I MPRESSIONISM AND JOURNALISTIC ILLUST ATION
JOEL ISAACSON
Journalistic Illlustration provided a ready source of visual stimuli for the experimental artists of the 1860s and
18709 that affected as well as coincided with their iconographic and, to a lesser degr e, their formal interests.
E
since the appearance of Meyer Schapiro's essay on
~... "Courbet and Popular Imagery" in 1941, we have been expanding our awareness of the popular arts as a formal and iconographic influence upon French painting of the second half of
the 19th century.' During the past four decades, the interconnected contributions of cheaply printed colored woodcuts,
fashion plates, photography, Japanese prints, lithography, and
j ournalistic illustrations of contemporaneous events, customs,
and social types have been increasingly recognized.' In the
work of Anne Hanson and Beatrice Farwell, in particular, a vast
repertory of images, mainly lithographic, has been brought forward as providing a pictorial storehouse from which artists repeatedly drew. Whereas Hanson has concentrated her attention
upon Manet,' Farwell has ranged more broadly, exploring the
extensive precedents in the lithography of the July Monarchy
and early Second Empire for the iconography of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and the Impressionist generation.' In the catalogue
of her illuminating exhibition The Cult of Images, Farwell has
assessed the results of this research correctly and forcefully.
While taking account of the artists' commitment to paint what
they saw, in accordance with Realist theory, she affirms the parallel role of popular imagery:
I n view of the wide range of Realist subjects already treated a generation earlier in popular lithographs, this simple
view of artists setting out to paint the contemporary scene
from the life is no longer convincing. The pattern was already there. It is naive to suppose that Degas was unaware
of Gavarni's and Beaumont's "rats" behind the scenes at
the Opera, since they appeared every day in Le Charivari.
By the same token, it must be assumed that any artist
whose youth was spent in the 1830s, '40s or '50s grew up
i n the constant presence of a plethora of images that were
bound to appeal to visual sensibility and the urge to draw.
I t was the first generation of artists so affected. Thus we
see in Impressionist painting the country outings, the
boating parties at Chatou and Asnicres, the cafe-concert
and the Moulin de la Galette, views of bridges and streets
of Paris, music in the Tuileries, ladies in theatre loges and
i n bathtubs, all purged by Impressionist color and sunlight
of their evil and erotic connotations to be sure, but essentially the same repertory as that of the commercial lithographer of a generation earlier.'
We may take Farwell's appraisal as an epigraph to the present
study. The images she has gathered together, as well as those
cited by Hanson, date mostly from the period prior to 1860,
when Manet and Degas were still students and the Impressioni sts for the most part in their youth and generally unfocused as
to career. The present essay is an attempt to bring the investigation up to date, so to speak, by considering the continuing stimulative role of illustration during the succeeding twenty years.
The images upon which we shall concentrate are those to be
found, with an ever increasing frequency, in the weekly newspapers and satirical journals of the later Second Empire and the
first decade of the Third Republic. Their appearance coincides
with the active years of the Impressionists' emergence, the period when they were inaugurating their careers and establishing
the first mature phase of their art. These images provided an ongoing, up-to-the-minute reference for the painters, and, in terms
of style and the currency of the subjects depicted, they offered
an immediate stimulus to the direction that Impressionism was
taking.
I n the survey that follows I hall stress, for the painters, those
works from the 1860s and 1 Os by Renoir, Manet, Degas, and
Monet that depict the pursue of culture and leisure in the Paris
of their day. The names we p t beside theirs are, for the illustrators, Daumier and Gavarni, o course-from an earlier but still
i nfluential generation-and, s well, Cham, Nadar, Pelcoq, Randon, Stop, Grdvin, Bertall, a d Marcelin, among others.' In the
pages of such reviews as Le Vie parisienne, Le Journal amusant, Le Charivari, L'Esprit follet, and in illustrated newsweeklies such as L'lllustration and Le Monde illustre, these artists
developed their assigned survey of the life of Paris. As Farwell
(in the quote above) and Roberts-Jones have indicated for the
i mages of the Romantic generation, the subjects treated in the
pages of these journals find their echo in the paintings of the
I mpressionists.' The race curses, cafe scenes, masquerade
balls, and outdoor concerts of Manet and Degas, the theatre and
circus scenes, dancers and dance halls, the laundresses of Degas and Renoir, the backsta)e visits of Degas, the equestrians
of Renoir and Manet-scenes of genre, scenes of modern activi ty, which complement the landscapes and townscapes, the
portraits and still lifes of the Impressionists-were mainstays
of the illustrators' and particularly the satirical cartoonists' repertory as they had been in the lithographic depictions of their
predecessors.
Popularity and Circulation
The period from about 1050 to 1880 saw a tremendous increase in the volume of publication, a phenomenon that directly
parallels the rapidity of urban growth during those years.'
Among newspapers and specialized journals of all sorts, the satirical illustrated journal achieved a considerable spurt in
growth and popularity. Philippe Roberts-Jones has noted that
whereas during the July monarchy one can cite five or six reviews of this type, for the period from 1860 to 1890 he could catalogue, without exhausting the possibilities, 162 such journals.'
Among those, we may note, for the two decades from 1860 to
1880, the appearance of 115 : new publications and the continuation throughout the period of three earlier journals of major importance-Le Charivari, Le Journal amusant, and Le Petit journal pour Tire." Most of these reviews were decidedly ephemeral,
but some attained considerable success during their short
spans. La Lune, which published from 1865 to 1868, reached a
circulation as high as 40,000, although most of the successful
satirical journals tended to show much more modest figures: Le
Charivari averaged just under 3,000 copies from 1866 to 1869; Le
Journal amusant i n 1858 printed 8,000 copies; L'lllustration and
Le Monde illustrc, both weeklies that included reportorial images and caricatures, printed 27,000 and 21,000 copies, respectively, in 1858, although L'Illustration's circulation had dipped
to about 17,500 in 1868-69."
From 1860 to 1880 journals devoted to political satire appeared in approximately equal numbers with those that restricted themselves to the satire of manners." The illustrated weeklies, chiefly L'lllustration and Le Monde lllustre, produced a
seemingly endless supply of wood-engraved illustrations devoted to political and other current events along with a minor offer.
i ng of satirical illustrations and thus provided an abundant
96
storehouse of images upon which the Impressionist painters
might and did draw, but it was the exclusively satirical journals
devoted to a canvass of modern manners that seem to have
most fully captured their attention. Among the most Important
and most successful of these were La Vie parisienne and the
Journal amusant, both journals that had been established at an
early date and that had succeeded in producing a varied repertory of images and subjects and in offering a steady employ for Ill ustrators who had established their own styles and iconographic specialties."
The satirical journals often aimed at more or less Identifiable
strata of the middle class. La Vie parisienne was founded by the
Illustrator Marcelin in 1863; from the outset It sought to address
Itself to a relatively sophisticated clientele that had emerged
strongly within the prosperous world of the Second Empire,
concentrating principally on the worldly domains of fashion,
sport, theatre, and the arts and presenting these subjects in images that were executed in rather free-form, sketchy, and styli zed manner. The Journal amusant, founded earlier, in 1856,
sought to establish a more pedestrian tone and attract a less urbane clientele"; an issue cost thirty-five centimes in 1876,
Fig. 1. Title page, La Vie parisienne,
Fig. 2. Alfred Darjou, "Souvenir de la
roughly half the price of La Vie parisienne. Unlike the situation
10 May 1873.
GrenouillAre," cover illustration,
with the latter journal, which attempted to effect an elegant inLe Journal amusant, 4 Sept. 1869.
tegration of text and image, the drawings in the Journal amusant dominated the text and were presented in a more down to
earth, realistic style (the drawings were regularly reprinted with
a time lag of sometimes several years in the still more popularly pretention, of the foolish gregariousness associated with passoriented Le Petit journal pour rire, i n which text was abandoned i ng fashions, to a degree of the heedlessness of people caught
all but entirely).
up in the ebb and flow o the social current, but the attitude of
The purview of La Vie parisienne was indicated on its title most of the journals wa one of endorsement rather than critipage, repeated each issue throughout the years. The page concism. In this light, the oc casional presence of Daumier among
tained a number of images in small rectangles, circling like the
the artists of the Journal amusant serves as the exception that
numbers on a clockaround the printed title, underwhich was listproves the rule; rarely di his colleagues approach him in exered: Moeurs didgantes, Choses du jour, Fantaisies, Voyages,
cising (or it would seem i wishing to exercise) the mordant wit,
Theatres, Musique, Beaux-Arts, Sport, Modes. The specific sub- the bitter, disaffected ey with which he viewed society through
jects depicted in the drawings included: the salon, horse and
most of his career.
carriage, the theatre coulisses, skating, the military, the family,
What role did the cari ature de moeurs play in society, and
music (playing the piano), the dance hall, faces of men and
what can we learn of the Impressionists' sense of their own enwomen, a stroll in the country, the race track (Fig. 1). This roster, terprise from the links to illustration that have been established
weighted on the side of la vie 616gante and la vie amoureuse, and that I hope to furtherp laborate here? The caricaturist and ilwas covered in its pages and in those of numerous, more short- l ustrator of manners, wht~ther lithographer or journalist, providlived successors, e.g., L'Esprit toilet (1869-72), Le High-Life ed images directed toward the urban middle class. Alan Gow(1871) and Le Frou-Frou (1871-72). Le Frou-Frou subtitled itself a ans has called illustratic n "the art peculiarly associated with
"Journal du High Life" and announced the following coverage:
and created for the bourg eosie."" Farwell has characterized the
"Actualites the trales, chronique de la vie e16gante, echos du
art of the lithographic i age as "the art of the people," and
mode." This legend was accompanied by a montage of scenes
Roberts-Jones has said that illustration provides a democratic
depicting the hunt, the steeplechase, the beach, the theatre (or i conography in its reach out towards a broad audience." In1
5
cafe-concert), and elegant carriages.
deed, the illustrator's su ey was geared to the interests of the
The Journal amusant treated many of the same subjects as La
middle-class urban dweller, whether high or low in status and
Vie parisienne, but, aiming at a wider audience, it deliberately
aspiration. For the most part, the illustrators addressed themextended its coverage in a somewhat more folkloric fashion to a selves to a male audience, to the would-be man of the world.
greater range of class activities and customs. During the first T hey concentrated upon h is entertainments and pastimes, catahalf of 1873, for example, a dozen pictorial essays were given
l ogued his activities and catered to his fantasies of full particiover to the theatre; ten dealt with art and artists, Including two pation in the life of the theatre and the dance hall; they offered
on the Salon des Refuses of that year and seven installments the view from the loge
well as the gallery and permitted a
containing caricatures of paintings at the Salon; six essays glance at a backstage rendezvous; they chided and revealed his
each dealt with peasants, provincial manners, and the carnival;
peccadilloes and flirtatious with the actress and dancer as well
four with military manners and two more with apprentice sailas with the laundress and modiste; they mirrored his enjoyment
ors; three essays dealt with the flirtations of students (t tudiants of the cafe-concert and o the pleasures of leisure by river's side
et t tudiantes) and two others with the flirtations of women and
or ocean's edge. The car oonist was a popular artist; to a conof actresses backstage at the theatre; several were devoted to
siderable degree he was he "painter" of the middle class and
other places (England, Vienna, Brittany, Rouen); and, among the
for the middle class, of and for that class which, in its extraordiother subjects surveyed, two each dealt with balls, billiards, and
nary rise to prominence and at least marginal wealth within the
country life." Among the leading artists working for the Journal expanded urban setting, provided the occasion for the existwere Bertall., Darjou, Daumier (who appeared more or less reguence of these images in the first place. That the illustrator full arly during the sixties), Grdvin, Lafosse, Pelcoq, Randon, Robifilled this role was in effe t affirmed by Baudelalre, when, In his
da, and Stop. Their drawings along with their captions were for
search for an artist who spoke to and revealed the present, he
the most part good-humored and eartny; rarely did they deal in
concluded his 15-year-long address to the bourgeoisie by desigthe scabrous or licentious, but they made sure, of course, to apnating the Illustrator Con, tantin Guys as the "painter of modern
proach each subject with a raised eyebrow, treating the people life."" The cartoonist wa the "painter" of the modern world of
they depicted as the gentle rather than caustic butt of their relathe urban bourgeois unti the realist painters, and notably the
I mpressionists, came to Include in their canvases just those
tively muted jibes.
Both the Vie parisienne and Journal amusant shared with the
pursuits that either made up the common activities of the
subjects they depicted the values of the urban society to which
middle-class city dweller' (preferably male) or had been made
they catered. The mode of caricature in itself Implies a distance, part of the contemporary world of knowledge and desire
a critique, and indeed we find in these journals an awareness of through the illustrated press.
Ii
,a.
---
43463
Fig. 5. Edouard Riou, "La Grenouill8re, A Bougival," La Chronique lllustrAe,
1 August 1869, p. 4.
Pardon, madameI It me semble;gne je vous ai donnd un coup dv
pied dada l'estemac f
Non,-non, monsieur... au contrairel...
Fig. 6. Stop, "Aux
bains de mer," Petit
journal pour fire,
no. 34,1869, p. 8.
Fig. 4. G. Lafosse,
"Au bord de I'eau": "La plage de Croissy," Le Journal amusant, 17 July 1869, p. 4.V
Fig. 3. Claude Monet, La GrenouillAre,1869. Oil on
canvas, 29-3/8 x 39 /. ". The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, the H. 0. Havemeyer Collection.
This is not to say that the mirror of the contemporary was the
only form of art that appealed to the bourgeois. Not at all. The
reflection of the past, revealed mainly in history painting, persisted at the Salon (if in decreasing numbers), and the categorI ies of landscape, portrait, and genre (both historical and contemporary) either held their own or increased their presence
there during the second and third quarters of the 19th century."
