In the first of these two articles about the paintings of Jules-Alexis Muenier (1863–1942), I looked at his life and a selection of paintings which exemplify his work. This article looks at how he used photography in painting, and concludes with a few works which refer to painting, or raise other issues.

It’s almost certain that Muenier became a photographer between 1880, when he went to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, and when he travelled to North Africa with Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret in 1888, armed with cameras. Although he may have found it difficult to set up the necessary darkroom and processing laboratory when he was still living in Paris, in 1885 he moved to a large house on his parents-in-law’s estate in Coulevon, which should have been ideal.

His classical training with Gérôme would have equipped him with the skills needed to make finished paintings for the Salon, in the traditional way. He had also started his training when still at school, by going to drawing lessons. By 1885, he was perfectly capable of developing a major Salon painting using those skills alone.

Although few of his drawings have been found, that is quite common among painters who have been using classical techniques. There are surviving oil studies for several of his major works, including this skilful study for The Breviary from about 1887. The priest shown here also appears in Muenier’s Catechism Class, which was completed in 1890.

I apologise for the poor quality of this image of a copy of Muenier’s finished painting of The Chaplain’s Retreat, better-known as The Breviary from about 1887. Here the priest is sat in contemplation, his breviary in his hand, his fingers keeping his place in it. He is surrounded by the flowers of his garden, and a watering can is at his feet. This recalls metaphors of gardeners from Christian teachings. Behind are the rooves of the village, which he had painted in a separate study.

Although I have been unable to find a suitable image of the painting, this photograph shows Muenier with his painting of The Harpsichord Lesson in about 1911, which became his most famous painting during his lifetime. Although there is nothing to suggest that he is doing this in any unconventional way, Muenier is dressed much too smartly, and his suit and shoes are far too clean, for him to have been caught in the midst of his work here, even though he is holding a brush as if he was.

This is another superb study, this time for Muenier’s large and complex painting Awakening, for which I don’t have a date (or, sadly, an image).

Here is a photograph which appears to show Muenier painting Awakening, with his son Pierre behind him. They are in a beautifully furnished bedroom, which Muenier is using as a studio. The study above has clearly been important in the painting of a central passage in the huge canvas shown. Muenier’s palettes, brushes, and other equipment all give this an air of truth – except that the artist is again dressed immaculately in a clean suit, and there are no sheets or other protection on the floor around the canvas. It all looks too neat and clean.

This photograph of Muenier apparently painting on his property in Coulevon does show the artist, seemingly significantly younger here, holding palette and brushes in the garden of his house. The small pochade box below the easel looks out of place, though, as do his very snappy and clean clothes. Even more puzzling is the painting on which he is seen to be working, which shows an old man and woman outside a property in the village: not something which he could possibly see from this location.

Taken much later in his career, Boat on the Saône shows Muenier dressed much more appropriately, probably genuinely engaged in painting on the River Saône not far from his home. Although the broad brim of his hat weakens the image, it places his eyes in the shade, something essential if you’re not going to paint under a parasol. His brush also looks as if it is making contact with the canvas.

The reality is that Muenier – and Gérôme, and Dagnan-Bouveret – weren’t just happy snapper photographers, but believed in it as fine art. All three were early members of local photographic clubs, and Muenier and Dagnan-Bouveret exhibited their photographs as seriously as their paintings.

Muenier also painted a couple of works which reflect on his own art. The first, The Young Artist, considers the controversial question of the encouragement of women artists. The girl’s teacher is the same model as the instructor in The Harpsichord Lesson, suggesting that this work also dates from around then.

Even more challenging is another undated work, The Young Model Posing in the Studio, which shows the back of a young girl who is posing nude for a packed group of male painters down below her, with their tobacco smoke wafting above them. She is thin, her hair unkempt and loose, and may well have been modelling to pay for her food.

Sadly, I have been unable to discover anything about the background to this work, but it could be read as condemnation of such practices. This is also the only nude painting of his which I have found: he did not appear to favour the ‘academic nude’.

My final work by Muenier could be a monochrome image of an oil painting, an engraving, or a drawing – I know not, and it is also undated. It is the evocative Emigrants, of which I am sure Jules Bastien-Lepage would have been proud.

So how did Muenier use his photography in his painting?

Creating such large, highly detailed realist paintings requires meticulous technique. A final study, arrived at by a combination of drawings, studies, and photographs, would have to be made. In some cases, this could have been a single photograph, but no exact matches seem to have been found.

Muenier then transferred the lines from that final study to his canvas using the traditional square system: the study and canvas would be squared off identically, and outlines and details transferred a square at a time. He also used a camera lucida, and possibly later a projection system, which made the transfer and enlargement simpler. But there is no evidence that he simply painted from photographs: they were one of his aids, no more than that, and remember that this was long before colour photography became feasible too.

Reference

Gabriel P Weisberg and others (2010), Illusions of Reality, Naturalist Painting, Photography, Theatre and Cinema, 1875-1918, Van Gogh Museum. ISBN 978 90 6153 941 4.

Ultramarine was and remains an important and beautiful pigment, but wasn’t the mainstay of painters before Prussian Blue became available in 1710. If you could have looked at the palettes of most artists prior to the eighteenth century, you would most probably have seen Azurite Blue. Once more modern pigments started to flood the market, its use declined, and by 1800, it was gone.

Like Ultramarine, Azurite is a mineral, but being found more widely and in more prosaic locations, it lacked the mystique of the blue from across the sea. It is formed from basic copper carbonate, the same chemical as malachite (with which it is normally found), but formed into a different crystal structure.

It was known to the ancients, but used little in European painting until the Middle Ages, as Egyptian Blue was far more popular in classical times.

As European painting emerged from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, the use of Azurite Blue flourished. You could be mistaken for thinking that the blue robes in Giotto’s egg tempera painting of Pentecost from about 1310-18 use Ultramarine, but in fact they use Azurite Blue instead.

With some notable exceptions, when bound by drying oil or egg, Azurite Blue has proved to be a stable and reliable pigment. Its only real disadvantage is that grinding it too finely results in lightening of its colour.

The sky in the van Eycks’ magnificent centre panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, the Adoration of the Lamb, from about 1425-1432 relies on Azurite Blue, where it can now be seen to have turned slightly green in parts.

It has also been found in Piero della Francesca’s famous Baptism of Christ, which was painted in egg tempera after 1437. I suspect that it was used throughout its lucent sky.

Azurite Blue became established as the basis for the blue robes used to signify the most holy figures, in particular the Virgin Mary as depicted by Dirk Bouts and his workshop in The Virgin and Child with Saint Peter and Saint Paul from the 1460s. Depending on the artist and the painting, it was often used for the underpainting, over which Ultramarine glazes were applied.

It was also used extensively in fresco, where it has proved more vulnerable to discoloration.

When watercolour paints became more widely used, Azurite was often the sole blue pigment used. This is the case in the first large opaque watercolours, Raphael’s cartoons painted in around 1515-16, including The Miraculous Draft of Fishes, also shown in detail below.

Another notable and impressive use of Azurite as the sole blue pigment is Albrecht Altdorfer’s Christ Taking Leave of His Mother from about 1520, here in oil paint. All the blues seen here in both clothing and sky rely on Azurite for their colours.

Jacopo Tintoretto was another Old Master who relied on Azurite Blue, and it forms his mainstay blue in The Origin of the Milky Way from about 1575.

In Diego Velázquez’ Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary from about 1618, Azurite Blue is the basis for Christ’s distinctive blue robes shown in the vignette scene at the upper right.

Francisco de Zurbarán’s full-length portrait of Saint Margaret of Antioch, from 1630-34, is an interesting example of one form of discolouration which can affect Azurite Blue. The saint’s blue cloak has darkened in colour over time, becoming almost black in parts, particularly where it hangs down behind her. The reason for this remains obscure.

In Rubens’ late Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (c 1636), it is Azurite Blue which provides the colour for his magnificent sky.

With its ample supply and low cost, it may seem peculiar that Azurite Blue should have been abandoned so completely when Prussian Blue arrived. What I find even stranger is that Azurite pigment was also manufactured from quite ancient times, being known as Blue Verditer or Blue Bice. Few paintings seem to gave undergone careful examination to establish whether they used the synthetic pigment, though, and it is almost entirely known from its use in domestic paints, particularly for decorative purposes.

You can still get Azurite Blue, but it is now a specialist pigment, and absent from major paint ranges. Given its great importance up to 1710, that seems rather a shame.

Reference

Rutherford J Gettens and Elisabeth West FitzHugh (1993) Artists’ Pigments, vol 2, ed Ashok Roy, Archetype. ISBN 978 1 904982 75 3.

The sick have traditionally been cared for by their families. But for those without families, particularly anyone away from home, there have long been charitable institutions and others prepared to offer hospitality. They could have been slaves in the Roman empire, soldiers in mediaeval Baghdad, those returning from the Crusades in Europe, or refugees crossing mountainous areas through passes.

Few early hospitals provided much in the way of medical care, which was generally expensive and ineffective in any case. Most were little more than large inns, and any care staff were usually members of religious orders. A few took in cases of transmissible diseases which had become proscribed locally – conditions such as leprosy, and plague – in an attempt to confine the disease and prevent spread. The richer you were, though, the greater the chance and desire of being nursed at home.

Jacopo Pontormo’s fresco showing an Episode from Life in Hospital from 1514 shows nuns from a religious order caring for other women, perhaps the sick from their own convent.

Venice was particularly prone to outbreaks of plague, and developed procedures and establishments for coping with cases. In Tintoretto’s painting of Saint Roch Heals Plague Victims from 1559, those suffering from plague have been brought to this small chapel, where the saint is healing them. The dark room is already collecting a disarray of bodies, some seemingly close to death. Without the miraculous work of the saint, this would quickly have become the waiting room for hell.

Adam Elsheimer shows a more positive atmosphere in Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Bringing Food for the Inmates of a Hospital from about 1598. Clearly run by a religious order or similar foundation, above each bed is a religious painting, and watching over them all is a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ. Saint Elizabeth works with her halo visible, feeding the man in the bed nearest the viewer.

Some hospitals grew grand, such as that shown in Cornelis de Wael’s To Visit the Sick from about 1640. A team of doctors is gathered around a table to the left, where they write up their notes and directions for care. Extended families surround the few patients in their very modern iron beds, with children and dogs apparently welcome too.

But for many, hospitals remained a final resort, and they knew only too well that their chances of walking out alive were slim. This was even more true for hospitals which confined the mentally ill, the asylums.

In William Hogarth’s narrative series A Rake’s Progress, Bethlehem Hospital ‘for lunatics’ was the final stage in a saga which takes its lead actor Tom Rakewell from squandering his inheritance in orgiastic nights in brothels. After he recovers temporarily by marrying a rich but ugly old woman for her money, his descent continues through gambling until he is put into a debtor’s prison, where he becomes insane, and ends his days in the ‘Bedlam’ asylum.

Hogarth shows here a scene in London’s Bethlehem Hospital, given the common name of Bedlam, which has entered the English language. Tom is almost naked, tensed and stressed on the floor, with only an ignored friend to comfort him. Other inmates show the disturbing signs of their conditions, and two well-dressed ladies have come to watch the antics of those in Bedlam – a sign of the Enlightenment, it seems.

With the Age of Enlightenment came the first major voluntary hospitals, funded by benefactors, charities, and public subscription. Johannes Beerblock’s painting shows the very modern Wards of the Hospital of Saint John in the city of Bruges in 1778. Each bed was, in effect, its own private cubicle. There were trained medical staff, but nurses were compassionate carers rather than professionals.

In the centre, middle distance, a group of four elegantly-dressed physicians are doing the rounds of their patients. The main caring staff appear to be from a religious order, and wear its elaborate black-and-white uniforms. They are serving food, reading to comfort the sick and dying, and at the left are assisting a priest, perhaps in administering the last rites. Lay staff are cleaning and servicing the needs of patients.

At their worst, though, hospitals were still places of death and dread, as shown in Goya’s painting of a Plague Hospital from his disturbing series The Disasters of War (1808-10).

There were several big steps forward in transforming the hospital into something closer to those we have today. Most are associated with individuals, such as Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, Joseph Lister’s recognition of the importance of hygiene, and Ignaz Semmelweiss’s practice of anti-sepsis.

One of the most important revolutions is associated with the work of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War. Although she is now a controversial figure, William Simpson’s illustration of One of the Wards in the Hospital at Scutari (Turkey) from 1856 gives an idea of the change which started in the middle of the nineteenth century.

American hospitals also saw great change at this time, some resulting from the Civil War. Jonathan Eastman Johnson’s painting of The Field Hospital (The Letter Home) from 1867 seems to refer back to that, its patient dictating a letter to his family from his camp bed.

In the late nineteenth century, as I will show in the next and concluding article, hospitals were transformed by the nursing revolution, the use of general anaesthesia for surgery, scientific advances in medicine, and more.

In the late nineteenth century, hospitals were transformed by the nursing revolution, the use of general anaesthesia for surgery, scientific advances in medicine, and more. So too were paintings of hospitals.

Perhaps the first painting of what we’d recognise as a modern hospital, Jean Geoffroy’s Visiting Day at the Hospital from 1889 is all about light, cleanliness, and the clinical. Like other Naturalist paintings of the time, it also fitted in very neatly with the Third Republic’s image of modernising, by applying the latest developments of science to the improvement of life, and illness.

