What the heck is "The Académie?"

 "The Académie" sounds, to me, like a graphic novel about a school for angsty mutant artists run by an eccentric megalomaniac, but in fact it was the elite institution that controlled art and good taste in France during the 1700s and 1800s. It replaced the Italian Baroque apprentice/guild systems of the 1500s- 1600s and was eventually abandoned in the early 1900s with the advent of modern art. The Académie produced juried exhibitions called "Salons" which held the key to fame and commissions (and scandal). Other European countries modeled their Academic systems on that of France as well. When people say, "Academic style," they mean clean-lined, idealistic (a bit staged), slightly grandiose, and shaded with soft rich shadows. In reality, though, several styles flourished in the Académie at any given time, but the Académie's famous ideological battles are why everyone thinks of Ingres and David. Eventually with the rise of Impressionism, cubism and Dada, no one looked to the Académie any longer as the leaders in art or good taste.

There were academies all over Europe since at least Renaissance times, but before it became a "system" in the 1700s most artists were involved in the guild system of the Baroque era. 

The Old Guild System

Guilds and trade unions engaged in rigorous gatekeeping, both for training and for running a business. Today we might wonder why a painter would even need a guild; after all if you really wanted to you could just put up an easel in the corner of your living room, buy some paints and how-to books, and print up some business cards. But that's all thanks to the Industrial Revolution which changed painting in the late 1800s.

Before that artists were stuck in the studio creating every paint color from scratch with pigments that came from dirt, plants, animals and rocks. Perfecting the texture with binding agents an solvents. Building wooden canvases and other supports, preparing the surface, varnishing the finished pieces. Once an artist found a good paint recipe they kept it secret, only telling their assistants. That's why certain Baroque artists were famous for signature colors, like Titian for his copper-haired muses. An artist might also hoard a secret technique.

Some of Rosa Bonheur's supplies as she left them in the 1890s (image via). You can see the mix of modern paint tubes which came about after the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, as well as more traditional bottles of pigments, solvents and binders. I can see at least four types of yellow pigment here; some were common while others were quite rare. Pigments might have different physical properties like opacity or mix well with one type of red vs another, for example. That's why an artist needed more than red, yellow and blue, which is why today the shades still have names like "cadmium red," "alizarin crimson" "scarlet lake" and "rose madder." They aren't merely poetic, and those shades today can contain the real pigments or synthetic versions, but are still used in the same way. One type of yellow, "gamboge,"  comes from a tree in Southeast Asia and its availability varied according to shortages caused by faraway wars. This makes it possible to reliably date a painting based on its use (I learned that from Elementary, thanks Moriarty). Large doses can also be fatal (many paint pigments are poisonous), which is why van Gogh tried to eat yellow paint while mentally unwell. Each pigment has a very particular backstory and would be an interesting way to approach studying history.

And these artists didn't do it all by themselves. A studio required staff, so they took trainees under their wing. Some of them were apprentices and protegées who would eventually inherit the studio or set up their own; a protegée was meant to carry on the reputation of a master artist, not to compete. An artist's wife and family members might also assist or paint parts of the image, uncredited.

All of this cost money, like opening a new restaurant would nowadays. It was a full-time job (with taxes to pay) so the studio needed patrons such as wealthy clergy and nobility, perhaps a successful merchant. Even if the studio was part of a convent staffed entirely by artist-nuns (and that did happen), they still had to get the permission and financial backing from religious higher-ups. Then there were expensive props and supplies, models to pay. Some artists even showcased how much money they were spending (i.e. showing off the wealth of the client) by making paint colors from semiprecious stones, like blue from lapis lazuli. 

An artist also had to be a terrific sales-person and networker. Back then artists were regarded as skilled craftsmen, like carpenters. But due to their efforts artists were just beginning to be seen as creative intellectuals who could be both respected and allowed to hob-nob and even marry into elite social circles. This would pave the way for the caché of the Académie in the 1700s.

Artists formed guilds or unions to protect business where aspiring artists had to be elected to membership and then pay dues. Most of these guilds denied membership to all women and Jews, with some exceptions-- usually women who had inherited a studio. Women could also be kicked out of guilds (and even punished by authorities in some places) if they studied or painted nudes, which was a major impediment to figurative work (and the highest paid, most respected commissions). This continued long into the Academic era.

Guilds formalized the apprenticeship process. Apprenticeship was also frequently denied to women, or it was so disreputable and vulnerable to predators that women could not safely participate. (Despite this there were a shocking number of women artists in Baroque times, working in all styles and financially successful.) After apprenticeship, when a painter was ready to apply to the guild they created the best painting they possibly could to show they had mastered painting; this was submission was called a "masterpiece." Which, of course, is where the modern term comes from.

The Painter in his Studio, by Adriaen Jansz van Ostade, 1663. (image via) Think about how much this would cost in 1663. Big windows, lots of space (enough for an entire family), supplies, props, references (books were luxuries).

It's only natural, then, that most studios also functioned as schools. Multiple apprentices would apply year after year. To supplement income many artists would also give drawing lessons to people like craftsmen, scientists and wealthy young ladies. Schools and city-states each developed their own styles and practices, so today we still say "the [x] school" when referring to a particular style.

The Académie

Schools eventually evolved into state-run academies. This gave the nobility more centralized involvement in what had previously been a piecemeal system by artists for artists. Art instructors leveraged this involvement to access high society, Enlightenment resources such as libraries and expert lecturers on philosophy and anatomy, and a certain high-minded caché. They secured sponsorship to send their most promising students abroad to study the old masters in Rome (the legendary and coveted Prix de Rome) and in Amsterdam. Whereas an old-fashioned apprentice was considered a craftsman and a businessman, someone trained at an academy was considered an intellectual gentleman.

