File:The art of the Louvre, containing a brief history of the palace and of its collection of paintings, as well as descriptions and criticism of many of the principal pictures and their artists (1905) (14786138143).jpg

Identifier: artoflouvreconta00pott (find matches)
Title: The art of the Louvre, containing a brief history of the palace and of its collection of paintings, as well as descriptions and criticism of many of the principal pictures and their artists
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Potter, Mary Knight, d. 1915
Subjects: Musée du Louvre Painting
Publisher: Boston, L.C. Page & company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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ts spontaneous gaiety. The scene represents a knollon the bank of a golden stream, whose soft shores stretchout in the distance till lost in the glowing suffusementof distant colour. On the right, under noble trees is aparty of lovers, who are preparing to follow their com-panions down to the shore where lies at anchor the shipof loves dream. Farther at the right is a statue ofVenus about which two small Cupids are playing. Moreof these Cupids are everywhere, now helping an amorous swain to persuade his lady-love to accom-pany him on the wonder-boat, and now assisting theloving couples to embark. But most of them swarmaround the bark itself. Some are pulling up the sails,some weighing anchor, and a whole garland of them arein the air as high as the topmast, swinging about in arevel of joy and grace. These Cupids perhaps suggestRubens at his very best. But they have an infantile andyet a fairylike charm that Rubens scarcely approached.They are neither angels nor Cupids. They are angel-
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Salle Baru 295 cupids. If they have an esprit, a fairylike vivacityhardly compatible with baby angels, they have at thesame time too refined a delicacy, too tender a spiritu-ality to be Cupids, per se. They are the quintessenceof Watteaus art. In them is seen perhaps moreplainly than anywhere else, how the alembic of hisbrush changed all it touched into something more glow-ing, more exquisite, more sweetly languorous, or moredaintily gay, than ever brush did before or since.They are indeed the very spirits of the art that Watteaumade the art of the eighteenth century. Hardly less charming and tender than these dancing,flying spirits are the lovers who people the scene. Thebeautiful soft satins and velvets, the lovely forms, thegraceful groupings, all show, individually and collectively,not alone Watteaus idyllic sweetness and power to tella fairy-tale, but equally well his unerring draughtsman-ship, ability as a composer and his marvellous eye forcolour. It is this last which is the a

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