All this was but Paris-gossip amidst the olive-trees and steep streets of far-away Grasse, where the large-headed, small-bodied lad was idling through his fifteen summers, living and breathing the beauty of the pleasant land of romance that bred him, when, like bolt from the blue, fell the news upon him that his father, tearing aside the fabric of the lad’s dreams, had articled him as junior clerk to a notary.

But the French middle-class ideal of respectability meant no heaven for this youth’s goal, no ultimate aim for his ambition. He idled his master into despair; “wasting his time” on paint-pots and pencil-scribblings until that honest man himself advised that the lad should be allowed to follow his bent.

So it came about—’twas in that year of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the year that saw the Pompadour come to supreme power (she had been for three years the king’s acknowledged mistress)—the youth’s mother, with all a French mother’s shrewdness and common-sense, gathered together the sixteen-year-old lad’s sketches, and bundled off with him in a diligence to Paris.

Arrived in Paris she sought out the greatest painter of the day, and burst with the shy youth into the studio of the dandified favourite artist of the king’s majesty, Pompadour’s Boucher—large-hearted, generous, much-sinning, world-famed Boucher, then at the very summit of his career—he was at that time living in the Rue Grenelle-Saint-HonorÉ, which he was about to leave, and in which Fragonard in his old age was destined to end his days.

The lad glanced with wonder, we may be sure, at the great “Rape of Europa” that stood upon the master’s easel, whilst his mother poured out in the rough accent of Provence the tale of the genius of her son—stole, too, a stealthy scrutiny of the Venus-pieces and Pastorals that stood about the studio, and was filled with awed admiration. The mother besought the genius of France to make a genius of her son; and Boucher, with kindly smile upon his lips, glancing over the immature work of the prodigy, told the lad that he might come back to him in six months’ time, pointing out to him, with all that large-hearted friendliness and sympathy that made him the loved idol of the art-students, that he lacked sufficient dexterity in the use of his tools to enter his studio or to benefit by apprenticeship to him, and advising the anxious mother to take him to Chardin as the supreme master in France from whom to learn the mastery of his craft.

To Chardin the youth went; and France’s consummate master in the painting of still-life, putting the palette on the youngster’s thumb straightway, from the very first day—as his custom was—and making him use sienna upon it as his only pigment, advising him as he went, set him to the copying of the prints from the masterpieces of his own time, insisting on his painting large and broad and solid and true.

Young Fragonard made so little progress that Chardin wrote to his parents that he could get nothing out of him; and sent the lad, bag and baggage, out of his studio.

Thrown upon his own resources, the young fellow haunted the churches of Paris, brooded over the masterpieces that hung therein, fixed them in his mind’s eye, and, returning to his lodging, painted them, day by day, from memory.

At the end of six months he called again upon Boucher, his sketches under his arm; and this time he was not sent away. Astounded at the youth’s progress, struck by his enthusiasm, Boucher took him into his studio, and set him to work to prepare the large decorative cartoons that artists had to make from their paintings for use at the Gobelins and Beauvais looms. The artist painted his picture “in little”; he was also required to paint an “enlargement” of the size that the weavers had to make into tapestry—this enlargement was mostly done by pupils, the State demanding, however, that the artist should work over it sufficiently to sign his name upon it—the head of the factory keeping custody of the “painting in little” to guide him; the weavers working from the enlargement. This work upon the enlargement of Boucher’s paintings was an ideal training for Fragonard.

The Director-General of Buildings to the king (or, as we should nowadays call him, Minister of Fine Arts), Lenormant de Tournehem, kinsman to the Pompadour, died suddenly in the November of 1751; the Pompadour promptly caused to be appointed in his place her brother Abel Poisson de VandiÈres—a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman, a man of honour, who brought to his office an exquisite taste, a loyal nature, and marked abilities. The king, who liked him well, and called him “little brother,” soon afterwards created him Marquis de Marigny—and Fragonard, like many another artist of his day, was to be beholden to him.

After a couple of years’ training under Boucher, Fragonard’s master, with that keen interest that he ever took in the efforts and welfare of youth, and particularly of his own pupils, urged the young fellow to compete for the Prix de Rome, pointing out to him the advantages of winning it. At twenty, without preparation, and without being a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard won the coveted prize with his “Jeroboam Sacrificing to Idols.” It was in this year that Boucher was given a studio and apartments at the Louvre.

For three years thereafter, Fragonard was in the king’s school of six ÉlÈves protÉgÉs under Carle Van Loo. He continued to work in Boucher’s studio, as well as painting on his own account; and it is to these years that belong his “Blind Man’s Buff” and several pictures in this style.

