Art History Today

The Smile of Reason: Evolution of Portrait Painting in Enlightenment France. 5

Chardin’s Portraits & Absorption.

Watteau was an example of the “surprise invader” type. So too was Chardin who initially produced still life and figurative pictures, most of which weren’t destined for a public, but a group of informed insiders, aristocrats and fellow artists. Chardin produced a disciplined type of northern genre with images of people in kitchens, children and young men reading or painted, occasionally conveyed with a muted visual trickery such as opened drawers offered to the viewer. Was it portraiture? Certain images of people, like his self-portraits are images of people that existed, though again there is the problem of how accurate this is a true representation of the living. There also exist paintings where the name of the sitter isn’t mentioned, but it is assumed to a person known to Chardin; a good example of this is the “Woman with a Teapot” who is thought to be Chardin’s wife who sadly died a few months after the picture was done.¹ Apart from these self-portraits where Chardin is looking directly at the viewer, most of the figurative pictures have an air of isolation, self-involvement, a general distance from the spectator. For example the wonderful picture of a boy playing cards (London, above) is an image of absorption which does not rely on a beholder of the picture to acknowledge the event taking place.²

1The “Lady taking Tea” was acquired by the famous anatomist Sir William Hunter in 1765 about the time Hunter sat for his own portrait, “My Highest Pleasures” William Hunter’s Art Collection (ed) Peter Black, (Paul Holberton, 2007), 15. Hunter also owned a few other Chardin’s: a pair of pictures of servants working.

2Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, 46-51.

The Smile of Reason: Evolution of Portrait Painting in Enlightenment France. 4

Other Portraitists from the Middle of the Century.

There is a variety of portraiture in the middle of the century. For example, Jean Marc Nattier (1685- 1766) produced a kind of mythological and decorative portrait which have been linked with the court of Louis XV and Madame Pompadour, famously painted by Boucher. Yet, as Levey points out, the situation was more complex because Pompadour and her kin were painted by Quentin de La Tour, not Nattier.¹ There are more lightly charming pictures such as his depiction of the Queen, Marie Leczinksa who was an amateur painter, and who for her portrait requested Nattier to paint her in ordinary costume; but there are also the allegorising portraits of members of the royal family which are pallid and lifeless. Subject of a recent exhibition in England, Jean Étienne Liotard (1702-89) came from Switzerland but settled in Paris in 1723. Perhaps his most famous portrait is that of a Maid carrying Chocolate (before 1745, above) which is a marvellous feat of observation striking for its hyper-realistic technique. Another foreign painter was Alexandre Roslin (1718-93) a well-travelled Swede whose elegant portraiture was popular with the French court and patrons in northern European countries. Another important French artist was Jacques Andre Joseph Camelot Aved (1702-66) born in or near Douai, trained in Amsterdam, even owning pictures by Rembrandt, though there is not much of the Dutchman’s technique in Aved’s art.

1Levey, Painting and Sculpture in France 1700-1789, 186.

The Smile of Reason: Evolution of Portrait Painting in Enlightenment France. 3

Watteau’s Head Studies.

Though Watteau’s allegories and fine dress do not really fit the category of portraiture, anybody interested in how the face was represented should peruse his drawings and studies of heads. According to the collector Jeurat, Watteau did not do complete drawings or subject drawings (dessin histoire). Another collector, Mariette said that Watteau only used drawings as studies for his painting; he also noted that Watteau was not able to draw in the grand manner.¹ His drawings of women from life show both visual aptitude and sharp observation, achieved by his skill at using sanguine (red chalk) to convey hands and feet which was coupled with strokes of white chalk to convey the shininess of the skin. It is true to say that Watteau is the importer of Rubens’s fascination with the flesh into eighteenth-century rococo.² The mixed technique is most visible in the treatment of the hair of Watteau’s female portraits; some of these show chalks of different colour.³ Some scholars call these heads of women portraits; but that raises the question of identity and representation of the self. Are these to be regarded as “portraits” in Diderot’s sense? Could these images betray identity through their anonymity? Most of these memorable images are of unnamed individuals who turn up in his fêtes galantes, or his comedic characters like Mezzatin. There are a number of drawings or real people that he knew such as the sanguine sheet of Antoine de La Roque who is shown with his arm in a sling. But generally the artist doesn’t seem to have done portraits- in the strict sense- of either men or women, simply used them for studies or drawings of their bodies. Watteau produced quite a number of these sheets, some of which have been found on the back of drawings when curators have unglued supports, findings that have happened to a number of French draughtsmen.⁴

1Quoted in Marianne Roland Michel, Watteau: An Artist of the Eighteenth Century (Chartwell Books, 1984), 73.

