French Painters of Influence

The following painters influenced eighteenth-century English painters in several ways, direct and indirect.  As a normal part of their formal academic training or informal leisure inclination, many English painters traveled abroad, most particularly to Italy and France.  Here they studied the style and manner of long dead great masters, of course, but they also met their contemporary counterparts and returned to England with sketches of their works and in some cases actual pieces.  Likewise, painters from France and Italy frequently traveled to London and exchanged ideas and styles freely with their fellow artists.  Other foreign artists moved to England for years and actively pursued careers there, competing directly with British artists.  The exchange of ideas and styles back and forth from the Continent to Great Britain was extremely lively throughout the century, despite political upheavals and even open wars.

• Boucher, Francois (1703-1770) was the most typical Rococo decorator of the period.  He began as an engraver of Watteau, won the Prix de Rome in 1723, and travelled to Italy in 1727.  There he studied the works of Tiepolo, who was the greatest decorator of the age.  Returning to France in 1731, Boucher became an Academician in 1734 and the Director of the Academy in 1765.  His sometimes indelicate mythological paintings, inspired by Veronese, Rubens, and Watteau, were criticized by Diderot. Reynolds is known to have visited his studio and been shocked to see that he had given up using models.  Many of his paintings are on display in the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery in London
  

• Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon (1699-1779)  was the finest eighteenth-century French painter of still-life and genre.  He joined the Academy in 1728 and served as treasure and hung exhibitions for two decades.  His still lifes are remarkably fine in technique and feeling.  For a short time Fragonard was his pupil.
  
• Claude Gellee or Claude Lorrain(e) (1600-82) was a landscape painter whose works exerted an incridible influence in England during the eighteenth century.  Out of relative obscurity he emerged by 1630 with a fully established reputation which has continued unchanged until the present.  Comparison to Poussin is obvious, but while Poussin's heroic landscapes show the influence of Titian and Annibale Carracci, Claude's sources derive chiefly from Mannerists like Tassi and the Northerners Elsheimer and Brills.  His compositions usually consist of a large mass of trees on one side counter-balanced by a smaller mass on the other, a middle distance with some small features like a bridge, farm, or ruin, and a distant vista of mountains, rivers, or the Roman Compagna.  Claude's paintings were eagerly collected in England throughout the eighteenth century.  And landscape designers created "picturesque" garden designs in deliberate imitation of Claude.

• David, Jacques Louis (1748-1825) was related to Boucher, who recommended that he study under Vien in Rome.  He won the Prix de Rome in 1774 and remained in Rome until 1781, at which point he abandoned Boucher's Rococo for the new Neoclassicism.  In 1782 he joined the Academy and in 1784 returned to Rome to paint one of his best known works, Oath of the Horatii (1785; Louvre).  Oath is commonly regarded as the most important Neoclassical painting, both for its simplicity and severity and for its utter sacrifice of color to drawing.  It is also a highly political painting, extolling the classical and republican ideals of the Revolution.  During the Revolution David became the virtual dictator of the arts in France.  He abolished the Academy in 1793 and helped to found the Institut which replaced it.  After the fall of Robespierre, David was imprisoned but later released at the intercession of his wife and pupils.  In 1798 he met Napoleon and promptly became an ardent follower, painting many propaganda pieces.  Following Napoleon's Defeat at Waterloo, David fled to Switzerland and then Brussells, where he died in 1816.  Most of his best pictures are in Paris. 

• Fragonard, Jean Honore (1732-1806)  was a typical painter of gallant and sentimental subjects during reigns of Louis XV and XVI.  He studied under Chardin for several months and then Boucher.  His first great success came with Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf (1752; Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts).  Psyche (1753; London, National Gallery) shows Fragonard working in the Grand Manner.  From 1756 to 1761 he worked at the French Academy in Rome, where he studied Tiepolo.  Returning to Paris in 1765, Fragonard made his name with High Priest Coresus Sacrificing Himself to Save Callirhoe (Paris, Louvre).  Abandoning historical themes, he painted The Swing (1766; London, Wallace) one of his most famous paintings.  The light hearted and frank eroticism of this painting appealed greatly to the aristocracy, and Fragonard experienced considerable success in this vein.  The Revolution eliminated Fragonards patrons and put a sudden end to his style of art, which was promptly supplanted by the severe Neoclassicism of David.  In his final destitution David got Fragonard a job in the Museums Service, but he died virtually forgotten.  Outside Paris (Louvre), the best collection of his works is in the Wallace Collection in London.
  
• Gravelot, Hubert (1699-1773) was a French book illustrator and engraver.  After studying in Paris under Boucher, he came to London in 1733, where he served as Gainsborough's master before returning to Paris in 1746.  He returned to London and stayed until 1755, when he returned to Paris.  In the mid eighteenth century Gravelot is the most important link between the French School (particularly Watteau) and England.  He illustrated most of the important books published in England during his years there.  His paintings are rare but may have influenced Hayman.
  
• Poussin, Gaspard (1615-75) was actually born Dughet but adopted the name of his famous brother-in-law Nicolas (1594-1665).  He studied under Nicholas from 1631-1635 and lived and worked in Rome while attempting to combine the landscape style and principles of Poussin and Claude.  Garpard Poussin invented the Land Storm landscape so popular during the eighteenth century.  Because of his great popularity, many of his paintings are exhibited in European galleries and collections, but most of these paintings are only guessed to be by Gaspard.  Only a few paintings have been positively assigned to him.

• Watteau, Antoine (1684-1721) was born in  the Flemish town Valenciennes, which had only recently become French.  He went to Paris in 1702 and worked as a hack painter before going to work for a painter of theatrical scenes.  In 1707/8 he moved to the decorative painter Claude Audran, through  whom watteau gained access, in Luxembourgh Palace, to the Rubens cycle of the Life of Marie de'Medici, the style of which greatly influenced him.  In 1712 he was invited to join the Academy but did not submit his diploma piece until 1717, when he presented one of his best known pictures Embarkation for the Island of Cythera (Louvre; later version in Berlin).  In 1719-20 Watteau visited London, where a bad winter worsened his already declining health, and he returned to France to die.  Watteau composed most of his paintings by taking figures from large bound volumes of sketches he had done over the years.  Since he used many of the figure sketches over and over again, Watteau's pictures often bare a strong family resemblance.