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But the praises of Diderot and Grimm failed to fill his pockets; and he decided to paint no more academic pieces for the critics' praise. He had indeed no taste for such things, no sympathy with ancient thought nor with the dead past. He was, like his master, a very son of France--a child of his own age, glorying in the love of life and the beauty of his native land.

Having done his duty by his school, he turned his back upon it gleefully, as Boucher had also done before him, and set himself joyously to the painting of the life about him.

His great chance soon came, and in strange guise.

It so happened that a young blood at the court, one Baron de Saint-Julien, went to the painter Doyen with his flame, and asked him to paint a picture of the pretty creature being swung by a bishop whilst he himself watched the display of pretty ankles as the girl went flying through the air. Doyen had scruples; but recommended Fragonard for the naughty business.

Fragonard seized the idea readily enough, except that he made the frail girl's husband swing the beauty for her lover's eyes, using the incident, as usual, but as the trivial theme for a splendid setting amidst trees, glorying in the painting of the foliage--as you may see, if you step into the Wallace galleries, where is the exquisite thing that brought Fragonard fame--the world-famous "Les hazards heureux de l'Escarpolette."

The effect was prodigious. De Launay's brilliant engraving of it popularised it throughout the land. Nobles and rich financiers, and all the gay world of fashion besides, now strove to possess canvases signed by Fragonard. Boucher was grown old and ailing; and just as Boucher had been the painter of the France of fashion under the Pompadour, so Fragonard was now to become the mirror of the court, of the theatre, of the drawing-room, of the boudoir, of the age of Du Barry.

Finding a ready market for subjects of gallantry, he gave rein to his natural bent, and straightway leaped into the vogue. Pictures were the hobby of the nobility and the rich; and France under the Pompadour, and particularly at this the end of her reign, was madly spendthrift upon its hobbies and fickle fancies. The pretty house, delicately tinted rooms, fine furniture, dainty decorations, and charming pictures, were a necessity for such as would be in the fashion.

You shall look in vain for the affected innocence, the na?ve mawkishness, the chaste sentimentality of Greuze in the master-work of Fragonard. He knew nothing of these things--cared less. His was an ardent brush; and he used it ardently; but always you shall find him using his subject, however naughty, as the mere excuse for a glorious picture of trees. He is one of the great landscape-painters of France.

He had many qualities that go to make a decorative painter. Indeed, it is to the Frenchmen of the seventeen-hundreds to whom we may safely go for pictures that make the walls of a drawing-room a delight. Unlike the Italians, they are pleasing to live with. His painting of "La F?te de St. Cloud," in the dining-room of the Governor of the Bank of France, is one of the decorative landscapes of the world.

He was now producing works in considerable numbers--it is his first, his detailed period, somewhat severe in arrangement and style as to composition and handling--the years of "Love the Conqueror," the "Bolt," the "Fountain of Love," of "Le Serment d'Amour," the "Gimblette," "Les Baigneuses," the "Sleeping Bacchante," the "D?but du mod?le," and the like.

His master, Boucher, was grown old; he could not carry out the commissions for the decoration of rooms and for paintings with which he was overwhelmed; and it was in order to help forward his brilliant pupil, his "Frago," that he now introduced him to his old friend and patron the farmer-general Bergeret de Grandcour--a man of great wealth, a lover of art, and an honorary member of the Royal Academy--who became one of Fragonard's most lavish patrons and most intimate friends. Bergeret de Grandcour commissioned several panels in this, Fragonard's thirty-fifth year--the year of his painting the superb "F?te de St. Cloud." This is towards the end of that period of minute and detailed painting which he did with such consummate skill, yet without bringing pettiness into his largeness of conception.

Meantime, Choiseul's masterly mind, having secured peace abroad, saw that France, if she were to keep her sovereign State, must be first cleansed from the dangers that threatened from within. He turned to the blotting out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits, whose vindictive acts against, and quarrels with, the Parliaments, and whose galling and oppressive tyranny, had roused the bitter hatred of thI magistracy and of the people throughout the land. Choiseul they treated as their bitterest enemy. He decided to blot them out, root and branch, from France. The popular party closed up its ranks. Choiseul had not long to wait. The chance came in odd fashion enough. An attempt by the Order to end the Pompadour's scandalous relations with the king was the quaint thing--the match that started the explosion. With all his skill of state-craft, Choiseul leaped to the weapon. In secret concert with the king's powerful favourite he struck at them through the bankruptcy of their banking concerns in the West Indies, caused by their losses in the wars with England; and Louis abolished the society out of the land, secularising its members, and seizing its property.

The Pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. Worn-out by her vast activities, and assailed by debt, she fell ill of a cough that racked her shrunken body. She died, transacting the king's business and affairs of State, on the 15th of April 1764, in her forty-second year.

Whatever may be said of this cold-blooded, calculating, grasping woman, who crushed down every nice instinct of womanhood to win a king's favour, who knew no scruple, who was without mercy, without pardon or forgiveness, without remorse; bitter and adamant in revenge; who turned a deaf ear to the cries from the Bastille; whose heart knew no love but for self; it must be allowed that at least for Art she did great and splendid service. She not only encouraged and brought out the best achievement of her age; she did Art an even more handsome benefit. She insisted on artists painting their age and not aping the dead past.

To Fragonard personally she rendered no particular service. His real achievement began on the eve of her death, when she was a worn-out and broken woman. Nor had Fragonard ever that close touch with the royal house or its favourites during any part of his lifetime that meant so much to the fortunes of his master, Boucher.

There were two patrons for whom Fragonard was about to create a series of masterpieces in the decoration of their splendid and luxurious homes--works of Art which were to have strange adventures and histories. They were both women.

Before this breach between them Fragonard had painted several portraits of the Guimard.

However, the work for the lady was to have far-reaching results little dreamed of. For the completion of the room, Fragonard procured the commission for David, then twenty-five; and David never forgot the service rendered. He was to repay it tenfold when black days threatened; and with rare courage, when even the courage of gratitude was a deadly dangerous commodity.

However, this was not as yet; the sun shone in the skies; and all was gaiety and laughter still.

The "Chiffre d'Amour," the picture of a pretty girl who cuts her lover's monogram in the bark of a tree's trunk, the shadowed tree and figure telling darkly against the glamorous half light beyond, was one of Fragonard's happiest inspirations of these years, as any one may see who steps into the Wallace galleries. Here also may be seen to-day the exquisite "Fair-haired Boy." The boldly painted "L'Heure de Berger" was wet upon the canvas about this year, though its boldness of handling foretells his later manner, whilst the spirit of Boucher is over all.

Four years after the death of the Pompadour the patient neglected queen, amiable dull Marie Leczinska, followed her supplanter to the grave. The king's grief and contrition and his solemn vows to mend his ways came somewhat over-late; they lasted little longer than the drying of his floods of tears over the body of his dead consort.

He spoke figuratively--it was safer so. But 'twas understood. Indeed, the pretty sentiment was well received by the old aristocrats and young bloods about the table; and they drank a bumper to the pretty Madame du Barry. For the Jesuits had no love for the king's minister Choiseul--and the madcap girl was but the lure whereby the king was to be drawn from his great minister. So religion rallied about the frail beauty, and hid behind her extravagant skirts--one of which cost close on ?2000--and, with the old nobility, drank damnation to the king's minister and To the devil with the new thought and with parliaments. Long live the king and the divine right of kings!

Our worthy priest seems to have had the ear of destiny, though he dated his certainty near upon a couple of months too soon.

So it came about that before a year was out the old king was become the doting creature of a light-o'-love of Paris, the transfigured milliner and street-pedlar, Jeanne, natural child of one Anne B?qus, a low woman of Vaucouleurs. This Jeanne, of no surname and unknown father, a pretty, kindly, vulgar child of the gutters, with fair hair and of madcap habits, was some twenty-six years of age, when--being reborn under a forged birth-certificate at the king's ordering, as Anne de Vaubernier, and being married by the same orders to the Count du Barry, an obliging nobleman of the court--she appeared at Versailles as the immortally frail Countess du Barry.

The remonstrances of Choiseul with the king against this new degradation of the throne of France, and his unconcealed scorn and disgust of the upstart countess, made a dangerous enemy for France's great minister, and was to cost him and his France very dear.

The king's infatuation brought royalty into utter contempt amongst the people. It was to cost France a terrible price--and Fragonard not least of all.

One of the first gifts from the king to the Du Barry was the little castle of Louveciennes; and she proceeded with reckless extravagance to furnish her handsome home. Drouais, the artist, sold to her for 1200 livres , as overdoors for one of the rooms, four panels that he had bought from Fragonard. They have vanished; but they served Fragonard a good turn--he received an order to decorate Du Barry's luxurious pavilion of Luciennes, which she had had built to entertain the king at her "little suppers."