2David Wakefield, French Eighteenth-Century Portraiture (Gordon Fraser, 1984), 28.

3Michel, Watteau, 880.

4Pierre Rosenberg Du dessin au tableau: Poussin, Watteau, Fragonard, David & Ingres (Inflammation, 2000), 47, who notes the same discoveries in Poussin and Watteau drawings.

The Smile of Reason: Evolution of Portrait Painting in Enlightenment France. 2

Early Portraiture: Rigaud, Largillière and their Imitators.

Arguably, one could start the history of eighteenth-century French portraits with Hyacinthe Rigaud’s grand, formal image of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Though some reject the influence of Van Dyck here, it has that luxurious look of the Flemish painter that captures the power of this invincible monarch. This picture was celebrated for its accurate representation of an autocratic ruler, who as his solar title implied, sought to control life at Versailles and beyond. Rigaud was born in Perpignan in 1659, and reached Paris in 1681 He embarked on Louis’s portrait after one of the king’s brother, “Monsieur” in 1688. That year was his entry into royal circles where he earned the title the “portraitist of royalty” until his death in 1743. Influenced by Rembrandt, Rubens and Jordaens, as well as Titian and Veronese, Rigaud had examples of all in his personal collection. One of his most famous portraits is the double portrait of his mother which according to Levey recalls Phillipe de Champaign than Rembrandt.¹ Rigaud’s most famous pupil was Jean Ranc who produced charming, mediocre pictures lacking his master’s genius. The only comparable portrait painter to Rigaud is Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) who was also trained not only outside Paris, but out of France altogether, initially in Antwerp followed by London. Anti-catholic feeling forced Largillière away from England, so he went to Paris. Levey calls Rigaud and Largillière painters of “the party of colour” executing portraits for a well-heeled set. Sometimes, Largillière positions his groups against decorative landscapes, reminiscent of Gainsborough (above). Largillière is arguably the most important of the two painters: his handling of paint would have been favoured by Watteau; the origins of Fragonard’s fantasy portraits can be seen in his art, too.

1Michael Levey, Painting and Sculpture in France 1700-1789, Pelican History of Art, (Yale University Press, 1972), 4.

The Smile of Reason: Evolution of Portrait Painting in Enlightenment France. 1

Placing the Portrait in Eighteenth Century France.

During the decades of the 1750s and 1760s in France, a number of critics grew concerned about the question of portraiture; one objection was that the technique was too mechanical and unskilful.¹ In his Salon of 1767, the greatest art critic of the century, Denis Diderot (above) called portraiture, “the depiction of a being in all its individuality.”² Here Diderot is aiming to explain portraiture in terms of its the divisibility of the whole into parts, which after intense study, reveal identity or a sense of what kind of person is being portrayed; the details individualise. This is far from what a portrait is thought to represent today; we are inclined to think of it as representation based upon a model such as a real human face, a photograph, or some kind of artistic source. The concept of the portrait was more complex than it is today because the definition of it depended on a debate raging between the gens du monde- the people who commissioned the portraits- and the artists and connoisseurs. The former praised likeness; they wanted a copy of an image of a real person who was absent; the latter believed that invention and artifice in the creation of the image was more important than likeness, or similarity; the connoisseurs who sided with the artists- not the sitters- wanted to see the skill of the brushwork, so to them portraits like Fragonard’s portraits de fantaisie of the 1760s- see below had a more aesthetic inclination.³ Diderot had imagined this cultural split between the copyists and the painters in his previous Salon of 1763. The debate between the two groups should be kept in mind when assessing the development of the portrait in France during this century. Some craved likeness in portraits; some believed in the invention of the artist rather than straight copying from a model.

1Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot, ((University of Chicago Press, 1980), 109. Fried connects the uneasiness of the genre with his concept of “theatricality” which had to “comply with the demand that a painter negate or neutralise the presence of the beholder” which seldom happens in the genre of the self-portrait, 109-110.

2Diderot on Art II: The Salon of 1767, trans John Goodman (Yale University Press, 1995), 9. The full quote is: “But if there’s a portrait of a face, then there’s a portrait of an eye, there’s a portrait of a neck, of a throat, of a stomach, of a foot, of a hand, of a big toe, of a fingernail, or what is a portrait if not the depiction of a being in all its individuality.”

