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3
THE
AGE OF REASON
England
and
France
eighteenth century
The
period round
about
r
7
had
seen
the
culmination
of the
Baroque
movement in
Catholic Europe.
The
Protestant
countries
could
not
help
being
in1presscd
by
this all-pervading fashion but, nevertheless, they did
not
actually
adopt
it.
This even
applies
to England during the Restoration
period,
when
the Stuart
court
Iboked towards France
and abhorred
the
taste
and outlooKUfthe
Puritans. It was
during
this
period
that
England
produced
her
greatest architect, Sir
Christopher Wren (r632-1723),
who
was
given the
task
of
rebuilding
London s churches
after
the
disastrous
fire
of
1666. It is
interesting to
con1pare his St Paul s Cathcdral,_figure
299
with a church of
the Ronun Baroque, built
only
some
twenty
years earlier,
page
436 jigure
282. We
see
that Wren
was definitely
influenced
by
the
groupings and
effects
of
the Baroque
architect,
although
he
himself
had
never been
to
Rome.
Like
Borromini s church, Wren s
cathedral,
which
is
much
larger in scale, consists
of
a central cupola, flanking towers,
and the
suggestion
of
a ten1ple fayade
to
frame
the main entrance. There
is
even
a definite similarity
between Borromini s llaroque towers and Wren s,
particularly
in the
second
storey. Nevertheless,
the
general itnpression
of the
two fayades is very different. St Paul s is not
curved.
There is
no
suggestion
of,rnovetncnt, rather ofstrength and
stability.
The way in
which
the p;i.red cohnnns arc used to give stateliness
and
nobility
to
the
£tyade recalls Versailles, page 448 jigure 291
rather
than
the Ronun
Baroque. Looking
at
the
details, we tnay
even wonder whether or not to
call Wren s style
Baroque.
There is
nothing of the
fi·eakish
or
fantastic in
his
decoration.
All his forn1s
adhere
strictly-
to
the
best n1odels
of the
Italian
Renaissance. Each
fonn
and
each part of the building can be
viewed by
itself
without
losing its intrinsic
meaning.
Cmnpared with
the exuberance
ofBorronllni, or of the architect ofMelk, Wren
in1presses us
as being
restrained
and
sober.
The
contrast
between Protestant
and
Catholic
architecture is
even
more
marked
when we
consider
the
interiors
ofWrcn s
churches-
for
instance
that ofSt Stephen Walbrook in L o n d o n . f \ ~ u r e ;oo.
A
church
like this
is
designed
mainly as
a hall where
the
£1ithful meet
for worship.
lts
aim
is not
to conjure up
a vision
of another
world,
but
rather
to allow
us to
collect
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58 Ti lE
i\C>
Of Rci\SON
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459 I,NCI.AND AND f-Illdoll, r675- 1710
JOO
Sir Christopher
Wr
en
turrri••r if
1/te
uu t
of
Sl
Step/tell
Wai Jrook,
t.,.
1ou, 16
72
our tho ughts. In the many churches he designed,
Wre
n e
nd
eavoured to
give ever
-n ew
variations on the th
eme
of such a hall, which would be
bo th dignified and simple.
As
with ch
ur
ches, so
wit
h castle
s. No
king ofEngland
cou
ld have
raised the prodigious sums to build a Versailles, a
nd no
English peer
wou
ld have cared to compete with the German pr incelings in luxury
and extravagwce. It
is
true that the building craze reached England . The
D uke
of
M arlborough s Blenheim Palace is even larger in scale than Prince
Eugene s Belvedere.
But
these were exceptions. The ideal
of
he
English eighteenth century was not the palace but the country house.
The architects of these
cou
ntry houses usually rejected the
extravagances
of
the Baroque style. It was their ambi ti
on
not to infi·inge
any rule
of
what they consider
ed
good taste , a
nd
so they were anxious
to keep as close ly
as
possible to the real or pretended laws
of
cla
ss
ical
archi tecture. Architects
of
the Italian Renaissance w
ho
had studi
ed
and
measured the ruins
of
classical buildings with scientific care had published
their findings in te
xtbo
oks to p rovide builders and craftsmen with patterns.
