# The Photographic Pantheons of French Impressionists

Hadrien Viraben

► To cite this version:

Hadrien Viraben. The Photographic Pantheons of French Impressionists. Alexis Clark; Frances Fowle. Globalizing Impressionism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism, Yale University Press, 2020, 978-0-300-24775-6. hal-02910414

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<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Hadrien Viraben

Contribution à Alexis CLARK et Frances FOWLE (dir.), *Global Impressionism : Reception, translation, and transnationalism*, Londres, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2020.
Préprint. Version définitive publiée : http://www.aaeportal.com/publications/-19996/globalizing-impressionism--reception--translation--and-transnationalism.

*The Photographic Pantheons of French Impressionists*

**Figure captions:**

Fig. 1. Antonin Mercié, *Monument à Meissonier*, 1895. Marble. 170 x 352 x 430 cm. Poissy (originally erected in the jardin de l'Infante, Paris).

Fig. 2. Théodore Duret, *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin* (Paris: H. Floury, 1906), 49.

Fig. 3. Wynford Dewhurst, *Impressionist Painting: Its Genesis and Development* (London: G. Newnes, 1904).

Fig. 4. Vittorio Pica, *Gl'Impressionisti francesi* (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d'arti grafiche, 1908), 125.

Fig. 5. *Claude Monet 1840–1926*, exh. cat. (Berlin: Thannhauser, 1928), 6–7.

Fig. 6. “Documents,” *Bulletin des expositions - Galerie d’art Braun et Cie*, n° 3 “L’impressionnisme et quelques précurseurs” (January 22, 1932): 3.

Fig. 7. Charles M. Kurtz, *A Special Exhibition of Paintings by the French Impressionists*, exh. cat. (St. Louis: Saint Louis Museum of Fine Arts, 1907), 8.

Fig. 8. Paul Paulin, *Camille Pissarro*, 1903. Patinated plaster. 65 x 35 x 32 cm. Paris, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.

Fig. 9. Paul Paulin, *Jean-François Raffaëlli*, c. 1912. Glass negatives. Each, 12 x 9 cm. Clermont-Ferrand, musée d'Art Roger-Quilliot.

Fig. 10. Paul Paulin, *Jean-François Raffaëlli*, 1912. Bronze. Dimensions unknown. Present location unknown.

Fig. 11. John Rewald, “L’Art français dans les écoles françaises,” *Marianne*, April 27, 1938.
On October 6, 1909, U.S. impressionist Mary Cassatt declined to send her photograph to John Wesley Beatty, director of the Carnegie Museum of Art:

> In reply to your form of Sept 16th asking for my photograph, I don't possess one, and it would be very disagreeable to me to have my image in a catalogue or in any publication.

> It is always unpleasant to me to see the photographs of the artists accompany their work, what has the public to do with the personal appearance of the author of a picture or statue? Why should such curiosity if it exists be gratified?¹

Founded in 1895, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh would be one of the first contemporary art museums in the United States. Its flagship exhibition, the Carnegie International, is today the longest-running display of contemporary international art in North America.² In her letter to Director Beatty, Cassatt underlined the reasons for her quarrel with the exhibition organizers' decision to use small photographs of the artists to accompany their paintings and sculptures. The public, Cassatt insisted, should not require the image of the artist in order to appreciate the works of art presented. Despite Cassatt's harsh rebuke and refusal to participate in the plan, the 1909 Pittsburgh exhibition catalogue reproduced the photographic likenesses of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. For Cassatt, such images testified to the curiosity of the public at a time when new reproduction technologies and accelerated media coverage had started to make artists into celebrities.³

It was also in 1909 that Cassatt refused to be promoted by another likeness: she turned down Paul Paulin's offer to portray her in a sculpted bust that would then be included in the sculptor's gallery of statues celebrating the French impressionists. In a letter to her close companion and fellow art collector Louisine Havemeyer, she repeated her distaste for the current efforts to glorify and memorialize the impressionists: "Did I tell you they want my bust for the Luxembourg with all the other painters of my set. Such stuff. I refused. . . .What one would like to leave behind one is superior art, & a hidden personality."⁴

Despite Cassatt's qualms, during the 1900s several series of portraits devoted to the French impressionists were created throughout the world and in different media. Besides sculpture, another kind of portrait "gallery" could be described in the metaphorical sense of André Malraux's "Musée imaginaire" or Cassiano dal Pozzo's "Paper Museum."⁵ This last type of portable portfolio particularly favored photography as a way to unite portraits created under various circumstances. These photographic collections first appeared in early monographs
devoted to the history of impressionism: in England, Wynford Dewhurst's *Impressionist Painting* (1904); in France, Théodore Duret's *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes* (1906); and in Italy, Vittorio Pica's *Gl'Impressionisti francesi* (1908).⁶ In these books, which are further discussed by Laura Moure Cecchini and Alexis Clark in the present anthology, photographic documents assumed a critical role. They made the physical likenesses of the masters of modern art recognizable to a worldwide readership. From the start of the century, these three international historians of impressionism thus participated in establishing a visual pantheon of masters. They linked a canon of French impressionist painters' names and works to an iconography of their faces.

