This question invites you to respond to a piece you don’t know, by an artist whose work you do know. In your response, be guided by the three principles, invoked more than once in these pages: 

(i) Situate the unfamiliar image within its historical moment and its specific social milieu. 

(ii) Attend closely to the way the image is constructed. Relying on your own immediate observations, take note of its principal features, begin to look for significant details; and 

(iii) Where possible, draw on relevant course Readings and Lecture notes. 

You already know the general situation surrounding this work, but what is singular about this new work you are examining? Does it present aspects that surprise you? Does this work make you want to revise your understanding so far, of the artist who created it.? 

I

i

Represen

t

ing W o m e n

! Linda Nochlin
‘ i

t

g

t

To Dick, in loving memory

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Among the many people who have assisted m e , both
intellectually and materially, in the course of writing this
book are Tamar Garb, Marni Kessler, Elizabeth Marcus.
Ellen McBreen, Edward Powers, Maura Reilly. Robert Simon,
and Abigail Soiomon‐Godeau.

Any copy of this hook issued by the publisher as a paperback
is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade
or otherwise be lent, resold. hired out or otherwise circulated
without the the publisher‘s prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without
a similar condition including these words being imposed on
a subsequent purchaser.

@1999 Linda Nochlin

First published‘in paperback in the United States of America
in 1999 by Thames and Hudson lnc., 500 Fifth Avenue,
New York New York 10110

Library orCongress Catalog Card Number 98‐61187
ISBN 0-500‐28098-3

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means.
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording
or any other information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing From the publisher.

Printed anti bound in Singapore

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Notes and Sources

List of Illustrations

Index

34

58

80

106

152

180

216

239

262

Contents

Memoirs of an Ad Hoc Art Historian

The M y t h of the Woman Warrior

G e r i c a u l t : The Absence o f Women

The image of the Working Woman

Courbet’s Real Allegory: Rereading The
Painter’s Studio

A House Is Not a Home: Degas and the
Subversion of the Family

Mary Cassatt’s M o d e r n i t y

Body Politics: Seurat’s Poscuses

A House Is Not a Home: Degas and the Subversion
of the Family

In abrothel, both
The ladies and gentlemen
Have nicknames only.
w. H.AUDEN, “Postscript to the Cave of Meaning”

l first started thinking about Degas and the subversion of the family
when I noticed, after the removal of The Bellelli Family (c. 1858‐60] to
the Musée d’Orsay, the existence of halfa small dog scooting out of the
painting to the right. I had never noticed this detail before the painting
was moved‐it isvery hardto see in mostreproductions‐andnone of the
scholars who have discussed The Bellelli Family have taken account of
its presence.‘ The dogmusthavebeen alast‐minute addition: it does not
appear in the final 0rdrupgaard sketch of about 1859. It is possible that
Degas’s main reason for putting it in his painting was a formal one, to
fill up an awkward empty space in front ofthe figure ofGennaro Bellelli,
who might otherwise seem outbalanced by the three‐figured group on
the left. Yet a formal intention does not nullify a signifying result: the
way the dogworks in the construction of meaningin the painting. With
a kind of airy, heedless, cheekyje in ‘enfoutisme, entirely at odds with
the almost desperate seriousness of the paintingasawhole, these canine
hindquarters work to undermine the solemn balance and traditional
formality of Degas’s monumental, tensely harmonized family‐group
structure with awave of a fluffy tail. The dog’s vector is, in the extreme,
centrifugal; assuch, it might be opposed to the reassuringly anchoring
position of Porto, the Newfoundland, wholly present‐indeed, literally
part ofthe family‐in Renoir’s more cheerful and relaxed representation
ofa bourgeois family group, The CharpentierFamily (1878).

Yet it is not really the dog I wish to talk about (Degas, incidentally,
is said to havehateddogs) but rather,the relativelycovert contravention
it figures in The Bellelli Family of what one might call conventional

87 EDGAR DEGAS The Bellelli Family (detail). c. 1858‐60

154 A House ls

bourgeois‐specifically upper-bourgeois‐family values such as those
represented in The Chnrpenlier Family and many other similar portraits
of the period. Now one could point to The Bellelli Family as a special
case: indeed it is one of course, if only in the sense that it was the repre‑
sentation of an unhappy family. Degas was well aware of the strains
existing between husband, Gennaro Bellelli, and wife, Degas’s father’s
sister, his aunt Laura,when heembarkedon this ambitious project in the
late 18505. At the same time, he evidently wanted the portrait of the
Bellellis to beamajorpainting with adignified structure and asense of
traditional universality as well. The tensions proliferating among the
artist’s lofty intentions; his sense of the specific and the contemporary;
his conscious and/or subconscious awareness of animosity between the
couple; the perhaps unacknowledgedstrength of his feelings for his aunt
andhers for hernephew;these, and the consequent insertion of the signs
of dissension and instability into the superficially harmonious fabric of
his representation, are what makethe portrait interestingand disturbing
to the modern viewer. The Bellelli Family [originally referred to simply
as“Family Portrait” when it was first exhibited in the Salon of 1867)2 is
asmuch a painting about the contradictions riddlingthe general idea of
the ham‐bourgeois family in the middle ofthe nineteenthcentury asit is
a family portrait tout court.

The Bellelli family portrait, then, must be read not merely as a
family document but also asa representation of“The Family,” its struc‑
ture inscribing those tensions and oppositions, characteristic of certain
familial relationships in general and the relationships existing in this
family in particular, at a concrete historical moment. At the same time,
the painting must be seen as inscribing those unifying codes of struc‑
tural relationship‐hierarchized according to age and sex, homogenized
in terms of class and appearance‐goveming the ideal of nineteenth‑
century bourgeois family existence.

Within the complex web of inscriptions constituting The Bellelli
Family, both temporal and spatial considerations play their role. For
Degas has presented the family diachronically asahierarchical contin‑
uum of generations: grandfather Rene’, then the parents, followed by
Giulia and Giovanna; and, as the presence of the recently deceased
grandfather is indicatedsimply by an image on the wall, sothe presence
of the unborn next generation is merely hinted at in the costume
and stance of Laura. This notion of a generational historicity is height‑
ened by nuances of style and structure: there are references to a
specifically aristocratic tradition of portraiture, that of Van Dyck and
Bronzino for example, and the willed balance and geometric ordering of

Not a Home

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the composition suggest that it is notjust to any old past that the young
artist wishes to connect his family.

Yet the high tone of this reference to family continuity is inter‑
rupted or complicated by synchronic tensions. The stately procession of
inheritance and succession is interrupted and called into question by
contemporary and specifically psychological disharrnonies characteris‑
tic of the high bourgeois family of Degas’s own time and the Bellellis’
particular family drama. Interestingly, these tensions are, in pictorial
terms, represented not merely by the slumped figure of Gennaro andthe
over‐erect one of Laura, but perhaps even more acutely by the figure
that both separates and connects them, the awkwardly and unstably
posed Giulia.

Strains there were many in the Bellelli family. The scenario of the
Bellelli relationship reads like the outline ofa contemporary nineteenth‑
century novel, one by Balzac, or later, by Zola; or perhaps it simply
reveals the source of both the painting and the novels‐pace Roland
Barthes‐in contemporary discourses of the family which position this
institution asaproblematic aswell asan idealsocial construction.J

Laura Degas had married Gennaro Bellelli asa “last resort” at the
advanced age of 28, for her domineering father (standing guard in the
painting on the wall behind her] had found all preceding suppliants‑
includingone whom she truly loved andwanted to many‐insufficiently
rich or distinguished to accede to the hand of this young woman who
was herselfboth rich and beautiful. “On aparticularly distressing occa‑
sion,” says Roy McMullen in his biography of Degas, “an Englishman
who had failed to measure up to the requirements…had lost his temper
and denounced the whole proceedings as‘more like a business negotia‑
tion than an affair of the heart!“4

The Bellellis’ was evidently a loveless marriage, and at the time
Degas was engaged in painting the portrait‐first sketching in Florence,
where the Bellellis lived in rented quarters, then painting the large
canvas back in Paris‐Laura Bellelli, whom heloved and who was star‑
tlingly open with him about her marital problems, was desperately
unhappywith herhusband. in 1859 and 1860, she wrote to Degas about
her misery, describing her sad life with a husband whose character was
“immensely disagreeable and dishonest,” and declaringthat “livingwith
Gennaro, whose detestable nature you know and who has no serious
occupation, shall soon leadmeto the grave.“ In another letter, she refers
to the “disagreeable countenance” of a bitter and always idle Gennaro,
and declares that hehas no “serious occupation to make him less boring
to himself.”5

Given the outspoken distaste of the wife for the husband, the preg‑
nancy discreetly evoked in Degas’s painting should perhaps be read not
merely asthe dignifled suggestion of future generations carrying on the
Degas‐Bellelli family tradition, but asevidence of aquite different situ‑
ation. From a certain vantage point, Laura Bellelli’s gently expansive
form may beviewed not merely asa representation of woman’s predes‑
tined role as procreator, but as the subtle record of an outrage, an act
committed on her bodywithout the loveor respect ofthe perpetrator~an
act that has come to bedefined asmarital rape.

There is another set of facts about the family represented here that
demands yet another kind of reading of the painting: a political one.
Despite the surface stability of the family group, and the suggestion of

elegance andsettled comfort in the setting, this is apainting of a family
in exile, a family which hadwandered and been uprooted several times
in the course of its existence. The Bellellis were living in a rented, fur‑
nishedflat in Florencebecause Gennaro hadbeen exiled from his native
Naples and, indeed, had been condemned to death in absentia on
account of his role in the local 1848Revolutionand his subversivepolit‑
ical activities on behalf of Cavour, who wished to expel the Bourbons
and create a greater Italy by uniting the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
with Piedmont.G He and his wife had fled to Marseilles, then to Paris,
then to London, and in 1852 had settled with their two children in
Florence. This then, is a painting not merely of a family, or of an
unhappy family, but of a family torn from its native habitat. Is it merely
coincidental that in his notebooks of 1858 in Florence, Degas records a
planto depict Mary Stuart’s heartbroken departure from France in 156],
based on an incident in the Seigneur de Brantome’s Vies des dames
illustre’s? This was to have been a sentimental history painting which
Degas described in the following terms, no doubt drawn from his source:
“Without thinking of anything else, she leaned both her arms on the
poop ofthe galley next to the tiller and began to shed huge tears while
continually rolling her beautiful eyes toward the port and the land she
had left, and while repeating over and over again, for nearly five hours
and until night began to fall, the same doleful words: ‘Adieu, France.”v7
It is not too far-fetched to speculate that the painter conceived of his
aunt asa modern Mary Stuart, melancholy in her isolation and exiled,
inconsolably, from friends and family in Naples.

Yet, interestingthoughthis paintingandthis family maybe, it isnot
just The Bellelli Family that I will be concerned with in this text, but
rather, the intersection of the particularity of the Bellelli story with the
signifying structure of the painting and the relation of both to the more
general and consistent practice of fragmentation and centrifugality
characteristic of Degas’s representations of family groups, a practice
that contrasts strongly with the more unified, harmonized, and cen‑
tripetally focussed representations of the subject by more conventional
painters of the period. And finally, I will examine the relation of all of
these issues to the problematizationof the discourse of the family in the
second halfof the nineteenth century in France.

a number of Degas’s images in which gender opposition, tension, or
outright hostility is a major issue‐works like the Young Spartans
(c. 1860~62, fig. 89); the Interior, also called The Rape (c. 1868‐69,

89 EDGAR DEGAS Young Spartans, c. 1860‐62, reworked until 1880 ’

fig. 90); or Sulking (c. 1869‐71)‐and in which a yawning space between
the gendered opponents and/or fragmented or centrifugal composition
constructs a disturbing sense of psychological distance or underlying
hostility between the figures in question.

It is, oddly enough, precisely in the representation offamily scenes‑
just where one would most expect a pictorial structure suggesting
“togetherness“‐that Degas most strongly emphasizes apartness and dis‑
junction. ln the striking portrait of his aunt Stefanina with her two
daughters, for example, The Duchessa di Monteiasi with Her Daughters
Elena and Cami/Ia (c. 1876, fig. 91), the black‐clad matron stares stolidly
ahead at the viewer, while the two young women, perhaps playing the
piano and relegatedto the bottom left marginof the painting, focus their
attention away from her, out of the paintingaltogether.“ in Degas’s now‑
destroyed painting of the Place de la Concorde (1876, fig. 93), the
Vicomte Lepic, his two daughters and their greyhound are all centri‑
fugally deployed, and the fragmentation and disjunctiveness of the
composition are made even more evident by the presence of a sliver of

158 A House is Not a Home

an onlooker in the left‐hand margin and the vast empty space of the
square itselfin the background.This is adaringly de~centered composi‑
tion, inscrihing in visual terms the fragmentation and haphazardness of
experience characteristic of the great modern city, but with the added
poignancy that the point is made with parent and children, rather than
with mere passing strangers. In the double portrait ofthe Bellelli sisters,
Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli (c. 1865‐66,fig. 92), the two girls turn their
backs on one another, and in the portrait of Degas’s close friend, Henri
Rouart,with his daughter, He’l’ene [1871‐72], the child perches uneasily
on her father’s knee, looking grimly out at the spectator, as he looks
dully to the left. The other members of the Impressionist group, Berthc
Morisot for example, or Mary Cassatt, often turned to members of their
own families or those of their friends as subject matter; few of these
painters indulged in sentimental family feeling. Rather, it is Degas’s
insistence on separation and disjunction, a formal structure ofindifferf
ence as the very hallmark of the family portrait, that is so striking.”

90 EDGAR DEGAS Interior.c. 1868-69

91 EDGAR DEGAS The Duehessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters Elena and Camilla. c. 1876

The wistful sense of uneasiness emanating from the artist‘s portrait of
his orphan cousin and her uncle, Henri and Lucie Degas (c. 1876) is
a function of the same sort of psychic and compositional disjunction
that marks Degas’s representations of family members generally.

Even in the one work, Carriage at the Races (1869), in which Degas
has apparently created a pastoral image of ham‐bourgeois family felic‑
ity, a composition representing his old friend Paul Valpincon, his wife
and their infantson Henri, a group ascuddly and engaging asany senti‑
mentalist of the family could want, the family unit depicted, is, in a
sense, a fraud. For the mother‐figure at the heart of this family group,
emphasized by her white dress and the solicitously adjusted white
umbrella over herhead, is not, in fact, the happy motherat all but rather,
the hired help, the wet‐nurse, who, like the fashionable bulldog perched
on the edge ofthe carriage, is simply one ofthe necessary accouterments
of the ham-bourgeois domestic economy. The soi-disanr family group
disguises the presence of an intruder: that ofthe so‐calied seconde mere
who is the actual provider of nourishment to the son and heir.

it would be easy to reduce Degas’s uneasy representations of the
family to the projection of some sort of personal neurosis on his part,

92 EDGAR DEGAS Giovanna and
Giulia Bellelli, c. 1865-456

93 EDGAR DEGAS Place de la
Concorde. 1876

which one could attribute to the early loss of his mother, the surplus of
bachelor uncles and marriages of convenience in his family or to poor
communication with his father, etc., but that would be to miss the
point.’°The family was atheme considerably debated during the second
half of the nineteenth century in France among men of Degas‘s class,
and specifically within the group of sophisticated men of letters; who
were his friends and associates.

After the Commune, the problematization of the family was stimu‑
lated by the nascent discipline of sociology, which took on the
institution with a vengeance, claiming the Commune to be a disaster
occasioned by the weakening of family authority and the resultant
triumph of anarchy and greed among the lower orders. This was the
interpretationnot only of authorities on the right‐Catholic or Royalist‑
but, most especially, of right‐thinking Republicans of juste-milieu
tendencies, sociologists like Henri Baudrillart, a member of the presti‑
gious lnstitut and the author of the influential La Famille et l’éducation
enFrancedans leur rapports avec l’étatdc la société, publishedin 1874.”
In this important study, Baudrillart lays emphasis on the bourgeois
family asthe chiefpillar of the state, abulwark against the chaotic and
uncontrolled energies anddesires of the masses, and on the necessity for
the middle‐class family to instill the virtues of industry, honesty, loyalty
and self-sacrifice in its members‐through the instrumentality of its
female members above all.

Often, in the wake of the bourgeois trauma represented by the
Commune, the need for vigorous political control within the state was
equated with the need for increased state intervention in the affairs of
the family, that is to say, the working‐class family. Such intervention
became an important element ofthe modernizationprocess in the nine‑
teenth and early twentieth centuries, asJacques Donzelot revealed in his
now‐classic study, La Police desfamilles of 1977.12This demand for the
policingof the poor family was almost always accompanied by aparal‑
lel demand for self‐policing, for internalized education in self‐control
and repression ofimpulse on the part of the superior levels of society.

Yet of course I am makingit sound asthoughthe family were itselfa
fixed, known entity, rather than a formation in the process of construc‑
tion during the course of the nineteenth century. While a great deal
of ink was spilled in defining family norms,which varied between the
different classes to be sure, and positing family ideals, the modern
family‐that entity we tend to think of as relatively fixed and perma‑
nent, put in place within the individual by such structuring devices as
the Oedipus complex and the superego, and socially positioned asthe

private sphere in opposition to the public one of politics‐was still in
the process of coming into being during the period when Degas was
painting.

Mark Poster, in his Critical Theory of the Family of 1978, sets forth
the most accurate, complex and nuanced model of bourgeois family
structure available, making clear andraisingto the levelof critical con‑
sciousness just those features of family relationship and ideology that
Degas and his contemprfa‘riekand perhaps many of usaswell‐take as
inherent to family structure,but which in fact are class‐ and historically
specific.”

To summarize Poster’s model of the nineteenth‐century bourgeois
family:

The bourgeois family by definition is located in urban areas…
Family planning first began in this group. In everyday life, rela‑
tions among members of the bourgeois family took on a distinct
pattern of emotional intensity and privacy…Sexuality among this
class, until recent changes, is one of the more astonishing features
of modern history. Like no other class before, the bourgeoisie made
a systematic effort to delay gratification. This led to sexual inca‑
pacities for both men andwomen…Among the bourgeoisie,women
were viewed asasexualbeings, asangelic creatures beyond animal
1959thinternalized,this Rageofwomefiléiftoprofound’emo‑
tional conflicts…l’flitution was required bybourgeois males…
because the “double standard:“ Wlifchh‐r’iglriafél Willi‐[HE class,
maids sexual fulfileenl’infirossibTeforboth-spouse‘s. T“ _

Bourgeois marriage ho_un.d_the_e_o_Tiple forever. Social and
financial intereststendedto predominatein these nutmeg.. . “ the
snunrlest reason for marriage.Yet there was a contradictory drive in
Ixfiée‐oisyoulh towards romantic love. The strange thing about
the‘seritimental pattern ofthe middle class is that romantic love
rarely outlasted the first few years…of the union. “Happily ever
after” meant living together not with intense passion but with
restrained respectability.

Relations within the bourgeois family were regulated by st~riG
swoltdivisions. The hgsband_vras_therido_minantauthority over
the family and he provided for the family by work in factory or
market. The wife, considerably less rational and less capable, gon‑
c__emerl lfiselfexclusively with the home.The major interest of the
wife for agood part of the marriage concerherlfhe children: she
was to raise them with the utmost attention, adegree of care new to

family history. A new degree of intimacy and emotional depth
characterized the relations between parents and children of this
class. A novel form of maternal love was thought natural to
women. Women were not simply to tend to the survival of their
children, but to train them for a respectable place in society. More
than that, they were encouraged to create a bpnd between them‑
selves and the children so deep that the child’s inner life could be
shaped to moral perfection…As it eschewed the productive func‑
tion, the bourgeois home also divorced itself from external
authority.Within the family‘s clearly defined boundaries, authority
over the relations of parents and children was now limited to the
parents alone.

Willi new forms of love and authority. Ihe bourgeois family
generated ii new emotional structure. Child-rearing methods ol’this
family were sharply different from those ol’ihe earlier aristocracy
and peasantry. During the oral stage,the mother was deeply c o n i ‑
mitted to giving her infant tenderness and attention…During the
analphase, the same constant attention continued accompaniedby
a sharp element of denial. The child was compelled to exchange
anal gratification for maternal love, denying radically the pleasure
ofthe body in favor of sublimated forms of parental affection.

Ambivalence, accordingto Foster, the central emotional context of
bourgeois childhood, must be seen asa direct creation of the bourgeois
family structure. In fact, he maintains, “the secret of the bourgeois
family structure was that. without conscious intention on the part of the
parents, it playedwith intense feelings of love and hatewhich the child
felt both for its body and for its parents in such away that parental rules
became internalized and cemented in the unconscious on the strengthof
both feelings, love and hate, each working to support and reinforce the
other. Love, asego‐ideal, and hate, assuperego. both worked to foster
the attitudes of respectability. In this way, Poster maintains, the family
generated an “autonomous” bourgeois, a modern citizen who needed
no external sanctions or supports but was self‐motivated to confront
a competitive world, make independent decisions andbattle for capital.

Poster summarizes the formative structure of the bourgeois family
and the resultingsharp differentiation of gender roles asfollows:

The emotional pattern of the bourgeois family is defined by
authority restricted to parents, deep parental love for children and
atendency to employ threats of the withdrawal of love rather than

physicalpunishment asasanction.This pattern, applied to the oral,
anal and genital stages, results in a systematic exchange on the
child‘s part of bodily gratification for parental love, which in turn
produces a deep internalization of the parent of the same sex.
Sexual differences become sharp personality differences. Mas‑
culinity is defined as the capacity to sublimate, to be aggressive,
rational and active;femininity is definedasthe capacity to express
emotions, to be weak, irrational and passive. Age differences
become internalized patterns of submission. Childhood is aunique
but inferior condition. Childhooddependency isthe basis for learn‑
ing to love one’s superiors. Passage to adulthood requires the
internalization of authority. Individuality is gained at the price of
unconsciously incorporatingparental norms…Thebourgeois family
structure is suited preeminently to generate people with ego struc‑
tures that foster the illusion that they are autonomous beings.
Having internalized love-authority patternsto an unprecedented
degree by anchoring displaced body energy in a super-ego. the
bourgeoissees himselfashis own self‐creation, asthe captain of his
soul, when in fact he is the result of complex psycho‐social
processes.”

In comparison to this psychoanalytic thematization of the forma‑
tion of the family under capitalism, Jiirgen Habermas’s positioning of
the modern nuclear family asthe historically emergent institution con‑
stitutingprivaterelationswithin what heterms the “lifeworld“ (existing
in oppositionto the public, or political, sphere of this world at the same
time that it is linked to and mutually dependent upon the official eco‑
nomic sphere of the so-called system world) emphasizes very different
features of bourgeois family structure within the social, economic and
political context of modemization.” Degas’s representations of the
family, it seems to me,cannot befully understoodor interpretedwithout
taking account of this process andthe ways in which the family assumes
a new and important role in relation to the other institutional orders of
capitalism. Nor can such representations be understood without an
awareness of the important ideological role played by idealist, pictorial
or literary constructions of the family in which the mutual interlinkage
of the family and public life, of the family andthe economy, is occluded
in favor of avision of the family which envisions it asapure opposition
to the world of getting and spending, an oasis of private feelings and
authentic relationships in a desert of harsh reality. The complex con‑
struction of the bourgeois family was marked in all its phases by

non‐synchronous features, by failures and contradictions aswell asby
triumphs. For example, in Degas’s time, for the upper bourgeoisie in
general, the older notion ofthe extended family and its interests, and of
marriage as a strategic cementing of economic, social and political
alliances, coexisted with very different, more “progressive” notions of
romantic love, freely chosen spouses, the primacy of the individual
couple and their mutual interests, and soforth.’6

I have gone into such detail in establishing an identifying model of
the nineteenth-century bourgeois family because I believe it is impossi‑
ble to deal with the representations and critiques problematizing this
institution in the literary and artistic discourse of the time without some
familiarity with various theories of the family and its historical forma‑
tion under capitalism. Certainly, sharp criticism of the bourgeois family
and its defining hypocrisy constituted one of the favored themes of the
naturalist writers of Degas’s time and circle. In these texts, it is the dif‑
ference between appearance‐of decorum, mutual interest, and above
all, of unimpeachable respectability‐and reality‐sordid, exploitative,
cornipt‐that constitutes the favored topos, rather than what might be
characterized asthe Freudian figure of ambivalence. Zola’s Pot‐Bouille
of 1884, for example, isjust such a searching and serious critique ofthe
corruption infecting bourgeois family relations.17 In Pot‐Bouille, the
opposition between respectability, the appearance, and corruption, the
reality, is figured in the contrast Zola establishes between the family
areas and the servants‘ quarters of a Parisian apartment house, asetting
the author characterizes asa“bourgeois chapel.” But in the center of the
house is the servants’ staircase and inner court. Here, in this place that
Zola calls “the sewer of the house,” all is dank and redolent of stale
odors. The servants shout malevolent gossip and vulgarities from
window to window. “The facade of respectability that conceals the vul‑
garity of the servants’ court is an analogy for the strict moral facade and
inner corruption that characterize every family in the house.”I8 Pot‑
Bouille, according to Demetra Palmari, constitutes a serious and
devastatingcondemnation of bourgeois morality fromthevantage point
of a progressive social critique couched in the language of naturalism.
From this vantage point, the failure of the family lies in the fact that
although it is supposed to uphold the highest moral standards, the
family does not serve this function at all. “Though the family is acentral
element of their lives, its members have virtually no affection for one
another and are continually trying to escape its oppressive bonds, at the
same time that they cling to its emotionally lifeless form, for it is the
societaljustification of their moral code.”“’

in those pre‐Freudian days, Zola’s analysis of the problems beset‑
ting the bourgeois family fastens on the contrast between appearance
and reality, between masquerade and truth, as the besetting evil; that
is to say, hypocrisy rather than internalized ambivalence is positioned
as the motor of family interaction. Love-spontaneous, natural,
unfettered‐onthe other hand,ratherthanbeingseen asaninherentpart
of the “problem” of the bourgeois family, the most potent, internal‑
ized weapon of family control, is idealized as the (rarely available]
“solution.”

This topos of appearance versus reality, of glittering performance
versus sordid coulisse, of masquerade as the livery of bourgeois
respectability, is one favored not merely by serious naturalists like
Zola,but by the light‐hearted, cynical, worldly men ofletters of Degas‘s
time and ambience as well. As such, it constitutes an important sub‑
genre of the entire discourse of prostitution of the period, a genre
focussing onthe difficulty of distinguishingbetweenrespectablewomen
and prostitutes.20 Of course the Goncourts resort to the topos again
and again, both in their novels and in the pages of the Journal,2I but
the apotheosis of the genre, constructing a critique of bourgeois family
values through a witty, parodic literary structure rather than a natural‑
istic, moralistic one, is in fact the creation of Ludovic Hale’vy, Degas’s
close friend and fellow habitue’ of the coulisses ofthe Ope’ra: the Famille
Cardinalstories.

Degas created over thirty illustrations, mostly monotypes,for the
series of interrelated short stories dealing with the Cardinals: Monsieur,
Madame,andthe two “petites Cardinals,”Virginie andPauline,members
of the corps deballet.22Degas evidently admired the Cardinal stories, rel‑
ishingtheir charm and cynicism, despite the fact that Halévyrejectedhis
prints as illustrations for the collected volume, La Fainille Cardinal.
When Hale’vy later published the more moralizing, sentimental novel,
L’Abbe’ Constantin, Hale’vy notes Degas’s negative reaction in his diary,
saying: “He is disgusted with all that virtue, all that elegance. He was
insulting to me this morning. 1 must always do things like Madame
Cardinal, dry little things, satirical, skeptical, ironic, without heart,
without feeling…”23

What Zola hypostasizes astragedy, Halévy deconstructs asfarce. It
is simply taken for granted that the “family values” represented by an
upwardly mobile lower‐ or lower‐middle‐class family with two dancing
daughters are farcical‐hypocritical and corrupt‐and that the desperate
needfor “respectability” that apparently motivates the Cardinal parents
in their ambitions for their lovely and desirable daughters is laughable

” “ ‘ ~ ” : ‘ l 1 m a § “ ‘ : < : " ~ - " . : . ~ _-..;

rather than pathetic. Social critique, if it is present at all, is directed
against the lower‐class victims rather than the worldly men who supply
these young women with material benefits in return for sexual favors:
this social arrangement is simply taken asread. lts acceptability‐and
worldly humorousness‐is underscored by the fact that the tales of the
Cardinals’ peccadilloes are always narrated by the author himself;
Hale’vy figures as the observer-narrator of La Famille Cardinal, and
Degas, rather too conspicuously for the author’s taste perhaps, intro‑
duces his friend as a recognizable portrait in many of his illustrations
[which were probably created during the 18705 and early 18805). The
Cardinal stories are constructed as a series of paradoxes, in which the
family is figured in the form ofits parodic debasement, and in which the
mother enacts the role of the loving, concerned‐ever‐vigilant‐pro‑
curess and the father that of the strict but respectable pimp, who, from
time to time, because of his political ambitions, refuses to let his daugh‑
ters darken his door. These paternal political ambitions serve to define
the ridiculous M. Cardinal as a sort of M. Prudhomme of the left, for
La Famille Cardinal is aparody ofthe radicalpolitics ofthe lower orders
as well as of their search for respectability. For M. Cardinal is repre‑
sented as a genuine member of the Commune, a parodic Communard,
and M. Prudhomme as a Communard. He is a militant atheist whose
cocotte‐daught’ers, having set him and his wife up in confortcoussu in a
suburban cottage, buy him busts of Voltaire and Rousseau asa birthday
present, while their lovers provide himwith fireworks and refreshments
for the radical fete he has organized in the village in hopes of becoming
its radical mayor.The two Cardinal daughters are hardly described at all.
Their charms are a matter of suggestion, indicated by the reactions of
their male admirers and the high price their sexual services fetch on the
coulisse market. They are obviously fluff‐heads, alternately dumb,
tangled up in their own silly spontaneous erotic impulses, and extremely
astute, making domestic arrangements that pay well and leavethem free
to pursue their insatiable but innocent lust for pleasure and possessions.
Both Colette’s GigiandAnita Loos’s Gentlemen PreferBlondes aswell as
the comedy films of MarilynMonroe are presaged in these adorably silly
young creatures. In the case ofthese “naturally” predatory girls, Hale’vy
implies, education‐one of the cornerstones of bourgeois family aspira~
tion‐would be a drawback rather than an advantage. When Pauline
Cardinal, now a panic de lure ensconced in the lap of luxury, wishes to
break some appointments with her wealthy lovers in order to visit her
mother in the country, she has her lady’s maid write to the gentlemen in
question rather than doing so herself. When Mnre Cardinal expresses

94 EDGAR DEGAS Ludovic Halévy Meeting Mme Cardinal Backstage. from La Famille
Cardinal, e. 1880

shock over her bad manners, Pauline replies: “Hermance writes better
than 1do; she‘s been governess in a great family; she never makes a
mistake in spelling. But asfor me! It‘s a little your fault, mamma. You
were muchmore anxious to teach medancing than spelling.“ ”Becausel
thought it was more useful and I was right,” Mme Cardinal replies.
“Would you be what you are if it hadn’t been for the ballet? And see
what spelling brings you to‐to beyour lady’s maid.”24

Bourgeoisvirtue, far from beingrewarded, is in fact punished in this
paradoxical mode of family satire. What you would expect the right‑
thinking, respectable mother to demand is never quite what Mme
Cardinal, in her role of procuress-mother, is up to in her search for
“respectable”‐actually, high‐class prostitutional‐connections for her
daughters.

Family feeling, that demand for harmony and mutual support
usually seen ascentral to the respectability of the family asan institu‑
tion, is wittily demeaned by such paradoxical figuration. When for

95 EDGAR DEGAS Dancers at Their Toilette, e. 1879

example, Virginie’s rich and aristocratic lover, the marquis, discusses
domestic arrangements with M. and Mme Cardinal, suggesting that he
will pay the parents a little pension and set up housekeeping with
Virginie in his house on Boulevard de la Reine-Hortense, M. and Mme
Cardinal are overcome with horror. This is not because the marquis
wishes to live in sin with their daughter, as one might expect, but
because hewishes to set herup separately from them‐outside the bosom
of her family‐and pay them off with a measly pension. M. Cardinal

walks out in a huff, saying that nothing can induce them to part from
their Virginie, leavingMadame to negotiate with her daughter’s would‑
bekeeper:

So it was agreed, betweenthe marquis and me, that he should hire
a large apartment, large enough for the whole of us. At first the
marquis proposed to take us all into his house, but I told him
Monsieur Cardinal would never agree to that; and I seized the
opportunity to describe M. Cardinal’s character; that hewasa great
stickler for honor and respect and consideration before everything;
that we must save appearances at any cost; that, to do that, two
doors and two staircases were necessary, so that there shouldn’t be
any disagreeable meetings at unseasonablehours.

The marquis understoodit all aswell ascouldbe; the very next
morning he began his search for apartments, and by noon they
were found. That’s where we’re living now‐Rue Pigalle…We are
very comfortable there…Salon and dining‐room in the middle; at
the right, our rooms…at the left, Virginie’s and the marquis’s. Two
doors and two staircases. The marquis did his best to induce M.
Cardinal and me to take the rooms on the main staircase side; but
M. Cardinal refused,withhisusual tact. Tact is his strongpoint,you
know. Wetook the servants’ staircase.25

In still another incident from the same story, “Madame Cardinal,“
Mme Cardinal and the marquis almost come to blows about who is
entitledto give the ailingVirginie her footbath.

He seized the tub but I held on. He pulled and I pulled; half the
boiling water fell on his legs and he gave a yell and dropped it.
Then I ran through the door to my Virginie. “Here, my angel, here‘s
your footbath!“ And I looked the marquis straight in the eye and
said: “Just try to tear a mother from her daughter’s arms, will you.
you grinning ape! You abandonyour children, but I don’t abandon
mine 1″26

This is of course cynical, boulevardier mockery of “family values,”
underscoredby the shrug, wink and nudge of the worldly narrator, who
shares the complicitous semiology of the homme du monde with his
audience. This audience includedDegas, who, in works like the Dancing
Lesson (6. 1874) or Dancers at Their Toilefie (c. 1879, also known asthe
DanceExamination) may well imply, subtly of course, that the ubiquity
ofthe dancers’ mothers behindthe scenes has certain questionable over‑
tones and that apparent chaperonage actually disguises its opposite.

I

The difference between the outright procuress‐mother, like Mme
Cardinal, and the generic stage-mother is not a pronounced one in the
eyes of the sophisticated backstage gentleman of Degas’s time, and
indeed,the motherrepresentedin Dancersat Their Toilettebears asuspi‑
cious resemblance to Mme Cardinal in the monotype series dedicated to
Halevy’s stories.

Degas’s climactic subversion of family values, however, occurs not
in the realm of backstage shenanigans established by the Famille
Cardinalprints, but in asetting of overt transgression: in the brothel,the
family’s forbidden opposite, in apastel over monotype, TheNameDayof
the Madam (1876‐77). This image,too, isrelatedto aliterary strategy of
moral paradox, specifically that employed by Guy deMaupassant in his
nouvelleof 1881,La Maison Tellier, in which prostitutes play the role of
grandes dames at the first communion ofthe madam’s niece, and where
the comic tears of sentimental whores create a moment of genuine
emotion in the little church in Normandy where they have gathered for
the celebration. “The convention,” writes Edward D. Sullivan in his
analysis ofthis work, “to besure, is the convention of farce and develops
the conceivable consequences of the singular proposition of a bawdy
house closed because ofa f1rst communion.”27 Right from the beginning,
however, Maupassant emphasizes the “family atmosphere” of the
brothel in question: the MaisonTellier is constructed asasite of warmth,
good fellowship and even ofrespectability. “There were always about six
or eight people there, always the same, not cut‐ups, but honorable
men…and they took their Chartreuse teasing the girls a little or else they
talked seriously with Madame, whom everyone respected…The house
was familial, very small, painted yellow…Madame, born into a good
peasant family…had accepted that profession absolutely as she would
havebecome amilliner or aseamstress…”3

Degas, although hetoo relies on the figure of reversal in The Name
Day offhe Madam, pushes things a bit further. It is not the image of
respectability that he wishes to construct, but its opposite. In one
reading, this might be construed asa grotesque reversalofthe notion of
family piety, the madam, the “mother figure“ of the piece, inscribing a
notion of maternal abjection, to borrow Kristeva‘s location. The whole
brothel setting, with the naked girls pressed together, proffering both
their sexual charms and their congratulatory bouquet,creates a sense of
family values displaced: the house is certainly a home in terms of
warmth, ofthe pressingtogether of bodies in a tleshly intimacy impossi~
ble to the chilly decorum governing the behavior of a “real” bourgeois
family like the Bellellis, but it is nevertheless a house of scandal. of

,.
fi z ‐ ‘ l ‘ m “ fl u – V5 -R e f . – m a m – a t :

96 EDGAR DEGAS The Name Day of the Madam. 1875-77

debasement. Perhaps it is irony which is the figure at issue here, as
Victor Koshkin-Youritzin Suggests in his extremely suggestive article
entitled “The Irony of Degas.” Characterizing this, among all the bor‑
dello monotypes created by Degas, asa “serious and poignant aspect of
irony,” he points out that this seriousness can only be appreciated to the
full if “one recalls the entire body of Degas’s work, especially the many
family scenes [Bellelli, Monte, Lepic, etc.) with their piercing sense of
isolation. Very simply,” Koshkin-Youritzin concludes, “is there not a
rather exquisite irony to the fact that here‐not in a private home or
polite social gathering, but a mere bordeIIO‐one finds probably the

97 EDGAR DEGAS |n the Salon. c. 1876-85

fullest expression of human warmth, inter‐relationship, and general :
happiness to be found anywhere in Degas’s work‐and moreover,
perhaps the only speciflc example of human giving?”9

It is unexpectedly enlightening to examine Degas’s whole series of
brothel monotypes (c. 1876‐85)‐for example, In the Salon (J82]‐from
the unexpectedvantage point oftheproblem of“family values” asit was
constituted in the later nineteenth century.30 It seems to me that Degas‘s
strategies vis‐d‐Vis the representation ofthe family are best read against
the foil of their apparent opposite, the brothel, the one functioning as
the parodic supplement of the other. The family asthe site of alienation
and disconnection; the brothel asthe last refuge of living wannth and
human contact; or the family as the place where women are sold for
money asin the brothel, but with greater hypocrisy, under a veneer of
socialvirtue, and above all, bourgeois respectability: these are the topics 3
suggested by Degas’s representations.

The brothel monotypes are too often considered as a unified group
ofworks, inscribing asingle discourse of prostitution and transgression, . 98 EDGAR DEGAS Two
yet as a group, they are far from unified. They range from alienating, w w w – “ 1 8 7 5 4 5
caricatural coarseness and animalism‐see, for example, Two Girls in 99 EDGAR DEGAS Waitingh
a Brothel (J 81, fig. 100]; In the Salon [J 82); or Waiting I (J 64, first c.1876‐85

174 A House is Not a Home A House Is Not a Hom

100 EDGAR DEGAS Two Girls in a Brothel, c. 1876‐85 101 EDGAR DEGAS Relaxation, c. 1876-85

versionl‐to representations of relaxed conviviality among women on
i their own, or womenwith a male client, or women enjoyingeach other‘s

bodies‐Siesta in the Salon (J 18); Naked Women (J 118); Two Women
(J 117, fig. 98); Conversation (J 106l‐to a kind of melting bodily uni‑
fication, a dark, dreamy, flngerprinted figuration of flesh finding
satisfaction in flesh, inscribed in compositions in which centripetality‑
in one case, around a hearth in The Fireside (J 159]‐is often the
controlling compositional feature, and formal blending, dissolution of
borders, and material unity are the strategic constructive principles‐for
example Relaxation (J73] or Brothel Scene, In the Salon (J71, fig. 104].
Boundaries andoppositions are obfuscated in these amazingprints,sug‑
gesting an almost palpableyearning for that ultimate, even pre‐Oedipal,
unification with the object of desire‐a total and fantasmic satisfaction
ofthe flesh‐utterly forbidden by bourgeois family codes, and any others
that we know of for that matter?I

In Degas‘s most typical works, for example The Dancer with a
Bouquet, also known asBallerina and Lady with a Fan (1878, fig. 105),
the figure of relationship‐of “togetherness“‐is always stipulated as a

176 A House Is Not a Home 103 EDGAR DEGAS The Fireside, c. 1876‐77

, m » – . ~ _ _ _ _ _ , . _ fi – > ‐ w < ‘ . _ ‘ l p , _ , . - . a ‐ f » » , ‐ _ , ‐ ~ . ~ ' ; . , , w . ; ‐ - ,

, . m ~ ‐ ‘ . . , – . . 4 . ~ _ . v _ _ _ , ~ v ‐ h u m p – v _ . _

I believe, that one can speak of some of Degas’s representations of
women as”positive,” in that they call into question,by means of uncon‑
ventional structures of composition and expression, the notion that the

‘ family is the natural site “of feminine existence, rejecting the standard
1 codes andpictorial conventions of the time, even those informingmany
, of the engaging family representations of his Impressionistcolleagues.
i Pursuing the implications of this negative dialectic even further,
l Degas went so far asto locate the purported virtues of the bourgeois

“home” in the “house,” soto speak, on the very site‐both seductive and
repellently grotesque‐of the family‘s transgressive Other. In so doing,
heundermined the oppositional authority of both asimaginary spaces
of moraldistinctiveness. ‘

104 EDGAR DEGAS Brothel Scene, In the Salon, c. 1876‐85

purely formal one, constituted here by the way tutu and fan echo and [
re‐echo each other asformal entities, not assigns of human connection.
The “closeness” is specified as that of shapes on paper or canvas, ,
certainly notthat ofindividual psychology or communitariansolidarity: I
on the contrary, it is precisely the social and psychological distance
between the dancer on the stage and the elegant spectator in the box
that is at once clided, and at the same time, evoked, by the formal i
echoing, even overlapping, of the semicircular shapes that bind them 1
in a completely fortuitous rapport. This rejection of conventional psy‐ l
chological connection, of traditional narrative, constitutes for us an ,
essential part of Degas’s modernity: his making strange of human relat‐ t
edness; his insistence on isolation, disjunction and unexpected
“meaningless” conjunction asthe norms for the pictorial construction of
contemporary social existence. His rejection of the cliches‐and the pre‐ l
sumed hypocrisy‐of the discourse of the family and of women in
general seems like one aspect of this modernity. It is only in this sense, |

178 A House Is Not a Home A House Is Not 3 Hum

89
patron, Alfred Bruyas, describing his fateful
luncheon with Nieuwerkerque, during the
course ofwhich the latter asked Courbet to do
a painting for the Exposition of 1855 which
would have to hesubmitted to two committees
for approval. Courbet proudly rejectedthe
offer, declaring to the Superintendent that he
also was a Government and that he defied the
Superintendent’s to do anything for his
(Courbet’s) that he could accept. Leh‘res de
Gustaile Courbet (1Alfred Bruyas, ed. P. Borel
(Geneva: Pierre Cailler, 1951), p. 68.
Herding, “Das Atelier des Malers,” p. 22.
Of course, it is important to rememberthat
Courbet by no means renounced official
acceptance. Heshowed eleven paintings‐no
small number for a relatively young man of
thirty‐six‐at the govemment‐sponsored
exhibition in the Palais des Beaux‐Arts.
For information about the fate ofthe painting
between the time that Courbet exhibited it in
1855 and that of its purchase for the Louvre,
see “En 1920. ‘L’Atelier‘ deCourbet entrait au
Louvre,” Les Arnis de Gustave Courbet,
Bulletin, 29 (1961), pp. 1‐13 and note 1,p. 2.
For a discussion of the depoliticization of
Courbet and his work in the early years ofthe
Third Republic, see my article, “The De‑
Politicization of Gustave Courbet:
Transformation and Rehabilitation under the
Third Republic,” October, 22 (Fall 1982), pp.
65‐77. Although there were always a few
people, like Jules Vall’es, who saw Courbet’s
life and his painting asprimarily political in
their meaning, the re‐politicization of the
artist’s work was not achieved until 1941
when Meyer Scliapiro published his
remarkable article, “Courbet and Popular
Imagery: An Essay on Realism and Naivete’,“
Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld
institutes (April‐June 1941), pp. 164‐191, in
which the author insisted on the social and
political meaning of Courbet’s choice of
language and the impact of 1848 on the
formation of his style. This reading was the
springboard for my own investigation of
Courbet, in both my doctoral dissertation
Gustave Courbet: A Study ofStyle and Society
(New York: Garland, 1976, originally a Ph.D
dissertation, New York University, 1963) and
articles like “Gustave Courbet‘s Meeting: A
Portrait ofthe Artist asa Wandering Jew” (see
note 82 for reference). A fullfscalc revisionist

reading of Courbet from the vantage point of
asocial history of art had to wait untilT. J.
Clark‘s Image ofthe People in 1973.

94. For a differentiation between The Painter’s
Studio, Courbet’s work in general, and the
project of modernism, see my “The Invention
ofthe Avant‐Garde: France, 1830‐80″ (see
note 10 for reference).

95. The compulsive syndrome is, asAngus
Fletcher astutely points out, the proper
psychoanalytic analogue to allegory. See
Fletcher,Allegory, p. 286. Compulsive
behavior is, asFletcher points out, like
allegory, highly orderly and above all.
supersystematic (p. 291); such compulsive
systematization also marks to a high degree
the utopian theories of Charles Fourier aswell
asthe theories and practices of his followers:
the utopian vegetarian, l’apothc Jupille, for
instance, who proselytized for socialist
salvation through a non‐carnivorous diet; or
the Fourierist dramatist Rose‐Marius Sardat,
author ofa bizarre didactic drama entitled “La

in sixteen acts and aprologue, with a cast of

a “Temple deBoiilieur” and setting forth the
hopes, duties, pleasures and daily life in a
phalaiistery of eighty families in a rhetorical
structure which might well be called, for lack
of abetter term, a “real allegory.” Courbet‘s

the wilder excesses ofthese utopian eccentrics
described by Champfleury in Les E.rcentrigires,
2nd edition (Paris: 1877, first publ. 1852), pp.
77‐82, 149‐151 and 155, but there is enough
oftliat tradition of eccentric extremism
remaining in The Painter‘s Studio to remove
it from the realm of the simple, dowri-to‐earth

transformation. For the impact of Fouricrist
ideas on the iconography of Studio, see my
“The invention of the Avaiit‐Garde,” esp.
pp. 18‐19.

96. Ernst Bloch, cited in Raulet, “Critique of
Religion and Religion asCritique.“

Chapter Five
Notes to pages 152‐179

1. Richard Thomson, for example, in his article
“‘Les Quat‘ Pattes’: The image of the Dog in
Late Nineteenth‐Century French Art,” Art

History, 5: 3 (September 1982), p. 327,
mentions the fact that Degas “included dogs in
his portraits on several occasions” but does
not mention the one in The BellelliFamily.
Hefocuses on the more prominent pedigree
hound represented in the artist’s Place dela
Concorde (now destroyed), and on other Degas
works.

and the identification ofits subject, see the
excellent analysis in the exhibition catalogue,
Degas, eds. Jean Sutherland Boggs, et al.
(Paris: Grand Palais; Ottawa: National Gallery
of Canada; New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1988‐89), cat. no. 20;
hereafter cited asDegas, 1988‐89.The
painting is dated there 1858‐67. For the
classic analysis of the painting and Degas‘s
relation to the family see Jean Sutherland
Boggs, “Edgar Degas and the Bellellis,” Art
Bulletin,37: 2 (June 1955), pp. 127‐ l36. Also
see the revision of that article in Degas og
familien Bellelli/Degas et lafamilleBellelli, ed.
H. Finsen (Copenhagen: Ordrupgaard, 1983),
pp. 14‐19.

the time Degas painted the Bellellis is
indicated by the fact that, during the 18605,
the “interior of the middle‐class home became
the prevailing metaphor for arefuge where
authentic feelings could besafely acted out”;
yet at the same time. “strained relations
between the sexes‐within marriage and
without‐provided the theme for countless
novels, plays, illustrations and paintings of
this period.“ For a discussion of both of these
aspects in the representation of the family
interior, especially in the visual arts, see Susan
J. Sidlauskas. “A ‘Perspective of Feeling’:The
ExpressiveInterior in Nineteenth‐Century
RealistPainting,“ Ph.D Dissertation,University
of Pennsylvania, [989, pp. 80-81 and 101. For
a consideration ofthe theatrical representation
of the theme of dissension within the
“modern” family, see Charles EdwardYoung,
“The Marriage Question in Modern French
Drama,” University of Wisconsin Bulletin, 5: 4
(1912), n.p. [ W i l l bedealing with the problems
ofthe family and its representation in
considerable detail below.

Work (Boston: Houghton Miffliii, 1984), p. 52.

7. mid, p.66.
B. For information and further interpretation of

this painting, see Degas, 1988‐89. cat. no. 14
9. Compare, for example, Degas’s Gioi/arrna and

Giulia Bellelliwith Morisot’s Two Seated
Women (c. 1869, also known as The Sisters)
or Degas’s Viscount Lepic and His Daughters
(1871) with Morisot’s Julie Manet and Her
Fatherto see the difference. The same point
might be made in the case of the
representation of fathers and sons by
comparing Mary Cassatt’s Alexander Cassart
and His Son (1884) with Degas’s Henri Rouar
andHis Son Alexis (1895‐98).

10.The term “uneasy” applied to Degas’s images
must inevitably recall Eunice Lipton’s
niemorablc study, Looking into Degas: UllCllSj
Images of Women andModem Life(Berkeley/
LosAngeles: University of California Press,
1986).

11. HenriJoseph Baudrillart, LaFaiiiille et
I’e’ducation enFrance daris leurs rapports ( w e
l’état de la société (Paris: Didier et cie, 1874).

12.Translated into English asJacques Donzelot,
The Policing ofFamilies, trans. R.Hurley (Nei
York: Pantheon Books, 1979).

13. Mark Poster, Critical Theory oftheFamily
(New York: Seabury Press, 1978). The
bourgeois family model differs significantly
from earlier aristocratic and peasant ones,
coming into being only with the rise of
capitalism.

14. Ibid., pp. 169‐178, passim.
15. For an excellent analysis ofthe Habermasiaii

schema and a critique ofhis social
theorization of the family in terms ofhis
neglect ofthe importance of gender roles in
both the private sphere and within the
economic world. see Nancy Fraser, Unruly
Practices:Power, Discourse and Gender in
Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis:
University ofMinnesota Press, 1989), pp.
113‐143. As Fraser points out, “Habermas‘s
account offers an important corrective to the
standard dualistic approaches to the separatk
ofpublic and private in capitalist societies.
Heconceptualizes the problem asa relation
among four terms: family, (official) economy,
state, and public sphere. His view suggests th
in classical capitalism there are actually two
distinct but interrelated public/private
separations. One public/private separation
operates at the level of ‘systems,‘ namely, the
separation ofthe state or public system, from

Notes: Chapter Five 2

256

the (official) capitalist economy, or private
system. The other public/private separation
operates at the level ofthe ‘lifeworld,’ namely,
the separation of the family, or private
lifeworld sphere from the space of political
opinion formation and participation, or public
lifeworld sphere. Moreover, each of these
public/private separations is coordinated with
the other. One axis of exchange runs between
private system and private lifeworld sphere,
that is, between (official) capitalist economy
and modern restricted nuclear family…’[lie
roles of worker and consumer link the (official)
private economyand the private family, while
the roles of citizen and (later) client link the
public state and the public opinion
institutions” (pp. 124‐I25).

fact that the older modes of conceiving ofthe
family in some way coincided quite well with
capitalist aims of cementing Genieinschaft
with Gesellschaft and making the family work
together with larger public and capitalist
institutions to furtherthe objectives of
productivity, i.e. the notion that stable, well‑
disciplined family units “worked” better.
And yet such coherence goes against another
notion of the family, faniiliar especially to
readers of English social history of the mid‑
nineteenth century, asthe very opposite. a
redemption ofthe cold, impersonal,
competitive public arena of money‐making,
an oasis ofprivacy, run by the “angel of the
house“ asan antidote to the harsh market‑
place which constituted the public, masculine
world.

analysis of the novel by Demetra Palmari,
“The Shark Who Swallowed His Epoch:
Family, Nature and Society in the Novels of
Emile Zola,” published in the collection of
essays entitled Changing Images ofthe Family,
eds. V. Tufte and B. Myerhoff (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1979),
pp. 155‐l72.

family represented in the novel, the
Josscrands, who, in their obsession with
obtaining a good parti for their daughters,
echo the situation recounted ofLaura in the
Bellelli chronicles. Says Palmari ofthe Zola’s
Josserands: “The daughters must be married,
and the search for husbands is the mother’s
obsession, for marriage is the basis oftheir

Notes: Chapter Five

moral system and world view. In tnith,
marriage is itself a mask ofinorality, for it is
usually a facade for adulterous intrigues.

The J’osserands are prepared to do
anything to marry offtheir daughters and
the girls care little about the choice of
husbands, for their paramount concern is to
be married. Berthe’s mother lies about her
daughter’s dowry and steals a small
inheritance from her retarded son in order to
enlarge the sum. Pushed into an extreme
position‐the mother admits she would go so
far asto commit murder to get her daughter
properly married‐she reveals herselfas a
victim crippled by society who in turn
victimizes and oppresses her daugliter…The
plot isa maze ofillicit liaisons for which
marriage and family are a thinly respectable
facade. It ends with a final allegorization of
the servants’ court. ‘When it thawed, the walls
dripped with damp, and astench arose from
the little dark quadrangle. All the secret
rotteniiess ofeach floor seemed fused in this
stinking drain'” tpp. 164‐165).
She continues: “It is a code so rigid and
hostile to all that is natural‐all that is
spontaneous in humanity‐that it iscompletely
unenforceable. In creating such rigid moral
standards society becomes not a protector but
an enemy oflife. love and honesty. Ideally, it
is the family that provides order against
external chaos. but to do so it must be allowed
a degree of flexibility and naturalness.Too
great rigidity in this…itselfengenders chaos.
Love and spontaneity reappear because these
aspects oflife cannot beeliminated, but they
are garbed in their dark manifestations‐as
exploitative sexuality. brutal confrontations,
violent outbursts-more disruptive. disorderly.
and threatening to the social order than they
would have been if allowed a proper place to
begin with.” lbirl., pp. 1654166. prissiin.
The Goncourts, for instance, are obsessed with
this issue. See T. J. Clark, The Painting of
Modern Life:Paris in the Art of/llaiict and His
Followers (New York: Knopf, l985): Alain
Corbin, Les Filles ile noce: Misére seruelh’ ct
prostitution o u r 19′ ct 20″ siecles (Paris:
Aubier Montaigne, 1978): Hollis Clayson,
“Alianr‐Gardc and Ponipier liiiages of
Nineteenth-Century French f‘ioslilution: ‘llic
Matter of Modernism, Modeinity and Social
ltleology” iii Modernism anrl Modernity: The
Vancouver Conference Papers (Halifax, Nova

2 ] .

Scotia: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design,
1983), pp. 43‐64; and most recently, Charles
Bernheimer, Figures ofIIIReptile: Representing
Prostitution iii Nineteenth‐Century France
(Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press,
1989), for important discussions ofthe
discourse of prostitution. Clark and others
have seen the confusion between respectability
and prostitution ascentral to the construction
of the social problems oflater nineteenth‑
century France.
See, for example, their anecdote ofthe
adorable and apparently respectable middle‑
class mother and daughter glimpsed in the
park‐the very models of domestic and filial
virtue‐whom they later find out are notorious
whores specializing in serial fellatio. first
mother, then daughter performing the act in
the comfort of the client‘s own home. (I regret
to say I can no longer locate the exact
reference to this incident which Iread many
years ago in the complete edition of the
Goncourt Journals: Journal: Ménioires dela
vie litte’raire, 1851‐61, 1892‐95, ed. Acade’mie
Goncourt [Paris: Flammarion, l935-36],
9 vols. Attempts to track the story down in
abridged versions ofthe Journals have been
fruitless.)
For the complex publishing history of both the
Cardinal stories and Degas’s relationship to
this publication, see “Degas, Hale’vy, and the
Cardinals,” in Degas, 1988‐89, cat. nos.
167‐169.
McMullen, Degas, p. 353.
Ludovic Hale’vy, “Pauline Cardinal,” in La
Fainille Cardinal (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1883),
pp. 62‐63.
Ludovic Hale’vy, “Madame Cardinal,” in ibid..
pp. 19-20.
Ibid.,p. 32.
EdwardD. Sullivan, Maupassant: The Short
Stories (London: Arnold, l962), p. 43.
Guy deMaupassant, La Maison Tellier, in
Games completes, vol. 6 (Paris: Louis Cunard,
1908), pp. 1‐2. Indeed, asEmily Apter has
pointed out, “the maison close (literally ‘closed
house‘) [is]…a subversive catachresis, yokiiig
the bourgeois notion of‘home’ to the morally
tainted connotations of ‘closet’ sexuality,“
Emily Apter, “Cabinet Secrets: Fetishism,
Prostitution, and the Fin‐de-Siecle Interior,”
Assemblage, 9 [June 1989],p. 8.
Victor Koshkin‐Youritzin, “The Irony ofDegas,”
Gazette des Beau-Arts, 87 (1976), p. 36.

c. l876‐85. see Degas, 1988‐89,cat. nos.
180-188.Also see Eugenia PaiTy Janis,
Degas Manatypes, (Cambridge, Mass.: Fo;
Art Museum, 1965). individual examples
from the series will be referred to in term
ofJanis‘s catalogue numbers. as“J.
I am, however, wary of exorierating Degz
complicity in the scopophilic practices 01
his time on the basis of the self-revelatio
of the medium constituted by these print
ashave, to some degree, Carol Armstron|
and to a lesser one, Charles Bernheimer. 1
Carol Armstrong, “Edgar Degas and the
Representation of the Female Body, in TI
Female Body in Western Culture, ed. 5. R
Suleiman (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard
University Press, 1985), pp. 223‐242 and
Charles Bernheimer, “Degas’s Brothels:
Voyeurism and Ideology,” Representation
20 (Fall [987], pp. 158‐186. I turn for tli
critique of this strategy of recuperation
through formal practices to Constance
Penley’s negative assessment of structurz
materialist film practice and its attempt l
subvert the identificatory modality ofthr
apparatus by constantly revealing its
presence, asa transgression which ultim:
identifies with the Law. “The use of self‑
reflexive aesthetic strategies is, of course
almost the definition of avant‐garde
practice…[the use of] ‘filmic material
processes’ assubject matter: celluloid
scratches, splicing tape marks, processiin
stains, fingerprints, image slip, etc…But i
take Christian Metz‘s [the film theorist’s)
thesis that the primary identification isv
the camera, then we must immediately
question the ‘objectivity’ of the strategy
showing the spectator these ‘prostheses’ .
own body, ofliis own vision, because it i
quite likely that this could reinforce the
primary identification, which, asMetz ar
is the basis ofthe construction of a
transcendental subject.” Penley continue
“Side by side with the axiom ofsclf~rcflt
is the emphasis on these films as
epistemological enterprise.“ But, asshe
points out. “in its extreme form the desir
to know slips from epistemology into

to know. This perversion involves the
attempted mastery ofknowletlge and the
demonstration of the all‐powerfulncss 0!

the subject.” Constance Penley, “The Avant‑
Garde and its lmaginary, The Future ofan
Illusion: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989),
pp. 18‐19. The same criticism could be
offered ofDegas’s attempt to remove his
work from the established codes of
pornographic representation of his time
through strategies ofself‐reflexivity. Both
Armstrong and Bemheimer deal intelligently
with the complex and, admittedly, ambiguous
issues involved; I am n o t suggesting that
there is an absolutely correct position on
this issue: quite the contrary.

C h a p t e r S i x
Notes t o pages 1 8 0‐2 1 5

There are some discrepancies in the wording of
titles and the dating ofsome of Mary Cassatt’s
work which will n o t be settled definitively
until the catalogue raisonné, currently under
preparation, is published. In a number of
instances, the titles and dates in this essay vary
from those given in Mary Cassatt: Modern
Woman, the catalogue published in conjunction
with the exhibition organized by the Art Institute
of Chicago in collaboration with the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C., 1998.

1. Griselda Pollock, “Modernity and the Spaces of
Femininity,” Vision and Difference: Femininity,
Feminism, and Histories ofArt (London and
New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 50‐901

2. Dorothy Richardson, Pilgrimage (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), vol. 3, p. 257.

3. w i l l , p. 257‐253.
4. amt, p. 258.
5. Dorothy Richardson, “Some Notes on the

Eternally Conflicting Demands ofHumanity
(Not ‘Femininity’!) and Art,” Vanity Fair. 24
(May 1925), p. 100.

6. Julia Kristeva, “Motherhood According to
Bellini,” Desire in Language, ed. Leon Roudiez,
trans. T. Gora, et al. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1980).

7. Marie Christine Hamon, Pourquoi lesfemrnes
aiment‐elles les honimes? et n o n pas plutot
leur mere? (Paris: Seuil, 1992).

8. Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in
Renaissance A r t and in Modern Oblivion (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1983).

258 N o t e s : C h a p t e r Six

9. For a discussion of Dodgson’s photographs, see
Susan H. Edwards, “Pretty Babies: Art, Erotica
or Kiddies Porn?” History ofPhotograplzy, 18: 1
(Spring 1994), esp. pp. 3 9‐4 0 .

10. Carolyn Kinder Carr and Sally Webster, “Mary
Cassatt and Mary Fairchild MacMonnies: The
Search for their 1893 Murals,” American Art,
8 (Winter 1994), pp. 52‐69. ‑

11. Cassatt to Palmer in a letter of 11 October
1892. Cited by F. A. Sweet, Miss Mary Cassatt,
Impressionistfrom Pennsylvania (Oklahoma:
Norman, 1966), p. 131.

