FRENCH PICTURES AND THEIR PAINTERS BY LORINDA MUNSON BRYANT ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1922 Frontinpiare Saint tenevkw Overlooking Paris. Puvis de Oluwmnes. Pantheon, Paris. T, 1022, BY D01 D, MKAD AN D n mPANT, 1 xc. PEINTSD IN tr. 8. A. TO MY COUSIN ANTOINETTE BRYANT HERVEY INTRODUCTION Never has France been dearer to us than she is today. And never have we longed more deeply to know more about her people. Our boys and her boys lie side by side over there. The underlying cause that brought them together was the same, and very quickly they recognized in each other the spirit that was theirs in common. This spirit rose above the trench and the battle front and gave them, sometimes in pathos and sometimes in fun, pictures that appealed-to each alike. And after all what goes deeper into our hearts than the pictures of a nation For tunately genius in any line of art is not circum scribed by a particular language, for i t speaks a tongue of its own understandable to like gen iuses among all people. In French Pictures and their Painters I am bringing before you the men and women and children of France who have made history, and that means everybody in the French nation from the eleventh century until today, and also the painters who had the gift of portraying char FRENCH PICTURES acterlstics underlying the events which made or marred the welfare of the people. We find that the artists of the various centuries were the real historians. Sometimes these artists were big enough to picture underlying motives that brought about a revolution-or constructed a republic then again the artists simply reflected the surface life of the time, but both have given invaluable material from which to construct a vivid word picture of each period of the time. The more familiar we can become with French pictures given us by painters who were living witnesses of the scenes, the closer we will come to that glorious nation whose people have indeed come up through tribulation. As we proceed from century to century in studying the events and peoples portrayed by French painters, we find that we too become inti mately associated with France. And to know France and her history through pictures is to know more about our own country and the men and women who brought it into being. Then, too, in searching out the whereabouts of various artists pictures we have come upon rare treasures in small collections in out-of-the-way places little known to the world. Again in many a tiny village and hamlet, now so familiar to our boys who - were in France, are AND THEIR PAINTERS certain old rustic houses beloved by the natives because a world artist had been born there and lived as one of them. I wonder how many American boys when in the Duchy of Lorraine hunted out in the tiny hamlet of Champagne the old home at the end of the street leading to a common pasture-ground and read from the tab let Here was born in 1600 Claude Gellee Lor rain, who died in Rome, November 25, 1682. And yet we cross the ocean to see Claudes pic tures and collectors pay tens of thousands of dollars to own one of his originals, for with him began the long list of French painters. The little Claude grasped in his tiny hands the national binding-cord that always has held France together and ever has helped her to consolidate her forces and constantly to draw other thinking peoples closer to each other. That national binding-cord is art a reality founded on the laws of God. L. M. B. NEW YORK CITY. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I QUEEN MATILDA CLOUET POUSSIN LORRAIN i II LE SUEUR LEBRUN RIGAUD MIGNARD CHAMPAIGNE 14 III WATTEAU NATTIER CHAKDIN ... 24 IV BOUCHER LA TOUR FRAGONARD GREUZE 36 V DAVID 51 VI GERARD MADAME LEBRUN .... 63 VII PRUDHON GROS INGRES VERNET . 72 VIII GERICAULT JDELACROIX DELAROCHE . 85 IX DECAMPS FROMENTIN ZIEM ISABEY . 95 X GEROME T. FRERE BIDA .... 104 XI COROT 113 XII MILLET 122 XIII ROUSSEAU DUPR DIAZ .... 132 XIV DAUBIGNY TROYON JACQUE BRETON ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.