Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/883

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
  
CHANTAVOINE—CHANTREY
847

then be stewed in butter or oil, or cut up small and stewed with meat. No fungus requires more careful preparation.

See M. C. Cooke, British Edible Fungi, (1891), pp. 104-105.


CHANTAVOINE, HENRI (1850–  ), French man of letters, was born at Montpellier on the 6th of August 1850, and was educated at the École Normale Supérieure. After teaching in the provinces he moved, in 1876, to the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris, and subsequently became professor of rhetoric at the Lycée Henri IV. and maître de conferences at the École Normale at Sèvres. He was associated with the Nouvelle Revue from its foundation in 1879, and he joined the Journal des débats in 1884. His poems include Poèmes sincères (1877), Satires contemporaines (1881), Ad memoriam (1884), Au fil des jours (1889).


CHANTILLY, a town of northern France, in the department of Oise, 25 m. N. of Paris on the Northern railway to St Quentin. Pop. (1906) 4632. It is finely situated to the north of the forest of Chantilly and on the left bank of the river Nonette, and is one of the favourite Parisian resorts. Its name was long associated with the manufacture, which has now to a great extent decayed, of lace and blonde; it is still more celebrated for its château and its park (laid out originally by A. Le Nôtre in the second half of the 17th century), and as the scene of the great annual races of the French Jockey Club. The château consists of the palace built from 1876 to 1885 and of an older portion adjoining it known as the châtelet. The old castle must have been in existence in the 13th century, and in the reign of Charles VI. the lordship belonged to Pierre d’Orgemont, chancellor of France. In 1484 it passed to the house of Montmorency, and in 1632 from that family to the house of Condé. Louis II., prince de Condé, surnamed the Great, was specially attached to the place, and did a great deal to enhance its beauty and splendour. Here he enjoyed the society of La Bruyère, Racine, Molière, La Fontaine, Boileau, and other great men of his time; and here his steward Vatel killed himself in despair, because of a hitch in the preparations for the reception of Louis XIV. The stables close to the racecourse were built from 1719 to 1735 by Louis-Henri, duke of Bourbon. Of the two splendid mansions existing at that period known as the grand château and the châtelet, the former was destroyed about the time of the Revolution, but the latter, built for Anne de Montmorency by Jean Bullant, still remains as one of the finest specimens of Renaissance architecture in France. The château d’Enghien, facing the entrance to the grand château, was built in 1770 as a guest-house. On the death in 1830 of the duke of Bourbon, the last representative of the house of Condé, the estate passed into the hands of Henri, duc d’Aumale, fourth son of Louis Philippe. In 1852 the house of Orleans was declared incapable of possessing property in France, and Chantilly was accordingly sold by auction. Purchased by the English bankers, Coutts & Co., it passed back into the hands of the duc d’Aumale, in 1872. By him a magnificent palace, including a fine chapel in the Renaissance style, was erected on the foundations of the ancient grand château and in the style of the châtelet. It is quadrilateral in shape, consisting of four unequal sides flanked by towers and built round a courtyard. The whole group of buildings as well as the pleasure-ground behind them, known as the Parterre de la Volière, is surrounded by fosses supplied with water from the Nonette. On the terrace in front of the château there is a bronze statue of the constable Anne de Montmorency. The duc d’Aumale installed in the châtelet a valuable library, specially rich in incunabula and 16th century editions of classic authors, and a collection of the paintings of the great masters, besides many other objects of art. By a public act in 1886 he gave the park and château with its superb collections to the Institute of France in trust for the nation, reserving to himself only a life interest; and when he died in 1897 the Institute acquired full possession.


CHANTREY, SIR FRANCIS LEGATT (1782–1841), English sculptor, was born on the 7th of April 1782 at Norton near Sheffield, where his father, a carpenter, cultivated a small farm. His father died when he was eight years of age; and his mother having married again, his profession was left to be chosen by his friends. In his sixteenth year he was on the point of being apprenticed to a grocer in Sheffield, when, having seen some wood-carving in a shop-window, he requested to be made a carver instead, and was accordingly placed with a Mr Ramsey, wood-carver in Sheffield. In this situation he became acquainted with Raphael Smith, a distinguished draftsman in crayon, who gave him lessons in painting; and Chantrey, eager to commence his course as an artist, procured the cancelling of his indentures, and went to try his fortune in Dublin and Edinburgh, and finally (1802) in London. Here he first obtained employment as an assistant wood-carver, but at the same time devoted himself to portrait-painting, bust-sculpture, and modelling in clay. He exhibited pictures at the Academy for some years from 1804, but from 1807 onwards devoted himself mainly to sculpture. The sculptor Nollekens showed particular zeal in recognizing his merits. In 1807 he married his cousin, Miss Wale, who had some property of her own. His first imaginative work in sculpture was the model of the head of Satan, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1808. He afterwards executed for Greenwich hospital four colossal busts of the admirals Duncan, Howe, Vincent and Nelson; and so rapidly did his reputation spread that the next bust which he executed, that of Horne Tooke, procured him commissions to the extent of £12,000. From this period he was almost uninterruptedly engaged in professional labour. In 1819 he visited Italy, and became acquainted with the most distinguished sculptors of Florence and Rome. He was chosen an associate (1815) and afterwards a member (1818) of the Royal Academy, received the degree of M.A. from Cambridge, and that of D.C.L. from Oxford, and in 1835 was knighted. He died after an illness of only two hours’ duration on the 25th of November 1841, having for some years suffered from disease of the heart, and was buried in a tomb constructed by himself in the church of his native village.

The works of Chantrey are extremely numerous. The principal are the statues of Washington in the State-house at Boston, U.S.A.; of George III. in the Guildhall, London; of George IV. at Brighton; of Pitt in Hanover Square, London; of James Watt in Westminster Abbey and in Glasgow; of Roscoe and Canning in Liverpool; of Dalton in Manchester; of Lord President Blair and Lord Melville in Edinburgh, &c. Of his equestrian statues the most famous are those of Sir Thomas Munro in Calcutta, and the duke of Wellington in front of the London Exchange. But the finest of Chantrey’s works are his busts, and his delineations of children. The figures of two children asleep in each other’s arms, which form a monumental design in Lichfield cathedral, have always been lauded for beauty, simplicity and grace. So is also the statue of the girlish Lady Louisa Russell, represented as standing on tiptoe and fondling a dove in her bosom. Both these works appear, in design, to have owed something to Stothard; for Chantrey knew his own scantiness of ideal invention or composition, and on system sought aid from others for such attempts. In busts, his leading excellence is facility—a ready unconstrained air of life, a prompt vivacity of ordinary expression. Allan Cunningham and Weekes were his chief assistants, and were indeed the active executants of many works that pass under Chantrey’s name. Chantrey was a man of warm and genial temperament, and is said to have borne noticeable though commonplace resemblance to the usual portraits of Shakespeare.

Chantrey Bequest.—By the will dated the 31st of December 1840, Chantrey (who had no children) left his whole residuary personal estate after the decease or on the second marriage of his widow (less certain specified annuities and bequests) in trust for the president and trustees of the Royal Academy (or in the event of the dissolution of the Royal Academy, to such society as might take its place), the income to be devoted to the encouragement of British fine art in painting and sculpture only, by “the purchase of works of fine art of the highest merit . . . that can be obtained.” The funds might be allowed to accumulate for not more than five years; works by British or foreign artists, dead or living, might be acquired, so long as such works were entirely executed within the shores of Great Britain, the artists having been in residence there during such execution and completion. The prices to be paid