ; and as the water-lilies know not why they spread their petals and become more glorious, neither can the painter — if he be a painter — give account of the reason of his inspiration. He paints because h e feels. If he be conscious of his motive his picture is the worse for it — this is a demonstrable truth. With all due respect to the memory of the venerable Mr. Frith, let us adduce his ‘ Derby Day’ as a proof. In this picture we have not only one, but more anecdotes than I ever have had patience to count. It would be unjust to deny its author psychological force, which he has spread over this canvas with truly Dickensian prodigality ; one must further concede to him an astonishing pictorial ability, and gladly acknowledge that it is and must remain a great historical document, to which our descendants will again and again 90 LE BOCAL D'OLIVES HIS WORK have to refer ; but this Solomon among pictures, this Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed like one of these ; Chardin’s to wit. A picture belongs to space, not time, but the £ Derby Day’ occupies literally both space and time. Now if we could have stood the canvas on its head, and turned it into parch- ment, and induced, let us say, that sad jester Hood to have written a poem on it, on the same subject: forsooth, as verse was strung on verse, as sunshine and laughter, shadow and tears dropped from his pen, he would have unveiled a finer picture before our eyes. Conceivably, nay certainly. Mr. Frith wished to paint not what his bodily but what his mental eye saw, and having thus seen, he built his picture up brick by brick like a house — Chardin’s pictures have grown like flowers — that is the fundamental difference. As to the sentiment then of which Chardin speaks, one may, with the reservations just alluded to, once more count both his subjects and the manner in which they are rendered as belonging to the sphere of sentiment. Guided by this sentiment, this feeling, Chardin’s choice of a pleasing subject was unerring. Nothing, for instance, could be prettier than his 4 Toilette du Matin,’ exhibited in 1741 at the Salon and now in Count Sparre’s Collection at Wanas in Sweden, where Lady Dilke saw it, and describes it thus : 4 In the dim-lit room, in the uncertain morning light the faint blues and pinks of the little one’s dress, massed with the white draperies of the dressing-table, tell out from the splendid amber- yellow of the mother’s petticoat, above which her handsome gown, broad striped in red and white, is gracefully tucked up. No prettier lesson in coquettish dressing was ever given than the one conveyed by these two figures. Top knots peep out scarlet from beneath the hood of the mother’s black tippet, delicately blue above the fair child’s forehead, the little muff in her baby hand is blue velvet and white fur, whilst by the Mass-book on the red stool, over which falls the red drapery which enframes the mirror 91 CHARDIN on the toilet lies another muff of green velvet and sable, cunningly chosen to give the last touch of elegance to her mother’s appear- ance. The accessories — the toilet service with its silver candle- stick, the clock, the “ meuble chantournd” on which it stands, all show the ease of graceful life, which, if simple, is of a “ simplicity qui roule sur Tor,” and one guesses that costumes so finished can scarcely have been donned only to go to church— Mass will certainly be followed by less serious engagements.’ This is a pretty, feminine description of the subject, only it gives one little idea of the work. Lady Dilke’s charming appreciation of the mysteries of female apparel might apply equally to a work by some other painter, say Watteau or to Boucher, or even some mediocre modern painter. What we would like to hear is something about the qualities which go to make it a Chardin. We want to be told how the figures recede behind the frame. How the whites of the dressing- table, receiving the light at different angles, are distinguished from the whites in the mother’s gown, how the black tippet is not really black, how the background loses itself towards the left, and discreetly asserts itself towards the clock on the ‘ meuble chantourne,’ how the floor is really a floor and not a vertical plane, how the toilet-china is differentiated from the silver-metal, or the leather book from the velvet and sable muff, and how the little jug on the floor helps to keep the balance of the composi- tion. The ‘ pretty lesson in coquettish dressing ’ which this picture conveys is characteristic of the times. We want to know about Chardin. We want to admire Chardin’s characteristics, which are : due regard for the space his frame encloses, proper distribution of the masses of shadow and light, harmonious tone and proper distinction between the values of his colours on the different planes of his picture, proper expression of the surface qualities of the objects represented, proper concentration of interest, — in short, his stupendous appreciation of the purely pictorial essentials — coupled with due respect for the non- 92 1 A W POIRES ET VERRE DE VIN FROM THE PICTURE IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGES 86 AND 9, HIS WORK essentials. We thank him for having frequently succeeded in choosing a pleasing subject, but he would have been no less great had he chosen to paint thieves’ dens, as representing like- wise simplicities ‘ qui roulent sur For.’ 1 One of the easiest things to appreciate is his method of composition. He apparently took an especial delight in balancing and counterbalancing his masses. It is quite an amusing pastime, to pick up reproductions of his pictures and to check the ingenuity of his invention in this direc- tion. In the oft repeated ‘ Blanchisseuse,’ for instance, one may cover up this and then that one of the spots of light or shade which surround the principal group ; let the basin on the left disappear, the whole picture noSv hangs in the air ; remove the ill-drawn cat on the right, and the whole right side drops away ; seat the boy on a stool instead of the high-backed chair, and the laundress in the background advances illogically into the foreground ; remove the three rushlights from the dark wall, the wall becomes a disturbing mass. In the charming ‘ Gouvernante ’ of 1739, the line of composition which makes the woman keep her place inside the frame runs from the left, beginning by the open work- basket across the lighted floor, via the toys up the legs of the table and the coat of the boy over the open dresser into the light of the open door, down to the chair-back. Remove or alter any part, and the composition becomes disconnected. And so from picture to picture down to the simplest subject, as, for instance, the 4 Poires et Verre de Vin ’ in the Louvre, where the dark mass of the knife-handle responds to the dark mass of the wine, and the reflecting lights on the tip of the handle stand in its intimate relation to the corresponding lights on the edge of the glass and the tips of the two pears. In judging the genuineness of a Chardin — other than a portrait — this scheme of composition seems to me an almost infallible test. A few light 1 As Professor C. J. Holmes so aptly remarks in his book on Constable: ‘The realism of a Velazquez or a Chardin is recognized as great art, not on account of the accuracy and directness with which it seizes upon facts, but on account of the beauty it reveals in the selection and handling of those facts.’ 93 CHARDIN fragments of a broken nut, an overhanging piece of string, a vessel or a toy here and there, such things often preserve the balance of a whole picture, even as the picture may hang on a wall securely supported by but one thin nail. Chardin s endeavour to balance and counterbalance the com- position of his painting is a proof of the great importance he placed on the self-containedness of his pictures : it expresses his profound respect for dimension and proportion — and he learnt it from the originators of the Cabinet- Stucke, the Dutchmen Teniers, Dou, Metsu, Terborch; but in Chardin’s pictures, with but few exceptions, the intention is so well concealed that, on the contrary, his composition seems purely accidental, in fact so happy is he as a rule in his arrangement, that the illusion pro- duced by his composition increases the impression of truthful- ness. Instead of the artificial grouping and stagelike effect so many other earlier and later works suggest, one has the sensa- tion of personal intimacy — the spectator feels at home with the subject— the persons do not pose, and the still-life seems as naturally grouped as the walnuts and the wine on an after- dinner table. This intimacy of Chardin’s art causes our master to stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Diderot tells us how Greuze stood long, gazing at one of Chardin’s pictures, and then turned away heaving a deep sigh — a sincere tribute to his fellow’s greatness. The Dutch and Flemish painters had after all required something beyond their own individual conception of life, in order to make their pictures attractive. Brouwer, Ostade, and Teniers painted peasants realistically — yes, but they painted realistic Harlequinades ; Rubens impresses as much by the opulence of his subject-matter, as by the gigantic exuberance of his spirit; Vandyck, for whom Rubens’s boots were several sizes too big, trips over the stage of art as an ‘ exquisite ’ : reminds one, indeed, towards the end of his life, of certain unpleasant phases in recent literary and artistic life. The unimaginative ‘ little masters ’ 94 PLATE XXXVll PANIER DE PECHES ET NOIX HIS WORK were not satisfied with earthenware and homespun : gold, silver, silk, satin and Turkey carpets, and extravagant fruit had to be called to assist and increase the value of their craftsmanship. The eighteenth century had a more refined taste; long before Rousseau it began coquetting with the simple life. Boucher paints ‘ La Bonne Mere,’ a sweet little opera-dancer dressed in homespun, with her children and other domestic ‘staffage’ around her, but she must needs display her delicate rosy ankles, more familiar with almond milk and attar of roses, than soda or soft soap ; such a pretty creature could not possibly have common ‘ brats,’ therefore Boucher paints little cupids. Or Greuze, with a sigh, we must suppose, deems it necessary to display a rosy nipple in every picture he paints — his morality, apparently, is measured by inches. Into this world of moralizing immorality, of a wellnigh incredible artificiality, Chardin brings his ‘ Two Rabbits,’ his ‘ Ray Fish,’ his ‘ Girl scouring Saucepans ’ ( La Recureuse ’) his ‘ Garmon Cabaretier,’ a potman. No morality, no immorality, no artificiality : just beautiful statements of plain facts, and in doing so he resumed the practice of French National art, ere it became discouraged by Francis i., denationalized by Louis xiv., and devitalized by his own times. The LeNains were the last National French painters before Louis xiv., Chardin the first one after, and as the LeNains remained isolated in the seventeenth century so did he remain in the eighteenth. But whereas the LeNains seem to have been without influence on the art of their native land, Chardin’s influence on the men who took up the task where he left it was decided and manifold ; in him the germs of Realism and Impres- sionism are already to be found. It is perhaps inexact to speak of Realism as a modern conception of Art, when in fact it is very much older. Giotto was a Realist; Carpaccio, Van Eyck, Holbein, Pieter Peasant Brueghel and many others were Realists — Realism being a mental attitude found in all ages, just as Idealism is (Realism gave us Moses, Idealism gave us Christ). Realism is 95 CHARDIN characterized by its marked respect (or the contrary) for our bodily senses, their welfare, their sanity and their pleasures. Chardin as a Realist joins the ranks of all those who have pro- tested against the falsity, the instability of unchecked idealism. That is his attitude as a man ; he is, however, still greater and more original as a painter: he was the first Impressionist (though the word itself dates I believe from the sixties of the last century only). That is to say, Chardin is the first one who paints things intentionally as they appear, not as they are ; he reproduces merely their impression on his optic organs. This was a tremendous step in advance. He was the first to free Art from a stifling habit, viz. the habit of seeing things intellectually, and consequently rendering them not as they actually appear, but as we know them to be constructed . 