The Absinthe Drinkers of Degas

The top floor of the Musée d’Orsay is filled with the Impressionists that shook up the Paris art world. Manet, Monet, Morisot, and Renoir cover the walls along with the man who never wanted to be lumped into the movement. Degas did however join them in creating their exhibitions in 1874 after the Salon would not let them in.

From 1874-1886 the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers would display their work in the studio of Nadar on the Blvd des Capucines. Preferring to be called a Realist, Degas ridiculed the en Plein air practice that was taking over and the basis of Impressionism. He preferred to worship at the feet of Delacroix and Ingres and spend time at the Opera capturing the musicians and dancers.

While Orsay holds many of his horse racing and ballet paintings, it’s one of a slightly darker subject that is my favorite. However, once you know the story, it is not that sad at all. In 1875 Edgar Degas painted Dans un Café, later titled L’Absinthe. In the painting of two people sitting in a café, the woman looks depressed and defeated with a glass of absinthe in front of her.

The man smokes his pipe and appears to be watching something off the canvas. I once heard someone describe a young woman as a prostitute, fashionably dressed down to her feet sitting with her date and a vacant look on her face. The truth is that Degas couldn’t find any people that looked depressed enough for his painting so he asked two friends to pose for him in the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes. An actress that also posed for Manet, Ellen Andrée portrays the sad woman and painter Marcellon Desboutin as her companion. When the finished painting was shown in 1876, it was not received well.

One critic even said of the woman in the painting, “What a whore!” The painting was described by some as a cautionary tale of what will happen if you head down the road of the green fairy. The painting would end up in the collection of Isaac de Camondo until he donated it in 1911 to the Musée du Louvre where in 1986 would move to the Orsay. Happy 188th birthday, Monsieur Degas.

The Walls of the Musée d'Orsay that Tell a Story.

One of my favorite things about the smaller rooms of museums is how the curators organize 

the collection. Some rooms are dedicated to a single artist but the really cool ones are a mix of artists and when you really look you can see how each painting actually speaks to each other. 

There is one specific room in the Musée d’Orsay that I love and it is because of the paintings in the room and how each one has their own amazing story but together they tell another story.  On the ground floor of the Orsay in salle 12 you can find one of my favorite portraits, Berthe Morisot au Bouquet de Violettes by Manet.  I have a lot of favorites and if you have done a tour with me I will mention it about 1000 times but if I had to pick my top five favorite paintings, this would be one of them. 

I love the story of their friendship and how they met as she was a copyist in the Louvre and as soon as they met he wanted to paint her. Manet loved her dark looks and captured her for the first time in the painting just to the right. Le Balcon was painted in 1868 and Berthe is seen sitting holding a fan and looking off into the distance. 

The next wall, Manet’s Madame Manet au Piano, which is his wife Suzanne Leenhoff who arrived into his family as a piano teacher for the young Manet. Next to her is La Lecture also by Manet that shows a lovely Suzanne in a billowy white dress, that also resembles back to Le Balcon and in the background is her son, Léon who is also in Le Balcon. To the right is Monet’s painting of his wife also on a couch. 

James Tissot’s Portrait of Mademoiselle L.L. , another portrait of a very fashionable woman in her red jacket that pops from the wall. Back to the wall with Berthe that includes two Renoir’s Madame Darras and Jeune femme à la violette. Stand back and look at this wall and how they all are tied together and then look at the entire room and see how one theme leads to the next. 

Check out my video I made sharing this room as well as Manet’s Olympia and then up to the Impressionist gallery. And if you are coming to Paris this fall, reach out for a tour, days are filling up fast. Check ClaudineHemingway.com 

Also see video on my YouTube channel and subscribe. 

Dante's Divine Comedy in Art

Dante’s Divine Comedy would be published in 1472. Dante spent more than 12 years writing the narrative poem and finished it in 1320 less than a year before he would die. Recanting the three levels of afterlife, Inferno (hell), Purgatory and Paradise (heaven) he follows the characters as they navigate their destined ending. Many have been moved by Dante’s piece including many artists. In Paris you can find him in the museums and even on the streets. Around 1307, for two years Dante attended the University of Paris living in the 5th, not far from the street that now holds his name. Walk a few blocks towards the school and in the Place Marcellin Berthelot you will find the bronze statue of him by Jean-Paul Aubé complete with his signature laurel wreath. 

