university press of america impressionism and its canon dec 2005

Impressionism and Its Canon James E. Cutting 2006 University Press of America Library of Congress Control Number: 2005934187 ISBN 0-7618-3344-7 For Claudia Lazzaro, my wife, who offered encouragement, a wry smile, an open mind, and a promise of what could be Contents Image Credits vii Preface ix Chapter 1: Culture, Art, and Science 1 Chapter 2: Canons and Their Structure 9 Chapter 3: Categories and Their Measure 21 Chapter 4: The Impressionist Artists 41 Chapter 5: Museums 69 Chapter 6: Dealers and Collectors 91 Chapter 7: The Core Canon 119 Chapter 8: The Broader Canon 135 Chapter 9: Scholars and Curators 157 Chapter 10: A Second Sample 169 Chapter 11: The Public and Mere Exposure 183 Chapter 12: A Theory of Canon Formation and Maintenance 199 Appendices 219 Bibliography 269 Index 279 Author Information 299 Image Credits Figure 2.1, page 11: Edgar Degas, La mélancholie (Melancholy, 1867-70, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC). Edgar Degas, Repasseuses (Women ironing, 1884-86, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Figure 4.2, page 50: Armand Guillaumin, Place Valhubert, Paris (1875, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Claude Monet, Le bassin d’Argenteuil (The Argenteuil basin, 1872, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Figure 4.3, page 52: Jean-François Raffaëlli, La place d’Italie après la pluie (Place d’Italie after the rain, 1877, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Nashville, TN). Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Le pont neuf (Pont Neuf, Paris; 1872, National Gal- lery, Washington, DC). Figure 5.3, page 80: Camille Pissarro, Verger en fleurs, Louveciennes (Orchard in bloom, Louve- ciennes, 1872, National Gallery, Washington, DC). Camille Pissarro, Printemps. Pruniers en fleurs (Orchard with flowering fruit trees, Pontoise, 1877, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Figure 6.2, page 101: Gustave Caillebotte, Le pont de l’Europe (variante) (On the European bridge, 1876-77, Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX). Gustave Caillebotte, Raboteurs de parquet (Floor scrapers, 1875, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Figure 6.3, page 109: Edgar Degas, La leçon de danse (The Dance Lesson, 1879, Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art, New York). Edgar Degas, Danseuses à la barre (Dancers Practicing at the Bar, 1876-77, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). viii Image Credits Figure 8.1, page 138: Berthe Morisot, Dans les blès (In the wheat fields, 1875, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Berthe Morisot, La chasse aux papillons (The butterfly chase, 1873, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Figure 11.1, page 186: Alfred Sisley Village de Voisins (Village of Voisins, 1874, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Alfred Sisley, Cour de ferme à Saint-Mammès (Farmyard at St. Mammès, 1884, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Figure 11.2, page 188: Paul Cézanne, Les cinq baigneurs (Five bathers, 1875-77, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) . Paul Cézanne, Baigneurs au repos, III (Bathers at Rest, 1876-77, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA). Figure 12.1, page 213: Edouard Manet, Croquet à Boulogne or La partie de croquet (The croquet game, 1868-71, private collection) Edouard Manet, Plage avec personnages (On the beach, Boulogne-sur-mer, 1869, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA). Preface If ever there was a study . . . needing as it does the co-operation of so many sciences . . . it is surely that of Art-history, and I would make the claim that the benefits it would confer would be at least equal to those it would re- ceive. . . . We have such a crying need for systematic study in which scien- tific methods will be followed wherever possible. Roger Fry, Last Lectures With these words Roger Fry (1866-1934)—artist, art critic, Bloomsbury group member, and enthusiast for the arts and humanities—invited the appear- ance of a book like this one. He recognized that there is much to learn in art from science and in science from art. Moreover, throughout his varied career he was very much involved with the topic of study here—French Impressionism. Fry was among the first art professionals in the English-speaking world to extol its virtues. From 1905 to 1910 he was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and he urged expansion of its collections in Impression- ism. In 1907 he arranged for the museum’s purchase of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Mme Charpentier et ses enfants (Madame Georges Charpentier and her children, 1878). 