French painters – Page 15 – my daily art display

The Father’s Curse and The Punished Son by Jean-Baptiste Greuze

The Father’s Curse and The Punished Son by Greuze

My Daily Art Display today looks at a work by the French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze. His work was praised by the French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot who claimed that Greuze’s paintings were, as he succinctly put it, “morality in paint” and as such represented the highest ideal of painting in his day. So who was this moralistic painter?

Jean-Baptiste Greuze was born in Tournus, a Burgundian town on the banks of the River Saône in 1725. He came from prosperous middle-class family and studied painting in Lyon in the late 1740’s under the successful portrait painter, Charles Grandon. Around 1750 Greuze moved to Paris where he entered the Royal Academy as a student. It was whilst there that he developed a style of painting which was described as Sentimental art, but more about that later. He was accepted as an Associate member of the Academy after he submitted three of his paintings A Father Reading the Bible to His Family, The Blindman Deceived and The Sleeping Schoolboy. These moralising pictorial stories, which in some ways remind me of the works by William Hogarth some two decades earlier, were about life amongst working class folk. It was this genre of art which depicted scenes from the lives of ordinary citizens and which were calculated to teach a moral lesson – that would be Greuze’s trademark for the rest of his life.

Although Greuze was happy to be admitted to the Academy on the strength of his three genre paintings he strived to be accepted as a history painter which, in thiose days, was considered a higher rank of art. However the Academy did not look favourably on his attempts at history paintings and this rebuff so annoyed Greuze that he refused to submit any more of his works for the Academy’s exhibitions. Fortunately for Greuze the public liked his “sentimental” paintings and the sale of his works continued strongly, which meant he had no more need to exhibit his works at the Academy.

During the late eighteenth century in France, Rococo art had almost taken over the French art scene. It was all the rage with its mythological and allegorical themes in pastoral settings and its elegant and sometimes sensuous depictions of aristocratic frivolity. At this time this brand of light-hearted, and now and again erotic works, were much in demand with wealthy patrons. So in some ways the French art world received a shock when Greuze’s pompously moralising rural dramas on canvas countered the frivolity of the artificial world of Rococo art.

The featured painting today is entitled The Father’s Curse and The Punished Son which Greuze completed in 1778. The first thing that strikes one with the characters depicted at the bedside scene is their staged posturing. This was another trademark of Greuze, the way in which his characters were shown in dramatic poses that had once been reserved for grander historical and religious subjects. It reminds me somewhat of watching an amateur dramatic performance were all the actions of the amateur players seem so “over the top” and comically exaggerated.

The setting of today’s painting is the final part of a tragic tale. The beginning of this saga was when a son decided to abandon the family home and join the army despite the pleadings of his father, mother and siblings who need him to financially support the family. Not having been swayed by their entreaties he left. Now the scene is set with his homecoming. However, it is not a joyous celebration of the return of the prodigal son. Before us in the bed we see his ageing father who has just died and his family are all congregated around the death bed, inconsolable. Look at the exaggerated poses of the family members as they pour out their grief. In the right foreground we see the son who has returned to his home wounded. He is stooped and remorseful, racked with guilt, having returned too late to be with his father before he died and he can see by the state of the home that the family have little money and of course we see him, head in hand, realising it was all his fault.

The increasing significance of the middle class, and of middle-class morality, also played a part in the success of Greuze’s painting genre. His paintings seemed to preach the ordinary virtues of the simple life. It was a call to the return of honesty in the way we dealt with life. Surprisingly, the unconcealed melodrama of his pictorial sermonising was not found offensive, and visitors to the Salons were moved and often openly wept in front of his paintings. The intellectuals of the day were generally opposed to rococo art style and considered its style decadent, and in turn looked upon Greuze as “the painter of virtue, the rescuer of corrupted morality.” Greuze’s fashion for simplicity and his portrayal of ordinary people infiltrated even the highest circles of society, and engravings of Greuze’s work were popular with all classes of society.

Greuze’s reputation declined towards the end of his life and through the early part of the 19th century but briefly revived after 1850, when 18th-century painting returned to favour. The advent of modernism in the early decades of the 20th century totally obliterated Greuze’s reputation.

Greuze survived the French Revolution but his fame did not. He died in Paris on March 21, 1805, in poverty and obscurity.

Charity by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Charity by Williiam Adolphe Bouguereau (1865)

It used to be the “in thing” when one talked about what one was studying to reel off a list of “-ologys”. It always sounded very impressive. In the art world there is the tendency to group artists in “-isms” and not so long ago I even bought a book, entitled isms, Understanding art. Would you believe there were 52 “isms” listed and a few more words that they gave up trying to add the ism suffix. The featured artist in My Daily Art Display today is described as a dedicated follower of Academicism and Realism with a touch of Classicism. He is the French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Bouguereau was born in the Charente-Maratime seaport of La Rochelle in 1825. His family were wine and olive merchants and as he grew older it was expected that he would join the family firm. But for his uncle Eugène, a local priest, we may never have had the pleasure of seeing the works of this talented French painter. His uncle managed to interest the young William-Adolphe in biblical and historical stories and even organised for the boy to attend the local high school. Whilst at the school Bouguereau began to develop his artistic talents which not only impressed his teachers but also his father. The course of the boy’s life changed and he was enrolled at the École des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux and later with some financial assistance from his family along with money he made from some of his paintings he took himself off to Paris where he was accepted at the École des Beaux Arts

Bouguereau enjoyed painting and drawing figures and decided that to improve his technique he would attend anatomical dissections. During this time he studied under Francois-Edouard Picot, the renowned French painter whose artistic forte was the depiction of mythological, religious and historical subjects. Bouguereau had his first introduction into the genre we now term Academicism. He went on to win the prestigious Prix de Rome with his painting Zenobia Found by Shepherds on the Banks of the Araxes and the travelling stipend that went with it in 1850 and he went off to Italy and the Villa Medici in Rome which housed the French Academy. It was Napoleon Bonaparte who located the Academy in this building and both the building and the grounds were renovated so that future French artists who won the Prix de Rome could come here for a year, soak up the Italian atmosphere and have the opportunity to study and copy the art and sculptures of the Masters of the Italian Renaissance. It was during this time that Bouguereau, as well as studying the art of the ancient, Greek, Etruscan and Roman times, was able to immerse himself in classical literature. This period of his life was forever going to have a profound effect on his life and be inspirational in his choice of subjects that he would depict in his future works of art. Bouguereau throughout the rest of his artistic life was going to strictly adhere to the tenets of Academicism. So what is Academicism? It is a genre of art which promoted Classical ideals of beauty and artistic perfection and by doing so establishes a clear hierarchy within the visual arts. Academicism preferred the grand narrative or history painting genre and advocated life drawings and classical sculpture.

