Notice de l'oeuvre :
Renoir recurrently asserted that painting and literature are independent from one another since they have, in his view, their own means of expression. Notwithstanding, he expressed personal opinions that, quite paradoxically, highlight his interest in the literature of his time. The painter was in strict contact with many renowned authors, amongst which Astruc, Zola, Banville, Duranty, Alphonse Daudet, Mallarmé, Léon Diex and Valéry, as well as his brother Edmond and his friend Paul Lhoste, to only cite a few.
Renoir’s œuvre and the naturalist novels by Zola, Maupassant, Daudet, Duranty and the brothers Goncourt and Huymans offered reflections on similar themes regarding modern life: they all endeavoured in the 'representation' of the countryside, of street life, cafes and the outdoors. Between 1878 and 1883 Auguste Renoir did not participate in any impressionist exhibitions since they were not financially interesting to him. He consequently returned to the official Salon. Other than working on numerous portraits Renoir pursued the art of illustration.
He notably contributed to the production of the illustrated edition of Zola’s L’Assommoir, published in 1878 by Marpon and Flammarion. This publication, which entailed the collaboration of numerous artists amongst which Clairin, Gervex and Régamey, was the first one to combine traditional and modern reproduction techniques. Amongst them there was the guillotage technique, which enabled the mechanical transposition of the draughtsman’s drawing on a specific type of paper, known as “Gillot paper”. For this publication Renoir created four illustrations displaying The Lodge of the Germans, Lantier and Gervaise spent a delightful evening at café-concert, Workers’ daughters in the outer boulevard and Father Bru stepped on the snow (ill. 1). These images, which discussed similar themes to those of his paintings, and which were diffused at an unprecedented rate and volume for the artist, have been forgotten for a long time by the bibliophiles and specialists of Renoir’s drawings and engravings.
John Collins contributed to the discovery and understanding of Renoir ‘the illustrator’ by unearthing a satirical text by Alphonse Daudet, “Les Salons Bourgeois”, edited by Émile Bergerat in 1878 in Les Chefs-d’œuvre d’art à l’Exposition universelle, which was a collection of essays dedicated to painting and to the decorative arts. This work was illustrated by a large number of artists (Gérôme, Bastien-Lepage, Gustave Moreau, Meissonier, Rochegrosse, Stevens, Bonnat etc.) and, just like Zola’s L’Assommoir which was published in the same year, it was widely circulated. The intention of the editor was to promote a new decorative style that was inspired by modern life and customs.
Daudet’s article is adorned with two illustrations by Renoir: an ornamental letter D (ill. 2) and a scene displaying a mundane Salon at the end of the text (ill. 3). Our ink drawing is the original illustration which was reproduced in the publication via a photomechanical process.
Daudet’s essay hints at the Salon managed by Mrs Charpentier, born Marguerite-Louise Lemonnier (1848-1904). She was the wife of Georges Charpentier (1846-1905), an editor of the naturalists. This lady, who directly inspired the character of Juliette Deberle in Zola's A love affair, played a key role in the cultural life of the time by hosting a variety of writers, sculptors, poets, political men and above all painters at her Salon in 15 Rue de Grenelle. Émile Bergerat and Alphonse Daudet were frequent visitors of the Salon hosted by the Charpentier couple — which usually took place on Friday afternoons from January to March — and it is precisely in this setting that their first encounter with Renoir took place. Daudet and Renoir shared the same aesthetic vision and became friends between 1875 and 1880. In September 1776 Renoir spent some time in Daudet’s estate at Champrosay, where he painted a number of landscapes and the Portrait of Mrs Daudet, born Julia Allard. Daudet and his wife were themselves the hosts of a famous Salon, whose frequent visitors included Parisian social elites and “les Cinq”, also known as “le Groupe des auteurs sifflés” which was composed by Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev and Edmond de Goncourt.
