Part 2 (1/2)
Out of the whirl of things Boucher's fortune was ripening, little as he might suspect it.
He was painting masterpieces that make his name live. To his fortieth year belong the famed ”Birth of Venus,” the ”Venus leaving the Bath,”
the ”Muse Clio,” the ”Muse Melpomene,” and the three well-known pastorals now at the Louvre--”The Sleeping Shepherdess,” the ”Nest,”
and the ”Shepherd and Shepherdesses.” Of the many famous Venus-pieces that his hand painted during these years it is not easy to write the list. But having signed the ”Marriage of Love and Psyche” at forty-one, he turned his experimental hand to the homely, realistic Dutch style that was having a wide vogue, and painted the ”Dejeuner”--a family of the prosperous cla.s.s of the day at breakfast--showing with rare charm the surroundings and home life of the well-to-do of his time.
All goes well with Boucher. He changes into better quarters in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore, where he lived for the next five years, until 1749; but his eyes are fixed upon a studio and apartments at the old palace of the Louvre, though the hard intriguing of his powerful friends at Court on his behalf failed for some time. He had, indeed, to make another move before he arrived at his longed-for goal.
Pensions Boucher, like others, had found to be somewhat empty affairs; but rooms at the Louvre were a solid possession eagerly sought after by the artists.
In this year of 1744 Boucher created a new fas.h.i.+on at the annual Salon by sending studies and sketches instead of finished pictures; and it set a value upon such things not before realised by artists, for success was instant and loud.
Towards the end of the next, Boucher's forty-second year, the Swedish Amba.s.sador, Count de Tessin, who was to take his leave of Paris, commissioned four pictures to represent the day of a woman of fas.h.i.+on, and to be ent.i.tled ”Morning,” ”Midday,” ”Evening,” and ”Night.”
Boucher painted one of these for him, now known as the ”Marchande de Modes.” The others were painted later, and all had a wide vogue as engravings. The correspondence has interest since it reveals Boucher's business habits; he was paid for a picture on its delivery, and for each of these he was to receive 600 livres (double florins or dollars)--about a hundred and twenty pounds.
In an official doc.u.ment of the Director of Buildings to the king (or Minister of Fine Art, as we should say), written in this year of 1745, Boucher being forty-two, is a ”list of the best painters,” in which Boucher is singled out for distinction as ”an historic painter, living in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honore, opposite the Rue des Deux-Ecus, pupil of Lemoyne, excelling also in landscape, grotesques, and ornaments in the manner of Watteau; and equally skilled in painting flowers, fruit, architecture, and subjects of gallantry and of fas.h.i.+on.”
Not so bad for dry officialdom; the critics could learn a lesson. For he was nothing less. What indeed does he not do? and wondrous well!
this painter of the age.
And the mighty rush of events is about to sweep him into further prominence; the very things which he probably pa.s.sed by with a gay shrug are to enrich him, to help him to his highest fulfilment.
Poor Chateauroux saw that she must lose the king's gadding favour in the conflict with Maurepas unless she joined her lord, now with the army. She realised full well that she had created the new Louis of Ambition--that her going must bring the people's hate to her. But she dared not lose the king. And she went. Maurepas had overdone his jibings. The indiscretion at once rang through the land; became the jest of the army--and Maurepas was not far from the bottom of the business. The discreet indiscretion of covered ways between the king's lodgings and hers only added to the mockeries, and increased the people's hate against, of course, the Chateauroux. Then upon a day in August the small-pox seized Louis at Metz; poor Chateauroux fought for possession of the king in the sick room, until his fear of death--Louis' sole piety--sent her packing--shrinking back in the hired carriage at each halting-place for change of horses, lest she should be seen and torn from her place and destroyed by the populace.
But Louis recovered; Paris rang with bells at joy on his recovery, and he entered the city amidst mad enthusiasm, hailed as The Well-Beloved.
He sent for the Chateauroux to find her dying, Maurepas having to deliver the message of recall. She died suddenly and in great agony, swearing that Maurepas had poisoned her--died in the arms of her poor discarded sister, the De Mailly.
But this year of 1745 Boucher hears a mightier scandal that is to mean vast things to all France--and not least of all to Francois Boucher.
VI
THE POMPADOUR
A young bride had become the gossip of the rich merchant society of Paris--that cla.s.s that was ousting the old n.o.blesse from power. She was a beautiful, a remarkable woman; her wit was repeated in the drawing-rooms, she had all the accomplishments; her charming name--Madame Lenormant d'Etioles.