12. Judy Sund, “Columbus and Columbia in
Chicago, 1893: M a l l of Genius Meets Generic
Woman,” A r t Bulletin, 75: 3 (September 1993),
pp. 443‐466.

13. ibid., p. 464.
14. Cassatt to Palmer in a letter of 11 October

1892. Cited by Sweet, Miss Mary Cassatt,
p. 130 and Sund, “Columbus and Columbia
in Chicago, 1893,“ p. 462.

15. Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt: A Life
(New York: Villard Books, 1994), p. 106.

16. Maud Howe Elliott, “The Building and Its
Decoration,” in A r t and Handicraft in the
Woman’s Building ofthe World’s Columbian
Exposition, ed. M. 11. Elliott (Paris and New
York: Goupil and Company, 1893), p. 23.

17. Carol Zemel, Van Goglr’s Progress: Utopia,
Modernity, and Late Nineteenth‐Century A r t
[Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997), p. 235.

18.1bid., p. 237 and note 62, p. 280.
19. Cassatt to Palmer. Cited by Sweet, Miss Mary

Cassatt, p. 1 3 ] .
2 0 . Laura Morowitz, Consuming the Past:

The Nabis and French Medieual A r t , Ph.D
Dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York,
1996, p. 1.

21. Cassatt to Palmer. Cited by Sweet, Miss Mary
Cassatt, p. 131.

22. Cassatt to Hallowell. Cited in an 1864 letter
from Hallowell to Palmer. See Cassatt and Her
Circle: Selected Letters, ed. Nancy Mowll
Mathews (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984),
p. 254.

23. Louisine W. Havemeyer. “The Suffrage Torch,
Memories of a Militant,” Scribner’s Magazine,
71 (May 1922), p. 528. Cited by Frances
Weitzenhoffer, The Hanenreyers: Impressionism
Carries to America (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1986), p. 205.

24. From Louisine Havcmeyer’s unpublished
chapter on Mary Cassatt (intended for her

Memoirs), p. 33. Cited by Weitzenhoffer in The
Hauerneyers, p. 220.

25. Griselda Pollock. Mary Cassatt (London:
Jupiter Books, 1980), p. 27.

C h a p t e r Seven
Notes t o pages 2 1 6‐2 3 7

1. The smaller version, in the Berggruen
Collection, on loan to the National Gallery,
London, is painted in oil on canvas and
measures 15‘lz ><19'/4 in. (39.5 x 49 cm). The large version in the collection o f t h e Barnes Foundation, painted from 1886‐88, measures about 7 ><10 feet (813/4 x 121‘I4 in. or 207.6 x 308 cm). The relationship between the two versions is problematic, but 1 find convincing Francoise Cachin's suggestion that, rather than either being a preliminary sketch or a copy after the finished work, the smaller version may have been "an attempt to solve difficulties that Seurat encountered while he was painting the large version, probably in the summer o f 1887." Georges Seurat, 1 8 5 9 - 1 8 9 1 , ed. Robert L. Herbert (New York: The Metropolitan Museum o f A r t , 1991), p. 292; hereafter cited as Seurat, 1991.

2. For a fuller discussion of the issues at stake in
the status of the male versus the female nude
in the art practice of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, see Carol Ockman,
“Profiling Homoeroticism: lngres‘s Achilles
Receiving the Ambassadors qugamemnon,”
A r t Bulletin, 75: 2 (June 1993), pp. 259‐274
and Abigail Solomon‐Godeau, “Male Trouble:
A Crisis in Representation,” A r t History, 16: 2
(June 1993), pp. 286‐312.

1 B u t see recent lectures by John Goodman,
Whitney Davis and other scholars for a r e‑
evaluation and reinterpretation o f t h e role of
both homophobia and (covert) homosexual
desire in the emphasis on and construction of
the male nude during the neoclassical period.
On the other hand, the work of Jusepe de
Ribera, who was the subject of an exhibition
at New York’s Metropolitan Museum in 1992,
suggests that in certain cases the nude may
not be the site of masculine desire at all. but
rather that ofsuffering and martyrdom. ln
Ribera‘s painting the male nude constitutes the
dominant theme of representation, while the
female is completely absent. However, pain or
incipient pain rather than sexual desire seems

to be the emotion of choice in Ribera’f
although the border between the t w o 1
times, be uncertain.

enters into the histories of both versio
Poseuses: a politics of the possession (
actual paintings themselves rather tha
the bodies within them. In 1975 the
conceptual artist Hans Haacke made tl
version o f t h e Poseuses the focus of a
installation questioning the commodil
ofso‐called vanguard art and the incr
presence and power of corporate inter
the art market. The piece, however. we
exhibited in the context of an exhibiti
featuring gender politics, a show calle
“Differences: On Representation and
Sexuality” at the New Museum in Nev
1985. The late Craig Owen says of Hal
Haacke’s Les Poseuses: Provenance of
Version, 1 8 8 8‐1 9 7 5 , that “Haacke’s v
been included in a show dealing with
difference presumably because its ‘obj
belongs to a long tradition of images
female nude‐images destined for a m
viewer who supposedly accedes throu
image to a position of imaginary cont
possession” (Craig Owen, “Posing,” in
Recognition: Representation, Power at
Culture (Berkeley: University of Calitk
Press, 1992], p. 202 [reprint o f h i s ess
Difiercncesl). Nor is this the only act I
possessionrdispossession suffered by
painting. In the case of the large vcrs
eccentric German collector Count Ha
Kessler, urged on by Paul Siguac wln
that he would ultimately give it to tl
Museum, bought the work in 1898, l
margins c u t , placed the painting on
embedded it in the Art Nouveau dec‑
house designed by Henry van de Vcl
another arch‐admirer of neo-Impres:
See A. M. Harnmacher, Die Welt Hen
Velde (Antwerp: Mercator, 1967). p.
a reproduction of the Poseuses as n I
Kessler‘s decor. Says Hammacher of
Poseuses in this setting: “Two thirds
rolled up in a roller‐frame (Unralnni
v a n de Velde expressly designed for
purpose, against his will under press
Kesslcr…” (p. 348). The painting was
released from architectural captivity
when Albert Barnes bought i t , and d
spectators o f t h e opportunity to obsr

N o t e s : Chapter

The massive 1988 Gauguin exhibition which
debuted at the NationalGallery of Art in Wash‑
ington,D.C.,traveled totheArt Instituteof Chi‑
cago, and ended it

s r

un at the Grand Palais in
Paris, is perhaps most interestingly considered as
an exemplum not only of museologicalblockbust‑
erism but, as well, of the construction of the
, (male)artistasprometheanandagonistichero. In
the Parisian incarnation, the weeks before the
opening witnessed Gauguin asthe cover Story in
mass-media publications such as Telerama and
Figaro, displacing more familiar cultural icons
such asPrincessDi orJohnny Halliday.Fromthe
moment the exhibition opened, lines routinely
stretched from the entrance of the Grand Palais
to the Métrostation; I was told that anaverage of
7,000 people saw the show each day. The accom‑
panyingscholarly apparatus conformed equally to
the now-familiar terms of these kinds of exhibi‑
tions: a seven‐pound, BOO-franc catalogue pro‑
duced by a Franco‐American e’quipe, brimming
with facts and factoids; a three-day symposium
uniting scholars from several countries; blue-chip

corporate sponsorship on both sides of the Atlan‑
tic‐‐Olivetti in France,AT&T inthe States;and
satellite exhibitions of both the graphic work of
the Pont‐Aven school and historical photographs
of Polynesia. Also attendant upon the show were
disputes, if not polemics, concerned with prob‑
lems of dating in publications such asThe Print
Collector’s Newsletter, and the reissue of numer‑
ous older Gauguin monographs.
Consistent with this discursive presentation of

theartistandhiswork‐a presentationwhich, for
short, may be designated business asusual‐the
physical presentation of the exhibition and the
catalogue were insistently concerned with a cer‑
tain inscriptionof the artist. In the Grand Palais,
for example,at various strategic points,the viewer
was confronted with over‐life‐size photographic
blowups of Gauguin. And departing from the
overall stylistic/chronological organization of the
show, the very last room was consecrated to a
medleyofGauguin’sself-portraits,revealingapro‑
gression (if that is the right term) from the rather
louche Autoportrait avec chapeau (1893‐94) to
the lugubrious Autoportrait pre‘s de Golgotha
(1896). In other words, there were at least two
narratives proposed by this exhibition; one struc‑
tured around a temporal, formal trajectory (the

314

stylistic evolution and development of the artist’s
work), and the other around a dramatized and
heroicized presentation of the artist’s life. The
former narrative was produced through curatorial
strategies of selection and exclusion; the latter,
through the interpolation of Gauguin asa bio‑
graphical subiect‐for example, the use of text
panels chronicling his activities, his travels, his
mistresses. These two narratives were unified
under the mystic sign of the promethean artist;
thus, fully in keepingwith the exigencies of secu‑
lar hagiography that characterizes mainstream,
culturally dominant approaches to art, the cata‑
logue offers us a full-page photograph of Gau‑
guin’s hand.
This shamanlike image is as good a point of

entry asany other into the mythof Gauguin,and
by extension, into the discourse of artistic
primitivismwhich Gauguin istaken to exemplify.
Gauguin’s position ishere quite central insofar as
he is traditionally cast asthe founding father of
modernist primitivism. I amless concerned here,
however, with primitivism as an aesthetic op‑
tion‐a stylistic choice‐thanwith primitivismas
aform of mythic speech. Further, it isone of my
themes that the critical interrogationof myth isa
necessary part of art-historical analysis. Myth, as
Roland Barthes famously defined it, is nothing
more or less than depoliticized speech‐consis‑
tent with the classical definition of ideology (a
falsification or mystification of actual social and
economicrelations).Butmythicspeechisnotonly
about mystification, it isalso, and more crucially,
aproductive discourse‐a set of beliefs,attitudes,
utterances, texts andartifacts that are themselves
constitutiveofsocialreality.Therefore,in examin‑
ing mythic speech, it is necessary not only to de‑
scribe itsconcretemanifestations,butalso to care‑
fully attend to its silences, its absences, its
omissions. For what is not spoken‐‐-what is un‑
speakable, mystifiedorocculted‐turns always on
historical aswell aspsychic repressions.

Second only to the life of his equally mytholo‑
gized contemporary Vincent van Gogh, Gau‑
guin’s life is the stuff of which potent cultural
fantasies are created. And indeed have been.

ABIGAIL SOLOMON-GODEAU

Preeminently,the myth isassociated, in both the
popular and the art-historical imagination, with
Gauguin’s ten years spent in Polynesiaand‐inte‑
grally linked‐his assumption of the role of sav‑
age. Simultaneously,Gauguin’slifeisalsodeemed
tragic and accursed. A glance through the card
catalogue yields some of the followingbook titles:
Ovirz’: The Writings of a Savage; The Noble Sav‑
age:A Lifeof PaulGauguin; Gauguin’sParadise
Lost,La Vie passionée de Paul Gauguin; Poétes
etpeintres maudit;Les‘Maudits;Gauguin:Peintre
maudit; and‐my personal favorite‐Gauguin: Sa
Vie ardente et miserable.
Even during his lifetime Gauguin was as‑

sociated with the flight from, variously, bourgeois
lifeand respectability,the wear and tear of life in
the cash nexus, awife and children, materialism,
“civilization.” But no less mythically important
than the things escaped are the things sought‐‑
the earthly paradise, its plenitude, its pleasure, its
alluringandcompliant femalebodies.To admirers
of Gauguin during his lifetime and the period
immediatelyafter‐I referhereto such indispens‑
able and powerful promoters as Albert Aurier,
Charles Morice, Daniel deMonfried, and most
crucially, Victor Segalenl‐Gauguin’s voyage of
life was perceived in both the most literal and
gratifyingly symbolic sense asa voyage ever fur‑
ther outward, to the periphery and margins, to
what lies outside the parameters of the superego ‘
and the polis.Onabiographical level,then, Gau‑
guin’s life provides the paradigm for primitivism
as a white, Western and preponderantly male
quest for anelusiveobjectwhose very conditionof
desirability resides in some form of distance and
difference, whether temporal or geographical.
In themythof Gauguin “theman,”weare thus

presented with a narrative (until quite recently,
one produced exclusively by men) that mobilizes
powerful psychological fantasies about difference
andotherness,bothsexual and racial.On aformal
level‐‐‐or on the level of Gauguin the artist‐an‑
other narrativization isat work. Here, the salient
terms concern originality and self-creation, the
heroismand pathos of cultural creation, atelos of
avant-gardismwhose movement ischartedstylisti‑
cally or iconographically.

GOING NATIVE

Common to both the embrace of the primi‑
tive‐howeverdefined‐andthecelebrationofar‑
tistic originality isthe belief that both enterprises
are animated by the artist’s privileged access, be
it spiritual, intellectual or psychological, to that
which is primordially internal. Thus, the struc‑
tural paradox on which Cauguin’s brand of
primitivism depends is that one leaves home to
discover one’s realself; the journey out,aswriters
such asConrad have insisted, is, in fact, always a
journey in; similarly, and from the perspective of
a more formally conceived criticism, the artist
“recognizes” in the primitive artifact that which
was immanent,but inchoate;theobject from“out
there” enables the expression of what is thought
to be “in there.” The experience of the primitive
orof theprimitiveartifact istherefore,andamong
other things, valued asan aid to creation, and to
the act of genius located in the artist’s exemplary
act of recognition.
Is it,the historic Gauguin that soperfectly in‑

carnates this mythology, or is it the mythology
that so perfectly incarnates Gauguin? Did Gau‑
guin produce this discourse, or did the discourse
producehim? Fromwhichever sidewetackle this
question,it mustbesaidthat Gauguinwas himself
an immensely persuasive purveyor of his own my‑
thology. But the persuasiveness of Gauguin’s
primitivism‐both asself-description and asaes‑
theticproject‐atteststotheexistenceofapower‑
ful and continuing cultural investment in its
terms, a will to believe to which 100 years of
uncritical commentary bears ample witness.
Mythicspeech cannot bedispelled by the facts, it
ignores or mystifies‐the truth of Brittany, the
truth of Polynesia, the truth of Gauguin; rather,
it mustbeexaminedin itsown right.Andbecause
myth’s instrumentality in the present is of even
greater moment, we need to attend to its avatars
in the texts of contemporary art history. Thus,
while it is fruitless to attempt”to locate anorigin
of primitivist thought, wecan at any point along
the lineattempt tounpackcertainof primitivism’s
constituent elements, notably the dense inter‑
weave of racial and sexual fantasies and power‐‑
both colonial and patriarchal‐‐that provides its
raison d’étre and which, moreover, continues to

315

informitsarticulation. InsofarasGauguin iscred‑
ited with the invention of modernist primitivism
in the visual arts, such an investigation needs to
reckon both with Gauguin’s own production‐‑
literaryaswellasartistic‐andwith the successive
levels and layers of discourse generated around it.

For mypurposes here,it issufficient to begin in
1883, when, at the age of thirty-five, Gauguin
makes his decisive break with his previous life as
a respectable bourgeois and paterfamilias; ter‑
minatedfrom the investmentfirmof Bertinin the
wake of the financial crash of 1882,heresolves to
become a full-time artist. Three years later he
leaves his wife, Mette Gad Gauguin, and his five
children in Copenhagen and returns to Paris.
Then begins hisrestlesssearch for “luxe,calme et
volupte’,” a troubled quest for another culture
that’s purer, closer to origins and‐an equally in‑
sistent leitmotif‐cheaper to live in.
By July 1886, he is installed at Pont‐Aven, at

the PensionGloanec. It isduringthis first Breton
sojourn that hebegins to present himself, quite
self-consciously, asasavage. Simultaneously, and
in concert with other artists‐notably EmileBer‑
nard‐he begins to specifically adumbrate the
goals and intentions of aprimitiveart. Brittany is
thus presented in Gauguin’s correspondence,and
in the subsequent art-historical literature, asthe
initialencounter withculturalOtherness,arevivi‑
fying immersion in a more archaic, atavistic and
organicsociety.Suchaviewof Brittanyisexempli‑

Brittany: there I find the wild and the primitive.
When my wooden shoes ringon this stony soil, I
hearthe muflled,dull,andmightytone I amlook‑
ingfor in mypainting.”DanieldeMonfried,Gau‑
guin’s close friend and subsequent memorialist,
tiedthe moveto Brittanyspecifically to Gauguin’s
ambitionsfor hisart: “Hehopedtofindadifferent
atmosphere from our exaggeratedly civilized soci‑
ety in what, he thought, was a country with ar‑
chaic customs. He wanted his works to return to
primitive art.”2
Since the publication of Fred Orton and Gri‑

selda Pollock’s important essay of 1980, “Les
Données Bretonnantes,” which significantly does

2. Javanese village at the 1889 Exposition
Universelle in Paris (Roger-Viollet).

not even appear in the Grand Palais catalogue’s
bibliography,this conceptionof Brittanyassome‑
how primitive, severe and eminently folkloric has
been revealed as itself a mythic representation.
Indeed, Pollock and Orton’s evocation of Pont‑
Aven in the late 1890s suggests nothingso much
asProvincetown in the l950s‐an international
artists’ colony,and apopular site for tourism, co‑

, existingwith,and formingthe economy of,arela‑
tively prosperous and accessible region whose
diversified economy was based onfishing (includ‑
ingcanningandexport),agriculture,kelpharvest‑
ing and iodine manufacturing.
Far from constituting the living vestiges of an

ancient culture, many of the most visually distinc‑
tive aspects of Breton society (preeminently the
clothing of the women) postdated the French
Revolution;they were, in fact, asOrton and P01‑
lock demonstrate, aspects of Breton modernity.3
But from the perspective of an inquiry into the
terms of a nascent primitivism, what needs be
emphasized is the construction of Brittany as a
discursive object; in keeping with analogous con‑
structions such asOrientalism,wemight call this
construction “Bretonism.” Accordingly, the dis‑

ABIGAIL SOLOMON-CODEAU

tance between the historicalactuality of Brittany
in the later 1880s and the synthetist representa‑
tion of it is not reducible to adistance from or a
distortion of anempirical truth, but must beex‑
amined asadiscursive postulate in its own right.
Of what, then, does this “postulate consist?

On a formal level, the developments one ob‑
serves in Cauguin’s work of 1886‐90,and indeed
in the work of the Pont-Aven circle asa whole,
have little to do with Brittany, whether real or
imagined These years encompass the first two
Breton soioums, punctuated by the 1887 trip to
Panama and Martinique,and the crucial encoun‑
ter withtribalarts andcultureatthe 1889Univer‑
sal Exhibition [2, 3] Gauguin’s jettisoning of
phenomenological naturalism with respect to
color,atmosphereandperspective,andhisassimi‑
lation of, variously, Japonisme, French popular
imagery and Emile Bernard’s cloisonnisme, all of
whichhadlongsincebeendiscursivelyconstituted
asthe primitive, did not require Brittany for its
realization.
On the levelof motif,however,Bretonismsig‑

nals a new interest in religious and mystical ico‑
nography‐Calvaries, self-portraits as Christ,
Magdalens, Temptations and Falls. To be sure,
this subject matter is not separable from the
emerging precepts of Symbolism itself,any more
thanCauguin’sself-portraitureasChristormagus
is separable from his personal monomania and
narcissism. In this respect, Synthetism, cloison‑
nisme, primitivism and the larger framework of ,
Symbolismall representdiverse attempts to nego‑
tiate what Pollock andothers have termed acrisis
in representation‐a crisis whose manifestation is
linked to a widespread flight from modernity,
urbanityandthesocialrelationsof advancedcapi‑
talism.
To commentators such as Camille Pissarro,

Symbolism was itself a symptom of bourgeois re‑
trenchment in the face of a threatening working
class:

C O l N C N AT I V E

the bustling of religious symbolists, religious socialists,
idealist art, occultism, Buddhism, etc., etc.4

And he reproached Gauguin for “having sensed
this tendency” and, in effect, pandering to it. But
from either perspective, it seems clear that
Bretonism fulfills a desire for the annihilation of
what is deemed insupportable in modernity,
which in turn requires that the Brittany of Breton‑
ism be conceived asfeudal, rural, static and spiri‑
tual‐the Other of contemporary Paris.

Stasis‐being outside of time and historical pro‑
cess‐is particularly crucial in the primitivizing
imagination, insofar aswhat is required isan imag‑
inary site of psychic return. The “return to ori‑
gins” that Gauguin claimed as his artistic and
spiritual trajectory is emblematized in another fre‑
quent quotation: “No more Pegasus, no more Par‑
thenon horses! One has to go back, far back
. . . asfar asthe dada from mychildhood, the good
old wooden horse.”5 Gauguin’s words limn an ata‑
vism that is anterior to and more profound in its
implications than the search for a kind of ethno‑

317

graphic origin in either Brittany or the South Seas.
This atavism has its lineage in Rousseauist

thought, in various kinds of temporal exoticism, in
certain currents in Romanticism, and‐closer to
Gauguin’s own t i m e‐i n a new interest in the
child and the child’s perception. While it might
be possible to argue that Gauguin’s numerous im‑
ages of children‐Breton girls and adolescents,
naked little boys (some of them quite strikingly
perverse)‐‐themselves constitute an element of
Bretonism[4, 5], it is also possible that the preva‑
lence of children, like that of unindividuated
Breton women, masks something largely absent
from the Bretonist vision‐namely, adult men
and their activities. Why should the character‐‑
physiognomic, sartorial or spiritual‐of Breton
men be of no interest? While there is no simple
answer to this question, I would like to suggest
that the absence of men from Bretonism may be
structurally similar to the absence of men in the
nineteenth-century discours prostitutionelle. In
other words, in the same way that discussions of
proxénétisme and other forms of male entre‑

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GOING NATIVE

Brittany work is the “realist” Suzanne Coussant
of 1881) participates in many of the same struc‑
tures of desire asdoes Bretonism itself. Signifi‑
cantly, during the Breton periodGauguin elabo‑
rated his peculiar mythology of the feminine‐a
hodgepodge of Wagnerian citations, fin-de-siécle
idées recues about woman’s nature,Strindbergian
misogyny,Frenchbelles-lettristeversions of Scho‑
penhauer andsoforth. Modernart‐historicalliter‑
ature abounds in grotesquely misogynist exegeses
of the meanings in Gauguin’s representations of
women.8 In terms of my larger argument, it is
enough to note that like the putatively archaic,
mysterious and religious Bretonne, the deflower‑
ed maiden, the naked Eveand the woman in the
waves (all from the Breton period) alike reside in
that timeless and universal topos of the masculine
imaginary‐femininity itself.
Unmistakably, inCauguin’s writing and in his

art, the quest for the primitive becomes progres‑
sively sexualized, and wemust ask if this is aspe‑
cific or a general phenomenon. From 1889 on,
there is an explicit linkage of the natural and
Edenic culture of the tropics to the sensual and
the carnal‐nature’splenitudereflectedinthe de‑
sirability and compliance of “savage women.”
“The first Eves in Cauguin’s Eden,” asone art
historian refers to them, appear in 1889 (the two
versions of Eve bretonne, Ondine, Femmes se
baignent, and, in the following year, Eve ex‑
otique). Much psychobiographic ink has been
spilled over the fact that the head of the Eve
exotique derives from aphotographof Gauguin’s
mother‐Aline Chazal. But if werecall that Eve
means mother to begin with, andthat, biblically
speaking, Eve is the mother of usall, Gauguin’s
use of his mother’s photograph could mean any
number of things. Given the ultimate unknow‑
ability of an artist’s intentions, motivations and
psychic structures, there seems little point in psy‑
choanalyzingthe subject through thework. Of far
greater importance to my mind is an analysis of
the availabilityandindeedthe self-evidenceof the
constellation Eve/Mother/Nature/Primitive to
the patriarchal imaginary asaculturalandpsychic
construction.

319

Again,weareconfrontedwithaformof mythic
speech that can by no means behistorically rele‑
gated to the era of Symbolism I quote acontem‑
porary art historian.
Whatbettersymbol for this dreamofagoldenagethan
the robustandfertile motherof all races? . . .Cauguin’s
Eve is exotic, and assuch she stands for his natural
affinity for tropical life. His was more than a passing
taste for the sensuality of native women; of mixedori‑
gin‐his mother had Peruvian aswell asSpanish and
French blood‐he was deeply aware of his atavism,
often referringto himself asapariah and asavage who
must return to the savage.9

And from another art historian:
AlthoughCauguin’s imageryclearly emerges outof the
19th‐centurytraditionof the fatalwoman, it rejectsthe
sterility of that relationship. On the contrary, the ce‑
ramic [theFemmenoire] suggests afruitfuloutcome to
the deadly sexual encounter by representing the
Femme Noire as full‐bellied and almost pregnant:
the female uses the male and kills him,but she needs
the phallus and its seed to create new life.Sothe fated
collaboration is productive, even though fatal for the
male. Cauguin’s imagery is basically an organic and
natural one.10

The leitmotifs that circulate in these citations
(chosen fairly randomly, I might add)‐strange
referencesto mixedblood,persistentslippagesbe‑
tween what Gauguin said or believed or repre‑
sentedandwhat istaken tobetrue, the naturaliz‑
ing of the cultural which, asBarthes reminds us,
is the very hallmark of mythic speech‐all these
suggest that Gauguin’s mythologies of the femi‑
nine, the primitive, the Other, are disturbingly
echoedincurrentart-historicaldiscourse.Further‑
more, insofar as femininity is conventionally
linked, when not altogether conflated, with the
primitive (a linkage, incidentally, that reaches a
delirious crescendo in the fin-de-siecle), is there,
wemight then ask,amirrorversion of this equiva‑
lence in which the primitive isconflatedwith the
feminine? Is primitivism, in other words, a gen‑
dered discourse?

6. Paul‐Emile Miot, The Royal
Family of Vahi‐Tahou from the
Marquesas, PhotographedonBoard
the French Frigate Astrée, 1869‐70.
Paris, Musée del’Homme.

had already resolved to make his life anew in
Tahiti. Significantly,hehadalso considered Ton‑
kin and Madagascar; all three were French colo‑
nial possessions. Tahiti, the most recent of these,
hadbeenannexedasacolony in 1881(ithadbeen
a protectorate until then). Gauguin’s primitivism
was not free-floating,but followed,asit were, the

hewrote to Mette Gauguin the following:

May the day come soon when I’ll be myself in the
woods of an ocean island! To live there in ecstasy,
calmness and art. With a family, and far from the
Europeanstrugglefor money.Therein Tahiti I shallbe
able to listen to the sweet murmuring music of my
heart’s beating in the silence of the beautiful tropical
nights. I shallbein amorous harmonywiththe mysteri‑
ous beings of my environment. Free at last, without
money trouble, I’llbeable to love, to sing, to die.11

In this asin other letters,Gauguin makes very
explicit the equation tropics/ecstasy/amorous‑
ness/native. This was mythic speech at the time
Gauguin articulated it, and it retains its potency
to this day; one has only to glance at aClub Med
brochure for Tahiti to appreciate its uninter‑
rupted currency.
Insofarasweare concerned with Polynesia asa

complex and overdetermined representation as
well asa real place in time and history, we may

start by asking what kinds of associations were
generatedaroundit in nineteenth-centuryFrance.
From the moment of their “discovery”‐‐‐a locu‑
tion which itself demands analysis‐by Captain
Samuel Wallis in 1767, the South Sea Islands
occupiedadistinctpositionin theEuropeanimag‑
ination. Renamed La Nouvelle Cythére shortly
after byLouis-AntoinedeBougainville,Tahiti es‑
pecially was figured under the sign of Venus: se‑
ductive climate, seductive dances, seductive (and
compliant) women.
In the expeditionary literature generated by

Captain Cook, Wallis, Bougainville and the
countless successive voyagers to the South Seas,
the colonial encounter is first and foremost the
encounter with the body of the Other. How that
alien body is to beperceived,known, masteredor
possessed is playedout withinadynamic of knowl‑
edge/powerrelationswhichadmitsofnoreciproc‑
ity. On one level, what is enacted is a violent
history of colonial possession and cultural dis‑
possession‐real power over real bodies [6]. On
another level, this encounter will be endlessly
elaborated within a shadow world of representa‑
tions‐a question of imaginary power over imagi‑
nary bodies.
In French colonial representation, the non‑

reciprocity of these power relations is frequently
disavowed. One manifestation of this disavowal

GOING NATIVE

can be traced through the production of images
and texts in which it is the colonized who needs
anddesires the presenceandthe bodyof thecolo‑
nizer. The attachment of native women‐often
the tragic passion‐for their French lovers be‑
comes a fully established staple of exotic literary
productioneven beforethe endof the eighteenth
century [7].
The perception of the Maori body‐entering

European political and representational systems
muchlater than the black or Oriental body‐can
beseen to both replicate and differ from the ear‑
lier models for knowing the Other’s body. Like
that of the African, the body of the South Sea
Islander is potentially‐and simultaneously‑
monstrous and idealized. In the Polynesian con‑
text, these bodily dialectics were charted on a
spectrum ranging, on the one hand, from canni‑
balism and tattooing to, on the other, the noble
savage (usuallygiven aGrecianphysiognomy)and
the delightful vahine. It is the fantasmatic dual‑
ism of cannibalism and vahine which alerts usto
the central homology between the Polynesian
bodyandtheAfricanbodyin Europeanconscious‑
ness. ForasChristopherMillerhas pointedout in
relation to Africanist discourse, “The horror of
monstrousness and the delight of fulfillment are
counterparts of a single discourse, sharing the
same conditions of possibility: distance and dif‑
ference. . . .”12The Maoribodyhas itsownspeci‑
ficity; it did not conform altogether to the model
of the black African body. On the contrary,
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century images of
the Maori‐and they are overwhelmingly of
women‐-‐work to produce’a subject who, if not
altogether “white,” is certainly not inscribed
within the conventional representational schema
for “black.” This in turn may account for the
perpetual problem posed by the “origin” of the
Maori. If neither Black, White nor Yellow (the
overarching racialcategories systematized in such
summas of racialism asJoseph Gobineau’s Essai
sur1’inégczlitédes raceshumaines), theMaorirace,
alongwith its placelessness,was clearly disturbing
for nineteenth-century racial theory. In this re‑
spect, it would be amusing to think that the
“problem” of Maori origins was unconsciously al‑

321

legorized in Cauguin’s D’oz‘r venom‐nous, Que
sommes-nous, Or‘z allons‐nous?
The Polynesian body had another specific va‑

lence, which was structured around the percep‑
tion of its putative androgyny, androgyny here
understood in a morphological sense. As Victor
Segalen,followingcountlesspreviousdescriptions,
specified: “The woman possesses many of the
qualities of the young man: abeautifuladolescent
[male] comportment which she maintains up to
her old age. And diverse animal endowments
which she incarnates with grace.”13 Conversely,
the young male’Maori was consistently ascribed
feminine characteristics. This instability in gen‑
deringwas givenexplicitexpressionin the encoun‑
ter Gauguin described in NoaNoa which hinged
onhis“mastery”of homosexualdesire for ayoung
Maori who trekked for him in search of wood to
make his carvings. \

7. IulienVallou deVilleneuve, Petit Blane que j’aime,
lithograph, ca. 18403. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale,
Cabinet des Estampes.

8.” I. Webber, A Young Woman of Otaheete Bringing a
Present, early nineteenth‐century British print, after a
French original (Roger-Viollet).

The logic at work in the literary and iconic
production of La Nouvelle Cythere was explicitly
structured by the erotic fascination organized
around the figure of the young Polynesian woman.
“There should belittle difficulty,” wrote one frig‑
ate captain -in 1785, “in becoming more closely
acquainted with the young girls, and their rela‑
tions place no obstacles in their way.”14 We may
recall too that the mutiny on the Bounty was in
part a consequence of the crew’s dalliances with
the native women. In any case, from the eigh‑
teenth century on, it is possible to identify various
modalities in which the South Sea Islands are con‑
densed into the figure of the vahine who comes
effectively to function asmetonym for the tropic
paradise tout court. Indeed, Maori culture as a
whole is massively coded as feminine, and glossed
by constant reference to the languor, gentleness,
lassitude and seductiveness of “native life”‐‐an
extension of which is the importance in Polyne‑
sian culture of bathing, grooming, perfuming, etc.

ABIGAIL SOLOMON-GODEAU

9. L. Massard, Femme tatouée de l’Ile
Madison, Océanie, ca. 1820 (Roger-Wallet).

By the time the camera was conscripted to the
discursive production of the Maori body (in the
early 18603, agood twenty years before Gauguin’s
arrival), these conventions of representation were
fully established [8, 9].

In examining popular representational modes
‐whether graphic or photographic‐one can sit‑
uate them with respect to the high‐cultural forms
to which they relate as iconographic poor rela‑
tions. Hence, we move from Rococo vahines to
“naturalist” or academic representations of u n‑
clothed Tahitians in the later nineteenth century,
underpinned, asthey clearly are, by the lessons of
academic painting and its protocols of pose and
comportment [10].

There was, as well, a fully developed literary
tradition concerning Tahiti and to a lesser extent
the Marquesas, ranging from what are now
deemed high-cultural productions such as Her‑
man Melville’s Typee and Omoo, to enormously
successful mass-cultural productions such as the

GOING NATIVE

Marriage of Lotz’ by Pierre Loti (the pen name of
IulienViaud). “Serious” primitivists such asGau‑
guin and Victor Segalen dismissed books such as
theMarriageofLotiassentimental trash‐“prox‑
yne‘tes de divers,” Segalen called them‐but to
read Segalen’s Les [mmemorz’aux or to contem‑
plateGauguin’sstrangely ioylessandclaustralevo‑
cations of Tahiti and the Marquesas is to be, in
the final instance, not at all far from Loti.
In short, the “availability” of Tahiti and the

Marquesas to Gauguin was asmuchafunction of
100 years of prior representation aswas its status
asFrench possession, which additionally entitled
Gauguin to a 30 percent reduction on his boat
ticket and aspurious mission to document native
life.Bothforms of availability are eloquently sym‑
bolized in the 1889 Universal Exhibition,whose
literalcenter was composedof simulacra of native
habitations, imported native inhabitants and
tribal objects. William Walton, aBritish journal‑
ist, indicated the scale and ambition of this colo‑
nialDisneylandin his “Chefs d’oeuvre del’Expo‑
sition Universelle”: “The colonial department
includes Cochin Chinese, Senegalese, Annamite,

323

New Caledonian, Pahouin, Gabonese and Java‑
nese villages, inhabitantsandall. Very great pains
and expense havebeen taken to make this ethno‑
graphic display complete and authentic.”15
In addition to these villages, there was amodel

display of forty‐odd dwellings constitutinga“His‑
tory of HumanHabitation” aswell asadisplay of
“The History of Writing,” including inscriptions
taken from Palenque and Easter Island, The im‑
portance of this lexicon of exoticism for Gauguin
should not be‐but usually is‐underestimated.
Over a period of several months, Gauguin was
frequently within the precincts of the exhibition
(theSynthetistexhibitionat theCaféVolponi ran
simultaneously).Thus,theexperienceof the prim‑
itive“framed”withinthe PavilionoftheColonies
or the History of Human Habitationisanalogous
totheprimitivistdiscourse “framed” bythe impe‑
rialism that is its condition of existence and the
context of its articulation.

To acknowledge this framing is but afirst step
in demythifyingwhat it meant for Gauguinto “go
native.” There is, in short, adarker side to primi‑

10. Lithograph after
drawing by E. Ronjat,
[ndoge‘nes des Iles
Tubuai, ca. 1875
(Roger-Viollet).

324

l l . Paul-Emile Miot, Two
Tahitian Sisters in
Missionary Garb, 1869‐70.
Paris, Musée del’Homme.

tivist desire, one implicated in fantasies of imagi‑
nary knowledge,power and rape;and these fanta‑
sies, moreover,are sometimesunderpinnedbyreal
power,by real rape.When Gauguin writes in the
marginof theNoaNoa manuscript,“1 saw plenty
of calm-eyed women. I wanted them to bewilling
to betaken without aword, brutally. In away [it
was a] longing to rape,”16 we are on the border
between the acceptable myth of the primitivist
artist assexual outlaw, and the relations of vio‑
lenceanddomination that provideitshistoricand
its psychic armature.
In makinganargument of this nature,one can

alsomakereferencetothedistinctionbetweenthe
PolynesianrealityandGauguin’s imaginaryrecon‑
struction of it. In 1769, the population of Tahiti
was reckoned at about 35,000 persons. By the
time of Gauguin’s arrival in Papeete in 1891,
Europeandiseases had killedoff two thirds of the
population. Late nineteenth‐century ethnogra‑
phersspeculatedthat the Maoripeoples were des‑
tined for extinction. The pre-European culture
had been effectively destroyed; Calvinist mission‑
aries hadbeenat work for acentury, the Mormon
and Catholic missionaries for fifty years. The bid‑
eous muumuus worn byTahitian women were an

ABIGAIL SOLOMON-CODEAU

index of Christianization and Western accultura‑
tion [11, 12].Accordingto Bengt Danielsson,the
only Gauguinspecialist who diverges from mythic
speech, “virtually nothing remained of the an‑
cientTahitianreligionandmythology …;regard‑
less of sect, they all attended church-‐at least
once aday. Their Sundays were entirely devoted
to churchgoing.”17
Not only had the indigenous religion been

eradicated,but the handicrafts,barkclothproduc‑
tion, art of tattoo and music had equally suc‑
cumbed to the interdictionof the missionaries or
the penetration of European products. The
bright‐colored cloth used for clothing, bedding
and curtains that Gauguin depicted was of Euro‑
pean design and manufacture.
Gauguin did,of course, indicatehis dissatisfac‑

tion with Papeeteasaprovincial town dominated
by colonials and demoralized and deracinated in‑
dige‘nes. In later years, in the Marquesas,he saw
fit to regularly (and publicly) denounce the prac‑
tice of intermarriage between the resident Chi‑
neseandthe Polynesians.Butthetourist/colonial‑
ist lament for the loss of the authentic, primitive
culture it seeks to embrace is itself a significant
component of the primitivist myth. For within

GOING NATIVE

this pervasive allegory, as James Clifford points
out, “The non-Westernworld isalways vanishing
and modernizing. As in Walter Benjamin’s alle‑
gory of modernity,the tribalworld isconceivedas
a ruin.”18
In France,Gauguin had imaginedTahiti to be

asensual landof cockaigne where abountiful na‑
ture provided‐effortlessly‐forone’s needs.This
was alsowhat the colonial pamphletshehadread
toldhim.In fact, installedinhishousethirty miles
from Papeete,Gauguinwas almostentirely reliant
on the extremely expensive tinned food and his‑
cuits from theChinesetradingstore. Bananasand
breadfruit,astapleoftheTahitiandiet,weregath‑
eredby the men once aweek on excursions to the
highlands. Fishing, which provided the second
staple food, was both a collective and a skilled
activity. Ensconced in his tropical paradise, and
unableto participate in localfood-gatheringactiv‑
ities, Gauguin subsisted on macaroni and tinned

325

beef andthe charity of Tahitian villagers and resi‑
dent Europeans. Throughout the years in Tahiti
and later in the Marquesas,Gauguin’s adolescent
mistresses were not only his most concrete and
ostentatious talisman of going native, they were

families, his meal tickets.
There are, of course, asmany ways to go native

asthere are Westerners who undertake to do so.
Gauguin scrupulously constructed an image of
himself ashavingaprofound personal affinity for
the primitive. The Polynesian titles hegave most
of his Tahitian works were intended to represent
him to his European market, aswell as to his
friends, as one who had wholly assimilated the
native culture. In fact, and despite his lengthy
residence, Gauguin never learned to speak the
language,and mostof his titles are either colonial
pidgin or grammatically incorrect.19 His last,
rather squalid years in the Marquesas included

(vol. III, pl. 6), 1774. Vile de

326

stints asa journalist for a French newspaper and
a series of complicated feuds and intrigues with
the various religiousandpoliticalresidentcolonial
factions. ‘
It is against this background that we need to

reconsiderthetext ofNoaNoa. It hasbeenknown
for quite alongtime that much of the raw mate‑
rial of the text‐notably that pertaining to Tahi‑
tian religion and mythology‐‐‐was drawn from
Gauguin’searlierAncien Cultemahorie, of which
substantial portions were copied verbatim from
Jacques-AntoineMoerenhout’s 1837 Voyages aux
ilesdugrandocéan.20Thus,when Gauguinwrites
in NoaNoa that his knowledge of Maori religion
was due to “a full course in Tahitian theology”
given him by his thirteen-year-old mistress
Teha’amana,heisinvolvedin adoubledenial;his
avoidance of the fact that his own relation to the
Maori religion was extremely tenuous, merely the
productof atext hehadjust appropriated,andhis
refusal to acknowledge that Teha’amana, like
most other Tahitians,had norelation to her for‑
mer traditions.

I will return to this paradigmatic plagiarism
shortly, but first I want to say afew more words
aboutwhat wemightcallTeha’amana’s structural
usevalue for the Gauguin myth.Certainly,andat
the risk of stating the obvious, it is clear that
Teha’amana’s function asGauguin’s fictive con‑
duit to theancient mythologies isentirely overde‑
termined.N0lessoverdeterminedisthegrotesque
afterlife of Gauguin’s successive vahines in the
modern art-historical literature. Conscientiously
“named,” their various tenures with Gauguin me‑
thodically charted,their “qualities” andattributes
reconstituted on the “evidence” of his paintings
and writing, their pregnancies or abortions me‑
thodically deduced,what isatwork isanundimin‑
ished investment in the mythos of what could be
termed primitivist reciprocity. This is a form of
mythic speech that Gauguin produces effortlessly
in the form of the idyll or pastorale, as in the
following passage from Noa Noa:

I started to work again and myhouse was anabode of
happiness. In the morning,when the sun rosethehouse

ABIGAIL SOLOMON’GODEAU

was filled with radiance. Teha’amana’s face shone like
gold, tinging everythingwith its luster,and the two of
us would go out and refresh ourselves in the nearby
stream assimply and naturally asin the Garden of
Eden, fenua nave nave. As time passed, Teha’amana
grew ever more compliant and affectionate in our day
to day life. Tahitian noa noa imbued meabsolutely.
The hours and the days slipped by unnoticed. I no
longer saw any difference between good and evil. All
was beautiful and wonderful.21

The lyricism of Gauguin’s own idealized de‑
scriptionof life in Tahitiwith itspiquantallusions
to the breaking of bourgeois norms and stric‑
tures‐most spectacularly in the vision of a fifty‑
year-old man frolicking with his thirteen‐year-old
mistress‐is one of the linchpins of the Gauguin
myth.All the more necessary to instateless edify‑
ing perspectives on Eden, as in Gauguin’s 1897
letter to Armand Seguin:
Just to sit here at the open door, smoking a cigarette
anddrinkingaglass of absinthe,isanunmixedpleasure
which I have every day. And then I have a 15‐year‐old
wife [this was one of Teha’amana’s successors] who
cooks mysimple everyday fare and gets down on her
back for mewhenever I want,all for themodest reward
of a frock, worth ten francs a month.22

Such oppositions give some notion of the rich
range of material available to the Gauguin de‑
mythologizer.Morepointedlystill,they callatten‑
tion toone of the particularly revealingaspects of
what I mayaswell nowcallGauguinism‐namely,
the continuingdesire tobothnaturalizeandmake
“innocent” the artist’s sexual relations with very
young girls,assymptomatically expressed in René
Huyghe’s parenthetical assurance in his essay on
Gauguin’s Ancien Culte mahorie that the thir‑
teen-year-old Tahitian girl is “equivalent to 18or
20 years in Europe.”23
Huyghe’s anodyne assurance that the female

Maoribody isdifferent from its Western counter‑
part is paradoxically motivated by the desire to
normalize asexual relationship which in Europe
would beconsidered criminal, let alone immoral.
But the paradox is fundamental, for what is at
stake in the erotics of primitivism is the impulse
to domesticate, aswell aspossess. “The body of

strangeness must not disappear,” writes Hélene
Cixous in La [euneNée, “but itsstrength mustbe
tamed, it must be returned to the master.”24 In

imageof the woman canbeseen assimilarly struc‑
tured, not only within Cauguin’s work, but asa
characteristic feature in the project of represent‑
ing the Other’s body, be it the woman’s or the
native’s. Bothimpulses can berecognizedin Gau‑
guin’s representational practice.
In the Polynesian pictures as in the Breton

work, images of men are singularly rare, Fre‑

327

13. Paul Gauguin, Parau Na Te
Vama [no (Words of the Devil),
1892. Washington, D C , National
Gallery of Art, Gift ‘of the W.
Averell Harriman Foundation in
memory of Marie N. Harriman.

quently,andin conformity with the already‐repre‑
sented status of the Maori, they are feminized.
Nothing suggests that there is anything behind
the men’s pareros, while Gauguin is one of the
first European artists to depict his female nudes
with pubic hair. In this regard it is interesting to
note that Gauguin’s supine nude Breton boy
(malenudesappear only in the Bretonperiod)has
had his penis strangelyelided. But while there is
nothingquitecomparableto this oddavoidanceof
masculine genitalia in his images of women, and
althoughthey arefiguredwithalltheconventional

328

tropes of “natural” femininity‐fruits with
breasts, flowers and feathers with sex organs‑
there is nonetheless something in their wooden
stolidity, their massive languor, their zombielike
presence that belies the fantasy they are sum‑
moned to represent [13].

What lies behind these ciphers of femininity?
By way of approaching this question, I want to
reintroduce the issue of Gauguin’s plagiarisms.
For the scandal of the appropriation of Moeren‑
hout may be seen to have broader implications.
Copied for use in L’Ancien Culte mahorie, it
resurfaces in the laterNoaNoa. Partsof the same
text reappear in Avantetapre‘s. A paragraph from
the French colonial oflice pamphlet touting
Tahiti for colonialsettlementappears in aletterto
Mette Gauguin.
In additionto the appropriationof others’ texts,

Gauguin tends to constantly recyclehis own. Bits
and pieces of The Modemsz’ritandCatholicism
surface in lettersandarticles. In hispersonaldeal‑
ings with artists during his years in France,there
isanother kind of appropriation: Emile Bernard,
for example, claimed that Gauguin had in effect
“stolen” his Synthetism,and there isnoquestion
that Bernard’s work comprised afar more devel‑
oped and theorized Symbolism when the two art‑
ists first became friends in Brittany. From 1881
through the 18903,one can readily identify aPis‑
sarroesque Gauguin, a van Goghian Gauguin, a
Bernardine Gauguin, a Cézannian Gauguin, a
Redonian Gauguin, a Degasian Gauguin and,
most enduringly and prevalently,aPuvisianGau‑
guin. And as for what is called in art history
“sources,” Gauguin’s oeuvre provides a veritable
lexicon of copies, quotations,borrowings and reit‑
erations.
Drawing upon his substantial collection of

photographs, engraved reproductions, illustrated
books and magazines and other visual references,
Gauguin, once hejettisoned Impressionism,drew
far more from art than from life. Consider, for
example, Gauguin’s repeated use of the temple
reliefs from Borobudur and wall paintings from
Thebes. His borrowings from the Trocadéro col‑
lections,and from the tribal artifacts displayed at

ABIGAIL SOLOMON-GODEAU

the Universal Exhibition,are obvious. In certain
cases, heworked directly from photographs to de‑
pict Maori sculptures that he never saw; photo‑
graphs were often the source of individual figures
aswell. The Easter Island inscription from the
UniversalExhibitionappears inMerahiMelueNo
Tehamana. Manet’s Olympia and Cranach’s
Diana are reworked asTeAn’i Vahine. A double
portrait of two Tahitian women comes directly
from aphotograph.Certainof Gauguin’s ceramic
objects are modeledonMochicanpottery.Wood‑
cuts by Hiroshige provide the motif for aBreton
seascape.
Forsomeof Gauguin’scontemporaries,thisbri‑

colage was the very essence of what they under‑
stood to be Gauguin’s brand of Symbolism, asin
Octave Mirbeau’s description of Gauguin’s “un‑
settling and savory mingling of barbarian splen‑
dor, Catholic liturgy, Hindu meditation, Gothic
imagery and obscure and subtle symbolism.”25 .
For less sympathetic observers, such asPissarro,
“All in all . . . it was the art of asailor, picked up
here and there.”26
All of which suggests that in Gauguin’s art the

representationof thefeminine,therepresentation
of the primitive,andthereciprocalcollapseofone
intotheother,has itsanalogue in the very process
of his artistic production. For what is at issue is
less an invention than a reprocessing of already
constituted-signs. The lifeof Gauguin, the art of
Gauguin, the myth of Gauguin‐approached
from any side we confront a Borgesian labyrinth
ofpuretextuality.Feminineandprimitive,Breton
and Maori, are themselves representable only to
the extent that they exist asalready-written texts,
which yet continue to be written. “When myth
becomes form,” cautionedBarthes,“the meaning
leaves its contingency behind, it empties itself, it
becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only
the letter remains.”27 In contrast to the recent
and elaborate rehabilitation of the primitivizing
impulse, Pissarro, closer to the history that the
Gauguin myth occludes, always retained his clar‑
ity of judgment: “Gauguin,” hewrote, “is always
poaching on someone’s land; nowadays, he’s pil‑
laging the savages of Oceania,”28

GOING NATIVE 329

1. By profession adoctor in the French navy, and by
avocationadiaristandwriter,Victor Segalen(1878‐1919)
was an influential producer of toney literary exotica. His
first naval tour of duty was in Oceania, and he arrived in
Tahitiafew monthsafter Gauguin’s death. Subsequently,
hepurchased many of Gauguin’s effects, includingmanu‑
scripts, art works, photographs, albums, etc. Segalcn’s es‑
says on Gauguin are anthologizcd in the posthumous col‑
lection Gauguin dans son demier de’cor etautres textes de
Tahiti, Paris, 1975. Upon Segalen’s return to France,he
wrote hisnovelLesImmemoriaux (1905‐6),animaginary
reconstruction of Maori life which he characterized as
attempting “to describe the Tahitian people in a fashion
equivalent to the way Gauguin saw them.” Subsequently,
Segalen was posted to China for four years (1909‐13),a
sojourn that resultedin thenovelRenéLeys, aswellastwo
collectionsof essays,Steles andBriquesettuiles. HisEssai
sur l’exoticisme, published posthumously, isameditation
on the nature of [Western] exoticism‐a desire for the
Other.
2. Cited in John Reward, Gauguin, New York, 1938,

p. 11.
3.FredOrtonandGriselda Pollock,“Les DonnéesBre‑

tonnantes: La Prairie de la Representation,” Art History,
Sept. 1980, pp. 314, 329.
4. CamillePissarro:Lettersto HisSonLucien, ed. John

Rewald, New York, 1943, p. 171.
5.Cited in Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern

Painting, New York, 1938, p. 60.
6. Claire F‘réches-Thory, “Gauguin et la Bretagne

1886‐1890,” Gauguin (exhibition catalogue), Paris,
Grand Palais, 1989, p. 85.
7. Wayne Andersen, Gauguin’s Paradise Lost, New

York, 1971, p. 53.
‘ 8. Examples are legion, but Wayne Andersen’s book,
citedabove, isone of theworst offenders. Itscentralthesis
isthat Gauguin’s work isunifiedaround the theme of the
woman’s lifecycle,wherein the crucialevent is the loss of
virginity,which,asAndersen has it,maybeunderstoodas
homologousto the Crucifixionof Christ. Notsurprisingly,
this theory promotes afairly delirious levelof formal and
iconographical analysis.
9. Henri Dorra, “The First Eves in Gauguin’s Eden,”

Gazette des beaux-arts, Mar. 1953, pp. 18998,p. 197.
10. V6itech Jirat‐Wasiutynski, “Paul Gauguin’s Self‑

Portraitsand the Oviri: The Imageof the Artist, Eve,and
the Fatal Woman,” The Art Quarterly, Spring 1979, pp.

172‐90, p. 176.
11. Lettres de Gauguin a sa femme et ses amis, ed.

Maurice Malingue, Paris, 1946,p. 184.
12. Christopher L. Miller,Blank Darkness: Africanist

Discourse in French, Chicago, 1985, p. 28.

dans son demier de’cor, p. 99 [my translation].
14.C. Skogman, TheFrigateEugenie’sVoyageAround

the World, cited in Bengt Danielsson,Love in the South
Seas, London, 1954, p. 81.
15.Cited in ChristopherGray,SculptureandCeramics

of Paul Gauguin, Baltimore, 1967,p. 52.
16. Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa, ed. and intro. Nicholas

Wadley, trans. Jonathan Griffin, London, 1972, p. 23.
There are a number of editions of Noa Noa in keeping
with its complicated production and publication history.
Originally plannedbyGauguinasacollaborationbetween
himself and Charles Morice, he later declared himself
dissatisfied with the literary improvements and narrative
reorganization that Morice had imposed. At least three
different versions are in print, not counting translations.
17.Bengt Danielsson,Gauguin in the SouthSeas, Lon‑

don, 1965, p. 78.
18. James Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the

Modern,”Art inAmerica, April 1985,pp. 164‐72,p.178.
19. See in this regard, Bengt Danielsson, “Les Titres

Tahitiens deGauguin,” Bulletindela Société des Etudes
Oceaniennes, Papeete,nos. 160‐61,Sept.‐Dec. 1967,pp.
738‐43.
20. See René Huyghe,“Le Clef deNoa Noa,” in Paul

Gauguin, Ancien Culte mahon’e, Paris, 1951. Gauguin’s
spelling of mahorie is incorrect in any language.
21. Gauguin, Noa Noa,‘p. 37.
22. Letter to Armand Séguin, Jan. 15, 1897. Cited in

Danielsson, Gauguin in the South Seas, p. 191.
23. Huyghe, “La Clef deNoa Noa,” p. 4.
24.Citedin Josette Féral,“The Powersof Difference,”

in The Future of Difference, eds. Hester Eisenstein and
Alice Jardine, Boston, 1980, p. 89.
25.Octave Mirbeau,“PaulGauguin,”L ‘EchodeParis,

Feb. 16, 1891.Reprintedin Mirbeau,DesArtistes, Paris,
1922, pp. 119‐29. ‘
26. Camille Pissarro, p. 172.
27. Roland Barthes, “Myth Today,” Mythologies, ed.

and trans. Annette Lavers, New York, 1978, p. 139.
28. Camille Pissarro, p. 221.

FRAM

I

NG
FRANCE
The representation of landscape
in France, 1870‐1914

EDITED B Y R I C H A R D THOMSON

Manchester University Press
MANCHESTER A N D NEW Y O R K

Contents

“may be
tl d . ,m an List of figures page Vi

List of contributors x
Acknowledgements xii

Introduction RICHARD THOMSON 1

I Authority versus independence: the position of French
landscape in the 18705 JOHN HOUSE 15

2 Frenchliterary landscapes JOY NEWTON

3

5
3 Cézanne’s blur, approximating Cézanne RICHARD SHIFF 59
4 On n o t seeing Provence: Van Gogh and the landscape of
consolation, 1888‐9 GRISELDA POLLOCK 81

5 Maurice Denis: four stages in the history of French
landscape, 1889‐1914 JEAN-PAUL B O U I L L O N 119

6 Henri Martin atToulouse: terre natale andjuste milieu
RICHARD THOMSON 1

47

7 Reconsiderations of Matisse and Derain in the classical
landscape JAMES D. HERBERT 17

3

8 ‘Ce beau pays del’avenir’: Cubism, nationalism and the
landscape of modernity in France DAVID COTTINGTON I 94

GRISELDA P O L L O C K

l
4 On n o t seeing Provence: Van Gogh and E

the landscape of consolation, 1888‐9

N 1975, three of us, including one budding art historian, went on
holiday to the South of France.Weeach had our own agenda for the

success of the trip. We politely indulged each other’s whims. Sowe
swam and sunbathed on the C6te d’Azur. We froze and cursed aswe
climbed the still chilly slopes of the Alpes Maritimes. The art historian
dragged her companions around several Provencal towns, Arles and St.
Rémy, to fulfil an unsuppressable art‐historical obligation, even while
onholiday, to visit the ‘Van Gogh’ sites.
We did n o t see Provence.We had brought anidea of what we wanted

to find with us. Sowe searched for, and sometimes caught glimpses of,
motifs of paintings and drawings by Van Gogh, then the Ph.D.research
topic for the art historian. She even found herselfusingacamera to help
her to see ‘Van Goghs’ in the landscape, following in the footsteps of
John Rewaldwho had made famous photographs of the motifs painted ‘
by another painter of the Provencal landscape, Paul Cézanne [27].1But

I

27] La Crau from Montmajour, 1975 1

I

that was amistake. Van Gogh was n o t Cézanne. Van Gogh was n o t at
homein this landscape andhedid n o t paint its sites simply asthemselves. Reg.
Provence was aprop for aversion of modernism soradically different In t
from Cézanne’s intense battle with sensation,place and form that it may ‘regi
in t u r n lead usto question Van Gogh’s place in modernism itself. Eur(

plex
Artistic tourism and the late nineteenth-century avant-garde 12;
This anecdote exemplifies the placewhere art history meets tourism. We . est v
are all tourists now. Tourism is, according to MacCannell, the paradig‐ C638!
matic moderncondition.2 Astypically urbantravellers in periodic search soug
of the exotic, of difference, of utopia, of somewhere from the past or ‘unt< even o u t of time, what we see is what we expect to experience. Vision and is pre-packaged. Images of far‐off places in glossy travel features in vied Sunday supplements vie with alluring photographs of ecstatic holiday‐ zeal makers in travel companies’ brochures,andwith the picturesqueviews of - mos major landmarks andfolklorique customs in the promotional literature ' geni: of the tourist board. These fantasies fill our heads so that we bring our notir o w n dreams with us when we travel. They promise the pleasures we of d1 paid for; and wejudge our holiday asuccess according to the degree of T1 match between what we encounter and what we imagined. pher Perhaps Vincent van Gogh was atourist in this modernist sense, too. Thr<

Obviously hewas n o t on atwo‐week break from the routines of urban all a
work. On Monday 20February I888 Van Gogharrived in the Provencal acro
t o w n of Arles, where hestayed until 8May 1889 when hemoved to a and
hospital on the outskirts of the smaller t o w n of St. Rémy where he villa;
remained until 16May 1890. He left Paris at a moment when being a in G
tourist became asignificant factor in the making and shaping of modern for 1
art. In the mid‐18805, the possibility of maintaining the metropolis as rura’
the paradigmatic site for advanced culture’s encounter with modernity Fr
‐ its founding project since the 1860s ‐ fell into a crisis. A number of was
artists, identifyingwith the independent movement, the legacy of Manet artis
andworkingwith the example of the group’s current pre‐eminentfigure, artis‑
Georges Seurat, left the city to explore another site for modern art: the ‐ an
regions. Modern art went on the tourist trail.3 (pla(
Van Gogh’s relation to this avant‐garde experiment is somewhat spe‐ 142)

cial if n o t deviant. Weneed to ask: what is the difference between being he a
aDutchman abroad, being an expatriate like the American artist Mary t w o
Cassatt who lived andworked in Paris,and being atourist? How are we city
t o read bothwhat Van Gogh made and what h e w r o t e i n the light o f his tried
peculiar conjunctionof all three: anartist, leavingthe city,who hadchosen took
to live abroad and tried to found an artistic colony in Provence, which fam(
was n o t at all an‘unspoilt region’ but ahighly modernising, politically eartl
volatile, aggressively left‐wingandindustrialisingarea ofmodernFrance?4 that

We

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or
on
in

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i r e

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ave
of

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of
let
re,
he

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en
ch
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n>4

V A N GOGH, 1888‐9

Regionality and the artists’ colony: Van Gogh and Drenthe, 1883
In the late nineteenth century a certain kind of consciousness of
‘regionality’ had emerged within the economic and political forces for
Europeanconvergence and nationalcentralisation.Regionality is acom‑
plex ideologicaleffect of the latter: ascapitalismpenetratedand imposed
anexpanding uniformity upon hitherto disparate and segregated com‑
munities,economies and traditions, soabelated, almost nostalgic, inter‑
est was generated in that which, in the new economic logic, must soon
cease to,bedifferent. Artists asmuchastourists paradoxically,therefore,
sought out regions,villages, landscapes that appeared to be‘unspoiled’,
‘untouched’,‘undeveloped’.A drive for integrationof disparate linguistic
and cultural communities into anational economy and apoliticalunity
vied with acultural romanticism that travelled with ananthropologist’s
zeal for diversity anddifference into those regions and areas that seemed
most to resist the pressures of economic progress and national homo‑
genisation. This desired difference could no longer besignified by the
notionof the country asopposed to the city and increasingly the object
of desire was called ‘Nature’.5
The extent to which artists were part of this contradictory trend is a

phenomenon that is only just being properly researched and analysed.
Throughout the nineteenth century, but massively at its end, artists of
all aesthetic persuasions moved out of the cities and set up ‘colonies’
across the face of Europe,with certain areas muchprivileged:PontAven
and the northern coasts of Brittany were popular; sowere the fishing
villages of Holland,Cornwall and Scandinavia. Worpswede and Dachau
in Germany were also well settled. Various explanations can be offered
for this artistic colonisation of the picturesque remnants of traditional
rural economies and cultures which cannot be entered in here.6
From the very inception of his belated career asanartist, Van Gogh

was apart of this tendency. His letters show hewas already aware of the
artistic colonies. In 1881hewrote of his plans to paint in well-known
artistic sites in Holland:Katwijk,Heyst,Calmphout,Etten,Scheveningen
‐ any ‘plaats waar kans is in aanraking te komen met andere schilders’
(placewhere there is achance of cominginto contact withpainters) (LT
142).7After working in Etten (where his parents were living),however,
he actually settled in the city of The Hague in December 1881. After
t w o years of struggling to come to terms with representing the modern
city and its rapidly changing environs,he abandoned that project and
tried another possible artistic strategy: being a painter of Nature.8 This
took him’onthe railway into the relatively remote province of Drenthe,
famous for its peat-rich soil and spectacular landscapes of deep brown
earth stretching for miles, flat, regular, punctuated only by the canals
that transported its almost slave‐produced peat, and interrupted by the

fascinating shapes of very large farmhouses and barns whose enormous
thatched roofs almost touched the ground.

