The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France 9789048505234

Citation preview

T h e R i s e of t h e C u lt of Rembrandt

A l i s o n Mc Q u e e n

The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France

amsterdam university press

Cover design and lay out Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Cover illustration Frédéric Regamey, Paris à l'eau-forte. Paraît tous les samedis, lithograph, 1875. Paris, Musée de la publicité.

isbn 90 5356 624 4 nur 640 © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2003 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

ta b l e o f c o n t e n t s

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preface

11

Acknowledgements

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introduction

Reassessing Rembrandt chapter 1

29

Reinventing the Biography, Creating the Myth The Formation of Rembrandt’s Artistic Persona in Nineteenth-Century France

65

plates

chapter 2

81

Politicizing Rembrandt An Exemplar for New Aesthetic Values, Realism, and Republicanism

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chapter 3

123

Picturing the Myth Rembrandt’s Body and Images of the Old Master Artist chapter 4

157

Rembrandt the “Master” Printmaker Choosing an Ancestral Figure for French Painter-Printmakers chapter 5

215

The Rembrandt Strategy Etchers and Engravers Fashion their Professional Identities

283

conclusion

Repercussions of the Cult of Rembrandt 299

notes

347

Appendix

Interpretive Prints after Rembrandt 355

bibliography

375

Illustration Acknowledgments

379

index

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the rise of the cult of rembrandt

preface

Among the thousands of artists who have ever tried to interpret the world around them, Rembrandt van Rijn belongs to a small group who live on today as both an Old Master and a household name. The cult of Rembrandt does not just flow from his brush and etching needle, it is the result of his universal appeal, the accessibility of his personality and the capacity for his persona to be reinterpreted and reinvented by successive generations of academics, acolytes, and ordinary people alike. Indeed, Rembrandt is the only artist in history to have an international team of scholars reevaluate his output of paintings in an as yet unfinished project begun over thirty years ago. The Rembrandt Research Project, a team of specialists founded by the Dutch Government in 1968, navigates the globe attributing and deattributing paintings, often to the dismay of private collectors and museum curators. One wonders how this particular Dutch artist came to assume such a privileged position. Why is Rembrandt the center of such extensive scholarly and popular debate? The obvious answer is the marketdriven phenomenon of contemporary art sales, which requires a clear distinction between works produced by the Dutch master himself and those executed by his students, followers, and admirers. In elite art circles, scholars also vie to protect Rembrandt’s reputation from being sullied by any connection with lesser-quality works. The reverence of Rembrandt is not solely the domain of art experts and he is popularly known today through mainstream movies and even a pricey Rembrandt ® toothpaste, from Den-Mat Corporation. In this case, he is a curious choice since Rembrandt does not actually

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depict teeth very often. And when he does, the dark teeth in a cavernous mouth would hardly seem to encourage a dentist or patient today. Den-Mat also distributes Porcelain Bonding kits for restoring damaged teeth. These are set up like an artist supply case, complete with brush and miniature palette. The company encourages dentists to emulate Rembrandt’s artistry as they apply the product. In another use of the Old Master, Rembrandt Funds ® ranked high on the money markets in the 1990s. Given the notoriety of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy of 1656, he is an odd choice yet again. The RembrandtAdvantage™ Masterpiece Collection, sold through Kentuckybased company Pinnacle Solutions, offers human resources tools and services. These include the Rembrandt Portrait ® personal assessment, which aids in employee interviewing and selection, a Rembrandt Morale Survey ® to improve company spirit, and a Rembrandt Legal Clinic ® program helping managers hire without being sued. In Canada, Rembrandt adorns the packaging of Extra Butter Flavour Microwave Popping Corn marketed through the grocery store chain Loblaws as one of its President’s Choice ® products. In this reworking of Rembrandt’s Self-portrait at the Age of Thirty-four (c.1640), the artist holds a large bowl of popcorn, glances out to the shopper and away from the hockey game on television. Here, Canada’s national sport and the Dutch Old Master flank this savory television snack. In a warmer clime, luxury cruises traverse the Caribbean on SS Rembrandt and, coming out of the Netherlands, Rembrandt ® Masterpiece Lager Beer can be enjoyed the world over. In contemporary popular culture, Rembrandt’s name has such resonance that the headline of an article in the New York Times Magazine in 1995 referred to the trendy inner-city barber Franky Avila as “The Rembrandt of Barbers.” 1 By invoking Rembrandt’s name, the author knew his readers would understand that this connection implies that Avila’s skill with a razor equals that of Rembrandt with his paintbrush or etching needle. Even if a reader has never actually seen any work by Rembrandt, the connection is clearly meant to bolster the barber’s reputation and status. Advertisers and consumers may not be aware of the vicissitudes of Rembrandt’s reputation since his death in

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1669, but these references are successful because of the artist’s symbolic resonance. He has come to stand for the archetypal bohemian artist who was unappreciated by his contemporaries, who had many romances, and who was burdened with financial problems on and off throughout his life, and yet whose genius has come to be recognized over time. Rembrandt embodies the proverbial myth of the misunderstood, starving artist. For over 150 years, Rembrandt has been one of a select group of Old Master artists. His position is secure in art history’s canon, the list – composed over time by scholars and critics – of the must-knows and the must-sees of the field. As an art historian, I am both subject to and object to the canon of art history and I have sought to understand how that canon works and how it came into being. For over three decades, exponents of feminism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism have criticized canons and challenged the privilege such established lists allocate on the basis of geography, gender, and race in all disciplines. Still, many people accept canons as naturally rather than socially constructed entities and I wonder why: how does it serve their needs? The reverence Rembrandt now enjoys is due in part to the indisputably high quality of his drawings, paintings, and prints. However, many would argue for the comparable merit of the work of other artists who are not the subject of so much international attention and debate. What separates Rembrandt from other Old Masters is how his art and his biography, in combination with his artistic persona, have been manipulated to serve various agendas. The origins of the veneration of Rembrandt today can be traced in large part to nineteenth-century France and the critics and artists who made use of the Old Master’s artistic persona.

preface

9

ack nowledgements

This book grew out of my doctoral dissertation, a project supported by the Friends of the Frick Fine Arts Department of the University of Pittsburgh, Delta Upsilon at McGill University, a fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and an Andrew Mellon Fellowship. I am also thankful for the financial support of the Research Committee at Mount Allison University. Generous support from the Arts Research Board and the John Thomas Fund at McMaster University made possible the numerous illustrations in this book. Research for this book benefited from the assistance of many professionals in institutions in North America and Europe. I am grateful to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Constance Cain Hungerford, and Gerald Ackerman for their advice during the early stages of my research. I thank Michèle Hypolite of the Bibliothèque et Archives Municipale and Vincent Ducourau, Gisèle Ibarboure, and Laurence Garrido of the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne, as well as Annick Bergeon and Pierre-lin Renié of the Musée Goupil and Francis Ribemont and Bernadette de Boysson of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. In Paris, I am indebted to Jeroen de Schneemaker at the Institut Néerlandais, Collection Frits Lugt, Fondation Custodia. I also thank Rejane Bargiel of the Musée de la Publicité and Emmanuel Schwartz of the Bibliothèque de L’École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. At the Louvre, Brigitte Scart of the Documentation des dessins, Sylvie Dubois and Dominique Osman of the Documentation des peintures,

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Cantarel Besson, Michèle Dupuis, and Philippe Fleury of the Archives, and Mme. Wisniewski in the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque des conservateurs were all generous and helpful. I appreciate the patience and cooperation of all the employees of the Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie Jacques Doucet. Lastly, at the Bibliothèque nationale I am thankful to all the staff of the salle des imprimés, réserves, manuscrits and especially the Cabinet des estampes, particularly Mme. Bréjard and Gisèle Lambert and above all Claude Bouret, whose enthusiasm and generosity of time and spirit I treasure. Several individuals deserve special thanks for their guidance and assistance during the research trips in France that went into this book: I thank Louise d’Argencourt, Jacques Foucart, Claudette Hould, Geneviève Lacambre, Pierre Rosenberg, Arlette Serullaz, and Gabriel and Yvonne Weisberg. I am especially grateful to Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Arsène Bonafous-Murat, Michel Melot, and Carol SolomonKiefer who each offered direction that stimulated my thinking. Parts of this text have appeared in a monograph on Félix Buhot as well as articles in Simiolus, Nouvelles de l’Estampe, and Dutch Crossing; in preparing these I benefited greatly from the advice of Amy Golahny and Ger Luijten. I am thankful for the friendship of Anne Bertrand who made important comments on this text and also helped with several passages of translation. I thank Kristel Smentek for her generous, last-minute help in acquiring several photographs. This book has benefited from the editorial advice of Gerald Owen and Marica Ognjenovic as well as meaningful comments from my colleague Hayden Maginnis. Ed de Heer, director of the Museum Het Rembrandthuis, played an instrumental role in the publication of this book and I thank him for his interest and support. A special thanks to my editors, Suzanne Bogman and Anniek Meiders, and everyone at Amsterdam University Press for their care and professionalism in publishing this book. I owe much to the faculty of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and the members of my doctoral committee: Seymour Drescher, Ann Sutherland Harris, Barbara McCloskey, Anne Weis, and David Wilkins. Most important,

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my supervisor Aaron Sheon has continued to be an inspiring and encouraging mentor whose guidance I cherish. I thank my darling fiancé Ken McLeod for his devotion and support of my research. I dedicate this book to my parents, Rod and Sandy (née Illingworth), author and artist, whose love and encouragement made it all possible.

acknowledgements

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introduction

Reassessing Rembrandt

This book offers the first comprehensive study of Rembrandt in nineteenth-century France, the country and century that held an incomparable position historically as the nexus of European art education, art criticism and its related construction of the canon of Old Master artists, and was also the center of an increasingly powerful commercial art market. Rembrandt’s life and art, particularly his paintings and prints, had mythic resonance among nineteenth-century French artists, writers, and collectors. Although the academic establishment favored Old Masters such as Raphael throughout the period, Rembrandt had particular appeal for artists seeking to explore new subject matter and techniques. This study analyzes the discourse concerning Rembrandt’s Old Master status and its role in the newly shaped aims of French painter-printmakers: Why did French critics and artists assign Rembrandt such a prominent position as an ancestral figure whom contemporary artists should emulate? An unprecedented number of publications concerning Rembrandt’s life and art – at least 150 – circulated in France from the 1830s to the end of the 1890s, especially from the early 1850s onwards. The proliferation of scholarly and popular publications was paralleled by the increasing sales and value of Rembrandt’s paintings and prints on the Parisian art market. During this period, Rembrandt was appropriated as a symbolic figure by critics and painter-printmakers and assigned a heroic, cult-like artistic and political status. French critics molded and reinvented earlier anecdotal biographies and used new

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material from Dutch archives to formulate an artistic persona for Rembrandt that had particular meaning within the context of nineteenthcentury French vanguard art and politics. I am indebted to Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz’s important study Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist, A Historical Experiment, which examines the popularity, historically, of stereotyping episodes as “artistic anecdotes” and repeating them until they become used as original sources. Their arguments, specifically regarding society’s urge to find some access to an individual who is regarded as exceptional or gifted and the tendency to elevate a creative individual to the status of a cultural hero, are exemplified in the treatment of Rembrandt discussed here.2 The heightened level of interest in Rembrandt in France during the second half of the nineteenth century had unusually self-serving meaning as he became the favored model for non-conformist and antiestablishment aims. Students in academic establishments who avowed an appreciation of Rembrandt were not encouraged to seek inspiration from his paintings or prints or to emulate his adventurous biography. Still, when Paul Delaroche created his famous Hemicycle des Beaux-Arts [plate 1], in 1841, for the principal lecture hall of the École des Beaux-Arts, he included Rembrandt among the northern artists of distinction (ninth from the left), even though academics considered him a far less desirable model than Raphael.3 Rembrandt was a model from the past that artists and critics sought out on their own because he fulfilled their needs for a new, “non-ideal” exemplar, someone who could justify and bolster their own artistic projects and political views. Rembrandt was selected because for some he served as a challenge to the hegemony of the French Academy while for others he functioned as a new archetype. He became a benchmark for their aspirations and goals as artists exploring new subject matter and new techniques which received little institutional support or public acclaim among their contemporaries. Rembrandt was positioned as a successful predecessor and he functioned as a mentor both psychologically and through the practical emulation of his artistic techniques.

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the rise of the cult of rembrandt

One measure of Rembrandt’s popularity was the production and sale of Rembrandt-like paintings and prints. Many of these were attributed to Rembrandt in nineteenth-century France and are now identified variously as works of Rembrandt’s students, as seventeenth- and eighteenth-century copies, or as nineteenth-century copies or even intentional fakes. In this study, I evaluate how these diverse works were discussed, exhibited, reproduced, and treated as products of Rembrandt’s hand by nineteenth-century French critics, collectors, and artists. In so doing, I attempt to reconstitute the aesthetic experience and the taste for Rembrandt’s paintings and graphic works in the nineteenth century. The issues I consider will relate to authenticity and attribution only to the extent to which they were relevant in the nineteenth century.4 Furthermore, my evaluation will only extend beyond the boundaries of France in order to discuss artists who exhibited relevant works in French exhibitions, such as the Salon, and critics of foreign nationalities who published their texts in French or whose works circulated in French translation. A sizable body of literature has been published on Rembrandt’s popularity since his lifetime. I am indebted to these texts, which provided much useful background information and indicated various approaches that can be used to evaluate the ways in which an artist is regarded in a later era.5 I expand on previous scholarship to consider the recurring anecdotes of Rembrandt’s biography within the larger context of publications on his artistic production. The fascination with Rembrandt’s biography, which was fed by the increasing availability of information from archival sources, erased divisions between his art and life. Certainly the constellation of views that formed the conception of Rembrandt in the nineteenth century was not monolithic and I seek to reveal the discordance and contradictions in the conception of Rembrandt’s personality and art in nineteenth-century France and suggest that it was in part this incongruity that fostered Rembrandt as a subject of interest.

reassessing rembrandt

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The Question of Influence The posthumous popularity of Old Masters such as Rembrandt is described typically as their influence. This vague term relates to a seemingly benevolent desire to connect a contemporary artist with a more famous artist in history. Discussions of influence pervade the literature about Rembrandt and later art – as do examinations of the popularity of all Old Masters in later periods. In art historical terms, influence is treated largely as an aesthetic phenomenon, a situation in which one artist reflected on, was inspired by, or incorporated elements from another artist or work of art from the past into the artist’s own creation. Defining the impact of an artist only in terms of aesthetics restricts, however, any evaluation of connections between artists in different eras to formal comparisons, often with little to support the stylistic parallels. In addition to compositional quotation, copies, particularly those executed in oil, have been the favored means of examining the influence of an Old Master artist. French artists, from the famous to the lesser-known, submitted requests to paint copies after Rembrandt and others in the Louvre and elsewhere in the nineteenth century. Extant copies after Rembrandt were painted by Léon Bonnat, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, Alexandre Descamps, Théodore Géricault, and Edouard Manet, among others.6 There was even a short-lived Musée des copies established by Charles Blanc that opened in 1873 and included six copies after Rembrandt.7 Consideration of the painted copies executed at the Louvre by famous male artists has, however, misrepresented the contents of the extant registers of copyists in the nineteenth century.8 The vast majority of those who registered were female and few went on to become famous. While discussion of painted copies has been an interesting element of the analysis of the work of several individual artists, I seek to consider alternate means of understanding references to past art.9 Discussions of influence have also usually been restricted to an artist’s early, student years when the artist is said to be building a foundation by learning from the past and then going beyond this founda-

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tion.10 Such approaches are constructed on various assumptions, including the notion that once artists are established they do not require further inspiration because they have gone beyond the past. There is, however, a great deal of evidence that artists return to the past for inspiration throughout their careers. Michael Baxandall cogently critiqued the etymological constraints of the word influence and I am indebted to his analysis of the term.11 I support his suggestion that art historians scrutinize their vocabulary and use diverse and more specific terms, such as copy, transform, respond, or quote, in discussions concerning interest in the art of the past. In the nineteenth century, French artists did their utmost to absorb, invoke, subsume and usurp Rembrandt’s artistic persona in an effort to define their own identities.

The Formation of the Louvre Museum and Rembrandt’s Paintings in French Public Collections in the Early Nineteenth Century The popularity of Rembrandt’s art in France must certainly be tied to its availability and while there was some interest in his art in the seventeenth century, little Dutch art was accessible to the French public until the end of the eighteenth century. The French royal collection, founded by François I and exhibited at Versailles throughout the reign of Louis XIV, became the first public picture gallery in France when it was installed at the Palais de Luxembourg in Paris in 1749. The collection grew under Louis XV and Louis XVI, who typically commissioned Surintendants to buy works at sales both in Paris and other European cities. Rembrandt’s paintings, however, did not form a significant portion of the French royal collection during this period. Louis XIV acquired one work, Self-Portrait with an Easel [plate 2], before 1683 (probably in 1671) and Louis XV purchased another painting, Angel Raphael Leaving Tobias [plate 3], in 1742. Louis XVI added six works by Rembrandt to the royal collection, the largest number of paintings by Rembrandt acquired during the ancien régime. He acquired Supper at Emmaus in 1777, Portrait of a Woman [plate 4] and reassessing rembrandt

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two paintings of the Philosopher in Meditation [plate 5] in 1784, and The Good Samaritan [plate 6] and Self-Portrait before an Architectural Background in 1785.12 Thus, by the time of the Revolution of 1789 there were eight paintings by Rembrandt in the Palais de Luxembourg. While Italian art still dominated the royal collection, Louis XVI’s director-general of royal buildings, Comte d’Angiviller, concentrated on buying northern and French paintings to diversify the royal collection before it was transferred to his principal project, the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. Following the Revolution of 1789 and the decree that all ecclesiastical and royal assets become the property of the newly founded French nation, the royal collection finally transferred from the Palais de Luxembourg to the new Louvre museum, which opened August 10th, 1793.13 Well before his coup d’état of 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte played a key role in the development of the new national collection of art through military campaigns which began in 1794 and expanded French borders into Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Prussian territory, thereby making France the leading European power until 1814. These campaigns placed several of Napoleon’s relatives as rulers of neighboring countries – Louis Bonaparte became king of Holland and Joseph Bonaparte king of Spain – and provided a constant influx of looted art into Paris. Italy was undoubtedly the most fertile ground for French soldiers but, either by treaty negotiations or plundering, France successfully acquired objects from each country. It is important to understand the Napoleonic pillaging of art and collectibles of all types within the context of the larger mission of the Commission of Sciences and Arts, a subgroup of the French Commission of Public Instruction. In the case of the commission’s project in The Hague, they judged Stadholder Willem V’s natural history cabinet to be more important than his cabinet of paintings. Thus shells, stones, stuffed animals and birds, books, maps, plants, vegetables, arms, and scientific machinery comprised the first three expeditions of goods to be transported from the Netherlands to Paris. Paintings were not shipped until the fourth expedition.14 Nonetheless, paintings were the primary focus of all seized art works not only because painting was

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placed at the zenith of artistic production by the powerful French Academy, but also, more practically, they were more transportable than, for example, antique sculpture, which formed a smaller portion of the booty. Following the tradition of the Roman triumphal procession, seized works were paraded through the streets of Paris. They were then exhibited in the Salon Carré and finally installed in the galleries of the Louvre in what Cecil Gould aptly described as a “visible trophy of conquest.” 15 The trophies acquired between 1793 and 1815 included an impressive fifty-three paintings and twenty-nine drawings by Rembrandt that were seized from collections in The Hague, Braunschweig, Kassel, Prussia, Florence, and French aristocratic collections – although in a few instances works were purchased from sales of the latter. H. van der Tuin published much of the inventory of the Napoleonic museum of 1810 but he specified the originating collection only for those works sent to Paris from Kassel and did not indicate where each work was located while it was in France.16 The first three volumes of the Rembrandt Corpus refer to the presence of some of Rembrandt’s works in France, but with its emphasis on works attributed to Rembrandt, his school, students, and followers, the Corpus does not include works that at the beginning of the twenty-first century are considered foreign to what is now the perception of Rembrandt’s work.17 No previous scholarly study has considered the inventory of 1810 in conjunction with records from the National Archives. The combination of all these sources in the present study clarifies the number of works attributed to Rembrandt in France in the early nineteenth century – a figure that has previously been underestimated.18 Exhibition catalogues from 1799, 1807, 1811, and 1816 also demonstrate the significant exposure of Rembrandt’s works in Paris in the early part of the century and clarify the location and availability of his paintings to the art-viewing public.19 In 1799, the first exhibition of works taken from Stadholder Willem V’s collection in The Hague included five paintings by Rembrandt: Presentation in the Temple, Bust of a Man with a Plumed Hat, Self-Portrait, Susanna at the Bath, and Old Man.20 Another seven works reassessing rembrandt

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were seized and/or bought from French aristocratic collections: Portrait of a Man/Jewish Man with a Fur Hat, Holy Family/Carpenter’s Household [plate 7], Pilgrims of Emmaus, St. Matthew and the Angel, Self-Portrait with Bare Head, Self-Portrait with Cap and Gold Chain, and Venus and Amor [plate 8]. Lastly, the source of one work, Portrait of Rembrandt’s Sister with a Veil/Bust of a Young Woman is unknown, but came either from a French aristocratic collection or one of the Italian collections transported to Paris in 1798. Works seized in Berlin, Braunschweig (Brunswick), 21 Kassel, 22 and Potsdam,23 following the Battle of Jena on October 4th, 1806, included the largest number of Rembrandt’s paintings transported to France. Unlike the exhibition in 1799, works displayed at the Louvre in 1807 – at an exhibition commemorating Napoleon’s triumph the previous year – were subject to greater scrutiny. This exhibition included seventeen of Rembrandt’s works imported from Braunschweig, Kassel, and Potsdam. Another three works from Braunschweig, classified as “School of Rembrandt,” were also exhibited. But others works labeled “imitator” were not displayed and instead joined a select group of Rembrandt’s works added to the Imperial collections at Compiègne, Fontainebleau, Malmaison, and Saint-Cloud.24 The Louvre collection received thirty-one new paintings by Rembrandt, the most prized of which were exhibited again in 1811 along with a new acquisition from Florence.25 Most of these works also figured among the twenty-nine paintings by Rembrandt that were illustrated in print form in the ten-volume publication Galerie du Musée de France, produced between 1804 and 1815.26 To judge from the representation of an artist’s work in this Galerie, Rembrandt was already ranked by French authorities as the most important artist of any northern school – a position consolidated by later French critics.27 Rembrandt’s representation in the Galerie was, in fact, more extensive than that of Raphael and was surpassed only by the French artists Eustache Le Sueur and Nicolas Poussin.28 Although Raphael continued to be the favorite of French Academicians for several decades, the extensive public display of Rembrandt’s work demonstrates the appeal of alternative models even at this early date.

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The importing of works by Rubens and many Italian Renaissance artists has received greater public and scholarly attention due to their inclusion in a few contemporary prints illustrating the Louvre’s galleries and exhibitions.29 Reproductions in the principal publication on the early Louvre collections suggest, however, that Rembrandt’s works were better represented and more significant in the early nineteenth century than previously realized. Furthermore, the availability of Rembrandt’s works and their identification as “original” versus “school of ” or “imitation” raises several points that are relevant to evaluating the increasing popularity of his art in France during the course of the century. Art critics throughout the nineteenth century fostered the idea of fusing Rembrandt’s life and art. Their approach expanded on descriptions in the Louvre catalogues which connected Rembrandt’s works with his biography. The Louvre’s publications from the early part of the century described Family Portrait from Braunschweig as Portrait of Rembrandt with his Wife and Children, Kassel’s Portrait of a Woman as a Portrait of Rembrandt’s Wife and Portrait of a Man Trimming his Quill as a portrait of Rembrandt’s friend Coppenol. The works exhibited in France early in the nineteenth century also spanned Rembrandt’s career and fostered an interest in his entire œuvre, rather than one period. They ranged from the early detailed and fine manner of painting to later works with a more painterly and tactile surface. This duality is most noticeable when comparing the Braunschweig Family Portrait, which was described as painted “at the first go,” 30 and the so-called “sketch” Winter Landscape from Kassel 31 to two other landscape scenes also from Kassel. The latter paintings, often referred to as Landscape with Goats [fig. 1] and Landscape with Hunters [fig. 2],32 are precisely painted works where the hand of the artist cannot be detected. The linear and detailed technique of these landscapes is opposite that of the other bold and broadly painted works, yet the two diverging techniques were unproblematically combined under the one rubric of Rembrandt. The presentation of Rembrandt’s different techniques at the Louvre did not suffer from the division of prize works which stayed in Paris from those works which were reassessing rembrandt

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fig. 1 – Attributed to Rembrandt 1807-1815, Landscape with Goats. Engraved by Geissler

regarded as secondary and were sent to provincial museums. According to a report by Chaptal, the Minister of the Interior, and Napoleon’s decree in 1800: “[T]hose works most intimately bound up with the history of art, which mark its progress, epitomize the various genres and enable the spectator to form a clear impression of all the revolutions and phases of the history of painting” were those chosen to remain in Paris.33 The acceptance of two technical or stylistic veins in Rembrandt’s work during the early years of the Louvre museum informed French art criticism on Rembrandt as well as the patterns of collecting his works throughout the nineteenth century. Still, as the discipline of art history developed in France during the 1850s and later, Rembrandt’s works, like those of all artists, became subject to classification. In Rembrandt’s case, the two techniques were increasingly charged with posi-

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fig. 2 – Attributed to Rembrandt 1807-1815, Landscape with Hunters. Engraved by Bovinet

tive and negative connotations. By the last decades of the 1800s, taste in France had shifted away from the fine painting style exhibited in Landscape with Goats and Landscape with Hunters towards more painterly and sketch-like works. The willingness to regard Rembrandt’s technique in a malleable fashion is particularly relevant since it also set the stage for the ready appreciation of his reinvented artistic persona.

The Old Masters and Nineteenth-Century France: The Revivalist Mode The foundation of the Louvre museum and Chaptal’s efforts to concentrate the “greatest works in every category” in Paris, separating them from works of lesser quality sent to the provinces, resulted in a reassessing rembrandt

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division and categorization of schools and artists with the labels Old Master and minor master. Such categories of value were all too familiar in France where subject matter and technique were strictly coded as early as the foundation of the French Academy of Art in 1648. The well-known hierarchy of subject matter ranked paintings of historical, religious or mythological subjects above portraiture, genre painting, landscape, and still life. Academic training also established an acceptable mode of painting through its emphasis on drawing, composition, and design. Thus the schools or geographic regions and artists who depicted subject matter and exhibited technical proficiency that were in tandem with the Academy’s doctrine formed the heart of its pantheon. The French Academy emphasized the value of ancient Greek and Roman art and Italian art derived from classical traditions.34 Although the formation of the Louvre museum made a more diverse range of art available, Italy and Antiquity continued to dominate the Academy after a hiatus between 1789 and 1816 when the Academy was reestablished as part of the Institut Français in conjunction with the École des Beaux-Arts. The most sought-after award of the French Salon, the Prix de Rome, established in 1666, reinforced France’s reverence of Italian art.35 As a satellite of the government, the Academy was the official arbiter of a national French style and continued praise of drawing over color shaped the production of art in France well into the nineteenth century. The Italian-inspired art of Poussin and the Flemish art of Rubens were the most commonly cited leaders in the debate between these two elements of painting. By the 1850s the Academy’s strict taxonomy of important art and significant Old Master artists was, however, subject to revision as forgotten artists were “rediscovered” by art critics who promoted their work through journal articles, books and the art market. Occasionally, nontraditional models had been heralded earlier in the century. These included Ingres’ interest in the so-called Flemish “primitives” 36 and the rising popularity of Spanish art, particularly with the formation of a “Galerie Espagnole” at the Louvre between 1838 and 1848.37 During the second half of the century such “revivals” were given serious attention by influential critics. The rise of art history as a discipline in

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France in the mid-nineteenth century perpetuated the critical propensity for categorizing art and artists, but some critics also sought out alternatives to the Italian and Classical traditions. This exploration of artists outside the academic canon resulted in a revivalist mode in the 1850s and 1860s when French critics and artists had renewed interest in French and Netherlandish art. Some of the most potent of these revivals – Jean-Baptiste Simon Chardin, the Le Nain brothers, Jan Vermeer, and Frans Hals – offer a framework for interpreting Rembrandt’s position in nineteenth-century France and how it differs from the standard “revival”. Growing interest in earlier French art among nineteenth-century artists and critics drew increasing attention to Rococo art,38 Chardin,39 and the Le Nain brothers.40 Texts by the Goncourts, Champfleury and Chennevières-Pointel served to resuscitate interest in such art.41 Furthermore, Thoré-Bürger single-handedly instated the Dutch artists Jan Vermeer 42 and Frans Hals 43 into the canon of Old Masters in France. Unlike Chardin, the Le Nain brothers, Vermeer, or Hals, Rembrandt did not suffer a complete or near eclipse and I am not, therefore, evaluating a Rembrandt “revival” in nineteenth-century France. Rembrandt was never excluded from history but assessments of his work were inseparable from the Academic hierarchy and the general, biased appraisal in France of Italian art as superior to northern art. The increasing number of publications on Rembrandt in France from the 1850s to the end of the century must be seen within the larger context of the revivalist mode that promoted the study of alternatives to art traditionally promoted by the Academy. These studies were an integral part of the reevaluation of entrenched hierarchies and developed the necessary vocabulary and visual analysis to place art that was produced in northern European countries in a positive light. The results of these publications demonstrate the periodic malleability of the Old Master canon when a critical reappraisal of an artist was undertaken by one of a network of powerful and persuasive art critics. The position ascribed to Rembrandt at the apex of northern art was, in fact, consolidated by such critics in their mid-nineteenth-century studies on reassessing rembrandt

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Flemish and Dutch art. The concentrated interest in Rembrandt on the part of French critics and artists, particularly between the 1850s and the 1890s, was not disinterested. It resulted from the desire to position Rembrandt as an ancestral figure for nineteenth-century artists who could then use his artistic persona as a benchmark and justification for their own goals.

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chapter 1

reinventing the biography, creating the myth The Formation of Rembrandt’s Artistic Persona in NineteenthCentury France

Writing on Dutch Art in France

D

utch and flemish art of the seventeenth century has always been a subject of interest and attention for French artists, critics, and collectors and was a favored part of the royal collections of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI even though, during these reigns, the northern schools were not as sought after as the French and Italian schools. A marked increase in attention was paid to Dutch and Flemish art after the Revolution of 1789 when the prices of northern art rose at French auctions. French artists, such as Guérard, Boilly, Drolling and David, also increasingly followed the meticulously detailed painting technique of Dutch and Flemish artists such as Metsu and Teniers the Younger.44 The ideas presented in nineteenth-century texts on Dutch art evolved in part from the precedent of eighteenth-century writings by Jean-Baptiste Descamps and Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, who published the first significant French studies devoted solely to Flemish and Dutch art. Lebrun in particular identified Dutch art as a democratic rather than aristocratic pursuit as early as 1795 when he addressed a popular revolutionary society. His characterization of Dutch art as democratic was of great interest throughout the nineteenth century as French collectors gathered increasing amounts of Dutch art and French critics sought both to fulfill and augment the demand for literature on the lives and works of Dutch artists. Although French critics

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diverged in their views on many elements of Dutch art, a common thread running through the growing critical discourse was the perception of Dutch art as a reflection of everyday life in the seventeenthcentury Netherlands. The first of the eighteenth-century French studies of northern art, Descamps’s La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois of 1754, focused on artists’ biographies and a few of their best-known works. Descamps intended to make this information more accessible to the French public as he sought to fill the gaps he saw in previous publications with his own research.45 While Descamps called Rembrandt “this great painter,” he did not refer to Rembrandt as the leader of Dutch artists, although in his eyes Rubens was the “Prince of Flemish painters.” 46 Descamps did not create a hierarchy of Dutch artists in the same way as he did the Flemish and he did not identify any one artist as the head of the Dutch school.47 Descamps was probably more familiar with Flemish art and, largely following institutionalized conventions, he reaffirmed Rubens’ status which was well-established in France since his royal commissions in the early seventeenth century. Lebrun, the most important dealer of northern paintings in France, had a similar attitude. He published a catalogue of his private collection in 1792, Gallerie des peintres flamands, hollandais et allemands, which served as a significant resource on northern art in France.48 Lebrun’s catalogue followed a master/pupil hierarchy and included entries that outlined the biography and art of each artist. Unlike Descamps, Lebrun cited Rembrandt as the founder of the Dutch school: “Rembrandt became the founder of one of the most immense schools that painting can glorify, and Holland owes him almost all of its successes in this art.” 49 Still, Rubens remained for Lebrun, as he was for Descamps, the most important northern artist: “Rubens is without a doubt the most beautiful genius and the most talented colorist who glorifies paintings.” 50 Lebrun also noted the impact of the presence of Rubens’ works in France at the Palais de Luxembourg and the predominant position of the French and Italian schools in the gallery of the Palais-Royal. While he noted the difficulty some people had appreciating the significance of painting that many described as a faithful

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imitation of nature, Lebrun believed the time had finally come for a greater appreciation of all northern art.51 Netherlandish art was increasingly popular in France after 1820, and between the late 1840s and the 1880s numerous French studies on Dutch art codified the terms in which it was evaluated in France and, in many ways, how Dutch art has been understood ever since. Nineteenth-century French critics including Charles Blanc, Eugène Fromentin, Henry Havard, Arsène Houssaye, Alfred Michiels, Hippolyte Taine, Thoré-Bürger, Louis Viardot, and Louis Vitet had various reasons for writing about Dutch art. Many saw it as a field ripe for study because there was a paucity of publications in France and some also knew through their travels that few Dutch museums had catalogued their collections. The numerous French publications on tourism in the Netherlands and the increased facility of train travel north of France also helped stimulate the growing market for Dutch art and information on the Dutch school.52 Such market-driven concerns were not necessary for all, however, and some of the critics were principally inspired by their political ideologies and their personal interest in the material.53 Among the earliest studies, Arsène Houssaye’s Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise, published between 1844 and 1847, outlined many of the concepts that became central to the understanding and appreciation of Dutch art among French critics.54 Houssaye, publisher of the journal l’Artiste between 1844 and 1849, wrote numerous articles on seventeenth-century northern art during this period and emphasized in the introduction to his text that part of his mission was to demonstrate how art outside France existed in many forms. He believed people in France should know more about all schools and he dismissed criticism by saying: “There are no bad schools, there are only bad painters.” 55 Théophile Gautier agreed and noted that Houssaye’s book was heavily subscribed, despite its prohibitively high cost, because it included many new resources and did not simply repeat previous ideas on Rubens the “great colorist” and Rembrandt the “sublime worker.” 56 Houssaye, like all later nineteenth-century French critics, defined Holland as a country that was reborn out of its political reform. reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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He emphasized the freedom of the individual Dutch people, who he said were all “kings” and free from the servile chains of the papacy and the Spanish Inquisition.57 Houssaye outlined several of the principal issues that traversed the French historiography of Dutch art, particularly the role of truth and the belief in a specifically northern conception of beauty, as well as the juxtaposition of Raphael and Rembrandt and ensuing debate over the significance of these two artists. Alfred Michiels took a different view. His Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise, first published in 1847 and in expanded form from 1865 to 1876, was more critical of what he deemed the hyperbolic tendencies of the northern schools’ emphasis on realism and observation.58 The principal focus of the completed volumes of his study was Flemish art, but Michiels also acknowledged the positive effects of empiricism among Netherlandish artists, and said it completely retraced the life of the nation, thus providing the “most perfect image a race has ever left of itself.” 59 Michiels also judged some works base and shocking, his leading example being Rembrandt’s “ugly” prints of a man and woman urinating 60 [figs. 3 & 4]. In Michiels’ assessment, the danger of such absolute empiricism was the possibility that artists would be deprived of nobility and elevation and create works lacking exalted expression. Unlike other later critics who praised Protestantism as a formative characteristic of Dutch society and art, Michiels was uncomfortable with the possible ramifications of Protestantism on religious art. For him Protestant beliefs detracted from representations of religious subjects by presenting Christ as an unrefined peasant, Mary Magdalene as a milkmaid, and pious people with the grace of fish sellers.61 Michiels’ views were clearly predicated on his own partiality towards Catholicism. He was relieved that Protestantism had at least not nihilated art or “dried up” northern color entirely, although he remained judgmental of the predominantly individual and bourgeois subjects of Protestant art.62 The publication of the first edition of Charles Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles: École Hollandaise in 1849 was a crucial event in the widespread dissemination of information on Dutch art.63 Blanc’s study was first available in regular installments, each composed of a

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fig. 3 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Man Urinating, 1631

fig. 4 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Woman Urinating, 1631

section on one artist. Readers could later bind the sections as a book or keep them in their original magazine-like form. This format was far more affordable than expensive, limited edition art books and launched the mass-market availability of French publications on Dutch art. Blanc’s École Hollandaise was popular not only with artists and amateurs but, given its numerous illustrations and availability in small sections, it also appealed to the general public in a new way that one reviewer described as “artistic propaganda” for Dutch art.64 Blanc, who held the powerful position of Director of the Fine Arts briefly in 1848 and again in 1870 and founded the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1859, delegated some volumes of this lengthy project to other writers, but he wrote the volume on Dutch art himself.65 Like Houssaye, Blanc remarked on the characteristic independence of Dutch society, particularly the “republican” or “popular government” which launched both political independence for the nation and individual freedom of thought. He also added the significance of family life, reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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Protestantism, and individualism. Like most French critics, Blanc demonstrated at least minimal interest in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dutch art, but all of the critics cited 1600 as the key turning point, claiming the school blossomed only after the Netherlands was freed from foreign, Spanish power. Blanc wrote, “republicanism... delivered them from the purely decorative art of courts and princes, from what we call ceremonial art.” 66 He linked this republican government, in his mind the essence of Dutch originality, to the Greek and Florentine schools. Blanc ranked Dutch art the third most original in the world, after Florentine and Greek art, and cited the three “masters” of these schools – Phidias, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt – as exponents of the greatest Greek, Florentine, and Batavian genius.67 In this way, Blanc dismissed any claim that art could only flourish under royalty.68 “Truth”, noted by Houssaye as the principal characteristic of Dutch art, was described by Blanc as “imitation”. Blanc believed Dutch artists found nothing in the world – or at least in their country – ordinary, vulgar or insignificant. Instead, they reproduced the trivial and ugly elements of nature as they existed.69 Thus Blanc saw a gallery of Dutch paintings as a complete history of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.70 Both Houssaye and Blanc placed Rembrandt at the head of the Dutch school, but Blanc also initiated a trend in which many French critics regarded Rembrandt as an exception among artists in the Netherlands. First, Blanc claimed that Rembrandt and his students were the only Dutch artists who painted historical and religious subjects. Second, while Blanc said Rembrandt remained faithful to the principle of imitation, “he introduced a new ideal, not the ideal of forms, but the ideal of clair-obscur, not the ideal of beauty, but the ideal of expression.” 71 Blanc also qualified his description of Dutch art as imitation, saying that landscape painters in particular knew how to capture the latent poetry, or the spirit of the world he called pantheism and that in this way they departed from the principle of pure imitation, raising themselves to express character and thereby creating masterpieces.72 Blanc also felt compelled to elevate both the Dutch school and specifically Rembrandt’s status with descriptives that aligned them

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with principles associated with French Academic traditions, as well as Greek and Italian art. Blanc believed that it was necessary to elevate Dutch art to the level of southern Mediterranean art and he felt the need to work within a previously defined tradition. It was not in Blanc’s interest to alter the structure and institutionalization of French art – his own fleeting employment was linked to the success of this tradition – and thus he approached the problem from another angle. In emphasizing the poetic nature of Dutch landscape painting and “ideal” characteristics of Rembrandt’s art, Blanc worked to make both aspects significant to his contemporaries by reconfiguring coexisting concepts of ideal art to accommodate Dutch art. Two articles published in the early 1860s developed Blanc’s conception of Dutch art and made his ideas available to an even wider public. In 1860, Louis Viardot published “De l’école hollandaise” in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and he repeated Blanc’s description of Dutch art as an art of imitation and noted the importance of the “popular government” of the Dutch.73 Elaborating on Blanc, Viardot claimed Dutch art was not made for public spaces but for the bourgeoisie, the people themselves, and that the “vulgar subjects taken from communal life, which everyone has everyday in front of their eyes” were precisely those that were most popular among French collectors in his own period.74 The following year, Louis Vitet compared Flemish and Dutch art in an article in the widely read Revue des deux mondes, saying that Flemish art was not a “radical revolution” but only a timid prelude to what Dutch artists accomplished when they created a national mode of painting following the dramatic religious and political changes in the Netherlands.75 Religious and political liberty, the themes of Blanc, Viardot, and Vitet, appeared again in Thoré-Bürger’s study Musées de la Hollande of 1858 and 1860, but unlike Blanc he did not seek to justify Dutch art relative to contemporary French or classical standards.76 Thoré-Bürger’s unreservedly positive assessment emphasized the country’s physical isolation as the leading cause of its originality and ingenuity. Of all French critics, Thoré-Bürger was undoubtedly the most familiar with reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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the country because he had traveled extensively in the Netherlands after his exile from France in 1848. This exile was a result of his career as a political journalist in revolutionary publications and he was one of many French citizens cast out by the soon-to-be emperor Napoleon III. Thoré-Bürger was permitted to return to France only in 1860 after an amnesty the previous year.77 During his exile he changed his name from Théophile Thoré to William Bürger, a pseudonym he chose to emphasize his status as a peripatetic “citizen” of the world; his composite surname appears in this study to facilitate a diachronic analysis of his publications. When Thoré-Bürger first visited Holland in 1856, he discovered a society that epitomized what he had already promoted as the only plausible future for France: replacing Catholicism and the monarchy with a democratic republic, ideas he published in his brochure Liberté soon after his exile. Thoré-Bürger found in Dutch art paintings not of popes and kings, gods or heroes, but specifically Dutch people and, he claimed, humanity in general.78 He admired the emphasis of Dutch art on the present over the past and likened it to photographs of the seventeenth century, using the terms “naturalism” and “realism” to explain his view of the photographic quality of Dutch works. These concepts paralleled Houssaye’s “truth” and Blanc’s “imitation.” Thoré-Bürger believed Dutch art was unique in modern Europe and summarized it as “l’ art pour l’ homme” (capitals in original text), meaning “art for humanity” or “art for the people.” 79 For Thoré-Bürger, Rembrandt’s love of the human subject, as well as his connection to nature and reality, epitomized the Dutch school. He said Rembrandt lived among victors and free people and therefore triumphed over the other northern artist, Rubens, who had held such a prominent position in French criticism earlier in the century but, according to Thoré-Bürger, lived among conquered and enslaved people.80 Later, Hippolyte Taine, a philosopher, historian, and literary critic, also praised the characteristic Dutch emphasis on individuality and their rejection of official authority embodied by the Catholic church – the same attributes previously criticized by Michiels. Taine, who along with Thoré-Bürger was among the most laudatory French

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critics of Dutch art, advanced a polarized view of northern and southern art in his study Philosophie de l’art dans les pays-bas.81 He had published a history of Italian art before this study on the Netherlands and he divided what he referred to as the history of modern art into two opposed groups. He placed in the first group the Latins, which included Italians, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Germanic people formed the second group and comprised Belgians, Dutch, German, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. For Taine, Italians were the best of the Latin artists and Flemish and Dutch the prime Germanic artists. He also defined Dutch art as mimetic, reflecting society with its proclivity for the “real” and “truth.” Taine not only used the same adjectives as Houssaye and Thoré-Bürger, but also cited the latter directly in his text.82 By comparison, the translation and republication of artist and writer Eugène Fromentin’s book Les Maîtres d’autrefois, BelgiqueHollande of 1876 has given an overblown sense of its significance in the nineteenth century. Fromentin’s cursorily written views had little resonance for his contemporaries who were interested in Rembrandt’s work. Fromentin ranked Rembrandt as the head of the Dutch school but his frustrated attempts to decode Rembrandt’s works meant Fromentin published the most negative critiques of Rembrandt’s paintings in any French study of Dutch art. While Fromentin agreed with Taine and other critics that Dutch art was a mirror of society, he viewed Rembrandt as the least Dutch of Dutch artists.83 Fromentin said Rembrandt did not see what his contemporaries observed; Ruysdael was in his eyes the emblem of Dutch art, whereas Rembrandt was the exception to an otherwise univocal national style and method.84 Fromentin formed his views on Dutch and Flemish art during a three-week trip in 1875. After writing for four months, he first published his impressions as a series of essays in the Revue des deux mondes, thus addressing his ideas to one of the largest potential audiences of any of the French critics of Dutch art.85 Fromentin agreed with earlier French writers that Dutch freedom in life and art began in the seventeenth century. He specified the beginning of the Twelve-year Truce in 1609 as the most important reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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event: “At the same time, under the same circumstances, we can see two very similar events taking place: a new state, a new art. The origins of Dutch art, its character, its aims, its means, its subjects, its fast growth, its appearance without precedents and notably the speed with which it was born after the armistice.” 86 Fromentin noted that he was not presenting any particularly new ideas about Dutch art, as he expanded on the traditional discussions about the opposition of Flemish and Dutch art, which had been expounded earlier by Thoré-Bürger as Catholic versus Protestant, religious versus profane, tone versus value, and Rubens versus Rembrandt. Fromentin’s critique of Rembrandt was largely based on his frustrated attempts to interpret elements of The Night Watch – the misnomer applied throughout the nineteenth century to The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq [plate 9] – particularly the central small female figures as well as the overall composition of the painting. Fromentin wrote more positively about Frans Hals’ group portraits, which, for him, captured each individual and fulfilled Fromentin’s expectation of the decipherability of Dutch art and its emphasis on individuality, terms which by then were codified in and by French criticism.87 The Night Watch did not fulfill the mold of Dutch art that Fromentin perpetuated and his criticisms, along with those of Michiels, diverged from the otherwise positive presentation of Rembrandt as the leading Dutch artist. Nevertheless, Fromentin’s construction of the Dutch school and its leader restated the definition proposed by his contemporaries that Dutch art was a mirror of Dutch society. Lastly, critic Henry Havard agreed with Fromentin that Rembrandt depicted truth unlike any other Dutch artist. Havard, who was an Inspector of the Fine Arts and thus a bureaucrat employed by the French national government, even spoke Dutch – a rarity among French critics. He wrote two general studies: L’Art et les artistes hollandais (1879-81) and Histoire de la peinture hollandaise (1881).88 The first was commissioned by the French Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, which hired Havard to find new documents on Dutch art and artists in public archives in the Netherlands. In the end, Havard’s research did not lead him to any new interpretations of Dutch

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art; he still emphasized its realism, observation of nature and the profound knowledge of humanity he thought it conveyed. Nonetheless, the publications resulting from his efforts are intriguing because they grew from a commission initiated by the educational and artistic branch of the French national government, an act which underscores how, by the 1880s, Rembrandt was actively incorporated into French institutions. While the conception of seventeenth-century Dutch art as an art of “imitation” has been debated by recent art historians,89 nineteenth-century French critics helped formulate and consolidate this idea by unanimously defining Dutch painting as a reportorial transcription of the Dutch nation, its people, culture, morals, customs, habits, topography, and economy. Whether a critic was entirely positive (Blanc, Thoré-Bürger, Taine), more critical (Michiels), or wary (Houssaye, Fromentin, Havard), they unanimously agreed that Dutch seventeenth-century art was a mirror of contemporary society. French critics used varying descriptive words – “truth,” “imitation,” “realism” and “naturalism” – but they were all adjectives that centered around perceptions of mimeticism and optical verisimilitude. Each located Rembrandt as the leader of the Dutch school even if his work did not always appeal to their individual taste.

Recreating the Old Master Myth: Perspectives on Rembrandt among French Art Critics circa 1850 to 1900 By the time Louis Royer’s statue of Rembrandt was dedicated on May 27th, 1852, in the Botermarkt (Butter market) in Amsterdam, Rembrandt was already designated nationally as the leading artist of the seventeenth century, the “Golden Age” of Dutch art.90 Plans for this dedicatory ceremony, initiated by members of the Arti et Amicitiæ society, sparked further interest among Dutch scholars and fueled a concentration of new research in Dutch archives into the details of Rembrandt’s life. Amsterdam archivist Pieter Scheltema revealed some of reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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his discoveries in a lecture to the society and the impending publication of his research was announced in France by Gérard de Nerval in his review of the dedicatory ceremony in the Revue des deux mondes.91 Scheltema’s study was translated into French in the Revue universelle des arts in 1858 and then published as a book in Brussels in 1859 and in Paris in 1866. By the 1860s, it was one of a growing number of studies on Rembrandt that ranged from books and journal articles in specialized art periodicals to newspapers and magazines with a more widespread circulation.92

The “Rembrandt” Inherited by Nineteenth-Century France Rembrandt became such a cult figure in nineteenth-century France that his admirers took to rewriting his biography and crafting available material. Rembrandt’s biography, as it was known in France during the early part of the nineteenth century, was derived from at least six possible sources: André Félibien, Roger de Piles, Florent Lecomte, Edme François Gersaint, Jean-Baptiste Descamps, and Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun. Their texts were the only ones accessible to anyone who did not read Italian, German, Dutch, or English since other biographies of Rembrandt, namely those by Baldinucci, Sandrart and Houbraken, were not available in French translation.93 French writers before 1800 did, however, on occasion acknowledge their debt to narratives spun by their predecessors. The main focus of the earliest French biography of Rembrandt, André Félibien’s Entretiens sur la vie et les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres (1684), was Rembrandt’s often thick application of paint. Félibien said Rembrandt’s paintings “often only seem sketched.” 94 This idea also appeared in Baldinucci’s description of Rembrandt’s impasto technique in his treatise on engraving and etching (1686) – the first treatise of its kind and the first Italian biography of Rembrandt.95 Félibien also introduced the idea that Rembrandt was a “universal” artist who lived on in his paintings, particularly his numerous self-portraits.

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It was only in the following decade, when Roger de Piles published his Abrégé de la vie des peintres (1699), that elements of Rembrandt’s biography as it was outlined by Sandrart and Baldinucci were introduced in France. De Piles said Rembrandt grew up in a windmill on the bank of the Rhine. He noted how Rembrandt studied with Lastman but that all he learned came from within himself: “he only owed the knowledge he had of his profession to the kindness of his spirit and his thoughts.” 96 Sandrart first introduced this idea in Teutsche Academie (1675), in which he wrote that Rembrandt followed his own interests and contradicted the rules of art.97 De Piles also derived from Sandrart the idea that Rembrandt’s only goal was to imitate nature; he agreed with Sandrart that while the contours of Rembrandt’s drawing might not have been correct, they were full of spirit. Though Sandrart said Rembrandt never went to Italy, De Piles claimed Rembrandt executed four or five prints in Venice between 1635 and 1636. De Piles drew from Baldinucci that Rembrandt collected innumerable objects in his studio and was generous in lending props to other artists. He added that Rembrandt referred to these accessories as “my antiques” and that while he had a large collection of Italian drawings and many prints, he did not “profit” from them. Later, Gersaint and Descamps perpetuated the idea that Rembrandt’s collection was not of even minor relevance for his own works. De Piles also picked up on Sandrart’s characterization of Rembrandt as one who associated with the lower classes, a view repeated by Baldinucci. De Piles claimed Rembrandt felt personally autonomous only by spending time with people of low social standing and even pretended to quote Rembrandt directly saying: “when I want to rest my spirit it’s not honor that I search, it’s liberty!” 98 Lastly, De Piles mentioned Rembrandt was married but did not say to whom. Florent Lecomte also mentioned Rembrandt’s wife in his Cabinet des Singularitez (1699-1700) and Lecomte emphasized that she came from the same low social class as Rembrandt, who never wanted to disguise his background and always spent time with his own “sort.” Lecomte also repeated the following ideas: that Rembrandt grew up in a windmill and had little formal eduction, that he often painted with reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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large brushstrokes and layered his paint thickly, and that he traveled to Venice.99 Once the myths were established, others embellished them. Gersaint, in his Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pieces qui forment l’œuvre de Rembrandt (1751), took many of the elements of his biography from De Piles and continued to support the idea that Rembrandt traveled to Venice, that he painted with thick brushwork like Venetian artists, and referred to his collection of costumes and armor as his “antiques.” Gersaint praised Rembrandt’s use of clair-obscur and said that while his technique made his paintings appear “rough” when viewed from close up, they looked better from a certain distance. Gersaint also noted the names of several artists who were Rembrandt’s teachers, but like De Piles he believed Rembrandt did not owe his artistic taste to anyone but himself. Although Gersaint demonstrated only a minimal interest in Rembrandt’s family, he introduced in France the story in which Rembrandt’s wife (unnamed) encouraged him to leave town so she could say he had died and then sell his works at inflated prices. Gersaint was not sure whether this story was true, but he thought it was based on the reputation Rembrandt’s wife had for the successful sales of her husband’s work. Published soon after Gersaint’s book, Descamps’ biography of Rembrandt in La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois (175463) was based principally on Houbraken’s De Groote Schouburgh (1718). Houbraken expanded on Sandrart’s passing comment that Rembrandt made a lot of money from the fees he charged his students. He also repeated Baldinucci’s story that Rembrandt bought up his own prints to increase their market value and formulated what would become one of the most pervasive tropes of the artist’s biographies: Rembrandt the miser. As Descamps elaborated on this purported avaricious streak, he took from Baldinucci that Rembrandt bid on his own prints at auction to increase sales and had Titus pretend he had stolen his father’s prints so they could sell them at elevated prices.100 Descamps added that Rembrandt intentionally printed his plates when they were only half finished so he could then sell the finished prints as separate works. The latter idea derived from Houbraken, who said Rembrandt made small

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changes to his etchings so he could resell them. Houbraken did not mention Rembrandt’s bankruptcy – up to this point Baldinucci was the only critic who paid any attention to the event – but he introduced other new elements to his narrative of Rembrandt’s biography. Houbraken is perhaps most famous for writing that Rembrandt would not spend much money on his home and ate only a piece of herring or cheese for lunch. Houbraken also wrote Rembrandt’s miserly ways were so well known that his students played a trick on him by painting coins on the floor which their master naturally stooped to pick up.101 Further, Houbraken discussed Rembrandt’s wife Saskia and introduced a new character, that of Rembrandt’s pet monkey, to whom the artist was supposedly very attached. Descamps, in turn, incorporated each of these elements into his version of the biography and added that Rembrandt must have died very wealthy after such a frugal lifestyle. Descamps also challenged De Piles and stated Rembrandt never traveled outside of Holland. Descamps, following Houbraken’s lead, perpetuated the idea that Rembrandt kept company with the poor. But according to Descamps the poor were not just people Rembrandt turned to sometimes; they became the only people he spent any time with: “He only lived with the lower class and people much below himself.”102 Once again copying Houbraken, Descamps continued the idea that Rembrandt worked from nature; Descamps said, “He looked to nature as the only one capable of teaching him. He chose no other studio for his studies than his father’s windmill.” 103 Other new elements which Houbraken introduced and Descamps picked up included how Rembrandt advised people not to get too close to his canvases and encouraged them to keep at a distance by claiming the smell of paint would bother them. Following Baldinucci’s and Félibien’s attention to Rembrandt’s impasto, Houbraken added that the paintings he executed late in life looked as if they had been done with a trowel. He proposed that one portrait was so thickly painted it could be picked up from the floor by its nose. Houbraken added that Rembrandt always said a work was completed when an artist had achieved what he wanted to achieve. Interestingly, Houbraken’s claim that Rembrandt was popular during the last years reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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of his life was of little interest to later French biographers. Descamps added a few other elements to the biography, including mention of Rembrandt’s son Titus. He also claimed Rembrandt would have invented art if it had not already existed. Lastly, Descamps took from Houbraken the idea that Rembrandt regarded his printmaking techniques as his secret treasure and never worked on his prints in front of anyone. Lebrun’s entry on Rembrandt in Gallerie des peintres flamands, hollandais et allemands (1792) repeated few of the anecdotal narratives that could be found in Descamps. Lebrun offered instead a general commentary on Rembrandt’s painting technique, which he said altered from a detailed to a thick application of paint, the latter a practice Rembrandt maintained until the end of his life. Lebrun picked up from Descamps the idea that Rembrandt had a low social standing and added that he only kept up his contacts with distinguished people so he could sell his work. Although Lebrun claimed Rembrandt was avaricious, he did not repeat any of the stories from earlier biographies to support his claim. He thought Rembrandt’s miserly nature may have tarnished his reputation slightly but conceded that this meant Rembrandt produced more paintings than he otherwise would have. Even though Lebrun carried on some of the basic ideas introduced by earlier biographers, his own narrative was vague and lacked the anecdotal detail that appealed to later French critics. Although various competing “Rembrandts” emerged from these biographies, a prevalent view was that the artist was a miserly person who studied on his own from nature and associated with the lower classes. These elements were carried through and expanded as later writers reworked his biography. Before the nineteenth century, however, critics paid scant attention to Rembrandt’s family and personal life. They also generally assumed Rembrandt was successful and must have died with a certain level of wealth. They largely ignored Rembrandt’s bankruptcy in 1656 and the auctioning of his estate that dispersed his worldly possessions including his art collection.

