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History of Art Literature Anthologies
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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 Seven
On the Cassirer Family, please see: https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2019/11/cassirer-family.html
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| Fig. 163) Francisco Goya, The Wreck, 1793-1794 |
In conclusion of this analysis of the Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth
Century, it seems useful to consider how the publication of the anthology in
1913 allowed the German public to approach the three major epistolary corpuses which
are now considered essential to fully understand the nineteenth century
painting: the collections of letters of Goya, Delacroix and van Gogh.
The first steps of the
rediscovery of Goya’s letters
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| Fig. 164) The Biographical News on Goya by Francisco Zapater y Gomez, dated 1868 |
The existence of Goya's correspondence with the
friend Martin Zapater was known since 1868, when it was published by the nephew
of the latter, Francisco Zapater y Gómez. And yet, when the German art
historian Valerian von Loga published in a 1908 issue of the magazine
"Art and artists" (the art magazine of the Cassirer publishing house)
[239] the translation of three letters by the Spanish painter to the friend
Martin Zapater (letters in his possession, some of which were being exhibited
at an exhibition on Goya in Berlin in those days), he also stated that the original
volume of 1868 could not be found anymore (according to him, there was only one
remaining copy, which was in possession of the British Museum, which he had however failed
to examine for reasons we don't know), while the artist's letters were still scattered in the Spanish
archives and not published elsewhere [240]. So, in effect, while the existence of the corpus of Goya’s
letters was known, the epistulary was no longer available to the public and
it was impossible to study it, if not initiating a new research initiative. The
rediscovery of Goya in the German world dates back to the early twentieth
century, when the Spanish art world gained the attention of German scholars.
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| Fig. 165) The article by Valerian von Loga on Goya’s letters, published in the magazine "Art and Artists" 1908 |
The anthology by Else Cassirer proposed to the
1913 reader, first of all, the three letters already published by von Loga in
1908: they were, as already said, missives addressed to Zapater and dated 1876,
1877 and 1880. Today, the correspondence with his friend is mostly known for the
comradely and unconventional expressions; these three letters, instead,
documented the financial difficulties and the various vicissitudes of the
painter, including failed real estate investments, an accident with the cart
and the urgent need to return to work in the production of carpets, in order to
make a fixed salary [241].
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| Fig. 166) Francisco Goya, Portrait of Bernardo de Iriarte, 1797 |
Always von Loga provided the Cassirer publishing
house with other ten letters, owned by his acquaintances in Madrid. None
of them was addressed to Zapater: three were letters dated 1794 to Bernardo de
Iriarte, the 'protector' of the Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando; three other missives were
addressed to Joaquín María de Ferrer y Cafranga, a Spanish friend living for
decades in Paris, who eventually became prime Minister in Madrid (these three letters,
respectively of 1805 in the first case and of 1824 in the second two cases,
were completely unknown at the time of their publication in the the Letters of artists); and finally four epistles
were for his son, and were sent in the painter’s later years (between 1824 and 1828).
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| Fig. 167) Francisco Goya, The Fire, 1793 |
In the letter dated January 4, 1794 to Bernardo
Iriarte, the painter explained that he had painted, in the preceding months,
the 'cuadros de gabineto', to which
he had entrusted the hope of being able to make some money, also to pay for
medical expenses. We know today that they included "The Shipwreck" and
"The Fire". Goya made it
clear that they were works that he had begun in his studio without having
received any assignment; therefore he had been both able and wanting to
give full room to his imagination; and yet he did not have potential buyers. Since he was worried that the pictures would be subject to censorship at the Academy, he was
sending them for a prior examination to the 'protector', asking for advice and
support. Actually, it was an implicit plea to solicit the Academy to purchase the works
directly from him. The answer must have been positive, as stated by the subsequent
letter of 7 January: "I am so happy
with the recommendation to the gentlemen professors of the Academy of San
Fernando, with which you have honoured me, as well as I am thankful for your
concern for my health and the kindness with which you treated my art
production. I feel enthusiastic and I spur a new courage and a new drive, and I
am inspired to create works that - as far as I can appreciate – should be worthy of
such an institution. I feel the same satisfaction when I realize that these
paintings - of course at your pleasure – are due to remain in your premises.
