Middle Chapters Discussion: Victorine Meurent

[Jessica]

Manet clearly found Victorine Meurent a bewitching model: he painted her numerous times in the early 1860s. Given that she wasn't a "stunner," what do you think he found appealing about her? What, if anything, do his images of her have in common?

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[Mariposa]

This question confounds me. I don't seem to be able to find a clear clean response in the text. She was not particularly attractive. She did seem to be compliant though. By that I mean she was able to hold poses for long periods etc. The only similarity between paintings where she is the model is her direct gaze at the viewer and that has everything to do with Manet and nothing really to do with Victorine. So I guess I am baffled. It does not appear he was having sex with her (at least not from the book which is well-researched), and I do believe there would be some evidence if he were... So Victorine is a mystery.

I looked again and again at Olympia and she seems truncated and then I reread Chapter Four to recall that she had been called "La Crevette." No added vertebrae for Victorine...

Lizabeth

[sweetnaranja]

Beauty is subjective and I think Victorine is very attractive. What is it about her looks that the art community finds unappealing? I remember reading that the critics thought that she was ugly and fat.

In Olympia, the cat, the black maid, and the flowers implied that she was a prostitute - and a brazen one at that - looking us straight in the eye! I can understand how symbols represent different things at different periods of time but her body and face is attractive. This is beyond the time of Rubens, when heavy women were in vogue.

Sharon

[ross_king]

You have to feel sorry for Victorine if she dared to read the reviews of Manet’s paintings. The critics clearly found her ugly and alarming for reasons that went beyond her actual physical appearance. They certainly stressed her ugliness and (in the case of Olympia) her dirtiness, but both Lizabeth and Sharon are right that complaints about her “ugly” appearance are surely exaggerated. One critic called her a “female gorilla,” which is stretching matters just a bit! But they were men trained to appreciate the soft-focus nudes of Ingres and Cabanel, so Manet’s in-your-face production was truly shocking to them.

Manet’s fascination with Victorine seems to be rooted at least partly in her “modern” look. She represented to him the “face” of 1860s Paris: he later did a portrait of her entitled Young Lady in 1866. Other painters wanted women who would represent, say, a “timeless” beauty, but Manet’s Victorine seems to have been linked to the here-and-now. He liked dressing her in specific costumes - the street singer, the prostitute - that played on modern Parisian types.

I wonder if Manet could have done either Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe or Olympia with anyone else but Victorine posing for him? The success of these two landmark paintings is closely linked with the appearance of Victorine. Could anyone else have brought it off?

[Jessica]

It's interesting that Berthe Morisot -- one of the few female painters running in this circle -- was subjected to the same kind of ridicule when she posed for Manet's "The Repose." (And double whammy -- her paintings were rejected by the Salon as well.)

Today, it's easy to understand the value of representing the "common" in art. We seem to have a sincere love of the underdogs, the powerless, and the anti-heroes. Was this just not a value in the 1850s-1860s France? Even after the struggle of the French Revolution less than a century prior?

And if Berthe and Victorine weren't acceptable representations of women, what type of woman was?

Jessica
Book Club Editor

[ross_king]

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Jessica wrote:
Today, it's easy to understand the value of representing the "common" in art. We seem to have a sincere love of the underdogs, the powerless, and the anti-heroes. Was this just not a value in the 1850s-1860s France? Even after the struggle of the French Revolution less than a century prior?

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The "common" certainly wasn't as popular in official circles during the Second Empire. Liberté, égalité and fraternité weren’t exactly alive and well in those days. Napoleon III ran a very aristocratic regime that made - especially in its early years - little concession to democracy (and democracy had many active opponents, including people like the writer Gustave Flaubert). Napoleon III was determined to revive the splendour of Napoleon I’s court. The official artistic line (established by an aristocratic snob like the Comte de Nieuwerkerke) esteemed heroic virtues rather than plucky underdogs. Gods and heroes were the preferred subjects for paintings. Any depictions of the "common man," or of the socially dispossessed, smacked of political revolution - hence the suspicion with which painters like Courbet and Jean-François Millet (both of whom painted humble subjects) were regarded early in their careers.

In this context it’s interesting that one painting causing a fuss at the Salon of 1863 was Millet’s Man with a Hoe, which featured a peasant leaning on his hoe, open-mouthed and exhausted, in the middle of a rocky field. The painting caused a rumpus both because of the supposed ugliness of the farmer and because of the critique of agragrian capitalism suggested by this image of an exhausted worker. The work is now at the Getty Center:

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=879

[ross_king]

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Jessica wrote:
It's interesting that Berthe Morisot -- one of the few female painters running in this circle -- was subjected to the same kind of ridicule when she posed for Manet's "The Repose."
And if Berthe and Victorine weren't acceptable representations of women, what type of woman was?

