03 September 2014
Matisse and Tériade
The spectacular display of Jazz (Paris, 1947), one of the greatest livres d’artiste, is one of the highlights of the magnificent exhibition Matisse: the Cut-outs at Tate Modern (until 7 September; then at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, 12 October 2014-8 February 2015).
The book, a turning-point in Matisse’s use of the cut-out technique, is a life-affirming explosion of colour and energy produced in the face of life-threatening illness (Matisse started to work on it in 1943 while convalescing from a serious operation). It was published in a limited edition of 270 copies, and 100 albums of just the prints were also produced. In the exhibition all the prints from one of these albums are shown, together with facsimiles of all the texts. The display of the book in its entirety has the great virtue of allowing visitors to compare all 20 original cut-out models (the maquettes) with their stencil reproductions in the printed book shown with Matisse’s accompanying handwritten texts. It also enables them to appreciate why the artist was originally disappointed with the resulting loss in the book (despite the extreme care taken by the printers to reproduce the exact colours of the originals –the production of the book took nearly five years), of the contrast between the different paper surfaces of the original cut-outs.
In his introduction Matisse plays down the importance of his texts and asks for the reader’s indulgence, explaining that their role is a purely visual one, as a black and white counterpoint to the colours of the plates or as ‘asters to the composition of a bouquet of more important flowers’. This is a modest way of introducing his succinct and enthralling reflections and aphorisms on art and life. In one of them he compares his technique of cutting with scissors directly into the gouache-coloured paper to a sculptor’s carving into stone. In another, he describes lagoons (recollections of his trip to Tahiti in 1930 and the subjects of three prints) as one of the seven wonders in the paradise of painters. Some texts are veritable prose poems. The subjects of the book’s 20 plates are taken from the circus, folklore, mythology, and personal artistic practice or reminiscences. The title Jazz was thought up by Tériade, the book’s publisher, whose ambition was to to produce a modern illuminated manuscript. Though unrelated to the subjects depicted, the title is perhaps an indication of the book’s spirit of discovery and improvisation.
Tériade was a key figure in the Parisian art scene for some five decades. Born in Greece in 1897 (‘Tériade’ is a francized form of his real name, Efstratios Eleutheriades) he went to France in 1915 to study law but soon abandoned his studies for art journalism and, later, art publishing, following in the footsteps of his compatriot Christian Zervos (the publisher of the monumental catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s works). He first met Matisse and published his first article on the artist in 1929 and the collaboration between the two men continued until Matisse’s death 25 years later
Henri Cartier-Bresson ‘Tériade and Matisse’ 1953. Photograph taken in the garden of Tériade’s Villa Natacha. From Tériade & les livres de peintres (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 2002) British Library L.B.31.b.28002
Matisse was a subject or contributor in all of Tériade’s editorial or publishing ventures. The entire range of their collaborations is listed and illustrated in the exhibition catalogue Matisse et Tériade (Arcueil, 1996; L.B.31.b.16914), from the first article Tériade wrote about Matisse in Zervos’s Cahiers d’art, to Matisse’s contribution in Minotaure, the avant-garde magazine which Tériade edited between 1933 and 1936, for which the artist designed one of its famous covers and the various Matisse-related issues of Verve (the arts magazine published by Tériade, 1937-1970), nos 1(1937), 3 (1938), 4 (1938), 8 (1940), and 13 (1945).
Minotaure, Cover of no.9 (1936). C.180.d.1. Lithograph after Matisse’s ink drawing.
Cover of Verve: revue artistique et littéraire, no 8, June 1940 (Cup.800.g.3.), showing ‘La Symphonie chromatique’, a lithograph after Matisse’s cut-out maquette for which 26 colours were used.
Tériade’s greatest publishing venture was the 27 livres d’artiste illustrated by, among others, Chagall, Braque, Giacometti, Léger and Picasso. Matisse illustrated five of them (the highest number by a single artist): Stéphane Mallarmé Poésies (1932), Lettres de la Religieuse Portugaise (1946), Jazz (1947), Poèmes de Charles d’ Orléans (1950), and Une Fête en Simmerie (1963), and these are also richly-illustrated and documented in this catalogue. Moreover, the catalogue led to the generous donation by Tériade’s widow, Alice, of her husband’s publications, art collections and part of his archives to the Musée Matisse at Le Cateau-Cambrésis (the artist’s birthplace). The occasion was marked in 2002 by the inauguration of a permanent gallery dedicated to Tériade and the publication of Tériade et les livres de peintres, a comprehensive catalogue of all the artists’ books he published.
Both catalogues are a valuable and touching reminder of a great and fruitful friendship, also celebrated in the wonderful series of photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1951 in Tériade’s Villa Natacha at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, in the last of which Matisse is only present in spirit, by his signature on the great painted tile decoration (‘L’Arbre’ – the preparatory study of which, now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is in the exhibition) which can be seen behind Tériade, its dedicatee, a personification of the joie de vivre that characterises all his collaborations with Matisse.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tériade in the dining room of Villa Natacha, 1953. From From Tériade & les livres de peintres
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek
References:
Minotaure: revue artistique et littéraire (Paris, 1933-39) C.180.d.1.
Verve (Paris, 1937-60) Cup.800.g.3 (French edition), or Cup.800.g.4 (English edition).
Henri Matisse Jazz (Paris, 1947). C.108.eee.16.; a modern edition with facsimile of the prints and transcription and translation into English of the texts (Munich, 2001) is at YC.2003.a.11186.