Within the vairied audience for these offerings-including the
government to a limited extent and the aristocrats of tradition
and wealth (financiers, industrialists, the most successful entrepreneurs)--a narrow upper stratum of the middle class responded to works within the gamut of genres as well as to the
mythological'erotic variants on history painting that abounded
at the exhibitions. We may understand this range of work, allowi ng for differences in circumstances and setting among its clientele, as constituting an art for the middle class, as intended
to satisfy a vein of the acquisitive instinct that derived from the
desires of the nouveau riche for prestige, cultural integration,
and the reputed satisfactions of ownership-all varieties of patronage as conspicuous consumption. But that patronage was
li mited; the great variety of works of art at the Salon went unsold. They provided a bourgeois art but a particularly precarious
one, unsure of its audience, subject to the easily shifting vicissitudes of taste and fashion. The satirical illustrator and litho- I
grapher of manners served a far larger audience. They provided
a more accessible brand of art-in subject immediate and sav-
ory; occasionally, as with t e erotic lithograph, clandestinely attractive-and, of course, i price such
images could be almost
2
as cheap as the daily news aper. '
That illustration also pr vided an example, a model, a fecund
source for the style and i agery of painters such as Courbet,
Manet, and the Impressic nists is no longer in question. Farwell's view of the relations hip between the work of the painters
and the lithographic imag ry she has studied is forcefully asserted: "Splendidly isolat d as though by aesthetic antisepsis
from the imagery of their s cial matrix, the innovations of these
artists have been misinter reted in the twentieth century as an
i nnocent and clear-eyed o servation of the reality about them,
whereas their true and de per innovation was their awareness,
as artists, of that new wo I d of imagery, 'the art of the people,'
that "22
eventually rendered i relevant the pretensions of Salon art
. . . .
Whereas she goes 0o far, I believe, in minimizing "cleareyed observation," she ju tly removes the Impressionists' work
from the view of innocen e, i.e., from the idea that their painti ngs may have had no gro riding in a world of carefully chosen
i mages, pictures with whi h they had grown up, with which they
were surrounded, and wh ch dealt in the same trade of depicti ng modern manners in which they themselves were engaged.
That Manet and Degas were so engaged has never seriously
been questioned, but that the
younger artists of the Impressioni
i st generation were also interested early on In creating a middle.
Fig. 7. Edgar Degas,
The Cafe-Concert at Les
Ambassadeurs, c. 1876. Pastel over
monotype, 14.91111 x 10.518". Mus6e
des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.
Fig. 8. Grandville, "Le Concert A la
vapeur," 1844.
Fig. 9. Honor9 Daumier,
"Carotte dramatique," Le Chariveri,
30 April 1844.
Fig. 10. Alfred GrBvin,
"A Londres, notes at croquis":
"A London Pavilion," Le
Journalamusant, 14Oct.1871, p.7.
Fig. 11. Edgar Degas,
The Orchestra of the Opera, 1868.69
Oil on canvas, 20.718 x 13 31,". Louvre.
Fig. 16. Edgar Degas, The Musicians in the
Orchestra, 1872. Oil on can as, 27.118 x
19.5116". Stade/sches Ka nstinstitut,
Frankfurt.
98
class and, in part, an urban art is worth emphasizing. In an oftquoted letter, Eugene Boudin, the teacher and intimate of Monet, wrote to a friend, defending his subjects of vacationers on
the Normandy beaches and pointing out that young painters,
Monet "at their head," were increasingly looking to the depiction of the contemporary in their work:
The peasants have their favorite painters: Millet, Jacque,
Breton, that is very fine; those people do difficult labor,
they struggle ... That is fine, but between us, these middle class people who are strolling on the jetty at the hour
of sunset, have they no right to be fixed upon canvas, to
be brought to our attention. Between ourselves, they are
often resting from strenuous work, these people who
l eave their offices and cubbyholes. If there are a few parasites among them, are there not also people who have fulfilled their task. That is a serious, irrefutable argument."
The mention of Monet is not out of place in this connection. In
1866 and 1867 he had moved into the city to paint such subjects
as the racecourse, the fashionable promenade, the activity of
the Parisian sl:reet and square. In 1868, several months before
Boudin's letter, Emile Zola praised Monet's city subjects, and,
as Boudin, placed him in the first rank of artists who were at.
tempting to paint modernity, emphasizing thereby an unfamiliar
Monet, a Monet in love with the city, who recorded its features
and then attempted to export its characteristics to the countryside Itself: "In the field, Claude Monet will prefer an English
park to a corner of forest. He likes to rediscover everywhere the
trace of man ... Like a true Parisian, he brings Paris to the country, he cannot paint a lancscape without including gentlemen
and ladies in the latest dress [en toilette]. Nature appears to
l ose its interest for him aE soon as it loses the imprint of our
manners.""
Zola and Boudin were ric ht to link the early Monet to the city
and to urban tastes. Indeed, the city provides one measure of
modernity and one gauge Af the shift in artistic generationsfrom peasant to urban bou ,geois, from Barbizon to Impressioni sm. Impressionist city sutjects provide a reverse response to
the urbanlindustrial explosion of the mid-19th century than the
escapist one found in Barb zon painting. 25 Rather than shun, the
I mpressionists embraced tie city and courted its dangers. They
painted the subjects they found there and tested the possibilities for patronage that if offered. They did this in mounting their
i ndependent exhibitions ar~d in turning to the same pursuits depicted by the illustrators, ho had already secured a good portion of the urban audience for themselves. Zola recognized the
connection between paint r and illustrator, at the same time
that he tried to point a di iference, in the same passage from
which I have quoted above. He sought to distinguish the sincere
painters of urban reality (following Monet he went on to discuss
Bazille and Renoir!) from a' group (unnamed) of fashionable arti sts who, he felt, were turning In the same direction but in a spiri t of superficial opportunl m. Monet and his friends fully im-
Fig. 14. Alfred Grdvin, "Roland A
Roncevaux ...": "Petit cancan
sarrasin," Le Journal amusent,
26 Nov. 1864, p. 4.
Fig. 12. HonorA Daumier, "The
Orchestra during the Performance of a
Tragedy," Le Charivari, 5 April 1852.
Fig. 19. Stop, "Mignon": "Au tableau
suivant, on eat sur Is bord d'un lac, "
Le Journal amusent, 22 Dec. 1866, p. 3.
Fig, 13. Grandville, "Mile.
LeucothoS dans le r6le de PhSdre,"
1844.
Fig. 16. Edgar Degas, The Falling-Curtain,
1
.
1880. Pastel, 21 4 x 29 1/8". Private Collection.
awl$
Au tableau suivant, on eat our I bord d'un lee.-On n'a jamais an pourg~eL-Acbwd
me Cabel Spouse use eapiloe do eo
. -Toot Is
eat 1 madame Gagi-MariS. - M
monde s'embraese, et l. toile to be Bur une contredanse e:eculde per dog petite. perannner vAhraw d'un rateonnde, hai
'
IIIIp iij'"
I
l
s~l
l
l
,.,.,
lineore, encore, un scul iut;tant
Fig. 17. "Les Tableaux plastiques dans le monde,"
La Vie parisienne, 2 May 1863, p. 180.
nt kNAGE ; XT nts nKa.A3asmESr .I:om,ptEs.
I.,' direclrur Ini.mkre lransporlr aces actin l es prcrirea drrr5s,drr5 a 'aide desquels on fail ,rarcher
w..w, les pircr; de cm ,i.nahle lhiAi ,'
Fig. 18. Bertall, "DSmenagement du Boulevard du Crime": "DSmenagement des
DSlassements• 6 omiques," Le Journal amusent, 10 May 1862, p. 3.
99
mersed themselves in their milieu, were intensified by it; they
were to be distinguished, Zola went on, precisely from those
models with which we are concerned in this essay: "Their works
are not unintelligent and banal fashion plates, not drawings of
current events similar to those published in illustrated journals.
Their works are alive, because they are taken from life and because they are painted with all the love that they feel for their
modern subjects." Zola once again was right to separate the
paintings from the illustrations. One can do it in terms of quality
and spirit and in terms of intent, but the last only partly so. For
the Impressionists sought, as a basic aspect of their endeavor,
to create a popular art, an accessible art, that would share the
modern subjects of the illustrators and hopefully attract a small
but sufficient: part of their audience.
The Impressionists themselves offered little in the way of a
guide to their relationship to or understanding of illustration
and other forms of popular imagery, just as they had little to say
about their recourse to those other salient graphic images that,
along with illustration, surely informed their work: Japanese
prints and photography. The connections and the awareness
are supported by tantalizingly few indications. We know, of
course, that Monet established his earliest reputation in Le
Havre as a caricaturist, a role that brought him initially to the attention of Boudin. 28 I n 1860 both Monet and Manet published
caricatural portraits in the journal Diogdne. 21 Joachim Gasquet
has described how Cdzanne, while still in Aix, turned to the
Magasin pittoresque and the pages of illustrated journals, revues d'actualites, and fashion images in order to learn to draw
figures in movement and to compose pictures, to put "le monde
en page." 28 And we know that in 1871 he turned to the plates of
La Mode illustree for at least two compositions of women in the
out-of-doors. 29 I nterestingly, as well, when Pissarro did a portrait of Cezanne in 1874, he included, tacked on the wall behind
the sitter, the pages of satirical weeklies with portraits-charges
30
of Thiers and Courbet. Monet as well seems to have had recourse to the fashion plate in developing the character and
grouping of his figures in the D6jeuner sur l'herbe of 1865.66
and the Femmes au jardin of 1866-67 (Figs. 28, 29).J 1 I n Renoir's
inn of Mother Anthony of 1866 he includes a background of caricatural images painted on the wall of a Barbizon hostelry, indicating an interest in satirical popular images that has led Roskill
to suggest that, at an early date, "the contemporary popular image was not just a neutral source for the Impressionists (as
Cezanne's11 case might imply), but rather a focus of interest in its
own right. 32
Boudin was not the only realist artist vocally concerned with
creating an art of the middle classes in 1868. It was apparently
very much on the minds of Degas and Manet during the second
half of the 1860s. In a letter to Fantin-Latour in 1868 Manet wrote
skeptically (a view evidently shared by Degas) about the possibility of creating a truly inexpensive art accessible to the lower
classes and looked to a more sophisticated bourgeois audience. Writing from Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he felt very isolated, Manet said he envied Fantin for:
, being able to discuss with the great esthetician Degas
the unlikelihood of creating an art within the grasp of the
poorer classes, that might be offered at the price of 13
centimes .... Good old Duranty ... is wrong about my
great projects. He sees me as doing large canvases. Certainly not. I have come a cropper at that all too often. What
I want today is to make money ....
. . . Tell Degas to write to me. From what Duranty tells
me, he is on the way to becoming the painter of high-life.
That's up to him, and I regret all the more for his sake that
he has not gone to London. The parade of gentlemen, all
with their hats at the right angle, would have inspired a
few paintings."
This letter makes it quite clear that the creation of a popular art
was very much a concern of advanced painters at the time. And,
as the second paragraph indicates, within that mission there
was at least some tendency to turn to the fashionable side of urban pursuits, such as those featured in the pages of La Vie parisienne and a number of similar journals."
Little in Manet's and Degas' work of the time suggests a clear
connection to illustration, but we are not without some indications. We can point to Manet's Execution of the Emperor Maxi-
Fig. 20. Edgar Degas,
Steeplechase-the Fallen
Jockey, 1866. Oil on canvas,
70.7/8 x 59.7/8". Collection
Mr. and Mrs, Paul Mellon,
Upperville, Virginia.
milian (1867.68) and his VI w of the Universal Exposition of 1867
( Oslo), both, despite the i differences, dealing with immediate
current events of consid e able importance; the former has been
associated, although un l early, with journalistic images, and
the latter was
almost ce r ainly based in part on commercial il38
l ustration. And it is in 1 8 8-69 that we find Degas' The Orchestra of the Opera (Louvre) depicting a fragment of a popular,
high-level entertainment nd conceived in terms that were almost certainly informed by precedents in illustration (see below
and Figs. 11-14). The intim ate conversational group in Au cafe
de Chateaudun (L. 251) we uld seem to have no closer compositional parallel than the ca toons of Gavarni, and his portrait of
The Cellist Pilet (Louvre) ncludes, hanging on the rear wall, a
print based on a popular Iii hographic type depicting well known
musicians of the day. 38
That Degas was passio ately interested in satirical illustration (although at what dat i s not certain) is attested by the extensive collection of litho raphs by Daumier and Gavarni left at
his death. As Jean Boggs has pointed out, he was also a devotee of the work of Charl s Keene, Carlo Pellegrini (a friend,
whose portrait he painted i n 1876-77; L. 407), and Guys, having
done a copy of a drawing y Guys as early as 1860. On the other
hand, we can point to a sin l e instance in which he chose to distinguish his work from the routine illustrations of the weekly
press. In 1872, writing fro New Orleans, he spoke of the difficulty he was having in com i ng to grips with the character of the
place: "You mustn't do ar i n the same way i n Paris and Louisiana, you'd end up with Le Monde illustre. "17
The question of the dist nction between Impressionist painti ng and the art of illustration will engage us further on. For now,
i t is time to survey the impressive record of correlation, of continuing assimilation and stimulation that may be observed if we
examine the paintings in r4lation to the body of illustration that
appeared in the dailies nd weeklies from the late 1850s
through to 1880.