According to Roger Marx’s review of *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes* in the *Gazette des beaux-arts*, the strength of such a book lay precisely in its impact on a wide public: “Nowadays, the main issue is no longer to join the elite to [the impressionist cause], as it is already won . . . but the ‘compact majorities.’ . . . Nothing is more suitable to convert them than this book: an abundant illustration adorns a text that is pleasant and easy to read; it is enough to seduce, convince, and fully achieve, according to the author’s wish, the double goal of popularization and tribute.”⁷

Portrait series were directly involved in making such tributes. Whether sculptures, photographs, or sometimes reproductions of portrait paintings, these series were easily disseminated, as their relatively small size in portable books meant that they could reach a global public, including those without local collections of French impressionist works. Printed in bound volumes, these images effectively constituted pantheons of impressionist artists. Their aggregation visually defined an impressionist canon as limited to French art, while their monumentalizing mission instilled that canon into public memory. In this regard, Cassatt’s refusal to be included in these iconographies certainly played a role in her marginalization from impressionist “sites of memory.”⁸ If these portrait collections acted as commemorative tributes or monuments, they also shared the characteristic of being relatively discreet—though still not sufficiently so for Cassatt.

The French impressionists' own relationship to the idea of monuments or commemorations was complex, to say the least. Their independence from the official Salon required that they dissociate from the traditional *culte des grands hommes*, in particular from the canonizing accolades of academic careers.⁹ It would have been unimaginable to create monuments to the
French impressionists similar to the life-size statues erected between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries in honor of the likes of Alphonse de Neuville, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Ernest Meissonier (fig. 1). The iconophilia of a growing number of international admirers of the French impressionists thus resulted in sculpted but modest forms of glorification via Paulin's busts, which could satisfy both the expectations of the general public and the imperatives of the artists.

The portrait portfolios contained in the first monographs devoted to French impressionism, published and circulated while these artists were still very much alive, thus acted as another type of discreet or humble monument. This characteristic here refers not only to the practical dimension of their size, but also to the ethos of independent art. While having the appearance of a tribute of respectable size, these non-monumental monuments retained all their capacity to shape the writing of history. Having the advantage of being easily disseminated throughout the world, they helped to inscribe a canon of impressionist masters into the memory of the international public.

## THE INTERNATIONAL CIRCULATION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIOS

The series of portraits published in the books by Dewhurst, Duret, and Pica all appeared without crediting the photographers. The names of these portraits' photographers are still today rarely known. The few photographers who have been positively identified include J. M. Lopez, Frederick Hollyer, and Clément Maurice.¹⁰ The production dates of these professional photographs and even the techniques used also remain relatively obscure. Only a few scholars have accurately attributed such images to specific photographers—images that have been tirelessly reproduced by art historians as documents. For similar reasons, what mattered to early twentieth-century authors and readers of impressionist histories was not the identities of the photographers but those of the artist-sitters.

In France, Duret illustrated the frontispiece of his 1902 monograph on Édouard Manet with an engraving after a photograph of the painter by Lopez.¹¹ The bust-length photograph depicts Manet from the front, his eyes turned slightly to his right. The artist's body has been squeezed into a bourgeois suit and further restricted by the tight focus of the lens on his trim frame. In a
second photograph attributed to Lopez, an elegantly dressed Manet appears in three-quarters frontal view, with his balding head and straight posture on display.¹²

Lopez's photograph sets a precedent for a later use of impressionist portraits. Four years later, Duret's *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes* (1906) used photomechanical printing techniques that allowed for more accurate reproductions to circulate. Photographic portraits of Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Paul Cézanne, and Armand Guillaumin were reproduced at the start of each of Duret's biographically based chapters.¹³ Only Berthe Morisot was represented by a painted self-portrait.¹⁴ Monet's portrait presented the very same format, pose, and costume as Lopez's photograph of Manet. Two other pictures of Monet taken by the same anonymous photographer were published by Dewhurst and Pica and only presented slight variations: a bust-length, three-quarter view portrait presents Monet without his hat, and a knee-length, frontally posed portrait shows the artist now with a bowler hat.¹⁵ Pissarro's photograph also showed the artist in fashionable dress, with his face turned to meet the gaze of the viewer (fig. 2).