Hommage à Tériade (Grand Palais, 16 May to 3 September 1973). (Paris, 1973). S.E. 293/49
Hommage à Tériade [Diploma Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts]. (London, 1975). X.419/3145.
Jack D. Flam Matisse on Art. Revised edition. (Berkeley, 1995) 95/24994.
E. Tériade Écrits sur l'art. (Paris, 1996). YA.1997.a.3905
Claudia Beltramo Ceppi Zevi (ed), Matisse et Tériade [Exhibition, 1996-1997: Museo Mediceo, Florence and Musée Matisse, le Cateau-Cambrésis] (Arcueil, 1996). LB.31.b.16914.
Beatrice Lavarini Henri Matisse Jazz (1943-1947) : ein Malerbuch als Selbsterkenntnis (Munich, 2000) YA.2001.a.22816
Tériade et les livres de peintres [Exhibition, Musée Matisse, 2002]. (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 2002) LB.31.b.28002.
Karl Buchberg [et al.], Henri Matisse: the cut-outs (London, 2014). [Awaiting shelfmark]
Cover of the catalogue Matisse et Tériade (Arcueil, 1996). L.B.31.b.16914
04 August 2014
Cats, courtesans and Claudine: the colourful career of Colette
Many English readers first make the acquaintance of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954) through the stage or film adaptations of her novella Gigi (1945; 012550.p.6.). Deliciously frothy, it captures with elegance and grace the extravagant world of the belle époque, far removed from the austerities and humiliations of wartime France under the German occupation, and might give the impression that the author was a frivolous airhead with little interest in the realities of those harsh times. Yet while she was conjuring up the vanished Parisian demi-monde to enchant her readers and, she admitted, to lift them out of the drabness and anxiety of their daily lives, she was engaged in a far more dangerous and deadly serious enterprise – rescuing and assisting Jews, including her own husband, whom she hid throughout the war.
Born in January 1873 as the daughter of a retired army officer, Colette grew up amid the countryside of Burgundy which she lyrically describes in many of her writings. Her marriage at the age of twenty to Henry Gauthier-Villars, a writer and music-critic known as Willy, who was fifteen years her senior, transplanted her to Paris and led to the publication of her first novels, the Claudine series. These four broadly autobiographical stories of a young girl’s schooldays, her marriage to a much older man, her encounters with Parisian society, visit to the Bayreuth Festival and love affair with Annie, the narrator of the last book, did not appear under her own name, however, but under that of Willy, who, she later claimed, had read her jottings in old school exercise books, encouraged her to write, and appropriated the results. He combined plagiarism with infidelity, and in 1906 Colette left him and, with the help of Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf, became a music-hall artiste of some notoriety and the lover of her sponsor. She recorded her experiences and her fascination with the world of the music-hall and circus in Garçon, l’audition! (1901; the British Library possesses a presentation copy signed ‘Willy’), Entre deux airs (1895; 1578/1186), whose author was given as ‘L’ouvreuse du Cirque d’été’, and Mes apprentissages (010665.df.11).
Colette, Garçon, l’audition! (Paris, 1901) 1578/1188
In 1912 Colette married Henri de Jouvenel, the editor of the newspaper Le Matin, and the following year gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Colette. During the war she converted the de Jouvenel estate at St-Malo into a convalescent home for officers and in 1920 was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in recognition of her services. The marriage ended in 1924 when Colette divorced her husband following an affair with her stepson Bertrand de Jouvenel which is reflected in her novels Chéri (1920) and La fin de Chéri (1926), whose depiction of the relationship of the hedonistic young hero and the ageing courtesan Léa aroused considerable controversy.
Portrait of Colette by Jean Cocteau, from Colette, Le pur et l’impur (Paris, 1941) X.900/21054.
Colette enjoyed her new freedom to mingle with the Parisian circle of artists and writers surrounding Jean Cocteau in the 1920s, and rose to become acknowledged as France’s greatest female writer. As well as novels and autobiography, she wrote the libretto for Maurice Ravel’s opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (first performed in 1925), the story of a rebellious child who is punished by the objects which he has damaged in a tantrum and is finally rescued when he shows his repentance by tending a wounded squirrel. The list of characters includes a pair of cats, creatures for which Colette had a lifelong love; they feature frequently in her writings, and her novel La chatte (1933) centres on the bond between a young man and Saha, the cat who displaces his bride in his affections.
A cat looks on as Colette writes. Picture from Colette, Mes apprentissages ([Paris], 1936) 010665.df.11.
Colette’s third marriage in 1935 to Maurice Goudeket endured happily for the rest of her life, but placed her in considerable danger during the German occupation because of his Jewish origins, which compelled him to go into hiding in their attic. Remaining in Paris and continuing to write and publish, Colette made a living which enabled to help many other Jews, and in 1945 was elected to the Académie Goncourt as its first-ever female member, becoming its president in 1949. Since 1935 she had been a member of the Belgian Royal Academy, and in 1953 became a Grand Officier of the Légion d’honneur. Her work is notable for its delicate and subtly sensuous quality, evoked in such details as Claudine licking the precious ruby presented to her by her bridegroom ‘because it ought to melt and taste like a raspberry fruit-drop’, the scents of the wild herbs in Colette’s mother’s garden, the salt and sunshine of a holiday in Normandy where two adolescents discover each other in La Blé en herbe (1923, 012547.ccc.11), and the textures of fine lace or a cat’s fur.
When she died on 3 August 1954, Colette was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, the first woman in France ever to be given a state funeral. Although she was denied a Roman Catholic ceremony because of her two divorces, the scandals surrounding her racy career, bisexuality and spicy early novels had long since been dispelled by recognition of her outstanding gifts as a writer.
Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak
14 July 2014
Vive [la] France! 'Les Dieux ont soif' and the French Revolution
In 1921 the French author Anatole France (1844-1924; photo below from Wikimedia Commons) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament’. He had been a member of the Académie Française, and in 1927 the Symbolist author Paul Valéry was elected to succeed him among the Immortels. Tradition decreed that he should deliver a eulogy in honour of his predecessor, but instead the new Academician proceeded to launch an attack on France’s humble origins as the son of a Paris bookseller, his prose style, his politics and his pusillanimous nature. What was responsible for the discrepancy between the international acclaim which France received abroad and the vicious obloquy meted out to him in his own country so soon after his death?
Many of the reasons can be found in the resentment felt by Valéry and his fellow Symbolists at what they perceived as France’s mockery of their work. In reaction against the Romanticism of the early nineteenth century, he had written in the tradition of the Realist movement, and never more brilliantly than in his novel of the French Revolution, Les Dieux ont soif (Paris, 1912; British Library 12550.ppp.22).
Variously translated as The Gods are Athirst and The Gods will have Blood, this is the story of a young man, Evariste Gamelin, who during the Terror undergoes a transformation from a devoted son and sensitive artist to a fanatical member of the Commune prepared to despatch countless victims, including his own brother-in-law, to the guillotine, and ends up, like Robespierre, being destroyed by the Revolution itself in a coup which outlaws the entire General Council which supported the rebellious Commune. France mercilessly portrays the inexorable corruption of the principles on which the revolution was based as the Terror gathers momentum and sweeps bewildered and hapless innocents – an old bread-woman, for example, accused of plotting to rescue the Queen – into the Tuileries and onto the tumbrils on trumped-up charges of counter-revolutionary activities. The appearance of Marie Antoinette in court is almost incidental in the general turbulence, described in a brief throwaway paragraph or two. France shows how the personal and political are equally polluted as Gamelin becomes increasingly delusional, condemning a blameless young man to death on false evidence as he is convinced that the latter was the man who had seduced his mistress Elodie, and a disturbing element of increasingly frenzied and hectic sado-masochism marks their relationship. He illustrates the decline of lofty ideals to the squalor and squabbling of the Paris mob in a bread queue and dogs licking yesterday’s blood below the guillotine. Yet alongside these he creates painterly scenes of startling beauty – two women preparing quinces for jam-making, a small Savoyard boy entertaining passers-by with a dancing marmot – which complement the background of Gamelin, an artist, and Elodie, an art-dealer’s daughter. He also presents the reader with an entirely convincing depiction of a truly good man in the figure of the former aristocrat and avowed atheist Brotteaux, who rides on his last journey between a former monk and a young prostitute and offers comfort to them both.
A set of revolutionary playing-cards from 1790-92, similar to those designed by Evariste Gamelin in the novel, showing republican motifs including the elements, the seasons and values associated with the declaration of the Rights of Man, from Egalité-sur-Marne (Château-Thierry), in Henri-René d’Allemagne, Les Cartes à jouer du XIVe au XXe siècle (Paris, 1906) LB.31.c.6035.
France himself had seen at first hand the duplicity and deformation of ideals betrayed and political cynicism during the Dreyfus trial, and his action in coming to Dreyfus’s defence and thereby risking his social and literary reputation was not that of a timorous man. Moreover, the scrupulous precision with which he handled language stemmed from his conviction of the importance of preserving it from the kind of creeping debasement in the service of ideology which George Orwell, one of his greatest admirers, would later identify in his essay Politics and the English Language (London, 1946; shelfmark 12987.h.3.).
Two years after the publication of Les Dieux ont soif, France’s country, with the rest of Europe, would be plunged into another conflict which, Cronus-like, devoured its children as pitilessly as the Revolution did Gamelin. His evocation of the terrible consequences of fanaticism and the belief that any means are justifiable to achieve its aims endowed his greatest novel with an eerily prophetic quality in the years preceding the First World War, and continue to give it a timeless relevance today.
Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak
07 July 2014
Not just cycling: the other Tours de France
Today London hosts the finish of the third of the three British stages of this year’s Tour de France.
Yet the idea of a tour of France is an old one, and this blog will be about some of the antecedents of the cycle race: a royal tour of early modern France, the tour de France completed by journeymen in the 19th century, and a best-selling primary school textbook, Le tour de France par deux enfants, first published in 1877.
On 24 January 1564 the young king Charles IX and the Queen Mother Catherine de’ Medici set off on a royal progress that lasted until 1 May 1566, and took in most the country. The aim of the journey, which took place during the peace after the first War of Religion, was to display the king to his Catholic and Protestant subjects alike, and stamp his authority on his riven kingdom. The royal party travelled south down Eastern France into Provence and on to Languedoc and back up south-western and western France finally returning to Paris via the central province of Auvergne. The itinerary included stopovers in non-French border regions such as the Duchy of Lorraine and the Comtat Venaissin, a papal enclave. Just like the modern Tour de France, Abel Jouan’s 1566 account of the royal tour (reprinted Paris, 1759; 1321.c.1.) includes an indication of the distance travelled for each stage, and he also tells us that the King completed a total of 902 leagues, roughly 4,000 kilometres.
