FRANCE MAKES HISTORY: THE EXPOSITION DES PRIMITIFS FRANQAIS AND THE THIRD REPUBLIC by MOIRA FRANCES STEVEN B.A., Sir George Williams University, 1972 Diploma, Art History, The University of British Columbia, 1991 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITIS^Ft'dOLUMBIA April 1995 © Moira Frances Steven, 1995 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. ~ . . , F i n e A r t s Department of ^ _ The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada D a t e A p r i l 27, 1995 DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT The Exposition des Primitifs frangais opened in the Pavilion de Marsan at the Louvre in 1904, with over 700 paintings, drawings, enamels, sculptures and manuscripts assembled there from French and international collections, both private and public. The exhibition, organized by the most prominent curators, academics and administrators in the Beaux- Arts community, attempted to rewrite French art historical canon by arguing that a heretofore overlooked School of French Primitive art, particularly paintings, had spanned the gap between the acknowledged highpoints of High Gothic sculptural and architectural production and the emergence of the so-called Golden Age of French art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Organized partly in response to claims of Flemish artistic supremacy at the 1902 Exposition des Primitifs flamands at Bruges, the French primitifs were positioned in their 'genius' as parallel to and contemporary with Flemish and Italian early renaissance developments and as a national school equally deserving of academic, aesthetic and historical consideration. This exhibition, however, must be considered in the context of shifting discourses and contemporary events. The exhibition's Catalogue Definitif provides a field for diverse readings of these events and strategies and forms a central part of the analysis and argument. Through an examination of the language choices and focus of the Catalogue's rhetoric, as well as the structure of its argument, this thesis links the exhibition's claims to the contemporary political environment, specifically around Republican issues of a national identity defined in terms of language and culture, as well as issues of immigration and perceived threats to national integrity; Republican attempts to reestablish a distinct political position between the emerging Left and Right; and a reappropriation of the 'primitif from competing national claims and emerging avantgardist definitions. \ TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iv List of Illustrations v Acknowledgement vii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter One The 'Event' 20 Chapter Two Catalogue as Representation 39 Chapter Three Representation as 'Catalogue' 59 Chapter Four Perception and Reception: Responses 91 to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais Conclusion 116 Illustrations 121 Bibliography 148 Appendix 1 Content Analysis of the Exposition des Primitifs 169 frangais Appendix 2 Chart of Exhibitions 1878 - 1904 172 Appendix 3 Component Parts of the Catalogue Definitif of the 176 Exposition des Primitifs frangais iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Plan of the Louvre 121 2. Facade of the Pavilion de Marsan, northwest corner 122 of the Musee du Louvre on the Rue de Rivoli 3. Catalogue Definitif - Title Page of the Catalogue 123 4. Catalogue Definitif - Advertising page for the Librairie 124 Centrale des Beaux-Arts, no page 5. Catalogue Definitif - Endpaper, no page 125 6. Catalogue Definitif - Administration, page V 126 7. Catalogue Definitif - Administration, pages VI and VII 127 8. Catalogue Definitif - Administration, pages VIII and IX 128 9. Catalogue Definitif - Introduction, page XI 129 10. Catalogue Definitif - Title Page of the Oeuvres Exposees au 130 Palais Du Louvre, no page 11. Catalogue Definitif - Peintures et Dessins section, page 1 131 12. Catalogue Definitif - Title Page of the Oeuvres Exposees a 132 la Bibliotheque Nationale, no page 13. Catalogue Definitif - Avis ['Notice', or Introduction] to 133 the Manuscrits a Peintures section, page 5 14. Catalogue Definitif - Manuscrits a Peintures section, 134 pages 8 and 9 15. Jean Fouquet, The Melun Diptych, right wing (La Vierge et 135 I'Enfant), c. 1450. 16. Nicolas Froment, Le Buisson Ardent, 1475-76 136 Figure Page 17. Enguerrand Charonton, La Triomphe de la Vierge Marie, 1453. 137 18. Ecole de Nicolas Froment, Pieta, avec saint Jean, la Vierge, 138 la Madeleine et un donateur, 1470?. 19. Le Peintre des Bourbons, called Le Maitre de Moulins, Saint 139 Victor et donateur, c. 1480. 20. Jean Fouquet, Portrait de Charles Vll, c. 1445. 140 21. Ecole de Nicolas Froment, Miracle d'un Saint portant sa 141 fete dans ses mains en presence des donateurs, c. 1480. 22. Jean Malouel, Martyre de saint Denis, c. 1400. 142 23. Le Peintre de Bourbons, dit Le Maitre de Moulins, La Vierge 143 et I'Enfant-Jesus avec quatre anges, c. 1490. 24. Jean Fouquet, The Melun Diptych, left wing (Etienne Chevalier 144 c. 1450. 25. Ecole de Paris, Altarpiece of the Parlement de Paris 145 (called Le Calvaire), c. 1450 26. Girard d'Orleans, Portrait de Jean le Bon, c. 1380. 146 27. Ecole d'Artois (Le Maitre de Flemalle), L'Adoration des Bergers, 147 c. 1430. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks and appreciation to all those who helped in the 'process': To the Interlibrary Loan Department staff - for their unfailing good humour, astonishing speed and diligent attempts to locate obscure information from less than precise sources, To Maureen Ryan and Carol Knicely - for their encouragement, good advice and expansive ideas and for seeing what I wanted to say, To my friends, both here at UBC and elsewhere, and especially to Laura and Joanna - for their love, patience and encouragement, To Joanne - for her sisterly support and love, even from 2,000 miles away, and To my parents - for their support and love, and for not questioning, even when they didn't really understand what all this was about. vii INTRODUCTION The national culture is a repository, inter alia, of classificatory systems. It allows "us" to define ourselves against "them" understood as those beyond the boundaries of the nations. It may also reproduce distinctions between "us" and "them" at the intra-national level, in line with the internal structure of social divisions and relations of power and domination. The elaboration of national identity is a chronic process. Of considerable importance is the relationship between the present of a national collectivity and its past. That relationship should be understood, at least in part, as an imaginary one, mediated by the continual, selective reconstitution of "traditions" and of "social memory". These categories direct our attention to the role of cultural institutions and practices through which the chain of identity between past and present is forged. It also requires us to consider the special role of cultural producers as active constructors of national identity.1 At 9:30 a.m. on the morning of April 12, 1904, M. Henri Marcel, the Director of Fine Arts, acting on behalf of the Minister of Public Education, opened the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in the Pavilion de Marsan wing of the Musee du Louvre and its companion exhibit at the Bibliotheque Nationale. This grandly staged exhibition of over 700 works was meant to display an ongoing legacy of great French art in the era from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. It was scheduled to run for three months, closing on the highly symbolic date of July 14, 19042, just before the Pavilion and the adjacent wing were to be reopened as the Musee des Arts decoratifs in 19053. This exhibition focused primarily on paintings and drawings, but also included sculpture, tapestries and other 'Philip Schlesinger, "On national identity: some conceptions and misconceptions criticized," Social Science 26,2 (1987): 264. Emphasis in original. Journal des Debats, Thursday, April 7, 1904: 2. 3Yvan Christ, Le Louvre et les Tuileries: Histoire Architecturale d'un double Palais (Paris: Les Editions «Tel», 1949): 130; and Jacques Hillairet JAuguste Andre Coussillan], Le Palais des Tuileries: Le Palais Royal et Imperial et Son Jardin ([Paris]: Les Editions de Minuit, [1965]): 100. 1 objects as 'supporting documentation'.4 Emphasizing primarily portraiture (or works claimed as portraiture) this exhibition promoted a school of French art that spanned the period between the great architectural achievements of the thirteenth century when France was renowned as the centre of the International Gothic style and the so-called classical period of French art beginning with the sixteenth century School of Fontainebleau. Those intervening centuries had long been perceived as a lacuna in the French art production, a gap which this exhibition intended to fill. In just two years Henri Bouchot, Conservateur du Departement des Estampes at the Bibliotheque Nationale, together with six prominent curators and specialists from the Institut Frangais, the Musee du Louvre and other prestigious institutions, had assembled works from private and public collections in France and from as far away as Berlin and Glasgow. They even went to great lengths to 'harvest' regional museums, distant churches and monasteries, and even government offices for little-known works to support the exhibition's claims.5 Organizers prepared at least two catalogues to accompany the exhibition: the Catalogue Definitif and a special edition Catalogue; both contained an introductory essay by Georges Lafenestre, the Conservateur des Peintures at the Louvre, and descriptive entries for all pieces exhibited, edited by Henri Bouchot, Conservateur du Departement des Estampes at the Bibliotheque Nationale. The exhibition and its catalogues made 4 Les Primitifs Frangais exposes au Pavilion de Marsan et a la Bibliotheque Nationale, Catalogue definitif (Paris: La Comite de I'Exposition des Primitifs francais): 107. Hereinafter referred to as Catalogue Definitif. 5Henri Bouchot, "L'exposition des primitifs frangais: Avant-propos," Gazette des beaux-arts Series 3,31, 562 (April 1904): 267. Hereinafter referred to as Bouchot, "...Avant-propos." 2 specific and overt claims that these art works in the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century comprised a significant, singularly French artistic production, an important part of the evolution of an original national 'genius', later overcome and subsumed by the influence of Italianate schools in the mid-sixteenth century. Thus it was positioned in opposition to traditional assertions of the supremacy of the Netherlandish and Italian schools of the same period. The exhibition and its catalogues asserted unequivocally that these heretofore ignored French Primitives had in fact influenced Flemish artistic developments of the fifteenth century, rather than the reverse and more commonly held belief that the Flemish themselves had originated the northern stylistic tradition. In fact, the exhibition dared to suggest that there had been a French Renaissance (or, as Bouchot and Lafenestre preferred to describe it, a continuing development) parallel to, or even preceding the classical revivals of the Italian Renaissance. The concept of a linear development of artistic practice was a given in academic and connoisseurship discussions of this period. Long before the science of evolution had circulated during the mid-nineteenth century, the ideas of a linkage between artistic movements and of progressive artistic development from pre-historical to modern times had become part of art historical practice and the conceptualization of the art historical canon; scholars sought in contemporary objects their roots in the past acknowledged 'masters'. Deviations in style were accounted for by theories about the melding of disparate traditions, or in the 'overpowering' of one tradition by another. From at least the mid-eighteenth century, the Renaissance (Italian, that is) had been epitomised as the 3 beginning of the modem period's reclamation of classical knowledge superseding the 'ignorance' of the so-called Dark and Middle Ages when perspective and anatomy had been forgotten. And from that point on, cultural evolution had been seen as an unchallenged straight line forward to the present day. In the later eighteenth century a rival school of thought extolled the virtues of an indigenous Northern European style, suggesting that, during the late fifteenth century, the independent development of a rival mode of expression from Netherlandish sources had blended a Northern sense of immediacy, naturalism and realism with an Italian sense of perspective and proportion to produce the great developments of the sixteenth and later centuries, epitomised by artists such as Jan van Eyck. Paralleling the growth of nationalistic ideologies in the last half of the nineteenth century, however, was a further fractioning of this Northern stream into German, Flemish and Netherlandish styles, just as the overall 'Italian' sobriquet had been divided into Florentine, Venetian, Roman, etc. The Northern sub-styles overlapped and re-divided into multiple style groups geographically based around cities or under specific ruling groups. At the start of the twentieth century, these dual streams of Italian and Netherlandish art were accepted by scholars, collectors and artists alike as the basis and origin of all contemporary European art and historical analysis. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais, however, broke from this seamless history. Georges Lafenestre and Henri Bouchot presented a new theory: namely that, from Roman architectural sources through to the images produced in the so-called Dark Ages and the later magnificence of Gothic cathedrals and manuscript illuminations flowed a single (French) line of evolution and creative development leading up to "a more natural and free 4 Renaissance..., a Renaissance above all more national, more spontaneous, and which bloomed effortlessly, joyously, as a wildflower, naive and fresh and in its own time, from the strong stem of secular tradition."6 In their argument, Flemish art and its related schools in Germany were viewed as merely offshoots of the central French stalk of artistic development. In comparison with French originality, the Italian Renaissance was simply "a sizable imitation of antiquity badly translated by the decadent Italians"7. The French, they claimed, thus had preeminence over the Italians, Belgians, and Germans, for in French art there had been no 'dark ages,' but a subtle and steadfast continuation of the Golden Age of Greece tied directly through to the Golden Age of France. Importantly, this French 'Renaissance' was not rooted in the Church - the emphasis on 'secular' in the above quotation cannot be clearer. In discussing this revisionist history, Lafenestre set up a series of polarities, such as court and nation; aristocratic and popular; forced and natural, which delineated France's art production in the formative years of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a national, secular, popular (i.e., non- aristocratic) and naturalistically based art, exactly the kind of art production which the governing Republicans were themselves promoting in 1904. The Exposition des primitifs frangais, then, asserted the supremacy and continuity of French art production by extending its authority back from the Classical period of the seventeenth century to the end of the High Gothic to bridge a gap in the French art ^Catalogue Definitif, XXI: "...Renaissance plus naturelle et plus libre..., Renaissance plus nationale surtout, plus spontanee, et s'epanouissant sans efforts, joyeusement, comme une fleur de terroir, naive et fraiche, sortie, en sa juste saison, de la tige robuste des traditions seculaires." 7Catalogue Definitif, XXI: "...fondee sur une imitation materielle de I'antiquite mal traduite par les decadents italiens...." 5 historical continuum. What my thesis also argues is that this exhibition was a product of and produced within a framework of other discourses which concerned issues such as the identity of France, the reassertion of a Republicanism situated between polarizing political positions, and the reappropriation of the 'primitif from both an emerging avant- garde definition and alternative national interpretations. Central to this positioning was the articulation of a particular 'Frenchness', both in national and international terms. Through the medium of art and art historical discussion a specific formulation of 'France' was written for a bourgeois, 'French' viewing public. In completing this analysis I work primarily with the text of the principal catalogue to show how the arguments presented in its introductory essay and the entries worked in conjunction with the images to reconstitute the art historical canon. The paintings and drawings, individually and collectively, were arranged in a particular order and the text re- framed them with particular inferences arising from that imposed order. In the context of this exhibition they worked together: the text inscribed meaning in conjunction with these images, largely unfamiliar to the exhibition's public; however, the text conveyed the exhibition's 'message', even without the supporting documentation provided by the images themselves. In other words, the images were in some senses secondary to and supportive of the textual construction surrounding them; the text had (and has) a separate and independent circulation that constructed meanings outside the experience and physical boundaries of the exhibition. An examination of this exhibition, its construction, representation and milieu provokes a series of questions: Why was this exhibition held? What differentiates this 6 exhibition from others in this period? What is worth noting about this particular collection exhibited at this time? Why were the fundamental claims about the primacy of French cultural production made in this exhibition being asserted (or reasserted) in 1904? What was the climate which supported collecting so many works of art into one location? To what end and to whose benefit was this event contemplated? The position and function of this thesis then is to deconstruct the events surrounding the exhibition to reveal the structures and forces implicated in the creation of the exhibition and to discover why this event was so thoroughly discussed, debated and yet is now comparatively unmentioned. The very few works that have discussed this exhibition have approached it primarily as a French response to the rising and conflicting claims of nationalism being made in Europe in the later years of the nineteenth century and the pre-World War I period.8 Analysis of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can move beyond the purely nationalistic and externally focused enterprise it has been made out to be by these historians only by investigating the wider and more complexly defined milieu surrounding the exhibition. In addition, it is also valuable to consider some of the contradictory and complementary issues surrounding the idea of 'the exhibition', the 'history' it was trying to re/write, and the function of the written documentation as accompaniment to and residue of an 8Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, "The Recovery of the Past and the Modern Tradition," Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth Century An (London and Boston: Faber and Faber Limited, 1984); and Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993) are the only two works I have discovered in the course of my research which discuss this exhibition in any detail. Haskell in particular frames his argument around the discussion of the claims of a 1902 Belgian exhibition, the Exposition des Primitifs flamands, and posits the Paris exhibition as a response to those claims and other comments about French stewardship of their own national, cultural heritage. While this is certainly a worthwhile element to this discussion, more layers than these need to be explored. 7 e p h e m e r a l a n d t e m p o r a l l y l o c a t e d event, o c c u r r i n g in a s p e c i f i c p l a c e a n d at a s p e c i f i c t i m e . T h i s t h e s i s , t h e n , offers the following a r g u m e n t s . First, t h e exhibition itself w a s p o s i t i o n e d within a n o n g o i n g s e r i e s of 'nationalistic' art exhibitions o c c u r r i n g f r o m t h e m i d - n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y o n , but e x t e n d e d t h e g e n r e of r e t r o s p e c t i v e a n d s t a n d - a l o n e e x h i b i t i o n s e v e n further with its c l a i m s of national e x c e l l e n c e . It a t t e m p t e d t o rewrite w h a t w a s p r e v i o u s l y a c c e p t e d ; in other w o r d s , the d i d a c t i c c o n t e n t of e x h i b i t i o n s h a d shifted f r o m s u p p o r t i n g t h e ' k n o w n ' to c l a i m i n g the ' u n k n o w n ' . S e c o n d , t h e exhibition o c c u r r e d within a n d w a s f r a m e d a r o u n d s p e c i f i c c o n t e m p o r a r y e v e n t s a n d o p i n i o n s . B y d e c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e rhetorical d e v i c e s a n d a l l u s i o n s u s e d in t h e t e x t s , w o r d a n d i m a g e , w h i c h c o m p r i s e d the d i s c o u r s e s s u r r o u n d i n g the exhibition, I a s s e r t that, t h r o u g h the m e d i u m of t h e exhibition a n d its c a t a l o g u e , t h e c u r a t o r s w e r e in f a c t d i s c u s s i n g c o n t e m p o r a r y political e v e n t s , b o t h internal a n d external to F r a n c e , a n d t h e e x h i b i t i o n ' s s t a n c e for this s c h o o l of F r e n c h art f o r m e d b o t h a r e t r o s p e c t i v e r e d r e s s i n g a n d c o r r e c t i o n of a n art history p e r c e i v e d a s faulty a n d a s a c o m m e n t a r y o n p r e s e n t political situations a n d i s s u e s . T h e i m p a c t of F l e m i s h immigration o n the n o r t h w e s t b o r d e r s a n d o n g o i n g t e n s i o n with Italy o v e r F r e n c h efforts to s e c u l a r i z e t h e e d u c a t i o n a l s y s t e m , for e x a m p l e , a r e i m p l i c a t e d in t h e a r g u m e n t s p r e s e n t e d in the d i s c o u r s e c o n s t r u c t e d b y Exposition des Primitifs frangais to d e v a l u e , or rather d i m i n i s h the Italian a n d F l e m i s h c l a i m s to a 'primitif a n d R e n a i s s a n c e art p r o d u c t i o n . T h e exhibition t h u s c o u c h e d c o n t e m p o r a r y situations a n d beliefs in a R e p u b l i c a n interpretation of historical i m a g e s . 8 My third argument considers how the art historical contentions of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can be seen as a Janus-faced and paradoxical attempt, on the one hand to reassert a centrality and supremacy of established art historical institutions amid a perceived dispersal and therefore weakening of the authoritative voice of the Paris/Louvre/ institutional paradigm, while on the other to propose an ultimately radical theory of French art production in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The art historical and curatorial endeavour of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais extended beyond the exhibition to affect the entire conception of European art history - simultaneously radicalizing its content by advancing a French primitif in opposition to accepted Italian and Flemish genealogies, while at the same time reinforcing the centrality of French academic and museum institutions. The focus of this thesis, therefore, is not to re-argue the merits, or lack thereof, of the theories presented in favour of and against the 'rehabilitation' of a school of French Primitives. Rather, it is to examine why such arguments occurred at that specific time and the reasons for the vehemence and incidence of them. Why, in other words, did this exhibition occur when and how it did? To what end was it organized and what was the outcome or result or effect of the claims made there? To this end it is important to note that Henri Bouchot, Georges Lafenestre and their colleagues intended the Exposition des Primitifs frangais as a reply to a Bruges exhibition of 1902, the Exposition des Primitifs f/amands.9 The official catalogue of the Belgian ^he exhibition title is variously recorded (as is the Exposition des Primitifs frangais), but for consistency i will stay with Exposition des Primitifs flamands, as it was referred to in the French press. The exhibition ran for three and half months (from June to September 1902, extended by two weeks due to demand) and attracted some 35,000 visitors and a wide response in journals arid newspapers, according to Weale's article (W.H. James Weale, "The Early Painters of the Netherlands as illustrated by the Bruges Exhibition of 1902 [2 parts]," Burlington Magazine 1,1 and 2 (March and April 1902): 41-52 and 202-217). Regrettably, I have 9 exhibition, authored by the English scholar, W.H. James Weale, extolled the virtues of the Flemish works as a means of recouping an ignored Belgian heritage. An alternative Catalogue Critique written by a young scholar, Georges Hulin de Loo 1 0 , while proclaiming that he had 'solved' some of the mysteries of Northern European art history, pointedly asserted at the same time that the French should emulate the Belgians in salvaging their own past. Hulin de Loo directly challenged the French art establishment; he argued that the French public was unfamiliar with much fifteenth and sixteenth century French art simply because it was not hung in the public galleries and, when examples were displayed, they were mis-attributed by French curators and academics to German, Flemish or Dutch painters. To add further injury, he asked disingenuously: Is it by ignorance or thoughtlessness that [France] neglects its treasures? Is [France] waiting until a foreigner, some patient German scholar, applies himself to researching the few works, to their reproduction and their study, and, by means of his approach, work and persistence, succeeds in demonstrating to the eyes of France and of the world what had been, before the Italian hybridization, the French national art?11 been unable to locate the original Weale catalogue, Exposition des Primitifs flamand et de I'art ancien (Bruges, 1902), for comparison and have had to rely on secondhand quotations and references in Weale's article. Francis Haskell, in History and its Images, places the exhibition firmly within the sorcalled Flemish Renaissance movement of the period. I agree that it is part of the cultural movement of the time; he does not, however, expand the discussion to more complex political, economic and ideological territory which would have made the event's timing and relevance even more compelling. 1 0Georges Hulin de Loo, Bruges 1902: Exposition de Tableaux Flamandes desXIV^, XV s et XVI-siecles - Catalogue Critique (Gand: A. Siffer, Libraire-Editeur, 1902). "Hulin de Loo, Bruges 1902:..., LVIII: Est-ce par inconscience ou par insouciance qu'elle laisse les tresors dans I'oubli? - Attend- elle qu'un etranger, I'un ou I'autre patient erudit Allemand, s'attache a la recherche des oeuvres eparses, a leur reproduction et a leur etude, et qu'a force de demarches, de labeur et d'obstination, il arrive enfin a montrer aux yeux de la France de du monde quel a ete, avant I'hybridation italienne, I'art national francais? 1 0 Such a telling insult prompted a swift response. By January 1903, an article by Henri Bouchot in the French periodical, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, announced a retaliatory exhibition, albeit in an editor's footnote: It was last August, in returning from the Exposition des primitifs flamands de Bruges, that M. Henri Bouchot launched, in the journal, L'Eclair, an Exposition des Primitifs frangais project. His rallying cry has everywhere found a reply; numerous and delighted supporters have contacted the scholarly curator at the Cabinet des Estampes, which permit him to consider henceforth the realization of his idea.1 2 A comparatively brief fourteen months later, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was opened. Georges Lafenestre, too, in his opening essay to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais's Catalogue Definitif, confirmed that the Flemish show had been the main impetus to the creation of the Paris event when he writes "[t]he invitation, furnished by the Exposition des Primitifs flamands, at Bruges, in 1902, for a methodical and scientific comparison of two contemporary arts, fraternal and alike, was too seductive to avoid."13 The direct link between the events is clearly recognized and acknowledged. But is that The reference.to a German scholar 'discovering' French artistic roots must have especially rankled French readers. 1 2Henri Bouchot, "(.'exposition des primitifs francais: de quelques portraits de peintre Jean Fouquet aujourd'hui perdus," La Revue de I'art ancien et moderne 13, 70 (Janvier 1903): 1: C'est en aout dernier, au retour de YExposition des primitifs flamands de Bruges, que M. Henri Bouchot avait lance, dans le journal I'Eclair, le projet d'une Exposition des primitifs frangais. Son appel a partout trouve de I'echo de nombreuses et flatteuses adhesions sont parvenues au savant conservateur du Cabinet des Estampes, qui lui permettent de considerer desormais comme certaine la realisation de son idee. "Catalogue Definitif, XXX: "L'invitation, fournie par I'admirable Exposition des Primitifs flamands, a Bruges, en 1902, a une comparaison methodique et scientifique de deus arts contemporains, fratemels et jumeaux, etait trop seduisantes pour qu'on s'y derobat." 11 all? Even though the academic sensibilities of the Louvre and the French art establishment had undoubtedly been stung by Hulin de Loo's observations, the launching of an enterprise such as the Exposition des Primitifs frangais must have been predicated on a political and cultural climate that encouraged what seems to have been a rapid (and reactive) organization of this event14 Other factors, attitudes and influences must have been at play to support such an expenditure of time, effort and the relatively scarce funding for fine arts.1 5 Republican ideology that was elucidated in public policies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as viewed through this reading of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can be described as centrist and moderating, or, as historian Francois Furet phrases it, "a conservative authority governing in the name of revolutionary values"16 From the first years of the Third Republic, the liberal bourgeois government had gradually moved to a more centrist position, so that by 1904, the middle year of the Waldeck- 14Although I have found no evidence specifically supporting this notion, it is quite possible that the idea of an Exposition des Primitifs frangais had been considered for a considerable time prior to the actual announcement, possibly in response to early publicity about the Bruges exhibit which was probably evident as early as 1901. 1 5 A n avenue of investigation unavailable to me during the course of my research is an examination of contemporary fiscal records of the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts. A profitable and enlightening endeavour would be to explore the costs incurred by the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and to determine from which ministry this funding was derived. Surely the costs would have been quite large - too large for the standard budget of the Beaux-Arts section of the Ministry to cover without special funding being allocated. The patriotism of French patrons and lenders might account for some of the expenses; however, one cannot presume that all lenders, especially foreign ones, absorbed the full cost of transportation, insurance, etc. 1 6Francois Furet, 'The Birth of History in France," In the Workshop of History, trans. Jonathan Mandelbaum (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984): 92. 12 Rousseau government17, the Bloc Republicain comprised a mixture of political stripes including the Socialist, Millerand, as well as more centrist conservatives moving away from the right wing. Memories of the Communards and the turbulent Boulangist years of the later 1880's produced a more conservative Republicanism.18 Judith Stone's analysis of the ruling Republicans in this period indicates that, as the Radicals consolidated their position within government, their political tendencies edged toward the centre of the spectrum; this was a means of preserving the power they had thus far achieved by stripping away the more Jacobinist elements.19 The ruling Bloc supported pragmatic values of stability and consistency which focused on the individual; these included both free enterprise and notions of public service and duty to the state as one of the privileges and rights of the citizen.20 The individual could act and think as an individual while maintaining "society as a the collectivity of individuals".21 The place of art and its institutional manifestations within this Republican ideological framework has been discussed in great detail by a range of historians, such as Miriam 1 7Under President Ernest Combes, it was in power from 1902-1906. R.D. Anderson, France 1870-1914: Politics and Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977): 77-78. 1 8Anderson, 18; Andre Roussel and Jean Sgard, Histoire de France a travers les journaux du temps passee, Vol. 3: La Belle Epoque (1898-1914) (Paris: A I'Enseigne de I'arbre verdoyant, A. Colin, 1982): 78. 1 9Judith F. Stone, 'The Radicals and the Interventionist State: Attitudes, Ambiguities and Transformations, 1880-1910," French History 2, 2 (1988): 185. 2 0Miriam Levin, Republican Art and Ideology in Late Nineteenth Century France (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986): 68. 2 1Levin, 19. 13 Levin and Daniel J. Sherman22; these authors, however, have focused predominately on the contemporary production of art in analyzing, for example, the Salons, the envoi method of distributing annual Salon purchases to provincial centres, and the development and fostering of an 'official' art style. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais, as I will show, represents the culmination of a parallel but very different tactic of using art within that Republican ideological structure. Contemporary production exemplified the nation's present level of achievement and projected the future development of the French state and its citizens under Republican rule. The historical exhibition as it had evolved from the Retrospectives at the Expositions Universelles23 demonstrated both the custodial role of the Third Republic in preserving the national patrimony as well as the multifaceted artistic roots of contemporary technological and artistic expertise. Republican art policies at the end of the nineteenth century proclaimed artistic practice as an intrinsic part of the liberal democratic state. As cultural historian Nicholas Green has described, the levels and depths of Republican governmental involvement in French cultural affairs were not simply the totalising imposition of government on the governed, but rather a constant and often unsuccessful negotiation with the existing structures of civil society. Moreover, as he 2 2Miriam Levin, previously cited and Daniel J. Sherman in "The Bourgeoisie, Cultural Appropriation, and the Art Museum in Nineteenth-Century France" (Radical History Review 38 (1987): 38-58) and Worthy Monuments: Art, Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). "Often, these exhibitions were limited to a consideration of relatively short periods of artistic production (i.e., ten, twenty or one hundred years) and were often linked with symbolic dates (for example, the Retrospective for the 1889 Exposition Universale commemorated the centennial of the Revolution). See Richard D. Mandrell, Paris 1900: The Great World's Fair (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1967) and Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988) for general discussions of the World's Fair phenomenon. 14 argues, state intellectuals and administrators were not the source and origin of such initiatives; their decisions and directives were always framed by a deeper level of economic, political and intellectual structuration. Nevertheless, focusing on the precise history of official policy and departments does provide one crucial point of access to the reworked definition of art and its role under the Republican hegemony.24 The theoretical principles outlined by Green and others2 5 to address the manufacture of art during the Third Republic can also be applied to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais because the exhibition discourse incorporates many of the same principles in recouping the art production of an earlier historical period into the ideological framework of the contemporary one. Thus, while the elements described in both Levin and Sherman were applied to production in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, I have used their work to inform my analysis of the display of historical works from a much earlier period at the Primitifs exhibition. The production values of the official art of the time were under question -- seen as formulaic and sterile -- and the Exposition des Primitifs frangais provided a new milieu in which to make similar claims without incurring the bored response the Salons had inspired in recent years.2 6 2 4Nicholas Green, '"All the Flowers of the Field': the State, Liberalism and Art in France under the early Third Republic," The Oxford Art Journal 10, 1 (1987): 73. " S e e note 21, above. 