THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART
NINETEENTHCENTURY FRENCH DRAWINGS
Monsieur Boileau at the Café Heather Lemonedes Brown
In Monsieur Boileau at the Café (cat. 37a), we encounter a portly man seated at a café table. The
figure leans back, pausing as he smokes a cigarette to assess the viewer directly. To capture his
likeness, avant-garde artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted in oil and tempera over charcoal underdrawing on board, transforming the timeless genre of portraiture into a contemporary image that subtly addressed the culture of the time.
The magnificent Monsieur Boileau at the Café has the distinction of being the first unique work 1
of art by Toulouse-Lautrec acquired by an American art museum. It was featured in the first
exhibitions of the artist’s paintings in the United States, including a show at the Art Institute of Chicago organized by the Arts Club from December 23, 1924, through January 25, 1925, where it
was highlighted on the cover of the exhibition pamphlet. Shortly thereafter, in the spring of 1925, Monsieur Boileau at the Café was shown again at Wildenstein & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
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The Chicago and New York exhibitions were very similar, and Paul Rosenberg was the primary lender to both; it was he who sold Monsieur Boileau at the Café to Wildenstein in 1925.
In a review of the Wildenstein exhibition, the New York Times singled out the portrait of Boileau
as exemplifying Toulouse-Lautrec’s “amazing strength” and noted the artist’s “masterly precision” 3
in his description of “M. Boileau’s pleasure in a good dinner.” During the artist’s lifetime, the
drawing was highly regarded; it was one of four works Toulouse-Lautrec showed at the Exposition 4
des Indépendants in Paris in 1893. The work was admired there by critic Charles Saunier in La Plume and collector and writer Roger Marx in Le Voltaire, both of whom praised the artist’s ability to
create an intimate dialogue between the figure and the locale, thereby transcending the boundary 5
between portrait and genre subject.
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s first director, Frederic Allen Whiting, and its curator of 6
decorative arts and paintings, William Mathewson Milliken, attended the 1925 exhibition at
Wildenstein, where they identified Monsieur Boileau at the Café as a highly desirable acquisition for the museum. Josef Stránský at Wildenstein hailed this decision, writing to Milliken: “I
congratulate you upon this splendid acquisition. Thank God there is one great Museum who has a 7
Curator of Paintings with enthusiasm and conviction and carrying on the spirit of progress.” The acquisition of the drawing required some creativity from Whiting and Milliken. The
Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) was still a new institution, having opened its doors just nine
years prior. There were few funds for art acquisitions, so Whiting and Milliken negotiated the purchase of the drawing with Stránský in exchange for four paintings from the collection of 8
Hinman B. Hurlbut plus $4,800 from funds given to the museum by Hurlbut. A lawyer, banker, 9
and railroad executive, Hurlbut is one of four Clevelanders responsible for founding the CMA. An ardent collector, Hurlbut bequeathed his collection to the museum along with money designated for art purchases. Today, $4,800 seems astonishingly low for a drawing of this quality, yet the
price was substantial for the museum at the time. The purchase of such an avant-garde work is remarkable and is a testament to the vision of the museum’s first director and curator. Henry
Sayles Francis, curator of paintings, drawings, and prints at the CMA from 1927 to 1929 and 1931 to 1967, later praised the purchase of Monsieur Boileau at the Café and Milliken’s eye for quality: “He did an extraordinary thing when he got the Toulouse-Lautrec. . . . This was before there was a great rage for Toulouse-Lautrec. . . . A picture like that today would bring in six figures.”
