FRANCE 



3305 



FRANCE 



of both architectural and land- 

 scape elements, clothed his work in 

 light and atmosphere. Ruskin said 

 of him that he effected a revolu- 

 tion in art, which revolution " con- 

 sisted mainly in setting the sun in 

 the heavens " ; and in this respect 

 he was the founder of modern 

 French, and, indeed, of all modern 

 landscape art. 



A variant on the severe classic- 

 ism of Poussin and Lorrain was in- 

 troduced by Simon Vouet (d. 1649) 

 in the form of a naturalism based 

 on that of Caravaggio ; and his 

 pupil Charles Le Brun (d. 1690) 

 succeeded in imposing on French 

 painting a pompous character that 

 checked for a time the growth of 

 independent genius. This was the 

 fruit of the minister Colbert's 

 avowed policy, of which Le Brun 

 was the instrument, of directing 

 French art into industrial and de- 

 corative channels ; and it was fol- 

 lowed, in the 18th century, by a 

 not unwholesome reaction. 



Chardin, Fragonard, Watteau 



Meanwhile, the genre painting of 

 the brothers Le Nain, who flour- 

 ished in Paris during the first half 

 of the 17th century, had kept alive 

 an older and simpler tradition than 

 the Italian one. They painted the 

 daily life of the people, very much 

 in the manner of contemporary 

 Dutch and Flemish schools, but 

 with a certain southern grace in 

 their realism. In much the same 

 way Jean Simeon Chardin (d. 

 1779), an isolated figure among his 

 flamboyant and sentimental con- 

 temporaries, concerned himself 

 only with the aesthetic aspect and 

 significance of the humble life he 

 painted, and relied on delicacy of 

 treatment and beautiful pigment 

 to achieve beauty. French 18th 

 century painting, however, as 

 shown by Fragonard, Lancret, Pa- 

 ter, Boucher, and others, is essen- 

 tially the mirror of the artificial 

 mode of life and thought that had 

 followed the heaviness of Louis 

 XIV's reign. J. B. Greuze painted 

 genre with a certain naturalness 

 that did not enter into the sham 

 shepherd and shepherdess composi- 

 tions of the rest ; but even he is 

 not free from the charge of senti- 

 mental affectation. Watteau's tem- 

 perament gave a seriousness to his 

 Fetes Galantes, which renders them 

 unique of their kind. 



The basis of this irresponsible 

 and momentarily charming art was 

 Classicism. But it was covered 

 with a pseudo-romantic veneer. 

 The sculpture of the time partook 

 of the same character ; that is to 

 say, its aim, first and last, was to 

 please. French sculpture in the 

 Gothic period was entirely subor- 

 dinate to architecture. The Renais- 



sance emancipated it, only to con- 

 fine it once more within the rigid 

 classicism of the 17th century. 

 Then came the Bernini influence, 

 and a host of rococo imitations of 

 that Italian master. Seemingly the 

 Revolution was needed to bring 

 about a further emancipation both 

 in painting and sculpture. For the 

 first, this event produced Jacques 

 Louis David ; for the second, Hou- 

 don. David's classical formula was 

 cold and repellent, and his histori- 

 cal compositions are bombastic ; 

 but the famous unfinished Mme. 

 Recamier reveals the artist un- 

 chained from his conventions. 

 Houdon was the first of a long line 

 of French sculptors who, while 

 working at first on the Greek and 

 later the Renaissance models, de- 

 signed with personal freedom and 

 feeling. David d' Angers, Rude, 

 Carpeaux, and Barye are names 

 that most readily occur in this dis- 

 tinguished sequence, which, lasting 

 throughout the 19th century, was 

 only interrupted roughly, per- 

 haps by the advent of Rodin. 



