HANDBOUND
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRP*;<:
Boucher.
ktr.
BOUCHER
. Man, His Times, His Art, and His Significance
1770
by
Haldane Macfall
N •
THE CONNOISSEUR
CARMj
"Connoisseur" Extra Number.
BOUCHER
The Man, His Times, His Art, and His Significance
1703 1770
by
Haldane Macfall
LONDON :
PUBLISHED BY
THE CONNOISSEUR
CARMELITE HOUSE, B.C.
1908
CranforZr
GEO. PULMAN AND SONS, LTD,
LONDON AND WEALDSTONE.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
List of Illustrations - 3
Authorities on Francois Boucher - - - , - lo
Francois Boucher — A Biographical Sketch - - 13
Illustrations - - - , . . . - 81
Record of principal Pictures and Drawings sold by auction
(with sale prices) from 1745 to 1908 - - - - 145
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Pastoral Subject. Louvre . Colourplatc. Frontispiece
Portrait of a Young Woman - M 12
The Rape of Europa. Louvre • „ • 19
The Nest. Louvre - „ - 26
The Source. From the Engraving by Demarteau - „ - 31
Bergere aux Fleurs. Louvre • • • „ - 37
. Diana leaving the Bath. Louvre M 43
Domestic Scene. Louvre . . go
~ Rinaldo and Armida. Louvre - . 55
•^Mme. de Pompadour. From a Coloured Plate by Franz Hanfstaengl - . 61
Le Desir de Plaire „ - 68
A Bacchante. Attributed to Boucher - „ - 74
Portrait of Boucher. From the Engraving by Carmona, after Roslin - - . - 81
Mme. de Pompadour. Victoria and Albert Museum . . - 82
Mme. de Pompadour. Wallace Collection . . 33
• The Toilet of Venus. Louvre . . 84
Venus disarming Cupid. Louvre . . 85
Le Coucher de V6nus. Chartres Museum . 86
The Rising of Venus. Chartres Museum . 37
Love, the Bird-catcher. Collection of Mr. Alfred de Rothschild . . 88
Love, the Vintager. Collection of Mr. Alfred de Rothschild - . 89
Pastoral Subject. Collection of Mr. Charles Wertheimer - . 90
Pastoral Subject. Collection of Mr. Charles Wertheimer . 91
La Bergfere Ecout6e. Mme. Besnard's Collection • 92
Venus demanding Arms for ..Eneas from Vulcan. Louvre • 93
Birth and Triumph of Venus. Collection of Mr. Alfred de Rothschild - . 94
The Toilet of Venus. Collection of Mr. A Ifred de Rothschild . 95
The Muse of Painting. Glasgow Gallery . 96
"Mme. de Pompadour. Versailles 97
Bird-catchers (La Chasse). From an Engraving by ]. F. Beauvarlet - . 98
The Pretty Kitchen-maid (La Belle Cuisiniere). From an Engraving by P. Aveline 99
Cupid Captive. Wallace Collection . 100
Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan. Wallace Collection - . 100
The Judgment of Paris. Wallace Collection - - 101
Venus and Vulcan. Wallace Collection - - 101
Cupids on Clouds. From a Drawing in the British Museum . 102
Sketch of a Cupid. From a Drawing in the British Museum . 103
The Little Flute Player. Chartres Museum . - - 104
Soap Bubbles . 105
Cupid, with Grapes. Prom an Engraving by Demarteau - . 106
The Altar of Friendship. From an Engraving by Demarteau . 107
The Infant Christ and St. John. In the Collection of Baron D'Erlanger - - . 108
The Egg-Seller -, . 109
Calisto surprised by Love. Wallace Collection • .... 109
Cupids with Emblems of their Cult. Victoria and Albert Museum - \\Q
Design for a Fountain. Victoria and Albert Museum - . - 110
Child Study, in sanguine. Mr. Romaine Walker's Collection , - . - 1 10
The Lady with the Fan. Musee National, Stockholm - - - . - 1 1 1
Diana Reposing. Ch. Sedelmeyer Collection . . . \i%
Study of a Musician. From a Drawing in the Brilish Museum - . 113
Study of a Draped Female Figure. From a Drawing in the British Museum - - 113
The Fortune-Teller. Versailles . . - 114
8
A Set of Four Decorative Panels, in the Collection of Sir Joseph B.
Robinson, Bart. • • • - - 119
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— continued.
PAGE
The Fisherman. Versailles - 115
Venus Disarming Love. Collection of Mr. Alfred tie Rothschild 116
The Three Graces. Louvre • 1 17
A Pastoral. Wallace Collection 1 18
The Fortune-Teller ;
The Love Message;
Love's Offering ;
Evening ;
Venus and Cupid. Drawing in Crayon, heightened with white and sanguine 120
Diana and a Nymph Reposing. Ch. Sedelmeyer Collection • 121
Watermill at Charenton 122
Cupid Subject 122
The Sleeping Shepherdess. Wallace Collection - 123
The Setting of the Sun. Wallace Collection 124
Neptune and Amyone. Versailles 125
Girl with a Dove. Mr. G. Harland- Peck's Collection 126
Fishing. Ch. Sedelmeyer Collection 126
Pastoral Life. Kami Collection 127
Pastoral. Ch. Sedelmeyer Collection 128
The Shepherd. Ch. Sedelmeyer Collection 129
Vulcan presenting Arms to Venus. Louvre 130
Bust of Young Girl. Crayon drawing heightened with pastel ', formerly in Beurdelty Collection 131
Portrait of Alexandrine d'Etoilles. Crayon drawing heightened with white, formerly in Beurdtlcy
Collection 131
The Birth of Bacchus. Collection of M. le Baron Edmond de Rothschild 132
Female Study. From a. drawing in the British Museum 133
Pensent-ils a ce Mouton ? From the engraving by Madame Jonrdan 133
Chinese Fishers 134
Venus and Vulcan. Versailles 134
The Artist. Collection of M. Leon Bonnat 135
Psyche's Sisters. Beauvais Tapestry after Boucher 136
The Basket-Maker. Beauvais Tapestry after Boucher 136
Fishing. Beauvais Tapestry after Boucher 136
Boreas and Orithyia. Boucher Tapestry 137
Summer, or Rustic Pleasures. Beauvais Tapestry after Boucher 137
Psyche Abandoned. Boucher Tapestry - 138
Le Magniflque. From an engraving by De Larmessin 138
La Marchande de Modes. Music National, Stockholm 139
Landscape Sketch. From a drawing in the British Museum • 140
Female Nude Study. From a drawing in the British Museum 140
i Venus going to Bathe. Mr. G. Harland-Peck's Collection • 141
The Rising of the Sun. Wallace Collection 141
Sketch of Two Cupids. British Museum 142
Design for a Beauvais Tapestry-panel. Victoria and Albert Museum 142
Peasant Girl and Children. From a drawing in the British Museum - - 143
Sketch of a Lady. From a drawing in the British Museum • 143
The Artist. Collection of M. le Baron Edmond de Rothschild - - - 144
AUTHORITIES ON BOUCHER.
FRANCOIS BOUCHER, by Andre Michel, a sumptuous volume, beautifully illustrated, published
by Piazza., of Paris, 1506. with an almost complete list of his works and engravers. The
letterpress of this book, the best authority on Boucher so far, may be had in a cheap form
without the list of works, in
FRANCOIS BOUCHER, by Andre Michel, in Les Artistes Celcbres series, 44 illustrations,
5 francs. 1886.
FRANCOIS BOUCHER, LEMOYNE ET NATOIRE, by Paul Mantz (Quantin, of Paris, 1880,
large folio).
FRANCOIS BOUCHER, by Edmond aud Jules de Goncourt, with four eaux-fortes by the authors —
being the essay separately published and specially illustrated from
/ L'ART AU XVIII" SIECLE, by Edmond aud Jules de Goncourt, 3rd edition, in two quarto
volumes, 1882.
j L'CEuvRE DE BOUCHER, by Emile Wattier, Paris s. d.
For contemporary writings and criticisms, details may be found in the : —
ARCHIVES NATIONALES (cartons et registres de la serie O).
MERCURE DE FRANCE, a contemporary periodical, years 1725-1770.
ARCHIVES DE L'ART FRANCAIS (1851-60).
REFLEXIONS SUR QUELQUES CAUSES DE L'ETAT DE LA PEINTURE, by Lafont de Saint-
Jenne (1747).
LETTRE SUR L'EXPOSITION DES ODVRAGES DE PEINTURE, &c., DE L'ANNEE, 1747, by
the AbbcS Leblanc.
OBSERVATIONS SDR LES ARTS, &c., EXPOSES AU LOUVRE EN 1748, by Saint-Yves.
OBSERVATIONS SUR LES OUVRAGES DE MM. DE L'ACADEMIE ROYALE, &c., EXPOSES AU
SALON DE 1753, by the Abbi Leblanc.
CORRESPONDENCE LITTERAIRK of Grimm (edition Tourneux).
SALONS DE 1759, 1761, 1763, 1765, 1767, 1769, by Diderot (edition Assezat-Tourneux).
REVUE UNIVERSELLE DES ARTS (published by Paul Lacroix).
NECROLOGE DES HOMMES CELEBRES ; ELOGE DE M. BOUCHER, PREMIER PEINTRE DU ROI
(Paris, 1770).
GALERIE FRANCAISE ou PORTRAITS DES HOMMES ET FEMMES CELEERES QUI ONT PARC EN
FRANCE (Paris, 1771).
LES TROIS SIECLES DE LA PEINTURE EN FRANCE ou GALERIE DES PEINTRES FRANCAIS
DEPUIS FRANCOIS i«r JUSQU'AU REGNE DE NAPOLEON, &c., &c. (Paris, 1808).
ANNALES DB LA SOCIETE LIBRE DES BEAUX-ARTS (Du Rozoir, 1841-42).
FRENCH PAINTERS OF THE XVIII. CENTURY, by Lady Dilke (1899).
LES TROIS SIECLES DE LA PEINTURE EN FRANCE, by Gault de Saint Germain.
WALLACE COLLECTION — Paintings at Hertford House, by A. G. Temple. 2 vols., 410., 1902.
ART JOURNAL (1901-6)— essays by Claude Phillips.
v/Lis PEINTRES DES FETES GALANTES, by Blanc (1854).
BOURGES : SOCIETE DES ANTIQUAIRES ; memoires XXV., 162 (1902).
GAZETTE DE BEAUX ARTS (3 s., xviii., 390), 1897.
BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, vii., 233 (1905).
L'ART, 3 s., iv., 493 (1904).
(EUVRE DE JEAN DAULLE (a portfolio of engravings). Dyce Collection at South
Kensington.
10
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN (LOUVRE).
-/FRANCOIS BOUCHER.
i
1703 1790
I.
THE simple phrasing of a baptismal certificate in the parish
church of Saint-Jean-en-Greve was the first announce-
ment to a formal world, little heeding of it, that, on the
29th day of September in the year of 1703, was born to
Paris a man-child christened Fran9ois Boucher ; 'twas a written
statement, penned in simple, blunt fashion, recording with bold
sincerity the insignificancies of a career, but wholly lacking as
to hint that the child was destined to add to the great city's long
roll of fame. A gossip tongue or so wagged, no doubt. A
Saturday child — therefore, as the old ladies' scandal has it, born
to be something of a clever scamp. And he was nothing less.
Thus the significant thing, as often, lay in the midst of the
old women's tattle.
_,- At the making of the certificate, the father, Nicolas Boucher,
writes himself down maitre peintre, which is somewhat as
though one said "foreman painter;" yet it is clear that he was
of more solid substance, since, though the boy's mother appears
simply as Elizabeth Lemesle — their modest home in the rue de
la Verrerie — godfather Fra^ois Prevost signs as witness, and,
in the doing, owns to being huissier attx requetes du palais —
tipstaff to the palace of the King, as one gathers — and godmother
Boullenois as being daughter to a procureur au Chatelet de
Paris, which savours of some fussy little consequential law-
officer about the police-court. However, the father would appear
to have been an obscure, honest fellow, given to the trade of art
in mediocre fashion enough, designing embroideries, covers for
chairs, and the like — "an inferior designer, little favoured by
fortune," runs the grim recorded verdict of his polished day.
The child was born into a Paris a-gossip with stirring events.
The star of the Grand Monarque was setting ; Louis XIV.
was nearing the end of his long lease of sovereignty. Europe
was one vast armed camp. France was bleeding from catastrophe
after catastrophe, suffering terrible carnage ; her pride about to
be lowered still further at every hand. The year of Boucher's
birth saw the English admiral Rooke whip Chateau-Renaud off the
high seas, destroying the French and Spanish fleets in Vigo bay,
and carrying off in treasure from the captured galleons some
seven millions of pieces-of-eight.
The child's first year saw the English troopers of the all-
conquering Marlborough ride down the Frenchmen at Blenheim,
13
putting an end to the world's long dread of the Invincibility of the
French arms— a day that made " Malbrook " a name of fear to
every child throughout France.
The small toddling Francois' awakening understanding heard
of the horror-whispered losses of thirteen thousand Frenchmen
on the bloody field of Ramillies ; then of Oudenarde ; then of Lille.
To his six-year-old ears came the dread news of Malplaquet. His
seventh year saw Paris essaying the holiday-mood, with bells
a-ringing, for the birth of a great-grandson to the old king — a
sickly child, that was to succeed him as Louis Quinze. Yet the
coming of the little princeling brought the old king luck, for the
following year saw the fall from power of Marlborough, which
freed the last days of " France" from the terror of his name.
The boy Boucher, for he is now at sturdy twelve that cocks an
ear to great events, would hear cackle as to the death of the king
in his lonely old age — his son, the Dauphin with the "half-taste
for the arts," his grandson, and his grand-daughter all suddenly
being cut off before him — would listen to the palace gossip, indeed,
is not godfather Fra^ois Prevost tipstaff there, gossip of the
herald of the Court, appearing at the sickly great-grandson's
window with the black plume in his hat, to whisper low " The
King is dead!" and reappearing immediately afterwards, with
white plume in the hat, to cry aloud : " Long live the King ! " For
the five-year-old sat upon the throne of France as Louis XV.
The youth Boucher grew up to manhood in a France that
lay under the Regency of the dissolute and brilliant Orleans.
But high politics had little claim upon him ; he had one sole
ambition — to become an artist.
He was concerned with a far more engrossing event in this year
of 1720 than the utter financial chaos of all France which was
supreme when he reached this his seventeenth year. Nicolas
Boucher, the father, seems to have been an obscure fellow enough ;
but, unlike mediocrity, to have realised his mediocrity ; for, having
himself given the lad his schooling with pencil and brush, the honest
Nicolas had the astuteness to put his son to the studio of Lemoyne
— (Le Moine, Lemoine) — (they spelt airily in those days) a painter
of ceiling-pieces and the like — he who covered the ceilings at
Versailles with goddesses in the grand manner, and astounding
well — a true artist and a great one, and rapidly becoming famous.
v Lemoyne, at the height of his career, was a well-chosen, an ideal
master for the promising youth. Founding his art upon that
" of Correggio and Veronese, Lemoyne had rid himself of slavish
/'academic or senile tendencies of imitation of the great
Italians, and sounded a marked French note, painting with
all a Frenchman's grace. And Boucher, with the astounding
gift of rapidly acquiring what he desired to acquire from
others, and of rejecting what did not interest him,
absorbed direct and at once from Lemoyne's already French
utterance that basic grounding in the old masters that it would
have taken him years of drudgery to get from the Italian models
14
/
y
- which were then the inevitable and only schooling — it would have
taken him even more benumbing years to rid from his craftsman-
ship the cold foreign accent which had been already whittled
away from the better part of the Italian genius by Lemoyne.
Boucher is said to have stated that he was but three months
with Lemoyne, who "took scant interest in his pupils." If so,
c had marvellous gifts of assimilation ; for, on the day he left
Lemoyne's studio, a youth of seventeen, he stepped out of it a
finished artist, a sound and accomplished craftsman, fully equipped
/with all the trade-secrets and tricks of thumb of his master, and
a facile copyist of his handling and manner and style. The
testimony of Boucher, an unwontedly generous man in all things,
might not seem above suspicion, were it not that he had prodigious
application, untiring industry, a passionate love for his work, and
a quick and alert mind. He was remarkably free from the
hesitancies of the student — daring in experiment — eager in
venturing.
Indeed, this young fellow of seventeen took down all that
Lemoyne had built up and created, as at a gulp ; and on the eve
of manhood he so rivalled his master in accomplishment that, for
some years after he left Lemoyne's studio, it is dangerous to
attribute pictures to the pupil except under the most searching
and clear evidence.
To the end of his days, Boucher held the art of Lemoyne in the
highest esteem and reverence, never ceasing from lauding it. In
long-after years, when Boucher was at the height of his fame,
the owner of a picture by Lemoyne begged Boucher to complete
it; only to be met with the solemn reproof: "To me such
works are sacred vessels — I should dread to profane them by
touching them." At any rate, master and pupil parted with no
grudge or ill-feeling on either side.
On leaving Lemoyne's studio, Boucher went to live with P£re
Cars, the engraver, who engaged him to design drawings for
the plates for his gravers — P£re Cars allowing him his food, lodg-
ing, and sixty livres (double-florins) a month. Boucher accounted
his fortune made. Lemoyne and the Cars were closely connected
in their work — Laurent Cars, son of " Pere Cars," and an intimate
friend of Boucher's, it was who engraved the series of plates after
Lemoyne. Lemoyne's brilliant pupil, Boucher, would naturally be
recommended to the Cars by the master who, astounded at the
painting of a Judgment of Susannah by this youth of seventeen,
burst into prophecy of his achieving greatness in the years to come.
II.
THE cheery, gay young artist went at his work at Cars'
with all the enthusiasm of youth, and with that energy for
work, as for pleasure, that sent him jigging through life at
fullest pitch all his days. He blithely threw off anything that
was wanted ; gave himself no small airs ; bringing to whatsoever
is
he set his hand the same address and charm and invention. Tail-
pieces to the printed page, frontispieces, vignettes, emblems,
coats-of-arms, freemasons' diplomas, first-communion cards, initial
letters — all were the same to him. Laurent Cars engraved an
alphabet almost completely designed by him. Boucher made
himself known also to the makers of books, and let no chance of
working for them slip by — thus and otherwise, by every means
within his reach, filling a lean purse that was as quickly emptied.
The more important prints were soon given to Boucher to create,
/ and several were signed with his name. Indeed his fertile brain,
J quick inspiration, and facile hand were given free range from an
early start — and his decorative sense rapidly developed.
In the midst of this busy making of anything that came to his
hand, the young fellow was taking part, between whiles, in the
competitions for the Academy. He worked with what he could,
how best he could, uncomplaining and cheery always.
About the last day of the last year of his teens, on the 29th of
December, 1722, near by in another corner of this same Paris,
happened a little, a strange, thing, that was to have a profound
effect upon our youth, Boucher — still more upon the handsome
twelve-year-old boy who sat upon the throne of France — nay, upon
all France herself, from end to end of her. Yet it chanced in simple
privacy enough ; and no heralds proclaimed it in the streets of
Paris No bells were set ringing. There was born to a financial
fellow of shady repute, one Poisson, a company-promoting rogue, a
little girl-child whom they christened Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson.
But, in the cradle of little Jeanne, good and evil fairies flinging a
mixed largesse of qualities, her evil or fairy godmother stealthily
hid, among the pretty little morsel's skirts, the diadem and sceptre
of France — and no doubt set the impish ones a-laughing. But
they that had the seeing eye of the prophet would have foretold
that the girl-child was at no distant day to become a marchioness
of France — and no ordinary one, but Marquise de Pompadour, that
the world shall know in immortaj fame of infamy as thief of a
King's will and filcher of his sceptre, as of France's honour.
The youth knows nothing of the girl-child, no hint of this sudden
thing flung into the coil of his destiny — cares less ; nay, scarce
takes much more interest in the boy-king of all France, little
realising that one day they must all three come together; but is
concerned the rather with the looking-glass and clean-shaving and
the latest-cut of dandified coat and the style in coiffing of the hair, for
which more interesting fashions he has the taste, if only with the
lean art-student's leaner purse to gratify such dandyisms as are in
him, or to follow the loose manner of morals that are in the vogue
amongst the careless laughing folk of this rollicking Paris of the
Regency in which he is springing up to man's estate — and to which,
be it confessed, he is to take kindly enough.
_/ The youth Boucher was living the artist's life, concerned with
nothing but art. What cared he for the King or the King for him ?
Yet for the twelve-year-old Louis of France the web of fate
16
J!.
was weaving patterns not without significance. For it was in
the next year of 1723, that even the careless ears of our
Boucher heard, where he stood on the edge of manhood, the
boy-king declared to be of man's estate — his legal majority, as the
lawyers have it, announced to all France — heard also, if as
carelessly yet perchance looking up awhile from his colours
and brushes and easel, for he is becoming a gossiping Parisian
and the streets are full of it, of the sudden deaths of Orleans
by stroke of apoplexy, and of his precious minister, the boon-
companion of his wild devilments, the infamous Cardinal
Dubois — he who had intrigued France into accepting the papal bull
Unigenitus that is to make a hell of so many homes throughout this
fair France ; both dead as the result of their debaucheries.
Of a truth, this year of 1723 held a more tense thrill for the young
rtist than high or low politics. His dogged efforts to win recog-
nition from the Academy were rewarded at last. Laugh he did at
the ungainly title set him for subject. But he straightened his
face ; set himself to the business with a will ; and his solemn effort
to achieve the academic in paint with Evilmerodach, fils et successeur
de N abuchodonosor , delivrant Joachim des chaines dans lesquelles son pere
l>e retenait depuis longtemps took the first prize — he won the envied
^ bays of studentship, was carried shoulder high round the Louvre by
his boisterous comrades, and deposited at his lodgings, an eleve
couronne.
The collectors forthwith began to notice the brilliant young
fellow. Everyone has a good word for genial, unjealous, warm-
hearted Fran9ois Boucher, who is friend to all. Baron de Thiers
orders works from him that hold their place " even in his fine collec-
tion." But this hot enthusiastic young man needs no paying orders
to make him work. He can rub along one way or another. But
he paints from sheer joy in the doing, eager only to get the good
thing done, and to display the skill of his hand's work for the glory
of it. " His studio is his church." He is a born giver — gives
himself to his work, to his friends, to his pleasures, to all he does,
with both hands. Gives the precious works, upon which he has
lavished his whole strength, to his friends free-handedly when done.
A worker in marble, one Dorbay, takes advantage of the generosity,
furnishes his whole house with large pictures by Boucher — for
^/nothing ! A Rape of Europa, of this his Cars period, finds its way
into so choice a collection as that of M. Wattelet.
Boucher has won the student's highest prize. He must move
on to Fame. Nay, our Fran9ois even counts fame cheaply
enough, seizing eagerly at the occasion of the public street-exhibi-
tions known as the Exposition de la Jeunesse, to make his work more
widely known — hanging his pictures on the tapestries and carpets
and such like, which, by order of the police, the citizens had to
hang out to decorate their houses during the procession of the Fete-
Dieu along the Place Dauphin and the Pont-Neuf.
However, these works of his youth hold but a very distant hint
of that art which is to make the name of Boucher famous. These
17
religious pictures, engraved and published in the following year,
reveal the young man's small interest in his subjects. As a fact,
religious art never caught Boucher's fancy. His interest, in
presence of it, flags.
It was in the year after Boucher entered the house of Pere Cars
that Watteau died — the eager life of the greatest living artist of
France burnt out the afflicted feeble body. So it came that, some
four years after, De Julienne, the dead man's friend, seeking to
publish his (Euvres d'Antoine Watteau, walked into the engraving
studio behind Pere Cars' shop in the Rue Saint-Jacques, where
Boucher was wont to spend much of his time with his friend
Laurent ; and thereby brought into young Boucher's career an
influence that, wedded to his already sound training under Lemoyne,
'was to lead his achievement to its great goal. De Julienne
^engaged the young fellow to carry out some 125 of the engravings.
The business brought Boucher rare delight. De Julienne gave
him 24 livres a day, to the no small contentment of both.
Boucher was a facile and prodigious worker; he joyed in this
taste; and he learnt just those lessons from the master that were
needed to an enhancement of his own art. Above all it had
revealed to him that, when his position was secure, when the
academic prizes were won, it was to France that a French artist
must look for the foundations on which to build — Watteau revealed
the spirit of France to him.
Thus, in such varied and many enterprises, turning his wits to
embellish all that came to his hand, and in the study of nature and
the laws of his art, Boucher spent four fours as eleve couronne.
The time had come for him to complete his artistic education
according to the ideas of the times, an impossible thing to the artist
of his day without the Italian tour. He had to think of going to
/ Rome. It was a part of the quaint paradox of the man, a part of
the irony of his nature, that he waded through all the formalities
only to triumph over them in order to reject them. It were as if he
had set himself to prove that he could do the ordinary thing with
consummate skill. His individuality and his genius overpowered
all pedantry. To Rome, at twenty-five, therefore he decided to go.
The Royal School of 'dives proteges was not created until
more than twenty years afterwards, when Boucher was at the
summit of his great career. He certainly did not go at the King's
expense. He as certainly did go to Rome — with Carle Van Loo
and his two nephews Fra^ois and Louis Van Loo — since, in June
1728 we find Wleughels, the director of the Academy at Rome,
reporting his arrival there, "an unaffected youth and of marked
J merit," whom he has been able to " stuff into a little hole of a room
presque. hors de la maison " — a hospitality sometimes offered to young
French and foreign artists.
Of Boucher's doings in Rome, during his stay — whether, as
gossip says with much contradiction, his stay was of the shortest,
or whether constant illness numbed his wontedly busy brain and
hand for work of any kind — little is known. The eager imagination
18
is easily made idle by the overwhelming sense of a new place ; and
the treasures of Italy might well silence for awhile a man whose
eyes had so much to feed upon. The spiteful, bitter, but otherwise
ill-informed and ill-qualified Du Rozoir vowed, not without hint of
gall, that Boucher understood nothing of, and cared less for, the
masterpieces of the great Italians — that he voted Raphael " fade "
(insipid), Carraccio " gloomy," Michael Angelo " bossu " (contorted).
So far from being an object of derision such as the vile little
pedantic mind of Du Rozoir would think him, if Boucher uttered such
judgments he is to be admired ; he showed an admirable courage
and a sincerity far too rare even in such men as our own Reynolds.
He displayed a quality that would largely account for his own high
achievement — a downright and vigorous will to see for himself, to
judge for himself, instead of servilely peering through the spectacles
of others. Such judgment would save the world from oceans of cant
and stupidity in high places. There is something vastly refreshing
in finding a great artist ridding himself of all artistic and intellectual
snobbery so — from the very start. To dare to state the faults of
the great dead is not to deny them their mighty qualities. And
when the frank truth is spoken, though it had been sacrilege to say it
Until a few years ago, Raphael is "fade" in many ways, his
Madonnas do show insipid — Carraccio is gloomy — Michael Angelo is
" bossu." There's no getting away from it. Yet there are mighty
qualities in their masterpieces that Boucher perhaps felt more
keenly than the snobbery-ridden Du Rozoir, if all were known. It
does not follow that because an artist has no particular sympathy
with an old master, or is uninfluenced by that master, that he denies
him power. Were Velazquez or Frans Hals influenced by Michael
Angelo or Raphael ? Are they the lesser thereby ? Are they not in
some measure the greater ?
It were idle to seek to trace his footsteps during these wander-
years of twenty-five to twenty-eight — idle to wonder whether he
stood before the Correggios at Parma or the masterpieces of
Veronese at Venice. The art of Tiepolo we know he knew, and
that he felt its appeal. A poor enough engraving by Jeaurat in
1734 after a picture by Boucher, Paysanne des environs de
Ferrare, looks as if he had stayed his feet at Ferrara on the way
to Venice. His picture of the Temple of Concord and the road
to the Vatican proves that his brush was not as idle as gossip
would have it at Rome.
There were two Italian painters who were at that time adjudged
to be amongst the greatest masters of the past, with whom the
critics of the day rarely lost a chance of comparing Boucher on his
return from Rome — it is repeated time and time again — " the
facility and grace of Albani " and " the beauty of arrangement and
grouping and the large sense of chiaroscuro of Pietro da Cortona." Tj>
For, mark you, the leading critics, even Diderot whom we shall
soon see bitterly assailing him — being indeed as honest a literary
man as he was a wretched art-critic — thus hailed Boucher on his
21
./ return from Italy as a painter whose art was remarkable for
"vigorous and virile beauty."
Certainly in The Meeting of Rachel and Jacob, the Eliezer et
Rebecca, and Jesuit Martyrs in Japan, the fine engravings
by Laurent Cars prove the staying of Boucher's feet before the big
affairs of Pietro da Cortona, of Benedetto Castiglione, and of
Giovanni Lanfranco. And the score of the like religious canvases
which the catalogues of sales betray that he painted in Italy or
immediately on his return from Italy were no doubt in the same
manner. Indeed we shall see much of these influences even in the
picture which he is soon to paint of the Marriage of the Children of
God with the Children of Men, which marks the end of his Italian
period and his entrance into his kingdom, where he set up Venus
upon his altar and turned his back on sacred art.
Here, be it remembered, we see Boucher grimly setting aside his
own taste, and doggedly making a prodigious and laborious effort,
prolific in solemn attempts, to capture the conventional reputation
and standing of the "serious painter."
Besides the by no means useless discipline of this solemn
entertainment in the painting of religious themes, to which he
addressed his gifts in Italy and on his return from Italy, he won to
that repute of an Historical Painter then necessary to his worldly
promotion ; so that at twenty-eight, on the 24th of November 1731,
J he was nominated (agree] to the Academy. He had now but to
y paint an "historical picture" to take his seat as an Academician.
Now, this date tallies with the end of a three years' study in
Italy, when and where, it is likely enough, many of these religious sub-
jects were painted, which, it may be, to-day hang under other names,
unknown and little suspected, perhaps as well for Boucher's fame.
Of a truth, the threadbare religious subject made small appeal to
him, as to his generation turning their backs upon the orthodoxies.
They at least gave the professors of art, with dandruff on collar,
standards whereby to judge him against the past. They served
their turn. The sad part of the business is not that Boucher
painted them, but that the very critics who hailed this work with
frantic eulogies assailed the master-work of his hands when he
turned his great gifts to its creation.
III.
ON the edge of his thirties, in the full vigour of early
manhood, back in his beloved Paris, warmed by the atmos-
phere of the city that is all the world to a Parisian,
amongst friends, thrilled by the pleasures and gaiety of the
jigging life about him, his fingers on the pulse of his age, having
done his drudge-work and won his call to the Academy, he winked
a shrewd eye at the gang of them and gave rein to the original
genius that was in him.
He saw that however much his solemn make-believes, seen
through the spectacles of the old Italian masters of a dead day,
22
c* >
might rouse the praise of bookish men or of solemn academicians
or of the critic steeped in formal traditions or of the moralist-
thinkers of the day, his public were not tumbling over each other
to possess themselves of pictures from the old Testament, even
/ when painted in the methods of the latest fashion. Boucher had
no itch to preach to his age. He was a part of that age, concerned
as little with the deeds of the past as with the threat of the future.
He was, like all except such as were morosely inarticulate in the
France of his day, enamoured of the gaiety of life. And having
won to his goal, with a shrug at the taste of that tradition that had
elected him to the Academy and forced upon him infinite travail in
achieving the fantastic foreign thing, he straightway turned his
back upon the Old Book which he had been dipping into, with a
wry mouth the while, and betook himself to worship in the temple
where the Graces stood upon a flower-decked altar. The Italians
had set their mistresses upon the altar of their pious faith to paint
the Mother of God ; Boucher set a goddess upon his altar to be his
mistress. The smug Madonna of the Italians gave place to a
Frenchified Venus. In 1732, in his twenty-ninth year, he gave to i/
the world his Marriage of the Children of God with the Children of
Men, where Venus^js the avowed object of his adoration. It
caused a considerable stir; and added greatly to his reputation.
The Venus commanding arms from Vulcan for Mneas, the
Birth of Adonis, and the Death of Adonis, of this same period,
are strongly under the influence of Lemoyne still ; but we have "'
already in the Venus piece that rosy touchUpon~the flesh of the
female figures which is a surer sign-manual of Boucher's than his
written name.