Meanwhile the quarrels between priests and parliaments had grown very bitter. The king took first one side, then the other. It was in 1756, Louis having got foul of his Parliament, that the unfortunate and foolish Damiens stabbed the king with a penknife slightly under the fifth rib of his left side, as he was stepping into his carriage at Versailles, and suffered by consequence the terrible tortures and horrible death that were meted out to such as attempted the part of regicide.

This was the year when, at twenty-four, Fragonard was entitled to go to Rome at the king’s expense—the Italian tour being a necessary part of an artist’s training who desired to reach to academic distinction, and honours in his calling. He started on his journey to Italy with Boucher’s now famous farewell advice ringing in his ears: “My dear Frago, you go into Italy to see the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo; but—I tell you in confidence, as a friend—if you take those fellows seriously you are lost.” (“Lost” was not the exact phrase, Boucher being a Rabelaisian wag, but it will pass.)

Arrived in Rome, Fragonard, like his master before him, was torn with doubts and uncertainties and warring influences. For several months he did no work, or little work; and though he stood before the masterpieces of Michael Angelo and Raphael, stirred by the grandeur of their design, and eager to be busy with his brush, he was too much of a Frenchman, too much in sympathy with the French genius, too much enamoured of the art of his master, to be affected creatively by them. His hesitations saved him, and won France a master in her long roll of fame. He escaped the taint of learning to see through the eyes of others, evaded the swamping of his own genius in an endeavour to utter his art in halting Italian. Rome was not his grave, as it has been the grave of so many promising young sons of France; and he came out of the danger a strong and healthy man. Tiepolo brought him back vision and inspiration, and the solid earth of his own age to walk upon. And the French utterance of his master Boucher called back his dazed wits to the accents of France. At last the genius that was in him quickened and strove to utter itself.

The bright colours of Italy, the glamour of her landscapes, these were the living lessons that bit deeper into his art than all the works of her antique masters; and the effort to set them upon his canvas gave to his hand’s skill an ordered grace and dignity that were of more vital effect upon his achievement than the paintings of the great dead.

So it came about that Natoire, then director of the royal school in the Villa Mancini, having written his distress to Marigny at the young fellow’s beginnings, was soon writing enthusiastically about him, and procured a lengthening of his stay in Rome.

Here began that lifelong friendship with Hubert Robert, already making his mark as an artist, and with the AbbÉ de Saint-Non, a charming character, who was to engrave the work of the two young painters, and greatly spread their names abroad thereby. Saint-Non’s influential relations procured him free residence in the Villa d’Este, where the other two joined him, and a delightful good-fellowship between the three men followed—the AbbÉ’s artistic tastes adding to the bond of comradeship. So two years passed pleasantly along at the Villa d’Este, one of the most beautiful places in all Italy—the ancient ruins hard by, and the running waters and majestic trees leaving an impression upon Fragonard’s imagination, which passed to his canvases, and never left his art—developing a profound sense of style, and a knowledge of light and air that bathed the scenes he was to paint with such rare skill and insight. Here grew that love of stately gardens which are the essence of his landscapes, and which won to the heart of a child of Provence.

In distant Paris the making of history was growing apace. Gossip of it reached to Italy. A backstairs intrigue almost dislodged the Pompadour from power. D’Argenson and the queen’s party threw the beautiful and youthful Madame de Choiseul-Romanet, not wholly unflattered at the adventure, into the king’s way to lure him from the favourite. The king wrote her a letter of invitation. The girl consulted her noble kinsman, the Comte de Stainville, of the Maurepas faction or queen’s party, a bitter enemy to the Pompadour. De Stainville, his pride of race wounded that a kinswoman of his should be offered to the king, went to the Pompadour, exposed the plot, and forthwith became her ally—soon her guide in affairs of State.

In the midst of disasters by sea and land the Pompadour persuaded the king to send for De Stainville, and to make him his Prime Minister. He was created Duc de Choiseul in December 1758. He had as ally one of the most astute and subtle and daring minds in eighteenth-century France—his sister Beatrice, the famous Duchesse de Grammont. The king found a born leader of men. Choiseul brought back dignity to the throne. He came near to saving France. Choiseul was the public opinion of the nation. He founded his strength on Parliament and on the new philosophy. He became a national hero. He could do no wrong. He rose to power in 1758; and at once stemmed the tide of disaster to France.

The Parliament men took courage. Philosophy, with one of its men in power, spoke out with no uncertain voice. All France was listening.

Fragonard had at last to turn his face homewards; and dawdling through Italy with Saint-Non, staying his feet at Bologna and Venice awhile, the two friends worked slowly towards Paris, Fragonard entering his beloved city, after five wander-years, in the autumn of 1761, in his twenty-ninth year, untainted and unspoiled by academic training, his art founded upon that of Boucher, enhanced by his keen study of nature. He reached Paris, rich in plans for pictures, filled with ardour and enthusiasm for his art, ambitious to create masterpieces, and burning to distinguish himself.