MPS MEN PORTRAITS SERIES n°4 version française
AT WORK ! English translation : Ann Menuhin
menportraits.blogspot.com © Francis Rousseau 2011-2020
MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ AT WORK!
John Neagle (1796-1860) Pat Lyon at his Forge (c. 1826-27) The Boston Museum of Fine Arts
This portrait of the famous American businessman and inventor of the first fire pumps and fire trucks, Patrick Lyon, is very unusual. It is one of the only portraits which shows a person of this importance directly and personally engaged in the manual labor (in this case that of the forge) which made him famous. When he commissioned John Neagle to paint his portrait, Patrick Lyon was already a rich and prosperous man, but it was on the condition sine qua non that the artist painted him as a worker in front of his tools of the trade that the order was confirmed. The painter was both surprised and intrigued by this request; indeed at the beginning of the XIXth century, in the very young United States of America, the personalities who had succeeded in business and who could afford to commission a portrait of themselves, generally preferred to be represented in the fine suits of a businessman surrounded by the precious objects that their fortune had allowed them to amass rather than as a blacksmith, underground miner, fabric merchant or worker! When the painter asked his sponsor the reason for his request, Patrick Lyon replied: "I am
not a gentleman, I never have been and I see no reason to be represented as such. I am a blacksmith, a worker and I represent myself at work in front of my forge. Show in this painting that the task of the workers is noble and I will be satisfied ... ". This contempt for the establishment had a very specific reason: at the beginning of his career, Lyon had been accused - wrongly - of a robbery at the Bank of Philadelphia whose headquarters were located in the premises of the Masonic Lodge of the city . Lyon was imprisoned for 3 months under very severe conditions for this false theft! After this incident which left a lasting mark on him, he became a hero among the city workers and made it a point of honour to always be described as an honest blacksmith at work rather than as a member of a higher class which he associated with injustice and lies. This is also the reason why Pat Lyon insisted that the painter Neagle include the prison in which he had been so harshly detained in his portrait, in this case the dome of the prison chapel, in the upper left of composition, behind the apprentice. The unusual character of this portrait was highly regarded in its time and would definitively launch Neagle's career, still a young artist (29 years old), by bringing him numerous commissions. This portrait still remains today, moreover, his most famous work.
MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ AT WORK !
Long considered an amateur painter, collector and patron, Gustave Caillebotte appears today as one of the major figures of the Impressionist group. Famous for his compositions inspired by Haussmann's Paris, he devoted a significant part of his production to the evocation of gardens. He painted his first studies "sur le motif" or in the open air in the family home of Yerres, before acquiring a property at Petit Gennevilliers where he created a sumptuous garden and built a greenhouse. Like his friend Claude Monet, with whom he shared a passion for horticulture, he favored the evocation of the plant universe. This painting makes it possible to judge the extent of his vegetable garden which required the employment of at least two gardeners. The glass bells of the model seen here, acting as individual mini greenhouses, were used to protect salads and hasten their development.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) The Gardeners Private collection
Watering was then still practiced with stainless steel watering cans as we can see them represented. In the art world, Caillebotte's talent was little known, except in the United States where his first exhibitions met with immediate great success. The Americans even consider him as one of the founders of the realist school, illustrated for example in the 20th century by the painter Edward Hopper. In Europe, Caillebotte, best known for having been the patron of impressionist painters, was rediscovered as a painter in the 1970s on the initiative of American collectors. Retrospectives of his works are now frequent. Fortunately, he did not need to sell his paintings to live. His descendants still own almost 70% of his works. Some of his paintings are at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris