4
" In this watercolor Gavarni portrays an individual whose father was an industrialist and whose older brother was a distinguished professor. From the looks of him, Hippolyte Beauvisage Thomire had a keen eye for fashion in casual clothing, however.
He represents the new generation of bourgeois consumers that emerged during the July Monarchy. He is the modern young man off the newly invented fashion plates and out of the cast of Balzac’s Human Comedy.
Charles Baudelaire, the great cultural critic of Louis Philippe’s reign in latter years, called the artist Gavarni “the poet of official dandysme." Dandysme, Baudelaire said (in his famous essay “De l’heroisme de la vie moderne” [The heroism of modern life], which appeared in his review of the Salon of 1846), was “a modern thing.” By this he meant that it was a way for bourgeois men to use their clothing as a costume in order to stand out from the respectable, black-coated crowd in an age when aristocratic codes were crumbling and democratic values had not yet fully replaced them.
The dandy was not Baudelaire’s “modern hero,” however. “The black suit and the frock coat not only have their political beauty as an expression of general equality,” he wrote, “but also their poetic beauty as an expression of the public mentality.” That is why Baudelaire worshiped ambitious rebels, men who disguised themselves by dressing like everyone else. “For the heroes of the Iliad cannot hold a candle to you, Vautrin, Rastignac, Birotteau [all three were major characters in Balzac’s novels] . . . who did not dare to confess to the public what you went through under the macabre dress coat that all of us wear, or to you Honore de Balzac, the strangest, most romantic, and most poetic among all the characters created by your imagination,” Baudelaire declared. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
7
" Vernet received his commission for this project in 1838, a year in which concessions for the construction of railroads were a subject of passionate debate, and many of the deputies were carried away by visions of the glorious future this new invention would usher in, typical of which was the speech of the director of bridges and railroads in which he proclaimed that, after the invention of the printing press, railroads represented the greatest advance in the history of civilization.
In response to this enthusiasm Vernet broke traditional rules of decorum in his enormous mural, combining classical figures and traditional allegorical emblems with products of the industrial revolution. In one section of his mural composition, usually entitled Le Génie de la Science (The genius of Science), a nude allegorical figure is seated in the foreground, one hand on an air pump, the other on an anvil, while a modern steam locomotive is driven toward a railroad tunnel in the background (see Figure 2-2). If Vernet had been limited to one symbol to characterize the social and economic reality of the July Monarchy, it is doubtful that he could have found a better one. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
8
" The image of the locomotive and these signs of industry were closely linked, of course, in that construction of the railroad lines lowered transportation costs, stimulated economic growth, and led to the development of modern coal, iron, and engineering industries. It should be noted, however, that while progressive industrialization may have been a defining characteristic of economic life during the July Monarchy, few painters actually dealt with this aspect of contemporary reality in a direct way. This points up the fact that while Vernet’s mural may have been most representative of its time, it was not typical of the art of his contemporaries. This should caution us against making easy generalizations about the relations between art and society, or believing that art necessarily reflects its social context in a direct and unmediated way. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
9
" It is perhaps not superfluous to point out here that throughout the 1830s and 1840s travel was still for the most part an activity for the rich or the adventurous. Most transportation on the European continent was by ship or mail coach, and it was time-consuming, expensive, and uncomfortable. Not until the emergence of the train did travel become an activity for the middle and lower middle class. Yet the railroads were still in their infancy under the July Monarchy. The first passenger railway was not built until 1837, and by 1840 only 433 kilometers of rail had been laid down. Then railroad building picked up speed; by 1848, 1,592 kilometers of rail lines were in use while 2,144 more were under construction. The railroads were to encourage yet a new kind of travel publication, the railroad guide or itinerary, which described and illustrated (in wood engravings or lithographs) the major sights along a particular line. However, this new type of publication, though it originated during the July Monarchy, did not become widespread until the Second Empire. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
11
" The July Monarchy was the start of France’s Steam Age, a period when steam technology, much of it imported from England, began to transform perceptions of space and time (the steamboat and the railroad), material culture (the powerloom for weaving cloth), and the circulation of words and images (the mechanized printing press). The number of steam engines in France rose from six hundred in 1830 to five thousand in 1847, and contemporaries were powerfully aware of the changes they portended. Indeed, the July Monarchy has never received sufficient acknowledgment for setting the stage for the major economic boom of the 1850s and 1860s, for which the Emperor Napoleon III was happy to take credit. Nevertheless, in two fundamental ways, France before 1848 was more like it had been at the end of the eighteenth century than like it would be by the beginning of the twentieth. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