What I have already begun, and I am about to finish producing, represents the
courtyard of a madhouse: two naked men are in a fist fight, while the guardian is
whipping them. Others are dressed in a straitjacket. These are situations to
which I have become accustomed in Zaragoza, living close to an insane asylum. I
will send the job to Your Excellency, when it is ready" [242].
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| Fig. 168) Francisco Goya, The courtyard of the madhouse, 1794 |
In a letter dated 9 February 1794, Goya made a
plea to Bernardo Iriarte to temporarily transfer the pictures in the house of
the Marquis of Villaverde, where he was hoping they would please the eldest
daughter of the latter, an art lover. It is not known whether any purchase materialised
[243].
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| Fig. 169) Francisco Goya, No one saw us, from the collection of Caprices, 1799 |
Ten years passed, in December 1805, Goya addressed
from Bordeaux his friend Joaquin Ferrer, who lived in Paris, asking for
support. Ferrer proposed Goya to produce some new prints of the Caprichos. Goya reacted by stating that this
was not possible, as he had sold the metal cuts to the king of Spain twenty
years earlier; moreover, he had been brought before the Inquisition because of
the Caprices; last but not least, if he had ever the possibility to exploit
them again, it would not use them for prints, since he hoped to draw a better
economic gain otherwise. The relationship continued for years: in a 1824 letter, he
announced to Ferrer that he had sent to Paris the series of lithographs on the Toros de Burdeos (the Bulls of Bordeaux).
Less significant are the four letters to his son between 1824 and 1828.
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| Fig. 170) Francisco Goya, The Bulls of Bordeaux, the famous American Mariano Ceballos, 1824-1825 |
It seems obvious that the publication of the
thirteen letters would not have been possible without the research activities
by von Loga. Else Cassirer was probably a big fan of the Spanish painter and was
aware that these few texts were anyhow of great interest, because the
collection of letters of 1868, prepared by the nephew of Zapater, was
considered lost. It should be noted that, in the same year of the first edition
of the anthology, i.e. in 1913, a German selection of letters of Goya to Zapater was
published by August Liebmann Mayer in a specialized antiquarian magazine [244]. Mayer was at the time the most important Spanish art expert in the
German speaking world. For a long time, this was due to remain the most
comprehensive modern edition of Goya’s correspondence. This ended in 1975, when
Enrique Lafuente published a wider section, in an essay also contained in a
specialised publication [245]. Finally, in 1982 it was released the first
comprehensive publication of the correspondence to Zapater in Spanish, addressed
to a broad public and edited by Mercedes Agueda and Xavier de Salas. In
conclusion, the pages included in Else Cassirer’s anthology were really ahead
of their times.
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| Fig. 171) The first complete edition of the letters of Zapater and Francisco Goya, edited by Mercedes Águeda and Xavier Salas, in 1982 |
Delacroix's letters as
a hymn to friendship
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| Fig. 172) Paolo Veronese, Saint Barnabas heals the sick, about 1566 |
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| Fig. 173) Eugène Delacroix, Saint Barnabas heals the sick, 1834 |
Delacroix's letters were a celebration of his
friendship with the people around him (in some cases, even with old school
friends). He entrusted them confidential considerations on his character and on
his art. In a letter of 1834 to Frederic Villot, his friend and future director
of the Louvre Museum, the painter declared his passion for Venetian painting,
and told him of the pleasure for finalising in a short time a water colour drawn
from an oil painting by Veronese which he had just seen in Rouen, where he had
been gridlocked by sudden circumstances, like if he were an ‘accidental tourist’
[246]. Twenty-five years later, in 1859, he confirmed in a letter to the
painter Alexis Joseph Perignon (1806-1882) that Veronese "is in my opinion probably the only one who
managed to discover the secret of nature" [247].
