National Identity
and Nineteenth
Century Franco Belgian Sculpture Jana Wijnsouw
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National Identity and Nineteenth-Century
Franco-Belgian
Sculpture
This book elaborates on the social and cultural phenomenon of national schools during the nineteenth century, via the less studied field of sculpture and using Belgium as a case study. The role, importance of, and emphasis on certain aspects of national identity evolved throughout the century, while a diverse array of criteria were indicated by commissioners, art critics, or artists that supposedly constituted a “national sculpture.” By confronting the role and impact of the four most crucial actors within the artistic field (politics, education, exhibitions, public commissions) with a linear timeframe, this book offers a chronological as well as a thematic approach. Artists covered include Guillaume Geefs, Eugène Simonis, Charles Van der Stappen, Julien Dillens, Paul Devigne, Constantin Meunier, and George Minne.
Jana Wijnsouw holds a PhD from the Department of Art History, Music, and Theatre Studies at Ghent University.
Routledge Research in Art History
Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality art history research.
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Researchin-Art-History/book-series/RRAH.
The Gamin de Paris in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture
Delacroix, Hugo, and the French Social Imaginary
Marilyn R. Brown
Antebellum American Pendant Paintings
New Ways of Looking
Wendy N.E. Ikemoto
Expanding Nationalisms at World’s Fairs
Identity, Diversity and Exchange, 1851–1915
Edited by David Raizman and Ethan Robey
William Hunter and His Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds
The Anatomist and the Fine Arts
Helen McCormack
The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art Materials, Power and Manipulation
Edited by Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, Ika Matyjaszkiewicz, Zuzanna Sarnecka
National Identity and Nineteenth-Century Franco-Belgian Sculpture
Jana Wijnsouw
National Identity and Nineteenth-Century Franco-Belgian Sculpture
Jana Wijnsouw
First published 2018 by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jana Wijnsouw to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-71251-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20013-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC
1850–1880 1880–1895 1895–1916
Visual Table of Contents
Ivory and socialism
1830–1850
Artistic prosperity and economic distress
Sculpture as a sign of unity
Flemish vs. international and being abroad to recognize native traditions In need of innovation
Contradicting storylines, Minne and Meunier abroad, and sculpture in exile
Coexisting identities, Meunier’s Débardeur and Zola
Sculpture as a unifier
Expansion and consolidation
New possibilities and national success through an international stage
The renaissance of sculpture vs. French influence
POLITICS
EDUCATIONA need for national innovation
Growing (inter) nationalism
Belgian salons, an exclusive party
EXHIBITIONS
French sculptors in Belgium
Guillaume Geefs and Eugène Simonis
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
List of Tables x
List of Figures xi
List of Abbreviations xiv Acknowledgments xv
1830–1850: Belgium’s ‘Big Bang’ and the Emergence of Its Sculpture School 15
1 Politics 17
1.1 Sculpture for a New Country: Art as a Unifier 17
2 Education 22
2.1 Defying ‘Enemies of Our True Nationality’: The Academy of Antwerp 22
2.2 Enemies within the Borders of the Nation: Antwerp vs. Brussels 25
2.3 Out with the Old, in with the New: The Academy of Brussels 26
2.4 Outside the Classroom, into the Studio 30
3 Exhibitions 35
3.1 The Belgian Salons: An Exclusive Party 35
4 Public Commissions 37
4.1 Guillaume Geefs, ‘le seul sculpteur belge’ 37
4.1.1 General Augustin Belliard, ‘plus Belge que Français’? 52
4.1.2 Geefs’ Peter Paul Rubens: ‘King of the Flemish Painter School’ 57
4.1.3 A Battle of Heroes: Rubens vs. Belliard 62
4.2 Louis-Eugène Simonis, ‘père de la sculpture belge moderne’ 62
4.2.1 Simon Stevin, an Ambiguous Choice 68
4.2.2 Godfrey of Bouillon, a Belgian Hero Ahorse 71
4.3 A Battle of Sculptors: Geefs vs. Simonis 73
PART II
1850–1880: A Foreign Prevalence and Non-Belgian Sculpture 77
5 Politics 79
5.1 Sculpture Midway through the Century: Art as a Sign of Unity 79
6 Education 83
6.1 The Academies: Expansion and Consolidation 83
6.2 Beyond Academies and Borders: The Private Studio 86
7 Exhibitions 90
7.1 Sculpture at the Salons: The Road to National and International Fame and Claim 90
7.2 ‘National Schools’ at the International Exhibitions: Constructed (or) Reality? 95
7.2.1 Cultural Shards and Patches 95
7.2.2 The ‘boulangerie nationale’ 97
7.3 Jean Baptiste Carpeaux in Belgium: Visiting, Exhibiting, Inspiring 99
8 Public Commissions 102
8.1 ‘Une question d’art ou une question de nationalité?’ 102
8.2 French Sculptors in Belgium 103
8.2.1 A Clash at the Bourse of Brussels 103
8.2.2 ‘A Good-for-Nothing [Who] Will Soon Be Disposed of’: Auguste Rodin in Belgium 114
8.2.3 Carrier-Belleuse in Belgium: The Sequel 118
8.2.4 Jules Bertin: ‘enfant adoptif de Tongres’, or a Frenchman? 124
8.3 Sculpture at the Palace of Justice: A Lesson Learned? 127
8.4 Une Question d’Art et une Question de Nationalité 130
PART III
1880–1895: A Renaissance of Belgian Sculpture 133
9 Politics 135
9.1 Artistic Prosperity and Economic Distress 135
9.2 Building for King and Country 140
10 Education 146
10.1 Antwerp: The ‘Flemish’ Academy 146
10.2 Van der Stappen’s Reign at the Academy of Brussels 148
10.3 Finding Native Heritage Abroad 150
11 Exhibitions 157
11.1 The Old Ways: The Salons 157
11.2 Alternative Stages: L’Essor, Les XX, and La Libre Esthétique 159
11.3 National Success on an International Stage: The Paris Salons 165
11.4 Sculpture at the International Exhibitions: Yesterday’s ‘National Schools’? 168
12 Public Commissions 171
12.1 ‘Dans l’esprit des sculptures du grand Opéra de Paris’: Two Statues for the Royal Museums of Fine Arts 171
12.2 The Renaissance of Sculpture in Belgium 180
12.3 Sculpting a(n) (Inter)National and Local Identity 184
PART IV
1895–1916: International Belgian Sculpture 187
13 Politics 189
13.1 King Leopold II, Belgian Chryselephantine Sculptures, and a French Garden 189
13.2 A New Political Movement, a New Sculpture 191
14 Education 197
14.1 Ever Looking Back: The Antwerp Academy 197
14.2 ‘La nature, c’est moi qui l’enseigne!’: Van der Stappen vs. Dillens in Brussels 198
14.3 A Need for Change: The Education Abroad 201
15 Exhibitions 203
15.1 Salons: The Old and the New 203
15.2 ‘La France aux Français!’: The Paris Salons 207
15.3 Contradicting Storylines: Belgians at the International Exhibitions 208
15.3.1 Paris—1900 208
15.3.2 Ghent—1913 211
15.4 Meunier and Minne Exhibiting Abroad 215
15.5 Sculpture in Exile: Later Exhibitions 219
16 Public Commissions 221
16.1 Public Identity: Locality vs. Nationality 221
16.1.1 Le Débardeur, a Local Hero 221
16.1.2 Art Criticism Revised: Walloon Sculpture? 223
16.2 ‘Qu’importe la nationalité de l’artiste?’: Meunier’s Zola 226
16.3 Multiple Identities 230
6.1 Overview of sculptors enrolled at the sculpture class(es) of the Academy of Antwerp (1830–1916) 86
7.1 Overview of Belgian sculptors at the Paris salons (1830–1911) 91
7.2 Random sample of the attendance ratio of Belgian and foreign sculptors at the Belgian salons (1854–1868) 91
7.3 Overview of sculptors from each country at the Belgian salons (1854 to 1894) 93
9.1 Overview of the inaugurated public monuments in Belgium (1830–1916)
11.1 Overview of sculptors at the Belgian salons (1830–1908)
11.2 Random sample of the attendance ratio of Belgian and foreign sculptors at the Belgian salons (1875–1893)
138
158
159
15.1 Random sample of the attendance ratio of Belgian and foreign sculptors at the Belgian salons (1900–1909) 204
2.1
4.1
4.2
4.3
Jean-Baptiste De Cuyper, Matthijs Ignatius Van Bree, 1849, Academy garden Mutsaardstraat, pba 23
Guillaume Geefs, Leopold I (top congress column), 1859, Place du Congrès, Brussels, pba
Guillaume Geefs, Felix de Mérode, 1833–1837, cathédrale Saint-Michel, Brussels, pba
Guillaume Geefs, André Ernest Modeste Grétry, 1842, Place de la République Française, Liège, pba
4.4 Guillaume Geefs, Tacambaro Monument, 1867, Tacambaro Square, Audenarde, pba
4.5
4.6
Guillaume Geefs in collaboration with Louis Roelandt, Monument aux Martyrs de la Révolution de 1830, 1836–1838, Place des Martyrs, Brussels, pba
Guillaume Geefs, Detail of Liberty (part of the Monument aux Martyrs de la Révolution de 1830), 1836–1838, Place des Martyrs, Brussels, pba
4.7 Guillaume Geefs, Details of the lamenting angels (part of the Monument aux Martyrs de la Révolution de 1830), 1836–1838, marble, Place des Martyrs, Brussels, pba
4.8 Joseph Geefs, La Génie du Mal, c. 1842, KMSKB, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels
4.9 Guillaume Geefs, La Génie du Mal and details, 1848, Saint-Paul Cathedral, Liège, pba
4.10 François Rude, Départ des volontaires de 1792 (La Marseillaise), 1833–1836, Arc de Triomphe, Paris, pba
4.11 François Rude, Detail of Départ des volontaires de 1792 (La Marseillaise), 1833–1836, Arc de Triomphe, Paris, pba
4.12 Guillaume Geefs, Général Augustin Daniel Belliard, 1836–1838, Rue Royale, Brussels, pba
4.13 Guillaume Geefs, Peter Paul Rubens, 1840, Groenplaats, Antwerp, pba
4.14 Eugène Simonis, André Dumont, 1865, Place du Vingt Aout, Liège, pba
4.15 Eugène Simonis, Walthère Frère-Orban, 1860, Boulevard d’Avroy, Liège, pba
4.16
Eugène Simonis, Simon Stevin, 1846, Simon Stevinplein, Bruges, pba
43
44
45
46
47
49
50
53
58
64
65
66
4.17 Eugène Simonis, Godfrey of Bouillon, 1848, Place Royale, Brussels, pba 67
4.18 Joseph Poelaert, Congress Column, 1850–1859, Place du Congrès, Brussels, pba 75
5.1 Joseph Geefs, Leopold I, 1856–1873, Leopoldplaats, Antwerp, pba 80
8.1 Léon Pierre Suys, Bourse de Bruxelles, 1838–1873, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 104
8.2 Joseph Jaquet, Fronton with the Goddess of Commerce (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 105
8.3 Louis Samain, America (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 105
8.4 Joseph Van Rasbourgh and Auguste Rodin, Asia (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 106
8.5 Guillaume De Groot, Industrie, Agriculture, Science, and Art, 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 107
8.6 Collaboration of artists led by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, detail of Arts, Commerce, et Industrie (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 108
8.7 Collaboration of artists led by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, detail of the frieze Arts (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 110
8.8 Collaboration of artists led by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, detail of the frieze Commerce (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 110
8.9 (Attributed to) Louis Samain, couple above the back entrance (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 111
8.10 Guillaume De Groot, couple crowning the windows (Bourse de Bruxelles), 1870–1874, Boulevard Anspach, Brussels, pba 112
8.11 Charles Garnier, Grand Opéra de Paris, 1861–1875, Place de l’Opéra, Paris, pba 113
8.12 Jules Pecher, in collaboration with Auguste Rodin and Antoine-Joseph Van Rasbourgh, Monument to Jean-François Loos, 1876–1879, formerly at the Loosplaats, Antwerp, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels 117