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Reinventing the Biography, Creating the Myth In nineteenth-century France, certain aspects of Rembrandt’s life history were based on ideas formulated in previous centuries. Some facts, however, assumed greater importance than others and several new elements were added. In this way, the accounts of Rembrandt’s biography acquired increasingly myth-like qualities and were molded in particular directions. These included a fascination with the artist’s reputation and problems with his public, as well as an emphasis on Rembrandt’s alleged status as a self-taught artist and independent painter-printmaker who maintained his freedom and individuality at all costs. There was also an increasing curiosity about Rembrandt’s financial status, his sexual conduct, and his rapport with patrons and contemporaries, particularly Jewish people. The “Rembrandt” that emerged from the critical reinvention of Rembrandt’s biography in nineteenth-century France was a virile, bohemian, and much-maligned personality. His artistic persona was molded into a form that became a model mentor and an Old Master figure whose lifestyle and goals could be used to justify the similar experiences of many French artists in the nineteenth century. During the first half of the nineteenth century, perceptions of Rembrandt as a miserly and jealous person grew in France through a popular vaudeville play “Rembrandt, ou la vente après décès.” This play marks the first time Rembrandt was explicitly used in France to exemplify the plight of artists whose works were undervalued and unappreciated until after their death. This play was not the product of one individual’s perspective, but was the joint effort of four playwrights. It was written by Étienne, Morel, Servières, and Moras and was first published and performed at the Troubadour Theater on 26 Fructidor year 8 (13 September 1800). It was presented again as a comic opera at the Gymnase Dramatique beginning August 1st, 1821 and was republished in 1846. “Rembrandt, ou la vente après décès” reenacts the story in which Rembrandt faked his death to try and increase the value of his paintings, which Gersaint first introduced into France in the eighteenth century. The play focuses on the period of reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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Rembrandt’s life just a few months after he had arrived in Amsterdam and describes him masquerading as the auctioneer at his own supposedly posthumous sale. The play also had a subplot centered on Rembrandt’s jealousy towards a French gentleman of Louis XIV’s court, Sirval, who was courting his purported widow, here named Augusta. This intrigue added a bit of spice for the audience. The opening and closing monologues function as bookends for the play’s principal theme and mission, which is to draw attention to the condition of living artists. The play begins with Augusta lamenting Rembrandt’s difficult life: “During his life Rembrandt suffered every misfortune; he never ceased to be exposed to the injustices of his contemporaries; and now that he is barely dead, even his enemies celebrate his memory and rank him as one of the greatest painters.” 104 At the end of the play, Rembrandt reveals himself and thanks everyone who has bought his paintings. He is especially grateful to the Jewish art dealer Forbeck who now has to try to unload all the paintings he just purchased at inflated prices before word spreads that Rembrandt is actually alive: “Gentlemen, I thank you for making me rich: when I was poor I had to die; now that I am rich, I am revived. Thanks to my death I am a well-known man; meanwhile I am no more talented today than I was three months ago.” 105 The play closes with Augusta addressing the French audience about how important it is not to overlook the talents of one’s own contemporary artists: “While he was alive Rembrandt was exposed to acts of envy, and we admired his talent only after he died. Our authors have made an effort to reveal this character to you; but do not wait until they are dead to appreciate their work.” 106 This vaudeville comic opera introduced Rembrandt to the French public as the paragon of the misunderstood and unappreciated artist. This conception of his artistic persona continued to flourish and became one of the central reasons why Rembrandt was regarded as such a significant figure in France. Throughout the nineteenth century, French critics and writers thought that they alone recognized Rembrandt’s talents and that he had been unappreciated by his contemporaries. Aggrandizing their own abilities to identify expertise, critics maintained, “he had no offi-

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cial honors, nor orders, nor titles, nor decorations,” and at the time of his death “overwhelmed by misery, disabilities, unsociable, forgotten, alone, the great artist disappeared.” 107 Despite the fact that all of Rembrandt’s correspondence with Constantin Huygens, secretary for Stadholder Frederick Hendrick, the Prince of Orange, was translated into French as early as 1868 and his commissions from the Stadholder and numerous religious works were known in France, critics paid negligible attention to Rembrandt’s plausible courtly affiliations.108 Indeed, through to the end of the century they believed Rembrandt was either unrevered by his contemporaries or isolated in his own country because of a lack of understanding for his incomparable superiority.109 Some expressed amazement that a figure they regarded as the best Dutch artist, whose posterity they ranked on a par with the greatest Old Masters, was in fashion for such a short time and then replaced by inferior rivals with whom no one would dare compare him in the nineteenth century.110 But Blanc consoled himself with the thought that Rembrandt must have died knowing what a great artist he was: “he died.... forgotten by his contemporaries, but no doubt conscious of his genius, with the secret certainty that his memory would not perish and that he would arrive, as in fact has happened, that posterity, would rank this poet among artists of the first order, this prodigious painter, this inimitable printmaker.” 111 Rembrandt’s experiences could, therefore, be used as an exemplar for many French nineteenth-century artists. While they too had difficulties with their public, which was largely unreceptive to new ideas or different ways of making art, perhaps in a few generations people would realize what great talents they really were. Thoré-Bürger best articulated this idea in his review of the Salon of 1861, which was published first in the daily newspaper Le Temps. In an attempt to elevate the French public’s appreciation of Jean-François Millet’s Waiting, an image depicting the biblical story of Tobias and his wife, ThoréBürger compared Millet’s experiences to those of Rembrandt: Rembrandt was also fond of this subject from the story of Tobias, of which he painted various scenes in an informal reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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style, which recalls a little the peasant-like style of M. Millet... For two centuries, the exclusive amateurs of the grand Italian style have always manhandled Rembrandt, which has not prevented him from making inroads in the museums and principal galleries of Europe. That should console the realists a bit for the current injustices, and give them some hope for the future.112 The similarities between the unjust treatment of Millet and Rembrandt by an unappreciative public was at the heart of this comparison between the French and Dutch artists. This trope of Rembrandt, the unsung artist, was central to the narrative pattern of his biography, which was deemed significant in nineteenth-century France in part because of a general interest in the anecdotal details of the lives of the Old Masters. Furthermore, these life experiences held great appeal because they could be used to validate and console French artists and the critics who lobbied for them. Rembrandt’s example could be offered to those who were denied the accolades of reigning French institutions; they could hold out hope that following generations would set the record straight, just as French critics thought they alone had done for Rembrandt. Building their myth on an old topos, which Vasari had used on Giotto, the critics also fostered the belief that Rembrandt did not have a master or at least did not learn anything from any teacher. They took this idea from early biographies and it grew along with the artist’s celebrity in France. This idea was integral to connections made between Rembrandt’s alienation from contemporary society and his superiority over his counterparts. Despite the circulation of archival discoveries which identified all of his instructors, the perception of Rembrandt as a self-trained artist continued to flourish. French critics maintained, “Rembrandt had only one master and that was Rembrandt.” 113 Although he studied with Swanenburg, Lastman, and Pynas, the critics maintained he learned to paint by himself.114 Even as information about Rembrandt’s own extensive art collection became more readily available, critics still held to the idea that

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Rembrandt made paintings, drawings, and prints that were unlike those of anyone else and they maintained that he certainly did not copy anyone.115 The potential significance of originals and reproductions of works by other artists such as Brouwer, Schongauer, Seghers, Giorgione, and Holbein were completely ignored. Furthermore, the fact that Rembrandt owned much Italian art, including prints after works by Michelangelo, Raphael, and the Carraccis, might have been seen as a contradiction by those critics who formulated the Dutch artist as the epitome of the northern school and someone who worked in opposition to the Italian school. But French critics neatly construed this as part of his “genius” personality. The first in-depth French study devoted solely to Rembrandt’s possible connections with Italian art appeared only in the 1890s.116 Critics preferred to explain Rembrandt’s collection as evidence of his ability to appreciate other art and still remain true to his own goals, an ability which was, in their minds, part of his “genius”: “It was precisely the great characteristic of his genius to have admired everything without imitating anything, to have known the beauty of another art and to have always remained in his own.” 117 They believed, in fact, that this was a self-conscious choice on Rembrandt’s part and that he wanted to arrive at his own “genius” without leaning on anyone else.118 French critics reconciled Rembrandt’s autonomy with his extensive Italian collection and connections with other artists, thereby fulfilling the conditions of their own myth of Rembrandt as an independent artist. They continued to perpetuate this view despite contradictory evidence. De Piles’ idea that Rembrandt executed two prints in Venice had no currency in nineteenth-century France, where critics completely rejected the idea that Rembrandt ever traveled to Italy.119 They preferred to believe he never went beyond the borders of the Netherlands because it fitted into their idea of Rembrandt as the embodiment of a specifically northern tradition that ran counter to the southern, particularly Italian, tradition. This formulation of Rembrandt’s biography created an Old Master artist who achieved success outside the boundaries of institutionalized artistic instruction and practice. French critics said Remreinventing the biography, creating the myth

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brandt did not conform to academies and emphasized that he was an artist whose success was solely founded on his innate talents.120 Rembrandt could therefore be looked upon as an example for artists who rejected the control of French institutions over creativity and struck out on their own path. It may also have appealed to French artists and critics to think that one could appreciate works produced by other artists and even make studies after earlier or contemporary art while maintaining one’s independence. Following this invention of Rembrandt’s example, one could even admire Rembrandt’s art – in whatever numerous ways that might manifest itself: copying, collecting, looking and discussing – and still remain true to oneself. French critics applied a focused range of adjectives to Rembrandt’s art and personality, drawing their lexicon from prevailing notions of his status as a self-taught, independent and nonconforming artist. Rembrandt was variously called “the most original painter of all the schools,” “the most original of all painters” or an “original and sincere genius.” 121 He was said to have had an “exceptional originality,” a “gripping originality,” an “original and independent spirit” and was called an “original talent” and the “most original of the modern genius.” 122 Rembrandt was considered “one of the most robust individualities” and an artist who captured the individuality of his sitters.123 Other words most commonly used to describe Rembrandt’s art in France included: “new” or “novelty,” 124 “sincerity,” 125 “naiveté,” 126 “truth,” 127 and “reality.” 128 “Liberty” was often used to describe both his art and his actions.129 Rembrandt was regarded as an independent figure who prided himself on his autonomy and the accessible, authentic nature of his work. Some critics went even further and called Rembrandt a heretic and a revolutionary who broke with the past and who was in perpetual revolt with received traditions, official and conventional art.130 What French critics regarded as the authenticity of Rembrandt’s art was, for them, best represented by his studies after nature and depictions of the poor. Discussing works ranging from The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp [plate 10] to studies of beggars, they said Rembrandt “observed nature,” “scrupulously copied nature,” “worked

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from the book of nature,” and “did not retreat from the miseries of nature.” 131 One critic called Rembrandt “the naturalist” and another called him the “painter of life.” 132 Connections between Rembrandt and studies from nature were also tied to an increasing interest in his childhood and the belief that he sought out motifs from the terrain surrounding his father’s windmill.133

Rembrandt’s Class Relations The idea that Rembrandt associated primarily with the lower classes was entrenched in formulations of his biography before the nineteenth century and grew in France despite any attempts to prove otherwise. Rembrandt was said to have “been of the people, he did not breathe freedom except with the people.” 134 His working practice was viewed as follows: “He looked at the people around him, he observed, he represented them as they were... Penetrating more and more, he preferred to look at the unhappy, the miserable people who would have horrified people other than he.” Through his representations of the poor he was said to have inaugurated “the new world.” 135 The idea that Rembrandt had clients who came from all social classes also held appeal.136 Further, the critics admired how, as they saw it, there were no insignificant or ugly models for Rembrandt and how, therefore, everything in nature could be worthy of an artist’s attention.137 One critic even thought Rembrandt’s sitters looked so real and contemporary to him that they could even have come from Parisian suburbs in the second half of the nineteenth century: Above all the popular attracted him, and in the squares, in the suburbs, the workers and the countryfolk appeared to him worthy of attention. Morals are simpler and appearances less refined with these little people; their expressive gestures become more frankly marked, their attitudes and their expressions are more natural... Rembrandt never stopped studying them. He loved living reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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among the poor.... [T]he means by which the artist represented them to us are so true, so just and so exact still today, that several of them appear to be life studies after the prowlers and workers of our suburbs.138 Despite the fact that two Dutch critics, Scheltema and Carel Vosmaer, emphasized Rembrandt’s relationships with the upper classes in publications which circulated in French translation, French critics refused to believe that Rembrandt could have been “un homme de bonne société.” 139 Vosmaer also said that Rembrandt did not grow up in a windmill but in a house.140 But such attempts to demythologize Rembrandt’s biography were unsuccessful. French critics held fast to the idea that Rembrandt was a bohemian-like artist who grew up in a windmill in the country and spent his time with the masses because it appealed to their conception of him as an archetypal anti-bourgeois, unconventional person. Drawing on terms familiar from the ancien régime, Fromentin even identified Rembrandt with the French proletariat when he declared: “Rembrandt was of the third estate, and barely that, as we used to say in France in 1789.”141 Taine also connected Rembrandt to the French proletariat by saying “Rembrandt is the people”.142 The emphasis on his ties to the lower classes enabled those French critics who believed that art holds an instrumental role in the “progress” of society to posit Rembrandt as an observer and painter of humanity and as a populist and humanitarian.143 This was central to the arguments they proposed for the “universality” or universal significance of his art.144

Rembrandt’s Private Life Rembrandt’s private life – his finances, sexuality, and relationships with family and friends – was also a growing source of interest in nineteenth-century France. This level of fascination was fostered by the extensive archival research undertaken in Amsterdam. With regard to his finances, the perception of Rembrandt as an avaricious person was well

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established before the nineteenth century. This idea was carried over by some French critics, who said Rembrandt was “thirsty for gold,” and that although as a young artist he loved his work and did not think about the coins that would fall into his lap, later he became “miserly,” developing a passion for money.145 But other critics challenged this view and presented various possible explanations for Rembrandt’s financial problems. Their defense was part of an increasing interest in the details of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy, which had held little appeal for earlier critics. This interest was no doubt fed by the multiple publications of Rembrandt’s inventory in French translation.146 Critics cited all the jewelry Saskia wore in various paintings as evidence that Rembrandt was willing to spend money and also suggested that if he were miserly he would not have bought so much art for himself.147 The belief that Rembrandt spent all his money on his art collection was, in fact, the most common reason French critics gave for his bankruptcy. If Rembrandt had indeed led a simple domestic life and ate herring and cheese for lunch, they claimed it was a voluntary sacrifice for his desire to collect prints; they said he went bankrupt because of his “passion” for art and “love of beautiful things.” 148 Others cited the contents of the few extant letters in Rembrandt’s hand as evidence of his generosity and suggested his bankruptcy was caused by changes in taste or a decreased interest in art because of growing economic problems in Amsterdam.149 These attempts to explain his problematic financial situation were integral to efforts on the part of some French critics to restore Rembrandt’s reputation and present him as a person with an untarnished past. Whether a critic condemned or defended the fluctuations in Rembrandt’s finances, he examined them closely and this aspect of the Old Master’s life made Rembrandt seem more accessible and human as someone subject to the uncertainties of life. Another avenue of inquiry into Rembrandt’s private life was a growing curiosity about his friends, relatives and love interests. Only a couple of critics made Rembrandt out to be a difficult person who lived a secluded life absorbed by his work and without any friends.150 One writer described Rembrandt as a moody, mumbling, and distracted reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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creative type, but this view was not common.151 Rembrandt’s romances were of much greater interest. It was well known before the nineteenth century that Rembrandt had a wife named Saskia and a son Titus. But Saskia’s exact social status and Rembrandt’s purported relationships with other women were a topic of considerable debate during the second half of the nineteenth century. The critic A. Willems remarked in 1874, “What we know about Rembrandt’s private life amounts to very little, and what we do know certainly does not make us think much of his morals.”152 During the first half of the nineteenth century Saskia was believed to have been a poor peasant who was just as frugal as Rembrandt.153 But later archival discoveries established her identity as a noble and rich woman who put restrictions in her will that caused inordinate financial problems for Rembrandt.154 Rembrandt’s deep love for Saskia was mentioned regularly and French critics believed he conveyed this love through the number of paintings in which Saskia was his sitter.155 They also thought his love could be seen in all the expensive jewelry Saskia was always seen wearing, gifts they assumed were from her husband.156 These views were clearly informed by the perception of painting as a medium through which one could directly access an artist’s thoughts and identity, an idea then current in French criticism. Some of the critics even felt sorry for Rembrandt – at least one regarded him as a family man – when he was left a single father after Saskia’s premature death in 1642, the very year the critic said Rembrandt should have been celebrating his achievements after The Night Watch.157 Some critics blamed what they referred to as Rembrandt’s poor psychological state after Saskia’s death and his difficulty managing domestic responsibilities as the causes of a “scandalous” relationship with Titus’ live-in nurse. George Duplessis and Henry Havard commented on how Rembrandt did not or could not stay a widower for very long, and that it was his prodigious artistic personality that led him to a life of debauchery.158 Still, they did not think his love for a servant could have harmed his reputation. The nurse/servant in question was first identified as Hendrickje Jaghers, a “peasant from Ransdorp,” who was brought before the courts in 1654 and was said to have

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caused Rembrandt much public embarrassment. However, the critics conceded that Hendrickje was a good housekeeper and financial manager. Besides, they maintained that Rembrandt did not worry about what people thought and did not care whether there was a scandal about them living together and having a child.159 This was one way in which French critics created his identity as a rebel who went against the established order and its values. Hendrickje’s surname was later more accurately identified as Stoffels and there was much interest in the financial association she established with Titus in 1660.160 As more information circulated about the women in Rembrandt’s life, identifying the sitter in Portrait of a Woman [plate 4], which hung in the prestigious Salon Carré of the Louvre throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, was an increasingly pressing matter. Believing that Rembrandt only painted portraits of people he knew well, French critics also tried to determine Rembrandt’s relationship with the sitter of this work and endeavored to ascertain their level of intimacy. Hendrickje Stoffels was identified as the sitter as early as 1885 but not all French critics thought that Rembrandt would have married her, while others claimed he had had three different wives.161 An account of the Geertge Dircks affair was not published in French in the nineteenth century, but Blanc suggested Rembrandt’s relationship with a new female model, who might have been his third wife, dramatically increased the power of his prints during the last decade of his life. Blanc said, “Finally the etchings dating after 1656, the character of vigour and manly energy they take on, are enough to say that the artist, far from leaving himself to be beaten by misfortune, doubled his power and energy.”162 The soap opera-like narratives spun around newly available archival information were based on an urge for Rembrandt to be known as a sexually active and virile personality. Using these narratives, the critics created an artistic persona for Rembrandt that was not only opposed to bourgeois standards of propriety but also completely indifferent to any criticisms against his personal conduct. These views of his private life helped to foster in France anti-establishment tendencies as part of the Rembrandt myth. Furthermore, Rembrandt’s purreinventing the biography, creating the myth

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ported sexual debauchery was directly related to his artistic vigor and conformed to perceptions of creative potency as a specifically masculine domain in nineteenth-century France. The construction of his artistic persona as a stereotyped masculine identity located Rembrandt as a model specifically for male French artists.

Rembrandt and the Dutch Jewish Community French critics and historians helped shape Rembrandt’s biography into the myth of a liberally minded artist who lived outside mainstream society by aligning Rembrandt with the Dutch Jewish community.163 Nineteenth-century thinkers were the first to see connections between Rembrandt and the Jews. In part, their high level of interest was informed by the newly accessible archival information, which showed that Rembrandt had lived in the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam.164 The connections were largely positive and there was only one instance where a French writer presented Rembrandt as someone who did not like Jews; he made up a fictional narrative in which Rembrandt resisted Titus’ desire to marry a Jewish woman and convert.165 This was not, however, the prevailing view. As with the emphasis on Rembrandt’s attraction to lower social classes among French critics, several critics also used information on Jews to reconfigure further his personality as unconventional, openminded and indifferent to ideas held by bourgeois society. Discussion and praise of Rembrandt’s interest in different social groups formed a significant component of the conception of Rembrandt in France as a free artist, particularly an artist unfettered by the shackles of Catholic doctrine. Although French critics were certainly aware that the significant representation of religious subjects in Rembrandt’s œuvre could be interpreted as Catholic imagery, it was the diversity of his religious subject matter and his attraction to people from varying backgrounds that they deemed most significant. Most French critics who wrote about Rembrandt and Judaism did so in nuanced terms and did not use the artist and his work as a

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platform to express sentiments either for or against Jewish people. But the French historian Edouard Drumont exploited connections between Rembrandt and Jews in his well-read anti-semitic text La France Juive, a book first published in 1886 and regularly reprinted and issued in popular editions during the last two decades of the century.166 Drumont articulated an idea which then had considerable circulation in France and connected “Jews with the cult of money.” He claimed Jews had mercantile and avaricious tendencies and lived in reality. Drumont juxtaposed these traits with those he assigned to Aryans, who he said were preoccupied with superior aspirations and lived in the realm of ideals. In art, Drumont aligned Jews with the masses, the lower classes: They prefer the lower classes, which allow them on the one hand to get rich by flattering the base appetites of the multitude and to serve their cause by ridiculing the enthusiasms, the pious memories, the august traditions of the people at whose expense they live.167 Drumont also compared the condition of Jews in France, where they were required to shed their past, with Jews in Holland. Much to Drumont’s dismay, Jews were openly accepted in Holland, which he called “the cradle for the modern Jew.” Given the common characterization of Rembrandt as a miserly personality who circulated among the lower classes – and most importantly the popularity of his images of Jews in France – it is perhaps not surprising that Drumont suggested one must consider “Rembrandt’s world” in order to understand the history of Jews in Holland: It’s Rembrandt that one must, I would not say look at, but contemplate, study, scrutinize, search, analyze, if we really want to see the Jew. If they’re talking, Rembrandt’s Jews talk about business at the door of the synagogue, of the guilder or of the last envoy from Batavia! These travelers who walk with their stick in their hand with the air of wandering reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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Jews, who feel that they are going to arrive and sit down somewhere!168 Drumont related Rembrandt’s images of Jews with notions of the “wandering Jew.” This figure was popularized in French, German, Norwegian, and Flemish imagery well before the publication of Champfleury’s (Jules-François-Félix Husson) Histoire de l’imagerie populaire in 1886. The figure of the “wandering Jew” had great resonance in France in the second half of the nineteenth cenutry, and the image of a peripatetic man with a long beard, leather tablier and stick was regarded as a dramatic everyman.169 Popular imagery and literature presented the “wandering Jew” as a poorly dressed man who looked like a vagabond and existed on the margins of society.170 Drumont’s connections between Rembrandt’s subjects and the “wandering Jew” figure also relate to how French critics aligned Rembrandt with their ideas concerning art of and for humanity. French art critics also constructed a junction between Rembrandt and their conception of Jews and Judaism. The critics stopped short of saying Rembrandt was himself Jewish, but popularized references to Rembrandt’s avaricious tendencies resonated with the stereotyped character of the miserly Jew then circulating in France.171 Even critics who, based on recently discovered archival material, rejected the idea that Rembrandt’s combined avaricious and spend-thrift nature brought about his financial demise still made much of his love of money. Attempts by some to put this trait in more positive terms led a few critics to explain Rembrandt’s use of many props and costumes in his imagery as a natural outgrowth of his mania for collecting exotic objects. These were the same objects earlier critics said Rembrandt called “my antiques.” Many critics emphasized that Rembrandt lived in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam at two different times in his life. They said that the most important period occurred during his final years on Sint Anthonies Breestraat, years during which Rembrandt was supposedly bankrupt but some critics wondered if he had squirreled away a significant stash of money. The location of Rembrandt’s home in the Jewish district was considered a central component of his biography in the

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nineteenth century and was even mentioned in the entry on Rembrandt in the nineteenth-century Larousse encyclopedia. French critics were also intrigued with what they saw as the pervasive imagery of Jews in Rembrandt’s œuvre. They frequently discussed images of Jewish people both in his prints and paintings, including the Jewish Synagogue and what they saw as Jewish-type heads in his etchings. Fromentin stated that Rembrandt painted Jews more than Christians.172 Rembrandt’s painting The Jewish Bride and the print known as “la grande Juive” also received particular attention. Brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt noted the “Juiverie” of Rembrandt’s work in their journal; they remarked on his mysterious synagogues and identified the principal diminutive enigmatic female figure in The Night Watch as a Jewish woman, as did Fromentin.173 Another critic identified Portrait of a Woman [plate 4] in the Louvre as a “Jewish bride.” 174 One critic even thought Rembrandt had chosen numerous Old Testament subjects simply as an excuse to paint Amsterdam Jews.175 Others made much of Rembrandt’s contacts and friendships with Jews in Amsterdam. They noted particularly his Four subjects for a Spanish book, four etchings that were used in a book written in honor of Jewish people by Menasseh-ben-Israël, the rabbi for three Amsterdam synagogues. Through documents Scheltema unearthed in Amsterdam archives, Menasseh-ben-Israël was known to have lived on the same street as Rembrandt, suggesting a further connection between the two.176 Other critics noted Rembrandt’s portrait of this patron and his portrait of Doctor Ephraïm Bonus [fig. 5], which was known in France as “Juif à la rampe.” In addition, many French writers believed that Rembrandt’s studies of Polish figures all depicted Jewish people. One said he wished he could have Rembrandt as his guide through the Jewish section of Warsaw and interpreted Rembrandt’s images of the poor as depictions of Jews.177 Notions of Rembrandt’s affinity for Jewish subject matter must be evaluated as part of the larger conception of his interest in images of reality, humanity, and the lower classes in France. These ideas were clearly informed by the anti-semitic ideologies of many French critics and historians as well as the widespread anti-semitism in France during reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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fig. 5 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Doctor Ephraïm Bonus (“Juif à la rampe”), 1647

the second half of the nineteenth century. However, these ideas were not always overtly expressed. The unprecedented level of interest in Rembrandt’s images of Jewish people, his personal friendships with prominent Amsterdam Jews, and the location of his home in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam among French writers were integral to the configuration of Rembrandt as a bohemian artist who lived on the margins of bourgeois society. The character traits and friendships French critics assigned to Rembrandt contributed to notions of his artistic persona as outside the mainstream compared to other western European artists. These mythmakers defined Rembrandt’s personality as one that accepted difference and was attracted to subject matter that gave him access to varied social groups. Their claims concerning his personal affinity for Jewish people and culture contributed to notions of Rembrandt as an openminded observer of the multifaceted society in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, as the country was characterized in nineteenthcentury France. As an artist who did not conform to bourgeois standards and sought out difference, Rembrandt became an icon for French artists who promoted a minority perspective or worked on the periphery of society. The reinvention of Rembrandt’s biography and characterization of his art in France formulated his artistic persona as an individualist. He was presented as a self-taught, bohemian, liberally-minded, antibourgeois, anti-traditional, marginalized, unappreciated, virile, and sexually active figure who aimed to depict aspects of the world in which he lived in a sincere, truthful, and realistic manner. The characterization of the Dutch school with Rembrandt at its epicenter further substantiated connections French critics made between Rembrandt and notions of independence, democracy, freedom, and individuality. The cultural myth or idea of Rembrandt that was formulated by French critics – the myth-makers – was the character of the suffering, creative genius who was unrecognized by his contemporaries. Rembrandt, thus, embodied characteristics of the underappreciated painter, poet, or writer at a time when French critics and artists could best make use of a sense of communal identity with the Old Master. reinventing the biography, creating the myth

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plate 1 – Paul Delaroche, Hemicycle des Beaux-Arts (Left Section), 1841

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plate 2 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Easel, 1660

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plate 3 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Angel Raphael Leaving Tobias’ Family, 1637

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plate 4 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Woman, n.d.

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plate 5 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Philosopher in Meditation, 1632

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plate 6 – School of Rembrandt van Rijn, The Good Samaritan, n.d

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plate 7 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Carpenter’s Household/The Holy Family, 1640

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plate 8 – After Rembrandt van Rijn, Hendrickje Stoffels as Venus/Venus and Amor, n.d.

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plate 9 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, 1642

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plate 10 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, 1632

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plate 11 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Woman at the Bath, 1652

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plate 12 – Alphonse Martinet, Rembrandt’s Studio, c.1857

plate 15 – Aert de Gelder, Abraham and the Angels, oil on canvas. Rotterdam, Boymans van Beuningen Museum.

plate 13 – Frédéric Regamey, Paris à l’eau-forte. Paraît tous les samedis, 1875

plate 14 – Henri-Patrice Dillon, Nouveau théâtre de la rue Blanche, 1898

plate 16 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Head of a Rabbi

plate 17 – Copy after Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Burgomaster Six

plate 18 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Suppliant before a Biblical Prince

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plate 19 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Samplers in a Cave

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plate 20 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Head of an Old Man

chapter 2

Politicizing Rembrandt An Exemplar for New Aesthetic Values, Realism, and Republicanism

he multifaceted identity French critics and artists refashioned for Rembrandt created an artistic persona that fulfilled their own needs. He became a figure they could call upon to validate and promote both the aesthetic and political principles they advocated for contemporary French art and society. The growing acceptance and appreciation of Rembrandt’s art was related, in part, to a questioning and reevaluation of prescriptive aesthetic values in the visual arts. The political dimension to the recreation of Rembrandt came about when several writers used him in an attempt to bolster their call for art to take a radical socio-political role in nineteenth-century France. They gave his artistic persona political meanings, variously making him into an anti-catholic, an antiroyalist, and a politically active figure. Over time, Rembrandt came to be regarded as the most modern of the Old Master artists and the most suitable forerunner for what a number of critics defined as the modern French artist.

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Changing Views on Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century France

Rembrandt and Drawing Rembrandt’s artistic persona was a useful exemplar for many French critics and artists who sought to buttress their challenge of prevailing

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notions of quality art, specifically as they related his art to definitions of good drawing and beauty. In their subtle attempts to elevate Rembrandt’s reputation as a draughtsman, which rendered him increasingly significant in their own time, there was a political agenda of changing academic controls and practices. Critics either tried to justify Rembrandt’s talents within the academic system or promote him as an example outside that tradition. Their tactical approach was informed by their own political views of academic conventions and what they believed would most effectively advance Rembrandt’s reputation – and that of contemporaries who espoused similar goals – in France. Rembrandt’s drawings were never held up as a model in the nineteenth century by leading French art institutions such as the École des BeauxArts or the Louvre, but he became an acknowledged precursor for those who sought to contest entrenched traditions and promote the innovations of contemporary artists. In favoring the example of Rembrandt’s artistic persona, it seems that artists were hoping to broaden the choices of both technique and subject matter at their disposal, and in this way challenged definitions of good quality art and questioned the criteria of the art academy and juried salons. The debate over Rembrandt’s talents as a draughtsman in France was underway well before the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, De Piles claimed Rembrandt’s drawing was “incorrect” and ranked it the weakest aspect of his art following the four categories he evaluated in his comparative table “Balance des peintres”: composition, drawing, color, and expression.178 Antoine Coypel compared Poussin’s and Rembrandt’s drawing techniques and also found Rembrandt lacking.179 Furthermore, Descamps declared Rembrandt a mediocre draughtsman.180 Gersaint was more conciliatory. He said Rembrandt used drawing simply to develop his ideas and since he always intended to put the drawings aside he did not finish them with great care.181 In the 1790s, Lebrun defended Rembrandt’s drawing as being as skillful as that of any other artist and said his drawing technique was a great help in distinguishing authentic works by Rembrandt from those of his imitators:

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Rembrandt’s manner was an excuse for many incorrect masters, who saw in him only a mediocre draughtsman; but they were wrong, because this artist’s drawing may be without choice but it is no less skillful, no less correct; and it is above all through the differences in drawing that we find the greatest help in distinguishing Rembrandt from his imitators.182 Throughout the eighteenth century, however, Rembrandt’s drawings were generally regarded as inferior to standards promoted by the French academy. In the nineteenth century, French writers continued to evaluate Rembrandt’s draughtsmanship by comparing his drawings to those by artists aligned with the classical tradition of Italian and ancient art. At the same time, the perception of value and what constituted skillful drawing was being reevaluated. The increasingly broad and inclusive views on the definition of good drawing in France enabled artists such as Rembrandt to be designated exemplary draughtsmen. As early as 1817, Stendhal said he disagreed with critics who divided drawing techniques into camps under Raphael and Rembrandt and who advocated the strict Academic definitions of good-quality drawing. Stendhal recommended artists study both Raphael and Rembrandt’s drawing or, better yet, consult nature.183 Others hesitated. In the following decade, Paillot de Montabert wondered whether or not he dare suggest that Rembrandt’s drawing was better than that of Giulio Romano or Annibale Carracci, but he ventured that critics who thought otherwise were themselves at fault. Do we not hear everywhere that Rembrandt’s drawing is pitiful, and that he did not understand anything of this facet of art? Would it not be more the critics themselves who do not comprehend anything about the theory of drawing?.... It has to be understood that he did not have a feeling for drawing relative to movement and perspective. We see in his paintings scenes which are rightly felt, very politicizing rembrandt

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pleasantly done, with very correct lines, maybe he was even superior in this natural feeling than Juliano Romano himself, and dare I say Annibale Carracci.184 Montabert blamed any shortcomings in Rembrandt’s drawing on his schooling in Holland and his predilection for color: “This painter, like so many others, would have become a great draughtsman, if he had not been preoccupied exclusively with clair-obscur and color and, moreover, if he had forgotten the bad tastes of studios, if at last a real school of painting had opened a sure path for him to follow.” 185 Despite Montabert’s praise of Rembrandt, this last remark that the Dutch artist would have been a better draughtsman if he had been trained somewhere besides in the Netherlands outraged painter-printmaker Alphonse Legros. Legros expressed his disagreement in a letter to his friend Henri Fantin-Latour: You speak to me of Rembrandt, of this famous, of this great, of this giant, and in reading, I found a phrase taken from M. Paillot de Montabert; these are remarks which make me snigger with laughter... This Parisian man claims that if Rembrandt drew like Poussin he would be a great painter! It’s strong, eh? I would very much like to see the painting by Rembrandt of which you speak, because it should be quite splendid. I eat it up from here (you know, the fashionable phrase).186 Legros did not think Rembrandt’s technique needed to be improved at all and he believed that Rembrandt’s drawing was certainly as skilled as that of Poussin. Thoré-Bürger was even more certain when he said, “Rembrandt drew better than Poussin!” 187 In another comparison of Rembrandt to Italian artists, Gustave Planche said he did not understand why anyone would defend the “pure” drawing of Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael over the mysterious shadows Rembrandt used around the contours of his figures. In fact, Planche rejected the idea that one could not reconcile an attraction to two artists from different traditions.188

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Instead of comparing Rembrandt to artists revered by French institutions, other critics sought to evaluate Rembrandt’s abilities as a draughtsman outside the Academic tradition. Charles Blanc allowed that Rembrandt’s drawing was not as polished as artists connected to the Academy, but he said, “If Rembrandt ignored what we call style, he replaced it with a quality of the first order which is feeling.”189 Blanc suggested that French artists who wanted to learn how to make a croquis drawing should look to Rembrandt’s etchings of beggars.190 He later declared his approval of Rembrandt’s drawing more forcefully, asserting it was removed from tradition and “broke the chain of art” that extended from classical antiquity through to Italian art during the Renaissance. Blanc also reiterated his earlier pitch for sentiment: “If his drawing lacks nobility, if its proportions are incorrect, he is raised up by a superior quality, feeling.” 191 Although Blanc could not fit Rembrandt into the classical tradition of so-called correct drawing style, he suggested this canon should not be considered the only benchmark for evaluating the talent of a draughtsman. “We often hear that Rembrandt was an extremely weak draughtsman, that he missed this part of art; there is a heresy of orthodox thinkers. Certainly Rembrandt did not draw with the correct elegance taught by the classical tradition... but there are essential aspects of drawing that Rembrandt possesses to the highest degree: expression and perspective.”192 Other critics suggested Rembrandt’s drawing was not conven193 tional and that Rembrandt was independent of the grand style: “He remains in his own genius and completely independent of the tradition of the grand style... his talent has no affinity with correct drawing, with the purged and ideal taste of the masters of Florence or Rome.” 194 Critic François Lenormant pronounced, with a sense of relief, that Rembrandt was not a conventional draughtsman like some boring Academics: “Rembrandt is not a draughtsman in the ordinary sense in which we hear this word. He never knew to refine his drawing with the correctness that we teach in the academies, and which sometimes degenerates to pedantry... But besides this fault in correction and ideal form, what a profound science of drawing, what an art for politicizing rembrandt

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depicting nature in its truth and in its life!” 195 Blanc and Lenormant both advanced Rembrandt as an example counter to – but equally valid as – traditional, Academic models. Frédéric Villot, a curator at the Louvre, praised the energy and finesse of Rembrandt’s drawing despite its incorrect and bizarre passages.196 To Eugène Delacroix, Rembrandt’s drawing was vague, magical, and expressive.197 George Duplessis, curator at the Cabinet des estampes, also defended Rembrandt’s abilities as a draughtsman: He did not delight in exquisite contour, in harmoniously established proportions and with art of level-headed lines; but as he thoroughly possessed a feeling for form, as he knew how to give the figure he invented an expression accurate and suitable for their position, as his sense of life was as developed as his sense of light, we can assert that he did not lack the genius of drawing and that, if he did not make the same use of it as other equally illustrious masters, it was because his temperament was opposed to this interpretation of nature, of this choice of the standards which constitute real beauty.198 Even with all these attempts to improve Rembrandt’s reputation as a draughtsman, his drawings were still undervalued in Academic circles and he was included in only a negligible number of published drawing courses. These publications served as resources for art students and as supplements to classes run by the Academy. Indeed, few non-Italian or non-French examples were promoted by leading French art institutions. Raphael was systematically highlighted in the courses prior to 1850 and Domenichino, Reni, Poussin, and Lebrun were also popular. Rembrandt figured in only two of these published drawing courses: Antoine Etex’s Cours élémentaire de dessin, published in 1850 and 1851, and in Marie-Elisabeth Cavé’s Cours de dessin sans maître, published in 1851 and 1852. Cavé was one of the few instructors who urged students to study a wide range of models.199 Two decades later, in 1872, Etex was also permitted to present his views in a series of courses at the

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École des Beaux-Arts.200 Still, Rembrandt was never one of the past artists whose drawings attained a privileged status among the principal French institutions of art instruction. Rembrandt’s drawings were also not well displayed at the Louvre. Although it was possible to study his techniques in the paintings hanging in the Louvre or in private collections, few of Rembrandt’s drawings were readily accessible. Of the approximately 36,000 graphic works of western European origin then at the Louvre, the principal public French repository for such works, only 1,420 were accessible to visitors.201 Of these exhibited or accessible drawings, the schools were represented as follows: 765 French, 456 Italian, 88 Flemish, 60 Dutch, 35 German, 4 unknown German, Flemish, or Dutch, and 3 Spanish. Italian and primarily French drawings were clearly promoted as the most valuable models in the context of this important institution. Of the comparatively few drawings by Dutch artists, Rembrandt was the best represented with six works.202 But this presentation was overwhelmed by the preference given to Raphael (20), Rubens (28), Charles Lebrun (32), Nicolas Poussin (32), Annibale Carracci (39), and above all Eustache Lesueur (176). Drawing techniques and the perfection of forms found in nature, which related to antique art and conformed to practices promoted by the Academy, dominated the Louvre. In this context, exposure denoted the level of official approval. Rembrandt’s drawing techniques were, therefore, something that French artists and critics had to actively and consciously seek out. They were not promoted by the leading institutions for the education or exhibition of art and did not enjoy either the validation or promotion such establishments could offer. In fact, the way in which most French critics described Rembrandt’s drawing placed him outside tradition, someone different from Italian and French Academic standards, and an alternative to standard models. These standards were, however, also the subject of much debate and criticism in the 1860s. Following Napoleon III’s decree to reform the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863, alternative models were promoted as aesthetic dogma and academic authority increasingly came under politicizing rembrandt

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attack.203 Although the changes made to the École des Beaux-Arts were ultimately superficial, the debate over art instruction in France introduced into Academic circles many of the ideas that were affiliated with Rembrandt during this period. The reform debate centered on the question of originality and such related ideas as spontaneity, naiveté, authenticity, purity, and truth. The reform promoted a new approach to teaching that would develop originality in students, since originality had come to be seen as the heart of artistic creativity. Drawing classes remained the foundation and core of the school and, under the new regime, instructors were supposed to free the subjectivity of their students to allow them to develop their own individual qualities. Problems arose as it became apparent that the ideas of teaching and originality were paradoxical; how could one teach students to be innovative? Nonetheless, the debate around altering the school’s curriculum promoted ideas such as innovation, independence, and non-conformity in the most powerful art circles in France. The encouragement of freedom and originality in drawing within academic circles came at the same time as many French critics were promoting those very traits in Rembrandt’s drawings. Thus, the questioning of the teaching practices of the Academy was a part of the changing attitudes towards aesthetics in France which enabled an artist like Rembrandt to be regarded by some – particularly those who challenged the hegemony of traditionally recognized artists and techniques – as a valid precursor for contemporary artists.

Rembrandt’s Nudes Questions concerning the value of Rembrandt’s art with regard to drawing and beauty in art were wrought with a specific debate over his depictions of the female body. Rembrandt’s images of female nudes were subject to criticism as early as Houbraken and in the eighteenth century Gersaint found them “intolerable.” 204 In the nineteenth century, French critics and artists unanimously agreed that Rembrandt did not depict nude female figures following the perfected forms of Greek

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fig. 6 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Nude Female Seated on a Mound, 1631

and Roman sculpture. Some saw this opposition to ancient traditions as a positive and others as a negative trait. While Rembrandt’s renderings of nude male figures drew little attention, his female nudes, such as Nude Female Seated on a Mound [fig. 6], were typically regarded as overweight and fleshy, unposed bodies presented in an unaltered form. Deemed imperfect, Rembrandt’s nudes were a subject of criticism among those who defined the beauty of a nude female form relative to the classical traditions that dominated French art well into the nineteenth century. Well-known examples, such as female nudes painted by Ingres, Gérôme, and Cabanel among others, all conformed to classical ideal standards. With such comparisons in mind, Fromentin thought Rembrandt depicted only deformed women.205 Even Montabert, who suggested Rembrandt’s drawing may have been better than that of Romano or Carracci, remained critical of his rendering of the female form: “It is true that we are forced to admit that Rembrandt never knew the beauty and elegance of the nude. Whoever looks, for example, at one of his Bathsheba or a Susanna at the Bath, sees nothing but gross and shapeless nudity; that cannot be challenged.” 206 Lenormant held the same view and said he did not like the Bathsheba from the Lacaze collection [plate 11], Rembrandt’s bather in the National Gallery in London, or any of the prints depicting Hendrickje Stoffels. Lenormant said that “Charles Blanc was not severe enough with these deplorable works, which nothing, even the painter and printmaker’s always great skill, makes up for the ignoble character, which goes as low as Courbet’s bathers.” 207 The Bathsheba and Susanna paintings at the Louvre were even published in La Vie Parisienne [figs. 7 & 8] in 1870 in a series of caricatures done after works in the Lacaze collection donated to the Louvre in 1869.208 These caricatures emphasized the same traits as the critics. The lumpy forms of the women’s breasts, buttocks and legs and the accompanying texts reinforced the conception of Rembrandt’s depictions of the female body as ugly, dirty and entirely unappealing. The illustrator Hix commented on Rembrandt’s Bathsheba: “A pretty painting, but a nasty woman, and the tones are pushed to black. Never was a bath more opportune.” 209 The accompanying caption read:

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fig. 7 – Hix, Woman at the Bath, caricature after Rembrandt, 1870

fig. 8 – Hix, Bathsheba, caricature after Rembrandt, 1870

“Hurry up: King David is watching me. I don’t care for him to see me with a hangnail.” 210 The caption below Woman at the Bath, which was sometimes referred to as Susanna, read: “Oh, this little foot! This little foot! All of your water, oh profound sea won’t be enough to make it presentable.” 211 Such perceptions of Rembrandt’s female nudes as base and vile were a significant component in the attack on his refusal to convey ideal form and beauty in art. The artist Legros took the matter of Rembrandt’s nudes so seriously he even thought many of the works were incorrectly attributed to Rembrandt. Legros claimed that the only nudes Rembrandt ever executed were the prints Jupiter and Antiope and Black Woman Lying Down. He also refused to accept the idea that Rembrandt ever produced a work on an erotic subject. What appears now as prudishness on Legros’ part indicates how he thought attributing erotic subjects to Rembrandt would detract from his evaluation of the Old Master. In Rembrandt’s defense, Legros said: “The respect that I feel for Rembrandt’s genius, the special studies that I have made after his printed politicizing rembrandt

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work, obliges me to communicate to the public an opinion which seems reasonable to me in every respect.” 212 For some, however, Rembrandt’s renderings of the female nude offered an alternative to tradition. In 1846, when Gautier saw Susanna at the Bath before it was purchased by Paul Périer, he praised its “natural grandeur.” 213 And when this painting and Rembrandt’s Bathsheba were donated to the Louvre, two prominent artists, Léon Bonnat and Tony Robert Fleury, exclaimed that Bathsheba was the most beautiful painting in the collection and they believed no other nude was more powerfully executed than Bathsheba’s torso.214 While the predominant view was critical, evaluations of Rembrandt’s nudes were clearly subject to whether or not the viewer’s notion of female beauty was informed by traditional notions of perfected, sculpted forms. Rembrandt’s example offered an alternative to that tradition.

Refashioning Concepts of Beauty and Ideal Art: Rembrandt versus Raphael The definition of beauty, one the most important aesthetic issues addressed by artists and critics in nineteenth-century France, was also intertwined with debates concerning the value of Rembrandt. Rembrandt held a multifaceted position within this debate, indicating both the increasingly broad definitions of beauty and the difficulty most French artists and critics had in forming a clear sense of beauty that was not in some way contradictory. Discussions of whether there was any beauty to be found in Rembrandt’s art and how to quantify or justify those findings provides significant insight into this central debate and also illuminates one of the key means by which Rembrandt was increasingly regarded as an Old Master to admire and emulate. Since the foundation of the French Academy, Italian art, and specifically the work of Raphael, had stood as a principal benchmark for conventional definitions of beauty and good or high-quality art. As discussed above, drawing was a primary component of this definition. Definitions of “ideal” art largely referred to the following standards:

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Italian and classical art and traditions and a rendering of forms in an improved if not perfected manner rather than precisely as they exist before the eye. For the most part, however, writers did not define their terms clearly. As early as the 1830s, French critics raised questions surrounding what constituted beauty and the value of “ideal” beauty in conjunction with Rembrandt. Those questions grew in force and quantity in the following decades. In their attempts to raise Rembrandt’s status as one of the most significant Old Masters, French artists and critics negotiated the Dutch artist’s position relative to entrenched traditions in different ways. Some compared Rembrandt’s work to ideal art and ideal beauty in an attempt to validate his achievements, as they had in their approach to his drawings. Others suggested beauty could assume many forms and proposed that the spectrum of its definition should not be limited as in the past. Many set Rembrandt up in opposition to the traditional characterization of beauty and thus hailed his achievements as new and different from conventional models. Martin Rosenberg cogently evaluated the changing values of ideal beauty in his study of Raphael and nineteenth-century France as follows: As the century progressed, however, Raphael became a less vital model as art diverged from the grand ideal still cherished by Ingres and Delacroix. Their followers tended to turn to different models from past art to create works with very different qualities than the grand goût of Raphael... By Manet’s time, the seemingly immutable values of ideal beauty, for which Raphael’s art had so long served as paradigm, had fallen victim to modernity.215 Indicating this shift, Charles Baudelaire’s theory of beauty as outlined in his well-known essay, “The Painter of Modern Life” (first published in 1863), provides insight into the complexity of the debate. At the beginning of his essay, Baudelaire lamented that so many people, including artists, went to the Louvre and overlooked many interesting works to sit in front of a work by Titian or Raphael. Then, when they left the politicizing rembrandt

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museum, they said to themselves: “I know my museum.” For Baudelaire, Raphael did not represent everything in art. In addition to the “general beauty” of classical artists and writers he suggested people look to the “particular beauty,” which could be found under varying circumstances and in different customs. He was thankful that at least in recent years the situation had begun to be corrected.216 In the context of his essay, which promoted the work of caricaturist and lithographer Constantin Guys, Baudelaire took the opportunity to propose what he called a rational and historical theory of beauty: Beauty is always, inevitably, of a double composition, even though the impression it gives is one.... Beauty is made of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstancial element, which will be, if you like, each in turn or all together, the era, the fashion, the morals, the passion. 217 Baudelaire’s promotion of a more diverse definition of beauty and the importance of using contemporary life and society as a subject relates to the tactics many of his contemporaries used to defend Rembrandt. There are also numerous parallels between the popularized elements of Rembrandt’s biography in nineteenth-century France and Baudelaire’s description of Guys, his ideal modern artist. Baudelaire said Guys drew like a barbarian, was self-educated, a printmaker, took an interest in everything around him, chose his models from crowds of people, was a passionate observer obsessed with analyzing forms in nature, and produced “shadowy sketches.” Baudelaire’s call for a definition of beauty that would accommodate an artist who had the background and techniques of Guys would, therefore, also accommodate Rembrandt. Writers who looked specifically at the issue of beauty and Rembrandt’s art tried either to justify his conception of beauty relative to tradition, called for a change in the definition of beauty, or set Rembrandt up as a model counter to conventional ideas about ideal beauty. Critics who compared Rembrandt’s art to predetermined definitions of ideal art and beauty sought to inscribe him within the boundaries of

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the sanctioned canon of quality art. These writers did not challenge predominant conventions, rather their strategy was to place Rembrandt within established customs. They believed that if they could prove Rembrandt’s worth on a par with traditionally valued art they would raise awareness of his significance. Vosmaer was among those critics who sought to advance Rembrandt’s stature by evaluating him as equal to entrenched models. In his response to Fromentin’s attacks on Rembrandt in the Revue des deux mondes, Vosmaer defended Rembrandt’s art by comparing it to that of Raphael and the Egyptians. He suggested the art of Rembrandt, Raphael, and the Egyptians were all examples of exceptional art and needed time and consideration to be understood properly. Vosmaer believed that if Fromentin had only taken more time to examine The Night Watch and consider its achievements, then he would have understood it better and, thus, appreciated its value. It is the ordinary effect of an exceptional work of art, of many paintings of a superior level. Raphael does not always satisfy the first to come, nor at first glance. Often even with well-known artists, seeing them for the first time, we say: is that it? To appreciate Shakespeare, one has to understand him, and understanding is not achieved except by the force of penetrating his works a bit at a time. Egyptian art does not charm at first glance; when you penetrate it, it captivates you.218 Vosmaer made use of such comparisons to the accepted canon when it suited his purposes. In general, he rejected the terms realist and idealist as products of his own time and did not think they should be applied to Rembrandt or any past art. Vosmaer did not think Rembrandt was a realist even though he taught his students only to study from nature. He allowed that Rembrandt liked nature and reality, but claimed that the Dutch artist studied the ugly in order to render it picturesque in his images of the poor. In this way, Vosmaer defended Rembrandt as politicizing rembrandt

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both a poet and an idealist.219 Unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Vosmaer was apprehensive about connecting terms such as realist with Rembrandt and perhaps feared that associations with the controversial realist movement in France would be detrimental to Rembrandt’s reputation and potentially marginalize his significance. Coquerel also questioned whether, following contemporary terminology, he should group Rembrandt with the realists or the idealists. He concluded it would be impossible to deny that Rembrandt was a realist “to the greatest degree, to excess” since he found nothing ugly or unworthy of study in nature.220 Coquerel cited The Slaughtered Ox in the Louvre as an example of Rembrandt embracing all subjects, regardless of their moral or physical ugliness. Despite Rembrandt’s wideranging choice of subject matter, which Coquerel often found coarse or rude, he saw other works as intrinsically ideal as any artist could create. Coquerel cited another work in the Louvre, Angel Raphael Leaving Tobias and His Family [plate 3], as an example of his notion of the ideal strain in Rembrandt’s œuvre. Coquerel then concluded that the latter painting in fact incorporated both the ideal and real aspects of Rembrandt’s art. Coquerel’s definitions of real and ideal remained vague and his emphasis was principally on subject matter rather than the formal issues that concerned other critics. He attempted to engage in the debate between real and ideal but ultimately collapsed the two terms. Théophile Gautier had similar difficulty extricating himself from accepted definitions of good art and ideal beauty. Like most of the critics, however, he did not question whether or not applying the then-popular terms realist and idealist to past art was appropriate. In his essay “De beau dans l’art,” Gautier described Rembrandt as an artist who took his subjects from nature but who did not simply reproduce forms as he saw them. Rather he said Rembrandt had a preconceived notion or dream of what ideal beauty was and thus remained only partially objective.221 The artist Auguste Couder even found a place for Rembrandt in his study of the moral purpose of art. Couder preferred defining beauty as contour and line following Greek traditions of order and symmetry, but he made room for Rembrandt in his chapter on color and compared his achievements to those of Apelles.222

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Other artists and critics, who did not seek to place Rembrandt within established conventions, advocated a broader definition of beauty that would value real and ideal imagery equally. For example, Planche thought admiration or emulation of Raphael’s drawing technique should not exclude an artist from also looking to Rembrandt. He believed contemporary definitions of beauty were too exclusive and ought to include everyday subjects which some regarded as too banal to be worthy of close artistic study. The popular critic, the one who only sees in the history of art a determined period to the exclusion of all others, who calls Latin poetry Virgil, French poetry Fénélon, and painting Raphael, accuses the most beautiful of Rembrandt’s compositions of triviality... What does that mean in effect? Is human reality not the first and most indispensible element of a picturesque work? 223 The landscape artist Paul Huet, in his notes on beauty written in 1854, called for a redefinition of beauty so that Rembrandt’s presentation of everyday subject matter would be more highly regarded. His interest in Rembrandt can best be understood when one considers that such a reevaluation would also serve to elevate the status of Huet’s own art and the subject matter and method of painting of the artists affiliated with his circle at Barbizon. Huet’s interest was, without a doubt, a vested interest. Huet rejected previous attemps to define beauty and used Rembrandt as the prime example of what the new explanation of beauty should include: Philosophers have formed many theories on art and beauty; artists love art and that is all there is to it... Beauty neither imposes nor defines itself: the ordinary ignore it, the artist feels it, likes it and looks for it... Beauty is everywhere... A pile of manure overrun by poultry can become sublime in Rembrandt’s hand. This base and trivial subject, handled by the master, will carry politicizing rembrandt

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us to an imaginary world, across luminous rays which shine on the artist as well as his subject; everything, right up to his execution, charms us, makes us think along with him. Ungraspable beauty will be everywhere, maybe even right down to the artist’s faults.224 Further, in an attempt to position Rembrandt as judiciously as possible, Charles Blanc tried to negotiate a position for him as an artist both inside and outside tradition. He said Rembrandt formed an independent way of treating line by looking to nature and depicting truthful expressions of subjects rather than placing ugliness outside the realm of art. In this way, Blanc said Rembrandt belonged entirely to modern art, which he defined as specifically Christian.225 But Blanc was also unable to escape from established conventions encompassing the value of beauty and ideal form. Blanc fell back on what he vaguely termed Rembrandt’s profound imagination to explain what he believed mediated between the real and ideal realms in Rembrandt’s art.226 Blanc ultimately tried to escape from the complexities of this debate by saying that Rembrandt’s art represented a new ideal.227 Thus, he said Rembrandt assumed an exceptional status as the only Dutch artist capable of producing ideal art in a country that did not have this tradition. The majority of French critics believed Rembrandt’s art was self-consciously opposed to Italian traditions and ideal art. Jules Renouvier, author of an important print treatise discussed in Chapter Five, declared Rembrandt a dissenting artist who went against the principles of art derived from Italy. Renouvier defined Rembrandt as an artist of his own time whose mission was to capture the life and humanity in his community with the utmost veracity. He wrote: Rembrandt is neither an idealist, nor an eclectic, he is a fantastic and real artist, whose lynx eye sees humanity in its most reality in Amsterdam... he represented only the truth and vivacity of life, with the privilege of being both the most finished and most free painting... He reacted against the theories and examples coming from Rome, as

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much by his manner of rendering correct forms, as by his way of hearing the gospel. Inspired by his own time and drenched in nature, equal to the greatest artists, he had a unique gift: he makes the sublime from the base.228 Yet, even as Renouvier identified Rembrandt as a realist, he invoked the term sublime in an attempt to bolster the artist’s achievements further. Lenormant held the same view as Renouvier and said Rembrandt was “a man whose genius was one of the most polar opposites to classicism and the beauty of style.” 229 In opposing Rembrandt and Italian art, several French writers developed a dialectical model in which Rembrandt and Raphael represented the two extremes that existed in past art.230 While presenting Rembrandt as the model anti-establishment artist, they also asserted he was the only plausible example of a modern artist who contemporary French artists could or should revere and try to rival. Houssaye also ascribed to the traditional description of Raphael and Phidias as examples of ideal beauty in his attempt to define the beauty of Flemish and Dutch art. He criticized northern artists for blindly following Plato’s philosophy that “beauty is the splendour of truth” instead of ascribing to the interpretive aspect of Aristotle’s theory, which held that “art is the imitation of nature,” where the imitative process included some element of transformation. Although Houssaye ranked Rembrandt and northern art’s terrestrial ideal or ideal of reason after antique and Christian ideals, he nonetheless thought there should be room for Rembrandt in the pantheon of beauty. Given this ranking, it seems paradoxical that Houssaye also commented that Raphael did not inspire any artists but tormented many, whereas he said Rembrandt marked the beginning of a new art: “Raphael did not create one painter, he drove a thousand to despair: in one it is the known world, the final word, the crowning of the work; in Rembrandt, the daring and magical colorist, it is again the beginning of the world. It is a new dawn which brightens art.”231 Houssaye’s conception of Rembrandt as a new world reappeared later in Les Dieux et les demi-dieux de la peinture, by which point his approach to beauty was politicizing rembrandt

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far less strict. Houssaye no longer sought to establish a hierarchy of approaches to aesthetics, but to understand the different routes artists took to reach their own definition of beauty.232 Nevertheless, for some, setting up Raphael and Rembrandt as polar opposites was a highly controversial venture. In 1851, Delacroix feared he would be criticized for comparing the two, particularly since he concluded that Rembrandt’s art was more beautiful than that of Raphael. Delacroix wrote in his journal: I am very sure that if Rembrandt had held himself down to this studio practice [drawing every figure nude before putting clothing on them], he would not have either that power of pantomime nor that power over effects which makes his scenes so genuinely the expression of nature. Perhaps it will be discovered that Rembrandt is a far greater painter than Raphael. I write this blasphemy – one that will make every school-man’s hair stand on end – without coming to an absolute decision in the matter; but the further I go on in life the more I feel within me that truth is what is most beautiful, and most rare. Rembrandt has not, if you will, the absolute elevation of Raphael. Perhaps that elevation which Raphael has in the lines, in the majesty of each one of his figures, is to be found again in Rembrandt’s mysterious conception of his subjects, in the deep naturalness of expressions and of gestures. Although one may prefer that majestic emphasis of Raphael, which perhaps belongs to that grandeur of certain subjects, one might affirm, without causing oneself to be stoned by men of taste – by which I mean of a genuine and sincere taste – that the great Dutchman was more natively a painter than the studious pupil of Perugino.233 Three years later in 1854, in his article “Question sur le beau” in the Revue des deux mondes, Delacroix readdressed his earlier comparison between Rembrandt and Raphael. In this context he asserted, with

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greater confidence, that people should not restrict themselves to traditional definitions of beauty. Delacroix found as much beauty in Rembrandt’s popular types as he did in what he referred to as primitive German and Italian art which was not tied to notions of ideal beauty entrenched in ancient art. Thus, Delacroix presented Rembrandt as a new path to an unconventional conception of beauty, one not tied to classical traditions. Nonetheless, he still felt compelled to prove that Rembrandt’s art could measure up to that of the ancients and could not resist comparing Rembrandt to Phidias. Delacroix declared that the principal laws of taste – which were embodied by unity, variety, proportion and expression – were as strong in one of Rembrandt’s portraits of a beggar in rags as Phidias’ sculptures of Jupiter or Athena. 234 While Delacroix placed Rembrandt outside tradition he still struggled with inherited definitions of beauty and sought to validate the Dutch artist’s worth relative to those practices. Thoré-Bürger experienced the same dilemma and also situated Rembrandt and Raphael in opposition to one another. Thoré-Bürger recalled looking at two images in a journal where portraits of Raphael and Rembrandt were placed facing away from one another. To ThoréBürger Raphael looked backwards to the past; he was a flower about to wilt. In contrast, he thought Rembrandt looked forward to the future; he was a root taking hold that would grow and develop. This image inspired his germinal analogy of Raphael and Rembrandt representing the Janus of art. Thoré-Bürger said Raphael looked at humanity abstractly while Rembrandt looked directly, with his own eyes. In spite of all this praise of Rembrandt, Thoré-Bürger still bemoaned the fact that the artist was born in the Netherlands instead of Italy: “Oh! If Rembrandt, with his free and original genius, could rise again in a country like Italy, this eternal country of beauty, he would have given light to superb creations.” 235 A few years later, in the context of his salon criticism, Thoré-Bürger referred back to this ideal in his description of the two types of modern art. “There are only two types in modern art: Raphael and Rembrandt, an ‘a priori’ and an ‘a posteriori’ artist, a philosopher of aesthetics would say; an artist who works from an ideal conceived by himself, and an artist who works from nature.” 236 politicizing rembrandt

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It is perhaps not surprising that Thoré-Bürger and Delacroix were the two principal exponents of the Rembrandt versus Raphael paradigm given their close friendship and the ideas they shared, beginning as early as the late 1830s through to Delacroix’s death in 1863.237 Delacroix and Thoré-Bürger both believed that Rembrandt was the only plausible example for the future of modern art. Socialist and political writer Pierre Joseph Proudhon held a similar view. In his mind Rembrandt was superior to Raphael because he took on contemporary subjects and found new ways to solve formal issues. For Proudhon the central mission of modern art was to find a means of depicting contemporary life without subscribing to artistic conventions. As a result, Rembrandt was the exemplar he promoted for contemporary artists. He said: “Raphael would have retreated from contemporary events, which he would desperately have wanted to depict in an ideal form. This is precisely the problem that art has to overcome, and it is because Rembrandt overcame this issue that his glory surpasses that of Raphael one hundred fold.”238 Rembrandt was also an important subject for the Goncourt brothers and their notion of the future of modern art as separate from traditional definitions of ideal art. In a complex passage in their journal, they suggested that the great ideal works of art were created by artists who had no knowledge of definitions of ideal. The Goncourts’ conception of ideal or perfect art was not the Italian ideal, they said, but a mixture of Rembrandt and the French printmaker and caricaturist Gavarni, a blend of reality transformed by light, shadow, and a poetic blend of colors.239 French artists and critics used Rembrandt’s art to challenge definitions of beauty promoted by the Academy for two centuries. Rembrandt’s example justified broader interpretations of beauty and thus he offered an example for others to follow in their own quest for new forms of art. Whether they promoted Rembrandt as a part of the canon of good art or an alternative to that canon, each offered Rembrandt as the principal archetype of modern art. Rembrandt emerges from this intersection of aesthetic theories as an entirely realist or a partially idealist artist, depending on the

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exponent’s view and whether the critic or artist sought to incorporate Rembrandt into the established canon or wanted to place him outside tradition as a beacon for others to follow. It was particularly useful for critics who wanted to promote their contemporaries affiliated with the French group known as the Realists to praise the realism of Dutch art and Rembrandt’s success as an artist who depicted real life in a truthful manner. There are considerable parallels between the terms applied to Rembrandt’s art and the language associated with realism in France as defined by its principal exponents. In fact, one of the few occasions when the term realism was used before 1840 was in reference to Rembrandt. In an article in the Revue des deux mondes in 1835, Gustave Planche referred to the “realism of Rembrandt” to explain the lack of “poetic ideal” in his art.240 As discussed in the previous chapter, the rhetoric around Rembrandt’s artistic persona emphasized his individuality and his independence from teachers or past traditions. The words originality, novelty, sincerity, truth, and reality were the most commonly repeated descriptors applied to his art. Defining “Realism” has been the subject of considerable debate for at least the past two decades but its general principles, as outlined by its earliest advocates, included claims of optical verisimilitude, individuality, contemporaneity, and a commitment to truth, honesty, and sincerity.241 Such declarations formed what has been referred to as the “Realist myth.” At the same time, this myth embodied many of the tenets that were being assigned to Rembrandt’s artistic persona. Exponents of the French realist artists wanted to defend precisely the same characteristics, which epitomized the realist’s goals. Among their earliest supporters, Champfleury published his defense of realist art, specifically works produced by his friend Gustave Courbet, in an article in the widely read journal L’Artiste in September 1855.242 Champfleury praised Courbet for being born a painter (rather than becoming one through education), and said that artists triumphed when they observed their subjects and painted the individuality of their sitters. He advocated that artists take up both ugly and beautiful subjects so that they can depict things truthfully, as they exist. A few months politicizing rembrandt

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later, Fernand Desnoyers published his defense of realism, again in L’Artiste.243 He declared that realism signified depicting the true representation of objects and that the artists involved had not formed a school but rather followed the principles of independence, sincerity, and individualism. Desnoyers believed realist artists had to present their own world and their own time and while their art would not be an apology for the ugly and negative aspects of society, they had the right to represent what exists before their eyes. The following year, Edmond Duranty founded Réalisme, which he intended to be a monthly journal and a platform for artists and writers associated with the group. In the first issue, Duranty outlined what were, in his mind, the principal tenets of realism: sincerity, truth, independence, naiveté, spontaneity, attacking convention, and reproducing the social milieu of the period in which the artists lived.244 Part of the appeal of Dutch art, and particularly the work of Rembrandt, for such critics as Houssaye, Thoré-Bürger, Planche, and the Goncourts was that it provided them with a precedent for the principles of the French realists.245 Promoting this art of the past and asserting its value served to justify the goals French artists and critics identified with realist art in their own period. As quoted in the previous chapter, Thoré-Bürger even consoled the realists with the example of Rembrandt, saying that one day they too would gain the recognition they deserve, just like Rembrandt.