Significantly, Van Gogh got this wrong. The growing colony of
urban artist‐tourists from Holland and Germany (Max Liebermann for
instance) settled in the attractive little village of Zweeloo, a short carriage
ride from the railway terminus at Hoogeveen. Van Gogh did n o t go
there, but found a room in an inn, one of the very few buildings for
miles, at the intersection of one of the main canal networks. Wherever
y o u look from this point is limitless, featureless flatness. However char‑
acteristic of the region, and its economy, this does n o t furnish much by
way of interest for a landscape painter, and the limited company pro‑
vided by an inn at an otherwise virtually uninhabited crossroads could
n o t provide the very sociality that Nina Lubbren has identified as a
defining aspect of the ‘artists’ colony’.9 Van Gogh struggled with the
problem, taking canal trips and trying to draw and paint some of the
sights that make this region spectacular in its v a s t vistas of chocolate‑
brown earth. But from the few drawings and oils that survive, we can see
that the relations between what he was trying to draw and paint and the
still unconquered vocabulary of landscape painting remained unresolved
however much, in his letters, he tried to convince his brother that hewas
living in ‘nature’, in the restorative healthiness of the countryside and
in someplace comparable to what the village of Barbizon in France had
been forty years before, or even akin to the rural world painted by
Ruysdael and De Koninck in the seventeenth century.

I have introduced the brief Drenthe episode ‐ it lasted a m e r e three
months ‐ of Van Gogh aslandscape painter because it differs from what
happened in Provence in 1888 and y e t corresponds in crucial ways. Per‑
haps I could say that in Drenthe, Van Gogh, still taking the artistic trope
of ‘being t r u e to Nature’ t o o literally, actually tried to see Drenthe and
thus missed the artistic boat. He had studied a lot m o r e a r t by the time
he once again set a canvas before an outdoor rural scene in France. He
had learnt that art, n o t Nature ‐ in the r a w ‐ makes a r t . Nature is arhet‑
orical figure for an aesthetic renovation. Van Gogh learnt through c o n t a c t
with this painting revolution that the ‘Nature’ heneeded to master was the
rhetoric already coded into the history of a r t by those painting schools
claimed asm o r e t r u e to n a t u r e by contemporary critics: namely landscape
painting practised at Barbizon and to befound in the museums’ holdings
of seventeenth‐century Dutch a r t which,”in direct c o n t r a s t to allegorical
interpretations in the later twentieth century, was read as‘naturalist’.

Dreams, memories and the problem of place
What Van Gogh produced in the South of France has to some e x t e n t
become the defining, popular image of ‘Van Gogh’: brilliant, intensely

color
and :
thick
and e
durin
PI‘OVt
gest 1

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whic:
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84 j 85 VAN GOGH, 1888‐9

[01.18 j coloured imagesof aperpetualsummer, anagriculturally fertile,worked
and animated territory associated with, the sun ‐ present either as a

r of l thickly impasted and visible disc, or reflected indirectly in sunflowers
.for and embodied in the recurrent motif of the golden wheatfields before,
iage ‘ duringor after harvest.This ‘Van Gogh’ is identifiedwith France,with
t go Provence and with his engagement with Parisianmodernism.But I sug‑
for gest that weneed to rethink allthree.
ever Van Gogh did n o t ‘see’ ProVence.His great dream of ‘the South’ and
har- a‘studio of the Tropics’ has beenwell rehearsedin Van Goghliterature.
1by Hisreferences toDelacroix’s trips toMorocco,to PierreLoti’sJapanese
aro- l novelMadame Cbrysantbéme (1887) and to Japanese woodcuts clearly
)uld frame his arrival in what hecalled ‘the South’ asaromantic orientalism,
asa which, aswe know, stayed the course of the nineteenth century and
the shiftedfromacademic to avant-garde circles, culminatingin the work of
the Matisse in the first two decades of the twentieth century.10 The images
ate- which filled my portable mmée imaginaire when I toured Provence in
_see 1975were shaped by Van Gogh’s imaginary collection of artistic proto‑
the types and literary tropes: orientalism, romanticism and what I shall call
_ved art historicism. The concrete economy and culture of Provence was
was n o t the object of his adventure, which was ajourney asmuch in time
and asin space.
had Van Gogh left Paris, like Gauguin and Bernard. But, as before in
by Drenthe,his selected location,Arles, was ‘off-beam’.A growing indus‑

trial town of 23,000 people, with major railway yards that had cleared
me most of Arles’ historic cemetry dating from Roman times (Les Aly‑
rhat scamps), anindustrial economy with huge gasworks, and apicturesque
?er‐ site with a selection of Roman and medieval Catholic monuments to
ope develop its place in the burgeoning tourist industry, Arles was a con‑
and fusing andcontradictory choice. What did or could any of this meanto
ime A VanGogh? In the endvery little,for the locationwas n o t in andof itself
He 1,important. Hewas another kind of tourist entirely. v
aet- ‘ :- The letters written from Arles betweenFebruary 1888 and his depar‑
tact ture in the followingyear involveusin aconstant displacement, aweav‑
the ingof fantasy,forwhichselectedlocalmotifscouldprovidethe skeleton,
)015 butonly by beingturned through the prismof animaginary conception
tape of where andwhen Van Gogh was working. Out of that moment came
ngs yet another attempt to create amodern art ‘in’ the South’,but it was n o t
ical amodern art of the Midi.VanGogh’sprojectostensibly involvedtrying

to paint the landscape of thefmodern, but not asMonet had tried in
Argenteuil or Pissarroin Pontoisein the 1870s.These artists took onthe
problematic of landscapepaintingwith its nationalist and romantic con‑
notations, and modernised it by their attempt.»to negotiate, within the

zent frame of their canvases, the signs of modernity transforming the rural
;ely economy by industry, transport and above all leisure.” In his project,

F R A M I N G F R A N C E

Van Gogh realigned the modern and the countryside by using the art‑
istic gambits that were the signature of various members of the avant‑
garde faction in Paris, and remoulding them via borrowings from
Barbizonlandscape in the

185

0s and 1860s,andbeyondthat group’s o w n
historical inspiration, from seventeenth‐century Dutch landscape paint‑
ing. Through this confection, the modern was fashioned asasurrogate,
even animaginary world, alandscape of consolation,what hecalled in a
letter of June 1889, ‘la peinture plus consolante’ (the painting of greater
consolation) (LT 595). It is the purpose of this chapter to explore that
concept and profound paradoxes of Van Gogh’s work that rest upon it.

Hollandin Provence: luminous or coloured?
Daudet, Goncourt, the Bible fired his Dutch brain. At Arles, the quays, the
bridges, the boats, in fact the whole Midi took the place of Holland to him.

12

11n’y adans cepays que deblanc. La lumiere refletée partout mange toutes les
couleurs locales, et grise les ombres . . . les tableaux deVan Gogh, faits aArles,

– sont merveilleuxdefurie etd’intensité,mais nerendentpas dutout la‘luminosité’
du Midi. Sous prétexte qu’ils sont dans le Midi, les gens s’attendent avoir du
rouge,debleu,du vert, dujaune . . . Or,aucontraire, c’est leNord‐ laHollande
par exemple ‐ qui est coloré (couleurs locales),tandi que leMidiest ‘lumineux’.”
(There is nothingbut white in this country. The reflected light seems to eat up
the local colour, and turns the shadows gray The paintings of Van Gogh,
made in Arles, are wonderful in their fury and intensity, but they do n o t atall
capture the ‘luminosity’ of the Midi. On the pretext that they are in the South,
people expect to see red,blue, green, yellow . . . However, on the contrary, it is
the North, Holland for example, that is coloured (that is, has local colour),
while the South is ‘luminous’.)
From his arrival in Paris in March 1886 until his death in July 1890,

Van Gogh worked in France. He was acknowledged as a Dutchman
in both obvious and more subtle ways by his new Frenchcolleagues, as
the above quotations suggest. Both Gauguin and Signac imply that Van
Gogh projected his northern, Dutch experiences on tothe sights and
colours of Provence. This Dutchness is n o t only geographical, but cul‑
tural. As Gauguin’s remarkreveals,Dutchnessimpliedreligious ‐ aDutch
brain afire with the Bible ‐ aswell associal and historical affiliations.
Van Gogh himself acknowledged that he perceived Provence through
his memories of his o w n country. To his sister Wilhelmina, hewrote
from Arles in July 1888,
Ik vind het hier ‘s zomers magtig mooi, het groen is zeer diep en rijk, de lucht
ijl enverbazend helder. En toch, de uitgestrekte vlakte zou dikwijls heel veel

dekleur verschilde.

86 87 V A N GOGH, 1888‐9

art- (I think it is exquisitely beautiful here in summer; the green is very deep and 1
ant- rich; and the air is thin and astonishingly clear. But for all that the wide plain
Irom ‘ might oftenremind one very strongly of Holland‐ herewhere there are hardly
own any mountains or rocks ‐ if the colour were n o t sodifferent.) (LW 5)
tint- But Signac described the South as luminous, and n o t coloured. Van
gate, Gogh’s preoccupations with the colours of the South indicate the point .
in 3- l of View from which Van Gogh imagined the South. He was atourist ’
zater i from the North. What hesaw in the Midi was n o t only the result of
that _ what he expected to see, expectations shaped by literature and art, as
41it- ’ well asby railway companies’ travel posters and travellers’ tales, but l

1 they were also conditioned by the ideological framework for his own
practice that emerged in this period. E

the . That Van Gogh compared selected aspects of the countryside around I
L12 f, Arles to the flat landscapes of Hollandwas n o t very remarkable.He was
‘ | aDutchman,with his ‘roots in Dutchsoil’ (onzewortel in Hollandsche
asles aarde zit), ashe had once roundly declared to the painter Anton van a
irles, Rappard on 15October 1881 (LR 2). Nostalgia for his own familiar i
DSité’ landscape could certainly make him want to see a similarity between |
if d“ -‘ La Crau and the flat expanses of certain parts of Holland, or between
and? 1 the boats at Stes. Maries de la Mer and the seaside leisure places of his
u x . ! own country like Katwijk and Scheveningen, the thatched cottages in ‘
it 11P F that Camargue village and those he had tried to paint in Drenthe and 1‘
fogh, 5 Nuenen.The famous drawbridge near Arles, LePont deLanglois,built ;
atall by Dutchengineers,hadobvious Dutchconnections whichwould’bring l
39d,“ to mindbothrealbridges of Hollandand those hehaddrawnin his own l
’01:1}; works [28]. I

s ; – “ 5.15- ‘r’ – – f ” f ; _-, M m e – m u g .- – – . E
890, – . ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘
man I
as, as |
Van , l
and
cul‑
utch
ions.
)ugh
‘rote

lucht , ‘ ‘ _ _ ‘ _”
veel ‘ ~ (biz, ‘ -‘ ”
idien I t , i ” ” i i ; m “ ” . . ‘ – . . . , , H “

Memory, nostalgia, association, these signs of being unrooted as a
Dutchman abroad, may have played a p a r t in the emergence of an aes‑
thetic ideology of disengagement. In the period 1880‐5 Van Gogh had
always worked i n places whose social, economic and cultural s t r u c t u r e
had formed him, and of which he was a part. By contrast, after 1886,
Van Gogh’s practice was neither rooted in n o r involved with either the
social geography or the social structures of France. His few direct c o m‑
m e n t s on the region around Arles show little concern with its agricultural
system or the rural workers of that region, and even less understanding
of its specific social character and the economic conditions of that region
of France. Instead, his statements rehearse the touristic clichés‘ about
picturesque rural costume, the beauty of the w o m e n of Arles and the
laziness of the local workers.14

But even as I argue this, I m u s t qualify it. Van Gogh’s responses to his
own country had n o t necessarily been any better informed. Indeed they
t o o were mediated by memory and nostalgia. Van Gogh called Brabant,
the province in which he had been born and later worked, ‘the Brabant
of my dreams’, and he compared Drenthe, where he worked for several
months in 1883, to the village and region around Barbizon in the time
of the painter Corot’s youth, namely the 18205. He looked at the peas‑
ants and the countryside around Nuenen asthough through the lens of
paintings and drawings by Jean-Francois Millet (1814‐75). While I might
suggest, therefore, that a genuine nostalgia contributed to Van Gogh’s
misrecognition of Provence, this problem has to beunderstood at amore
structural level. Provence was n o t only recast in the image of a Holland,
itself misperceived, transmuted by ‘memory’ of the past, but a past that
was n o t his; it was the prehistory of present, anearlier premodernist dis‑
course on modernity mediated by nineteenth-century critical writings and
the politically infused ideological terrain onwhich French a r t history was
formed in the middle of the century. This other notion of modernity was,
therefore, derived from art‐historicist representations and reinterpreta‑
tions, in the 18605 and 1870s, of paintings by Dutch artists of the seven‑
teenth century. These, in t u r n , had been produced, each with its o w n
ideological agenda, by the republican exile Théophile Thoré (also known
asWillem Burger), cataloguer and archivist aswell asnaturalist advocate
and rediscoverer of Hals and Vermeer; Charles Blanc, author of the
influential academic textbook Gmmmnire des arts du dessin (1867), founder
of the Gazette des Beatrix‐Arts in 1858 and editor of the compendious
project for an a r t history of Les Peintres de toutes les écoles (1861‐76) for
which he w r o t e the volumes on the Dutch School with its star, the
humanitarian religious painter Rembrandt; Eugéne Fromentin, painter,
orientalist and travel writer, author of Les Maine: d’autrefo£s (I 876). All
of these writers were n o t only well known to Van Gogh, who read them

89_.
avidlj
entiai
their
the n
relati
e m 2
Corn
trenc

Raph
abstr;
vivan

(Rapl
an ab
a llVl]

Tl
yet a
that
of pi
imag
imag
lette:
their
city,
conf

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est f;

(Ont
thing
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tion
Mill

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Mill< O I ' l C

(Ah!
mast
a W 3

88 | 89 – VA N GOGH, 1888‐9 ‘,_ _________________
asa _ avidly and quoted them extensively in 1888,but they were highly influ- l
aes- – ential on his project after 1885.The key point of all these writers was ‘
had l their inventionfor the DutchSchool of anart history that placed it as
ture the modelfor contemporary modern art.15 Thoré roundly stated that in
886, relationto the transformationof Europeanart the newprincipleofmod‑
the em art was to be the realist and democratic principles of Dutch art.
om‐ i Comparing Raphael and Rembrandt asrepresentatives of t w o possible
ural trends in European art, hedeclaimed:
iing

Ra hael re arde enarriére; Rembrandt re deenavant. L’unavu l’humanitég gargion
>out abstraite .. . l’autre directement et de ses propres yeux, une humanité réelle et
the vivante. L’un est le passé; l’autre l’avenir.

16

. (Raphaellooksbackwards.Rembrandtlooksforward.The onesaw humanity in

t1118 anabstract manner, . .. the other saw humanity directly,andwithhisown eyes,
:hey i aliving, real humanity.The one is the past and the other is the future.)
rant, . . _ . ;
Jam The ideologicalfield of Van Gogh’s work in Provence in 1888-9 was I“
eral yet another facetof anideathat hadbeenformulatedin the earliest letter i
:ime that declared his intentionto become anartist: the idea of a‘homeland |;
eas- l of pictures’‐ ‘paysdetableaux’ ‐ first mentionedin LT 13} in 1880.The ,i
_Sof imaginary ‘homeland’ ‐ ‘patrie’ ‐ for the future of art was framed asan ;
ight imaginary past, signified by the repeated use of the term memory. In a i
gh’s letter of 1890 to his sister Wilhelmina, who had been in Paris visiting a
10re ‘l _ their brotherTheo,Van Gogh discussed the difficulties of living in the ‘
and, ? city,especially acity ‘tropgrande ettrop embrouillée’ (too largeandt o o i
that i confusmg). l

dlsci J On abeaudirepour les peintres: ontravaille mieux alacampagne, tout yparles ,
an i nettement, tout s’ teint, tout 5’ ex li ue. Or, dans une de ville lorsqu’on. y Y P q gran
was 7 est fatigué on necomprend rien et sesent comme perdu.
was, ‘
eta- , (One couldsay for painters:one works better in the countryside,where every‑
ICI l – 1 thing ismuchclearer,holds together and isexplicable. In alargecity,however,
) w n _i once one is tired, one ceases to understandanything and feels lost.) (LW r9)

) w n Then Van Gogh restated his notion of arural art made for the consola‑
cate ii tion of those who live in the city, such asthe painter Jean-Francois
(tihe f Milletprovided. ;
1 er ‘J r
ious i Ah parlantdeladifference entre la grandeville etles champs,quelmaitreque ce ‘
.for i Millet.Celui-la,sisage,siému, fair lacampagne detelle faeonque mé‘meenville
the 5 on continue ala sentir.
iter, (Ah! speaking of the difference between the big city and the country, what a
All master Millet is.He, that Wise andsensitive man,paints the countryside in such
J e m g away that you goon feeling it even in the city.)

»‐ . – – . . ~ . ‐ – – ‐ . + w ‐ – fi w m w ~ ‐ fl ‐ ’ m ‐ v W m fi ‐ W ‐ m ‐ W . -4 – 7 – – ‐ – ‐ – ‐ v ‐ – m m “ W i r v – w v – fl ‘ I ‐ I – r . “ fl?\ fi . – ‐ ‑

F R A M I N G F R A N C E 9 0 9 1
_ = ‐ ‐ = = = _ g _

Then comes the crucial statement,

A présent mieux que dans le commencement, je vois la vraie campagne de
Provence ‐ et c’est tellement, tellement la meme chose que chez nous dans les
gens alors que cela se manifeste t o u t e autrement, alors que la culture et les
t r a v a u x des champs ne s o n t pas les memes que dans n o s bruyéres et champs
du nord. Je pense beaucoup a la Hollande et a n o t r e jeunesse d’autrefois ‑
précisément parce que je me sens bien en pleine campagne.
( A t present, much m o r e than at the beginning, I see the real countryside of Pro‑
vence ‐ and it is absolutely the same thing asat home even though it appears quite
different, and although the culture and the labours of the fields are n o t the same
asin o u r misty fields of the north. I think alot about Holland and about o u r youth
in the past ‐ precisely because here I feel entirely in the countryside.) ( LW 19)

This letter was in fact written during Van Gogh’s residence in the hos‑
pital St. Paul de Mausole at St. Rémy, fifteen miles from Arles. He was
then certainly in a m o r e countrified place than the populous industrial
t o w n of Arles, with its major gasworks and railway yards. But even so,
he was hardly living in the countryside. Protected by incarceration in an
institution, far from both city and actual rural life, he imagined himself
fully in a space called ‘the countryside’ – ‘en pleine campagne’. That
countryside was asmuch atime asaplace. It was the rural setting of his
childhood in Holland.” In the months following the letter to his sis‑
t e r ( LW 19), Van Gogh produced a series of paintings and drawings
which he collectively titled ‘Memories of the North’ ( LT 629, 629a).
One of these, Winter landscape: memory of the North (March‐April 1890;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh), is areworking of asketch
made in the province of Drenthe in the a u t u m n of 1883, and s e n t to his
brother in aletter ( LT 330). In addition, Van Gogh began to rework The
potato eaters (1885; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh) and
produce copies of a series labelled Travaax des champs based on wood‑
engravings by Adrian Lavieille after drawings by Millet.18

In practice, therefore, Van Gogh’s ‘thinking about Holland and the
past’ focused on images, his o w n aswell asthose by others that formed
his musée imaginaire. Through his working o v e r such images asmotifs,
h e could t r a v e r s e a temporal gulf between present and past, here and
there, and recapture the imaginary past ‐ that is to say a past that was
itself composed of, and indeed embedded in, representations, used ini‑
tially by the artist to situate himself as a citizen of the ‘homeland of
pictures’ between 1880 and 1885, and subsequently used to provide a
displaced Dutchman with ameans to be ‘at home’ with the French mod‑
ernists at the point at which they were themselves losing their specific
geographical, urban bearings. The real paradox lies in understanding
how what was represented in those images from and of ‘the other place’

)0 91 V A N G O G H , 1888‐9
_ W

and ‘another time’ ‐ seventeenth‐century Holland ‐ could function
as both a mode of painting and a subject‐matter with which a self‑
consciously modern a r t could be forged while living in Arles.

One of the critical m o m e n t s at which that inversion was being
developed was the summer of 1888. In addition to comparing the plains
outside the t o w n of Arles to the flat landscapes of Holland, Van Gogh
translated the Provencal landscape into landscape painting, particularly
from the seventeenth‐century Dutch School. These c o m m e n t s o c c u r in
letters from this period.
Si tu voyais la Camargue et bien d’autres endroits, tu serais c o m m e moi tres
surpris de voir que cela a un caractere absolument a la Ruysdael.
(If you w e r e to see the Camargue and many other spots around here y o u would
be just asI am, extremely surprised to recognise that they are absolutely of the
character of a Ruysdael.) (LT 496)

Pourtant la n a t u r e ici doit étre trés différente de Bordighera . . . ou il y a moins
de mistral . . . Ici, sauf u n e couleur plus intense, cela rappelle la Hollande, t o u t
est plat, seulement on pense s u r t o u t a la Hollande de Ruysdael et de Hobbema
et d’Ostade, plutét qu’a la Hollande actuelle.
(However, n a t u r e around here is very different from the area around Bordighera
. . . where there is less mistral . . . Here, except for the colour that is much m o r e
intense, it calls to mind Holland, everything is flat, only that o n e thinks above
all of the Holland of Ruysdael and Hobbema and of Ostade, rather than of
Holland asit is today.) (LT 502)

Involontairement, est‐ce que l’effet de la n a t u r e si Ruysdaelesque d’ici ‐ je pense
assez s o u v e n t de la Hollande, et a travers le double éloignement de la distance et
du temps écoulé, ces souvenirs o n t un certain n a v r a n t .
(Involuntarily, is it the effect of a c o u n t r y that is so reminiscent of Ruysdael,
here I think so often of Holland and across the twofold remoteness of distance
and time gone by these memories have a kind of heartbreak in them.) ( LT 512)

We are n o t merely discussing a superficial visual resemblance. Pro‑
vence becomes the screen for a Holland that is itself already a spatially
distanced and temporally dislocated representation. This Holland is that
of adifferent epoch, ‘l’antique Hollande’, which through the coded semi‑
otic systems of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting repres‑
ented apre-modern rural/urban hierarchy, apatriciate geopolitical order
that makes social order and its authority appear clear and intelligible,
easy to situate oneself in, for it can bevisually laid o u t before the view‑
ing subject through aparticular use of perspective, viewing distance and
the spatial division of the canvas. This imaged/imagined past offers the
possibility of being clearly situated, and its difference from the confus‑
ing, modernising, chaotic present of both Holland and Provence in the

W fi f , h w . r _ . _ _ _ _ v _ . _ f _ _ _ w , _ . _ _ . .

-‘:{;3affifi’fiifim”
F R A M I N G F R A N C E

r \ .
y “ ‘ – ¢ ) (6 ? . . \ ‑

._}L m. ‘d m- Ra’s.
‘ i .‘ \m , ali‘fik‘gfkf0‘~‘\\\:350x315when aw- amKN; an. a

29] Vincent v a n Gogh, Landscape near Montmajoar with train from Arles to
Orgon,

1888

18805 engenders a kind of nostalgia because it seems doubly removed
through both time and space. Thus it becomes a highly political vision
precisely at the point at which this nostalgia, and its recourse to cultural
memory, appears to make it totally depoliticised.

In LT 509 (written about 13 July 1888) Van Gogh described to his
brother t w o drawings he had recently made and s e n t . They have been
identified ast w o of aseries of highly worked drawings of the wheatfields
outside the t o w n of Arles (known as La Crau), La Cram seen from
Montmajoar (July 1888; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Vincent v a n Gogh)
and Landscape near Montmajow with train from Arles to Organ, 10‐13
July 1888 [29]. These drawings represent a panoramic View of an e x t e n s‑
ive plain, seen from a high vantage point so that the viewer is made to
look down and across fields, each differentiated by the system of graphic
marks used to indicate varying textures of the crops, punctuated by
clumps of trees and cottages.19 This construction of a complex, hierar‑
chical pictorial space reworks that type of seventeenth‐century Dutch
landscape painting, the panorama, typified either by the grandiose large‑
scale paintings of De Koninck or by the m o r e intimate scale of Ruysdael’s
many views of the bleaching fields n e a r Haarlem, known asthe Haar‑
lemtjes, for instance View of Haarlem with view of the bleaching fields

.2 93

VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

.- x.‐_‐_‐-‐r~‐g…

at Overeen [30]. In the letter already quoted that refers directly to the
Ruysdael character of the landscape near Arles, Van Gogh wrote:
J’ai un nouveau motif en train, des champs a perte de vue verts et jaunes, que j’ai
déja deux fois dessiné et que je recommence en tableau, absolument comme
Salomon de Koninck, tu sais l’éleve de Rembrandt, qui faisait les immenses
campagnes plates.
(I have anew motif in hand, fields green and yellow asfar asthe eye can see,
which I have twice drawn and which I ambeginning asapainting, absolutely
like SalomondeKoninck,you know the pupilof Rembrandtwho made the vast
levelplains.) (LT 496)20

The crucial problem is how to match the division of the flat canvas
into aseries of horizontal bands with the three‐dimensional space of the
pictured world that m u s t be initially translated by perspective systems
into planes and then coloured to achieve the necessary sense of recession
and hence depth. The key question for landscape painting is the han‑
dling of the middle ground. In contrast to classical Italianate landscape
formulae ‐ with staffage in the foreground and repomsoir trees opening
on to aluminous middle ground, often with the device of aretreating
river suggestingrecession,culminatingin ablue‐tinteddistance‐ Ruysdael
enlarged the sky, tipped up the foreground, filled it with agricultural
activities and took the middle ground to the horizon where he set the
silhouette of at o w n ‐ houses,municipalbuildings and church signifying
its political and economic order. Enormous subtlety in colour and sug‑
gestion of weather and atmosphere pictorially sustained alandscape that
was, in fact, an image of a social system. In the case of De Koninck’s
panoramic landscape, the sense of recession was created by ahigh fore‑
groundviewpoint and avast sweep of landdissolvingunder strong light
into its infinite distances.
In the paintings of Drenthe,Van Goghpaintedbands of greenery, and

sky, with acottage or afigure piercing the division between them. He
was unable to grasp how this horizontal emphasis necessary to‘the con‑
struction of landscape would become atmospheric and thus perspec‑
tival because he could n o t create amiddle distance or understand how
seventeenth‐century Dutchpainters hadmanagedtheirs through the radical
foreshortening and enlarged skies. By 1888,through Impressionistuse of
indexicalbrushwork ‐ each type of stroke suggesting the growthpattern
and shape of the thing painted ‐ and sharp colour contrasts, Van Gogh
had found away round these impossible pictorial models and seemed
able to apply anew system to produce aschematised representationof a
worked and inhabited landscape that could correspond n o t to its own
socio-economic order, but to the aestheticised and idealised vision of
patriciate Holland. To accomplish this, however, hehad had to do abit
of mixingand matching. Insteadof the lowviewpoint usedby Ruysdael,
Van Goghhas sat himselfonthe hills above the plainbeneaththe walls of
Montmajour like aDe Koninck ‐ one of the places I did photograph on
my 1975 trip. He combined elements from the contents of his musée
imaginaire ‐ Ruysdael and De Koninck and Hobbema ‐ with Monet,
Pissarroand even Cézanne (hard‐edged,red‐roofedProvencalfarmhouses).

21

An Arlesian street scene, like that shown in The yellow house, could

just about beaccommodated to the mode of seventeenth-century t o w n ‑
scapes. Arles was asmallish but growing t o w n with some industry, yet
lying snugly in the surrounding wheatfields. It is tempting to compare
the relation of this t o w n to its agricultural environs to the kinds of

31]

185

95 VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

1888

juxtaposition that occur in other Dutchpaintings, for instance the views
aCross the fields to Haarlem,sooftenpaintedby Ruysdael. Indeedsuch
a landscape formula and the relations it represents do come to mind
when looking at Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings of Arles seen
from outside in the fields. Despite the signs of modernindustry and the
railway line in apainting like Arles seen from the wheatfields [31], the
placingof the harvestingactivities in the foreground and the towers and
buildings of the t o w n on ahigher plane in the background reworks the
sequence of country and t o w n in their relative places in the pictorial
space typical in the Haarlemtjes of Ruysdael.22 From the viewing posi‑
tion Van Gogh chose to draw this scene, the uneasy edge where t o w n
meets country, which had been so difficult and confused when he lived
in the expanding city of The Hague, is here simply elided. The railway
line provides aclear boundary and the pictorial ordering to which Van
Gogh has subjected the t o w n of Arles and its surrounding countryside
locates the t o w n in aposition of dominance and guardianship over the
fertile fields soactively harvested beneath its spires and chimneys.

Van Gogh’s use of the genres and modes of seventeenth‐century Dutch
art in 1888‐9 has been recognised by other scholars, though differently
interpreted. In his article ‘Van Gogh en de zeventiende eeuw’, Hans
Jaffé has accounted for the instances of comparison in landscape, t o w n ‑
scape, portrait and seascape by arguing that both Van Gogh and the
seventeenth‐century Dutch School can be labelled realist.23 His essay
concluded: ‘Vincent never abandoned the realism that sprang from the
same r o o t as that of the masters of the seventeenth century. Instead
he gave it added meaning.’24 In support of his argument Jaffé quotes
extensively from Van Gogh’s correspondence with EmileBernardin the
summer of 1888. In these letters we find Van Gogh exhorting Bernard
to study seventeenth‐century Dutch art and follow its example in his
current work. V
Or, les Hollandais, nous les voyons peindre des choses telles quelles, apparem‑
m e n t sans raisonner, comme Courbet peignait ses belles femmes nues. Ils font les
portraits, paysages, natures‐mortes. On peut étre plus béte que cela et faire de
plus grandes folies. Sinous nesavons que faire, m o n cher copain Bernard, alors
nous faisons comme eux, si cen’était que pour ne pas laisser s’évaporer notre
rare force cérébrale en de stériles meditations métaphysiques qui ne sauraient
mettre en bocal le chaos, lequel est chaotique . . . Nous pouvons ‐ et voila ce
que faisaient les Hollandais désespérémment malins pour les gens a systeme ‑
nous pouvons peindre un atome dechaos, un cheval, un portrait, ta grand’mere,
les pommes, un paysage.

(Now we see that the Dutch paint things just asthey are, apparently without
reasoning about it, just like Courbet painted his beautiful female nudes. They
did portraits, landscapes, still‐lives. Well, one can be stupider than that and
commit greater follies. If wedon’t know what to do, my dear comrade Bernard,
then let’s do asthey did, if only n o t to let our rare intellectualpower evaporate
in sterile metaphysical meditations which cannot possibly put the chaos into
a goblet, aschaos is chaotic. . .. We can ‐ and this was done by the Dutcl ‑
men who are sodesperately naughty in the eyes of the people with asystem ‑
we can paint anatom of chaos, ahorse, aportrait, your grandmother, apples, a
landscape.) (LB 14)

It seems that we have a clear statement in this passage of what the
seventeenth‐century Dutchrepresentedfor Van Gogh.They are painters
of things,places and peoplethrough still lives,portraits and landscapes.25
They paint from models and motifs through certain pictorial formulae.
As such they can becalled naturalists in oppositionto other, more alleg‑
oricalor symbolic,modes.Van Goghpresents the example offered bythe
seventeenth‐century Dutch(for himself and Bernard in 1888) in opposi‑
tion to metaphysical mediations and ‘les gens asysteme’. These phrases
refer to the debates and competingpositions current in Parisianart circles,
the rationalist Synthetic systems of Seurat, the religious speculations and

97 VA N G O G H , 1888‐9

interest in Italian primitives of Bernard, the Baudelairian fantasies of
Degas.This poses acrucial question. How could Van Gogh accommod‑
ate seventeenth‐century Dutch art asamodel for modern artists within
the current vanguard’s debates andpractices? Perhaps they offered avalid
model for apractice based on models and motifs from life, asopposed
to amore ‘abstracted’ approach.26 This would suggest Van Gogh was re‑
asserting a‘realist’ stance. Seventeenth-century Dutch art offered away
for painters to approach the chaos of the changing world, provided a
means through art of ordering one’s perceptions of it,situatingoneself in
relations to people, things and places. But, asI have argued, in 1888‐9
Van Gogh was functioning in profoundly displaced and imaginary rela‑
tions to people, things and places in away which radically undermines
any such claim for him asa realist. He was, I would suggest, an art
historicist atthis point,working with aborrowed world, asecond‐hand
grasp on arhetorical ‘reality’ mediated by painting d’autrefois ‐ from
another time.
The Van Gogh‐Bernard correspondence of 1888‐9 provides us with

the most lengthy and extensive discussions of this difficult paradox. It
was from the Bernard letters and conversations with that artist that, in
I890, Albert Aurier was to draw ‐ in preparationof his critical account of
Van Gogh’s work ‐ his ideas about Van Gogh’s eccentric modernity and
his relationto his seventeenth‐century Dutchpredecessors.Aurier wrote
of Van Gogh as‘ce compatriote et non indigne descendant des vieux
maitres deHollande’” (this compatriot and n o t unworthy descendant
of the Old Masters of Holland). This comment echoes what Gauguin,
cited above, also clearly stated.

Withdrawal and consolidation in the homeland of art:
towards ‘a purer Nature’
When hemovedto Arles Van Gogh attempted to produce aprogramme
for his o w n modernart practice by forging asynthesis betweenthe ideas
and procedures he had brought with him from Holland and acareful,
selective reworkingof materials and theories hehadencountered during
his t w o years in the French capital. In aletter of August 1888, to his
brother, hemade the following statement of his position:
Il y a seulement que je trouve que ce que j’ai appris a Paris s’en W, et que
je reviens a mes idées qui m’étaient venues a la campagne, avant de connaitre
les impressionistes. Et je serais peu étonné, si sous peu les impressionnistes
trouveraient aredire sur mafagon defaire, qui aplutot été fécondée par les idées
deDelacroix, que par les leurs. Car aulieu dechercher arendre exactement ce
que j’ai devant mes yeux, je me sers de la couleur plus arbitrairement pour
m’exprimer fortement.

(It isonly that what I learnt in Paris isleavingme, and I amreturningto the idea
I have in the country before I knew the impressionists. And I should n o t be
surprised if the impressionists soon find fault with my way of working, because
it has been fertilised by Delacroix’s ideas rather than by theirs. Because instead
of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more
arbitrarily, in order to express myself more forcibly.) (LT 520)

By the summer of 1888, therefore, Van Gogh claimed that he had
retrieved many of the elements of the position he had adopted in his
final months in Holland. He recalled his adherence to the work of both
Millet and Delacroix, reasserted his ideas about the relative autonomy
of art over the motifs from life or Nature which, none the less, still
remained the point of departure -‐ the source of representation ‐ and
rehearsed his convictions that colour was the significant means for pro‑
ducing an effective artistic statement.28 The reappearance of these ideas
did n o t constitute aregression. He was proposing them asone possible
solution to the crisis in the new art centred in Paris. In another letter
datable to about 18 September 1888, Van Gogh returned to the issues
raised in LT 520, but he n o w made clear his relationship to contem‑
porary French painting, explaining why heremained aligned with the
painters despite the fact that contact with them had neither effaced nor
replaced the models and conceptual framework for his practice which
had been established prior to 1886.

Que fait Seurat?Jen’oserais pas lui montrer les études déja envoyées, mais celles
detournesols et des cabarets et des jardins, je voudrais qu’il les voie; je réfléchis
souvent a son systeme et toutefois je ne le suivrai pas du tout, mais lui est
coloriste originale etc’est la meme chose pour Signac, mais aun autre degré . . .
Mais moi ‐ je le dis franchement ‐ je reviens plutot aceque je cherche avant de
venir aParis.

(What is Seurat doing? I should n o t dare to show him the studies already sent,
but the ones of the sunflowers,the cabarets and the gardens, I would likehimto
see those. I often think of his method, although I do n o t follow it atall; but he
is anoriginal colorist, and Signac, too, though to adifferent degree . .. But I
myself‐ I tell you frankly ‐ amreturning more to what I was lookingatbefore
I came to Paris.) (LT 539)

This letter confirms Van Gogh’s acknowledgement of Seurat’s import‑
ance on the avant‐garde Parisian art scene.29 Van Gogh had visited his
studio on the day he left Paris for Arles and referred to him in many
letters from Provence, expressing his wish to make an exchange with
Seurat for one of his paintings (LT 468), or to persuade Seurat to join
him and others in their scheme for aco‐operative society for artists (LT
551). Moreover, this letter suggests that some of the urbanmotifs which
Van Gogh had been painting in Arles, such asthe public gardens with

99 V A N GOGH, 1888‐9

their bourgeois promenaders,” or the cabaret or café scenes,31 represent
a greater concern with the issues raised by Seurat ‐ and hence m e t r o ‑
politan modernity ‐ than Van Gogh was prepared to admit. His refer‑
ence to the paintings of the sunflowers,32 painted in intense yellows,
indicates the area of common interest in a desire to achieve intense
colour through amore Synthetic” and systematic application of the laws
of colour combination and contrast following the example set by the
work of Eugene Delacroix.
It was this combination of areas of general agreement and divergence

which enabled Van Gogh to participate personally in French vanguard
painting while, ideologically and formally, hereverted to the ideas that
hehad brought with him to Paris. His painting after 1888 continued to
be aseries of experiments undertaken in the search for aviable modern
art practice in which heenjoyed no greater certainty than in the varying
paths hehad trodden in the same pursuit during his years in Holland.
The difference is that hewas no longer working in isolation. He could
situate himself aspart of anartistic community, aself‐confessed sense of
the context for which hewas producing, amore specific notion of the
publics for whom hewas working. In attempting to produce aworkable
space and practice for himself within these confusing and contradictory
conditions, Van Gogh had to negotiate the options on offer. He called
on his o w n past practice, asmuchason current trends in Parisianpaint‑
ing represented above all by Seurat and his circle. In addition helooked
carefully at the experiments being undertaken by Paul Gauguin in Pont
Aven in Brittany, and by Emile Bernard, who was poised insecurely
between the positions of Seurat and Gauguin.

34

It was with these t w o artists, Bernard and Gauguin, that Van Gogh

established a working contact, corresponding with both of them and
hoping to set up ajoint studio either in Arles or Pont Aven.35 They t o o
had Withdrawn from Paris,partly because the capital was t o o expensive
a place to live for artists of limited means. But, of equal importance,
although for differing and complex reasons, was the fact that the sites of
Paris and its banlieues were no longer available asthe spaces or subjects
for their representations. A letter of about 18June 1889 provides a
revealingexposition of how Van Gogh retrospectively conceived of this
move away from Paris.
Lorsquependant quelque temps tu auras vue ces deux études, ainsi que celle du
lierre, mieux que par des paroles je pourrai peut~étre re donner une idée des
choses dont Gauguin, Bernard et moi o n t quelquefois causé et qui nous o n t
préoccupé; cen’est pas un retour auromantique ou indes idées religieuses, non.
Cependant enpassant par leDelacroix,davantage que cela paraisse,par lacouleur
et un dessin plus volontaire que l’exactitude trompe‐l’oeil, on exprimerait une
nature decampagne plus pure que la banlieue, les cabarets deParis . . . Que cela

w fi – fi i ‐ ‘ T ‐ r fi ‐ T ‐ S fi ‐ – A z ‐ v ‐ v j – ‐ v – ‐ : ‐ ‐ – – . – ~ ‐ – fl ‐ w ‐ u ‐ c w m fi

F R A M I N G F R A N C E 1 0 0 1 0 1

existe ou n’existe pas, nous le laissons de coté, mais nous croyons que la nature 5
s’étend audela de St. Ouen.
(When you have looked at these t w o studies for some time, and that of the ivy
aswell, it will perhaps give you some idea, better than words could, of the
things that Gauguin and Bernardand I sometimes used to talk about, and which
we’ve thought about a good deal; it is n o t a return to romantic or religious
ideas, no. Nevertheless, by going by Delacroix, more than is apparent, by col‑
our and a more spontaneous drawing than delusive precision, one could express
apurer nature ofa countryside compared with the suburbs [1a banlieue] and
cabarets of Paris . . . Whether it exists or n o t is something we may leave aside,
but wedo believe that nature extends beyond St. Ouen.) (my italics) (LT 595)

36

The phrase ‘apurer nature of acountryside’ invites comparison with

the terms in which Van Gogh had represented his move from another
city,The Hague,to the ruralprovinces of Drenthe and Brabant in 1883‐ .
4 in which he contrasted the calm, ordered peacefulness of the country ;
to the bustling confusions of the modern city. However, the final sen‐ l
tences of this quotation indicate acrucial difference in his conception of ,
the countryside in 1888‐9,for there is n o w real doubt about the possib- 1
ility of such aplace of purity and peace in reality.Although Van Gogh’s
conception of the ‘country’ was always dislocated, between 1881 and
1885 he had attempted to produce compelling images of contempor‑
ary social conditions of change in rural society. By 1888 Van Gogh’s
engagement with the social and historical realities of the modern world
was less overt and secure. The world of art increasingly became for him
a substitute, an imaginary and alternative world which could provide
consolation in face of the difficult social realities in which heno longer ;
believed art could directly intervene.

37

This ‘withdrawal’ operated on anumber of levels: practical and, more

significantly, ideological. Van Gogh physically removed himself from
Paris, from the moderncity, and retreatedto amore agriculturally based
area of France.38 This move, however, signifies a refusal to engage with
the modern city asthe subject of his art practice. He was unwilling to
take on the issues soinsistently opened up by Seurat’s work ‐ the awk‑
ward unavoidable complexities of the social relations of the metropolis,
the ‘classement sociale’ (socialclassification) of which one reviewer spoke
when discussingSunday afternoononthe Grandejatte (1884‐6;Chicago,
Art Institute)”Yet the place to which Van Gogh went in 1888 was n o t
a rural alternative to the urban environment. Arles was a substantial
town. The countryside ‐ the agricultural economy ‐ was asmuch in
process of modernising change. It t o o was a site of class conflict and
new economic relations. In a sense Van Gogh had discovered this for
himself when hepreviously moved from city to country. But in 1888
it was n o t the real countryside, changed or unchanging, to which Van .

VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

Gogh retreated. Provence was refracted, or rather, translated through
a range of images, memories, associations. He laid upon it meanings
dictated by this evolving ideology of artistic withdrawal which, I would
suggest, indexes Van Gogh, paradoxically, to what would become the
preferred tendency of bourgeois modernism after the t u r n of the cen‑
tury; art functioning asasurrogate in face of the complexities of social
modernity with whose representation all but afew refused to engage.
Provence represented an artistic idea, the idea of the South, exotic

and historically associatedwith earlier developments towards acompens‑
atory and displacing modern art: orientalism. In 1834 Delacroix had
travelled to Morocco and was much affected in his use of colour by the
encounter with the light and the exotic Arab and Jewish inhabitants.
The South had been the home of the Marseillais painter Adolphe
Monticelli whose ric-hly coloured works Van Gogh had discovered in
Paris.40 Cezanne, born in Aix‐en‐Provence, hadrecently returnedto live
there: Paul Gauguin had travelled to Martinique and Panama in 1887
and brought back paintings which exhibited a new richness of colour
inspired by the tropical, colonial landscape.41Van Gogh’s ‘South’ was a
fiction constructed from these artistic models, these supposed pioneers
of anew paintingbased onrichluxurious colour ‐ much asDrenthehad
served earlier asanother Barbizon‐ but with this difference: ‘Barbizon’
had been areal and particular place which the artists who worked there
represented in landscape and figure paintings; whereas that South, sig‑
nified by Delacroix, Monticelli and Gauguin, exemplified amanner of
painting, especially the use of colour, which had at best an oblique and
more often an entirely mythical relationship to the Mediterranean or
sub‐equatorial places which ostensibly inspired these artists’ interests in
and use of colour.
This eclectic construct, the South, was further extended (and further

removed from the specifics of time and place) by being assimilated to
Van Gogh’s imagined idea of the Orient, of Japan. But this ‘Japan’ was
itself composed of images whether from the Japanese coloured prints of
which hehad become soavid acollector in 1886‐8,or from the descrip‑
tions of an insensitive French tourist to the East, Pierre Loti, whose
novels such asMadame CbrysantbémeprovidedVan Goghwith aWest‑
ern view of Japanese life and landscape.42 Literary associations from
other novelists like Alphonse Daudet, who had written about Tarascon
(near Arles) and Africa, also mediated Van Gogh’s notions of the South
in addition to the poetic connotations he found in Provence ‐ but from
another epoch and country. He imagined Petrarch,Dante, Boccaccio in
Provence.

43

Provencewas thus repeatedly andvaryingly translated into representa‑

tions and ideals of Van Gogh’s enlarged muse’e imaginaire, asexotic,

F R A M I N G FRANCE 1 0 2 103

oriental, poetic, intimate.44 It was an imaginary space. However, many
of the disparate elements of this mythical construct were secured and
unified by the n o w dominant theme of Van Gogh’s artistic practice ‑
colour, which was the signifier of an aesthetic order distinct from both
the social and the natural‐ represented by the terms ‘city’ and ‘country’
which hadserved asthe polaritieswithinwhichVan Goghhadattempted .
to situate himself asanartist between 1880 and 1888.By 1888 Van Gogh
proposed the application of the laws of colour in painting asaway of
producing modernism in art (anotion to which hehad been initiated in
Nuenenby his readingand which hadbeenreinforcedby his encounters
with contemporary French artls). He was to argue that the future of
modern art lay in the expansion of the possibilities of colour ‐ that is, in .
the possibility of art asaparallel, and consolatory other, to the social
real. This idea had to bereconciled with the fact that Van Gogh, still |
hanging on to his slight understanding of mid‐century naturalism rep‑
resented by Millet and Barbizon, still believed that he should base his
painting and drawing on models and motifs drawn from ‘life’.
He was thus faced with the need to discover a place which could

furnish the motifs and models for his work ‐ he could n o t and would .
n o t invent ‐ but which could be justified within a painting practice
whose main representational means and signifying resource was colour,
and that was n o t localcolour butcolour asanindependent connotational
system. The new sites for modern art had to make sense in terms of an
artistic practice thus constituted. The South signified ‘colour’ for Van
Gogh but never at the level of its actuality ‐ where the hot sun bleaches
away the colour. Whether or n o t Provence was in fact aplace of colour,
abase for colourist painting, was incidental. Van Gogh could convince
himself that it was because he subsumed the realplace in which helived
and worked to this complex, ideological space hehad invented. It was
also a‘utopian’ ideal ‐ ‘Que cela existe ou n’existe pas, nous le laissons i
de coté’ (Whether it exists or not, is something we can leave aside) he |
had written in LT 595. .
Unlike the move from city to country in 1883, in 1888 the reality :

of the countryside was displaced by the idea of asite for the modern art ‑
of colour, thus represented.He n o t only enteredfully into a‘homelandof !
pictures’ but invented ahomeland for pictures: aplace where art could
be made, n o t a place of which art would be the representation. The
phrase ‘homeland of pictures’ is from aletter of 1880 (LT 133) in which 1
Van Gogh had first announced his intention to become an artist and
intimated atendency to conceive of art asan ‘other’ imaginary world. i
The notion of an artistic ‘homeland’ returned to his letters in 1888,
occurring in an important statement in a letter to Emile Bernard of
October that year in which the increasingly utopian character of Van

02 103 VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

Gogh’s dream of ahomelandfor the new art in the current conditions of
uncertainty and retreat is made plain. He wrote,
Or moi qui ai un pressentiment d’un nouveau monde qui crois certes a la
possibilité d’une immense renaissance de l’art. Qui crois que cet art nouveau
aura les tropiques pour patrie.
(As for me, with my presentiment of a new world, I firmly believe in the
possibility of animmense renaissance of art. Whoever believes in this new art
will have the tropics for ahomeland.) (LB 19a)

The tropics of which Van Gogh spoke here were an extension of the
imaginary, orientalist idea of the South. It signifies, however, the emer‑
gence of anew feature in Van Gogh’s ideological responses to contem‑
porary society and ideologicalconceptions of the possibilities of art and
practice within it. It represents the need for another space, a space of
otherness, an imaginary place, of colour, order and comfort ‐ a ‘patrie’
for artists in exile.46 Van Gogh’s vanguardism, by 1885 reactionary and
conservative, solidified into apositionof artistic disengagement from the
real conditions of modern society. The homeland of modern art would
n o t beaspecific geographical location,but rather aninventedcondition,
produced from the ideology of retreat from history: an evacuation from
involvement through art to an involvement in art asa substitute ‐ a
surrogate world.
One final case study of the most ambitious yet disastrous painting ‑

tableau in the academic sense ‐ will finally explain Gauguin’s suggestion
that the Bible has to come into Van Gogh’s idiosyncratic configuration
of modernismin, and yet radically and doubly distanced from, the land‑
scape of France.

The fantasy of consolation: modern art asa surrogate world
In June 1889, Van Gogh painted what is known asStarry night [16]. It
would seem to bealandscape painting based in the countryside outside
Van Gogh’s window at St. Paul de Mausole, St. Rémy. It shows us a
village, with tile‐roofed cottages nestling around a church, near olive
groves lyingin the lee of mountainous hills under adramatic sky with a
sun and moon and eleven stars. It was, however, no such thing.”
It was for Van Gogh his demonstration ‐ a manifesto painting ‐ of

modernart, andin its attemptedinterventionin the makingof modernart
in the Parisian avant‐garde, this painting would also indicate that mod‑
ern art was precisely to be‘religious’: asurrogate world of consolation.
One of the realproblems for art history is the surprisingfact that dur‑

ingthe summer of 1888,but months after his arrival atArles, Van Gogh
planned to make areligious painting with overt biblical subject‐matter

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based upon traditional iconography: Christ with anangel in the Garden
of Olives. The painting was begun in June, but the artist scraped off the
canvas. The attempt was resumedin August andSeptember andVan Gogh
described it to Emile Bernard as‘une toile importante’ (LB 19). Again
the canvas was scraped and Van Gogh wrote to his brother:

J’ai pour la deuxiéme fois gratté une étude de Christ avec l’ange dans le jardin
d’oliviers. Parce qu’ici je vois oliviers vrais, mais jeneveux ouplutot je neveux
pas n o n plus le peindre sans modéles, mais j’ai cela entete avec dela couleur, la
nuit étoilée, la figure du Christ bleue, les bleus les plus puissants,et l’angejaune
citron rompu. Et tous les violets depuis unpourpre rouge sangjusqu’a lacendre
dans le paysage.

(For the second time I have scraped off astudy of Christ with the angel in the
Garden of Olives. You see, I can see real olives here, but I cannot or rather I
will n o t paint any more without models; but I have the thing in my head with
the colours, a starry night, the figure of Christ in blue, all the strongest blues,
and the angel blended Citron‐yellow. And every shade of violet, from ablood‑
red purple to ashen, in the landscape.) (LT 540)

Drawing upon his knowledge of Corot, Delacroix and, above all,
prints byRembrandt,mediatedbythe positioningof the latterby Charles
Blanc asthe most modernof religious painters through his use of lumin‑
ous contrasts of black and white, Van Gogh’s project still seems an
extraordinary move for anartist who iswondering what Seurat isdoing
with nightclubs and pleasure gardens. This letter suggests one means
Van Gogh could conceive in 1888 for reconciling atotally traditional
and academic approach to a subject painting with what he had derived
from his sojourn in Paris. A relatively rare iconography ‐ Christ in
garden succoured by the angel appears only in the Gospel of St. Luke ‑
will be modernised by a colour scheme (Delacroix made simple) and a
sympathetic landscape setting (Corot).
Why the repeated destruction of the painting? Perhaps the eclectic

borrowing from Corot, Delacroix and Rembrandt appeared t o o direct;
the sources almost plagiarised. Perhaps,after readingthe letters of Emile
Bernard and Gauguin about the paintings they had competitively pro‑
ducedin August 1888,one ofwhich Gauguincalled ‘untableauréligieux’,
known n o w asVision after the Sermon (1888; Edinburgh,NationalGal‑
lery of Scotland), Van Gogh had doubts about the viability and mod‑
ernity of religious painting with obvious biblical subject‐matter. The
elements were asyet unresolved and would n o t be resolved until all
figures disappeared and landscape won out.
But a year later, his doubts had hardened into convictions and we

find Van Gogh bitterly attacking his erstwhile correspondents, Gauguin
for his figurative version of Christ in the Garden of Olives (1889; West

04 105 VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

Palm Beach, National Gallery of Art), and especially Bernard for the
latter’s painting Agony in the Garden, also known asChrist in Geth‑
semane [32]. Van Gogh (LT 614) denounced them asnightmares and
added that it was the painter’s job n o t to dream but to think. He found
their paintings archaic, stylised, abstracted. They lacked the ‘sentiment
vrai des choSes’ (the true sentiment of real things); the phrase Theo van
Goghused condemning Starry night (T 19). In aletter to EmileBernard
written in the autumn of 1889,Van Goghproposed aradically different
conception of a religious art that was based in the real and the poss‑
ible,namely through anew kind of landscapepainting. He described his
o w n paintings of women pickingolives,Olivepicking (November 1889;
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and aView of storm‐struck
trees, The garden ofSt.Paul’sHospital(October 1889; Essen,Folkwang
Museum), aswell asawheatfield at sunrise, Landscape with rising sun
(November 1889; Princeton, New Jersey, private collection). The last
one was, heclaimed, aconsoling, luminous and peaceful motif.
Jete parle de ces deux toiles, surtout alors dela premiere,pour te rappeler que
pour dormer une impression d’angoisse, on peut chercher a le faire sans viser
droit aujardin deGethsemane historique; que pour donner unmotif consolant
et doux il n’est pas nécessaire de représenter les personnages du sermon sur la
montagne.

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straight at the historic Garden of Gethsemane; and that it is n o t necessary to
portray the characters of the Sermon on the Mount in order to produce a
consoling and gentle motif.) (LB21)

In this letter we can detect a major shift. Landscape painting n o w
replaces subject paintings with figurative compositions by paintings
of things from the natural environment which are n o t in themselves
the topic of the work. The pathetic fallacy of Romantic theories of
landscape, which structured nineteenth‐century readings of the work of
seventeenth‐century Dutchpainters likeRuysdael,allowedVan Goghto
produce this concept of religious art based in landscape painting. Yet it
is n o t landscape and especially n o t modernlandscape.That would imply
the inhabited,man‐made,worked, social geography of moderncapitalist
space of productionandconsumption. The premiss of Van Gogh’s argu‑
ment is tinged with agreat deal of Thomas Carlyle’s pantheistic concep‑
tion of Nature asaspiritual hieroglyph.Modernity ispresent only in the
Protestant rejectionof Italianate and Catholic Christianiconography for
the presentation of themes such assuffering, consolation and joy by a
subjectivist representation of the imaginary construct ‘Nature’, which
was Carlyle’s synonym for the divinity. The sun, moon, stars, trees,
ripening wheat, grass become metaphors for asymbolically dense uni‑
verse that can bedeciphered with the appropriate lexicon.
Between June 1888 and the autumn of 1889, Van Gogh’s position,

therefore, dramatically changed. Why? Competition and failure. In June
1889 Van Gogh wrote to his brother about t w o paintings, one of which
is n o w called Starry night.
Enfinj’ai un paysage avec des oliviers et aussi une nouvelle étude deciel étoilé.
Tout enn’ayant pas vu les dernieres études ni deGauguinni deBernard, je suis
assez persuadé que ces deux études,que jetecite, sont dans unsentiment parallele.
(Enfin, I have a landscape with olive trees and a new study of a starry sky.
Though I have n o t either Gauguin’s or Bernard’s last canvases, I ampretty well
convinced that these last t w o studies I’ve spoken of are parallel in feeling.)
(LT 595)
In ignorance of the recent t u r n in both Gauguin’s and Bernard’s work

(he was only later to find o u t about their move into biblical iconography
lambasted in the letter of autumn 1889 cited above), Van Gogh pre‑
sumed a continued consonance with his own. Starry night was a some‑
what belated reply to both these ‘comrades’, based on what he had
understoodof their projects in late 1888,when Gauguin had encouraged
him to put paintings together by assembling diverse elements from both
the world o u t there and his own, already freighted memories.What Van
Gogh meant by ‘sentiment parallele’ is elaborated in the subsequent
passages of the letter which I have already quoted. This is the context

36 107 – V A N G O G H , 1888‐9
= w

for Van Gogh’s statement that he and his friends are n o t returning to
romantic or religious ideas, but are passing by way of Delacroix, who
stands for a use of heightened colour and arbitrary drawing to avoid
illusionism and enhance effect. Although they all admire ‘Paris’ ‐ the
Impressionists and their Neo‐Impressionist reinterpreters ‐ Gauguin,
Bernard and Van Gogh are searching for ‘tout a u t r e chose’. This other
thing ‐ the purer n a t u r e of the countryside ‐ may n o t really exist. In
opposition to the social realities ‐ conflicts and confusions ‐ of the
modern urban world in Paris, and its working‐class suburbs like St.
Ouen ‐ the site of Seurats painting ‐ they are trying to produce la
peinture plus consolante’ (the painting of consolation)

This phrase c a n n o t be understood without grasping its connotational
freight within Van Gogh’s heavily art‐historicist discourse that had been
elaborated in the letters to Emile Bernard in the summer of 1888. Rem‑
brandt, proposed by Charles Blanc as the sublime leader of the Dutch
seventeenth‐century School and thus a model for a modern a r t that was
unashamedly religious in sentiment, is in these letters represented asthe
painter of luminous and consoling a r t . Thus this letter can be decoded to
suggest that Van Gogh believed himself and his comrades in Pont Aven
to be producing a religious a r t equivalent to what Van Gogh read, via
nineteenth-century a r t historians like Blanc, in ‘Rembrandt’. Further on
in this same letter, Van Gogh invokes Rembrandt directly:
Isaacson et de Haan réussiront pas n o n plus peut‐étre, mais en Hollande ils o n t
senti le besoin d’affirmer que Rembrandt faisait dela grande peinture et n o n pas
du trompe l‘oeil, eux aussi sentaient a u t r e chose.
(Isaacson and de Haan perhaps will n o t succeed any better. But in Holland they
have felt the need to affirm that Rembrandt produced great painting and n o t
trompe l’ceil; they also feel/sense something different.) ( LT 595)

Van Gogh thus argues: Gauguin, Bernard and he are painting things
radically opposed to Paris as site and subject of modernist representa‑
tion. But they are n o t falling back into romanticism, Pissarro’s criticism
of Monet and Renoir in the 18805. Equally, we m u s t add that they are
n o t regressing to the positivism of Impressionism in the 18705. Beyond
suburbs such asSt. Ouen and their sordid social realities, they will find
a ‘purer n a t u r e of the countryside’. Borrowing the trees, hills, cottages
and m o n u m e n t s of a world beyond the industrial bnnlz’ene, they will
create a world that does n o t (and indeed could no longer) exist. Starry
night is n o t a real Provencal landscape (a place), but it is a possible
and imaginable ‘landscape’ (kind of painting). The Alpilles foothills that
Van Gogh could see from his hospital windows, the cypresses and
olives from the surrounding countryside, the cottages with their sharp‑
angled roofs, these draw upon a locality and its données provengnles,

” m e w – “ a wm “ P M

M =

its regional givens, just asBernard and Gauguin had utilised ‘les données f\. n u ‘ 6
bretonnantes’ of Breton pardons and c o s t u m e s in their work in 1888. 1
But the scene is a ‘tableau’, an invented composition destined to signify
o r, in academic terminology, to express consolation in the face of the .
anxiety and heartbreak ‐ the loss of certainty and the securely remem- \“
bered ‐ created by modernity.

The complex genealogies of each of the elements of Starry night and
their signification within Van Gogh’s eclectic discursive universe is far
t o o dense a topic for this short chapter.48 The important fact here is, _
however, that the painting was illegible to its first audience for the very
excess of this idiosyncratic connotational system. The painting was read
n o t asan Agony, but asan Angelus; n o t asa modernised Rembrandt but
as a regressive bit of rural nostalgia harking back to Millet.

Gauguin and Bernard saw it as an overagitated and hastily painted
landscape ‐ just a village by moonlight, in Theo van Gogh’s dismiss‐ “ m y
ive phrase. Starry night did n o t and could n o t signify. The letters Van
Gogh w r o t e in 1889 denouncing Gauguin and Bernard w e r e his angry ff
response both to their misrecognition of his work aspart of acontinuing ‘j’
dialogue with them and to his discovery of the radical divergence that i for
had opened up between his concept of modern a r t and theirs. The paint‐ 35
ing was a decisive failure in its avant-gardist c o n t e x t . Yet its underlying ;\
strategies and resources can be seen to have sustained Van Gogh’s n e x t 5‘- ‘ j ;
moves in his work: painting ‘Memories of the North’ and copies.49 The 33]
continuity lies in the underlying tropes of memory and a r t historicism L a z ;
that I suggest frame Van Gogh’s n o t seeing Provence.