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The Display and Dispersal of Drawings in 19th-Century France Debra DeWitte
Honoré Daumier’s Art Lovers is a study of the act of looking (cat. 13). Two gentlemen lean forward, intrigued by the works of art before them. Art covers the wall, but one man is particularly taken by a small framed work that is placed atop a table and leaning against the wall (fig. 14). A small sculpture beside it seems to mimic the actions of the man, twisting itself to better view the
framed work. What are they looking at? Is it a painting or drawing? Is it by a famous artist? Where are they? Are they at a public exhibition, a gallery, or an auction? Or are they visiting the home of a wealthy collector? In 19th-century France, the possible venues for looking at drawings, the
audiences interested in seeing them, and the uses they had for their viewers expanded more than ever before. This exploration into the ways in which drawings were viewed and exchanged in
19th-century France leads us into the homes of artists and collectors, into refined galleries and
auction houses, and into exhibitions open to the public, revealing the important role drawings played in 19th-century artistic and social life. Drawings as Artistic Tools Drawings are often considered a preparatory medium for their essential role in planning out
compositions and details for finished paintings, sculptures, or buildings. The process of drawing had an important role in the Académie des Beaux-Arts, founded in 1648, which became the École
des Beaux-Arts in 1863. In these institutions, artists were required to draw for several years before
Fig. 14 Art Lovers (detail), c. 1863. Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879). Gray and black wash, charcoal, and graphite,
with watercolor, on cream laid paper;
26.2 x 19.4 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1927.208
Fig. 15 The Auction House: The Expert,
1863, printed 1920. Honoré Daumier
(French, 1808–1879). Wood engraving;
44.2 x 32.3 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Ralph King, 1921.1483
Cat. 24 (detail)
33
1
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824) The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione, c. 1800 Pen and brown and black ink, brown and gray wash with point of brush, with black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache, on cream wove paper 28.5 x 21.8 cm (11 1/4 x 8 9/16 in.)
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 1989.101
Signed, lower left, in brown ink: ALG / INV.; lower left, in black chalk: A L GIRODET INV.
When asked to list his most important works
did his canvases, beginning with a rough
specifically developed for the project. Didot
Trioson named several acclaimed history
focused studies of individual figures from the
David, who delegated plays to particular artists
created after 1789, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucypaintings, but also drawings illustrating
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1
dramas by French playwright Jean Racine.
One of these sheets, The Meeting of Orestes and
Hermione, belongs to a series of commissioned illustrations for Racine’s Andromaque (1667), a
tragic play inspired by antiquity and centered on a triangle of unrequited love. Girodet’s five images broke from the contemporary
tendency to focus on violence and action and
instead conveyed psychological depth. Related to the second scene of the play’s second act,
Cleveland’s drawing shows the hero, Orestes,
being introduced to Hermione, his future love, by her servant. Girodet communicated much of the scene’s content through the figures’
poses and setting, from the eager expression and forward movement of Orestes to the
defensive stance and coy gaze of Hermione, who will take advantage of the hero’s
compositional sketch and progressing to more
2
amorous sentiments to enact revenge. The
stark geometry and strict linear order of the
nude. He mastered this technique as a young man while working in the studio of Jacques-
Louis David. According to an early biographer, his mother approached David, then renowned for history painting, with examples of her
son’s abilities as a draftsman, earning him
an invitation to study under the elder artist 5
in 1784. David’s studio was known for its
competitive atmosphere, in which young
artists alternately adopted and rejected his teachings. Among them, Girodet asserted his independence especially strongly, and
his Racine project is one of his last to show
evidence of David’s influence before he spurned it completely, favoring a more emotional
and imaginative idiom. Like many of David’s students, Girodet read Latin and Greek, and he maintained a passion for both classical
and contemporary literature that led him to
undertake illustrations throughout his career. The series of drawings to which Cleveland’s
indeterminate setting connect both Girodet
sheet belongs was one of several commissioned
the spareness of the interior space conjures a
Didot. Around 1800, as the English gained
and Racine to the grand classical tradition, and foreboding ambience. This tone is enhanced
by the room’s only furnishing: a neoclassical
guéridon behind Hermione featuring a decorative siren, an allusion to the danger that will befall 3
Orestes. For its rich composition and skillful technique, Girodet considered The Meeting of
Orestes and Hermione as equally important as his
paintings, exhibiting it in the same section of
the annual Paris Salon the next year. It reveals the centrality of drawing within the oeuvre of an artist most often remembered for his
contributions to the legacy of history painting in France around the turn of the 19th century. Girodet approached the creation of The
Meeting of Orestes and Hermione just as he 66
from Girodet by French luxury publisher Pierre prominence in the field of book illustration, Didot sought to reestablish France’s
preeminence in the genre. He organized
images for 12 plays by Racine, whose work he saw as modern French classics. Didot, who took over the family’s publishing business
with his brother Firmin after their father’s
retirement, described his aims as nationalistic
and characterized his goals for the Racine folios as demonstrating “the current state of the arts in France” and forming “a typographical and 6
national monument.” He dedicated the books
to Napoleon Bonaparte and printed them using the former royal press at the Louvre in a large
deluxe folio featuring a paper, ink, and typeface
entrusted illustrations for his Racine project to 7
from his milieu. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
the publication was produced at a financial
loss for Didot, who sold only about half of the 8
edition of 250.