Replacing Rubens While Rembrandt was being mythologized, the status of his closest northern rival for latter-day hero worship, Rubens, was being dismantled. The leading Flemish painter of the seventeenth century, Rubens was also an important diplomat and his skills and extensive workshop brought him international commissions, including the famous cycle on the life of Marie de’Medici, executed for the Palais de Luxembourg between 1621 and 1625. This series of 24 paintings, now in the Louvre, was an important subject of study among later artists. Rubens is

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frequently cited as the forerunner of the rising interest in color theory among French artists in the early nineteenth century. Rubens was, indeed, an important figure for nineteenth-century French theories on color, particularly the popular case of Delacroix’s interest in the optical fusion of juxtaposed tones on the canvas, and Rubens remained a subject of interest for several French artists throughout the century. But, as French critics focused their attention on Rembrandt, gave him the position of head of the Dutch school and ranked Dutch art over Flemish art, they also dislodged Rubens from the hegemonic position he had been assigned previously in France. While there were at least two dozen studies of Rubens’ art in nineteenth-century France, this number was well surpassed by the quantity of French publications, over 150, on Rembrandt.246 Since Dutch artists were regarded as a discrete group separate from Flemish artists, Rubens was associated with Catholicism, royalty, and, in Thoré-Bürger’s words, “conquered and enslaved people.” 247 French critics did not suddenly begin to speak of Rubens’ art in pejorative terms – although some were overtly negative – but the adjectives they used to describe his art and personality positioned him as a foil and contrasted with those they applied to Rembrandt’s art and increasingly distanced Rubens from the principles and trends of much French art during the second half of the nineteenth century. An analysis of these definitions further clarifies how the increasing interest in artistic individuality and personal expression in France affected the perception of Rembrandt as the leading northern artist. For instance, Delacroix always maintained a certain level of interest in Rubens’ art, but his journal entries in the 1850s demonstrate a shift in his preference from Rubens to Rembrandt along the same lines as those of contemporary critics. Delacroix’s reevaluation of Rubens is largely based on composition and his belief that Rembrandt was better able to render harmoniously figures in a landscape or against a background setting. In 1854, when Delacroix looked again at a copy he had made after a painting of Lot by Rubens, he was “astonished at the coldness of that composition,” and said he now regarded Rembrandt as the artist who could best fuse the primary and secondary elements of a politicizing rembrandt

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composition.248 Delacroix specifically criticized the lack of harmony in Rubens’ landscapes in comparison with those by Rembrandt. Delacroix was not the only one who criticized Rubens’ work. Thoré-Bürger believed Rubens liked light too much and used too much white in his composition, meaning that all his paintings ended up having the same color values. He said Rubens paled in comparison to Giorgione, Titian, Corregio and Rembrandt, the “magicians of clair-obscur.” 249 Another critic thought Rubens was simply derivative and an imitator of Venetian artists.250 Only Fromentin seemed to prefer Rubens. He praised Rubens’ palette and use of light as well as the clarity with which he depicted his subjects.251 Fromentin thought Rubens’ art was heroic, a description he could hardly reconcile with his reading of democratic Dutch art. Blanc contrasted the decorative, radiant, and light (referring to content) qualities of Rubens’ art with the intimate, expressive, meditative, and profound art of Rembrandt.252 He saw Rubens’ work as superficial, while Rembrandt’s had substance and communicated emotional depth to viewers. Similarly, Thoré-Bürger compared Rubens’ art and its ability to make the viewer open up, with Rembrandt’s aim for simplicity and the mysterious, profound, and elusive qualities of his art, which he claimed makes the viewer meditate in front of his works. For Thoré-Bürger, Rembrandt’s art was inside truth and Rubens’ art was outside. By this statement, Thoré-Bürger meant that Rembrandt’s art embodied the critic’s own conception of sincere art while Rubens’ art was devoid of his notion of veracity, for Thoré-Bürger the keystone of good art. Furthermore, Champfleury said one becomes tired and bored from seeing too much of Rubens’ art but he never found Rembrandt’s work tiring.253 While Champfleury put Rubens among a band of calm artists along with Veronese and Lebrun, he grouped Rembrandt with Tintoretto, El Greco, and Delacroix as tormented artists. He stated that calm artists painted simply for the sake of painting and were famous decorators but they did not bleed when they produced art, which for Champfleury meant their art was not as good. Champfleury also thought fast producers like Rubens only used their muscles when painting, whereas he believed tormented artists expended

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blood and bone with every brushstroke and their human experiences and suffering made their art superior.254 For Blanc, Thoré-Bürger and Champfleury, Rubens’ art lacked depth and substance and was therefore not as meaningful as Rembrandt’s work for either themselves or artists in their own time. Rubens’ art was increasingly regarded in France as external to the artist’s personality. His works and ideas were not believed to have come from within himself but were seen as products largely of commissions from royalty or religious institutions. Stylistically, Rubens’ use of light and color were well respected but were not seen as offering the same ingenuity as the contrasting tones of Rembrandt’s paintings. While French critics found some innovative aspects in Rubens’ work, they put originality at the heart of Rembrandt’s œuvre. This repositioning of Rembrandt over Rubens as the most important northern artist in nineteenth-century France corresponded with attempts on the part of many French artists and critics to assert the same principles – individuality and independence – in the art of their own period. Their desire to produce original art and to work outside the confines of institutions was integral to how they reconfigured Rembrandt over Rubens as the leading northern European artist.

Rembrandt as a Populist, Reformer, and Politically Active Figure In addition to using Rembrandt to validate and encourage changing views on aesthetics, several writers also employed his artistic persona to advance their own political agendas in France. They were particularly attracted to Rembrandt because they believed he embodied the anti-Catholic, anti-monarchic, pro-democratic, and pro-republican sentiments they wanted to promote in their own country. In many instances the personal politics of French writers spurred on their interest in and presentation of Dutch art and society. As demonstrated above, French critics praised the way in which Dutch society established its independence after a revolution and developed a “popular” or politicizing rembrandt

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“Republican” government. At the same time they admired how the Dutch school of art flowered when it was freed from the monarchy and papacy. These views take on greater relevance within the context of the battle between monarchical power and attempts to establish a democratic, republican government as well as debates over the power of the Catholic Church in France during the nineteenth century. While the political views of French critics often determined their interest in Rembrandt and Dutch art, some made only allusions to the relevance of the Dutch example for France while others made overt connections to political changes they thought should take place in their own country. Blanc was one of the more subtle figures, but his interests can be interpreted by comparing how he defined Dutch art and the way in which he spoke of the direction he thought French politics should take. In 1848, the year of a major revolutionary uprising in France, Blanc announced in a speech following his appointment as Director of Fine Arts that “pure monarchy” and “strong democracy” were the only forms of government that were positive for art. He concluded that democracies always created better art by making the production of art a heroic task while monarchy made art a slave to its whims.255 Blanc said that the freedom artists enjoyed in the Netherlands made Dutch art one of the most significant schools in the world. His praise of Dutch republicanism, Protestantism, and independence were the opposite of the political, religious, and artistic strongholds of nineteenth-century France and suggests what he thought should take place in France in order to make the French school more important. Blanc’s political position can be described alternately as progressive and conservative and his close relationship with his brother Louis Blanc, one of the most famous socialists and a member of the government of 1848, connected him to political circles that favored republicanism. Blanc wanted a revolution in France that would change both industry and art. His publications on Dutch art must be considered within the larger context of his political agenda as a pro-democracy activist who had left France at the beginning of the Second Empire and who wrote largely in a period of self-imposed asylum before returning to France

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and reassuming his position as Director of Fine Arts after the Revolution of 1870. It appears, therefore, that Blanc’s characterization of Dutch art and his particular interest in Rembrandt was largely determined by his own political mission to promote democratic forms of art and government in France. Blanc had widespread support. Edgar Quinet, a historian, professor, and politician, used the Netherlands and specifically Rembrandt as the prime example from the past for the possibilities of reform and revolution in his own day. Quinet was a Professor at the Collège de France from 1841, but because he offended the French clergy with his texts Jesuits (1843) and Ultramontanisme (1844) he was exiled in 1851. He then lived in Brussels and only returned to France in 1870. Quinet’s praise of Dutch reform in the seventeenth century and of Rembrandt as the historian of the Netherlands epitomized the type of reform he explicitly advocated should take place in France. Quinet also connected Rembrandt to the Calvinist Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde (Philippe de Marnix, Baron de Sainte-Aldegonde) who had fought against Spanish rule and the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. To Quinet, Rembrandt’s art represented Marnix’s iconoclastic writings and Marnix represented the type of leadership that was needed to change the religious system of nineteenth-century France. Quinet believed previous biographers of Rembrandt had not paid adequate attention to his significance for Dutch reform. He wrote: How have Rembrandt’s biographers and his interpretors forgotten up to now his character of reform? That should be the starting point. Rembrandt is the Historian of the Netherlands much more than Strada, Hooft or Grotius. He makes the revolution palpable, he clarifies thousands of its aspects without knowing it. On the other hand, the reform shows him for what he is, it unveils him; without it, he would remain a sort of inexplicable monster in the history of the arts. His bible is the bible of the iconoclast Marnix, his apostles are mendicants; his Christ the Christ of beggars.256 politicizing rembrandt

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Quinet believed Rembrandt’s art could only be understood in relation to the revolutionary period in which the artist had lived. Rembrandt and the Dutch reform movement in the seventeenth century appealed to Quinet because he regarded them as harbingers of the revolution he wanted to see take place in France. His interest centered specifically on Amsterdam and around Rembrandt as an artist opposed to institutions and traditions. Further, Quinet admired the powerful role of Protestantism in the Netherlands: [Amsterdam] is a city of refuge. The multitudes of the banished, outlaws, exiles from all nations, of all origins, who stripped and ruined crowd towards the United Provinces, give the crowds in Rembrandt’s work a variety of types, of physiognomies, of races, that no other painter equaled... Rembrandt broke with all tradition, just as his church broke with all authority; He replays nothing but himself and his immediate inspiration.257 Quinet designated Rembrandt the “historian of the Netherlands” and believed his artistic persona embodied the very anti-Catholic, anticlerical tendencies he wanted his contemporaries in France to emulate. Quinet specifically wanted to abolish the Concordat of 1802, which had restored the position of the Catholic Church under Napoleon I. His ultimate goal was to make the Catholic church a private institution with no control over education so that the state-run schools would instruct the future citizens of the French Republic.258 Rembrandt’s art was also the paradigm for writer and Protestant minister Coquerel fils’ views on the direction French art and religious politics should take. In Rembrandt et l’individualisme dans l’art, Coquerel identified Rembrandt as an artist imbued with what he defined as the Protestant values of independence, liberty, and individualism.259 Rembrandt was, for him, a revolutionary figure who fought against monotony and the official character of Catholic art. Coquerel called Rembrandt “the great rebel” because of his non-Catholic choice of subject matter.260 He aligned Rembrandt with Protestantism and then

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used the artist as evidence that beauty was not foreign to Protestantism and that the religion was not hostile to art. Coquerel concluded his study with an exegesis of his anti-Catholic politics: “Traditional art, official art, sacred art, is worn out: it has had its time; it is in vain that we try to resuscitate, to galvanize Catholic art from the middle ages during the nineteenth century.” He promoted “individualist and spontaneous art, by which man, artist, thinker, poet represent not what is offical and condemned, but what for him is reality, movement, color, truth, life... Also, just as in the past we cried on the tomb of the kings of France: ‘the king is dead: long live the king!’ we can say today, in the presence of monuments closed to Catholic art which will never waken from its sleep: official art, sacred art is dead, and well dead: long live liberal art, individual art, protestant art, human art!”261 By defining Rembrandt as a rebel Coquerel made him into a subject that could fulfill the Protestant minister’s own needs. Rembrandt became the vehicle for Coquerel to project his own views and an instrument through which he could advocate his anti-Catholic political agenda for France. Comparisons between nineteenth-century France and seventeenth-century Holland, specifically Rembrandt’s position as an icon of political freedom in France, were becoming so expicit that ThoréBürger was able to write to Proudhon in 1859 that simply using Rembrandt’s name could mean more for the success of the French Revolution than a demonstration organized by leading Republican political officials. Thoré-Bürger wrote: Yes, my idea is that we can work towards truth and justice by talking about a ray of sunshine, and that one word about Rembrandt could mean as much for the Revolution as a demonstration by citizen Ledru at the Republique universelle. You are the teacher who has come to show this. The philosopher has explained the mischievous artist and has no doubt that Rembrandt did not go without attacking the pope and emperor.262

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Thoré-Bürger’s mention of “citizen Ledru” refered to Ledru-Rollin (Alexandre Auguste Ledru) a republican lawyer, who founded the journal La Réforme and was popular in 1847-48 for his calls for a democratic and social republic of France. It was, in fact, Ledru-Rollin who first appointed Blanc Director of Fine Arts in 1848. As a provisional minister, Ledru-Rollin organized the first elections open to universal male suffrage. A one-time candidate for President of the Republic, he was also elected to the Legislative Assembly. In 1859, Ledru-Rollin was, like Thoré-Bürger, living in exile; he lived first in Belgium and then in England. He returned to France in 1871. In comparing Rembrandt to Ledru-Rollin, Thoré-Bürger claimed that the Dutch artist was as well known in France as this significant political figure, and that simply saying Rembrandt’s name would ignite a response from the French public on par with Ledru-Rollin’s calls for radical action. Thoré-Bürger believed that Rembrandt’s name and identity embodied notions of democracy and liberty for French citizens and made him the most significant exemplar of Republican politics in contemporary France. Thoré-Bürger thought Proudhon, a high-profile political personality, was the perfect person to use Rembrandt to advance the republican movement in France. Proudhon became well known during the Revolution of 1848 with his journal Le Représentant du peuple and was elected a representative in the Assembly during the June elections. A supporter of freedom and the rights of the individual, Proudhon was opposed to the Catholic Church and favored empowering the proletariat. He went into exile in Belgium in 1858 after the publication of La Justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Église (1858) and remained in Brussels until 1862. Consequently, this letter was addressed to Proudhon when both men were in exile. Thoré-Bürger’s own critical writings on Rembrandt never included any references suggesting he either believed or found any archival evidence that Rembrandt acted in any overt manner against the papacy or any royal figures. Nonetheless, Thoré-Bürger extrapolated from what he knew of Rembrandt’s position as the leader of Dutch art, an art he said represented the freedom and individuality of

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the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, to conclude that Rembrandt’s personal politics must have been opposed to Catholicism and Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Thoré-Bürger then used the identity he had formulated for Rembrandt for his own political purposes. Thoré-Bürger saw a kindred spirit in Proudhon after reading Proudhon’s review of Musées de la Hollande: Amsterdam et la Haye in the Belgian publication Revue trimestrielle in 1859.263 Thoré-Bürger and Proudhon had not had personal contact before this point.264 Nevertheless, Proudhon’s views on the role of art in society and the significance of Dutch art and specifically Rembrandt as an example to French artists in the nineteenth century were entirely in line with those of Thoré-Bürger. Proudhon was particularly interested in Thoré-Bürger’s account of the birth of an individual Dutch school in the early seventeenth century, after the country had gained freedom in thought and action from Spanish rule. Are you not tempted to exclaim to yourself, after reading this page: Bravo for the Dutch!... Now, when a nation separates itself from others, in this way condemning itself to redo everything, it redoes everything. The patriotism that gives a nation victory also produces masterpieces; this consciousness of what is right which makes the nation heroic soon manifests itself in a new ideal.265 Rembrandt’s art and Dutch art, which Thoré-Bürger called realist, naturalist, and an art for mankind, Proudhon called human art. For him this was the opposite of divine art: mythological subjects and art produced in Catholic countries. Despite the failure of the 1848 Revolution and the continued power of the aristocracy and Catholic Church in France, Proudhon believed the birth of this human art in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century meant there was hope that France could also rise above its oppressors and establish a national school. He said the religious reform in the Netherlands banished all signs of divinity and artists were left with the happy necessity to make art for themselves, for politicizing rembrandt

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humanity.266 Proudhon foresaw that when this occurred in France, being a citizen would assume greater meaning for each individual, as he believed was the case in the Dutch democracy. He wrote: And here is exactly what explains how in France, after the declaration of all liberties and the establishment of universal [male] suffrage, thought is still nothing, work is nothing, the commune nothing, the individual nothing, the people nothing: the nation stayed bowed under its aristocratic and religious ideal. And that people work, even without knowing it, to maintain the nation under this yoke. It is the great mystery of modern times. There is still hope. Human art was born spontaneously in the seventeenth century, but the last word was not spoken nor the phenomenon explained until the nineteenth century: from invention to explanation there is progress. 267 Proudhon’s praise of Dutch art and Rembrandt began to inform all of his thinking. It was a central component of Proudhon’s text Du principe de l’art et de sa destination sociale, published in 1865, in which he rejected the “ideal” art of Raphael, which he said sought not to depict nature as it was but as the artist thought it should be. Proudhon lamented that while Rembrandt and Dutch art had undergone reform and developed a new aesthetic, French art remained tied to the Catholic Church and royalty, and still looked to Greek and Roman art. He wrote: What we need is a practical art that follows all our fortunes; which depends both on the event and the idea, which can not be overturned in a minute and ruined by opinion, but which progresses like reason, like humanity... Rembrandt, the Luther of painting, was for the seventeenth century, the reformer of art. Alas, while France, Catholic and royalist, reworked its spirit by looking to the Greeks and Romans, the reformed republic of Holland ushered in a new aesthetic. In the painting

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incorrectly called The Night Watch, Rembrandt painted a scene of civic life from nature and human models, and in one stroke, in this masterpiece of masterpieces, he eclipsed all pontifical ostentation, the coronations of princes, noble tournaments, and the apotheosis of the ideal. In The Anatomy Lesson, another masterpiece, where he depicted science in the form of Professor Tulp, who with scalpel in hand and his eye fixated on the cadaver, he finished with allegories, emblems, personifications, and incarnations and reconciled for always the real and the ideal... Thus the most concrete, the most realistic looking painting can arouse a more powerful aesthetic response, suggest a more elevated ideal than the most idealistic painting... In this way, the Reformation was a reaction against Roman Catholicism in the same way as the Dutch school reacted against Catholic art, both of the Renaissance and Middle Ages. The Reformation, by its origins and most of its sects, was iconoclastic. This is exactly what will determine the Revolution. Art cannot perish: chased from the temple, it should be revived in the city hall and in the home; condemned for its old idealism it will be reborn in its positive and rational humanity.268 Dutch Art, said Proudhon, was the only example of past art that could be significant for French art and the Revolution. He promoted art that was not at the service of Catholicism but was for the people and intended to decorate public institutions and private dwellings. Proudhon encouraged contemporary French artists to follow Rembrandt’s example and urged that they work from nature and live models. Most importantly, he wanted art to depict contemporary life and address issues of current relevance in society. As Dutch art had developed a new aesthetic by turning from the example of Greek and Roman art, Proudhon suggested French art could forge new paths by following the northern rather than the southern example.

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Like Thoré-Bürger, Proudhon referred to Dutch art as realist and he added another term – positive. His use of this word must be understood within the context of the theory of positivism outlined by Auguste Comte in 1848 in Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme.269 Proudhon drew a parallel between his conception of Dutch art and, by using a term that referred to Comte’s theory, a philosophy which touched on many of the principal themes of nineteenth-century political thought in France, including liberty, equality, democracy, and the importance of the individual. Comte’s mentor was the economist Saint-Simon, who attracted followers throughout the nineteenth century; he promoted the fraternity of humanity and advocated that workers were the fundamental class that nourished the nation of France.270 Like Saint-Simon, Comte’s theory rejected the traditional concept of religion and promoted a cult of humanity. Comte sought to create a modern society based on republicanism and held a radical view of the French Revolution. He was opposed to compromise with the papacy or the restoration of monarchy in any form, advocating French society be organized without God or king. The connection made in the philosophy of positivism between republican ideology and scientific theories of observation led figures such as Proudhon to describe Dutch art as “positive” and regard it as a relevant example for the changes he advocated take place in French art and politics in his own time. Furthermore, Proudhon’s comparison between Rembrandt and Martin Luther turned up in other critical texts and offers further proof of the perception of Rembrandt as a politically active and radical figure in nineteenth-century France. Analogies between Luther and Rembrandt were first made in France by Arsène Houssaye in the late 1840s in an article in L’Artiste and then again in his book-length study Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise.271 Houssaye regarded Rembrandt as a direct descendant of Luther because his images had the same power to promote revolution and reform in the Netherlands as Luther’s texts had done throughout Europe. Houssaye wrote:

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If Rembrandt had a master, it was Luther. Rembrandt had very serious faith in Luther. He was for him a reformer like Mohammed, Jesus Christ and Moses. He thought that Catholicism, with its pomp and pleasures, was nothing more than another mythology... Rembrandt gave grace to Luther, who had shown the Dutch the first rays of the new day, who ingnited their spirit of revolt, who made free and strong men of his brothers.272 In 1856, in an article praising Jules Veyrassat’s engraving after Rembrandt’s The Carpenter’s Household/The Holy Family for the Chalcography (copper plate collection) of the Louvre, Gautier compared the manner in which Luther and Rembrandt translated the bible into language and images that could be understood by all levels of society.273 These French critics and writers believed Rembrandt’s art, like Luther’s doctrine, was a driving force behind the rejection of Catholicism in the Netherlands and the evolving Dutch democracy. Luther was not the only icon of liberty critics compared with Rembrandt; Shakespeare was also invoked in the promotion of Rembrandt as a theatrical figure and a populist. In his popular novel Nôtre Dame de Paris (1831), Victor Hugo was the first person in France in the nineteenth century to compare Rembrandt and Shakespeare.274 The theatrical or fantasy-like subject matter of the works of Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Hugo’s main interest, was the principal point of comparison for a few French critics. For example, Sosthène Cambray suggested: We could easily compare [Rembrandt] to Shakespeare, who alone invaded all the realms of fantasy.... We said that both of them worked on a black background and that their imagination was often set off by ideas full of brilliance and poetry. However, we can also add that these ideas are beautiful in and of themselves in Shakespeare, and are only beautiful in Rembrandt by the prestige of color; that the first ones radiate in his dark drama and become clear with their own light.275 politicizing rembrandt

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Later, when the Goncourt brothers saw Rembrandt’s The Night Watch during their trip to Amsterdam in 1861, they were also reminded of the theatrical, fantastic elements and characters of Shakespeare’s comedies: It is the sun, it is life, it is reality, and yet, there is in this painting a breath of fantasy, a smile of wonderful poetry. There is this head of a man, against the wall, on the right, with a black hat. Meanwhile, these people have never found anything noble in Rembrandt! Then in the middle ground, among four heads, there is an undefinable figure with a stray smile on its lips, this figure wearing a large grey hat, a mix of a gentleman and one of Shakespeare’s clowns, strange heroes of comedy, of as you like it, and this piece of gnome-like farce, which slides in his ear the words of the confident comics of Shakespeare... Shakespeare! This name comes back to me and I repeat it, because I know what a rapport my spirit makes between this painting and Shakespeare’s work.276 Most French critics who compared Rembrandt and Shakespeare agreed that universality was inherent in their work. They believed that while each artist was undisputedly of their own time – one even said they were like brothers277 – they thought their work also appealed to all people across time.278 Critics believed that the simultaneously historical and eternal nature of Rembrandt and Shakespeare’s art occurred because they belonged to the people and represented human drama and real life.279 Critic Émile Michel wrote: “Rembrandt, like Shakespeare, is universal; like the great English poet, he is profoundly human, and like Shakespeare Rembrandt covered the entire range of feelings that can stir a soul.” 280 Taine said that due to Rembrandt’s ability to depict individuals in all their specificity, which only Shakespeare saw with equal clarity, they were the only two artists who could be precursors to developments in contemporary art. He noted in particular that Balzac and Delacroix could find their masters in Shake-

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speare and Rembrandt.281 In his view, the ability of these two artists to look at and convey human nature linked precisely with what Taine believed was the mission of art in his own time. Blanc also declared that the “genius” of Rembrandt and Shakespeare was specifically important to contemporary or modern “geniuses,” particularly because both artists embraced all aspects of life.282 On the whole, French critics in the second half of the century believed comparisons between Rembrandt and Luther or Shakespeare were valid. Such analogies summarized and reinforced their views on the direction art and politics should take in France and were an integral part of the increasing perception of the contemporary relevance of Rembrandt’s artistic persona in the nineteenth century. Competing perceptions of Rembrandt demonstrate the extent to which the past can be manipulated to serve varying purposes at different historical moments. Connections made between Rembrandt and new ideas in French art and politics led him to be referred to as “the most modern of all the [old] masters,” and an artist whose inventions were believed to speak best to the modern soul “today.” 283 Rembrandt was said to “belong entirely to modern art,” to embody the modern sprit, to draw modern souls towards him, and to provide the best precursor and most suitable “master” for modern artists.284 Although a part of the past, when cloaked in nineteenth-century politics Rembrandt was revered as a contemporary French icon.

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chapter 3

Picturing the Myth Rembrandt’s Body and Images of the Old Master Artist

fig. 9 – Pierre Nolasque Bergeret, Rembrandt in his studio, 1834

fter eighteen months of detective work and pleading letters, one sunny spring day I walked past uniformed armed guards, through magnificent stone gates and into the Assemblée Nationale, a majestic building facing across the Seine River to Place de la Concorde. I would finally see here Pierre Nolasque Bergeret’s Rembrandt in his Studio [fig. 9], one of the surviving images of Rembrandt’s life from the nineteenth century. Sequestered in a bureaucrat’s office and enjoyed by only a small number of politicians and government employees, this precisely painted work is a feast for the eyes. Its warm colors evoke the atmosphere of a Dutch genre painting. The anecdotal qualities of the largescale domestic interior convincingly present to me, the willing viewer, a window into Rembrandt’s life, his family, and his studio practice. I feel that I am watching him at work, witnessing a moment in his life. And this is precisely the response nineteenth-century artists hoped they would achieve with their images of the Old Master.

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Scenes of Rembrandt’s life produced in France during the second half of the nineteenth century had an integral role in the formation and dissemination of Rembrandt’s artistic persona and they aggrandized the Dutch artist just as the publications of French critics had done. These images humanized Rembrandt’s personality and the artists who created them used pictorial strategies to make their images appear to be authentic recreations of everyday events in Rembrandt’s life. Their images picturing the myth

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made Rembrandt into a more accessible artist and included anecdotal elements that demonstrate the growing curiosity about his daily life. The works all advocated Rembrandt’s status as an important Old Master artist but did not focus on the great moments of life that were stressed in the lives of many other Old Masters. The representations of Rembrandt’s life emphasized his successes with middle- and upper middle-class patrons, his love for his family, his affiliation with the poor, his periodically moody temperament, and his frugal tendencies. In a sense they made the Old Master artist into an average human being with both good and bad character traits. As a result, he was presented as a figure who was not intimidating; he became someone to whom artists could relate. The canonical status assigned by French critics to The Anatomy Lesson and The Night Watch was furthered by French artists through their inclusion of the two paintings in many of these images. As for his working practice, Rembrandt’s use of clair-obscur and his preference for miscellaneous studio props rather than ancient Greek and Roman art were of greatest interest. These scenes also emphasized his practice of working from nature and thus advanced the contemporary perception of Rembrandt’s art – and Dutch art on the whole – as authentic and truthful images of daily life. While French artists held the same interest in Rembrandt’s personal life and artistic practice as French critics, the artists attributed a greater level of material wealth and critical acclaim to Rembrandt than the critics did. Four artists depicted Rembrandt wearing a medal and several others situated him in settings that suggest a high level of prosperity. The painters involved appear to have felt a greater desire to portray Rembrandt as an accomplished artist than did the critics. This enabled them to further validate his role as an ancestral figure within the artistic tradition they had inherited. While most French critics formulated Rembrandt’s artistic persona as a misunderstood and unappreciated “genius,” many of the artists sought rather to make the Old Master into a successful and accessible figure with whom they could identify. These artists actively contributed to the construction of Rembrandt’s identity in France, particularly when their works were dissem-

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inated through reproductions available from leading art dealers. Their scenes of Rembrandt’s life played an integral role in the formation and dissemination of Rembrandt’s artistic persona in nineteenth-century France. Visual representations of Rembrandt’s life attest to connections between the formation of Rembrandt’s identity by nineteenth-century French critics and the awareness and reinforcement of this identity by French artists. These works suggest the extent to which artists contributed to the making and perpetuation of the mythical Rembrandt figure. Such scenes of artists’ lives were, in fact, popular in France as early as the late eighteenth century and their quantity grew markedly in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Over twenty painted, sculpted, and printed images of Rembrandt were produced or exhibited in France between the 1840s and the end of the century. While some of these appear to no longer survive in any form, an examination of the fifteen extant examples demonstrates both the high level of fascination French artists had with Rembrandt and the elements of his art and personality that were of greatest interest.285 These images illustrate anecdotal aspects of Rembrandt’s biography, his daily life, his successes and foibles, and his interaction with family, models, and middle-class patrons as well as other tropes from narratives formulated by earlier and contemporary biographers. They also show how the significance French critics placed on The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, The Night Watch, and Syndics paintings – specifically the first two works – was also promoted in the artistic realm. Images of Rembrandt’s life appealed, in part, to the growing popularity of anecdotal history paintings and their increasing exhibition at French Salons in the nineteenth century. Scenes of artists’ lives were common in the Troubadour school in the early nineteenth century and in Ingres’ historical works. These works often emulated the choice of subject matter and the application of paint practiced by fifteenthand seventeenth-century northern European artists.286 Ingres’ Raphael and the Fornarina is among the most discussed paintings in this genre, as are works by François Marius Granet, Joseph-Nicolas Robertpicturing the myth

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Fleury, and Léon Cogniet.287 Scenes of artists’ lives were exhibited at the Salons in increasing quantity from 1804 to the 1860s; their numbers then decreased, following the overall abatement in the exhibition of historical subjects.288 Rembrandt alone grew in popularity despite the general decline in the number of scenes of other artists’ lives in the second half of the century. In looking at the narratives which were typically the subject of such anecdotal scenes, one can evaluate the extent to which images of Rembrandt conformed with the genre as well as how and why scenes of his life diverged from the usual scenes of “great moments” of an artist’s life, specifically death and visits from important people. Not all of the works discussed here are regarded today as having great aesthetic significance. Their survival often only through reproduction in graphic media is undoubtedly part of the reason why they have received little attention. But their reproduction in prints also suggests their importance, since these works were often published in varying formats by leading French art dealers and had a notable circulation. Many of the images were disseminated as photographs, as full-scale or reduced prints, or smaller, inexpensive carte album or carte de visite. Consideration of the content and circulation of these images is, therefore, integral to our understanding of how and why Rembrandt assumed the stature he did in nineteenth-century France. In a country like France, eager to use physiognomy as a means of understanding character, these Rembrandt images constituted an important basis for the perception of his art and personality. The two early examples of scenes of Rembrandt’s life presented here demonstrate that Rembrandt was, from the beginning, part of this anecdotal genre. Pierre Nolasque Bergeret’s Rembrandt in his Studio (1834) [fig. 9], which was exhibited at the Salon of 1836 (#132), depicts the artist as a successful member of the upper-middle class who lives in a comfortable if somewhat untidy environment, has a well-dressed wife and child, a servant, and receives distinguished visitors.289 Bergeret’s Rembrandt sits at a desk etching a portrait of Burgomaster Jan Six, surrounded by the trappings of a globe, books, prints, armor, and pet monkey which identify him as an educated artist and a

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collector of art and curiosities. He is dressed as a successful burgher in a brown suit and white shirt, much as any one of Rembrandt’s numerous male sitters were attired. The view of ships through the window situates the artist in the busy port city of Amsterdam and suggests that he is a part of the city’s prosperous economy. In order to further the authentic appearance of his studio scene, Bergeret clothes Titus in a cloak and brimmed hat like a child from paintings by Rembrandt’s contemporaries, such as Metsu or De Hooch. Saskia, whom he depicted in a red dress with gold brocade trim and feathered hat, appears to be inspired by Portrait of Saskia from Kassel, which was exhibited at the Musée Napoléon from 1807 to 1815. Even the chandelier comes from numerous Dutch seventeenth-century interior scenes, including Rembrandt’s own The Carpenter’s Household [plate 7] in the Louvre. These elements substantiate Bergeret’s claim that he is depicting an everyday scene of Rembrandt’s life with the utmost veracity. But Bergeret’s work is, of course, entirely ahistorical since Rembrandt etched his portrait of Jan Six in 1648, when Titus was actually seven years old, not a toddler, and Saskia had been dead for six years. Complete accuracy was not relevant to Bergeret as he sought to produce a pastiche of well-known elements from Rembrandt’s life. Bergeret specifically emphasizes Rembrandt’s activity as a printmaker and includes his chemicals in the flasks of yellow and blue liquid, as well as two copper plates propped up against the wall. Coupled with the paintings mounted on an easel and hanging on the walls, this scene suggests there was some interest in Rembrandt’s dual painter-printmaker identity in France even at this early date. The second early example, Jules-Jean-Baptiste Dehaussy’s Last Moments of Rembrandt, He Asks to See his Treasure Once More Before Dying [fig. 10], exhibited at the Salon of 1838 (#441), was based on one of the most popular elements of Rembrandt’s biography in nineteenth-century France: his purportedly frugal personality.290 Here, Rembrandt does not receive any kings on his death bed, as was the case for Leonardo da Vinci in the popularized version of his death in the arms of King Francis I, a subject known in several versions, including one by François Guillaume Ménageot exhibited at the Salon of 1781. picturing the myth

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fig. 10 – Jules-Jean-Baptiste Dehaussy, Last Moments of Rembrandt, He Asks to See his Treasure Once More Before Dying, c.1838

Nor is Rembrandt’s passing mourned here by important political or religious officials, as was typically the case with Raphael, for example, in Bergeret’s Honors Bestowed on Raphael after his Death exhibited at the Salon of 1806. Neither is he dying in the midst of one of his great artistic enterprises, as does Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel in LouisCharles-Auguste Couder’s work from the Salon of 1817. Instead, Dehaussy’s Rembrandt dies without pomp and circumstance, comforted solely by the presence of his young wife who lovingly shows him the masses of gold coins he had furtively stored below the bedroom floor. The images produced during the second half of the nineteenth century vary from portrait-like works that provided little anecdotal information to scenes which characterized Rembrandt as a quirky, moody artist who rejected classical tradition and worked from nature rather than antique art. They depicted Rembrandt as an artist who worked for a middle- to upper middle-class clientele and was best

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fig. 11 – Fabien-Henri Alasonière, Rembrandt in his Studio, etching after painting by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, 1863

known for his Anatomy Lesson and Night Watch paintings. Among the fifteen images under consideration, five images simply presented Rembrandt as an artist and had no narrative content. Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier’s Rembrandt in his Studio (1863) [fig. 11], known today only through an etching by Fabien-Henri Alasonière, depicts Rembrandt in a typical seventeenth-century Netherlandish interior.291 The high window-covered walls, chair, and carpet on the table are all elements drawn from interior scenes produced in Rembrandt’s time. Rembrandt sits at his easel working on a painting and the scene suggests Meissonier’s interest in Rembrandt, particularly because this work was one of only two images he produced of a specific artist from the past.292 Further, judging from the precise rendering of form in the etching after Rembrandt in his Studio, Meissonier painted this work with his usual meticulously detailed technique. As Jean-Léon Gérôme’s image of Rembrandt will also demonstrate, the way in which both Meissonier and Gérôme painted their scenes of Rembrandt’s life was a form of reverence to Rembrandt’s manner of painting during the early years of his career, a technique which paralleled their own practice. In Meissonier’s image, he focused on that element of Rembrandt’s artistic career which validated his own artistic pursuits. Meissonier paid homage to Rembrandt’s art – and by extension his own – and presented himself in part as a student of Rembrandt or, conversely, Rembrandt became a model for Meissonier’s own artistic goals. Three other works depicted bust or half-length portraits of Rembrandt with palette and paintbrushes in hand. Alexandre Joseph Oliva’s bronze bust Rembrandt [fig. 12] is one of only three sculpted images of Rembrandt exhibited at the salons during this period that can be traced.293 The bronze, purchased by the state,294 was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 (#4519) and would have been the best known sculpted representation of Rembrandt in nineteenth-century France.295 The jauntily placed beret, long curly hair, moustache, goatee, and cape-like coat Oliva assigns to Rembrandt are attributes which characterized his physiognomy and clothing. These elements are drawn from Rembrandt’s numerous painted and etched self-portraits. Oliva’s Rembrandt also holds a paintbrush and palette covered with the remains

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fig. 12 – Alexandre Joseph Oliva, Rembrandt, 1853

fig. 13 – Alberto Masso Gilli, Rembrandt, 1874

of various colors. Here, Rembrandt seems to interrupt his work on a canvas, as he leans back and assesses his work. The expression of concentration on his face and the momentary quality of his pose suggest that Rembrandt is in the midst of an inspired creative moment. The distinctive beret, facial hair and tousled locks appear again in Alberto Masso Gilli’s etching Rembrandt [fig. 13]. Gilli’s print, which

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fig. 14 – Honoré Cavaroc, Portrait of Rembrandt, late 19th century

fig. 15 – Louis George Brillouin, Rembrandt in his Studio, preparatory drawing for painting exhibited at Salon of 1859

transforms the artist’s pose from Rembrandt’s etched Self-Portrait Leaning, was exhibited at the Salon of 1874 and illustrated in the publication L’eau-forte en 1876. Another example, an undated but probably late nineteenth-century drawing by Honoré Cavaroc, Portrait of Rembrandt [fig. 14], barely varies the elements that came to be codified as Rembrandt except for the addition of a medal hanging from a chain around the artist’s neck. A similar chain and pendant appears in images by Robert-Fleury, Leys, and Roux suggesting that several artists sought to emphasize Rembrandt’s status as a successful artist. However, none of the French nineteenth-century critics ever mentioned Rembrandt receiving a medal. Consequently, artists such as Cavaroc must have developed this theory on their own, giving Rembrandt the same honors typically bestowed on Rubens, the most popular northern artist in France during the first half of the century. In these works by Oliva, Gilli and Cavaroc, the upright pose and assertive, outward-looking glance ascribed to Rembrandt presented him as a self-assured and confident artist to be admired. The last example of these straightforward portraits is Louis George Brillouin’s Rembrandt in his Studio, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1859 and is known today only in part through a preparatory drawing [fig. 15]. Here the scowling physiognomy and stooped posture Brillouin adopts for the fashionably dressed Rembrandt suggests a moody and sceptical personality, an approach taken by few French critics. Four other works emphasized the anecdotal aspects of Rembrandt’s biography that were increasingly popular during this period. Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury’s Rembrandt painting his Mother, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1845 as Rembrandt’s Studio (#1451), is known today through a lithograph by Adolphe Mouilleron [fig. 16]. In this work Rembrandt sits at his easel, painting a portrait of his mother in a manner which emphasizes the belief that he liked to work directly from a model. Rembrandt’s success as an artist is suggested by his grooming, clothing, and, here again, the pendant or medal around his neck. He listens to comments from a respectable-looking visitor, probably his patron Jan Six.

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fig. 16 – Adolphe Mouilleron, Rembrandt painting his Mother, lithograph after painting by Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1845

Robert-Fleury also includes a monkey, seen earlier in Bergeret’s painting, alluding to one of the frequently repeated facets of Rembrandt’s biography in nineteenth-century France. It relates to a story drawn from Houbraken recounting Rembrandt’s affection for his pet monkey, who in France later acquired the name “Puck.” In the popularized monkey narrative, Rembrandt was said to have been so overwrought about the death of his pet that the artist expressed his grief by including the monkey in the group portrait of a prominent Dutch family he was in the midst of painting. According to biographers, contrary to Rembrandt’s love of money, he would not remove the monkey from the painting despite his patron’s pleas. Rembrandt then lost the commis-

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fig. 17 – Adolphe Mouilleron, Burgomaster Six in Rembrandt’s Studio, lithograph after painting by Henri Leys, 1853

sion and willingly kept the canvas for himself. This playful element helps to humanize the Old Master by showing him with his favorite pet. French critics paid increasing attention to the monkey narrative beginning in the mid-1840s and some referred to it as a means of defending Rembrandt against charges that he was stingy.296 They claimed his love for the monkey over the commission demonstrated his magnanimous character. Robert-Fleury’s inclusion of the monkey may or may not be charged with the same meaning. But by placing the monkey at the foot of the artist’s mother, the twosome represent a perception of Rembrandt’s familial ties and loving nature. They emphasize his human qualities. The armor and costumes Robert-Fleury and many other artists included – here placed on the wall and in a heap in the lower left-hand corner of the painting – refer to “my antiques.” Since Roger de Piles, Rembrandt was said to have used these as props instead of classical art and all the leading French critics in the nineteenth century emphasized this point. Robert-Fleury produced numerous images of the lives of past artists and seems to have found it an appropriate way to pay homage to those he admired. Although Baudelaire was one of Robert-Fleury’s enthusiasts, he commented warily about this painting of Rembrandt, calling it a “very curious pastiche, but one must keep guard in this form of exercise. Sometimes we risk having taken from us what we have.” 297 Baudelaire expressed his concern that by paying too much attention to the lives and art of the Old Masters, contemporary French artists would distance themselves from their own talents and interests. Clearly none of the many artists who explored this genre held the same view. Rather, they saw it as a way to pay tribute to an artist they revered. While Robert-Fleury emphasized Rembrandt’s contacts with upper middle-class patrons, Henri Leys’ Burgomaster Six in Rembrandt’s Studio depicts Rembrandt almost overwhelmed by visitors. This painting is known only through a lithograph of 1853 by Adolphe Mouilleron [fig. 17]. Of the scenes of Rembrandt’s life which circulated in nineteenth-century France, Leys’ work placed the greatest emphasis on the artist’s material success. Leys fills the two-story studio with paintings, prints, sculpture, costumes, armor, and valuable metal work.

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fig. 18 – Charles Baude and Studio, Rembrandt and Saskia, wood engraving after painting by Léon Brunin, c.1900

The opulent setting is, therefore, a suitable space for Rembrandt to receive his distinguished visitors. The curtain dramatically raised by a young boy – undoubtedly Titus – presents viewers with a stage-like setting and promotes their perception that they are witnessing an actual event. Despite all the trappings of success and the admiring interest in his work, Leys’ Rembrandt looks annoyed. With hand on hip and an impatient glance in the direction of Six, who scrutinizes one of his paintings, Rembrandt is presented as a sulky and detached personality. Belgian artist Léon Brunin’s later scene, Rembrandt and Saskia, also emphasizes Rembrandt’s financial success. This work, exhibited at the Salon of 1900 (#212), was reproduced in a wood engraving [fig. 18] by Charles Baude and his studio. Like Robert-Fleury earlier, Brunin’s work stresses the idea of Rembrandt’s close family relations. Dressed in fine clothing and placed in a rich setting, Brunin depicts Rempicturing the myth

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fig. 19 – Léopold Flameng, Rembrandt’s House, 1859

brandt, Saskia, and Titus as a tightly knit, happy family. With paintbrush in hand Rembrandt is shown altering Saskia’s pose, again working from the model. This subject also relates to the interest in Rembrandt’s romantic life and the progeny of his virility, aspects which pervaded critical writings during the same period. In contrast with these two scenes, which make claims for Rembrandt’s elevated social status and financial success, Léopold Flameng’s earlier etching Rembrandt’s House [fig. 19] focuses on the artist’s rapport with the lower classes. This print was commissioned in 1859 for Charles Blanc’s Rembrandt, sa vie, son œuvre and was one of two scenes of Amsterdam produced by Flameng to accompany his twenty-five etchings after Rembrandt’s prints which illustrated the text.298 Flameng’s scene reinforced the myth that Rembrandt preferred to socialize with the lower classes, a narrative equally emphasized in Blanc’s text. The belief that Rembrandt associated with the poor can be traced back to Roger de Piles, was reinforced by Houbraken and, as previously discussed, was one of the most often repeated elements of the mythical Rembrandt persona in nineteenth-century France. The trope of Rembrandt’s affiliation with the lower classes was repeated by many leading French critics including Blanc, Fromentin, and Thoré-Bürger. Flameng depicts Rembrandt descending the outside stairs of his impressive home and turning to a group of street people who are clustered as if it were their custom to wait at his front door. Flameng does not show Rembrandt looking to the middle-class people of Amsterdam who circulate in the nearby market; instead he turns to the proletariat, with whom several French artists and critics liked to believe Rembrandt felt a kinship. To create a sense of authenticity in his fictional recreation of an everyday event for Rembrandt in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Flameng studied the house on Breestraat and faithfully depicted the façade, neighboring homes, canal, and the tall spire of the nearby Zuiderkerk. Flameng’s strategy was to formulate a scene that convincingly recounts a recurring element of Rembrandt’s daily life. He sought to create a visual representation of Rembrandt’s allegiance to the lower classes, thus reinforcing one of the

picturing the myth

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fig. 20 – Unknown Artist, Rembrandt Working in his Studio, woodcut after painting by Hendrik Hollander, 1852

most popular tropes of the Rembrandt myth in nineteenth-century France. Several images of Rembrandt’s life produced or exhibited in France served to stress the renown and popularity of works in the Louvre’s collection and the canonical status of The Anatomy Lesson and The Night Watch, which were also promoted in contemporary publications. One of six examples discussed here, Dutch artist Hendrik Hollander’s Rembrandt Working in his Studio [fig. 20], was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855 (#1555). This work is known today through a woodcut from 1852 by an unknown artist. Hollander presents Rembrandt at work on the portrait of Captain Banning Cocq for

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The Night Watch, his most celebrated painting in the nineteenth century. Hollander’s work includes little narrative detail except a collection of “my antiques” in the lower right foreground, a faithful dog, and most important, a short woman cuddling a seated man. This woman’s pose, dress, and coiffure mirror one of the enigmatic female figures in the center middleground of The Night Watch who attracted much attention from nineteenth-century French critics and, indeed, still draw notable attention from viewers today. Hollander’s scene of Rembrandt at work in his studio serves, like Robert-Fleury’s image discussed earlier, to perpetuate the notion that Rembrandt used models and worked faithfully from life. In his study of the Captain and his suggested use of the female model for The Night Watch, Hollander presents Rembrandt as an artist who worked from nature rather than his imagination. These images and others discussed below are in keeping with written descriptions of Rembrandt’s working practices concurrently circulating in France. The number of written and visual works which emphasized Rembrandt as an artist who worked from nature was not coincidental. This trait was undoubtedly of central interest to many French artists and critics because it served to validate their own strategies. By aligning the technique of studying from nature with works that were seen to embody Rembrandt’s greatest achievements as an Old Master, they promoted, by extension, the positive value of those elements in contemporary art. Prosper-Louis Roux’s fascinating Rembrandt’s Studio [fig. 21] also presents the artist working after a model in what was one of the most complex and significant scenes of Rembrandt’s life produced in this period. The painting, exhibited at the Salon of 1857 (#2346), was popularized by a print by Alphonse Martinet [fig. 22]. In 1859, this etching, mezzotint, and aquatint print was exhibited at the Salon (#3615) and published by Goupil and Company (commonly known as Goupils). This black-and-white print could be purchased from Goupils in a range of formats and prices, including the least expensive carte de visite, through to the end of the century.299 There are no extant figures for the sales of these reproductions but certainly the small-scale formats demonstrate the mass-market appeal of both this work and picturing the myth

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fig. 21 – Prosper-Louis Roux, Rembrandt’s Studio, 1857

fig. 22 – Alphonse Martinet, Rembrandt’s Studio, etching, aquatint and mezzotint after painting by Prosper-Louis Roux, c.1857

Rembrandt. Goupils also produced a more expensive, limited edition of color prints [plate 12] after Roux’s painting.300 These were heightened with gouache and arabic gum on the easel, Rembrandt’s body (but not face) and shadow, his palette and brushes, the woman’s dress, veil, and her chair, as well as the book press, cat, armor, window curtain, and lower right hand railing of the staircase. The two exhibitions and publication through Goupils made Roux’s scene of Rembrandt in his studio one of the best circulated works of its kind. Roux’s composition is a pastiche of elements drawn principally from paintings then attributed to Rembrandt and exhibited at the Louvre. The two paintings shown hanging in Rembrandt’s studio are the Louvre’s The Good Samaritan [plate 6] and Angel Raphael leaving Tobias’ Family [plate 3]. Roux even took into consideration the relative scale of these works to add to the sense of authenticity in his contrived scene. The winding staircase complete with owl was drawn from the two “Philosopher” paintings [plate 5] then attributed to Rembrandt in the Louvre, and the candelabra with a reflective orb hanging from the ceiling and the arch-topped window were derived from the Louvre’s The Carpenter’s Household/Holy Family painting [plate 7]. In the center foreground Rembrandt is depicted at work painting a woman and child embracing, a pose which alludes to the Venus and Amor painting [plate 8] then attributed to Rembrandt in the Louvre collection.301 The scale of this work mounted on the easel is also in keeping with the relative scale of the other paintings on the walls. By using paintings within his canvas which would be familiar to his French audience, Roux gives the work – and by extension the artist’s life – a sense of immediacy and accessibility for the viewer. Including these works also adds an aura of authenticity to the work. Roux’s precise painting technique and casual inclusion of anecdotal details such as the cat and kittens in the lower left foreground also promoted the perception of the scene as natural and truthful. Further, the work has a spontaneous quality as several figures are caught in midmovement: Titus removes a cover from The Good Samaritan, a visitor seated by the window moves to get a better view of the painting on the easel, three visitors lean in to get a closer look at Angel Raphael leaving picturing the myth

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Tobias’ Family, another visitor raises his monocle and a paper to read some fine print or perhaps inspect an etching more closely, and Rembrandt turns from his canvas to look again at his models. The carpet is even turned up as if one of the visitors has just caught its corner when entering the room. The momentary quality of the composition contributes to the desired and plausible perception of this painting as emblematic of actual daily-life events in Rembrandt’s studio. Several aspects of the composition also conform with and promote elements aligned with Rembrandt’s artistic persona. The dramatic shaft of sunlight that extends in a definitive line from the window, carries across the room, and then highlights parts of the woman and child, refers to Rembrandt’s much discussed use of clair-obscur.302 The six visitors suggest the commonly held belief that Rembrandt worked for middle-class rather than royal or ecclesiastical patrons. The armor, sword, and vessel in the foreground on the left are Rembrandt’s “antiques.” Finally, the book press in the left hand corner appears here for the first time in a French scene of Rembrandt’s life. Roux may have mistakenly depicted a book press rather than printer’s press in Rembrandt’s studio, but regardless of this confusion the scene can be seen as promoting Rembrandt’s dual identity as a painter-printmaker. This dual character was increasingly discussed after 1851 when the two presses Rembrandt had in his home were noted in the first French publication of Rembrandt’s household inventory of 1656. Like the popularized monkey narrative discussed earlier, there are numerous direct parallels between anecdotes disseminated through French textual sources and pictorial representations of Rembrandt’s life and art. Two other salon paintings of the 1860s promoted the significance of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson. Tony François de Bergue’s Rembrandt painting The Anatomy Lesson, was exhibited at the Salon of 1861 (#231) and is known today through a caricature [fig. 23] published in Galletti’s Album Caricatural, Salon de 1861. Galletti’s caricatures are known to have rendered faithfully the composition of each salon painting, thus, it appears that de Bergue’s painting revealed little except the belief that Rembrandt worked directly from a real male corpse laid out on the diagonal. Like many of his contemporaries, de

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fig. 23 – Galletti, Rembrandt Painting The Anatomy Lesson, caricature after painting by Tony François de Bergue, 1861

fig. 24 – Christoffel Bisschop, Rembrandt going to the Anatomy Lesson, photograph after a painting, c.1866

fig. 25 – Eugène Le Roux, Rembrandt Painting Susanna at the Bath, lithograph after painting by Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury, c.1859

Bergue emphasized Rembrandt’s tie to nature and may also have been attempting to justify and explain what some of his contemporaries viewed as the awkward composition and foreshortening of The Anatomy Lesson. The text Galletti added below his caricature reveals more than the image itself about the conception of Rembrandt’s identity and the dissemination of those views in France through more popular imagery. Galletti’s caption reads: “Rembrandt took a corpse out of the water: he was rewarded fifteen francs. While waiting, he benefits from the opportunity to pose the dead body and thus get from him a free sitting.” 303 Galletti’s perception of Rembrandt was clearly informed by the belief

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in the artist’s frugal disposition that pervaded French criticism. His humorous caricature, in turn, perpetuates this view as Galletti’s Rembrandt takes advantage of even the most inappropriate occasion to study a model free of charge. The second example, Dutch artist Christoffel Bisschop’s Rembrandt going to the Anatomy Lesson [fig. 24], was exhibited at the Salon of 1866 and the Exposition Universelle in 1867; it survives today through a photograph published by Goupils.304 Like Roux’s painting, this image also circulated among the general public in the inexpensive format of the carte de visite. Bisschop’s painting shows a young Rembrandt, accompanied probably by Titus carrying his supplies, about to enter the anatomy theater in Amsterdam. The skeleton sketched on the wood and the skull beside it represent the studies of corpses that will take place behind the door and beyond the stage-like space accessible to the viewer. A well-dressed Rembrandt strikes a confident pose before the entrance and momentarily looks out to the viewer. In this choice of composition and subject Bisschop focused on the beginning of what was known to have been the most successful period of Rembrandt’s career. Bisschop put Rembrandt in a theatrical position with his hand reaching for the door, a pose that addresses the nineteenthcentury spectator and emphasizes that he is about to witness and study a medical examination of a corpse. By isolating this moment Bisschop stressed the authentic quality of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson as a work the artist went to great lengths to render as accurately as possible. The same can be said for Robert-Fleury’s Rembrandt Painting Susanna at the Bath, which was reproduced in a lithograph by Eugène Le Roux [fig. 25].305 Here Rembrandt twists in his chair to look at his model for Susanna at the Bath, whom Titus helps into position. The woman’s pose and the painting’s title refer to Rembrandt’s painting Susanna or Woman at the Bath, a canvas Doctor Lacaze donated to the Louvre in 1859, where it formed part of the permanent display in the Lacaze gallery.306 In Robert-Fleury’s rendering, the scale of the canvas on Rembrandt’s easel corresponds to that of the Susanna in the Louvre and again promotes the perception of reality in the scene as was the case in Roux’s view of Rembrandt’s studio. The figure of Titus, who picturing the myth

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fig. 26 – Paul-Adolphe Rajon, Rembrandt biting an etched plate, etching after painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, c.1861

helps his father and arranges Susanna’s drapery, also relates to the long-haired sitter in Portrait of a Young Man in the Louvre.307 Moreover, as with Roux, the spontaneous poses and gestures of the sitters contribute to a sense of immediacy and accessibility. The piles of armor, clothing, precious objects and jewels included in so many of these images are, once again, a pictorial rendering of “my antiques.” In each instance, these objects signify Rembrandt’s use of unorthodox props and his affinity with traditions other than those of Italy

and classical antiquity. The objects contribute to the anecdotal quality of the painting but in doing so also locate Rembrandt outside the conventions of past art, a position also negotiated for him by most French critics. In addition, a box spilling forth jewelry in the central foreground relates to the emphasis French critics placed on both the expensive jewelry Rembrandt bought for his wife and Saskia’s insatiable desire to adorn herself and dress up in exotic costumes – a weakness many critics claimed was a significant cause of the artist’s financial dissolution. Besides referring to well-known paintings in the Louvre collection, Robert-Fleury includes a full-scale view of The Night Watch in the background of the studio. The swag of the ensign and drum in the centerground suggest that a theatrical recreation of the scene formed an integral part of Rembrandt’s artistic practice. In weaving together his familiarity with works in the Louvre collection and elements from contemporary artistic and biographical studies, Robert-Fleury’s image suggests his extensive knowledge of Rembrandt and interest in the latest studies on the artist then available in France. The most widely published and undoubtedly best known of all the images discussed in this context was Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Rembrandt biting an etched plate [fig. 26].308 With this painting, Gérôme established what would become a life-long interest in Rembrandt’s biography and art. Gérôme first exhibited this painting at the Salon of 1861 (#1251) and then again at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 (#293). The painting is known today largely through an etching by Paul-Adolphe Rajon, as well as a photogravure of the canvas. Rajon’s print after Gérôme’s Rembrandt biting an etched plate was first published by Goupils around 1866. Goupils also sold photogravures of the painting and reproductions in the carte-album and carte de visite formats.309 Most importantly, the painting appealed to the growing interest in Rembrandt’s dual artistic persona as a painter-printmaker. Multiple reproductions of Gérôme’s work were circulating from the early 1860s at the same time as the cult-like reverence of Rembrandt firmly took root. Gérôme presented Rembrandt alone and consumed by concentration, bent over an etching plate and surrounded by tools and chempicturing the myth

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icals. Gérôme’s Rembrandt has just submerged the plate or “bitten” it in an acid bath, perhaps the bowl to his left at knee height. The artist holds a needle in hand and moves to the side to study the effect of the biting on the lines he has just etched. He appears to be still at work scratching out his composition, refining his marks and perhaps preparing to stop out and bite the plate again. An embossed leather screen, highlighted by diffused sunlight entering the studio through a partially screened window, divides the shadowy, dark room. The leather screen separates Rembrandt at work on a print from his famous canvas, The Anatomy Lesson, in the background. Thus the screen acts as a feature to accent and divide physically the two aspects which were increasingly seen to embody Rembrandt’s dual artistic persona in France from the 1860s on: Rembrandt the painter and Rembrandt the printmaker. Through his composition, Gérôme presents the two personas as separate but not mutually exclusive identities. Further, he painted this scene in the detailed and fine painting style contemporary French critics associated with Rembrandt’s manner of painting early in his career. Thoré-Bürger denounced Gérôme’s technique and compared it to the art of one of Rembrandt’s students which he vehemently disliked: “It’s the last degree of William Mieris! What a surprising perversion to go search out Mieris to paint Rembrandt!... Poor Rembrandt, treated with the vapidity of the last of the Mieris’.” 310 Thoré-Bürger wished artists would refrain from emulating the painting style and depicting the life of Rembrandt and other Dutch artists until, by his definition, they got it right. He thought Gérôme made Rembrandt look like a monkey wearing a little cotton cap and said that the contorted pose gave him the appearance of an epileptic. In ThoréBürger’s mind Gérôme showed Rembrandt as a porcelain figure and did not embue the scene with the artist’s warm, red blood. It must be remembered, however, that Thoré-Bürger’s criticisms were informed largely by his own preference for the fluid, sketchy painting technique he associated with the latter part of Rembrandt’s artistic output. On the other hand, contemporary critics including Louis Auvray, Maxime du Camp, and Léon Lagrange connected Gérôme’s rendering

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of the scene with works by Rembrandt and his studio. Auvray’s view was quite positive; he thought Gérôme had conformed his technique intentionally to that of Rembrandt.311 Du Camp found the work strange because of the almost inconceivably high level of finish.312 Both Du Camp and Lagrange – who despised the painting – compared Gérôme’s technique in this work with that of Rembrandt’s students Gerard Dou and Mieris.313 Gérôme and Meissonier both aligned themselves with Rembrandt’s early career and his meticulous application of paint during this period, which was also their practice. By promoting the finemaleri technique of Rembrandt, the increasingly well-established Old Master artist, Gérôme and Meissonier also validated their own artistic methods. In fact, when English artist Robert Jefferson Bingham’s photograph of Gérôme’s painting was exhibited at another venue at the same time the painting was being shown at the Salon, one critic remarked on the similarities in color between Gérôme and Rembrandt’s art and in style between that of Gérôme and Dou. In his exuberant praise of the quality of Gérôme’s painting and Bingham’s reproduction, the photography critic sought primarily to discount claims that photographs could only give cold and incomplete facsimiles of original works.314 His comments, however, and those of the critics mentioned above also indicate that some contemporaries recognized that Gérôme was using this painting to fashion himself as a student of Rembrandt or to suggest that he had inherited an artistic tradition descending from Rembrandt. Gérôme began to identify with Rembrandt’s dual painterprintmaker persona at a time when he had himself started to experiment with the etching technique in Egyptian Smoker. Gérôme produced a small number of etchings during his career and his desire to explore the medium undoubtedly contributed to his reverence of Rembrandt’s achievements. Gérôme also includes an ample use of Rembrandt’s famous clair-obscur so that the image offers enough light for the viewer to confirm that Rembrandt is indeed at work on a copper plate. But Gérôme sets Rembrandt in a semi-dark middleground and his activity is sufficiently hidden so as not to reveal to the viewer any information about picturing the myth

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Rembrandt’s etching technique. In this way, Gérôme constructs an aura of fascination and inaccessibility around the Dutch artist that corresponds to views articulated by critic Charles Blanc and later by Eugène Dutuit and Émile Michel, who catalogued and critiqued Rembrandt’s etchings in the growing number of French publications about his prints. Gérôme presents Rembrandt in the persona of an elusive creator. His etching technique is wrapped in a cloak of mystery and while it is the central focus of attention and, therefore, charged with positive value, it is too physically distant to be fully apprehended, let alone easily emulated. Contemporary French critics described Rembrandt’s abilities as an etcher in the same way: they praised his handling of the etching needle, his repeated wiping and reworking of plates, and how he bit his own plates. Beyond technique, they saw magic. Critics noted that some aspects of Rembrandt’s technique and, therefore, his talent could not be explained and they classified this as his “genius.” They also noted Rembrandt always worked on his prints in isolation and would not permit his students to watch. The distanced and enigmatic figure in Gérôme’s painting is informed by a comparable interpretation of Rembrandt’s work. Mounting interest in Rembrandt’s life as a subject during this period, as well as Gérôme’s growing reputation in the 1860s, led to the increasing value assigned to this specific painting. The work sold for 6,000 francs in 1861 and escalated to 20,300 francs only four years later.315 Indeed, Gérôme’s Rembrandt biting an etched plate was the best circulated of all the scenes of the artist’s life in nineteenth-century France. The wide dissemination of this painting and its reproductions was both a response to the increasingly popular perception of Rembrandt the Old Master painter-printmaker and, in turn, helped to promote the status of his dual artistic persona. Nineteenth-century French painter-printmakers readily picked up this dual painter-printmaker identity and fashioned themselves after the Old Master. They, in turn, aligned themselves with Rembrandt in the hopes of improving the perceived value of their own art and of establishing a solid professional identity for the modern, creative, and original printmaker.

