Diderot: Paintings in the Salon of 1765

This is Denis Diderot's critique of the Salon of 1765. Text in Orange   quotes from John Goodman's  English translation

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Fragonard : Portrait of Diderot, 1769

Inspired by the two chapters that Bryant  devoted to Diderot, at first, I was only going to examine Diderot's reviews of a  few prominent artists like Chardin and Greuze.  But soon I realized that his Salon of 1765 is something like a snapshot of the French artworld in the mid 18th Century.  So eventually, I've  examined almost every review except for the brief dismissals like "I only speak of this work to show how many idiocies can be assembled in the space of a few meters"

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In  1667 the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris began to present annual, or biannual, juried exhibitions of its membership.  Beginning in 1737,  these Salons were opened to whomever bought a ticket,  running for six weeks toward the end of  Summer. .In 1759 Friedrich Grimm invited Diderot to critique these exhibits for his Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique.

With its limited circulation of no more than fifteen (!), that cultural newsletter was something like my blog -  except that each copy was hand written --  it was not free ---  and subscribers included various kings, queens, dukes, and duchesses.   My blog subscribers include a bunch of --  well -- you know who you are. 

It being impossible - both then and now - to separate literature and art from politics - the contents were the concern of government authorities. Diderot had already been sent to prison once   so it was imperative to maintain the strict privacy of this writing.

Salon of 1765

IF I POSSESS a few considered ideas about painting and sculpture, it's to you, my friend, that I owe them. I'd have followed the lead of the crowd of idlers at the Salon, like them I'd have cast no more than a superficial, distracted glance at the productions of our artists; in a word, I'd have thrown precious works onto the fire or praised mediocre ones to the skies, approving or dismissing them without seeking out reasons for my infatuation or disdain. It's the task you set me that fixed my eyes on the canvas and made me circle around the marble. I gave my impressions time to coalesce and settle in. I opened my soul to the effects, I allowed them to penetrate through me. I collected the verdicts of old men and the thoughts of children, the judgments of men of letters, the opinions of sophisticates, and the views of the people; and if it sometimes happens that I wound artists, very often it's with weapons they themselves have sharpened for me. I've questioned them and come to understand fine draftsmanship and truth to nature; I've grasped the magic of light and shadow, become familiar with color, and developed a feeling for flesh. On my own I've reflected on what I've seen and heard, and artistic terms such as unity, variety, contrast, symmetry, disposition, composition, character, and expression, so comfortable on my lips but so indistinct in my mind, have taken on clear, fixed meanings.

Diderot disparages those who have strong feelings about art  "without seeking out reasons for (their) infatuation or disdain".  He calls it a "superficial, distracted glance" -- in the tradition of "cogito ergo sum" (Descartes) and ultimately  "The unexamined life is not worth living" (Plato/Socrates).  He calls such viewers mere "idlers".  (and as we learned from his contemporary,  William Hogarth in "Industry and Idleness" , the "Tyburn Tree" awaits young Thomas Idle.).  He does not allow that the viewer may be searching for an intensity of joy, or a way of looking at the world, or an  awareness of spiritual reality rather than a  rationale for the evaluation of art. 

We may note the confidence that Diderot  achieved regarding the "clear, fixed meanings" of art's qualities in the decade or so since he began receiving instruction from Baron von Grimm.  I would question whether he was just learning buzzwords.  Was he really deepening his experience of paintings ? -- because "unity, variety, contrast, symmetry, disposition, composition, character, and expression" all seem rather murky when actually applied to judgment.  

It's hard to say what Diderot did with all those "verdicts of old men and the thoughts of children, the judgments of men of letters, the opinions of sophisticates" that he said he collected. In his critiques, he never  refers to any source of judgment other than himself.  Maybe he was just pretending to speak for others  - or maybe he was trying to represent something like a consensus of opinion. 

We may also note that Diderot has here said nothing about about his own experience with either collecting or making or copying art.  Fashionable people, including his  publisher, Grimm,  did take drawing lessons back then — apparently he did not. Visual art may have served as a pleasant diversion  from the Herculean effort of encyclopedizing all important knowledge.   Yet he could be quite sharp tongued:  "I haven't the courage to describe this thing. Read Anacreon, and if you have a copy of his bust, burn Boizot's painting in front of it, pleading that he never again be permitted to produce anything so limp based upon so charming an author."

Charles Parrocel,  1688-1752

Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1714 - 1789

Remember that Chardin once said to us in the Salon: Messieurs, Messieurs, go easy. Find the worst painting that's here, and bear in mind that two thousand wretches have broken their brushes between their teeth in despair of ever producing anything as good. Parrocel, whom you call a dauber, and who is one in comparison with Vernet, this Parrocel is an exceptional man relative to the crowd that abandoned the career they began to pursue at the same time as be. Lemoyne said it took thirty years to learn how to retain the qualities of one's original sketch, and Lemoyne was no fool. If you'll listen to me, you might learn to be a bit more indulgent.

Ironically, Chardin is a harsh critic even as he asks us not to be.  Presumably the  Academy was quite competitive, so biting criticism was not uncommon. Competition is good for martial artists and other athletes - but for artists it would tend to enforce conformity to established norms.

 Presumably Chardin's gratuitous swipe at Parrocet occurred a decade after his colleague at the academy had passed.  From the above reproductions, it’s not obvious to me that one was notably better than the other - even if Vernet went for a finer finish.

Chardin's plea suggests that he might have heard about Diderot's sharp tongue despite the strictly limited circulation of his criticism.

Francois Lemoyne, 1737, Time Saving Truth from Falsehood

Lemoyne, Diana and Callisto (detail)

The details in Lemoyne's painting do feel as fresh as his drawings.

Lemoyne

On the other hand, however, his drawings feel as  contrived as his paintings. 

Chardin seemed to doubt there was any education that took longer or was more laborious than that of painters, not excluding those of doctors, lawyers, and professors at the Sorbonne. The chalk holder is placed in our hands, [he said], at the age of seven or eight years. We begin to draw eyes, mouths, noses, and ears after patterns, then feet and hands. After having crouched over our portfolios for a long time, we're placed in front of the Hercules or the Torso, and you've never seen such tears as those shed over the Satyr, the Gladiator, the Medici Venus, and the Antinous. You can be sure that these masterpieces by Greek artists would no longer excite the jealousy of the masters if they were placed at the mercy of the students' grudges. Then, after having spent entire days and even nights, by lamplight, in front of an immobile, inanimate nature, we're presented with living nature, and suddenly the work of all the preceding years seems reduced to nothing; it's as though one were taking up the chalk for the first time. The eye must be taught to look at nature; and many are those who have never seen it and never will! It's the bane of our existence. After having spent five or six years in front of the model, we turn to the resources of our own genius, if we have any. Talent doesn't reveal itself in a moment; judgments about one's limitations can't be reached on the basis of first efforts. How many such efforts there are, successful and unsuccessful! Valuable years slip away before the day arrives when distaste, lassitude, and boredom set in. The student is nineteen or twenty when, the palette having fallen from his bands, he finds himself without profession, without resources, and without moral character: for to be young and have unadorned nature ceaselessly before one's eyes, and yet exercise restraint, is impossible. What to do? What to make of oneself? One must either take up one of the subsidiary crafts that lead to financial misery or die of hunger. The first course is adopted, and while twenty or so come here every two years to expose themselves to the wild beasts, the others, unknown and perhaps less unfortunate, wear breastplates in guardrooms, or carry rifles over their shoulders in regiments, or dress themselves in theatrical attire and take to the boards. What I've just told you is the life story of Bellecour, Lekain, and Brizart,  bad actors out of despair at being bad painters. Chardin told us, if you recall, that one of his colleagues whose son was the drummer in a regiment answered queries about him by saying he'd abandoned painting for music. Then, adopting a serious tone again, he added: Many fathers of these incapable, sidetracked children don't take the matter so lightly. What you see here is the fruit of the small number who've struggled more or less successfully. Those who've never felt art's difficulty will never produce anything of value; those who, like my son, feel it too early on, produce nothing at all; and rest assured that most of the high posts in our society would remain empty if one gained access to them only after trials as severe as those to which we must submit.

Another reminder that in Europe, in contrast to east Asia, even the most prestigious visual art fails or succeeds as a business.   Value is established in the marketplace rather than in the elite scholar's study.

But Monsieur Chardin, I say to him, you mustn't hold it against us if

Mediocribus esse poetis

Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae

(Mediocre poets are pardoned by neither men,  gods, nor the colonnades  where they recite)

Taste is deaf to all pleas.  What Malherbe said of death, I'd apply  to criticism; everything must bow to its law:

"And the guard keeping watch at the gates of the Louvre

Cannot protect our kings from it."

I'm with Horace and Diderot on the emotional content of a critical response. Even if I disagree with the critic, I prefer candid expressions of dismay to faint praise.  But as we will read later on, Diderot sometimes goes even further - giving many more words to expressing contempt than to explaining why. So it does seem that presenting his own clever wit was more  important than discussing the art.

I'll describe the paintings for you, and my descriptions will be such that, with a bit of imagination and taste, you'll be able to envision them spatially, disposing the objects within them more or less as we see them on the canvas; and to facilitate judgment about the grounds of my criticism or praise,

Which reminds us  that photo reproductions could not accompany art criticism in the 18th Century.  Sadly, the  chances are almost as slim that the readers back then would  ever see the paintings under review. Three centuries later,  however, we are now in a much better position to see what Diderot was writing about - and to make it even easier for us:

A French scholar has posted all of Diderot's salon reviews
side-by-side with images of the paintings he discussed.

Including many essays as well, this really is the most useful art history website I've ever found - and it wasn't even created by an art historian.

CARLE VAN LOO

Carle Van Loo, Augustus Closing the Doors of the Temple of Janus, 1765

First, let's browse a review that  was published and available to the public. The Mercure de France was a cultural gazette first published in 1672. Regretfully the text that follows was apparently translated by an algorithm rather than a bi-lingual scholar, so it's rather awkward. 

Mercure de France, October 1765, p. 145:

    “In the number of precious remains of the Artist that we regret, the most visible piece represents Augustus, closing the doors of the Temple of Janus . The composition of this table is rich, well ordered & responds to the size of the subject. We have heard some complaints about the number & volume of objects relative to stage space. Is this criticism valid if, as one cannot dispute, enough air passes between each figure, so that the eye can turn easily? Moreover, it should be considered that in order to properly represent this important ceremony, the multitude of figures was essential, that the extent of the canvas was obligatory, that the choice of the subject was no less so, and that this subject is of the most happy analogy to the place for which it is intended, & to the Monarch who lives there . We are (as well as many connoisseurs consulted) very far from finding cold in this composition, as we have ventured in a pamphlet . All the characters in this scene have the movement & expression they should have. The action of the Priests who close the doors of the Temple is sufficiently animated; that of the crowd of spectators, is relative to the feeling of joy & admiration in which they must be. The circumstance which the painter had to put before our eyes was undoubtedly one of the most august and most considerable in the Roman Empire; but the exterior ceremonial did not include more play in the figures, & the Artist even added accessories which animate and enrich it. It is for this reason that we must tolerate the kind of inaction that we reproach in the figure of Augustus. We do not want to risk examining whether it was possible to give it more interest, and to link its expression more to the action of the subject. We agree unanimously on the truth & on the harmony of the colors in this painting, as well as on the accuracy of the costume. In general he fixed the attention of the spectators, he attracted the glances, and the effect appeared very satisfactory.  We can confidently advance that this posthumous production, from one of the best painters of our age, will never derogate from the reputation of its Author, nor the honor of its destination. to link its expression more to the subject's action. 

Mercure concludes with a tepid thumbs up after confirming the appropriate narrative details.  Rather than enhancing the artist's reputation, this piece will "never derogate" it. But it's also been defensive on three aesthetic points: not enough space for the figures,  the  overall coldness,  and the  inaction of Augustus.   Quite possibly a regular reader of Mercure reviews would read this as essentially a negative response

.  I like the attention paid to "air around the figures".    This refers to the quality of pictorial space - not the two-dimensional distance between the edges of the figures. It's about enjoyability.

Here is Diderot's review:

To the viewer's right, the temple of]anus oriented so the doors are visible. Beyond these doors, against the temple façade, the statue of Janus on its pedestal. This side of it, a tripod with its cover on the ground. A priest dressed in white, his two hands grasping a large iron ring, closes the doors, whose upper, middle, and lower segments are traversed by wide iron bands. Beside this priest, further back, two other priests dressed like the first. In front of the priest closing the doors, a child carrying an urn and observing the ceremony. In the center foreground of the scene is Augustus, alone, erect, in military attire , silent, an olive branch in his hand. At Augustus' feet, on the same level of depth, a child, one 'knee to the ground, a basket on his other knee, holding flowers. Behind the emperor, a young priest of whom little more than his head is visible. To the left, some distance away, a mixed crowd of people and soldiers. On the same side, at the edge of the canvas and in the foreground, a senator seen from behind and holding a roll of paper. This is what Van Loo sees fit to call a public festival. It seems to me that the temple, not being here a pure accessory, a simple background decoration, should have been given emphasis rather than depicted as such a paltry, impoverished structure. The iron bands traversing the doors are wide and make a fine effect. As for the Janus, he almost looks like two bad Egyptian figures joined together. Why flatten the saint of the day against the wall? The priest pulling the doors pulls them marvelously, his action, drapery, and characterization are all beautiful. I say the same of his neighbors; their heads are beautiful, painted in an idiom that's grand, simple, and true, their handling is virile and strong. If another artist would be capable of doing as well, I'd like to know who he is. The little urn-bearer is heavy-handed and perhaps superfluous.; The other child throwing flowers is charming, well conceived, and could hardly have been better posed; he tosses his flowers with grace, perhaps too much grace, he brings to mind Aurora shaking them from the tips of her fingers . As for your Augustus, Monsieur Van Lao, he's miserable. Wasn't there a single student in your studio who dared tell you he was stiff, ignoble, and short, that he was made up like an actress, that this red drapery in which you've decked him out offended the eyes and threw the painting out of kilter? This is an emperor? With the long palm he carries flush against his left shoulder, he's a member of the confraternity of Jerusalem returning from the [Palm Sunday] procession.  And this priest I see behind him, what am I to make of his little casket and his foolish, embarrassed air? Or of this senator encumbered by his robe and his paper, his back turned to me, mere figural padding, the amplitude of whose lower drapery makes his upper portion seem thin and insubstantial? And what's the significance of the whole? Where's the interest? Where's the subject?

To close the temple of Janus is to announce a general peace throughout the Empire, an occasion for rejoicing, for celebration, and in examining this canvas I can't find the slightest indication of  it. It's cold, it's insipid; everything is gloomy silence, dreadful sadness; it's the burial of a vestal virgin.

If it were up to me to execute this subject, I'd have made the temple more prominent. My Janus would have been imposing and handsome. I'd have placed a tripod at the temple door, with young children crowned with flowers burning incense. There, a grand priest venerable in expression, drapery, and character would have been visible; behind this priest I'd have grouped others. In all periods priests have been the jealous observers of sovereigns: they'd have tried to determine what they might hope for or fear from the new master, I'd have had them fix their attentive gazes on him. Augustus accompanied by Agrippa and Maecenas would have commanded that the temple be closed, he'd have gestured accordingly. The priests, their hands grasping the rings, would have been poised to obey. I'd have assembled a tumultuous crowd of people chat the soldiers would have barely been able to control. Above all, I'd have wanted my scene to be well lit; nothing augments gaiety so much as a beautiful day. The procession from Saint Sulpice never would have departed in such somber cloudy weather. And yet if, after the artist's death, a fire had consumed this composition, sparing only the group of priests and a few scattered heads, all of us would have acknowledged the impression these precious remains made on us by crying out: What a shame!

Diderot praises  the action  of a few figures, but soundly trounces the rest - especially the "miserable" presentation of Augustus. His overall characterization of the scene is right on the mark:  "it's cold, it's insipid; everything is gloomy silence, dreadful sadness; it's the burial of a vestal virgin."

He makes a few fanciful suggestions for how the scene might be better staged - but we all know that whatever Van Loo did would be just as lame.   Diderot seems unaware that great narrative painting is so much more than stage craft.  Yet he also asserts an aesthetic. He prefers "an idiom that's grand, simple, and true, their handling is virile and strong." He is annoyed by whatever has "offended the eyes and thrown the painting out of kilter".  And  he seems unconcerned with whatever ideas the subject matter should properly suggest. The political concept that peace is created by an all-powerful imperial authority apparently  does not concern him - though that was likely why this theme was appropriate for the Royal Academy.  He only wants a scene that looks good and is mimetic of natural forms and human events.                                  

For me, the above reproduction is quite small, but I doubt that the full size original would have looked any better.  It has zero, if not negative, pictorial energy.  It lays out its figures like it was  putting underwear into a dresser drawer. The socks go here - the boxer shorts go there - everything is neatly separated and stacked for convenience.  And I join Diderot in being questioning the testosterone level of Augustus.   He looks more like a eunuch than someone who has seized the reigns of a great empire. 

Both Diderot and the Mercure offer a sharp aesthetic critique -  but Diderot's review is much more passionate, blatantly subjective, and  entertaining. Perhaps  that was his primary  contribution to the practice of art criticism - enabled by the privacy of his communication.

Tiepolo, Maecenas presenting the Liberal  Arts to Augustus,  1742

 
Here's a much better painting  from the same era on a similarly imperial theme.
The space, the figures, the color are all delicious -  and there's even some thought given to the characters involved:

Maecenas is a tough man of the world

Augustus as a vigorous, impatient  young punk

who's not very comfortable sitting down.

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Carle Van Loo, The Three Graces, 1765

  Mercure de France, October 1765, p. 147-148:

We know that the painting of Graces had suffered criticism at the last exhibition. They had determined this Painter to sacrifice to the judgment of the Public the real beauties on the side of art, which are to be found in this piece, and to remake another. Such sacrifices are familiar to graduates. Rich enough from their own funds to recover better than they have lost; they should count the use of time only by progress towards perfection, and by profit for their glory. A new table of Graces was exhibited this year; it offers three charming figures, among which it would be difficult to make a choice of preference, either for the pleasure of the heads, or for the elegance of the forms, the beauty of the contours, or finally for the freshness & for the radiance of the colors in skin tones. Despite so many commendable parts in painting, one cannot hide that the group seemed to think a bit coldly. But what difficulties in this position of three figures of standing women, all three equally beautiful, but devoid of the help of reflections, of the play of contrasts! It was thus, however, that antiquity so to speak prescribed this subject. Why have you complied with it, one might say? But why should we have avoided a difficulty which has nothing in itself strange or contrary to beautiful nature? In the arts as well as in the sciences, the mistakes of great men are often guides to a goal which they themselves have not achieved. " all three equally beautiful, but devoid of the help of reflections, of the play of contrasts! 

Again  the Mercure de France is defensive in response to a piece that has "suffered criticism"  I have no idea what is meant by "devoid of the help of reflections, of the play of contrasts!" - but obviously the writer considered it a serious aesthetic issue.

Diderot's complaint is easier to understand:

It's difficult to imagine a colder composition, Graces more insipid, less aerial, less attractive. They have neither life, nor action, nor character. What are they doing? I'm ready to die if they have the slightest idea. They display themselves. This is not the way the poet saw them. It was in spring, he evoked beautiful moonlight; fresh greenery . covered the mountains; streams murmured, one heard and saw the play of the silvery waters; the beams of the night star undulated on their surface. The spot was solitary and tranquil. It was on the soft grass of a meadow, near a forest, that they sang and danced. I can see and hear them. How sweet is their song! How beautiful they are! How firm is their flesh! The tender moonlight further softens the whiteness of their skin. How easy and buoyant are their movements! It's old Pan who plays the flute. The two young fauns at his side have adorned their pointed ears; their ardent eyes peruse the most secret charms of the young dancers: what they see doesn't prevent their regretting what the changing movements of the dance conceal from them. The wood nymphs approach, the water nymphs lift their heads among the reeds; soon they will join in the games of the obliging sisters.

Junctaeque nymphis Gratiae decentes

Altemo terram quatiunt pede . . . 

But let's return to those by Van Loo, who aren't equal to the ones I leave behind. The central one is stiff; one would say she'd been posed by Marcel.  Her head's too big, she has difficulty holding it up. And these little scraps of drapery flush against the buttocks of one and the upper thighs of another, who put them there? Nothing other than the bad taste of the artist and the bad morals of the people. They don't understand that it's a woman who's undressed and not a woman who's nude that's indecent. An indecent woman has a little cap on her head, her stockings around her ankles, and her slippers on her feet. This reminds me of the way Madame Hocquet made the Venus Pudica into the most disreputable figure imaginable. One day she fancied the goddess hid herself very badly with her lower hand, and lo and behold she placed some plaster drapery between this hand and the corresponding portion of the statue, which suddenly took on the air of a woman drying herself Do you think, my friend, that Apelles would have imagined placing strips of drapery as wide as your hand over the bodies of the Three Graces? Alas! Since their appearance in the nude out of the head of the old poet, since the time of Apelles, if any painter has seen them, I swear to you it isn't Van Loo's.

Those by Van Loo are tall and lanky, above all in their upper portions. This cloud descending on the right and spreading at their feet belies common sense. The handling is too firm, too vigorous for such soft, pliant creatures; and then there's an odd, fantastic green cast all around them that darkens and obscures them. Without effect, without interest; painted and drawn without freshness, from habit. This composition is far inferior to the one he showed in the ?receding Salon and cut into pieces. No doubt the Graces, being sisters, should resemble one another, but must they all have the same head?

Even so, the worst of these three figures is superior to the affectations, mannerisms, and red bottoms of Boucher. At least they're flesh, and even beautiful flesh, with a severe aspect that's less displeasing than  debauchery and bad morals.  If there's mannerism here, it sins in the direction of grandeur.