1 Evolution in Art is, however, — as already hinted in the first chapter — continually struggling to discard one convention after the other, symbol after symbol. We begin to see artistically as a child sees, i.e. we see in things at first not their essence, which indeed is eternally hidden from us, but their relation to ourselves ; and in the measure that our experience widens it narrows their significance. By a continual process of elimination we learn at last to know things as what they are not ; logical negation brings us as near as we shall ever get to positive knowledge. A child’s drawing is as severely symbolic as a geometrical figure. A child uses line as if it could see it — naturally, and he employs it to record an intellectual, not an optic truth. A circle symbolizes the head, two smaller circles or points the eyes, a vertical and a horizontal line nose and mouth respec- tively. This method of drawing is severely intellectual — its limitations due purely to the limitation of intellect not of eye power. This limitation is shared of course by the savage and undeveloped races, and causes such in later stages to evolve a purely intellectual and symbolic method of expression, as 1 The habit of seeing intellectually has caused even G. B. S. to go astray intellectually. His chapter on ‘Impressionism’ in The Sanity of Art clearly proves his inability to distinguish between visual and intellectual objects. 96 PLATE XXXVIII IN POSSESSION OF DR. TUFFIER, PARIS HIS WORK we see in Maori or Aztec art, an art which probably appeals to the senses of a civilized boy of, say, eight or ten very much as it did to the native, whilst to us it appears unin- telligibly grotesque. Even if we descend to a still lower stage, as low as bird-life for instance, we will find a scarecrow actually scaring crows because it looks like a man, an inference which the higher intellect of a child rejects because the child at once sees where it does not resemble a human being. And this intellect of ours, which dominates our senses, is continually misleading us, and perverting at least optic truths. Think of the curiously twisted figures of Egyptian art, which torture the optic organs merely for the pleasure of the intellect. Had the Egyptians rendered what they saw, instead of what they knew, they would have spared us the frontal aspect of an eye in a profile face, or the frontal aspect of a body on the profile of a pair of legs ; neither would the Assyrians have constructed five-legged winged- lion-men. 1 The lower the stage of evolution the more natural its pleasure in intellectual performances. We may be quite sure that impossible creatures of all early art ‘ from China to Peru ’ appeared to their makers very much more ‘natural ’ than Monet’s hay-stacks would have done. It is an indisputable fact that children and primitive races live in a world of symbolic imagina- tion founded on a seemingly complicated though perfectly natural association of ‘ ideas,’ i.e. ‘ things seen ’ ; and there is a very great difference between such primitive reaction of the senses and deliberate observation. We are in fact inveterate symbolizers, and the sole difference between a child and a savage on one side, and us on the other is, that the former see in this world a mere jumble of symbols, whereas we have nicely labelled and docketed and rubricized these symbols in our book of know- ledge, which knowledge has been gained by our experience 1 It is curious to remember that the Egyptians and Assyrians, like their pupils the Greeks, reached a much higher level in sculpture than they ever did in pictorial art, the ‘Sheikh el Beled,’ ‘the Scribe,’ and the ‘ dying lioness,’ to wit. c.— 7 97 CHARDIN of causes and effects — but symbols they remain, and must remain. However this may be, we must not linger over this philosophic aspect of life, and revert to the application of this idea to paint- ing. What a picture was to the Greeks and Romans we scarcely know; it certainly had little in common with the modem conception of a well-painted picture. Pliny even in his late epoch called line, i.e. outline, picturae summa sub- tilitas, and the 4 tonos ’ and the 4 splendor ’ can hardly have been what we call 4 chiaroscuro ’ and 4 glow as of a Rembrandt, for example. What classic painting might have become had not Christianity intervened is impossible to say. But Christian art, embodying as it did a radically anachronistic purpose, had to reduce painting once more to the symbolic stage. It was decidedly a step back- wards and remained a step back, until the human mind had fully absorbed the new idea and needed the picture no longer as a deity, and could take up the task where the Classics left it, uniting, however, in the forward step the new with the old. We must expect to find, and indeed we do find, that the anxious endeavour to express the new idea causes a loss of certain objective achieve- ments ; m other words, the expression of the idea was made at the expense of technical excellence. In the measure that the idea became familiar the technical side of Art advanced — because it was no longer the painter s sole task to promulgate doctrines, to act the part of a missionary. At this present moment we seem to be entering into a new age, for it seems to me that there are so far only four stages of European civilization: the pagan or pre-Christian era; the religious or Christian era ; the philosophic era, or the age of doubt (the so-called Renaissance) ; and lastly, the scientific or modern era. It is this latter age which has begun to arrive since the end of the seventeenth century. On examination we find that there is a distinct difference in artistic expression. European humanity 98 PL A TE XXXI I PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST (1771) FROM THE PASTEL IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGE 64 HIS WORK is gradually becoming more and more acquainted with the 4 causal nexus ’ of things, by a process of elimination of non-causal elements. Whilst individual knowledge was all-embracing, Art was all-embracing too ; with an advancing state of knowledge, the process of elimination became more and more involved, and specializing became more and more the custom. We therefore find in these days religious, philosophic, and romantic ideals disappearing by degrees from the domain of the painter’s art, which by this process of elimination is becoming purely optic in its appeal, purely optic in its expression. Modern art is therefore neither symbolic in its meaning nor in its execution ; where it apparently still is symbolic, in either or both directions, it is frankly archaistic, or else purely illustrative. To be well painted a Christian picture required originally little more than correct symbolism ; we know what almost childish delight the primitive Christians took in an involved system of symbolic ‘rebus’ and punning. But the symbolic ‘Madonna/ the symbolic ‘ Christ ’ could not definitely satisfy the ever- progressing human mind. It was not sufficient that correct symbolism and a rigid type should designate the Madonna and the Bambino. Humanity, beginning to specialize, demanded less generalities, and whilst one type of features had satisfied many peoples and generations, eventually the type of the Madonna was individualized and changed with each era, nay with each painter. And when man’s eye first referred to nature, one symbolic tree had to do duty for a whole grove, one stone symbolically enlarged for a range of mountains. The gradual approach to optic truth which we are witnessing is caused by the successive elimination of crude symbolic conceptions. The Renaissance began well, and might have ended well but for the fact that it roused the interest in Religious Truths, i.e. symbolism. Where this religious revival was strongest — in Germany — we get the most acute form of symbolism, as witnessed by Diirer’s art, 99 CHARDIN and one may note that his art is essentially based on line, which in itself is a purely symbolic convention. It was the philosophic scepticism of Italy rather than religious zeal that maintained the greatness of Italian art. But towards the end of the seventeenth century Science was beginning to assert itself, and from that epoch we must date the commencement of modern art. This forward step in Art — foreshadowed by Peasant Brueghel and Caravaggio — was strangely enough simultaneously taken by the Netherlanders, below their overcast skies, and the Spaniards under the rays of their white-hot sun. Ribera and Velazquez, Hals, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, were the leaders of this movement, which had for its possibly only half-conscious object, the instalment of light as the sovereign ruler of colour. In Ribera’s conception a fierce tyrant, genial and somewhat vulgar in Hals’s, humane and sentimental in Rembrandt’s, just but commonplace in Vermeer, this new ruler appears diplomatically omnipotent in Velazquez’ alone. Strongly differentiated as their conceptions seem, they themselves are united by a common bond — Observation ; they observe first and think afterwards ; they all have trained their mind to follow the behest of their eyes, in lieu of obeying the promptings of their intellects. Observation not thought is the mainspring of their art (even Rembrandt prefers the pen or the etcher’s needle when he thinks). Now a scientist is an observer long before he is a thinker, and the new era is the age of observation, or of what we call scientific research. The more we inquire into modern art, the more do we find that its aims are to convince by stating records of observa- tion, and the more do we notice that the results are gained by the elimination of all such things as are irrelevant to the purpose. As we have learnt to discard miraculous revelations, and to study instead the ever-open book of nature, so our great painters are seeking to glorify not the symbols but the facts of life. And as the symbols of life — the man-made distinctions — divide the world, so do the facts of life unite them. 100 / zs A L. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST “A L ABAT-JOUR’ (1775) FROM THE PASTEL IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGE 65 HIS WORK The painters discovered Monism long before Haeckel. For whilst all primitive painting was synthetic, all truly modern painting is synoptic. The modern painter eliminates differences, and seeks to unite his picture into an organic unity — like the modern scientist ; the primitive painter, like the primitive thinker, saw in this world nothing more than contrasts — light as opposed to darkness, good as opposed to evil, and he was ever bent on emphasizing the distinction. Heaven and hell were realities to him ; we moderns have discovered that our life, all life, exists only on the Borderland. Since those days we paint things as they appear, not as they are or as they ought to be. We know that we shall never know what things are essentially, and we leave what they ought to be to God, or the life force, or evolution or whatever else you may call it. Meanwhile we — say the real artists — are content to record what we see. — what we see with our eyes that is, not with our vitellect . This is comparatively a quite new conception of paint- ing. You will remember that Leonardo da Vinci calls the point, the line and the plane the beginning of pictorial art. Now points and lines are invisible in nature, and the planes that are visible are not the geometrical planes Leonardo was thinking of. To Leonardo Art begins with the intellect not with the eye. Diirer, when he painted his Christlike ‘Self-Portrait’ (now in Munich), is said to have constructed it upon his own theory of Proportions ! W e discover then the remarkable fact that man uses his eyes to think with long before he uses them to see with. Only if that is clearly understood, can one make the right sense out of Haillet de Couronne’s explanation of Chardin’s manner of seeing. Haillet de Couronne was a personal friend of our painter, and therefore likely to have heard the explanation he gives from Chardin’s own lips : ‘ Chardin must have reasoned somewhat in the following way : Here is my model : now in order to render nothing but the truth l must learn to forget what I have seen, I 101 CHARDIN must likewise forget the manner in which others may have seen the same subject ; let me therefore place it at a distance where the details, having lost themselves in the masses, strike the eye as a whole, giving an impression — at once pleasing and truthful — of all its colour, giving likewise the perfect illusion of roundness and of light and shade, properly its own. He succeeded, and that meant the advent of this style of his, this magical execution which has ever since distinguished his work in so decided a manner.’ Thus the contemporary critic. There is certainly no one before Chardin who so deliberately ‘ went for’ a new truth in vision, not even Velazquez, who was too much of a court portrait-painter to allow technical experiments carried out for their own sake, to occupy practically all his time, as they did Chardin’s, especially in the latter’s old age. Velazquez, moreover, began by seeing quite ordinarily, his early pictures being in no way distinguished, except perhaps by great precision. Chardin had a different way of seeing from the very commence- ment. Chardin was original— that is to say he begins a new era rather than ends the old. Hals, Rembrandt, and Velazquez were the last of the old masters, because, their painting was not purely ‘ paint,’ although Rembrandt almost reached that ideal. I do not want to be misunderstood : I am not putting trickery, and e Art for Art’s sake ’ in its misunderstood sense, before honest painting ; but no argument in the world will get over the fact that a picture is something that is painted, and a good picture consequently some- thing that is well 1 painted ; its execution therefore comes before everything else. The subject, sublime or ridiculous, will neither make nor unmake a picture. Hals, Rembrandt, and Velazquez were essentially portrait-painters, they had therefore at least to co-ordinate the likeness with the technique if they did not indeed 1 Always — as we have noted in the opening chapter — well in accordance with the evolu- tionary stage of the period. 102 PLATE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE FROM THE PASTEL IN THE LOUVRE, PARIS SEE PAGE 65 HIS WORK subordinate the technical part. Hals battled with the force of light, and subjugated it by sheer impetuousness ; Rembrandt con- tended with the power of shade and penetrated it with the mind of a visionary ; Velazquez, fascinated by the medium which unites the two — atmosphere — conquered it with the patience of a scientific worker. But Rembrandt was the only one who ever endeavoured to revolt against the utilitarian standard required of him, with disastrous consequences to himself. With Chardin all was different. He seems almost deliberately to have gone out of his way to seek for the humblest and most insignificant subject-matter, lest any one might suppose he con- sidered anything but conception of importance. That is the spirit that has moved the best among the modem painters, and that is why we should hail in Chardin the first of the Moderns. The things I have seen shall delight your eyes, says the modern master, even when he is painting imaginative subjects, and whatever the physical eye may see it certainly does not see ‘ line.’ The consequence is that the really modern master, like the last of the old masters Rembrandt, Hals, and Velazquez, did not draw in the sense that Raphael, Leonardo, and Diirer drew. I do not know of any authentic or interesting drawings by Hals or Velazquez, and Rembrandt’s drawings are not line drawings, they are searchings, essays, thought-crystals. There are drawings extant, ascribed to Chardin, some even signed ‘ Chardin,’ such as ‘La Lecture’ in the Albertina, which bears the legend ‘Fait pour Mme. de Pompadour, Chardin,’ but they are to my mind of doubtful authenticity, being, as they are, utterly unlike anything one might legitimately expect from his hand. The charming interior in M. Michel Levy’s Collection, however, leaves to me less doubt as to Chardin’s authorship , 1 and here again his resemblance to Rembrandt becomes palpably apparent. The strong and masterly ‘ shorthand note ’ of the ‘ Porteurs de Chaise ’ of the Stockholm Museum is another undoubted record 1 It is, however, doubted. 103 CHARDIN of his hand. Of the ‘ Decrotteur ’ and the ‘ Santo Bambino,’ both in the Albertina, I can make nothing. Let us, however, be clear on one point: Chardin did undoubtedly at times paint very indifferently ; it is therefore just possible that even the unlikely things, be they pictures or drawings, may have been ‘ committed ’ by him, the etchings that are ascribed to him included ; personally, I prefer to reject them. The fact that Chardin left no pupils has been commented upon, and I believe twisted into an argument that he left no influence. Chardin had followers, of which one may cite Roland de la Porte for one ; but of him Diderot wittily remarked : ‘ One could more easily pass from Notre-Dame Bridge to Roland de la Porte, than from Roland de la Porte to Chardin.’ His pictures resemble the proverbial Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Lepicie has painted pictures in the style of Chardin’s genre subjects, technically no worse, in fact better than de la Porte, nor should one underrate either of these men : they knew their metier — as did Van der Heist for example ; but he can as little compare with Hals as they could with Chardin. Fragonard was at one time actually a pupil of his, and if Cochin is to be believed, an unsuccessful one. Greuze had long before endeavoured to emulate our master, only to turn away and give it up with a deep sigh, as Diderot has told us . 1 All these facts can be accounted for very easily, I think. Chardin had a new and practically unprecedented mode of seeing. He strove to forget symbols, that is the symbolic manner in which others endeavoured to express pictorially that which does not properly belong to the domain of sight. The structural form of an object, which until then had been considered the thing to draw, the thing to paint, is in reality not wholly visible ever. To Chardin therefore, especially in his later work, it was nothing 1 There is more than one picture painted by Greuze in the manner of Chardin. Greuze’s artistic capacities would have maintained a far higher level had he been truer to his art; I would only remind the reader of his fine portrait of the painter Etienne Jeaurat in the Louvre. 104 PLATE XL II LES PORTEURS DE CHAISE (LA VINAIGRETTE) HIS WO UK to break contours, to dispense with them entirely when necessary ; and yet he not only preserved the illusion, but increased it. He knew little, possibly too little, of anatomy, though, properly con- sidered, anatomy should be no more than a pons asinorum to the painter, helping him merely to avoid mistakes of careless- ness. For the painter is surely concerned with surfaces — uncut surfaces, not cut-open ones ; he should entirely depend on his eyes. That is a theoretical truth. In practice of course anatomical knowledge may be, or has been at any rate, of immense value. Nevertheless pictorial beauty is only skin-deep : the surface only matters. And indeed Chardin’s sublimity is his rare appreciation of surface qualities : the glaze on China, the bloom on plum and grape, the down on a peach, the shine of steel and the gloss on the knife-handle, the mirroring of silver, the sparkle of glass, the polish of wood, the texture of cloth; such things he could paint. His sight was not equal to the moving subtleties of flesh-painting, and he could not atone for this defect by his theoretical (anatomical) knowledge — that is the worst that can be said against his art. All this goes to prove that Chardin’s manner of seeing was not only personal, but new, and therefore not academic, because it depended on sight, not on theoretical construction. Vainly had his contemporaries sought to acquire his method, vainly endeavoured to adopt his pigments. Here is the recipe that Cochin communicated to M. Belle, the son of the Inspector of the Gobelins . 1 ‘ Glaze for harmonizing a picture, which was used w r ith excellent results by M. Chardin : V arnish Cologne Earth Ultramarine Ash English Linseed Oil. ‘ When the picture is finished it should be gone over with these 1 Arch, de l’Art Francis, 1851-2, Doc. 2. 28. 105 CHARDIN “ teintes.” It is necessary that the linseed oil should not make itself noticeable. I have heard M. Chardin say that with these “ tones ” differently mixed and modified, he went over all the dark parts irrespective of their colour. It is certain that he is the one painter of his age who understood the magic harmony of a picture.’ Chardin ‘ glazed ’ — so much is evident from his pictures, and from this, but that would not in itself account for the marvellous beauty of his statements of pictorial facts. With the reservation that Chardin’s technique was principally a matter of vision, Bachaumont’s explanation of his ‘ technique ’ is a good deal more instructive. ‘ His method of painting,’ he says, ‘ is singular ; he places his colours side by side, scarcely mixing them at all, in a manner resembling mosaics. . . .’ Transplanted from the dimly lighted studio, and the well of a narrow French courtyard, into the full light of the free and open air, Chardin’s mode of seeing becomes nothing more or less than the modern impressionist’s way of looking at nature. After Bachaumont’s explanation a vision of Segantini, Monet, and the other pointillistes involuntarily arises in one’s mind, but one has to study Chardin’s pastel-portraits in the Louvre in order to realize how severely scientific, how purely synoptical Chardin’s mode of vision was. In his pastels he places without mixing all the colours side by side, and succeeds actually in rendering whiteness without the use of pure white. Hence Decamps’ despairing : £ Those whites of Chardin, I cannot manage to find them .’ 1 Chardin’s influence is to be found in Manet, whose ‘ Brioche ’ in the Franco-British Exhibition was a deliberate attempt to tackle a ‘Chardin problem’; it is traceable in Millet (‘ Le Vanneur,’ ‘ La Lessiveuse,’ and others) ; it is evident in Fantin- 1 Lady Dilke thought his browns equally marvellous ; Decamps, however, as a painter, was not so much concerned, I should say, with the effect of Chardin’s colour as with the process by which such effects were brought about, and as ‘ white ’ in painting is to a great extent identical with ‘light,’ Decamps’ lament reaches far beyond mere ‘colour.’ 106 L' HOMME A LA BOULE FROM THE DRAWING IN THE LOUVRE SEE PAGE 135 HIS WORK Latour, Le Sidaner, and the other pointillistes as we have already seen. Philippe Rousseau and Leon Bonvin intentionally occu- pied themselves with Chardin’s ‘ models,’ whilst Leon Bonvin’s better-known brother Francois copied the subject but not the manner of Chardin’s vision. A walk through the Luxem- bourg Galleries will reveal quite a host of recent imitators of Chardin’s subjects and mode of seeing, such as Verhaeren, Bergeret, Mme. Dubourg, Vollon the Elder, Villain, etc. ; whilst the Armenian Sakkarian closely imitates the master’s subjects, composition and style, without, however, succeeding in deluding the expert . 1 Chardin’s influence is, I think, recognizable even in Corot’s treatment of his pictures as an organic whole, in his neglect of ‘ anatomical ’ construction. Somehow or other Chardin’s modesty and choice of insig- nificant subject has militated against his acceptance as a ‘ great ’ painter, even as Pieter Peasant Brueghel has been denied the position he deserves. One thing, however, seems after all this certain : Chardin was the first to paint the optical appearance instead of the intellectual significance of the thing seen. A whole revolution in our con- ception of things had to take place before the pictorial outlook of Chardin could be reached. The spirit that moved Monet to find beauty in a hay-stack, or Whistler in a £ Pile of Old Battersea Bridge,’ is the same as that which moved Chardin to search for it on a kitchen table. Now we can understand how it happens that a king and a scavenger may in a modern picture dissolve themselves into mere masses of light and shade, into mere splashes of colour. Such sublime contempt for all human standards of valuation would have appeared sheer madness in a primitive painter. One could not, for instance, imagine a Van Eyck indicating the presence 1 I do not mean to imply a deliberate falsification, because Sakkarian signs them with his own initials. 107 CHARDIN of a human being, however distant and consequently diminutive, by a mere spot of colour. Such mode of expressing a pictorial truth would have outraged the feelings of humanity with its earth- centred universe, its man-centred earth and its church-centred man. Picture the feelings of a Carpaccio opposite a Raffaelli, a Diirer opposite a Manet, a Raphael opposite a Whistler ; and — so hard is it for a human being to see subjectively and to think objectively — it is only just thirty years ago that Ruskin stood opposite the very Whistler and called him a coxcomb. The fact is : the painters are only just beginning to realize the limitations and the possibilities of painting. All these many centuries they have been learning the A B C of their art : first line, then form (depth), next colour, and lastly tone — the painter’s gradus ad Parnassian. The complete mastery of these four grades alone can give the painter perfect freedom. But this freedom is only gained by voluntary renunciation, by rigid exclusion of all non-pictorial elements. The ancient cynics by confining their wants to the wants of a dog thereby attained the freedom of a demi-god. The modern painter, by his voluntary surrender of all non- pictorial elements, of all things that do not strictly appeal to the mind through the optic sense of beauty (or harmony, or satis- faction — call the joy of seeing what you will) in reality extends his domain. The modern painter who wishes to use line will express more than the old master, because he understands form, and the modem painter who wishes to emphasize colour will succeed the better because he understands tone. The modem illustrator will give up making pictures — and the picture painter will disdain illustration. And all this because we are learning to see more beauty in a bunch of grapes than in an imagined Olympus, an envisaged heaven or a pageantry of romance. This keener sense of ‘ beauty ’ we owe to Chardin, who was 108 SEE PAGE 135 aw t •> 7/ TETE D'HOMME COIF FEE D'UN TRICORNE FROM THE DRAWING IN THE LOUVRE HIS WORK the first to realize it for us. A careful study of the subsequent evolution of Art must convince us that All modern art, in so far as it aims at optical truth, is influ- enced by Chardin, through the medium of the great school of French f Impressionism.’ 109 Y CONCLUSION I N the first chapter I put forward a certain number of state- ments, by which I sought to explain certain broad prin- ciples of Art. I had stated : — That Art is a metier. That as a metier it should be employed for a purpose. That if this purpose were self-expression Such self-expression could only be Art provided the self expressed were that of a genius. That a genius is only he who adds a new note to the highest expression of Art which has preceded his work. That subject-matter is no criterion of Art. That the artist is not a free agent. That in the most favourable circumstances the artist is the most able exponent of the spirit of his age. Chardin’s painting had no other purpose than self-expression — it was accordingly either not Art , or else he was a genius. He was a genius, for he added a new note to the highest expression of Art preceding his times : he taught a new manner of seeing ; he taught that things are void of truth by themselves, and gain their truth only in conjunction with their surroundings : he discovered the milieu. The choice of his subject, being as it was of the very simplest, did not prevent him from making his discovery manifest. He was not a free agent, because he, like all of us, depended 110 CONCLUSION on his character , 1 which — not of his own making, forced upon him a certain line of evolution. Had he been a gay and easy man, he would no doubt have followed in Boucher s groove of development ; had he been sensual and constitutionally sick like Watteau, he might have followed that great artist’s course — he was, however, healthy, slow, contemplative, and of a scientific turn of mind, and as such he presents not the gay but fragile bubble floating on the tide of the eighteenth century, but the steady flow of the tide itself. For whilst we are apt to think of the Rococo as representing an intellectual but irresponsible joie de vivre, in truth its real force, its real importance was the discovery of the milieu — i.e. the mutual responsibility, the ties which bind us all to one another and to this world. A The king’s L* Etat cest moi was still true, only — by the end of the eighteenth century 40,000,000 citizens sang out this truth in chorus, ‘ Moi,' 40,000,000 times, that is the State — infinitely multi- plied it means the Universe. The endless interdependence of things, that is the truth we are gradually learning. That is the truth Chardin endeavoured to visualize ; of its actuality he was certain — of its vastness he could have no conception. 1 Character is after all nothing more nor less than the mental manifestation of bodily constitution. Ill APPENDIX THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MODERN ART— LINE— DEPTH- COLOUR— TONE— AS A RESULT OF AN EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESS FROM INTELLECTUAL TO OPTICAL CONCEPTION The fabulous prices which the works of the so-called ‘old masters’ are just now reaching in the sale-rooms might lead one to believe that these old masters had indeed touched the zenith of Art, and that all later development of painting were simply a gradual but steady decline. And indeed, leaving the question of 4 rarity ’ on one side, the appreciation of past achievements is bestowed at least upon such works as seem pre-eminently worthy of it. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that commercialism, which to-day assuredly has reached its zenith, has a great deal to do with the nonsensical estimation of the imponderable and inherently indeterminable monetary valua- tion of emotional qualities — for such are ultimately the qualities of all Art. It is equally impossible to pay in pounds, shillings and pence for the 4 colour ’ of Titian, and the 4 tone ’ of Velazquez, as for the beauty of a sunrise seen from Pilatus, or the moonlight in the Lagoons — or the misty splendour of the Thames. As things are constituted at present, old masters are a good specula- tion; let us be grateful at least that the none too scrupulous machinations on the picture-exchange are mostly limited to works of real artistic merit. Mean- while modern Art fares badly generally. Only when a man has qualities which show palpable points of resemblance to some particular old master, such as Hals, or Titian, or Velazquez, or a mixture of all three, is he able to command fairly respectable prices — after a while. But when a painter is not readily ‘docketable’ he has a hard time; for the critic is then, so to speak, unhorsed, and his long lance of criticism having become useless, he lays about him pro- miscuously with the broadsword of invective, if indeed he has any fight left. And in many cases the critic is right, since there are few professions in which fouler professional means are employed than the painter’s. In no profession — excepting perhaps the preacher’s — may trickery and deception pass itself off as inspiration, more easily and with greater im- punity. Mankind is so trusting and even still so innocent in questions of 113 C . — 8 CHARDIN emotion, so ready to believe, that it will look upon 4 yonder cloud 1 and will take it in turn for a camel, a weasel, a whale at the bidding of self-constituted authority. Yet the pipe of Art changes its complexion, i.e. its complexity, during its evolutionary progress with every epoch. Each new era adds a new stop, ‘and,’ to borrow again from Hamlet, 4 though we may fret it, yet can we not play upon it’— unless we know the stops. Now the pipe of Art, as we know it to-day, has four stops, each capable of much modulation, yet all distinct from one another. LINE is its first stop, indicating the limits of the object represented. Line, which does not exist in nature is therefore an abstraction and a convention — but an elementary one. Line proper is concerned with two dimensions only, height and width— in that sense it is 4 outline.’ Eventually, however, line was used not merely to represent the limits, but also the construction of the object represented, i.e. not only the contour but also the limits of its planes, its solidity and perspective, which led to the discovery of the second stop : Depth. DEPTH, pictorially, is the realization of the third dimension on a plane ; it manifests itself optically by light and shade, or by its symbolic, and therefore primitive, abstraction black and white — and as light and dark colour it con- sequently appears. But the careful study of the degrees of light and shade led to the discovery of Colour. COLOUR, though mentioned here as the third stage, was of course co-existent with both preceding stages. But in these stages it was arbitrary, limited, used at first symbolically, afterwards as a means of distinction, in either cases its appeal was purely intellectual. In the third stage it is studied as a means of optical expression. Its connection with ‘light’ was not at once recognized even in this stage — at least not to its full extent, and in this unrecognized stage gave rise to some of the finest schools of painting during the Renaissance. Colour had to be understood as a manifestation of light before it could lead to the discovery of the fourth and last stop of the pipe of Art : Tone. TONE is the relation of light to colour modified by atmosphere ; 1 as such it is invisible to those who search for objects of the intellect, since they are looking for absolute colour; to such red is red and blue is blue, whereas optically considered relative red is never only red, relative blue never only blue ; even relative white is more often than not any other colour but white. So long, therefore, as painters saw with their intellect only they were unable to analyse colour. It is true that in spite of this inability they harmonized Colour-schemes, but these colour schemes were never optically truthful. The 1 It is important to realize that with ‘ atmosphere,’ the actual condition of the air is not necessarily meant. When a modern painter paints in a dark key, he is as it were creating an artificial atmosphere, hut the objects he represents in it must he painted strictly in accordance with the laws of atmospheric modification of colour — it must be painted ( in tone.’ 114 APPENDIX mastery of ‘ Tone , 1 i.e. of the optical relationship of natural hues, cannot be achieved without complete reliance on the purely optical functions of sight. Line — Depth — Colour — Tone — these then are the four stops : the painter who can play a melody on this pipe of Art, and the painter above all who knows the use of the last stop, is a true master of his craft. It is this last stop which gives the master the true sense of proportion : and the sense of proportion is the safest guide through Art as through life. The following table attempts to give an account of the different stages of progress from intellectual to optical conception of Art. It needs, I hope, no further explanation ‘ Except , 1 in the words of Dr. Laing, the editor of this series, ‘ that of course it must be remembered that it is diagrammatic, and that the stages are not steps of a stair, but artificially marked stations on an inclined plane . 1 115 A TABLE— SHOWING THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MODERN ART LINE— DEPTH— COLOUR— TONE AS A RESULT OF AN EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESS FROM INTELLECTUAL TO OPTICAL CONCEPTION W z w & o « Ph‘ £> O O a o ■ 09 C ^ a* > rft H 3 ,0 H ej 5 ; .2 5 23 s *.§ ?H ?H CO p a) £2 Pi-+-5» ' C T 3 P <+-. _ .2 0, 3 «gl p .2 a> o p, « ° .h rt « ' , P ra +J o a) co .)=; J^l *-« CO cc a r-i ^ P »S c ft *"-3 <*-. 1 ° « ^ 2 C a> 5 g rP -+-> CO H 9 sa, 3 c ~ P . 2 2 <5 .2 e :p 0 .2 be G c3 Ph 0 0 .2 *3 •S.®- S.s b£ rj 1 o Sf§ s® J 2 S .2 p be P be C3 O w be .2 •2 "3 co 2 3 JZ Ph be p- P-. 05 0 O 15 ® o SP rrt w +j +3 O co c3 P © t >> CQ .2 •oT '-P -.2 o' *3 5 Ph § 2 S-3 -+-» p co d O N Oh be 03 cn a H Ch W Q a, ® a 3 '53 O co O ^ O CO o U P 0 P O co O ^3 O T 5 P 3 0) CO N 0 * P .2 1? > g rP 9 4-» Ph^P p p . 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Oh 3 O Sh b£ © a, o to © co a © a © be co CO §p 4-> CO 117 CATALOGUE OF CHARDIN’S PRINCIPAL WORKS BASED ON GUIFFREY’S, BOCHER’S AND OFFICIAL GALLERY CATALOGUES, WITH ADDITIONS, INTENTIONAL OMISSIONS, CORRECTIONS— AND A FEW NOTES Thanks to M. Jean Guiflfrey’s courtesy, this Catalogue is mainly based on his most excellent Catalogue de VCEuvre de J. B. S. Chardin. The student will find in that invaluable work exhaustive information not only regarding the pictures themselves, but also excerpts of contemporary criticism of Chardin’s art. The present writer wishes here to put in a special plea on behalf of Chardin as a portrait-painter. M. Guiffrey, in common with other French critics, rejects many portraits which have been attributed to our master, apparently because they do not appear ‘good enough.’ But if that were a valid reason several of Turner’s undoubtedly genuine pictures, for example, would have to be rejected. In the body of this book I have endeavoured to give the reason for my belief that the very inferiority of Chardin’s portrait work argues rather for its authenticity. I would only beg those interested to call to mind one of his best portraits, ‘ L’Enfant au Toton ’ in the Louvre, and to ask themselves whether it is quite worthy of his ‘ Pourvoyeuse,’ his ‘ Ratisseuse,’ his ‘ Recureuse,’ and his ‘ Garmon Cabaretier.’ As regards the drawings attributed to Chardin, I share Guiffrey’s and Goncourt’s misgivings. Lastly; the fact that there are so many replicas of Chardin's genre subjects, which may or may not be undoubted examples of his craftsmanship, is explained by a contemporary note accompanying the ‘Benedicite’ and the ‘Mere Laborieuse ’ in the Stockholm Museum, which says, ‘ des copies retouches par Chardin lui-meme, etc.,’ copies retouched by Chardin himself ; thus clearly implying that there were other copies in existence not re-touched by the artist himself. Wherever there seemed to me sufficient reason to doubt Chardin’s authorship I have thought it best to omit the reference. 118 LIST OF WORKS OIL PAINTINGS ALL PAINTED ON CANVAS UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED AUSTRIA Vienna, Prince Liechtenstein’s Gallery. La Garde Attentive ou les Aliments de la Convalescence. H. 17f x W. 13^ inches. Salon of 1747. La Gouvernante. H. I7f x W. 13$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1739. Salon of 1739. (A repetition said to be in the Collection of Count Arthur Vogue.) La Pourvoyeuse. H. 18jxW. 14| inches. Salon of 1739. Dated 1738, in the German Emperor’s Collection. The same subject dated 1739 in the Louvre, and at the Palace of Schleissheim, near Munich. La Ratisseuse. H. 17f x W. 13$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1738. Salon of 1739. The same subject in the German Emperor’s Collection, in the Aeltere Pina- kothek, and in Sir Hugh P. Lane’s Collection. BELGIUM Brussels, M. Brugmann. Le Garmon Cabaretier. H. 18$ x \V. 15 inches. Salon of 1738. The same subject signed in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. FRANCE Amiens, Picardy Museum. Retour de Chasse. H. 19f x W. 22\ inches. Usteiisiles de Menage. H. 13 x W. 16^ inches. Signed J. B. Chardin. Ustensiles de Menage. H. 16$ x W. 13 inches. Signed J. B. Chardin. Une Corbeille de Raisins. H. 13 x W. 16y^ inches. Signed Chardin, 1755. 119 CHARDIN Angers, Musee David. Fruits. H. 12j 9 g x W. 15f inches. Fruits. H. 7i x W. 13$ inches. Fruits. H. 7$ x W. 13$ inches. Bordeaux, Museum. Nature Morte. H. 31 1 x W. 38 1 inches. Bourg, Musee Lorain. Scene Familiere (Goncourt). H. 3H x W. 24^ inches. Carcassonne, Museum. Nature Morte. H. 15 x W. 10 inches. Chantilly. So-called portrait of Diderot. Portrait of d’Alembert. Guiffrey attributes both these portraits to Aved. A portrait of d’Alembert is stated by French authors to be in the Duke of Sutherland’s Collection, together with a portrait of Chardin himself. Nothing is known there of such pictures. Cherbourg, Museum. Nature Morte. Signed Chardin, 1752. Dijon, Museum. Portrait of the composer Rameau (Goncourt). H. 70r x W. 38j 3 6 - inches. Attributed by Dorbec and Guiffrey to Aved. Lille, Palais des Beaux Arts. An old Woman. H. 28§ x W. 22g inches. Said to be signed. Judging from a reproduction this does not appear to be a Chardin ; it is said to resemble a drawing by Lepicie of the engraver Tardieu’s works. Le Singe Savant. H. 28| x W. 21 J inches. ? The same subject as ‘ The Singe de la Philosophic,’ exhibited at the Salon of 1740. Montauban, Musee Ingres. Une Brioche, des Cerises et un Verre de Vin. H. 15$ x W. 33 inches. 120 LIST OF WORKS Nakbonne, Musee. Une Jeune Fille. Signed and dated 1752. Paris, Louvre. The numbers are those of the Catalogue sommaire. 63. Le Jeune Homme au Violon. H. 26| x W. 28f inches. Companion to the following. 64. L’Enfant au Toton. H. 2 6| x W. 28f inches. Signed Chardin, 173 . . Salon 1738. 89. Le Chat dans le Garde-Manger (La Itaie). H. 43j x W. 55$ inches. Place Dauphine 1728. 90. Fruits sur une Table de Pierre, Chien et Perroquet (Le Buffet). H. 74$ x W. oOf inches. Signed J. Chardin, F. , 1728. This and the preceding picture were given by Chardin to the Academy on the occasion of his reception, 25th Sept. 1728. 91. La Mere Laborieuse. H. 18$ x W. 15 inches. Salon 1740. The same subject in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, in Mme. Jahan- Marcille’s Collection and in the Museum, Stockholm. 92. Le Benedicite. H. 19 ^ x W. 15f inches. Salon 1740. The same subject as the following. 93. Le Benedicite. H. 19| x W. 16$ inches. La Caze Collection. This is a later work than the former; the same subject in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and in the Museum at Stockholm. 94. Lapin Mort et Ustensiles de Chasse. H. 32$ x \V r . 25$ inches. Signed Chardin. ? Salon 1757. 95. Menu de Maigre. (Copper), H. 13 x W. 16$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1731. 96. Menu de Gras. (Copper), H. 13 x W. 16$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1731. 97. Le Singe Antiquaire. H. 31$ x W. 25$ inches. Salon of 1740. Similar subject at Lille. 98. Les Attributs des Arts. H. 36$ x W. 57$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1765. Salon 1765. Originally painted for the Royal Palace, Choisy. 99. La Pourvoyeuse. H. 18 Jx W. 14k inches. Signed Chardin, 1739. Salon 1739. The same subject in the possession of the German Emperor; also in the Palace of Schleissheim, and in the Liechtenstein Collection. 121 CHARDIN 100. Les Attributs tie la Musique. H. 354 x W. 574 inches. Salon 1765. Originally painted for the Royal Palace, Choisy. 101. Pipes et Vases a Boire sur une Table de Pierre. H. 12$ x \V. 164 inches. Signed Chardin. 102. Panier de Peches sur une Table de Pierre. H. 13 xW. 15f inches. Signed Chardin, 1768. 