THROUGHOUT the seventeenth century the impulse for the artistic activity of France emanated from Rome. But before discussing the dominating personalities of the age we must refer to a few painters who occupy a more or less isolated position in the art of their country.

The naturalism of Caravaggio was introduced into France by two of his followers, Jean de Boulongne, called Le Valentin (1591–1634), and Simon Vouet (1590–1649), who was also slightly influenced by the Venetians. Valentin spent the best part of his life in Rome, where he died in 1634. The Louvre owns, among eight pictures from his brush (not all of which are exhibited), his masterpiece, The Innocence of Susannah recognised (No. 56), which has the vigorous handling and bold chiaroscuro of the Neapolitan school.

Simon Vouet, who came to England at the age of fifteen, and subsequently travelled in Turkey and Italy, where he remained until his appointment as Painter to the King took him back to Paris in 1627, tried to combine the naturalism of Caravaggio with the colouring of the Venetians, an endeavour in which he was only partially successful, as he was not equipped by nature with a sensuous appreciation of beautiful colour. The Louvre owns a dozen Scriptural subjects and allegorical figures by Vouet; but even the best of them, The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (No. 971), is but a dull and heavy performance; whilst his Portrait of Louis XIII. (No. 976) is wholly devoid of artistic merit. Perhaps he owes his fame chiefly to the fact that he was the master of the absurdly overrated Le Sueur and of that art despot of the Louis xiv. era, Charles Le Brun.

THE BROTHERS LE NAIN

Of far greater artistic significance are the three brothers, Antoine, Louis, and Matthieu Le Nain, who were born at Laon, and flourished in Paris during the first half of the seventeenth century. Antoine and Louis died in 1648, and Matthieu in 1677. Very little is known of their history, but the splendid array of their works in Gallery XIII. proves them to have had close affinities with the contemporary Dutch and Flemish schools, even if their manner of composition suggests close acquaintance with Spanish art. Their subjects, too, like those of many of the Northern masters of their time, are taken from the daily life of the people, which is rendered with naÏve honesty, and at times with a real appreciation of beautiful pigment. So far it has been impossible to distinguish between the works of the three brothers, as even the signatures “le nain, fecit 1647,” on the Portraits in an Interior (No. 543), and “le nain, fecit anno 1642,” on the Peasants at their Meal (No. 548, La Caze Gallery), afford no clue to the solution of the problem. The striking differences in brushwork and colouring, which are to be noticed in the eleven Le Nain pictures at the Louvre, would certainly suggest that the three brothers did not, or did only rarely, collaborate on the same pictures. The painter of The Return from Haymaking (No. 542), with its prophetic suggestion of the plein-air effects of late nineteenth-century art, cannot have had much in common with the painter of the dull and dingy Denial of St. Peter (No. 547).

The founder of the Classicist school of French painting, which has had official approval and support from his time to the present day, was Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Born at Les Andelys in Normandy, he went to Paris at the age of eighteen, and became so fascinated by the examples of antique sculpture that, in spite of his extreme poverty, he determined to continue his studies in Rome. It is unnecessary here to relate the struggles that preceded his arrival at Rome in 1624. He frequented the school of Domenichino; but what was more decisive for the formation of his style was his unceasing study of antique sculpture, in which he was guided and encouraged by his friend, the sculptor Duquesnoy. After some years of continued poverty, he found at last liberal patronage, and rose to such fame that on his return to Paris in 1640 he was appointed Painter-in-Ordinary to the King. However, the duties and restrictions attached to this position proved so irksome to Poussin, that after two years he returned to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life.

At the Louvre is to be found an imposing array of forty canvases by Poussin, whose art is as typical an expression of French genius as the poetry of Corneille. It is essentially intellectual, based on theoretical rules of design and composition, not in the least sensuous or emotional, but always coldly classical. The vast majority of his paintings at the Louvre are in such a deplorable state of deterioration and neglect that it is almost impossible to form an adequate idea of their original colour, but even the most ardent admirers of the master do not maintain that he was a great colourist. His pictures are entirely dependent on beauty of form and rhythmic design. They might almost be described as painted reliefs. This applies at least to his treatment of the human figure. His conception of landscape, though still severely classical, is more pictorial and testifies to a genuine love of Nature—Nature idealised by a lofty imagination. To appreciate his greatness as a landscape painter, one has only to examine the glorious setting to his Orpheus and Eurydice (No. 740). The figures here are really of quite subordinate importance—mere incidents in a landscape painted with consummate mastery, perfect in linear and aerial perspective.

