The Early French Painters--Richard Parkes Bonington--Chardin--Historical Paintings--Bonington again--The Moreau Collection--The Thomy-Thierret Collection--The Chauchard Collection.
French pictures early and late now await us. On our way down the Grande Galerie we passed on the right two entrances to other rooms. Taking that one which is nearer the British School, we find ourselves in Salle IX., leading to Salle X. and so on to Galerie XVI., which completes the series. In Salle X. the beginnings of French art may be studied, and in particular the curious Japanese effects of the Ecole d'Avignon. Here also is very interesting work by Le Maître de Moulins and a remarkable series of drawings in the case in the middle, representing the Siege of Troy. Salle XI. is notable for its portraits by Clouet and others; in Salle XII. we find Le Sueur, and in Salle XIII. the curious brothers Le Nain, of whom there are very interesting examples at the Ionides collection at South Kensington, but nothing better than the haymaking scene here, No. 542.
French painting of the seventeenth century bursts upon us in the great Salle XIV. or Galerie Mollien, of which Nicolas Poussin and Ausonian Claude are the giants, thus completing Landor's pleasant list with which we entered the Grande Galerie in the last chapter. There are wonderful things here, but so crowded are they that I always feel lost and confused. There is, however, compensation and relief, for the room also contains one minute masterpiece which perhaps not more than five out of every thousand visitors have seen, and yet which can be studied with perfect quietness and leisure. This is a tiny water-colour in the revolving screen in the middle. There is much delicate work in this screen, dainty aquatint effects by the Dutchmen Ostade and Van der Heyden, Weenix and Borssom, and so forth; but finest of all (as so often happens) is a little richly-coloured drawing of Nottingham by Bonington, who, as we shall see, has a way of cropping up unsuspectedly and graciously in this great collection--and very rightly, since he owed so much to that Gallery. He was one of the youngest students ever admitted, being allowed to copy there at the age of fifteen, while at the Beaux Arts. That was in the year after Waterloo. There may in the history of the Gallery have been copyists equally young, but there can never have been one more distinguished or who had deeper influence on French art. Paris not only made Bonington's career but ended it, for it was while sketching in its streets ten years or more later that he met with the sunstroke which brought about his death when he was only twenty-seven, and stilled the marvellous hand for ever.