[Pg 326]
[Pg 327]

CHAPTER XIV

THE FRENCH SCHOOL

A study of French miniature painters has led the present writer to place their work on a higher level than has heretofore, perhaps, been generally assigned to it, and has shown him that there have been not a few but many French miniaturists of remarkable excellence, and that they practised their art during a period which we are accustomed to look upon as one of anarchy, of tumult, and of bloodshed; a fact which is not only interesting in itself, but has the advantage of throwing light upon the period also; on its life, and on the men and women who played prominent parts during that eventful period of modern history, for we find ample evidence that even during the Terror itself the miniature painter was busy at work. In this respect, as in many others, a recent exhibition of eighteenth century French Art, at the BibliothÈque Nationale in Paris, revealed much. Indeed, it may be said that it was the most noteworthy event in connection with miniatures, and the claims they have upon the notice of students of art, of manners, and of costume, which has taken place for years.

It was recognised as a revelation by the learned authorities of the French national library, who were responsible for its arrangement, foremost amongst whom stood the late lamented Henri Bouchot, "Directeur du dÉpartement des Estampes," a gentleman to whose courtesy I have been personally indebted, and whose critical acumen was well known.

It was, they said, a revelation; they spoke of it in relation to its technical aspects more particularly. It brought to light a number of French miniature painters whose ability was amply demonstrated, but who were almost or quite unknown at the present day, even to their own countrymen.

But the personality of these miniature painters and the remarkable people who sat to them must not make us ignore some earlier men to whom I shall now briefly refer.

In the first place I may call attention to the fact that, as might be expected, a comparison between French painters-in-little and those of Great Britain reveals some interesting differences, both technically and in respect of the treatment of the subject. The latter differences, which spring from national characteristics, will, I think, be brought out as we come to deal with the work of the various artists, and I shall not stop to enlarge upon them now.

At a time when we could boast in England of no native artist of importance—hardly one, indeed, can be named, for Nicholas Hilliard was not born until the middle of the sixteenth century—there was working in France a family of artists known as the Clouets, who produced portraiture of great excellence. What[Pg 329]
[Pg 330]
[Pg 331] I have termed elsewhere the tangled skein of the history of the Clouets would take a great deal of unravelling. It is a subject to which foreign critics of eminence have devoted much time and trouble. Without following all their researches in detail, or professing to utter anything like the last word upon an obscure and difficult subject, it may be said to have been proved that the family was undoubtedly of Flemish extraction, and that they were firmly established at the French Court at the beginning of the sixteenth century. M. Laborde, in his "Renaissance des Arts À la Cour de France," quotes a deed of gift of property which had escheated to the Crown dated 1516, the second year of the reign of FranÇois I., which shows that, at any rate, by that time the Clouets were established in Royal favour.

The surname was probably originally Clouwet, and two members of the family, father and son, have been commonly known as Janet. This duplication of names, to say nothing of the varieties of spelling, has led to a good deal of confusion in the attribution of works by these artists. Among the latest authorities upon this subject I may quote my friend M. Dimier, of Paris, who contributed a chapter to my book on the portraiture of Mary Queen of Scots.[5]

The subject has a significance of its own for French art critics as throwing light upon the influences exerted upon French artists at the period of the Renaissance—that is to say, whether the work by the men of that time which has come down to us owes its highest artistic qualities to Italian influence, to native genius, or to Flemish influence. Critics are divided into two camps: those who stoutly maintain the claims of the French artists to originality, and those who are equally confident that it is to Italian influence we owe all that is most attractive in French art of that period. M. Dimier has acutely pointed out that whilst the Italian influence theory is anathema to many, these same critics allow the assertion of Flemish influence to pass without a protest.

Be all this as it may, it is quite clear that the vogue for portraiture in France at the beginning of the sixteenth century was extraordinary. Contemporary inventories show that drawings by the thousand must have existed. They were kept in albums in the houses of the great, and many collections are known. Catherine de Medici loved to have her children painted, and M. BonafflÉ has shown that her estate included more than a hundred such portraits. There are numbers of these to be seen to-day at Chantilly, the old home of the CondÉs, not the least interesting of which is a series of eighty or ninety drawings in black and red chalk that once belonged to the Earl of Carlisle and formed part of the famous Castle Howard Collection.

