of decent middle-class life, in its struggle with narrow
means, and in its happiness, which is that of the
family and of tranquil and ordered labour. Even
the pursuits of his youth, when he painted still-life,
and the pursuits of his age, when he was drawing
portraits, accorded with that chronicle of the Parisian
bourgeoisie which was the work of his mid-career ;
for the portraits were yet of everyday folk, and the
still-life, the fruits, the china, the copper vessels, the
silk-lined workboxes in whose familiar textures,
colours, tones, his brushes revelled so adroitly, were
the natural accessories and accompaniments of an
existence led always within the limits of the home.
Thus regarded and this is the fair way of looking
at his course -there is really no sudden change of



CHARDIN 179

route to be discovered in his artistic progress. His
was the record of the things he saw ; but in his
youth he did not feel himself strong enough to
portray, in what he saw, that which was one day
to interest him most Humanity.

He began very humbly. It was in 1728, when he
was but twenty-nine, that his picture of ' The Skate '
attracted some notice ; and other objects of still-
life were grouped with it at the Exposition de la
Jeunesse, in the Place Dauphine, when M. Largilliere
not a bad judge, one would have thought inspected
his things, and, not knowing that they were Chardin's,
protested that they must be the work of some very
excellent Dutchman, and that Chardin would be wise
if he copied them. Soon after that, as we have seen,
he was accepted at the Academy, and from that time
forward he exhibited at the Louvre. An exhibitor
for forty years, he was for twenty years a hanger.
That was a capacity in which he was sure to make
enemies ; but at least he was never blamed for be-
stowing unmerited prominence upon his own labours.

Chardin won, and he would have deserved to
retain, a reputation by his still-life pictures alone,
for the truth is, none of the older Dutchmen had
conceived of common matter so nobly ; and, senti-
ment apart, none had brought to its representation



i8o ON BOOKS AND ARTS

a touch quite so large, a palette quite so rich. To
Chardin belongs at once a reality without meanness,
and an arrangement without pretension or artifice.
The very gathering of his groups of household
things has a significance ; it is characteristic ; it
reveals in him that sense of human interest with
which his forerunners were scarcely occupied, and
which we, in these later days, have missed equally
in men as different as Blaise Desgoffe and William
Hunt. Into Chardin's pictures nothing is put
thoughtlessly ; and, possessed as he was of a per-
ception uniquely keen to note the varied individuality
of matter and its artistic interest, he yet had little
of mere pride in his ability to paint so well the
object and the substance of his choice. The simple
materials gathered on his kitchen-slab have their
place there of right, and tell the story of modest and
frugal provision from the little red jar of rough but
highly glazed pottery, to the eggs and the saucepan.
In one picture there will be exactly the material for
the humblest meal, and the things that are required to
prepare it that and no more a transcript from his
own limited home in the early days, when he was
an ill-rewarded painter and the husband of an ailing
young woman whose fortune was gone. In another,
and it is most likely of a later time, there are the



CHARDIN 181

fruits for the dessert of the well-to-do, and with
them is the silver and the gold, and the sugar-bowl
of now famous Dresden.

But though Chardin does justice to a luxury of
colour, as in the 'Goblet d' Argent,' and in the
picture both are in the Salle Lacaze of the
brown wooden jewel-box whose pale-blue soft silk
lining catches so discreet and delicate a light, the
charm of the very simple never escapes him. A
tumbler of water and three tiny onions, and there is
a subject for Chardin. And in all the still-life of his
earlier and of his middle years there is an unfailing
vigour of draughtsmanship, a quiet truth of chiaros-
curo, an effect of unforced picturesqueness ; and with
easy decisiveness he executes intricate schemes of
colour. His hues, above all, are blended and fused ;
the influence of colour upon the colour that is near
it he is found to have studied to perfection. He is
a master of the elaborate interchange of reflections
between the silver cup and the glazed copper-hued
pottery, on which its light chances to play. And
now the reflected light is cold and clear, and now it
is vague and warm. To see these things as Chardin
saw them, is really to see them for the first time.
He opens to us, in a measure that is entirely his
own, the charm of the world of matter.