Bouguereau with his portraiture, especially those of women, was very popular and successful as he had the ability to merge together a true likeness of the sitter with a certain amount of beautification without it being too obvious. He was inundated with commissions from wealthy patrons for portraits of them or their family and most of these still remain in private hands. His artistic standing increased over the years and he was made a Life Member of the Academy in 1876 and in 1885, was made Commander of the Legion of Honour and Grand Medal of Honour, the highest decoration in France. His art was now bringing in great financial rewards and he had built up a formidable list of clients and art dealers who were willing to handle his work. In 1875 he started teaching drawing at the Académie Julian which had been established in 1868 as a private school for art students, both male and female (although taught separately) and its teachings prepared the students for the entrance exam for the prestigious École des Beaux Arts

In 1856 when he was 31 years of age he married Marie-Nelly Monchablon and the couple went on to have five children. In 1877 his wife and infant son died and in 1896 at the age of seventy-one he remarried, this time to an American, a fellow artist and academic, Elizabeth Jane Gardner who was twelve years his junior and one of his former pupils. In 1905, Bouguereau died of a heart attack at the age of 79. He had a long and full life over the course of which he completed in excess of eight hundred paintings.

My Daily Art Display showcases Bouguereau’s painting entitled Charity which he first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1865. I saw this work in the Birmingham Municipal Art Gallery a few weeks ago. Before us, at the centre of the painting, sitting on the steps of the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, we see a woman with three children huddled together. This is a pyramidal composition which we are viewing from a low viewpoint. The woman in the way she is dressed reminds me of the Virgin Mary and with the baby in her lap I can almost believe that I am looking at a secular Madonna. She stares straight out at us. The soft features of her face plead with us to, in some way, help her with her burden. Look how the artist has portrayed the two young children. They have been depicted in begging poses, which are meant to tug at our heart strings. However they seem to be reasonably well dressed and we see no signs of the clothes being ragged. I do note that they are all bare-footed and the shirt and the chemise worn by the young boy and girl have been pulled down slightly, revealing bare shoulders but this to my mind adds to the lack of realism. This painting found no favour with Bouguereau’s contemporary realist painters. They castigated him for depicting the woman and children in their spurious begging poses. They said the depiction looked completely “stage managed” and lacked the brutal reality of beggars and their terrible impoverished lifestyle. To them, Bouguereau had sold out his Realism ideals. To them this depiction of poverty and begging was highly idealised. Notwithstanding whether he had “sold-out” his Realism principles in thisn instance, I still think this is a superb painting and of course I can assure you it looks even more beautiful when you stand close up to it.

I will end the blog today with Bouguereau’s thoughts about art in general and how it had affected him and given him so much pleasure. He commented:

“Each day I go to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged to stop because of darkness I can scarcely wait for the next morning to come…if I cannot give myself to my dear painting I am miserable…”.

The Raft of Medusa by Théodore Géricault

My Daily Art Display today features one of the most moving paintings I have come across and what makes it even more remarkable is that it is based on a true story. The massive oil on canvas painting is entitled The Raft of Medusa and was painted by the French Romantic painter, Théodore Géricault in 1819. Before I look at the painting let me go through the actual events which this painting is based upon.

The story begins on June 17, 1816 with the new Bourbon government of France dispatching the frigates Medusa, Loire and Echo and the brig Argus to officially receive the British handover of the port of Saint-Louis in Senegal to France. The British who having helped to re-establish the French monarchy, wanted to demonstrate their support for Louis XVIII, and decided to hand over to him this strategic trading port on the West African coast. The French naval frigate, Medusa was to carry 365 crew and passengers, including the Senegal’s governor-designate, Colonel Julien-Désire Schmaltz, from Port de Rochefort on the island of Aix on France’s west coast, to Senegal via Tenerife.

The captain of the Medusa was Vicomte Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys, who at the age of 53 had spent most of his career behind a desk at customs offices and had never been in command of a ship, in fact had hardly sailed on a ship for twenty years. However, the old adage “it’s who you know and not what you know” was applicable in his being put in command of the fleet as he had many Royalist connections. The governor-designate Schmaltz wanted to reach St Louis as soon as possible and persuaded the captain to set a course close to the shore line in order to save time. Things went badly almost from the start of the voyage when a young cabin boy was lost over the side. Captain Chaumereys also had problems with both his passengers and crew alike, spending long periods arguing with them

The Medusa was a fast vessel and in fact much faster than the other vessels in the group and soon pulled ahead of them which was to be a contributing factor in the forthcoming disaster and terrible loss of life. On July 2^nd, for some reason, whether due to poor navigation skills or lack of attention the Medusa, was many miles off course and ran aground on the Arguin Banks, which lie off the west coast of Mauritania, despite perfect weather conditions and calm seas. The grounding ripped a hole in the hull of the Medusa and after surveying the damage it was deemed un-repairable and terminal. Couple this factor along with deteriorating weather conditions and the crew had no choice but to abandon the vessel. The Medusa had some lifeboats but they would hold only 150 people and so it was decided to construct a raft to house the rest

The crew then set to work making a raft from parts of the Medusa’s decking and masts. When completed the raft measured 65 feet by 23 feet and was towed behind two of the ship’s lifeboats. In all, one hundred and fifty people, including one woman, boarded the raft. However with such weight the raft became almost submerged and it was decided to jettison some of the food. After doing this the deck of the raft settled in the water with what they believed to be a suitable clearance above the sea surface. The lifeboats towing their raft set off from the crippled Medusa but the weight of the raft was becoming problematic. The only propulsion of this raft was from the rowing power of the men in the lifeboats which was towing it,as the raft had no oars, no sails and no navigational aids.

