Part 2 (2/2)
To the visitor to the Wallace collection the picture by Fragonard next best known after the ”Chiffre d'Amour” and the ”Swing,” is this exquisite study of a fair-haired boy--the child is painted with a subtle grace and consummate delicacy rarely combined with the directness and impressionism here displayed by Fragonard.]
Fragonard's name will always be linked with that of his friend and patron, a wealthy man, the farmer-general Bergeret de Grandcour.
His family visited at the rich man's houses in town and country.
Now the career of a rich man was incomplete without the making of the Grand Tour. At the least the gentleman of means must have roamed through Italy. And it was thus that, with Bergeret de Grandcour, Fragonard now made his second journey into Italy in his forty-second year.
Fragonard was delighted at the prospect of seeing his loved Italy again after twelve years. It was a family party--Fragonard and his wife, with Bergeret de Grandcour and his son, to say nothing of Bergeret's servants and cook and following. It was a happy, merry journeying in extravagant luxury.
Fragonard had aforetime gone into Italy as a penniless student and an unknown man; he now travelled in the grand style as the guest of a man of affairs, visiting palaces and churches, received in state by the highest in the land, dining with the Amba.s.sador of France, having audience of the Pope, advising Bergeret de Grandcour in the buying of art-treasures. He tasted all the delights of great wealth. He went to a concert ”chez le lord Hamilton,” seeing and speaking with _la belle Emma_--Nelson's Emma. He stood in Naples; he tramped up Vesuvius. It was at Naples the news came that Louis the Fifteenth lay dying of the small-pox--a few days later the old king died.
The party at once turned their faces homewards, returning to Paris in leisurely fas.h.i.+on by way of Venice, Vienna, and Germany, only to know, at the journey's ending, one of those miserable and sordid quarrels that seem to dog the friends.h.i.+ps of men of genius. Going to Bergeret de Grandcour's house in Paris to get his portfolios of sketches, made throughout the journey, Fragonard found to his amazement and consternation that Bergeret de Grandcour angrily refused to give them up, claiming them as payment for his outlay upon him during the Italian journey. The sorry business ended in the law-courts, and in the loss of the lawsuit by Bergeret de Grandcour, who was condemned to give up the drawings or to pay a 30,000 livres fine (6000). The ugly breach that threatened to open between them, however, was soon healed by reconciliation; and Bergeret de Grandcour's son became one of Fragonard's closest and most intimate friends.
V
THE TERROR
Louis the Sixteenth, third son of the Dauphin who had been Louis the Fifteenth's only lawful son, ascended the throne in his twentieth year, a pure-minded young fellow, full of good intentions, sincerely anxious for the well-being of his people; but of a diffident and timid character, and under the influence of a young consort, the beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette, of imperious temper and of light and frivolous manners, who brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment.
The Du Barry sent a-packing, and d'Aiguillon and the rest of their crew, the young king recalled the crafty old Maurepas who had been banished by the Pompadour, an ill move--though the setting of Turgot over the finances augured well. And when the great minister Turgot fell, he gave way to as good a man, the worthy honest banker, Neckar.
In a happy hour Fragonard was granted by the king the eagerly sought haven of the artists of his time--a studio and apartments at the old palace of the Louvre, as his master Boucher had been granted them before him.
Settling in with his wife, his girl Rosalie, his son Alexandre Evariste, and his talented sister-in-law Marguerite Gerard, he lived thereat a life almost opulent, making large sums of money, some eight thousand pounds a year, at this time. He joyed in decorating his rooms. He was the life and soul of a group of brilliant men who gathered about him, having the deepest affection for him.
His sister-in-law, Marguerite Gerard, was as gay and distinguished in manners, and as beautiful, as his jovial wife was dull and vulgar and coa.r.s.e--the vile accent of Gra.s.se, that made his wife's speech horrible to the ear, becoming slurred into a shadow of itself on Marguerite's tongue, and turned by the enchanting accents of the younger sister's lips into seduction. This girl's friends.h.i.+p and companions.h.i.+p became an ever-increasing delight to the aging painter.
Their correspondence, when apart, was pa.s.sionately affectionate. Ugly scandals got abroad--scandals difficult to prove or disprove. The man and woman were of like tastes, of like temperaments; it was, likely enough, little more than that. The girl was of a somewhat cold nature; and we must read her last letters as censoriously as her first--when, in reply to Fragonard, evil days having fallen upon him, and being old and next to ruined, on his asking her for money to help him, she, who owed everything to him, refused him with the trite sermon: ”to practise economy, to be reasonable, and to remember that in brooding over fancies one only increases them without being any the happier.”
But this was not as yet.
Fragonard, happy in his home at the Louvre, free from cares, content amongst devoted friends, reached his fifty-fifth year when he had suddenly to gaze horrified at the first ugly hint that, in the years to come, he must expect to hear the scythe of the Great Reaper--know the pa.s.sing of friends and loved ones. He was to reel under the first serious blow of his life. His bright, witty, winsome girl Rosalie died in her eighteenth year. It nearly killed him.
But there was a blacker, a vaster shadow came looming over the land--a threat that boded ill for such as took life too airily.
In an unfortunate moment for the royal house, and against the will of the king and of Neckar, the nation went mad with enthusiasm over England's revolted American colonies; and the alliance was formed that France swore not to sever until America was declared independent. It started the war with England. The successes of the revolted colonies made the coming of the Revolution in France a certainty. The fall of Neckar and the rise of the new minister, Calonne, sent France rus.h.i.+ng to the brink. The distress of the people became unbearable. The royal family and the Court sank in the people's respect, and the people were no longer the people of the decade before--they had watched the Revolution in America, and they had seen the Revolution victorious.
The fall of Calonne only led to the rise of the turbulent and stupid Cardinal de Brienne; and the Court was completely foul of the people when De Brienne threw up office in a panic and fled across the frontier, leaving the Government in utter confusion.
The king recalled Neckar. The calling of the States-General now became a.s.sured. Paris rang with the exultation of the Third Estate.
The States-General met at Versailles on the 5th of May 1789. The monarchy was at an end. In little over a month the States-General created itself the National a.s.sembly. The Revolution was begun. The 14th of July saw the fall of the Bastille. On the 22nd the people hanged Foulon to the street-lamp at the corner of the Place de Greve--and _a la lanterne!_ became the cry of fas.h.i.+on.
Fragonard was in his fifty-seventh year when he heard in his lodging at the Louvre the thunderclap of this 14th of July 1789--saw the dawn of the Revolution.
The rose of the dawn was soon to turn to blood-red crimson. The storm had been muttering and growling its curses for years before the death of Louis the Fifteenth. It came up in threatening blackness darkly behind the dawn, and was soon to break with a roar upon reckless Paris. It came responsive to the rattle of musketry in the far West, hard by Boston harbour.
Fragonard and his friends were of the independents--they were liberals whom love of elegance had not prevented from sympathising with the sufferings of the people, and who had thrilled with the new thought.
Fragonard's intelligence drew him naturally towards the new ideas; indeed he owed little to the Court; and when France was threatened by the coalition of Europe against her, he, with Gerard, David, and others, went on the 7th of September with the artist's womenfolk to give up their jewelry to the National a.s.sembly.
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