Edgar Degas, La Toilette (1884-86) Private Collection. See End Note #1

 “I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine…of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament—temperament is the word—I know nothing.” ~Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, best known in the public imagination for his more sentimental, impressionistic works—ballet scenes, race tracks, opera and music hall scenes—was, first and foremost, a student of the human figure. With the current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Degas and the Nude, a first-ever sweeping survey of some of his best and also least-known figurative works, here is an artist who still has the capacity to shock and surprise. Pulled from the extensive holdings of the MFA, The Musee D’Orsay, in Paris and dozens of other private and public collections, Degas and the Nude offers a retrospective of his work over a fifty-year time frame, from his days as a classically-trained student, to his ‘modern’ work at the turn of the 20th century. Much to the dismay of many late 19th century critics and the Parisian public-at-large, Degas, the radically-inventive artist, challenged a then, time-honored establishment’s approach to representing nude subjects, as he relentlessly strove to capture the most intimate and disarmingly candid moments in their private lives. artes fine arts magazine

Edgar Degas, Self-Portrait (1886)

The nude figure was, in fact, critically important to the art of Degas from the beginning of his career in the 1850s to the end of his working life at the dawn of the 20th century. The MFA exhibition presents works in every medium that Degas practiced: drawings, both academic and experimental; paintings made for official exhibitions and those never seen by the public in his lifetime; pictures in pastel, the medium most associated with the artist; sculpture, both in wax and bronze; printed media, including etchings, lithographs, and the monotype which he mastered. This common thread throughout the show is the human figure, transformed in his hands from the classically portrayed symbol of perfection and grace—to the most modern of demystified subjects—where composition, color and objectivity became his signature style. But, this was to be an approach to subject matter that, for Degas, would be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

E, Degas, Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1863-65), Musee d'Orsay. End Note #2

In his student years, Degas was captive to the nostalgic tastes of the past, as were so many French artists working and learning in the state-sanctioned, tradition-bound ecole d’art. Like so many Romantic era painters who went before, he initially wanted to be a history painter: to paint monumental stories from the past, the Bible and classical mythology. The exhibit features drawings from those years, as he studied the nude form in both the classroom and abroad, in the museums of Paris and Italy. Following the traditional plan of a young artist, he sketched classical sculpture and works by renaissance masters, like Michelangelo and Botticelli. Also working with live models, he began to adopt his own style, capturing likenesses that would soon appear in his own paintings. He later painted his only ‘historical’ work, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, showcasing the use of nudes in support of his desire to create an important work. Exhibited in the annual show of the Academie des Beaux Arts, in Paris in 1865, its portrayal of violence and complex action can be broadly understood as an illustration of war’s atrocities, but also an examination of man’s inhumanity toward women in a time of war. It would be Degas’s first and last historic painting, as he was about to step off in a new direction: interpreting the nude body—not in classical or historical terms—but as a contemporary figure in her own setting.

According to show curator and MFA’s Chair, Art of Europe, George Shackelford, “For Degas, these early years weren’t just an education in history, technique and anatomy, but something much more. As he relentlessly copied the nudes of the Old Masters and drew from live models, he developed a desire to be rigorous, but also rigorously original: a desire he would bring to bear in his important early paining of the nude, Young Spartans Exercising, and that would continue for the rest of his career.” Degas was in many ways, his own teacher, insisting critically, “that I get it into my head that I know nothing at all. That is the only way to go forward.”

Edouard Manet, Effect of Snow, Montrouge, Dec. 28, 1870

The son of a Parisian banker, Degas was closer to Manet than any other Impressionist in age and social background. Manet, who he met in 1862, and his artistic circle gradually persuaded Degas to turn from history painting to the depiction of contemporary life. The two artists were present and involved in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the humiliating siege and blockade of Paris that brought the city’s population to near starvation. The civil war that immediately followed, pitting Socialist Communards against Republican monarchists, led to further wide-spread death and chaos in the streets, leaving an indelible mark on both artists and the intellectual community as a whole. With the restoration of government and civil order, the Impressionists once again turned their attention to pastoral and bourgeois themes—in celebration of the ‘new’ France, while Degas headed in a very different direction.

The Serious Client (1876-77). End Note #3.

In the 1870s, Degas set out to work on a series of nudes that were neither classically-based nor studies for larger paintings. In fact, this series of monotypes were decidedly anti-classical, even as the idealized body of his earlier works gave way to more natural interpretations. Largely unknown until after his death, the works depict prostitutes in Paris’s high-class brothels. The pictures are explicit in detail—emphasizing the prostitutes’ heavy, full breasts, large bodies, and luxuriant pubic hair—and sometimes sexually explicit as well. Degas never intended these pictures to be seen publically. Both intimate and revealing of both subject and artist, they represent an extended engagement by the artist with an indecent, but widely accepted, underbelly of Paris bourgeoisie society. They were based on observation and study, but also on contemporary public opinion regarding sanitation, disease, morality and social standing.

Upon closer examination of a work like The Serious Client (1876-77), Degas may be invoking a role that John House (Impressionism: Paint and Politics, 2oo4), calls the flâneur-detective. Always the objective observer, the artist enters the forbidden world of the brothel “to find order and meaning in the seeming incoherence of the modern urban environment.” The standard markers of difference—class, sex and race—are very much at play in many of Degas’s works, and his brothel monotype series is no exception. Given the context of the pictures, the artist is making clear distinctions between male and female, working and upper class, master and servant. The women are portrayed through posture and dress as being clear about their functionary role. The setting, by extension, is pictured as conspicuously overdone, yet hermetically sealed from the outside world by mutual agreement among all parties. Men of influence move through the space—typecast as in control, on view…and fully dressed to reflect their professional status in society.

The Siesta-Scene from a Brothel (1870-80). End Note #4.

For a brief period of time, in the 1870s, Degas embraced the view of certain members of the scientific community, who believed that physical characteristics were seen to relate to social standing and typecasting. Individual physiognomy was thought to predetermine such traits as intelligence, criminality, and emotional stability. Ironically, this male-generated theory was held to be particularly attributable to members of the opposite sex. In the brothel series, as well as in some early ballet drawings and painting, Degas was inclined toward typecasting, where working-class dancers were shown with snub noses and slightly simian features, conforming closely to stereotypical ideas of the physiognomy of the lower classes. Fortunately, for his career and reputation, Degas ultimately rejected these theories, going on to become a leading proponent of artistic representation of the working poor.