Apprentice craftsmen completed a ‘Tour de France’ lasting several years to learn their trade culminating in the production of a ‘chef d’oeuvre’ (masterpiece). Their journey was sustained by associations known as ‘compagnonnages’, quasi-masonic brotherhoods, which provided inns run by a ‘Mother’ in each town. The ‘compagnonnages’, of late medieval origin, but particularly strong in the early 19th century, still exist and today artisans can still complete a tour de France lasting from five to eight years. The best- known ‘compagnon’ is the joiner Agricol Perdiguier (1805-1875), also known as ‘Avignonnais-la-Vertu’ from his home town of Avignon. In his Mémoires d’un compagnon (Geneva, 1854-1855), Perdiguier describes in great detail the ‘Tour de France’ that he undertook between 1824 and 1828. The novelist George Sand, who greatly admired his earlier book, Le livre du compagnonnage (Paris, 1839) based the character of the carpenter Pierre Huguenin, the protagonist of her novel Le compagnon du tour de France on Perdiguier (Brussels, 1841; 1458.b.15) and English translation (Dublin, 1849; 12518.c.34.).
An edition of Perdiguier's memoir of his ‘Tour de France’ as a journeyman (Moulins, 1914) 010662.dd.26
Le tour de France par deux enfants (Paris, 1877; revised edition 1906) published under the name G. Bruno, but really by Augustine Fouillée (1833-1923), is an illustrated didactic and patriotic schoolbook. Two orphaned brothers, André (14) and Julien (seven), observe their dying father’s last wish and travel to France from Lorraine, annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, over the Vosges mountains during the night to evade the border guards to find their uncle in Marseille and become French citizens. The children travel round much of the country (there are local maps throughout). They discover the variety of its regions and the occupations of its people from agriculture to industry as well as the lives of its great men. The book shares its nation-building ideology with contemporary European classics for schoolchildren such as Edmondo De Amicis’ Cuore (‘Heart’) with its monthly story set in different regions of the newly unified Italian peninsula or Selma Lagerlöf’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils which describes the varied geography of Sweden. Unlike these works, however, Fouillée’s book is devoid of literary merit.
Crossing the mountains by night; illustration from Le tour de France par deux enfants (13ème édition, Paris 1878) 12202.eee.14
Founded in 1903, today’s Tour de France, a multi-stage three-week cycle race, has a different itinerary each year, but always consists of a circuit of France, la Grande Boucle (great loop), increasingly with stages in neighbouring countries, covering about 3,500 kilometres in total. It too is designed to showcase the regional variety of (mainland) French landscapes and cultural heritage. It also aims to reinforce the national identity and unity of mainland France known as the ‘Hexagon’ after its shape, implying ‘natural’ boundaries created since time immemorial, rather than built progressively over the centuries through marriage alliances and territorial annexations. For example in 1906 through to 1910, with the agreement of the German authorities, the race passed over the Vosges into the ‘lost’ former French territory of Alsace-Lorraine. French spectators reportedly sang the ‘Marseillaise’. The 2014 itinerary, meanwhile, commemorates the anniversary of the First World War with visits to Ypres, the Chemin des Dames and Verdun.
Teresa Vernon, Lead Curator Romance Collections
02 July 2014
The Triumph of Mannerism – Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence
De Triomf van het Maniërisme (The Triumph of European Mannerism), a mammoth (518 items) Council of Europe exhibition in Amsterdam in 1955 was the first comprehensive examination of Mannerism – the dominant, and previously overlooked, artistic style between the High Renaissance and the Baroque, roughly between 1520 to 1600. It was followed, a year later, by the Mostra del Pontormo e del primo manierismo fiorentino at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, on Pontormo and early Florentine Mannerist art. In 1972, L’École de Fontainebleau, an exhaustive (705 items) examination of French Mannerism, largely indebted to Italian artists working for Francis I, completed the trio of major exhibitions that led to a proliferation of monographs, conference proceedings and exhibitions on Mannerism which continues unabated. In the first half of 2014 alone there was a rich crop of Mannerist shows: El Greco in Toledo and Madrid (one on his library and one on his influence on modern art), Pontormo drawings in Madrid, and Baccio Bandinelli and Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence.
Pontormo & Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of Mannerism revisits the subject of the 1956 Florence exhibition. It follows the stylistic development of these two leading artists of early Florentine Mannerism in roughly chronological order but with separate sections on their portrait paintings and their drawings (they were both remarkable draughtsmen). They had much in common, both temperamentally and artistically. They were ‘born under Saturn’ (i.e. they were eccentric, restless, and anguished) and were influenced by Michelangelo’s paintings and by Northern Renaissance prints, especially Dürer’s.
The exhibition, as its title indicates, also aims to demonstrate that, after their common beginnings in the workshop of Andrea del Sarto, the careers of the two artists took different directions. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family for the rest of his life,whereas Rosso, thanks to his republican inclinations, was forced to lead a peripatetic existence, working in various artistic centres in Tuscany and also in Rome and Naples before going to France, where he spent his last ten years in the court of Francis I, becoming one of the key figures of the School of Fontainebleau. This last period of Rosso’s output, though examined in the catalogue, is largely omitted in the exhibition as it was the subject of a major show in the Château de Fontainebleau last year which demonstrated the far-reaching influence Rosso’s allegorical decorations exerted, through prints, on subsequent generations of artists. The present exhibition includes, nevertheless, two contrasting, examples from Rosso’s French years, his Pietà and Bacchus, Venus and Cupid, the first tragic and austere, the second erotic and voluptuous.
