Moreau by Frederick Wedmore — Read

One of the prettiest chapters of the volume in which French artists of the Eighteenth Century have recorded with grace and freedom the lighter manners of their age, is that certainly which was written by Moreau le Jeune. He employed, with extreme diligence, half a life in writing it. Born in March 1741, he died in November 1814. The son of a Parisian wigmaker, of the parish of St. Sulpice -- which was also Chardin's -- he, with his brother, Moreau l'Aîné, a painter not greatly known, was drawn early into the circle of the producers of Art. He was a pupil of Louis de Lorrain, a now forgotten painter, whom he followed, at seventeen years old, to St. Petersburg. Coming back to Paris, he was in the workroom of Le Bas, the engraver, and there he learned the secret of the burin's expression. He engraved with delicate skill. It was but slowly, however, that in his own designs he showed himself an accomplished draughtsman; for though his daughter, Madame Carle Vernet -- who wrote an account of him -- lets us understand that he was born drawing, there is much of his early work that is obviously laboured. Suddenly, the De Goncourts tell us -- those critics who, with M. Maherault, the industrious collector, have studied him the best -- suddenly his power of draughtsmanship declared itself -- the individuality of his vision and method. It was in a drawing commissioned by Le Bas, who sought to engrave it, the ‘Plaine des Sablons' -- a review by Louis XV. In it he was revealed as the successful draughtsman of festivals, the historian of lively ceremonies. And such success was rewarded.

For, with commendable promptitude, in 1770 -- the year after the drawing was executed -- he was appointed ‘Dessinateur des Menus-plaisirs,' and five years later, when Cochin retired, ‘Dessinateur du Cabinet du Roi. ' Thus, while still a young man, Moreau's position was assured, and he was left free to use much of his time in works on which it was possible to bestow a more exquisite grace than any which could be fitly employed upon labours in which official portraiture counted for much. Moreau was free to invent for himself, and free to illustrate the best literary inventions of a literary age. His career was before him, and the day not distant when he would produce ‘L'Histoire des Mœurs' and the illustrations to the ‘Nouvelle Héloïse.'