3Mary D. Sheriff, Fragonard: Art and Eroticism, (University of Chicago Press, 1990), 174.

The Comic Century: Humour, Caricature & Satire in European Art. Slides

Slides

1. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, frontispiece to Los Capricchos, 1797-98, aquatint.

2. George Murgatroyd Woodward, Caricature Curiosity, 1806, hand coloured etching, 30.1×24.9 cm.

3. Anonymous, Dissection of Dead Member of Parliament, 1746, etching.

4. Giambattista Tiepolo, The Artist with Presumed Portrait of his Son, Domenico, 1752-53, Detail of Apollo and the Four Continents, Residenz, Würzburg, fresco.

5. Domenico Tiepolo, The Burial of Punchinello, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and ink, brown and yellow wash, over black chalk, 29.5 x 41.2 cm.

6. Pietro Longhi, Painter in his Studio, 1740-45, oil on canvas, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice.

7. William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress 1732, engraving, Royal Collection.

8. Charles Le Brun, Fright and Anger, The Expressions, from the Traité des Passions, 1678.

9. Charles Le Brun, Anger, The Expressions, from the Traité des Passions.

10. Joshua Reynolds, Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse, exh RA, 1784, oil on canvas, 240×148 cm, Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California.

11. Mary Darly, Caricature Shop, 1750s, location unknown, print.

12. Johann K. Lavater Illustration to Essays on Physiognomy: An Angry, Wicked Man-Essays on Physiognomy (1792), 1788-98.

13. J. C. Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, Ten faces of both men and women.

14. William Hogarth, Characters and Caricatures, 1733, etching.

15. William Hogarth, The Laughing Audience, 1733, etching.

16. Joshua Reynolds, Parody on the School of Athens, 1751, oil on canvas, 96.5×133.5 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

17. British artist, probably Thomas Patch, Connoisseurs in Rome, 1751, oil on canvas, 94.5×134.5 cm, Yale Centre for British Art.

18. Richard Cosway, Group of Connoisseurs, 1771-5, oil on canvas, 84.5 x 105 cm, Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museums, Burnley.

19. Johann Zoffany, Charles Townley’s Library at 7 Park Street, Westminster, 1781-3, oil on canvas, 127×99 cm, Townley hall Art Gallery, Burnley.

20. Pier Leone Ghezzi, Joseph Henry, pen and brown ink on paper, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

21. Joshua Reynolds, Joseph Leeson later 1^st Earl of Milltown and Sir William Lowther, 1751, oil on canvas, 49.5 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

22. Pier Leone Ghezzi, John Martin, Joseph Henry, Lord Bruce of Tottenham and Lord Middleton, pen and brown ink, faint traces of black chalk, and touches of colour on light brown laid paper, 32.2×22.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

23. Pier Leone Ghezzi, Self-Portrait, 18^th century, oil on canvas, measurements unknown, Uffizi, Florence.

24. Pier Leone Ghezzi, John Leeson, 2^nd Earl of Milltown and Lord Charlemont, pen and brown ink, faint traces of black chalk, and touches of colour on light brown laid paper, Private Collection.

25. Pompeo Batoni, Joseph Leeson, 1744, oil on canvas, 135. 5×98.5 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

26. Pompeo Batoni, David Garrick, 1764, oil on canvas, 76×63 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

27. Matthew Darly, A Connoisseur Admiring a Dark Night Piece, 16×10.3 cm, British Museum.

28. Thomas Rowlandson, The Connoisseurs, c. 1799, hand coloured etching, 28.8×23.0 cm, Royal Collection.

29. William Hogarth, Sir Francis Dashwood at his Devotions, late 1750s, 120×87.6 cm, Private Collection.

30. James Gillray, The Charm of Virtue, or a Cognoscenti Discovering the Beauties of an Antique Terminus, 1794, drawing.

31. Thomas Lawrence, Richard Payne Knight, 1794, oil on canvas, 127×101.5 cm, Whitworth Art Gallery.

32. Charles Grignion after William Hogarth, Tail piece to a Catalogue of the ... Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1761, etching and engraving.

33. Charles Grignion after William Hogarth, frontispiece to a Catalogue of the ... Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1761, etching and engraving.