The Birth and the Death of Adonis, in the neglect that fell
upon Boucher's art during and after the scuffle and wild confusion
of the French Revolution, lost their pedigree, and for long hung
side by side in Paris under the name of Lemoyne, in spite of the
engravings after them, until, on being cleaned of the dark dirt of
the years, in 1860, Boucher's initials were found upon the fallen
pitcher in the Birth of Adonis, and the engravings by Aubert
and Scotin, and a catalogue of the time, convinced the doubters.
Unfortunately the Salon was closed from 1704 to 1737 ; the works
of Boucher of this period are by consequence difficult to place.
We know that from henceforth, devoting himself to the service of
Venus, he painted more than once the incident of her interview
with Vulcan.
Boucher came to her service rid of all prentice essayings in
craftsmanship ; he found in his subject a goddess to whom he could
whole-heartedly devote great and rare powers of artistry. And,
from the day he entered into her court, his sensitive genius and his
pleasure-loving nature were a mirror in which he revealed to the
world an exquisite appreciation of the beauty of woman. He
J painted the flesh of her dainty body with a radiant delight and a
rare sense of form such as France had never before seen or uttered.
He remains to-day the first painter^of __the subtle, delicate and___
23
V
elusive thing that is femininity. He caught her allure and her
fragrance and her charm as he caught the fragrance and charm of
infants and flowers ; he set the statement of these exquisite things
upon canvas as they have never been uttered ; and he achieved it
with a will and a consummate skill which showed that his genius had
found at last its true path for his wayfaring and adventure in life.
He took, without questioning, the subjects that were in the air,
the dandified phrases and the sketchy classical allusions that were
in men's mouths, and flung from superficial lips in the fashion of the
day ; but he dug up no ancient ruins to find the foundations of
ancient lore, nor burnt the midnight oil in deep research amongst
ancient thought ; he employed conventional traditions to his own
ends, giving expression through them to the ideas that held the
eye of the times, breathing into the dead bones of the old gods and
goddesses whom the solemn old Academicians were bringing forth
still-born after infinite travail, the live spirit and light atmosphere
of his own times which prevent one from mistaking them ever for
anything but the statement of eighteenth-century France.
The verdict of his own generation was that Boucher was born
sensitive to the spirit of his day, amiable, and pleasure-loving. And
his life and career scarce refute the verdict. But these attributes
are superficial gossip-talk of obvious things ; and alone had not
enabled him in any way to make his wide reputation. For, make
no mistake about it, Boucher is__one of the greatest decorative
painters in all time. The whole of his life, from that early day of
his childhood that his father put the pencil into his small hands,
until that day when death filched it from his numb fingers, as he sat
in the early hours of daylight at work upon his last masterpiece, he
set himself with equal devotion to work and to play. And from the
years when the eagerness of youth jigged in his blood, and the man,
and the instincts of man, took possession of him, until the end, when
death took him, he worked often twelve hours a day, unsoured, and
without losing his blitheness of heart, or exhausting his vivid
imagination, or belabouring his inventiveness, or weakening the
desires of his gadding spirit. Out of his dogged toil he made the
pleasant means to satisfy the gratification of his tastes ; the
gratification of his tastes created in return the blithe subjects which
are the foundation of his chief achievement. They fulfilled each
other, his toil and his play—he made of his industry a vast pleasure,
of his pleasure as vast an industry. Out of each the other was
reborn ; recreating the one the other. A man's art is the revelation
of his soul's appetites, the confession of what he has felt most
intensely, set his heart upon most keenly. And Boucher, in
uttering himself, uttered his age. He loved his day, and was
content to love it. He came to his workmanship with the
swift skill and hand of the masters ; and he played as he toiled,
scarce knowing which was play and which toil, reckless of the
eternities.
The story of his love affairs makes no romantic reading —
commonplace ecstasies with nameless frail women, wherein neither
24
PASTOKAL SUBJECT (LOUVR1-:)
the man's head nor heart were once greatly touched. But,
whatever his frailties, it stands to his repute that no woman ever
owed her fall to him. His weaknesses were the most human of all.
However, hard as he lived and played or rioted or worked,
Boucher snatched a few moments from this his thirtieth year to
get himself married. Marriage, it is true, did not turn Boucher
to unmitigated faithfulness. His thirty years of manhood were
taken with the charms of the pretty little seventeen-year-old
Parisian, Marie-Jeanne Buseau ; and he married her for love of
her, certainly not for great possessions, on the 21st of April in
1733, at the church of Saint-Roch — worthy old father Nicolas
Boucher stepping out of the mists of oblivion for a few brief
minutes again to sign the register, and forthwith stepping back
into the fog of eternal silence again.
The young couple settled down, for the next ten years, in the
rue Saint-Thomas-du- Louvre, near the hotel (town-house) of the
Longuevilles. Here Boucher, then, lived his thirties.
There is, in a private collection at Bordeaux, a pastel portrait of
Madame Boucher, by the famous Latour — it was shown at the
Salon which we are to see opening its doors again in 1737. A
blonde beauty with blue eyes of an infinite tenderness, and a
roguish smile. She wears a white satin dress, cut low, her neck
daintily befrilled in the mode ; she plays with a closed fan in pretty
fingers that peep out of mittens of white lace. In 1761, when she
was 45, Roslin painted the dainty creature whom even Diderot, the
man of growls, confesses to be " always beautiful ; " indeed the
celebrated beauty is said to have been dowered with a dainty form
withal, which was of greatest service to Boucher in his painting of
goddesses — the indiscretion is more than gossip's whisper, for we
find Boucher, on consulting his friend Bachaumont as to what
subjects he shall choose for a series of pictures which he is
commissioned to design in illustration of the fable of Psyche,
receiving the advice : " Read and read again the Psyche of La
Fontaine, and above all things study well Madame Boucher."
These Psyche pieces run much to the " altogether."
Boucher, from all gossip account — and the tattling tongue wagged
more than a little profanely those days — did not for long study
Madame Boucher only ; but the lady consoled herself airily enough,
and strife was avoided. It was an excuse for seeing her and being
with her, that her lover, the Count de Tessin, Sweden's
Ambassador to France, commissioned Boucher to do the
illustrations for the fairy tale of Acajou, which, dull and insipid /
though they be, show the \nfiii&Ac^oT^^teau^ --
Faithful or frail, Boucher 's~pretty wife, like most artists' wives
of her century, herself worked in his studio, copying in miniature
several of the master's pictures ; indeed the signature of Jeanne
Boucher is known to us upon a fine etching.
Even marriage did not stay Boucher's hand from the feverish
pursuit of his art. Two years were flown by since he had been
nominated for the Academy ; it was now time to present the
27
necessary " historic painting " before taking his seat. He decided,
his marriage over, to take in this his thirtieth year the title of
Academician with Rinaldo and A rmida, now at the Louvre. This
V was just the " historic painter " style for a passport into the doors
of the Academy. Diderot praised it. It was exactly this part of
his necessities for Academic favour which, once secure in his seat,
Boucher forthwith flung into his discarded bag of tricks and tossed
out of his studio ; and which, being forthwith vanished from his
achievement, Diderot ever afterwards so bitterly craved and
regretted. But even here the real Boucher stands revealed — cupids
peep round draperies and curtains which have been filched from the
Italians, and which drape the pompous would-be Ionic columns;
nor did this blonde coquettish French Armida know any ancient
tongue.
The Sleeping Venus (engraved by Aubert in 1735) is of this
time, and redolent still of Lemoyne.
His election to the Academy, and the noising abroad of the
enthusiastic praise poured forth upon theRinaldo and Armida, brought
Boucher's name prominently before the King ; for, immediately in
the following year, he received his first order from the Court
whose painter he was to become. He was commanded to
replace with gayer decorations the paintings in the chamber of
the Queen, which had become blackened and made the apartment
ysombre and sad. Boucher set to work upon the four pretty
\ygrisailles, Charity, Abundance, Fidelity and Prudence, still to be seen.
With his tendency ever to cull the flowers only from everything
that came into his vision, his quickness to see the general pleasing
effect of a thing, and his vivid trick of evolving forms and seizing
them flying, Boucher was the destined painter of a Court which
/ had begun to find even the art of Oppenord " too severe " ! and was
adopting the rococo of Meissonnier.
But neither the honours of the Academy nor the favour of the
King kept Boucher from the booksellers' shops. At the end of
1734 appeared his illustrations to the (Euvres de Moliere, of which
his thirty three plates, engraved by Laurent Cars, are excellent.
Boucher dealt with Moliere as freely as with the gods and goddesses
of ancient mythology — everything is in the latest fashion, furniture,
decoration, the people that tread the stage. The spirit is of his own
graceful day, the pomp of Moliere's years is flown. The elegance
of Watteau is over all — indeed, some of the plates such as Le
Medecin malgre Lui are very Watteau.
IV.
\yCHARDiN, with superb gifts of the first rank, and others
witlTTmh, were about this time bringing— the~ Homely into the
vogue^__Aveline's engraving of La Belle Cuisiniere published
a year or two after Boucher is firmly seated in the Academy,
proves Boucher's essaying to be in the fashion. Such
work showed him but moderately equipped for the detailed
28
precision and the accuracy of realism, wedded to the Dutch sense
of interior atmosphere, requisite for painting still-life. Boucher
always lacked a grip upon " character " — he did not concern himself
with it. But even here we have that right sense of arrangement, o
grouping, that made for style. Yet, already, the pots and pans take
on a certain charm that was to develop the sneer about his very
broomsticks looking as though they called for pompons and ribbons.
He is more concerned with the accident of kissing in a kitchen than \s
with the kitchen's normal habit. He cannot go into the scullery
without dragging Venus in by the skirts. He has not the heart to
show a kitchen-wench as honest house-drudge. He must give her /''
the romance q£jan intrigue. Its pendant, La Bette F///agw«£ was
engraved by Svelme"uTT73Sr~
Boucher, Royal Academician, put on no airs ; he took up
the graver of the copyist again for a Book of s/w^Vs after Bloemaert
issued in the June of 1735. However, these were but busy
asides ; he was not neglecting his easel. The Academy decided
upon a display to test the achievement of its own members on the
occasion of an election to its staff ; and ordered that, on Saturday
the 2nd of July of this 1735, each of the candidates should show a
work done or finished during the year. Boucher did not fail to
thrust himself into the ranks of the competitors, sending four little
pictures of the Four Seasons, represented by little fauns and infants ;
and was elected, with Carle Van Loo and Natoire, to be deputy
professor.
Boucher's brain was very productive. He designed the four J
celebrated satiric vignettes of Religion and the Virtues over views **
of Paris for the Breviaire de Paris of 1736 He was working all
the while steadily for the booksellers ; one work succeeds another
with facile rapidity.
But there appeared about this time two prints, L' 'Amour
Moissonntur (Love, the Harvester) and L' Amour Oiseleur (Love,
the Bird-snarer), finely engraved by Lepicie, from two paintings by
Boucher in the Derbois collection, which mark an epoch in his
career. Five years later (1741) Fessard engraved the other two,
" L1 Amour Vendangeur" (Love, the Vintager), and V Amour Nageur "
(Love, the Swimmer).
This was the first flight of that host of Cupids which flew into ^
Boucher's studio and frolicked onto his canvases, and joined the
following of Venus — peeping over clouds, over waves, round
curtains ; being brought forth, said a spiteful One of the Pen, with
an abundance worthy of a " bastard Rubens."
Huquier published no less than six books of them : Livres de
groupes d' enfants as The Elements, The Seasons, Genies des
Arts. The Four Elements engraved by Daulle and dedicated to
Count de Bruhl, are probably of this period. It must be confessed
that, save perhaps for Lepicie, his engravers, fine as some of them i
were, often did scant justice to Boucher's painting of infants — for -^
he painted their rounded limbs, their jolly fat gracefulness, their
lusty life, their beautiful awkwardnesses, their vivacity, their naive J
29
^surprise of life, their infant character, as they had never been
J painted before, and have never been painted since.
Huquier also publishes in this thirty-third year of the artist, an
J engraving of an upright Pastoral and of a Shepherd and Shepherdess
conversing, with animals, and in a pleasant landscape, from
paintings by Boucher, which were his first essays in the style that
' he created.
He met at Huquier's, and grew intimate with, I^eissonnier, the
creator ofJRfogoco, who in May of this year, 1736, stood godfather to
Boucher^Tfirstborn son.
Before the year was out, appeared his Cries of Paris, engraved
by Ravenet and Le Bas. These " studies taken from the low
classes," like his homely pieces of the life of the people, betray
Boucher's limitations in the presence of realism. He here essayed
to utter the truth of the everyday things that he saw ; but he could
not see the deeper significances of life— as always, his brush could
not refrain from making elegance and dandified manners peep out
from behind the milkmaid's skirts or the coal-heaver's fustian.
His delicate and sensitive nose flinched from the gutter. Of the
sordid and miserable accent of the life of the people, the weari-
ness of the toil of the drudges, the dignity of their strenuous
labour, he refused to know or hear a syllable or see a hint. From
the tragic he turned away to the dance of life, to the flowers and
the dandified make-believes. He looked down at the " low class "
from his high window ; and he drew the daintier morsels amongst
them whilst they were young or picturesque, as he fancied they
ought to be, whDse musical street-cries came floating up to him on
the blithe air of a fine morning.
But there was about to chance a more fateful thing for Boucher's
future in this same 33rd year of his life.
A series of prints were announced in illustration of Don Quixote
by several artists. Boucher led off with Sancho pursued by the
servants of the Duke. This design of Boucher's was to have
far-reaching results.
The Gobelins tapestry-factories had been occupied with Don
Quixote since 1723 ; and the subject had rapidly become popular.
Boucher henceforth was to play an important part in the history
of the world-famed French tapestry-looms.
Oudry had been called by letters patent of the 23rd of March,
1734, after the dismissal of Antoine M£ron for embezzlement, to
conduct the Beauvais factories, together with Bernier, an alderman
of Paris, on a lease of twenty years. Oudry at once set himself to
get good copyists at work upon the looms, and to furnish them with
good designs, of which he composed a number himself. He now
called Boucher to his aid, whose original and fresh style, colour,
and arrangements, greatly increased the reputation and the
product of the famous looms. Amongst the several large paint-
ings that he now produced with astounding rapidity, was the
celebrated Bacchus and Ariadne at the Royal Palace of Turin.
He was also soon designing pieces of furniture and screens.
30
31
These designs of Boucher's (whether they contain the decorative
balance of a great painter that is subtly felt in fine pictorial design,
or whether with the central motive vignetted off into fantastic
framing of palms, draperies, and the like, more frankly decorative
in intention) mark a great gulf between the taste and style of the
sixteen and seventeen hundreds. Louis Quatorze caused his cam-
paigns to be represented; all must be in the heroic strain — for Louis
Quinze it was the Chase and Love and Pleasant Prospects.
Boucher painted for this series the Tiger Hunt (engraved by
Flippart), and the Crocodile Hunt (engraved by Moles), both
for the " Little Apartments " that the King had had constructed in
the roof of the Palace in which to rest sometimes after his return
from hunting — those " Little Apartments " that were to become the
scene of his orgies and intrigues, his favourite abiding place.
In 1737, Boucher probably painted for the Beauvais looms the / \/
Fountain of Love and La Bonne A venture, up_right pastorals that/
foreshadow his well-known pastoraL style to come/_I?ut they \
do not seem to have gone to the Beauvais factories ; and not until J
later to have served as the models at Gobelins.
Huquier published at this time the Jeux d'enfants, which
contained amongst other charming designs the Balan$oire, some
infants on a see-saw, that look as if they had been intended for
tapestry also.
It was in the midst of these triumphs that news came to Boucher
which gave him a profound shock. His old master Lemoyne, who
had begun the ceilings at Versailles the previous year, broke down
from incessant toil and prodigious overwork in order to fulfil
engagements, and took his life with his own hands in June 1737.
The 7th of July saw three pictures by Boucher " faites pour le
Roy ; " and at the Salon which opened its doors on the I8th of
August for the first time since Boucher's infancy, he had four pictures
of rural subjects, and " two ovals, the Four Seasons, for the King."
This Salon of 1737 was an artistic event for all France, and a s
new thing for Boucher and his generation. Old Rigaud, near upon
eighty, shuffling through the great rooms at the Louvre, might
well blink at the distance travelled by French Art since the beginning
of the century, as he held forth, we may be sure not without irony,
to the younger Academicians concerning the last Salon of 1704,
thirty-three years gone by. Blink he well might ; for the Art he
knew was vanished — he stood lost, stammering, bewildered in a
new world. A new generation had been born, grown up, and was
in possession. Taste was wholly changed. The grand manner, the
severe mock-heroics, and the solemn pomposity that had built up
the majesty of the France of Louis Quatorze were flown ; and the
Agreeable Elegance and the Pleasant Make- Believe of Louis Quinze
reigned in their stead. The imposing reception-room had given
place to the dainty boudour. Light chatter, gay banter, quick wit,
and the airy repartee had usurped the stilted splendours of a
consequential age. France, fatigued with the strain of the eternal
pose of the grand manner, freely unbent and sought relaxation in
33
J
an elaborate etiquette of joyousness and amusement. The making
of love was more pleasant pastime than the making of war.
J Gallantry and gaiety became the supreme objects for which to live
— for which to die.
The grand manner and mock-heroic splendour of Louis Quatorze
had not exactly made for truth in art — its severities had been
the splendid lie of a stately strut. Literature and the arts had
echoed the splendour of the lie ; and with such solemnity and
pomp as to give the lie something of majestic utterance. The
man of the world, the hero, the very rogues (and the one had
more than a little of the other) had lived in a stiffly brocaded,
heavily bewigged, and ponderous etiquette. Speech wore formal
tinsel. A sigh was calculated as though gowned in broideries.
An oath a measured masterpiece. So the real blithe France had
disguised herself in heavy stuffs — putting on the whalebone busks
and hoops of a stilted dignity, posing in an atmosphere of the
sublime. Europe, by consequence, vied in a make-believe majesty
that became an artistic reality. Europe essayed to believe herself
a gorgeous prig — and became one. Nay; did not France's ranked
battalions, going into battle, almost quarrel with the enemy
that he did not fire first, France saluting ? It was all very
wonderful.
Louis Quatorze, nicknamed " the great," being gone — France
threw off her stiff whalebone corsets of pomposity from her -r
breathed freely again, and in the intoxication of being able to smile
gracefully and laugh without loss of dignity and be prettily blithe
and gay again, came near to flinging most of the rest of her
apparel from her, and walking naked. As it was, she showed
more than a demure ankle. But at least she became human—
if naughtily human. Born in the pompous cradle of the grand
siecle of Louis Quatorze, the young bloods of Louis Quinze
could not wholly rid themselves of the grand manner ; but they
put prigdom from them to the best of their will, and strutted
down their picturesque century breathing an air of easy elegance,
set up a dainty pagan goddess for their worship, and became
amiable and gracious — with charm as their aim, and love of frail
women as the constant pursuit of their inconstant minds. ... At
once the stage saw the scene-shifters put on a new drama ; the
poets stained their fingers with rose-coloured inks ; verse got
a-tripping to a livelier measure ; prose was uttered to a lighter
rhythm ; painting and sculpture blossoms into blitheness ; the
bloods burst into jocund frivolous song ; the house and its furnish-
ments showed more cosy splendours and took on more gracious
lines. France became a coquette, seeking only pretty flower-
strewn ways to tread, and giving herself to dalliance — her patch-
box and her powder-puff and her fan a serious part of her
unseriousness — her manhood's aim now to be a pretty fellow.
Vive le joli !
34
V.
BOUCHER has arrived. He is in the vogue. The Court has taken
him up. Also the collectors. He has in the three years
from his election to the Academy to the opening of his first
Salon, created~~a new alncL Of iglirat" StyleT - - the .pastoral, the
cupid-piejces^the Venus-pieces. He has created also a new style
in tapestry.
Boucher's true province was that of a great decorative-painter ;
and he has come into his kingdom. We should judge his pictures
as though they stood where he designed that they should hang —
as part of a general scheme in a room — in the frames that he
designed — and in their right surroundings. But just as the Italian
masterpieces, torn from the churches for which they were painted,
and placed in a modern dining-room, are but a precious curiosity,
wholly out of place and all awry and uncomfortable, so Boucher
also, though he suffers less thereby, does not show to fullest
advantage in the raucous huddle of a public gallery. In the Hotel
de Soubise, once the stately town mansion of the Prince of Soubise,
now the Musee des Archives Nationales, you may at least see a
few works as Boucher designed and framed and placed them.
This palace the Prince of Soubise had had built on the site of
the old palace of the Hotel de Guise, a building raised to be worthy
of his fortune and his rank, by Lemaire. Brunetti and Bofrand
having the care of the interior decorations, commissioned the
artists, Boucher, Parrocel, Natoire, Tremolieres, Carle Van Loo
and Restout, to paint important pieces for its adornment. Of
the seven straightway painted by Boucher, as was his prompt
energetic habit — for the larger the canvases required and the
larger the number of them the more rapidly his eager wits
bent themselves to the completing of them, five are still in
position.
The superb The Three Graces putting Love in Chains, shown at
the Salon of 1738, has unfortunately gone black— a rare mishap in
Boucher's work — but, luckily, the Morny collection had a replica
painted by Boucher the following year. The Education of Love by
Mercury, an over-door, has something of academic coldness in it,
suffers from Boucher's habitual lack of "character" in
male. The Pastoral of the Bird-snarer and the Shepherdess, called
La Cage, is a very beautiful over-door, in which Bird-snarer and
Shepherdess have descended out of the Royal Palaces to play their /
parts. The Pastoral of the Shepherd placing a rose in the powdered-/
hair of a Shepherdess by the foot of a fountain, has already great
decorative qualities that place Boucher in the front rank of his age.
The Venus s'appuyant sur Cupidon pour entrer au bain en descendant
de son char, shown at the Salon of 1738, is a beautiful canvas which
displays Boucher's art rid of all influences. The Aurora and Cephalus
shown at the Salon of 1739, of which the Museum at Nancy has a
variant, was found in an attic at the Soubise awaiting its placing
in position.
Boucher seems, about this time, to have played with pastel,
probably turned to it through his intimate friendship with La Tour,
who showed, in this year of 1737, his portrait of Madame
Boucher.
But none of these essayings in other methods ever drew him from
his painting — he showed at the Salon of 1739 a picture 14 feet by
10 feet high of Psyche led by Zephyr into the Palace of Love, and
shortly afterwards we find Parizean engraving Psyche refusing
divine honours, designed for the looms at Beauvais. These large
pictures for the Beauvais tapestries developed still further
. Boucher's innate sense of landscape, evident in his earliest work.
His figures never over-ride his landscape ; his landscape never
overpowers his figures. The poise is exact and just. That he
himself laid great stress upon landscape we see from his earnest
and repeated counsels to his pupils, and in his constant deploring
of the lack of the art in France. It is true that in landscape
^/ Boucher did not wholly get away from convention ; but he came
astoundingly nearer to nature than was the habit of his time.
Indeed, for one frankly unconcerned with the rude realities of life,
and given over to glossing her ruder moods, his landscape is
marvellously true.
In 1740 he sent to the Salon his Landscape with a Mill.
Landscapes, dated 1741 and 1745, prove his serious attitude to the
subject. In 1741 his Forest and The Mill were hung at the
Salon, at the display of which in 1742 appeared the Hamlet
of Isse, an important canvas, which was afterwards to be enlarged
for the Opera. He published his Landscapes designed after nature,
engraved by Basan and Chedel ; Views in the neighbourhood of
Beauvais in 1744, and Views in the neighbourhood of Charenton in
1747, engraved by Le Bas — and Views of Fronville engraved by
W. Ryland.
Yet, even in the presence of nature, seeking to set down the
thing before him, his eyes ever select that which is of decorative
effect. He sees only what he has come to see. He puts his mood
into nature ; does not seek to steal nature's mood from her and
make her reveal herself to him.
The vogue for the lacquers and porcelain of China was in full
career ; and Boucher was never deaf to a vogue. For the cata-
logue of one of the principal merchants of Oriental wares, one
Gersaint, a personal friend, Boucher designed a frontispiece,
and in 1740 a pretty A la Pagoda. To get playing with a thing,
for Boucher, easily meant launching himself into full career upon
it. So we find in this same year, Huquier publishing a Book of
Six Plates, the Five Senses, representing divers Chinese pastimes, designed
by F. Boucher. These were the beginning of the tedious chinoiseries
on which he frittered away some of his precious years and wasted
great gifts. He designed several more books which, unfortunately,
were "favourably received by the public." At the Salon of 1742
he showed eight Sketches of Chinese subjects, to be carried out at
Beauvais in silk and wool — the well-known pictures now at
36
Besar^on. Three other chinoiseries as models for tapestries are
also known.
Midst this outpouring of chinoiseries, book illustrations, tapestry
designs, landscapes, models for the gilt bronze decorations of
porcelain vases, sketches for sculptures, the designing of elaborate
and beautiful frames for his pictures, schemes for the arrangement
of the rooms in which they hung, and the like manifold activities,
he managed to paint a masterpiece, the great picture of the
goddess at whose shrine he laid the best offerings of his versatile
genius — the Birth of Venus, sometimes called Triumph of ^
Galatea" which the Swedish Ambassador, our worthy wife-hunter
Count de Tessin, bought for 1000 livres at the Salon of 1740, and
which now hangs at Stockholm.
The removal of the Cabinet des Medailles, from Versailles to
Paris, brought work for the King's Library to the artists, Boucher
having to paint four " panels " — Epic Poetry signed and dated 1741 ;
History, 1742 ; and the Eloquence and Astromony shown at the
Salon of 1746 before being set up in place. Boucher seems to
have had to dun the Director- General of Buildings pretty hard for
the money.
It was on the 15th of the April of this year, 1742, that, on the
vacancy caused by the death of Martin, the Royal favour was
marked by the grant of a pension of 400 livres to Boucher, with a
promise of early favours to follow. Two years afterwards this
pension was increased to 600 livres (dollars).
To the Salon of 1742 Boucher sent the exquisite canvas of
Diana leaving the bath with one of her companions, now at the
Louvre, and engraved by Hedouin, (not to be mistaken for the
later, Diana Returning from the Chase engraved by Duflos) — a Leda,
probably the picture at Stockholm — a Landscape from the Fable of
Frere Luce — a Landscape in the neighbourhood of Beauvais — the
eight Chinoiseries from the Beauvais looms now at Besan9on—
and, as we have seen, the landscape the Hamlet of Isse.
This Hamlet of Isse was to be enlarged for the Opera. French
armies might war and be broken in war ; Paris had to have her
Opera — and Boucher was a Parisian of Parisians. This
Hameau d'lsse shows him to be on the staff of the Opera as
" decorator," to which office he did not disdain to return in after
years when First Painter to the King. Boucher took his place
at the Opera until July 1748, presiding in 1743 over the scenery
and costumes of the ballet Indes galantes, in 1746 over those of
of Persee and in the ballet A thys wherein he had a huge success
with his " fountains and jets of water and lighting and waterfalls,
his columns and his rocks."
To this year belongs his painting of the Vie champetre engraved
by Elise L6picie ; and the Country Fair engraved by Cochin.
39
VI.
BOUCHER is forty. He has entered into his kingdom. The ten
years of his forties are to be one long triumph. He produces
masterpiece after masterpiece. His art has caught the taste
of the day. He is at the height of his powers. He had done
great things before ; he was to do many afterwards ; but during
these ten years he is to send forth vivid and glowing creations
of sustained power and originality.
We have a picture of him as he was, in the flesh, at this time.
The pastel portrait of him at the Louvre by Lundberg (that artist's
election-piece on taking his seat at the Academy in this year),
shows us a gay, somewhat dissipated deviUmay-care dandy of a
man, handsomely dressed, smiling out of his careless day.
In his art, in the gossip of him, there is a strange aloofness of
the man from the high dramatic incidents of his day. His art
breathes the spirit of the butterfly social life of the time only.
Old Cardinal Fleary dead, the French armies flung back from
Austria — what remained of them — it was in this, our Boucher's
fortieth year, that Louis Quinze, acting upon an impulse to be like
his great-grandfather the Grand Monarque, became King by act.
But he had small genius for the business. He was the plaything
of his ministers, a set of vile, quarrelling, jealous and greedy rogues,
He fell into the habit, henceforth, of ruling France from behind
petticoats. Two sisters of the noble and historic house of de Nesle
had yielded to his gadding desires, and it is whispered a third also.
A fourth, the youngest, now became his mistress — and in this year
he created her Duchess of Chateauroux. Shamed by the defeat of
Dettingen, she roused him to martial ambition ; and he placed
himself at the head of the army — strutted it through Flanders as
conqueror, when the small-pox fell upon him at Italy, and sent
Chateauroux packing. He returned to France on his recovery, to
be hailed as a Caesar, and christened " Well-Beloved " by the
populace of Paris, a few weeks before Chateauroux, reconciled to
him, suddenly died.
So far, all this for Boucher, as for us, was little but scandal.
Yet out of the whirl of things his fortune was ripening. Of the
disastrous defeats at Prague and Dettingen we find no hint in
Boucher's work of this year, but rather the indifference of the gay
world of Paris to all else but Venus and jollity.
He moves into new and better quarters in the rue de Grenelle-
Saint-Honore, opposite to the rue des Deux-Ecus, where he lived
for the next five years (until 1749). But his eyes were now steadily
fixed upon a studio and apartments at the old Palace of the Louvre
— though, spite of hard intriguing by his friends to get them for
him, he failed in his attempts for some time, making in fact another
move before he was enabled to reach his longed-for goal.
At the Salon of this year, he showed his upright oval canvas of
The Birth of Venus, and its pendant Venus leaving the Bath ; the
Muse Clio, engraved by Daulle, and its pendant Muse Melpomene ;
40
/ -ll
and three Landscapes. In this same year he painted and signed
y- the beautiful Pastoral at the Louvre known as The Sleeping
Shepherdess; and the other two famous Pastorals at the Louvre,
The Nest and The Shepherd and Shepherdesses, are of this period.
All three belong to his finest achievement.
Of the many paintings of Venus that were sent forth from
Boucher's studio in these, his great years, it is not easy to give the
entire list, for his prolific hand and brain were producing abundant
and beautiful canvases of the first importance in her honour.
The growing taste amongst collectors for the homely realistic
Art of the Dutch masters probably drew Boucher to their exquisite
paintings of interiors ; and, having signed the Marriage of Love and
Psyche in 1744, he painted the Dejeuner which L6picie's engraving
has made well known, showing a family at breakfast in a well-to-do
French room of the period. This was followed by a series of
illustrations to La Fontaine, by the Magnifique, and by the
Calandrier des Viellards and the Amorous Courtesan, both engraved
by Larmessin.
The Femme Couchee, painted in 1745, shows the naughty
character of Boucher's famous model, " la petite Morphil," far from
treated with reticence — this girl, Murphy, of Irish extraction, was
to figure in the life of the King and of the Pompadour in the years
close at hand ; and to become the jest of the town and the subject
of ribald songs. She was sister to the Academy model, to whose
reversion she was entitled.
To the Salon of this same year, Boucher sent " several studies
under the same number." This was a new thing. Artists until
this time had never attached any value to studies and sketches for
their works. Success was instant and loud.
Towards the end of 1745, the Swedish ambassador, Count de
Tessin, about to leave Paris, commissioned him to paint four
pictures, to be finished by the March following — Morning, Mid-day,
Evening and Night. Of these the Morning, painted in the
following year (1746), and now at Stockholm where it is known as
The Toilet (engraved by Gaillard as La Marchande de Modes)
alone seems to have been carried out according to the scheme
written down by the ambassador's secretary. The three other
pictures were modified by Boucher, for we at least have the
engravings by Petit after pictures of three half-lengths of women,
entitled Le Matin, Le Midi, and Le Soir, of more or less similar
ideas. We learn from the correspondence that it was Boucher's
habit to be paid on delivery of each picture, and that for each of
the original paintings for de Tessin he was to receive 600 livres.
In a document of the Director General of Buildings of the year
1745 is a " List of the Best Painters," inwjjrjchBguch^r is marked
down for distinction ..a&--''.aa_hi8toric_painteCK living in the rue de
Grenelle-Saint-Honor6, opposite the rue des Deux-Ecus, pupil of
Lemoyne, excelling also in landscape, grotesques and ornaments
in the manner of Watteau ; and equally skilled in painting flowers,
fruit, animals, architecture, and subjects of gallantry and fashion."