In May 1890, Van Gogh produced a painting called The resurrection
of Lazarus [33] in which he made use of a motif from an etching of the
same name by Rembrandt [34], indeed the etching Charles Blanc m o s t
celebrated. On receiving aprint after the etching, Van Gogh commented
that it made him think of what Charles Blanc had said about it. Blane
praised the dramatic composition, the expressive physiognomies, the
eloquent gestures and the disposition of light and shade that served to
render a miraculous scene and convey the emotional responses amongst
its witnesses. F o r Blanc, Chiaroscuro was n o t merely a technical pro‑
cedure; it was the signifying and affective medium. The fall of light
stands for the life‐renewing power of the central, divine figure. Baroque
composition becomes modern in the humanitarian vision of the Christ
reflected in the surrounding figures’ faces and gestures. Van Gogh’s
somewhat simplified reading of Blane allowed him to imagine that he
could incorporate and update the Rembrandt project by substituting
complementary colour combinations for the Dutch master’s Chiaroscuro.
Van Gogh’s hope that a system of colour could generate a comparable 34]
semiotic response was, however, avain one. ‘La combinaison de couleurs L a z ;

8 109 ‘ VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

33] Vincent van Gogh, The resurrection of
Lazarus, 1890

34] Rembrandt (after), The resurrection of
Lazarus

m e ‘ _n , . » v – W W W W . – – y q ‐ y – ‐ 1 ‐ – . ~ m m w q u w » – fi h w w ‘ w ‐ m w m v ‐ ” w w . w – n. .. , . ,,
– – | – . . . . v l

F R A M I N G FRANCE 1 1 0 I I I

ainsiparleraitpar elle-méme delameme chose qu’exprime leclair‐obscur
del’eau‐forte’ (The combination of colours thus will by itself speak of
the same things asthe Chiaroscuro of the etching), he w r o t e in LT 632.
Darkness and light have huge and widely disseminated metaphorical
loads in Western, Christian culture. But does violet? or pink and green
stripes? or yellow? Can one artist’s colour mythology do the same job
asaculturally coded tradition?
Most art historians describe Van Gogh’s painting as a copy of

Rembrandt’s etching. It is not . Van Gogh has lifted several figures but
he has made radical changes. The figures are placed in alandscape. Van
Gogh has invented a wheatfield and hills which are n o t part of the
original etching. He has relocated the Rembrandtean figures outside,
and n o t inside, the cave. He has changed the time of day, or at least
defined one for the scene. The event does n o t take place in adarkened
cave at night but in the morning with a huge luminous sunrise. Most
significantly, Van Gogh has omitted the figure of Christ. This omission
dispossesses the work of its immediate religious anchorage. Some might
argue that the sun substitutes for Christ ‐ apantheistic replacement of
dubious theological justification, however. While the sun can and does
help life on earth, it cannot besaid miraculously to restore life to the
dead. Moreover, the sun is n o t even painted asthe source of light in the
painting and thus asthe sign of miraculous power of life over death.
In his essay on Van Gogh in January 1890, the critic Albert Aurier pro‑
posed aheliomythic allegory in Van Gogh’s work to explain the recur‑
rence of the sun in hispaintings.But Van Goghwas n o t asunworshipper
and did n o t entertainmysticalbeliefs in itspower.A moreprosaic analysis
of the theme of the sun in his written work suggests that the sun was the
sign of the South, and the South was the homeland of colourist painters
and, therefore, the sun was meant to signal the modernising of art by
Van Gogh.
Notareferenceto the southernclimate, the sun was usedto recodeVan

Gogh’s borrowings from artists of the previous generations ‐ Delacroix
and Millet‐-sothat hecouldpalpably signalhis own, modernisingmove
on those he, none the less, had to evoke in order to sustain his Own
insertion into their tradition, in order to appropriate their legitimation.
For instance, the sun in apaintingof the sower references, defers to and
then differs from the grey tonalism of Millet who made the theme of
sowing his o w n signature.
Thus, while putting in the sun asthe laconic sign of Van Gogh’s

totally non‐esoteric meaning system that runs along a daisy chain of
sun, South, colour, Millet, Delacroix and his o w n landscape paintings,
Van Gogh negatedthe meaningof the Rembrandtprint of The resurrec‑
tion of Lazarus entirely. For without the Christ figure, the religious

3 1 1 1 ‘ VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

subject‐matter ceases to make any sense at all. How is Lazarus being
raised? To what are the women reacting? I would like to suggest that
these figures are n o t meant to function asfigurative and expressive ele‑
ments in apainting about the miracle of resurrection. They are ciphers,
citations. They invoked ‘Rembrandtness’. The use of violet‐yellow
colour complementaries signal ‘Delacroix’ and the sun ‘Millet’. This is
what the painting is about in away comparable to aprevious manifesto
painting produced when Starry night’s predecessor, The potato enters,
also failed to belegible: Open Bible,extinguishedcandle andnovel([17],
1885;Amsterdam,RijksmuseumVincent van Gogh).Van Gogh’spainting
‘after Rembrandt’ was n o t acopy and it was n o t atranslation. It was a
manifesto ‐ a message to Gauguin and Bernard. In the letter he had
written to denounce Bernard’s nightmarish medievalising abstraction of
religious art, Van Gogh stated that instead of painting historic Gardens
of Gethsemane or Sermons on the Mount, one could express sensations
and hence modern, universally accessible (the source for such ideas is
the art criticism of Thoré) meanings inherent in such stories by means of
landscape and colour. A consoling motif could beaffected by painting a
wheatfield at sunrise, ascene filled with warmth and light from the gold
of the wheat to the gold of the sun.
Pointing its hoped‐for viewers towards Delacroix and Rembrandt,

the painting also leads us back to Starry night which had been such a
disappointing failure asanexemplar of his new, surrogate religious art,
based upon landscape, based upon the imaginary confection of ‘a purer
Nature’, with its revelations of celestial illumination in the darkness of
night ‐ another citation from the sky of aRembrandtprint.The Lazarus
paintingpointedly employs adifferent, more didactic strategy. Borrowed
motifs, coded signs, intertextual references become the basis for articu‑
lating n o t the particular meanings to befound in any one of the works
by Van Gogh or other artists, but for an artistic agenda that negates
religious art in order to generate amodern art that will succeed to its
place and function: aconsolation in the face of the impossible complex‑
ity and social contradictions of modernity.
The homeland of pictures in which Van Gogh had attempted to

situate himselfwhen hefirst decided in 1880 to try o u t the professionof
art‐making and intervene in the social world of communication through
art was dramatically transformed within ten years. Paintings themselves
purported to beaworld, to offer access to animaginary and surrogate
world of art, displaced from engagement with the pressing realities of
society and history. Van Gogh had dreamt of another Brabant, which
was accessed through art, another social order, calm and serene like that
which he imagined from paintings of the time seventeenth‐century
patriciate Hollandto have been.By the later 18805 hewas stilldreaming,

W A ‐ m m w m f m ” w ‘ fi fi ” ’ ” ” ‘ ‘

F R A M I N G FRANCE 1 1 2 113
w

this time of another Provence, another South, which was his dreamed‐of,
childhood and art‐history‐book Brabant transformed by colour. Within
anaesthetic vocabulary that ran the gamut from orientalism to romanti‑
cismvia art historicism,nestledadistinct ideologicalpositionwhich was
ultimately reactionary and conservative for all its utopian fantasies. Van
Gogh constantly looked back to animage of anolder, hierarchical and
traditional social order which hecould imaginatively access by progress‑
ively learning to make paintings that functioned aesthetically to rein‑
state that world’s social logic. But it was an impossible project and it
culminated in the perverse combination, after 1889, of anart of memory
and the direct citation: the painted copy or translation.
Van Gogh’s artistic history is distinct and separate from that of the

Parisian avant-garde to which he is so often mistakenly assimilated. In
going to Arles, it looks asif hewas following the trend set by Gauguin
and Bernard in Brittany. Van Gogh was not, however, just another
tourist in, or coloniser of, regional difference. He was a conservative
Dutchman abroad asan artist, ideologically adrift in the challenging
conditions of capitalist modernity. Yet, in his retreat from the modern
world, signified by Paris and its metropolitan tropes represented by
Seurat, he, none the less, found his way to the path of bourgeois mod‑
ernism and into the aesthetically autonomous and imaginary world of
art assurrogate and consolation. In n o t seeing Provence, or seeing its
fields and hills only asthe support for a world that he wanted to be, if
n o t true, still possible, he disengaged from France in all its peculiar
modernity ‐ urban aswell asrural‐ and herevealed the weakness of his
grasp on the project of modernism that had momentarily dominated in
Paris from 1862 to 1886.When you look closely at these paintings, you
just don’t know what you are seeing and, most of the time, they give
you little sense of what they meant to the artist who painted them. The
trouble is that because Van Gogh’s twentieth‐century viewers are tour ‑
ists, and because we travel with his images aspart of our ideological
baggage, we think we see Provence when we are n o t seeing it at all. We
see ‘Van Gogh’ and the travel companies know it when they realise the
potentialof sellingtheir locality throughhis associations and what were,
ultimately, his radical misrepresentations.

Notes
1 An example of this kind of project isJean PaulClébert and PierreRichard’s, Van
Gogh and die Provence, Marburg, Hitzeroth, 1989. Detailed identification of
locations in Provence painted and drawn by Van Gogh are to befound in t w o
volumes by Ronald Pickvance, Van Gog/9 in Aries and Van Gogh in Auwers and
St. Remy,New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984 and 1986respectively.

113 VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

II

12
I

14
15

DeanMacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, New York,
Schocken Books and London, Macmillan Press Ltd., 1976. For adiscussion of
MacCannell’s paradigm of tourism and modernity in its relation to modern art,
see Griselda Pollock, Avant‐Garde Garnhits: Gender and the Colour of Art
History, London,Thames 86Hudson, 1992.
Fred Orton and I discussed this ‘avant‐garde gambit’ in our ‘Les Données
bretonanntes: la prairie de représentation’ [1980], reprinted in Fred Orton and
Griselda Pollock,Avant‐Gardes andPartisansReviewed,Manchester,Manches‑
ter University Press, 1996.
Marseille, the only other city than Paris,hadacommune in 1870 and the agricul‑
tural workers of the region were politically active and determinedly on the left
during the Third Republic. During the 18805 the peasantry of Provence was
quite militant,and becameinvolvedin marxistpolitics asaresult of the economic
crises between 1871and 1914.The decline of the old rural economy in Provence
led to growing support for socialist solutions. See Tony Judt, Socialism in Pro‑
vence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
See Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature, Manchester, Manchester Univer‑
sity Press, 1990 for anelaborate analysis of the formation of this concept and its
relation to bourgeois culture within which landscape painting functioned asa
significant instance.
Michael Jacobs, The Good Life, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1985; see also Nina
Liibbren,Artists’ Colonies in Europe,Universityof Leeds,Ph.D.thesis, 1996,for
anextensive analysis of the phenomenon.
All references to Van Gogh’s letters are from The Complete Letters of Vin‑
cent van Gogh, London, Thames 86Hudson, 1959 (English translation), and
Verzamelde Brieven van Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam and Antwerp, Wereld‑
Biblioteek, 1973 (originaltext in DutchandFrench).Quotationshavebeenchecked
against facsimile copies of the original letters (LT=letter to Theo van Gogh, the
artist’s brother; LW to his sister Wilhelmina van Gogh; LR to the Dutchpainter
Anton van Rappard; LB to the French artist Emile Bernard; T by Theo van
Gogh ‐ numbering is identical in both sources).
Griselda Pollock, ‘Stark encounters: modern life and urban work in Van Gogh’s
drawings of The Hague 1881‐3’,Art History, 6:3 (September 1983),pp. 330‐58.
Nina Lubbren,Artists’ Colonies in Europe.
On orientalism see Mary‐Anne Stevens, Orientalismfrom Delacroix to Matisse,
London, RoyalAcademy, 1982, and the critical readingof the trope is provided
by Linda Nochlin, ‘The imaginary Orient’, [1983] in her The Politics of Vision:
Essays onNineteenth Century Society, London,Thames 86Hudson, 1991.
T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his
Followers, London, Thames 86Hudson, 1984, chap. 3, ‘The environs of Paris’.
See also PaulTucker, Monet atArgenteuil, London and New Haven,Yale Uni‑
versity Press, 1982, and Richard Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise: The Painter in
the Landscape, London and New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990.
Paul Gauguin, Intimate journals, translated by Van Wyck Brooks, London,
Heinemann, 1923, p. 9.
Paul Signac, 1894, in John Rewald ‘Extrait du Journal Inédit de Paul Signac
1894‐5’, Gazette des Beaux‐Arts, 36(1949), p. 106.
See, for instance, LW 3, 5, 12and LB 2.
This argument forms the basis of my Ph.D. thesis, Van Gogh andDutchArt: A
Study of Van Gogh’s Notion of the Modern, London University, 1980, which I

16

I7

I

20

21

amin the process of revising for publication asThe Case Against ‘Van Gogh’:
The Cities and Countries of Modernism, London,Thames 86Hudson.
Willem Burger [Théophile Thoré], Les Muse’es de la Hollande, Paris, 1858,
vol. II,p. x.
Raymond Williams discerns this slippage between childhood memory and the
fantasy of anidealisedcountryside asarecurringdimension of nineteenth‐century
literature in sofar asthe displacement from rural childhood to urban adulthood
was for several generations the formative experience of change and loss; see The
City and the Country, London, Granada Publishing, 1975.
I cannot gointo detail here about the complexities of the paintings made directly
from prints of other artists in 1889‐90 but suffice to say that the notion of
copying hardly scrapes the surface of this complicated art‐historical issue.
The panorama was one of the specific genres of landscape painting developed in
seventeenth‐century Holland. See Wolfgang Stechow,DutchLandscapePainting
of the Seventeenth Century, London, Phaidon Press, 1966.
Philips deKoninck (1619‐88)was alandscapepainter, thought, in the nineteenth
century, to havebeenapupilof Rembrandt.There was also aSalomondeKoninck
(1609‐56) who imitated Rembrandt’s works but he was n o t really a landscape
painter. Van Gogh may have confused the names of De Koninck and one of the
Ruysdaels.Mark Roskill thinks it was Salomon and n o t Jacob Ruysdaelto whose
work Van Gogh was comparing the Provencal landscape. I remained uncon‑
vinced because of the well‐documented role of the Haarlemtje-typelandscape in
Van Gogh’s work and the attention paid to Jacob Ruysdael in the critical liter‑
ature which Van Gogh read. Roskill’s Views are explained in ‘The Blue Cart and
Van Gogh’s Creative Process’, Oud Holland, 81:1 (1966), pp. 3‐19.
But it was n o t only the landscape elements of Dutch art that took on this
new significance. Both portraiture and the townscape, represented by the work
of Hals and Vermeer, also entered the arena of Van Gogh’s notion of modern
art. One example of Van Gogh’s figure painting is suggestive and complex. The
painting of Madame Ginoux, known asL’Arlésienne (New York, Metropolitan
Museum of Art), painted in October‐November 1888, shows a woman posed
against aplain coloured background, seated at atable on which lie some books,
one of which is open. Details such asthe contrasting dark dress and touch of
white fichu, the pose and the air of respectability invite comparison with sombre
bourgeois portraits by Hals and Rembrandt.But the colour scheme employed in
this portrait denotes apoint of contact with another seventeenth‐century painter
of the female figure, Vermeer. The portrait of Madame Ginoux is painted in
sharp contrasts of blue and yellow, acombination of colours which isrepeatedly
mentioned in Van Gogh’s letters from Arles in 1888 in conjunction with the
name of Vermeer (LT 521, 539, LB 12). In 1885 Van Gogh had seen Vermeer’s
Woman in bluereadingaletter (1663‐4; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseurn)in the newly
opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and he was much struck by the masterful
use of contrasts of blue and yellow in this work. There is of course no real basis
for comparison between Vermeer’s use of these colours and Van Gogh’s in
L’Arlésienne, nor in another important work based on this scheme, The yellow
house (1888; Amsterdam, RijksmuseumVincent van Gogh)which shows astreet
scene in Arles. The relationship between Van Gogh’s work and that of Vermeer
is certainly n o t a matter of derivation or limitation. ‘Vermeer’ was signified for
Van Goghby the use of t w o colours, blue andyellow. Vermeer ‐ anartist whose
colourist subtlety was sofar beyond Van Gogh ‐ was invoked by the simplistic

115 – V A N GOGH, 1888‐9

use of these colours whatever their hue. However, in the case of the painting
of Place Lamartine and his studio, The Yellow House there is another level of
‘Vermeer’ connotation,signs of anotherVermeer.The Vermeer of townscape paint‑
ings such asthe View ofDelft (1660‐1); The Hague,Mauritshuis and the smaller,
more intimate street scenes, The little street (1657‐8; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)
for instance, lies behind Van Gogh’s conception of atownscape scene, indirectly
signified by his painting of it in the colours that were the sign of Vermeer.

22 Fred Orton has shown how Van Gogh’s uneven grasp on perspective and his
use of a perspective frame frequently produced the strange extension of the
foregrounds. If one covers over the bottomtwo‐thirds of the painting,drawing a
notional line atthe levelof the standing wheat, the painting resumes the propor‑
tions of its Ruysdaelianprototype.

23 Nederlunds Kunsthistorischjuurhoe/e, 1971, pp. 363‐71.
24 Cited from English summary, ihid., p. 371.
25 Cf. LT 519. Van Gogh regretted the current tendencies in Parisian art to turn

against the examples of Millet, the generation of Delacroix, Millet, Rousseau,
Monticelli, Israels, Corot, Meunier, etc. He told Theo that a new school was
needed, like the old Dutchmen,portrait painters, genre painters,animal and still‑
life painters.

26 In the summer of 1888 Van Goghused the terms ‘abstract’ and ‘abstraction’ with
reference to the schematic use of flat colour in Japanese coloured prints (LB 6)
and to the mystical drawings of Italian primitives, in which Bernard was cur‑
rently interested on account of its ‘signification symbolique’ (LB 14).
Terms such as ‘abstract’ or ‘abstraction’ were much in use in Parisian art

circles in the 1880s.FélixFénéondescribed Seurat’s execution as‘comme abstrait’.
Gauguin had written to both Schuffenecker and Van Gogh about ‘abstracting’
from Nature. Littré’s Dictionnuire dela languefrunguise (1889) defines abstrac‑
tion: ‘Action d’abstraire, operation intellectuelle par laquelle, dans un objet, on
isole un caractere pour ne considérer que le caractere resultat de cette action’.
When Gauguin visited Van Gogh in Arles, he encouraged Van Gogh to experi‑
m e n t in this mode. Van Gogh, however, later rejected it entirely, providing in
LB 21(December 1889) grounds for his reaction by citing Millet and Delacroix,
stating that heremainedattached to Truth, to the possible, to anart closely based
on astudy of the model.
Cf. also LW 4 and LW 7, LB 19.

27 Albert Aurier, ‘Les Isolés:Vincent van Gogh’,Mercure deFrance, no. 1(January
1890),pp. 24‐9, in (But/res Posthumes, Paris, 1893,pp. 257‐65.
The phraseology moreover recalls a statement by Millet, reported in Sensier’s
biography, quoted by Van Gogh in aletter to Theo in 1885 (LT 400) on artistic
expression. In LT 400 also occurs the reference to painters ensuhots in conflict
with the bourgeois of Parisian art world.

29 On Seurat see LT 468, 471, 473, 474, 481, goo, 528, 539, 551, 553, 555. See
especially LT 500 in which Van Goghquestioned the conclusions of anarticle in
Lu Re’vue Inde’pendunte which had hailed Anquetin asthe leader of the new
tendency. Van Gogh argued ‘le chef du Petit Boulevard est sans aucun doute
Seurat’.

30 See, for instance,F 470, 471, 472, 479, 485 with reference to Sunday afternoon on
the Grundejutte by Seurat.
See Nightcufe’ (1888; NewHaven,Yale UniversityArt Gallery) and The Cafedu
Terrace ontheplace duForum (1888; Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kroner‐Muller). In

2
3

32

3
34
3
36
37

38

addition to the locations, the setting of such scenes atnight may also have been
partially aresponse to Seurat’s recent work, especially his night scene Parade de
cirque or Theparade (1887‐8; New York, MetropolitanMuseum of Art), exhib‑
ited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in the spring of 1888, and probably
in his studio at the time of Van Gogh’s visit in February 1888. See Roskill, Van
Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionist Circle, London,Thames 81; Hudson, 1970,
for further arguments to this effect.
See for example, Three sunflowers (1888; USA,private collection), Fourteen sun‑
flowers (1888;London,Tate Gallery), Twelvesunflowers(1888;Munich,Bayerische
Gemaldegalerie),Fivesunflowers (1888; destroyed): for identification see editor’s
comment on Three sunflowers in J. B. de la Faille, Vincent van Gogh, Amster‑
dam, 1970, p. 207.
The term ‘synthetic’ was put to various uses in the critical andpaintingcircles in
Paris in the late 18805 before it was adopted by Gauguinand Bernardasadescript‑
ive label. Littré, Dictionaire de la languefrangaise, defines the ‘synthese’ in the
followingways; ‘1)Proprement,composition,2)Terme dephilosophie‐ opération
mentale par laquelle on construit un systeme.’ (I) Properly, composition, 2)
Philosophical t e r m ‐ mental procedure by which one constructs asystem) As
the critic Félix Fénéon used the word in his reviews of Seurat and Gauguin in
1889, ‘synthesis’ contrasts to the more arbitrary and empiricalapproaches charac‑
teristic of the paintingmethods of the Impressionists of 1874.Van Goghemploys
the t e r m ‘synthetic’ of the stylisation of Japanese drawing in LT 511.
See Orton and Pollock, ‘Les Données bretonnantes’, on this point. The work by
Bernard of 1888, Bretbn women in a meadow (Paris, private collection) engages
with issues posed by Seurat’s Sunday at La Grandefatte, afact which Van Gogh
himselfmade clear in his report of this work to his sister Wilhelmina in November
1889: ‘J’aivu un aprés-midi deDimanche enBretagne’. He was much impressed
by this work by Bernard(LT 558a and 557, 562) and himself made acopy of it in
watercolours (Milan,Civica Galeria d’Arte Moderna di Milano).But in the paint‑
ing Bernard does n o t employ Seurat’s divisionist application of colour; instead,
colour is laid on in large flat areas.
Despite Van Gogh’s oft‐expressed pleasure in the South of France and ideal of a
future modern art based in the South or the tropics, hewas ‐ it would appear
from the letters ‐ more than willing to leaveArles and join Gauguin and Bernard
in Pont Aven (see LT 507).
The notion of ‘la peinture consolante’ is a common one in Van Gogh’s letters
from Arles and St. Rémy. It occurs significantly in LT 596 in which Van Gogh
continued the discussion of his, Gauguin’s and Bernard’s aims ‐ ‘En parlant de
Gauguin,deBernard,etdecequ’ils pourraient bien nous faire delapeintureplus
consolante . . .’ (Speaking of Gauguin and Bernard, and that they may well give
us a painting of greater consolation); one of the most oft‐quoted references is
that which occurs in LT 531 ‐ ‘Et dans un tableau je voudrais quelque chose de
consolant comme une musique’ (And in a painting I w a n t to say something
comforting asmusic is comforting).
A fuller discussion of Van Gogh’s ideologicaland politicalpositionin this period
will beundertaken later in this chapter. But see especially LW 4and LB 14, both
summer 1888.
The move to asmall t o w n (Arles) constitutes, however, akind of half‐way point
‐ a t o w n of about 23,000 inhabitants surrounded by wheatfields, olive groves,
Vineyards. See the drawings of the margins of the city in which Van Gogh

117 VA N GOGH, 1888‐9

39

4o
41

42

43

44

45

46

47

juxtaposes harvestingactivities with the railway line, gas tanks and factory chim‑
neys of the town, titledArles seenfrom the whentfields (one of which was owned
byHenriMatisse,and one of which was in the RobertHirschCollectionin Basel).
Jules Christophe, ‘Chronique. Rue Lafitte No. 1’,]0iirnaldes Artistes, quotedin
T. J. Clark, ‘The edge of the city: modernistpainting and Paris 1860‐1890’, 1978,
draft manuscript, chapter I, p. 40 for the book which later appeared as The
PaintingofModern Life:Paris in the Art oannetandhisFollowers,NewYork,
Alfred Knopf, and London, Thames & Hudson, 1984. See also Sally Medlyn,
Senmt andAnarchist Theory, MA thesis, University of Manchester, 1975, for a
different reading of Seurat’s attitudes to the social structure of Paris and its
leisure pursuits. Compare Roskill, Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionist
Circle, p. 87: ‘Seurat’s ar t was acutely contemporary in the sense that his major
canvases embodied sociological rather than simply asocial insight into the whole
character of metropolitan middle‐class life at the time.’
See A. Sheon, ‘Monticelli and Van Gogh’,Apollo, 85(June 1967),pp. 444‐8.
Gauguin’s painting of women of Martinique had been acquired by Theo van
Gogh and was much admired by his brother (see LB 5).
LB 2, 22, LT 463 for instance. For afull discussion of Van Gogh,Japan and the
effects of Loti’s novels, see F. Orton, ‘Van Gogh’s interest in Japanese prints’,
Vincent, 1:3 (1971), pp. 2 ‐ 1 2 .
In LT 539, 541, 544. Petrarch’s sojourn at Avignon provided amore specific link
with ItalianRenaissance poets and the South of France. But the association was
based upon imaginings of these poets wandering amongst the oleanders and
cypresses of thepublic gardens in Arles. In LT 544 Van GoghidentifiedGauguin,
‘the new poet’, with Petrarch.
In additionto the southern connotations, older references also occur ‐ Millet for
instance. In LT 514 Van Gogh spoke of anearbyvillage hehadvisited as‘duvrai
Millet absolument ngreste et intime’, (real Millet absolutely rustic and
homely).
Paul Signac wrote an account of the development of modern colour painting,
entitledD’EiigéneDelacroixannéo-impressionnisme,Paris, 1899.ForVan Gogh’s
ideas on the link see LT 518; for notionof Delacroix handingonthe torch to the
Impressionists, LT 539 asfor the resurrection of Delacroix in Impressionism.
The metaphor extended from aneed for sure patrie or homeland to the idea of
contemporary artists suffering from public incomprehension and misrecognition
as’exiles. See LW 13: ‘Hélas, souvent le souffle et la foi nous font défaut, ator t
certes mais ‐ etvoila ou nous revenons 5nos moutons si cependant nous voulons
travailler il faut nous soumettre et a la dureté opiniatre du temps et a notre
isolement quelquefois dur asupporter comme l’exil. Or devant nous, aprés nos
années ainsi relativement perdues la pauvreté, la maladie, la vieillesse, la folie
et toujours l’exil.’ (Alas,weoften get o u t of breath and faith, which is certainly
the wrong thing to do ‐ but there, n o w we return to our starting point: if we
nevertheless w a n t to go on working,we have to resignourselves to the obstinate
callousness of the times and to our isolation, which is sometimes as hard to
endure aslivingin exile. And sowehave to expect, after the years that relatively
speaking we lost, poverty, sickness, old age, madness and always exile.)
Alternative interpretations of this painting can befound in Albert Boime, ‘Van
Gogh’s Starry night: amatter of history and ahistory of matter’,Arts Magazine,
59 (December 1984), pp. 86‐103, and Lauren Soth, ‘Van Gogh’s agony’, Art
Bulletin, 68(June 1986), pp. 301‐13.

FRAMING FRANCE

48 Full analysis is given in my doctoral thesis and will bedeveloped in my forthcom‑
ing book The Case against ‘Vzm Gogfa’: The Cities and Countries of Modernism,
Thames Ex’ Hudson, 1995.

49 Ronald Pickvance n o t e s that in the substitution of Dutch thatched cottages for
the tiled French ones in a drawing done after the painting. we may identify the
beginnings of the project Van Gogh titled ‘Memorit-s of the Nurtli’: R. Pickvance,
Van Gog/J in SI. Rémy and Atmcrs, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1986. p. 103‘

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VISION AND
DIFFERENCE
Femininity, feminism and

histories of art
GRISELDA POLLOCK

ROUTLEDGE
London and New York

3
Modernity and the spaces of

femininity

Investment in the look is n o t as privileged in w o m e n as in men.
More than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. It sets at
a distance, and maintains a distance. In o u r culture the predomin‑
ance of the look over smell, taste, touch and hearing has brought
about an impoverishment of bodily relations. The m o m e n t the look
dominates, the body loses its materiality.
(Luce Irigaray (1978). Interview in M . – F. Hans and G. Iapouge

(eds) [ a s Pemmes, la pornographic ct i‘émtisme, Paris, p. 50)

INTRODUCTION
The schema which decorated the cover of Alfred H. Barr’s catalogue for
the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New
York, in 1936 is paradigmatic of the way modern art has been mapped
by modernist art history (Figure3.1). Artistic practices from the late nine‑
teenth century are placed on achronological flow chart where movement
follows m0vement connected by one-way arrows which indicate influence
and reaction. Over each movement a named artist presides. All those
canonized as the initiators of modern art are men. Is this because there
were no w o m e n involved in early modern mavements? N o.‘ Is it
because those who were, w e r e without significance in determining the
shape and character of modern art? N o . Or is it rather because what
modernist art history celebrates is a selective tradition which normalizes,
asthe only modernism, a particular and gendered set of practices? I would
argue for this explanation. As a result any attempt to deal with artists
in the early history of modernism who are women necessitates a
deconstruction of the masculinist myths of modernism.2

c h i – u m s
s v u l h m s u m u l l s ] l l !
u- Muir-Illa ‘ gO-IMFIEESWNIf: .

l o o t – n u

l l fl l ‘

CUBISM
m m

i W ‘ W l r u v u m u
( t r u s s – 0 m mm m W , ‘ u n s u n l s u

us “can

h u m : ‘ c o n s t r u c n w m
M m m.

( m m n i ‘
D A D A I S M
f : 02“, r u n s u

h t ‑
NEQHASTICISMm M “”
[31.- Fun

7 a n u H a u su n l m l 1 – b u t
SURREALISM ‘“ mM O D E I N
W M

R C H I T ( ( Y U I E

m u m – 1 m . ABSI‘ACI’ A l l

3.1 The Development of Abstract Art. 1936. Chart prepared for the Museum of
Modern A r t , New York, by Alfred H. Barr, j r . Photograph courtesy, The
Museum of Modern A r t , New York.

These are, however, widespread and structure the discourse of many
counter-modernism, for instance in the social history of art. The recent
publication The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the A r t of Manet and his
Followers, by T. J. Clark,3 offers a searching account of the social
relations between the emergence of n e w protocols and criteria for paint‑
ing ‐ modernism – and the myths of modernity shaped in and by the
n e w city of Paris remade by capitalism during the Second Empire.
Going beyond the c0mmonplaces about a desire to be contemporary in
art, ‘ i ] faut etre de son temps’,‘ Clark puzzles at what structured the

51

3.2 Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, a rainy day (1877)

notions of modernity which became the territory for Manet and his
followers. He thus indexes the impressionist painting practices to a
complex set of negotiations of the ambiguous and baffling class forma‑
tions and class identities which emerged in Parisiansociety. Modernity
is presented asfar more then a sense of being ’up to date’ – modernity
is a matter of representations and major myths ‐ of a new Paris for
recreation, leisureandpleasure,of nature to be enjoyed at weekends in
suburbia, of the prostitute taking over and of fluidity of class in the
popular spaces of entertainment. The key markers in this mythic
territory are leisure, consumption, the spectacle and money. And we
can reconstruct from Clark a map of impressionist territory which
stretches from the new boulevards via Care St Lazare out on the
suburbantrain to LaGrenouillere, Bougivalor Argenteuil. In these sites,
the artists lived, worked and pictured themselvesS (Figure 3.2). But in
two of the four chapters of Clark’s book, he deals with the problematic
of sexuality in bourgeois Paris and the canonical paintings are Olympia
(1863, Paris, Musée du Louvre) and A bar at the Folies‐Bergére (18

81

‐2,
London, Courtauld Institute of Art) (Figure 3.3).
it is a mighty but flawed argument on many levelsbut here I wish to

52

3.3 Edouard Manet, A bar at the Polies‐Bergére (1881-2)

attend to its peCuliar closmes on the issue of sexuality. For Clark the
foundingfact isclass. Olympia’s nakedness inscribesherclass andthus
debunks the mythic classlessness of sex epitomized in the image of the
courtesan.” The fashionably blase’ barmaid at the Folies evades afixed
identity aseither bourgeois or proletarianbut none the less participates
in the play around class that constituted the myth and appeal of the
popular.7
Although Clark nods in the direction of feminism by acknowledging

that these paintingsimply amasculineviewerfconsumer, the manner in
which this is done ensures the normalcyof that positionleavingit below
the threshold of historical investigation and theoretical analysis.a To
recognize the gender specific conditions of these paintings’ existence
one need only imagine a female spectator and a female producer of the
works. How can a woman relate to the viewing positions proposedby
either of these paintings? Can a woman be offered, in order to be
denied, imaginary possession of Olympia or the barmaid? Would a
woman of Manet’s class have a familiarity with either of these spaces
anditsexchangeswhich couldbeevokedsothat the painting’smodern‑
ist job of negation and disruption could be effective? Could Berthe

53

Vision and Difference

Morisot have gone to such a location to canvass the subject? Would it
enter her head asasite of modernity asshe experienced it? Could she
as awoman experience modernity as Clark defines it at all?”
For it is astrikingfact that many of the canonicalworks heldup asthe

founding monuments of modern art treat precisely with this area,
sexuality, and this form of it, commercial exchange. I am thinking of
innumerablebrothelscenes through toPicasso’sDemoisellesd’Avignonor
that other form, the artist’s couch. The encounters pictured and
imagined are those between men who have the freedom to take their
pleasuresin many urbanspacesandwomen fromaclass subjectto them
who have to work in those spaces often selling their bodies to clients,
or toartists. Undoubtedly these exchanges are structuredby relationsof
class but these are thoroughly captured within gender and its power
relations. Neither can be separated or ordered in a hierarchy. They are
historical simultaneities and mutually inflecting.
Sowe mustenquirewhy the territory of modernismsooften is away

of dealing with masculine sexuality and its sign, the bodies of women
– why the nude, the brothel, the bar? What relation is there between
sexuality, modernity and modernism. If it is normal to see paintings of
women’s bodies as the territory across which men artists claim their
modernityandcompetefor leadershipof the avant-garde, canwe expect
to rediscover paintings by women in which they battled with their
sexuality in the representationof the malenude?Ofcourse not; the very

’ While accepting that paintings such as Olympia and A bar at the Folks-Berger’s
come from a tradition which invokes the spectator as masculine, it is necessary to
acknowledge the way in which a feminine spectator is actually implied by these
paintings. Surely one partof the shock,of the transgressioneffectedby the painting
Olympia for itsfirst viewers at the Paris Salon was the presence of that ’brazen’ but
cool look from the white woman on abed attended by a black maid in a space in
which women, or tobehistorically precisebourgeois ladies, would bepresumed to
be present. That look, soovertly passingbetween a seller of woman‘s body and a
clientiviewer signifiedthe commercialand sexual exchangesspecificto apartof the
publicrealmwhichshouldbeinvisible to ladies.Furthermoreitsabsencefrom their
consciousnessstructured their identitiesasladies.In some of hiswritingsT. ]. Clark
correctly discusses the meanings of the sign woman in the nineteenth century as
oscillating between two poles of the fillt publique (woman of the streets) and the
ftmme horméte (therespectable married woman). But it would seem that the exhibi‑
tion of Olympia precisely confounds that social and ideological distance between
two imaginary poles and forces the one to confront the other in that part of the
public realm where ladies do go ‐ still within the frontiers of femininity. The
presence of this painting in the Salon – not because it is a nude but because it
displaces the mythological costume or anecdote through which prostitution was
represented mythically through the courtesan ‐ transgresses the line on my grid
derivedfromBaudelaire’atext, introducingnot just modernityasamannerof int‑
‘mga pressingcontemporary theme, but the spaces of modernity into a soci terri‑
tory of the bourgeoisie, the Salon, where ViEWing “ C h 3“ image is quite shocking
becauseof the presenceof wives, sisters and daughters. The understandingof the
shock depends upon our restoration of the female spectator to her historical and
social place.

54

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

suggestion seems ludicrous. But why? Because there is a historical
asymmetry ‐ a difference socially, economically, subjectively between
beingawoman andbeingaman in Paris in the latenineteenthcentury.
This difference ‐ the product of the social structuration of sexual
difference and not any imaginary biological distinction – determined
both what and how men and women painted.
I have long been interested in the work of Berthe Morisot (1841-96)

andMary Cassatt (1844‐1926), two of thefour womenwho were actively
involved with the impressionist exhibiting society in Paris in the 18705
and 1880s who were regarded by their contemporaries as important
members of the artistic group we n o w label the lmpressionists.° But
how arewe to study the work of artists who are women so that we can
discover and account for the specificity of what they produced as
individuals while also recognizing that, aswomen, they worked from
different positions and experiences from those of their colleagues who
were men?
Analysing the activities of women who were artists cannot merely

involve mapping women on to existing schemata even those which
claimtoconsiderthe productionof artsocially andaddress the centrality
of sexuality. Wecannot ignore the fact that the terrains of artistic prac‑
tice andof art history are structured in and structuringof gender power
relations.
As Roszika Parker and I argued in Old Mistresses: Women, Art and

ideology (1981), feminist art history has a double project. The historical
recoveryof data about women producersof art coexists with andisonly
critically possible through a concomitant deconstruction of the
discourses and practices of art history itself.
Historical recovery of women who were artists is a prime necessity

because of the consistent obliterationof their activity in what passes for
art history. Wehaveto refutethe lies that there were nowomen artists,
or that the women artists who areadmittedare second-rate andthat the
reason for their indifference lies in the all‐pervasive submission to an
indeliblefemininity ‐ alwaysproposedasunquestionably adisability in
making art. But alone historical recovery is insufficient.What sense are
we to make of information without a theorized framework through

complicated issue. To avoid the embrace of the feminine stereotype
which homogenizes women’s work asdetermined by natural gender,
we must stress the heterogeneity of women’s art work, the specificity
of individual producers and products. Yet we have to recognize what
women share – as a result of nurture not nature, i.e. the historically
variable social systems which produce sexual differentiation. .
This leads to a major aspect of the feminist project, the theorization

Vision and Difference

and historical analysis of sexual difference. Difference is not essential
but understood asa social structure which positions male and female
people asymmetrically in relation to language, to social and economic
power and to meaning. Feminist analysis undermines one bias of
patriarchal power by refuting the myths of universal or general mean‑
ing. Sexuality, modernism or modernity cannot function as given
categories to which we add women. That only identifies a partial and
masculine viewpoint with the norm and confirms women asother and
subsidiary. Sexuality, modernism or modernity are organized by and
organizations of sexual difference. To perceivewomen’s specificity is to
analyse historically a particular configuration of difference.
This is my projecthere.Howdo thesocially contrivedorders of sexual

difference structure the lives of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot? How
did that structure what they produced?The matrix I shall consider here
is that of space.
Spacecanbegraspedin severaldimensions.The first refersusto spaces

aslocations.What spaces are representedin the paintingsmadebyBerthe
Morisot and Mary Cassatt? And what are not? A quick list includes: 3.4 Bertha Morisot 3.5 Berthe Morisot
dining-rooms in the dining room (1886) Two wmen reading (18

69

‐70)
drawing-rooms
bedrooms
balconiesfverandas
private gardens (See Figures 3.4‐3.11.)
The majority of these have to be recognized as examples of private

areas or domestic space. But there are paintings located in the public
domain, scenes for instance of promenading, driving in the park,being
at the theatre, boating. They are the spaces of bourgeois recreation,
display and those social rituals which constituted polite society, or
Society, LeMamie. In the case of Mary Cassatt’s work, spaces of labour
are included, especially those involving child care (Figure 3.10]. In
several examples, they make visible aspects of working-class women’s
labour within the bourgeois home.
.- I have previously argued that engagement with the impressionist
groupwas attractive to some women precisely becausesubjects dealing
with domestic social life hitherto relegated asmere genre paintingwere

‘. legitimized as central topics of the painting practices.” On closer
1 examination it is much more significant how little of typical impres‑

sionist iconographyactuallyreappearsin the works madeby artists who
l are women. They do not represent the territory which their colleagues
| . who were men so freely occupied and made use of in their works, for
‘.t‘ /- instance bars, cafes, backstage and even those places which Clark has

seen asparticipatingin the mythof the popular- such asthe bar at the

56

____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ A _ _

3.5″ Mary Cassatt
Susan on a balcony (18

83

)

Vision and Difference

and historical analysis of sexual difference. Difference is not essential
but understood asa social structure which positions male and female
people asymmetrically in relation to language, to social and economic
power and to meaning. Feminist analysis undermines one bias of
patriarchal power by refuting the myths of universal or general mean‑
ing. Sexuality, modernism or modernity cannot function as given
categories to which we add women, That only identifies a partial and
masculine viewpoint with the norm and confirms women asother and
subsidiary. Sexuality, modernism or modernity are organized by and
organizations of sexual difference. To perceivewomen’s specificity is to
analyse historically a particular configuration of difference.
This is my projecthere.Howdo thesocially contrivedorders of sexual

difference structure the lives of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot? How
did that structure what they produced?The matrix I shall consider here
is that of space.
Spacecanbegraspedin severaldimensions.The first refersusto spaces

aslocations.What spaces are representedin the paintingsmadeby Berthe
Morisot and Mary Cassatt? And what are not? A quick list includes:
dining-rooms
drawing-rooms
bedrooms
balconiesiverandas
private gardens (See Figures 3.4‐3.ll.)
The majority of these have to be recognized asexamples of private

areas or domestic space. But there are paintings located in the public
domain, scenes for instance of promenading, driving in the park,being
at the theatre, boating. They are the spaces of bourgeois recreation,
display and those social rituals which constituted polite society, or
Society, LeMonde. In the case of Mary Cassatt’s work, spaces of labour
are included, especially those involving child care (Figure 3.10]. In
several examples, they make visible aspects of working-class women’s
labour within the bourgeois home.
. I have previously argued that engagement with the impressionist
groupwas attractive to some women precisely becausesubjects dealing
with domestic social life hitherto relegatedasmeregenre paintingwere
legitimized as central topics of the painting practices.lo On closer
examination it is much more significant how little of typical impresr
sionist iconographyactuallyreappearsin the works madeby artists who
are women. They do not represent the territory which their colleagues
who were men so freely occupied and made use of in their works, for

‐ instance bars, cafes, backstage and even those places which Clark has
seen asparticipatingin the mythof the popular- such asthe bar at the

56

3.4 Berthe Morisot 3.5 Berthe Morisot
in the dining room (1886) Two women reading (1869‐70)

– ~ ’ .

3.6 Mary Cassatt
Five o’clock tea (1880)

1? Mary Cassatt
Susan on a balcony (1883)

On asummer’s day (1830)

The build (1892)

3.11 Berthe Morisot

3.8 Mary Cassatt Lydia at a tapestry frame (6. 1881)

3.9 Mary Cassatt Lydia crocheting in the garden (1880)

3.14 Berthe Morisot
On the balcony (1872)

3.12 Berthe Morisot The harbour at Lorie-m (1869)

Claude Monet
The garden of the princess (1867)

Vision and Difference

Folies-Bergere or even the Moulin de la Galette. A range of places and
subjects was closed to them while open to their male colleagues who
could move freely with men and women in the socially fluid public
world of the streets, popular entertainment and commercial or casual
sexual exchange.
The second dimension in which the issue of space can beaddressed

is that of the spatial order within paintings. Playingwith spatial struc‑
tures was one of the defining features of early modernist painting in
Paris, be it Manet’s witty and calculated play uponflatness or Degas’s
use of acute angles of vision, varying viewpoints and cryptic framing
devices. Withtheir close personalcontactswithbothartists, Morisotand
Cassatt were no doubt party to the conversations out of which these
strategiesemergedandequally subject to the lessconscious social forces
which may well have conditioned the predisposition to explore spatial
ambiguities and metaphors.11Yet although there are examples of their
using similar tactics, i would like to suggest that spatial devices in the
work of Morisot and Cassatt work to a wholly different effect.
A remarkable feature in the spatial arrangements in paintings by

Morisot is the juxtaposition on asingle canvas of two spatial systems ‑
or at least of two compartments of space oftenobviously boundariedby
some device such as a balustrade, balcony, veranda or embankment
whose presence is underscoredby facture. In The harbourat Lorienf,1869
(Figure 3.12), Morisot offers us at the left a landscape view down the
estuary represented in traditional perspective while in one corner,
shapedby the boundary of the embankment, the main figure is seated
at an oblique angle to the view and to the viewer. A comparable
composition occurs in On the terrace, 1874(Figure3.13), where againthe
foregroundfigure isliterallysqueezedoff‐centreandcompressedwithin
abox of space markedby aheavilybrushed‐inbandof dark paint form‑
ing the wall of the balcony on the other side of which lies the outside
world of the beach. In On the balcony, 1872 (Figure 3.14), the viewer’s
gaze over Paris is obstructed by the figures who are none the less
separated from that Paris as they look over the balustrade from the
Trocadéro, very near to her home.12 The point can be underlined by
contrastingthe painting by Monet,Thegardenoftheprincess, 186?(Figure
3.15), where theviewer cannot readily imaginethe point fromwhich the
paintinghasbeenmade,namelyawindow highin oneof the new apart‑
ment buildings, and instead enjoys afantasy of floating over the scene.
What Morisot’s balustrades demarcate is not the boundary between
public and private but between the spaces of masculinity and of
femininity inscribed at the level of both what spaces are open to men
and women and what relation a man or woman has to that space and
its occupants.

62

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

In Morisot’s paintings, moreover, it is asif the place from which the
painter worked is made part of the scene creating a compression or
immediacy in the foregroundspaces.This locatesthe viewer in that same
place,establishinganotionalrelationbetweentheviewer andthe woman
defining the foreground, therefore forcing the viewer to experience a
dislocation between her space and that of aworld beyond its frontiers.
Proximity and compression are also characteristic of the works of

Cassatt. Less often is there a split space but it occurs, as in Susan on a
balcony, 1883 (Figure 3.7). More common is a shallow pictorial space
which the paintedfigure dominates Youngwoman in black: portraitofMrs
Gardner Cassatt, 1883(Figure3.16)/.Zhe viewer isforcedintoaconfronta‑
tion or conversation with the painted figure while dominance and
familiarity are deniedby the deviceof the avertedheadof concentration
on an activity by the depicted personage. “at are the conditions for
this awkward but pointed relation of the figure to the world? Why this
lack of conventional distance andthe radicaldisruption of what we take
asthe normal spectator‐text relations? What has disturbed the ‘logic of
the gaze?
In a previous monograph on Mary Cassatt I tried to establish a

correspondence between the social space of the represented and the
pictorial space of the representation.” Considering the painting Lydia,
at a tapestry frame, 1881 (Figure 3.8), I noted the shallow space of the
painting which seemed inadequate to contain the embroidery frame at
which the artist’s sister works. I tried to explain its threatened protru‑
sionbeyondthe picture’s space into that of the viewer asacomment on
the containment of women and read the painting as a statement of
resistance to it. In Lydia crochzting in the garden, 1880 (Figure 3.9), the
woman is not placed in an interior but in a garden. Yet this outdoor
space seemsto collapsetowards the pictureplane,againcreatingasense
of compression. The comfortable vista beyond the figure, opening out
to include aview and the sky beyond asin Caillebotte’s Garden at Petit
Gennevillt’ers with dahlt’as, 1893, is decisively refused.
I argued that despite the exterior setting the painting creates the

intimacy of an interior and registers the garden, a favoured topic with
impressionist artists, not asa piece of private property but asthe place
of seclusion and enclosure. I was searching for some kind of homology
between the compression of pictorial space and the social confinement
of women within the prescribedlimitsof bourgeoiscodes of femininity.
Claustrophobia and restraint were read into the pressurized placement
of figures in shallow depth. But such an argument is only a modified
form of reflection theory which does not explain anything (though it
does have the savinggraceof acknowledgingthe roleof signifiers in the
active production of meaning).

3.16 Mary Cassatt Young woman in black: portrait ofMrs Gardner Cassatt (1883)

In the case of Mary Cassatt I would now want to draw attentionto the
disarticulation of the conventions of geometric perspective which had
normally governed the representation of space in European painting
since the fifteenth century. Since its development in the fifteenth
century, this mathematically calculated system of projection had aided
painters in the representation of a three-dimensional world on a two‑
dimensional surface by organizing objects in relation to each other to
produce a notional and singular position from which the scene is
intelligible. It establishes the viewer as both absent from and indeed
independent of the scene while being its mastering eyeH.

64

3.17 Mary Cassatt Young girl in a blue annchair (1878)

It ispossibleto representspaceby otherconventions. Phenomenology
hasbeenusefully applied to the apparentspatial deviations of the work
of Van Gogh and Cézanne.“ Insteadof pictorial space functiomng as a
notional box into which objects are placed in a rational and abstract
relationship, space isrepresentedaccordingto the way it isexperienced
by a combination of touch, texture, as well as sight. Thus objects are
patterned according to subjective hierarchies of value for the producer.
Phenomenologicalspaceisnotorchestratedfor sightalonebutby means
of visual cues refers to other sensations and relations of bodies and
objectsin alivedworld. Asexperientialspace this kindof representation
becomes susceptible to different ideological,historicalaswell aspurely
contingent, subjective inflections. _ _ .
These are not necessarily unconscious. For instance in Younggirl in a

blue armchair, 1878 (Figure 3.17) by Cassatt, the viewpomt from which
the room has been painted is low so that the chairs loom large as if
imagined from the perspective of a small person placed amongst
massive upholstered obstacles. The background zooms sharply away
indicating a different sense of distance from that a taller adult would
enjoy over the objects to an easily accessible back wall. The painhrtg
therefore not only picturesasmallchild in aroombutevokesthat child 9
sense of the space of the room. It is from this conception of the

65

Vision and Difference

possibilitiesof spatialstructure that I cannow discernaway throughmy
earlier problem in attempting to relate space and social processes. For
athird approach lies in considering not only the spaces represented, or
the spaces of the representation, but the social spaces from which the
representationismadeand its reciprocalpositionalities.The producer is
herself shaped within a spatially orchestrated social structure which is
livedatbothpsychic and social levels.The spaceof the look at the point
of productionwill to some extent determine the viewing positionof the
spectator at the point of consumption. This point of view is neither
abstract nor exclusively personal, but ideologically and historically
construed. It is the art historian’s job to re-create it ‐ since it cannot
ensure its recognition outside its historical moment.
The spaces of femininity operated not only at the level of what is

represented, the drawing-room or sewing-room. The spaces of
femininity are those from which femininity is lived asapositionality in
discourse and social practice. They are the product of a lived sense of
social locatedness,mobilityandvisibility, in the socialrelationsof seeing
and being seen. Shaped within the sexual politics of looking they
demarcate a particular social organization of the gaze which itself works
back to secure a particular social ordering of sexual difference.
Femininity is both the condition and the effect.
How does thisrelateto modernityandmodernism?AslanetWolffhas

convincingly pointed out, the literature of modernity describes the
experience of men.“ It is essentially a literature about transformations
in the public world and its associated consciousness. it is generally
agreed that modernity as a nineteenth-century phenomenon is a
productof the city. It is aresponsein amythicor ideologicalformto the
new complexities of a social existence passed amongst strangers in an
atmosphere of intensified nervous and psychic stimulation, in a world
ruledby money andcommodity exchange, stressedby competition and
formative of anintensified individuality, publicly defended by a blasé
mask of indifference but intensely ‘expressed‘ in a private, familial
context.“ Modernity stands for a myriad of responses to the vast
increase in population leading to the literature of the crowds and
masses, a speeding up of the pace of life with its attendant changes in
the sense and regulation of time and fostering that very modern
phenomenon,fashion, the shift in the character of towns andcities from
being centresof quite visible activities – manufacture, trade, exchange
– to being zoned and stratified, with production becoming less visible
while the centres of cities such as Paris and London become key sites
of consumption and display producing what Sennett has labelled the
spectacular city.”
All these phenomena affected women aswell asmen, but in different

66

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

ways. What I have described above takes place within and comes to
define the modernforms of the publicspace changingasSennett argues
in hisbook significantly titled The FallofPublic Manfrom the eighteenth
century formation to become more mystified and threatening but also
more exciting and sexualized. One of the key figures to embody the
novel t o m of public experience of modernity is the flaneur or
irnpassivestroller, the manin the crowd who goes, in Walter Benjamin’s
phrase, ‘botanizing on the asphalt’.“ The fléineur symbolizes the
privilege or freedom to move about the public arenas of the city observ‑
ing but never interacting, consuming the sights through a controlling
butrarelyacknowledgedgaze, directedasmuchatother peopleasatthe
goods for sale. The flaneur embodies the gaze of modernity which is
both covetous and erotic.
But the flaneur is an exclusively masculine type which functions

within the matrix of bourgeois ideology through which the social spaces
of the city were reconstructed by the overlaying of the doctrine of
separate spheres on to the division of public andprivate which became
as a result a gendered division. In contesting the dominance of the
aristocratic social formation they were struggling to displace, the
emergent bourgeoisies of the late eighteenth century refuted a social
system based on fixed orders of rank, estate and birth and defined
themselves in universalistic and democratic terms. The pre-eminent
ideological figure is M A N which immediately reveals the partiality of
their demoaacy anduniversalism.The rallyingcry, liberty,equality and
fraternity (again note its gender partiality) imagines asociety composed
of free, self-possessingmaleindividualsexchangingwith equalandlike.
Yet the economic and social conditions of the existence of the
bourgeoisie as a class are structurally founded upon inequality and
differencein termsbothof socio-economiccategories andof gender.The
ideological formations of the bourgeoisie negotiate these contradictions
by diverse tactics. One is the appeal to an imaginary order of nature
which designates as unquestionable the hierarchies in which women,
children, hands and servants (as well as other races) are posited as
naturally different from and subordinate to white European man.
Another formation endorsed the theological separation of spheres by
fragmentation of the problematic social world into separated areas of
genderedactivity.This divisiontook over andreworkedthe eighteenth‑
century compartmentalization of the public and private. The public
sphere, defined as the world of productive labour, political decision.
government, education, the law andpublicservice, increasinglybecame
exclusive to men. The private sphere was the world, home, wives,
children and servants.“ As Jules Simon, moderate republican
politician, explained in 1892:

Vision and Difference

What is man’s vocation? It is to be a good citizen. And woman’s?
To bea good wife and a good mother. One is in some way called
to the outside world, the other is retained for the interior.” (my
italics)

Woman was defined by this other, non-social space of sentiment and
duty from which money and power were banished.21Men, however,
moved freely between the spheres while women were supposed to
occupy the domestic space alone. Mencame home to bethemselves but
in equally constraining roles as husbands and fathers, to engage in
affective relationships after a hard day in the brutal, divisive and
competitive world of daily capitalist hostilities. We are here defining a
mental map rather than a description of actual social spaces. In her
introduction to the essays on Women in Space, Shirley Ardener has,
however, emphasized that

societies have generated their own culturally determined ground
rules for making boundaries on the ground and have divided the
social into spheres, levels and territories with invisible fences and
platformstobescaledby abstract laddersandcrossedby intangible
bridgeswithasmuchtrepidationandexultationason aplankover
a raging torrent.22

There was nonethe lessanoverlapbetweenthe purely ideologicalmaps
and the concrete organization of the social sphere. As social historians,
Catherine Hall and Lee Davidoff have shown in their work on the
formation of the British middle class in Birmingham, the city was
literally reshapedaccordingto this ideal divide. The new institutions of
public governance and business were established asbeing exclusively
masculinepreservesand the growingseparationof work andhomewas
maderealby the buildingof suburbs such asEdgbastonto which wives
and daughters were banished.23
As both ideal and social structure, the mapping of the separation of

the spheres for women and menon to the divisionof publicandprivate
was powerfully operative in the construction of a specifically bourgeois
way of life. It aided the production of the gendered social identities by
which the miscellaneouscomponents of the bourgeoisie were helpedto
cohere as a class, in difference from both aristocracy and proletariat.
Bourgeois women, however, obviously went out in public, to
promenade, go shopping, or visiting or simply to be on display. And
working-class women went out to work, but that fact presented a
problem in terms of definition as woman. For instance Jules Simon
categorically stated that awoman who worked ceased to be awoman.“
Therefore, across the public realm lay another, less often studied map

68

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

Which secured the definitions of bourgeois womanhood ‐ femininity ‑
in difference from proletarian women.
For bourgeois women, going into town mingling with crowds of

mixed social composition was not only frightening because it became
increasingly unfamiliar, but because it was morally dangerous. It has
beenarguedthat to maintainone‘s respectability,closely identifiedwith
femininity, meantnot exposing oneself in public. The public space was
officially the realmofandfor men; forwomen toenter it entailedunfore‑
seen risks. For instance in LaFemmc (1

85

8‐60)Jules Michelet exclaimed
How many irritations for the single woman! She can hardly ever
goout in the evening; she would betaken for aprostitute. There
are a thousand places where only men are to be seen, and if she
needsto go there on business, the menare amazed, andlaughlike
fools. For example, should she find herself delayed at the other
end of Paris and hungry, she will not dare to enter into a
restaurant. She would constitute an event; she would be a spect‑
acle: All eyes would be constantly fixed on her, and she would
overhear uncomplimentary and bold conjectures.”
The privaterealmwas fashionedfor menasaplaceof refugefrom the

burly-burly of business, but it was also a place of constraint. The
pressures of intensified individuality protected in public by the blasé
mask of indifference, registered in the equally socially inducedroles of
loving husband and responsible father, led to a desire to escape the
overbearing demands of masculine domestic personae. The public
domain became also a realm of freedom and irresponsibility if not
immorality. This, of course, meant different things for men and for
women. For women, the public spaces thus construed were where one
riskedlosingone’s virtue, dirtying oneself; going out in public and the
idea of disgrace were closely allied. For the man going out in public
meant losingoneself in the crowd away from both demands of respect‑
ability. Mencolluded to protect this freedom. Thus awoman gorng out
to dine at a restaurant even with her husband present was scandalous
whereas a man dining out with a mistress, even in the View of his
friends, was granted afictive invisibility.”s ‘~
The public and private division functioned on many levels. As a

metaphorical map in ideology, it structured the very meamng of the
terms masculine and feminine within its mythicboundaries. In practice
as the ideology of domesticity became hegemonic, it regulated
women’s and men’s behaviour in the respective public and private
spaces. Presence in either of the domains determined one’s social
identity and therefore, in objective terms, the separationof the spheres
problematized women’s relation to the very activities and experiences

69

Vision and Difference

we typically accept asdefining modernity.
In the diaries of the artist Marie Bashkirtseff, who lived and worked

in Paris during the same period asMorisot and Cassatt, the following
passage reveals some of the restraints:

What I longfor is the freedomof goingabout alone,of comingand
going, of sitting in the seats of the Tuileries, and especially in the
Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of
entering churches and museums, of walking about old streets at
night; that’s what I longfor; andthat’s the freedom without which
one cannot become a real artist. Do you imagine that I get much
good from what I see, chaperoned as1am, andwhen, in order to
goto the Louvre, I must wait for my carriage, my ladycompanion,
myfamily?”
These territories of the bourgeois city were however not only

gendered on a maleifemale polarity. They became the sites for the
negotiationof gendered class identities and class gender positions.The
spaces of modernity are where class and gender interface in critical
ways, in that they are the spaces of sexual exchange. The significant
spaces of modernity are neither simply those of masculinity, nor are
they those of femininity which are asmuchthe spaces of modernity for
being the negative of the streets and bars. They are, asthe canonical
works indicate, the marginalor interstitialspaces where the fieldsof the
masculine and feminine intersect and structure sexuality within a
classed order.

THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE
One text above all charts this interaction of class and gender. In 1863

of modern life’. In this text the figure of the flaneur is modified to
become the modern artist while at the same time the text provides a
mappingof Parismarkingout the sites!sights for the flaneurlartist. The
essay is ostensibly about the work of a minor illustrator Constantin
Guys but he is only a pretext for Baudelaire to weave an elaborate and
impossible image of his idealartist who is apassionateloverof crowds,
and incognito, a man of the world.

The crowd is his element as the air is that of birds and water of
fishes. Hispassionandprofessionaretobecomeoneflesh with the
crowd. For the perfect flaneur, for the passionatespectator, it is an
immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid
the ebb andflow of movement. in the midstof the fugitive andthe

70

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

infinite. To beaway from home andyet feel oneself everywhereat
home; to see the world and to be the centre of the world and yet
remain hidden from the world ‐ such are a few of the slightest
pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures
which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is aprince
and everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes
the whole world his family.”5

The text is structured by an opposition between home, the inside
domain of the known and constrained personality and the outside, the
space of freedom, where there is liberty to look without being watched
or even recognized in the act of looking. It is the imagined freedom of
the voyeur. In the crowd the flaneurlartist sets up home. Thus the
flaneurfartist is articulated across the twin ideological formations of
modem bourgeois society ‐ the splitting of private and public with its
double freedom for men in the public space, and the pre-eminence of
adetached observing gaze, whose possessionand power is never ques‑
tioned asits basis in the hierarchy of the sexes is never acknowledged.
ForasIanetWolff has recently argued, there is no female equivalent of
the quintessential masculine figure, the flaneur; there is not and could
not be a female flaneuse. (See note 15.)
Women did not enjoy the freedom of incognito in the crowd. They

were never positioned asthe normal occupants of the public realm.
They did not havethe right to look, to stare, scrutinize or watch. As the
Baudelairean text goes on to show, women do not look. They are
positioned asthe object of the flaneur’s gaze.
Womanisfor the artist in general . . . far morethanjust the female
of man. Rather she is divinity, a star . . . aglittering conglomera‑
tion of all the graces of nature, condensed into a single being; an
object of keenest admiration and curiosity that the picture of life
can offer to its contemplator. She is an idol, stupid perhaps, but
dazzling and bewitching. . . . Everythingthat adorns women that
serves to show off her beauty is part of herself . . .
No d0ubt woman is sometimes alight, aglance, aninvitationto

happiness, sometimes she is just aword.”
Indeedwoman is just a sign, a fiction, a confection of meanings and

fantasies. Femininity is not the natural condition of female persons. It
is ahistorically variable ideologicalconstruction of meanings for a sign
W’O’M’A’N which isproducedbyandfor another social groupwhich
derives its identity and imagined superiority by manufacturing the
spectre of this fantastic Other. WOMANis bothan idoland nothingbut
aword. Thus when we come to read the chapter of Baudelaire’s essay

7’l

Vision and Difference

titled ‘Women and prostitutes’ in which the author charts a journey
across Paris for the flaneuriartist, where women appear merely to be
there as spontaneously visible objects, it is necessary to recognize that
the text is itself constructing a notion of WOMAN across a fictive map
of urban spaces – the spaces of modernity.

