[Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Edited by Else Cassirer. Part Six

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[Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century]
Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert
[Edited by Else Cassirer]

Berlin, Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1913 [on the cover page] / 1914 [in the frontispiece], 710 pages, with 150 illustrations.

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro
Part Six


On the Cassirer Family, please see: https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2019/11/cassirer-family.html

Fig. 132) Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Theophila Palmer, 1771

Go Back to the Beginning

The analysis of the anthology edited by Else Cassirer would not be complete, if we forgot to analyse the last two hundred pages, dedicated to the artists outside the German-speaking area. The "non-German" sections included, first of all, ten pages of letters of Goya, in those days very rare, as the sole representative of the Spanish world. They were followed by fifty pages of letters of English artists (from Reynolds to Beardsley), one hundred and fifty pages of French letters (from Ingres to Gauguin) and finally thirty pages of Belgian and Dutch artists (from Meunier to van Gogh).

The German public found therefore in the anthology of Else Cassirer a new tool which was not yet available in other European linguistic areas. The first French-language anthology was in fact "Les artistes écrivains", edited by Paul Ratouis de Limay in 1921. For an equivalent work in English, readers had instead to wait until the two American anthologies edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves (1945) and by Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (1947). The two volumes were not in themselves collections of letters, but of different texts of artists. The first anthology only dedicated to artists’letters appeared with the two volumes of "Letters of the great artists from Ghiberti to Gainsborough" edited by Richard Friedenthal, a German scholar who had sought refuge in Britain a few years before World War II. It was published in 1963.

To read in parallel the correspondence of the artists from the German-speaking world and from other cultures and language areas allowed the German public to capture the commonality of many themes in the nineteenth century across Europe. Everywhere, the artists were affected by the education acquired by many of them in Rome [196] and Florence [197]; they also confirmed in their writings the role that the Italian schools (the Florentine, the Venetian) continued to have in the formation of modern taste after hundreds of years  [198]. They also felt the need to dwell - for better or for worse – on the role of art academies [199]. Finally, the theme of the relationship between art, nature and fantasy was present everywhere and throughout the century [200]. These are issues we already dealt with in earlier parts of this blog, although with an emphasis on German artists, and there is no reason to return to them.

Germany viewed from the rest of Europe

The reading of the anthology edited by Else Cassirer clarifies however that, if it is true that there was a common substrate to the artists’ cultures across Europe, there was no real biunique relationship between them. Let me explain: during the entire century European artists (and therefore also those from the Germans) shared the interest for France and its art [201]: in fact, references to France were frequent in the German, Spanish, English and Dutch letters. However, very few European artists wrote on Germany and the German art.

There were of course exceptions: Sir Joshua Reynolds, for example, wrote to the philosopher and writer Edmund Burke on August 30, 1781 about the journey that he had just made to Düsseldorf, and in particular about the Dutch paintings in the local art gallery (which at the time contained not less than 48 Rubens, described just a few years earlier, between 1776 and 1777, by the German writer Wilhelm Heinse, one of the fathers of the Sturm und Drang, in his Letters on some paintings of the Art Gallery of Dusseldorf, not contained in the anthology by Else Cassirer). Dusseldorf was described by Reynolds as a widely receptive cultural environment to art, where young painters had full access to the masterpieces and were authorised to copy them in the gallery without any trouble.

Fig. 133) David d’Angers, Goethe, 1829

In 1830 the French sculptor David d'Angers wrote about the favourable impression that Goethe had made on him. He had met the German literate a few years before. After having made his acquaintance, he had elaborated the proposal to issue coins which would represent not only the domestic rulers but also the universally recognized and appreciated personalities of culture [202].

