Even the decorative painters abandoned more and more the much-worn paths of the Italians. _François Lemoine_ gave them, by Rubens' aid, the transition to a manner peculiarly French, elegant, sensuous, charming. His pupil, _François Boucher_, followed him. Like the sons of the seventeenth century, he made exhaustive use of mythological subjects and was often a superficial artist, and in his later works he became entirely a mannerist; but he was not so at the beginning. It was a great advance for France when Boucher gave his pupils the advice to abstain from imitation of the great Italian masters, and not to grow "as cold as ice." And what a great naturalist he is in his numerous drawings and etchings, and in those marvellous groups of chubby children who are playing and tumbling about on clouds, or playing musical instruments shooting arrows, or sporting with flowers! "It is not every one who has the stuff to make a Boucher" even his great antagonist David has said of him. In _Fragonard_, again, there was summed up all the joy of life and the frivolity, the lustrous, luxurious talent, the charming amiability and nimble sureness, of French art in the eighteenth century. Fragonard has painted everything. His great decorations are careless inspirations, sparkling with spirit and life. With him pastoral scenes alternate with episodes of everyday life--children, guitar players, women reading. Fragonard is a piquant, ingenious painter. Perhaps hardly any other painter has so much kissing in his pictures. His etching, "L'armoire," of 1778, is well known. In that he already stood on the sure ground of popular life. The old rustic, who is armed with a formidable cudgel, is beating open, with the assistance of his wife, the doors of a great clothes cupboard, in which a handsome young fellow has hidden himself; close by is a pretty farm girl, weeping in confusion into her apron; in the background the curious and amazed little sisters are looking on. [Illustration: GREUZE. THE MILKMAID.] [Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ GREUZE. HEAD OF A GIRL.]