41
Yet consider awhile, wonderfully as his art in its subtle way
suggests the spirit of his times, how strangely aloof it is from
the vast doings of these days — as aloof from high politics as from
the solemn realities. Think how in this year of 1745 France is
racked with significances !
Boucher hears — cannot surely help but hear — a strange, a mighty
scandal, that is to mean vast things to all France, and not least
of all to Boucher.
A young bride has been for some time the talk of the rich
merchant class of Paris — that class that has steadily come to
possess near upon all France. A remarkable young woman, her
beauty, her lively wit, her brilliant talents are the gossip of
the town. Her very name is charming — Madame Lenormant
d'Etioles — trips like song of nightingale upon the tongue. Who
was she ? Whence comes she ? Well ; we have been at her
birth — it is our once Jeanne Poisson — Jane Fish. How the ribald
songs of the Paris gutters, set to it by spiteful witty old Maurepas,
are going to thrash that jest of Jane Fish to ribands ! Daughter
of a scandalous financial fellow who had fingered the commissariat
monies in an ugly fashion to his own ends — who had indeed been
banished for the nasty business, and was in truth in banishment
when Jane popped into the world. At least he was husband to
Jane's mother, herself no better than she should be — and the wags
winked knowingly, jerking a thumb at the dandified fine fellow,
Monsieur Lenormant de Tournehem, who had been the favoured
one during the enforced travels of Monsieur Poisson. As a fact
Lenormant de Tournehem takes astounding interest in the child,
gives her good schooling, pays handsomely for the teaching of all
the accomplishments by the greatest artists of the day from the
Opera and the First Places. Poisson, the father, being returned,
takes Lenormant de Tournehem to his arms. And Lenormant de
Tournehem ends the pretty business by lifting Jane into the
moneyed aristocracy and making his nephew, Lenormant d'Etioles,
marry the girl, giving a half of his wealth to the couple, and
promise of the remainder. Consequential little Lenormant d'Etioles
is lord of Etioles and other seignories. "Uncle" Lenormant de
Tournehem even provides for the young couple handsome town-
house and country-seat on the grand scale, where Madame gathers
about her the most brilliant circle of wits and artists of the day,
gay Boucher amongst the number, and biting Voltaire, and the
rest. But Madame has had since childhood an absorbing silent
ambition — she now confides it to her cynical mother and to " uncle "
Lenormant de Tournehem. She has set her dogged will, learnt
all her accomplishments, trained herself with elaborate cold-
blooded cunning, to seduce the King of France. She is almost
virtuous about it — swears she will wrong her d'Etioles for no one
but the King. After much intriguing, she catches the wandering
eye of the King ; at a great masked ball, the beauty who has plagued
and interested the King all evening, unmasks at the King's bidding-
drops a handkerchief — Louis Quinze picks it up ; so that the whole
42
Court murmurs: "The handkerchief has been thrown." A bitter
Court intrigue is at once a-gog. But a few nights after, Madame
Lenormant d'Etioles is stealthily smuggled into the private
apartments of the King. Rumour speaks. She comes again ; but
ends the night with sudden feigned terror — her husband has
missed her, traced her — she dare not go back to certain death.
The King is moved and lets her hide herself from henceforth in
the secret apartments ; to the beautiful creature, who thus so
dramatically interests his bored day, he promises his protection,
a lodging, her husband's banishment, and early acknowledgment
of the high honour of titular and accepted mistress — before the
whole Court in Easter week, says the pious Great One. Which
pious decision was only put off by the sudden need for Louis to
join the army and win the victory of Fontenoy, whence he returns
to Paris a conqueror. On the 14th of September, Madame
d'Etioles is presented to the Court, proceeds to the Queen's
apartments to pay her devoirs, and in her twenty-third year is
raised to the great aristocracy of France as Marquise de
Pompadour.
Boucher has now the Strong Friend at Court ; gets soon
another, for the Pompadour seizes an early chance to employ the
King's favour to appoint " uncle " Lenormant de Tournehem to be
Director General of Buildings, which office covered amongst
many things the control of the royal art treasures.
That the Pompadour's influence affected Boucher's position at
Court during the next two or three years it would be ridiculous to
deny ; but, as a fact, it is utterly ridiculous to attribute Boucher's
position at Court to the friendship of the Pompadour, far less his
rise in his art. He was painting for the Queen's Apartments at
thirty-one, when Jane Poisson was a school-girl of twelve in a
convent. Boucher was a prominent personality in the art-world
before he met Lenormant de Tournehem, who introduced him into
Madame d'Etioles' circle — and few men entered that artistic circle
who were not already men of position, Carle Van Loo, Cochin,
Pigalle and the like. Madame d'Etioles had loved to surround
herself with the artists and the wits and the philosophic set — but
she preferred entities whose names carried weight. And we must
remember that her position was for two or three years far from
secure — indeed was never secure — she had to win it day by day.
The religious set about the Queen were shocked — that the King
should choose as mistress one who was a friend of freethinkers
like Voltaire, and not from his own church ! The nobility were
shocked — that the King should stoop to choose a mistress from
any class but their own, the old noblesse of France! The Royal
Family sulked at the humiliation — "the choice of one so low-born
detracts from the honour of the King's adultery ! " It is a
strange France.
Boucher painted the two remaining pictures for the Cabinet des
Medailles in 1746, Astronomy and Eloquence, also "four pictures"
for the grand Cabinet of the Dauphin, which were "placed
45
elsewhere " ! His Toilet of Venus (engraved by Duflos) now at
Stockholm, was his contribution to his goddess.
To the Salon of 1747 he sent his These allegorique, dedicated
to the Dauphin ; and two Pastorals, one of which, Pensent-ils aux
raisins ? (engraved by Le Bas), is to-day at Stockholm. This
year also saw his two pictures painted for the bedroom of the King
at the chateau of Marly, Venus demanding arms from Vulcan for
JEneas now at the Louvre ; and the Apotheosis of JE-neas now
vanished.
Now, though Michel's searching and accurate pen be silent as to
the influences at work as to the ordering of these pictures for the
King's private apartments at Marly, it is likely enough that the
Pompadour directed the commission. At any rate, this his forty-
fourth year finds Boucher working for the warring camps of the
Dauphin and the King's mistress. The Court party, about the
Queen and Dauphin, fought the Pompadour day and night for
possession of the King, with a venom and an ever- watchful intrigue
that never slackened, led by Maurepas, the King's minister, and one
of the most astute and unscrupulous minds in this unscrupulous
century.
After this, Boucher rarely does work for the Queen's or
Dauphin's party.
In this year he gives his strength to that Rape of Europa,
engraved by Duflos, that was painted for a competition arranged by
the Academy at the order of Lenormant de Tournehem in the name
of the King, in which chosen Academicians were to paint pictures
six feet by four feet high, subject and style to be in the individual
manner of each artist — six prizes of 100 pieces of silver and a gold
medal to be awarded by the artists themselves in secret vote.
Boucher displayed his amiable nature and his wonted kindly
sympathy for all with whom he came in contact his life long by
proposing with Natoire and Dumont that they should all so arrange
as to share the prizes equally and thus avoid any sense of soreness
which must inevitably be aroused in the losers ; a decision eagerly
approved by the artists and which led to the comically pathetic
bewilderment of Lenormant de Tournehem. On the 7th of
October, Boucher sold this Rape of Europa for 1500 livres — the
highest price he had yet known.
Another Rape of Europa, which had been painted in the
^ year of his Birth of Adonis, and engraved by Aveline, was bought
by Lord Hertford. A third version was engraved by Pelletier, and
they all three differed considerably.
This Rape of Europa was not without detractors. The Mercurt,
always friendly to Boucher, sounded the loud peal of praise ; but
even some of his friendly critics began to demur to his " abuse of
rose-tints" ; and there were sly digs, even in verse, at his love of
robbing Venus of all attire. Diderot was turning upon him for
triviality ; for Diderot and the new philosophy were devoting their
attention to the whole foundations upon which France rested ; art
and letters amongst all other social activities— and they were
46
finding that these things were not very good. They began to
demand of art " grandeur and morality in its subjects " ; they were
soon to ask of it "the statement of a great maxim, a lesson for
the spectator." Boucher's allies began to use "buts." In the
previous year, Lafont de Saint-Yenne had censured, and with
justice, the cold and characterless features of the figures in
Astronomy and Eloquence; and Boucher's friends, particularly the
abbe Leblanc, who thought they could with justice sneer away the
stupid criticisms about Boucher's children being " for the most part
upside down and violent without necessity and without beauty,"
were hard put to it to show Boucher's sense of "character."
Boucher himself, for all his modesty and the praise of his friends,
was sensitive to printed attacks ; and in the midst of almost
unanimous praise he set aside his rule of silence under criticism by
designing the frontispiece to his friend Leblanc's brochure in which
he drew Ignorance, Envy and Hate in counsel, and an ass braying
opinions.
The Venus and the Graces Bathing and the Venus and Vulcan
(engraved by Daulle) in the Galerie La Gaze, were of this year.
It is significant that the year of 1748, from which he pours forth
the finest of his Venus-pieces, saw the Pompadour come to supreme
power ; and that it is during her remaining years that Boucher
reaches to highest achievement.
The Pompadour seemed to bring the King luck. Marshal Saxe
moved on from victory to victory. The French dream of Empire
in India looked assured, when, in October, 1748, the nations,
exhausted by war, came to terms of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle.
Peace was no sooner signed than Louis Quinze relapsed into his
wonted habit of dandified indolence and boredom. He laid aside
his duties as the lord of a great people, gave himself up to shame-
less riot, and allowed the Pompadour to usurp his magnificence
and to rule over the land. For the next sixteen years she was the
most powerful person at Court, the greatest force in the State-
making and unmaking ministers, disposing, like a sovereign, of office,
honours, titles, pensions. Louis squandered upon her person
seventy-two millions of the public monies as they now value it.
All affairs of state were discussed and arranged under her guidance;
ministers, ambassadors, generals, transacted their business in her
stately boudoirs ; the whole patronage of the sovereign was dis-
pensed by her pretty hands ; the prizes of the church, of the army, .
of the magistracy, could be obtained solely through her favour
and good-will. She was possessed of an extraordinary combina-
tion of talents, rare accomplishments, and astounding taste. And
it was in the exercise of the indulgence of her better qualities that
destiny brought Boucher the friendship and genuine admiration of
this marvellous woman. She became not only his patron but his
pupil, though her engravings after his designs are scarce of the
foremost rank of accomplishment. And the best of them, the
frontispiece to Rodogune, required Cochin's retouching hand upon
the plate.
47
But this, her sovereignty over the King, easy and light in outward
seeming, was a haggard-eyed nightmare to the woman who had so
craved for it, before she knew the ghastly struggle that it meant.
The Pompadour knew no moment's rest from the day she won to
the King's bed. She had to fight her enemies, who stood round
about the King, secret and open alike, for possession of her lord,
day and night, as if for very life — and she fought. She won by
consummate skill, some throws of luck, and unending courage. Yet
from each day's victories, she soon knew that she must know no
hour's rest. The Court party fought her for power. Maurepas,
who had made Chateauroux's life a burden to her, brought all his
unscrupulous wit, all his mimicry, all his vile jibes and unchivalrous
cynicism and hatred to bear against the Pompadour from the day
she came into the King's life — all those gifts that so tickled the
cynic humour of the King. He had made himself a necessity to the
King ; and he never slept away a chance of injuring her. He knew
no mercy, no nobility, no pity, no scruple. He made her the hated
object of the people ; with his own hand wrote the witty and foul
verses and epigrams that were flung about the streets of Paris.
But she had an enemy more subtle and insidious than any at the
Court, whether in the King's apartments or the Queen's or on the
backstairs ; she had a task far heavier than these bitter courtiers
and ministers ever gave her, and they were without scruple or
honour — hour by hour she had to dispute the King with the King's
Boredom.
One of her first moves was her celebrated theatre in the private
apartments. It was set up in the Cabinet des Medailles. The first
play was by Voltaire — VEnfant Prodigue. Here the greatest in
the land vied with each other to play the smallest parts — mar-
chionesses of the old noblesse were content if they might but carry
a banner — the Prince of Hesse was one of the dancers — the Prince
de Dombes was proud to play the bassoon in the orchestra— the
Due de Chartres joined the company with difficulty. A great noble
promised the Pompadour's maid a command in the army for one of
her kin if she would get him the part of the police-officer in
/-r\ . /•/• i
Tartuffe !
Her power so greatly increased that she took open command of
the King's will. She dared, and succeeded in getting Maurepas
banished — though she did not reckon on Maurepas passing on his
hatred to his friend the crafty d'Argenson. Henceforth she used
the kingly " We." A single armchair told all to remain standing in
the favourite's presence. She gets her father created Lord of
Marigny, her brother Marquis de Vandieres— he whom the king
called " little brother " and liked well.
She amasses a private fortune and castles and estates undreamed
of by any other mistress. Into them she pours art-treasures.
These things cost the nation thirty-six millions of money.
She created the porcelain factories of Sevres, which robbed
Dresden of a great part of her position, and brought a large
48
DOMESTIC SCENE (LOUVRE).
industry and revenue to France. She watched over the Gobelins
looms. She founded the great military school of Saint-Cyr.
In the midst of work that would have broken many statesmen, in
the midst of deadly intrigues, she kept complete control of the art
production of the land. ,
Boucher left the Opera as its " decorator " in 1748, to go to this
theatre of the Pompadour's — and did not return to it until sixteen
years later when death took " the King's morsel."
He painted for her the decorations for the Little Apartments
and for Bellevue which he decorated in the Chinese style.
In her hectic desire to keep the King from being bored— the
King " qui s'ennnyait" - she stooped to the very deeps;
stooped to drag down even the art of Boucher. She went to her
favourite artist and begged him to employ his art's skill in the
painting of a number of pictures in questionable taste to tickle the
jaded desires of Boredom. And here let us speak in honest
judgment of this business. It was an ugly habit in the France
of the century, as it had been in Italy of the Renaissance, this
commissioning of the lewd picture for the "secret collections"
of the amateurs. These pictures painted by Boucher for " the
special usage of the King, ''qui s'ennuyait," which the ill-fate
Louis the Sixteenth on succeeding to the throne so indignantly
ordered to be made away with as " toutes ces indecences" — so slyly
taken away and hidden amongst his own belongings by de Maupeon
to whom the order was given — and bought for the celebrated
Wallace collection at the Restoration — these pictures, it may be, /
have been responsible for the wide idea that Boucher painted >/
ever with immoral intent. As a matter of fact, except in these
exercises, he painted woman with the frank honest healthy vision
of a healthy man, just as he painted flowers and infants.
To the Salon of 1748 Boucher sent a gouache sketch of a /
Venus upon the Waters ; the Pastoral of the Shepherd showing a
Shepherdess how to play the flute ; and a little square picture
of the Nativity. Fessard engraved a Nativity by Boucher in
1761 as the Lumiere du Monde — and Huquier earlier, in 1756,
another Nativite, a charming design. It is significant that
Fessard's is from a picture " belonging to Madame de Pompadour! "
Perhaps even from her chapel !
Even the friendly critics were now mixing " buts " with their
praise — this time not only over a Venus but upon a religious
subject. Carping is in the air. There is comparison with—
Albani ! Bouchers. Jhej^ine^_ai^_iLcharming^ mistresses," those/
of the Italians Had "more of modesty." The writers must make
the Italians " moral1' at all costs— even Raphael's young mistresses /
must be accounted modest and moral ! Boucher must rid his
palette of the rose-tint — should "consult Rubens." Well, Rubens
was free enough with his reds in his flesh-tints, when all's said. . . .
Why should Boucher paint like Rubens ? or Rubens like Boucher.
. . . Asses brayed even in the witty eighteenth century.
51
The Nativity, however, restored Boucher to the good graces
of the scribblers a whit. Orders were now pouring in.
This year he painted for the King the easel-pictures from the
Fetes Venitiennes and the Fetes de Thalie, the enlargements
from which he retouched with his own hand, and from which two
tapestries were to be executed for Muette.
By a rule of the previous year, a scale of fees had been set up,
as regards pictures designed for tapestries. The "originals in
little," by the Academicians, and the enlarged copies (grandes
copies) wrought by their own hand or so much worked upon
by them as to be avowed by them as theirs, were to be paid for
together, according to size :
Large size, 22 to 18 feet, original and copy — 6,000 livres ;
Medium size, 17 to 13 feet, original and copy — 5,000 livres;
Small size, 12 to 9 feet, original and copy — 4,000 livres.
The large copies were to serve as the model for the weavers ;
and the easel picture was at first to remain under the eye of the
" tapissier en chef," who would thus always have before him the
general effect of the piece to be woven.
Coypel wrote, urging forward some pieces for the Queen of
Poland this year, but Boucher seems to have lagged over them.
He received also an order for several pictures from the Chancellor
or Grand Seal, with, as subjects, the attributes of one of the gods.
He painted Two Nymphs of Diana returning from the Chase, for the
dining-room of the King at Fontainebleau ; and two large allegoric
compositions. Of his Venus-pieces, the two Toilets of Venus
were of this time.
In 1749, Boucher had an order for two pictures — Vertumnus
and Pomona to represent Earth, with a " pleasing landscape " or with
trees loaded with flowers and fruit; and Arion on a Dolphin, to
represent Water, with tritons, nereids, and other sea-gods — being
two of four pictures to represent The Four Elements, the others
to be done later. Also a picture for the King of Apollon et Isse,
and three pictures for the " appartement " at Choisy, Love
caressing his Mother, Venus disarming her Son, and Venus looking at
Love Sleeping. Lenormant de Tournehem writes in February
of this year of orders for five pictures by Boucher and Oudry of
flowers and foliage with birds, for the Queen's apartments ; and of
some landscapes and country subjects for over-doors by Boucher.
The Toilet of Venus and Graces chaining Love, at the Louvre,
are signed and dated 1749 ; these were obviously once over-doors.
And he showed still another Toilet of Venus, dated 1749, at
the Salon this year.
Boucher was now so firmly established, that in 1750 he moved
into a new house in the rue Richelieu, near the Palais Royal. He
was disappointed at not receiving the studio and apartments at the
Louvre for which he ever craved ; but he was allowed to use a
studio in the King's library, under the Cabinet des Medailles,
opening upon the inner court.
52
Boucher was by this time making money so easily that he began
to indulge his fancy for curiosities and pictures in considerable
purchases.
At the Salon of 1750 appeared his Adoration of the Shepherds,
painted for the Pompadour's private chapel at Bellevue. If
Boucher must paint religious pictures at all, it at least seems fitting
that his should have been the signature upon the altar-piece where
the Pompadour prayed and the abb6 Bernis chanted the mass !
Boucher had already painted for the Pompadour at Bellevue two
over-doors, the Vues chinoises for her blue and gold boudoir, and
the series of Attributes of Agriculture, framed in garlands carved
by de Verberck, for the famous gallery.
He showed also four pastorals : Lovers surprised in the corn,
(engraved by Gaillard), Shepherdess sleeping (engraved by
Beauvais), and a repetition of Shepherd teaching his Shepherdess
how to play the flute (engraved by Gaillard as the Agreable Legon.}
At Tours is the Apollo with a Shepherdess (1750), originally
painted for the chateau of Chanteloup, in which we see the portraits
of M. de Stainville and his young wife in disguise. This name of
Stainville is about to stand supreme in France.
The friendly critics amidst their praise complain of the heads of
Boucher's women being more coquette than noble — and a more
solemn fellow, shaking a serious wig, warns that " to work for
money is by consequence to spoil his talents." Whilst even the
faithful Mercure, bursting into jesting poetry, lets fly the neat
shaft that the shepherdess with her pompons and her falbalas looks
as if she had come from the Opera, and would be off again thereto.
These strictures, in spite of Cochin's counter-attack on the critics,
fretted Boucher ; and he sent nothing to the next year's Salon of
1751. But he was painting as untiringly as ever. Indeed, he was
at the height of his powers, and his rich vein of fancy never yielded
more charming results. From these full years date some of his
happiest works. A colour-print by Bonnet in 1769, bearing also
Boucher's signature and the date of 1751, shows the Pompadour
en jardiniere. In the Reunion des Genies des Art (1751) at
Angers, his hand shows all its cunning of composition and harmony
amidst the intricacy and abundance of the forms in the
complex design. The Latona at Delos originally shown as
Evanouissement d'Amphitrite, was of this time, and displays his
most exquisite gifts of colour. He was pouring out Venus-pieces
of the first rank, many of them engraved by Gaillard, Michel, Le
Vasseur, Janinet, Basan, Courtois, and others ; innumerable Cupids
flew out of his studio ; and Bonnet and Demarteau were re-
producing in facsimile a large number of drawings of Venus and
Cupids and heads and sketches which were eagerly bought. /
In this his forty-eighth year, Boucher's art is in its most//
luminous stage — his atmosphere clear and limpid, his yellows
golden, his whites satinlike and silvery, his pearly tones exquisite
and subtle, his pale yellows clear as amber, his pale blues tender
53
/ and beautiful, his painting of the flesh-tones upon the nude bodies
*•") of his goddesses unsurpassed by mortal hands.
<^ The beauty of it all, alas, was not to last much longer.
Troublous days were setting in for Louis, for Paris, for the
people of France. Louis got foul of his parliaments.
Lenormant de Tournehem died suddenly on the 19th of November
1751 ; the Pompadour promptly had appointed in his place her
brother Abel Poisson de Vandieres, as Director General of
Buildings, Houses, Castles, Parks, Gardens, Arts and Factories of
the King, at the age of twenty-five. A shy handsome youth, a
gentleman and an honourable fellow, against whom his sister had
but the one complaint, that he was devoid of brazenness! He
brought to his office an exquisite taste, a loyal nature, and
remarkable abilities. No man did more for the advancement of art
in his day than the Pompadour's " little brother."
Boucher had little reason to complain of the long days of neglect
and misunderstanding that are the lot of many artists. The
Pompadour's brother was Boucher's friend. Boucher had not long
to wait for proof of it. De Troy, the director of the Academy of
France at Rome, died there on the 24th of January, 1752, leaving a
pension of a thousand livres a year a-begging ; the young Director
General of Buildings went straightway to the King and secured
the pension for Boucher in this his forty-ninth year.
But of far greater value to artists than royal pensions — which
were only too often far in arrears — was a studio with its apartments
at the Louvre. For years Boucher backed by his friends, had
moved every lever at Court to procure them. The Pompadour's
"little brother" again came to his aid, shortly after procuring him
his pension, securing him also on the death of Coypel, the studio
and apartments rendered vacant by the death of the First Painter.
This studio, with its apartments, at the Louvre, had gone with
the office of First Painter to the King. But poor Coypel had seen
little of his pension, which had been cut down to a tenth of its old
value ; and the old painter had been reduced, for some months
before his death, to pathetic appeals for the bettering of his low
estate, and had with difficulty at last got 3000 livres.
The title of Finst Painter to the King, with its pension, was
allowed to lapse for some years ; but Boucher was eager only for the
studio and lodgings, of which he took possession in September 1752,
bringing his family and belongings from the rue Richelieu, and
vacating his studio beneath the Cabinet des Medailles. Here, in
the old palace of the Louvre, he had his home for the rest of his
days. The rooms and studio were in such shocking state of
neglect that he had to ask for them to be put in repair before he
could take possession. It is quaintly significant of the state of the
King's Exchequer that the Pompadour's brother wrote a friendly
note to Boucher in reply — in which he warns him not to press
the King just at present for repairs, as he may turn round at
this stage and say that what was good enough for his First
Painter should be good enough for Boucher ! Boucher wisely
54
took the hint, had the repairs done, and afterwards recovered the
money.
The decoration of Fontainebleau was going on apace. A new
wing was being built to the palace for the use of the King, under
the Pompadour's guidance ; and, when it was finished, the more
important decoration of the Council Chamber was confided to
Boucher. He had already painted for the Dining Room the Two
Nymphs of Diana returning from the Chase. In 1753 he was at work
without cease upon the ceiling and the principal picture. Soon the
last stroke of the brush was given to them ; and the Soleil qui
commence son cours et chasse la Nuit was in position ; and the four
Seasons represented by infants were shown at the Salon.
He sent to the Salon the same year the two well-known pictures
painted for the Pompadour, and now at the Wallace ; Sunrise
and Sunset which were to be designed in tapestry at the Gobelins
looms by Cozette and Audran. They created the greatest
enthusiasm ; and the poetasters burst into verse over the "modern
Correggio." But Grimm, "the friend of the philosophers" held
to his wonted severity, attacking " this painter of fans," finding
his colour "detestable," his pictures damned by comparison
with his neighbour Van Loo, his rose-tints "exasperating," his
design "bad," his Apollo "nothing but a puppet," and "the
two pictures of the lowest rank at the Salon." Boucher himself
always had a strange and particular affection for these two
pictures; "they were of the nuniber of his own paintings with
which he was most satisfied " !
rtists have strange affections for their children.
'Two Pastorals at this same Salon, painted for the Pompadour,
for Bellevue ; two over-doors for the Castle of Muette ; the decor-
ations at the theatre at Saint-Laurent do not complete the list of
this his fiftieth year's industry ; the engravers were haunting his
studio seeking works to reproduce — easel pictures, heads, studies,
landscapes — and he worked for them all, Chedel, Duflos, and others.
And as though for a rest, he designs four models for statues for the
Pompadour's castle of Cre9y — a Gardener, a B utter -Churner, a
Milkmaid.
w"He was fulfilling the while, most conscientiously, his duties as
Academician and professor. Indeed, he was ever a favourite of
the students and artists. He had his own pupils whom he was
ever ready to help, and in whose success he found the keenest
/pleasure. Of the winners of the " first prize at the Academy,"
La Traverse, Melinde, Deshayes, Brenet, and Fragonard were from
his studio.
In June he is a member of a royal commission sent to choose
from the Marquis de Crillon's collection the pictures worthy to be
added to the King's ; in September he is called, with the same
colleagues, to examine into the state of the pictures by Rubens at
the palace of the Luxembourg which had been attacked by " gray,"
and to report on the secret process of Madame Godefroy and
Monsieur Colin for removing the " gray " without displacing them
and without damage.
To keep his head cool amid such a mass of work, of duties, and
of cares, it was necessary to be up and bustling. It was about this
time that Reynolds, passing through Paris, went to visit Boucher,
and found him at work upon a huge canvas for which he was using
" neither sketch nor models of any kind. On expressing my
surprise, he repjiedjthat he had considered the model as necessary
during his youth, untiflieTiad completed his study of art ; but that
he had not used^oneL.for_a_ long lime past." He was rushing his
work, relyirig^on his memory, ceasing to be, of a truth, a sad truth,
a student of the life, becoming the maker of a convention. As
astute Michel has it, when he painted the Painter in his Studio, now
at the Galerie La Gaze, he shows a large number of studies and
sketches beside the easel. In The Painter, engraved by Marie
Igonet in May, 1752, the book of studies is gone; he is seated
before his canvas in his dressing-gown and calico cap, hard at
work, amidst an amusing confusion — his wife looks over his
shoulder, a child in her arms, whilst two little boys play on the
floor, one grinds some colours whilst the other tells fortunes by
cards. It is his own indictment.
He soon had no time even to give his pictures the minimum
amount of work necessary for them, to say nothing of studying
nature or life. His vision begins to hesitate, his hand to falter.
The Pastoral at the Louvre dated 1753 (No. 27) is already
heavy and without fire. It is but chance, yet here is the dis-
quieting symptom. He has topped the hill — it is the moment of his
decline. He must descend the other side.
Boucher begins to grow old.
Louis Quinze and Louis-Quinze-France also.
The quarrel between priests and parliaments is now at its
bitterest. Louis banishes parliaments and establishes a Royal
Chamber. The writing on the wall does not make for ease of mind
to Louis, nor his France. Atop of all comes an ugly scuffle on the
American frontiers of New England — one May morning an English
force under a young English major, a dogged fellow of the name of
Washington from down Virginia way, cut to pieces a French
command — the resulting attack and defeat and surrender of
Washington did not make for peace. This threat of war with
England calls for money; and the Pompadour has not money-
making ways. In Paris the people are ablaze with anger, not
against the King's enemies, but against the King. A peace is
patched between King and people — the parliament is recalled —
enters Paris in triumph, grimly enough on the day that, to the
Dauphin, is born a second son, who is to succeed as Louis XVI.
A backstairs intrigue almost dislodges the Pompadour.
D'Argenson with the Pompadour's treacherous cousin Madame
d'Estrades, throw the beautiful and youthful Madame de Choiseul-
Romanet, not unwilling, into the King's way to lure his fancy from
the Pompadour. The King writes her a letter. The girl consults
58
her kinsman the Comte de Stainville, of the Maurepas faction, a
bitter enemy to the Pompadour. De Stainville, wounded that a
kinswoman should be offered to his King, goes to the Pompadour,
exposes the plot, becomes her ally, and soon her guide in affairs
of state.
The Pompadour never forgot this peril. She saw the hint of her
personal attractions beginning to wane upon the King. She decided
to keep her supremacy by forestalling a rival. She had stooped
before, and in stooping had not shrunk from making Boucher stoop.
She now stooped to the basest shift of all. She supplied the King
with mistresses of the lowest class, who should never come into
intellectual rivalry with herself, nor be the prop to his will and to
his ease that she was. The first of these was Boucher's model, the
little Murphy — la petite Morphil of the songs. For her she started
a little house near the palace for the King's pleasure ; which system
developed, as scandal has it, into the beautiful retreat of her
notorious pavilion in the Parc-aux-cerfs near Versailles, which she
made into a seraglio of beautiful young women, thus securing
herself against the danger of unknown and secret rivals. That the
French Court, already a severe tax upon public opinion, should
become an outrage upon public decency, troubled her as little as it
disturbed the ease of her lord. Public contempt grew, and ex-
aggeration. From henceforth the little " Well- Beloved" lost its
reality in satirical use, and took on a comic meaning.
VII.
IN 1754 the Pompadour's amiable " little brother," Boucher's
good friend Abel Poisson de Vandieres, was created Marquis
de Marigny ; Boucher lost nothing thereby.
Boucher now yielded himself utterly to his vogue. % /
His pastorals and shepherd-pieces ; his pastels ; his drawings in V
red chalk, and in black chalk enhanced with white or touched with (
pastel, were at once seized upon by eager engravers and had an T
immense sale amongst the general public.
Now, we have the testimony of his own day that he refused
to take advantage of his ever-increasing reputation in order to
raise the price of his work. His fortune grew rapidly ; he there-
fore had to do more work. He poured out his brain's ideas. He
spent freely of his means, embellishing his lodging at the Louvre,
and buying celadon cups and handsome porcelain, Indian boxes,
precious stones, rubies, agates, onyx, emeralds, cat's eyes, crystals,
fragments of beautiful stones, calcedony, jasper, coral, birds,
insects, butterflies — anything that fired his colour-sense. He has
been blamed for this as a man of trivial tastes ; nothing could
better prove his desire to keep his eye for colour quick. He
collected also pictures and etchings. To lay too much stress on
his choice were stupid. He would buy what he could get — few of
us can make an exclusive collection of the supreme examples of
59
our taste. Even so, we find him famous for his collection of
Rembrandt's etchings — yet these were days when Rembrandt had
no great vogue, and the greatest artists feared to set him and
Velazquez and Hals beside Michael Angelo and Raphael — and
Pietro da Cortona and Albani ! the great Dutchman being indeed
pronounced somewhat vulgar ! Boucher's liking for Tiepolo is
obvious. Nor do fourteen drawings and a sketch by Rubens, nor
pictures by Jordaens, by Teniers, and by Van Goyen prove him
of the trivial leanings that were the constant sneer against the
dead man — to say nothing of his engravings after Gainsborough.
The engravers of Boucher were as much pushed as the master
— naturally the quality of this engraving did not always maintain
the highest level. Boucher protested ; his protest got into print.
It lead to the great breach with Duflos. In the March of 1755
appeared in the Mercure an announcement that a set of prints
recently issued by Duflos, as being after pictures by Boucher,
had been engraved from furtive drawings made in the master's
studio by the least capable and least advanced of Boucher's pupils,
and given without his knowledge to the engraver who put the
prints on sale, without the leave of the painter who refuses to
recognise or acknowledge them. In May, Duflos replied tartly
with an ugly thrust that must have gone home to Boucher :
" Every man has his mania; that of M. Boucher is to avoid being
engraved ; occupied with works that please him, time flies ; he
has not always time to do new work ; his pictures in private
houses are not seen by everybody ; if he received an order from
the country, a few strokes of the pencil, some deft touches, added
here or taken away there, make a new picture, and give the
painter time to breathe ; the engraver loses, also the public — but
the Academician gains."
