Carmontelle

Louis Carrogis , known as Louis de Carmontelle or Carmontelle , born with Paris the August 15th 1717 and died in Paris the December 26th 1806, is a painter, draftsman, engraver, dramatic author and French architect-landscape designer. Large director of the festivals of the duke of Orleans, famous for his portraits as for his small impromptu comedies called Proverbs , it is known also to have invented transparencies, precursors of the Magic lantern, and to have arranged the Parc Heap of Paris.

Its life and its work

Born from a father shoe-maker of origin ariégeoise, he learns painting and the drawing as an autodidact and finds an use of tutor in mathematics near the children of the nobility. He takes part in the Seven Year old Guerre in the capacity as topographer, while occupying his leisures to crunch the soldiers of his regiment. Of return to Paris in 1763, it enters to the service of the duke of Orleans as a reader.

This place of reader was subordinate, written Madam de Genlis, since it did not give the right to eat with the princes, even in the countryside. As well as the Doctor Tronchin, Mr. Carmontelle enjoyed the distinction to come every evening to take ices with the Prince and the people of the court…

Carmontelle is however made appreciate for its spirit and its ability with portraiturer the characters, small and large, who attend the court. Its principal employment consists in orchestrating the festivals and the entertainments of which raffole the nobility. Using a machine which he itself invented, he makes ravel transparent landscapes in front of the guests of the duke. He improvises comedies whose actors are selected among the assistance, while the spectators are invited to guess the proverbs which form the screen of it. Some of its parts are put in music by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde and are represented in the private theaters of the large courtesans.

In 1785, with died of the duke of Orleans, it is found with the service of his/her son, the duke of Chartres and future Philippe Égalité, for which it draws the plans of the Monceau park and conceives the Folie S. of them When the duke of Chartres east guillotine in 1793, Carmontelle takes its retirement in a small housing of the Rue Vivienne, where it dies thirteen years later at the age of 89 ans.

Portraits

One knows of him more than 600 portraits. The baron Grimm, which posed itself for Carmontelle in 1769, writes about them:

Mr. de Carmontelle has been made for several years a collection of portraits drawn with the pencil and washed colors of Détrempe. He has the talent to seize singularly the air, the maintenance, the spirit of the figure more than the resemblance of the features. It sometimes happens to me the every day to recognize in the world of people whom I never saw but in his collections. These portraits all of figures, in foot, are done in two hours of time with a surprising facility. He thus managed to have the portrait of all the women of Paris, of their consent. Its collections, which it increases the every day, give also an idea of the variety of the conditions; men and women of any state, of any age are there shovel-mixes, since Mr. the Dolphin to the wiper of Saint-Cloud.

Hundred years later, this analysis of Grimm is largely confirmed by two historians of art:

These portraits generally makes profile, in foot, of format In-folio, are of a very faithful resemblance, although ground with ground and without much style. With the pencil, washed Watercolour, raised sometimes Pastel or of Gouache, these drawings form a gallery of most curious and more interesting, particularly for the descendants of the duke of Orleans, since they are the friends of their family.

Carmontelle, which did not monnayait its portraits and liked to distribute copies of them to his/her friends, had care to preserve the originals of them, so that the major part was preserved by it, to be collected thereafter with the Château of Chantilly and with the Musée Carnavalet. Much of them was reproduced by engravers reputation, one of most famous being the Unhappy Family Fixed , engraved in 1765 by Jean-Baptiste Delafosse.

The print of Fixed

This year, a close relation of Voltaire, Etienne No5el Damilaville, with the idea of raising a subscription to come out of family assistance Fixed, whose father was wrongfully condemned to the torment. Subscribers, that Grimm and its friends hasten to solicit in all Europe, including in Russia, will receive in exchange of their gifts a portrait of Mrs Calas, that Carmontelle agreed to draw. In April, that is to say a few days after the judgment of rehabilitation obtained thanks to the efforts of Voltaire, Damilaville informs him of its project: “One of our friends currently draws it with Lavaysse and all its family in the same table where they will be in a prison. ” Voltaire is filled with enthusiasm at once: “The idea of the print of Calas is marvellous. I request from you, my dear brother, to put itself at the number of the subscribers for twelve prints. ” Voltaire not only bought the prints, but it made some hang one in the alcove where its bed was.

Proverbs

The proverbs of Carmontelle constitute a theater of company par excellence. In the beginning, it is hardly that groundworks on which the characters of the court are invited to improvise. Carmontelle itself takes share there by reserving the role of the miserly and jealous husband. It puts as well truth at it as the duke of York, brother of the king d' Angleterre, would be one day exclaimed: “That is so perfect that if this man wants to marry, it will never find a woman. ”

Approximately a hundred proverbs was preserved. They are small comedies without claim, with the screen light and deprived of any dramatic action. The majority of criticisms agree to find to them that a weak literary merit. Diderot comments on two of them thus:

Red rose , or Which says what it knows, which gives what he has, which does what he can, is not obliged with more : The subject is pretty and the proverb is hateful. It is a painter who makes for sign a red rose with a merchant who asks for a gold lion to him. The painter does what it can, the merchant gives in payment of the wine that it has and the woman of the painter says what it sait.

unhappy Husbands , or the Devil is not always with the door of a poor fellow : The poor husband essuient successively all that it is possible to imagine of disasters, when the sudden death of an uncle gives them above their business. It is the bottom of a charming comedy and larger pathetic. Ah! if this subject had fallen into the head from a poëte, there are fabric for five good well conditioned acts and well heats.

It is necessary to wait nearly one century so that the wish expressed by Diderot is exaucé in the person of Alfred de Musset. It is him which insufflate with the proverbs the poetry which they missed, free to sometimes plagiarize them without shame. One finds thus in One could think of all , only Musset makes play for the first time in company in 1849, of the entirely retranscribed scenes of the proverb of Carmontelle entitled Inattentive the .

Transparencies

Transparencies of Carmontelle are composed of a long roller of end to end bent painted fabrics. Tended between two reels and lit by transparency, this roller ravelled in front of the eyes of the spectators in their giving the impression to be driven through a charming landscape. Their enchantment reached with his roof when they recognized, among the characters which walked there, those which they themselves had incarnated in the proverbs.

In 1801, Carmontelle, then 84 years old, showed its transparencies with Madam de Genlis, who writes:

On my return in France, Carmontelle still lived. It often saw me with the Arsenal and this kind of so original magic lantern and the most pleasant effect showed me. It was then in market très-avantageusement to sell it in Russia.

Country of illusions

On a piece of ground located in the village of Heap, in the North-West of Paris, acquired in 1769 by the duke of Chartres, Carmontelle is charged to arrange a pleasure garden. It puts at work in 1773 and designs a park in the Anglo-Chinese style, which one then calls the “madness of Chartres”. As he explains it in an album where it defends his work, which was highly criticized, his ambition was to create “an extraordinary garden where all times and all the places would be joined together. ” In this “country of illusions”, the walker saw himself offering a course marked out of seventeen shelter S called factories or madness S. To the turning of a way, it discovered inter alia a tower with Pont-levis, an alley of the tombs, an island of the sheep, a Water mill in ruins, a Windmill Dutch, a Corinthian colonnade , a temple of Mars, Tartar tents , a Obélisque, a Minaret, a Egyptian pyramid, a Chinese carousel, a Naumachie . As had wanted it main the duke of Chartres, large of the Grand the East of France, some of these constructions were decorated moreover maconnic symbols .

Completed in 1778, the Monceau park was thereafter several times refitted, not leaving that very few elements of the garden such as Carmontelle had conceived it.

Gallery of portraits

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