As an employed technique, monotype was considered an experimental and contemporary medium. Lacking an etched or engraved plate, the process depended on paint or ink being applied directly to a smooth metal plate, which was then run through a press. Special effects and changes in the images were an inherent part of the process, with certain parts of the finished image left to chance. Degas fully exploited this characteristic in his use of monotypes to represent the settings and figures in the brothels. Spontaneity and loosely-defined details characterized the finished product—an important step for the artist as he moved away from his classical training and into the realm of sensory impressionism.

Degas’s focus shifted again in the late 1870s, when he turned his attention to the outside world. Here, his female models were pictured in private settings, often alone: lounging, reading, stepping into or out of the bath. Recurring themes became a feature of his work, with naturalism ‘coloring’ his style as he moved farther away from the classical traditions that were his roots. Still enamored of monotypes, Degas continued to rely on the medium as he broadened his repertoire of subjects. But now, he was running inked plates through the press twice, creating ambiguous, sensual and shadowy images that could then be further enhanced with chalk and colored pastels.

Nude Woman Standing, ca. 1878 (left: See End Note 5) invites the viewer to share a private moment with his model. In this remarkable work, consciousness, rather than nudity, is the principle theme. As if caught unaware, the woman has withdrawn into herself, appearing to forget for the moment that she is in the presence of another. We marvel, today, at reality TV participants, as they reveal all in front of prying cameras; yet this work illustrates how easily we can slip the reins of self-consciousness and retreat into our own thoughts and emotions. Cool flesh tones on pale blue paper help to avert the simmering sensuality that would ordinarily accompany a drawing of this kind. The figure grips her temples, elbows resting on her knee. Posed against a stark background, evidence of her toilette is nowhere to be seen. She is frozen in contemplation—a static drama unfolding before our eyes. Degas’s mastery of the human gesture is in evidence here: the artist’s machinery of illusion in full swing as he asks us to consider this simple scene as an homage to everyday life and our own vulnerability, uniting us in our humanity.

Degas exhibited small pastel nudes in the Impressionist exhibit of 1877. Now affiliated with the Impressionists, he sought safety and expanded recognition in their numbers. Nude Woman Drying Herself, 1884-92 (near right, End Note #6) was completed during that time in the hopes that it would serve as a showpiece for his skills and garner the attention of buyers and the critics, either with the Impressionists, or on his own.

His friend Henri Gervex had exhibited a large painting of a nude, Rola, in 1878; its treatment of a naked prostitute provoking both public admiration and criticism. At the same time, painter and collector, Gustave Caillebotte was finishing large-scale male and female nudes, including Man at His Bath, 1884 (above right, End Note #7). Degas’s unfinished Nude Woman Drying Herself is evidence of his intention to create a modern oil painting with the scale of Gervex’s canvas, but with a greater sense of narrative detachment than he had demonstrated in the pastels, monotypes and etchings of the previous decade, in keeping with Caillebotte’s unabashed realism.

Henri Gervex, Rolla (1878). End Note #8.

The last Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 was a pivotal moment for Degas. He showed new works—including a group of bathers. The exhibition checklist announced a “Suite of female nudes” by Degas: “bathing, washing, drying themselves, wiping themselves, combing themselves or being combed.” These works represent one of Degas’s highest achievements as an artist. Executed in pastel, the medium held strong appeal for him since it yielded effects of line, tone and color simultaneously. As he had done with monotype, the artist fully exploited the expressive possibilities of the medium: wiping and blending colors, smudging and carving into the surface with the butt-end of his paint brush.

As most contemporary museum visitors know, dancers were a favorite subject of Degas. He remained fascinated with the moving body throughout his career—specifically the dancer’s body. First, he would sketch them nude, or work their images in clay or wax. Carefully studying these gestures, movements and poses at moments of stillness, he would then clothe the dancers in tutus for final versions in oil or pastel. While no longer actively portraying prostitutes, his interest in ballet was not far removed from this unseemly side of Paris culture. Unlike today’s classical dancers, 19th century ballerinas generally came from working class families and, because they exhibited their scantily-clad bodies in public—something that ‘respectable’ bourgeois women did not do—they were widely assumed to be sexually available. They were often ‘sponsored’ by wealthy businessmen, who exchanged their patronage for sexual favors. Several of Degas’s paintings contain images of these men, sitting on the sidelines of a rehearsal; or conversely, mothers of the dancers hovering nearby at rehearsals and performances in order to safeguard their daughters’s virtue.

Right: After the Bath, Woman with a Towel (1893-97). See End Note # 9.

This careful analysis of his subject, and strong reliance on the studio setting to achieve a finished piece becomes an important way to understand that, while Degas was a champion of the Impressionist movement (and accepted as one of their own in exhibitions and in personal friendships), his working style did not qualify him for what contemporaneous critic, Jules-Antoine Castegnary called, “modern forms of naturalism.” By this he meant a certain spontaneity-of-response by the artist (plein air painting, for example), together with an objectivity of representation. While Degas certainly qualified in the latter, his allegiance to draftsmanship, boldly-calculated compositions, and a methodical (classically-styled) approach to repeatedly rendering his subject, placed him in a unique category. Yet, as a consequence of his studio-based use of seemingly-spontaneous mark-making, his bold use of color and loosely-configured drawing techniques, today we consider Degas’s work an important part of the Impressionist genre.

Jean Auguste Ingres,The Valpincon Bather (1808). Louvre, Paris.

