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.

Self-Portrait of Léon Cogniet

We finish our look at French painter Léon Cogniet (1794 – 1880) with this wonderful self-portrait.

Cogniet’s greatest success in life came after 1843, not with his landscape or genre work, but when he devoted himself chiefly to portraits and teaching. He taught art at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Ecole Polytechnique; he also taught painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to several generations of artists.  Among his acolytes were Dominique Papety, Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat and Adrien Moreau.  His devotion to his students was legendary; when he died in the 10th arrondissement of Paris on November 20, 1880, he was buried in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. 

Self-portraits are remarkable personal statements.  Since they are both a reflection and a creation of the artist, they illustrate his artistic prowess while seeking to define himself.  They are how they see themselves, and how they want to be seen by the world.  Sometimes, the artist casts a cold, appraising and clinical eye at himself, and other times provides only a highly romanticized version of himself.  Just as we are often our truest selves only when wearing masks, artists are often the most naked when clothed only in paint.

So, what do we see when we look at Cogniet’s self-portrait?

First, obviously, a very handsome man – one who would not be out of place in New York’s hipster environment (other than he seems to be physically cleaner than most hipsters).  His hair is a tangled mass, but, for all of that, lush, dark, luxuriant.

Cogniet’s eyes gaze directly at us from beneath heavy, soulful brows.  The eyes are, perhaps, the most important note in the picture:  they speak of sincerity, sensitivity and introspection.  But … for all of that, there is a calculated quality to the effect, almost as if Cogniet thought – “they will see me as a sensitive and complicated man.”

The nose is long, and has a peasant-like flatness.  However, the nostrils are small, modulated and delicate.  His lips are a rich vermillion, full and mobile – with the barest suggestion of a self-debasing smile.

However, it is his clothes that make the strongest statement.  He wears a simple (though striking) red cravat over linen shirt, beige vest and dark topcoat (collar turned up in best Romantic fashion).  This is no dandy, no social butterfly, no aspiring court painter.  No – this is a self-styled man of the people; a teacher, a sensitive artist without pretentions of gentility, a man of honesty and frank emotional power.

Yes, it’s all calculated … but remember, calculated to both to obscure and illuminate his real self.  The choices he makes inspire both admiration and a touch of condescension.  Bravo for you, we think, for your lack of pretention, but how pretentious that lack of pretention is!

In this, we should, perhaps, take the word of his many students, to whom Léon Cogniet was a beloved figure.  It’s important to remember that in the atelier tradition, the art of painting continued and thrived simply because many dedicated masters made a point of sharing their genius.  It is that lack of continuity that has retarded contemporary art to such a lamentable degree, and we are all somewhat diminished by the lack of Léon Cogniets in this world.