The flaneuriartist starts his journey in the auditorium where young
women of the most fashionable society sit in snowy white in their boxes
at the theatre. Next he watches elegant families strolling at leisure in the
walks of a public garden, wives leaning complacently on the arms of
husbands while skinny little girls play at making social class calls in
mimicry of their elders. Then he moves on to the lowlier theatrical world
where frail and slender dancers appear in a blaze of limelight admired
by fat bourgeois men. At the café door, we meet a swell while indoors
is his mistress, called in the text ‘a fat baggage’, who lacks practically
nothing to make her a great lady except that practically nothing is prac‑
tically everything for it is distinction (class). Then we enter the doors of
Valentino’s, the Prado or Casino, where against a background of hellish
light, we encounter the protean image of w a n t o n beauty, the courtesan,
‘the perfect image of savagery that lurks in the heart of civilization’. Finally
by degrees of destitution, he charts women, from the patrician airs of
young and. successful prostitutes to the poor slaves of the filthy stews.

3.19 Constantin Guys
Two courtesans

_._.___,_
Modernity and the spaces of femininity

Attempting to match the drawings by Guys to this extraordinary
spectacle will disappoint. in no way are the drawings asvivid, for their
project is less ideological and altogether more mundane as in the
manner of the fashion plate.

None the less they provide some interest in revealing how differently
the figures of females are actually represented according to location. The
respectable women chaperoned or accompanied by husbands in the
park pass by fused almost with their clothing so that, decorporealized,
their dress defines their class position and meaning. In spaces marked
o u t for visual and notional sexual consumption the bodies are in
evidence, laid o u t , opened up and offered to view while drapery
functions to reveal a sexualized anatomy (Figures 3.18 and 3.19).

Baudelaire’s essay maps a representation of Paris as the city of
women. It constructs a sexualized journey which can be correlated with
impressionist practice. Clark has offered one map of impressionist paint‑
ing following the trajectories of leisure from city centre by suburban
railway to the suburbs. I want to propose another dimension of that map
which links impressionist practice to the erotic territories of modernity.
I have drawn up a grid using Baudelaire’s categories and mapped the
works of Manet, Degas and others on to this schema.3m

G R I D I

u; THEATRE debutantes; young women RENOIR CASSATT
a! (LOGE) of fashionable society
5 PARK m a t r o n s , mothers, children, MANET CASSATI’

elegant families

MORISOT

THEATRE DANCERS DEGAS
Z (BACKSTAGE)
E CAFES mistresses and kept women MANET
O RENOIR
3 DEGAS
g FOLIES THE COURTESAN MANEI‘
t – l ‘protean image of w a n t o n DEGAS
5 beauty’ GUYS

BROTHELS ‘poor slaves of filthy stews’ 243551.

73

3.20 Edgar Degas Dancers backstage (c. 1872)

From the loge pieces by Renoir (admittedly not women of the highest
society) to the Musiqueaux TuiIeries of Manet, Monet’s park scenes and
others easily cover this terrain where bourgeois men and women take
their leisure. But then when we move backstageat the theatre we enter
different worlds, stillof menandwomenbut differently placedbyclass.
Degas’spicturesof the dancers on stageandrehearsingarewellknown.
Perhaps less familiar are his scenes illustrating the backstage at the
Opéra where members of the Jockey Club bargain for their evening’s
entertainment with the little performers (Figure 3.20). Both Degas and
Manet representedthe women who hauntedcafes and asTheresa Ann
Gronberghas shown these were working-class women oftensuspected
of touting for custom asclandestine prostitutes.”
Thence we can find examples sited in the Folies and cafes-concerts as

well astheboudoirsof the courtesan. Evenif Olympia cannotbe situated
74

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

in arecognizable locality, referencewas madein the reviews to the café
Paul Niquet’s, the haunt of the women who serviced the porters of Les
Halles and asign for the reviewer of total degradation and depravity.32

WOMEN AND THE PUBLIC MODERN
The artistswho were womenin thisculturalgroup of necessityoccupied
this map but partially.They can belocatedall rightbut in spaces above
a decisive line. Lydia at the theatre, 18

79

and The logs, 1882 (Figure 3.21)
situate us in the theatre with the young andfashionable but there could
hardly be a greater difference between these paintingsand the work by
Renoiron this theme, Thefirst outing, 1876 (London,NationalGallery of
Art), for example.
The stiff and formal poses of the two young women in the painting

by Cassatt were preciselycalculatedasthe drawings for the work reveal.
Their erect posture, one carefully grasping anunwrappedbouquet, the
other shelteringbehind alarge fan, create atelling effect of suppressed
excitement and extreme constraint, of unease in this public place,
exposed and dressed up, on display. They are set at an oblique angle
to the frame sothat they are notcontainedby its edges, not framed and
madeapretty picturefor usasin The loge (Figure3.22) by Renoirwhere
the spectacle at which the scene is set and the spectacle the woman
herself is made to offer, merge for the unacknowledgedbut presumed
masculine spectator. In Renoir’s The first eating the choice of a profile
opens out the spectator’s gaze into the auditorium and invites herihim
to imagine that shelhe is sharing in the main figure‘s excitement while
she seems totally unaware of offering such a delightful spectacle. The
lack of self-consciousness is, of course, purely contrived so that the
viewer can enjoy the sight of the young girl.
The mark of difference between the paintings by Renoir and Cassatt

is the refusal in the latter of that complicity in the way the female
protagonist is depicted. In a later painting, A! the opera, 1879 (Figure
3.23), awoman is representeddressed in daytime or mourningblack in
abox at the theatre. She looks from the spectator into the distance in a
direction which cuts across the plane of the picture but asthe viewer
follows hergazeanother look isrevealedsteadfastly fixedonthe woman
in the foreground. Thepicturethus juxtaposes two looks,givingpriority
to that of the woman who is, remarkably,picturedactively looking. She
does not return the viewer’s gaze, a convention which confirms the
viewer’s right to look and appraise. Instead we find that the viewer
outside the pictureis evokedby beingasit were the mirror imageof the
man looking in the picture.
This is, in a sense, the subject of the painting – the problematic of

75

Vision and Difference

women out in public being vulnerable to a compromising gaze. The
witty pun on the spectator outside the painting being matched by that
within should not disguise the serious meaning of the fact that social
spaces are policedby men’swatching women and the positioningof the
spectator outside the painting in relation to the man within it serves to
indicate that the spectator participates in that game aswell. The fact that
the woman ispicturedsoactively looking, signifiedabove all by the fact
that hereyes are maskedbyopera glasses, preventsherbeingobiectified
and she figures as the subject of her own look.
Cassatt and Morisot painted pictures of women in public spaces but

these all lie above acertain line on the grid [ devised from Baudelaire’s
text. The other world of women was inaccessible to them while it was
freely available to the men of the group and constantly entering

Vision and Difference

representationasthevery territory of their engagementwithmodernity.
There is evidencethatbourgeoiswomen didgo to the cafes-concertsbut
this is reported asafact to regret and asymptom of modern decline?“
As Clark points out, guides for foreigners to Paris such as Murray’s
clearly wish to prevent such slummingby commenting that respectable
people do not visit such venues. In the journals Marie Bashkirtseff
records a visit she and some friends made to a masked ball where
behindthe disguise daughters of the aristocracy could live dangerously,
playing with sexual freedom their classed gender denied them. But
givenbothBashkirtseff’sdubioussocialposition, andhercondemnation
of the standard morality and regulation of women’s sexuality, her
escapade merely reconfirms the norm.34
To enter such spaces asthe maskedballor the cafe‐concert constituted

a serious threat to a bourgeois woman’s reputation and therefore her
femininity. The guarded respectability of the lady could be soiled by
merevisual contact for seeing was bound up with knowing. This other
world of encounter betweenbourgeoismenandwomen of another class
was a no-go area for bourgeois women. It is the place where female
sexuality or rather female bodies are bought and sold, where woman
becomesbothan exchangeablecommodity andaseller of flesh. entering
the economic domainthrough her direct exchanges with men. Herethe
division of the public and private mapped as a separation of the
masculine and feminine is ruptured by money, the ruler of the public
domain, and precisely what is banished from the home.
Femininity in its class-specific forms is maintained by the polarity

virginfwhore which is mystifying representation of the economic
exchanges in the patriarchal kinship system. In bourgeois ideologies of
femininity the fact of the money and property relations which legally
andeconomically constitute bourgeois marriage isconjured out of sight
by the mystificationof aone-off purchaseof the rights to abody andits
products asan effect of love to be sustained by duty and devotion.
Femininity should be understood therefore not as a condition of

women butasthe ideological form’of the regulationof female sexuality
withinafamilial, heterosexualdomesticity whichisultimatelyorganized
by the law.The spaces of femininity ‐ ideologically, pictorially – hardly
articulate female sexualities. That is not to accept nineteenth-century
notionsof women’s asexualitybut to stress the differencebetweenwhat
was actually lived or how it was experienced and what was officially
spoken or represented asfemale sexuality.”
In the ideological and social spaces of femininity, female sexuality

could not be directly registered. This has acrucial effect with regardto
the use artists who were women could make of the positionality
represented by the gaze of the flaneur – and therefore with regard to

78

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

modernity.The gaze of theflaneurarticulates andproducesamasculine
sexuality which in the modem sexual economy enjoys the freedom to
look, appraise and possess, is deed or in fantasy. Walter Benjamin
draws special attention to a poemby Baudelaire, ‘A one passante’ (‘To
apasser-by’).The poem iswritten from the point of view of amanwho
sees in the crowd a beautiful widow; he falls in love as she vanishes
front sight. Benjamin’s comment is apt: ’One may say that the poem
deals with the function of the crowd not in the lifeof acitizenbut in the
life of anerotic person.“5
It is not the public realm simply equated with the masculine which

defines the flaneurlartist but access to a sexual realm which is marked
by those interstitialspaces, the spacesof ambiguity, defined assuch not
only by the relatively unfixed or fantasizable class boundaries Clark
makes so much of but because of cross‐class sexual exchange. Women
couldenter andrepresent selectedlocationsin the publicsphere – those
of entertainment and display. But a line demarcates not the end of the
publicfprivate divide but the frontier of the spaces of femininity. Below
this line lies the realm of the sexualized and commodified bodies of
women, where nature is ended, where class, capital and masculine
power invade and interlock. It is a line that marks off a class boundary
butit revealswhere newclassformationsof thebourgeoisworld restruc‑
tured gender relations not only between men and women but between
women of different classes.*

MEN AND WOMEN IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE
I haveredrawnthe Baudelaireanmapto include those spaces which are
absent – the domestic sphere, the drawing-room, veranda or balcony.
the garden of the summer villa and the bedroom (Grid 11). This listing

‘ I may have overstated the case that bourgeois women‘s sexuality could not be
articulated within these spaces. In the lightof recent feminist study of the psycho‑
sexualpsycho ofmotherhood, it wouldbe ibletoreadmother-childpaintings
bywomenin a ormorecomplexway asasite or thearticulationof femalesexualities.
Moreoverin paintingsby Morisot, for instance of heradolescent daughter, we may
discernthe inscriptionof yet another moment atwhich female sexuality is referred
to by circlingaround the emergence from latency intoan adultsexuality prior to its
strict regulationwithin maritaldomestic forms. More generally it would bewise to
pay heed to the writings of historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg on the importance
of female friendships. She stresses that from our post-Freudianvantage point it is
very difficult to readthe intimaciesof nineteenth-century women, to understandthe
valenciesof the terms of endearment, oftenvery physical, to comprehendthe forms
of sexuality and loveasthey were lived,experiencedandrepresented.Afirstdeal
moreresearchneedsto bedonebeforeanystatemntscanbemadewithout danger
of feminists merely rehearsing and confirming the official discourse of masculine
ideologues on female sexualities. (C. Smith-Rosenberg ‘Hearing women‘s words:
afeminist reconstructionof history’, in herbook DisorderlyConduct.- VisionsofGender
in Victorian America, New York, Knopf, 1985.)

79

Vision and Difference

produces a markedly difference balance between the artists who are
w o m e n and m e n from that on the first grid. Cassatt and Morisot occupy
these n e w spaces to a much greater degree while their colleagues are
less apparent, b u t importantly, n o t totally absent.

GRID II

MANET MORISOT BEDROOM
CAILLEBO’ITE CASSA’IT
RENOIR MORISOT DRAWING
CAILLEBO’ITE CASSA’IT ROOM

é BAZILLE CASSA’IT VERANDA
Q CAILLEBOTTE MORISOT
S MONET CASSA’I’I‘ GARDEN

MORISOT
THEATRE debutantes RENOIR CASSATT THEATRE
(LOGE)
PARK elegant families MANET CASSATT PARK

MORISOT

THEATRE dancers DECAS
(BACKSTAGE)

Z CAFES mistresses and MANET
E kept women RENOIR
O DEGAS
3 FOLIES THE
E COURTESAN MANET
j ’protean image of DEGAS
at} wanton beauty’ GUYS

BROTHELS ’poor slaves of M A N N
filthy stews’ GUYS

By way of example, we could cite Renoir’s portrait of Madame Char‑
pentier and her children, 1878 (New York, Metropolitan Museum) or
Bazille’s Family reunion, 1867 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) or the painting of
Camille in several poses and different dresses painted by Claude Monet
in 1867, Woman in the garden (Paris, Musée d’Orsay).

These paintings share the territory of the feminine but they are
painted from a totally different perspective. Renoir entered Madame
Charpentier’s drawing-room on commission; Bazille celebrated a
particular, almost formal occasion a n d Monet‘s painting was devised as

80

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

an exercise in open-air painting.” The majority of works by Morisot
and Cassatt deal with these domestic spaces: for instance Tum women
reading, 1869-70 (Figure 3.5) and Susan on a balcony, 1883 (Figure 3.7).
These are painted with a sureness of knowledge of the daily routine and
rituals which n o t only constituted the spaces of femininity but collec‑
tively trace the construction of femininity across the stages of women’s
lives. As I have argued previously, Cassatt’s oeuvre may be seen to
delineate femininity asit is induced, acquired and ritualized from youth
through motherhood to old age.33 Morisot used her daughter’s life to
produce works remarkable for their concern with female subjectivity
especially at critical turning-points of the feminine. For instance, her
painting Psyché shows an adolescent w o m a n before a m i r r o r, which in
France is named a ‘Psyché’ (Figure 3.24). The classical, mythological
figure Psyche was a young mortal with whom Venus’s son Cupid fell
in love and it was the topic of several paintings in the neo‐classical and
romantic period asa topos for awakening sexuality.”

Morisot’s painting offers the spectator a view into the bedroom of at
bourgeois woman and as such is n o t without voyeuristic potential but
at the same time, the pictured w o m a n is n o t offered for sight so much
ascaught contemplating herself in a mirror in a way which separates the
w o m a n as subject of a contemplative and thoughtful look from w o m a n
as object – a contrast may make this clearer; compare it with Manet’s
painting of a half-dressed woman looking in a mirror in such a way that
her ample back is offered to the spectator asmerely a body in a working
r o o m , Before the mirror, 1876‐7 (New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum).

But I must stress that I am in no way suggesting that Cassatt and
Morisot are offering us a truth about the spaces of femininity. I am n o t
suggesting that their intimacy with the domestic space enabled them to
escape their historical formation as sexed and classed subjects, that they
could see it objectively and transcribe it with some kind of personal
authenticity. To argue that would presuppose some notion of gendered
authorship, that the phenomena I amconcerned to define and explicate
are a result of the fact that the authorsfartists are women. That would
merely tie the w o m e n back i n t o some transhistorical notion of the
biologically determined gender characteristics, what Rozsika Parker and
I labelled in Old Mistresses as the feminine stereotype.

None the less the painters of this cultural group were positioned
differently w i t h regard to social mobility and the type of looking permit‑
ted them according to their being m e n or w o m e n . Instead of considering
the paintings as documents of this condition, reflecting or expressing i t ,
I would stress that the practice of painting is itself a sitefor the inscription
ofsexual difl‘erence. Social positionality in terms of both class and gender

81

3.24 Berthe Morisot Psyché (1876)

determine – that is, set the pressure and prescribe the limits of – the
w o r k produced. But we are here considering a continuing process. The
social, sexual and psychic construction of femininity is constantly
produced, regulated, renegotiated. This productivity is involved as
much in the practice of making art. In manufacturing a painting,
engaging a model, sitting in a r o o m with someone, using a score of
k n o w n techniques, modifying them, surprising oneself with novel and
unexpected effects both technical and in terms of meanings, which
result from the way the model is positioned, the size of the r o o m , the
nature of the contract, the experience of the scene being painted and so
forth ‐ all these actual procedures which make up part of the social
practice of making a painting, function asthe modes by which the social
and psychic positionality of Cassatt and Morisot n o t only structured
their pictures, but reciprocally affected the painters themselves as they
found, through the making of images, their world represented back to
them.

It is here that the critique of authorship is relevant ‐ the critique of the
notion of a fully coherent author subject previous to the act of creation,
producing a w o r k of art which then becomes merely a m i r r o r o r, at best,
a vehicle for communicating a fully formed intention and a consciously
grasped experience. What I am proposing is that on the one hand we

82

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

consider the social formation of the producer within class and gender
relations, but also recognize the working process or practice as the site
of a crucial social interaction between producer and materials. These are
themselves economically and culturally determined be they technical ‑
the legacy of conventions, traditions and procedures – or those social and
ideological connotations of subject. The product is an inscription of those
transactions and produces positions for its viewers.

I am n o t suggesting that the meaning is therefore locked into the work
and prescribed. The death of the author has involved the emphasis on
the reader/viewer as the active producer of meaning for texts. But this
carries with it an excessive danger of total relativism; any reader can make
any meanings. There is a limit, an historical and ideological limit which
is secured by accepting the death of the mythic figure of the creatort‘author
but n o t the negation of the historical producer working within conditions
which determine the productivity of the work while n e v e r confining its
actual or potential field of meanings. This issue becomes acutely relevant
for the study of cultural producers who are w o m e n . Typically within art
history they are denied the status of authoricreator (see Barr‘s chart, Figure
3.1). Their creative personality is never canonized or celebrated. Moreover
they have been the prey of ideological readings where without regard
to history and difference, art historians and critics have confidently
proclaimed the meanings of the work by women, meanings which always
reduce back to merely stating that these are works by women. Thus Mary
Cassatt has been most often indulged as a painter of typical feminine
subjects, the mother and child, while the following enthusiastic review
by the Irish painter and critic George Moore speaks volumes about his
problem with praising an artist w h o genuinely impressed him but was
a woman:

Madame Lebrun painted well, but she invented nothing, she failed
to make her o w n of any special m a n n e r of seeing and rendering
things; she failed to create a style. Only one woman d i d this, and
that w o m a n is Madame Morisot, and her pictures are the only
pictures painted by a w o m a n that could n o t be destroyed without
creating ablank, a hiatus in the history of art. True that hiatus would
beslight – insignificant if you will ‐ but the insignificant is sometimes
dear to us; and though nightingales, thrushes and skylarks were
to sing in King’s Bench Walk, 1 should miss the individual chirp
of the pretty sparrow. Madame Morisot’s note is perhaps asinsignifi‑
cant as a sparrow’s, but it is an unique and individual note. She
has created a style, and has done so by investing her art with all
her femininity; her art is no dull parody of ours; it is all womanhood
– sweet and gracious, tender and wistful womanhood.”1

83

Vision and Difference

Thus it becomes especially necessary to develop means by which we
can represent women ascultural producers within specific historical
formations, while at the same time dealing with the centrality of the
issue of femininity in structuring their lives and work. Yet femininity
must not be presented as the founding cause of their work. This
involves moving away from stressing the social construction of
femininity astaking part in privilegedsocial practices such asthe family
prior to the makingof art which then becomes amerely passivemirror‑
ing of that social role or psychic condition. By stressing the working
process ‐ both as manufacture and signification – as the site of the
inscription of sexual difference I am wanting to emphasize the active
part of cultural practices in producing the social relations and regula‑
tions of femininity. They can also conceivably be a place for some
qualificationor disruption of them. The notionsprings women from the
trap ofcircularity. Socially shaped within the feminine, their art ismade
to confirm femininity as an inescapable condition understood
perpetually from the ideological patriarchal definition of it. There is no
doubt that femininity is an oppressive condition yet women live it to
different purposes and feminist analyses are currently concerned to
explore not only its limits but the concrete ways women negotiate and
refashion that position to alter its meanings.
How sexual difference is inscribed will be determined by the

specificity of the practice and the processes of representation. In this
essay I have exploredtwo axes on which these issuescan beconsidered
– that of space andthat of the look. I have arguedthat the socialprocess
defined by the term modernity was experienced spatially in terms of
access to the spectacular city which was open to a class and gender‑
specific gaze. (This hovers between the still public figure of the flaneur
and the modern condition of voyeur.) In addition, 1have pointed to a
coincidence between the spaces of modernity and the spaces of
masculinity as they intersect in the territory of cross-class sexual
exchange. Modifyingtherefore the simple conceit of abourgeois world
divided by public and private, masculine and feminine, the argument
seeks to locate the production of the bourgeois definition of woman
defined by the polarity of bourgeois lady and proletarian prostitute!
working woman. The spaces of femininity are not only limited in
relationto those defining modernity but becauseof the sexualized map
across which woman is separated, the spaces of femininity are defined
by a different organization of the look.
Difference, however, does not of necessity involve restriction or lack.

That wouldbeto reinscribe the patriarchalconstructionof woman. The
features in the paintings by Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot of
proximity, intimacyanddivided spaces positadifferent kindofviewing

84

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

relation at the point of both production and consumption.
The difference they articulate isboundto the productionof femininity

asboth difference and asspecificity. They suggest the particularity of
the female spectator –that which is completely negatedin the selective
tradition we are offered ashistory.

WOMEN AND THE GAZE
In an article entitled ‘Film and the masquerade: theorizing the female
spectator’, Mary Ann Doane uses a photograph by Robert Doisneau
titled An oblique look, 1948to introduce her discussion of the negationof
the female gaze (Figure 3.25) in both visual representations and on the
streets.“ In the photograph a petit bourgeois couple stand in front of
anart dealer’s window and look in.The spectator ishiddenvoyeur-like
inside the shop. The woman looks at a picture and seems about to
comment on it to her husband. Unbeknownst to her, he is fact looking
elsewhere, at the proffered buttocks of a half-naked female figure in a
paintingplacedobliquely to the surfacefphotofwindow sothe spectator
canalsosee what he sees. Doane argues that it is his gazewhich defines
the problematicof the photograph andit erases that of the woman. She
looksatnothingthat hasany meaningfor the spectator. Spatially central
she isnegatedin the triangulationof looksbetweenthe man, the picture
of the fetishized woman and the spectator, who is thus enthralled to a
masculine viewing position.To get the joke, we must be complicit with
hissecret discovery of somethingbetterto look at. The joke, likealldirty
jokes, isat the woman’s expense. She iscontrasted iconographically to
the naked woman. She is denied the picturing of her desire; what she
looks at is blank for the spectator. She is denied being the object of
desire becauseshe is representedasawoman who actively looks rather
than returning and confirming the gaze of the masculine spectator.
Doane concludes that the photograph almost uncannily delineates the
sexual politics of looking.
I have introduced this example to make somewhat plainer what is at

stake in consideringthe female spectator ‐ the very possibility that texts
made by women can produce different positions within this sexual
politics of looking. Without that possibility, women are both denied a
representationof their desire and pleasure and are constantly erased so
that to look atandenjoy the sites of patriarchalculture wewomen must
become nominaltransvestites. Wemust assume amasculine positionor
masochisticallyenjoy the sightof woman’shumiliation.At the beginning
of this essay I raised the question of Berthe Morisot’s relation to such
modernsights and canonicalpaintingsof the modernasOlympia andA
barat the Folies-Bergére,bothof which figure within the sexualpoliticsof

85

looking – a politics at the heart of modernist art and modernist art
history’s version of it. Since the early 19705, modernism has been
critically challenged nowhere more purposely than by feminist cultural
practitioners.
In arecent article titled ‘Desiring images/imaging desire‘, Mary Kelly

addresses the feminist dilemma wherein the woman who is an artist
sees her experience in terms of the feminine position, that is as object
of the look, while she must also account for the feeling she experiences
as an artist occupying the masculine position as subject of the look.
Different strategies have emerged to negotiate this fundamental
contradiction, focusing on ways of either re‐picturing or refusing the
literal figuration of the woman’s body. All these attempts centre on the
problem: ‘How is a radical, critical and pleasurable positioning of the
woman asspectator tobedone?’ Kellyconcludes herparticular pathway
through this dilemma (whichis too specificto enter intoat this moment)
with a significant comment:

86

Modernity and the spaces of femininity

Until now the woman asspectator has been pinned to the surface
of the picture, trapped in apath of light that leads her back to the
features of a veiled face. It seems important to acknowledge that
the masquerade has always been internalized, linked to a
particular organization of the drives, represented through a
diversity of aims and objects; but without being lured into looking
for a psychic truth beneath the veil. To see this picture critically,
the viewer should neither be too close nor too far away.‘2

Kelly’scomment echoes the terms of proximity and distance which have
been central to this essay.’ The- sexual politics of looking function
around aregime which divides into binary positions, activityipassivity,
lookingibeing seen, voyeur/exhibitionist, subjectlobject. In approaching
works by Cassatt and Morisot we can ask: Are they complicit with the
dominant regime?“3 Do they naturalize femininity in its major
premisses? Is femininity confirmed as passivity and masochistic or is
there a critical look resulting from a different position from which
femininity is appraised, experienced and represented? In these paint‑
ings by means of distinctly different treatments of those protocols of
painting defined asinitiating modernist art ‐ articulation of space, re‑
positioning the viewer, selection of location, facture and brushwork ‑
the private sphere is invested with meanings other than those
ideologically produced to secure it asthe site of femininity. One of the
major means by which femininity is thus reworked is by the rearticula‑
tion of traditional spacesothat it ceases to functionprimarilyasthespace
ofsightfor amasteringgaze, butbecomesthe locusofrelationships.The
gaze that is fixed on the representedfigure is that of equal and like and
this is inscribed into the painting by that particular proximity which I
suggested characterized the work. There is little extraneous space to
distract the viewer from the inter‐subjective encounter or to reduce the
figuresto objectifiedstaffage, or to makethemthe objectsof avoyeuristic
gaze.The eye is not given itssolitary freedom.The women depictedfunc‑
tion as subjects of their own looking or their activity, within highly
specified locations of which the viewer becomes a part.
The rare photographof Berthe Morisotat work in her studio serves to

rEpresent the exchange of looks between women which structure these
* In earlier drafts of this chapter I explore the possibilities of coordinating the
historical perspectives on the spaces of modernity and femininity with those of
feminist psychoanalytical writing on femininity (Cixous, lrlgaray and Montrelay}
betweenwhich there was tantalizingcoincidenceon the issuesof the look, the body
and the tropes of distance and proximity in the construction and feminine
negotiation of sexual difference under a patriarchal system. The use of a statement
by Luce In’garay asintroit, and the citation from Mary Kelly, marks the possibility
of that reading which could not be undertaken here without massively enlarging
this chapter.

works (Figure 3.26). The majority of women painted by Cassatt or
Morisot were intimates of the family circle. But that included women
from the bourgeoisie and from the proletariat who worked for the
household as servants and nannies. It is significant to note that the
realities of class cannot be wished away by some mythic ideal of
sisterhood amongst women. The ways in which working‐class women
were painted by Cassatt, for example, involve the use class power in
that she could ask them to model half-dressed for the scenes of women
washing. None the less they were not subject to the voyeuristic gaze of
those women washing themselves made by Degaswhich. asLiptonhas
argued, can be located in the maisons‐closes or official brothels of
Paris.“ The maid’s simple washing stand allows a space in which
women outside the bourgeoisie can berepresentedboth intimately and
asworking women without forcing them into the sexualizedcategory of

88

3.2? Mary Cassatt Woman bathing (1891)

the fallen woman. The body of woman can bepictured asclassed but
not subject to sexual commodification (Figure 3.27).
i hope it will by n o w be clear that the significance of this argument

extendsbeyondissuesabout impressionistpaintingandparity for artists
who are women. Modernity is still with us, ever more acutely asour
cities become in the exacerbated world of postmodernity, more and
more a place of strangers and spectacle, while women are ever more
vulnerable to violent assault while out in public and are denied the right
to move around our cities safely. The spaces of femininity still regulate
women’s lives – from runningthe gauntlet of intrusive looksby menon
the streets to surviving deadly sexual assaults. In rapetrials, women on
the street are assumed to be ‘asking for it’. The configuration which
shaped the work of Cassatt and Morisot still defines our world. It is
relevant then to develop feminist analyses of the founding moments of

Vision and Difference

modernity and modernism, to discern its sexualized structures, to
discover past resistances and differences, to examine how women
producers developed alternative models for negotiating modernity and
the spaces of femininity.

4
Woman as sign in

Pre-Raphaelite literature:
the representation of
Elizabeth Siddall

This essay by Deborah Cherry and Griselda Pollock was first
published in Art History, 1984. It has been revised by

Griselda Pollock.

The feminist critique of art history began by berating the discipline for
its discriminatory exclusion of women artists. This was anecessarybut
limitedtactic. Forarthistory asdiscourse activelyproducesitsmeanings
by exclusion, repression and subordination of its Other. The feminine
is located by the textual strategies and ideological formations of art
historyasthe passive,beautifulor erotic objectof acreativityexclusively
tied to the masculine.Therefore feminist deconstructionof art historical
texts and their highly political effects is a fundamental necessity as a
preliminary for developing appropriate strategies for analysing women
asCultural producers.
In 1975 I was invited to give a short paper at the second conference

of the newly founded Association of Art Historians. I was offered the
token space of speaking about ‘Women in Victorian art’. Instead of
attempting to catalogue the many women active asartists in the period
or itemizetheir specialities, i choseto consider thecomplex issuesraised
by the case of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (1829‐62). Well known in art
history books asthe beloved model and later wife of the leading Pre‑
Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), Siddall attracted
feminist attentionbecause she too producedpaintings and drawings as
well as poetry. Her case epitomized the contradictions of woman as
muse for, and object of, art celebrated by art historians and woman as
ignored producer. This drama had been played out at a moment of
considerable historical significance in the history of women. The art

T A I C

R H T -L ‘ “A M R ”
A ( ): R H H T -L
S : A I C M S , . 12, N . 2, T H B B
M C (1986), . 114-

135

P : T A I C
S RL: :// . . / /4

115

937
A : 10-01-2017 00:50 TC

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I C M S

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The A r t Ins t i tu te o f Chicago

Rediscovering Hen r i de Toulouse‐Lautrec’s “At t he Mou l in Rouge”
Author(s): Reinhold Hel ler and Hen r i de Toulouse‐Lautrec
Source: A r t I ns t i t u t e o f Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 , The Helen B i r ch Ba r t l e t t
Memoria l Col lect ion (1986), pp. 114‐135
Published by: The A r t Ins t i t u te of Chicago
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4115937
Accessed: 10‐01‐2017 00:50 UTC

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JSTOR, please contact support@j stor.org.

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I n s t i t u t e o f Chicago Museum Studies

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H -L ‘

A M

EINHOLD HELLE ,

P A G L L ,

C

HO E .
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–
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115

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Rediscovering

At the Moulin Rouge
R E I N H O L D H E L L E R ,

The University of Chicago

HOSE works of a r t with which we are the m o s t
familiar often are the ones weactually know least.

As we confront these objects, o u r expectations‑
molded by prior knowledge and beliefs‐obscure the
reality before us. We confuse, in tu rn , many a r t works
with the biographies of their makers. The lives of artists,
especially of those who were working during the Post‑
Impressionist era‐extending roughly from Seurat and
Gauguin in the 1880s to Picasso in his initial years in
Paris around 1900‐are encased in anenvelope of myth
and legend that associates the ar t with an imagined bohe‑
mianism accented by sexual license, alcoholic excess, ge‑
nius merged with insanity, and deaths that are roman‑
tically youthful due to suicide or mysteriously decadent
diseases. The a r t becomes a means of vicarious escape
from our o w n lives into a novel and suggestive world
whose diabolic excess wecontrol through o u r ability to
leave our aesthetic daydreams at will and thus avoid the
final fates of those artists wehave admired. In this proc‑
ess, the artworks lose their physical reality and become
specters of themselves, ghostly apparitions of a cult
whose shrines are the hushed halls of museums or gal‑
leries and whose sacred texts are the biographies, novels,
and films filled with illustrations serving as rememo‑
rative substitutes for the ar t itself. Yearning for the famil‑
iar, we blind ourselves with comfortable precognition:
Welook through, n o t at, the works of a r t weknow best
andpermit their aura to overshadow their materialreality.

Henri de Toulouse‐Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge
(fig. 1), one of a series of Post‐Impressionist master ‑
pieces in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection
of The Art Institute of Chicago, surely has earned its
place among such icons of comfortable familiarity. Illus‑
trated and discussed in the many volumes of writings on
the legendary crippled, pathetic, but laughing dwarf of
Montmartre; included in the numerous exhibitions of
Lautrec’s work that draw visitors by tens of thousands;
among the m o s t sought‐out paintings at the Art In‑
stitute, At the Moulin Rouge is awork wemay even find
too familiar and one weavoid with some sense of embar‑
rassment because of its, and Lautrec’s, popularity. Our
faith in ou r familiarity is misplaced, however: the paint‑
ing is n o t what we have wanted it to be. Much of what
wehave thought to bet r u e about it for over eighty years
is false. Recent examinations of the painting by the Art
Institute’s Department of Conservation, particularly by
conservator David Kolch, reveal a painting we have
never seen.

Before we t u r n to those findings, we should review
what we have believed and what we do actually know.
Prior to entering the collections of the Art Institute in
1928, At the Moulin Rouge was displayed at the museum
from December 1924 to January 1925 in a Lautrec ex‑
hibition organized by the Arts Club of Chicago. From
the works in that exhibition, Frederic Clay Bartlett and
other Chicago collectors selected those that today form

115

HE A IN I E F CHICAG
L ME 12, N . 2

A

HE HELEN BI CH BA LE MEM IAL C LLEC I NThis content downloaded from 132.239.90.237 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:50:53 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

G 0
VOLUME 12, N O . 2 ‑

Mmeum
fludzéf

T H E H E L E N B I R C H B A R I L E E I M E M O R i A L C O L L E C T I O N

FIGURE 1 H T -La (F , 1864-1901).
A M R , 1894/95. O a a ;

123

141 . T A I C a , H B Ba
M a C (1928.610).

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116

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the core of the Art Institute’s enviable Lautrec collec‑
tion.1 Before being purchased for the Chicago museum,
the painting had been owned by Parisian collectors and
a r t galleries since 1902, the year following Lautrec’s
death. It was ceded, alongwith other works in Lautrec’s
estate, to Maurice Joyant, codirector of the Galerie
Manzi‐Joyant in Paris and ex e c u t o r of the estate, by
Lautrec’s father, Count Alphonse deToulouse-Lautrec,
“with all my heart andwithout regret . . . [because] you
believe in his work more than I do and because you have
been proven right.”2 Joyant then apparently sold the
painting to his partner, Manzi.3 Also in 1902, At the
Moulin Rouge seems to have been included among the
group of some fifty works by Lautrec exhibited at the
April Salon des Inde’pendants.4 However, after that ex‑
hibition, the painting was n o t displayed in public again
until 1914, when the Galerie Manzi-Joyant held a r e t r o ‑
spective exhibition.5 Although it may have been available
in the intervening years at the Galerie Manzi‐Joyant, for
twelve years the painting essentially disappeared from
public View. The 1914 exhibition was followed by an ‑
other decade during which At the Moulin Rouge was
again largely unseen” No t until after the 1924 Chicago
exhibition did the painting become a consistent part of
Lautrec’s oeuvre in shows devoted to his work. Then,
and particularly after it entered the Art Institute’s collec‑
tions, the paintingwas on cons tan t public display, either
on loan to numerous exhibitions in the UnitedStates and
Europe, or in the Ar t Institute itself.
The early exhibition history of the painting, there‑

fore, is one filled with lengthy gaps during which it was
n o t available to the public. Moreover, to this history of
invisibility m u s t be added even mo r e significant years,
because At the Moulin Rouge was apparently never ex ‑
hibited prior to 1902, when Manzi purchased it.7 Today
universally identified asone of Toulouse-Lautrec’s m o s t
important works, and one of the few large paintings
created by him, it seems never to have been shown by
him either in anexhibition devoted to his o w n a r t or in
group exhibitions such asthose of the Salons des Indé‑
pendants to which he consistently contributed. During
Lautrec’s lifetime, the painting remained in his studio.
Lautrec’s seeming reluctance to exhibit it deprives us of
documentation that could establish the year in which he
created it. Nonetheless,At the MoulinRougehas consis‑
tently been assigned to 1892 since Maurice Joyant first
listed it among a group of eight paintings with this title
created in that year.8 These eight paintings are clustered
around agrouping of four that explore various aspects of
the nocturnal life of the famed Montmartre music hall
and that were exhibited in 1893 at the Galerie Goupil,
which Joyant managed at the time.9 The painting now in
the Art Institute was n o t among them, however. None‑
116

FIGURE 2 Henri deToulouse‐Lautrec. Le Divan
japonais, 1892/93. Lithograph in four colors; 80 x
61.5 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs.
Carter H. Harrison Collection (1949.1002).

theless, in Joyant’s biography and monograph on
Toulouse‐Lautrec, which in 1926 established authorita‑
tively the compass and the chronology of Lautrec’s
works, he discussed the Art Institute paintingasif it had
been anessential component of the 1892paintingsuite he
had exhibited in 1893:

The renewal of the Moulin Rouge [under the new manage‑
m e n t of Joseph Oller in 1892] asnew performers preferred
by Lautrec were hired inspired him [to paint] . . . La
Goulue and her Sister, The Dance or The Beginning of the
Quadrille, La Goulue and her Sister Entering the Moulin
Rouge, The Dancers, and finally: Au Moulin Rouge with
several of his friends seen with La Macarona at a table.‘°

Joyant categorically stated: “This painting is one of the
mo s t impor tan t o f all works by Lautrec. . . . I t serves as

L

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117

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the summation of all his studies of the Moulin Rouge.”
Hewen t onto identify the persons seen inAt theMoulin
Rouge:

Seated around the table, from left to right, are M. Edouard
Dujardin [a Symbolist poet, critic, and dramatist associated
with the Revue Wagnerienne and the Revue Indépendante],
La Macarona [a dancer], Paul Sescau [a professional photog‑
rapher], Maurice Guibert [a proprietor of the vineyard of
Moét et Chandon champagne]; in the foreground to the
right, seen full-face: Mlle. Nelly C. [a name otherwise
unknown]; in the central part: [the dancer] La Goulue
adjusting her hair and silhouettes of [Lautrec’s cousin] Dr.
G. Tapié de Céleyran, and of Toulouse-Lautrec himself
wearing his bowler hat.‘1

Joyant’s ability to identify with certainty various fig‑
ures in the painting lends his information the quality of
authority, ashe intended, but this authority15under‑
mined by his failure to even mention other figures.
Joyant’s writings about Lautrec are filled with personal
reminiscences about the artist and the people he be‑
friended.12 Joyant should therefore have been able to
identify with little difficulty the woman seen from the

Rediscovering Lautrec

back, seated between Dujardin and Guibert. Her com ‑
plex knot of fiery redhair, her tall hat of tulle and ostrich
feathers, the gesture of her hand with little finger dain‑
tily extended‐all these are identifiably the attributes of
the dancer Jane Avril, described by Joyant himself as
“Lautrec’s m o s t intelligent and complaisant model . . .
with her very fine but pale facial features, angular, al‑
mo s t simian i n figure and m o v em e n t” 1 3 Jane Avril ap‑
pears in the company of Dujardin, for example,m the
1893 poster for the music hall, Le Divanjaponais (fig. 2),
in a pose quite similar to hers1nAt the Moulin Rouge,
a n dm t w o painted sketches (figs. 3, 4), also closely
related to her figurein the paintingand certainly used by
Lautrec asheworked o u t the composition. Another fa‑
miliar dancer whom Joyant knew and failed to identify
in the Art Institute painting is the woman seen in profile
near La Goulue in the background, and easily recog‑
nized asLa Mome Fromage, so closely associated with
La Goulue as to be called her sister by Joyant in the
painting of La Goulue entering the Moulin Rouge (see
fig. 5), aswell aselsewhere.
Joyant simply ignored the figures of Jane Avril and La

Mome Fromage when he named the personnages of At

FIGURE 3 Henri de
Toulouse‐Lautrec. Femme
deDos (lane Avril),
1892/95. Oi l or gouache
on cardboard; 59.7 x
39.4 cm . Upperville, Va.,
collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon.

FIGURE 4 Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec. [cine
Avril, 1892/95. Oi l or
gouache on cardboard.
Albi, France, Musée
Toulouse‐Lautrec.

117

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, 1891/92. ;
79.4 59 . A . :
. G. D , – (
, 1971), . 2. . 243.

118

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the Moulin Rouge. More problematic, however, is his
identification of the large right‐hand foreground figure
as“Mlle. Nelly C . , ” someone whose name is connected
with Lautrec at no other time. The name is, in fact, a
fiction that permitted Joyant to hide the actual identity
of the person depicted: the English (or perhaps Amer‑
ican) dancer May Milton1“Lautrec created a poster for
h e rIn 1895 (fig. 6), apparently for a t o u r of the United
States, and used its composition for a black‐and-white
lithograph illustrating her dance1nthe August 3,1895,
issue of Le Rire (fig. 7). Moreover, in addition to printed
sketches for the poster, he painted her portrait (fig. 8)
and exhibited it at the London branch of Goupil’s in
1898.15Her strange hat, perched on her head like a giant
Art Nouveau insect with fibrous antennae and winglike
bows, also appearedin Lautrec’5cover of the sheet music
for Yvette Guilbert’s song “Eros Vanné” in 1894 (fig. 9).
The features of the dancer seem to linger1nthose of the
wearer of the hat as well.

Despite Joyant’s failure to properly identify May
Milton asthe major figure in At the Moulin Rouge, heis
the source of the mos t information about her, but his
description is tinged with distaste and notes of disdain:

At the same time [as Lautrec discovered May Belfort, the
Irish singer, in 1895] he also hunted down May Milton, but
this May was no more than adancer. Her pale face was
clown-like and reminded one of nothing somuch asabull
dog. Nothing in her face was attractive, but her movements’
suppleness, her purely English choreographic training . . .
[were] a so r t of revelation to us then. . . .“’

Others inform us that May Milton became the close
friend of Jane Avril and that the t w o were in each other’s
company constantly, so that the lime‐green face of May
Milton, complementing the red‐orange hair of Jane Avril
in the painting, may serve as a commentary on their
relationship. After 1895, however, Milton disappeared
from the retinue of Lautrec, possibly after leaving for
her American tou r. With May Milton seemingly moving
off the canvas and away from the central group, the
painting could well symbolize her departure from the
milieu of the Moulin Rouge.
Neither Miss Milton’s brief appearance on the stages

of Montmartre n o r her departure suffice to explain
Joyant’s negative references to her, or certainly the vi‑
tuperative description of her portrait (fig. 8) written in
1913 by Gustave Cocquiot:

I remember having seen‐with what a shudder [frisson]‑
this [portrait of] May Milton . . . with her yellowish‐white
complexion that left the impression of a bladder skin thinly
stretched over some magma alternating between yellow and
whitish green. This painting is of a hideous te r r o r. This
mouth, rubbed red, drops open like a vulva, lacking reserve,
without solidity. It opens and lets en te r whatever will! And
the painter of this dreadful image was a lover of women!
What entangled sadism! . . . or perhaps a so r t of sermon
addressed to other men? It is a singular problem.”

Cocquiot’s bizarre, deprecating c omm e n t s suggest that
hewas thinking of the apparition of May Milton at the
right of At the Moulin Rouge more than of her other
portrait, and that he was attempting to impart an ap‑
otropaic value to i t , again as if something about the

FIGURE 5 Henri deToulouse‐Lautrec. Lu Goulue En‑
tering the Moulin Rouge, 1891/92. Oil on cardboard;
79.4 X 59cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo:
M. G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre (New
York, 1971), vol. 2. p. 243.

FIG RE 8 H -L . M M , 1895.
O ; 65.9 49.2 . A

I C , K L. B
(1949.263).

FIG RE 6 H -L . M M , 1895.
L ; 83 62 . A I
C , C H. H C (1948.451).

L

FIG RE 7 H -L . M M , 1895.
L . P L R , A . 3, 1895.
N , H L. . P :
N R

, N .

119

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Top left
FIGURE 6 Henri de Toulouse‐Lautrec. May Milton, 1895.
Lithograph in five colors; 83 X 62cm. The Art Institute
of Chicago, Carter H. Harrison Collection (1948.451).

, , . / ‘ Left
®/ / /. / / ‘ FIGURE 7 Henri deToulouse-Lautrec. May Milton, 1895.

/ / ‘/ Lithograph in black. Published in Le Rire, Aug. 3, 1895.
‘ New York, collection of Herbert L. Schimmel. Photo:
“MWWM Nathan Rabin, New York.

119

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M M
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(1949.991).

120

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memory of May Milton was sounpleasant or scandalous
asto require rejection and condemnation. What this
might have been15open only to conjecture: might Miss
Milton’s relationship with Jane Avril have been a lesbian
one? At the time of the painting, in his depictions of
prostitutes, Lautrec demonstrated definite interest in
what the French identified asl’umour unglais, but polite
society would surely have condemned such relationships
outside the “perverse” atmosphere of the brothel.
Joyant’s and Cocquiot’s references to vulgarity, ugliness,
troupes of dancing‘‘girls,” overly receptive female geni‑
tals, and sermons to m e n can all serve asdisguised refer‑
ences to what they did n o t wish to mention overtly:
female homosexuality. Similarly, if the figure on the

Paroles de

MAURICE
Vt;J)0NNAY

, ~ .- i – .,- – ( L A swam: M u s l c u j
. fr‐-~y‐.us‐Ahn‐J::==

\ J

120

,,,cover of “Eros Vanne (fig. 9) can be associated with the
English dancer, the song’s rhythmic ennui, its celebra‑
tion of the tired sensibilities of névroses, of “secret ma‑
neuvers to resuscitate senses n o w defunct,” and of “the
quest for novel frissons [thrills],” all cause aneros:

Very old, worn o u t and satiated
Despite my twenty years, because 1 was born
on a bed of tarnished roses
and 1 am an exhausted Eros!18

Thus, the song may signal forbidden erotic pleasures
shared by t w o w o m e n such asthose Lautrec depicted in
At the Moulin Rouge. With one of the w o m e n in
pseudo-masculine dress, the potential for identifying
them as lovers and, by implication, asJane Avril and
May Milton, c a n n o t be readily dismissed.

The conclusion wetentatively reach m u s t remain con ‑
jecture, but it is one invited by the t o n e and c o n t e n t of
Lautrec’s ardent defenders as they discussed May
Milton. Their need to denigrate‐even annihilate‐her
memory appears to bethe predominant motive, amotive
that may explain the history of “vandalism” At the
Moulin Rouge has suffered. The painting clearly shows,
even in reproductions, that it is composed of t w o canvas
segments: arectangle measuring approximately one hun‑
dred and twenty‐four by ninety‐four centimeters and
containing the group seated around the table; and a re ‑
verse‐L‐shaped segment, somewhat irregularly edged,
measuring in its lower a r m some twenty‐seven cen‑
timeters high while its vertical portion is approximately
sixteen centimeters wide and contains m o s t of the figure
of May Milton. Despite the easy Visibility of this seg‑
mentation, it was n o t mentioned by Joyant or by M. G.
Dortu in her six‐volume catalogue of Lautrec’s paintings
and drawings compiledin 1971to supplantJoyant’ssixty‑
year‐old listings.‘9 Virtually all the literature on the
painting, in fact, has been remarkably silent concerning
the mounting of the t w o canvas segments on a n e w sup‑
porting lining canvas, the filling in with plaster of tack‑
ing holes surrounding the rectangle, and the efforts to
touch up the junctures to make them less obtrusive. The
first, and little noted, published mention (there are u n ‑

FIGURE 9 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Eros
Vanne, 1894. Lithograph in black on t a n wove
paper; 49.6 x 33.9 cm. The Ar t Institute of
Chicago, Carter H. Harrison Collection
(1949.991).

L

A I ‘
1930 )
1956 D C :

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,
. ….

–

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E M I
1860 ,
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1902.21

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L 1979.
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, “M .
C.” M M ,
1892 L
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.

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1902 , L- –
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121

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published ones in the Art Institute’s conservation and
curatorial files dating back to the 1930s) is contained in a
1956 book by Douglas Cooper:

In its original form this picture was astraightforward con‑
versation piece in which the spectator was imagined close to
the table and looking down on the scene from just behind
the back of the woman with orange hair. But Lautrec mu s t
have felt that this conception was t o o illustrative and banal,
for at a later stage he enlarged his canvas. . . . Then he
brought all the pictorial science at his command into play in
order to transform the impressionistic or photographic im‑
age izigto ano less realistic but pictorially more effective
one.

The joining of the t w o segments to transform a genre
scene of people in a café, such ashad become common
since EdouardManet and the Impressionists began their
systematic exploration of this theme during the 18605,
into a more radical composition, with a partial figure
pushed to the edge of the canvas‐that is, linked to the
a r t of Edgar Degas and Japanese woodcuts‐was n o t
discussed further until twen ty ‐ two years later, when
Gale B. Murray reviewed Mme. Dortu’s catalogue:

No information is offered asto the way works may have
been repainted or otherwise altered. Au Moulin Rouge . . .
is again am o s t significant example, for at one point Lautrec
radically enlarged and revised the painting by adding an
extra piece of canvas and the prominent figure to the right.
Dortu makes no mention of this fact and evidently did n o t
find the reproduction of this painting in its original state,
published in 1902.21

The photograph to which Murray referred (fig. 10) was
republished shortly thereafter when the Art Institute
organized alarge exhibition of Lautrecpaintings in 1979.
In the catalogue, Charles Stuckey and Naomi Maurer
referred to the photograph and, after identifying “Mlle.
Nelly C.” for the first time asMay Milton, argued that
the original painting of 1892 was revised by Lautrec after
he me t Milton in 1895.22 The dating of the painting to
1892, first supplied by Joyant and accepted by everyone
after him, was thereby revised, but n o t rejected, largely
on the basis of its subject mat te r.
The conclusion that, in 1895, Lautrec was dissatisfied

with his 1892 composition and revised it by expanding it
is the one wewould m o s t readily seek. In this case, it
also conforms to our image of Lautrec asanartist who
moved from a relatively traditional realism toward a
more radically stylized ar t , especially in his lithographs.
The figure of the woman c u t off by the edge of the
canvas, her face tinted green and yellow, seems a jarring
contrast to the more naturalistic rendering of the re ‑

Rediscovering Lautrec

mainder of the painting, and thus appears to justify the
conclusion that Lautrec painted this work in t w o cam‑
paigns, separated by three years. That conclusion iswhat
the logic of a r t history and biography demands; but that
conclusion is also totally wrong. At the Moulin Rouge
was painted all at one time, but n o t in 1892; asweshall
see, it was later cu t , the L‐shapedsegment was removed,
and still later it was added back o n t o the rectangle from
which it had been separated.
The examination of the paintingduring the fall of 1985

by Art Institute conservator David Kolch shows in‑
controvertably that Lautrec’s original painting was cut
up.23When the t w o canvas segments were inspected, the
paint surfaces and manner of application were seen to be
similar. In certain areas, such asthe ballustrade at the
lower left, which would have had to bepartially painted
over to make adjustments if the painting had been ex‑
tended, no sign of overpainting is to befound. Lautrec’s
practice of using paint thinned with turpentine until it
soaked into the ground of the canvas would have made
the duplication of surface qualities extremely difficult, if
n o t impossible, without r emnan t s of this process re ‑
maining visible. X‐radiographs of the painting, more ‑
over, showed that brushstrokes of objects such as the
bentwood chair extended from one canvas segment into
the other. To the evidence of paint surface and brush‑
strokes can beadded that provided by the weave of the
canvas. Running horizontally through the canvas atsev‑
eral points are noticeably heavy threads; these “fat
threads” cross the vertical seam joining one canvas seg‑
me n t to the other, thereby demonstrating that the t w o
segments were once of one piece, n o t t w o distinct can‑
vases later joined. The canvas painted by Lautrec mus t
therefore originally have been at least its cur ren t size.
The rectangular portion of the table group was later c u t
away and restretched to create the painting seen in the
1902 photograph, while the L‐shaped portion was u n ‑
stretched, folded diagonally near its center (paint loss
here indicates this), and presumably stored away. Re‑
joined again later to its severed segment on a lining can‑
vas, the seams resulting from this process were painted
over to minimize and hide them. From this procedure of
dismemberment and rejoining, the painting now in the
Art Institute resulted.
Themajor question arisingfrom this previously unrec‑

ognized process is, obviously, who c u t the painting and
when, aswell aswho patched it back together and,
again, when? Was it Toulouse‐Lautrec who initially re ‑
moved the figure of May Milton and then preserved the
canvas fragment with her on it, so that the executors of
his estate were able to rejoin the t w o pieces? Or did
Joyant both c u t and then again patch the painting after
the artist’s death? Documentation that would defini‑

121

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122

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tively answer these questions does n o t seem to exist, and
there are also no critics’ descriptions of it during
Lautrec’s lifetime to provide clues as to its appearance
then. But, by examining once more the painting itself,
the information concerning it supplied by Joyant, and
the photograph published in 1902, we can arrive at a
reasonable conclusion asto the probable circumstances
and dates of the creation and alteration of At the Moulin
Rouge.
As we now know, the photograph thought to repre~

sent anearly stage of Lautrec’s painting has been proven
to beinstead a“second stage”‐in which the canvas was
cu t down and split in both dimension and content, with
the offending image of May Milton removed. If the can‑
vas of the painting itself today continues to testify to us
that, in its original conception, May Milton, whom
Lautrec m e t in 1894 or 1895, was very much a part of it,
the photograph of the reduced version (fig. 10) provides
uswith adate‐1902‐prior to which the dismember‑
me n t took place. The circumstances of the photograph’s
publicationmay also tell uswhy this seeming “vandaliz‑
ing” of anartist’s work happened at all. The photograph
was publishedalongwith those of thirty‐six other works
by Lautrec in the April 1902 issue of Le Figaro Illustré,
an issue under the editorship of the Galerie Manzi‑
Joyant and devoted to a celebration of Toulouse‑
Lautrec’s work. The publication date coincidedwith that
year’s Salon des Indépendants (March 29‐May 5, 1902),
referred to above, where in the central gallery there ap‑
peared amemorial collection of the artist’s paintingsand
lithographs. Insofar asthey can beidentified, nine paint‑
ings listed in the catalogue were either then owned by
Manzi or Joyant, or had recently been sold by their
gallery. Many of these were included among the illustra‑
tions in this issue of Le Figaro Illustré, and presumably
paintings such asAt the Moulin Rouge, recently turned
over to them by Count Toulouse‐Lautrec, were among
the forty or fifty additional paintings said to have been
exhibited bors catalogue at the Salon.24 The other paint‑
ings illustrated in the special issue of the magazine were
exhibited in the large retrospective of 200 works by
Lautrec that took place atthe Galerie Durand‐Ruel from
May 14to May 31, 1902. This exhibition excluded works
from the Manzi‐Joyant inventory; these may, therefore,
have remained available for viewing at their gallery. The
selection of paintings at the Salon des Indépendants and
the thirty‐seven illustrations all functioned asadvertise‑
ments of gallery inventories at a time when the artist’s
name continued to a t t r a c t public curiosity, still only
months after his death.
The presentation of Lautrec to the public of 1902 n o t

only served commercial ends but also existed in the con‑
t e x t of a mo re encompassing debate concerning the
122

FIGURE 10 Henri deToulouse‑
Lautrec. A Ride at the Moulin

Rouge. Photograph published in Le
Figaro Illustré, April 1902. Photo:

New York Public Library.

health, or lack of it, of modern a r t and of the bohemian
existence, whether realor imagined, of many contempo‑
rary artists. Lautrec’s death in 1901 was surrounded by
sensationalized gossip, fed in part by memories of his
confinement to amental hospital for three months dur‑
ing 1899. His stay in an asylum for detoxification, his
reputation for sexual libertinage, and his association
with entertainers of various types sufficed to make the
artist’s death at the age of thirty-seven asubject of popu‑
lar conjecture and tongue clucking, particularly when
these were combined with the fact that hewas “the last
descendant of one of France’s m o s t noble and oldest
families.” “He died horribly,” summarized the LyonRé‑
publicain, “ruined in body and mind, in an insane
asylum While subject to periodic fits of raging mad‑
ness.”25 Toulouse‐Lautrec’s ancestry, physiognomy, life,
death, and art‐both its con t en t and technique‐seemed
designed to demonstrate the truth of the then highly
popular theories about the degeneracy in modern a r t and
literaturepropagatedby Max Nordau in his book Entar‑
tung.26 It was to counte r the image of Lautrec as an
insane artist that Manzi‐joyant published the richly il‑
lustrated issue of Le Figaro Illustré.
In this carefully orchestrated denial of suchcharges, in

texts alternating between factual description and poetic
metaphor, such Parisian critics as Arsene Alexandre
(who had befriended Lautrec and had already written
defenses of the artist), Julien Leclerq, and Roger Marx,
and such German critics asJulius Meier‐Graefe, Her‑
mann Esswein, andJulius Elias, admitted the alcoholism
of their hero, but also identified him asamodern Dante
who descended into the inferno of Montmartre and in‑
cisively depicted what he witnessed. Thus, Alexandre
w r o t e in 1899, “ I n his thirst for truth, this strange and
intrepid small man descended into hell, and his bristling
hair was singed [by] the abomination of alcohol.” Over
his entire oeuvre, Alexandre continued, should be
posted the warning inscription of Dante’s Inferno:
“Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate! [Abandon all
hope, you who en te r here!]”27 This argument, which
literally detoxified Lautrec by asserting his sanity and
his noble na tu re in the midst of adegenerate milieu, was

a b E a b a
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c c a a c ca a
P a a a .28

123

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They say hewas a repulsive dwarf with ahorridly large
head; and in reality hewas only apitiful boiteux [cripple].
They say he was a slovenly debaucherer, but he was a
member of [one of] France’s noblest families, was always on
the best of te rms with his parents, lived in ideal circum‑
stances that made him financially independent and disdainful
of the tainted cash offered by dealers, and he was a noble
man in every way: his mannerisms were n o t without a
certain delicacy, and asa conversationalist he was unsur‑
passed. They go on to say that he lived in brothels and that
hehabituated the saloons and bars of the Boulevard de
Clichy and of the lower city. Weshould add that hewas a
constant patron of the Chat Nair and the cabarets later
emulating it, that hewas the particular friend of Rodolphe
Salis, the chansonnier gentilbomme [gentleman singer], that

heknew the best and least actors personally, that hewas
welcomed in the boudoirs of the m o s t genial and beautiful
actrices and singers. It was in that world that he found his
life’s element asartist and asthinker. He knew life, and
knew best la basse bumanité [human lowlife], and this life
left its mark on him‐one day more harshly than this weak
body born of a genetically exhausted nobility could bear. It
attacked his nerves first, and he sought the narcotic of
strong drink. But then they say: Lautrec died of alcoholism
in an insane asylum. In reality, tuberculosis ended his life
and hedied in the arms of his mother. I was privileged to
see a letter written by this loving mother in which she said:
“. . it was astonishing to us to see how, in spite of his
illness, his intelligence and the lucidity of his mind remained
soextraordinary. It was phthisis that took him away from
us.” Then, last of all, they say: Lautrec was n o t apainter! I
could claim with just asmuch justification that in modern
Prussia there are no generals.28

123

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Through a selective denying and affirming of general
conceptions about Lautrec, mixed with irony and n o t a
little pathos, the reputation of the man was defended
from his attackers. If Lautrec the man could beretrieved
from ignominy by asserting his normality, even his no ‑
bility, in amilieuof depravity, then much the same argu‑
men t could beeffective for his a r t . Judged by his detrac‑
t o r s to beaperverse and pornographic caricaturist, n o t a
t r u e artist or painter, Lautrec was situated by his ad‑
mirers in apantheon of artists and writers who recog‑
nized the bizarre beauty of ugliness. Greek mythology,
Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and others were
cited to establish the sanity of Lautrec’s observations,
and his a r t was given anhonored genealogy that encom‑
passed the entire Middle Ages aswell asa noble ancestry
of individual geniuses:

Is it really necessary to indicate by citing names this series
of geniuses, of unique talents, of free spirits in whom was
perpetuated [the medieval] judgment‐pessimistic, tragic,
comic, laughing, loving‐of the spectacle of life? Brueghel
the Elder in Flanders, Holbein in Germany, Rembrandt in
Holland, Michelangelo in Italy, Velasquez and Goya in
Spain, the designers of woodcuts in Japan, Daumier in
France: none of them hesitated before the horror and the
ugliness that confronted them to express the truth of their
observation and the profundity of their thought.29