Before leaving the Clouets, I may mention that a painting, measuring sixty-one by fifty-three inches, of Henri II. was sold at Christie's in January, 1905, for £2,500. Those who were fortunate enough to have visited the Exhibition de Primitifs FranÇais at Paris, in 1904, will remember a number of interesting portraits attributed to the two Clouets, of which they cannot have failed to admire the beautiful portrait from the Louvre of Elizabeth of Austria. The original drawing for this is in the BibliothÈque Nationale, and the existence of the two works—that is, the crayon from nature and the beautifully finished picture in oils—is interesting as showing the practice of the artist.

In the remarkable Exhibition just named the student will have made the acquaintance of many names probably new to him, and can hardly have failed to observe the number attributed to Corneille de Lyon, most of them dated somewhere about 1548. This is an artist who has only of late years won recognition. He, too, was a Fleming, but the only name which can be assigned to him is Corneille. M. Dimier says he was a native of the Hague who settled at Lyons. He surmises that the Royal visits to Lyons in the year 1536 were productive of Royal patronage. But M. Dimier appears to hold very conflicting views as to the merits of this artist, and discovers great divergences in his style; thus he says: "His [Corneille's] knowledge is so scanty that he can scarce fill in his own feeble design; in the best of these pictures the bust and shoulders are like students' work, and verge on the ridiculous"; yet his texture, he says, elsewhere, "is delicate, limpid, and absolutely fresh, the total effect the result of genius of a very small order." But in a portrait of the Baron de Chateauneuf, which does, or did, belong to Mr. Charles Butler, he finds work which he says is scarcely unworthy of Holbein; "in depth of knowledge, boldness of execution, and extreme beauty of colour this little work is a masterpiece, far and away superior to anything which I have ascribed to the Janets," &c.

I have quoted these opinions at some length so that readers may judge for themselves of the relative importance of this early artist, all of whose work exhibited at the Exhibition de Primitifs was small in scale, and most of it, I have reason to believe, new to some students of art.

When we leave the Court of the Valois we seem to come to a great gap in our subject; and it is not until we arrive at the names of Petitot and his followers, a subject which has already been dealt with in Chapter VIII., that there is anything of importance to arrest our attention. This book is in no sense a detailed history of miniature painting; it merely aims at discussing some of the salient points of a wide subject; and, therefore, I make no further apology for passing on to the work which was executed in the eighteenth century, when several artists of remarkable ability appear on the horizon. I propose to take a few of the most eminent of these names, and to deal with them in chronological order.

Following that classification, the amiable Rosalba Carriera will come first. She was born in Venice in 1675; and though some would deny her any extraordinary talent, certain it is that she achieved European reputation. This lady must have possessed charming manners and very endearing qualities, for she is reputed to have been plain in personal appearance. Some ten or twelve years before her death,[Pg 335]
[Pg 336]
[Pg 337] which occurred in her native place in 1757, she became blind, and devoted her means and the closing period of her life to works of charity. She painted a good many miniatures, which are dispersed in various collections, also landscapes. But probably her fame will rest most securely upon her work in pastels, of which there are examples in the Louvre; I recall two in the Salon des Pastels which are not unworthy of the fine specimens of that kind of work which hang around them; and that is high praise indeed, for, as every one knows, work in crayons was carried by French artists of the eighteenth century to a pitch of astonishing excellence; some of the portraits in that room by La Tour, for example, can hardly be surpassed for truth to nature and beauty of drawing; with almost the strength of oil paintings, they have a character and charm peculiar to themselves. In landscape work Rosalba earned great renown, though there are some who say that she was over-praised in her day and by her generation.

Jean Baptiste MassÉ has been described as a link between seventeenth and eighteenth century miniature painters. He was also an engraver, the son of a Protestant goldsmith of Chateaudun, born in 1687. In spite of his religion, the Regent obtained his admission to the Academy. He worked in gouache and his style is said to have influenced Hall. The portrait of Natoire here shown gives a good idea of his powers. He lived till 1767.