For some unknown reason, whether it be that the people on the raft decided that their lives would be safer if they disengaged from the lifeboats or whether those in the lifeboat believed that the raft was jeopardising their safety, the towing line was severed and the raft was set free, some four miles off the coast of Mauretania. By the second day, three of the passengers had committed suicide and that following night the store of rum aboard the raft was broached and in a drunken insurrection by the soldiers against their officers, mayhem ensued. By daylight the next day the number of people alive on the raft had more than halved to sixty. Food had run out and the survivors resorted to eating the corpses.

On July 1th 1816, after 13 days adrift, the raft by pure chance was rescued by the Argus, as no specific search effort was made by the French for the raft. At this time only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, Some had died of starvation, and some had thrown themselves into the sea in despair.

The whole episode was a disaster, not only to those who sailed on the Medusa but for the French government and when the ship’s surgeon Savigny submitted a report on the incident, it was leaked to an anti-government newspaper, the Journal des débats, which caused outrage. The French government had tried hard to suppress the details. The French nation was horrified. The event became an international scandal, partly because of the human disaster and partly because the disaster was generally attributed to the incompetence of the French captain, whom people believed was acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy. However in reality, King Louis XVIII had no say in the captain’s appointment, since, then as now, monarchs were not directly involved in appointments made to vessels like a naval frigate. Captain de Chamereys was found to blame for the incident and was court-martialed.

This painting by Géricault was his first major work of art and is now housed in the Louvre in Paris. What strikes you first when you stand in front of this painting is its enormous size, measuring 16 feet by 24 feet. We, the viewers, are dwarfed by its enormity, which gives the painting more power. Strangely enough nobody commissioned the work but the artist believed that the incident he was portraying would generate great interest from the public and in so doing he believed his career would take off. Géricault spent much time in preparing for this painting doing numerous sketches. He interviewed the ship’s doctor, Henri Savigny and the ship’s geographer, Alexander Corréard and he even constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. He would have models pose on his constructed raft . His friend, the artist Delacroix, modelled for the figure in the foreground, with face turned downward and one arm outstretched. His young assistant Louis-Alexis Jamar modelled nude for the dead man in the foreground, who is about to slip into the sea. In his desire to depict accurately the bodies of the survivors and the dead he made many visits to morgues and hospitals noting details with regards the texture and colouring of flesh on live bodies and corpses. Géricault had been correct in his assessment that the painting would prove popular if somewhat controversial. It appeared in the 1819 Paris Salon and for the artist it launched his career and, although it was partly a history painting, it was looked upon as the beginning of the Romantic Movement in French painting.

The painting portrays the moment in time when the survivors on board the raft spot the approaching ship, Argus, which can just be seen on the whitened horizon. It is at this very point in time that the survivors realise that they are about to be rescued. An African crewman, said to be Jean Charles, can be seen standing on a cask waiving his shirt to attract the crew of the Argus. This portrayal of a negro at the pinnacle of the painting was probably down to Géricault’s abolitionist’s sympathies. The majority of the figures depicted in this enormous painting are life-size and the bodies of the men in the foreground are almost twice life-size. Their closeness to the edge of the canvas makes us almost believe we are just a step away from the raft itself. The raft has suffered from the battering it endured in the rough seas and is barely afloat. The painting is dark and sombre which Géricault chose to suggest the torment and agony of the survivors.

In some ways it is an idealised painting as in actuality, there are more people shown on the raft than were found by the Argus and at the time of the rescue of the castaways, the sea was recorded as being calm and the weather settled. However to add feeling to the painting he has allowed the seas to be whipped up high in a frenzy of surf under blackened storm clouds. One must also query the fact that some of the men seem so “muscled” and somewhat healthy despite having starved for such a length of time and barely kept alive. It is a combination of history painting, recording the story of the men’s plight and a painting of the Romanticism genre.

There is a moody darkness about the painting. There is a strong diagonal surge from the bottom left of the painting to the top right. Our eyes move along the diagonal from viewing the despondent man with his head in hand in the bottom left to the man arm waving his shirt in the upper right. As we stare in disbelief at the scene in front of us, we sympathise with the plight of these men.

Géricault must have been fully aware when he submitted the work to the Paris Salon that it would prove controversial as the demise of the Medusa and terrible loss of life was blamed on the Bourbon government and so whether the painting was acclaimed or condemned depended a a great deal on whether the viewer was pro or anti Bourbon.

L’Absinthe by Edgar Degas

My Daily Art Display the other day featured one of the great American Realist artist Edward Hopper’s 1927 painting Automat and we looked at thetheme of loneliness and isolation in an urban environment. Today I am featuring a painting, which may
have influenced Hopper. It has had many titles but finally in 1893 the painting was simply called L’Absinthe. It was painted in 1876 by the French painter and sculptor and one of the founders of Impressionism, Edgar Degas.

Degas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas. Born in Paris in 1834, he was one of five
children of Augustine and Célestine De Gas. His father was a banker and Edgar was brought up in a moderately wealthy family environment. After the death of his mother when he was five years old, he was brought up jointly by his father and grandfather. He began school life at the age of eleven and at about this time dropped the use of the ostentatious spelling of the family name for the surname he is known by now, Degas. He finished his schooling at the age of nineteen and attained a baccalaureate in literature. When he left school he registered as a copyist in the Louvre. However his father had planned for his son to study law and enrolled him in the Faculty of Law at the
University of Paris. Edgar was very half-hearted about his father’s career choice and failed with his studies. He had been always interested in art and in his teenage years wanted to eventually become a famous history painter and paint pictures depicting great moments in history. This art genre had achieved immense popularity in France in the
nineteenth century. In 1855 he met the great French Neoclassical painter Ingres, who was his idol, and who offered Degas advice, which he was never to forget:

“..Draw lines, young man, and still more lines,
both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist…”

He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts and a year later journeyed to Italy where he stayed for three years, part of this time was spent living with his aunt in Naples.
It was during this time that he studied the works of the great Italian Renaissance painters, such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. He returned to France in 1859 and moved into
a Paris studio. His painting genre slowly changed from that of a history painter to one of a painter of contemporary subjects. He was still copying paintings at the Louvre and it was said that in 1864, whilst working on a copy of Velazquez’s portrait that he met another artist engaged in the same work. The artist was Édouard Manet, who was a key figure in the change-over from Realism to Impressionism and somebody who was to
influence Degas.