While Delacroix enjoyed in this case the
rapidity of execution of his watercolours, it would be a mistake to think that
he was a painter with great ease of performance; in a second letter of the same
year, he confessed to Villot the great passion for the fresco, but betrayed his
character difficulty with a technique that was requiring immediate execution,
and did not allow to make any tweaks. The tone was very personal, and in the
letter to his friend Delacroix confessed his laziness [248]. This was not just
a rhetorical exercise: most probably, there were real psychological
difficulties of a chronic nature, revealed by a letter addressed some years
later to Jean-Baptiste Pierret, a school friend with whom he corresponded
throughout his life: "Dear friend, I
am sending you some very intimate words from the bottom of my deep isolation,
which - as I can assure you - has nothing unpleasant, in the middle of a nature
that is being revived and that involves me in his wake. The trees are starting
to become green. The recent rains are accompanying and encouraging the revival.
Although the sun only visits us often and rain showers are on the agenda, here I
am very happy as always. And yet I still could not make up my mind to do
anything and I am a little disappointed by myself. This feeling always spoils
the joy for anything else. I think one needs to have done his job properly to
really enjoy the good that nature has to offer. I wonder how a stale man can
prove any real pleasure, if it can be achieved only through coercion or pain"
[249].
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| Fig. 174) Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers, 1834 |
In 1849, in a letter to the art critic Léon
Peisse (who had expressed a very favourable opinion on its "Women of
Algiers") Delacroix made it nevertheless clear that he rejected any
reading of his painting that was based on the combination of linear structures,
whether curved or straight, thus challenging the very basis on which Peisse had
spent good words about him. "I stand
at my window and I see the most beautiful nature; I cannot think of any
reference to a line; the lark sings, the river reflects a thousand diamonds,
the country whispers: where are the lines that may create these so pleasant
impressions?" [250] Interestingly,
also in this case the artist made reference to the art between the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, emphasizing Rubens and Correggio (the two painters to
whom Delacroix seems to look at as his inspirational sources). In France, where
for centuries the Academy had discussed the merits of the Antwerp painter (supported
by the proponents of colour) against those of Poussin (celebrated by the supporters
of the drawing), the choice of mentioning Rubens was certainly not random.
Actually, Delacroix had yet to fight to be
accepted. The same year, he wrote to the president of the Academy of Fine Arts
to apply for a vacant position in the board. Intentionally, he supported his
application by mentioning a series of paintings and fresco cycles with literary
and historical subjects, thus wanting to refer to his production with the most
conventional subjects; explicitly, he wrote of his today more appreciated subjects
as "painting of a lower order" [251]. However, he was not selected. He will
have to wait until 1857 to join the Academy.
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| Fig. 175) Eugène Delacroix, The Boat of Dante, 1822 |
The letters also bear witness to the great
interest of Delacroix for the English world throughout his life, as from the
first trip in 1825, when he was still twenty-six. The trip to Britain is best
documented in his Letters than it was
in the Journal, that the painter had
just started to maintain in recent years. Many years later, in 1862, the
painter revealed in a letter to Philippe Burty (the man who, a few years later,
published his correspondence, after the death of the artist) that the inspiration for the 1828 lithographs on the theme of Faust had come to him during the journey to London. Although
universally known as "Illustration to Goethe's Faust", these
lithographs – Delacroix wrote – were not directly resulting from the reading of Goethe's
text, but by a now forgotten "musical drama" by George Soane, with
the music by Henry Bishope, which was represented for the first time in London
just in 1825 [252].
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| Fig. 176) Eugène Delacroix, Mephisto, Lithograph for Faust, 1828 |
To make sense of the love of Delacroix for London and England, Else Cassirer chose a letter of 1858, in which the painter,
now almost sixty, paradoxically wrote: "I no longer have the desire to see London: I could not recognise there
any of my memories and above all, I would not be able to enjoy again what is to
be seen there today" [253]. These
words were addressed to Théophile Silvestre, an art critic who wanted to visit
London and had begged him for some advice on the things to see.
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| Fig. 177) Eugène Delacroix, Massacre at Chios, 1824 |
The letter is full of admiration "for the outstanding conscientiousness with
which this people also cope with imaginary things" [254] and
emphasizes the sense of freedom with which the British artists avoided simply
imitating Italian and Flemish past art, rather referring to an "endless personal sensitivity" [255].
"Our school is old and the English
one seems to be young" [256]. Here
followed some words of sincere admiration for Constable and Turner, whose
landscape painting influenced his Massacre
at Chios, and of discouragement because of the difficulties that painters
like Géricault were meeting in France.