Thus it chanced that for this wilful light-o'-love Fragonard painted the great master-work of his life--the five world-famous canvases of the series of "The Progress of Love in the Heart of Maidenhood," or, as they are better known, "The Romance of Love and Youth"--the old king masquerading therein as a young shepherd, and the Du Barry as a shepherdess. In "The Ladder" the Du Barry plays the part of a timid young girl who starts as she sees her shepherd-lover to be the king; the "Pursuit" follows; then the "Souvenirs" and "Love Crowned." The last of the five, the discarded mistress in "Deserted," was only begun; and was not completed by Fragonard until twenty years later at Grasse, to complete the set.

What it was that struck a chill into the frail Du Barry's favour, so that the masterpieces of Fragonard never entered within her doors, is not fully known. Whatsoever the cause, these canvases were rejected by her. It is said that the work was found to be disappointing, being lacking as to the indecencies by the Du Barry and the king, who preferred the more suggestive panels of Vien. It is true that Fragonard's earlier four panels which she possessed were in questionable taste, and that these five were pure; indeed, their trivial story matters little amidst the massy foliage and the majestic trees that spring into the swinging heavens. Fragonard suspected, and somewhat resented the suspicion, that he was being made to paint in a sort of artistic duel with Vien. At any rate, Vien was chosen. So it came that the discarded pictures lay in Fragonard's studio for over twenty years, when we shall see them, rolled up, making a chief part of the strange baggage of Fragonard's flight from his beloved Paris.

The fact was that the Du Barry was of the gutter. She had the crude love of fineries of the girl promoted from the gutter. She loved display. But into her home she brought the vulgar singers of the lowest theatres, where the Pompadour had brought the wits and leading artists of her time. The old culture was gone. Louis laughed now at ribald songs, and was entertained by clowns.

It is part of the irony of life that Fragonard, who never entered into the favourite's friendship, should have become the recognised artist of her day. It was a part of that grim irony that caused the Du Barry, whose age he honours, to reject the most exquisite work of his hands--in which his art is seen at its highest achievement, the tender half-melancholy of the thing stated with a lyric beauty that displays his genius in its supreme flight.

A search through the Du Barry's bills--and there are four huge bound volumes of them--reveals the list of pictures painted by Boucher, by Vien, by Greuze, and by others, for the spendthrift woman; but of transaction with Fragonard there is no slightest hint.

MARRIAGE

There lived in Grasse, with its rich harvests of flowers, and given to the distilling of perfumes therefrom, a family that had come from Avignon--its name, G?rard, and on friendly terms with the Fragonards. It so chanced that a young woman of the family, the seventeen-year-old Marie Anne G?rard, was sent to Paris, to the care of Fragonard, in order to earn her living in the shop of a scent-seller, one Isnard. The girl had artistic leanings, and fell a-painting of fans and miniatures. She had need of a teacher; and who better qualified for the business than her townsman, the famous Fragonard? What more natural than that Fragonard should become her master? She was a jovial girl. So they would talk of home, and the people amongst whom they had been bred. She was no particular beauty, as her picture by Fragonard proves; she had the rough accent of Provence; was thick-set and clumsy of figure, and of heavy features, but she had the youth and freshness and health of a young woman's teens, that hide the blemishes and full significance of these coarsenesses. She and Fragonard fell a-kissing. Fragonard, now thirty-seven, married Marie Anne G?rard in her eighteenth year; and she bore him a much loved daughter, Rosalie--and ten years later, in 1780, a son, Alexandre Evariste Fragonard.

There came to live with the newly married couple his wife's younger sister Marguerite and her young brother Henri G?rard, who was learning engraving.

Fragonard's marriage at once affected his habits and his art. The wild oats of his artistic career were near sown. The naughtinesses of girls of pleasure gave place to the grace and tenderness of the home-life--the cradle took the place of the bed of light adventures; and children blossomed on to his canvases. He set aside the make-believe shepherds and shepherdesses of the vogue; and henceforth painted the "real thing" in rural surroundings.

He brought to his homeliest pictures a beauty of arrangement, a sense of style, and a dignity worthy of the most majestic subjects. He came at this time under the influence of the Dutch landscapists, and stole from them the solidity of their massing in foliage, the truth of their character-drawing, the close observation of their cattle and animal-life, their cloudy skies, and the finish and force of their craftsmanship. Whether he went into Holland is disputed. He was too keen an artist, his was too original a genius, to imitate their style or take on their Dutch accent. He simply took from them such part of their craftsmanship as could enter into the facile gracious genius of France without clogging its grace. He is now content with his house and garden for scenery, with his family for models. He realises that an artist has no need to go abroad to find "paintable things."