12
" Literary subjects as a whole enjoyed a great popularity at the Salon of 1839. France had a passionate addiction throughout the twenties and thirties to English literature, English history, and Goethe. This addiction is seen, for instance, in the extraordinary popularity of the historical novels of Walter Scott. Their pages held not only events and figures of profound interest to a history-curious society, but also a wealth of descriptive detail about the material side of life in other times: what people did, what their homes were like, how they spoke, how they dressed, what they fought about, what they believed in, and—most entertaining—whom they loved. These accounts, told by a fictional observer of the lower class, found universal favor. The educated admired Scott’s erudition, while all social strata loved his use of local color, description, and melodramatic anecdotes.
Scott’s historical novel, by format and methods, is the primary literary source of the genre historique in history painting. Both were equally popular in the arts. Both directly reflect bourgeois tastes and were dependent for their proliferation on a new literate, commercial society. By the early thirties, the Scott repertoire was so well known that a Salon audience would have found the stories recognizable without a catalog entry. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
13
" Books devoted to France and its various regions became increasingly popular toward the later part of the July Monarchy. This growing preoccupation with France itself—perhaps best exemplified in the novels of George Sand—was a complex phenomenon, related at once to romantic nationalism, to improving communications within France, and to the retreat, after the 1830 revolution, of the legitimist nobility to their country estates, which contributed to making the countryside fashionable.
Though by no means a new genre—they had been widely published since the middle of the eighteenth century—the travelogues had a wider audience than ever before during the July Monarchy because, like novels, they often appeared initially as installments in newspapers, to be published only later in book form. Thus, they were read by a broad segment of the public. Indeed, from upper to lower middle class, the French during the July Monarchy were a nation of enthusiastic armchair travelers. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
14
" Shortly after the advent of Louis Philippe, the movement to save France’s architectural heritage began in earnest. One of the more important acts in this preservation campaign occurred shortly after the July Revolution, when the official post of inspector of historical monuments was created; then, seven years later, the Commission on Historical Monuments was established, with Prosper Merimee, the renowned novelist and passionate archaeologist, at its head. Under the auspices of this agency surveys were made of monuments all over France, and requests for funds for restorations were directed to Parliament. At odds with our present notion that a good restoration is a minimal one, the nineteenth-century concept included additions that were in some way in keeping with the spirit of the building. This entailed adding intense polychromy and mural paintings to the walls of many of these newly appreciated edifices. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
16
" The harem picture, a natural locus for erotic fantasy, was a staple of visual imagery of the time, but images of the virile and heroic Arab warrior, such as those in the lithographs of Raffet, found an enthusiastic reception as well. As surprising as it might at first seem, empathy with the Arab warrior, the enemy of the French occupation army, was a regular feature of the visual reportage of the Algerian war and of Salon pictures. Indeed the leader of the Algerian resistance, Abd el-Kader, became something of a national hero in France. One might argue that the growing modernization process contributed to a widespread longing for its antithesis, for an exotic alternative to the quotidian reality of contemporary France, and dovetailed with the politics of colonization. Thus, orientalism may have predated and postdated the July Monarchy but was nonetheless a defining feature of sociocultural life during its span. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
17
" In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the conviction that history painting was the first of the genres in a rigid hierarchy determined by subject continued to infuse all aspects of the paternal French government program for the arts. This program was based on instruction, competition, critical review, patronage, and reward. The classical French academic system codified a canon of subjects and style, a grande manière, for history painting, based on the use of illustrious figures and stories on a large scale, which emphasized a moralizing, exemplary virtue. History painting thus told of humankind and its destiny. In descending order in the hierarchy below history painting came portraiture, landscape, and scenes from everyday life (em>genre painting). Within historical subjects, the divisions were further articulated by content: mythological subjects and ancient history, biblical and Christian subjects, literary themes, “modern” history (before 1789), and contemporary history (after 1789).