One general point may e made at the outset. To the degree
that the Impressionists di ected their attention to the contemporary, they were adherin to the dictates of a body of theory
and opinion that had bee in process of formulation since at
l east the 1840s. To the ex ent that they shared the subjects of
j ournalistic illustration, h wever, they were doing more than
bringing popular subjects i to their work; they were choosing to
paint specific popular su4jects that were thoroughly familiar,
both as activities and as graphic images, to a reasonably wide
circle of the Parisian bourg oisie.
A specific instance may :)e cited in the scenes of boating and
bathing that Monet and Renoir essayed for the first time at La
Grenouill6re in 1869 (Fig. 3). Scenes of bathers by the Seine can
be found in popular lithographs and physiologies of the
preceding generation, and. Daumier did a series of "Les Canotiers parislens" in 1843. 98 Rarely, though, are they depicted in
t he weekly journals until just about 1868. In that and the followi ng year, however, a number of articles and picture essays devoted to canoeists appeared in the Journal amusant, La Vie
l
Fig. 27. Honore Daumlej,
"Actualites": "Concert Europeen,
Le Charivarl, 19 Aug. 186~.
YM..
_4~OIIr
,.I- m mm .uppriu1,P
w4+ pr.lr.l,
.Iw
11 (m.Hn 1"14,1 14n,lr
Fig. 21. Cham, "Actual ites," Le
Charivari, 6 May 1857.
Fig. 22. Cram, "Quel bonheur!!!
le jockey .ert vient de tomber sur
l a tote! ...," Lo Charivarl, 5 July 1857.
Fig. 23. Eugene t_ami, Steeplechase, 1839.
Lithograph, 4 x 6.7/8".
WT
1
Fig. 25. Andd Hiroshige,
Wagon Wheel on the
Beach, from "Views of
Famous Places in Edo,"
c. 1857.
Woodcut, 13.7/8 x 9 12 ".
1
Fig. 24. Edgar Degas, Carriage at the Races, c. 1878. Oil on canvas. 26 x 32'/4 ".
Musce du Louvre, Paris.
Fig. 26. Wood and Gibson. Inspection of
Troops at Cumberland Landing, Pamunkey,
Virginia, 1862. Photograph. Pl. 16 from
Alexander Gardner, Photographic Sketchbook
of the War, Washington, 1865. 66.
101
102
parisienne, Le Petit Journal pour rire, L'Esprit toilet, and a number of other papers.'° Among the sites described, La Grenouillere is singled out for particular attention, and we learn
that at the end of July, 1869, it received the imperial visit of Napoleon III and Eugenie during the course of a boating trip along
the Seine. On July 17th and September 4th the Journal amusant
devoted multi-page spreads to the site (Figs. 2, 4), and on August 1st La Chronique illustrce printed a large drawing by Edouard Riou (Fig. 5) accompanied by a brief article by Edmond
Viellot:
All true Parisians know this charming spot, where we find
. . . the elegancies of the grand monde, the monde
bourgeois and above all the demi-monde....
The aristocracy of Bougival and Croissy comes to bathe
there and to watch the high-jinks of the male and female
swimmers ... [the small circular island) is the most frequented spot in the area, it is also the place where the ferryman disembarks the passengers between the two
banks.
The emperor, the empress, the Prince Imperial and their
group used the dinghy to disembark at La Grenouillere.'0
When, in August or early September, Monet and Renoir set up
their easels side by side at La Grenouillere, they were not, we
may take it, making a random choice nor merely selecting a
desirable locale conveniently near their present domiciles, but
were choosing to paint a setting and an activity that had been
singled out at the time for specific attention and placed squarel y before the public eye.
I n this instance, it is worth suggesting, as well-in a manner
parallel to Philippe Roberts-Jones' view that Daumier's drawing
style influenced the Impressionists"-that the abbreviated,
sketchy treatment of the figures in Monet's Metropolitan painti ng (Fig. 3) may have been stimulated by scenes of swimming
that appeared in the Journal amusant and Petit journal pour Tire.
One of the most promising models of this sort is offered in a
drawing by Stop that appeared in the Petit journal pour fire i n
the second half of August, 1869, at just the time that Monet and
Renoir turned to the subject (Fig. 6)."
I n many cases, the popularity of a subject or compositional
motif in journalistic illustration of the third quarter of the century proves to have had a sufficiently long history for it to have
been developed into a number of distinguishable types that later appeared in painting. Let us consider, for example, some
variations on a motif that was adopted by Degas in numerous
works beginning in the late 1860s: the exciting group of painti ngs in which Degas roots himself in the audience, at the theatre or cafe-concert, and looks up to the stage, over the heads of
viewers in the? front rows or of the orchestra in the pit, catching
the visual interferences-hats, violin bows, scrolls of bass fiddles-that inflect the view of the activity on the stage. At the
cafe-concert (Fig. 7) the view is oblique, and one can find specific early and ongoing treatments of this viewpoint in the work of
the illustrators: in a marvelously characteristic example by
Grandville, for example (Fig. 8); a Daumier cartoon of 1844 from
the series "Les Carottes" (Fig. 9); and a view of the English music hall by GrO vin from the Journal amusant of 1871 (Fig. 10)."
Another series of views that encapsulates audience and
stage offers a more specifically frontal orientation. Degas'
earliest example is the Orchestra of the Opera of 1868-69 (Fig.
11). Our sense of discovery and participation as we regard the
painting is great, and it is hardly lessened by our awareness that
Degas shared in this instance a basic compositional and experiential viewpoint with his predecessor Daumler (Fig. 12) ."
Nor is the immediacy, charm, and fascination of the painting
diminished if we extend the pictorial antecedents further. By
doing so, however, we can gain a fuller sense of Degas' rootedness in a tradition, or at least a convention, of pictorial illustration in which such views are found. They are to be seen in early
and late examples: in a somewhat Flaxman-like illustration by
Grandville from 1844 (Fig. 13); in variations in other works by
Daumier (often wiih the same compositional formula applied to
other subjects than the theatre) 4 , and frequently in the press
during the 18130s. I reproduce here a representative drawing by
Grevin that first appeared in the Journal amusant of 1864 (Fig,
14; compare it to another painting by Degas, the Musicians in
the Orchestra of 1872 (Fig. 15).
Fig. 28. Claude Monet, Femmes au
jardin, 1866.67. 01/ on canvas, 26 x
32'/4 ". Mus6e du Louvre, Paris.
Fig. 29. Fashion plate from Le Moniteur
de /a mode, c. 1867.
From these examples, and many more could be offered ' 4 ° we
may conclude that, in this case, the Impressionist point of view
was the product of several related factors: a deliberate plan of
l ooking, as Degas himself repeatedly indicated in his notebooks"; the experiences of such scenes in life; and the record
of such scenes on the pages of the Illustrated journals. The ill ustration becomes, in this context, one referent, one factor in
the decision-making process of the painter as he tries to determine what to paint and what aspect of, what view towards, the
contemporary he will choose. Degas' piquant views of the cafeconcert and the theatre stage are not his alone; they were prepared for by others, who had determined earlier some of the exploratory attitudes that are so strikingly a part of his accomplishment.
One of the most remarkable of Degas' compositions of this
type is the pastel The Falling Curtain of 1880 (Fig. 16), a work
which, for its time, seems daringly original in composition and
i n the manner in which the dancers are cut by the lowering curtain. In relation to illustrations in the press, however, it may be
seen in a different light. The motif of the lower body-most frequently the legs alone-appearing below the fringe of a descending curtain was so recurrent in illustration that by the early
sixties it had been used in sufficient variations to have attained
the status of a running gag. The ogling attitude characteristic of
a good deal of illustration is exemplified in a cartoon from La
Vie parisienne of 1863: "Encore, encore, one more moment,"
cry the binoculared onlookers (Fig. 17). In 1862, Bertell in the
Journal amusant (Fig. 18) depicts the arrangements of a popular
theatrical group, in process of moving from one theatre to another; included is a prop that consists of a kind of stretcher covered with a cloth, from which dangle mannequin-like legs representing the chorus line: "The director himself transports with
care the precious props used for all the productions of this loveable theatre." And, in a related instance, Aaron Scharf has published a calling card photograph by Disderi from the 1860s, a
montage of dismembered limbs belonging to the dancers of the
Opera. 48 Occasionally, in the journals, vignettes of the falling
curtain were appropriately used to mark the close of an article
(Fig. 70). More rarely, as in a cartoon of 1866 by Stop from the
Journal amusant ( Fig. 19), the illustration might approach the
stringency of Degas' interpretation.
These examples can be multiplied many times.°' What, then,
we must ask, is the difference between the cartoon and the
painting? How do we make distinctions of quality and intent? Is
the audacity of Degas' work diminished by the comparison?
Certainly, the inventiveness is less; we see that rather than
providing an original formulation, Degas is appropriating a
convention, a comic device. And to what end? To an end of
formal wit and celebration that in view of its clear-sighted and
uncompromisingly direct presentation permits his work to
transcend its model. Rather than as an innovation, we may see
i t as a culmination, as a brilliantly economical summation of a
popular pictorial theme. But the fact of the model is of the
greatest importance, for it tells us once again of a phenomenon
i n the history of art to which Ernst Gombrich devoted a good
part of his book Art and Illusion. We learn that despite the selfdirected task that Degas and his colleagues set for themselves-to pursue nature directly, the formulas of past art to be
cast out as fully as possible-they never ceased to turn to
pictorial modals according to which they might gauge the
graphic possibilities of the new art.
What we have seen in the foregoing examples are only a few
i nstances of the parallelism of interests, themes, and formal devices between illustration and Impressionist painting. I would
like to turn now to a more rapid survey of further examples,
guided by subject but with an eye, as appropriate, to coincidences of theme and composition.
The Race Track
Scenes of the race track have an ample history in the popular
i magery of the Romantic period and continue unabated in the ill ustrated journals of the period 1860-80. 50 They make their first
appearance i t the work of Degas and Manet in the first half of
the 1860s.S 1 Degas' first large painting of the racecourse,
Steeplechase- the Fallen Jockey, exhibited at the Salon of
1866 (Fig. 20), presents an aspect of the pastime-the steeplechase race-that was a regular feature in satirical illustration
from at least the late 1850s, where my survey of the journals began. Frequently the illustrator's comment would be directed at
the high rate of casualties in such races. Cham, for example, in
1857 (Fig. 21), includes the helmeted figure of Mars, who exclaims: "What injustice! To suppress me on the pretext that I
am the one who kills off people." Degas' painting is, however,
devoid of anecdotal or satirical content-indeed, he imparts to
the fallen jockey a sense of stillness that seems almost removed from the continuity of cause and effect-and immediatel y, with this as a case in point, we can make an important distinction between Impressionist painting and illustration that ap-
PETIT JOURNAL POUR RIRE.
AU[ mum au
JOURNAL AMUSAWT. en MODES PARISIENNES
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Fig. 30, Edmond Morin, "Un tempo
de galop au Bois de Boulogne,"
cover illustration, L'Esprit toilet,
29 May 1869.
Fig. 31. Auguste Renoir, Riders in the
Bois-de-Boulogne, 1873. Oil on canvas,
102 3/, x 89". Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
Fig. 33. Alfred GrOvin, "Actualite ":
"Paris s'amuse!", cover
illustration, Petit journal pour rinO,
no. 176, 1873.
TOILETTE DE PARIS.
Fig. 34. Edouard Manet, Masked
Ball at the Opera (sketch), 187. Oil
on canvas. 18'/, x 15.118".
Bridgestone Gallery, TI'kyo.
Fig. 32. Edouard Manet, Masked',
Ball at the Opera, 1873. Oil on
canvas, 23.5/8 x 28 3/. ".
Private Collection, New York.
10 3
PIIYSIOYOMIES PAIIISIESY5S, - pr J. Pn.uq.
(rL.nn+K, fl
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Fig. 35. Auguste Renoir, Au Moulin de la Galette, 1876. Oil on canvas, 51'112 x 68.7/8".
Mus6e du Louvre, Paris.
plies in almost every comparison of work in the two media. The
l ack of anecdote separates the paintings from their graphic
models or parallels just as it distinguishes Impressionist painti ng from the great majority of contemporary French genre and
from, for example, most English painting of modern manners."
I n another steeplechase cartoon (Fig. 22), in which Cham's
comment is less challenging, we find a compositional device
frequently utilized by the illustrators: the contrast between the
l arge foreground carriage and the distant racing scene-i.e., the
relationship between near and far-is converted into a simple
juxtaposition of key elements. This treatment amounts to a condensation of a more expansive, traditional view. In such traditional scenes, as we find them in depictions of the racecourse-e.g., Eugene Lami's etching of 1839 (Fig. 23)-a foreground crowd surrounding a carriage serves both as focus of attention and as a kind of repoussoir that directs our attention
along an implied diagonal to the races beyond." Distillations of
this type of composition, simplifying the elements depicted and
their relationship, are offered in the lithographs of Daumier and
may be found in the well known painting by Degas, exhibited at
the first Impressionist show, of the Carriage at the Races
(1871-72, Eloston)." When Degas returned to this kind of organization within the race track context at the end of the seventies
i n the Louvre version of the Carriage at the Races (Fig. 24), he so
cropped the near carriage at the right and so telescoped the rel ationship between foreground and background as to achieve a
composition that possesses much of the crispness and simplicity of the type represented in Cham's vignette. Degas' painti ng, of course, goes well beyond the Cham in terms of formal
wit and probity, but we may do well to consider that the condensed awareness of proximity and distance in Degas' painti ngs-and those of Renoir and Cassatt as well -had an important precedent in illustration. We see in this minor example, in
Cham's cartoon, a basic element of the illustrator's art. The ill ustrator often composed according to what we may call a principle of necessary juxtaposition. Cham and his colleagues, in
their concentration upon subject, upon the need to tell a clear
story in a brief space, to give a precise view of the commenter
and the commented upon, seem to effortlessly achieve results
that, when viewed spatially or compositionally, vie with the
most brilliantly adventurous compositions of the Impressionists.
