Nineteenth-Century French Drawings

THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

NINETEENTHCENTURY FRENCH DRAWINGS

Monsieur Boileau at the Café Heather Lemonedes Brown

In Monsieur Boileau at the Café (cat. 37a), we encounter a portly man seated at a café table. The

figure leans back, pausing as he smokes a cigarette to assess the viewer directly. To capture his

likeness, avant-garde artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted in oil and tempera over charcoal underdrawing on board, transforming the timeless genre of portraiture into a contemporary image that subtly addressed the culture of the time.

The magnificent Monsieur Boileau at the Café has the distinction of being the first unique work 1

of art by Toulouse-Lautrec acquired by an American art museum. It was featured in the first

exhibitions of the artist’s paintings in the United States, including a show at the Art Institute of Chicago organized by the Arts Club from December 23, 1924, through January 25, 1925, where it

was highlighted on the cover of the exhibition pamphlet. Shortly thereafter, in the spring of 1925, Monsieur Boileau at the Café was shown again at Wildenstein & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

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The Chicago and New York exhibitions were very similar, and Paul Rosenberg was the primary lender to both; it was he who sold Monsieur Boileau at the Café to Wildenstein in 1925.

In a review of the Wildenstein exhibition, the New York Times singled out the portrait of Boileau

as exemplifying Toulouse-Lautrec’s “amazing strength” and noted the artist’s “masterly precision” 3

in his description of “M. Boileau’s pleasure in a good dinner.” During the artist’s lifetime, the

drawing was highly regarded; it was one of four works Toulouse-Lautrec showed at the Exposition 4

des Indépendants in Paris in 1893. The work was admired there by critic Charles Saunier in La Plume and collector and writer Roger Marx in Le Voltaire, both of whom praised the artist’s ability to

create an intimate dialogue between the figure and the locale, thereby transcending the boundary 5

between portrait and genre subject.

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s first director, Frederic Allen Whiting, and its curator of 6

decorative arts and paintings, William Mathewson Milliken, attended the 1925 exhibition at

Wildenstein, where they identified Monsieur Boileau at the Café as a highly desirable acquisition for the museum. Josef Stránský at Wildenstein hailed this decision, writing to Milliken: “I

congratulate you upon this splendid acquisition. Thank God there is one great Museum who has a 7

Curator of Paintings with enthusiasm and conviction and carrying on the spirit of progress.”

The acquisition of the drawing required some creativity from Whiting and Milliken. The

Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) was still a new institution, having opened its doors just nine

years prior. There were few funds for art acquisitions, so Whiting and Milliken negotiated the purchase of the drawing with Stránský in exchange for four paintings from the collection of 8

Hinman B. Hurlbut plus $4,800 from funds given to the museum by Hurlbut. A lawyer, banker, 9

and railroad executive, Hurlbut is one of four Clevelanders responsible for founding the CMA. An ardent collector, Hurlbut bequeathed his collection to the museum along with money designated for art purchases. Today, $4,800 seems astonishingly low for a drawing of this quality, yet the

price was substantial for the museum at the time. The purchase of such an avant-garde work is remarkable and is a testament to the vision of the museum’s first director and curator. Henry

Sayles Francis, curator of paintings, drawings, and prints at the CMA from 1927 to 1929 and 1931 to 1967, later praised the purchase of Monsieur Boileau at the Café and Milliken’s eye for quality: “He did an extraordinary thing when he got the Toulouse-Lautrec. . . . This was before there was a great rage for Toulouse-Lautrec. . . . A picture like that today would bring in six figures.”

