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IMAGINARY PORTRAITS

I. A PRINCE OF COURT PAINTERS

EXTRACTS FROM AN OLD FRENCH JOURNAL

Valenciennes, September 1701.

[5] They have been renovating my father's large workroom. That
delightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and the
green weather-stains we have known all our lives on the high
whitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard,
for the coolness, in summertime. Among old Watteau's work-people came
his son, "the genius," my father's godson and namesake, a dark-haired
youth, whose large, unquiet eyes seemed perpetually wandering to the
various drawings which lie exposed here. My father will have it that
he is a genius indeed, and a painter born. We have had our September
Fair in the Grande Place, a wonderful stir of sound and colour in the
wide, open space beneath our windows. And just where the crowd was
busiest young Antony was found, hoisted into one of those empty niches
of the old Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a
[6] kind of grace--a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed
out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own
window--which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem
like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors,
who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are
able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks,
with a sort of comedy which shall be but tragedy seen from the other
side. He brought his sketch to our house to-day, and I was present
when my father questioned him and commended his work. But the lad
seemed not greatly pleased, and left untasted the glass of old Malaga
which was offered to him. His father will hear nothing of educating
him as a painter. Yet he is not ill-to-do, and has lately built
himself a new stone house, big and grey and cold. Their old plastered
house with the black timbers, in the Rue des Cardinaux, was prettier;
dating from the time of the Spaniards, and one of the oldest in
Valenciennes.

October 1701.

Chiefly through the solicitations of my father, old Watteau has
consented to place Antony with a teacher of painting here. I meet him
betimes on the way to his lessons, as I return from Mass; for he still
works with the masons, [7] but making the most of late and early hours,
of every moment of liberty. And then he has the feast-days, of whic