The boy’s father is clearly not rich, and he could never have afforded state-of-the-art care for his sick son. But this clinical atmosphere is not inhuman, as shown by the mother kissing her son in the next bed along. What the painting doesn’t reveal is that, in all likelihood, the boy in the foreground bed is dying of tuberculosis, a problem which even the Third Republic seemed powerless to prevent.

The hospital building shown in Luis Jiménez Aranda’s painting of Doctors’ Rounds in the Hospital Ward from the same year is not as modern, but its sheets are almost as white. Here, the large and august team of physicians, no doubt with their trainees too, is examining a patient’s chest during a ward round.

There is a subtle detail here: the senior physician is bent down, with his left ear applied to the back of the patient’s chest. Today, that act of auscultation would be performed using a stethoscope, almost a badge of office for medical practitioners around the world. The stethoscope was still relatively novel in 1889: simple monaural tubes were first used by Laënnec in 1816, but the modern binaural design didn’t really evolve until the late 1800s, and an older physician may still have preferred to apply their ear directly to the patient, as shown here.

In the same year, Vincent van Gogh was admitted to a mental hospital at Arles, France, and painted a series of works showing the modernised asylum, and its evolution from Hogarth’s image of Bedlam.

Van Gogh’s Dormitory in the Hospital in Arles (1889) shows how, despite their improvement, mental hospitals were still a long way behind modern general hospitals. In the foreground is a stove very similar to that seen in Florence Nightingale’s wards in Scutari, and the carers are members of a religious order rather than specialist nurses in mental health.

Mental hospitals were to remain huge and forbidding places for the next century. Van Gogh captures this in his stark view of a Corridor in the Asylum (1889).

Anna Sahlstén’s Surgery in Hospital from about 1893 continues the theme of the modern hospital. I’m not sure whether Sahlstén painted this in Finland, her native country, or when abroad in Berlin or Paris. The dazzling whiteness of sheets has been tempered in this children’s ward with light touches of colour. In the foreground, a mother cuddles her infant, and at the back of the ward a smart professional nurse is caring for another of the younger patients.

On the wall is a large radiator for the hospital’s heating system, which has replaced the old stoves seen at Scutari.

According to Karel Myslbek’s In Hospital from 1910, the modern hospital wasn’t universal experience, though.

In one of his loosest and most sketchy works, Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky dazzles with white and light in At the Hospital from about 1910. The nurse is taking a patient’s pulse. Unusually, this hospital’s windows are open wide to the countryside beyond, and there is a large vase of flowers at the right.

Some hospitals remained more traditional in their appearance. John Singer Sargent’s oil painting of a Hospital at Granada in 1912 shows the sick scattered haphazardly outside the wards and clinics, apparently awaiting medical attention.

When he was a war artist, Sargent painted scenes in military medical facilities, including this watercolour of the Interior of a Hospital Tent in 1918. Although makeshift and temporary, this appears more orderly and modern than the hospital in Granada.

Before Sargent’s birth, his father had been an eye surgeon in Philadelphia, and the artist may have had more insight into the medical world and hospitals. Few artists, though, could match the experience of Henry Tonks, who trained and practised as a surgeon until he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art in London at the age of thirty.

When war broke out in 1914, Tonks returned to medicine, first in England, then the following year he served as a medical orderly on the Marne, in France, where he used his pastels to paint Saline Infusion: An incident in the British Red Cross Hospital, Arc-en-Barrois, 1915.

Saline intravenous infusions were still relatively novel at that time, and war surgery was busy re-learning many of the lessons of the past. Tonks preserved the anonymity of his models although his drawing is otherwise anatomically precise – as would be expected of a former teacher of anatomy. The doctor seated at the right is inserting the cannula for the infusion, a delicate task which would have been unfamiliar at the time, and an early step in the growth of technological medicine.

My final painting of a hospital is by one of the ‘Glasgow Girls’, who volunteered to work as a nurse in France during the First World War. Norah Neilson Gray’s The Scottish Women’s Hospital : In The Cloister of the Abbaye at Royaumont. Dr. Frances Ivens inspecting a French patient from 1920 shows a scene in an ancient abbey just outside Paris, where the artist was caring for some of the many casualties of that war.

These vaulted cloisters are older than any other hospital I have shown in these two articles, and some of its dress – the young woman in the centre foreground – the most contemporary. On the left are patients in modern hospital beds, being cared for by professional clinical staff, including nurses and doctors. At the right is a small group of military personnel, a visual link to the the cause of the patients’ injuries, which underlines this very modern trend in hospitals – of treating injuries inflicted by people on their fellow humans.

Plutarch’s fourth book of biographies of famous Greek and Roman figures contrasts the Greek statesman and general Themistocles, known as the saviour of the city-state of Athens and Greece as a whole, and a Roman counterpart in Camillus – both obscure unless you are a classicist. Although neither appears to have been painted by any of the more famous masters, you may be surprised at how often they have appeared in art.

Themistocles was of lowly birth, who came to receive ‘wisdom’ handed down from Solon. From an early age, he became driven by high ambition in the desire to make a great reputation for himself. He first came to attention when the Greeks had discovered huge deposits of silver at Laureium, and were debating how those riches should be divided. The popular proposal was to divide the money up among the citizens of Athens, but Themistocles alone proposed that income should be used to construct triremes for their ongoing war with Aegina.

His case won the day, the warships were built, and later secured victory for the Greeks against the mighty Xerxes, king of the Persians.

Themistocles remained a man of the people despite his great personal ambition. He took command of the Athenian forces, and started to prepare the triremes for battle against the Persian navy. He then met opposition at home, forcing him to lead the Athenian contribution to a large army, augmented by Spartans, to the vale of Tempe, but was unable to achieve much in that, and the Persians moved inexorably deeper into Greek territory.

The combined Greek fleet learned from early skirmishes, including the Battle of Artemisium, as Xerxes and his forces were steadily closing in. Themistocles had to be ingenious in solving the many problems which threatened to weaken his naval force, and manipulated ‘signs from the gods’ to his advantage in keeping his large fleet fully manned. He also faced dissension from Eurybiades, the leader of the Spartans who was in overall command, and had to use his powers of persuasion to keep their fleet united.

Themistocles resorted to deception and misinformation: a Persian prisoner of war, Sicinnus, was very loyal to Themistocles, and taught his children. Sicinnus was sent in secret to Xerxes to tell him that the Greek fleet was fragmented and trying to escape, and to encourage the Persians to block the strait between the island of Salamis and the Greek mainland, close to the city of Athens. This set a trap for Xerxes, who thought that he could achieve a quick naval victory.

At dawn, Xerxes was watching from a high place ashore, as Themistocles proceeded with the sacrifice of three prisoners of war. The Athenian general had determined that the best time for battle was when the sea breeze was fresh enough to send a swell rolling through the strait, which would compromise the higher vessels of the Persians.

Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s romantic fantasy of The Battle of Salamis from 1868 is wonderful swashbuckling stuff, but bears little resemblance to Plutarch’s account. Xerxes is shown only a little above the shoreline, at the upper left, and there are quite a few women who have somehow become embroiled, and partially unclad, in the battle.

The Greeks won the day, beating the Persians into retreat, thanks to the skill and tactics of Themistocles. This prevented the Persians from conquering the whole of Greece, allowing the Greeks to mount a later offensive. Themistocles earned widespread acclaim, even from Sparta.

Themistocles then convinced Athens that it needed to rebuild and strengthen its fortifications, and turned Piraeus into the city’s port. Unfortunately, the Spartans were moving to take control of the Greek alliance by excluding from it those city-states which had not fought against the Persians. Not only did Themistocles fall out with the Spartans, but he became unpopular at home too.

This came to a head when he was ostracised – votes cast against him on ostraca, fragments of pottery, were sufficient to result in banishment from Athens. Plutarch considers that this was not a penalty, but a way of dealing with inevitable jealousy which his success had aroused.

When Themistocles was in exile, Pausanias tried to involve him in a scheme of treachery against the Greeks, but Themistocles would not hear of it. Pausanias was then put to death, which led to Themistocles being charged with treason. The exiled general fled from city to city until he reached Epirus, where he took refuge with Admetus, King of the Molossians.

Admetus’ wife Phthia had suggested a way of supplication which would make it almost impossible for Admetus to refuse the Athenian’s request: Themistocles took the king’s son in his arms and threw himself down at his hearth.

Franz Caucig or Franc Kavčič’s painting of Themistocles Seeking Refuge with King Admetus from before 1801 is a reasonably faithful depiction of the scene, although Admetus and his court appear very modest, and Themistocles still young.

Pierre Joseph Célestin François’ Themistocles and King Admetus from 1832 seems more confused and confusing, with a young Themistocles standing before Admetus, who has his infant son on his lap, and his wife at his side.

Themistocles was forced to flee once again, and found it hard to keep ahead of his pursuers. This ultimately brought him to the court of the Persians, where Xerxes had died and his son Artaxerxes had succeeded to the throne. Themistocles had to resort to further cunning to gain entrance to the court: he travelled in one of the wagons normally used by the wives and concubines of the king.

Themistocles was granted an audience before Artaxerxes, an extremely unusual situation in which the leading adversary who had done much harm to the Persians sought their protection from his enemies. Artaxerxes was secretly overjoyed that he now had Themistocles. The king gave him a year’s grace, and time to learn the Persian language – a period during which he took part in royal hunts and entertainments.

I have been unable to find a painting of this remarkable audience before Artaxerxes, but there are two fine illustrations made for books from the early twentieth century.

William Rainey’s Themistocles at the Persian Court published in about 1900 in an illustrated summary of Plutarch’s Lives for “Boys and Girls” draws a sharp visual contrast between the Persians and Themistocles.

Walter Crane’s illustration from about 1910 dresses Themistocles in a warrior’s helmet and fine armour. This too was published in a re-telling of Greek history for “Boys and Girls”.

Themistocles survived an attempt on his life, and had further adventures with the Persians. But Persia was again under threat from the Greeks under Cimon, and Artaxerxes looked to Themistocles to come up with a solution to his Greek problem. Recognising the impossibility of the task, Themistocles took poison, and died in the city of Magnesia on the Maeander, in the far south-west of modern Turkey, when he was sixty-five, in 459 BCE. Other sources deny his suicide, and claim that he died there of natural causes.

In 1887, the suicide of Themistocles was set as the theme for the contest for the Prix de Rome. It was won by Henri-Camille Danger’s painting of Themistocles Drinking Poison, which recreates the moment of great drama as Themistocles, visibly aged, raises a goblet ready to drink to his death.

The ashes of Themistocles were interred in a grand tomb in Magnesia, although his reputation was not rehabilitated for a long time by the Greeks.

That interment is shown in Giuseppe Bossi’s painting of the Burial of the Ashes of Themistocles from 1806, with a dramatic if fanciful landscape behind.

Reference

Whole text in English translation at Penelope.

Early into the new year of 1912, Pierre Bonnard went to stay in Grasse, in le Midi, where he remained at the Villa Antoinette until April. In August, he holidayed with Marthe in Vernon, where they bought a house which they nicknamed Ma Roulotte (‘My Caravan’). This was built on piles driven into the bank of the River Seine. Being so close to Claude Monet at Giverny, Bonnard started visiting him regularly, something he kept up until Monet’s death in 1926.

Bonnard was offered admission to the Legion of Honour, but in common with other Nabis, refused.

The Terrace at Grasse (1912) is not only a riot of colour and vegetation, but features at least two cats strolling around the terrace, and a woman in a cloche hat, probably Marthe.

The title of Bonnard’s painting of The Capstan (1912) – in French Le Cabestan – seems to have eluded translation: it refers to the large human-powered windlass, around which at least three people are pushing one of its bars. This was used to haul boats from the sea up the steep foreshore to the right. I suspect that Bonnard painted this in le Midi during the first part of the year.

Bonnard’s Evening Landscape (1912) is less brash, although its countryside suggests that this too was a view in le Midi.

Back in the north of France, Bonnard’s colours were more pastoral, but still rich in this painting of the Blue Seine at Vernon (1912).

In his Summer in Normandy (1912), two women sit talking, one under a large sunshade.

In the years preceding the First World War, Bonnard painted many still lifes, of which a large proportion were floral, including this vase of Poppies (1912) seen on a verandah. His other motifs included traditional arrangements of fruit, and laid-out tables.

Bonnard’s style gives the impression of his work being painted very quickly, much of it in front of the motif. In reality, many of his works were the product of a more formal and sometimes quite protracted process, as revealed in these Figure Studies for ‘Le Printemps’ from about 1912. Although an avid photographer, at this time photography doesn’t appear to have played any significant role in his preparations for painting.

Nudes and intimate domestic scenes seem to have been less prominent in his work at this time. Some of those which he did paint perhaps bear the influence of Edgar Degas, as in this Woman in a Tub (Nude Crouching in a Tub) from 1912.

The following year (1913), Bonnard seems to have travelled less, working in Vernon and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, also to the north-west of Paris, and visiting Hamburg with Edouard Vuillard and other artists, at the invitation of the director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the city’s major art gallery.

For this and the next couple of years, Bonnard felt that he had reached a ‘crisis’ in his painting, in which he had lost sight of form in his pursuit of colour. He therefore resolved to return to drawing more, and to concentrate on shapes – which seem to have been at the centre of his attention in Woman in a Tub above.