The "Heureuse F?condit?," the "Visit to the Nurse" , the "Schoolmistress," the "Good Mother," the "Retour au logis," the "L'Education fait tout," the "Dites donc, si'l vous pla?t," are of this period.

In all he did he proves himself an artist, incapable of mediocrity, bringing distinction and style to all that he touches.

Fragonard also excelled in the painting of miniatures. And there are small portraits under fancy names to be seen at the Louvre, painted with a breadth and force that prove him to have known the work of Franz Hals. The figure of a man, known as "Figure de Fantaisie" or "Inspiration," is stated with a directness and vividness worthy of the great Dutch master. Indeed, there is much in the direct handling of the paint and the life of the thing that recalls Franz Hals--the very arrangement of the dress and the treatment of the hand being a careless attempt to recall the habits and fashions of the Dutchman. "La Musique" repeats the impression. And even the more pronouncedly French style of the pretty woman in "La Chanteuse" does not disguise the inspiration of Franz Hals in the painting of the bodice, the cuffs, and the details--the high ruffle is "dragged in" from Hals's day. The "Music Lesson" at the Louvre was painted about the same time.

Fragonard's old master, Boucher, for some time had been "going about like a shadow of himself." The year after Fragonard's marriage the old painter was found dead, sitting at his easel before an unfinished picture of Venus, the brush fallen out of his fingers--the light of the "Glory of Paris" gone out.

Yet Louis of France spake prophecy--if unwitting of it. The guillotine was not to have him. In 1774 he was stricken down with the small-pox, and the sick-room in the palace saw the Du Barry and her party fight a duel with Choiseul's party for his possession--never, surely, was a more grim, more fantastic warfare than that bitter intrigue to get the confessor to the king's bedside, that meant the dismissal of the favourite before he should be allowed to receive the Absolution--in which the strange blasphemy was enacted of the Eucharist being hustled about the passages, whilst the bigots strove against its administration, and the freethinkers demanded the last consolation of the Church. On the 10th of May the small-pox took his distempered body, "already a mass of corruption," that was hastily flung into a coffin and hurried without pomp, or circumstance, or pretence of honours to St. Denis--being rattled thereto at the trot, the crowd that lined the way showering epigrams not wholly friendly upon its passing; and was buried amongst the bones of the ancient kings of his race, unattended by the Court, and amidst the contempt and loud curses of his people.

Even the poor weeping Du Barry was gone, hustled from the palace at the wandering orders of the dying delirious king. D'Aiguillon also, and Maupeou and Terray were gone. And the Court was hailing the new king and his queen--ill-fated Louis the Sixteenth and tactless Marie Antoinette.

The scandalous levity of the privileged class of the day, and its ruthless vindictiveness when thwarted, had near done their work. A proud and gallant people touched bottom in humiliation. The pens of the wits and thinkers sent the new opinion broadcast amongst a people wholly scandalised and punished by the corruption of their governors. These writings made astounding and alarming way. The "intellectuals" were all on the side of the people--Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Condillac, the Abb? Raynal. With wit and sarcasm and invective and argument, they stirred passions, appealing to self-respect and dignity and honour and the innate love of freedom in the strong; they appealed to common-sense, to the craving for liberty in man's being, to the rights of the individual; and the printing-press scattered their wit and wisdom throughout the land to the uttermost corners of France. They sneered away false aristocracy, false religion. They wrought to overthrow the old order, and brought it into contempt. And they needed to manufacture no evidence. France had lain supine, a mighty people as they proved themselves when their right arms were freed--lain in chains under the heel of a king who had been capable of setting their necks under the feet of a trivial and foolish woman, whose nursery had been the gutter.

To Fragonard these things were but tattle; yet the doing of them was to reach to his hearth; the consequences of them were to strip him bare and wreck him--he was to see his wife and womenkind dragging through the streets of Paris to beg bread and meat at the gates of the city. But the future was mercifully hidden from him. He was now at the height of his career; and was to taste wider success.

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.

The party at once turned their faces homewards, returning to Paris in leisurely fashion 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 friendships 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 . 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.

THE TERROR

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