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chapter 4

Rembrandt the “Master” Printmaker Choosing an Ancestral Figure for French Painter-Printmakers

fig. 27 – Louis Marvy, Doctor Faust, engraving after Rembrandt, 1840s

S

cholars usually refer to Rembrandt’s “influence” on French printmakers as if it were a natural phenomenon. Because of the perception of Rembrandt’s stature today, many assume he was always regarded as the master printmaker. Rembrandt’s prints have certainly been popular since his lifetime. But the position he was assigned in nineteenth-century France as the leading past master of etching was more a constructed phenomenon than one that evolved naturally. Rembrandt’s status as the emblem of the etching revival in France was carefully negotiated for him through the self-conscious efforts of French critics and artists through their print treatises, publications, associations, and works of art.316 As their emblematic figure, Rembrandt’s techniques and achievements were then used to justify the goals of French painter-printmakers in the nineteenth century. The consolidation of Rembrandt’s significance in nineteenthcentury France can be seen first among vanguard etchers, particularly landscape artists associated with the Barbizon school in the 1830s and 1840s. He was then embraced by numerous critics and promoted as a validation of the achievements of contemporary French printmakers. At the same time, Rembrandt’s stature was unequivocally established under the auspices of the Société des Aquafortistes in the 1860s. He became an emblem for the value of original prints, particularly etchings, by members of this society. They sought to liberate printmaking from its role as a reproductive process associated with engraving, a medium

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institutionally sanctioned by the French Academy, which involved direct carving of copper or wood with a steel gouge or burin. Perceptions of Rembrandt’s life and art as a model of artistic originality and individuality, which were disseminated through the works of French critics, historians, and artists, led to a veritable “cult of Rembrandt” among French etchers during the second half of the nineteenth century. In a paradoxical situation, Rembrandt’s rising status was concurrently appropriated by French engravers in their efforts to combat those who challenged the creativity of their artistic pursuits. They also used him in their battle against the rise of photography as a means of reproduction. By the mid-1880s, through slower and more covert means, the role of reproductive copies exhibited at the French salons ultimately established Rembrandt’s status within Academic circles.

Landscape Prints and the Barbizon School Before the rise of publications on Rembrandt began in the 1850s in France, a number of French landscape artists associated with the Barbizon school were drawn to Rembrandt’s prints on what appears to have been a purely aesthetic basis.317 Rembrandt appealed to these printmakers because of their interest in the effects he created in three principal areas in his prints. First, they looked to the contrasts Rembrandt achieved by placing dark forms against a light background, which is now referred to as contre-jour. They also admired his use of clair-obscur and how he approached depicting a landscape as a croquis or sketch. Their perception of Rembrandt’s technique as directly tied to nature was also of central importance. There is significant documentary evidence for the attraction of numerous Barbizon artists to Rembrandt’s art. Of these artists, Louis Marvy and Charles Jacque were among the first to draw on Rembrandt’s work as a source of inspiration for their own etchings. Marvy produced numerous copies after Rembrandt’s prints and paintings in the 1840s, including a landscape, two versions of Doctor Faust [fig. 27], a Portrait of Burgomaster Six, Descent from the Cross, The Night Watch,

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Christ and the Samaritan Woman at a Well, Beggars at the Door of a House [fig. 28], Christ Chasing the Moneylenders from the Temple, and The Resurrection of Lazarus.318 Marvy published some of these works in L’Artiste, a journal he worked for for ten years. Jacque also looked to Rembrandt’s prints for guidance as early as 1830, when he was working in a geographer’s shop; his first known etching is Head of a Woman, which was derived from Rembrandt’s etching of the same subject. In the mid-1840s Jacque returned to Rembrandt in his copies after Rembrandt drawing and Rembrandt’s Mill, which he published in L’Artiste.319 Around the same time, Jacque reversed the composition of Rembrandt’s etching The Monk in the Cornfield [fig. 29] and used it as the basis for his own etching of a couple copulating in a field. He then further transformed this creative copy and produced what must have been either a private or little-circulated etching on the theme of bestiality between a woman and a pig and inscribed it Tout les gouts sont dans la nature (All tastes can be found in nature) [fig. 30]. This transformation of one of Rembrandt’s prints suggests how copying was not only the product of commissions from leading art publications or an interest in reproducing well-known images but also an artist’s personal desire to seek out inspiration from more unusual sources. In 1843, Marvy and Jacque together produced a series of etchings that they printed themselves. It was, in fact, under their guidance that Auguste Delâtre learned how to print etchings. Delâtre later bought their printing press and established the printshop that would become the artistic base of the Société des Aquafortistes in the 1860s. Along with their interest in Rembrandt’s prints and his art in general, Marvy and Jacque were also attracted to Van Ostade’s scenes of daily life, particularly his images of the poor. Marvy made copies after Van Ostade and, under Jacques’ direction, Léon Subercaze produced a series of prints for a book on Van Ostade’s art.320 The interest of Marvy and Jacque in both Van Ostade and Rembrandt demonstrate that during these nascent years of the revitalization of etchings Rembrandt was alloted a significant but not dominant position among French etchers. In addition to Marvy and Jacque, other artists affiliated with the Barbirembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 28 – Louis Marvy, Beggars at the Door of a House, engraving after Rembrandt, 1840s

fig. 29 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Monk in the Cornfield, c.1646

fig. 30 – Charles Jacque, “Tout les gouts sont dans la nature”, 1840s

zon school looked to Rembrandt as an inspiration for their own renderings of landscapes. Paul Huet wrote to Théophile Silvestre in 1854 about the importance of one of Rembrandt’s drawings for his landscape prints: “I have a memory above all of a small landscape by Rembrandt with this inscription: Tacet sed loquitur, which made such an impression on me in my childhood.” 321 Huet made copies after Rembrandt’s prints as early as 1835, when he did an etching that reversed the composition of The Three Trees (1643) [fig. 31]. Another example is Théodore Rousseau who owned five prints by Rembrandt, one of which, an impression of The Hundred Guilder Print, he had been willing to pay up to 10,000 francs to acquire. Rousseau saw buying this print as a worthwhile investment because he believed by studying the beauty of this one work – which summarized for him everything an etching could be – he would better understand Rembrandt’s “genius” and be able to produce higher quality prints himself which could, in turn, make him more money through his own sales. Alfred Sensier, a friend to several Barbizon artists and an avid collector of their works, recounted Rousseau’s comments on The Hundred Guilder Print: This print speaks, Rousseau told me in a hushed voice; the shadow is vaporous like an autumn day and the figures are animated with a breath of air. That one, look, I would pay 10,000 francs for it if I had to, he told me, because it would not be a sacrifice, it’s an investment. This etching would give me, by its beauty, the means to make 100,000 francs because it summarizes everything: sentiment, order, morals, light and painting. If I looked at it for an entire day, I would be dazzled and almost frightened by Rembrandt’s genius... But I should not be the only one who is happy, my dear. Here, take these two small landscapes by Rembrandt, he said to me, I want you to have them; I’ll keep them at my place for a few months, and they’ll be yours afterwards.322

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Critic Philippe Burty also noted the popularity of collecting Rembrandt’s prints among Barbizon artists during this period. He remarked, in conjunction with Camille Flers, how they formed an integral part of the decoration of many studios: “He loved passionately all that bric-a-brac that was in fashion in the studios in the 1830 s: chests, consoles, Rembrandt’s etchings, prints after the eighteenth-century Old Masters, stained-glass windows, coats of arms.” 323 But not all the Barbizon artists felt a sense of kinship with Rembrandt at this early stage. Such was the reputation of Rembrandt that Millet was intimidated and felt “blinded” by Rembrandt’s genius during the early years of his career and only looked to him later, when he felt more established and self-confident.324 Barbizon artists were in awe of Rembrandt’s talents as an etcher and revered his work as a sometimes daunting example of what they themselves sought to achieve. They produced copies after Rembrandt and their statements about him all revolved around discussions of his prints as exemplarly objects. They did not have a notable interest in Rembrandt’s personality or biography and were interested in his art purely on an aesthetic level. Artists from the Barbizon school were attracted to Rembrandt’s printmaking techniques because he had achieved several effects that they, too, wanted to accomplish: contre-jour, clairobscur, and the quick croquis landscape print. They also wanted to work directly from nature and believed Rembrandt had done so by his free and spontaneous handling of motifs. It was their affinity for these technical characteristics that led the Barbizon artists to study and emulate his prints. Rembrandt’s The Three Trees [fig. 31] was his most popular print in nineteenth-century France. Artists of the Barbizon school admired this work because they were interested in producing prints out of doors that conveyed their comparable ability to study nature directly from the motif. Etching was in part attractive because scratching into the ground of a copper plate with an etching needle, and in the case of drypoint, scratching directly into the plate, was not physically difficult. Neither was scratching into a layer of ink or collodion on glass in the case of a cliché-verre (glass print). The improvisatory quality was rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 31 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Three Trees, 1643

appealing for its spontaneity. The facility with which artists could transport their etching and cliché-verre materials also freed them from the constraints that painting out-of-doors could place on their work. In both painted and printed landscapes, Barbizon artists wanted to retain a sense of the moment, despite the fact that their compositions were often clearly composed and made use of conventional repoussoir or other organizational motifs. Two examples, Huet’s clichéverre The Marsh/The Voyageur (n.d.) [fig. 32] and Rousseau’s etching Site de Bérry (1842) [fig. 33], demonstrate how they exploited the effect of contre-jour to add to the dramatic quality of their print while at the same time retaining a sense of the scene’s immediacy. Following the example of Rembrandt’s The Three Trees, Huet concentrated his hatch-

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fig. 32 – Paul Huet, The Marsh/The Voyageur, n.d.

fig. 33 – Théodore Rousseau Site de Bérry, 1842

fig. 34 – Charles Jacque, Seven Etchings on One Plate, 1844

fig. 35 – Félix Braquemond, Two Trees with a Sunset, 1856

ing and lines in the large cluster of trees and Rousseau in the individual trees and ground, they set up a stark contrast between a largely white and unworked background and the central motifs of their composition. In the following decades French critics and artists articulated their admiration of Rembrandt’s use of clair-obscur, admiring his use of light and shadow to create strong contrasts. Most importantly, they found a parallel in Rembrandt’s landscapes to their desire to work directly from nature and capture the changing effects of weather and the immediacy of their chosen motifs. An example of this is Jacque’s handling of landscape elements in Seven Etchings on One Plate [fig. 34]. French printmakers from the Barbizon school found a precedent for their spontaneous and fluid printed drawings or croquis in Rembrandt’s renderings of similar subjects. In some cases, there is evidence that etchers in France during the following decades were directly inspired by one particular etching by Rembrandt. Félix Braquemond’s mezzotint study Two Trees with a Sunset (1856) [fig. 35] is closely tied to the composition and dramatic rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 36 – Henri Guérard, The Thatched Cottage, c.1881

effects of Rembrandt’s The Three Trees. Although the Utrecht-born artist Ludwig von Siegen is heralded today as the inventor of the mezzotint, and the earliest example of the technique can be found in his Amelia Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel in 1642, it was commonly believed in France during the nineteenth century that Rembrandt had invented the process. This misinformation spread thanks to Gersaint who wrote that the originality of Rembrandt’s prints was his combination of drypoint, etching and mezzotint. 325 No examples of this technique can, in fact, be found in Rembrandt’s work, although Von Seigen is believed to have been inspired during his time in Amsterdam by Rembrandt’s use of drypoint. 326 The misattribution of this invention may have resulted in part from the posthumous reproduction of Rembrandt’s etchings and drypoints in mezzotint. Perhaps the most notorious example is Captain William Baillie, who used mezzotint in his continued attempt to emulate Rembrandt and achieve comparable effects of chiaroscuro. 327 Other examples of works by French artists that were directly inspired by the Dutch Old Master include Henri Guérard’s The Thatched Cottage [fig. 36] and many of Alphonse Legros’s landscapes, such as Sheepfold on the Hillside [fig. 37] and The Hovel on the Hill [fig. 38].

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fig. 37 – Alphonse Legros, Sheepfold on the Hillside, n.d.

fig. 38 – Alphonse Legros, The Hovel on the Hill, n.d.

fig. 39 – Ludovic Lepic, Nemi Lake, 1870

All of these works have remarkably similar compositions and subjects as Rembrandt’s scenes of thatched cottages with a few trees, fields, or ambling figures. There are many other possible examples, Ludovic Lepic’s Nemi Lake (1870) [fig. 39] and Francis Seymour Haden’s Sketch in Burty’s Garden (1864) [fig. 40] – both of whom wrote of their admiration of Rembrandt’s prints – also serve to suggest the aesthetic emulation of Rembrandt’s treatment of weather and sketch-like rendering of subject matter.328 Printmakers from the Barbizon school and later landscapists working in France studied, collected, and admired Rembrandt’s prints. In the 1840s, when the artists were first returning to etching and other printmaking techniques that allowed for a similarly free rendering of subject matter, they were principally interested in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of the new (to them) media. Particularly in the nascent years of the revitalization of etching in France, printmakers were not concerned about validating or defending their work. During the following decades, French etchers organized themselves into more formal associations and became increasingly self-conscious of the

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fig. 40 – Francis Seymour Haden, Sketch in Burty’s Garden, 1864

status and public recognition of their medium – or lack thereof. Rembrandt then became signficant to them not only in the aesthetic realm but also as a painter-printmaker whose interests and struggles, they believed, mirrored their own. rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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Original Etchings as a Challenge to Engraving and Photography Following the early example of Barbizon artists, dozens of French artists began to experiment with etching needles. Charles Baudelaire was among the first critics to sound the trumpet on the reevaluation of etching in France and in 1862 he proclaimed: Etching is really coming into fashion... There is obviously a symptom of growing value in these developments. But we would not want to assert that etching is soon destined for complete popularity. It is too personal a subject, and consequently too aristocratic, to delight people other than men of letters and artists, people very much in love with all living personality. Etching is not only made to glorify the individuality of an artist, but it is even impossible for an artist not to inscribe his most intimate individuality on a plate... Among the different expressions in the plastic arts, etching is the one which comes closest to literary expression and is the best way to betray the spontaneous man. So, long live etching! 329 Although Baudelaire regarded etching as an aristocratic art rather than an art for the general populace – a view not shared by the majority of his contemporaries – he promoted the expressive potential of etchings. Furthermore, Baudelaire’s belief that artists could transfer their inner selves onto etched plates appealed to his interest in art as a direct vehicle for personal expression. Despite this growing interest or “fashion” for etchings, the artists and critics who sought to promote etching as an independent medium of considerable artistic value had to fight against several hurdles. They had to establish etching relative to engraving, the print medium most highly valued by the French Academy. Engravings represented the majority of prints accepted for exhibition at the French Salons and most of these works were prints after other works of art,

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typically paintings.330 Reproductions represented a significant means of income for numerous French printmakers. For many years, before alternative exhibitions became common, exhibiting at salons was one of the few ways printmakers could access potential buyers and patrons. Further, the Chalcography of the Louvre museum also favored engravings and regularly commissioned reproductions of works of art for sale in its store.331 Most artists and critics who promoted etching sought to define it as an original medium rather than a reproductive one like engraving. Unlike engraving, etching did not require extensive formal training and the medium permitted artists to scratch easily on the surface rather than cut a more rigid, controlled line into a copper plate. The nature of the medium, therefore, permitted artists far greater freedom and they could work more quickly than with engravings. Hence, some artists believed that even in making an etching which reproduced another work of art there was still more room for free, artistic interpretation than engravings allowed. Nevertheless, as the number of print societies and associations grew in France during the second half of the nineteenth century, some artists categorically refused to exhibit any prints that depicted other works of art. The question of whether to value the role of prints – etchings or engravings – as reproductions was further complicated by another hurdle: the rise of photography during the second half of the century and the threat it posed to eclipse print commissions entirely. As photography grew in popularity, printmakers had an increasingly difficult battle before them. Their troubles began after 1851 when collodion negative and albumen printing paper were first introduced and sales of reproductive photographs flourished in France. In 1853 reproductions of paintings, prints, or sculpture represented 5.5% of all photographs offered for public sale. Sales of reproductive art photography reached its peak in the early 1860s, when they represented 28.5% of the photographic market.332 Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo in 1873, noted the rising popularity and sales of photographs of art:

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We sell good engravings well enough; among others, we have already gotten rid of twenty or so artistic prints of the Venus anadyomène by Ingres. But it’s a real pleasure to see how the photographs are in demand, especially the colored ones; there’s a good profit to be made there. The photographs at Goupil and company, wrapped in papers one inside the other, are sold at a rate of a hundred a day.333 Photography companies such as Braun and Company, which began as Adolphe Braun’s studio in 1847 and became one of the leading photography houses in France beginning in the mid-1850s, benefitted from the booming sales of reproductions of art.334 The first book with photographic illustrations from glass negatives was a series of photographs after Rembrandt’s prints published in installments in 1853 by Gide & Baudry, with Charles Blanc as author of the accompanying text. The photographs for this text were produced by the Bisson brothers, Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson. It is ironic that the subject of this first book illustrated with photography was the very artist who was then taken up by French printmakers to advance the status of their art as a significant artistic medium and more valuable than photographs reproducing art. 335 The rising tide of Rembrandt reverence took place on all fronts. It was certainly less expensive to commission photographic reproductions of art than prints, hence printmakers had to battle for work against the rising competition of photography. The most famous example, Henriquel-Dupont’s engraving of Delaroche’s Hemicycle in the École des Beaux-Arts, took ten years to complete. It was also, at the time, the most expensive commission Goupils had ever undertaken of a reproductive print.336 Henriquel-Dupont was said to have received 100,000 francs for the engraving. Goupils and other publishing houses produced such large plates in the hope of reaping profits from a splinter market of the rising sales of paintings to upper middle-class French buyers. But developments in photographic processes meant that by the 1860s the same mural could be reproduced quickly and inexpensively by photography and potentially satisfy the same market.

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In their fight against photography, French printmakers argued that a print had greater value because it was a free, artistic medium rather than a mechanical process like photography. Even the founders of the Société des Aquafortistes, who in their own exhibitions typically promoted original over reproductive prints, defended the latter against the menace of photography. They claimed etching was the best way to “translate” their own painted works. In 1862, Alfred Cadart, editor of the Société des Aquafortistes, wrote in his brochure advertising the society’s publications that despite the interesting prints the artists of this society produced, their works remained unknown to the public because prints were having trouble competing with photography. Numerous editors have come to regard photography as the best means to popularize works of art. Everything by photography, everything for photography, seems to be the word of these dealers who, having already spread in the public the bourgeois taste for mezzotint, have now arrived at another mechanical mezzotint: Photography. Stunned by this deplorable tendency, artists have joined together, and as their work has already shown, they want to protest with a publication that shows that the interpretation of the artist by the artist should perpetuate itself and not the interpretation of the artist by the machine.337 In another letter, also from 1862, editors Cadart and Chevalier wrote directly to Napoleon III to explain their mission to the emperor himself: In one blow, [the Société] revives a forgotten art, poses a limit to the invasion of photography, reanimates emulation among artists, and raises public taste by the popularization of their works.338 The society’s important role in the battle against photography was recognized and articulated by critic Jules Claretie, who wrote in defense rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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of the Société des Aquafortistes that it was “a kind of protest against photography – this new means used against the popularization of artworks. It is, properly speaking, the rivalry of art against trade.” 339 Alcide Dusolier advanced another line of defense: that only an artist could reproduce a work of art with their experience and contemplation of the object. He believed that: The material reproduction of nature, however exact this reproduction may be, is by itself powerless to awaken in us the poetic emotion that should be born from the contemplation of a work of art. It needs more, it needs intelligence, it needs an artist! It is the artist’s glory not only to reproduce, but also to interpret. Thus, so as not to ruin one of art’s most susceptible principles, never separate form from idea.340 In this challenging battle for recognition and commissions, French printmakers sought ways to buttress the value of prints by aligning themselves with Rembrandt.

A Foreigner as the Model for a New National School? From our perspective today it may appear that French critics and artists made an odd choice in seeking out Rembrandt as the model past printmaker. There were numerous past artists from whom to choose, among them Stefano della Bella, Claude Lorrain and the Carracci brothers. Jacques Callot, the French seventeenth-century artist who produced etchings depicting contemporary poor people and the daily realities of French peasants, would appear to have been a particularily obvious choice for French artists. Callot’s works were certainly well represented in the leading French public collection, the Cabinet des estampes of the Bibliothèque nationale, and formed part of several private collections, including those of Clément, Gervaise, Hulot, Roth,

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and Thiers. Studies of his œuvre were also published in France in the nineteenth century.341 Henri Delaborde wrote in 1850 in an article entitled “La Gravure depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours,” which he published in the Revue des deux mondes, that Callot was “alone among all the French printmakers, a few of whom are better than him, the printmaker from Nancy is still known today by the masses.” 342 In the nineteenth century, Callot was ranked as the most important French etcher and in a letter to Walewski, Minister of Fine Arts, written in 1862, Cadart used Callot’s name in an attempt to appeal to the minister to support the revival of etching as a national art: Minister, the subscription of your department for the number of collections you deem suitable and which, distributed by Your Excellence to artistic establishments, with the discernment it has already given to so many prints, should not miss the opportunity to popularize an art from which so many masterpieces have sprung in France from Callot to our times and have made a national art.343 This letter from the editor for the Société des Aquafortistes shows that Callot was at least momentarily the past artist invoked by etchers in their attempt to reestablish their medium as a national French art. In 1876, Adolphe Martial listed Callot, Israëls and Rembrandt as significant models in a letter he addressed to himself under the pseudonym Potémot. His suggestion: “The sky, the earth and good men are always admirable models. Revive Callot, Israël[s] or Rembrandt” shows again how in some instances a variety of possible models were recommended and that the ultimate selection of a sole exemplar for French etching must have been a conscious choice. 344 Comparisons between Rembrandt and Callot were not uncommon in nineteenth-century France, but as early as 1842, Rembrandt was judged to be superior by Aloysius Bertrand writing in Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantaisies à la manière de Callot et Rembrandt. In the preface to rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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this collection of poetry, Bertrand described Callot as a carefree man who passed his time among young women and drink. Rembrandt, on the other hand, was respected by him as a wise and profound thinker. Art always has two antithetical faces, a medal which, for example, is marked on one side with the resemblance of Paul Rembrandt and on the other that of Jacques Callot. Rembrandt is the philosopher with a white beard who acts like a snail in his corner, who absorbs his thought in meditation and in prayer, who closes his eyes to collect himself, who speaks to the spirits of beauty, of science, of wisdom and love, and who consumes himself in the penetration of the mysterious symbols of nature. Callot, on the other hand, is the boasting infantryman and soldier who struts about on the spot, who makes noise in the bars, who caresses the daughters of gypsies, who only swears by his sword and by his gun, and who has no other worry except to wax his moustache.345 Bertrand clearly took neither Callot’s art nor his life seriously. While Callot’s etchings of street people and beggars predate the earliest studies of this subject by Rembrandt, Callot’s images were not regarded in France as authentic representations of the poor. Callot’s “Les Gueux” series, also known as “Les Mendiants,” “Les Baroni,” or “Les Barons,” was his most famous series of etchings in the centuries following his death in 1635.346 In the nineteenth century, however, Callot’s depictions of peasants were regarded as images of shackled subjects still at the mercy of French royalty. Rembrandt’s mendicants were viewed, on the other hand, as makers of their own destiny since they lived in a country free from royal rulers and could be proud of their hard-fought freedom. Charles Blanc believed Rembrandt depicted the poor with greater compassion and understanding than any of his contemporaries:

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Other artists have painted vagabonds, and at the same time as Rembrandt took up the etching-needle, Stephano della Bella, Callot, Visscher, Miel and others represented misery: but not one of these painters was able to lend to this sort of representation the same interest as Rembrandt. He alone put in a profound sense of pity, he alone took the poor seriously... Rembrandt’s poor are real poor. Misery penetrated right to the marrow of their bones... He alone fixed the profound and serious eye of a master on certain aspects of town life, on one of the conditions of humanity. 347 Blanc also remarked that while Callot may have produced etchings twenty years before Rembrandt, the talent for etchings was not inherent in Blanc’s undefined notion of “French genius” as was the case for engraving. We say that Rembrandt invented etching. However, some twenty years before him, Jacques Callot brought this beautiful art to light in his countless and already so popular compositions. But etching, as painters agree, was not in the French genius; the clarity of engraving suited the character of our school better.348 Evaluations of the superiority of Rembrandt’s images of the poor as authentic and truthful by comparison to prints by Callot continued in the work of one of the premier nineteenth-century French historians, Jules Michelet. Michelet wrote in 1879 in his comprehensive Histoire de France: Go to the library, take a Callot, take a Rembrandt. Ridiculous comparison you will say, and you will be right, it is like putting sand and stone from a small dry torrent in the presence of an ocean. Regardless, look, study, question. The Frenchman, what does he say with his fine rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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point, with his microscopic chisel? He recounts what he has seen in his bohemian life: court, parties and family, cripples, hunchbacks and beggars, the artifices of misery, the universal hypocrisy, the undertakings of soldiers, the deaths and incredible scenes of pillage, tortures above all, the gallows and the rope, the grace of the hanging, this eternal subject which does not delay French gaiety. Oh! The poor gay people, I would so like for you a bit of interior, of a gentle home with warm lights which I see in the other, the two fortunes of Holland, family and free thought. I don’t even wish a Dutch thatched cottage for you, so comfortable, nor Rembrandt’s beautiful mill... The sailor was free, the middle-class were free; far freer was the peasant, this unhappy underdog, on whom we walk and stamp our feet everywhere. The peasant, how he felt strong under the law in Holland! What noble pride in man! 349 For Michelet, Callot’s images of poor French people were a sham since Callot’s own life experiences were closely tied to those of the French royal court and were, thus, only hypocritically representative of the lives of the poor. In contrast, images produced by Rembrandt in Holland, the home of liberal thought and free citizens, were, for Michelet, authentic and sincere representations of daily life among the lower classes. Not all French etchers sought to depict the daily life of the poor, but the subject was of significant interest. Rembrandt was chosen as the best exponent of such images by French critics and their interest in his pauper figures can also be found in the numerous images of the poor by artists affiliated with the Société des Aquafortistes. Rembrandt’s mendicant figures received notable critical attention in France and it appears that French etchers who wanted to convey a sense of immediacy and authenticity in their images of the poor found the best precedent for their own goals in Rembrandt’s art.

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Rembrandt’s works depict a specifically urban type and were not a model for the rural peasant figures of Millet or Camille Pissarro. Instead, his character studies of heads and representations of street people such as Male and Female Beggar [fig. 41], who have tattered clothing and sometimes carry objects or support themselves on sticks or crutches, were regarded in France as the most authentic images of the urban poor. Charles Jacque conveyed a similar representation of such hobbling figures in his Seven Etchings on One Plate [fig. 34]. Likewise, other members of the Société des Aquafortistes, including Georges Duseigneur, Henri Guérard, Adolphe Hervier, Alphonse Legros, and Joseph Soumy, produced character studies and images of lower-class urban figures [figs. 42-45] for which parallels can be found in Rembrandt’s work in both subject matter and the free handling of the etched line. In Rembrandt’s prints, François Bonvin, Edouard Manet, and Théodule Ribot also appear to have found a precedent for their desire to create convincingly authentic etchings of the poor. Belief in the authenticity of Rembrandt’s images of rural homeless figures was one of the most significant reasons why French critics and artists preferred the Dutch artist to their fellow countryman Callot. Another factor may have been Callot’s use of more precise and controlled lines versus the loose and spontaneous lines of Rembrandt’s etchings. French artists and critics did not overtly state such a critique of Callot’s technique but they did laud Rembrandt’s free handling of the etching needle. Perhaps even more important than the poor as a discrete subject in Rembrandt’s œuvre was the larger ideology it was seen to represent. Rembrandt’s etchings were viewed as creations of the leading artist of the Netherlands, a democratic nation. The desire for French etchers to produce truthful and authentic prints – whether of the poor or any other subject – was a significant cause for the reverence of Rembrandt’s printed œuvre over Callot’s. Albrecht Dürer was the other past printmaker with whom Rembrandt was most often compared in nineteenth-century France. The admiration French printmakers held for both Dürer and Rembrandt can be seen, in part, in works produced by artists closely connected to the French etching revival. Rembrandt and Dürer were presented as rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 41 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Male and Female Beggar, 1630

fig. 42 – Henri Guérard, Frontispiece for Dix Têtes de Vieillards, 1872

fig. 43 – Henri Guérard, Head of an Old Man, 1872

fig. 44 – Henri Guérard, Old Sweeper, n.d.

fig. 45 – Adolphe Hervier, Child with a Basket, 1875

fig. 46 – Léopold Flameng, Letterhead for Auguste Delâtre, c.1860

the principal past mentors for French printmakers in the letterhead Léopold Flameng designed for Auguste Delâtre around 1860 [fig. 46]. A medallion bust of each flanks the inscription “Imprimerie artistique de Aug. Delatre, Rue St. Jacques, 303.” On the right, below Dürer’s medallion, the words “taille douce” denote his principal connection with engravings. On the left, below Rembrandt’s medallion, the designation “eau-forte” signifies that it was he who was regarded as the embodiment of the etching tradition. Flameng signed the print to the right above Rembrandt’s head on the etcher’s worktable, below the artist, who is shown working among his tools. Above the etcher, there is a view of Notre Dame Cathedral as seen from Ile St. Louis. This medieval building had been the subject of Victor Hugo’s Nôtre Dame de Paris, in which Hugo made the first comparison between Rembrandt and Shakespeare and referred to a specifically northern conception of genius. If Flameng was not consciously referring to Hugo’s

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text, his imagery may have been inspired by some of the comparisons French critics made between Rembrandt and the middle ages.350 In the center of the letterhead an artist strains to turn the wheel of a printing press. Flameng probably intended this figure to be Delâtre himself or at least to symbolize Delâtre’s famed talents as the printer who had welcomed to his studio dozens of printmakers including Félix Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt, Flameng, Jules de Goncourt, Haden, Maxime Lalanne, Legros, Martial, Charles Méryon, Rousseau, and James MacNeill Whistler. Since Delâtre typically designed his own advertising and produced trade and calling cards for his business, the letterhead was most likely a gift from Flameng rather than a commissioned work.351 To the right, above Dürer, an artist paints at his easel. The painter’s inclusion in this print, which was effectively for bills sent from Paris’ leading printshop, represents the painter-printmaker, the artist who uses his talents as a colorist and the fluid sweeping motions of applying oil paint to a canvas to the advantage of his prints. The draped nude male sculpture behind the easel may be the subject of his painting. Certainly the architecture of the Academy in the distance provides an appropriate backdrop for the engraving quadrant of Flameng’s print.352 In Flameng’s rendering, the modern day painterprintmaker draws inspiration from both etching and engraving traditions, although over time Flameng and his contemporaries came to regard Rembrandt and his etchings as the more significant of the two. Ferdinand Roybet’s frontispiece [fig. 47] for the fourth annual publication of the Société des Aquafortistes in 1866 exemplifies similar connections between French artists and both Dürer and Rembrandt as important past printmakers. This close-up view of an etcher’s workplace incorporates the prerequisite position facing a sunfilled window, a copper plate, tools, acid, and bath, as well as two books – perhaps two print manuals or other sources of technical information or inspiration – in the lower right-hand corner. The plaque announcing the publication, inscribed “Eaux fortes modernes publiées par la Société des Aquafortistes 4º année mdccclxvi” is, in fact, the screen that etchers typically placed on the inside of their windows to diffuse direct sunlight and create a suitably lit work space. The partially drawn curtain rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 47 – Ferdinand Roybet, Frontispiece for the Fourth Annual Publication of the Société des Aquafortistes, 1866

adds texture and a sense of movement to this still-life scene. Roybet clearly indicates both Dürer’s and Rembrandt’s presence. Dürer appears in the form of a folio of loose pages, which is probably intended to represent a collection of the artist’s prints. The French version of the artist’s name, Albert Durer, extends across the front cover of the folio. The bust in the right background is undoubtedly of Rembrandt. As in many other paintings and prints of Rembrandt throughout this period, the classic characteristics are represented: a jauntily berettopped head with tumbling, curly hair and upturned moustache are attributes incorporated into representations of Rembrandt in both paintings and prints throughout this period.353 The contrast between the bust’s partially lit and partially obscured physiognomy even suggests Rembrandt’s famed clair-obscur. By including the folio of Dürer’s prints and a bust of Rembrandt Roybet emphasized the importance of both artists for the Société des Aquafortistes. While etchings were the society’s focus, the tradition of engraving was also seen as valuable for some of the artists involved. There were also several French publications devoted to Dürer during this period, although nothing comparable to the number of texts on Rembrandt. 354 Like Rembrandt and Callot, Dürer’s prints figured in the Cabinet des estampes and several leading private collections, including those of Clément, Delessert, Firmin-Didot, Galichon, Gigoux, and Roth. Since Dürer produced prints over a hundred years before Rembrandt, one could expect he would be seen as the germinal European artist in this medium. Indeed, Blanc noted that the first known etching was produced by Dürer’s hand in 1512: The oldest known etching is Albrecht Dürer’s Saint Jerome, etched in 1512... Etching had not yet taken its place in the domain of the arts; she would not complete her expression, acquire her value, her color, until the seventeenth century; in a word it is Rembrandt who was the true inventor; it is he, who through a simple process, made it an art.355 rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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Despite any claim that Dürer was the first etcher – and French printmaking treatises allowed that there was an ongoing debate between German and Italian sources – Blanc would not grant Dürer the status of preeminent etcher. The critic Philippe Burty agreed with that view and dismissed Dürer’s etchings as a fleeting interest. He criticized Dürer’s technique as one not adapted to the copper plate but the same as if the artist was working with wood: “Albrecht Dürer only tried it in passing. It could not be his instrument of choice. He asked of it about what he asked of wood: powerful contours.” 356 French critics and artists associated Dürer principally with woodcuts and engravings rather than etchings. Blanc estimated Dürer on par with Marcantonio Raimondi and Rembrandt, but he claimed Rembrandt was undisputably the leading figure of the three: Rembrandt is without doubt the most illustrious painterprintmaker. For two hundred years he has shared with Albrecht Dürer and Marcantonio, the honor of supplying the great trade of prints in Europe, of being collected by an always increasing number of amateurs, and to have risen from simple prints to fabulous prices in the most famous sales.357 Rembrandt’s status is again reinforced by Eugène Montrosier, who also grouped the same three artists as the trilogy of great painter-printmakers: “It is Rembrandt! The most famous of painter-printmakers, the most outstanding personality of the trinity formed in history with Albrecht Dürer and Marc-Antonio.” 358 Critic Joséphin Péladan dismissed Dürer and Raimondi’s significance and declared Italian artist Piranesi the only other past printmaker who could come anywhere close to Rembrandt’s talent: “The opposite of painter-printmakers Albrecht Dürer and Marcantonio, who were surpassed, Rembrandt has remained the king of etchers – without sharing this position – and Piranesi alone approached him with his architectural hallucinations.” 359 However, Raimondi’s connection with the Italian reproductive engraving tradition meant that he was ultimately of minimal significance to

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French printmakers, who emphasized originality above all else. With the growing cult of Rembrandt, interest in Dürer also waned.

Public and Private Print Collections Rembrandt’s prints were accessible through the Cabinet des estampes of the Bibliothèque nationale, the leading national public resource of prints available to French artists and critics in the nineteenth century. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the Cabinet des estampes held a collection of over 1,400 prints by Rembrandt. The king’s print cabinet – then the Bibliothèque Royale – was formed in 1667, when Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Minister and Surintendent for Louis XIV, acquired “works by more than six thousand masters” from the abbé Michel de Marolles, whose collection was ranked as the most valuable in France in the seventeenth century. These included 224 Rembrandt prints. In 1731, the royal collection expanded significantly through the acquisition of prints from the son of Jacques-Louis de Beringhen. These included 426 prints by Rembrandt and 27 prints by his students.360 Hugues-Adrien Joly, who was nominated Garde of the Cabinet des estampes in 1750, sold off 189 duplicates and added further to the Royal collection, particularly in 1784, when he acquired 736 of Rembrandt’s prints from Antoine de Peters’ collection. The next addition to the royal collection came in 1847, when fifteen of Rembrandt’s prints were acquired when the collection of Dutch diplomat Baron Jan Gijsbert Verstolk van Soelen was sold. At least fifty more prints were purchased during the nineteenth century. These additions included Portrait of Rembrandt with a Round Hat and Embroidered Coat, a unique print which chief curator Georges Duplessis purchased in 1893 at the R.S. Holford sale.361 Beginning in 1819, Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross [fig. 48] was framed and permanently exhibited in a window of the print room (today an exhibition gallery) as part of a selection of prints curators deemed the best from the Cabinet des estampes, and those which rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 48 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Descent from the Cross, 1633

“were curious by age or rarity.” The exhibition notice called Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross “one of his largest and most beautiful compositions” and it was hung on the principal façade in the first row.362 This practice of hanging prints in the windows continued throughout the century to allow visitors to study the works in natural light.363 Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross was said to be a perfect example of clair-obscur, and the catalogue entry also emphasized the myth derived from Houbraken that Rembrandt’s desire for money had led him to sell his prints before the plates were completed, thereby explaining why there are up to seven states for some of his works. The catalogue even suggested that Rembrandt was a frustrated artist: “Except for four or five works which are both rare and beautiful, the rarest prints are studies where the scribbles are almost without merit, and where the plate was ruined by Rembrandt, who was unhappy with his work.” 364 Thus the catalogue perpetuated many of the perceptions of Rembrandt’s personality that were emphasized by French critics. The exhibition of 1819 also included printed copies after paintings. While there was only one copy by Jan de Frey after a painting by Rembrandt, there were three copies after Rubens, five after Poussin and twenty-two copies after Raphael. Rembrandt was similarly represented by one reproductive print in the exhibition of 1823.365 Even at this early date Rembrandt was included, albeit marginally, among those who were regarded as well-established artists in France. A reevaluation of the collection took place, by 1837, at the same time as Barbizon artists were starting to look to Rembrandt’s prints for inspiration. Eighteen original prints by Rembrandt were exhibited that year.366 The works by Rembrandt on display included Christ Preaching, Christ Healing the Sick, The Resurrection of Lazarus, The Good Samaritan, Christ Presented to the People, Descent from the Cross, St. Jerome, SelfPortrait with a Sabre and Heron, portraits of Lutma, Coppenol, Tolling, Jan Asselyn, Burgomaster Six, A Shell, Landscape with Three Trees, Thatched Cottage with Barn, Thatched Cottage with Large Tree, and View of a Canal [figs. 49-60, 63].367 (The illustrations included here are those prints and states that were exhibited in the nineteenth century.) In the rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 49 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Preaching, c.1652

case of Christ Healing the Sick or Pièce des cent florins [fig. 50], the notice emphasized the increasing value of this print, which had sold for 800 francs in 1770 and 4,500 francs in 1835. The catalogue of 1855 showed a similar representation and included the same eighteen prints by Rembrandt.368 By the time of the next catalogue, in 1875, three of Rembrandt’s prints had been taken down: Christ Preaching [fig. 49], St. Jerome [fig. 54], and View of a Canal. 369 Judging by the fragile condition of these works today, the prints were probably removed because of the discoloration and aging hastened by their lengthy exposure to sunlight. While Rembrandt’s prints were displayed in increasing numbers throughout the nineteenth century, prints depicting Raphael’s works continued to dominate the Cabinet des estampes. Even though Raphael

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fig. 50 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Healing the Sick, c.1649

did not produce any of the prints himself, the print room followed the French Academy’s lead and emphasized his work as a model even in a setting where the only Raphael presence that could be created was through copies after his paintings. Artists and critics who came to study in the print room were, therefore, exposed primarily to the official French notion of good art and how to produce it. Despite this attempt at authoritative dogma, there was a certain amount of institutional acknowledgement or promotion of the value of Rembrandt’s prints in the Cabinet des estampes. In this context, it is important to evaluate how the display of his etchings in this semi-public space presented Rembrandt’s printed œuvre. Notably, the prints exhibited gave a limited representation of Rembrandt’s range of subject matter. There was a greater emphasis on more conventional material – religious subjects, portraits, and landscapes – and none of the more rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 51 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Resurrection of Lazarus, c.1632

fig. 52 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Good Samaritan, 1633

fig. 53 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Presented to the People, 1635 and 1636

fig. 54 – Rembrandt van Rijn, St. Jerome, c.1629

fig. 55 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with a Sabre and Heron, 1634

fig. 56 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Janus Lutma, 1656

fig. 57 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Burgomaster Six, 1647

fig. 58 – Rembrandt van Rijn, A Shell, 1650

erotic mythological or other sex-related scenes, such as the so-called Le Lit à la française [fig. 63], of which there were numerous examples in the collection. None of Rembrandt’s much-discussed nudes were exhibited, and not even one of the many etchings of beggars, poor people, or character studies that also formed a significant part of the collection. As a result, the institutional presentation of Rembrandt gave a sanitized view of his work. The case of Charles Jacque noted earlier does, however, demonstrate that an interest in Rembrandt’s etchings of sex-related subjects drew an artist to works other than those on public display in the print room. Most of the etchings by Rembrandt on exhibition throughout the nineteenth century were examples of the first state of each print. There was much emphasis placed on rarity, and, in the case of Christ Preaching [fig. 49], what was supposedly a unique state.370 Several of the etchings – including the portraits of Lutma [fig. 56], Coppenol, and Six [fig. 57], and Christ Healing the Sick [fig. 50] – were all printed rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 59 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Thatched Cottage with Barn, 1641

fig. 60 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Thatched Cottage with Large Tree, 1641

on Chinese and Japanese papers, which were considered exotic in the nineteenth century. As for the presentation of Rembrandt’s etching technique, there were vast differences in the level of detail in these prints. They ranged from many heavily worked plates, such as most of the portraits and religious subjects, to the St. Jerome [fig. 54] in which there are many unworked passages. Since the prints exhibited were

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seen as complete works of art, Rembrandt’s technique could thus be regarded as encompassing a broad spectrum of possibilities. The Cabinet des estampes was the only semi-public print collection available for consultation in Paris. The presentation of an artist’s prints therefore had an impact on the many artists and critics who went there to study. Rembrandt’s use of exotic and unusual papers did, in fact, become a significant point of interest among French critics and printmakers, as did the varying levels of finish in his prints. However, with only one example of each print on display, the attention to Rembrandt’s production of varied states could not be fostered in this environment. Despite the limited exposure, several of the etchings on exhibition were among the most talked about of Rembrandt’s prints in the nineteenth century, including: Christ Healing the Sick, Portrait of Burgomeister Six, and Landscape with Three Trees. But other prints, namely Doctor Faust [fig. 61], Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill [fig. 62], and the mendicant subjects, did not figure in the printroom’s displays and their popularity and the perception of their significance in the nineteenth century was promoted by French critics and artists rather than institutions. As an important resource for French artists and critics, the presentation of Rembrandt in this space helped form their perception of him as a printmaker. It is, however, even more significant to consider those aspects of his printed œuvre which were not sanctioned by the leading French print institution but which were nonetheless actively sought out, with undoubtedly greater difficulty. Although the Cabinet des estampes was the leading print resource open to French artists and critics, the accessibility of the collection was the subject of some debate and frustration in the nineteenth century. Similar to restrictions still in place today, the reserve section of the Cabinet des estampes was accessible to dealers, critics, and artists only by written request.371 Clément, Danlos & Delisle, and Lacroix were among the dealers who consulted the print collection regularly and representatives from the publishing house Goupils also made frequent visits. Artists who successfully received passes to study the collection included Bonnat, Bracquemond, Charles Courtry, Charles rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 61 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Doctor Faust, c.1652

fig. 62 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill, 1639

Daubigny, Edgar Degas, Flameng, Gérôme, Manet, Marvy, Rajon, Robert-Fleury, Veyrassat, and Charles Waltner. Critics and historians also visited. Among them were Blanc (who, in his request dated 1849, referred to himself as a painter); Burty (who made repeated visits in the 1860s), Champfleury, Galichon, Jules de Goncourt, Mantz, and the Dutch archivist Scheltema. Unfortunately these written requests indicated what the visitor specifically wanted to study only in rare instances. The printroom was not entirely accessible to everyone. It took Henri Fantin-Latour two attempts before he was granted a pass and Théodore Duret was refused permission both times he submitted requests. Others who were denied access included the critics Gonse and Taine and artists Besnard, Brillouin, Neuville, Rops, and Vollon. Women had particular difficulty gaining access to the collection; two surviving requests from Nélie Jacquemart and Emma Roberts were both refused. Artists writing on their own behalf were generally successful, but it certainly helped if one was endorsed by an established figure. Written requests to study Rembrandt’s prints at the Cabinet des estampes were, however, not always required, particularly if artists were sufficiently determined to pay homage to the Old Master. Charles Jacque wrote in an undated letter to Jules Claretie of the initial problems but how persistence in the face of bureaucracy resulted in success when he took Honoré Daumier to study Rembrandt’s prints on reserve in the Cabinet des estampes: We had planned to go together with Daumier to see Rembrandt’s works on reserve at the library, which Daumier did not know. Arriving at the rooms, the boy who addressed us took us straight to the chief curator who, having put on his binocle (gold, I think), asked us our names, which I stated. He wrote them down. ‘Have you,’ he asked me ‘a letter from someone known? from someone who recommends you?’ ‘But, Monsieur,’ I said, ‘I am not [known], but my friend there, Mr. Daumier, is my guarantee, as I am with him.’ He said ‘I didn’t say so’ and

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looked embarrassed, ‘but I do not know the man.’ ‘What, but he is the famous caricaturist Daumier whose work includes several thousand subjects, some of which you must have at the library!’ Seeing the stunned look of my chief curator, I allowed myself to throw this in his face: – ‘And I, Monsieur, without being famous like my friend, have no less a work than more than three hundred etchings that I have been told are here!’ The chief curator ended up telling his employee to come and accompany us: ‘Well, show these men the prints!’ I imagine that while we visited Rembrandt in the reserves under the eye of two guardians, he found out if one Honoré Daumier and one Charles Jacque existed, because no one grabbed our collar as we left.372 Jacque and Daumier’s experience suggests that some artists who argued their case directly were able to study the rich collection even without writing in advance. In general, visiting the Cabinet des estampes was a notoriously arduous process and one that sparked a debate among artists. JeanFrançois Raffaëlli published his criticisms of the obstacles artists confronted when trying to access the national print collection, a process he estimated took up to a year. In a letter first published in the daily newspaper L’Événement on November 18th, 1884, and then in excerpts in the Journal des Arts on November 21st, 1884, Raffaëlli criticized the exclusivity and politics of the Cabinet des estampes.373 First one has to send a written request to the curator. Then this request has to be supported by someone well known, preferably by a member of the Fine Arts administration. Finally when your request, duly supported, is welcomed, you have to present yourself on said day, yourself, in person, to the curator, said curator, after examining your person, finally decides whether or not he should grant you this permission and this favor. In which case rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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you just have to sign the register, sign your card, and finally wait for the two days a week when you will be authorized to consult, during special hours, the original prints that the assistant curator will want to confide to you, and with whom you will be especially polite. Really the door to the office of foreign affairs is easier to force open.374 Raffaëlli further suggested the collection be transferred from the Bibliothèque nationale to the Louvre, where it could replace the marine and ethnographic museums. Then, he said, the existing Cabinet des estampes could function as a museum and France’s print collection would be equally accessible to artists and the general public as the rest of the Louvre collection. Raffaëlli conceded that it was important to protect the valuable collection of prints but he mused that since the Louvre displays valuable paintings that are irreplaceable why could not prints, for which several copies exist, be at least equally accessible? Significantly, Raphaëlli’s only reference to valuable prints cited Rembrandt: Certainly I understand the difficulties and I know the artistic value of certain prints. I know many of Rembrandt’s works are worth a fortune; but such a painting at the Louvre, which cost 100,000 francs and for which we cannot find a second proof, does not pose, as far as I know, more resistance to a criminal and meanwhile we do not hide it! 375 Raffaëlli believed that since the public was not regularly exposed to prints and the only major prize the French Academy offered for printmakers, the Prix de Rome, was for engravers, other print media still remained largely unknown and thus unappreciated by the general French population. Despite the fact that it was more difficult to study or copy prints in the Cabinet des estampes than to copy paintings at the Louvre

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museum, dealers, artists, and critics with a range of interests were able to consult the collection. While Rembrandt’s prints were only partially validated in this setting, Raffaëlli’s emphasis on the value of Rembrandt’s prints and the dissemination of his views in the French press demonstrate the exemplary status Rembrandt had been assigned by the 1880s. This position was further consolidated and promoted through Félix Buhot’s response to Raffaëlli’s plea for the increased accessibility of prints in France, a topic discussed in the following chapter. The growing number of private collectors of Rembrandt’s prints in France also demonstrates his rising popularity. They included critics Charles Blanc and Eugène Dutuit, publisher Firmin-Didot, dealers Danlos and Delisle and Charles Clément, collectors Delessert and His de la Salle, artists Léon Bonnat, Desperet, Jean Gigoux, Théodore Rousseau, and Antoine Vollon, as well as politician Adolphe Thiers and Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Count Adolphe Thibaudeau, and Emile and Louis Galichon.376 Bonnat was thrilled when he became friends with His de la Salle and was able to see his art collection. Thoré-Bürger was often granted permission to visit private collections because of the articles he published but as with painting collections he remarked on their inaccessibility: “One must say that entering many of these galleries is quite difficult, or at least, that it requires letters, references, as the English say, round-about approaches, and almost diplomatic intrigues: personal connections, indirect recommendations, and often stubbornness.” 377 These were worthy collections and critics and others sought assiduously to see them.

