THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

When we consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and ecclesiastical sculpture in France during the Middle Ages and the period of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by the French as assiduously as it was in Italy. For there can be no doubt that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. We may suppose, indeed, that if those of the French had found their outlet in painting alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover of a markedly different kind from that of the Italian or Spanish or Netherlandish pictures. But on the other hand we should have perhaps lost the amazing fascination of Chartres, and the delights of Limoges enamel and ivories.

As it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in France is the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise in 1516, whither he had come from Milan in the train of the young king François I. Unfortunately he was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he died. At about the same time there was a court painter in the employment of François—under the official designation ofvarlet de chambre—named Jehan Clouet, who is supposed to have been of Flemish extraction. Nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he had a son François Clouet, who seems to have been born at about the time of Leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. At the funeral of François I. in 1547 he was ordered to make an effige du dict feu roy, and he continued to be the official court painter to Henri II. (whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), François II., and Charles IX. He died in 1572. Every portrait of this period is attributed to him, just as was the case with Holbein in England. Neither of the two examples at the National Gallery can be safely ascribed to him. The little head of the Emperor Charles V., king of Spain, at Hereford House, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of Francis I., king of France, in the Museum at Lyons, which is attributed to Jean Clouet. Both may have been painted when Charles V. passed through Paris in 1539, but whether by Jean or one of his disciples cannot be said with certainty.

Not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born Claude Gellée and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of their lives and painting their best works in Italy and under Italian influence.

Nicholas Poussin was born at Villiers near Les Andelys on the banks of the Seine, in 1594, where he studied for some time under Quentin Varin till he was eighteen. After this he was in Paris, but in 1624 he went to Rome where he lived with Du Quesnoy. His first success was obtained by the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by Cardinal Barberini on his return from an Embassy to France. These were The Death of Germanicus and The Capture of Jerusalem. His next works were The Martyrdom of S. Erasmus, The Plague at Ashdod, of which a replica is in the National Gallery, and The Seven Sacraments now at Belvoir Castle. By these he acquired such fame that on his return to Paris in 1640, Louis XIII. appointed him royal painter, and in order to keep him at home provided him with apartments in the Tuileries and a salary of £120 a year. Within two years, however, Poussin was back in Rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in 1665 in his seventy-second year.

Poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical anatomy. Besides being the intimate friend of Du Quesnoy, he was a devout pupil of Domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. It is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as the Plague at Ashdod, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity. He was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders of the old. He was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. The influence of Titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in the Bacchanalian Dance, No. 62 in the National Gallery, which was probably one of a series painted for Cardinal Richelieu during the short time that Poussin was in Paris in 1641. In this and in No. 42, the Bacchanalian Festival as well as in The Shepherds in Arcadia, in the Louvre, we get a surprisingly strong reminiscence of Titian, more especially in the brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky.

As the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in these pictures are full of life—for correctness of drawing is the first requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless. The fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is independent of passing fashions. As evidence of the soundness of his principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:—

"There are nine things in painting," Poussin wrote in a letter to M. de Chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be taught and which are essential to that art. To begin with, the subject of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent form. A painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say, composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts, beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and above all, judgment. This last must be in the painter himself and cannot be taught. It is the golden bough of Virgil that no one can either find or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it."

Gaspar Poussin, whose name was really Gaspard Dughet, was brother-in-law of Nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. He was nineteen years his junior, and survived him by ten years. He was born in Rome of French parents, and died there in 1675, and though he travelled a good deal in Italy he never appears to have visited France. His Italian landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of one which is considered his best, No. 31 in the National Gallery, Landscape with Figures, Abraham and Isaac. Scarcely less fine is the Calling of Abraham, No. 1159, especially in the middle and far distance. The sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying the pictures.

Claude Gellée, nowadays usually spoken of as Claude, was born at Chamagne in Lorraine in 1600. Accordingly he has been styled Claude Lorraine, le Lorraine, de Lorrain, Lorrain, or Claudio Lorrenese with wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery about his surname and it would have served just as well. He was brought up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he went to Rome seeking for employment. As it happened he found it in the house of a landscape painter, Agostino Tassi, who had been a pupil of Paul Bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well, and soon became his pupil. Later he was studying under a German painter, Gottfried Wals, at Naples. A more important influence on him, however, was that of Joachim Sandrart, one of the best of the later German painters, whom he met in Rome.

Claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted for Pope Urban VII. in 1639, when he was just upon forty years old. These are the Village Dance and the Seaport, now in the Louvre. The Seaport at Sunset and Narcissus and Echo in the National Gallery (Nos. 5 and 19) are dated 1644—the former on the canvas and the latter on the sketch for it in the Liber Veritatis, where it is stated that it was painted for an English patron.