In 1822, Eugene Delacroix completed his first major painting. Dante et Virgile, that now hangs in the Louvre, shows the poet and his trusty guide Virgile on a boat crossing the River Styx while the City of the Dead burns behind them. Dante stands in the boat while Virgile holds him as the waves and the wind are crashing around them. At their feet the damned can be seen fighting for life or resigning to their fate. Pulling the story from the 8 canto of Inferno it would appear at the Salon of 1822 where the French State would buy it and it would hang in the Musée du Luxembourg, later in the Louvre. 

William Bouguereau in 1850 also depicted a scene from the Inferno in one of the most thought provoking paintings in the Orsay. Dante et Virgile captures the moment in the 8th circle of hell that was for the falsifiers and counterfeiters. Dante and Virgil look on while Capocchio, a heretic, attacks Gianni Schiecchi who had taken on the identity of a man in hopes to steal his inheritance. The incredible forceful nature of the scene is intense. You can almost feel his knee in your own back. Get close enough to really take in this amazing painting. The way Bourguereau captures their bodies and muscles is astounding and adds to the dimensions of feelings you get when looking at it. 

One of the best paintings Ary Scheffer ever did could be his Les Ombres de Francesca de Rimini et de Paolo Malatesta Appraissent a Dante a Virgile. From the 2nd level of Hell reserved for the lustful he captures the moment after the death of the two lovers, Francesca and Paolo. Francesca was married to Giovanni Malatesta but fell in love with his brother Paola. Giovanni caught the two together and killed them. In this painting you can see a wound on his chest and her back a reminder of the horrific crime. The two are seen floating as Dante and Virgil look on, it is almost too beautiful looking to be hell. Scheffer’s piece was also displayed at the Salon of 1822, in the same room as Delacroix’s painting which received all the accolades. However today, they both hang in the Louvre for millions of people to appreciate each year. 

Perhaps the most famous piece of art based on Dante’s Divine Comedy would be that of Rodin’s Porte de l’Enfer  and all the pieces that accompany it. You may have recognized the story of Francesca and Paolo as they are the subject of La Baiser. Paolo and Francesca are locked in their embrace holding a copy of Lancelot and Guinevere in his hand. Carved from sparkling white marble it appears to be the perfect image of love, but evil awaits them. Just as they lean in, Giovanni kills them.  

It was to be a part of August Rodin’s monumental work The Gates of Hell, commissioned for the Decorative Arts Museum in 1880. He would work on it for 37 years, until his death and the museum for which it was intended would never be finished. Today a plaster copy sits in the Orsay and a large bronze model at the Musée Rodin.

At the Rodin as you stand and admire his stunning piece filled with the chaos of the moments he so perfectly captured lurking over your shoulder is what Rodin originally called  "the poet". The Thinker was imagined to be Dante himself, holding the characteristics of Adam and Prometheus. He wanted a grand figure reminiscent of Michelangelo and one that would reflect the intelligence of the subject. At first the statue was to be a standing full length Dante, but he changed to the crouching and tense figure we know today. The Gates of Hell based on Dante's Inferno would never fully come to fruition, but the Thinker and the Kiss would go on to become two of the most famous statues in the world.

Déjeuner sur l'herbe par Pablo Picasso

Towards the final years of Picasso’s life, he spent a lot of his time re imagining some famous pieces by other artists. In 1958 Picasso was discouraged by the building up around his beloved La Californie home in Cannes and one night after being with some friends he set his sights on a new home and bought it the next day. The Château de Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, would be where he and his second wife Jacqueline would live from 1959-1962. He fell out of love with it as fast as he fell into it and they moved onto a home in Mougins. However, while he was at Vauvenargues he spent the bulk of his time from 1959 to 1961 on 140 drawings and 27 paintings, lino-cuts and cardboard models all on the theme of Manet’s Le  Déjeuner sur l’herbe. 

When Manet painted this monumental piece in 1862, much like his painting Olympia, this one also was met with much controversy. Rejected from the Salon and displayed at the Salon des Refusés with his other Impressionist friends in 1863, the subject of a nude woman sitting between two fully clothed men was a scandal for the time. Although, Émile Zola proclaimed it “the greatest work of Édouard Manet”.

In 1932 Picasso said "When I see Manet's Luncheon on the Grass I tell myself there is pain ahead". On August 1, 1959 he began his dive into Manet’s masterpiece with a small drawing. The subject and structure of the painting was a bit out of the box for Picasso. He normally focused on one subject or model. Manet’s painting with four people was not what he was used to doing. His first drawing was the closest to Manet’s with all four subjects, but he quickly moved away from Manet’s original structure.