1 82 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

No engraving hardly even the soft lights and
the opulent shadows of mezzotint could render
the character of this still-life of Chardin's. No
etching, short of Jacquemart's, could do justice
to work in itself so subtle, yet apparently so bold.
But the manly and refined line-engraving of the
French engravers of the middle of the Eighteenth
Century was happily able to translate, with singu-
lar excellence, the work of Chardin's middle age, a
work in which the rendering of matter counted
indeed for something, yet in which character,
sentiment, story counted also for much.

It was in 1734, and still at the Place Dauphine,
that Chardin showed that which seems to have been
the first of his genre pictures a picture of a woman
sealing a letter. From that time onwards, to about
the beginning of his last decade, the painter's work
consisted chiefly of the record of the daily life of the
civilised bourgeoisie, on whom Fortune never smiled
too lavishly, but from whom she rarely turned with
a quite empty hand. The value of the bourgeois
virtues, of reticent affection, of subdued love, of
calm persistency in uneventful and continually re-
curring labour, Chardin himself must have felt.
Unlike too many of his Dutch brethren, he saw
life, and dealt with it, where life was not gross.



CHARDIN 183

His children have an unconscious innocence along
with their reflectiveness ; his boys are all ingenuous ;
his young women bring the delightfulness of grace
to the diligent doing of household work in kitchen
or parlour ; and his seniors, in gaining experience,
have not lost sweetness.

And with the interest of pleasantness you have in
Chardin's case the assurance of the interest of truth.
Hogarth was as true, but he was less pleasant ;
Morland was as pleasant, but he was less true.
Hogarth painted an individual ; Morland general-
ised or idealised the individual, and was contented
with a type. Chardin's figures do not cease to be
typical of the race, while they retain the delicate
accuracy of personal studies, and betray an untiring
reference not to a few models only, but to all the
nature he lived amongst. Always without exaggera-
tion, always with directness and a deep simplicity,
the self-effacing art of Chardin accomplished its
task, writing for us in picture after picture, or print
after print, the history of the quietest of refined lives
that the Eighteenth Century knew ; arresting for
us the delicate gesture, in itself so slight, yet so
completely revealing; and tracing, on honest and
sensitive faces, every expression that rises above
broad comedy, or falls short of high passion.



1 84 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

Unaccustomed though it was to the sincere por-
trayal of homely things, Chardin's own generation
became quickly appreciative of the finest phase of
his art, and from 1738 to 1757 (as M. Emmanuel
Bocher has so laboriously and carefully recorded
in a volume which is the inevitable supplement to
the De Goncourts' literary study) the best engravers
of the time Laurent Cars, Le"picie, Surugue, Le Bas,
and others besides were busy in the translation
of Chardin's work. Such accomplished draughts-
men with the burin could not fail, of course, to
express his obvious subject, and to retain in the
black and white of their copperplates the sentiment
of the canvas. But they did more than this their
flexible skill allowed them to retain often Chardin's
manner and method ; so that the very men who had
rendered best, or as well as the best, the trembling
light of Watteau and his immense and airy distance,
with all its delicate gradations and infinite planes,
are found to be the complete interpreters of Chardin's
peculiar breadth and simplicity, and of that deliberate
firmness which is opposed the most to Watteau's
masterly indecision. The low prices at which the
prints were issued made the prints saleable, and
popularised Chardin's art among the educated
middle class. Often but a couple of francs were



CHARDIN 185

charged for an engraving worth, if it is in fine con-
dition, three or four guineas to-day.

Contemporary criticism, and especially the criti-
cism of Diderot, was favourable to Chardin, and
may have assisted his fame. There were years in
which ' the father of modern criticism,' occupied as
much with intellectual charm and moral teaching
as with technical perfection, fairly raved over the
painter whose work was the eulogium of the tiers
ttat. Lafont de St. Yonne, in 1746, places him
very high in the ranks 'des peintres compositeurs
et originaux.' In 1753, the Abbe le Blanc writes
of him 'II prend la nature sur le fait.' And a
few years later it is Diderot who says : ' It is always
nature and truth. M. Chardin is a man of mind.
He understands the theory of his art.' Again, ' M.
Chardin is not a painter of history, but he is a great
man.' Then there dawns upon the critical mind
some sense that the painter is repeating himself. From
the old mint he reissues, with but slight modification,
the old coins. Still-life apart, he can give us no new
subjects ; and the familiar ends by being under-
valued, and the excellent is held cheaply. At last,
from Diderot, in 1767, there comes the undisguised
lamentation, ' M. Chardin s'en va ! '