Boucher, Three Graces carrying Cupid, 1765-70

Diderot may be excused for gratuitously trashing Boucher here since Boucher's Three Graces had not yet been painted.  These three do not have red bottoms .  Life is teeming both within and about them.

I really can't add much to his critique.  He was spot  on about the heads not fitting the bodies. We might note that he said  nothing about the importance or the meaning of the Graces.  He only tells us hat he wants them to appear "soft and pliant".  His critical approach is aesthetic ,  not conceptual - but it's interesting how appealing he finds the words that some poet had written about these mythic creatures.  What those words make him "see and hear" is so much more beautiful  to him than the images painted by Van Loo - and possibly by anybody else.

Carle Van Loo, modello for Saint Gregory dictating his homilies

If Carle had left only  these oil sketches, they'd exalt him to the highest rank among painters. But why did he call them sketches? They're highly colored and paintings, beautiful paintings  that have something more due to a hand that was failing  as  it executed them, compounding their admirable qualities with a quality that is profoundly touching.

 The sixth is, in my view, the most beautiful one. Yet there are only two figures, the saint dictating his homilies and his secretary writing them down. The saint is seated, his elbow resting on the table; he wears surplice and stole, the biretta on his head. And what a beautiful head it is! One scarcely knows whether to focus one's eyes on it or on the posture of the secretary, so simple, true, and natural; one moves from one to the other of these figures, and always with the same pleasure. The naturalness, truth, solitude, and silence of this study, the soft, tender light illuminating it in a way that's perfectly appropriate to the scene, the action, and the figures, that, my friend, is what makes this composition sublime, things that Boucher will never understand. This sketch is surprising. But tell me where this lout of a Van Loo found this, for he was a lout, he was incapable of thinking, speaking, writing, or reading. Beware those people whose pockets overflow with intelligence and who scatter it about on the slightest pretext. They don't have the demon; they're not sad, sombre, melancholy, and taciturn; they're never awkward or stupid. The finch, the lark, the linnet, and the canary chatter and babble all day long; when the sun sets they poke their heads under their wings and go right to sleep. But this is when the genius takes up his lamp and lights it, when the solitary bird, wild, untameable, his plumage dull and brown, opens his throat, begins his song, making the wood resound, melodiously piercing the silence and gloom of the night.

Regretfully, this is the only oil sketch that can be found on the internet - and  the image is not  very large.  I'd agree with Diderot that this is far better than the other Van Loo pieces he has presented, but it feels quite cramped.   The scribe is well rendered - but the saint is awkward.  We need that dove shadowed on the wall to believe that he is holy -  but it flattens the surrounding pictorial space.

Writing  before the era of the great public museums  and the dissemination of  photo  reproductions, perhaps Diderot had never seen really great paintings of sanctified scholars. Compared to the following, Van Loo's is tired and anemic:

Caravaggio, St. Jerome in his  study, 1605

Carle Van Loo, Academe, 1742

This academic study is what Van Loo was best at doing.  So dry,  crisp, and geometric. The Met also has a picnic scene that was apparently thinking about Watteau -  but Carle Van Loo just has no feeling for space or form. He was an illustrator. 

Louis-Michel Van Loo,  portrait of his uncle, Carle Van Loo, 1764

Chardin hung this piece right in the center of Carle's pieces at the  Salon - as a memorial to his colleague.  Diderot writes "The touch is vigorous; it's painted grandly, though a  bit too red"  Nothing about its representation of character - which I would say presents him as something of a fussy, nervous rabbit.

Maurice Quentin de la Tour,  portrait of Maurice de Saxe  1750-60

Diderot briefly mentions other portraits: 

When one  examines all these dreary faces lining the  walls of the Salon, one cries  out "La Tour, La Tour, ubi es ?"  

La Tour, a regular at the Salons, was missing from this one - and judging from the example shown above, I would have missed him too. 

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BOUCHER

Boucher, Daphnis and Chloe, 1743

(not shown in this  Salon)

I don't know what to say about this man. Degradation of taste, color, composition, character, expression, and drawing have kept pace with moral depravity. What can we expect the artist to throw onto the canvas? What he has in his imagination. And what can be in the imagination of a man who spends his life with prostitutes of the basest kind? The grace of the shepherdesses is the grace of Madame Fovart in Rose and Colas  (a comedy by Sedaine).. ,.....I defy you to find a single blade of grass in any of his landscapes. And then there's such a confusion of objects piled one on cop of the other, so poorly disposed, so motley, that we're dealing not so much with the pictures of a rational being as with the dreams of a madman.

Apparently Boucher loved  comic opera as much as Diderot hated it.

Neither of which is surprising.

I'd say this man has no conception of true grace; I'd say he's never encountered truth; I'd say the ideas of delicacy, forthrightness, innocence, and simplicity have become almost foreign to him; I'd say he's never for a single instant seen nature. at least not the one made to interest my soul, yours, that of a well-born child, that of a sensitive woman; I'd say he's without taste. Of the infinite number of proofs I could provide to support this, a single one will suffice: in all the multitude of mole and female figures he's painted, I defy anyone co find four that would be suitable for treatment in relief, much less as free-standing sculpture. There are too many little pinched faces, too much mannerism and affectation for an austere art. He can show me all the clouds he likes, I'll always see in them the rouge, the beaury spots, the powder puffs, and all the little vials of the make-up table. Do you think he's ever had anything in his head as straightforward and charming as the image from Petrarch, E'l riso, e'l canto, e'l parlar dolce, humano?"  (the smile, the song, the sweet human speech)

Boucher's figures not sculptural?  He did happen to work with sculptors - sending a drawing of the following piece to a porcelain factory at Sevres

Boucher, Pastoral Scene with a couple near a fountain, 1749 (detail)

(not in this Salon)

The Grape Eaters, Sevres  porcelain, after drawing by Boucher, 1752

Boucher worked with sharply defined volumes -and organized them better than the artisan who translated them into clay - as might be seen by comparing how each of them handled the head of the shepherdess shown above.

Those subtle, refined analogies that summon objects onto the canvas and bind them together by means of imperceptible threads, my God, he hasn't the vaguest notion of them. He's the most mortal enemy of silence known to me. He makes the prettiest marionettes in the world; he'll end up an illuminator. Well, my friend, it's at precisely the moment Boucher has ceased to be an artist that he's appointed first painter to the king.

Noting that for Diderot, the "imperceptible threads" that bind things together on the canvas are conceptual analogies, not visual relationships.  And noting his disparaging use of "illuminator" as something less than painter - presumably because Boucher's figures feel more like dolls than people.

 ln a word, take all this man's paintings. and you'd have difficulty finding a single one before which one couldn't say, like Fontenelle to the sonata: Sonata, what do you want from me? Painting. what do you want from me? There was a time when he couldn't stop making Virgins. And what were these Virgins? Precious little flirts. And his angels? Wanton little satyrs. And then in his landscapes there's a drabness of color and uniformity of tone such that, from two feet away, his canvas can be mistaken for a strip of lawn or bed of parsley cut into a rectangle. But he's no fool, he's a false good painter, like there are false wits. He doesn't command the wisdom of art, only its concetti.

I like Fontenelle's query of the arts: "what do you want from me?"  

Presumably, Boucher's paintings would answer: "Lighten up! --- and enjoy erotic energy"

I would call that "wisdom" -- but only in some applications. (wanton profligates don't need to hear it)

Boucher, Jupiter in the Guise of Diana with Callisto, 1763

Jupiter transformed is in the center. He's in profile; he leans over Callisto's knees. With one hand, his right, be tries gently to push aside her clothing; with his left he caresses her chin: here are two hands with plenty to do! Callisto is painted facing us; she weakly resists the hand trying to undress her. Below this figure the painter has spread out drapery. a quiver. Trees fill out the background. To the left is a group of children playing in the air; above this group, the eagle of Jupiter.

The painting reproduced above is in the Met - so surely I've walked right past it many times. I never stopped to look, however, because it feels so perfunctory  - and the human forms have the spongy quality of vacuum cast dolls.   The Lesbian theme is provocative, though, isn't it?  As a sworn virgin, Callisto was apparently only forbidden to have sex with males - and she had no idea what "Diana" had between her legs.  Apparently, 18th Century French aristocratic culture was as fascinated with gender identity as we are.   Curiously, however,  Diderot does not mention the theme at all. 

Boucher painted this theme several times.  The Met's website tells us that its own version entered the Salon of 1765 - so it is indeed the one seen by Diderot.  He tells us that Callisto is facing the viewer - when actually she is facing Jupiter/Diana.  So now we know:  Diderot's descriptions should not necessarily be trusted - a point made elsewhere in the translator's notes. 

Do the figures of mythology have hands and feet different from ours? Ah! Lagrenee -  what would you have me think of this, when I see you right beside it, and am struck by your firm color, by the beauty of your flesh and by the truths of nature that emanate from every point of your composition? Feet. hands, arms, shoulders, a throat, a neck, if you must have them as you've kissed them on occasion, Lagrenee will provide them for you; Boucher, no. Having reached fifty. my friend, scarcely any painter works from the model, they work by rote, and this goes for Boucher. Hackneyed figures turned this way and that. Hasn't he already shown us this Callisto, and this Jupiter, and this tiger's skin covering him a hundred times?

Lagrenee, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, 1773

(not in this Salon)

Yes, it does appear that Lagrenee's figure, though much simplified,  is closer to an individual woman's body than Boucher's construction.   And we might note that sexual identity is also the theme  of this painting.  Poor Hermaphroditus was innocently bathing in a forest pool when he was seized by a lusty nymph who got the gods to merge her body with his -- transforming Hermaphroditus into the world's first trans-sexual.

Diderot's review of this piece rather surprised me. I had expected him to focus more on the mythological story - but he was only concerned with the absence of "the truths of nature" in  the female body parts - as we  (men) must have known them when we  "kissed them upon occasion".   He  really wants some good, convincing cheese cake!

Noel Halle

Here's another contemporary depiction of the same scene by an artist whom Diderot will discuss below. With the dark, ominous eagle of Jupiter in the  background,  the underage features of Callisto, and the quiver-carrying Diana reaching for her exposed nipple, this interaction is closer to a rape than a seduction.

Boucher, Angelica and Medoro

Diderot had much the same to say about this companion piece, also at  the Met, and also too banal to have ever drawn my attention.  He found nothing to suggest the poetry of Ariosto - with "neither feet, nor hands, nor truth, nor color, and always the same parsley trees" - and Angelica portrayed as "a little strumpet  - what an ugly word". 

I don't know what French word  was translated into "strumpet" -- whether it specifically denoted a sex worker or just a woman whose sexual partners were casual.  Either way -- I'm  puzzled how minimal  naturalism  would suggest such behavior - and how more naturalism might have made her appear  more virtuous. 

It's really too bad that none of Boucher's better work , like the Daphnis and Chloe shown far above, entered any of the Salons that Diderot reviewed. 

*************

JOSEPH-MARIE VIEN

Vien, Marcus Aurelius distributing Bread in  time of Plague, 1765

This composition lacks warmth and verve, there's no poetry, no imagination; it's not worth a single line by Lucretius. The group of citizens occupying the left of the canvas is the only acceptable passage. It has color, expression, character, and is skillfully disposed; but this isn't enough to prevent me from crying out: What a painting for the educated viewer, for the sensitive man, for the elevated soul, for the discerning eye! Everything is harsh, dry, and flat; so many bits of cardboard cut out and pasted over one another. There's neither air nor atmosphere suggestive of space, of depth beyond the heads; these images seem glued to the sky. Although these soldiers are well posed they're poorly characterized, they lack ferocity, they're as compassionate as monks. This structure suggestive of a temple or palace is too dark. The sole merit of this work is that overall it's well drawn. The feet of the colossal woman are very beautiful, they're real flesh, I recognize nature in them. The young girl in the foreground between her father and mother is passable, but you might find her head a bit small.

Diderot squabbles with some of the characterizations - is that large white woman on the right asleep or dead? - and eventually delivers his  aesthetic  verdict above: it's not worth a single line of great Latin poetry - even if  he can recognize the "nature" in some of the details.

No argument from me - most of it is really awkward and clunky - except for the passage with the luminous reclining woman in white. I would also note that this scene feels like a miraculous healing by a saint rather than the benevolence of a  soldier/emperor.

********

HALLE

Noel Halle, The Justice of Trajan, 1765

Trajan occupies the center foreground of this picture.  He looks, he listens to a kneeling woman, some distance away from him between two children. Beside the emperor, further back, a soldier restrains his rearing horse by its bridle; this horse isn't at all like the one required by Father Canaye and of which he said: "Qualem me decet esse mansuetum."  ("Get  me a tame one"). Behind the suppliant is another standing woman. Towards the right, in the background, the suggestion of a few soldiers. Monsieur Halle, your Trajan imitated from the antique is flat, without nobility, without expression, without character; he seems to say to this woman: Good woman, 1 see you're weary; I'd lend you my horse, but he's as temperamental as the devil . . . This horse is in effect the only remarkable figure in the scene; it's a poetic, gloomy, greyish horse such as a child might see in the clouds: the spots on its breast look just like a dappled sky. Trajan's legs are made of wood, as stiff as if a lining of steel or tin-plate were underneath the material. As a cape, he's been given a heavy garment of poorly dyed crimson wool. The woman, whose facial expression should set the pathetic tone for  the scene, whose ample blue garment attracts the eye very well, is seen only from the back; I've identified her as a woman, but she might be a young man; on this point I must rely on her hair and the catalogue, for there's nothing about her that specifies her sex. And. yet a woman bears no closer resemblance to a man from the back than from the front; there's a different hair style, different shoulders, a different lower back, different thighs, different legs, different feet; and this large yellow carpet I see hanging from her belt like an apron, that folds under her knees and that I then find behind her, she'd apparently brought it along to avoid soiling her beautiful blue robe; but this voluminous piece of material could never figure as part of her clothing if she were standing up. And then nothing's finished in either the hands, or the arms, or the coiffure, it's suffering from the plica polonica (Polish flu?).  The material covering her forearm seems like furrowed St-Leu stone. Trajan's side of the composition is without color; the sky, overly bright, makes the group seem as if in shadow and effectively wipes it out. But it's the arm and hand of this emperor that must be seen to be believed, the arm for its stiffness, the hand and thumb for their faulty draftsmanship. History painters regard these small details as mere trifles, they go after the grand effect; the rigorous imitation of nature, making them stop at each step of the way, would extinguish their fire, would snuff out their genius: Isn't this true, Monsieur Halle? Such was not the view of Paolo Veronese, he took care with his flesh, his feet, his hands; but the futility of this has now been recognized, and it's no longer customary to paint them, although it's still customary to have them. Do you know what this infant in the foreground rather closely resembles? A bunch of big gnarls; it's just that on his legs, undulating like snakes, they're a little more swollen than on his arms. This pot, this copper domestic vessel on which the other child leans, is such a peculiar color I had to be told what it was. The officers accompanying the emperor are every bit as ignoble as he is. These little bits of figures scattered about, do you really think they suggest the presence of an army? This picture's composition is completely lacking in consistency, it's nothing, absolutely nothing. neither in its color, which resembles the quintessence of dried grass, nor its expression, nor its characterizations, nor its drawing; it's a big enamel plaque, quite dreary and quite cold. "But this subject was impossible." You're wrong, Monsieur Halle, and I'm going to tell you how someone else would have bandied it. He'd have placed Trajan in the center of the canvas. The main officers of his army would have surrounded him; each of their faces would have registered the impression made by the suppliant's speech. 

The online reproduction  of this this piece is quite small - but I'm doubting that a larger one would save it. It looks like a perfunctory illustration for a  Sunday school text book.  Everything about it feels small, awkward, and  predictable.  When you look at Halle's other paintings online, this clumsy performance is not typical.

Poussin, Esther Before Ahasuerus, 1650's

Poussin incorporates formal qualities into his story - contrasting twisting turbulence on the left versus rock solid stability on the right, separated by the space measuring  tiles on the floor.

Look at how Poussin's Esther presents herself before Ahasuerus. What prevented you from having your woman, overwhelmed by her distress, similarly grouped with and sustained by female companions? You want her alone and on her knees? I consent to this; but my God, show me more than her back: backs aren't very expressive, whatever Madame Geoffrin may say. Have her face convey the full extent of her pain; make her beautiful, with a nobility corresponding to that of her situation; make her gestures strong and moving. 

Charles LeBrun, Family of Darius before Alexander, 1660

You clearly didn't know what to do with her two children; study the Family of Darius and you' ll learn how subordinate figures can be made to enhance the interest of the main ones. Why didn't you indicate the presence of an army with a crowd of heads pressed together beside the emperor? Then a few of these figures sliced by the edge of the canvas would have been sufficient to make me imagine the rest. And why, on the woman's side, were there no spectators, no ·witnesses to the scene? Was there no one, no relation, no friend, no neighbor, neither man, woman, nor child, curious about the outcome of her mission? Such, it seems to me, would have been the way to enrich your composition, which as it stands is sterile, insipid, and stripped down.

LeBrun has a much weaker sense of form than Poussin - and his pictorial energy suffers from a focus on individual characters.  But still he incorporates  a sweeping overall composition into telling his story.

Diderot is critiquing Halle's piece as a storyboard, not a painting - and curiously he suggests that the story would be better told with the inclusion of more auxiliary figures. 

Halle, Education of the Rich

The Education of The Rich - Poor oil sketch:  This is miserable. One sometimes sees feet and hands carelessly rendered, heads roughly sketched in, everything sacrificed to an overall impression or effect; here nothing is fully rendered, absolutely nothing, and there's no effect: this is at the very limit of license in such sketches. In the left foreground, a child sitting on the floor amuses himself looking at maps. His mother relaxes on a sofa. This pot-bellied man standing behind her, is he the father? I think so. This young man with his elbows on the table, what's he doing? I have no idea. What's this priest up to? I don't know that either. What's the meaning of this servant leaving the room? A globe here, a dog there. Spare me this, Monsieur Halle. One would say you'd scribbled this canvas from a bowl of pistachio ice cream. If chance led a maker of marbled paper to produce this composition, I'd be surprised, but only because of the odds against it. 

Rousseau's Emile was first published - and publicly burned ! - to some acclaim in 1762 -- so I'm guessing that new ideas about education were on  the minds of the cultural elite who visited the 1765  Salon. And I would say that Diderot got this painting all wrong. The child sitting on the floor is self educating - exploring the world with maps. The man in red (Diderot's priest?) is quite animated as he  gives his presentation - and all of the adults, other than  the fellow leaving the room, are giving him their undivided attention..  At the  apex of the great triangle is the portly father who hired the tutor and is listening in for his own benefit. The small head and passive posture suggests that his heir is not especially bright - while his large, alert sister appears quite engaged.

Halle, Education of the Poor

The Education if The Poor - Poor oil sketch: To the right, one sees an open door in which there's some sort of poor wretch; perhaps he's the master of the house. Inside the hovel, a seated woman teaches a child to read, it's her mother, I think. In the background, a servant carries another up a wooden stairway to an upper room. Further left, in the foreground, an older girl facing us makes lace; behind her, her younger sister, who's not exactly delicate, observes her work. At the feet of the first one, a little cat. Greuze would have used a dog, because all children have them so they can order them around. The left side is occupied by a carpenter's work table. On the near side of this table, the son of the house prepares to push forward a joining-plane. From another side, further back, his standing brother shows him an instruction sheet. The whole thing slackly drawn and draped, as banally colored as one can imagine. Any student submitting such a daub to the grand prize competition would go neither into the pension nor to Rome. Such subjects as_this should be left to those who know how to handle and imagine them properly. Chardin, who hung the Salon this year, juxtaposed these two miserable sketches with another by Greuze that puts them cruelly to shame. It's a classic instance of a malo vicino.

Again,  Diderot has missed the vigorous  expression of learning  in  this piece - the excitement of the older brother showing the younger how to  follow the instructions for cabinetry - the careful attention that the older girls  are giving the younger while  teaching them to embroider or read.  This is the ideal family life of the artisan class -- who are not as impoverished as the title might suggest. Not "slackly drawn" at all - and unlike most of the Salon pictures seen  so far, it's secular but not erotic.

*******

LOUIS-JEAN-FRANCOIS LAGRENEE

Lagrenee, Diana and Endymion

In the left foreground the sleeping Endymion, his head thrown back, his body lifted slightly on a rise in the ground, his right arm at rest on his dog, who's relaxing nearby. In the right background Diana, whose obligations wrest her away from her beloved. She looks at him as she departs, she takes her leave reluctantly. Between her and Endyrnion, a Cupid who'd like nothing better than to make her forget her duties, as he's done since the world's beginning.

Not every depiction of this post coital fantasy has Diana staring at Endymion's crotch.  But that is quite appropriate for the myth that has her bearing fifty children from her sleeping lover. That's the part of him that interests her.

This work is very beautiful and very well painted. Endymion' pose convincingly evokes sleep; his legs a bit spindly, perhaps, bur everything else correctly drawn. I'd prefer him to have finer features; he has a slipper chin that I find annoying and which makes him seem ignoble and brutish. His stomach is agreeably executed, his knees full of surprising detail, and this whole area of flesh of an astonishing verisimilitude. The hand resting on his dog doesn't seem like a hand by Lagrenee, for no one knows how to make hands as well as he. The Diana is slender and buoyant, but her blue drapery brings her too far forward and should have been eliminated or changed. Also, behind the shepherd's head there's a thick, brown cloud that could have been rendered more vaporously; but something was needed to enhance the coloring of the figure, and at least this thick brown cloud isn't detrimental to it. Some claim his posture resembles a dead man's more than that of a man asleep. I cannot agree with this criticism, though I recall very clearly a Christ by Falconer whose arm hangs down in the same way.