Reprinting Rembrandt’s Copper Plates The market for Rembrandt’s prints among French collectors was fed by the numerous reworkings and reprintings of his copper plates in the nineteenth century. This practice, which can be traced back to the eighteenth century, continued into the early twentieth century. Significantly, France was the repository for the largest number of these plates.378 Due to the common nineteenth-century practice of adding rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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steel facing to the copper, an almost unlimited number of impressions could be made of each plate. The major source of Rembrandt’s copper plates in France was the Paris-based art connoisseur Claude-Henri Watelet, who specialized in Rembrandt’s prints. Watelet, who began his collection as early as the 1760s, published impressions, together with his own works, in Rymbranesques ou essais de gravure in 1785.379 The most famous transformation of one of Rembrandt’s prints attributed to Watelet is SelfPortrait with Saskia, in which Saskia was replaced by a portrait of Rembrandt’s mother.380 In 1786, the Parisian publisher and print dealer Pierre François Basan acquired eighty-one plates at Watelet’s estate sale. Between 1789 and 1797 Basan published his own Recueil Rembrandt.381 Although Basan did little retouching, his son, Henry-Louis Basan reworked many plates and published them again around 1807. Perhaps Henry Basan’s best-known alterations were to Rembrandt’s Doctor Faust, in which Basan changed the scholar’s face from that of an older to a younger man. Around 1820 the copper plates transferred to another French publisher, Auguste Jean, who made further reprints and published compilations for his own profit. In 1846 the French engraver Auguste Bernard acquired the plates, reworking and publishing them again. Bernard was the last person who reprinted Rembrandt’s copper plates in France in the nineteenth century. The availability of later impressions of Rembrandt’s copper plates helped both to satiate the growing market and encourage sales of Rembrandt’s etchings in France. Nineteenth-century French sale catalogues did not indicate whether a print listed under Rembrandt’s name was an impression from the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth century. The major selling point was whether the print was a high-quality impression. Precise lines, clear definition of forms, and the condition and quality of the paper – Dutch or Asian – were all important factors. There is little to indicate that French nineteenthcentury collectors were even aware of – let alone interested in – the massive reprinting taking place. Only astute collectors distinguished between a print put through the press by Rembrandt himself and a later restrike, and his

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etchings increased in value and their prices mounted throughout the century. Reports in daily newspapers reveal the significant escalation in prices, although it remains difficult to evaluate the growth fully since the quality of specific impressions cannot be judged. An article on Clément, then Paris’ most celebrated dealer in Old Master prints, in the newspaper Le Temps outlined how prices had risen exponentially for high quality impressions of Rembrandt’s prints: In 1861, [Clément] began [forming his collection] at Hôtel Drouot with the Arozarena sale. It was a real event. A few of Rembrandt’s prints rose to previously unheard of prices: The Three Trees was bought by Firmin Didot for 1,860 francs (which he later sold to Edmond de Rothschild for 11,000 francs) and a superb proof of The Hundred Guilder Print obtained 3,210 francs, an amount well surpassed six years later at the Harrach sale... where Théodore Rousseau did not hesitate to go as high as 8,000 francs for the first state described by Bartsch.382 Arozarena’s sale of 1861 was indeed a landmark event. This South American millionaire arrived in Paris in 1859, built up a significant business speculating on prints for two years, sold off his entire collection in 1861 and promptly left for Cuba. Arozarena’s sale of over three hundred prints by Rembrandt did much to stimulate the value of his prints in France. Of particular note were a Portrait of Janus Lutma (first state) which sold for 1,860 francs and a Portrait of Burgomeister Six (second state) which Firmin-Didot bought for 5,251 francs.383 FirminDidot then sold that Portrait of Burgomeister Six in 1877 for 17,000 francs and Eugène Dutuit said it was the best print he had ever seen.384 Arozarena’s sale was not the only boost to the prices of Rembrandt’s most highly acclaimed prints. A second state of Christ Healing the Sick/The Hundred Guilder Print sold from the Firmin-Didot collection in 1877 for 8,550 francs.385 Eugène Dutuit purchased a first state of the same print for 27,500 francs.386 The famous The Hundred Guilder Print was clearly the most prized of all of Rembrandt’s prints by rembrandt the “ master ” printmaker

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fig. 63 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Le Lit à la française, 1646

nineteenth-century French collectors but other prints sold from the same Firmin-Didot sale in 1877 brought enviable prices: The Goldweigher’s Field and House with Three Chimneys (states unspecified) went for 1,100 and 2,150 francs respectively, The Haybarn (third state) sold for 1,420 francs, and Landscape with Canal (state unspecified) sold for 3,700 francs.387 These sales demonstrate how Rembrandt’s prints gained considerable currency in nineteenth-century France, attaining levels of circulation that surpassed that of all other Old Master printmakers. This was in part a circumstantial and market-driven phenomenon resulting from the French reprinting of Rembrandt’s plates. But more important, the increasing monetary value of his etchings added to the general perception of worth assigned to Rembrandt’s name. At the same time, French printmakers were trying to create a greater sense of public appreciation for their artistic pursuits and a strategic alliance with Rembrandt could only help to bolster their cause. Contemporary notions of Rembrandt as the most valuable (read lucrative) Old Master printmaker helped to position him as their chosen mentor.

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chapter 5

The Rembrandt Strategy Etchers and Engravers Fashion their Professional Identities

rom the 1860 s through the 1880 s, FRENCH print treatises, critics, and members of print societies provided the final impetus in the formation of the cult of Rembrandt, positioning him as an iconic figure and a talisman for printmakers. Rembrandt was regarded as the archetypal painter-printmaker because of both his artistic achievements and his technical proficiency. He was known as an individualist and an original, self-taught etcher who used exotic papers, printed his own plates, and treated a copper plate with the freedom of a canvas. Thus the challenges he had faced and the goals he had sought to achieve were seen to parallel those of French printmakers in the nineteenth century. They used Rembrandt’s name and images of him to validate and promote the status of painter-printmakers in France as they tried to secure public favor and create a professional identity for themselves. Aligning themselves with Rembrandt was part of their strategy to increase the value assigned to their own names and art and bring about the triumph of the original print in France.

F

The Role of Treatises French treatises on printmaking, specifically those promoting a revival of etchings, played an important role in positioning Rembrandt as the mentor and guide for French printmakers. These treatises functioned as an introduction to the technical problems of producing prints and the materials and instruments involved. They provided a history of the

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medium and were largely “how to” or recipe books explaining the purpose of plates, varnish, resins, oils, turpentine, acid and oxygen baths, rubbing, and printing processes. Most cited the origins of engraving in antiquity and noted its rising prominence beginning in the sixteenth century. By the second half of the century, Rembrandt was widely acknowledged in treatises as the leading representative of the etching technique. Earlier, in his treatise of 1836, Pierre Deleschamps emphasized no one artist. He cited Callot, Rembrandt, Leclerc, Duplessis, and Bertraux as exemplary etchers. Deleschamps’ interest lay in the function of etchings, which he suggested could be used in two ways: to interpret a painting or function as a drawing. Deleschamps wrote: Etching is an ingenious and fine drawing which expresses so much the mind of the painter, which the point, by its extremely free play, can joke, that is to say without effort and without labor, can depict on the metal the capricious idea that offers itself to the artist’s genius.388 In Jules Renouvier’s treatise of 1856 Rembrandt shared with Callot the status of seventeenth-century genius of printmaking.389 Renouvier noted that Rembrandt worked in the Netherlands, a country “ripe for an art that had nothing to borrow from the classical repository of old Italy.” 390 Renouvier also made use of information published by other French critics and emphasized that Rembrandt was an artist who did not have a master. He repeated the importance of Rembrandt’s print collection and said that his numerous drawing notebooks demonstrated his extensive studies after nature. Renouvier said Rembrandt was “neither an idealist nor an eclectic, he is a fantastic and real artist, with the eye of a lynx who sees humanity in its most gripping reality in Amsterdam.” 391 He also believed Rembrandt “expresssed nothing but the truth and vivacity of life.” 392 Furthermore, Renouvier declared Rembrandt had “a completely fertile freedom. He reacted against the theories and examples that came from Rome... Inspired by his own times and soaked in nature, he had a unique gift equal to the greatest

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artist: he was sublime in the most base subjects.” 393 Ultimately, as French etchers sought to define etching as different from engraving and as they tried to liberate printmaking from the reproductive role promoted by the French Academy, Italian models were rejected in part because of their close ties to Academic traditions. By the time of Maxime Lalanne’s important text of 1866, Traité de la gravure à l’eau-forte, Rembrandt was at the head of the list of “the principal painter-printmakers from diverse schools who have illustrated the art of etching.” 394 Lalanne ranked artists according to his perception of their significance; Claude Lorrain, Van Dyck, Van Ostade, Callot and others all rated below Rembrandt. Lalanne specifically emphasized the importance of an artist’s individuality in producing an etching: The artist understands that the etching has that which is essentially vital, it is the force of his past and the guarantee of his future, which, more than any other manner of printing on metal, carries the mark of the artist’s character. Etching personifies and represents him so well, it identifies so much with his idea, that, in the process, it often seems to cause the artist to be reduced to nothing in favor of this idea. Rembrandt gives us a striking example.395 For Lalanne, Rembrandt was the most notable example of artistic individuality because his manner of working was inseparable from the ideas behind his art. Lalanne also emphasized to his contemporaries the importance of revarnishing and reworking a plate. Here again he used Rembrandt’s working process to support his point: Rembrandt often proceeded in this way; looking at the successive states of his plates we realize how he went back to his work; we see that he worked extensively on one part of his subject without touching the others; he took a proof; then he came back to the same part with the finest the rembrandt strategy

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work, and moved to other areas he worked according to the effect that preoccupied him.396 Lastly, Lalanne explained to his readers how crucial it was for artists to learn to print copper plates on their own. The artist’s ideas and the practical experience of the printer – who Lalanne called “the worker” – remained otherwise isolated from one another. Lalanne wrote: “It would be highly advantageous that artists be able to print their proofs themselves. Rembrandt is the most illustrious example, since many of the ideas that we use today have come from his hand.” 397 Adolphe Martial’s later study of 1873, Nouveau traité de la gravure à l’eau-forte, solidified the divide between Italian traditions and French production of etchings advanced earlier in Renouvier’s treatise.398 Martial’s text was a practical guide with step-by-step processes, but he selected two critics to write prefaces and gave them the privileged position of outlining his philosophy behind producing etchings. In his preface, Théophile Gautier praised etching for its truthfulness, its authenticity, and its desire to speak directly to the public, and he cited Rembrandt as its greatest practitioner.399 Thoré-Bürger’s more substantive preface considered the factors that contributed to the earlier eclipse of etchings. He wrote: Ah good! the conquest is done! Etching, almost abandoned since the eighteenth century, has again become one of the expressions of French art... And do you know what caused etching to be abandoned? It was the noble aesthetic, supposedly Greek and Roman, which suggested – ordered – the ‘grand style and the grand art.’ Simple art, like simple literature, was prescribed, in those times. Inspiration meant nothing, next to patience. Rembrandt’s three hundred and sixty etchings did not count next to an engraving by some academic. ‘Etchings,’ the Bescherelle dictionary said, ‘are for print collectors what sketches are for painting collections.’ But maybe there is no ‘grand art’ and lesser art. Maybe Rembrandt’s The Hundred

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Guilder Print is as important to art as a superb engraving by Marcantonio after Raphael. The Amsterdam museum turned down one thousand guineas for its proof of Rembrandt’s portrait of Jan Six; what engraving has ever attained such a price? 400 Thoré-Bürger made his appeal for Rembrandt’s significance to the etching tradition by using patterns of rhetoric common in his writing. He pronounced Rembrandt equal to the French Academy’s icon Raphael and said the Dutch artist’s worth surpassed all others. By 1876, Rembrandt was seen as a man for every age, not just the seventeenth century. That year, Raoul de Saint-Arroman published his treatise La gravure à l’eau-forte through Alfred Cadart and argued that Rembrandt was linked to the nineteenth century, a period that “understands, interprets, and borrows from him a new conception of art.” 401 He believed artists such as Rembrandt destroyed any sense of chronology in history because of their long-term significance. Saint-Arroman even referred to the Dutch artist as “our Rembrandt,” embracing him as a French citizen and a direct descendant in the lineage of French artists. In discussing the achievements of contemporaries such as Méryon, Legros, and Flameng, Saint-Arroman declared they were Rembrandt’s direct successors. Speaking on behalf of himself and his contemporaries, Saint-Arroman said, “we study, we penetrate, we feel Rembrandt’s work with so much power, that in a way it is he himself who directs the current battle [for original etching].” 402 Saint-Arroman believed Rembrandt’s free touch and execution of prints, undertaken using a technique on par with the freedom of painting, was the most significant aspect of his etchings for the nineteenth century. For Saint-Arroman, Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jan Six was not solely an etching. The broad and free execution rendered it more painterly. This recognition of Rembrandt’s stature as both a painter and printmaker and comparisons between Rembrandt’s copper plates and the canvases were integral to his appeal to French artists, many of whom affiliated themselves with both of these media in the nineteenth century. the rembrandt strategy

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Saint-Arroman agreed with previous writers that etching was definitely born from engraving by artists who wanted to work in a freer mode: “What a difference for [the artists] who copy, and clash immediately with the dryness of the copper, – and the man who sketches the form he wants to create in a direct and definitive stroke on a supple and obedient substance.” 403 To Saint-Arroman, the Italian and German artists who produced engravings and etchings before the seventeenth century were on the right track but had not yet reached the high point of printmaking. He declared: If the art that we study had prestige at this point, it did not have all its real value. It had not yet attained the supreme allure which would give it freedom. But we were on the right track... It was Rembrandt who gave it splendor in the seventeenth century. He brought out all its charms, he colored it mysteriously and, filling it with poetry, brought it a new life. Rembrandt brought shadow and light to etching.404 Print treatises were one of the foremost elements that brought about the consolidation of Rembrandt’s iconic status for French etchers. Lalanne, Martial and Saint-Arroman’s treatises had the greatest impact because of the authors’ key positions within the Société des Aquafortistes in the case of the former two and the role of Cadart as publisher in the latter. French printmakers used these manuals as their guides and they were reminded of the significance of Rembrandt’s technical proficiency and the truthfulness and authenticity of his studies after nature.

The Critics go to Work Rembrandt’s prints received the focused attention of French critics from early in the nineteenth century. In an article in L’Artiste in 1834, Frédéric Villot lamented how etching had been forgotten in France and chastized contemporary print amateurs who he believed might

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even be foolish enough to doubt Rembrandt’s genius if he had had the misfortune to live in their time.405 Writing in 1839 in L’Artiste, Charles Blanc first expressed his praise of Rembrandt’s etchings, particularly for his understanding of the “secrets of light and color.” 406 Blanc would return to this idea and develop it fully in the following decades at the same time as French artists took to the etching medium at an increasingly feverish pace. Publications proliferated during the second half of the century, many simply referred to as L’Œuvre de Rembrandt, suggesting a discussion of his production in all media. But ambitious studies by Charles Blanc, Francis Seymour Haden, and Eugène Dutuit focused, in fact, on etchings; other media received only modest treatment. Their catalogues represented a significant portion of the contribution of nineteenth-century French scholarship to the historiography of Rembrandt. Each of these critics took a turn at classifying and describing Rembrandt’s etchings and they positioned their catalogue either following or counter to the tradition of subject groupings set by the Parisian dealer Gersaint, who wrote the first catalogue of Rembrandt’s etchings, published in 1751.407 Rembrandt’s prints were the center of attention among critics attuned to the growing interest in the production of etchings as a national French art. They responded specifically to the need to promote and defend etchings through an alliance with Rembrandt. By increasing the perceived value of Rembrandt and his etchings, the critics enabled their contemporaries to benefit by associating and aligning themselves with the Old Master. Even the term painter-printmaker, which began to be assigned to French artists in the 1870s, appears to have originated in the concomitant identification of Rembrandt’s dual artistic persona and the status he was given in France.408 The idea of a painter-printmaker is an artist who practices printmaking as if it were another branch of painting and works on copper plates in the same manner as a canvas: the artist prepares the plate, rubs, scratches, scrapes, prints, adds more acid and prints again, and may even add drypoint or other lines and rework the plate.

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Charles Blanc published the first of his four catalogues of Rembrandt’s etchings in 1853. Blanc was attracted to Rembrandt’s prints as early as the 1830s, when he studied printmaking under Luigi Calmatta and Paolo (Paul) Mercuri. In an attempt to distance himself from what Blanc saw as the limitations of his instructors, he sought out Rembrandt for inspiration and made a copy after his etching Janus Lutma.409 But Blanc soon turned from producing art to writing about art and his first catalogue of L’Œuvre complet de Rembrandt (1853) included a selection of eighty-seven etchings, each illustrated by a photograph.410 Blanc’s intention in publishing the catalogue was twofold: firstly, he wanted to make more of Rembrandt’s etchings available to a wider public; secondly, he wanted to reclassify Rembrandt’s etched œuvre. Blanc thought Gersaint’s system was too complicated and poorly conceived. While he retained Gersaint’s preference for sorting the prints according to subject rather than chronologically, Blanc shifted the organization of the prints into fewer, more general groups.411 More importantly, Blanc advanced his goal to disseminate Rembrandt’s etchings to a larger public between 1859 and 1861 when he published another catalogue in a smaller two-volume format. He also published this less-expensive edition because the first edition had sold out and he wanted to fulfill demands from his artist and art amateur friends who could not afford the more expensive folio-size text.412 The edition published between 1859 and 1861 catalogued all of Rembrandt’s etchings and included forty-four etched illustrations, a list of his paintings and a list of some of his drawings in the British Museum. Blanc reprinted this edition in 1873 with an added thirty-five illustrations in héliogravure by Amand Durand along with revisions to the lists of paintings and drawings. He published a final two-volume catalogue in 1880, which included illustrations for each of the 353 entries, but he also cut the lists of paintings and drawings from the text. This foliosize publication was meant for a wealthier book-buying public. Over the years, Blanc exploited various means of illustrating his texts and while his project for etched illustrations with Flameng in 1859 was important to him he often used the less expensive photographic or combination print-photograph processes. This procedure

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enabled him to make the material available to a wide range of people. The act of publishing so many different editions of this catalogue indicates both the esteem in which Blanc held Rembrandt and, over the decades, the growing and diverse market for texts on Rembrandt’s etchings. Blanc called Rembrandt “the most illustrious painter-printmaker” and the “inventor of etching.” 413 He admired Rembrandt’s expressive touch and, like Saint-Arroman, believed Rembrandt transformed printmaking because he made it a kind of canvas painted in etching. Blanc was also responsible in 1853 for the first French publication of Rembrandt’s inventory. But he did not analyze the inventory at any length and it received greater attention after Thoré-Bürger republished it in his editions of Scheltema’s biography in 1859 and 1866.414 The most significant discovery about Rembrandt for French printmakers occurred after the inventory was published, when it became increasingly common knowledge that Rembrandt had two printing presses in his home. These presses definitively separated Rembrandt from other past printmakers about whom such information was not known. Some French critics and artists knew well before the 1850s that Rembrandt altered his states and they were thus able to compare the various impressions he had made of the same subject. Blanc remarked as early as 1834 on how Rembrandt printed different proofs of his own plates.415 But it was only when French critics and artists were debating the value of printing plates themselves and after the publication of Rembrandt’s inventory in France that he was increasingly identified as an artist-worker and a printer as well as a printmaker. The claim put forward by Houbraken that Rembrandt made slight changes and reprinted his plates only to make extra money – a story repeated by many later biographers – had little impact on French critics and artists. They were either unaware of this purported “fact” or were unconcerned with the reasons why Rembrandt produced different states. There was more likely a sense of nostalgia or envy on the part of French painter-printmakers for a time when market demand could sustain the sale of multiple states of a contemporary artist’s etchings – a time very different from their own. the rembrandt strategy

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Auguste Delâtre was, in fact, credited with reigniting interest in France in producing different states or impressions of a plate following his study of Rembrandt’s states.416 The principal interest of the painterprintmakers lay in Rembrandt’s technical proficiency and artistic sensibilities. They looked to his use of chiaroscuro and his expertise as a printmaker who made both nuanced and significant changes as he inked, selectively wiped, reworked, and reprinted his plates and experimented with differently textured and colored papers. They admired his skillful manipulation of surface tone over line and the tonal effects Rembrandt achieved through the use of drypoint burr. Each critic and artist thought he knew best the true nature of the Old Master’s work and so, in his study L’Œuvre gravé de Rembrandt, Francis Seymour Haden launched a challenge to the system of classifying Rembrandt’s etchings that had been used from Gersaint through Blanc. His views were laid out in a catalogue for the exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London in 1877, published in Paris in 1880.417 Haden rejected classifications by subject and arranged his catalogue chronologically. He believed this was the only way to see what he called Rembrandt’s “development” as a printmaker; he thought art works were the result of a chain of cause and effect that could only be understood when studied in the order they were produced. Although Blanc considered undertaking the same approach in some of his later editions, he maintained that an arrangement by subject was more appropriate since so few of Rembrandt’s etchings were dated and one could not assume specific events in his life would have an identifiable impact on the way he handled an etched plate.418 Haden, on the other hand, believed that an artist’s life and output could be defined into discrete compartments that always followed the same pattern: beginning, progress, apogee, decline. He separated Rembrandt’s etchings into three sections: his first or “primitive” period (1628-39), his second or middle period (1640-50), and his third or final period (1651-61). Unlike Blanc and his predecessors, Haden disregarded differences among states as insignificant. His main concern was authenticity and he carefully considered the role each of Rembrandt’s students might have had in the creation of any given etching.

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The final French catalogue of this period, Eugène Dutuit’s L’Œuvre complet de Rembrandt, was published in two volumes between 1883 and 1886. Dutuit focused on Rembrandt’s prints because he thought the paintings in the Louvre and other European collections were already sufficiently well known. He believed that no one was more of a painter in his printmaking than Rembrandt, hence his etchings warranted extensive study.419 After due consideration, Dutuit rejected the latest chronological organization by Haden and continued to group the prints by subject.420 Dutuit did follow Haden’s example regarding authenticity and advanced his views on several prints, particularly landscape subjects. However, Dutuit discounted questions regarding the role of students, saying they could not be resolved. He believed that regardless of who in the studio undertook a plate it would have been based on one of Rembrandt’s drawings. Such debates paled beside the importance of disseminating Rembrandt’s work among Dutuit’s contemporaries. As Dutuit said in his handbook for print collectors, “Rembrandt’s name suffices... I have nothing to add.” 421 On the whole, however, from Blanc’s earliest catalogue, through Haden and Dutuit, French critics demonstrated a growing concern for the authenticity of each etching. As market prices rose and they helped to establish Rembrandt as the archetypal Old Master etcher, some critics became increasingly preoccupied with determining and controlling what was identified as being definitively by Rembrandt’s hand. At least one painter-printmaker, Alphonse Legros, who had his own collection of Rembrandt’s prints, also entered the debate. Legros agreed that seventy-one of the etchings in Haden’s catalogue were unconditionally by Rembrandt’s hand. He was also tentatively prepared to accept the authenticity of a further forty-two etchings, but believed the rest were reworked or executed by Rembrandt’s students. Legros advocated a drastic reduction from the 363 etchings Haden attributed to Rembrandt.422 There was, however, significant resistance to all this talk of authenticity from Henri Beraldi, author of Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, the most comprehensive French study of contemporary prints in the nineteenth century. Beraldi proclaimed that: “Only one man could the rembrandt strategy

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have settled everything, and possessing all the desirable general and particular knowledge, as well as experience acquired from etching, could give us the definitive catalogue of Rembrandt’s etched works. Unfortunately this man is dead. It was Rembrandt.” 423 Further, Beraldi declared Rembrandt the “Père Eternel,” the eternal father of French printmakers.424 He despaired that too many collectors wasted their energy hunting for unique prints when they should have been making purchases on the basis of their own personal taste. Even in Rembrandt’s œuvre, Beraldi hastened to admit, there were weaker works. But Beraldi feared that amateurs who kept themselves busy trying to separate works by Rembrandt from those by his students and followers would lose sense of the value of even the least significant print attributed to Rembrandt. Despite challenges to the value of their work, critics such as Blanc, Haden, and Dutuit had a vested interest. Their scrutiny was in part a personal, intellectual exercise and, over time, a response to market demand but each also owned sizeable collections of Rembrandt’s prints and maintained a vested interest in the value placed on different states, the quality of impressions and the possible role of students. In fact, Blanc put his own collection up for sale in 1860, right after publishing his second edition, but has never been accused of having a conflict of interest.425 Through their catalogues these critics tried to apprehend Rembrandt’s talents as an etcher by subjecting it to their control. Categorizing and shaping his graphic œuvre was, for them, a means of attaining greater understanding of what they saw as his intangible “genius.” They attempted, through taxonomy, to arrange, sort, and organize states, dates, and authenticity, depending on their personal concerns. For Blanc and Haden there was something more on their minds than money, they also wanted respect. Their role as critics and connoisseurs of Rembrandt’s prints was tied directly to their conception of themselves as printmakers. Blanc produced only a few prints, including copies after Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait before an Architectural Background and Portrait of Janus Lutma. His explorations in printmaking revolved entirely around the inspiration he drew from Rembrandt.

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fig. 64 – Francis Seymour Haden, Amstelodamus, 1863

Haden presents an even stronger case of self-interest. Firstly, he said he began studying and collecting prints as early as 1845 after looking at Rembrandt’s etchings in a second-hand print shop.426 Later, Haden often showed his collection of Rembrandt’s prints to his many printmaking friends, including Whistler, Legros, and Delâtre. A surgeon by profession, Haden fashioned himself as an artist and derived much inspiration for his prints from Rembrandt’s example. Haden prided himself on his use of a steel needle as his principal tool and compared his technique with that of Rembrandt: “I have no doubt that this [tool] is the secret of the freedom which distinguishes Rembrandt’s line.” 427 Haden took his first trip to Amsterdam in 1863 with Whistler and Legros, a trip undertaken expressly to pay homage to Rembrandt and his home town. Whistler made a copy of The Night Watch and Haden etched four plates during their visit. One of these, Amstelodamus [fig. 64], depicts the Amstel river lined with boats, homes and churches. It is a convincingly accurate, although abridged, the rembrandt strategy

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representation of a section of the Dutch capital. Haden published this etching at the end of his catalogue Études à l’eau-forte. Burty noted as early as the 1860s the stylistic parallels between Haden’s cityscape of Amsterdam and Rembrandt’s landscapes.428 There is, however, another level at which Haden paid tribute to Rembrandt in this etching. His inscription “Hic terminus haeret” relates to the Roman god Terminus, who was connected with immovable sacred landmarks. The precedent for Haden’s use of this phrase has been found in Erasmus, who adopted the Terminus figure as a type of motto meaning “Terminus abides in this place.” 429 Why Haden inscribed these words on his etched cityscape of Amsterdam must also be considered. Haden repeated the same words in only two other instances, in two etchings of a printmaker’s hands at work. By including the inscription, Haden suggests his wish for Terminus to protect Amsterdam, a city sacred to him because of its connection with Rembrandt and the tradition of etching in which Haden wanted to find a place for himself. His Amstelodamus etching paid homage to Rembrandt by representing his city in the Old Master’s most cherished medium and by depicting the scene in a manner that can be readily compared with Rembrandt’s technique. Haden joined technique, subject matter and an inscription to express his admiration for Rembrandt and his interest in maintaining Amsterdam as a protected locale. For Haden, who later said that “the history of Rembrandt is the history of the whole art of etching,” Amsterdam was the most important city for the history of this much-revered medium.430 Of all the critics who published on Rembrandt’s prints in France, Haden was the most active printmaker and had the strongest personal ties to the advancement of etching among his contemporaries. But Blanc and Dutuit were equally keen to promote the value of Rembrandt’s prints within the larger context of the regeneration of French etchings. Before their texts were published, starting in the late 1850s, catalogues of Rembrandt’s prints were rare, expensive, and in great demand.431 The efforts of Blanc, Haden and Dutuit were augmented by those of other critics who dissemination information on Rembrandt’s prints in a wide range of publications.

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It was Thoré-Bürger who popularized the belief in France that Rembrandt was a self-trained etcher. In an article in the journal L’Artiste in 1858 Thoré-Bürger asked “Who then taught him printmaking?” and offered no names in reply.432 While, according to critics, Rembrandt’s teachers contributed in no way to his development as a painter, ThoréBürger claimed that Rembrandt did not even have the luxury of rejecting the input of any print instructor. Somehow, through his own struggles, he mastered the technique independently. Thus, like the French etchers who were reconnecting with the little known tradition of etching in the nineteenth century, Rembrandt was believed to have discovered the medium and taught himself. As an “unschooled” painter and printmaker he appealed to French etchers who had few contemporary teachers. Jules Claretie suggested that the possible origins of Rembrandt’s interest in etchings lay in the French artist, architect and writer Abraham Bosse’s treatise on etching, which was published in France in 1645.433 But Claretie’s view had no impact on his contemporaries, and as late as the 1890s French critics continued to say that they did not know where Rembrandt learned about the printmaking process. Émile Michel thought Rembrandt might have learned about printmaking from his Dutch contemporaries the Lastman brothers, but for the most part the critics seemed content to assume that Rembrandt’s drive to create etchings came solely from within himself. 434 Another instrumental figure, George Duplessis, curator of the Cabinet des estampes, separated Rembrandt from other Old Master etchers because of the diversity of his subject matter, the unparalleled effects he achieved and his ability to make etchings equal in calibre to his paintings. Duplessis took particular note of The Raising of Lazarus and Christ Healing the Sick, both of which were on permanent display in the Cabinet des estampes during the second half of the century. Duplessis wrote that these two were among the etchings by Rembrandt that were as valuable as his paintings. The equal status he claimed for Rembrandt’s etchings and paintings was also a part of the attempt by Duplessis and his contemporaries to raise the status of etchings to that of paintings. By championing Rembrandt’s dual status as a painterprintmaker, Duplessis sought to validate the significance of both media. the rembrandt strategy

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In France Rembrandt was the best known Old Master who had explored easel painting and etching to the same degree. He was the only Old Master who they believed had the dual status of painter-printmaker, a status many French etchers sought to achieve for themselves. Rembrandt was also an exemplary model for French etchers who wanted to exploit the needle as a means of attaining an original and expressive line. Criticisms centering on Rembrandt’s supposedly weak, uncontrolled or unskilled draughtsmanship positioned him well among French etchers. These etchers and the critics such as Blanc and Claretie who supported their cause saw etching as “pure drawing” 435 or “direct drawing.” 436 Cadart believed it was “the caprice, the fantasy, the most immediate way to convey one’s thoughts.” 437 Critics and artists promoted etching as a means of immediately conveying one’s ideas without any intermediary and of rapidly transmitting impressions in a highly personal and infinitely varied manner. This sincere and spontaneous medium was, to them, something that had escaped the control of French art institutions and thus could contribute to the freedom etchers could enjoy.438 The increasing number of publications on Rembrandt, and particularly his prints, coincided with attempts on the part of etchers to elevate the status of their art in the face of competition from reproductive engraving and photography. The position of authority these texts gave to Rembrandt was precisely the public image and professional identity the etchers wanted for themselves. Vying with their competitors, French etchers looked to Rembrandt as an incentive in their push to separate themselves from their peers. Reproductive engravings met with great success at the yearly French Salons, where engravers such as Jules Jacquemart, Henriquel-Dupont, and Charles Waltner all received prestigious medals for their engravings after well-known paintings. Original printmakers, however, received little recognition. There were, in fact, few prints based on original subjects – not reproducing or interpreting another artists’ work – exhibited at Salons during the July Monarchy in the 1830s. These numbers increased somewhat between 1850 and 1861 and more so after 1863.439 Many printmakers also reproduced Salon paintings and museum works for publication in art

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periodicals such as L’Artiste and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and before the second half of the 1860s some artists were able to find a small market for prints after their own paintings and also to publish a few original prints. The foundation of the Société des Aquafortistes played a crucial role in the increasing appreciation and value placed on etchings, and the dissemination of original prints through publications.

The Société des Aquafortistes The foundation of the Société des Aquafortistes in 1862 marked an important turning point for Rembrandt’s rising status in France. This society, which would refer to itself as neither a school nor an academy, was proud to exist without a president or patron because it claimed to embody its members’ love of independence.440 Ultimately the group proved to be the most significant association for rekindling interest in etchings in France, Belgium, England, and the United States, resulting in what is typically referred to as the etching revival of the nineteenth century. As a group, the society said it practised etching in order to search for truth in art by various means and to raise public awareness of etchings to the same level as that of contemporary paintings exhibited at official exhibitions.441 The society did, in fact, receive some financial support from the Ministry of Fine Arts through paid subscriptions for their publications. Nevertheless, the society preferred to emphasize the autonomy of its members, who produced etchings outside the confines of government-run institutions.442 Théophile Gautier summarized the society’s principle of individuality in his preface to their first publication: This society has no other code besides individualism. Each person should create and engrave himself the subject he will print to the collective work. No subject prevails, no technique is advised; we are free to show all of our originality, and no one is at fault.443

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The society’s conception of originality meant its publications included only new subject matter and not copies after contemporary or past art. In their publications, both members of the society and French critics who sought to bolster the society’s reputation invoked Rembrandt’s example in order to validate their goals. The claims for aligning themselves with Rembrandt were both aesthetic and philosophical. Members of the Société des Aquafortistes saw etching as a medium of original expression. At an aesthetic level, they valued Rembrandt’s expressive use of line and appreciated the contemporary conception of Rembrandt as an alchemist who scratched, wiped, and bit his own plates. At a philosophical level, their desire to attain “truth” in their art and retain their independence attracted them to Rembrandt. Since members of the society were determined to publish original prints, not copies, their interest in Rembrandt seldom manifested itself in reproductions of his work. Rather, their desire to emulate his achievements was expressed by the choice of critics who wrote prefaces for their yearly publications. These publications appeared between 1862 and 1867 and included prints that the society originally published at a rate of five per month. In his preface to the society’s first publication in 1862, Gautier noted numerous Old Master etchers whose example the society wanted to follow. But Gautier emphasized Rembrandt’s position by discussing his work most extensively and praising his ability to achieve more colorful effects with etching than with a rainbow of oil paints: With [etching’s] resources, apparently so limited, it knew how to give Rembrandt the flickering lights, mysterious shadows and profound blacks he needed for his philosophers and his alchemists who were looking for the microcosmos; for his synagogues in the architecture of Solomon, his Christs reviving the dead, his landscapes crossed by shadows and rays of light, and all the fantasies of his pensive, powerful and bizarre imagination. His palette, although so rich, did not give him a wider range of effects.444

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In a review that same year, Gautier also compared the significant achievements of members of the society with those of Rembrandt. He wrote: “Meanwhile Rembrandt attained magical and marvelous effects, and the slightest mark, by which he scratched the copper, sells for the price of gold.” 445 Thoré-Bürger wrote in his introduction to the Société des Aquafortistes’ third annual publication that while his contemporaries hung prints by a variety of artists from the past on the walls of their studios, Rembrandt was “the most astonishing of etchers.” 446 His argument for the significance of original etchings over engravings, a view which invoked Rembrandt’s example, was first published in this preface and then republished in Martial’s treatise in 1873, demonstrating the significance of his words for French etchers. Théodore de Banville, in his review of the society’s third year, referred to the artists in the society as inheritors of a legacy that had originated in Rembrandt and extended through two centuries into Banville’s own day. He believed the society was instituted to continue Rembrandt’s “illustrious tradition.” 447 Not even the financial ruin of Alfred Cadart could halt the growing worship by the cult of Rembrandt. Although the society ceased publishing its prints in 1867, the same critics and artists turned to Rembrandt again in a second set of publications, L’Eau-forte en..., published from 1874 to 1881. This annual publication included a collection of thirty etchings, except in 1875 when the volume contained forty prints. In the introduction to the first year’s publication, critic Philippe Burty lauded Rembrandt’s genius and declared that the hand of the Dutch artist summarized everything that could be said about the art of etching. Burty proclaimed the freedom and spontaneity of etchings as a means for artists to escape the traditional patterns of instruction in French institutions. He thought the rise of lithography earlier in the century had unjustly eclipsed etching. In Burty’s call for the revival of etching, he focused on Rembrandt’s qualitites as a leader for his compatriots. He wrote: “From there this vibration for life, this clash of light and shadow, this magic of reflections, this gradation of distances that make Rembrandt’s etchings – to take him whose genius the rembrandt strategy

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and hand summarizes all in this art – works so moving, so infinitely changeable.” 448 Burty was one of the leading exponents of etchings in France and his views were instrumental not only in promoting Rembrandt’s reputation but also in the revitalization of the etching tradition. He wrote about prints exhibited at the Salons and published articles on individual artists (including Méryon, Haden, and Bracquemond, who were part of his circle of friends) and the Société des Aquafortistes. Burty was published regularly in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1859-70), Le Rappel (1869-71), La République française (1874-87), and L’Art (187588). He also wrote articles in the Chronique des arts et des curiosités, La Renaissance littéraire et artistique and La Presse and wrote many introductions for Cadart’s publications L’Eau-forte en... and L’Illustration nouvelle. As a prominent critic his personal views promoting individuality and liberty dominated his writings and made him an arbiter of taste in France.449 Burty’s important article “La Belle épreuve,” published in L’Eauforte en 1875, outlined many of the same traits as those associated with Rembrandt by French printmakers.450 He intended “La Belle épreuve” to summarize the elements of the highest quality prints in the wake of rising prices and growing interest in prints among French collectors: It is time to give the public the reason, not of the value given to a collection of works which the value of a master always makes interesting, but the much elevated prices sometimes assigned to certain of his works. When rarity does not determine this high price, the reason is ‘the print.’ The beauty of a print, owing to a set of circumstances that we will explain, classifies separately the sentiment of the artists who thought of it, the skill of the printer who brought it to life, the taste of the amateur who distinguishes and choses it.451 Aspects of Rembrandt’s printmaking practice made his work exemplify Burty’s notion of “la Belle épreuve.”

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One of the characteristics of Rembrandt’s prints that most appealed to Burty was his use of exotic and old papers: Singular in everything, Rembrandt, the only one, or nearly, among the Dutch, who used Japanese paper, which is thick like velvet, shimmering like satin, of the amber tone of a fragment of ancient Paros, and which makes the print look like it is perpetually caressed and warmed by a ray of sun. Rembrandt acquired these sheets from some captain or Dutch merchant who had come back from Desima or Kyoto. He was miserly. He kept them for portraits of friends, for his large works that required heightened and nuanced blacks, in opposition to the vast light and clear-cut details. It is on this paper that he pulled the superb print of Christ Healing the Sick, which was recently copied so faithfully.452 Burty remarked that among his contemporaries, Méryon, Daubigny, Millet, Jacquemart, Haden, and Bracquemond also created the character of their work in specific types of paper. They carried on the tradition established by Rembrandt of seeking out particular and often uncommon papers to achieve unusual effects with their prints. Like Rembrandt’s practice of producing multiple states, unusual papers lent a sense of value and uniqueness to their works. Like Blanc and Lalanne, Burty emphasized how Rembrandt printed his plates himself and he paid special attention to the two presses in the artist’s home: Rembrandt printed himself. We have known this without a doubt since Doctor Scheltema, the wise archivist in Amsterdam, found in the archives of this city and published the inventory of all that was recorded in Rembrandt’s house when it was seized in 1656 to be sold by the Chamber of Insolvents. We encounter scattered here and there all the trappings of a printmaker-printer. the rembrandt strategy

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‘In the room behind the antechamber: a small oak table, four lampshades; an oak press. In the room behind the living room: a press of marbelized yellow wood; a small armoir in marbelized yellow wood.’... And this style of bailiff seizure is still enough to make us see the master, bowed over at mid-day in the ‘back room’ inking his plate with the attentive care of a good worker, choosing a piece ‘of large format’ paper and turning the reel of his ‘marbelized yellow wood press’.453 The idea of Rembrandt having sole control over every stage of the production of his prints appealed to Burty’s preference for an independent artist. This persona of Rembrandt as a printmaker and printer was also a focal point of interest among nineteenth-century printmakers, particularly those affiliated with the Société des Aquafortistes. Those who printed their plates themselves, or at least controlled the biting stage of their prints looked to Rembrandt as a beacon for their own efforts. Like Rembrandt, Jacques, Marvy, Bracquemond, Guérard, Lepic, Buhot, Cassatt, Degas, Haden, Méryon, Pissarro, and Whistler all ventured to print their own plates. In fact, Lepic was highly critical of those contemporaries who did not print their own works since, following Rembrandt’s example, this was the only way for printmakers to obtain a powerful effect in their work. Speaking of the time sixteen years before when he first started making prints, Lepic wrote: I was surprised by what was false in modern printmaking and the double cause that threatens to steer it even in its progress, by pushing it on the wrong path: on the one hand, it is becoming so much the more dry because it is more finished; on the other hand, it rejects or repudiates, with an extraordinary fickleness, even the art of masters, the art of Rembrandt, in whom we find such powerful effects; it repudiates them, I say, by refusing to use printer’s ink, which alone enables one to obtain them.454

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Society member Félix Bracquemond also declared Rembrandt to be the exemplar of the true creator who by printing his own plates made etching a medium of equal value to painting. In the prelude to his review of the print section at the Exposition Universelle in September 1878, published in the daily newspaper Le Rappel, Bracquemond said: But the true creator of etching, the one who made of it an art equal to painting was Rembrandt. When this prodigious master used the needle, etching or engraving, the genius of prints leads his hand. Rembrandt showed a new creation in each of his prints. One must examine them one by one, to study them as they deserve. The master’s pursuit of perfection was not interrupted when his plate was finished. He printed it himself and in this way he added to the effect that he first achieved on the plate. With Rembrandt the printer is still the painter.455 Again in Le Rappel in October 1878, Bracquemond continued to trumpet Rembrandt’s ways as he urged his contemporaries to control every stage of the process. According to Bracquemond, too many French printmakers gave over their plates too easily to printers and thus lost control over their final work. He advocated that artists be like Rembrandt, dependent upon no one other than themselves. Bracquemond entreated: Before finishing, it seems to me to be useful to insist on a point that has become of great importance in printmaking. Most etchers leave themselves too openly to the skill of printers to add the effect and also to correct or conceal the imperfections of their plates. The expediencies of an edition of the print in this way come to the aid of the inadequacy of the artist’s work; but his resources, naturally limited, do not replace the negligence of the print.

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Printers only provide sombre tones, a sort of general black effect, to complement the coloration these works are lacking. Let no one cite for me – I cited it myself – the example of Rembrandt, who printed his plates himself. The printmaker who prints the works that have come from his hand continues his work. He is the master of the choice of the process. The case of the printmaker who, following the use and general rule, gives his plate to the printer to pull his proofs, is completely different. The artist should not count on anyone besides himself. All the tones of the printed picture should be on the metal, and there is fault in demanding this completion of the printer which the artist himself knows, can and should give them.456 Bracquemond himself successfully emulated Rembrandt’s example and Burty cited his techniques in biting and his use of old and exotic papers in the manner of Rembrandt: Bracquemond gave the modern belle épreuve its special character, in collaboration with Auguste Delâtre, the incomparable printer of trial proofs. The biting skillfully graduated and almost always deep in its lines should deposit powerful layers of inks and rich greys. But he was the first among us to have the taste for perfect papers (Rembrandt was almost the only one in the past who also had it), like a fruit perfectly ripened for the palate.457 Although he worked with Delâtre, Bracquemond was intimately involved with printing his plates. The role of the printer remains secondary within this discussion over how best to follow Rembrandt’s example. Yet in one instance reverence of Rembrandt the artist-worker or artist-printer was also a valuable archetype for a professional printer. When Haden sought to compliment Auguste Delâtre’s talents as a printer he invoked Rem-

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brandt’s name and wrote in a dedicated copy of his L’Œuvre de Rembrandt: “To Delâtre. If he had lived in Rembrandt’s time, Rembrandt would certainly have used him to print his etchings.” 458 This was clearly the highest compliment Haden could offer and Delâtre could hope to receive. Haden’s praise of Delâtre has, however, led to the unfortunate misconception that Delâtre was responsible for the printing of Rembrandt’s reworked plates.459 Of all the reprinting of Rembrandt’s plates in nineteenth-century France, Delâtre definitely made the restrike of Rembrandt’s Three Oriental Figures, for Philip Gilbert Hamerton’s Etching and Etchers in 1868, but there is no evidence that Delâtre produced all the numerous French nineteenth-century impressions of Rembrandt’s plates.460 As a printer, Delâtre was accustomed to translating other people’s works and comparisons between his etchings after the works of Paulus Potter and Adriaen van Ostade and the original seventeenth-century prints prove that these were also not impressions taken from the Dutch artists’ own plates but rather that Delâtre executed these prints “after” the Old Masters as a form of emulation. Haden’s comparison between Delâtre and Rembrandt promoted the French artist-printer, particularly following Burty’s praise of Rembrandt’s talents as a printer in “La Belle épreuve.” Although Burty’s definition of a “belle épreuve,” a high quality print, had significant resonance, it did not satisfy everyone because he did not stipulate that the best quality prints were those printed by the artist, as Rembrandt had done. Burty said a “belle épreuve” was among the first impressions made, a print with a sizeable border around the image, and the product of an agile printer – he did not mention that the artist should also be the printer. The artist Henri Guérard disagreed and was upset with himself for giving over his own plates on numerous occasions for someone else to print and publish. Guérard was furious after reading Burty’s views when they first appeared in Paris à l’eau-forte and he refused to submit his plates to the journal, which was preparing for its next publication. By 1875 Guérard had become a regular contributor to Paris à l’eau-forte and the publisher explained Guérard’s works would not appear in that one issue as planned because of Guérard’s state after reading Burty’s article. Guérard apparently the rembrandt strategy

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fig. 65 – Norbert Goeneutte, Portrait of the Printmaker Henri Guérard, 1888

exploded in the journal’s offices and the publisher recounted: “‘I am angry,’ said Guérard on entering, ‘but I am not bringing you the plates that I promised you... Because I read P. Burty’s article on la Belle Épreuve, and I don’t want you to give me any undeserved privilege.’” 461 Guérard typically printed his own plates, a role evoked in Norbert Goeneutte’s etched portrait of Guérard at work in his studio [fig. 65]. Following Burty’s article, however, Guérard appears to have had a sudden crisis of conscience that submitting his plates to the printers of Paris à l’eau-forte would compromise his views as to what constituted a “belle épreuve.” Guérard did not think Burty sufficiently emphasized the importance of artists printing their plates themselves. He wrote in an article in Paris à l’eau-forte the week following Burty’s publication: La Belle épreuve is first of all pulled by the artist himself and satisfies the impression that he wanted to produce,

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and then those that are among the first proofs taken carefully from a finished plate. Proofs that come before the different states a plate goes through, during its printing, are only trial prints, trial and error, and are only of interest for study and rarity. No matter what the printer’s ability, we must establish the fact that he will never attain the results the author of a print will obtain. The two use the same agents but the artist will have more of the feeling of a creator who directs his hand and his thoughts... Rembrandt did not proceed otherwise: he pulled his etchings himself, and I think that we can only win by following the example of such a master. The least of his proofs seems preferable to me to the best proofs by the most renowned printers.462 This conception of Rembrandt as an artist-worker whose technical proficiency and hands-on contact with his prints at all stages from varnishing to biting to the selection of paper was among the most potent in establishing Rembrandt among French printmakers as their leading mentor. Beraldi described printing one’s own plates as following the principle that Rembrandt “cooked” his prints.463 By pursuing “cooking” themselves, printmakers were “being” Rembrandt, meaning artists would momentarily take on the persona of Rembrandt, the archetypal printmaker-printer. In an attempt to emulate this role, artist Félix Buhot sought inspiration from Rembrandt the technician when he was working on an etching of Victor Hugo. Buhot became frustrated by his inability to manipulate the copper plate in the acid and wrote to Burty that paying homage to a portrait of Rembrandt would fulfill his need for an icon and better enable him to emulate his mentor’s achievements. Buhot wrote: “I have not yet bitten the Victor Hugo plate, I am working on it right now and it seems to be working but it is precisely this mysterious hour of biting that I myself dread. If I had an image of Rembrandt in my bedroom I would light a candle to him.” 464 the rembrandt strategy

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Three years after publishing “La Belle épreuve,” Burty repeated his admiration for “Rembrandt’s magical point” as the highest expression ever achieved in etching when he was asked to write the introduction for L’Eau-forte en 1878. Such was Rembrandt’s power that Burty could only conclude, as Thoré-Bürger had more than two decades earlier, that an inner force had incited Rembrandt to start making etchings. Burty suggested Rembrandt’s innate genius had drawn him to the medium because it was the opposite of the scientific medium of engraving. He said etchings enabled Rembrandt to study natural phenomena faithfully and thereby grasp the profundity of humanity. In his article “Qu’estce que la gravure?,” Burty drew together many of Rembrandt’s characteristics, which were revered by his contemporaries. He wrote: Who urged Rembrandt to take up etching, to set up several presses in his house, to collect these sheets of old papers that make silvery proofs, and the sheets of Japanese paper that make golden proofs? Why did he combine all the refinements of an amateur with all the fits of anger, worries, science, and the good-natured aspects of genius. Why did he always confide an unknown idea or a new portrait to copper? Because etching is the most faithful confidante in the hours when the colorist felt his head burning and his hand ready. Engraving is a positive instrument, scientific in a way. It shows you one object after another... in their composed essence and not in their relationship with the surrounding world, not as our eyes see them freely, but as they appear to them through the glass of binoculars. There is an awkward side to Albrecht Dürer’s work, clumsy by the strength of application... There is none of that with Rembrandt, although when the fantasy leads him to make red hair gleam or to emphasize the bright shine of the Goldweigher’s new money, he works with fantastic precision. No childishness, but a completely human understanding of natural phenomena, the profound science of human pride that loves

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to dominate things, an incomparable art to speak to an excitable imagination: ‘Let us search together the darkness, let us follow this game of fleeting half-tones and moving reflections together, let us blink together before this flash of light that bursts from Doctor Faust’s window, before this shower of rays that falls on the shepherds and announces to them that the sky is joyfully reconciling itself with the ground.’ 465 In addition to the preeminent status alloted to Rembrandt in the critical texts that accompanied the publications of the Société des Aquafortistes, he was the only artist whose portrait was ever published in the seven volumes of L’Eau-forte en... Alberto Masso Gilli’s Portrait of Rembrandt [fig. 13] was first exhibited at the Salon of 1874 (#3456) and then published in Cadart’s album L’Eau-forte en 1876. This etching, as discussed in Chapter Three, was largely inspired by Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill [fig. 62] with the addition of a palette, brushes, and mahlstick in the artist’s hands to emphasize his stature as both painter and printmaker. The tools identify the aspect of Rembrandt’s identity that was tied to painting. The source and medium of Gilli’s own work and the context of its publication represents Rembrandt’s identity as a printmaker. Eugène Montrosier, in his introduction to that year’s volume, elaborated on the significance of Rembrandt, as depicted in Gilli’s etching, for contemporary etchers: Who is this person with the profound look, in the offhanded pose, who has the appearance of following some fleeting vision in the wave of his thought? Is it a soldier, is it a scholar, is it a thinker? It’s Rembrandt!... M. Mas[s]o Gilli, who, to our admiration, tried to give back the line of this god of art, has exceeded the mark. While praising the excellent qualities of facture, we can honestly say that we find the portrait too arranged. We would not present the composer of so many marvelous works in this way.466 the rembrandt strategy

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While Montrosier found the portrait too ordered to embody truly the spontaneity of Rembrandt’s prints, he still regarded it as symbolic of his sense of Rembrandt’s genius, particularly his use of clair-obscur. Montrosier wrote at length praising Rembrandt’s importance for contemporary etchers and the dissemination of his work, thanks to copies by Flameng: Rembrandt, of whom Léopold Flameng has guessed the secret in executing his beautiful copies of The Hundred Guilder Print and The Night Watch, left superb works in which all feelings are marked in a masterly fashion. The plates of his that we know are both concise and free. They touch, at the same time, the most profound realism and the most subtle idealism. After descending right to the ground, they come back up at a dizzying speed to pacific regions where religious inspiration blossoms. Rembrandt, as it were, invented the ‘manners’ since lost for taming light, that docile collaborator of his genius! No one possessed and used the science of ‘clair-obscur’ better than he. The other Dutch painters, his predecessors, his contemporaries and his followers, did not have as grand goals. More naive in their cult for beauties which blossom under their gaze, they simply sketch on the plate with no other motive than to give a new reign to their intimate impressions.467 Gilli’s handling of the plate also emphasized the central importance of Rembrandt’s clair-obscur for himself and his contemporaries. Rembrandt’s body is in large part barely distinguishable from the dark backdrop and the light emanating from a source outside the work highlights the artist’s hands, the instruments of his art. His face is partially lit although his eyes are hidden in shadow and the largely unworked area of Rembrandt’s open collar adds a stark contrast to the predominantly black tonality of the etching.

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Émile Cardon restated the value of etching as an original, personal, and sincere medium, best known for its diversity in his introduction to the volume L’Eau-forte en 1879. In addition, he said etching was a medium irresistible for any “true amateur,” one that engraving could never equal. Indeed, Cardon believed his contemporaries would never have a sense of Rembrandt’s talent if they had not known his etchings: “Engraving could never, like one of his etchings, give us an idea of Rembrandt’s talents: they give us at least a sense of the works that have disappeared or that the master did not perfect on a canvas.”468 Cardon advocated an appreciation for Rembrandt’s etchings to validate a collector’s stature as a genuine amateur.

Paris à l’eau-forte The volumes produced by the Société des Aquafortistes are the best known of all nineteenth-century French publications on etchings. But the journal Paris à l’eau-forte, actualité, curiosité, fantaisie was another important, although shortlived, outlet for artists to circulate their etchings and consolidate and advance the status of their mentor Rembrandt. This weekly publication was founded in 1873 by editor Richard Lesclide and director of etchings Frédéric Regamey. The journal circulated until the offices closed in 1876.469 In the journal’s first volume, Lesclide and Regamey laid out their intention to publish 300 etchings each year. In the first year they met their highly ambitious goal. Most of the etchings were produced by Regamey especially for the journal and illustrated articles on theater, current events, fashion, poetry, and literature. Regamey continued to be the most regular contributing artist, but others included Jules Adeline, Jules Breton, Buhot, Courtry, Léon Gaucherel, Henri Guérard, and Henri Somm. Prints executed after paintings started to appear in June 1873 and the etchings later ceased to illustrate texts only and became full-page inserts accompanied by special short articles and descriptions. Of all past artists whose works were a source of inspiration for the etchers contributing to Paris à l’eau-forte, Rembrandt was the most the rembrandt strategy

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popular. Moreover, in their eyes, Dutch seventeenth-century art was by far the most important school of the past.470 The recurring publication of Rembrandt’s works served both to demonstrate his significance to the etchers and the publication and also to reinforce and elevate Rembrandt’s significance for contemporary artists. The first works published after Rembrandt were by A. Protche, Portrait of Rembrandt (10 May 1874) and Two Heads after Rembrandt (Self-Portrait and Portrait of Rembrandt’s Mother ; 17 May 1874). While the general compositions of these three etchings were derived from works by Rembrandt, they had a highly interpretive quality. An accompanying description noted: “Finally, the figures which M. Protche borrowed from Rembrandt are right in the master’s style and recall the daring speed and the tones revealed in his drawings.” 471 The term “borrowing” was an important choice and implied that Protche’s works retained a sense of originality. The reference to Rembrandt’s drawing style as the source of Protche’s inspiration served the same function. A similar emphasis on originality even when an artist derived a composition from Rembrandt appeared in the context of Berthe Pilet’s Le Lecteur, after Rembrandt (10 January 1875): “All the while preserving the master’s mark, the young artist gives to her work that personal impression, of which Guérard spoke concerning the ‘belle épreuve’.” 472 Here the phrases “personal impression” and Guérard’s comments on Burty’s article “La Belle épreuve” were used to justify the originality of Pilet’s etching. Pilet’s work is a rare example of a female French artist publishing a work done in reverence of the Dutch Old Master. During the journal’s second year of publication, the relationship between texts and images altered. The etchings were no longer solely illustrative but were often the basis for an accompanying narrative. Such was the case for E. Champollion’s Portrait flamande, which is derived from Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait Before an Architectural Background in the Louvre. Champollion’s etching was published along with the narrative in which Rembrandt alienated one of his patrons by not removing the image of his monkey from the Burgomeister’s commissioned family portrait. The author claimed Rembrandt painted this portrait to appease his patron. Although the painting in the Louvre

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was always identified as a self-portrait during the nineteenth-century, it was transformed in this instance into a portrait of the disgruntled Burgomeister and was thus a reinterpretation of the painting. An entirely different approach was taken to Guérard’s etching, Un Gueux, after Rembrandt, which was published the following year (30 April 1876). Here, Guérard’s ability to produce an unlimited number of exact copies after Rembrandt’s beggar figure “tis vinnich kout” (“it’s cold out”) [fig. 66] on seventeenth-century paper was highly valued: The etcher who hides himself under an impenetrable veil gave us this week a marvelous copy of Pendant Beggar. He himself writes us that if one of our friends wants an original copy of the same print, on seventeenth-century paper, with all kinds of guarantees of authenticity, he will provide as many as we would like – It appears that he makes them himself. 473

fig. 66 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Pendant Beggar, 1634

Reproductions after Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus and Kouk Seller also appeared at the end of the journal’s third volume. The most important etching after Rembrandt published in Paris à l’eau-forte was Guérard’s The Microcosm (14 March 1875), after Doctor Faust [fig. 61]. Guérard’s etching served, in turn, as the basis for Frédéric Regamey’s publicity poster [plate 13] for Paris à l’eau-forte, which was displayed throughout Paris beginning in the early months of 1875. The use of one of Rembrandt’s etchings as the symbol for the the rembrandt strategy

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journal and the key image of the advertising campaign epitomizes the editorial board’s desire to use Rembrandt to advance the status of contemporary etching and particularly etchers associated with Paris à l’eau-forte. The two other publicity posters which formed part of the journal’s campaigns depicted a woman and the journal’s mascot, a cat, images that did not refer to any specific works, past or present. 474 The selection of the Doctor Faust etching further substantiates the central significance of this particular print for French etchers throughout the ninteenth century. This image was heralded in France in 1831 both by Gautier in his Albertus ou l’âme et le péché, 475 and by Hugo in Nôtre Dame de Paris.476 Its significance grew even more after Louis Marvy’s copy [fig. 27] was published in the well-read Magasin Pittoresque in 1847.477 The unsigned article that accompanied Guérard’s print noted Rembrandt’s Doctor Faust was “an old magician in his sorcerer’s studio” and a source of inspiration for artists such as Eugène Delacroix and Ary Scheffer.478 As one of the paradigmatic symbols of Rembrandt’s etched œuvre, Doctor Faust retained a powerful resonance throughout the century. The journal’s editorial board was, however, concerned that their manipulation of Rembrandt’s etching would be regarded as blasphemous and disrespectful of the “master of etchers.” They had, after all, transformed the original inscription into a pitch for “Paris à l’eauforte, appearing every Saturday.” They were careful to emphasize their respect for Rembrandt and note the significance of Guérard’s faithful likeness to the original etching: Rembrandt’s Microcosmos, reproduced by Guérard, served as a model for our friend Frédéric Regamey to draw our latest poster, of which we can see the marvelous effects on the walls of Paris, and marks so much better our path. Perhaps it is a bit bold to have replaced the mysterious characters that appeared to old Faust by a simple announcement, but we know that we are not taking advantage of charlatanism, and we excuse ourselves from any disrespectful intentions towards the master of etchings.

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Guérard’s excellent reproduction proves, moreover, that we have all the requisite deference to him, – and despite the insistence of our cat, co-founder and co-owner of this journal, we have completely banished him from our print, even though he managed to slide his insolent head into our poster.479 In the same way as Henry Somm’s images – one of which was also published this same week – were seen as respresentative of Paris, Rembrandt’s name was said to be synonymous with etching: “Rembrandt means etching.” 480 Just as Rembrandt had come to embody the essence of etching in nineteenth-century France, his Doctor Faust was an emblematic image and was used to further the cause for Paris à l’eau-forte and the avancement of etching in France in general. The publishers and artists affiliated with Paris à l’eau-forte could not make a greater claim for the value of their own work than the dissemination of this advertising poster. They used Rembrandt’s iconic image Doctor Faust to signify the route they wanted to follow in producing etchings like the Old Master. It symbolized the hoped-for status of their own achievements through an inheritance of the valuable etching tradition descended from Rembrandt.