2 6 French historian and reviewer Andre Michel apologized to his readers for not having reviewed the 1904 Salon, but "this exhibition [i.e., the Exposition des Primitifs frangais] is so interesting and so exceptional...that perhaps you will permit me perhaps to delay still longer" ("cette exposition est si interressante et si exceptionelle...qu'on me permettra peut'etre de m'y attarder encore"]. Andre Michel, "Causerie Artistique V: L'Exposition des Primitifs francais," Journal des Debats (29 April 1904): 1. 15 The Third Republic, like its predecessors in the Second Empire and Restoration periods, was well aware that the institutions of the fine arts were important purveyors of a cultural atmosphere that could be harnessed to inculcate the nation with ideological tenets central to and supportive of the current regime. From this perspective, the successive governments of the Third Republic utilized the Louvre, the Salon system and other cultural events such as the Exposition Universelles as conduits for France's self- imaging as a modern nation concerned with an ever-more enlightened future. Recent retrospective analyses have revealed the subtexts of political posturing and national self- assertion interwoven through the apparent motivations of institutional display and commerce. In the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, too, there are subtexts which implicate a wider political agenda within the construction of its art historical claims. Historian Miriam Levin recognized that Republican aesthetics served ideological goals both by developing an 'official' style of art designed to "manipulate human psychology and social behaviour" and by regarding historical works as "so many insights into the sensibilities and production systems of older societies,...turn[ing] the past into a point of reference for determining the character their own [Republican] society's products ought to have."27 The ostensible democratization of art through public museums and the Salons went against the mostly elitist tendencies of the fonctionnaires in charge of the art institutions like the Louvre, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and the Institut Frangais. The positions of these fonctionnaires endured from one regime to another with the goal of keeping things Levin, 13. 16 the same and not risking change or the threat of the new.2 8 Their role was to protect and preserve the national patrimony, inherited via the Revolution from the Ancien Regime, for the benefit and general use of the Nation.29 With this in mind then, the question becomes: how did the claims of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais operate outside the professed arguments made in the Catalogue Definitif? As I will argue, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can be constituted as a textual and visual metaphor for the contemporary French and European environment as perceived by the Republican government and ruling elite. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais proposed a smooth historical continuum, but underlying and threatening that seamless historical scenario of a once unified, francophone, artistically autonomous and centralized nation was the implication of a France beleaguered by Italian, ultramontane and papally-linked artists invading from the south at the same time that the northwest provinces were falling under the pervasive influence of a Flemish internationalist presence. And while medieval Paris was struggling to remain the central controlling force for the nation, a dispersal of talent and power to provincial capitals was weakening the continuity and consistency of French (artistic) production and authority in the face of immigrant workers taking the place of the French-born. The foregoing outline provides almost too neat an analogy for the fears of the Paris-based Republicans at the turn of the twentieth century. External forces of the 2 8Jeanne Laurent, Arts et pouvoir en France de 1793 a 1981: Histoire d'une demission artistique, Universitaire de Saint-Etienne, Travaux 34 (Saint-Etienne: Centre Interdisciplinaire d'Etudes et de Recherches sur I'Expression Contemporaine, 1981): 10. 29Jean-Pierre Babelon and Andre Chastel, "La notion de patrimoine," Revue de I'Art 49 (1980): 19. 17 ultramontane Catholic conservatives were gathering momentum in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair while, at the same time, leftist groups were breaking away from the Republican centrist position to ally themselves with more Radical elements espousing internationalism of a different kind: socialism. Political leadership on the right, typified by Barres, called for a return to dispersed democracy. An influx of Belgian and Italian workers into the border provinces in the northwest and southeast were displacing French workers, a situation that fostered local and national distrust of such temporary populations who with little or no stake in France carried their French wages back across international borders.3 0 To elaborate on these issues, this thesis considers the question of the wider application of the visual argument of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in four chapters, each dealing with specific issues. First, I examine the exhibition itself: where it was held, its contents and their arrangement, as well as the milieu of exhibitions of which the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was but one part. This examination demonstrates how the Exposition des Primitifs frangais constructed the viewing of its contents and how that viewing reinforced the ideological messages of the exhibition. In the second chapter, I investigate how the catalogues, and particularly the Catalogue Definitif, formed the textual argument, first as supplement to the visual experience of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and second as a separate construction of the overall exhibition argument; the use of language, the formulation of the argument and the circulation of the catalogues all 3 0Firmin Lientacker, "La Situation des travailleurs beiges en France de 1871 a 1914," Les Relations franco-beiges de 1830 a 1934, Actes de Colloque de Metz November 15-16, 1974 (Metz: Centre de recherches relations Internationales de I'Universite de Metz, 1975): 175. 18 are considered as elements of the textual argument. Then, in Chapter Three, I consider the political and artistic climate and community within and outside France during the period leading up to and surrounding the exhibition in an attempt to unravei different readings of the Catalogue Definitif and the complex agenda of alternate meanings that can be derived from it; this chapter also locates the term 'primitif within contemporary usage and practice and discusses how the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and the Musee du Louvre, the institutional body supporting the exhibition, reappropriated this term in order to defuse the radical overtones of other usage. And in the fourth chapter, I place the arguments surrounding the exhibition's avowed intent within a framework of responses by major periodicals and journals of the time, both domestic and foreign, using the Catalogue Definitif and the position taken by the curators as a counterpoint to the support, or lack of it, for that position. The Conclusion includes a brief review of subsequent accounts of French art history to investigate what the long range impact of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was on the 'rewriting' of that history. 19 CHAPTER ONE THE 'EVENT' The museum's primary function is ideological. It is meant to impress upon those who use or pass through it society's most revered beliefs and values.31 Analysis of a long-past event is an inherently conjectural process. Temporality and ephemerality are the essence of an experience and to re-create that experience is impossible. This chapter attempts, however, to reconstruct the Exposition des Primitifs frangais to some extent, first, by delving into written descriptions of the exhibition to understand how the physical layout and siting of the exhibition became an important part of the discourse of the exhibition; second, by examining this exhibition as part of a continuum of exhibition practices occurring throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth as a forum for nationalistic expressions voiced in cultural terminology and settings; and third, by discussing the 1902 Exposition des Primitifs flamands held in Bruges, Belgium, as the direct precursor to and professed impetus for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais held two years later. The French exhibition which M. Marcel so eagerly opened had been constructed for the maximum effect on the public viewership it was trying to attract. Four analytical elements, those of content, site, timing, and organization, provide a framework for 're- visualizing' the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. 3 1 Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, 'The Universal Survey Museum", Art History 3, 4 (December 1980): 449. 20 In purely numerical terms32, out of the 701 objects the exhibition displayed, there were 459 paintings, drawings and mural copies, as well as 23 tapestries, 25 enamels and 58 sculptures at the Pavilion de Marsan; and 242 manuscripts and miniatures at the Bibliotheque Nationale several blocks away. The visual preponderance of paintings and drawings (64% of the objects shown) was reinforced by curator Paul Vitry's introduction to the Sculptures section of the Catalogue Definitif in which he clearly placed all other genres of objects in the exhibition in a secondary and supporting role: The few pieces here described which make no pretence of constituting a complete presentation show the development and essential works of French sculpture in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. They are reunited here simply to add to the decoration of the Exposition rooms and to offer at the same time some characteristic examples for comparison of the evolution of French painting and those of sculpture. They have been borrowed almost in their entirety from Parisian collections.33 This is an important emphasis: although not specifically entitled L'Exposition des Peintures primitifs frangais, the weight and focus of the discourse surrounding the claims of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was on the painted and drawn works it contained. The qualities and levels of production exemplified in the enamels, tapestries, and especially the sculptures and manuscripts were apparently unchallenged or unchallenging; thus the field of combat lay in the drawn and painted images. It was here that Henri Bouchot, 3 2Refer to appendix 1 for a detailed breakdown of the exhibition by type of work, content and lender. "Catalogue Definitif, 107: Les quelques pieces dont suit I'indication n'ont pas la pretention de constituer une serie complete, montrant le developpement et les oeuvres essentielles de la sculpture francaise aux XIVe, XV e et XVIs siecles. Elles ont ete reunies simplement pour contribuer a la decoration des salles de I'Exposition et pour offrir en meme temps quelques termes de comparaison caracteristiques entre revolution de la peinture francaise et celle de la sculpture. Elles ont ete empruntees presque uniquement a des collections parisiennes. 21 chief curator of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, and Georges Lafenestre, the author of the Introduction, contended that French creative superiority in painting and drawing had been continuous and particular. Analysis of the ownership of the objects according to nationality of lenders and city of origin shows that the majority of lenders unsurprisingly were, first, French or domiciled in France and, second, private owners. Educated, and numbering among them current and past government ministers and bureaucrats, as well as members of the Institut Frangais and the art-historical establishment, the Paris-centred owners loaned their works to the Louvre, in a sense, in order to show their own art to themselves and each other. Each had an interest, whether political, personal or economic, in promoting the re- interpreted content of the works and, by displaying their possessions in the central national cultural institution, they were also establishing their status as owners of recouped, and therefore more valuable, 'masterworks'.34 It is interesting and ironic to note that, of the 25 works borrowed from non-Parisian institutions (though comprising only 13% of the total show), four of the five highlights of the exhibition35 were from institutions and sites outside the lle-de-France/Paris hub. Their 'freshness' to the critics might have contributed to this response, but it points to the frailty of the Louvre's position as the repository of aH of France's greatest treasures. 3 4 S e e appendix 1 for detailed information. 3 5 B y this, I mean the greatest number of mentions in the extensive periodical coverage of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. These were: the Buisson Ardent (fig. 16) from Aix; the Triomphe de la Vierge Marie (fig. 17) and the Pieta (fig. 18), both from Villeneuve-les-Avignon; the Melun Diptych, the two wings reunited here from their galleries in Antwerp and Berlin (fig. 15 and 24); and the Portrait de Jean le Bon (fig. 26), which, though local, was hidden from general view in the Bibliotheque Nationale. 22 Site is the second important element in analyzing the exhibition's discourse surrounding the claims for a French primitif by the curators. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais was housed in the Pavilion de Marsan (fig. 1), a section with considerable Republican resonance. Severely damaged during the Commune uprising in 1871, along with most of the Aile Nord and the Bibliotheque du Louvre, its ruins had been used in the early days of the Republic as a symbol of the valour of the true Republican hero battling to save that icon of France, the Louvre, from the depredations of the Communards.3 6 Rebuilt after 1872, its west-facing facade (fig. 2) had been harmonized architecturally with that of the Pavilion de Flore on the south wing in the much older style of Henri IV, whose reign (1595-1610) was symbolic of the beginnings of France's Golden Age of the seventeenth century.37 The Louvre was the ideal institution in which to hold an exhibition claiming French artistic supremacy. Previously a royal palace, it had been turned into a public national museum (and later an art school) after the French Revolution and had long since attained standing as the fulcrum of French artistic production. Here were housed the proofs of French greatness as well as the booty of past conquests; here too was centred the arbiters of taste and 'quality' in current artistic production. As a social space, the Louvre drew its specific audience for various purposes: pretence and erudition, entertainment and excellence. Under Republican auspices, the Louvre performed the dual functions as the central democratic site, accessible by all, where a national 'taste' was housed and as a 36Christiane Aulanier, Histoire du Palais et du Musee du Louvre, Vol. IV, Le nouveau Louvre de Napoleon III (Paris: Editions des Musees Nationaux, 1961): 19. 3 7Christ, 130. 23 complement to contemporary art production in state art schools and in the salons administered by them.3 8 This siting of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais then reinforced the state involvement and support for the nationalist arguments for a French primitif. On the other hand, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, though organized under the auspices of the Musee du Louvre, had been located in the most remote wing of Louvre, perhaps simply because of the sheer size of the show. The site of the exhibition was thus physically distant, marginalized from the central 'body' of the Louvre, and perhaps marginalized too from all it represented. Located in the northern wing, it was thus more associated with the Musee des Arts decoratifs, scheduled for opening in 190539, than with the edifice of academic and institutionalized art historical practices represented by the main buildings and collections of the Louvre. The contents of the exhibition were similarly fraught with ambivalence from the beginning: the curators were asserting both an inclusionary status to the works they presented, while at the same time they placed them outside the body of the very edifice of which they are supposedly a part. These seeming paradoxes reinforce my contention that this endeavour was simultaneously a radicalizing and a conservatizing act -- adding to, yet critical, of the canonical assumptions which had excluded French influence on the sixteenth century Renaissance. 3 8Levin, 108. 39Hillairet, 100; Christ, 130. In the review by Camille Benoit ("Les primitifs frangais: La peinture du XVe siecle," La Revue de Paris 11, 5 (May 1904): 189), the wing is already referred to as the Musee des Arts decoratifs. 24 The timing of this exhibition is a third element permitting further understanding of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. First of all, I am taking the notion of timing to refer also to access to the exhibition. The audience experience is constructed at various stages in the process of experiencing the 'event'. By imposing an entry fee of 1 franc per person and setting exhibition hours between 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., access to the exhibition was restricted to, or perhaps more accurately focused on, a specific group. No free days were mentioned in any of the literature, nor did regular admission to the Musee du Louvre include entry to the Pavilion de Marsan, or wee versa, both of which were standard practices of the day. 4 0 Whole segments of the population, the working class and the lower middle class most particularly, were thus excluded from experiencing the exhibition. The leisured classes, and that important and influential segment of the population, the fonctionnaires, or civil service, could thus both afford the entry fee and, perhaps more importantly, have the leisure time required to attend the exhibition.41 As Daniel Sherman has argued, admission fees to art museums were customarily a means to limit access to a specific and desirable public, as well as ensure that due reverence and propriety were maintained: ...the museum of the late nineteenth century constituted itself in the image of class elite, which it then invoked as its public. Beginning with the rhetoric of museum administrators, this invocation operated on a number of levels: the arrangement of collections, the framing of regulation, the ordering of the visit. Often solidly founded in the pragmatic needs of the institution, these practices nevertheless also worked as signifiers, shaping the institutional ^Journal des Debate 7 April 1904, 2. "Sherman, 235. 25 character and identity in ways that not only invoked one public but largely excluded another.42 The practices he describes for provincial museums were also the case for the Louvre and the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. An important facet of the experience of the exhibition linked to these ideas of access and exclusion is the notion of the 'promenade'43, described by social historian David Scobey as a 'performative utterance' of social values and rules. Applying Scobey's analysis to museums one can see that walking through the exhibition, guided by pamphlet guidebooks, constructed the audience at the same time as they constructed what they were seeing. The exhibition's contents presented a self-reflective image mirroring back specifically targeted values important to contemporary Republican bourgeoisie and buttressed either simultaneously or afterward by the essay and catalogue entries in the Catalogue Definitif. The codes recognized by the viewers were part of the 'secret' knowledge allowing and restricting entry into the 'ruling' classes. There are two different transactions and recognitions occurring in this procession through the exhibition: between the works and the viewer and between one viewer and another. In the first transaction, the works, as described in the Catalogue, reflected both 'mastery' that is unarticulated, but no less claimed through selection and presentation by an institution such as the Louvre, and 'order' in which identification and lineage are emphasized in the Catalogue 4 eSherman, 211. 4 3 l owe entry into the topic of the 'promenade' to David Scobey. His article ("Anatomy of the promenade: The politics of bourgeois sociability in nineteenth-century New York," Social HistoryM, 2 (May 1992), 203-227) dissects the social function of seeing and being seen as a means of creating and reinforcing codes of behaviour and class. This approach is valid here, I believe, because the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was targeting a specifically constituted Republican audience. 26 Definitif $ descriptive passages about each work deemed important. The works were arranged and presented in a way which reinforced the authoritative voice of the Louvre's control of the art historical forum. The second transaction concerns the identificatory activity of the viewer(s) being seen together with other individuals recognizably a part of the legitimate (and thus legitimated) audience for such an event because their behaviours, dress, and even the fact of their attendance at such an event classified them as being 'like! oneself. Accustomed as the bourgeoisie were to attending the Salons each year, this event was yet another formalized exhibition of 'culture' and of class self-recognition organized through the official channels of the Beaux-Arts hierarchy. A second timing issue relates to the duration and dates of the exhibition. Its three month schedule was bracketed by two highly significant and resonant dates. It was opened on the Tuesday after Easter44, the week after the most sacred feast day in the Christian calendar, and was scheduled to close on July 14th, the secular 'high holiday' of the Republic. The implied progression from religious to secular 'religion' is no coincidence. As French historians Mayeur and Reberioux characterize it45, the F§te de la Republique had become a secular holiday representing not so much the Bastille's fall, a singularly anarchistic act from which the present-day constitutionally-based Republican 4 4 A preview was held at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, April 11th. The entry fee was 10 francs, reduced to 2 francs for members of the Societe des Amis du Louvre upon presentation of their membership cards. Twenty-five percent of the proceeds of this event were to be donated for the aid of Russians wounded in the Russo-Japanese War; France supported the Russian side in this conflict. Journal des Debats 7 April 1904: 2. 4 5 Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Reberioux, The Third Republic from itsOrigins to the Great War, 1871-1914, trans. J.R. Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de I'homme, 1984): 118. See also Jean-Pierre Bois, Histoire des 14 Juillet 1789-1919, Collection «De memoire d'homme: l'histoire», ed. Lucien Bely (Rennes: Editions Ouest-France, 1991) for a detailed history of how July 14th evolved from a revolutionary's Bastille Day to a Republican fete nationale. 27 government wanted and needed to distance itself, but the patriotic festival in which the Republican government succeeded in blending together the Revolution with the constitution46. This legitimized the extremes of uprising and legislation into a continuous link "between the monarchical past and the Republican future" and focused disparate political and social public opinions on a common civic celebration, not one of religious or customary origin.47 The exhibition then was situated between the monarchical, religious festival of Easter and the secular, reconstituted Fefe National, republicanized to elide differences of political spectre and to present a representation of the French nation as seamless whole, unified under the constitutionality and fraternity of its governmental structures. A fourth element necessary for an understanding the Exposition des Primitifs frangais is organization. This blending and eliding of the monarchical past with a Republican present and future as part of the French national identity was reinforced by the very arrangement of the art works in the exhibition. Articles written by critics and the intelligentsia provide a number of important details on how the exhibition was experienced. Two painted stone sculptures of Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon, reigning monarchs in the second half of the fourteenth century, were placed at the threshold to "welcome visitors"48; their presence marked symbolically the beginning of 4 6 Bois, 9. 4 7 Bois, 9-11. 4 8Andre Michel, "Causerie Artistique I. L'Exposition des Primitifs francais," Journal des Debats, April 12, 1904:1. These two pieces are listed together as #307 in the sculpture section of Catalogue Definitif, 113-4. These two sculptures are linked directly with drawings of the same monarchs on the Parement de Narbonne, an altar hanging depicting the Passion, drawn on white silk. One of the first pieces in the catalogue (#3), the Parement is cited in both the Introduction and in the catalogue entries as one of the most important 28 the period in which the earliest of the works displayed in the exhibition were created.49 Separate rooms on at least two floors of the Pavilion50 contained schools of art works grouped by date order and by locality, school and/or attributed artist51 (such as the separate rooms set aside for Corneille de Lyons and the Loire school5 2). Critic Camille Benoit, for example, referred to a main picture hall with separate rooms for the Avignon School and another for works from the fourteenth century.53 Sculptures were scattered throughout the exhibition and "afforded a welcome relief to the wealth of colours displayed upon the walls"54. The resulting impression of the exhibition was one of small rooms organized around a central space and arranged in groupings organized by date, artist and/or school, thus providing a comprehensive account of art production of the French nation. The manuscripts were exhibited separately at the Bibliotheque Nationale. As described in Catalogue Definitif, they were presented a noticeably different arrangement to those at the Pavilion de Marsan. Not only were they physically separated from the transitional pieces between gothic architecture of the cathedrals, manuscript illumination and the fledgling painting genre (Catalogue Definitif, XVIII-XIX and 2-3). 4 9Charles V ruled until 1380. His role in the Great Schism may also have influenced this placement; he supported the Anti-Pope Clement (and thus split Rome's powerbase) and he forbade allegiance to any faction in the debate that would not be to the benefit of France. 50Louis-Frederic Sauvage, "Les Primitifs francais," La Nouvelle revue (Paris) 25 (May 15, 1904): 209; Benoit, 210; and Catalogue Definitif, XXVI. "Sauvage, 209. 5 ZHenri Bouchot, "L'Exposition des Primitifs frangais," Revue des deux mondes 20 (March 15,1904): 441 - 2. "Benoit, 210. 5 4Lionel Elliot, "The Primitive French Exhibition at Paris," The Connoisseur 10, 37 (September 1904): 44. 29 paintings, but there was a separate entries section in the Catalogue Definitif (as will be discussed in Chapter 2). Nevertheless, immediately on entering the Bibliotheque Nationale a viewer would also have been struck by contrasts of size and tone -- from the large and age-darkened panel paintings in the Pavilion de Marsan to the tiny, jewel-toned miniatures on display at the Bibliotheque Nationale. All of the pieces were laid out in glass-topped cases in one large room, in strict sequential order: "all the manuscripts, and several of those which one finds in facsimile on the vestibule walls on the main floor, are listed in the Catalogue in the place that they would by rights occupy in the chronology."55 The separation of the manuscripts from the main exhibition presents an important facet of the organization of this section of the display.56 Surely in an exhibition which founded many of its claims on the parallel and overlapping developments in representation between manuscript illumination and the development of a uniquely French art production, such an argument would have been more convincingly supported by arranging objects to provide more direct opportunities to compare and contrast these related elements. The exhibition's reliance on the audience's memory to carry over from one site to the next seems at this distance an undue impediment to the professed task ssCatalogue Definitif, Manuscript section, 1-2: "...[TJous les manuscrits, et plusieurs de ceux dont on trouvera en fac-simile sur les murs du vestibule au rez-de-chaussee place qu'il avaient droit d'occuper dans la serie chronologique." 5 6 This was particularly noted by Camille Benoit ("Les primitifs francais: La peinture du XV e siecle," 189). Jean Guiffrey ("L'Exposition des Primitifs Frangais a Paris," Rassegna d'Arte 4, 6 (June 1904): 81) commented that the Bibliotheque Nationale was located "far, unfortunately, from the pictures shown at the Louvre, in the Pavilion de Marsan [loin, malheureusement, des tableaux exposees au Louvre, au Pavilion de Marsan]". Even Henri Bouchot, Secretaire-general of the exhibition and co-writer/editor of the Catalogue Definitif as well as prolific contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, commented that the distant location "will spoil the quick comparisons" ["nuira aux contestations rapides"], "...Avant-propos," 268. 30 of convincing the exhibition-goer of the strength of the curatorial argument57. It is possible that there were spacing constrictions as the reason for the dual venues, but one might speculate that there was a jurisdictional dispute arising from the Portrait de Jean le Bon being removed from the Bibliotheque Nationale's domain; however, it might also indicate a certain intellectual hesitancy, a reluctance to support fully the revisionist art historical argument being made. While some manuscript pages were indeed mounted near to paintings in the Pavilion de Marsan to facilitate such comparisons58, the number of these juxtapositions is unspecified and, according to reviewers' complaints, seemingly insufficient.59 This analysis of the format of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais reveals that by controlling the environment and the way in which the works were shown, Republican ideology can be seen to be embodied in the temporal and spatial arrangement supportive of the overall assertions of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Only elite segments of the social sphere were allowed in to see the works by virtue of the opening hours and admission costs; in addition, the milieu of the Louvre placed social restrictions on behaviour which included 'polite society' and excluded all others. Reinforcement of the Parisian and institutional centrality added to the construction of a specific Republican and cultural unity. "Bouchot, "...Avant-propos," 265. 5 8 Paul Vitry, 'The Exhibition of French Primitives at Paris," Burlington Magazine 5, 13 (April 1904): 90. This article was more of a press release or "coming attractions" article previewing what was intended to be displayed at the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. 5 9Benoit, 189; Guiffrey, "L'Exposition des Primitifs francais a Paris," 81; and Michel, "Causerie Artistique 1/1. 31 It is important to recognize that this exhibition was not an isolated phenomenon, but only the most recent manifestation of European exhibiting practices which had developed throughout the nineteenth century. As various studies have disclosed6 0, from the middle of the nineteenth century, the Great Exhibitions, or Expositions Universelles, had established a pattern of national self-assertion through the display of cultural objects and manufactured goods. Although these events focused on both contemporary production of goods and art objects as well as technological excellences of each participant, by the time of the Exposition Universelle of 1878, staging a Retrospective had become an intrinsic part of national self-presentation, both as a means of confirming the existence of a glorious past and also as a way of linking historic excellence and creativity to present and future achievements of the contemporary nation-state. Indeed, the Expositions Universelles can be seen as direct precursors of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Assertions of French cultural hegemony in the present and projected into the future were 'retrofitted' to the past. In the construction of these events, contemporary artistic production exemplifying national achievement and progress was thus shown to be only the most recent evidence of a long-standing national character redolent with cultural accomplishment and creativity. The ethos of unifying the nation under a singularly national banner of industrial and aesthetic achievement was carried over through the 6 0 These include Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988); Richard D. Mandrell, Paris 1900: The Great World's Fair (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1967); Pascal Ory, Les Expositions universelles de Paris. Panorama raisonne, avec des apercus nouveaux des illustrations par les meilleurs auteurs ([Paris]: Editions Ramsay «lmage», 1982); and Frank Anderson Trapp, 'The World's Fairs: From Bazaar to Utopian Vision" and Pierre Vaisse, "Salons, Expositions et Societes d'artistes en France 1871- 1914," both from Saloni, Gallerie, Musei e loro Influenza sullo Sviluppo dell'Arte die secoli XIX e XX, ed. Francis Haskell, Section 7, Atti del XXIV Congresso Internationale de Storia deH'Arte (Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria, 1979). 32 publicity surrounding the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Notions of progress and of technological advances were thus viewed in retrospect as a means of identifying the historical origins of present-day greatness. The double levels of education (that is, exposing heretofore privileged works of art to the view of the general public, in particular the bourgeoisie and lower classes) and erudition (that is, displaying examples of the intellectual achievement of the academy for the delectation of the intelligentsia) were thus fulfilled and elision of the cultural differences within France achieved. During the thirty-year period between 1875 and 1904 at least 40 European exhibitions presented 'old' art produced in the centuries prior to the eighteenth century.61 There were three main types of exhibitions held during this period. The Expositions retrospectives, the first type, were actually held from the 1850's on as an adjunct to Expositions Universelles or Expositions Internationales, cultural events for the edification of the fair-going public. Displaying almost exclusively decorative art objects rather than paintings and sculpture, they were devised more as a backward glance to earlier forms of manufacture in contrast with contemporary 'products' in the nearby Palaces of Industry; the intent, quite simply put, was to illustrate the progress achieved by the country, as well as to demonstrate the artistic sensibilities of the nation. Current artistic production, usually high art paintings and sculpture, was displayed in separate Fine Arts Pavilions. The 1878 Exposition Universelle offers an excellent example. Housed in the right wing of the Trocadero, this Retrospective was situated opposite the 'primitive' 6 1 S e e appendix 2 for a list of exhibitions from 1877 to 1904 and their content and focus, compiled from a review of the Burlington Magazine, La Revue de I'art ancien et moderne, Gazette des beaux-arts, Revue de I'Art Chretien, and other contemporary journals. 