8.13 Jules Pecher, in collaboration with Auguste Rodin and Antoine-Joseph Van Rasbourgh, relic of the Monument to Jean-François Loos, 1876–1879, Leopold De Waelplaats, Antwerp, pba 118
8.14 Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, Monument Ghémar, 1872–1873, Cemetery of Laeken, Brussels, pba 119
8.15 Joseph Ducaju, Henri Leys, 1870–1873, Louiza-Marialei-Frankrijklei, Antwerp, pba 120
8.16 Jean-Jacques Winders, Liberation of the Scheldt, 1873–1883, Marnixplaats, Antwerp, pba 123
8.17 Jules Bertin, Ambiorix, 1866, Grand Marché, Tongres, pba 124
8.18 Julien Dillens, Justice entre la Clémence et le Droit, c. 1879, interior of the Palace of Justice, Place Poelaert, Brussels, pba 130
9.1 Paul Devigne, Jan Breydel and Peter De Coninck, 1887, Markt, Bruges, pba 141
9.2 Pierre Devigne-Quo, Jacob Van Artevelde, 1863, Vrijdagsmarkt, Ghent, pba 143
9.3 Julien Dillens, Hippolyte Metdepenninghen, 1886, Koophandelsplein, Ghent, pba 144
10.1 Giambologna, Hercules and the Centaur, 1600, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, pba 153
10.2 Julien Dillens, La Source, 1901, Place Armand Steurs, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Brussels, pba 155
11.1 Jef Lambeaux, Brabo-Fountain, 1887, Grote Markt, Antwerp, pba 163
12.1 Charles Van der Stappen, L’Enseignement de l’Art, 1879, facade KMSKB, Rue de la Régence, Brussels, pba 172
12.2 Paul Devigne, Le Triomphe de l’Art, 1879, facade KMSKB, Rue de la Régence, Brussels, pba 173
12.3 Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, La Danse, 1865–1869, Facade Opéra Garnier, Paris, pba 175
12.4 François Jouffroy, Harmonie, 1865–1869, Facade Opéra Garnier, Paris, pba 176
12.5 Eugène Guillaume, Musique Instrumentale, 1865–1869, Facade Opéra Garnier, Paris, pba 177
12.6 Jean-Joseph Perraud, Drame Lyrique, 1865–1869, Facade Opéra Garnier, Paris, pba 178
12.7 Jef Lambeaux, Le Faune Mordu, 1903, Parc de la Boverie, Liège, pba 182
13.1 Constantin Meunier, Monument au Travail, 1890–1930, Quai des Yachts, Brussels, pba 193
13.2 Constantin Meunier, Le Semeur (part of the Monument au Travail), 1890–1930, Quai des Yachts, Brussels, pba 194
15.1 Geo Verbanck, Monument Van Eyck, 1913, Limburgstraat, Ghent, pba 212
15.2 Jules Van Biesbroeck, Beauté, Force et Sagesse, c. 1913, De Smet-De Naeyerpark, Ghent, pba 213
15.3 Aloïs De Beule, Ros Beiaard, 1910–1913, De Smet-De Naeyerpark, Ghent, pba 214
15.4 George Minne, Fountain of kneeling youths (St.-Nicholas Church in background), 1898, Emile Braunplein, Ghent, pba 218
16.1 Constantin Meunier, Débardeur, 1893, Suikerrui, Antwerp, pba 222
16.2 Constantin Meunier (with Alexandre Charpentier and Victor Rousseau), Monument Emile Zola, 1902–1909, destroyed 1942, formerly at Avenue Zola, Paris, © Bridgeman Art Library 227
Abbreviations
AACB Archive of Modern and Contemporary Art of Belgium
AMR Archive (and Documentation) Musée Rodin, Paris
ANF Archives Nationales de France, Paris
AP Archives de Paris, Paris
ARAA Archive Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp
ARAB Archive Royal Academy of Fine Arts Brussels
ARB Royal Academy of Science, Literature, and Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
ARCM Archive Royal Committee of Monuments and Sites
BNF Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
CAA City Archive Antwerp
CABR City Archive Bruges
CABX City Archive Brussels
COARC Conservation des Oeuvres d’Art Religieuses et Civiles, Paris
FC-CFL Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris
INHA Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris
KBR Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels
KIK/IRPA Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Brussels
KMKG Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels
KMSKA Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp
KMSKB Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
MSK Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
pba Picture by author; all pictures were taken between 2012 and 2017
RKD Netherlands Institute of Art History, The Hague
SAB State Archives of Belgium, Brussels
V&A Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Acknowledgments
In The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) puts it: ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple’. Only after four years of intensive research, do I realize the profundity of this plain truth. Even though Wilde also states, ‘To define is to limit’, I will attempt to name and acclaim but foremost sincerely thank those who contributed to this book.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Marjan Sterckx, who planted the seeds for this project and guided me along its growth; to Tom Verschaffel, Saskia de Bodt, Linda Van Santvoort, Sura Levine, Ilja Van Damme, Marc Leman, Anna Bergmans, and Maximiliaan Martens; to Ghent University and the Special Research Fund; and the Research Foundation Flanders.
I would like to thank the editorial team at Taylor & Francis and Julia, Holly and Isabella in particular, and all professionals and institutions in Belgium and France that facilitated this research.
Thanks are also due to my friends and colleagues, Anna, Davy, Gilles, Stefan, Thijs, Ulrike, and Wendy. Katrien, Karen, Tim, Sarah, Brigitte, Liselotte. Marlise, Jozefien, Fredeica, Eva, Ann, Evelyne, Aurelie, Astrid, Bieke, Elizabeth, Evert, Francesca, Laura, Lieve, Teresa, Myako, Leen, Bea, Bruno, and Maarten.
I am greatly indebted to my friends—in particular to Sandra, Lies, and Jonas for sharing my love for cycling, and to Lien, Niels, Vicky, Yasmijn, Yannick, and Stefan for their ever present cheerfulness. A special thank you to my family, family-in-law, grandparents, and parents, Arjan and Marianne, Tess and Lev.
Last but never least, thank you, Jo, for your undying love and support.
Introduction
Today, statues of great men and the occasional commemorated woman adorn the streets and squares of Belgium. The majority of these monumental depictions of characters from the pages of the nation’s history books date back to the nineteenth century. They have now merged into the historical scenery of our cities, often silent stone or bronze witnesses of daily life that only overzealous tourists seem to notice. Perhaps serving as a subject to the occasional student prank, a lucrative source for thieves, or as a substructure for contemporary artists’ designs, these monuments have become memories of a sovereign long deprived of power, a scientist respected but outdated, or a painter whose strokes dried centuries ago.1 This is of course by no means an exclusively Belgian phenomenon. Today, the case of the bluntly ignored statues is a rule rather than an exception for the majority of sculptures spread across the European continent.
However, history has taught us on numerous occasions the way and enormous speed in which this situation can change. In 2014, anti-Russian protesters in the Ukrainian city Charkov went to great effort to bring down the colossal, 8.5 m high, statue of Vladimir Lenin (1963), claiming this sculpture, depicting the former head of State of a now neighboring country, was an insult.2 While prior to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the presence of these Lenin-statues all over the country was tolerated without question, their existence became problematic the very moment matters of national identity and Russian supremacy over Ukrainian sovereignty became a political reality. While the creator, subject matter, iconography, or style of these sculptures remained the same, tilting political circumstances changed their significance nonetheless. This way, their role as testimonies of a historical and artistic tradition was abolished, by turning them into symbols of a newly risen foreign supremacy.
These violent actions against statues demonstrate how public sculptures can often shift from the periphery of our consciousness to its very center, becoming the focalization point of an insurgent attack on the underlying principles or anterior identity of the statue.3 In these instances, it becomes most clear how the nationality of art can become more than just a way of categorizing art and its creators.
This book is the result of a four-year PhD project conducted at the Department of Art, Music, and Theatre Sciences at Ghent University, supervised by Prof. Dr. Marjan Sterckx and Prof. Dr. Tom Verschaffel, and funded by BOF, Special Research Fund, Ghent University (Wijnsouw, In Search of a National (S)cul(p)ture: The Local, National, and International Identity of Sculptors in Belgium (1830–1916) (Unpublished dissertation, Ghent University, 2015)).
1 The Japanese installation artist Tatzu Nishi (1960), for instance, transforms historical monuments and buildings by wrapping them in a domestic space (Nishi, “Swapping Public and Private,” in Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention, ed. Parry, Medlyn, and Tahir (Liverpool University Press, 2011), 173–190; Neyt, “Kunst in open lucht belaagd door dieven en vandalen,” Het Nieuwsblad (December 9, 2010).
2 Van der Velden, “Beeldenstorm in Oekraïne: honderden Lenins van hun sokkel getrokken,” De Morgen (September 29, 2014).
3 A destruction of an image can transcend the act of vandalism when the underlying meaning of the image or that which it represents is the true subject of the act of violence, ranging from the Byzantine iconoclasm, to
Returning to the Belgian situation, the question may rise which Belgian nineteenthcentury statues would be subject to annihilation in the case of a national identity crisis. Would it be the French General Augustin Belliard (1769–1832), who, despite his French origins, was the first man to be commemorated by the newly founded Belgian state? Would the monument of the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) be more susceptible to Walloon attacks? Or would the sculptures by Constantin Meunier (1831–1905), whose portrait was printed on the former national 500 francs bill, and is today probably still the best-known nineteenth-century Belgian sculptor, be targeted? In other words, what elements—subject matter, composition, sculptor, style, reception—contribute to the creation of a ‘national sculpture’? And which sculptures, common characteristics, and sculptors can therefore be considered truly ‘national’, and why?
This book acknowledges the nineteenth-century artists, who have now often been diminished to ‘producers of the background noise of cultural banality’.4 It questions the constitution, role, and influence of the national, regional, local, and international identity of sculptors in Belgium during the nineteenth-century, and discerns its impact on different levels of the artistic practice, from exhibitions and education to politics and public monuments. The influence of questions concerning national identity on both sculpture and sculptor, ranging from material, iconographic, and compositional to stylistic implications, are evaluated by means of thoroughly selected case studies that are combined with the nineteenth-century discourse on national culture.
This way, the emphasis within this book is on the actual implications of foreign and mainly French influences, comprising both Belgian sculptors’ trajectories abroad as well as the presence of foreign sculptors or sculptures in Belgium. As a leitmotiv through this research, stylistic evolution and innovation by Belgium’s leading sculptors are reviewed. This way, this research aims to elucidate on the development of sculpture in Belgium during the nineteenth century, and answers the question of whether there was such a thing as a nineteenth-century, ‘Belgian sculpture school’.