Picasso was known to be an extremely fast painter, when he would tackle this theme he would work in torrents of activity for months at a time before putting them down to come back to them later. He would play with the theme and the amount of people in the landscape, sometimes with three women in the back. Picasso would add the woman washing her feet that he would continue into other paintings. Removing the men all together at times, making the trees larger than life, but most of the time staying with the blue and green palette. He had never spent so much time devoted to one theme in his entire life.   

In March 1960, Picasso painted his first larger version of Déjeuner. Mostly green with a bit of blue focusing on the main figure, Victorine. Later versions included the men who Picasso decided needed to be nude as well. In the Musée National Picasso-Paris on the upper floor is a room dedicated to his Déjeuner paintings. They do change them out during the year and is one of my favorite rooms of this well done museum. Every time I walk into this room it brings a huge smile to my face. Hanging on the walls are just a few of his paintings, drawings and even a cardboard model. I usually spend a half an hour in this one small room, listening to the people as they walk in and comment on the paintings. Some even see the resemblance to Manet which pleases me to no end. I love how Picasso dated his paintings and drawings, knowing now when he started this series you can see how the paintings displayed fit into his timeline. 

On this date in 1973, the great Spanish painter would take his last breath in Mougins. He would be laid to rest at the Château de Vauvenargues, high above the hill in Provence. 

Portrait of Émile Zola by Manet

Emile Zola was born on this day, April 2, 1840. The French writer who is known for his famous headline J’ACCUSE in defense of Alfred Dreyfus but did you know he was also a marketing genius. It was Zola who while working for  Librairie Hachette in 1862 where he spent his days packing books, until one day they recognized a hidden talent. He told them they should paint signs to sit outside the doors of shops that people would see as they walked by, and with that the sandwich board was born.  

There are so many tales that can be told of Zola but this one I have been waiting months to share. Inside the Musée d’Orsay off of the main lower gallery in a small room are a few of Manet’s most amazing pieces.  In 1865 when Manet presented his painting Olympia to the jury it did not go over well. They hated it, they hated what she represented and how she was positionioned and rejected it from the Salon. However one day, the young writer Emile Zola heard about the painting and wanted to see it. A friend of Cézanne, he was already a great fan of the arts and the artists. He thought Olympia was a masterpiece by an artist that was a master of the future, deserving to hang in the Louvre. 

Zola did what he did best and took pen to paper. At the time he was enthralled with what was happening in Paris with the artists that were being turned away from the hallowed Salon and being forced to build their own exhibition. He wrote a pamphlet in defense of Manet titled “La Revue du XXe Siecle”. He would write another one the next year when Manet went out on his own to set up his very own exhibit during the Universal Exposition that many other artists mocked him for. 

In a way of thanking his new friend, Manet offered to paint him. He invited him to his studio on Rue Guyot in 1868. Manet set the scene on the desk with elements of Zola's personality and himself. You can see the blue pamphlet that started their friendship on his desk while the quill and inkwell remind us of Zola’s life as a writer. 

Zola is reading “L’Histoire des Peintres” by Charles Blanc, a book both men loved. Although, it is what hangs above the desk that makes me love this painting so much. The print of the Japanese wrestler by Utagawa Kuniaki II suggesting the influence the Japanese woodblock paintings had on the art style at the time. The screen behind Zola is another nod to the influence of the East on the artists. 

To the left of that is an engraving by Velazquez of Bacchus hints at their shared love for Spanish art peaks out from the top of Olympia. 

I have a fascination anytime there is a painting within a painting. So many questions come to mind, why is it there, what does it mean to the artist and what are they trying to tell us. For this one, it is quite simple.  Olympia represents not only the way the two men met and a painting Zola loved, but it was also Manet’s way of righting the wrong of the Salon of 1865. 

Adding Olympia into the painting of the man that in a way legitimized her meant so much to Manet.  He made one small adjustment in this version, he changed the direction of her eyes away from the viewer and onto Zola himself. 

In May of 1868, he entered the painting of Zola into the Salon. This time they welcomed it with open arms. Was it Manet’s work or was it that they were more afraid of what the pen of Zola would say about them? Hanging in room M of the 1868 Salon there was Zola high up on the wall, but even more so, there was Olympia hanging above the same people that rejected her so vehemently just a few years before. 

The painting remained in the personal collection of Emile Zola, hanging in his home until 1925, twenty three years after his death, when his wife Alexandrine left it in her will to the Musée du Louvre. It would hang in the Louvre until 1986 and then move over to the newly opened Musée d’Orsay. 

And in the end Zola was correct, Manet was an artist that would become a master and hang in the Louvre.