T he
mo
st famous
of
these books was
wr
it ten
by
Andrea Palladio, page
62
T his book ofPalladio s came to be considered the ultimate authority on all
rules
of
taste in archi tec
tur
e in eighteenth- cen
tur
y England. To bu
il
d o
ne
s
villa in the Palladian m anner was considered thelast word in
fas
hio
n.
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41 0 THE
AGE
Or- f
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461 ENGLAND
A il ANCe, EIC H I CEN I lJRY
land
sc
ape garden as the ideal surroundings for their Palladian v
ill as.
Just
as
they had appealed to
the
authority ofan Italian architect fo r the rules
of
reason and taste
in
bu ildi
ng
, so they turned to a so
uthern
painter for a
standard
ofb
eau ty in scenery.
Th
eir idea of what nature sh
ou
ld l
ook
like
was largely derived from the paintings of Cla ude Lorrain . It is interesting
to compare the view
of
the lovely grounds o
fStourhead
in
Wilt
shire,
jig re302 which we re laid
ou
t before the middle of the eighteenth
century, with wo rks by these two masters.
Th
e
tem
ple in the background
again re calls Palladia s Villa Rotonda (which was,
in
its turn , modelled on
the Roman Panth
eo
n), while the whole vista
wit
h its lake, its bridge and
i
ts
evocation ofRoman buildings co nfirms
my
remarks on the influence
which the paintings of Claude Lorrain ,
page
396 jigure 255 were to have
on the beauty of the En glish landscape.
The position ofEnglish painters and sculptors
under
the
ru
le of taste
and reason was not always enviable. W e have seen that the victory of
Protestantism
in
England, and
the
Puritan
host
ili
ty
to images and
to
lux
ur
y had dealt the tradition
of
art in England a severe blow. Almost the
on
ly
purpo
se for which painting was still
in
demand was that ofsupplying
liken
ess
es, and even this function had largely been met by foreign artists
s
uch as
Holbein,
page
37
4
and VanDyck,
page 403
w
ho we
re ca lled to
Eng
land after they had estab
li
shed their reputations abroad.
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462 THE
AGE
f
REASON
The fashionable gentlen1en of Lord
Burlington s
days had no objection
to
paintings or sculptures on puritan grounds, but
they
were not eager
to
place conunissions
with
na6ve artists who had not yet made a
natne
in the
outside
world.
If
they
wanted
a
painting
for
their
mansions
they
would
much rather
buy one which bore
the name
of
some fatuous Italian nuster.
They prided
thetnselves on
being
connoisseurs,
and
smne
of
thcn1
assetnbled the most admirable collections
of
old masters,
without,
however,
giving
much employment
to
the
painters
of
their time.
This
state
of
affairs greatly irritated a young English engraver,
who
had
to
make his living by illustrating books. His name was Wl11iam Hogarth
(1697-1764). He felt
that he had
it in him
to be
as
good
a painter
as
those
whose works were bought for hundreds of pounds frmn abroad, but he
knew that there
was
no
public for
conternporary
art
in
England. He
therefore
set out deliberately
to
create a new
type
of painting which
should
appeal to his
countrymen.
He
knew that they were
likely
to
ask
What
is
the use
of
a painting?
and he
decided
that, in
order
to
impress
people brought
up
in the puritan tradition, art must have an
obvious
purpose. Accordingly, he planned a number
of
paintings
which
should
teach the people the
rewards
of
virtue
and the
wages
of
sin. He ·would
show
a Rake s progress fi·om profligacy
and
idleness
to
crime and death,
or The
four
stages of cruelty frmn a
boy
teasing a cat to a grown-up s
brutal
murder. He
would
paint
these edifYing stories
and warning
examples in such a
way that
anyone who saw the series
of
pictures would
understand all
the
incidents
and
the lessons
they
taught.
His
paintings, in
fact, should resen1blc a kind
of
dumb show, in which all the characters
have their appointed task and
tnake
its n1eaning clear through gestures and
the usc
of
stage properti es. Hogarth hin1sclf
compared
this new
type of
painting
to
the art
of
the
l a y w ~ i g h t
and the theatrical
producer.
He
did
everything
to bring
out what
he
called
the character of
each ftgurc, not
only
through
his face but also through his dress and behaviour.
