359 



VIEN, JOSEPH-MARIE. 



VI EN, JOSEPH-MARIE. 



360 



release. But the magistrate demurred. "Suppose, on my way to 

 prison," said Vidocq, " I get away from my keepers, come back to you, 

 and resume my bondage, will you then grant me the provisional 

 freedom I now solicit ?" " Yes," replied the judge. He escaped, and 

 made good his offers to assist justice. This service was followed by 

 others far more considerable. These events took place in 1804, but 

 ho continued for several years the slave of his antecedents. In 1806 

 he went to Paris again, where he maintained himself by following the 

 handicrafts which he had learned during the course of his nomadic 

 life. He became a toy manufacturer, a dealer in hardware, and a 

 tailor ; but other thieves, who had known him in prison, and who 

 were well acquainted with his embarrassments, left him no peace : 

 sometimes they wanted money, at others they proposed a good 

 bargain ; next it was some plunder to be hid. On one occasion they 

 borrowed his cart, to convey the body of a murdered victim to a place 

 of safety. His state in the end became intolerable. 



In 1809, driven to extremity, Vidocq presented himself before M. 

 Henri, the commissioner of the secret police of Paris, acknowledged 

 his critical condition, and offered to give valuable information in case 

 he might be allowed to coma and go freely. This proposal was not 

 accepted until his solicitations had been several times renewed, in the 

 midst of which he was once more arrested. On this occasion he was 

 sent to Bicetre, when M. Henri, interested by his perseverance, and 

 struck with the pointed nature of his proposals, which he continued 

 to make by correspondence, at last consulted the Minister of Police, 

 Pasquier, who returned a favourable answer, in which Vidocq was 

 instructed to furnish information. His revelations then became so 

 numerous and so important, that his liberty was granted him not 

 long after. 



The qualities he displayed in his new functions, soon attracted 

 attention. Few detective officers ever possessed so much presence of 

 mind, keen intelligence, bodily strength, courage, and diligence ; 

 besides that fluency of slang and banter, which is the eloquence of 

 the vulgar. He made it a point, from the outset of his new vocation, 

 to produce at once the culprit and the proofs of his -crime. The 

 receivers of stolen goods found in him a more relentless enemy than 

 the thief. At first he held but a humble employment under the 

 regular police officers; but, in 1813, he was withdrawn from their 

 control and placed under the orders of M. Henri alone. His captures 

 were extraordinary. The famous thief Delzeve, and Folard, the robber 

 who afterwards stole the medals of the Royal Library, were surprised 

 at their work, and handed over by this secret agent to justice. La 

 Courtelle, a sort of St. Giles's, infested with the worst vagabonds, was 

 purged ; the great burglar, Desnoyers, and thirty -two of his accomplices 

 were taken. About the same time, the famous brigade of detective 

 palice (Brigade de Surete"), directed by Vidocq, was formed, consisting 

 at first only of four men; in 1817, the number rose to twelve; and in 

 1824, when its complement was full, it contained twenty-eight detec- 

 tives. " It was with this limited force," says Vidocq, " that I had to 

 watch and look after 1200 returned transports, and issue every year 

 from four to five hundred writs." In the single year 1817, he effected 

 772 arrests, and 39 seizures of stolen goods. His useful brigade cost 

 but 2000?. a year, of which he enjoyed a salary of 200Z. During 

 the whole term of his official employment, he was the butt of continual 

 charges, suspicious, and open accusations. He was said to take part 

 in every crime, to incite robberies for the sake of arresting his dupes, 

 and to have a share in all the plunder. This obloquy rose so high 

 as at length to alarm the government, and in 1825 he was superseded 

 in his functions by Lacour, whose antecedents resembled his own. In 

 1826 he established a paper manufactory at Saint-Maude"; and in 1827 

 he wrote his autobiography, which was published in Paris, by the 

 bookseller Tenon, in 1829, in 4 vols. In 1831-32 he was employed to 

 detect some of the political agitators of the day, but his vocation was 

 not either permanent or precise. Then, in 1834, he set up an office for 

 information on behalf of Trade and Commerce, the object being to 

 enable the fair trader, when applied to for credit, to ascertain the 

 degree of trust to which his new customer was entitled. In 1844, 

 stimulated by the success of Eugene Sue's ' Mysteries ' at Paris, and 

 certain works of the same questionable character, which had appeared 

 in London, he republished his Memoires, under the title of ' Les 

 Vrais Mysteres de Paris.' The morbid taste for notoriety of any kind 

 which then seemed to exist, induced Vidocq to visit London, and 

 exhibit himself, with many curious articles used by French burglars, 

 in the rooms of the Cosmorama in Regent Street. But this specula- 

 tion did not answer his expectations. Soon after he fixed himself in 

 Belgium, where he died in 1850. 



VIEN, JOSEPH-MARIE, one of the most celebrated French 

 painters of the 18th century, was born at Montpellier, June 18, 1716, 

 and was the pupil of various painters, among them A. Rivalz, of 

 Toulouse, and finally C. Natoire, at Paris, whither he repaired in 1740. 

 He was very sickly in his youth, and his parents thought that even 

 the fatigue of the drawing-board was more than his strength could 

 bear, and endeavoured to lead him to other pursuits ; his own enthu- 

 siastic devotion to art however got the better of all obstacles, and in 

 the year 1743, he competed successfully at Paris, for the grand prize 

 of the French Academy, and obtained accordingly also the govern- 

 ment pension for Rome. The subject of the picture was the Plague 

 of the Israelites in the time of David. In 1744 he departed for Rome 



and remained there until 1750, when he returned to Paris. Besides 

 numerous studies he painted many excellent pictures during his six 

 years' residence in Rome, including several church or altar pieces of 

 great merit, as the Slaughter of the Innocents, St. John for the town 

 of Montpellier, and the only two pictures by Vien now in the gallery 

 of the Louvre, Saint Germain and Saint Vincent receiving the Crown 

 of Glory from the hands of an Angel, and the Sleeping Hermit. 