1 A Time and a Place for Everything: Geographical and Temporal Demarcations
As the Ukrainian case, as well as many others, has demonstrated, the national identity of sculptures and sculptors is by no means a static premise, pointing out the importance of a temporal as well as a geographical framing. The focus here lies with nineteenth-century Belgium, taking the founding of Belgium in 1830 as the starting point, and reaching well into the twentieth century.5
In the newly founded nation Belgium, nationality seems to have been of particular importance to artists choosing to pursue a career in sculpting. In order to legitimize
the seventeenth-century ‘Beeldenstorm’, or Soviet propaganda, e.g., Sterckx, “Goodbye hero!,” in Ravaged: Art and Culture in Times of Conflict, ed. Tollebeek and Van Assche (Mercatorfonds, 2014), 166–177; Besançon and Todd, The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm (University of Chicago Press, 2009); Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution (Reaktion Books Ltd, 1997).
4 This is what author Joep Leerssen has identified as the process of ‘de-banalization’ (Leerssen, When Was the Romantic Nationalism? The Onset, the Long Tail, the Banal, (Nise, 2014)).
5 For similar questions applied to the Dutch Reign between 1815 and 1830 see the research of Anna Rademaekers, at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Ghent University.
the nation from an artistic viewpoint, Belgian politicians and art critics reaffirmed the Early-Netherlandish paintings by Jan Van Eyck (c. 1395–1441) or Hans Memling (c. 1430–1494), and the Antwerp Golden Age led by Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) as the nation’s pinnacles of artistic brilliancy. However, the position of sculpture in this excellent artistic tradition often remained vague, or even unsolicited. In consequence, nineteenth-century Belgian sculptors were, at least initially, unable to rely on a former tradition that confirmed their style or unity as a ‘school’. Even those sculptors who, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had attained an international career were considered isolated cases and incapable of truly exceptional creations. Oscar Roelandts pointed out in his “Considération sur l’Influence de l’Art Français en Belgique” (1941) that, despite the international career of some late-eighteenth-century Belgian sculptors, such as Gilles-Lambert Godecharle (1750–1835), Jean-François Van Geel (1756–1830) and his son Jean-Louis (1787–1852), Jean-Baptiste De Bay (1779–1864), or Mathieu Kessels (1784–1836), they had only seldom demonstrated innovation or originality detached from academic rules. According to Roelandts, even the presence of the French sculptor François Rude (1784–1855), who resided in Brussels from 1815 until 1827, did not leave a substantial mark on Belgian sculpture, as none of his Belgian contemporaries adopted Rude’s style, sculpture, or innovative education system.6
It is therefore perhaps not surprising that both art critics and politicians of the newly founded Belgium had little confidence in the sculptors of their own nation. Art critical journals at the beginning of the year 1830 barely mention Belgian sculpture. This, however, significantly changes over the course of the century, and is in grave contrast to the numerous appreciative reviews almost a century later. The symbolic end of this book is therefore the exhibition Belgian Art in Exile, organized in London in 1916, with a remarkably numerous participation of 23 sculptors compared to 61 painters. In the catalogue of the exhibition, the symbolist painter and Brussels Academy professor Jean Delville (1867–1953) explicitly mentioned the ‘national character’ of the Belgian school, in contrast to the French, English, and German schools, and emphasized precisely the international reputation of, among others, Godefroid Devreese, George Minne (1831–1905), Egide Rombaux (1865–1942), and Jules Lagae (1862–1931).7 By including the 1916 exhibition, its ambition to demonstrate ‘the characteristic of our school of sculpture, one of the finest of the world’, can be evaluated.8 In addition, the exhibition serves as a final point of reflection to assess the way in which the formation of a national Belgian identity influenced the development of sculpture in Belgium.
The geographical scope of this book is restricted to Belgium, but also elaborates on the role and influence of Belgian sculptors abroad, mainly in France. In order to demarcate this research, the foreign trajectories of over 400 Belgian sculptors were collected, revealing that Paris, Rome, and Florence were the most crucial destinations for Belgian sculptors.9 Because this research focuses on the implications of ‘foreign influences’ for the national identity of sculptors in Belgium, rather than the actual exhaustive study of their travels, the more obscure Belgian sculptors, who traveled and worked in peripheral,
6 Roelandts, “Considération sur l’influence de l’art français en Belgique,” Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Belgische Academie, IV, no. 5 (1941), 103–104.
7 Delville et al., Belgian art in exile (Bemrose & Sons Ltd., 1916).
8 Belgian art in exile, 4.
9 Dupont, Modèles italiens et traditions nationales, Les artistes belges en Italie, 1830–1914 (Belgisch Historisch Instituut, 2005).
sometimes even exotic places, and who can be considered exceptions, are not elaborately included.10
Instead, the focus lies with the stylistic evolution and innovation by Belgium’s leading sculptors, the influence of foreign sculptors or sculptures in Belgium on their oeuvre, as well as the impact of their trajectories abroad. Consequently, next to Belgium, the influence of the Paris art scene, geographically and intellectually close to Brussels, and to a lesser degree that of Rome and Florence as an inspiration for sculptors, are included. International exchanges and the urge to manifest oneself were generally metropolitan phenomena. In particular, the role of cities like Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, and to a lesser extent Bruges, or Liège, may enlighten the often—but not necessarily—contradictory ambitions and interests of local and national authorities.
2 Statu(e)s Quaestionis
2.1 International Mobility and National Schools
Throughout this book, the Belgian borders, and therefore the edges of its fixed ‘national school’, are occasionally breached in order to survey the presence of the nation’s sculptors abroad. The means of classification of artists in national schools, originating in the nineteenth century and expanding into modern art historical scholarship, has been increasingly though not systematically scrutinized. Clearly, the use of this category of ‘national schools’ cannot be ignored as a historical reality, or as a useful means of classification, even for current research. Present scholars do propose a more inclusive vision of national schools as fluid entities, part of a symbiotic system, and have devoted increasing attention to their intellectual particularity, as well as the role and impact of mobility and exchange.
The last decade saw numerous research initiatives on the voyages, careers, and reception of specific nineteenth-century artists departed from their native country. Recent publications, conferences, and exhibitions considered, for example, the travels and career of Paul Cézanne11 (1839–1906), Auguste Rodin12 (1840–1917), and Jules Dalou13 (1838–1904) in Britain; Henri Fantin-Latour14 (1836–1904) in Australia; and Gustave Courbet15 (1819–1877) in Belgium, or focused on the international identities of artists abroad, such as Rachel Esner and Margriet Schavemaker in their book about Vincent van Gogh
10 Most Belgian sculptors sent work to the most important European capitals to partake in local salons in Paris, London, and Amsterdam, or to other European cities hosting exhibitions, or World Fairs. In other instances, sculptors decided to travel abroad to visit relatives, study alternative traditions and examples, commission possibilities, etcetera. Louis Royer (1793–1868) received international acclaim for his monumental sculptures commemorating the most iconic figures in the national pantheon of the Netherlands; see: Verschaffel and Wijnsouw, “Royer Louis,” Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms, http://romantic nationalism.net/.
11 Robbins, et al., Cézanne in Britain (Yale University Press, National Gallery, London, 2006).
12 Mitchell, “ ‘The Zola of Sculpture?’: A Franco-British Dialogue,” in Rodin: The Zola of sculpture, ed. Mitchell (Ashgate, 2004), 19–40.
13 Albinson and Briggs, Dalou in England: Portraits of Womanhood, 1871–1879 (Yale Center for British Art, 2010); Pierre, “Dalou in England: Portraits of Womanhood, 1871–1879,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 9, no. 1 (2010), n.p.
14 Elias, “Fantin-Latour in Australia,” ibid., 2, no. 2 (2009), n.p.
15 Marechal, et al., Gustave Courbet en België, Realisme, van levende kunst tot vrije kunst, Cahier KMSKB, XIII (KMSKB, 2013).
(1853–1890) abroad,16 Saskia de Bodt in her various works about Dutch painters in Belgium,17 in Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880–1914 by Annette Stott and Nina Lübbren,18 in Tatiana Mojenok Ninin’s Les peintres Russes et la Normandie au XIXe siècle, 19 or in Les peintres Italiens à Paris en quête d’identité (1855–1909)20 by Marion Lagrange.
Other recent scholarly works do not specifically elaborate on artists or particular case studies, but take the more general attraction and impact of foreign nations, for instance France and the Paris art scene as a subject, such as Tom Verschaffel’s work on the reception of Belgian artists in France,21 or Gaëtane Maes and Jan Blanc’s Les échanges artistiques entre les anciens Pays-Bas et la France. 22 A similar transnational approach between Belgium and France is incorporated in the impressive exhibition catalogues Parijs-Brussel, Brussel-Parijs: realisme, impressionisme, symbolisme, art nouveau: de artistieke dialoog tussen Frankrijk en België, 1848–1914, 23 and Brussel, Kruispunt van culturen, in which sculpture is occasionally threated.24
Generally, however, almost all the aforementioned works take the ‘central’ Western countries and main metropolises as their central scope, and, with the exception of the mentioned exhibition catalogues, take painters as primary protagonists. Notwithstanding, the aforementioned literature about artists traveling and working in a different country than their homeland, as well as the more general publications on transnational exchange, may serve as useful comparisons, even though the particularities of the sculpting discipline, for instance working with often bulky and weighty materials and a less direct production process, cannot be overlooked.25 In general, sculpture is a less studied
16 Esner and Schavemaker, Overal Vincent. De (inter)nationale identiteiten van Van Gogh (Amsterdam University Press, 2010).
17 de Bodt, “De Antwerpse Academie in een veranderende kunstwereld,” in Contradicties/Contradictions, Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 2013–1663, ed. Pas, et al. (Asamer, 2013), 203–215; “De Hollandse kolonie en het Brusselse kunstleven,” in Brussel, Kruispunt van culturen, ed. Hoozee (Mercatorfonds, 2000), 69–76; Halverwege Parijs, Willem Roelofs en de Nederlandse schilderskolonie in Brussel 1840–1890 (Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 1995).
18 Stott and Lübbren, Dutch utopia: American artists in Holland, 1880–1914 (Telfair Books, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia and Singer Laren Museum, the Netherlands, 2009).
19 Mojenok Ninin, Les peintres russes et la Normandie au XIXe siècle (Editions Points de vues, 2010).
20 Lagrange, Les peintres italiens à Paris en quête d’identité (1855–1909) (Editions CTHS, 2010).
21 Verschaffel, “Een jury heeft geen reden van bestaan, Franse critici over Belgische kunst, 1831–1865,” Negentiende Eeuw, 3, no. 1 (2006), 19–34; “Art and Nationality: The French Perception of Belgian Painters at the Paris Salons (1831–1865),” in Vision/Revision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century French Culture, ed. Harkness, et al. (Peter Lang, 2003), 123–137.
22 Maes and Blanc, Les échanges artistiques entre les anciens Pays-Bas et la France (Brepols, 2010).
23 Pingeot and Hoozee, Parijs-Brussel, Brussel-Parijs: Realisme, Impressionisme, Symbolisme, Art Nouveau: De Artistieke Dialoog Tussen Frankrijk En België, 1848–1914 (Mercatorfonds, 1997).