In FranÇois Boucher, who was born just at the beginning of the century, in 1704, and died in 1770, we have an artist of consummate ability, whose renown does not depend upon his miniatures. He may be called the decorative artist par excellence of the century; but probably many of the little nudities (of which there are a large collection to be seen at Hertford House) which are attributed to Boucher are really by Charlier and others of his followers. The learned editor of the catalogue of the collection of French miniatures shown at the BibliothÈque Nationale in 1906 is my authority for saying that some of the miniatures which are signed Boucher are by Madame Boucher, not the wife of our painter, but a lady bearing the same name. Thus the connection of FranÇois Boucher with our subject appears to be slight, and as his other work is so well known we need not stop to discuss him further.

Jacques Charlier comes next to his master in point of date, having been born in 1720. Very little biographical information is to be gleaned about this artist; nevertheless he was extremely well known in his time, and his genius, such as it was, appears to have been admirably adapted to the taste of the day. Thus, the Comte de Caylus, the amateur who has left us that valuable memoir of Watteau which the Goncourts rescued from oblivion, is said to have possessed a hundred examples by Charlier; and in 1772 the Prince de Conti commissioned him to paint a dozen miniatures at 1,200 livres apiece. Louis XV. also extended his patronage to Charlier, who painted upon boxes most of the members of that monarch's family.

It would seem that after the death of Louis XV. Charlier's reputation waned, and the value of his works diminished. He had a sale of his productions which by no means answered his expectations, and shortly afterwards he died. Hertford House can boast of a large number of works attributed to Charlier; but, for the most part, they consist of the familiar Toilet of Venus, nymphs bathing, and such-like subjects which we are wont to associate with Boucher. But here and there will be found a portrait—one of Madame Elizabeth of France, for instance.

The versatile Jean HonorÉ Fragonard, says M. Bouchot, painted miniatures only for his amusement. This critic also attributes them to Madame Fragonard. Be their authorship what it may, examples which can be safely attributed to him are extremely rare and greatly sought after. A representative one is to be seen in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and another is in the Wallace Collection.[6] Each may be described as a portrait study of a young girl; in each the handling is broad in the extreme, and resembles a freely painted water-colour drawing in effect.

I now come to a miniature painter proper, of the highest excellence, viz., Pierre Adolphe Hall. He has been termed—and I, for one, should agree with this verdict—the finest miniature painter of the eighteenth century. The facility of his execution is simply marvellous; the sweetness and tenderness of expression that he gives to his faces, and the invariable refinement of his works, make them delightful. His manner is entirely peculiar to himself, body colour being largely used. The work is broad in style and effect, and yet the features are often minute.

The career of this prolific artist was somewhat chequered; and although he earned large sums of money by his brush—as much as twenty to thirty thousand livres a year, it is said—he died in poverty, and left his family in want. He was born at Stockholm, in 1736. When twenty-four years of age he came to Paris to study; here he remained many years, and married a Mlle. Godin, of Versailles, whose father was killed in the Revolution. Gustavus III. wished Hall to return to Sweden; but he had become so thoroughly French that he refused.

The Revolution sounded the knell of the artist's fortunes. Quitting Paris, he started for the north, hoping to find employment and commissions on the way; but at LiÈge he was seized with apoplexy, and died there, in 1793.

In the Exhibition of Miniatures at the French National Library to which I have several times referred, there were over fifty examples attributed to Hall, many of superb quality and undoubted authenticity. I do not mention the price obtained at auction as an infallible test of the quality of a miniature, or of any other work of art—for fashion reigns supreme in the sale-room as elsewhere; nevertheless, it is perhaps worth recording that two miniatures by Hall, shown in this collection, fetched the sum of 28,000 and 60,000 francs respectively, one being a portrait of the Countess Helflinger, nÉe O'Dune—an exquisitely soft and tender example, now belonging to M. Cognac; while the other came from[Pg 341]
[Pg 342]
[Pg 343] the MÜlbacher Sale, and represented, not Louisa, Queen of Prussia, as was wrongly stated in Swedish on the back of the frame, but probably, since the portrait is entirely French in style, that of Mlle. Dugazon in the character of Nina, as may be seen by a comparison with an engraving of the subject by Janinet after Houin, and the portrait by Mme. VigÉe le Brun of the famous actress which now belongs to the Comtesse de Pourtales.