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The Display and Dispersal of Drawings in 19th-Century France Debra DeWitte

Honoré Daumier’s Art Lovers is a study of the act of looking (cat. 13). Two gentlemen lean forward, intrigued by the works of art before them. Art covers the wall, but one man is particularly taken by a small framed work that is placed atop a table and leaning against the wall (fig. 14). A small sculpture beside it seems to mimic the actions of the man, twisting itself to better view the

framed work. What are they looking at? Is it a painting or drawing? Is it by a famous artist? Where are they? Are they at a public exhibition, a gallery, or an auction? Or are they visiting the home of a wealthy collector? In 19th-century France, the possible venues for looking at drawings, the

audiences interested in seeing them, and the uses they had for their viewers expanded more than ever before. This exploration into the ways in which drawings were viewed and exchanged in

19th-century France leads us into the homes of artists and collectors, into refined galleries and

auction houses, and into exhibitions open to the public, revealing the important role drawings played in 19th-century artistic and social life.

Drawings as Artistic Tools Drawings are often considered a preparatory medium for their essential role in planning out

compositions and details for finished paintings, sculptures, or buildings. The process of drawing had an important role in the Académie des Beaux-Arts, founded in 1648, which became the École

des Beaux-Arts in 1863. In these institutions, artists were required to draw for several years before

Fig. 14 Art Lovers (detail), c. 1863. Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879). Gray and black wash, charcoal, and graphite,

with watercolor, on cream laid paper;

26.2 x 19.4 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1927.208

Fig. 15 The Auction House: The Expert,

1863, printed 1920. Honoré Daumier

(French, 1808–1879). Wood engraving;

44.2 x 32.3 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Ralph King, 1921.1483

Cat. 24 (detail)

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Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824) The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione, c. 1800 Pen and brown and black ink, brown and gray wash with point of brush, with black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache, on cream wove paper 28.5 x 21.8 cm (11 1/4 x 8 9/16 in.)

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 1989.101

Signed, lower left, in brown ink: ALG / INV.; lower left, in black chalk: A L GIRODET INV.

When asked to list his most important works

did his canvases, beginning with a rough

specifically developed for the project. Didot

Trioson named several acclaimed history

focused studies of individual figures from the

David, who delegated plays to particular artists

created after 1789, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucypaintings, but also drawings illustrating

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dramas by French playwright Jean Racine.

One of these sheets, The Meeting of Orestes and

Hermione, belongs to a series of commissioned illustrations for Racine’s Andromaque (1667), a

tragic play inspired by antiquity and centered on a triangle of unrequited love. Girodet’s five images broke from the contemporary

tendency to focus on violence and action and

instead conveyed psychological depth. Related to the second scene of the play’s second act,

Cleveland’s drawing shows the hero, Orestes,

being introduced to Hermione, his future love, by her servant. Girodet communicated much of the scene’s content through the figures’

poses and setting, from the eager expression and forward movement of Orestes to the

defensive stance and coy gaze of Hermione, who will take advantage of the hero’s

compositional sketch and progressing to more

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amorous sentiments to enact revenge. The

stark geometry and strict linear order of the

nude. He mastered this technique as a young man while working in the studio of Jacques-

Louis David. According to an early biographer, his mother approached David, then renowned for history painting, with examples of her

son’s abilities as a draftsman, earning him

an invitation to study under the elder artist 5

in 1784. David’s studio was known for its

competitive atmosphere, in which young

artists alternately adopted and rejected his teachings. Among them, Girodet asserted his independence especially strongly, and

his Racine project is one of his last to show

evidence of David’s influence before he spurned it completely, favoring a more emotional

and imaginative idiom. Like many of David’s students, Girodet read Latin and Greek, and he maintained a passion for both classical

and contemporary literature that led him to

undertake illustrations throughout his career.

The series of drawings to which Cleveland’s

indeterminate setting connect both Girodet

sheet belongs was one of several commissioned

the spareness of the interior space conjures a

Didot. Around 1800, as the English gained

and Racine to the grand classical tradition, and foreboding ambience. This tone is enhanced

by the room’s only furnishing: a neoclassical

guéridon behind Hermione featuring a decorative siren, an allusion to the danger that will befall 3

Orestes. For its rich composition and skillful technique, Girodet considered The Meeting of

Orestes and Hermione as equally important as his

paintings, exhibiting it in the same section of

the annual Paris Salon the next year. It reveals the centrality of drawing within the oeuvre of an artist most often remembered for his

contributions to the legacy of history painting in France around the turn of the 19th century.