King Louis XIV (the "Sun King" who established Versailles) organized the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris in the 1660s as part of his larger effort make France internationally famous for luxury goods. Paris was considered a cultural backwater at the time compared to Rome or Madrid, but by the late 1700s foreign students were traveling to Paris to learn, a phenomenon which would peak in the 1850s-1930s.  

The Academic curriculum was highly structured. Prospective students had to first pass a difficult entrance exam. Then those who were admitted set about learning to draw (not paint). They were given old drawings and etchings of paintings to copy, then if the teacher approved they moved on to sketching plaster busts and sculptures. With the teacher's approval male students would then move on to figure drawing class with live models. They considered painting secondary to drawing as interior decorating is to architecture, so it was only toward the end of the program or post-graduate that students learned painting by copying works at the Louvre and assisting older artists. Students didn't have much wiggle room in terms of style and content. 

An illustration c. 1880 of students drawing from plaster sculptures (image via). This was likely after Académie Colarossi in Paris finally opened its doors to female students in the Belle Epoque and women came pouring in from foreign countries to study. Some Academies in other nations followed suit.

The Académie also served as gatekeeper for professional success. They hosted juried Salons in which the accepted paintings were shown at the aristocratic social event of the season. Anyone could submit paintings, not just Academic students. Paintings were crammed together on the walls all the way up to the ceiling, so the Academic juries also controlled who got top billing by placing their favorite painters' work at eye level. Those who did well in Salons were almost guaranteed a good career. Being critically panned was a disaster. The Académie also offered assistance to working professionals such as studio space, research materials, travel funds, artistic community and access to powerful clientele; and of course cushy teaching positions. A professional artist could ultimately be elected into Academic membership, to become one of the celebrated gatekeepers who juried Salons and the like. While it was possible to make money and achieve fame outside the Academic System, it was certainly more difficult.

However many artists in the 1700s and 1800s still studied with individual professionals rather than at the Academies. Many simply could not afford Academic tuition or had not been accepted; women were usually barred from formal study. Others still preferred the art style of the individual with whom they trained or preferred the one-on-one style of teaching. Many artists mixed the two, obtaining training first from a middling local professional, then apprenticing to a more renowned artist, then taking courses at the academies, and then perhaps even studying with another artist after that. Thus many professional artists were also prolific teachers; in the 1700s nearly everyone seemed to study under someone who studied under Fragonard; in the 1800s all roads led back to David, Delacroix and Ingres (and to Rosa Bonheur for women). Most of the women I'm profiling for my Inktober project learned this way.

Allegory and Idealization

Simply put, allegory is when you paint a hot lady with a paintbrush and say, "this is a picture of The Arts." Allegory is similar to a symbol, but the way the Académie used it it almost always boiled down to a pretty woman who represented Peace, Painting, The Nation or some other abstract concept, though sometimes it was a horse that represented War or a hooded skeleton that represented Death. The system was based on the concept of Platonic ideals. 

Plato wrote that the ideal is the ultimate imaginary form of something on which all inherently flawed real-life versions are built. Platonic spaghetti, for instance, is that perfect ideal spaghetti in your mind; the real spaghetti you cook will never live up to it. Therefore in Academic art, when they show a woman holding a paintbrush meant to represent the Platonic ideal of Painting, she isn't a realistic warts-and-all portrayal. She is the most idealized and generic woman possible, holding the most generic possible paintbrush; bonus points if her clothes are from an unspecific era or Greek, her pose is unrealistic or even defying physics, and her environment is stagey or anachronistic. The whole point is that she isn't a realistic individual in the real world. The more flawless the woman, the more flawless the concept. Furthermore the 18th century viewer would know that she is the allegory of Painting because of her gold chain, green clothes and black hair; such details of each common allegory had been standardized since Baroque times, though artists didn't always include every detail by the book. The artist and viewer were expected to have a thorough education in allegorical conventions as well as mythology, history and art history. Allegorical art (usually history painting) was intellectual art for smart people.

Nowadays we'd see an Academic allegorical portrayal and ask, "whoa, why is her spine like that?" or "why isn't she gripping the brush tightly enough to actually hold it," or "why is her boob hanging out?" These unrealistic things were all meant to clue the viewer in to the fact that she's an allegory, not a real lady. The flawlessness of the woman's beauty can also throw us for a loop because beauty standards then were very different from today, and even then they varied by time and place. They might vary still more depending on whether the artist's patron preferred a particular type of body. 

Artists might also refer to ancient Greek ideals of beauty, which followed a mathematic formula right down to the length and width of the toes. The ancient Greeks were usually sculpting gods and goddesses, so they used "perfect physical beauty" to convey the idea of the supernatural. Nor was any ancient Greek goddess just a slip of a thing, physically; the Goddess was meant to be powerful and plentiful and her body reflected that in skeletal breadth and fleshiness. Those ideas certainly affected the Academic practice of allegory. While in 18th and 19th century portraiture you often see dainty women with impossibly dainty rib cages and big bobble heads, in history painting the allegorical women usually adhered more closely to Greek standards.

Despite these high-minded ideas, art was still a business that was subject to the waxing and waning of fashions. The flawless allegorical woman naturally blended with the more earthbound requests of patrons and nobility, resulting in so countless portrayals of Venus and allegories of Vanity or Beauty who looked suspiciously like someone's naked mistress. By 1790 Versailles looked like it had an unchecked infestation of cherubs. Idealism became a pervasive element of Academic art no matter the subject; they just felt it made a better painting. Ingres, for example, was disgusted by anatomy (even though he was more than capable of painting anatomically realistic figures); he preferred to paint stylized people. 