Drawings and paintings during this period highlight Degas’s continuing focus on the backs of his models. Trained in the tradition—and an admirer—of neo-classicist painter, Jean Auguste Ingres, who famously extolled the female back as a sensual anatomical feature (see: The Valpincon Bather, 1812), Degas, too, was to follow in the footsteps of this master of the neglected side of the nude, throughout his career. Since the 1870s, Degas had used the back as a locus of character and expression: in depictions of women walking, of mounted jockeys or dancers in the wings. But the bather’s back is more complex. Degas almost never depicted his bathers, except from behind. Perhaps he did not want to show their faces, to create identifiable individuals—women with names, identities and personalities. The female form, for Degas, was now more iconic or symbolic, than real, as they focused on the same everyday tasks, like bathing or drying, common to everyone. By stripping his bathers of specifics, the back served as a locus for the body’s expressive powers and poetic center.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, Degas’s art making underwent a transformation—one that was subtle, but also completely revelatory. His nudes became a vehicle for experimentation, in style and method, as well as impact. His earlier, methodical etchings gave way to expressive lithography. Drawing, the cornerstone of his practice, shifted from the careful pencil academies to strokes of charcoal or black chalk for forceful studies of nude bathers. He tossed aside the care with which he had approached Scene of War in the Middle Ages in the 1860s to create oil paintings with celebratory swaths and daubs of paint. As a key sign of the times, Impressionism transitioned to the more personalized work of the Post-Impressionists. And perhaps, (like Monet during this same period) Degas began fell prey to failing eye sight, dogging him as he aged. Anatomical accuracy became less important to the artist than expressing emotion and feeling that were palpable in the work.

The Tub (1886) Musee d'Orsay. End Note #10.

On exhibit, The Tub (1886), like other works in which Degas achieves drama with unusual perspectives on his subject, assumes an oblique—even severely geometric angle: the tub and the crouching woman, both vigorously outlined, form a circle within a square. The remainder of the rectangular format is filled by a shelf so sharply tilted at an unnatural angle that nearly shares the plane of the picture, itself. On this shelf Degas has placed two pitchers (note the curve of the small one fitting into the handle of the other), which are not in-the-least foreshortened. Here, the tension between two-dimensions and three—surface and depth—comes close to the breaking point. The carelessly placed brush, with its handle hanging precariously over the edge, tempts the viewer to reach out and grab it before it tumbles to the floor.

Degas would revisit the same theme and position with his models, over a period of two decades. With slight variations, all would be placed in the same anonymous pose, with strict physical demands placed on the women during the posing process. The pose he demanded was difficult to hold. “Standing on her left leg, her knee slightly bent, [the model] lifts her other foot behind her with a strong movement, graspsher foot with her right hand, while her left elbow shoots out to maintain her balance,” as one observer described it. “For a whole minute, she remains almost immobile, her muscles all taut; but suddenly her left leg shifts and—in order not to fall—she has to give it up.”

After the bath, Woman drying Her Neck (1895-98). End Note #11.

In the 1890s, Degas’s propensity to revisit familiar poses reached new levels. Repetition intrigued him, as did (in all likelihood) the enthusiastic market for his work by galleries and collectors. He began copying himself by placing smooth tracing paper over previous works to translate poses, one to the other. During this time he also began using recent charcoal drawings and tracings as the basis for finished pastels, as he had done with monotypes earlier in his career. Repetition could simply be a matter of revisiting favorite poses, but for Degas, the concept was more complicated. With changing times and shifting social values in the face of Western Europe’s industrialization and modernization, themes of war’s inhumanity and the abuses of women meant that motifs embodied in some of Degas’s work, going back decades, were still resonant. The image of a woman in one bathing scene—head bent, one arm curved across her chest, the other lifted into the air, palm upward—as though gesturing, partly in defense, partly as a warning, was reminiscent of a figure in his violent 1963-65, Scene of War in the Middle Ages. Across thirty years, the emotions remain constant, while the social context changes.

Dancer...(1896-1911) Note #12.

By the late 1880s, Degas’s eyesight had begun to fail, perhaps a result of an injury suffered during his service in defending Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. After that time he focused almost exclusively on dancers and nudes, increasingly turning to sculpture as his eyesight weakened. In his later years, he was concerned chiefly with women bathing, entirely without self-consciousness and emphatically, not posed. Despite the seemingly fleeting glimpses he portrayed, he achieved a solidity in his figures that is almost sculptural.

In later life, Degas became reclusive, morose, and given to bouts of depression, probably a consequence of his increasing blindness. His monotype Coastal Landscape ,c. 1892 (left, below, End Note #13) an unusual work from this period, is an unexpected instance of Degas presenting an outdoor scene with no obvious figures, showing an imaginative and expressive use of color and freedom-of-line that may have arisen, at least in part, as a result of his struggle to adapt to his deteriorating vision. Show organizers invite viewers to detect the subtle suggestion of a reclining figure disguised in the hillside, however; positing that it served as a gentle send-up to Monet, the consummate landscape painter, from an old colleague and adversary who made the representation of the human form his life’s work

Near the end of his career, Degas was already well-known throughout Europe and in North America. Collectors from Paris, London, New York Chicago and Boston vied for his work, many purchasing his bathers from the 1880s and 90s. His reputation was also strong among his peers, bridging the generations between the Paris avant garde and a new generation of artists for a new century. In 1918, at the sale of Degas’s atelier after his death, the broader public viewed many of his works for the first time. Most connoisseurs were shocked by what they saw—dozens of works by this painter of dancers on the stage, of jockeys, laundresses, and milliners. “We looked at these walls,” wrote one of Degas’s friends, “covered with works that were powerful but horrible, which frightened us all the more because the energy of their lines and the beauty of their tones kept us from looking at or thinking of anything else.”