I n stating this, it is important to indicate that I do not mean to
i nfer that the illustrator provided anything more than an ingredient, one stimulus among many, for the painters. I am convinced
that the Impressionists were engaged in a process of eclectic
probing and borrowing as thorough as that of the history painter, who, guided by academic theory, seached the visual archives
of past art for the formal and conceptual vocabulary and syntax
with which he would construct his own, The Impressionists
68
Fig. 36. Jules Pelcoq, "Physionomies parisiennes":' Les Bals publiques
(autrefois)," Le Journal amusant, 7 Aug. 1875, p. 2.
were as avid in their search as was their predecessor and compatriot Manet, who bor owed in the most fragmentary, composi te, and heterogeneous fashion from a vast pictorial record .56
Their models were to be found in life, in journalistic illustration, in the world of lithography, in images d'Epinal, i n photography, in old masters, in contemporary painting, and in Japanese
prints. In only rare instances may we point to a borrowing in
which an image is taken intact from another medium or model.
C6zanne's use of fashi n plates provides one of those rare exceptions. Monet's prob ble use of fashion plates, as part of his
i nterest in contempora eity, for his Dejeuner sur l'herbe and
Femmes au jardin-whereby we may point to piecemeal adaptation and partial integration of the graphic model into a new,
complex pictorial whole-provides a more general and accurate
model for understandin(l the phenomenon of borrowings and influences within Impressionist painting (Figs. 28, 29)."
Only occasionally can we be sure that one medium rather
than another played th dominant role, but even when that is
the case, dominance sh;uld not be taken to imply exclusivity. In
the case of Cham's vignette (Fig. 22) in relation to Degas'
Carriage at the Races (Fig. 24), for example, we can point to a
certain pictorial relevance, but we cannot be at all sure of the
role that Cham's image actually played. Indeed, other illustrators, particularly Daum er, may have been of greater importance. Or other mediums, other graphic idioms, may have
played a role, but we cannot, once again, be certain. What we
can believe in, however, is the potentially reinforcing contributions made to the painters by a number of different pictorial
sources. In the case of Degas' Carriage at the Races we can foll ow the lead offered i n general by Aaron Scharf and Gerald
Needham as well as Hanson and Roberts-Jones; we can point to
the interlocking stimuli offered by Japanese prints, photography, and illustration": by images such as Hiroshige's
Wagon Wheel on the Beach from his "Views of Famous Places
i n Edo" (Fig. 25) the compositional effect captured in Wood I
and Gibson's photograph of the Inspection of Troops at Cum- I
berland Landing, Virginia, 1862 (Fig. 26); and, among others,
Daumier's Concert Eurbpeen of 1867 (Fig. 27). All three images-or others that mi 'ht be substituted-offer with differing
degrees of dynamism a d oddity a kindred graphic intelligence
that must have appealed to Degas' continously searching eye.
59;
The Amazon
Another Impressionist subject, which appears with intermittent frequency in illustration during the second half of the 1860s
and is then approached 4y Manet and Renoir in the early seventies, is the Amazon, the equestrienne in the park. Manet's
L'Amazone ( Mile, Marie Lef6bure) of about 1870 has a general
prototype, for example, In the work of Constantin Guys," Or we
can point to illustrations by Edmond Morin-e.g., the title page
for L'Esprit follet for 29 May 1869 (Fig. 30)-whose numerous
depictions of horsemen and horsewomen may indeed have
brought Renoir to look at his work when Renoir attempted his
( Fig. 31), a painting rejectl arge Riders in the Bois-de-Boulogne
61
ed at the Salon of 1873.
The Masked Ball
Depictions of the masked ball at the Opera were popular in lithography at least
from 1839, when Gavarni devoted a suite of
62
drawings to it. They were renewed in the illustrated press duri ng the first two months of each year, during the extended period of carnival, which lasted from December through February.
One of the main events of the season was the masked ball held
each Saturday at the Opera, beginning in mid-December." One
of Manet's major projects of 1873 was devoted to this subject,
which he insisted on studying at length through sketches done
at the site and from models in his studio(Fig. 32). 6 ' Manet's conception, however, hardly seems divorced from-and was very
likely conditioned by-the repeated designs of the illustrators.
We find the essential form in various, linked images in which a
theatre or Salon crowd is depicted-as so often in the work of
Guys and Daumier-in a compressed relief grouping. 85 The
masked ball itself was a favorite subject of Gr6vin (Fig. 33),
Fig. 37. Auguste Renoir, Rowers' Lunch, c. 1879.
Oil on canvas, 21'/., x 25-518". Art Institute of Chicago.
ous, scene of a group on the terrace of a country cafe, by Robida (Fig. 39), bears the pointed caption: "There are painters who
go to Italy, to Egypt, to look for subjects, when
at the gates of
66
Paris we have splendid, magnificent sites."
Cafes
That Monet's and Renoi~'S cafe paintings of the 1870s have at
l east a partial but direct s urce in similar scenes in weekly journals of the 1860s and 1870 is suggested by the visual evidence:
compare, for example, Re oir's In the Cafe of 1877 (Fig. 40) with
a cartoon by Robida of 186,7 (Fig. 41), or Manet's Au cafe-concert
of 1878 with an illustration by Darjou that appeared initially in
the Journal amusant in 187 (Figs. 42, 43). 69
These illustrations are, It seems to me, pictorially more convincing and, in terms of their comparative contemporaneity and
accessibility, more germaife as models than any that have been
proposed previously in the literature. Anne Hanson, for example, has cited earlier examples deriving from about 1860 in essays on Manet and his sources in popular imagery (Fig. 44). 70
The earlier illustrations seem dated-understandably-by comparison with the cartoons byy Darjou and Robida, whose freedom
of touch and lighter mood surely made them more attractive as
visual stimuli to the Renoir and Manet of the 1870s. That is im-
Fig. 38. Alfred Grdvin, "Au bord de la Marne":
' Sur la table," Petit journal pour rire, no. 82, 1870, p. 3.
Fig. 39. Albert Robida,
"Revue trimestrielle," Le
Journal amusant, 4 July 1868, p. 6.
-5-~,µpe,yde
ram.e neJe~i~eaumelalexJa eI
- A ChiW,cage aq4. ;e h,i N l,,0 troy real; mu, U,oM, &10 N 7k.., .
t
whose title page drawing for the Petit journal pour rire of 1873,
i n its rapid, energetic style, may be compared as well to Manet's
t wo oil sketches for the final painting (Fig. 34).
portant to recognize, andlyet, as soon as we make that judgment, a caveat must be entered, one that applies to the study of
popular pictorial sources
general. The illustrations presented
here are not intended as s ecific models but as examples of the
Le Moulin de la Galette
kind of image that I bell ve stimulated the painters. Hanson
The subject of Renoir's Au Moulin de la Galette (Fig. 35), the makes the point in her discussion of cafe illustrations; she
outdoor dance hall, was popular in lithography before 1850 and
warns that "any 'source' a might suggest ... can be matched
appeared, although sporadically, in the illustrated press up to
by other 'sources' among he vast number of illustrators."" The
86
the time of Renoir's painting in 1876. Among the illustrators,
point is one the validity of which will be recognized by anyone
Pelcoq depicted such scenes as early as 1858, and we find one
who has looked extensively at these images, 77 and it is worth
again in 1875, at which time he took a retrospective and nostalemphasizing. The possible models abound-we can readily add
gic glance at the exotic and polyglot clientele of such establishthe names of Guys, Gavarni, and Daumier. But, just as we would
ments in earlier days (Fig. 36). Pelcoq's composition is quite
not want to insist upon illustration to the exclusion of work in
conventional n its planar and rather compartmented horizonother mediums, we would, be mistaken to single out the major
tal/vertical organization, but it offers, although in reverse, al- artists at the expense of, their less accomplished colleagues
most the same: disposition and relationship of elements that we I and progeny. Rather, the frequent appearance and the continufind in the Renoir, sufficiently so that we may hypothesize a link
i ng presence of such images in the popular journals suggest
between the two pictures (the date 1875 certainly permits that).
that no specific citation c .n or should be made. Such a citation
I n terms of theme, Renoir's painting may be seen as an expres- would be less meaningful and less accurate than would be the
sion of the continuing liveliness and social impact of such urrecognition of a general atmosphere of illustrational precedents
ban pleasure spots. Formally, Renoir cleaves to Pelcoq's conwith which the Impressionists were familiar and from which
servative compositional matrix but transforms (or even obliterthey could draw in a random or unselective rather than
ates) it by wedding it to the new dynamic of color and facture
"recherch6" fashion. Rather Man the influence-and this could
that characterizes his revision of conventional technique.
apply to the study of sources in the history of art in general-we
should speak of the "climate" of influence, wherein "major"
The Boating Party
and "minor" and early and late examples may be seen as offerRenoir's great Luncheon of the Boating Party of 1881 (Phillips i ng in a cumulative and syncretic way a single, in effect, conGallery) or the very small Rowers' Lunch of about 1879 (Fig. 37) tinuous model,
have numerous precedents in the illustrated press." One example, which mediates between the expansiveness of the former
The Theatre
painting and the relaxed intimacy of the latter, appeared in the
One of the most intriguing subjects in Impressionist painting
_PQ tit journal dour rire i n 1870 (Fig. 38). A related, more bolsteri s the theatre-principally views of the stage, of the audience,
105
Fig. 41. Albert Robida, "Le Bockl!
et I'Alexandrin," LeJournal
amusant, 16 March, 1867, p. 7.
Fig. 40. Auguste Renoir, I the
Cafe, 1877. Oil on can as,
13.3/8x 1014 ". Rijksmus urn
Krdller.Miiller, Ott9rlo.
Puisse-je de men peas y volt somber Is toudre,
Vole sos maisons en cendres et ses Isuriers en poudre,
Voir le dernier Romain A son dernier wupv,
Moi seule en Acre rise, et mourir de plsisir!
-
106
Pill! garCon, deux bolls?
and of the relation between the t wo. in addition to the scenes of
audience and stage viewed from the level of the orchestra, discussed earlier (Figs. 11-16), we find numerous depictions of figures in loges in the work of Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt, mainly
dating from the later 1870s and early eighties. The earliest and
one of the most beautifully developed paintings of this category
i s Renoir's La Loge of 1874, shown at the first Impressionist exhibition (Fig. 45). We can trace a fairly long history for such
views in illustration, going back, once again, to Gavarni (Fig. 46),
Daumier, and Guys and repeated with untiring frequency in the
j ournals by Darjou, Pelcoq, and Marcelin, the latter seeming to
have annexed the theme as his own in the late fifties and early
sixties (Fig. 47).' 0
From the view of the loge we can turn to the view from the
l oge, looking out towards the stage, a theme favored by Degas
above all among the Impressionists." As we find such scenes
i n illustration, we are frequently confronted with a compositional type, a convention involving the relation between near and
far, between a close-up commentary and a somewhat more distantly placed scene or event. As such, the composition can apply to a number of other situations; for example, we can compare Cham's view of the loge and stage of 1863 (Fig. 48) with the
structurally icentical steeplechase scene in Fig. 22. Daumier exploited the view from the loge with numerous variations in cartoons stretching through a good part of his career." Other illustrators carried it on in captioned cartoons and, as the motif became standardized, in vignettes at the end of journal articles,
e.g., an image from La Vie parisienne of 1867 (Fig. 49). When we
turn to Degas (Fig. 50), however, we see a greater leap, a greater
adventurousness and daring beyond what the illustrators, including Daumier, offered. The illustrations provide the ingredients and the basic compositional formula with which Degas
works; they may be viewed as an occasion, or an invitation, to
which he responds. In doing so, he alters relationships-e.g.,
between above and below (the loge at the bottom of his picture,
the stage in the upper portion) and between coloristic reserve
(in the foreground) and cclat (the stage in the background).
And, instead of the gags of the illustrators, he poses formal
i ronies-e.g., the punning relationship between the curve of the
fan and of a tutu, and between the dancer's bow to the audience
and the cock of the woman's hand above the velvet rail of the
box. The question of differences in quality and purpose be.
t ween the Impressionists and their illustrational models is
sharply pointed in this instance and requires further comment.
But that is best left to a ore general discussion, which I shall
offer at the conclusion."
A theatre subject frequently found in the illustrated journals
but rarely in Impressionist painting is the complementary view
from the stage out to the audience. Degas attempted the view
on only two occasions and Manet only once, in his Lola de
Valence (Louvre) of 1862!