Two years earlier in London, Dewhurst had already included portraits among the illustrations for his own monograph on French impressionism (fig. 3). Dewhurst, however, largely extended his book's apparatus, with photographs of Auguste Pointelin, Jean-François Raffaëlli, Georges d'Espagnat, Maxime Maufra, Émile Claus, and Alexander Harrison as well as the portrait of Manet painted by Henri Fantin-Latour.¹⁶ In 1908 Pica, author of the first Italian monograph on the movement, reproduced photographic portraits of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Guillaumin alongside those of Johan Barthold Jongkind, Eugène Boudin, Albert Lebourg, Raffaëlli, Federico Zandomeneghi, and Théo van Rysselberghe and painted portraits of Manet, Edgar Degas, Jean-Louis Forain, Sisley, Morisot, Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh (fig. 4).¹⁷

Compared to Duret, who, in limiting photographic representations to the French impressionists, implicitly elevated these artists above non-French practitioners of impressionism, the extent of the portfolios published in England and Italy is notable. In addition to the proclivities of the individual authors, the disparate contents of these photographic portfolios may be attributed to the national context of publication or the choices executed by editors. Duret's significant difference in age from Dewhurst and Pica partly explains the latter authors' decision to include younger artists in their monographs, especially Pica's "divisionists" (*divisionisti*) and "synthetists" (*sintetisti*).¹⁸ The desire to create a popular book with an abundance of illustrations also likely precipitated the increase of portraits in the Italian monograph. The difference of
national contexts further contributed to Dewhurst's extension of the boundaries of French impressionism and to his inclusion of the works and faces of international representatives of the movement. In their respective expansions of impressionism's chronological and geographical reach, the illustrations of the first monographs dedicated to impressionism in England and Italy signaled that "impressionism" as a label and canon remained more fluid at the beginning of the twentieth century.

## CIRCUMSCRIPTION AND STABILIZATION OF THE CANON

Duret's work to circumscribe the same canon and then formalize it through these portraits may be understood as coming out of his concern that the label "impressionism" had been diluted.¹⁹ He thus repeatedly asserted the need to impose precise criteria on who and what constituted impressionism. He excluded artists born too early, artists who had refused the "impressionist" epithet, and also international artists whom he perceived as coming late to impressionism. Duret could thereby manipulate his canon to include Cézanne while excluding Degas, Gustave Caillebotte, Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Signac. With apparent objectivity, Duret defined an "impressionist" as a painter belonging to a narrow period in the past, trained between 1865 and 1870, and present at the 1874 and 1877 Impressionist Exhibitions. Historical or true impressionists had had to struggle heroically under the weight of a label before it became widespread, fashionable, and, ultimately, corrupted.

Among those in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who wrote the history of French impressionism, Duret, as a longtime friend of the French painters and as one of their oldest critical supporters, had unparalleled status and authority.²⁰ In the end, his position and prestige ensured the historiographical posterity of his particular canon, which became ever more codified as it was repeated across his publications that, as detailed elsewhere in this anthology, appeared in multiple languages and editions.

Dewhurst, Duret, and Pica shared a common perspective on the place and role to be given to these images of artists, alongside the paintings. The three historians felt that such documentation was necessary, and that it was best expressed through photography. Moreover, their series brought together portraits of Sisley, Guillaumin, Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro that, still today, are probably the most commonly reproduced images of these artists. Together, these three authors thus contributed to the international establishment of a relatively stable iconographic pantheon.
Furthermore, the photographs systematically presented bust portraits centered on the artists' faces. Consistent use of this type of image permitted a clear view of each artist's appearance and enabled the formation of a harmonious series. Hence, when Dewhurst had to choose between two portraits of Camille Pissarro transmitted by his son Lucien, he preferred the photograph by Hollyer (see fig. 3). This picture had probably been made during the elder Pissarro's stay in London in 1897. At that time, Hollyer was a renowned photographer, famous for his reproductions of works of art and portraits of celebrities. As usual, Hollyer had taken several photographs of Pissarro: the bust in profile with the head turned toward the camera, wearing a beret; the bust and the face in profile, with or without the same beret. Dewhurst preferred Hollyer's photograph to a more informal image by Antonin Personnaz that showed Pissarro and his wife in the orchard at Éragny.²⁵

The clarity of these portraits stands in stark contrast to seemingly more candid but in fact carefully composed photographs taken by those who visited Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence. Ker-Xavier Roussel and the Bernheim-Jeune brothers staged their encounters and conversations with Cézanne in order to testify to the exceptional nature of their relationships with the artist.²⁶ During their visit in 1902, the Bernheim brothers took a series of photographs depicting their dialogue with the master of Aix-en-Provence, which they later published in 1914. Similarly, Roussel photographed various stages of Cézanne's work on the motif of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire in 1906, alongside another witness and painter, Maurice Denis. This series was also published for the first time in 1914. Compared to these apparently casual and intimate scenes, portrait photographs of the French impressionist masters acted as substitutes for an actual meeting between the painter and the reader.