The Liber Veritatis, it should be observed, is the title given to a portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or Indian ink, which is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Most of these were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other particulars relating to them. So great was the vogue for Claude's landscapes in England during the eighteenth century that as early as 1730 or 1740 a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by Jonathan Richardson, Dr. Mead and others, were engraved by Arthur Pond and John Knapton; and in 1777 a series of about two hundred of the Duke of Devonshire's drawings was published by Alderman Boydell, which had been etched and mezzotinted by Richard Earlom, under the title of Liber Veritatis. This was the model on which Turner founded the publication of his own sketches under the title of Liber Studiorum. Thus, if Claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for Turner was by no means the first Englishman to fall under his spell. Richard Wilson, the first English landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both from an acquaintance with his drawings in English collections and from the study of his works when in Rome.

In this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered 12 and 14 in the National Gallery Catalogue, as our most important examples by this master, for Turner bequeathed to the nation his two most important pictures The Sun Rising Through a Vapour and Dido Building Carthage, on condition that they should be hung between these two by Claude. The Court of Chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify the effect of Claude's influence on Turner or alter the judgment of posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other and to art in general, and the Director has wisely observed the wishes of Turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the Court of Chancery notwithstanding. Both of Claude's are inscribed, besides being signed and dated, as follows:

  • No. 12. Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebeca, Claudio Gil. inv. Romae 1648.
  • No. 14. La Reine de Saba va trover Salomon. Clavde Gil. inv. faict pour son altesse le duc de Buillon à Roma 1648.

Both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no doubt that the appreciation of Claude in this country is never likely to die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with increased vigour.

Meantime, however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many of the names of its original members ever became famous—as may be said in our own country—but among them was Sebastien Bourdon (1616-1671), whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also, wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of the Academy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in 1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting landscapes, and historical subjects. The Return of the Ark from Captivity, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is Jacob's Dream, by Salvator Rosa, and the other, The Return of the Ark from Captivity, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the painters."

Eustache le Sueur, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616), was another of the original members of the Academy, and was employed by the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the cloister at the monastery of La Chartreuse (now in the Louvre) of which Horace Walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume of the Anecdotes of Painting. "The last scene of S. Bruno expiring" (he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the Prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master. If Raphael died young, so did Le Sueur; the former had seen the antique, the latter only prints from Raphael; yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of heads! What harmony of colouring! What aërial perspective! How Grecian the simplicity of architecture and drapery! How diversified a single quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion the only pathetic!"

Philippe de Champaigne was another of the original members. He was born at Brussels in 1602, and did not come to Paris till 1621, where he was soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. But he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine full-length of Cardinal Richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun of Port Royal, both of which are in the Louvre. There are four in the Wallace Collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the English public is the canvas at the National Gallery (No. 798), painted for the Roman sculptor Mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles of Richelieu. As a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles cecy est le meilleur." The full length of the Cardinal presented by Mr. Charles Butler in 1895 (No. 1449), is a good example, which cannot however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works.

But it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait painting in France became anything like a fine art, and even then it did not get beyond being formal and magnificent. The two principal exponents were Hyacinthe Rigaud and Nicolas Largillière, both of whose works have a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm.

Rigaud was born in 1659, at Perpignan in the extreme south of France, and studied at Montpelier in his youth, then at Lyons on his way to Paris—much as a Scottish artist might have studied first at Glasgow, then at Birmingham on his way to London. On the advice of Lebrun he devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such success that in 1700 he was elected a member of the Academy. He painted Louis XIV. more often than Largillière or any other painter, and in his later years (he lived till 1743) Louis XV. his great-grandson. He is said to have shared with Kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of having painted at least five monarchs.

Rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his portraits by the French engravers. Of his brushwork we are only able to judge by the two doubtful versions at the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection respectively, of the fine portrait at Versailles of Cardinal Fleury. The group of Lulli and the Musicians of the French Court, which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1906 is not by him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to him.

Nicolas de Largillière was three years older than Rigaud and survived him by another three. He was born in Paris in 1656 and died six months before completing his ninetieth year. Early in life he went as a pupil to Antwerp, under Antoine Goubeau, and he is said to have worked in England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely during the later years of that master. On his return to France he was received into the Royal Academy—in 1686.

In the Wallace Collection is an interesting example of his work, the large group of the French Royal Family, in which four living generations are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. Henri IV. and Louis XIII., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, Louis XIV., the Dauphin his son, the Duc de Bourgogne his grandson, and the Duc d'Anjou, his great-grandson—afterwards Louis XV., are all included in this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in painting.