Fig. 134) Frederic Leighton, Pavonia, 1859

Also important is the case of the British painter Frederic Leighton, a pre-Raphaelite who studied in Frankfurt with von Steinle (one of the last Nazarenes) and therefore represented a link between the two movements and the two countries. Nevertheless, he also included some critical tones on Germany in his letters to his master, written in German and referring to von Steinle as "My dear friend and teacher" [203]. Leighton wrote one of them from Florence in November 1854, but referred in it to the recent trip to Berlin: "There is really something special in this city: at first sight, it has something impressive, and the huge mass of new buildings with architectural ambitions (you can think what you like on the taste of the buildings) gives the impression of an intense artistic activity and widespread artistic taste" [204]. And yet it is an entirely wrong impression: in reality, writes Leighton, the artistic taste was imposed to the Berliners from government. They did not understand anything or very little, in his opinion, about art and were, in many respects, real parvenues. The new museums seemed to him really exceptional buildings, but he noted that the works hosted there were mere plaster casts, with the exception of Egyptian art [205] (the Pergamon Altar was discovered by German archaeologists and moved to Berlin only in the last decades of the nineteenth century; to the altar, just moved to Berlin, was devoted a letter from the Belgian sculptor Constantin Meunier to the architect Henry van der Velde in 1901 [206]). The artist who best represented the Berliners - Leighton wrote - was the painter Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805 -1874), with his series of frescoes that - just in the entrance of the New Museum in Berlin - intended to offer visitors an overview of the entire history mankind. The judgment on Kaulbach was not wholehearted: "A simple crap of allegories, performed without any aesthetic sense for form, with a complete denial of all individuality, and painted better not say how" [207].

Fig. 135) Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Destruction of Jerusalem, 1846

The Pre-Raphaelite expressed an equally unfavourable assessment on the frescoes that Cornelius had painted a few years earlier, between 1840 and 1847, for the hall and the colonnade of the Old Museum (Altes Museum). The frescoes were designed by the architect Schinkel (we are in the 1830s) with an evident educational goal: the creation of the world forces from chaos to light and the origination of the civilization and the human culture. "Unfortunately, I cannot spend too much praise for the things of Cornelius at the Altes Museum: I confess that I did not like them at all. If I look at them from a distance in combination with the building, I find them disproportionate. In a long, very simple colonnade, which has been built in very large proportions, I would expect that a fresco builds large and pure plastic masses, both in form and colour. Instead I saw a nervous combination of colours, a confusing blend of ideas and allegories, such as to make me dizzy" [208]. The frescoes of Cornelius were destroyed during the Second World War, but the preparatory drawings by Schinkel survived.

Fig. 136) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The development of life from morning to night,
a project for a fresco cycle at the Altes Museum in Berlin, 1831.

The artists at the discovery of extra-European art

An element differentiating the world of German artists and the rest of Europe is the different attention given to art outside Europe. The German world was completely eurocentric: whenever artists wanted to cross their linguistic boundaries, their interest was addressed to Italy, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Russia. To the contrary, in Europe, as from the second half of the century, was coming into being a true passion for non-European art and cultures. Already in the middle of the nineteenth century the French artists, in particular, were leaving for North Africa. They narrated these trips in their letters (think of Delacroix's letters on the trip to Morocco and Algeria in 1832, those by Fromentin on the journey to Algiers in 1846 [209] or by Lepage on the trip to in Algiers in 1884 [210]). The next generation visited Asia and Polynesia (think of the letters of Gauguin).

Fig. 137) Eugène Delacroix, Arab fantasies, 1833

Fig. 138) Eugène Fromentin, Falconry in Algeria, about 1863

French artists had a comparative advantage. When they travelled to the overseas departments (such as Algeria and French Polynesia) they did not leave the French soil in institutional terms and thus were subject to the same conditions than at home, at least in administrative terms. Even in the colonies, their position as French citizens was more than protected. Germany, to the contrary, had reached as a country the national unification only in the last third of the century, and an empire outside Europe had been proclaimed much later and only on limited territories; the wave of enthusiasm for non-European cultures did therefore occur with many decades of delay, and only after the problem of comparing German culture with other manifestations of culture throughout Europe had already been addressed.