24 Hoozee, Brussel, Kruispunt van Culturen (Mercatorfonds, 2000).
25 Albinson and Briggs, Dalou in England: Portraits of Womanhood, 1871–1879; de Bodt, “De Hollandse kolonie en het Brusselse kunstleven”; Esner and Schavemaker, Overal Vincent. De (inter)nationale identiteiten van Van Gogh; Lagrange, Les peintres italiens à Paris en quête d’identité (1855–1909); Maes and Blanc, Les échanges artistiques entre les anciens Pays-Bas et la France; Mojenok Ninin, Les peintres russes et la Normandie au XIXe siècle; Pierre, “Dalou in England: Portraits of Womanhood, 1871–1879”; Stott and Lübbren, Dutch utopia: American artists in Holland, 1880–1914; Elias, “Fantin-Latour in Australia”; Sterckx, “Parcours de Sculptrices entre la Belgique et la France. Présence et Accueil,” in Cahiers de l’IRHIS, 2: France/Belgique—Sculpture, ed. Chappey and Robichon. (s.e., 2007), 18-25; Robbins, et al., Cézanne in Britain; Verschaffel, “Een jury heeft geen reden van bestaan, Franse critici over Belgische kunst, 1831–1865”; Mitchell, “ ‘The Zola of Sculpture?’: A Franco-British Dialogue”; Verschaffel, “Art and Nationality: The French Perception of Belgian Painters at the Paris Salons (1831–1865),” 123.
discipline than painting, although nineteenth-century Belgian sculpture is not entirely unsolicited.
2.2 Sculpture in Belgium
Already in 1923, Marguerite Devigne, the first woman to hold a PhD in art history in Belgium and curator of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, published her Catalogue de la Sculpture, containing numerous nineteenth-century Belgian sculptors.26 She continued to publish on Belgian sculptors,27 as did contemporary author Sander Pierron, who offered an extensive overview of the development of nineteenth-century sculpture in the country.28
After Devigne and Pierron, research stagnated, leaving a substantial gap until 1990, when Jacques Van Lennep edited an impressive book with essays concerning the development of nineteenth-century sculpture, including some thematic chapters and a biographic catalogue of the most important sculptors.29 Even fifteen years after its publication, this book still offers a strikingly representative overview of nineteenth-century sculpture. It remains an important work of reference, together with some of Van Lennep’s other publications, such as his chapter on the Belgian sculpture education in Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 275 Ans d’Enseignement, and in De Beelden van Brussel, which all served as a basis for this research.30 Alain Jacobs (2006) has contributed to scholarship on Belgian sculpture through his book on sculptors from Malines,31 while some influencing books originate from a historical approach and mention specific public monuments and the nineteenth-century context of ‘statuomania’, such as Duurzamer dan Graniet. Over Monumenten en Vlaamse Beweging32 and België, Een Parcours van Herinnering, Plaatsen van Geschiedenis en Expansie. 33
The impact of international mobility of sculptors in Belgium in this context remains unsolicited in these publications. However, some scholars have included useful insights on the impact of foreign trajectories of sculptors within their monographs or thematically based publications on sculptures and their makers, such as June Hargrove on Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824–1887),34 Sura Levine on Constantin Meunier,35
26 Devigne, Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Catalogue de la sculpture (s.e., 1922).
27 Devigne, Constantin Meunier (Brepols, 1919); Thomas Vinçotte (Brepols, 1919); La Sculpture Mosane du XII au XVI siècle (Van Oest, 1928); La Sculpture Belge, 1830–1930 (Denis, 1942).
28 Pierron, La sculpture en Belgique 1830–1930 (Edition d’Art Jos. Vermaut, 1932).
29 Van Lennep, De 19de-eeuwse Belgische Beeldhouwkunst (Generale Bank, 1990).
30 Academie: Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (KMSKB, 1987); Catalogus van de beeldhouwkunst, Kunstenaars geboren tussen 1750 en 1882 (KMSKB, 1992); “Standbeelden en Monumenten van Brussel vóór 1914,” in De Beelden van Brussel, ed. Derom and Marquenie (Pandora, 2000), 7–179.
31 Jacobs, Welgevormd: Mechelse Beeldhouwers in Europa (1780–1850) (Lamot, Museum Schepenhuis, Malines, 2006).
32 Art, “Het historisch monument: een bepaalde manier van omgaan met het verleden,” in Duurzamer dan graniet: Over monumenten en Vlaamse beweging (Lannoo, 2003), 13–23.
33 Tollebeek et al., België, Een Parcours van Herinnering (Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2008).
34 Hargrove and Grandjean, Carrier-Belleuse, Le Maître de Rodin (Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2014); Hargrove, The Life and Work of Albert Carrier-Belleuse (Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 1993).
35 Levine, “Een ode aan de Arbeid, een ode aan de Natie,” in Constantin Meunier, 1831–1905, ed. Vandepitte (Lannoo, KMSKB, Brussels, 2014), 159–185; Pauvre Belgique: Collecting Practices and Belgian Art in and outside Belgium (University of Chicago Press, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, 2007); Levine and Urban, Hommage à Constantin Meunier, 1831–1905 (Galerie Maurice Tzwern-Pandora, 1998).
Anne Pingeot on French sculptors,36 Antoinette Le Normand-Romain on Rodin,37 IngaRossi Schrimpf on Minne,38 etcetera. In some cases, authors did scrutinize the phenomenon of transnational exchange and mobility while taking sculptors as a subject. The work of Micheline Hanotelle39 and Marjan Sterckx40 proved significant in this respect, as well as the edited volume published on the occasion of the conference France/ Belgique: Sculpture organized and published by Frederic Chappey and François Robichon in 2007.41
This book uses these last publications as a starting point and targets to move beyond existing research. Within the restraints of the earlier sketched geographical and temporal framework, it aims to elucidate the national, and in extension also local and international, identities of sculptors in Belgium. The mechanisms and strategies characteristic of the cultural and artistic policies of nation-states, artistic movements and organizations, and of individual artists and art critics are researched in order to understand their meaning and role for the development of national culture, and its relation to sculpture in Belgium.
By analyzing these mechanisms for the specific yet representative domain of sculpture, and geographic case Belgium, the role of an artist’s identity in both a nationalized and internationalized context can be discerned. Rather than focusing on an exhaustive mapping of the diaspora of Belgian sculptors abroad and of foreign sculptors in Belgium, the emphasis within this research is on the actual implications of ‘foreign influences’, comprising both Belgian sculptors’ trajectories abroad as well as the presence of foreign sculptors or sculptures in Belgium.
A thorough analysis of the impact of this foreign agency for sculptors in Belgium may shed a new light on the role nationality, national culture, national identity, and character played in the creation of a ‘Belgian sculpture school’. The influence of questions concerning national identity on both sculpture and sculptor, ranging from material, iconography, composition to style, are evaluated by means of case studies that are confronted with the nineteenth-century discourse on national culture and ‘schools’.
3 In Theory
3.1 Matters of National Identity
Before plunging into the depths of the nineteenth-century art world, the research questions posed above may demand a certain degree of definition. When questions about
36 Pingeot, La Scupture Française au XIXe siècle (Ed. de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1986).
37 Le Normand-Romain, Camille Claudel & Rodin (Ed. du Musée Rodin, 2003); Rodin (Flammarion, 1997). Also see her work on French sculptors in Rome, La Tradition Classique et l’Esprit Romantique, Les sculpteurs de l’Academie de France à Rome de 1824 à 1840 (Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1981).
38 Rossi-Schrimpf, George Minne. Das Frühwerk und seine Rezeption in Deutschland und Österreich. 1897 bis 1914 (Unpublished dissertation, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, 2011).
39 Hanotelle, Echanges Artistiques Franco-Belges entre les Sculpteurs dans le dernier quart du XIXe-siècle (Ecole du Louvre, 1997).
40 Sterckx, “ ‘Dans la Sculpture, moins de jupons que dans la Peinture.’ Parcours de femmes sculpteurs liées à la Belgique (ca. 1550–1950),” Art&Fact, Femmer et Créations, no. 24 (2005), 56–74.
41 De Potter, “Les Acquisitions de l’Etat français en matière de sculpture belge, 1919–1939,” in Cahiers de l’IRHIS, 2: France/Belgique—Sculpture, ed. Chappey and Robichon (s.e., 2007), 48–53; Leblanc, “Alexandre Charpentier et la Belgique: un example de connivence artistique au temps de l’Art Nouveau,” ibid., 30–35; Sterckx, “Parcours de Sculptrices entre la Belgique et la France. Présence et Accueil,” ibid., 18–25.
national identity are posed, an interdisciplinary approach presents itself and therefore directly implies the necessity to define certain elements and concepts from outside the field of art history. The anthropological, social, and political sciences have offered an impressively diverse array of definitions for concepts, such as ‘nationalism’, ‘nationality’, ‘national character’, and ‘national identity’. Joep Leerssen assembles these concepts with the common denominator ‘national thought’.42 This book accommodates some of the accomplishments from these disciplines, and combines them with the principles from its primary discipline, art history. Therefore, at the beginning and end of all theory, the foundation of any hypothesis in this research is the work of art itself, comprising possible meanings granted by the artist, public, critic, commissioners, and other factors.
Generally, the development of nationality and nationalism during and after the nineteenth century has been extensively researched. Scholars from various disciplines and ideological perspectives have devoted elaborate studies to the mechanisms of nationhood, national identity, and character and nationalism, such as Marxist historians Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, philosopher Etienne Balibar, sociologist Anthony D. Smith, social anthropologist Ernest Gellner, post-structuralist linguist Homi Bhabha, and many others.43
Already in the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan (1823–1892) questioned, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un nation?’. Renan, who first introduced his book with the same title in 1882, proposed that modern nations were not established on a basis of natural principles, such as common language, race, or geographical borders, but rather by a resolve to nationhood. By means of this common ‘will’, or ‘consent’ as Renan calls it, to constitute a nation, a set of negotiations, both social and affective, were instigated. In order to adequately establish the nation, every member is therefore obliged to ‘forget’ certain aspects of its past that could prevail the forging of a common historical memory. By means of these oblivions, the myth of nationhood can be secured.44 According to Renan, the function of practices of representation in this process cannot be underestimated. Representing the past, or as Renan suggested ‘the erroneous past’, for instance by means of sculpture, is essential to create and perpetuate a collective national character.45
42 Leerssen, Nationaal denken in Europa, Een cultuurhistorische schets (Amsterdam University Press, 1999), 9.
43 Some of the most important publications considering nationalism are: Calhoun, The Roots of Radicalism, Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early-Nineteenth-Century Social Movements (The University of Chicago Press, 2012); Wodak and Auer Borea, Justice and Memory, Confronting Traumatic Pasts: An International Comparison (Passagen Verlag, 2009); James, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In (Sage Publications, 2006); Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Zolner, Re-Imaging the Nation, Debates on Immigrants, Identities, and Memories (Peter Lang, 2004); Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996); Miller, On Nationality (Oxford University Press, 1995); Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1992); Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1991); Balibar and Wallerstain, Race, Nation, Class, Ambiguous Identities (Verso, 1991); Smith, National Identity (Penguin Books, 1991); Bhabha, Nation and Narration (Routledge, 1990); Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ramirez, Rethinking the Nineteenth Century, ed. Wallerstein, Studies in the Political Economy of the World-System (Greenwood Press, 1988); Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Cornell University Press, 1983).
44 Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” in Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? Et autres essais politiques, ed. Roman (Presses Pocket, 1992).
45 “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” 55.
Recent scholarship pays growing attention to the construction, role, and function of national identity. A common ground between almost all authors is the attention devoted to the construction and importance of national consciousness, as well as its relation to modernity.
According to Anthony Smith (1991) in his book on national identity, three crucial components constitute a standard Western nation, the presence of a historic territory, a legal-political community and equality of members, and a common civic culture and ideology.46 Closely associated with these characteristics are some fundamental features, that allow the existence of a national identity, namely a historic ground or ‘homeland’, often constructed through myths and recollections, shared legal rights and duties, an economic system based on internal mobility, and a communal public culture.47 These last two elements constituting national identity are of crucial importance to this research, since sculptures, as a part of public culture, could both be the object and product of international mobility.