"This Year Venuses Again... Always Venuses!" a cartoon by Honoré Daumier, 1864, depicting two annoyed ladies at a Salon exhibit. (image via).

The opposite of idealism was called "realism." Nowadays most people use the term to mean something looks photo-realistic, but in most of art history it means not idealizing things. Realists painted real people, warts and all, doing real things in the real world. The Impressionists, for example, were realists, showing normal people doing everyday things with no allegorical pretense at all-- a person rowing a boat was just that. Other realists included social agendas, creating unflinching looks at poverty, suffering and the uglier side of life, while others swore allegiance to modernity. 

Degas, for instance, was a promising young student in the Academic style who won the Prix de Rome and then decided he wanted to find "the movement of the Greeks" in the modern world instead of in history painting. Manet was another realist whose famous Olympia was extremely shocking-- not because she was more naked or sexy than Academic nudes (she was actually posed  less overtly than many arch-backed Venuses of the time), but because she was too realistic. She was short with realistic proportions, wearing a modern necklace, and looking the viewer dead in the eye instead of existing in some fantasy land where she can't see you. 

The Birth of Venus, by Alexandre Cabanel, 1863. (image via). This is idealized Academic style: no visible brushstrokes, a physically impossible scenario (reclining on water, flying babies), mythological characters, a stagey artificial composition, a classically proportioned woman lit by soft directional studio lighting, and a vague allusion to the Renaissance masters. They were really into tall women back then with long fleshy limbs, breasts shaped like meringues and slightly small heads for their bodies. Characters in Jane Austen novels (1810s) always felt bad about themselves because they weren't tall enough.

Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863. (image via). This is realist, not Academic style or idealized. She's probably meant to be a prostitute (the black cat and accessories would have tipped off Victorian viewers; "Olympia" was also a common pseudonym for prostitutes to use as well as being an insolent reference to the Academic obsession with Greek mythology). This painting was famously shocking. People usually attribute that to her being a prostitute, but that isn't true. If she'd been a Mary Magdalene or a character from classical Greek mythology or ancient history who was prostitute or mistress, that would've been totally fine. If she'd had the standard classical body shape, softly shaded from one direction like studio lighting, fainting away or gazing into a mirror, even looking over one shoulder at the viewer so as to passively beckon him into her fantasy world, it also would've been fine. The problem was her realism and modernity. She's short with teardrop breasts and a wide Parisian face, demonstrating that the Academic ideal has no power to define "beauty." She's in modern Paris, where Black people exist just because (in Academic art they never painted Black people without a narrative reason, like being one of the Three Kings of Orient visiting Jesus, or as part of the mise-en-scène to place Cleopatra in ancient Egypt, or to allegorically represent Africa; Black people didn't just randomly show up, living their lives). To underscore the departure from tradition, Manet used a lighting style that created an outline effect, which criticized even the hallowed drawing methods of the Académie. Manet and his Olympia both made the Victorian gentleman viewer feel inadequate: she intimidated instead of putting on a coquettish show, confronting the viewer/john with sex like "I don't have all day," while Manet made the viewer feel inadequate by rendering all his fine traditions and allegorical knowledge irrelevant, trampling all over the boundaries of his comfort zone of "once upon a time." 

When we see artistic details that challenged Academic tradition, it can be hard not to think "yeah but... it's just a shadow? So what, why were they losing their minds?" But when you remember the history of the Académie it's easier to understand why these things were truly threatening. Artists used the Académie to social climb from craftsmen to gentleman-intellectuals, while nobility used the Académie to control the arts. It upheld a classist society and created an identity that placed modernity neatly into history, with noble purpose and a common goal. Breaking with tradition was an upset to elitism, monarchy and tradition. Nowadays we see Impressionism as prosaic, but back then it posed a nihilistic threat.

Color vs. Line

Since the Académie was in charge of art it became the obvious battleground for defining art and determining its future. There were two big ideological camps: the poussinistes (fans of Poussin) versus the rubenistes (fans of Rubens), which in the 1800s evolved into the Neoclassicists versus the Romantics. 

The Poussinistes and Neoclassicists esteemed drawing, line and form over color. They wanted to create figures so beautifully shaded and crisply defined that they could be statues ready to be plucked right off the canvas. Their figures had weight, balance and completion, often at the expense of implied movement. This stiff, highly finished style naturally lent itself to the calm rational ideals of Neoclassicism. Color was also an afterthought, and it belonged within the lines of the form. Color was best in one simple tone shaded from light to dark. If you've ever seen old black and white photos that have been hand-colored, poussiniste paintings had that quality. "Line" usually meant crisp edge, "form" meant smooth shading. Examples of poussinistes were David and Ingres. 

My Eyes Are Up Here, by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres. Just kidding! This is called Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864. (image via). You can see the even weight distribution and musculature, small head and statuesque profile typical of Greek-inspired Academic figures. Ingres often played fast and loose with anatomy to make figures more idealized, but this example is fairly natural looking. Notice also that the background looks flat like a stage set. You can tell from the shadows that Oedipus was drawn in the studio and then placed outdoors, a common Academic practice. They knew how to paint people under different lighting conditions, because the Dutch and Flemish masters of the 1600s had had a field day with lighting effects. But the soft full shading of the studio was part of the idealization process. Remember, drawing came before painting. Concept came before reality. Notice also how Oedipus's skin is just light and dark shades of tan and the rocks are light and dark ochre. Form came first, color second. Ingres hated the work of Rubens.

The Rubenistes, meanwhile, valued color, expressive brushwork, and movement. They wanted dancers to really look like they were dancing and clouds to really look like they were sparkling, so they sacrificed crisp edges and finished brushwork for expressive movement and complex blending of colors. This style naturally lent itself to the whimsical Rococo era, and then to the intense emotions and violent passions of the later Romantics. Examples of Rubenistes included Fragonard and Vigée Le Brun; Romantics included Delacroix and Courbet. 

