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In the eighteenth century it was the man who knelt at the woman's feet, it was the man who pleaded and the woman who acceded; but in our century the place of the man is changed, it is he who holds the fan, it is he who is besought; and if one were to dream of continuing the tradition of Watteau and Fragonard in the nineteenth century, he would have to take note of and meditate deeply and profoundly on this, as he sought to formulate and synthesize the erotic spirit of our age.
The smooth grass parquet swept gracefully to the semicircle of dark green trees, against the foliage of which the virginal white of the gowns was transposed to an ivory tone by the blue and green keys in sky and forest. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "paint in the foreground a few peacocks languidly dragging their gorgeous tails, and you have a Watteau or a Fragonard no, a Monticelli!
As regards design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of beauty and the portrait, the Impressionist movement is based upon the old French masters, principally upon Chardin, Watteau, Latour, Largillière, Fragonard, Debucourt, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen.
But he looks like a wise man of Greece beside Fragonard. I met him, a while ago, the miserable old man, trotting by under the arcades of the Palais-Égalité, powdered, genteel, sprightly, spruce, hideous. At sight of him, I longed that, failing Apollo, some sturdy friend of the arts might hang him up to a tree and flay him alive like Marsyas as an everlasting warning to bad painters."
If I did that I would take half that charm away from you that elusive incompleteness which Fragonard and Watteau tried to imitate, Heaven knows with how little success. No, I shall always let you live your own life. All that I ask for, my dear, are certain meeting places.
Now I am back, if not with the Greek Venus, 'whom men no longer call the Erecine, at all events with an enchanting Parisian, nearly as beautiful, and more delightful a voluptuous goddess, laughing amid her hair, drawn less austerely than Ingres, but much more firmly than Boucher or Fragonard... a fragrant goddess."
Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator's technique.
"There I made a mess of it, I confess," he admitted. "But it never struck me they'd separate. I thought, of course, they'd drive straight to some hotel, and " "And the long and the short of it is, Greyle's slipped you," said Gilling. "Well there's no more to be done tonight. The only thing of value is that Greyle called at the Fragonard.
He followed him to the Fragonard Club, watched him enter; then he himself turned into a neighbouring bar and telephoned to Swallow. The Squire was still in the Fragonard when Swallow got there: from that time he kept a watch. The Squire remained in the Club for an hour " "Which proves," interrupted Copplestone, "that he's a member, and that I ought to have followed up my attempt to get in there."
The simpler forms of the Louis XV period, and the beautiful furniture of the Louis XVI period, were often painted soft tones of ivory, blue, green, or yellow, and decorated with lovely branches of flowers, birds, and scenery where groups of people by Fragonard and other great painters disported with all their eighteenth century charm.
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