Rachel Esner on Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with L'illustration
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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with L'Illustration Esner, R. Publication date 2012 Document Version Final published version Published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Esner, R. (2012). Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with L'Illustration. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 11(2). http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/summer12/rachel-esner- visiting-delaroche-and-diaz-with-lillustration General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:27 Sep 2021 Rachel Esner on Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with L’Illustration | Print | E-mail CALL FOR PROPOSALS: NCAW digital research and Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with L'Illustration publication initiative by Rachel Esner In 1896, the critic Henri Nocq wrote: current issue about the journal "In order to garner a more or less complete picture of an artist, his works, past issues and his artistic direction, one must visit his studio. Not only does the oeuvre help retain all its significance when viewed in the place where it was conceived and how to support the journal executed, there is also a striking resemblance between the artist and his studio; the dwelling itself permits one to make a thorough assessment of the man who occupies it."[1] This statement sums up a notion that had been gaining currency since the advent of Romanticism in the 1820s and which found expression not only in the works of artists Volume 11, Issue 2 Summer 2012 themselves—in their depictions of their studios and in self-portraits—but also in many forms of media with an even broader reach within the public domain. In fact, we can Patricia Mainardi, Founder of AHNCA speak of the artist's studio becoming "mediatized" through its representation, during by Elizabeth Mansfield the course of the nineteenth century, in dozens of artist-novels and hundreds of Patricia Mainardi, Mentor and Educator: caricatures on the subject published from the 1830s onward. These forms of Her Years at the CUNY Graduate Center dissemination of the image of the artist and his studio have been the subject of much by Sally Webster art-historical investigation.[2] The reach of those print media, however, was fairly Patricia Mainardi and the Dahesh limited, certainly when compared to more "mass media" sources such as the Museum of Art illustrated press,[3] which, by contrast, has yet to be examined in depth. It was above by Amira Zahid all through the latter that the studio, supposedly the artist's private realm, Articles increasingly became communal property. "Graceful in the Extreme": A But what exactly is the image of the artist's place of work these sources create? How Neoclassical Drawing by John Flaxman was the space characterized and, especially, how was it understood to reflect, perhaps by Heather Lemonedes even to produce, the artist himself? These questions are central to this article,[4] Art for the Public: William Henry which aims, through a close reading of both texts and images, to outline how the Vanderbilt's Cultural Legacy artist and his studio[5] were presented to a very particular audience; namely, the by Leanne Zalewski bourgeois readers of the widely circulated magazine L'Illustration. In my essay, I will Louis-Ernest Barrias and Modern focus on two articles from the first of the two illustrated "series" of visits to the artist's Allegories of Technology by Caterina Y. Pierre studio published by the journal[6]—the first of their kind in the popular press.[7] The visits undertaken by the writer and literary critic Augustin-Joseph du Pays were to "Stone, the Most Perfect of Surfaces": Paul Delaroche in September 1850 and to Narcisse Diaz in March 1853. The accounts Bolton Brown in the Sierra and Woodstock of these visits can be said to typify the conceptions of the studio that run throughout by Derin Tanyol the series, and are thus illustrative of the image of art and artists that L'Illustration The Image of Mary of the Miraculous sought to convey. It is my contention that, in line with the magazine's overall Medal: A Valiant Woman ideology, the aim of this series was to promote an art that avoided the extremes of by Joyce C. Polistena both Neo-classicism and Romanticism, but that nonetheless served a didactic aim, Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with and an artist who was no longer an extravagant outsider but an upstanding member of L'Illustration society, with whom—although he always maintained a special status thanks to his by Rachel Esner abilities—L'Illustration's readers could identify. Spinner or Saint?: Context and Meaning in Gauguin's First Fresco L'Illustration was founded in 1843 as the French counterpart to the London Illustrated by Nora M. Heimann News.[8] From the outset, it staked a claim to high-mindedness, moderation, and Disharmony and Discontent: Reviving impartiality in matters of both politics and culture. Although the editors were rather the American Art-Union and the Market reserved toward the Revolution of 1848 and in the early years of the Second Empire, for United States Art in the Gilded Age for a time, exhibited a somewhat obsequious attitude towards the new powers, in by Craig Houser general their ideology seems to have been conservative republican. As in its politics, Rue Laffitte: Looking at and Buying L'Illustration strove for temperance and balance in language and tone; the writing Contemporary Art in Mid-Nineteenth- style was elevated and never strident.[9] Although reporting on the arts was not as Century Paris by Véronique Chagnon-Burke important as commenting on current and market affairs, the journal did count several prominent art critics among its ranks, including Théophile Gautier and Paul Mantz.[10] "Une exposition (in)complete": Courbet The quality of the criticism was generally high and the editors seem to have taken the in Vienna, 1873 by Christian Huemer art world seriously. As far as taste was concerned, here too we can characterize the journal as moderate to conservative, as it favored artists of an academic bent. The Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s Three Graces and the Winckelmannian Female Nude painters and sculptors discussed were very much in the mainstream, and many could by Katie Hanson be considered the "official" artists of their time.[11] L'Illustration was quite widely disseminated but rather expensive, meaning that from the beginning its audience belonged to a wealthy, mainly upper-class segment of society, those with enough time and education to read long articles and who were interested in "things of the world."[12] Like the journal itself, L'Illustration's readers were moderate in every way, with a particular dislike of extremes (especially the far left). Jean-Nöel Marchandiau describes them as firmly "center left, center, and center http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/summer12/rachel-esner-visiting-delaroche-and-diaz-with-lillustration[20-9-2013 13:04:24] Rachel Esner on Visiting Delaroche and Diaz with L’Illustration right." L'Illustration was the place for those cultured citizens, he writes, fleeing the "feverishness" of their time.[13] As David Kunzle points out, however, it was precisely this equability that made the magazine the perfect instrument for maintaining the status quo. Its reports and investigations, its political optimism and championing of the free market—always presented in a seemingly objective and neutral manner— appealed to its readership's desire for stability and at the same time served to reinforce their belief in the political and economic system of the moment.[14] Although Du Pays's series only began in earnest in the 1850s, a kind of prolegomena was offered in advance of the Salon of 1844[15] in an article entitled "Visite aux ateliers." While the article is primarily a description of some of the pictures that were to appear in the show, two aspects are interesting and relevant to the series which followed, providing insight into the general attitude of L'Illustration toward art and the artist, and creating a basis for the image it would later construct for its bourgeois audience. The first is the critic's condemnation of both Ingres and Delaroche for not exhibiting at the Salon, turning their studios instead into exhibition spaces, which, however, were inaccessible to the general public. As far as the critic was concerned, this meant that these artists had "died,"[16] implying not only that in order for an artist to live he must allow the public access to his works, but, indeed, that the public has a certain right to see them. Later, Du Pays would write in reference to Delaroche: "Today, when, under the influence of our current political system, each one of us is more and more compelled to confront the question of publicity, even artists cannot avoid the consequences.