Each
ofhis
picture sequences can
be read
like a story or, rather, like a sermon. In this
respect, this type
of
art was not perhaps quite
as
new
as Hogarth
thought.
We
know
that
medieval art
used
itnages
to impart
a lesson,
and
this
tradition
of
the picture
sermon
had lived on in popular art
l p
tO
the time
of Hogarth. Crude
prints
had been
sold at fairs
to show the
fate
of
the
drunkard or the perils
of
gambling,
and
the ballad-mongers sold pamphlets
with
similar tales.
Hogarth, however,
was
no popular
artist
in
this sense.
He
had nnde
a careful study
of he
masters
of the
past
and of
their
way of
achieving pictorial effects. He knew the Dutch masters, such as Jan Steen,
who filled their pictures with hum.orous episodes fi·orn
the
life
of the
people and excelled in bringing
out
the characteristic expression of a type,
page
428 jigure
278 He also knew the
methods of
the Italian artists
of
his
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AND
1-l
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<
.J 64 THE
ACE
OF RJ..ASON
tragic scene, n1ade even
more
tragic by the grotesque dwarf, who
mocks it, and by the contrast with the two elegant visitors, who had
known the rake in the days of his prosperity.
Each
figure
and
each episode in
the
picture has its place
in
the
story Hogarth tells, but
that
alone would not suffice to
make it
a
good painting. What is renurkable in Hogarth
is
that, for all his
preoccupation with his subject-tnatter, he still
rctnained
a painter,
not
only
in the
way he
used his brush
and
distributed light
and
colour,
but
also
in the
considerable skill
he showed in
arranging his
groups. The
group round
the rake, for all its
grotesque
horror,
is as
carefillly composed
as any
Italian painting
of
he classical tradition.
Hogarth, in £:1-ct was very proud
of
his
understanding of
this
tradition.
He
was sure
that
he had found the
law
which governed
beauty. He
wrote
a
book,
which
he
called The Analysis of Beauty
to
explain the idea
that
an undulating line will always be nwre beautiful
than
an angular one.
Hogarth,
too,
belonged
to
the age
of
reason
and believed in teachable rules of taste,
but
he did not
succeed
in
converting his compatriots frorn their bias for the old tnasters. It
is
true
that
his picture-series earned
him_
great
£1 n1e and
a considerable
sum
ofnwney,
but his
reputation
was
due
less to
the
actual paintings
than to reproductions he made of thetn
in engravings which
were
bought by an eager public.
As
a painter, the connoisseurs
of the
period did not
take him seriously and, throughout his life,
he waged
a
grim
campaign against fashionable taste.
It
was only a
generation
later
that
an English painter was born
whose
art satisfied
the
elegant society
of eighteenth-centtuy
England
Sir Joshua Reynolds
r723-92).
Unlike Hogarth, Reynolds had
been to
Italy
and had
come,so agree
with
the connoisseurs
of
his
tin1e
that
the great tnasters
of
the Italian Renaissance
-Raphael,
Michelangelo,
Correggio and Titian- were the
unrivalled exen1plars
of
true art. He had absorbed the teaching
attributed to
the Carracci,
pa szes
390-1
that the only hope for an artist lay in the careful study
and in1itation of
what were
called the excellences of the ancient
masters-
the d r u g h t s m n s h ~ p ofRaphacl, the colouring of Titian,
and
so on. Later in his life,
when
Reynolds
had
nnde a career
as
an
artist in
England and
had becmne the first president of the newly
fotinded Royal Acaderny
of
Art,
he
expounded this acadetnic
doctrine
in a series of discourses, which still rnake interest ing
reading.
They
show that
Reynolds, like his conte tnporari es (such
as
Dr Johnson), believed in the rules
of
aste
and
the importance
of
authority
in art.
He
believed
that the
right
procedure in
art could,
to
a large extent,
be
taught, if students were given facilities for
studying
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~ . N G L A N D
AND
fRANCE ~ . G H T E E N T H r : ~ . N T U R Y
the
recognized
masterpieces of Italian
paindng.