The Shepherds in Arcadia (No. 734, Plate XXXVII.) may be quoted to illustrate the calculated rhythm of his design and his indebtedness to classic art from which he derived his nobility of form. Real dramatic action was beyond Poussin’s range. His famous Rape of the Sabine Women (No. 724) is a striking instance of his failure to grasp the significant difference between dramatic movement and mere heroic posturing. Far more inspired, and therefore more natural and dramatically effective, is the superb circular painting for a ceiling commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu and representing Time rescuing Truth from the Attacks of Envy and Discord (No. 735). The allegory is said to have been intended as an allusion to the circumstances which induced Poussin to leave Paris for good. The design has more real vitality than is generally to be found in Poussin’s work; the action of the figures is more natural; and the colour music is not drowned by the prevalence of dingy browns. The decorative effect heralds in a strange way the art of the next century, and particularly that of Boucher.

To see Poussin in the right perspective as regards the world’s great masters, one need only compare his two Bacchanals (Nos. 729 and 730) with Titian’s rendering of a similar theme. The comparison is disastrous for the eclectic Frenchman. A Portrait of the Painter (No. 743) from Poussin’s own brush is to be found in Room XIV., where no fewer than thirty-seven of his pictures are on view.

Strangely enough, the otherwise very complete collection of French pictures at the Louvre does not contain a single example of Poussin’s brother-in-law, Gaspard Dughet, better known as Gaspard Poussin (1613–1675), who devoted himself more exclusively to landscape than did his more illustrious relative. Nicolas Poussin’s influence also became decisive for the formation of the style of Claude GellÉe, called Le Lorrain (1600–1682), who is represented at the Louvre by seventeen pictures (Nos. 310–326), most of which also have suffered considerably from discoloration and neglect. Claude, who was the child of poor parents, started life as a cook. In this capacity he went to Rome, where his talent for art was discovered by the landscape painter Agostino Tassi, to whom he served as cook and apprentice. Having learned all he could from his master, he returned to France in 1625, but, like Poussin, preferred to go back to Rome after two years spent in his native country. In the Papal city he lived the rest of his days, and rose to fame and affluence.

He was essentially a landscape painter. The historical and legendary incidents introduced in such pictures as The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsis (No. 314), or Ulysses restoring Chryseis to her Father (No. 316), were to him a mere excuse for painting classic landscapes and imaginary buildings of noble proportion bathed in a golden atmosphere, which has hardly been rivalled by any contemporary or later painter. It is only on rare occasions, as in the View of the Campo Vaccino at Rome (No. 311), that he applied his gifts to the portrayal of nature. As a rule, his views are carefully arranged combinations of architectural and landscape elements brought together arbitrarily, and generally disposed in the manner of the wings and backcloth of a stage scene, but connected by the unity of light and atmosphere. Considering this method, it is amazing that his memory enabled him to invent such imaginary scenes with so great a degree of truth. The View of a Sea Port (No. 317, Plate XXXVIII.), in the subdued light of a misty day, is a magnificent instance of his masterly management of aerial perspective. It is signed and dated “claude in roma, 1646.” It is generally known how much Turner in his first manner owed to the example of Claude. That even Watteau was indebted to him may be gathered from such pictures as The Village FÊte (No. 312), which, signed and dated, “claudio, inv. RomÆ, 1639,” contains in germ the elements that constituted the greatness of the eighteenth-century master.

LE SUEUR

Whilst Poussin and Claude were working in Rome, two pupils of Vouet reaped the highest honours in France. Eustache Le Sueur (1617–1655), whom his compatriots in their incomprehensible over-estimation of his mediocre gifts have called the “French Raphael,” certainly strove to emulate the divine Urbinate; but how badly he succeeded in this endeavour is to be gathered from the fifty-two paintings, by the placing of which his memory is retained at the Louvre. What dignity there is in the simple flow of line in his designs, is completely ruined by the offensive crudeness of his colour. Even allowing for the inevitable fluctuations of taste in matters of art, it is difficult now to understand how enthusiasm could ever have been aroused by the works that were considered his masterpieces, St. Paul preaching at Ephesus (No. 560), which at the beginning of last century was valued at £10,000 (!), and the twenty-two Scenes from the Life of St. Bruno (Nos. 564–585), painted between 1645 and 1648 for the small cloister of the Carthusians in Paris. This series, which is a severe tax on the patience of the conscientious visitor, fills the whole of Gallery XII., whilst other paintings connected with it intrude into the adjoining room, which is consecrated to the brothers Le Nain.

