Louis-Michel Vanloo (Salon of 1763)

[p.350]

Louis-Michel Vanloo

This painter was attached to the Spanish court¹. I don't know why he's no longer there, but he's certainly a great artist.

The Portrait of the author, accompanied by his sister and working on his father's portrait, is a beautiful thing².

The painter occupies the middle of the canvas. He is seated. His legs are crossed and one arm is crossed over the back of his armchair. He is resting. The sketch of his father's portrait is in front of him on an easel. His sister stands [p.351]behind his armchair. Nothing could be simpler, more natural or truer than this last figure. The artist's robe does silk wonderfully. The arm hanging over the back of the armchair is completely out of the canvas; all you have to do is pick it up. The family air could not be better preserved in the three heads. In all, the piece is amply done³ and deserves the highest praise; the heads are noble and greatly touched⁴.

With all this, you might ask, how does this compare with Van Dyck for truth, with Rembrandt for strength?

But while there are so many different ways of writing, each of which has its own particular merit, could there be only one way of painting well [?] Because Homer is more impetuous than Virgil, Virgil wiser and more numerous than the Tasso, the Tasso more interesting and more varied than Voltaire, shall I refuse my just tribute to the latter⁵? Moderns envious of your contemporaries, how long will you continue to belittle them with your eternal comparisons with the Ancients? Is it not a very strange way of judging to look at the Ancients only from their beautiful points of view, as you do, and to close your eyes to their faults, and on the contrary to have your eyes open only to the faults of the Moderns and to keep them stubbornly closed to their beauties [...] To praise the authors of your pleasures, will you always wait until they are no more? What's the use of praise they can't hear?

I'm always annoyed that among the superstitions with which men have been stubborn, it has never occurred to us to persuade them that they would hear under the grave the evil or the good that we would say about them. [p.352]

I'm just as angry that these pieces of paint, which have the freshness and brilliance of flowers, are doomed to fade as quickly as they do.

This disadvantage stems from a way of doing things that doubles the effect of the painting for the moment. When the painter has almost completed his work, he freezes it. To glaze is to pass over the whole a light layer of the color and hue appropriate to each part. This layer, light in color and heavy in oil, has the function and defect of a varnish; the oil dries and yellows as it dries, and the painting smokes⁶ more or less, depending on whether it has been painted more or less frankly.

A painter is said to paint with full colors or frankly, when his colors are more unes, less tormented, less mixed⁷.

It is conceivable that oil spread on places where there are many different colors mixed and melted causes an action of one on the other and a decomposition from which yellow, gray, black spots are born, and the general harmony is lost.

The places that will suffer most are those where there will be ceruse⁸ and other metallic limes that the fatty substance will revive.

A sculptor a little jealous of the duration of a work that costs him so much trouble, should always support the delicate and fragile parts of it on solid parts; and the painter prepare and grind his colors himself, and exclude from his palette all those that can react on each other, decompose, revivify, or suffer, like salts, by the acid of the air. This acid is so powerful that it tarnishes even porcelain paints.

The art of giving paint long-lasting colors is almost [p.353] yet to be found. It seems that most limes, all saline substances, should be banished, and only pure, well-washed earths admitted.

It is a strange thing the diversity of judgments of the multitude that gathers in a Salon. After wandering there to see, one should also take a few turns there to hear.

People of the world cast a disdainful and distracted glance at the great compositions, and are arrested only by the portraits whose originals they have present.

The man of letters does just the opposite. Passing quickly by the portraits, the large compositions fix all his attention.

The people look at everything and agree on nothing⁹.

It's when they meet on the way out that they're pleasant to hear. One says: Have you seen the Marriage of the Virgin¹⁰? It's a beautiful piece! ... No. But what about the Portrait de la comtesse¹¹? that's what's so delicious... Me, I just don't know if your countess has been painted. I'd have fun with a portrait, whereas I have neither too many eyes nor too much time for Deshays' Joseph¹² or Greuze's Paralytic¹³.... Ah, yes; it's that man next to the stairs who's about to be given extreme unction... This is how nothing passes without praise and blame: he who aims for general approval is a fool. Greuze, why must an impertinence afflict you? There's always a crowd around your painting, and I have to wait my turn to approach it. Can't you hear the voices of surprise and admiration coming from all sides? Don't you know you've done something sublime? What more do you need than your own suffrage and ours?

As long as portrait painters will make me nothing but likenesses, [p.354] without composition¹⁴, I will say little about them; but when they have once felt that to interest requires action, then they will have all the talent of the history painter, and they will please me regardless of the merit of likeness.

A singular dispute has arisen here between artists and people of the world. The latter claimed that the main merit of a portrait was to resemble; the artists, that it was to be well drawn and well painted. What does it matter to us," said the latter, "whether the Van Dycks look like or not? Are they any less masterpieces in our eyes? The merit of resemblance is fleeting; it's the merit of the brush¹⁵ that amazes in the moment, and eternalizes the work. It's a sweet thing for us," they replied, "to find on canvas the true image of our fathers, our mothers, our children, those who have been the benefactors of mankind and whom we miss. What was the first origin of painting and sculpture? It was a young girl who used a piece of charcoal to follow the contours of her lover's head, whose shadow was cast on a lit wall¹⁶. Between two portraits, one of Henri IV poorly painted, but resembling, and the other of a faquin¹⁷ of concussion¹⁸ or of a silly author painted to miracle, which one will you choose? Who is it that fixes your eyes on a bust of Marcus Aurelius or Trajan, Seneca or Cicero? Is it the merit of the artist's chisel or the admiration of the man?

From which I conclude with you that a portrait must be resembling for me, and well painted for posterity.

What is certain is that nothing is rarer than a fine brush, more common than a dauber who makes one look like, and that when the man is no more, we assume likeness¹⁹.

Yes, but the attraction of truth is so invincible that it would be enough for the most beautiful portrait by Van Dyck to have retained the reputation of not having resembled, to lose its price. This is because the first merit of a portrait is to resemble, whatever one may say, and a great painter only has to make fantasy heads²⁰, if he doesn't have the talent to give resemblance.

Notes