Girodet approached the creation of The

Meeting of Orestes and Hermione just as he 66

from Girodet by French luxury publisher Pierre prominence in the field of book illustration, Didot sought to reestablish France’s

preeminence in the genre. He organized

images for 12 plays by Racine, whose work he saw as modern French classics. Didot, who took over the family’s publishing business

with his brother Firmin after their father’s

retirement, described his aims as nationalistic

and characterized his goals for the Racine folios as demonstrating “the current state of the arts in France” and forming “a typographical and 6

national monument.” He dedicated the books

to Napoleon Bonaparte and printed them using the former royal press at the Louvre in a large

deluxe folio featuring a paper, ink, and typeface

entrusted illustrations for his Racine project to 7

from his milieu. Perhaps unsurprisingly,

the publication was produced at a financial

loss for Didot, who sold only about half of the 8

edition of 250.

Just as Didot’s publication was intended

to showcase the French art of publishing,

Girodet elevated the field of drawing through

his work on the project. Describing his Racine illustrations, he famously wrote that “it

is wrong for these drawings to be [seen as] only drawings, for they demand the same

conception and nearly the same studies as

a painting, once you are drawn in by giving them style and character; only the process 9

of creating them is different.” By exhibiting drawings such as The Meeting of Orestes and

Hermione alongside history paintings in the

most prestigious contemporary venue, Girodet asserted a new status for highly polished

drawings in Revolutionary France. In his

own lifetime, his Andromaque drawings were kept by Didot and Firmin, who bound them in a luxury edition with the engravings. In

1810, Firmin unsuccessfully attempted to sell the folio, perhaps to recuperate the project’s

financial losses. The drawings were unbound and sold individually over the coming years,

with many—such as those acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Getty Museum around the same time as Cleveland’s—

only returning to the public eye nearly two 10

centuries later.

1. Barthélémy Jobert, “Girodet and Printmaking,” in

Girodet, 1797–1824, ed. Sylvain Bellenger, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2006), 154.

2. Sylvain Bellenger, “The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione,” in Diane De Grazia and Carter E. Foster, Master Drawings from

the Cleveland Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000), 124.

Cat. 1

Catalogue

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Théodore Géricault (French, 1791–1824) Sheet of Sketches (recto and verso), 1819 Pen and brown ink on ivory laid paper 22.8 x 35 cm (9 x 13 3/4 in.)

Dudley P. Allen Fund 1964.28.a–b

Inscribed, on recto, upper left, in brown ink: dessin de gericault fait à fontain la magdelaine Watermark, center: scallop shell [possibly J. Berger or J. Bouchet]

Despite the importance of drawing in all its

finished drawings to appeal to collectors and

Medusa, as the figures’ contorted, violent poses

is known about this aspect of his oeuvre,

to fail. Even alongside this change, his sketches

second Magdelaine sheet, executed at the same

forms to Théodore Géricault, relatively little including Cleveland’s Sheet of Sketches. The artist

covered both sides of his support with unrelated pen and ink studies of posed nude figures,

gain financial support as his health continued allowed him to experiment and record private thoughts and caprices.

Sheet of Sketches is one of two 1819 drawings

most of whom contort their bodies upward and

with inscriptions mentioning Magdelaine;

than a staff held by one man. The drawing has

and studies related to Géricault’s The Raft of

forward, free from any setting or props other

long been thought to depict Bacchic revelers, perhaps loosely related to a series of erotic

drawings that the artist made around 1818

following a disastrous love affair that produced 1

a child. An inscription provides further clues, revealing that Géricault made the sketches at

the “fontain [sic] la magdelaine,” a religious site in Féricy, near Fontainebleau. Géricault visited this village in fall 1819, after a disappointing

reception of his painting The Raft of the Medusa

at the Paris Salon and the beginning of health

issues that spanned the rest of his life. Created in the artist’s preferred medium for his own

purposes at a turning point in his career, Sheet

of Sketches suggests the consistent role drawing played for Géricault, an artist whose practice otherwise shifted dramatically.

