De Libris: Prose and Verse by Austin Dobson
page 41 of 141 (29%)
page 41 of 141 (29%)
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_"La peinture a l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus
beau Que la peinture a l'eau."_ About _la peinture a l'eau_, M. Rouquet says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however, with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute." (Caricature, by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As regards landscape and animal painting, he "abides in generalities"; but he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and Hogarth's and Walpole's friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself. "It is most humiliating," says Rouquet, "for the genius of painting that it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil." Seeing that Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to the perfection of his art, the words are--as Diderot says--remarkable. With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,--all foreigners. Of these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter, and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of contemptuously by the Abbe le Blanc. But the first is assuredly |
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