Beautiful flowing design of the lower left half (Endymion) - not so much for the upper right (Diana).  The cupid is awful. A  drapery keeps the viewer  from seeing the object of Diana's loving  glance. I would call this an alluring study of a reclining erotic male - abused by the addition of the other figures. 

Poussin, Endymion and Selene (detail), 1630

Wow! There's not false note in this one - it tells so much more of the story - a variation where Endymion's spirit awakes to greet his lover, while his body is still sleeping in the background. It's far more  decent -- i.e. Endymion is actually awake when Selene makes love to him. (his horses are charging - just like those pulling Apollo's chariot). No date rape here.  And such a gorgeous vision!

Girodet, Endymion, 1791

Then there's this later version - which  visited Chicago about 20  years ago. Endymion never wakens - but then Selene is just a moonbeam so it doesn't matter.  I have no idea what Selene saw in that big flabby, feminine body - but what a delicious ambiance. 

Lagrenee, Goodness and Generosity

This is a real painter. The advances he's made in his art are surprising.  He has drawing, color, flesh, expression, the most beautiful draperies , the most beautifully characterized heads, everything except verve. What a great painter, if only he'd acquire some temperament! His compositions are simple, his actions truthful, his color beautiful and solid; he always works after nature. There are paintings by him in which the severest eye fails to discern the slightest fault. His small virgins are worthy of Guido Reni. The more one looks at his Justice and Clemency, his Goodness and Generosity, the more satisfying they seem. I remember having once advised him to abandon the brush; but who is it that wouldn't have forbidden Racine to become a poet on the basis of his first verses? Lagrenee explains the progress he's made very simply; he says he uses the money he's earned making poor works to make good ones.

Sometimes it does seem that Diderot lifts a painter up only so he can slap him harder back down.  But I do agree with raising the issue of vitality and temperament with this artist.  And this shows Diderot getting personally involved with careers as well as individual paintings.

The passage also tells us that Diderot was looking to art for satisfaction - and that sometimes, the longer he looked, the  more he got.  I feel the same way - though usually not about the same pieces. 

 Goodness and Generosity : It's above all in small cabinet pictures that this artist excels. This one is the pendant of the preceding and need concede nothing to it in the way of perfection. Goodness is seated, I think; she faces us. She squeezes her left breast with her right hand, splashing milk over the face of the child in front of her. Generosity, on the ground, leans against Goodness and scatters pieces of gold with her right hand, while her left hand rests on a large conch shell from which tumble all the symbols of wealth. One must see for oneself the placement of this figure, the effect of her two arms, the way her head recedes into the canvas while everything else advances forward, the way each part sits well in its proper level of depth, the way the arm distributing gold is set off from the body and seems to emerge from the canvas; all the bold, picturesque qualities embodied in the figure as a whole. The shell is most beautifully formed and preciously executed. This work is exemplary in its discriminating use of rich drapery and ordinary drapery. The blue material covering Goodness' knees is amply handled, it's true, but a bit hard, dry, and stiff; that covering the same portions of Generosity, just as amply handled, is soft and pliant as well. Goodness' drapery is arranged modestly; that of Generosity is more richly disposed, which is as it should be. The child beside this last figure is bad: the arm he extends is stiff, he lacks natural details and is reddish in tone. Even so, the work is enchanting and extremely effective; the heads couldn't be more beautifully characterized, and then what feet, what hands, what flesh, what life. Steal these two pendants from the King, for it's good to steal from  kings, and you'll certainly have the finest works in the Salon.

Nice observation about the two contrasting kinds of drapery - and I agree the child is drawn poorly. My favorite feature is how one figure fits in along the edge of the other in front of it - and how its arm floats up scattering gold coins. I am struck, however, by the independence of the drapery that covers the knees of Generosity.  It feels like it was studied from life and then cut/pasted into position. Yet again, Diderot does not address the concept involved: this image presents the goodness and generosity of nature, not men among men. Why the bounty of nature is depicted as attractive young women, one of whom is presenting her nipple, is not a query acceptable in his time - though it might be raised today.

Lagrenee, Justice and Clemency

Justice and Clemency :Oval painting, overdoor for the gallery at Choisy At left, Justice seated on the ground, seen in profile, her left arm resting on the shoulder of Clemency, looking at her sympathetically, and slackly holding her sword in her right hand. To the right, Clemency kneeling in front of her and leaning onto her lap. Behind Clemency, a small child riding on the back of a roaring lion, lording it over him. Around Justice her scales and other attributes.  Oh, what a beautiful picture! Praiseworthy for its color, its characterizations, its postures, its draperies, and all its details. Feet, hands, everything of the highest finish. What a figure is this Clemency! Where did he get this head? It's the expression of goodness itself; her characterization, her posture, her drapery, her expression, her back, her shoulders, everything is quite fine. I've heard it suggested that the Justice could be a bit more dignified. You've seen her; don't you think she should be left as she is? If I dared whisper some advice to the painter, I'd suggest that he eliminate this bit of drapery spread out behind her that compromises her effectiveness and replace it with whatever he likes; that he change this blue skirt in which his Clemency is decked out; that he rework this child who's reddish and lacking in tonal finesse; that he suppress half the folds in the rumpled drapery on which it reclines, and that he touch up the lion's mane, making it more vigorous. But even as it is, if this work were to be labeled "Guido Reni" and taken to Italy, only its freshness would give the game away.

Here is "a beautiful picture" - yet still Diderot lists five ways to improve  it.  It's hard to accept that both of  these statements could be true.  Though I've yet to read Diderot so enraptured by a  piece that he cannot imagine it as being any different. 

And again, he will not discuss the propriety of the overall image for the subject matter. This picture shows one young woman leaning into the lap of another, gazing deep into  her eyes,  and reaching for her nipple which has conveniently become uncovered by her blouse.  Aren't they making out?  The sword of justice  was never grasped by a more limp hand. And what's with the goofy infant with his mock-ferocious stuffed  lion?  This is a bedroom scene.  Why should Eros have anything to do with Justice ?

Guido Reni, Charity, 1600-1640?

Here is Guido Reni doing a similar theme.

 A greater sense of stillness and gravitas,

and we know that Charity is generous

because she takes care of three infants at once.

Lagrenee , Charite

To the left, the old man is seated on the ground; he seems uneasy. The woman standing on the right, leaning towards the old man, her bosom bared, seems more uneasy still. Both of them stare fixedly at a barred window of the prison, from which they can be observed and through which we see a soldier who watches them. The woman presents her breast to the old man, who dares not accept it; his hand and his left arm signal his dismay.  The woman is beautiful, her face is expressive, her drapery as convincing as one could hope. The old man is handsome, even too handsome , he's too ruddy, as hardy looking as if he had two cows at his disposal. He doesn't seem to have suffered for an instant, and if this young woman doesn't watch out he'll end up getting her pregnant. Those willing to indulge the artist's lack of common sense, his ignoring the sudden, terrible effect of imprisonment and condemnation to die from hunger, will be enchanted by this work. The fine head, beautiful beard, beautiful white hair, beautiful characterzation, beautiful legs, beautiful feet, and such arms! Such flesh! But this is not the picture I have in my imagination. I absolutely reject the notion of having this unfortunate old man and this benevolent woman suspicious of being observed; this suspicion impedes the action and destroys the subject. I'd have the old man in chains and the chain, fixed to the dungeon wall, binding his hands behind his back. Immediately upon his nurse's appearance and baring of her breast, I'd have his avid mouth move towards it and seize it; I'd like to see his hunger reflected in his gestures, and his body betray some effects of his suffering: not allowing the woman time to move towards him, but hurling himself towards her, his chain stretching his arms out behind him. I wouldn't want it to be a young woman, I'd require a woman of at least thirty; of an imposing, austere, and seemly character; with an expression conveying tenderness and compassion. Luxurious drapery would be ridiculous here; she should be coiffed rather carelessly, her long, loose hair falling out from beneath her headscarf, which should be broadly handled; she shouldn't have beautiful, rounded breasts but hardy, large ones that are full of milk; she should be impressive and robust. The old man, despite his suffering, shouldn't be hideous, if I've construed nature correctly; we should see in his muscles, in his entire body a constitution that's vigorous, athletic. In a word, I'd require that the entire scene be depicted in the grandest style, and that such a compassionate humanitarian act not be turned into something trivial.

If the image shown above represents the painting seen by Diderot, he has mis-remembered some of the details.  The old man is not staring at the window and his hand and arm do not signal his dismay. Diderot presents this as a "compassionate humanitarian act", as did the ancient Roman writer, Valerius Maximus, who introduced the story into literature - but he also tells us "if this young woman doesn't watch out he'll end up getting her pregnant." So erotic thoughts are not far from his mind - even if he will not address them - and this is one of the least erotic of the many versions of this popular theme. Apparently Diderot was unaware that he added what he required to make this scene more engaging.

************

Jean-Baptiste Deshays

Deshays, Charite Romain

(not shown in this Salon)

Regretfully, very few Deshays paintings from the Salon of 1765 can be seen on the internet though Diderot gave him a comprehensive encomium:

I saw Deshay's birth as well as his death. I've seen everything he produced in the way of large compositions, his Saint Andrew adoring his cross, the same saint led to his martyrdom, his insolent and sublime Saint Victor defying the proconsul and overturning the idols; Deshays had deduced the special character that a fanatical military man, accustomed to risking his life for other men, should display when acting for the glory of his God. I've seen his dying Saint Benedict receiving final communion; his Temptation of Joseph, in which he dared depict Joseph as a man, not a stupid brute; his Marriage of The Virgin, beautifully set in a temple though custom dictated that it be set in a room. Deshays' imagination was bold, vast. He was a fabricator of large machines who, though sick and dying, is still present in his Saint Jerome reflecting on his final end, his Saul thrown down on the Damascus road, and his Achilles battling with the waters of the Simois and the Scamander, works whose conception and execution both give off heat. His style is imposing, lofty, noble. He'd fully mastered spatial organization in depth and knew how to make his figures arresting and his compositions effective. His draftsmanship was firm, assured, strongly articulated, a bit foursquare. He knew how to sacrifice details to overall effect. In his works one encounters large areas of shadow and repose that provide relief for the eyes and intensify the brighter passages. Without  delicacy, without preciosity, his color is solid, vigorous, and well judged. Some criticize his men for being jaundiced, with touches of  red that's almost pure, and his women for a certain artificial  freshness. His Joseph clearly demonstrates that grace and sensuality weren't foreign to him, though his grace and sensuality retain elements of austerity and nobility. The drawings he left behind give us an exalted idea of his gifts: his taste, his velvety way with charcoal, and his passion make us forgive the mistakes and exaggerated forms. There's talk of head studies drawn by him of such skill and feeling that they wouldn't seem out of place among those left behind by the greatest masters. Great things were expected of Deshays and his death has been much lamented. Van Loo's technique was superior, but he was not comparable to Deshays in the realms of imagination and genius. His father, a bad painter in Rouen, his birthplace, first placed the chalk in his hand. He studied in succession with Colin de Vermont, Restout, Boucher, and Van Loo; under Boucher he risked losing everything he'd learned from the others, skill and grandeur in compositional organization, the intelligent deployment of light and shadow, the effective use of large masses and their imposing quality. Pleasure was a major distraction in his youth, but he won the Academy's grand prize and departed for Rome. The silence and sadness of this declining city were not to his taste and he grew bored there. Unable to return to Paris to seek out the distractions required by an agitated nature such as his, he gave himself over to the study of artistic masterpieces and to his awakening genius. He returned to Paris. He married Boucher's eldest daughter. The marriage did not lead to any change in his dubious morals; he died at the age of thirty-five, a victim of his ill-considered predilections. When I compare the limited time we devote to work with the surprising progress we make, I think that a man of ordinary abilities but possessed of a sturdy, robust temperament, who kept at his books from five in the morning to nine in the evening, studying literature like another works metal, would know at forty-five everything it's possible to know.

Deshays had a teenager's sense of action and drama -   and as shown by his version of Charite Romain, - the sexual innocence of a boy.

could have  been his artist of choice. He would have been even better for the cover art of pulp novels. As Diderot put it, his imagination was "bold and vast".  Apparently Diderot enjoyed being thrilled.

Achilles, aided by Vulcan and Juno, about to be submerged by the Scamander and Simois rivers

In the center of the painting, Vulcan suspended in the air, each hand holding a torch whose flames he shakes into the waters of the Simois and the Scamander; he stands upright and faces us directly. Juno is behind him. The two rivers, one leaning on his urn, reclining and facing us, the other standing and seen from the back, seem to be frightened . Nymphs at their banks, fleeing. The river waters agitated in their beds. Achilles struggling in the waves, pursuing a Trojan he's about to strike with his sword. On the sand, still dry, we see helmets and shields. 

The subject requires an immense canvas and this is a small painting. Vulcan seems a young man, with nothing of the vigorous, formidable god of the ironworks, of flaming caverns, of the Cyclops' leader, of the forger made to wield tongs and anvil, to live in furnaces, to pound and hammer flashing masses of iron. This is not the way the ancient poet saw him. The rivers are awkward, dry, and meagre. The idea is full of passion, but its execution is stiff; no air between objects, no humidity, no harmony, no connections and transitions; everything is crude and flattened into the foreground. One of Van Lao's young daughters, five years old, was asked what it was. "Why nanny, it's fireworks," she responded, and this was a good answer. To realize this work properly, the talents of three or four great masters would have had to be combined. It calls for terrifying, dreadful beings hanging unsupported in the air; agitated waters throwing up mist; tangible atmosphere; frightening nymphs and river gods; riverbeds glutted with helmets, shields, bodies, and quivers; Achilles submerged in the churning waters, etc.

This is quite a tempestuous painting by one of his favorite artists -  yet still Diderot is not satisfied -and probably nothing will ever match what his mind eye sees when  he's reading Homer.

Briseis led from the tent of Achilles

Hector exposed on the banks of the Xanthus

Fallen (more like sleeping) young hero, ancient river god, big beautiful babe in the sky,

what more could we want?

Conversion of St. Paul

If ever there was a great subject for picture, it's the conversion of Saint Paul. I'd say to a painter: Do you think you've got what it takes to conceive of such a grand scene, the knowledge to arrange it so it will astonish? Do you know how to make fire fall from the heavens, to instill sheer terror in men and horses? And the magic of light and shadow, have you mastered it? Then take up your brushes and depict Saul's adventure on the road to Damascus for me.

Diderot has zero interest in the spiritual content of this event - only in visual drama.

In Deshays' picture one sees Saul thrown down in the foreground; his feet extend into the background, his head is lower than the rest of his body; he supports himself with one of his hands, his other arm is raised, seemingly to protect his head, and his gaze is fixed on the spot from which the danger emanates. This figure is beautiful, well drawn, quite bold; it's still the work of Deshays, while the rest is not. One expects the terrifying effect of the light to be one of the main elements in such a composition, and the painter gave no thought to this. He's scattered frightened soldiers to the left, another group of them is visible to the right surrounding a fallen horse, but these groups are cold and mediocre, they're neither engaging nor interesting. It's the horse's enormous buttocks that capture and hold the spectator's attention. If one measures this enormous animal by comparing his size to that of the soldier seizing hold of it, it's larger than the one in the Place Vendome. The color is dingy and heavy handed throughout and, in all honesty, this is but a fragment of a composition.

It does appear that the horse's ass is the focus of this painting.

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CHALLE

Charles-Michel-Ange Challe

( This Leda by Challe was not in the Salon of 1765.
It might have worked well as a tapestry)

Hector Rebuking  Paris for his Cowardice

(image cannot be found - this huge painting may no longer exist)

After quoting about 20 lines from the Iliad, Diderot remarks:

What force! What truth! So spoke the Hector of the venerable Homer. Add or excise a word from this speech, if you dare. -And our painting? -I hear you; but could I possibly pass before the statue of my god without paying it homage? Homer having received his due, I'll turn my attention to Monsieur Challe; but how am I to portray the confusion prevailing among these objects, the sham lavishness of this palace, the impoverished opulence of the composition as a whole?

Challe fails to present an image equal to what Diderot sees when he reads Homer - but he's yet to find any artist who has.

As if the faults in this composition weren't obvious enough, imagine that this mischievous Chardin has hung on the same wall, and at the same height, two works by Vernet and five by himself that are so many masterpieces of truth, color, and harmony. Monsieur Chardin, one shouldn't do such things to a colleague; you didn't need such a foil to make your own pictures look better. .

 Challe's painting is about six meters wide by four high; it is, in faith, one of the largest idiocies ever perpetrated with the brush. But this poor Challe is no longer young; tell me what we might do with him, for I couldn't bear it if he were to continue to paint. I know very well that you defenders of the fable of the bees will tell me this enriches the canvas merchant and the pigment merchant, etc. May  sophists go to the devil,  these  people can't tell right from wrong; they'll get what's coming to them from Providence.

One may note that Diderot loves or hates any painting that he's looking at. He never feels just lukewarm -- and in figurative art, I'm much the  same way.  It's only an abstract painting that I allow to be merely pleasant.

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BACHELIER

Jean-Jacques Bachelier, Charite Romaine

Monsieur Bachelier, it is written: "Nil facies invita Minerva."  All women are difficult to rape, but Minerva is the most difficult of all. The austere, strict goddess said to you, when you beat poor Abel to death with the jawbone of an ass, when you seized upon our Savior, who was most unhappy to find himself in your hands instead of the Jews', and on a hundred other occasions: "You'll never produce anything worthwhile, I can't be raped." You're wasting your time. Why don't you go back to your flowers and animals? Look how Minerva smiles on you then, how your flowers blossom on the canvas, how your horses caper and kick, how your dogs bark, bite, and rend with their teeth. If you're not careful Minerva will abandon you altogether: you don't know how to paint historical pictures, and when you set out to paint flowers and animals and summon Minerva, the goddess, vexed by a child who insists on having everything his own way, won't come, and your flowers will become pale, wan, withered, faded, your animals devoid of action and truth, as cold and limp as your human figures; I'm even afraid my prophecy is halfway realized. You pursue singular, bizarre effects, something that always signals conceptual sterility and lack of genius. In this Roman Charity you wanted to achieve a tour de force by illuminating your canvas from above; even if you'd managed to make all artists bow down in admiration, this would not have prevented a  man of taste, comparing you with Rembrandt this once, from examining the placement of your figures, your draftsmanship, characterization, passions, expression, heads, flesh, color, and drapery, from shaking his head and saying to you: "Nil facies."

 I appreciate pungent negative criticism of art work - but must that extend to personal attacks on the artist?  Perhaps it was just the custom of his time, but I'm afraid that Diderot was something of troll - and this painting is much better than Diderot's  critique.  And  yes, this painting does recall  Rembrandt, and not just because the overhead lighting throws Pero's face into shadow. Bachelier piece is centered on the human drama of a daughter caring for her father - not on the relationship  between a big breasted woman and the viewers who stare at her. As a narrative,  this is the best treatment of this popular theme that I have seen - and that includes the versions of  Caravaggio and Rubens.  It's a shame that Bachelier would soon abandon figurative painting and become more of an educator than an artist. 

Bachelier's Roman Charity has only two figures: a woman who's descended into the depths of a dungeon to nourish an old man condemned to die of starvation with milk from her breasts. The woman is seated; she faces us; she leans over the old man, who's spread out at her feet, his head resting on her knees, and gives him suck, though one can't quite make out how, so awkward is her posture. This scene is lit by a single ray of light falling through a hole in the upper masonry.

This light casts the woman's head into partial or deep shadow. The artist must have tormented himself to the point of despair over this head, for it's rotund and dark, qualities that, in combination with her long, aquiline nose, give her the bizarre features of a child from of a Mexican mother and a European father, in which the characteristic traits of these two nations blend together. You wanted your old man to be thin, dried out and fleshless, near death, and you've made him so hideous he inspires fear; the rude handling of the head, with its protruding bones, narrow forehead, and prickly beard, drains humanity from his face; his neck, arms, and legs counter this effect somewhat, but in the end he resembles a monster, a hyena, anything but a man, and the woman who asked Duclos, secretary of the Academy, what kind of beast this is was fully justified. As for color and drawing, if this were a depiction of a large gingerbread it would be a masterpiece; but in fact it's a big piece of chamois leather artistically hung over a skeleton and stuffed with padding here and there. As for your woman, her arm is badly drawn, the foreshortening is botched; her hands are wretched, the one supporting her head can't be made out at all; and the knee on which your nasty human beast rests his head, where does it come from? To whom does it belong? You can't even imitate iron, for the chain binding this man certainly isn't made of it.

If mimesis were the primary job of the painter - then scorn might be an appropriate response when a representation is less than convincing:  "those aren't fingers, they're  sausages"  (to quote a local old-school art instructor).  But then any ten-year old could be an art critic.

The only thing you've been able to do well, without knowing it, is to avoid making your old man and your woman nervous about being observed; such fear denatures the subject, drains it of interest and pathos, so that it's no longer an act of charity. Which isn't to say one shouldn't open a barred window onto the dungeon, and even place a soldier or a spy at this window; but if the painter has any genius, the soldier will be perceived by neither the old man nor the woman giving him suck; only the spectator will be able to see him and the astonishment, admiration, joy, and tenderness registering on his face; and to include a brief word of consolation, I'm less shocked by your hideous old man than I am by the Tithonus-like elder of M. Lagrenee, because I find something hideous less offensive than something trivial; at least your idea was forceful. Your woman isn't the woman with broad cheeks, long austere face, and large ample breasts that I'd want her to be, but then neither is she a young girl with pretensions to elegance who likes to show off her beautiful bosom.

I admit I'm surprised that Diderot was critical of the other, more voyeuristic  approaches to this subject.