Fortunately, however, though popularity passed



186 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

from him, the old man was able to interest himself
in a fresh department of work. He had painted a
few portraits at an earlier time, but now his atten-
tion was attracted to portraiture in pastel that was
the medium in which an artist as masculine as him-
self, and as penetrating, had obtained an admitted
triumph ; and why should Chardin fail where
Quentin Latour had brilliantly succeeded? Nor
did he fail altogether. He was able to draw back
upon himself, in the last years, a little of the old
attention. And the pastel portraits, if they had the
'fragility had also the ' frlatj which a well-known
verse attributes to the then fashionable method.
And in subjects which were portraits only, the flesh
tints were no longer, by any possibility, effaced by
the stronger reality which somehow Chardin had
been wont to bestow upon the accessories in his
pictures.

Pleasant to him and well merited as must have
been that slight return of appreciation which came
to Chardin in his eighth decade, it is not by the
labour of that time that we are now likely to class
him. With the galvanised revival of a classical
ideal, his name, after his death, fell into dishonour.
Some of his worthiest pictures tumbled, neglected,
about the quays of Paris. Only within the last



CHARDIN 187

quarter of a century has there been evident the
sign of an intention to do justice to his work ; and
for us his principal distinction is, as I have said
already, that he is not only foremost, but was for
years alone, in the perception of the dignity and
beauty of humble matter, and of the charm which
Art may discover in the daily incidents of the least
eventful life.

(The Art Journal, 1885.)



MOREAU

ONE of the prettiest chapters of the volume in which
French artists of the Eighteenth Century have re-
corded with grace and freedom the lighter manners
of their age, is that certainly which was written by
Moreau le Jeune. He employed, with extreme dili-
gence, half a life in writing it Born in March 1741,
he died in November 1814. The son of a Parisian
wigmaker, of the parish of St. Sulpice which was
also Chardin's he, with his brother, Moreau 1'Aine,
a painter not greatly known, was drawn early into
the circle of the producers of Art. He was a pupil
of Louis de Lorrain, a now forgotten painter, whom
he followed, at seventeen years old, to St. Peters-
burg. Coming back to Paris, he was in the work-
room of Le Bas, the engraver, and there he learned
the secret of the burin's expression. He engraved
with delicate skill. It was but slowly, however,
that in his own designs he showed himself an ac-
complished draughtsman ; for though his daughter,

188



MOREAU 189

Madame Carle Vernet who wrote an account of
him lets us understand that he was born drawing,
there is much of his early work that is obviously
laboured. Suddenly, the De Goncourts tell us
those critics who, with M. Maherault, the indus-
trious collector, have studied him the best sud-
denly his power of draughtsmanship declared itself
the individuality of his vision and method. It was
in a drawing commissioned by Le Bas, who sought
to engrave it, the ' Plaine des Sablons ' a review
by Louis XV. In it he was revealed as the successful
draughtsman of festivals, the historian of lively
ceremonies. And such success was rewarded. For,
with commendable promptitude, in 1770 the year
after the drawing was executed he was appointed
4 Dessinateur des Menus-plaisirs,' and five years later,
when Cochin retired, ' Dessinateur du Cabinet du Roi.'
Thus, while still a young man, Moreau's position
was assured, and he was left free to use much of his
time in works on which it was possible to bestow
a more exquisite grace than any which could be fitly
employed upon labours in which official portraiture
counted for much. Moreau was free to invent for
himself, and free to illustrate the best literary inven-
tions of a literary age. His career was before him,
and the day not distant when he would produce



igo ON BOOKS AND ARTS

' L'Histoire des Mceurs ' and the illustrations to the
' Nouvelle Heloi'se.'