Rosso Fiorentino, Pietà (ca 1538-40). Paris, Musée du Louvre. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Rosso Fiorentino Bacchus, Venus and Cupid (ca 1535-39). Luxembourg, Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art. Image from Wikimedia Commons
The exhibition is a feast for the eyes. It opens spectacularly with three enormous detached frescoes, by Andrea del Sarto, Rosso, and Pontormo, from the atrium of the Church of SS Annunziata, all newly restored for the exhibition. Numerous other works have also been cleaned recently, sometimes with unexpected results – the cleaning of Rosso’s The Marriage of the Virgin has made St Joseph, traditionally depicted as an elderly man, look even more youthful whereas the head of a donkey, previously obscured by layers of grime, has been revealed in the background of Pontormo’s magnificent Visitation.
Rosso Fiorentino, The Marriage of the Virgin (Ginori Altarpiece) 1523. Florence, Basilica di san Lorenzo (Image from Artemagazine)
Pontormo, Visitation (ca 1528-29). Carmignano, Pieve di San Michele Archangelo. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
The Mannerist treasures in churches and museums in Florence and surroundings are
overwhelming. They include Pontormo’s most famous work, his otherworldly Deposition/Lamentation, in the church of Santa Felicita and his beautiful lunette fresco decoration of Vertumnus and Pomona, in the Medici country villa at Poggio a Caiano. Palazzo Pitti has the world’s most important collection of Andrea del Sarto paintings, the Uffizi an incomparable collection of paintings by Bronzino, Pontormo’s pupil and himself the subject of a memorable exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi four years ago. Bronzino’s frescoes for the Chapel of Eleonora da Toledo are in the Palazzo Vecchio where several rooms were decorated by Giorgio Vasari, Johannes Stradanus, and Francesco Salviati and other artists of the second generation of Florentine Mannerists.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek
A Select Bibliography of Florentine Mannerism and the École de Fontainebleau
Pontormo, Rosso and Mannerism in Florence
Pontormo e Rosso: atti del convegno di Empoli e Volterra progetto Appiani di Piombino. [Congress held on Sept. 22, 1994 in Empoli and on Sept. 23-24, 1994 in Volterra]. (Florence, 1996). YA.1998.b.216.
L’Officina della maniera: varietà e fierezzanell’arte fiorentinadel Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche, 1494-1530. (Venice, 1996). YA.2000.b.284.
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence (exh. cat., ed. by C. B. Strehlke; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A., 2004–5). m04/.37453
Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino: diverging paths of mannerism / edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. (Florence, 2014). LF.31.b.10009.
Pontormo
Mostra del Pontormo e del primo manierismo fiorentino : [tenuta al] Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, marzo-luglio 1956. (Florence, 1956). YV.1989.a.419.
Pontormo: disegni degli Uffizi / catalogo di Carlo Falciani. (Florence, 1996). WP.4334. v.79.
Pontormo, dibujos (Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, 12 de febrero-11 de mayo de 2014) [comisariado, Kosme de Barañano] (Madrid, 2014). LF.31.b.11064
Rosso Fiorentino
Cecile Scaillierez, Rosso. Le Christ mort. (Paris, 2004). YF.2014.b.2174
Antonio Natali, Rosso Fiorentino: leggiadra maniera e terribilità di cose stravaganti. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2006). LF.31.b.3723.
Le roi et l'artiste: François Ier et Rosso Fiorentino : Château de Fontainebleau, du 23 mars au 24 juin 2013 / commissariat, Thierry Crépin-Leblond, Vincent Droguet. (Paris, [2013]) YF.2014.b.420.
Bronzino
Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio. (Berkeley, 1993). YK.1994.c.10.
Bronzino: artist and poet at the court of the Medici / edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. (Florence, 2010). LC.31.b.8601.
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: the transformation of the Renaissance portrait in Florence / Carl Brandon Strehlke; with essays by Elizabeth Cropper ... [et al.]. (University Park, Pa, 2004). LC.31.b.2261.
Cellini
John Pope Hennessy, Cellini (London, 1985). L.45/3693.
École de Fontainebleau
L’École de Fontainebleau [catalogue of the exhibition in the Musée du Louvre and the Galeries nationales d'exposition du Grand Palais]. (Paris, 1972). X.410/5309.
Primatice: maître de Fontainebleau: Paris, Musée du Louvre, 22 septembre 2004-3 janvier 2005. (Paris, 2004). YF.2006.b.1071
Dominique Cordellier, Luca Penni, un disciple de Raphaël à Fontainebleau. (Paris, 2012). LF.31.a.4504.
Xavier Salmon, Fontainebleau, le temps des Italiens ([Heule?], 2013)]. LF.31.b.9839
Francesco Salviati
Francesco Salviati et la bella maniera: actes des colloques de Rome et Paris. (Rome, 2001). Ac.5233.a/284.
Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) ou, La bella maniera / sous la direction de Catherine Monbeig Goguel. (Paris, 1998). LB.31.b.17992.
Andrea del Sarto
Andrea del Sarto, 1486-1530: dipinti e disegni a Firenze : [catalogo della mostra a] Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, ... nov. 1986-mar. 1987. (Milan, 1986). YV.1987.b.798.
Giorgio Vasari
Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: art and history. (New Haven; London, 1995). YC.1995.b.4896.
Giorgio Vasari disegnatore e pittore, a cura di Alessandro Cecchi. (Skira, 2011). LF.31.b.8051
Pontormo, Vertumnus and Pomona ( 1519-21) Poggio a Caiano, Villa medicea. Image from Wikimedia Commons
23 June 2014
Napoleon III meets his nemesis: caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War
The ten months from early July 1870 to the end of May 1871 were among the most significant in French and German history. In a little less than a year France lost its hegemonic position in Europe to its rival Prussia and became a Republic, while a united Germany was created. The British Library holds a world-class collection of (mostly) French and (some) German caricatures in three separate collections bound in 55 volumes. The two larger collections (14001.g.41 and Cup.648.b.2) have recently been conserved, and are now accessible to researchers. We now need to conserve the last much smaller collection bound in four volumes (Cup. 648.b.8) to ensure that it too is fit for use. In many ways, these volumes act as a taster for the collection as a whole, and in this first of two blogs, we will look at the Franco-Prussian war as seen through the eyes of French and German caricaturists.