His lectures arc fu
of exhortations to
strive after lofty
and
dignified subjects, because
Reynolds believed that
only
the
grand
and impressive was worthy of
the
narnc
of
Great
Art. 'Instead
of
endeavouring
to
an1usc
mankind
with
the
n1inute
neatness
of
his
imhations,
the
genuine painter',
Reynolds
wrote
in his third Discourse 'must endeavour
to
im_provc
them
by the
grandeur
of
his ideas.'
From_
such a quotation it
might
easily appear that Reynolds was
rather
pompous
and
boring,
but
if we read his Discourses and
look
at
his pictures, we soon get rid
of
this prejudice. The £tct
is that
he
accepted the
opinions
about art which he found in the writings of
the influential critics
of
the
seventeenth
century, all
of
whon1
were
much concerned
with the dignity
ofwhat
was called 'history
painting'. We have seen how hard artists had
to
struggle against social
snobbery which
made people
look down on
painters
and
sculptors
because
they
worked
with their
hands,
J?af ,CS 287 8.
We know
how
artists
had to
insist
that
their real work was
not handiwork
but brain
work,
and
that
they
were no
less fit
to be
received into polite society
than
poets or scholars. It was
through
these discussions
that
artists
were led to
stress the itnportance
of poetic
invention in art,
and to
emphasize the elevated subjects
with which their
minds
were
concerned.
'Granted,' they
argued,
'that there may
be son1ething
tnenial in
painting
a portrait or a landscape from nature
where
the
hand merely
copies
what
the eye sees,
but
surely it requires
more than
mere craftsnnnship: it requires erudition and inugination to paint a
subject like Reni's
Aurora or
.Poussin's
Et in
Arcadia ego ?', paJ? CS
394-5 jigures
253 254.
We know
today
that there is
a fallacy
in
this
argmnent.
We know
that
there
is
nothing
undignifled
in
any
kind
of
handiwork
and that, rnoreover, it needs 1nore
than
a good eye
and
a
sure
band to
paint a
good portrait or
landscape.
Dnt every
period and
every society has its own prejudices
in
matters
of
art
and of taste-
ours, of course, not excluded. Indeed,
what
nukes it so interesting
to
examine
these ideas, which highly intelligent
people
in the
past took
so much for granted,
is
precisely
that
we learn in this
way
also
to
examine ourselves.
Reynolds was
an
intellectual, a friend
of Dr johnson and
his circle,
but
equally welcom_e
in
the elegant
country
houses
and town
nunsions of the powerful and
the wealthy.
And though he
sincerely
believed in the superiority of history painting,
and
hoped for its
revival
in
England, he accepted the fact
that
the only kind
of
art really
in denund in these circles was·
that
of portraiture. VanDyck had
established a standard of society portraits
that
all E.tshionable painters
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466 i l ~ 1· REASON
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ol 7 ~ N G L N D il ~ R A N C : I . EI GIIT[EN I H C cNTUi tY
J05
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Miss Ho les 111ir J
/1cr
t i t ~ : ,
1775
Oil nn ranv ts 91 S x
71.1 nn 36 1.:
x in;
\ V ~ I I a c c
<
ollcClion
London
Sir
Joshua Hcynolds
)ost•p J
Unretti,
1773
Oil 011 c a n v a ~ . 7J.7 x
f1 tl em
29
x
24Y i
in
l•riVltl colk·rtiort
ofsubsequent generations had
tried to reach. Reynolds could be
as flattering and as elegant as the
be
st o f
them,
bu t
he
liked
to
add
an extra interest to his paintings of
people to
bring
out t
he
ir character
and their role
in
society. T hus
figure 3 4 represents an intellectual
fi:om Dr j ohnson s circle, the Italian
scholar joseph Baret ti, who had
com
piled an English-I
talian
dictionary and later translated
Reynolds s D
iscourses
into Italian. It
is a perfect record, in
ti
mate without
being impertinent, and a good
pai
nting into the
bargain.
Even
w hen
he
had to paint a
child, Reynolds tried to make the
picture into more
than
a mere
po rtrait by care full y choosing his
setting.
Figure 3 5
sho ws
hi
s po rtrai t
of Miss
Bowles with her dog . We
remember that Velazquez, too, had
painted the po
rt
rait
of
a child and
dog, pag
e 41 o jig
ure
267.