But I repeat yet again, a taste for the extraordinary is typical of mediocrity. When one despairs of making something that's beautiful, natural, and simple, one attempts something that's bizarre. Trust me, go back to jasmine, jonquils, tuberoses, and grapes, and beware of heeding my advice only too late. This Rembrandt was a painter of unique gifts, this Rembrandt sacrificed everything to the magic of light and shadow; leave him alone, for he was possessed of the rarest mastery, and nothing less will make us indulge the darkness, smokiness, harshness, and other such faults entailed by his approach. And then this Rembrandt was a great draftsman, such a touch he had! Such expression, such characterization! Do you have all that? Do you think you ever will?

I'm also surprised that Diderot gave so much thought to  Rembrandt - and I do agree that the comparison is tough on Bachelier.  But I would say that it's his overall composition that comes up short. The foreground space defined by the woman's knee and  the man's shoulder is awkward.

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CHARDIN

Chardin, Attributes of the Sciences 

(not the variant discussed by Diderot)

You come just in time, Chardin, to refresh my eyes after your colleague Challe morally wounded them. Here you are again, great magician, with your silent arrangements! How eloquently they speak to the artist! How much they have to tell about the imitation of nature, the science of color and harmony! How freely the air circulates around your objects! The light of the sun is no better at preserving the individual qualities of the things it illuminates. You pay scarcely any heed to the notions of complementary and clashing colors.

This  might  serve as a list of Diderot's criteria for good painting -- with "imitation of nature" at the top -followed by the "science of color and harmony" - followed by a sense of volumes in space ( so you can feel the air around each object).  And apparently Diderot wants color to be subtle and unobtrusive.

If it's true, as the philosophers claim, that nothing is real save our sensations, that the emptiness of space and the solidity of bodies have virtually nothing to do with our experience, let these philosophers explain to me what difference there is, four feet away from your paintings, between the Creator and yourself. 

This would recall the Grapes of  Zeuxis  fable with which Bryson began his book.  If Chardin painted a vine loaded with grapes, presumably local birds would soon be pecking at them.

Chardin is so true, so harmonious, that even though one sees only inanimate nature on his canvases, vases, cups, bowls, bottles, bread. wine, water, gropes, fruit, pate, he holds his own against and perhaps even draws you away from the two beautiful Vernets he didn't hesitate to put beside his own work. My friend, it's like the universe, in which the presence of a man, a horse, or an animal doesn't destroy the effect of a bit of rock, a tree, a stream; without doubt the stream, the tree, the bit of rock bold less interest for us than the man, the woman, the horse, the animal, but they are equally true.

I must, my friend, communicate to you an idea that's just come to me and that I might not be able to recall at a different moment. It's that the category of painting we call genre is best suited to old men or to those born old; it requires only study and patience, no verve, little genius, scarcely any poetry, much technique and truth, and that's all. You yourself know that the time we devote to what's conventionally known as the search for truth, philosophy, is precisely when our hair turns grey, when we'd find it very difficult to write a flirtatious letter. Regarding, my friend, these grey hairs, this morning I saw that my entire head was silvered over, and I cried out like Sophocles when Socrates asked him how his love life was going: "A domino agresti et furioso profugi," ( I'm free of that savage, merciless master.)

I'm all the more willing to digress with you like this because I'm only going to say one thing about Chardin, and here it is: Select a spot, arrange the objects on it just as I describe them, and you can be sure you'll have seen his paintings.

After telling us that Chardin’s work is "so true, so harmonious" — Diderot then turns to tell us that genre painting requires "no verve, little genius, and scarcely any poetry" — and if you put a bunch of objects on a shelf just as he had described them,  voila!, "you have seen his (Chardin's)  painting".

 Ouch! Could Diderot really have been so blind to the non-mimetic qualities of painting?  This is shocking - not that his response is unusual - but that it appears in a foundational document of European art criticism. He was a smart, inquisitive, sensitive man who called Chardin his friend.  How did he end up so ignorant ?

It seems to me that when one picks up the brush, one must first have an idea that's strong, ingenious, delicate, or savory, and ,have in mind some effect, some sort of impression. Giving over a letter for delivery is an action so commonplace that it absolutely must be heightened, either by some particular circumstance or by superior execution. Very few artists have ideas, but none save a very small number can manage to dispense with them. Yes, without doubt it's permissible for Chardin to show a kitchen with a servant sent over a tub washing dishes, but note how truthful are this servant's movements, how her fortitude is visible in her upper face, and how the folds of her skirt reveal everything that's beneath them; note the astonishing truth of all the household utensils, the color and harmony of the whole small composition. There's no middle ground: either interesting ideas, an original subject, or astonishing technique. The best would be to unite them, combining a piquant idea with delectable execution. Without his sublime technique, Chardin's ideal would be an impoverished one.

The above admonition comes from his scathing review of Bachelier - suggesting that without his "sublime technique" of truthful mimicry, Chardin would also have little to offer.

 He painted Attributes of the Sciences, Attributes of the Arts and of Music, Refreshments, Fruits, and Animals. It's all but impossible to choose between them, they're all of like perfection. I'll sketch them for you as rapidly as 1 can.

46. Attributes of the Arts

Here there are books lying flat, an antique vase, drawing, hammers, chisels, rulers, compasses, a marble statue, brushes, palettes, and other such objects. They're arranged on a kind of balustrade. The statue is from the Grenelle Fountain, Bouchardon's masterpiece. Same truth, same color, same harmony.

Noting that Diderot says nothing of the symbolic meanings of these objects - or what this particular arrangement might signify.  His only concerns are mimesis and harmony - and  I'm  wondering whether "harmony" is anything more than the absence of a disturbing disharmony.

Same  thing with Chardin's Attributes of the Sciences: 

It's nature itself, so truthful are the shapes and colors; the objects separate from one :mother, move forward, recede as if they were real; nothing could be more harmonious, and there's no confusion, despite their great number and the small space.

Diderot says nothing about what is represented - what is left out - or how this might compare with the sciences as he, the encyclopedist, knows them so well.

48.  Chardin, Hanging Dead Duck

or "Third Painting of Refreshments"

If it's true that no connoisseur can dispense with owning at least one Chardin, this is the one to go after. The artist is getting old; he's sometimes done as well, but never better. Hang a duck by one leg. On a buffet underneath, imagine biscuits both whole and broken, a corked jar full of olives, a painted and covered china tureen, a lemon a napkin that's been unfolded and carelessly flung down, a pate on a rounded wooden board, and a glass half filled with wine. Here one sees there are scarcely any objects in nature that are unrewarding and that it's only a question of rendering them properly. The biscuits are yellow; the jar is green, the handkerchief white, the wine red, and the juxtaposition of this yellow, this green, :his white, this red refreshes the eyes with a harmony that couldn't be bettered; and don't think this harmony is the result of a weak, bland, over-finished style; not at all, the handling throughout is of the greatest vigor. It's true that these objects don't change before the artist's eyes, that as he's seen them one day, so they remain the next. This is not the case with animate nature; invariability is an attribute only of stone.

We  cannot judge color by looking at reproductions - but everything else that Diderot says here  is true enough.  This does appear to be the better than the "Attributes" paintings which are more about their subject matters - and it does feel like it's  been handled with "the greatest vigor".  Regretfully, Diderot only knows how to talk  about the proper rendering of  subject matter.   Much more might be said about  the eerie, sinking   feeling this arrangement creates as it balances volumes on either side of its central axis.

Chardin, Basket of Plums

Place on a stone bench a wicker basket full of plums, for which a paltry string serves as handle, and scatter around it some walnuts, two or three cherries, and some small bunches of grapes. This man is the finest colorist in the Salon and perhaps one of the finest in all of painting. I can't forgive Webb his impertinence in having written a treatise on art without mentioning a single Frenchman. Nor can I forgive Hogarth for having said the French school lacked even a mediocre colorist. You lied, Monsieur Hogarth, out of either ignorance or stupidity. I'm well aware that your nation has the habit of dismissing impartial authors who dare praise us; but is it really necessary for you so basely to flatter your fellow citizens at the expense of truth? Paint, paint better if you can; learn to draw, and stop writing. We and the English have two very different styles: ours improves upon English work, theirs is inferior to ours. Hogarth was still alive two years ago, he spent time in France, and Chardin has been a great colorist for thirty years.

Showing that Diderot had read some of the art theory of his time.

Chardin's handling is unusual. It resembles the summary style [maniere heurtee] in the way one can't make things out from close up, while as one moves away the object coalesces and finally resembles nature; and sometimes it affords as much pleasure from close up as from a distance. This man is as superior to Greuze as the sky is high, but in this respect alone. He has no style; no, I'm mistaken, he does have one that's his alone; but because it's his own style, it should ring false in certain circumstances, and it never does. Try, my friend, to explain that to yourself Can you think of a literary style suited to anything and everything? The genre of Chardin's painting is the least demanding one, but no living painter, not even Vernet, is as perfectly accomplished in the one he's chosen. I've just remembered two Landscapes by the late Deshays I didn't tell you about; that's because they don't amount to anything, because both of them are as crude and harsh ... as these last words.

Guessing that this piece is especially wonderful in person as the mass of plums in the basket emerges from space and the meandering string in the center adjudicates a balance between the two  sides.

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SERVANDONI

Servandoni, Architecture with ruins of  temple and obelisk, 1730

This is noble and grand, and if you apply the principles I've just established to these architectural remains, you'll be struck by their nobility and grandeur even on a small scale. Here the objects depicted evoke a retinue of associated moral ideas about the persistence of human nature and the power of peoples. What huge masses! They seemed destined to last an eternity, but they're destroyed, they're disappearing, soon they'll vanish completely; the time when countless human multitudes lived, loved, hated, made plans, and sowed trouble around these monuments is long since passed; Caesar, Demosthenes, Cicero, Cato were of their number. In their place are snakes, Arabs, Tartars, priests, ferocious wild animals, brambles, and thorn-bushes; where once the raucous crowd reigned, silence and solitude now prevail. The ruins are more beautiful in the light of the setting sun than in the morning; morning is the moment of the world's awakening noise and tumult; evening is the moment in which it falls silent and becomes calm .So, it would seem I've raised the difficult question of analogies between ideas and feelings, analogies that secretly guide the artist in choosing his accessories. But let's leave it at that, I have to move on.

This is the first time, in this Salon, that Diderot has associated a  painting with moral ideas - unless it would be to note how far it has fallen short of them. 

Servandoni (not in this  Salon)

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FRANCISQUE MILLET

Francisque Millet (1642-1679) , Mountain landscape with lightning, 1675

I could find nothing online from the Joseph-Francisque Millet who exhibited in the  Salon of 1765. Diderot described his work as "gloomy color, heavy handed touch".

 But I did discover this wonderful  piece by an earlier artist with a similar name who regretfully died quite young. So let this entry be a  tribute to his remarkable vision.

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ANTOINE LEBEL

Antoine Lebel, 1793

(not shown in this Salon)

Antoine  Lebel

(not shown in this  Salon)

I'd very much like to know how it is that Chardin, Vernet, and Loutherbourg don't make all these artists abandon their brushes. But then Homer, Horace, and Virgil wrote, and I dare to write in their wake. So, Monsieur Lebel, go right ahead and paint. In one there's a gorge through some mountains, those to the right high and in shadow, those to the left low and in the light, with a few travelers crossing them. In another one there's another gorge through the mountains; those to the right high and in shadow, those to the left low and in the light, with a torrential stream roaring through the gap.

Figures bad, nature false, not the slightest spark of talent. Monsieur Lebel doesn't understand that a landscapist is a portrait painter whose sole merit consists of his ability to capture a likeness.

I could not find images for  what Diderot discussed - but in his later work,  Lebel does give us reason to believe that landscape painting may have other merits than  a mimetic portraiture of natural features.  Diderot himself said as much in his discussion of Vernet.

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VERNET

Joseph Vernet, Shipwreck (Detail) 

(this piece was done five years after this Salon)

View of the port of Dieppe. The four times of day. Two views of the environs around Nogent-sur-Seine. A shipwreck; another shipwreck. A marine at sunset. Seven small landscapes; two more marines. A storm, and several additional paintings listed under the same number. Twenty-five pictures, my friend, twenty- five pictures! His speed is like the Creator's, his truth is like that of Nature. A painter wouldn't have been wasting his time devoting two years to almost any of these compositions, and Vernet produced them all in that time. What incredible lighting effects! What beautiful skies! What water! What compositional intelligence! What prodigious variety in these scenes! Here, a child who's survived a shipwreck is carried on his father's shoulders; there, a dead woman stretched out on the shore, with her distraught husband. The sea roars, the wind whistles, the thunder cracks, the pale, sombre glow of lightning pierces through the clouds, momentarily revealing the scene. One hears the noise of a ship's hull being breached, its masts tipped over, its sails ripped. The crew is terrified; some on the bridge lift their arms towards the heavens, others throw themselves into the water, the waves smash them against the neighboring rocks where their blood intermingles with the whitening foam; I see some of them floating, I see others about to be swallowed up, I see still others straining to reach the very shore against which they'll be dashed to pieces. The same variety of character, action, and expression prevails among the spectators: some of them shudder and turn away, others offer help, others still are immobilized by what they're seeing; some have lit a fire at the foot of a boulder; they busy themselves trying to revive a dying woman, and I find myself hoping they'll succeed. Direct your gaze at another sea, and you'll see serenity and the full complement of its charms: tranquil, smooth, smiling waters stretching into the distance, their transparency diminishing and their surface gloss increasing all imperceptibly as the eye moves out from the shore to the point at which the horizon meets the sky; the ships are immobile, sailors and passengers alike indulge in whatever diversions might outwit their impatience. If it's morning, what hazy vapors arise! How they refresh and revivify the objects of nature! If it's evening, how profoundly the mountain peaks sleep! How nuanced are the colors of the sky! How wonderfully the clouds move and advance, casting the hues with which they're colored into the water! Go into the countryside, direct your gaze towards the sky, note carefully the phenomena of that single instant, and you'll swear a patch of the great luminous canvas lit by the sun has been cut away and transferred to the artist's easel; or close your hand, make a tube of it through which you can see only a small segment of the large canvas, and you'll swear it's a picture by Vernet that's been taken from his easel and moved into the heavens. While of all our painters he's the most prolific, he's the one that makes me work the least. It's impossible to describe his compositions; they must be seen. His nights are as affecting as his days are beautiful; his ports are as beautiful as his original compositions are pungent. Equally marvelous, whether his brush is captive to natural givens, or his muse, liberated from its shackles, is left to its own devices; incomprehensible, whether he uses the day star or that of night, natural or artificial light, to illuminate his paintings; always harmonious, vigorous, and controlled, like those great poets, those rare men in whom judgment and verve are so perfectly balanced they're never exaggerated or cold; his utilitarian structures, his buildings, his attire, his actions, his men, his animals all ring true. He's astonishing from close up and even more astonishing from a distance. Chardin and Vernet, my friend, are two great magicians. One would say of the latter that he begins by creating the topography, and that he has men, women, and children in reserve whom be uses ro populate his canvas as one populates a colony; then he adds weather, sky, season, good or bad fortune to suit his taste; he's Lucian's Jupiter, who, tired of bearing human beings complain, rises from the table and says: "Hail in Thrace" and instantaneously one sees trees stripped, harvests smashed, huts destroyed and blown away; " Plague in Asia" and one sees the doors of houses closed, streets deserted, and men in flight; " Here, a volcano" and the earth trembles underfoot, buildings collapse, animals take fight, and city dwellers head for the countryside; "There, a war" and entire nations take up arms and slit one another's throats; "In this region a poor harvest" and the old laborer perishes from hunger at his doorstep. Jupiter calls that governing the world, and he's wrong; Vernet calls that making paintings, and he's right.

Diderot loves a mimesis that is harmonious and melodramatic.  He would have been thrilled to see a modern action movie in full cinemascope and color - without needing at all to follow the story.  As he does with  these paintings, he can easily make one up for himself. Echoing his comment about the still-lifes of Chardin, he tells us that we can get the same effect from landscape paintings by just looking at a real view through an empty frame.  Apparently he has no familiarity or interest in the non-mimetic effects of a painting - whether it's the dynamics of form or the subtlety/profundity of subject matter.

It's not just that he would have had no comprehension of the modern art that came  after him -- he also would not have felt the achievements of  the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque art that preceded him.  Apparently he did not even understand what his friend Chardin was doing either.

So just as Diderot would  have burned  Boizot's illustration of Anacreon's poem in front of a bronze bust of the poet -- I would like to burn Diderot's art criticism in front of two paintings by Rembrandt.  These two self portraits, done in the last years of his life,   demonstrate the difference between the physical details that a painting can resemble and the flashes of spirit it can express.

Morning

Mid day

Evening

Night

67.  Four Times of Day:   Lighting effects that couldn't be more beautifully controlled. Examining these works, I can't get over the special talents, the specific strengths distinguishing them from one another; what results from this? In the end, you begin to think this artist has every talent, that he's capable of anything.

I'm with Diderot in notinthe lighting before anything else.  It's probably even more impressive in the actual painting than the reproductions.  But Vernet's human figures are only adequate as either expressive human figures (Watteau) or statuesque masses in space (Claude).

Here we can compare some of the best figures of Claude de Lorrain, Watteau, and Vernet

66. View of the Port of Dieppe: Immense and imposing composition. Sky lightly overcast, silvery. Handsome mass of buildings. Lively, picturesque view: a multitude of figures busy fishing, preparing and selling the catch, working, mending the nets, and other such tasks; gestures truthful and unforced; figures lively and vigorous of touch; however, as I must be totally candid, neither as lively nor as vigorous as usual.

It's only in  the last  phrase that we hear from an  aesthete : one who measures liveliness and vigor from one painting to the next - and cares about it.  Judging from the reproduction - it does make me feel drowsy - especially as compared with Vermeer's View of Delft. We may also note that Diderot has not suggested whether this painting renders anything like the physical characteristics or the character of the seaport being  portrayed.  And so he does not always believe that "sole merit consists of his ability to capture a likeness."

In this article on Vernet there are, my friend, a few repetitions of things I wrote two years ago, but as the artist showed me the same genius and the same handling, I had no choice but to reiterate the same praise. I hold to my opinion: Vernet challenges Claude Lorrain in the art of raising an atmospheric mist on canvas, and is infinitely superior in scenic invention, figural drawing, variety of incident, and the rest. The first is purely and simply a great landscapist, the other is a history painter. In my view,  Claude selected natural phenomena  that are rarer and for this reason more striking. Vernet's atmosphere is more ordinary and for this reason more easily recognizable.

Claude Lorrain's reputation among 19th and 20th Century American collectors was much higher -  so I have seen his work in American art museums, while I have seen  nothing by Vernet.  Lorrain's reputation has also been higher among those who have written  surveys of art history- especially with an emphasis on form over content. To my eyes - that makes sense.  Vernet appears to be so much more about thrilling narrative -  while Lorrain is more about the mood created by powerful forms in space.

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ALEXANDRE ROSLIN

Alexandre Roslin, self portrait with wife, 1767

(not shown in this Salon)

And never was a composition stupider, flatter, more dispiriting. The figures are so stiff It s been dubbed the Game of Skittles. At first glance one seems to be at Nicolet's theatre, in the middle of one of his most outrageous burlesques. One recognizes Father Cassandre by his slow, gaunt, sad, distracted air. The imposing creature moving forward m white satin, that s Mademoiselle Zirzabelle, and the lanky fellow bowing, that's Monsieur Liandre. As for the others, they're the family brats. The footmen, peasants, children, and coach as hard and dry as can be imagined; the other figures with blank faces graceless, without dignity of demeanor. It's a ceremony so cold, so stiff, it makes one yawn. What, these girls don't think to run up to their father with open arms, nor this father to open his arms to receive them, nor any of these little ones to break away from the others, crying out as they run, Hello, grandfather, Hello, grandaughter? All these people don't seem to have been in any great hurry, but they. should have been, for this is the family that, of all those in France, is the closest, the most decent, in which the love of one member for another is the strongest. The La Rochefoucault residence is the very dwelling of Paternal Tenderness, but there's not a hint of this in Roslin's canvas. Here there's neither soul nor life ;  nor joy, nor truth: no soul, life, joy, or truth in the masters, no soul, life, joy, or truth in the servants; no soul, life, truth, joy, or animation in the peasants; it's a big, depressing firescreen. The large  terrace, green and monochrome, that fills the foreground could very easily pass for the velvet from an old billiard table and manages to muffle, darken, and deaden the scene.

However, it must be admitted that there are fabrics, draperies, details imitated with the greatest verisimilitude; the softness, color, reflected light, and folds of Mile Zirzabelle's satin, for example, couldn' t be bettered. But if a person shouldn't be dressed like a mannequin, neither should a mannequin be dressed like a person.

The La Rochefoucault family portrait, critiqued above, cannot be found on the internet, but the group self portrait shown above it was done only a few years later - so I  imagine they are similar.

I'm guessing that Diderot was  proud to have personally known of such a  family - and  that proof of  his own social status would have been the primary content of this review.

His quip about fabric hanging from mannequins is  spot on.  There's no question that the artist is highly skilled - but  yes - his stiff, proper paintings do make one yawn.

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JEAN VALADE

Jean Valade, portrait of the Marquis  of Caumont, 1745

( probably not in this Salon)

We owe,  my friend, a bit of thanks to our bad painters, for they spare both your copyist and my time.  Please convey my gratitude to Monsieur  Valade if you ever meet him. Roslin is a Guido Reni,  a Titian, a Paolo Veronese, a Van Dyck in comparison with Valade.

Many of the Valade portraits seen on the internet are no more than quick, perfunctory likenesses - if that. But as you can see above, he could do quite well given sufficient time and inclination.