The trick of thumb is there ; but facile habit has taken the
place of inspiration.
From henceforth he signs more rarely and at longer intervals,
only such charming pieces as the Mill (1755). But the feverish
haste that had taken possession of him left him less and less
leisure to joy in his works; and his eyesight began to fail. His
flesh-tints deepen to a strong reddish hue ; he is not ignorant
of the reproach; he fears it must be something to do with his
eyesight, for he only sees as an earthy colour what people cry out
to be bright vermilion.
Again, in working for the tapestry-weavers he had to force the
colour, as models for the looms were pitched in higher key.
Oudry had introduced Boucher to the Beauvais factories, and
to the Gobelins, whither he sent several works for the King —
Neilson executing there his design in 1750 of Love Lighting his
Torch at the Fire of the Sun. In this year of 1755 Oudry died.
Marigny at once persuaded the King to grant the directorship
of the Gobelins to Boucher ; who, in the same year received
1 ,000 livres in special recognition of the care he had given to the
60
61
factory. Boucher was to receive 2,000 livres a year, which were
but irregularly paid, and that only after long delays.
The last year of Oudry's direction had been disturbed by strife
with the tapestry-weavers. Boucher's appointment was hailed
with delight. A few months after his appointment, he set to
work upon seven pieces for the King's apartment at Compiegne,
which Marigny had persuaded the King to commission from
Boucher in November, in order to revive the manufacture which
the constant repetition of stale designs had made to fall into
dulness ; he had pointed out at the same time the significant fact
that the success of the Beauvais looms had been largely due to
Boucher's art. Boucher was wisely given the choice of subjects,
and his fertile mind had not to go on a long journey through the
clouds ; the story of the galantries of the gods, of Jupiter and
Venus, had always had a lively fascination for him. These Amours
des Dieux were placed in medallions bordered in gold, suspended
like pictures to a garland of flowers, and set upon a rose ground,
framed in a large darker band of rose, itself surrounded by a
gold border.
At the Salon of 1755 Boucher was again a defaulter. "We
suspect," said his good ally the Mercure, "that the little furtive
scribblers are the secret cause."
Meantime church and parliament had broken out into open war
again. Louis had need of parliament's support — hostilities at sea
with the English made war inevitable. Support came from the
most unlikely place. Maria Theresa, the astute Empress of Austria,
that had been for two hundred years the implacable enemy of
France, wrote, with her own hand, the famous letter which addressed
the Pompadour as " Ma Cousine," and won the close alliance of the
May-day Treaty of Versailles in 1756. A treacherous clerk betrayed
the secret to Frederic of Prussia's spies — and he seized Leipzig
and Dresden and set astir the mighty Seven Years' War. Paris
was in a state close upon revolt, when poor foolish Damiens,
reckless of his own life, stabbed the King with a pen-knife as Louis
/stepped into his carriage at Versailles.
In 1756 Boucher painted the famous Rothschild Portrait of Madame
de Pompadour. He had painted for her the two well-known pictures
the Muse Erato and the Muse Clio (engraved by Daulle), in both o
which she is said to figure as the Muse. Indeed this was not the
first time that Boucher paid the " tribute of immortality " to his
benefactress — nor the last.
This celebrated portrait caused high commotion. Here the
Pompadour poses as artist — at her feet are portfolios, rolls of music,
a crayon-holder with a red chalk in it, and a graving tool ; but she
is also the femme d'Etat, the Woman of Affairs — on the rosewood
bureau beside her, where she sits upon the chaise-longue, is the pen
in the inkpot, a ministerial portfolio, a forgotten, neglected flower.
Roslin is said to have put in the lace upon the robe for Boucher.
Boucher painted the Pompadour in another fine portrait wherein
she poses as artist — standing in an orange silk dress before an easel.
63
At the Sireuil sale was described a pastel portrait of the Marquise,
three-quarter face, coiffed, and with the throat half-uncovered.
At the National Library in Paris, amongst a portfolio of plates
engraved after Boucher, is an aquatint Madame la Marquise de
Pompadour, morte en 1764, signed by Boucher and engraved by
Watson— a bust-portrait in which she is shown with throat bare, a
drapery floating round her shoulders, pearls in the hair, which is
dressed very close and short, the nose strong, the lips full and
sensual. This is the canvas, of all that Boucher painted, which
looks as if it were a true likeness.
At Versailles is another bust-portrait, much like this, a full face,
and with bare neck, flowers in her right hand, which is drawn back
to the left shoulder, where the end of a bluish green drapery,
broken with yellow, is held by a blue ribbon which passes over the
uncovered breast ; in the powdered hair are set blue and yellow
flowers ; the cheeks are painted and rouged.
It has been said, that it was not the face that interested
Boucher most in a man or a woman, above all in a woman ; that he
had not any of the great qualities out of which great portrait-
painters are born. A neat saying brushes aside the truth easily
enough. Boucher, as a fact, painted but few portraits, but of such
as he painted, more than one, the small " blue Pompadour'' seated
on a couch (at Edinburgh), the celebrated and exquisite Pompadour
in a garden (at the Wallace) and the little portrait in white dress
seated in a garden (in South Kensington) prove that, when he set
his will to it, he cannot be ignored amongst the most brilliant
masters. His portrait of the Infant Orleans Egalite stands out
as one of the greatest of child-portraits.
Of other well-known portraits from his hand, are the Portrait of a
Child painted in 1749; the Marechal de Lowendal, (engraved by
Larmessin) ; Marie Leczinska ; Madame Favart, coiffed with rose-
garlanded ribbons and forget-me-nots ; the Nattier-like canvas in
the Galerie La Gaze ; the nude picture of Mademoiselle X*** en habit
d'ete ; and the pastel heads for the Cabinet des Beautes.
At the Salon of 1757, Boucher showed the Rothschild portrait of
Madame de Pompadour, which he had finished the year before.
The friends of the artist and his sitter went into ecstasies over it ;
but the critics were not so pleasant — the grumbling Grimm
declared it "detestable in its colour and so overlaid with detail and
ornament, pompons and all kinds of fanfreluches, that it made the
eyes ache in the head of anyone of good taste," — which Grimm
presumably thought that he was and Boucher was not.
Boucher also showed a large Venus demanding arms for JEneas now
at the Louvre (No. 708), a design for the Gobelins looms; the
Forges de Lemnos, also for these looms ; and two Infant Subjects
for the weavers.
Boucher had long turned his back on religious subjects ; but he
was now again brought back to them, as once or twice before, by
the Pompadour, who desired an altar-piece for her private chapel
at Bellevue! So it came about that in the same year he turned
64
from his illustrations to the Decameron (engraved by Flipart and
Lemire) to paint the Repose in Egypt, now at the Hermitage,
St. Petersburg ; and in the following year (1758) the Infant Saviour
with the Kneeling Baptist.
To the Salon of 1759, at fifty-six, he sent a Madonna (according to
the Mercure, a Nativity according to Diderot), which created a new
feeling amongst the critics. This was the year that Diderot wrote
his first " Salon " — he had not yet declared war against Boucher —
and compares the Madonna with the work of another, to Boucher's
great advantage. In spite of " the false colouring, the bed with the
ridiculous canopy," he could live with this picture — "you may find
fault with it, but you cannot ignore it."
In truth, when Boucher took the time to it, he still knew how to
create the good thing. The St. John Preaching at the church of
Saint Louis at Versailles, and the sketch of the Trois Graces portant
V Amour in the Gallery La Gaze, dated 1759, are charming in
freshness of colour and in style. This clearly is the year also of
the female nude study, back view, so exquisitely etched by de
Goncourt.
He was steadily at work at this time upon his paintings Amours
des Dieux for the Gobelins looms — in 1 759 and 1 760 appeared the
engravings by Gaillard of the Jupiter and Calisto and the
Jupiter and Leda.
In the midst of disasters the Pompadour persuaded the King to
send for De Stainville, from the embassy at Vienna, and to
make him his prime minister. She had at last found a man who
was loyal to his word. De Stainville was created Due de Choiseul
in December, 1758. Choiseul had as ally, one of the most astute
and subtlest minds in eighteenth-century France — his sister
Beatrice, the famous Duchesse de Grammont. The King had at
last by his side a born leader of men. Choiseul gave back the King
his dignity. He and his great sister came near to saving France.
Choiseul became the Public Opinion of the nation. He founded his
strength on parliament and the philosophers. He became a
national hero. He could do no wrong. Choiseul came to power in
1758, and stemmed for awhile 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.
Boucher was frankly bewildered by affairs.
He painted in 1761 the Genies des Arts for the Gobelins looms-
He showed at the Salon of this his fifty-eighth year, some
Pastorals, and some Landscapes. Diderot attacked him bitterly —
deploring that such talents and great gifts as were his should be
so debauched in order to win the applause of little men. Yet even
Diderot has to confess to the imagination, effect, magic, facility.
But in spite of spurts of the old magic, Boucher was rapidly
approaching his premature decay. He had burnt the candle at both
ends, with a vengeance.
We have the picture of the man, already old, in the fine portrait
painted by Roslin, the Swede, and shown at the Salon of this very
year — now hanging at Versailles. Roslin has caught him
in one of those moments not given up to pleasure, not fired with
work. Sad ; old age creeping over the shrewd kindly features ;
the eye is dulled, the fire gone out of it ; already the crow's-feet are
printed there ; there is world-weariness in his attitude as he looks
out upon us over his shoulder, his right elbow over the chair-back ;
feebleness has come upon him ; but — the hand, the long strong
sensitive hand, keeps firmly in its slender nervous fingers the crayon
holder with its red chalk ! It was to be held in those fingers to the
last hour.
In 1762, with a faltering, weary hand, Boucher painted the
Venus receiving the Beauty Prize and Love Disarmed. But sickness
was fallen upon him; and from henceforth was to leave him
but rare intervals of respite. On the 3rd of July his colleagues of
the Academy officially charged Deshayes, his son-in-law, to convey
to him the sorrow of his comrades at his illness.
He showed at the Salon of 1763 The Sleep of the Infant Jesus ; a
small landscape, and the pastoral Berger endormi sur les genoux de
sa bergere. Diderot burst forth into rank abuse. Boucher was
nothing more than a man corrupted by praise, and made giddy by
his talent — the ruin of all students — it was his fault, and his alone,
that they were all wearying the world with garlanded infants, and
painting their chubby, rosy, &c. — the rest is rather after-dinner
conversation, even for Diderot.
Boucher took no notice of these attacks ; but he could not wholly
ignore the change that was taking place in public taste. The ideas
of the philosophers were penetrating public opinion. The Man of
Feeling had arisen and was walking abroad.
They were beginning in fact to speak of the great antique days —
of the simplicity of Greece. Leroy, the pupil of Blondel, had
published in 1758 his Ruins of the most beautiful monuments of
Greece ; the writings of Winckelmann were becoming known to the
French public; in 1766 a miserable translation was published
of his History of A ncient A rt. Gabriel was giving at the same time
the telling example of an intelligent return to simple and
harmonious lines, that were soon, in their turn, to be overdone by
too ardent and narrow disciples ; Vien was also heading
towards the coming reaction. Fickle fashion was about to turn her
back upon Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses and leafy
groves ; and to take up her abode awhile with heroes, and
amongst picturesque ruins.
Boucher, bewildered by her vagaries, vainly endeavoured to
adapt himself to France's new intellectual and artistic mistress
— do we not find him raising in the background of his Moineau
apprivoise the columns of a temple and a pyramid which in
some puzzled mood he considered to be the monuments of
the ancients ? Whatever virtue lay in the new thought and
•
66
S1
^ i3 I
Pf AIRF
it .1 .A L 'a. 1 JTV 1 _j
the no
purer, r.
Boucher r
generosity
to Vien in 176^
as .'
M.
be cleansed from within,
blotting out of the .
dominant amo-
they had governed for
as vast as it was secret. Their vtr>: j±.t*
quarrels, with, the parliaments, and then $tf:. < * ^
tyranny, had roused the hitter hatred <»f tht a,»jir--: u? « <«.-»u ••'
people throughout the land. ChoiwuJ w&s ' h,-ir
He decided to b!ot t'r< root a&d I>raf..<^i. TJxe porWA.- -.
closed up its ranks. Qun^eul w»u> U. hHX«ey<KJ
In 1764 Boucher ! fm t»u- <»»)bt?inj toon** the /4*v*-i
AV; «OIK — Vertwihu. ami I'-jriona — ami iisfr**; *W
Cephalw. The larger nusni)er of thos>e pj^tures paintfrd 1
Gobelins during his directorship are at tht i^iuvre or t*".a
amongst them the " A mynihus and Syivu : " .mJ fj»f: •• KM
the Louvre.
In the October of this year, Cocbir, /»«
suggest the painters and subjects for ;}w*
at the Castle of Choisy, replied th.it ?
four, led him to propose i-.b*
Elements, but, he added, " / fo»?.«».»,
//*rt^ furnish but commonplace idtu* :t
he continues: "The deeds of war-f < «, v*?
the destruction of the human race h-r"
is it not reasonable to show nornvtifrv's «
of humanity, which the great kings h/ive ii->n<;
their peoples ? " Diderot has i-.'iumphed inJeeti
philosophers, and the Man of Feeling.
Under the sway of these s'l^tcsttons, ihe subjctt* *;iK«nrii
Augustus shutting the gaits oj tftg 1\mrU of /IHH;,
Liberty to his Prisoners, 7V:.*- i**itts Trajan, antt
(ff Marcus Aurelius. The pu;.v rs ». 'vLttxl were C»rie V»f *^>o.
Vien, Boucher, and !. .* iaw DesbRyei* >«;hin,
who had planned th>s g;. • . : . • . > iJ.
adds of Boucl, fora, long »v*,J; t; have
at last a eta .;al r There HI
something pathc -ocd ,
troubled in his s<; ^ aside
from his Nympii-
surprists, and otht
other, could pjmr
This offici.
September, I/ •
.
O K PI .j AI R K .
the new movement, Boucher's own pure French landscapes were | /
purer, nobler, and truer than this vile pseudo-classical clap-trap. I ^
Boucher realised that there was a new thought, and with wonted T
generosity and keen foresight for the welfare of others, he sent i
to Vien in 1764 his young kinsman who was to become illustrious
as Jacques- Louis David.
Meantime Choiseul's masterly mind saw that France must first
be cleansed from within. At peace abroad, Choiseul turned to the
blotting out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits, who,
dominant amongst her clergy, holding the ear of royalty whom
they had governed for three reigns, had an influence upon affairs
as vast as it was secret. Their vindictive acts against, and
quarrels with, the parliaments, and their galling and oppressive
tyranny, had roused the bitter hatred of the magistracy and of the
people throughout the land. Choiseul was their bitterest enemy.
He decided to blot them out, root and branch. The popular party
closed up its ranks. Choiseul waited, lynx-eyed.
In 1764 Boucher painted for the Gobelins looms the Amours de
Neptune et Amymone — Vertumnus and Pomona— and Aurora and
Cephalus. The larger number of these pictures painted for the
Gobelins during his directorship are at the Louvre or the Trianon ;
amongst them the " Amynthus and Sylvia " and the " But " are at
the Louvre.
In the October of this year, Cochin, at Marigny's request to
suggest the painters and subjects for the decoration of the gallery
at the Castle of Choisy, replied that the number of pictures being
four, led him to propose the Four Seasons or the Four
Elements, but, he added, " / consider that these are hackneyed subjects
that furnish but commonplace ideas to men of abundant genius." And
he continues: "The deeds of warriors, who have for object but
the destruction of the human race, have been so much celebrated,
is it not reasonable to show sometimes the generous deeds, full
of humanity, which the great kings have done for the welfare of
their peoples ? " Diderot has triumphed indeed ! Diderot and the
philosophers, and the Man of Feeling.
Under the sway of these suggestions, the subjects chosen were
Augustus shutting the gates of the Temple of Janus, Titus giving
Liberty to his Prisoners, The justice of Trajan, and The Charity
of Marcus Aurelius. The painters selected were Carle Van Loo,
Vien, Boucher, and Boucher's son-in-law Deshayes. And Cochin,
who had planned this gentle means of aiding his old friend,
adds of Boucher that "he has desired fora long while to have
at last a chance to paint an historical picture." There is
something pathetic in this glimpse of Boucher, disturbed and
troubled in his soul, eager to prove that he could turn aside
from his Nymphes au bain, Attentions dangereuses, Baigneuses
surprises, and other frivolous gallantries, and, just as easily as any
other, could paint "an historical picture" for the Serious Ones!
This official effort to capture the " Great Art " was still-born. In
September, 1766, Marigny had to report to the King that the four
pictures for Choisy, showing the deeds of generosity and humanity of
divers princes had not been crowned with success ; and begged to
displace them and send them to the Gobelins factories, ordering
in their stead four pictures by Boucher, " whose brush, guided by
the Graces, appears more fitted to decorate so agreeable a place of
sojourn." These pictures were never painted by the old master's
hand. The guidance of the Graces was at an end. Boucher fell
ill. It fell to Pierre to paint them.
And the Pompadour ?
Choiseul bent on destroying the Jesuits, got his chance in a
strange fashion — and he took it in as strange fashion. An
attempt by the Jesuits to end the Pompadour's scandalous relations
with the King was the trivial thing — the match that started the
explosion. With all his skill of statecraft, Choiseul leaped to his
weapon. In secret concert with the King's powerful favourite, he
decided to hurl them down. The chance soon came. Louis, egged
on to it by his astute minister and vindictive mistress, abolished
the Society from out all France, secularised its members, and
seized its property.
The Pompadour lived but a short while to glory in her triumph.
Worn out by her superhuman activities ; assailed by debts that
threatened her wide-grasping hands which spent even before she
gathered in, she had to borrow 70,000 livres to pay her way when
she fell ill with a cough that racked her emaciated body. Her last
hour found her transacting affairs of state. She died on the 15th
of April, 1764, in her forty-second year, keeping her ascendancy
over the King's will, and the supreme power in France, to her
last moment. And Louis ? Weary of his servitude, he had but a
heartless epigram to cast after the body of the dead woman, as it
passed in funeral procession to its last resting-place.
Whatever posterity may have to say of this cold-blooded, calcu-
lating, grasping woman, who crushed down every nice instinct of
womanhood in order to become a king's mistress ; who knew no
scruple in keeping the King's favour; who was without mercy,
without pardon, without remorse ; bitter and adamant in revenge ;
who turned a deaf ear to the cries from the Bastille ; whose heart
knew no friend but self ; who made of statecraft a vulgar traffic,
playing the part of kingship like a tradeswoman; it must be allowed
that at least for Art she did great and splendid service. She was
no formal patron of Art. She loved it. What heart she had was
in it. She not only encouraged and brought out the best achieve-
ment of her age ; she did Art an even more handsome service — she
insisted on artists painting their age and not the dead past. Again
and again she insisted upon it. And Art blossomed like a garden
throughout France.
She created the outer habit of France. She created the room,
the Salon, the arts and crafts of her age — the fashions, the handicraft,
the furniture, the carriage, the chairs, the fans, china, tapestries ;
the whole domain of the cultured man's habitation and its ornament
were dictated by and were subject to her. She mothered it all.
70
VIII.
THE death of the Pompadour robbed Boucher of a powerful
friend and protector; but it did not lose him his position
with the Court. Her brother Marigny was faithfully
attached to him. At the death of Carle Van Loo, Boucher's
life-long friend, the post of First Painter to the King became
vacant ; Marigny immediately secured it for Boucher, who thus
came into this honour in his sixty-second year.
Marigny, in writing his congratulations to Boucher, in which he
charmingly announces that the honour must be the more flattering
to the painter since the King has consulted the public wish, pointed
out that it meant the loss of the directorship of the Gobelins
factories, which was not compatible with the high office he now
held ; but he added that the King desired to continue the pension of
1,200 livres which he already enjoyed, as also the entire appoint-
ments and fees attached to the position.
There had been serious intention of appointing Boucher to the
Ecole des Eleves Proteges, for which, as Cochin said, he had the
valuable merit of making himself liked and of inspiring the love of
work and enthusiasm for art. Boucher was indeed very popular
always in the studios owing to his kindliness, his eagerness to
render service, his readiness to encourage the youngsters, or to
console them. When the riot took place in 1767, provoked by the
decision of the Academicians in awarding the Prix de Rome, the
students ranged on either side down the place du Louvre to insult
the academicians, hailed the old master, Boucher, with loud and
repeated applause When one came to him for advice, he
did not play the Pontiff, but, scorning the charlatanry of big words,
chose rather to enlighten the youth by example than by laying down
rules — putting himself out in order to make things clear to a young
artist. " I do not know how to show you but with a brush in my
hand," he would say However, the fear that Boucher was
not a sufficiently orthodox master for youth— a fear aggravated by
the attacks made upon him by the new criticism — prevailed ; and
Michel Van Loo, asking for the succession to his uncle, was given
the office, as gossip had it, largely on Boucher's advice. Indeed
Boucher's well-known contempt of too great servitude to the old
masters was widely known.
A serious illness, followed by a iong and weary convalescence,
prevented his painting anything to the Salon of 1765, when he had
keenly desired, this year above all others, to be well represented.
Not to limit himself to sujets galants, which seemed to irritate
the new criticism, he asked M. Bergeret de Grandcourt to lend him
during the Salon two pictures from his collection, the Jupiter
in the shape of Diana surprising Calisto and the Angelica and
Medor. He added eight pastorals. J
Diderot gave himself up to outrageous violence : " I do not know
what to say of this man. Degradation of taste, of colour, of
composition, of character, follow upon deprivation of morals.
71
( What can there be in the imagination of a man who passes his life
Vwith loose women of the lowest class ? I say that this man
/ does not truly know what grace is ; I say that he has never known
w truth ; I say that the ideas of delicacy, honesty, innocence, simplicity,
are to him almost strangers ; I say that he has not seen a scrap of
nature, far less that which interests my soul and yours. All his
compositions make hideous confusion to the eyes. He is the most
mortal enemy of silence that I know When he paints
infants he groups them well In all this numberless family
you -will not find one employed in a real act of life, studying his
lesson, reading, writing, stripping hemp!'1''
Poor unfortunate infants! Is philosophy to bring you this for
prize ? Diderot's soul, and mine, and thine — are they to be more
thrilled and uplifted by seeing infants at work than at play ? Are
even little infants to cease from jollity-, and learn to labour ? Poor
Boucher blundered much, sinned much, played overmuch, had his
faults, large and small. But Diderot and ye philosophers, had ye
none ? Is the good you did, to be wholly blotted out by your
blunders ? Did you plumb the future so absolutely rightly, when
all's said ? Larger you saw life, in many ways, than the corrupt age
you condemned ; but flawless not at all, any of you ? And when you
sat down and wrote such blatant trash for art-criticism as this, you
stooped low enough — lower in truth and rightness and justice and
honesty perhaps even than he whom you charged with lacking
these things. He at least felt and knew what was art, so far
as she revealed herself to him. You did not even know what
Art was !
Yet were your aims high, even though your acts grossly unjust,
nay malevolent. Poor Boucher did not understand you — nor you him.
That was all. He was an artist. He painted his generation and
the spirit of that generation as far as he saw it or knew it — or could
see it or know it. He was not untrue to it. The pity of it was
that his generation and his age were untrue. The whimsy of it was
that you, who most condemned that generation, set up also
false gods and fantastic falsenesses in art, debauching your
nation's vision of reality with foreign and alien things that had no
part in its life — were indeed as untrue to that life as the worst
thing that Boucher drew. Blame Boucher as ye may, are not his
landscapes more France than the vile classic ruins and false
sentimentality painted by your " moralist " folk who followed after
him ? with their preposterous Greek temples set in the fair prospect
of France, and their dull and empty daubs.
It never struck Boucher that his infants ought to be at school —
never dawned upon him that they should have been budding
philosophers instead of laughing and being glad to be alive — he had
no thought to train them as Men of Feeling. He had no joy in
setting them to toil, even to the picking of hemp. He had no
faintest desire to make them "teach a lesson to the spectator."
He was but a healthy man, delighted at the wondrous miracle
that they should Be.
A BACCHANTE
(Attribute/I to Boucher |
74
Boucher continued to paint, as he had always painted — except
that he painted not so well. Education of the Virgin, in 1766,
The Virgin with the Infant Christ in her arms, in pastel, Venus and
Love, in 1765, now at Berlin ; Venus rising from the water, in 1766;
Venus A wakening, Love begging Venus to return to him his arms, engraved
by Bonnet ; Fishing, in 1764 ; Fishing Villager, engraved by Gaillard ;
Beloved Bird, engraved by Flipart ; Elle mord a la grappe, De trois
chases en ferez-vous une ? landscapes for the Dauphin ; whilst
Demarteau was producing in facsimile-engraving, with astounding
skill, his Character Heads and Academies. Boucher had gone back
to the Opera after the death of the Pompadour ; and painted there
the Castor and Pollux, in 1764, the Theseus, in 1765, the Sylvia, in
1766, and the Tithonus and Aurora, in 1768.
But he was growing old. The wreath of roses was wilting on
a grey head. The features were going pale. The hand alone kept
something of its one-time cunning and its vigour.
Boucher went to Holland, in 1766, with his friend Randon du
Boisset, the Receiver General. To the Salon of 1767 he sent nothing.
Diderot attacked him for his absences as hotly as for his
contributions — sneered at him, the First Painter to the King, for
not having the progress of Art more at heart ! " It is at the very
moment," cries he, robbed of his bone to gnaw, "of obtaining
the title that you give the first blow to one of our most useful
institutions ; and that, too, for fear of hearing hard truths."
Ah, Diderot ! what hath philosophy done for thee ? A little
breeding had done so much more. But thou hast near spent thy
last petty spite upon a gentle fellow. He is going to his grave.
But he will give thee one more chance to show thy nakedness.
In 1768, four years after the death of the Pompadour, the
patient, neglected Queen, amiable dull Maria, followed her to the
grave. The King's grief and contrition and vows to amend his
life came over-late, and lasted little longer than the drying of the
floods of tears over the body of his dead consort. A year later,
he was become the creature of the woman Jeanne, natural child
of one Anne Bequs of Vaucouleurs — a pretty, kindly, childish,
vulgar creature of the gutters, some twenty-six years old, who,
reborn under a forged birth-certificate as Anne de Vaubernier,
and being married by the King's orders to the Count du Barry, a
nobleman of the court, appeared at Versailles thenceforth as the
better-known and immortally frail Countess du Barry. But neither
the remonstrances of Choiseul with the King against this new
degradation of the throne of France, nor his unconcealed scorn
and disgust of the upstart countess, nor the dangerous enemy he
made for himself thereby, signified greatly now to Fra^ois
Boucher, First Painter to the King.
Boucher was failing.
The Salon of 1769 was his last. He sent the Caravane de
Bohemiens, painted in the style of Benedetto. Diderot dipped
his pen in vulgar ink with huge glee, "The old athlete cannot
die without showing himself once more in the arena," he cried
76
soon after, and unashamed. But praise was now become a rare
commodity — criticism more severe. Boucher lacks correctness —
eyes are too large — noses too small — expression is monotonous.
Boucher signed this year Wisdom and Justice ; the Young Mother
sleeping beside her Child in the Due d'Aumale's collection ; and the
Presentation at the Temple at the Louvre, a study in grey oils on
paper — a process of which he was very fond.
Boucher had for some time gone about like a shadow of himself.
His son, Juste-Nathan Boucher, had been a great disappointment
to him. He seems to have been a dull dog. He had taken to
architecture instead of painting, lest his father's glory overshadow
him. Sorrow laid a heavy hand on the old painter. His favourite
pupils, Baudoin and Deshayes had married his daughters. Baudoin
had died a few years before ; Deshayes was now taken. The
light of " The Glory of Paris" was going out.
At five o'clock on the morning of the 30th of May of 1770, amidst
his treasures, seated at his easel before a picture of Venus, the
brush fallen out of his hand, they found Boucher dead.
Even Grimm unbent, and owned that Boucher's death was a
very great loss to French Art, though Diderot threw jibes at his
coffin.
They buried him on the 31st of May at St. Germain-l'Auxerrois.
IX.
BOUCHER won every heart. The "Glory of Paris" was without
spite ; void of envy, or pomposity, or undue pride, or petty conceit.
Treading under foot all jealousy ; hating chicanery ; bluntly dis-
dainful of all pose; incapable of hypocrisy; contemptuous of all
pretence — he lived his day in debonair fashion, working like one
possessed, playing like a wild thing. He knew few regrets. He
shrank from attack, bewildered that others could do to him what
he was too gracious to do to them — surprised, since he detested
to see others attacked. Affectionate, a good ally, a loyal comrade,
unselfish, generous, a man who never lost a friend or feared an
enemy ; one who set aside all private gain to heal a wound, or save
another from an humiliation ; who hated strife, and did his all to
promote good-fellowship and make a pleasant path to the way-
faring of others — he died regretted even by his self-appointed
opponents. Incapable of revenge ; to become his enemy was
simply to be blotted from his notice. A loveable good fellow
who shrank from giving a wound. A wit who used no venom
in his rapier-play of repartee. A humorist who ever kept back
the jest that held a sting. He never stabbed a reputation nor
deserted a friend. He was ever ready to leave his prolific and
enriching toil to help a baffled comrade or encourage a struggling
youngster. He made money but to spend it. He gave freely and
whole-heartedly and of what he had. Boucher had but one serious
V weakness, the most human sin of man — the love of women. And,
76
even in this, his worst enemies admitted that no woman ever owed
her downfall to him. He lived his playtime with light women.
Mighty names come down to us, reverenced by us and set upon an
idol's pedestal, of which we cannot say so much.
Boucher died a few months before that Christmas Eve that saw
Choiseul driven from power by the du Barry, or rather by the
knaves who used the vulgar but kindly girl as their tool — four years
before the small-pox took the King — four years during which this
same du Barry, with her precious trio, d'Aiguillon, Maupeou, and
Terray, sent the members of Parliament into banishment — years
that sent France rushing with laughter and riot to her doom,
whilst the apathetic Louis shrugged his royal shoulders at all
warnings of catastrophe, which, to give him credit, he was scarce
witless or blind enough not to foresee ; nay, even admitted in
his constantly affirmed cynical creed that "things, as they were,
would last as long as he, and that he that came after him must shift
for himself " — shrugged his no longer well-beloved shoulders, as the
Pompadaur had done, repeating her cynical saying of " apres nous
le deluge." — which fatuous jape the whole Court, with servile
originality, echoed as its jesting catchword.
" After us the Deluge," indeed !
They were a folk most wondrous full of epigram — tossing off the
spontaneous repartee in nicely chiselled phrase as lightly as a
broken promise. But this one sticks like a burr upon the wisdom
of the world.
Wit and ruthless fatuity were the order of the day. Most
fatuous of them all was Terray — he who tinkered with finance,
yielding at last, as crown to his many infamies, the scandalous
" Pacte de Famille" a company to produce artificial immensity of
rise in the price of corn by buying up the grain of France, exporting
it, and bringing it back again for sale at vast profit — with Louis of
France as considerable shareholder. Indeed, when aristocracy
stoops to brokerage, it out-brokers the brokers. Had not the
owners of the land the right to do what they would with their own ?
Small wonder that the Well-Beloved became the Highly-Detested
of the groaning people — he and his privileged class !
Yet Louis spoke unwitting prophecy. The guillotine was not for
him. Four years after his First Painter to the King was laid in the
grave, the small-pox took his majesty's distempered body, " already
a mass of corruption," that was hastily thrust into a coffin and
hurried without pomp or circumstance or honours to St. Denis and
buried amongst the bones of the ancient Kings of his race,
unattended by the Court, and amidst the contempt and curses of
his people.
The scandalous levity and ruthless vindictiveness of the privileged
class of the day had near done their work. A proud and gallant and
a noble people touched bottom in humiliation. The race began to
see that if it should hope to rid itself of its ancient impeding robes
of state, even in rags, it must wholly cast its garment from it, even
though it bared its soul naked to the elements. It girded up its
77
strength to do the ugly business, though it should fling away its
life in the doing. The French have ever been famed for their
courage and their logic. The pens of the wits and thinkers did the
rest. Amongst a people wholly scandalised and punished by the
corruption and social disorder of their governors, the " new
opinions " made astounding and alarming progress. The
" intellectuals " were all on the side of the people — Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Condillac, the
abbe Raynal — with wit, sarcasm, invective, argument ; with stirring
of passions ; with appeals to self-respect and dignity and honour and
the innate love of freedom of the strong man ; with appeals to
common-sense, to the guiding laws and craving for liberty of man's
being, to the rights of separate individual existence, they sent their
wit and wisdom into the uttermost corners of France through the
printing-press. They sneered away false aristocracy, false religion.