Fig. 139) Paul Gauguin, Te tamari no Atua (The birth of Christ, Son of God), 1896

And it was around 1913, exactly the year of publication of the anthology edited by Else Cassirer, that the passion of the German-speaking artists for exotic trips became a general fashion. Their journeys were described in the memoirs of artists: exactly in that year Pechstein travelled to Palau in Polynesia, while Nolde crossed Russia, China, Japan to reach New Guinea. Paul Klee, August Macke and the French Louis Moilliet crossed the Mediterranean in 1914 to Tunisia. They were all surprised by the sudden outbreak of the war and were forced to return to Germany with much trouble. 

England as a world of freedom

Fig. 140) Thomas Gainsborough, The morning walk, 1785

Else Cassirer did an important work to collect and translate texts which were not available in German, consulting the most important monographs dedicated to the respective artists. For example, as to Reynolds, the letters were taken from the volume "Life and times of Sir Joshua Reynolds: with notices of some of his contemporaries", a monograph by Charles Robert Leslie and Tom Taylor [211] in two volumes published in the US in 1865. Regarding Gainsborough and Constable, the texts were respectively taken from the works “Thomas Gainsborough. His Life Work Friends and Sitters” by William Boulton (1905) and “Life and letters of John Constable” by the aforementioned American painter and scholar Charles Robert Leslie, which had been published in 1896. Finally, with regard to Whistler, the letters were transcribed from manuscripts preserved by the French art critic Theodor Duret, one of the most reliable partners for the Impressionists in Europe (we will see his name later in the French section). In all these cases, the letters were not available in German before the 1913 first edition of the Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century, except those of Aubrey Beardsley, already translated, even in two different volumes, in 1908 [212] and 1910 [213]. It is likely that the success of Beardsley’s letters in Germany was due to his reputation as a cursed painter, as well to his erotic prints, the very complex sexual life and his death in a still young age due to tuberculosis.

Fig. 141) John Constable, The Salisbury Cathedral seen from the Bishop's possessions, 1825

The reader cannot but observe the different situation of artists in the German and English worlds. In Germany, as we have seen, the relationship between art and society was structured along two patterns. On the one hand, there were cases in which the artist was in touch with his audience through the intermediary of a royal house, of a Government department or public or semi-public facilities, such as the academies or the art societies (Kunstvereine). On the other hand, there was often a special relationship between artists and philosophers, even as a manifestation of the conceptual nature of much of German art of that century. In Britain, to the contrary, the role of markets and the public as a whole is much greater than in Germany. Moreover, artists exchanged views with the public directly, through tools such as letters to the newspapers, where both they and their critics dwelled openly on art. The letters show that artists did not depend on public institutions, but directly on private commissions. The dialogue with the private clients was characterised by extreme freedom; the artists were not afraid to address the public in clear and outspoken terms.

Fig. 142) William Blake, Malevolence, 1799

Think of the liberty with which, August 23, 1799, William Blake responded to Reverend Trustler, his client, after the latter had complained of the watercolour "Malevolence". "I feel very sorry that your Ideas & Mine on Moral Painting differ so much as to have made you angry with my method of Study. If I am wrong, I am wrong in good company. I had hoped your plan comprehended All Species of this Art, & Especially that you would not regret that Species which gives Existence to Every other, namely, Visions of Eternity. You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that what is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care" [214]. The letter is a hymn to freedom and to the fantasy of the artist: "I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World Is a World of imagination & Vision. I see Everything I paint In This World, but Everybody does not see alike. (...) Some See Nature all Ridicule & Deformity, & by these I shall not regulate my proportions; & Some Scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself" [215]. And he concludes: "You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flatter' d when I am told so” [216].

Fig. 143) William Blak’s letter to the Reverend Trustler of 23 August 1799.
Source: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/letters-from-william-blake-to-dr-trusler-august-1799