33 art from non-European cultures in the Trocadero's left wing6 2; both artistic and utilitarian objects from France's past were displayed in strict chronological order.6 3 This positioning and arrangement is not accidental: the relative sophistication of the 'European' (and more particularly, French) past was contrasted with the 'exoticism' of the non- European and colonized present; in addition, the materiel-organized exhibits parallelled the contemporary arrangements in the Palais d'lndustrie further down the promenade, reinforcing and linking a pre-industrialized culture with industrial and artistic production in the modern era. Thus the motive for showcasing French artistic production in these exhibitions was an established tradition. Toward the end of the century, however, 'stand-alone' historic art exhibitions began to develop; affiliated with neither industrial nor national exhibitions, they instead displayed chronological surveys of artworks under a generalized title such as 'Maitres Anciens' or 'Arts Anciens', or were limited to a single 'Old Master' or a particular type of art production. Painting and sculpture were included only infrequently; for example, Budapest's 1884 retrospective exhibition of gold and silver plate was focused narrowly on secular and religious objects from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries, while a Van Dyck exhibition, held first in Antwerp (1899) and then in London (1900), focused only on one artist and his production. These exhibitions contained little or no overt emphasis on the art works country of origin and often assembled works based entirely on local ownership 6 2 S e e Marilyn Wan, Naturalized Seeing/Colonial Vision: Interrogating the Display of Races in Late 19th Century France, unpublished MA thesis (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1991), for a detailed investigation of the construction of the 'other' in this and other Expositions Universelles. 6 3 A.-R. de Liesville, "L'Exposition Historique de Tart ancien: Coup d'oeil general," Gazette des Beaux-arts Series 2, 18 (July 1878): 6. 34 and availability. Here the claims were not so much for the nationality of the artist(s) per se, but for the ownership of the works themselves, the collection and the possession of the objects being displayed as evidence of curatorial perspicacity.64 In the 1890's a third kind of exhibition emerged, combining the nationalistic aspects of the Retrospectives with the focused content of the historical exhibitions. The assertions of a national stylistic predominated in this third type, with claims for national artistic origins and characteristics often allied with a recouping of a formerly disparaged or overlooked artist, group of artists, or movement. The 1898 Basel exhibition of Swiss and German Masters was one of the first to introduce the element of a national mastery into the historical exhibition. The Madrid Velasquez exhibit of the same year, focused only on a single artist, but also promoted a particular national style and body of work, this time allied to the works of Diego Velasquez. Both Sienna and Dusseldorf held exhibitions of 'maitres anciens' in 1904 in competition with the Exposition des Primitifs frangais show. The 1902 Exposition des Primitifs flamands held in Bruges was the immediate precursor to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and thus merits special analysis because of the latter's explicit self-positioning as a response to the former's claims and posture. The Bruges show took the historical exhibition to new levels of nationalism and art historical assertions. Tied closely to a contemporary Flemish Renaissance which was promoting a Flemish-speaking Belgian culture distinct from both Dutch and French cultural implications, the Bruges exhibition focused entirely on the 'national' school of 64lt is important to note that several of this kind of exhibition were held at private institutions, such as the New Gallery and the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and the Galerie d'Altenburg. The relation of the exhibitions to the art market is thus a prominent factor in their occurrence. 35 Flemish painting in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. It argued for a coherent, chronological unity of fifteenth century Flemish art production and reaffirmed Flemish- speaking Belgium's role as one of the two 'founders' of later eighteenth century art developments, the other being the Italian Renaissance. The Bruges exhibition had arisen from the growth of Belgian nationalism.65 Throughout the 1890's Belgium had begun to distinguish its own cultural heritage from the umbrella of 'The Lowlands' sobriquet and as part of a reassertion of Flemish achievements separate from both Dutch and French historical hegemonies. The anti- academic Symbolist group, called Les XX, had examined their Flemish nationalist roots and evolved their own contemporary style in opposition to Neo-lmpressionist and Symbolist connections with France6 6; subsequently the conception and eventual staging of the Bruges exhibition helped to crystallize an historical Flemish presence distinct from the French and Netherlandish. These nationalist impulses had, according to Francis Haskell, resulted in the Exposition des Primitifs flamands. The exhibition, he notes, was "inspired by a series of nationally motivated exhibitions that had been held in many parts of Europe over the last few years, above all those devoted to Rembrandt and Rubens in 6 5 The main description of the Exposition des Primitifs flamands has been obtained from "Johannes Huizinga and the Flemish Renaissance," a chapter in Francis Haskell's History and its Images. In addition, contemporary journals and periodical accounts of the exhibition haver contributed greatly to my understanding of the exhibition as it was presented and received, particularly: Etienne Bricon, "Bruges et I'art primitif flamands," La Grande revue (September 1902): 689-705; H. Fierans-Gevaert, "L'Exposition des primitifs flamands a Bruges [three parts]", La revue de I'art ancien et moderne 12 (Aout, Septembre and Decembre 1902): 105-116, 173-182, and 435-444; and Weale, previously cited. 6 6 Jean Cassou, Emile Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner, Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World (New York, Toronto and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1962): 54; Donald D. Egbert, Social Radicalism and the Arts: Western Europe (New York: Knopf, 1970): 605, 612. 36 Amsterdam and Antwerp" and had "the aim of commemorating the integrity of a vigorous national culture"67. Of particular importance in understanding the vehement claims of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais is the editorializing commentary by the catalogue's writer, Georges Hulin de Loo, cited in the Introduction to this thesis. Hulin de Loo, a young Belgian scholar, was just beginning to make a name for himself and sought to differentiate his research from that outlined in the more neutral catalogue of W.H. James Weale by inciting controversy. Hulin de Loo's commentary extensively critiqued French acquisition policies and, in one instance, disparaged the French Republican government's neglect of cultural issues for the more prosaic concerns of re-election: Could it be true that the French government, ordinarily so prodigious with frivolous expenditures, at a time when it can wait for a repercussion from the polls, appears to be stingy concerning its national collections, even concerning the Louvre? This incomparable and marvellous treasure, with which the abolished monarchs enriched France, does it have nothing to look forward to from democracy? ...Without doubt, French parliamentary politicians and the transitory governments that are burdened with service to their passions and interests, are exclusively absorbed in the questions that divide the nation. They have neither the leisure nor the concern to occupy themselves with elevated goals and important enterprises with a view to which they should unite their efforts ~ when it is matter of the outward prestige of France or the internal integrity of their great ethics.68 [emphasis in original] Haskell, History and Its Images, 445 and 449. Hulin de Loo, Bruges 1902..., LXI-LXII: Serait-il vrai que le gouvernement frangais, d'ordinaire si prodigue de depenses vaines, du moment qu'il peut en attendre une repercussion surs les votes, se montre parcimonieux envers ses collections nationales, meme envers le Louvre? Cet incomparable et merveilleux tresor, dont les monarchies abolies ont enrichi la France, n'a-t-il rein a attendre de la democratie? ...Sans doute, les politiciens parlementaires frangais et les gouvernements ephemeres qu'ils chargent du service de leurs passions et de leurs interets, sont 37 Hulin de Loo's attacks on France and its cultural policies were specifically cited in the Exposition des Primitifs frangais catalogue as a prime motivation for the scheduling of the French exhibition and the vehemence of the counterclaims made by Georges Lafenestre and Henri Bouchot. As Lafenestre proclaimed, rather facetiously, near the end of his Introduction to the Catalogue Definitif, it was now time for French curators to build on the work of the Bruges exhibition in the cause of scientific truth, to continue the arduous task of bringing the greatness of French Renaissance art to the public's attention.69 Thus, the challenge was taken up, the fulfilment of a long 'crusade' to persuade the now more receptive public of the 'truth' of the French curators' endeavour. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais therefore cannot be seen as an isolated instance, but an event that negotiated the ideas and concepts of previous exhibitions. Above all, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais voiced an institutional response to the 1902 Bruges exhibition, the Expositions des Primitifs flamands, in an art historical and nationalistic dialogue. exclusivement absorbes par les questions que divisent la nation, lis n'ont ni le loisir ni le souci de s'occuper des buts eleves et des hautes entreprises en vue desquels elle devrait unit ses efforts -- qu'ils s'agisse du prestige exterieur de la France, ou de I'integrite interne de sa grandeur morale. Hulin de Loo was referring here to the national elections held earlier in 1902 when the Bloc Republicain, a coalition of moderate elements among the varieties of Republicans, was elected in a majority under the presidency of Ernest Combes (Watson, 73; Anderson, 24). Their preoccupation with political issues had, according to Hulin de Loo, distracted them from culturally important matters. This is but one part of a four-page essay attached to a discussion of Jehan de Perreal of Paris, a French painter whom Hulin de Loo claims to be the Maitre de Moulins, one of several controversial attribution claims he made in his catalogue. 65'Catalogue Definitif, XXX-XXXI. 38 CHAPTER TWO CATALOGUE AS 'REPRESENTATION' A catalogue is a special type of book that assumes much of the structure of an exhibition (for which, as ever, it serves as guide, even when too bulky to carry); hence, in many ways, it corresponds to the museum. It translates the brute facts of the exhibited art objects into commentary that resembles a continuous narrative simply because it is a book that has a sequence of pages (just as the exhibition will usually have a numbered sequence of rooms and objects, its own on-the-spot catalogue).70 The 'event' of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais presented an experiential construction of the Catalogue Definitif's argument by placing the exhibition within an environment supportive of and encapsulating specific Republican government stances at the end of the nineteenth century on the use of artistic media as ideological tools. The 'event' cannot stand alone, however; only when the ephemerality of viewing is considered together with the Catalogue Definitif and other discourses surrounding and, to a large degree, creating it can the full scope of the exhibition claims be understood. The texts of the catalogues, reviews and articles are what remain to the current reader; the event, ephemeral and temporally located, cannot be 're-experienced'71 and the 'words' remain as bare bones, a kind of archaeological evidence to be reassembled to attempt to 7 0Richard Sniff, "Art History and the Nineteenth Century: Realism and Resistance," The Art Bulletin LXX, 1 (March 1988): 33. 7 1 l n fact, it is difficult even to reconstruct the exact contents of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais due to curatorial and owner penchants for re-naming works or using local or abbreviated titles for the works. In some cases, the use of generic titles (for example, 'Pieta') has made it difficult to locate which item is being discussed. Sales and donations of various works to local, national or international museums or collectors has also inhibited the tracing of exhibited works. In order to formulate a precise understanding of the exhibition, I have pieced together its contents from references made in the many reviews and articles discussing the event, although the number of works recognizable through this process is far short of the 701 works listed in the Catalogue Definitif. 39 understand what meaning was constructed around the exhibition as well as the meaning it was intended to call up to the varied 'readers' of the discourse of the exhibition's visual texts. A catalogue represents an exhibition in several senses. First, it re-presents the experience of the exhibition for contemplation at another time and in another place, with emphases, viewpoints and elisions not necessarily part of that experience. Second, the catalogue stands in for, or represents, a lived experience because it substitutes for the actual viewing of the works in the exhibition halls. Third, it acts as an embodiment of the exhibition, a textual synthesis and summary of all of the claims made visually. And, last, it leads the viewer to see objects in certain ways, constructing a form of viewing supportive of the exhibition's overall theme and stance. The Catalogue Definitif of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais as a primary textual source defining the goals of the exhibition comprises a unified argument with separate component parts providing particular kinds of information, tone and rhetorical elements to the whole.7 2 The two catalogues examined73, the Catalogue Definitif74 and the 7 2lt must be stated that the structure of this catalogue is similar to others of the period: the rosters of dignitaries, academics, patrons and committee members, the introductory essay, and the numbered catalogue entries section interspersed with plates are all standard catalogue features. 7 3 A third version of the catalogue could not be located, despite the best efforts of the University's Interlibrary Loan Department. Information available from periodicals and other sources indicates it was small, sketchily written pamphlet probably only listing the title, artist, date and location for each of the works shown; much cheaper to purchase, it was likely used as a reference sheet for the exhibition visitor. Inspection of this format might have provided additional information for this analysis, but it seems probable that the listings followed the same format as those in the other two catalogues. 7 4 This is available on microfiche at the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Library (AW5 P2708 P75). I was unable to obtain access to an original. 40 special edition Catalogue75, though similar in content and form, differ in several important aspects. The Catalogue Definitif was less ostentatiously printed and available at the exhibition itself for "deux francs net"76. The numbered, limited edition of the Catalogue printed on high quality vellum, its text reset in a more formal typeface, was available commercially outside the museum and exhibition; because of its more costly materials, it was more expensive than the Catalogue Definitif and intended for a wealthier audience, whether or not they had attended the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. In addition, the introductory essay in the Catalogue Definitif was abridged in the special edition catalogue77. Two major omissions from the special edition are noteworthy. The first omission eliminated the history of previous attempts, beginning in 1878 and continuing to the present day, to bring these works to the attention of the French public and it lulled the reader/viewer with self-congratulatory praise of its perspicacity and empathy to the art historical cause: Was it not time to renew, with more chance of success in the eyes of a better educated and more sympathetic international public, the task of rehabilitation already boldly attempted in 1878 by the Marquis de Chennevieres, Director of Fine Arts, at the exhibition of National Portraits, taken up again, from a more general point of view, by M. Emile Molinier in 7 5 This version was available in the original, but rebound form in the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Library. 76Catalogue Definitif, cover. This price placed it outside the reach of many visitors who, even if they could afford the entry fee, might have thought twice about purchasing a catalogue too. Unfortunately, the cover was too poorly reproduced on the microfiche at the U.B.C. Fine Arts Library to be included as an illustration in this thesis. 7 7 l have found no information to show where this editorial decision was made or by whom. 41 1900 at the Petit Palais, and so valiantly prepared in the interim by the ringing words of Courajod at the Ecole du Louvre.7 8 [emphasis added] For the specific audience purchasing the more expensive Catalogue, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was thus characterized by this omission as the first, if not the only, attempt to recoup this particular French past, enhancing the curators' daring and romanticized endeavour. The Catalogue Definitif was, in fact, a direct rebuttal of the slanderous assertions made by Hulin de Loo; Lafenestre had clearly declared that the French art of this period had already been presented to the world by previous curators, but had been ignored; now the "international public" was ready to recognize the validity of his and his predecessors' claims in this splendid exhibition.79 The second omission from the special edition catalogue dealt with issues of the comparison objects and the remote location of the manuscripts section and also Lafenestre's attempts to forestall any criticism of curatorial jingoism. Readers of the special edition were spared the justification of the distant location of the manuscripts ^Catalogue Definitif, XXX-XXXI: N'etait-il pas temps de renouveler, avec plus de chances de reussite, aux yeux d'un public international, mieux instruit et plus sympathique, I'entreprise de rehabilitation deja hardiment tentee, en 1878, par le Marquis de Chennevieres, Directeur des Beaux-Arts, a I'Exposition des Portraits Nationaux, reprise, sous un point de vue plus general, par M. Em. Molinier, en 1900, au Petit Palais, et si vaillamment prepare, dans rintervalle, par la parole eclatante de Courajod a I'Ecole du Louvre. The 'Exhibition of National Portraits' refers to a show at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 and '1900' to the Exposition Retrospective at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Louis Courajod was noted for his crowd- pleasing lectures on early French art and is cited in the Catalogue Definitif as a pioneer of the daring approach fulfilled by the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. He believed that it was "in France, and above all, in Flanders that the origins of the Renaissance were to be sought - although he rather distrusted the word because of its implication of 'rebirth' rather than of a new development" (Haskell, History and its Images, 442-3). See also Udo Kulturmann, The History of Art History (New York: Abaris Books, Inc., 1993): 196. 7 9Perhaps the assumption was that the well-travelled and -read connoisseur would be aware of the history of French attempts to establish the French primitifs in the art historical canon. 42 section of the exhibition because these paragraphs were less relevant to a reader who had not experienced the physical separation of the two parts of the exhibition. In fact, this catalogue omits the entire Bibliotheque Nationale section of the exhibition all together, effacing the role of the manuscripts as a counterpoint to and supportive display for stylistic linkages to the paintings at the Pavilion de Marsan. Equally as important for the purposes of this thesis was the claim that truth, and not 'patriotic vanity', was the sole motivation for the exhibition. Lafenestre's protestations of impartiality were thus assimilated into the 'fact' of the exhibition's occurrence; the physical presence of the catalogue was a permanent textual record of a truly scholarly endeavour, the contents of which merely presented the reader with self-evident and obvious facts: As was already done in 1878 and 1900, it was, in fact, necessary to supply, by means of several specimens of other contemporary art forms (sculpture, tapestries, miniatures, enamels, etc.) some explanatory and supporting terms of comparison without which the evolution of painting could be understood only with difficulty. As for the miniatures, the abundance of them was such that it was impossible, as it was at Bruges, to show them in the same location. Fortuitously, the Bibliotheque Nationale is not far from the Pavilion de Marsan and it does not take long to go there to admire the collection of miniatures that the special commission, under the direction of M. Omont with the enthusiastic assistance of the respected and tireless M. Leopold Delisle, has been able to reunite there. We desire, and this goes without saying, that this international gathering of experts validates the honour of the French masters; we have no intention to impose in advance even the most obvious conclusions on the enlightened souls and impartial judges. Above all, we are intent on refraining from the foolish exaggerations of patriotic vanity which are the most deplorable cause of errors and disagreements at a time when they are creeping into questions of art, history and science. Following the example of the old artists that we admire and love, we seek the truth, we desire only the truth.80 'Catalogue Definitif, XXXII: 43 Because of the omissions in the special edition catalogue, the analysis of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais presented in this thesis will focus on the Catalogue Definitif (fig. 3 - 14) because it contains the unabridged introductory essay and the entire manuscript section. In addition, the Catalogue Definitif would have circulated more widely. Available as it was at the exhibition itself, it would have reinforced the show's immediate impact on the viewer if the catalogue entries were used to explain what the viewer was seeing while seeing it. The Catalogue Definitif could also be experienced following the exhibition when the essay and entries could be read at leisure and the experience remembered and reinforced by this activity. A third factor, the Catalogue Definitif's lower cost in comparison to the special edition, would also have permitted a somewhat wider circulation. It was therefore a primary textual device through which the meaning of the exhibition was constructed for a Republican bourgeoisie. Comme on I'avait deja faire en 1878 et 1900, il etait, en effet, necessaire de fournir, par quelques specimens des autres formes de I'art contemporain, (Sculpture, Tapisserie, Miniature, Emaux, etc.) des termes de comparaison explicatifs et justificatifs sans lesquels les evolutions de la peinture se comprendraient difficilement. Pour les miniatures, I'abondance etait telle qu'il n'etait pas possible, no plus qu'a Bruges, de les exposer dans le meme local. Heureusement, la Bibliotheque Nationale n'est pas eloignee du Pavilion de Marsan, et le voyage ne sera pas trop long pour y admirer la collection d'enluminures que la commission speciale, sous la presidence de M. Omont avec le concours, toujours ardent du venerable et infatigable, M. Leopold Delisle, a pu y reunir. Nous desirons, cela va sans dires, que cette consultation internationale tourne a I'honneur des maitres frangais; nous n'avons nulle pretention d'en impose, d'avance, les conclusions, meme les plus probables, aux esprits eclaires et aux juges impartiaux. Nous tenons, avant tous, a nous garder de ces sottes exagerations de vanite patriotique qui sont las cause la plus facheuse des erreurs et des querelles, lorsqu'elles se glissent dans les questions d'art, d'histoire et de science. A I'exemple des vieux artistes que nous admirons et aimons, nous recherchons la verite, nous ne desirons que la verite. 44 The Catalogue Definitif comprised four main sections81, the administration pages, the introductory essay, the catalogue entries for the Pavilion de Marsan objects, and the section for the Bibliotheque National's exhibition of manuscripts and miniatures. Additional pages both at the beginning and as endpapers contained advertisements for the Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts (fig. 4) and for various art galleries, print sellers and publishing houses in Paris (fig. 5), often citing specific publications "related to the history of the French Primitives"82. The first section of the Catalogue Definitif contains listings of the various organizing committees, members of which were drawn from the hierarchical machinery of the Louvre and those government departments responsible for the public and national representations of 'France' in cultural contexts. Consideration of those listed is informative. M. Edouard Aynard, a sitting member of the Chambre des Deputes, was prominently listed as the President of the exhibition's administrative board (fig. 6). Represented here, too, were administrators from the major beaux-arts institutions of France, for example, Georges Berger, President of the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs and Vice-President of the Societe des Amis du Louvre, a recently organized acquisitions committee; and M. Kaempfen, the Directeur des Musees Nationaux and one of the main administrators of the exhibition. The Comites d'Organisation (fig. 7) were staffed with a variety of representatives from both the intelligentsia and the art historical publishing sphere. For example, Charles Ephrussi, director of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and See appendix 3 for a further analysis of these sections. Catalogue Definitif endpaper, unpaginated: "...relatifs a l'histoire des Primitifs Francais". 45 Andre Hallays, a writer for the Journal des Debats83, were both listed on the Paintings and Drawings Committee. Similarly, the Manuscript Committee boasted both rising and established art historians such as Emile Male and Paul Durrieu (also a Comte and collector of note), while the Tapestries and Enamels Committees claimed such noted members as Paul Vitry and Albert Maignan, both collectors and scholars.8 4 The Comite de Patronage, the Membres Protecteurs, and the Commissions Superieures (one each for French and foreign members) were composed of a cross-section of Europe's intellectual, political, administrative and social elite. Representatives of French society included M. Deville, President of the Conseil municipal of Paris; ex-President Sadi-Carnot as well as future president Georges Clemenceau; Emile Molinier, past-curator of the Musee du Louvre and organizer of the Retrospectives at the Exposition Universelle of 1900; and Antonin Proust, the Ministre des Beaux-Arts in the short-lived Gambetta government (1881-82) and one of the architects of state-defined fine arts policies. In addition, non-French representation on the exhibition's boards included S.A.S. le Prince de Liechtenstein; Henry Hymans, Curator of the Belgian Royal Library in Brussels; and Count Wilczek from Vienna8 5. Other, perhaps surprising, inclusions among the non- French participants on the Commission Superieure were H. Kervyn de Lettenhove, the "Though neither of these individuals actually wrote reviews, these journals were prolific in their coverage of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. The Gazette des Beaux-arts printed a total of 16 articles before and during the exhibition, most of them authored by Bouchot (6) and Lafenestre (4), while the Journal des Debats published a series of 10 review articles by Andre Michel. Other journals such as Les Arts were also represented by members on one or more committee. 8 4Maignan and Vitry were also lenders to the exhibition, as were Aynard and several other members of the Committees. 8 5 Both the Prince de Liechtenstein and Count Wilczek also loaned works to the exhibition. 46 chief organizer of the 1902 Bruges Exposition des Primitifs flamand, and Georges Hulin de Loo, that outspoken critic of the Exposition des Primitifs flamands catalogue who was so prominently cited as the cause of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais.66 What can be made of this assortment of individuals? First, all of these committee members had a vested interest in the success of, or at least controversy arising from the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Whether the exploitation of the event promoted increased the value of privately owned works, or reinforced or established an academic career, either by supporting or contesting the claims of the exhibition, most of these individuals were already part of the established order, the ruling group whose values were contained within the exhibition's values. A second consideration is that the Third Republic's moderate Republicans governed in the belief that good citizens performed their civic duty in all social matters, including monitoring and directing the cultural aspects, or, as historians Chastel and Babelon phrase it, "the intervention of the State seems to have habituated the collective and the particular to consider that the authorities should assume the responsibilities of the [nation's] patrimony in defining it and in bringing it to the public's notice."87 Another view points to an effort to unify and integrate two segments from within the elite: the older school of the connoisseur and the aristocrat mingled here with a newer class of scholars, university educated 'scientific' art specialists.88 These eeCatalogue Definitif, VIII. 87Jean-Pierre Babelon and Andre Chastel, "La notion de patrimoine," Revue de I'Art 49 (1980): 24: "L'intervention de I'Etat semble avoir habitues collective et particulier a considerer que les autorites doivent assumer la responsabilite du patrimoine dans sa definition et dans sa mise en valeur." 88Marie-Claude Genet-Delacroix, "Esthetique officielle et art national sous la Troisieme Republique," Annates: Economies Societe Civilisations 39, 5 (September-October 1984): 114-5 47 observations together speak also to the audience the Exposition des Primitifs frangais hoped to attract: the educated citizen, cognisant of the responsibilities that citizenship bestows and appreciative of the newly reformed and expanded patrimony on display in the Pavilion de Marsan and the Bibliotheque Nationale. The second major section of the Catalogue Definitif is a 22-page essay, the Introduction (fig. 9). Its author, Georges Lafenestre, was a staunch Republican, a poet and Curator of Paintings at the Musee du Louvre. Lafenestre ostensibly described in text the pictorial argument of the exhibit itself, contextualizing the works within a specifically constructed representation of a French political and cultural history. To do this, Lafenestre's essay argued that realistic portraiture and an awareness of the human figure evident in the sculptural programs of High Gothic architecture were absorbed into the lively anecdotal style of the Parisian/He de France school of manuscript illumination. From this resulted a style of panel painting, especially portraiture, different from all other art being produced elsewhere at that time in its "fresh truthfulness of its attitude, the clear vivacity of movement and gesture, the appropriate expression of the physiognomy in peaceful or moving deed"8 9 [emphasis added], all highly prized characteristics of a good Republican citizen. Lafenestre asserted that the lie de France school spread to all courts and cities ruled by or allied to France, contrary to the claims made by many academics, and explicitly those of the 1902 Bruges exhibition of Flemish primitives, that the Flemish had originated this new realistic style. The disarray of the Hundred Years War and the consequent collapse of centralized rulership had prevented the continued artistic cohesion e9Catalogue Definitif, XIX: "...la verite tranche de I'attitude, la vivacite claire du mouvement et du geste, I'expression opportune de la physiogamie dans Taction paisible ou pathetique." 48 of the now dispersed Parisian school. Although, Lafenestre assured his readers, it never completely lost "notre esprit frangais,"90 the national style was eventually diluted by foreign influences, notably Northern 'stiffness' and a Southern (read 'Italian') internationalism, into the so-called 'decadent' Ecole Fontainebleau.91 The Introduction provided historical background for the period covered, described current attribution debates, and directed the viewer to particular objects or artists within the show. Most notable among these were newly designated 'masterpieces' such as the paintings of Etienne Chevalier by Jean Fouquet (fig. 24), the Buisson Ardent by Nicolas Froment (fig. 16), the Vierge Glorieux by Enguerrand Charonton (fig. 17), and the anonymous Pieta of Villeneuve-les-Avignon (fig. 18), all of which had been little known outside their original regional sites. The Introduction's impassioned language and persuasive rhetorical devices, however, exceeded its purely informational goals and were specifically aimed at convincing a identifiably French audience or reader of the validity of the presented argument and of the catalogue's construction of 'France', French art, and the French character. The frequent use of phrases such as "la vieille famille frangaise", "les Gaulois, nos ancetres", "cette entreprise frangaise"92, illustrate the fervour of the presentation, a rallying cry "to make amends as far as possible for the injustices of a long 9°Catalogue Definitif, XIV. 9 1Haskell (in History and Its Images, 442) quotes academic and lecturer Louis Courajod's 1899-1903 work, Les On'gines de la Renaissance en France (Volume II, 12), in which Courajod called Italy "the last born child of the Renaissance" ("le dernier-ne fils de la Renaissance"), relegating Italy to a tertiary status after the Lowlands and France. In the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, Bouchot and Lafenestre attempted to move France in front of the Lowlands as inheritor of the premier place in European art development. 9 zPhrases selected from the Catalogue Definitif, XXVIII, XI, and XXIV. 49 oversight concerning our venerable painters".93 The 'story' was structured in a strictly linear fashion and combined logically organized information with the vocabulary and passion of the melodramatic and romantic literature of the period and emphasizing the heroic aspects of this struggle. Lafenestre characterized both France's vulnerable geography (an allusion to the sensitive issue of the invasion of France and the nation's territorial losses during the Franco-Prussian War) and the complex and accepting nature of the French to welcome outside influences as reasons that explained why the French primitifs had not been more widely accepted as renaissance masterpieces. It would only be through the persistent and dedicated efforts of learned and enlightened scholars, Lafenestre declaimed, that such obvious proof of French genius could now be presented to public and international scrutiny. The roll call he recited was indeed prestigious: What courageous and lengthy efforts had to be made by so many scholars, archaeologists, and poets in order to triumph over obscurity during the nineteenth century: Chateaubriand, Emeric David, Victor Hugo, de Caumont, Vitet, Merimee, Viollet-le-Duc, Lassus, Quicherat, Courajod, etc.! What patience and good will was necessary in the associations founded or inspired by them...to save, not without difficulty, the few relics, always threatened, of the most magnificent patrimony of art that an ancient people, working tirelessly, have ever bequeathed to its children. Blessed are these dead, seeing that they have accomplished their "Catalogue Definitif, XIII: "...de reparerdans la mesure possible, les injustices d'un long oubli a I'egard de nos vieux peintres." ^Catalogue Definitif, XII-XIII: Quels courageux et longs efforts, pour triompher de ces tenebres on du faire au XIXs siecle tat d'erudits, d'archeologues, de poetes, d'artistes: Chateaubriand, Emeric David, Victor Hugo, de Caumont, Vitet, Merimee, Violet-le Due, Lassus, Quicherat, Courajod, etc! Que de patience et de volonte il a fallu encore aux associations fondees ou inspirees par eux,...pour sauver, non sans peine, quelques reliques, toujours menacees, du plus magnifique patrimoine d'art que jamais un vieux peuple, infatigablement laborieux, ait jamais legue a ses enfants! 