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Updated: June 5, 2025
"That queer one at the top is a Nicholas Hilliard. I believe he was the first of the miniaturists. And the two just underneath are Samuel Coopers. They say he stood at the head of the Englishmen. There are three Richard Cosways and rather a nice Angelica Kauffmann." "It was the Fragonard miniature Mr. Van Vreck liked best," put in Constance. "It seems he painted only a few. And next, the Goya "
The pink flesh of Boucher, the fat chins of Watteau, the bored shepherds and plump, tight-laced shepherdesses, the whipped-cream souls, the virtuous oglings of Greuze, the tucked shirts of Fragonard, all that bare-legged poesy interested him no more than a fashionable, rather spicy newspaper.
In the vestibule-the hangings of which are of Cordova-leather, with gold ground-seemingly awaiting the good pleasure of some grand lady, is a sedan-chair, decorated with paintings by Fragonard. Farther on, there is one of those superb carved mother-of-pearl coffers, in which Oriental women lay by their finery and jewellery.
He is much nearer to Fragonard than he is to Edouard Frère even.
Camille Mauclair, an enthusiastic admirer of this school of art, says: "Berthe Morizot will remain the most fascinating figure of Impressionism the one who has stated most precisely the femininity of this luminous and iridescent art." A great-granddaughter of Fragonard, she seems to have inherited his talent; Corot and Renoir forcibly appealed to her.
The history of Impressionist art is simple. 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.
Fragonard pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by Boucher, who said to him, "If you take Michelangelo and Raphael seriously, you are lost." Feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not sound on general principles, Fragonard devoted himself to the lighter and more sparkling works of Tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Our artists have many secrets still to learn from the friezes of Herculaneum, the Roman bas-reliefs, the Etruscan vases." He dilated at length on antique beauty, then came back to Fragonard, whom he abused with inexhaustible venom: "Do you know him, citoyenne?" Élodie nodded. "You likewise know good old Greuze, who is ridiculous enough, to be sure, with his scarlet coat and his sword.
Four Aubusson chairs... A bureau signed 'Percier-Fontaine, for a wager... Two inlays by Gouttieres... A genuine Fragonard and a sham Nattier which any American millionaire will swallow for the asking: in short, a fortune... And there are curmudgeons who pretend that there's nothing but faked stuff left. Dash it all, why don't they do as I do? They should look about!"
Three or four points are seized, and the spaces between are left unaccounted for. Whistler has not the strength of Velasquez; Manet is not as complete as Hals. In the seventeenth century were Poussin and Claude; in the eighteenth Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, and many lesser lights Fragonard, Pater, and Lancret. Nineteenth century art began in France in the last years of the eighteenth century.
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