Vaguely mythological subjects such as that

of the Cleveland sheet interested Géricault from a young age. He trained himself by copying the work of past masters at the Musée du

Louvre to develop his hand, filling sketchbooks with reference images that often featured

the composite layout seen in Sheet of Sketches.

After his first showing at the Paris Salon in

after Sheet of Sketches was made, Géricault

shifted to working in watercolor, using it for 84

the figures’ poses and musculature, perhaps

even returning to sources found in works that

his greatest achievement: a history painting

inspired him, such as those by Michelangelo.

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based on a contemporary subject. Although

To create the Cleveland drawing, Géricault

influential to future generations, it was

used pen and ink, often angling his stylus to

own time, causing him to retreat to Féricy.

material to pool and saturate the sheet. As in

unilaterally panned by critics in Géricault’s

vary the thickness of his line and to allow the

He traveled with his friend Auguste Brunet,

many of the artist’s works on paper, the ink

a sociologist whose portrait appears on the

has transferred through the sheet over time,

second Magdelaine sheet, and stayed in a

pension owned by René Richard Louis Castel, a teacher and poet he had known since 4

childhood. Devastated by the criticism of his

painting, Géricault devoted time to sketching while in Féricy. Castel’s correspondence describes spending a day in the artist’s

company about a month after his arrival as he produced sketches at the Magdelaine, a local fountain commemorating a saint, Osmane, known for granting fertility. Although

Géricault’s typical sketchbook pages—reflects its importance to the artist. This significance is also indicated by its likely first owner, 7

Pierre-Olivier Dubaut. An artist himself,

Dubaut assembled one of the most renowned collections of Géricault’s oeuvre over the first

half of the 20th century, a process that led him of Sheet of Sketches to such holdings clarifies the

mental and physical malady, leading him to

return to Paris for medical care soon after, his

sojourn seems to have provided at least a brief 6

The imaginative, capricious figures in

interpretation of this period; they were a

sketchbooks and independent sheets. Although literature on the drawing has exclusively

described the figures as Bacchic in content, it

seems plausible that some may have comprised reflections on imagery from The Raft of the

The drawing’s size—nearly double that of

major monograph on the artist. The importance

Géricault would fall ill with a mysterious

respite for working privately and reflectively.

causing the figures to blur into one another.

to develop expertise sufficient to publish a

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favorite subject seen throughout Géricault’s

compositional studies for his canvases. Shortly

the artist may have more generally considered

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traditional genres. Géricault still continued to alone sheets, such as the present example, and

in revisiting the canvas’s details in its close

directly copying or reconsidering the painting,

the Medusa. The artist considered the canvas

Cleveland’s drawing accord with such an

draw privately, however, resulting in stand-

time, clearly points to the artist’s interest

study of a featured hand and foot. Rather than

the other (fig. 44) features a bust portrait

1812, he became best known for painting and

his unorthodox combination of the medium’s

recall those in the painting. As well, Géricault’s

role of this previously little-known drawing within the artist’s oeuvre and legacy.

1. Lorenz Eitner, “Erotic Drawings by Gericault,” Master Drawings 34, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 380. See especially

Géricault’s Sheet of Sketches (Bacchantes), private collection, London (382).

2. See Colta Ives and Elizabeth E. Barker, Romanticism &

the School of Nature: Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), 42–43.

3. The large-scale work depicted the starving and adrift

survivors of a shipwreck documented in the French press,

referencing the dramatic, expressive poses used by historic masters Michelangelo and Raphael. On this relationship,

Cat. 6 (recto)

Catalogue

85

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Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940) In Front of the Mirror (recto), c. 1891–92; Reclining Male Nude (verso), c. 1887–89 Pastel and charcoal on beige laid paper 34.8 x 27.2 cm (13 11/16 x 10 11/16 in.)