One hundred years later, in December 1886, James McNeill Whistler - American painter who moved to London - used the same direct tone in a letter (entitled "cards on the Policy") to the Director of the Pall Mall Gazette, a literary magazine, in which denounced the misconduct of the Times, which had not published his open letter in response to a malevolent criticism, which the London newspaper had filed on behalf of the ordinary layman. " Sir - In your courageous crusade against the demon Dulness (…) I think it well that there should [be] delivered into your hands certain documents for immediate publication, that your readers may be roused quickly (…) It happened this way – (…) The Criticism in the Times of Saturday called for immediate expostulation and my answer was consequently sent in to the Editor who forthwith returned it with his regrets that its tone prevented its appearance in the paper - I thereupon withdrew to write the following note to Mr Buckle, enclosing again my letter to the Editor of the Times, and was now told with the Editors compliments that "my letter would be considered" - Taking this in complete good faith, I left the office - to discover the next day in print a remnant that by itself entirely did away sufficient - with reason for its being there at all - Further comment from me is necessary but I leave the matter in your hands - with the assurance that hitherto I have found the press always willing to accept correction or comment upon whatever they have initiated themselves.»" [217]. The editor of the Times, under pressure from the media campaign of Whistler, finally decided to publish only part of his letter, in order to place him under bad light, but the painter did not give in and sent an extremely acid message: " Dear Sir - I beg to acknowledge the consummate sense of opportunity displayed by the Editor of The Times, in his cunning production of a part of my letter - Amazing! Mes compliments!"" [218].

Fig. 144) James McNeill Whistler, Lapis lazuli, 1885-1886

The idea of the English society as a world of freedom is confirmed by the choice of Else Cassirer to publish, in the margins of Aubrey Beardsley’s letters, a series of highly erotic prints (some of an evident sado-masochistic style), which most probably looked very bold to the average German reader of the time.

Fig. 145) Aubrey Beardsley, The flagellants’ club in London, 1895

The sources of French art history

The identification, selection and translation of the letters of French artists were probably at the very core of Else Cassirer’s endeavour. The editor used two main sources. The first was the personal library of Théodore Duret, the French art historian; the second was the French journal Gazette des beaux arts.

Fig. 146) The French and German editions of the History of Impressionist Painters by Théodore Duret

Théodore Duret (1838-1927), author in 1906 of a famous History of the Impressionist Painters which was published three years later in German by Bruno Cassirer, provided his publishing house in Berlin with the original of several letters which had been addressed to him by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro and Whistler. The journal Gazette des Beaux Arts, which is the second source, had been founded in 1859 under the direction of the art historian Charles Blanc, whom many letters of artists were also addressed to (the most beautiful was one by Theodor Rousseau [219]): from this journal (the most important art magazine in the French-speaking world) were drawn the letters by David, Géricault and Millet selected in the anthology. Other French periodicals provided the letters of Puvis de Chavannes (Revue de Paris, 1910), Cézanne (Les soirées de Paris, magazine founded by Apollinaire in 1912, with letters exactly of that year) and van Gogh (Mercure de France in 1894, which started in 1890 and hosted all major French writers of the time). Many other letters were taken from monographs devoted to individual artists (David d'Angers, Ingres, Gavarni, Daumier, Corot, Theodor Rousseau, Courbet, and Bastien-Lepage).

Fig. 147) An issue of the Revue de Paris 1910

Special cases were the letters of Eugène Delacroix and Eugène Fromentin, namely the French artists whose writing skills have universally been recognized most developed in the nineteenth century (see the judgment of Paul Ratouis de Limay, in the first anthology of writings by French artists published only a few years later). In France, in fact, editions of the correspondence of the two artists were released shortly after their disappearance. Delacroix died in 1863; a first edition of his correspondence, collecting letters from 1815 to the year of his death, was published by Philippe Burty in 1878; a compilation of abstracts from the letters, which took the forms of an imaginary autobiography, was curated by G. Dargenty (pseudonym of the writer and art critic Arthur Auguste-Echérac) in 1885. Else Cassirer used both the Burty edition and the Dargenty compilation,but not the Journal (Delacroix’s memoirs in three volumes, which were published starting from 1893, but do not belong to the epistolary genre). In Germany, the letters had already been reviewed (but not published) by Paul Fechter in 1910 [220], highlighting their complementary value to the Journal. After the publication of the first edition to the anthology of Else Cassirer, a complete German edition in two volumes of Delacroix's letters was published by Wilhelm Stein in Basel in 1918, while the French critical edition of the general correspondence was released in five volumes in 1935-1938 [221]. As for Eugene Fromentin, who died in 1876, the "Youth letters" (Lettres de jeunesse) were published by Pierre Blanchon already in the same year of his death, and has since become a commercial success (seven new editions followed until 1929). There have never been, however, any comprehensive publication of Fromentin’s letters in other languages (and his weight in art literature is considered much more important in the French cultural world than elsewhere).