50 Lafenestre's highly emotive language, certainly typical of much writing of this period, constructed the recognition of a 'true' French art, understood as a kind of national 'Holy Grail', that is, as a long and unheralded quest finally and successfully completed. The third large section of the Catalogue Definitif, the catalogue entries themselves presented yet another construction: a listing of each work in the exhibition, not necessarily in the order in which they were viewed. Edited by Henri Bouchot9 5 with contributions by individual curators in catalogue sections other than Paintings and Drawings, the entries contained different kinds of contextualizing information, the purpose for which was the simultaneous construction of a contemporary viewership as well as a retrospective representation of an earlier citizenry whose attributes predicted the current apex of French development - the Third Republic. This end was achieved through several techniques. The language of this section changed its tone and quality as a counterpoint to the Introduction's hyperbole and passion. Here language is logical, orderly, linear and descriptive: the language of historical positivism, of evidence being presented to a knowledgeable viewer. The intention was not to persuade, but to prove the claims that had been made more floridly in the Introduction. Citations of lineage, academic authorities, provenance and stylistic analysis replaced the descriptive and emotive. The catalogue entries in this section vary considerably in length and complexity of argument, but the tone never does. Several excerpts can serve to illustrate this point. Bouchot used academic tactics such as identifying iconographical elements and historical events Benis soient ces morts, puisqu'ils ont accompli leur oeuvre! 95Bouchot, an art historian and a long-time Bibliotheque Nationale curator nearing the end of his career, was elected to the Academie the same year as the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. 51 to construct a body of evidence supporting the essay's more evocatively phrased claims of both attribution and artistic and aesthetic excellence. For example, an extensive entry for the painting of Saint Victor et donateur by the Maitre de Moulins, c. 1480 (fig. 19), compared the>.armorial emblems in the former with those previously documented in a known and attributed work, the painting of Etienne Chevalier (fig. 24), thereby verifying its authorship and identifying the figure portrayed as an eminent personage associated with the rulership of France. Bouchot emphasized the obviousness of such a conclusion: One cannot stop oneself from thinking of the correlation between the picture we are describing and that of Etienne Chevalier of the Berlin Museum....The canon is a prince of the house of France, the fleur de lys on the armour seems to indicate it. This figure has been read as King Rene, but M. le comte Durrieu suggests Charles III of Anjou, nephew of King Rene, in the garb of an 'avoue' of St. Victor of Marseille [i.e., a knight of the Church].9 6 In Bouchot's commentary on another exhibited work (fig. 20), Jean Fouquet's Portrait de Charles VII (c. 1445), the catalogue entry cited the painting's legend in order to connect the subject to a known miniature and to relevant historical events as a means of establishing an unmistakeable lineage: The name of the person depicted is supplied to us by the frame on which a legend in special script invented by Jean Fouquet and found in a large number of the miniatures of the Livre d'Heures conserved at Chantilly: THE MOST VICTORIOUS KING OF FRANCE CHARLES THE VII BY NAME....For one to dare to give that name to him, it was necessary that the prince earn the title of Victorious; it was not difficult that after the battle of Formigny, on April 15th, 1450 and above all after the conquest of Guyenne in 1453, for Catalogue Definitif, 4 9 ( # 1 0 6 ) : On ne peut s'empecher de penser a la correlation entre le tableau que nous decrivons et I'Etienne Chevalier du Musee du Berlin..Le chanoine est un prince de la maison de France, la fleur de lys de la cuirasse du saint le semble indiquer....On a vu dans le personnage le roi Rene lui-meme, mais M. le Comte Durrieu propose Charles III d'Anjou, neveu du roi Rene, en costume d'avoue de Saint-Victor de Marseille. 52 him to lay claim to it. But the king seems to have been about 40 years of age; in 1453, he was 50 years old. Someone therefore has not waited for the later victories and one is obliged to distinguish the title of Victorious from the time of the conference at Arras (1444).97 The rigorous and logical analysis and so-called conclusive proof offered in these and other entries are presented in measured, generally non-emotive vocabulary. Such entries, combining documentary information with speculation in a relatively seamless presentation, involved the reader and viewer in a supportive, consensual agreement with the evidence presented. At the same time, Bouchot emphasized historical information that called attention to victories by the state of France, easing recollections of more recent French defeats. Bouchot also reclassified many works within the established hierarchy of academic genres. Appendix 1 shows that over half of the exhibited works (53%) are on overtly religious themes; Bouchot's entries for such works continued his emphasis on chronicling the history of the French state. He thus re-presented them within the discourse of history paintings by describing the public role of each identifiable personage in the painting, and at the same time effacing the religious meaning and associations of the subject matter. These works are thereby resituated as documents of French history worthy of study by Catalogue Definitif, 16 (#38): Le nom du personnage represents nous est fourni part le cadre, dans une legende en caracteres speciaux imagines par Jean Fouquet et retrouves dans la plupart des miniatures du Livre d'Heures conserve a Chantilly: LE TRES VICTORIEUX ROY DE FRANCE CHARLES SEPTIESME DE C E NOM.... Pour qu'on osat lui donner ce nom il fallait que le pince meritat le titre de Victorieux; ce ne fut guere qu'apres la bataille de Formigny, le 15 avril 1450, et surtout apres la conquete de la Guyenne en 1453, qu'il eut pu le revendiquer. Mais le roi parait age ici d'une quarantaine d'annees; en 1453, il eut eu cinquante ans. On n'avait done pas attendu les victoires finales et on avait du lui decerner le titre de Victorieux des ka conference d'Arras (1444). 53 serious academics, rather than as objects intended for religious veneration. For example, the description of the painting, Miracle d'un saint portant sa tete dans ses mains, en presence des donateurs, school of Nicolas Froment, c.1480 (fig. 21), recounts how Saint Mitre, a 5th century Greek convert to Christianity, proved his sanctity by walking from the scaffold to the cathedral carrying his head under his arm. The factual terms of the account evacuated the miraculous aspect of the original legend, removing all sense of religious wonder typically associated with the depiction. Instead, the donors, Jacques de la Roque and his unnamed wife, became more central players in the historical drama, both visually with their painted figures flanking that of the headless saint in the centre of the panel and textually with the entry emphasizing how they fulfilled their socially and politically prominent roles as founders of the hospital at Aix. Originally foregrounded in their religious duties, their roles were now de-sacralized in the catalogue to be more identifiably civic in orientation. The scene thus was represented more as an episode in French history than as an event inspiring religious devotion.98 This biographical emphasis in the Catalogue Definitif is consistent with the style of French historical scholarship in this period in which the personalities of the past were used as metonyms for the period in which they lived.99 Heavily based in archival texts as well as the positivism of Auguste Comte 1 0 0 , studies of the portrait were one manifestation of these trends; here the frequent references to the personalities and achievements of donors 9BCatalogue Definitif, 38 (#80). "Green, 77. See also Francois Furet, 'The Birth of History in France," In the Workshop of History, trans. Jonathan Mandelbaum (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984). 100Kulturmann, 104. 54 represented in these works paralleled the general predominance of portraiture and can be seen as a link to the Bloc Republican's valuing of individual accomplishments of citizens in modern French society. An interesting counterpoint to the Introduction and the catalogue entries for the Paintings and drawings section of the Catalogue Definitif is the fourth section devoted to the Manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale. The title, "Manuscrits a Peintures" (fig. 13), restated the continuity argument of Lafenestre's introductory essay, linking artistic stylistics of manuscript production with the development of French primitif painting. This section, however, shows a marked difference to the integrated and mutually supportive arguments of the earlier introductory essay, the catalogue entries for the paintings and drawings for the exhibit at the Pavilion de Marsan. The separate physical layout of the display of the manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale, already discussed in Chapter 1, was reinforced by a separate introduction, under the title, "Avis"1 0 1. This new section, seemingly produced independent of the rest of the exhibition by the Bibliotheque Nationale, explained how the curator(s) had arranged the displayed objects in chronological order from the 13th to the 16th century. In addition, the objects were meticulously displayed: for example, "three cases, marked with the letters A, B, C,...dedicated to twenty-seven manuscripts from the Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal and case 1 0 1 According to The Concise Oxford French Dictionary (Second edition, 1980), this word can be variously defined as 'statement of opinion,' 'announcement,' and 'judgement'. All of these elements could be used in reference to the content and, to the reader, its use sets this section apart from the rest of the catalogue. 55 XX to nine manuscripts from the famous collection of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson".1 0* The manuscript section of the Catalogue Definitif gave explicit instructions to the visitor to move down the aisles in a specific sequence from right to left from the front of the room to the back. Each item displayed was listed in the catalogue, specified by case (e.g., Vitrine IV) or site (e.g., Vestibule)103; for example, the page in figure 15 clearly shows that the Breviaire de Paris manuscript (#12) can be viewed in Case IV.104 The experience of the visitor at the Bibliotheque Nationale was thus more controlled and delineated in the manuscript section of the Catalogue Definitif than in the section discussing the paintings and drawings shown at the Pavilion de Marsan. The curators orchestrated the movements of the viewer and more precisely related the manuscript catalogue entries to the particular location at which it could be seen. In textual terms, the Bibliotheque Nationale portion of the exhibition can be read as an extensive footnote to the main part of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, a 'proof to the curators' claims of the formal linkage between manuscript production and the school of French primitives. In addition, the status of manuscripts as part of a complex library cataloguing system also differentiated these works from the paintings; for example, the entry for item #9, the manuscript Les Grandes Chroniques de France (fig. 14) was annotated with a unique 10ZCatalogue Definitif, 1: "...trois vitrines, marquees des lettres A, B, C, ont ete consacrees a vingt-sept manuscrits de la Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal et la vitrine XX a neuf manuscrits de la celebre collection de M. Henry Yates Thompson." Please note that page numbering restarts in this section of the catalogue, another indication of the separate treatment in the two parts of the Catalogue Definitif. 103Catalogue Definitif, 2. 1 0 4 There is no indication of a reverse cross-reference so that an object seen in a particular case can be easily identified in the catalogue. Note that, in fig. 14, the objects are numbered sequentially, but not in parallel sequence by case numbers and location. The Catalogue Definitif s text can be seen as in conflict with and dominant over the experiential elements of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. 56 identifier, "Sainte Genevieve, n° 782," indicating that this exhibit item is part of the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve on loan to the exhibition. No such ordered and organized thinking similarly catalogued the paintings of the other great institution represented at the Exposition des Primitifs frangais: the Louvre. Neither the Introduction nor the catalogue entries for the paintings and drawings, although numerically and chronologically sequenced, gave the visitor any such instructions on how to view the works displayed; only the numerical sequence of the catalogue entries provided any semblance of structured viewing. In fact, the part of the Catalogue Definitif dealing with the Pavilion de Marsan was not intended to provide guidance on how to experience the visual display. Georges Lafenestre and Henri Bouchot had created an interrelated dialogic text of the Introduction and the Catalogue entries, exclusive of the manuscript section. The Catalogue Definitif was created as a 'unit of discourse': the linear, syntagmatic construction of the Introduction was bound together with the associative references of the Catalogue entries to create a mutually reinforcing argument for the establishment of a French primitifs. The poetic troping of the logic and rhetoric of the Introduction combined with the themes of portraiture, civic and secular duty to the state, and the qualities of realism, 'truth' and Frenchness, and were repeated throughout the catalogue entries in order to produce the specific ideological message of the Catalogue Definitif. By not referring to the experiential qualities of a stipulated viewing structure for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, the Catalogue Definitif 57 thus ruled over that experience and re/presented a textual manifestation of the visual argumentation of the exhibition.105 1 0 5Stephen Bann, The Clothing of Clio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984): 35-36; and Hayden White, 'The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory," History and Theory 23, 1 (1984): 17. See also Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison, WI and London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). 58 CHAPTER THREE REPRESENTATION AS 'CATALOGUE' ...French art is dedicated to the immortality of the race, of the people or of the French nation, the "genius of France", sublimating and transcending all divisions, all dramas, all the incidents of the history of man, of class and of parties, into a system of aesthetic values and unified historical accounts, which embody, represent and enliven national sentiments, in a French society likewise convinced of its power and its cultural and artistic superiority.106 The Exposition des Primitifs frangais, as event and catalogue together, presented a unified, art-historical argument seeking to expand the academic spectrum to include notions of a French renaissance equal to and parallel with the paradigm of the Italian Renaissance and as counterpoint to the Flemish claims for equal recognition. But what else was this exhibition saying about the state of France, its people and the nation's current position within both the European and international spheres? Were there other issues imbedded within the rhetoric of historical development and lineage, within the impassioned call to arms to right a wrong, that go beyond the ostensible claims for academic and connoisseur acceptance? In this chapter the arguments presented in the Catalogue Definitif are read differently to provide an alternate and expanded interpretation of the relevance of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais far more resonant in the 1 0 6Marie-Claude Genet-Delacroix, "Esthetique officielle et art national sous la Troisieme Republique," Annates: Economies Societe Civilisations 39, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1984): 117-118: ...[L]'art frangais consacre-t-il I'immoralite de la race, du peuple ou de la nation frangaise, le «genie de la France», sublimant et transcendant toutes les divisions, tous les drames, tous les accidents de I'historie des hommes, des classes et des partis, dans un systeme de valeurs esthetique et historique unifie, qui incarne, represente et vivifie le sentiment national, dans une societe frangaise ainsi convaincue de sa puissance et de sa superiorite culturelle et artistique. 59 contemporary milieu of early twentieth century France than its seemingly limited sphere of art. In another sense then, the exhibition can be seen as 'cataloguing' a set of political and social issues and concerns of the country from the point of view of the governing Republicans. The Catalogue Definitif presents three interrelated areas of argumentation to claim a French primitif equal to that of the Italian and Flemish: linguistic and cultural homogeneity, anti-clericalism, and stylistic proselytization. These arguments relate, however, to larger French and international milieus and it is apparent that the content, style and tone of the Catalogue Definitif is intertwined with both internal and external issues and debates on Republicanism and national identity which, in early twentieth century France, were fraught with gradations of meaning. The catalogue is positioned within these debates to support what were specifically Republican ideas of the 'Nation' as bourgeois, stable, and unified. Cultural and Linguistic Homogeneity The first area of argumentation in the catalogue's claim for an Ecole des Primitifs francaise centred on specific notions of linguistic, geographic and cultural homogeneity. Throughout the Catalogue Definitif, both the Introduction and the catalogue entries made claims that artists who were French-speaft/ng. artists who worked at French courts, and even artists with francophone names, all became French artists. These disparate individuals were assimilated and gallicized ("assimiler,...franciser", according to 60 L a f e n e s t r e ) . 1 0 7 F o r e x a m p l e , in d i s c u s s i n g the international c h a r a c t e r of t h e P a r i s ateliers, L a f e n e s t r e in his e s s a y c l a i m s "[a]lmost all, a p p r e n t i c e s a s m u c h a s m a s t e r s , c a m e f r o m A r t o i s , Hainaut, B r a b a n t , s o u t h e r n F l a n d e r s , all p r o v i n c e s with a F r e n c h l a n g u a g e a n d culture, g o v e r n e d b y v a s s a l p r i n c e s a n d relatives of t h e F r e n c h k i n g . " 1 0 8 S e v e r a l p a g e s later, L a f e n e s t r e reiterated this point e v e n m o r e s t r o n g l y , c l a i m i n g n o w that e v e n t h e great ' F l e m i s h ' painters J a n v a n E y c k a n d R o g i e r v a n d e r W e y d e n w e r e F r e n c h b e c a u s e their s o u l s w e r e a b l e t o d e a l s o o p e n l y with the simplicity of n a t u r e a n d realistic p o r t r a y a l s that w e r e , a c c o r d i n g to L a f e n e s t r e , s o F r e n c h in c h a r a c t e r . E v e n t h e Italians r e c o g n i z e d this, c l a i m e d L a f e n e s t r e , b e c a u s e t h e y g a v e t h e epithet of ' G a l l i c u s ' t o b o t h artists: N e v e r t h e l e s s , the b a s e itself, the s o u l , r e m a i n s a natural d e v e l o p m e n t of F r e n c h art, with a m o r e experimental return to the simplicity s t r o n g a m o n g the s c u l p t o r s of the thirteenth c e n t u r y a n d a m o r e e x p a n s i v e a w a r e n e s s of outer nature a n d of p r o x i m a t e realities. T h e d a y w h e n o n e w a n t s to u n d e r s t a n d this art c o m p l e t e l y , o n e m u s t b r i n g t o g e t h e r t h e w o r k s f r o m A r t o i s with all t h o s e , at least, of o l d Hainault. R o g i e r d e la P a s t u r e (van d e r W e y d e n ) « R o g e r u s Gallicus» to the Italians, like J a n v a n E y c k is « J o h a n n e s G a l l i c u s » , a n d his c o m p a t r i o t s f r o m T o u r n a i , with l a n g u a g e a n d instincts s o F r e n c h , w o u l d truly h a v e the right to t a k e part in this c o l l a b o r a t i o n . 1 0 9 107Catalogue Definitif, XVIII. 10BCatalogue Definitif, XVII: "Presque tous, apprentis plus que maltres, arrivaient de I'Artois, du Hainaut, du Brabant, des Flandres meridionales, toutes provinces de langue et de culture francaise, gouvernees par les princes vassaux et parents du roi de France." 109Catalogue Definitif, XXIV: Toutefois, le fond meme, I'esprit, reste un developpement naturel de I'art frangais, aven un retour plus experiments vers la simplicity forte des sculpteurs du XIII6 et une intelligence plus etendue de la nature exterieure et des realites prochaines. Le jour ou Ton voudra connaitre cet art d'une facon complete, il faudra joindre aux oeuvres de 'Artois toutes celles, au moins, de I'ancien Hainaut. Rogier de la Pasture (van der Weyden) «Rogerus Gallicus» pour les Italiens, comme Jan van Eyck est «Johannes Gallicus», Rogier et ses compatriotes les Tournaisiens, de langue et de sentiments si frangais, auraient bien le droit de prendre part a ces concours. 61 In this way, Lafenestre's argument contested Flemish claims to the production of specific artists by reinscribing their nationality as French or French-related. If a Flemish painter worked within the geographical boundaries of France, he therefore became French. The catalogue entry for item #16, a painting dated to c. 1400 (fig. 22), thus claimed that "[t]he Le Martyre de Saint Denis is considered to be the work of Jean Maelwael called Malouel, a Gueldrois painter settled at Dijon around 1398, and who became French just like the German Memling, established in Flanders, became Flemish."1 1 0 This line of argumentation was especially strongly stated when Lafenestre described the earlier stages of French artistic autonomy in the fourteenth century when he asserted that French painters had differentiated their style from that in Flemish work. Lafenestre's arguments in this area were supported by Bouchot's catalogue entries which developed, or rather identified, geographical and physiological 'Frenchness' in the works displayed. For example, in the description of a School of Touraine panel from c. 1480 (item #64, La Vierge et sainte Anne sur un trone avec Dieu le Pere, deux anges et deux saints), Bouchot insisted that "[t]he two women, the Virgin and Saint Anne, have very French facial characteristics, without any rapport, even vaguely, with the Virgins of Flanders. The angels are also very close to the French angels in the manuscripts."111 n°Catalogue Definitif, 8: "Le Martyre de saint Denis est considere comme l'oeuvre de Jean Maelwael dit Malouel, peintre Gueldrois etabli a Dijon vers 1398, et qui devint un Francais comme I'allemand Memling, etabli en Flandre, devint un Flamand." inCatalogue Definitif, 28 (#64): "Les deux femmes, la Vierge et sainte Anne ont les physionomies tres franchises, sans rapports, meme lointaine, avec les Vierges des Flandres. Les anges sont aussi tres proches des anges francais des manuscrits." The Catalogue Definitif entries are full of such references to the manuscripts section, which further emphasized the separate location of the Bibliotheque Nationale portion of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Regrettably, I was unable to locate this painting for inclusion in this thesis. 62 And again, for catalogue item #109, the La Vierge et I'Enfant Jesus avec quatre anges (fig. 23), attributed to the Maitre de Moulins (c. 1490), Bouchot explained that "the Virgin is an undisputed Frenchwoman; the type shown here has been preserved as a further example of one."1 1 2 Geographical references to French locations abound in the catalogue entries, further buttressing the essential Frenchness identified by Bouchot. The following excerpt concerning a School of Paris work (c. 1490) entitled Le Christ descendu de la croix en presence d'un religieux stands as an example: The calvary, considering the background which represents Saint-Germain- des-Pres, the Seine, the Louvre and Montmartre, seems to be located not far from Montparnasse....The interest in this picture, which has a beautiful appearance of art, resides in the representation of the abbey of Saint- Germain-des-Pres, the Louvre and Montmartre.113 Thus again, the painting of religious devotion has been 're-inscribed' by Bouchot into an historical travelogue of fifteenth century France. These arguments are coherent with other analyses of late nineteenth-century Republican support for notions of the homogenized linguistic, geographic and cultural unity. Etienne Balibar points out that France had long regarded linguistic uniformity as a political necessity essential to the country's nationhood: The French 'revolutionary nation' accorded a privileged place to the symbol of language in its own initial process of formation; it bound political unity closely to linguistic uniformity, the democratization of the state to the 112Catalogue Definitif, 51: "...la Vierge est un indiscutable francaise; le type qu'elle nous montre s'est conserve encore a peu pres tel." U3Catalogue Definitif, 43 (#92): Le calvaire, etant donnes les fonds qui representent Saint-Germain-des-Pres, la Seine, le Louvre et Montmartre, paralt etre place non loin de Montparnasse....L'interet de ce tableau, qui a une belle tenue d'art, reside surtout dans la representation de I'abbaye de Sainte- Germain-des-Pres, du Louvre et de Montmartre. Unfortunately I was unable to locate the painting based on the information contained in this entry. 63 coercive repression of cultural 'particularisms', local patois being the object on which it became fixated....'Nativism' had always been implicit in the history of French national ideology until, at the end of the nineteenth century, colonization on the one hand, and an intensification of the importation of labour and the segregation of manual workers by means of their ethnic origin on the other, led to the constitution of the phantasm of the 'French race'. 1 1 4 There were two main tactics by which the Republicans had fostered this ideology of unification. One was by legislating the standardization of French language use and education throughout the country, and the second was by promoting the French state as a long-standing legal and historic entity. Balibar has also noted that the act of imagining a collective national identity permitted the elision of internal differences and helped to focus potentially divisive internal tensions towards externally identifiable 'others': By constituting the people as a fictively ethnic unity against the background of a universalistic representation which attributed to each individual one - and only one - ethnic identity and which thus divides up the whole of humanity between different ethnic groups corresponding potentially to so many nations, national ideology does much more than justify the strategies employed by the state to control populations. It inscribes their demands in advance in a sense of belonging in the double sense of the term - both what it is that makes one belong to oneself and also what makes one belong to other fellow human beings. Which means that one can be interpellated, as an individual, in the name of the collectivity whose name one bears. The naturalization of belonging and the sublimation of the ideal nation are two aspects of the same process, [emphasis in original]115 The principle of a French-speaking 'nation' had first arisen in the revolutionary era of the 1790's when the use of regional languages continued to be linked with the power 1 1 4Etienne Balibar, 'The Nation Form: History and Ideology," Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, trans. Chris Turner, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London and New York: Verso, 1991): 104. 1 1 5Balibar, 96. 64 of the Catholic Church and the Ancien Regime.1 1 6 The homogenization of the French had accelerated particularly since the 1890's with the passage of legislation standardizing the use of French language and laicizing the educational system. 1 1 7 As recently as 1903, the use of Breton, Basque, Provencal and Flemish had been abolished in all religious instruction, effectively undermining local clerical influence.118 Such linguistic policies effectively annexed non-French-speaking regions into a Republican-defined, French-speaking, national entity to privilege centrist needs over regional ones. Regional patois were thus devalued and defined as the languages of the uneducated and powerless.1 1 9 This concern for cultural and linguistic homogeneity can also be extended to encompass other considerations. The late nineteenth century was a time of shifting demographics: French population growth had stabilized in the last decades of the nineteenth century, forcing recourse to immigration to fill the employment needs of the 1 1 6 E v e n before the Revolution, the Ancien Regime had sought to impose a unifying linguistic principle to France. According to both Pierre Achard ("History and the Politics of Language in France," History Workshop 10 (Autumn 1980): 175-176) and Caroline C. Ford ("Which Nation? Language, Identity and Republican Politics in Post-revolutionary France," History of European Ideas 17, 1 (1993): 32-35), the 1539 Villers-Cotterets decree during the reign of Francis I attempted to use language to centralize authority in Paris by legislating that all proclamations and laws would be in French only. Both authors agree that "linguistic uniformity did not become a political and cultural goal until the Revolution and, more specifically, until the establishment of the first French Republic" (Ford, 33). Others (including Mayeur and Reberioux) suggest that concerted efforts to legislate language uniformity did not occur until the middle of the Third Republic. 1 1 7 F o r a full discussion of this topic, see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870-1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976). n 8 A c h a r d , 180; Ford, 37. 1 1 9 F r e d Orton and Griselda Pollock, "Les Donnees Bretonnantes: La Prairie de representation," Art History 3, 3 (September 1980): 329; Ernest Gellner, Culture, Identity, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 17; and Achard, 177. 65 burgeoning industrial corridors of the northwest. Immigration of foreign workers to fill this need came primarily from Belgium and Italy, the two countries specifically targeted in the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in its re-writing of the European Renaissance. This meant that, by 1905, 5% of the population, or over a million non-French born individuals, could be identified in the census. 1 2 0 However, despite, or perhaps because of this dependence on foreign workers, many of whom took low-paying industrial work that the French-born would not, there was a distrust of 'foreigners' who took French wages back to their own countries and did not participate in the French economy or commit to the Nation by becoming citizens.121 And the Republicans, having built on Renan-esque theories of consensual nationhood, were seeking a "common, organic, trans-historical national community", an Enlightenment conception of community in which "...the universalism of Jacobinism is presented in opposition to the particularism of regional, cultural, ethnic and other minorities"122 at the same time as industrial sectors of the 1 2 0Philip E. Ogden, "International migration in the nineteen than twentieth centuries," Migrants in Modern France: Population Mobility in the Later Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Philip E. Ogden and Paul E. White (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989): 40-45; and Olivier Milza, Les Frangais devant I'immigration, Questions au XX" siecle (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1988): 21. Not only were Belgian and Italian immigrants (approximately 310,000 and 350,000 respectively) settling in northwest and southeast border regions, there was also in-migration to the Paris basin and other large towns throughout the country. In fact, Paris had approximately 16% of the entire country's foreign population, higher than any comparable centre in Europe (43). 121Lientacker, 180. Only approximately 375,000 of the over one million became naturalized citizens in this period (Ogden, 40). 1 2 2 Maxim Silverman, Deconstructing the nation: Immigration, racism and citizenship in modern France, Critical Studies in Racism and Migration, ed. Robert Miles (London and New York: Routledge, 1992): 23-25. Emphasis in original. 66 country were eager for an influx of workers123. This resulted in tensions between creating the sense of the political and inviolable whole and supporting politically influential economic forces in the regions, between the need for an assimilationist agenda creating the nation-state and the exclusionary tendencies in the face of regional inflows, and between the ideal 'France' of Republican ideology and the practical needs of industrialists in the northwest and southeast.124 When the reader or viewer studied the Catalogue Definitif, the notions of French language, French geographical integrity, and French political history were all re-created into French cohesiveness, despite the contemporary evidence to the contrary. Anti-clericalism/Anti-papalism The second main argument in the Catalogue Definitif incorporates notions of anti-clerical and anti-papal constructs into its art historical claims. Long demonized as anti-democratic and as diverting citizen loyalties to an external authority, Roman Catholicism had been a point of attack in Republican thought and policies since 1879 when government legislation first began to exclude clerical teachers from the school system.1 2 5 Allusions to anti- papal politics were somewhat veiled, but remained identifiable. The Catalogue Definitif essay went out of its way to emphasize the lay spirit underlying the paintings in the 1 2 3Philip Nord, "Social defence and conservative regeneration: the national revival, 1900-14," Nationhood and Nationalism in France: From Boulangism to the Great War, 1989-1918, ed. Robert Tombs (London and New York: Harper Collins Academic, 1991): 214-5. 1 2 4Silverman, 17. 1 Z 5Anderson, 23, 92; Mayeur and Reberioux, 150-1. 67 Pavilion de Marsan. For example, it referred to the changing stylistic in manuscript illuminations as "the rapid emancipation, under the influence of lay scholars, of the observing spirit and human sensibilities".126 Lafenestre also made reference to the importation of numerous Italian painters, including Simone Martini, to the (French) papal court in Avignon in 1309127, but hastened to add that "nevertheless the Parisians were not at all corroded by these influences, too transient or too far away, of an art in development like their own."1 2 8 Nevertheless, the implication that a Papal court was encouraging foreign influences was very clearly stated. The language and focus of the catalogue overtly emphasized secular stylistic sources for the displayed art, thereby confounding the conflation of clerical and monarchical which was present throughout the Catalogue Definitif. At one level the aestheticization of religious imagery served to titillate the viewer's eye and not the viewer's religious belief. In turn, by making the objects 'French' and 'Republican' the religious associations of the images were correspondingly elided. This goal had already been partially accomplished with the removal of the art works from their original and functional settings in churches, chapels, or monasteries, and placing them within the state's secular equivalent, the museum which served as the repository of the national patrimony and as 1Z6Catalogue Definitif, XVI: "la rapide emancipation, sous I'influence des lettres la'ique, de I'esprit observateur et de la sensibilite humaine." 127Catalogue Definitif, XVIII. 1ZBCatalogue Definitif, XVII: "Neanmoins, les Parisiens ne se laissent point encore entamer par ces influences, trop passageres ou trop lointaines, d'un art en formation comme leur." Note the term Parisian even though Lafenestre is writing about southern France. 