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| Fig. 178) Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of the Honourable Mrs Seymour Bathurst, 1828 |
But once again, what is striking is the crucial
role of personal relationships. About Thomas Lawrence, thanks to whose personal
commitment Delacroix's paintings were exhibited in London, achieving great
success, he wrote that his female portraits were, in his opinion, even superior
to those of van Dyck [257]. Another friend was the Scottish painter David
Wilkie (1785-1841), with whom he corresponded further after his journey and whose
visit he received in his home in Paris. During that visit, which took place on
Wilkie’s return from a long trip to Spain, Delacroix sadly realized that the mental
conditions of his friend painter were gradually deteriorating [258].
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| Fig. 179) David Wilkie, The presentation letter, 1813 |
Van Gogh
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| Fig. 180) Van Gogh’s Letters, translated by Margarethe Mauthner, published by Bruno Cassirer in 1906 and since then republished in ten editions until 1930 |
The Letters
of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century terminated with the epistles by van
Gogh. A German selection of van Gogh’s Letters to his brother (Briefe an den Bruder) had already been
published by Bruno Cassirer in Berlin in 1906, thanks to the translation of
Margarete Mauthner. It was a great success, which consolidated the genre of
artists' letters as a commercially sound editorial project. The number of editions of the
Mauthner translation topped to ten in 1930. Else Cassirer proposed seven
letters by van Gogh: six to his brother Theo and one to Gauguin. Curiously,
none of them was drawn from the Mauthner edition (produced by the same
publishing house). They all originated instead from the original texts published in the French magazine Mercure de France, where the letters had been published in 1894 and
in 1897.
The first collection in German of all van Gogh
letters in six volumes, edited by the art historian Fritz Erpel, was published
in 1965 and again in 1985.
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| Fig. 181) Vincent van Gogh, Farmhouse in Provence, 1888 |
The first (undated) letter to his brother pointed
out the parallels between the fate of van Gogh and the one of Gauguin. For both
"to be able to work in peace one should
regulate his own live as much as possible and somehow find a fixed base in
order to ensure its existence" [259]. Good intentions were not lacking in
successive letters: "One has to try
to act like calm and balanced people, and not to live as decadent people"
[260].
His thoughts went to Delacroix, when he
described the colour tones he was using: "In every part there are old gold, bronze and copper tones; and together
with the green blue of the sky, which clears up to a radiant white, all of it
produces a wonderful, extraordinary harmonious play of colours with muted
tones, as Delacroix did" [261].
Cézanne was the other point of reference for the use of colours. In a second
letter the attention was for the Japanese painting and more generally for the art
which he called 'the art of the South'
[262].
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| Fig. 182) Vincent van Gogh, Still Life with Drawing Board, Pipe, Onions and Wax, 1889 |
The letter to Gauguin of 1888 was full of
sadness and despair, partly because of economic hardship and disease. While art
could play the same consolation role as the music by Berlioz and Wagner, only
the brother was able to understand him (and also Gauguin).
NOTES
[239] Francisco Zapater y Gómez, Noticias
biográficas, 1868.
[240] See:
[241] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1919, 712 pages.
Quotation at page 445.
[242] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 447.
[243] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 447.
[244] Mayer, August L., Goyas Briefe an M.
Zapater, in: Beiträge zur Forschung. Studien und Mitteilungen aus dem Antiquariat
Jacques Rosenthal München, München, Verlag von Jacques Rosenthal, 1913. pages
39-72 + 4 Tafeln.
[245] Lafuente Ferrari,
Enrique - Las cartas de Goya a Zapater y los epistolarios españoles, in: Homenaje
a la memoria de don Antonio Rodríguez Moñino, 1910-1970, Madrid, Castalia,
1975, pp. 285-328.
[246] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 535.
[247] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 547.
[248] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 536.
[249] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 538.
[250] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 539.
[251] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 540.
[252] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 548.
[253] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 541.
[254] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 541.
[255] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 542.
[256] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 543.
[257] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 542.
[258] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 543.
[259] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 678.
[260] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 688.
[261] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 678.
[262] Künstlerbriefe
aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 685.
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