The Reading Lesson, by Léon Augustin Lhermitte

Today we conclude our weeklong look at the life and art of Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844 – 1925), celebrating the 170^th anniversary of his birth. 

Lhermitte’s earliest experience with the arts was copying pictures in popular illustrated magazines and studying the work of other French painters.  His school-teacher father encouraged his work by allowing him to sketch.  As the boy’s talents expanded, his father showed his drawings to Count Walewski, then minister at the École des Beaux-Arts.  Walewski was impressed, and offered the boy a scholarship of 600 francs, permitting him to enroll in the École Impériale de Dessin.  Here he was introduced to a type of study of drawing that was based on memorization, a technique also used by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).  In this way he could view a scene, especially a landscape scene, and employ his memories to more fully execute the painting back in his studio. 

Lhermitte took part in both the Exposition Universelle in 1900, where he served as a member of the jury, and, the Exposition des Pastellistes.  In the latter part of his career, Lhermitte moved away from representing the human figure and concentrated more and more on landscape.  Figures in space lost their individual identity, and became part of the larger landscape composition.  At the same time, though, he also increased his focus on images of mother and child, as seen in today’s picture.

In his older age, Lhermitte stayed close to his home and executed several landscape pastels based on the banks of the Marne, which was near his studio, and other landscapes near his home.  He was decorated with several honors from across Europe, such as the Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael in Germany, and his works were regularly acquired by the state after initial exhibition.  His life and career ended on July 28, 1925 in Paris.  His reputation would wane considerably, but Lhermitte gained new cultural currency in the 1990s, when he was reappraised by an exposition at the Musée d’Orsay.

Here, Lhermitte moves away from the primacy of the landscape and back to the human scale.  With The Reading Lesson, Lhermitte celebrates simple motherhood and even simpler pleasures.  The centrality of the mother as wellspring of a food, support, education and emotion succor was a theme to which he would return regularly.  Did Lhermitte miss his mother… or, perhaps, was his mother absent, and he missed what he never knew?  I have not been able to discover the answer to this question … but many artists (be they writers or painters or musicians) who focus on an idealized past, often do so because they feel as if they had missed some vital emotional connection in early life.  It’s possible that, to Lhermitte, The Reading Lesson is a fantasy painting.

Most critics agree that Lhermitte’s oil paintings are not as aesthetically pleasing as his drawings, and The Reading Lesson is a case in point.

Here, as with his pastel work, Lhermitte renders details vague with a few, loose brushstrokes.  He dapples the hair of the little girl and the bangs of the mother with white to emphasize the golden light which fills the background sky, and washes out the distant hill, as well. 

Also, it seems that Lhermitte’s formidable sense of composition plays him false here.   In other drawings we have seen, the composition is such that it leads the eye around the canvas, taking in the human figures and landscape, alike.  Here, Lhermitte plants his central figures dead-center, and provides no tension for the eye.  It is a very static composition.

For all of its sweetness, I am not nearly as enamored of this painting as I was of the drawings seen earlier this week.  It seems too soft, too diffuse, as if Lhermitte was using a visual shorthand to inspire our emotional response.  In other drawings, the fact that the figures were vague and indistinct added to the mystery of their actions and interactions.  That same indistinctness is markedly unsuccessful when the intention of the picture and the emotions involved are more concrete and precise.  It is almost as if his loose style works well with ambiguity, but descends into disposable sentiment when taking a more defined direction. 

Finally, the two figures lack the humanity-in-all-its-flaws quality of the three drawings we looked at.  These are idealized figures, not actual peasants or laborers.  When a painting would not be out of place on a Hallmark card, we must question its overall success.

The Japanese Fan, by Gustave Leonard De Jonghe (c.1865)

Good heavens, I love this picture.  In the original French, the title for this painting is L’admiratrice du Japon; translated into English, the title The Japanese Fan is a double pun, making reference to the fan on the floor, and the woman herself.

It was painted by Gustave Leonard de Jonghe, who was born on February 4, 1829 in Courtrai, Belgium. He was a painter of figures and genre scenes, working in both oils and watercolors.  De Jonghe was the son of Jan Baptiste de Jonghe, himself a talented artist and Gustave’s first teacher.  (How often have we come across artists initially trained by their fathers?)  Afterwards, Gustave continued his artistic studies with the acclaimed master teachers and artists, Louis Gallant and Francois Josef Navez (1787 – 1869). Gustave would also study under the famed Belgian artist, Alfred Stevens (1828-1906).

De Jonghe began working in Paris and beginning in1850, exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon and continued to do so throughout his career. The Paris Salon awarded him with a third place medal in 1863 and, that same year, he received a medal in Amsterdam.  Honors increased in 1864, when Belgian King named him Chevalier de l’Ordre de Leopold.

