The Canon’s Dinner by Jean Georges Vibert

We return today to master artist Jean Georges Vibert (1840-1902), who created a series of paintings illustrating the hypocrisy and greed of the church.  Vibert specialized in genre scenes that underscored human weakness within the clergy – and while these views were often acidic, they were seldom vitriolic.  These pictures became extremely popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but he won special acclaim in the (then) free-thinking United States.  He was actively collected by both the Astor and Vanderbilt families and today’s picture, The Canon’s Dinner (1875), was sold at auction as recently as November by Sotherby’s.  Obviously Vibert continues to speak to us today.

As Vibert wrote about himself …you can’t deny that the priests who began my education recognized in me elocutionary talents, because they planned to make a preacher of me. Yes; I advise you to speak of the priests! You have profited handsomely by their teachings!  They, at any rate, cannot be ignorant of your lively satire; you have made them feel the point of it enough.  Haven’t you always said that a painter should paint only what he sees?  It is not my fault if I have seen them at such close quarters.

By any critical yardstick, this is a remarkable picture.  Vibert tells the story through meticulous detail mixed with his signature snarky wit.  First off, the canon in the picture is a corpulent man, obviously well-used to his comforts.  Notice how his slippered feet are spread apart, resting on the rail of his table.  His ruddy face is lined but incandescent at the prospect of is good meal.  His plate is not only filled with lobster, but also on the table are two bottles of wine.  The tableware is silver and opulent – this is no simple meal.

Next to the canon is a tray resting on an elaborate table complete with what looks like duck, greens, gravy and perhaps a tureen of soup.  The couch upon which he sits is beautifully upholstered, complete with an ornate overhang.

The room is appointed in luxurious detail.  Note the tapestries that line the wall (delicately rendered by Vibert), along with the frescoes surrounding the door and the lush, Oriental carpet beneath his feet.

Vibert, of course, makes the joke complete with the canon’s companion.  That worthy is dressed in simple robes of black, his slim (and probably underfed) figure upright on a kneeling bench, holy book before him.  He is probably praying on behalf of the canon before he starts his meal, or, also likely, detailing some important part of church doctrine to his superior. 

The differences between the two men could not be more startling: thick and thin, sensual and ascetic, gluttonous and abstemious, worldly and spiritual.  However, the canon, who is clearly more ‘human’ in his enjoyment of the pleasures of the world, is undoubtedly higher in the church hierarchy, a hierarchy that values chastity, poverty, simplicity and self-denial.  Like the canon’s dinner, Vibert’s joke is just too delicious.

One other point – the qualities of such a picture, and its degree of wit, would be lost without the artist’s extraordinary technical ability.  Painted by, say, a Manet or Renior, the picture would merely become a study in colors, or perhaps a look at contrasts.  But appreciating the extreme sensual pleasure and richness of the surroundings is essential to the joke, and that kind of delineation is only possible with an artist gifted at realistic detail.

More Vibert tomorrow!

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.

Renoir Drawing, Peasant Girl With Dog

This very pleasant drawing, Peasant Girl With Dog, was done in red chalk on cream-colored paper by Pierre-August Renoir (1841-1919) in 1894, one of the most celebrated Impressionist painters.  With perhaps the exception of Edgar Degas, drawings by Impressionist masters are relatively rare – mainly because Impressionists gave up on drawing.

The characteristics we associate with Impressionism largely emerged from the paintings of Renoir and Claude Monet executed between 1867 and 1870.  Between the two of them, they changed the ‘language’ of painting, the after-effects of which are felt to this day.   Impressionists painted directly from the subject (dancers, farmers, seascapes, picnicers) to retain the changing nature of appearances.  They achieved this effect by using broadly painted broken brush-strokes, and by trying to capture objects as they change.  (It is not unusual for an Impressionist still life to include slightly wilted flowers.)  I also think of the advent of Impressionism as the era in which the mind and optic nerve parted ways: the largely intellectual, skill-based discipline of drawing (and painting) was largely abandoned in favor of sensation. 

The canon of Impressionists paintings has, once this new language of painting became more familiar, become very popular with the public.  This is largely because many of the Impressionists (Renoir, Monet, Degas et al) were wonderful colorists.   They painted slices of life rather than epic history or Biblical pictures, or formal portraits, and with this revolution, the centuries-old artistic tradition that began in the early Renaissance began to erode.

Renoir was born in Limoges and moved to Paris in 18S45. His early work was as a porcelain painter, and he used the money he earned to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he became a pupil of Gleyre with Monet, Bazille and Sisley. He exhibited in four of the eight Impressionist exhibitions which launched the movement and was one of the leading lights of the revolution until it was perceived that his native good humor led the more zealous Impressionists to dismiss him for not being ‘serious.’  (It is a mystery to your correspondent why ‘dour’ is equated with ‘serious,’ but that is perhaps the topic of a future post.)

We’ll look at Renoir’s life in greater detail tomorrow, but till then, let’s look at the above drawing.  The overall effect is a very pleasant one, but it seems to your correspondent to be little more than an artful doodle.  The woman’s anatomy looks to be sound, but much more is suggested than depicted.  The arm supporting the head seems a bit crabbed, and the head itself unevenly fitted to the torso.  The dog resting on the woman seems to be to scale, until one begins to wonder upon what low object the woman is sitting, or ponders how big is the bottom of the dog’s body.  The other dog is standing on its hind legs, unless it is a dry run for the final depiction of the dog.  The trees and fields are sketched out with a few loose lines, but mass is convincingly created.  So, like much of the Impressionist canon, the overall effect is quite nice, but it does not really support detailed viewing.

If I sound prejudiced against the Impressionists, well …, I am.  While I love much of the work, I cannot separate my momentary optic pleasure from the realization that the movement was the beginning of the end of art.  As Impressionists largely abandoned the discipline of drawing and the long apprenticeship of the Beaux-Arts tradition, art became less about skill and more about ‘feeling.’  It may be a big step between the pretty pictures of Renoir and the horrors of de Kooning, but Impressionism was the necessary first step that made the ugly irrelevancies of Modernism possible.