The Musées d’estampes en province The cult of Rembrandt also figured prominently in the controversy over establishing print museums in the French provinces, facilities which to this day have an impact on the availability of prints throughout the country. Artist Félix Buhot used the Old Master’s status among French painter-printmakers to promote his mission for accessible print museums through publications and prints he produced between 1884 and 1887. Buhot’s efforts summarize how Rembrandt’s example continued to be appropriated by French artists past the years when the Société des Aquafortistes held sway. An experimental printmaker who also captured fleeting aspects of the world around him in sensitive the rembrandt strategy

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drawings and impastoed oils, Buhot was passionately dedicated to raising the status of fellow painter-printmakers and improving the amenities available to artists in France. Buhot first presented his plans for provincial print rooms following the debate over the accessibility of the Cabinet des estampes. This debate was sparked by Raffaëlli’s article in L’Événement November 18th, 1884 and its reprinting in the Journal des Arts four days later. While Raffaëlli was solely concerned with the accessibility of prints in Paris, Buhot was primarily interested in the provinces, where there were few dealers and fewer still public collections of prints. Raffaëlli was, in fact, opposed to Buhot’s idea because he thought it would detract from his plan for a print museum in the nation’s capital. Raffaëlli expected the establishment of provincial museums would be a natural outcome of the success he anticipated the Paris museum would enjoy.481 But Buhot bemoaned the fact that people in the provinces had to rely on what they saw for sale in street stalls. He did not think they could possibly see high-quality works, specifically prints by Rembrandt, at a flea market. But the street is not enough. It is not certain that the public will often find the opportunity to admire the masterpieces that they must first be shown. It is not in the ten centime boxes that they will have much luck finding Rembrandt’s Christ Healing the Sick, for one proof of which, not long ago, a well-known amateur paid 28,000 francs; nor Annunciation to the Shepherds, nor Portrait of Burgomaster Six by the Dutch master; nor the original engravings of Albert Dürer... nor Claude Lorrain’s admirable etchings, nor Bartolozi’s color prints, nor the shimmering mezzotints of Reynolds and Watson, etc.482 At first Buhot simply suggested provincial museums should develop their collection to provide resources for artists working outside of Paris. Next, he proposed the printrooms form their collections as inexpensively as possible. Using works from the Chalcography of the

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Louvre, he suggested they could provide prints by or after each of the major past printmakers at a low cost. 483 Buhot believed the collections in printrooms of past printmaking should be as comprehensive as possible. He recommended that works from all schools represented in the Chalcography’s collection be accessible to artists. Among the works Buhot wanted to be available, Rembrandt was by far the most important artist for any printroom. He declared: “Of Rembrandt above all, this master of masters, whose eight prints here are enough to captivate us for a long time, notably the fantastic painting in the Louvre, The Carpenter’s Household, who is visited each day by the gentle and warm sun, the sun in the golden tone cast in Dutch painting. ” 484 In the new provincial resources, Buhot urged several changes from practices common at the Louvre’s Chalcography. First, most of its prints were engravings and did not provide an adequate example to etchers – the “colorists” – who he said wanted to reproduce the “spirit, warmth and life, and all or almost all themselves cultivated the art of Rembrandt.” 485 Second, the Chalcography was a repository for prints reproducing paintings and did not include examples of the various stages of the printmaking process such as the épreuves d’artiste (the impression an artist makes before taking the plate to an editor; this step enables artists to verify whether the print will take the form they expect) or épreuves avant-lettre (the impression made before the title, artist’s name and that of the editor and any dedication or mention of a collection are added).486 While Buhot suggested the Chalcography donate prints to provincial museums, he also hoped that private collectors such as the Dutuits in Rouen, the Rothschilds in Paris, and LeroyLatteux of Amiens would bequeath their prints and thus make original Old Master works accessible to the French public.487 In order to encourage provincial museums to establish independent printrooms, Buhot announced a prize through the newspaper Journal des Arts that the first to do so would receive a collection of prints donated by contemporary French artists. The Rouen museum won the prize and opened the doors of its printroom in March 1885.488 Rouen received sixty-five prints, including proofs offered by Buhot, Courtry, Fantin-Latour, Gaucherel, and Masson as well as donations the rembrandt strategy

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from Béraldi and Burty.489 Museums in Amiens, Blois, Chartres, Honfleur, Montauban, Nîmes, and La Rochelle followed suit and Buhot encouraged artists and collectors to donate prints to these collections also. Two years later, in 1887, Buhot decided to publish a brochure including all of his articles on the provincial printrooms as well as images he would produce especially for the occasion. While he never completed this project, related prints and drawings indicate how Buhot placed Rembrandt at the forefront of his plans for the provincial printrooms. When Buhot formulated the frontispiece for his collected articles, he did more than take his inspiration from one of Rembrandt’s drawings. As an aspiring modern master, Buhot emulated the Old Master’s achievements and acted as if they were collaborators on the project. Buhot physically incorporated a reproduction of Rembrandt’s drawing into his study [fig. 67], using it as the support for his own work. In his preparatory study for Les salles d’estampes en province, Buhot used gouache and wash on top of a photograph of one of Rembrandt’s drawings.490 With his quick, fluid strokes he transformed Rembrandt’s view of the portal of a church. In the original drawing, two men converse beside the massive interior of a church. In Buhot’s rendering, the church becomes a print room in the provinces and the two men are print collectors, one carrying a folio under his arm. He also added a woman to the right of the entrance who is perhaps an attendant or custodian of the collection, and he transformed the original parishioners inside the building into amateurs perusing prints on easels. Rembrandt’s depiction of a religious space thus became an icon at the altar of French prints.491 Buhot inscribed below the study “Frontispiece composé en province par Rembrandt,” as if to say that Rembrandt himself had produced Buhot’s print, or that the French artist had assumed a guise as Rembrandt while he was working. The inscription to the left: “suite d’articles publiés dans le Journal des Arts 188485 augmenté de plusieurs chapitres inédits” shows Buhot’s intention of adding to his original text. Buhot further laid out his thoughts for the brochure and Rembrandt’s central position in the advancement of printmaking in France

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fig. 67 – Félix Buhot, Les salles d’estampes en province, 1887

fig. 68 – Félix Buhot, Sketches for les salles d’estampes en province, 1887

in a double page of sketches [fig. 68]. His notes across the page indicate a kinship with his contemporaries who also promoted the status of etchings. Scattered across the page are the names of the critics Clément de Ris, Champfleury, and Gaucherel, and the artist Courtry. Auguste Poulet-Malassis, who is also mentioned, was an important print collector and publisher whose editions included the work of Baudelaire. Poulet-Malassis had a significant role in the rehabilitation of etchings in the late 1850s; he commissioned frontispieces for his publications from artists including Braquemond, Flameng, and Legros. During his exile in Brussels, Poulet-Malassis was an instrumental link between French and Belgian printmakers and the establishment of the Brussels-based Société internationale des aquafortistes in 1869.492 Poulet-Malassis’ success in promoting printmakers was an important contemporary inspiration for Buhot’s own efforts. In his sketches for the brochure, Buhot also cited Dutuit’s Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes as the leading source for information

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on the watermarks of old paper. Indeed, the notion of old papers was central to Buhot’s conception of printmaking and was undoubtedly informed by his awareness that Rembrandt used old Chinese and Japanese papers. In the central right-hand segment of the paper, Buhot sketched a street scene where a cartouche over a door reading “Vieux Papiers” seems to announce the availability of valuable paper products. Various letters of “Vieux Papiers” appear again in the upper and central left quadrants of the right side of the sheet. The owl and open book are elements that reappear in many of Buhot’s prints.493 As one of his favorite motifs, Buhot incorporated an owl into his stamped monogram and in some instances used an owl as a symbolic representation of himself in his works.494 The owl may be included here as an emblem denoting Buhot’s place as a modern master within the etching tradition. Linking himself with tradition, Buhot conceived of his brochure as divided into two parts: old and modern. In his inscription in the “Partie moderne” Buhot bemoaned the status of etchings relative to other processes: “This will kill that. The mania for etching comes every now and then and almost killed vignettes. The heliogravure and photogravure processes brought it back to life but will never give it the charm and brilliance etchings had in the 1830s and 1840s.” 495 “Ceci tuera cela,” “This will kill that,” is a phrase that Buhot undoubtedly acquired from Burty, although it originated as the title of a chapter of Hugo’s well-known novel Nôtre-Dame de Paris.496 Hugo’s phrase referred to the rise of the printing press over medieval architecture, and thus symbolically to words overriding the importance of images or artistic objects and monuments. Burty related the phrase “Ceci tuera cela” to his fears that photography would render reproductive prints obsolete.497 Buhot lamented that even a high level of interest in etching does not mean it will triumph over photographic processes. He still believed that while reproductions could spark interest in etchings, they would never be as important as the original works themselves. In his designs for the second part of the brochure, the “Partie ancienne,” Buhot reinforced Rembrandt’s emblematic position for the French etching tradition in both an inscription and an image. the rembrandt strategy

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The inscription reads: “The collections of Mariette. Prints by Rembrandt. Rembrandt printer. Impressions with turpentine.” 498 Next to the inscription Buhot sketched an interior scene of Rembrandt’s studio. Here the Dutch artist labors over his printing press while two assistants watch him at work. A dog and a fireplace with mantle add to the anecdotal quality of the image and contribute to Buhot’s attempt to make the scene appear representative of Rembrandt’s daily life. Image and text together promote not only Rembrandt as the leading past master of etchings but also position Buhot as an inheritor of this tradition and establish his status as a modern master. As part of his own personal emulation of Rembrandt – or, at least, what he believed was Rembrandt’s technical practice – Buhot often used turpentine. In the 1880s he acquired a press for his studio at 71 Boulevard de Clichy and was one of the few French etchers who could boast that he printed his plates himself, just as he imagined Rembrandt had done.499 The final and most public example of Buhot’s reverence of Rembrandt as the zenith of the reinvigoration of etching in France appeared in his frontispiece for volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle. Béraldi commissioned this print in 1885 and it was exhibited at the Salon of 1886. A bust of Rembrandt with his characteristic moustache, goatee, long hair, and angled beret is alloted the dominant position in the central upper margin of the print. Although Rembrandt was not included in either the preparatory drawing [fig. 69] or the first three states of the print, his image appeared in the fourth state and then remained front and center in the final, published version [fig. 70]. This was unusual for Buhot who typically outlined his marginalia in the first state and then developed and defined them more clearly with each subsequent state. In this particular case, however, Rembrandt’s bust embodied Buhot and his contemporaries’ notion of a painter-printmaker to such an extent that the interior view of a printer’s studio with press and bottles of chemicals included in the lower register of earlier states was no longer necessary. By this point, Rembrandt’s bust symbolized the notion of a printmaker as both artist and technician in France so completely that Buhot no longer needed to illustrate the process in detail.

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fig. 69 – Félix Buhot, Frontispiece for Volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, 1885

fig. 70 – Félix Buhot, Frontispiece for Volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, 1885

This frontispiece reiterated Rembrandt’s role as the principal model for Buhot’s provincial printrooms; the words “Musées d’Estampes en province” surround Rembrandt’s bust. Flanking him, cityscapes of London and Paris signify the two capitals in which print collections, associations, and exhibitions had successfully promoted prints in the nineteenth century. In the lower margin, a view of Rouen refers to the city which had met Buhot’s challenge to establish an independent printroom. To the left and below Rouen, the titles of Philippe Burty’s publications – “La Belle épreuve” and “Maîtres et petits maîtres” – suggest Buhot’s admiration of Burty and his appreciation of the critics’ continued promotion of prints as well as the close friendship between artist and critic. 500 Margins were always an integral part of Buhot’s prints. They were aesthetically complementary and commented on the central image.501 While few of Buhot’s contemporaries exploited a print’s border to the same extent, it is a recurring motif in his œuvre.502 In his frontispiece for a volume of Beraldi’s study, Buhot included in the margins those elements which for him best characterized the status of French printmakers in the nineteenth century. The mission of the “Les Graveurs du XIX siècle,” announced on a placard in the central image, was bolstered by critics such as Burty, city centers such as Paris, London, and Rouen, and above all the archetypal painter-printmaker Rembrandt. This print summarizes Buhot’s reverence of Rembrandt and his aspirations for himself and his contemporaries to equal the example set by the Old Master. For advocates of print rooms, societies, journals, and independent printmakers, Rembrandt’s status grew to cult-like proportions in France during the second half of the nineteenth century. Rembrandt was assigned an iconic status because the artists and critics involved identified a need for someone or something to bolster the cause of original French etchings. They looked to the authority they gave to Rembrandt’s prints as part of their larger project to advance their own authority. Rembrandt’s name and accomplishments validated and advanced their own goals since he represented the success etching had

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attained in the past and, by extension, the current success they wanted and believed it should achieve in their own time. By defining their cause as a part of the tradition of etching that began with Rembrandt, artists and critics identified with him as an ancestral figure and forerunner of their cause. He functioned as a benchmark by which they could measure their achievements in the technical aspects of etching and their success acting independently and controlling the production of their artistic products. Through the self-conscious efforts of French artists and critics, Rembrandt was chosen as the principal mentor for the etching revival in France. Using Rembrandt’s artistic persona, they advanced themselves and created a professional identity that secured their ultimate victory over their competitors. The success of this venture can be seen most clearly in the fact that eventually they no longer needed Rembrandt. The establishment of the Société des peintres-graveurs and its first exhibition in 1889 marked the triumph of the original print in France.503 Many of the printmakers discussed in this study were involved in the society, including Buhot, Haden, and Legros, as well as Bracquemond and Guérard who were president and vice-president. In his preface to the first exhibition catalogue, Burty cited Rembrandt as the first of the “master printmakers” who dispersed his genius throughout the universe through his prints.504 This was precisely the goal of the artists involved with this society, but they were no longer concerned with justifying their existence and no longer felt the need to define themselves in relation to Rembrandt, whose significance now seemed natural. Their main goal was to exhibit original prints in a non-discriminatory and unjuried setting that was open to all artists. Despite controversy when the group was renamed the Société des peintres-graveurs français in 1891, it continued to grow and hold exhibitions, denoting how successful French artists and critics had been in using Rembrandt to help establish an increasingly public perception of value for original prints in France.505 This success continues and the Société des peintres-graveurs français still regularly holds exhibitions at the Bibliothèque nationale, more than a century later.

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Reproduction versus Interpretation: Rembrandt and the Creative Copy In an ironic twist of the cult of Rembrandt, specifically the creativity and originality of Rembrandt’s prints, he was also the chosen model for artists who exhibited reproductive prints after paintings at the French Salons. Printmakers who preferred to create original prints – those that were in no way connected with or representative of another work of art – looked to Rembrandt as a model of artistic liberty and individuality, but relatively few original prints were ever exhibited in the Salons during the nineteenth century. The French Academy and Salon jury promoted reproductive prints, most commonly engravings and to a lesser extent etchings. However, many of the artists who exhibited their reproductive prints resented claims that their works were simply copies after original art. Consequently, these artists and their sympathetic critics increasingly applied the term “interpretive” to such prints. As a result, Rembrandt was called upon not only as the mentor for French etchers who wanted to promote the value of original etching over engraving, but he was also taken up by reproductive etchers and engravers who sought to defend themselves against criticism that their prints were not creative. Further, they used Rembrandt to defend the value of an artist’s role against the threat that photographers would receive all the commissions for illustrations previously allocated to printmakers. Linking originality and reverence, associations between Rembrandt and artistic creativity and ingenuity in this period led to an increasing number of interpretations or prints d’après Rembrandt being exhibited at the French Salons during the second half of the century. Since interpretive French printmakers were only rarely in a position to follow Rembrandt’s techniques or emulate his imagery, they displayed their admiration for the Old Master by producing and exhibiting copies after his work. Images of Rembrandt’s œuvre exhibited in the print section of the Salon came to embody notions of orginality and creativity then associated with his name in France. The interpretive copies after Rembrandt’s paintings and prints symbolized his somethe rembrandt strategy

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what delayed but ultimately triumphant position within Academic printmaking circles. Prints after past and present art dominated the print rooms of French Salons throughout the nineteenth century. Rembrandt, and also Corregio, De Hooch, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens, Ruysdael, Titian, and Van Dyck were among the past artists whose works were most frequently taken up by French Salon engravers. Given the status of Raphael within the tradition of the French Academy, it is not suprising that prints after his art were prominently represented in the printrooms of the Salon through the first part of the century. The display of Raphael’s art through prints reached its height at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, where twenty-five prints after Raphael were exhibited. But Raphael’s popularity then deteriorated, even in the Salon setting, and Rembrandt’s grew significantly. From the mid-1880s to the end of the century, prints after Rembrandt’s art dominated the Salon venue.506 In the years from 1886 to 1899, seven to thirteen copies after Rembrandt were exhibited annually in the print section.507 The increasing submission and exhibition of images after Rembrandt at the Salons parallels the general growing popularity of his œuvre in France. More importantly, it reveals the use reproductive printmakers made of then current notions of Rembrandt – as the original and creative painter-printmaker – in their attempt to defend the artistic value of reproductions. Reproductive printmakers found support among the critics, who promoted the originality of their work just as they had done for Rembrandt. Alfred de Lostalot believed that through the talent of some printmakers, copies could achieve the same artistic value as the original work. He supported engravings against criticism from etchers, particularly those associated with the Société des Aquafortistes and wrote: In the Gazette [des Beaux-Arts], etching does not have free rein as it has with our colleague: it is, in most cases, subordinated to another work of art because it is given the mission of making a faithful copy. It is the business of artists with transcendent merit, like Jacquemart, Gaillard

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or Flameng, to raise a copy to the level of an original and, sometimes even to surpass it; it is no less true that, with us, an etcher is only a translator. On the other hand, in Cadart’s publication, except for the very rare exception, engraving is considered secondary and we only allow original works. He likes to collect ébauches, croquis, caprices, the artists’ thoughts.508 In his treatise on prints, A.M. Perot also defended the originality of reproductive prints. Perot defined a copy as the imitation of a work of art in the same medium; he viewed a painting done after another painting or an engraving done after another engraving as a copy. But as soon as an artist undertook a work in a medium that was different from the subject he or she was working from, Perot proposed their work was not a copy but a translation and should therefore be regarded as equally inspired by nature. Perot asked: What is the character of a real copy? It is to be something that imitates something else with the same means and by the same processes. What is the character of a translation? It is to be the imitation of an object by means or in an idiom different from that by which the original was made. Engraving is, therefore, not a copy after painting. The goal of these two arts, in truth, is the same, the imitation of nature; but they each follow their particular means and different processes. The engraver must often consult nature.509 Charles Blanc was equally supportive of what engravers could achieve as translators. In his Grammaire des arts du dessin: architecture, sculpture, peinture, he said engraving was an interpretive translation that revived the spirit of a painting. Blanc allowed that engravers had only black and white colors at their disposal but that by using clair-obscur, the colors in a painting became abstracted tones of equal value to a polychrome canvas.510 the rembrandt strategy

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Engravings after paintings were, before the rise of photography, the most popular means of disseminating imagery, although lithographs and to a lesser extent etchings were also used. The selection of which works to depict – usually paintings – was certainly informed by the pre-established canon of important past art. Dissemination of the prints then served, in turn, to reinforce and perpetuate this canon. Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson, The Night Watch, and Syndics were his three most commonly reproduced paintings in France. Léopold Flameng’s engravings of The Anatomy Lesson [fig. 71] and Syndics [fig. 72] and Adolphe Mouilleron’s lithograph of The Night Watch [fig. 73] were among the many well distributed and exhibited prints after Rembrandt’s œuvre. Flameng’s engravings were exhibited at the Salon of 1876 and then published by Cadart. Mouilleron’s lithograph was commisioned by the Ministry of the State for the Exposition Universelle in 1855. Analysis of the interpretive prints produced, exhibited, or published in France in the second half of the nineteenth century also indicates the popularity of certain works exhibited in the Louvre and other public European collections (see Appendix). In 1887, Charles Courtry, a well-known Salon engraver, received the Medal of Honor for his engraving of Rembrandt’s The Carpenter’s Household from the Louvre. To commemorate this achievement, Courtry’s friend and fellow engraver Albert Duvivier produced a dedicatory portrait and poem in his honor [fig. 74]. Courtry had, by this point, a solid career producing prints after contemporary and past art for such publications as L’Art, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, L’Artiste and exhibition and sales catalogues for Durand-Ruel and other dealers. Moreover, Courtry had already produced numerous engravings after Rembrandt’s œuvre and, for him, such engravings were creative works that testified to his admiration for Rembrandt.511 In a letter Courtry wrote to a collector eager to buy a print of his engraving after Rembrandt’s The Carpenter’s Household, Courtry replied: “You ask me for the name of the publisher of the Rembrandt print, the publisher of the Rembrandt is me. I made this plate because of my love of the master’s painting.” 512 Courtry’s perception of these prints is also evoked in the poem Duvivier scratched onto the plate below Courtry’s portrait:

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fig. 71 – Léopold Flameng, Anatomy Lesson, engraving after Rembrandt, 1876

fig. 72 – Léopold Flameng, Syndics, engraving after Rembrandt, 1876

fig. 73 – Adolphe Mouilleron, The Night Watch, lithograph after Rembrandt, 1854

No, the engraver is not an obscure interpretor; He mixes his thoughts in the work he propagates, And, in a rival flight, they glide in the same sky The energy he expends equals that of the painter We cheer him, in his turn, as a triumphant victor The glory of the first cannot be offended Courtry translates Rembrandt and remains a creator! 513 Duvivier, himself an engraver who exhibited at the Salon, defended Courtry against what must have been many attacks that he received a Medal of Honor for a print simply derived from another work of art.

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fig. 74 – Albert Duvivier, Portrait of Charles Courtry, 1887

Complaints from artists and critics who thought such awards should only go to artists who had produced original prints undoubtedly spurred Duvivier to defend Courtry and, at the same time, enhance the value of his own and all engravings. Reproductive or, as they wished to be called, interpretive printmakers including Bracquemond, Courtry, Flameng, Rajon, and Waltner, perceived their copies as a creative, artistic process and aligned themselves with Rembrandt to support their cause. After Rembrandt was recognized as the most important past printmaker by original etchers, interpreters followed suit and prints after Rembrandt’s œuvre dominated the Salons beginning around 1883. This delayed reaction resulted, in part, from the more conservative tendencies of the Academy and Salon and a hesitation to take up Rembrandt, who was typically regarded as an model counter to academic traditions. It is also significant that the number of interpretive works after Rembrandt increased in the print section of the Salons at the same time as copies ceased to be exhibited in the drawing section. Copies after past art formed a prominent part of the drawing section of Salons into the 1880s and the most common subject for drawn copies was Raphael’s art. This is not remarkable given the association between Raphael and high-quality drawing, as discussed earlier. Since Rembrandt’s drawings were generally poorly regarded in academic circles, it is equally predictable that few drawn copies after his work were exhibited in the Salon venue. Perhaps as a delayed result of the proposed reform of the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863 and the increasing emphasis on originality in academic drawing classes, copies started to disappear from the drawing section in 1883 and almost none were exhibited from 1885 to the end of the century. This occurred at precisely the same time as Rembrandt was given premier status in the print section. The decreasing associations between copies and drawings and greater affiliation with prints may help to explain why the numbers of copies after Rembrandt began to increase in the mid-1880s. Furthermore, Salon printmakers had to defend attacks on their work and they used copies after Rembrandt to bolster their cause. For professional interpreters, an image of or by Rembrandt epitomized

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contemporary associations between Rembrandt and creative art much as working with Rembrandt’s free, expressive line had embodied the same associations for original French etchers. Working within the confines of their profession, the interpreters produced prints of Rembrandt’s œuvre instead of working with his spontaneous, croquis technique. To interpretive printmakers their approach held equal meaning and demonstrated comparable reverence for the Dutch printmaker. Thus Rembrandt became the most heavily copied and exhibited artist by interpretive printmakers at precisely the time they most needed to be recognized themselves as original artists.514 The success of their efforts is denoted by the increasing value placed on reproductions of Rembrandt’s art in the 1880s. When Boussod-Valadon (formerly Goupils) commissioned the well-known printmaker Charles Waltner to produce a large-scale print of The Night Watch [fig. 75], in 1887, it was among the most remunerated commissions of its kind that a French printmaker had ever received.515 This print was produced by a mixture of etching, mezzotint, and aquatint, a technique made famous by Adolphe Goupil that became known as “goupillage.” Henri Beraldi, in his entry on Goupil in Les Graveurs du XIX siècle, said that Waltner had received as much for The Night Watch as Henriquel-Dupont received for the ten years of work he put into an engraving of the Hemicycle of the École des Beaux-Arts: “For a long time [Goupils] has had almost a glorious monopoly of the publication of prints of art: it paid Henriquel-Dupont 100,000 francs for the Hemicycle des Beaux-Arts and again yesterday paid Waltner 100,000 francs for The Night Watch, which remains one of the most important bills in the production of engravings.” 516 Goupil records for 1853 in fact list the cost of Henriquel-Dupont’s plate as 5,000 francs, which appears to have included both the artist’s materials and salary for the year. There are no surviving records for the cost of Waltner’s The Night Watch, but other prints he produced for Goupil cost anywhere from 150 to 5,000 francs.517 Evidence suggests that Beraldi exaggerated the amount Goupils/Boussod Valadon paid for both commissions, but his comment indicates that a print after Rembrandt’s most famous painting was perceived to be as valuable as a print of what was arguably the rembrandt strategy

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fig. 75 – Charles Waltner, The Night Watch, etching, aquatint, and mezzotint after Rembrandt, 1887

not only the best-known in France of all mural paintings but also the most famous print commission – until then. In fact, when Waltner’s print of The Night Watch was first advertised for sale in Boussod Valadon’s catalogue of 1887 all of the artist’s proofs on parchment – the fifty most valuable prints – had already sold out. Receiving this commission was a great honor for Waltner and he and his contemporary interpretive printmakers viewed such work as highly original and expressive. When Waltner produced etchings after Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait (London, National Gallery) and Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother (Paris, Louvre), he produced different states and

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fig. 76 – Charles Waltner, Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother, etching after Rembrandt, first state, n.d.

fig. 77 – Charles Waltner, Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother, etching after Rembrandt, second state, n.d.

altered the plates in precisely the same way as an “original” etcher would. In the first state of his Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother [fig. 76], Waltner left the background principally unworked to set off the sitter’s head and dark, massive clothing. His changes to the background and addition of greater detail in the sitter’s face altered the effect of the etching in the second state [fig. 77]. Waltner approached this copy after Rembrandt in a manner inspired by the expressive qualities and reworking of plates that he associated with the Dutch artist. In 1884, when Waltner produced an interpretation of Rembrandt’s The “Doreur” [fig. 78] from the Paris-based Morny collection for publication with George Petit, he was also actively involved in the process of inking and printing the plate. He wrote in the margins of the first state that the print should be made slightly smaller and that both the hands and background needed to be darker: “mains plus sombre,” “le fond plus sombre.” Like most interpretive and indeed almost all printmakers of his time, Waltner did not print his plates himself but, again the rembrandt strategy

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fig. 78 – Charles Waltner, The “Doreur,” etching after Rembrandt, 1884

emulating Rembrandt, he was actively involved in the printing stage because he regarded it as an integral part of the creative process. Léopold Flameng who, along with Waltner, was famous for his prints after Rembrandt, was also equally particular about how his interpretive prints were printed. In 1873, when Flameng finished his etching after Rembrandt’s The Hundred Guilder Print [fig. 79], he was livid that the French state considered printing the plate anywhere other than where Flameng had recommended. Flameng wanted his plate to be printed by Salmon, the most popular printer among intepretive printmakers. But Flameng had to fight with the state, which had commissioned the plate in 1871, to retain his right as an artist to control the production of his work.518 Flameng, who was out of the country at the time, wrote to the appropriate government official: Dear Sir, I have learned thanks to one of my students that you have taken the liberty (without consulting me) to have my print The Hundred Guilder Print printed by another printer than the one that I chose, the one who knows exactly what is necessary to take a good impression of this plate. It took me a great deal of time and effort to execute this print. I cannot consent that you would contravene in my wish, expressed to you, that my work be printed by Salmon: in the interest of my work and in your interest I formally oppose that you would have it printed elsewhere. I hope that your response will be one of an equally passionate alarm and that, concerned for your interests, you will follow what I advise you. Yours sincerely, Léopold Flameng. P.S. Maybe my plate is at Delâtre’s – a massacre! 519

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fig. 79 – Léopold Flameng, Hundred Guilder Print, etching after Rembrandt, 1873

Clearly Flameng no longer held Auguste Delâtre in the same high esteem as he had in the 1860s when he designed a letterhead for Delâtre’s shop [fig. 46]. Flameng had previously printed a number of his plates at Delâtre’s but their working processes must have diverged by the time Flameng wrote this letter in 1873.520 Furthermore, Salmon’s studio was the preferred resource for printmakers such as Flameng, Courtry, and Waltner to take their plates which interpreted other works of art.521 Flameng was equally particular about the manner in which his intepretations after Rembrandt were exhibited. In one instance, he complained that the prints he exhibited were improperly mounted and could not give the right effect on blue mats. He succeeded in having them changed to white before the end of the exhibition.522

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Flameng’s sense of pride and creative independence in relation to his prints after Rembrandt’s etchings was apparent as early as 1859, when he worked with Charles Blanc on the plates for Blanc’s L’Œuvre complet de Rembrandt. Flameng produced forty etchings for this publication and while the plates are typically attributed solely to Flameng it appears that they were to some extent a joint venture between Flameng, Blanc and two other unidentifiable artists.523 In the first, experimental stages of the printing process, several images were placed together on one plate and printed as a unit [fig. 80]. As the four artists on this team perceived their copies after Rembrandt as an independent creative process, they inscribed their initials in the upper left hand corner of one of these plates, along with a diminutive, hat-wearing, peasant-like figure. Such action would seem intentionally to mark the print

fig. 80 – Léopold Flameng, Charles Blanc and Unknown Artists, Several Prints on a Plate, etchings after Rembrandt, 1859

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as their own original product. In the end, Flameng was accredited with the etchings, but Blanc was clearly involved in at least the preparatory stages. Indeed, Blanc also produced the frontispiece for the text, which was inspired by a portrait of Rembrandt in the Louvre. But Blanc differentiated between the portrait he produced and the conventional notion of a copy and did not scratch d’après Rembrandt into the plate. He regarded the print as an original work and a testimony to his admiration of Rembrandt, and so he signed it with his own name. Later, when Blanc reflected back on this joint project, he recalled how Maxime Lalanne praised Flameng’s etchings, saying they were such good imitations that they would even fool Rembrandt himself if he were to come back to life.524 In addition to the Salon venue and these individual creative projects, interpretive printmakers used the status of Rembrandt to buttress their own societies against the original etchers of the Société des Aquafortistes. Interpretive etchers had made circumstances more difficult for interpretive engravers by claiming a superior status for free copies made using a needle over precise copies using a burin. The Société des aquafortistes français, founded in March 1885, first exhibited etchings at the Salon of 1886. Of the thirty-one etchings displayed, all were copies. In the preface to the society’s catalogue that year, Émile Bergeret defended the works of interpretive etchers as a “voluntary servitude” to painting and said that over time they would probably display more original works. He wrote: Etching in effect, with its resources which are infinite and renewed by each artist, is the only print medium that can follow painting today in its bold explorations of color, of value and the outdoors. It finds a practical solution for all the problems that painting presents her. It plays on her solely black and white lines all the Venetian carnivals of a rainbow of tones. It is the indispensible and unique translator; because against a painter, it produces another painter, and other prints only produce a practician.525

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While Bergeret referred to the members of the association as the “sons of Rembrandt, Callot, and Piranesi,” he placed particular attention on Rembrandt’s significance for the society. Bergeret asserted that Rembrandt “had two palettes for the colorist and one began where the other ended. One must believe that with him the printmaker substituted for the fettered painter.” 526 He emphasized Rembrandt’s passion for etching and the powerful effects of his paintings. Bergeret’s distinction between the two media is a key factor in his defense of the society’s venture. By claiming that Rembrandt did not mix his two utensils, paintbrush and etching needle, Bergeret argued for the autonomy of the artists in the society. The freedom of their spontaneous etched copies would produce translations that surpassed what he defined as the purely technical work of engraved copies. Yet Rembrandt was so highly revered that members of the society sought to measure everyone else against him. On that basis, they concluded that the engraver Courtry was his equal and included Duvivier’s Portrait of Courtry [fig. 74] and his poem in their catalogue of 1887. Burty’s preface to this catalogue does not attempt to position etched copies as superior creative endeavors over engraved copies. Burty and members of the society must have concluded that they would be more successful in advancing the cause of printed copies if they took a united front behind their chosen hero Rembrandt. Another series of exhibitions, the Exposition Internationale de Blanc et Noir, also promoted graphic works in a variety of media and gave equal value to etched and engraved copies. In a sequence of four displays in 1886, 1888, 1890 and 1892, these exhibitions grew from installations in the Salle des États at the Louvre to more ambitious expositions in one of the Palais on the Champs-Elysées. During the course of these exhibitions, the number of copies after Rembrandt on display made him the best represented of Old Master printmakers. The exhibitions promoted the value of imitative prints for disseminating works which were previously unknown and for enabling the circulation of a greater number of images. The introduction to a special retrospective display of printmaking in 1892 substantiated the value of both etchings and engravings: “But the masters who manipulated the burin or who the rembrandt strategy

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made use of etching were not only servile imitators. Most of them were admirable interpretors, some of them even creators, and all were genuine artists whose names will never perish.” 527 At the Expositions Internationale de Blanc et Noir etchers and engravers formed a strong united front behind their archetype Rembrandt. Yet, competing claims for the superiority of etched over engraved copies returned at the Exposition Nationale de l’eau-forte moderne in 1896. This exhibition, which was held at the École des BeauxArts, set out to display the production of French etchings during the second half of the nineteenth century. The exhibition catalogue explicitly stated that both original and reproductive etchings would be included if the latter were “liberally” executed, as compared to the strict line of engraved copies. Of the reproductive etchings on display, there were three times more copies after Rembrandt than any other Old Master artist.528 The twelve copies after Rembrandt included Courtry’s award-winning The Carpenter’s Household, Flameng’s famous The Night Watch and The Hundred Guilder Print and Waltner’s The “Doreur.” Just as in the Salon setting, the predominance of copies after Rembrandt occurred because of the connection the artists made between these works and artistic creativity. Rembrandt assumed the position of the most heavily copied past artist during the second half of the nineteenth century because his art and identity were associated with definitions of original art. In an attempt to align themselves with the most successful Old Master painterprintmaker and thereby improve their own stature by association, both interpretive etchers and engravers aligned themselves with Rembrandt by producing and exhibiting his work in increasing quantity. They used Rembrandt to serve their own needs and made him the crux of their concerted efforts to legitimize themselves and their achievements. The difficulty interpretive etchers and engravers experienced negotiating their relationship with one another indicates their resistance to losing the autonomy of their professions and their fear of forfeiting commissions to photography, a less expensive, faster means of reproducing art. There is no indication that either original or interpretive printmakers saw their varied use of Rembrandt as contradictory,

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his artistic persona was simply useful to many. His stature became such that an image taken from his painted or printed œuvre could stand in for all the meaning latent in the name “Rembrandt.” Rembrandt, as an artist whose paintings and prints were increasingly valued during this period, became, after decades of growing support, the premier past printmaker in both vanguard and Academic circles. As Rembrandt’s position as leading past painter-printmaker was established during the second half of the nineteenth century in France, his name and œuvre were variously used to advance the cause and status of original and interpretive etchers and engravers as they sought to secure favor for their work and forge a professional identity for themselves.

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conclusion

Repercussions of the Cult of Rembrandt Rembrandt’s popularity in France grew until it reached a cult-like level during the second half of the nineteenth century. His artistic persona was reinvented as French critics and artists realized they could use aspects of his life and art to promote their own goals. This concentrated interest in Rembrandt, particularly between the 1850s and the 1890s, was hardly disinterested. Rembrandt’s name and the images he produced were empowered and endowed with meaning that encompassed anti-authoritarian conduct, personal and political liberalism, republicanism, originality, and innovative creative powers. This identity was forged not because of an impartial desire to laud an underrecognized Old Master artist, but because of self-legitimizing aims. French critics and artists made use of the identity they formulated for Rembrandt and held him up as an exemplar for the success and achievements one could obtain, both within and outside the boundaries of established institutions. Rembrandt’s artistic identity was framed in this way because it fulfilled the need French artists and critics had to identify with a successful model from the past. They felt a strong desire to create a kinship with Rembrandt as an Old Master artist, as is evident through the quantity of publications on Rembrandt’s life and art, their correspondence, their collections of his work, their emulation of his technique through copying his imagery, and the numerous ways they invoked Rembrandt as an emblem for their own aspirations. They designated Rembrandt as the benchmark for evaluating their success. He was used

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to justify and promote new standards of beauty and the use of new subject matter, and to support the aspirations of original and interpretive printmakers. The position of authority given to Rembrandt by French artists and critics was appropriated to validate specific artistic achievements in their own time, most effectively to help consolidate a professional identity for French painter-printmakers.

A “Rembrandt” Play, 1898 Rembrandt arrived triumphant before the French masses at the Nouveau Théâtre in Paris from October 2nd to November 1st, 1898.529 Period costumes, romance, drinking, and death all dramatized the reenactment of the Old Master’s life in the staging of Louis Dumur and Virgile Josz’s script, first published in France in 1896. The production and advertising of the play “Rembrandt” demonstrate how the mythical tropes, particularly Rembrandt’s ties to the principles of liberty and democracy, remained a powerful force through to the end of the century and disseminated extensively within French popular culture. The play overlapped with the first retrospective exhibition of Rembrandt’s paintings held in Amsterdam and it emphasized the biographical details of Rembrandt’s life as well as prevailing beliefs about his misunderstood and unappreciated genius. The multi-faceted myth of Rembrandt pervaded his stage-self and he was presented as a master, a genius, and an independent but unappreciated artist who imitated no one, rejected tradition, created his own mode of painting, and reinterpreted old themes using humble, everyday people as his models. He was presented as an artist who adhered to nature and models for inspiration, collected art and miscellaneous objects in his studio, captured contrasting light and dark tones in his etchings, produced sketches for paintings and was dissatisfied by his work. Rembrandt’s character also lamented his plight, both his bankruptcy – here said to have been precipitated by Saskia’s former admirer, Albertus – and the lack of recognition by his fellow Dutch citizens. The playwrights added a new element to the narrative when they presented Rembrandt as blind during

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the last years of his life. In one of the play’s monologues, Rembrandt lamented the terrible treatment of great artists in their own countries and encouraged people to be aware of and to appreciate contemporary purveyors of culture. Here, the playwrights repeated the didactic message conveyed in the play of 1800, attesting to the popular prescriptive use of Rembrandt’s example among French audiences. This eight-part play incorporated tableaux vivants of Rembrandt’s principal paintings, including The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp and The Night Watch. The presentation of Rembrandt’s manner of painting in the play divided his work into two distinct parts, just as French publications had done. The conception of a shift in Rembrandt’s mode of painting from a detailed application of paint during the early years of his career to broadly and loosely painted canvases during his later years remained a potent idea through the end of the nineteenth century. French theater critics paid much attention to the play and were overwhelmingly positive in their reviews of “Rembrandt.” One critic thought it was only appropriate that Paris pay homage to the “master” at the same time as Amsterdam paid tribute with an exhibition.530 Another declared that the play had an important educational role and praised the theater’s new director for introducing this biographical type of performance to the stage.531 Only one critic believed the play went into too much detail about every event in the artist’s life and criticized it for paying inordinate attention to the minutae of Rembrandt’s love interests.532 Another critic perpetuated the dominant tropes of the Rembrandt myth when he reiterated the play’s themes in his review: He died poor. He owed his casket to public charity. His funeral cost 30 francs. He deserved better. What genius this man was, who imitated no one, who created his own manner of paintings, and painted so many portraits... with such astonishingly truthful fidelity... How audacious was this independent spirit, who disregarded all tradition, willingly forgot the past, freely and originally interpreted the Bible, the heroes of which are no longer repercussions of the cult of rembrandt

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pompous figures majestically draped in the manner of the Italian school, but humble people, the little people – the workers, the beggars, the vagabonds.533 The emphasis of this play on Rembrandt as a genius and on notions of his tormented life appeared in the caricatured and deranged-looking image of the artist in the play’s publicity poster [plate 14]. The poster depicts a wide-eyed Rembrandt gesturing perhaps to Albertus, who plays Rembrandt’s nemesis, to leave his presence. In the background, several Dutch burgomasters stare agog at the artist’s violent outburst. This poster exhibits the same focus on fictionalized aspects of Rembrandt’s temperament as the play itself. Displaying the poster around Paris brought these sensationalized elements of Rembrandt’s artistic persona before the general public. The poster and critical reviews also announced the play’s cutrate seat prices, which made it accessible to a broad audience. All seats, regardless of position, were available for the same low price of 2 francs and 50 centimes, a fraction of what theatergoers usually paid. One critic praised the accessibility of the performances, calling it a “good deal” and a play for a “popular clientele.” 534 Another critic remarked on the play’s appeal not only to professionals in the art world but also to the “human masses.” 535 Associations between the name Rembrandt and culture accessible to the proletariat in France thus prevailed through the end of the nineteenth century. Fromentin’s notion that Rembrandt was part of the “third estate” of the ancien régime and Taine’s conception of Rembrandt as “of the people” resurfaced in 1898 in the unusual and democratic approach the director of the Nouveau Théâtre took to marketing the “Rembrandt” play. Just as French critics conceived of the Dutch artist as “our Rembrandt” and aligned him with the country’s proletariat, director Paul Franck instituted low-rate seat prices and sought to permit a broad spectrum of French society to come and witness the Old Master in action. Rembrandt became such a popular cult figure in the last decades of the nineteenth century that more imitators sprang up. An unprecedented

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number of works, now attributed to his students or followers, were ascribed to Rembrandt during this period. Works were produced by nineteenth-century artists that conformed to contemporary expectations of the tactile and sketchy technique associated with Rembrandt’s manner of painting during the last years of his life. These works were obviously intended to capitalize on market demands. They also suggest the extent to which some French artists sought to emulate through repetition what they believed was Rembrandt’s style at the zenith of his artistic career. Perhaps they hoped these copies would enable them to absorb some of the mystique and creativity associated with Rembrandt’s late works. These actions have had repercussions on the history of art that are still felt today, particularly the controversy around attribution that continues to dominate Rembrandt studies. The growing debate over the authenticity of works in Rembrandt’s œuvre can be traced to the 1890s. The authenticity of Rembrandt’s painted and graphic output was occasionally called into question before this date but the years between the discovery of a painting attributed to Rembrandt outside Paris at Pecq in 1890 and the first retrospective exhibition of Rembrandt’s paintings in 1898 mark a turning point in perceptions of his artistic persona. Rembrandt’s Old Master status had been promoted to such an extent during the previous decades in France that the limited supply of his works available for sale could no longer meet burgeoning market demands. The reprinting of Rembrandt’s copper plates only partially served to fulfill the growing demand for his prints in France. Satisfying the desire for his paintings was more problematic. Contributing to the notoriety, two aphorisms about Rembrandt’s paintings were drawn from his early biographies and repeatedly attributed to the artist by French writers: “A painting is finished when the artist says that it is finished” and “A painting is not made to be sniffed” but contemplated from a distance.536 The repetition of these phrases related to the popular belief that Rembrandt produced principally sketch-like impasto-laden works. These paintings were identified with the latter years of Rembrandt’s life, the period in which critics said he suffered most from financial pressures and a lack of public acclaim. Works identified with these final years were the most popular repercussions of the cult of rembrandt

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in France during the last decades of the nineteenth century. This suggests that the focus on Rembrandt in textual sources as a marginalized, suffering genius had a significant impact on contemporary perceptions of the value of his œuvre.

From “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” to the first Retrospective Exhibition in 1898 Vying to protect the Old Master against impersonators, several acclaimed artists joined noted art critics in debates concerning the attribution and authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt in the 1890s. Such subjects have a lengthy history in studies of Rembrandt and form the core of the Rembrandt Research Project. Since 1968 this group of scholars has combined connoisseurship and technological practices to examine paintings associated with Rembrandt’s œuvre. The controversy today over the attribution and authenticity of Rembrandt’s works developed partially from students and artists who emulated his work during his lifetime and also germinated from the mythical status he was assigned in the nineteenth century. After Rembrandt’s artistic persona was carefully negotiated through literary and artistic means, the mystique associated with his creative pursuits grew to overwhelming proportions. Debates concerning authenticity and Rembrandt’s œuvre, which currently dominate Rembrandt studies, became increasingly contentious following the sale January 26th, 1890, in France, of a painting first referred to as “School of Rembrandt” Christ and the Pilgrims of Emmaus [plate 15]. Christ and the Pilgrims of Emmaus was discovered in 1890 in the estate auction of Mme Legrand from Pecq, just west of Paris.537 First, art dealer Stéphane Bourgeois commissioned a representative, Léonard Salomon, to attend a pre-auction viewing and make charcoal sketches of any works that looked valuable. Salomon made a sketch of Christ and the Pilgrims of Emmaus and noted that the painting was dated 1656 and signed “Rembrandt.” Meanwhile, Bourgeois learned from his doctor, who had tended to Legrand during her final days, that she had refused

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an offer of 40,000 francs for one of her paintings several years earlier.538 Based on Salomon’s sketch and Bourgeois’ speculation that the work Legrand had not been willing to sell was indeed Christ and the Pilgrims of Emmaus, the dealer commissioned a local carpenter to purchase the painting at any price. Competition at the auction from artist Henry Penon, a tapestry designer and a friend of Legrand, raised the price of the painting from a starting point of 200 to a sale price of 4,050 francs, which Bourgeois’ representative paid as the winning bid.539 The notoriety of this painting grew so quickly that within a few hours of the sale Bourgeois refused an offer of between 75,000 and 100,000 francs from Baron Oppenheim. Bourgeois then declared the work an original painting by Rembrandt and estimated its value at 250,000 francs.540 During the following weeks there was a constant flow to Bourgeois’ gallery of visitors who wanted to see the painting. While Bourgeois received many serious offers to purchase the canvas, he favored selling the work to the Louvre.541 Georges Lafenestre, then a curator at the Louvre, visited Bourgeois’ gallery less than a month after the auction and agreed that the work was an authentic painting by Rembrandt but he never ventured to purchase the canvas.542 This was a fortunate decision for the Louvre, since Bourgeois soon became embroiled in a legal battle with Legrand’s daughter who claimed the estate auctioneer had misrepresented their collection and thus cheated them of their rightful inheritance. The painting quickly became a cause célèbre and attracted eager crowds when it was exhibited in London.543 Meanwhile, in Paris, Lafenestre, art critic Émile Michel, and Dubois, Director of the École des Beaux-Arts, were appointed to determine the value of the painting and examine the legal conditions of the sale. According to this team of experts, the painting was an authentic work from Rembrandt’s hand. They found art expert Gandouin at fault for not attributing the work to Rembrandt in the first place, a mistake which resulted in the painting’s deflated sale price, but the auctioneer was acquitted and the sale remained legally binding.544 Controversy surrounding the discovery of this painting, retitled Abraham and the Angels soon after the sale, permeated French society repercussions of the cult of rembrandt

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through the most circulated newspapers.545 The work, now identified as by Aert de Gelder, attracted the attention not only of leading critics but several highly acclaimed artists also actively contributed to the debate.546 Looking at a broader range of publications on Abraham and the Angels than has previously been considered brings to light the unusual role artists played as experts of Rembrandt’s work and exemplifies the resonance of the cult of Rembrandt among French artists through the end of the century. Those who defended the attribution of Abraham and the Angels to Rembrandt had few strong supporting arguments. For example, painter Tony Robert-Fleury said simply that one of Rembrandt’s students could not have produced a work of such high quality.547 He and critic Paul Mantz looked not to the technical aspects of the painting but interpreted it within the context of Rembrandt’s biography. They praised the quality of the painting and noted the significance of the date, 1656, the year of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy and the by then wellknown inventory of his household effects.548 For them, the presence of the signature and date on the canvas may have been sufficient evidence for attributing the painting to Rembrandt because it nourished their desire to laud what they regarded as Rembrandt’s artistic successes in the face of adversity. Their views were based on their belief in the suffering creative genius figure then central to the structure of Rembrandt’s artistic persona in France. Those opposed to attributing the painting to Rembrandt formed the more persuasive side of the debate. Journalists first interviewed artists Antoine Vollon549 and Alfred Stevens, but neither wanted to give his opinion of the “Rembrandt from Pecq.” 550 Instead, they offered Léon Bonnat’s name as the leading specialist of Rembrandt’s work among contemporary artists. Bonnat was, by this point, one of the preeminent artists in France. He became Official Painter of the Third Republic after 1879, was made a member of the Institut in 1881, and was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1888. His status and reputation thus gave his opinion significant authority among his contemporaries. Bonnat was fervently opposed to attributing Abraham and the Angels to Rembrandt. He compared the Pecq painting to

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Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Young Man and Self-Portrait with Easel [plate 2] in the Louvre and refused to connect the canvas with Rembrandt’s work. Bonnat wrote the following letter, which was published in Le Temps February 19th, 1890, and quoted in part in L’Artiste, Le Figaro, and Le Petit journal: I have just seen the painting. It is a work from the school. I am told it is dated 1656. But go to the Louvre and look at numbers 417 and 415,551 works dated closest to the painting in question. There is no similarity between the drawing or the execution. It is obvious. Certain aspects are skillfully done, fair enough, but others, such as the heads of the angels and the two figures on the left, are very weak. This by Rembrandt? Never! 552 It was entirely appropriate that Bonnat was regarded as the leading expert on Rembrandt among French artists. By 1890 he had received an official commission from Charles Blanc to copy Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson in The Hague for the short-lived Musée des Copies.553 Bonnat had also executed copies of The Night Watch, and the Syndics during his stay in Holland and copied Susanna at the Bath after a work in his own collection. By 1890 Bonnat owned fourteen of Rembrandt’s etchings and over seventy drawings.554 Bonnat had, in fact, begun his drawing collection with a work by Rembrandt, probably Old Tobias and his Son, which he had received as a gift from his neighbor, the noted art collector His de la Salle.555 By 1890 Bonnat also owned three paintings attributed to Rembrandt: Susanna, Head of a Rabbi [plate 16], and Burgomaster Six [plate 17].556 Bonnat’s knowledge of Rembrandt was formed through his travel and study in Holland in 1872 and 1883,557 his examination of Rembrandt’s works in the Louvre, his own collection, and those of his French contemporaries, particularly Henry d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, and His de la Salle.558 Bonnat’s conception of Rembrandt both as an artist and as an historical figure was also informed by the numerous repercussions of the cult of rembrandt

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studies and catalogues on Rembrandt which were being published in increasing quantity in France during the second half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, Bonnat had the largest collection of works by Rembrandt – indeed of all Old Master artists – of any French artist in the nineteenth century. Bonnat combined his visual appreciation of original works by Rembrandt with an extensive analysis of critical studies. The principal source of his information was the three-volume study by another prominent French collector of Rembrandt’s works, Eugène Dutuit. Dutuit’s volumes were among the most consulted books in Bonnat’s library.559 In this light it is understandable that Alfred Stevens referred a journalist for Le Temps to Bonnat, noting that “his entire life [Bonnat] has studied the works of the master [Rembrandt] and his opinion, therefore, has great weight.” 560 Jean Jacques Henner also said: “Bonnat has complete competence with this material” and reported that he was not the only one of Henner’s friends to challenge the identification of Abraham and the Angels with Rembrandt.561 Henner himself had travelled to Holland and had studied Rembrandt’s works in collections in Amsterdam, and The Hague, Dresden, as well as the Louvre.562 Critic Albert Wolff also cited Bonnat as one of the most astute experts of Old Master works in Paris. Wolff praised Bonnat’s intervention in the question of the painting’s signature and his ability to identify a different hand at work in the figure of Abraham from that of the angels. For Wolff the controversy surrounding Abraham and the Angels demonstrated that while the passage of time could give a work a superficial sense of unification, it would not deceive a connoisseur of Bonnat’s calibre.563 In addition to Bonnat and his supporters, Jean-Léon Gérôme challenged the attribution of Abraham and the Angels to Rembrandt. His letter to Le Temps, published at the same time as Bonnat’s letter, was also printed in Le Figaro and L’Artiste: This painting is certainly the work of a man of talent and the head of Christ is worth noting for its execution and character, but the other figures are entirely inferior in every way. The three heads of the disciples are weakly

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painted, poorly constructed and recall none of the vigorous manner and skill of Rembrandt. In summary, this work is by a man of talent, it has a good effect and is generally well handled, but it is not by Rembrandt.564 Gérôme did not have an extensive art collection like Bonnat but he had a well-established interest in Rembrandt by 1861, when he exhibited Rembrandt biting an etched plate [fig. 26] at the Salon. This painting represented Gérôme’s first public display of his knowledge and fascination with Rembrandt. Increasingly captivated by Rembrandt during the following decades, Rembrandt’s portrait – probably a print after a self-portrait – hung prominently in Gérôme’s bedroom and it was under this image that Gérôme was said to have died. An early biography of Gérôme, written two years after his death, ends with the following remark on the end of his life: “The next morning, in the small bedroom next to the studio, in front of a portrait of Rembrandt, at the foot of Truth, a servant found him immobile, already frozen: he had succumbed to death in his sleep.” 565 According to this biographer, Rembrandt was an emblem of veracity or reality for Gérôme. Rembrandt functioned as an icon for Gérôme throughout his career and remained central to his ruminations on art. The engraver Charles Waltner, a student of Gérôme, also agreed with his teacher and Bonnat that Abraham and the Angels was not by Rembrandt; he suggested that the painting was the work of a student. Waltner was another appropriate authority for journalists to consult since he had produced the most famous engraved copy of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch [fig. 75].566 Waltner had also executed numerous renderings of Rembrandt’s paintings for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and for Salon exhibitions between 1874 and 1885.567 These copies evince Waltner’s extensive study of Rembrandt’s technique. Lastly, critic André Michel was also opposed to attributing the painting to Rembrandt but, like those who defended Rembrandt’s authorship, he took advantage of the occasion to expound on aspects of Rembrandt’s life which were entrenched in the framework of his biography in nineteenth-century France. Michel noted that Abraham repercussions of the cult of rembrandt

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and the Angels was dated to that difficult period between 1648 and 1661 when Rembrandt lost his wife Saskia (he was not correct on this point), his mother, his property, and his collection and retreated into painting – an isolated refuge which Michel said was his last asylum and a divine consolation.568 According to Michel, the debate over the “Rembrandt du Pecq” had entered popular imagination to such an extent that the French public was unable to separate the artist’s name from the Parisian suburb. Michel recounted a conversation between a man and a woman which he had overheard at the Louvre in front of Rembrandt’s Bathsheba in the Lacaze gallery: “A Woman: ‘Who is this work by?’ – A Man, after consulting the inscription on the frame: ‘But by Rembrandt! The one from Pecq!’” 569 For this couple, Rembrandt had become a resident of a suburb of Paris. Controversy over the attribution of Abraham and the Angels indicates the growing debate among followers of the cult of Rembrandt concerning the technical characteristics of Rembrandt’s paintings. Furthermore, associations between Rembrandt’s work and the impastoed technique of the Pecq painting – particularly noticeable in the passages of Abraham’s beard and clothing and the wings and garments of the angels – had taken hold even among those who refused to attribute the canvas to Rembrandt. Such painterly works were increasingly regarded as the definitive products of Rembrandt’s career and, later in the decade, dominated the first retrospective exhibition of Rembrandt’s paintings. This retrospective was held in Amsterdam in September and October 1898 and included 123 paintings from public and private collections. Thirty-two paintings were loaned from French collections, including the Metz and Strasbourg museums and the Bonnat, DurandRuel, Goldschmidt, Hirsch de Gereuth, Jacquemart-André, Kann, Lehmann, Porgès, Pourtalès Gorgier, Schickler, Schloss, and Wassermann collections.570 French loans represented one quarter of the works in the exhibition and constituted the second largest contribution next to the United Kingdom.571 A few of the paintings loaned from French collections exemplified the fine-painting style associated with the early years of Rembrandt’s career.572 The predominant technique

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of the paintings from France was, however, a heavy and loose application of paint.573 Léon Bonnat provided six paintings from his private collection, which constituted the largest loan from France. The works from Bonnat’s collection epitomized the thickly painted technique which had come to dominate perceptions of Rembrandt’s manner of painting in France. None of the eight paintings assigned to Rembrandt in Bonnat’s collection are now attributed to the Dutch artist.574 Nonetheless, these works are crucial to our understanding of the power of the Rembrandt myth since they encapsulate contemporary understanding of his paintings in France. All of these works are now stored at the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne, the principal repository for his collection. Today museum officials regard this portion of the collection as something of an embarrassment, since none of the works is now believed to be by Rembrandt. From today’s perspective, these canvases are regarded as a blemish on Bonnat’s otherwise flawless reputation as an accomplished connoisseur of the Old Masters. More relevant, however, was the fact that Bonnat was acclaimed during his own time as an expert on Rembrandt. He was known for owning the largest collection of Rembrandt’s works of any French artist and in 1898 he made the most significant French loan to the first retrospective exhibition of Rembrandt’s paintings. The works he loaned, Susanna, Portrait of Burgomaster Six [plate 17], Suppliant before a Biblical Prince [plate 18], Samplers in a Cave [plate 19], Head of an Old Man [plate 20], and Head of a Rabbi, all exhibit the rapid application of paint and thick, textured surface of the canvas which were then believed to constitute Rembrandt’s favored mode of painting. Bonnat later added another two canvases, Christ on the Cross and Noli me tangere, to his collection. Three of these paintings relate to other works by Rembrandt; Susanna and Noli me tangere repeat the compositions of paintings of the same subject and Portrait of Burgomaster Six reverses the composition of the then well-known print of the same title. Bonnat proudly displayed on the back of the frame of the Burgomeister what he believed was an “original” drawing. It was undoubtedly a copy after the drawing in the Six collection in Amsterdam. repercussions of the cult of rembrandt

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Instead of dismissing these paintings as examples of lacunae in Bonnat’s judgement of Old Master paintings, they should be regarded as important documents and evidence of the predominant perception of Rembrandt’s painting technique in France during the last decades of the nineteenth century. They were products of the cult-like status of Rembrandt’s artistic persona. Similar works can be traced to other leading French collections of the period such as the Aligre, Bégassière, Beistegui, Beurnonville, Boissière, Double, Duclos, Flameng, Goldschmidt, Harjes, Heugel, Kann, Lacaze, Langlois, Lehmann, Morny, Porgès, Schloss, Secrétan, Warneck, Wassermann, and Wilson collections. Many of these paintings filtered through the hands of dealer Charles Sedelmeyer, who profited immensely from fulfilling the desire collectors had to acquire one or more sketch-like paintings by Rembrandt. Given the burgeoning market for Rembrandt’s works, it is hardly surprising that profiteers entered the scene. In some cases these paintings were based on compositions from Rembrandt’s prints but for the most part they had no connection to previously known works. Some of the paintings have now been attributed to various students of Rembrandt while others are in no way associated with his œuvre; these works were probably produced by French artists who benefited from helping to satiate the market for Rembrandt’s works. The exhibition of 1898 and the numerous catalogues of Rembrandt’s painted works which followed soon after – attributing more than 900 canvases to Rembrandt as compared to the approximately 300 now accepted by the Rembrandt Research Project – were products of Rembrandt’s elevated reputation. A constellation of meaning was developed around the name Rembrandt by French artists and critics, most actively between the 1850s and the 1890s. This reinvention of Rembrandt in France and the reverence of his artistic persona in the second half of the nineteenth century has had a lasting impact on attitudes towards his work. The formation of Rembrandt’s artistic persona as an authoritative archetypal figure fulfilled the self-validating needs of artists and critics of the nineteenth century. Scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been left to contend with the repercussions of this designated iconic status.

