Fragonard Part 1

Fragonard.

by Haldane Macfall.

I

THE BEGINNINGS

High up, amongst the Sea-Alps that stretch along the southern edge of France, where romantic Provence bathes her sunburnt feet in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, high on the mountain's side hangs the steep little town of Gra.s.se, embowered midst grey-green olive-trees.

In as sombre a narrow street as there is in all her dark alleys, on the fifth day of April in the much bewigged and powdered year of 1732, there was born to a glovemaker of the town, worthy mercer Fragonard, a boy-child, whom the priest in the gloomy church christened Jean Honore Fragonard.

As the glovemaker looked out of his sombre house over the sunlit slopes of the grey-green olive-trees that stretched away to the deep blue waters of the sea, he vowed his child to commerce and a thrifty life in this far-away country place that was but little vexed with the high ambitions of distant, fickle, laughing Paris, or her splendid scandals; nay, scarce gave serious thought to her gadding fashions or her feverish vogues--indeed, the attenuated ghosts of these once frantic things wriggled southwards through the provinces on but sluggish feet to the high promenades of Gra.s.se--as the worthy mercer was first in all the little town to know by his modest traffic in them; and that, too, only long after the things they shadowed were buried under new millineries and fopperies and fantastic riot in the gay capital. As a fact, the dark-eyed, long-nosed folk that trudged these steep and narrow thoroughfares were a sluggish people; and sunlit Gra.s.se snored away its day in drowsy fashion.

But if the room where the child first saw the light were gloomy enough within, the skies were wondrous blue without, and the violet-scented slopes were robed in a tender garment of silvery green, decked with the gold of orange-trees, and enriched with bright embroidery of many-coloured flowers that were gay as the gayest ribbons of distant Paris. And the glory of it bathed the lad's eyes and heart for sixteen years, so that his hands got them itching to create the splendour of it which sang within him; and the wizardry of the flower-garden of France never left him, casting its spell over all his thinking, and calling to him to utter it to the world. It stole into his colour-box, and on to his palette, and so across the canvas into his master-work, and was to lead him through the years to a blithe immortality.

The small boy with the big head was born in the year after Francois Boucher came back to Paris from his Italian wanderings on the eve of his thirties and won to academic honour. The child grew up in his Provencal home, whilst Boucher, turning his back upon academic art on gaining his seat at the Academy, was creating the Pastorals, Venus-pieces, and Cupid-pieces that changed the whole style of French art from the pompous and mock-heroic manner of Louis Quatorze's century of the sixteen hundreds to the gay and elegant pleasaunces that fitted so aptly the elegant pleasure-seeking days of Louis the Fifteenth's seventeen hundreds.

Gossip of high politics came trickling down to Gra.s.se as slowly as the fashions, yet the eleven-year-old boy's ears heard of the death of the minister, old Cardinal Fleury, and of the effort of Louis to become king by act. Though Louis had small genius for the mighty business, and fell thenceforth into the habit of ruling France from behind petticoats, raising the youngest of the daughters of the historic and n.o.ble house of De Nesle to be his accepted consort under the rank and honours of d.u.c.h.ess of Chateauroux. All tongues tattled of the business, the very soldiery singing mocking songs; when--Louis strutting it as conqueror with the army, got the small-pox at Metz, and sent the Chateauroux packing at the threat of death. He recovered, to enter Paris soon after as the Well-Beloved, and to be reconciled with the frail Chateauroux before she died in the sudden agony in which she swore she had been poisoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE II.--THE MUSIC LESSON

(In the Louvre)

Fragonard had a profound admiration for the Dutch painters. Whether he went to Holland shortly after his marriage is not known; but he seems suddenly to have employed his brush as if he had come across fine examples of the Dutch school. "The Music Lesson" at the Louvre is one of these, and the Dutch influence is most marked both as to subject, treatment, and handling of the paint, if we allow for Fragonard's own strongly French personality.]

At thirteen the boy listened to the vague rumours of a new scandal that set folk's tongues wagging again throughout all France. The king raised Madame Lenormant d'Etioles, a daughter of the rich financier cla.s.s, to be Marquise de Pompadour, and yielded up to her the sceptre over his people.

The nations, weary of war, agreed to sign the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. In this, our artist's sixteenth year, the Pompadour had been the king's acknowledged mistress for three years. From this time, the peace being signed, Louis the Fifteenth laid aside all effort to fulfil the duties of the lord over a great people; gave himself up to shameless and riotous living, and allowed the Pompadour to usurp the splendour of his throne and to rule over the land.

For the next sixteen years she was the most powerful person at court, the greatest personality in the State--making and unmaking ministers like a sovereign, and disposing of high offices, honours, t.i.tles, and pensions. The king squandered upon her some seventy odd millions of the public money as money is now valued. Her energy and her industry must have been colossal. Her intelligence saved the king from the boredom of decision in difficult affairs. She made herself a necessity to his freedom from care. Every affair of State was discussed and settled under her guidance. Ministers, amba.s.sadors, generals, transacted their business in her handsome boudoirs. She dispensed the whole patronage of the sovereign with her pretty hands. The prizes of the army, of the church, of the magistracy, could only be secured through her good-will. As though these things were not load enough to bow the shoulders of any one human being she kept a rein upon every national activity. She created the porcelain factory of Sevres, thereby adding a lucrative industry to France. She founded the great military school of Saint Cyr. She mothered every industry. She was possessed of a rare combination of talents and accomplishments, and of astounding taste. But her deepest affection was for the arts.

The Pompadour had gathered about her, as the beautiful Madame d'Etioles, the supreme wits and artists and thinkers of her day; Voltaire and Boucher and Latour and the rest were her friends, and the new thought that was being born in France was nursed in her drawing-rooms. As the Pompadour she kept up her friendships. She was prodigal in her encouragement of the arts, in the furnishment of her own and the king's palaces and castles. And it was in the exercise and indulgence of her better qualities that she brought out the genius and encouraged to fullest achievement the art of Boucher, and of the great painters of her time. So Boucher brought to its full blossom the art that Watteau had created--the picture of "Fetes galentes"--and added to the artistic achievement of France the Pastorals wherein Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses dally in pleasant landscapes, and the Venus-pieces wherein Cupids flutter and romp--a world of elegance and charm presided over by the G.o.ddess of Love.

II

ROME

All this was but Paris-gossip amidst the olive-trees and steep streets of far-away Gra.s.se, 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-cla.s.s 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-Honore, 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 Vandieres--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 _eleves proteges_ 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.s.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE III.--L'ETUDE

(In the Louvre)

The picture of a young woman sometimes known as "L'Etude" (but perhaps better known as "La Chanteuse" or "Song") at the Louvre is another of those little canvases painted by Fragonard under the strong influence of the Dutch school, as we may see not only in the handling of the paint, and in the arrangement of the figure, but in the very ruffle about the girl's neck, the lace cuffs to the sleeves, and the treatment of the dress.]

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 Abbe 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 Abbe's artistic tastes adding to the bond of comradeship. So two years pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 d.u.c.h.esse 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.

III