13u t Velazquez had
been in
terested in
the
texture
and colour of
what
he saw. Reynolds wants to show
us
the touching love
of
the little girl for
her
pet. We are told
what tro
uble he took to gain the
child s confidence, before he set out to paint her. He was asked to the
house
and
sat beside h
er
at dinner wh ere
he
amused her so mu ch with
stories and tricks, that she
thought
him the most charming man in the
world. He made her look at something distant from the table and stole
he
r
plate; then he prete nded to l
ook
for it, then he contrived it should come
back to her w ithout h
er
knowing how. The
next
day s
he
was delighted to
be taken to his house, where sh e sat down w ith an expression fu ll ofglee,
the expression of whi ch he at on ce caught and never lost. No wonder tha t
the outcome is mo re
self
- conscious, and mu ch more thought out, than
Velazquez s straightforward arrangement. lt is true that,
if
we compare his
handling
of
paint
and
his treatment
of
he living skin and the fluffy f
ur with
that ofVelazquez,
we
may find R
eyno
lds disappoint
in
g
But
it would
hardly be fai r to expec t of him an effect at which he was no t aiming. He
wanted to
bring out
the character
of
the
sweet
child, and to
make
h
er
tenderness and her charm Ji
ve
for us. Today, wh
en
photographers have so
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68
THh AGE or
REASON
accustomed
us to the trick
of
observing a child in a similar situation ,
we may find it difficult fully
to
appreciate the originality ofReynolds s
treatment. Uut we
must
not blame a n1aster for
the
imitations which have
spoHt his effects. Reynolds
never
allowed
the
interest
of
the
subject-matter
to upset the harmony of the painting.
In the
Wa11ace
Collection in London, where Reynolds s
portrait
of
Miss Bowles hangs, there is also the
portrait
of a girl of roughly the same
age by his greatest rival in
the
field
of portrait
painting,
Thomas
Gainsborough (1727-88), who was only
four
years his junior. It is the
portrait
of
Miss Haverfield, figure 306. Gainsborough painted the little
lady as she was tying the bow of her cape. There is nothing particularly
rnoving or interesting in
her
action.
She
is
just
dressing, we fancy,
to
go
for a walk. Dut
Gainsborough
knew how to invest the sim_plc movement
with
such grace and charm
that
we find it
as
satisfying
as
Reynolds s
invention
of a girl hugging
her pet.
Gainsborough was much less
interested in
invention than
Reynolds.
He
was
born
in rural Suffolk,
had a natural gift for painting, and never found it necessary
to
go
to
Italy
to
study the great masters. In con1parison with Reynolds and all his
theories
about the
importance
of
tradition, Gainsborough was almost a
self-tnade man. There
is
son1ething in the relationship of the two which
recalls
the
contrast between
the
learned Annibale Carracci, page 390
who wanted
to
revive the manner of Raphael,
and
the revolutionary
Caravaggio, page 392
who
wanted to acknowledge no teacher
except
nature. Reynolds, at any rate, saw
Gainsborough
somewhat in this light,
as a genius who refused
to
copy the masters, and, rnuch as he admired his
rival s skill, he felt bound to warn his students against his principles. Today,
after the passage of aln1ost two centuries, the two masters
do
not seen1 to
us so
very
dHferent. We realize
perhaps n1orc clearly
than they
did,
how
much
they
both owed
to
the t t ~ d i t i o n ofVan Dyck,
and to
the fashion of
their
titne. But,
if
we
return to
the
portrait of
Miss Haverfield with this
contrast in mind, we understand the particular qualities which dis6ngnish
Gainsborough
s
fi-esh and
unsophisticated
approach
from Reynolds s
more
laboured style. Gainsborough, we now sec, had no intention of
being highbrow ; he wanted to
paint straightforward unconventional
portraits in
which he could
display his brilliant
brushwork and
his sure
eye. And
so
he succeeds best where Reynolds disappo inted us. His
rendering
of
the fi·esh
cornplexion of
the child
and the shining
material
of the cape, his treatment of the frills
and
ribbons of the hat,
all
this
shows his consumnute skill in rendering
the texture
and surfaces
of
visible objects. The rapid
and
impatient strokes of the brush almost
remind
us
of
the work
of
Frans Hals,
page 417,.fiJ Jire 270. Dut Gainsborough
was a less robust artist. T here are, in n1any
of
his portraits, a delicacy
of
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469 ENGLAND \ il FRANC:E
I H T N T
C:ENTURY
J0
6
Thoma s
Gainsboro ugh
M
ss
1 nwr/ield
t.17S0
il
on
c a n v : ~ i ,
11 7 6 x
101 9
C
lll
X
in
\V;albc( Collt Clion.