They wrought to overthrow the old order ; brought it into contempt ;
and slew it. And, with it, Boucher's art, like much that was
gracious and good and beautiful in the evil thing, went down also,
and was overwhelmed for a while.
For awhile only. For, just as out of the blood and terror of the
Revolution a real and live France arose, phoenix-wise, and, in being
born, whilst putting off the vilenesses of the body out of which she
was born, took on also the gracious and winsome habits that place
her amongst the most fascinating peoples of the ages ; so Boucher is
coming into his kingdom again — the most gracious of painters that
the world has ever known.
When Boucher passed away, the generation of which he was the
limner was near come to its violent end. The greatest of his pupils,
Honore Fragonard, was destined to live through the supreme agony
of all that had inspired his master. Poor bewildered Fragonard is
to see the rosy carnivals and the pretty dreams of gallantry give
way to the bloody realities and fierce tern pest of the mighty romance
of the French Revolution — see the garrets of the old curiosity-
shops receive the despised canvases of his beloved master — the
Romans of David put to rout the shepherds and shepherdesses in
silk and satin and velvet.
The old palace of the princes of Soubise knows its lords no
longer. It is now the museum of the national archives. Several
canvases by Boucher still hang over the doors where he set them.
Two Pastorals look down upon the room where Marie Antoinette's
last letter may be read ; in the room where Love listens to the
lessons of Mercury, are the arrests of the revolutionary tribunal,
the requisitions of Fouquier-Tinville for the escort of those
condemned to death, the judgment committing twenty-two Girondin
deputies to the guillotine which is signed with the name of David,
decrees on which appears the name of Bonaparte.
In the France of Louis Quinze, feudalism had arrived at its ex-
treme point of civilisation. It had achieved its ideal of social life in
all its outer refinement, in all its outer grace, in all its most
exquisite delicacy. Its rude realities were buried in an elegant
78
corruption. Manners had created a polished society that lived its
life in a formal and dandified etiquette which forbade the mention ' —
of any rude facts of life — the indecencies became almost a virtue in
the subtlety of their statement. A solecism the only sin. Only "
the coarsely done or roughly stated reality was the unforgivable act.
An honest sentiment was a banality— a foolish sentimentality. The
obvious a vulgar crudity. So this century, seen at a glance and in^-
its outward seeming, was full of gaiety and light airs and balmy
breezes ; jocund with a polished jocundity, that stepped it sedately
to the measure of a gavotte, laughing gaily, setting aside all serious
cares, essaying to banish under light raillery a load of discourage-
ment, of wretchedness, of unrest, of doubt, of languour, of a biting
melancholy that surges up through the eternal game of wit. The
heart is shrivelled to feed the glittering brain — and a shrivelled
heart being a grizzly thing, smother it in flowers. Under the
skipping feet the ground sounds hollow; and none dare's to dig
where that hollowness is, lest he find nothing but nothingness.
The richer we are, the more intellectually subtle, lacking the
great heart, the more hollow and void is this nothingness. The old
noblesse found it in the seventeen-hundreds as the great plutocracy
are finding it to-day.
Boucher's art holds the significance of his age in astounding ^
fashion. Nothing could more closely define the vast gulf that lay
between the outworn, weary, and decaying aristocracy of France
allied with a reactionary, narrow, and selfish church, and wedded
to an unscrupulous wealth-seeking plutocracy on the one hand, and
the real France of dogged self-respecting toil, supported and
championed by intellect and sincerity on the other. Of the travail
and bitter suffering of the real France of Boucher's day there is no
shadow of a hint. We have but the gracious and picturesque side
of the old romantic Feudal France in decay — a make-believe France
playing at being feudal, seizing the privileges, shirking the duties
of feudalism — that lordly France that had lost all but its traditions
and its perquisites and the simple courage that she has never lost,
tried as it was to be by fire in the awful years of the Terror, close
at hand. The fantastic honour that saw dishonour in cheating at
cards and whipped out the sword to punish the accusation, but
never hesitated to cheat a woman. Yet it had its handsome side,
even in its sinnings. Throughout all these years, of the men in
power, two alone were but accused, and that in vilest slander, of
stooping to the secret and foul villainy of the Italians of the Ren-
aissance— Maurepas of poisoning the Chateauroux ; Choiseul of
poisoning the Dauphin. But with all their faults, the sinners of the
age of Louis Quinze were rakes, not assassins. Caylus summed up his
generation in his witty acquittal of Maurepas when, with contempt,
he said that " he was even more incapable of crime than of virtue."
They had something of the gentleman even in their cups; something
of romance even in their sins ; something of vile weakness rather
than of crime even in the sorry acts wherein they stooped so low
as to smile and shrug upon the dishonouring of their womenkind.
79
The atmosphere in which they passed their dandified day is set
I- upon Boucher's canvases — and they died with a smile, as though
they walked to death in the pleasant prospect of one of Boucher's
Pastorals. They detested a scene, picked their steps past the
sordid things of life that wore rags, and turned their backs upon all
violent passions, whether honest angers or shrewish violences.
They allowed nothing gross to come between them and their
" nobility." Against all their paltry life and their shameless
follies, it stands ever to their honour that if they did not know how
to live, they at least knew how to die. They could look down with
contempt at canaille like the du Barry shrieking and tearing at
her prison-bars, and flinging to the jailors the names of those that
tried to screen her, in the hopes of saving her own life. They
wiped out something of the ghastly blot upon the splendid
escutcheon of their race the day they arose from the foul litter of
their prisons during the Terror, and, in answer to the coarse
summons of the uncouth roll-call of their rude jailors, stepped out
with a smile upon their lips to go to their doom as though they
strutted into one of Boucher's pleasant landscapes, unshrinking,
unafraid, without a whimper, reckless of everything except the
loss of their fantastic honour.
so
PORTRAIT OF I3OUCHER.
From the Engraving by Carmona, after Riislhi.
81
MME. DE POMPADOUR (Victoria and Albert Museum).
Photo. Mansell &• Co.
MME. DE POMPADOUR (Wallace Collection.)
Photo. Mausell &• Co.
83
10
p
H
w
84
o
z
LE COUCHKR DE VENUS (CliartrfS Museum)
Photo. Levy
THE RISING 0V VENUS (C/iartres Musei.ni)
Photo. Levy
87
I.OVK, THK P.IRD-CATCHKR
(Collfctiiiti of Mr. Alfred tie Rnthscliihl\
88
LOVK, THE VINTAGKR
(Collection of Mr. Alfred
Rutlisfhil I)
89
U
HI
a:
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90
ID
ST
91
LA BERGERE ECOUTIiE
(Mine. Besnard's Collection)
VENTS DEMANDING ARMS FOR ACNEAS FROM VULCAN (Lour re)
BIRTH AND TRIUMPH OF VENUS
(Collection of Mr. Alfred tie Rothschild)
94
THE TOILET OF VENUS
(Collection uf Mr. Alfred At Rothsthild)
THE MUSE OF PAINTING (Glasgow Gallery)
Photo. Hanfstaengl
MME. DE POMPADOUR (Versailles)
Photo. Neiirdccn
97
BIRDCATCHERR (I. a Chasse) From ait engraving by J . F. Branvarlct
In the possession of Messrs. Ma^gs Brothers
98
THE I'KF.TTY KITCHKN-MAII) (La Belle Cltisillierc)
From an Kn^rui'ing by P. Aniline
In the possession of Messrs. Maggs ISrothas
CUPID CAPTIVE (Wallace Collection)
Photo. Alansell & Co.
VENUS AND MARS SURPRISED BY VULCAN
(Wallace Collection) Photo. Mansell &• Co.
100
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS (Wallace Collection)
Photo. Manscll &• Co.
VENUS AND VULCAN (Wallace Collection)
Photo. Manscll (~ Co.
101
•w
is» ---' .-•' f .•
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Cl'PIDS ON CI.Ot'DS
(l-'roiu a Drawing in tin- British Museum}
102
SKETCH 1)1 A Ct I'll)
(Frniii n Dr. living in i lit- Ilritisli Museum)
103
Hk*
THE LITTI.F. I I.UTE PLAYER (C/mrtres Museum)
Photo. Levy
104
SOAI' BUBBLES (£1,420 at Comtc dc Bryas Sale , 190;>
105
Cl'l'll), WITH (iRAl'KS From an Engraving by Demarteau
In the possession of Messrs. Muggs Brothers.
106
THE ALTAR OF FRIENDSHIP From an Engraving by Dcmartcau
In the possession of Messrs Maggs Brothers.
107
THE INFANT CHRIST AND ST. JOHN
(In the Collection of Baron d'Erlangcr)
108
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109
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cri'ins \\nii I'.MIU I'.MS or THF.IK CUI.T (I'ictoiia and Albert Museum)
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DESIfiN IOK A I 01 \I\I\
(r/V<un'« ««(/ A! i'H I Mnsi'iiiii)
CHILD STUDY /« Sanguine
(Mr. Rouiaine Walker's Collection)
110
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'THE LADY WITH TIU-: IAN
(tViisef National, Stockholm)
111
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112
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114
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115
VKNUS DISARMING I.OVK
(Collection o) Mr. Alfred dc Rothschild)
116
THE THRKE GRACES (Louvre)
Photo. Neunleen
117
A PASTORAL (Wallace Collection)
Phulo, l(lanscll & Co.
118
&)
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119
VENTS AND CL'l'IU Drawing ill Crayon, heightened with White and Sanguine
(£Jti4 at Beurdclcy Sale in 1<M5)
<
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121
\VATKKMII. I. AT CIIARENTON
(£1000 at Lelotig Kale, 190.1)
CUPID SUBJECT
122
123
THE SETTING OK THE Sl'N (Wallace Collection)
Photo. Mansfll & Co.
124
NEPTUNE AND AMYONE (VcrsailUs)
Photo. Manscll & Co.
CilKI. WITH A DOVF. (.Mr. (',. llarland-l\ , k's Collection)
I-ISHING (Clt. Scdelmeycr Collection]
126
127
PASTORAL
(Ch. Seiielmeyer Collection)
128
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129
VULCAN PRESENTING ARMS TO VENTS (Louvre)
Photo. Livy
THE lilKTH 01 HACCHTS
(Collfftinii of M. If liai-ini Edmund de Rothschild)
a;
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CIIIM-SK F1SHF.KS
/.,/,, ;/A. Sill,', Hill.!}
VENUS AND VULCAN (Versailles)
o. Ncurdeen
#£.>• ,• •',..
V-JfcvvO
THK ARTIST
(Collection of M. Lion Ilonnal)
1'SYCHK's SISIKRS /!,\ini'ci!s Tapesti-v after liniifher (£12,000 ai Cnmier Salt-, 1005)
THE BASKKT-MAKER Heaiirais Tapestry afttr liiiuclirr
(^4,200 at Cronier Salt' in 1905)
KISIIIN(, Heaiivuis Tapestry nftfr Binicher
(/4,o8o at Cronier Solemn 1905)
HORKAS AM) ORITHYIA linllcllfr TilfifStry I /'=,, I<OO til Lclflllg Sale ill 190 .(
SL'MMKR, OR RUSTIC PLEASURES Btauvais Tnf>fstrv afte
|/5,ooo at Cronier Sale, 1905)
137
PSYCHE ARANDOM.n Iliinclifr
(/ j,^.|O at Ci'onit'r .Sd/<-, KK1^!
LE MAGXIl-'IQUE From an Engraving by De Larnifsshi
In the possession of Messrs. Mnggs Brothers
138
LA MARCIIANDE DE MODES
(Miisec National, Stockholm)
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FEMALE NUDK STUDY
From a Drawing in the British Mnsfi
140
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141
SKKTCII 01- T\\() Cl'l'lllS (Hritisli M
DKSICiX I;OU A HI-.Al'VAIS TAPl^STRV 1'ANKI.
(Victoria and Albt'i't MitsfinnJ
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143
THE ARTIST
(Collection of M. Ic Baron Edmonti tic Rothschild)
144
A Record of the Principal Pictures and Drawings by
Francois Boucher Sold by Auction in England and on
the Continent from 1745 to 1908. By W. G. Menzies.
Year.
1748.
1759-
ii
1762.
1764.
1766.
1767.
1769.
1770.
PAINTINGS.
Title. Method.
Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks.
Price.
£ s. d.
Venus asleep, with
Cupid in the fore-
ground ... ... oil
De la Roque
040
Landscape, with ruins
and figures ,
Angran de Fon-
pertuis
800
The Departure of
Jacob
20 x 16 Comte de Vence
8 17 6
Shepherds at a Foun-
tain ... ...
26 x 22 ,, ,,
7 17 6
Landscape, a bridge
surmounted by a dove-
cot, with river and
Fisherman
GaillarddeGagny Engraved by Chedel,
under the title of " La
The Birth, and Death
Colombier "...
3 17 6
of Adonis ...
Lalive de Jully... pair
40 16 6
The Sacrifice of Gideon
19 x i2j
30 o o
The Rise of Apollo
Mme de Pompa-
dour The God is ready to
mount his chariot
surrounded by naides,
one of whom presents
The Retirement of
her lyre
. 392 o o
Apollo
,, ,, The God descends from
his chariot to meet
Tethys
pair ;
The Nativity
64 x 47 , , ,, Engraved by Fessard
under the title of
"La Lumiere du
Monde
28 17 6
Noah in the Ark with
the animals.... ... ,,
Julienne pair
47 12 o
Noah offering a Sacri-
fice at the setting out
from the Ark.
Cassandra before the
statue of Minerva
16 X 21 ,,
IO IO O
A woman holding a
book in her left hand ,,
— ... —
800
Bust of a Beautiful
Woman, holding a
basket of flowers ... ,,
three quar-
900
ter length
The Nativity grisaille
Cayeux Sketch on panel
I 6 6
Landscape, with figures
and animals oil
... — ,i ...
12 0 0
An Inn ... ... ... ,,
„ panel
i 13 6
Rural Amusements
oval — pair
56 o o
Pastoral Music.
145
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1771.
1772.
1773-
1774.
1775-
1776.
1777.
Title.
Two winged children
one holding a bunch
of roses which the
other waters ...
The Adoration of the
Shepherds
The Adoration of the
Kings
The Presentation at the
Temple
The Rape of Orithia
by Boreas
Pygmalion in love with
his Statue
Landscape from the
Door of a Cottage ...
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
see remarks ...
grisaille a 1'huile
oil
grisaille
oil
Boucher...
16 X 16
18 x 15 ,,
13 x 18
13 x 10
13 x 8
18 x 24 Lauragais
Cattle market, with
numerous figures
Children Blowing Soap
Bubbles
The Birth of Venus ...
Landscapes
Pastoral, Shepherd
playing a flute seated
beside a Shepherdess
A Dutch Inn sur-
rounded by rocks
before which is a
horse and carriage ...
Woman in a chemise
seated on a bed caress-
ing a cat
Rebecca receiving the
presents from Abra-
ham's servants
Two women at their
Toilet ...
Pastoral
A Fable
Gardens of Caprarole
Falls of Sextus
The Small Cascade of
Tivoli
Small Ruined Colon-
nade ...
View of the Villa
Farnese
View of a Mill near
Rome
Landscape
19 x 16 Lempereur
21 x 44
nj x I4j Jacqmin...
Comte du Barry
| x J7i De Grammont ...
Sorbet
Blondel de Gagny
gj x 15 Randon de Bois-
oval set
all
7x4
Remark*.
Grisaille a 1'huile, in
imitation of a wash
drawing in bistre,
heightened with white
On paper
Painted on paper
A man looks at three
bathers, one has her
legs in the water, and
is bending to seize a
goose
pair
A Woman Meditating
The Nativity
The Nativity
Syrinx pursued by the
God Pan takes refuge
in the arms of Ledon
Alpheus pursuing Are-
tbusa who takes
refuge in the arms
of Diana
Hercules and Omphale
The Sacrifice of Gideon
grisaille
oil
9 x i2j
•,
circular
I3j x 10} ,, ,,
47 x 31 Prince de Conti
In the centre a river
crossed by a wooden
bridge, a young girl
looks at her reflection
in the water ...
Study for above
pair
Prico.
£ s. d.
6 8
II O O
14 o o
II IO O
740
6 16 o
36 o o
14 o o
3 10 o
19 4 o
28 o o
24 o o
Three figure com-
position
32
o
o
A young girl is look-
ing at her and a man
is looking through
a curtain
Twelve figures
28
49
o
4
0
0
pair
5°
47
48
o
4
o
O
•
0
216 o o
27 5 o
30 8 o
32 o o
10 10 o
64 10 o
153 10 o
So 10 o
146
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title. Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks. Price.
1777. Diana and Endymion oil 17! x 22} Prince de Conti 30 o o
,. Landscape, with
figures, cattle and
Poultry „ 28 l6 0
,, Landscape, with a
bather... 13 4 o
Group of women
sleeping , ,, Cupid is looking at them
through a curtain ... 5 10 o
,, Diana Caressing one of
her Nymphs ,, „ ... _ 78 10 o
1778. A Woman Meditating ,, Mme. de Cosse... 24 o o
Hercules and Omphale 9} x lof Paris, Nov. 3Oth 1800
,, Lady taking a cup of
Chocolate ,, 2 14 o
, , Rebecca receiving pre-
sents from Abraham's
servants Le Brun 49 12 o
,, Landscape, with river , Silvestre 7 13 6
,, Young Shepherdess,
standing, holding a
rose, her knee on an
open cage, a Shepherd
hands her a flower ... ,, ... ... 20 16 o
., Shepherds at a Foun-
tain ... ... ... ,. ... ... Bourlat de Mon-
„ The Departure of tredor... ... 34 16 o
Jacob 8 x 6J Nogaret 6 17 6
1779. Interior of a Farm 13$ x 18 Trouart Copy of a picture by
1780. Venus demanding Arms Wouvermans... ... 28 o o
from Vulcan 43 x 32 Chardin 16 16 o
,, The Repose of Venus.
The goddess sleeps on
a bed, with cupid
asleep near her ... ,, Proult 48 8 o
,, A Shepherd sleeping
near a Shepherdess
who decorates him
with flowers Marquis de Cham-
grand Engraved by Aliamet
„ Jupiter takes the shape under the title of "La
of Diana to surprise bergere prevoyante " 26 o o
Calisto oval Le Roy Landscape 52 5 o
1781. Cupid persuading
Venus to give up her
girdle to secure the
Golden Apple Sireuil pair 956
The Judgment of Paris
The Old Man's Cal-
endar grisaille ... , Three figure composition i o o
1782. The Toilet of Venus... oil Marquis de
Menars ... The Goddess is sur-
rounded by gamboll-
,, A Young Woman nude, ing Cupids 23 10 o
reposing on a bed ... ... ,, ... 24 o o
,, The River Scamandre ,, ... ... ,, ... Subject represented by
a nude woman, sur-
prised 9120
,, Pastoral Landscape ... , „ ... 32 o o
,, Venus at the Bath ,, ... She holds her son in her
arms 24 5 o
,, Venus disarming Cupid ,, ... Venus is on a cloud and
,, Two Young Girls seated Cupid begs for the
on the grass attaching return of his arms ... 29 4 o
a letter to the neck of
a pigeon ,, ... 19 5 o
,, The Seasons , ., ... set of four 56 o o
1783. The Repose of Venus
and Cupid ... ... ,, 28$ x 2oJ Blondel d' Azin-
court Cupid, while Venus
sleeps, plays with the
pigeons of her chariot.
Landscape 27 5 o
147
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1783-
Title.
Method.
1784.
1785.
1786.
1787.
1789.
1790.
1791.
1793.
1802.
1808.
1809.
1810.
1817.
1822.
Size and Shape.
Sale.
The Repose of Diana
after the Chase ... oil
Pretty Peasant and
Child ,,
Young Shepherdess and
Child
A Luncheon
A Country Ball
Cupid surrounded by
Children sleeping and
playing with grapes...
Landscape
Sketch
Landscape
Two Nymphs leaving
the Bath surprised by
a Satyr
Young Woman nude,
reposing on a bed ...
Two Women at their
Toilet ...
grisaille
oil
oil
Two Naiades surprised
by a Faun
Syrinx pursued by the
God Pan takes refuge
in the arms of Ledon
Alpheus pursuing Are-
thusa, who takes refuge
in arms of Diana ...
Hercules and Oraphale
The Seasons
The Painter's Studio...
Interior of a Garden...
A Cottage
Mountainous Landscape
Landscape with Cottage
and Figures
The Toilet of Venus ...
The Graces Binding
Love ...
Jupiter and Calypso ...
Bacchus and Ariadne
Shepherdess Embraced
by her Lover
Shepherd seated by a
Shepherdess, to whom
he presents a bird
The Triumph of Venus
and Neptune
Rebecca receiving the
presents of Eliezer ...
Two Shepherdesses ...
The Wooden Bridge ...
Virgin and Child
Eliezer offering Jewel-
lery to Rebecca on
behalf of Abraham.
The Pilgrims of
Emmaus
Rebecca receiving pre-
sents from Abraham's
Servant ,,
Joseph presenting his
Family to Pharaoh
Venus on a cloud with
Cupid... ...
The Little Wooden
Bridge oil
Landscape ... ... ,
The Flageolet Player... „
grisaille
oil
sketch...
26 x 20 Blondel d' Azin-
court ...
22 x 15
23 x 30
20 X 24
oval
x 40
9 X lof
oval
19 X 15
circular
9x6
Montulte
De Billy...
Dubois ...
Godefroy
Aubert ...
Remarks.
companion to the pre-
ceding...
Landscape in back-
ground. Sketches.
Pair
pair
pair
pastoral subject with
figures...
with over twenty figures
pastoral with figures ...
Vandreuil
Beaujon ...
Collet ...
Boullongne
Parizeau...
Marin
pair
pair
set of four
panel
pair
3° X 36
25 x 30
40 x 30
oval
oval
Le Brun...
Choiseul-Praslin
De Laujac
26 x 27 St. Aubin
pair
pair
15 X I3i Le Rouge
21 x 27 PreVost ...
Simon ...
— St. Victor
... 12 figures
Price.
£ ». d
16 6 6
to 10 o
12 15 O
8 16 o
1600
55°
1600
26 o o
28 o o
28 o o
26 8 o
30 o o
36 o o
36 10 o
IO IO O
20 o o
i ii 6
426
18 8 o
31 o o
16 10 o
1600
200
49 12 o
12 17 6
o 10 o
046
49 12 o
066
060
O IO O
0 17 6
1 12 6
148
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title. Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks. Price.
£ s. d.
1822. Virgin and Child ... oil St. Victor ... 23 o o
1827. The Surprised Lovers... ,, ... ... Paris, Dec. 26 ... 20 16 o
1828. An Artist at his Easel
painting a Landscape , 12} x 16 Le Moyne ... 48 16 o
1833. Nude children playing
with a Goat , 9f x loj pair 5 12 o
Children playing with
Birds.
1836. A woman, a child, and
an old man De Brusle ... 8 16 o
„ Portrait of the Comte
de Provence ,, ,, ... full length 680
1838. Two Young Girls sur-
prised by a Shepherd ,, Perier 31 4 o
1839. Two young men making
music to a young girl
in a garden Paris, March and 21 5 o
1841. Two Bacchantes asleep
in an Arbour Paris, Deer. 16... 60 o o
1 842 . Two young men making
music to a young girl
in a garden , Harcourt ... 28 17 6
1843. The Birth of Bacchus ,, F£rier pair 112 16 o
The Rape of Europa...
,, The Triumph of Galatea , ,, n 8 o
1844. The Dove Cot Baron d'lvry ... 324 o o
The Fete of the Shep-
herds and the Laun-
dresses , ,, ,, • ... 32°o o o
1845. The Return to the Farm ,, Vasserot 32 8 o
,, Bathers i8J x 26 Meffre 53 12 o
,, Eliezer and Rebecca ... ,, ... ... ,, ... ... n o o
,, Terpischore seated on
a Cloud ... ... ... Gypierre ... Semi-nude, holding a
drum ; a Cupid brings
her garlands of flowers 31 10 o
,, Euterpe , 4 I7 6
,, Nude woman asleep ... , n 12 o
,, The Nymph Syrinx
pursued by the God
Pan, takes refuge
among the roses ... ,, ,, 36 o o
1846. The Toilet of Venus Stevens pair 55°
Venus and Cupid
„ Cupids on Clouds,
two quarreling over a
Dove Brunet-Denon ... 18 8 o
„ Diana at the Bath, sur-
prised by Actaeon ... sketch Saint 8 13 6
„ Landscape, a Foot-
bridge across a river oil ,, 75°
1847. Shepherdesses seated,
weaving floral crowns,
near them a Shepherd
plays a flute , Rossi 58 J3 °
1850. The Toilet of Venus ... „ Paris, Jany. 1 8th to 16 o
„ Nymphs bathing 23^ x 2o| Schweling ... 42 o o
,, Young woman raising
her veil with her right
hand 30 x 24^ Thielens : Brussels 200
1851. Diana , Narbonne ... 126 o o
Diana leaving the Bath , ,, M4 ° °
,, The Love of Venus and
Vulcan Prousteau ... Set of four mytholo-
Venus and Cupids ... gical subjects ... 424 o o
Mars and Venus
Judgment of Paris
Diana and Calisto oval „ pair 130 o o
Venus and Adonis
The Watermill Picturesque landscape 132 o o
1852. Four pictures Due de Richelieu 620 o o
Pastoral Scenes Two large subjects ... 504 o o
149
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year Title. Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks. Price.
£ a. d.
1852. Four over-doors ... oil 216 o o
1853. The Nymph Syrinx,
pursued by the God
Pan, takes refuge
among the roses ... ,, Vente G. de M. 48 o o
,, Terpischore seated on
clouds receives gar-
lands of flowers from
Cupid ., .. ••• 4° 1° o
,, Diana and Endymion ,, ... ... ,, 36 o o
,, Diana looking at
Endymion Dugtere 500
1854. The Four Seasons 32j x 66 Gentil de Cha- Pastoral scenes with
vagnac ... figures 408 o o
„ Jupiter and Calisto , ,, pair 113 o o
Cephalus and Procris
1855. Daphne and Chloe Devize 10 8 o
„ The Rising of Apollo 118 x 58 Baron Comailles pair 808 o o
The Return of Apollo
1856. The Triumph of Venus Barroilhet ... ceiling 120 o o
Jupiter and Calisto Paris, Feb. 19 ... 120 o o
1857. Jupiter and Calisto d'Armagnac ... 120 o o
,, The Picnic , Paris, Mar. 20 ... pair 268 o o
The Alfresco Dance
,, Springtime ; and
Autumn 36 x 50 Patureau ... pair, in the form of
medallions 380 o o
1858. The Mill at Charenton Febvre pair 28 o o
Le Petit Trianon
,, Beauty intoxicating
Love , Pillot 30 o o
,, Four overdoors ... ... ,, ... ... 28 16 o
,, Cupids Gathering
Grapes Ferol 36 5 o
,, Marquise de Pompa-
dour, in yellow silk
dress , Ve'ron 84 o o
1859. Two Cupids sleeping ;
and Companion Deverre 12 5 o
,, Shepherdess Sleeping ,, ... ... ,, ... ... pair ... ... ... 44 12 o
Confidences
,, Swiss Milkmaid 9x7 St. Marc ... 3 10 o
Cupids Rattier pair 32 o o
1860. , Culling Eardley, Two large pictures
London ... painted for Louis XV.
in 1748 1250 o o
,, Leda and the Swan Dhane de Steen-
huyse ... ... 120 o o
Pastoral Lord Seymour ... 320 o o
Village Courtship oval ,, 164 o o
Mme. de Pompadour ... ... Richard... ... 20 o o
Music 30 x 37i Barroilhet ... n 12 o
The Pretty Sleeper ... ... 18 x 24 ,, ... 24 o o
1861. The Young Shep-
herdess Montbrun ... pair 62 10 o
The Young Shepherd
,, Country Scene ... ... Dubois ... ... 42 o o
,, Venus and Cupid in
a chariot on clouds ... ,, 44$ x 36J Rhone 102 o o
,, Large Landscape with
Ruins... ... ... ... 40 o o
,, Mme. de Pompadour ... ... 40 o o
1862. Portrait of a young
Girl , Due de Villars ... — 95°
The Gallant Shepherd 1
The Fishermen } 34 ° °
„ Venus disarming Cupid Earl Pembroke... The goddess is seated
on clouds and Cupid
with hands together
begs for the return of
his quiver 160 10 o
,, Mme. du Barri ... ... f> (l ... 32 o o
,, Pastoral Scene , — — 208 o o
150
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title. Method.
1862. Young woman dressing
a young man oil
Size and Shape.
Sale.
— Bonvoisin
Remarks.
Subject from La Fon-
taine's Fables
,, Head of Christ
Crowned with Thorns ,
,, Cupids and Chiraeres ... ... — ... overdoor
1863. Pastoral Souty —
,, Pastoral Landscape ... ... — „ ... ...
,, Two Lovers — ,, —
„ Four Pastoral Sub-
jects ... ... ... ,, ... ... — t) ... ... —
Bathers , Meffre —
The Judgment of Paris Voisin
Four overdoors ... ... — If ... ... —
Four overdoors ... , \ —
Love and Youth 2ijxi8i Gilkinet
,, Cupids playing with a
dove Soret
,, Marie Leczinska ... ,, ... ... Morland London
,, Six miniatures... ... ... —
„ Nymph sleeping
,, The Happy Parrot ... ,,
" Group of Lovers
1864. The Little Fishermen — Marquis de St.
Cloud
,, Birds — Nesting ... , ,, ,,
,, Springtime , ,. .,
,. The Adoration of the
Shepherds 73x54 Paris, March 24.
1865. Portrait of Mme de
Pompadour in the
Artists' Studio ... , Alexandre Dumas
,, A Scene from the opera
"The Puritans" 25jxi3f Comte de Pour-
tales
,, An Artist at his easel,
painting a landscape ,, ... ... ,, ,,
,, The Little Messenger ,, ... ... Tondu
,, Cupid engraving an
escutcheon ... ... ... ,,
,, Cupid and the Graces 558x72 Due de Morny ...
1866. Diana leaving her Bath ,, Cuyck
1867. Portrait of Louis
Philippe - Joseph
Egalite at the age of
two years ... ... ,, ... ... 35jX28f Laperlier
, . The Marriage of Cupid
and Psyche 37JX52
The Genius of Child-
hood i6Jxi3j ,
The Genius of Youth i6jxi3jj ,
1868. The Studio of the
Painter I5jxi3j Khalil-Bey
„ The Bathers 18x254
„ Mile B oval
,, Fishing oval Horsin-Deon ...
30^x24
,, The Boatman oval „
28 x 27j
The Awakening 34x30 Comte de C
,, Four Overdoors 43^x40 ,, ,,
,, Marquisede Pompadour 84! x 104! Henry Didier ... Full length Portrait
The Birth of Adonis ... , ,, ,. ... Pair
The Death of Adonis ,,
The Little Shepherds 14x11! ,,
., Flowers and Fruit ... , 50x34 ,,
,, Cupids holding Doves 18x36! ,, ,,
,, The Painter and his
Family I3jxio December 5th ...
,. The Poet I3jxio ,.
The Statuary I3ixio ,.
,, Cupid's Geometry »
., The Bridge 22ixi7joval „
Price.
£ ». d.
II 12 O
210
25°
36 5 o
34 I0 °
4 10 o
26 10 o
53 « °
26 o o
28 16 o
29 5 o
62 o o
IO IO
233 5
40 8 o
20 o o
96 o o
6 10 o
16 16 o
13 5 o
2150
600 o o
280 o o
140 16 o
5 12 o
760 o o
144 o o
62 io o
420 o o
47 5 o
50 o o
560 o o
58 o o
39 o o
50 10 o
88 16 o
12 O O
4 16 o
1120 o o
164 o o
52 16 o
200 o o
29 5 o
32 16 o
18 5 o
27 4 o
16 10 o
19 12 O
151
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1868.
M
1870.
1872.
I873-
I874.
I873.
1876.
1877.
Title. Method.
Size and Shape. Sale. Remarki
Price.
£. ». d.