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Rare film footage of Edgar Degas, Paris, c. 1914:

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END NOTES:

1. Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), La Toilette (1884-86), pastel over monotype laid down on board. Private collection. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
2. Edgar Degas, Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1863-65), oil on paper. Paris, Musée d’Orsay. ©Photo: Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
3. Edgar Degas, The Serious Client (1876-77), monotype on woven paper. National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa. Purchases 1977. Photo ©National Gallery of Canada. National gallery of Canada, Ottowa. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
4. Edgar Degas, The Siesta—Scene from a Brothel (1878-80), monotype in black ink. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Katerine E. Bullard Fund in memory of Francis Bullard 61.1215. Photo: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
5. Edgar Degas, Nude Woman Standing (ca. 1878), black chalk and pastel on blue wove paper. Paris, Musée d’Orsay. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
6. Edgar Degas, Nude Woman Drying Herself (1884-92), oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Carl H. de Silver Fund 31.813. Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
7. Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894), Man at His Bath (1884), oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds by exchange and from the Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, Edward Jackson Holmes Fund, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, Gift of Mrs. Samuel Parkmen Oliver—Eliza R. Oliver Fund, Sophie F. Friedman Fund, Robert M. Rosenberg Family Fund, and Mary L. Cornille and John F. Cogan Jr. Fund for the Art of Europe. Photo: ©Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
8. Henri Gervex (French, 1852-1929), Rolla (1878), oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris (on deposit at Musée des Beaux Arts des Bordeaux). Bequest of M. Bérardi, 1926 BX E 1455. Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts des Bordeaux/Art resource, NY.
9. Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman with a Towel (1893-97), pastel on brown cardboard. Harvard Art museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of mrs. J. Montgomery Sears. Photo: Allan Macintyre ©President and Fellows of Harvard College. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
10. Edgar Degas, The Tub (1886), pastel. Paris, Musée d’Orday, Bequest of Comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
11. Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Neck (1895-98), pastel on woven paper. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911 RF 4044. Photo: Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN; photographed by Patrice Schmidt.
12. Edgar Degas, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (modeled between 1896-1911, cast between 1921-31), bronze. Paris, Musée d’Orsay, acquired through the generosity of the heirs of the artist and of Hébrard. Photo © Musée d’Orsay/rmn. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
13. Edgar Degas, Coastal Landscape (ca. 1892), pastel on paper. Collection Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski.  Boston only.

Japanese portrayal of Commodore Matthew Perry’s gunship in Edo Harbor, 1853, block print, artist unknown

From the word orient, we take our meaning, ‘to establish a direction or a path based on the points of the compass’. Navigators over centuries faced east to trace the path of the rising sun to its apex for the noon sextant sighting—toward the Orient—the land of mystery somewhere over the horizon. That this archipelago of exotic lands lost in a vast sea, with its towering mountain ranges walling off enormous swaths of snow-choked plains, rain-drenched jungles, powerful emperors and marauding armies, rising and falling from power somewhere in the veiled mists of time, could elude Western eyes for so many centuries, was no accident. For more than a thousand years, with few exceptions and under very limited conditions, the empires of the East enacted a moratorium on European exploration and trade along their shores. artes fine arts magazine

Claude Monet, Camille in Japanese Costume (1876)

This self-imposed exclusion of Asian nation-states from any Western influence–a once-great family of nations that measured their scope-of-power by the greatest distance their invading forces could be logistically supported from their capitals boardering the Mediterranean, was redefined  during the Age of Exploration. Bold expeditionary sorties were reaching the farthest corners of the globe. With discovery came dreams of riches; and with increasing profitable trade routes coursing the seas between expanding European centers-of-commerce, the Indian sub-continent and coastal cities of China, there arose a growing curiosity about the potential for profit to be found amidst the many harbors of the Japanese coast, its secretive people and the elegant coastal city of Edo, its capital.

Kitagawa Utamaro, Courtesan with Servant Girl (c.1795)

American financial interests in the Pacific in the 19th century had long been overlooked. And so, in 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry, armed with a fleet of gunships and a letter of introduction from President Millard Fillmore in hand, dropped anchor in the harbor of present-day Tokyo. Japanese ports had been closed to Western vessels for more than two centuries, under the xenophobic rule of the Tokugawa government. Perry’s objective was ultimately not militaristic, but a show-of-force and the threat of future naval action was impressive enough to secure him a high-level meeting with those surrounding the emperor. He sought to open trade relations with the Japanese. While the American threat was overt and explicit, the opportunity contained in the message was clear: “The world is modernizing. Let’s climb on the commercial bandwagon together, before you’re left behind!” With the proposal on the table, Perry weighed anchor and left, stating that he would give the Japanese time to consider the proposal; but promising to return in a few months to consummate the arrangements.

Japan had been aware of the lucrative trade arrangements existing between certain Chinese ports and trading companies in Holland and England, particularly. They also understood that a policy of isolationism would not be in their long-range best interest. Internal political unrest was no small part of the dynamic behind the decision to concede to Commodore Perry’s demands. And so, with commercial trade agreements signed in 1855, the West was to be introduced to its first wave of Japanese artifacts arriving on their shores. Japanese traders quickly discovered that there was brisk overseas demand for their goods: porcelain, decorative bronzes, fabrics and lacquered goods. With the fall of the shōgunate in 1867, Japan quickly adopted an international spirit of outreach and took a pavilion at the Paris Universal Exposition, in the same year. There, Parisians saw their first formal presentation of the Japanese ‘arts’, launching a craze for all-things-Japanese, coined japonisme.

Henri Riviere, The Tower under Construction, As Seen from the Trocadero, from the book Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower (1902), color lithograph

It is one of the ironies of history that the first introduction to the art of Japanese print making would be as packing material for the porcelain table settings being shipped in wooded crates, decades before, elsewhere in Europe. They were viewed as exotica—artifacts from a far-off place worthy of attention—but in no way would they serve as a source of creative inspiration, given Western infatuation with the pre-eminent measure of good taste for that time, found in neo-classical styling. It took the French Expo of 1867 and the inclusion of works by a dwindling number of what had been many generations of Japanese block print makers (Hiroshige III, Kunisada II, etc. [students took the names of their masters, hence the generational appellation]), to rouse the interest and attention of the Parisian artistic community. One-hundred of these prints were sold after the exposition closed, spawning a keen interest in this style of work, called Ukiyo-e (Floating World); with the application of flat color planes, absence of perspective and appealing representations of Japanese women, lifestyle and landscapes found in these prints.

(left) Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, 1890–1891, color aquatint and drypoint; (right) Utagawa Hiroshige, Kinryuzan Temple in Asakusa, from the series, One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo (1856), color woodcut with ‘lacquer’ and embossing.