His painting career was temporarily halted for two years with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Degas enlisted in the National Guard and his military duties gave him little time for painting. With the conclusion of the war midway through 1871, his military life came to an end and the next year he went New Orleans where his brother, René, and other relatives lived. He returned to Paris the following year but sadly in 1874 his father died. A careful scrutiny of his father’s estate revealed that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts and Degas, wanting to preserve the good name of the family, had little choice but to sell his house and a large quantity of his art work to service the debt. Having always lived a relatively wealthy existence in which his art was mainly a hobby and for his own pleasure, Degas suddenly found himself having to paint pictures to sell and by so doing, put food on his table. Art historians believe it was during this time that Degas produced some of his greatest works.

It was also in this period of his life that Degas came together with a group of like-minded artists and together they put on independent exhibitions of their art works. The first of their exhibitions was held in 1874 and it was dubbed an Impressionist Exhibition. However, Degas did not like the label “Impressionists”, which the media had attached to his group of painters. Degas was a leading-light within this group and proved to be a great organiser.

His financial situation had improved by this time through the sale of his art and he developed a love for collecting works of art of the old Masters such as El Greco as well as works by his contemporaries, Manet, Pissarro and Cézanne. Alas, with age came his dissatisfaction with life in general. He became frustrated and disgruntled with life and became very argumentative and his friends began to desert him. Of Degas’ confrontational behaviour and loss of his friends, Renoir once commented:

“…What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one
of the last to go, but even I couldn’t stay till the end…”

Degas never married nor had any children. In many ways all he had was
his art and he lost that in the last few years of his life when his eyesight
started to fail. He died in Paris in 1917 aged 83.

And so to the painting, L’Absinthe. We see two figures, one a man, the other a
woman sitting at a table outside a café. They are positioned to the right of centre of the painting which was a style often favoured by Degas. The man wearing a hat looks scruffy, almost tramp-like. His gaze is away from the woman and is fixed on something off the canvas, to the right of the picture. The woman is also wearing a hat and is dressed more formally than the man. She stares ahead with a blank expression, her arms hanging limply down by her side. On the table before her we see a glass filled with a green coloured liquid – absinthe. It is this drink which lends its name to the painting. This drink became very popular in France around 1850 and became commonly known as the queen of poisons or la fée verte (the green fairy). It is anise-based drink made from the wormwood herb and which is highly toxic and extremely addictive. It can have an alcohol content as much as 80 per cent by volume, twice that of spirits we buy today. It was a latter day drug. One critic condemned it saying:

“……Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country….”

In some ways although this painting depicts two people sitting at the same table, the theme is loneliness and social isolation and the consequences. There is an air of desolation about the man and woman as they stare into space. Degas invites us to join these regulars at this café. Look how they sit side by side but there is no contact between them. There is no animated conversation between them. Degas is showing us that you can be together but still be alone. Maybe they can gain some comfort from their individual loneliness.

She sits with her absinthe before her. He is with his black coffee, probably trying to counteract the effects of too much absinthe. In my mind, there is a feeling of isolation
permeating from this work. In this case the isolation may be due to the fact that this pair are heavy drinkers and for that reason they are shunned by society. Although this is a café scene, the painting could be classed as a portrait as both the man and the woman were known to the artist. The woman, dressed up as a prostitute, was the famous French actress Ellen Andrée, who modelled for many of the Impressionist artists and the man was Marcellin Desboutin, a painter and engraver who favoured the Bohemian lifestyle. Degas wanted his two models to pose as absinthe addicts in front of his favourite café, the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes, which was situated in the Place Pigalle in Paris. It was a popular meeting place for Degas and Impressionist painter friends such as Manet, and van Gogh and this quaint meeting place existed up until 2004.

The painting which now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay was first exhibited in 1876 but was not well received by the critics. For them it was “ugly and disgusting”. In 1892 when it came up for auction at Christie’s the lot was greeted with “boos and hisses” ! For
many critics the painting was looked upon as a blow to morality. The English viewed French art with grave suspicion as to its morality and preferred paintings which were morally uplifting and incorporated a moral lesson. George Moore the Irish writer and art critic of the time described the woman in the painting:

“…What a whore…”

and of the painting itself critically uttered:

“….the tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson….”

Ellen Andre — Ellen Andrée, the actress.

Amusingly once the painting had been exhibited Ellen Andrée became a larger than life figure and a succès de scandale, which only goes to confirm that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The French government, at the time, took a much dimmer view of the painting and the furore that had risen from it. They tried to dampen down to the controversy by saying the green drink on the café table was simply green tea!!!

The Madwoman sometimes known as Hyena of Salpêtrière by Théodore Géricault

The Madwoman sometimes known as Hyena of Salpétrière.by Géricault (1823)

My Daily Art Display today is a painting by the French artist and pioneer of the Romantic Movement Théodore Géricault. Many will be familiar with his two masterpieces, namely, Officer of the Hussars and The Raft of Medusa but today I am going to take a look at a rather disturbing portrait he completed in 1823 entitled The Madwoman or sometimes known as Hyena of Salpétrière.

But first, a little about the artist. Théodore Géricault was born in 1791 in Rouen in the north west of France. He began his art tuition under the tutelage of Carle Venet an expert painter of horses and the “sport of kings”. He also spent time with the classical painter Piere-Narcisse Guérin who believed the young Géricault had great talent but lacked calmness and composure which was needed to become a first-rate painter.

He went on to study at The Louvre where he copied the paintings of the Masters, such as Rubens, Titian and Rembrandt. He did this for almost six years and developed a love for their style of painting which he believed to be of much more importance in comparison to the new art genre Neoclassicism, which had begun to come to the fore at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1816 he went to Italy and visited Florence, Rome and Naples and this trip was the start of his love affair with the art of Michelangelo. Géricault’s first great success as an artist came in 1821 when he was thirty years of age and he exhibited The Charging Hussar at the Paris Salon.