68 a new-found cult object.1 2 9 An extreme example from the catalogue entries, items #40- 42, the Melun Diptych by Jean Fouquet, dating from c. 1450, serves well here. The right wing of the diptych (fig. 15) depicts the Virgin Mary, but is allegedly a portrait of Agnes Sorel, the mistress of Charles Vll. As such, it was read as a display of the individualistic and realistic attributes of portraiture as opposed to a more formulaic Madonna. Etienne Chevalier, the painting's donor and Treasurer of France, is shown on the left wing of the diptych (fig. 24). In the 2-1/2 page catalogue entry for this work1 3 0, Bouchot reported the gossip surrounding the famous Agnes Sorel and her patronage of Chevalier, effectively intermixing the latter's service to the court and his role in government with scandalous details of their supposed liaison. Bouchot thereby completely eliminated any possible consideration of the work in religious terms, despite its title, and dwelled on its worldly connections: At Melun, where the work was hung on the wall of the cathedral, it was located in the exact place of the tomb of Etienne Chevalier and his wife Catherine Bude, dead in 1452 and represented with her husband on a brass tomb plate. A very old legend has it that the Virgin of the diptych has the traits of Agnes Sorel, mistress of King Charles Vll and protector of Master Etienne Chevalier, one is astonished that Catherine Bude does not appear in the composition and it was thought that the alleged Agnes Sorel was really the wife of the Treasurer....As we have stated, Agnes Sorel had named him executor of her will and the slightly scandalous, and improbable, story 1 2 9 There has been a considerable amount of work on the topic of museums and their role in constructing meaning. The most useful for my purposes have been: Carol Duncan, "Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship," Exhibiting Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991); Duncan and Wallach, "The Universal Survey Museum,"; Sherman, 'The Bourgeoisie, Cultural Appropriation, and the Art Museum in Nineteenth- Century France,"; and Sherman, Worthy Monuments. ^Catalogue Definitif, 17-20. 69 imputes to a great shared passion the absence of Catherine Bude from the diptych.1 3 1 Analysis of the exhibition contents (see appendix 1) presents another aspect of this tendency. From the predominate category of objects, that is painting, the breakdown of subject matter between secular and religious is close to 50-50, or more exactly, 32% secular and 31.5% religious, with overall totals of 47% secular and 53% religious subjects for the entire Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Yet, in relating these relationships back to the actual descriptive passages about the individual works, it becomes immediately apparent that the religious content of the paintings was used only as an identificatory label or as a stylistic marker. Thus, in one instance, an analysis of the Virgin Mary was used only to make a comparison with another known painting. This is the case with the painting of the L'Adoration des Bergers of c. 1430 (fig. 27), which was attributed in the catalogue to the Ecole de I'Artois (Le Maitre de Flemalle). Here Bouchot wrote: "Among the figures, the type of Virgin, with her hair tucked behind her ears, is that of Eve in the earthly paradise in the Tres Riches Heures, etc.; her white mantle studded with stars is 131Catalogue Definitif, 17-19: A Melun, ou l'oeuvre etait attachee a la muraille de la cathedrale, elle surmontait I'endroit precis de la sepulture d'Etienne Chevalier et de sa femme Catherine Bude, morte en 1452 et representee avec son mari sur une plate tombe de cuivre. Comme une legende fort ancienne voulait que la Vierge du diptyque fut representee sous les traits d'Agnes Sorel, maltresse du roi Charles VII et protectrice de maitre Etienne Chevalier, on s'etonnait que Catherine Bude ne parut pas dans la composition, et on pensait que la pretendue Agnes Sorel etait vraisemblablement la femme du tresorier...Comme nous I'avons dit, Agnes Sorel I'avait nomme son executeur testamentaire, et la chronique un peu scandaleuse, mal invraisemblable, attribuait a une passion partagee I'absence de Catherine Bude dans le diptyque. 70 similar to that in the Adorations des bergers of the manuscript."132 The irony of comparing Eve with the Virgin is apparently not taken up in the text. Religious content of the images then was not discussed according to the discourses of the actual historical period in which the work was originally viewed, nor in terms of style. A second form of this anti-clerical aspect employs a trope for anti-papal attitudes held by the governing centrist Republicans by using a kind of battle jargon, for example, terms such as "invasions," "resistance," "overthrown," "victim," "fatalities," "defeat," "confusion,"133 to describe the impact of Italianate artistic influences in the sixteenth century. A passage documenting the first incursions of the new, 'foreign' influences in terms suitable to epic poetry is an example: In the disarray when the School of Paris and those of the provinces fell prey to foreign invasion, none of the successive centres which developed here and there under the protection of a few enlightened princes in Burgundy, bordering on and in Berri, then on the banks of the Loire, in Provence, in the Lyons and Bourbonnais districts, became dominant or prosperous enough so that they developed in continuity and practice a strong enough scholarly tradition to group together once more so many incongruous elements....The few powerful personalities who went there to train would remain too isolated to rally for a time a large enough army of good Frenchmen [sic] capable of resisting, by their sheer size, the foreign invasion.^34 [emphasis added] 132Catalogue Definitif, 14 (#32): "Dans les figures, le type de la Vierge, avec les cheveux rejetes derriere les oreilles, est celui des Tres riches Heures pour Eve dans le Paradis terrestre, etc.; son manteau blanc etoile est semblable a celui de VAdoration des bergers du manuscrit." '"Catalogue Definitif, XXII-XXIII. ""Catalogue Definitif, XXII: Dans le desarroi ou les evenements ont jete I'ecole de Paris et celles des provinces en proie a I'invasion etrangere, aucun des centres successifs qui se forment, ga et la, sous la protections de quelques princes eclaires, en Bourgogne, d;abord et dans le Berri, puis sur les bords de la Loire, en Provence, dans le Lyonnais et le Bourbonnais, ne devient assez preponderant et prospere pour qu'il s'y developpe, avec suite et methode, une tradition scholaire [sic] assez forte pour grouper de nouveau tant d'elements heterogenes....Les 7 1 Such metaphorical language was commonly used in other contemporaneous discourses, such as the popular press, to describe Republican perceptions of the external threat of the Papacy (for example, the Pope's 1892 encyclical, Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, which in essence 'endorsed' the French Republican governments, though not if they persisted in their anti-religious legislation135) and internal Catholic and conservative support for papal influence and interference, for example, in maintaining Roman Catholic influences in education. At the same time, such invasion vocabulary would be highly charged for citizens with the still sensitive memories of the 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and France's loss of Alsace-Lorraine. The language choices, therefore, linked defeat and humiliation in historical times, both in war and significantly in art, to the new contemporary threat of a Catholicism being described and demonized in the popular press as a pervasive and looming menace to the peace, prosperity and independence of the successive and successful Republican governments. Stylistic Proselytization The third argument presented in the Catalogue Definitif posits what I call a theory of stylistic proselytization. For example, Lafenestre's Introduction states that the development of linearity, realism and naturalism centred on the Ile de France and in Paris, signifying as a result a truly French aesthetic and approach to painting. This style was quelques puissantes personnalites qui s'y vont former resteront trop isolees pour rallier a temps une assez grosse armee de bons Francais capables de resister, par leur masse, I'envahissement exterieur. Mayeurand Reberioux, 153. 72 then described as being disseminated not only throughout France, where it blended with the best qualities of independently developed local schools, but also into Flanders where, according to Lafenestre, under Burgundian rulers "[a]II the franco-flemish art, until the rise of van Eyck, proceeded from the Parisian art of the preceding generation."136 This construct of a French-centred origin of Northern realism directly opposed the commonly- held theory, first proposed in the late 1790's by the German art historian, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, and supported throughout the nineteenth century by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and others,1 3 7 that Flemish art style had spread southward into France. Significantly, the principles of the governing Republicans of the late nineteenth century emphasized cultural unity and elided cultural pluralism through language and education policies, bolstering the idea of a Republican 'nation'. The Louvre itself had long been positioned as the centralized repository of all national culture ~ from its role as a pre-Revolution royal residence embodying the legitimacy of the Ancien Regime and the king to its position as a state institution "in theory belonging to the people."1 3 8 In contemporary terms, the official Salon system located in Paris acted as a regulating agency for the art production of the nation. Salon taste, academic taste was therefore equated with French taste. In 1895, art official Gustave Larroumet, a moderate Republican, had deplored this centralist inclination, and the unwritten policy, that permitted the Louvre to denude the rest of the country for its own benefit: 136Catalogue Definitif, XXIII: 'Tout cet art franco-flamand, jusqu'a I'apparition de van Eyck, precede de I'art parisien a la mode sous la generation precedente." 137Kultermann, 78-79 and 91. 1 3 8 Duncan and Wallach, 454. 73 [t]he national museums located in Paris should not enrich themselves by despoiling the nation to the profit of the capital. Above all they should not monopolize works which in their original place, are living and, moved elsewhere, are dead. The Louvre should not imagine that it can deal with France to the profit of Paris, the same way that Lord Elgin used the Parthenon to the profit of England.1 3 9 However, as a corollary to the envoi system (that is, the distribution of salon art from the centre out to the provinces), the Exposition des Primitifs frangais had harvested in regional treasures to fulfil the goals of a Parisian, and thus national, centre1 4 0 by bringing together works from sites as diverse as regional museums in Lyons and Troyes, as well as monasteries and churches from as far away as Moulins and Aix. 1 4 1 Indeed, Charles Blanc, Director of Fine Arts from 1870-1873 "[regarded] provincial museums as 1 3 9Gustave Larroumet, L'art et I'etat en France (Paris: Librairie Hachette et cie., 1895): 251-252: "Les musees nationaux installees a Paris ne doivent pas s'enrichir en depouillant la nation au profit de sa capitale. Surtout, ils ne doivent pas accaparer des oeuvres qui, a leur place originelle, sont vivantes et, partout ailleurs, sont mortes. Le Louvre ne saurait traiter en Franc; au profit de Paris, comme Lord Elgin a faite du Parthenon au profit de I'Angleterre." 1 4 0Still the best sources for information on the relationship between provincial museums and Paris are Daniel Sherman's works, Worthy Monuments and the earlier 'The Bourgeoisie, Cultural Appropriation, and the Art Museum in Nineteenth-Century France," both previously cited. Gustave Larroumet discussed this relationship in L'art et I'etat en France. Though published a decade before the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, it still provided a valuable, near-contemporary view of the inner workings of the Fine Arts Administration. A footnote in Sherman's Worthy Monuments [no. 62, page 35] supports my contention of the provinces being stripped of treasures for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais: In the parliamentary discussion of the fine arts budget for 1903, Roger Ballu, a deputy and former Inspecteur des Beaux-Arts (his direct responsibilities had not included provincial museums) charged that the Fine Arts Administration was engaged in the practice of systematically transferring masterpieces from the collections of provincial museums to the Louvre: ACD/DP, 1903(1), 3 Feb 1903.510. He cited no definitive evidence to support this charge, and I have found none in the archives; the minister, Jacques Chaumie, while responding to most of Roger Ballu's comments, did not bother to reply to this charge. 1 4 1Appendix 1 shows that, in all, there were 23 French cities and towns that sent works to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. I have found no evidence to suggest or refute the possibility either that the works were simply commandeered or that they were willingly offered. At best, reviews, books and articles at the time mentioned the 'home' of the visiting works infrequently and then only in passing. Bouchot does call them lenders, but then he would hardly admit to commandeering artworks ("...Avant-propos," 265). 74 repositories from which the state could pick and choose at will". In uniting regional treasures in Paris, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais restated and reinforced that city's centrality, not only in contemporary political and cultural matters, but also in historical and artistic terms. Art historian Daniel Sherman's arguments on nineteenth century museum policy correspond to this analysis; he suggests that centres outside Paris and the He de France hub were "usually left out of the familiar dichotomy that treats Paris as the only true city and equates the provinces with rural France."1 4 3 Provincial museums from the 1840's and 1850's had developed active local fine arts societies whose monetary support enabled them to acquire works independent of the envoi system. Despite this growing independence, however, Paul Greenhalgh points out that "[f]rom the Revolution onwards, the hegemony of Paris over the rest of France became a recognized part of French cultural strategy, Paris was to be built up into the centre of European and hence world civilization."144 It is important to note that in nineteenth century France there had been a long history of resistance to the centralization of culture and international interest. The Expositions Universelles were instances that had provoked strong provincial resistance to the harvesting of local treasures for the glorification of Paris. A pamphlet called Pas d'Exposition en 1900, written by Leon Goulette, editor of LEst republique, a newspaper from Nancy, had challenged centralized cultural supremacy and expressed strong feelings !Sherman, Worthy Monuments, 33. 'Sherman, "Bourgeoisie, Cultural Appropriations...," 43. Greenhalgh, 118. 75 of "provincial pride and hatred of the political and economic power of Paris"1 4 5. Not only did such expositions strip the provincial centres of their best works, as was also the case with the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, but they also drew an inflow of capital from visitors with their hard-earned money who were attracted to the capital city by such extravaganzas. The centralization of artistic development in Paris as argued in the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was thus paralleled by physically relocating notable works to Paris and by bolstering the still resonant claim that the Musee du Louvre performed the crucial role of formulating cultural and aesthetic standards for the nation. It is into this third strand of argumentation that the other two strands can be woven. If the premise of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was to foster notions of a centralized, single-minded Nation in historical, artistic and aesthetic terms, then language and political loyalty must all be focused on the secular and centralized authority and be consistent throughout the country. No regional, patois-driven polities could be sustained or condoned in such a Nation; nor could any externally focused loyalty to a papal throne be tolerated if the Republican belief in unity and consensus was to be supported. There is thus an immediate and undeniable linkage between anticlericalism and the linguistic policies. All stripes of liberal and Republican citizens could unite in their support for a national, secular and unified school system with the promulgation of standardized French as a replacement for patois and local usages. 1 4 6 The separation of Church and State had come to the fore as an issue as early as 1873, two years after the founding of the 'Cited in Mandrell, 4 1 . Achard, 1 7 9 . 76 Third Republic and, at the turn of the century, the Bloc Republican as a political and governing group had in fact arisen primarily through the identification of a common enemy: the Church. Historian Claude Langlois has observed in a recent study that the stand against the Roman Catholic church became a rallying point for a spectrum of Republicans with discordant opinions: A single point of view united the adversaries [among the Republicans] profoundly separated by the proposed political solutions, the politics of religion: the authoritarian Empire had ostensibly supported Catholicism; the government of moral order, in the absence of a king to hand over to France, went one step further in this matter. The enemy, therefore, was clericalism.147 As historian Maurice Crubellier has expressed it, the Republican government's agenda was to replace the catechism with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and therefore to replace the familial relationship to the Mother Church by an analogous relationship to la patrie (from the Latin, pater or father), an essential ingredient in the development of a solidly secular nation.1 4 8 Thus, by writing issues of anti-clericalism, centralization, cultural homogeneity and the promotion of the French language into the text of the catalogue, the Republican position was embedded in highly politicized terms in an art historical argument surrounding the claims of the Exposition des Primitif frangais. At this point, the field of 1 4 7 Claude Langlois, "Catholiques et laics," Les Lieux de memoire, ed. Pierre Nora, Vol. Ill, Les France (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1992): 152: Un seul point unit des adversaires profondement separes par les solutions politiques proposees, la politique religieuse: I'Empire autoritaire a ostensiblement soutenu le catholicisme; le gouvernement d'Ordre moral, a defaut de donner un roi a la France, a rencheri encore sur ce point. L'ennemi, le voila bien, le clericalisme. 148Crubellier, 232. 77 inquiry must be viewed in the light of emerging Rightist and Leftist philosophies being formulated in both municipal and national political arenas. After the dissolution of conservative Boulangism in the 1880's, the Right, and especially ultra-conservative factions, had supported the army and the judiciary during the years of the Dreyfus Affair. The Right, strongly conservative and Catholic, identified 'the Nation' with a seemingly paradoxical blend of nationalism and regionalism, arguing that the 'true' Revolution had been decentralist and federalist and had supported regional self-determination in opposition to the autocratic centralist government of the Ancien Regime. On the other hand, socialist support for unionization, especially in Paris and regional centres such as Lyon, was putting pressure on the Republican government's slow-but-steady pace of social reform. A growing Republican fear of a Leftist presence in France was thus linked with the spectre of internationalism, previously associated only with the Catholic Church. The Republican politic, tending to hold somewhat Rightist beliefs in institutional conservatism, property and profit which they had assumed virtually unchanged from previous regimes regardless of their political bent, abhorred the spectre of collectivism, unionization and socialist agendas epitomized in the potent memory of the worst excesses of the 1872 Commune.1 4 9 Municipal and national elections illustrate the political vacillations of this period. For example, Paris municipal representation, radical since 1871, shifted to a Rightist alignment from 1896 on, largely due to anti-Dreyfusard feelings; however, in reaction to growing 1 4 9 D . R . Watson, "The Nationalist Movement in Paris, 1900-1906," The Right in France, 1890-1919: Three Studies, ed. David Shapiro, St. Antony's Papers, Number 13 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962): 57, 63; Nord, 212. 78 syndicalism and labour unrest, it reverted in 1904 to a socialist minority. National elections show a corresponding shift in the other direction: the centrist Bloc of Radicals and Republicans had enlisted Socialist support to defeat conservative elements in 1900, but, by the federal election of 1906, disaffection with socialists urging accelerated changes to current social policies resulted in a return to a more Rightist bent. The 1904 Republicans, then, found themselves between the two polarities of the political spectrum at a time when popular support for centrist ideologies seemed to be fluctuating. Both poles were increasingly powerful and espoused nationalistic aspects to their philosophy: the Right advocated the regional and anti-collectivist stance it saw as the legacy of 1789, while the Left invoked egalitarianist ideals of the Revolution. The Republicans found themselves as neither: they remained centrist in alignment, supporting the principles of continuity, stability, anti-clericalism, homogeneity and a specific national identity.150 And what can we therefore infer were the notions surrounding national identity catalogued through the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and its discourses? The educational objectives of Republican beaux-art policies are apparent throughout the Catalogue Definitif. Lafenestre's consistent subtext in his Introduction was that to see these works was to learn much that had been hidden about France's greatness. This approach was used in the creation (or reinforcement) of a stronger, more nationalist, rather than localized, sense of 'France'.1 5 1 By extending historian Miriam Levin's analysis of Republican art policy, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can be categorized 150Watson, 82; Stone, 185. 151Green, 78-9. 79 as a 'normative approach', that is, one where the values and codes of conduct to which a citizen should aspire can be seen as mirrored in the facture and style of art: Order, harmony, balance, a logical and controlled working method were qualities that bespoke the personality of the artist. They were communicated through the work of art to the viewer to accept as guidelines for his own moral character. Art in fact, had its source in the artist's need for discipline....[T]he achievement of moral perfection, whether through the process of making the work of art or by using it as a guide for one's actions, ended in a sense of pleasurable calm....It was a theory that valued rigor, diligence, and devotion to duty as a social obligation.152 These are the very qualities that are extolled in the Catalogue Definitif and that are advocated as the values ordering the proper conduct and attitude of a true Republican - one who espoused neither extreme of the political spectrum and who assiduously fulfilled the duties of a citizen, a "civisme republicain," according to Crubellier.153 Consider the following catalogue entry for the exhibition's portrait of Jean le Bon (fig. 26), which is cited as the exemplar for unflattering portraits154. Yet, according to Bouchot, the face of the King, despite the painting's unfinished roughness, revealed stalwart and unpretentious qualities: In this crude profile, thick and fleshy, of King John, what ancestral size in the nose! What thickness of lips! What dull and serious rusticity in this despondent face, in this neglected clothing and hair! But also what a tone of heartrending sincerity, what power of unpitying truth! This single work suffices to tell us, by the manly daring and the free breadth of its rendition, that there was thus in Paris painters, true painters, in the complete sense of 1 5 2 Levin, 154. Though Levin's analysis is specifically applied to art production in the period of the late Third Republic, the same approach can also be used for an historical exhibition. 153Crubellier, 232. ^Catalogue Definitif, 1 (#11), attributed to Girard d'Orleans, c. 1359. 80 the work, already different from the miniaturists and tapestry makers, and capable of painting great works, vigorous and simple....1 5 5 In other words, this king was represented in the Catalogue Definitif as having the attributes of a stolid, sincere, unpretentious, bourgeois: a good Republican citizen rendered by painters of similar character. The catalogue's Introduction also overtly highlighted portraiture throughout the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and linked the qualities identified there to the history of the nation: Lafenestre, the moderate Republican and a curator at the Louvre, wrote in the Introduction to the Catalogue Definitif, "[h]istory and portraits, it is the same taste for life and for truth, in the present or in the past, a noble taste that we preserve today."1 5 6 Qualities identified in these works, such as truth, honesty, and unflinching self-regard, were seen as combined with lively and virile rendering of images1 5 7. The sitter's characteristics were associated with a sense of duty which in turn was supported by the litany of government jobs and duties fulfilled by the persons portrayed. The physiognomy of recognizable individuals, as well as saints and other figures, was repeatedly foregrounded to fashion a composite portrait, as it were, of an 'Ideal Citizen' formed in lssCatalogue Definitif, XX: Dans ce rude profile, epais et charnu, du roi Jean, quelle ancestrale grosseur du nez! quelle epaisseur de levres! Quelle rusticite lourde et serieuse dans cette mine abattue, dans cette negligence des vetements et de la chevelure! Mais aussi que accent de sincerite navrante, quelle puissance de verite impitoyable! Cette seule piece suffirait a nous dire, par la hardiesse virile et la largueur libre de sa facture, qu'il y avait alors a Paris des peintres, de vrais peintres, dans le sens complet du mot, deja differents des miniaturistes et brodeurs, et capable de brosser de grands ouvrages, vigoureux et simples... 156Catalogue Definitif, XIX: "Histoire et portraits, c'est le meme gout pour la vie et pour la verite, dans le present ou dans le passe, un noble gout que nous conserveron toujours." ^Catalogue Definitif, XXIII. 81 the historical roots of pre-Revolutionary France and promoted and attained in the contemporary Republic. The 'PrimitiT Attachment of the term 'primitif to the very title of this exhibition also had significant cultural and political impact in 1904. The claims made by the Exposition des Primitifs frangais revolved around a new application of a term which was considered both avant- garde and radical and which had contested meanings and history.158 Used widely and variously throughout the nineteenth century for widely differing reasons, the term 'primitif was co-opted by Lafenestre and Bouchot for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in order to counteract both the radical historic resonances inherent in many past applications of the term and the newer claims being made by contemporaneous Belgian and French avant-gardes to legitimize its use in new artistic contexts and associations. Reference to the Nouveau Larousse lllustree, a popular illustrated encyclopedia published between 1897-1904159, provides access to contemporary usage of the term primitif. Of the sixteen different definitions of the word, ranging from mathematical to geological, several dominant notions catalogue and illuminate how the word was understood in this period and in the context of art production and history. The "Beaux- Arts" definition, "[t]he primitives - artists, painters or sculptors who preceded the masters 1 5 8 T h e controversy continues today, especially in the context of centre/periphery dynamics and post- /neo-colonial analysis of cultural institutions. See, for example, "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, ed. William Rubin (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984) for an example of an exhibition pilloried by critics and cultural historians for its approach. 1S9Nouveau Larousse lllustree (Paris, 1897-1904 ed.). S.v. "Primitif". 82 of the Grande Epoque,"1 6 0 states the accepted point of view against which the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was positioned. Certainly, in French academic circles, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had long been enshrined as the era in which the foundations of French academic style had been established, a belief that persisted even into the concurrent Salon exhibition.161 It is in this sense, together with the basic Larousse definition, "that which exists from the beginning,"162 that the curators of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais appear to have used the term 'primitif.' They argued that a school of French painting had existed from the beginning (interpreted as the beginning of French artistic history); thus, the goal of the exhibition organizers was to push back the origins of French artistic production from the 'grande epoque' to the middle ages, linking gothic sculpture, manuscript illumination and ecclesiastical architecture with the achievements of the traditionally defined golden era in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as part of a continuum of French excellence. This was not a new project for historians of art in eighteenth and nineteenth century France. As early as the 1770's, Seroux d'Agincourt had attempted to construct a seamless lineage of European artistic production from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries, from what had been considered as the decline of classical greatness to the 1 6 0 "Les primitifs - artistes, peintres ou sculpteurs qui ont precedees les maitres de la Grande Epoque". The Grande Epoque refers to the period of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries when French art reached what was considered in the canon to be its illustrious peak, epitomised by such artists as Poussin, Fragonard and Watteau. 1 6 1 T h e Salon opened at the Grand Palais on April 16, 1904, four days after the Exposition des Primitifs frangais (Andre Michel, "Promenades aux salons," Journal des Debats, 29 May 1904, 1). 1 6 Z"Quelque chose qui existe des I'origine." 83 'rebirth' in the Italian Renaissance.163 The need to prove conclusively that superior French art production had been continuous from the beginning of European artistic production and ongoing throughout the Middle Ages became the goal of much of the art historical and historical investigations of the latter half of the century. At length and in broad, heroic terms the Catalogue Definitif, as has been noted earlier, characterized the search as a nation-wide quest, enumerating the roll call of historians, archaeologists, and art enthusiasts who had sought evidence of French artistic development stretching backwards in time to the beginning of all European art practices, in other words, to a French 'primitif that presaged later artistic superiority: The terrain, nevertheless, for the last 25 years, has been well worked, well cultivated. Following after the late and determined explorers who were the first to excavate in forgotten fields, Emeric David, P. Merimee, Didron, Viollet- le-Duc, Leon de Laborde, Ph. de Chennevieres, A. de Montaiglon, Paul Mantz, Dussieux, E. Soulie, etc., new scholars, conscientious and patient, new critics, passionate and perspicacious, did not cease, in recent times, in their documentary publications or their learned studies to bring to light nearly every day some newly uncovered corner. The scholarly works of Leopold Delisle, Jules Guiffrey, Bernard Prost, Abbe Requin, Paul Durrieu, R. de Lasteyrie, E. Male, P. Vitry, Dimier, Salomon Reinach, etc., the discerning and cordial studies of A. Gruyer, Andre Michel, L. Gonse, P. Leprieur, C. Benoit, Andre Hallays, L. de Fourcaud, etc., and the many other contributions carried on by the tireless and modest workers at the Archives des Monuments Historiques, the Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de France, the Bulletin Monumental, the Comptes rendus des reunions annuelles des Societes des Beaux-Arts, the Archives de I'Art Frangais, on the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the Revue de I'Art ancien et modeme, and the many collections of the provincial academies and Societies, offer henceforth 1 6 3 M . Lamy, "Le Decouvert des Primitif italiens au XIX6 siecle: Seroux d'Agincourt (1730-1874) et son influence sur les collectionneurs, critiques et artistes francais [two parts]," La Revue de I'art ancien et moderne 39 (March 1921) and 40 (Sept-Oct. 1921): 169-181 and 182-190; and Henri Loyrette, "Seroux d'Agincourt et les origines de l'histoire de I'art medieval," Revue de I'Art 48 (1980): 40-56; and Kulturmann, 82. 84 a huge body of work, to those who are interested, of the history of our revered painters.164 This lengthy quote also serves to point out the rather incestuous nature of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Noticeably, of all the living contributors to this 'righting the wrong,' only a few were not participants on one or more of the organizing committees for the exhibition, collectors of note, or affiliated with the Musee du Louvre, art journals or other government-sponsored institutions of the time. Significantly, alternative usages of the primitif abounded throughout the nineteenth century, all of which located the term in an oppositional posture to contemporary classicist and academic tastes. From the 1800's on the term had been taken up and used in reference to the German Nazarenes, French Barbus and English Pre-Raphaelites, each group emulating the simplicity of form, linearity and clarity of colour of Masaccio, Giotto and Fra Angelico in their styles and themes in order to exemplify a return to the Catalogue Definitif, XXXI-XXXII: Le terrain, d'ailleurs, depuis vingt-cinq ans, avait ete bien travaille, bien cultive. A la suite des anciens et hard is explorateurs qui, les premiers, avaient fouille dans ces champs oublies, Emeric David, P. Merimee, Didron, Viollet-le-Duc, Leon de Laborde, Ph. de Chennevieres, A. de Montaiglon, Paul Mantz, Dussieux, E. Soulie, e t c . , de nouveaux erudits, consciencieux et patients, de nouveaux critiques, passionnes et perspicaces, n'avaient cesse, en ces dernier temps, par leurs publications documentaires ou leurs etudes sagaces, presque chaque jour, d'en remettre en lumiere quelque coin mieux derviche. Les savants travaux de MM. Leopold Delisle, Jules Guiffrey, Bernard Prost, I'abbe Requin, Paul Durrieu, R. de Lasteyrie, E. Male, P. Vitry, Dimier, Salomon Reinach, etc., les etudes judicieuses et chaleureuses de MM. A. Gruyer, Andre Michel, L. Gonse, P. Leprieur, C. Benoit, Andre Hallays, L. de Fourcaud, etc., bien d'autres contributions apportees par les travailleurs infatigables et modestes aux Archives des Monuments Historiques, aux Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de France, au Bulletin Monumental, aux Comptes rendus des reunions annuelles des Societes des Beaux-Arts, aux Archives de lArt Frangais, a la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, a la Revue de lArt ancien et moderne, aux nombres recueils des Academies et Societes de Province, offrent desormais une vaste carriere, pour leurs etudes, a ceux qu'interesse l'histoire de notre vieiile peinture. 85 origins of artistic production.165 Each of these groups "abandoned later technical inventions and formal complications in order to return to what they considered a severe and noble style."166 As Robert Goldwater has argued, these were avant-gardist movements seeking a purer means of expression which pre-dated their contemporaries whose style and tastes had, they believed, degenerated into the formulaic and overworked.167 For the later Symbolists at the end of the nineteenth century, the notion of primitif was understood to be a recollection of less adulterated forms of expression, "a return to the purer and more fundamental and thus implicitly better, more profound, and simpler approaches to art,"168 a form that avoided the pitfalls of realism and idealism. For the politically conservative Symbolists, their individualized expression used this 'primitive,' that is, non-academic, style in combination with their personal symbology and themes from early Christian and romantic medievalism to express a metaphysical and religious philosophy.1 6 9 1 6 5Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, enlarged edition (Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986): 54; Jean Cassou, Emile Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner, Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World (New York, Toronto and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1962): 105; and Michael Kotzin, "Pre-Raphaelitism, Ruskinism, and French Symbolism," Art Journal 25, 5 (Summer 1966): 347. 1 6 6Goldwater, Primitivism, 54. 1 6 7Goldwater, Primitivism, 253-4. 1 6 8Patricia Townley Mathews, Aurier's Symbolist An Criticism and Theory, Studies in the Fine Arts: Criticism, No. 18 (Ann Arbor, Ml: UMI Research Press, 1986): 75-6; Philippe Jullian, "Introduction," French Symbolist Painters: Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon and their Followers (London: Hayward Gallery and Arts Council of Great Britain, 1972): 166. 