Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet
must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the
innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London
and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or
Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his
pages--if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who
played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_;
or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly"
over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so
neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's
curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any
consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been
dead seven years when the _Etat des Arts_ made its appearance.
If, for lack of space, we elect to pass by certain preliminary
reflections which the _Monthly Review_ rather unkindly dismisses as a
"tedious jumble," M. Rouquet's first subject is History Painting, a
branch of the art which, under George the Second, attained to no great
excellence. For this M. Rouquet gives three main reasons, the first
being that afterwards advanced by Hogarth and Reynolds, namely,--the
practical exclusion, in Protestant countries, of pictures from churches.
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