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Of the older painters, Fragonard and Greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical David, they both saw the century out. Fragonard simply ceased painting for want of patrons, and David was good enough to procure him a post in the Museum des Arts, or he would have starved.
In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art the tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau had been completely lost; having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir: further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died.
A comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference between the English and French Schools at this period. On the one hand to put it very shortly indeed we see Fragonard influenced by Tiepolo, France, and Louis XV.; on the other, Sir Joshua, influenced by Michelangelo and Raphael, England, and George III.
Mrs. Parflete whose courage, determination, and powers of endurance were concealed by a face which might have been made of lovely gauze seemed less a being than a poetical creation: a portrait by Watteau or Fragonard stepped from its frame, animated by pure fancy, and moving, without sorrow and without labour, through a charmed existence.
Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand, inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant of one she named it at Berlin. "Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."
The impressionists claim as their common ancestors Claude Lorraine, Watteau, Turner, Monticelli. Watteau, Latour, Largillière, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen are their sponsors in the matters of design, subject, realism, study of life, new conceptions of beauty and portraiture.
In the oval medallions supported by cupids, is found a domestic scene by a Fragonard or a Chardin; and the portraits of innocent children by Greuze replace the courting shepherds and mythological goddesses of Boucher and Lancret. Sculpture, too, becomes more refined and decorous in its representations. As with architecture, decoration, painting, and sculpture, so also with furniture.
There is an irresistible fascination in the study of the men and women of the eighteenth century of France and England; they, their manners and customs, have disappeared for ever, but Gainsborough's gracious women, Sir Joshua Reynolds's charming types, and Romney's sensitive heads, have in England immortalised the reign of beauty of this period; in France the elegance and grace of the time are shown in the canvases of Greuze, Vanloo, and Fragonard, in the cupids and doves and garlands which adorned the interiors of Mme. de Pompadour.
Still, I grant you these low-life scenes by Teniers, Jan Steen or Ostade are better stuff than the frills and furbelows of Watteau, Boucher, or Van Loo; humanity is shown in an ugly light, but it is not degraded as it is by a Baudouin or a Fragonard." A hawker went by bawling: "Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal!... list of the condemned!"
"All the same, to carry on the joke, let's go into the octagon room and see if the alleged Fragonard pictures have gone, too," said Annesley-Seton. He led the way, turning on more light in the adjoining room as he went; and, outdistancing the others, they heard him stammer, "Good Lord!" before they were near enough to see what he saw. "They aren't gone?" shrieked his wife, hurrying after him.
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