The picture of a young woman sometimes known as "L'Etude" (but perhaps
better known as "La Chanteuse" or "Song") at the Louvre is another of
those little canvases painted by Fragonard under the strong influence
of the Dutch school, as we may see not only in the handling of the
paint, and in the arrangement of the figure, but in the very ruffle
about the girl's neck, the lace cuffs to the sleeves, and the
treatment of the dress.]
Arrived in Rome, Fragonard, like his master before him, was torn with
doubts and uncertainties and warring influences. For several months he
did no work, or little work; and though he stood before the
masterpieces of Michael Angelo and Raphael, stirred by the grandeur of
their design, and eager to be busy with his brush, he was too much of
a Frenchman, too much in sympathy with the French genius, too much
enamoured of the art of his master, to be affected creatively by them.
His hesitations saved him, and won France a master in her long roll of
fame. He escaped the taint of learning to see through the eyes of
others, evaded the swamping of his own genius in an endeavour to utter
his art in halting Italian. Rome was not his grave, as it has been the
grave of so many promising young sons of France; and he came out of
the danger a strong and healthy man. Tiepolo brought him back vision
and inspiration, and the solid earth of his own age to walk upon. And
the French utterance of his master Boucher called back his dazed wits
to the accents of France. At last the genius that was in him quickened
and strove to utter itself.
The bright colours of Italy, the glamour of her landscapes, these
were the living lessons that bit deeper into his art than all the
works of her antique masters; and the effort to set them upon his
canvas gave to his hand's skill an ordered grace and dignity that were
of more vital effect upon his achievement than the paintings of the
great dead.
So it came about that Natoire, then director of the royal school in
the Villa Mancini, having written his distress to Marigny at the young
fellow's beginnings, was soon writing enthusiastically about him, and
procured a lengthening of his stay in Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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