The year after Hall, was born in Stockholm another Swedish artist, destined to attain great popularity in France, and, like his greater compatriot, to fall into neglect, was Nicolas Lavreince, or, to give him his proper name, Nicolas Lanfransen.

When about thirty years of age he came to Paris to pursue his studies, and the work of his dainty, minute, not always too decorous brush was just suited to the taste of the people for whom he worked and amongst whom he lived. He, too, like Hall, drew Nina, and the Dugazon in the rÔle of Babet, and the Du Barry of course; all of whom were to be seen in the BibliothÈque Nationale a year or two ago, each portrait being marked by extreme delicacy of touch and minuteness of finish. It must be owned that there is an extraordinary charm about the work of this artist, apart from its merits of execution; but it is a charm difficult to put into words. They have not the unreality of the fÊtes galantes, nor the domesticity of our Francis Wheatley, but something between the two, something of the daintiness of Watteau combined with the homeliness of the English artist.

He worked a good deal in body colour, and his gouaches have been engraved in colour and in black and white by Janinet and Vidal. Many of these, such as "La Comparaison," "L'Aveu Difficile," "L'IndiscrÉtion," are very celebrated, and now of extreme value; while another, "Le petit Conseil," is a print of great rarity. Probably driven away by the Revolution, Lavreince, like Hall, quitted Paris, and died at Stockholm, in 1807, at which date, according to M. Bouchot, his art had fallen into complete discredit.

Antoine Vestier, born in 1740, is recognised as an oil painter, and was received into the French Academy in 1786. He is said to have rivalled Mme. VigÉe le Brun and Roslin, and loved to adorn his sitters with ribbons and satins. Nevertheless, he was a miniature painter, and exhibited in the Salon excellent work of the kind, marked by good colour and careful execution. He lived on until the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and had a daughter, Nicole Vestier, who was also a miniature painter. She married Dumont, himself a distinguished artist, of whom I shall have something to say later on.

Another artist who devoted special pains to his draperies, and has been called the Roslin of miniature painting, was Jean Laurent Mosnier, born in Paris, in 1746. Mosnier was made an Academician two years after Vestier, but did not long survive, dying in 1795. French critics place his work on a level with that of Augustin or Dumont. His comparatively early death may account for the rarity of his miniatures, which are extremely scarce and much sought after nowadays, being distinguished by excellent taste and brilliant finish, especially, as I have said, in the painting of the draperies.

In the same year as the last-named artist, Luc Sicard, or, as he was sometimes called, Sicardi, was born. He was a native of Avignon, and one of the best miniature painters of his day. The delicacy of his flesh tones, the precision of his execution, and his attention to the most minute details made his work especially adapted for boits aux portraits; and he was officially attached to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, to assist in the production of these cadeaux diplomatiques, for which he was wont to be paid 300 livres apiece. Hence many portraits of the French Royalty of his time were executed by him.

There is a lovely example of his delicate handling in the Wallace Collection (reproduced in my "Miniature Painters"); and the fine example given in this volume, the portraits of Benoit Boulouvard and FranÇoise du Plain de Ste. Albine, gives a good idea of his style, though it cannot convey the colouring which is especially charming in the latter example. Thus, the girl wears a citron-coloured ribbon in her beautifully painted hair, her dress is of a tender pale greenish-blue, her lips fresh and red; her dark eyes contrast with a pale complexion of the utmost purity, while the boy's deep blue eyes contrast with his warm brown hair. Sicardi died in the same year as Mosnier, namely 1825.

Another provincial artist of about this period was Claude Jean Baptiste Houin, a native of Dijon, where he died, as Conservateur du MusÉe, in 1817. His work, too, is much sought after now. He was a pupil of Devosge and Greuze, and also painted in pastel.