1 It was purchased for a considerable price from the Paris art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel after the Charpentier estate sale. It is now one of the prized Im- pressionist possessions of the Met. Moreover, as I will show, it is one of the thirty most reproduced images in the Impressionist literature. Fry may also have lost his job in the fallout over this acquisition. Nonetheless, he soon returned to England and much later was made a professor at Cambridge. He inhabited an important intellectual niche prior to the “two cultures” era, where at the same university C. P. Snow would later decry the lack of communication between humanities and the sciences. 2 Unlike Fry or Snow, however, I will not try to address or redress any larger division within larger intellectual pursuits. Instead, my aim is more modest. This book is an example showing that empirical analysis, although it can take vastly different forms, can be applied appropriately and usefully to many fields x Preface beyond its usual purview. Moreover, as a psychologist and cognitive scientist I feel I have some things to offer those concerned with the arts and culture. I am bold enough to offer, and to provide evidence supporting, an explicit theory of canon formation and maintenance. My key motivation stems from a personal experience that many will have shared. I have enjoyed going to art museums in North America and Europe for decades. I am consistently pleased by, and interested in, the images in them that I had never seen before. These are often more interesting and more rewarding to study than better known works—indeed, than the very ones I went to the mu- seum to see. I have often asked myself: Why have I not seen these images be- fore? The answer usually is that they are not part of any artistic canon. Why not? This book attempts to provide an answer. Among other forces acting on individuals within a society, there would seem to be genes that guide us to our particular pursuits and interests. Surely, as I will suggest in Chapter 1, we all possess genes that help shape a focus on art. Music, painting, dance, and more—even if officially banned in a given cul- ture—are everywhere, universal to all peoples. Equally surely, there would ap- pear to be genes channeling analytic pursuits. The history of science and tech- nology across all cultures is testament to this. Today, academics may lead a broader society in the possession of this trait, but engineers, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, chefs, hackers, numismatists, coaches, media commentators, and others cannot be far behind. Nonetheless, the unrestrained enjoyment of one peculiar type of analysis—the use of statistical methods on freshly culled data—may be the manifestation of one of the rarest of genes. Happily and un- apologetically, I confess to be such an individual. Indeed, this book is the result of the intersection of what may be the most widespread of our predisposi- tions—interest in things artful—and perhaps one of the least widespread—in- terest in things statistical. Nonetheless, the statistically averse should not worry. What I present is nei- ther frightful nor arcane. Statistics are merely rhetorical devices that many scien- tists use to convince one another. Since my intended audience is only partly a scientific community, I have placed obfuscating numbers and statistical tests outside the text in endnotes. With these adjustments, the flow of my argument is less disrupted by needless visual noise. Given that statistical rhetoric is ap- preciated by a smallish sector of humanity, it is necessary to convert its force into something more widely digestible. Indeed, the author of this revelation in my own educational background was fond of noting that the most powerful of all statistical tests is “the intraocular trauma test.” 3 That is, the important pat- terns deserving of our attention are those that, when properly presented, are so obvious that they just hit you between the eyes. The key here is in finding an effective medium in which to deliver this blow. The best way to do this, I be- lieve, is to graph the data of interest, making it a picture. But what are these pictures of? A pivotal distinction for research in the humanities, and particularly in the study of history, is that between primary and secondary sources. 4 Given a par- ticular event, primary sources are those told by actors or written immediately thereafter by witnesses; secondary sources are those written at a distance, in Preface xi space or time. Of course, most historical study uses primary sources. It is less common, but by no means rare, to study history through secondary sources. In- deed, this is called historiography. Since this book is the result of the study of many hundreds of secondary sources and since it uses statistics, it is an exam- ple—likely the first—of an empirical historiography of art. My secondary texts are all books ever published on Impressionist art and re- lated topics. To limit the scope manageably, I confined my search to all books in the Cornell University Library, one of the premier research library