[Illustration: WATTEAU. LA PARTIE CARRÉE.] In this way the development proceeded. The pompous representation which portrait painting had practised hitherto was gone. People would no longer be masters of the ceremonies, but human beings. New forms of technique were discovered, such as pastel painting. No other material was capable of rendering the peculiar fragrance of this fugitive flower nature, the graceful appearance of this _rococo_ style, of these ladies with the touch of powder in their hair, and their moist, dreamy eyes, as Maurice Latour, Rosalba Carriera, and later the Swiss, Liotard, painted them. Of those who endeavoured, on the model of Watteau's style, to depict the life of the fashionable world, none approached the delicacy of that national genius. _Lancret_ and _Pater_ followed him, but more roughly, more soberly, more drily. Lancret in his whole conception, compared with Watteau, is a homely, often a somewhat cumbrous journeyman; Pater, an artist of greater elegance, has the fickleness of the virtuoso. Both in conviction and in art they lacked that poetic, glorifying breath which pervades Watteau's creations. In Watteau one _believes_ that these gracious beings, these tall and nervous cavaliers, these amiable coquettes and comely women, actually represent originals in noble society; whereas in the works of his disciples it often happens that the paid model, selected from a lower circle of society, appears to us to be not congruous with the elegance of her wardrobe. These dancers, huntsmen, and noble maidens are not wholly what they should represent. But how delicious they are, these French gossips, so long as one is mindful _not_ to think of Watteau! What grace is theirs too! What innate tact! With what a pleasant adroitness do they understand how to rivet our attention, and to keep far, far away from the tedium in which their classical ancestors, with their natural heaviness, waded! Instinctively and without effort they rejected the rhythmically balanced composition and correct nobility of form of the classics, and found a characteristic expression for unconstrained gestures, pleasing movements, and refined elegance. [Illustration: GREUZE. "_L'Art._"]