A Mad Woman and Compulsive Gambler by Géricault — A Madwoman and Compulsive Gambler by Géricault

It was in 1821 and just three years before his death at the young age of thirty-three that he embarked on a series of ten portraits of the insane who were all patients of his friend Doctor Etienne-Jean Georget, the French psychiatrist who pioneered in psychiatric medicine and worked at the infamous Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. They series of portraits were all of maniacs who had an obsession. One was a person who stole children, one was a person who obsessed with gambling, one was a man who was obsessed with robbery, a kleptomaniac, and the poor woman in our featured painting was obsessed with envy. The name of the establishment derived from the fact that it had originally been a gunpowder factory and then later was converted to a dumping ground for the poor of Paris. It served as a prison for prostitutes, and a holding place for the mentally disabled, criminally insane and the poor. Its other “claim to fame“was that it was infested by rats!

Of the ten portraits only five, including the one featured today, remain. The Madwoman is housed at the Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon. In this painting Géricault has with compassion tried to capture and understand the image of mental illness. Géricault, like many of his contemporaries, examined the influence of mental states on the human face and believed, as others did, that a face more accurately revealed character, especially in madness and at the moment of death.

Let us look closely at the old woman in the painting. She avoids our gaze as she looks downwards with slightly bulging eyes. Her eyes are red-rimmed probably brought on by the amount of mental and physical pain she has had to endure. Her mouth is tense. You can see the anger in her face but angry with what? Her case notes stated that she suffered from “envy obsessions” and maybe the slightest hint of a green tint to her face was the artist’s way to signify her obsession with envy. Her expression was likened to that of a hyena and hence the subtitle of the painting Hyena of Salpétrière.

Gericault’s career was short-lived. His love of horse riding was to be his downfall as after many riding accidents, which had weakened him, coupled with chronic lung infections, the young artist died after much suffering in Paris at the tender age of thirty-three.

Géricault's tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

If you ever visit Paris you should, like I have done on many occasions, make the journey to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, which houses the graves and tombs of many famous people including that of Géricault, his bronze figure reclines, brush in hand, on top of his tomb.

Autumn by Jean-Baptiste Pillement

On my journeys abroad I have always tried to visit the major public galleries, such as the Prado in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York but I have never ever visited private galleries which I suppose could be termed “selling” galleries. I have always thought I would feel slightly uncomfortable looking around the paintings knowing I had no intention of buying a work. I did visit the Schiele Exhibition at the private Richard Nagy Gallery in London last week but that was advertised as an exhibition even though six of the paintings could have been bought by a viewer. I was told the six on sale ranged between £280,000 and £3 million so that kind of put them out of my price range! After leaving the gallery I was walking down Old Bond Street and happened upon another private gallery, Colnaghi, which according to the notice in the window had a small collection of Old Master Paintings. I went in and asked if I could look around and they told me I could and I walked into their one main room which was probably about 20 metres square and hung on the walls were about twenty exquisite paintings. I was the only person in the room and I could take my time to study these beautiful works of art. The next time I return to London for a visit I will go to that Mayfair area and try and visit some of the other private galleries and see what other hidden gems are waiting to be discovered.

My featured artist today is Jean-Baptiste Pillement, the French artist, engraver and designer who was born in Lyon in 1728 and is best known for his Rococo style of painting and the engravings done after his drawings. He was also well-known for his chinoiserie theme in many of his paintings and designs. Chinoiserie being a French term for an artistic style which reflects Chinese influences. His beautiful designs were used in porcelain and pottery as well as textile manufacture. He became one of the most talented French landscape painters of the period. His extensive travels throughout Europe gave him an opportunity to build a large portfolio of en plein-air drawings which he would later convert into beautiful landscape paintings. Pillement was influenced by painters such as Francesco Zuccarelli, the great Italian Rococo painter, and Francois Boucher, the French painter and proponent of Rococo taste, who in the eighteenth century made pastoral paintings very popular.

When he was fifteen years old he moved to Paris and worked at the Gobelin factory which was a family run firm of dyers and manufacturers of tapestries. Two years later he travelled to Spain to work as both a designer and painter and remained in the country for five years. From there at the age of twenty-two he moved to Portugal and in 1754, aged twenty-six he travelled to London. Whilst in England Pillement concentrated on landscape painting and soon he discovered a ready market for his quality works and the great English thespian, David Garrick became an avid collector of his work.

He left England in 1756 and journeyed around Europe. He was employed as an artist at the Court of Marie Theresa and Francis I in Vienna. In Warsaw he was commissioned to decorate the Royal Castle and the Ujazdowski Castle. Wherever he went, whether it be St Petersburg, Milan or Rome he received lucrative commissions for his work and in Paris he worked for Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon. In 1800 he returned to his birthplace, Lyon where he carried on painting, teaching at the local Academy and designing for the local silk industry. Unfortunately for him the Rococo genre was losing its popularity with the onset of the French Revolution and his commissions became less and less. Due to his past association with matters royal, he was forced to seek refuge in the south of France, in the town of Pézenas. There he remained for ten years. It was during that time that he created some of his most admired works of art. The last ten years of his life he spent in Lyon until his death in 1808, at the age of 80.

My Daily Art Display for today is a painting which I saw at the Colnaghi Gallery entitled Autumn which Pillement completed in 1792. This sun-drenched landscape has a feel of the 17^th century Dutch Italianate paintings of Nicolaes Berchem and Jan Both and the French master of Arcadian landscape paintings, Claude Lorrain. The romantic sensitivity of the painting probably emanates from his alpine travels and his contact with landscape painters such as Philippe de Loutherbourg. Landscapes like this one by Pillement were very popular at the time, especially the sets of paintings showing the countryside during the different seasons. Pillement painted a “companion” picture to go with today’s featured painting entitled Winter which was also present at the Colnaghi gallery.

Madame Moitessier by Ingres

By now you will have realised that the paintings I like the most are ones that have a story behind them. My Daily Art Display today has an intriguing tale attached to it which I will now share with you. The painting is entitled Madame Moitessier and the artist who created this work of art was Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres. This painting which was completed in 1856 is housed at the National Gallery in London. It is the date which is interesting as Ingres initially started the painting in 1844!