Liberty Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830. (image via). This history painting is unusual for the Académie in that the event was so recent (the French Revolution forty years prior) and the corpses and civilians are unusually realist; their clothes are near-contemporary and they are more awkward than idealized in death. However his Liberty provides an excellent example of allegory. She's timeless, sculpturally beautiful, and dressed unrealistically. The brushwork has been kept loose, especially in the clouds of smoke but also in the folds of the fabric. The child is silhouetted but not sharply outlined. No one's body is particularly well lit or well composed from head to toe, but the composition taken all together creates the impression of excitement, adrenaline and forward movement. This composition, while not especially colorful, shows how colors are more complex, composed of layers of contrasting shades (the blue and orange smoke especially) that help the color come alive.

The line vs. color debate also took the form of claiming that drawing was superior to painting, that drawing was an intellectual exercise while painting was more craftsmanlike and superficial. The painting side pointed out how empty a painting would be without any emotional response and that color and brushwork instinctively stirred emotion. They also believed it could allow more people to enjoy art, not only the educated and intellectually inclined. The drawing side seemed to get the upper hand, though. This helps to explain why, when the painterly Impressionists came along who cared more about the placement and color of a hay bale than about the yearnings of anyone's soul, they managed to enrage both sides. 

Another lively debate was between those who learned from nature versus those who learned from older paintings. The Nature side eventually was fullfilled by the Barbizon school beginning in the early-mid 1800s. They were among the first plein aire painters (i.e. they painted outdoors, or sketched outdoors and finished up in the studio). They often kept colors fresh and brushstrokes loose, but were far more restrained than the later Impressionists. They usually painted landscapes but often depicted people in rural genre scenes as well. Rarely did they venture into history painting but they created heroic rural scenes that were monumental in novel ways, usually to great acclaim. The Barbizon school were respected and accepted but weren't part of the Académie. 

Of course not everyone took a side; many brave souls even spoke up to point out that most great art involves both line and color. Many artists took inspiration from both sides, the best example being Bouguereau, the last great superstar of the Academic era. 

Psyche, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1895. (image via). Bouguereau said line and color were the same thing. He used crisp outlines and full shading but also complex colors which seemed to sparkle. The skin here isn't just light and dark tan, the purple isn't flat. He blended his brushstrokes to create impeccable detail for every feather and ruffle, but allowed his painterliness to show through, using airy landscapes and flowing fabrics to create movement. He also took the best of what the Barbizon school had to offer; his outdoor figures really look like they're bathed in natural light (though this particular painting doesn't show his best lighting effects). He was one hell of an incredible painter with a natural sophistication and ease to his style; unfortunately his subject-matter was a cautionary tale of what happens when you blend empty eroticism with saccharine pretentiousness. Still, like Christopher Nolan movies or the British Royal Family, it isn't so much the content of Bouguereau's work that annoys me so much as its fans. Ugh, Victorians. 

The Genre Hierarchy

The final weird and wonderful thing you need to know about Academic art is that they ranked the genres from best to worst, smart to stupid. History painting was best, then genre painting, then portraiture, then landscape, then still life. History paintings were sometimes monumental and could be ancient Greek scenes (real or mythological), Biblical scenes, ancient events or allegorical depictions of ideas (so, an image of Peace doting on France or Sculpture inspiring a sculptor would count as history painting). It was the most respected and well-payed. 'Genre painting,' by the way, means slice of life scenes. It could be a shepherdess in a field, lovers flirting by a fence, a maid carrying a jug, nuns nursing the sick.  

The Intervention of the Sabine Women, by Jacques-Louis David, 1798 (image via). While some history paintings were relatively simple, many others (like this one) were monumental paintings with complex compositions and lots of drama. This depicts a chaotic event in Roman mythology when two neighboring cities are at war and the women, caught in the middle between fathers and husbands, beg the men to stop fighting. David painted this as an obvious call for France's people to come together when regimes changed violently after the Revolution. History paintings often were masked commentary on current events. David had previously tried to create a non-ancient history painting of current events as they unfolded (the beginning of the French Revolution), but by the time he got halfway done the situation had completely reversed itself. That's partially why painters so often used ancient history as commentary on current events. It also helped them avoid too much backlash; they could always claim, at the end of the day, that it had nothing to do with current politics. Here you can see that each figure is fully posed and beautifully lit; each could stand alone as its own painting. David has arranged them in a line like figures in an ancient Roman frieze. David was a Neoclassicist and the drama in this painting comes from its crisply delineated poses and intellectual references rather than expressive brushwork or complex color.

Women were typically discouraged from history painting specifically, not only because they weren't supposed to study anatomy (but they often did anyway) but because it was considered presumptuous for a woman to teach an intellectual lesson and unfeminine to be so ambitious. Some women did it anyway of course but they more often found willing clients in portraiture and still life, thus creating a cycle of disrespect, wherein the genre was respected less because it was practiced by ladies, and was practiced by ladies because it was less respected. Women sometimes broke the glass ceiling through sheer audacity and talent, but more often they found a way to do genre painting and history painting by focusing on maternal and moralistic themes-- winning support by "staying in their lane" where they could realize ambitious projects but still find willing patrons. 