1 6 9 Gill Perry, "Primitivism and the Modern," Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, ed. Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina and Gill Perry (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993): 14; and Robert Goldwater, Symbolism, Icon Editions (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1979): 196. Encompassing literary, theatrical, musical and visual proponents, the so-called Symbolists recognized the value of primitivistic simplification of style and 86 At the end of the nineteenth century, other avant-gardist groups adopted a range of 'primitivistic' expressions that critiqued the realist and illusionist formulas of academic and Salon art. This means, generally speaking, the use of flattened planes, a linearity, a use of strong colour blocs and, above all, simplicity. Gauguin and the 'Pont- Aven/Synthetists', for example, used romanticized themes taken from what they considered primitive, that is, peasant, provincial and tribal cultures, to construct an oppositional stance against the restrictive urban bourgeois society of the late nineteenth century.1 7 0 Art historians Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock have argued that, within the geographical entity of 'France' itself, Gauguin and his followers found a culture that was perceived to be as exotic as the Far East, yet accessible to the Paris art world: Brittany represented as remote, savage, primitive, rustic, superstitious or simple signifies within specific historical conditions a nexus of town and country, uneven developments, regional variations, and centralization, the history of the dominance of the town and its bourgeois social forms and norms.1 7 1 In the early years of the twentieth century, the Fauves in France, and later Die Brucke in Germany, took a reductionist approach to the 'primitive', that is, constructing the 'primitif amalgamated the personal with metaphysical and romantic content to create what Symbolist painter and philosopher of the movement, Maurice Denis, called in his article, "De la Gaucherie des Primitifs" written after visiting the 1904 exhibition, "the most delicate sentiments of the human soul" ("les sentiments les plus delicats de Tame humaine"), Theories, 1890-1910 (Paris: Bibliotheque de L'Occident, 1913: 173). 1 7 0Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Going Native," Art in America (July 1989): 121; Kenneth Coutts-Smith, "Some general observations on the problem of cultural colonialism," The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art, ed. and compiled by Susan Hiller (London and New York: Routledge, 1991): 28. 1 7 1 Orton and Pollock, 329. 87 as unfettered and essential emotions, merging figure and landscape in an anti-analytical, anti-realist and symbolic union.1 7 2 A dichotomy exists within this understanding of the retrospection inherent in the so- called Symbolist, Pont-Avenist, and other schools of contemporary and avant-gardist art production. In the rejection of current art production these groups implied a corresponding rejection of current meanings and interpretations of progress. They all rejected where the world was 'now' and sought a nostalgic return to a life and set of beliefs simpler than the current ones. 1 7 3 However, the primitif espoused by the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and the Catalogue Definitif was a retrospection based in the linear conception of progress and evolution leading up to and resulting in the modern state. The primitif of the 1904 Exhibition asserted a forward-moving, historical oeuvre rather than nostalgic contemporary art production and theories, thus placing itself in opposition to these emerging avant-gardist movements. The exhibition forcefully disassociated the primitif from those anti-institutional, anti-academic, and individualistic critiques of academic art and bourgeois culture circulating within the contemporary art world by reinstalling the 'primitive' within the institutional setting and linear traditions of the Louvre as representative of a French national school. It is important to remember that the year is 1904 with its full outpouring of artistic production drawing on themes of non-western, so-called 'primitive' cultures represented 1 7 2Perry, 46, 62; Goldwater, Primitivism, 105. 1 7 3Patricia Leighten, "The White Peril and L'Art negre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anti-colonialism," The Art Bulletin 72, 4 (December 1990): 630; Solomon-Godeau, 122. 88 by artists in France, such as the Fauves and Picasso, et al., just beginning.1'4 Recognition of the aesthetic qualities of the artistic production of non-western cultures had, however, begun many years before. Ethnological museums and displays at Expositions Universelles had provided exposure to such cultures, contributing to an alternative aesthetic framework on which the later movements were based. Art historian Patricia Leighten has argued that this new group of avant-garde artists were more concerned with undercutting the social structures they felt had produced a watering-down of 'true' artistic expression than with truly exploring the aesthetic qualities and cultural content of the artifacts they drew upon: For the modernists, primitivism became a method for revolutionizing style; more, this formal radicalism often served, depending on the attitude of the artist, to present an alternative - mingling concepts of authenticity, spontaneity, freedom from the repression of bourgeois constraints, and amour libre - to currently entrenched social and aesthetic forms. The primitivism of Picasso and Derain most notably, like that of Gauguin before them, gestured toward cultures whose transformative powers they admiringly offered as escape routes from the stultification of French culture and academic art. 1 7 5 1 These motivations strayed far from the insertion of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais's definition of the primitif into the art historical canon. It is interesting to note that the word primitif occurs only once in the entire Catalogue Definitif, and significantly so ~ in its title. What does this textual absence signify for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais? The preceding discussion of the term, its 1 7 4 T h e date of Vlaminck's 'discovery' and purchase of African works has been variously cited as sometime between 1904 and 1907. The importance is not the 'when' this occurred, but that the exposure to 'non-traditional' works is relatively concurrent to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. 1 7 5Leighten, 622. 89 usage and the political resonance imbued in that usage permits some speculation. It could be argued that the primitifs of the title is a 'hook', a popular term in its various permutations, thus familiar to a large potential audience. Here its use was denuded of those specific ramifications inherent in it. The argument presented by the catalogue essay and entries, though skirting the term itself, effectively reasserted lineage and uniqueness of the artistic school. At the same time as the French primitifs were being positioned as part of the art historical oeuvre, that label was being rejected because of its Italian pre-Renaissance as well as contemporary affiliations. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais then sought to assert the primacy of France amid other competing claims to a national primitif. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais and its Catalogue Definitif removed the notion of the primitif from other cultural milieus: the Tahitian, the peasant, the Italian, the German and the Flemish, using the term in a particularly French, Republican, realistic, non-Catholic way to identify an originating art based on the earliest times and the intrinsic 'genius' of the French people. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais did not, like contemporary avant-garde movements, draw on past models for present day production; instead the exhibition and its catalogue turned a radical critique of the centralized state and academic art practices into an assertion of an historical lineage, one which confirmed France's place on an equal, if not higher, footing with other European nations. 90 CHAPTER FOUR PERCEPTION AND RECEPTION: RESPONSES TO T H E EXPOSITION DES PRIMITIF FRANCAIS When I tell you that I was equally bowled over, if not more so, by an art which is exactly the reverse of that [Monet's], you will recognize in me the eternal debate. I went this morning to the show of French Primitives....What a marvellous - and transporting art! The difficult problem of transposing the real on the imaginary is resolved here, and by such simple means: one of several rapports of happy and various tints in a beautiful unity suffices for the realization of the most sumptuous harmonies. Letter by Henri-Edmond Cross to Charles Angrand, 1904.176 It is all very well to present an exhibition such as the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and its recuperative agenda to a public; it is a different matter to try to understand and track response to such an exhibition. Certainly Georges Lafenestre and Henri Bouchot were taking a daring stance against those supporting the notions of an Italian/Flemish Renaissance rather than a French-centred stylistic development independent of outside influences. But did the public at large share that opinion? How were the journals of the day aligned in response to the claims? Did the claims succeed in 're-writing' art history? Just as reconstructing the experience of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais is a difficult one, so too is trying to determine how the public(s) and media understood the meaning and relevance of the event. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais, as has already been described, had been constructed to convey specific messages about the history of France, its historical and continued preeminence in the European artistic development and, more indirectly, the role of the Ideal Citizen in the Third Republic, considered by the 176Quotation cited in Catherine C. Bock, Henri Matisse and Neo-lmpressionism 1898-1908 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Inc., 1981): 67. Cross was a Neo-lmpressionist painter who visited the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in the summer of 1904. 91 French, at least to be the most evolved nation-state in Europe. These specific visual and textual messages must, however, be recognized and read by one or more audiences. Donald M. Lowe's analysis of bourgeois perception177 provides a framework upon which to build an understanding of the audience's perception for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Lowe argues that printed media became, in the period from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, the predominate means by which the bourgeoisie understood events outside their everyday experience. Sight was, as a result, the privileged sense, enabling use of and access to these media; at the same time, "the order of development-in-time," as Lowe terms it, permitted an understanding of what was currently visible by connecting it to both past events and developments outside the realm of everyday experience.178 Further, Lowe places this analysis into a social context in which new methods were being developed to assist bourgeois society to cope with the accelerated speed of innovation: these included the changing meaning of 'revolution', traditionalism as the consciousness of a tradition what was not longer absolutely binding, nostalgia as longing for the past rather than another place, the historical novel as a popular genre, the extension of the temporal landscape, as well as the despatialization of historiography - all these developments were new efforts to recapture a past which had become more fleeting and distant, as bourgeois society experience a more mechanical, segmented present. Past and present needed to be consciously reconnected, now.1 7 9 As part of this need to feel more secure in the present by seeking out a past as described by Lowe, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can be seen to provide a venue to make 1 7 7 Donald M. Lowe, History of Bourgeois Perception (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982). 1 7 8 Lowe, 18. 1 7 9 Lowe, 43. 92 such a reconnection possible: by asserting simultaneously a "retrospective nationalism"180 and an historical continuum, the exhibition made the present more solid and defined and the future less unsure by showing that contemporary society was produced out of this continuum. In the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, the visual images were recognizable and familiar, even though they were centuries old and infrequently or distantly displayed. Interpreted by the Catalogue Definitif, these art works reinforced basic assumptions about French artistic prowess rather than challenging them, and presented conventionalized styles as opposed to avant-garde explorations, which were often unfamiliar and discomfiting to the viewer, and perhaps loaded with unwelcome and unsettling political overtones. Thus, even though the curators of the exhibition were refuting and rewriting the canon of art history, they were also supporting the centrality and excellence of French achievements. As Daniel Sherman has noted, the art museum of the nineteenth century performed a profoundly important role as simultaneously a container and an embodiment of accepted values. The museum consequently stood as "[a] model of hierarchy, of order, of respect for art as something separate from the exigencies of daily life, as long as it laid claim to this special status in certain accepted and moderate ways,... thus [standing] in a virtually metonymical relationship to the system of values of the bourgeoisie elite as a whole."181 Through experiencing the works in the setting of the Louvre, the modern viewer of 1904 then was guided to perceive the past 1 8 0 Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992): 4. 1 8 1Sherman, Worthy Monuments, 237. Jeanne Laurent also emphasizes the lack of risk-taking at fonctionnaire-filled institutions such as the Louvre (Arts et pouvoir en France de 1793 a 1981, 10+). 93 as a forerunner presaging the present Republican regime in a visual language, making the linkage that Lowe has theorized and achieving a synthesis of past and present and future into a single, inevitable, historical continuum. In addition, the act of seeing an exhibition placed the viewer in the company of other viewers who shared in confronting an understandable presentation of one's own history, and in identifying with portraits of historical and unidealized figures who were presented as recognizably like oneself and set within landscapes that were recognizably French. 1 8 2 The process of shared experience elided political, social and economic variations within an already circumscribed viewership183 and created 'un bon public' from the various publics congregating in the Pavilion de Marsan where the curators attempted to embody notions of a unilingual, unified, continuous French art history.184 Response also occurs outside and apart from direct experience of an exhibition, that is, among an audience that has never seen the exhibition itself and which extends across periods of time when the experience can only be imagined. Organizers can judiciously engineer newspapers, journals, friendly critics, and others to publicize positive reactions and opinions to the event for absorption by a public one step removed from the Exposition des Primitifs frangais; however, each newspaper and journal was positioned within a political spectrum. Their political affiliation affected how and what was reported as well as the audience to whom the exhibition was presented. Immediate and, perhaps levin, 48. 'As discussed in Chapter 1. 'Scobey, 224-5; Lebovics, 6 and 9. 94 more importantly, long-term repercussions of the event cannot be controlled as the reportage circulated among a wider group of people whose sole experience of the exhibition would rest vicariously on another's interpretation of the event. Despite the presentation through the textual and pictorial representations at and surrounding the exhibition, there could be no assurances that the desired impact on 'history' would actually prevail. Indeed, the exhibition could even be ignored or overshadowed by dissenting opinions or the weight of tradition. The full impact of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais can be measured more precisely by asking to what extent its assertions were understood and if they changed minds and attitudes and revised the canon. This exhibition was very widely reviewed in journals, newspapers and popular magazines, from New York to London to St. Petersburg. Surprisingly, there was remarkably little divergence of opinion across the spectrum of reviews; generally the responses to the exhibition, evidenced in reviews and essays, supported the Exposition des Primitifs frangais's claims for a school of early French painting, rather than Italian or Flemish sources of European artistic development. The novelty of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and its claims was clearly recognized and understood by many viewers and reviewers, though the wider ramifications often were not. In turn, these responses mirrored the ongoing political and aesthetic controversies of the day. 1 8 5 Conservative Republican journals such as the Gazette des 1 8 5 lt is interesting to note that critiques of the Exposition des Primitifs francais mention Bouchot much more frequently than Lafenestre as the 'author' of its contentions. The most ardent argument for a French primitif was Lafenestre's Introduction rather than the sections attributed to Bouchot, but since the first announcement in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in January 1903, Bouchot's name was the most prominently featured. 95 Beaux-Arts, the Revue de I'art ancien et moderne, and the Journal des Debats all ran multi-part articles and promotional pieces, mostly written by members of the Beaux-Arts establishment. Henri Bouchot and Georges Lafenestre each wrote numerous and lengthy articles for the centrist Gazette and Revue, as well as for other journals.1 8 6 All of these were constructed as supplementary material to the Catalogue Definitif, expanding the arguments of the catalogue entries into lengthy stylistic and archival examinations of the major (and often minor) works presented in the Pavilion's rooms. Foreign journals such as London's Burlington Magazine, and the Belgian Le Revue de I'art Chretien as well as North American journals such as International Studio from the United States, or even the distant Le Journal de Saint-Petersburg from Russia, 1 8 7 all carried reviews of the exhibition, again generally favourable even while loaded with minor quibbles about dating or site inadequacies. Negative responses to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in both the foreign and domestic press, emerged along some broad issue-based lines. Most obvious was the debate over the use of the term 'primitif. As discussed in Chapter 3, this term was one 1 8 6 F o r Henri Bouchot, these included: "L'exposition des primitifs francais: Avant-propos," Gazette des beaux-arts, Series 3, 31, 562 (April 1904): 264-274; "L'exposition des primitifs frangais [four parts]," Gazette des beaux-arts, Series 3, 31, 563-566 (May, June, July and August 1904): 353-364, 451-467, 61-81,113-139; "L'exposition des Primitifs frangais," Revue des deuxmondes 20 (March 15, 1904): 420-443; "Les primitifs francais: Un dernier mot," La revue de I'art ancien et moderne 16 (September 1904): 169-178; "Les primitifs frangais: Le 'Parement de Narbonne' au Louvre (1371): Le Peintre Jean d'Orleans a Paris," Gazette des Beaux-arts, Series 3, 31 (January 1904): 5-26; and "Un tableau capital de I'ecole frangaise a retrouver: Appel aux amateurs et aux conservateurs de musees," Gazette des beaux-arts, Series 3,31,564 (June 1904): 441 - 450. As for Lafenestre, his articles included "L'Exposition des Primitifs frangais [4 parts]," Gazette des Beaux-Arts Series 3, 31 and 32, 563-66 (May, June, July and August 1904): 353-364, 451-76, 61-81 and 113- 139. Both Lafenestre and Bouchot's essays appear to be virtually interchangeable. Both use a painting-by- painting analysis of what available documents exist and are couched heavily in speculative theories of lineage and style. 1 8 7Despite the best efforts of the Interlibrary Loan department of the University of British Columbia, this last-named journal article could not be located. 96 fraught with gradations of meaning and reviewing the Exposition des Primitifs frangais provided a public forum to reawaken these debates and promote particular political and religious points of view. Pierre Suau, a journalist for Etudes, the Jesuit-published rightist journal, maintained that "strictly speaking one calls Primitifs the masters of the Middle Ages, the Trecentisti and the Quattrocentisti," a statement that evoked the history of Italian masters the exhibition was working against. M. Bouchot and other exhibition organizers, Suau claimed, were misleading readers and viewers by using the term 'primitif; one had only to look for the sublimity of spirit in the original primitifs to know how those exhibited were mislabelled188. Maurice Denis, a founding member and theorist for the Nabis, a group rejecting both realism and Impressionist naturalism for direct renditions of a sensed environment, declared that the term 'primitif should be applied exclusively to artists who "allied the most natural feeling of Beauty and the sense of the objects [emphasis in original]"189. Both Denis and Henri-Edmond Cross, a Neo-lmpressionist painter, attended the exhibition; although there is no indication that other practising artists also attended the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, it seems likely others did so. Though practising very different styles, both were struck by the harmonious and 'truthful' representations of the 'real' that they saw. 1 9 0 Both Denis and Cross enthused over this departure from the Salon formulas and Impressionist style, to the point that their 1 8 8 " L e s Primitifs francais," Etudes 99, 26 (June 20, 1904): 815: "Rigoureusement parlant, on appelle Primitifs les maitres du moyen ages, les Trecentisti et les Quattrocentisti..." 1 8 9 "De la Gaucherie des Primitifs [1904]," Theories 1890-1910: Du symbolisme etde Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre classique, 3 e edition (Paris: Bibliotheque de L'Occident, 1913): 168: "...allier avec le plus de naturel le sentiment de la Beaute et le sens des objet." Originally published in a July 1904 issue of Les Arts de la Vie. 1 9 0 S e e the epigraph at the beginning of this Chapter; also Denis, "De la Gaucherie...," 169. 97 responses indicate exactly how radical the show was to some eyes. It also clearly indicates that they saw in the paintings of the Pavilion de Marsan the style and 'difference' they valued and wished to see, and not the canonical challenge which was irrelevant to their positions outside Salon and academic circles. Paul Durrieu, even though a member of the Paintings and Drawings committee for the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and a member of the Academie, also expressed reservations about the use of 'primitif,' stating that "the term French primitive still designates only something very vague by determination and above all quite restricted in all cases by the number of pieces to cite."191 Art historian Andre Michel, in the first instalment of his ten-part series analyzing the Exposition des Primitifs frangais in the relatively middle of the road Journal des Debats, noted that the term was legitimate only in the sense that it referred to works pre-dating ultramontanist influences: at the same time, he also pointed out the irony of attending an exhibition under the auspices of the Academie des Beaux-Arts which traditionally and strenuously resisted the recognition of a French medieval art.1 9 2 A number of writers compared the Paris exhibition with that held earlier in Bruges and with the concurrent exhibitions at Dusseldorf and Sienna, to the generally favourable benefit of the French show. An anonymous article in the Belgian journal, La Revue de I'art Chretien, even praised the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, though somewhat half- 1 9 1 Paul Durrieu, "L'exposition des primitifs frangais," La revue de I'art ancien et moderne 15 (Mai 1904): 85: "...le terme de primitif frangais ne designe encore que quelque chose de tres vague comme determination et surtout de bien restreint, en tout cas, comme nombre de pieces de citer." 1 9 2 Michel, "Causerie Artistique III," 26 April 1904: 1. 98 heartedly, as "less prestigious, less dazzling than the one at Bruges, but more agreeably presented."193 Other issues, such as the scandal surrounding the reluctant (and late) loan 1 9 4 of a retable from the Appeal Court of Paris1 9 5, occupied considerable space in such diverse journals as the Symbolist journal, Nouvelle Revue, which hinted that the court President Forichon had actually hidden the work to prevent its cooptation.1 9 6 Le Figaro expressed concern about the lack of cooperation by the court by citing the loan of tapestries from the Bargello in Florence.1 9 7 Considerable time was spent in discussing the nationalism stirred up by the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. The curators had assiduously avoided using the term 'nationalism' because of its rightist associations linked back to the right-wing Boulangist unrest of the 1880's and the contemporaneous growth of rightist movements, but the public had not missed the allusions to a patriotism no less fervent. Maurice Denis, the Symbolist painter and writer, declaimed that art was international in scope while deploring the nationalism in this and other recent primitif exhibitions. He proclaimed that "each nation, each ethnic group wants to have their own [primitifs], discloses them with love, 193"Primitifs francais, flamands et allemands," Revue de I'Art Chretien Series 4, 15 (July 1904): 343: "...moins prestigieux, moins eblouissante que celle de Bruges, mais plus agreablement presente." 1 9 4 T h i s work, item #355, Le Calvaire, was listed in the supplementary section of the Catalogue Definitif, indicating a late entry to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. The curators apparently were in ongoing negotiation for items throughout the early days and weeks of the exhibition. By early May there seems to have been no further mention of this issue in either journals and newspapers, other than to deplore the circumstances. 1 9 5 This work, apparently loaned to the Palais de Justice by the Musee du Louvre several years earlier, was in fact returned to permanent display immediately after the Exposition des Primitifs frangais ended, likely as a result of the controversy and the considerable attention the work had attracted. 1 9 6 Sauvage, 212. 1 9 7Alexandre Arsene, "Les Primitifs frangais," Le Figaro (Paris), 13 April 1904: 4. 99 prefers them to those of a rival nation. Attributions are changed, paintings are re- christened, all in the guise of erudition, but in reality serving national pride."1 9 8 Andre Michel's articles disparaged the kind of nationalist fervour that the Exposition des Primitifs frangais had engendered in some quarters (notably right wing ones), saying that, while reclaiming the primitifs is patriotic, the populace should not be lured into advocating nationalist positions against other countries.199 The Louis-Frederic Sauvage article in La Nouvelle revue (Paris), even while taking pleasure in the retaliatory nature of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, condemned the descent into nationalistic posturing in the fine arts field: "the organizers of the Louvre Exhibition have not been able to resist the desire to use retaliations, and under the rubric: Primitifs frangais, they have welcomed - oh! into open arms, you cannot doubt it - Flemish, Cologne, Italian masters which give us, also, the greatest honour." The writer ironically temporized by saying that the curators were "guilty of perhaps excessive hospitality."200 Most commentators, however, lauded the exposure given to this overlooked body of work and praised the courage and intellectual fortitude of Bouchot and his associates in recognizing their value and disinterring them from the forgotten vaults of the provinces. There were also those who took issue with the breadth of the exhibition's controversial 1 9 8 Denis, "De la Gaucherie...," 167: "Chaque nation, chaque groupe ethnique veut avoir les siens, les decouvre avec amour, les prefere a ceux de la nation rivale. On change les attributions, on debaptise les tableaux, sous le couvert de I'erudition, en realite pour servir I'orgueil national." 1 9 9 Michel, "Causerie Artistique IV," 29 April 1904, 1. 2 0 0 Sauvage, 208: "les organisateurs de I'Exposition du Louvre ne paraissent pas avoir su resister au desir d'user de represailles, et sous la rubrique: Primitifs frangais, ils ont accueilli, -- oh! a bras ouverts, vous n'en doutez pas, - des maitres flamands, colonais, italiens, qui nous font, du reste, le plus grand honneur...une hospitalite peut-etre excessive." 100 claims (or what Francis Haskell mildly calls Bouchot and Lafenestre's "overcompensation for this neglect"201). A review signed by L C . in the Belgian journal Revue de I'Art Chretien pointed out that "the considerations that we derived from the professor from Ghent [namely, Georges Hulin de Loo] are harshly in contrast to the learned and enthralling essays in which Bouchot and Lafenestre have in some degree inaugurated the exposition at the Pavilion de Marsan. They will be without doubt strongly contested; in any case they will interest our readers."202 This debate was welcomed more as a forum for informed and academic discussion than as an endorsement of either side of the argument; indeed, it could be read that the reviewer seemed pleased that the French were reacting to the Hulin de Loo claims so vociferously. Disputing attributions, so integral to the claims made by Lafenestre and Bouchot, were of course the centrepiece of much of the academic response. A flurry of articles did indeed make claims and counterclaims. One example can illustrate this point very well. The Saint Victor et donateur (fig. 20) was attributed by H. Fierans-Gevaert to Hugo van der Goes at the 1902 Bruges exhibit; at the Exposition des Primitifs frangais Bouchot and company identified it as the work of Le Peintre des Bourbons, dit Le Maitre de Moulins. Lionel Elliot, however, in his article in The Connoisseur vacillates between an unknown Z 0 1Haskell, History and Its Images, 446. 20Z"Primitifs frangais, flamands et allemands," 344: "Les considerations que nous venons d'emprunter au professer gantois vont rudement a I'encontre des savantes et attachantes dissertations par lesquelles Bouchot et Lafenestre ont en quelque sorte inaugure I'exposition du pavilion de Marsan. Elles seront sans doute fortement combattues; elles interesseront en tous cas vivement nos lecteurs." Georges Hulin de Loo, as discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 1 of this thesis, made the original challenge to the French art world in his Exposition de Tableaux Flamandes des XIVs-, XVs etXVI- siecles - Catalogue Critique (Gand: A. Sifter, Libraire-editeur, 1902). 101 German painter and, perhaps, even Jan van Eyck. 2 0 3 Similar examples abound in the plethora of articles published in the first months after the exhibition opened, all with nationalistic implications. In the forefront of the most serious disputations were Louis Dimier, the French right-wing academic, and English author and art lecturer Roger Fry. Both Fry in the Burlington Magazine204 and Dimier in articles and books published in France between 1904 and 19102 0 5 completely dismissed what they considered the extravagant claims of the Louvre and its curators that the paintings formed a distinct and rival 'primitif school, even while they acknowledged the value of studying these works. In his first of two review articles, Fry, in his Morellian analysis of form through comparison of drapery, colour, fold definition and anatomical detail,2 0 6 restated his opinion that sculptural works were the real contribution of France in the period immediately preceding that of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and asserted that all claims to a uniquely French art production ignored the multiple nationalities intermixing on the continent during the period of the Hundred Years War, the principal period for which Bouchot and Lafenestre claimed 2 0 3 Lionel Elliot, "The Primitive French Exhibition at Paris," The Connoisseur 10, 37 (September 1904): 36- 44; H. Fierans-Gevaert, "L'Exposition des primitifs flamands a Bruges," La Revue de I'art ancien et moderne 12 (August 1902): 116; and Catalogue Definitif, 49. 2 0 4 R o g e r Fry, "The Exhibition of French Primitives I", Burlington Magazine, 5, 14 (May 1904), 89-96; and 'The Exhibition of French Primitives II", Burlington Magazine, 5, 16 (June 1904), 279-298. 2 0 5 L o u i s Dimier, "Les Origines de la Peinture frangaise," Les arts: Revue mensuelle de musees, collections, expositions 37-42 (January - July 1905); Le Portrait du XVI- siecle aux Primitifs frangais. Notes et corrections au Catalogue officiel sur cette partie de I'Exposition d'Avril-Juillet 1904 (Paris: Jean Schemit, 1904); and Les Primitifs Frangais. Biographie Critique (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1910). 2 0 6Jacqueline V. Falkenheim, Roger Fry and the Beginnings of Formalist Art Criticism, Studies in the Fine Arts: Criticism, No. 8 (Ann Arbor, Ml: UMI Research Press, 1980): 62. His early training and exposure to art was primarily Italian Renaissance, with an especial fondness for Giotto. 1 0 2 a 'primitif.207 Fry cited Jacques Bandol as typical of the Flemish artists who had worked in France and who had injected "a new vitality, a refreshing ugliness" into the exhausted and calligraphic images of the period.2 0 8 Additionally, Fry claimed that "French painting, as seen at the Pavilion de Marsan, begins nearly a century later than this great English work [the Westminster Retable, c. 1275]"209 as part of his own attempts to establish an early English painting tradition. Overall, he argued for a Flemish/Italian melding of realism and landscape adapted and adopted by the French. In other words, he supported the canonical interpretation of artistic dissemination; only with Van Eyck and van der Weyden, claimed Fry, did separate French and Flemish schools arise from the Franco-Flemish amalgam.2 1 0 Historian Louis Dimier was by far the most outspoken of the oppositional voices, French or foreign, reacting to the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Staunchly right-wing, a political stance which generally promotes a nationalistic platform, "he was fiercely opposed to nationalism in intellectual matters" believing that "the very concept of 'French' art was vacuous, and that the real painting of France in the sixteenth century was created by Italians, Rosso and Primaticcio, and by Jean Clouet, a Fleming (as Dimier 2 0 7 F r y , "The Exhibition of French Primitives I," 279, 281. Z 0 8 F r y , 281-2. Bandol was also called Jean de Bruges and was known to have drawn the cartoon for the Apocalypse tapestries on loan from Angers cathedral at the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. His style was a melding of French and Flemish influences that Fry said were inevitable in that turbulent period. 2 0 9 F r y , 280. 2 1 0 F r y , 'The Exhibition of French Primitives II," 356. 103 mischievously emphasized in order to embarrass those scholars who wished to see Clouet as purely French)."211 Dimier wrote few journal articles critiquing the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, the exception being his six-part series appearing in Les Arts during 1905. In these he described the history of French art from the High Gothic to the seventeenth century and, although he did not deal extensively with the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, he did specifically dismiss the likelihood of a continuous unadulterated French artistic tradition with the blunt sentence: "With these two masters [i.e., Bourdichon and Perreal], one mediocre and the other with no known works, ended the history of 'ancienne' French painting."212 His most vociferous critiques were confined primarily to small books, 2 1 3 in particular, Le portrait du XVf6- siecle aux Primitifs frangais: Notes et corrections au Catalogue officiel sur cette partie de I'Exposition dAvril-Juillet 1904,2U published in the same year as the exhibition, and Les Primitifs Frangais: Biographie Critique, published six years later. Both approached the claims of the exhibition in a point-by-point refutation of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais claims made particularly by Bouchot, who, though a worthy writer and scholar on other subjects in Dimier's eyes, had here erred in his analysis.2 1 5 The 1904 book took a different tack in an addendum called "Difficulties of 2 U R o s e n and Zerner, 190-1. 