Girl Playing with a Dog (1913) shows Vivette Terrasse, one of the daughters of Claude Terrasse, the artist’s brother-in-law. Bonnard makes this portrait true to her name, as she runs in the sunshine alongside the family’s dog.

Bonnard had not abandoned his mirror play, nor removed his easel from more private rooms in the house. The Dressing Table with a Bunch of Red and Yellow Flowers (1913) presents us with another visual riddle which we struggle to resolve.

Shown in the mirror above the dressing table is a reflection of what lies behind the artist. There’s a nearly-nude figure sat in the corner, and what appears to be a bath, or a bed on which there is a large black object, possibly a dog. As ever, the artist is nowhere to be seen, unless of course that headless figure is male rather than female.

In his Kneeling Woman (Nude with Tub) (1913), Bonnard appears to have got so close to his subject as to be inside the tub with her. Her position is again reminiscent of paintings by Degas.

The early months of 1914 saw Bonnard working again in Saint-Tropez, where he rented a house. In the summer, his paintings were included in a major exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, alongside modern masters such as Cézanne, Matisse, Renoir, Signac, and van Gogh.

This painting of a Lane at Vernonnet (c 1912-14) divides quite crisply into the hot dry yellows of the lane and walls, deep greens of the trees, and the intense blue of a cloudless sky in the middle of the day. A small child breaks the stillness of the lane, and they have the same whimsical caricature of his earlier children on the streets of Paris.

The Terrace (1914) is not that shown above, at Grasse, and apart from pale yellows, its colours are more subdued in the gathering twilight.

Bonnard seldom painted panoramic views, but Resting in the Garden from about 1914 is a fine example of an exception. At the left, Marthe reclines on a lounger, with a table decked with fresh fruit in front of her. On the opposite side of the table sits a large ginger and white cat, its eyes almost closed in the bright sunshine.

Beyond this small terrace, trees with rich foliage lead off to rolling countryside, with a white village church in the distance.

This year, Bonnard moved back from the dressing table and its mirror, for The Bathroom Mirror (1914). Marthe’s reflection is now but a small image within the image, showing her sat on the side of the bed, with a bedspread matching the red floral pattern of the drapes around the dressing table. Bonnard has worked his usual vanishing trick for himself, and a vertical mirror at the right adds a curiously dark reflection of the room.

My final selection for this period is Bonnard’s Nude in an Interior from about 1912-14, which refers back to his Man and Woman in an Interior from 1898, with such extreme cropping that only a thin sliver of Marthe is visible. Something else is in front of her – perhaps the artist, or a hanging dress – but so little of it is shown that it is unidentifiable.

The rest of the interior is a complex overlay of coloured rectangles, from cropped surfaces and objects. We feel as if we have caught a glimpse of something which we shouldn’t have, but remain fascinated in trying to imagine what we cannot see.

With the First World War in progress, life in France may have felt increasingly precarious. But for Bonnard, 1915 was to bring a great surprise as Marthe started to paint.

References

Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Cahn (2016) Pierre Bonnard, Painting Arcadia, Prestel. ISBN 978 3 791 35524 5.
Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon (2006) Bonnard Inédits, Éditions Cercle d’Art (in French). ISBN 978 2 702 20707 9.

Colour has fascinated people for millenia. The ancient Greeks speculated how many colours were primary, and how many formed fundamental categories. Although it was much later that Newton demonstrated how white light can be separated into components of different colour, Pythagoras and Aristotle both proposed systems of colour categories by which they thought all perceived colours could be classified.

Ordering colours in this way is not a mere theoretical exercise, although it has many aesthetic uses. Once ordered, colours can be identified systematically, artists and designers can better understand how to mix colours, and more. Ordering is also an important preliminary to gaining insight into colour spaces, now central to colour reproduction and colour science more generally.

During the Renaissance, the more theoretical approaches of classical times were eclipsed by the practical experience of painters mixing pigments. In their writings on the art and craft of painting, Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci proposed basic chromatic colours, typically of red, blue, green, and dull yellow, from which they held that all others could be mixed. Their conclusions, though, were limited by the pigments then available and lack of sound physical knowledge.

In 1615, the Flemish physicist Franciscus Aguilonius, also known as François d’Aguilon, (1567-1617) was the first to propose a colour line extending from white (albus) to black (niger), passing through the primaries of yellow (flavus), red (rubeus), and blue (caeruleus). Below that are secondary combinations of orange (aureus) and purple (purpureus), with green (viridis). This was published in his six volume treatise on optics, whose title page and illustrations were designed by Peter Paul Rubens.

This ordering, with slight variations, remains the basis for the layout of colours on palettes and in most paint ranges.

During the Age of Enlightenment, ideas about colour ordering advanced again, as investigators brought in the second and third dimensions in an effort to include all the colours observed in nature, or mixed by the painter.

In 1758, Tobias Mayer (1723-1762) proposed this colour triangle, recreated here by Jacques Lacombe in 1792, which is impressively modern. With the three RGB primaries forming its corners, it was the first expression of the painter’s acquired knowledge that all colours could be mixed from the three primaries plus black and white. Mayer envisaged assembling a series of triangles of diminishing size into a six-sided solid, with white and black as the polar vertices, and the three primaries forming its triangular equator, but never expressed this concept in a full model.

It was Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777) who first showed this explicitly in his diagram of a colour pyramid of 1772, in which the vertical axis represents lightness. It was also Lambert who first appreciated the practical value of colour order systems, pointing out their use for dyers to formulate colourants with reproducible effects.

It was an artist friend of the painter Caspar David Friedrich, Phillip Otto Runge (1777–1810), who advanced Lambert’s pyramid into a solid colour sphere, in 1810. The upper views here show the outer surface of this sphere from the white and black poles. The lower views show cross-sections through the sphere: on the left, cut through the equator, and on the right a vertical section through the poles.

Unfortunately this aesthetically pleasing model has its problems, as it includes some impossible colours, and denies that each colour can be uniquely identified by a single set of values for hue, lightness and chroma.

The nineteenth century brought renewed interest in colour ordering, driven particularly by the introduction of science and technology into traditional crafts such as dyeing and tapestry manufacture.

In about 1867, the artist Charles Blanc (1813-1882) used this colour star in his educational books for artists. It differs little from the colour line of Aguilonius above, but the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul (1786-1889) advanced a more sophisticated colour hemisphere. Chevreul was the director of the dyeing department of the royal tapestry manufacturer of Gobelins, who daily wrestled with problems trying to achieve consistent dyeing of textiles for use in tapestry-making.

The late nineteenth century saw major influence of the German physicist and physiologist Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894). Von Helmholtz awakened interest in the psycho- and neuro-physiology of colour, and the importance of perception as well as physics. It was actually one of von Helmholtz’s scientific adversaries, Ewald Hering (1834-1918), who brought the most important and immediate improvements in colour ordering, by applying principles of colour perception.

By the early twentieth century, many other colour orderings had been proposed, on the basis of a wide variety of theories.

Among them was the Colour Harmony Manual of the German Nobel Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). Having won his Nobel Prize, he decided to devote his remaining career to projects which interested him, including colour order. In 1905, he lectured in the USA on colour, and met Munsell. But the two were on different courses, and of little influence over one another. When Ostwald started to publish his proposals in a series of volumes from 1918, they formed yet another system for ordering colour.

In the next and concluding article, I will look in detail at Munsell’s contribution and system, in commemoration of the centenary of his death.

Reference

Rolf G Kuehni and Andreas Schwarz (2008) Color Ordered, A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 19 518968 1.

By the start of the twentieth century, several systems had been proposed for ordering and specifying colour, but none had won over many users. It was the painter and art teacher Albert Henry Munsell who proposed a novel colour system which became, and remains, popular in art, design, and manufacture. Munsell died a century ago today, on 28 June 1918, and this article commemorates his achievement, and explains a little of his system.

Munsell was born in Boston, MA, and graduated from the Massachusetts Normal School of Art. During his studies, he was inspired by Ogden Nicholas Rood’s book Modern Chromatics, and this drove his lasting interest in colour and systems for measuring and ordering it. His first experiment with colour took place in 1879, when he painted ordered colours on a pyramid and spun it on a string, to observe the colours mixing optically.

He travelled to Paris to study in the early 1880s, and on his return was appointed a lecturer at his alma mater, where he developed his interest in colour education. In 1898, he constructed a colour sphere, on which he painted what he termed ‘balanced colours’: when optically mixed by spinning the sphere, those different colours became the same neutral grey. This was the starting point for his colour ordering system.

Munsell looked at other ordering systems, concluding that Hering’s couldn’t be correct; he augmented it with a fifth basic colour for the hue scale, and realised that a painted sphere would be too constrained by the properties of the pigments then available. He extended the range of ordering models which he had examined to include those of Lambert, Runge, and others (illustrated in the previous article).

The lightness scale was a particular problem for Munsell, with its choice between logarithmic or square root scaling from the available evidence. He opted for painter’s terminology for this, calling it value. The third attribute, the intensity of colour, he named chroma, in 1901, a usage which has since become general.

Munsell originally wanted to map his colour ordering in terms of slices of constant value (lightness) through a colour solid, but in 1902 he came up with the idea of a colour ‘tree’ formed using slices of constant hue, which became the basis for his first colour atlas.

The final decision which he had to make was the order in which to present his colours. His initial plan had been to arrange them into complementary colours, but he changed that to perceptual uniformity in 1904, and the following year published the first edition of A Color Notation. That was followed in 1907 by the first Color Atlas of the Color-Solid, which was enlarged and renamed the Munsell Book of Color in 1929, just over a decade after his death.

The Munsell Colour Wheel is at the heart of the system, with basic hues red (R), yellow (Y), green (G), blue (B), and purple (P). Intermediates are inserted between those as shown.

Here is an example set of Munsell hues, all shown at the same values of 6, and chromas of 6.

Munsell colour tables are here assembled for the two hues 5PB (purple-blue) and 5Y (yellow), which are diametrically opposed on the colour wheel, thus deemed complementary. The vertical scale shows values from 0 (black) to 10 (white), and chromas vary horizontally from 0 (grey) in the centre, to 12 (pure colour) at left and right. Not all colours can be represented here, of course.

Assembling the three coordinates together results in this diagram. This shows the circle of ten hues, which are displayed with values of 5 and chromas of 6. The vertical value scale ranging from 0 to 10 is shown in neutral colours, from black to white. A wedge of constant 5PB hue is then shown at a fixed value of 5, the chromas ranging from 0 (grey) to 12 (pure colour).

Munsell made several important advances in his first colour ordering. He broke from most earlier orderings in not putting colours of the highest chroma on the same horizontal plane, and making the vertical axis that of value (lightness). In defining chroma, he established that colours of constant hue and value can vary. These remain fundamental to all modern colour ordering systems.

His system was extensively revised in the light of the then-novel CIE colour system, in 1943. As a result of this, the Munsell Color Company, which Munsell had founded shortly before his death, issued revisions known as the Munsell Renotations. Although not perfect, the Munsell Colour System remains one of the most widely-used colour ordering schemes.

Munsell was also an important influence in the education of children about colour, and pioneered the provision of high fidelity colour chips to artists and designers.

Contemporary designers are also very familiar with the Pantone System of swatches of standardised colours, as shown here, which have become standards in several sectors such as process colour printing. Pantone may have been inspired by the Munsell system, but is not recognised as a colour ordering system, unlike our inheritance from Albert Henry Munsell.

Reference

Rolf G Kuehni and Andreas Schwarz (2008) Color Ordered, A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 19 518968 1.

Like people, some pigments are brash and flashy, and live in the limelight. Others, like the Green Earths, live quiet, purposeful lives away from publicity. This doesn’t make them any less important, or less worthy of attention.

As with other ‘earth’ colours, the Green Earths are taken from the earth as a clay mineral – celadonite and glauconite to be specific. This occurs in abundance near Verona in Italy, and on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, so was used extensively by Roman artists in classical times. Although a useful colour, the Green Earths lack the intensity of most other greens, but were in general use during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Several smaller examples of painted surfaces, particularly from walls, have confirmed the use of Green Earths by classical Roman artists. They have also been found in early paintings from North America and the Indian sub-continent, where there are local sources of the clay. They were used in Japanese art, but so far have not been found in Chinese paintings.

In Europe, most of the oldest examples of the use of Green Earths in substantial artworks are in frescoes, such as those in Chapelle des Moines, Berzé-la-Ville, France, which date from the 1100s. Green is one of the limited range of colours used in these depictions of the martyrdom of saints.

Although the richness of the green robes in Spinello Aretino’s Virgin Enthroned with Angels from about 1380 relies on Malachite Green, the paint layer includes Green Earths too.

Green Earths have also been found in Friedrich Herlin’s extensive multi-panelled altarpiece in the Church of St Jakob, in Rothenburg, believed to have been made between 1462-65. In this panel, they appear to have formed the basis of several green garments.

Michelangelo’s unfinished The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels, popularly known as The Manchester Madonna, from about 1497, shows how an underpainting of Green Earths, visible at the left, was used to achieve realistic flesh tones. Later, painters came to prefer verdigris for this, but Green Earths appear to have worked particularly well in egg tempera, as in this case.