Because both national identity and the nation are complex constructs, consisting of various interrelated components, it is almost impossible to pinpoint their exact function. One of the most obvious functions of national identity is the socialization of the members of the nation as ‘nationals’ or ‘citizens’. This goal is achieved by means of a repertoire of shared values, symbols, and traditions, such as flags and anthems, but also artworks and monuments.48 The realization of a national identity offers an important means of positioning the individual self in the world, thanks to the premises of a collective personality and its idiosyncratic culture, which may constitute an ‘imagined community’.49
These ‘imagined communities’, as Benedict Anderson (1983) first defined them, were supposedly constructed by the gradual unification of centers and peripheries, thanks to the emergence of ‘print capitalism’.50 Anderson explains that ‘print capitalism’—the emergence of capitalism combined with innovating print technologies recurring parallel to the Industrial Revolution—created a common language and temporality that stimulated new forms of unity around cultures and shared histories. Eventually, these ‘imagined cohesions’ resulted in a shared identity, characterized by a political and cultural consciousness and expressed in nationalism. The nation, and its conscious experience, are therefore a ‘performance’ of cultural identity, and remain a continuous, ever-developing process.51
This is in contrast to Ernest Gellner’s synchronous research (1983), in which he envisions national identity as a fixed plight.52 Gellner bases his theory on Max Weber’s thesis on modernization, and explains that the increased industrialization rationalized social life and increased bureaucracy, regulations, and efficiency.53 His functionalist interpretation envisions nationalism as an artificial, constructed, top-down movement used to perpetuate social cohesions. Gellner points out the fundamentally illusory qualities of national identities—‘the cultural shards and patches used by nationalism are often
46 Smith, National Identity, 9, 12, 77.
47 Smith defines the nation as ‘a named human population sharing historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members’ (National Identity, 14).
48 National Identity, 17.
49 National Identity, 17.
50 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 67, 110–111, 141, and 181.
51 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 86–87.
52 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 17–22.
53 Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism, 8; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 17–22.
arbitrary historical inventions’—and sketches a clear connection between identity, culture, and nationality, by stating,
If a man is not firmly set in a social niche, whose relationship as it were endows him with his identity, he is obliged to carry his identity with him in his whole style of conduct and expression. In other words, his ‘culture’ becomes his identity. And the classification of men by ‘culture’ is of course the classification by ‘nationality’. 54
Just like Gellner and Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm (1991) considers capitalism as a conditio sine qua non for the presence of nationalism and national consciousness, although their analysis of the means in which this occurs greatly differs. Hobsbawm elaborates on the construction of the nation and a national consciousness, and stresses the crucial role of the systems of representation in order to ‘turn subjects into citizens’, and therefore securing symbolic identification.55
Parallel to certain aspects first posed by the Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (1935), Hobsbawm states that a national consciousness is formed by, on the one hand, ‘cultural institutions’, generally managed by the state, such as language and education,56 and on the other hand, by ‘invented traditions’ characterized by visual symbols and common cultural practices that envision the nation as a unit, creating variations of popular consciousness and securing the loyalties of ‘citizens’ to the nation-state. Within this framework, the process of ‘turning subjects into citizens’, and therefore perpetuating their national identification, was activated during the late nineteenth-century with the rise of a participatory democracy. Simultaneously, however, local and regional identities became increasingly complex and evolved into nationalist movements by the early twentieth century, sometimes endorsing extreme chauvinist patriotism.57
The existence and importance of local and at the same time international identities are described by Anne-Marie Thiesse (2001), who elaborates on the possibilities of parallel identities. A common international identity of present Europeans, for instance, consists exactly of the fact that their forbears endeavored the creation of national identities, ‘Rien de plus international que la formation des identités nationales’. 58
Although all these theories situate the formation of national consciousness within the nineteenth century, art and other cultural expressions are almost always reduced to the status of side-products of social behavior. Most scholars define national identity as a social construction, and, when mentioning sculpture—usually by means of public monuments— define it both as symptomatic of as well as functionalist for national expression.
This is in line with Pierre Nora’s concept of lieu de memoire (1990), which he defines as ‘a meaningful entity of a real or imagined kind, which has become a symbolic element of a given community as a result of human will or the effect of time’. 59 As Nancy Wood
54 Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism, 107–108; Gellner, Thought and Change (University of Chicago Press, 1964), 157.
55 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 25.
56 Day and Thompson, Theorizing Nationalism, 106.
57 Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition; Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, Europe 1789–1848 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962).
58 Leerssen, When Was the Romantic Nationalism? The Onset, the Long Tail, the Banal, 15; Thiesse, La Création des identités nationales: Europe XVIIIe–XXe siècle (Le Seuil, 1999), n.p.
59 Rothberg, “Introduction: Between Memory and Memory: From Lieux de mémoire to Noeuds de mémoire,” Yale French Studies, no. 118/119 (2010), 3–12; Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, Spring, no. 26 (1989), 7–24; den Boer and Frijhoff, Lieux de mémoires et identités nationales (Amsterdam University Press, 1993).
(1994) explains, this encompasses the foundation of a community’s symbolic repertoire. Nora devotes particular attention to monuments, as he considers them as the most materialized expression of lieu de mémoire, which contributes as well as originates from the nation-building process.60
In Belgium, Jo Tollebeek and Tom Verschaffel (1994) have published on the nationbuilding process and ‘national schools’, mainly during the nineteenth century, and its impact on several aspects of historic culture, such as the constitution of a Belgian history, as well as a national pantheon.61 As they state, national identity constituted the cohesion of a national culture, and implied the existence of certain independent characteristics that transcended individual members in their time.62 These nation-specific features were supposedly also present in art, resulting in the constitution and distinction of ‘national schools’.
3.2 The Image and Beyond
In general, the question of the usage of images and art in this debate—as both illustrations as well as actual sources—has been the subject of a far less wide array of studies. Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen (2007) were among the first to introduce the discipline of ‘Imagology’, which they defined not as a form of sociology, but as a way of understanding a discourse rather than a society.63 Focusing almost exclusively on literary works instead of visual representations, they argue that these ‘images’ unambiguously demonstrate that national characterizations mostly consist of commonplace and hearsay, rather than empirical observation or statements of fact.64 The study of these ‘images’ of a nation could therefore single out the significantly active prejudices, stereotypes, and clichés from the total complex of imaginary images.65
While Beller and Leerssen mainly focus on literary representations, the book Narrating the Nation (2008), edited by Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas, and Andrew Mycock, offers a broader vision on the different media narrating the nation, and next to literature comprises film, art, and music.66 In one particularly relevant chapter in this book, historian Michael Wintle states that the narratives of national identity are perhaps most commonly mediated by print, but can also be communicated through visual
60 Wood, “Memory’s Remains: Les lieux de mémoire,” History and Memory, 6, no. 1 (1994), 123–149.
61 Tollebeek, “Het koppelteken van de nationale cultuur. De paradox van de eigenheid van België en Nederland, 1860–1918,” in Naties in een spanningsveld, ed. Bemong, et al. (Uitgeverij Verloren, 2010), 14–32; Tollebeek et al., België, Een Parcours van Herinnering; Hoozee et al., Mise-en-scène (Mercatorfonds, MSK, Ghent, 1999); Tollebeek, et al., Romantiek en historische cultuur (Historische uitgeverij, 1996); Tollebeek and Verschaffel, “Waarom een natie haar geschiedenis schrijft,” Onze Alma Mater, 53, no. 4 (1994), 470–481; Tollebeek, “Historisch besef in Vlaanderen, Identiteit en Vervreemding,” Ons Erfdeel, 33, no. 2 (March–April 1990), 162–173.
62 Tollebeek and Verschaffel, “Waarom een natie haar geschiedenis schrijft,” 472.
63 Beller and Leerssen, Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, ed. Dyserinck and Leerssen, Studia Imagologica, Amsterdam studies on cultural identity (Rodopi, 2007); Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam University Press, 2006); Leerssen and Spiering, National Identity—Symbol and Representation, ed. Leerssen, Yearbook of European Studies, (Rodopi, 1991).
64 Beller and Leerssen, Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, 3.
65 Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, 11.
66 Narrating the Nation, ed. Berger, et al. (Berghahn Books, 2008).
media.67 However, as Wintle rightly notes, when exploring these alternative ‘carriers’ of narration, ranging from prints, cartoons, paintings, sculptures, films, to even flags and maps, questions should not be limited to the content of the studied image, but should include alternative inquiries after who made these images, when, why, who read them, and how.68
This book offers a view on these different aspects that may contribute to an artist’s as well as an artwork’s national identity, and their grouping in ‘national schools’, focusing on the specific case of sculpture. Although an artist’s identity does not necessarily differ from that of any other random member of the nation, his or her persona and especially art are often functionalized to shape and perpetuate that very identity. This also implies the existence of an identity of art, which may be national, but in some cases also local, international, or none of the aforementioned. Since an image can never operate in isolation, images, or in this case sculptures, are at all times combined and confronted with a diverse array of written evidence, originating from both the artists and the public as art critics, in order to come to a well-balanced conclusion.69
While Wintle’s main question centers on whether artists merely reflect contemporary politics and social relationships, or if they can be considered ‘ideological crusaders’, pursuing their own or their commissioners’ ambitions about how they think things should be, this research proposes to go one step further and include an art historical approach. In order to understand fully the place and impact of a work, the artwork as a whole, and therefore all questions proposed by Wintle, as well as the artistic impact, are taken into account. The artworks, as well as the artist, are considered a compendium both containing and engendering national identity. Instead of considering nationalism and national identity as mere sociological processes, this book proposes to study their impact on artistic developments. The focus on romanticism and the usage of the past in order to perpetuate national identity for instance, dominates current debates, while the incorporation of a national identity by means of the contemporary tradition and culture, and by means of other stylistic and iconographic developments, has too often been ignored.70 In order to sketch a more inclusive overview of the national identity of both sculpture and sculptors in Belgium, particular attention is paid to the connection and circulation of artists, artworks, ideas, and theory. This is to understand the impact of foreign influences and their importance for the national culture of Belgium and its sculpture school.
4 In Practice
In addition to this theoretical framework, the reconstruction of Belgian sculptors’ national and international careers, as well as their commissions, artworks, education,
67 Wintle, “Personifying the Past,” in Narrating the Nation, ed. Berger, et al. (Berghahn Books, 2008), 222.
68 “Personifying the Past,” 223. Also, see Banks, Visual Methods in Social Research (Sage Publications, 2001); Barnard, Art, Design and Visual Culture: An Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998).
69 Wintle, “Personifying the Past,” 224–225. Also, see Banks, Visual Methods in Social Research; Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence (Cornell University Press, 2001); Barnard, Art, Design and Visual Culture: An Introduction
70 In this respect, Joep Leerssen’s definition of ‘Romantic Nationalism’ proves a useful concept. According to Leerssen, public, official culture, and in extension also sculptors, function as important sponsors of Romantic Nationalism, which is not to be confused with Romanticism as an artistic style. The conglomerate of all institutions within old and new states of the nineteenth century availed themselves of Romantic Nationalism’s self-legitimations, on a national, provincial, and municipal level, and expressed this in their public culture (Leerssen, When Was the Romantic Nationalism? The Onset, the Long Tail, the Banal, 13).
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it, but even that consolation could do little for him against the immediate anguish of knowing that the hounds were on the trail at last, and the quarry perhaps unsuspecting. How could Lochiel escape so large a force? He and his few hundreds would be surrounded as in a net; he would be killed or captured even if he did not take to the cave on Beinn Bhreac. And, if he did, chance might always lead the pursuers straight to it. Could Ewen in that hour have sent a message to Lochiel he would willingly have bought the privilege not merely by his own death—that went without saying—but by a death in any manner protracted and horrible. Yet no suffering could buy that chance; there was nothing to do but lie there helpless, at the lowest ebb of dejection, and hear from the camp the drums and bugles of departure.