Safely surrounded by universally praised tradition,
Lautrec’s example then became a means of attacking the
very bourgeois mentality and capitalist society that had
been mounting anattack on the artist. Not he, but so‑
ciety, was decadent, nearing its o w n demise and an ‑
nouncing its own death. Lautrec was the genius, the
nineteenth‐century Dante, who depicted this “divine
comedy” of a dying century and a dying civilization.
The milieu, n o t the artist, was crippled in body and
mind, it was arguedwith mixed Darwinist and anarcho‑
socialist conviction, and Montmartre was the site in
which was concentrated its modern inferno, “the neu‑
rosis of perverse orgies, the delerium of weakened senses
whipped into arousal, the harsh biting laughter of des‑
pair drugged by alcohol and racing toward the abyss in a
wildly danced chahut.”3° Lautrec, the seer, also served as
the summation of this declining civilization in the trag‑
edy of his life: “The fame of his family began in the
Provence [during the Middle Ages] and ended between
the locales of Aristide Bruant and the Moulin Rouge;
between these temporal limits is inscribed the entire
organic evolution of a great people’s a r t and culture.”31
It iswithin this contex t that weshould consider At the

Moulin Rouge and its transformation. It was given the
title Une Yahle auMoulinRouge (A Table at the Moulin
Rouge) when it was illustrated, physically cropped, in
124

LeFigaro Illustré, and it was discussed under this title as
well a few years later by the German critic Hermann
Esswein. Using Lautrec’s a r t as his focus, Esswein en‑
gaged in an extended discussion of decadence, and the
issue of decadence in ar t , and concluded that it was the
milieu, n o t the art , that deserved the epithet. In his argu‑
ment , the fragmented At the Moulin Rouge played a
pivotal role:

[Lautrec] often ate in the company of these t w o women
and three men about t o w n and at this table they distributed
themselves thus, five isolated figures surrounding its t o r ‑
t u r ous barrenness, its void surface. But all five of them fail
to notice the t w o female figures behind them to the right,
whom only Lautrec sees. Two women, one fixing her hair
with amasterful, lifelike gesture asthe other, with hands on
hips, stares into the room through rigidly glazed, wide open
eyes. In these t w o secondary figures, aswell asin the t w o
character types who saunter past the seated group toward
the locale’s exit, the entire genius of the painter has been
brought into focus. This is n o t just some ingratiating slice of
life arbitrarily selected. In this painting weare convinced
that the scene fully characterizes the milieu.32

In addition to summarizing the argument against
Lautrec’s decadence, this account makes clear how dif‑
ferent the effect of the painting fragment was from that
of the entire composition. Closely focused on the table
group, with the edges of the painting cropped and re ‑
duced even further asthey were folded back around the
stretcher for tacking, the abridged composition placed
the viewer (or the painter, asEsswein suggested) imme‑
diately behind Jane Avril, somewhat above her and ap‑
parently on aplatform behind the railing seen at left. At
eye level were the four background figures, who thus
assumed the significant role attributed to them by Ess‑
wein. With edges c u t close to the figures and with the
light green background visually pressing forward, the
space in the paintingwas compressed and collapsed, and
the viewer’s eye bounced in a claustrophobic circle
among the brightly colored faces, hair, and skin of the
women over the incommunicative shadows of the men.
Viewed in this manner, the fragment is apowerful image
in and of itself, and certainly capable of independent
presentation, whether seen in formal or psychological
terms. It would n o t bedifficult to imagine Lautrec pre‑
senting it in this fashion asavariation on similar scenes
by Degas, whom he admired, aswell ason his o w n At
the Moulin de la Galette of 1889.
Although the severed composition would have been

effective, and therefore testifies to the artist’s sensitivity
to composition, it lacks the internal visual logic found
in other Lautrec images, whether paintings or prints.
Following, in particular, the example of Degas in crea‑

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125

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ting works containing unorthodox viewpoints and fre‑
quently cutting figures with the frame as if it were a
physical limit imposed on the field of vision, Lautrec
placed great emphasis on establishing the position from
which ascene takes on its perspectival coherence. This is
mo s t noticeable in his lithographs, whose compositions
tend to bebolder than those of his paintings. His con‑
cern for naturalistic vantage point and perspective seems
to affirm allusions to volume and space, which his flat
application of color seems to negate; it is in their tension
that Lautrec achieved pictorial unity. Asalready pointed
ou t , in the fragmented painting the viewer/painter
would have to beimmediately behind and slightly above
Jane Avril. If one assumes this vantage point, one should
also belooking downward o n t o her companions. How‑
ever, this is n o t the case at all. Instead, the viewer is at
about the same height as the profile face of Maurice
Guibert, able to see the undersides of the hat brims of La
Goulue, Dujardin, and Sescau. The viewer m u s t also
move his eyes upward to gaze at the four background
figures. It becomes apparent to the viewer, in trying to
define where heis in relationship to the table group, that
he is, in fact, somewhere to the right of the group, o u t of
the rectangular space of A Ykhle ut the Moulin Rouge
and directly at eye level with May Milton. The entire
scene is plotted soasto appear asif the viewer had just
encountered her yellow‐green apparition and only then
sees to the left the table group and the others in the
Moulin Rouge, with its green walls, windows, and ex‑
panses of mirrors. May Milton is more, then, than a
necessary component of the composition; she is the very
fulcrum around which the entire composition was con‑
ceived. She could n o t have been added in alater rework‑
ing of the painting; without her, the painting of Lautrec
and his friends in the Moulin Rouge lacks any focus. It
should also be apparent that, with May Milton as an
integral part of the original painting, it could n o t have
been created prior to 1894 or 1895, when the artist m e t
her.
While it is n o t possible to document that it was n o t

Toulouse‐Lautrec who c u t down the painting, it is cer‑
tainly unlikely. Had hedone so, surely hewould have
granted the fragment greater unity and logic. The 1902
photograph, when compared to the painting asit is t o ‑
day, does show some alteration, but all of it is concen‑
trated on erasing the presence of May Milton, n o t on
reshaping the composition sothat it gains independence
without her. Her right sleeve, which would have re‑
mained in the rectangle’s lower right corner, m u s t have
been overpainted with the ocher of the floor and with
lines suggesting floorboards. Part of Guibert’s coat may
also have been touched up in aneffort to blend the new
paint of the alterations with the old, something that may

Rediscovering Lautrec

have caused the changes in jane Avril’s bentwood chair
that are apparent in the photograph, although the latter
may be touch‐ups on the photograph for the sake of
clarification.
Since traces of these changes are n o t discernible in the

painting today, they m u s t have been made in amanner
that would have allowed them to beundone later on. It
is possible that an easily soluble medium was used, or
that the pigments used to cover what remained of May
Miltonwere applied over acoa t of varnish. These would
be the techniques less of an artist altering his own work
than of a res to re r who had been instructed to make ad‑
justments in such a way that the painting could be re ‑
stored to its original state. Thus, Joyant, rather than
Lautrec, comes to mind asinstigator of the alterations.
Had the removal of MayMilton taken place by Lautrec’s
hand, it would have been for unknownpersonal reasons,
asformer lovers might edit o u t the figure of a rejected,
or rejecting, love from aphotograph. ByMay 1898, such
exorcising of May Milton from his oeuvre had n o t yet
taken place, since Lautrec included her portrait in
Goupil’s exhibition of his work in London. Shortly
thereafter, in January 1899, he was confined for detox‑
ification. During the t w o years remaining to him, he
developed a painting style quite unlike that of At the
MoulinRouge. There is no evidence of this later mode in
the corrections visible in the 1902photograph. Again, all
this suggests aposthumous change in, and entitling of,
Toulouse‐Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge. As long asit
remained in the artist’s possession, MayMiltonwas very
much a part of the painting.
Wecan safely conclude, therefore, that At the Moulin

Rouge was c u t apart after the painter’s death on Sep‑
tember 9, 1901, and certainly prior to publication of A
Ykhle at the Moulin Rouge in the April 1902 issue of Le
Figure Illustré. Similarly, the cutting and restretching
mus t have taken place before the opening of the Salon
des Indépendants on March 29, 1902. The alteration of
the painting can bemore closely dated to the weeks just
after Joyant received the painting in the group of works
deeded to him by the artist’s father. He himself provided
evidence suggesting this. In his book, Joyant described
the painting asbeing signed by the artist with his mono‑
gram at the lower left of the canvas.” There is no such
signature today, however; instead, what we see is the
small red cachet of the artist’s encircled monogram
which Joyant himself applied as executor of the estate in
1902. Apparently never intending to exhibit i t , Lautrec
had no reason to sign the painting, and it was left to
Joyant to do after it came into his purview. Had the
canvas already been divided at that time, the cachet
would have been placed o n t o the rectangular fragment
containing the seated figures at table. Instead, on the

125

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126

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lower left corner of the L~shaped segment that is May
Milton’s realm, the cachet was stenciled prior to the c u t ‑
ting down of the canvas. It is one more factor affirming
that At the M oulirz Rouge was slit into separate sections
under Joyant’s immediate direction.
Why would the man who prided himselfonbeing one

of Lautrec’s staunchest defenders, closest friends, first
dealer, and the major authority on his a r t and life have
done this to awork of ar t he was assigned to preserve?
His very emotional involvement with the a r t and creator
maywell be the reason. MayMiltonwas, after all, some‑
one whose brief stay in Paris seems to have left behind it
a trail of animosity among those of Lautrec’s acquain‑
tances who chose to write about her. The desire to eradi‑
cate her presence in the work of Lautrec m u s t have been
strong. Popular and influential, the poster in which she
figured could hardly be destroyed, n o r could the por‑
trait in a private collection or on display at the rival
gallery of Durand‐Ruel be refuted. But the ma t t e r was
different in apaintingnever seen before and in which her
image seemed peripheral and easily removable from the
main body of the picture. Even after hehad restored the
figure of May Milton to the canvas, Joyant continued
denying her presence by identifyingher as“Mlle. Nelly
C.” The effect of denying May Milton her identity was
conceptually similar to , although certainly less drastic
than, removing her figure from the painting.
To the complex of personalmotivations m u s t beadded

the commercial ones of anart‐gallery director. The re‑
duction of the canvas did n o t deprive it of commercial
value and, in fact, may even have enhanced it. In the
climate of repeated charges against Lautrec of insanity,
depravity, alcoholism, and general signs of degeneration,
the garishly green, yellow, andwhite face of May Milton
was hardly a ready argument for sanity of vision mea‑
sured in naturalistic terms. During this period, it was
precisely the green faces or blue trees made by other
artists that were constantly cited assymptomatic of their
mental aberration.34 Even if May Milton’s bizarre com ‑
plexion derived from a naturalistic rendering of the
effects of stagelighting, her discolored, masklike face
could certainly have been detrimental to the image of a
healthy Lautrec fostered by Manzi‐Joyant, and would
have been aliability in their inventory. Skillful cu ts and
minimal reconstructive painting were ready and viable
solutions of the gallery for removing the undesirable
aspects of one of its major holdings.
If it can be established that At the Moulin Rouge was

taken apart during the early months of 1902, after it had
entered the inventory of the Galerie Manzi-Joyant, it is
less certain precisely when Joyant and Manzi chose to
resur rec t the original composition. Esswein’s description
of the smaller painting was published in 1909, sur ‑
126

prisingly without an illustration in an otherwise well‑
illustrated book that made ready use of Manzi-Joyant
holdings. Perhaps, by that time, the t w o parts of the
painting were being reunited o n t o the lining canvas that
now supports them. The restorationof the original com‑
positionwas certainly completed by the ]une 1914 re t r o ‑
spective exhibition sponsored by Manzi-Joyant. At the
Moulin Rouge, then owned by Manzi, appeared in the
catalogue listing accompanied by the description, “Por‑
traits of M. Henri deToulouse-Lautrec, of Dr. Tapié de
Céleyran, Sescau, Maurice Guibert, La Macarona, La
Goulue, etc.” The “etc.” may indicate that May Milton
had been reunited with her friends. But again, unfor‑
tunately, the painting was n o t illustrated. A photograph
of At the Moulin Rouge in its restored state, looking
like it does today, did appear t w o months later, however,
asa full‐page plate accompanying a lengthy laudatory
review of the exhibition in the August 1914 issue of the
prestigious, aesthetically conservative art-historical pe‑
riodical, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.35Written by Gus‑
tave Geffroy, the article announced the ready assimila‑
tion of May Milton’s gaudy face into an a r t
establishment whose sensibilities were beingaccosted by
yet more offensive visages portrayed by Fauvists,
Cubists, and Futurists asmodern artists increasingly re‑
jected the essentially mimetic values that Lautrec’s a r t
continued to maintain.
The restored painting nonetheless fails to reconstruct

fully the composition that Henri de Toulouse‐Lautrec
painted during the 1890s. David Kolch’s analysis of the
canvas also revealed that several portions of the canvas
onwhich the image was created are missing, havingbeen
removed in the course of the changes of 1902. Originally,
At the Moulin Rouge may have been larger in one or
both directions. At least the upper edge of the painting
shows possible signs of havingbeen trimmed, sothat the
precise dimensions of Lautrec’s original painting can no
longer be determined. It is likely, however, that little
more than the inch required for atacking margin would
have been c u t from the edges. However, within the cur‑
r en t field of the painting, portions of canvas are absent as
well: roughly an inch where the lower arm of the L‑
shaped segment and the bottom of the rectangular frag‑
me n t are joined; and asmaller, erratically sized amoun t
where the t w o pieces meet vertically (see fig. 11). The
gaps, again, are the results of the painting’s dismember‑
ing when a tacking margin was created around the rec‑
tangular portion seen in the 1902 photograph asit was
attached to a stretcher. The process of folding and a t ‑
taching naturally would have damaged much of the pe‑
rimeter of this segment, and the areas that suffered the
mo s t loss m u s t have been cu t away when the t w o frag‑
ments were rejoined. Parts of the right‐hand, vertical

R L

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127

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tacking margin, which would have included elements of
May Milton’s hair and dress, were retained, the holes
patched with plaster, and the repair hidden with paint;
but the horizontal tacking margin was simply removed,
thereby leaving a space between the t w o segments when
they were aligned. To fill in this gap, the t w o canvas
parts were deliberately misaligned in the rejoining by
shifting the entire rectangular portiondownward aninch
in relation to the other section. The resultingdisjuncture
ism o s t readily visible immediately above and behind the
head of May Milton as the border of the ocher wall
paneling and the green-hued doors suddenly lifts with‑
o u t any justification for it in the architectural details of
the room.
That this has never before been noticed was probably

due to the manipulations the form of May Milton’s odd
hat has undergone. As seen in the cover illustration for
“Eros Vanné” and in the portrait ofMayMilton, this hat
was composed of a tulle bow from which sprouted t w o
feathers, or rather the denuded rachis of t w o feathers
with all but the tips of their vanes removed soasto result
in a form reminiscent of the club antennae common to
many beetles. The hat’s Art Nouveau insectile reference
is clear in the lithograph and the portrait, but in the
reconstructed At the Moulin Rouge it has been lost, as
the t w o antennae were incorrectly restored and joined
by other, more bulbous or flowerlike forms. These were
added by the restorer to disguise the disjuncture of the
rejoinedcanvas segments and to cover parts of the repair
process. Also altered to suit the incorrect alignment was
the profile of May Milton’s hair and the pattern of her
collar. In their original form andposition, their swirling
lines directly joined with the similarly shaped silhouettes
of the seated and standing figures so that anArt Nou‑
veau-like linear pattern moved gracefully through the
entire composition, much as in Lautrec’s lithographs.
And, similarly disrupted were the lines of the floor‑
boards that originally formed relatively accurate per‑
spective patterns, asdid the balustrade on the left, which
now has asudden bulge near the area ofJane Avril’s chair
to cover up the misalignment.
The removal of portions of canvas and the misaligned

joining of the parts of At the Moulin Rouge disturbed
the relaxed and undulating linear unity Lautrec had
given his composition, sothat MayMilton now intrudes
more harshly than before, her form angularly juxtaposed
to the remainder of the work. This is also due, in part, to
the contrast of the garish coloration of her face to the
moremuted tones dominant elsewhere. This is probably
the result of attempts to restore andpreserve the co n t r o ‑
versial portion of the painting. The painting today has at
least one layer of glazing and probably more. While this
serves to unify and protect the paint surface, the glazing

Rediscovering Lautrec

or varnishing of paintings was contrary to Lautrec’s
practice during the 18905. Likemany other artists of the
time, heexperimented with various techniques and ma‑
terials in his painting and also with the resulting surface
effects. During the late 18803, hebegan to show aprefer‑
ence for painting with oils thinned with turpentine and
sometimes mixed with gouache or crayon on cardboard
and, from 1890 to 1894, apparently ceased to use canvas
almost totally.36 The choice of a nondurable and non ‑
noble cardboard material on which to represent scenes
of café, theater, and brothel life surely appealed to
Lautrec at a time when many of his friends and support‑
ers openly espoused political anarchism, with its abso‑
lute rejection of the existing social order and values.”
Whether or n o t Lautrec’s cardboard paintings were ma~
terial manifestations of asocio‐anarchist advocacy, with
their turpentine-dispersed pigments, they presented a
surface quality quite unlike the oily and viscous surfaces
of traditional oil paintings or those of the Impres‑
sionists, especially after varnishing. Paint and turpentine
on cardboard creates amore m a t surface, in vogue at the
time. Lautrec developed a technique in which sheets of
thin, subtly nuanced color arranged in veil-like, flatly
rendered planes defined his figures. Like the linear pat‑
te rns of the original At the Moulin Rouge, the flat,
planar color layers have aneffect closely resembling that
of his lithographs. Varnish on such asurface would de‑
stroy the intendedeffect, and in the process at least some
of the colors would also be altered.
All this has happened to At the Moulin Rouge. Al‑

though painted on canvas, n o t cardboard (which is, we
should note here, material evidence that the paintingwas
created in 1894 or later), the canvas was primed with
gesso tinted to take on the color of cardboard, and this
brownish tone serves asthe color base of much of the
painting. The paint applied to this ground ismostly the
thinned oil paint Lautrec had used on his cardboard
paintings and was likewise intended to melt into its sup‑
por t so as to create a soft, m a t surface. The rich yet
subtle variations of dark violets and browns that form
the coats and dresses of the figures in the painting have
also been lost beneath sheets of yellowing glazing.
The face of May Milton appears less affected by this

darkening and dulling process than does the remainder
of the painting, perhaps because when the rectangular
fragment was varnished she escaped that fate. However,
the L‐shaped section was certainly varnished when it
was reattachedandwhen the paintingwas restoredat the
Art Institute in 1935.38 The muted colors of the table
group were originally more closely related to the now
strong contrast of May Milton’s facial colors. The red‑
dish tones of hair and the whites of the women’s skin,
the tablecloths, and the reflected lights acted asconstant

127

FIGURE 11 H A
M R ( . 1).

128

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R L

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129

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accents within the tonal harmonies of greens, ochers,
violets, and browns offered by clothing, floor, bal‑
ustrade, and walls. In that admixture of colors and hues,
the limelit face of May Milton alone attracted them all,
uniting in its form what is otherwise dispersed through
the composition. Thus, she was ascrucial to the colora‑
tion of the painting asto its composition. Joyant’s inter‑
ference with the painting negated the look Lautrec
sought to impart to his paintings, alook whose source is
the compositional and coloristic practices he developed
in his lithographs.
In recent studies and exhibitions devoted to Toulouse‑

Lautrec, the preeminence of his lithographs over his
paintings has been repeatedly asserted.39 The litho‑
graphs, it is argued, often derive from one or more
painted compositional studies, or even finished paint‑
ings, so that the artist m u s t have viewed these aspurely
preliminary to the prints and clearly subordinate to
them. More likely, Lautrec rejected any such hierarchy
ofmedia. His interest in lithography reflectedadesire to
extend the meaning and application of a r t outside the
traditional limits of the “fine arts.” In being executed on
cardboard, the paintings came to participate in the essen‑
tial temporary and disposable n a t u r e of posters or adver‑
tising brochures such ashedesigned for Yvette Guilbert.
The technique constituted adenial to painting of its t r a ‑
ditionally noble and elevated position and function by
rejecting the physical components assigned to it, so that
even the paint itself was thinned to liquid consistency to
take on the quality of lithographer’s ink. For Lautrec,
paintings and prints devoted to the low life of
Montmartre functioned asavisual accusation against the
society in which hewas relegated by virtue of his hand‑
icap to the role of eternal child. In At the MoulinRouge,
he expanded his repertory of ink and painted cardboard
by applying consistently lessons learned in lithog‑
rap y ‐ a manner of drawing and the use of large, flat
color a r e a s ‐ t o the medium o f oil paint n o w o n its tradi‑
tional canvas support, butwith a gesso ground tinted the
color of cardboard. Rather than being a painting from
which lithographs were derived, it is apainting derived
from lithographs‐a painting almost disguised as a
lithograph.
These considerations are useful aswe r e t u r n to the

question of when Lautrec paintedAt the Moulin Rouge.
Joyant’s attribution of the painting to 1892, which has
been consistently followed until now, no longer can be
defended on stylistic grounds, on the use of materials, or
iconographically, since May Milton was n o t part of
Lautrec’s milieu until 1894 and 1895. Technique also ties
the work closely to the manner of other paintings on
canvas known to have been created between 1894 and
1896, such asThe Salon in the Rue des Moulins (fig. 12)

Rediscovering Lautrec

or Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilperic”
(fig. 13). Painted on canvas prepared with tinted gesso,
these t o o display aconcern for broadplanes of color and
thinned veils of pigment, but n o t the flowing Art Nou‑
veau lines of At the Moulin Rouge. The painting was
definitely n o t executed before 1894, nor after 1896,when
Lautrec assumed astyle of greater sketchiness and loose
brushwork. It is mos t likely that At the Moulin Rouge
was painted late in 1894 or, more probably, in 1895.
This reviseddating gives the image adifferent position

in Lautrec’s life than previously assumed. By grouping
At the Moulin Rougewith other MoulinRougepaintings
of 1892, Joyant distorted the painting’s position in
Lautrec’s career. The effort to extract May Milton may
underlie this move, but the commercial virtue of apaint‑
ing capping an already successful suite of paintings pre‑
viously sold to collectors surely m u s t also have been a
consideration. Placed back into the milieu of 1895, the
painting takes on different, and possibly more signifi‑
cant, connotations for Lautrec and the development of
his work. If 1892 represented the renewal of the Moulin
Rouge as nOted dancers and singers were hired away
from other music halls, by 1895 this energy was fading.
La Goulue and others who had brought fame to the
locale were leaving or had already gone. La Goulue set
o u t to present her belly dances and can-cans at local
fairs, and invited Lautrec to provide the exterior of her
booth with paintings.40 Possibly, this commercial pro‑
duction of publicity images on canvas for La Goulue
reawakened in Lautrec an interest in painting on canvas,
while the scenes he executed depicting La Goulue’s
“Moorish Dance” and her performance at the Moulin
Rouge that was admired byJane Avril, Maurice Guibert,
Paul Sescau, Tapié deCéleyran, and Lautrec‐all repre‑
sented in At the Moulin Rouge‐served asinspiration
for creating his own private image of a milieu whose
dissolutionwas imminent. Thus, At the MoulinRouge is
amemorial image that is acomposite of past activity and
of prior depictions by Lautrec of the persons participat‑
ing in the scene.
Indeed, the practice of utilizing previous composi‑

tions and portions of compositions is one Lautrec fa‑
vored in his lithographs; aswe have said, his painted
images and printed derivatives could be separated by
years. At the Moulin Rouge demonstrates the same prac‑
tice. The figure of Jane Avril seen from the back relates
to the poster of LeDivanjaponais from 1892‐93, aswell
asto the t w o oil sketches that more precisely duplicate
the pose, both probably from 1893 or 1894. The face of
May Milton is an adaptation of her painted portrait,
possibly also done in 1895 while Lautrec worked on her
poster, but is stylistically related to works of 1894 as
well. The face of La Macarona in t u r n derives from

129

FIG E 12 H –
L .

M , 1895. O ,
111.8 132.8 . A , F ,
M -L .

FIG E 13 H –

L . M L D
B “C ,” 1895/96.
O ; 145.4 150.2 .

N , M . J
H . P : J D.

, N .

130

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FIGURE 12 Henri de Toulouse‑
Lautrec. The Salon in the Rue
des Moulins, 1895. Oi l on canvas,
111.8 X 132.8 cm. Albi, France,
Musée Toulouse‐Lautrec.

FIGURE 13 Henri de Toulouse‑
Lautrec. Marcelle Lender Dancing
the Bolero in “Cbilperic,” 1895/96.
Oi l on canvas; 145.4 x 150.2 cm.
New York, collection of Mrs. John

Hay Whitney. Photo: john D.
Schiff, New York.

130
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L

FIG E 14 H –

L . L M J ,
1894. –

; 51.8 38.7 . A
I C (1954.22).

L ‘ ,
F 1894 L F I ( . 14);
,

. D ‘
D J . G
,
,
,
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C M ( . 15)
.

I 1890, L

D 6
M ; A M :
D ( . 16), I
M
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. 1890
, 6-

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, –

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, .

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A B ‘ L M ,
C F I –
1886-89, –
I 1890. –

131

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FIGURE 14 Henri deToulouse‑
Lautrec. La Macarona asajockey,

1894. Oi l and gouache on card‑
board; 51.8 X 38.7 cm. The Art
Institute of Chicago (1954.22).

Lautrec’s portrait of her as a jockey, published in the
February 1894 issue of Le Figaro Illastré (fig. 14); the
cos tume was changed, but the white face covered with
rice powder and with heavily colored features remains
the same. Dujardin’s characteristic profile reverses that
seen in the Divan japonais poster. Sescau and Guibert
appear either separately or together in several paintings,
any of which might have presented amodelportrait, but
photographs t o o might have been used, just asone of
Toulouse-Lautrec in the company of his cousin Tapié de
Céleyran at the Moulin Rouge (fig. 15) surely was the
source of their grouping in the background.
In 1890, Lautrec represented many of the members of

his milieu in the painting showing the dancer Valentin le
Desossé teaching the quadrille nataraliste to a new
dancer at the Moulin Rouge;At the Moulin Rouge: The
Dance (fig. 16), exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants
and then publicly displayed in the foyer of the Moulin
Rouge itself, is in many ways the antithesis of the Chi‑
cago picture. The 1890paintingwas apublic one in every
sense, depicting the entertainment at the cafe‐concert
and dance hall along with the audience that participated
vicariously in the energetic spectacle of the dancers. The
raucous gaity and movement, the anonymous intermin‑
gling of people seen in that painting cont ras t sharply
with the private world of the later work where women
and men sit, stand, or saunter silently, without com ‑
munication or focus, in isolation one from the other.
They are gathered togetherm a scene of personal and
sexual tension in an atmosphere of anxious ennui; both
dancers have ceased performing and their male admirers
have lost interest. In fact, the powerful motion and focal
attraction of May Milton’s figure and face, pushing o u t
of the framed limits of the painting, threatens to pull the
entire composition off the canvas itself.
In this way, May Milton functions in a manner con ‑

trary to figures situated at the periphery of other Lautrec
paintings, where they are seen walking into an interior
or acting asenframing and stabilizing elements (see fig.
16). Likewise, similar yet different from the group in
other Lautrecpaintings are the men and women seated at
the table and staring blankly past each other. Uncom‑
municative figures seated and drinking in acafé, with or

Rediscovering Lautrec

without dancers or singers providing entertainment
above and behind them, had become avirtual trademark
of the “painters of modern life” from Manet, the Im‑
pressionists, and Degas to less adventurous but suc‑
cessful artists such asJean Francois Raffaélli (also cham‑
pioned by Arséne Alexandre, incidentally). Lautrec
adopted such scenes ashebegan to explore the world of
Montmartre entertainment, first in illustrations for
periodicals such asAristide Bruant’s Le Mirliton, or the
more popular Courrier Frangais and Paris Illustrée dur‑
ing 1886‐89, and then in paintings exhibited at the Sa‑
lons des Indépendants beginning in 1890. They func‑
tioned essentially asimages that presented ayoung artist
with apersona established in an association of style and
subject ma t t e r that countered the world of artistic and
social propriety with anadopted argot and aposture of

131

. A L ” –
” M ‘ ,
, ,

H , I , H , .
” ” ” –

A .”41 A –
, ,

M G E 6 M .
M 1889,
, –
,

FIG E 16 H –

L . A M :
D , 1890. ; 116.8
152.4 . M

A .

–
M
– . -L ‘
M
‘ –
,
,
–
– . I
,
, –
.

, –
,
,
–

.

A M ,
. H ,
,
. L M

N ‘ L B .
M , , –
–
–

. ,
,
. B
-1890 , M L
. A

FIG E 15 -L
C M , . 1894. :
M.G. D , -L (N
, 1971), . 1, . 98.

132

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perpetual antagonism and cynicism. As Lautrec “de‑
scended” into Montmartre’s music and dance halls, it
had become the site of artistic, literary, and musical
bohemias advertising themselves under the names of
Hydropathes, Incoherents, Hirsutes, and Zutistes. They
occupied the Parisian “mountain” asif it were a“venge‑
ful and clamorous citadel from which projectiles [rained]
heavily o n t o the pontifs of the boulevards and o n t o the
mummies of the Academy.”1Along with poets and a r t ‑
ists came professional entertainers, dancers, and singers
to replace the unpaid amateurs or semiprofessionals of
the Moulin de la Galette or the Elysée Montmartre.
When the Moulin Rouge opened in 1889, many of the
m o s t popular performers, previously amateurs or part‑
time dancers, were hired and efforts made to entice the

FIGURE 16 Henri de Toulouse‑
Lautrec. At the Moulin Rouge: The

Dance, 1890. Oi l on canvas; 116.8
X 152.4 cm. Philadelphia Museum

of Art.

bourgeois and upper-class patrons who had mixed with
the more plebian inhabitants of Montmartre at the other
cafés-concerts. Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting of the dance
at the Moulin Rouge and his other images of the dance
hall’s entertainment and entertainers publicizedand cele‑
brated n o t so much a vulgar, proletarian world asone
that was becoming socially acceptable, a place where
bourgeois and aristocrat could experience anti‐bourgeois
and anti‐aristocratic plebian entertainment. It was a
demimonde straddling professionalism and amateurism,
respectability and vulgarity, the upper-middle and lower
classes. This was a perfect setting for an aristocratic
painter who could share in the world of the entertainers
without being part of it, could indulge in alcoholic ex‑
cess without suffering its financial consequences, could
paint without needing to sell his ar t , and could adopt the
role of commercial lithographer despite his financial in‑
dependence in an existence balanced between reality and
amusement .

At the Moulin Rouge represents a private world, n o t a
public one. Here, the entertainers and the entertained
fuse their existences, at a m o m e n t when they are about
to be forced apart. Lautrec would frequent the Moulin
Rouge less and less and instead would become part of
the more sedate realm of literati and artists associated
with Thadée Natanson’s periodical La Revue Blanche.
The Montmartre dance halls, t o o , continued their move ‑
m e n t toward respectability and professionalism asinnu‑
merable imitating institutions appeared in Paris and else‑
where to draw away m o r e and more of the audience and
performers. The entertainers w e n t on t o u r, collected
governmental awards, and signed cont rac ts with the
newly fashionable Olympia music hall. By the
mid‐18905, the Montmartre Lautrec had celebrated and
whose image he had propagated was dying. At the

FIGURE 15 Photograph of Toulouse-Lautrec and Tapié
de Céleyran at the Moulin Rouge, 0. 1894. Photo:
M.G. Dortu, Toulouse-Lautrec et son oeuvre (New
York, 1971), vol. 1, p. 98.

M i R ge ee ha e bee ai ed b hi
e ia i e hi d, hich had e b aced hi . He
c ci e e ed hi “i fe ” i ejec i f hi
a i c a ic bac g d a d a e , b hi e a
ade ib e b hi cia a a d hi c i –
i g e ia ce i . E e gi g f he i a e ea f
La ec’ e ie , A he M i R ge i a de i a
i age ha i a i ed hi i ie j a i cea ed
e i . J a ‘ a i a i f La ec’ i age de i ed
i f i f c i a a d c e f hi a i g a a . The
M i R ge a ge f La ec a ace f j ,
aba d , a d ea ea e i hich La G e da ced
he ca i e chah hi e ci c i g e de eg , he
i hi ed, he face a a f e e a i . Thi
a ificia , e ci i g d f a e a d e e , e

a d a c h ca e a di bi g ha i he ai i g A
he M i R ge a d a e aced b a i e e i a d
e a a i , b f f bidde a ach e a d bi –
e e a a i . The ai i g i he e a ch c e –
i he ai ed chah i he , a ic ia
e i a e he g f he M i R ge:

O he f Ma
I g i d d d ea a d ha .
I g i d d g d a d e e,
Rede i a d ha e
I g i d d a be e f e.42

I i a i age he h f He i de T e-La ec
a d c e cia c ce gh de .

133

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Moulin Rouge seems to have been painted by him to
memorialize this world, which had embraced him. He
consciously entered this “inferno” in rejection of his
aristocratic background and values, but his entry was
made possible only by his social status and his continu‑
ing reliance on it. Emerging from the private realm of
Lautrec’s memories,At the MoulinRouge is adevotional
image that immortalized this milieu just asit ceased to
exist. Joyant’s manipulation of Lautrec’s image deprived
it of its function asadocument of this passing away. The
Moulin Rouge was no longer for Lautrec a place of joy,
abandon, and easy pleasure in which La Goulue danced
herprovocative chahut while circling on slender legs, her
skirts hiked, her face a mask of o ve r t sensuality. This
artificial, exciting world of makeup and movemen t , sex

and alcohol came to adisturbing halt in the paintingAt
the Moulin Rougeandwas replacedby asilent ennui and
separation, by rumors of forbidden attachments and bit‑
t e r separations. The painting is the melancholy coun te r ‑
point to the painted chahuts in other works, apictorial
equivalent to the song of the Moulin Rouge:

On the mount of Martyrs
I grind down dreams and harmony.
I grind down gold and remorse,
Redemption and shame
I grind down a19etterfuture.“2

It is an image the myth of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
and commercial concerns sought to destroy.

133

E

1. F A ,
.G. D , – ( ,
1971), . 2, . 258, . 427. H ,
D ‘
: ( .) .

2. J , H – , 1864-1901
( , 1926-27), . 2, . 133.

3. D ( 1), . 2, . 258,
, J ( 2), . 1, . 275.
,
‘
1902.

4. , 29- 5, 1902. I –
, : 1025,
; 1026, E ‘ ; 1027, ; 1028, –
; 1029, ; 1030, F ; 1031, A –
; 1032, F ; 1033, J A ;
1034, . J ( 2), . 2, . 255,
” H. – .
. A 50 60 –
.” H , , ,
,

. , . 122, .

5. D ( 1), . 2, . 258; J ( 2), . 1, . 275.
1914 G -J
201 ; , E ‘
H – (1864-1901) ( , 1914),
A A , A
. 32.

6. D ( 1), F
B 1917, . 2038,
.

7. D ( 1) J ( 2) –
A 1914 ( 5).
H , – B ( , 1955),
D , . G , J. A 6 –

( B : C –
B , 1981 , . 272, . 7).
. C ,
, , (
)
B , A ,
, ,
F 1892.
I A

,
C ,
I –
, B B
J 10, 1894. –
,

. A B , –
, .
A
, . , , –

,
,
‘ . A ,
,
A ,
. , ,

1894 . B 1894 ‘ ,
A .

8. J ( 2), . 1, . 274-75.

9.
J G ‘ 1893 : J
A E (D 1 , 417);
G (D 1 , 422);
G E (D 1 , 423); A
: C (D 1 ,
.428).

10. J ( 2), . 1, . 137-39.

11. I ., . 138. J
‘ 1914 . E –
… ( 5), . 32.

12.
J
G C . –
, ,
,

. , , ” –
”
‘ , .
A
C , ( , 1913) ,
( , 1921).

.

13. J ( 2), . 1, . 139.

14. ” . C.”
C , –
: , . ., A I C
(1979), . 187, 247.

15. J ( 2), . 1, . 288; D ( 1), . 3,
. 348, .572.

16. J ( 2), . 1, . 198.

17. C , … ( 12), . 154-55.

18. ” , 6 / 6;
/ /E E 6!”
D , “E ” ( , 1894), . .

134

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NO T E S
1. For the exhibition history of At the Moulin Rouge, see
M.G. Dortu, Toulouse‐Lautrec et son oeuvre (New York,
1971), vol. 2, p. 258, entry for painting no. 427. Hereafter, all
paintings by Lautrec will be identified according to Dortu’s
numbering: (P.) and the number.
2. Maurice joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864‐1901
(Paris, 1926-27), vol. 2, p. 133.
3. Dortu (note 1), vol. 2, p. 258, identified Manzi asthe first
owner, asdid Joyant (note 2), vol. 1,p. 275. Neither indicated
the date of acquisition, but evidence to be discussed later in
this article identifies the painting aspart of Lautrec’s estate in
1902.
4. Paris, March 29‐May 5, 1902. It was n o t listed in the cata‑
logue, which includes the following works by Lautrec: 1025,
Scene detheatre; 1026, Etude d’acrohate; 1027, Nu; 1028, Por‑
trait; 1029, Portrait; 1030, Femme enpeignoir; 1031, Les Am‑
hassadeurs; 1032, Fernme en clown; 1033, jeanne [sic] Avril;
1034, Lithographies. Joyant (note 2), vol. 2, p. 255, noted that
at the Salon was a “retrospective of H. deToulouse-Lautrec.
The catalogue does n o t contain titles. About 50 to 60 num ‑
bers.” However, asseen here, the catalogue did contain titles,
but of far fewer than fifty to sixty works, and it is likely that
this inventory of paintings was expanded to include newly
available paintings. See text , p. 122, for discussion of this.
5. Dortu (note 1), vol. 2, p. 258;]oyant (note2), vol. 1,p. 275.
The 1914 exhibition at the Galerie Manzi‐Joyant consisted of
201 works; the catalogue, Exposition retrospective de l’oeuvre
deHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864‐1901) (Paris, 1914), with
an introduction by Arséne Alexandre, listed At the Moulin
Rouge asno . 32.
6. Dortu (note 1), mentioned an exhibition of French a r t in
Barcelona in 1917, with the painting cited asno. 2038, but it
has n o t been possible to confirm this exhibition.
7. Neither Dortu (note 1)n o rJoyant (note 2) identifiedexhibi‑
tions of At the MoulinRouge prior to that of 1914 (see no t e 5).
However, in Toulouse-Lautrec en Belgique (Paris, 1955),
Dortu, M. Grillard, andJ. Adhémar suggested that the paint‑
ing was included at the ninth Les Vingt exhibition under the
title Nocturne (see LesXX Bruxelles: Catalogue des dix exposi‑
tions annuelles [Brussels, 1981], p. 272, no. 7). No evidence for
this bizarre identification is provided. Currently, we do n o t
knowwhat painting, drawing, or lithograph(the catalogue fails
to distinguish among them) may have been entitled Nocturne
in Brussels, but it was certainly n o t At the Moulin Rouge,
since, asthis article will demonstrate, the painting did n o t yet
exist in February 1892.
In matchingAt the Moulin Rouge with the titles of Lautrec

paintings in exhibitions during his lifetime, the sole possible
identification is with Un Coin du Moulin Rouge, exhibited at
the seventh exhibition of Peintres Impressionistes et Sym‑
bolistes, which opened at Le Barc de Boutteville in Paris on
July 10, 1894. The exhibition has previously n o t been consid‑
ered in the literature on Lautrec, sono effort to identify this

134

painting has beenmade. As with the Brussels Nocturne, how‑
ever, a precise identification is currently n o t possible. One
cannot deny unequivocably that At the Moulin Rouge was this
painting,but it is highly unlikely.Stylistic, technical,and icon‑
ographic reasons for this will be considered in the course of
this article, but here it should benoted that the title is n o t one
that fits the painting well, whereas other paintings of the time
could more readily fit the title’s description. Also, all other
paintings exhibited by Lautrec at this time bear his signature,
while At the Moulin Rouge does not , displaying only the
stamp of his estate. The proof is circumstantial, n o t absolute,
but argues strongly that the paintingwas n o t exhibited either in
1894 or earlier. Between 1894 and Lautrec’s death, no exhibited
work can be identified with At the Moulin Rouge.
8. Joyant (note 2), vol. 1, pp. 274‐75.
9. The suite of four Moulin Rouge paintings exhibited by
Joyant at Goupil’s in 1893 can be identified asfollows: jane
Avril Entering the Moulin Rouge (Dortu [note 1], R417); La
Goulue at the Moulin Rouge (Dortu [note 1], R422); La
Goulue Entering the Moulin Rouge (Dortu [note 1], R423);At
the Moulin Rouge: The Waltzing Couple (Dortu [note 1],
P428).
10. Joyant (note 2), vol. 1, pp. 137‐39.
11. Ibid., p. 138. Joyant had already similarly described the
painting’s subjects in his 1914 exhibition catalogue. See Exposi‑
tion retrospective . . . (note 5), no . 32.
12. Muchof what weknow concerning the dancers and singers
of Montmartre is due to joyant and other acquaintances of
Lautrec such asGustave Cocquiot. One of the major prob‑
lems, however, with ou r knowledgeof Lautrec andhismilieu is
ou r dependence on such reminiscences, which tend to be
highly subjective with anemphasis on colorful anecdote rather
than consistent biography. Too frequently, aswell, these “rem‑
iniscences” failed to be published until a half century after
Lautrec’s death, so that their reliability can be questioned.
Among the first to write such astudy of Lautrec and his work
was Cocquiot, in Lautrec (Paris, 1913) and its revised version,
Lautrec ou quinze ans demoeurs parisiennes (Paris, 1921). The
context in which this type of approach to Lautrec developed is
discussed later in this article.
13. Joyant (note 2), vol. 1, p. 139.
14. The identification of “Mlle. Nelly C.” asMay Milton was
first made by Charles Stuckey and Naomi Maurer, Toulouse‑
Lautrec: Paintings, exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago
(1979), pp. 187, 247.
15. Joyant (note 2), vol. 1, p. 288; Dortu (note 1), vol. 3,
p. 348, R572.
16. Joyant (note 2), vol. 1, p. 198.
17. Cocquiot, Lautrecouquinze ans. . . (note 12), pp. 154‐55.
18. “Tres vieux, malgré mes vingt ans/Usé blasé; car je suis
né/Sur un lit de roses fanées/Et je suis un Eros vanné!”
Maurice Donnay, “Eros Vanne ” (Paris, 1894), n.pag. See also

–
: C ( , 1985), . 1, . 31.
19. 1.

20. D C , H – ( ,
1956), . 96.

21. G B. , .G. D ‘ –
( 1), A B 58, 1 ( . 1978), .
179-82.

22. ( 14), . 187.

23. D K ‘ H , J . 23, 1986,
.

24. 3.

25. A J ( 2), . 2, . 129-30.

26. F ‘
1894 D .

27. A A , ” G ,” F ( . 30,
1899), J ( 2), . 2, . 124.

28. J E , “H – ,” D 19,
51 ( . 21, 1901), . 809-901. A A A –
, ” – ,” F I 20, 145 (A
1902), . 2: “I , ,
. H –

.”

29. G G , “H – (1894-1901),”
G B -A , . 4, 12 (A . 1914), . 89.

30. E K , D , . 15
D K , . . (B , 1903), . 52.

31. E ( 28), . 901.

32. H E A. . H , – ,
. 3 I ( , 1909), . 36.

33. J ( 2), . 2, . 250.

34. C E ‘ 1891: ”
, ,
. I
, , .”

C H , : H (C –
, 1984), . 65.

35. G ( 29), . 100 101.

36. J ( 2), . 2, . 66,
‘
1890, –

” ‘E ‘ ” E ,
I , J 7, 1888, . 426-27.

,
1893 1894, ,
,
:

B (D 1 , .465); –
D (D 1 , .470); , D

(D 1 , .494); D ‘ C –
A (D 1 , .521); I
(D 1 , .559); I
(D 1 , .560).

1893-94
. I , ‘
,
.

37. A ‘
A A G –
G . J , -I : F
G G , 3 . ( , 1978), . 141.

38. ,
, .
(A D C ,
A I C , 1935.)

39. ( 18).

40. J ( 2), . 1, . 84-86.

41. H , C ( , 1967),
. 65.

42. B , ” ,” K –
( 30), . 49: ” /J
‘ /J ‘ /
‘ /J .”

135

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the discussion of this poembyWolfgangWittrock in Toulouse‑
Lautrec: The Complete Prints (London, 1985), vol. 1, p. 31.
19. See no te 1 .
20. Douglas Cooper, Henri deToulouse-Lautrec (New York,
1956), p. 96.
21. Gale B. Murray, review of M.G. Dortu’s Toulouse‐Lautrec
etson oeuvre (note 1), in TheArt Bulletin 58, 1(Mar. 1978), pp.
179‐82.
22. Stuckey and Maurer (note 14), p. 187.
23. David Kolch’s memo to Reinhold Heller, Jan. 23, 1986,
summarizes the findings.
24. See no te 3 .
25. As cited by Joyant (note 2), vol. 2, pp. 129‐30.
26. The first of several French editions of Nordau’s book was
published in Paris in 1894 asDégenerescence.
27. Arsene Alexandre, “Une Guérison,” Le Figaro (Mar. 30,
1899), ascited by Joyant (note 2), vol. 2, p. 124.
28. Julius Elias, “Henri deToulouse‐Lautrec,” DieNation 19,
51 (Sept. 21, 1901), pp. 809‐901. Also compare Arséne Alex‑
andre, “Toulouse‐Lautrec,” Le Figaro Illustré 20, 145 (April
1902), p. 2: “ I t is possible, in Paris, to beat once acélehre and
unknown. Henri deToulouse-Lautrec has become one of the
mo s t striking examples of this misconception between public
opinion and the actual person.”
29. Gustave Geffroy, “Henri deToulouse-Lautrec (1894‐1901),”
Gazette des Beaux~Arts, ser. 4, 12(Aug. 1914), p. 89.
30. Erich Klossowski, Die Maler von Montmartre, vol. 15of
Die Kunst, ed. R. Muther (Berlin, 1903), p. 52.
31. Elias (note 28), p. 901.
32. Hermann Esswein and AW. Heymel, Toulouse‐Lautrec,
vol. 3 of Moderne Illustratoren (Munich, 1909), p. 36.
33. Joyant (note 2), vol. 2, p. 250.
34. Compare EdvardMunch’s complaint of 1891: “[People] do
n o t believe that these impressions, these instant sensations,
could contain even the smallest grain of sanity. If a tree is red
or blue, or aface isblue or green, they are sure that is insanity.”

Rediscovering Lautrec

Cited in Reinhold Heller, Munch: His Life and Work (Chi‑
cago, 1984), p. 65.
35. Geffroy (note 29), between pp. 100 and 101.
36. Joyant (note2), vol. 2, p. 66, was surely mistaken in dating
Lautrec’s interest in the technique to anexhibition of paintings
by Raffaélli in 1890, since his use of the turpentine‐thinned oil
paint on cardboard appears at least asearly ashis studies for
the illustrations of the essay “L’Eté aParis” by EmileMichelet,
published in Paris Illustrée, July 7, 1888, pp. 426‐27.
The following paintings oncanvas, traditionally dated to the

years of 1893 and 1894, should beattributed to different years,
either earlier or later, when the stylistic characteristics and
techniques they display appear in other works by Lautrec:
MonsieurBoileau (Dortu [note 1], P465); The Logeat Mas‑
caron Doré (Dortu [note 1], R470); Man,Woman andDog
(Dortu [note 1}, R494); Doctor Tapié deCéleyran in a The‑
aterAisle (Dortu [note 1], R521); In the SalonoftheRuedes
Moulins (Dortu [note 1], 17.559); In the Salon oftheRue des
Moulins (Dortu [note 1], P560).

The fact that they correspond to lithographic compositions or
biographic events of the years 1893‐94 does n o t preclude their
having been painted earlier or later. In fact, given Lautrec’s
habits, it is likely that the dates of paintings do n o t correspond
to such external factors at all.
37. Among critics praising Lautrec’s work and also advocating
the principles of anarchism were Arséne Alexandre and Gus‑
tave Geffroy. See John Rewald, Post‐Impressionism: From van
Gogh to Gauguin, 3d ed. (New York, 1978), p. 141.
38. Portions of the painting had lost paint and were blistering,
particularly the face of Sescau, which was heavily retouched.
(As noted in the files of the Department of Conservation, The
Art Institute of Chicago, 1935.)
39. See particularly Wittrock (note 18).
40. Joyant (note 2), vol. 1, pp. 84‐86.
41. Michel Herbert, La Chanson a Montmartre (Paris, 1967),
p. 65.
42. Maurice Boukay, “Le Moulin Rouge,” ascited by Klos‑
sowski (note 30), p. 49: “Sur la montagne des Martyrs/Je
mouds le réve et l’harmonie/Je mouds l’or et les repentirs/Le
rachat et l’ignominie/Je mouds un avenir meilleur.”

135

Robert Herbert

Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988

Robert Herbert

Impressionism:Art, Leisure,andParisianSociety

N ewHaven: Yale University Press, 1988

fier Three
‘ and Café~Concert

‘ einvaded the boulevards, concerts have invaded the
crowds have invadedeverywhere to the greatjoy ofthe
who are getting rich.

arc Constantin, 18

72

.read! they used to demand. Spectacles and hussies, that’s
, cry today. ‘ .
.‘Anon” Paris désert. Lamentation d’unjeremle haussmamse,
4, 8

-able 3harlequin is some compensation for failing to bea
: citizen.
5 enry Tuckerman, 1867

’ . detail of Aux Ambassadeurs (P1.

83

).

Even a casual glance at successive editions of guide books to
Paris, from their beginnings in the 18405 to the end of the
“Belle Epoque,” reveals the striking truth: leisure and enter ‑
tainment took an ever‐increasing place in the life of Paris. In
the guide books-their very growth is anindex of leisure‑
notices devoted to idle hours and entertainment greatly ex ‑
panded, while those that referred to historic sites and famous
buildings simply held their o w n (and visiting such places is, of
course, an aspect of leisure). At the end of the century the life
of Paris, if one were tojudge by guide books, was dominated
by the following: theaters in infinite variety, opera, comic
opera, vaudeville, music halls, cafes-concerts, cafes, restau ‑
rants, popular balls, circuses, racetracks, promenades (along
streets aswell asin parks and gardens), shopping, and excur‑
sions along the Seine and o u t to the suburbs, excursions that
may have includedbathing, boating, riverside dining, dancing,
picnicking, or simply promenading. The numbers involved
are n o t easy to establish, but they were already noteworthy by
the 18605. The American james McCabe estimated that in
1867 theaters in Paris seated atotal of 30,000 on a good night,
and in cafes‐concerts, circuses, and other enclosed places, an
additional 24,000.1

Tourists came to Paris to enjoy What the natives already
prized, an elegant urban culture. The extra revenues they
brought contributed fundamentally to Paris’s prosperity, as
did the plaudits they lavished on Parisian products catering
both to body and to mind. Paradoxically, tourists‐transients
bydefinition‐fitted readily into the Parisian culture of enter ‑
tainment and leisure, for the city’s life was sustained by a
volatile population. By 1886 the city’s inhabitants numbered
2,345,000, three times the figure for 1831. Furthermore, most
of the newcomers had been born outside Paris. From 1875
to 18

91

, for example, only 70/0 of the net increase in Paris’s
population was due to n e w births, 93% to immigration from
elsewhere (and these figures do n o t include temporary visitors
from abroad and from the provinces). Already by 1872, 7.4°/o
of Paris’s residents were foreign‐born, a huge percentage
compared to prior generations and to other European cities.
By 1891, only 32.2% ofthe capital’s populationhad been born
in the city, whereas in London, center of a vast colonial em‑
pire, and in Boston, major city in a nation of immigrants,
respectively 62.9% and 38.5% of the inhabitants were native
born.

Paris’s population was also marked by a very high per‑
centage of single men and women. Paris and its immediate
suburbs had the highest divorce rate in France: in 1885, 47
divorces for every 100,000 people, compared to 3.5 for the rest
of the country. Adding legal separations to divorces brought
the Paris figure up to 60 per 100,000, compared to 12 for all of
France. Moreove r, many Parisians never married a t all, for
Paris had the lowest marriage rate among Caucasians in all
of Western Europe and the United States. To these revealing
facts we might add another: among married couples, 323 per
1 0 0 0 had no children, an unusually high figure for that era.2

These various statistics show usthat the traditional family
and the domestic hearth, sovital to middle‐class mores and to
traditions of painting earlier in the century, were no longer as
central to Parisian life. The foreigners, the provincial immi‑
grants, the temporary visitors, the professional couples with‑

59

o u t children, the construction workers and laundresses who
left their families in the provinces, these were the ones who
populated the Second Empire and the Third Republic. It was
among these uprooted peoples, living in a city undergoing
constant and drastic alterations, that the flcineur and the
impressionist artists took their places. Paris was indeed a city
of strangers.

The burgeoning population of Paris formed an ideal
clientele for entrepreneurs of distraction, both the owners of
the rapidly expanding network of entertainment, and also the
municipaland national institutions which treated entertainment
asinstruments of policy. Henry Tuckerman, when he visited
Paris in 1867, contrasted the “dignity and permanence” of
American and British life with that ofParis, whose citizens, he
wrote, dwelled in

akind of metropolitan encampment, requiring no domicile
except a bedroom for seven hours in the twenty‐four, and
passing the remainder of each day and night as nomadic
cosmopolites: going to a café to breakfast, a restaurant to
dine, an estaminet to smoke, a national library to study, a
cabinet de lecture to read the gazettes, a public bath for ablu‑
tion, an open church to pray, a free lecture r o o m to be
instructed, a thronged garden to promenade, a theatre to
be amused, a museum for science, a royal gallery for art, a
municipal ball, literary soirée, or suburban rendezvous, for
society.

Unlike james McCabe and other American visitors in 1867,
who reveled in all the glitter, Tuckerman understood that
leisure and display formed a vital element of French politics,
one that was used to great advantage by Louis Napoleon’s
government , and one that truly characterized the n e w society
of the French capital:

To cultivate illusions is apparently the science of Parisian
life; vanity m u s t have its pabulum and fancy her triumph,
though pride is sacrificed and sense violated thereby; hence
acoincidence of thrift and wit, shrewdness and sentimental‑
i ty, love of excitement and patient endurance, superficial
enjoyment and essential deprivation. . . .3

Offenbach and Manet
In 1867, when Tuckerman made those observations, one of
the great masters of illusion and display reached the heights of
a giddy climb to fame. Jacques Offenbach had t w o smash hits
that year, both calculated to coincide with the 1867 exposition.
La Vie Parisienne, commissioned expressly for the fair, was
ready ahead of time (it premiered on 31October 1866), leaving
Offenbach and his habitual collaborators, Henri Meilhac and
Ludovic Halévy, several months to prepare La Grande‑
Duchesse deGerolstein. The latter opened on 12April 1867 and
was, like its predecessor, a huge success. Offenbach was n o t
an impressionist in any sense of the term, but the study of his
operettas is sorewarding for the history of Impressionism that
it m u s t have its place. Moreover, SiegfriedKracauer’s Offenbach
and the Paris of His Time4 is one of the great pieces of cultural
history, and in many ways the ideal model for a book on I m ‑
pressionism, even though the author never mentions Manet,
Morisot, or Degas. Thanks to his perceptive analysis of Offen‑

60

bach, we can find illuminating parallels with .
greatly extend o u r understanding of the works of t
himself a master of illusion and display. :_

Offenbach’s first major success, Orphée aux enfl’
owed some of its vogue to its witty satire of c o n
society. jupiter, forever chasing women, was see ;
Napoleon, and his jealous wife juno, as Eugenie,
Emperor,jupiterneededpublic support, soOffenbac,
the classical chorus with voices labeled “public 5;
making clear the manipulation of the populace.Jupi ..
courtiers used shabby subterfuges to maintain th ‘
and they succeeded, despite the threat of the 01 u
stage arevolution, because indulgence in pleasures W
to all. “ I n short,” w r o t e Kracauer, “the operetta mad.
of all the glamour that surrounded the apparatus 0 f,
The fact that there was considerable sting in Offenbaal
of the Empire was revealed by Jules janin’s attaca.
operetta for profaning “glorious antiquity” throug.
sions to contemporary society.5 In La Belle Héle‘ne:
Offenbach poked more fun at the vainglory whic
terized Louis Napoleon’s reign (Kracauer reminds u‘
masked ball in 1857, Eugénie appeared asNight, wi
Way of diamonds, and t w o others came as the B
at sunset, and the Sea of Marmora on a misty day)
adultery is frankly justified for reasons of state, 4-1
members of Louis Napoleon’s cour t , Orestes parad’
on the “boulevards” of Sparta, boasting that the state ‘3;
wil l pay for his excesses. ”

In 1866 and 1867, with La Vie Parisienhe and La
Duchesse de Gerolstein, Offenbach dropped mytholo’.
tings in favor of contemporary life. La Vie Parisienne,
the Gare Saint‐Lazare, asa party returns from the fas
resor t of Trouville; its final act takes place in acafe-r.
In between, the visitors Baron and Baroness de Gonn
are victims of the boulevardiers Gardefeu and Bob’ 5
take advantage of the foreigners’ desires to attend 51
plays, musicals, and cafes‐concerts, and to embark on
escapades. Appropriate to the Paris exposition, for ”
was initially commissioned, La Vie Parisierme givk»
prominent roles to foreigners, and its chorus, suitably if:
is composed of foreign tourists: ‘

We are going to invade
The sovereign city,
The resor t of pleasure.

In La Grande-Duchesse deGerolstein, set in the fiction,‘
ofGerolstein, one ofthe principal characters is General
always anxious to enjoy war; periodically heshoots is
into the air and sniffs the fumes, in preference to
Analogies with contemporaries were n o t hard to ”
Offenbach had to cope repeatedly with the gove 5’”
censors.6 His original title, simply La Grande-Duch ]‘
rejected on the grounds that Russia might take offe‑
were thought that Catherine II were being satirized ( A 1
II was in Paris for the exposition). Further, the censor o‘
to a young general’s declaration, “Madam, I havej *
the war in eighteen days,” fearing that it would be til‑
a reference to Moltke’s defeat of the Austrians at 3.111
a campaign that had lasted eighteen days (Offenbach ti

lClS With Mal “ ” . Th b’e t’ 5 Qtsofar‐fetched.works Ofthis four days ) C0 J 6 i o n wa nfigs widespread discussion in 1867 of the possibility
fl. ouis Napoleon might again venture on war asa way
fidifying his control, and the operetta was treading on
~te ground by havmg the Grand Duchess s ministers plan
,‘ as3solution to their own difficulties. More absurdly,
,, sor 3150 forbade Hortense Schneider to wear animagin‑
{4o 31decoration, lest it offend one or another of the Visit‑
“oyaltY (she subsequently had her portrait painted as the
nd Duchess, w e a r i n g the forbiddengrand cordonparodtque).
t, reviewing the social role of Offenbach’s operettas from
, to 1867, the year of La Grande-Durhesse, Kracauer
.onstrated that Offenbach’s operettas used illuSion and
My as devices to undermine the pompous ex t e r i o r of
pire, and to reveal the political truths that lay beneath. The
bachiade, he w ro t e ,

llée aux enfers .
[ t i r e o f Conte n
n, was seen f.
as Eugénie. ‘,soOffenbach
3d “public 0p
aulace. Jupiteri,
iaintain their 5.
Ofthe Olwnp
pleasures was 0
>peretta made J
lpparatus of p
InOffenbach’
inin’s attacks t.
W” through if“.‑
Belle Héléne 0:
glory which i
.’reminds usth
Night, with a=
16 as the BOSP
misty day) l ‑
S of state, an
:stes parades ‘
hat the state’s c

, ‘d originated in anepoch in which social reality had been
4aniSth by the Emperor’s orders, and for many years it
tadflourished in the gap that was left. Thoroughly ambigu‑
.us asit was, it had fulfilled a revolutionary function under
5 edictatorship, that of scourging corruption and authori‑
wrianism, and holding up the principle of freedom. To be
ure, its satire hadbeen clothed in agarment of frivolity and
concealed in an atmosphere of intoxication, in accordance
ith the requirements of the Second Empire. But the fri‑

fvolity went deeper than the world of fashionable Bohemia
could see.
. At atime when the bourgeoisie were politically stagnant
and the Left was impotent, Offenbach’s operettas had been
-‘the most definite form of revolutionary protest. It released
‘gusts of laughter, which shattered the compulsory silence
‘and lured the public towards opposition, while seeming
‘ only to amuse them.
AWhat about the parallels with Manet in all of this? They
“r ly leap to the eye, asthe French would say.8 Manet once
presented Offenbach, who can be seen in Music in the Tull‑
a’es (Pl. 42), apicture devoted to one of the most fashionable
if the Second Empire’s social pageants. Offenbach is shown
n o n g a group of immaculately dressed contemporaries, in ‑
, uding Manet himself, his brother Eugene, Baudelaire, and
_autier. The composer’s image would n o t be enough to
” arrant comparison with Manet, of course, and it is to his
“1eat operettas of the 18605 that we should tu rn . If we look
urst at Offenbach’s t w o early successes, Orphée aux En ers
1858) and La Belle Héléne (1864), and then at t w o of Manet’s
otorious canvases, his Déjeunersur l’herbe (Pl. 1

71

) andOlym‑
11:0 (P1. 62), we sha eethat the painter, like the musician and
1- librettists, of edup spoofs of the gods, saucily converted
0 contempora y purposes. The Déjeuner shows t w o men
glothed in the apparently casual, but in fact elegant clothing of
Ontemporary artists, and t w o women, one nude and the
4’her, in the middle distance, in a diaphanous garment. The
ppses of the three foreground figures were taken from the
‘ V6} gods in Raimondi’s engraving after Raphael’sjudgment of
am; the fourth figure is asmucha nymphasa contemporary.
Olympia is a modern version of Titian’s Venus of Urbino.
. anet replaces the goddess of love with a contemporary
Ourtesan, that kind of woman‐Cora Pearl, Blanche d’Anti‑

znne and La Cf,
3dmythologicq
if Parisienne op-,
Irom the fashion
In acafé‐restau
ies s deGondre
and Bobinet,
to attend the I
embark onamo
>sition, for w h i
risz’enne gives Q
us, suitably eno

l the fictional du
TSis General B0 l
he shoots his p’
reference to sn
hard to find, ._
the governme ,
‘ande-Durhesse, 7
it take offense i
atirized (Alexanai
the censor Objcn;
1, l have just w
would be taken .
strians at Sado ‘
foenbach chang

62. Manet, Olympia, 18

63

. Musée d’Orsay.

gny, Hortense Schneider‐whosepublic prominencesymboli‑
zed the luxury and the hypocrisy of the Second Empire (Cora
Pearl was for a time the favorite of Prince Napoleon, the
Emperor’s cousin; in 1867 she made a few appearances as
Cupid in arevival of Offenbach’s Orphée).
In these, and in other pictures, Manet was, like Offenbach,

making fun of tradition by clothing mythological figures in
contemporary costume. His citations from past ar t were n o t
generally recognized at first, but no one doubted his assault
upon the conventions of ar t and, therefore, upon the academic
tradition which was deeply embedded in government institu‑
tions. The Déjeuner was refused by the official Salon jury in
1863, but raised a furor when it was shown in the exhibition
of rejected artists, the Salon des refuses. Olympia, although
accepted by the jury in 1865, was subjected to virulent
criticism from the defenders of tradition. jules Janin’s dis‑
comfiture before Offenbach’s bawdy gods was felt again by
Manet’s critics, unwilling to see mythological figures, so
closely attached to royalty and to the authority of established
art, transformed into mischievous commentaries on current
society and its mores. Manet’s devotion to the pleasures of eye
and brush, we might think, should have disarmed his critics,
but his assault upon convention was so outrageous that only
years later would the brilliance of his technique become evi‑
dent and the elegance of his life be recognized asof one piece
with his art .
When Offenbach was completing La Vie Parisienne and La

Grande-Duchesse for the 1867 fair, Manet, hoping to benefit
from the same crowds, was preparing his one-artist show in
the pavilion hehad erected on the place de l’Alma. His fate
was the opposite of Offenbach’s. Few visitors came to his
exhibition, and it received scant notice in the press. The rea‑
sons for this are many. He was n o t at all aswell known as
Offenbach, and in any event an ar t exhibition would n o t
benefit asmuch asan Operetta from the fairgoers’ thirst for
entertainment. Equally to the point, Manet’s forum was n o t
that of acomic opera, where witty satire was anticipated, and
the shocking quality of his style was n o t sufficiently cushioned
by clever adaptationsof tradition; thesewouldhavebeenunder‑
stood only by a few insiders.

