Art criticism; Dramatic criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
‘C’est un fils, Monsieur!’ has no such forgiveness to ask of us. It
is the blithest picture that we need to be shown of the home joys of
the refined. A young husband, who is known already as ‘le Président,’
and who is a student and a fortunate collector of Art as well as a man
of the world, rises from his study chair with outstretched hands and
radiant face, as the newly born baby is carried in to him in triumph,
followed by a procession of household retainers, and preceded by the
lively Miss Rozette, the President’s foster-sister. Nothing is more
expressive than the joyous pantomime of this privileged young woman,
and the answering gestures of the newly made father; and delightful
is the sentiment of the piece. In England, popular Art has sometimes
made the joys of domesticity a little dull; but here the respectable is
actually gay, and nothing but sunshine lies upon the path of duty.
Of the many writers whom Moreau avowedly illustrated, as distinguished
from those who furnished a text for his designs, Rousseau was the one
in whom he most believed, and for Rousseau much of his best work was
executed. His designs for the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ were among the last of
the important drawings wrought by him before he made that journey into
Italy which his daughter speaks of as having ‘opened his eyes,’ but
which, to whatever it may have ‘opened’ them, certainly closed them to
the aspects of that France it was his truest mission to portray. The
types of Julie and Saint-Preux are types which Moreau understood--he
understood their impulse and their sentiment; and how many faults he
would have forgiven them for their grace! To illustrate Rousseau was
of course to have the opportunity--and in Moreau’s case it was also
to profit by it--of representing both a deeper and a more immediate
sensitiveness than most of that which claimed interpretation in the
sometimes callous figures of the ‘Monument du Costume.’ Moreau was
grateful for so fortunate an occasion, and he thoroughly responded
to it. His Julie is ‘un type de Greuze honnête,’ with her ‘bouche
entr’ouverte,’ her ‘regard profond,’ her ‘gorge couverte en fille
modeste, et non pas en dévote,’ her ‘petite figure de blonde, mouvante
et sensible.’ Moreau read Rousseau again and again: he genuinely cared
for him, and when Rousseau died, the death-scene was not suffered to
pass unrecorded, and of the grave in the Ile des Peupliers, by Geneva,
he made a little etching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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