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Pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on the lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their lives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the music of Mozart, in the landscape of Watteau or of Fragonard.
It seems ages away now, though as a matter of time it's only four days ago! Well, that afternoon Swallow, who had had two or three more keeping a sharp look out for the Squire, got a telephone message from one of 'em saying that he'd tracked his man to the Fragonard Club.
This is the secret of Watteau, says Mauclair, which was not yielded up in the eighteenth century, not even to his followers, Pater, Lancret, Boucher, Fragonard, whose pagan gaiety and artificial spirit is far removed from the veiled melancholy of Watteau. In these works we find the aura of consumption.
In the windows of these places you will see: innumerable French mirrors; stacks of empty picture frames of French eighteenth-century design, at an amazingly cheap figure each; remarkably inexpensive reproductions in bright colours of Sir Joshua, Corot, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, some Italian Madonnas; an assortment of hunting prints, and prints redolent of Old English sentiment; many wall "texts," or "creeds"; a variety of the kind of coloured pictures technically called, I believe, "comics"; numerous little plaster casts of anonymous works and busts of standard authors; frequently an ambitious original etching by an artist unknown to you; and an occasional print of the "September Morn" kind of thing; together with many "art objects" and a great deal of "bric-a-brac."
Chéret has also succeeded in proving his artistic descent by a beautiful series of drawings in sanguine: he descends from Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard; he is a Frenchman of pure blood; and when one has done admiring the grace and the happy animation of his imagination, one can only be surprised to see on what serious and sure a technique are based these decorations which appear improvised.
Certainly up to the time of Géricault painting in general held itself rather pedantically aloof from poetry. Claude, Chardin, what may be called the illustrated vers de société of the Louis Quinze painters of Watteau and Fragonard even Prudhon, did little to change the prevailing color and tone. Claude's art is, in manner, thoroughly classic. His personal influence was perhaps first felt by Corot.
"Well, anyway," continued Gilling, "there he was, and thence he eventually emerged, with a kit-bag. He got into a taxi, and Swallow heard him order its driver to go to King's Cross. Now Swallow was there alone and he had just before that met his man scooting round to see if there was a rear exit from the Fragonard, and he hadn't returned.
Nevertheless, Copplestone's mind was not entirely absorbed by this pleasant subject; the events of the day and of the arrival in London kept presenting themselves. And coming across a fellow club-member whom he knew for a thorough man about town, he suddenly plumped him with a question. "I say!" he said. "Do you know the Fragonard Club?" "Of course!" replied the other man. "Don't you?"
Our old-time sculptors Clodion and Coysevox were not profound; nor were Fragonard, La Tour, nor Marivaux, yet they brought honor to the French school. All have their value and all are necessary. The rose with its fresh color and its perfume, is, in its way, as precious as the sturdy oak.
One can't study the masters too much I mean, from the amateur's view-point; in the case of an artist it depends on the receptivity of his temperament. Velasquez didn't like Raphael, and it was Boucher who warned Fragonard, when he went to Rome, not to take the Italian painters too seriously. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it sometimes stifles individuality.
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