Before passing on to Vouet’s most famous pupil, Charles Le Brun, whose despotic power imposed upon French painting during the “grand siÈcle” its pompous rhetorical character, mention should be made of SÉbastien Bourdon (1616–1671), who, but for his prolonged sojourn in Rome, which fed his ambition to excel in the “grand style,” would have been one of the most remarkable artists of his century. This conclusion is, at least, justified by his precious little painting of a group of Beggars (No. 76), which is perhaps unrivalled in French seventeenth-century art for quality of paint and appreciation of tone values; and by his excellent Portrait of the Philosopher RenÉ Descartes (No. 78), who was also painted by Frans Hals (No. 2383). In his treatment of scriptural and historical subjects he does not rise above the dull level of his contemporaries.

CHARLES LE BRUN

Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) studied first under Vouet, but, attracted by Poussin’s stronger personality, followed that master to Rome in 1642, and continued his studies under his guidance. When Le Brun returned to Paris four years later, his reputation was already firmly established. Patronised by Louis xiv.’s powerful minister, Colbert, he was placed at the head of the newly founded Academy of Painting, and of the Gobelins Manufactory, became First Painter to the King and “Prince” of the French Academy in Rome; and was, in fact, given absolute power in all matters concerning the fostering of the arts and art industries. This despotic power explains how it was possible that Le Brun, who notwithstanding his brilliant executive skill and extraordinary facility never rose above the level of mediocrity, could impose his uninspired personality upon every phase of French artistic activity of his time.

His enormous canvases at the Louvre, which probably occupy more space than has been allotted to any other painter, vainly endeavour to conceal the lack of real emotion and of a central motif by theatrical gestures and overcrowding. His masterpiece at the Louvre is The Tent of Darius (No. 511), which represents the family of Darius imploring Alexander the Great for mercy. But even here one feels the absence of dramatic inspiration and concentration. Less successful are the other scenes from the history of Alexander: The Passage of the Granicus (No. 509), The Battle of Arbela (No. 510), Alexander and Porus (No. 512), Alexander entering Babylon (No. 513). The whole series was painted between 1661 and 1668 for execution in tapestry and was exhibited at the Salon in 1673, the year in which for the first time an official catalogue was compiled. Besides many scriptural and mythological subjects, and a few portraits from Le Bran’s brush, there are at the Louvre his decorative paintings on the ceiling of the Galerie d’Apollon in which the magnificent centre panel was added two centuries later by Delacroix.

PIERRE MIGNARD

Le Bran’s successor in the direction of the Academy and the Gobelin works, Pierre Mignard (1612–1695), called “Le Romain” owing to his long domicile in Rome after the completion of his studies under Vouet, did not have his precursor’s large decorative faculty and sweeping ease of execution. Yet the excessively affected grace and the careful finish of his pictures, of which The Virgin of the Grapes (No. 628) is a thoroughly characteristic instance, helped to raise him to an exalted position in the opinion of his contemporaries. To this day the affected style of prettiness of which he was the high priest is known as “mignardise.” His power was altogether insufficient for the ambitious decorative tasks he set himself in emulation of Le Brun. If he has any claim to the esteem of posterity, it is for having left the world a portrait gallery of the notable men and women of his time—portraits which are by no means free from flattery and mannered grace, but constitute, nevertheless, a valuable historical record. Of these the Louvre owns the Portrait of the Artist at Work in his Studio (No. 640); the Portrait of FranÇoise d’Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon (No. 639); and the life-size group of Louis of France, Son of Louis XIV., his Wife, and their three Children (No. 638).