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Creating images of women was a very fraught business for an artist in 19th-century France. The most cherished images were, of course, nudes, but an artist could get into all sort of trouble if his painting of a nude woman was perceived to appeal to “base passions” rather than “noble instincts” - that is, if it served to titillate the viewer rather than to make him appreciate such “timeless” female virtues as chastity, love, fidelity and self-sacrifice. Art was supposed to appeal to the mind rather than the physical senses.

Manet wasn't the only one to land in trouble by painting a female nude. No artist who attempted one was immune to charges of peddling dubious eroticism. In Chapter 8 I discuss the fierce criticism of Cabanel’s Birth of Venus: she was seen by many critics as simply too sexy for the Salon. I quote Flaubert’s friend Maxime du Camp, who wrote (in 1863) that art “should have no more sex than mathematics,” and that the naked body is an “abstract being.” Well ... Cabanel’s Venus isn’t exactly abstract and mathematical (although it does maybe explore the geometry of curves). (Cabanel's Birth of Venus is color plate 4A in the book: you can also find it on various internet sites.)

The most renowned nude of the era was Ingres’ La Source, painted in the mid-1850s. This woman with her jug of water was said to be the most beautiful image in French art:

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/I/ingres/source.jpg.html

The tricky thing for an artist was to painting something similar without causing too many nudges, winks and sniggers in the Salon. Manet, I suspect, found all such paintings appalling. His images of Victorine make no attempt to show an ideal of beauty of femininity. She’s certainly nothing like Ingres’ model - that nice, passive-looking creature with her shy, doe-like eyes. Yet only six or seven years separate the two paintings.

[marlohill]

Something that blatantly sticks out that others in this group have noticed too is the criticism that the artists and even their models were subjected to. What happened to that saying, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all?" I guess that saying came afterwards, but still it is disheartening to read how judgemental people tend to be about everything. So many of those artists didn't even want to have their artwork critiqued by the public, even when they had the opportunity to have their work shown again fewer than 500 chose to. At least, like Ross explained in an earlier post, that part of the criticism was because the art was so different to what they were used to. Still, it is inexcusable to call someone a gorilla. Really the man who said that to Victorine Meurent was making fun of her and I am glad that she didn't care what they said (hopefully!) I watched a biography of Karen and her brother Richard Carpenter. Karen had a beautiful voice, but it makes me sad every time I hear her, because I watched that biography and I saw what happened to her. She was very close to her brother. He played the piano and orchestrated the music and she played drums and sang. Critics commented that she was fat! So, now we don't hear Karen Carpenter anymore. She died in her thirties with Anorexia. Think of all the beautiful songs they could of still been performing together...

[marlohill]

One of many points that Ernest Renan does not take into account in his book, The Life of Jesus, is that most of the early disciples of Jesus Christ had enough faith that he was the son of God to give up their life for him. You have to ask yourself: "Would they have been willing to die for someone that they did not truly believe was the son of God?"
Poor Manet, on the other hand! He didn't have has much faith in his own paintings, destroying them himself.

[marlohill]

Unlike the other artists, Claude Monet did not come from a wealthy background, his father was a grocer. I am very happy that Eugene Boudin convinced him to give up caricatures and instead paint landscapes. Monet is the artist that I am most familiar with because his artwork is in calendars, etc. I have a friend that really likes Monet, so now I know more about him than she does, after reading "Judgment of Paris"!

[ross_king]

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marlohill wrote:
Something that blatantly sticks out that others in this group have noticed too is the criticism that the artists and even their models were subjected to.

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The criticism of this period is certainly depressing to read: much of it is ignorant and a lot is just plain nasty. One reason why the criticism was so venomous is that the art critics - like many of the paintings they reviewed - were political, or at least politically inspired. One art critic in the 19th century wrote that the Paris Salon was as political as the elections. So, for example, the attacks on Cabanel’s Birth of Venus in 1863 were partly veiled attacks on the Emperor Napoleon III, who had bought it. You couldn’t criticize the emperor (without ending up in jail), but you could at least attack his taste in painting.

Manet came in for strong criticism not only because of his style but also due to his subject matter. Many of his works (especially his early ones) had a political charge to them: in paintings like The Old Musician, The Street Singer, and The Absinthe Drinker he portrayed beggars, street urchins, itinerant singers and musicians, all of them "down and outs" whose appearances in his work could be seen as reproaches to the prosperity of Napoleon III’s Paris and his policy of clearing the slums. Manet liked to dwell on life’s darker side. Art critics who supported the emperor, or who were politically (as well as artistically) conservative, would obviously let rip at this sort of thing. That’s one reason why Victorine Meurent’s appearance was described in such unflattering terms ("female gorilla," etc.): she was threatening to many people because she represented an "unruly woman." But had Victorine read the review, she could obviously have been expected to take it personally.