Fig. 148) The collection of autobiographical writings of Delacroix, published by G. Dargenty in 1885

Fig. 149) A 1912 edition of the Youth letters of Fromentin

There were also two French artists whose letters have already been published separately in the German first edition of 1913 of the Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century. Some of Cézanne's famous letters to Bernard were contained in the magazine "Art and Artists" (Kunst und Künstler), again published by Bruno Cassirer, in 1910. In three consecutive issues of the journal on that year the editors presented the "Memoirs of Cézanne"(Erinnerungen an Paul Cézanne), which in France had been published with the title Souvenirs sur Paul Cezanne et lettres inédites in the magazine Mercure de France in 1907. Moreover, thirty-four letters of the Belgian Felicien Rops, some of which with erotic themes, had been published in Munich in 1912: it was a case similar to that of the German publication - around the same years - of Beardsley’s letters. The interest of the public for the letters was most likely explained by the reputation of the artist producing unscrupulous sexual images. Rops’ letters chosen by Else Cassirer discuss among other things the instinct of perversity [222].

Fig. 150) Felicien Rops, Behind the scenes, 1878-1881

Fig. 151) Felicien Rops, Pornocrates. The Lady with the Pig, 1878

French artists and political commitment

The Letters prove that the twentieth-century model of the politically engaged artist (think of Picasso) originates from the nineteenth century French world. While German art in the nineteenth century was conceptual - in the sense that it always revealed an idealistic vision of the world - the French one (with the notable exception of impressionism) was political, because it followed the development of a society marked by tensions and by the crystallization of different interests. Think of the fundamental role of the relationship between artists and intellectuals, in the French art literature, since the relations between Diderot and the artists who participated in the Salons between 1759 and 1781. The artist and the writer were part of a constantly moving world, and knew both to be agents of its transformation. But it would be wrong to draw a simple equation between art and revolution: the letters show in fact that the artists had different and often opposed positions to each other. There were in fact also artists who may indeed be considered as real counter-revolutionaries (but this confirms, in fact, the political significance of French art).

Fig. 152) David d’Angers, Victor Hugo, 1837

The sculptor David d'Angers addressed letters to the aforementioned historian and art critic Charles Blanc [223], the journalist François-Adolphe Chambolle (editor of the Orleanist daily Le Siècle [224]) and the wife of Victor Hugo [225]. In 1830 he discussed with Blanc the virtues of democratic governance as a stimulus to the creative activity of the artists, and the criteria by which public commissions should be assigned to them. He also noted the need to take into account the increasing proletarianization of society, and therefore the necessity to operate forms of self-control in public spending on art works, taking into account that the monuments were funded by the taxes paid by the poor, and that therefore there was the need to practice good governance [226]. To Chambolle he proposed that the Salons become permanent, that every six months a new exhibition be organised in rotation, that artists be recognised a right to see their works accepted and that their right to free expression be legally recognized as it is the case of the rights of writers [227]. This was part of a liberal constitutional thinking, which wanted to entrench new rights in society, but also supported the monarchy and did not seek a return to the republic.

Fig. 153) Honoré Daumier, Gargantua, 1831

Honoré Daumier was instead the prototype of the politically committed artist-intellectual, supporting left-wing republicanism. In 1832 he was tried and sentenced to six month prison because of the caricature of King Louis Philippe devouring the resources of the people. From jail he wrote a letter to his fellow painter Philippe-Auguste Jeanron. Trial and imprisonment had made him famous, to the price however of being always identified with its caricatures: everyone - inside and outside the prison – called him "Gargantua", the theme of the cartoon for which he was sentenced, and wanted to be portrayed by him: "Here I am working a lot more than I was doing at my father’s home. I am pressed and oppressed by a mass of citizens who want to be portrayed by me" [228]. Evidently the prison regime did not prevent him from working.