103. Le Chateau de Cartes. H. 30 x XV. 26f inches. Coll. La Caze. 104. Le Singe Peintre. H. 28§ x W. 23§ inches. Coll. La Caze. Salon of 1740. The same subject in Baron Henri de Rothschild’s Collection. This and the ‘ Singe Antiquaire ’ are known to have been painted more than twice. 105. Melon, Poires et Peches (oval). H. 23J x W. 20§ inches. Signed Chardin. Coll. La Caze. The same subject in Baron H. de Rothschild’s Collection. 106. Raisins et Grenades. H. 18| x XV. 22£ inches. Signed Chardin, 1763. Coll. La Caze. 107. Le Bocal d’Olives. H. 274 x W. 384 inches. Signed Chardin, 1760. 108. La Fontaine de Cuivre. (Panel), H. 11 x XV. 9,^- inches. Such a ‘ Fontaine ’ figures in several pictures, and has led some critics to accept pictures as ‘ Chardins,’ when other evidence was not strong enough. It is a prominent feature of ‘ Une fille tirant de l’eau a une fontaine,’ exhibited at the Salon in 1737, but painted in 1733. 109 Un Dessert. H. 18| x W. 22^ s inches. Signed Chardin, 1763. Coll. La Caze. 110. Peches, Noix, Raisins et Verre de Vin. II. 15 x W. 18 j inches. Signed Chardin, 1756. Coll. La Caze. 111. Ustensiles Divers (Debris d’un Dejeuner). H. 15 x XV. 18| inches. Signed Chardin, 1763. Coll. La Caze. 112. Poires et Verre de Vin. H. 13 x W. 15f inches. Signed Chardin. Coll. La Caze. One of his most beautiful still-lifes. 113. Le Gobelet d’Argent. H. 13 x W. I 64 inches. Signed Chardin. Coll. La Caze. 114. La Table de Cuisine (Cat and Mackerels). H. 58f x XV. 50f inches. Signed C. S. 115. Le Panier de Raisins. (Paper mounted on canvas), H. 27yV x 'V. 22j$ inches. Signed Chardin. 122 LIST OF WORKS 116. Ustensiles de Cuisine et CEufs. (Panel), H. 6f x W. inches. Signed Chardin. This is the same subject as the picture Chardin sold to Wille, the original being at present in M. Kleinberger’s possession. PARIS, IN PRIVATE POSSESSION This list is mainly based on Guiffrey’s Catalogue. Some of the pictures have, however, since changed hands ; others have been added or omitted. Mme. Edouard Andre. Les Attributs des Arts. H. 55 $ x W. 86$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1731. Les Attributs de Science. H. 55$ x W. 86$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1731. M. S. Bardac. Le Larron en Bonne Fortune. H. 80 x W. 63 inches. Signed Chardin. Le Chat friant d’huitres. H. 80 x W. 63 inches. M. Bureau. Le Souffleur. H. 59 x W. 39§ inches. Signed ce 4 x bre 1734. This is the portrait exhibited in 1737 as ‘ Un C'himiste dans son Laboratoire,’ and probably again in 1753 as ‘ Un Philosophe occupe de sa Lecture’ ; shown by Goncourt to be a portrait of Aved the portrait-painter. Nature Morte (a sketch). This picture, the genuineness of which I see no reason to doubt, is intensely interesting as show : ng a Chardin-picture in the making. M. L. Charley. Les Osselets. H. 32 x W. 25^ s inches. Signed J. S. Chardin. M. Deligand. Le Singe Antiquaire. H. I7f x W. 13f inches. Mme. Ditte. Nature Morte (Theiere en Faience Blanche et deux Marrons). H. 11 xW, 15| inches. Nature Morte (Pot de Faience Blanche). H. ll^gxW. 15f inches. 123 CHARDIN M. Doistau. L’liicureuse. M. P. Decourcelle. Le Chat dans le Garde-Manger. H. 39§ x W. 32^ inches. M. Dollfus. Portrait de Femme (doubtful). H. 314 x W. 854 inches. M. Doucf.t. Les Bouteilles de Savon. H. 24 x W. 25| inches. Signed J. Chardin. Salon 1739. Exhibited at the Salon of 1739, under the title of ‘ l’Amusement Frivole d’un jeuue Homme faisant des Bouteilles de Savon.’ Is this the picture Mariette mentions as one of his first efforts? Le Faiseur de Chateau de Cartes. H. 221 * W. 24f inches. Salon 1737. Exhibited at the Salon of 1737, under the title ( Jeune Homme s’amusant avec des Cartes.’ Buste, Coin d’ Atelier. H. 23§ x VV. 204 inches. Signed Ch. . . . Les Attributs du Peintre. H. 24f x W. 314 inches. Signed Chardin. Rafraichissements. H. 32f x W. 38j^ inches. Signed Chardin, 1764. Le Plat d’Huitres H. 15|xW. 19^ inches. Signed Chardin. Corbeille de Peches. H. 26 x W. 22J inches. Signed Chardin. Mme. Duruy. Portrait du Chansonnier Pannhard. H. 314 x W. 23f inches. M. Guiffrey doubts Chardin’s authorship. M. F LAMENG. Les Attributs de Peintre. H. 18| x W. 33|r inches. Les Attributs d’Architecte. H. 18| x W. 33g inches. Nature Morte (une Pomme, des Raisins, des Noix, etc.). H. 19| x H r . 23§ inches. 124 LIST OF WORKS M. C. Groult. Le Toton. H. 26§ x W. 28| inches. Signed Chardin, 1741. A replica of the Louvre picture. Les Attributs des Arts et les Recompenses qui leur sont accordees. H. 44| x W. 49| inches. Signed Chardin, 1760. Mme. Jahan-Marcille. Le Benedicite. H. 19f x W. 26 inches. Salon 1746. This picture is the same subject as the Benedicite purchased by the king in 1740. See p. 47, with ‘ Une addition pour faire Pendant a un Teniers place dans le cabinet de M. de La Live.’ It does not appear an improvement on the original version. La Fontaine. H. 48 x W. 41 inches. Signed Chardin. L’fieonome. H. 17f x W. 14 inches. Sketch from the picture at Stockholm, which latter is not shown ‘ comme trop dete'riore. La Musique Civile. H. 42P x W. 58| inches. Signed Chardin, 1767. La Musique Guerriere. H. 42| x W. 58|- inches. Signed Chardin, 1767- These two pictures, as well as the ‘ Attributs de la Musique,’ and ‘de Part ’ of the Louvre, are remarkable on account of their ‘tightness and finish’ intended evidently to please the public more than the artists, whilst his other still-lifes of the period show a beautiful ‘ looseness ’ of handling ; neither is the decided- ness comparable to the ‘ tightness ’ of his earliest work. Les Attributs de la Musique. H. 48| x W. 55 inches. Place Dauphine 1732 ? Ditto. H. 48 x W. 55£ inches. Lapins Morts (Une Carnassiere de Peau Blanche). 1 II. 28 x W. 23£ inches. Lapin Mort (La Grive Morte). 1 H. 28 x W. 21§ inches. Le Bol de Cristal. H. 13f x W. 17§ inches. Signed Chardin. 1 In order to distinguish between these still-lifes with identical titles, a characteristic object forming part of the picture is mentioned in parentheses. 125 CHARDIN La Corbeille de Prunes. H. 12| x W. 15 inches. Panier de Fraises. H. 14J x W. 17 inches. La Theiere Blanche. H. 14|- x W. 17 inches. Le Gobelet d’Argent. H. 13$ x W. 21 inches. Le Gobelet d’Argent. H. 17$ x W. 20$ inclies. Salon 1765. Signed Chardin. Salon 1761 Signed Chardin, 1738. Signed J. S. Chardin. Nature Morte. H. 17$ x W. 20$ inches. Signed J. S. Chardin. Coin de Table de Cuisine. H. 12$ x W. 15§ inches. Signed Chardin. Repetition of M. Le'on Michel Levy’s picture. Enfants jouant avec une chevre. H. 9^ x W. 15| inches. M. Edouard Kann. Un Dejeuner. H. 9j^- x W. 15f inches. Chardin, 1759. Nature Morte. H. 13$ xW. 17| inches. M. Keeinberger. Ustensiles de Cuisine et (Eufs. (Panel) H. 17 x W. 21 inches. This is apparently the little picture Chardin gave to Wille, for it bears on the reverse the inscription ‘du Cabinet de J. C. Wille, Graveur du Roi. M. Keotz. Enseigne de Pharmacien. H. 24 x W. 74jf inches. Enseigne de Pharmacien (reverse). H. 24 x W. 74if inches. M. Henri Michee-Levy. Portrait de Vieille Femme. H. 21§ x W. 18i inches (oval). ‘ Je desire que mon portrait, peint par Chardin, soit donne apres ma mort a la Comtesse de Thollemey,’ is written on a piece of paper on the back of this portrait. Le Chat aux Aguets. H. 20| x W. 25$ inches. 126 LIST OF WORKS M. Leon Michel- Levy. Les Aliments de la Convalescence. H. 16|- x W. 12§ inches. A first sketch for the picture in the Liechtenstein Gallery. La Table. H. 35 fa x W. 47} inches. If this is the actual picture which Goncourt saw, and which he supposes to be the f Devant de Cheminee’ Chardin had painted in Aved’s studio, it is painted anything but ‘ franchement, bellement et de sa large touche.’ If this is Chardin’s work at all, it is of course very early, and must have been painted somewhere about 1723, though scarcely before, as Aved did not come to Paris until 1722. Le Lievre. H. 24/g- x W. 31} inches. Signed Chardin. Le Chat Friand d’Huitres. H. 31} x W. 24/g- inches. Signed Chardin. Le Larron en Bonne Fortune. H. 31} x W. 24 j 7 5 inches. Signed Chardin, 1753. Corbeille de Peches. H. 14fk x W. I7f inches. Signed Chardin, 1757. Panier de Prunes. H. 16} x W. 18} inches. Signed Chardin. Gobelet d’ Argent. H. 11}$ x W. 15} inches. Signed Chardin. Coin de Cuisine (Pot de Terre Noire). 1 H. 14} x W. 17} inches. Coin de Cuisine (Pot en Terre Rouge). 1 H. 14}f x W. 12§ inches. Coin de Cuisine (Fromage Ouvert). 1 H. 14}$- x W. 12f inches. Signed Chardin. Coin de Cuisine (^Icuelle de Terre Rouge). 1 (Panel) H. 6j^ x W. 7$ inches. Signed Chardin. Coin de Cuisine (Pot de Terre brune). 1 H. 12f g x W. 15} inches. Chardin. Repetition of the picture in Mme. Jahau Marcille’s Collection. M. Masson. Gobelet d’Argent et Fruits Divers. H. 13§ x W. 16} inches. 1 In order to distinguish between these still-lifes with identical titles, a characteristic object forming part of the picture is mentioned in parentheses. 127 CHARDIN M. Casimir-Perier. Jeune Dessinateur taillant son Crayon. H. 31yf x W. 25£ inches. Signed 1737- M. PlERQUIN. Portrait d’Homme (Portrait of Rameau the Composer). H. 41 x W. 32 inches. Signed Chardin. Doubted by Guiffrey. Corbeille de Peches. H. 15 x W. 18^ inches. Baron Henri de Rothschild. Petite Fille Jouant au Volant. H. 81^ x W. 25|- inches. Signed Chardin, 1751. Though at first sight not particularly pleasing, an examination of details, the manner in which the battledore is painted, for instance, proves Chardin’s con- summate skill. Chateau de Cartes. H. 31J x W. 39§ inches. L’flcu reuse (La Recureuse). H. x W. 14^. Signed Chardin. LMilcureuse (La Recureuse). H. 24^6 x W. 18 inches. Sometimes a period of twenty years had elapsed, until circumstances again com- pelled him to repeat an earlier subject. The ‘ Recureuse,’ for instance, was first exhibited in 1738 and again in 1757 ; the ‘Benedicite’ first in 1740, a second time with additions, ‘ pour faire un pendant a un Teniers ’ in 1746, and a third time ‘ avec des changements’ in 1761. It would seem certain that it was his habit to keep the first picture painted from nature by him for reference, and to paint his replicas from this first sketch, which he would leave in an un-retouched state. This would not so much apply to his still-life subjects, but would account for the fact that at least two ‘ originals ’ seem to exist, or to have existed, in the case of nearly all his subject pictures. La Pourvoyeuse. H. 14j 3 s -x W. 17J inches. With a ‘ rechaud ’ like the Liechtenstein Picture. La Blanchisseuse. H. 13f x W. 16^5 inches. Less coarse than the Hermitage one, which is presumably earlier. L’Aveugle. (Panel) H. 11 x W. 7j inches. Salon 1753. A poor picture, and doubly interesting because undoubtedly genuine. La Petite Fille aux Cerises (Une Petite Fille assise s’amusant avec son Dejeuner). (Panel) II. 7| x W. 7|- inches. Salon 1737. Un Petit Enfant avec les Attributs de Fenfance. (Panel) H. 7§ x W. 7j inches. Salon 1737. 128 LIST OF WORKS L’Ouvriere en Tapisserie. H. 7£ x W. 6-pg inches. Salon 1759. Le Dessinateur. (Panel) H. x W. 5g- inches. Signed Chardin. Le Dessinateur. (Panel) H. 6}-). x W. of inches. Le Singe Peintre. H. 15| x W. 12^- inches. Retour de Chasse (Perdrix Rouge). 