Colbert and Le Brun had succeeded but too well in carrying out the powerful minister’s ambition to direct French art towards industrial and decorative aims, to train an army of capable producers, and to place the whole organisation on what may be called a business basis. The system was, however, not favourable for the growth of independent genius. With few exceptions, the whole generation of painters that grew up under Le Brun’s rÉgime are of no significance to the history of art. There were among them many capable craftsmen, but they only repeated in a feebler way what Le Brun had done on a more imposing and dazzling scale. Whole dynasties of painters arose, like the Boulognes and the Coypels, who, under official patronage, filled acres of canvas with florid, theatrical renderings of scriptural subjects, and with the bombastic mock-heroics of classic history and mythology seen through baroque spectacles.

LE BRUN’S FOLLOWERS

It would be giving undue importance to these painters of the Louis xiv. period if we were to go beyond a mere enumeration of their leaders and their chief works at the Louvre. None of them possessed any marked individuality; and most of them were linked together, not only by similar aims and ambitions, but also by family ties. Four members of the Coypel family rose to great eminence among their fellow-artists, and to important official positions. NoËl Coypel (1628–1707), the painter of the four historical compositions, Solon defending his Laws before the Athenians (No. 157), Ptolomy Philadelphus giving the Jews their Freedom (No. 158), Trajan giving a Public Audience (No. 159), and the Foresight of Septimus Severus (No. 160), all of which were originally executed for the Council Chamber at Versailles; his sons Antoine Coypel (1661–1722), whose best known pictures at the Louvre are the Susannah and the Elders (No. 169) and the Democritos (No. 174), which recalls Jordaens in its exuberant life, and NoËl Nicolas Coypel (1692–1734), whose goddesses and nymphs already reflect the taste which dominated the eighteenth century; as well as Antoine’s son, Charles Antoine Coypel (1694–1752), whose uninspired art may best be studied in the Perseus delivering Andromeda (No. 180).

The Triumph of Bacchus (No. 447) and The Annunciation (No. 445), by Charles de La Fosse (1636–1716); Hercules fighting the Centaurs (No. 53), by Bon Boulogne (1649–1717); and The Marriage of St. Catherine (No. 55), by his brother Louis Boulogne (1654–1733), only serve to illustrate the mediocrity of their respective authors. The impersonality of Bon Boulogne’s art had at least the advantage that his teaching left free scope for personal expression to his many pupils.

Even the still-life painting of the “grand siÈcle,” which found its chief exponent in Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (1634–1699), partakes of the love of pomp and display that characterises this period. Gold and silver vases, precious stuffs and furniture generally accompany his flowers, which are painted without real appreciation of their natural beauty, and in purely local tints without a hint of the effect of each colour upon its surroundings. The Flowers (No. 648), in the La Caze Gallery, may be mentioned as a typical example.

BATTLE PAINTERS

The battle painter, Jacques Courtois (1621–1676), called Borgognone and Le Bourguignon, though born in France, was so completely under the spell of the art of Italy, the country where he spent almost his entire life, that he can scarcely be reckoned as belonging to the French school. His furious cavalry mÊlÉes, though entirely imaginative (as such confused encounters of horsemen piercing each other’s ranks have never taken place in actual warfare), are painted, like the Cavalry Fight (No. 151), with a touch as swift as it is sure and expressive, and full of exuberant vitality.

Joseph Parrocel (1678–1704), who, during a prolonged visit to Rome had benefited by Borgognone’s teaching, could not, after his return to France in 1675, escape the current of thought which dominated his time, and introduced the stage-heroic note into his master’s sham realism. The glorification of his king is the purpose of such pictures as The Passage of the Rhine by Louis XIV. (No. 678). The chief interest is centred in the richly apparelled group on their prancing steeds in the foreground.

JEAN JOUVENET

The Descent from the Cross (No. 437), by Jean Jouvenet (1644–1717), which has been honoured by a position among the masterpieces in the Salon CarrÉ, is certainly one of the most estimable compositions produced in France during this active but uninspired century. Not only in the general disposition of the design, but also in the use of colour as a constructive element, Jouvenet here acknowledges his indebtedness to Rubens, although he could never rival the luminous glow of the great Fleming’s palette. Most of his other pictures suffer from dull heavy shadows and exaggerated expression. His strong and honest painting of the kneeling group in The AbbÉ Delaporte officiating at the High altar of NÔtre-Dame (No. 440), makes us regret that he did not devote himself more to subjects taken from the life of his time.