Just as Didot’s publication was intended
to showcase the French art of publishing,
Girodet elevated the field of drawing through
his work on the project. Describing his Racine illustrations, he famously wrote that “it
is wrong for these drawings to be [seen as] only drawings, for they demand the same
conception and nearly the same studies as
a painting, once you are drawn in by giving them style and character; only the process 9
of creating them is different.” By exhibiting drawings such as The Meeting of Orestes and
Hermione alongside history paintings in the
most prestigious contemporary venue, Girodet asserted a new status for highly polished
drawings in Revolutionary France. In his
own lifetime, his Andromaque drawings were kept by Didot and Firmin, who bound them in a luxury edition with the engravings. In
1810, Firmin unsuccessfully attempted to sell the folio, perhaps to recuperate the project’s
financial losses. The drawings were unbound and sold individually over the coming years,
with many—such as those acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Getty Museum around the same time as Cleveland’s—
only returning to the public eye nearly two 10
centuries later.
1. Barthélémy Jobert, “Girodet and Printmaking,” in
Girodet, 1797–1824, ed. Sylvain Bellenger, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2006), 154.
2. Sylvain Bellenger, “The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione,” in Diane De Grazia and Carter E. Foster, Master Drawings from
the Cleveland Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000), 124.
Cat. 1
Catalogue
67
6
Théodore Géricault (French, 1791–1824) Sheet of Sketches (recto and verso), 1819 Pen and brown ink on ivory laid paper 22.8 x 35 cm (9 x 13 3/4 in.)
Dudley P. Allen Fund 1964.28.a–b
Inscribed, on recto, upper left, in brown ink: dessin de gericault fait à fontain la magdelaine Watermark, center: scallop shell [possibly J. Berger or J. Bouchet]
Despite the importance of drawing in all its
finished drawings to appeal to collectors and
Medusa, as the figures’ contorted, violent poses
is known about this aspect of his oeuvre,
to fail. Even alongside this change, his sketches
second Magdelaine sheet, executed at the same
forms to Théodore Géricault, relatively little including Cleveland’s Sheet of Sketches. The artist
covered both sides of his support with unrelated pen and ink studies of posed nude figures,
gain financial support as his health continued allowed him to experiment and record private thoughts and caprices.
Sheet of Sketches is one of two 1819 drawings
most of whom contort their bodies upward and
with inscriptions mentioning Magdelaine;
than a staff held by one man. The drawing has
and studies related to Géricault’s The Raft of
forward, free from any setting or props other
long been thought to depict Bacchic revelers, perhaps loosely related to a series of erotic
drawings that the artist made around 1818
following a disastrous love affair that produced 1
a child. An inscription provides further clues, revealing that Géricault made the sketches at
the “fontain [sic] la magdelaine,” a religious site in Féricy, near Fontainebleau. Géricault visited this village in fall 1819, after a disappointing
reception of his painting The Raft of the Medusa
at the Paris Salon and the beginning of health
issues that spanned the rest of his life. Created in the artist’s preferred medium for his own
purposes at a turning point in his career, Sheet
of Sketches suggests the consistent role drawing played for Géricault, an artist whose practice otherwise shifted dramatically.
