NINETEENTH-Century EUROPEAN PAINTINGS at the STERLING
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Introduction Introduction Sterling and Francine clark art inStitute | WilliamStoWn, massachuSettS NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN PAINTINGS diStributed by yale univerSity Press | NeW haven and london AT THE STERLING AND FRANCINE CLARK ART INSTITUTE VOLUME TWO Edited by Sarah Lees With an essay by Richard Rand and technical reports by Sandra L. Webber With contributions by Katharine J. Albert, Philippe Bordes, Dan Cohen, Kathryn Calley Galitz, Alexis Goodin, Marc Gotlieb, John House, Simon Kelly, Richard Kendall, Kathleen M. Morris, Leslie Hill Paisley, Kelly Pask, Elizabeth A. Pergam, Kathryn A. Price, Mark A. Roglán, James Rosenow, Zoë Samels, and Fronia E. Wissman 4 5 Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Francine Clark Art Institute is published with the assistance of the Getty Foundation and support from the National Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Endowment for the Arts. Nineteenth-century European paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute / edited by Sarah Lees ; with an essay by Richard Rand and technical reports by Sandra L. Webber ; with contributions by Katharine J. Albert, Philippe Bordes, Dan Cohen, Kathryn Calley Galitz, Alexis Goodin, Marc Gotlieb, John House, Simon Kelly, Richard Kendall, Kathleen M. Morris, Leslie Hill Paisley, Kelly Pask, Elizabeth A. Produced by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Pergam, Kathryn A. Price, Mark A. Roglán, James Rosenow, 225 South Street, Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267 Zoë Samels, Fronia E. Wissman. www.clarkart.edu volumes cm Includes bibliographical references and index. Curtis R. Scott, Director of Publications ISBN 978-1-935998-09-9 (clark hardcover : alk. paper) — and Information Resources ISBN 978-0-300-17965-1 (yale hardcover : alk. paper) Dan Cohen, Special Projects Editor 1. Painting, European—19th century—Catalogs. 2. Painting— Katherine Pasco Frisina, Production Editor Massachusetts—Williamstown—Catalogs. 3. Sterling and Anne Roecklein, Managing Editor Francine Clark Art Institute—Catalogs. I. Lees, Sarah, editor Michael Agee, Photographer of compilation. II. Rand, Richard. III. Webber, Sandra L. IV. Title. Laurie Glover, Visual Resources V. Title: 19th-century European paintings at the Sterling and Julie Walsh, Program Assistant Francine Clark Art Institute. Mari Yoko Hara and Michelle Noyer-Granacki, ND457.S74 2012 Publications Interns 759.9409’0340747441—dc23 2012030510 Designed by Susan Marsh Composed in Meta by Matt Mayerchak Copyedited by Sharon Herson Details: Bibliography edited by Sophia Wagner-Serrano title page: Camille Pissarro, The Louvre from the Pont Neuf Index by Kathleen M. Friello (cat. 253) Proofread by June Cuff ner opposite copyright page: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Production by The Production Department, Jane Avril (cat. 331) Whately, Massachusetts preceding page 474: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Onions (cat. 280) Printed on 135 gsm Gardapat Kiara pages 890–91: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Women of Color separations and printing by Trifolio, Verona Amphissa (cat. 3) © 2012 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London P. O. Box 209040, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-9040 www.yalebooks.com/art Printed and bound in Italy 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 248 and refinements of composition must take a second- 248 | Piette’s House at Montfoucault 1874 ary role, beside the elemental need to respond to the extremes of nature. Oil on canvas, 46.4 x 68.6 cm Piette’s House at Montfoucault was painted in Lower left: C. Pissarro. [18]74 [date partially legible] late 1874, during the winter that followed the finan- 1955.826 cial disappointments of the first Impressionist exhi- bition.1 Barely surviving on their meager resources, The challenge of painting snow was welcomed by Pissarro and his young family traveled from Pontoise several of the Impressionist artists, but it was rarely to stay with Ludovic Piette at his farm—called “Mont- celebrated so directly and viscerally as in Pissarro’s foucault”—in the remote village of Melleray, between Piette’s House at Montfoucault. From pale sky to Chartres and Le Mans.2 Before leaving, Pissarro had crowded foreground, whiteness has transformed this told the art critic, Théodore Duret, “I’m going there to rural landscape, blurring the contours of houses, study the figures and animals of the true countryside”; trees, and pathway, and smothering the nearby gar- it is also arguable that Melleray was the site of his first den. A lighter covering still clings to the rooftops, historic depictions of “peasants at prosaic tasks in the but massive, globular accumulations of