M. Rouvier, who was born in 1750 and died in the year of Waterloo, is a man whose work appears to have won recognition in his own time, a contemporary writer speaking of it as possessing likeness, good colour, and harmony; but, perhaps owing to the rarity of examples by him, he may be said to be almost unknown to the present generation. There were four notable miniatures by him in the Alphonse Kann Collection, dated 1780 and 1781. They are marked by beautiful handling and distinction of style.

In FranÇois Dumont we have, it is generally allowed, one of the foremost miniature painters that France can boast of, worthy of being ranked with Isabey and Augustin, and, like both of them, a native of Lorraine. In the Exhibition, which was so valuable as an exposition of what the French school was capable of, there were a large number of works by Dumont, comprising Marie Antoinette, painted in 1774, and many portraits of the period of the Revolution. There is a certain sobriety and moderation about the work of Dumont which conveys a sense of solid value, sometimes rising to a height of character painting of extreme vigour, and sometimes, in his women's portraits, marked by great delicacy of face, hair and drapery painting.

The career of Dumont is a notable instance of the triumph of genius and industry. He was left an[Pg 347]
[Pg 348]
[Pg 349] orphan, with six brothers and sisters, and when only eighteen years of age quitted his native place, Luneville, and came to Paris as a portrait painter. After ten or twelve years' work he had so far succeeded as to be able to go to Rome, in 1784, where he established a reputation which led to his being appointed the "miniaturiste attitrÉ" of the Italian Court. He was made an Academician when only thirty-seven, and the King gave him Cochin's rooms in the Louvre. The year the Revolution broke out he married Nicole Vestier; and from that time on till 1824 Dumont's contributions to the Salon were regular and numerous.

There is a comparatively large collection of his works to be seen at the Louvre, bequeathed by Dr. Gillet. It may be noted that he had a brother, Laurent Nicolas Antoine, called Tony, who painted miniatures, signed "Dumont," at Paris. Some critics are inclined to attribute a certain heaviness of style to Dumont, which may be the excess of the solid qualities that I spoke of; and this charge is somewhat borne out by the examples to be seen at the Louvre.

The lourdeur of Dumont passes into leatheriness in the work of Louis LiÉ PÉrin, his flesh painting being greatly inferior to that of his master, Sicardi. PÉrin came to Paris to earn his living as a miniature painter in 1778. Ruined by the Assignats in 1799, he returned to his native place, Rheims, where he followed his father's trade of woollen manufacturer; but he continued to paint during the Empire, and died in 1817.

In Pierre Paul Prudhon (1758-1823) we have an artist indeed, but not, strictly speaking, a miniature painter, for his work in this manner was but little. Nevertheless, there is one celebrated example of his powers, viz., the portrait of Mlle. Constance Mayer, from the Eudoxe Marcille Collection. The tragic end of this pupil and friend of Prudhon is well known. The face is marked by the sensibility which was the distinguishing charm of that ill-fated lady and artist. There is a large drawing of the same subject in the Louvre (reproduced in my recent work on "Eighteenth Century French Art"), remarkable for force and character.

Jean Baptiste Jacques Augustin (1759-1832) has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the greatest miniature painters produced by France; but it was reserved for the Exhibition brought together at the BibliothÈque Nationale in 1906 to show the extent and surpassing quality of some of his work. From the collections of Baron Schlichting and Alphonse Kann, from the Doistau Collection, and last, but not least, from Mr. Pierpont Morgan, came nearly fifty works. The quality of these varied a good deal, some being almost coarse and bricky in colour, whilst others, notably some sketches, with small heads, which came from Augustin's heirs, were amongst the most wonderful things I have ever seen in art of this nature. It would be impossible to convey an adequate idea of the marvellous expression, delicacy, and finish combined in the heads in these sketches, which were not larger than a pea. In another specimen of his powers in the same collection might be seen the most delicate tones of flesh painting imaginable. In the Wallace Collection are nine or ten Augustins, including JÉrome and Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie Louise. The most attractive of them all is a young lady in a white bodice, with a leopard skin hanging round her dÉcolletÉ figure. She has a most vivacious and winning expression. It is dated 1824.