Within ten years of their introduction to the French public, Ukiyo-e prints were being handled by well-known galleries, actively acquired by collectors and artists, alike—Monet, Manet and Gauguin among them. Van Gogh claimed, “Whatever one says, even the most vulgar Japanese sheets colored in flat tones are, for the same reason, as admirable as Rubens and Veronese.” Their influence on the development of the Impressionist style can be seen in the work of many of the masterworks of the time, with Japanese dress, styling and representations of prints, themselves, finding their way into painting motifs. More importantly, japonisme affected French artists’ perception of their very subject matter, with use of color, perspective and atmospherics mimicking that found in Japanese block prints. A detailed consideration of the works of Manet, Degas, Whistler, Bonnard, Pissarro, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin will reveal these influences. And, there are many fine books available on the topic.

Here, we offer one small example, in the print making of Mary Cassatt. Her, Woman Bathing (1890-91) is one of a series made in the classic Japanese style. Cassatt, a Philadelphian, “hated conventional art,” and in 1877, when Degas invited her to join the impressionists in their reaction to the overbearing academies d’arts, she joined forces with the outcasts. She had first seen Ukiyo-e woodcuts at the 1890, Ecole des Beuax-Arts, with her friend and fellow artist, Berte Morisot, she set out to create a series of prints in that style. The result is a masterful fusion of East and West, as women and children (her specialty, though never married) interact and engage in everyday behavior, in muted tones and flattened planes-of-color and form—in the best spirit of the late 18th century and early 19th century Japanese master print makers.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

“In Gertrude Stein’s writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music. Just as one may stop, for once, in a way, before a canvas of Picasso, and, letting one’s reason sleep for an instant, may exclaim: “It is a fine pattern!” so, listening to Gertrude Steins’ words and forgetting to try to understand what they mean, one submits to their gradual charm.” -Literary Critic, Mabel Dodge Luhan, in Speculations (1913)

Hers was a personality writ large on the pages of early 20th century cultural history. Whether in physical stature, intellectual prowess, life-style choices, the artistic and literary sphere-of-influence drawn to her, or that expansive ego, this was a figure to be reckoned with. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), is one of the most influential Americans of her day, perhaps most famous as a modern writer and the creator of such oft-repeated phrases as , ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ and ‘There is no there, there.’ But Stein¹s reach across the arts was extraordinary, extending well beyond literature to include collaborations in opera, ballet and more, and her influence as a style-maker, art collector and networker was considerable. 

(Above, left): Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, 1905–06; oil on canvas; 39 3/8 x 32″; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946; © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. fine arts magazine 

George Platt Lynes, Gertrude Stein, Bilignin (1931). See caption detail 2, end of article.

Currently, two museums in the San Francisco Bay area, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) are working in tandem to debut the first major exhibition to fully investigate this fascinating visual legacy and life of Gertrude Stein. At the Jewish Museum, Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories is an art-filled biographical exploration of Stein¹s multiple identities as a literary pioneer, transatlantic modernist, Jewish-American expatriate, American celebrity, art collector, and muse to artists of several generations. The exhibition also features Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967), Stein’s life-long partner, and explores the aesthetics of dress, home décor, entertainment, and food that the two women created together. 

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories is built upon exciting new scholarship, by lead guest curator Professor Wanda M. Corn of Stanford University and associate curator Professor Tirza Latimer of the California College of Arts. The exhibit is jointly organized with the Smithsonian¹s National Portrait Gallery. 

While simultaneously, at SFMOMA, The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, reunites the unparalleled modern art collections of author Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael Stein, and Michael’s wife, Sarah Stein. Jointly organized by the museum, together with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, this major touring exhibition gathers approximately 200 iconic paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and illustrated books not only by Matisse and Picasso, who are each represented by dozens of works, but also by Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Henri Manguin, Francis Picabia, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Félix Vallotton, among others. The Steins Collects premiered at SFMOMA in May, 2011, running until September 6, 2011, before traveling to Paris later this year and then New York in 2012. 

Pablo Picasso, Boy Leading a Horse (1905–6). See caption detail 3, end of article.

Supplemented by a rich array of archival materials—including photographs, family albums, film clips, correspondence, and ephemera—the exhibition provides a new perspective on the artistic foresight of this innovative family, tracing their enduring impact on art-making and collecting practices and their inestimable role in creating a new international standard of taste for modern art. 

Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1874 and raised in Oakland, California in an upper middle-class Jewish family, Stein left America for France in 1903 at the age of 27. Like James McNeill Whistler and Henry James, her American predecessors, Stein became an expatriate, living in France until her death in 1946. For almost all of that time, from 1908 onwards, Stein lived openly with Toklas. 

Stein was a cultural networker, bringing creative people and friends such as Picasso, Matisse and Hemingway, but also key members of a cosmopolitan homosexual elite, together at legendary salons held in her homes. Her originality as a thinker, along with her interdisciplinary approach to projects in dance, music and theater, continue to inspire artists today. As an inventor of modernist literature, she wrote novels, poems, journal essays, literary and art theory, opera libretti, plays, memoirs and word portraits. 

The Steins in the courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris (ca.1905). See caption detail 4, end of article.

As American expatriates living in France, the four Steins were pivotal in shaping the city’s vibrant cultural life. Leo Stein (1872–1947) and younger sister Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) were the first to leave the family home in Oakland, traveling to Paris along with millions of tourists to visit the 1900 World’s Fair and then relocating to the city in 1902 and 1903, respectively. Sarah Stein (1870–1953) and Michael Stein (1865–1938) soon followed from San Francisco with their eight-year-old son, Allan, arriving in early 1904. The family established their apartments on 27 rue de Fleurus (Leo and Gertrude) and rue Madame (Sarah and Michael) and quickly integrated into the intellectual circles of the Parisian avant-garde. Gertrude and Leo lived modestly off family investments and had to team up to afford their early purchases. “You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. It’s that simple. . . . No one who is not very rich can do both,” was Gertrude’s legendary quote from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. 