Draw aside the curtains of the past and we discover our little Jeanne Poisson--grown into this exquisite creature. It has come about in strange fas.h.i.+on enough. The father--a scandalous fellow--having fingered the commissariat moneys in ugly ways to his own use, had been banished for the ugly business. Nor is Jeanne's mother any better than she should be; and the wags wink knowingly at the handsome and rich man of fas.h.i.+on, Monsieur Lenormant de Tournehem, who has been the favoured gallant during the absence of the light-fingered Poisson.
And, of a truth, Lenormant de Tournehem takes astonis.h.i.+ng interest in the little Jeanne--watching over her up-growing and giving her the best of education at the convent, where she wins all hearts, and is known as ”the little queen.” The truth spoken with wondrous prophecy, if unthinkingly, as we shall see. Complacent Poisson came home, and took the rich and fas.h.i.+onable, bland and smiling Lenormant de Tournehem to his arms. Has he not wealth and estates? therefore as excellent a friend for Poisson as for Madame Poisson. The girl Jeanne leaves the convent to be taught the accomplishments by the supreme masters of France, the wits foregather at Madame Poisson's, and the brilliant Jeanne is soon mistress of the arts--coquetry not least of all; has also the most exquisite taste in dress. Under all is a heart cold as steel; calculating as the higher mathematics. She has but one hindrance to ambition--her mean birth. Lenormant de Tournehem rids her even of this slur by making his nephew, Lenormant d'Etioles, marry her, giving the young couple half his fortune for dowry, and the promise of the rest when he dies--also he grants him a splendid town-house, as splendid a country seat. And consequential self-respecting little Lenormant d'Etioles is lord of Etioles, amongst other seignories. So Jane Fish appears as Madame Lenormant d'Etioles, seductive, beautiful, accomplished, to whose house repair the new philosophy, the wits, and artists. She has a certain sense of virtue; indeed openly vows that no one but the king shall ever come between her and her lord. But, deep in her heart, she has harboured a fierce ambition--that the king shall help her to keep her bond. She puts forth all her gifts, all her powers, to win to the strange goal; confides it to her worldly mother and ”uncle,” Lenormant de Tournehem; finds keen allies therein to the reaching of that strange goal. The death of the Chateauroux clears the way. At a masked ball the king is intrigued as to the personality of a beautiful woman who plagues him with her art; he orders the unmasking. Madame Lenormant d'Etioles stands revealed, drops her handkerchief as by accident; the whisper runs through the Court that ”the handkerchief has been thrown!” The king stoops and picks it up. A few evenings later she is smuggled into the ”private apartments.” She goes again a month later; in the morning is seized with sudden terror--she daren't go back to her angry lord lest he do her grievous harm; he will have missed her. The king is touched; allows her to hide from henceforth in the secret apartments; promises the beautiful creature a lodging, her husband's banishment, and early acknowledgment as t.i.tular mistress--before the whole Court at Easter, says the pious Great One. But he has to join the army to play the Conqueror at Fontenoy; and it is later in the year (September) before Madame d'Etioles is presented to the Court in a vast company and proceeds to the queen's apartments to kiss hands on appointment. Thus was Jeanne Poisson raised to the great aristocracy of France in her twenty-third year as Marquise de Pompadour.
Boucher had been one of the brilliant group of artists of the d'Etioles' circle. That the Pompadour's influence had much effect upon his position at Court for a year or two is unlikely; for she had to fight for possession of the king day and night, as the Chateauroux had done, against the queen's party and the unscrupulous enmity of Maurepas. To set down Boucher's favour at Court to her is ridiculous.
He was painting for the queen's apartments at thirty-one when the Pompadour was a school-girl of twelve. But in the year following her rise to power, Boucher painted four pictures for the large room of the Dauphin, which were ”placed elsewhere”; and, the year after that, he was at work upon two pictures for the bedroom of the king at the castle of Marly. It is likely enough that the Pompadour directed this order. She had almost immediately secured the office of the Director-General of Buildings, which covered the direction of the royal art treasures, for ”uncle” Lenormant de Tournehem, who was also a friend of the artist. And from this year it is significant that Boucher paints no more for the opposing camp of the Queen and Dauphin.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VII.--INTERIEUR DE FAMILLE
(In the Louvre)
Boucher had a quick ear for the vogue. Twice he found the Home to be in the artistic fas.h.i.+on; and each time he painted Home life in order to be in the mode. This interior, showing a well-to-do French family of the times at the midday meal, is not only rendered with glitter and atmosphere, but it is valuable as a rich record of the manners and furnishments of his day.]