it may respond to his feelings, which were those of a great majority of his contemporaries. But it was unfortunate for Greuze that he followed Diderot's advice, and introduced the false pathos of the stage into his genre pictures. In this way he placed a constraint on himself, and cut away the best impulses of his talent. That he had the gift of detecting pleasant features in nature and life, he proves in many of his pictures, especially when he depicts the harmless sports of merry children.

Greuze was the son of an architect at Tournus, a small town in Burgundy, and studied under Gromdon, a painter at Lyons. With no money in his purse, but a head all the fuller of dreams and plans, he set out eventually on a pilgrimage to the capital of France. On the road, por trait-painting supplied his daily wants. On arriving safely in Paris, he ere long exhibited his "La Lecture de la Bible," and his début was most successful. In 1754 he tried for the Académie prize, and obtained the travelling scholarship by his picture of the "Deceived Blind Man." In Rome he met Fragonard the artist, and joined that adventurer. Both felt more interested in the living beauties of the Eternal City than in the dead beauties of the old artists. Fragonard was as fickle as a butterfly, Greuze an earnest lover, whose heart was entirely filled by the passion. The "beautiful Leander," as his friend and confidant christened him, had the misfortune to please the amiable daughter of a Roman grandee, whose portrait he was commissioned to paint. Letitia was resolved on flying privily with her beloved, but Greuze displayed good sense. The respect, combined with gratitude, which he owed the father, prevented him from misusing his confidence, and he, contented himself with the young lady's portrait. In later years, when she had become the wife of the Prince d'Este, she thanked the painter in a letter for his noble selfdenial, for she felt happy with her husband and children. Unfortunately, Greuze was not fated to enjoy the same degree of happiness. When he returned to Paris, and his income grew with his reputation, he married a bourgeois girl, who was more inclined to extravagance than to domestic habits. She was as whimsical as a great lady, and was accustomed to throw money out of the windows, in order to give herself the appearance of a petite marquise. For all that, the painter did not withdraw his love from her. He consoled himself for her bad propensities in his affection for his children, whom, like his wife, he frequently depicted on canvas. Still, the example which the artist afforded his wife was not of a nature to render her modest and contented. He was as vain of his personal appearance as he was of his talent. He soon learnt to charge high prices, and to play the great gentleman, when his income became larger. He wore the finest lace in his jabot and ruffles; the most valuable stones glistened in his shirt-pin and rings; and he carried a magnificent sword at his side.

After the death of his wife, Greuze lived in seclusion. His daughters, Anna and Caroline, to whom he was greatly attached, presided over the household. Owing to the favourable state of his fortune, he could look forward to the future without apprehension. Suddenly the storm of the Revolution burst over France. The state bankruptcy, and the consequent ruin of many large banking-houses, robbed the aged man of nearly all his property. No other resources remained to him but those afforded by his brush and palette. But his talent had also lost the larger portion of its former value, not so much through age as through the perfect meta

morphosis in artistic taste. The Revolution not only abolished the goddesses in hooped petticoats, the frivolous Graces, and the amorous shepherds, but the fathers of families, the worthy mothers, virtuous daughters and prodigal sons, were equally unable to hold their own against the race of heroes, with an apotheosis of whom David and his successors inaugurated the new era.