Augustin arrived in Paris some eight years before the outbreak of the Revolution; he lived to paint Napoleon at the height of his greatness, say, about 1810, JosÉphine, Pauline, and others of the Bonaparte family, and died of cholera in 1832. Between 1781 and 1800, when he was married, he painted upwards of three hundred and sixty portraits, some miniatures and some in oils. His wife became his pupil, and is said to have almost equalled her husband. She lived till 1865, and her work is often confounded with that of her husband, whose method of working and artistic tendencies she thoroughly understood and embraced.

It has been said of Augustin that he was the traditional descendant of the old missal painters; and a portrait by him of Denon in enamel recalls, according to M. Bouchot, the best work of Fouquet, of Clouet, or Nanteuil. I should have said that, compared with the two latter painters, he was far their superior when at his best. For delineation of character, minute detail, and brilliant, if somewhat hard, finish, Augustin's work would hold its own in comparison with much of the finest medieval missal-painting, which, indeed, it instinctively recalls. Although, consciously or unconsciously, Augustin's work may have been influenced by the study of medieval work, with its brilliancy, formality, and patience, amongst the fifty pieces from his hand shown in Paris a considerable variety of treatment might be found, some of it being large and bold in style, as, for example, a portrait of the sculptor Calamard.

J.-B. J. Augustin must not be confounded with that Augustin Dubourg who signed his work "Augustin." Dubourg's work is not met with after 1800; it is said that he was a cousin of the better-known man, and came from the same town, namely St. DiÉ in the Vosges.

A contemporary of Augustin, born in the same year and dying in the same year, was Charles Guillaume Alexandre Bourgeois. His effective manner of rendering a portrait may be said to be peculiar to himself, he treating them as medallions, and painting the head in profile on a black ground, which greatly added to their effect. Although this seems to have been Bourgeois's favourite method of portraiture, it was not his invariable practice; and when, leaving the marble whiteness and medal-like effect of his ordinary method, he set himself to paint flesh tones and the fair skin and rounded contours of youth, he was equally successful. He is said to have been very proficient in practical chemistry, and published several works on the subject. Although he exhibited in the Salon from 1800 to 1824, his work is rare, and examples fetch a high price. A peculiarity I have noted in his treatment is that the eyes in his women's portraits are invariably large and the eyes[Pg 353]
[Pg 354]
[Pg 355] lashes curled to an unnatural degree. I should say that his men are not as well painted as his women. The medallion style that he affects makes his work particularly suitable for insertion in boxes.

In concluding these remarks upon the French school of miniature painters, I come to a very distinguished name, that of Isabey, with which two other artists may be grouped as pupils or companions; and we will take the latter first; they are Jean GuÉrin and Louis FranÇois Aubry.

GuÉrin was born in 1760, and was a companion of Isabey in David's studio. His abilities must have been early recognised at Court, as he painted the King and Queen, and, later, many of the celebrities of the AssemblÉe; he also lived to paint JosÉphine Bonaparte in Court costume. His portrait of General KlÉber is perhaps the best known miniature in the Louvre, and is a work of astonishing virility and force of character. It was exhibited in the Salon of 1798, and he made many copies of it. Although his men's portraits are remarkable for their searching modelling, he was equally successful with the portraits of women and children, which he painted with naÏvetÉ and tenderness.

The other associate of Isabey was Louis FranÇois Aubry, a Parisian, born in 1767, who lived till the middle of the nineteenth century. Contemporary criticism assigned to this artist the ability to imitate his master Isabey, and to rival him in delicacy of brush and fidelity of likeness. Although he exhibited for over thirty years at the Salon, there is nothing by him in the Wallace Collection, and I only recall one in the Louvre, and that is a large miniature, painted with great care, representing a lady playing a harp. It is highly finished throughout, and recalls the best work of Augustin. I should say that he excelled in what may be called full-dress pictures, somewhat conscious, not to say affected, in pose, but excellent work of high technical quality. Aubry was at his zenith during the Restoration; he lived till 1851, and for many years had an atelier in Paris frequented by male and female students.