## THE VALUE OF ICONOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION

Duret's interest in artist-portraits would be confirmed in successive versions of his two monographs on Manet and the French impressionist painters, which included reproductions of painted portraits rather than photographic portraits of the artists. Shortly after World War I, while completing the second edition of his *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes*, Duret informed Lucien Pissarro of this modification: "In the first edition of my *Histoire des Impressionnistes*, I provided portraits of the artists, and of your father among them, as photographs. In the new edition I just put in [the editor] Floury's hands, I didn't want to repeat myself, by providing
portraits in *photos*. I wanted to present portraits painted by the artists themselves or by artists close to their school.”²⁷

Duret further explained that he had not found a painted portrait of the elder Pissarro that could suitably replace the previously published photograph. The second edition of his book went to press without an image of Camille Pissarro. Only the third edition (1922) included the 1903 self-portrait, whose reproduction had been provided by the painter's heirs.²⁸ Duret also failed to find alternative images for Guillaumin and Sisley in 1919. In 1922 he finally used a self-portrait by the former and what he believed to be a portrait of the latter by Renoir (1873–74). In reality the latter painting portrayed Monet, whom Duret had erroneously identified as Sisley.

From Duret's perspective, the painted portraits belonged to the same category as the photographs: both constituted iconographic documentation. As he explained in his letter to Lucien, they responded to his desire to show the public previously unpublished documents.²⁹ At first, the choice of painting rather than photography might seem paradoxical, as oil on canvas potentially veered away from the veracity expected of the camera. Photographic portraits published as anonymous documents were clearly seen as products of a mechanical mode of production, while painted portraits were reproduced with the mention of their author and, implicitly, the artistic expression of a subjectivity. In fact, Duret's choice when it came to the later editions of his book was probably dictated by technical and financial constraints. Indeed, the photographs reproduced in the Floury edition of 1906 attested to its wide range of illustration types and its luxurious quality. By comparison, the reprints, intended to be sold at a lower price, were illustrated using a simplified and homogenized process. Hence, they compelled Duret and his editors to use the same process of reproduction for both impressionists' works of art and their portraits. The new images were nevertheless also accepted as a form of objective documentation.

The extent of Duret's interest in iconographic documentation may also be seen with the second edition of his *Manet* (1906). For this volume, Duret exchanged the earlier photograph by Lopez with a portrait of the artist by Alphonse Legros (1863). Duret had accessed this painting with the approval of its owner, Léon Leenhoff, Manet's heir.³⁰ Three years after this publication, Duret wrote to Leenhoff, urging him to donate the portrait to the Petit Palais. Having previously considered it a document, Duret attributed little artistic and monetary value to this work. Instead, it would allow “everyone to know Manet's physiognomy, since no portrait of him can be found
in museums.”³¹ Duret was successful: Leonhoff agreed to donate the painting, and two weeks later Duret himself forwarded the agreement to the Petit Palais curator Henry Lapauze.³²

## DURAND-RUEL'S IMPORTATION OF AN IMPRESSIONIST PANTHEON ONTO U.S. SOIL

While it is difficult to know the details related to production of these photographs used in the first monographs devoted to the history of impressionism, a few clues shed light on their distribution. Dealer Paul Durand-Ruel undoubtedly played a central role in this process, helping to canonize the painters represented by his gallery, above all Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. Mention of Durand-Ruel's copyright appears in several publications, thereby suggesting that he was frequently solicited to obtain these portraits for publication.³³ Durand-Ruel also held the copyright on reproductions of many French impressionist paintings, and he similarly controlled the diffusion of those reproductions and their copyright. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Durand-Ruel's gallery and its photo library were thus indispensable for any publishing project on French impressionism.

The Carnegie Institute archives further confirm Durand-Ruel's central role in creating a pantheon in the United States analogous to European examples. With a virtual monopoly on the sale and exhibition of French impressionism in the United States, the Parisian gallery and its New York branch would be key contacts for the director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, John Wesley Beatty, who organized the Carnegie International starting in 1896. Since the painters themselves were reluctant to organize this type of overseas operation, Durand-Ruel acted as the exclusive supplier of French impressionist paintings for the first edition of the Carnegie International, where he also promoted "several younger men of the new school, [Maxime] Maufra, [Gustave] Loiseau, [Henry] Moret, [Georges] d'Espagnat," alongside the historical masters of the movement.³⁴ In addition to delivering paintings, his gallery provided photographic portraits for the catalogue, whose editors, motivated by an educational mission, were keen to present the likenesses of the artists on display.³⁵

Durand-Ruel's gallery would continue to hold a monopoly on U.S. consumption of French impressionist original works of art and their reproduction. In 1907 the New York branch, headed by Paul's son, Joseph Durand-Ruel, was the sole source of a large traveling exhibition entitled *French Impressionists* that reached audiences far from U.S. cultural capitals.³⁶ From October
1907 to June 1908, the exhibition stopped at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, the Arts Guild in St. Paul, and finally the Wisconsin School of Art in Milwaukee. The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy introduced this exhibition with two articles containing a pantheon of photographs provided once more by Durand-Ruel.³⁷ Identical images appeared in the catalogue of the Buffalo and St. Louis exhibitions and were actively researched by the Carnegie Institute (fig. 7).³⁸ The photographs supplied for this U.S. touring show appear to have been significantly older portraits, dating back to the 1870s and 1880s, since these were probably the only ones available to the New York branch of Durand-Ruel. The series had similar formal characteristics to its European counterparts and was made with the same desire to establish a portfolio showcasing artists' portraits to the general public.