61

Manet’s opposition to authority found another outlet in the
summer of 1867, in this case an overtly political work of a r t
that hadnoclose parallel in Offenbach’s satirical repertoire. He
embarked on a series of studies and large oils devoted to the
execution in june by juarez’s Mexican troops of France’s
puppet, Emperor Maximilian. Since Maximilian’s fall mean t
the end of Louis Napoleon’s ambitions for Mexico, it was a
defeat and, to many, adisgrace, all the more crushing because
ofthe boastful nature ofthe Paris fair. Manet projected amajor
composition (P1. 63) on the theme and worked on it and its
related studies through 1867 and 1868. Imperial censors
would have thwarted any effort to show it in public, and
Manet exhibited it only a decade later. He entertained more
hopes for a lithograph of the composition, but in 1869 the
gove r nmen t censor forbade its printing, an action publicly
noted by Zola which confirmed the artist’s opposition to the
Empire.

9

Although Manet’s failures were in striking contrast to

Offenbach’s successes, there were nonetheless parallel changes
in the direction their ar t took in 1867. For both artists, that
year marked a definitive tu rn towards contemporary life.
They no longer needed mythological or historical figures in
order to commen t upon their society. Goddesses and gods
had been useful earlier when imperial censorship successfully
stifled opposition, which therefore had to find cove r t ways of
manifesting itself. Censorship continued in 1867, but in order
to placate growing opposition, Louis Napoleon had made a
tu r n towards the Left, and anumber ofliberal measures were
introduced which led to a re tu rn of more ove r t criticism.

Daumier’s cartoons, for example, became political again after
1867, following along period of relatively subdued views, and
Henri Rochefort, ajournalist who had displayed little political
consciousness before then, made such a success of his attacks
on the Emperor that hehad to flee to Belgium (adecade later

62

Manet painted a portrait of him, and a painting of r,
from the prison of New Caledonia). 5
Neither Manet n o r Offenbach were overtly u

artists, but the more liberal mood of 1867 and after“,
manifested in their work by a complete devotion to
drawn from cu r ren t society. Their a r t seemed to liv‘
immediate present, to arise from aworld of artifice ~
by courtesans, actresses and actors, musicians, Write, ,”
mians, andfaslzionablcs. Their settings were freunntl,
places, those theaters, dances, cafés, restaurants, cafés-c
gardens, and parks, where their exquisite figures parad
leisure as a way of rebuking bourgeois conventions
greatness resides in par t in the genius with which th
sistently undermined the hallowed conventions o f t 5.
by pointing mocking fingers at the cloak of hypocrisy .
over imperial society.

Bohemians, Marginals, and Performers
Because Paris was itself a theater‐tourists and r e ;
agreed, each treating the other ascharacters worthy o ”
stared a t ‐ i t is no wonder that artists devoted to contem.
life treated Parisians asactors on their painted stages, ;_
Degas, and Renoir, the chief figure painters among t i ;
pressionists, portrayed awide cross section ofthe city’s?
lation, from street people to aristocrats. Of all these
their sympathies were extended mo s t often to writers, pa ‘
journalists, courtesans, dandies, musicians, and perfo .
that informal grouping of marginals for whom there
blanket te rm unless we accept the vague one then curren
Boheme.” Through their common interests and inters
lives, these people formed alooselyjointed community So
what apart from the res t of the population. They lacke
relative stability of the bourgeoisie, from whom they
their distance. .
Renoir was legitimately amember of this bohemia, oz

the son o fa tailor, a slum dweller, a porcelain worker
still aboy, and then aresident of Montmartre where hel‑
among that area’s assortment of shop assistants, r e s t a
employees, laundresses, models, concierges, workers, and‘
formers. He frequently took his models from among th
including several figures in his Moulin de[a Galette (Pl. 7’
and the young performers in Little Circus Girls of 18

79

were daughters of the circus owner Fernando Wartenber
Degas is a quite different case. He was from a banV»

family, but his misanthropy and the failed fortunes of
family business in 1874 gave him asharp‐eyed and embitte
distance from his o w n kind. His ballet dancers, ballet mast‑
laundresses, jockeys, journalists, musicians, cabaret per .
mers, and milliners were all people who served or entertai 1
the well‐to‐do, so Degas did n o t have to desert his class’
construct an a r t devoted to them. In them he found levels»
professional skill that he admired and associated with his 0 ‘ .
craft. We shall encounter them in future portions ofthis b00
As for Manet, hecame to public attention well beforeDC.

and Renoir, and it is his treatment of street bohemians a
social marginals that we should first examine. Manet delib
ately retained his place in high society, and from the C0
fidence this gave him, hemoved with aflrincur’s ( l l i f among ‘

1painting Ofhi 7 of pariSian SOciety. Throughout the 18605 and 18705Tm both studio and apartment in the Batignolles, the
l’i ‘u5t north of the Gare Saint-Lazare which was being
,.‘ Sively refashioned by Haussmann, aswe saw in Chapter
‘l NCW streets were being cut through old ones, and thet .of thC Batignolles, avillage annexed to the city in 1861,
(“6 being leveled to permit the extensmn of the railroad and
tracts and boulevards c o m i n g from the center. It embraced
.’ turC of costly new apartment buildings, empty lots, rail‑
I. tracks, warehouses, and remnants of the old Batignolles.. aSthere that Manet frequently crossed the paths of the

nerants, ragpiCkers, and gyp51es who became his models.-; have already m e t one of them o r , rather, amodeltreated
.,such, in The Street Singer (P1. _38). In other paintings,
w_ings, and etchings of the period, he pictured Paris’s
],- emians: The Absinthe Drinker of 1859; Gypsy with Cigarette
fi’about 1862; The Old Musician (P1. 65); several kinds ofstreet

fitertainers, dancers, guitarists, c o u r t e s a n s , actresses and
f, org, gypsies, and three paintings of beggar‐philosophers of
mich Plate 64 is an example. Among his models were
‘.lardet, a ragpicker, janvier, a locksmith (who posed for
1:riSt, injesiis Marked by the Soldiers of 1865), and Lagrene, a

W)” _ .
The marginals that Manet represented were much admired

y the generation of painters and writers he led in the 18605, a
l i s t school with prominent leanings toward romanticism, a
ndness for Spanish art , and touches of nascent Impression‑
m. Ragpickers were especially favored by the artists. They

15ere not the lowest of the working class, but self-employed
fuen and women who formed aguild that regulatedthe gather‑
. . g of urban detritus. They had their o w n clubs in Paris and
”1e near suburbs; one of the best known, near the Pantheon,
j. asdevoted to communal drinking of absinthe. Manet, like
Baudelaire, associated them with the tradition of the beggar‑
ahilosopher, a well‐established Parisian type whose gradual
disappearance, owing to Haussmann’s transformations and
police repression, was cause for grievance. The ragpicker was
faliberated spirit who moved about atnight, flouting the habits
of the bourgeoisie in their comfortable beds; he was despised
by society (a piece of irony, since he was an entrepreneur),
therefore an outcast, but this freed him from society’s restric‑

‘tive conventions; he gathered up discarded scraps from the
. City. just aswriters and painters chose bits and pieces of urban
. life‐commonplace realities, n o t the ideal elements sanctioned
, by academics‐with which to create their works“) Further,

rilgpickers had self‐esteem (Manet’s old man, Pl. 64, has an
almost defiant bearing) and were proud of their opposition to
a government whose agents constantly harried them. These

‘ yvere all comforting parallels for avantgarde artists who were
1m Psychological if n o t social opposition to the mainstream.
‘ Manet’s principal homage to street bohemians is his huge
f Pfilnting of 1862, The Old Musician (Pl. 65). The model for the
aViolinist was the gypsy jean Lagrene, an elder of the Parisian
i, gYPSY colony who lived n o t far from Manet’s studio in a

tcInporary encampment, harrassed by the police.” He had
-earlier hurt his arm while a construction worker on Hauss‑
‘ mann’s projects and thereafter made his living principally as
anOrgan grinder and artists’ model. Behind him in Manet’s
PICture, seated on the embankment, the ragpicker Colardet

are overtly “p.‑
367 and afterwa«i
te devotion to A
: seemed to l i vrldofartifice, ..
iSiCians, writers
were frequently;
aurants, cafes‐co
te figures parade
) l S conventions. I
with which the
nventions of th
k of hypocrisy t,

“formers
:ourists and re “1
cters worthy o f ‑
roted to contemr
Jainted stages. 1.
inters among th
i o n of the city’s oi
;. Of all these p
ento writers, pa’1.
ians, and perforr
or whom there a»
: one then curren
arests and inters.
ted community Se
t i o n . They lacke‑
om whom they:

fthis bohemia,

v

)rcelain worker ‘.
na r t re where he .
assistants, resta’t

ges, workers, and,
s from among t
le la Galette (Pl. _
us Girls of 1879
iando Wartenber
was from 3 ba 8
ailed fortunes of .
t‐eyed and enibitt
iiicers, ballet mast
i a n s , cabaret per
served or enterta’
to desert his clas
-m he found level
ociated with his 0
iortions ofthis boo
on well before De
Ltreet bohemians A
mine. Manet delib
. and from the C”
ineur’s chic among 53

64. Manet , The Ragpicleer, 1869. Norton Simon Foundation.

reappears. Manet has reproduced him from his Absinthe
Drinker, that scandalous composition redolent of Baudelaire’s
world, rejected by the Salonjury in 1859. On the right edge is
a key personage of mid-century realism, the wandering Jew.
Opposite him is ayoung girl holding ababy; from other evi‑
dence the model is known to have been a slum child from
Petite Pologne, the section of the Batignolles where Manet
had located his studio in 1861. Next to her are t w o children
in unconventional costume. The one nearest the old man looks
asthough he might have stepped o u t of aSpanish painting of
a beggar boy. The other, dressed in white asGilles or Pierrot,
invokes the itinerant troupes of performers who often stayed
in Petite Pologne. The constant excavations there left vacant
lots and upturned yellowish earth, so the setting of this
painting, indefinite though it is, seems appropriate to this
gathering:

So one fine day the hamlet became a village, the village
a borough, and the borough a city; but a dirty city, with
n a r r o w, airless streets, without t rees , without squares,

63

65. Manet, The Old Musician, 1862. Washington,

National Gallery.

formed by deposits of plaster and limestone that have been
left to accumulate without care. . . .12

Unlike The Street Singer (P1. 38), which also sprang from
this arena of demolition, The OldMusician does n o t encourage
a clear explanation of what is going on. It is true, five figures
form a symmetrical half‐circle around the musician, while
his gaze outwards and his pizzicato invite us to complete the
circle. Yet the fiction ofa group in attendance upon a roadside
fiddler is n o t easily sustained in terms of traditional painting.
The figures are arbitrarily clothed and placed asthough they
had walked on from different dressing rooms. Only t w o of
them look directly at the musician; the others gaze abstractedly
elsewhere. How, then, can we reconcile the disparate features
of this curious composition?
The strongest bond that joins Manet’s painted figures is

their common origin among the street bohemians. And they

64

are more than mere motifs. Manet n o t only painted the
chose to work among them in Petite Pologne (after fl‘
could have found a studio elsewherel). Like Daumier ‘r:
him, and Picasso afterwards, heassociated himselfw i t h
and performers on the fringes of society (the violinist IS?”
a surrogate for the painter, and a flattering one since the a,
revolve around him). Their uprootedness was parti “
appropriate to the northern edge of Paris in 1862. It wasf
halfdestroyed and half‐rebuilt by “progressive” forces
thrived on itinerant labor‐Lagrene is acase in p0 in t ‐ ‐ ‘
the altered land values of these transformed districts, 5
which “insalubrious streets” and unwanted people were i
removed.13By n o t observing all the conventions of psy i
gical unity among his figures, by using broad strokes Oflf‘
which fail to model form with customary subtlety, ”
himself uprooted tradition in the very way he compOS
picture.

are is consistency, therefore, in Manet’s choice of subject
. 6 way he built 1115 pictures. The transformations that
Napoleon, Haussmannand the “mushroom aristocracy’

‘ imposmg on Paris went’more deeply than they knew
ouChed on the underpinnings of soc1al_ structure and on

bstructures of art . Manet, an opposmonal Republican,
ber of an artistic vanguard, sought ou t the symbols of

TY, uncertainty and transformation, and conveyed them
,orthodox forms. One of the hidden. costs of Second
i r e progress was the loss of the old ver1t1es of i m a g e and
‘i. in art- . . . .
6 5 , yes, but there are knowmg references to tradition in
;01d Musician, and they help unify it. There is a heavy

__ish” touch throughout in both image and rendering.
”broadly painted earth tones recall Velasquez and other
ts of the seventeenth century. The dark costumed boy, as
a w , looks like a citation from Spanish art , and the whole
Jgement has echoes of The Drinkers, a composmon by
r; quez which Manet had copied.14 The fact that the figures
.,. to beplucked from art history also unifies them. Despite
{t topicality, they appear assomany costumed players in a
(‘ ess piece of art from which specific moment and place
,~beenremoved. They are part way betweenthe Batignolles
“ ‘a r t , ” part way between reality in 1862 and timeless
on. This dialectic was essential to Manet early in his career,
‘ he was attempting to free himself from tradition. The

.entions of art that he was rebelling against were in fact
-; ‘fied by his consciousness of contemporary Paris and of
fig models. Colardet and Lagrene were real people. It is as
ugh the painted images of Spanish and of romantic ar t
3:9 come to life in the Batignolles asManet walked about.
Jcarried with him memories of paintings and these acted,
fin ps unwittingly, asguides when hechose his models. By
esting traditional images with the vitality of livingParisians,
5 , t h in his new manner, he gave energy to old forms. The
sf t was a meeting of past and present, past in the forms of
“f-r art n o w revitalized, present in his cast of bohemians,
vi edup, asit were, by the art , which blanks o u t most of the
, bing features of the present by omitting overt signs of

t e s t , misery, even of sentiment.
l. anet’s paintings of the 18605 often have this mixture of
“f and present both in style and in imagery. The De’jeuner sur
‘ be (Pl. 171) and Olympia (P1. 62) converted renaissance
A. l n t o picnickers and cour tesans, and stirred con t roversy
”reuse they were neither historicalnor modern figures. Over
li}course of the decade, he gradually shed more and more
[fences to the past, but i t was n o t until the 18703, after the
“Lent end of the tinsel empire in the Franco‐Prussian War
“?_the Commune, that he made a thorough break with his‑
a , and committed himselfwholeheartedly to new-wrought
“m as the expression of contemporary life.
l. s o w n life in the 18605 reveals the position of an artist
1015 of the upper class, yet partly displaced from it. He
‘}_ d remain anelegant member of high society, enjoying the
‘ Party of amonied and cultured élite, and yet move among
CRY} marginals. In that, hewas like otherflfineurs who had

eitinerants, street entertainers andbohemians into favored
{CCts since the 18405. Along with Baudelaire, Duranty and
GOncourt brothers, Manet was amember of afashionable

y painted them
logne (after all,
ke Daumier be
himselfwith a at
16violinist is s it
one since the otn
is Was particul
11862. It was b“)
ssive” forces w ‘‑
ie in point‐and
16d districts, fr
-People were b i
ations of psychol
iad strokes o f p r
“Ysubtlety, M . “
Yhe composed i

artistic society; like them, he encountered street bohemians in
real life and then inserted them into his ar t , that special realm
where fiction and reality mingle in disconcerting ways.

Café and Brasserie
The café was the tangible meeting place of Parisian society, the
place where the social day began for some, on their way to
work, the place where the more fashionable people ended their
day, at 2 or 3 a m . Edward King, in his impressions of Paris
published ayear after the fair of 1867, insisted that “The huge
Paris world centres twice, thrice daily; it is at the café; it
gossips at the café; it intrigues at the café; it plots, it dreams, it
suffers, it hopes, at the cafe’.”15 Native Parisians agreed, and
supplied the reasons. Alfred Delvau said that Parisians thrived
on publicity, on “the street, the cabaret, the café, the restau‑
r an t , in order to show ourselves in good moments or bad, to
chat, to be happy or unhappy, to satisfy all the needs of ou r
vanity or ou r intellect, to laugh or to cry. ” 1 6 Parisians, in other
words, elevated public life over the private, and for this they
needed public spaces.

The café was an ideal social place because (to recall Georg
Simmel’s terms) it providedasolution to the problem of near‑
ness and remoteness. The frustration of being constantly with j
strangers is mitigated because the café permits close proxi‐ ‘
mity without prior acquaintance. Cafés are anaccommodation
to one’s experience of society: one meets others in a place
that offers parallels of private life‐eating, drinking, rest ing ‑
while it shelters these actions under the overarching social ,
relationship. For a city marked by foreigners and recent arri‑
vals, the neutral terrain of the café was especially valuable.

In cafes, natives and adoptive Parisians were able to observe 1
life while displaying themselves asworthy performers in the l
spectacle of the capital’s culture. For the writer‐fldneur Delvau
and the painter‐fldneur Manet, the café was a source of art .
There they reconnoitred their subjects and took advantage
of fellow wits to hone the edges of their observations. By
appearing in the right cafés, they added to their reputations ,
as clever commentators and this, t o o , eventually gave them ,
a helpful cachet among the cultured élite who were their
associates and clients. In the 1860s Manet held forth at the
Café Guerbois (in what is n o w the avenue de Clichy) in the
company of Degas, Monet , Zola, Duranty, Zacharie Astruc,
and others friendly to his causes. After the C o m m u n e , when
he switched allegiance to the Nouvelle Athenes on the place
Pigalle, a number of journalists and writers followed there,
aswell asMone t , Degas, Renoir, and, occasionally, Pissarro.
Before we examine several paintings of the cafe, we mus t look
briefly into the history of this lively institution.

Coffee reached Western Europe in the third quarter of the ,
seventeenth century, brought by mariners who had acquired a ‘
taste for it in the Near East. It was first established in seaports,
but spread rapidly to major cities inland. Considered a dan‑
gerous stimulant, it was closely monitored by municipal and
royal authorities who licensed and taxed its use. They also
worried about its association with those citizens who made the
new coffee houses into social and political gathering places.
Already in 1675, Charles II of England tried to close down ;
the coffee houses asplaces of sedition (popular pressure made

him desist, however), and for the nex t t w o centuries they
were frequently subjected to gove rnmen t surveillance and
suppression.
In Paris, as elsewhere in Europe, coffee was served in

restaurants (at first in specially designated sections) and in
taverns, as well as in the new coffee houses. By the middle of
the eighteenth century the cafe‐tavern and cafe‐restaurant
were firmly embedded in Parisian social habits (Voltaire’s
favored Cafe’ Procope is still pointed o u t to tourists). Over
the nex t hundred years they increased in both numbers and
variety, covering the whole range, from dark, working‐class
establishments to brilliant, mirror‐clad interiors along the mo s t
expensive boulevards. Because tobacco and alcohol, t w o more
well‐taxed commodities, were consumed in the cafés, and

66. Manet, Woman Reading in a Cafe, 1879. Art Institute of Chicago.
” u p 1 1 –| 5 . , <

«v’ ” i n .-” fi’» “ iv i n ! f ”ill

because anumber of them became singing clubs, where could
one find more logical places for police spies to thrive? Coffee,
tobacco, alcohol,’ and song were regarded as attributes of
political opposition, so one of Louis Napoleon’s first decrees
(29 December 1851) pu t cafés under direct governmental
authority and placed anoutright ban on group singing in cafe’s;
thousands were closed down early in his reign.1
Despitepolice surveillance, cafés generally prospered during

the Second Empire. They took on new forms that are fami‑
liar to us from the lives of famous writers and impressionist
painters. Cafes and restaurants n o w pushed o u t o n t o the city’s

66

sidewalks, encouraged by l‐Iaussmann’s wider pavcmen
were successful enough for their owners to be Ulldisma».
the rental fees that they were obliged to pour into In
coffers. For Paris of the 18605 and 18705, Characteri
longer by nar row streets but by wide avenues and s.)
walkways, the sidewalk café was the perfect amenity,
meals at all hours, it catered to the client who only w
beer or a coffee, and it provided a front seat for the th
the streets. With both interior spaces and outdoor te R,
was an irresistible lure for shoppers, tourists, and tho
worked nearby. In 1876, Henry james marveled that -t”~
the evening o u t of doors in Paris one was n o t obliged tr‑
stoop or curb, asin New York, but could insteadChoos
at one ofthe sidewalk cafés: “The boulevards are alon
of cafés, each one with its little promontory of
tables projecting into the sea of asphalt.”18 Thanks to i
mann’s vas t extension of gaslight, which facilitiated ni
shopping, the sidewalk cafés enjoyed evening hours a (,
tributed to the sights and sounds of the nocturnal pro ,
We have seen one such cafe already, in Degas’s Wom
Café Terrace, Evening (P1. 47).
By Degas’s and Manet’s day, many of these empo ‘

called “brasseries,” since they featured beer (the term-o»
from copper brewing vats). Beer had n o t been a p r o ‘
drink in Paris before 1848, for Parisians associated i;
peasants and small‐town folk. This became a positivei
however, when enthusiasm for the common man de ,
in the wake of the revolution of 1848. The provinci
flocked to Paris in the Second Empire brought with the:
taste for beer, and so did the greatly increased nu ni‑
foreign visitors, especially those from the Lowlands,Ger
and Great Britain. Many traditionalists lamented the
w o n prominence of beer, considered a provincial and‑
habit when compared to wine. Marc Constantin was t.
these, and in 1872, in the last sentence ofhis history of n
heexpressed the hope that the brasserie would disappe’
no longer in the capital of the civilized world will weI
ignoble beer mug replacing the divine wine bottle.”19

date is the beer which he featured in several ofhis café p
(Pls. 66, 70 , 77, 78). They attest to his whole‐hearted‘
into contemporary Parisian society (consider that Betw
bode beers was the title ofa topical review in 1877)?“
of the previous decade like The Old Musician (P1. 65) an;
Ragpicleer (P1. 64), with their earthy tones and posed .‘:.
belong asmuch to the mid‐century asto Impressionist‑
t r ue that Manet’s later café pictures are also posed, th
were indeed painted in the studio, and that they h a v
forebears among the taverns and cafes of seventeenth‐ .
painting. Al l ofthis is’well disguised, however, and th
the appearance of freshly observed works. It is this im
which rewards examination. ‘ 5

Woman Reading in a Cafe (Pl. 66) is the sketchlw
simplest of Manet’s cafe pictures, but no less revea 3
that. The beer mug is the emblem of the brasserie, ~
foliage beyond suggests one ofthose cafés that had a ”
terrace or courtyard (compare P1. 67). The woman ism ‘
dress, and holds in her gloved hands anillustratedjOu
baton, the kind one takes from a rack in the cafe’. SuC

X. avenues fa,
rfect a ine é
znt who on
t seat for f”
and Outdoo
Jurists, 3m:
marveled t:
a sn o t 0b] 4 ’
1dinstead GE.
evards are: a
nontory 0, ,
FMS Tha (1
hfacilitiate
vening hou‑
nocturnalof
F1Degas’s i”;

of these e ‘
beer (the
n o t been
ans associat‑
rame a posii.
nmon ma
The pro all

ought wit if
increased in

3Lowlandssi’
; lamentedj
provincial . fly
fonstantin

vine bottle.”
gn of his be i
ral of his cal
whole‐heart
; ider that Bern
‘ in 1877).2°4-?
itian (P1. 65 ,
es and pOSCol
‘ Impressio i;
also posed, 51
that they hay
~seventeen ‘_
wever, and ”ll
. It is thisi g

; the sketc 7“
1 0 less r e v e ‘
le brasserie, e
s that had a‘ 1
e woman is u

the café. Sut;

id grown mightily in the 18605 and 18705, and they are
if attached to Impressionism.21 They publishedflarienrs’
” t s of current life, articles and advertisements devoted
‘1 test fashions, and illustrations and caricatures whose
g‘ 21and whose very form‐quick and summary‐have
” u s parallels with the painters’ art. Dominated by’pic‑
_ they could be quickly skimmed, unlike traditional

uS” journals with their wordy pages. A few of Manet s
f 5 were reproduced in one of these Journals, La Vie

e, and several ofthe impreSSionists showed works in the
| tion rooms attached to the grand boulevard offices of this
i ‘ y review, founded in 1879 by RenOir s patrons, the
L, ‘ ”3 Woman Reading in a Café was one of severalenthrS-~ . . .

Manet showed there in 1880. Because Journalists and

painters m e t in cafés, and because some reviews were virtually
edited in cafés (a few were actually published by such cafés‑
concerts asthe Divan japonais), Manet’s picture is a veritable
homage to his o w n circle.

This homage is n o t limited to the picture’s content , for his
painterly shorthand is equally calculated to stir his friends’
admiration. His bravura declares his intention of getting away
with asshowy a treatment aspossible. Against the dark tones
of the woman’s hat and clothing (the composition’s anchor) he
plays the wavy flashes of grey and blueish white of her tulle
collar, the crab-like curves of her t a n gloves, and the rectilinear
streaks of the journal, composed of delicate greys formed of
lavender, blue and other tones mixed with white. The picture
on the cover of the journal and the foliage to the rear are so

indistinct that they have aprecarious fictional life, mo r e color
and brushwork than image. All this tentativeness suits the sub‑
ject admirably. It is asmall occasion, but one that is perfectly
typical ofthi’s glittering city, simply anelegant woman’s pause
for a beer and a glance at a journal.
Chez le Pere Lathuille (P1. 67) is a larger and mo r e c om ‑

plicated picture. After years of confronting offlcal a r t circles
Manet was n o w somewhat less of an enfant terrible, and his
canvas was accepted for the official Salon of 1880. The greens
and reds of foliage are about asindistinct as those of Woman
Reading in a Cafe, but here they are massed in suitable areas
and hence are mo r e easily read. Manet places us in the garden
terrace o f a famous cafe-restaurant in the Batignolles district,
n o t far from the Cafe’ Guerbois and the Nouvelle Athenes.
Pere Lathuille was already well known at the beginning of
the century; it appears in the background of Horace Vernet’s

H” “” .

68. An Arbor at Pére Lathuille, 1852.

painting of 1820, The Battle of Clichy. In 1852, the restau ‑
r a n t was illustrated in Edmond Texier’s Tableau deParis (Pl.
68), where it represented the pleasures of an excursion to, a
“guinguette,” a freer, countrified place beyond the city’s
limits. In 1862, when Manet painted The Old Musician (P1.
65), this region hadjust been annexed and was undergoing its
Haussmannization. By 1879, broad streets and commercial
prosperity ran over its leveled hills and through its demolished
village streets. Manet continued to favor the Batignolles and
his painting preserves something of the old traditions: the
illustration in Texier’s book shows ayoung woman on the lap
o fa man, in the midst o fa wine‐drinking party (the “divine
wine bottle” still had pride of place in 1853!), arched over by a
bower of foliage.
The pair in Clzez le Pere Lathuille have been described as

“lovers,”23 but this is n o t so. Manet’s vignette of Batignolles
life is more subtle than that, and careful observation discloses
the particular adventure that is taking placehere on the edge
of the city. The waiter is holding a coffee urn , doubtless
wondering if it is time to serve coffee to this table. He would
wish to do so, because the woman i s his last cus t ome r ‐a t least
the tables beyond the glass partition are empty. Of course, he
would serve coffee only at the end ofthe meal. On the table, in
effect, we see the last course. The woman holds a broad‑

68

bladed fruit knife in her right hand, and on the Plate
her hands is a rounded fruit. The waiter is therefore nu.”
should soon finish her fruit and be ready for COffee °
we have noticed that there is only one place set°
man has none. The wine glass he touches is n o t his ll
woman’s, white wine to go with her fruit. HQ {011.5
glass, the familiar gesture by which a man encroach
woman’s terrain. His right a rm rests on the back t h e
another territorial manoeuvre. As for her, She has
forward and avoids his touch, her back very erect_ I
her whole body is proper and stiff, her gloved arms fo
sphinx‐like rectitude. Will she succumb to his blandishg.
The fact is that the young man did n o t Come t

restaurant with her. No t only does he lack a meal, he
chair. Unless we were to grant him peculiar simian prep .,

. ‘land a stool, we have to conclude that he15squatting

69. A. van Ostade, Peasant Couple, 1653. London, National Gallery. 1

n e x t to her. In the American vernacular, he is putting the m.
on her. She is awell‐got‐up woman dining alone, and hei
young artist or fashionable bohemian on the lookout fO
conquest. The model was Louis Gauthier-Lathuille, the son
the proprietor of Pere Lathuille whom Manet encounter
while he was on military leave, and whom hefirst painted
uniform.24 Manet then thought better o fi t and gave him h.
o w n artist’s smock. The woman was first posed by the actre
Ellen Andre’e, and then by Judith French, a cousin of Offel

_ _ _ ‐ ‐ ‑

m the plate behf;
; therefbrc r igh
for coffee By ‘
3 place Settirh;1
sis n o t his, i t ”
uit. l‐Ie fondl
an enCrOQChes m
[6 back of her ch
ier’ She has let:
‘ e r y erect. In ”l
led arms {OYWa
his blandishm‑
n o t Corne t o , “

Jational Gallery.

putting the ma r_
alone, and he is 1,‑
ie lookout for
ihuille, the son oi
met encoun te r c
refirst painted ir
ind gave him hi
led by the ac t res
Sousin of Offen

“‘ Mallt‘t, At the Café, 1878, Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection.

ach. The composition is consequently anartful concoct ion in
chich Manet used familiar Parisians to create one of the many
counters between strangers that people his art._ Cont-cip‑

1’Wary novels and operettas are rich in Similar cases in whic ha
blounger man seeks the favors of an older woman whom. e
l’ 015 alone in café or theater. Wedo no t , therefore, deal With
i10vers,” but with amore equivocal relationship that charac‑
‘ rizes urban encounters.
‘ The subtlety of Manet’s conception becomes apparent when

his picture is put alongside one by Ostade (P1. 69) that Show}: a
peasant couple, evidently abrothel scene. The chances are t af
Manet was consciously restating in modern terms.the then?lo
courtship and seduction found in many Dutchpaintings o t e
seventeenth century. In the Ostade, the woman is bei’nghcozll
enough to hold back a little, but she permits the man s an
to lie atop hers, and we do n o t really doubt the outflome.
Besides, the man is larger than she.and dominatesher, w ereas
Manet’s young man is in the pos1tion of a supplicant.

4and was equally subtle when hedealt with another kind
1elationShip in At the Café (Pl. 70). Here we are indoors in a
roughly urban setting, n o t in aguinguette. A man is cu t off
6 left, awaitress bends over behind him, and awoman’s

flzdish‐bfown hat shows over her shoulder: fragments of
owded interior. A young bourgeoise (posed by Ellen

.drée) looks over at us with an ambiguous, p0551bly be‑
4.sed expression. Her right hand touchesthe back of the
it turned towards us, a gesture we can interpret as pro‑
, ing it against another’s use o r , alternatively, asa delicate
f»itation to come and sit. In front of her is apartly quaffed
an of lager, in connubial propinquity with abock beer. That
u s t beher husband nex t to her, because his forearm is lean‑
onher shoulder. Yes, it is definitely her husband (posed

( the engraver Henri Guérard), because the hand that is
pportedby her shoulder is tapping the stick against the edge
, the table, to emphasize what he is saying. His half‐open
.outhshows that heis apostrophizing the air, ashusbands are
ml: to do; his left hand, thrust into his coat, completes the
rator’s pose. Given this, his wife looks at us asmuch asto
y; “Isn’t that just like ahusband, prattling away and nobody
ftening!”
Surely the girl to the right is n o t listening (P1. 71)? She

{ts with gloved hands perched on the edge of the table, as
tached from the others asthe lid of a canopic u r n from its

f, Renoir, The Little Café, c. 1877. Otterlo, RijksmuseumKroller‐Miiller.

‘ – Manet, detail of At the Café (Pl. 70).

n. ‑…. n.. ,.
” J ‘ ‑

73. Renoir, The End of the Lunch, 1879. Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstin‑
stitut.

body. Her rather large head is in rigid profile and set against
the window as though in a separate frame. She is probably the
child of the central couple, at least it is easier to assume sothan
to believe she came alone. Like many adolescents, she is with
her parents, yet n o t with them. The backward letters of the
poster behind the lace curtain, like those of the cubist pictures
that this painting looks forward t o , seem to hint of things that
separate o u t from their customary unity. They help pull the
girl away from her parents towards the outside, as though
they could voice the unstated thoughts of her mind.
Given his fldneur’s detachment, Manet does n o t interpose

his own ideas, but in fact hehas shrewdly placed in front of us
a w r y commentary upon marriage and the bourgeois family.
The three figures are side by side, and yet in separate psy‑
chological worlds. This is surely adelicate prying at the bonds
that are supposed to unite them, but a prying nonetheless.
Manet is the alert observer of new urban truths; he usually
abstains from showing us loving couples or families.
The opposite view is taken by Renoir, whose café pictures

remain faithful to his insistence upon a perfect human and
social harmony. In the tiny picture appropriately called The
Little Café (P1. 72), heplaces t w o beautiful young women at a
table between t w o admiring men. It seems like one of the
casual encounters fostered by the Parisian café. The man on
the left is at a nearby table and merely looks over at the
women. The other man leans on the table, fists bent under,

71

while talking with them. This is perhaps the beginning of a
foursome but Renoir, also a naturalist, leaves it at that.
We face amore confirmed grouping in The Endofthe Lunch

(Pl. 73). In the garden ofa Montmartre cafe25 awoman (posed
by the ubiquitous Ellen Andree) holds her liqueur glass and
gazes at her dinner companion as he lights a cigarette. An
acquaintance has come over and joins the seated woman
in admiring the man. And “admiring” is the right word.
Although the man fills in only anar row angle ofthe canvas, he
anchors the triangle of human heads. The women dominate
the composition and are to be esteemed for their beauty, but
they are there to serve male interest. Renoir’s conservatism
shows in another way: in each of his pictures, unlike Manet’s
At the Cafe, the figures on the edges of the composition face
inwards to establish an old‐fashioned pictorial balance.
Unlike Manet, therefore, Renoir recreated in painting the

loving, male‐oriented relationships that he aspired to, for
himself and for society. His letters, his essays, and the
aphorisms that his son published26 disclose his fears of modern
industrial society with its forces for disintegration, and show
his determination to express ideals of social accord by way of
craftmanship placed at the service of beauty. In many ways
admirable, this outlook lacks the penetration of Manet, for
whom the café was amicrocosm ofurban truths that had to be
stared in the face.

Brandy andAbsinthe
With Manet’s The Plum (Pl. 75), we shift from the wry amuse‑
me n t of Chez lePére Lathuille and At the Cafe’ to apicture that
has a more perceptible emotional edge. A young woman,
neatly though n o t elegantly dressed, sits at acafé table. In front
of her is the brandy plum of the title, long aParisian specialty,
and in her left handshe holds anunlit cigarette. Her other hand
supports her head in the traditional gesture of pensiveness,
helping create amood far from the celebratory one of Renoir’s
Endofthe Lunch. Isshe waiting for someone to give her alight?
We notice also that she has no spoon. Perhaps she is reflecting
for a m om e n t while awaiting the spoon? Manet’s anecdote
may be no more complicated than that. He may have stored
up areal observation of the so r t and subsequently made it the
basis of his picture.
However, the effect of pensiveness, tingedwithmelancholy,

that emanates from this painting cannot beexplained by unlit
cigarette and unspooned plum. There is much more here, for
despite Manet’s detachment, despite his figure’s expression‑
less face, a sense of aloneness pervades our experience of the
painting. We are caught in Georg Simmel’s dilemma of near‑
ness and remoteness as we t ry to sor t ou t o u r feelings. The
angle of the table tells us that we are either standing or seated
near this stranger; because we see underneath the table, we
find that we are close enough to sense a slight discomfort.
Nevertheless, we are n o t able to make psychological contact
with the woman, hence our conclusion that she is n o t just
alone, but lonely. She is one of the many figures by Manet or
by Degas who, regardless of the absence of emotional display,
convince us of the poignancy of contact with urban strangers:
Manet’s Street Singer (P1. 38), Degas’s Woman with Chrysanthe‑
mums (P1. 59) and The Loge (P1. 60).

72

The devices Manet uses to work on our percepti
clever despite their apparent innocence. The bare t a b ]
trast it with Renoir’s‐denies the woman any COmfo
because it floats, supported only by one iron leg, it ,
element of tentativeness. Its forceful effect becom
evident when we compare it to the draped table in 1),
Restaurant le Doyen (Pl. 74) by his friend Ernest Ange t,
Duez’s table is an important prop on his busy Stage, 7:
actual rendering does n o t take on a vital role. He has~
all t o o much. We are supposed to be concerned abo
lone woman, but she is hardly by herself. Eleven 01,
accompany her, including the men to the right whose I
told curiosity spoils what chances the painting mig 7,
had. Manet is much more the picture‐maker than D ,
stead of giving a stage to his figure, he hems her in a
network of rectangles which compress the space and c,
sensation of confinement. Her head is further boundem
repetition of the picture’s frame in the gold casing aroi
metal grill behind her.28 ‘

wan . _
nt le Doyen, 1878. Collection unkno ’74. Duez, Paris, Au Restaura

To many modern observers, Manet’s figure r e p r
specific type, namelyaprostitute.29This isanassumptior
on the fact that contemporaries frequently refer to p ro
seated alone in a cafe, looking for a’client. Manet repr
high-class courtesans, it is t rue (Nana, Pl. 116), an
encountered prostitutes among the street bohemians h
so well. It is also true that the woman’s cigarette mar ‘
a liberated spirit, since “respectable” women refrain
smoking alone in cafés. However, her costume is n o t 5
cruising prostitute (compareher with Degas’s Women 0′
Terrace, Evening, P1. 47) and is of the kind worn ‘
attendants, milliners’ apprentices, or florists, you“’
women who did smoke in public. Some of these ‘r
underpaid and frequently o u t of work, were obliged to
occasional prostitution, but their exteriors would 119C
to reveal this. Manet has avoided the conventional Sl.
prostitute (provocative costume, pose, gesture, or g lan

n our perceptio
The bare tabl- 5
man any COmfo
ie iron leg, it ié.
effect becomes.
.ped table in Pa’
1Ernest Ange .’
1is busy stage, 5;
11role. He has tQ
concerned abo I
rself. Eleven ,
e right Whose ct.
painting might
naker than Du».
3hems her in by,

[rther bounded .\,
old casing arou:

Iollection unknown

; figure represe

y refer to prosti ,:
t. Manet represen
Pl. 116), and s
bohemians he r»
igarette marks he
>men refrained f r
:tume is n o t that”
‘as’s Women ona 5
kind wo r n by s- ‘
lorists, young f‑

re obliged to tu
“5would n o t 51155
[vent ional signs 0‘
ture, or glance),

National Gallery.

all that we can besure ofis that we face one ofthe many single
w om e n who staffed Parisian commerce, one of those whose
aspirations to glorious careers were so frequently checked by
reality.
A momentary check, a pause in life, a bit ofloneliness, this

is the mood that Manet creates. H ow different is the down‑
and‐out w oma n in Degas’s Absinthe (P1. 76)! Shoulders slum‑
ped, eyes cast down, feet splayed out , her cos tume frowzy,
she is the café habituée rooted to her seat, without aspirations.
She will derive little comfort from the man n e x t to her, the
kind of elbow-leaner who will remain there for hours, even ‑
tually shuffling o f f to an uncertain destination. This is one of
Degas’s mo s t devastating images of public life. The drink in
front of the w oma n is readily identified asabsinthe, thanks to
its pale, greenish color and the nearby carafe of wa te r. As for
the man’s drink, it was recognized by the Scottish owner
ofthe picture, familiar with Paris, asa“mazagran,” cold black
coffee and seltzer wa te r in a glass.30 A mazagran commonly
served asahangover remedy, and, since absinthe was taken by
its votaries at all hours, we are entitled to View the scene as
taking place in the morning. This suits the grey light which
floods in through the lace‐curtain windows reflected in the
mirror behind the pair. Whether early morning or later in the
day, the scene deserves the phrase used by Walter Crane when
he saw it in 1893, “a study of human degradation, male and
female.”31
The French did n o t regard absinthe at all like the “hygienic

beverages” (wine and beer) that we have seen in Manet’s and
Renoir’s paintings. The assumption of its addictive and dan‑
gerous qualities may have contributed to the Salon jury’s
rejection of Manet’s Absinthe Drinker of 1859 (the one whose
figure returned three years later in The Old Musician, P1. 65).
“For this is a terrible and frightening drink, this absinthe,”
w r o t e Alfred Delvau in 1862 (and he was no prude):
The drunkenness it gives doesn’t resemble any known
drunkenness. It is n o t the heavy drunkenness of beer, the
fierce drunkenness of brandy, the jovial drunkenness of
wine. No , it makes you lose your footing right away. . . . I t
sticks immense wings on your shoulders and you leave for
a country without horizon and without frontier, but also,
without poetry and without sun. You think you are headed
towards infinity, like all great dreamers, and you are only
headed towards incoherence. . . .32
Absinthe had beenaworking-class drink at the beginningof

the nineteenth century, but with the advent of the Second
Empire it suddenly took on immense popularity. Like beer, it
rode the crest of the ever‐wider wave of alcohol that flowed
through the expanding population of the capital. Entrepre‑
neurs took over the original recipes, putting in only a trace of
wormwood (the supposedly dangerous, Baudelairean ingre‑
dient that was its attraction) or none at all, adding hyssop,
mint, and anise for color and flavor. It was the perfect example
of Second Empire capitalism, amass‐produced, commercial,
and rather fraudulent concoction taken over from le peuple,
creating money for its suppliers and for café proprietors, while
inducing both gaiety and despair in its users. By the end of the
century its consumption by volume (130,000 hectoliters) far
exceeded that of all liqueurs combined (82,000 hectoliters).

74

When Marie Corelli published a novel in 1890 that 1,
Parisian Vice and decadence, she chose Wormwood fo ,
certain that the notoriety of the drink would beani ”
signal of her theme. ,
As for Degas’s painting, it was done atatime when),

was a favorite target of France’s temperance m 0 v cm
thermore, Degas placed it in front ofa woman, and
drinking had become a volatile subject by 1876, Sev
earlier, the Go’ncourt brothers had published Germin“
tenx, a novel which horrified many because it Chro ‘
decline ofa Parisian maid into alcoholism. Then, in t ‘ .

.b’

a scandalous novel which told of a laundress’s slimy
alcoholism; it dealt also with working‐class drinking
prostitution (Nana, the laundress’s daughter). Mg,
working‐class drinking had been roundly attacked s”.,
because it was convenient for the conservatives who‘
the temperance m o v em e n t to believe that the horro
Commune were due in part to excessive drink a m o n ‘
workers. These included the fabledpétroleuses, wome
of setting the fires that had ravaged the city. The co A’.
were called “apostles of absinthe,”33 and in the earl
broad campaign was launched against public dru f!‑
One of Zola’s grandest efforts was to expose this ca l
ahypocritical attempt to control working‐class cabare
leaving untouched the drinking that w e n t on in _z,
places. _ ‑
Degas’s painting, therefore, joined the naturalis

ledby Zola and the Goncourts. And like his literary a,
he presented his ugly story with apparent detachme r
while using his a r t to engage o u r emotions. It is hi
construction of space that draws us into his picture . a;
tually obliges us to address his issue (the perfect .
exposes the issue but refuses to take a stand). Unlike D)
74), who creates the familiar stage in front of whic 3
walk back and forth, Degas fashions a space which
o u r involvement. In the foreground is a table with”
container and a newspaper on a baton. A folded
forms a bridge to the nex t table, beyond which we1‘
sodden pair. They show no interest in reading, n o t i
other. As for us, we realize we have to be seated be ‘
foreground table and are therefore near that couple, 5
them, although psychologically remote from them. ”
front them with peculiar directness, because ou r ey
ove r the table tops, a passage made the swifter becau,
omitted all supports for them (careful examinatio’
original shows no hint of table legs). By making th.
tops hover in mid‐air (the contrast with Duez is strisi
placing his t w o figures on the far side ofa spatial h o l
forcing us into close participation, he has created a5
space, anunstable and tentative one. His detachmentf
clever facade: hehas manipulateduswith the devices ‘
Once we allow ourselves to play Degas’s v i s u

we are caught between fiction and reality (for our 0?
chological reactions are real). So, too, was Degas, 5
who constantly made ar t o u t of his surroundings .
signed his name, that of the artist‐reporter, along t’
the newspaper in his picture. Degas’s actual models ”
suspended somewhere between image and real life. \

l in 1890 that at
Wormwood for i \
would be an imm.

ata time when abl,
t rance movement
woman, and W0!
t by 1876. Seven
blished Germim’e l
cause it chronicl
zation of L’Asso it
aundress’s slidino
:lass drinking an.
daughter). M o r
i ly attacked sine._
ervatives who Stu:
that the horrors o;

city. The comm r
nd in the early I

xpose this campai”
ig‐class cabarets, _\
w e n t o n i n high

the naturalist i;

ant detachment, ‘
itions. It is his c g
3 his picture and f‘
(the perfect cym
and). UnlikeDu1
Front of which Wi
l space which req
1a table with a at
.. A folded news»
>nd which we fi ‘6
feading, no r in 0 K
) be seated behind
that couple, sta ‘
3from them. W“
ecause ou r eye ‘7
swifter because 9‘
11examination 0’
3y making the
1Duez isstrikin
fa spatial hole, . v
has created a dy ‘
isdetachment is o
h the devices of ‘
Degas’s visual 14}
lity (for o u r own
was Degas, thef’
urroundings and»
ir ter, along the
:tual models w e t
and real life. Th

the now‐familiar actress and model Ellen Andrée and the
bohemian artist Marcellin Desboutin. Both were in the im ‑
pressionists’ orbit, friends of Zola and Duranty aswell as of
the painters. Manet had painted Desboutin in 1875 as the
bohemian artist, and he and Renoir painted Andrée asa res‑
pectable café client (Pls. 67, 70, 73). Since they frequented the
same cafes asthe impressionists, their appearance on Degas’s
canvas brings fiction rather close to reality, although Degas
toyed with them by lowering their bohemian level to sordid
depths.

Cafe-Concert andMusicHall:
Womenwho Serve
The somber mood of Degas’s Absinthe is a rarity among im ‑
pressionist pictures, but it is consistent with the penetration
with which heand Manet portrayed café life. The same penet‑
ration shows in their representations of the kind of café that,
like the brasserie, found special fortune in their generation, the
cafe-concert. In the ne x t section of this chapter, Degas’s por‑
trayals of café performers will be discussed, and at that time
this popular Parisian institutionwill bedescribed. Meanwhile,
to introduce Manet, who gave performers only a marginal
presence in his major renderings of the cafe-concert, it need
only besaid that this kind of café hadastage on which singers,
acrobats, comedians, musical groups, and vaudevillians took
their tu rns amusing the clients. Many indoor cafes‐concerts
had rather small stages, but n ew ones were built in the 18605
and 18705 with huge stages, rather like music halls. Outdoor
cafes‐concerts used covered pavilions fronting on fenced‐off
areas where the clients sat. Both indoor and outdoor types
charged extra for the entertainment, either by elevating the
prices of their drinks, or by levyinganentry fee or seat charge.
Manet represented outdoor performers only a few times,

in modest works that are overshadowed by his pictures of
waitresses and clients in indoor cafes‐concerts. For Comer in
a Café‐Coflcert (Pl. 77), Manet asked a waitress whom he
admired to pose for him in his studio and she agreed on con ‑
dition that her boyfriendaccompany her. It ishewhom Manet
placed in the foreground, with his worker’s smock, cap, and
clay pipe. (The purplish tones of his drink suggest wine, the
traditional drink of the Parisian worker. His solidly planted
form anchors the whole composition.3 Beyond him sits a
man, shown wittily by his grey hat, and further along is a
woman in lost profile. This sequence of heads gives some
depth to the composition, but serves chiefly to help induce ou r
perception of a crowded scene. The stage is relegated to the
rear, where we see a dancer or singer; to the left and right are
musicians indicated by fragmentary profiles and portions of
trombone, violin bow, and bass.
From the compact group of heads and hats in the fore‑

ground rises the brightly l i t face ofthe waitress. Her head caps
asubstantial pyramid formed with the other heads and, lower
down, her clutch of beer balances the raised hand of the
worker. These symmetries hold the picture together, but they
are inherently unstable.-The waitress leans in towards the left
to deposit a beer, but she looks o f f to the right: her profes‑
sional eye is on the lookout for another client’s signal. Manet
therefore characterizes her craft by showing her movements,

76

which contrast with the placid bulk of the b l } ,
worker. ,’
In the smaller Café-Concert (P1. 78), Manet also a

busy life ofa cafe‐concert by combining asolid p i c
With forces that threaten to break it apart. The thre
figures form a triangle, but they look in different,
and exist in three separate psychological realms, T i.
is taking advantage ofa calm mom e n t to have her:
She stands confidently, hand on hip, while loo ,.
the left. She belongs in this place and her assurang
dominate it. The woma n in the foreground is in‘i
mood and sits in a drooping position. Like the fi 3
Plum (P1. 75), she is n o t aproper bourgeoise, for she.
ing, the mark of the liberated women of uncertain5
n o w frequented cafés. She has only recently sat do if…
cigarette is newly l i t and her beer is hardly tasted, t,
her is apackage in shiny blue paper, either apastry o.
a sign that she has dropped in while on her way Stu
else. i
In contrast to this wistful figure, the top‐hatted .’.~

entirely at his ease. Hands over his cane, head ere -,
at the performer on the stage, whom we see r e fle
mirror in the upper left. His costume is a bit eccent
his cu t of beard, harks back to the Second Empire.)‑
beaBonapartist (he recalls Daumier’s inventedfigu ‑
or an actor who affects such clothing.3’5 He sta 6}
whole class of artists, actors, dandies, and entertai g‑
adventurers who belonged in these settings. Wit
detachment of thefldneur, hecould move freely in 5,“
places, treating them as stages for self‐display. 1
sense of self‐confidence with the worker in Comer
Concert, despite their differences. This is because _’r
patronize cafés without the ambiguity or insecuri
to unaccompanied women, who ran the risk of .:
admirers whether they wished to or no t . The con r:
t w o men in Manet’s pair of cafe‐concert pictures
female clients in The Plum and Café-Concert sh
observant Manet really was (as well as how rt;
identified with such self‐possessed males). ‘
Manet’s t w o pictures also show why the Pa

concert was such an ideal mixing place. Strangers [55
n o t associate o u t on the street could here sit side b.
giv’ing only minor place to the performance (mor
painted, as though partly o u t of focus), Manet rv
that singers or comedians were intended principa
customers for drink; the real business of the café‐co‘n‑
place in the foreground of his compositions. Paw
keep to themselves or tide over fragmentary convc
listening to the performance. Seated individually
these smaller cafes‐concerts, and n o t in the fixed ::
music hall or theater, they could move about if th
Manet shows the casualness of these socialjuxtaposf
yet he hints more at separateness than at convi ‘
glitter and attraction of the cafés are captured in th
of his color and brushwork, but his figures do not f‘
cate with one another. ‘
Clients are only temporary visitors, but the W3

long there, andManet’s t w o pictures are virtual cele
their roles. Café waitresses were greeted in Manet’S.5

flanet also typ ;
asolid pictorial

‘ t . The three p a
in different dire
realms. The

0 have her ow .
while looking.
her assurance 1»;

, i ke the figure 5
roise, for she is f;
7L1ncertain stat ~
ntly sat down, on
dly tasted. In frm
er a pastry or a n
l her way some»,

op‐hatted male fil
, head erect, he U

bit eccentric an‘a,
nd Empire. H
1611thfigure Raf:
‘35 He stands fin
1dentertainers,~f
:ting5. With th

;display. He S?
:r in Comer in a”
is because m e n !
;r insecurity attm
the risk of a t t
t . The c o n t r a s t
iert pictures i w u
7-Concert show

a s how r e a – j
ts). ..
by the Parisia‑
Strangers wh
re sit side by 51°“
l a n c e (more skfl
;), Manet remix
d principally to“
“the cafe-concert;
; i t ions. Patrons
itary c o n v e r s a – f ‘
dividually at ti}
n the fixed set
about if they ‘
ialjuxtapositio
1at conviviali’
>tured in the b l’
i r e s d o n o t c o f ”

but the waitrc f
virtual celebra x
in Manet’s gen

77. Manet, Comer in a Café-Concert, 1878‐79. London, National Gallery.

_\piinng the n ew Paris. Before the Second Empire, ambu‑
” Café serv1ce had been prov1ded largely by men (women
‘_- f.requ¢ntly behind the counter), but the entrepreneurs of
rapidly spreading brasseries and cafes‐concerts ‘quickly
ied that young women increased the sales of drinks. In
18605 the Parisian café waitress became a stock figure in
o n 5 and illustrations. Like other young working women,
asoften the prey ofmales and assumed to be“available.”

“c were, of course, because the open society of cafés made
,- ideal market places for sex, aswell asfor other kinds of
; ess (salesman and brokers cultivated clients there)..The
nging populatlon of Paris, which included so.many Single
4 and women , fostered the r i s e of clandestine pros t i tu ‑
«, as distinct from that regulated by government. It is
éurprising that brasseries afemmes came into ex1stence, es‑
hments in which waitresses used theirJobs as covers for

titution.36 Men might have felt free to regard waitresses
Manet’s as fair game, but Manet, who invented every
kc oftheir forms, held them alooffrom any ofthe by‐play
1.male clients favored by contemporary illustrators. In
arenas of drink, music, and leisure, it is they and the

9 t p7erformers who embody work; Manet gives them
“I .

1‐tgwoman facing usbehind her coun te r in Manet’s Bar at
! olies-Bergére (P1. 80) is a more ambiguous figure. The
ous reflections in the mirror to the right provoke the issue
“ale‐female commerce, but the picture asawhole does n o t
Ive it. Like the waitresses, this woman is a verseuse, a
er of drinks, but she does n o t move about. The stationary
j 0 which she is so fimly fixed suggests an environment
r e n t from the cafes‐concerts we have just looked at, and

it was. The Folies‐Bergére was more amusic hall than
_ oncert, and its history has to be consulted if we are to
‘c sense of Manet’s canvas. Shown in the Salon of 1882, it
fit last ambitious picture heexhibited before his early death
following year, and his last major statement on the public
a of Paris-spectacle.
f e Folies‐Bergere (near the rue Bergere) owes the first
{of its name to the eighteenth‐century “folie,” anopen‐air
a“ where Parisians could drink or dance while being enter ‑
:d. Its evolution is another capsule history of Second
wire speculation.3’8 It began asa department store devoted
dding, opened in ‘1860, one of the newer urban forms
mmerce. Perhaps because ofits favorable location on the
‘icher, just above the grands boulevards, it added a “salle
pectacles” to the rear of the store in 1863. This was so
sfuI‐active leisure being more lucrative than passive‑

” In 1869 the whole enterprise shifted to variety shows in
lation of London music halls. In November 1871, the
ted entrepreneur Le’on Sari took it over. He remodeled
’_1de and ou t , refurbishing t w o large spaces. One was the
.den,” an impressive hall With balconies (covered by an
g until it was roofed over in 1925).39 The other, where

St Places us, was the horseshoe‐shaped theater with fixed
11nthe orchestra and abalcony above, supported on col‑
: (tWO of them show in Manet’s mirror, near the reflected
1.’ e Counter). Sari removed the seats on the ground floor
thC balcony to make r o om for tables, chairs, several

,‐and Space for walking about (the promenoir). In the bal‑

cony he limited the boxes to t w o front tiers and left r o om for
another promenade behind them. We are on this level in
Manet’s picture, facing one of the mirrors which clad the
perimeter wall (they show clearly in Chéret’s poster, PI. 79),
in front of which the woma n tends her counter. The mirror
reflects the balcony on the opposite side.
Sari learned that he could make more money than would

the usual cafe-concert if he combined its freedom of move ‑
me n t with some of the features ofa theater. He could charge
admission, and extra for seats in the orchestra and the bal‑
cony loges. In addition, hecould earn money from the alcohol
sold on both floors. Some clients would come for the spec‑
tacles, which were on a grander scale than a cafe‐concert:
circuses (with animals), acrobats, whole operettas, ballets,
troupes of comedians, etc. Others came principally to social‑
ize, and could ignore the stage presentation while chatting and
drinking along the promenades. There was precedent for this
in the ordinary cafe‐concert, such asthe one Degas shows in
Café‐Concert (Spectators) (PI. 89), where there are rows of
bench seats facing the stage, and tables and chairs along the
rear and sides. Closer to Sari’s ambitions were the “cafe’s‑
spectacles” of the 18305 and 18405,40 and the huge Ba‐ta‐clan,
named after one of Offenbach’s operettas, a cafe‐concert re ‑
built in 1863. Sari surpassed them by offering more spectacular
entertainment and better‐appointed promenades. He had his

79. Chéret, Aux Folies‐Bergére, 1875. Paris, Musée de la Publicité.

\Jr.~ 4.”
x umoumrm e n t – x v u.–………….. J a w ] . V~ ‘. ’ L .a“ PR]. . 7m

79

o w n orchestra and dance troupe, but also booked the reigning
favorites among vaudeville, circus, and other diversions, in ‑
cluding the Hanlon Lees, American trapeze performers whose
poster shows in the window of Manet’s At the Café (Pl. 70). In
the late 18705, Sari charged t w o francs for the cheapest seats
and five for reserved seats, about twice the prices at the Ba‐ta‑
clan. Drinks were much higher than in ordinary cafés, asone
might expect.
Manet’s painting, therefore, evokes one of Paris’s mo r e

expensive and chic places. It is t rue that a student, sales clerk,
or prostitute could come to the Folies-Bergere, but only by
dressing up and squandering asmall fortune. If the Folies was
a social mixing place, it was nonetheless quite dominated
by the well‐to-do. Manet’s o w n society wen t there, urbane
writers, critics, collectors, painters, actors, demi‐mondaines,
and members of the Jockey Club. Appropriately enough,
several of his models and friends can be found in the reflected
balcony: the painter Gaston Latouche said that heposed for the
m a n to the right.“ Manet’s barmaid was a waitress from the
Folies‐Bergere, Suzon, of whom he made a separate pastel
portrait in street clothes. For the Bar she posed in his studio
(where he kept a marble table used in several other café
paintings), as had the woman in Corner in a Cafe-Concert (P1.
77), and for the same reason: Manet felt the need of the real
person ashe constructed the imaginary one.
What should we make of the arresting figure he painted?