France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. The French Army of the Rhine, under the personal leadership of Emperor Napoleon III, invaded Germany on 2 August. After an initial ‘victory’ in an insignificant skirmish, the French army suffered repeated defeats at the hands of the superior Prussian forces and their South German allies. On 2 September Napoleon was captured with his army at Sedan and imprisoned. 100,000 French troops became prisoners of war.
This factual German lithograph shows the arrival of French prisoners at Ingolstadt in Bavaria prior to being interned. Note the ethnographic interest in the colonial troops from Africa.
Arrival of French prisoners at Ingolstadt, 10 August 1870
This crushing and humiliating defeat led to the immediate collapse of the Empire. Republican deputies proclaimed a Provisional Government of National Defence on 4 September.
The French and German caricaturists exhibit a common contempt for the defeated Napoleon and a desire to humiliate him.
This dramatic German caricature depicts Napoleon III speared by the German eagle and consigned to Hell, while his family flees to England crying ‘We are lost’!
Bilder -Cyklus. Schrapnels No. 1. (Düsseldorf, Selbstverlag. Fr. F. Reis)
This image and text is a witty riff on Goethe’s poem Der Erlkönig. Here the horseman is Napoleon and his young son the Prince Imperial. The Emperor rides on, soon to be engulfed by the flames, reassuring his son that the looming devil is but the ‘gatekeeper of his kingdom’.Eines alten Komödianten letzte Gastrolle – Erlkönig!
This striking French colour lithograph printed in Belgium shows a statue of King Wilhelm I of Prussia as the winner of the war in the macabre guise of a skeleton in uniform standing atop a mound of skulls.
Statue à élever à la mémoire du vainqueur et à l’ambitieux destructeur du genre humain. (1870. J. Dosseray, Editeur, rue de Prusse, 10, Cureghem)
On 18 January 1871, the German chancellor Bismarck proclaimed Wilhelm as the Emperor of a united Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. Adolphe Thiers and Jules Favre, the head and foreign minister of the new government elected in February, negotiated with Bismarck, but had to agree harsh terms finally ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt (10 May 1871). France lost Alsace and a considerable part of Lorraine to Germany, and an army of occupation was to remain in North-Eastern France until the payment of a large indemnity of 5 billion francs.
In this image, standing astride sacks of money labelled ‘5 milliards’ (5 billion), Bismarck crowns Wilhelm who in turn grabs two women personifying Alsace and Lorraine, while a weeping France and a tearful Thiers and Favre look on impotently.
L’Actualité. Par G. Gaillard fils. Ce qui les attend!... No. 2 Mars 1871. Signed G. Gaillard fils. (Grognet lithographe. Madre, éditeur)
Teresa Vernon, Lead Curator French Studies
References/Further Reading
Jean Berleux, La caricature politique en France pendant la Guerre, le siège de Paris et la Commune (1870-1871). (Paris, 1890). 7858.g.31
Morna Daniels, ‘Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune’ Electronic British Library Journal, art 5 , pp. 1-19 http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2005articles/article5.html
W. Jack Rhoden, ‘French caricatures of the Franco-Prussian War and Commune at the British Library’, FSLG Annual Review issue 6 (2009-2010), pp.22-24 http://frenchstudieslibrarygroup.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/fslg-annual-review-2010.pdf
Bettina Müller, ‘The Collections of French caricatures in Heidelberg: The English connection’, FSLG Annual Review issue 8 (2011-2012), pp.39-42 http://frenchstudieslibrarygroup.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/annual-review-issue-8-2011-12-current.pdf
Help us raise funds to conserve this collection of Franco-Prussian War caricatures. By making a contribution, you support our conservators’ efforts to clean, repair, and reback these precious volumes, making them accessible to users both now and in the future. Please make a donation at http://support.bl.uk/page/care-for-collections today; every amount makes a difference.
09 June 2014
Feasting, not fasting: Marie-Antoine Carême and the pleasures of the palate
For a man who would earn the sobriquet of ‘the king of chefs and the chef of kings’, Marie-Antoine (Antonin) Carême did not have an auspicious start in life on 8 June 1784. Not only did he bear a surname which in French means ‘Lent’, the season of forty days of fasting, but ten years later, when the French Revolution was in full swing, he was abandoned by his parents. However, the need to earn his living at such a tender age set him on the path which would lead him to preside over the tables of kings, emperors and the highest-ranking politicians of Europe.
The young Carême began humbly enough as a kitchen-boy in a lowly Parisian chop-house, but four years later embarked on an apprenticeship in a shop near the Palais-Royal belonging to the celebrated pâtissier Sylvain Bailly. The sound knowledge of techniques of working with sugar, marzipan and pastry which he gained there laid the foundations not only of his own business, the Pâtisserie de la rue de la Paix, but also of the spectacular pièces montées which he confected as window displays and to adorn the tables of wealthy clients. Bailly encouraged him to take the art of sugarcraft seriously and to frequent the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he pored over books on the history of architecture to gather inspiration from pictures and plans of temples, pyramids and ruins.
