Imaginary Portraits by Walter Horatio Pater

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Produced by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.

IMAGINARY PORTRAITS

By WALTER HORATIO PATER

E-text Editor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.
Electronic Version 1.0 / Date 10-12-01

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CONTENTS

I. A Prince of Court Painters: 3-44

II. Denys L'Auxerrois: 45-77

III. Sebastian Van Storck: 79-115

IV. Duke Carl of Rosenmold: 117-153

IMAGINARY PORTRAITS

I. A PRINCE OF COURT PAINTERS

EXTRACTS FROM AN OLD FRENCH JOURNAL

Valenciennes, September 1701.

[5] They have been renovating my father's large workroom. That
delightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and
the green weather-stains we have known all our lives on the high
whitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's
yard, for the coolness, in summertime. Among old Watteau's work-
people came his son, "the genius," my father's godson and namesake, a
dark-haired youth, whose large, unquiet eyes seemed perpetually
wandering to the various drawings which lie exposed here. My father
will have it that he is a genius indeed, and a painter born. We have
had our September Fair in the Grande Place, a wonderful stir of sound
and colour in the wide, open space beneath our windows. And just
where the crowd was busiest young Antony was found, hoisted into one
of those empty niches of the old Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene
to the life, but with a [6] kind of grace--a marvellous tact of
omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar
reality seen from one's own window--which has made trite old
Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland;
or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the
thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of
serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with a sort of comedy
which shall be but tragedy seen from the other side. He brought his
sketch to our house to-day, and I was present when my father
questioned him and commended his work. But the lad seemed not
greatly pleased, and left untasted the glass of old Malaga which was
offered to him. His father will hear nothing of educating him as a
painter. Yet he is not ill-to-do, and has lately built himself a new
stone house, big and grey and cold. Their old plastered house with
the black timbers, in the Rue des Cardinaux, was prettier; dating
from the time of the Spaniards, and one of the oldest in
Valenciennes.

October 1701.

Chiefly through the solicitations of my father, old Watteau has
consented to place Antony with a teacher of painting here. I meet
him betimes on the way to his lessons, as I return from Mass; for he
still works with the masons, [7] but making the most of late and
early hours, of every moment of liberty. And then he has the feast-
days, of which there are so many in this old-fashioned place. Ah!
such gifts as his, surely, may once in a way make much industry seem
worth while. He makes a wonderful progress. And yet, far from being
set-up, and too easily pleased with what, after all, comes to him so
easily, he has, my father thinks, too little self-approval for
ultimate success. He is apt, in truth, to fall out too hastily with
himself and what he produces. Yet here also there is the "golden
mean." Yes! I could fancy myself offended by a sort of irony which
sometimes crosses the half-melancholy sweetness of manner habitual
with him; only that as I can see, he treats himself to the same
quality.

October 1701.

Antony Watteau comes here often now. It is the instinct of a natural
fineness in him, to escape when he can from that blank stone house,
with so little to interest, and that homely old man and woman. The
rudeness of his home has turned his feeling for even the simpler
graces of life into a physical want, like hunger or thirst, which
might come to greed; and methinks he perhaps overvalues these things.
Still, made as he is, his hard fate in that rude place must needs
touch one. And then, he profits by the experience of [8] my father,
who has much knowledge in matters of art beyond his own art of
sculpture; and Antony is not unwelcome to him. In these last rainy
weeks especially, when he can't sketch out of doors, when the wind
only half dries the pavement before another torrent comes, and people
stay at home, and the only sound from without is the creaking of a
restless shutter on its hinges, or the march across the Place of
those weary soldiers, coming and going so interminably, one hardly
knows whether to or from battle with the English and the Austrians,
from victory or defeat:--Well! he has become like one of our family.
"He will go far!" my father declares. He would go far, in the
literal sense, if he might--to Paris, to Rome. It must be admitted
that our Valenciennes is a quiet, nay! a sleepy place; sleepier than
ever since it became French, and ceased to be so near the frontier.
The grass is growing deep on our old ramparts, and it is pleasant to
walk there--to walk there and muse; pleasant for a tame, unambitious
soul such as mine.