1 H. 26| x W. 23§ inches. Signed Chardin. Retour de Chasse (Perdrix Grise que guette un Chat). H. 29f x W. 41§ inches. Un Dejeuner. H. 29^ xW. 24 inches. Salon 1761. Un Dessert. H. 22 x W. 19^ inches (oval). Salon 1761. Fruits. H. 22 xW. 19-Jf inches. Salon 1761. La Corbeille de Raisins. H. ll^fxW. 15f inches. Signed Chardin, 1768. (Companion to the Corbeille de Peches of the Louvre.) Le Pot d’Etain. H. 17&x W. 14^ inches. Signed Chardin. Coin d’Office (Trois Pommes d’Api). H. 14^5 x W. 17| inches. Signed Chardin. Coin de Cuisine (Biberon de Gres). 1 H. 13 x W. 18f inches. Signed Chardin, 1764. Coin de Cuisine (L’Entrecote). 1 H. 12 jx W. 15f inches. Signed Chardin 1721. If this date is correctly deciphered this is the earliest dated picture by Chardin. Coin de Cuisine (Moulin a Poivre). 1 H. 12J x W. 15 inches. Coin de Cuisine (Poulet Plume). 1 H. 15 x W. 12f inches. Coin de Cuisine (Pot Blanc). 1 H. llif x W. 15| inches. Coin de Cuisine (Pot de Terre Brune). 1 II. 15 x W. 15f inches. 1 In order to distinguish between these still-lifes with identical titles, a characteristic object forming part of the picture is mentioned in parentheses. C. — 9 129 CHARDIN Coin de Cuisine (Bolle de Carotte ). 1 H. 9| xW. 16 inches. Q (JUMPER, Musee. Tete de Jeune Garcon . 2 H. 15§ x W. 12§ inches. Petites Savoyardes . 2 (Panel) H. 11^ x W. 7b inches. Tete de Petite Fille . 2 H. lGt;, x W. 12j^ inches. Reims, Musee. Vieille Femme . 2 H. 22^g x W. 17^ inches. Nature Morte . 2 H. 14j% x W. 16Jf inches. Rouen, Musee. Legumes sur une Table de Cuisine. H. 27^g- x W. 35b inches. Rouen, Collection Lebreton. Retour de Chasse. H. 13 x W. 23j inches. Signed Chardin, 1736. M. Seailles. Instruments de Musique. II. 24j§ x W. 37 inches. Dr. Tuffier. Chevres et Bacchantes. H. 20g x W. 35g inches. Signed Chardin, 1767- Salon 1767. Chevres et Satyres. H. 20gX*W\ 35g inches. Signed Chardin, 1769. Salon 1769. M. Weill. Les Bouteilles de Savon. H. 28§ x W. 25f inches. M. WlLDENSTEIN. Les Artichauts. H. 15f xW. 28f inches. Percy M. Turner, Esq. A Man’s Portrait ( ? John Hunter). Signed J. S. Chardin. H. 17 b x W. 13|. This picture, which bears the title ‘John Hunter,’ though not like John Hunter’s generally known portraits, undoubtedly resembled him in certain 1 See previous page. 2 These attributions have not been checked by Guiffrey. 130 LIST OF WORKS characteristic features. John Hunter, the brother of William, who collected Chardin’s works, was several times in Paris, and may well have sat to the master, though neither of the brothers make any mention of the fact in their diaries or correspondence. The conservator of Hunter’s Collection in the Royal College of Surgeons believes this picture to be a portrait of William Hunter. GERMANY Berlin, The German Emperor (Collection of Frederick the Great). Une Dame occupee a cacheter une Lettre (Die Briefsieglerin). H. 56| x W. 56f inches. Signed Chardin, 1733. Place Dauphine 1734. This picture is specially notable as being the largest group he ever attempted ; it was painted before he had decided on the ‘Tiers Etat’ as his own subject- matter. The dog seems the most successful part of this composition. Un jeune Dessinateur tail lan t son Crayon. H. 32 x W. 25j inches. Signed Chardin, 1737. Salon 1738. Quite different in technique from the former. La Pourvoyeuse. H. 18^ x W. 14§ inches. Signed Chardin, 1738. Salon 1739. La Ratisseuse. H. 16^g x W. 13 inches. Signed Chardin. Salon 1739. Still-life. (Two leeks.) James Simon. Nature Morte (Kitchen-Still-life). Signed Chardin. Carlsruhe. Le Petit Oranger (Orangen-Baumchen). H. 23£ x W. 18| inches. Certainly the most beautiful example of his earlier still-life work. Nature Morte (Tote Kaninchen). H. 41§ x W. I7f inches. Signed Chardin, 1726. Another beautiful example of his early masterly work, finer than the un- congenial ‘Raie’ of 1728. Nature Morte (Totes Rebhuhn). H. 15§ x W. 29£ inches. Signed J. S. Chardin. Nature Morte (Un citron ). 1 H. 22j^ x W. I7f inches. Signed J. S. Chardin. Nature Morte (Pot en Argent ). 1 H. 21| x W. I7f inches. Signed Chardin. Munich, Aeltere Pinakothek. La Ratisseuse. H. 17f x W. 14 inches. Signed Chardin. 1 See footnote on page 129. 131 CHARDIN Munich, Palace of Schleissheim. La Pourvoyeuse. H. 18|- x W. 14f inches. Princess Frederick Charles of Hesse. Still-life. H. 7| x W. inches. GREAT BRITAIN London, National Gallery. La Fontaine. H. 17i x W. 14|- inches. Inferior to Sir Frederick Cook’s version. Nature Morte (Claret Bottle). H. 18 x W. 14| inches. Signed Chardin, 1754. Sir Hugh P. Lane. La Ratisseuse. H. 20 x \V. 16g inches. Signed Chardin. Alleyne’s College, Dulwich. Girls at Work. H. 22^ x W. 28| inches. This picture, which Guiffrey does not mention, needs cleaning badly, it will then most likely prove to be a genuine example of his work ; even in its present state it is full of interest. Sir Frederick Cook, Bart. La Fontaine. H. 14J x W. 16'| inches. Signed Chardin. La Blanchisseuse. H. 14| x W. 16j inches. Signed Chardin. Edinburgh, Nationai, Gallery. Still-life (The Two Herrings). H. 17| x W. 15 inches. Signed Chardin. Glasgow, "The Hunterian Museum. Une Dame qui prend du The. H. 31 x W. 39 inches. Signed J. S. Chardin, 1735. Salon 1739. Le Garmon Cabaretier. H. 17£- x W. 13£| inches. Signed Chardin. Salon 1738. L'Ecureuse. H. 17|xW. 14yh inches. Salon 1738. This particular picture was exhibited by Chardin in 1757 he. exactly nine- teen years after the exhibition of its first version. 132 LIST OF WORKS Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland. Les Tours de Cartes. H. 12 x W. 15j inches. Salon 1743. The official catalogue of the Dublin Gallery erroneously states that this subject is the same as the pictures in the Hermitage and the Doucet Collections, confusing it no doubt with the ‘ Jeune Homme s’amusant avec des Cartes’ of the Salon of 1737. HOLLAND The Hague, Dr. Bredius. Coin de Table de Cuisine (Mortier de Bois). H. 13 x AT. 16^ inches. , RUSSIA St. Petersburg, The Hermitage. La Blanchisseuse. H. 15j x AT. 16f inches. Signed Chardin. Le Benedicite. H. 19^ x AT. 15|- inches. Signed Chardin. I suggest that this is the original it appears ‘ crisper ’ and more spontaneous than any of the others. Un Jeune Garmon jouant avec des Cartes. H. 32|- x W. 25f inches. Signed Chardin. SWEDEN Stockholm, National Museum. La Blanchisseuse. H. 14§ x AT. 17 inches. Signed Chardin. Jeune Servante versant de l’Eau (La Fontaine). (Oak panel), H. 15 x AT. 16^ inches. Signed Chardin, 1733. Jeune Femme faisant de la Tapisserie. (Oak panel), H. 7\V x AT. inches. Signed (almost effaced), Chardin. Salon 1738. The same subject in Baron Henri de Rothschild’s Collection. L’Artiste Dessinateur. (Oak panel), H. 7^xAT. 6f inches. Le Benedicite. H. 19-^ x AT. 15§ inches. See note below the following. 133 CHARDIN Une Mere et sa Fille a leur devidoir. H. 19j^-x W. 15§ inches. ‘ Des copies retouchees par Chardin lui-meme d’apres les originaux, 99-98 au Louvre.’ Lievre Moi't pres d’un Chaudron de Cuivre. H. 26| x W. 22| inches. La Toilette du Matin (Le Neglige). H. 19^ x W. 15§ inches. Salon 1741. Une Dame Assise, un Livre a la Main. (Les Amusements de la Vie Privee.) H. 16i x W. 13§ inches. Salon 1746. L’Econome. H. 16^ x W. 13| inches. £ Separe 1885 de la Galerie comme trop dete'riore.’ At Drottningiiolm Palace. Lievre et Deux Perdrix. Signed C. D. Wan as Collection, Wachbureister. La Bonne Education. H. 16j x W. 18i inches. L’Eleve Studieux. H. 16|- x W. 18| inches. Nature Morte. H. 13 x W. 15| inches. Nature Morte. H. 13 x W. 15| inches. UNITED STATES. The Historical Society, New York. Still-Life. (It has not been possible to obtain further information.) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Coin de Cuisine. H. 15i x W. 18£ inches. Signed Chardin, 1735. Teapot, Chestnut, Grapes, Pears. Still-life, H. 16§ x W. 13 inches. Signed Chardin, 1764. 134 LIST OF WORKS MINIATURES London, J. Pierpont Morgan. A snuffbox. With six miniatures on china, representing ‘ La Recureuse,’ and four still- lifes. Beautiful and careful work which has always been accepted as Chardin’s own, though it seems almost incredible that he should have excelled in this branch of art, which demands qualities very different from his own life work. DRAWINGS AND PASTELS Austria, The Albertina, Vienna. ‘ La Lecture.’ H. 9| x W. 11§ inches. Black and white chalk touched with colour, on grey paper. f Fait pour Mme. de Pompadour, par Chardin.’ La Lettre. H. 9f x W. 11§ inches. Black chalk and sanguine, touched with white. Both very unlike his ‘ hand.’ France, Louvre, Paris. Portrait de Chardin. H. 18J x W. 15 inches. Signed Chardin, 1771. Portrait de Chardin a l’abat jour. Signed Chardin, 1775. Portrait de Mme. Chardin. H. l7f x W. 14$ inches. Signed Chardin, 1776. L’Homme a la Boule. Sanguine. H. 15f x W. 8§ inches. Signed J. B. Chardin, 1760. Characteristic of Chardin’s ‘ hand. ’ Tete d’Homme Coiffee d’un Tricorne. On grey paper. H. 5J x W. 6J inches. Un Peintre a Son Chevalet. H. 10$ x W. 6f inches. Black and white chalk on paper. 135 CHARDIN Interieur Bourgeois. H. 10| x W. 12j inches. Reims, Musee. Nature Morte. Pastel. H. 15f x W. 24 inches. M. S. Bardac. Portrait de Bachelier. Pastel. H. 25| x W. 21-f inches. Signed Chardin, 1773. Le Marquis de Brion. Le Garde-Manger. H. 8f x W. 6| inches. Black chalk and sanguine, touched with water colours and pastel. Etude d’Enfant. Sanguine. H. 13 x W. 9 inches. Jeune Homme Dessinant. H. 4f x W. inches. Sanguine on grey paper. M. Foulon de Vaux. Jeune Homme. Pastel. H. 17| x W. 15 inches. Signed Chardin, 1776. Jeune Fille. Pastel. H. 17|xW. 15 inches. Signed Chardin, 1776. Neither of these can compare in quality with the Louvre pastels. M. C. Groult. Portrait de Chardin. Pastel. M. Henri Michel Levy. Le Dessinateur. H. 13f x W. 5f inches. Pen and Indian ink. M. Leon Michel Levy. Portrait de Chardin. Pastel. H. 15§ x W. 12| inches. In a poor condition. Les Amateurs de Medailles. H. 9| x W". 15f inches. Signed Chardin, 1769. Black chalk, pen and wash of Indian ink. Un Interieur. 1 Black chalk, pen and wash of Indian ink. 1 Ascribed to Fragonard. See R. A. A. M., 1899, t. ii. p. 412. 136 LIST OF WORKS M. lk Baron Henri de Rothschild. Jeune Garmon. H. 8f x W. 6| inches. Signed J. B. S. Chardin. Pencil drawing.; L’Ecrivain. H. x W. 6£ inches. Pen and wash : bistre. M. Armand Schiller. Jeune Paysanne. Sanguine. H. 7| x W. 6§ inches. Sweden, Stockholm Museum. La Vinaigrette. H. 11 x W. 18J inches. Black chalk- touched with white : brown paper. Unmistakably Chardin’s hand : a note such as one would expect and can understand. 137 INDEX Academic Tradition, 5. Academie royale de Peintureet Sculpture, 39 ; description of its personelle, 40 note ; in a parlous condition, 66. Academicians, mode of their election, 34; salaried, 35. Acade'mie de St. Luc, 35, Albertina, 103-104. Analysis of Beauty, 61 note. Anatomy, its relation with Art, 105. d’Angeviller, 67. Animal’s sight compared with child’s, 97. Antinous, 8. Antonello, 74. Apelles, 82. Apollo di Belvedere, 8. Apollo of Tenea, 74. d’Argenson, 15. d’Argenville, 1, 71, 84. Art, Academic, 2, 3, 5 ; a handicraft, 3, 4, 5, 12 ; as self-expression, 5, 12 ; confusion of product with producer, 6 ; c Intime,’ 7 ; and emotion, 7, 113 ; its complexity, 8, 114 ; and history, 9 ; what is Art ? 