Degas, on the other hated, was intrigued by the activities behind the scenes-the act~rs and dancers in preparation, the informal and revealing views of props and scenery, the backstage
visits of top-hatted men, ccasionally shown in casual and intimate conversation with the actresses or ballet rats! The subject was considered a fas$inating one, as well, by the illustrated
j ournals and their audience. The "coulisses," the backstage
rendezvous with the emp asis placed upon flirtation, assignation-all offered in good, and exploitative, spirit-was a recurrent topic throughout th sixties and seventies, one journal,
L'lmage, offering a wee -ly feature on the subject through a
good part of 1868; another, L'Univers illustr6, i n 1875 observed
the inauguration of the loig awaited new Opera by devoting an
entire issue to it and res rving the front cover for a major picture, "Le Nouvel Opera- es coulisses," prominently featuring
the dancers and their to edoed visitors among the variety of
backstage paraphernalia( ig.51). 7 e
The visit in the wings asily spilled over into access to the
dressing room, where, all but invariably, the slightly ridiculous
"gentleman" caller-the butt of the joke, but no less recognized as powerful-converses with or simply observes the lady
at her toilet. Thus, the pal tings, monotypes, and pastels of Degas (Fig. 52), the associa ed work in various mediums by Forain-half-cartoonist himself-and, e.g., Manet's Nana of 1877
( Fig. 53) all draw upon or, at least, share the popular repertory of
the commercial illustrator'and satirist (Fig. 54). 80
Further Themes
That repertory and that ~sharing extend, although with much
l ess frequency, to many more subjects than those that have
been presented here (any more than can reasonably be discussed or illustrated): skating-both ice-skating outdoors at
Longchamps as depicted ~y Renoir in 1868 and the new indoor
roller-skating rink, the s tting for Manet's Skating of 187781 ;
floods (usually in the reg on around Paris; Sisley, Monet, and
82
Pissarro) ; the circus (D gas, Renoir)B"; the side show-frequently depicted in illustr tion but not in Impressionist painting
before Seurat"; the fashi nable throng, typified in painting at
an early date by Manet's Musique aux Tuileries of 186285 ; wom6
en at their toilet (Degas, M net)B ; l aundresses (Degas, Renoir)";
cityscape (Monet, Renoir Manet, Caillebotte).B 8 Additionally,
Degas' subjects of the stock exchange and the ballet rehearsal
are to be found in illustratipn.B 0 And for a number of other specific works by Manet there! exist precedents in illustration: the
site of the Universal Exposition of 1867, viewed from the
Trocadt ro across the Seine"; the subject of the cats' meeting,
executed as a lithograph and serving as a poster and illustration
I n 1868 81 ; t he tete-a-tete or conversation between a standing
man and seated woman at a bench, as seen in Manet's In the
Conservatory, was a comrt-j onplace-usually representing flirts- I
Fig. 42. Edouard Manet, Au Cafe-concert,
1
1878. Oil on canves, 18 /, x 15.318".
Wallets Art Gallery, Baltimore.
Fig. 43. Alfred Darjou, "L'Alcazar," Le
Journal amusant, 13 Feb. 1864, p. 2.
tion-in illustration (Figs. 65, 66); and the Folies-Bergere, both
as setting and with specific focus on the barmaid, may be found
I n cartoons of the later 1870s (Figs. 67, 68).B 9
Formal Effects
Although the greater emphasis should be placed upon the
thematic links between Impressionist painting and commercial
Illustration, we cannot entirely neglect certain formal similarities, which-albeit with less certainty-may provide a further
i ndication of ways in which popular imagery may have affected
painting. I am thinking now of certain formal types, compositional arrangements or structures, that appear prominently in
I mpressionist painting after-occasionally long after-they had
become established in illustration. We have already seen some
of these formal types in association with certain themes: the
view from the orchestra to the stage, offered in many variations
( Figs. 7-19), or from loge to stage (Figs. 48.50)-a structure repeated elsewhere, as, for example, in Cham's race track cartoons (Fig. 22). And I have repeated, however tentatively, the
view that the brief, informal drawing found in numerous illustrations may have had some liberating, suggestive effect on Impressionist painting style (Fig. 6). 91
There are other formal effects that may be specified. The view
from above, found so excitingly in the work of Caillebotte, has
precedent, of course, in photography-with its imposed viewpoint and also with the excited interest in aerial pictures taken
from balloons-but also in illustration, as Kirk Varnedoe has
pointed out. 91 And, in less extreme fashion, the view from above
to below is exemplified in illustration (Fig. 55) and painting by
the motif of a building balcony set in sharp relationship to the
street below (a compositional structure that has a correlate in
Degas' most adventurous images of the loge and stage; Figs.
50, 69). Caillebotte is, once again, the main practitioner, as seen
i n a number of paintings from the later 1870s (Fig. 56)."
The device of cropping figures at the framing edge or within
the picture, so favored by Degas, may be attributable in part to
the influence of Japanese prints (figures cut at the edge are actually rarely to be found in the prints except in pillar prints), but
i t i s not absent in illustration, although rather infrequently
found." In the case of a single work, Manet's The Railroad of
1873 (Fig. 57), the treatment of the grille fence is graphically
powerful, and we may well ask whether he had any pictorial
sanction for so bold a presentation of the perceived object. Ill ustration provides a possible source, given the readiness with
which the cartoonist would lay down strongly and flatly the bars
of a cage or the uprights of a fence in his drawings (Fig. 58), and
it may well be that this is what prompted Philippe Burty, in one
of those rare instances in which a painting was actually compared to illustration, to write of Manet's still unfinished canvas
i n 1872 that "one will find pages, in black and white, analogous
to this harmonic and tender painting, in issues of The
Graphic." 97
i
Fig. 44. "Le Cafd-concert," from Emile de
Latledollidre, Le Nouveau Paris, Paris [18601, p. 113.
I n each of these instant(es of formal relationships, we can
point to possible precedents not only in illustration but also in
photography or Japanese prints or earlier painting. In one case,
however, precedents are lEcking except in images from the ill ustrated journals. I am speaking of images of the sort that
Pierre Francastel has calleii apprehensional or polysensorial in
their approach to space, whereby the focus is placed upon figures or objects seen close to and the surrounding environment
i s allowed to develop as it will, relatively unfocused, and in a
seemingly unplanned, marginal, or peripheral manner. Francastel considers that this intimate approach to the relationship bet ween figures and space was one of the chief formal innovations of the Impressionists," It is found primarily in the work of
Renoir during the later 187)s, although Manet and Degas were
i nvolved with it as well. Remarkable was Renoir's effort to capture an informal, fragment lry view of life, of people passing, of
the seemingly random. He eveloped a species of anti-composition, or proceeded from
e detail towards composition as
Francastel would have it. he images produced contained figures clustered towards the! center or distributed in groups unevenly from side to side, cli ped laterally by the frame, or 99pulled
apart from each other eith r on the surface or in depth. Photography offered, indeed, the variable-focus phenomenon of
depth of field, but nothing ore. Only in images by the illustrators do we find a steady of ort of the same sort that we see in
Renoir's paintings-vignet es, compositions cropped and partial, yet as telling as the pu ch line of a comic caption. To some
extent we have seen such rawings already in Cham's capsule
renderings of the race track and theatre (Figs. 22, 48), and we
may find them again in, f~r example, numerous cartoons by
Cham, Grdvin, Randon, Pelcoq, and others of horses and carriages-placed so close to he viewer that one could not expect
to grasp the objects whole (Fig. 59)'°°-and in illustrations depicting intimate t6te-A-tet s or passing conversation, with
groups of city dwellers, al ays on the move and-appropriatel y-glimpsed fragmentarily caught on the quick (Figs. 60, 62).
Corresponding images by Renoir are his Young Men and Girls in
1 01
In
the Street, a pastel of about 1877 (Ordrupgaard, Denmark),
10
the Street, 1876 (Fig. 61), ano Place Clichy, c. 1880 (Fig. 63). '
To the question, properly raised at this point, as to whether
we should at all assume pictorial sources for these paintings,
my reply is that we must, that the characteristics of free response and transcription that abide in these paintings do not
preclude graphic models; indeed, the difficulty of knowing how
to record transient effects all but demands them. Were the
models actually in journalistic illustration, however? Perhaps
not, but if not then one does not know just where else to look.
Journalistic illustration provided a ready source of visual
stimuli for the experimental artists of the 1860s and 1870s that
affected as well as coincided with their Iconographic and, to a
l esser degree, their formal) interests. That the Impressionists
Fig. 45. Auguste Renoir, La Loge, 1874. Oil on
canvas, 31.7/8 x 25.5/8". Courtauld Institute
Galleries, London.
J8
Fig. 46. Gavarni, "Phddre au
Theatre-Frangais," from the series
"Par-ci, par-la," 1857-58.
should have been open to this imagery is, in retrospect, not surprising. The history of the advanced art of the period 1860-80 is
i n good part one of gradual disenfranchisement-from tradition
(in terms of iconographic choices and values, in technique,
form, style), from established institutional arrangements and
protocol, from the sway of history in general. In their quest for
new modes of social action, they moved away from the Salon
and sought to exploit the possibilities offered by independent
dealers and exhibitions. In their search for ways of working,
they admitted, following the lead of the early Realists, new pictorial models-e.g., i mages d'Epinal, Japanese prints, photography, and journalistic illustration. The last, uniquely, served
i conographic and formal requirements: it offered subjects that
were not only of their time-the illustrations and the subjects,
taken together, were their time; and it provided an informal, in a
sense careless, style that, although based of course on traditional recipes, seemed often to sidestep orthodox approaches
to drawing and composition.
The Impressionists' avowed aim was not to be history painters. Did they, however, in the process of developing new perspectives and assimilating new models, become cartoonists?
One would, of course, never say that they did, and yet it is, I believe, an important question, for it leads to a number of other
considerations: If they did not, how did they avoid doing so? In
what aspects of their effort and their results do they differ from
their models? And how does the existence of these models and
the differences from them affect our understanding of the Impressionist method and contribution?
The first two questions are answered in large part by the immediate fact that the Impressionists produced independent
paintings (or pastels, drawings, prints) and not images linked to
a prescribed, usually verbal, message. Additionally, Impressioni st painting tends not to be narrative painting-one does not
speak of Impressionist genre painting by saying that such and
such "happens" in the painting in the way of incident, drama, or
plot (one may and does refer to Impressionist technique in
equivalent ways, however, in terms of build-up, action, etc.).
Even in a ncn-narrative mode like landscape, Impressionist
painting tends to pull back from the natural drama of weather
and mood or from the exploration of symbolic effects (gray
weather, frecuently depicted in Impressionist landscapes,
tends to arise from a concern for fact rather than effect),
The independence of painting from the cartoon is not automatic, however. Impressionist painting, for example, liberates
itself from the character of the cartoon-its comic, bantering,
story-telling mode-far more completely than does another cat-
Fig. 47. Marcelin, "La Reins Topaze": "A propos
des variations du deuxi6me acte," LeJournal
amusant, 9 May 1857, p. 5.
egory of painting of modern life, the contemporaneous genre
painting of the new .uste milieu of the Second Empire and early
third Republic, of artists s~ch as Bdraud, Berne-Bellecoeur (Fig.
64), Dagnan-Bouveret, Ger~vex, Alfred Stevens, Tissot, 103 as well
as artists who participated in the impressionist exhibitions,
e.g., De Nittis, Forain, anc Raffaelli. The work of most of these
painters includes a significant portion of paintings governed by
a narrative, anecdotal bia , a tendency toward the depiction of
minor incident, often in t e flirtatious/amorous mode deriving
from 18th-century paintin s and prints of manners. In its own
mocking and bowdlerized fashion, satirical illustration continues that vein; in fact, it is 'dominated by it. Hence, both illustration and juste-milieu genre direct themselves unhesitatingly towards the popular audience. Impressionism offers, by contrast,
an inescapably more compromised-because uncompromising
-effort to make serious painting within a popular mold. If it
avoids narrative and anecdote in general, it surely avoids those
traits as they were manifested in the genre of manners, in particular. And in so doing, it alienated itself from the very audience it otherwise sought ti attract.
The existence of the amorous/flirtatious mode within illustration is worth considering further. Flirtation or seduction was a
constant theme of illustration, permeating all subjects that at
all permitted it entry. 10' The endless search for a "dishonest"
woman was pursued not only i n the theatre coulisses and dressi ng rooms but among Ia'~undresses, ironers, milliners, waitresses, barmaids, on park benches, at dance halls and cafeconcerts, skating rinks, bathing spas, and race tracks. Banteri ng, exploitative, occasionally funny, so constantly there as to
i nvite ennui, the cartoon of seduction adapted itself to almost
all the subjects shared by Impressionism and illustration. But
almost without exception , 1j the character, the tone, the attitude,
the perception of the subject on the part of the Impressionist
painter is remarkably different from the cartoonist's. Gone is
the naughty, the frivolous, the demeaning; enter neutrality, a
degree of seriousness, even a note of respect."'
Space limitations will not permit an exploration of this theme,
but in general we can point to the clear absence of the flirtatious in Degas' backstage scenes (save for his illustrations for
the Famille Cardinal by Ludovic Hal6vy), brothel visits, depictions of ironers, laundresses, milliners, and women at their
toilet 1 08 ; i n Renoir's theatre scenes, laundresses, milliners,
groups in the street or park (even The Swing and Moulin de la
Galette of 1876 convey an air of high spirits acid equal exchange
rather than male-dominated flirtation); and in Manet's paintings
throughout his career, fro the Musique aux Tuileries of 1862,
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Fig. 48. Chant, "Croquis, par Cham":
"A l'Oddon," Le Charivari, 1 March 1863.
A Fig. 49. Vignette from La Vie
parisienne, 24 Aug. 1867, p. 611.
Fig. 54. Alfred Grdvin, "Fantaisies
pwisWwes : "La Vie en partie
double," cover illustration, Le
Journal amusant, 7 Oct. 1867.
.0
JOURNAL AMUSANT
I
Fig, 53. Edouard Manet,
Nana, 1877. Oil on canvas,
60-518 x 45'i. ". Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
LE NOUVEL OPERA
Fig. 51. "Le Nouvel Opera-Les Coulisses,"
cover illustration. L'Univers illustr6,
2 Jan. 1875.
Fig. 52. Edgar Degas, Uintimitd,
c. 1 877-78. Monotype, 4 .114 x 6. 5116".
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
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Fig. 50. Edgar Degas, At the Theatre,
c. 1880. Pastel, 21-5/8 x 18 -718".
Private Collection, France.
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9.