December 1702.

Antony Watteau left us for Paris this morning. It came upon us quite
suddenly. They amuse themselves in Paris. A scene-painter we have
here, well known in Flanders, has been engaged to work in one of the
Parisian play-houses; and young Watteau, of whom he had some slight
[9] knowledge, has departed in his company. He doesn't know it was I
who persuaded the scene-painter to take him; that he would find the
lad useful. We offered him our little presents--fine thread-lace of
our own making for his ruffles, and the like; for one must make a
figure in Paris, and he is slim and well-formed. For myself, I
presented him with a silken purse I had long ago embroidered for
another. Well! we shall follow his fortunes (of which I for one feel
quite sure) at a distance. Old Watteau didn't know of his departure,
and has been here in great anger.

December 1703.

Twelve months to-day since Antony went to Paris! The first struggle
must be a sharp one for an unknown lad in that vast, overcrowded
place, even if he be as clever as young Antony Watteau. We may
think, however, that he is on the way to his chosen end, for he
returns not home; though, in truth, he tells those poor old people
very little of himself. The apprentices of the M. Metayer for whom
he works, labour all day long, each at a single part only,--coiffure,
or robe, or hand,--of the cheap pictures of religion or fantasy he
exposes for sale at a low price along the footways of the Pont Notre-
Dame. Antony is already the most skilful of them, and seems to have
been promoted of late to work on church pictures. I like the thought
of that. [10] He receives three livres a week for his pains, and his
soup daily.

May 1705.

Antony Watteau has parted from the dealer in pictures a bon marche,
and works now with a painter of furniture pieces (those headpieces
for doors and the like, now in fashion) who is also concierge of the
Palace of the Luxembourg. Antony is actually lodged somewhere in
that grand place, which contains the king's collection of the Italian
pictures he would so willingly copy. Its gardens also are
magnificent, with something, as we understand from him, altogether of
a novel kind in their disposition and embellishment. Ah! how I
delight myself, in fancy at least, in those beautiful gardens, freer
and trimmed less stiff than those of other royal houses. Methinks I
see him there, when his long summer-day's work is over, enjoying the
cool shade of the stately, broad-foliaged trees, each of which is a
great courtier, though it has its way almost as if it belonged to
that open and unbuilt country beyond, over which the sun is sinking.

His thoughts, however, in the midst of all this, are not wholly away
from home, if I may judge by the subject of a picture he hopes to
sell for as much as sixty livres--Un Depart de Troupes, Soldiers
Departing--one of those scenes of military life one can study so well
here at Valenciennes.

[11]

June 1705.

Young Watteau has returned home--proof, with a character so
independent as his, that things have gone well with him; and (it is
agreed!) stays with us, instead of in the stone-mason's house. The
old people suppose he comes to us for the sake of my father's
instruction. French people as we are become, we are still old
Flemish, if not at heart, yet on the surface. Even in French
Flanders, at Douai and Saint Omer, as I understand, in the churches
and in people's houses, as may be seen from the very streets, there
is noticeable a minute and scrupulous air of care-taking and
neatness. Antony Watteau remarks this more than ever on returning to
Valenciennes, and savours greatly, after his lodging in Paris, our
Flemish cleanliness, lover as he is of distinction and elegance.
Those worldly graces he seemed when a young lad almost to hunger and
thirst for, as though truly the mere adornments of life were its
necessaries, he already takes as if he had been always used to them.
And there is something noble--shall I say?--in his half-disdainful
way of serving himself with what he still, as I think, secretly
values over-much. There is an air of seemly thought--le bel serieux-
-about him, which makes me think of one of those grave old Dutch
statesmen in their youth, such as that famous William the Silent.
And yet the effect of this first success [12] of his (of more
importance than its mere money value, as insuring for the future the
full play of his natural powers) I can trace like the bloom of a
flower upon him; and he has, now and then, the gaieties which from
time to time, surely, must refresh all true artists, however hard-
working and "painful."

July 1705.

The charm of all this--his physiognomy and manner of being--has
touched even my young brother, Jean-Baptiste. He is greatly taken
with Antony, clings to him almost too attentively, and will be
nothing but a painter, though my father would have trained him to
follow his own profession. It may do the child good. He needs the
expansion of some generous sympathy or sentiment in that close little
soul of his, as I have thought, watching sometimes how his small face
and hands are moved in sleep. A child of ten who cares only to save
and possess, to hoard his tiny savings! Yet he is not otherwise
selfish, and loves us all with a warm heart. Just now it is the
moments of Antony's company he counts, like a little miser. Well!
that may save him perhaps from developing a certain meanness of
character I have sometimes feared for him.

[13]

August 1705.

We returned home late this summer evening--Antony Watteau, my father
and sisters, young Jean-Baptiste, and myself--from an excursion to
Saint-Amand, in celebration of Antony's last day with us. After
visiting the great abbey-church and its range of chapels, with their
costly encumbrance of carved shrines and golden reliquaries and
funeral scutcheons in the coloured glass, half seen through a rich
enclosure of marble and brass-work, we supped at the little inn in
the forest. Antony, looking well in his new-fashioned, long-skirted
coat, and taller than he really is, made us bring our cream and wild
strawberries out of doors, ranging ourselves according to his
judgment (for a hasty sketch in that big pocket-book he carries) on
the soft slope of one of those fresh spaces in the wood, where the
trees unclose a little, while Jean-Baptiste and my youngest sister
danced a minuet on the grass, to the notes of some strolling lutanist
who had found us out. He is visibly cheerful at the thought of his
return to Paris, and became for a moment freer and more animated than
I have ever yet seen him, as he discoursed to us about the paintings
of Peter Paul Rubens in the church here. His words, as he spoke of
them, seemed full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving glory
within it. Yet I like far better than any of these pictures of
Rubens a work of that old Dutch [14] master, Peter Porbus, which
hangs, though almost out of sight indeed, in our church at home. The
patron saints, simple, and standing firmly on either side, present
two homely old people to Our Lady enthroned in the midst, with the
look and attitude of one for whom, amid her "glories" (depicted in
dim little circular pictures, set in the openings of a chaplet of
pale flowers around her) all feelings are over, except a great
pitifulness. Her robe of shadowy blue suits my eyes better far than
the hot flesh-tints of the Medicean ladies of the great Peter Paul,
in spite of that amplitude and royal ease of action under their stiff
court costumes, at which Antony Watteau declares himself in dismay.

August 1705.

I am just returned from early Mass. I lingered long after the office
was ended, watching, pondering how in the world one could help a
small bird which had flown into the church but could find no way out
again. I suspect it will remain there, fluttering round and round
distractedly, far up under the arched roof, till it dies exhausted.
I seem to have heard of a writer who likened man's life to a bird
passing just once only, on some winter night, from window to window,
across a cheerfully-lighted hall. The bird, taken captive by the
ill-luck of a moment, re-tracing its issueless circle till it [15]
expires within the close vaulting of that great stone church:--human
life may be like that bird too!

Antony Watteau returned to Paris yesterday. Yes!--Certainly, great
heights of achievement would seem to lie before him; access to
regions whither one may find it increasingly hard to follow him even
in imagination, and figure to one's self after what manner his life
moves therein.

January 1709.

Antony Watteau has competed for what is called the Prix de Rome,
desiring greatly to profit by the grand establishment founded at Rome
by King Lewis the Fourteenth, for the encouragement of French
artists. He obtained only the second place, but does not renounce
his desire to make the journey to Italy. Could I save enough by
careful economies for that purpose? It might be conveyed to him in
some indirect way that would not offend.