snow weigh fields or in the kitchen garden or farmhouse yard.” 3 down the foliage in front of us and seem to threaten Since meeting at the Académie Suisse in 1860, Pis- the equilibrium of the scene. Pissarro’s energetic sarro had remained close to the ideologically radical application of paint, in thick impastos that mimic the but modestly talented Piette, who was to contribute density of snow itself, adds to the tactile experience thirty of his bright-hued market views and local scenes and evokes the awkwardness of working outdoors in to the Impressionist exhibition in 1877.4 In his letters such bleak conditions. Instinctively, we stand with the to Pissarro from Montfoucault, Piette wrote about the artist on the frozen ground and within inches of the struggles of his own painting career and the dramatic snow-laden branches, sensing the wintry air. Like him, political events of these years, often describing the we understand that nuances of atmospheric effect attractions of the locality and urging his friend to visit. 590 Camille Pissarro In December 1871, soon after the terrible events of landscapes of Gustave Courbet that were admired by the Franco-Prussian war and the siege of Paris, Piette Pissarro and his circle. Elsewhere, a palette of blue- evoked the timelessness of the rocky landscapes at grays, green-grays and ocher-grays accounts for virtu- Melleray: “in these places, one could believe oneself ally the entire scene, with what appears to be pure carried back one or two thousand years into the past: black in the deepest shadows. In 1873, Pissarro had no trace of man: everything as wild as a century or two explained to Duret the new approaches to color of after the Flood.” 5 He also noted that snow had recently Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and himself: “There is fallen, one of several references in his correspondence nothing colder than broad sunlight in the summer,” to extreme weather in the region: “he who has not seen he insisted: “contrary to what the colorists say, nature snow here, does not know our country,” Piette boasted is colored in winter and cold in summer.” 12 With spe- the previous year.6 Piette himself often painted the cific reference to certain Montfoucault pictures, Rich- snow and once told Pissarro “you know better than I ard Shiff has shown how Pissarro attempted to convey that winter is full of intoxication for the painter.” 7 this subdued winter richness, avoiding “excessively Previous journeys to Montfoucault in 1864 and harsh juxtapositions” of pure color as well as the arti- 1870 would have prepared Pissarro for the project ficiality of traditional chiaroscuro. Instead he “mixed ahead. During his 1874 stay, he completed about fif- most of his grayish tones from blue, yellow, red and teen canvases of the buildings, trees, farm animals, small amounts of green,” ensuring that “the brilliant and rough fields of Melleray, recording snow in about luminosity remains while the hue contrasts disap- half of them and making three studies of the interior pear.” 13 In an analysis of a Montfoucault interior of of Piette’s large house, presumably when bad weather 1874, Shiff reported that Pissarro’s neutral colors were prevented him from painting outside. For the Clark indeed mixed in this way and proposed that the Clark composition, Pissarro positioned himself opposite painting follows this same procedure.14 RK the façade of the building, a traditional stone struc- ture that survives today, its five symmetrical windows provenance Possibly Eugène Murer (Eugène-Auguste here partly concealed by foliage.8 The most immedi- Meunier), Paris (d. 1906);15 [Ambroise Vollard, Paris, until ate subject of Piette’s House at Montfoucault is the d. 1939];16 [Étienne Bignou, Paris and New York, by Mar. snow itself and its impact on a largely unremarkable 1940]; [Sam Salz, Paris and New York, by May 1940, sold to corner of rural France. Two villagers in the middle dis- Durand-Ruel, 4 Mar. 1941];17 [Durand-Ruel, New York, sold to Clark, 6 Mar. 1941]; Robert Sterling Clark (1941–55 ); Sterling tance—one of whom appears to carry hay, presumably and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. to feed livestock—give scale to the event, but other- wise the work is free of “the figures and animals” he exhibitions London 1939, no. 25, as Effet de neige, lent had planned to study.9 Toward the right-hand side of by Vollard; New York 1940a, no. 7, ill., as Effet de Neige; San the composition the view seems threatened by inco- Francisco 1940, no. 290, ill., as Snow Landscape, lent by herence, as the disorienting effects of snow on space Salz; New York 1941a, no. 12, as Le maison de Piette à Mont and color collapse the distinction between forms, and foucault, effet de neige; Williams town 1956a, no. S-2, ill.; between distance and foreground. At the center of this London–Paris–Boston 1980–81, p. 101, no.