The pedagogical mission assumed by U.S. institutions became explicit a few years later, on the occasion of the 1909 exhibition of the Carnegie Institute. As noted in the introduction to this essay, Cassatt refused to provide a photographic portrait similar to those of her former colleagues. In his response, Beatty tried—in vain—to rally Cassatt to his cause by affirming the educational value of such images to the general public and by emphasizing her admirers’ real and sincere desire: “I appreciate your attitude in reference to the publication of your portrait. I also think there is much to be said in favor of your point of view, but it is true that a large number of people are pleased and gratified to see the portraits of the men and women who produce the works of art they admire. I think it is not wholly idle curiosity, but a real interest in the personality of the artists.”³⁹ As Beatty’s answer points out, physiognomy could also be used as a tool to understand the artist’s character and personality.

## A DISCREET MONUMENT

As noted in the introduction to this essay, Cassatt would also refuse to be portrayed by Paul Paulin, author of a sculpted pantheon of French impressionist masters. A dentist by profession, Paulin doubled as an amateur artist.⁴⁰ A visitor to the impressionist group exhibitions in the 1880s, he befriended Lebourg, Degas, and Renoir, who had painted a portrait of Madame Paulin around 1895.⁴¹ In addition, Paulin collected works by Guillaumin and Pissarro. Paulin took up sculpture and started to publicly exhibit those works at the 1882 Salon. A year later, he made his first portrait of Degas, which remained private.
From 1902 to 1913, Paulin put together a gallery of busts of Degas, Guillaumin, Monet, Pissarro (fig. 8), Raffaëlli, and Renoir. This time, he exhibited them all with an almost systematic deliberation at the Salon of the Société nationale des beaux-arts. Placed side by side, the individual busts could be combined to form a small-scale monument to the masters of French impressionism. They were no longer individual tributes but were to be regarded as a veritable monument dedicated to the heroes of a historic moment of French art, to impressionism and its masters. This monument was all the more exceptional as it was partly executed during the painters’ lifetimes. The images thus protected the French impressionists from possible charges of ostentatious self-promotion, since the sitters had, unusually, granted authorization for these flattering but also realistic and therefore documentary portraits to their close friend, Paulin. The series of busts found a public purpose when, between 1909 and 1912, the Musée du Luxembourg acquired four of them.42 This purchase was due to their novelty rather than any artistic merit; they were almost unique as artist-authorized depictions of the French impressionists’ physical appearances.

The documentary realism of these sculptures was enhanced by Paulin's process of creation. Before modeling his busts, Paulin took a series of photographs showing his sitter from different angles. These preliminary glass negatives then allowed him to reconstitute the model in three dimensions with greater accuracy. Paulin's studio collection, kept at the Musée d'art Roger-Quilliot in Clermont-Ferrand, now contains only the negatives taken in preparation for his portrait of Raffaëlli (figs. 9, 10). It seems likely that the same process was applied across the corpus of sculptures, however. Still, taking preliminary photographs was not always possible. Pissarro, for example, died before Paulin could record his likeness. Several letters from the sculptor to Lucien show that he instead collected photographic "documents" of the elder Pissarro in 1904, explicitly requesting two large photographs that depicted the painter's face in both frontal and profile views.43 This process explains why Paulin then produced two versions of Pissarro's bust and so exactly reproduced two canonical photographs of the master. In the first, Pissarro wore a beret; this would be Hollyer's picture, published by Dewhurst. In the second, he wore a hat; this would be the anonymous photograph distributed by Durand-Ruel during the 1907-8 exhibition.

In 1912 almost all the portraits by Paulin were displayed as part of a major impressionist retrospective organized by the Manzi-Joyant gallery in Paris. The most extensive exhibition on
impressionism to be organized in Paris before World War I, it included more than two hundred
works, mainly loaned from private collections. Raffaëlli, whose bust had been exhibited the same
year at the Salon, was eager to be included among the historical masters of the movement, and he
made a direct request to Paulin: "Your busts would absolutely belong in this exhibition, all along
the entrance gallery! Why don't you talk about this right away to Manzi?"⁴⁴

Reunited alongside the paintings, the collection of busts assumed the role of an iconographic
document. Its documentary value was equal to that which Duret had attributed to photographs in
the original edition of his books, to the portrait of Manet by Legros given to the Musée du Petit
Palais, and finally to reproductions of painted portraits Duret included in the reprints of his
history of French impressionism. By adding a gallery of Paulin's busts, the display of the 1912
retrospective hence emulated in three dimensions the layout of Duret's *Histoire des peintres
impressionnistes*.