2 1 2 " L e s Origines de la Peinture francaise," Les Arts: Revue mensuelle de musees, collections, expositions 38 (March 1905): 30. 2 1 3 l n fact, Bouchot's rebuttal (in "...Un dernier mot," 176) refers to Dimier's works as 'opuscules', or minor literary works. Z 1 4 4 9 pages. 2 1 5 125 pages. 104 an Uneducated Man on the Exposition des Primitifs frangais"2™; Dimier framed his critique in a fictitious correspondence from an anonymous scholar from the provinces who was confused by the arguments made in the Catalogue Definitif. His intention in publishing this addendum, he wrote, was not to demean the wisdom of scholars whose efforts had produced such a great exhibition, but merely to act as conduit for truth: They [the following comments] are not made in order to diminish in the eyes of those who read them the worthiness of the eminent men from whom the catalogue emanated. They are presented neither in the malign hope that they can remain uncontested, nor with the deplorable intention of deprecating an enterprise already crowned with public approval, but rather with the simple desire to acquire knowledge and in the love of truth.2 1 7 The subsequent eight sections counter-argued in definitely un-ignorant terms and in exhaustive detail the main Catalogue Definitif arguments. One noteworthy section, entitled "On the Merit of Jean Fouquet" ("Du Merite de Jean Fouquet"), called into doubt the aesthetic value of one of the most highly praised and valued art works shown in the Exposition des Primitifs frangais: the Melun Diptych: Here is reunited on one panel seven works in oil by this painter, certainly or sufficiently identified. I will indicate my naive impressions of them. It is an abominable collection. The colourings of them are ruddy and dark, of a dull crudity. The drawing is poor and shapeless. The face of Saint Etienne in the panel from Berlin [fig. 24], and its attempt at foreshortening, is one of the worst made things there is. The execution of all these pieces is of a ponderousness without equal. The Virgin from Antwerp [fig. 16] in this 216"Difficultes d'un ignorant sur I'Exposition des Primitifs frangais," Le Portrait du XVI- siecle aux Primitifs frangais: 49-57. 217Dimier, Le Portrait, 49: Elles ne sont faites pour diminuer a rien aux yeux de ceux qui les liron, le merite des hommes eminents dont emane le catalogue. On ne les a formees, ni dans I'espoir malin qu'elles pourraient rester sans reponse, ni dans le facheux dessein de rabaisser une entreprise deja couronnee de I'approbation publique, mais dans le simple desir de s'instruire, et pour I'amour de la verite. 105 respect is unbearably refined. The stiffness of the strained figure, the shameful botching of the draperies, the glossy red of the cherubs, which seem to made out of badly carved wood, make it in all ways an object of ridicule.218 He ended by allowing that 'truth will out,' the very exhortation made by Lafenestre in his Introduction to the Catalogue Definitif. Dimier concluded: Thus ends the notes from my correspondent. He hoped that I would insert this word at the end, remarking that he has not drawn any general conclusion from these comments with regard to the basic thesis which the catalogue defends (although that thesis values these remarks): proof of his absolute confidence. The reader, he says, will judge them. 2 1 9 This addendum permitted Dimier to critique the Exposition des Primitifs frangais from a position that argued from a provincial, non-centralist point of view against the inflated opinions of academia and institutional bureaucrats, despite his protestations to the contrary. Dimier was not at all neutral on this subject, however; he had maintained throughout his career a rancorous relationship with the Academie des Beaux-Arts which, according to the Dictionnaire de Biographie frangaise, had maintained a conspiracy of 2 1 8Dimier, Le Portrait, 52: On a reuni de ce peintre, sur un meme panneau, sept ouvrages a I'huile, certains ou suffisamment presumes. J'en marquerai mon impression naive. C'est un assemblage execrable. Le coloris en est tantot rougeaud et noir, tantot d'une erudite blafarde. Le dessin est pauvre et informe. Le visage de saint Etienne dans le tableau de Berlin, et son essai de raccourci, est une des choses mal faites qu'il y ait. L'execution de tous ces morceaux est d'un pesanteur sans pareille. La Vierge d'Anvers a cet egard raffine sur I'insupportable. La raideur de la taille tendue, I'indigne bousillage des draperies, le rouge poli des cherubins, qui semblent etre de bois mal degrossi, font de celle-la quelque chose de tout a fait ridicule. 2 1 9Dimier, Le Portrait, 57: La finissent les notes de mon correspondent. If a souhaite que je mette ce mot de la fin, en faisant remarquer qu'il ne tirait de toutes ces remarques, quant au fond de la these que defend le catalogue (quoique cette these tienne a ses remarques), aucune conclusion generale: preuve de son absolue bonne foi. Le lecteur, dit-il, en jugera. 106 silence to marginalize him and which had offered him no official distinctions. He had also fought vigorously against Republican expulsion of clerics from educational institutions, a politically unpopular stand that had cost him his teaching position in Valenciennes.2 2 0 In the post-exhibition period immediately after the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, a number of books on the topic of the French primitifs were published. Many of them were actually collected and expanded versions of journal articles; for example, George Lafenestre's series of four articles on the Exposition des Primitifs frangais were combined with two concerning the Exposition Universelle of 1900 into a book entitled Les Primitifs a Bruges et a Paris, 1900-1902-1904: Vieux Maitres de France et des Pays-Bas.22^ Henri Bouchot's 1904 book, revealingly titled Les Primitifs frangais 1292-1500: Complement Documentaire au Catalogue Officiel de I'Exposition,222 a distillation of his Gazette des Beaux-Arts articles, further articulated the main points made in the Catalogue Definitif, and served to augment Bouchot's emphasis on the secularization of lle-de- France art production. It is also worth noting that he proclaimed with renewed vigour that only France was entitled to use 'primitif in reference to its art because the nation had been the source of the art form; the Italians were actually only "direct descendants of the Z20Dictionnaire de Biographie frangaise (Paris: Letousey et Ane, 1933: 367). Z 2 1 L e s Primitifs a Bruges et a Paris, 1900-1902-1904: Vieux Maitres de France et des Pays-Bas (Paris: Librairie de I'Art Ancien et Moderne, 1904) comprised the four-part "L'Exposition des Primitifs francais" from the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Series 31 and 32, 563-66 (May, June, July and August 1904): 353-364, 451-76, 61-81 and 113-139) and the two-part "Les arts a I'Exposition Universelle de 1900: La peinture ancienne" from the same journal, the Gazette des Beaux-arts (Series 3, 24 (November and December 1900): 377-396 and 537-562). 2ZZLes Primitifs frangais 1292-1500: Complement Documentaire au Catalogue Officiel de I'Exposition, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie de I'Art Ancien et Moderne, 1904). 107 Greeks of Constantinople" and therefore not originators of any new movement, but only copyists of previous traditions.223 Virtually coincidental with the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, Georges Hulin de Loo published a book entitled L'Exposition des «Primitifs frangais» au point de vue de /'Influence des freres Van Eyck sur la peinture frangaise et provengale.224 Although he was complimentary about the success of the Paris exhibition, he takes up again his stance from the Bruges catalogue, expanding it further to list a full slate of French institutional and national inadequacies, including especially a lack of methodical and scientific record-keeping and analysis, as well as unsubtle references to the intellectual laziness of French scholars interested in studying only texts and reluctant to stir outside their offices to examine the actual works of art: The causes of the backward state of the history of French painting are many: the dispersal and relative rarity of the works, as a consequence of the numerous attacks of revolutionary and iconoclastic seizures which the country suffered; the fact that if there is in France an admirable international museum of masterpieces, the Louvre, there is nothing one could properly call an historical museum of painting which collecting as complete as possible a series of documents, allows for the study of the chronological sequence of events and the geographical distribution of artistic movements; the defective organization of acquisition committees; the lack of resources or competent direction in provincial museums; the spirit of classicism and orthodox aesthetics in all education; the absence of photographic records; the sedentary character of the nation which supports scholars who prefer z z 3 Bouchot, Les Primitifs frangais 1292-1500, 43: "...des descendants immediats des grecs de Constantinople." 2 2 4 Georges Hulin de Loo, L'Exposition des «Primitifs frangais» au point de vue de /'influence des freres Van Eyck sur la peinture frangaise et provengale (Brussels and Paris: Societe d'histoire et d'archeologie de Gand, 1904). Hereinafter called L'Exposition des «Primitifs frangais» au point de vue.... 108 to study written texts in their offices, rather than going to see the works wherever they are, etc., etc. 2 2 5 [emphasis in original] In addition to the systemic problems identified in this excerpt, Hulin de Loo issued warnings about the "more serious and more dangerous...tendency to naturalize as French certain Low Country painters by means of geographic annexation simply by moving the frontier".226 As a tool of rebuttal, Hulin de Loo chose to trace the Van Eyckian influence on a number of the most prominently praised artists and works from the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and in the process, he effectively re-nationalized the overall style of the so-called French primitifs by reinserting the Flemish influence into the mix. For example, Jehan Fouquet was claimed as an intermixture of Italian and Flemish influences on a French base and Enguerran [sic] Charonton was characterized as truly French with Italian 2 2 5 Hulin de Loo, L'Exposition des «Primitifs frangais» au point de vue..., 8: Les causes d'etat arriere de l'histoire de la peinture frangaise sont multiple: la dispersion et la rarete relative des oeuvres, par suite des nombreuses attaques d'epilepsie revolutionnaire et iconoclastique qu'a subies le pays; le fait que, s'il y a en France un admirable musee international de chefs- d'oeuvre: le Louvre, il n'y a pas a proprement parler de musee historique de la peinture frangaise, qui, recueillant des series de documents aussi completes que possible, permette d'etudier I'enchainement chronologique et la repartition geographiques des mouvements artistiques; ('organisation defectueuses des commissions d'achat; le manque de ressources ou de direction competente des musees de province; I'esprit de classicisme et d'orthodoxie esthetique dans tout I'enseignement; I'absence de photographies; le caractere sedentaire de la nation, qui porte meme les savants a etudier de preference dans leur cabinet des textes ecrits, plutot que de passer une partie de leur vie, a aller voir les oeuvres partout ou elles sont, etc. etc. Note the quotation marks in the title. 2 2 6 Hulin de Loo, L'Exposition des «Primitifs frangais» au point de vue..., 11: "...plus grave et plus dangereuse, la tendance a naturaliser frangais, certains peintres des Pays-Bas, par la voie de I'annexion geographique, en deplagant simplement la frontiere." 109 influences mixed in with Flemish-Provencal227; in addition, Hulin de Loo claimed that the Pieta de Villeneuve "profited from the Eyckian conquest."228 Henri Bouchot, it is interesting to note, replied directly to Hulin de Loo in an article published in the Revue de l'art ancien et moderne in September 1904. With ill-disguised sarcasm, he defended France and the worthy claims made at the Exposition des Primitifs frangais as a nationalistic response to aggressive foreign nationalisms: The legend of the Van Eycks had its advocate, just as the Chanson de Roland had Gaston Paris. The old woman of the arts - of all the arts -Rome, who was not attacked, has found its champion. The rampart of the North and the rampart of the South have placed themselves in a position to square up against the 'nationalists' of French art, in the name of Flemish and Italian nationalisms.229 Identifying Georges Hulin de Loo and Louis Dimier as the 'champions' of the north and south, he first disputed the logic of the former ("Mr. Hulin chases after and seeks to demonstrate that all of France, a huge territory, was a tributary of the art of a tiny corner, or a mere spot..."230 [emphasis in original]) and sarcastically used the very criticisms Hulin de Loo had voiced 2 3 1 to dispute the research techniques of the latter ("M. L. 2 2 7 Hulin de Loo, L'Exposition des ((Primitifs frangais» au point de vue..., 25 and 45-46. 2 2 8 Hulin de Loo, L'Exposition des «Primitifs frangais» au point de vue..., 49: "a profite des conquetes Eyckiennes." 2 2 9 Bouchot, "...Un Dernier Mot," 169: La legende des Van Eyck a eu son avocat, comme la Chanson de Roland eut Gaston Paris. La grand'mere des arts - de tous les arts! - Rome, qui n'etait pas attaquee, a trouve son champion. Le rempart du Nord et le rempart du Midi se sont mis en posture de regler leur comte aux «nationalistes» de l'art francais, au nom des nationalismes flamand et italien. 2 3 0 Bouchot, "...Un Dernier Mot," 173: "M. Hulin la poursuit et cherche a demontrer que toute la France, c'est-a-dire un territoire immense, fut tributaire en art d'un petit coin, d'un seul endroit...." 2 3 1 Hulin de Loo, L'Exposition des 'Primitifs frangais' au point de vue..., 11. 110 Dimier goes, by preference, to copies or to derivative works to establish the bases of his arguments. This is why, although taking part in the Committee and having the power to make corrections to the successive editions of the official catalogue, he refrained from saying anything and preferred to operate separately"232). This brief survey of responses among the French and foreign press and publishers thus indicates that reception of the exhibition was varied and extensive. Much of the criticism generally fell into critiques of trie way in which Bouchot and Lafenestre proved their argument, as well as disputes, though to a lesser degree, over the basic premise that a French primitif did indeed exist. In general this response to the show might be attributable to the fact that the 'message' was what many factions wanted to hear. Indeed, the presentation of Bouchot's and Lafenestre's theories in the Catalogue Definitif had been intended to soothe all sides. Journals of various political stripes and aesthetic positions could take what they wanted from the exhibition and, with relatively few exceptions, were generally supportive, or at least relatively uncritical, of the arguments put forward by the Exposition des Primitifs frangais. Where there was criticism it was focused much more on debates over details and definitions, rather than on the overall premise of the exhibition. With the exception of Georges Hulin de Loo, Louis Dimier, and Roger Fry, the other critics did not dispute or call into question the existence of a French primitif, or, when they did, their critiques were less pointed and more implicit which avoided placing the writers in opposition to an institution like the Louvre and performing the 'treasonable' 232Bouchot, "...Un Dernier Mot," 177: "M. L Dimier va, de preference, aux copies ou aux oeuvre derivees pour etablir les bases de son argumentation. C'est pourquoi, faisant partie du Comite et pouvant proposer des corrections aux editions successives du catalogue officiel, il s'est bien gardee de rien dire, et a mieux aime operer a part." 111 act of denying French excellence. After all, most of the owners of the journals as well as many of the writers reporting on the exhibition had a vested interest in supporting the Exposition des Primitifs frangais because of their involvement on its organizing committees and the sense of patriotism it fostered. Another impact of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais was discernible in the art market and in the acquisition policies of the Musee du Louvre. While public interest in the 'primitifs' was at its height, private collectors, both big and small, became interested in buying such images for their own walls. Both Paul Durrieu and Andre Michel in their reviews of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais took pains to warn art buyers to beware of second class works flooding the market and claiming the right to be called 'primitive'. Paul Durrieu, one of the curators of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais as well as a noted collector, summed this up in his 1904 warning: I should again point out that for this category of painting [manuscript miniatures] as for paintings, and even more than for paintings, there are a large quantity of fakes circulating, some of them very well executed. Several years ago, the Paris market was inundated with them. One particularly saw a whole invasion of fake portraits of Joan of Arc, arriving freshly hatched from foreign studios.2 3 3 Durrieu, 178: Je dois encore signaler que, pour cette categorie [manuscript miniatures] comme pour les tableaux et meme encore beaucoup plus que pour les tableaux, il circule quantite de faux, quelques executes tres habilement. II y a quelques annees, le marche de Paris en etait comme inonde. On vit notamment toute une invasion de pretendus portraits de Jeanne d'Arc, arrivant tout frais eclos d'un atelier de I'etranger. 112 The Musee du Louvre's acquisition policies had long been the focus of critical analysis,2 3 4 but Georges Lafenestre, named Curator of Paintings and Drawings in 1900, had broadened their somewhat limited scope in order to "give to the supreme masters, to superior works, the primary place, but not to forget the Louvre's role as a great school, a systematic panorama of the phases of painting."235 Critics of the exhibition had noted the paucity of early French works on the walls of the national museum's galleries as one reason the French primitif school had been so unknown to the public2 3 6; however, within a year of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais, the Louvre had acquired three notable works to fill the gaps in its collection: the La Donatrice avec sainte Madeleine (c. 1490) by the Maitre de Moulins237; the Retable de Boulbon2 3 8; and, most importantly, the Pieta of Villeneuve-les-Avignon, purchased by the Societe des Amis du Louvre.239 2 3 4Larroumet's L'art et I'etat en France, for example, contained a lengthy critique of the acquisition funds and organization of the entire beaux-arts machinery. He particularly deplored the cumbersome machinery of ministerial approvals required for each purchase and strongly advocated a kind of 'acquisition float', or endowment fund, to which certain curators would have discretionary access (249-50). 2 3 5 Henri de Chennevieres, "Les Recentes acquisitions du Departement de la Peinture au Musee du Louvre, 1900-3)," Gazette des Beaux-arts, Series 3, 30 (October 1903): 266: "Faire aux maitres souverains, aux oeuvres superieures, la part toujours premiere, mais ne pas oublier le role du large ecole que en Louvre doit tenir, panorama methodique des phases de la peinture...." This was a broadening of previous policies which under previous administrations had aimed at acquiring only the greatest works which even them was a limited field and for which the Louvre had insufficient funds. 236Thiebault-Sisson, "L'Exposition des Primitifs frangais," Le Temps 12 April 1904: 3; Guiffrey, 81; and Sauvage, 207. 2 3 7 Marcel Nicolle, "Les recentes acquisitions du Musee du Louvre," Revue de l'art ancien et moderne 16, 91 (October 1904): 308; and F. de Mely, "Une promenade aux primitifs," La revue de I'art ancien et moderne 15 (June 1904): 461. This was item #108 in the Catalogue Definitif. It had also been displayed at the Belgian pavilion at the 1900 Exposition Universelle as a Flemish work. 2 3 8 Nicolle, 310. 2 3 9 Michel Laclotte, et al., Les Donateurs du Louvre (Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1989): 100 and 104. This is item #77 in the Catalogue Definitif. The municipal authorities in Vllleneuve-Les-Avignon were apparently under not a little duress, it seems, to relinquish the work. It is important to note that the 113 After this last purchase in 1906, as historian Michel Laclotte had noted, there was "a particular interest...in the origins of French art, that is, in the 'primitifs'. After the Pieta of Villeneuve-les-Avignon, a portrait of a child by the Maitre de Moulins (Jean Hey) and La Bataille de Cannes by Jean Fouquet were purchased. The choice of sculptures shows the same orientation."240 Despite this flurry of acquisitions, however, the main institutional and organizational problems described by Hulin de Loo were not addressed. The cumbersome structure lumbered on relatively unchanged for decades until one of many reorganization plans began in the 1970's.241 Louvre acquisition policies also re-emphasized the periphery- centre dynamic by amassing important historical artworks in the centralized site of the Musee. Several of the works obtained, the Pieta most notably, had been elevated to international masterpiece status by the exhibition's promotional material and critical praise. By purchasing works such as this, the Louvre absorbed what had been considered regional masterpieces, elevating them to the French artistic pantheon by installing them in the 'national museum.' The Louvre's role as the sole repository of French artistic patrimony was reinforced and its curators more firmly established as the only suitable custodians. Such acquisitions were both a buttress to the centrality of Paris and the work was not purchased by the Musee du Louvre itself, but by the Societe des Amis du Louvre, founded in 1897 by a group of politically influential and wealthy patrons (for example, Raymond Poincare, Edouard Aynard and Baron Edmond de Rothchild) as well as members of the Ministry. These 'concerned citizens' raised funds privately (or through government grants) for the purchase of works outside the budgetary limits of the Departments of the museums. (98) 2 4 0Laclotte 104: "...un interet particulier...pour les origines de I'art frangais, pour les 'primitifs', d'abord. Apres la Pieta de Villeneuve-les-Avignon, on achete un portrait d'enfant du Maitre de Moulins (Jean Hey) et la Bataille de Cannes de Jean Fouquet. Le choix des sculptures montre le meme orientation." Z 4 1Laurent, particularly 165-174. 114 construction of a collection of an Ecole des Primitifs frangais as a more permanent response to the accusations of neglect made by Georges Hulin de Loo in 1902 and 1904. 115 CONCLUSION The nation has now become both the subject and the object of this new cult, which has superimposed itself on the old one, no longer capable of catering for the whole of society. The nation gives perpetual homage to itself by celebrating every aspect of its past, each and every one of its social, geographical and professional groups which it believes has contributed to the general prosperity, and all the great men born on its soil and who have left lasting works in every domain imaginable.242 If one agrees with [Johannes] Huizinga that history' is the way in which a culture deals with its own past, then historical understanding is a vital cultural enterprise, and the historical imagination an important, if neglected, human faculty. Because the sources of history include in a primary sense the fundamental human practice of rhetoric, we cannot forget that our ways of making sense of history must emphasise the making. To get the story crooked is to understand that the straightness of any story is a rhetorical invention and that the invention of stories is the most important part of human self-understanding and self-creation.243 The Exposition des Primitifs frangais closed on July 14th, 1904 and the works, most of them at least, were returned to their owners.2 4 4 The publicity died away and the measure of the impact of the exhibition could be assessed. The reception and perceptions of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and the subsequent effect on the art market and acquisitions by the Louvre does not, however, indicate what, if any, was the full impact of the exhibition on the canonical structures of art history. What was the lasting impact, if any, of this event and its circumstances? Did the Exposition des Primitifs 2 4 2Kryzsztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500 - 1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles- Portier [Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1987)] (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1990): 43-4. 2 4 3 H a n s Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison, WI and London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989): 9. 2 4 4 F . de Mely, "Seconde promenade aux primitifs." La revue de I'art ancien et moderne 15 (July 1904): 54. 116 frangais change or expand the way in which the term primitif was understood and applied to fifteenth century art production? In the decades after the 'revelations' of 1904 a number of books dealt in varying degrees with the issue of the French primitives. For example, Outlines of the History of Art (Lubke's History of Art) of 1904 devoted only five pages to early French art (versus 72 pages for early German and Netherlandish schools) and began only with the Clouet's paintings from the 1550's.245 Louis Hourticq's La Peinture des Origines au XVP Siecle was published in its first edition in 1908; he stood by the North/South traditionalist schism, with a passing reference to the furore of the Exposition des Primitifs frangais and the issue of the primitifs contained in a footnote: "Hardly any critic or archaeologist has not written about French painters in imitation of the Italian, regarding the exhibition of 1904. On that occasion, the current opinions were very given a rough time and were, on the whole, little changed."2 4 6 In 1915, French art historian Andre Michel began to publish the Histoire de TArt depuis les premiers temps Chretiens jusqu'a nos jours, a multiple-volume survey of French art history. He took a more ambiguous stance in the issue of the French 'primitif. In Volume II, published in 1907, he stated that there was a French school of painting from as early as 1350; a painter born in Bruges was no more a foreigner in Paris than one 2 4 5Wilhelm Lubke, Outlines of the History of Art (Lubke's History of Art), 2 vol., ed. Russell Sturgis (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1904): 327. 2 4 6 L o u i s Hourticq, La Peinture des Origines au XVI- Siecle, 2nd ed. [1st edition, 1908], Manuels d'Histoire de I'Art Series (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1926): "Sur les peintres frangais a I'imitation italienne, il n'est guere de critique et d'archeologue qui n'ait ecrit, a propos de l'exposition de 1904. A cette occasion, les opinions courantes ont ete fort malmenees et, en somme, peu modifiees." This footnote may reflect the 1926 attitudes more than the 1908 ones. 117 bom in Auxerres for if Flanders was "under the fleur-de-lys," it was therefore French.*4' However, by Volume V, issued in 1915, he had backtracked somewhat when he wrote that "the history of French painting begins in 1595, when great works were created to honour Henri IV."248 By 1939, when Louis Reau published his French Painting in the X/V*1, xv^ andXVP1 Centuries, the national theme of 1904 reemerged, but he tempered his by statements about the overly enthusiastic claims of 'Frenchness' at the 1904 exhibition with claims that the French were comprised of subjects of the King of France, Provengals, Burgundians and French-speaking Walloons, a broadly encompassing geography equal to the best imaginings of Henri Bouchot and Georges Lafenestre.249 Both Michel and Reau, it must be remembered, were writing separately during the First and Second World Wars respectively, times of extreme national distress when exhortations of national superiority and continuity were needed for reasons other than academic pride. At best, the Exposition des Primitifs frangais broadened the application of the term primitifs and placed heretofore little known or under-appreciated works into circulation and discussion. But did it change the canon? Slightly. In general, art historical works today regard the French Primitives primarily as an aside complementing the Italian Renaissance and to Netherlandish developments. As one example, Gardner's Art through the Ages, Z 4 7 Andre Michel, ed., Histoire de I'M depuis les premiers temps Chretiens jusqu'a nos lours, vol. II (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1905-1915): 104. 2 4 8 Michel, Histoire de I'Art..., 778. 2 4 9 L o u i s Reau, French Painting in the XIV^, XVs* and XVI— Centuries (London, Paris and New York: Hyperion Press, 1939): 7 and 9. 118 a popular survey textbook first written in 1926 and re-edited periodically into the 1980's, devotes only one column in its 975 pages of text to the French schools of the fifteenth century; the Avignon Pieta as they call it is cited as "an isolated masterpiece of great power", while the "only one really major figure" mentioned is Jean Fouquet.2 5 0 The Exposition des Primitifs frangais and its issues of the 'primitif were soon overtaken. In 1907 the first show of the group, now known as the Cubists, included Picasso's Les Demoiselles dAvignon among other works, bringing a new 'primitif into the field through cross-cultural referencing. African artifacts were now re-categorized, not as ethnological artifacts, but as abstracted planes and angles breaking through the formalism of European aesthetics. Modern historian Patricia Leighten traces this 're- invention' of the primitif as founded in an anti-establishment stance: For the modernists, primitivism became a method for a revolutionary style; more, this formal radicalism often served, depending on the attitude of the artist, to present an alternative - mingling concepts of authenticity, spontaneity, freedom from the repression of bourgeois constraints, and amour libre - to currently entrenched social and aesthetic forms. The primitivism of Picasso and Derain most notably, like that of Gauguin before them, gestured toward cultures whose transformative powers they admiringly offered as escape routes from the stultification of French culture and academic art.2 5 1 The avant-garde, it seems, had taken back and re-worked the 'primitif yet again. The Exposition des Primitifs frangais, as this thesis has tried to show, was a locus of alternative readings, not only as a proposed revision of France's art historical lineage, but as an attempt to reappropriate the primitif from avantgardist and foreign definitions Z 5 0 Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey, Gardner's Art through the Ages, 8th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1986): 677-8. 2 5 1Leighten, 622. 119 and to construct a Republican sense of self-assertion amid shifting and polarizing meanings of 'France the Nation'. Factionalization and polarization continued to plague the Republican centre although centrist governments managed to retain relatively undisturbed power for several more years. 2 5 2 There was, however, no immediate or essential change in the way in which the nation thought of itself or indeed had always though of itself. What Lebovics calls the "tyranny of solidarity" continued to be an essential part of the French approach to national self-identification: the many were united as the one, at least at the theoretical and ideological level, if not as a reality.253 The seemingly cohesive notion of 'France' as defined and elaborated upon in the Catalogue Definitif and the Exposition des Primitifs frangais remained only a construct. 2 5 z Watson, 83; Nord, 222; and Anderson, 26. 2 5 3 Lebovics, 9. According to Lebovics and others, Michelet in the 1820's was one of the first to begin the myth of a geographical (and hence, linguistic, cultural and historical) unity of a France existing before the recorded political and historical entity. Throughout the nineteenth century this kind of retroactive nationalism was a common theme for writers and philosophers such as Ernest Renan and Ernest Lavisse (3-4). 120 S s ; c o LIOIN;N A D E LU Q C CO 3 - 4 LU to Uj —1 L U 1 i n i s 3 a n v 3 2 V H 0 > -- II s a a N i a « „ r Fig. 1 Plan of the Louvre. From Yvan Christ, Le Louvre et les Tuileries: Histoire Architecturelle d'un double Palais (Paris: Les Editions «Tel», 1949): n.p. 121 Fig. 2 Facade of the Pavilion de Marsan, northwest corner of the Musee du Louvre on the Rue de Rivoli. From Yvan Christ, Le Louvre et les Tuileries: Histoire Architecturelle d'un double Palais (Paris: Les Editions «Tel», 1949): 140. 122 E X P O S I T I O N DES Primitifs Francais A U PALAIS DU L O U V R E . . (Pavilion de Marsan) A LA BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE Catalogue MM. H i x i l B O U C H O T , Membre d* l'Inititnl, Conterreteur du D*p«r- tement iet E t t i m p e i i l i Bibliotheque N i l i o n i l e (Ptimtures et • Dtitiiis); L l o r o L D D E L I S L E , Membre-de l'lnititut, Adminiitr*- teur giainl de la Bibliotheque Nitionale [Miniaturts tt Manus- crits dt la Bibliothiqui National/ tt collictions ptrticuliirts); J.-J. G U I F F R E Y , Membre de l'lnititn!, Adminiitreteur de l i Manu- facture Nationale del Gobelin* (Tafisstrits); F R A N T Z - M A R C O U , Inspecteur ftninl d e l Mofiumentt hiitoriquei {£mtmx)\ H m i M A R T I N , Contervtteur a la Bibliotheque de l'Araenal (Minid- turts dt U Biblictkiqut dt TArsim*!)-, P A U I V I T R Y , attache tux M m i e i Nationaox (Sculpturi). Preface de M . G i o a o t i L A F E N E S T R E , Membra de l'Inititut, Coneenratetir dee Peintures au Muae'e da Lourr* «.< P A R I S P A L A I S D U L O U V R E ' ' E T B I B L I O T H & Q . U E N A T I O N A L S A v r i l 1904 ' 3 mm*, Fig. 3 Catalogue Definitif - Title Page of the Catalogue. 123 Librairie Centrale des Beaart-AFts 13, Rue Lafayette — PARI8 \ EN SOUSCRIPTION : L ' E X P O S I T I O N Primitifs Francais (La Peinture en France. tout let Valoit) • p.r M. Henri BOUCHOT Ceuerrtteur it Cabinet des EiUmpes k U Blkllotki^M Nittcotlt . . O I O Cet ouvrage former* un volume petit in-fojlo contenaritj cent planches en heliogravure. Chaque planche j »era accotripagnee d'une notice due a la plume de M . Henri - ! '• Bouchot. • i P r i x de I'ouvrage en sonscription s 1 5 0 francs ! 11 sera tlrd dix cxemplaires $ur "papier des M a n u - i facrures Imperiales du Japon, au prix de 3 0 0 francs, i ' Chacun de ces cxemplaires di luxe portera le nora i du souscripteur. / ' L'ouvrage sera public en quarre livraisons men- \ suelles; la premiere paralrra le 3o Avril 1904. L U N P R O S P E C T U S I L L U S T R E SEfU E N V O Y E A T O U T E P E R S O N N t QUI L E D E M A N D E R A Fig. 4 Catalogue Definitif - Advertising page for the Librairie Centrale des Beaux- Arts, no page. 124 Georges R A P J L J L Y JrTarchand& estampes de la Bibliotheque jfationale, libraire de T€colt'^ /fationale des Jjeaux-jfris \ . ' ; % f f f $ 9, Qrjai jWolaquaia — P f l f ^ I S ^, ... . ' • . - . "^^T^ •, 2$ L i vres A n d ens & Modern es • • . sur I'Art ck. les Artistes E s t a m p e s , E a u x - f o r t e s P o r t r a i t s , etc ^ OEuvres'de R E M B R A N D T , A L B E R T , D U R E R , . M A R T I N S C I I O N G A U E R J I J I L U C A S . D E L E Y D E , . V A N ' D Y C K , P A U L P O T T E R : V A N • O S T A D B ; " 4 | M O N T E G N A , R U Y S D A E ' L , C L A U D E L B . L O R R A I N , etc.. reproduits par-ffij l'h61iogravure A M A N D - D U R A N D . - Catalogue Mentuel en Distribution. j f m m IMPRIMERIE F R A Z I E R - S O Y E • 153-157, rue Montmartrc, P A R I S . )\nriexe £ithographique : 23,T{ue du jrfail SPEC1AL1TE D E C A T A L O G U E S P O U R E X P O S I T I O N S E T V E N T E S A R T I S T J Q U E S D E T A B L E A U X G R A V U R E S , E T D ' O B J E T S D A R T T Y P O G R A P H Y — I . I T M O G R A P H I E — S I M I L I - G R A Y U R E T R A V A U X JEN 3 ' C O U L E U R S €xiculior\ par ,ous process - P«vis el specimens sur demand* T f c L i P H O N E 1 B 7 - 1 4 T I L i P H O N E 1 B 7 - 1 « V̂ J "fcffim _ i w ^ , ->.