Ut Pictura Poesis’ and Expression in French Art Criticism 1819-1840

DIDEROT’S SHADE; THE DISCUSSION ON ’UT PICTURA POESIS’ AND EXPRESSION IN FRENCH ART CRITICISM 1819-1840 Maria Anna Jonker Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Arts, 1994 Chair: Evert van Uitert 1 I would like to thank Hans van Helsdingen, Evert van Uitert and Jan de Vries for their valuable remarks and support. A word of thanks to Marcel de Jong, Bruno Braakhuis and Marion Laan is also in place here for their help with correcting and editing my manuscript. Without the help of the Library of the University of Amsterdam and that of the library staff of this university’s Department of Art History, writing this book would simply have been impossible. Of the Parisian libraries, the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal and the Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris in particular have been enormously helpful. My research was funded by the Stichting voor Kunsthistorisch Onderzoek, Netherlands’ Organization for Scientific Research, NWO. The photographs in this book are reproduced by courtesy of the Library of the University of Amsterdam. I completed my manuscript in 1993. Several important publications in the field of French art and art criticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth century were published too late to be of any real use to me. I regret particularly that I have not been able to benefit from Richard Wrigley’s work on French art criticism and the excellent bibliographies accompanying it. 2 CONTENTS Introduction 4 Chapter 1, UT PICTURA POESIS AND EXPRESSION BEFORE THE 1830'S 21 Chapter 2, DAVID, LESSING AND THE SEARCH FOR MIDDLE GROUND 103 Chapter 3, UNITY AND MODERNISM 167 Chapter 4, THE EIGHTEEN-THIRTIES 236 Chapter 5, DELECLUZE; Art for the nation 260 Chapter 6, PLANCHE; a Classicist defending Shakespeare 323 Works cited 385 Illustrations 405 3 INTRODUCTION In this book I will attempt to trace the history of one aspect of art criticism in France during the period 1819-1840, i.e. the debate on ut pictura poesis. French artists and art theorists in general had great faith in this theory, which set out to elevate painting to the level of poetry and tragedy. History painters depicted lofty actions in order to achieve the same seriousness and high intellectual level as the writers of tragedy and epic poetry. To compete with poets in their ability to depict human action and emotion they strove to achieve perfect drawing of the human form and practised peinture d'expression, the art of painting the outward signs of emotion. However, painters and theorists alike were aware that painting could never match poetry in its portrayal of complicated events and emotions. The nature of painting, they knew, was to reproduce the external appearance of things and when trying to tell a story the artist could only capture one moment. In this moment he had to achieve maximum eloquence. During the first half of the nineteenth century the theory of ut pictura poesis still had many adherents among artists and critics. However, their struggle to maintain it became ever more difficult. Destructive currents had been at work since the last quarter of the 4 seventeenth century when Roger de Piles drew attention to the qualities unique to painting, i.e. colour and realism. Artists and art theorists of the eighteenth century had tried to harness these qualities for the elevated aims of history painting, as Thomas Puttfarken (1) has pointed out in an admirable study on the theories of Roger de Piles and their influence on later generations. Another eighteenth century development was that the balance between tragedy and painting seemed to be changing in favour of the latter. Playwrights were no longer content to limit themselves to verse, but began to experiment with mime and pantomime as bearers of expression and effect. The emphasis placed on conveying emotion through gesture and facial expression became so great that exaggeration seemed to invade art. In France the critic Denis Diderot argued for more naturalness in both painting and theatre but far more fundamental criticism came from Germany. Winckelmann's writings on antique art revealed its beauty of form and simplicity of gesture to the European public. His compatriot Lessing also saw in these features the main qualities of antique art and mounted an attack on the value of ut pictura poesis which would have far-reaching consequences. He believed that art should turn the handicap of depicting only a single 5 moment to its advantage and should seek out not the most expressive moment but that containing the greatest beauty. Lessing's theory signalled the trend which would lead to the complete separation of art and literature, and ultimately of art and the depiction of reality. Although the theories of Winckelmann and Lessing were very important for the development of art, Lessing's influence in particular was only felt in France after the turn of the century. French painters and critics made use of Winckelmann's theories to free art from the theatricality which had plagued it and to give it the naturalness and immediate impact on the viewer so obviously lacking in the works of the French history painters in the first half of the eighteenth century. The great history painter Jacques-Louis David was seen by many as the painter best able to put this directness, naturalness and elevation back into art. In a study on Diderot's theories of painting and theatre, Michael Fried (2) has described the large debt which David owed to these theories. Fried believes the key concept of Diderot's theories to be that of "absorption", by which he means the way in which figures, both on stage and in paintings, should behave as if there were no viewer, so as to achieve complete naturalness. In a far less convincing article, (3) Fried has tried to demonstrate that French painters of the 6 late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were wholly preoccupied with the unavoidable theatricality of painting which depicted a momentary action. My main objection to this article is that it presents the question of theatricality, which was indeed important during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as a problem which occupied the painters of those times. In fact it was a concept used mainly by art critics holding widely differing views on the art of their day to denote equally disparate tendencies in art. Diderot used the word theatricality to describe the exaggerated Rococo art of his time whilst his opponents used it to describe the works of the painter Greuze, whom he greatly admired. It was ultimately to play an important part in the discussion on history painting's role as an expressive medium during the period under review in this book. This debate was maintained throughout the 1830's, most notably by the two leading critics, Planche and Delecluze. The history of the ut pictura poesis theory, or the theory of the relationship between theatre and painting as it became in France during the course of the eighteenth century, was described by James Rubin (4) for the period from 1790 to 1810. During this period we see the gradual deterioration of the concept. Critics observed that many painters now saw it as a licence for 7 simply copying scenes which they had seen in the theatre and adopting actor's gestures in their works. The theatricality which Diderot had loathed in both painting and theatre seemed to return, at least in the works of minor painters. Whether the work of David himself, still the most important painter of the time, was free from theatricality was not easy to decide. His increasing interest in the beauty of Greek statues which led him to make the figures in his paintings pose like isolated actors on stage seemed to suggest so. The dramatic action demanded of history painting seemed to give way to this new tendency in his work. Another threat to elevated history painting emerged during the period between 1790 and 1810, in the shape of growing interest in the realistic depiction of events from recent history. Such subjects had always been regarded as requiring too much realism to be fit for the elevated art of history painting. They should either be depicted in the form of allegory, or if shown realistically, classed as genre. David's pupil Gros gave a new lease of life to history painting through his ability to combine elevation and realism in his paintings of events from Napoleon's reign. At the same time, tragedy was also succumbing to an ever greater degree of realism. During the period which will concern us in this 8 book, young painters were embracing the realism introduced by Gros, choosing subjects even less elevated than Napoleonic battles. Their strong humanitarian and political interests, and the wish to shock and be noticed, drove them to depict scenes of carnage and desperation which they had read about in the press. However, the suggestion that this trend signalled the end of the theory of ut pictura poesis must be refuted. The painters themselves and the few critics who dared support them saw their work as a protest against the lifeless reproduction of antique art, held up as the example for them to follow. This copying seemed to them to rob French art of the deep, even harrowing emotion which they wanted to express. They were highly interested in developments then taking place in the French theatre, led by their contemporaries who wanted to put back the authenticity and expressivity which they believed French seventeenth-century tragedy to lack. Like playwrights, the painters of the day believed that the unities of time, place and action, which had always been observed by poets and painters, hampered them in their search for these expressive qualities.

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