london
shades and a refinement of touch which rather recall the visions of
Watteau 454 jigure 8
Doth Reynolds and Gainsbo r
ou
gh we re
ra
ther unhappy to be
smothered with commissions for port raits when t hey wanted to pa
in
t
ot
her things. Bu t w hile Reynolds longed for t
im
e and
le is
ure to pa
int
ambitious mythological scenes or episodes from ancient history
Ga
in
sb
oro
ugh
wan
ted to paint the very
e c t ~
w hich his rival despised.
He wanted to paint landscapes. Fo r unlike Reynolds who was a man
about
t
ow
n Gainsborough loved
th
e qui
et co
un tryside a
nd amo
ng
th
e
few entertainmen ts he really enjoyed was chambe r mu sic. U
nf
or tunately
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47 1GE O f REASON
Gainsborough could n
ot
find many buyers for his landscapes, and so a
large nu
mb
er of his pictures remained
mere
sketches don e for his ow n
enjoyment,figure307. In these he arranged the trees and hills of the English
countr
ys
ide into pictur
esque
scen
es
w
hi
ch remind us that this
wa
s the age
of the landscape
ga
rdener. For Gainsborough s sketch es arc no views
dra
wn
direct fi:om nature. They are landscape compositions , designed to
evoke and reflect a mood.
In the eig
ht
een th centur
y,
Eng
lish institutions and English taste became
the
adm
ired models
fo
r a
ll
people
in Europe
who longed for the rule
of
reason. For in England art had not been used to
enhan
ce the power and
glory of
god
-like rulers. T he public for which H ogarth catered, even the
people who posed for R
eynold
s s and G
ain
s
borou
g
h
s
portr
aits,
were
ordinary mor tals. We m
m b e
that in France,
too,
the heavy Baroque
grandeur o
fV
ersa illes had gone
out
of ashion
in
the early eig
ht
ee
nt
h
century in favour of the more delicate and intimate effects of Wattcau
s
Rococo ,
p
a,ee
454 jgure 298 .
Now this whole aristocratic dream-world
bebra
n to recede. Painters began to look at the li fe of he
ord
inary m en
and women of their time, to draw movi
ng
or amusing episodes which
could be spun out in to a story.
Th
e greates t of these was j ean-Baptistc
Simeon
C hardin (I699- 177
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71 ENGLAN D AND
FRA
NC
E I
T I I
C:EN I U l t \
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472 Ti l
AGE l j._ASON
restrained and, by conlparison ::Vith the scintillating paintings ofWatteau,
his works
may
seen1
to lack
brilliance. But
if
we study thern
in the
original,
we
soon
discover in then1
an unobtrusive
nnstery in the subtle
gradation
of tones and the seemingly artless
arrangement
of the scene
that
makes him
one of
the
most
lovable painters
of
the eighteenth century.
In France,
s
in England, the new interest in ordinary human beings
rather than
the trappings
ofpower benefited the
art
of
portraiture. Perhaps
the greatest
of
the French portraitists was not a
painter
but a sculptor, Jean
Antoine Houdon
(1741-1828).
In
his
wonderful
portrai t busts,
Houdon
carried on the tradition which had
been
started by
Dernini
more than a
hundred
years earlier, page
4J8 fiRurc
284. Figure 309 shows Houdon s bust
ofVo1tairc and allows us to see in the face
of
this great chan1pion
of
reason, the
biting
wit, the penetrating intelligence, and also the deep
compassion
of
a great
mind.
309
Jean-Antoine
Houdon
Voltaire
1781
Marble, height so.S ern,
1 0
in; Victoria ,mJ Albert
Muleum,
J.ondon
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I
NG
LAN D A N D I UJNC
I:.
. I I G II TE [NTH I U HY
O