systems in the world, with more than seven million bound volumes and with an extensive Fine Arts collection. But more particularly I am interested in the images in these books—those that authors have chosen to reproduce for the reader. This book is a study of those images selected by their relative occurrences. I claim that their analysis can provide deep insights into the structure of the Impression- ist canon as we know it today. Secondarily, I am also interested in the contents of the Internet. What one finds there is a wealth of wisdom, opinion, and drivel. But more than any other source I can think of, it represents our cultures—the amalgam of American, European, and non-Western thoughts. Since late 2002, less than half of what was on the web was in English, and that segment contin- ues to diminish. But the best aspect of the web, for me and for most others, is that it is searchable. One can Google™, to use the emergent verb, and find wonderful, strange, and incredible things simply for the asking. The web will never replace books, but it is a new world that may soon be as rich as books. And so different. Finally, to think about art one needs images to look at. However, I have generally chosen not to present the most obvious canonical images. 5 Why not? The reason is that everyone else has, and one can find them on the Internet with a stroke of Google. Instead, I will present ten pairs of images for the reader to ponder, interspersed throughout these chapters, only to discuss them fully in Chapter 12. Enjoy these pairs, for the differential responses to them by scholars and by the public are the grist of my story. 6 James E. Cutting Ithaca, NY July 2005 Notes Epigraph: Fry (1939), p. 3. 1. The convention I have adopted throughout is that a painting, on its first cita- tion, will be referred to by its French title in open text and in italics, followed be- tween parentheses by its English title (unless that is identical or nearly so to the French), its date, and often the museum it in which it is found or else listed as in a private collection. When relevant to the discussion this will also be followed by the name of the individual who bequeathed it to the museum. French titles are either those from the artist’s catalogue raisonné or the name used by the museum, which often differ. English titles are either those used by the museum or those that com- monly appear in texts. Mary Cassatt’s work does not often appear in French texts and her catalogue raisonné (Breeskin, 1970) is in English. Thus, when her work only appeared in English-language works the titles are given only in English. Cézanne’s xii Preface second catalogue raisonné (Rewald, Feilchenfeldt, and Warman, 1996) is also in English, but it uses French titles for the artworks. On the second and subsequent citations of each painting only the French title will be used, often with the date, the museum, and the legacy. French and English titles are used together in Appendices 7.1 and 8.1. 2. On Fry and the Met: Bazin (1967, p. 250) reported that the Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art purchased Renoir’s painting in 1907 for $17,800. He suggested that Fry promptly lost his job. Other records show that he stayed at the Met until 1910. In addition, Sir Charles Percy Snow first used the phrase two cultures for an article in 1956. His book by the same title appeared a bit later, and then expanded (Snow, 1964). Part of the fame of Snow’s ideas was due to a harsh attack by F.R. Leavis, which then attracted further commentary on all sides. One of the purposes of this book is to show that publicity sustains a canon; the two cultures idea certainly be- longs to a twentieth century canon of ideas, and there is no question that Leavis, who did not like the idea, contributed greatly to its currency. Similarly, it is often said that the early scorn of the French establishment towards Impressionism certainly contributed to its rise. 3. Robert Abelson. For a delightful presentation of his view of statistics see Abel- son (1995). 4. See, for example, Hairston and Ruszkiewics (1996), p. 547. 5. Although there are none here in what I will call the first tier of the Impressionist canon, there are six images from the second tier: Degas’ Repasseuses (Women iron- ing, 1884-86, Musée d’Orsay), in Chapter 2; Monet’s Le bassin d’Argenteuil (The Argenteuil basin, 1872, Musée d’Orsay) in Chapter 4; Renoir’s Le pont neuf (1872, National Gallery Washington) in Chapter 4; Pissarro’s Printemps. Pruniers en fleurs (Orchard with flowering fruit trees, Pontoise, 1877, Musée d’Orsay) in Chapter 5; Caillebotte’s Raboteurs de parquet (Floor scrapers, 1875, Musée d’Orsay) in Chap- ter 6; and Morisot’s La chasse aux papillons (The butterfly chase, 1873, Musée d’Orsay) in Chapter 8. 