110
the challenging and disturbing Db/eunersurl'herbe and Olympia,
and right on through the Bar at the Folies-Berg6re of 1881. Consider, as example, two works by Manet, both of which have clear
parallels, if not precedents,, in Illustration: the Folios-Bergdre
and In the Conservatory, which dates from two years earlier, in
1879. In the Conservatory (Fig. 65) presents a mature couple,
husband and wife, engaged in (silent) conversation at a bench in
a greenhouse. The motif or device of a man and woman conversi ng at a bench (or sofa or chair, as the case may be) was standard in commercial illustration and served as an occasion, even
as a sign for flirtation or amatory discourse (Fig. 66), and at least
one caricaturist saw Manet's painting that way in his illustrated
review of the Salon of 1879. 1 0 ' What Manet does, however, as he
approaches the theme, is retain the amorous framework butconvert it into an opportunity for presenting a tense, almost brutally
strained moment in an enduring relationship (the kernel of the
situation offered in the stalled eroticism of the two juxtaposed
hands, centered in the canvas). He turns the genre on its head,
refuses its typical inanity, and transforms anecdote into a
psychologically acute and suggestive representation of the interplay of forces and personalities."'
The Folies-Berg6re became a locale to which illustrators
turned in the second half of the 1870s. When Manet did his
painting in 1881 (Fig. 67) he was continuing the survey of leisure
pursuits that had engaged him earlier in his depictions of the
Opera ball (Figs. 32, 34), the cafe (Fig. 42), the skating rink, and
race track. And once again the focus he chose was not inconsistent with (might it have been stimulated by?) a motif found in ill ustration. For along with more general views of the establishment and its activities one finds a depiction of the barmaid and
her customer. Lafosse's cartoon of 1878 (Fig. 68) is typical of
the illustrational attitude (" 'What do you wish, monsieur'? 'I
dare not tell you.' ") that saw every young woman as fair game
for the roving male citizen, although it must be recognized that
the attitude was built upon a clear factual foundation: the bar
maid, as the laundress, actress, and ballet rat, often lived, and
often was expected to live, a hyphenated life-as barmaidprostitute, as actress-lorette, perhaps laundress-grisette, etc. , "
But, once again, Manet both depicts the popular subject and deprives it of its easy popular acceptation. One may not know precisely how to read the interchange between maid and customer
i n the mirror image at the right of the painting, but there is no
question about the position of the woman who faces us. As
Olympia, almost two decades earlier, she is exposed (actually, a
difference there, for Olympia exposes herself, whereas the
passive voice seems proper for the barmaid) yet reserved in fantasy, inner reflection. An image of alienation, as Timothy Clark
acutely ascribes it,i 0 but the product of a vital empathy on the
part of the painter. For Manet sees and offers dignity and selfpossession where none of his contemporaries in illustration or
i n painting would grant their existence-except Degas, perhaps
even Renoir, except Monet and Pissarro and perhaps others:
Morisot, Cassatt, Caillebotte, Marie Bracquemond.
The Impressionists' attitude toward illustration is complexambivalent to a degree, a compound of attraction and withdrawal. They embrace its subjects, perhaps, too-personallyits humor; but the latter finds no place in their paintings, which
tend often to seem bland, non-committal, more like motifs than
subjects with a content, as was claimed at the time by critics
and even supporters. That sense of iconographic neutrality may
i ndicate that they did not know entirely what to do with modern
subject matter or even what their own attitudes and purposes
were in pursuing it, but one thing seems clear: to them it was no
l aughing matter. Impressionist "neutrality," in this regard, may
provide a gauge of the seriousness with which they approached
the subjects they chose to paint, of the value thay placed upon
their enterprise. And in particular cases, where we can grasp intention more clearly, as often with Manet and Degas (his laundresses, prostitutes, women at their toilet, occasionally the
ballet rats),"' seriousness of purpose takes the form of a content respectful of human dignity within the compromising and
precarious urban world they chose to depict.
The Impressionists' interpretation of their subjects limited
the popular appeal of their works. In this we see a phenomenon
repeated in other aspects of Impressionist activity-e.g., when
Degas, Pissarro, and Cassatt turned to printmaking in the late
Fig. 55. Alfred Darjou, "Les
Embellissements de Paris," LeJournal
amusant, 6 Dec. 1862, p. 5.
Fig. 66. Gustave Caillebotte, Homme
au balcon, 1880. Oil on canvas, 45 3/, x
35". Private Collection, Paris.
1870s they became so involved with experimental techniques
that they compromised the commercial advantages of the print
as a reproducible comrhodity 12 ; or, in a similar vein, when
Degas turned to the "erotic," potentially popular (for however
li mited an audience) subject of the brothel, he interpreted it in
the toughest, least ingratiating fashion and confined himself to
the graphic medium of the monotype-unique, non-repeatable,
good only for gifts to friends. With respect to their journalistic
models, the Impressionists not only reduced the broad humor
of the cartoons but in tote provinces of form, technique, and
style they refused to be limited, despite the stimulative value of
the illustrations, by what those models offered. Thus, when
Degas painted fans-intended for quick sale and exploiting the
popular subject of the theatre-he took advantage of the freedom from convention offred by the decorative rainbow shape
to develop some of the most adventurous, abstract, and freefloating compositions in Ifis entire oeuvre 13; and Manet's Bar at
the Folies-Bergcre not only deviates from the low comedy of the
satirists, but also turns th occasion into one for the creation of
a painting as formally co'nplex, multifaceted, and challenging
as any in his career.
What illustration offered to the painters was the range of subj ects, the specific situations, and the formal ingredients upon
which they could draw. What the Impressionists managed to do,
again and again, was to replace the piquancy of anecdote with
an experience of vibranc , resonant color, and phenomenal activity that succeeded in al~ but destroying the traces of their ubiquitous models. The illus rator tells a joke; the painter declines
to do so, choosing inste d to embody other realms of awareness in his work. He sha es-as Monet and Renoir at La Grenouillere, Monet at the G . re Saint-Lazare, Renoir at the Moulin
de la Galette, Manet at the cafe and Folies-Bergere, and as
Degas repeatedly at the c fe-concert, the theatre, the rehearsal,
and on the Place de la Concorde"'-the complex of responses
articulated by writers suc6 as Edmond and Jules de Goncourt,
who, in their journal, cele rated the phenomenal complexity of
the world through which t hl ey roved. For the Goncourts a visit to
the theatre while a rehearsal was in full swing yielded a rich mixture of "ideas and sensations," each of the senses alerted in
turn."' Backstage:
. . young girls in boar 'Ping school smocks scooting bet ween your legs, otherslascending a staircase, their skirts
of angel's gauze rustlinc in the shadows; suddenly through
a gap in the setting, a corner of the stage, a blast of music
and voices; and then waves of extras, stagehands, workers
. , . the pell-mell of an illusion factory in action ... On the
stage, a director's assistant with his cane marshals the
battalions of dancers, the legions of the chorus ...
I n the house, sway li ng together in great confusion,
i
Fig. 59. Cham, "Actualit6s,"
Le Charivari, 8 May 1857.
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Fig. 57. Edouard Manet. The Railroad, 1873. Oil on canvas,
1
37 /4 x 45". National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- 67.
Plan
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parisiens," Petit journal
pour fire, no. 67. 1870, p. 3.
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Fig. 58. Alfred Le Petit, "Rouen et ses environs," Le Journal
amusant, 10 May 1873, p. 3.
Fig. 61. Auguste Renoir, In the Street,
1876. Oil on canvas. 17-3/8 x 14.118".
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
Fig. 63. Auguste Renoir,
Place Clichy, 1880.Oilon canvas,
25.518 x 21 3/. ". Collection Mrs. R.A.
Butler. London.
Fig. 62. Alfred Grdvin,
"Croquis": "Une IAgende de Charlet,"
Petit journal pour rife, no. 35, 1876, p.8.
CROQFIS, - par
. ,J.,„. n ,
%. Gn¢r1Y.
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theatre and life, street and fairyland: the theatre people, in
shirt sleeves, seated in the velvet surroundings of the glittering first class boxes, filmy white dancers, with sparkli ng crowns, their skirts like aureoles behind them, among
the lamplighters.... On the stage there is action, there is
movement; the ballet master paces the front of the
theatre, clapping the beat with his hands.... "F, now! F!",
the conductor shouts out to the orchestra.
Theodore Reff and Frangois Fosca have already pointed to the
parallels between the Goncourts' descriptions and Degas'
paintings. Reff has cited, specifically, another, similar passage
from the Journals that bears a striking resemblance to what we
find in Degas' views of the stage from the loge:
We are at the Opera, in the director's box, above the stage.
At our side, Peyrat and Mlle. Peyrat, a young girl....
And while conversing, I have my eyes on a stage flat opposite me.... La Mercier, quite blond, bedecked with
golden baubles ... radiates in a warm light like a breath
that caresses the flesh and blends the glow of her skin
with the glitter of false jewels. Her brow, her cheek ... she
i s modeled by light....
Then behind the luminous figure of the dancer ... a
marvelous background of shadows and glimmers ...
Forms that lose themselves in the shadows and in the
smoky, dusty reaches.... 16
As Reff observes, "the very structure of the [Goncourts'] vision
seems to anticipate that of The Ballet" (Fig. 69) and, of course,
similar works by Degas, such as At the Theatre ( Fig. 50). Reff's
observation is very acute, but we have already seen that such
visual perspectives, such juxtapositions of proximity and distance, were already to be found in journalistic illustration, indeed, were a commonplace of the genre; one found there ready
made, in graphic form, the ingredients of the structure and the
structure itself. What illustration fails to provide, however, is
the richness, the timbre, the polyvalent sensibility that is evident in the Goncourts' description and in Degas' extraordinary
paintings. And these qualities are to be found equally well in the
work of so many of his colleagues; they are an integral part of
the Impressionist achievement.
A look at the world of illustration in the journals of the time
-as, with varying returns, at contemporaneous photography,
Japanese prints, popular woodcuts, fashion plates, and lithographs-reinforces the conviction that graphic images, pictorial formulations, were important for the Impressionists in charti ng the terrain of contemporary life and in giving form to their
survey, registering ways of putting that life down on canvas or
paper. In this, illustration played a familiar role. Even at a time
when the direct and faithful rendering of the world about us was
among the highest aims of the artist, when the value placed
upon the immediate scrutiny of nature and the recording of its
visually assimilable aspects was greater, perhaps, than at any
other time in history, the pictorial image continued to assert its
ability to stimulate, nourish, and direct the artist's enterprise; it
could inform him and help him to see. What it did not do, however, was dominate the painter's activity nor determine his
sensibility. It is precisely the differences, in content and in
form, between the Impressionists' paintings and their contributory models in illustration that help us to gauge the serious
formal and iconographic commitment with which they made
their art.
112
1. Journal of the Warburg and Gourtauld Institutes, I V, 1941, pp. 164.91. In the
notes that follow, several illustrated journals and other sources will be referred to
repeatedly. Therefore, the following abbreviations will be used: Le Journal
amusant (JA); Le Petit journal pour rire ( PJPR); La Vie parisienne (LVP); Beatrice
Farwell, The Cult of Images, exh. cat., The Art Museum, University of California,
Santa Barbara, 1977 (Farwell, Cult); Anne Hanson, Monet and the Modern
Tradition, New Haven and London, 1977 (Hanson, Manet); Philippe Roberts-Jones,
De Daumiera Lautrec, Paris, 1960 (Roberts-Jones, Daumier).
2. Among works concerned with various kinds of illustration (as against
photography and Japanese prints), we may cite the following in chronological
order: William Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication, Cambridge, Mass., and
London, 1953; Nils G. Sandblad, Manet. Three Studies in Artistic Conception,
Lund, 1954; Roberts-Jones, Daumier, 1960; Linda Nochlin, "Innovation and
Tradition in Cou rbet's 'Burial at Ornans'," Essays in Honor of Walter Friedlaender,
New York, 1965, pp. 119-26; Nochlin, "Gustave Courbet's Meeting: a Portrait of the
Artist as a Wandering Jew," Art Bulletin, XLIX, Sept. 1967, pp. 209.22; Gerald
Needham, "Paintings of Claude Monet, 1859-1878," unpub. Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1970; Mark Roskill, "Early Impressionism and the Fashion Print,"
Burlington Magazine, CXII, June 1970, pp. 391.95; Alan Gowans, The Unchanging
Arts, Philadelphia and New York, 1971; Joel Isaacson, Monet.' to DAleuner sur
I'herbe, London, 1972; Nana-Mythos and Wirklichkeil, exh, cat,, Hamburger
Fig. 64. Etienne BerneBellecoeur, The Intended. Oil
on canvas. From Art and
Artists of all Nations,
New York, 1900, p. 46.
Q~'dl-ngwreenwd ,, _h,t
- r- p„w- r eWr..
Kunsthalle, 1973; English lnfluen es on Vincent van Gogh, exh. cat., intro. and cat.
by A. Pickvance, University of ottingham, 1974-75; Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort,
"L'Imagerie populaire et I'iconog aphie impressioniste," Nouvelles de I'estampe,
no. 18, Nov.-Dec. 1974; Theodo a Reff, Manet: Olympia, London, 1976; Klaus
Herding, "Les Lutteurs 'detestab es': critique de style, critique sociale," Histoire
et critique des arts, nos. 4.5, May 978, pp. 95.106. For works by Anne Hanson and
Beatrice Farwell, see notes 3 and , l.
3. Anne Coffin Hanson, "Manet's Subject Matter and a Source of Popular
I magery," Museum Studies, Art Institute of Chica go, III, 1968, pp. 63 . 80; "Popular
I magery and the Work of Edouar~f Manet," in U. Finke, ed., French 19th Century
Painting and Literature, Manchester, 1972, pp. 133-63; Monet and the Modern
Tradition, 1977.