The evenings organised by the Charpentier did not resemble — according to Daudet — a real literary Salon since the topics of conversation were often political in nature. In his text he equally decried the presence of “doctors who impose their presence in order to gain popularity in the neighbourhood”, “parents with limited economic resources who try to find husbands for their daughters”, “teachers of oratory” and “old ladies and young women wearing ambitious and faded clothes”. He offers an acerbic and original description of these mundane reunions: “These Salons are too small, too long and narrow, and the guests who sit and chat tend to get as embarrassed as people on trains; these are distraught apartments, with hallways, doors, screens and the stunned house hostess who screams 'do not go there' at you...” .
Renoir’s illustrations for “Les Salons Bourgeois” is in harmony with the playful spirit of the text. The drop cap D (ill. 2) which opens the essay — “(De) Out of all the mad actions that have taken place over the centuries none is more cheerful, weird, and more likely to offer funny surprises than those passionate evenings” — is constituted by a representation of a tall, slouched and tired pianist wearing a minuscule suit who arches over his keyboard. This man with long, ruffled hair is a caricature of Daudet, who was well-known for his musical talents. This scene reveals the sense of humour of the artist, who is annoyed for having to attend these Salons that are of no interest to him.
Our drawing, which is similarly sarcastic in nature, was intended to illustrate the last page of the text (ill. 3). It clearly evokes the pretentious ritual of the mundane Salon: two men in evening attire wear collars which appear to be exaggeratedly long; they bow respectfully in front of the voluptuous hostess, Marguerite Charpentier, who is portrayed surrounded by her suitors as they pay her their respects. Between 1876 and 1878 Renoir also painted a number of portraits of the young woman. In these official portraits and in our drawing, Marguerite displays the same type of attire and hairstyle (ill. 4).
A few years later, Edmond de Goncourt offered a similarly comical description of Mrs Charpentier surrounded by toadying writers in his Journal: “a small woman with a beautiful face and displaying a dreadful coquetry is so tiny, so short and so pregnant that in her fairy dress she seems to be playing at the theatre of the Queen of Low Bottoms. Around her, an entourage of small authors bow lowly”.
Between 1878 and 1883 Renoir was the only impressionist artist working as an illustrator as well as painter. It is possible to detect the same unconventional graphic style of our drawing in some of the other illustrations that Renoir made in 1878: the originals unfortunately disappeared soon after having served their intended purpose. In addition to our illustration, a drawing of the Lise — published as frontispiece of Daudet’s pamphlet —, of Les peintres impressionistes and some preparatory drawings for Zola’s L’Assommoir (edited by Marpon and Flammarion) have survived to this day. In the drawing displaying Workers’ daughters on the outer boulevard (ill. 5), which is currently in the Art Institute of Chicago, Renoir employed the same technique that he used for the creation of our drawing: he sketched very lightly his composition with a black chalk before finalising the drawing with ink. Some sections of the underling pencil drawing are clearly visible underneath the thick lines of ink. His graphic style is characterised by an entanglement of short and irregular hatchings which create masses of variable intensity that are reminiscent of a net of intertwined wires. He created a rich surface in which contours and details seem to disappear (ill. 6 & 7). The areas that are shaped by light do not disclose any trace of underlining drawing. By favouring the shading of tones and the employment of fluid and relaxed lines, Renoir remained loyal to the typically impressionist innovations in painting.
Our drawing belonged to Jean-Louis Debauve (1926-2016), an expert collector of historical documents, of engravings displaying Brittany and of unpublished autographs and letters by Sade and Jules Laforgue. Debauve, who attained the title of doctor of law, was introduced to the world of literature by his mother — an eager reader of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and the Symbolist poets — and by his uncle Charles Martine, who was a librarian at the École des Beaux-Arts as well as a collector, a regular client of Les Deux Magots and a friend of André Malraux, Robert Desnos and Dunoyer de Ségonzac. Nicknamed “the judge” due to his professional activities and his meticulous intellect, Jean Louis Debauve contributed to the consolidation of the complete œuvre of Jules Laforgue, which was the product of thirty years of work.
Amélie du Closel
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