In painting, the dull and lifeless 

 classicism of David and his school 

 waned in the early years of the 

 19th century. The Romantic 

 movement of 1830 virtually de- 

 molished it. Romanticism, of 

 course, was not confined to France, 

 and was as much a literary move- 

 ment as an artistic one ; but it 

 exercised an enormous influence on 

 the future development of French 

 painting. Headed by Eugene Dela- 

 croix and Theodore Gericault, it 

 took the form of a revolt against 

 the abstract and impersonal char- 

 acter of Classicism. 



The Barbizon Group 



It was an awakening to the 

 objects of the external world, to 

 the relations of those objects to 

 each other and to their environ- 

 ment. In pure landscape it made 

 possible the emergence of the 

 Barbizon group, of Corot, Rous- 

 seau, Daubigny, Millet, and the 

 rest, who in their turn became 

 the forerunners of the Impres- 

 sionists, Romanticism, in short, 

 was the beginning of the sharp 

 cleavage between academic and 

 independent art which still per- 

 sists. J. A. D. Ingres and, in a 

 different way, Puvis de Chavannes, 

 were the principal stalwarts of the 

 Classical reaction that made itself 

 felt from time to time during the 

 century ; on the other side, Manet, 

 Degas, and their Impressionist fol- 

 lowers bore the brunt of an official 

 persecution bitter enough to act as 

 a tonic to men with new ideas. 



As the century drew to a close, 

 the development of French inde- 

 pendent painting accelerated its 

 pace. Claude Monet, once ac- 



claimed as the last word in modern 

 art doctrine, lost his supremacy, 

 through the rise of a now group 

 the Post-Impressionists. This 

 movement, commonly attributed 

 to Paul Cezanne, Vincent van 

 Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, is de- 

 scribed under a separate heading; 

 here it need only be said that its 

 importance lay in the fact of its 

 being the source of a series of re- 

 volts that still continue to agitate 

 art circles. These also, viz. Cubism, 

 Futurism, Vorticism, will be found 

 described elsewhere. No one of 

 them is an exclusively French 

 movement ; but all have attracted 

 their French enthusiasts. An at- 

 tempt has been made to group a 

 number of these ultra-modernists 

 under the common title of expres- 

 sionists. One recent result of their 

 rise, and of the cold-shouldering 

 which the official salons continue 

 to administer to the more extreme 

 exponents of these cults, has been 

 the vast accumulation in Paris of 

 small " independent " galleries. 

 The Modern Movement 



Expressionism has invaded 

 French sculpture of to-day, though 

 to a necessarily limited extent ; but 

 in painting it provides, for a nation 

 of critics, the sensation of the hour. 

 Maurice Denis, famous as one of 

 the earlier Post-Impressionists, is 

 among the most inventive and 

 capable of the moderns ; the idols 

 of les Jeunes, however, are Henri 

 Matisse and Derain. Side by side 

 with these recent ebullitions the 

 stream of traditional French art, 

 informed by the classic spirit, con- 

 tinues to run its course ; and if this 

 outside movement appears to be 

 even stronger in France than else- 

 where, it derives a good deal of its 

 strength from the very tradition 

 of high accomplishment from 

 which it seeks to break away. 



French art has reached a stage 

 at which an astonishingly high 

 standard of technical proficiency 

 no longer suffices, and there is a 

 psychological reaction against the 

 cool intellectualism of the older 

 school. 1 ut even this is unlikely to 

 disturb seriously the main tradition 

 which is so firmly embedded in the 

 roots of French character. 



F.J.Maclean 



Bibliography. Claude Lorrain : 

 painter and etcher, G. Grahanie, 

 1895 ; French Painters of the 18th 

 Century, Lady Dilke, 1899; French 

 Engravers and Draughtsmen of the 

 18th century, Lady Dilke, 1902 ; 

 The Great French Painters and the 

 Evolution of French Painting from 

 1830 to the Present Day, C. Mau- 

 clair, Eng. trans. P. G. Konody, 

 1903 ; French Painting in the 16th 

 Century, L. Dimier, Eng. trans. 

 H. Child, 1907 ; Watteau and His 

 School, J. Edgcumbe Staley, 1907; 