Marie-Clothilde-Inès Moitessier, née de Foucauld, was the daughter of a civil servant. Born in 1821 she married the wealthy banker, and one time importer of Cuban cigars, Sigisbert Moitessier. He was in his forties whilst she was just twenty-one years of age. Two years later, her husband spoke to a friend of Ingres and asked him to speak to the artist about painting a portrait of his new wife, Madame Montessiere. Ingres refused the commission, as to him, portraiture was a “low” form of art and he preferred to concentrate on “history paintings”. However his friend Marcotte persevered with the Monsieur Moitessier’s request and finally Ingres agreed to meet the new wife.

Ingres was immediately struck and captivated by her beauty and agreed to paint her portrait. Ingres then made his first mistake by suggesting that Moitessier should include her young daughter “la charmante Catherine” in the portrait. If you look at preliminary sketches of this work, which can be seen at the Ingres Museum in Montauban, you can see the head of Catherine under her mother’s arm. However by 1847 the young child had become so restless, couldn’t sit still for any lengthy period and finally rebelled against any artistic instructions and so, was banished.

Ingres was a perfectionist. Everything had to be just right with the work and over a period of time the clothes which Madame Montessier wore were changed to suit the artist and be of the latest fashion. In the finished painting she wears the latest woven floral fabric with a crinoline, the stiffened petticoat, which had just come into fashion in 1855. The lady also had little choice on what jewellery she should wear. Ingres was the Master and told her what to wear and couched his suggestions in terms of flattery. He was reported to have told her one day when discussing how she should adorn herself:

“……Since you are clearly beautiful all by yourself, I am abandoning, after mature consideration, the projected grand headdress for a gala. The portrait will be in even better taste and I fear that it would have distracted the eye too much at the expense of the head. Same thing for the brooch at your breast; the style is too old-fashioned and I beg you to replace it with a gold cameo. However I am not against a long and simple chatelaine, which I could terminate with the pendant of the first one. Please….bring on Monday your jewel chest, bracelets and the long pearl necklace……”

More bad luck for the commission was to follow as in 1849 Ingres’s wife died suddenly and the artist was devastated and didn’t paint for the next seven months. In 1851, seven years after he started the painting of the seated Madam Moitessier, little progress had been made and the husband became restless at this lack of progress. So that year, after constant cajoling and support from his friends and the demand of the sitter and her husband, he went back to the easel. Ingres started another painting of Moitessier’s wife, dressed in black, this time in a standing position. He completed this at the end of 1851 and this work can now be found in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

After completing the standing portrait of Madame Moitessier he reverted back to the one he had begun in 1844. The lady is sitting in a rather strange pose. Art historians believe that the pose of the lady, hand touching cheek, captured in Ingres’s painting, was reminiscent of the fresco Hercules and Telephus from Herculaneum which Ingres probably saw when he was there in 1814. It is believed that Ingres had the sitter take up this pose but had to convince her husband that it was in keeping with Classical art and it made his wife look more learned and cultured. The husband liked this idea as he was of the nouveau riche and liked the idea that the painting may have people believe they were more akin to nobility. It is also quite amusing to read that Madame Moitessier had gained weight during her pregnancies and had demanded of Ingres that he should re-paint her arms and make them look thinner and thus more flattering! This painting took over twelve years to complete and there are many preliminary drawings of it in existence.

Why did it take him so long? I have told you of some problems he encountered during this epic and I suppose we should also remember that he was 76 years of age when he finally completed the work and age may have played a large part in the agonisingly slowness in his progress. Still, now we look at the finished article we must admire Ingres’s work.

Marie-Clothilde-Inès Moitessier, née de Foucauld, was the daughter of a civil servant. Born in 1821 she married the wealthy banker, and one time importer of Cuban cigars Sigisbert Moitessier. He was in his forties whilst she was just twenty-one years of age. Two years later, her husband spoke to a friend of Ingres and asked him to speak to the artist about painting a portrait of his new wife, Madame Montessiere. Ingres refused the commission as to him portraiture was a “low” form of art and he preferred to concentrate on “history paintings”. However his friend Marcotte persevered with the Monsieur Moitessier’s request and finally Ingres agreed to meet the new wife.

Ingres was immediately struck by her beauty and agreed to paint her portrait. Ingres then made his first mistake by suggesting that Moitessier should include her young daughter “la charmante Catherine” in the portrait. If you look at preliminary sketches of this work, which can be seen at the Ingres Museum in Montauban, you can see the head of Catherine under her mother’s arm. However by 1847 the young child had become so restless, couldn’t sit still for any lengthy period and finally rebelled against any artistic instructions and was banished.

More bad luck for the commission was to follow as in 1849 Ingres’s wife died suddenly and the artist was devastated and didn’t paint for the next seven months. In 1851, seven years after he started the painting of the seated Madam Moitessier little progress had been made and the husband became restless at this lack of progress. So that year after constant cajoling and support from his friends and the demand of the sitter that he produced something, Ingres started another painting of Moitessier’s wife, dressed in black, this time in a standing position. He completed this at the end of 1851 and this work can now be found in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

After completing the standing portrait of Madame Moitessier he reverted back to the one he had begun in 1844. The lady is sitting in a rather strange pose. Art historians believe that the pose of the lady, hand touching cheek, captured in Ingres’s painting was reminiscent of the fresco Hercules and Telephus from Herculaneum and which Ingres probably saw when he was there in 1814. It is believed that Ingres had the sitter in this pose, and he had tgo convince her husband that it was in keeping with Classical art and it made his wife look more learned and cultured. The husband liked this idea as he was of the nouveau riche and liked the idea that the painting may have people believe they were more akin to nobility. It is also quite amusing to read that Madame Moitessier had gained weight during her pregnancies and had demanded of Ingres that he should re-paint her arms and make them look thinner and thus more flattering! This painting took over twelve years to complete and there are many preliminary drawings of it in existence.

Why did it take him so long? I have told you of some problems he encountered during this epic and I suppose we should also remember that he was 76 years of age when he finally completed the work and age may have played a large part in the agonisingly slowness in his work. Still, now we look at the finished article and must admire Ingres’s work.