4. Beatrice Farwell, "Courbet's' aigneuses' and the Rhetorical Feminine Image,"
i n T. Hess and L. Nochlin, eds.,
oman as Sex Object, New York, 1972, pp. 64.79;
Manet and the Nude (1973), New York: Garland, 1981; The Cult of Images. 1977;
"Manet's Bathers," Arts Ma azin , LIV, May 1980, pp. 124.33.
5. Farwell, Cult, p. 14; see a so Fa ell, "Manet's Bathers," p. 125.
6. Bertall, pseud. for Albert d'Arn ux (1820.82); Chain, pseud. for Amedee-Charles
Henri, comte de Nod (1819.79); Alfred-Henri Darjou (1832-74); Alfred Grevin (182792); G. Lafosse; Marcelin, pseud. ~or Emile Planat (1825.87); Edmond Morin (182482); Nadar, pseud. for Gaspard Felix Tournachon (1820-1910); Jules Pelcoq; Gilbert
Randon (1814-84)- Edouard Riou (1833-1900); Albert Robida (1848.1926); Stop,
pseud. for Louis Pierre Gabriel B rnard Morel-Retz (1825.99). These artists should
be listed among the most importa t and prolific illustrators of the time.
7. Farwell, Cult, pp. 11-13; Robert -Jones, Daumier, pp. XV-XVI.
8. From 1841 to 1881 the populat on of Paris grew rapidly from about 935,000 to
about 2,270,000. See the conveni nt chart in Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public
Man ( New York: Vintage, 1978), p. 31.
9. Roberts-Jones, Daumier, p. XV I. See the list of journals with their first date of
publication in Philippe Jones [Ro erts-Jonesj, "La Presse satirique illustree entre
1860 et 1890," Etudes de Presse, .s., VIII, no. 14, 1956, pp. 13-14. See also Roger
Belief. Presse et journalisme soils le Second Empire, Paris, 1967; and Jacques
Letheve, Impressionnistes et symOlistes devant la presse, Paris, 1959, esp. the
table on pp. 288-96.
10. 105 publictions are listed by Jc nes, "La Presse satirique," pp. 13-14. Ten more,
some lasting only a single issue have been gleaned from the list in Jacques
Letheve, La Caricature et la presse sous la /lie Republique, Paris, 1961, pp. 241-50:
La Fronde illustree; La Lune, 187 ; Le Monde comique; Le Monde pour rire; La
Petite tune; Le Pilori, 1871; La Rep blique a outrance: Le Sans-Culotte; La Timbale;
Le Trac. Le Char
rvari began 'i n 183 , Le Journal amusant, 1848, and Le petit journal
pour rire, 1856.
11. See Bellet (cited n. 9), pp. 31213, and Documents pour I'histoire de la presse
nationale au XIXe et XXe siecle (Paris: Centre de documentation sciences
humaines, n.d. [1970s]), pp..'grand
27.32 By comparison, the press runs for the two
l eading daily newspapers of
format" were, in 1869: Le Figaro, 45,897; and
Le Siccle, 36,667. But the most popular paper of all was the small format,
deliberately non-political Le Petit journal, which in 1870 printed an average of
320,000 copies. Klaus Herding ha reproduced a cover illustration for La Lune, 3
Nov. 1878, "Les Lutteurs masques, par Gill," with a caption that refers to the
"500,000 lecteurs de La Lune," buk that number has to be understood as satiric;
Herding (cited n. 2), p. 105. n. 87. On the other hand, it should at least be
recognized that the readership often went well beyond the circulation figures, for
the journals were available to the clientele in public places, e.g., cafes.
12. Based on the list in Letheve, La Caricature et la presse (cited n. 10), pp. 241.50:
24 journaux potitiques, 25 journaux de moeurs (although ten of the latter group
also dealt in political and social satire). On the censorship of political satire. see
Letheve, pp. 11.31, and Roberts-Jones, Daumier, chs. 2, 3.
- pommmj hiuut Ii homes 1 Silnt •rsunhcnrF,
_
Fig. 70. "Comment finissent les drames 9 Saint-Petersbourg," La Vie parisienne,
17 Oct. 1863, p. 462.
Fig. 65. Edouard Manet,
I n the Conservatory, 1879.
Oil on canvas, 45'1, x
59". Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Fig. 66. T. Denoue and Jules
Pelcoq, "Ces dames de
Mabille," Le Journal amusant,
9 July 1870, p. 7, and Petit
journal pour fire, no. 62,
1876, P. 3.
Fig. 67. Edouard Manet, Bar at
the Folies-Bergere, 1881. Oil on canvas,
37'1. x 50". Courfauld Institute Galleries. London.
-4Fig.68. G. Lafosse, "Aux Folies-Bergere,"
Le Journal amusant, 14 Dec. 1878, p. 5.
13. For the Journal amusant and La Vie parisienne, see Jones (cited n. 9), pp. 7780, 110.13. This long article, mostly in the form of a catalogue, is the best single
source for capsule descriptions of satirical journals from 1860-90.
14. The Journal amusant was preceded by the Journal pour rire, founded in 1848
by Charles Philippon, publisher of Caricature and Le Charivari. Philippon was also
the first editor of the Journal amusant.
15. See Jones (cited n. 9), pp. 9, 55, 61, 69: and Roberts-Jones, Daumier, p. 12.
16. For a survey of the subjects treated earlier in the journals and books studied
by Hanson, see Manet, pp. 38.39.
17. Gowans (cited n. 2), p. 134.
18. Farwell, Cult, p. 17; Roberts-Jones, Daumier, p. XVI.
19. Charles Baudelaire's Le Peintre de Is vie moderne first appeared in Le Figaro,
26, 29 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1863.
20. See Hanson, "Manet's Subject Matter" (cited n. 3), p. 64, and Hanson, Manet,
pp. 6-10; Cynthia and Harrison White, Canvases and Careers, New York, 1965, ch. 2
passim and tables 2-4, pp. 38, 40-41; Emile Zola, "Une exposition de tableaux a
Paris (Salon of 1875], in Salons, ed. F. W. J. Hemmings and R. J. Niess, Paris, 1959,
pp. 147-68, esp. pp. 161.64.
21. Contemporary parallels would be Life magazine photographs, Playboy pinups,
cheap poster-sized color reproductions and photographic blowups, posters,
record album covers, etc.
22. Farwell, Cult, p. 17.
23. Georges Jean-Aubry, Eugene Boudin, Neuchetel, 1977, p. 72; trans. John
Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 4th, rev. ed., New York, 1973, p. 44.
24. "Mon Salon," in Zola, Salons (cited n. 20), p. 130.
25. See Robert Herbert, Barbizon Revisited, Boston, 1962, esp. pp. 64.65; and
Herbert, "City vs. Country, the Rural Image in French Painting from Millet to
Gauguin," Artforum, VIII, Feb. 1970, pp. 44-55.
26. See Rewald, Impressionism ( cited n. 23), pp. 37.39; and Daniel Wildenstein,
Claude Monet. Biographie et catalogue raisonn6. I, Lausanne and Paris, 1974, pp.
4.6. Wildenstein reproduces 54 caricatures by Monet in Claude Monet ( series: Les
I mpressionnistes) (Paris: Diffusion princesse, 1971), pp, 84.93.
27. Roberts-Jones, Daumier, p. 105. For Monet's caricature, see Daniel Wilden.
stein, Monet, 1971, p. 93, pl. 53; for Manet's, see Jean Harris, Edouard Manet,
Graphic Works, New York, 1970, cat. no . 1, p. 23.
28. Cezanne, new ed., Paris, 1926, pp. 35.36.
29. The paintings are nos. 119 and 120 in Lionello Venturi, Cezanne, son art, son
oeuvre, 2 vols.. Paris, 1936. For a reproduction of the source for no. 119, see
Rewald (cited n. 23), p. 208. For further references, see Mark Roskill, "Early Impressionism and the Fashion Print," Burlington Magazine, CXII, June 1970, p. 392,
n. 2.
30. Theodore Ftetf, "Pissarro's Portrait of Cezanne," Burlington Magazine, CIX,
Nov. 1967, pp. 627-33.
31. Roskill (cited n. 29), pp. 391-95; and Isaacson (cited n. 2), pp. 45-50.
32. Roskill, p. 392 (with a reference, n. 5, to Theodore Reff, "The Pictures within
Degas's Pictures," Metropolitan Museum Journal, I, 1968, p. 150, n. 87; reprinted in
Degas: The Artist's Mind, New York, 1976, p. 316, n. 100). That journal illustrations
were a major source of interest for van Gogh is now well established and
documented; see the exh. cat. English Influences on Vincent van Go gh (cited n. 2).
33. Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, Manet raconte par lui• m Lme, Paris, 1926, I, pp. 102.
103: "... je vous envie de pouvoir discuter avec le grand estheticien Degas sur
I'inopportunite d'un art a l a portOe des classes pauvres et permetlant de Iivrer des
tableaux au prix de 13 sols .... Le brave Duranly ... s'est trompd sur mes grands
projets. II me voit faisant de grands tableaux. Certes, non. J'ai assez remporte de
vestes comme cela. Ce quo je voux aujourd'hui, coal gagner do I'argent ....
. . Dites donc a Degas de m'6crire II eat en train, a ce quo m'a (III Duranly, de
devenir le peintre du high-life. C'esl son affaire, et In regrotte d'aulant plus pour lui
Fig. 69. Edgar Degas. The Ballet, c. 1878.
Pastel, 15 3A x 19.518". Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.
11;
14
qu'il ne soft pas venu a Londres. Ce mouvement do chapeaux blen tenus lui aurait
i nspire quelques tableaux."
34. During the year and a half (1867, Jan,-June 1888) preceding Manet's letter, at
least sixteen new illustrated journals appeared, ten of which reflected to some
extent the taste for "high-life" exhibited so prominently in La Vie parisienne: Le
Bouffon, Le Diogene, L'lmage, L'independance parisienne, Le Masque, Le ParisCaprice, Le Philosophe, all in 1867; La Comite, L'Eclipse, and Le Gulliver,,in the
first half of 1868 (based on Jones, cited n. 9, the list on pp. 13.14 and the accompanying catalogue).
35. For the Execution see the early discussion in Sandblad (cited n. 2), pp. 109-58,
and the recent exh. cat. Edouard Manet and the Execution of Maximilian, Bell
Gallery, Brown University, Providence, 1981. See also, for a convincing model from
Le Monde illustrr of 3 Oct. 1863, Lee Johnson, "A New Source for Manet's
' Execution of Maximilian'," Burlington Magazine, CXIX, Aug. 1977, pp. 560-64, On
the View of the Universal Exposition, see Patricia Mainardi, "Edouard Manet's
'View of the Universal Exposition' of 1867," Arts Magazine, LIV, Jan, 1980, pp. 10815.
36. For Au cafe de Chateaudun of c. 1869 (P,-A. Lemoisne, De gas at son oeuvre, 4
vols., Paris, 1946.49, no. 215; cited here and elsewhere as L, 215, etc.), compare,
e.g., Gavarni, La Mascarade humaine, Paris, 1881, pl. 65. For The Orchestra of the
Opera (L. 186) and Pilot (L. 188), see Reff (cited n, 32), pp. 7647, 121-24; and notes
44,45 below.
37. Lettres de Degas, ed. M. Guerin, rev, ad., Paris, 1945, p. 23: "On ne doit pas
faire indifferement de I'art de Paris et de Louisiana, 9a tournerait au Monde
lllustre."
38. For Monet's paintings, see Wildenslein, I, 1974 (cited n. 26), nos. 134-37,
Corresponding to nos. 134 and 135 are Renoir's paintings of La Grenouillere in
Stockholm and the Reinhart Collection, Winterthur, Switzerland. For early
examples in popular imagery, see Farwell, Cult, nos. 65, 130. Walter Benjamin,
"Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire," in Charles Baudelaire, a Lyric Poet in
the Era of High Capitalism, trans. Harry Zohn, London, 1973, p. 36, cites a
physiologie from the period of the July Monarchy called Paris dens 1'eau. For
Daumier, s e see Lo y s DeItoiI, Daumier, La Peintre • graveur itlustre, XXII, Paris, 1926,
nos. 1023.42. His series "Les Baigneurs," beginning in 1839 and running for
several years, includes a number of suburban, riverside bathing scenes; Delteil
760-90 (Daumier's lithographs hereafter referred to by Delteil number), It should be
recalled, too, that Manet's first inspiration for his DAjeuner sur l'herbe came from
his observing a scene of bathers along the banks of the Seine and that the painting
carried the title Le Bain when It was first shown at the Salon des Refuses in 1863;
see Antonin Proust, Edouard Manet.' Souvenirs, Paris, 1913, p, 43,
39. 1868:13 June, 4 July; LVP, 22 Aug. 1869: JA, 17 July, 4 Sept,; PJPR, nos, 17, 30,
34 (an irregular series by Grevin, "Canotiers at canotieres"); L'Esprit follet, 22 May,
17 July; Le Monde illustre, (Aug.
40. La Chronique illustree, I Aug. 1869, p. 3: "L'Ile de Is Grenouillere." The
passage quoted here was taken verbatim by Viellot from the "official" account of
the Imperial stopover by E. Bauer in the Moniteur universal, 27 July 1869, p. 942.
Other spots that are cited in the press are: Asnieres, Chatou, Colombes, Nanterre
(see Le Monde illustre, 1 Aug, 1889, p. 80, with the remark: "Les moins forts sont
alles a la Grenouillere.").
41. Roberts-Jones, Daumier, p. XVI,
42. Based on the number 23453 at the bottom right of the drawing, it would have
first appeared in the Journal amusant i n 1865.
43, Fig. 8 from Grandville, Un autre monde, Paris, 1844; Fig. 9 from Daumier's
series "Les Carottes," first printed in Le Charivari, 30 April 1844 (Delteil 1265).