I have indicated now, by a brief line or two, the
direction in which Moreau le Jeune must chiefly be
studied, and the places in which he may be seen
if men would see him at his prime. Perhaps it
may be a matter of taste, and a matter of taste only,
whether one prefers him in his more spontaneous
or in his more official work. The draughtsman is
the same in either labour, though the inspiration
is different. For me his greatest achievement is
' L'Histoire des Mceurs,' or, in another phrase, ' Le
Monument du Costume,' which must be spoken of
in detail later on. For many, and above all, for
the lovers of curiosities, the seekers in byways of
history, his celebrity hangs chiefly on his perform-
ance of the various ' Sacres ' ; his records of the
public functions, his ' Fetes at Versailles for the
Marriage of the Dauphin and of Marie Antoinette ' ;
his ' Crowning of Voltaire ' at the Theatre Fran-
^ais in 1788; his ' Fetes at the Hotel de Ville/
on the birth of a new Dauphin to Louis XVI.
Among these we may look perhaps principally at
the ' Crowning of Voltaire,' for it has the virtues of
them all. The drawing was engraved by Gaucher,
who has preserved in the print the lively touch



MOREAU 191

of the original. But what, one asks, was the
occasion of the ceremony, what the cause of the
'crowning 5 ? At the Theatre Frangais, Voltaire's
Irene had been performed for sixteen nights. In
those days of limited audiences that was a brilliant
success. The bust of the poet is placed then in the
middle of the stage, to be adorned and declaimed
before. Madame Vestris another, of course, than
the Vestris known to Englishmen reads aloud, and
with emphasis, the lines of which the Marquis de
Saint-Maur has hurriedly been delivered. Other
performers, in more or less classic garb, cluster
about her with garlands in their hands, ready to
bestow them on the bust. In a box, high up on one
side of the theatre, sits the demi-god, with two fair
friends one of whom is his niece, Madame Denis,
and the other that Marquise de Villette to whom
the print that represents the occasion is dedicated.
The playhouse is full. The clapping of hands is
lusty and enthusiastic. People rise in their boxes.
Men stare upwards from the pit. Fine ladies crane
their necks to catch a glimpse of the hero with the
thin angular face, with its tell-tale lines of wit and
mockery and observation.

Moreau must have seen the sight himself, and
borne away the vivid recollection of it. Never was



192 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

tactualitt the thing that passes, the thing that
may be insignificant to-day, but is to be History
to-morrow never was Pactualitt designed with a
more fitting mixture of grace and precision. But
in the more important work next to be spoken of,
there was greater room for invention. Therein was
Moreau, in the true sense, dramatist as well as
draughtsman, for even if the outline of the subject
was suggested to him by the speculator who under-
took the publication, it was Moreau alone who gave
veracity and character to the head and gesture of
each person in the play.

The ' Suite d'Estampes pour servir a 1'histoire des
Mceurs et du Costume dans le Dix-huitieme Siecle '
began to be published in 1775 by Prault, of Paris,
though it has been of late suggested that it was
really conceived and undertaken by a German of
the name of Eberts. The notion was to give a
series of plates in which the most correct and
fashionable manners, and the dress of the moment,
and the furniture in vogue, should be together por-
trayed. The artist first pitched upon to recall them
was, strangely enough, a foreigner. Freudeberg, a
Bernese settled in Paris, a draughtsman of grace
and charm undoubtedly, but of a closely bounded
talent, had found favour with the public, and it was



MOREAU 193

he who was chosen to make and he did make
the first dozen drawings. The best engravers of
the day were forthwith to engrave them. But by
the time the first series was finished and two odd
pieces, I believe, not generally taken account of as
belonging to the set Freudeberg became home-sick
and resolved to depart, and the business of con-
tinuing the work, which in the view of its promoter
was to be a practical guide to fashion, was assigned
to Moreau. Moreau did the second series, and then
the third. The second dealt with the fortunes of
a lady ; the third with those of a grand seigneur,
who was likewise something of a petit-maitre. And
for each there was a text, bald, it may be, but in a
measure appropriate. It was anonymous, and chiefly
descriptive. A little later, in a new issue, it was
sought to associate the work with popular literature,
and Restif de la Bretonne a free-spoken 'realist,'
whom, after long neglect, it is now, not altogether
without cause, the fashion to enjoy was invited to
write his commentary, and his commentary took
the form of quite a new interpretation. ' Restif,'
says M. Anatole de Montaiglon, ' au lieu de respecter
le sentiment des trois suites, a isole chaque motif et
chaque planche.' Restif, that is, has invented for
each plate some fresh little story.

N



194 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

In life, the- mind associates with a given and
chosen landscape the more magnetic and memorable
of the figures that people it. These alone bestow
on it the reality of its human interest, and the
others may be ignored. And so, among the masses
of description and criticism of the arts of design,
the writings which we really associate with the
works they endeavour to vivify are those generally
which have a charm of their own the charm of
the literary touch. Restif de la Bretonne's stories,
with all their faults, have just that charm. There
is that in them which permits their author to take
possession of the theme, so that the theme belongs
no longer at all to whatever dullard chanced to be
the first to treat it.