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Pierre-Antoine Demachy 

Pierre-Antoine De Machy

(May not have been in this Salon)

What wonderful opportumt1es for study there are at the Salon! What insights can be gained by comparing Van Loo with Vien, Verner with Leprince, Chardin with Roland, De Machy with Servandoni! One needs to be accompanied by a skilled, candid artist who lets us see and speak as we like but who from time to time pushes our nose up against beautiful things we'd otherwise have missed and against bad ones we'd have praised to the skies. Before long one begins to understand technique; as for the ideal, that can't be taught, but anyone who can judge a poet on this score can also judge a painter; our guide will make us aware that in some cases the artist preferred a less truthful action, a weaker character, a less striking posture to others whose advantages he grasped fully, but whose use would have entailed more loss than gain for the composition as a whole. De Machy elicits approval when viewed in isolation; when compared with Servandoni, he seems wretched. Seeing the one enlarge small things, one feels that the other shrinks large ones. The firm, vigorous color of the first brings out the mealy, grey paleness of the second; however dense one might be, one has to be struck by the staleness, the insipidity of the latter when contrasted with the verve and warmth of the former. Let's get down to specifics.

Here's a Servandoni  for purposes of comparison - and by contrast, the De Machy does feel  dumpy - while the Servandoni feels thrilling.

But the De Machy does have its own comfortable charm.

***

De Machy : Portal of Saint Genevieve on the Day the King Laid its Foundation

Stone

 This portal, which is grand and noble, has become a little house of cards under De Machy's brush. The uproar, the crush of people in which several citizens were wounded, suffocated, squashed isn't here, Monsieur De Machy gives us no trace of it, replacing it with little battalions of perfectly erect marionettes, carefully aligned, carefully disposed in parallel rows; the cold symmetry of a procession instead of the movement and disorder of grand ceremony. There's neither verve, nor variety, nor character, nor color, nor intelligence; overall effect empty, flat. Cochin's court balls are infinitely preferable.

This critique might exemplify the necessity of keeping Diderot's commentary private. Saint Genevieve was the  patron saint of Paris, and this building,  later to be secularized by Napoleon as the Pantheon, symbolized the authority of the king who was laying its foundation stone.   Diderot's preference for the display of anarchy is more  political than  aesthetic.  De Machy has made the looming portal glow with mystery and  power.               

                                              

De Machy : Construction of the the new Wheat Market
                                  

The Construction of the New Grain Market is flat, grey again, lacking in understanding of light; it's a real magiclantern image. As he shows cranes, scaffolding, bustle, and creates a flickering effect through juxtaposition of shadows that are black, very black, with light that's bright, very bright, I'm convinced that if were projected onto a large sheet children would find it delightful.

I might find the actual painting to be delightful as well - the reproduction cannot be trusted for tones

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DROUAIS

Francois Hubert Drouais (1727-1775),

  Portrait  of young woman as Vestal Virgin, 1767

(not shown at this Salon)

As with several of the previous artists, Diderot expresses his gratitude that Drouais showed nothing worth wasting his time to write about.  He dismisses the portraits with "All this man's faces are no more than the finest rouge artistically deposited on the finest, whitest  chalk."

That's an exaggeration - but essentially true.  The aesthetic here is closer to cosmetology than expressive painting.  The character depicted is a cipher - the rest is a tiresome invrentory of upscale merchandise.

Joshua Reynolds  (1723-1792)

Lady Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces, 1763-65

The same could be said for this contemporary English depiction of Lady Bunbury, who also pretends to be living in Ancient Rome - though not necessarily as a virgin.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)

Portrait of Mrs. Ann  Thicknesse, 1760

Here is another English contemporary who also gives us an expressionless facial mask -

but delivers it in a much more exciting painting.

(I've known Mrs. Thicknesse for nearly sixty years now)

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FRANCESCO GIUSEPPE CASANOVA

Casanova - not in this Salon

Casanova - not in this  Salon

This Casanova is a great painter. He has imagination, he has verve; his brain gives forth horses that whinny, caper, bite, kick, and fight, men who slaughter one another in a hundred different ways, smashed skulls, pierced chests, screams, threats, fire, smoke, blood, the dead, the dying, all the confusion, all the horror of a free-for-all. He also knows how to arrange the most tranquil of compositions, how to depict soldiers marching or resting as well as in battle, and several of the most important technical skills are his to command.

94. Soldiers Marching

Large painting

This is one of the most beautiful, most picturesque machines known to me. What a handsome spectacle! What grand, beautiful poetry! How can I transport you to the foot of these rocks that touch the sky? How can I show you this broad-beamed bridge supported by rafters, thrown from the summit of these rocks towards this old chateau? How can I give you an accurate idea of this chateau, of the crumbling antique towers that compose it and of the other vaulted bridge that unites and separates them? How will I make the torrent rush down from the mountains, hurl its waters beneath this bridge... etc etc etc

This is starting out as a very positive review -- but as it turns out - Diderot is only being sarcastic

Ah! If only the technical components of this composition were equal to the idea! If only Vernet had painted the sky and water, Loutherbourg the chateau and the rocks, and some other great master the figures! If only all these objects situated on their various levels of depth had been lit and colored in accordance with their spatial placement! This painting demands to be seen at least once in one's life, but unfortunately it completely lacks that perfection these other hands would have given it. It's a beautiful poem, well conceived, well laid out, but badly written.

Eventually Diderot delivers a comprehensive ass whuppin' -- not because the subject is juvenile - but because the aesthetic is insensitive :

This picture is sombre, lacklustre, muffled. At first the canvas seems to offer only the accidents having befallen a large piece of scorched bread, an impression that undercuts and destroys the effect created by the huge rocks, the large mass of stone rising in the middle of the canvas, the marvelous wooden bridge, and the precious stone arch, that undercuts and destroys the effect of this infinite variety of groupings and actions. There's no intelligence in the color tones, no aerial perspective, no air between objects, the eyes are hindered and discouraged from wandering. The objects in the foreground have none of the vigor demanded by their placement. If the scene transpires close to the viewer, the figure closest to him should be at least eight times larger than one that's about sixteen meters behind this figure; either the foreground is handled forcefully, or there's no truth, no effect. If on the other hand the scene unfolds deep within the canvas and the viewer is far away from it, the objects will be imperceptibly diminished and will require the softest of tones, because there will be a greater expanse of air between the eye and the scene. Proximity to the eye separates objects, while distance presses them together and blends them. This is the A B C that Casanova seems to have forgotten. But how is it, you ask me, that here he's forgotten what other work shows him to know well? Shall I answer you as I see it? It's because elsewhere his organization is his own, he's its inventor; here I suspect he's only its compiler. He opened his print folder and skillfully mixed together three or four landscapes, compiling an admirable sketch from them, but when he set out to paint this sketch all his skill, craft, talent, and technique abandoned him. If he'd observed the scene in nature or in his head, he'd have seen it replete with its own spatial recession, sky, and water, with its own light and colors, and would have executed it accordingly. Nothing is commoner and more difficult to recognize than plagiarism in painting; perhaps I'll have occasion to talk about this further on. In literature it's betrayed by style, in painting by color. However that may be, how many are the beauties destroyed by the monotony of this work, one which nonetheless, because of its poetry, variety, fecundity, and detail, is Casanova's most beautiful production.

Was it a compilation of other images or something entirely original? 

 Diderot has asked a perceptive question.

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Baudouin 

Pierre Antoine Baudouin : The Hours of the Day, Morning

(I could not find an image of the painting discussed by Diderot - so I found another to give some idea of Baudouin's work)

101. A Young Girl Recognizing Her Child at Notre-Dame among the Foundlings, or the Strength of Kinship : The church. Between two pillars, the foundlings' pew. Around the pew, a crowd, joy, commotion, surprise. Within the crowd behind a nun, a tall girl holding an infant and kissing it. A beautiful subject botched. I argue that the crowd ruins the effect, reducing a touching, moving event to an incident that's difficult to make out; that there's no silence, no serenity, and that only a few spectators should haver)been present. Cochin the draftsman-designer (dessinateur) responds that the more people there are on the scene, the more forceful the evocation of kinship ties will be: Cochin is arguing like a man of letters, and I'm arguing like a painter .. You want to evoke the full force and intensity of these blood ties and yet retain the scene's calm. solitude, and silence? Here's how that might have been done, and how Greuze would have handled it. I imagine mother and father have gone to Notre Dame with their family. wh1ch includes an elder daughter, her sister, and a young son. They come upon the foundlings' pew, the father, mother, and son on one side, the two sisters on the other. The elder girl recognizes her child; at that moment, overcome by maternal affection which makes her forget the presence of her further, a violent man from whom her lapse had been kept secret, she cries out, she rushes forward and picks up the infant; her younger sister pulls at her clothing, but in vain; she pays no heed. She whispers: My sister, what are you doing? Don't you realize the risk ... Our father ... The mother's face turns pale and the father takes on a terrible. menacing air. be casts a furious glance at his wife. The little boy, for whom all this remains a closed book, stares vacantly. The nun is amazed; a few spectators, men and women of a certain age, for there shouldn't be any others, react, the women with joy and pity, the men with surprise; and there's my composition, which is much better than Baudouin's. But the right expression for the elder daughter must still be found, and that won't be easy. I've said there should only be spectators of a certain age around the pew because experience suggests that others, young men and women. wouldn't

linger there. So? So Cochin doesn't know what he's talking about If he wants to defend his colleague against his own better judgment and his own taste. then let him.

Greuze has made himself a painter-preacher of good morals, Baudouin, a painter-preacher of bad; Greuze, a painter of the family and of respectable people; Baudouin, a painter of rakes and houses of ill repute. But fortunately he's not a skilled draftsman; he lacks color and genius the stronger. One day Baudouin spoke to me of the subject for a picture: he wanted to show a prostitute who'd come to the rooms of a midwife to give birth in secret, and who was obliged by poverty to abandon her child to the foundling hospital. Why don't you set your scene, l responded, in a garret, and depict a decent woman compelled to do the same thing for the same reason? That would be more beautiful, more moving, and more seemly. A garret is a more appropriate subject for a man of talent than a midwife's wretched quarters. When it doesn't entail any artistic sacrifice, isn't it better to represent virtue rather than vice? Your composition will inspire only a sterile form of pity; mine would inspire the same feeling, but in a fruitful way. --Oh!

That's too serious; and then, it's so easy to find prostitutes to model. Well. do you want an amusing subject? - Yes, one that's even a bit smutty. if you can manage, for I admit it, I like smut, and the public doesn't despite it either. - If smut you must have, so be it, and you'll even be able to use models from the rue Fromonteau. Tell me quickly . .. and he rubbed his hands in anticipation. - Imagine, I continued, a hackney-coach moving along the St Denis road between eleven and twelve o'clock. In the middle of the rue St Denis one of the coach's braces gives way, and the compartment is thrown on its side. The window panels slide down, the door opens, and a monk and three prostitutes emerge. The monk begins to run away. The driver's poodle leaves his master's side, follows the monk, and, on catching up with him, grips his long robe between his teeth. While the monk tries desperately to get rid of the dog, the driver, who doesn't want to lose his fare, climbs down from his seat and heads towards the monk. One of the prostitutes applies her hand to a bump on the forehead of one of her companions, while the other, struck by the comedy of the misadventure, completely disheveled, her hands on her hips, bursts into laugher; the shopkeepers are also laughing on their doorsteps, and some rascally members of the gathering crowd screamed at the monk: "He shit his bed! He shit his bed!" - "That's excellent," said Baudouin. - "And it even bas a moral," I added. It's vice punished. And who can say whether the monk of my acquaintance who experienced this mishap eight days ago, visiting the Salon, might not recognize himself and blush? And isn't it something to have made a monk blush?

I could not find any of the pieces mentioned online - so the one above will have to serve as an example of Baudouin’s competence as illustrator and limitations as painter.

 Diderot has moved so smoothly from art critic to raconteur - we can conclude that it's his own imagination that he wants to see depicted.   He wants more melodrama  - and if we must have smut, let's humiliate the church while we're at it.

A Mother Quarreling with her Daughter is the best of Baudouin's small pictures; it's better drawn than the others and rather agreeably colored, though still a bit drab. The weariness of the man on the sofa of the prostitute freshening her rouge, not bad. Everything in The Confessional should be better drawn, calls for more temperament, more force. It makes no impression and, into the bargain, has need of more patience, time, of just about everything, and could use revisions and corrections by the father-in-law. -There are also some miniatures and portraits. pretty portraits rather prettily painted; a Silenus Carried by Satyrs that's hard, dry, reddish, satyrs and Silenus both. All this isn't completely without merit, but it lacks ... How to describe what it lacks? This is no less difficult to say than it is essential to have, and unfortunately it's not popping up as easily as mushrooms. Why am I having so much difficulty saying this? You know very well how precious one's two pupils (i.e. eye-balls = testicles) are.   Once there was a university professor who fell in love with the niece of a canon while teaching her Latin; he got his student pregnant. The canon exacted a very cruel form of revenge. Did Baudouin give painting lessons, fall in love, and impregnate the niece of a canon? Well, he doesn't seem to have what Abelard lost as a result of that episode .. I bid Monsieur Baudouin a pleasant evening, and I pray God that He keep watch over you, my friend, and, unless His will dictates otherwise, that He protect you from canons' nieces, so that you'll be safe from their uncles.

  I hadn’t really expected this kind of blunt sexual humiliation to appear in one of the first comprehensive exhibition critiques in European history — but there it is. Baudouin paints as if he’d lost his  testicles.  I suppose the reader is supposed to hide his smile and snicker. Deplorable as it is, however, it does offer a less mimetic and more aesthetic criteria for judgment. And the aesthetic invoked is a primal life energy. Judging from the Baudouin images found online, however, I would say that his weakness was imagination rather than masculine hormones.

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ROLAND DE LA PORTE

It has been said,  my friend, that  those who have not  laughed at Regnard's comedies have no right to laugh at the comedies of Moliere.  Well, tell those who pass by Roland de la Porte's work without stopping that they have no right to look at Chardin. It doesn't have Chardin's touch, nor his vigor, nor his truth, nor his harmony; it's not that it falls a thousand leagues, a thousand years short; it's a matter of the little, imperceptible distance that one's aware of but can't close. You work, study, take pains, strike out, start over, all wasted effort; nature has made its pronouncement: You will go so far, just this far, and no further. It's easier to advance from the Notre-Dame bridge to Roland de La Porte than from Roland de La Porte to Chardin.

Roland de la  Porte (not the same medallion described below)

102. A Medallion Representing an Old Portrait of the King in Imitation Relief :  This is an imitation of an old plaster, replete with all the accidents worked by age. It has cracks and holes, there's dust, dirt, grime; it's convincing ma un poco freddo.  (cold)  And then this genre is so facile that only the people continue to admire it.

Roland de la Porte, c. 1765

(this appears to be  similar, but not identical, to the piece described below)

I could spare you this one; but these works circulate on the market swindling dealers baptize them to suit themselves and take people in.  Still moving from right to left, it's my customary direction, on a table of bluish, broken marble, some grapes, a few small  sugar cubes a white pottery cup and saucer; in the background a bowl full of peaches, a bottle of ratafia; around them a few plums, a carafe of water, breadcrumbs, some pears, some peaches, finally a tin coffee box. These different objects don't go together, and this is a mistake Chardin doesn't make. He, my friend, who knows how to do flesh excels in all subjects, but he who excels in subjects like these doesn't necessarily know how to do flesh. The colors of garden roses are beautiful, but they don't contain as much life as the rosy cheeks of a young girl. The first might be compared with these works, but that would be to flatter them.

detail of Laporte

detail of the following Chardin

Chardin, c. 1728

(not in this Salon)

Touch, vigor, truth, and harmony are the criteria by which Diderot judged Chardin to be superior -  

and Chardin's reputation  significantly eclipsed that of La Porte both then now.  As Harold Rosenberg put it, "Without realizing he was doing it, Chardin rejected his own time and opened the door to modernity". The National Gallery of Washington has nine Chardin paintings, the Met has two, Chicago has three.  None of them has anything by Roland de la Porte.  Yesterday was the first time I ever even heard his name. 

In comparing the detail areas shown above - it does appear that Chardin was more concerned with the qualities of paint as it organized pictorial space - while La Porte was more concerned with arranging  perfectly rendered subject matter - just as a professional flower arranger might work. And Chardin goes for a profound, mysterious, timeless feeling - while La Porte goes for a more secular , immediate, thrill of light, color, and design.

So I don't really agree with Diderot that La Porte was good but Chardin was better. Rather, I would say that they were each very good in the direction which they chose  - and thanks to the history of Modernism, Chardin has been getting much better press.

Here's  some of his other work:

Roland de la Porte

Roland de la Porte

This one is my favorite.  Light is erupting from that loaf of bread

 like fire from flowing lava.

Roland de la Porte

Something about this area reminds of Claudio Bravo

Roland de la Porte

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JEAN  BAPTISTE DESCAMPS

Descamps (1706-1791), self portrait, 1762

(not shown in the Salon)

Decamps depicts himself as a sensitive, honorable, serious man - and indeed his biography would suggest just that. He worked as an artist, art historian, museum curator, and founder of an art academy.

Above is the only piece on the internet firmly attributed to him - exhibiting taste and character - but not especially virtuosity.

Diderot soundly thrashed him - but he did that to almost everyone.  His critique of  the Salon resembles a pinball game at the arcade --  shooting down one  hapless yellow duck after another.

To this fellow too, the polite acknowledgement already known to you.   (i.e. gratitude for not painting anything good enough to write about)  for you paint grey, Monsieur Descamps, you paint heavy-handedly and without truth. This child holding a bird is stiff, the bird is neither living nor dead; it's one of those pieces of painted wood with a whistle at the back. And this fat; short, disagreeable woman from Caux, what's she saying? Who's she angry with? She's between two of her children, and it's me she's looking at; the one who's crying, if it's because of the enormous head you've given him, he has good reason. It's said you dabble in literature; may God grant that your gifts as a writer are superior to your gifts as a painter. If you have a taste for writing, write in prose, in verse, whatever you like, but don't paint; or if, to divert yourself, you move from one muse to the other, keep the latter productions in your rooms; your friends, after dining, napkins on their arms and toothpicks in hand, will say: But that's not bad.

Young Man Drawing, The Student Modelling, Young Girl Feeding Her Bird, off with all of you to the quarters of Monsieur Descamps your father, and don't come out.

************

GREUZE

Greuze, self  portrait

(not  in this Salon)

Perhaps I'm a bit long-winded, but if you only knew how much fun I'm having boring you! I'm no different from the other bores in this world. But then a hundred and ten paintings have been described and thirty-one painters assessed.

A brief gesture of  mischievous self deprecation - though it's hardly an antidote to so much caustic criticism of  others.

Here we have your painter and mine; the first who has set out to give art some morals, and to organize events into series that could easily be turned into novels.

This is a strong assertion.  But should we take it any  more seriously than the rest of this paragraph? Diderot certainly likes to turn images into prose - but has he  ever turned  them into novels ?

 He's a bit vain, our painter, but his vanity is that of a child, it's the intoxication of talent. Deprive him of the naivete that enables him to say of his own work: Look at that, how beautiful it is! ... and you'll deprive him of verve, you'll extinguish his fire, and his genius will be eclipsed. I suspect that if he were to become modest he'd have no further reason for being. Our best qualities are closely related to our faults. Most respectable women are moody. Great artists are capable of hatchet blows in their heads; almost all female flirts are generous; even good, pious folk sometimes speak ill of others; it's difficult for a master who thinks he's doing good not to be a bit of a despot. I hate all the mean, petty gestures that indicate merely a base soul, but I don't hate great crimes, first because they make for beautiful paintings and fine tragedies; and also because grand, sublime actions and great crimes have the same characteristic energy. If a man weren't capable of setting fire to a city, another man wouldn't be able to throw himself into the pit to save it. If Caesar's soul had not been possible, Cato's would not have been either. Every man is born a citizen of either Tenares or the heavens; it's Castor and Pollux, a hero, a villain, Marcus Aurelius, Borgia, "diversis studiis ovo prognatus eodem. "

After praising Greuze for introducing morals, Diderot then praises those who perpetrate "great crimes" - like burning down a city - so that others can heroically try to save it or write a fine  tragedy about the catastrophe.   This is why I  don't take Diderot's interest in  morality all that seriously.

Greuze, portrait of  Diderot

(not quite as warm and friendly as Fragonard portrayed  him)

We have three painters who are skillful, prolific, and studious observers of nature, who begin nothing, finish nothing without having consulted the model several times, and they are Lagrenee, Greuze, and Vernet. The second carries his talent everywhere, into popular crowds, into churches, to market, to the fashionable promenades, into private homes, into the street; endlessly he gathers actions, characters, passions, expressions. Chardin and he both speak quite well about their art, Chardin with discretion and objectivity, Greuze with warmth and enthusiasm. La Tour is also worth listening to in intimate conversation. There are a great many works by Greuze, some mediocre, some good, many excellent. Let's examine them.

Wouldn't readers be interested in why Chardin was not included as one of those " skillful, prolific, and studious observers of nature"?  Wouldn't we like to read some explanation for this omission?

Greuze,    Young Girl Crying Over her Dead Bird                            

What a pretty elegy! What a pretty poem! What a fine idyll Gessner would make of it! It could be a vignette drawn from this poet's work. A delicious painting, the most attractive and perhaps the most interesting in the Salon. She faces us, her head rests on her left hand. The dead bird lies on top of the cage, its head hanging down, its wings limp, its feet in the air. How natural her pose! How beautiful her head! How elegantly her hair is arranged! How expressive her face! Her pain is profound, she feels the full brunt of her misfortune, she's consumed by it. What a pretty catafalque the cage makes! How graceful is the garland of greenery that winds around it! Oh, what a beautiful hand! What a beautiful hand! What a beautiful arm! Note the truthful detailing of these fingers, and these dimples, and this softness, and the reddish cast resulting from the pressure of the head against these delicate fingers, and the charm of it all.