In 1882, de Jonghe suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and returned to Brussels. In 1884, he moved to Antwerp, where he would die in January 1893.  Most of his work now rests in private collections, though several significant paintings can be found at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris, and The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia.

In 1855, Gustave de Jonghe moved from Belgium to Paris and exhibited regularly in the Salon for the next thirty years.  This period was the dawn of the Aesthetic Movement, which celebrated the beauty and delicacy of blue and white china, and the subtle coloration and grace found in an idealized view of Japanese living.  The Japanese and blue and white china craze would later enthrall such diverse figures as James Whistler (1834-1903), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and de Jonghe’s own teacher, Alfred Stevens.  Collecting china and Japanese clothing and kimonos became a mania in major European cities, and often served as shorthand for refinement and delicacy of taste.  (Catalogs or picture books of Japanese scenes lie at our subject’s feet.)

The woman in the picture is obviously a fan of all things Japanese; and is the focus of the painting.  The Japanese fan, though, which may also be the point of the title, is simply an object on the floor.  The composition centers on the confrontation between the bird and the young woman which has, it appears, caused chaos in the room.  It is uncertain whether the woman is disciplining the cockatoo or the bird is threatening her.  To underscore the whimsy of the piece, the violent scene on the Japanese screen behind her reinforces the impression of a conflict between the two antagonists.

The wit of the picture is matched by de Jonghe’s masterful execution and composition.  Though the Japanese influence would later mean much to the Impressionists, de Jonghe flawlessly delineates kimono, dresser, china and screen.   Also precise is the subject’s expression, easily recognizable to any pet owner, just wait until I get my hands on you….

Renoir's Dance in the Country Sketch

Today, another pretty drawing by Renoir, this, a study for his later painting, Dance in the Country, painted in 1883 and currently at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.   The painting was commissioned a year earlier by wealthy merchant Paul Durand-Ruel; it is a sister picture to Renoir’s Dance in the City, painted that same year.

The male figure was modeled by Paul Lothe, Renoir’s friend, and the woman is Aline Charigot, who later became Madame Renoir.  The finished painting is rather large -- both figures are life-size – and features Renoir’s characteristic limpid coloration.

But let’s look for a moment at the drawing.  That this is a quick study (executed in brown wash and watercolor with a brush over a pencil sketch) is fairly clear.  Lothe’s arm around Charigot is clearly a little too long above the elbow, and Renoir seems a tad uncertain as to where on the man’s shoulder to place the lady’s hand.  Moreover, Charigot looks more pained than pleasured, a misstep Renoir corrected in the final painting (see below).  Charigot, a simple country girl somewhat in awe of her celebrated husband, looks at us from the finished painting with an open-mouthed grin, teeth showing, truly happy.  It took Renoir a few studies (there is an additional pencil study for the drawing in the Honolulu Academy of Arts) before he captured her mix of happiness and abandon.

What Renoir does do well here is convey the sense of movement; this is not two people standing still in the simulacrum of dance, but a man and a woman really moving.  And Renoir, always colorist before draughtsman, cannot help but apply blue wash to the man’s pants and details of her dress – color was to the Impressionists what line was to the classicists.

While it is always interesting to look at a painting’s preparatory drawings, it is usually the finished work that is the most arresting.  However, I will chance a sacrilege at the Impressionist alter and opine that I think the drawing – a sketch, really – is somehow more beguiling than the finished work.  The drawing has an immediacy and intimacy that the painting lacks, and the line is not obscured by Renoir’s sometimes ‘fuzzy’ brushwork.

Before we leave Renoir, here’s a great story the artist told about how he acquired a Paul Cézanne watercolor (quoted from Renoir, an Intimate Record, by A. Vollard):

Coming back from Italy, I went to the Midi.  I looked up Cézanne and proposed that we should go to Estaque together to paint.

“Oh, don’t go there!” cried Cézanne, who had just come back.  “Estaque is done for!  They’ve put up parapets.  I can’t bear it!”

I went just the same, a little saddened by the thought of how they must have spoiled it; but I was encouraged when I found the same old Estaque, and if Cézanne had not told me, I would never have noticed any change.  His parapets were just a few stones one on top of another.

It was on this trip that I brought back a magnificent water-colour of Bathers by Cézanne, the one you see there on the wall.  The day I found it, I was with my friend Lauth.  He had been suddenly taken with a violent diarrhea.

“Do you see any good leaves around?  No, I don’t want pine-needles.”

“No, but here’s some paper,” I replied, picking up a stray piece at my feet.  It was one of the finest of Cézanne’s water-colours; he had thrown it away among the rocks after having slaved over it for twenty sittings.