Pierre Grassou

Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to his honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy protecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one of those eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had, to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself a man of genius. The next day he bought colors, and canvases of various dimensions; he piled up bread and cheese on his table, he filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a provision of wood for his stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug at his pictures. He hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.

After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures. Again he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the invitation. The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile imitation of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a copy of Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."

"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be original."

"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.

"What?" asked Fougeres.

"Fling yourself into literature."

Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked and obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before taking them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination. His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fancied something was wrong with his eyes.

The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After seven years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute quite passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class. Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve hundred.

At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the poverty of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the grand salon of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture, powerful in interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and from Dubufe's first manner as to execution, represented a young man in prison, whose hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one side was a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in tears. A sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched table was a meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a window near the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been inspired by the masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full front. The condemned man was substituted for the dying woman – same pallor, same glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor, he had painted the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk attired in black; but he had added an old woman to the young one of Gerard Douw. The cruelly simple and good-humored face of the executioner completed and dominated the group. This plagiarism, very cleverly disguised, was not discovered. The catalogue contained the following: —

510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.

Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.

Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd collected every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X. paused to look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the poor Breton, became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a most satisfying religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on the stone-floor, – a huge blunder, by the way, for Fougeres had painted greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the base of the walls. "Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the cross of the Legion of honor to this son of a peasant who had fought for the royal cause in 1799. (Joseph Bridau, the great painter, was not yet decorated.) The minister of the Interior ordered two church pictures of Fougeres.

This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame, future, and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy, imitate, and you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou de Fougeres obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which society owes the wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these days the election of leaders in all social classes; who proceed, naturally, to elect themselves and who wage a bitter war against all true talent. The principle of election applied indiscriminately is false, and France will some day abandon it.

Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good and gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides, he had on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who expected to succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of a man whom nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said: —

"Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen his successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"

That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support and the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up mediocrities as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers. The newspapers, it is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier Fougeres digested them as he had digested the counsel of his friends, with angelic patience.

Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned, he furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and painted the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two church pictures, and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a punctuality that was very discomforting to the exchequer of the ministry, accustomed to a different course of action. But – admire the good fortune of men who are methodical – if Grassou, belated with his work, had been caught by the revolution of July he would not have got his money.

By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie Magus some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the help of which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of execution before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the bourgeoisie worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of ideas, for steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great loyalty; though