Reclining Girl by François Boucher

There is always some debate with regards paintings and nudity and what is appropriate and what is inappropriate and whether the depiction is merely erotic or crosses the line and becomes pornographic. There has been much discussion about today’s painting in My Daily Art Display as to whether the female body is being treated as a person or as an object.

My featured artist today is François Boucher a French Rococo painter who was well known for his paintings of voluptuous females which also incorporated classical themes. Some of his works of art were portraits of the famous Madame Pompadour but what made today’s work somewhat controversial was that his nude painting featured a fourteen year old girl. Today’s oil on canvas picture entitled Reclining Girl was painted in 1751 and can be seen in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. There is also a very similar painting featuring this girl, by the same artist, in a similar pose in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. So who is the girl and how did she come to pose naked for the artist?

The girl is Mary-Louise O’Murphy de Boisfaily who was born in Rouen in 1737. She was the fifth daughter of an Irish army officer who, after her father’s retirement from military service, had taken up shoemaking to bring money into the household. After her father died her mother took the family to live in Paris where she tried to find work for her daughters and made ends meet by trading second hand clothes. Mary-Louise finally got work as a dancer at L’Opera and earned some money as a model. It was around this time that she came into contact with Casanova the famous Venetian adventurer and womaniser and was he, according to his memoirs, who takes the credit for introducing the young girl to both Louis XV of France and the artist Boucher. Art historians have said that the painting was simply a way of offering herself up to Louis XV as a prospective mistress. It was almost an advert for her services and this is why, in some quarters, the painting was looked upon as being somewhat degrading and vulgar. However whatever the intentions of Marie-Louise and Boucher were, it proved successful for she became one of Louis’s courtesans, albeit to start with, not one of his principal courtesans but one of his lower-echelon “companions”. However through her guile and beauty she soon rose through the “ranks” and became one of the ruler’s favourites. In 1754 she gave birth to Louis’s illegitimate daughter Agathe Louise de Saint-Antoine. Marie-Louise remained a favourite of Louis and all would have remained well but she made the fatal error of attempting to oust Madame Pompadour as Louis’s favourite mistress and for that she paid the penalty – banishment from the royal court and at the tender age of 17 was married off to Comte de Beaufranchet. The marriage did not last very long as her husband was killed in battle. Marie-Louise married twice more, her last being at the age of sixty-one, to a man some thirty years older her junior but this partnership ended in divorce. She died in 1814 at the age of 77. If you want to read more about her life you can as her story was dramatised in the 1997 novel by Duncan Sprott entitled Our Lady of the Potatoes.

The painting is without doubt sexually provocative. The girl, and we should remember she was barely fourteen years of age, is seen face down, lying naked, splayed on a chaise-longue. I wonder whether the artist decided that because of her age he should not show her frontally naked. Her face-down pose however does not detract from the sensuality of the painting and in some way may add to it. We concentrate our view on the girl’s buttocks and her thighs which are wide apart. This pose shows the willingness of the model to entertain any sexual overtures from a lover. This was exactly the message she wanted to give Louis. One notes the similarity between the curves of her body and the curves and creases of the pillow on which her right leg rests and which pushes upwards separating her thighs. It is a sumptuous setting with the heavy velvet drapes and the silk bedding.

It is a painting you will either like and find it beautifully erotic or you will hate it and condemn it as just another form of pornography wrapped in the guise of a work of art. It is simpy up to you as it is all in the eye of the beholder.

The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

The Rococo style of art was characterised by lightness, grace, playfulness and intimacy and emerged out of France around the beginning of the 18^th century and in the following century spread throughout Europe. The actual word rococo is thought to have been used disapprovingly by a pupil of Jacques-Louis David who ridiculed the taste, which was in vogue in the mid-18^th century. He combined the artistic genres of rocaille, which prospered in the mid 16^th century and was applied to works that depicted fancy rock-work and shell-work, and barocco (baroque) genre.

The featured artist in My Daily Art Display is Jean-Honoré Fragonard, whose works are amongst the most complete embodiments of the Rococo spirit. He has been described as the “fragrant essence” of the 18^th century. He was famous for the fluid grace and sensuous charm of his paintings and for the virtuosity of his technique. The painting by Fragonard featured today is probably his most famous and is the oil on canvas work entitled The Swing which he completed in 1767 and which is now part of the Wallace Collection in London.

The story behind the painting is fascinating and well documented. The French dramatist and songwriter Charles Collé tells how he met the painter Francois Doyen in 1767 who tells him that he has been approached by a “gentleman of the court” who had seen one of his religious paintings being exhibited in Paris. The painter Doyen goes to meet the gentleman and relates to Collé what happened next:

“…I found him at his ‘pleasure house’ with his mistress. He started by flattering me with courtesies and finished by avowing that he was dying with a desire to have me make a picture, the idea of which he was going to outline. I should like Madame (pointing to his mistress) on a swing that a bishop would set going. You will place me in such a way that I would be able to see the legs of the lovely girl, and better still, if you want enliven your picture a little more……. I confess, M. Doyen said to me, that this proposition, which I wouldn’t have expected, considering the character of the picture that led to it, perplexed me and left me speechless for a moment. I collected myself, however, enough to say to him almost at once: “Ah Monsieur, it is necessary to add to the essential idea of your picture by making Madame’s shoes fly into the air and having some cupids catch them.”

Doyen decided not to accept the commission but instead passed it on to Fragonard. The identity of the patron is unknown, though he was at one time thought to have been the Baron de Saint-Julien, the Receiver General of the French Clergy, which would have explained the request to include a bishop pushing a the swing. However Fragonard insisted on replacing the bishop with the more traditional figure of the cuckholded husband.

So let us examine the picture. We see a young woman on a swing. She is swinging with gay, if somewhat thoughtless, abandon as the sunlight beams down upon her. She is at the apex of her arc and suddenly her shoe has flown off. She has achieved this position due to the help afforded to her by the naive cleric (or cuckholded husband), on the right, who we can see pulling the swing rope. On the left, lying on the ground below the swing, semi-concealed in the shrubbery, is a young attentive male courtier who is staring at the long and exposed legs of the young woman. Her legs are parted and with the motion of the swing, her skirt is open. Not only are her legs exposed but the young man is able to see under the many petticoats that she is wearing under her pink flowing dress. She knows he is watching her every move and is obviously pleased by this attention. He reaches out as if to try and touch her.

