id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I

JEAN-BAPTISTE SIMÉON CHARDIN occupies a curious position among the artists of his time and country. His art which, neglected and despised for many decades after his death, is now admitted by those best competent to judge to be supreme as regards technical excellence, and, within the narrow limits of its subject matter, to possess merits of far greater significance than are to be found in the work of any Frenchman, save Watteau, from the founding of the school of Fontainebleau to modern days, is apt to be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, un-French, out of touch, and out of sympathy with the expression of the artistic genius of eighteenth-century France. A grave misconception of the true inwardness of things! Rather should it be said that Chardin was the one typically French painter among a vast crowd of more or less close followers of a tradition imported from Italy; the one painter of the actual life of his people among the artificial caterers for an artificial and often depraved and lascivious taste; a man of the people, of the vast multitude formed by a homely, simple bourgeoisie; painting for the people the subjects that appealed to the people.

In order to understand the position of Chardin in the art of his country it is necessary to bear in mind that the autochthonous painting of France, the real expression of French genius, was from its early beginnings closely connected with the art of the North, and not with that of Italy. The style of the early French miniaturists of the Burgundian School, of Fouquet and of Clouet, is the style of the North; their art is interwoven with the art of Flanders. When in the time of François I. the School of Fontainebleau, headed by Primaticcio and Rosso, promulgated the gospel that artistic salvation could only be found in the emulation of Raphael and the masters of the late Italian Renaissance, and of the Bolognese eclectics; when finally degenerated painters like Albani were held up as example, official art became altogether Italianised and stereotyped; and the climax was reached with the foundation of the School of Rome by Louis XIV. But, though officially neglected and looked upon with disfavour, the national element was not to be altogether crushed by the foreign importation. Poussin remained French in spite of Italian training, and held aloof from the coterie of Court painters. Jacques Callot carried on the national tradition, though as a satirist and etcher of scenes from contemporary life, rather than as a painter. And the Netherlands continued directly or indirectly to stir up the sluggish stream of national French art—directly through Watteau, who, born a Netherlander, became the most typically French of all French painters; indirectly, half a century earlier, through the brothers Le Nain, who drew their subjects and inspiration from the North and their sombre colour from Spain; and afterwards through Chardin, whose style was so closely akin to that of the Flemings that, when he first submitted some pieces of still-life to the members of the Academy, Largillière himself took them to be the work of some excellent unknown Flemish painter.

What are the qualities that raise Chardin's art so high above the showy productions of the French painters of his generation, placing him on a pedestal by himself, and gaining for him the respect, the admiration, the love of all artists and discerning art lovers? Why should this painter of still-life and of small unpretentious domestic genre pieces be extolled without reservation and ranked among the world's greatest masters?