Like the photographic portfolios, Paulin's sculptures were also shown in the United States. In
1915 busts of Guillaumin, Degas, Renoir, and Monet were displayed along with their paintings
in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where U.S. and international
audiences could refine their knowledge of the appearance of the artists and their works. At its
inaugural presentation in 1924, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco
included the Paulin busts, as well as one after Auguste Rodin and a plaster cast after Pissarro.
Other casts of Paulin's busts continue to be held by museums throughout the United States,
including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.

## PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT AND “MONUMENTAL HISTORY”

Portraits published in the first historical monographs on French impressionism may be regarded
as monuments in honor of those declared to be the masters of the movement. They have much to
do with the sculptures produced at the same time as tributes to the same painters, insofar as they
were also used to become part of international public memory. They maintain a formal and
functional proximity to Paulin's busts. The monumental value already acquired by these images
during the interwar period would be further exemplified in one of John Rewald's early articles.

In 1938 the twenty-five-year-old Rewald published an article in the newspaper *Marianne* in
which he revealed his views of the pedagogical duty of a historian.⁴⁵ That duty led him to
demand that any mention of academic painters be stricken from French high school textbooks.⁴⁶ These inflammatory remarks aside, Rewald’s article deserves particular attention due to its illustrations. Rather than basing his argument for the superiority of French impressionism on comparisons between these and academic artworks, Rewald juxtaposed two photographs of Pissarro and Carolus-Duran (fig. 11). While Rewald refused to tolerate any value equivalency between independent and institutional art, the confrontation staged by this juxtaposition strongly implied that one artist had been a master, while the other had not. Rewald’s disdain for academic artists, omnipresent throughout his text, incited appreciation for the one and contempt for the other artist.

Many years later, Rewald developed his point by republishing the very same photographs. In 1980 he attacked the rehabilitation of so-called “official” painters whose resuscitation under revisionism had challenged the traditional heroics of impressionism.⁴⁷ Revisionism not only affronted Monet and his contemporaries, but it offended Rewald’s canonization of the French impressionists in his widely circulated and well-received *History of Impressionism*.⁴⁸

Rewald took the side of the public against what he understood to be the revisionist and academic manipulation of history. He argued that order and clarity were historians’ pedagogical responsibility. While referring to Friedrich Nietzsche’s text “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” Rewald borrowed the German philosopher’s concept of “monumental history,” or the uninterrupted tradition of masters.⁴⁹ For Rewald, it was necessary to erase from memory once and for all the “anti-monumental” art of official artists, in favor of a continuous line of artistic summits or “a chain of crests that links humanity through the ages.” The French impressionists were a critical link in that chain.⁵⁰ Spanning several decades, Rewald’s illustrated crusade emphasized the aura acquired by the portraits and the associated presence of the impressionists. Such images acted as a metonym for the heroic narrative that Dewhurst, Duret, and Pica had constructed in the first historical surveys on impressionism. Relying on photography to shape public memory, Rewald repeated the narratives first put into circulation by his late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century forebears.⁵¹
The author would like to express his heartfelt gratitude to Alexis Clark and Frances Fowle for the essential part they played in editing this paper, giving their careful review and very constructive criticism. He also wishes to thank Alix Lionni, Luca Lionni, and Elizabeth Yardeni for their help in translating this paper.

<footnote n="1">¹ Mary Cassatt to John Wesley Beatty, October 6, 1909, Archives of American Art, Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art records, Washington, D.C.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Judy Ng, “A Finding Aid to the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art Records, 1883–1962, Bulk 1885–1940,” January 1, 2011, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., https://sirismm.si.edu/EADpdfs/AAA.carninst.pdf.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ On Cassatt’s reluctance about her public image during this period, see Hadrien Viraben, “Constructing a Reputation: Achille Segard’s 1913 Biography of Mary Cassatt,” *American Art* 31, no. 1 (March 2017): 98–113.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Mary Cassatt to Louisine Havemeyer, March 10, 1909, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Havemeyer Family Papers Relating to Art Collecting, 1901–1922, box 1, folder 6, item 2.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ André Malraux, *Le musée imaginaire* (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). On the tradition of paper museums, see Élisabeth Décultot, ed., *Musées de papier: L’antiquité en livres, 1600–1800* (Paris: Louvre, 2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ Wynford Dewhurst, *Impressionist Painting: Its Genesis and Development* (London: G. Newnes, 1904); Théodore Duret, *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin* (Paris: H. Floury, 1906); Vittorio Pica, *Gl’Impressionisti francesi* (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1908).</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Roger Marx, “Bibliographie.—‘Histoire des impressionnistes,’ par Théodore Duret,” *Gazette des beaux-arts* 597 (1907): 262. Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise indicated, translations are</footnote>
mine. “Aujourd’hui l’essentiel est de gagner à sa cause non plus l’élite qui lui est acquise, . . . mais les ‘majorités compactes.’ . . . Rien n’est plus propre à les convertir que le présent ouvrage: une illustration abondante y orne un texte d’une lecture agréable, facile ; c’est de quoi séduire, convaincre et pleinement atteindre, selon le vœu de l’auteur, un double but de vulgarisation et d’hommage.” Marx borrowed the expression “compact majorities” from Henrik Ibsen’s famous play *An Enemy of the People*.