Others - in the same year – were instead afraid of being labelled as revolutionaries. From his retreat in Barbizon, away from the Parisian events, Millet wrote the historian Alfred Sensier in 1863: "In which club did my critics put me? Am I really socialist? My God, I could answer them what is written under the caricature of a Auvergne official: I was accused of being a follower of Saint-Simon, but I do not know what it ever means!" [229]. And, in 1871, he wrote to the same correspondent, referring to the invitation received from the Paris Commune to become part of an association of artists in support of the revolutionary movements: "My dear Sensier, how sad what is happening in Paris! Did you see that the Federation of artists nominated me? I replied: «I refuse the honour that you wanted to give me». What a miserable society! We understand why: Courbet is the president" [230].

  

Fig. 154) Photos of Place Vendôme with the demolished column, Source: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonna_Vend%C3%B4me#/media/File:Franck,_Colonne_Vend%C3%B4me,_1871.jpg

And Courbet – who was instead personally committed alongside the revolutionaries - was accused of having decided the destruction of the column on the Place Vendôme, a symbol of imperial power. Five years later, he defended himself from this charge, in a letter written shortly before his death, explaining that he actually preferred to transfer the column from the square and he was the victim of the dynamics of revolutionary violence: the decision to destroy the monument was in fact taken before he could intervene [231]. And yet he was condemned. From prison he wrote to his friend, the writer Jules Champfleury: "I have been pillaged, ruined, slandered, dragged through the streets of Paris and Versailles, covered with profanity and insults. I was locked in prison cells where you lose the wisdom and the strength of the body. I slept on the floor, along with the rogue and parasites; I was transported from prison to prison, in hospitals, including people dying around me, in carriages for the transport of prisoners, in such narrow places that one does not even manage to enter with the body, with the rifle or gun in the chest, for four months. (...) I do not know wheter France will never again suffer the ignominy of another Napoleonic rule. It would be a reason to leave the country and become Swiss” [232].

Fig. 155) Gustave Courbet, The wave, 1870

Fig. 156) Gustave Courbet, Courbet in his cell in the Sainte-Pélagie prison, 1871

Released from prison, Courbet rejected any rehabilitation attempt. In a letter to Minister Maurice Richard, he refused the Legion of Honour, because "every honour of the monarchy is incompatible with my bourgeois principles" [233]. The conclusion of the letter is impressive: "Allow me, therefore, Mr. Minister, to decline the honour that you thought to grant me. I am 50 years old, and have always been master of myself. Let me end my life as a free man. When I will be dead, people should tell about me: he had no school, no church, no direction, no academy, he did not belong to any system, only to freedom" [234].

Fig. 157) Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Bathers, 1890

That the wave of protest, albeit on art, was blowing even in the times of the Third Republic is reflected in a letter of 1888 by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. In those months the world of French artists was seething. On the one hand there were the first Symbolist movements (supported by Puvis) and on the others the followers of traditional academic painting, under the guidance of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (the latter were contemptuously called pompiers by the former). The tensions eventually led to the creation of the Salon du Champ de Mars by Puvis, Rodin and Carrière in 1890. It was a separate exhibition from the official salon, which since then took the name of Salon of the Champs Elysees. The painters of the Salon du Champ de Mars were considered young and revolutionary, while the contributors to the Salon of the Champs Elysees were seen as the exponents of a lagging world.

Fig. 158) William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Bohemian girl, 1890

Today that split is recognized as the birth date of the first secessionist movement in Europe, which will make school across the continent, and as a fundamental moment of renewal from academicm to symbolism. The situation described in the letter of Puvis of 1888, addressed to an unknown recipient, offers us the direct framework of the disputes, whose mechanics was however different from what one might think. In those months the protests were being conducted by a group of young painters (deliberately not identified in the letter) not in favour but against Puvis and his Symbolist friends: the secession of the Champ de Mars had thus, paradoxically, the purpose to protect a group of vanguard painters against the contestation of a majority of younger colleagues who obviously did not share their reformist opinion. We know that Bouguereau had gathered on his side a group of young painters who complained of being discriminated; he had proposed that the official salon become an exhibition without prizes, dedicated to young people. It was against this egalitarian request, whose success would have eliminated bonuses and remuneration, that Puvis and others organized the secession. From the words of Puvis de Chavannes it is also clear that the secessionists actually had the support of the Republican establishment, and in particular of the interior minister Charles Floquet (who was also serving contemporaneously as Prime Minister): he was a Republican politician openly contrary to the state of things before the fall of the second empire, and therefore an ally in the battle for a renewal of art against any previous tradition.