Pan pursuing Syrinx...
20X24
22 10 O
Cupid the Painter ... oil
Delamarre ... pair
31 o o
Cupid the Historian ...
Music ... ... ... ,,
4°i x jij Maillet pair
364 o o
Painting
The Toilet of Venus
50 J x 58^ San Donato
920 o o
Venus and Cupid
48 x 52
408 o o
The Springtime of Love „
44 x 47^
324 o o
The Autumn of Love... ,,
44 X 47^
336 o o
Bacchante in Frenzy... ,,
6oJ x 34^ ,,
480 o o
Nymph gathering
Flowers ... ... ,,
6gJ x 34^
244 o o
Young Girl supplicating
Love ... ... ... ,,
7° x 32
2OOO O O
Painting „
28f X 22§
2OO O O
oval
Sculpture ,,
28f X 22f
22O 0 0
oval
Poetry ,
28f X 22f ,,
280 o o
oval
Music ... ... ... ,,
28J X 22|
264 o o
oval
Venus on the Water
25^ x 38$ MarquisduBlaisel
40 15 o
Venus asleep
42 x 36} „ ,. ...
2iO O O
A young girl reclining at
oval
the foot of a tree hold-
ing a letter in her hand ,,
Otto Mundler ... A young Shepherd peeps
240 o o
from behind a tree and
Fishing — A girl and
watches her reading
boy fishing ... ... „
... M I, •.«
80 16 o
Love's Confidences
Montesquiou-
Fezensac
326 o o
Pastoral Subjects ... ,,
10 x 28 ,, Four panels
1088 o o
Jupiter and Calisto ... „
Canot
68 o o
Venus and Cupid
54 x 66 Pereire ...
504 o o
The Favourite Sheep,
or The Messenger ... ,,
32} x 29!
360 o o
Rosebuds and Bird ... ,,
36 x 28J
360 o o
Portrait of a child in a
Cope, London ...
913 o o
Musical Rivalry ... ,,
Harcourt
28 17 6
Cupids ,
36J x 34 March 15.
80 o o
The Young Mother ... ,,
I3j x gi
48 5 o
Jupiter and Calisto ... „
64 x 56 Baron de Forest
380 o o
The Little Milkmaid ... ,,
16 x 12 „ ,,
152 o o
Clytie transformed into
a Sunflower ... ... ,,
M. D. de L. ...
3° 5 °
Arion ... ... ... ,,
45| x 52^ Marquis de la
Rochebousseau
232 o o
Pastoral
15! x nj „
80 16 o
Pastoral
192 o o
Venus asleep ... ... „
Shepherds andVillagers
MarquisduBlaisel
248 o o
in a landscape ... „
Didot
i 5 o
Groups of children, in
floral borders ... ,,
Alexander Barker,
London ... Set of 8 panels
6350 o o
The Rustic Kitchen ... „
23} x 20 Guichardot
12 0 0
The Virgin and Joseph
looking at the Infant
Jesus sleeping
oval 8iin. , on copper
o 13 6
diam.
Cupids shooting arrows oil
Baron Thibou ... pair
584 o o
Cupids sleeping
Three Cupids playing
on clouds
164 o o
Mythological Subjects ,,
fff —
So o o
The Awakening ... ,,
32j x 52 Marcille
284 o o
Psyche ,
i?i x 2iJ ,, pair
440 o o
The Concert
Diana and Venus ... ,,
35j x 27}
28 10 o
The Little Bird-
38 x 60 Mme. Brooks ... —
60 o o
152
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1877.
Title.
The Band
Method. Size and Shape. Sale.
oil 32! x 48 Mme. Brooks
Remarks.
Price.
£ «• d
Set of three Chinese
subjects 268 0 0
Fishing 39! x 28
The Cup of Tea ... ,, 37j x 26
,, Cupids D'Imecourt ... 84 o o
,. The Masque Munro, London — II5 I5 0
,, Little Peasant Feeding
Chickens Oct. n 23 IO o
1878. Woman Sleeping „ I20 o o
„ The Departure for
Market , 25 5 o
Young Girl carrying
fruit Baron D. ... 52 lo o
1880. The Masque ... ... ... Lionel Lawson,
London ... ij*r 10 o
1881. Venus Sleeping Wilson 74 o o
Jupiter and Calisto ... ,, ... ... oval Beurnonville ... 800 ,, ,,
„ The Haberdasher ,, ... 2g6 o o
„ The Charming Villager ,, 28} x 23} „ ... xjo o 0
., Head of a Cherubin 8J x 7} ,, ... 24 o o
„ Young Girl reading ... ,, 24 x 20 ,, ... 76 o o
,, Young Woman 14^ x 12 ,, ... Half figure 24 o o
oval
Nymphs and Cupids 5^x37} ,, ... 80 o o
,, Mme. de Pompadour 3o| x 24} ,, ... I22 o o
Love's Offering 323 x 24 ,, ... Sketch ij2 o o
Cupids Drawing ... „ 14} x 2of ., ... 48 o o
Interior grisaille ... 10 x 8 ,, ... Sketch 18 8 o
The Stream oil 24} x 20 Double 2Oo o o
The Mill ... ... ... 24! x 20 ,, ... ... Companion to above 160 16 o
1882. Expectation ... ... ... Moreau-Chaslon 140 0 o
The Toilet of Venus 50} x 58^ Febvre 860 o o
The Laundresses ... , 19} x 234 !66 o o
,, The Band 43j x 56 1284 o o
The Wedding Fan of
Marie Leczinska, wife Walker d'Uffing-
of Louis XV. ton 75 o o
,, The Toilet of Venus ... , Bojano 26 o o
„ Springtime, and the
Companion ... ... ... ,, ... ... 37 jo o
,, Autumn 35 10 o
1883 Bacchus and Cupid ... , 22 x 18} Aguado go o o
,, Nymphs and Satyrs ,, 48 16 o
„ The See-Saw ,, 32 x 58^ Beurdeley ... pair of overdoors ... 580 o o
The Game of Leap- Frog
,, The Reading Lesson 9x7 Beurnonville ... IO4 o o
„ The River Scamandre oval „ 64 o o
24 x 20
,, The Drudge 16 x i2f 2i Io o
,, Blindman's Buff ... ,, Becherel ... 28 o o
,, The Return from the
Fields... ... ... ,, ... ... i, ... pair ... ... ... 29 5 o
The Village Kitchen
„ Nymphs in a Land-
scape ... ... ... ... Dec. 15 ... ... I2o o o
„ Vertumnus and Po-
mona , 64^ x 68J Girardin 160 o o
Vertumnus and Po-
mona ... ... ... ,, ••• ... Doat ... ... 160 o o
,, The Villagers Borniche 2810 o
, , Young Shepherdess
holding a basket on
her head ,, ,, 13 10 o
1884. The Shepherds' Fete 96 x 94 Baron d'lvry ... 1600 o o
,, The Laundresses ... ,, 96 x 94 ,, 1600 o o
,. The Dove-cot , 18 x 26 ,, 164 o o
,, Venus sleeping 33j x 33! Beurnonville ... 40 o o
., The Garden March 27th ... 20 o o
1885. Mme de Chateauroux,
as a shepherdess ... ... Comte Sapia de
Lencia ... 28 16 o
,, Portrait of the Marquise
de Pompadour.as Venus ,, 42! x 34 La B^raudiere ... 5320 o o
153
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Y.ar.
Title.
Method.
Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
1885. Portrait of Louis XV. oil Burat
,, Cupids ... ... ... ... — ,, ... ... —
1887. The Fountain of Love go x 56 Pittet
,, The Rape of Europa Baron R. Portalis
,, Young girl reclining — ,, „
The Grape Gatherers 28| x 24 Salverte —
,, Young girl sleeping ... ... ,, ... ... —
La Gimblette Pair
The Spoiled Child ...
,, The Surprise , —
,, Naiades surprised by a
Faun 38 x 3oJ Sennegon
The Gatherer of
Flowers ... ... ,, ... ... 40 x 31 Lord Lonsdale,
London
Mme de Pompadour 78 x 62 ., ,, Blue silk dress .
The Triumph of
Aphrodite ... ... ... 98 X 100 „ ,, —
1888. Allegorical subject re-
presenting Circe with
Diana seated on a
cloud , 18} x 2oJ Marquis d'Houdan
1889. Venus asleep Secretan
1890. The Band , Rothan
,, Painting
,, The Mill
The Odalisque
, , The Avaricious Woman
,, Sunrise ...
The Sweet Perfume ...
,, The Muse of History London, June 22
,, Pastoral ... ... , ... ... 36! x 29! Crabbe ...
1891. Woody Landscapes ... ,, ... ... 20 x 23! Montbrison
,, A Muse ... „.
,, The Fishermen ... ,, ... ... London, Mar. 14
The Rape of Europa — Philippe Georges
d'Ay
1892. The Education of
Achilles Audouin Allegory.
,, The Little Reapers
The Little Shepherdess I — Pair
The Little Gardener J
The Little Gardener
,, Little Shepherd leaning
against a tree ... ,, ... ... —
,, The Toilet of Venus Daupias
The Band
,, Portrait of a Woman ... ,, ... ... —
Young girl standing March 28th
,, Cupid among Clouds ,,
The Muse Erato, with
Cupid Magniac, London
,, Studio Interior... ... Hulot
Group of Children rep-
resenting Sculpture
,, Allegory representing
painting
1893. Bathsheba 6o| x 46 —
Gipsy Encampment May 6th
,, The Birth of Adonis ... ,, ... ... 26 x 3? Denain ... ... pair
The Death of Adonis...
The Muse of Eloquence 38! x 36 — pair
The Band
1894. Nymph Surprised Court, Marseilles
Woman lying on a bed
reading 6x8 June i6th
The Judgment of Paris grisaille ... 52} x 76} Emile Barre ...
,, Samson and Delilah ... oil 2iJ x 26 Mar. ijth
Biblical Subject ... grisaille ... Mar. i6th ... sketch ..
Young woman at her
toilet oil 274 x 22 June i6th
1895. Ruth and Boaz ... grisaille ... 14 x 17$ Lefevre, Amiens sketch ..
,, Cupids by a Fountain oil London ...
Price.
£ s. d.
400 o o
48 o o
36 16 o
20 5 o
48 o o
204 o o
80 o o
192 o o
80 o o
40 16 o
1030 o o
10395 o o
630 o o
830
340 o o
980 o o
980 o o
484 10 o
300 o o
132 o o
188 o o
156 o o
294 o o
600 o o
28 16 o
240 o o
351 o o
328 o o
80 o o
2OO O O
144 o o
82 10 o
50 o o
364 o o
324 o o
70 o o
30 o o
4 10 o
861 o o
1000 o o
I2O O O
92 o o
480 o o
699 o o
324 o o
244 o o
28 o o
5 10 o
104 o o
5 10 o
450
40 o o
6 16 o
1099 o o
154
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title. Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks. Price
£ s. d.
1895. Decorative Panels ... oil London, July 13 336 o o
,, Louis xv. Kam Edouard ... 552 o o
1896. Mme. de Pompadour,
seated , London, June 6... Small whole length ... 220 15 o
. 1897. The Surprise , Montesquiou-
Fenzensac ... 64 o o
,, The Tete-a-tete ,, ,, ... 140 o o
,, The Young Bohemians „ 39 5 o
,, The Departure for
Market ,, ,, ... 70 o o
,, StudyofaNudeWoman
standing 98 o o
,, The Spinstress... ... ... ,, 30 o o
„ The Repose ... ... ... ,, 58 o o
Jupiter and Juno i2j x 14 E. Densy ... sketch for ceiling ... 12 o o
1898. Cupid as a Birdcatcher 4iJ x 47! May 7th 448 o o
,, The Environs of Beau-
vais 24 x 32 May I7th ... 78 10 o
,, Cupid as a Birdcatcher 34 x 36! Tabouriar ... 204 o o
1899. Pastoral, Girl, Musician
and Dog , 26 X 2oJ Broadwood and
Lord Seigh,
,, Portrait of Alexandrine London ... 1167 10 o
LeNormandd'Etoilles 2iJ x 18 Muhlbacher ... 3400 o o
,, Diana and two Nymphs
in a Landscape 28| x 38^ Langen, Munich 50 o o
,, Bust Portrait of a
Woman ... ... ,, ... ... 22j x i8J ,, ,, 250 o o
,, Cupids Playing 32^ x 371} Stein 820 o o
oval
,, Overdoor Baron de Reuter,
London ... 152 o o
,, Lady on a Terrace William Eden,
London ... 52 o o
1900. Flora ... ... ... ... 32j x 49^ Debrousse ... 320 o o
,, The Four Seasons ... ... Grignon Dumoulin 188 o o
,, Marie Leczinska Morland ... 220 o o
The Market of Love Spain 189 o o
„ Two overdoors Marquis of Head-
1901. The Mill, the environs fort 1600 o o
of Beauvais 17$ x 23$ J. Lassalle ... 406 o o
., Judgment of Paris ... ,, London, July 13 504 o o
1902. The Triumph of Venus , Guidi Museum,
The Departure of Rome 940 o o
Cleopatra 21 x 34 London, April 28 115 10 o
,, Portrait of a young Girl , 36 x 28 M. Miallet ... 448 o o
1903. Galatea, in a shell
carriage drawn by
Dolphins , Berlin, Feb. 14 73 o o
A Woody River Scene 23 x 28 Page Turner ... f Signed and dated 1762.) 861 o o
\ Purchased in 1868 for t
A Wood Stream 20x28 I £110 ) 798 o o
,, A Girl with a Mask ... , 28 x 22j John White ... Realised nogs, at the
Novar Sale 1878, and
I5ogs. at the Posno
Sale 1880 37 16 o
,, A Mill at Charenton 48x60 Madam Lelong... 1000 o o
„ Chinese Fishers ... „ 14$ x 2o| ,, „ ... 560 o o
,, Cupids and Infant
Bacchanals ,, 33 x 53 London, April 28 Set of 4 overdoors ... 52 10 o
oval
The Egg Merchant ... , 42 ... 33^ Lelong 1025 o o
Familiar Scenes — „ pair 42° ° °
,, Fishing Boats „ 2O2 o o
Diana Reposing ... ,, 29 x 38 Vaile Signed and dated 1748 3150 o o
,, The Triumph of Am-
phitrite 39 * 56 „ 357 ° °
oval
The Fortune Teller ... , 124 x 72I )
The Love Message ... 123 x 73i lVaiie . _ 234,5 o o
Love's Offering ... 120 x 72
Evening 124 X 7i| )
Cherubs Sporting 25x19 London, July 13 pair no 5 o
155
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1903
Price.
£ ». d.
504 o o
Title. Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remark*.
inus, seated on Clouds oil 2iJ x iyj London, July n Signed and dated 1762
oval
„ Diana and Cupid ... ,, 21 x i?J London, Nov. 38 pair
,, The Infant Bacchus
and Cupid
1904. A Bacchante , 30 x 37$ Hayne
„ The Bird Cage ...} Marne
The Little Bird-NesterJ
„ The Mill Paris, May 26 ...
Woody Landscape ... ,, 28 x 35$ T. Thurlow
,, The Seasons , Ridgway Set of 4 panels
,, Head of a Peasant Girl ,, Paris, Dec. 16 ... Catalogued as by Boucher 40 o o
1905. The Soap Bubbles ... , Paris, Feb. 6 ... 860 o o
„ Cupid Drawing ... ,, Paris, March 21
,, Lovers, Love's Messen-
gers, and a Floral
Offering „ London, March 25 Set of three
„ Group of Lovers Paris, May 12 ...
,, The Fisherman ... , Paris, June 26 ...
„ Nymphs and Cupids ... , Paris, June 29 ...
,, The Toilet of Venus ... „ 39 x 43 London, June 17
Shepherd and Shep-
herdess „ 29 x 35 London, July 8...
,, Sleeping Nymph and
Satyr , 30 x 38 ,,
1906. Venus and Cupid ... ,, Paris, April 25 ...
,, Shepherd and Shep-
herdess , isj X 14 London, March 3
,, Musical Cupids ... ... Paris, March 30
„ Cupids Playing ... , Paris, April 30 ...
„ Cupids Playing ... ,, ... ... ,,
„ Birth of Bacchus ... ,, Paris, May 4 ...
,, Cupid with Flowers ... „ ... ... Paris, May 16 ...
,, Young girl with two
children ... ... ,, ... ... ,,
,, Allegory of Hymen ... „ ... ... ,, ,,
„ Madame de Pompadour , 23^ x i?J Quilter panel
,, Nymphs and Cupids ... „ 27 x 54 London, July 2 ... pair
,, Shepherd and Shep-
herdess „ 48 x 70 London, Dec. i
„ Charity , 28 x 38 London, Dec. 20
Fruit Girl and her) 43 in.
Lover... ... ...) ,, ... ... circle London, Feb. 16
1907. Venus and Cupid ... , 18 x 22j
Solitude )
The Sleeping Beauty _ Sedeimeyer ...
Cupid pursued
Cupid Captured )
Pastoral
Bacchante Sleeping ... ,
The Pretty Fishergirl ,,
Fisherman ...
The Watermill ... „
Landscape ...
The Message ,, Paris April 16 ...
Pastoral
Jupiter, Calisto and
Cupids ... ... ,, ... ... 324 x 40 London, April 13
Landscape, The envi-
rons of Beauvais ... ... Paris, May 13 ...
Coteaux de la Marne Paris, May 24 ...
The Ferryman „ ,,
The Haymaker ... ,, „ „
A Shepherdess, ssated
on a landscape with
a child and a lamb,
listening to a young
shepherd who is play- 32 x 27
ing a flute ... ... ,, ... ... oval London, May 31
Young Shepherdess ... ,, ... ... Sedeimeyer
A Bacchante, with
Cupid and an infant
Bacchanal ,, 34 x 45 London, June 14 63 o o
63 o o
220 10 o
2728 o o
86 o o
115 to o
14000 o o
200 o o
39 18 o
96 o o
284 o o
228 o o
141 15 o
787 10 o
94 10 o
120 o o
37 16 o
820 o o
708 o o
680 o o
74 o o
312 o o
88 o o
148 o o
325 10 o
60 18 o
136 10 o
78 15 o
58 16 o
32 ii o
4480 o o
960 o o
560 o o
1040 o o
201 o o
80 o o
120 O O
648 O O
33 12 o
200 O O
60 5 o
38 o o
36 10 o
189 o o
132 o o
156
Year.
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Title. Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks.
Paris, March 18 —
1908. Ariadne and Bacchus... oil
„ Bacchantes Sleeping ... „
Mercury
Cupid ...
Pastoral
Educating
grisaille
oil
April 8
Price.
£ •. d.
84 o o
80 o o
350 o o
96 o
304 o
BOUCHER SCHOOL.
1902. Pour la Plus Belle ...
1903. Boys Playing, Dancing,
and Sporting...
1905. Game of Love...
,, Landscape
,, The Toilet of Venus ...
The Rustic Bridge ...
,, The Angling Party ...
,, Nymphs Bathing
Cupid and Psyche
1906. The Little Hunters ...
,, Pastoral Scenes
,, Lovers ...
1907. Venus and Love
,, The Fisherman
,, The Seasons ...
Spring
,, Pastoral Scenes with
Lovers, Sheep and
Goats
,, Cupids
oil
Paul Baudry
43 X 58
oval
London, Nov. 28
Paris, June 20 ...
Paris, Feb. 27 ...
Paris, March 21
set of
pair
four overdoors
63 x 63
Paris, March 24
London, May 8...
pair
—
5° * 34
28 x 35
Paris, March 26
London, Mch. 17
London, May 26
Sedelmeyer
Muhlbacher
Sedelmeyer
Paris, April 16 ...
set of
set of
four
four
I5j x 3i
i8J x 40
London, May 31
London, April 13
a pair, overdoors
overdoor
176 o o
94 10 o
160 o o
42 o o
62 o o
44 o o
IOO O O
31 10 o
58 o o
105 o o
22 I O
92 o o
76 o o
932 o o
236 o o
39 18 o
37 16 o
157
DRAWINGS, WATERCOLOURS, PASTELS,
AND GOUACHES.
Year.
Title.
Method. Size and Shape. Sale.
Remarki.
1744.
Two Pastels
— 14 x ii Quentinde
—
1756.
Venus drawing a heart
Lorangere
pierced with arrows...
in three crayons
mixed with
pastel Dec. 15
—
1760.
An old woman and two
young girls, one of
whom holds a rabbit
1763-
in her arms ...
Female life study
in three crayons 15 x 12 St. Moys...
p. Baboult
Engraved under the
title of "Trait Dan-
gereux"
1766.
Bust of a young man...
p. d'Argenville
—
M
Head of a woman
P
—
1767.
Two architectural pieces
pen, coloured 11x7 Julienne
—
Two similar drawings
15 x ii ,,
—
oval
„
Bust of a young girl
holding basket of
flowers...
P- 14 * I3j ,
—
, (
A flower girl ...
pen, 'with bistre
wash ... ,,
—
Venus at the bath with
Cupid (Diane decouv-
rant la grossesse de
Calisto)
pen, with bistre
wash ... 9x7
two
(|
Landscapes, with figures
and animals ...
pen, and san-
guine ... ,,
two
, ,
Landscape with Dove-
blk. and wte.
cot
ch 12 x i8J ,
—
1768.
The Repose in Egypt...
pencil ... ... Mariette
—
1769.
Two male life studies...
sanguine and
charcoal ... Cayeux
—
"
The Nativity
g. ,, ..<
Engraved by Fessard
under the title of " La
Lumiere du Monde"
n
Four heads from life ...
f.
—
Six studies of heads : |
six drawings in s and I
— —
—
three crayon drawings J
tt
Nine heads, two coats-
of-arms, etc. ...
pen ... ... ,,
—
M
Five heads, a grotesque
and a child
—
—
( ,
Group of two children
blk. ch. ... '..
and two children ...
one in s. and
one in three
crayons
,,
Three groups of child-
ren
s. ,, ,
—
,,
A Humourous Concert
col. ch. ... „
Three female studies...
Venus on the water ...
»
A woman
I
—
Venus on her bed
P- J
three crayons „
Five compositions
pen and bistre — ,,
—
Study
blk. ch. ...
—
and two
Landscape with figures
Two children with wings
pencil
blk. ch. ...
—
Price.
£ '• A-
440
250
2 IO O
I 12 6
0 12 O
076
Ol6o
1 13 6
8 16 o
400
5 15 °
400
300
i 5 °
O 12 O
o 10 6
076
066
o 13 o
066
086
086
O 12 6
200
too
I 12
O 10
158
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
pen and bistre
three crayons )
blk. ch. ...J
stump, in three
crayons
Y«ar. Title.
1769. Juno commanding
^Eolus to destroy
jEneas's Fleet
„ Woman, half figure ...\
Child seated J
„ Woman reclining
1771. Portrait in a medallion,
held by fame and
supported by children s.
„ Birth of Adonis
,, Apollo and Daphne ... b.
„ The Visitation of the blk. and wte.
Virgin... ... ... ch. ...
,, The Repose in Egypt pen and bistre
,, Amphitrite seated on blk. and wte.
a Dolphin ch
,, Two Heads 1
Study of a woman!
seated holding a sheep f
Seven studies J
,, Female Life Study ...
,, Composition ...
,, Pastoral subject
Hope and Religion ...
,, Parnassus
,, Temple Interiors
,, Venus nude, standing three crayons
looking at two turtle- mixed with
doves pastel
,, The Unbelieving
Thomas
The Adoration of the
Shepherds ... ... pen and wte. ch.
,, Pastoral ... ... pen and bistre
,, Study of a woman blk. and wte. ch.
standing ... ... on blue paper
,, The Game of Blind-
man's Buff g.
,, Two drawings of penandchinese
Tombs white
,, Soldiers in a field
,, Interior of a room with
woman seated feeding
a child s.
Two Fable Subjects
and Three Pastorals sanguineandch.
The Cries of Paris ... s.
,, Twenty studies of
Foreign figures
,, Two large Chinese
subjects ... ... s.
„ Ten Chinese subjects...
Twelve „
,, The Little Flower Girl
,, Eight drawings of vases
and cartouches
1773. Two academy studies
and two drawings ...
,, The Announcement of
the Birth of the
Saviour to the Shep-
herds by the Angels...
A Fountain
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
Cayeux ...
— Lebrun Fils
19 x 26
Dec. 16
Dec. 16
— Boucher...
blk. and wte. ch. zoj x i6J
9 x ii
unfinished sketch
pair
four
composition of twelve
figures
Huquier.
10 x 7
eighteen ...
Lempereur
Venus at her Toilet ...
Three women and a
child, one makes soup
and the others air
clothes
blk. ch. heigh-
tened with
white or Chi-
nese paper...
bistre heigh-
tened with white
pen and wash...
Price.
£ s. d.
I O O
076
o 12 6
i I 6
II 10 O
i 8 i
I 4 o
1150
i ii 6
o ii 6
o 12 o
o 13 o
o i o
o ii 6
o 10 o
5 15 °
800
800
i o o
056
12 O O
0 12 6
1 O O
3 17 6
0 IO O
1 O O
2 O O
o 15 o
050
076
o 10 6
o 13 o
030
600
159
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Till*.
1773. Landscape
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remark*.
Head of a woman
Rape of Europa
Scene from the Tragedy
"Mahomet II"
The Beheading of St. ]
John the Baptist. ... |
The Pilgrimage to I
Emmaus ... ... J
Amphion on a Dolphin
accompanied by
Tritons and Naiades ;
and the figure of a
woman
Four fan compositions
including the Rape
of Europa
Compositions and stud-
ies, including one of
Moses
Four drawings, one a
Title page and
another Group of
children
Two Pastorals and two
others...
Three Compositions
and three studies
The lord and his vizier
The Audience of the '
Lord
The Slave Merchant ...
The Mute
A Janissaries Camp ...
A Sultana Reading ...
A Sultana Bathing ...
The Cadi gives
Audience ... ...
A Sultana and the Cap-
tain of the Janissaries
The Muphti and Chidou-
Bachi
The Boftangi
The Capigi-Bachi
Numerous Heads
Landscape
The Mills of Charenton
Landscape- Gentilly
near Paris
Landscape - Gentilly
near Paris with
Fisherman
Landscapes
Suggestion for the dec-
oration of an opera,
and another
Three Drawings
Two Drawings...
Three Little Land-
scapes
Three Little Land-
scapes...
Three Little Land-
scapes
on grey paper
height ened
with white...
P-
pen and wash...
pencil
vellum
o n
pencil
vellum
Lempereur
two
four
pencil ...
blk. and wte.
ch. on grey
paper
on blue paper
on blue paper
one blk. ch. and
two pencil ...
one blk. ch. the
other on blue
paper
one on blue paper
two
four
three
two
two
two
two
Price.
£ .. d.
250
I o o
200
0160
o 10 6
0 15 o
080
200
076
080
1 O O
O 12 6
i o o
0160
o 10 6
o 12 6
o 15 o
200
276
0160
I 4 o
080
076
0 10 6
1 o o
160
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1773. Pastoral Landscapes...
,, View of Cachant near
Paris and a s'udy of a
woman
,, Nine different drawings
,, Psyche refusing Divine
Honours ......
1776. Two Architectural
pieces with figures ...
„ The Flower Seller ...
,, The Repose in Egypt...
,, The Virgin and Child
with Saints ...
,, Religion, figure on a
cloud .........
,, Victory and Fame
,, Portrait, supported by
two Cupids ......
ThreesheetsofChildren
groups
,, Venus and
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
blue paper
blk. ch. on wte.
paper
pen and bistre
coloured
coloured
pencil and bistre
pen and bistre
blk. ch.
b.
,, Four studies for foun-
tains, ceilings, etc. ...
,, The Lord's Supper.
Landscape
Three classical sketches
,, Twenty-six Vignettes
for the History of
France
1777. A Woman reclining ...
Two Cupids on Clouds
,, Fountain, composed of
two women, holding
a shell...
,, Two Landscapes, in
one a Fisherman in
his boat, in the other
an artist with children
,, Samson betrayed
, , Adoration of the Shep-
herds .........
,, Sacrifice to Venus
, , Angelica and Medora. . .
,, Cephalus and Procris
,, Diana bathing...
,, Two Peasants ...
Diana and Calisto
,, Diana bathing with
Nymphs
,, Peasant and a young
Girl, and a Laundress
„ Woman and Two
Children ......
A Woman with a Child
in her arms.
, , Interior with a Woman
holding a frying-pan,
and another with a
Child, drying linen ...
„ Cupid teaching three
Girls .........
„ Woman reclining with
Cupid asleep...
Woman reclining with
two Children.
Two Women ......
Two Women reclining.
b.
sanguine and
blk. ch. ...
pen and bistre
pen
blk. and wte. ch.
pen
in 3 colours ...
sanguine and
white
pen and bistre
Lempereur
Jacqmin ...
Neyman
Blondel de Gagny
Mariette...
two
three
Prince deConti...
pen and bistre
blk. and wte.cb.
blk. and wte.
cb. washed
with pastel...
I2f x 8J
13 x 3
8 x ii
9 x 14
Price.
£ .. d.
o 17 6
076
076
12 O O
o 15 o
75°
330
10 6
200
2 l8 O
0 12 6
400
200
1 10 O
300
I 3 6
276
076
blk. ch. on
white paper
i?
X
12 La Tour d'Aigues
6
0
0
grisaille on grey
paper
13
X
10 ,,
I
15
o
pen and blk.ch.
6f
x
9 Randon de Boisset
8
0
o
bistre wash ...
13
x
i?
12
o
o
pen and wash
7
X
ii
5
5
o
b.
7
X
9
4
16
o
ink and bistre
8
X
ii ,, ... nine figures
10
0
o
blk. and wte. ch.
13
x
9
10
o
o
blk. ch.
8
X
12 ,,
IO
17
6
blk. ch. on
white paper
7
X
10
8
o
0
s.
ii
X
7 ,, ... two
8
o
0
p.
_
• . two
6
IO
0
two
two
850
3 12 o
9 10 o
IO O O
161
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
Title.
Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks.
Price.
£ ••
d.
1777.
Two Naiades and two
children
bistre and white 10x7 Randon de Boisset
10 8
O
M
Young Girl with Rabbit
blk. ch. and
The Old Miser.
pastel ... 12 x 9 ,, ,, ... pair
4 13
o
Scenes galantes
pen and bistre ,, pair
18 o
0
Venus and Cupid
P. 14 x 3 pair
13 o
o
The Three Graces and
Cupid
blk. ch. and
pastel ... 13 x 10 ,, ,, ...
16 10
0
M
Venus and Cupid
blk. and wte. ch. n x 6 ,, ,, ...
6 8
0
Young woman playing
with a Bird
— 9x6 ,, ,, ... two
16 16
0
|(
Woman holding a
basket of flowers
A Naiade and Venus
with doves
blk. ch. and
pastel ... 8 x ii ,,
10 5
0
rl
Seven Cupids playing
with a bow ...
blk. ch. ... 10 x 30 ,, ,, ...
2 17
0
Three children
4 x 13 „ „ ...
2 I?
6
n
The Three Graces ...
— ,, ,, ...
* 5
o
M
Young Girl with basket
of flowers on her head
blk ch. and
pastel ... 11x8 ,, ,, ...
7 10
0
( ,
A Barn, figures
ii x 15 ,, ,, ...
° 3
0
( (
Landscape, cottage and
mill
n x 8 ,,
I 12
6
M
Landscape, farm and
figures...
ink and wash... 9x7 „ ,, ...
3 IS
0
> ,
Peasant holding a
basket of flowers, near
her is a dog ...
16 x 13 „ ,, ...
12 0
o
, t
Little Boy holding a
stick ...
ii x 7 „ ,, ... pair
8 o
0
( t
Little Girl holding a
basket of flowers
( (
Woman seated, with
\
cat and dog ...
— oval ... ,, ... two
9 10
6
lt
Danas and the Shower of
f
Gold
J
1 r
Woman holding a
Donkey
25 o
o
( r
Woman unloading a
Donkey
Tobit and the Angel ...
blk. ch. ... 10 x 15 ,, ,, ...
3 17
6
, ,
Head of a Woman
blk. ch. ... 11x8 ,, ,, ...
I 0
u
Head of the Virgin ...
red ch. ... ,, ,, ...
I 10
0
Child
blk ... ... ii x 8 , half figure
i 4
u
"
Landscapes : Cottages
and figures ...
one heightened ,, ,, ...