⁸ On Cassatt’s marginalization, see Viraben, “Constructing a Reputation”; Kevin Sharp, “How Mary Cassatt Became an American Artist,” in *Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman*, ed. Judith Barter, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 145–75. On the concept of “lieu de mémoire,” or site of memory, see Pierre Nora, “Entre mémoire et histoire: La problématique des lieux,” in *Les Lieux de mémoire*, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 1:xvii–xlii.

⁹ On this question, see Hadrien Viraben, “Les monuments discrets aux maîtres de l’impressionnisme,” *Sculptures 3* (2016): 73–79. On the French impressionists’ opposition to “statuomanie,” see, for example, Ségolène Le Men, *Monet* (Paris: Citadelles et Mazenod, 2010), 353.

¹⁰ The only exception is the portrait of Degas by Albert Bartholomé.

¹¹ Théodore Duret, *Histoire de Édouard Manet et de son œuvre, avec un catalogue des peintures et des pastels* (Paris: H. Floury, 1902).

¹² Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, *Manet raconté par lui-même* (Paris: H. Laurens, 1926), 2:fig. 218.

¹³ Duret, *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes*, 49, 77, 105, 127, 169, 197.

¹⁴ Duret, *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes*, 155.

¹⁵ Dewhurst, *Impressionist Painting, unpaginated*; Pica, *Gl’Impressionisti francesi*, 51.

¹⁶ Dewhurst, *Impressionist Painting, unpaginated*.
<footnote n="17">¹⁷ Pica, *Gl’Impressionisti francesi*, 9, 20, 25, 51, 77, 98, 114, 125, 137, 147, 150, 162, 171, 191, 195, 204, 208.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Pica, *Gl’Impressionisti francesi*, 195–208. On Pica, see in particular Maria Mimita Lamberti, “Vittorio Pica e l’Impressionismo in Italia,” *Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa*. *Classe di Lettere e Filosofia* 5, no. 3 (1975): 1149–201.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Duret, *Histoire des peintres impressionnistes*, 41–47. On Duret, see in particular Shigemi Inaga, “Théodore Duret (1838–1927): Du journaliste politique à l’historien d’art japonisant: Contribution à l’étude de la critique artistique dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle” (PhD diss., Université de Paris VII, 1988).</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ An example of the aura acquired by Duret can be found in the interview Charles Borgmeyer devoted to him. This interview then became the eleventh chapter of Borgmeyer’s *The Master Impressionists*, considered the first monograph on the movement, published in the United States in 1913. See Charles Louis Borgmeyer, “A Few Hours with Duret,” *Fine Arts Journal* 33, no. 5 (1915): 482–510.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ *Claude Monet, 1840–1926* (Berlin: Thannhauser, 1928), 6–7; “Documents,” in “L’impressionnisme et quelques précurseurs,” special issue, *Bulletin des expositions* (Galerie d’art Braun et cie), no. 3 (January 22, 1932): 3. In 1947 a very similar photographic pantheon integrated the pedagogical section of the new “Musée des Impressionnistes” at the Jeu de Paume. See Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, *Archives nationales, 2014479/44*. I am deeply grateful to Martha Ward for bringing this documentary section to my attention.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Dewhurst, *Impressionist Painting*, 45.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Dewhurst, *Impressionist Painting*, 51.</footnote>
²⁴ See Arsène Alexandre, “Camille Pissarro,” *Le Figaro*, November 14, 1903; Louis Vauxcelles, “Camille Pissarro,” *Gil Blas*, November 14, 1903; Maurice Le Blond, “Camille Pissarro,” *L’aurore*, November 15, 1903; Édouard Sarradin, “Camille Pissarro,” *Journal des débats politiques et littéraires*, November 15, 1903.

²⁵ Camille Pissarro to Lucien Pissarro, November 21, 1902, in *Correspondance de Camille Pissarro*, ed. Janine Bailly-Herzberg (Paris: PUF, Éd. du Valhermeil, 1980), 5:285–87; letter from Lucien Pissarro to Camille Pissarro, December 1902, in *The Letters of Lucien to Camille Pissarro, 1883–1903*, ed. Anne Thorold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 741–44. On Hollyer, see John Hannavy, ed., *Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography* (London: Routledge, 2007), 710–12.