-*>^» :7 Fig. 5 Catalogue Definitif - Endpaper, no page. 125 'if PRES1DENCE D'HONNEUR: M. L I M n i l S T I I D I L ' l m T X U C T I O X Pu«LI(il)I. VICE-PRESIDENCE'SD'HONNEUR : M. i i D I I I C T I U I D U B i A U X - A i T t ; M. L I D I I I C T I U I D I L'Exiiioxninrr S U P I H U U H ADMINISTRATION DE L'EXPOSITION . .';' ' . " / . "... Prisidenl : M . £ d o t f s r d A T N A K D , . delput^ du Rhone,' mcmbre da l'lnstitut. : • • ' T f ' • •'•'[' ' Vice-Priiidttii: M . Georges B « O B * J > membre de l'lnstitut, president de l'Union Centrale des Arts decoratifs et de fa/Socie'te' des Amis da Louvre. - - . "• ••,\\, : . x Vice-President des Comji/s if organisation : Le Comte Robert D I L A S T E Y X I E , mcmbre de l'lnstitut^-^rbfesseur a T E c o l e des Chartes. Administrateurs : M . Leopold D E L I S L E , mcmbre de l'lnstitut. admi- nistrates general de" la Bibliotheque Nationale; M . J . - J . G U I P T R E Y . mera- b r e d e l'lnstitut, administrateur de-la Manufacture des .Gobelins ; M . . G a - briel H A X O T A U X , de I'Acade'mie francaise; M . - K A K M P P E H , Directcur des M u s i c s nationaux; M . J . - L . P A S C A L , membre de l'lnstitut, archilecte. inspect cur general des Batiments cjvils; M . E . S A O L I O , membre de 1 Ins- titut, conservateur honoraire du Muse'e de Ctuny. Secretaire general: M . Henri B O U C H O T , mcmbre de IVnstitut. conser- vateur du Departement des Estampes h la Bibliotheque nationale. — Secretaire : M . P . - A . L E M O I S N E , archivistc paltfographe ; — Adjoints : M M . Carle D R E Y F U S et Andre* G E R M A I N ; — Commissairt de VExposition du Pavilion de Marsan ; M . M E T M A N , conservateur du Muse'e des Arts de'eoratifs. — Tr/sorter fS\. T . M O R T R E U I L , . secretaire tre'soricr de *1» . 8ibliotheque Nationale. — Tr/.wrirr adjoint : M . Paul L A C O M B E , tre'soricr '.de la Socidte dc l'Histoire dc Paris. Catalogue Definitif - A d m i n i s t r a t i o n , p a g e V . C O M I T F . S D ' O K G A N IS A T I O N i " S i c t i O M . — P o l n t u r e d © t d e s B l n s . — PrttlJmt: M . G e o r g e s LAPIMEITH, m e m b r e de I ' l n s t i t u t , c o n s e r v a t e u r du D i p a n e m e n t de Ii P e i n t u r e i u M u s i e d u L o u v r e . ' Memtris ; M M . C a m i l l e BSNOT^ c o n s e r v s t c u r a d j o i n t d e l M u s i e i n n t i o n a u x ; F r a n c o i s BINOIT, p r o f c s s e u r 1 I ' U n i v e r s i t i de l . i l l e ; BICAKO- FA»«B. c h e f dc b u r e i u i 1 ' i d t u i n i s t n t i o n d o 1 ' e i u i - A r t i ; I I . l i e Cur.wwR- v n a i s , c o n » e r v a l e u r a d j o i n t des MUJCCI n a t i o i i s u i ; J u l c s CI>M Jn, d u e c - t c u r de la Rfvut di I'Art, a n c i e n D i r e c t e u r des [ U t i m e n t * c i v i l s ; L . DIM n a , c r i t i q u e d ' i r i ; C o m l e P a u l D u i n t u , c o n s c r v - i t e u r h o i i o r a i r e des M u s i c s n u t i o n a u s ; C h a r l e s E m a u s s i , d i r c c t c u r Ac i» G-t^dlt >t'\ Br•>ui-A rti ; L o u i s G o N i l , m e m b r e d u C o n s e i l supe'rieut' des B e a u x - A r t s ; A n a t o l e m e m b r e d c I ' l n s t i C o n d i a C h s n t i l l y ; J e a n G l A Y i , d u joufnal du DSbatt Societe' dc* A m i s d u I . o u v n . d e I'art J t ' U n i v e r s i t i d e Par M u s i e s n a t i o n a u x ; P a u l L u t i o n n c u r , v i c e - p r i i i d e d i r e c t e u r d u j o u r n a l c o n s e r v a t e u r d e « P e i n t u r e s d u M u a i e :s M u s e e * n a t i o n a u x ; A n d r e +!AL- id KOU-.HUN, s e c r e t a i r e g i n e r a l de U e; H e n r y I.IMONSKJ, p r o f c u e u r de l ' H i s t o i r e i r i s ; P a u l L t P a i f u a , c o n s e r v a t e u r a d j o i n t des t o t , d i r c c t c u r dc I'Art; J u l e s M * c i E r , ; c o l l e c - I ' U n i o n c e n t r a l e des A r t s d i c o r a t i f s ; MANM, Arts; MASJOU, c o l l e e t i o n n e u r ; A n d r e D i p a n e m e n t d c la S c u l p t u r e au M u s i e d u L o u v r e ; P i e r r e at NOLHAG, c o n s e r v a t e u r d u M u s e e d c V e r s a i l l e s ; A n d r e PF-RAT<, c o n s e r v a t e u r a d j o i n t d u M u s i c de V e r s a i l l e s ;• B e r n a r d I'SOST, i n s p e c t e u r g e n i t a l des B i b l i o l h e q u e s et a r c h i v e s ; SCHLUMHES&E», m e m b r e de l ' l nstitut ; P a u l VITST, attache1 a u i M u s i c s n a t i o n a u x . I P SECTION. — M a n u s c r i t a e t m i n i a t u r e s . - Pritidint : M. H e n r i OKONT, . r a c m b r e d c i ' l n s t i t u t . c o n j e n - d t u r d u D e p a r t m e n t d e i m a n u s c r i t s a l a B i b l i o t h f c q u e N a t i o n a l e . Mimbrti ; M M . C o u n n c , c o n s e f v a t e u r a d j o i n t an D i i p a r t c m e n i des M m i u ' c n t s de la B i b l i o t h e q u e N a t i o n a l e ; L e o n D o m , b i b l i o t h i c a i r e au D e ' p a r t e m e n t d e » M a n u s c r i t s ; le C o m t e P a u l D u m i i t ; ; C a m i l l e ' EJM.AKT, c o n s e r v a t e u r d'j M u s i * d u T r o c a d i r o ; H e n r i G.ULICK. c o l l c c t i o n n c u r ; P a u l I . e M t i u i ; G u s l a v e MACON, c o n s e r v a t e u r a d j o i n t d u M u s i e C o n d i a C h a n i i t l y ; MALC, p r o f e & s e u r d e p r e m i e r e a u L y c i e L o u i s - l e - G r a n d ; C h , de LA R o s c i m , s o u s - b i b l i o t h e c a i r e au D i p a n e m e n t des M a n u s c r i t s ; H e n r i MAKIIN, c o n s e r v a t e u r du C a b i n e t des M a n u « c r i ( s a : r » R t h l i o t h e t i u e de I ' A r s e n a ! ; S a l o m o n REINACH, c o n s e r v a t e u r d u M u s i c de S a i n t - G e r - JII'SKCI M . M . i u r i c e ••• — T a p l s s e r l e s e t d t o f f e s p e l n t o s . — President; AILLX, c o l l e e t i o n n e u r . M,t*brts; M M . C i o s r (L.), c h e f dc bureau B e a u i - A r t i ; P * i C T ( L . D I | , h i s t o r i c " d"irt i A n g c artiste p e i n t r e , c o l l c c t i o n n c u r et a m a t e u r ; J . G u n • u D ^ p a n e m e n l d e i E s t a m p e s ; J . M » c t i r , » i o a i ' a d m i n i t l r a t i o n d t s >; P o u a m t a - S * a L O v l i a , n r . t o u s - b i b l i o t h e c a i r a - p r i i i d e n t de 1 ' U n i o o c o m c r v i t e u r du M u i t e da IA»TIM L a R o Y . c o n i e i l l e r a n M u i i e d e i A r i i d ^ c o r a - , « c o u , c e n t r a l e J e ) A r u d e c o r i ( i l s ; G i s t c j n La R o u e n , m e m b i t t o n e i p o n d m i de t ' l m la C o o r d e i co'mptet ; M i r i n K , c r » n « r x t i f i ; A l b e r t MAIONAN, i r t i j t e p e i n t r e , c o l l e c t i o ' n n e u r . v. I V SUCTION, — ftmaux. — P>i\idmt: P r a n t i M> g e n e r a l d e i M o n u m e n t i h i i t o r i q u c i . Mimb'n : M M . F r a n c o i s C o u » a o i * , b i b l i o l h i c a i r e au D e p i r t e m e o i des E s t a m p e s ; E . H A » * u c o u a t , c o n s e r v a t e u r d u M u s i c d e ' C l u o y ; H e a r t DI LA TOUI, c o n s e r v i t e u r a d j o t n l du D i p a r t c m e n t d e l m i d a i l l e s • l a B i b l i o t h e q u e N a t i o n a l * . ; A b e l L a » a * n c , j e c r i t a i r e du C o l l e g e de F r a n c e ; G a i t o n M t o a O N , c o n s e r v a t e u r du D i p a r t e m e n l dc la R e n i i n a n c e au M u s i c d u L o u v r e ; L u c i e n M AONC, i t c l u t c c t c ; ).-) . SUIQUII n« VASsaiOT, a t t a c h i a u i M u s i c s o a t i o n a u x ; I'aul VITIT, a t u c h i a u i M u i i e s n a t i o - M . . VlTI o r n c n t les s a l l e i d u P a v i l i o n d c M a t : c h a r g e r de c b o i i u l p t u r e a q u i C O M ITS D E P A T R O N A G E M M . le P r i n c e A . d ' A a a N a a a o , de I ' l n s t i t u t ; E d o u a r d A r w a t D , d a V l n s t i t u t ; E r n e s t BAIILOH, de 1*1 oatitut ; S. E . M . B t i t l n , a m b a s n d e a r de F r a n c e , P a l a i s F a r n i t e , R o m e ; le due de BAUPFIIWOMT; G c o r g e i B de I ' l n s t i t u t ; BIHOUJID, a m b a s s a d e t i f de p r a n c e , Beflifc ; D ' W . DOOB, D i r e c t e u r - M u s i c R o y a l de B e r l i n ; L . BOKNAT, d a I ' l n s t i t u t ; S. E . M . CAMBON, a m b a s s a d e u r de F r a n c e , L o n d r e s ; C h . L . C A I O O N , a r c h i t e c t e , B r u a e l l c i ; G e o r g e s CLIHEKCEAU, S i n a t e u r , ; C o r r a d o R t c c i , D i r e c t e u r du M u s i c des O f f i c e s , i F l o r e n c e (Italie) ; L i o - n e l CUST ; D i v i n e , P r e s i d e n t d u C o n s e i l m u n i c i p a l ; S t i p h a n e DIITILL(, P r i i i d e n t d u C o n s e i l d ' A d m i n i s t r a t i o n d u P . - L . - M . ; L a d y D i m ; C u s - tave D a u r r u s ; C h a r l e s E^H»UJSI ; FITIJ, D i r e c t e u r de la B i b l i o t h e q u e . R o y a l e de B r u x e l l e i ( B e l g i q u e ) ; L a d y de G U T ; J . - J . G u i r r n k Y , de I ' l n s t i - tut ; G a b r i e l HANOTAUX, de r A c a d i m i e F r a n c a i s e ; H e n r i HTMAKJ, C o n - t e r v a i e u r d u C a b i n e t de> E s t a m p e s , B i b l f f o h e q u e R o / a l c , B r u x e l l e s ( B e l - g i q u e ) ; KACXTFRN, D i r e c t e u r h o n o r a i r e du M u s i c d u L o u v r e , P a l a i s du L o u v r e ; P a u l L a a o i , D i r c c t c u r de I'Art; S . A . S . tc P r i n c e de L i t c m i x - i T t i s , Palais de L i e c h t e n s t e i n , V i c n n e ( A u t r i c h e ) ; J . MACIET ; M o n i e i - g n c u f P e « « A u o , d e V A c a d e m i e F r a n c a i s e , C a r d i f i a i £ v ( q u e d ' A u t u n ; S . A . le P r i n c e RADOLIN, A m b a s s a d e u r d ' A I I e m a g n e , Paris ; le M a r q u i s de R a - TIDEAUX, A m b a s s a d e u r de F r a n c e , V i e n n c ( A u t r i c h e ) ; H e n r i Roujost, Fig. 7 Catalogue Definitif - Administration, pages VI and VII. 127 p'erpelue) dt [ ' A c a d e m i c ' " ^ B c a u i - A r t i ; I. V a n R t j i w i j c i , tc dc U V i l l e , A n * f t * ( B « l g i q u e ) ; A . S c « . i » i ; S. E. te D' SCNONI, Directeur d t i Mtltees r o ' y a u i . B c d i n ; le G>m(e de S I C I U - D O I F ; dc S n v i i , P r e f e t d e la S e m e , H d t c t - d e - V i l l e ( r e r t s . ; 1T»IAJ»II.VT ; M I I T ; H . P t i m i ; ], de r o i j f o u ; Hugue^s K I A F F T ; . C e r c l e d*f*T U n i o n A n i s t i q u e . DI'UTI C O C H I I , ; le b a r o n G r f f i t o ; U'Ax(>XQ(A; j £harj*j P o i a t s ; A a o t b i A c o * ; L. G O L U I C M M I O T ; D I A K B ; M o i t A C f - T J i L A T o i i - ; A\dti G M M A I N ; le coral* L. C A H E N n ' A N V c u ; F . BISCMOP'SHEI H ; le cerate de POMEMO'; C . G H Q U L T ; F . ROT ; Isidore LB-HOY ; le o t f m i e T . V d e ^ C A i i o H o o ; le corat* - B o m DF. CAST«LLAU( ; le C e r c l e A r t i i t i q u e e*. L i t t t r a i r V M " * U comtetM de P o u i r » i t s ; M . 'Ernest C O O T ' M T . _ • • M E M H R E S E T R A N C E R S D E l.'A C O M M I S S I O N S U P E R i E U R E M M . l e D" J o r y r B o r T i o e s . , S t o c k h o l m ; Btrtnw*', L a H « > e , s! C o i v i s , B r i t i s h - M u s e u m ; " H e r b e r t ' C O O K ; Robert D u : , Directeur d a Bur- l i n g t o n - M * j » j i i « r ' D t s T * i l i , D i i c o j e u r des M u s s e s R o y a u x des A r t i Industrie)*. Bru*elle.s; M »i D v o i * ' * ; C . FMirXi-,\(uiiUY.' L o n d r e s ; Fit-' G I * * I « T . Professeur i r i l n i v c r s t i i i de l i i e t e ; D« F n . B o n n ; ]. l:>tei)tANDtt, K a m i g ^ c h e - M u s / i n r i l5* VOK I d ' i r t ; II. r>« G E i « u i L i i , - T i i d e r t - H ' i d e n " * A r i h u r ' H A S I L O " , B e r l i n ; Jules H I I M O . D i r e c t o r ' d e la Rtvut J/J Art Chrttitn, a L i e g e ; H M E L T I X I , l . o n d r e i ; C n i n e l i u s HOAST'F.DF n't C> I O O T , [.»' H s v e ' f G e o r g e ' M uti!«. Pro- l e . . e u r i r U n i v c r ' l l e d e G a n d . ' G a n d | ' ! ) ' fi /"CMAIID . v o n K A U F H A X V . ' P r o - fe.seur i l ' U n i v « f s r t d " e t C o n s e i l l e r - m i m e , l l e r l i n ; ' H . K I W J m 1.FTIF»- « o * « , B r A e l U i f M i ^ f , t i i i s , . j l r r f m c T i t S e * Kupfef'stich K i b i n e i Director,, D r e s d e ; L I ' N A I K (LIJ-KOCH [leu M ujee' d^s B c a u i - A r U d ' A n v e r j ; J . L i s i i K B s , D i r e c l e f i f du K n - n i ^ l i c h t s . K u n s i g c w e r h e M u s e u m , ! B e r l i n ; D ' A . L i c n T w A ; l i , ' ; H a m b u r g :C tit M A S U A C M , P r i v a i doeent i I ' U n i v e j a i K d t C . e n e v ^ ; } i i C i l l e r i e s i n d M u P * S. S j p c C « p o i (ion A n v i t e u r adjoi Muse. T i c HI l . o n d r e i , T r u i C l i s j t o w ; A . F'i i . ; \ in j eoitieiller d ' E u i . membre eHeciif^de I ' A c i d e i A r u de S j i n i - P e i e n b o u r g ; C l a u d e PHILITPI C o l l e c t i o n ; B . - W . ^ ' . » I H R » I H N « C * m s t e r d i m ; M n R o o m , e o n . c r n t e I ' m l SEIOHL, director d e l H o h e i u r i m . u i , directeur d c i i l c i u i - A r t i , Drc<__ , . : j b i n e t R ° y » ' d " E M . m p e , ; B'. S i r n ^ o , di'recteZ"dc, H o f e n c e ; T M o n M < w . e o n . e r » . t e U r d g British M u s e u m ; V, , - , U , V . " L O N , L G L I 1 " ' = . » « U D \ C i m m « - T i n . M » c « . : o n N , d e p u i e d e C m d ; OUrg ; WtujAtKM, • 1 Ihc eur du R i j k s - M u - M u i e e P l i n t i n I M u s e u m . . B e r l i n ; secretaire-general de I ' F . i p o i i i i o n de llrugi Junes W t A i e , l . o n d r e i ; W i s c t (le C o n s u l ) , HimD< S u c d c l s c h e s K u n s l I n s t i l u l , F r i n c f u r ! - i / - M M E M B R E S D E L A C O M M I S S I O N S U K f i R I E U R E M M . le B i r o a d'Ai»*nAf,colleelionneur ; A r s e n e A L K A H D I I crit r l ; A U D I , B i b l i o i h i c . i r e de . . ville d ' A i x ; P h i l i p p e A H Q O . M , C o n s t inbre de l ' t n u i t u t ; Ernest i S i g i i m o n d BAADAC,- c o l - UE»« DE T U U Q U I | 8ir,A«o- direction des B e a u t - A r t s ; l i n i i t r a i e u r de C l u n t i l l y ; . C h i n i b r o des Deputes ; t ; IJIOUILLOH, [ D ' | ; de Par teur du M u s e e de M i r l e i l l e ; A l b e r t U M BASELOW, membre dc l ' l n s t i t u t ; l e i j i o n n c u r ; H e n r i B M A L O I , eo F A ( » E , C h e f du B u r e a u , des Musees A . de R m n . m i i , membre de 1 ' l i m i i u L e o n BOUHCEOIS, ancien p r i ' s i d c n i l U s r E u i L , [>i" de) ; Etienne BaicoN, critique Georges C A I H , conservateur des M u s i c s de la cline S«3i C A H O I . c o l i c c t i o n n e u r ;' C m Musee d ' E p i n a l ; C i i M t P C t A U (Georges), i c n a l e u r ; Jules C i A « a r n , . C O U S B I T , recevcuf M u n i c i p a l de Ij. D i r e c t i o n des H e a t i i - A r t s ; H e n r i •tji.iNii, ecrivain J ' J M ; Pierre D . n m r , membre de l ' l n s t i t u t ; D . U ( t . p u b l i e i s t c ; DATOT ( A . ) ; Em ile D u i o x i t M i , * A b b e v i l l e ; .t, i v o c a l , p r e s i i k n t du C o n i e i P i i i u n i c i p i l ; o'M ESVMNA r ; Paul D o - .cinbre de I'l nstitut, d i r « c l e u r de 1'Kcole d e s B c a u i ' A r l s ; , M o n i e i g n e u r D u u i i L i s n , mcmbre de I ' t n s l i t u l , directeur de I'Ecole de France t R o m e ; H A N D ( G . ' , A m i e n s ; E . D u i A H t > - G t t V I L L I , Acrivain d'srt; E d i o o n d F O U L C , L. de F O U I C A U D , p r o l e s i c u f * 1"Ecole des b e » u i - A r t » ; o . de la B i b l i o t h e q u e de 1'Arscnal; Paul G A U C H E I T , i f l g d - cieur-architect e, a V i e r i o n ; G u s t ave C e f ' s o r , - der i vain d'art; L i o n G i a o n , e o o s e p f i l e u r d u M u i e e N.-D. d u P u y , G U I O « A » O ( V i b b t J ( L o e h e i ) ; b a r o n I'Acjdtfmie Francaise ; s ; L. C S O S T , c h e l de bureai Fig. 8 Catalogue Definitif - Administration, pages VIII and IX. 128 http://Btj.Hi http://im.ui http://Rmn.mii I N T R O D U C T I O N i Depuis que les Gaulois, nos ancetres, amis des cou- leurs vives et des paroles sonores, furent inities, par leurs conquirants, aux seductions de la culture gr^co- romaine, la pratique des arts, plastiques ou Htteraires, n'a guere ete interrompue dans notre pays. L'art de la peinture, notamment, le plus souple de tous et le plus expressif, facile associii; de la poesie, s'y est toujours montre l'interprete fidele de nos croyances, de nos sentiments, de notre pensee. Meme aux epoques les plus troublees, a travers les longs flux et reflux des invasions barbares, sous les Merovingiens et les Carlo- vingiens, on couvre encore d'images coloriees, (decor mural, mosai'ques, tissus brodes), plus ou moins gros- sieres, les basiliques et lespalais, comme, autrefois chez les galio-romains, les temples et les villas. Les scribes Chretiens s'efforcent aussi de r^pandre, a leur tour, sur les feuillets des Missels et des Psautiers une parure semblable a celle dont leurs pr^ddcesseurs paiens decoraient les rouleaux des Poetes et des Philosophes. Les chroniques nous apprennent quelles legendessa- crees ou heroiques se deroulaient, en scenes parlantes, sur les murs des cathedrales et des residences impe- riales. Quelques manuscrits precieux nous ont conserve, outre les noms de leurs illustrateurs, des temoignages de la sincerite naive, avec laquelle ces proteges de Charlemagne et de Charles le Chauve essayaient deja d'exprimer, par une technique enfantine, la beaute du decor architectural qui les entourait, la vivacite, sau- vage ou elegante, des personnages si meles qu'ils y voyaient se mouvoir. Fig. 9 Catalogue Definitif - Introduction, page XI. 129 C E U V R E S E X P O S E E S P A L A I S D U L O U V R E 1 • P E I N T U R E S — DESSINS — EM A U X TAPISSERIES ; . • : • it ftl t Fig. 10 Catalogue Definitif - Title Page of the Oeuvres Exposees au Palais Du Louvre, no page. 130 I . Q1RARD D'ORLfeANS?, vers i35o. -. Portrait du roi de France Jean II, dit le B o n . . , H . 0 , 9 1 L . 041. PEINTURES 'ET DESSINS . '', J§. •'.VSE?: Le roi, ag< d'edviroo quarante a a t , est repre'sente' de profil a >•$• ' .';.-'-.>vi gauche. II porte la barbe rare, les cheveux coupe's sur le frontlet, tombant en meches sur le col. 11 est ve-tu d'une robe bleue & gar-' riaches etje'tices de fourrure blanche. Le fond est d'or, applique1 . sur plitre et toile, la toile elle-meme collie sur un panneau debois. \ Une gaufnire, en dentelle au poincon, est inscrite sur le pourtour du champ d'or.. La peinture a pris un ton fonce' que-fait ressortir".. Vlclat du forid. Ce tableau paralt avoir Hi peint en Angleterre, pendant la captivity du roi, aux environs de 1^59. N< e n l j i o , le roi Jean av'ait alors pres de quarante ans. Nous S a v o n s , grace a un compte ptiblii par Mgr le due d'Aumale, que le peintre Girard_ d'OrKans Itait, en quality de valet, de chambre, attache a la per- • sonne du roi en Angleterre, et qu'il peignit',\'par son brdre, divers "tableaux. Le present portrait iitait autrefois dans les appartements du roi Charles V a i'hfitel Saint-Paul, et il faisait partie d'un quatrip- tyque fermant, contcnant trois autres portraits, ceux d'Edouard III. d'Angleterre, de Charles IV, Empereur d'Allemagne et « Roi des Romains > et de Charles V alors due de Normandie. Une mention de Tinventiiro du Roi Charles V public par Labarte n' aa^fnontre que Girard d'OrMans avait peint un quatriptyq'ue de ce genre. Cette ceuvrc, d'un intdrftt historique considerable, a peu pris unique aujourd'hui cn Europe, est la prcuvc ta plus aaisissante dc l'activitd et du talent nituralistc des artistes parisiens du xiv" siecle. Dans le Fig. 11 Catalogue Definitif - Peintures et Dessins section, page 1. 131 Wmm > OEUVRES EXPOSEES • y: \ A L A ( : B I B L I O T H E Q U E / N A T I O N A L E M A N U S C R 1 T S A P E I N T U R E S Fig. 12 Catalogue Definitif - Title Page of the Oeuvres Exposees a la Bibliotheque Nationale, no page. 132 AVIS ta mm Li-galerle affectee a 1 Exposition est destfnie a devenir' ..••.•dins peu d i n n e r s , la piece pnncipale du Dipartement'de* s;-ni6d«illes et antiques de Ta Bibliotheque Nationale. En la"cons- •Jtnusaht et-en fam'enkgeant, l'architecte M . Pascal s'est astreint •y-i j faire' respectueusenient entrer les p'eintiires et les sculp- hires qui fais'aient 1'orneraent du Cabinet des midailles duRoi •.-.'• ftabli au rv'iii* siecle, au-dessus de l'arcade Colbert. ... 1 Les organisateurs de l'Exposition se .sont propos* d'y ras-. ••'•lembler un choix de manuscrits, d'apris' lesquels on pourral : luivre revolution de la peinture appliqude en France a la "..'decoration" des livres. depuis le xni* siecle jus'qu'au xv'i*. Ces' •• manuscrits sont ici catalogues suivant l'ordre cbronologique. • tuquel ii n'a ete fait que de rares exceptions, justifiees*ar des • analogies de .provenance ou de sujet. : ( ...,.-.•.-Le meme priacipe a preside, en general, au placement •.•dei manuscrits dans les'vitrines. Des exigences materielles,ont -cependant obligi de s'en ^carter sur quelques points. De -plus, il a paru convenable" de mettrea part, pour etre places dsnsun meuble special au milieu de la galerie, des morceaux . d'dlite qu'il importait de grouper, pour mieux faire apprdcler Its chefs-d'eeuvre des artistes franfais du xiv' et du xv' siecle. "En outre, trois vitrines, marquees des lettres A, B, C . ont tte consacrees a vingt-sept manuscrits de la Bibliotheque de '•• l'Arsenal et la vitrine X X a neuf manuscrits de la celebre collection de M . Henry Yates Thotp-pson. Mais tous les 4 13 Catalogue Definitif - Avis to the Manuscrits a Peintures section, page 5 133 If x n r S I E C L E 8. L E . L I B E R F L O R l D U S . . d * L a m ben La La libtr FloriJui e»t un r e c u e i l d e t n x l e i theologiquet t l hia- . o r i q u e , , qui a etc c o m p o a e . a u . commencement d i i x u - ritdi. L - e . e m p b i r e o r i g i n a l , cn partie autographe c s t . l la Hibl.othtqat de C . n d ! 'exemplaire de la b i b l i o t h e q u e Nationale doit ivotr_W n peu . p r e . le m i l i e u do a m ' " t e l e . L e i pagei " P " * " contienncnt une partie d e i figu I ' A p o c a l y p ie 111. . L E S G K A N D E S C H R O N I Q U E S D E P R A N C E . Sai E ; G c i i e v i t v e , n" -jit. E i c m p l a i r e t)ui purail b i t . . - . S i i n l - D e a i i „ o t I r t t a P h i l i p p e le H i r d i ; l a peinture, repreientiat. l o t h i n d e J C l i v r t t u f o i i CM r e p r o d u i l r n t i l e rlu i . XXIII fa N,r»,;t J,i Huiofhn-. Vitrine 111. L A S O M M E L P . R O I . ^ rr.ncaia . , , 1 . ' V o l u m e copie cn 1194 par P e r n n Jo P a l o n i , Le ieit«-«al i c c o m p j ^ ' i i t de q u i n i t tableaux. i u r l e i hull d e r n i e n detqueltaB etc t r a c c e i l e i figures a l l c g o n q u e i d e l V-icei et d e i Vertui. La rut me l u i t t de p e i n t u f o i e retrout-e d a m ( r o i i aulret mioatcm do I ' P . i p o i i t i o n : let n " 149,14 et 9)8 de l i Bibliothfcqiie Naliouk ( n - 45 e l 1 )b de ce l i v r e l ) et le n' 6119 dc I ' A r i e n a l (cc-tica u i ) l i l l e e . i t l e a u n i J i n . j e m i . 8 ^ de ta M a i a r i n o et daol b mi. a d d i l i o n h e l 18161 du M u i e e l i r i t a n n i q u e . — L e i roil. 9)1* 14931) n n u i ont conserve ie programme d i t a i l l e d e i itij*u l/w I ' t n l u m i n e u i devait trailer. ' Vitrine IV.'. . . P S A U T J E R D E L A S A I N T E - C H A P E L L E . (vera 90.) C a b i n e t da M . i l . y»Il* THOMPJOI. H i n u i c r i l p o i t O i e u r k l a mort du r o i P h i l i p p e le H i r d i , istt- rieur • la canonisation de saint L o u i s . Vitrine X X . a . B R E V 1 A I R E D E P A R I S . / ' • Latin IOIJ . M * o u s c r i \ ei£ctitc! peu de t e m p i avant la c/nooisatioe de ttiat L o u i i (1197), 1 I ' u n g * de l i f t m i l l t r o y i l c / S u r l ^ r o n t i s p i " representee! d e u i seines de 1'tiiitoire de D l v i d . ' Deliile,'iVo(.V« dt do*{t Hunt roja**\. 57. Vitrioa IV. ,3. P S A U T I P . H R ' O K I G I N K M t T U S l E N N E . Ce l i v r c , qui pcul dale grand nombre de p e i i i o . P»f d e i legcndes, in, l i g n e i . i l y 1 beaucoup dc cioquis de p e r s o n n e l do 14. L A S A I N T E A 011A Y H . • - T r n i t i i a l l c g o r i q u c d e Latin I04)f,. In * i i f siecle, renferme un dotit le sujet eat capli^ le* m a r ^ s et a u i bouts ,'.c - figures (trotejquei el de Vitrine I V . m p l . i e M . I I M . T Y a r . s Tsln* I e v o i i o n . •e'u^'ri-eaemrlaire de J Musee b r i m liRraphe <•( du /rtfi.ir t-1111 j 11.111,-11 r. L a d . . i r ;.<•)" cn * t V " f i e K ni d a n . le gran a S i c i e t d pate'( Roi qui l o r m f aii)ou.'d')nii I.e. d e u . m a n n e r ! . , n n m e de Ha- c i l l i x u p l i e •nn> de ' • R e p f » d t l t i i » n de -.graphique ( p i . 141 el J< f.'l cl dans le R r o u e i l de M . W i : R e p r o d u c t i o n dc peinture. dc la Sainte A b t ' i v e d a m I ' o u v r i . ; du comte de Italian! el d*r>< le C at a ln^u r i l l u i l r f ' d e la Hibliot h t q n Didot... ' ) Vitrine X X . 14 bi). P S A U T I E R D ' I S A B E l . I . E . fille de P h U l p p . It B d , rein. d ' A n g l e t t r r t . M i . francais 16 de la-Hibliotheque Royale de M u n i c h . P l a U l i e i latin et (ranfaii qui dul clre fait. [TubiWernent en A n ' gleterre. quelque t e m p , apitM le wtri^t d l . i l . e l l e avec Edouard II ii d'Ani(lelerre ( i J " « V La i ' h o l o g r i p h i e de p l u s i t u r i J.a^r1 .de C . Teufel de M u n i c h , eit expo.ee tetdani ta collection • c h i u i i e o . V'eitibule/ . B I B L E L A T I N E . donr I t , mlniaiurca K>nt accompagnte* dca caqulnei devanl .trvir'de g i i i i k J I'tnlumlneur. 1' ^PS. (Vitrine C, n* 11.) Ml Fig. 14 Catalogue Definitif - Manuscrits a Peintures section, pages 8 and 9. 134 http://compoae.au http://expo.ee Fig. 15 Jean Fouquet, The Melun Diptych, right wing (La Vierge et I'Enfanf), c. 1450. From Michel Laclotte, ed., French Art from 1350 to 1850 (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965). 135 Fig. 16 Nicolas Froment, Le Buisson Ardent, 1475-76. From, Michel Laclotte, ed., French Art from 1350 to 1850 (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965). 136 Fig. 17 Enguerrand Charonton, La Triomphe de la Vierge Marie, 1453. From Michel Laclotte, ed., French Art from 1350 to 1850 (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965). 137 Fig. 18 Ecole de Nicolas Froment, Pieta, avec saint Jean, la Vierge, la Madeleine et un donateur, 1470?. From Lawrence Gowing, Paintings in the Louvre (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987). 138 Fig. 19 Le Peintre des Bourbons, dit Le Maitre de Moulins, Saint Victor et donateur, c. 1480. From Grete Ring, A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500 (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1949). 139 Fig. 20 Jean Fouquet, Portrait de Charles Vll, c. 1445. From Lawrence Gowing, Paintings in the Louvre (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987). 140 Fig. 21 Ecole de Nicolas Froment, Miracle d'un Saint portant sa tete dans ses mains en presence des donateurs, c. 1480. From Grete Ring, A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500 (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1949). 141 Fig. 22 Jean Malouel, Martyre de saint Denis, c. 1400. From Lawrence Gowing, Paintings in the Louvre (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987). 142 Fig. 23 Le Peintre de Bourbons, dit Le Maitre de Moulins, La Vierge et I'Enfant-Jesus avec quatre anges, c. 1490. From Grete Ring, A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500 (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1949). 143 Fig. 24 Jean Fouquet, The Melun Diptych, left wing (Etienne Chevalier), c. 1450. From Michel Laclotte, ed., French Art from 1350 to 1850 (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965). 144 Fig. 25 Ecole de Paris, Altarpiece of the Parlement de Paris (called Le Calvaire), c. 1450. From Lawrence Gowing, Paintings in the Louvre (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987). 145 Fig. 26 Girard d'Orleans, Portrait de Jean le Bon, c. 1380. From Lawrence Gowing, Paintings in the Louvre (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987). 146 Fig. 27 Ecole d'Artois (Le Maitre de Flemalle), UAdoration des Bergers, c. 1430. From Lawrence Gowing, Paintings in the Louvre (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987). 147 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Arsene, Alexandre. "Les Primitifs frangais." Le Figaro (Paris) 13 April 1904: 4. Babeau, Albert. Le Louvre et son histoire. Edited and corrected. Paris: Firmin-Didot et cie., 1895. 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Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. 168 APPENDIX 1 Contents Analysis of the Exposition des Primitifs francais The following numerical analyses of the exhibition contents were derived from data provided in the Catalogue Definitif. Contemporary newspaper and journal reports indicate that there were new items being added to the exhibition throughout its 3 month run (witness the Supplement section in the Catalogue Critique itself) and so it is therefore possible that these figures are indeed not the final ones. However, since the Catalogue Critique can be considered an 'official' record of the event, I have used them for my analysis of content. 1. OBJECTS ACCORDING TO MEDIUM Object No. of Objects % of Total % at Site Exhibition Pavilion de Marsan: Paintings 294 42.0 64.0 Enamels 25 3.5 5.5 Tapestries 54 8.0 12.0 Sculptures 58 8.0 12.5 Mural copies 29 4,0 6.0 Total: 459 65.5 100.0% Bibliotheque Nationale: Manuscripts 242 34.5 100.00% Total: 242 34J 100.0% Totals: 701 100.0% 2. OBJECTS ACCORDING TO SUBJECT This is a broad (and highly subjective) classification system which I have used simply to ascertain the relative split between secular and religious subjects. This is of course problematic when faced with objects in which the donor is prominently displayed in the company of his or her patron saint in an act of how prayer or other religious rite. Is this a religious painting because of the donor is depicted? Or is it a secular painting because of the portrait-like depiction of the donor? Where, in my 169 judgement, the donor image predominates over the religious content, I have classified it as secular. Where the reverse balance is evident, I have classified the work as religious. In both cases, I have used the scale of the respective depictions as one indicator of the applicable category. Object Secular % of Total Religious % of Total Paintings 149 32.0 145 31.5 Enamels 18 4.0 7 1.5 Tapestries 36 8.0 18 4.0 Sculptures 15 3.0 43 9.0 Mural copies 218 47"!b% 29 242 6.0 53.0%* * Discrepancy of total to individual percentages results from rounding. 3. OBJECTS BY LENDER The following information is incomplete because, based on the Catalogue Critique alone, it is difficult to determine the exact number especially where the lender's city is not specified.2 5 4 Even though incomplete, I think these figures do indicate an interesting relationship between the number of Parisian owners and the number of objects being loaned in comparison to the number of non-Parisian lenders. 2 5 4 T h i s does not differentiate foreign (i.e., non-French) owners living in France or French owners living outside France. Because surname and city were used to make this distinction, a not infallible criterion to say the least, I have included such individuals in the most obvious category, that is, by city where cited, unless there is undoubted evidence to the contrary (e.g., M. Weber, Consul a Hambourg). a. Pavilion de Marsan : # of Lenders # of Items % of Total Institutions - Paris 8 132 29 - Non-Paris French 25 58 13 - Foreign 6 . 14 3 Private - French 2 5 6 98 213 40 - Foreign 28 165 42 459 _9 100 Summary: Lenders Items Number % Number % Foreign Lenders: 4 20.5 56 12 French Lenders: 131 79.5 165 100.0% 403 459 88 100% Rihliotheoue Nationale (ManuscriotsV # of Lenders # of Items % of Institutions - Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal 25 212 88 - Other 10 10 4 Private (nationality unspecified) 15 SQ 20 242 _8 100 Note; Because the section in the Catalogue Definitif which deals with manuscripts was organized quite differently from the sections on painting, etc., it is very difficult to determine exactly which manuscripts were loaned by whom. The above figures are estimates. 2 5 5 These figures include only paintings, sculptures, enamels and tapestries. See the following chart for lenders to the manuscript exhibition. z 5 6 C i t y was only specified for non-French/foreign lenders; therefore this category cannot be more precisely expressed. 171 APPENDIX 2 Table of Exhibitions, 1878-1904 This information was obtained by surveying contemporary journals, especially the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and La Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, The Burlington Magazine and the Revue de I'Art Chretien. The criteria are that these are exhibitions occurring between 1878 and 1904 and that their focus was on art production in Europe between approximately 1000 AD and the mid-seventeenth century. Abbreviations: EU = Exposition Universelle El = Exposition Internationale EN = Exposition Nationale Date Location Title Content/Comments April 1904 Sienna Exposition de I'ancien art siennois Multimedia and multinational; sculpture, paintings predominantly Jul?-Oct? 1904 Dusseldorf Exposition des maitres ancien or Exposition des Primitif Allemands, depending on the journal 411 paintings, 170 manuscripts, 12 tapestries; multinational Spring 1902 Bruges Expositions des Primitifs flamands Paintings by Flemish/Netherlandish artists only Sept 1902 Dusseldorf Exposition retrospective d'art religieuse Complement to the 1902 industrial exhibition; 13th- 15th c. objects; no paintings 1900 Paris Exposition des tresors d'eglises frangaises In conjunction with EU 1900 Objects only 1900 Paris Exposition retrospective In conjunction with EU 1900 1900 London Van Dyck Exhibition 1900 Florence Exposition des Maitres Anciens Very small show; from private collections 172 Date Location Title Content/Comments Aug 1899 Paris Exposition de dessins Cabinet des etampes - 15th - 18th centuries Sept 1899 Dresden Cranach Exhibition March 1899 London Rembrandt Exhibition Royal Academy 1899 Madrid Velasquez Exhibition 1899 Antwerp Van Dyck Exhibition 1899 London Netherlandish School 165 works at the New Gallery Aug 1898 Berlin Exhibition of Art from the Middle ages and the Renaissance Objects only; Italian and Flemish only 1898 London Exhibition of School of Lombardy Masters First 1/2 of 16th Century 1898 Amsterdam Rembrandt Exhibition 1898 ? Italian Masters Galerie d'Altenburg and Galerie Lindenau (Commercial) Jan? 1898 Basel Swiss and German Masters 14-16th century 1897 Brussels Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with El 1897 1897 Geneva Exposition des arts anciens In conjunction with EN Sept 1896 Orvieto Exposition d'art religieuse Objects only July 1895 Utrecht - Exposition d'art ancien 15th-17th century 1893 Madrid Exposition d'art retrospectif Multimedia; primarily nationalistic content; 13th century on 1892 London Flemish School Exhibition 60 paintings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club 1890 Berlin Dutch art exhibition 15th century on 173 Date Location Title Content/Comments 1890 Tours Exposition Retrospective Regional, multimedia, 1400's on 1889 Paris Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with the EU 1889 1889 Ghent Exposition Retrospective de peinture 1400's on; some national focus 1887 London Exposition Retrospective Royal Academy Early Renaissance; various schools 1887 Paris Exposition de Tableau de Maitres Ecole des Beaux-Arts Several schools; 15th century on 1886 Limoges Exposition d'art retrospectif Regional Exhibition Objects from 12th century on 1885 Nuremberg Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with EN Multimedia from 14th century 1884 Budapest Exposition Retrospective d'orfevrie Objects, 12th century on 1883 Berlin Exposition des oeuvres de Maitres anciens Early 16th Century on; local/private collections 1883 Amsterdam Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with EU 1883; no paintings mentioned, objects only 1883 Paris Exposition de Portraits du Siecle 400 works dating from David on 1882 Lisbon Exposition Retrospective Objects primarily 1880 Dusseldorf Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with EN Middle ages to Rococo 1880 Brussels Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with EN 1880 Multimedia 174 Date Location Title Content/Comments 1880 Le Mans Regional exhibition Objects only combined with contemporary works and industrial objects 1880 Turin Exposition Retrospective Church art 2nd-16th century July? 1879 Paris Les Dessin des Maitres anciens Ecole des Beaux-Arts 1878 Paris Exposition des portraits nationaux In conjunction with EU 1878 1878 Paris Exposition Retrospective In conjunction with EU 1878 175 APPENDIX 3 COMPONENT PARTS OF THE CATALOGUE DEFINITIF FOR THE EXPOSITION DES PRIMITIFS FRANCAIS The component parts of the Catalogue Definitif are as follows: Title page 1 Committees and Patrons 6 Introduction 22 Pavilion de Marsan - Oeuvres Exposees Title Page 1 Catalogue Entries (including supplements) 154 Index 8 Bibliotheque Nationale - Oeuvres Exposees Title Page 1 Avis [Introduction] 3 Catalogue Entries 75 Index 6 Plates (32 in total) Paintings 23 Drawings 2 Tapestries 2 Sculptures 2 Manuscripts 3 Advertisements (both in the front and back 8 of Catalogue Definitif) Total Pages 285 176