At last came evening, and Mullins with food and water.
“Is there any news, Sergeant?” asked Ewen, raising himself.
“Yes, sir, His Royal Highness the Duke’s expected here tomorrow with nine regiments of foot and some horse. And Captain Greening ain’t in charge of prisoners no longer; his Lordship saw to that before he left—seems he was annoyed with the Captain about something or other. I can’t say as I’m sorry. But I’m afraid, Mr. Cameron, you’re going to be moved from here to-morrow, and put in one of them nasty places they call the dungeons, though they ain’t scarcely that, so to speak, and——”
Ewen cut short this bulletin. “You can put me in my grave for all I care at present! It’s the expedition to Loch Arkaig I want news of. Is there none?”
“No, sir, how could there be, so soon?—Bless me, how wild you look! Have you kin in those parts?”
“More than kin,” said Ewen brokenly. “My heart and my honour . . . O God, send a mist, a storm—send someone to warn him!”
Next day Cumberland and his ten regiments marched in from Inverness. But of this great stir Ewen heard nothing. He was down in a damp little cell under the fort, with fever once more in his blood, fighting a desire to knock his head against the wall. The old sergeant, who still had charge of him, could tell him nothing of what
he wanted to know, save that there was report of great burnings going on down the Glen, and of quantities of cattle driven off.
So Ewen had to endure the suspense as best he might until the following evening, when a light suddenly streamed through the open door, and a kilted figure was roughly pushed down the steps by a couple of redcoats. But in the short-lived radiance Ewen had recognised the tartan of his own clan.
“Who is it—are you from Loch Arkaig?” he asked hoarsely, raising himself on his heap of straw.
“Aye; Alexander Cameron from Murlaggan,” answered the newcomer. “My sorrow, but it is dark in here! Who are you—a Cameron also?”
Ewen dragged himself to one knee. “Lochiel . . . Lochiel—is he safe? Tell me quickly, for God’s sake!”
The Cameron groped his way to the corner. “Yes, God be praised! There were but a handful of us captured; the rest scattered while the redcoats were fording the river of Lochy.—There, honest man, sure that’s good news, not bad!”
For—the first time in his grown life—Ewen was shaken by uncontrollable sobs, by a thankfulness which tore at his heart like a grief. Alexander Cameron sat down by him in the straw, seeming very well to understand his emotion, and told him more fully the story of what had happened: how the Argyll militia with Lord Loudoun had at first been mistaken for a body of MacDonald reinforcements which were expected, but distinguished in time by the red crosses on their bonnets; how the Camerons had thought of disputing the passage over Lochy, but, realising the overwhelming force of the enemy, had withdrawn swiftly along the northern shore of Loch Arkaig, so that by the time the latter got to the neighbourhood of Achnacarry the Chief must have been well on his way to the wild country at the head of the loch, where they would never pursue him. But the burnings and pillagings had begun already, and one could guess only too well the heavy measure of vengeance which was going to be meted out in Lochaber.
The two men lay close together that night under one plaid for warmth, and Ewen at last knew a dreamless sleep. Not only had Lochiel escaped, but he was not likely ever to hear now that the
secret of the cave by the waterfall had been partly betrayed; nor, if he had left the district altogether, would he be tempted to make use of it in the future. The horror was lifted.
CHAPTER VI
It was the seventeenth of July, and Keith Windham in his quarters at Inverness was turning over an official letter which had just come to him from Fort Augustus. It was, he saw, in the handwriting of Sir Everard Faulkner, Cumberland’s secretary, and as he looked at it hope whispered to him that it might, perhaps, portend the lifting of the cloud under which he had lived for the last two months. And, not to silence that voice too soon, he left the letter unopened for a minute or two, and sat staring at it.
His case had never come before a court-martial; it had been privately dealt with by Hawley and the Duke. Three things had combined to save him from being cashiered: the fact that Cumberland was graciously pleased to set his conduct at Fontenoy against his present lapse, that Lord Albemarle had written some words of appreciation of him in that despatch which Keith had never delivered, and that Hawley had regarded, and succeeded in making Cumberland regard, Lord Loudoun’s action in putting his staff-officer under arrest as high-handed, and to be resented. “I can’t understand your conduct, Windham,” he had said angrily to his erring subordinate, “but I’m damned if I’ll stand Lord Loudoun’s!” Hawley chafed all the more because he knew his own star to be on the decline; and thus military jealousy played no small part in saving Keith from complete disaster
But all was over, naturally, with his chance of being appointed to Cumberland’s staff, nor could Hawley keep him on his, even for the short time that should elapse before he resigned his own none-toofortunate command. Although Major Windham’s might be regarded as a mere technical offence—and even Cumberland, severe as he was showing himself in matters of discipline, did not seem to regard it as more—Lord Loudoun’s treatment of it had given it so much publicity that for appearances’ sake the defaulter had to be punished. Keith had hoped that he might escape from Scotland by being sent back to his own battalion of the Royals, now in Kent, or that perhaps he would be attached to the second, just proceeding to
Perth; but he was offered instead a vacancy in Battereau’s regiment, which was to remain behind with Blakeney’s when the bulk of the army should move with Cumberland to Fort Augustus. He was, in short, put on the shelf; but he was very plainly shown that it was a choice between accepting this position or sending in his papers altogether. He might indeed count himself extremely lucky that he had escaped being broke, and so the Duke himself had told him.
The last week in May, therefore, had found him left behind in Inverness, no longer the centre of military activity now that Cumberland was gone, but rather a depôt for prisoners, entailing on the two regiments remaining in the town duties which were both dull and—to Keith Windham at least—hateful. But the shelf has an uncommonly sobering effect upon a hot-tempered and ambitious man, and it did not require two months of it to bring reflection to Major Windham. Before they were half over he was viewing his own irregular conduct in a much more critical light, and from cursing his impetuosity he had come to marvelling at his folly. Saving Ewen Cameron’s life he did not for an instant regret; he would have done the same again without a moment’s hesitation, nor did he regret his return to the shieling in the guise of the Good Samaritan; but to have dashed in that manner back to Fort Augustus while carrying a despatch, still more to have thrust himself into Lord Loudoun’s presence and almost to have brawled there—was it any wonder that he had found himself under arrest? Prudence could not undo the past, but it might modify the future, and he therefore set himself to practise this virtue in Inverness, much as it went against the grain. Warned by the fate of an officer who was court-martialled for having shown the wretched captives there some kindness, he did not go out of his way to emulate him, nor did his old wound again furnish a pretext for his withdrawal from scenes which he disliked. If the officers of Battereau’s had known him previously they would have thought him remarkably changed. General Blakeney, a hard man, had no fault to find with Hawley’s disgraced staff-officer
The first fruit of this new prudence had been Keith’s abstention, not only from writing to Ewen Cameron, but even from sending him a direct message. He had sent instead by an acquaintance in Bligh’s regiment, when it proceeded to Fort Augustus, a verbal
recommendation to Sergeant Mullins to be faithful to the ‘commission’ which he had given him, in the hope that the sergeant would, besides obeying this injunction, pass on unsolicited to Ardroy the scanty news of himself which his messenger was instructed to add. A man under a cloud could not, he felt, afford to compromise himself still further in the matter of open friendship with a rebel— though to Cumberland and Hawley he had vigorously denied any such relations with Ewen Cameron. Made wary by his experiences with Guthrie, and afraid of giving a handle against Ewen, he had merely urged in defence of his own conduct a not unnatural anxiety about a Scottish acquaintance—the name, of course, he had been unable to withhold—who had shown him hospitality and kindness before the raising of the standard of rebellion. It was disingenuous, but in the absence of close questioning the version had served its purpose.
And as the weeks went by he had not only made no attempt to communicate in any way with the captive Jacobite, but was careful never to enquire for him by name whenever an officer came from Fort Augustus, whence indisposition (induced, so they asserted, by their melancholy surroundings) was always bringing a few. Yet, as the clearing out of Lochaber and Badenoch proceeded, he did his best always to ascertain what prisoners were arriving at Inverness for transhipment to England, but he never found Ewen Cameron’s name among them. And at last, since he felt sure that the latter would never have been kept until July at Fort Augustus, he came to the conclusion that he must have overlooked his name in the lists, and that he had been shipped off from Inverness without his knowledge—unless he had been despatched by land from Fort Augustus to Edinburgh. Keith hoped indeed that the latter course had been taken, for he knew something of the horrible condition in which the prisoners were kept in the ships, packed together like cattle with nothing to lie upon but the stones and earth of the ballast. He was sorry, very sorry, that he had not been able to see Ardroy once more, but it was the fortune of war; and there was no denying the fact, once recognised, that this young man, to whom he had been so unusually attracted, had brought him nothing but ill-luck.
The letter, its seal broken at last, merely said that His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland commanded Major Windham’s attendance without delay at Fort Augustus. Now Cumberland, as Keith knew, was on the very eve of departure for England; the summons must evidently have some connection with that fact, and it was full of the most hopeful speculations that he went at once to procure leave of absence from his colonel.
And when, some five hours later, he came down the descent to Loch Ness, he could not but remember the last time that he had ridden into Fort Augustus, on that wet night in May, on fire with indignation and disgust. Well, he had learnt his lesson now!
Since Cumberland’s advent, Fort Augustus had naturally become an armed camp of a much greater size; there were hundreds more tents pitched by the Tarff, and besides these, the women’s quarters, the horse lines of the dragoon regiment of Kingston’s Horse, and quantities of cattle and ponies driven in from the ravaged countryside. As had been foreshadowed, the Earl of Albemarle, who had already been there for some time, was to succeed the Duke as commander-in-chief on the latter’s departure to-morrow. Remembering his lamentations at Perth in May, Keith wondered whether his Lordship were more reconciled to the prospect now.
But the Duke sending for him at this juncture—it must mean something to his own advantage!
He asked, as he had been instructed to do, for Sir Everard Faulkner, and found the ex-banker, ex-ambassador to Constantinople and patron of Voltaire at a table in a tent, very busy writing.
“Good afternoon, Major Windham,” said he, looking up. “You have made good speed hither, which is commendable.”
“So your letter bade me, sir.”
“Yes,” said Sir Everard, laying down his pen. “I sent for you by His Royal Highness’s recommendation, to request your assistance on a certain matter of importance to His Majesty’s Government. If you can give it, you will lay not only me, but the Duke also, under a considerable obligation.”
“If you will tell me what the matter is . . .” murmured Keith, amazed. To be able to lay Cumberland under an obligation was a
chance not to be made light of, but he could not for the life of him imagine how he had it in his power to do so unlikely a thing.
“I have for some time,” proceeded Sir Everard, fingering the sheets before him, “been collecting evidence against such prisoners in Inverness and elsewhere as are to be sent to England in order to take their trials. Yesterday I received a letter from the Lord Justice Clerk in Edinburgh transmitting a copy of the Duke of Newcastle’s order that prisoners are to set out as soon as may be, and that particular care is to be taken that the witnesses sent to give evidence against them should be able to prove”—he took up a paper and read from it—“‘that they had seen the prisoners do some hostile act on the part of the rebels, or marching with the rebel army’. You appreciate that point, of course?”
“Certainly,” agreed Keith. “But surely there is no lack of such evidence?”