‘Hermitage on a rock’: one of Carême’s pièces montées, made of coloured biscuits to produce ‘un effet vraiment pittoresque’. From his Le Pâtissier royal parisien.
In keeping with the Revolutionary and early Empire vogue for the ideals of classical antiquity, these masterpieces won him commissions from members of Parisian high society, including Napoleon himself. Despite his pronouncement that ‘an army marches on its stomach’, the Emperor had little interest in food, but appreciated Carême’s talents, and when in 1804 his generosity enabled his chief diplomatic aide Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord to purchase the estate of Château de Valençay near Paris as a meeting-place for diplomats, the latter enlisted Carême’s services as his personal chef. After having satisfied Talleyrand that he could present a different menu for every day of the year without repetition or the use of out-of-season produce, Carême completed his training in his new post. The dishes which he prepared according to Talleyrand’s tastes and specifications show a surprisingly modern emphasis on simple, high-quality ingredients, fresh herbs and vegetables and local seasonal foods; some of these, such as asparagus with hollandaise sauce, are still popular today.
The fall of Napoleon might have proved disastrous for Carême, but in fact demonstrated the truth of the old adage that a good cook, at whatever level, is never out of work. In subsequent years he travelled to London as chef de cuisine to that well-known bon viveur, the Prince Regent, then to St. Petersburg (although his stay was so brief that Tsar Alexander I never tasted a single dish which he had prepared), and finally back to Paris as chef to James Meyer Rothschild of the famous banking dynasty. As a travelling celebrity chef he also worked in Vienna to provide banquets for Talleyrand’s guests during the Congress, and in Brighton, where visitors to the Pavilion can still buy tea-towels and tableware embellished with his menu for a gala dinner in honour of the future Tsar Nicholas I.
Fit for royalty: boar's head and suckling pig, embellished with skewers. From Le Cuisinier parisien
Carême’s inventiveness was not confined to the creation of succulent surprises. He is believed to be the originator of the classic chef’s toque, and was also the author of treatises not only on the culinary arts but on architectural projects to improve both Paris and St. Petersburg. The British Library holds several first editions of works on cookery by Carême, including Le Maître d’hotel français (2 vols., Paris, 1822; 1406.e.21), Le Cuisinier parisien, ou l’art de la cuisine française (1828; 1037.i.28), and Le Pâtissier royal parisien, ou Traité élémentaire en pratique de la patisserie ancienne et moderne (1815; 1406.f.2), besides English translations of his works made as early as the 1830s for British chefs eager to imitate his success.
Title page of Le Pâtissier royal parisien
It has been suspected that, like Emile Zola, Carême was a casualty of the toxic effects of French stoves, or more precisely of the harmful fumes rising from the charcoal over which he cooked. He died at his Paris home on 12 January 1833, aged only 48, and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, having accomplished a French revolution of his own in European cuisine. His remarks on the deficiencies of Viennese butchers and the pre-refrigeration trials of procuring fresh produce in Brighton in April (‘the lack of game is making itself felt, the poultry has grown old, vegetables become scarcer every day’) are as sharp as when they were first written, and while few readers would have the audacity to attempt to recreate his edifices in nougat and marzipan, his instructions for simpler delights such as pommes meringuées à l’hérisson, bristling with delicate hedgehog-like spikes of flaked almonds, put the pleasures of the imperial table within the reach of all those with a love of dishes to please the eye as well as the most refined palate.
Susan Halstead, Curator Czech & Slovak
Some of Carême's confections
23 May 2014
Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
The annual Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages will take place at the British Library on Monday 2 June in the Eliot Room of the Library’s Conference Centre.
Despite its rather specific title, the seminar always covers a range of topics in the fields of bibliography, printing, book history and publishing history, and this year we have a typically varied and interesting programme:
11.00 Registration and Coffee
11.45 ELIZABETH UPPER (Warburg Institute, University of London), Reconstructing Early Modern Workshop Practice for Colour Printing, c.1490-1630
12.30 Lunch (Own arrangements).
1.45 JOHN DUNKLEY, The Marriage of Gradgrind and Marple: Editing Eighteenth-Century French plays
2.30 GRAHAM WHITAKER (University of Glasgow), The ‘Science of Antiquity’ and the Nineteenth-Century Periodical in Germany.
3.15 Tea
3.45 NEIL HARRIS (University of Udine), Press Variants and Cancellantia in the First Edition of Alessandro Manzoni’s Promessi sposi (1825-26)
4.30 AENGUS WARD (University of Birmingham), Editing Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espanna
The Seminar will end at 5.15 pm.
The seminar is open to all and attendance is free, but please let Susan Reed ([email protected]) know if you would like to attend.
Printers at work; detail from the titlepage of Bernardus Mallinckrodt, De ortu ac progressu artis typographicæ dissertatio historica ... (Cologne, 1640) C.75.b.17.(1.)
25 April 2014
On tour with a translation
In an earlier guest post for European Literature Night, we heard from one of the translators of Antoine Laurain’s The President’s Hat. This was Laurain’s first novel to be published in English and was among the first batch of Gallic Books titles sold in the United States by Consortium. It was one of twelve titles chosen by a panel of independent booksellers for the ABA Indies Introduce Debut Authors promotion in Fall 2013 and Antoine was invited to appear at bookstores across the country. Here he describes his experience of that tour.
When I wrote Le Chapeau de Mitterrand I thought perhaps it might find a readership in France, and indeed this proved to be the case. A year later, another story began...
