Part 1 (1/2)
Boucher.
by Haldane Macfall.
I
THE SMALL BEGINNINGS
The year after good Queen Anne came to rule over us, Louis the Fourteenth being still King of France, on an autumn day in the October of 1703, that saw the trees of Paris shedding their parched leaves as a carpet to the feet of the much-bewigged dandified folk who stepped it swaggeringly down the walks of the Palais Royal, swinging long canes, and strutting along the shaded promenades of the more fas.h.i.+onable places of the city, there stood in the vestry of the parish church of Saint Jean-en-Greve a little group of the small burgess folk, gathered about a little infant, whilst the tipstaff to the king's palace, one Francois Prevost, signed solemnly as witness to the birth-certificate and as acknowledged G.o.dfather to the aforesaid morsel of humanity, which, as the certificate badly set forth in black and white for ever, was henceforth to be known for good or ill as Francois Boucher, first-born son, on the 29th of September, four days past, of the tipstaff's friend, Nicolas Boucher, ”maitre-peintre,” who stood hard by, and of his wife Elizabeth Lemesle.
The worthy tipstaff's writing done, he bowed in the best Court manner to Mademoiselle Boullenois, daughter to yonder consequential fellow, the law officer from the Police Court; and handed her the inked quill to bear witness in her turn as G.o.dmother.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE II.--MADAME DE POMPADOUR
(In the Wallace Collection)
Here we have one of the handsomest portraits of his great patron and friend, the notorious Marquise de Pompadour, painted by Boucher at the most brilliant phase of his art. It is a glittering achievement. The figure is superbly placed in its surroundings. The play of limpid light upon the beautifully gowned woman, of which Boucher was such a master-painter, proves it to be of his best period. The Pompadour stands, wreathed in smiles, as the mistress of a great domain; and masks as usual behind her pretty ways all hint of that calculating hand and remorseless will that sent her enemies without a sigh to the Bastille or banishment or worse--she who was past-mistress of the art of the _lettre de cachet_.]
The sand being flung upon the wet ink, and the blotting done, there was exchange of compliments in the stilted manner of good-fellows.h.i.+p of the day between priest and party--tapping of snuff-boxes and taking of snuff, with more than a little gossip of the Court and some shaking of heads, and under-lips solemnly thrust forth; the gossip is not without authority and weight, for is not G.o.dfather Prevost tipstaff to the king's majesty, therefore in the whirl of things?
The child, indeed, was born into a Paris agog with stirring affairs.
Well might heads be shaken solemnly. The French arms were knowing defeat. The Englishman, Marlborough, was flinging back the French armies wheresoever he gave them battle. Europe was one great armed camp. France was suffering terrible blood-letting. Defeat came on defeat. These were sorry times. On land all went wrong. Good generals were set aside; intriguing good-for-nothings led the veterans into disaster. But there was still France upon the high seas.
Then the women folk, bored with high politics, would draw back the talk to the infant Francois, and there would be genial banter about the morsel; for was he not a Sat.u.r.day child, therefore bound to be a bit of a scamp!
And so, off to Monsieur Boucher's modest little home in the Rue de Verrerie to a gla.s.s of wine and further compliments and banter, and more vague surmises as to what lay upon the knees of the G.o.ds for little Francois Boucher.
II
THE STUDENT
Yes, the sun of the Grand Monarque was setting. Louis Quatorze was nearing the end of his long lease of splendour. Our little Francois was not a month old when Admiral Rooke whipped Chateau-Renaud off the high seas, destroying the French and Spanish fleets in Vigo Bay, and carrying off some millions of pieces of eight from the galleons as treasure. The child's first year saw the English troopers ride down the French at Blenheim--a day that made ”Malbrook” a name of dread to every French child, a name to frighten into good behaviour. To the little fellow's home came the horror-spoken talk of Ramilies; then of Oudenarde; then of Lille--to his six-year-old ears the terrible news of Malplaquet.
But there was Paris a-bellringing in his ears at seven; for there was born to the king's grandson a sickly child that was to succeed him as Louis the Fifteenth. And Francois Boucher is one day to step from his modest home and stand nearer at this child's side than he thinks.
The boy Boucher, at st.u.r.dy twelve, would recall the death of the old king in his lonely last years, and the setting upon the ancient throne of France of the five-year-old child as Louis Quinze--a comely little fellow--with Orleans as Regent. Young Francois Boucher was to spend his youth and grow up to manhood in a France that lay under the regency of this dissolute, brilliant Orleans.
Nicolas Boucher, the father, seems to have been an obscure, honest fellow, given to the _trade_ of art, and that too in mediocre fas.h.i.+on enough, designing embroideries, covers for chairs, and the like--”an inferior designer, little favoured by fortune,” runs the recorded verdict of his day. But he had the virtue of recognising his mediocrity, and the desire to save his son from the sordid cares of mediocre artistry; since, having himself given the boy his schooling with pencil and brush, and brought the lad up in an atmosphere of art and in the company of artists, he had the astuteness to send him to the studio of Lemoyne, a really great painter and rapidly becoming famous--he who painted the ceilings of Versailles with G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses in handsome fas.h.i.+on.
Lemoyne was a well-chosen master for the promising youth of seventeen.
He had founded his art upon that of Correggio and Veronese, had rid himself of hard academic tendencies, and was painting in a sound French fas.h.i.+on. The youth Boucher, with the quick and astounding gift, that he displayed all through his life, of rapidly making his own what he wanted to acquire, picked up from Lemoyne at once a French way of stating what he desired to state, in a large, broad manner, without having to go through the long years of drudgery to Italian models of style which was then the only schooling for an artist--was therefore enabled to free himself from the equally long years that it would have taken him to rid the Italian style from his artistry. In short, the youth of seventeen made Lemoyne's art his own in a few weeks; and, on the eve of manhood, he so rivalled his master in accomplishment that it is dangerous to attribute a picture of this time to the master or the pupil without most careful evidence.
Yet the youth vowed that he was but three months with Lemoyne, who, said he, took scant interest in his pupils. But it must be remembered that Boucher was a prodigious worker, with a pa.s.sionate love for his work that lasted until death took the brush from his fingers, and that he had a quick and alert mind and hand, free from the hesitances of a student, and always daring in experiment. To wish to achieve a thing, for Boucher, was to set him to its achievement. He rested neither night nor day until he mastered that which he had set out to do. On the day he left Lemoyne's studio he stepped out of it a finished artist, a sound painter, fully equipped with all the craftmans.h.i.+p, trade-secrets, and tricks of thumb that it had taken his master his life to learn--and a facile copyist of his style and handling. It was the sincerest form of flattery; and Boucher, to the end of his days, held the art of Lemoyne in the greatest reverence--as is proved by his answer, when at the very height of his fame, to one who asked him to complete a picture by his master: ”Such works are to me sacred vessels,” said he--”I should dread to profane them by touching them.”
Lemoyne's admiration for his pupil was not lacking in return. The youth painted, whilst with his master, a picture of a ”Judgment of Susanna,” before which Lemoyne stood astounded, then burst into prophecy of Boucher achieving greatness in the years to come.