Part 18 (1/2)

Poets were lacking in the last century I do not say rhyers of words; I say poets Poetry, taking the expression in the truth and height of its ; poetry, which is an elevation or an enchantination, the contribution of an ideal of reverie or gaiety to huht; poetry, which carries away and suspends above the world the soul of a period and the spirit of a people, was unknown to the France of the Eighteenth Century, and her two only poets were two painters: Watteau and Fragonard

Watteau, the reat poet of Love! the master of sweet serenity and tender Paradises, whose work may be likened to the Elysian Field of Passion! Watteau, the h so heavily in his auturet around dreaonard, the little poet of the _Art of Love_ of the time

Have you noticed in _L'Embarquement de Cythere_ all those naked little forhts of the sky?

Where are they going? They are going to play at Fragonard's and to put on his palette the hues of their butterfly wings

[Illustration: COReSUS AND CALLIRHOe

_Fragonard_]

Fragonard is the bold narrator, the gallant _aenius but French in spirit; the uish undress, of skies hted with female nudity

Upon a table beside a bunch of roses let us allow the leaves of his work to be ruffled by the wind of a lovely day: fro in coquettish flight, our glance skips to es where the somersaults of love upset the painter's easel, to pastures where the s and weeps like a nymph over her broken urn, for her sheep, her flocks, and her vanished drea a beloved na The breeze is always turning the before a sun-dial which little Cupidsthe with his staff and gourd beside hie pot Does it not seem that your eye is upon a vision of a fete by Boucher, shown by his pupil in Tasso's garden? Adorable ic lantern!

where Clorinde follows Fiale with the sele, little coht say were thrown upon the cloth upon which Beroalde de Verville atherer walk Tasso, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Ariosto (Ariosto as he has drawn hienii of happiness It laughs with the liberties of La Fontaine It goes frous to Favart, from Gentil-Bernard to Andre Chenier It has, so to speak, the heart of a lover and the hand of a charh passes into a kiss and it is young with immortal youth: it is the poeh to have written it like Fragonard for him to re

He leaped into success and fame at one bound, with his picture of _Callirhoe_, that painting of universal approbation, which caused him to be received into the _Acade which aroused public enthusiasust, and which had the honour of a Royal coine a large picture nine feet high by twelve feet long, where the huures are of natural size, the architecture in its proper proportion and the crowd and sky have their own space Between two colu marble with its iris-coloured reflections, above the heavy purple of a tapestry with golden fringe spread out and broken by the ridge of two steps, opens the scene of an antique drama which seems to be under the curtain of a theatre On this tapestry, on this pagan altar-cloth, stands a copper crater near an urn of black marble half veiled hite linen A colu with incense and ornaoats' heads, a superb bronze whichpriest has thrown hiainst this candelabra and embraces its pedestal; in terror he has allowed his censer to fall to the earth

Standing by his side is Coresus, the high priest, croith ivy, enveloped in draperies, and see in the sacerdotal whiteness of his vestrace, an enervated Adonis, the shadow of a es the knife in his breast; with the other he has the appearance of casting his life into the heavens, whilst across his efferief of violent death Opposite the dying high-priest is the living though fainting victim, nearly dead at the belief that she is about to die

With her head resting on her shoulder, she has glided before the s legs, her arlance is distracted; she has lost all volition in the use of her liwith a breath, turning white under her crown of roses, which the painter's brush has made to pale in sy priest is leaning in horrified curiosity

Another, upon one knee, perfectly terrified, with fixed gaze and parted lips, holds before the young girl the basin used to receive the blood of the victirey-bearded priests, aghast at the horrible spectacle Above them the smoke of the temple, the flale with the cloudy sky, a sky of a night of , a sky of fiery and so a torch and dagger bears Love away in soht enveloped in a black o to the shadow at the base of the picture: to their faces; a little boy clings about their knees and holds fast to the across the arm of one of the women, illumines the hair and the little rosy hands of the child

Such is Fragonard's great co unexpected production, for which he must have taken the idea, and, perhaps, even the effect from one of the revivals of _Callirhoe_ by the poet Roy;[27]

a painting of the opera, and denificent illusion this picture presents! It must be seen in the Louvre so that the eyes may feast upon the clear and warm splendour of the canvas, the inal light inundating the centre of the scene, palpitating and dying away on _Callirhoe_, enveloping her fainting body like the fading of day, and caressing that failing throat The rays of light and the smoke all melt into one another; the teht is rolling above the day The sun falls into the glooleaonard lavishly threw the lights of fairyland upon his ieri

And what itated and convulsive painting! The clouds and the garestures are rapid, the attitudes are despairing, horror shudders in every pose and on every lip, and a great hout this entire tehout this entire lyrical cohteenth Century, is Passion

Fragonard introduces it into his tiht fancy the entooria raises his art to the level of the emotion of the _Alceste_ of Euripides; it reveals a future for French painting: pathos

_L'Art du Dix-Huitieme Siecle_ (3d ed, Paris, 1882)

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Callirhoe_ by Pierre-Charles Roy, ritten in 1712--ES

THE MARKET-CART

(_GAINSBOROUGH_)