FINE ARTS.

ORNAMENTAL DESIGNS OF WATTEAU.

THE name of WArrsetu is better known than his works : as a decora- tive artist he enjoys a wholesale reputation, while as a painter of pictures be is not thoroughly appreciated. This may arise from his works being rarely found in public galleries : there is only one in the Louvre, and that seems to puzzle his countrymen so much that they are disin- clined to add any others to their collection. It is not a matter of surprise

that our National Gallery should be without a picture by WATTEAU, though his merits as a colourist are likely to find favour for Him in this

country, because aristocratic amateurs, when they want to raise a few thousands, send " their Raffaelles, Corregios, and stuff," to John Bull's warehouse, where " the best price is given for old" pictures, and

"no questions asked." WATTEAUS are ornamental furniture, that

may be admired without the trouble of thinking : there is nothing to disturb the equanimity of the most vacant mind in his groups

of courtly Corydons and masquerading Phyllises tricked out in the fashion of LOUIS the Fourteenth, for a fancy-ball champetre at Ver- sailles. Moreover, their market value is estimated by hundreds, not thousands; though, seeing how suddenly MunteLo and VELASQUEZ have attained the dignity of four figures in the English price cur- rent, we should not be surprised at a similar leap in the article of WATTEAUS : it is to be hoped, however, that any advance in pecu- niary value will be preceded by such an increased appreciation of the qualities of the painter as may suffice to prevent a repetition of the mistake of the works of LANCRET for WATTEAU. But this by the by. WATTEAU perhaps, more than any other painter of in- trinsic worth, reflected the characteristics of his age : the mixture of truthful shnplicity and courtly airs, of natural grace and artificial ele- gance in his pictures, is most remarkable ; the artificial predominates both in his subjects and his treatment of them, but it is endowed with a charm beyond the meretricious manner of the mere fashionist, arising from a strong picturesque feeling for the beauties of nature, that neither style nor theme could stifle or overlay. GAINSBOROUGH, the most genuine and unsophisticated of English painters, and STOTHA RD, the most graceful and poetical in feeling, both remind one of Warrear ; indeed, ST0THARD paid him the high compliment of pilfer- ing from him, as well as from RAFFAELLE and VANDYKE,—a distinction that the Frenchman would have felt flattered by, for STOTHARD stole with gusto. Sroruann's style, however, was far more elevated, being akin to the Venetian painters in design as well as colouring ; he idealized fashionable modes, his picturesqueness was poetical. War- Tliats, on the contrary, infused a homely character into his courtly scenes, his being a prose-picturesque : his invention was quaint and fantastic, showing itself in a combination of modes, the rural and the regal ; STortamin's was intellectual and imaginative, resulting from the conception of a relined nature: the one was etherial, and suggestive to the fancy ; the other material, and exhausting the subject. Warman would have painted the Queen and her Ladies of Honour playing at dairy-farming within sight of the Petit Trianon, to perfection ; the courtiers looking like elegant clowns, and the maids milking with an air. This anomalous and seemingly incongruous admixture of the rustic and the fashionable, not only gives piquancy to WirrE.tu's ornamental designs, but is the very element of their fitness for decorative purposes, where representations of nature require a link of artifice to connect them harmoniously with the furniture. As in architectural ornaments the modeller translates natural objects into the forms and phraseology of art, and the painter also gives a precise and formal character even to thc curl of a tendril in his decorations, so in the introduction of pic- tures as part of the embellishments of a room, a certain degree of arti- ficiality in the treatment of the sul.jects seems required. It may be rural-fantastical, as in WATTEAU ; ideal-fantastical, as inthe classic ara- besques of Pompeii and the Vatican ; ethical-ffintastical, as in the Ger- man arabesques; or it may take any shape that human fantasy may throw it into—peopling the scenes with boys as genii, with nymphs, satyrs, &c. as in the antique gems, -with the china shepherds and shep- herdesses of the mantelpiece, or with monsters and chimeras ; the prin- ciple being, that pure representations of actual nature are unfitted to form part of a design of architectural decoration, unless connected in sonic way with the artificial world into which they are transplanted. This is strikingly exemplified in the alterations made at Versailles by LOUIS PHILIPPE : the rooms lately lined with pictures of the events of French history, not only fatigue the eye by the glare of colour, but the paintings, instead of being subordinate as decorations, are principal ; it is neither a gallery of pictures, as the Louvre, nor a suite of apartments pictorially embellished. One half of the palace is all gilding and fur- niture, the other all painted canvass ; the one wants the relief of orna- ment, the other of colour.

We have been led into these remarks by the appearance of the First Part of a complete series of the Ossese snd Designs qf Watteau, col- lected from his works, and lithographed by W. Nesnoe of Edinburgh. The cugraved collection of WArrEau's works, published soon after his death, is very scarce ; and this reproduction of them is a desideratum, especially at this time, when the taste for interior decorations is greatly

on the increase. They are copied with spirit and freedom, the same size as the original plates ; a design occupying sometimes one and oc- casionally two sheets of super-royal folio. The work will consist, when

complete, of one hundred sheets, each monthly number containing- five. Two designs for central paunels, one of them filling a double sheet and

two smaller ones for upper panne's, fbrin the first number. The larger one is a version of " The Swing," which WATreau was so fond of, and is one of his most engaging fancies ; but the scene, instead of being bounded, as in the pictures, by a bosky glade where the cavaliers and dames are at gambols, is surmounted by a bower-roof fantastically

blended with the foliage ; and below an amphibious monster is taking the water, seared by the barking of a dog outside the grotesque frame- work or bordering. This will give an idea of the singular manner in which the pictured reality overflows its boundary and runs into the embellishments of the framework : these are the most odd combina- tions of solid carving and living creatures that can be conceived ; rocks and stone volutes germinating into flowers and foliage, scarfs blossom- ing into human heads slender scrolls supporting grassy knolls, trees bearing heads like fruit, vases poised on taper leaves, and so on. The figures will not bear close scrutiny ; but that is not an important defect, the general design being the object, and the exe- cution is sufficiently good for this purpose. One thing is wanting— colour ; but this the original engravings have not. If WArrEarea own drawings were in existence and a few copies of this work could be

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coloured from them, the value of the publication would be greatly en- hanced. Colour is an essential feature of all pictorial embellishments, and it constitutes a leading principle of WArresau's : without colour, indeed, we have but half his idea ; and moreover, the incongruities ap- pear much more striking than the graces of the fancies. Truth to say, the purer taste that the revival of classic arabesques has introduced, has spoilt the relish for the grotesque fantasies of WATTEAU. When he flourished, the taste in architectural decoration was becoming as lax as the morals of the age ; and the formal quaintness of the Gothic style and the severe beauty of the classic, were both felt to be too dry, an- gular, and linear, for the florid magnificence then prevailing: WAT- TS:A.11'S designs are to the Italian arabesques what the Rococo style of architecture is to the Roman. The felicitous way in which the painter introduced peeps of nature—sunny spots of colour and atmosphere, and glimpses of rusticity—in the midst of the most stately splendours of gold and damask, most welcomely gladdened the eye, and gave an agreeable fillip to the fancy : any thing more real would have been out of place and repulsive, any thing more classic would have been deemed pedantic. To use these designs with e- at the present time, the idea should be used as a hint only, not adopted; as much discre- tion is required to reject as to employ.

This publication is intended to be the first of a series of works of ornamental design; and if the success be commensurate with the need

fbr such books, the proprietors will have no reason to complain. We regard these as the seeds of a future harvest of taste and invention, that the Schools of Design will, we hope, ripen into health and vigour.