A turning point in this discussion --- this is where Diderot steps away from his third person evaluation of a painting -- and enters into a fantasy second person relationship with the child who is portrayed.   And he begins it by wanting to kiss her hand:     

 One would approach this hand to kiss it, if one didn't respect this child and her suffering. Everything about her enchants, including the fall of her clothing; how beautifully the shawl is draped! How light and supple it is! When one first perceives this painting, one says: Delicious! If one pauses before it or comes back to it, one cries out: Delicious! Delicious! Soon one is surprised to find oneself conversing with this child and consoling her. This is so true, that I'll recount some of the remarks I've made to her on different occasions.

Poor little one, how intense, how thoughtful is your pain! Why this dreamy, melancholy air? What, for a bird? You don't cry, you suffer, and your thoughts are consistent with your pain. Come, little one, open up your heart to me, tell my truly, is it really the death of this bird that's caused you to withdraw so sadly, so completely into yourself? ... You lower your eyes, you don't answer. Your tears are about to flow. I'm not your father, I'm neither indiscreet nor severe. Well, well, I've figured it out, he loved you, and for such a long time, he swore to it! He suffered so much! How difficult to see an object of our love suffer! ... Let me go on; why do you put your hand over my mouth? On this morning, unfortunately, your mother was absent; he came, you were alone; he was so handsome, his expressions so truthful! He said things that went right to your soul! And while saying them he was at your knees; that too can easily be surmised; he took one of your hands, from time to time you felt the warmth of the tears falling from his eyes and  running the length of your arm. Still your mother didn't return; it's not your fault, it's your mother's fault ... My goodness, how you're crying! But what I say to you isn't intended to make you cry. And why cry? He promised you, he'll keep all his promises to you. When one has been fortunate enough to meet a charming child like yourself, become attached to her, give her pleasure, it's for life ... And my bird? ... My friend, she smiled ... Ah, how beautiful she was! If only you'd seen her smile and weep! I continued: Your bird? When one forgets oneself, does one remember one's bird? When the hour of your mother's return drew near, the one you love went away. How difficult it was for him to tear himself away from you! ... How you look at me! Yes, I know all that. How he got up and sat down again countless times! How he said goodbye to you over and over without leaving! How he left and returned repeatedly! I've just seen him at his father's, he's in charmingly good spirits, with that gaiety from which none of them are safe ... And my mother? ... Your mother, she returned almost immediately after his departure, she found you in the dreamy state you were in a moment ago; one is always like that. Your mother spoke to you and you didn't hear what she said; she told you to do one thing and you did another. A few tears threatened to appear beneath your eyelids, you either held them back as best you could or turned away your head to dry them in secret. Your continued distraction made your mother lose her patience, she scolded you, and this provided an occasion for you to cry without restraint and so lighten your heart. Should I go on? I fear what I'm going to say might rekindle your pain. You want me to? Well then, your good mother regretted having upset you, she approached you, she took your hands, she kissed your forehead and cheeks, and this made you cry even harder. You put your head on her breast, and you buried your face there, which was beginning to tum red, like everything else. How many sweet things this good mother said to you, and how these sweet things caused you pain! Your canary warbled, warned you, called to you, flapped its wings, complained of your having forgotten it, but to no avail; you didn't see it, you didn't hear it, your thoughts were elsewhere; it got neither its water nor its seeds, and this morning the bird was no more ... You're s~ looking at me; is it because I forgot something? Ah, I understand, little one; this bird, it was he who gave it to you. Well, he'll find another just as beautiful ... That's still not all; your eyes stare at me and fill up with tears again. What more is there? Speak, I'll never figure it out myself ... And if the bird's death were an omen ... what would I do? What would become of me? What if he's dishonorable? ... What an idea! Have no fear, it's not like that, it couldn't be like that ... - Why my friend, you're laughing at me; you're making fun of a serious person who amuses himself by consoling a painted child for having lost her bird, for having lost what you will? But also observe how beautiful she is! How interesting! I don't like to trouble anyone; despite that, I wouldn't be too displeased to have been the cause of her pain. The subject of this little poem is so cunning that many people haven't understood it; they think this young girl .is crying only for her canary. Greuze has already painted this subject once. He placed in front of a broken mirror a tall girl in white satin, overcome by deep melancholy. Don't you think it would be just as stupid to attribute the tears of the young girl in this Salon to the loss of her bird, as the melancholy of the other girl to her broken mirror? This child is crying about something else, I tell you. And you've heard for yourself, she agrees, and her distress says the rest. Such pain! At her age! And for a bird! - But how old is she, then? How shall I answer you, and what a question you've posed. Her head is fifteen or sixteen, and her arm and hand eighteen or nineteen. This is a flaw in the composition that becomes all the more apparent because her head is supported by her hand, and the one part is inconsistent with the other. Place the hand somewhere else and no one would notice it's a bit too robust, too developed. This happened, my friend, because the head was done from one model and the hand from another. Otherwise this hand is quite truthful, very beautiful, perfectly colored and drawn. If you can overlook the small patch that's a bit too purplish in color, it's a very beautiful thing. The head is nicely lit, as agreeably colored as a blonde's could be; perhaps she could have a bit more relief The striped handkerchief is loose, light, beautifully transparent, everything's handled with vigor, without compromising the details. This painter may have done as well, but he's never done anything better.

This work is oval, it's two feet high, and it belongs to Monsieur

de La Live de La Briche.

After the Salon was hung, Monsieur de Marigny did the initial honors. The Fish Maecenas arrived with a cortege of artists in his favor and admitted to his table; the others were already there. He moved about, he looked, he registered approval, disapproval; Greuze's Young Girl Crying caught his attention and surprised him. That is beautiful, he said to the artist, who answered him: Monsieur, I know it; I am much praised, but I lack work. -That, Vernet interjected, is because you have a host of enemies, and among these enemies there is someone who seems to love you to distraction but who will bring about your downfall. -And who is this enemy? Greuze asked him. -You yourself, Vernet answered.

As Norman Bryant began his chapter about Greuze:

"OF ALL THE painters whose work this book discusses, Greuze is the most remote from ourselves; so remote as to be almost irretrievable."

And none of Greuze's work is more remote from me than this image.  Why are we shown a cute young girl reacting to the death of a canary?   What is her reaction?  Is she  really swooning?  Is she play-acting in a child's game?  Is the dead canary supposed to symbolize something?

Diderot interprets this as a romantic drama.  While mama was away, the girl was  visited by a young man  who pledged his heart and possibly took something in return -  perhaps her innocence ? -  or her  purity?  Precious things that, like the broken mirror in another  Greuze piece, can never be restored.

And I'm also puzzled because I find the painting so visually unattractive.

Perhaps the colors and tones have been badly abused by aging and reproduction. Above is another reproduction whose color is more pleasing.

But still - it has no more visual power than an illustration on a can of chocolate cookies.

Its visuality is as pathetic as its theme  - a creepy theme, as Diderot develops it - inviting the older male viewer to kiss and console  a vulnerable, heartbroken child on, or just beyond,  the threshold of adult sexuality.

This conflation of paternal concern with sexual gratification is more like a predatory technique than an actual attempt to help a young person through a difficult and risky transition. But Diderot seems to be enjoying it.

Who would want to hang this in their home and make it part of their daily life?  When Diderot called it a "pretty poem" , was he attacking it with sarcasm -    as he had just done with the "handsome spectacle" of Casanova's banal battle scenes?  Was he suggesting that this piece showed Greuze to be his own worst enemy as Vernet had declared ? I would hope so.  It's hardly exemplary of "giving art  some morals" . But it sounds like Diderot approves of  the predatory fantasy that this painting has both enabled and validated.

Greuze, Spoiled Child

This is a mother beside a table looking complacently at her son, who is giving some of his soup to a dog. The child serves it to the dog in his spoon. That's the subject, but -there are a great many accessories; such as, at right, a jug with an earthenware pan in which laundry is soaking; above, a kind of armoire; beside the armoire, a hanging rope of onions; higher up, a cage fixed to one of the armoire's side panels; and two or three poles leaning against the wall. From left to right, up to the armoire, there's a kind of buffet on which the artist has placed an earthenware pot, a glass half full of wine, some material hanging down; and behind the child, a cane chair and an earthenware pan. All of which indicates that this is his little laundress, from the picture exhibited four years ago and very recently engraved, who's gotten married and whose story the painter intends to follow. 

The subject of this picture isn't clear. The idea is not properly characterized; it could be either the child or the dog who's spoiled. There are patches of flickering light effects throughout that trouble the eyes. The mother's head is charmingly colored; but her headdress doesn't sit right on her head and prevents it from seeming three-dimensional. Her clothing is clumsy, and the piece of laundry she holds even more so. The boy's head is very beautiful, in a painterly way, you understand, it's a painter's version of a pretty child's head, not the way a mother would want it to be. The handling of this head couldn't have greater finesse; the hair even lighter than Greuze usually tends to make it; and what a dog! The mother's bosom is opaque, lacking in transparency, and even a bit red. There are also too many accessories, too many details. As a result the composition is blunted, confused. Just the mother, the child, the dog, and a few household objects would have produced a finer effect. The work would have had the tranquility it now lacks.

It sounds as if Diderot wanted Chardin to present this scene with his characteristic tranquility - instead of Greuze with his busy clutter. And so do I.

Here, my friend, is a demonstration of how there can be something equivocal about even the best painting. Look closely at this fine, fat fishwife, with her head twisted backwards, and whose pale coloring, showy kerchief, all mussed, and expression of pain mixed with pleasure depict a paroxysm that's sweeter to experience than it is decorous to paint; it's a study, a sketch for The Well-Loved Mother. How is it that in one place a given expression is decent, while in another it's not? Must we have accessories and circumstances before we can judge facial expressions? Do they remain ambiguous without these aids? There must be something in this idea. This open mouth, these swimming eyes, this unstable posture, this swollen neck, this voluptuous fusion of pain and pleasure make all respectable women lower their eyes and blush in its vicinity. Not far off, in the sketch of the well-loved mother, we have the same posture, the same eyes, the same neck, the same mixture of passions, and none of them even notice. Furthermore, while women pass by this head quickly, men linger in front of it, I mean those who are connoisseurs, and those who under the pretext of being connoisseurs remain to enjoy a powerful display of voluptuousness, and those, like myself, to whom both descriptions apply. In the forehead, on the cheeks, on the bosom there are incredible passages of tonal mastery; they teach you how to look at nature and recall her to you. The details of this swollen neck must be seen to be believed; they are beautiful, true, perfectly achieved. You've never seen two opposed expressions so clearly evoked together. This tour de force, Rubens didn't succeed any better at it in his painting in the Luxembourg Gallery in which the painter showed in the Queen's face both the pleasure of having brought a son into the world , and the traces of preceding pain.

Greuze, sketch for the  Well Loved Mother

I could not find any online images of Madame Greuze - other than the above sketch for her portrayal of the Well Loved Mother.  The image that I showed above it accompanied Goodman's translation of Diderot.  Since it is a mirror image, I'm guessing that it is an etching.  

It's hard to discuss this piece without a better image of it  - but it is  interesting to  note Diderot's self critique as a voluptuary:  "I mean those who are connoisseurs, and those who under the pretext of being connoisseurs remain to enjoy a powerful display of voluptuousness, and those, like myself, to whom both descriptions apply."   It's also interesting to note that Diderot will later tell us that he knew Madame Greuze back when she was unmarried and ran a book stall where she sold him both classical literature and pornography.

Greuze, portrait of Johann-Georg Wille

Very beautiful portrait. This is Wille's blunt, brusque manner, his stiff neck and shoulders; these are his small, ardent, intense eyes, his blotchy cheeks. How the hair is rendered! How beautiful the drawing! How forceful the handling! What truth and variety in the tones! How superb the velvet of his clothing, and the jabot and ruffles of his shirt! I'd like to see this portrait next to a Rubens, a Rembrandt, or a Van Dyck; I'd like to see how our painter would stand up against them. When one has seen this Wille, one turns one's back on other portraits, even those by Greuze.

No argument from me here -- this does appear to be a great portrait - made  more interesting by Diderot's personal knowledge of the flirtatious subject.  If I ever get to Paris again, I will have to visit the Musée Jacquemart-André

Greuze, The Ungrateful Son

I don't know how I'll manage this one, and the next will be even harder. My friend. this Greuze will end up ruining you. Imagine a room into which scarcely any light enters except through the door when it's open, or through a rectangular opening above the door when it's closed. Let your eyes travel about this sad abode and you'll see evidence of poverty everywhere. There is however at right, in a corner, a bed which doesn't seem too bad; it's carefully made. In the foreground, on the same side, a large leather armchair which looks quite comfortable. The father of the ungrateful son sits here. Place a low armoire near the door, and close to the decrepit old man a small table on which is a bowl of soup that's just been served him.

Notwithstanding the help the eldest son of the household could offer his old father, his mother, and his brothers, he has enrolled in the army; but "he's not going away without soliciting money from these unfortunates. He has made his request. The father is indignant, he spares no words in rebuking this unnatural child who no longer acknowledges his father, nor his mother, nor his obligations, and who answers his reproaches with insults. We see him in the center of the image; he seems insolent and impetuous; his right arm is raised on his father's side above the head of one of his sisters; he prepares to leave, he threatens with his hand; his hat is on his head, and his gesture and his face are equally impertinent. The good old man who has loved his children, but who has never been able to bear being separated from any of them, tries to stand up, but one of his daughters on her knees before him holds him down by the tails of his jacket. The young libertine is surrounded by his eldest sister, his mother, and one of his little brothers; the mother tries to hold him back, the brute tries to free himself from her and pushes her away with his foot; this mother seems overwhelmed, heartbroken. The eldest sister has also tried to intervene between her brother and her father; the mother and sister's postures suggest they're trying to keep them apart; the latter has grabbed hold of her brother's clothing, and the way she pulls at it seems to say to him: Wretch! What are you doing? You push away your mother? You threaten your father? Get down on your knees and beg forgiveness ... But the little brother is crying; he lifts one hand to his eyes and holds onto his big brother's right arm with the other one, straining to pull him out of the house. Behind the old man's armchair, the youngest of all seems frightened, stupefied. At the other end of the scene, towards the door, the old soldier who recruited and accompanied the ungrateful son to his parents' home is leaving, his back turned to everything that's happening, his sword under his arm and his bead lowered. I forgot to mention that in the middle of this tumult there's a dog in the foreground whose barking makes it even worse.

Everything in this sketch is thought through, carefully organized, well described, and clear: the mother's pain and even her partiality for a child she has spoiled, and the old man's violence, and the various actions of the sisters and young children, and the ingrate's insolence, and the indifference of the old soldier who can't help shrugging his soldiers at what's happening, and the barking dog, an accessory for which Greuze has a special predilection and knows how to use well.

This sketch is very beautiful but, in my view, nowhere near as fine as the next one.

Not so beautiful as I see it.  I long for an artist like Goya to build a stronger composition and make me taste lights and darks as delicious. But it is a fascinating storyboard. The  title calls the son ungrateful - though he is presented as heroic at this critical moment of breaking away from the nest.

Greuze, The Bad Son Punished

He's been on campaign, he returns, and at what moment? The moment immediately following his father's death. Everything in the house has changed; it was the abode of poverty, now it's that of pain and misery. The bed is wretched, with no mattress. The deceased old man reclines on this bed; light from a window falls only on his face, all else is in shadow. One sees at the foot of the bed on a stool the sacred taper burning and the holy-water basin. At the head of the bed the eldest daughter seated in the old leather armchair, her body thrown back, in a posture of despair, one hand at her temple, the other holding up the crucifix she'd asked her father to kiss. One of his frightened little children hides his head in her breast; the other, on the opposite side of the bed, a bit further down, arms in the air and fingers spread wide, seems to have grasped the nature of death for the first time. The younger sister, on the same side of the bed, at its head, between the window and the bed, cannot persuade herself that her father is no more; she leans towards him, she seems to be looking for a last glance. She lifts one of his arms, and her open mouth cries out: My father, my father, can't you hear me? .. . The poor mother is standing near the door, her back towards the wall, devastated, and her knees are giving way beneath her.

Such is the spectacle awaiting the ungrateful son. He steps forward, he's at the threshold. He has lost the leg he used to push away his mother, the arm with which he threatened his father is crippled. He enters. His mother receives him; she remains mute, but her arms indicating the corpse seem to say to him: Look, just look at what you've done! ... The ungrateful son seems astounded, his head falls forward, he beats his forehead with his fist. What a lesson for fathers and children!

That's not all. This artist gives just as much consideration to his accessories as to the core of his subjects.

In the book on a table, in front of the eldest daughter, I detect that she, poor thing, had been assigned the panful task of reciting prayers for the dying.

The flask beside the book appears to contain the remains of a cordial. And the warming-pan on the floor had been brought to warm the dying man's frozen feet. And here again we have the same dog, not sure whether to acknowledge this cripple as the son of the house or to take him for a beggar.

I can't say what effect this short, simple description of a sketch for a painting will have on others; for myself, I confess that I've not written it without emotion.

This is beautiful, very beautiful, sublime, all of it. But as it's said man can produce nothing that's perfect, I don't think the mother's action rings true for this moment; it seems to me she'd have put one of her hands over her eyes, to block out both her son and her husband's corpse, and directed the ungrateful son's attention to his father's body with the other. The rest of her face could have expressed the intensity of her pain just as clearly, and her figure would have been even simpler and more sympathetic. And then there's a lapse in the accessories, a trivial one in truth, but Greuze forgives himself nothing: the large round ,basin for the holy water with its aspergillum is the one the church puts at the foot of a coffin; at the foot of a dying man in a cottage it would place a flask of water with a branch of boxwood that had been blessed on Palm Sunday.

Otherwise, these two works are, in my view, masterpieces of composition; none of the postures is awkward or forced; the actions are true and appropriate for painting; and this last one especially has an intensity that's unified and pervasive. Nonetheless, current tastes are so wretched, so trivialized that these two sketches might never be painted, and if they're painted Boucher will have sold fifty of his fiat, indecent marionettes before Greuze manages to sell his two sublime paintings. My friend, I know what I'm talking about. Isn't The Paralytic, his painting of the reward earned by having educated one's children properly, still in his studio? And it's a masterpiece of the art. Word of it reached the court, it was sent for, it was much admired, but it wasn't purchased, and it cost the artist twenty ecus to obtain the inestimable privilege ... But I've said enough, I'm becoming ill-humored, in this state I could even get myself into trouble.

 

I can't share Diderot's enthusiasm  for either their visual or narrative content. Their grim, awkward clutter is appropriate to a  guilt ridden theme  that must have resonated with both Greuze and Diderot much more than it does with me.  As young men, both of them had defied their artisan fathers.

About this genre of Greuze's, allow me to ask you a few questions.

To  answer Diderot's questions myself:

1. "What is real poetry"? : Writing (or, by extension, any communication)  that compels endless attention to its form and endless fascination with its content.  

2. "Is there poetry in these last two sketches by Greuze?" : Not for me -- I find both its form and  content too repellent to consider more than once. 

3.  "What would you say was the difference between this poetry and that of the sketch of Artemisia's Tomb?" :  I can't find any images of that sketch by Deshays.

4. Of two cupolas, one of them obviously painted, and the other, though it appears to be real, is actually painted, which is the more beautiful? :  I have not found that a trompe l'oeil painting is necessarily any more or less beautiful than any other representational painting.  Why should it be?

5.  "Of two letters, for example from a mother to her daughter, one of them full of beautiful and impressive demonstrations of eloquence and expressions of affection which one savors at length but which deceive no one, and the other simple and natural, so simple, so natural that everyone is fooled and believes it really was written by a mother to her daughter, which is the good one and which is the more difficult to write?" : If these letters appeared in a work of fiction,  how could any reader be  fooled into thinking they were real.  On the other hand, if they were presented as real,   why doubt that reality if  you trust the source?

 Ten years later, after Greuze  had quarreled with the Academy and ceased exhibiting in its Salons, both sketches would be fully developed in  paint.  They're still more like compilations of histrionics than paintings - but the melodrama has been cranked down a few degrees.  You may note that the punished son has no longer lost his leg and crippled his arm.

*************

GABRIEL BRIARD

Briard, Resurrection of Jesus Christ

What a piece of work! Have mercy! This Christ is so thin, so insubstantial, that he'd instill doubts about the Resurrection, if one believed in it, and give credence to the notion of reincarnation, if one didn't. And this tall soldier in the foreground who rises up on the ball of his foot, who shows off his other leg, who displays his fine arms, he's the dancer Dupre executing a pirouette. These other ones, to the tomb's right and left, bring to mind those scoundrels who pretend to be possessed at the church of Saint Suaire in Besanyon. The others are asleep; may they remain so, and the painter, too.

There's no good reproduction of this piece - or of any Briard paintings for that matter.  It looks like the artist was thinking of the Scola di San Rocco.  Maybe he did a good job.  It's not possible to tell whether it deserved Diderot's mocking or not.

The Village Soothsayer:  Clearly, this man paints without knowing what he's doing; he still doesn know what a subject is, he hasn't a clue that it must be characterized by essential or, contingent circumstances distinguishing it from any other. When he's placed in front of a rather eccentrically dressed peasant a nervous, standing young woman; beside her an attentive elderly woman; when he's dashed off a few trees here and there, and  made a young peasant's laughing head emerge from these trees, he imagines I ought to be able to figure out that this is a village soothsayer. The story goes that a well-meaning painter who had put a bird in his picture and meant it to be a cock, wrote above it: "This IS a cock". Despite the evident lack of subtlety Monsieur Briard would have done very well to write above the figures in his painting: This ones the soothsayer," "that one's a young girl who has come to consult her",  "this other woman is her mother", and  "here, the girl's lover." Monsieur Briard, even if one could predict the future a hundred times better than your soothsayer, how could one figure out that the laughing figure is in collusion with her? So you still need to write: "This young fellow and the old rascal there are working together." One must be clear by whatever means necessary.