These were followed by a long series of works at Paris, many of 

 them compositions of the highest pretensions, and indicating a decided 

 revival in the French school of painting from the insipid puerile state 

 to which it had been reduced by Vanloo and Boucher. The pictures 

 of Vien approach the style and technical excellence of the scholars 

 of the Carracci, though for some time his works were much maligned 

 by the scholars of Boucher and Vanloo, and among them his own 

 master Natoire. His St. Denis preaching to the Gauls, one of his best 

 works, was pronounced by them inferior to the picture by F. Doyen 

 of the Miracle des Ardons, illustrating the tradition of the miracle 

 performed by St. Ge'ne'vieve when by her prayers she arrested the 

 conflagration of Paris, which was caused by lightning in the year 1129. 

 Vien's picture was placed in the church of St. Roch, where Doyen's 

 is also now placed : they are nearly the same size, being about 24 

 feet high by 13 wide. In a few years however, and before the French 

 revolution, Vien was justified by his contemporaries, who gave him 

 the title of regenerator of painting in France : Count Caylus had 

 always been an admirer of his genius. It was his object to restore 

 the study of the antique, and of nature as represented in the works 

 of the best Italian masters, and he succeeded to a considerable extent 

 in both respects ; but his admiration for the antique was carried 

 to the utmost extreme by his pupils, Vincent and David and their 

 scholars. 



Vien was elected a member of the French Academy in 1754, when 

 he gave as his presentation piece, a picture of Daedalus attaching his 

 Wings. In 1775, after the painting of his picture of St. Denis, which 

 was exhibited in the Louvre in the previous year, he was decorated with 

 the Order of St. Michel, and was appointed Director of the French 

 Academy at Rome, where he resided from that time until 1781, and 

 was elected in the mean while member of the Academy of St. Luke. 

 After his return to Paris he became one of the rectors and Director 

 of the Academy there (he had previously been professor) ; and he 

 was finally appointed principal painter to the king in 1789. This post 

 he of course lost at the revolution, but he was from its foundation a 

 member of the Institute of France ; he was also created by Napoleon 

 a member of the senate, a count of the empire, and a Commander of 

 the Legion of Honour. He died at Paris, March 27, 1809, having 

 nearly completed his ninety-third year, and he was buried in the 

 Pantheon. He painted until within a year of his death. Vieu's 

 pictures are very numerous, amounting to little short of two hundred ; 

 this number would not be great, if many of them were not of very 

 large proportions. Few of them have however been engraved ; the 

 St. Denis, already mentioned, which is by some considered his master- 

 piece, has been engraved only in outline by C. Normaud for the 

 'Annales du MuseV,' published by Landon, and in the 'Musde de 

 Peinture,' &c., of Re veil and Duchesne. His works are from various 

 subjects, but chiefly from the Sacred Scriptures, from ancient and 

 modern history, and from Greek mythology. Among his more cele- 

 brated pictures are : Julius Csesar contemplating the Statue of Alex- 

 ander at Cadiz, and regretting that he was still unknown at an Age 

 when Alexander was already crowned with Glory ; the Consecration 

 of the Equestrian Statue of Louis XV. ; Marcus Aurelius causing Pro- 

 visions to be distributed among the People; St. Louis vesting the 

 Regency of the Kingdom in his Queen, Blanche of Navarre ; St. 

 Jerome; the Embarkation of St. Martha; Christ breaking Bread; the 

 Resurrection of Lazarus; the Virgin attended by Angels; St. Gregory; 

 Briseis in the Tent of Achilles; the Parting of Hector and Andro- 

 mache ; Hector exhorting Paris to go out to battle ; Venus wounded 

 by Diomede; ./Eneas pursuing Helen during the burning of Troy ; 

 Andromache showing the Arms of Hector to her Son ; Mars forcing 

 himself from the Arms of Venus ; Cupid and Psyche ; Sappho playing 

 on her Lyre; Proserpine adorning the Statue of Ceres; Cupid flying 

 from Slavery; a Woman selling Cupids; and a young Greek Girl 

 comparing her Bosom with a Rose-bud. 



Vien has left also many drawings, some in series, as : The Sports of 

 Nymphs and Cupids, in 20 pieces ; the Vicissitudes of War, also in 

 20 pieces ; and the Union of Cupid and Hymen, Love and Marriage, 

 in 36 pieces. There are also some etchings by Vien : he executed a set 

 from a series of designs of the Adventures of Lot and his Daughters ,* 

 and a Fdte or Masquerade given by Vien and other students of the 

 French Academy at Rome, to the Cardinal de Larochefoucauld in 1748 : 

 it is in 32 pieces, under the following title' Caravane du Sultan a la 

 Mecque, Mascarade Turque donnde a Rome par Messieurs les Pen- 

 sionnaires de 1'Acaddmie de France et leurs Amis, au Carnaval de 

 l'Anne"e 1748 ; Jos. Vien inv. et sc." 



MADAME VIEN, born Marie Reboul, was a distinguished painter of 

 birds, flowers, and still life ; and was a member of the old French 

 Academy of Painting. She died in 1805, aged seventy-seven. 



JOSEPH-MARIE VIEX, the Younger, the son of M. and Madame Vien, 

 though a distinguished portrait-painter, practised only as an amateur. 

 He was born at Paris, in 1761. He exhibited several pictures in the 