In some respects Jean Baptiste Isabey is the most remarkable name in the annals of French miniature painting. He was persona grata to successive monarchs, having been peintre attitrÉ to Napoleon, to the Allies, to Louis XVIII., and to Charles X. But the commencement of this artist's career can be taken much farther back, seeing that it was the admiration of Marie Antoinette for his work upon boites decorÉes that led to his first royal patronage, and resulted in his being installed at Versailles before he was of age. From that time, the very eve of the Revolution, until 1855 he produced a long series of portraits of all the most distinguished personages of his time.

The Wallace Collection is especially rich in his work, there being nearly thirty examples by his hand. With Napoleon I. he was a special favourite, and, as I have said, several of his portraits of the Emperor may be seen at Hertford House, representing him in full Imperial costume, in academic dress, with JosÉphine, and otherwise. And there, too, may be seen two portraits of the Duke of Wellington from his hand. But this collection is especially rich in portraits of ladies of the Empire and Restoration, to depict whose charms he adopted a style of his own, known to French critics as portraits sous voile. These ladies are touched in with a light hand and with the freedom of a water-colour sketch.

This manner of painting, in which he may be said to have set the fashion, is the very antithesis in style to that of his master David; but the rigorous training of that severe draughtsman enabled Isabey, when he chose, to paint with a precision and minute finish which is the ne plus ultra of such work. This was shown in a large piece, twenty-three by seventeen centimetres, exhibited in Paris in 1906, and representing the children of Joachim Murat, and Caroline of Naples dÉjeunant sur l'herbe. This, I do not hesitate to say, is the most extraordinary piece of work of its kind that I have ever seen. It is a group of several children in velvet dresses of the period, and a certain quality of velvety softness marks the execution. The attention to detail is microscopic; all the accessories of the little picnic party are painted with elaborate care; the stalk of the flowers in the dessert dish, the tiny finger-nails of the children, are all treated as if the artist's reputation depended upon the fidelity with which he represented them. It is a veritable tour de force of finish; but such is the brilliant and luminous way in which he has handled it that there is nothing hard or laboured in its effect, in spite of the immense amount of work it must have entailed.

In this particular example there is a quality recalling the finest Flemish work; and yet, as Isabey came to the capital, as we have seen, before he was twenty-one years of age, he can hardly have been subject to Flemish influences; I should attribute it to the influence of David and the classical school. The group I have been describing is not dated, but clearly belongs to the halcyon days of the Empire.

It may have been the demands made upon the time of Isabey, owing to his numberless commissions, that made him adopt the less laboured style of most of the portraits of ladies which may be seen at the Wallace Collection—that is, his latest manner—which is so entirely different from the group of Murat's children as to make one almost doubt at first sight that it can have proceeded from the same hand.

I had intended to close this notice upon the French painters with Isabey, who, as he lived to be nearly ninety, seems to be linked on almost to our own times; but there are two or three others to whom I must briefly refer, of whom the Italian Ferdinand Quaglia is one.

He was born in 1780, and was established in Paris in 1805, where, having obtained the patronage of JosÉphine Beauharnais, he became a Court painter. A miniature of the Empress by him may be seen at Hertford House; it is probably a replica, as it is dated 1814, and she was divorced five years earlier. Quaglia's work is marked by high finish, but it is uninteresting, and his style sometimes approaches the smoothness of porcelain, which detracts from its artistic value.

Another artist who clearly enjoyed the French Imperial patronage was C. Chatillon, as is shown by the beautiful portrait of Napoleon in his coronation robe and wearing the laurel wreath of victory, which adorns this volume. The original is in the collection of his Grace the Duke of Wellington.

Daniel Saint was an excellent artist, though not, perhaps, of the first rank; there are several examples of his work in the Wallace Collection, and he may be regarded as the successor of Augustin and Dumont.

Lastly, I may mention J. Mansion, who painted many charming portraits of the period of the Restoration, as may be seen at Hertford House. He was associated with the SÈvres factory, but his quality as a portrait painter is amply vindicated in the Wallace Collection. His work was probably largely influenced by Isabey, whose style it closely resembles.

[Pg 360]
[Pg 361]
[Pg 362]
[Pg 363]