44. Delteil 2243. The comparison was cited earlier by Philippe Roberts-Jones,
"Daumier at l'impressionnisme," Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th per., LV, Apr. 1960, p.
249; and in Roberts-Jones, Daumier, p. XVI. See also Jean Boggs, Portraits by
Degas, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962, p. 29.
45. Fig. 13 from Grandville (cited n. 43), For another work by Grandville, see
Apocalypse du ballet, also 1844; repro. in Grandville, Des Gesamte Werk, Munich,
1972, It, p. 1200. Daumier seems to have been very interested in this compositional
type in 1857-58. Two theatre views from Le Charivari date from 23 Jan. 1857 and 1
April 1858 (Delteil 2908 and 3030). In Le Charivarl of 1858, In several cartoons on
the subject of the public swimming pool, essentially the same composition was
used, a view within the pool with the legs of bystanders on the pool's deck cut off
at the knee by the upper frame: 18, 22 June (Delteil 2863.64); 9, 19 July (Delteil 2870,
2872); 3 Sept. This compositional structure appeared still earlier in Daumier's
series "Les Baigneurs," c. 1839.42.
46• E.g., 1859: JA, 19 Nov., Girin; 23 July, Nadar and Darjou. 1861: JA, 14 Dec.,
Marcelin. 1863: L.VP, 5 Dec. 1864: JA, 27 Feb., Henri Oulevay (an example of the
format as applied to the side show, a standard in illustration for decades before
Seurat's La Parade of 1887.88). 1866: JA, 17 Feb., Pelcoq; 11 Aug., Randon;
L'Univers illustre, 13 Oct., Cham. 1860: Le Charivari, 1 May, Cham.
47. Degas' notes to himself, outlining ideas for viewing his subjects, are well
known; see, e.g., the richly notated sketchbook of c.
77.83, Notebook 30, in
Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas, Oxford, 1976, I, pp. 133-35, or the
handy selection in Linda Nochlin, ad., Impressionism and Post-Impressionism,
1874.1904, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1966, pp. 60.63.
48. Art and Photography, Baltimore, 1969, p. 281,
49. E.g., 1861: JA, 27 July, Marcelin. 1864: JA, 24 Sept. 1868: JA, 4 Apr., Stop
(vignette at end of article). 1869: JA, 16 Oct., Robida. 1873: LVP, 1 Feb., Henry and
Beni. 1876: JA, 29 Apr., Randon. 1879: La Vie moderne, 10 July, Maurice Leloir.
Daumier's swimming pools (see n. 45) and similar compositions by other artists
are also applicable here.
50. See John Grand •Carterel, L'Histoire, la vie las moeurs at la curiositQ, V, Paris,
1928, pp. 203.12. For the period prior to 1860, see Farwell, Cult, pp. 21-22, 67. 74.
51. Degas, L. 7678, 106, 107, all from before 1865. Manet, beginning with the
Races at Longchamps of c. 1864-65 (Chicago, Denis Rouarl and Daniel Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, catalogue raisonne, 2 vols., Lausanne and Paris, 1975, no.
98; Manet paintings cited hereafter by RW number), It is possible that Monet's turn
t o the race track in 1864-65 was motivated, in a fashion similar to Monet's and
Renoir's approach to La Grenouillere in 1869, by the suddenly renewed popularity
of the sport (French horses won the Epsom Derby in England in 1864 and 1865;
Gladiateur, the winner in 1865, then received wide acclaim for his victory in the
Grand Prix de Longchamps, which had been founded only two years earlier by the
Duc de Morny. See Maurice Allem, La Vie quotidienne sous le Second Empire,
Paris, 1948, pp. 181-82).
52. Pertinent here is the disparity between the interpretations of the racecourse in
Manet's Races at Longchamps (previous note) and William Frith's Derby Day of
1858 (National Gallery, London). For a related reference, pertaining to observations
of Whistler, see E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 2nd, rev. ed., New York, 1961, pp.
216, 425.
53. Reproduced in LVP, 2 May 1863, in a wood engraving by Gil lot,
54. Degas, L. 281. For Daumier, Delteil 2762, 2799 (1856); 2955 (1857); 34590865);
3589 (1867). The last two are similar in composition but are racing subjects, Among
other examples by Cham: Le Charivari, 31 May, 5 July 1857, 18 Apt, 1858; JA, 2 Apr.
1864 • PJPR, nos. 19, 21, 1869.
55. g or Renoir, See D. 182, 261, 323, 325, 326, For Cassatt, see Adelyn Breeskin,
Mary Cassatt, a Catalogue Raisonne of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and
Drawings, Washington, D. 01., 1970, nos. 61, 62, 73, 98 (hereafter cited as Breeskin).
56. The record for paintings like Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe of 1863 (Louvre) or
Mile. V. in the Costume o( an Espada of 1862 (Metropolitan), to take just two
examples, is complex. For the Dejeuner sur l'herbe: Titian/Giorgione, Marcantonio
Raimondi, contemporaneo s semi-pornographic lithographs, bathing scenes by
Peter, etc., book and mag ine illustrations, Courbet's Demoiselles des bords de
la Seine, Raphael, Rubens,
atteau, have all been suggested; for a recent review
and interpretation, see Farwell, "Manet's Bathers" (cited n. 4). For Mlle V. there
have been suggested, with vprying degrees of credibility, Velazquez, Goya (several
prints from the Tauromaquia series), Marcantonio, Japanese prints, Rubens,
Titian, etc.; see Hanson, Ma et, pp. 79-81, for a recent discussion and bibliography
(to which add Joel Isaacso
Manet and Spain, exh. cat., University of Michigan
Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 1969, pp. 30.31).
57. See above and n. 31.
pp..
58. Scharf (cited n. 48), passim,
esp. pp. 151-55; Needham `cited n. 2), esp. pp. 30915; Hanson, "Popular Imagery" (cited n. 3), p. 133, and Monet, pp. 55-57, 183-84;
Roberts-Jones, Daumier,
(V •XVl.85.
59. See Siegfried WichmanniJaponismus, Herrsching, 1980, pp. 248-49.
60. L'Amazone, Sao Paulo, Museu de arte moderns (RW 160). For Guys, see, e.g.,
Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and other Essays, trans. and ed. J. Mayne,
London, 1964, pl. 24; Au tem s de Baudelaire, Guys el Nadar ([Paris): Les Editions
du chene, 1945). p. 151.
61. D, 94. Among other illus rations of equestrienne subjects we may cite: 1866:
JA, 13 Jan., Costiaux. 1867 LVP, 19 Jan., 20 Apr., 29 June, Ther, 21 Dec.; Le
Charivari, 12 Nov. 1869: LVP, July, Puck. 1870: PJPR, no. 72, Costiaux.
62. Gavarni's suite was title "Les Bals masques." See Farwell, Cult, p. 64 and
i
nos. 61, 62, 129.
63. James McCabe, Jr., Paris by Sunlight and Gasli ght, Boston, 1870, pp, 739.40.
The Opera ball was particular) popular in the late 1860s and early 1870s.
64. See Adolphe Tabarant, Aganet et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1947, pp. 231.33; and
Theodore Duret, Histoire de E ouard Manet et de son oeuvre, 4th ad., Paris, 1926,
pp. 109.11. The existing versions are RW 216 (Fig. 32), 214, 215 (Fig. 34), two oil
sketches, and 503, a wash dra ing.
65. Among the incessant ima as of the Opera ball in the journals, we may cite:
1865: LVP, 25 Feb. 1866: LVP, 13 Jan. 1867: LVP, 2 March. 1868: LVP, 5 Jan.; JA, 15
Feb., Grevin. For 1867-68, we' may mention the newly founded L'tmage, which
devoted a large proportion of Its pages to the Opera ball at the beginning of the
year, through the carnival season, and to the theatre coulisses through the
remainder. 1869: JA, 23 Jan.; PJPR, nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, Grevin and Pelcoq. 1870: PJPR,
no. 65, Grevin; Le Charivari, 19 _Feb., Grevin, 1871: JA, 23 Dec., Denoue and Pelcoq.
1872: JA, 13 Jan., Denoue and f~elcoq. 1873: PJPR, no. 180, Grevin (reissue of 1868,
JA, 15 Feb.); LVP, 8 March, Be and H. de Hem. For Guys, see Charles Baudelaire,
The Painter of Victorian Life, intro. and trans. P. G. Konody, London, 1930, p. 33.
66. See Farwell, Cult, p. 64, nqs. 55, 56. For two of the best known of the handcolored lithographs, views of the Closerie de Lilas and Bal Mabille, after Charles
Vernier, see Robert Latfont, Hisioire de Paris et des parisiens, Paris, 1958, pls. 643,
644.
67. Luncheon of the Boating Party ( Phillips Gallery), D. 379. An illustration of the
canoeists' lunch which. in its dense of group conviviality, relates closely to this
painting is found in JA, 17 July )869. by G. Lafosse, p. 7, "C'est drble comme Nini
" Fig. 38 would have first appeared in the JA in the summer of 1863, based on
the number of the drawing. 2172, For the subject of canotiers in general, see
notes 38, 39.
68. The caption for Fig. 38, corjtaining a slight air of the risque, i s more characteristic of these images, however: " S'il est permis de verser un verre de vin
comme qa a une dame!' 'A Chif onnette aussi, je lui en avais trop verse; mais, to
vois, ells en 6te
69, A brief sampling of other ciafe images from the 1860s: 1865: JA, 17 June,
Grevin (repeated in PJPR, no. 7, 1870). 1867: LVP, 7 Dec.; JA, 25 May, Robida
(repeated PJPR, no, 253,,1874);! Le Monde illusird, 27 July. 1868: JA, 11 Jan.,
Lafosse (in the mood of Degas'; Absinthe, 1876, Louvre). Visually related to the
illustrations reproduced here ar~ also two drawings by Manet: nos. 491, 498 in
Alain de Leiris, The Drawings of Manet, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969,
70. "Popular Imagery" (cited 6. 3), pp. 151.54, and Manet, p. 68. Hanson
specifically compares our Figs; 42 and 44. A closer parallel may be found,
however, in the other pair she illustrates-Manet's pen drawing Au cafe of c. 1869
(Fogg Art Museum) and a plate from Pierre Zaccone's Les Rues de Paris, 1859.
71. "Popular Imagery," p. 153. Se also pp. 134 and 151, and Manet, p. 38.
72. E.g., Farwell, Cult, no. 44, p. 4; and Gowans (cited n, 2), p. 17, where a much
more general and important statement is made regarding the passage of forms
from High Art to Low Art, the latt r, often after a considerable time lag, becoming
the vehicle of " influence."
73. For Daumier (Delteil 2806); foi Guys, see Au temps de Baudelaire (cited n. 60),
pp. 48, 120. Examples in illustra ions: 1859: JA, 15 Jan., Nadar and Darjou; Le
Monde illustre, 30 April, Damoure to (repeated Journal iilustre, 10 July 1864, along
with a full page of such views). 18 ,0: JA, 19 May, Marcelin (cover illustration), 1861:
JA, 1 June, Marcelin. 1863: JA, 5 Dec., Pelcoq; LVP, 14 Feb., 5 Dec. 1864: JA, 20
Feb., Raunheim. 1866: JA, 17 Nod., Pelcoq; LVP, 19 May (an entire page of such
views). 1869: LVP, 23 Jan„ 27 March. 1870: JA, 13 June, Marcelin. 1871: Le Frou'
Frou, 3 Dec.
A variant view of the loge is that found in Renoir's The First Outing of 1876
( National Gallery, London; D. 182), in which we see a figure or figures, usually in
profile, looking out from a foreground box towards the audience (Cassatt utilized
t his view later on: Breeskin 61, 62, 73, all from 1879-80). Gavarni developed it early
on (see La Mascarade humaine, tiled n. 36, pp. 187. 191), and we can cite an
illustration by Lafosse in JA, 23 Jan; 1875.
74. For Degas' works of this genre; see L. 434, 476 (Fig. 69), 577 (Fig, 50), 586, 828,
829, and no. 34 (Etchings and Lithographs) in Jean Adhemar and Francoise
Cachin, Degas. The Complete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes, New York,
1975.
75. E.g., Delteil 2225 (1852), 2764 (1 56), 2910 (1857), 3266, 3280 (1864), 3703 (1869).
76. Other examples in illustration ore: 1857: PJPR, no. 65, Damourette. 1859: JA,
23 July, Nadar. 1862: JA, 25 Jan., Nadar and Darjou; Le Charivari, 6 July, Cham.
1863: Le Charivari, I March, Cha
1865: L'llluslration, 5 Aug., Cham. 1866:
L'Univers illustre, 13 Oct.. Cham. 18,67: LVP, 24 Aug. (Fig, 49), 14 Dec. 1868: JA, 25
Sept., Robida,
77. Degas: L. 432, 433. In Manet's Lola de Valence the setting with the stage flats
and view of the audience was added later. In doing that, Manet brought the
painting into conformity with an existing motif in illustration; see John Richard- ,
son, Manet, 1958, pp. 14,119, and Hanson, Manet, p. 79 and n. 115, fora discussion I
of bibliography and illustrational precedents. Some further examples in
illustration are: 1856: Le Charivari, 24 Sept., 27 Dec., both by Daumier(Deltei12897, f
2903).1857: Le Charivari, 14 Oct., Ch. Vernier. 1862: Le Charivari, 19 Nov., Pelcoq.
78. See L. 526, 564, 585, 617, 652, 715, 723, 841, 842, 844; Adhemar, no. 35, and
Cachin, nos, 56,57 (cited n. 74).
79. These views are well represented in illustrated books and journals from an
early date. For a prototypical example, characteristically used to illustrate a