Much of Gertrude Stein’s fame derives from a private modern art gallery she assembled, from 1904 to 1913, with her brother Leo Stein, while in Paris. Leo’s acquaintances and study of modern art would eventually result in the famous Stein art collections. Bernard Berenson hosted Gertrude and Leo in his English country house in 1902, and suggested they visit Paul Cézanne and Ambroise Vollard’s art gallery. In 1904, the joint family trust account had accumulated a balance of 8,000 francs, Gertrude and Leo spent this at Vollard’s Gallery, buying Gauguin’s Sunflowers and Three Tahitians, Cézanne’s Bathers, and two Renoirs. 

Henri Matisse, Michael Stein (1916). See caption detail 5, end of article.

Widely-published critics did much to increase Stein’s notoriety in the U.S. Regularly-appearing newspaper articles frequently exposed Gertrude’s name to the public. Of the growing Stein family art collection in Paris, one critic commented: “in proportion to its size and quality … [it is] just about the most potent of any that I have ever heard of in history. He also made the observation that Gertrude “collected geniuses rather than masterpieces. She recognized them a long way off. The collection soon had a worldwide reputation. 

By early 1906, Leo and Gertrude Stein’s studio had many paintings by Henri Manguin, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Honoré Daumier, Henri Matisse, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Their collection was representative of two famous art exhibitions that took place during their residence together in Paris, and to which they contributed, either by lending their art, or by patronizing the featured artists. The Steins’ elder brother, Michael, and sister-in-law Sarah (Sally) acquired a large number of Henri Matisse paintings; Gertrude’s friends from Baltimore, Claribel and Etta Cone, collected similarly, eventually donating their art collection, virtually intact, to the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

While numerous artists visited the Stein salon, many of these artists were not represented among the paintings on the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Where Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso’s works dominated Leo and Gertrude’s collection, Sarah Stein’s collection emphasized Matisse. 

Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat (1905). See caption detail 6, end of article

Contemporaries of Leo and Gertrude, Matisse and Picasso became part of their social circle, and were a part of the early Saturday evenings at their home. Gertrude attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, as; “[m]ore and more frequently, people began visiting to see the Matisse paintings—and the Cezannes. Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began.” This arrangement was codifies, so that Gertrude could attend to her writing in peace. Michael and Sarah decided to open their apartment on the same night of the week and so began the prestigious Saturday evening salons where the brightest artists, writers, musicians, and collectors of the day convened to discuss the latest developments. Anyone with a proper referral was welcome to strain their eyes to see the works by candlelight, as neither apartment was wired with electricity yet. 

Among Picasso’s acquaintances who frequented the Saturday evenings were: Fernande Olivier (Picasso’s mistress), Georges Braque, André Derain, Henri Rousseau, Joseph Stella (artists), Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire (poets), and Marie Laurencin (poet, Apollinaire’s mistress and an artist in her own right), to name a few. 

Comments surrounding Pablo Picasso’s, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906 (on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), also serve the indelible Gertrude Stein reputation. When someone commented that Stein didn’t look like her portrait, Picasso replied, “She will!” 

The art collection increased and the walls at Rue de Fleurus were rearranged continuously to make way for new acquisitions. In “the first half of 1905″ the Steins acquired Cézanne’s Portrait of Mme Cézanne and Delacroix’s Perseus and Andromeda. Shortly after the opening of the Paris Autumn Salon, in 1905, the Steins acquired Matisse’s Woman with a Hat and Picasso’s Young Girl with Basket of Flowers. 

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), 1907. See caption detail 7, end of article.

While the Stein family collection continued to grow over the next several years, Gertrude’s increasingly intense relationship with a women she met on the day of her arrival in Paris in 1907, together with the impending war between France and Germany resulted in a division of the art collection and brother Leo’s move to Italy in April 1914. Regarding the division of the Steins’ art collection, Leo wrote in a letter to his sister: 

“The Cézanne apples have a unique importance to me that nothing can replace. The Picasso landscape is not important in any such sense. We are, as it seems to me on the whole, both so well off now that we needn’t repine. The Cézanne’s had to be divided. I am willing to leave you the Picasso oeuvre, as you left me the Renoir, and you can have everything except that. I want to keep the few drawings that I have. This leaves no string for me, it is financially equable either way for estimates are only rough & ready methods, & I’m afraid you’ll have to look upon the loss of the apples as an act of God. I have been anxious above all things that each should have in reason all that he wanted, and just as I was glad that Renoir was sufficiently indifferent to you so that you were ready to give them up, so I am glad that Pablo is sufficiently indifferent to me that I am willing to let you have all you want of it.”  

After Stein’s and Leo’s households separated in 1914, she continued to collect examples of Picasso’s art which had turned to Cubism. At her death, Gertrude’s remaining collection emphasized the artwork of Picasso and Juan Gris, having sold most of her other pictures. 

Henri Matisse, Sketch for Le Bonheur de vivre (1905–6). See caption detail 8, end of article.

As an integral part of the Stein life-story, the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s, Seeing Gertrude Stein, more than 100 artifacts and art works by artists from across Europe and the United States are on display. Included are paintings, sculpture, photography, drawings, and artist¹s gifts to Stein, as well as items from Stein¹s and Toklas¹s custom-designed wardrobe, manuscripts, books, periodicals, letters, journals, and personal belongings. Galleries also include digital and video loops on monitors to render a fuller picture of Stein¹s history. One loop, for example, has the voice of Stein reading from her work. 

This wealth of archival and artistic material on exhibit illuminates Stein through five distinct stories that offer multiple ways of seeing Stein. Most notably, these five stories do not repeat what is best known, that is, Stein’s years as a salonière and collector of Picasso and Matisse in the years before World War I. instead, this portion focuses on Stein from 1915-46, when she became recognized as a major writer, collected the works of the Neo-Romantics, and formed a new international circle of young friends that she called her ‘second family. 

Story One, Picturing Gertrude 

Images of Stein changed considerably over the decades, from her Gibson Girl New Woman look during her student days, to her reinvention as a Bohemian priestess in Paris at the turn of the century, to her matronly look after World War I, with her masculine dress in waistcoats after she cut her hair, with Toklas’ encouragement, in 1926. She became one of the most painted, sculpted and photographed women of the twentieth-century. This first ‘story’ presents portraits of Stein from her childhood to maturity and includes works by Felix Vallotton, Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Carl Van Vechten, Jacques Lipchitz, Jo Davidson and others. 