A few weeks after Gallic Books released The President’s Hat in the UK in March 2013, the fantastic feedback from British readers gave reason to believe that my very French story – which takes place in 1980s Paris in the days of François Mitterrand’s presidency – might appeal to a whole new audience. It seemed the ‘fairytale’ dimension, humour and optimism of the story could also work in another language. And not just any language, but the most widely spoken language in the world.
It was around this time that Jane Aitken and her team began to discuss the possibility of taking The President’s Hat on a tour of the USA. As American independent booksellers got behind the book, the three cities on the itinerary quickly grew to ten! From San Francisco to Boston by way of LA, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, Chicago, New York... Like a presidential candidate on the campaign trail, I set off to meet my novel in bookstores across the country for much of September 2013. I gave talks (in English, if you please, and without forgetting to throw in the customary joke), answered questions and signed many, many books. I think the last Frenchman to embark on a tour of this scale must have been Maurice Chevalier! Indeed my French publisher, Flammarion, said as much just last week: ‘I’ve never known any of our authors to do a US book tour ... apart from Michel Houellebecq, of course.’
The President’s Hat visits another President’s house.
One of the most memorable and surprisingly moving aspects of the trip was hearing my American readers pronounce the names of my characters : ‘When Daniel Mercier takes the hat ... talking about Fanny Marquant ... My favourite character is the nose, Pierre Aslan ... Do men like Bernard Lavallière still exist in France?’ There was something amazing about hearing the names I had come up with at my desk in Paris two years earlier pronounced in an American accent! I kept telling myself I was going to wake up one morning and find myself back home with the novel still unfinished and the idea of promoting it in the USA nothing but a dream. But it really was happening. This fairytale for grown-ups had worked its magic once again.
I sometimes have a look online and am thrilled to find that new reviews are still appearing regularly from both sides of the Atlantic. I’m delighted to have been able to bring a little happiness to readers I never imagined I could reach. I’m grateful to the team at Gallic Books and to my British and American readers for making all of this possible.
You can see Antoine’s photo diary of his tour here.
Antoine Laurain with a map of the USA
07 April 2014
Hats off to Laurain! A tale of three translators
In the first of our guest posts for European Literature Night 2014 Emily Boyce, in-house translator for Gallic Books, discusses how she and two others worked on the translation of this year’s featured French book.
It might surprise readers to learn that the English version of Antoine Laurain’s 208-page novel The President’s Hat, a light-hearted and uplifting meditation on the nature of power and self-confidence in Mitterrand’s France, was worked on by three translators; myself and Jane Aitken from Gallic Books and freelance literary translator Louise Rogers Lalaurie are unmasked at the end of the text rather than on the title page as is customary. Perhaps a collaborative effort might be expected of a weighty tome which would take an age for one person to tackle (Penguin’s recent multi-handed re-translation of Proust, for example), but a whimsical tale of a mislaid hat?
In our case, although timing was an issue and the text was certainly not without its challenges and complexities (how to deal with all those 1980s cultural and political references, for one thing), the main reason for splitting the translation was in order to capture the distinct voice of each character. The book is almost a succession of short stories as the hat passes from one head to another changing the lives of those who wear it, from the accountant who finds himself dining next to the presidential party in a Paris brasserie, to the aspiring writer struggling to free herself from a dead-end affair with a married man, to the perfume maker who’s lost his inspiration, to the staunch conservative set to surprise his fellow dinner party guests...
Voice is often the hardest thing to get right in a translation. The author will have carried each character around in his or her head for months if not years, perhaps building up a whole picture of that character’s life and personality, only a fraction of which might have made it into the finished book. The translator can usually only go on what’s on the page. In this respect, it occurred to Gallic MD Jane that the act of translation was rather like interpreting a play script, and it made sense to ‘cast’ translators to play each part.
Translators are undoubtedly versatile actors, but putting on a convincing portrayal of such a range of characters of different sex, age and background presents a real challenge. No matter how skilled a writer the translator is, he or she will have registers they feel more or less comfortable in, and their choice of words will always be influenced by their own experience. A translator of Proustian prose may struggle to render the kind of urban slang the award-winning translator Sarah Ardizzone specialises in; Sarah spent time living in Marseille specifically to pick up ‘Beur’ Verlan.
I translated twenty-something Fanny in The President’s Hat, being of a similar age myself, but I was also the voice of Bernard, the middle-aged man whose transformation from stiff bourgeois to art-loving liberal is signalled when instead of his usual copy of Le Figaro, he picks up leftie Libération. The casting of translator to role was partly practical – Louise had already translated the beginning of the story featuring accountant Daniel as an extract for Fiction France, so it made sense for her to continue with him – and partly a matter of personal preference; Jane may have been closest in age to perfumier Pierre, but she was also drawn to his story.
Jane and I are set to stage another co-translation with Antoine Laurain’s next book, The Red Notebook, which is coming out in spring 2015. This time the main characters are Laure (played by me), an expert gilder who has her handbag stolen, and Laurent (played by Jane), a bookseller who finds the bag and sets out to return it to its rightful owner. Perhaps Jane can draw upon her experience of running Belgravia Books in interpreting the part of Laurent. As for my method acting, I’d better start surrounding myself with gold!
Suggested further reading:
Hélène Gestern, The People in the Photo, translated by Emily Boyce and Ros Schwartz (London, 2014) H.2016/.7895. Original, Eux sur la photo (Paris, 2011) YF.2014.a.12047
Faïza Guène Just like Tomorrow, translated by Sarah Ardizzone (London, 2006) H.2007/2783. Original: Kiffe kiffe demain (Paris, 2004) YF.2008.a.30567.)
Author Antoine Laurain, photographed in Gallic Books’ bookshop
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