Green Earths were popular among the early landscape painters too, including Saloman van Ruysdael, and his less well-known contemporary Jan Willemsz Lapp, who painted this Italianate Landscape with Shepherds in around 1640. Again, they will probably have been used extensively in his underpainting, with other colours being used to tint and glaze over them.

Slightly later in the seventeenth century, Jan Victors provides a fine example of the natural colour of Green Earths in The Greengrocer at the Sign of ‘De Buyskool’ of 1654. Its rather dull bluish-greens are obvious in the clothing of the children, and in most of the fruit and vegetables shown in the detail below.

At least three of Vermeer’s paintings have been found to include Green Earths in their paint layers, including The Concert from about 1663-66. Here I suspect that it is the basis for the woman singer’s jacket, at least. Tragically, on 18 March 1990 this and a dozen other works were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA, and it remains unrecovered.

By about 1700, the Green Earths had become a little too dull, and they went quietly into retirement, replaced by Verdigris and Malachite, then by the novel Prussian Green mixed from Prussian Blue and a yellow.

As the Green Earths have virtues such as lightfastness and little in the way of vices, they haven’t entirely disappeared from the palette, though. You can still buy them, under the slightly more glamorous name of Terre Verte, which means just the same. When traditional green underpainting of flesh is revived, as it is at present, Green Earths reappear on palettes.

Reference

Carol A Grissom (1986) Artists’ Pigments, vol 1, ed Robert L Feller, Archetype. ISBN 978 1 904982 74 6.

Courts, where citizens are tried for alleged crimes or pursue grievances against others, are as ancient as rulers. Their name indicates how they were once a hearing in front of a monarch or their representative. When the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome adopted more democratic constitutions, judges, magistrates, and juries were substituted for the ruler.

Prior to the nineteenth century, courts commonly featured in two groups of paintings: those involved in key events in the Bible, most notably the trial of Jesus Christ, and those featured in major history narratives.

The story given by Herodotus about the corruption of Sisamnes, known as the Judgement of Cambyses, is today very obscure. However, in 1489 it formed the basis for two paintings by Gerard David which are now viewed as a diptych.

Sisamnes was a notoriously corrupt judge under the rule of King Cambyses II of Persia, and accepted a bribe in return for delivering an unjust verdict.

In the left panel, Sisamnes is being arrested by the king and his men, as the judge sits in his official chair. Hand gestures indicate the bribery which had been at the root of Sisamnes’ crime.

King Cambyses sentences Sisamnes to be flayed alive, as shown in the foreground. In the upper right, David uses multiplex narrative to show the judge’s skin then covering the official chair, as a reminder to all who sit in judgement of the fate that awaits them should they ever become corrupt or unfair.

David’s gruesome pair of paintings were a pointed reminder to the authorities in Bruges of the importance of an independent judiciary, and the penalty for any judge who was tempted by bribery or any other form of influence – cautions which have contemporary value even now.

The other much better-known story of judgement is that of King Solomon, told in the Old Testament, and in a succession of marvellous paintings since the Renaissance. Two women each claimed to be the mother of the same healthy baby, alleging that the other was the mother of a dead child. Solomon’s wise judgement was to threaten to cut the living baby in two, which elicited the correct protective response from the real mother of that child.

Nicolas Poussin’s famous painting of 1649 uses a classical composition, the two disputing women and their actions preventing it from becoming too symmetrical. Timed slightly before the raising of the sword, the master of painted narrative depicts the body language with great clarity. Solomon’s hands indicate his role as the arbiter, in showing a fair balance between the two sides.

The true mother, on the left, holds her left hand up to tell the soldier to stop following the King’s instructions and spare the infant. Her right hand is extended towards the false mother, indicating that she has asked for the baby to go to her rather than die. The false mother points accusingly at the child, her expression full of hatred. Hands are also raised in the group at the right, perhaps indicating their reactions to Solomon’s judgement.

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a growing interest in contemporary courts, and well-publicised trials, made them a popular theme in paintings. As very few people ever see inside a courtroom, one of the first tasks of artists was to reveal what they looked like – a task which continues even today with illustrations in newspapers and on television.

Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin’s painting of The Old Bailey, Known Also as the Central Criminal Court from 1808, here seen in an aquatint, is a good topographic view of this most famous English court. The presiding judge sits under a Damoclean sword of justice at the left, and the twelve men of the jury are to the right of centre. At the far right stands the accused, in front of whom is a large collection of witnesses ready to testify.

That was, and remains, an exceptional court. More typical of the type of court which ordinary citizens might encounter is Adolph Tidemand’s Scene before a Magistrate in the Country (before 1858), seen here in a lithograph. Set somewhere in rural Norway, the bench of magistrates sits at the right in more cramped and modest surroundings. Its justice may have been rougher, but the experience was far less daunting, and less overwhelmed by lawyers.

In some jurisdictions, the rise of lawyers to prominence in life during the nineteenth century was not welcomed.

For the satirical eye of Honoré Daumier, Three Lawyers (1855-57) meeting was the gathering of an elite who were out to help themselves, rather than the unfortunate people that they purported to represent. Their heads tipped back and clutching thick bundles of papers, Daumier had less respect of them than they had for themselves.

Daumier’s Before the Hearing from 1860-65 shows them in a tight cabal before entering court.

In his undated Two Lawyers Conversing, you can be sure that they are up to no good, except for themselves.

Other artists took a more conventional and less critical view.

Abraham Solomon’s wonderful pair of paintings is actually set just outside the court. In the first, the father and family of the accused are seen Waiting for the Verdict (1859) at the end of a trial. The court appears in cameo up to the right, in that strange state of suspended animation as it awaits the decision.

Solomon’s pendant shows the elation when the verdict of Not Guilty (1859) is returned. The man, now freed from the dock, is embraced by his wife, who is kneeling in supplication, as their young child reaches out to touch father’s face. His father, eyes damp with tears of relief, is thanking their barrister earnestly.

In place of the view of the distant court, which is being symbolically dismissed as the barrister closes a door at the right edge, the left side of the painting now leads out to the warm light of the early dusk in the outside world, indicating freedom.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Phryne before the Areopagus from 1861 harks back to a classical legend of an unusual court case in Athens.

Phryne was a highly successful and very rich courtesan (hetaira) in ancient Greece who was brought to trial for the serious crime of impiety. When it seemed inevitable that she would be found guilty, one of her lovers, the orator Hypereides, took on her defence. A key part of that was to unveil her naked in front of the court, in an attempt to surprise its members, impress them with the beauty of her body, and arouse a sense of pity. The legend claims that this ploy worked perfectly.

Gérôme shows a whole textbook of responses to surprise among the members of the court, although Phryne herself is covering not her body, but her eyes; each of the men in the court, of course, is looking straight at her. At the time that Gérôme painted this, France was well into its Second Empire, when Napoleon III had removed the gag from the French press, and was moving from his early authoritarian regime towards the more liberal. The legend of Phryne was a convenient vehicle for Gérôme to express his political opinion, and her nakedness suggests her role is that of Truth.

Coverage of prominent court cases came to dominate reporting in the press throughout Europe and North America. Several cases became so popular that they moved artists to depict them, and one, the Dreyfus Affair in France, had lasting influence on that nation’s history.

Frederick Sargent’s painting of The Tichborne Trial (1873-1899) shows one of the most prominent cases in England. In 1854, Roger Tichborne, heir to a title and family riches, was presumed to have died in a shipwreck. The following year, an Australian butcher came forward with the claim that he was that heir, which was tested in a civil court case, heard between 1871-72.

The outcome of that rejected the claim, and the Australian butcher then underwent criminal prosecution for perjury, in one of the longest criminal cases heard in an English court, during 188 days between 1872-73. Sargent’s painting shows that case in progress, with the accused sitting just below the centre and looking straight ahead of him. Standing to the right of him is his barrister, Edward Kenealy, with ‘mutton chop’ whiskers.

The Australian butcher was convicted, sentenced to fourteen years in prison, and eventually died destitute in 1898. His barrister’s career was also finished, and he was subsequently disbarred. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for his own political party in 1875, but died shortly after losing that seat in 1880.

The melodrama of legal process is shown in William Frederick Yeames’ ‘problem picture’ Defendant and Counsel from 1895. An affluent married woman wearing an expensive fur coat sits with a popular newspaper open in front of her, as a team of three barristers and their clerk look at her intensely, presumably waiting for her to speak.

As she is the defendant, the viewer is encouraged to speculate what she is defending: a divorce claim, or a criminal charge? As with Yeames’ earlier And when did you last see your Father? and Gérôme’s Phryne before the Areopagus, this may be another exploration of truth and its problems.

Ferdinand Brütt’s Before the Judges from 1903 shows the end of an era in the courtroom, as an official lights the candles in its chandelier, and its three judges sit hearing the case being put to them.

In the next and concluding article, I will look at the remarkable court paintings of Jean-Louis Forain, and the work of the modern court artist.

In the first article in this series, I showed how, during the nineteenth century, paintings of courts of law came to depict those of the day, and to tell stories of contemporary cases. The early years of the twentieth century brought the most prolific painter of courtroom scenes, and led to the growth of a relatively new profession, the courtroom artist.

Jean-Louis Forain was a successful painter, caricaturist and political satirist in the late nineteenth century, who had long admired the work of Honoré Daumier (shown in the previous article). When Forain turned his attention to justice and the law after about 1902, he went beyond Daumier’s biting images of lawyers, entering the courtroom itself.

Forain’s The Court from about 1902-03 is one of the first of his series of courtroom views, and most neutral in its approach. In the foreground, a lawyer discusses the case with a woman, who is bent forward to hear his whispering. In the distance the court appears detached, perhaps disinterested, the judges sat behind large piles of papers, under a large painting of the crucifixion. This work was bought from the artist by Edgar Degas.

By the time that Forain painted this Trial Scene from 1904, his satire had come to the surface. The court here is so completely disinterested in the case before it that its judge is incapable of remaining awake, and the jurors at the left are hardly attentive either.

In The Petition (1906), a young woman is in search of justice, perhaps a divorce, in an alien environment in which her petition is presented by lawyers, rather than being allowed to engage herself.

A much younger woman stands out in Forain’s Scene at the Tribunal (1906), as a lawyer turns and scowls disapprovingly at her.

Forain’s caustic satire continues in Counsel and Accused (1908), where a lawyer inhabiting a different world is shuffling through disordered papers, while his client and her children sit waiting in the office.

Two women are shown in his Scene of the Tribunal from 1910, a lawyer talking to them as the court is oblivious to their presence.

Legal Assistance (c 1900-12) shows an ordinary family man, cradling his young child in his arms as he presents a paper to a barrister or judge (wearing his short cylindrical hat). This painting was bought by Henri Rouart, an industrialist who was a good patron of the arts, as well as a fine amateur painter himself.

In Forain’s undated Court Scene, Exhibits, the material evidence at a trial is being presented, presumably to one of the women giving evidence.

Sadly only available in this monochrome image, Forain’s undated painting of Recess of the Court is his most scathing. The judge leans back, fast asleep, as chaos takes hold in the court. Laywers are talking amongst themselves, and furniture is being moved around. Where is justice?

Courts in some jurisdictions have long been very reticent about allowing parties, judges, or juries to be drawn, painted or photographed. Although American practice has long allowed artists as reporters, in 1925 Britain made it illegal to draw inside a courtroom during a trial. The thirst for images for publication has since been satisfied by artists who work entirely from memory.

In some cases, producing drawings and paintings of court proceedings may be quite a mechanical act, and more appropriately considered as illustration than fine art (although I find it very hard to make clear distinction, as if that serves any useful purpose).

Arnold Mesches’ Courtroom sketch of the US Navy’s court of inquiry about USS Pueblo’s capture by North Korea from 1969 is perhaps more of an illustrative record of a court in session, sketched from a square and conventional position. But other artists and cases are quite different.

Robert Clark Templeton’s Sketch of an Overview of the Courtroom from 1971 tackles several classical problems in visual art. The courtroom is quite large, with the protagonists spread around the room. The judge at the far right is quite distant, and elevated from, the jurors, who spread across the middle of the view, almost to the left edge. But the most important individual is the accused, who is seen in profile just below the right end of the jury.

Templeton was limited in his choice of media too. Few courts would have even considered him using watercolours, for example, and for this case he chose modern and unobtrusive oil pastels. This sketch has been executed briskly, with very effective use of gestures and marks, such as the water jug on the table in front of the accused, and the windows behind the jury.

Templeton’s Drawing of an Overview of the Courtroom (1971) is more vivid with its use of colour, but is dominated by the backs of several heads.

When Templeton projected himself forward for this Drawing of Judge, Jurors and others (1971), he moved from general scene-setting to the drama of the proceedings. He has been a little creative in the composition, but captures the interaction between judge and jury very well.

This is the image that most of the press wanted, though: a Drawing for CBS Evening News of Bobby G. Seale and others (1971) showing the head and shoulders of the accused, who co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and was here on trial in New Haven, CT, for the murder of Alex Rackley. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and the case was declared a mistrial.

Another fine example of courtroom art is Elizabeth Williams’ portrait of Faisal Shahzad, The “Times Square Bomber” Sentencing, Manhattan Federal Court: October 5, 2010 (2010). Shahzad had pleaded guilty to five counts of federal terrorism-related crimes committed when he planted a car bomb in Times Square, New York, on 5 May 2010, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Still photography during trials has also been extremely controversial, but during the twenty-first century, many jurisdictions have opened their courtrooms to television, following the audience success of the O J Simpson murder trial in 1995.