An artist who was less tied to the tyranny of the official school, and imbued with a really profound sense of the beautiful, was Jean Baptiste Santerre (1658–1717). The delicate perfection of form of the nude in Susannah and the Elders (No. 835) approaches him to David and Ingres at their best. But this very perfection carries the germ of decay, because it is incapable of progress, and stagnation in art signifies death. As regards his technique, Santerre was extremely careful and conscientious. He reduced his palette to but five colours, and waited ten years after the completion of a picture before putting on the final coat of varnish.

THE PORTRAIT PAINTERS

The two great portrait painters who flourished under the “Grand Monarque,” Rigaud and LargilliÈre, were preceded by an artist to whom, perhaps owing to the relative scarceness of his works, history has done but scant justice. Whilst the Louvre contains thirteen portraits by LargilliÈre and seventeen by Rigaud, only two pictures stand to the name of Claude Lefebvre (1632–1675); but his Portraits of a Master and his Pupil (No. 529) and the Portrait of a Man (No. 530), are distinguished by a penetrating insight into character and an incisive vigour of style that form a striking contrast to the shallow bombast introduced even into portraiture by the fashionable painters to the Court. Lefebvre has been compared with Van Dyck. The Portrait of a Man (No. 530) has more in common with the brilliant audacity of Frans Hals’s brushwork. Lefebvre worked for some years in London, where he was a favourite at the Court of Charles ii.

Rigaud’s manner of portraiture has none of these serious, manly qualities, but his skill in arranging the sumptuous accessories which play so important a part in his portraits,—as important, at least, as the actual features of the sitters,—secured him the patronage of the pomp-loving, haughty nobility. Hyacinthe Rigaud y Ros (1659–1743) was born at Perpignan and educated at Montpellier and Lyons. It was the advice of Le Brun that saved him from the customary pilgrimage to Rome and its inevitable consequences. It was Le Brun who recognised Rigaud’s bent for portraiture, and launched him on the brilliant career which gained for him the title of “the French Van Dyck.” Rigaud was enormously productive. Between 1681 and 1698 he is said to have painted six hundred and twenty-three portraits. And he had then another forty-five years before him!

Rigaud’s best known picture at the Louvre is the stately portrait d’apparat of King Louis XIV. (No. 781), a life-size full length, in which the spirit of the time, the curious blending of supercilious haughtiness, love of display, and affected grace of manner, are happily expressed in the monarch’s attitude and in the whole setting. The picture is signed and dated, “peint par hyacinthe rigaud, 1701.” The same tendencies are to be noted in the full length Portrait of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux (No. 783), in which it is surprising that the prelate’s personality is not completely smothered by the splendid profusion of the accessories. His gifts appear, however, in a better light in his excellent Portraits of Marie Serre, the Artist’s Mother (No. 784), with the same head, honestly and soberly painted, twice on the same canvas, once in sharp profile looking to the right, and again, facing this, a three-quarter profile to the left. Wholly unexpected is the delicacy and softness of one of his pictures in the La Caze Room: the Portrait of the Duke of LesdiguiÈres as a Child (No. 792). His solitary excursion into the domain of “grand art” at the Louvre is at the same time his last work: The Presentation in the Temple (No. 780), which in grouping and lighting owes much to the study of Rembrandt.

Nicolas de LargilliÈre (1656–1746) was born in Paris, but was taken when still an infant to Antwerp, where he became a pupil of Goebouw. From 1674 to 1680 he worked in London as an assistant of Sir Peter Lely, from whom he acquired the clever tricks and mannerisms in the painting of draperies and the textures of silks and velvets and other materials, which were to form so important a part of his artistic equipment. After Lely’s death LargilliÈre went to Paris, where he not only shared with Rigaud the patronage of the Court as portrait painter, but secured many important commissions for historical paintings which, perhaps to the advantage of his fame, are now all but forgotten. LargilliÈre was not without distinction as a brilliant and daring colourist. Nor was he incapable, on occasion, of seizing the subtleties of his sitters’ character. But his praiseworthy qualities are more than balanced by his unpleasant affectations and by the baroque squirminess of his line. This tendency carried him to such insufferable excesses as the conglomeration of lumpy bosses which does duty for a hand in his Portrait of M. Du Vaucel (No. 484), in the La Caze Room.