Two designs which I never see without wanting
them are the most vivacious of Moreau's series.
They are the 'Sortie de 1'Opera' and ' C'est un
fils, Monsieur ! ' Others, even among the most
admirable, are more limited in their aim. The
' Grande Toilette/ for instance, as its name implies,
is occupied more particularly with raiment. It is
a very summary of fashion. It is the great lord,
or the consummate petit-maitre, displayed to us
when dressing is completed. The edifice, it seems,
has just been crowned. ' Monseigneur,' vividly writes



MOREAU 195

Restif de la Bretonne, ' Monseigneur is dressed ; for
some minutes already he has been standing ; his
cordon bleu is assumed ; they have just given him
his purse, and he has his bouquet.' Yes, the edifice
has been crowned : Monseigneur is ready ; for
and the touch is untranslatable they have acheve
de le chausser. You see the neat shoes, the garter,
the closely drawn stocking, the whole paraphernalia
of the leg he was proud of. 'Achev/ de le chausser'
it is all in the phrase. And now he is free, no
doubt, to enjoy the idleness of the morning, to do
a service to a comedian, and, after an author has
had audience of him, to accept the dedication of
a book.

' La Petite Loge ' is just as characteristic. What
one sees is the inside of an opera-box, of which the
tenants are a couple of bachelors of fashion. A
dance is over, on the stage, and a girl who has
taken part in it has been brought into the box, to
be encouraged to be touched under the chin. And
here is an epitome of Restif's story. A Prince, struck
with the beauty of a ragged little child in the street,
determined that she should be educated pensioned
her and her mother. Soon, however, busied with
the greatest business of his class and day 'occupied
with intrigue,' the story-teller tells us he forgot his



196 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

little prote'ge'e! She had her money regularly all
that she was promised but he was too busy to
think of her. Then, one night, at the Opera,
smitten with the charm of a new dancer, he inquired
who the dancer was, and ordered her to be brought
to him. As soon as she was in the box, ' II lui
passa sous le menton une main un peu libre ' ; but
then it was disclosed to him that she was the child
he had been struck with. Coulon, the famous
dancing-master, had by this time taught her to
some purpose. As for her future, her mother an
ancestress, I take it, of HaleVy's ' Madame Cardinal '
had already a register of one hundred and twenty
pages, filled with the propositions of the Court and
the town. ' Sa mere se reservait le droit de les
comparer,' for nothing, it seems, even by a Madame
Cardinal, should be done in a hurry. Well, among
the girl's many lovers there was one who was un-
selfish. What did he want but to marry her ! The
Prince not minded now to be outdone in chivalry
generously urged that he should be accepted, and
Isabelle was glad to consent. But the King ordered
the lover's arrest, and the young people were
separated. The girl lived prudently, in London and
in Paris. She and her art were admired ; but she
died of a sudden illness. ' Her young lover was in



MOREAU 197

absolute despair, and the Prince, her protector, wept
for her.'

In the' Sortie de 1'Opera' we see the elegant and
famous crowd that surged out of the theatre after
a performance long looked forward to. 'Gluck's
new Operas it is essential to see them,' said a
writer who knew what it was that a fashionable
woman could not afford to neglect. The ' all Paris '
of the day was there ; and at the end, when the
crowd was in the lobbies, and the aboyeur was
calling the carriages, and the flower-girl was a
messenger of intrigue that was the moment that
gave birth to plans for dainty suppers eaten away
from home, the time when ' abbes without a family
learned the secret of how they might belong to
all.' What a bustle of flirtation ! What a passing
about of love-letters ! The elegance of the scene
must make amends, as best it can, for its light-
hearted naughtiness.

' C'est un fils, Monsieur ! ' has no such forgiveness
to ask of us. It is the blithest picture that we need
to be shown of the home joys of the refined. A
young husband, who is known already as 'le Pre-
sident,' and who is a student and a fortunate
collector of Art as well as a man of the world, rises
from his study chair with outstretched hands and



198 ON BOOKS AND ARTS

radiant face, as" the newly born baby is carried in to
him in triumph, followed by a procession of house-