What happens in our courtrooms continues to fascinate us, although no longer through their art.

Just as the Athenian statesman and general Themistocles had saved his home city, and Greece as a whole, from being conquered by Xerxes and his Persians, so Marcus Furius Camillus saved Rome from annihilation by the Gauls.

Plutarch starts his biography of Camillus by remarking that his subject attained great fame without ever serving as one of Rome’s consuls. Instead, he was five time made its dictator, and celebrated four triumphs. He lived in troubled times, when military tribunes ran Rome.

Camillus first came to prominence during a battle with the Aequians and Volscians, when he dashed out on his horse in front of the Roman army, engaged the enemy despite a wound in his thigh, and put them to flight. He was rewarded with the office of censor, from which he persuaded single Roman men to marry some of the city’s many war widows.

One of the most costly campaigns had been the siege of the Tuscan city of Veii, which at the time was a match for Rome itself. That city was well fortified, and the Roman army had been forced to maintain the siege year-round, instead of spending the winters back in Rome.

In the tenth year of the war against Veii, Camillus was made dictator, the sole ruler, of Rome by its Senate. Camillus made a vow that, should Rome succeed in the war, he would celebrate with games, and dedicate a temple to the goddess Mater Matuta (later equivalent to Aurora), whose temple had been destroyed in 506 BCE.

Most of the paintings in this article are taken from the superb frescoes made by Francesco de’ Rossi (also known as Francesco Salviati) in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, between about 1543-45. In Camillus Receives the Charge of a Dictator, he shows a young bearded Camillus being made the ruler of Rome, to the amazement of his young wife.

When Camillus took command of the siege, he had mines dug while distracting the enemy defending their walls against conventional attacks. This allowed the underground tunnels to reach into the heart of Veii, from where the Romans took the city by storm. Veii was sacked, the war ended, and Camillus returned to Rome with an image of the goddess Juno. He there undertook his first triumph, in which his chariot was drawn by four white horses through the city – a unique event which the citizens found offensive, as only Jupiter was entitled to do that.

De’ Rossi’s frescoes show this as the Triumph of Furius Camillus. The young general rides high on a podium placed inside the chariot, at the left. Four white horses draw this, and the whole of Rome has come out to watch. At the right is the statue of the goddess Juno, with her trademark peacocks on its roof. There is even a suit of armour being paraded, in honour of the first such triumph.

Camillus also became unpopular because he opposed half of Rome being moved to populate Veii, something the poor felt would be to their advantage. Most of all, though, the Romans objected to Camillus allowing his soldiers full enjoyment of the spoils of Veii, rather than giving a tenth to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Camillus claimed that he had forgotten that he had vowed to give that share to the temple.

These matters were overtaken by events, when Camillus was one of six to be appointed to rule Rome as a military tribune, and was immediately called to lead the army in an invasion of the territory of the Faliscans, and to lay siege to the city of Falerii.

Being another well-fortified city, life went on as normal in Falerii during the siege. Its citizens employed one teacher for its boys, and he wanted to betray the city using his pupils. Each day, the teacher led his school further and further out from its city walls, until he reached the Roman forces. He then handed the children over to the enemy, and demanded to see Camillus.

The Roman commander was not swayed by this, and condemned the teacher’s action. Camillus said that a great general wages war using his own valour, not on the baseness of other men. He had the teacher stripped and his hands tied, then gave the boys rods with which to beat him back into the city. This action caused the citizens to sue for peace, and the Faliscans made an alliance with Rome.

This short story inspired Nicolas Poussin to paint Camillus Delivers the Schoolmaster of Falerii to His Pupils in 1637. The teacher grimaces at the right, as his pupils get their own back by beating him, for once. In the background is the fortified city of Falerii, high on a hill and not to be taken by force easily.

In about 1764-66, Domenico Corvi made this copy, after Poussin, of Camillus and the Schoolmaster of Falerii. Although less grand than Poussin’s surviving version above, the teacher is still getting a sound beating from his younger pupils.

Unfortunately, when the general and his army returned to Rome, his success made him even less popular, as the soldiers had not won any booty. Camillus also lost his two sons to sickness, and was overcome by his grief. He was then accused of the theft of bronze doors from Tuscan booty, and voluntarily went into exile.

It was then that the Gauls laid siege to the Tuscan city of Clusium, whose leaders asked the Romans for their assistance. Rome sent envoys to speak to the Gauls, but quickly realised that there was no coming to terms with them. The Roman envoys slipped into Clusium, where they encouraged the Tuscans to go out and fight the Gauls; one of those envoys led by example, and was recognised by the Gauls, who decided to attack Rome instead.

Instead of the Romans condemning the actions of their envoy, the people appointed him and his brothers to the military tribune, which strengthened the resolve of the Gauls to attack and defeat Rome.

In the absence of Camillus, the Roman army lacked good leadership, and was surprised by the Gaulish army when they were eleven miles from the city of Rome. The Gauls overwhelmed the Romans, who fled back to Rome or the city of Veii. The Gauls were taken aback at their success, so didn’t press on to take Rome, which had been abandoned by most of its citizens.

Three days after their rout of the Roman army, the Gauls entered the city of Rome, occupied it, and put a guard around its Capitol, which remained in the hands of Romans. Although this was peaceful at first, a Gaul and a Roman clashed, leading to overreaction by the Gauls, who then killed the remaining Romans, sacked and plundered the city.

Hearing of this, Camillus raised forces from Ardea, and with them attacked a Gaulish camp at night, when most of its troops were drunk and asleep. Surviving Romans rallied to the cause, but Camillus would not assume leadership of a reconstituted Roman army without the agreement of the Romans still defending the Capitol. Those remaining there eagerly agreed, and Camillus was again appointed dictator and military commander.

One night, the Gauls attempted an assault on the Capitol, and succeeded in scaling its cliffs. However, they were detected by the sacred geese of the temple of Juno, and the Gauls were repelled. Now the tide turned against those occupiers, who were effectively under siege by the threat of Camillus and his growing army. They were cut off from supplies of food obtained by foraging outside the city, the Gauls started suffering from outbreaks of disease, and were unable to cope with the heat of the late summer.

Conditions drove the Romans besieged in the Capitol to make peace with the Gauls besieged in the rest of the city. Rome was to pay the Gauls a thousand pounds of gold, but even there the Gauls cheated the Romans and tampered with the scales. While this was going on, Camillus entered Rome as its appointed leader, and told the Gauls to quit without any gold, as Rome delivered its city with iron instead.

De’ Rossi shows this in composite form in his fresco of the Attack on the Gauls who Sacked Rome. In the foreground, the Gauls and Romans are still arguing about the weight of gold, as Camillus’ forces start to take possession of the ruins of what had been Rome.

The Gauls withdrew with Camillus and his army in hot pursuit, killing and routing the Gauls until they were well clear of Rome. After seven months of occupation, the city was back in the hands of the Romans.

Camillus then oversaw the rebuilding. That was controversial at first, but eventually became so hasty that the city was rebuilt with confused and narrow streets, forming a maze of houses.

Camillus Inaugurates a Temple in de’ Rossi’s series of frescoes may refer to this time, or to the earlier vow to dedicate a temple to Mater Matuta.

Peace did not last long, though, and Latins, Tuscans, and other tribes laid siege to the city of Sutrium, an ally of Rome.

Camillus was appointed dictator a third time. He manoeuvred his army into a position so that it surrounded the enemy, who decided to fence themselves in behind a wooden palisade and await the arrival of reinforcements. Camillus attacked with fire, using the strong wind which blew to fan the flames and force the enemy out.

Camillus then invaded the enemy’s territory, and drove on towards the city of Sutrium, only to discover that its people had already surrendered and been forced to abandon it as refugees. The Roman commander attacked the occupied city, and recaptured it. This took Camillus back to his third triumph in Rome.

The Inhabitants of Sutrium Supplicate to Camillus to Free them from Tyranny is another of de’ Rossi’s frescoes, here showing some of the refugees from the city pleading with Camillus to recapture their city.

Once again, Camillus became unpopular because of jealousy. The people became seditious, under the leadership of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who had heroically defeated the Gauls when they had attacked the Capitol. He was arrested, and his trial started on the Capitol, from where he could arouse the emotions of his judges. Camillus moved the court outside the city, out of sight of the Capitol, and he was convicted and hurled from the Tarpeian Rock for his crime.

By now, Camillus was growing old, and refused appointment to the military tribune for a sixth time. But the people refused to let him quit, claiming that he didn’t need to physically lead the army into battle any more. He therefore appointed a field commander, who was such a disaster that the army was put to flight. Camillus then took charge, turned the fleeing soldiers around, and crushed their enemy. The following day, he led the army on to recapture the Roman city of Satricum, which had been taken by the Tuscans.

De’ Rossi may be referring to this episode in his fresco of Camillus Called to Battle. The general is noticeably older here, his beard fully white. At the left, he is helped into his clothes by a servant, then rides off in his armour at the right. Behind them are retreating Romans, travelling in the opposite direction – something that Camillus is just about to reverse.

On his return to Rome, the city was in turmoil again, and he was made dictator for the fourth time, against the wishes of the people, and against his own desire. As the crisis deepened, Camillus could see that he could not solve it, so he withdrew to his house, claimed to be sick, and finally resigned his office.

News reached Rome that the Gauls were again on the march, and heading for Rome. Camillus was made dictator for a fifth time, and prepared his army by having helmets forged for them, to protect against the slashing blows that were commonly used by Gaulish soldiers. The Romans also added bronze edging to the wooden shields, and Camillus trained them to use their javelins like spears.

Camillus led his soldiers out and caught the Gauls unawares when they were gorged with food and drink. When the Gauls tried to fight back, they found that their swords quickly blunted against the Romans’ helmets, and the javelins caught the Gauls defenceless. The Romans went on to capture Velitrae in this, the last campaign of Camillus’ long career.

His final public act was to see one consul chosen by the patricians, and the other from the plebeians, for the first time. The following year, Rome suffered an epidemic which killed many of its citizens, including Camillus.

Plutarch’s comparison between Themistocles and Camillus has not survived; given their long and heroic careers, maybe none is necessary.

Reference

Whole text in English translation at Penelope.

During 1915, Pierre Bonnard divided his time between working in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and being in Vernon (mainly, perhaps, at his house in Vernonnet – the two places being almost synonymous). The main event of the year was Marthe starting to paint; with Bonnard’s encouragement, and his introduction of her to the painter Louise Hervieu, she took this quite seriously, signing herself as Marthe Solange.

The Garden at Vernonnet (1915) is a colourful dusk view of the wild flowers growing there in what was probably the early summer.

In Summer Sky (Ma Roulotte, Vernonnet) (1915), Bonnard gives a clear view of their retreat, nicknamed Ma Roulotte (‘my caravan’), which was built on piles on the bank of the river Seine.

Bonnard’s Earthly Paradise from about 1915 is a pastoral fantasy of a grand old tree which has grown out like a huge cabbage. Perched on a branch is a brilliant red and green bird, looking as if it has come from the Amazon rather than northern France. Under its canopy are two nudes: one on the left has long golden hair and appears to be Eve. She is about to pick an apple, and a serpent-like creature is watching her. The woman on the right, who more closely resembles Marthe, is lying on her right side, her head propped against her right arm, apparently asleep.

Three of his Five Characters (c 1915) are prominent as they stand outside a building. The right shoulder of the man at the left seems to merge with or overlap the right shoulder of the woman with a cloche hat. At the left edge is a third woman, who fades into the wall behind, and may be Marthe. At the lower right is a fifth face, almost cropped off the canvas. The man appears to be holding out a woman’s blue handbag, just in front of the woman wearing a broad-rimmed blue hat.

Bonnard’s domestic scenes were less intimate this year. In The Provençal Carafe, Marthe Bonnard and Her Dog Ubu (1915), Marthe is sat at the table with an empty plate in front of her. The carafe of the title is a pale khaki and green colour, and there is an orange and two bananas in a shallow bowl.

I have previously remarked about the preparatory work which Bonnard made for these apparently spontaneous paintings. In the case of his Le Café (1915), London’s Tate Gallery has no less than three sketches made in graphite for a single resulting painting.

This pencil sketch for Le Café (Coffee) from 1915 shows Marthe sat at the table, with her dog Ubu alongside her, as she drinks coffee there. This appears to have been made by the artist from a standing position, on the opposite side of the table from Marthe. The tabletop takes the lion’s share of the view, and Bonnard has already given the cloth its rectangular pattern.

The finished painting of Le Café (Coffee) (1915) adds a second woman, whose head has been cropped off the top of the painting; closer examination of the painting has shown that she was added at a later date, when Bonnard moved the empty chair closer to Marthe. The woman in blue is reaching towards a glass on the table near Marthe’s left elbow.

Behind them is a tantalising glimpse of a large and colourful mural. The upright chair behind the dog casts a pale blue shadow on the structures beyond.

In his Nude before the Mirror (Bather) of about 1915, Bonnard inverts his mirror play with a small mirror mounted at head height. Instead of using the reflection as a picture within the picture, to reveal figures behind the position of the painter, the artist is here set well back and his model is close to the mirror, so that it frames her face. This transforms the painting by giving the figure a face, an identity, and a character, rather than just the expanse of flesh of her back.