Man Ray, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1922). See caption detail 9, end of article

Story Two, Domestic Stein 

An exploration of the life Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas created around distinctive styles of dress, home décor, and entertaining. This is the first exhibition to give Toklas a major place in Stein¹s life, demonstrating that there was no Gertrude without Alice and no Alice without Gertrude. 

Story Three, Art of Friendship 

The wide circle of visual artists Stein and Toklas befriended included not just famous figures, such as Matisse and Picasso, but also, after World War I, a less well-known international set of younger male artists, writers, and composers—most of them gay—who adopted Stein as a figurehead, mentor, mother, patron, and role model. While achieving her own fame, Stein had the talent and instincts to champion others such as Carl Van Vechten, Pavel Tchelitchew, Francis Picabia, Cecil Beaton, and Francis Rose, all of whom made major contributions to American and European culture. 

(During the 1920s, with the walls of her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus covered by avant-garde paintings, Stein attracted many of the great writers of the time, including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson. It was during that time she has been credited with inventing the term ‘Lost Generation’ for some of these expatriate American writers.  She was Ernest Hemingway’s mentor, and upon the birth of his son he asked her to be the godmother of his child. During the 1930s, Stein and Toklas became famous with the 1933 mass market publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. She and Alice had an extended lecture tour in the United States during this decade). 

Vechten, Gertrude Stein and Alice B.Toklas Departing Newark Airport with Zuni Fetishes, Nov.7,'34. See caption detail 10, end of article

Story Four, Celebrity Stein 

The fourth ‘story’ focuses on one of the most important aspects of Stein¹s career—her six-month cross-country trip in the U.S.—followed by her life and activities during the two World Wars. Stein, who had never returned to the States after setting up housekeeping in Paris in 1903-04, arrived in New York from France, in 1934, with the reputation as an eccentric, avant-garde writer and left as a beloved media celebrity. She finished that year more famous in the States than she had ever been in France. During World War I, she and Toklas were active patriots, distributing Red Cross supplies throughout France; in World War II, their decision to stay in Nazi-occupied France is more controversial, inextricably linked to her large ego and her ability to suppress her Jewish identity (Gertrude and Alice—both Jewish—escaped persecution probably because of their friendship to Bernard Faÿ who was a collaborator with the Vichy regime and had connections to the Gestapo. When Faÿ was sentenced to hard labor for life after the war, Gertrude and Alice campaigned for his release. Several years later, Toklas would contribute money to Faÿ’s escape from prison). 

Story Five, Legacies 

The fifth ‘story’ probes the deep influence Stein has had on American artists after her death and includes works by Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Red Grooms, Glenn Ligon, Deborah Kass and many other important contemporary artists. 

                                                             _______________________ 

Bachrach Studio, Gertrude Stein (c.1903). See caption detail 11, end of article.

This well-organized and complex two-museum exhibit raises as many questions as it answers: Was Stein a bohemian genius, willing to take great risks in her personal life, writings and art patronage? Or was she an egotist and avid self-promoter who manipulated the world with a visionary zeal aimed at meeting her personal needs and ambitions? Would Gertrude Stein become the heroine of generations of women and emerging artists as a pioneering force in early modern arts and letters and would she have remained so, if not vindicated by the course of history? Stein Collects deals realistically and in depth with these questions, leaving the issues of character and self-serving motivation largely to the viewer. There is no doubt that Stein was one of the most brilliant and searching minds of the 20th century. Moral ambiguity was not her strong suit. She sought no comfort in political and social orthodoxy. Strong-minded and a cultural taste-maker, Stein consistently went out on a limb for what she believed in—even to the end. 

Her writing in the last year of her life expresses a particular penchant for life lived at the edge of the conventional and the comfortable. After World War II, Stein was visited by many young American soldiers. Her preface written for a 1945 Paris exhibition for Spanish painter Francisco Riba-Rovira, at Roquepine Gallery, is one of her last texts on her vision of the painting art. In it, she expressed her opinions of long-time acquaintances, Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse and Juan Gris, as well as Riba-Rovira, a familiar artist of her salon at rue de Fleurus: 

Henri Matisse, Self-Portrait (1906). See caption detail 12, end of article.

Yes, I walk a lot, a lot at the edge of the Seine where we fish, where we paint, where we walk dogs (I am of those who walk their dogs). Not a single young painter! One day, on the corner of a street, in one of these small streets in my district, I saw a man painting. I looked at him; at him and at his painting, as I always look at everybody who creates something I have an indefatigable curiosity to look and I was moved. Yes, a young painter! We began to speak, because we speak easily, as easily as in country roads, in the small streets of the district. His story was the sad story of the young people of our time .A young Spaniard who studied in fine arts in Barcelona: civil war; exile; a concentration camp; escape . Gestapo, another prison, another escape… Eight lost years! If they were lost, who knows? And now a little misery, but all the same the painting. Why did I find that it was him the young painter, why? I visited his drawings, his painting: we speak. 

Henri Matisse, Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra (1907). See caption details 13, end of article.

I explained that for me, all modern painting is based on what Cézanne nearly made, instead of basing itself on what he almost managed to make. When he could not make a thing, he hijacked it and left it. He insisted on showing his incapacity: he spread his lack of success: showing what he could not do , became an obsession for him. People influenced by him were also obsessed by the things which they could not reach and they began the system of camouflage. It was natural to do so, even inevitable: that soon became an art, in peace and in war, and Matisse concealed and insisted at the same time on that Cézanne could not realize, and Picasso concealed, played and tormented all these things. The only one who wanted to insist on this problem, was Juan Gris. He persisted by deepening the things which Cézanne wanted to do, but it was too hard a task for him: it killed him. And now here we are, I find a young painter who does not follow the tendency to play with what Cézanne could not do, but who attacks any right the things which he tried to make, to create the objects which have to exist, for, and in themselves, and not in relation. This young painter has his weakness and his strength. His force will push him in this road. I am fascinated and that is why he is the young painter who I needed. He is Francisco Riba-Rovira.” 