Fragonard once again made free association of fanciful costumes and provided us with a slight bit of erotic suggestions. This work by Fragonard is without doubt erotic but does not actually cross the line to be viewed as vulgar. There is a joyful aspect to this painting. However the painting received mixed reviews with the artist being criticised for the frivolity of the picture and that he should show “a little more self-respect”. The artist was unmoved by such disparagement and truth be told the popularity of his work continued. His commissions came in thick and fast, both from wealthy patrons and from the royal government. The royal patronage came to an end with their downfall during the French Revolution of 1789 and a year later Fragonard returned to his native Provence. Two years later, he went back to live in Paris. He died there in 1806 aged 74.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard was born in Grasse, Provence and since 1926 the town has been the home of the very famous French Parfumerie Fragonard !!

Self-portrait at the Easel by Jean-Siméon Chardin

Self-portrait at the Easel by Chardin (c.1776)

Another day, another French painter. Today I wanted to look at the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and My Daily Art Display for the day is his pastel on blue paper Self-portrait at the Easel which he painted around 1776. It is currently housed in the Louvre, Paris.

Chardin, the son of a cabinet maker, was born in Paris, in 1699. He lived on the Left Bank of the River Seine, close to the church of Saint Sulpice, which has, along with its “Rose Line”, recently gained notoriety because of the film The Da Vinci Code. He studied art under the tutelage of the French History painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noél-Nicolas Coypel and in 1724, aged twenty-five he became a master in the Acadèmie de Saint-Luc. A year earlier, he entered into a marriage contract with Marguerie Saintard but it was not until eight years later that the couple married in 1731 and that year his son Jean-Pierre was born. Two years later the couple had a daughter, Marguerite-Agnés. Sadly his wife died in 1735 and two years later his daughter passed away.

In 1728 he presented two of his painting, The Ray, and The Buffet to the prestigious Acadèmie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and they were of such quality that he was accepted into this hallowed society. For fifty years, he regularly attended the Society’s meetings and during which, served as counsellor, secretary and treasurer. He consistently exhibited at the Salon each year and he proved to be a “dedicated academician. Chardin earned money from his artistic talents in any way he could. His paintings were not restricted to any single genre; it just depended on the whims of his clients.

In 1744 he married for the second time. His second wife was Françoise-Marguerite Pouget. The following year their daughter, Angèlique-Françoise, was born, but she died in 1746. In 1752 Chardin was granted a pension of 500 livres by Louis XV. Beginning in 1761, his responsibilities on behalf of the Salon, simultaneously arranging the exhibitions and acting as treasurer resulted in a slow-down in the productivity of his painting. In 1763 his services to the Acadèmie were acknowledged with an extra 200 livres in pension. In 1765 he was unanimously elected associate member of the Acadèmie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Rouen, but there is no evidence that he left Paris to accept the honour. By 1770 Chardin was the ‘Premiere peintre du roi’, and his pension of 1,400 livres was the highest in the Academy.

Chardin rarely travelled far from his Left Bank home, just occasionally making the short trips to Versailles and Fontainebleau. In 1757 he finally moved house as Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre. Five years later more tragedy was to enter his life with the death of his artist son, Jean-Pierre, who was found drowned in Venice. The belief was that he had committed suicide. Chardon carried on painting and his last known painting was dated 1776, just four years before his death in 1780 at the age of 80.

Chardon was secretive about his methods. No one saw him painting; he had no pupils or followers. He seems to have worked slowly, in a style that is evocative rather than literally descriptive. He made few, if any, preparatory drawings. His contemporaries observed that his still-life paintings, which on close inspection seemed to be just a flurry of strokes, were in fact paintings of a startling immediacy and naturalism. He portrayed household and family routines and children at play in genre scenes with a touch that was tenderly true to life. These were engraved and claimed the imagination of a wide public. The subject matter he chose for his paintings was unassuming. They were also often small in size. Chardin’s paintings are supremely colourful and his work has long been admired by artists and critics alike.

Throughout the eighteenth century there were two competing hierarchies of painting genres. On one side, one had the history painting genre and on the other side there was the portraiture and still-life genre paintings. Chardin, who painted many still-lifes including many which featured food, never attempted portraiture until 1837 when, according to Nicolas Cochin’s 1737 book Essay on the Life of Chardin1737, wrote of Chardin:

‘….A remarkable occurrence led him to try his hand at this new genre. Monsieur Avid, a portraitist, was a great friend. He often asked Monsieur Chardin for advice, which he found beneficial. However one day when Monsieur Chardin criticised him too keenly, Monsieur Avid sharply retorted: “Do you suppose that it is as easy to paint as your stuffed tongue and saveloys?” Monsieur Chardin was extremely vexed at this remark…’

Today’s pastel, Self-portrait at the Easel by Chardin sees him standing at his easel. He stands before us at a time when his eyesight was failing and his health was deteriorating. He gives us an unflattering and unsentimental vision of himself. It is, in some ways a disturbing sight. His enormous prince-nez have slipped down to the end of his nose as he peers over them at us, his viewers. His eyes do not sparkle. They look tired and dull. This was to be one of the last paintings from the artist who seems weary and aware of how the passing years have affected him both physically and mentally. Although he had many successes in his life, he also experienced many tragedies and one can see that they have taken their toll on him. His faded skin with its slight ruddy tinge has a look of roughness about it. His lips have a slight upward turn to them as he forces himself to smile at us. What is he thinking about? Around his neck is a multi-coloured scarf, a mixture of warm reds balanced by cool blues and grays. Such colours can also be seen in his well-worn coat and reflected in his face.

Unfortunately for Chardin, public taste in paintings changed in the mid 18^th century and there was a desire to see historical paintings once again come to the fore. This was not Chardin’s painting genre and he fell from favour with the Academy. His pension was reduced and slowly his duties at the Academy shrank. It was not until a hundred years later that the paintings of Chardin came back in vogue and his works are now coveted by the top museums and the wealthy collectors. Chardin influenced many of the great artists that followed, such as Manet and Cezanne. Henri Matisse ranked Chardin as one of his most admired painters.