In the summer of 1916, Bonnard holidayed at Saint-Nectaire, a small village in the Auvergne famous for its Brie-like soft cheese. He visited Switzerland in November, where the Hahnlosers of Winterthur were becoming collectors of his work, and became good friends.

Bonnard met Renée Monchaty, a friend of Marthe’s, and fell deeply in love with her; she modelled for several of his paintings, and threw Marthe into rages of jealousy on occasion. He also had an affair with Lucienne Dupuy de Frenelle, the wife of a doctor, who is the model for several other of his works. In October, the Bonnards moved to Auteuil in western Paris.

Now, even in northern France, Bonnard’s landscapes were full of vibrant colour, as seen in this view of a Boat on the Banks of the Seine (c 1916).

Garden at Vernon; Landscape by the Seine (c 1916) shows another view of the river during the early summer, the water surface rich with red-brown and purple, as well as deep blues.

The identity of Bonnard’s model in his Girl in Blue, with a Rose (c 1916) is unclear: she is too dark for Renée Monchaty, and doesn’t match the appearance of the black-haired Lucienne Dupuy de Frenelle either.

The Mantlepiece (1916) is a complex piece of mirror play. Bonnard has viewed this from an unusually low position, level with the surface of the mantlepiece and looking slightly up. Behind him is his nude model, who appears slightly odd as she is both lit and viewed from below. On the wall behind them is a very long painting of a reclining nude (which certainly doesn’t look like one of Bonnard’s works), below which is a dressing table mirror.

In this case, Bonnard appears to have used the reflections to bring together quite disjoint images into a single image.

From January to April 1917, Bonnard worked at Cannes, where he went sailing in Paul Signac’s yacht, the Sinbad. He was starting to think seriously of moving to le Midi to live.

When Pierre Bonnard visited le Midi, one of his ports of call was to the sculptor and artist Aristide Maillol, who had been a longstanding and very supportive friend to him. Maillol lived and worked in the coastal village of Banyuls-sur-Mer, at the far south-western end of the French coast, almost in Spain.

Hommage to Maillol, painted in 1917, is Bonnard’s tribute to his friend, although not on his death (Maillol died three years before Bonnard, in 1944). It naturally features sculpture, which I suspect is one of Maillol’s.

Teatime (1917) shows what appears to be a commonplace social event, the gathering of five women to talk together over afternoon tea. Given Bonnard’s relationships with some of them, you have to wonder what they are thinking. I believe that the small woman in the red dress is Marthe. The woman with her back to us, with black hair and a mid blue hat, is Lucienne Dupuy de Frenelle, whose skin is lilac in the shadow. The woman wearing blue and white next to Marthe may be Renée Monchaty, who was so distressed when Bonnard and Marthe married in 1925 that she shot herself in the heart.

Marthe is now seen bathing in a proper bath, with water running from the taps as if from a spring, in The Spring (Nude in the Bath) (1917). Bonnard’s emphasis on form over the previous years was paying off.

References

Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Cahn (2016) Pierre Bonnard, Painting Arcadia, Prestel. ISBN 978 3 791 35524 5.
Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon (2006) Bonnard Inédits, Éditions Cercle d’Art (in French). ISBN 978 2 702 20707 9.

Sometimes my eye is caught by a single painting by an artist I haven’t come across before. This takes me to look at their other work, and not infrequently a welcome surprise. On this occasion, it took me to Berthold Woltze (1829–1896), whose biography is almost as short as they come.

He was born in Havelberg, a town built on an island in the Havel River, in Germany. He became a professor at the Weimar Saxon Grand Ducal Art School, among whose directors have been Arnold Böcklin, Franz von Lenbach, and Albin Egger-Lienz. Many of his paintings of genre scenes were engraved and published in the Gartenlaube (‘the garden arbour’) illustrated weekly newspaper, which was a forerunner of the modern magazine. He also painted portraits.

And that’s all we seem to know about him. I think that there’s more, and looking at his paintings, I think that he may have been an early exponent of what is known in Britain as the ‘problem picture’.

As in other countries in Europe, many Germans migrated to North America during the nineteenth century. A Letter from America from about 1860 shows an elderly mother and father eagerly reading a letter which they have received, presumably from their migrant son, and brother to the young woman, who looks as if she might consider going too.

Woltze’s undated The Letter gives us fewer clues. A young mother has just received, opened, and read a letter. She leans against the massive stone hearth, looking badly crestfallen, as her young daughter holds her arm and looks up at her mother’s face. The mother has been peeling potatoes, which are now scattered on the floor, and in her apron. Her shoes are badly worn, and she is clearly not well off.

The letter’s envelope lies on the floor, at the lower left corner, but gives no further clues. This is clearly bad news, and probably about her husband. Is he wounded, missing, dead, or has he left her?

Reading Good Advice Is Expensive! from 1873 is aided by its title, and some of the clues in the painting. An older man and woman are talking just below a sign which reads Justiz (‘justice’), and looks like the entrance to a court of law. He is quite roughly dressed, and carries on his back a load of papers which are almost certainly legal in nature. This makes him a legal clerk/messenger, either working for lawyers or the court.

The woman wears black over her otherwise brightly-coloured clothing, suggesting that she may be a widow. She is most probably asking the man for legal advice, perhaps in relation to the death or estate of her late husband. His response is likely to be the title of the painting.

The painting which caught my eye is Der lästige Kavalier (1874), rendered into English as The Annoying Bloke, I suggest.

It is set in a railway carriage, where there are two men and a young woman. She is dressed completely in black, and stares towards the viewer with tears in her eyes (detail below). Beside her is a carpet-bag, and opposite is a small wooden box and grey drapes.

Leaning over the back of her seat, and leering at her, is a middle-aged dandy with a brash moustache and mutton-chop whiskers, brandishing a lit cigar. He appears to be trying to chat her up, quite inappropriately, and very much against her wishes. Behind him, and almost cropped off the left edge of the canvas, is an older man with a dour, drawn face.

The young woman has suffered a recent bereavement, and may even be travelling back after the funeral. She looks too young to have just buried a husband, so I think it more likely that she has just lost her last parent, and is now living alone, and prey to the likes of this annoying and abusive bloke.

This sub-genre became very popular in Britain during the late nineteenth century: the problem picture, which encouraged speculation as to its narrative, even to the point of being the subject of columns in and letters to newspapers over the period 1880-1900.

Woltze’s other paintings include run-of-the-mill genre works such as his undated In the Tavern which has no tantalising narrative clues, just a couple of men in extraordinary hats.

Departure, also undated, is, like his letter paintings, a popular and fairly simple story.

Double Portrait (date not known) is more open to speculation, though. Two young women are talking in a garden or park. They may be sisters, or cousins, perhaps. The older has just revealed a secret to the younger, and sits plucking the petals off a daisy flower. The younger looks pleasantly surprised and curious, as if waiting for the older to tell more.

The last painting by Woltze which I have been able to locate (although the quality of the image is not good) is an undated scene showing a Young Gypsy under Arrest, a sadly common sight across Europe at the time. Next to the gypsy woman is a large tambourine, as if she had been engaged in dance or entertainment at the time. A young girl is bringing the woman a plate of food and a large mug of drink, walking fearfully in as if the gypsy were a sleeping ogre. Behind is her father, the jailer, holding open the door.

Having not come across a ‘problembild’ in Prussian painting before, I’m curious: was Woltze unusual, or were there others who painted similar works? Did they too become a popular pursuit in the same way that they did in Britain?

If one of the aims of studying history is to gain an understanding of the past, art history has failed miserably to accomplish that for the late nineteenth century. Whether viewed in the Salon, the commercial gallery, or the teaching studios of the École des Beaux-Arts, the dominant French painter for much of that period was Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904).

Gérôme was also one of the most vociferous opponents of the Impressionists, and by the end the century had fallen into disfavour. But learning history without getting to grips with both sides is a bit like ignoring King Harold in an account of the Norman Conquest of Britain, or omitting the Confederates from the American Civil War.

Each time that I look at one of Gérôme’s narrative paintings, I see something new, a reading that I had not noticed before. Whenever I browse his works, I see another painting which fills me with curiosity. It’s true that many are sheer spectacle, but behind their popular appeal there’s often much more.

In this series, I’m primarily going to look at his narrative paintings, and to suggest some readings which I think do them justice. As his career spanned times of momentous change in France, and Gérôme often moved in high places, I will attempt to explain what was going on around him, when relevant to his paintings.

Gérôme’s first painting to be shown at the Salon, in 1847, was made during a time of increasing tension as the ‘July Monarchy’ neared collapse. The following year, France underwent revolutions, leading to Napoleon III’s coup in December 1851, and the Second Empire. During this, much of the city of Paris was razed to the ground, and rebuilt according to the grand designs of Baron Haussmann. But it too ended in disaster, when France’s crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 brought the Third Republic with its extensive social change and modernisation. Gérôme died in his studio just a decade before the start of the First World War.

Gérôme trained in the studio of Paul Delaroche, a great history painter, and for about three months with Charles Gleyre, who later taught Whistler, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Frederic Bazille. He joined a group of artists known as the ‘Néo-Grecs’ (Neo-Greeks), who favoured light and witty scenes from the classics, and rejected the serious and sober approach of neoclassicism. His first bid for fame failed, when his entries in the Prix de Rome in 1846 found no favour with its judges. He then painted his first significant work, The Cock Fight (1846), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1847.

This motif had started from a relief showing two adolescent boys facing off against one another. Gérôme felt that he needed to improve his figurative painting, and after Delaroche’s advice decided to develop that image by replacing one of the boys with a girl. In both Greek and English – but not French – the word cock is used for both the male genitals and a male chicken, and the youthful Gérôme must have found this combined visual and verbal pun witty and very Néo-Grec.

There is a curious ambivalence in its reading too: two cocks are fighting in front of the young couple. Is one of the birds owned by the girl, and if so, is it the dark one on the left, which appears to be getting the better of the bird being held by the boy? Either way, it is a lightly entertaining reflection on courtship and gender roles, and a fine debut.

The Cock Fight earned Gérôme a third-class medal, and he sold the painting for a thousand francs. With the benefit of favourable reviews from critics, the following year brought him lucrative commissions, and a growing reputation.

Gérôme followed that with Anacreon, Bacchus, and Amor in 1848. This harks back to the secret rites of Bacchantes, invoking Anacreon, one of the nine canonical Greek lyric poets – very Néo-Grec again. The poet takes centre stage with his lyre at his shoulder. Dancing at his feet are an infant Bacchus at the left, waving his thyrsus and looking to the left at a young woman playing the double pipes. To the right of Anacreon is Cupid (Amor), with his wings, bow, and quiver of arrows. Behind is a procession of men and women, and in the left distance they are dancing in a large circle.

This painting was exhibited in the Salon that year, from where it was purchased by the state for 1,800 francs. I can’t help but think that it must have been a suitable piece of escapism from the political tensions of the February Revolution which took place that year, leading to the Second Republic.

In 1848, the short-lived Second Republic ran a competition for a painting which would form its figure(head). Gérôme entered The Republic in that, but was unsuccessful. This is his improved entry for the second round, which is not too distant from the figure later used for the Statue of Liberty.

Of all these early works, it is Gérôme’s relatively small and simple painting of Michelangelo from 1849 which is the most enigmatic. Michelangelo is shown in his dotage, hunched over and blind, being led by a young boy whose dress would have aroused his master’s homoerotic desires.

The broken sculpture is the Belvedere Torso, a huge fragment of marble statuary which was so loved by the sculptor that it was nicknamed the School of Michelangelo. The young boy is leading his master’s hands to stroke and caress the marble, now that he was unable to enjoy looking at its classical – and very male – form.

This is perhaps the first sign of Gérôme’s developing theme of sight, and the role of vision in establishing truth. In his blindness, Michelangelo can only feel what we can see, and cannot see the figure of the young boy. This is particularly appropriate to Gérôme, who quite late in his career became a successful sculptor himself, and whose later paintings referred to his sculptures and his acts of creating them.

It is also thought highly unlikely that the Torso would have been in Michelangelo’s workshop at the time.

Gérôme met more criticism when he exhibited Grecian Interior, Le Gynécée in the Salon of 1850. One critic (Théophile Gautier) compared it to one of Ingres’ paintings, but it was more widely condemned for its immorality, as you could perhaps understand.

It has been disputed as to whether the scene depicted here is that of Messalina’s legendary brothel, or was inspired by a poem by Simonides of Amorgos considering the temperament of women. Its title states that it shows the women’s area or gynaeceum within a large Greek house, where the unmarried women relaxed and socialised with one another, a refuge to which the ‘woman of the house’ would return when not with her husband.

Despite its four well-lit nude women, there is more to this painting than their expanse of flesh. The woman resting on the couch, looking away from the viewer, appears to be in the early stages of pregnancy. Most of all, though, it is Gérôme’s first classical painting which he has filled with small clusters of apparently random objects – for example, at the right edge, and around the shrine to the left of centre.

Gérôme became almost obsessive in decorating his classical paintings with all sorts of bric-a-brac, like an old curiosity shop. Although he researched these extensively, many are now considered to be inappropriate or anachronistic, and some are just odd. Like the fine detail on the tiled floor, they enhance the impression of reality, giving many of his paintings what would now be termed a photographic quality over eighty years before colour photography became common.

