French Art from Watteau to Prud'hon Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt: ...a un petit garcon, pendant qu'elle lui vergete son chapeau pour l'envoyer en classe.' Gracefully and pleasantly she bends towards her charge, who needs a little discipline, who does not quite satisfy her, who has not reached the standard that in her solicitude she would have wished. To the very next year--to the year 1740--belong two famous pieces: one of them 'Le Benedicit, ' and the other 'La Mere laborieuse.' They were the occasion of the painter's presentation to Louis Quinze. 'Sunday, the 17th November, M. Chardin, of the Royal Academy of Painting and of Sculpture, was presented to the King by the Comptroller-General with two pictures of his composition, which His Majesty received very favourably.' Lepicie, who had engraved 'La Pourvoyeuse, ' engraved 'La Mere laborieuse' in the year in which it was exhibited, and 'Le Bendicit' four years afterwards. Both, or versions of both, are in the Louvre. Repetitions of 'Le Benedicite' are at Stockholm and St. Petersburg. And a repetition of 1 La Mere laborieuse' is at Stockholm. A later Genre piece--with no domestic sentiment to help it in the least: a piece of austere excellence--was shown in 1753, as 'from the Cabinet of M. de la Live'; it was presented then as being a replica of a picture belonging to the King of Sweden--I know it only from Le Bas's engraving. At the time of its exhibition, this piece, a 'Dessinateur, ' or 'Etude du Dessein, ' to call it by the name of the print, was, on its public appearance, greatly discussed. Critics, according to their competence or their incompetence, differed even then. One Esteve, writing in a 'letter to a friend, upon the Exhibition of Pictures, ' asks whether talents great as Chardin's 'should be employed to paint a nature formless and disagreeable?' 'Can he be pardoned ...