Legacy

Nowadays we expect realism in art and media, but we still use the Academic tradition of the Platonic Ideal as expressed via heavy fantasy. Perfume ads, for example, use impossibly beautiful people in timeless fantasy scenarios to express the abstract idea of scent. Conceptual allegory, meanwhile, has become the purview of political cartoonists. They usually label the concept that the figure represents (like a clown car labeled "Trump's Approach to the Refugee Crisis" with the emergent clowns labeled "Private Prison Industry," "GOP Re-election Strategy" and "The NRA.") But we don't need labels for common modern allegorical figures; we recognize 'Patriotism,' 'the Democratic Party,' 'Old-Fashioned Ideals of Femininity' and 'the Mainstream Media,' among many others. Meanwhile memes that replicate the same group of figures with ever-changing labels like "my brain" vs "my ability to manage my time" could be considered an incredibly lazy modern version of Academic allegory; they get popular when they hit on an abstract universal feeling in a novel way and manage to express some otherwise embarrassing, forbidden or peculiar concepts.

After the advent of modernism, Academic style fell ever further into disrepute. Critics lined up to devalue it and antiestablishmentarians like the Dadaists held it in contempt. However avant-garde artists still took inspiration from Academic art. Many of the leading modernists of the 1910s and 20s had themselves studied in the Academic system. Countless modernists were inspired by Ingres. Abstract artists admired his flattening of the picture plane while surrealists admired his eerie and erotic stylization. Delacroix and Courbet continued to inspire.  

In the 1950s mega-critic Clement Greenberg declared all Academic painting to be kitsch (gasp!). But it's making a comeback in roundabout ways. Academic drawing and painting techniques are becoming popular again, visually dazzling a public which has spent the last century secretly resenting abstract art. Other contemporary painters still use allegory but there's no central standard; in today's multicultural, pluralistic world everyone is expected to invent it on their own using unusual symbols loaded with personal significance like they're Joseph freaking Beuys. On one had that's nice because it isn't so rigid and it opens space for discovery, but on the other it can be baffling as a viewer. Artists will say things in interviews like, "oh yes, I became fascinated by the character of the clown who is turned into a two-headed ox from [obscure Italian opera] so I used him to explore the way we recontextualize post-Colonialism through the lens of modern Dutch genderqueer identity." Which is... interesting but I never would have figured that out just from looking at the painting. I don't want to return to the era of Academic rigidity, but it would be nice sometimes to understand without reading the long text on the wall.

 

 

 

 

Inktober Day 3: Cecilia Beaux

 

Admiral Sir David Beatty, Lord Beatty by Cecilia Beaux, c. 1920. (image via) The war-torn horizon immediately conjures images of Napoleon and of J.M.W. Turner's storm-tossed seas.

 A distinct style that arose for society portraiture in the Belle Époque and Edwardian era (1880s-1910s), I'm sure you've see it, that certain something that unites the work of Cecilia Beaux, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Therese Schwartze, Joaquín Sorolla, William Merritt Chase, Lilla Cabot Perry and Giovanni Boldini. It's why all these rival's work looks a bit alike, and why critics engage in a fun circular game of calling each painter's work derivative of the other. But it's hard to know what to call the style. It isn't Impressionism, even though the brushtrokes are loose and fluid, natural light takes center stage, and the implied movement of the compositions looks strikingly modern, like a snapshot. It's very realistic and slightly idealized-- but it's not the Academic style either. Yet it was clearly suited to turn-of-the-century high society, that glittering slurry of new industrialists and old aristocracy: fresh yet unthreatening, classic but not stodgy, audacious yet respectable. Where, then, did it come from?

 

Velasquez. Yes, the Spanish painter from three centuries prior, the one who painted Las Meninas. His loose brushwork and thick buildup of wet-on-wet brushstrokes ran counter to the prevailing 19th century Academic tradition of perfectionist painters like Ingres. But it was hugely influential to figure painters like Carolus-Duran in Paris and Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz in Madrid, each of whom were prolific and influential instructors of the mid-1800s. 

 

Also arising in the mid-1800s were two schools of plein aire (outdoor) painting: Barbizon in France and the Macchiaioli in Italy, both precursors to Impressionism. While the later Impressionists often used blue-purple for shadows, thus creating a dazzling vibration of color contrasts wherein the entire painting seems bright and fleeting, the Barbizon and especially Macchiaioli shaded the traditional way, with black. You wouldn't believe what a difference this makes, nor how hallowed the tradition, but it anchors a painting firmly on solid ground, as well as in the past. Nevertheless the Barbizon and Macchiaioli painters dared to keep their brushstrokes sketchy and their paintings spontaneous, to let layered patches of color and shadow shimmer on the surface instead of blending everything together. They, too, were inspired by Velasquez, but moreso by English landscape painters and old Dutch and Flemish masters. The later society portrait painters would adopt many dazzling techniques of the Impressionists but they continued to shade with black.

Then there was James Abbott McNeill Whistler. All these portrait artists claimed him as an influence. To them he represented more than an admirable style, but a collection of bold modern ideas (by 1860s standards). Half a century before Kandinsky, Whistler was flirting with abstraction and naming his paintings things like 'Nocturne' and 'Symphony' to draw parallels between pure visual composition and music (his musician friend suggested it, and to Whistler's immense pleasure the titles pissed off the art critics to no end). He had no time for allegory or morals-- he was interested in "art for art's sake," that is pure form, pure color, pure realism rather than idealized Greek goddesses or art with some sort of moral message, which was favored by the predominant Academic tradition. As such Whistler's work incorporated an element of decorative arts (which, after all, claimed no higher moral purpose than to be beautiful). Whistler was mentored by Courbet (as was his friend Carolus-Duran). Courbet was in turn inspired by Velasquez and the Flemish painters like Rembrandt.

This entire lineage is interesting because while Academic Style built upon the predominant traditions of the previous centuries, these society portrait artists built on all the alternative traditions which flourished in the periphery.