Fig. 159) Ernest Meissonier, Self-portrait, 1889

This is what Puvis wrote: "This evening we had a scandalous meeting. This rogue pseudo-artists, who were put together by the heads X Y Z [sic], organized a horrible confusion and made it impossible even to our Meissonier only to take the floor. The result was a division between those who, like me, respect talent and those who do not. The newspapers, informed so passionately and, as almost always, in the wrong way, will not fail to incorrectly represent the whole story. However, it does not matter. Tomorrow we will go to the ministry to protest against such crap and on Saturday we will hold a meeting at six-thirty to count those who are with us and decide what to do. For my part, I am aspiring to get rightly free from a jury that has since long made me sick. The unskilled and rogue make their voice heard. They should continue to bake their thin soup as they want. I'm glad. But what a trash! I'm sorry and I'm surprised that among them there are painters who would be able in any way to show up so proudly and independently. But in order to enjoy a filthy popularity they are yielding and become capable of whatever meanness" [235].

Fig. 160) Eugène Carrière, Séailles and his daughter Andrée, about 1890

The years ending the century in France saw a vast anti-clerical movement, which became one of the emblems of the Third Republic. It is interesting to read a letter of Eugène Carrière on the subject, addressed to the philosopher Gabriel Séailles and without indication of date. The central theme was that of the tolerance towards believers and religious. "I have just read an appeal for the freedom that was launched by the group of S. [sic], but at the same time they claim the restriction of the freedom of the teaching clergy. I am of course against the clerical spirit, but it seems to me that the education to freedom (like to everything else) will be better strengthened through the example. Simply ask for the freedom for all, and it will reduce any desire for oppression. If the priests had all the freedom, it would be enough that their opponents had full freedom of speech in order to destroy their power"  [236].

Fig. 161) Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Piazza San Marco in Venice, 1881

It should be read as a political manifesto also the letter that Pierre Auguste Renoir used as an introduction to the new French translation of the Libro dell'Arte by Cennino Cennini. In fact, the epistolary form is here only a rhetorical artifice. We know that the text was inspired by the painter Maurice Denis and that different versions had been prepared before publication. The letter, addressed to Henry Mottez, son of the translator of the medieval text, contained a revisionist declaration against the modernity of art, all inspired by the role of religion in art (a really opposing counterweight to the pages which Baudelaire had, fifty years before, devoted to the Peintre de la vie modern [237], celebrating the virtues of the dandy artist, a truly man of the world).

Fig. 162) Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Renoir at play, 1906

Renoir’s text has the tone of a regret for the art of the time of Cennino, but should be read as a criticism of present times: only six years had passed since the promulgation of the law that imposed the secular state as a new pillar of French society and Renoir was taking a clear position in favour of the Church. "But, in order to explain the general value of ancient art, it must be remembered that (...) another element has vanished that filled the spirit of the contemporaries in Cennini’s time: the religious sentiment, the fruitful source of their inspiration. It is this feeling that gives to all of their works the character of sophistication and at the same time of innocence that we find so appealing. To put it briefly, then it reigned a harmony between people and the environment in which they moved, and such harmony stemmed from a common belief. One can easily understand it, by considering that the conception of the divine in the higher culture peoples has always had direct implications on order, hierarchy and tradition. It is here - it is obvious - not an act of faith, but merely a simple statement of fact. Surely, it will be possible to admit that, if it occurs as a rule that men have represented the heavenly societies on the earth model, in turn this divine organization has exercised an ever greater influence on their spirits and their ideals. (...) The religious sentiment was increasingly weakened over the centuries, but the rules that had developed under his influence had such solid foundations, so that up to the time of the revolutions what had been preserved was enough to preserve the art among peoples with a Catholic culture at the highest level. I am using the term "Catholic culture" because in my view it characterizes the essential difference between the conception of beauty that it wakes and the conception which is linked to the anarchist, egalitarian and ugly Christian culture of the early days. If Christianity had triumphed in its original form, we would not have the beautiful cathedrals, nor the sculptures or paintings. Fortunately, the Egyptians and the Greeks were not all dead; they have saved beauty, making entry into the new religion" [238].