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor 

Editor’s note: Following its Contemporary Jewish Museum/SFMOMA debut, The Steins Collect will travel to the Grand Palais, Paris (October 3, 2011, through January 16, 2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (February 21 through June 3, 2012). The exhibition is co-curated by Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA; Cécile Debray, curator of historical collections at the Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Rebecca Rabinow, associate curator and administrator, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

A richly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with new research and original essays from a range of French and American experts in the field. 

Visit the museum sites at: www.cjm.org and www.sfmoma.org 

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Caption detail: 

1. Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, 1905–06; oil on canvas; 39 3/8 x 32 in. (100 x 81.3 cm); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946; © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
2. George Platt Lynes, Gertrude Stein, Bilignin, 1931, toned gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, Gift of Adelyn D. Breeskin BMA 1985.3, © Estate of George Platt Lynes.
3. Pablo Picasso, Boy Leading a Horse, 1905–6; oil on canvas; 86 7/8 x 51 5/8 in. (220.7 x 131.1 cm); The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the William S. Paley Collection, 1964; © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.
4. The Steins in the courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, ca. 1905. From left: Leo Stein, Allan Stein, Gertrude Stein, Theresa Ehrman, Sarah Stein, Michael Stein. Theresa Ehrman papers and photographs, BANC MSS 2010/603, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Transfer; Judah L.Magnes Museum; 2010.
5. Henri Matisse, Michael Stein, 1916; oil on canvas; 26 1/2 x 19 7/8 in. (67.3 x 50.5 cm); SFMOMA, Sarah and Michael Stein Memorial Collection, gift of Nathan Cummings; © Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Ben Blackwell.
6. Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat, 1905; oil on canvas; 31 3/4 x 23 1/2 in. (80.7 x 59.7 cm); SFMOMA, Bequest of Elise S. Haas; © Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Ben Blackwell.
7. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), 1907; oil on canvas; 24 1/4 x 18 3/4 in. (61.4 x 47.6 cm); Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Estate of John Hay Whitney, 1983; © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
8. Henri Matisse, Sketch for Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905–6; oil on canvas; 16 x 21 1/2 in. (40.6 x 54.6 cm); SFMOMA, bequest of Elise S. Haas; © Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Ben Blackwell       
9. Man Ray, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, 1922, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Isabel Wilder, © 2010 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.10.
10. Carl Van Vechten, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Departing Newark Airport with Zuni Fetishes, November 7, 1934, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the Rare Books and Special Collections, Boatwright Memorial Library, The University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, Carl Van Vechten-Mark Lutz Collection, Courtesy of the Carl Van Vechten Trust.
11. Bachrach Studio, Gertrude Stein, c. 1903, Photograph drymounted on board. Courtesy of the Therese Erhman Papers, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
12. Henri Matisse, Self-Portrait, 1906; oil on canvas; 21 5/8 in. x 18 1/8 in. 954.93 cm x 46.04 cm); Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark; © 2011 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
13. Henri Matisse, Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra, 1907; oil on canvas; 36 1/4 x 55 1/4 in. (92.1 x 140.3 cm.); The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland; © 2011 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Mitro Hood

Gustave Caillebotte, patron, painter, 'The Unknown Impressionist', 1848-94

When Impressionism is mentioned, Monet, Renoir, Degas come to mind, but less frequently among the names is that of Gustave Caillebotte (French 1848–1894). Yet, he was very much their equal and a skilled and prolific painter. Wealthy, he had no need to sell his art. He supported his friends by buying their art, financing the Impressionist shows –considered radical in his day– and in the case of Monet, frequently paying his rent. Moreover, Caillebotte was a lawyer; a philatelist whose stamp collection is in the British Museum; a town councilman; a nautical engineer and famed yachtsman. Rarely seen together, the Brooklyn Museum re-acquaints us with Caillebotte’s work after a 30-year absence from its galleries. An intellectual and a modern man, with the means to support his focused passions, he bequeathed his substantial collection to his country—presciently saving much of Impressionist art for France.

Caillebotte, Man on the Balcony 2, 1880

Caillebotte was born eldest of three sons of a twice-widowed father and his third wife, into the grand bourgeoisie, whose family fortune stemmed from cloth supplied to the French military. He began drawing and painting at age twelve, served in the National Guard and was released in 1871, right before the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune ended. He turned to art, passing the exam for L’Ecole des Beaux Art in 1873. He soon became a member of a fringe art circle, the works of which were textured, loose and colorful in style, earning them the critically derisive term, Impressionism.

Caillebotte, The Oarsmen, 1877

The Brooklyn Museum has assembled a number of his works for the exhibit, drawn from private and museum collections in Europe and the U.S. Technically brilliant works like, “Floor Scrapers” and “House Painters” were rejected by tradition-bound venues of the day as “vulgar” and “too working class.” His renderings of Paris street scenes, the moods of the rivers, rowing shells and the muscular men who powered them, all done en plein air, reveal his mastery of light and the human form. His clever use of the perspective in his compositions, such as placing the Parisian streets at an angle while coming directly towards the viewer in works like “The Pont de l’Europe ” and “Man on the Balcony” ( left), creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy—as if we are standing there on the bridge or at the balcony overlooking the boulevard in 19th Century Paris—sharing the drama to the moment in the scene. Likewise, in the “Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres” (above), Caillebotte’s perspective puts us there in the same boat, sitting on our side of canvas, being transported by the oarsmen and basking in the same sun whose light rests on their out-stretched muscular arms.

Despite his other ardent pursuits, Caillebotte continued to paint, even after the Impressionists dispersed and up to his sudden death at 45. The “Unknown Impressionist” has secured a place in the pantheon of great painters of his day.

(At the Brooklyn Museum, through July 5, 2009)

by Linda Y. Peng, Contributing Writer- The Artful Traveler

For more about Gustave Caillebotte and to see more of his work go to: http://www.gustavcaillebotte.org

Visit the Brooklyn Museum at: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (718) 638-5000

Learn about the Paris Commune and why it mattered to the Impressionists at:

Google Search – “Paris Commune and Impressionism”

http://app.cul.columbia.edu:8080/ac/handle/10022/AC:P:2216

http://www.albertboime.com/ReviewsPubPDF/49.pdf