Bequest of William Kelly Simpson 2018.77

Stamped, lower left, in purple ink: artist’s studio mark [Lugt 2497b]

In Front of the Mirror presents Édouard Vuillard’s

unfinished, sketchily rendered hands, whose

Vuillard’s domestic relationships—an emerging

Here in her late 20s, the young woman is seen

part in settling on their position. Their

decades to come.

sister, Marie, one of his favorite subjects.

from behind in a white blouse and long blueand-white striped skirt. She raises her hands on either side of her head, seemingly in the process of styling her hair. Marie’s skirt is echoed by the yellow stripes surrounding

her, both in and below the mirror, and their patterning and color contribute movement

and tension. This mood is enhanced by Marie’s

formlessness implies frustration on Vuillard’s reconsideration may indicate that Cleveland’s

Vuillard’s oeuvre for its execution on the reverse

(fig. 62) and a painting (fig. 63) executed

shows a nude male torso and hand apparently

featuring this image—including a pastel around the same time—in which their

placement has been resolved. The portrait,

perhaps at first glance casual or unassuming, speaks considerably about the dynamic of

Fig. 63 Marie in a Camisole at Her Dressing

35.2 x 24.5 cm. Private collection. Photo:

on cardboard mounted on cradled panel;

Courtesy of the Vuillard Archives

154

In Front of the Mirror is unusual among

drawing was the first among several works

Fig. 62 Marie in a Camisole at Her Dressing

Table, c. 1891–92. Édouard Vuillard. Pastel;

theme that would dominate his practice for

Table, c. 1891–92. Édouard Vuillard. Oil

34.3 x 26.7 cm. Location unknown. Photo: Courtesy of the Vuillard Archives

of an earlier drawing. That charcoal study

cut down from a larger sheet. At least one other drawing from the same period was similarly trimmed, revealing that the artist kept and 1

recycled his early sketches. Vuillard likely

Cat. 29 (recto)

Catalogue

155

41

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (French, 1844–1925) Quai au Sable, Chartèves, 1904 Pastel on gray wove paper discolored to tan 69 x 99 cm (27 3/16 x 39 in.)

Bequest of Noah L. Butkin 1980.269

Inscribed, lower right, in black pastel: L. Lhermitte / 1904

Quai au Sable, Chartèves is one of many depictions

surrounding the nearby Marne River—he often

it, both achieved using a wide range of marks,

region—created partly because of his attraction

sketches and memory.

time he created Quai au Sable, Lhermitte had

by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte of his native to the subject but also due to the works’

worked indoors, rendering landscape from

Cleveland’s pastel shows the river’s banks

ready market. Born in Mont-Saint-Père,

on an autumn day, as evidenced by the

stipend from his hometown to study in Paris.

distance. Lhermitte’s studio was located on

a provincial village, Lhermitte received a

At the École Imperiale de Dessin, he learned under innovative teacher Horace Lecoq de

Boisbaudran, who emphasized memorization as the cornerstone of artistic practice and

instructed his students to undertake close

looking and then work in the studio rather than from life. Lhermitte absorbed these theories fully, and they informed his practice over

the years that followed. Although he divided his time between Paris and the provinces— including Mont-Saint-Père and the area

vibrant orange and yellow tones of trees in the the Marne, and he often represented the local terrain, doing so with increasing frequency

after 1900. He used a textured paper—which has likely shifted in color from a gray that

complemented the scene’s blue skies to brown

over time—allowing him not only to draw with the side and point of pastel sticks but also to

manipulate the powdery material, likely using

a brush and sponge. Lhermitte’s technical skill is especially evident in passages such as the

water’s luminous surface and the reflection on

from broad tonal passages to fine lines. By the

been experimenting with pastel for nearly two decades and exhibited regularly with artists’

groups who promoted it, including the Société d’Aquarellistes Français and the Société des Pastellistes Français. He quickly forged a

prominent place within these organizations,

becoming a leading advocate of pastel. Critics

acknowledged his expertise in this medium; in a catalogue for a 1909 exhibition of Lhermitte’s work, for example, his pastels were noted

as having “an almost unrivaled purity and brilliance of colour. . . . Light dances and

quivers on the leaves and on the running water with absolute verisimilitude.”