34. Anonymous, La Font de Saint-Yenne examining the Fountain of the Innocents, etching.

35. Johan Joseph Zoffany, The Tribuna of the Uffizi 1772-77, oil on canvas, 123.5×155.0, Royal Collection.

36. Leonardo da Vinci, Caricatures, location not confirmed, but probably Royal Collection.

37. Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Five Grotesque Heads, 1494, pen and ink on paper, 261×206 cm, Royal Collection.

38. Pietro Longhi, The Visit, 1745, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 60.9×49.5 cm.

39. Pietro Longhi, The Temptation, 1746, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, oil on canvas, 61×49.5 cm.

40. Francesco Guardi, The Ridotto, 1755, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice, oil on canvas, 108×208 cm.

41. Pietro Longhi, The Ridotto in Venice, 1750's, Private collection, Oil on canvas, 84×115 cm.

42. Att to Anton Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Giocomo Casanova, Collection Armband Preziosi, Bologna, oil on canvas, dimensions not known.

43. Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Man holding a Tricorn, 1740-45, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and pale brown ink, 17.3×11.1 cm.

44. Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Man in a Mask and a Tricorn, c. 1760 (Pignatti), pen and ink with wash on paper, 18.5×10.2 cm.

45. Giambattista Tiepolo, Caricature of a Gentleman and Other Studies, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, over black chalk.

46. Giovanni David, Le Masque de Caffé, 1775, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York etching and aquatint.

47. Domenico Tiepolo, The Burial of Punchinello, c. 1800, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, pen and ink, brown and yellow wash, over black chalk, 29.5×41.2 cm.

48. Domenico Tiepolo, Punchinello's Departure, 1797, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, fresco.

49. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Capricho no. 1, Los Capricchos, 1797-98, aquatint.

50. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, “What illness will he die from?” 1796-97, etching and aquatint, 21.3×15.1 cm.

51. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Self-Portrait with Dr Arrieta, 1820, oil on canvas, 116×79 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

52. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, “Those specks of dust,” 1796-97, etching and aquatint.

53. James Gillray, Doublûres of Characters;—or—striking Resemblances in Phisiognomy.—"If you would know Mens Hearts, look in their Faces," 1798.

54. James Gillray, The world being carved up into spheres of influence between Pitt and Napoleon, 1798.

55. George Henry Harlow, Portrait of Thomas Rowlandson, 1814, pencil sketch, National Portrait Gallery, London.

56. Thomas Rowlandson, "Dr Syntax outside the Halfway House" from Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, watercolour, 1812, Yale Centre for British Art.

57. Thomas Rowlandson, Dr Syntax sketching the Lake, same location and medium.

58. Joseph Wright of Derby, ‘The Reverend D’Ewes Coke, His Wife Hannah, and Daniel Parker Coke’, probably 1782, oil on canvas, 152.4×177.8 cm, Derby Art Gallery, Derby.

59. Thomas Rowlandson, Dr Syntax losing his way, same location and medium.

60. Thomas Rowlandson, Dr Syntax in Danger, same location and medium.

61. James Gillray, A Great Stream from a petty fountain- or- John Bull swamped in the flood of new Taxes; Cormorants Fishing in the Stream, 1806, hand coloured etching, 22.8×33.6 cm, Library of Congress.

The Comic Century: Humour, Caricature & Satire in European Art. 10

Thomas Rowlandson and Dr Syntax

The last of our caricaturists Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) is famous as the illustrator of one of the greatest comic figures of the 18^th century: Dr Syntax, a witty satire on William Gilpin, the person most associated with the picturesque. The “curate’s picturesque” by Gilpin the “high priest of the picturesque” was mercilessly sent up by the caricaturist Rowlandson who illustrated the character of the curate the Reverend Dr Syntax (created by William Coombe) who is shown riding off on his horse in search of the pleasures of nature. His fortunes are mixed: he is shown sketching a scenic lake (above) whilst gawked at by tourists in a boat; he also has to endure misadventures such as getting lost, and being chased by a bull. This mocks the pretensions of the genteel middle-class who claim preference for the aesthetics of landscape compared to the city or the town. Something of this vogue for the countryside on the part of the smart set can be seen in Joseph Wright of Derby’s the Cokes in a rural environment, probably the grounds of Brookhill Hall, Pinxton, a property recently inherited by the Reverend Coke who is shown with his wife and another member of the family.

The Comic Century: Humour, Caricature & Satire in European Art. 9

Gillray’s Caricatures in London & Paris.

