Arts & Leisure
Late 19th-century Paris and the countryside by way of Portland
By Rose Safran
The Portland Museum of Art offers a chance to tour Paris and the French countryside, now through Oct. 15. Worka include "Un Jeu de croquet (A Game of Croquet)," an 1872 oil on canvas by Louise Abbéma (France, 1858-1927.
Courtesy of the Gail and Tremaine Arkley collection
PORTLAND - Every year, the Portland Museum of Art mounts a major show designed to interest Maine tourists and residents.
This year, a trip to late19th-century Paris and the nearby French countryside is the theme. Via creative images, the exhibition interprets what was considered "modern life" at a time when Paris was noted as the culturally and socially "advanced" European city. Artists of the period were advised by the writer Charles Baudelaire to paint "modern life."
And so they did.
What did that mean? Essentially, the painters - regardless of style, materials and proclivity - took heed to the Baudelaire message and, applying the brush in different ways, painted what they saw happening. It was a Paris undergoing enormous upheaval - a rebuilding of the entire city had taken place, boulevards were crowded with people, art galleries were springing up, becoming gathering places, cafes were everywhere, theater was popular, shops attracted beautifully-clad women, concerts prevailed, balls were held, the bridges over the Seine were filled with people moving about the urban turf.
At the same time, urban life also meant crowded quarters, a have and have-not division consisting of those who worked to live and those who lived to play. Amid the beautiful people, the well-coiffed women of that day, were the laundresses, prostitutes and drug addicts. Not far from the Tuilleries were the tenements.
On the countryside, another explosion was happening - railroads were now extensive; trains were easily transporting tourists and artists to outlying places, to beaches, places of recreation with a host of sports and activities awaiting them. An entire new landscape had become available and the artists took advantage of it, establishing themselves in places such as Argenteuil, painting not only the changing countryside (i.e., its becoming industrialized) but also visiting places such as Trouville, a resort, painting regattas, croquet, horseback riding and other leisurely activities.
This exhibition, entitled "Paris and the Countryside: Modern Life in Late-19th-century France" explores this evolving social structure at a time when Paris was considered the most modern city in the world and it does so via art created by some of the greatest names in the history of art as well as by many lesser, relatively unknown ones.
At the same time, through juxtapositions (some of which will seem strange to viewers) the various artistic approaches; i.e., the "modernist" artistic trends - impressionism, pointillism, symbolism, post and neo-impressionism and even a touch of abstract and imported style fads such as the Japanese - present a variety of approaches to the changing scene.
For example, the presence of trains and smoke on the countryside might take on an "impressionist" look - or a sharper, clearer one. This exhibition, then, is a visualization of "what was happening" combined with "how artists were presenting it" in two places, Paris and the countryside, during a very specific time.
There are 88 works of art in the exhibit, some small - others massive, a mix of media including oils, watercolors, pastels, etchings, wood engravings, lithographs. Around 40 or so artists are represented, some such as Cezanne, Manet, Van Gogh, Boudin, Matisse, Seurat, Sisley by single works of art, others with multiple works.
There are 10 lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec, that great purveyor of café life including his famous image of the actress Jane Avril and his design for the remarkable symbolist publication, "La Revue Blanche," which published the work of the group known as the Nabis (there's a charming Maurice Denis painting, "Noele's First Steps," in the show).
A significant oil, too, is Toulouse-Lautrec's depiction of his aristocratic father on a horse. The Pissarro paintings are outstanding in speaking of a crowded Pont Neuf and busy Boulevard Montmartre - impressionist testimony to urban place as the great gatherer of continually on-the-go souls and sporty carriages taking them to events.
Tissot's massive, chock-full-of-Important People canvases are wonderful lifestyle comments of the period: in particular his "Political Woman" (she'd be today's trophy wife) and his "The Artists Wives." Along with Degas' s famous dancers appears his sensitive painting of a woman hard at work ironing. Other Degas paintings include an etching of his friend Mary Cassatt visiting the Louvre and a remarkable Spanish-master influenced one, "Pagans and Degas' Father."
Cassatt, herself, is represented by a charming 1903 pastel of a child, perhaps a family member, "Simone in a Plumed Hat."
The most notorious actress of the day, the popular Sarah Bernhardt was also an artist (as the recently closed exhibit at New York City's Jewish Museum also indicated via artifacts and examples of her work); Alfred Stevens paints her in her studio in 1890, palette in hand - isolated as a woman artist, even she, with all her notoriety, like Mary Cassatt, was not permitted to study with men.
In 1878, Jean Berard paints that gigantic marketplace filled with people and stalls - "Les Halles." Winslow Homer visited Paris in 1867 and produced two engravings of Parisian Balls and one of art students and copyists in the Louvre which were published in Harper's Weekly.
The exhibition includes five transfer lithographs from Pierre Bonnard's graphically superb "Some Scenes of Parisian Life" of 1899 as well as sensitive works on paper by Theophile-Alexandre Steinlein including a lithograph of washerwomen carrying their heavy loads and a striking etching of a morphine addict injecting herself. This mix of gay life with sad life not only anchors this interesting trip into the Parisian past and French countryside in its time, but also adds validity to its fundamental theme. No era is without its downside.
"Paris and the Countryside: Modern Life in Late - 19th - Century France" will remain on view at the Portland Museum of Art, its only venue, through Oct. 15. Available is a four-color catalog containing scholarly essays and including 75 color illustrations.