4 16
o
with wte. the
other blk. ch.
A Laundress ...
pen ,, ,, ... pair _
2 I?
6
A School
pen ,, two
6 10
o
, ,
A Woman carrying a
child in a basket
, ,
Five Drawings...
b. -
8 16
0
, ,
Five Drawings...
blk. ch. and
charcoal ... ,, ,, ...
8 10
rj
f (
Woman seated holding
a basket of fruit
blk. and wte. „ ,, ... pair
4 '7
6
, ,
A Fisherman
chalk
,,
Woman standing
,, ,, ... . pair
5 o
0
,,
Woman seated
( (
Two Women ...
,, „ .-. pair
4 16
0
t j
Two Women and three
Cupids
, ,
Woman standing
blk. ch. ... „ ,, ... two
2 5
0
,,
Woman and her child
in a kitchen
M
Woman reclining
,, ... pair
5 17
0
, ,
Venus sleeping
,,
Three Naiades...
, pair
9 10
0
162
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1777. Venus and Cupid
,, Bacchante sleeping ... )
,, Four studies of Heads j
,, Cottage with woman
and three children ...
,, Landscapes : Buildings
river, and figures
,, Landscapes : Figures
and animals
„ Landscape, Figures and
Miller's house
„ Shepherd wheeling a
Girl in a Barrow
1778. Peasant with Basket of
Flowers
1779. Samson surprised by
the Philistines
Study of a Woman ...
,, Interior of a country
house
,, Two Heads, Man and
Woman, study for a
fountain
Child's bust; Woman
with three Children...
,, Joseph sold by his
brothers
1781. Young man giving
Birds to a Girl
,, Les Guetteuses
,, Young Girl carrying a
Basket in which is
a Child
„ Mme. de Pompadour...
,, Young Girl holding a
Rabbit
Young Girl with Cat
on her knees
Danae receiving the
Shower of Gold
,, Young Girl making a
school of little boys...
Young Boy making a
school of little girls
,, Young Girl, nude, re-
clining on a bed
The Adoration of the
Shepherds
,, The Three Graces,
bathing
,, Landscape
Landscape
,, Woman reclining on
drapery
„ Nude Woman, lying on
her back
1782. Two Turtle-doves, and
woman leaving a Bath
,, Head of a Woman, hair
tied with ribbon
,, Portrait of Woman
surrounded by a floral
garland
,, Similar subject
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
— Randon de Boisset
charcoal
—
„ ...
charcoal
—
,, ,, ... two
—
—
- , , , , . . . two
three crayons...
—
• 1 II
pen and bistre
—
,.
grisaille a 1'huile
on paper ...
three crayons
grey paper...
16 x 13
Lerouge
Marquis de Cal-
viered'Avignon
blk. ch.
—
,.
sanguine pen
and wash ...
—
d'Argenville
s.
pen and bistre
wash
9 x 13
Trouart ...
pen and bistre
blk. ch. and
white
7f x 9}
14 x 9}
Sireuil
ch. and pastel
P-
blk. ch. and
pastel on blue
paper
round blk. ch.
and pastel on
wte. paper ...
blk. ch. and
pastel blue
paper
13 x to
14 X 12
12 X 9
10} in.
diam.
loj x 7j
two
,, ... ... pair
blk. ch. and
pastel on blue
paper
blk. and wte. ch.
27 x 38
6J x 9
blk. ch. on blue
paper ...
pen and bistre
wash, blue
40 x 24
1 '
rper
and wte.
crayon, blue
paper
sanguine on
grey paper...
in colours on
7x9
13 x 9
7f x 4
»» "'
grey paper ...
ch. and wte.
—
crayon, on
grey paper...
—
Lancrat ...
P-
IJ X 12
Menars de Marigny
P-
13 X 9j
13 x 0$
i» ii •••
M i» • • •
163
Price.
£ •• d.
440
5 15 o
2 18 6
2 18 6
340
1800
12 O O
0 17 o
1 O O
050
076
O IJ O
6 12 6
740
36 12 O
19 5 °
800
55°
7 12 o
26 o o
3 13 6
1600
400
7 3 o
3 16 o
3 12 o
4 16 o
I 12 o
4 16 6
600
3 '3 6
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1783. Ten figures with
animals
„ The Education of
Cupid...
The Flower Girl
The Repose of Venus
Bust of a woman with
flowers in hair
Another, similar
Woman lying on a bed
Figure of a Woman
holding a medallion
Nymph tied to a tree
and corrected by
Cupid
Young Shepherdess,
seated, holding a
medallion
Woman holding drapery
Young Shepherdess in
bright costume
Five Children
Peasant Study
Woman in Chinese
costume
Diana and Endymion...
Shepherd surprising a
woman bathing
Two Nymphs bathing,
in a Landscape
Shepherd suprising a
Shepherdess bathing
Venus seated holding
an arrow
Two female studies,
similar
Ten busts of young
girls in various posi-
tions, similar
Studies of Naiades and
Tritons
Woman, seen from the
back ...
Bather and two Cupids
Figure of a Woman ...
Landscapes, river views
and figures ...
Landscapes and pastoral
subjects
Peasant, back view ...
Laundress, holding a
basket of linen
Two Landscapes
Two Women and Cupid
A column surmounted
by a vase and a
medallion
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
pen and san-
guine wash...
blk. ch., wte.
paper
blk. ch. and
pastel on wte.
paper
blk. and wte.
ch
P.
P-
three crayons
and pastel ...
three crayons
and pastel ...
blk. and wte.
ch. on grey
paper
crayon and pas-
tel, on grey
paper
blk. and wte. ch.
blk. chalk and
sanguine ...
three crayons
blk. ch. on wte.
paper
blk. ch. on note
paper
crayon and pas-
tel ...
sanguine on grey
paper
crayons
sanguine on grey
paper
blk. and wte. ch.
and pastel on
blue paper...
crayons on blue
paper
ch. on wte.
paper
blk. and wte.
ch. on blue
paper
Dazincourt
oval , ,
16 x 13
16 x 13
twelve
numerous small sketches
Price.
£ s. d.
1 12 O
34°
6 17 6
5 15 °
a 8 o
2 12 6
2 IS O
300
I 4 o
—
2
O
o
ift
0
0
I
O
10
8
0
0
pair
I
I
6
pair
... X
t
»
pair
5
12
0
1 5 °
6 16 o
3 15 O
280
2 4 6
550
4 16 o
04*
O 12 •
164
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1783. Three Landscapes
,, Child Studies
„ Studies of Babies
Head of an Old Woman
„ Studies of Peasants ...
,, Bust of the Virgin ...
„ Studies of draped female
seated figures
Method. Size and Shape.
with
1784.
1785.
An Interior
A Kitchen
Venus reclining
Cupid ...
Pastoral subject
An interior.
Country scenes
Nymphs reposing after
the chase
A Shepherdess sleeping
and her flock.
Two similar subjects ...
Peasant carrying a
child in a basket
Three studies of heads
Three drawings
Two children, pressing
grapes
Three studies of hands
and a composition ...
Venus seated with Cupid
Shepherdess leaving the
bath, landscape
Female studies, and
two studies of heads
Venus and the Graces
in a landscape
Two Women's heads...
Group of Soldiers
Two Heads of Women
Study of Women re-
clining, view from the
back
Three Cupids
Head of Woman
Figure of a Woman ...
Landscape, with Mill
and washerwomen ...
Young Villagers
Landscape
Hut and bridge on a
river, with figures ...
Two studies of heads on
one leaf
Groups of Children ...
Child studies
Landscape with animals
The Flower Girl
Three Drawings
ch. on wte. paper
blk. and wte. ch.
crayon and pastel
blk. ch. on blue
paper
ch
blk. ch.
ch.
blk. ch. on wte.
paper
3 crayons on
grey paper...
on paper
blk. ch. on wte.
paper
blk. ch. on wte.
paper
blk. ch.
crayon and wte.
in ink on one
leaf
Cray o n and
pastel
blk. and wte.
ch. and pastel
ch. and pastel
blk. ch. on grey
paper
blk. ch. on wte.
paper
s.
blk. and wte. ch.
coloured
wash and wte.
ch. on blue
paper
Landscape with figures see remarks ...
Sale.
Dazincourt
... two
Remarks.
pair
pair
pair
pair
pair
pair
Leroy de Senne-
ville
— Nourri
pair
seventeen
one a " Halt during the
Chase"
Three, one blk. and wte.
ch., and the others
blk. ch
Price.
£ $. d.
086
I 18 6
0 18 6
1 7 6
250
I O O
280
i 15 o
o 15 o
6 16 o
4 i6 o
i 5 6
280
O 12 O
076
080
076
I O O
i 19 o
080
i 19 o
050
5 15 °
O 12 O
i 5 °
050
I IO O
i 19 o
o 12 6
3 17 6
086
O 12 6
o 15 o
450
33°
O IO O
165
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
Title.
Method. Size and Shape. Sale.
Remarks.
Price.
£ «. a.
I785-
Eight studies
Twelve landscape
pen and bistre
Nourri
One a study for the
"Massacre of the
studies
blk. ch.on wte.
Innocents"
o 3
o
paper
— ,,
Views of Charenton and
elsewhere
0 12
6
1787.
Mythological subject...
The Virgin
pen and wash...
8 x 13 Collet
ii x 8 .,
half figure
o 8
° 5
6
o
An Interior, with two
women and a child ...
bistre wash ...
izj x 8J Lambert and
1789.
Joseph sold by his
Duporail
—
2 12
o
Brothers
pen and bistre
9 x 13 Feby. 15
—
I 13
6
1791.
Interior with two women
—
12 x 8 Le Brun
—
i S
6
The Adoration of the
Shepherds
bistre and wte.
i8J X 14
—
8 o
o
The Triumph of Venus
and Neptune...
grisaille
18 x 33 ,,
Composition of 25 figures
i 18
6
"797'
A Woman seated, a
Landscape and two
others
blk. ch. on blue
paper
Wouters, Brussels
—
O IO
0
11
Young Villager repos-
ing leaning on a Vase
blk. ch.
— —
—
o 8
6
I799-
The Reconciliation of
Esau and Jacob
pen and bistre
Basan pere
six
3 O
0
Jesus making Peace
with His Disciples
(|
The Triumph of Venus
gouache
oval
—
I 4
0
If
Venus and Cupids
crayons and
pastel
14 x loj ...
—
I 4
o
(J
Eight Studies
crayons
,,
—
0 II
6
1803.
Young Villager leaning
on a Vase
blk. ch.
— April 18
—
o 8
6
1810.
Thirty-one Drawings...
. —
Rigal
Including Moses receiv-
the Tables of the Law,
Pastorals, Landscapes,
1811.
Moses receiving the
Heads and Studies ...
o 8
6
Tables of the Law ...
—
Silvester
Twenty drawings and
1814.
The Angel disappearing
studies
o 8
6
before Mann£ and
Elyma, and 14 draw-
ings
—
Bruun-Neergaard
—
I 12
6
,,
Young Boy
P.
6x9 ,, ,,
half figure
I I
0
1818.
Two young Girls one
holding a Rabbit
under her arm
crayon slightly
coloured with
pencil
6x4} Saint-Moys
t 10
e
1823.
Two Nude Angels
sanguine
4l x 3i Grunling, Vienna
_
o 8
6
,,
History and the Arts...
bistre and wte.
ch
— ., ,, ...
o 4
0
1834.
Young Woman giving
soup to a Child
pen and bistre
Lagoy
—
O 13
6
1839.
Brother Philip's Geese
gouache
Bruzard
for a Fan
10 16
o
1841.
Young Girl with her
head leaning against
a pillow
P-
Baron Roger ...
—
3 10
o
,,
Mme de Pompadour ...
P-
— >i fi
—
* 8
6
1842.
Young Girl with roses
in her hair
crayon
nj x 8} Villenave
—
I O
6
,,
Study of a Nude
Woman
crayons
_
I 13
6
ii
Landscape, Farmyard
blk. ch.
i3j x 20}
O IO
6
1845.
Young Woman stand-
ing in a Park
P-
Cypierre
_
IO 10
O
1848.
Sleeping Shepherdess
surprised by a Shep-
herd
ch
Saint
_
O 12
g
D
Young Girl smelling a
Flower
ch
__
6 8
o
M
Studies of Women ...
blk. ch. on blue
11
and grey paper
_
four
2 0
o
..
Young Girl Dancing ...
ch
— ',',
pair
18 o
o
Young Peasant Dancing
166
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1851. Young Girl Crowned
with Roses
,, Young Girl Dancing ...
1855. The Three Graces ...
,, Cupid
,, Head of a Young Girl
Crowned with Roses
1856. Bust of a Young Girl...
,, Nymphs surprised by
a Satyr
„ Venus looking at two
Doves
,, Girl playing with a Cat
1857. Vertumnus and Pomona
,, Five Drawings and
Pastels
,, Nine Drawings for the
" Metamorphosis of
Ovid"
,, The Birth of Bacchus
,, Diana and Actaeon ...
, , Vertumnus and Pomona
,, Twenty-seven drawings
,, Three Nymphs on
clouds
,, Venus and two Cupids
on clouds
1858. The Three Graces, and
Cupid
,, A Cupid
,, Two Groups of Cupids
attaching Garlands of
Flowers to an Altar...
,, Young Woman, nude,
lying on her right side
,, Pastoral subject
, , Land scape with animals
,, Study of a Man
,, Frontispiece of a Book
„ Three Nymphs, on
clouds
1859. Young Girl playing
with a Cat
,, Summer
,, Cupid stung by a Bee...
,, A Wooden Bridge
,, A Nymph seated
,, Pastoral
, , Landscape with figures
,, Head of a Sleeping
Girl
,, Young Girl Sewing ...
,, Two studies
,, Two studies
,, Pastoral
Study
„ Study
,, Study of a Young Man,
clothed in satin
, , Allegorical Composition
,, Country Dance
Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks. Price.
£ ». d.
crayons ...
— Van Os 4 12 6
crayons on col-
oured paper
— 800
blk. and wte.
crayon
Norblin 200
blk. and wte.
crayon
,, ... ... 10 o o
pastel on blue
paper
VandenZande... o n 6
crayons
— Greverah ... 400
Engraved by Marte-
nasie under the title of
—
Dec. 15 " Pan et Syrinx " ... o 16 6
crayon and
pastel
250
P-
— ,, II 12 O
in two crayons
Richard 600
—
,, ... ... 1800
Thibaudeau ... 52 12 6
chalk on white
paper
,, ... 700
in two chalks
on blue paper
13 4 °
in two chalks
on blue paper
,, ... 600
—
Marcille 29 15 o
in three chalks
Nov. 30 ... ... 086
s.
020
s.
Norblin 850
coloured and
crayon
— ,, ... ... — 7 12 o
in three chalks
Mouriau ... 400
s.
,, ... ... 0160
pen and light
wash
Kaieman ... 086
red chalk
— , o i 6
reddish violet
chalk
M 036
red wash heigh-
tened with
white
„ o 10 6
in three chalks
— — o 13 6
P-
— Feb. 21 ii 12 o
blk. ch.
, 036
030
pen ".
s.
— o i 6
; o36
s.
— o4o
sketch o i 6
in two chalks...
O I O
»i ••• -
pencil
... 056
— ... on one mount ... ••• 020
__
— for a fan 150
— , screen 200
—
— , 250
— , — — 74°
_ .... — i i 6
! 34°
167
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1859. Young Woman seated
in a chair
„ Young Girl holding
flowers in a basket ...
,, Young Lady in a silk
robe ...
,, Venus whipped by
Cupid
,, Shepherd surprising a
Shepherdess ...
Head of an Old Man ...
,, Adoration of the Shep-
herds
,, Frontispiece to a Book
,, Young Girl playing
with a Dove ...
,, Group of Children
Study
,, The Butter Churners...
Laundresses Chatting
Young Girl guarding
her Sheep
„ The Butter Churner ...
,, Study of a Young Man
,, Country Dance
1860. Cupid <
,, Three Cupids support-
ing an Escutcheon,
which bears the por-
trait of a woman
,, Bust of a Girl, back view
,, Allegory for the Dau-
phin
,, Nude Woman, reclining
surrounded by roses
„ Child reclining holding
grapes
1861. Study for the awaken-
ing
,, Nude Woman sleeping
Nude Woman reclining
holding a Rose
The Reverie
,, Venus and Cupid
,, Fan subject
,, Three Cupids support-
ing an Escutcheon,
which bears the por-
trait of a woman
,, Woman seated, holding
a Basket
Study of a Dress
,, Young Girl holding a
Basket
,, Interior with three
Women. playing musi-
cal instruments
„ Screen designs
,, Large landscape with
cottages
1862. Landscape with figures
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks
— Feb. 21 ..
in three cra-
yons, with
the shadows
washed in ...
pen and bistre
red wash heigh-
tened with
white
three chalks ...
blk.ch. relieved
with wte. ...
red ch.
pen and bistre
coloured in
three chalks
pencil ...
blk. and wte. ch.
pen, bistre and
sanguine ...
coloured chalks
chalks...
blk. and wte.
ch. on grey
paper
blk. ch. on
bluish paper
blk. ch. heigh-
tened with
wte. on grey
paper
pencil ...
blk. and wte. ch.
blk. ch. slightly
heightened
with wte. ...
pencil
water colour ...
gouache
— David ..
— Kaleman
12 J x
Norblin ...
Denesle ...
Walferdin
ii
May 21 ...
Lajarriette
— Van Os
May 29
a pair and another
May 21 ..
E. Blanc.
pair on one sheet
two
Price.
£ >. d.
0 15 o
040
1 4 o
3 16 6
956
086
066
080
o I 6
030
0 i 6
1 17 6
250
200
750
34°
7 17 6
i 17 6
0160
750
5 !5 °
3 12 6
0160
700
650
286
o 13 6
050
030
o 9 o
0160
0160
850
168
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1862.
1863.
Title.
Method. Size and Shape.
1864.
1865.
1869.
1875.
Virgin and Child with
Angels
Heads of Girls and Boys. blk. ch.
Young Girl holding
flowers on her knee
The Aga of Janissairies pencil
The Sultana.
Woman reclining ... blk. ch.
Portrait of a Woman... chalks
Young girl smelling a
rose p.
Studies of Children's
heads blk. ch.
Two drawings...
Venus and Cupid
Nymphs bathing
Young Girl in tasteful
costume
Group of Children ...
Young Girl surprised by
a faun...
Three nude Women
with Cupids
Cupids on clouds
Diana ...
Reclining Nymph sur-
prised by Satyr
Head of a Young Girl
Head of a Young Girl
A Gardener, with a
Shepherd and flock
in middle distance ...
Shepherdess with basket
on head
Nude Man seated
Head of a Child
Head of a Girl, and
Young Shepherd and
Shepherdess ...
Four Children's heads
on one sheet, and
three nude female
studies on the same...
Two Busts of peasants
Two drawings
Woman on a bas relief
A Mother and two
Children
Spring and Autumn ...
Soldiers halting in a
ruin
blk. and wte.
ch. on blue
rper
ch.
blk. ch.
in three chalks
blk. and wte.
ch. on blue
paper
in three chalks
in three chalks
blk. ch.
blk. ch.
sanguine and wte.
blk. & wte. ch. ^
s.
in two chalks...
blk. and wte.
ch
blk. and wte. \
ch. on reddish [•
paper ...)
pen and bistre
Drawing s.
Reclining nude Woman
surrounded with roses coloured chalks
Allegory for theDauphin,
Cupids supporting
medallions
Two Girls seated, at
their side a Shepherd
and his flock
Portrait of a Poet sup-
ported by two Nymphs
on a column
pen, bistre and
sanguine ...
pen, bistre and
wte
Sale.
Bonvoisin
April 16
Evans Lombe ...
Soret
Lhermitte
Andrgossy
May 10
Desperet
Remarks.
Miniature on ivory
two
pair
sketch on paper
. after Watteau
April 16
Gamberlyn
Foureau ... pair
Comte de Pour-
tales
Demidoff
Walferding
— Guichardot
Price.
£ ». d.
800
I 4 o
O IO O
020
18 16 o
19 4 o
020
340
100
2 14 6
056
050
o 17 6
4 16 o
210
076
040
040
o 10 o
2 IO O
040
056
056
056
o i 6
036
oio
10 o o
I 13 O
12 16 O
5 '5 °
750
700
blk. and
ch. ...
wte.
169
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1875. Young Mother giving
soup to her Child ...
„ The Nativity
,, The Nativity
,, The Flagellation
,, Landscape with Cot-
tages
,, 'f Rustic Interior
Cupids
Shepherd and Shep-
herdess reposing
Studies of head and hand
The Shepherd's Repast
Aurora ..
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
1876.
1877.
1880.
pen and bistre
blk. and wte.
ch
pen and bistre
pen
in various cray-
ons
red crayons ...
pen
blk. ch. ... —
bistre, crayon
and white ... octagonal
— Guichardot
Two Cupids
The Three Graces ...
Mars and Venus
The Virgin and Child
Innocence
Allegorical composition
Subject entitled —
" Contes de La Fon-
tine"
Head of a young Girl
with a Fichu tied
under her chin
Angel's Head
Young Shepherd with
bunch of grapes
Young Woman seated
Venus reclining holding
a Dove
Profile Head of a
Woman
P-
P-
pen and wash
sanguine and
bistre
1882.
YoungWoman standing
Rustic Interior
Cupids Playing
Moses presented to
Pharaoh's Daughter blk. ch.
Cupids on the prow of
a Ship
s.
ch. and san-
guine with
wte
blk. ch. with
wte. on tinted
paper
s.
pen and sepia
ch.
A Cottage with brood
of chickens
Landscape with build-
ings
Entrance to a Village
with Shepherd
Pastoral
Child on a Wooden
Bench...
Bust of a young Woman
A Shepherdess
Head of a Man
Two Heads of Cupids
Group of Cupids for a
Screen
blk. and wte.
ch. and san-
guine
ch.
s.
ch
line on blue \
paper
blk. andwte.ch. f
on brown
paper ... )
ch.
blk. and wte.
ch
sanguine
blk. and wte.
ch. on blue
paper
184 x 16 Marcille...
Feb."28 .'.'.'
l6| x uj Brooks ...
Behague ..
9i x 12 Maherault
i3l x 9!
it •••
It •««
15 x loj ,,
13! X i6J
Jean Gigoux
six
five
for frontispiece of a book
full size ...
for overdoor
pair
Price.
£ ». d.
100
i 17 6
i I 6
o 12 6
i ii 6
o 17 6
i 18 6
12 5 o
24 8 o
31 o o
16 8 o
7 15 o
44 o o
I 13 6
82 8 o
30 o o
7 12 o
600
840
5 12 6
480
24 o o
36 16 o
10 o o
75°
800
2 12 6
5 12 O
280
286
340
6160
170
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Tide.
1882. Cupids carrying a Car-
touche and using the
bow
,, Shepherd seated
,. Head of a you ng
Shepherdess
„ Cupids playing with
goats
, , Young Girl reclining . . .
„ Young Girl, beaten by
Cupid
, , Young woman reclining
The Nativity
„ Young Girl, bust
,, Fountain design
„ Young Girl's head
,, Young Woman's head
„ Young Woman'sbust...
,, Love the Conqueror ...
The Dance
,, The Young Artists ...
,, Washerwomen, in a
Landscape
1883. Neptune calming the
tempest, which .fliolus
had let loose against
the Fleet of ^Eneas ...
,, The Reader
,, The Picnic
Three Girls with Cupid
,, The Return from the
Fields...
, , Bust of Young Woman
,, Travelling Bohemians
Sketching
,, The Pancake
,, Nymph and Cupid ...
,, Bust of a Young Girl...
,, Nymph reclining
,, Nymph sleeping
1884. Head of a Boy
Bust of a Girl ...
Bacchante
The Bath of Diana ...
,, Allegorical Piece
,, Summer and Autumn
,, The Painter
,, Head of a Woman
,. Three Villagers
, , Young Shepherdess
followed by two Shep-
herds with their flocks
1885. The Sleeping
Shepherdess...
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
1886. The Rape of Europa ...
,, Mme. de Pompadour...
„ The Picnic
,, Return from the Fields
„ The Toilet
line and chalk
blk. and wte.
—
Jean Gigoux
ch. on blue
paper
—
blk. ch.
—
,, ...
blk. ch.
_
in three crayons
9i x I3i
Marmontel
three crayons
three crayons
blk. ch.
i3i x 18
three crayons
ch.
ch.
84 x 6J
14 x 8f
4x6
64 x 8
M ...
ch.
'34 x 94
,,
sepia ...
8| x lof
134 x 8J
si x 104
, , ...
—
8J x io|
., ...
blk. and wte,
ch. and bistre
pen and wash
blk ch. and wte.
blk. ch.
22 X 15!
104 x 8
i°4 x 34
94 x 8
Beraudiere
s.
in three chalks
blk. ch. grey
94 x 7i
;: :::
paper
—
—
—
Daran
—
—
Derenaucourt
s.
'74 x 13^
Schwiter
blk. and wte.
ch. grey paper
ch.
124 x 94
8f x 14}
„
s.
8f x 14!
,i ...
blk. and wte.
c h . and
sanguine ...
blk. and blue
—
Baron d'lvry
chalk and
sanguine ...
blk. and blue
7f x 5}
"
chalk and
sanguine ...
pen and sepia
pen and sepia
blk. ch.
10 x 7j
7} X 12}
9! x 12}
8| x u|
*» II
H M
May 2ist
blk. ch.
Beurnonville
pair
gouache
blk. and wte. ch.
on blue paper
blk. ch.
blk. ch.
10 J x I2| Beraudiere
oval
12 x 8 Richard Lion
"i x 8J „ „
joj x 18 „ „
Pric*.
£ m. d.
' 5
0136
O 12 6
36 o o
30 16
18 8
6 10
15 10
44 16
20 16
26 12
19 12
15 15
46 O
16 o
3 13
pair
24 16 o
8 16 o
35 1° o
2 IO O
45°
200
340
400
32 16 o
1600
1800
32 16 o
60 12 o
15 12 O
156 o o
40 o e
35 5 o
15 12 O
3i 5 o
21 5 O
9 15 o
29 12 O
14 5
34 10 o
122 O O
28 O O
66 o o
171
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
Title.
Method.
Size and Shape. Sale.
Remarks.
Price.
£
s.
d.
1886.
Gipsy standing holding
right hand of a child
s.
8 X
6
Richard Lion ...
14
O
0
Girl's Portrait
in three chalks
I2| X
9f
n i>
—
21
5
0
M
Rocky Landscape with
sanguine and
River ...
bistre
8J x
6
ii n ...
—
M
10
o
Maternal Cares
ch
it ti .*•
—
20
16
o
Rustic Landscape
s.
I4| X
1C*
it 11
—
7
5
0
l887.
The Rape of Europa...
—
12 X
8
Portalis
—
20
5
0
coloured ch.
Young Girl
and pastel ...
Ilf X
I7f
,
—
104
0
0
Mythological Figure...
blk. ch.
—
Muhlbacher
—
8
8
0
II
Maternal Cares
ch
—
n
pair
'9
4
o
II
The Elder Sister
The Artist's Dream ...
s.
—
,,
—
8
16
o
1888.
The Shepherdesses ...
gouache
9j x
iij
Roth
—
ii
4
0
l88g.
Young Girl reclining
chalks and
playing with Doves...
pastel
—
—
—
100
o
0
( (
Young Girl's Bust
—
—
Ayerst
—
22
8
0
l8gi.
Young Girl's Bust
Young Girl reclining...
ch
ch
'3i x
i3i x
18
Dod6 ... ...
it ... •»>
32
21
0
o
o
0
1892.
Daphne and Chloe ...
—
12$ X
14
A. Dumas
—
72
o
o
M
Sleep
s.
6 x
8|
tt
—
2O
0
0
M
Venus nude, reclining...
chalk tinted ...
. —
,,
—
80
0
C)
1893.
A Muse
s.
IlJ X
i«J
Denain
—
70
o
o
sanguine and
f f
Cupid and a Rose
pastel
—
,,
—
112
16
0
11
Cupid ...
s.
16 x
18^
May 13 ...
—
8
o
0
1894.
Venus and Cupid
blk. ch.
—
Emile Barre
carved oak frame
8
5
o
M. Dinelli
J
2
Q
1 1
Slaves bearing Trophies
blk. ch.
8J x
7i
O. du Sartel
2
O
0
Louis XVI. carved and
()
Cupids on clouds
blk. ch.
—
ii ii
gilt frame
16
O
o
fj
Rodogune, Act V.
Scene IV. ...
wash and ink...
8| x
5i
ti M
—
8
0
o
1)
Shepherdess reposing
blk. and wte.ch.
—
Feb. 28
—
I
7
5
1 t
Two Young Girls
chalk and pastel
8f x
8
April 28
_
4
12
6
•»
Allegorical Composition
ch
14 x
10}
June 16 j
sketch for a portrait of }
Mme. de Pompadour J
4
0
n
,,
The Little Reapers ...
—
—
General Mellinet
—
0
*7
6
)f
Young Woman's Head
P-
—
,,
—
2
17
6
II
Young Woman's Head
ch
—
Henri Baudot ...
—
4
7
6
||
Naiades...
pen
—
M ti ...
studies ...
2
i
0
11
The Little Farmer ...
—
2 X 4J
H. Gamier
pair
49
5
o
The Little Fisherman
1895.
The Bathers
s.
—
Cousin
2
7
f,
The Education of Cupid
—
—
_
4
12
o
|(
Two Young Girls
ch. and pastel...
— .
G. Hoche
9
O
o
)(
Study
s.
—
Nov. 26
2
2
6
|f
Study of Cupid
red and wte.ch.
16 x
10
Galichon
2
2
o
M
Les Fourberies de
Scapin
pencil
Mar. 30
on parchment
3
I
0
11
Landscapes
gouaches
pair
20
O
0
II
The Little Farmer ...
—
2 X
4j
H. Gamier
pair
45
4
o
The Little Fisherman.
II
Venus reclining
—
Paul Mantz
I
12
6
1896.
Allegory
—
—
Furby, Marseille
2
0
0
,,
Bust of a young girl ...
coloured chalks
Destailleur
14
5
o
M
Soldier standing, chat-
ting with a Woman,
lying on the ground
holding a Child
blk. ch.
—
3
12
0
,,
Cupids playing with a
goat
ch.
...
_
2
8
o
t t
Oval Cartouche sup-
ported by six Cupids
on clouds
c.
i7t x
22}
2O
o
o
n
Fame and Truth
Justice and other figures
pen
pen, on rose
,,
with a medallion portrait
of a man between ...
5
12
6
paper
__
overdoor...
6
o
1897.
Nude Woman, back view
in three chalks
and pastel,
It
Nude Woman, back view
yellow paper
ch., grey paper
14} x
*3l
8J
DeGoncourt
it ...
740
124
0
0
0
0
172
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1897. Nude Woman, full face
,, Nude Woman, reclining
back view
,, Adoration of the Shep-
herds
,, Bath of Venus, with
Cupids and swan
,, Girl in Spanish dress...
,, Girl seated
,, Shepherdess bathing...
,, The Gardener
,, Pastoral, Shepherdess
with goat and sheep
,, Vase and Cupids, land-
scape background ...
,, The Footbridge, with
two Children, one of
whom is fishing
,, Farmyard with figures
,, Washerwoman
„ Head of a Young Girl
,, Shepherdess sleeping...
Shepherd Fishing
„ Nude study of a Man...
,, Young Woman, front
view, holding a veil...
,, Girl with rose at her
bosom
,, The Monkey Parade ...
1898. Shepherd and shep-
herdess
Pastoral
,, The Wheelbarrow ...
,, Three Cupids
,, Philamint, and Agnes
„ Julie
Cleante
Philant
,, Four pencil drawing
for the Moliere of 1734
,, Cupid on a Cloud
,, Adoration of the Shep-
herds ...
,, Medallion supported by
Lions and Cupids ...
„ Bust of a young Girl ...
,, Two Draped Female
Studies
„ Rape of a Nymph
,, Infant Bacchanals
,, Study, Woman and
Cupid
,, Girl seated on a bed,
with a soubrette
behind a curtain
,, Cartouche surrounded
by Cupids, &c.
Cartouche decorated
with religiousemblems
„ Two Girls
„ Venus reclining
Head of a Girl
Bather
,, Venus and Cupids
Method. Size and Shape. Sale. Remarks.
Price.