Reproductions of this piece cannot be found - but  I have copied Diderot's critique anyway - as a succinct statement of his demand for narrative clarity

*****************************

LOUTHERBOURG

Loutherbourg, Caravan

Here we have the product of an excessive, ill judged affection for pyramidal compositions unaccompanied by an understanding of spatial recession. There is no grasp of such recession, no distinction made between levels of depth; all these objects seem to actually sit on top of one· another, the sheep being their foundation; atop this foundation, the two mules, the drover, and his dog; atop this dog, these mules, and this drover, the mule carrying the woman; atop this last, the woman and child marking the peak. Monsieur Loutherbourg, when it's said a composition must be pyramidal if it is to please the eye, what's meant is not two straight lines gradually moving together to form the tip of an isosceles or scalene triangle; the reference is to a serpentine line that courses over several objects and whose inflections, after having reached the peak constituted by the uppermost object in the composition, continue by descending along another route such that it skims the tips of other objects; and there are as many exceptions to this rule as there are different scenes in nature. Otherwise, this Caravan is vigorous in color; its objects thickly impastoed and its figures picturesquely conceived. A pity it's such a spiky chaos, a chaos that will never disengage itself from the mountains in which the painter has lodged it; there it will remain.

Even though the reproduction is very small, it does seem that there is no spatial recession, so the figures do appear to sit on top of one another.  But that is only a fault if, like Diderot,  we require natural perspective.   As would be shown by later career as a successful designer of theatrical scenery and innovative display boxes, Loutherbourg's creativity was not bound by the pictorial conventions of the Royal Academy.

Loutherbourg, 1762

Here is a young artist who in making his debut puts himself, with the beauty of his sites and rustic scenes, with the freshness of his mountains, with the truth of his animals, on a par with old Berchem, and who dares challenge him with the vigor of his brush, his understanding of natural and artificial light, and other qualities this painter shares with the terrible Vernet.

Berchem, 1656

Yes, I do see Loutherbourg's resemblance to Berchem.

Diderot  was quite taken by this young man and advised him at some length to saturate himself with the beautiful countryside.

A sweet, pleasant pastoral ode.

Loutherbourg, Defeat of the Spanish Armada,  1796

As  it turned out however, Loutherbourg was more interested in spectacle, a genre of painting that has mostly disappeared in the modern era - especially with the introduction of CGI.

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LEPRINCE

Russian Baptism

Jean Baptiste Leprince (1734-1781)

Children's Cradle

This is one of Leprince's best compositions. You say you find it better colored than the Baptism ?-Oh no. -You find it more interesting than the Baptism? -Oh no. But then the Russian Baptism with which you're comparing this painting is a devilishly beautiful thing.........

The peasant is very fine, true to character, true to rustic nature; his smock, all his clothing full and in good taste. I say the same of the old woman who was spinning and who appears to be the children's grandmother; she's excellent: fine head, beautiful drapery, the action simple and truthful. The children, both the one in the cradle and the two others, charming. But there are lots of things here that I find vexing, though this may be the result of my ignorance of the nation's customs. This is a fine cottage for this peasant, but he's too crudely, too poorly dressed for this old woman to be his wife. The girl pulling on the cradle's cord to raise or lower it could be either the daughter of the old woman or her servant, but she has no connection to the peasant. What is the social station of these two women? Where do they live? Either I'm much mistaken or there's some equivocation in this composition. Do Russian women dress better than Russian men? However that may be, here the painter's coloring and touch are much stronger. This is less thick-colored, less reddish than his Baptism, but this Baptism is much more interesting, it's much richer in human interest. We'll talk about it in a moment.

Jean Baptiste Leprince (1734-1781)

Russian Baptism

We're there. In faith, it's a beautiful ceremony. This grand silver baptismal font makes a beautiful effect. The office of these three priests standing at right is a dignified one: the first takes the newborn beneath the arms and plunges him into the font feet first; the second oversees the ritual and reads the sacramental prayers; he reads well, like an old man ought to read, holding the book away from his eyes: the third looks attentively at the book; and the fourth, who spreads ,.,. incense from a burning brazier near the baptismal font, have you noticed how well, richly, nobly dressed he is? How his action is natural and true? You'll agree that here we have four heads that are venerable indeed .. . But you're not listening to me, you're neglecting the venerable priests and the whole sacred ceremony, and your eyes remain fixed on the godfather and godmother. I can't hold this against you; it's a certainty that this godfather has the most virtuous, sincere character one could possibly imagine; if I ever encountered him elsewhere, I couldn't help but seek out his acquaintance and affection: I'd make friends with him, I tell you. As for this godmother, she's so amiable, so decent, so kind ... That I'd make her, you say, my mistress, if I could. And why not? And if they're married, so much for your good Russian friend ... You've got me there. But in the Russian's place I'd try to keep my friends away from my wife, or I'd have the fairness to say: My wife 1s so charm1ng, so amiable, so attractive, but what an edifying conversation for the most serious of Christian ceremonies, in which we're reborn in Jesus Christ by having the sins committed by our grandfathers seven thousand years ago washed away! Observe how well this godfather and godmother discharge their office! They set the tone: they're pious without bigotry. The figures behind the three priests seem to be relatives, witnesses , friends , assistants. What fine head studies Poussin would make here, for they're completely in character with his own. What do you mean, talking about studies by Poussin? I mean to say that I forgot I was talking to you about a painting. and th1s young acolyte extending his hand to take the vessels of holy oil that another gives him on a tray, concede that he's posed in the simplest yet most elegant way possible; that he extends his arm with ease and grace, and that his figure is charming in every respect. How. well he carries his head! How well posed it is! How well his hair 1s arranged! What distinguished features he has! How correct he holds himself without being either mannered or stiff! how well and simply dressed he is! The man beside him, bending over an open chest, 1s apparently the father or an assistant looking for something with which to swaddle the infant immediately upon his emergence from the font. Observe this infant carefully, he has everything a beautiful infant ought to have. The child I see behind the godfather is either his page or his squire; and the woman seated in the left background, beside him, is either the midwife or the sick-nurse. As for the woman we glimpse in a bed, beyond this curtain, there can be no mistake, she's the newly-delivered mother, and she'll get a dreadful headache from the burning incense if she doesn't watch out. And that, in faith, is pretty much it, a beautiful ceremony and a beautiful painting. It's the artist's reception piece. How many names do you think we'd read in the catalogue, if one had to produce a painting like this to gain admission to the Academy?

I'm ashamed to tell you that the coloring is coppery and reddish, that the background is too brown, that the handling of light . . . but human weakness has to manifest itself somehow. Otherwise, this composition is fully achieved; all the figures are interesting; even the coloring vigorous. I'd swear the artist made this work in a period of good health, and that if I were young, single, and were to be offered this Russian for a father-in-law and this young woman so modestly holding her candle next to him for my wife, along with a modest income, no more than would be necessary to allow my little Russian to sleep in on Sunday when she liked, myself keeping her company on the same pillow, and, without hardship, raise little urchins that these venerable fathers would come to baptize every nine or ten months at my home, my faith, I'd be tempted to go to this country to see what the weather is like.

One may note that Catherine the Great, who was one of the 15 subscribers to  his art  reviews,  hired Diderot to be her librarian in the following year.  I'm  guessing that his expressed enthusiasm for all things Russian had something to do with that.

I am much less thrilled by the smallness and clutter of  Leprince's illustrations.

One may also note that Diderot expresses his sexual attraction for the young mother in the Baptism. That rascal !  He's so self righteous when he blasts Boucher - but sex is on his mind even in a sacred ceremony. What a hypocrite !

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FRANCOIS BRUNO DESHAYS

(not in this Salon)

Belshazzar's  Feast

(not in this Salon)

Francois Bruno was the younger brother of Jean-Baptiste.

 Diderot  refuses to discuss his work, and instead shares a long winded anecdote that culminates with the punchline: "My brother is a fucking idiot!"

Perhaps the work in the 1765  Salon did not, indeed, merit discussion.

But as it turns out, he was not such a bad painter/illustrator at all.

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NICOLAS BERNARD LEPICIE (1735-84)

Lepicie, William the Conqueror disembarking in England

A general couldn't make it any clearer to his soldiers that they would either conquer or die than by burning the ships that had carried them. This is what William did. What a wonderful deed for the historian! What a fine model for a conqueror! What a beautiful subject for a painter, provided that painter is not Lepicie. What moment do you think the latter selected? Probably the one in which flames are consuming the ships, and in which the general announces the terrible alternative to his army. You think we see the ships burning on the canvas; William on horseback addressing his troops; and on this numberless multitude of faces the full range of impressions of anxiety, surprise, admiration, terror, despondency, and joy; your head fills up with groups, you try to imagine William's true action, the characterizations of his principal officers, the silence or grumbling, the stillness or movement of his army. Calm yourself, don't take any trouble the artist hasn't taken himself. When one has genius there aren't any unrewarding moments; genius can impregnate anything.

We see in his picture at right, on the side of the sea and ships, a dim glow and some smoke indicating that the conflagration has begun; some idle, mute soldiers, without movement, without passion, without character; then we see, all alone, a short fat man, his arms extended, screaming his head off; I've asked who he's so angry at a hundred times without being able to find out; then William in the midst of his army, on horseback, advancing from right to left as if he were in his own country and in ordinary circumstances; he's preceded by infantry and cavalry marching on the same side and seen from the back. Neither noise, nor tumult, nor military enthusiasm, nor bugles, nor trumpets; this is a thousand times colder and more tedious than a regiment passing beneath the walls of a provincial town on the way to its garrison. Only three objects stand out, this short, fat, heavy-handed standing figure, placed alone between William and the burning ships, his arms outstretched and screaming without anyone's hearing him; William on his horse, both man and horse as heavy, monstrous, false, and depressing, and even less noble and less meaningful than your Louis XIV in the Place V end6me; and then the enormous back of another cavalryman and the even more enormous rump of his horse. But, my friend, do you want a real painting? Leave these figures more or less as they are but rotate them 180 degrees; have them set fire to the ships, have William speak, and show me faces with passionate reactions intensified by the reddish glow from the burning fleet. Use the conflagration to produce some astonishing light effect; the arrangement of the figures would help this, even without changing them. Take note, my friend, of the marvelous effect created by size and mass. Lepicie's composition impresses, attracts attention, but it doesn't hold that attention for very long. If I had the mind of a Le Sueur, a Rubens, a Carracci, or some other such, I'd tell you how one could have brought off the moment chosen by the artist, but lacking such a mind, I haven't any idea. All I can think of is that the interest inherent in the slighted moment would have to be replaced, with just what I can't say, but something sublime that's consistent with its real or apparent tranquility, and that transcends movement; witness the Universal Flood by Poussin, which contains only three or four figures. But who is capable of a solution such as this? And when an artist has found one, who responds to it? In the theatre, it's not in the violent scenes that move the crowd to ecstasy that a great actor shows me the extent of his gifts; what could be easier than giving oneself over to fury, to curses, to frenzied outbursts? It's "Sit down, Cinna" and not 

A son disgusting from the murder of his father

His head in hand, demanding his recompense . ' .. ?

that's difficult to put across. The author, who here serves the same function as the chosen moment in painting, counts for half the effectiveness of the declamation. It's in passion that's controlled, concealed, dissimulated, secretly bubbling in the heart's depths like the fire m the subterranean cauldron of a volcano· it's in the moment preceding the explosion, and sometimes the moment after, that I see what a man is capable of; and what would make me a little vain would be to have created an effect where outward circumstances promised nothing.  It's in quiet scenes that an actor shows me his intelligence, his judgment. It's when a painter has disregarded the advantages that go with a dramatic moment that I'm led to expect great character, serenity, silence, and all the wonder of a rare Ideal and a technique that's almost as rare. You'll find a hundred painters who can bring off a battle that's that's already been lost or won.  In Lepicie's painting there's nothing to compensate for the interest he's passed up; 

there's neither harmony nor nobility; it is dry, harsh, and crude.

This does look like a  clunky, stupid commemorative painting that belongs in a cafeteria - but it is 27 feet long and I'm doubting that a tiny reproduction can give any sense of how it actually feels on the wall.   Lepicie may have just painted what his client (not Diderot) wanted to see.

Lepicie, self portrait

This piece has much more sensitivity.

Wouldn't you like to  meet this guy?

Lepicie

A nice tribute to his friend Chardin -

and I doubt Chardin could have done it any better.

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JACQUES FRANCOIS AMAND (1730-69)

Amand, Joseph Sold by His Brothers

As for Joseph and His Brothers, that I saw. Choose, my friend: do you want a description of this picture, or would you prefer a story? But the composition doesn't strike me as being all that bad.-I agree. -This big chunk of rock on which the child's price is being counted out works well in the center of the canvas. Certainly. -The merchant leaning over this rock and the one behind him are fairly well draped and characterized. I don't deny it. -The Joseph is stiff, short, graceless, lacking in attractive color, expressionless, without interest, and his legs are even a bit dropsical, but that's no reason to rip the whole canvas to shreds. I've no such intention. -These groups of brothers on one side, of merchants on the other are even arranged with intelligence. I think so, too. - The color -Ah! Let's not speak of the color and the drawing, I close my eyes to those. What I feel here is a mortal chill overtaking me, and this in front of the most affecting of subjects. What gave you the idea it was permissible to show me a scene like this without breaking my heart in two? Let's speak no more about this picture, I beg you; the mere thought of it pains me.

We have to give Diderot credit for transforming his gallery notes into interesting prose weeks if not months after he viewed the paintings. Here, he accomplishes that by  telling us how he is personally moved by the theme of fraternal betrayal. 

The design of this painting, such as it is, is narrative, not spatial. 

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FRAGONARD (1732-1806)

Fragonard, 

The High Priest Coresus Sacrificing Himself to Save Callirhoe 

It's impossible for me to talk to you about this painting; you know that it was no longer at the Salon when the incredible stir it created summoned me there. It will be up to you to give an account of it; we'll discuss it together; and so much the better, for perhaps we'll discover why, after a first round of tributes paid to the artist, after the first expressions of praise, the public seemed to cool towards it. Every composition whose success is short-lived is lacking in some important respect. But to fill out this entry on Fragonard I'm going to tell you about a very strange vision which tormented me one night, after a day on which I'd spent the morning looking at the paintings and the evening reading some of Plato's dialogues.

So Diderot never even saw this painting ? And now he's  going to critique it? At least he's upfront about that.

His critique  turns out to be longer than any other  he has written.   It's an exhaustive description of the painting and the rather  silly romantic story that it tells.  He sets the narrative within the allegory of Plato's cave, as if it pertained to the difference between Truth and Illusion.

He  declares himself a man of the enlightenment as he writes:

"While I was  reflecting on the unhappy fate  of man and the  cruelty of the gods or rather  of their  priests, for the gods are nothing"

And he concludes with a sight unseen, boiler plate judgment:

"this artist has a sublime imagination; all he lacks is a truer sense of color and a technical perfection that he could acquire with time and experience."

This painting does appear to be much more about gorgeous presentation than silly story  - so it stands out from most  of the 1765 Salon.

Fragonard, Psyche Showing Her Sisters Her Gifts from Cupid, 1753

(not in this Salon)

Here's a similarly gorgeous painting done ten years earlier when the artist was 21.

What a phenom ! His virtuosity, however,  appears to be the only significant content of his work.

Fragonard 

The Parents'  Absence Turned to Account

(called "The Farmer's  Children"  by the Hermitage)

... Compare these dogs with those by Loutherbourg and Greuze, and you'll see the latter are the true ones. In this fluid idiom one must have a precious finish and include enchanting details. This cloth is heavyhanded and stiff bad cloth. The child holding the saucepan has greenish, insubstantial legs that never seem to end; his posture is a bit stiff; otherwise, the simple, innocent character of his head is charming. One never tires of looking at the two other children. Overall, it's a fine little picture in which the artist's style of handling is unmistakable. I like it better than the landscape, which is vigorously colored but lacks a firm touch, two very different things; the site of which lacks variety; in which the small figures, while ingeniously, cleverly executed, are weak, and in which the foreground areas are nowhere near as fine as the mountains.

Fragonard has just returned from Rome. His Coresus and Callirhoe is his reception piece; a few months ago he presented it to the Academy, which received the artist by acclamation. It is indeed a beautiful thing, and I don't think there's another painter in Europe capable of imagining its like.

Since the Coresus was bought by the king, I do believe that it received acclamation.  But an editor has noted that Fragonard never presented it to the Academy and was never received as a full member.

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JEAN-BERNHARD RESTOUT (1732-97)

Restout, Carthusian Monk

I could, my friend, stop right here and tell you I'm finished with the painters and the painters with me; but perusing the Academy rooms I discovered four freshly completed canvases, and Monsieur Flipot the caretaker, who's fond of me, told me they were by Restout the son, and that the one in the middle, the young artist's reception piece,  was worth a look.

These pieces were not listed in the exhibition catalog --but Diderot discussed them anyway because  "they were worth a look".   Now that is the voice of a dedicated art critic.

The Carthusian was kneeling on a rather large rock that almost made him seem to be standing; his crucifix was on the ground, propped up on smaller rocks. The contrite, penitent man had his arms crossed over his chest; he adored, and his adoration was sweet and profound. He's surely a good Molinist who doesn't believe he and all the others will be damned. I'd wager this monk indulgent and gay, that he's like my former schoolmate Dom Germain, who makes watches, telescopes, and meteorological observations for the Academy of Sciences as well as ballets for the queen, and who makes no distinction between singing Lalande's Miserere and scenes by Lully. Anyway, Restout's also has the merit of being well draped. His folds are really those of the material and the nude beneath, and if Chardin wanted to claim this work as his own, he'd be taken at his word.

I would propose that this drapery is remarkable not because it mimics real fabric on real bodies -- but because it is sensitive to pictorial space as achieves a  strong simple volume.   Most of the drapery represented on the  walls of the Salon only served as  illustration.  Chardin would have been the exception - so Diderot was properly noting him here.

Restout, Anacreon

This entire composition breathes voluptuousness. The courtesan is a bit paltry; we've all seen more beautiful arms, more beautiful heads, more beautiful throats, more beautiful complexions, more beautiful flesh, more grace and youth, more sensuality, more intoxication. But if she were given over to me as she is, I douot I'd choose to amuse myself by criticizing her hair for being too dark. Greek courtesans might very well have been like this woman. As for Anacreon, I've seen him, I knew him, and I swear to you that this isn't a good likeness. My friend Anacreon had a large forehead, fire in his eyes, large features, a noble air, a beautiful mouth, fine teeth, a delicate, enchanting smile, a certain animation, fine shoulders, a handsome chest, a bit of a belly, rounded forms, everything about him suggested the easy, voluptuous life, the man of genius, the courtesan, the man of pleasure; and here I see only

a wretched Diogenes, a drunken wagoner, dark, muscled, hard, swarthy, small eyes, small head, flushed and gaunt face, narrow forehead, dirty hair.

Young man, paint out this hideous and ignoble figure. Take up the collection of delicate songs by our poet, acquaint yourself with his life, and perhaps you'll be able to imagine his character properly. And then the work isn't well drawn; this neck is stiff; this deep shadow under the right breast creates a gaping hole where an effect of relief should be, and this ill-considered hole makes the shoulder bone jump out and dislocates it; your Anacreon is disjointed. La Tour was right when he said to me: Don't expect someone who can't draw to be able to produce beautifully characterized heads ..Why is this so? He added another remark that's easier to explain: And don't ever expect a poor draftsman to become a great architect. I'll tell you why not in another place.

Diderot  mistakes pictorial issues for anatomical faults.   

This piece is a mishmash of unrelated parts,

beginning with the two human figures.

Restout, Diogenes

The Diogenes is a poor Diogenes, hard and crudely colored. And these children attracted by his bizarre action, I'd very much like to know why they're the color of a pigeon's throat. Certainly this isn't the pretty, vain, ironic, impertinent, giddy young creature we see twice a week in the rue Royale, who I can't recall what painter, I'm terrible with names, introduced into a scene of this same philosopher's life. She's waiting for him to utter an absurdity; we see she can't wait to laugh.

Another jumbled painting of painful spaces   - but it would have been  perfect for a Chicago dive that called itself the 'Wise Fools Pub"

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That's it for the paintings of 1765 -- I'll look at sculptures in another post.

Overall, I was both impressed and dismayed by Diderot as an art critic.

His voice was limited by the European tradition of art talk  that emphasized mimesis and naturalism. But he especially demanded  visual vitality - and usually I agreed with his judgments.

 If a known narrative was involved, he wanted the image in the painting to show what the story brought to his own mind's eye - and he was quite free with advice for how it should be staged.  It's as if there were only one best way to envision these stories. Yet he offered nothing of the  broader political, religious, or philosophical implications that might justify it. So why should the reader care about these long winded opinions if they are no more than personal preferences ?

Despite Chardin's plea for mercy, Diderot was often cruel and mean-spirited towards the artists, as if they were cobblers who had bungled the repair of his shiny new boots. To give him credit, however, at least he mentioned  every single one.  It is quite challenging to say something positive about pieces you really can't stand - and  I do want an art criticism based on strong appetite rather than the approval of authorities or artists.

His references to earlier artists stand out because there were so few. Guido Reni represented the Italian tradition, so important to the  Academy back when almost every artist studied in Rome. Rembrandt was the only northern painter mentioned.  But what about a contemporary artist like Tiepolo (1696-1770) ?  He specialized in history painting and his were so much more glorious, delectable, spacious, and dynamic than anything in the French Salon.  Was it just that Diderot had never seen any?  He did not like to travel and  not even a single gallery of the royal collection  went on public display until 1750.