His boastful skill in the management of the satins and velvets in the overrated portrait group of LargilliÈre with his Wife and Daughter in a Garden (No. 491), cannot atone for the singularly unfortunate and clumsy composition, and for the self-conscious affectation of each individual pose. More satisfactory, in spite of the superabundance of accessories and outward pomp, which in this case is a fitting attribute to the character of the sitter, is the Portrait of Charles Le Brun, First Painter to King Louis XIV. (No. 482), who is depicted in a colossal wig, seated before an easel, and wearing a superbly painted red velvet cloak.

LANDSCAPE PAINTERS

It almost goes without saying that landscape art, which, even in its most artificial and “classic” phase is inspired by the love and study of nature, was sadly neglected in so artificial an age. Among its leading exponents must be mentioned the two Patels, father and son, of whose life we have but scant knowledge, and whose pictures resemble one another’s so closely that it is often difficult to determine which is by Pierre Patel, the father (1620?–1676), and which by Pierre Antoine Patel, the son (1648–1708), especially as both adopted the signature, “p. patel.” In the case of the older artist’s The Exposure of Moses on the Nile (No. 680), and Moses burying the Egyptian whom he had Slain (No. 681), and his son’s four landscapes representing the months, January (No. 684), April (No. 685), August (No. 686), and September (No. 687), all doubts are set aside by the dates which accompany the signature. Both artists were close followers of Claude Lorrain, although their precise technique suggests the influence of Adam Elsheimer.

A truer perception of nature came to France from the North, whence, indeed, throughout the history of French painting vitality was infused into an art that was cramped by officially imposed canons of Italian perfection. As far back as the time of Le Brun, FÉlibien and Roger de Piles had begun in the field of literary polemics the long struggle between the Poussinistes and Rubenistes, the adherents of an art dominated by design and perfect drawing, against the partisans of colour as a vital element. During the whole seventeenth century the Poussinistes, who commanded all the official support, held the field, though the Netherlandish strain was represented by some of the finest painters of that period, like the brothers Le Nain, C. Lefebvre, and Philippe de Champaigne. In the eighteenth century the Northern influence became supreme through Watteau and Chardin on the one hand, and on the other through Boucher and Fragonard, both of whom were powerfully influenced by the study of Rubens’s works.

DESPORTES

In landscape the healthy opposition to the prevailing classic style appears first in the work of the Flemish battle painter Van der Meulen, whose backgrounds, sketched on the spot, show a fine feeling for aerial perspective and atmospheric effects. But his example apparently attracted no followers. Though not, strictly speaking, a landscape painter, FranÇois Desportes (1661–1743), who owed less to his early training under Nicasius, a third-rate Fleming, than to his habit of using his own eyes and studying nature direct, treated landscape with similar freedom in the backgrounds to his portraits and pictures of the chase. In his paintings of animals, dead or alive, limp bodies of hares and birds arranged as still-life with flowers and fruits, or in a very frenzy of movement in his hunting pieces, he endeavours to emulate Snyders, without quite rivalling the Flemish master. Of his twenty-five pictures at the Louvre, twenty-three (Nos. 225–248) belong to this genre, but not all of them are actually exhibited. The Portrait of a Huntsman (No. 224), and the Portrait of the Artist (No. 249) seated under a tree, holding a gun in his right, and caressing with his left hand a hound whose paw is resting on a pile of dead game, serve to prove that he knew how to manage portraiture with the same bold, frank spirit and summary breadth. He was particularly happy in rendering, without laboured detail, the varying textures of fur and plumage.

Desportes’s only successful rival as a painter of animals and hunting scenes was Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755). How closely his style resembled that of the elder painter is to be seen from his Wolf Hunt (No. 667), the Dog watching Dead Game (No. 668), and one or two similar pieces at the Louvre. Oudry was first taught by his father, and subsequently by LargilliÈre, who encouraged him in the painting of still-life, and directed his study particularly to the observation of tone values and of the interchange of colour that takes place between objects in close proximity to each other. In 1734, Oudry was appointed Director of the Beauvais Tapestry Works, which took a new lease of life under his able management. It was he who supplied the designs for the Fables of La Fontaine, which figure so frequently in the tapestries woven at that great establishment. Perhaps his most interesting picture at the Louvre is the large landscape The Farm (No. 670), signed and dated 1750, one of the earliest examples in French art of a rustic scene painted for its own sake, without any attempt at ennobling the landscape by forcing it into a formal arrangement.