Tocqué, Vestier, and Lépicié
A portrait painter of a very different stamp was Nattier’s son-in-law, Louis Tocqué (1696–1772). Although he, too, was a favourite not only at the French, but also at the Russian and Danish Courts, the examples of his art at the Louvre suggest that he was but indifferently successful—from the artistic point of view—with his “official” portraits, like the portrait d’apparat of Marie Leczinska, Queen of Louis XV. (No. 867), or the affected Portrait of the Dauphin Louis at the age of ten (No. 868). On the other hand, when he was not weighed down by the importance of his task, he attained to a solidity of style, strength of character painting, and beauty of technique that place him at the head of the French portraitists of his period. Tocqué was apparently never in England, but such masterpieces from his brush as the Mme. Danger embroidering (No. 868a), and the supposed portrait of Mme. de Graffigny (No. 869), show distinct affinity with Allan Ramsay and Hogarth, with superadded French finesse and suavity.
A fair-haired young girl in a low-cut white dress is seated, in profile towards the right, before a spinet. A youth, standing at her left, behind the instrument, is holding with his left hand the score, whilst his right is clasping the back of the girl’s chair. In the foreground a chair on which are a cat and a mandoline.
Painted in oil on canvas.
3 ft. 9½ in. × 3 ft. 11½ in. (1·10 × 1·20.)
In the case of Antoine Vestier (1740–1824) the pronounced leaning towards the English style of the period is to be accounted for by that artist’s lengthy sojourn in England. The Portrait of a Young Woman (No. 961), in the La Caze Room, might on superficial inspection pass for a work of Francis Cotes. Even in the Portrait of the Painter’s Wife (No. 959), which was painted in 1787, long after Vestier’s return to his native country, the figure of a boy caressing a dog has a curiously English flavour.
Honesty of purpose and serious concern with artistic problems mark the art of Nicolas Bernard Lépicié (1735–1784), whose Portrait of Carle Vernet (549a) is a picture of precious quality. He devoted himself more particularly to the domestic genre, which he treated without the sentimentality and theatricality of a Greuze. Indeed, if there is any contemporary painter with whom he shows affinity, it is Siméon Chardin. That he was a landscape painter of no mean ability may be gathered from his Farmyard (No. 549), which, in spite of the predominating brown, is remarkable for its luminous transparency.