Vaguely mythological subjects such as that
of the Cleveland sheet interested Géricault from a young age. He trained himself by copying the work of past masters at the Musée du
Louvre to develop his hand, filling sketchbooks with reference images that often featured
the composite layout seen in Sheet of Sketches. After his first showing at the Paris Salon in
after Sheet of Sketches was made, Géricault
shifted to working in watercolor, using it for 84
the figures’ poses and musculature, perhaps
even returning to sources found in works that
his greatest achievement: a history painting
inspired him, such as those by Michelangelo.
3
based on a contemporary subject. Although
To create the Cleveland drawing, Géricault
influential to future generations, it was
used pen and ink, often angling his stylus to
own time, causing him to retreat to Féricy.
material to pool and saturate the sheet. As in
unilaterally panned by critics in Géricault’s
vary the thickness of his line and to allow the
He traveled with his friend Auguste Brunet,
many of the artist’s works on paper, the ink
a sociologist whose portrait appears on the
has transferred through the sheet over time,
second Magdelaine sheet, and stayed in a
pension owned by René Richard Louis Castel, a teacher and poet he had known since 4
childhood. Devastated by the criticism of his
painting, Géricault devoted time to sketching while in Féricy. Castel’s correspondence describes spending a day in the artist’s
company about a month after his arrival as he produced sketches at the Magdelaine, a local fountain commemorating a saint, Osmane, known for granting fertility. Although
Géricault’s typical sketchbook pages—reflects its importance to the artist. This significance is also indicated by its likely first owner, 7
Pierre-Olivier Dubaut. An artist himself,
Dubaut assembled one of the most renowned collections of Géricault’s oeuvre over the first
half of the 20th century, a process that led him of Sheet of Sketches to such holdings clarifies the
mental and physical malady, leading him to
return to Paris for medical care soon after, his
sojourn seems to have provided at least a brief 6
The imaginative, capricious figures in
interpretation of this period; they were a
sketchbooks and independent sheets. Although literature on the drawing has exclusively
described the figures as Bacchic in content, it
seems plausible that some may have comprised reflections on imagery from The Raft of the
The drawing’s size—nearly double that of
major monograph on the artist. The importance
Géricault would fall ill with a mysterious
respite for working privately and reflectively.
causing the figures to blur into one another.
to develop expertise sufficient to publish a
5
favorite subject seen throughout Géricault’s
compositional studies for his canvases. Shortly
the artist may have more generally considered
2
traditional genres. Géricault still continued to alone sheets, such as the present example, and
in revisiting the canvas’s details in its close
directly copying or reconsidering the painting,
the Medusa. The artist considered the canvas
Cleveland’s drawing accord with such an
draw privately, however, resulting in stand-
time, clearly points to the artist’s interest
study of a featured hand and foot. Rather than
the other (fig. 44) features a bust portrait
1812, he became best known for painting and
his unorthodox combination of the medium’s
recall those in the painting. As well, Géricault’s
role of this previously little-known drawing within the artist’s oeuvre and legacy.
1. Lorenz Eitner, “Erotic Drawings by Gericault,” Master Drawings 34, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 380. See especially
Géricault’s Sheet of Sketches (Bacchantes), private collection, London (382).
2. See Colta Ives and Elizabeth E. Barker, Romanticism &
the School of Nature: Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), 42–43.
3. The large-scale work depicted the starving and adrift
survivors of a shipwreck documented in the French press,
referencing the dramatic, expressive poses used by historic masters Michelangelo and Raphael. On this relationship,
Cat. 6 (recto)
Catalogue
85
29
Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940) In Front of the Mirror (recto), c. 1891–92; Reclining Male Nude (verso), c. 1887–89 Pastel and charcoal on beige laid paper 34.8 x 27.2 cm (13 11/16 x 10 11/16 in.)