6. I thank the very many colleagues who were kind enough to listen to or read ill- formed versions of this, but I am most endebted to John Bargh, Anna Brzyski, Mi- chael Kammen, Peter Ornstein, Jesse Prinz, Arthur Reber, Buzz Spector, and Kirk Varnedoe who offered encouragement at critical times. I also thank Kathleen Gifford for her editorial work, and the librarians of Cornell University for facilitating what must have appeared to be a very curious project. [...]... French Impressionism, and trace its formation and establishment Framing that argument needs five elements: Discussions of the artists, museums, dealers and collectors, scholars and their representations of Impressionism over the last century, and the public and its reception to the presentation of what scholars and curators have had to offer With these in place, I will then present a theory of canon formation... these reasons and others that I will touch on, French Impressionist paintings often commanded the highest sales prices at art auctions throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s the largest and best attended touring art exhibits were often those focused on French Impressionism Although Impressionism had a shaky start, the force of its canon was soon... First, Impressionism is modern This fact makes thorough documentation of its formation, its maintenance, and its structure much easier than for the canons of earlier periods Indeed, the available literature is vast and varied Classical Greek, Gothic, and even Renaissance and Baroque canons, for example, have very little documentation written at the time the works were wrought The fact that Impressionism. .. focus of this book Bases of the Argument My presentation of the establishment and maintenance of the French Impressionist canon relies on several elements Five are necessary and two are obvious: Discussions of the artists (Chapter 4) and discussions of the museums in which their artworks appear (Chapter 5) Two may be a bit less obvious: Dis- Culture, Art, and Science 7 cussions of the dealers and then... museum curator, and the publisher—call the shots on what is, and what is not, in the canon Like Bloom’s, this view also seems overly simplistic Canons may be capital, but I think there is an adventitious following of canons, not their control, in the creation of artistic capital And of course today the real capital is in popular culture, not in high culture and its canons of art Views on canons are not... five decades Moreover, within French Impressionism most all of the contributors have been dead for a century Virtually the entire corpus of its art produced by these individuals is known and owned by museums or in private hands Although, as we will see later, certain sales are still brisk, fewer and fewer of its paintings are resold each year Often, none of this is the case for many newer forms of art... spools of video and film as shown on screens of various kinds, and the bodies of dancers sculpting space over the course of a performance In the case of a canon of artistic images, these objects hang on walls, are reproduced in books, and have been digitized electronically to appear on laptops and in PowerPoint™ presentations A canon is also a concept, inside our heads Each one of us has a general idea of. .. token of a particular member of a canon serves the maintenance of its position within the canon More importantly, I will assume that the relative place of an artwork within a canon is represented, in part, by the relative frequency of its reproduction in scholarly and popular sources This assumption plays an important methodological role in what follows Third, canons are sustained intellectually and. .. chapters and, as suggested earlier, throughout I will offer a smattering of Impressionist image pairs for the reader to contemplate 14 Canons and Their Structure Eighth, university libraries are the near-perfect resources for assessing the structure, the maintenance, and the reception of a canon Libraries are the longterm repositories for many of our cultural objects, for our reproductions of them, and. .. visitors annually.10 All of this hoopla over Impressionism over the years has created a thick texture of works on the 6 Culture, Art, and Science artists and their oeuvres that I draw upon Without such documentation, the type and line of analysis I have followed would not be possible, nor would it make sense And all of this publicity brings Impressionism very close to popular culture One of my goals here is . Impressionism and Its Canon James E. Cutting 2006 University Press of America Library of Congress Control Number: 20059 34187 ISBN 0-7618-3344-7 For Claudia Lazzaro, my wife, who offered. touring art exhibits were often those focused on French Impressionism. Although Impressionism had a shaky start, the force of its canon was soon felt in museums. Within France, many of its images were. still brisk, fewer and fewer of its paintings are resold each year. Often, none of this is the case for many newer forms of art. Third, in all of high art, Impressionism may be the most popular and pub- licly