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NOTES

APPENDIX

bibliography

i l l u s t r at i o n acknowledgements

index

notes

1 2

3

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5

New York Times Magazine February 12, 1995. Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist, A Historical Experiment (New Haven, 1979). For an in-depth study of this painting see Norman D. Ziff Paul Delaroche, A Study in nineteenth-century French History Painting (New York, 1977). General issues pertaining to the production of fakes and forgeries in art are discussed in Denis Dutton (Ed.), The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art (Berkeley, 1983) and Thomas Hoving, False Impressions: The Hunt for big-time Art Fakes (New York, 1996). Petra Chu noted that Rembrandt’s significance for nineteenth-century French art is an area that needs further research and deserves a comprehensive examination: Petra ten Doesschate Chu, French Realism and the Dutch Masters: The Influence of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting on the Development of French Painting between 1830 and 1870 (Utrecht, 1974), p. 16, note 2. France figures in broad studies which consider Rembrandt’s popularity during the two centuries after his death: Seymour Slive, Rembrandt and his Critics 1630-1730 (The Hague, 1953), R.W. Scheller, “Rembrandt’s reputatie van Houbraken tot Scheltema” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek vol. 12 (1961), pp. 81-118, and Frans Grijzenhout and Henk van Veen, The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective Trans. Andrew McCormick (New York,

1999), particularly relevant for this study were Dedalo Carasso, “A New Image: German and French Thought on Dutch Art, 1775-1860”, (pp. 108-129) and Jeroen Boomgaard, “Sources and Style: From the Art of Reality to the Reality of Art”, (pp. 166-183). Two essays look more generally at Rembrandt’s posthumous “influence”: Jan Bialostocki, “Rembrandt and Posterity” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek vol. 3 (1972), pp. 131-57; and Jeroen Boomgaard and Robert W. Scheller, “A delicate Balance: a brief Survey of Rembrandt Criticism”, in Christopher Brown, Jan Kelch, and Pieter van Thiel (Eds.), Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop, Paintings (New Haven and London, 1991), pp. 106-21. See also Jeroen Boomgaard, De verloren zoon: Rembrandt en de Nederlandse Kunstgeschiedschrijving (Amsterdam, 1995). Scholars have also raised similar issues for different periods and countries. Several studies consider the popularity of Rembrandt in the eighteenth century: F.W. Robinson, “Rembrandt’s Influence in Eighteenth-Century Venice” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek vol. 18 (1967), pp. 167-81; Jean Cailleux, “Les artistes français du dix-huitième siècle et Rembrandt”, in Albert Châtelet and Nicole Reynaud (Eds.), Etudes d’art français offertes à Charles Sterling (Paris, 1975), pp. 287-305. This article expands on his earlier, more specific study “Watelet et Rembrandt” Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de l’art français (1965),

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pp. 131-62. See also Christopher White et al., Rembrandt in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, 1983), particularly Ellen G. D’Oench, “‘A Madness to have his Prints’: Rembrandt and Georgian Taste 1720-1800”, pp. 63-81; Anne Röver and Gerhard Gerkens In Rembrandts Manier: Kopie, Nachahmung und Aneignung in den graphischen Künsten des 18. Jahrhunderts (Bremen, 1986); and Liesbeth Heenk Rembrandt and his Influence on Eighteenth-century German and Austrian Printmakers (Amsterdam, 1998). An exhibition in Venice also presented Rembrandt as “Goya’s master”: Enzo Di Martino and Isadora Rose-de Viejo Rembrandt inspirazioni per/an inspiration for Goya (Milan, 2001). There have been two studies on the concentrated nineteenth-century interest in Rembrandt’s art in western European countries outside France: Frances Lawrence Preston, “Rembrandt’s paintings: The development of an œuvre” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1991 and Johannes Stückelberger, Rembrandt und die moderne: Der Dialog mit Rembrandt in der deutschen Kunst um 1900 (Munich, 1996). The following studies examine various aspects of Rembrandt and nineteenth-century France: H. van der Tuin’s Les Vieux peintres des Pays-Bas et la critique artistique en France de la première moitié du XIX siècle includes a chapter “La Lumière: le maître du clair-obscur: Rembrandt,” which locates Rembrandt within a larger study of the increasing availability and popularity of Dutch art. H. van der Tuin, Les Vieux peintres des Pays-Bas et la critique artistique en France de la première moitié du XIX siècle (Paris, 1948). See also H. Van der Tuin, Les Vieux peintres des Pays-Bas et la littérature en France dans la première moitié du XIX siècle (Paris, 1953) and Louis Malbos, Hommage à Rembrandt, ses sources, son œuvre, ses élèves, son influence dans les collections du Musée Granet (Aix-en-Provence, 1969). See also Otto Benesch, “Rembrandt’s Artistic Heritage II: From Goya to Cézanne” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (July 1960), pp. 101-16; Norma Broude, “The Influence of Rembrandt Reproductions on Seurat’s Drawing Style: A Methodological Note” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (October 1976), pp. 155-60; Barbara

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Stern Shapiro, “Camille Pissarro, Rembrandt and the use of tone”. In Christopher Lloyd (Ed.), Studies on Camille Pissarro. (New York, 1986), pp. 123-35; Philippe Dagen, “L’Influence de Rembrandt sur la peinture contemporaine en France de la fin du XIXe siècle à nos jours” 3 vols. Third Cycle Thesis, Paris, 1982; and Peter Seth Samis, “The Appropriations of Rembrandt by the Nineteenth-Century Etchers” Master’s thesis, Berkeley, 1988. Samis later published part of his thesis in the article “Aemulatio Rembrandti: the 19th-century printmaker Flameng and his prises/crises de conscience” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (December 1990), pp. 243-60. For consideration of Rembrandt in the twentieth century, see Janie L. Cohen, “Picasso’s Exploration of Rembrandt’s Art, 1967-1972” Arts Magazine vol. 58 no.2 (October 1983), pp. 119-26. Bonnat Susanna at the Bath (Bayonne, Musée Bonnat), Carpeaux Study after Rembrandt (Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Courbet Copy of Self-Portrait by Rembrandt (Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Delacroix, Copy after Angel Tobias leaving Raphael (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Descamps, The Good Samaritan (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Manet, The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp (Private Collection). I thank Erika Dolphin for drawing the work by Descamps to my attention. The six paintings after Rembrandt were placed together in the sixth room: Portrait of Saskia (painted in Stockholm by Lucas van Breda), The Syndics (painted in Amsterdam by Léon Glaize), “Officier de fortune”/ Self-Portrait (painted in The Hague by Agnes van Tuyll), Portrait of Titus painted in the King’s Gallery in Holland by Agnes van Tuyll), Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp (painted in The Hague by Léon Bonnat), and Portait of an Old Man (painted in Florence by an unknown artist). See Louis Auvray, Le Musée Européen: Copies d’Après les grands maîtres au palais des Champs Élysées. (Paris, 1873), pp.834 and the inventory of the École des BeauxArts: mu2002, mu2003, mu2456, mu2514, and mu2455. Glaize and Bonnat each received 10,000 francs for their copies after Rembrandt, Archives nationales F21/572/2. For discussion

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of the Musée des Copies see Henri Delaborde, “Le musée des copies” Revue des deux mondes (1 May 1873): 209-18, Albert Boime, “Le musée des copies” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (October 1964): 237-47, Bruno Foucart, “IV. Le XIXe siècle: Les modèles élusifs et le ‘musée des copies’” Revue de l’art vol. 21 (1973): 23-7, Pierre Vaisse, “Charles Blanc und das Musée des Copies” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte vol. 39 (1976): 54-66, and Paul Duro, “Le Musée des copies de Charles Blanc à l’aube de la IIIe République” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (1985): 283-313. For discussion of the important educational role of copies in the nineteenth century see Albert Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1971), Paul Duro, “Copyists in the Louvre in the Middle Decades of the Nineteenth Century”. Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1988): 249-54, and Patricia Mainardi, “Copies, Variations, Replicas: NineteenthCentury Studio Practice” Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation vol. 15 (1999): 123-47. Registers of Copies after Flemish and Dutch Schools ll22-25, 1851-71 and 1882-1900. Paris, Archives des Musées nationaux. Registers for the years 1871-82 do not survive. These include Théodore Reff, “Degas’s Copies of Older Art” Burlington Magazine vol. 105 (June 1963): 241-51, “New Light on Degas’s Copies” Burlington Magaine vol. 106 (June 1964): 250-9, “Manet’s sources: A critical evaluation” Art Forum no.8 (September 1969): 40-8, “Further Thoughts on Degas’s Copies” Burlington Magazine vol. 113 (September 1971): 534-43. See also Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Creative Copies: Interpretive Drawings from Michelangelo to Picasso (London, 1988) and Jean Pierre Cuzin et al, Copier Créer: De Turner à Picasso: 300 œuvres inspirées par les maîtres du Louvre (Paris, 1993). Francis Haskell explored how in several instances nineteenth-century French painters identified with Old Master artists as “heroes” – Delacroix with Rubens and Michelangelo, Ingres with Raphael – and that this identification was connected to copying or imitating the

11

12 13

14 15

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19

past to improve the younger artist’s stature. Francis Haskell, Past and present in art and taste: selected essays (New Haven, 1987), pp. 90-115. “‘Influence’ is a curse of art criticism primarily because of its wrong-headed grammatical prejudice about who is the agent and who the patient: it seems to reverse the active/passive relation which the historical actor experiences and the inferential beholder will wish to take into account. If one says that X influenced Y it does seem that one is saying that X did something to Y rather than that Y did something to X.” Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven, 1995), pp. 58-9. See Jacques Foucart, Les Peintures de Rembrandt au Louvre (Paris, 1982). For comprehensive study of the history of this famous institution see Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris. (New York, 1994). Archives Nationales F17/1276 and F17/1277. Cecil Could, Trophy of Conquest: The Musée Napoléon and the Creation of the Louvre (London, 1965), p. 32. H. van der Tuin, Les Vieux Peintres des Pays-Bas et la Critique Artistique en France de la Première Moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1948), pp. 211-13. This is a significant point since some works which formed a prominent part of the French national collection of Rembrandts in the early 1800s are no longer associated with Rembrandt. J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings Trans. D. Cook-Radmore 3 vols. (The Hague, 1982-1989). Peter Samis said twenty paintings were added to the Louvre (Berkeley, 1988, p. 7) and J. Bialostocki said thirty-six paintings were gathered together, including those already in the royal collection (Bialostocki, 1972, p. 151). Notice des tableaux des écoles française et flamande, Exposés dans la grande Galerie du musée central des arts, dont l’ouverture a eu lieu le 18 Germinal an VII [7 April 1799] (Paris, 1799); Statues, Bustes, Bas-Reliefs, Bronzes, et autres antiquités, peintures, dessins et objets curieux, Conquis par la Grande Armée, dans les années 1806 et 1807; dont l’exposition

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20

21

22

23

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25

a eu lieu le 14 Octobre 1807, premier anniversaire de la Bataille d’Iéna (Paris, 1807); Notice des tableaux exposés dans la galerie Napoléon (Paris, 1911); Notice des tableaux exposés dans la galerie du musée royal (Paris, 1816). Archives Nationales F17/1276 “Inventaire et état, les tableaux provenant du cabinet du Stadholder; Rapport concernant les tableaux venus de la Haye” nº8, 147, 148; F17/1277 “4ème envoie de la Haye; Inventaire des tableaux dans la galerie et cabinet du Prince d’Orange et de Nassau” nº147, 148, 149, 158, and one unnumbered entry. Archives Nationales O3/1429 “Brunswick, M. le Baron de Rodenberg Commissaire, Etat des tableaux, sculptures, en ivoire et en bois, Emaux de limoges, maiolica, objets divers remis à cette cour en 1814.” Archives Nationales O3/1429 “La Hesse-Cassel, M. le Baron de Carlshausen Commissaire, Etat des tableaux, dessins, miniatures et autres objets précieux rémis à cette cour en 1815” and nº 148 “Note des 48 tableaux envoyés de Cassel à Mayence.” Archives Nationales O3/1429 “Etat des tableaux statues, bustes... rémis en 1814 et 1815 aux commissaires sur-nommés par la direction générale du Musée Royal conformement aux ordres du Roi.” For Empress Josephine’s collection at Malmaison see Anonymous, Catalogue des tableaux de sa majesté l’impératrice Joséphine, dans la galerie et appartements de son palais de Malmaison (Paris, 1811), M. de Lescure, Le château de la Malmaison, histoire, description, catalogue des objets exposés sous les auspices de sa majesté l’impératrice (Paris, 1867), Serge Grandjean, “Les collections de l’Impératrice Joséphine à Malmaison et leur dispersion,” Revue des Arts no. 4-5 (1959), pp. 193-8, and Serge Grandjean, Inventaire après décès de l’Impératrice Josephine à Malmaison, 1814 (Paris, 1864). These were Family Portrait (Braunschweig); Presentation in the Temple and Bust of a Man with a Plumed Hat (The Hague); Portrait of a Woman, Holy Family with Curtain, Portrait of a Soldier (two versions), Head of a Young Man, Portrait of Coppenol / Portrait of a Man Trimming his Quill,

302

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27

28 29

30

31 32

33

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Samson and Delilah, Landscape with Two Goats, Landscape with Hunters, and Jacob Blessing Joseph’s Children (Kassel). Antoine-Michel Filhol and Joseph Lavalée, Galerie du Musée de France 10 vols. (Paris, 180415). An eleventh volume was published in 1828. Works by other northern artists were represented in the first ten volumes as follows: Wouwerman 16, Teniers 12, Van Ostade 10, Poelemburg 9, Metzu 9, Van Dyck 8, Rubens 7, Ruisdael and Potter 5, Terburg 4, and Hals 1. Illustrations in the Galerie included: 19 works by Raphael, 30 by Poussin and 39 by Le Sueur. Gould noted the German campaign strengthed the Dutch collection and especially that of Rembrandt (London, 1965, p. 114). Two such prints were published at the end of Gould’s text. “[A]u premier coup” Inventaire du Musée Napoléon (Paris, 1810, cat. 2732) and Notice des tableaux exposés dans la galerie Napoléon (Paris, 1911, cat. 524). “[E]squisse” 1810 Inventory cat. 4718. Un Paysage engraved by Geissler and Un grand paysage engraved by Bovinet in Antoine-Michel Filhol and Joseph Lavalée Galerie du Musée de France vols. 1-10 (Paris, 1804-15), vol. 8, plate 508 and vol. 9, plate 581. These works were exhibited in France in 1807: Statues, Bustes, Bas-Reliefs, Bronzes, et autres antiquites, peintures, dessins, et objets curieux, Conquis par la Grande Armée, dans les années 1806 et 1807; dont l’exposition a eu lieu le 14 October 1807, premier anniversaire de la Bataille d’Iéna (Paris, 1807), see cat. 536 “Paysage (Quelques chèvres sur la droite, et deux paysans sur la gauche, ornent le devant du tableau),” and cat. 537 “Autre paysage (On remarque, sur la droite du tableau un pont de bois, et sur la gauche deux chasseurs. Le Musée ne possédait point de paysages de cet habile maître).” Based on these descriptions, the engravings reversed the compositions. Quote cited in Gould (London, 1965), pp. 75-6. Following this decree 1,846 works were sent to the provinces. The changing roles of the Academy have been discussed in such important studies as Albert Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1971) and Patricia

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Mainardi, The End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic (Cambridge, 1993). The prize originated with two drawing competitions held in 1663 at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture to promote competition between students. The Prix Royal was established in 1664 by Jean Baptiste Colbert and was connected with Rome after the establishment of the Académie Française in Rome. For “primitive” and “archaic” revivals in nineteenth-century painting see George Levitine (Ed.), Search for Innocence, Primitive and Primitivistic Art of the Nineteenth Century (College Park, 1975), pp. 11-69 and Tancred Borenius, “The Rediscovery of the Primitives” Quarterly Review vol. 239 (April 1923), pp. 258-70. An interesting question, which is beyond the scope of the present study, is the extent to which this concentrated interest in Rembrandt and seventeenth-century Dutch art should be related to the concomitant popularity of Spanish artists, particularly Murillo, Ribera and Velázquez, among French artists and critics. Certain critics who promoted Rembrandt also published studies on Spanish art and artists. For example, Thoré-Bürger wrote an article on Murillo for L’Artiste (1834, pp. 165-6) and articles entitled “Études sur la peinture espagnole” in the Revue de Paris (vols. 21, 22. pp. 201-20, and 44-64) in 1835. He also contributed entries to the volume on Spanish art in Charles Blanc, Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles (Paris, 1869). Blanc wrote “Velázquez à Madrid” for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (July 1863, pp. 65-74) and Théophile Gautier et al. included Velázquez and Murillo in Les Dieux et les demi-dieux de la peinture (Paris, 1864). Gautier and Alfred Michiels wrote reviews following the opening of the Musée espagnol in 1838. Lastly, Louis Viardot published Études sur l’histoire des institutions, de la littérature, du théâtre et des beaux-arts en Espagne (Paris, 1835), Notice sur les principaux peintres de l’Espagne (Paris, 1839), Les Musées d’Espagne, d’Angleterre et de Belgique (Paris, 1852), and Espagne et beaux-arts (Paris, 1866). Nonetheless, few critics made direct comparisons between the subject matter or techniques of Rembrandt and Spanish seventeenth-century

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artists. Thoré-Bürger said that Velázquez was Rembrandt’s analogue in the Spanish school. See Thoré-Bürger, “Rembrandt au Musée d’Amsterdam” L’Artiste (25 July 1858), p. 186. For more information on the significance of Spanish art in nineteenth-century France see Ilse Hempel Lipschutz, Spanish Painting and the French Romantics (Cambridge, 1972), Jeanine Baticle et al., La Galerie espagnole de LouisPhilippe au Louvre 1838-1848 (Paris, 1981), and Genviève Lacambre and Gary Tinterow, Manet / Velázquez: la manière espagnole au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2002). Studies on the Rococo revival include Carol Duncan, The Pursuit of Pleasure: The Rococo Revival in French Romantic Art (New York, 1976), Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion and Collecting in England and France (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 107-17 and Aaron Sheon, Monticelli, His Contemporaries, His Influence (Pittsburgh, 1979). See John W. McCoubrey, “The Revival of Chardin in French Still-Life Painting, 1850-70” Art Bulletin (1954), pp. 39-53. See Stanley Meltzoff, “The Revival of the Le Nains” The Art Bulletin vol. 34 (1942), pp. 25969 (264). Meltzoff also wrote the first general study on revivals, see Meltzoff, “NineteenthCentury Revivals” Master’s thesis, New York University, 1941. Champfleury’s studies include Essai sur la vie et l’œuvre des Le Nain Peintres Laonnois (Laon, 1850), “Nouvelles Recherches sur la Vie et l’Œuvre des Frères Le Nain” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1860), pp. 173-85, 266-77, and 321-32, “Catalogue des tableaux des Le Nain qui ont passé dans les ventes publiques de l’année 1755 à 1853” Revue Universelle des Beaux-Arts (1861), Les Peintres de la réalité sous Louis XIV: les frères le Nain (Paris, 1862), Documents positifs sur la vie des frères Le Nain (Paris, 1865), and “Note sur ‘la Réunion des Amateurs’ de Mathieu Le Nain” Chronique des Arts (6 March 1875). Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, L’Art du dix-huitième siècle (Paris, n.d.). ChennevièresPointel, Recherches sur la vie et les ouvrages de quelques peintres provinciaux de l’ancienne France (Paris, 1847-50) and Essai sur l’organisation des

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arts en province (Paris, 1852). These included Soulié, “Les frères le Nain” Magasin Pittoresque vol. 18 (1850), p. 147. Meltzoff noted articles in Magasin universel, Ruche parisien, and the Musée des familles. Meltzoff (1942), pp. 266 and 272. See also Aaron Sheon, “The Discovery of Graffiti” Art Journal (Fall 1976), pp. 16-22. Thoré-Bürger’s numerous publications on seventeenth-century art in the Netherlands include “Jan van der Meer, de Delft” Revue universelle des arts vol. 8 (1858), pp. 454-7 and “Van der Meer de Delft” Gazette des Beaux-Arts vol. 21 (1866), pp. 297-330, 458-70, and 542-75. ThoréBürger also included Vermeer in his general studies on art in Dutch museums, Musées de la Hollande 2 vols. (Paris, 1860). See Stanley Meltzoff, “The Rediscovery of Vermeer” Marsyas vol. 2 (1942), pp. 145-66. Frances Suzman Jowell offers a more recent evaluation in “Vermeer and Thoré-Bürger: Recoveries of Reputation”, in Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (Eds.), Vermeer Studies. (New Haven, 1998), pp. 35-57. Thoré-Bürger, “Frans Hals” Gazette des BeauxArts (1868), pp. 29-30, 431-48. For a complete study on this revival see Frances Suzman Jowell, “Thoré-Bürger and the Revival of Hals” Art Bulletin vol. 56 (1974), pp. 101-17 and Frances S. Jowell, “The Rediscovery of Frans Hals”, in Seymour Slive (Ed.), Frans Hals (London, 1989), pp. 61-86. See Carol S. Eliel, “Genre Painting During the Revolution and the Goût Hollandais”, in Alan Wintermute (Ed.), 1789: French Art During the Revolution (New York, 1989), pp. 47-61. Jean Baptiste Descamps, La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois, avec des portraits gravés en taille-douce, une indication de leurs principaux ouvrages, & des réflexions sur leurs différentes manières 4 vols. (Paris, 1754-63). Descamps noted in the introduction in vol. 1 that some of his information came from works by De Piles, Karl van Mander, and Arnold Houbraken, that he read historical studies on different cities and works by contemporary poets and also benefited from his own travels. Descamps vol. 2, page 84 and vol. 1, p. 296. Descamps vol. 1, page 360 and vol. 2, pp. 174 and 238.

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J.B.D. Lebrun, Gallerie des peintres flamands, hollandais et allemands 3 vols. in 2 (Paris, 1792). Lebrun vol. 1 (Paris, 1792), p. viii. “Rembrandt est devenu le fondateur de l’une des plus immenses écoles dont la peinture puisse se glorifier, et la Hollande lui doit presque tous ses succès dans cet art.” Lebrun vol. 1 (Paris, 1792), p. 13 “Rubens est sans doute le plus beau génie et le plus habile coloriste dont la peinture puisse se glorifier.” Lebrun did see this appreciation in the art of Chardin, which he compared to Rembrandt, as did some of Chardin’s critics in the 1750s and 1760s, one of whom called Chardin “le Rembrandt de l’École Française.” For references see Georges Wildenstein, Chardin (Paris, 1933), pp. 87-8 and 122. Francis Haskell, however, notes that the name Rembrandt carried different implications during this period than it did later. See Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion and Collecting in England and France. 2nd ed. (Ithaca, 1980) pp. 20 and 184, fn. 30. For an analysis of the critical comparisons of Chardin’s art and Flemish and Dutch painters, especially Rembrandt, by his contemporaries see Marianne Roland Michel, “Chardin Flamand” in Chardin (Paris, 1994), pp. 118-26. Théophile Gautier, “Ce qu’on peut voir en six jours” Moniteur Universel (3 May 1829), pp. 2-3, Jules Michelet, Sur les chemins de l’Europe: Flandre et Hollande 2 vols. (Paris, 1840), E. Texier, Voyage pittoresque en Hollande (Paris, 1857), Maxime du Camp, En Hollande, lettres à un ami... (Paris, 1859), É. Montégut, “Impressions de voyage et d’art en Hollande” Revue des deux mondes (15 March 1860) pp. 458-81 and (1 June 1869) pp. 555-96, Henry Havard, Amsterdam et Venise (Paris, 1876). For further analysis of the politics of French critics see Michael R. Orwicz (Ed.), Art criticism and its institutions in nineteenth-century France (New York, 1994). Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise 2 vols. (Paris, 1847, republished 1848). Houssaye (Paris, 1848 ed.), p. 6. T.G. [Théophile Gautier], “Histoire de la pein-

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ture: flamande et hollandaise” L’Artiste (7 March 1847), pp. 11-12. Gautier also noted that the texts cost 300 and 500 ff. Houssaye (Paris, 1848 ed.), pp. 152-3. Alfred Michiels, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise 3 vols. (Paris, 1847) and Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise 10 vols. (Paris, 1865-76), 2nd ed. vol. 1, 128. Both Houssaye’s and Michiels’ books were reviewed together by Frédéric Mercey, “La peinture flamande et hollandaise” Revue des deux-monde (15 March 1848), pp. 1026-56. “L’art des Pays-Bas doit à son réalisme un précieux avantage. Il retrace d’une manière complète la vie de la nation. Il peint tous les objets qui l’environnent, le ciel, l’eau, la terre, les plaines et les collines, les bois et les fleurs, la lumière du soleil et la clarté de la lune; il représente l’extérieur et l’intérieur, la décoration et l’ameublement des logis... Il est l’image la plus parfaite qu’une race ait encore laissée d’elle-même.” Michiels vol. 1 (Paris, 1865), pp. 141-2. “Le réalisme des Hollando-Belges descend parfois, souvent même, jusqu’à la grossièreté... Tout le monde connaît les estampes de Rembrandt, où l’on voit un homme et une femme accroupie, remplissant la même fonction.” Michiels vol. 1 (Paris, 1865), p. 134. “Si l’empirisme absolut des Pays-Bas a produit d’heureux effets, il a eu des suites regrettables. Il a privé les artistes de noblesse et d’élévation. Il est des sujets où ce défaut habituel devient choquant; il blesse, par exemple, le spectateur dans les toiles religieuses. L’esprit ne peut s’habituer à voir la mère du Christ sous la forme d’une lourde paysanne, Saint-Jean sous les traits d’un bouvier, Madeleine peinte comme une laitière, les docteurs comme des valets de charrue et les bienheureuses avec la grâce d’une marchande de poissons.” Michiels vol. 1 (Paris, 1865), p. 134. Michiels vol. 1 (Paris, 1865), p. 250. Charles Blanc, Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles: École Hollandaise 2 vols. (Paris, 1849, 1861, and 1883). 4,400 copies were published of the first edition and sold out completely. See Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), p. 24.

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“Le succès a récompensé tant de nobles et intelligents efforts. L’Histoire des Peintres avait, dès sa première livraison, un public tout formé, celui des artistes et des amateurs; elle a su s’en créer un autre, parmi lequel ses livraisons et ses gravures popularisent les connaissances, le goût et les compositions de la peinture... ce grand succès a la portée et la valeur d’une propagande artistique.” Paul de Saint-Victor, “Beaux-Arts: Histoire des peintres de toutes les Écoles, depuis la Renaissance jusqu’à nos jours, par M. Charles Blanc” Annuaire des Artistes et Amateurs (1860), p. 246. For further biographical information on Blanc see Misook Song, Art Theories of Charles Blanc, 1813-1882 (Ann Arbor, 1984), pp. 10-16. “La forme républicaine, une fois reconnue, les a délivrés de l’art purement décoratif que commandent les cours et les princes, de ce qu’on nomme la peinture d’apparat.” Blanc (Paris, 1883 ed.), p. 19. “Voilà comment l’école de Hollande est une des trois écoles vraiment originales de la peinture, et comment à ce titre, elle peut être placée en troisième ligne, après les Florentins et les Grecs. Que si l’on veut résumer ces trois écoles par les trois maîtres que les ont représentées avec le plus d’éclat, il faudra reconnaître que parmi les grands artistes du monde, les plus originaux ont été Phidias, Léonard de Vinci et Rembrandt, parce qu’ils ont été l’expression la plus haute du génie grec, du génie florentin, et du génie batave.” Blanc, École Hollandaise (Paris, 1883 ed.), p. 15. Blanc’s classification of the history of art into these three groups is also noted in Song’s Art Theories of Charles Blanc, 18131882; however, neither Blanc’s Histoire des Peintres nor volumes on Rembrandt are the focus of her study. Song (Ann Arbor, 1984), p. 7. “... l’école greque, l’école florentine et l’école de Hollande, se sont toutes trois épanouies sous la protection du gouvernement populaire. Ainsi tombe d’elle-même cette fausse opinion propagée par la courtisanerie, que les beaux-arts ne sauraient fleurir qu’à l’ombre de la royauté. Si la monarchie et le pape ont eu leurs grands peintres, la démocratie a eu les siens.” Blanc, École Hollandaise (Paris, 1883 ed.), p. 20.

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Ses artistes ont reproduit la nature telle quelle, triviale et laide quand elle était laide et triviale... Rien dans le monde, ou plutôt dans leur patrie, ne leur a paru grossier, vulgaire ou insignifiant.” Blanc, École Hollandaise (Paris, 1883 ed), p. 13. “Ainsi, une galerie de peintres hollandais est une histoire complète de la Hollande du beau siècle, une histoire à la fois morale, politique et naturelle.” Blanc, École Hollandaise (Paris, 1883 ed.), p. 12. “Il demeura fidèle sans doute au principe de l’imitation... il a introduit un idéal nouveau, non pas l’idéal des formes, mais l’idéal du clairobscur, non pas l’idéal de la beauté, mais l’idéal de l’expression.” Blanc, École Hollandaise (Paris, 1883 ed.), pp. 16-17. “Le plus simple paysage était pour eux plein de charme, pourvu que ce fût un coin de leur pays, et ils savaient en dégager cette poésie latente, cette âme du monde que nous appelons le panthéisme...Voilà comment les Hollandais, en partant du principe de la pure imitation, se sont élevés jusqu’à l’expression du caractère et ont produit des chefs-d’œuvre incomparable en leur genre.” Blanc, École Hollandaise (Paris, 1883 ed), p. 13. Louis Viardot, “De l’école hollandaise” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (February 1860), pp. 146-52. “Vulgaires sujets pris dans la vie commune, que chacun a chaque jour sous les yeux, et qui n’ont de secrets pour personne.” Viardot (February 1860), p. 152. L. Vitet, “Les Peintres flamands et hollandais en flandre et en hollande, II, Rembrandt et van der Helst, les hollandais” Revue des deux mondes (15 April 1861), pp. 777-801. “Mais ce réveil de l’art flamand n’avait aucun des caractères d’une révolution radicale; ce n’était qu’un timide prélude de ce qui allait accomplir en Hollande... Là, pour inaugurer une peinture nationale, ce n’était pas assez d’un retour au passé, il fallait faire du neuf. Le pays avait du même coup changé de religion et de foi politique: il n’était plus catholique et s’était fait républicain. De là pour la peinture tout un monde nouveau.” Vitet (15 April 1861), p. 781. Thoré-Bürger, Musées de la Hollande: I Amsterdam et la Haye-Etudes sur l’école hollandaise, II

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Musée van der Hoop à Amsterdam, et Musée de Rotterdam. 2 vols. (Paris, 1858 and 1860). These volumes were unillustrated and according to an advertisement in the back of the second volume each cost 3F50. Thoré-Bürger’s conception of Dutch political reform, and characteristics of realism and depictions of humanity in Dutch art are repeated in his “Nouvelles tendances de l’art” in Salons de Théophile Thoré 1844, 1845, 1847, 1848 (Paris, 1868). Musées de la Hollande cost 2fr50, see advertisement at the end of vol. 2 Thoré-Bürger, Études sur les peintres hollandais et flamands: Galerie d’Arenberg à Bruxelles avec le catalogue complet de la collection (Paris, 1859). Peter Hecht has also considered the significance of this text in “Rembrandt and Raphael back to back: the contribution of Thoré” Simiolus vol. 26 no. 3 (1998): 162-178. Studies on Thoré-Bürger include Gustave Larroumet, “L’art réaliste et la critique: I. Théophile Thoré” La Revue des deux mondes (1892), pp. 802-42, Paul Rebeyrol, “Art Historians and Art Critics: I. Théophile Thoré” The Burlington Magazine (1952), pp. 196-200, Frances S. Jowell, Thoré-Bürger and the Art of the Past (New York, 1977), “Politique et esthétique: du citoyen Thoré à William Bürger” in Jean-Paul Bouillon ed. La Critique d’art en France 1850-1900 (Clermond Ferrand, 1989), pp. 25-42, and “Thoré-Bürger - a critical rôle in the art market” Burlington Magazine vol. 138 no 1115 (February 1996), pp. 115-29. “Ce n’est plus l’art des papes et des rois, des dieux et des héros... Rembrandt et les Hollandais n’ont travaillé que pour la Hollande et l’humanité.” Thoré-Bürger, Musées de la Hollande vol. 1 (Paris, 1860 ed.), p. 324. Thoré-Bürger, Musées de la Hollande vol. 1 (Paris, 1860 ed.), p. 326. “Rubens était chez des vaincus et des esclaves; Rembrandt, chez des vainqueurs et des hommes libres. Là est surtout la différence de leurs génies.” Thoré-Bürger, Musées de la Hollande vol. 1 (Paris, 1860 ed.), p. 321. Hippolyte Taine, Philosophie de l’art dans les pays-bas (Paris, 1869). This text was drawn from a series of lectures Taine presented at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1868.

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Taine (Paris, 1869), pp. 52 and 58. Eugène Fromentin, Les Maîtres d’autrefois, Belgique-Hollande. (Paris, 1876), p. 408. Vitet made the same remark that although Rembrandt never left Holland he was the least Dutch of Dutch artists. Vitet (Paris, 1861), p. 784. “Si l’on écarte Rembrandt, qui fait exception chez lui comme ailleurs, en son temps comme dans tous les temps, vous n’apercevez qu’un style et qu’une méthode dans les ateliers de la Hollande.” Fromentin (Paris 1876), p. 178. Eugène Fromentin, “Les Maîtres d’autrefois”, Revue des deux mondes (1 and 15 January, 1 and 15 February, 1 and 15 March 1876), pp. 91-122, 346-79, 602-30, 770-801; 110-40, 262-96. “A la même heure, dans les mêmes circonstances, on voit se produire un double fait trèsconcordant: un état nouveau, un art nouveau. L’origine de l’art hollandais, son caractère, son but, ses moyens, son à-propos, sa croissance rapide, sa physionomie sans précédents et notament la manière soudaine dont il est né au lendemain d’un armistice, avec la nation ellemême ... tout cela été dit maintes fois pertinemment et très-bien.” Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 163. The Night Watch retained its misnomer despite growing awareness and discussion of its inaccuracy. Gautier (15 September 1851), p. 50, Royer (15 August 1853), p. 437, Thoré-Bürger (25 July 1858), p. 184, Coquerel fils (Paris, 1869), p. 55, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 39, Saugé (1886), pp. 91-2, Durand-Gréville (March 1887), p. 175, Michel, É (15 December 1890), p. 895, and (Paris, 1893), p. 286, and Durand-Gréville (3 November 1893), p. 564. Henry Havard, L’Art et les artistes hollandais 4 vols. (Paris, 1879-81) and Histoire de la peinture hollandaise (Paris, 1881). Duranty reviewed the former in “Bibliographie: l’art et les artistes hollandais, par M. Henry Havard” Gazette des Beaux-Arts vol. 45 (August 1879), pp. 169-72. Havard’s other publications include Amsterdam et Venise (1876), Histoire de la faïence de Delft (1878), and Van der Meer de Delft (1888), travel articles on Holland, Grammaire de l’ameublement (1883) and Les manufactures nationales:

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les Gobelins, la Savonnerie, Sèvres, Beauvais (1888, with Vachon). For views on this debate see Wayne Franits (Ed.), Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (Cambridge, 1997). Plans to erect this statue began in 1841 and it was unveiled 27 May 1852. Small replicas of the twenty-three foot high statue could be purchased for 125 guilders. See also L.D. Couprie, “A Statue for Rembrandt - Amsterdam, 1852” Delta vol. 12 (1969), pp. 89-95. For the significance of Dutch literature in the reappraisal of Rembrandt’s reputations see J.J. Kloek, “To the Land of Rembrandt: The Formation of a Literary Image of Seventeenth-Century Art in the Nineteenth Century”, in The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective Eds. Frans Grijzenhout and Henk van Veen, Trans. Andrew McCormick (New York, 1999), pp. 91107. Gerard de Nerval, “Les fêtes de mai en Hollande” Revue des deux mondes (15 June 1852), pp. 1186-1204. See also Gerard de Nerval, “Les Fêtes de Hollande: Het Rembrandts feest” in Lorely, souvenirs d’Allemagne, Rhin et Flandre, Les Fêtes de Hollande (Paris, 1852), pp. 332-40. First published as Rembrand. Redevoering over het leven en de verdiensten van Rembrand van Rijn (Amsterdam, 1853). Then “Rembrand, discours sur sa vie et son génie, avec un grand nombre de documents Historiques” Trans. Alphonse Willems, Intro. Thoré-Bürger in Revue universelle des arts vol. 8 (1858), pp. 273-99, 36990, 485-516 and Ed. Thoré-Bürger, Rembrandt, discours sur sa vie et son génie, avec un grand nombre de documents Historiques (Brussels, 1859 and Paris, 1866). For a full analysis of Rembrandt’s early critics see Seymour Slive, Rembrandt and His Critics 1630-1730 (The Hague, 1953). John Smith published his catalogue raisonné of Rembrandt’s work in 1836. “Ne semble souvent qu’ébauché.” See Slive (The Hague, 1953), p. 212. Filippo Baldinucci, Cominciamento, e progresso dell’arte dell’ intagliare in rame, colle vite i molti de’ più eccellenti Maestri della stessa Professione (Florence, 1686).

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“Il ne devoit la connoissance qu’il a aquise dans sa Profession qu’à la bonté de son Esprit et à ses Réflections.” See Slive (The Hague, 1953), p. 216. 97 Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der Edelen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste (Nuremberg, 1675). 98 “Quand je veux d’élasser mon Esprit, leur dit-il, ce n’est pas l’honneur que je cherche c’est la liberté!” See Slive (The Hague, 1953), p. 217. 99 Florent Lecomte, Cabinet des Singularitez d’architecture, peinture, sculpture et graveur (Brussels, 1699-1700) vol. 3, pp. 334-6. 100 See Ger Luijten, “Rembrandt the printmaker: the shaping of an œuvre”, in E. Hinterding, G. Luijten and M. Royalton-Kisch Rembrandt the Printmaker exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), London (British Museum) 2000-2001, p.21. 101 For a study of the perceptions of Rembrandt as avaricious see also Carl Newmann, “Rembrandt-Legende”, in Festchrift für Max J. Friedländer (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 161-67. 102 “Il ne vivoit qu’avec le bas Peuple & des gens bien au-dessous de lui.” Descamps, La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois, avec des portraits gravés en taille-douce, une indication de leurs principaux ouvrages, & des réflexions sur leurs différentes manières vol. 2 (Paris, 1754-63), p. 89. 103 “Il regardoit la nature comme seul capable de l’instruire. Il ne choisit point d’autre atelier pour étudier, que le Moulin de son père.” Descamps vol. 2 (Paris, 1754-63), p. 85. 104 “Rembrandt, pendant sa vie, a essuyé tous les malheurs; il n’a pas cessé d’être en butte à l’injustice de ses contemporains; et à peine il n’est plus, que ses ennemis mêmes célèbrent sa mémoire, et le mettent au rang des plus grands peintres.” Étienne et al. (Paris, 1846), p. 135. 105 “Messieurs, je vous remercie de m’avoir fait faire fortune: quand j’étais pauvre, je devais mourir; maintenant que je suis riche, je ressuscite. Me voilà, grâce à mon trépas, un homme à réputation; je n’a cependant pas plus de talent aujourd’hui que je n’en avait il y a trois mois.” Étienne et al. (Paris, 1846), p. 169. 106 “Pendant qu’il exista, Rembrandt fut en butte aux traits de l’envie, et l’on admira son talent

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que lorsqu’il eut quitté la vie. Nos auteurs ont fait leurs efforts pour vous tracer ce personnage; mais n’attendez pas qu’ils soient morts pour faire vivre leur ouvrage.” Étienne et al. (Paris, 1846), p. 170. “Point d’honneurs officiels, ni ordres, ni titres, ni cordons.” Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 395. “Accablé par la misère, les infirmités, farouche, oublié, solitaire, le pauvre grand artiste disparaît.” Louis Gonse, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (January 1893), p. 72. Three letters appeared in P. Scheltema, Rembrandt, discours sur sa vie et son génie, avec un grand nombre de documents Historiques Trans. Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1866). All of the letters were translated by Carel Vosmaer and published along with the original Dutch versions in Carel Vosmaer, Rembrandt Harmensz van Ryn, sa vie et ses œuvres (The Hague, 1868). Georges Lafenestre (Paris, 1893), p. 96, Delage (Paris, 1898), p. 23, and Fontainas (January 1899), p. 36. “Mais comment a-t-il pu se faire que le plus admirable peintre qu’ait produit la Hollande, celui que la postérité devait placer au rang des plus grands maîtres, ait été si peu de temps à la mode, que ses contemporains l’aient délaissé si vite pour des rivaux qu’on n’ose plus lui comparer?” Valbert (1 April 1893), p. 691. “Il y mourut... oublié de ses contemporains, mais sans doute avec la conscience de son génie, avec la secrète certitude que sa mémoire ne périrait point, et qu’il arriverait, ce que est arrivé en effet, que la postérité, rangerait parmi les artistes de premier ordre ce poëte, ce peintre prodigieux, cet inimitable graveur.” Blanc (11 October 1876), p. 3. “Rembrandt aussi affectionnait ce sujet de l’histoire de Tobie, dont il a peint divers épisodes dans un style familier, que rappelle un peu le style paysanesque de M. Millet... Depuis deux siècles, les amateurs exclusifs du grand style italien ont toujours malmené Rembrandt, ce qui ne l’a pas empêché de faire son chemin dans les musées et dans les principales galeries de l’Europe. Cela doit consoler un peu les réalistes des injustices du présent, et leur donner quelque espoir pour l’avenir.” Thoré-Bürger,

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“Salon de 1861” in Salons de W. Bürger 1861 à 1868 vol. 1 (Paris, 1870), p. 96. Houssaye (6 December 1846), p. 66 and (Paris, 1847), p. 159, Gautier et al. (Paris, 1864), p. 245. Thoré-Bürger (18 July 1858), p. 162, Vitet (15 April 1861), p. 785, and Scheltema (Paris, 1866), pp. 27-8. Planche (1832), p. 235, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 406 and Péladan (September 1881), p. 335. See Eugène Muntz, “Rembrandt et l’Art Italien” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (March 1892), pp. 196-211. “Mais ce fut précisément le grand trait de son génie d’avoir admiré tout sans rien imiter, d’avoir connu les beautés d’un autre art et d’être resté toujours dans le sien.” Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 9. See also Blanc (11 October 1876), p. 3 and vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), p. 8. Gautier et al. (Paris, 1864), p. 248. Houssaye (Paris, 1844-7), p. 161, Planche (15 July 1853), p. 257, Mantz (December 1861), p. 555, Scheltema (Paris, 1866), pp. 16-17, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 343, and Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), p. 14. Vitet (15 April 1861), p. 796 and Thoré-Bürger (September 1866), pp. 252-3. Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1859) p.71, Émile Michel (Paris, 1886) p.1 and 113. See also Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 7, Dumesnil, A.J. (Paris, 1860), p. 337, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 397 and ThoréBürger (25 July 1847), p. 52, (Paris, 1858-60) vol. 1, p. 202, (September 1866), pp. 252-3, and “Exposition Internationale de Londres en 1862” vol. 1 (Paris, 1870), p. 223. Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), p. 28, Lafenestre (Paris, 1893), p. 466, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 343, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), pp. 397 and 406, and Lenormant (25 December 1874), p. 1378. Beaurin (1 March 1865), p. 99, Anonymous (January 1887), p. 40. See also Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 366, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1863), p. 17, and Coquerel fils (Paris, 1869), p. 80. Lenormant (25 December 1874), p. 1378, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 406, and Mantz (1 November 1893), p. 354. Dumesnil (Paris, 1850), p. 22, Thoré-Bürger

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132 133 134 135

(Paris, 1858), p. 403 and (Paris, 1860), pp. 1601 and Lafenestre (Paris, 1893), p. 466. Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 374, Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 7, Delacroix (25 January 1857), Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1858), p. 403, Blanc (Paris, 1870), p. 646, and Lafenestre (7 October 1893), p. 467. Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 344, ThoréBürger (Paris, 1860), pp. 160-1, Anonymous (May 1866), p. 138, Willems (1 May 1874), p. 354, Havard vol. 1 (Paris, 1881), p. 90, Blanc (Paris, 1883), pp. 8-9, Lafenestre (7 October 1893), p. 466, and Morice (November 1898), p. 299. Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 344, Nerval (15 June 1852), p. 1203, Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1859-61), pp. 446-7, Goncourt Brothers (9-10 September 1861), p. 956, Anonymous (May 1866), p. 138, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 357, Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1868), p. xxxi, Blanc (3 August 1874) p. 4, Émile Michel (September 1890), p. 247, Lafenestre (7 October 1893) p. 467, and Hermann (1 July 1897), p. 218. See Gautier et al. (Paris, 1864), p. 244, Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 346, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1863), p. 23, Coquerel fils (Paris, 1869), p. 80, and Mantz (1 November 1893), p. 354. Mantz (14 November 1880), p. 3, Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), p. 106, Gautier et al. (Paris, 1864), p. 253, and Willems (1 May 1874), p. 354. Durand-Gréville (November 1896), p. 407, Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), p. 12, Gautier (21 June 1858), pp. 2-3, Scheltema (Paris, 1866), pp. 27-8, and Gautier (1846), p. 391. Thoré-Bürger vol. 2 (Paris, 1870), p. 191 and Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 357. Émile Michel (February 1890), p. 107. “Il était du peuple, il ne respirait la liberté qu’ avec le peuple.” Houssaye (Paris, 1847), p. 161. “Il [R] regarda les hommes qui l’entouraient, les observa, les représenta comme ils étaient... De plus en plus pénétrant, il regardait de préférence les malheureux, les misérables qui auraient fait horreur à d’autres qu’à lui,” and “C’est le nouveau monde que Rembrandt a inauguré par la représentation des pauvres et des simples.” Dumesnil (Paris, 1850), pp. 48 and 59.

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136 Michel vol. 39 (1885), p. 192. 137 Gautier (26 October 1856), p. 237, Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), p. 66, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 359, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), pp. 37980, Péladan (September 1881), p. 327, Morice (November 1898), p. 313. 138 “Le populaire surtout l’attire, et sur les places, dans les faubourgs, les ouvriers et les campagnards lui paraissent dignes de l’occuper. Avec ces petites gens, les moeurs sont plus simples et les allures moins raffinées; leur mimique s’accuse plus franchement, leurs attitudes et leurs expressions sont plus naturelles... Rembrandt ne se lassera jamais de les étudier. Il aimait à vivre dans la société des pauvres... Les traits sous lesquels l’artiste nous les représente sont si vrais, si justes et aujourd’hui encore si exacts, que plusieurs d’entre eux (B. nos 163, 164, 172, 174) paraissent copiés sur le vif d’après les rôdeurs et les besogneux de nos faubourgs.” Émile Michel (Paris, 1893), pp. 62-3. 139 Willems specifically challenged Vosmaer’s idea that Rembrandt was “un homme de bonne société.” Willems (1 May 1874), pp. 353-4. Only A.J. Dumesnil wrote about Rembrandt’s rapport with Huygens, Uytenbogard, and Six. See Dumesnil (Paris, 1860), pp. 340-8, 351-61. 140 See Thoré-Bürger (January 1864), p. 75. 141 “Rembrandt était du tiers, à peine du tier, comme on eût dit en France en 1789.” Fromentin (Paris, 1965 ed.), p. 396. 142 “Il (Rembrandt) est [le] peuple.” Taine (Paris, 1869), p. 165. 143 Dumesnil (Paris, 1850), p. 40, Blanc (Paris, 1853), cat.210, Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1858-60), p. 322-4, Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), p. 131, and Havard (Paris, 1881), p. 76. 144 Émile Michel vol. 39 (1885), p. 194 and (Paris, 1886), p. 104, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 356. 145 Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 372 and Houssaye (Paris, 1844-47), pp. 157-60. See also Anonymous (July 1847), p. 217, Erckman (19 April 1857), p. 57 and Planche (15 July 1853), p. 249. 146 Blanc (Paris, 1853), Blanc vol. 1 (Paris, 185961), Blanc vol. 1 (Paris, 1880), Scheltema (Paris, 1866), and Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868).

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147 Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), pp. 20-2. 148 Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 13, Galichon (March 1866), p. 235, Vitet (15 April 1861), p. 796, and Blanc (Paris, 1858), p. 203. 149 Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), p. 10, Taine (Paris, 1869), p. 167 and Scheltema (Paris, 1866), p. 27. 150 Berthoud (February 1838) and Lafenestre (7 October 1893), p. 470. 151 Erckman (12 April 1857), p. 30. 152 “Ce que nous savons de la vie privée de Rembrandt se réduit à fort peu de chose, et ce que nous savons n’est certes pas fait pour nous donner une haute idée de ses mœurs.” A. Willems, “Rembrandt Harmensz, van Rijn, sa vie et ses œuvres, par C. Vosmaer” (1 May 1874), p. 351. 153 Planche (1832), p. 234, Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 346 and Anonymous (July 1847), p. 217. 154 Much information on Saskia was made available in France through Thoré-Bürger’s review of W. Eekhoff study of Saskia in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (February 1864), pp. 189-92. See also Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 279 and G. Valbert (1 April 1893), pp. 690-1. 155 Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), p. 41 and Émile Michel (Paris, 1886), p. 28. 156 Péladan (September 1881), p. 329. 157 See Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 400, Émile Michel (Paris, 1886), p. 53 and (Paris, 1893), p. 634. 158 Duplessis (Paris, 1880), p. 168 and Havard (Paris, 1879-81), p. 89. 159 See Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 272 and 279, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 405, Émile Michel (1885), p. 210 and (Paris, 1893), p. 385 and Valbert (1 April 1893), p. 691. 160 See Louis Gonse,“L’Inauguration du nouveau musée d’Amsterdam: La Ronde de nuit et les dernières années de la vie de Rembrandt, avec une lettre de M. Durand-Gréville” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (November 1885), p. 420. 161 Émile Michel, “Hendrickje Stoffels et les dernières années de Rembrandt” L’Art vol. 39 (1885), p. 209. See also Blanc (Paris, 1861) vol. 2, pp. 446-7, Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), pp. 38-9, Théophile Gautier, Guide de l’amateur au musée du Louvre, suivi de la vie et les œuvres de quelques peintres (Paris, 1882), p. 57, Émile Michel (Paris, 1886), p. 76, F.A. Gruyer, Voyage

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162

163

164 165 166 167

168

169

Autour du Salon Carré au musée du Louvre (Paris, 1891), p. 370, Lafenestre (Paris, 1893), p. 471, and Valbert (1 April 1893), p. 691. “Enfin les eaux-fortes datées à partir de 1656, le caractère de vigueur et de mâle volonté qu’elles prennent alors, disaient assez que l’artiste, loin de se laisser abattre par l’infortune, avait redoublé de puissance et d’énergie.” Blanc vol. 1 (Paris, 1880), p. viii. For a thorough study of Rembrandt’s religious paintings and a significant examination of the artist’s connection with contemporary Jews see Michael Zell Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Berkeley, 2002). This was known by 1838. See Berthoud (February 1838), pp. 241-2. Erckman (19 April 1857), p. 57. Edouard Drumont, La France Juive, édition populaire (Paris, 1888). “Ils préfèrent le bas, ce qui leur permet à la fois de s’enrichir en flattant les appétits grossiers de la multitude, et de servir leur cause en tournant en risée les enthousiasmes, les souvenirs pieux, les traditions augustes des peuples aux dépens de qui ils vivent.” Drumont (Paris, 1888), p. 18. “C’est Rembrandt qu’il faut, je ne dis pas regarder, mais contempler, étudier, scruter, fouiller, analyser, si l’on veut bien voir le Juif. Qu’ils sont parlants, ces Juifs de Rembrandt causant d’affaires au sortir de la synagogue, s’entretenant du cours du florin ou du dernier envoi de Batavia! Ces voyageurs qui cheminent leur bâton à la main avec des airs de Juifs errants, qui sentent qu’ils vont arriver et s’asseoir quelque part!” Drumont (Paris, 1888), p. 78. Courbet’s lithograph Jean Journet has been connected with the image of the “Juif errant” in popular prints as has his The Meeting or ‘Bonjour Monsieur Courbet.’ See Meyer Schapiro, “Courbet and Popular Imagery: An Essay on Realism and Naïveté” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute vol. 4 (1940/41), pp. 167-8, Linda Nochlin, Gustave Courbet: A Study of Style and Society (New York, 1976), pp. 168-70, and 200-1, and Sarah Faunce and Linda Nochlin, Courbet Reconsidered (Brooklyn, 1988), pp. 116-18.

170 References to the “wandering Jew” appeared in fiction including Eugène Süe’s ten-volume Le Juif Errant (Brussels, 1844), a song by Béranger published in 1856, and a poem La Légende du Juif Errant by Pierre Dupont. See Nochlin (New York, 1976), p. 201, fn 2. 171 The notorious “Dreyfus Affair” launched against Captain Alfred Dreyfus in September 1894, which is now regarded as a measure of the power of anti-semitism then current in France, is too late in date to be significant for the interpretations of Rembrandt’s artistic persona discussed here. 172 Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 407. 173 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, mémoires de la vie littéraire. Ed. Robert Ricatte (Paris, 1956) entries for 17 February 1859, 6 September 1860, and 9-10 September 1861, Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 336. 174 Gault de St. Germain vol. 1 (Paris, 1841), p. 48. 175 Péladan (September 1881), p. 327. 176 Scheltema devoted a separate section to this material: “Manasseh ben Israël et Ephraïm Bonus” (Paris, 1866), pp. 130-1. 177 “Je pensais à lui [Rembrandt], j’aurais aimé l’avoir pour compagnon de voyage dans le quartier des Juifs à Varsovie, au milieu de ces types étranges, à demi orientaux...” Coquerel fils. (Paris, 1869), p. 70. 178 Roger de Piles (Paris, 1708). De Piles was simply folowing Sandrart’s lead, who wrote “Ainsi on ne vera point dans Rembrandt, ni le Goût de Raphaël, ni celuy de l’Antique ni pensées Poëtiques, ni elegance de Dessein.” 179 “N’est-il pas vray qu’un Tableau peint par le Poussin sur un trait simple & fidèle du Rembrandt, seroit un assez mauvais ouvrage; & qu’un autre peint par le Rimbrant sur le dessein exact & sçavant du Poussin, seroit un Tableau admirable, sur tout si en le peignant, il y avoit employé l’artifice de son clair-obscur?” Antoine Coypel, Discours prononcez dans les conférences de l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris, 1721), pp. 19-20. 180 Descamps (Paris, 1754-63), p. 94. 181 “Dans le grand nombre de Desseins que Rembrandt a laissé, on n’y trouve guère que des griffonnemens très-imparfaits, à l’exception de

notes 136-181

311

182

183

184

185

quelques Portraits & Paysages qu’il étoit obligé de dessiner d’après nature. Il ne faisoit apparamment des Dessins que pour développer ses idées, aussi y voit-on souvent le même Sujet retourné de plusieurs manières différentes; & comme il les destinoit à l’oubli, il ne s’embarrassoit guéres de les terminer avec soin.” Edmé François Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pièces qui forment l’œuvre de Rembrandt (Paris, 1751), p. xxxii. “La manière de Rembrandt a été une excuse pour beaucoup de maîtres incorrects, qui n’ont vu en lui qu’un médiocre dessinateur; mais ils ont été dans l’erreur, car le dessin de cet artiste pour être sans choix n’en est pas moins savant, ni moins correct; et c’est sur-tout cette différence de dessin qui est d’un grand secours pour reconnaître Rembrandt d’avec ses imitateurs.” Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, Gallerie des peintres flamands, hollandais et allemands vol. 2 (Paris, 1792-6), p. 1. “Il faut étudier le dessin dans Raphaël et Rembrant, (sic) le coloris dans le Titien et les peintres français, le clair-obscur dans le Corrège, et encore dans les peintres actuels; et mieux encore, si l’on sait penser par soi-même, voir tout cela dans la nature; le dessin et le coloris à l’école de natation, le clair-obscur dans une assemblée éclairée par la lumière sérieuse d’un dôme.” Stendhal, Histoire de la peinture en Italie vol. 1 (Paris, 1817), pp. 99-100. “N’entend-t-on pas répéter partout que Rembrandt est pitoyable dans le dessin, et qu’il ne comprend rien à cette partie de l’art? Ne seraient-ce point plutôt les critiques eux-mêmes qui n’entendent rien à la théorie du dessin?... Il s’en faut bien qu’il n’ait pas eu le sentiment du dessin relatif aux movements et à la perspective. On voit dans ses tableaux des pantomimes très-justement senties, très-heureusement rendues, des lignes très-correctes, peut-être même était-il supérieur dans ce sentiment naturel à Jules Romain lui-même, et j’oserait dire à Annibal Carracci.” Paillot de Montabert, Traité complet de la peinture vol. 3 (Paris, 1828), p. 188. “Ce peintre, comme bien d’autres, fût donc devenu un grand dessinateur, s’il n’eût été préoccupé exclusivement du clair-obscur et du coloris, et s’il eût oublié d’ailleurs le mauvais

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187

188

189

190 191

192

goût des ateliers, si enfin une véritable école de peinture lui eût ouvert une route certaine à suivre.” Paillot de Montabert (1828), p. 189. “Tu me parles de Rembrandt, de ce fameux, de ce grand, de ce géant, et, en lisant, j’ai trouvé une phrase rapportée de M. Paillot de Montabert; ce (sic) sont des paroles qui m’on fait souffer de rire... Ce monsieur parisien prétend que si Rembrandt dessinait comme Poussin, ce serait un grand peintre! Ce n’est pas fort, hein? Je désirais bien voir le tableau de Rembrandt dont tu me parles, car ça doit être bien épatant. Je le gobe d’ici (tu sais, le mot à la mode).” 12 March 1858, Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie, Fondation Jacques Doucet, manuscripts, microfilm BIX, pp. 8382-7. “Rembrandt dessinait mieux que Poussin!” Thoré-Bürger, Salons de T. Thoré 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848 (Paris, 1868), p. x. “Pour ma part, je ne vois pas pourquoi il serait défendu de dessiner aussi purement que Léonard et Raphaël, en noyant le contour des corps dans une ombre mystérieuse, comme l’a fait Rembrandt. C’est, je l’avoue, un problème difficile à résoudre; je ne crois pas pourtant qu’il soit absolument insoluble.” Gustave Planche, “Rembrandt, sa vie et ses œuvres” Revue des deux mondes (15 July 1853), p. 277. “Mais si Rembrandt a ignoré ce qu’on appelle le style, il y a suppléé par une qualité de premier ordre qui est le sentiment.” Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 11. Blanc (1859-61) vol. 1, p. 359. “Si son dessin manque de noblesse, s’il est incorrect dans les proportions, il est relevé par une qualité supérieure, le sentiment... Jugé séparément, Rembrandt semble se détacher de la tradition et avoir romput la chaîne de l’art.” Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), pp. 22-3. “On entend dire assez souvent que Rembrandt était d’une extrême faiblesse dans le dessin, que cette partie de l’art lui a manqué; c’est là une hérésie des orthodoxes. Sans doute Rembrandt n’a pas dessiné avec la correcte élégance qu’enseigne la tradition classique... mais il y a dans le dessin des qualités essentielles que Rembrandt possède au plus haut degré: l’expression et la perspective.” Blanc vol. 2 (Paris, 1883), p. 14.