Night (c 1850-55) is a small diversion which appears to have been completed by several different hands. It is typical of later paintings, particularly during the popularity of Aestheticism, of the personification of night.

One problem which Gérôme experienced throughout these early works was integrating his figures into the overall colour and look of the painting. Critics at the time commented on how his figures too often looked as if they had been pasted onto the canvas. This was less true of his Grecian Interior, but becomes quite prominent in this painting, The Idyll, also known as Innocence, or Daphnis and Chloe, from 1852, shown in the Salon of 1853. This is perhaps made worse by this painting’s lack of depth, and Daphnis’ sculptural appearance.

Gérôme’s former teacher Charles Gleyre had exhibited his own version of Daphnis and Chloe, perhaps a year or two earlier; the paintings are entirely different, although both feature the couple unclad.

With Napoleon III installed as the Emperor of France, and Gérôme’s early paintings generally well-received, it was time for the artist to tackle more substantial visual stories.

References

Ackerman GM (2000) Jean-Léon Gérôme, Monographie révisée, Catalogue Raisonné Mis à Jour, (in French) ACR Édition. ISBN 978 2 867 70137 5.
Scott Allan and Mary Morton, eds. (2010) Reconsidering Gérôme, Getty. ISBN 978 1 6060 6038 4.
Gülru Çakmak (2017) Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Crisis of History Painting in the 1850s, Liverpool UP. ISBN 978 1 78694 067 4.
de Cars L et al. (2010) The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Skira. ISBN 978 8 85 720702 5.

Many of the more traditional pigments have changed through the ages. Buy some Ultramarine Blue today, and it will have been made in a chemical plant rather than crushed from lapis lazuli won from a mine in Afghanistan. Buy some Naples Yellow, though, and you will get a colour mixed from Cadmium Yellow and Chinese White, in all probability – which should be named Naples Yellow Hue.

That is very different from the Naples Yellow used by Claude Lorrain in A Seaport at Sunrise from 1674. For Claude, it was the highly toxic Lead Antimonate Yellow, and nothing to do with Naples at all.

Naples Yellow occurs in nature, in the unusual mineral Bindheimite, which it seems has never been used as a pigment. Instead, ancient civilisations in the eastern Mediterranean, from about 1500 BCE, used it to colour glass and pottery, and it is one of the oldest synthetic pigments. By about 300 CE, it had been replaced by Lead Tin Yellow, and fell into disuse.

It start to reappear as a pigment in paintings after 1600, having been reintroduced initially in maiolica (glazed earthenware) about a century earlier.

By the early 1700s, when Herman van der Mijn painted these flowers, Naples Yellow was quite widely used in oil painting, although in watercolours it has a tendency to darken in polluted atmospheres.

It became the dominant yellow pigment used by landscape artists between 1750-1850, and has been found in Ferdinand Kobell’s Mountain Landscape (Path in a Gorge) from 1768.

As its chemical name reveals, Naples Yellow is a salt of two highly toxic metals, lead and antimony, and is therefore extremely poisonous, although less well absorbed through the skin. Despite this, it remained popular during the rise of plein air landscape painting, as in Johann Georg von Dillis’ delightful oil sketch of Triva Castle from 1797.

Ironically, this painting is also an early example of the use of Chinese White, which was starting to replace the toxic Lead White. Perhaps painters of the day were less concerned with their toxicity, and more appreciative of the fact that Naples Yellow absorbs relatively little oil, so dries quickly.

Look at the sandy, pale yellowish passages in most landscapes from 1750-1850, and chances are that you are seeing Naples Yellow at work, as in Ernst Fries’ undated View from Kleingemünd of Neckargemünd, completed before his untimely death in 1833, at the age of only 32; he apparently cut his wrists when suffering a delirium from scarlet fever.

When artists such as Heinrich Bürkel left the towns and cities of northern Europe to go and paint in the countryside around Rome, they took with them Naples Yellow, which he used in this view of Shepherds in the Roman Campagna from 1837. But Chrome Yellow was already starting to displace it from the palette, a trend which continued throughout the nineteenth century.

Some traditionalists, like Arnold Böcklin in The Shepherd’s Complaint (Amaryllis) from 1866, continued to use real Naples Yellow into the early years of the twentieth century, though.

Franz von Lenbach was still using it in landscape sketches such as The Vega de Granada in 1868. Here it’s only appropriate for depicting the ancient ruined fortifications erected on this plain, to separate Christians from the Moorish kingdom of Granada in Spain.

More surprising are the modern painters who continued to use real Naples Yellow, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir in this vase of abundant Chrysanthemums, painted in 1881-82, when new Cadmium Yellow was becoming more affordable.

Naples Yellow has also been reported in Gabriel von Max’s amusing Monkeys as Judges of Art from 1889. I have been unable to locate a suitable image of one of the last paintings to contain the pigment, made by Odilon Redon in about 1912, and sporadic occurrences continue until as late as 1933.

When suppliers reformulated their Naples Yellows in the twentieth century, all traces of its original lead antimonate had gone, in favour of a hue created from more modern, and less immediately toxic, substitutes. Although no pale substitute by any means, it just isn’t the same Naples Yellow of Claude and the great pioneers of plein air landscape painting.

Reference

Ian NM Wainwright, John M Taylor and Rosamond D Harley (1986) Artists’ Pigments, vol 1, ed Robert L Feller, Archetype. ISBN 978 1 904982 74 6.

Monkeys, or apes, are one of the oldest motifs in European painting, and have been significant features in every century’s art since the 1400s. Until little more than a century ago, though, monkeys were only human-like, and not our nearest relatives.

In this article and its sequel, I look at some of the best and most interesting paintings in which monkeys are major participants. These include a rich variety of genres and themes, including singeries, the rather odd and amusing works in which monkeys substitute for humans in everyday events – a device used more recently in advertising.

The earliest known example of monkeys in European art is this lavish fresco of Blue Monkeys found in the ruins of Thera, on the modern island of Santorini in Greece. This Cycladic civilisation was destroyed by a massive volcanic explosion in about 1627 BCE, so we know that these paintings are well over 3,500 years old.

Although now known as the fresco of the Blue Monkeys, these images make them look rather grey, and that may have been their intended colour. Presumably these monkeys had been introduced from North Africa.

The ruins on Santorini were not excavated until very recently, and these blue monkeys were concealed for the period from 1627 BCE until the late 1960s. Despite that, the next notable appearance of monkeys in European art shows animals which are almost eerily similar.

The reverse of Botticelli’s painting of Judith with the Head of Holofernes bears an unfinished work from about 1470 which has been given the title of Deer and Monkeys. Where the artist had seen these pale blue monkeys isn’t clear, although the background landscape shows a coastline on the Mediterranean.

The following century, members of the prolific Brueg(h)el family were among the artists from northern Europe who made monkeys major figures in their art. This is Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s later painting of Two Chained Monkeys from 1562. This pair of monkeys was kept at one of the major ports on the North Sea coast, where they had presumably been brought from North Africa, or even further afield.

Monkeys started to appear as novelties in many paintings, including portraits of the rich, who often kept them as exclusive pets.

At the end of that century, Cornelis van Haarlem’s wonderful painting of The Fall of Man (1592) counts a monkey in with the many different species it shows in the Garden of Eden. These include familiar species such as dog, fox, sheep, cat, frog, and snail.

Between the legs of Adam and Eve is a touching passage of a small monkey embracing a cat. There are obvious relationships between the monkey and Adam, and between the cat and Eve, but van Haarlem may also have been invoking the fable of the cat’s paw, which I will examine in the next article in the context of Landseer’s more explicit depiction.

Painters have long been attracted to the spectacle of humans who look different. In Agostino Carracci’s case, he combined three strange examples in his Hairy Harry, Mad Peter and Tiny Amon, completed between 1598-1600, not long before his death.

From the left are Tiny Amon (Rodomonte) the dwarf, Arrigo Gonzalez the hirsute (Hairy Harry) from the Canary Islands, and Mad Peter (Pietro the buffoon). Accompanying them are a large parrot, a couple of dogs, and two monkeys.

Monkeys were also relatively common in Vanitas paintings, such as Clara Peeters’ Fruit, Dead Birds and a Monkey (1615-20). A monkey is busy feeding from nuts, while gazing at a small pile of dead birds. I’m not sure how monkeys fit in with the symbolic associations with death in Vanitas compositions, though.

The early 1600s saw the first outbreak of a new sub-genre, that of the singerie – the French for monkeying, as in monkeying about. In these, monkeys dressed up as humans assume the role of humans in an everyday activity. Among the artists who painted singeries were those of the Teniers family.

David Teniers the Younger’s A Monkey Encampment from 1633 shows monkeys in human roles in a camp. They sit talking outside a large tent, staff a stall, and in the background are arriving at a military meeting, presumably involved in the recruitment of the population into its army or militia.

By about 1650, Abraham Teniers developed this into his comic undated Barbershop with Monkeys and Cats. Two cats are sat in the chairs in a barbers, and their attendants are monkeys. The barbershop shown is traditional in that it not only caters for the cutting of hair, but also has facilities and instruments for minor surgery, hence the use of hot coals in cleaning the surgical instruments.

When Holland grew rich in the Golden Age, much of those profits were gambled on tulip flowers, during what became known as Tulipmania or Tulipomania. Bulbs of varieties which were in demand fetched extremely prices, which speculation drove into a bubble. When reality returned to the market, prices crashed and fortunes were lost.

Jan Brueghel the Younger’s Allegory of Tulipmania from about 1645 shows tulip trading during its height, with each figure a monkey dressed in human clothing.

My last painting from the period before the Age of Enlightenment is Antoine Watteau’s tondo of The Monkey Sculptor from about 1710. This is a fairly straightforward case of singerie, this time set in the sculptor’s studio.

In the first of this pair of articles looking at paintings in which monkeys or apes are a substantial part of the motif, I showed examples from over 3,500 years ago, and in each century from the 1400s up to the Age of Enlightenment in the 1700s.

By the end of that century, many artists were attempting to portray animals and birds more faithfully to nature, in paintings which became increasingly objective (although the greatest emphasis on objectivity in painting was to come in the late nineteenth century in Naturalism).

George Garrard’s A Marmoset in Three Attitudes from 1793 appears to have been intended for a reference description of the species, setting it in its natural habitat and in three postures which the artist took as being characteristic. Unlike later illustrations, though, this painting is painterly in the depiction of vegetation, and is by no means academic or dry.

Edwin Henry Landseer’s approach in The Cat’s Paw from about 1824 is quite contrasting. This shows the moment of climax in a popular fable retold by Jean de La Fontaine in 1679, which probably originated in around 1560.

Bertrand the monkey is roasting chestnuts in the embers of a fire. Rather than risk burning himself retrieving the nuts from the heat, he promises Raton the cat a share of them if the cat will scoop them out for him. The cat agrees: as Bertrand eats the chestnuts when they emerge fron the fire, the cat’s paw becomes more and more burned. Before the cat can claim its reward, they are disturbed by a maid. The monkey then profits from the cat’s efforts and suffering, but the cat is cheated from enjoying its share.

This has entered the French language in the idiom tirer les marrons du feu, meaning to act as someone’s dupe, or to benefit from the work of others. In English, a cat’s paw is used figuratively of someone who is used by another as their tool.

Landseer shows the chestnuts roasting on the top of a stove, and the monkey using the cat’s paw to hook them back in to him, as the cat wails in pain.

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, when Darwin was busy unravelling the mysteries of evolution, singerie came back into vogue. One of its exponents was Zacharie Noterman, who painted Monkey Business after about 1850.

A monkey dressed as a businessman is plodding through his paperwork, as the bartender stands in front of him, smoking his clay pipe.

Monkeys became popular visual devices for those who wanted to criticise juries and organisers of art exhibitions for excluding their art, and showing members as monkeys is wicked satire.

Hans Canon’s African Jury Meeting from 1870 makes just that comment about a jury which had apparently rejected the artist’s work. In the top right corner is the upper face of the artist himelf.

For one or two artists, singeries were not enough. Gabriel von Max probably painted more works of monkeys or apes than any other artist, from models which he kept at his residence by Starnberger Lake, in the Bavarian countryside, where he painted each summer.

In von Max’s Monkeys as Judges of Art (1889), a crowd of monkeys are packed together in front of a canvas which already has a gilded frame, and will shortly be announcing their decision on that work. The artist avoids anthropomorphism, and his monkeys look very natural and non-human.

His undated A Visit to the Artist’s Studio shows a similar group of monkeys watching their leader handle von Max’s paint and brushes in his studio. I suspect that the artist may have supplemented his sketches of the group with some photos, as it appears implausible for the monkeys to have remained in much the same positions for long.

Von Max appears to have had very tender and personal relationships with his monkeys. In Go to Sleep! from 1900, a young woman, possibly his daughter, is nursing an infant monkey who is staring with tired eyes into the distance. Charles Darwin’s book The Descent of Man had been published in 1871, so by this time von Max would have been well aware of the proposal that monkeys and humans had common ancestors.

Von Max’s Self-Portrait with Monkey (1910) at the age of seventy shows him with another young ape.

Monkeys have had other more symbolic associations, typically with mischief and mayhem.