“No, in most cases there is not,” replied the secretary. “But—to come to the point—we have here in Fort Augustus a prisoner of some importance, who is most undoubtedly guilty of overt acts of hostility in this late unnatural rebellion, but to my chagrin (and His Royal Highness’s) I cannot put my hand on any person who actually saw him commit such acts, though there must be numbers who witnessed them—not even on anyone who observed him in the company of the rebels. There is indeed a probability—but only a probability—that if he is sent to Fort William he may be identified by someone or other as having taken part in the attack upon it in the spring, for it is pretty certain that he was there with Cameron of Lochiel. The prisoner’s name, by the way,” he added, with a carelessness too complete to be quite natural, “is also Cameron— Ewen Cameron of Ardroy.”
There was a silence in the tent. “So he is still here!” said Keith under his breath. “And that is why you have sent for me, Sir Everard; because you think that I can supply the evidence which will bring Cameron of Ardroy to the scaffold?” He checked himself, and added, in a studiously expressionless tone, “Why, to what do you suppose that I can witness against him?”
Deceived perhaps by the manner of his last words, Sir Everard referred complacently to his notes.
“I understand that you can testify to his taking you prisoner by force on the outbreak of hostilities at High Bridge in Lochaber. That in itself would be more than sufficient, but it seems that you also encountered him in Edinburgh, and can therefore bear witness to his being in the Pretender’s son’s so-called army.”
Keith stared at Sir Everard Faulkner’s wig, which was awry, with dismay in his soul. Surely Ardroy could not have been so mad as to have admitted these facts—which he had so carefully suppressed— to anyone at Fort Augustus! “Who told you these details, sir—not that I admit their truth?”
“Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment was so obliging as to mention to me the service which you could render to the Government in this matter. And he had the facts, it seems, from you yourself, shortly after the victory on Culloden Moor. Release from your duties at Inverness,” pursued Sir Everard amiably, “can easily be obtained, Major Windham, and no expense would be incurred by you for your journey to Carlisle; it would be defrayed . . .”
But Keith was not listening; he was wishing that he had Guthrie in some private spot with a couple of swords between them—no, better, one horsewhip! This was his crowning piece of malevolence!
Sir Everard stopped short in his beguiling recital, which had reached the assurance that the Duke would not forget the service which the hearer was about to render. “What is the matter, Major Windham?” he enquired. “You seem discomposed. Has Major Guthrie misinformed me?”
Keith did not answer that question. “Why does not Major Guthrie go as witness himself?” he asked in a half-choked voice.
“Because he cannot testify to overt acts, as you can,” explained Sir Everard. “It is true that he captured Cameron of Ardroy, badly wounded—and there is no room for doubt where he took those wounds—but a jury might not convict on that evidence alone, whereas yours, Major Windham——”
“Whereas mine—supposing it to be what you say—would successfully hang him?” finished Keith, looking straight at the secretary.
Sir Everard nodded with a gratified expression. “You would have the satisfaction of rendering that service to His Majesty, and at the
same time—if you’ll permit me to be frank, Major Windham—of purging yourself of any suspicion of undue tenderness towards the rebels. I fancy,” he added with an air of finesse, “that the accusation arose in connection with this very man, Ewen Cameron, did it not? You see how triumphantly you could clear your honour of any such aspersions!” And Sir Everard smiled good-humouredly.
“My honour must be in sad case, sir,” said Keith, “if to act hangman to a man who spared my own life will cleanse it! I am obliged to you for your solicitude, but I must beg to decline. Had it been some other rebel I might perhaps have been able to gratify you, but against Cameron of Ardroy I cannot and will not give evidence. I will therefore wish you good day.” He bowed and turned to go, inwardly seething.
“Stop, stop!” cried Sir Everard, jumping up; but it was not his summons which stayed Keith (in whose head at that moment was some wild idea of going to search for Major Guthrie), but the fact that he almost collided with a stout young officer of exalted rank just coming through the aperture of the tent. Keith hastily drew back, came to attention, and saluted respectfully, for it was Cumberland himself.
The Duke took no notice of him, but went straight over to his secretary. There had come in with him another stout officer of high rank, twenty years or so his senior, in whom Keith recognised the Earl of Albemarle. The couple of aide-de-camps who followed posted themselves just inside the tent door.
“I hope you have completed those damned tiresome notes about evidence, Faulkner,” said the Prince rather fretfully, “for there are a thousand and one matters to be attended to before to-morrow, and Lord Albemarle also desires some talk with you.”
“All are in order, your Royal Highness,” responded Sir Everard deferentially, “save the case of Cameron of Ardroy, for which we shall have to rely on evidence at Fort William. With your permission, my Lord,” he turned to the Earl of Albemarle, “I will speak to your secretary about it.”
“But have you not summoned Major Windham from Inverness, as I bade you?” exclaimed the Duke. “You told me yourself that his
testimony would be invaluable. Why the devil didn’t you send for him?”
“Your Royal Highness’s commands were obeyed to the letter,” responded Sir Everard with some stiffness. “But it seems that Major Windham has scruples about giving his testimony—as he can explain in person to your Royal Highness, since he is present.”
Cumberland swung round his bulk with an alertness which showed his five-and-twenty years. He glanced at Keith, standing motionless at the side of the tent. “Won’t give it—scruples?
Nonsense! You must have misunderstood him, Faulkner Write a line to Major-General Blakeney at once, informing him that Major Windham is seconded, as he sets out with me for England tomorrow. Now, Major, you see how easy it is to leave your new regiment, so no difficulty remains, eh?”
Keith’s head went round. Advancement at last—and good-bye to Scotland! But his heart was cold. There was a condition to this favour impossible of fulfilment.
He came forward a little. “If the honour your Royal Highness designs to do me,” he said in a very low voice, “depends upon my giving evidence against Cameron of Ardroy, I must beg leave, with the greatest respect, to decline it. But if it is without such a condition, your Royal Highness has no more grateful servant.”
“Condition, sir—what do you mean?” demanded the Prince sharply. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”
“Indeed, no, your Royal Highness. I thought,” ventured Keith, still very respectfully, “that it was rather the other way about . . . But I was no doubt mistaken.”
The pale, prominent eyes stared at him a moment, and their owner gave vent to what in any other but a scion of royalty would have been termed a snort. “Indeed you are mistaken, sir! I do not bargain with officers under my command; I give them orders. Be ready to start for Edinburgh to-morrow with the rest of my staff at the time I design to leave Fort Augustus. In England leave will be given you for the purpose of attending the trial of this rebel at Carlisle, whenever it shall take place. After that you will rejoin my staff and accompany me—or follow me, as the case may be—to the Continent. It is part of the duty of a commander-in-chief, gentlemen,”
went on the Duke, addressing the remainder of the company, “to remember and reward individual merit, and Major Windham’s gallantry at Fontenoy has not passed from my mind, although I have not until now been able to recompense it as it deserves.”
The aides-de-camp, Sir Everard and even Lord Albemarle expressed in murmurs or in dumb show their appreciation of His Royal Highness’s gracious good memory. As for Keith, he was conscious of an almost physical nausea, so sickened was he by the unblushing hypocrisy of the bribe—it was nothing less. He looked at the ground as he answered.
“Your Royal Highness overwhelms me, and I hope to show my gratitude by always doing my duty—which is no more than I did at Fontenoy. But there are private reasons why I cannot give evidence against Cameron of Ardroy; I am too much in his debt for services rendered in the past. I appeal therefore to your Highness’s generosity to spare me so odious a task.”
The Duke frowned. “You forget, I think, Major Windham, with what kind of men we are dealing—bloody and unnatural rebels, who have to be exterminated like vermin—like vermin, sir! Here is a chance of getting rid of one rat the more, and you ask that your private sentiments shall be allowed to excuse you from that duty! No, Major Windham, I tell you that they shall not!”
Keith drew himself up, and this time he met Cumberland’s gaze full.
“I would beg leave to say to your Royal Highness, speaking as a soldier to the most distinguished soldier in Britain, that it is no part of military duty, even in the crushing of a rebellion, to play the informer.”
The faces of the aides-de-camp (one of them a most elegant young man) expressed the kind of shock produced on a refined mind by an exhibition of bad taste; Lord Albemarle shook his head and put his hand over his mouth, but Sir Everard Faulkner’s demonstration of horror could not be seen, since he was behind his royal master, and the latter had almost visibly swollen in size.
“What, you damned impertinent dog, are you to tell me what is a soldier’s duty!” he got out. “Why, this is mutiny!”
“Nothing is farther from my thoughts,” replied Keith quietly and firmly. “Give me any order that a soldier may fitly execute and your
Royal Highness will soon see that. But I have been accustomed to meet the enemies of my country in the field, and not in the dock.” And as the Duke was still incoherent from fury and incredulity he repeated, “With the utmost respect, I must decline to give evidence in this case.”
“Damn your respect, sir!” shouted the Commander-in-Chief, finding his tongue again. “You’re little better than a rebel yourself! A soldier—any soldier—under my command does what he is ordered, or I’ll know the reason why!” He stamped his royal foot. “By Heaven, you shall go to Carlisle, if I have to send you there under guard! But you need not flatter yourself that there will be any vacancy for you on my staff after this. Now, will you go willingly as a witness, or must the provost-marshal take you?”
Keith measured his princely and well-fed opponent, the adulated victor, the bloodstained executioner. He was tolerably certain that the Duke, for all his powers, could not force him to give evidence, and that this talk of sending him to Carlisle by force was only a threat. But he knew that civilians, at all events, could be subpœnaed as witnesses, and was not too sure of his own ultimate position. He brought out therefore a new and unexpected weapon.
“If my presence should be constrained at the trial, I must take leave to observe to your Royal Highness that I shall then be obliged to give the whole of my testimony—how Mr. Cameron spared my life when he had me at his mercy after the disaster at High Bridge last summer, and how, in Edinburgh, he saved me from the hands of the Cameron guard and gave me my liberty when I was abandoned by the soldiers with me and trapped. Since those facts would undoubtedly have some influence on an English jury, I cannot think that I should prove an altogether satisfactory witness for the Crown.”
The victor of Culloden stood a moment stupefied with rage. When he could command his voice he turned to his secretary. “Is this true, Faulkner, what this—mutineer says?” (For indeed, owing to Keith’s calculated reticence at Inverness, it was news to him.) To Sir Everard’s reply that he did not know, the Duke returned furiously, “It’s your business to know, you blockhead!” and after that the storm was loosed on Keith, and a flood of most unprincely invective it was. The names he was called, however, passed him by without really
wounding him much. They were nothing compared to those he would have called himself had he sold Ardroy’s life as the price of his own advancement.
But it was pretty clear that he had finally consummated his own ruin, and when he heard the angry voice declaring its owner’s regret that he had overlooked his previous ill-conduct with regard to this misbegotten rebel, Keith fully expected the Duke to add that he intended to break him for his present. Perhaps that would come later; for the moment the Duke contented himself with requesting him, in language more suggestive of the guardroom than the palace, to take his —— face where he would never see it again. “And you need not think,” he finished, out of breath, “that you will save the rascally rebel who has suborned you from your duty; there are plenty other witnesses who will see to it that he hangs!”
But that Keith did not believe, or the Duke and Sir Everard would not have been so eager to secure his evidence. And as, at last, he saluted and rather dizzily left the tent where he had completed the wreck of his ambitions, it was resentment which burnt in him more fiercely than any other emotion. That it should be supposed that anyone—even a Prince of the blood—could bribe him into an action which revolted him!
Late as it was, he would much have preferred to start back to Inverness that evening, but his horse had to be considered. And, while he was seeing that the beast was being properly looked after, he was surprised to find himself accosted by an elegant young officer whom he recognised as one of the two aides-de-camp present at the recent scene.
