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And then inglorious Watteau, as he is! at times that steadiness, in which he is so great a contrast to Antony, as it were accumulates, changes, into a ray of genius, a grace, an inexplicable touch of truth, in which all his heaviness leaves him for a while, and he actually goes beyond the master; as himself protests to me, yet modestly.
'Tis truly in a delightful abode that Antony Watteau is just now lodged the hotel or town-house of M. de Crozat, which is not only a comfortable dwelling-place, but also a precious museum lucky people go far to see. Jean-Baptiste, too, has seen the place, and describes it.
Like the Louis Quinze painters, he has his thoughtless, irresponsible, involuntary side, and like them like the best of them, that is to say, like Watteau he is never quite as good as he could be. He seems not so much concerned at expressing his ideal as at pleasing, and pleasing people of too frivolous an appreciation to call forth what is best in him.
The same thing might be said, in a different sense, of Voltaire; while, as every one knows, the money-value of any hand-stroke of Watteau or Hogarth, Nattier or Sir Joshua, is out of all proportion to the importance of the men. Society seemed to delight in talking with solemn conviction about serious values, and in paying fantastic prices for nothing but the most futile.
FRANÇOIS BOUCHER, though doubtless influenced by Watteau, more especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country, choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the Court like his predecessors Le Brun, Rigaud, and Largillière than to devote himself to the expression of his own ideas and feelings.
They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid 20,200 francs for them in 1855. But it must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great painter.
Yet, it is in the heart of this century, of Goldsmith and Stothard, of Watteau and the Siècle de Louis XIV. in one of its central, if not most characteristic figures, in Rousseau that the modern or French romanticism really originates.
To know one is to know the other, at least as they appear from the outside, for with Callot, as with the less veracious and ingenuous Watteau, it is the external aspect of things that we get and from which we must form our inferences.
Yet, if we were to see at this moment some of his exquisite groups of ladies in sacques and Watteau hats, and cavaliers in flowing wigs and lace, cravats, I have no doubt that the most of us would admire them much, for they are exceedingly pretty, and exceeding prettiness is attractive, particularly to women.
Coysevox is chiefly Puget exaggerated, and his pupil, Coustou, who comes down to nearly the middle of the eighteenth century, contributed nothing to French sculptural tradition. But Clodion is a distinct break. He is as different from Coysevox and Coustou as Watteau is from Lebrun. He is the essence of what we mean by Louis Quinze. His work is clever beyond characterization.
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