1

Quai au Sable is revelatory of the ways in

which Lhermitte capitalized on such praise and on the popularity of his subject matter around the turn of the century. The pastel’s bucolic

landscape and rural population seen from an anonymizing distance affirmed the nobility

of their labor; Lhermitte typically presented

laborers whose work involved the river, such as washerwomen and fishermen. These themes

appealed to a growing community of collectors with an interest in contemporary art but

conservative taste. Cleveland’s pastel is one of many in which Lhermitte combined this

view with stock figures and slight perspectival changes. A pastel from around the same

time (fig. 72), for instance, almost exactly

duplicates Quai au Sable but lacks its distinctive

boats and workers—likely ferrymen traversing

Fig. 72 The Dent du Chat at Lac du Bourget,

1901. Léon-Augustin Lhermitte. Pastel on paper; 43.5 x 55.5 cm. Musée des BeauxArts, Reims, inv. 907.19.329

192

Cat. 41

the river connecting Paris with eastern

the Bureau France-Amérique, an organization

replication and reinterpretation during the

between the two countries. Although his

France. Lhermitte established this practice of 1880s after entering a business relationship with Boussod, Valadon & Cie, a Paris-based

gallery to which he signed the rights to sales of his pastels—at that time, his most successful 2

works. Like many others, Cleveland’s pastel

was produced for Boussod and later passed on to Wallis, an influential London-based paintings dealer that catered to audiences in England, Canada, and the United States beginning 3

in 1895. Scenes such as Quai au Sable were

especially popular in those countries around

1900 for their evocation of a pastoral tradition

and a lifestyle that was disappearing alongside 4

the rise of industrialization worldwide.

As American collectors gained purchasing power during the Gilded Age, Lhermitte’s

reputation rose astronomically, to the extent that, in 1909, he was elected as a member of

founded to develop economic relationships 5

comparatively traditional style led Lhermitte’s fame to decline after his death, his ubiquitous

presence in American collections today testifies to the formative role he played in the pastelliste movement of his day.

1. Edward F. Strange, “Léon Lhermitte,” in Selected Works

by Joseph Israels, Matthew Maris, Henri Harpignies, Léon Lhermitte, exh. cat. (London: French Gallery, 1909), n.p.

2. Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, “Léon Augustin Lhermitte,” in Monique Le Pelley Fonteny and Gabriel P. Weisberg,

Léon Lhermitte (1844–1925), exh. cat. (Beverly Hills: Galerie Michael, 1989), n.p.

3. Le Pelley Fonteny, “Léon Augustin Lhermitte,” n.p.

Provenance

(Boussod, Valadon & Cie, Paris), after 1904–by 1919; (Wallis, London), ?–by 1976; (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, May 14, 1976, no. 287); (Shepherd Gallery, New York), 1976; Noah L. Butkin [1918–1980], Shaker Heights, OH, 1976–80; his bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980–.

Exhibition History

Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Museum of Art (August 27–October 17, 2000).

Bibliography

19th Century European Paintings, no. 287 (ill.). New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1976.

Le Pelley Fonteny, Monique. Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844–

1925): Catalogue raisonné, 182 (ill.), no. 108. Paris: Éditions Cercle d’Art, 1991.

4. Mary Michele Hamel, Léon Lhermitte: An International

Exhibition, exh. cat. (Oshkosh, WI: Paine Art Center and Arboretum, 1974), 19–20.

5. Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, Léon Augustin Lhermitte

(1844–1925): Catalogue raisonné (Paris: Éditions Cercle d’Art, 1991), 64–65.

Catalogue

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