This "alternative lineage" idea is completely my own take on it, though. I don't know if general art historical consensus would agree because it doesn't have much to say on the subject at all. Because these portrait painters drew on alternative traditions, they were never on the cutting edge of anything (neoclassicism, romanticism, pure impressionism, fauvism, abstract expressionism, etc) and have been almost completely left out of the narrative of art history. They're considered unimportant in the progression and eventual triumph of unsentimental abstract expressionism. Sargent, Zorn and Sorolla are beloved, but most people don't learn about them from a boilerplate art history class. They simply stumble across them on Pinterest or in a coffee table book in some waiting room.

In their heyday, though, these artists were considered forward-thinking. So as Ingres' old-fashioned style dominated the 19th century, his style became associated with it. The new generation of bright (rich) young things wanted something new, something that represented them, yet they still were searching for the next Old Master, to own what their grandchildren would consider important art. Each aspiring young portrait painter who studied in Europe was right at the center of it, various influential movements as they unfolded in real time, meeting their modern idols at cafes and copying the old masters in museums.

And then there was Cecilia Beaux, stuck in Philadelphia. 

There was one good place to study art in Philly, and that was at Thomas Eakins's academy. But everyone knew that place was full of freaks. Ever since Eakins had exhibited a graphic painting of a surgery in progress, no respectable woman would touch his school, even if he was a great painter, and even if his school did allow women to study anatomy. 

Beaux's concerned family found a relative to teach Beaux instead, one Catherine Drinker. After studying with Drinker and desperate to make some money to support herself and her family, Beaux turned to painting portraits of children on porcelain plates. People would mail in photographs and she'd mail the plates back to clients as far away as California. She drew advertising lithographs ad technical illustration as well. "This was the lowest depth I ever reached in commercial art," she said, "and although it was a period when youth and romance were in their first attendance on me, I remember it with gloom and record it with shame." But the money did afford her the independence to continue her studies ("only until marriage of course," she told her family and, to an extent, herself). More importantly it taught her that mothers would do anything for portraits of their children. (I once had this same "ah-ha!" moment with pet portraiture when I saw someone go into the Louis Vuitton store pushing a gigantic dog stroller with a shivering chihuahua inside).

Beaux had to admit growing admiration for Eakins' Academic-style work. And she knew she had to step up her game if she didn't want to be painting plates forever. In the end she worked up the nerve to attend the academy but studied with other teachers. "A curious instinct of self-preservation kept me outside the magic circle." Sadly Eakins would be fired from the academy for his practice of allowing women artists to study anatomy. Philadelphia was not ready for his ideas. 

Somewhere along these studies she picked up a lifelong belief in phrenology, which was a preeminent form of quackery from an embarrassing period in history when scientists believed that behavior and character traits correlated with various physical features. At its worst this idea was applied to blatantly racist, sexist, classist and xenophobic agendas-- that's why it's earned such a nasty reputation nowadays. However I find it interesting that a portrait artist would pick up phrenology and run with it. It makes me reconsider the practice of cartooning where physical features are exaggerated to show personality. Much of portraiture is after all just glorified cartooning, where the artist manipulates the sitter's physical appearance to turn them into an expressive character. 

Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance by Cecilia Beaux, 1883. (image via)

 

With the exhibition of her first serious work, Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance, Beaux allied herself with artists like Whistler and Mary Cassatt. Beaux's reputation grew and she opened her own portrait studio. In just a few years she was able to charge as much for a commission as Eakins himself. She was good, but she wanted to be great. She craved a European education and in 1888 at age 32 she set sail for Paris. "Remember," begged her loving Aunt Eliza, who was anxious for her unmarried Quaker niece amid the notorious vices of the Paris art world, "you are first of all a Christian – then a woman and last of all an Artist."

Paris hit Cecilia Beaux like a ton of bricks but she thrived in the adversity. It wasn't Bouguereau, the most nurturing of her instructors, who buoyed her spirits the most, but the underhanded encouragement of the severe Fleury, eyeing her efforts: "...We will do all we can to help you."

At the same time that Beaux was training in the Academic style she was also drawn to its polar opposite, Impressionism. She experimented with incorporating it into her style but found she was too precise and concrete a painter to really adopt the style. However she did lighten her color palette significantly, beginning a lifelong love affair with white-on-white effects. She also studied the effects of natural light and outdoor painting which she would put to use later in her career with outdoor portraits and landscapes.

Twilight Confidences by Cecilia Beaux, 1888. (image via) Beaux painted this early work after spending the summer at an artist's colony in Brittany. She completed numerous studies for this, and the painting is her first foray into plein aire (i.e. outdoor) painting. The play of fleeting natural light is obviously her main focus and the white Briton bonnets of the women serve as perfect vehicles.

 

New England Woman, by Cecilia Beaux, 1895. (image via) While this painting was completed a decade after her time in Paris you can clearly see the influence of Impressionists like Morisot and Cassatt. Beaux also was an admirer of Whistler, and one of his most famous portraits was a girl in a white dress in front of a white curtain, titled Symphony in White.

 

When Beaux returned to Philadelphia she dedicated herself completely to painting. She chose never to marry or even to have serious relationships so she could focus. Her extended family welcomed her back home, and all of the time she lived there and worked in her studio, "I was never once asked to do an errand in town, some bit of shopping…so well did they understand." (everyone who works from home lately will understand what a gift that is). She maintained a strict daily routine with a punctual starting and quitting time.

 

The year after her return William Merritt Chase (the prominent Impressionist and society portrait painter) claimed, “[Beaux is] not only the greatest living woman painter, but the best painter who ever lived!” I personally disagree-- no one beats Anders Zorn, come on-- but Beaux was clearly earning a solid reputation stateside. She had multiple pieces exhibited together with John Singer Sargent who was much more well-known at the time, and a critic was famously overheard making very sideways compliment: "I see Sargent has signed his best paintings, 'Cecilia Beaux.'" He meant that her style was very derivative of his, but also that her work was superior. Her work is still frequently compared with his-- and they are very similar-- but as I pointed out at the beginning of the post, both Beaux and Sargent were basically painting in the style of Carolus-Duran.