Bequest of William Kelly Simpson 2018.77
Stamped, lower left, in purple ink: artist’s studio mark [Lugt 2497b]
In Front of the Mirror presents Édouard Vuillard’s
unfinished, sketchily rendered hands, whose
Vuillard’s domestic relationships—an emerging
Here in her late 20s, the young woman is seen
part in settling on their position. Their
decades to come.
sister, Marie, one of his favorite subjects.
from behind in a white blouse and long blueand-white striped skirt. She raises her hands on either side of her head, seemingly in the process of styling her hair. Marie’s skirt is echoed by the yellow stripes surrounding
her, both in and below the mirror, and their patterning and color contribute movement
and tension. This mood is enhanced by Marie’s
formlessness implies frustration on Vuillard’s reconsideration may indicate that Cleveland’s
Vuillard’s oeuvre for its execution on the reverse
(fig. 62) and a painting (fig. 63) executed
shows a nude male torso and hand apparently
featuring this image—including a pastel around the same time—in which their
placement has been resolved. The portrait,
perhaps at first glance casual or unassuming, speaks considerably about the dynamic of
Fig. 63 Marie in a Camisole at Her Dressing
35.2 x 24.5 cm. Private collection. Photo:
on cardboard mounted on cradled panel;
Courtesy of the Vuillard Archives
154
In Front of the Mirror is unusual among
drawing was the first among several works
Fig. 62 Marie in a Camisole at Her Dressing
Table, c. 1891–92. Édouard Vuillard. Pastel;
theme that would dominate his practice for
Table, c. 1891–92. Édouard Vuillard. Oil
34.3 x 26.7 cm. Location unknown. Photo: Courtesy of the Vuillard Archives
of an earlier drawing. That charcoal study
cut down from a larger sheet. At least one other drawing from the same period was similarly trimmed, revealing that the artist kept and 1
recycled his early sketches. Vuillard likely
Cat. 29 (recto)
Catalogue
155
41
Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (French, 1844–1925) Quai au Sable, Chartèves, 1904 Pastel on gray wove paper discolored to tan 69 x 99 cm (27 3/16 x 39 in.)
Bequest of Noah L. Butkin 1980.269
Inscribed, lower right, in black pastel: L. Lhermitte / 1904
Quai au Sable, Chartèves is one of many depictions
surrounding the nearby Marne River—he often
it, both achieved using a wide range of marks,
region—created partly because of his attraction
sketches and memory.
time he created Quai au Sable, Lhermitte had
by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte of his native to the subject but also due to the works’
worked indoors, rendering landscape from
Cleveland’s pastel shows the river’s banks
ready market. Born in Mont-Saint-Père,
on an autumn day, as evidenced by the
stipend from his hometown to study in Paris.
distance. Lhermitte’s studio was located on
a provincial village, Lhermitte received a
At the École Imperiale de Dessin, he learned under innovative teacher Horace Lecoq de
Boisbaudran, who emphasized memorization as the cornerstone of artistic practice and
instructed his students to undertake close
looking and then work in the studio rather than from life. Lhermitte absorbed these theories fully, and they informed his practice over
the years that followed. Although he divided his time between Paris and the provinces— including Mont-Saint-Père and the area
vibrant orange and yellow tones of trees in the the Marne, and he often represented the local terrain, doing so with increasing frequency
after 1900. He used a textured paper—which has likely shifted in color from a gray that
complemented the scene’s blue skies to brown
over time—allowing him not only to draw with the side and point of pastel sticks but also to
manipulate the powdery material, likely using
a brush and sponge. Lhermitte’s technical skill is especially evident in passages such as the
water’s luminous surface and the reflection on
from broad tonal passages to fine lines. By the
been experimenting with pastel for nearly two decades and exhibited regularly with artists’
groups who promoted it, including the Société d’Aquarellistes Français and the Société des Pastellistes Français. He quickly forged a
prominent place within these organizations,
becoming a leading advocate of pastel. Critics
acknowledged his expertise in this medium; in a catalogue for a 1909 exhibition of Lhermitte’s work, for example, his pastels were noted
as having “an almost unrivaled purity and brilliance of colour. . . . Light dances and
quivers on the leaves and on the running water with absolute verisimilitude.”