End of Part Six
Go to Part Seven

NOTES

[196] See the letters by Reynolds (p. 454), Gericault (p. 538), Chassériau (p. 559) and Corot ( pp. 569 e 572).

[197] See a letter by David (p. 507).

[198] See the letters by Blake (pp.475-476) and Cézanne (pp. 640 e 646).

[199] See the letters by Reynolds (p.455), Gainsborough (p. 460) and Constable (p. 470).

[200] See the letters by Constable (p. 466), Blake (p. 474), Corot (p. 567), Millet (p. 583), Carrière (pp. 611-612) and Cézanne (p. 645).

[201] See a letter by Romney (p. 464).

[202] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlino, Bruno Cassirer, 1919, 712 pages. Quotation at page 514.

[203] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 483.

[204] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 484.

[205] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 484.

[206] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 662.

[207] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 485.

[208] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 485.

[209] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 603 e 607.

[210] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 609.

[211] See https://archive.org/details/lifetimesofsirjo01lesluoft 

and for a more recent edition http://www.worldcat.org/title/life-and-times-of-sir-joshua-reynolds-with-notices-of-some-of-his-contemporaries/oclc/926021329?referer=di&ht=edition

[212] See http://www.worldcat.org/title/briefe-kalendernotizen-u-die-vier-zeichnungen-zu-ea-poe-von-aubrey-beardsley/oclc/81534577&referer=brief_results

[213] See http://www.worldcat.org/title/aubrey-beardsleys-letzte-briefe/oclc/252001374&referer=brief_results

[214] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 473. The English transcript can be read at 

https://archive.org/stream/lettersofwilliam002199mbp/lettersofwilliam002199mbp_djvu.txt.

[215] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 473-474. The English transcript can be read at https://archive.org/stream/lettersofwilliam002199mbp/lettersofwilliam002199mbp_djvu.txt.

[216] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 475. The English transcript can be read at https://archive.org/stream/lettersofwilliam002199mbp/lettersofwilliam002199mbp_djvu.txt.

[217] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 489. The English transcript can be read at 

http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/inst/display/?rs=22&instid=PallMallG

[218] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 490. The English transcript can be read at 

http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/inst/display/?rs=23&instid=PallMallG.

[219] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 577.

[220] See: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kfa1909_1910/0204?sid=cdffcf94f0898534aaa0728670fdef7a 

and 

http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kfa1909_1910/0223?sid=cdffcf94f0898534aaa0728670fdef7a

[221] Delacroix Eugène, Correspondence generale d'Eugene Delacroix, Paris, Plon, 5 volumes: First volume: 1804-1837 (453 pages); second volume: 1838-1849 (427 pages), third volume: 1850-1857 (431 pages), fourth volume: 1858- 1863 (392 pages); fifth volume: supplements and tables (280 pages), 1936-1938.

[222] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 664.

[223] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 664.

[224] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 510.

[225] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 516.

[226] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 512.

[227] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 514.

[228] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 557.

[229] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 586.

[230] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 590.

[231] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 599.

[232] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 597.

[233] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 598.

[234] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 598.

[235] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 566.

[236] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 610.

[237] Baudelaire, Charles, Le peintre de la vie Moderne, in Le Figaro, 26 and 29 November and 3 December 1863, For the text, see: https://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/67123/mod_resource/content/1/BAUDELAIRE%20-%20Le%20peintre%20de%20la%20vie%20moderne.pdf

[238] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 635-636.