²⁶ See Octave Mirbeau, Théodore Duret, Léon Werth, and Frantz Jourdain, *Cézanne* (Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, 1914), 10, 13, 16, 23, 35, 37, 50.

²⁷ Théodore Duret to Lucien Pissarro, October 3, 1919, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Pissarro Collection. Italics are mine.

²⁸ Théodore Duret to Lucien Pissarro, October 27, 1920, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Pissarro Collection.

²⁹ For similar reasons of rarity, Duret chose to introduce the third edition of his *Manet* in 1919 with the portrait of *Monsieur et Madame Édouard Manet* by Degas (ca. 1868–69). The latter painting had indeed been revealed during Degas’s sales in 1918. See *Catalogue des tableaux, pastels et dessins par Edgar Degas et provenant de son atelier*, sale cat., Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 6–8, 1918, lot 2.

³⁰ Théodore Duret to Léon Leenhoff, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Adolphe Tabarant Collection, MA 3950, box 5, reproduced in Melissa De Medeiros, “The Document as Voice: The
Manet Archive of the Pierpont Morgan Library" (MA thesis, Hunter College, City University of
New York, 2002), 2:43–44.

31 Théodore Duret to Léon Leenhoff, June 15, 1909, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Adolphe Tabarant Collection, MA 3950, box 5, reproduced in de Medeiros, “Document as Voice,” 2:44.

32 Théodore Duret to Henry Lapauze, July 2, 1909, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris, LDUT1178(3).

33 See, for example, Henri Castets, “Nécrologie: Pissarro,” *Revue universelle* 4, no. 101 (January 1904): 11–12; Gustave Coquiot, “Des Monet, des Renoir pour cinquante francs,” *Excelsior*, November 28, 1910; “Documents,” 3.

34 William H. Holston to John Wesley Beatty, August 22, 1900, Archives of American Art, Carnegie Institute, Washington, D.C., Museum of Art records, box 46, folder 2. On Durand-Ruel's monopoly on French impressionist works of art, see letter from Joseph Durand-Ruel to John Wesley Beatty, December 12, 1896, Archives of American Art, Carnegie Institute, Washington, D.C., Museum of Art records, box 46, folder 2.

35 Russell Spaulding to John Wesley Beatty, October 6, 1900; Durand-Ruel Galleries to John Wesley Beatty, April 14, 1909, Archives of American Art, Carnegie Institute, Washington, D.C., Museum of Art records, box 46, folder 2.

36 On this exhibition, see Claire Hendren, “French Impressionism in the United States’ Greater Midwest: The 1907–8 Traveling Exhibition,” *Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide* 18, no. 1 (2019): pages [As this is an online journal, the article is not paginated.].
³⁷ “The French Impressionists: Some of the Leaders of the Movement,” *Academy Notes* 3, no. 5 (October 1907): 79; “The French Impressionists: Some of the Leaders of the Movement: Second Paper,” *Academy Notes* 3, no. 6 (November 1907): 106–7.

³⁸ John Wesley Beatty to Durand-Ruel Galleries, January 13, 1908; Georges Durand-Ruel to John Wesley Beatty, January 15, 1908, Archives of American Art, Carnegie Institute, Washington, D.C., Museum of Art records, box 46, folder 6.

³⁹ John Wesley Beatty to Mary Cassatt, October 19, 1909, Archives of American Art, Carnegie Institute, Washington, D.C., Museum of Art records.

⁴⁰ On Paulin, see *Paul Paulin: Sculpteur impressionniste* (Clermont-Ferrand: Les Musées, 1983).

⁴¹ *Portrait of Mme Paulin* (ca. 1895).

⁴² The four busts are: *Edgar Degas à 50 ans* (cast after 1885), *Edgar Degas à 72 ans* (1907), *Pierre-Auguste Renoir* (1904), and *Claude Monet* (1911). On these acquisitions, see *Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Archives nationales, F/21/4255, folders 35 and 36*.

⁴³ Paul Paulin to Lucien Pissarro, November 22, 1903, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Pissarro Collection.

⁴⁴ Jean-François Raffaëlli to Paul Paulin, May 20, 1912, in *Paul Paulin*, 32. “Que vos bustes seraient à leur place dans cette exposition le long de la galerie d’entrée. Voyez donc à en parler de suite chez Manzi ?”

⁴⁵ John Rewald, “L’art français dans les écoles françaises,” *Marianne*, April 27, 1938.

⁴⁶ Rewald, “L’art français dans les écoles françaises.”

⁴⁷ John Rewald, *Studies in Impressionism* (New York: Abrams, 1986), 209–15.

⁴⁸ John Rewald, *The History of Impressionism* (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946).

⁴⁹ Rewald, *Studies in Impressionism*, 211.
<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ Rewald, *Studies in Impressionism*, 211.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ John House, “Impressionism and History: The Rewald Legacy,” *Art History* 9, no. 3 (September 1986): 369–75.</footnote>