9 ; its dependence on life, 12 ; undefinable, 13 ; between beauty and truth, 17 ; as an ex- pression of character, 26 ; and morality, 26 ; and heredity, 27 ; and Christianity, 98 ; and scepticism, 100 ; and observa- tion, 100 ; and commercialism, 113 ; and the critic, 113 ; and trickery, 113-114. Artist, qua ‘ Genius,’ 4 ; a creature of circum- stance, 11-13 ; as man, 27. Atmosphere, 114 note. Aved, 30, 50, 70, 80. Bachaumont, 23, 106. Barbizon School, 5. Baudouin, 62. Beauty, 1, motto; 17. Belle, Clement, 62. son of the former, 105. Belleforest, 74. Bergeret, 107. van Beyeren, 71. Billiards, 28 note. Bolognese School, 5. Bonvin, Francois, 107. Leon, 107. Botticelli, 10, 81. Boucher, 1, 19 ; The Four Seasons, 21 ; 23, 24, 52, 62, 63, 64, 70 ; La Bonne Mere, 95; 111. Mine., 20. Boullogne, 34. Bramante, 10. Brouwer, 94. Browning, 60. Brueghel, 16, 81, 96, 107. Burne-Jones, 76. Canons of Art, 7. Caravaggio, 117. Carpaccio, 95, 108. Carriera, Rosalba, 23. Carriere, 10, 76. Caylus, 20. Cazes, 28, 34, 70. Chardin, Jean, Chardin’s father, 27. Baptiste Simeon, 1, 18, 24; at- tacks problem solved by Velazquez, 24 ; his work ascribed to Flemish painter, 25 ; his christening, 27 ; his inclinations con- trary to father’s wishes, 27 ; enters Cazes’ studio, 28 ; joins N. N. Coypel, 29; helps J. B. van Loo, 30 ; shares studio with Aved, 30 ; anecdote of the sausages, 30 ; the surgeon’s signboard, 31 ; exhibits in Place Dauphine 1728, 34 ; presents him- self at the Acade'mie, 34 ; accepted and 139 CHARDIN received, 34; member of the Academie de St. Luc, 35 ; meets his first wife, 35 ; his marriage, 36 ; birth of son, 36 ; Place Dauphiue exhibition, 1732, 36 ; death of daughter and first wife, 37 ; exhibits at Salon, 1737, 37, 38 ; at Salon 1738, 38 ; Salon of 1739, 38 ; Salon 1740, 39 ; the king purchases two pictures, 39 ; his slowness, 40 ; Councillor of the Academy, 40 ; his illness, and death of his mother, 40 ; second marriage, 41 ; adverse criticism, 41, 43, 46 ; his in- tegrity, 46, 47 ; appointed treasurer of the Academie, 47 ; ‘ appartements’ in the Louvre, 48 ; Diderot’s praise, 51, 52 ; appointed ‘ Tapisseur,’ 53 ; pensioned, 53 ; death of Pierre Chardin, 56 ; his speech reported by Diderot, 57, 58 ; at the zenith of his art, 60; further pension, 64 ; the surprise caused by his pastel, 64, 65 ; he resigns his position as treasurer, 66 ; his last triumphs, 66, 67l insulted, 67 ; praises David, 68 ; his death, 69 ; characteristic, 68, 69. Chardin’s Work, its essence and influence — Claimed as a great master, 70 ; and opens his eyes to Dutch art, 70, 72 ; originator of whole school of modern art, 74 ; his technique, 75, 77 ; his subjects, 78 ; as a portrait-painter, 79; compared to Rembrandt, 83-85 ; his drawing, 86 ; his ‘ sentiment,’ 91 ; his composition, 93 ; the intimacy of his art, 94 ; statements of plain facts, 95 ; explanation of his mode of seeing, 96, 106 ; his influence, 108. His Paintings — 95 ; Piece Studieux, see Dessinateur, 42 ; Femme qui prend du The, see Dame prenant, etc. ; Fontaine, 21, 37, 42, 72, 86 ; Fontaine de Cuivre, 87 ; Garfon Caba- retier, 38, 78, 95 ; Gourmand puni, 90 ; Gouvernante, 39, 40, 86, 89, 93 ; Jeune Dessinateur taillant son Crayon, 38 ; Jeu de I’Oye, 40 ; Jeune Femme occupee a cacheter une Lettre, 36, 38, 39, 79 ; Jeux d’Enfants, 36 ; Lecture, 103 ; Mere La- borieuse, 39, 89 ; Neglige, 39, 40, 40, 91 ; Orange Tree, 85 ; Ouvriere en Tapisserie (or qui choisit de la laine dans son punier), 38, 42, 49, 78 ; Punier de Peches et Noix, 81 ; Punier de Prunes, 61 ; Petite Enfant avec les Attribute de l’ Enfance, 38 ; Petite Fille aux Cerises (or s’amusant avec son De- jeuner), 21, 37, 80, 86 ; Petite Fille jouant au volant, 37 ; Petite Maitresse d’ Ecole, 39; Petite Fille qui recite son Evangile, 46; Petite Fille s’amusant avec sa Poupee, 38 ; Philosophe, see Chimiste, etc. ; Poires et Verre de Vin, 86, 93; Porteurs de Chaise, 103 ; Portrait of a Jockey, 68 ; of the Artist ‘ a l’ abut jour,’ 65 ; of the Artist’s Wife, 65 ; of a son of M. Godefroy (Le Toton), 38, 42; of Aved, see Chimiste ; of M. . . . with his hands in his Muff, 42 ; of Mme. Le . . .,42 \ of M. Livret, 42 ; Pourvoyeuse, 38, 39, 65, 76, 86, 87, 90 ; Raie, 34, 36, 82, 83, 93 ; Raisins et Gren- ades, 72, 86 ; Ratisseuse, 39, 72, 77, 87 ; Recureuse, see Ecureuse ; Retour de Chasse, 49 ; Santo Bambino, 103 ; Saucissons, see Table ; Serinette(Dame variant ses Amuse- ments), 43 ; Singe Antiquaire (or de la Philosophie), 39, 72, 83 ; Singe Peintre, 39, 72, 83, 85 ; Surgeon’s Signboard, 31 ; Table, 30 ; Toilette de Matin, see Neglige-, Toton, see Portrait of a Son of M. Godefroy ; Tours de Cartes, 39, 42. Chardin, Pierre, Chardin’s son, 36, 45, 46, 50, 51, 56, 57. Christ, 96. Christianity and Art, 98, 99. Clouet, The Clouets, 14. 46, 53, 54, 55, 63, 64. Aliments de la Convalescence, 42 ; Amuse- ments de la Vie Privee, 42 ; Bas-relief ‘ feint ’ en bronze, 21 ; Benedicite , 39, 42, 72, 86, 88, 89 ; Blanchisseuse, 21, 37, 40, 42, 93 ; Bouteilles de Savon, 39 ; Buffet, 34, 36, 82, 83 ; Chateau de Cartes, 37, 40 ; Chimistedans son Labor atoire, 80 ; Corbeille de Peches, 65 ; Corbeille de Raisins, 65 ; Dame prenant son The, 38, 79, 85 ; Dame variant ses Amusements, see Serinette ; Dead Partridge, 72 ; Decrotteur, 103 ; Dessinateur, 38, 42, 46, 49, 86, 89 ; Deux Lievres, 83, 93 ; Ecureuse, 21, 38, 140 Cochin, C. N., 19, Constable, 74, 81, 117. Corot, 5, 94, 107. Correggio, 16, 117- Coypel, C. A., 19. INDEX Coypel, C. N., 29, 70. Crozat, 20. Cuyp, 117. David, 16 ; Marat assassinated, 17, 68. Dean, 2. Decamps, 106. Del Sarto. See Sarto. Depth pictorially, 108, 114. Desportes, 19. Diaz, 5. Diderot, 20, 51, 52, 54, 61, 62, 76, 82,94,104. Dilke, Lady, 15, 91, 106 note. Dobson, 19 note. Dou, 71, 73, 75, 94. Doyen, 68. Du Deffand, Marquise, 20. Dubourg, Mme. , 107. Durer, 8, 99, 101 ; portrait of himself, 101 ; 103, 108. Dutch School; its relation to Chardin, 73, 72. Little Masters, 74. van Dyck. See Vanbyck. Easel-picture, 6. Eclectics, 73. Emotion, in its relation to Art, 7, 113. European civilization, 98, 99. Evolution, 12, 96, 113-117. van Eyck, 95, 107. Fleury, 19. Florentine School, 5. Fra Angelico, 24, 81. Fragonard, 18, 46, 62, 63. Frederick the Great, 39. French Art, 2, before Louis xiv., 14, 16 ; under Louis xiv., 14, 16; under the Regency, 15, 16 ; after the Regency, 16, 17 ; its natural leaning, 16 ; modern, 106, 107. Society after Louis xiv., 14. Frith, 90 ; Derby Day, 90. Fyt, 71. Gainsborough, 19. Garrick, 63. GeoFFRiN, Mme., 19. Giotto, 9, 95. Gobelines, 23. van der Goes, 74. Goncourt, 21 ; etching of Chardin’s Surgeon’s Signboard, 21, 30, 31. el Greco, 17. Greeks and Romans, 21, 22. Greuze, 1 , 21, 51, 52, 63, 70, 94, 95, 104 note. Grimm, 51. Haeckel, 100. Haillet de Couronne, 30, 34, 48, 69, 101. Halle, 62. Hals, 16, 22, 23, 85, 100, 101, 113, 117. Heda, 71. de Heem, 71 ; Fruchtstiick, 72. van der Helst, 104. Hiroshige, 10. Historical Subjects, 21, 22. Hogarth, 19, 61, 89. Holbein, 95. Holmes, 93 note. Hondecoeter, 71 ; Dead Fowl, 72. de Hooch, 71. Hood, 91. Hudson, 19. Impressionism, 95-98, 106-109. Inner and outer eye vision, 81. Intellect and sight, 96, 115. Jeaurat, 104 note. Juillart, 62. Kalf, 34, 71, 72. Kneller, 19 note. Lacroix, 3. Laing, 115. Lancret, 19; Sujet cliampetre, 21; Village Wedding Feast, 21 ; 22, 34, 37, 70. Landseer, 75. Laokoon, 8. Largilliere, 19, 34. Latour, 19 ; Portrait of Mme. Boucher, 20 ; his own portrait, 20, 21, 23, 62. Law, 19. Lebas, 19. Lebrun, 16, 17, 18, 24. Lely, 19 note. Lemoine, 19, 34, 60. LeNain, 1, 95. 141 CHARDIN Leonardo da Vinci, 101, 103. Lepicie, 19, 44, 88. Le Sidaner, 107- ‘ L’Etat c’est moi,’ 14, 111. Liechtenstein, Prince, 40. Life in its relation to Art, 9, 10. Line, its meaning’, 96, 108, 114. Louvre, 18 ; lodgings in, 48, 49, 64 ; grand Salon, see Salon. Louis xiv., 2, 12, 14, 95. Louis xv., 2, 18. Louise, Ulrique, Queen of Sweden, 40. van Loo, Carte, 19 ; Le grand Seigneur giving a Concert to his Mistress, 21 ; Le grand Seigneur having the Portrait of his Mistress painted, 21 ; Jupiter and Juno, 21 ; Dejeuner de Cliasse, 22; 37- van Loo, J. B., 19, 70. van Loo, Michel, 37. Loutherbourg, 63. Maes, 34, 71 ; Benedicite, 72, 73. Maitre Desmoulins, 14. Mancini, 75 note. Manet, 87 ; Brioche, 106; 108, 117. Maori and Aztec Art, 97. Mariette, 20, 24, 80, 81. Marigny, Marquis de, 44, 46, 49, 53, 54, 55, 63, 64. Maugras, 14. Meissonier, 47- Menzel, 10. Mercier, 31, 33. Metsu, 71 ; Die Kochin, 72 ; White Hen, 72, 73. Meunier, 12. Michelangelo, Moses, 8, 10, 11, 24. Mieris, 75. Mignon, 72. Millais, Inca of Pern, 83, 85. Millet, 12, 24, 106, 107 ; Le Vanneur, La Lessiveuse, 107. Modern Art, in its relation to the old masters, 8. Monet, 106. Monism, 100. de Montmorin, Mme., 15 note. Morality and Art, 26. Murillo, 19, 21, 23. Musee Carnavalet, 21. Musee Conde, 23. 142 Napoleon i., 68. Nattier, 19 ; Mile de Clermont, 21 ; Mile, de Lambesc, 21 ; Justice Chastising In- justice, 21, 23. Neoclassicists, 3. Netscher, 71 ; Die Naherin, 72. Northern Art, 7- Optic Truth, 7- Optical conception, 115. Orry, 19. Ostade, 94. Oudry, 19, 34, 44, 82. Painters paid according to degree of finish, 54 ; Gradus ad Parnassum, 108 ; modern, 108. Painting in Japan, 5 ; with the Greeks and Romans, 98 ; a physical effort, 25. Parrocel, 19, 37. Pater, 19, 70. Paulmy, Marquis de, 57. Perronneau, 23, 62. Pictorial quality, 82. Piloty, 22. Place Dauphine, Exhibitions, 32, 33, 37. Pointillistes, 106. de Porta il, 47, 53. Portrait painting, 79, 80. Pouget, Marguerite, Chardin’s second wife, 41 to 43 and note. Poussin, 71. Praxiteles, 8, 74. Raffaelli,| 108 . Raphael, 3, 9, 17, 20, 70, 74, 103, 108, 116. Realism, 95, 96. Regent of France, 15, 17. Rembrandt, 20, 74 ; Slaughter-House, 83 ; 84, 85, 89, 100, 101, 102, 103, 117. Reynolds, 19, 28, 29, 74, 75. Ribera, 100, 117. Ricci, 19, 24. Rigaud, 19, 34, 73. Rodin, 8. Roland de la Porte, 62, 104. Rossetti, 81. Rousseau, J. J. S. , 95. Philippe, 107. Rubens, 16, 73, 74, 76, 94, 117. Ruskin, 108. INDEX Sacristy of San Lorenzo, 11. Sainctar, Marguerite, Chardin’s first wife, 35,36. Saint Germain des Pres, 28. Saint Sulpice, 27. Sakkarian, 107. Salon, Exhibitions, 18 ; hanging Committee, 19; of 1737, 18-25; Private view, 20; General Arrangement and number of pictures, 20 ; Catalogue, 20. Salon des Jeux et Chateau de Choisy, 55. del Sarto, 60. Saxo Grammaticus, 74. Schefer, 2, 57. Segantini, 100 Shakespeare, 74. Sight and Intellect, 96, 97 ; Animal’s and Children’s compared, 97. Spagnoletto, 106. ' Stiemart, 19. Stockholm Museum, 104. Taste, 10. Teniers, 16, 25, 71, 72, 73, 94. Terborch, 71, 73, 94. Terray, 66. Tessin, 40, 41. Thornhill, 19 note. Titian, 20, 74, 113. Tone, 108, 114. Traditional Teaching, 5. de Troy, 19, 21, 22; Hunt Breakfast, 21, 22; Death of the Stag, 21, 22 ; After the Ball, 21 ; Petite Liseuse, 21 ; Before the Ball, 21 ; Esther, etc., 21. Turner, 74. Vandieres. See Marigny. Vandyck, 94. Velazquez, 10, 11, 24, 25, 60, 74, 80, 100, 102, 103, 113, 117. Venetian School, 5, 16. Verhaeren, 107. Vermeer, 71, 81, 100, 117. Vernet, 54. Victoire, Mme., 68. Villain, 107. Voiriot, 62. Vollon, 107. Voltaire, 3. Watteau, 2, 12, 14, 15 ; La Fontaine, 16 ; 17, 18, 19, 21, 70, 74. Watts, 24. Webb, 61. Weenix, 71. VAN DER W ERFF, 75. Whistler, 10, 24 ; Pile of Old Battersea Bridge, 107 ; 108. WlLLE, 41. Wilson, 19. Zeuxis, 82. 143 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 3 3125 00765 5885