“Major Windham, is it not? General Lord Albemarle requests that you will not leave the camp without further orders, and that you will wait upon him at some time after His Royal Highness’s departure tomorrow.”
“Do you mean, sir,” asked Keith bluntly, “that I am to consider myself under arrest?”
“Oh, my dear Major, by no means!” answered the young man, greatly shocked. “On the contrary! His Lordship—but I am being prodigious, indiscreet—recognised in you, it seems, an acquaintance, so do not fail to wait upon him to-morrow.”
“I will do so,” said Keith. “Meanwhile, can you tell me if a certain Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment is in camp?”
“Major Guthrie—la, sir, I’ve not the pleasure of his acquaintance. But stay, part of Campbell’s regiment marched the day before yesterday for Badenoch, so it is like the Major is gone with them.”
“If it be a question of further burnings and floggings, I am sure he will be gone with them,” commented Keith. “Perhaps it is as well. . . . Tell his Lordship that I will certainly obey his commands to-morrow.”
Once again he spent a night at Fort Augustus after a clash with authority But this time it was a collision with a much more devastating force than Lord Loudoun. Cumberland was not likely to forget or forgive. And Keith felt quite reckless, and glad to be rid of the prudence which had shackled him since May. He had no more to lose now. If he could have shaken the life out of Guthrie it would have been some consolation. From Lord Albemarle’s message it did not seem as if he were going to be relieved of his commission after all; but, if he were, then, by God, he would get at Guthrie somehow, and challenge him!
When Cumberland first came to Fort Augustus he had been housed in a ‘neat bower’ which was specially constructed for him, and Lieutenant-General Lord Albemarle evidently preferred this abode of his predecessor’s to a tent. It was there, at any rate, that he received Major Windham next afternoon when the racket of the Duke’s departure was over.
William Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albemarle, the son of King William’s Dutch favourite, was at this time forty-two years of age, but his portly habit of body made him look older Plain as well as stout, he gave the impression of a kind but easily flustered nature.
“We met at Perth, did we not, Major Windham?” he asked, and as Keith bowed and assented the Earl said pleasantly, “I should like a few minutes’ conversation with you. You can leave us, Captain Ferrers.”
And when the elegant aide-de-camp had withdrawn, Albemarle, pacing up and down with short steps, his hands behind his broad back, began: “I must say that I am very sorry, Major Windham, that
you felt constrained to take up such an attitude towards His Royal Highness yesterday.”
“So am I, my Lord,” returned the culprit, with truth. “But I had no choice. I hope your Lordship is not going to renew the same request, for there are some things which a man cannot do, and one of those is, to help hang a man who has spared his own life.”
“Is that so—the prisoner in question spared your life?” asked Albemarle with an appearance of surprise, though, thought Keith, unless he had not been listening he must have learnt that fact yesterday “Surely you did not make that clear to His Royal Highness, who is as remarkable for clemency as for just severity!”
Keith looked at him askance; was my Lord Albemarle joking or sincere?
“No, Major Windham,” went on the new Commander-in-Chief, “I do not intend to renew the request, for I should not presume to flatter myself that I could succeed where one with so much stronger a claim on your obedience has failed. Your revealing this fact alters matters; I sympathise with your scrupulosity, and so must the excellent Prince have done had you but presented the case fairly to him. A pity, Major Windham!”
Keith inclined his head, but said nothing. A grim amusement possessed him, and he could not imagine why Lord Albemarle should be at pains to make this elaborate pretence.
“His Royal Highness’s zeal has been wonderful,” pursued the Earl. He sighed, sat down, and began to drum his fingers on the table beside him. “How I am expected to replace him I do not know. He has indeed accomplished most of his great task, but I am left with part of it still upon my hands—the capturing of the Pretender’s son, if indeed he has escaped the last search party of fifteen hundred men sent out from here and from Fort William three days ago. . . . And again, I fear that relations with the Scottish authorities may be sadly difficult. L’Ecosse est ma bête, Major Windham, as I think I said to you before, on a certain occasion when I was very indiscreet. Had I then had an indiscreet listener I might have harmed myself by my imprudence.” He stopped drumming and looked up. “I shall see what I can do for you, Major Windham,” he concluded, with a suddenness which took Keith’s breath away.
“Your Lordship .” he stammered, and found no more words. Albemarle smiled.
“The opportunity may shortly present itself of employing you. I must see. Meanwhile I wish you to remain here; I will arrange that with Major-General Blakeney and your colonel.”
And Keith murmured he knew not what. It seemed impossible that at Perth he should have made an impression so deep as to lead to this; and in a moment it appeared that there was another factor in the case, for Lord Albemarle, fidgeting with the sandbox on the table, revealed it.
“Years ago,” he said reflectively, “when I was a younger man, I used to know a lady—the most beautiful, I think, whom I have ever met in my life. Perhaps you can guess whom I mean? . . . I did not know when you brought me the despatch at Perth, Major Windham, that Lady Stowe was your mother; I have learnt it since. It would give me pleasure to extend to her son a trifle of help at a crisis in his fortunes.—No, say no more about it, Windham; ’tis but the payment of a debt to Beauty, who allowed unreproved worship at her shrine!”
And he raised his eyes to the roof of the neat bower, apparently absorbed in sentimental retrospect, while Keith, startled, grateful, yet rather sardonically amused, tried to picture this plain and unwieldy Anglo-Dutch peer paying his devoirs to a lady who had almost certainly made game of him behind his back. Or had she found him useful, like Lord Orkney, who, when Keith was a mere boy, had promised the pair of colours in the Royal Scots which had saved his mother so much trouble and expense—and had deprived him of any choice in the matter of a regiment.
But the adorer in question at this moment had now brought his eyes to the ordinary level again.
“You are not like the Countess, Major Windham,” he observed.
“My Lord, I am only too well aware of that. My half-brother Aveling resembles her much more closely. He is a very handsome youth.”
“I must make Lord Aveling’s acquaintance some day,” said the Earl rising. “Commend me meanwhile to Lady Stowe.”
“I shall not fail to do so, my Lord,” replied Keith, preparing to withdraw, but hesitating. Yes, this unlooked-for and melting mood
was certainly that in which to proffer his request. “Your Lordship’s extreme generosity towards a disgraced man,” he went on, “emboldens me to ask a small favour, which is, that I may see Cameron of Ardroy once before he goes south to his trial—giving my most sacred word of honour that nothing shall pass between us relative to escape. I desire only to say farewell to him, and your Lordship, who has shown yourself so sensible of my obligation towards him——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted his Lordship, putting up a plump hand. “Yes, before he goes you shall see him, I promise you, Major Windham. But not at present—not at present,” he added, as if he felt that the line of his complaisance must be drawn somewhere. “Send me in Captain Ferrers, if you please, as you go out.”
So Keith left, meditating on the hopeful change in his outlook. It was strange that Lord Albemarle did not fear Cumberland’s wrath, if the Duke ever learnt of the favour shown to a man under his extremest displeasure. If it was solely for the sake of the beautiful Countess of Stowe that his Lordship was braving this possibility, the situation was still more ironical, for Keith knew well that his mother would not feel any particular gratitude for this clemency towards her elder son. She would rather that some special token of favour had fallen on the head of his young half-brother, who had no need of it.
The next few days went slowly by, and Keith began to wonder whether Lord Albemarle’s lenity were not going to end in nothing but the assurance to him of an idle existence at Fort Augustus. He was glad, however, to be there, for he could fairly well assure himself that Ardroy was not taken away without his knowledge. Enquiries revealed the fact that old Sergeant Mullins was no longer his gaoler, but Keith got speech with his successor, a Scot, and learnt that Ewen was to be taken on the twenty-fifth of the month to Fort William to be identified. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, fearing to wait any longer, he sought out the exquisite Captain Ferrers and begged him to recall to Lord Albemarle’s mind his promise that he should see the prisoner before departure; and in the afternoon was duly handed a signed order permitting an interview.
CHAPTER VII
In thinking of Ewen, Keith had always pictured him where last he had seen him, in the upper room, light and wind-blown, and when he was conducted to the regions under the remains of the fort, he realised with something approaching dismay that Ardroy’s quarters had not been changed for the better. And as the door was opened, and he saw before him, down a few steps, a sort of cellar which seemed darker than it really was, and which smelt of damp, he was horrified, though in reality, the fort being of quite recent construction, its ‘dungeons’ were not nearly as noisome as their name suggested.
There was one small grated window, high up, and under this Ewen was sitting on a stool with his back to the door, reading, though there hardly appeared sufficient light for it. He did not turn his head. “Is that supper already, Corporal?” he asked. “What time is it then?”
“No, Mr. Cameron, nae supper, but an officer tae veesit ye.—Hae a care o’ yon steps, sir!”
But Ewen had turned on his stool, had seen who his visitor was, and was getting to his feet. He clashed as he moved, for he was in irons.
“Windham!” he exclaimed with an accent of surprise and pleasure. “This is very good of you! Where have you come from?”
And as Keith, distressed by everything, the darkness, the want of accommodation and the chains, stood rooted, Ewen, with more jangling, limped towards him, holding out a fettered hand. He was blanched by two months of semi-darkness, worn down by illness and insufficient food to the framework of himself, but he was shaven and respectably clothed, and he had all his old erectness of poise.
Keith took the proffered hand. “How long have you had those on?” was his first question.
“These irons? Only for a few days. They have just come off a man imprisoned for a short time with me who had the distinction of helping the Prince to escape when he was in Skye, MacDonald of Kingsburgh, and when he was carried to Edinburgh they put them on
me. I was flattered, not having the same qualification for them. Sit down, Major, on the stool he had, which still remains to me—or take mine, if you consider that less treasonable. Faith, no, I suppose Kingsburgh, who was never ‘out’, is less of a rebel than I.” He laughed, shuffled to a corner, and came back with another stool. “Now tell me how you came here, and what your situation is now? Mullins gave me some news of you—very scanty—in May. Are you quit of the cloud you drew upon yourself for my sake?”
“It is of yourself that we must speak,” said Keith, hoarsely, thrown off his balance by this unaffected cheerfulness, and deeply ashamed, all at once, of the cowardly ‘prudence’ which had left Ardroy without a letter. “Sit down; you should not stand, I am sure.
How does your wound?”
Rather stiffly, Ewen sat down. “Quite healed, though the leg is weak. However, I am to ride thirty miles to-morrow, for I go to Fort William to be identified, thence to Carlisle for trial—by what means of transport I do not know.”
“You think that you will be identified by this man at Fort William?”
“Man? There is more than one; indeed there’ll be a measure of jealousy, I’m thinking, who shall travel to Carlisle on my affair at the expense of the Government.—Why, I vow it never occurred to me before that you might go, Windham, and save me the journey to Fort William; for you can identify me, none better!”
Keith winced. “Don’t jest,” he said in a sombre voice; “don’t jest on such a theme, I beg of you. And, Ardroy,” he added earnestly, “I doubt whether the authorities here really place very much reliance on this testimony from Fort William, or they would not have——” He pulled up, biting his lip, for he had no intention of speaking of his encounter with Cumberland. Though he had no cause for shame, he was ashamed; moreover he did not wish to parade his own selfabnegation.
In the dim light, momentarily becoming to Keith, however, a little less dim, the prisoner looked at him with those clear eyes of his. Then, with a jangle, he laid his bony hand on the Englishman’s wrist. “My sorrow, I believe my jest went near the truth! They did want you to go as a witness against me—was not that what you were about to say? Why, then, did you not comply?”