As an appendix to his Salon of 1765, Diderot offered Essai sur la peinture which included his "Bizarre thoughts about drawing", "Feeble ideas about color", "Lifetime sum total of my knowledge  of  chiaroscuro", "What everyone knows about expression, and something everyone doesn't know",  and a "Section on composition in which I hope I'll talk about it"

Such self deprecation suggests an awareness of his own limited knowledge or experience- and indeed, unlike his colleague, Grimm, Diderot had never studied drawing or painting.  Perhaps that's why his focus is exclusively on the  imitation of the natural line, color, and shadow. He begins with the assertion: “Nature does nothing that is not correct Every form, whether beautiful or ugly, has its cause, and of all extant beings there’s not a single one that is not as it should be -”-- if causes and effects were readily apparent to us, we’d have only to represent things just as they are. The more perfect the imitation, the more analogous to its causes, the more it would satisfy us”

Even his discussion of composition is about a proposed rule of narrative rather than unique visual effect:

Poussin, Calista and Jupiter

We're only possessed of so much sagacity. We're only capable of so much attention. In making a poem, a painting, a comedy, a history, a novel, a tragedy, a work for the people, one shouldn't imitate the authors of educational treatises. Of two thousand children, there are barely two who could be raised according to their principles. If they'd given the matter any thought, they'd have realized that the exceptionally brilliant are not the best models for universal institutions. A composition intended for display to the eyes of a motley crowd of spectators will be defective if a man can't figure it out through plain good sense.

It should be simple and clear. Consequently, no pointless figures, no superfluous accessories. Treat the subject all of a piece. In a single painting Poussin showed Jupiter seducing Calista in the foreground and the seduced nymph dragged by Juno in the background. This is a fault unworthy of so accomplished an artist. The painter has but one instant at his disposal, and it's no more

permissible for him to encompass two instants than two actions. There are only a few circumstances in which it's not contrary to truth or interest   to evoke a moment that's already in the past or is yet to come. A sudden catastrophe surprises a man in the middle of his duties, he's within the  catastrophe but doesn't yet abandon his tasks.

(By the way - I'm totally charmed by Poussin's design here.  He's encircled the two lovers with foreground putti - and completes that circle with a distant view of one of  them being subsequently dragged away by a jealous wife.  It's magical )

In the preface to his 1767 Salon, however, Diderot seems to be moving away from the imitation of nature - as he queries one of his favorite sculptors (Falconet ?) as follows:

If you'd selected as model the most beautiful woman known to you, and had rendered with the utmost care all her facial charms, would you think you'd represented beauty? If you answer me positively, the youngest of your students will refute you, and tell you that you'd produced a portrait.

 Back in his discussion of Fragonard in the 1765  Salon, Diderot  invoked  Plato's Cave, but the true representation of Beauty has yet to be found - even by philosophers. Poor Diderot may have "fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there" (to quote Melville's Moby Dick"). 

With his interest in scientific methods,  it's not surprising that Diderot wanted paintings to imitate nature.  Now he thinks that is inadequate - as he realized, perhaps, that Greco-Roman sculpture, the standard of  Western European visual art since the Renaissance, pursued some kind of idealism. We may also note that in his 1767 Salon, Diderot identifies many more historic artists for purposes of comparison and identifies himself as a collector.  He has purchased a drawing by Boucher and traded some clothing for a painting by Vernet. But if he ever tried his own hand at drawing, he must have been frustrated and abandoned  that  attempt.

Let's see if his art criticism is any different:

Louis Michael Van Loo,  portrait of Diderot

Very lively. But too young, his head too small. Pretty like a woman, leering, smiling, dainty, pursing his mouth to make himself look captivating. None of the skillful use of color in the Cardinal Choiseul. And then clothing so luxurious as to ruin the poor man of letters should the tax. collector levy payment against his dressing gown. The writing table, books, and accessories as fine as possible, when brilliant color and harmony were both aimed at. Sparkling from close up, vigorous from a distance, especially the flesh. And beautiful well-modelled hands, though the left one is badly drawn. He faces us. His head is uncovered. His grey forelock, with his air of affectation, make him seem like an old flirt still out to charm; his posture, more like a government official than a philosopher. The falsity of the first moment of his posing left its mark on the remainder. Madame Van Loo came to chatter with him while he was being painted, giving him that air and spoiling everything. If he had played her harpsichord, if she had played or sung Non Ira ragiorre, ingrato, Ut core abbattdonato  or some other piece in the same vein, the sensitive philosopher would have taken on another character completely, and the portrait would have differed accordingly. Or better still, he should have been left alone, abandoned to his reveries. Then his mouth would have been partially open, his glance would have been distracted, focused on the distance, the working of his thoroughly preoccupied head would have been legible on his face, and Michel would have produced a beautiful thing. My pretty philosopher, you will always serve me as precious testimony to the friendship of an artist, an excellent artist, and a more excellent man. But what will my grandchildren say, when they compare my sad works to this smiling, affected, effeminate old flirt? My children, I warn you that this is not me. In the course of single day I assumed a hundred different expressions, in accordance with the thing that affected me. I was serene, sad, pensive. tender, violent,  passionate, enthusiastic. But I was never much as you see me here. I had a large forehead, penetrating eyes, rather large features, a head quite similar in character to that of an ancient orator, an easygoing nature that sometimes approached stupidity, the rustic simplicity of ancient times. Without the exaggeration of my features introduced into the engraving after Greuze's drawing, it would be a better likeness. l have a facial mask that fools artists, either because too many of its features blend together or because the impressions of my soul succeed one another very quickly and register themselves on my face, such that the painter's eye does not perceive me to be the same from one moment to the next and his task becomes far more difficult than he'd expected. I've never been well captured save by a poor devil named Garant who managed to trap me, just as an idiot sometimes comes up with a witty remark. 

Most of the reasons for Diderot's "infatuation or disdain" for this painting are personal - as might be expected in response to a portrait of oneself.  But still --  he's not even trying to present an objective evaluation.  He may not want to see himself as an "effeminate old flirt" - but one artist saw him that way - and we still might ask whether this is a good painting. The left hand appears somewhat awkward - but it also expresses a kind of nervous proclamatory  energy - similar to the hand that Fragonard gave him below:

Fragonard, portrait of Diderot

The Van Loo portrait seems penetrate behind the facial mask to that very moment when the subject is about to write something sharp, amusing, and definitely secular - and isn't that the essence of his life in this world?

Possibly the objectivity of Diderot's essays on art theory were intended to counterbalance the wanton subjectivity of his art criticism. He tells us that "Artists can alter their compositions infinitely: but the  rules of art, its principles and their application, will remain limited."  Those rules and principles, however, do not seem to govern his own responses to what he has seen.

The following excerpt from Donald Kuspit's  Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "Art Criticism" would seem to concur:

Diderot reviewed Salons from 1759 to 1781. He wrote a book-length examination of the Salon of 1767, in which he not only assesses contemporary art but attempts to clarify its principles; building upon de Piles’s merging of emotion and intellect, he shows that philosophical evaluation and empirical documentation are inseparable in art criticism. The pages Diderot devotes to seven landscape paintings by Horace Vernet are particularly exemplary of his approach. Diderot describes Vernet’s landscapes with great precision, as though he were walking through them; the peripatetic response to the topical is basic to art criticism, which deals with new art whose value has not yet been clearly established. In addition to inspiring such a literal mode of interpretation, these landscapes also stimulated Diderot’s intellect and evoked a certain mood. Diderot praises Vernet because his landscapes appealed to his mind as well as his emotions—because spontaneous attunement to them led to reflection. This double demand—that the critic be responsive to the spirit of a work of art so that he is able to find the truth in it or, to put this another way, that he appreciate it in its immediacy so that he can find the meanings it mediates—has been the credentials of the critic ever since. The critic must have feelings as well as knowledge, so that, like Diderot at his best, his criticism fuses “colorful description and arresting philosophical observations,” as the American scholar Jean Eldred writes.

Claude Vernet, The first Site

I'd inscribed this artist's name at the head of my page and was about to review his works with you, when I left for a country close to the sea and celebrated for the beauty of its sites. There, while some spent the day's most beautiful hours, the most beautiful days, their money, and their gaiety on green lawns, and others, shotguns over their shoulders, overcame their exhaustion to pursue their dogs through the fields, and others still wandered aimlessly through the remote comers of a park whose trees, happily for their young consorts in delusion, are models of discretion; while a few serious people, as late as seven o'clock in the evening, still made the dining room resound with their tumultuous discussion of the new principles of the economists, the utility or uselessness of philosophy, religion, morals, actors, actresses, government, the relative merits of the two kinds of music, the fine arts, literature, and other important questions, the solutions to which they sought at the bottom of bottles, and returned, staggering and hoarse, to their rooms, whose doors they found only with difficulty, and, having relaxed in an armchair, began to recover from the intensity and zeal with which they'd sacrificed their lungs, their stomachs, and their reason in the hope of introducing the greatest possible order into all branches of administration; there l went, accompanied by the tutor of the children of the household and his two charges, my cane and writing pad in hand, co visit the most beautiful sites in the world. My intention is to describe them to you, and l hope that these descriptions will prove worth the trouble. My companion for these walks was thoroughly familiar with the lie of the land, and knew the best time to take in each rustic scene, and the places best viewed in the morning hours, which were most charming and interesting at sunrise and which at sunset, as well as the coolest, shadiest areas in which to seek refuge from the burning midday sun. He was the cicerone of this region; he did the honors for newcomers, and no one knew better than he how to maximize the impact of the spectator's first glance. We were off, and we chatted as we walked. I was moving along with my head lowered, as is my custom, when I felt my movement suddenly checked and was confronted ,with the following site.

THE FIRST SITE

To my right, in the distance, a mountain summit rose to meet the clouds. At this moment chance had placed a traveler there, upright and serene. The base of the mountain was obscured from us by an intervening mass of rock; the foot of this rock stretched across the view, rising and tilling, such that it severed the scene's foreground from its background. To the far right, on an outcropping of rock, I saw two figures which could not have been more artfully placed to maximize their effect; they were two fishermen; one was seated towards the bottom of the rock, his legs dangling; the other, his catch slung over his back, bent over the first and conversed with him. On the rugged embankment formed by the extension of the lower portion of the rock, where it extended into the distance, a covered wagon driven by a peasant descended towards a village beyond the embankment: another incident which art would have suggested. Passing over the crest of this embankment, my gaze encountered the tops of the village houses and continued on, plunging into and losing itself in a landscape prospect that merged with the sky.

Who among your artists, my cicerone asked me, would have imagined breaking up the continuity of this rugged embankment with a clump of trees?  Perhaps Vernet. Right, but would your Vernet have imagined such elegance and charm? Would he have been able to render the intense, lively effect of the play of light on the trunks and the branches? - Why not? - Depict the vast distances taken in by the eye? He's done it on occasion in the past. You don't know just how conversant this man is with natural phenomena .... I responded distractedly, for my attention was focused on a mass of rocks covered with wild shrubs which nature had placed at the other end of the rugged mound. This mass was masked in tum by a closer rock that, separate from the first one, formed a channel through which flowed a torrent of water that, having completed its violent descent, broke into foam among detached rocks ... Well! I say to my cicerone: Go to the Salon, and you '11 see that a fruitful imagination, aided by close study of nature, has inspired one of our artists to paint precisely these rocks, this waterfall, and this bit of landscape. -And also, perhaps, this piece of rough stone, and the seated fisherman pulling in his net, and the tools of his trade scattered on the ground around him, and his wife standing with her back to us. - You have no idea what a jokester you are, Abbe .. . The space framed by the rocks in the torrent, the rugged embankment, and the mountains to the left contained a lake along whose shore we walked. From there we contemplated the whole of this marvelous scene: however, towards the part of the sky visible between the dump of trees on the rugged strip and the rocks with the two fishermen a wispy cloud was tossed by the wind. I turned to the Abbe: Do you believe in good faith, I said to him, that an intelligent artist could have done otherwise than place this cloud exactly where it is? Do you see that it establishes a new level o[ depth for the eye, that it signals expanses of space before and beyond it, that it makes the sky recede and makes other thin~ seem closer? Vernet would have gasped all of this. Others, in darkening their skies with clouds, dream only of avoiding monotony, but Verner wants his skies to have movement and magic like what's in front of us. -You can say Vernet, Verner all you want, but I won't abandon nature to run after an image of it; however sublime a man might be, he's not God. -All right, but if you'd spent more time with the artist, perhaps he'd have taught you to see in nature what you don't see now. How many things you'd find there that needed altering! How many of them his art would omit as they spoiled the overall effect and muddled the impression, and how many he'd draw together to double our enchantment! -What, you believe in all seriousness that Vernet would have better things to do than rigorously transcribe this scene? - I believe so. - Then tell me how he'd embellish it. - I don't know, and if I did I'd be a greater poet and a greater painter than he; but if Vernet first taught you to see nature better, nature, for her part, would have taught you to see Vernet better. -But Vernet will always remain Vernet, a mere man. -Yes, and all the more astonishing for that, and his work all the more worthy of admiration. The universe is a grand thing, without question, but when I compare it with the energy of the cause which generated it, what seems marvelous to me is that it's not still more beautiful and more perfect. It's quite otherwise when you reflect on the weakness of man, on his limited capacities, on the travail and brevity of his life, and consider certain things which he has undertaken and achieved. Abbe, may I put a question to you? Here it is: Which would you find the more remarkable, a mountain whose peak touched and held up the sky, or a pyramid covering several square miles and whose summit disappeared into the clouds? .. . You hesitate. It's the pyramid, my dear Abbe, and the reason is that nothing coming from God the mountain's author, is astonishing, while the pyramid would be an incredible human phenomenon.

The conversation proceeded by fits and starts. Such was the beauty of the site that from time to time we were overcome with admiration; I spoke without paying much attention to what I was saying, and my listener was equally distracted; in addition, the Abbe's young charges ran from left to right and clambered up the rocks, such that their instructor was in perpetual fear of their becoming lost or falling or drowning in the lake. He advised that next time we should leave them behind at the house, but l disagreed with him. 

l was inclined to linger on in this spot, spending the rest of the day there; but the Abbe having assured me that the country was so rich in such sites that we need not economize our pleasures in this way, I allowed myself to be led further on, though not without stealing a backward glance from time to time. The youngsters went on ahead of their teacher, while I trailed behind him. We followed narrow, twisting paths, and I complained a bit about this to the Abbe, but he, having turned around, stopped directly in front of me and, looking me straight in the eye, said to me with considerable emphasis: Monsieur, the work of man is sometimes more admirable than that of God! -Monsieur l'Abbe, I answered him, have you seen the Antinuus, the Medici Venus, the Callipygian Venus, and other antique statues? - Yes. - Have you ever encountered figures in nature that were as beautiful, as perfect as those? - No, I can't say that I have. - Have your students never said things to you that evoke greater admiration and pleasure than the most profound sentence in Tacitus? - That has happened on occasion. - And how is that? -I'm deeply interested in them; their remarks seemed to me to indicate great sensibility, a kind of shrewdness and astute intelligence beyond their years. - Abbe, let's apply these observations. If I had a cup full of dice, and I emptied the cup, and they all landed showing the same number, would this astonish you? -Very much. -And if all the dice were loaded, would you still be astonished? -No. -Abbe, let's apply these observations. The world is but a heap of loaded molecules of infinite variety. There's a law of necessity that governs all the works of nature without design, without effort, without intelligence, without progress, and without resistance. If one were to invent a machine capable of producing paintings like Raphael's, would such paintings continue to be beautiful? -No. -And the machine? Should it become commonplace, it would be no more beautiful than the paintings. - But doesn't it follow from this that Raphael was himself such a machine? -Yes, it's true; but Raphael the machine was never commonplace; the productions of this machine were never as widespread and numerous as the leaves of an oak; but by a natural, almost irresistible inclination we attribute will, intelligence, purpose, and liberty to this machine. Suppose Raphael was eternal, fixed in front of the canvas, painting ceaselessly and of necessity. Imagine these machines to be everywhere, producing paintings in nature like the plants, trees, and fruit depicted in them, and tell me what would become of your admiration then. The beautiful order in the universe that you find so enchanting cannot be other than it is. Only one such order is known to you, the one you inhabit; you'll find it beautiful or ugly, according to whether the terms of your coexistence with it are agreeable or difficult things would have to be quite otherwise than they are for it to seem equally beautiful or ugly independent of the pleasure or pain with which one lived in it. An inhabitant of Saturn transported to earth would feel his lungs dry up and would perish cursing nature; an inhabitant of earth transported to Saturn would feel choked, suffocated, and would perish cursing nature ...

At this point a western wind sweeping across the landscape enveloped us in a thick, swirling cloud of dust. It momentarily blinded the Abbe, who rubbed his eyes. As he did this, I added: Although this cloud seems to you like a chaos of haphazardly dispersed molecules, in fact, my dear Abbe, it's as perfectly ordered as the world... I was about to demonstrate my case to him. which he was hardly in a condition to enjoy, when the view of a new site, one no less admirable than the first, left me astonished and mute, my voice broken and my ideas thrown into confusion.

Diderot  gives a verbal physical description of what the painting inspired him to imagine -- not the painting itself.  He doesn't even tell us that the piece is oval not  rectangular. Then he shares his subsequent ruminations on the  difference between a beautiful view of nature and a good imitation of it in painting.  That leads him to ponder the importance of rarity - would we still be impressed by such a painting if it were mechanically produced?  This is a good question for the beginning of the industrial age,  eighty years before the invention of the camera, but it is hardly a "philosophical evaluation" of the work  itself as Kuspit has claimed.

Could we really say that that Diderot "appreciates it in its immediacy so that he can find the meanings it mediates" .. as Kuspit has suggested ?  Diderot  leaped so quickly from the painting on the wall to ideas that were already in his head when he wrote the introduction to this Salon.

If the immediacy of this specific painting had struck him, wouldn't he have been comparing it to other paintings? Or maybe introduced a new topic less familiar to him?

His critical review is not really about the visual effect of one particular painting at all - and in that sense, it does resemble contemporary  art criticism.  And what knowledge,  other than narrative details,  did he share in his critical review?

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Regarding the painting itself, now titled "La Source Abondante", it was recently sold at auction for 281,600 €.  It had been discovered hanging in a nursing home- where I think it should be returned.  It feels small, cute, claustrophobic,  and no more than calendar art. Apparently Diderot had a sweet tooth for this kind of image.  He was much more discriminating when it came to history painting and portraits.

Lucas Van Uden (1595-1672)

For comparison, consider this Flemish landscape from the previous century containing many of the same elements (small rustic figures, mountains, stream, trees, clouds.  As with Vernet, the artist was quite successful in his day and has been not so important in the history of art.  Yet in comparison with the Vernet, this piece feels airy, spacious, and energetic.

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Norman Bryson often referred to Diderot in his book about "French Painting of the Ancien Regime", especially in his chapter about Greuze. He also devoted two entire chapters to him.  Both writers share an interest in comparing verbal and visual communication.  Diderot translated every image that he saw into words, while Bryson presents "Word and Image" as both the title of his book and his key to approaching the most famous painters of that period.

It’s impossible to divorce Diderot’s views on painting from his sense of place within language - the place of the writer, of the painter, and of art criticism; if, behind the volatility, mobility, and fluidity of Diderot’s oeuvre there is any center at all, it lies in a meditation on the nature of language and signs, constructed at a level so deep that’s its influence can be detected not only in the Salons, but in genres as different one from another as the Encyclopedia entries, ., the dramatic dialogues, and the pornographic novella.  — full of energy or extravagance

.........What I discover is an oscillating Diderot who both dreams of limpid, unmediated communication, and calls that dream illusion; a Diderot whose oscillation between the two positions persuaded him first to champion Greuze and then to dissociate himself from Greuze; to praise Chardin first as a naturalist, and to turn around and call him a master technician; to revere painting throughout the 1760’s as a uniquely efficient and satisfying mode of communication, and in the 1770’s to lose his interest in painting altogether.

Diderot reviewed the Salons of 1771, 1775, and 1781... so how can we say that he lost all interest in painting during that period ? His Salon reviews became shorter - possibly because his publisher, Grimm, demanded brevity, but he was still writing about painters - including Jacques Louis David in 1781.

Bryson has invited Diderot to join the mainstream modern humanists, like himself, who primarily focus on "the nature of language and signs". Perhaps the rest of his oeuvre would justify that identification. At the center of the Salon of 1765, however, seems to be an appetite for vigorous and convincing representations of the world and stories as he sees them. If the images do not satisfy him, he is as angry as if a waiter had served him lukewarm tea - and he is disappointed, biting, and sarcastic most of the time. He's not looking for discourse or communication from others. He does not care if the waiter passionately believes that tea is best served cold.

Those who wish to learn more about Diderot may well appreciate Bryson's two chapters about him - but since my primary interest here is 18th Century French painting, I will skip them.

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Concerning my own view of the paintings in the 1765 Salon,  I would largely agree with Diderot -- most  pieces were not appealing - and it was surprising  how low the bar had been set for membership in the Royal Academy.  Since it was founded by LeBrun,  it was probably that way from  the very beginning. It did, however appoint Chardin to hang this show and it recognized the genius of young Fragonard, even as it hung him next to artists who were barely competent illustrators..

I'm embarrassed by being so conventional, but like every art history textbook in the 20th Century, Chardin stands out for me above all the others. Which is not to say that he was ahead of his time - there were many great painters before him - but that he was not of his time.  Indeed, he seemed to be assiduously pursuing timelessness.  Most of the pieces by the other now iconic artists did not interest me.  I liked the Greuze portrait, but the Bouchers were banal and the Fragonard was silly even if virtuosic.