On the other hand, maybe she, like Baudelaire and Zola, enjoyed adverse criticism: Baudelaire and Zola had the idea that there was no surer guarantee of your genius than to have all the idiots attacking you. There’s a great quotation from the Irish writer Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him." Anyway, I hope that’s the way Victorine looked at things.

[hasenbein]

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ross_king wrote:

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marlohill wrote:
Something that blatantly sticks out that others in this group have noticed too is the criticism that the artists and even their models were subjected to.

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The criticism of this period is certainly depressing to read: much of it is ignorant and a lot is just plain nasty. One reason why the criticism was so venomous is that the art critics - like many of the paintings they reviewed - were political, or at least politically inspired. One art critic in the 19th century wrote that the Paris Salon was as political as the elections. So, for example, the attacks on Cabanel’s Birth of Venus in 1863 were partly veiled attacks on the Emperor Napoleon III, who had bought it. You couldn’t criticize the emperor (without ending up in jail), but you could at least attack his taste in painting.

Manet came in for strong criticism not only because of his style but also due to his subject matter. Many of his works (especially his early ones) had a political charge to them: in paintings like The Old Musician, The Street Singer, and The Absinthe Drinker he portrayed beggars, street urchins, itinerant singers and musicians, all of them "down and outs" whose appearances in his work could be seen as reproaches to the prosperity of Napoleon III’s Paris and his policy of clearing the slums. Manet liked to dwell on life’s darker side. Art critics who supported the emperor, or who were politically (as well as artistically) conservative, would obviously let rip at this sort of thing. That’s one reason why Victorine Meurent’s appearance was described in such unflattering terms ("female gorilla," etc.): she was threatening to many people because she represented an "unruly woman." But had Victorine read the review, she could obviously have been expected to take it personally.

On the other hand, maybe she, like Baudelaire and Zola, enjoyed adverse criticism: Baudelaire and Zola had the idea that there was no surer guarantee of your genius than to have all the idiots attacking you. There’s a great quotation from the Irish writer Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him." Anyway, I hope that’s the way Victorine looked at things.

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I'm not certain if this is true today in art, but in music, I stopped reading reviews until after I had attended a concert. It seems as though many reviewers and/or critics seem to believe that they must have something negative to say to justify their jobs.

KathyH

[ross_king]

I discovered a good anecdote as I was doing research for the book, but I simply couldn’t fit it in ... so it's good to be able to tell it here. At the Salon of 1866 Jean-Léon Gérôme exhibited a work called "Heads of the Rebel Beys at the Mosque of el Assaneyn in Cairo." The painting shows a two men beside a mosque standing over a pile of disembodied human heads cluttering the steps. Apparently Gérôme (who had recently been attacked by the critics) modelled the heads on prominent Parisian critics. The critics were startled when they went to view the painting and saw their own grotesque features leering back at them. So Gérôme had his revenge.

You can see the painting on the following website (it’s the second one down: click to enlarge so you can see the heads).

http://www.artunframed.com/jean_leon_gerome_3.htm

I’m sure many other artists, writers and musicians have wanted to decapitate their critics.

[marlohill]

Gruesome! Clever painting, I wonder what was going on at the Mosque of el Assaneyn in Cairo? Jean Leon Gerome, was he an Impressionist too? The art work in the painting looks like the manequins in the Walt Disney World ride, Pirates of the Carribean. It sort of has that look about it, humorous, but gory.
Michelle

[ross_king]

Gérôme wasn’t an Impressionist. In fact, he was an enemy of the Impressionists, and he even banned all mention of Manet’s name from the class he taught at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He paints in a very different style than (and chooses very different subjects from) painters like Manet or Monet. Like Meissonier, Gérôme tries to include every little detail in his work, and his paintings usually tell a story. However, what exactly is going on in this painting I’m not sure: obviously someone has rebelled unsuccessfully against someone else! Many of his paintings show exotic scenes from Egypt.

The comparison with Pirates of the Caribbean is interesting. Ridley Scott, who directed Gladiator, claimed in an interview that he was inspired to do the film by one of Gérôme’s paintings, Pollice Verso, which is now in the Phoenix Art Museum. So if Gérôme was alive today, he’d probably be working in Hollywood.

You can see Pollice Verso (which means "thumbs down" ) by clicking on the following link and scrolling down to the third image and clicking to enlarge:

http://www.artunframed.com/gerome.htm

[Mariposa]

Interesting. The painting by Gerome that you cited reminded me of Jeff Wall's work. The photographic staginess of it.

Lizabeth

[ross_king]

Hi Lizabeth

That’s a good analogy. Gérôme (like Meissonier) used to create elaborate sets for his paintings in the same way that Jeff Wall uses actors, sets, props, and so forth, for many of his photographs. In order to do paintings like Pollice Verso, Gérôme bought Roman costumes and had special gladiator swords, etc., made for his models. As you can imagine, it got very expensive. You can begin to see why he hated the Impressionists: all they did was set up their easels on a riverbank and go to work for an hour or two.