The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 274, September 22, 1827. Various
and they were afterwards known in Rome by the name of the inseparables, for they lived in the same house, worked together, and united the produce of their labours. They were employed to copy all the best pictures in the Farnese Palace, and every evening attended an academy of drawing. Mignard was superior in practice, while Fresnoy was perfect master of the rules, history, and theory of his profession. They communicated their sentiments to each other, Fresnoy furnishing his friend with noble ideas, and the latter instructing the former to paint with more ease and dispatch. Fresnoy painted several fine pictures in Rome, and, in 1653, he left that city, in company with his friend, travelled to Venice, and then to Lombardy. Here the two friends parted,3 Mignard returning to Rome, and Fresnoy to his native city. After his arrival in Paris, he painted some beautiful historical pictures, which established his reputation. He perfectly understood architecture, and drew designs for many elegant mansions in Paris. During his travels in Italy, he planned and composed his De Arte Graphica, an excellent poem, full of valuable information, and containing unerring rules for the painter. This poem was twenty years in hand, and was not published until three years4 after the author's death, which took place in 1665. It has been observed, that Fresnoy possessed the genius requisite for forming a great master; and had he applied himself more strictly to painting, and educated pupils, he would doubtless have proved one of the greatest painters France ever produced. But, possessing high literary talents, he chose to lay down precepts for his countrymen, rather than to present them with examples of his art. He adhered too closely to the theory of painting, neglecting the more essential part—practice.
In the reign of Louis XIV., Nicholas Poussin distinguished himself as a painter, by displaying exquisite knowledge and great skill in composition. He generally painted ancient ruins, landscapes, and historical figures. He was likewise well acquainted with the manners and customs of the ancients; and, though he educated no pupils, and never had any imitators, his pictures are universally admired in every European country. Charles le Brun5 established the French school,—an undertaking which Voüet had previously attempted. Le Brun drew well, had a ready conception, and a fertile imagination. His compositions are vast, but, in various instances, they may justly be termed outre. He possessed the animation, but not the inspiration of Raphael; and his design is not so pure as that of Domenichino, nor so lively as that of Annibale Caracci. Eustache le Seur, Le Brun's rival, possessed remarkable dignity, and wonderful correctness of style. Indeed, by some he has been called the Raphael of France. Had he lived longer, (for he died at the age of thirty-eight,) the French school, under his direction, would most probably have adopted a manner which might have been imitated, and which might have established the arts on an eminence to vie with even imperial Rome. But, by the concurrence of extraordinary circumstances, Le Brun was the fashionable painter of the time, and it therefore became necessary to imitate his manner, rather than the more simple and more refined one of his rival. As Le Brun's imitators wanted his genius, his faults not only became current, but more glaring and deformed.
After Le Brun's death, which took place in 1690, the French artists degenerated greatly, their productions being decorated in a gaudy and theatrical way, without due regard to taste or decorum. Their school, some years ago, altered its principles, under the auspices of the spirited Count de Caylus, who possessed considerable merit as an artist. The count, by his high rank and fortune, had the means of encouraging the imitators of the ancients, and of procuring the best models in Italy for study. He, in conjunction with Monsieur Vien, first formed the design of restoring a pure taste in France; and if his countrymen had followed the path thus marked out for them, they would now have been equal to the greatest of the Greek painters. But it appears that they are incapable of rising to any very extraordinary height in the arts, for, with the exception of Le Seur, and one or two others, they have ever wanted that elevation of mind which so eminently distinguished the Romans. Though De Caylus greatly purified painting in his time, yet his precepts and examples had little or no weight after his death, for the art again retrograded into its original state—a state from which the French professors, as before observed, seem incapable of rising.
In our own days some few French artists have distinguished themselves, particularly Lefevre, who was the chief painter to Napoleon. A full-length portrait of the emperor in his coronation robes, for which Lefevre received the sum of five thousand Napoleons, and which I have lately had the pleasure of seeing, is very correct in drawing, and extremely rich and harmonious in colour; but it wants freedom and boldness of execution.
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