French Painting in the Golden Age

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by David Mandrella

French Painting in the Golden Age Christopher Allen Thames and Hudson 9.95 [pounds sterling]/$16.95 ISBN 0500 203709

Christopher Allen has published his volume on seventeenth-century French painting in Thames and Hudson's prestigious 'World of Art' series under the evocative title French Painting in the Golden Age. (The term 'golden age' has been used as a substitute for grand siecle before, by Pierre Rosenberg in his 1982 exhibition in Paris, New York and Chicago devoted to seventeenth-century French painting in American collections.) The result is impressive: a convenient format, 225 pages, 182 illustrations (79 of them in colour), for less than 10 [pounds sterling]. The illustrations are perfectly integrated into the text and the long, informative captions will delight teachers and lecturers, who will find all they need there for the quick preparation of notes on an indvidual painter or work.

A short introduction familiarises us with the crucial role of history painting in the seventeenth century, unduly neglected today. The aesthetic debates and discussions are admirably handled, with the utmost care (the time spent by the author at the College de France is no doubt partly responsible for that). However, the now classic work by the late lamented Professor Antoine Schnapper, Curieux du Grand Siecle. Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siecle II (1994) is strangely absent from the bibliography.

A grasp of the overall picture (which may justify certain omissions) and an ability to strike the right note are constants in this book. As an example, let us quote from page 77: 'Just as the history painter used the study of the live model to construct the figures of his painted narratives, Claude studied nature in order to produce an artificial poetic world'. However, Allen's (legitimate) love of certain painters prompts him to occasional hasty judgements, such as: 'It is sensitivity to expression that differentiates Valentin's work from lesser Caravaggesque artists such as Manfredi'.

The author presents the difficult and still uncertain beginnings of French painting in the seventeenth century well in a first long--perhaps over-long--chapter, 'From Manerism to Naturalism'. Henri IV's taking up residence in Paris in 1594 after his conversion to Catholicism has been linked to the emergence of a 'second school of Fontainebleau' dominated by Flemish painters (Dubois, Dubreuil), but many artists of French origin, such as Freminet (who would have merited an illustration), were also trained there. I am rather surprised by the total absence of Lorraine painters from Allen's account, since they were among the most powerful artists of the period: Jacques de Bellange, Jean Leclerc, Claude Deruet, the strange Francois de Nome and Charles Mellin (and the author cites only Les Grandes miseres de la guerre by the engraver and graphic artist Jacques Callot, without mentioning his huge influence on European painters). Although an autonomous province for a long time, seventeenth-century Lorraine is customarily included in the world of French art, as is demonstrated moreover by the pages Christopher Allen devotes to Lallemant, Georges de La Tour and Claude, all from Lorraine.

In the 1610s and 1620s, the French painters in Rome and Venice, most of them fascinated by Caravaggio, prepared the ground for the future development of French painting. Both Valentin and Tournier are well analysed by Allen, but a more thorough study of the several years Simon Vouet spent in Rome would have been desirable, as they are crucial to understanding the evolution of history painting during the seventeenth century in France. The Caravaggesque painter Nicolas Regnier is absent, although his paintings during his time in Rome are unquestionably related to those of the French artists.

In this first chapter devoted to naturalism, space could have been allotted to the artists known as 'the painters of reality'. To be sure, the Le Nain brothers and Georges de la Tour are fully covered, but Allen could also have dealt with still-life and portrait painting in the first half of the century (briefly tackled in the chapter 'The Academy and Charles Le Brun', but Dupuis and Picart for still life and Daret for the portrait are overlooked) as well as with genre scenes, with the Tassels.

The author perhaps places too much emphasis on history painting, whereas the so-called 'minor' genres can equally well carry a message about human life and destiny. I do not agree with him when he states: 'still life excludes the dimension of transcendence'. Moreover, Michel Fare's reference work on still life is not mentioned in the bibliography (Le Grand Siecle de la nature morte en France. Le XVIIe siecle, 1974), nor is the more recent D'apres nature. La nature morte en France au XVIIe siecle by Claudia Salvi (2000).

Chapters two and three, on Poussin, Claude, Vouet and atticisme (together forming a third of the book), are unquestionably the most brilliant. The author unfolds the artists' careers in a masterly manner and yet again demonstrates his knowledge of the literary background (pp. 100-102). The French landscape artists of the mid-century are also accorded their proper place here. It would have been desirable to add longer accounts of the landscape painting of Dughet and Francisque Millet; the author devotes two short, lavishly illustrated pages to them in his final chapter, 'The end of the Grand Siecle', but it would have been more natural for them to be dealt with here, where Anthony Blunt placed them in his memorable Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700, first published in 1953.