The grand tradition of history painting was formulated upon an ideal concept of beauty, with pose and gesture and body movement used to render inner states of being, creating compositions that represented the full range of human emotions. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
18
" The contribution of women to the art and literature of the July Monarchy (and the social and economic obstacles most of them faced) is a subject that has yet to receive serious and systematic consideration. There are, for example, the novels of George Sand, the essays of the social reformer Flora Tristan, the paintings of the young Rosa Bonheur, and the sculpture of the Princess Marie d’Orleans to be studied. The July Monarchy also saw the origins of a small French feminist movement, or “the emancipation of female thought” as it was then called. An early leader, Claire Demar, warned her sisters away from the romantic idea of “love at first sight.” As she observed:
I have the misfortune of not believing in the spontaneity of [this] feeling, or in the law of irresistible attraction between two souls. I do not believe that from a first meeting, a single conversation, can result certainty, on all points, and (I believe) it is not until a long and mature self-examination, serious thought, that it is permissible to admit to oneself that at last one has met another soul that complements one’s own, that will be able to live its life, think its thoughts, mingle with the other, and give and take strength, power, joy, and happiness.
Demar contended, “It is by the proclamation of the LAW OF INCONSTANCY that women will be freed; it is the only way. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
19
" Even were we to ignore its caption, Daumier’s lithograph of a defense lawyer being restrained and muzzled by the agents of a crooked judge (note the tipped scales) stands by itself as a powerful protest against the juste-milieu's campaign to silence the republican opposition in 1835. This was a central theme of his art at this time. In this case, the context is the so-called Procès monstre, the controversial Mass (or Monster) Trial of the leaders of the April 1834 uprisings, which began in Paris on 5 May 1835. The judges were the peers of France sitting as a high court to hear charges of crimes against the state. Specifically, Daumier alludes to the peers’ decision to arrest two newspaper publishers who had printed, and a group of republican deputies who had signed, a letter proclaiming that “the infamy of the judge makes the glory of the accused.” Press censorship was imposed four months later with the passage of the September Laws.
The three-phrase caption also deserves our attention, principally because it is so difficult to translate accurately. The second and third phrases (“explain yourself, you are free!”) are clear, but the initial (“Vous avez la parole”) represents something more than a loose translation such as “Go ahead” or “You have the floor” can fulfill. Literally one would say “You have the word,” and that is what the entire work (the image and caption read together) is actually about. For the republicans (and for the juste milieu) the dispute over the government’s attempt to restrain free speech was a test of the meaning of the July Revolution itself. To have “la parole”—the printed, as well as spoken, word—was to have language itself, and with it the ability to speak directy to the people. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
20
" From an art-historical point of view, the period of the July Monarchy was especially important for the emergence of the so-called Ecole de 1830, or School of 1830, the young generation of artists—including Louis Cabat (1812-1893), Camille Corot (1796-1873), Adrien Dauzats (1804-1868), Narcisse Diaz (1807-1876), Jules Dupre (1811-1889), Camille Flers (1802-1869), Paul Huet (1803-1869), Eugene Isabey (1803-1886), and Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867)—who reached maturity by the beginning of the July Monarchy. These artists altered the course of landscape painting in France by abandoning both the rule-bound classical landscape that had dominated French landscape art since its introduction by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain in the seventeenth century and the colorful romantic-picturesque topographic landscape imported by British watercolorists in the Restoration period, to turn instead to the depiction of the natural landscape. "
― , The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