 

In a reversal of the previous decade when she had difficulty acquiring training, Beaux was hired as the first woman to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Philadelphians were proud and she became a very popular instructor for the next twenty years.  

 

Beaux went on to exhibit large murals at the Chicago World's Fair, to amass a long list of sought-after clientele including Teddy and Edith Roosevelt, and to have her paintings exhibited in Paris to acclaim. 

 

By the early 1900s several of Beaux's extended family members died. Beaux was devastated, as she had been orphaned at birth and raised, with her sister, by her grandparents, aunts and uncles. She found it too painful to stay in Philadelphia and relocated to a country home in a wealthy community. She began summering in New York as well. Interestingly, she incorporated hiking and leisure into her daily studio schedule because she considered the steady maintenance of energy to be crucial to her artistic output. One must accept, she believed, that art will work one to exhaustion, so an artist must plan one's day in a way that re-energizes oneself.   

Abruptly in 1907, American artists overhauled the Impressionist era, moving on to gritty social realism, Dada and then abstraction. But Beaux never considered moving on from her style. "These men [Rubens, Memling, Mabuse, all Renaissance and Baroque painters] were not reformers," she wrote. "Theirs was the earnest desire toward perfection. Not to break down, but to build." For Beaux the old masters had set art as an ever-fixed mark that does not alter when it when it alteration finds. 

 

Despite the art world moving on the last decades of her life were filled with prestigious honors and awards of every sort. Toward the end of her life she broke her hip and her painting slowed considerably. She died in 1942 at age 87. 

Sita and Sarita, by Cecilia Beaux, 1893-4. (image via) Who wouldn't like to have their portrait made like this, looking mysterious with a witchy cat. Beaux sometimes added a touch of something slightly odd such as an unusual pose or composition which made the image more attention-grabbing while allowing the sitter to retain their dignity.

Mrs. Alexander Sedgwick and Daughter Christina, by Cecilia Beaux, 1902. (image via) The pose in this is interesting. The mother's back is turned, and she isn't even more than a sketch at the edges. Yet she's very prominent in the painting. 

Sarah Elizabeth Doyle by Cecilia Beaux, c. 1902. (image via) Sarah Doyle was a suffragist and educator who founded the Pembroke College in Brown University. Her former students commissioned this portrait from Beaux, to “be of itself a work of art of the highest merit" which would acknowledge Doyle's “deep and lasting influence upon the women of this community,” and “perpetuate her strong, womanly personality.” Doyle is shown here in her academic robes over her personal clothes, with a pose and expression that radiates intelligence and gravitas (to get in trouble and be sent to her principal's office would be terribly intimidating). The simplicity of the forms and fluidity of the brushstrokes create a confident sense of balance. The red background appears plummy purple in some photographs of the piece, and if that's the case in real life it would be an allusion to the symbolic colors of the women's suffrage movement: white, green and purple.

Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker) by Cecilia Beaux, 1898. (image via) Drinker was a wealthy and stylish railroad executive who married Cecilia Beaux's sister. He was also brother to Beaux's first art instructor, Catherine Drinker. Known to be a strong personality, the painting seems to be some sort of recognition and accord between his strong personality and Beaux's own formidable character (according to unsigned commentary at Smithsonian's image database). This man was the pinnacle of glitteringly wealthy East coast society, and here he is so comfortable with himself that he slumps in a chair to accommodate the cat on his lap, the literal lap of luxury. Besides the pose I love the technique of this painting. The brushstrokes are clear watery pools of color, the side lighting that splashes over the folds of his suit beautifully divides his face in two.

After the Meeting by Cecilia Beaux, 1914. (image via) I adore this composition-- the high contrast pattern play, near-abstract blocks of color, and how it leads the eye in an unusual upward zigzag. The bold layering of patterns echoes whatever peppery thing the woman in the chair is saying, and the lively composition which zings back and forth hints at a gathering of others who are listening and ready with a lively answer. According to writers in 1915 the "meeting" certainly refers to a women's suffrage meeting (note the green and white dress) and the "restless energy" is meant to characterize those who attended, someone who talks with her hands and grabs attention. The flattened, color-blocked composition was a pointed reference to abstract European modernism and drew a parallel between the modernism of the woman and of the painting itself (and possibly painter). Meanwhile the careless simplicity of the brushstrokes and lack of shading especially in the face was a reference to fauvism, another modern art movement. Beaux considered herself a "New Woman," an independent cultured citizen who supported women's rights. 

Portrait of Alice Davison by Cecilia Beaux, 1909. (image via) I think the way she painted Central Park is neat.

Cardinal Mercier by Cecilia Beaux, 1919. (image via) While this man doesn't look like someone I'd want to know the painting itself is beautiful. The tonal value of the red against the background is somehow surprising; where you'd expect dramatic contrast (as in a Baroque painting) they're separated only by outline. The mottled misty quality of the figure creates a separation from the viewer, as if he's not real. The overall effect really sucks you in.

So, here is my portrait of Cecilia Beaux for Day 3 of Inktober. I readily found two of Beaux's self portraits online, and while I quite like them as paintings I didn't think they made very good reference images. Nor were the photographs of her very descriptive. With some digging I found a watercolor portrait of Beaux by another artist named Rosina Emmet Sherwood. (Sherwood's life and work is worth taking a look; she did some gorgeous children's book illustration.) I tried to mimic Beaux's own long fluid brushstrokes in her blouse and in the "scumbled" background. I also noticed that she frequently employed a subtle but thick outline to separate the figure from the background. It creates a slightly art-nouveau-style effect, like a rich glaze puddling around the contours of a vase. You can see it in the portrait of Sarah Doyle above with the red background. I added the bow on the blouse to anchor the composition and cropped the image way in from Sherwood's original seated pose; I like how it makes her look like a thoroughly modern "Gibson Girl."  