If Hogarth’s main target was Walpole and his politicians, James Gillray’s (1756/7- 1815) favourite bête noire was the Royal Family of George III; though the cartoonist saved plenty of pictorial venom for both politicians and the art world. Born in Chelsea, Gillray lost an arm in battle, but he eventually trained as a letter engraver; he was even a member of the R.A. who took in certain print-makers. In his early career, Hogarth’s prints were a key influence, though most of Gillray’s cartoons are executed in a variety of techniques including etching, aquatint, hence they are considered different to engravings. Some of Gillray’s most famous caricatures are of George III who claimed that he didn’t understand Gillray’s work at all. A student of physiognomy as in Characters  “If you would know Mens’ Hearts, look in their Faces", Gillray’s images are full of different emotions and expressive language. During the French Revolution Gillray was less radical and more opposed to the French, the caricature equivalent of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. A favourite character in Gillray is John Bull, the personification of Great Britain itself; one of his most memorable appearances is the cartoon of Bull swamped in the flood of new taxes (above). Gillray has ocassionally been compared to William Blake; they were both engravers, though Blake’s imagery is far more fantastic and derived from mythology and ancient British history rather than rooted in the corporeal struggle of 18^th century life which is Gillray’s preferred territory.¹

1The comparison between Blake and Gillray is made in English Caricature, 17.

The Comic Century: Humour, Caricature & Satire in European Art. 8

Goya’s Disquieting Humour in Spain

In an article on the comic outside France, the illustrious poet and critic Charles Baudelaire examines the element of the fantastic in the art of Goya.¹ As he notes, this tendency of mixing the comic and the fantastic makes Goya difficult to locate in the history of the comic image; he may have been trained academically via the expressions of Le Brun; but his creations, especially the set of engravings known as the Capricchos, are singular in character. With great skill Goya yokes the terrifying qualities of nature with human physiognomies, both set against a decaying Spain that is losing its authority as the modern age relentlessly nears. The Capricchos comprise cartoons on the subject of politics, war, and witchcraft, executed in aquatint with great dexterity. Peopled with young Spanish girls, old witches at Sabbaths, malevolent demons, and soldiers, the Capricchos offer a terrifying, yet paradoxically realistic portrayal of the chaotic ferment through which political and social truths are discerned- what Baudelaire called “a monstrous type of verisimilitude.”² Unsurprisingly, despite their great originality and daring, the series didn’t sell at all; they were left to posterity and the expert appraisal of Baudelaire, and after him modern scholars who tend to view their real and allegorical horrors through the eyes of political analysis.

1“Some Foreign Caricaturists: Hogarth, Cruikshank, Goya, Pinelli, Brughel in Charles Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Literature, trans. P.E. Charvet, 235.

2Ibid, 238.

The Comic Century: Humour, Caricature & Satire in European Art. 7

Heading Towards Comedy: Tiepolo & the Venetian Caricature.

In Italy, the caricature has a long history going back to Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of old men. However, this might be classified as the overlapping of both the portrait and caricature genres: Leonardo amused himself by drawing the men with unusual ugliness, but this was not really an example of comedy since Leonardo undertook it in a spirit of merciless scientific enquiry. As we saw with Ghezzi in Rome, caricature in this tradition were used with connoisseurs as targets. Good examples of this genre exist by G. B. Tiepolo. But sometimes Tiepolo would combine the emblem of aristocratic fashion with a specific Venetian feature: the mask, a symbol of aristocratic intrigue and fantasy (above).¹ There are similar caricatures by Tiepolo’s son, Domenico who worked with his father at Würzburg and in Spain and who like his father learnt from Venetian masters like Veronese. After Giambattista’s death in 1770, Domenico kept his father’s albums but added his own drawings to them. Thus, we have a sheet comprising old men and a row of oriental and bizarre heads, many of which appear in his religious paintings which caused disquiet in the minds of the anti-fantasy faction in Venice.² These caricatures should be contrasted with the grave, dignified heads of old men found in a series of etchings from the 1750s known as the “Raccolta di Teste” by Domenico, his father and his brother Lorenzo. These heads of Orientals and philosophers are entirely without humour and owe much to Rembrandt and G. B. Castiglione.

1George Szabó, “Eighteenth-Century Italian Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection,” 1981.

2Jacob Bean, “William M. Griswold 18th Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Ex. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, cat. no. 264, fig. no. 264, pp. 264-65, ill.