Burlington Fine Arts Club
Published: 2017-12-07
Total Pages: 288
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Excerpt from French Art of the Eighteenth Century There are indeed marked exceptions to the rule thus tentatively laid down, and, most marked of all, that of Antoine Watteau himself. The painter of Fe'tes Galemies, the incomparable master, who though he never attempted themes of serious import (save only those sacred subjects which, with him, were Of the usual frivolous eighteenth-century type), touched with his own wistful melancholy, with the beauty of his own solitary, yearning soul, the scenes of frivolous gaiety, of artificial comedy, Which, with the changeful palette of the enchanter, he evoked. He was the Giorgione of the eighteenth century, but a Giorgione the true poetry of whose art was not fully appreciated by the connoisseurs or the society of his own day. To his contemporaries he was just the initiator and the most brilliant exponent of the Fete Galam'e school, a painter of exquisite skill, but not to be included in the highest category. The most complete manifestations of his art must still be sought for in the Louvre, In the Prussian palaces, and in the Wallace Collection. Unavailing efforts were made to obtain for the recent exhibition either the Fe'te Cfiampe'tre, in the National Gallery of Scotland,1 or the still more famous Plaz'sz'rs a'u Ba! Of the Dulwich Gallery; or again, that masterpiece of a higher order, l'amour Paz'sz'ble, which is in one of the palaces at Potsdam. As it was, there were shown three little pieces not without their own peculiar significance in the oeuvre of the Valenciennes master; and with them a sheet Of studies of a Negro's head which illustrates his art at its highest point. There is deep pathos of a wholly different kind in the technically superb art of Chardin - so moving in its na'i've simplicity, its unquestion - About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.