In Pierre Bonnard’s large painting of Pleasure or Games from 1906, one of four panels he made for Misia and Alfred Edwards’ apartment in Paris, decorative edging includes images of birds and monkeys, whose innocent playfulness is seen as being pleasurable.

One monkey appears in the riotous assembly shown in Lovis Corinth’s painting of The Temptation of Saint Anthony from 1908. This radically different depiction of this episode in the saint’s life was painted after Gustave Flaubert, and exceptionally shows Anthony as a young man – a highly inventive account.

Darwin’s theory may have been good for science and human understanding, but its effects have not been so good for monkeys. With acceptance of their close relationship to humans, monkeys, particularly chimpanzees, became surrogates for humans in experimentation.

Martin Monnickendam’s disturbing painting of Professor L. Bolk’s Anatomy Lesson from 1925 shows a group portrait of anatomists dissecting the body of a chimpanzee.

Finally, contemporary artist Serhiy Kolyada uses the figure of a painting monkey at the heart of The Theory of Origins (2012). The artist explains:
A painting monkey perhaps a commentary of contemporary art? Protective of its bottle of Teacher’s whisky and looking over its shoulder at a naked Teacher pointing to the supposed “cradle-of-civilization” Africa on a world map; both Teachers providing pupils with an escape? Or knowledge? An Egyptian pyramid, Stonehenge, Mount Kailish, the Temple of Tibet, a UFO and dinosaur, Sator Arepo and yin-&-yang all tease but fail to appease. Puzzles, a Bible, equations and runes add to the confusion, offering no real explanation except to say: Maybe Origin Theories are a mess and human beings have no idea, in fact, of their origins on this planet.

Our closest relatives certainly have a lot to say in our paintings.

Plutarch’s Lives progresses with a Greek hero who was a contemporary of Themistocles: Aristides (sometimes referred to as Aristeides). The two differed in their views over the way the Athenian city-state should be run. Themistocles was a champion of the people, and keen on opening government up democratically. Aristides, though, was a follower of Lycurgus, who had laid down the absolute laws of the Spartans. Ironically, both suffered as a result of the democratic votes which determined their ostracisation.

The two statesmen were opposed in almost everything that they said and did.

Aristides was a tireless and fearless defender of justice, even when it made life harder for himself. He was once prosecuting an enemy in court, and made such a good job of presenting the case for the prosecution that the judges wanted to proceed straight to a verdict without hearing the defence. Aristides then pled the case for the defendant to have a proper hearing, including that of his defence.

He first made his reputation as a general at the Battle of Marathon (in 490 BCE), in which the Athenians defeated King Darius the First’s Persian army even though the Greeks had less than half the number of men. The commander there was Miltiades, but it was the forces under the immediate command of Themistocles and Aristides who saw the most and hardest action.

According to the account of Herodotus, there were two singular athletic achievements associated with the Battle of Marathon: in one, an Athenian named Pheidippides ran more than 225 km (140 miles) from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance before the battle started. In the other, the Athenian forces marched at great speed from the battlefield back to Athens, a distance of 40 kilometres (25 miles), to counter a Persian force which was travelling by sea to the city.

Plutarch is one source who conflates these, and elsewhere claimed that a runner named Erchius or Eucles ran from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory. As shown in Luc-Olivier Merson’s painting of The Soldier of Marathon (1869), on telling of victory, the athlete – now named Pheidippides or Philippides – collapsed and died.

Merson’s painting won him the Prix de Rome, and became a significant part of the growing Olympic movement, which culminated in the running of the first modern Marathon in the renewed games of 1896.

Aristides was made Archon, ruler over Athens, in return for his accomplishments at Marathon, and quickly became known as the Just, on account of his passion for justice. Inevitably, this gave rise to jealousy, and Themistocles claimed that Aristides had abolished the courts of law, and was judging cases in private instead. This led to Aristides being ostracised, and banished from Athens for ten years as a result.

William Rainey’s illustration of Aristides and the Citizens from about 1900 shows a story told by Plutarch of the vote for his ostracism. An illiterate and boorish man came up to Aristides during the vote, and (not knowing who he was talking to) asked Aristides to write the name of Aristides on his fragment of pottery, so that he could cast it as his vote.

When Aristides asked why he had chosen to vote for Aristides to be ostracised, the man said that he was tired of hearing him always being called ‘the Just’. Such are the vagaries of the vote of the people even today.

Charles Brocas’ large portrait of Aristides, which was completed, and exhibited in the Salon of 1806, shows the statesman weeping with his two daughters, as they shelter in a cave at the start of their banishment. His left arm clutches their few possessions: a thin cloak, and small statues of the goddess Athena, and of Zeus himself.

This banishment was rescinded after only three years, when Xerxes and his army invaded the countries to the north of Athens. Aristides returned as a general, and he and Themistocles agreed to work together, with the latter as overall commander for the Battle of Salamis. During that naval engagement (won by the Greeks), Aristides captured the small island of Psyttaleia in the straits of Salamis, where he ensured that no Persian was safe.

I think it is his role in the Battle of Salamis which Bernardino Poccetti celebrates in his fresco of Aristides (1583-86) in the Palazzo Capponi-Vettori in Florence, Italy. Its inscription reads Aristide che fu un greco fabritio, which I think means something like ‘Aristides who was a Greek smith’ (a smith as in a builder of nations).

Aristides was then put in command of eight thousand Athenians, which joined forces with Pausanias and his Spartans to fight the Persians one last time at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE. After an initial cavalry battle, the Persians intended to attack the Greeks by surprise. Aristides was forewarned of that attack by the king of the Macedonians, which helped the Greeks repel the Persians the following day.

Eventually the Persians launched more attacks, but the Spartans and Athenians got the upper hand. The Persian commander was killed by a Spartan soldier, and the Persian force shut themselves up in a stockade, where the Greeks overcame them and slaughtered most of their enemy.

Although I cannot find any trace of Hugh William Williams’ original painting of The Plain of Plataea, from Mount Cithaeron (c 1824), this engraving by William Miller gives a good idea of the terrain at the foot of the mountain where the Greeks and Persians met in battle nearly 2,500 years ago.

After this, Aristides played an important role as an intermediary between the smaller Greek states and Sparta, ensuring that the city-states paid fair contributions to maintain their alliance.

During his life as a statesman and general, Aristides’ constant fairness did not bring him riches. Plutarch is undecided as to where he met his death, but states that his tomb at Phalerum, on the coast by Athens, had to be built by the city, as his estate was insufficient to cover its cost. For, unlike so many of his time, Aristides the Just had never extracted funds from the public purse to line his own pockets.

Reference

Whole text in English translation at Penelope.

During the final year of the First World War, 1918, Bonnard worked mainly in Vernon. In the summer, Marthe and he spent time together in Uriage-les-Bains, a small spa town in the Isère, just outside the city of Grenoble at the western edge of the Alps. While he was there, he was photographed by a friend. Bonnard and Renoir were honoured by a group of young French artists, who made them honorary presidents of their society.

In September, Bonnard went to Cap d’Antibes, in le Midi between Cannes and Nice, where he stayed through the winter, well into the early part of the following year. He was visited there by Matisse and Signac, and seems to have largely painted nudes and windows during that period.

Although this painting of The Terrace from 1918 has many similarities with earlier works made at Grasse, the terrace itself appears different, suggesting that Bonnard may have found another location for his expansive views with intervening trees. If the grey forms in the distance are mountains rather than clouds, it is possible that he painted this when at Uriage, although the shadows imply that this view looks to the west, which would have been away from the mountains there.

House by the Path on the Cliff (1918) appears to have been painted among the sandy cliffs and dunes of northern France, rather than in Antibes on the Mediterranean. Although a hazy day, with quite a big sea running according to the waves, the roofs are brilliant red, even back to the church in the distance.

Landscape of Haute-Savoie (1918) shows the western foothills of the Alps, and must have been painted while Bonnard was staying in Uriage.

Bonnard had first developed his aerial views when painting street views in Paris early in his career. These increasingly included the window frame and sometime substantial parts of its surrounds, as seen in this Window in Uriage from 1918.

In 1919, Bonnard spent September in Luxeuil-les-Bains, another small spa town at the western edge of the Alps, in the far east of France. In early December, Auguste Renoir died, leaving Monet as the sole survivor of the original French Impressionists.

The Abduction of Europa (1919) is one of Bonnard’s rare mythological works, showing Europa being carried away to Cyprus by Jupiter, who has disguised himself as a white bull to entice her to get on his back. A classical motif in painting, the story is drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and has been painted by almost every major figurative painter.

Bonnard’s bull is dipping his back as the naked Europa sits on him. In the far distance, coloured red in the setting sun, is the island of Cyprus, their next destination. Bonnard’s coast is very Mediterranean, with a deep blue sea and intense colours.

One of Bonnard’s major works in either 1918 or 1919 was an apparently simple domestic scene, The Bowl of Milk. Once again London’s Tate Gallery has managed to collect a total of five pencil studies to accompany the finished painting, which give further insight into his compositional and working methods.

This late compositional study for The Bowl of Milk (1919) shows that Bonnard arrived at a motif consisting of a woman holding a bowl of milk at the right edge, the large window with its balcony outside, and a table positioned by the window. He tried different compositions, with one and two women, but chose this as the basis for the finished work.

In this study for The Bowl of Milk, Bonnard concentrates on the figure holding the bowl out. He experimented with at least two other compositions, once of which includes a second woman.

Bonnard also sketched details, here of the balcony viewed through the window in The Bowl of Milk (1919). This was presumably a result of his campaign during the early years of the war to improve form in his works, rather than deploying colour to assemble details.

The result is The Bowl of Milk (1919), with its muted colours more appropriate for his earlier Nabi phase. The woman has just poured milk into a small bowl, which she is now about to put down for her cat. Beside her is a table laid out with four places for breakfast, with a large jug of milk on a tray. To the left is another table, on which is a vase of flowers and assorted small objects. The black cat is pacing the floor at the woman’s feet, as cats do.

This thoroughly peaceful, mundane domestic scene is thought to have been painted when Bonnard was staying in Cap d’Antibes, which would date it to 1918 or the early part of 1919. Although it looks informal if not spontaneous, it is the result of quite deliberate compositional work, and attention to details such as the form of the pillars on the balcony outside. In its informality is formality, in the model’s pose, the layout of the table settings, and the echoing verticals in the window and wallpaper. The model is thought to have been Renée Monchaty, and is clearly not Marthe.

In 1920, Bonnard stayed in Arcachon on the Bay of Biscay not far from Bordeaux, in the Spring, then went to Saint-Honoré-les-Bains in the middle of France in June. Towards the end of the year he went to stay with the sculptor and artist Henri Manguin in Saint-Tropez, where he remained until early 1921. During the summer, Bonnard painted the sets for the Ballets Suédois performance of Jeux by Nijinsky, in Paris. It was also a very productive year for his painting.

Earthly Paradise (1916-20) is a spectacular view, closely related to those from garden terraces. Marthe (I think) lies naked at the right, with a male nude stood under a tree at the left. Unlike many of his paintings of terraces, the trees here form a repoussoir around the landscape, rather than filling its centre. At the man’s feet is a small monkey, and the colours of trees, flowers and distant landscape are intense.

Pastoral Symphony (1916-20) uses a related composition with repoussoir for a rural idyll. At the left, a dairymaid is milking a cow. In the centre is a child playing, and at the right side a couple of women are petting a small deer. The countryside, complete with an older person and a horse, rolls back into the distance.

At this time, even his paintings of northern France have erupted into brilliant colour. Balcony at Vernonnet (c 1920) is an aerial view looking along the balcony of Bonnard’s house on the bank of the Seine, at its wild and overgrown garden.

Boats in the Harbor, Le Cannet (c 1920) shows yachts in the harbour at what I think should be referred to as Cannes, the name of the town on the Mediterranean coast, rather than Le Cannet, which is just inland of Cannes and where Bonnard later came to live.

Bonnard’s double portrait of the two Bernheim brothers Josse Bernheim-Jeune and Gaston Bernheim de Villiers from 1920 recognises the importance of their gallery to the artist. Their father, who died in 1915, had opened the gallery in Paris in 1863, and had started to promote Impressionists in 1874. In 1901, it held the first important exhibition of paintings by Vincent van Gogh in Paris, and went on to present works by the Nabis, Cézanne, Matisse, Modigliani, Utrillo, and others. It represented Bonnard between 1904-1940, and continues to specialise in his work.

If the Bernheim brothers had helped win Bonnard fame and success as an artist, his Portrait of Mademoiselle Renée Monchaty (1920) shows a model and lover who came close to ending his long relationship with Marthe. Bonnard met her in 1916, but their relationship came to an end when Marthe and Bonnard finally married in 1925. Within a month, Monchaty shot herself in the heart, surrounded by white roses in her bath.

Bonnard didn’t paint many portraits of himself, and his Self-Portrait with Beard from 1920 shows him in his mid-fifties, his suntanned face emerging from its camouflage against the background. He continued to pursue his art with a fierce independence, painting in his own way.

References

Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Cahn (2016) Pierre Bonnard, Painting Arcadia, Prestel. ISBN 978 3 791 35524 5.
Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon (2006) Bonnard Inédits, Éditions Cercle d’Art (in French). ISBN 978 2 702 20707 9.