£
s.
d.
ch., grey paper
'4
X
7f DeGoncourt
24
16
6
yellow paper
heightened
with blue
pastel
nj
X
'4
240
e
o
—
i6j
X
iii ,, ... sketch on paper
44
o
o
ch.
8J
X
7l
116
o
e
three chalks on
yellow paper
134
X
9i
404
o
o
ch.
X
9i
6
o
0
ch. on yellow
paper
IOJ
X
9j
34
6
6
pastel and chalk,
blue paper...
IOJ
X
12 „
'7
6
6
w.
6}
X
8}
24
e
o
ch. yellow paper
.04
X
7i
34
16
6
blk. ch.
12}
X
9i
28
16
6
pen, bistre and
sanguine
Hi
X
8}
80
o
o
ch. grey paper
blk. ch.
IlJ
X
12}
Bouillon
28
8
o
16
0
6
P- )
blk. andwte. ch.J
—
May 28
12
o
O
s.
—
Dec. 13 ...
I
12
6
ch.
—
2
O
O
P-
..
De Montesquiou-
Fezensac
4°
16
6
gouache
—
„
16
o
O
_
9i
X
12 Decloux
152
o
o
—
,, companion to above ..
106
o
a
51
X
8
5°
16
6
—
8
X
11} „ ... .-
136
8
o
s.
s.
4
X
x
7} pair
6} ,, ... ... pair
. 204
124
o
o
o
o
s.
*^4
X
7J
74
o
0
7f
X
5} ,,
1 20
o
o
s.
7J
X
9i
24
o
o
pen
6k
X
6}
16
o
o
blk. ch.
8}
X
I0i
0
18
6
in two chalks...
—
o
iG
6
blk. ch.
12
X
'si
6
16
6
blk. ch.
— ceiling
o
8
6
wash and ink...
—
— —
o
8
6
blk. ch. grey
paper
10}
X
134
14
8
*
ch
16
X
IO
\
IO
'7
6
pen and wash
—
| Feb. 7
12
10
6
chalk and pastel
Hi
X
J
I7i Marmontel
8
1 20
o
e
o
o
three chalks ...
10
X
5k
15
8
6
coloured paper
ch. and pastel
gouache
"1
X
X
13} J. de Bryas
8J '
592
20
o
0
0
0
173
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year.
1808.
Title.
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
1899.
View near Charenton
The Pancakes ... ... pen and bistre
Girl's Head
Pastoral Love
Pastoral Love ...
Nymph Awakening
Portrait of a Lady
Peasant and Child
Reposing Nymph
The Mother
Woman reclining
Group of Persons by a
Fountain
The Young Musician ...
Psyche and sleeping
Cupid...
Cupids on Clouds
The Water Mill
The Fountain
Adoration of the Shep-
herds ...
The Last Supper
Chinese Children play-
ing
The Dinner
Triton
Farm Interior ...
Historical Subject
Girl Sleeping ...
Study of Peasant
Nymph and Cupids ...
Spring: an allegory ...
Sleeping Venus and
Cupids
The Toilet
Two Children ...
Children's Heads
Head of Young Woman
Venus and Cupid
Head of Young Woman
Woman at a Fountain
Young Girl Sleeping
Virgin and Angels ...
The Harvesters' Siesta
Head of Girl
Woman carrying Child
Portrait of a Girl
The Young Shepherdess
The Little Farmer ...
Vertumnusand Pomona
Cupids on the prow of
a boat
Bust of a Young Woman
The Old Man's Calendar
Three Angels' Heads...
The Farmer Resting ...
Head of Sleeping Girl
Nude Male Study
The Toilet
Girl's Head
Vertumnus and Pomona
Landscape with rivulets
The Dinner
Children with Doves ...
Head of Girl
Little Girl with Cat ...
Rodogune
Madame Favart as
Gardener
The Little Samplette ...
134 x i6f J. de Bryas
8f x 7i
C. Soyeux
—
—
Apl. 20 ...
ch
28} x 24
12 X 8
May 3
Marquis de Chen-
nevieres
blk.and wte.ch.
n| X i6J
i ,
blk.ch.
12 X 8
,,
blk. ch.
12 X 8
—
11} x I3i
,,
s.
—
12 X 9j
oval
blk. ch.
ni x 8}
9i x 15!
blk. ch.
8 x lof
—
of x i if
11 ... ...
—
«} x I3i
i
_
8x6
—
8f x 9f
,i
z
"
P-
16 x I2j
F. Eudel'"
blk.and wte.ch.
—
G. Mallet
n it
I2j X 10
,,
—
—
May
—
i6J x 13^
Tabourier
in three chalks
1 6 X 12
wash
8J x 5J
,,
—
16 X 12
,, ... ...
—
—
November igth...
pen and wash
—
ii j i • • •
in three chalks
—
March 6th
coloured chalks
_.
ii
in three chalks
—
it
s.
—
three chalks ...
—
,, igth
—
—
,, 20th
—
7i x 6
.1
—
n| x i3j
t » > • • •
—
n| x 7f
»t .
—
8| x 6i
tl 1
—
7i X 6
It
blk. ch.
Mene ,
s.
14} x loj
April i;th
s.
three chalks ...
s.
8| x
H. Michel Levy
Lebrun sketch
I5J x I2j G. Muhlbacher...
8 x 5i
10} x 8} „
IOJ X 12 „
Price.
£ .. d.
84 O O
120 O O
7OO
886
640
40 o o
640
60 o o
40 o o
32 o o
786
10 16 6
13 12 6
56 16 6
29 8 6
24 o o
28 o o
64 o o
14 16 6
24 16 6
50 o o
400
1600
34°
44 4 °
12 8 6
28 16 6
54°
2 13 O
10 O O
286
11 8 6
94 o o
o o
142
8 o
42 o
4 8
12 4 O
106 o o
68 4 o
41 0 o
48 o o
60 8 6
52 o o
9 12 6
100 o o
n 16 o
886
12 8 6
700
21 O O
27 4 o
840
52 o o
600
10 O O
16 12 6
400
508 o o
120 o o
24 o o
31 4 o
174
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1899. The Return to the
Farm, night ...
,, Diana & Nymphs bathing
„ Shepherd playing Flute
, , Head of Young Woman
,, Venus and Cupid
,, Pastoral Scenes
„ Mythological Subject...
,, Rape of Dejanera
The Departure of
Esther
,, Nymphs and Cupids ...
„ Lady on a Terrace
,, Nude Woman
„ Shepherd and two
children
„ Shepherdess seated ...
The Return from the
Market
St. Peter and Paul
healing the Blind ...
,, The Return of Tobias
Nude Woman Sleeping
I goo. Rape of Dejanera
,, Six Oriental Heads ...
„ Fisherman on the banks
of the Seine ...
Male Study
„ The Fountain
,, Young Peasant Woman
and Child blk. ch.
„ The Cupid's Suicide ...
„ Joseph sold by his
Brothers
„ An Angel
„ Dauce receiving the
Shower of Gold
,, Woman Reclining,
back view
,, The Nativity
„ Woman seated, draped
,, Nude Man Reclining...
,, Study of a Woman ...
Cottage with Mill
,, The Flower Girl ... coloured
1903. Apollo and Daphne ... red chalk
,, Venus with Cupids
and Doves w.
, , Venus and Cupid ... crayon ...
,, A Group of Cupids ...
1904. Heads of Children ... p.
,, The Predication ... blk. and wte. ch.
„ Young Woman ... s.
,, Pastoral blk. and wte. ch.
,, Young Chinese Girl ... w. and pastel...
„ Young Chinese Girl ... w. and pastel...
„ Nymph and Cupid ... crayon
1905. The Reader
,, Pastoral
A Bather
,, Pastoral
Flora and Zephyr
,, Portrait of Alexandrine
de 'Etiolles
,, Venus and Adonis
,, Bust of a Young Girl...
,, The Assumption
„ Bath of Danae
,, Hercules and Antaeus...
,, The Adoration of the
Shepherds
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
May 23 ...
7i X5i
47
47
36 June 6th ...
36
G. Deloye
pair
sketch
sketch
Sir W. Eden,
London
Nov. 23
de la Rochenoire
5J x 8J Calando
io* x 7i
I4j X 10
uj x 15 Feb. 26 ...
13} x 18 B. de Fulde
March 19
26 x 26f ,, 31
24i
Fraissinet
April 28 ...
Defer-Dumesnil
Guyot de Ville-
12 x i8J neuve ......
June 14 ...
.. 27 ......
Charcot ......
Hi x i8J Dec. 17 ......
«} x 16 „ ......
Herzog ...
Paris, Feb. 23 ...
14 x 12
oval Page Turner
Paris, May 9 ...
Paris, Dec. 15 ...
Marne ...
Paris, May 26 ...
Paris, Dec. 16 ... two
Paris, Feb. 19 ...
M. Beurdeley ...
7* x 6
Price.
£ I. d.
986
12 8 6
6OO
17 o o
500
26 o o
30 8 6
52 o o
24 16 6
22 16 6
600
52 o o
18 o 6
400
13 4 o
800
29 4
24 o o
4 16 6
36 16 6
5 12 6
28 16 6
540
28 16 6
36 o o
10 o o
680 o o
7 12 o
lo 16 o
95°
800
1600
IO 12 6
680
24 IO o
26 5 o
IOO O O
56 o o
260 o o
52 o o
160 o o
68 o o
112 o o
74 o o
204 o o
40 o o
32 15 °
84 o o
80 o o
66 o o
60 o o
464 o o
68 o o
42 o o
49 o o
48 o o
60 o o
175
PICTURES AND DRAWINGS SOLD BY AUCTION— continued.
Year. Title.
1905. The Well
,, Shepherdess seated ...
Quos Ego
1906. Venus ...
,, Nude woman sleeping
,, Nymph and Cupid ...
,, Venus sleeping
,, The Young Flower Girl
,, The departure for
Market
,, Ladies and Children ...
,, Ladies and Children ...
,, Blindman's Buff
1907. Cupid on a cloud
,, Cupids ...
„ Young girl
„ La Bergere au Cceur ...
Method. Size and Shape.
Sale.
Remarks.
ch.
ch.
ch.
ch.
red ch.
crayon .
M. Beurdeley ...
Paris, Dec. 13 ...
14 X lof Bowyer
Paris, Mch. 29 ...
May 16 ..
,, May 4 ...
19 x 15 London, May 7...
Muhlbacher
14 x 17^ London, May 27
Sedelmeyer
Paris, Nov. 25 ...
Price.
£ •. d.
124 o o
108 o o
56 i o o
105 o o
104 o o
226 o o
164 o o
80 o o
80 o o
86 o o
I2O O O
29 8 o
240 o o
25 4 o
82 o o
408 O O
ABBREVIATIONS.
p.— pastel, blk. and wte. ch.— black and white chalk, s.— sanguine, g.— grisaille, col. ch.— coloured chalk.
ch. — chalk, b. — bistre, w.— watercolour.
NOTE :— A certain section of this list is based on the list of Boucher sale prices in Dr. Mireur's " Dictionnaire
des Ventes d'art."— W.G.M.
176
"T/ie Connoisseur''' Extra Number, No.
DEBENHAM £? FREEBODY
STl'Akl ]• MHKOIDI Rl- 1) Ph'll'Kl- IN 1-INH COI.orKINl
I-RAM1-D. SI/I- 14 IN. l:v 10 IN
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AND r.Ot M) OH. OL' RING. I'KAMKD. SIZK 15 IN. HV 17 IN.
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Antique Show Rooms a col-
lection of rare embroideries
and curios, which includes
many fine Stuart Caskets
and Framed Pictures now
so difficult to obtain ; also
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:: :: :: poses :: :: ::
STUART CASKET IN FINK HEADS
SIZE 6i IN. UY 9 IN. 6.^ IN. DKK1'
STUART EMHKOIDKKKD BOX WITH F.U-I, FRONT
AND IJKAWEKS
SIZB 10 IN. BY II IN. 6J IN. DRKP
STfART EMBROIDERED HllX WITH DRAWERS
SIZE 14 IN. ]<Y 10 IN. 8 IN. DEK11
WIGMORE STREET, LONDON, W.
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
C. STEVEN
has always on view an interesting selection of
rims * *
otterp «
orcelain
Also a number of Curios, of interest to
Collectors and others, at low prices
27, King St., Gheapside,
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Good Stock of Old Portraits, &c., for Extra Illustrating
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The Prices of the first Four Volumes are as shown owing to the first Sixteen Numbers having been raised to 2/- each.
To be obtained through all booksellers or Newsagents, or from the Publishers,
"The Connoisseur," 26, Bouverie St., Fleet St., E.C.
IV
" The Connoisseur'" Extra Number, No.
Jr
t
«*3§^ * '^^A.v
— >^ '* -^^ .v
^ *v
DECORATIVE *
INTERIORS
To produce a perfect effect a room should be
decorated and furnished in one style. Warings
are pre-eminent in this Period Work because
their Studio is unequalled, both in intimate
knowledge of the styles and in the practical
application of those styles to modern
conditions of convenience and comfort.
\
to
to
Owners of town and country houses requiring complete
or partial refurnishing can obtain from Warings
schemes and estimates without incurring any liability.
They may be sure of getting a distinctive and
charming result at a most reasonable outlay.
\ WARINGS
DECORATORS TO THE KING
London Liverpool Paris
Madrid Montreal t,fa
JF
,M
V.
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
OLIVER BAKER,
Stratford=on=Avon.
Old Chippendale Settee
nglish furniture
PEWTER POTTERY
BRASS IRON-WORK, 6c.. 6c.
M. J. DAVIS,
32 & 34, Long Miflgate
(POET'S CORNER),
MANCHESTER.
Good selections of old Oak
and Chippendale Furniture
always on hand.
High'Class early Pottery and
China and spiral stem Wine
Glasses a speciality.
N.B. — The Trade supplied.
'AIMTIBLUME'
A BOON TO PICTURE DEALER AND RESTORER.
This Medium prevents mastic varnish
from repeated Blooming: and saves
endless worry and expense.
1O oz. BOTTLE (with instructions) 5 -
T. ROWLANDS
PRACTICAL PICTURE RESTORER
AND RELINER TO THE TRADE
75, OXFORD STREET, MANCHESTER
GEORGE NEILSON,
Holyrood Square, EDINBURGH.
ALL KINDS or
ANTIQUE FURNITURE Chairs and Sideboards
. . ... <>f the Best Periods and
in Its Original Condition. Stylos in «reat variety.
On Hand— Mason's Ironstone Dinner Service. 225 pieces.
OLD ENGRAVINGS AND PAINTINGS
FRAMED AND RESTORED
Ernest AM?n 39> KING'S ROAD-
i-nicbi .ruaen SLOANE SQUARE, s.w.
Correct Framing of French & English Prints a. speciality
Buyer of Prints and Engravings. Telephone, 1-I1H Victoria.
DANIEL EGAN,
26, LOWER ORMOND QUAY, DUBLIN.
FRAME MAKER & GILDER TO THE
NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND.
Modern and Antique Frames (or Pictures and Looking Glasses Oil
piinlings cleaned lined, and restored. Prinls cleaned and bleached. A large
Collection of Old Furniture. Painlings, Coloured Prinls, and Drawings
FREDERIC WROE,
IJKALER IN —
Works of Fine Art, Engravings, Etchings, Colour Prints, Sc.
PAINTINGS and DRAWINGS
by Eminent Modern Artists.
38, South King Street, Cross Street, MANCHESTER.
FRED TODD,
jDccorator.
ANTIQUE CHINA,
FURNITURE, &c.,
Bought and Sold.
SCARCE MODERN ARTISTS' PROOFS,
ETCHINGS and MEZZOTINTS.
WRITE FOR CATALOGUE.
MATTHEWS g BROOKE, Market St., BRADFORD.
Brogden St. & Buxton Place, ULVERSTON.
SIMMONS & WATERS
Book and Print Dealers
10, Spencer Street, LEAMINGTON SPA
BOOKS AND PRINTS BOUGHT CATALOGUES GRATIS
E. HARRISON,
47, Duke Street, Manchester Square, W.
(Ci-osH TO WAI.I.ACK COLLECTION.)
WANTED.— Genuine Old Hunting, Racing,
and Coaching Paintings and Engravings.
VI.
" The Connoisseur''1 Extra Number, No.
The LARGEST STOCK of GENUINE ANTIQUES IN LONDON
Telephones GERHARD |
Telegrams—
'REQUIRABLE, LONDON.1
'ART TREASURES," a Guide to the Collector of Genuine Antiques.
92 pp., finely illustrated, post free 1/- in stamps.
A specimen Antique "Adam" Pedestal Sideboard
complete with Urns. An exceptional piece.
GILL & REIGATE
73 to 85, OXFORD STREET, LONDON, W,
Replica of Ancient Roman Cup, original
(in gold), found in the Island of Gothland
Height 5 Ins., diameter 5 ins. ^*5 S O
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No. 4
GOULDING & GO.
George Street, Plymouth
ART SILVERSMITHS
ART JEWELLERS ::
GEM SPECIALISTS
Old Furniture, China, Sheffield Plate, Curios
AT VKHY LOW PRICES
STATK REQUIREMENTS
Special -Fine Old Enamel Cornucopia
Thos. BAKER, Esplanade, WEYMOUTH
REAL LACE HOUSE
Point de
Duchesse
Collar
J. PINTNER
Real Lace
Manufacturer
(Scottish Exhibition,
Stand 204)
Crochet Work aSpeciality
I22A George St.
EDINBURGH
Extra Numbers of "THE CONNOISSEUR."
Published at FIVE SHILLINGS NET. Bound, SEVEN and SIXPENCE.
Postage 6d. extra on each Number.
George Morland
(Biographical Essay) by J. T. HERBERT BAILY
John Downman
(Life and Works) by G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D.
Francesco Bartolozzi, R.A.
(Biographical Essay) by J. T. HERBERT BAILY
Each of these beautiful Boohs contains
about 100 illustrations of the artist's works,
including many full=page plates in colour.
No similar works for the price have previously been published.
To be obtained from all Booksellers, or the Publishers :
"THE CONNOISSEUR/' Carmelite House, E.G.
VIII.
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
BY APPOINTMENT
MANCHESTER
JOHANNESBURG
PARIS BIARRITZ N|CE
O O O
Sheffield Plate at "Sheffield House."
Examples of Fine Old Sheffield Plate Models now in Stock.
V
M?\ppm BRO/; INCORPORATE p,
Write for C1 Booklet, post free.
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
ARTHUR HALLIDAY,
Hatchlands Road, RED HILL.
Art
Furniture
Maker
to H.M.
The King.
Dealer in
Antique
Furniture
and China.
View of one of the Galleries
G. O. HUGHES.
Will COLLECTORS, CONNOISSEURS, and OTHKRS
rcc]iiiring fine pieces of FL'KNITURE, PLATE,
CHINA, and other antiques send their wants to
G. O. HUGHF.S, as lie has special facilities for ob-
taining these goods. Prices are strictly moderate.
:: :: ALSO BUYER OF ABOVE GOODS. :: ::
Special. — OFFERS WANTED for following pictures:
>I. Crome, "Landscape"; C. F. Bucklev, "Land-
scape''; T. Creswicli, "Coast Scene, with
Figures" ; Holland, ''Venetian Scene" ; J. Both.
" Landscape, with Figures and Cattle."
2a, The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells.
. JL*. JL/»
(ART, LITE, and LITERATURE).
FOR PARTICULARS OF
Picture Exhibitions and Literary S Debating Circles,
APPLY :
Little Salon,
Gallery Van Brakel,
56. Albemarle St., W.
For aboVe and Vacant dates for Exhibitions,
address "Director, in full.
THE CRAVEN ART GALLERY
(RussEi.L STAXTON, Proprietor)
— _- -_ _-_ "~^JLg — _-_ _~
Expert Picture Restoring
Now ON VIKW —
A Portrait Group of Sir Walter Scott and Family,
attributed to SIR THOS. LAWRENCE.
23, Craven Street, Strand, W,C
WM.T.WHITE,
Dealer in antique furniture
38-46, Lady Lawson Street,
= EDINBURGH.™
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
No. 2670.
Blue, Violet, or Green Morocco Dressing Cuse, for a Lady,
fitted all plain Sterling Silver, only 18 Guineas.
J. C. VICKERY
Their Majesties'
SILVERSMITH. JEWELLER AND
DRESSING CASE MANUFACTURER
179, 181, & 183, Regent St.,
LONDON, W.
A FITTED DRESSING CASE OR SUIT CASE
IS
AN IDEAL WEDDING GIFT
J. C. VICKKRY has a splendid selection
at all prices, from J£_IO to J£.I50, and invites
the favour of a visit of inspection, or
kind enquiries by post.
Novelties in all Departments.
DORRINGTON & DAVYS,
Gold and
Silversmiths.
ANTIQUE
DEALERS.
Genuine Chippendale Chairs, 9 Sinai) and i Ann.
10 & 11, CATHEDRAL LANE, TRURO.
I. C. FUZZEY LTD.
20 to 24, Mill Street,
and Bordage . . .
WE hold a GREAT VARIETY of
Chippendale, Sheraton, Queen Anne,
Elizabethan, Old English Carved Oak,
French Carved Oak, Old China, &c.
I C. FUZZEY Limited, GUERNSEY
BY SPECIAL APPOINTMENT
HAMILTON-FINCHES-
< ' • Silversmiths •
cH't'lkry £.' Diamond Mcr
• 88 PRINCES STREET
EDINBURGH
JCl,
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
, —
Stettin Castle, Panel 28 x 24. Pn'ce>250 Guineas. J. M. W. Turner 1821.
The Noted Fine Art & Curiosity Dealer,
22, MAGDALEN ST., and
LONDON INN SQUARE,
EXETER.
V* 10* ^*
antique furniture, ©l& Cbina,
paintings anfc Curios, £c, bougbt
anfc solfc.
INSPECTION INVITED.
2,500 PICTURES TO
SELECT FROM.
j* j* j*
Catalogues and Valuations arranged.
ESTABLISHED 1835.
For Genuine Old Pottery try
THE OLD CHINA SHOP,
JOHN MAGGS,
Church Street, FALMOUTH.
Genuine antique Furniture
LARGK STOCK AT MO15ERATK PRICES.
Photos and Catalogues on application. —
Specialist in Restoring Old Furniture and Oak Fitments.
C. ANGELL, 8, Abbey Churchyard, BATH.
AND
SPARKLING
MALVERN
SELTZER, / />
SODA, POTAS ri/>__ / &
<%&?&&
-^»
W. J. M'COY & SONS, LTD.,
Dealers in antiques,
SMITHFIELD - - BELFAST.
Established 1860.
ST. NEOTS. Hunts.;
and BEDFORD.
A Special Show of Antique Furniture, Pictures,
Glass, China, and Sheffield Plated Goods.
Many interesting goods for Collectors.
The Trade Supplied. Address : ST. NEOTS & BEDFORD
WM. BOWDEN,
16, Bitton St., Teignmouth,
Dealer in HIGH-CLASS PAINTINGS,
DRAWINGS, and PRINTS.
Mr. ALF JONES, Jfrtist,
28, HENRIETTA STREET, BATH.
EXPERT IN PICTURES.
Specialist in Restoring Old Paintings.
Pictures Restored at Clients' own houses at moderate
charges. Excellent Testimonials.
VALUATIONS MADE FOR PROBATE, INSURANCE, &c.
XII.
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
Write at once for a Profusely Illustrated
Catalogue of Pictures
To MeSSrS. FROST & REED, 47, Duke Street, London,
S.W. ; 8, Clare Street, Bristol ; and 47, Queen's Road, Clifton,
the well-known publishers of high-class ETCHINGS and ENGRAVINGS, which
may be obtained from any PRINTSELLER throughout Britain (or direct from
Frost & Reed), who will be pleased to forward, post free, their latest
ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE, containing more than 190 notable pictures, on
receipt of P.O. for I/- (which will be refunded if a purchase be made).
Established 1808.
LAWRENCE $ THOMPSON
taao),
Dealers in Antique Furniture, China, Glass, fie.,
TAUNTON.
Enquiries Solicited.
Six and two Arm Chairs in fair condition, £20 0 0
ANTIQUE FURNITURE, CHINA, SILVER
AND WORKS
OF ART
William and Mary Arm Chair in original needlework.
W. F. GREENWOOD & SONS, Ltd.,
23 & 24, STONEGATE, YORK.
BRANCH :
10, Royal Parade. HARROGATE. Established 1829.
XIII
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No. 4
GEO. PULMAN £rSONS, CD
Art £r Mercantile
PRINTERS
and Manufacturing Stationers
THE CRANFORD PRESS
24, 25, 26, 27, Thayer St., London, W., €r Wealdstone, Middx.
All the "Connoisseur" Extra Numbers: "Lady Hamilton," "George Morland,"
"Francesco Bartolozzi," "John Downman," and "Boucher" were printed at
THE CRANFORD PRESS
The
" Connoisseur"
= Plates =
FOR DECORATION or THE HOME.
to the frequent demand, by Sub=
scribers, for loose copies of the Plates
issued with The Connoisseur, the Editor has
prepared a list of those that have appeared,
and of which copies can be obtained at 6d.
each, or 4,6 per doz. Special terms to the
Trade for not less than 100. For List see
Advertisement Page L. in the April Number.
Applications to be sent to —
THE "PLATE DEPARTMENT,"
= 95, Temple Chambers, London, E.C. =
The
"Connoisseur"
= Magazine •=
Is Published on the First of
each Month by Otto Limited, at
26, Bouverie St., Fleet St., E.C.
Subscriptions: Inland, 16/=; Foreign, 17/»!
to Canada, 14 = per annum. Published by
Gordon & Gotch, in Australia and New Zea-
land ; by The Central News Agency in South
Africa ; by Wheeler & Co., in Bombay and
Calcutta; by the International News Co.,
in U.S.A. ; and by Saarbach's News Ex-
change, Mainz, Paris, and Milan, in Europe.
XIV
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
THE . . .
TELEPHONE 297
Tunbridge Wells Art Gallery
42, CALVERLEY ROAD
Works by
F. WHEATLY, A. CUYP, CRESWICK, D. COX,
C. LANDSEER, PANINI, G. NORLAND,
COOPER, MILLAIS, S. BOUGH,
J. STARK, and others.
Offers are wanted for the following
IMPORTANT GALLERY PICTURES
Liberality and Modesty .. .. Guido Rheni
The Nativity . . . . . . Degrebber
Death of Edward III ..... C. Landseer
Industry .......... Mercicr
The Immaculate Conception . . Murillo
For further particulars apply to J. Ncwns, Proprietor,
ONE .MAN SHOWS ARRANGED to suit ARTISTS.
Galleries ael,nowleJe.ecl to he the best for the exhibition
of pictures in Kent.
PICTURES TAKI-:\ ON EXHIBITION and SALE.
A vury small commission only charged.
Not
PORTRAIT E
LADY
Y SIR PETER LELV.
WHITMORE. (Offer Wanted.)
™, j. NEWNS,
•fine Hrt and Hntique Dealer,
42, Calverley Rtl., TUNBRIDGE WELLS
And 28, High Street -late A. Smithcrs
WALTER PRATT
House Decorator &
General Contractor,
8, BARTLETT STREET,
and 35, GAY STREET,
— BATH. =
Estimates Free in
Totvn and Country.
Nat. Telephone, 421.
W.A.PENNINGTON
Dealer in
ANTIQUE II Alii HI
OLD CHINA
AND CURIOS.
College Court
(Nr. Cathedral),
GLOUCESTER.
Elizabethan Carvi-d Oak Court Cupboard.
XV.
" The Connoisseur'1'' Extra Number, No. 4
A List of the Principal Subjects dealt with in "The Connoisseur"
Magazine, giving the number of the Magazine in which the Articles
have appeared from the commencement to August, 1908, Nos. 1 to 84
All the numbers can be obtained from any Bookseller or Newsagent, or the
Publishers, 26, Bonverie Street, B.C., u-ith the exception of Nos. 41, 48, 49,
52, and 56, which are at present out of print.
ARCHITECTURE
45, 47.
ARMOUR
12, 16, 30, 31, 35, 42, 80, 81.
AUTOGRAPHS
83.
BOOK PLATES
8, 10, 53, 59.
BOOKS
5, 12, 13, 15, 1(S, 23, 24, 52, 55, 64, 68,
76, 82, 84.
BRASS AND BRONZE
17, 32, 35, 68, 70, 75, 76.
COINS AND MEDALS
2, 5, 8, 25, 27, 38.
ENGRAVINGS, PRINTS, ETCHINGS
1, 5, 9, 17, 20, 26, 27, 30, 38, 39,41, 43,
48, 49, 52, 56, 59, 62, 63, 66, 68, 74, 75,
76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83.
FANS
2, 25, 51, 70.
FURNITURE
9, 13, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33,
34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45,
46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56,57,
64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 77, 81, 83, 84.
GLASS
4, 7, 16, 37, 57, 72.
GOLD, SILVER, AND PLATED WORK
1, 4, 8, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21, 22, 24,26,27,
31, 33, 35, 40, 43, 45, 50, 51, 54, 55, 58,
61, 62, 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78,
81.
HERALDIC
22.
IRON AND METAL WORK
9, 26, 28, 31, 49, 54, 60, 64, 69, 75, 76,
82.
IVORY
19, 34, 83.
JEWELLERY
1, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 64, 75, 80.
LACE, EMBROIDERY, AND
NEEDLEWORK
1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 36, 41,
42, 43, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57,
58, 59, 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 74, 79, 80,
82.
MINIATURES
2, 19, 39, 52, 57, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 71,
72, 78.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
2, 10, 32, 33, 39, 50, 76.
PAINTERS AND PAINTINGS
1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48,
49, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64,
65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80,
81, 82, 83, 84.
PEWTER
15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 35, 52.
POTTERY, PORCELAIN, AND CHINA
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18,
19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31,
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43,
44, 45, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62,
63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77,
78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84.
SCULPTURE AND WOOD CARVING
13, 22, 27, 31, 42, 52, 56, 62, 82.
TAPESTRY
9, 16, 17, 19, 27, 28, 73.
XVI.
" The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
PRESENTATION PLATE to
Annual Subscribers of " The Connoisseur Magazine11
Annual Subscribers to THE CONNOISSEUR MAGAZINE fop twelve months from September or
October, 1908, will receive as a Presentation Plate a Photogravure Reproduction of this Picture
Lady Harriet Clive, by Sir Thos. Lawrence, R.A.
The Annual Subscription is 12/-, and the Magaxine can be obtained from ALL BOOKSELLERS and
NEWSAGENTS.
The Bookseller's Receipt must be forwarded to the SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT, 26, BOUVER1E
STREET, E.G., with the full name and address, when the Plate will be sent.
Subscribers will kindly NOT FORWARD SUBSCRIPTION RECEIPTS UNTIL THE ist DECEMBER, 1908,
when the Plates will be sent out according to priority of application.
The Plates can only be given to Annual Subscribers who pay their subscriptions to any Bookseller or at any
Bookstall or to the Publishers. When the subscription is paid to a Bookseller a receipt should be obtained and
forwarded to the Publishers, "The Connoisseur," 26, Bouverie Street, t.O.
Subscribers for the ready bound volumes will also receive the Plate.
The Subscription Price for the United Kingdom, including postage, is 16/=
XVII.
"The Connoisseur" Extra Number, No.
TONER & EVANS, fim Hr
3, KING STREET, ST. JAMES' SQUARE, LONDON, S.W.
TALOFA, LONDON
TELEPHONE 6658 GERRARD
Speciality :
CHOICEST
EXAMPLES
OF OLD
ENGLISH
PORCELAIN
& POTTERY
Collections
arranged, valued,
or purchased
i. A Pair of Old Hiichst Vases and Covers
a. An Old Dresden Vase and Cover, painted with a portrait in a panel of Augustus Rex— on reverse side,
the arms of Count Bruhl
PHOTOGRAPHS
from all the
Picture Galleries
SPECIAL TERMS ALLOWED TO
SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES, &c.
THE LARGEST COLLECTION
OF PERMANENT AND
ORDINARY PHOTOGRAPHS
FROM PICTURES, FRESCOES,
AND STATUES, AT HOME
OR ABROAD, ANCIENT
AND MODERN
Catalogue — "Choice "Photographs of Choice Pictures," post free l/«
Many of the Pictures by Boucher illustrated in this Number can be obtained from
W. A. MANSELL
Co.,
405, Oxford Street, London, W.
XVIII.
BINDING SECT. JUN 2 5 1968
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
ND
553
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