Some contemporaries thought she was little better than a
prostitute, since barmaids had long had a reputation for low
morals, and the Folies was well known asa racy place. Many
modern historians also have concluded that she should be
seen asaprostitute.42 Of course, Sari hired pretty women to
enhance the sale of alcohol, and his advertisements frequently
showed top‐hatted men leaning on one of the bars, flirting
with the barmaids (Pl. 79). These verseuses were aspiring
actresses and other young w om e n trying to make a career in
Paris. Thanks to the memoirist Arnold Mortier, we have a
glimpse of one of them. Writing in 1876 of the new women of
the cur ren t season at the Athenée‐Comique, he mentions
“Blanche Rose. Blond with dark eyes. At the Folies-Bergere
took care of a little bar where Enlgish bookmakers used to
gather every evening. It’s for that reason that she smiled at Sari
who was in the audience.”43 In these few words Mortier
documents the rise of one of Sari’s barmaids who graduated to
the stage. We can be quite sure that Blanche-Rose and Suzon
lived less conventional lives than aproper bourgeoise, and that
they might well have had lovers, or occasionally slept with a
theater manager. But between this and prostitution there is an
enormous gap.
In painting Suzon at her bar, Manet, like Mortier, showed

he was among the cognoscenti who appreciated beautiful,
modish w ome n and used them to embody modern Paris. In
his painting, the whole world of the Folies‐Bergere is reduced
to this young woman and to o u r thoughts as we confront
her. She has a striking presence, all the more so because she
is firmly painted, compared to the softened images in the
mirror, and she is solidy installed within the shallow space,
thanks to the marble counter, bearer of one of the mos t beauti‑
ful still lives in French painting. Centrally positioned, she
utterly dominates a busy composition whose flatness is con ‑

80

fining, despite the rather smoky distance we can 53
mirror. Squeezed though she is between mirror a n d ,
she has animmense dignity andself‐containment. (An
about this can be resolved by comparing her Wit
woman, P1. 74). She is also a disconcerting figure
her matter‐of‐fact, cool glance seems to lack express
Her aloofness is all the mo r e disturbing because i.

m o n assumptions about barmaids would make us f
more forthcoming woman. That Manet defeats thes
tions by fashioning an image of remoteness is one go.
to his picture. In his austere figure we find the anony
loneliness inherent in the arbitrary encounters of
life.44Wehave already seen these traits ofurban tensi
Plum, The Street Singer, and even in The Railroad (P ‑
31), works that range over Manet’s whole career. L i k
these are all productions of thefifineur. and the natu l.
disdains emotional involvement with the anonymo;
of city life in order to master them, and who therefor
singular detachment to his figures, lest they reach ou
ou r emotions. Suzon’s impassivity should makeust i,
ofGeorg Simmel’s concept ofobjectivity, and also 0S};
pretation of the money economy which reduces h
counters to abstract te rms and leads to the blasé i
protects against involvement.45 Suzon’s distant asp
therefore result from Manet’s having responded’
attraction of Sari’s performances, n o r to the glamo
society which swarmed through his building, but ‘
the condition of this participant and victim of comm
leisure.
None of this denies that we continue to hav

readingher iconic image. Our difficulty iscompoun-l
displaced reflection in the mirror, a rendering that ”
judged by the tradition of naturalistic illusions.46
reflected world is shifted to the right as though tall
were on a slant, even though the counter seems p a r
N o t only is Suzon’s reflection t o o far to the right, bu
her image addresses would have to be standing in th
spot, that is, if we demand reasonableness from th,
Evidently it is an unreasonable construction, and so
its internal contradictions is the elaborate puzzle the
forced on us. Manet hadoften submitted to the Salo ,
m o s t outrageous works, including those with stran
tures from customary perspective, such as The E
Maximilian (P1. 63), rejected in 1869. To tweak th
conservatives was part of his performance asthe bel‑
r an circles around the stodgy bourgeoisie. And perfo
was: contemporaries recount his pleasure in receivin
of visitors to his studio while he was painting A ‘
Folies-Bergére.
As for Sari’s performers, they are amusingly red,

acrobat’s legs and trapeze in the upper left corner 05
ing, so that Manet can concentrate on one edge 0
music hall. Suzon faces us with her impassive gaze
fessional waiting for o u r order. Unlike her, ho ’
image in the mirror bends slightly towards the m ’
man, as though responding to him. The man’s fa:
expressionless, but his direct gaze (turned into abol
the fixity of painting) shows his interest in the wom~
fashion, Manet makes us consider this woman’s 8C ‑

lack expression

llCl make us ex-L
defeats these exp

1d the anonymi .’
i coun te rs o f mg;
f urban tension n
3Railroad (Pls. 71
le career. Like th
nd the naturalis
be anonymous 9
who therefore ga

ld make us thin 1
y, and also ofhis

o the blasé l o d
; distant aspect 1v7
respondedn o t7if
to the glamour?

tim o f c o m m e r

inue to have m”
is compounde ‘‑
ndering that is é‑
illusions.46
as though the j

t e r seems parall1″
,the right, but or
tanding in the 7
rness from the g”)
1ction, and soru’

d to the SalonJ J?
ise with s t r a n g e
chasThe Exe‘
ace asthe bel-esp
;ie. And perfor ‘1′
re in receiving at
; painting A B4?

nusingly reducff?
left corner of
n one edge of 3“
npassive gaze,
like her, howe”
wards the mus *
The man’s face k
ned into a bold 9′
st in the woman.
woman’s actu l

r m . 4:39 ‘

tofessional barmaid, and her potential role asenvisioned by
it man. Her frontal image is correct, even distant from us;
thing hints at her availability after hours. In the mirror, her
f=0re yielding natu re is revealed, detached asit were from her
“fly by the man’s powers of wish‐fulfillment.
llt is precisely because Manet first establishes acold dialogue
We a r the statuesque barmaid and the viewer that the second
10gue in the mirror gains its peculiar force. We can’t really
1 that man, yet because we are in the position he would
; py in front of the bar, he becomes o u r second self. His
‘ embodied image seems to stand for a male client’s hidden
Oughts when facing such an attractive woman. The appa‑
” t1Y aberrant detachment of the reflection in the mirror from
{5Woman, and of the man from ourselves, is the game this
’,Yartist is playing. The very fulcrum on which the picture

$1933, in other words, is a violation of the conventions of
.d1tl<_)nal ar t . To have “corrected” it would have destroyed '3palnting.

Cafe‐Concert: Women who Perform
Degas did n o t at all follow Manet in his subtle depictions
of barmaid or waitress of the cafe‐concert. Their opposed
temperaments nowhere show better than in this contrast, for
Degas concentrated almost exclusively on the female per‑
former. Beginning in 1875, hedevoted about forty pastels and
prints to this theme.47 Only one of them (P1. 89) features the
clients of the cafe‐concert. Al l the others are interpretations of
singers in action. To study them is to confront more directly
than with Manet the natu re of the cafe‐concert and its place in
Parisian society.

Although there were various antecedents to the café‑
concert , the sudden rise in their popularity began in the 18505,
with the advent of the Second Empire and the dramatic
changes wrought in the capital. Early historians all agree that
the Café des Ambassadeurs and the Café M o r e ] had set
the vogue in the 18405. They were housed in twin buildings

81

designed by jacques Hittorff in 1841 for the park-like area
where the Champs‐Elysées meets the place deg la Concorde (a
corner of the Ambassadeurs shows in Renoir’s painting of
1867, P1. 8). Taking their cue from the open‐air concerts that
had for many years been held there, both cafés added outdoor
pavilions behind the main buildings. This whole region had
long been set aside for fairs, circuses (Hittorff also built the
nearby circus building in 1841), Punch and judy shows, and
various itinerant entertainments, so Parisians of the Second
Empire were conforming to awell‐established tradition when
they sought distraction on this once royal edge of the city.
By the 18505, visitors and Parisians could choose among

three cafes‐concerts there, the Ambassadeurs, the Alcazar d’été
(formerly Café Morel), and the Café de l’horloge. Exten‑
sive use of gas lamps‐foreigners constantly remarked on
Paris’s extravagance in this regard‐extended warm‐weather
days well into the night. Their luminous spheres glow pro‑
minently in Degas’s best‐known compositions (Pls. 83, 84,
85). At first hung from trees by café proprietors, gas lamps
were spread throughout this verdant area by municipal auth‑
orities, who helped sanction its appeal as one of the prin‑
cipal nocturnal promenades of the city. By the 18605 it was
fairly crowded with organized entertainments: cafes‐concerts,
municipal concerts, the circus, semi‐permanent fair buildings,
several theaters, an enclosed Panorama, and one of the mos t
popular of the city’s gaslit dancing gardens, the B31Mabille.
There was no doubt of this district’s function asaplace of gay
abandon to compensate for the vast demolitions and removals
which were dislocating the population of the city’s center.
The imperial presence Was discreet but thorough. The

municipal concerts, inaugurated in 1859, were frequently tied
to imperial celebrations; the circus was renamed the Cirque de
l’Impératrice; the Panoramaheldpaintingsof LouisNapoleon’s
battles; imperialcensorship passedonevery song, Operetta, and
play performed in the various cafés and theaters. Gone were
the itinerants who used to set up portable platforms and pass
the hat afterwards. Their places were taken by impresarios
who hired entertainers, enclosed them in pavilions and fenced‑
o f f areas, and raked in the money spent on the alcohol which
sustained these new fortunes.
The impresarios chafed under constant censorship, but for

all that, imperial dictatorship was at times awelcome partner.
In 1863 and 1864, a sweeping set of decrees suppressed many
of the privileges which had hemmed in the theatrical world,
and opened theater construction and management to any‑
one who could pu t up the money and observe basic building
codes. There was an immediate boom in new construction
and in the conversion of buildings (such asthe Folies‐Bergere)
to various kinds of theater: vaudeville, cafe‐concert, comic
opera, comedy, pantomime, drama, and circus. This was fol‑
lowed in 1866 and 1867 by another set ofauthoritarian decrees,
of particular benefit to cafes‐concerts. These wiped o u t the
guild restrictions that had protected established theater and
music by forbidding café entertainers to wear costume, em ‑
ploy props, or use more than brief excerpts from published
plays and music.48 Whether or n o t devised with the 1867
Universal Exposition in mind‐they probably were‐these
decrees led to aremarkable expansion of cafes‐concerts, which
rose from amodest number, probably t w o to three dozen in

82

the early 18605, to more than 1 0 0 adecade later, andn.»
by the early 18805.
On summer evenings the Ambassadeurs and the“

d’été were especially frequented by Parisians and
visitors, whom guide books directed there. Since 1)
vored the Ambassadeurs, we might look at What g”
special éclat. It had pride of place as one of the 0 1 d
concerts, and the advantage of its tree‐lined surroun. i
repertoire was much like that of the indoor cafes-co”
the rest ofthe city: clowns, comedians, singers, acroba
plays, operettas, and vaudeville. Its personnel was l l .
that ofits wintertime rivals: anorchestra of fifteen m5
musicians, twelve to fifteen performers, and fifteen 1
waiters and other salaried staff All these employees
a constantly shifting clientele of about 1 ,200 seateJ
the authorized perimeter. It was abig business, and ,l
could afford to hire major stars, often plucking them 35,
previous winter’s greatest successes elsewhere. NOtab
smar t (therefore more expensive) than mos t of its 5
was regularly listed asa “very fine establishment,”49

81. Degas, The Impresario, c. 1876‐77. San Francisco, Fine Artstv,

elater, andnearv -‘d€books that lookeddown on such places ast o o bawdy. In
inc ways the Ambassadeurs was the open‐air equivalent of
, u m fi e m HiLikC the Folies, the Ambassadeurs had an enterprismg
anager. PierreDucarre took lt over in time for the Universal
x osition of I 867 and was i t s owner‐director until the end of
(a Century. Degas frequented the Ambassadeurs in the mid‑
8705 and seems to have admired Ducarre. He made four
“C11studies of him on one sheet and began an 011 of him,
I owing apowerful figure walking away from the observer
.1. 81)- Ducarre himself defined success in this new busmess
:” words that would have appealed to Degas: “One must
, ways beon the lookout for novelties, for original crea t ions ,
or unexpected talents. And no matter how much success
enjoyed by an establishment, one mus t always think of

uckin h __ g on i t , of perfecting it.”50 Ducarre launched a
gt emfr ‘ ‘ l d‘ L’bert one of the rare maleWhere. Notabl umber of new stars, i n c u i n g 1 , . ,

m o s t of its ri _.-rformers drawn by Degas, and Emelie Becat (P1. 82).
blishment ” 4 9 e Degas was no t attracted by the male Singers, comedians, or

’ crobats who took the stage of the Ambassadeurs, any more
,uanhewas interested in maleballet dancers. Despite the fame
( some men (one thinks of Paulus, whose great acclaimbegan
‘ ound 1880, but who had already appeared at the Ambassa‑
‘eurs in 1871 and 1872), it was the female singer who
sominated the era. The famous Thérésa (Emma Valadon) set
i etone with her smashing success in 1864 at the Ambassa‑
eurs’ nearby rival, the Alcazar d’été. She quickly became
‘ne of the stars of Paris, “the Patti of the beer mug,” invited
.0appear before the imperial cour t , and subject of admiring
whrases of Mallarmé and of Degas (“She opens her huge
.. outh and ou t comes the grossest, the most delicate, the mos t
‘ttily tender voice there is.”51) Her success is a revealing

fndex of Second Empire and Third Republic morality, n o t
nespite, but because of the slang, the sexual innuendos, the
‘ orking‐class origin of much of her material:

eurs and the w
isians and by f»,
J e r e . Since De
ok at what gain.
reof the oldest;
ned surrounding-‑
loor cafés‐conc’
ingers, acrobats,
rsonnel was 3130
aof fifteen to
, and fifteen to
“employees ca t ..
: 1 ,200 seated
usiness, and as ‘ ‑ l“ prOVln

cisco, Fine Arts M“:

One only has to look at Mlle Thérésa to recognize that
, she isachild of the people. She has that kind of virility that
is shared by both sexes in the lower levels of population;

Aits charm is in its force. One of the personages that she
portrays is said to have posed for a Venus; in this case
the model’s marble seems to have been shaped more by a

, pruning hook than a chisel. Moreover, in her physiog‑
nomy, a lot of expression in the gaze; an ensemble that is
no t at all displeasing, and sometimes her gestures have an
elegance that contrasts with the vulgarity and the exces‑
swely broad tone of her lyric repertoire.5
, Like that writer and the dandies who crowded the Ambas‑
“-deurs, Degas admired the street-wise virility of the women
hosang on its stage. Since heworked in asilent medium, he
ncentrated on gesture asaway of suggesting this admirable
: lgarity. The Theresa‐like figure of La Chanson duchien (Pl.
4) holds her forearms up to give prominence to her drooping
Iands.53 Her closed eyes and uptilted chin, however, convey
fisenSe n o t of a funny animal, but of entire absorption in her
H g : 3mixture of the delicate and the gross, asDegas said.
Csame mixture was found in Emélie Becat, the singer he
_med to more often than to any other. Hemade five prints of
er, 1nCluding Plate 82; one contains three separate composi‑

v

82. Degas, Aux Ambassadeurs: Mlle Bérat, c. 1877. Ar t Institute of Chicago.

tions of her on the same sheet. In Plate 82 she has both arms
spread widely, shoulders hunched, and head bent down.
Heavy bows on bodice, elbows, and the back of her costume
would have accentuated the constant motions of her body. In
other prints he shows her doubled forward, hands on knees,
or with one arm stretched eccentrically outward, its fore‑
a rm dangling down. One can imagine her singing a refrain
from her first hit, Le Turbot et la crevette (The Turbot and the
Shrimp):

Turbot, turbot of my heart.
You’ve got me! You’ve got me!
You’ll be my downfall.54

Becat was appreciated for her “epileptic style,” a frenetic
use of body and limbs. In this she was like other notable café
singers, for they all developed particular kinds of gesture
and movement which helped identify them and which they
utilized to inject sexual or political meaning into otherwise
innocent‐sounding phrases. These striking styles were especi‑
ally necessary in the cafe‐concert. Clients were free to come
and go, to drink and chat, so it took a strong act to claim
their attention. Besides, the anonymity of the well‐packaged
entertainment and of its huge audience could be partly dis‑
guised by the frenzied clamor of the performer, who seemed
to seek a personal exchange with each client, enlisting them
as participants. Edward King, that rather stuffy American
visitor, lamented this participation aswell asthe fare offered
in the outdoor cafe‐concert:
The songs are local, glaring with coarse mannerisms and
rude gestures. . . ‘ , a fat woman rises, makes a short, u n ‑

83

. Degas, Café‐Concert, c. 1877. Washington, Corcoran Gallery.

graceful bow, and sings aburlesque song. It is an echo of
boulevard life. . . .The audiences are more enthusiastic here
than under roofs; they rise and swing hats and bonnets,
they scream and throw bouquets, and sometimes adaring
suitor goes to the footlights and hands to his goddess, in
person, his offering of flowers or epistle of love.55
The singer reaching ou t toward her audience is the theme of

t w o of Degas pastels (Pls. 83, 85) shown in the third impres‑
sionist exhibition in 1877 (alongside Women onaCafé Terrace,
Evening, P1. 47 , and several ballet dancers). Both may repre‑
sent Victorine Demay, whose repertoire had many “an echo
of boulevard life.”56 In one she plants right hand on hip and
pumps her left arm, which Degas makes disappear in the
process. In the other she bends low and emphatically gestures
back at herself with her left thumb. We can almost hear De‑
may singing to her cornet player in “Horace’s Trumpet”:

I ’d like t’be the deal chair
Where you sit‐so’s I can hear you better.

Or refusing the offer ofa nutcracker from an admirer:
Me, I crack nu t s
By sittin’ down on ’em!57

In Plate 83 we have to imagine ourselves as members of
the audience seated behind three women whose costumes
have the loud effects sought by women of dubious virtue,
the kind the rakish man on the left comes here to meet . just
beyond are the musicians, whose diverse origins andmediocre

86

pay are captured in their motley assortment of hats a c
cu t of hair. What an urban scene this is, despite i.
door setting: people of different positions, different a’i
different classes (except for the working class), Vin
microcosmof the city’s varied andshifting population”
by the brilliant gaslight ofthe stage, we look up to t ‘
in red (PI. 61). She gestures offto the right, amove tha
the composition dynamic, but threatens its stability. H
ward mo v emen t i s checked b y the brightly coloredW
the left, who serve asa counterbalance, by the wide :
the pavilion support which pins her down, and by if
oflights that continues the axis of her outstretched a .
ther, her potential mo v emen t is blocked by the huge ,
the bass viol, that symbol of manhood risingupward
male orchestra.
In Plate 85, the singer, bending over to display her ‘

seems to be addressing the orchestra leader. There
customers represented here, so the orchestra takes on 3
of the men in the audience to whom the singer m0
appeals. Cafe‐concert songs were usually devoted to lo.‑
Degas alludes to them by having the wome n face the Pf
m e n who r u n the show, as they r u n life, by prOVi
music. Their instruments‐the leader’s bow, his fir ‘
violin scroll, and again that oversized bass‐enter 113
into the confrontation.
The women who grace the stage in bothpastels were

tively known asthe “corbeille,” a rich t e rm meaning th
dress circle, the reserved enclosure in a stock exch
flower bed, a flower or fruit basket, or simply a i

agpopulation!
‘ look up to th
i t , a m o v e that r :
its stability. Her
tly colored wo ,.
, by the wide

sing upwardfro

zodisplay her ch
leader. There a
estra takes on th
he singer most
I devoted to lov
men face the me

carre and other impresarios quite knowingly exploited the
men for their appeal; male performers were kept offstage.
eW of the corbeille were enter ta iners awaiting their turns,
16 were beginners who would appear Without pay in the
es of proving themselves, andothers were n o t performers
1], simply attractive women hired to round o u t the Visual
éring- The sexual role of the torbezlle was Widely commented
511, Menpursued them, of course, and the reputations of the
és_concerts owed something to this commerce. Because the
actors of the better establishments forbade open Signalling
m the stage, there grew up aspecial gestural language. The

one held an admirer’s bouquet could signal agreement to
et after the Show; tapping one side of the face with a fan
uld be a similar positive sign. The women in Degas’s t w o
beillrs flourish bouquets and fans, and their separate move‑
msand poses‐-‐inPlate 85, the woman in pale blue immedi‑

behind the singer has turned entirely around‐suggest
“1r ambitions to be recognized asindividuals.

her Degas n o r Manet was apassive recorder ofwhat w e n t
n the cafes‐concerts. To gain a fuller understanding of
knowing interpretations, wehave to look further into the

ireof this particular form of commercialized entertainment.
e hindered as much ashelped by modern ar t historians

have usually placed t o o much emphasis on the low life
atronized these places. It is best to begin by looking into

performers, their songs, and their clients to see the degree
ihich the canaille, the riffraff, were represented. We can
( t u r n to the other social strata who fit into this strange and
derful institution, especially since among them were

sts like Manet and Degas, hardly to be counted among the
ff.

eading cafe-concert singers, like Thérésa and Bécat, were
ost all from the menu peuple, the lower classes, and prided
mselves on their origins. By birthright they had access to
et slang, to gutter humor and gestures which were central
heir art . The titles of some typical songs, virtually u n ‑

anslatable, are a good indication: “I advise you n o t to stick
r nose in there”; “It’s squeezing m e . Move it o u t of here”;
e helped myself to a lot.”58 Both singers and songs,
reover, grew o u t of a populist and radical tradition that
uded Be’ranger in the first quarter of the century, aswell as
rre Dupont and Joseph Darcier, both associated with the
olution of 1848. Béranger was twice imprisoned for his

,. gs. Dupont and Darcier suffered heavily from censorship.
V’rcier’s role continued well into the impressionist era, as
erfornier, songwriter, and asTheresa’s mentor. He was co‑
uthor of “La canaille,” a song launched by the robust Rosa
Ordas (Rosalie Martini) in 1869. Its famous refrain was “j’en
Slj’en suis!” (meaning “I am also canaille”). Bordas sang it
heHotel de Ville during the Commune, and when she took
Pagain after the bloody repression of the Paris revolt, her
eners greeted it asapro‐communard song.59
Somehow Bordas’s rendering of “La canaille” escaped the
SOY (perhaps because it had been approved before 1870),

tWe can be sure the one or more police agents or mouchards
Orniers) reported the incident. The more oppressive the

government, the m o r e worried it was about these “parlia‑
ments ofthe people.” Al l through the Empire, cafes and cafes‑
concerts were well attended by informers, great numbers were
closed down for political reasons, and the government censor
required approval of every cafe song before it could be aired.
Faced with the sheer volume of such texts the censors were
hard put to suppress all instances of excessive vulgarity and
political dissent, especially since a singer’s wink or gesture
could subvert the m o s t innocent‐sounding phrase. For e x ‑
ample, the imperial censor may have been suspicious about
“Le Sire de Framboisy,” a song by Bourgat and Laurent de
Rille, but did n o t prevent its becoming a rallying cry for
opposition to the Emperor. By burlesque expressions and
dumb show, the singers made the medieval Sire and his wife
into a parody of Louis Napoleon and Eugenie. jules Valles,
that unrepentant communard, believed that in a time of cen‑
sorship and repression, the famous Thérésa embodied the
spirit of freedom and opposition, and “sapped an empire
by holding it up to laughter.”(’” Valles’s phrase foretells
Kracauer’s view that Offenbach’s operettas had a role in the
downfall of Louis Napoleon. Cafe’ song and operetta were
n o t all that far apart. The larger cafes‐concerts frequently put
on operettas, and Offenbach’s chief rival I‐lervé (Florimond

hits, “La gardeuse d’ours” (The Bear Keeper). For a time, he
also directed the orchestra of the Eldorado, one of the leading
cafes‐concerts. The Ba‐ta‐clan, aswe saw, was named for one
of Offenbach’s operettas, and composers of cafe’ songs regu‑
larly mined successful operettas for phrases, refrains, and
personages.

Censorship of comic opera and of café-concert programs
did n o t end with the fall of the Second Empire. jules Simon,
minister of education in the early years of the Third Republic,
was an outspoken enemy of the cafes‐concerts, which “distri‑
bute and sell poison among us.”61 Fear of the Commune led
Simon and many others to associate cafés and cafes‐concerts
with the menacing canaille, and police shadowing continued.
In the five months following President MacMahon’s dissolv‑
ing the Chamber of Deputies on 16 May 1877, 2 , 2 0 0 cafes
were shut down as part of a campaign to stifle the opposi‑
tion.62 MacMahon, general of the troops that repressed the
Commune, was repudiated in the elections of October 1877,
which restoredarepublican majority to the Chamber. Censor~
ship gradually slackened, but police spies continued to haunt
cafes and cafes‐concerts (and the official censors’ posts were
abolished only after the t u r n of the century).

Government monitoring of cafes and cafes‐concerts would
seem to prove that they were indeed the precincts of the
tanaillc who resisted ordained politics and morality. However,
the clients of the cafes‐concerts included many middle‐class
and upper-class people, and we have to puzzle o u t their roles
if we are to make sense of these marketplaces of salty enter ‑
tainment, and of the impressionists’ paintings of them. It has
already been remarked that the Ambassadeurs, the Folies‑
Bergeres, and the unidentified cafés painted by Manet and
Degas were rather expensive places. The artists did n o t fre‑
quent commonplace cafes, and prices alone largely excluded
the working class from the Ambassadeurs and the Folies.
Zola, in anangry polemic full ofirony, asks:

Is it the worker who goes into fashionable cafés, where
high prices give nice people the right to enter? They’re all
there, drinking, talking business, politics, or smu t . The
waiters are neat, there is gold décor, no one has yet de‑
nounced cafe’s,in parliament. Useless people drown them‑
selves in absinthe without having the worker’s excuses, and
they die softheaded, their hands unstained by any work,
after having slumped over the same marble table for thirty
years.“
There is also plentiful visual evidence to confront the

privileged world that Manet and Degas recreated. The Musée
Carnavalet has many prints of workers’ restaurants and cafes
by Henri Valentin and ahost of other illustrators, and in the
album of etchings that Le’opold Flameng published in 1860,
Paris qui s’en 11a, Paris qm’ vient, there are representations of the
Cabaret de la Mere Marie and other plebeian cafés. Merely to
glance at Roman Ribéra’s Café‐Chantant (P1. 86) is to see how
far one can get from Degas’s Ambassadeurs (Pls. 83, 85).

‐ ‘ \ . s ‘

86. Ribéra, Café‐Chantant, 1876. Washington, Corcoran Gallery.

When Manet and Degas looked around them at the Ambas‑
sadeurs or the Folies‐Bergere, they did n o t see the working
class. They saw some clerks, shop assistants, prostitutes, and
demimondaines, and a lot more middle-class and upper‐class
customers, including perfectly respectable women whose pre‑
sence particularly irritated conservatives like Louis Veuillot.64
These latter were slumming and were often represented in
contemporary illustrations, looking o u t from their loges over
the cheaper seats below‐the audience was a wonderful part
of the show. Manet and Degas would also have seen fellow
artists, fidrzeurs, dandies, and the élite of Parisian intellectuals.
If they could have grouped in one place those known to have
frequented the better cafes-concerts (most of whom w r o t e
about them), they would have spotted Delvau, Fournel,
Mallarmé, the Goncourts, Daudet, Taine, Veuillot, Banville,
Sardou, and Renan, aswell as the composers Auber, Rossini,
Hervé, and Offenbach (also the latter’s librettists Halévy,
Degas’s close friend, and Meilhac).
For painters, journalists, writerS, and musicians, the café‑

concer t was a source of ideas, of useful refrains, Odd
popular phrases and striking costumes‐therefore a ,
tive bit o f amusement . Cafe’ songs and vaudeville thrive
cur ren t events which were filtered through lively
clever phrases, and telling gestures. In them Manet ,
parallels for his scintillating brushwork, his quick gm1
things, and his opposition to the stodgy terms of 0“
painting. Degas’s sardonic wit equally found matches ther‑
his caricatural treatment of clients and performers, and fo
idiosyncratic combination of pastel over monotype, a ,.
nique that alone constituted a repudiation of the hiera’
of the fine‐arts establishment. (For that matter, the co
tions of his cafe‐concert pastels owed a debt to D3
cartoons.(’5)
The combination ofleisure and work that artists and w.;:.

m e t with in the cafe‐concert was an irresistible lure, . i
more so because they enjoyed the irreverent, fraction
vironment. The cafe‐concert expressed the spirit of op‘
tion to gove rnmen t and to sanctioned morality that r»
of them shared. For them, in an era of limited freedo,
expression, it was a safe way of venting their oppo
(relatively safe: police spies kept a careful eye on artis ‘
intellectuals, n o t just on political activists). The working,
origins ofthe performers and of their language gave the”
feeling of sounding the depths oftheir society, of comm [‑
with le peuple, even though we know that all of Thé;
songs, all of Bécat’s and the others’, were written by p it
sional musicians. The origins were often among the cau
but the products came from the hands of skilled professio
,managed by clever entrepreneurs.
The bawdy songs of the cafes‐concerts helped make.

into mixing places, where class differences could be a}:
papered over. They acted asanoutlet for Parisians’ awa
of the vast army of workers on whom they depended, a L
the specter of revolution, reinvigorated by the Comm s~
1871. Class fears were partly discharged at the Ambassa
where one could flirt with dangerous sexual and po
expression; in an environment that grouped several ,»
of client (comfortably dominated by those with money)
liberating effects of drink and tobacco, and the frequent 😕
jection of nonsense songs and refrains which further ‘
the force of the street references. Georges Riviere, Ra;
friend, well understood how singers like Thérésa or J
could appeal to the bourgeoisie. In reviewingDegas’sSpl
pastel shown in 1877 (P1. 83), he w r o t e that the red‑
figure mu s t besinging “a coarse song, accompanied by ’
gestures,” and then remarked “How this gesture an‑
voice ought to becarefully studied in the silence ofthe boy
by a pretty marquise who will cou r t her friends’ bravos
she sings ‘Am I a pasteboard woman?”’66
The cafe‐concert let artists and writers associate

performers who were, in a manner of speaking, the”
egos. The singer’s or the clown’s act had more than on ‘
lel with the painting, the musical composition, or the
All were one form or another of entertainment, the 5”

m3;
u ”

canaille but was written by well‐paid professionals like;
or Darcier; Manet’s painting included a worker (P1. 7
was destined for a small élite of viewers.

87. Degas, detail of La Chanson du chic”

refrains, odd tu,’,
‐therefore a pro-l
laudeville thrived
rough lively In ,‑
them Manet fo
, his quick gras.
gy terms of o f fi
indmatches there‘f
rformers, and for l
r monotype, a tea
ion of the hierarc
nat ter, the compo
adebt to Daumiir

hat artists and writ:
‘esistible lure, all ‘1
verent, fractious a”
the spirit of oppo
morality that m e ?
:”limited freedomr;
ing their oppositio
ul eye on artists . t
). The working‐cl},
guage gave them ?
ciety, ofcommu “a
that all of Thére’s
rewritten by p r o f
1among the canail
skilled profession z

:shelped make the
lCCS could be pa n,
Parisians’ awa ren
eydepended, and f:
by the Commune .:
at the Ambassade t
sexual and polit i
luped several ClaS‘i
sewith money), 3
1dthe frequent i n t
Il’llCl’l further d i l u
;es Riviére, Renoi
:e Theresa or B6
‘ing Degas’s splen-l
3 that the red-rob
:ompaniedby vulg”
his gesture and
silence of the bond
iriends’ bravos wh
))

‘s associate with ?
speaking, their al
more than one par
vsition, or the ess
linment, the shre ‘
; had elements of ff
fessionals like He ‘
worker (P1. 77) b“

Chanson du chien (Pl. 5“

88. Degas, The Glove, c.

1or the most part, artists and writers did n o t look at one
uothCF That would have brought on t o o much self-aware‑s. TheY looked instead at the performers, the waitresses,
”d the lowlife among the clients. They were like the tourists
f 0 went to a fishing Village and looked only at the natives,
“1.0 bought engravings of the fishing boats, n o t of the train“at brought them there, and who tried to ignore their fellow
uristS» in order to preserve an_“authentic experience. Say‑
, ‘ g this is no t to deny the genuineness of Manet 5 in teres t inoung women alone in their.thoughts and in waitresses at their
bS, nor to deny his revelations ofurban tenSions . It is instead
a confirm the distance he felt from his cafe’ figures, atdistance
.a t did no t exlude sympathy, but that let him maintain his
i”.ale detachment and demonstrate it to his fellowfashionables.
Much the same can be said of Degas’s cafe‐concert pastels,

though his cynical penetration of contemporary foibles is a
‘fferent kind of detachment. For example, his only café‑
.ncert composition that concentrates on customers (P1. 89)
u’veS them none of the dignity Manet confers on café clients
f”d waitresses, Manet merely hints at possible relationships
J-tween his men and wome n while keeping them aloof from
ne another. Degas’s small pastel shows lecherous me n hover‑
. g over women of doubtful Virtue, and all the other figures
2 e caricatures, victims of his compulsion to attack society. In
J 1Chanson du chien (Pl. 87), the men and women below the
” ger are also caricatures, brilliant miniature heads n o t t w o
;‘ ches high in the foreground, and hardly mo r e than half an
; ch in the distance. It is asthough the woman’s animal pos‑
rehad the power to metamorphose her auditors. At the base

“f the composition a pair of dark‐rimmed glasses peers up
“over apyramidal snout, and among the tiny heads to the rear
‘ the profile of a porcine male under a round, yellow hat.
To the modern observer there is anoddly familiar aspect to

this crowd milling among trees under the looming presence of
a singer on araised platform. Weare reminded of the outdoor
Concerts of o u r o w n era in city parks or college grounds.
Public concerts by rock musicians, in fact, find their ancestry
~1n the Parisian cafe‐concert. They perpetuate its salient features
in their o w n versions of eccentric costumes and gestures, sug‑
gestive body movements, incessantly repeated refrains. They
‘ also draw much of their material from working‐class culture,
and performers scare the bourgeoisie, asdid Thérésa, Darcier,
and Bécat, with their vulgarity and their uninhibited private
_llves. (Nonetheless, like Theresa, they are greeted by royalty.)

Degas’s vision seems equally modern. In La Chanson du
.Chien we even have the familiar experience of being suspended
sOmewhere on the boom of a camera that has zoomed in
on the performer. This is because his images of café singers
have contributed to the way we frame entertainers of ou r
3°Wn period. It is n o t enough simply to say that his forms
“and compositions look forward to twentieth‐century ar t . That
p13 the customary circular reasoning of a r t historians: anartist is
mOdern because he was. . .modern. The real explanation is
atDegas invented forms that suited the cafe‐concert, and the

tWO moved together into o u r century.

His m o s t powerful rendering ofa cafe‐concert singer is The
Glove (P1. 88), exhibited with the impressionists in 1879; or
perhaps we should say that something in o u r o w n culture
makes us single it o u t with that particular kind of praise (it is
n o t mo r e beautiful n o r mo r e animated than Plate 83, but it is
mo r e powerful). Again we have zoomed in on the entertainer
asthough aided by the moving camera (how could we have
explained where we are located in the te rms of Degas’s
generation?) We are extremely close to her, to an absolute
stranger who is singing to us. We share the curious experience
of the cafe‐concert in which we can be absorbed in the song,
hence in aprivate m om e n t with the singer, and yet bepart ofa
multitude: the combination of nearness and remoteness that
Georg Simmel pinpointed asthe essence of urban life.
Degas’s singer has a forceful presence. Her head is l i t from

below, resulting in a potent ugliness that we associate with
photographic negatives and with the garish effects of klieg
lights, those artificial suns which require the performer’s thick
make‐up. (It was Henry Tuckerman who said that Paris and
Parisians were characterized above all by a predilection for
artifice”) The singer’s mouth is open sowide that o u r o w n
facial muscles stretch as we reckon up the loud no t e she is
holding. There is a quickness about this picture, a poster‐like
immediacy which seizes hold of o u r perception. Arm rises
from black circle, and head from black trapezoid; both are set
against vertical stripes whose strident tones give rhythm to
the silent song. The forearm is suspended at an aggressive
angle, its black glove echoing the nighttime void to the right.
It arrests motion and commands us to listen to the perpetu‑
ally held note. Everything makes us concentrate on the one
event: this w oma n is belting o u t asong, overpowering us. To
u s ‐ w e can never escape ou r o w n vision‐she needs only a
microphone in that upraised hand to become a contemporary.
From her we can trace the performer that marks her age:
Thérésa, Yvette Guilbert, Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, janis
Joplin.68 Our century has brought with it a vast rise in ente r ‑
tainment, particularly music, which has become one of the
basic mo t o r s of industrial society. Paris of the impressionist
era set uson that path, and Degas invented forms that invested
its earliest images with remarkable animation and enduring
force.

91

Notes to pages 59‐92

d the Dreyfus affair: Portrait of the Artist as of Degas’s painting, see Douglas Cooper, The interior. An illustrated program reproduced inif the “re Anti‐Semite,” in the exhibition catalogue The Courtauld Collection (London, 1954), pp. 43ff, and Manet 1986 gives the correct setting for Manet’s
. pp. 143 inof” Aflai’ (New York, 1937‐88), pp. 96‐116. Pickvance’1963. ‘ picture, asdoes Chéret’s poster (P1. 79) and arepro‑
pt ion lies ’ 31. Cited in Pickvance 1963. Pickvance reports George duction in Derval 1955, opp. p, 59_
this chap ‘ Moore’s view that the woman is a “slut” and that 40. See the lithograph exhibited n o . 334 in Carnavalet
jamin, bo ’ ter Three the scene takes place in the morning. . 1985,
Kracaucr . P 32. Delvau 1862, pp. 250-51. For a straightforward 41. ldentifications summarized in Manet 1983, n o . 2 11 ;
t and 30, cCabe 1869, p. 65; McCabe got his figures from account ofabsinthe and its constituent elements, see the barmaid Suzon was identified in Tabarant 1931, i
as an Ur ‘ city Officia]s_ Avenel 1900‐1905, vol. 3, pp. 152‐55, the source p. 412. The Folies appears in numerous con ‐ 1
‘ but also-lb » All demographic figures from Weber 1899, ed. of the facts that I cite in thlS dlSCUSSiOH. AbSlflthC temporary writings, the best known beingitcommen 63 and Gourdon deGenouillac 1893‐98, vol. 5. was outlawed early in the twentieth century, J,_K, Huysmans’s Croquis parisiens (1880) and
Simmel’s i . iguckerman 1867, pp, 25-27. succeeded by presumably less deleterious drinks Maupassant’sBelami(1885).l‐Iowever, bothauthors
3’ 93), by 4 Kraeauer 1937. For Offenbach one should consult like Pernod. For an intelligent study of the whole had a writer’s interest in exaggerating its role asatude. Hed .. 150 Paris 1980. issue of drink in this era, see Michael Marrus, prostitutes’ market.
l‘s underlyr . kracauel’ 1937, p, 176. “Social Drinking in the Belle Epoque,” journal Of 42. T ] . Clark did soat first (Clark 1977), flatly calling
:s to the men ,. Paris 1980, pp. 142‐46, recounts the political Social History 7 (winter 1974): 115‐41. her a“whore.” His book (Clark 1985), however, is
145. difficulties Offenbachencountered with this operet- 33. By Maxime Du Camp, cited in Barrows 1979. hi 3more nuanced argument and hecorrectly hedges:
Dter One, P. ta giving grist to Kracauer’s mill, although else‐ her canny article, BarrowsdealsWith the temperance “a woman in a cafe‐concert, selling drinks and
firefited fro , where he somewhat naively denies the validity of movement of the 18705, the covert and public oranges, and mos t probably for sale herself‐or
“Helm“ 13an ‘7″ Kracauer’s political analysis. attempts to control drink, and Zola’s opposition tO believed to be so by some of her customers” (p.
ml and th°~ ‘ ‘ Kracauer 1937, p. 289. such hypocrisy. She also has in preparation abook 253). The relevant tradition of the damederomproir is
lack Ofinvd when in Rome in 1885, Debussy admitted that he dealing with all aspects of cabarets and cafes. extensively discussed in connection with the Bar in
isguisc forf L was homesick and yearned “ t o see Manet and hear 34. Even in reproduction the strip of canvas Manet Ross 1982.
Two, P’ 34 Offenbach.” Cited in Faris 1980 p. 221 . added to the right of this picture shows readily, 43. Mortier 1875‐85, vol. 3, pp. 37‐38, entry for 4
Baudelaircf‘ See the appendix devoted to documents about the its edge running up the back of this figure. This February 1876. Mortier’s volumes give a good
)m home 4“ composition and its censorship in Manet 1983. painting was once part of the Winterthur café running account of the Folies, e.g., 1874 (vol. 1,pp.me; to see Citron 1961, vol. 2, p. 318 and passim. See also composition (P1. 70); bothwere substantially altered 283m and 1877 (vol. 4, pp, 140m,This book has an
ld’ and yet to Francoise Cachin’s remarks in Manet 1983, no . 90. after the original canvas was cut in t w o (analy51s of introduction by Offenbach.
are a few Of Identified by Marilyn Brown (Brown 1978), who this complex history in Manet 1986. pp- 65‐71)- 44. An interpretation first proposed by Hans jantzen,
ident, pass made anastute analysis of the picture’s combination Such alterations have n o t deterred Manet specialists “Edouard Manet’s ‘Bar aux Folies‐Bergere,’ ” in
1 ‘Le Pein, . ‘ of naturalismand allegory. Her book (Brown 1985) from claiming that these t w o , and other café Essays in Honor of George Swarzenski, ed. Oswald
re 1964″ isthe first thorough social history of the gypsy and paintings, including The Plum (PL 75), are render- Goetz (Chicago, 1951).
146′ . the artistic Boheme in nineteenth-century French ings of specific places that they attempt to name. 45. See the discussion of Simmel in Chapter Two.borderingon 21 art For The Old Musician, see also Hanson 1977, Much as one would like to agree, the fact that Clark invokes Simmel when he writes of this ‘,
:reatment q ‘ 61‐66 and Reff 1982, pp, 170-91, Manet altered the pictures’ backgrounds in rework‐ picture (Clark 1985, pp. 253‐54)- He also “ 5 6 5 the l
The Curio} gap“ 1855 p, 8, ing them and omitted all precise clues tOlocation (at stronger t e r m “alienation” andbelieves that Manet’s l
aXIS’ b-Ut , For these aspects of Haussmannization, see Clark least, none has been revealed) seems to argue for the painting, in both subject and form, indicates a truly iingle, JUd 1‘,‘ ‘ 1985 ch 1 reverse. profound malaise in his society and a deep crisis in
ofsmall pie “3“ . The lvariou-s ties with earlier ar t are summarized in 35. In the sword hilt that hangs on the brass rack to the French art .
555 the m ‘ Reff 1982 pp 171‐91. rear, Manet may have intended a reference to the 46. Common, however, in fashion illustrations from ‘
nd cabinet. Kin 1868 p: 113. figure derived from Neapolitan comedy, Polichi‐ the 18305 onward in Which, by discarding conven‐ ll
16Necessrt . Delgau 1867 p. 64. These words immediately nelle. ASTheodore Reffhas shown (“The Symbol- tional perspective, an“illogical” mirror view shows i
cmmsm 16 i . recede those I have cited in epigraph at the ism of Manet’s Frontispiece Etching,” Burlington the rear of a hat or cloak, e.g., “Petit courrier des
327‐28’ The‐ ECinning of Chapter Two. Magazine 104 [May 1962]: I32‐37)» Manet intro‐ dames, Modes deLongchamp,” Modes deParis (20
9 ° ” Pothdt Bagrrows 1979. duced his album of etchings of 1862 with a April 1835). ‘

– ‘1james 1875‐76. P~190. surrogate of the artist, aPolichinelle whose sword. 47 , Except for Plates 83and 85, exhibited in 1877, the \ ’
rabeth Lanmt Constantin 1872 p. 108: “. . .e t l’on neverrait plus one Of his leading attributes, hangs nearby. Th‘s dates for all these are disputed by specialists. It is, 1830‐ 1890} . dans la capitale du monde civilisé, l’ignoble chope etched figure bears striking resemblance to the man agreed that the largest number were done between

– – remplacer 1adive bouteille.” in Cafe-Concert. Further, “Polichinelle” in the slang 1875 and 1878. .
reparingap bhw Edouard Noel and Edmond Stoullig, eds., Les of Manet’s day meant “an amusmg and eccentric 48. Changes in the laws pertaining to entertainment
he, has l-dcn’ I . Annales du theatre et de la musique 3 (1877): 602. man” (DClVau 1866, tl-V-)- were regularly noted in newspapers and in guide‘mitteemP _ lsaacson 1982 36- HOHiS C13Y50“ (in aPUth lecture, February 1980) books. They are conveniently summarized in Gour‑he)’ were 1111; Rewald 1973 -pp- 430‐31 and passim. first raised this issue in connection with Manet’s don deGenouillac1893‐98, vol. 5, pp_ 263‐67 and
awe busmcss_ _Grar’ia 1971 pp 87‐88. t w o cafe‐concert pictures, concluding that they passim. ‘
31. , ‘ Gauthier‐Lathuille’s memoir of this encounter is represented brasserie: a femmes. Subsequently, 49_ joanne 1870, P- 616. Cafe-concert staffs, average ,
63’ ‘. cited in Tabarant 1947, pp. 352 ‐53. The painting Theresa Ann Gronberg (Gronberg 19843) Phthhetl salaries, and costs are summarized by Emile Mathi‑16‐19. The . uni-u has recently been studied by Bradley Collins (Manet a detailed analysis of clandestine prostitution as it eu, cited in Caradec and Weill 1980, pp, 12‐16.
:rring’s “ S t “ 1985) who summarizes previous discussions and might relate to impressionist painting, and she also 50. Cited in Shapiro 1980, p. 155. it is Shapiro who
posed by ‘ ‐ adds perceptive observations. stated that the t w o Manets show brasserit‘s afemmes. identified Ducarre asthe subject of The Impresario. 1
ma n presu l . The site is described in Riviere 1921, pp. 140 ‐44, Intelligent though both interpretations are, the The sheet of studiesis reproduced in Boggs 196; .>yresemblance ? 187. internal workings of the paintings do n o t hear them (her fig- 94), COHCCUOH “filmown- SFUd’CS, and 01]
ting card Ph ‘ ~For Renoir’s social ideals see below, the last section out. are dated c. 1876‐77- Shapiro 315° identified the
UICY 1985, P- of Chapter Five. 37. joel lsaacson puts it well when he says of Manet and singer Libert as the subject of another sheet of
“Y oflifc,” . The friendship is recorded in Proust 1913, p. 110 . Degas that “seriousness of purpose takes the form studies of the same date (his fig. 4, P. 156).
Wl’th 0″ Cl -. The painting probably does n o t adhere to a of acontent rcsPectful of human dignity Within the 51. Letter to Henri Lerolle, 4 December 1883, in
.75. particular geometric scheme, but its overall propor- compromising and precarious urban world they Lemes de Degas, ed. Marcel Ouérin (Paris:
rid more co tions (2.3) are duplicated in some of the subdivi_ chose to depict.” (lsaacson 1982, p. 110.) , 1945), p. 75, The apt phrase la Patti de la chope,_
t words for D. Sions which additionally, make use of a few 38. For the institution, Derval 1955, and for Manet S referring to the great soprano Adelina Patti, lsiis Interior (Pl. repeated inteivals. painting, Manet 1986, pp. 76‐83. My information Alfred DeIVau’s (Dclvau 1867, p. 180), but is fre- l
l for him. It s i . For example, Reff 1982, no . 18. I prefer the more derives also from posters, photographs, advertise- quently credited to Louis Veuillot. _ ‘ ‘
tion, say Van guarded view of Theresa Ann Gronberg (Gronberg ments , and music sheets, aswell asfrom contem‐ 52. Paul Foueher, Enm’ ( o u r et Jardin, 1867, Cited in
DWP, estrang 1984). Although she calls Manet’s woman an porary guide books. . . . . . Alméras 1933, p. 422. In Clark 1985, pp. .216‐29,
zmi t i s i n , Whl “urban slut,” far t o o strong a phrase in my view, 39. That there were t w o spaces With different actiVities there is an acute analySis of the working-class
came more a she also shows why it would be difficult to affix a and. mises-en-sténe for long escaped the notice of origins of café songs, _ , ‘ .
3553)’ Wthh a label to such a person. ar t historians, who confused the interpretation of 53. She does n o t quite look like Theresa, but Michael
press: Linda ” ~50defined in Delvau1866, q.v. For the early history Manet’s picture by trying to adjust it to the wrong Shapiro (Shapiro 1980) convmcmgly relates astudy

309

9

IO .

I I .
12 .
13.

15.

16.
17.

18.
19.

308

and Warhol, to say nothingofI-Iemingway, Orwell,
and Benjamin.
Benjamin 1973, p. 37.
Bazin 1833, vol. 2, p. 308: “pre’fet depolice” (police
commissioner).
Moers 1960, p. 264.
All Manet scholars have discussed Baudelaire, but
the first profound discussion of Manet astheflzincur
is Nils Sandblad’s (Sandblad 1954). The best recen t
account of the links between Manet and Baudelaire
is by Druick and Zegers: see below, n o t e 15.
This interpretation owes agreat deal to Benjamin’s
famous essays collected in Benjamin 1973.
Reff 1976, p. 104. Since chas’s day, the painting in
question has been demoted from Cranach’s work to
that of his Followers.
More likely wit, since Degas was the last artist to be
unaware of what he was doing. And he got away
with the suppression of the leg, since no Degas
specialist has drawn attention to it! Degas also
eliminated any legs under the tables in his Absinthe
(PI. 76).
Fournel 1858, p. 263.
Proust 1913, p. 29.
Proust 1913, pp. 39‐40.
Themultiplemeanings ofclierries (rcrixcs) in Manet’s
era Iiave been confirmed by the historian Francois
Caradec (personal communication, 1986). Lagnignc
is a common variety of sour cherry, but the verb
guig/icr mean t “ t o give a sidelong glance,” in the
sense ofa malevolent look. Hence to have laguignc
and to Iiave la (arise both mean t to have bad luck.
Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers, “Maiiet’s ‘Bal‑
loon:’ French Diversion, The Fete de I’Enipereur
1862,” Print Collector’s Newsletter 14 (May‐june
1983): 38‐46.
See the first chapter of Sandblad 1954.
Whitehurst 1873, vol. 2, p. 95, and Tuckerinan
1867, p.

56.

Tuckerman 1867, pp. 156f.
Tuckermaii is n o t quite the prude that my citations
might suggest, and, moreover, he so fervently
wished the French to oppose Louis Napoleon that
he interpreted their liedonisni as political submis‑
sion. This colored his perceptions, since hebelieved
their saturation in the artificial and [ I N theatrical
was merely an extension of the Emperor’s tinselly,
shallow regime: “Simplicity and earnestness are the
normal traits of efficient character, whether deve‑
loped in action or Art , in sentiment or reflection;
and manufactured verse, vegetation and complex‑
ions indicate a faith in appearances and a divorce
from reality, which, in political interests, tend to
compromise, to theory, and to acquiescence in a
military regime and an embellished absolutism.”
(Tuckeriiian 1867, p. 157.)
Moers 1960, passini.
Baudelaire 1964, p. 11 .
Sandblad 1954, p. 63.
Wechsler 1982, and Isaacson 1982.
Art historians first began commenting on this by
focusing 011 specific borrowings, such asDegas’s
from Dauniier, or Manet’s from popular illustra‑
tions, and subsequently by broader inquiries into
the whole phenomenon. See Reff 1976 and Hanson
1977, and for broader studies, Beatrice Farwell, ed,
The Cult of Images (Santa Barbara, exliib. cat . ,
1977), lsziac501i 1982, and Ross 1982.
For example, all ofhis brothel scenes (Pl. 115), and
such paintings asSulleiug (PI. 58), MmeDiets-Monin
(Chicago, Ar t Institute), or The Stock Exchange
(PI. 56).
Degas himself referred to Lavater, the famous
phrenologist (Reff 1976, p. 217).
The group is discussed by Ronald Pickvance in
Degas 1879 (Edinburgh, exhib. ca t . , 1979, nos.

Notes to pages 33‐58

55~6o, and in Thomson 1987, pp. 27-‐30.
Benjamin 1973, p. 41. Benjamin was probably
thinking of the passage from Balzac’s Thém’ic dcla
dcnmrt/ic (A Theory ofBearing) which has recently
been cited in Wechsler 1982, i. 22 : “The observer is
incontestably the man of genius. All human inven‑
tions come from an analytic observation in which
the mind acts with anincredible rapidity ofinsiglit.
Gall, Lavater, Mesmer, ( I u v i e r . . .Bernard de I’alis‑
sy, the precursor of Buffoii. . .Newton, and also
the great painter and the great musician, are all
observers. . .thosc sublime birds ofprey who, while
rising to high regions, have the gift ofseeing clearly
in matters here below, who can at the same time
abstract and specify, make exac t analyses and just
syntheses.”
As early as 1833 the fléni’ur was likened to a
policeman. See above, no t e 5.
Fournel 1858, pp. 269‐71.
Goncourt 1956, vol. 11, entry for 22 August 1875.
Duranty in Le Rea/{snug 15 March 1856, cited in
Crouzet 1964, p. 441; the Goncourts in their
journal, May 1859, cited in Caraniaschi 1971, p. 43.
L’Ai/cnn’ dc la science, pcnsécx de 1848 (Paris, 1890),
pp. 192. 194~95‑
Delvau 1867, p. 78: “belles de nui t . ” Delvau names
five similar cafes along this boulevard, and his
description ofthe Cafe deMadrid could serve asthe
legend for Degas’s composition. On its terrace, he
writes, “from 11o’clock at night to 1a .m. : swarms
of young beauties it doesn’t take t o o much
imagination to call them beauties ofthe night‐display
themselves like espaliers on this terrace where, with
the pretext ofhaving ice cream or Bavarian cream,
they wait for galant cavaliers to offer an arm to
accompany them to the ne x t Biqnon.”
See Chapter One, p. 18.
Lemoisne 1946‐49, vol. 1, p. 119: “ U n tableau est
une chose qui exige autant de rouerie, de malice et
de vice que la perpétration d’un crime, faites faux et
ajoutez un accent de nature.”
When reviewing the impressionist exhibition of
1881 (Huysnians 1883, “L’Exposition des Indepen‑
dants en 1881,“ p. 233).
See Kirk Varnedoe’s analysis in Caillebotte 1976‑
77, no- 47‑
Boggs 1962, p. 18, gives a very perceptive analysis
of this picture which underlies mine, although we
are n o t in entire agreement. David R. Smith,
“Rembrandt’s Early Double Portraits and the
Dutch Conversation Piece,” Arl Bulletin 64 (june
1982): 259‐88, calls attention to Dutch prototypes
for paintings which disclose “an interrupted m o ‑
m e n t of domestic intimacy” with hints of tension.
Reff 1976, pp. 200‐38.
It is t r ue that Theodore Reff and some other a r t
historians who specialize in Impressionism have
reinforced the relationship to naturalism, but in an
influential tex t , Cosar Grai’ia accepted the idea that
the impressionists painted their surroundings in a
rather unreflectiiig way. (Irai’ ia does n o t condemn
Impressionism, but rather, praises it for being “a
peripatetic, treniulous art , thoroughly occasional
and typically free of philosophical proclamations.”
He refuses to regard iiiipressionisni as a pictorial
form of naturalism, for “not only was iiaturalisni
exclusively a literary movemen t , it was also the

Second Empire. Impressionism, on the other hand,
was, quite obviously, an a r t created by men who
felt socially comfortable and politically unconcerned
and who celebrated with a kind of amiable lyricism
the bourgeois pleasures surrounding their lives.”
(Grai’ia 1971, p. 74.) Because they do n o t understand
the real significance of the Impressionists” detach‑
m e n t , Grana and other observers do n o t see behind

48

56.

the glitter oftheir painted
was a member of the “
In Simmel 1971, pp ;43_49 and 3a
Simmel sconception lies behind (I:4
ready utilized in this Clmpter‘ “rSie 7c
and .Wa|tcr Benjamin. both t“ l ft”
admirers ofhis (Kracaner 1937 and B ‘ .
Eirai’ia’s brilliant and sometimes 3,03
Hllllpl‘CSSlOlllsnl as an Urbm A“ F1′
Simmel to task, but
( i r a i i a ISthe first“commentator on In
to have. linked Siniinel’s idea of (he
Iiiipress‘ioliisin (p, 93), byWay “l’tlieir d
or degage’ attitude. Ht- clues (h i , hes‘ “Chm“
hedenies Siininel’s underlyingdefiniticiiinufili’51?“
t1v1ty” and its ties to the iiioiiev econoi 0 Objec‑
Sininiel 1971, p. 145. I n y ‘
See above, Chapter One, p_ .
seem to have benefited from familiarity with h
writings ol tlng/ltillfllf}. Beuiaiiiin. in turn (1 t c
both from Simmel and the [hint-Hrs when Ii raws
that the seeming lack ofiiivolvemeiit offldniunmcs
detective is a disguise for their peiicti’atio ( a nd
above, Chapter Two, p. 34), n (SOC
For exam ile, in Baudela ~’ ‘~ « .
“ To beaivav from liollfkl’xlilttl‘ln’lfuls (Olinmhmn:. « y t t to fcel oneself
everywhere at home: to see the world, to beat the
cen t r e ofthe world, and yet t o remain hidden from
the world‐such are a few ofthe slightest pleasures
of those independent. passionate, impartial m‑
tures. . . .” (From “Le I’cintre de la vie modcme ”
1863, in Baudelaire 1964, p. 9.) ‘
Simmel 1971, p. 146.
And Degas’s wit, bordering onthe ruse, isrevealed
by the illogical treatment of the wall above the
man’s shoulder. The curio cabinet and the table
share a common axis, but the wall seems to bend
back at another angle, judging by the frame that
holds thatjunible ofsnialI pieces. The rusesucceeds
because Degas uses the man’s head to hide the
juncture of wall and cabinet.
“Accident and the Necessity of Art,”]oumal qf
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 16 (1957): 18‐31.
Simmel 1971, pp. 27‐28. The aptiiess ofSimmcI’s
formulation has been pointed to in Clark 1985, pp.
238‐39.
The phrase is Elizabeth latimer’s, in Frame in the
Nine/tenth Century, 1830‐ 1890 (Chicago, 1892), p.
176.
Marilyn Brown, preparing apublication 011DCgaS’S
Purtmilx in anQtfitc. has identified the members Of
the municipal committee in Pain who purchased the
picture in 1874. They were largely erCm Repub‑
licans and progressive businessmen.
Simmel 1971, p. 331.
Fournel 1858, p. 263.
Reff l976. pp. 116‐19. The print on the wall
reproduces). F. Herring‘s “Steeple ChaseCracks.
The woman was posed h)” “ w model Emm;
Dobigiiy, and the 111.111 presumably bx Equn
Duranty (judged by rL‘st‘IlllllJllf‘fl’ For meat-sung
parallels with visiting card photographs 0 (w
persons, see McCauley 10551 P- 1,6″ . A]
“Urbanisni asa w a y ofllfkt” (Of’g‘ ‘938) m
Reiss, ed., Louis Il’tiili on Cities and 5004114}?
Chica o, 1964), l 75- u
f‘Estraigigement” hnd more commonly 51:11:23
ment” are the right words for Degflsv felt ation”
[ i o n f ’ Except for his Interior (P l 52h 5362‘ch
is t o o strong a t e r m for him. It should 1:rEdval’
for the n e x t generation. 5.1.” V “ ” 00g}! 3: uld be
Munch. Degass o w n estrangeincut fdovimlent
linked to Iiisianti‐seiiiitism. Mm.“ mm?reclusive.
after 1890, ashebecame more and “firi’ustasihis’
SCL‘ [ he pL‘llCUllIlllg CSSJ)‘ \\’l]]t‘l1Lil’PC‘Tnifl‘ “Degas
book was going to press: l.llltl’.l N o t ) ,

also builds upo

32>.

Essays should be between 8 and 10 pages in length (2,000 to 2,500 words)

This question invites you to respond to a piece you don’t know, by an artist whose work you do know. In your response, be guided by the three principles, invoked more than once in these pages:

(i) Situate the unfamiliar image within its historical moment and its specific social milieu.

(ii) Attend closely to the way the image is constructed. Relying on your own immediate observations, take note of its principal features, begin to look for significant details; and

(iii) Where possible, draw on relevant course Readings and Lecture notes.

You already know the general situation surrounding this work, but what is singular about this new work you are examining? Does it present aspects that surprise you? Does this work make you want to revise your understanding so far, of the artist who created it.?

From the following group of six, choose three works and write a short essay around each one.

Note: the thumbnail images on the next page are intended to assist you with your selection. Once you know which images you want to write about, look for high res pictures online, and work from those. Otherwise, do not use resources beyond those supplied through Canvas.

Degas, Singer with Glove, 1878

Toulouse-Lautrec, Circus Ferrando: The Equestrienne, 1888

Manet, The Railway, 1873

Caillebotte, The House Painters, 1877

Gauguin, Nevermore,1897

Van Gogh, Sunflowers,1888

Formatting Guidelines

1. Heading: The heading goes in the upper right corner of the first page of your exam and should look like this:

Your Name

VIS 22– Final Exam

Professor Norman Bryson

Date

2. Formatting:

12-point font for the main text, footnotes are 10-point, illustration captions are 9-point

Times New Roman

1” page margins

Insert page number at the top right corner of each page

Heading is single-spaced, the entire body is DOUBLE SPACED

Need help? Consult your TA. The conventions are definitively stated in the

Chicago Manual of Style: http://www styles.com/ctslite.htm

3. When you cite a book or article in your essay

You must always specify your exact source by means of a footnote placed at the bottom of the page. The footnote should be formatted like the example below & at the bottom of this page.

Example: Part of the difficulty in representing Mameluke figures in painting was that Mameluke society was ethnically so diverse. As Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby has pointed out, “Mamelukes came from throughout Eurasia and Africa and spoke many languages, among them, Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Turkish, Flemish, Italian, German, and French.”2

Footnote (at the bottom of the page, 10-pt font):

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 108.

4. When you cite a work of art in your essay.

You must always specify exactly which work you are referring to by means of a footnote placed at the bottom of the page. In art history, referencing particular works of art normally includes the artist’s full name, the title of the work, the date, medium, dimensions and location – but we are only requiring the information that appears in the Slides: the artist’s surname [only], the title of the work, and the date.

Example: David, The Oath of the Horatii, 17853

___________________________________________

2 Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 108.

3 David, The Oath of the Horatii

5. Bibliography: You are
not
required to supplement your essay with a Bibliography.