upon

Order gradually returned, and with it new hopes, new prosperity, and new renown. France liberally rewarded the painters who were the heralds of her glory. Not a soul thought of Greuze; he belonged to the past, and was reckoned among the dead. During the consulate the forgotten artist seems to have been recalled to memory. A still-existing letter of the master to Napoleon's ministers mentions a commission which the government had given him. In it we read, inter alia: "The picture I am preparing for the government is half finished. The position in which I find myself compels me to ask you to order a further payment, on account, so that I may complete the task. I had the honour to inform you of my great misfortune. I have lost everything but my talent and courage. I count seventy-five years, and have not a commission for a single picture. No moment in my life has been so painful as the present one." Greuze lived amid privations and want to the age of eighty-one, earning a scanty livelihood by his brush, and full of apprehensions as to the future of his daughters. Shortly before his death he painted his own portrait with such care and force that it attracted universal admiration in the salon of 1805. It was almost the only thing he was able to leave his daughters. "You will be able to sell it for one hundred louis d'or," he remarked. A few days after, he died, and was buried without arousing any attention. The monumental mania of our generation has seized him too, however, and his statue is about to be erected in Tournus. Two French painters of the monarchical period also deserve mention: Carle Vanloo and François Boucher. Both must be allowed to have possessed considerable talent, which was not fully developed, because the frivolous taste of the age exercised a perceptible influence over art. Both possessed a rare taste in blending colours. Vanloo, a member of that widely-spread Netherlandish artist family which, during the first twothirds of the eighteenth century, enjoyed a European reputation for portrait-painting, did not belong to the gens d'esprit, although they liked to have his company. His education must have been very defective, even though we only believe half of what Diderot repeatedly declared, that he could neither read nor write, speak nor think. The celebrated encyclopædist, indeed, treats "good Carle" with a certain kindly condescension, and was intensely delighted when "cette bête de Vanloo" once had ideas which, in reality, could only be expected from a man of genius. There is an interesting account of his peculiarities in the editor's preface to Diderot's "Essai sur la Peinture." Vanloo was naturally a goodhumoured man, but was accustomed to fall very suddenly into a silence which painfully affected those who did not know him. He would frequently not utter a word for weeks, but supped regularly with his wife, children, and pupils, whom he silently watched with flashing and fearinspiring eyes. He treated the pupils of the royal school, who lived in his house, like children. He would call them together now and then in order to hear their opinion about a picture he was engaged on. But if one of them happened to express an honest opinion, they were compelled

to bolt in all haste in order to escape the master's fists. A quarter of an hour later, he would send for the stern critic, and say, "You were right: here are twenty sous for you to go to the theatre;" and woe to the lad who ventured to decline the reward. When Frederick the Great offered him a post as court painter, with an annual salary of three thousand thalers, and an extra payment for each picture, he wrote to the negotiator, Marquis d'Argens: "Sir,-For a man to give up his country, is a step over which he must reflect all his life." After all, he did not go himself, but sent his nephew to Berlin. He knew what he was about, however, when he declined this brilliant offer. His prospects in Paris became with each year more favourable. He had the advantage of being favoured by the court. In 1748, his friend Coypel entrusted him with the management of the Ecole Royale, and four years later he took his place as premier peintre du roi. In 1763 he also became director of the Académie. Moreover, he was highly respected by the lower classes as well as the higher. When he appeared one evening at the theatre, after a lengthened illness, the whole pit rose and welcomed him with a perfect storm of applause.

The false art of the eighteenth century reached its culminating point with Boucher. His works reveal more plainly than many a book the utter corruption of the spirit of his age, which only revelled in sensuality. Vanloo, and many other artists who sought their ideals on the boards or in the boudoirs of the nobility, also represented humanity as they saw it-powdered, painted, in a slight negligée, or confined in corsets, hooped petticoats, and buckled shoes, with a tempting, victorious smile on the lips, and the fire of eager sensuality in the eyes; but still there was a certain degree of earnestness and feeling for the dignity of art in these painters. It was different with Boucher. At that day, caprice and love of pleasure ruled everything. The priest toyed with religion, the king with monarchy, the philosopher with science, the artist with art. Boucher threw himself recklessly into this frivolous society, and what he himself sought and loved, the excitement of curiosity, the malicious twitching at the light veil, the last relic of shame with which social etiquette covered lasciviousness, he also strove after in the creations of his fancy and brush.

This artist's industry was great. He frequently worked incessantly day and night, sometimes for high prices, sometimes for low, for churches, the court, or theatres. His income in his good time amounted to no less than one hundred and fifty thousand francs. But his expenses were equally great, for he lived as a grand seigneur, and gave his friends the most splendid feasts. One of his acts of extravagance cost him a whole year's income: it was the celebrated feast of the gods, in which the whole of Olympus was represented. Boucher enacted the part of Jupiter; his beloved, in a diaphanous costume, was Hebe, and served the gods and goddesses throughout the night with nectar and ambrosia. His fortunes were greatly promoted by the protection of the Pompadour. She it was who at length procured his admission to the Académie, by which he had been rejected, and, when Vanloo died, he took his place as first painter to the king. After the death of the Pompadour, Boucher put in a claim for the favour of the Du Barry, which was not refused him. He was not destined, however, to witness the end of the fifteenth Louis. He was one of the first of that drunken generation, crowned with already fading roses, who sank into the grave.

INDEX

TO THE FIFTY-SIXTH VOLUME.