 

This post is part of a series of posts from Inktober 2020 about women artists of the 17-early 1900s who each had some significant connection to Paris, France. Each post focuses on the art-historical context of the artist among her colleagues and ends with a portrait I did in ink of the artist in their style (roughly). Other posts in the series: 

 

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun

Claude Cahun

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

Bessie MacNicol

Sonia Delaunay

Rosa Bonheur

What is art?

I cannot believe I'm asking this-- or writing the answer voluntarily-- as I was sick to death of this question by the first year of art school (and sicker by graduation). But unlike years past I'm not b.s.-ing my way through an answer (not consciously anyway) and I'm finally satisfied that I have an answer that exists outside the untenable binary of genius / loser, art / craft, transcendent / kitsch that is particular to post-Renaissance modernity. [Image: Lisa Simpson holding her sax in front of clouds shaped like Bleeding Gums Murphy, an obvious spoof of Simba's dad-cloud apparition from The Lion King]

***

Art is the notation or commentary that you make on life, similar to the notes you take in class. [Image: Lisa, Marge and Homer Simpson watch a meteor shower]

***

Some things you copy down because you need to know them. Or because it is interesting enough as-is that it's worth remembering. You usually parse what you believe is the most important or salient fact and make a note of only that, particularly when it is representative of a bulkier portion of the learning material. This selectivity reflects a combination of your personal values or intellectual system, and what the teacher (i.e. cultural authority) says is important.... [Image: Lisa and Homer Simpson watch TV in awe]

... I'm alluding to classical Academic art, cave paintings, scientific illustration.... [Image: Homer as da Vinci paints Lisa as the Mona Lisa]

... most portraiture.... [Image: storage room full of statues and paintings of Mr. Burns in many styles]

... and historic monuments. [Image: Homer Simpson imagines himself playing Foosball with Michelangelo's David]

***

Other times you may jot your own abstract theories of the material in the margins of a novel or history book: leading questions to remind you later of your thoughts, or your theories pertaining to the text which usually reflect your larger cultural and intellectual environment, such as parallels with material you're learning in another class.... [Image: Lisa Simpson dressed like Sherlock Holmes, i.e. a detective]

... Here I'm alluding to Abstract Expressionism... [Image: 3-D Homer Simpson paints crazy lines like Pollock]

... art which advances a theory such as Futurism and Cubism... [Image: spoof of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase featuring Homer Simpson stumbling cubistically down a staircase]

 and mystical or religious art. [Image: Lisa Simpson reads Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass]

***

Or maybe the class doesn't interest you and you're doodling unicorns in your notebook and making escapist fantasies. I'd say these "notes" are still reflective of the class because 1) they were produced because you were in class and 2) they are often subconsciously related to the material or are a reaction to it, such as a cartoon of your teacher with a Hitler mustache. Here I'm thinking of escapist art, fantasy, sci fi, satire, mindless entertainment, psychadelia, decorative art and art for the sake of pure beauty. [Lisa Simpson dances while Chief Wiggam eats a donut in a spoof of David Lynch's Twin Peaks where Agent Cooper dreams of the Black Lodge]

***

In this analogy community happenings or collaborations might be a sort of group study session... [Andy Warhol holds a giant soup can above a cowering Homer Simpson in a Dali dreamscape]

 ... or lab class where you learn through pre-designed experimentation. [Image: Lisa Simpson plays the sax in band with other kids]

***

You mostly make the notes for yourself but you might share them if they are outstanding, or if note-taking resources are scarce, or if someone else needs to use them. [Image: Lisa Simpson stands heroically in front of a sunset]

***

And while many of us were forced to take notes in class because we wanted to pass the tests or because our teachers made us, "notes on life," i.e. art, are usually voluntary.... [Image: Bart Simpson does write-offs reading, "I WILL NOT EXPOSE THE IGNORANCE OF THE FACULTY"]

... Maybe we have never come across an adequate representation of life quite as we've experienced it, and we want to make note of our version of events-- for the pursuit of a Higher Truth, in order to help others going through the same thing, because we think our thoughts could entertain others, because we think our experience is super important, or because we think we have something better to offer than what already exists (plans for the future, proposals, fantasies, utopias).... [Image: Lisa Simpson reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar]

... Maybe we aren't allowed to express certain thoughts or do certain things in real life, so we express them in abstract ways.... [Image: Lisa and Bart Simpson peruse a copy of Public Nudity: Codes and Statutes]

  ... Maybe we're taking notes on behalf of a huge group of people: carving our tribal history onto a vessel, or making something to entertain every child in an orphanage, or documenting a disappearing culture, or inspiring social justice.... [Image: Lisa Simpson points an accusatory finger with the caption, "The whole damn system is wrong!"]

... Or maybe we feel compelled to take notes and we never really understand why. [Image: Lisa Simpson holds her sax and looks up as Bleeding Gums Murphy sits alone on a bridge in front of the moon playing his sax]

***

And just as the division between the material being taught and the notation of it (or between teaching and learning) exists only because we say it does-- because we are conscious of ourselves versus others and the linear flow of time, because modern large industrial and / or capitalist societies value the division of labor (teacher/student), because we are a society of domination that values a hierarchy of information based on class markers-- so the division between art and life exists only because we say it does, and for the same reasons. [Image: Lisa Simpson plays her sax while Homer chills out on her bed and listens with a bag of chips]