1
Quai au Sable is revelatory of the ways in
which Lhermitte capitalized on such praise and on the popularity of his subject matter around the turn of the century. The pastel’s bucolic
landscape and rural population seen from an anonymizing distance affirmed the nobility
of their labor; Lhermitte typically presented
laborers whose work involved the river, such as washerwomen and fishermen. These themes
appealed to a growing community of collectors with an interest in contemporary art but
conservative taste. Cleveland’s pastel is one of many in which Lhermitte combined this
view with stock figures and slight perspectival changes. A pastel from around the same
time (fig. 72), for instance, almost exactly
duplicates Quai au Sable but lacks its distinctive
boats and workers—likely ferrymen traversing
Fig. 72 The Dent du Chat at Lac du Bourget,
1901. Léon-Augustin Lhermitte. Pastel on paper; 43.5 x 55.5 cm. Musée des BeauxArts, Reims, inv. 907.19.329
192
Cat. 41
the river connecting Paris with eastern
the Bureau France-Amérique, an organization
replication and reinterpretation during the
between the two countries. Although his
France. Lhermitte established this practice of 1880s after entering a business relationship with Boussod, Valadon & Cie, a Paris-based
gallery to which he signed the rights to sales of his pastels—at that time, his most successful 2
works. Like many others, Cleveland’s pastel
was produced for Boussod and later passed on to Wallis, an influential London-based paintings dealer that catered to audiences in England, Canada, and the United States beginning 3
in 1895. Scenes such as Quai au Sable were
especially popular in those countries around
1900 for their evocation of a pastoral tradition
and a lifestyle that was disappearing alongside 4
the rise of industrialization worldwide.
As American collectors gained purchasing power during the Gilded Age, Lhermitte’s
reputation rose astronomically, to the extent that, in 1909, he was elected as a member of
founded to develop economic relationships 5
comparatively traditional style led Lhermitte’s fame to decline after his death, his ubiquitous
presence in American collections today testifies to the formative role he played in the pastelliste movement of his day.
1. Edward F. Strange, “Léon Lhermitte,” in Selected Works
by Joseph Israels, Matthew Maris, Henri Harpignies, Léon Lhermitte, exh. cat. (London: French Gallery, 1909), n.p.
2. Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, “Léon Augustin Lhermitte,” in Monique Le Pelley Fonteny and Gabriel P. Weisberg,
Léon Lhermitte (1844–1925), exh. cat. (Beverly Hills: Galerie Michael, 1989), n.p.
3. Le Pelley Fonteny, “Léon Augustin Lhermitte,” n.p.
Provenance
(Boussod, Valadon & Cie, Paris), after 1904–by 1919; (Wallis, London), ?–by 1976; (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, May 14, 1976, no. 287); (Shepherd Gallery, New York), 1976; Noah L. Butkin [1918–1980], Shaker Heights, OH, 1976–80; his bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980–. Exhibition History
Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Museum of Art (August 27–October 17, 2000).
Bibliography
19th Century European Paintings, no. 287 (ill.). New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1976.
Le Pelley Fonteny, Monique. Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844–
1925): Catalogue raisonné, 182 (ill.), no. 108. Paris: Éditions Cercle d’Art, 1991.
4. Mary Michele Hamel, Léon Lhermitte: An International
Exhibition, exh. cat. (Oshkosh, WI: Paine Art Center and Arboretum, 1974), 19–20.
5. Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, Léon Augustin Lhermitte
(1844–1925): Catalogue raisonné (Paris: Éditions Cercle d’Art, 1991), 64–65.
Catalogue
193