padour are 31, R. wall, Venus commanding Vulcan to
forge arms for AEneas, and 36, L. wall, Vulcan presenting them to
Venus. Boucher with all his faults was a grand decorative artist of
extraordinary versatility, but the loose habits and careless methods
of his later days are reflected in slovenly drawing and waning powers
of invention. Reynolds, who visited him in Paris, noted the change,
and describes how he found the artist at work on a large picture
without studies or models of any kind, and on expressing his surprise,
was told by Boucher that he did in earlier days use them, but had
dispensed with them for many years. Fragonnard, who on his return from
Rome, had set about some canvases in the grand traditional style of
the earlier masters, of which an example may be seen in 290, R. wall,
Coresus[218] and Callirrhoe, soon perceived that fame lay not in that
direction, and devoted himself with exuberant talent and
unconscionable facility to satisfy the frivolous tastes and refined
animality of royal and courtly patrons. For it was a time when life
was envisaged as a perpetual feast of enjoyment; a vision of roguish
eyes and rouged and patched faces of sprightly beribboned and perfumed
gallants, playing at shepherds and shepherdesses, of luxurious
sensuality untrammelled by a Christianity minus the Ten Commandments,
soon to be hustled away by the robust and democratic ideals of David.
Another early work of Fragonnard in this room is 291, R. wall, The
Music Lesson: some of his more characteristic productions we shall
meet with in the Salle La Caze. A somewhat feeble protest against the
prevailing vulgarity and debasement of contemporary art was made by
Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) and Jean Baptiste Greuze
(1725-1805) in their rendering of scenes of domesticity and of the
pathos of simple lives. Chardin is well seen in this room in his
laborious studies of still life, 89 and 90, L. wall, diploma works,
and in 91 and 92, same wall, The Industrious Mother, and Grace before
Meat. The last, a delightful work, won for the artist Diderot's
powerful advocacy, and made him the popular interpreter of bourgeois
intimacies. Other patient studies of still life are: 95, 96, 101, and
102; and R. wall 94. On the same wall hang, 97, The Ape as Antiquary,
and 99, The Housewife. If Chardin touches the border-line between
sentiment and sentimentality, Greuze (end wall) in 369, Return of the
Prodigal; 370, A Father's Crime; and 3