February 1712.

We read, with much pleasure for all of us, in the Gazette to-day,
among other events of the great world, that Antony Watteau had been
elected to the Academy of Painting under the new title of Peintre des
Fetes Galantes, and had been named also Peintre du Roi. My brother,
[16] Jean-Baptiste, ran to tell the news to old Jean-Philippe and
Michelle Watteau.

A new manner of painting! The old furniture of people's rooms must
needs be changed throughout, it would seem, to accord with this
painting; or rather, the painting is designed exclusively to suit one
particular kind of apartment. A manner of painting greatly prized,
as we understand, by those Parisian judges who have had the best
opportunity of acquainting themselves with whatever is most enjoyable
in the arts:--such is the achievement of the young Watteau! He looks
to receive more orders for his work than he will be able to execute.
He will certainly relish--he, so elegant, so hungry for the colours
of life--a free intercourse with those wealthy lovers of the arts, M.
de Crozat, M. de Julienne, the Abbe de la Roque, the Count de Caylus,
and M. Gersaint, the famous dealer in pictures, who are so anxious to
lodge him in their fine hotels, and to have him of their company at
their country houses. Paris, we hear, has never been wealthier and
more luxurious than now: and the great ladies outbid each other to
carry his work upon their very fans. Those vast fortunes, however,
seem to change hands very rapidly. And Antony's new manner? I am
unable even to divine it--to conceive the trick and effect of it--at
all. Only, something of lightness and coquetry I discern there, at
variance, methinks, [17] with his own singular gravity and even
sadness of mien and mind, more answerable to the stately apparelling
of the age of Henry the Fourth, or of Lewis the Thirteenth, in these
old, sombre Spanish houses of ours.

March 1713.

We have all been very happy,--Jean-Baptiste as if in a delightful
dream. Antony Watteau, being consulted with regard to the lad's
training as a painter, has most generously offered to receive him for
his own pupil. My father, for some reason unknown to me, seemed to
hesitate at the first; but Jean-Baptiste, whose enthusiasm for Antony
visibly refines and beautifies his whole nature, has won the
necessary permission, and this dear young brother will leave us to-
morrow. Our regrets and his, at his parting from us for the first
time, overtook our joy at his good fortune by surprise, at the last
moment, just as we were about to bid each other good-night. For a
while there had seemed to be an uneasiness under our cheerful talk,
as if each one present were concealing something with an effort; and
it was Jean-Baptiste himself who gave way at last. And then we sat
down again, still together, and allowed free play to what was in our
hearts, almost till morning, my sisters weeping much. I know better
how to control myself. In a few days that delightful new life will
have [18] begun for him: and I have made him promise to write often
to us. With how small a part of my whole life shall I be really
living at Valenciennes!

January 1714.

Jean-Philippe Watteau has received a letter from his son to-day. Old
Michelle Watteau, whose sight is failing, though she still works
(half by touch, indeed) at her pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read
the letter aloud more than once. It recounts--how modestly, and
almost as a matter of course!--his late successes. And yet!--does
he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great
good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the
contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads
among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence of theirs in
his old home? A life, agitated, exigent, unsatisfying! That is what
this letter really discloses, below so attractive a surface. As his
gift expands so does that incurable restlessness one supposed but the
humour natural to a promising youth who had still everything to do.
And now the only realised enjoyment he has of all this might seem to
be the thought of the independence it has purchased him, so that he
can escape from one lodging-place to another, just as it may please
him. He has already deserted, somewhat incontinently, more than one
of those [19] fine houses, the liberal air of which he used so
greatly to affect, and which have so readily received him. Has he
failed truly to grasp the fact of his great success and the rewards
that lie before him? At all events, he seems, after all, not greatly
to value that dainty world he is now privileged to enter, and has
certainly but little relish for his own works--those works which I
for one so thirst to see.

March 1714.

We were all--Jean-Philippe, Michelle Watteau, and ourselves--half in
expectation of a visit from Antony; and to-day, quite suddenly, he is
with us. I was lingering after early Mass this morning in the church
of Saint Vaast. It is good for me to be there. Our people lie under
one of the great marble slabs before the jube, some of the memorial
brass balusters of which are engraved with their names and the dates
of their decease. The settle of carved oak which runs all round the
wide nave is my father's own work. The quiet spaciousness of the
place is itself like a meditation, an "act of recollection," and
clears away the confusions of the heart. I suppose the heavy droning
of the carillon had smothered the sound of his footsteps, for on my
turning round, when I supposed myself alone, Antony Watteau was
standing near me. Constant observer as he is of the lights and
shadows of things, he visits [20] places of this kind at odd times.
He has left Jean-Baptiste at work in Paris, and will stay this time
with the old people, not at our house; though he has spent the better
part of to-day in my father's workroom. He hasn't yet put off, in
spite of all his late intercourse with the great world, his distant
and preoccupied manner--a manner, it is true, the same to every one.
It is certainly not through pride in his success, as some might
fancy, for he was thus always. It is rather as if, with all that
success, life and its daily social routine were somewhat of a burden
to him.

April 1714.

At last we shall understand something of that new style of his--the
Watteau style--so much relished by the fine people at Paris. He has
taken it into his kind head to paint and decorate our chief salon--
the room with the three long windows, which occupies the first floor
of the house.

The room was a landmark, as we used to think, an inviolable milestone
and landmark, of old Valenciennes fashion--that sombre style,
indulging much in contrasts of black or deep brown with white, which
the Spaniards left behind them here. Doubtless their eyes had found
its shadows cool and pleasant, when they shut themselves in from the
cutting sunshine of their own country. But in our country, [21]
where we must needs economise not the shade but the sun, its
grandiosity weighs a little on one's spirits. Well! the rough
plaster we used to cover as well as might be with morsels of old
figured arras-work, is replaced by dainty panelling of wood, with
mimic columns, and a quite aerial scrollwork around sunken spaces of
a pale-rose stuff and certain oval openings--two over the doors,
opening on each side of the great couch which faces the windows, one
over the chimney-piece, and one above the buffet which forms its vis-
a-vis--four spaces in all, to be filled by and by with "fantasies" of
the Four Seasons, painted by his own hand. He will send us from
Paris arm-chairs of a new pattern he has devised, suitably covered,
and a painted clavecin. Our old silver candlesticks look well on the
chimney-piece. Odd, faint-coloured flowers fill coquettishly the
little empty spaces here and there, like ghosts of nosegays left by
visitors long ago, which paled thus, sympathetically, at the decease
of their old owners; for, in spite of its new-fashionedness, all this
array is really less like a new thing than the last surviving result
of all the more lightsome adornments of past times. Only, the very
walls seem to cry out:--No! to make delicate insinuation, for a
music, a conversation, nimbler than any we have known, or are likely
to find here. For himself, he converses well, but very sparingly.
He assures us, indeed, that the [22] "new style" is in truth a thing
of old days, of his own old days here in Valenciennes, when, working
long hours as a mason's boy, he in fancy reclothed the walls of this
or that house he was employed in, with this fairy arrangement--itself
like a piece of "chamber-music," methinks, part answering to part;
while no too trenchant note is allowed to break through the delicate
harmony of white and pale red and little golden touches. Yet it is
all very comfortable also, it must be confessed; with an elegant open
place for the fire, instead of the big old stove of brown tiles. The
ancient, heavy furniture of our grandparents goes up, with
difficulty, into the garrets, much against my father's inclination.
To reconcile him to the change, Antony is painting his portrait in a
vast perruque, and with more vigorous massing of light and shadow
than he is wont to permit himself.

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