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193 André Fontainas, “Rembrandt Chez Lui” Mercure de France (January 1899), p. 47. 194 “Il reste dans son génie propre et complétement indépendant des traditions du grand style... son talent n’a aucune affinité avec la correction de dessin, avec le goût épuré et idéal des maîtres de Florence ou de Rome.” A.J. du Pays, “L’annonciation des bergers, par Rembrandt” L’Illustration (15 January 1859), p. 36. 195 “Rembrandt n’est pas un dessinateur au sens où l’on entend ce mot d’ordinaire. Il n’a jamais su châtier son dessin avec la correction qu’on enseigne dans les académies, et qui parfois dégénère en pédantisme... Mais, à côté de ce défaut de correction et d’idéal dans la forme, quelle science profonde du dessin, quel art pour rendre la nature dans sa vérité et dans sa vie!” François Lenormant, “Une publication nouvelle sur Rembrandt” Correspondant (25 December 1874), p. 1373. 196 Villot was quoted by Athanase Coquerel fils, Rembrandt et l’individualisme dans l’art (Paris, 1869), pp. 77-8. 197 Eugène Delacroix, The Journals of Eugène Delacroix Trans. Walter Pach (New York, 1937), p. 571. 198 “Il ne se complaît pas dans un contour exquis, dans des proportions harmonieusement établies et dans des lignes pondérées avec art; mais comme il possède à fond le sentiment de la forme, comme il sait donner aux figures qu’il invente une expression juste et appropriée à leur situtation, comme chez lui le sens de la vie est aussi développé que le sens de la lumière, on peut affirmer que le génie du dessin ne lui a pas manqué et que, s’il n’en a pas fait le même usage que d’autres maîtres également illustres, c’est que son tempérament s’opposait a cette interprétation de la nature, à ce choix dans les types qui constitue la réelle beauté.” George Duplessis, “Les eaux-fortes de Rembrandt” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (May 1875), p. 479. 199 For a complete analysis of the published drawing courses see Daniel Harlé, “Les cours de dessin gravés et lithographiés du XIXème siècle conservés au Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale” (Paris, Mémoire dactylographié de l’École du Louvre, 1975).

200 Etex/Blanc correspondence, Archives nationales AJ/52/975. 201 The drawings could be seen on Saturdays between two and four in the afternoon. The statistics presented here were compiled from Frédéric Reiset, Notice des dessins, cartons, pastels, miniatures et émaux exposés dans les salles du 1er étage au musée impérial du Louvre, première partie: écoles d’Italie, écoles Allemande, Flamande et Hollandaise; précédée d’une introduction historique et du résumé de l’inventaire général des dessins vol. 1 (Paris, 1866). 202 One drawing of a man kneeling, one of a woman seated in a chair and four studies of lions. 203 This decree was published in the Moniteur universel on 15 November 1863 and was signed by Napoleon III. The biggest change which resulted from this reform was the institution of three painting and three sculpture classes into the curriculum of the École des Beaux-Arts. Aspects of this reform and the history of the École des Beaux-Arts were considered in Alain Bonnet, “La Réforme de l’École des Beaux-Arts de 1863, problèmes de l’enseignement artistique en France au XIXe siècle” Third Cycle Thesis, Nanterre, 1993. 204 Gersaint (Paris, 1751), pp. xv-xvi. For a discussion of the debate around Rembrandt’s representations of the female nude since the nineteenth century, see Mieke Bal, “Between Focalization and Voyeurism: The Representation of Vision”, in Reading “Rembrandt”: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 138-76. 205 Fromentin (1876), p. 410. 206 “Il est vrai qu’on est forcé d’avouer que Rembrandt n’a jamais connu la beauté et l’élegance du nu. Qui voit de lui, par exemple, une Bethzabée ou une Suzanne au bain, ne voit qu’une nudité grossière et informe; cela est incontestable.” Montabert (Paris, 1828), p. 188. 207 “M. Charles Blanc n’est pas assez sévère pour ces déplorables œuvres, dont rien, pas même l’habileté toujours grande du peintre ou du graveur, ne rachète le caractère ignoble, descendant aussi bas que les Baigneuses de M. Courbet.” Lenormant, Correspondant (1874), p. 1371.

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208 Hix, “La galerie La Caze, au Louvre” La Vie Parisienne (26 April 1870), p. 331. 209 “La Bethsabée de Rembrandt, une belle peinture, mais une bien vilaine femme, et puis les tons ont poussé au noir. Jamais bain ne fut plus opportun.” 210 “Dépêchez-vous: le roi David me regarde. Je ne me soucie pas qu’il me voie avec un œilde-perdrix.” 211 “Oh! ce petit pied! ce petit pied! Toute ton eau, ô mer profonde ne suffirait pas à le rendre... présentable.” 212 “Le respect que j’éprouve pour le génie de Rembrandt, les études spéciales que j’ai faites de son œuvre gravé, me font un devoir de livrer à la publicité une opinion qui me paraît fondée à tous égards.” quoted in Louis Gonse, “L’Œuvre de Rembrandt, 2e et dernier article” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (December 1885), p. 508. 213 Gautier (1846), p. 398. 214 Marcel Nicolle (1899), p. iv. For other examples of the largely negative reception of both nudes in the Louvre collection see Gary Schwartz, “A Documentary History and Interpretation of Rembrandt’s 1654 Painting of Bathsheba”, in Ann Jensen Adams (Ed.), Rembrandt’s Bathsheba Reading King David’s Letter (Cambridge, 1998): 176-203. 215 Martin Rosenberg, Raphael and France: the Artist as Paradigm and Symbol (University Park, 1995), p. 185. Another study claimed that Raphael was one of the artists about whom the most was published in France between 1800 and 1900 because art history prefers successful artists. Rembrandt’s parallel popularity discounts this view that art critics preferred writing about “winners.” See Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin, “La légende de Raphaël. Les ‘grandes’ et les ‘petites’ vies d’une figure exemplaire de l’art, écrites en France au cours du XIXe siècle.” Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review vol. 22 no.1-2 (1995) pp. 80-6. Still, there were a number of publications on Raphael during this time, including: Giuseppe Campori, “Documents inédits sur Raphaël, tirés des Archives palatines de Modène” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April, May, and September 1863), pp. 347-61, 442-56, and 288-94; Charles Clément, Michel-Ange, Léonard

314

de Vinci, Raphael (Paris, 1867), Louis Courajod, “Observations sur deux dessins attribués à Raphaël et conservés à l’Académie des BeauxArts de Venise” (first as article in L’Art and Paris, 1880); François Anatole Gruyer, Essai sur les fresques de Raphaël de Vatican (Paris, 1858), Les Vierges de Raphaël et l’iconographie de la Vierge (Paris, 1869), Portrait du Joueur de violon (Paris, 1880), Raphaël, peintre de portraits (Paris, 1881), Les historiens et les critiques de Raphael, 14831883. Essai bibliographique pour servir d’appendice à l’ouvrage de Passavant (Paris, 1883), Les tapisseries de Raphaël au Vatican et dans les principaux musées ou collections de l’Europe (Paris, 1897); Eugène Müntz, “Les maisons de Raphaël à Rome, d’après des documents inédits ou peu connus” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1880), pp. 353-9, “Raphaël, archéologue et historien d’art” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (October and November 1880), pp. 307-18, and 453-64, Raphaël, sa vie, son œuvre, et son temps (Paris, 1881), “Une rivalité d’artistes au XVIe siècle. Michel-Ange et Raphaël à la Cour de Rome” Gazette des BeauxArts (March and April 1882), pp. 281-7, and 385-400, Les historiens et le critiques de Raphaël (1883); Quatremère de Quincy, Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Raphaël (Paris, 1833), Appendice à l’ouvrage intitulé Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Raphaël, par M. Quatremère de Quincy (Paris, 1853); A.F. Rio, Michel-Ange et Raphaël: avec un supplément sur la décadence de l’école romaine (Paris, 1867). 216 Charles Baudelaire, “Le Peintre de la vie moderne”, in Claude Pichois (Ed.), Œuvres Complètes vol. 2 Paris: Gallimard, 1976, p. 683. Baudelaire wrote the text in 1859 and published it in Le Figaro 28 November and 3 December 1863. 217 “Le beau est toujours, inévitablement, d’une composition double, bien que l’impression qu’il produit soit une... Le beau est fait d’un élément éternel, invariable, dont la quantité est excessivement difficile à déterminer, et d’un élément relatif, circonstanciel, qui sera, si l’on veut, tout à tour ou tout ensemble, l’époque, la mode, la morale, la passion.” Baudelaire (Paris, 1976 ed.), p. 685. 218 “C’est l’effet ordinaire d’une œuvre d’art exceptionnelle, de beaucoup de tableaux d’un rang

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219

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supérieur. Raphael ne satisfait pas toujours le premier venu, ni au premier coup d’œil. Souvent même des artistes consommés, le voyant pour la première fois, ont dit: n’est-ce que cela? Pour goûter Shakespeare, il faut le comprendre, et le comprendre ne s’obtient qu’à force de se pénétrer peu à peu de ses œuvres. L’art égyptien ne charme pas du premier coup; quand on y pénètre, il vous subjugue.” Carel Vosmaer, “Un mot à propos de Rembrandt” L’Art (1875), p. 166. Carel Vosmaer, Rembrandt Harmensz van Ryn, sa vie et ses œuvres (The Hague, 1868), pp. 35760. Coquerel (Paris, 1869), pp. 66-7. Théophile Gautier, “Du beau dans l’art” L’Art Moderne (Paris, 1856), pp. 134-53. Auguste Couder, Considérations sur le but moral des beaux-arts (Paris, 1867), pp. 60-1. “La critique vulgaire, celle qui ne voit dans l’histoire de l’art qu’une époque déterminée à l’exclusion de toutes les autres, qui nomme la poésie latine Virgile, la prose française Fénélon, et la peinture Raphaël, accuse les plus belles compositions de Rembrandt de trivialité... Qu’est-ce à dire, en effet? La vérité humaine n’est-elle pas la première et la plus indispensable condition d’une œuvre pittoresque?” Gustave Planche, “Histoire de l’art, Rembrandt” L’Artiste (1832), p. 235. “Les philosophes ont fait bien des théories sur l’art et sur le beau; les artistes aiment l’art et voilà tout... Le beau ne s’impose ni ne se définit: le vulgaire l’ignore, l’artiste le sent, l’aime et le cherche... Le beau est partout... Un tas de fumier envahi par la volaille peut devenir sublime sous la main de Rembrandt. Ce sujet bas et trivial, traité par le maître, va nous entraîner dans un monde imaginaire, à travers les rayons lumineux qui ont éclairé l’artiste aussi bien que son sujet; tout, jusqu’à son exécution, nous charmera, nous fera penser avec lui. L’insaisissable beau sera partout, jusque dans les défauts même de l’artiste, peutêtre.” H. René Paul Huet, Paul Huet d’après ses notes, sa correspondance et ses contemporains, documents recueillis par son fils. Pref. by Georges Lafenestre (Paris, 1911), pp. 71-2.

225 “Il inventa une grandeur morale indépendante de la régularité des traits et des lignes, et à l’inverse de la statuaire antique, qui s’en tenait à une extrême sobriété de mouvement et à l’impassibilité du visage, plutôt que de déranger la beauté plastique des formes, les artistes chrétiens, retrouvant un reflet de la Divinité dans les natures les plus déchues, aimèrent mieux pousser jusqu’aux dernières contractions de la vérité l’expression de leurs figures, que de mettre la laideur même en dehors du domaine de l’art. C’est de là que procède Rembrandt. Il appartient tout entier à l’art moderne, j’entends à l’art chrétien; il en est la personnification la plus puissante, la plus intime.” Blanc (1853), pp. 8-9. For a general study of Blanc’s views on artistic practice see Misook Song, Art Theories of Charles Blanc, 1813-1882 (Ann Arbor, 1984). 226 “Son imagination, jetant un voile entre la nature et lui, ennoblit la vulgarité même, et ses moindres études portèrent bientôt le cachet du maître, l’empreinte du génie.” Blanc (1853), p. 7. 227 Blanc (1883), p. 17. 228 “Rembrandt n’est ni un idéaliste, ni un éclectique, c’est un artiste fantasque et vrai, dont l’œil de lynx voit l’humanité dans sa plus saisissante réalité à Amsterdam... il n’a rendu que la vérité et la vivacité de la vie, avec le privilège de la peinture la plus achevée et la plus libre tout à la fois... Il réagit contre les théories et les exemples venus de Rome, autant par sa manière de rendre la correction de formes, que par sa façon d’entendre l’Évangile. Inspiré de son temps et retrempé dans la nature, à l’égal des plus grands artistes, il eut un don unique: il fait sublime dans l’ignoble.” Jules Renouvier, Des types et des manières des maîtres graveurs pour servir à l’histoire de la gravure, en Italie, en Allemagne, dans les Pays-Bas et en France (Montpellier, 1853), pp. 38-42. 229 “...l’homme dont le génie est un des plus l’antipode du classicisme et de la beauté du style.” François Lenormant, “Une publication nouvelle sur Rembrandt” Correspondant (25 December 1874), p. 1368. 230 There are few instances where another Italian artist was substituted for Raphael as the exemplar of ideal art. See Charles Beaurin, “Les

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disciples d’Emmaus, Titien et Rembrandt” L’Artiste (1 March 1865), pp. 97-102. “Raphaël n’a pas créé un peintre, il en a désespéré mille: chez l’un; c’est le monde connu, c’est le dernier mot, le couronnement de l’œuvre; chez Rembrandt, l’intrépide et magique coloriste, c’est encore le commencement du monde. C’est une aurore nouvelle qui éclaire l’art.” Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise (Paris, 1844-47), p. 156. See also Houssaye, “Rembrandt” L’Artiste (6 December 1848), p. 65. Arsène Houssaye, Théophile Gautier and Paul de Saint Victoire, Les Dieux et les demi-dieux de la peinture (Paris, 1864), pp. 243-62. Eugène Delacroix, The Journal of Eugène Delacroix Trans. Walter Pach. (New York, 1937), 6 June 1851. Eugène Delacroix, “Questions sur le beau” Revue des deux mondes (15 July 1854), pp. 306-15. “Ah! si Rembrandt, avec son génie libre et original, ressuscitait dans un pays comme l’Italie, – cet éternel pays de la Beauté, – à quelles créations superbes il communiquerait la lumière!” Thoré-Bürger vol. 2 (Paris, 1858-60), p. xiii. “Il n’y a que deux types dans l’art moderne: Raphaël et Rembrandt, l’artiste à priori et l’artiste à posteriori, dirait un philosophe esthéticien; l’artiste qui part d’un idéal conçu en lui-même, et l’artiste qui part de la nature.” Thoré-Bürger, “Salon de 1864” in Salons de W. Bürger 1861 à 1868 (Paris, 1870), p. 69. See the numerous “Cher ami” letters during these decades, Bibliothèque nationale manuscript naf 11955. “Raphaël aurait reculé devant ces actualités, qu’il eût désespéré peut-être de rendre idéales. C’était justement la difficulté que l’art avait à vaincre, et c’est pour l’avoir vaincue que la gloire de Rembrandt dépasse de cent coudées celle de Raphaël.” Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Du principe de l’art et de sa destination sociale (Paris, 1865), p. 95. “Toutes les grandes œuvres idéales de l’art ont été faites dans des temps qui n’avaient pas les notions de l’idéal ou par des hommes qui n’avaient pas cette notion... L’avenir de l’art moderne, ne serait-ce point du Gavarni brouillé

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avec du Rembrandt, la réalité de l’homme et de l’habit transfigurée par la magie des ombres et des lumières, par ce soleil, poésie des couleurs qui tombe de la main du peintre?” Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, mémoires de la vie littéraire vol. 1 (Paris, 1959 ed), 12 November 1861. Gustave Planche, “Histoire et philosophie de l’art. VII. L’École anglaise en 1835” Revue des deux mondes (15 June 1835), pp. 675-6. See also Bernard Weinberg, French Realism: The Critical Reaction 1830-1870 (Chicago, 1937), p. 114, fn 2. Linda Nochlin, Realism (New York, 1971) and Realism and Tradition in Art 1848-1900, Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, 1976), Gabriel Weisberg, The Realist Tradition, French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900 (Cleveland, 1980), and Gabriel and Yvonne Weisberg, The Realist Debate, Bibliography of French Realist Painting 1830-1885. (New York, 1984). Champfleury, “Du réalisme, Lettre à Madame Sand”, in Du réalisme, correspondance Champfleury and George Sand. (Paris, 1991), pp. 67-78. Linda Nochlin believes it was the combination of realism and drama in Rembrandt’s work that specifically attracted Courbet, who also executed a copy of Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait in Munich in 1869. See Linda Nochlin, Gustave Courbet: A Study of Style and Society (New York, 1976), pp. 14-20, 36, 51-2, 61-2, and 173-4. Fernand Desnoyers, “Du Réalisme” L’Artiste (9 December 1855), pp. 197-200. Duranty Réalisme (15 November 1856), pp. 1-2. See also Petra ten Doeschate Chu, French Realism and the Dutch Masters: The Influence of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting on the Development of French Painting between 1830 and 1870 (Utrecht, 1974) and Laura Malvano, “Le débat autour du réalisme entre 1855 et 1865” Histoire et critique des arts (May 1978), pp. 62-71. Alvin Beaumont, Un Œuvre de P.P. Rubens. La visitation découverte à Reims (Paris, 1869), Samuel Henri Berthoud, Pierre-Paul Rubens (Paris, 1841), Émile Michel, Rubens, sa vie, son œuvre, et son temps (Paris, 1900), Paul Mantz, “Rubens” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (January and April 1881), pp. 5-14, 305-14, (January and

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October 1882), pp. 5-18, 273-81, (January, March, April, and November 1883), pp. 5-18, 203-18, 309-23, 361-83, (January, March, and July 1884), pp. 29-45, 193-207, 34-49, (February, August, and December 1885), pp. 121-37, 97-115, 449-66, Alfred Michiels, Catalogue des tableaux et dessins de Rubens avec l’indication des endroits où ils se trouvent (Paris, 1854), “Génie de Rubens” Gazette des BeauxArts (March and April 1869), pp. 223-37, 33143, and Rubens et l’école d’Anvers (Paris, 1877), Theophile Silvestre, P.P. Rubens (Paris, 1851), Thoré-Bürger, “Le Musée d’Anvers, Rubens et ses contemporains” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (July, September and October 1861), pp. 24-37, 206-14, 338-48. Thoré-Bürger, Musées de la Hollande vol. 1 (Paris, 1860 ed.), p. 321. Eugène Delacroix, Journal (5 and 29 July 1854). Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1857), pp. 188-90. Péladan (September 1881), p. 330. Fromentin (Paris, 1876), p. 52. Blanc (11 October 1876), p. 3. Champfleury (Laon, 1850), p. 37. For an analysis of Champfleury’s criticism see David A. Flanary, Champfleury: The Realist Writer as Art Critic (Ann Arbor, 1980). Champfleury (Laon, 1850), pp. 37-8. Blanc’s speech was published in the Rapport sur les arts du Dessin et sur leur avenir dans la République and was discussed in Song (Ann Arbor, 1984), p. 13. “Comment les biographes de Rembrandt et ses interprètes ont-ils oublié jusqu’ici son caractère de réforme? Ce devait être le point de départ. Rembrandt est l’historien des Pays-Bas bien mieux que Strada, Hooft ou Grotius. Il rend palpable la révolution, il l’éclaire à son insu de mille lueurs. D’un autre côté, elle le montre tel qu’il est, elle le dévoile; sans elle, il resterait une sorte de monstre inexplicable dans l’histoire des arts. Sa Bible est la bible iconoclaste de Marnix; ses apôtres sont des mendian[t]s; son Christ est le Christ des gueux.” Edgar Quinet, “Fondation de la république des Provinces-Unies, III. Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde, réligion, politique et art des gueux” Revue des deux mondes (1 June 1854), p. 1002.

257 “C’est ici une cité de refuge. La multitude des bannis, des outlaws, des exilés de toute nation, de toute origine, qui affluent, dépouillés, ruinés, vers les Provinces-Unies, donne aux foules, dans Rembrandt, une variété des types, de physionomies, de races, qu’aucun peintre n’a égalée... Rembrandt a rompu avec toute tradition, comme son église avec toute authorité; il ne relève que de lui-même et de son inspiration immédiate.” Quinet (1 June 1854), p. 1003. 258 Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven, 1994), pp. 214-16. 259 Coquerel fils (Paris, 1869), p. 80. 260 Coquerel fils (Paris, 1869), p. 107. 261 “L’art traditionnel, l’art officiel, sacerdotal, est épuisé: il a fait son temps; c’est en vain que l’on a tenté de resusciter, de galvaniser l’art catholique du moyen âge en plein dix-neuvième siècle... c’est l’art individualiste et spontané, par lequel l’homme, l’artiste, le penseur, le poëte représente non ce qui est officiel et commandé, mais ce qui est pour lui la réalité, le mouvement, la couleur, la vérité, la vie... Aussi, de même qu’autrefois sur la tombe des rois de France on criait: Le roi est mort: vive le roi! nous pouvons dire aujourd’hui, en présence des monuments fermés de l’art catholique qui ne se réveillera jamais de son sommeil: l’art officiel, l’art sacerdotal est mort, et bien mort: vive l’art libéral, l’art individuel, l’art protestant, l’art humain!” Coquerel fils (Paris, 1869), pp. 141-2. 262 “Oui, mon idée est qu’on peut travailler à la verité et à la justice en parlant d’un rayon de soleil, et qu’un propos sur Rembrandt peut signifier autant pour la Révoution qu’un manifeste du citoyen Ledru à la Republique universelle. Vous êtes le maître qui est venu leur montrer cela. Le philosophe à expliqué l’artiste malicieux qui se doutait bien un peu que Rembrandt n’était sans attaquer le pape et l’empereur.” Institut Néerlandais, mss 6764a. 263 P.J. Proudhon, “Études sur l’École hollandaise” Revue trimestrielle (January 1859), pp. 276-89. 264 Proudhon wrote “Nous n’avons pas l’honneur de connaître M.W. Burger.” (January 1859), p. 276. 265 “N’êtes-vous pas tenté de vous écrier, après avoir lu cette page: Bravo, Hollandais!... Or, quand une nation, se séparant des autres, se

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condamne par là même à tout refaire en elle, elle refait tout. Le patriotisme qui lui donne la victoire lui fait produire aussi des chefs d’œuvre; cette conscience du droit qui la rend héroïque se manifestera bientôt dans son nouvel idéal.” (January 1859), p. 279. 266 “C’est l’idolatrie, auraient dit le Hollandais réformés du XVIIe siècle, qui ayant banni de leur temple, de leur culture, toute espèce de signes divins, se trouvaient dans l’heureuse nécessité de faire de la peinture pour eux-mêmes, pour l’Humanité.” (January 1859), p. 282. 267 “Et voilà justement ce qui explique comment, en France, après la proclamation de toutes les libertés et l’établissement du suffrage universel, la pensée n’est encore rien, le travail rien, la commune rien, l’individu rien, le peuple rien: la nation est restée courbée sous son idéal aristocratique et religieux. Et que de gens travaillent, même à leur insu, à la maintenir sous ce joug. C’est la grand mystification des temps modernes. Une espérance nous reste. L’art humain est né spontanément au XVIIe siècle, mais le mot n’a été dit et le phénomène expliqué qu’au XIXe: de l’invention à l’explication il y a progrès.” (January 1859), p. 289. 268 “Ce qu’il nous faut, c’est un art pour ainsi dire pratique, qui nous suive dans toutes nos fortunes; qui, s’appuyant à la fois sur le fait et sur l’idée, ne puisse plus être débordé tout à coup et brisé par l’opinion; mais qui progresse comme la raison, comme l’humanité... Rembrandt, le Luther de la peinture, fut, au dix-septième siècle, le réformateur de l’art. Tandis que la France, catholique et royaliste, se refaisait l’esprit, hélas! dans la fréquentation des Grecs et des Latins, la Hollande réformée, républicaine, inaugurait une nouvelle esthétique. Dans le tableau improprement appelé la Ronde de nuit, Rembrandt peint, d’après nature et sur figures originales, une scène de la vie municipale, et d’un seul coup, dans ce chef d’œuvre des chefs-d’œuvre, il éclipse toute l’ostentation pontificale, les couronnements de princes, les tournois nobiliaires, les apothéoses de l’idéal. Dans la Leçon d’anatomie, autre chef-d’œuvre, où il représente la Science sous les traits du professeur Tulp, le scalpel à la main, l’œil fixé sur un cadavre, il en

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finit avec les allégories, les emblèmes, les personnifications et incarnations, et réconcilie pour toujours ‘l’idéal et la réalité... Donc la peinture la plus concrète, la plus réaliste en apparence, peut éveiller un sentiment esthétique plus puissant, suggérer un idéal plus élevé, que la peinture la plus idéaliste... Ainsi, de même que la Réforme fut une réaction contre le catholicisme romain, de même l’école hollandaise fut une réaction contre l’art catholique, tant celui de la Renaissance que celui du moyen âge. Cependant la Réforme, par ses origines et par la plupart de ses sectes, était iconoclaste. Ce fut justement ce qui détermina la révolution. L’art ne peut périr: chassé du temple, il devait ressusciter à l’hôtel de ville et au foyer domestique; condamné dans son vieil idéalisme, il allait renaître dans son humanité positive et rationnelle.” Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Du principe de l’art et de sa destination sociale (Paris, 1865), pp. 84-87. 269 Auguste Comte coined the term “sociology” in 1839 and organized a Positivist society at the time of the 1848 Revolution. The five main elements of Comte’s positive method were tied to scientific fields to which observation, logic, and experimentation are traditionally ascribed: mathematics, astronomy, biology, physics, and chemistry. Although Comte was born into a Catholic and legitimist family, he broke from his roots and intended that positivism would reorganize the social system in France and what he referred to as the “crisis” that had existed since the French Revolution of 1789. He focused his efforts to disseminate positivism in France where, in his view, social regeneration and the revolutionary movement were the most advanced. While Comte sought to end domination in any form, he accepted the fact that political and economic inegalities would always exist. He believed that friction and jealousy between classes would disappear if each person fulfilled their social function and put themselves at the service of the republic and humanity as a whole. See Auguste Comte, Discours sur l’ensemble du positivime (Paris, 1848), Jean-Paul Frick, Auguste Comte ou la république positive. (Nancy, 1990) and Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography vol. 1 (New York, 1993).

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270 Saint-Simon’s most famous view, published in his “Parables” in 1819, was that France would lose less if the royal family and all its nobility disappeared than if it lost its intellectuals, industrialists, and agricultural workers. 271 Arsène Houssaye, “Rembrandt” L’Artiste (6 December 1846), pp. 65-70. 272 “Si Rembrandt a eu un maître, ce fut Luther. Rembrandt avait très sérieusement foi en Luther. C’était pour lui un réformateur comme Mahomet, Jésus-Christ et Moïse. Il pensait que le catholicisme, par ses pompes et ses voluptés, n’était plus qu’une autre mythologie... Rembrandt rendait grâce à Luther, qui avait indiqué aux Hollandais les premiers rayons du jour nouveau, qui leur avait inspiré l’esprit de révolte, qui avait fait de ses frères des hommes libres et forts.” Houssaye (1848 ed.), p. 154. Gautier mentioned Houssaye’s comparison between Rembrandt and Luther in his review of Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise in L’Artiste (7 March 1847), pp. 11-2. 273 Théophile Gautier, “La famille du menuisier d’après Rembrandt” L’Artiste (26 October 1856), pp. 237-8. 274 Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (Paris, 1966 ed.), pp. 343-4. 275 “Nous aurions pu le comparer tout d’un coup à Shakespeare, qui a envahi à lui seul tous les royaumes de la fantaisie... On a dit qu’ils avaient travaillé tous deux sur un fond noir et que leur imagination en avait tiré souvent des conceptions pleines d’éclat et de poésie. Cependant, on pouvait ajouter encore que ces conceptions dans Shakespeare sont belles par ellesmêmes, et qu’elles ne le sont dans Rembrandt que par le prestige de la couleur; que les premières rayonnent dans son drame sombre et l’éclairent de leur propre lumière.” Sosthène Cambray, “Rembrandt” L’Artiste (26 November 1843), p. 345. 276 “C’est le soleil, c’est la vie, c’est la réalité; et cependant, il y a dans cette toile un souffle de fantaisie, un sourire de poésie merveilleuse. Il y a cette tête d’homme, contre la muraille, à droite, coiffé d’un chapeau noir. Des gens, cependant, n’ont jamais trouvé de noblesse à Rembrandt! Puis au second plan, dans ces

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quatre têtes, il y a cette figure indéfinissable, au sourire errant sur les lèvres, cette figure coiffée d’un grand chapeau gris, mélange d’un gentilhomme et d’un pitre de Shakespeare, héros étrange d’une comédie, de ce que vous voudrez, et cette espèce de bouffon gnomatique, qui semble glisser à son oreille les paroles des confidents comiques de Shakespeare... Shakespeare! Ce nom me revient et je le répète, car je ne sais quel mariage fait mon esprit entre cette toile et l’œuvre de Shakespeare.” Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, mémoires de la vie littéraire (Paris, 1954 ed), 9-10 September 1861, p. 956. Earlier, in their journal entry of 5 May 1858, they compared Dürer, Rembrandt, and Shakespeare as the most intoxicating figures in art and literature. George Lafenestre, “Rembrandt van Rijn, 16061669” Revue Bleue (7 October 1893), p. 466. See Thoré-Bürger, Salon de 1866 (1870), p. 282, Vosmaer (1868), p. 356, and Willem’s review of Vosmaer (1 May 1874), p. 352, Coquerel fils (1869), pp. 1-2, and Gonse (October 1885), p. 328. See particularly Houssaye (1846), p. 69, ThoréBürger (1858-60), p. 78, and Taine (1869), pp. 21 and 165. “Rembrandt, comme Shakespeare, est universel; comme le grand poète anglais, il est profondément humain, et il a parcouru, comme lui, toute la gamme des sentiments qui peuvent agiter une âme.” Émile Michel, Les Artistes Célèbres: Rembrandt, ouvrage accompagné par 41 gravures (Paris, 1886), p. 104. Taine (Paris, 1869), p. 165. Charles Blanc, L’Œuvre de Rembrandt (Paris, 1853), p. 6, Grammaire des arts du dessin: architecture, sculpture, peinture (Paris, 1870), p. 528, “La Ronde de nuit de Rembrandt gravée par M. Flameng” Le Temps (3 August 1874), p. 3. Only two critics, Joséphin Péladan and Planche, rejected the comparisons their contemporaries made between Rembrandt and Shakespeare. Planche did not think they were productive comparisons and Péladan denied that there was anything poetic in Rembrandt’s figures of women because his nudes did not conform to Péladan’s own expectations of the idealized form.

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J. Péladan, “Rembrandt” L’Artiste (September 1881), p. 334 and Gustave Planche, “Histoire de l’art, Rembrandt” L’Artiste (1832), p. 235. “Il est en effet le plus moderne de tous les maîtres.” Michel (Paris, 1886), p. 113. “C’est par elle [Rembrandt’s clair-obscur] qu’aujourd’hui la peinture parle le mieux à l’âme moderne.” Taine (Paris, 1869), p. 66. “Il appartient tout entier à l’art moderne” Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 8. “L’âme moderne” Michelet (Paris, 1858), p. 456. “Attirent vers lui nos âmes modernes” Lafenestre (7 October 1893), p. 466. The following works can not be located and are not known through reproductions: Léon Brunin, Rembrandt in his Studio (painting, Salon 1895, #319), Laurent Detouche, Rembrandt at age twenty-six executing his famous painting The Anatomy Lesson (painting, Salon 1859, #870), Hippolyte-Dominique Holfeld, Rembrandt as a child (painting, Salon of 1842, #961), Stanislas Lami, Rembrandt (bronze bust, Salon 1896, #3566), François Lepère, Rembrandt (terra cotta bust, Salon 1867, #2357), Adolphe-Alexandre Lesrel, Flemish Lords visiting Rembrandt’s Studio (painting, Salon 1884, #1529), Victor-Marie Roussin, Rembrandt’s Studio (painting, Salon 1857, #2346), and Johan Georg Schwartze, Rembrandt in his last days (painting, Exposition Universelle 1867, #138). See Eric M. Zafran, Cavaliers and Cardinals: Nineteenth-Century French Anecdotal Paintings (Cincinnati, 1992). The prevalence of images of artist’s lives was first discussed by Francis Haskell in “The Old Masters in Nineteenth-Century French Painting” Art Quarterly (Spring 1975): 55-85. Raphael was the most frequently depicted artist, and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were among the most preferred Italian artists; images of Rubens and Van Dyck were also popular. Two or three scenes of artists’ lives were exhibited at the Salons between 1804 and 1817, up to ten a year in the 1820, and as many as twenty per year through the 1860s. After that there were approximately four or five exhibited every year. See Haskell (1971), p. 58. Bergeret’s painting was published for the first time by Jacques Foucart in “Préface, Quelques

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réflexions sur les limites et les manques d’une exposition”, in Les années romantiques: La peinture française de 1815 à 1850. Paris: rmn, 1995, pp.26-45, see fig.14, p.38. Mrs. Pat Holmann kindly provided photographs of this painting. Meissonier did not exhibit this painting at the Salon during his lifetime. The etching was exhibited at the Salon of 1893, the same year as the painting was displayed at the Georges Petit Galleries in Paris as part of a retrospective exhibition of Meissonier’s work. I am grateful to Constance Cain Hungerford for helping me to locate Alasonière’s print. For a comprehensive study of Meissonier’s work see Constance Cain Hungerford, Ernest Meissonier: Master in His Genre (Cambridge, 1999). This work was not discussed in the retrospective exhibition on Meissonier. See Philippe Durey and Constance Cain Hungerford, Ernest Meissonier, Rétrospective (Lyons, 1993). Meissonier’s interest in Rembrandt was noted by Marc Gotlieb, The Plight of Emulation, Ernest Meissonier and French Salon Painting (Princeton, 1996), pp. 103, 106, and 188. The other was of Willem van de Velde. The plaster model for this bust was exhibited at the Salon of 1852 (#1501) and the bronze version at the Salon of 1853 (#1465). Purchased 19 September 1853 for 1,800 francs. Archives Nationales O1/8975. Archives du Louvre, series S, 17 March 1855, request to remove bust for exhibition at Exposition Universelle. This narrative was most often repeated by Arsène Houssaye beginning in the mid-1840s. See Arsène Houssaye, “Rembrandt” L’Artiste (6 December 1846), p. 66, Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise (Paris, 1844-47). p. 162 and Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and Paul de Saint-Victor, Les Dieux et les demi-dieux de la peinture (Paris, 1864), p. 248. The monkey was the subject of a full-length article and was named Puck in L.G. Jacques, “Un portrait de famille, eau-forte de la semaine” Paris à l’eau-forte (6 September 1874), pp. 86-9. “Pastiche très curieux, mais il faut prendre garde à ce genre d’exercice. On risque parfois

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d’y prendre ce qu’on a.” Charles Baudelaire Salon de 1845. Flameng’s other scene of Amsterdam is a view of the Westerkerk with a few unidentifiable figures in the foreground. Sales catalogues for 1857, 1871, 1884, and 1894 in the Goupil Archives list the following prices: carte de visite 50 centimes, print on white paper with letter 30 francs, print on chinese paper with letter 40 francs, print on chinese before letter 60 francs, artist’s proof 120 francs. These were available for 60 francs each. Bordeaux, Goupil Archives. This painting is now considered to be “after Rembrandt” and a copy of a work executed c.1662, both of which are mentioned in the inventory of Harmen Becker in Amsterdam, 1678. The original is lost. Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée et al., Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures du Musée du Louvre, I Ecoles flamande et hollandaise (Paris, 1979), p. 112. See Gault St. Germain (Paris, 1841), p. 48, Cambray (26 November 1843), p. 343, Delacroix (15 September 1850), p. 114, Dumesnil (Paris, 1850), p. 35, Gautier (15 September 1851), p. 51, Pays (15 January 1859), p. 36, Anonymous (May 1866), p. 138, Couder (Paris, 1867), pp. 60-1, Vosmaer (The Hague, 1868), p. 364, Taine (Paris, 1869), p. 67, Blanc (Paris, 1870), p. 598, Blanc (Paris, 1883), p. 14, Michel, É (Paris, 1886), p. 34 and (May 1890), p. 430, Müntz (March 1892), p. 206, and Mantz (1 November 1893), p. 352. Regardless of the criticisms writers might have had of Rembrandt’s works, they always praise his use of clair-obscur. René Verbraeken traced the history of this word from its origins as “chiaroscuro” in Italian. The term clair-obscur was used in France as early as the 1660s by the Abbé de Marolles. René Verbraeken, Clair-obscur,-histoire d’un mot (Nogent-le-Roi, 1979). “Rembrandt a tiré de l’eau un noyé: 15 franc de récompense. En attendant, il profite de l’occasion pour faire poser son mort en lui extorquer ainsi un séance gratuite.” Although this painting was not listed in the official catalogue, Oliver Merson mentioned its inclusion in the exhibition. See Oliver Merson,

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“Exposition des beaux-arts de Hollande” in Fr. Ducuing (Ed.), L’Exposition Universelle de 1867, illustrée. vol. 1. (Paris, n.d.[1867]), p. 194: “C’est à tort que le livret attribué à M. Bles le Rembrandt se rendant au theatrum anatomicum. M. Bisschop est l’auteur de ce tableau dont la pâte est un peu massive, mais l’effet plein d’éclat et de vigueur. On avait vu ce cadre l’année dernière au palais des Champs-Elysées.” The catalogue for the Salon of 1866 said this work was then in the Historical Gallery of Amsterdam. The earliest known date this work was exhibited publicly was at the Sedelmeyer Gallery in 1892. Tableaux anciens et modernes, Paris, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 25 March 1892, cat.14. This work is now considered to be “after Rembrandt.” Bather, Study for Susanna was one of 275 works from the Lacaze donation that were exhibited in the Louvre in the Grand Salle/Salle Royale from its inauguration on 15 March 1870 until 1900. Another 307 works were distributed to provincial museums. See Christiane Aulanier, Histoire du Palais et du Musée du Louvre (Paris, 1968). This work was acquired through the Napoleonic conquest of Germany in 1806. See Jacques Foucart, Les Peintures de Rembrandt au Louvre (Paris, 1982). This work is currently unlocated. The painting was reproduced as an example of Gérôme’s works at the Salons of the 1860s in the exhibition catalogue Jean-Léon Gérôme 1824-1904 (Vesoul, 1981, 18). Paul-Adolphe Rajon made an engraving after the painting in 1868. I am grateful to Gerald Ackerman for sharing with me his views on this painting. See also Gerald Ackerman, La vie et l’œuvre de Jean-Léon Gérôme (Paris, 1986), cat.124. As Gérôme’s father-in-law, Adolphe Goupil had a vested interest in publishing larger quantities of Gérôme’s œuvre than any other artist and he was eager to promote Gérôme’s success. This personal connection my have helped to make Gérôme’s scene of Rembrandt’s life the most widely disseminated and best known of all the images of Rembrandt produced in nineteenth-century France.

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310 “C’est le dernier degré de Willem Mieris! Et quelle étonnante perversion d’aller chercher Mieris pour peindre Rembrandt!... Pauvre Rembrandt, traité avec la miévrerie du dernier des Mieris!” Thoré-Bürger (Paris, 1870), pp. 13-4. 311 Louis Auvray, Salon de 1861 (Paris, 1861), p. 28. 312 Maxime Du Camp, Le Salon de 1861 (Paris, 1861), p. 84. 313 Léon Lagrange, “Salon de 1861” Gazette des Beaux-Arts. (June 1861), p. 265. 314 Ernest Lacan, “Exposition Photographique” Le Moniteur de la Photographie (15 July 1861), p. 65 315 Duc de Morny, Paris, 1-3 June 1865. Other paintings by Gérôme sold in this period rarely achieved the same prices: Pifferain à Rome sold from the Pereire collection 6-9 March 1872 for 17,200 fr, Le Roi Candaule sold for 12,000 fr 9 March 1891, Les Augures sold for 19,950 from the Santurce collection, London, 25 April 1891. 316 One of the few studies devoted to the etching revival in nineteenth-century France, Gabriel P. Weisberg’s exhibition The Etching Renaissance in France: 1850-1880 revived interest among North American scholars in the printmaking tradition in France. Among the most important issues Weisberg raised was the emphasis placed by the Société des Aquafortistes on individuality. Gabriel P. Weisberg, The Etching Renaissance in France: 1850-1880 (Salt Lake City, 1971). Janine Bailly-Herzberg’s important study of the Société des Aquafortistes also made a significant contribution to our knowledge of the French etching revival. Janine Bailly-Herzberg, L’eauforte de peintre au dix-neuvième siècle, la Société des Aquafortistes 1862-67 2 vols. (Paris, 1972). Some of her research was first presented in “La resurrection de l’eau-forte originale à la fin du XIXe siècle” Jardin des Arts (February 1968), pp. 2-16. Her study examines the material in the society’s yearly volumes, which brought together prints that had first been published in monthly collections each containing five works. Petra ten Doesschate Chu’s chapter on etchings in French Realism and the Dutch Masters offered a significant and broad introduction to the general resonance of Dutch art within the etching revival

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in France. Chu notes that next to Rembrandt, Adriaen van Ostade was the second most important Dutch etcher for French printmakers. She also draws connections between Rembrandt and Charles Jacque, Charles Daubigny, Rodolphe Bresdin, Charles Méryon, Alphonse Legros, and Edgar Degas. Petra ten Doesschate Chu, French Realism and the Dutch Masters: The Influence of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting on the Development of French Painting between 1830 and 1870 (Utrecht 1974), pp. 65-77. Peter Samis’ Master’s thesis “The Appropriation of Rembrandt by the Nineteenth-Century French Etchers” examines some of the reasons why Rembrandt was important for artists who sought to promote etching in France. His discussion of the role of the Société des Aquafortistes and artists Flameng, Degas, and Lepic raises several important questions and outlines some of the ways in which Rembrandt was an inspiration for French artists. Peter Seth Samis, “The Appropriation of Rembrandt by the Nineteenth-Century French Etchers” Master’s thesis, Berkeley, 1988. There may also have been a significant concurrent but independent aesthetic interest in Rembrandt’s prints among the French landscape printmakers of Lyons. Of the artists based in Lyons, Louis-Hector Allemand and Auguste Thierriat both had sizeable collections of Rembrandt’s prints and Paul de Saint-Victor referred to Jean-Jacques de Boissieu as “Rembrandt canut.” See Marie-Félice Perez, “De Boissieu à Appian: l’eau-forte à Lyon au XIXe siècle” Nouvelles de l’Estampe (October 1996), pp. 31-41. None of these prints are described by Beraldi. See Magasin pittoresque “Mendiants, par Rembrandt” (July 1847), pp. 217-8 and “Le Docteur Faustus” (December 1847), pp. 393-4. L’Artiste (15 January 1849), p. 164. These prints were for a long time incorrectly attributed to Jacque himself. “J’avais le souvenir surtout d’un petit paysage de Rembrandt avec cet exergue: Tacet sed loquitur, qui avait fait tant d’impression sur moi dans mon enfance.” René Paul Huet, Paul Huet d’après ses notes, sa correspondance et ses contemporains, documents recueillis par son fils. (Paris, 1911),

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p. 5. Also noted in Philippe Burty, “Paul Huet” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1 April 1869), p. 299. Although Huet believed the work was by Rembrandt it was, in fact, a work by Johannes Ruyscher engraved by William Baillie in 1760. See also Maurice Tourneux, “Paul Huet et son œuvre, d’après des documents inédits” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1911), p. 456 and Jacques Foucart, “L’Inspiration Hollandaise” in John Sillevis and Hans Kraan, L’Ecole de Barbizon: un dialogue franco-néerlandais (The Hague, 1985), p. 28. “Elle parle, mon cher, me disait Rousseau à demi-voix, cette gravure, l’ombre est vaporeuse comme un jour d’automne et les figures sont animées d’un souffle. Celle-là, voyez-vous, je la paierai dix mille francs s’il me faut, me dit-il, car ce n’est pas un sacrifice que je ferai, c’est un placement. Cette gravure me procura, par sa beauté, le moyen de gagner cent mille francs, car elle résume tout: le sentiment, l’ordre, la morale, la lumière et la peinture. Si je la regardais toute une journée, je serais ébloui et presque épouvanté du génie de Rembrandt... Il ne faut pas que je sois seul heureux, mon cher. Tenez, voilà deux petits paysages de Rembrandt, me ditil, je les veux pour vous; je les prendrai en pension pendant quelques mois, et ils seront vôtres après.” Sensier (Paris, 1872), p. 344. Rousseau ended up paying 8,000 francs for the print. “Il aimait passionnément tout ce bric-à-brac que mit à la mode le monde des ateliers de Mille huit cent trente: les bahuts, les crédences, les eaux-fortes de Rembrandt, les gravures d’après les maîtres du XVIIIe siècle, les vitraux, les armes.” Philippe Burty, Maîtres et petits maîtres (Paris, 1877), p. 108. I thank Alexandra Murphy for drawing my attention to this reference. “Ce n’est que plus tard que j’ai connu Rembrandt: il ne me repoussait pas, mais m’aveuglait. Je pensais qu’il fallait faire des stations avant d’entrer dans le génie de cet homme.” Alfred Sensier, La Vie et l’œuvre de Millet (Paris, 1881), p. 56. Dutuit vol. 1 (Paris, 1883-86), p. 10. This idea was first introduced in France by Gersaint who said that the technique had not been used since Rembrandt. Gersaint (Paris, 1751), p. xxviii.

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For a comprehensive study of the medium see Carol Wax, The Mezzotint: History and Technique (New York, 1990). Wax (New York, 1990), p. 15. Ibid, p. 80. Ludovic Lepic, “Comment je devins graveur à l’eau-forte” (Paris, 1876) and Francis Seymour Haden, L’Œuvre gravé de Rembrandt (Paris, 1880). “Décidément, l’eau-forte devient à la mode... Il y a évidemment dans ces faits un symptôme de valeur croissante. Mais nous ne voudrions pas affirmer toute-fois que l’eau-forte soit destinée prochainement à une totale popularité. C’est un genre trop personnel, et conséquemment trop aristocratique, pour enchanter d’autres personnes que les hommes de lettres et les artistes, gens très-amoureux de toute personnalité vive. Non-seulement l’eau-forte est faite pour glorifier l’individualité de l’artiste, mais il est même impossible à l’artiste de ne pas inscrire sur la planche son individualité la plus intime... Parmi les différentes expressions de l’art plastique, l’eau-forte est celle qui se rapproche le plus de l’expression littéraire et qui est le mieux faite pour trahir l’homme spontané. Donc, vive l’eau-forte!” Charles Baudelaire, “L’eau-forte est à la mode” Revue anecdotique (April 1862), pp. 170-1. For an analysis of the status of “reproductive” engraving see also Stephan Bann Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painter and Photograhers in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven: 2001). For a complete history of this institution, founded in 1797, see Françoise Viatte “La chalcographie du Louvre d’hier à aujourd’hui”, Nouvelles de l’Estampe no.148-9 (October 1996), pp. 43-6. Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris 1848-71 (New Haven, 1994), pp. 270-1. This letter was written in London to Theo in The Hague, 19 November 1873, Correspondance complète de Vincent Van Gogh vol. 1 (Paris, 1960), p. 20. For insight into Van Gogh’s views of Rembrandt see Deborah Silverman, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art. (New York, 2000), pp. 86, 166-167.

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334 For a complete analysis of the successful Braun company see Christian Kempf, Adolphe Braun (1812-77) et la photographie (Illkirch, 1994) and Pierre Tyl, “Adolphe Braun, photographe mulhousien, 1812-77” Master’s thesis, Strasbourg, 1982. 335 For a complete list of the photographs after Rembrandt’s paintings that were available through Braun by the end of the nineteenth century see Catalogue Général des reproductions inaltérables au charbon d’après les chefs d’œuvre de la peinture (Paris, 1896). 336 Stephan Bann offers an in-depth analysis of this print commission in Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, 2001), pp.198-211. 337 “Des éditeurs considérables en sont arrivés à regarder la photographie comme le meilleur moyen de vulgariser les œuvres d’art. Tout par la photographie, tout pour la photographie, semble être le mot d’ordre de ces marchands qui, ayant jadis répandu dans le public le goût de la bourgeoisie gravure à la manière noire, devaient en arriver à cette autre manière noire mécanique: la Photographie. Frappés de cette déplorable tendance, les artistes réunirent, et comme leurs essais avaient déjà marqué, ils voulurent protester par une publication qui montrât que l’interprétation de l’artiste par l’artiste devait se perpétuer, et non l’interprétation de l’artiste par la machine.” Archives nationales F21/123. 338 “D’un seul et même coup, elle ressuscite un art oublié, pose une limite aux envahissements de la photographie, ranime l’émulation parmi les artistes, et élève le goût du public par la vulgarisation de ses œuvres.” (14 November 1862), Archives nationales F21/123. 339 “La Société des Aquafortistes est une sorte de protestation contre ce moyen nouveau employé contre la vulgarisation des œuvres d’art, la photographie. C’est à proprement parler la rivale de l’art contre le métier.” Jules Claretie, “Chronique” Diogène (2 August 1862). See also Bailly-Herzberg vol. 1 (Paris, 1972), p. 52. 340 “La reproduction matérielle de la nature, si exacte que soit cette reproduction, est par ellemême impuissante à éveiller en nous l’émotion

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poétique qui doit naître de la contemplation d’une œuvre d’art. Il faut davantage, il faut une intelligence, il faut un artiste! C’est la gloire de l’artiste de ne pas reproduire seulement, mais d’interpréter. Donc, sous peine de froisser l’art dans un de ses principes les plus susceptibles, ne séparons jamais la forme de l’idée.” Alcide Dusolier, “Le maître au lapin” in Ceci n’est pas un livre (Paris, 1861). See Édouard Meaume, Recherches sur la vie et les ouvrages de Jacques Callot (Paris, 1860), Champfleury, “Point de vue particulier sur Callot” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (October 1875), Prosper du Mast, Jacques Callot (Nancy, 1875), Charles Guerrart, “Deux livres d’esquisses de Jacques Callot” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (June 1881), Marius Vachon, Jacques Callot (Paris, 1886), and Henri Bouchot, Jacques Callot, sa vie, son œuvre et ses continuateurs (Paris, 1889). For an analysis of Callot in the nineteenth century see Martine Soton, “La Fortune critique de Jacques Callot au XIX siècle” Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Dijon, 1995. I thank Graham Larkin for bringing the latter study to my attention. “Seul entre tous les graveurs français, dont quelques-uns lui sont si supérieurs, le graveur de Nancy est encore aujourd’hui connu de la foule.” Henri Delaborde, “La Gravure depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours, première partie” Revue des deux mondes (1 December 1850), p. 929. “Ministre, la souscription de votre départment pour le nombre de collections que vous jugerez convenable et qui, distribuée par Votre Excellence aux établissements artistiques, avec de discernement dont elle a donné déjà tant de preuves, ne manqueront pas de populariser un art dont tant de chefs-d’œuvre éclos en France depuis Callot jusqu’à ce jour ont fait, pour ainsi dire un art national.” (3 September 1862), Archives nationales F21/123. “Le ciel, la terre et les bonshommes sont toujours d’admirables modèles. Ressuscitez Callot, Israël[s] ou Rembrandt.” Martial wrote these comments in an etched letter to Potémont, 1876. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes. “L’art a toujours deux faces antithétiques, médaille dont, par exemple, un côté accuserait

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la ressemblance de Paul Rembrandt et le revers celle de Jacques Callot. Rembrandt est le philosophe à barbe blanche qui s’encolimaçonne en son réduit, qui absorbe sa pensée dans la méditation et dans la prière, qui ferme les yeux pour se recueillir, qui s’entretient avec des esprits de beauté, de science, de sagesse et d’amour, et qui se consume à pénétrer les mystérieux symboles de la nature. Callot, au contraire, est le lansquenet fanfaron et grivoir qui se pavane sur la place, qui fait du bruit dans la taverne, qui caresse les filles de bohémiens, qui ne jure que par sa rapière et par son escopette, et qui n’a d’autre inquiétude que de cirer sa moustache.” Aloysius [Louis] Bertrand, Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantaisies à la manière de Callot et Rembrandt (Paris, 1842) pp. 23-4. This text was first published twelve years after the author’s death. The origin of given name Paul is obscure but was often attributed to Rembrandt in nineteenth-century France. 346 J. Lieure, Jacques Callot (Paris, 1927), cats. 479503. 347 “D’autres artistes ont peint des gueux, et dans le temps même où Rembrandt tenait la pointe, Étienne La Belle, Callot, Visscher, Jean Miel et autres représentaient la misère: mais aucun de ces peintres n’a su prêter à ces sortes de représentations le même intérêt que Rembrandt. Lui seul y a mis un sentiment profond de pitié, lui seul a pris les pauvres au sérieux... Les pauvres de Rembrandt sont des vrais pauvres. La misère a pénétré jusque dans la moelle de leurs os... Il a seulement jeté le regard profond et sérieux d’un maître sur un des aspects de la vie commune, sur une des conditions de l’humanité.” Charles Blanc, L’Œuvre de Rembrandt reproduit par la photographie, décrit et commenté (Paris, 1853), cat.148 and L’Œuvre Complet de Rembrandt décrit et commenté (Paris, 1859-61), cat.148. 348 “Rembrandt, disons-nous, est l’inventeur de l’eau-forte. Toutefois, quelque vingt ans avant lui, Jacques Callot avait mis en lumière ce bel art dans ses compositions innombrables et déjà si populaires. Mais l’eau-forte, comme l’entendent les peintres, n’était pas dans le génie français; la clarté du burin convenait mieux au caractère de notre école.” Charles Blanc, “De la gravure à

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l’eau-forte et des eaux-fortes de Jacque” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (February 1861), p. 197. “Allez à la Bibliothèque, prenez Callot, prenez Rembrandt. Rapprochement ridicule, direzvous, et vous aurez raison, c’est mettre le sable et le caillou d’un petit torrent sec, en présence d’un océan. N’importe, regardez, étudiez, interrogez. Le Français, que dit-il de sa fine pointe, de son burin microscopique? Il dit ce qu’il a vu dans sa vie de bohème: la cour, les fêtes et la famille, les estropiés, les bossus et les gueux, les ruses de la misère, l’universelle hypocrisie, des engagements de soldats, des tueries et des scènes inouïes de pillage, des supplices surtout, la potence et la corde, les grâces du pendu, ce sujet éternel où ne tardi pas la gaieté française. Ah! pauvre peuple gai, que je te voudrais donc un peu de l’intérieur, du doux foyer aux chaudes lueurs que j’aperçois chez l’autre, les deux bonheurs de la Hollande, la famille, la libre pensée. Je ne te souhaite pas même la chaumière hollandaise, si confortable, ni le beau moulin de Rembrandt... Le marin était libre, le bourgeois était libre; bien plus, le paysan, ce malheureux souffre-douleur, sur qui partout alors on marche et on trépigne. Le paysan, comme en Hollande il se sentait fort sous la loi! quelle noble fierté d’homme!” Jules Michelet, Histoire de France vol. 13 (Paris, 1879), pp. 374-5. See Dumesnil (Paris, 1850), p. 36, Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 9, and Péladan (September 1881), pp. 326-9. The Boston Public Library is the largest repository of this miscellany, including menus and cards commissioned by others, which demonstrate the day-to-day working of the Delâtre atelier. I am grateful to Sinclair Hitchings and Karen Shafts for their assistance while I conducted research on this material. This print is also discussed in Peter S. Samis, “Aemulatio Rembrandi: the 19th-century printmaker Flameng and his prises/crises de conscience” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (December 1990), p. 248. For the identification of this bust as Rembrandt, see also Janine Bailly-Herzberg L’eauforte de peintre au dix-neuvième siècle, la Société des Aquafortistes 1862-67 vol. 1 (Paris, 1972), p. 176.

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354 See Ernest Chesneau, “Albert Dürer” Revue des deux mondes (1881), Émile Galichon, “École allemande, Albert Dürer, sa vie et ses œuvres” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (May, July, October 1861) and Albert Dürer, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1861), Jules Janin, “Albert Dürer” Revue de Paris (1833), pp. 36-60, and Charles Narrey, Albert Dürer à Venise et dans les Pays-Bas (1866) reviewed by Édouard de Barthélemy, “Albert Dürer et Rembrandt van Rijn” L’Artiste (15 December 1866), pp. 58-60. Charles Ephrussi produced the majority of French studies of Dürer: Étude sur le triptique d’Albert Dürer dit le tableau d’autel de Heller (Paris, 1876), Le Prétendu et trilogie d’Albert Dürer (Paris, 1881), Un voyage inédit d’Albert Dürer (Paris, 1881), and Albert Dürer et ses dessins (Paris, 1882). 355 “La plus ancienne eau-forte qui soit à notre connaissance est le Saint Jérôme gravé par Albert Dürer en 1512... L’eau-forte n’avait pas encore pris sa place dans le domaine des arts; elle ne devait compléter son expression, acquérir sa valeur, sa couleur, qu’au XVIIe siècle; en un mot, c’est Rembrandt qui en fut le véritable inventeur; c’est lui qui, d’un simple procédé, fit un art.” Charles Blanc, “De la gravure à l’eau-forte et des eaux-fortes de Jacque” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (February 1861), p. 195. 356 “Albert Durer ne l’a essayé que comme au passage. Elle ne pouvait être son instrument d’élection. Il lui a demandé à peu près ce qu’il demandait au bois: des contours puissants.” Philippe Burty, “Qu’est-ce que la gravure?” L’eau-forte en 1878 vol. 2 (Paris, 1878), p. 10. 357 “Rembrandt est sans contredit le plus illustre des peintres graveurs. Il partage, depuis deux cents ans, avec Albert Dürer, et Marc-Antoine, l’honneur d’alimenter le grand commerce des estampes en Europe, d’être collectionné par un nombre toujours croissant d’amateurs, et d’avoir fait monter de simples graveurs à des prix fabuleux, dans les ventes les plus célèbres.” Charles Blanc, L’Œuvre de Rembrandt reproduit par la photographie, décrit et commenté (Paris, 1853), p. 5. 358 “C’est Rembrandt! le plus illustre des peintresgraveurs, la personnalité la plus marquante de la trilogie qu’il formera dans l’histoire avec Albert

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Durer et Marc-Antoine.” Eugène Montrosier, “L’Expression de la gravure à l’eau-forte” in L’Eau-Forte en 1876 (Paris, 1875), p. 10. “A l’inverse des peintres graveurs, Albert Dürer et Marc Antoine, qui ont été dépassés, Rembrandt est resté sans partage le roi des aquafortistes, et Piranèse seul l’a suivi de près par ses hallucinations architecturales.” J. Peladan, “Rembrandt” L’Artiste (September 1881), p. 331. Gisèle Lambert, “L’Œuvre de Rembrandt dans la collection du Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale” in Jacqueline and Maurice Guillaud, Rembrandt: La figuration humaine (Paris, 1986), pp. 651-8. I am grateful to Gisèle Lambert for sharing with me her research-in-progress on acquisitions made in the nineteenth-century and exchanges of duplicates of Rembrandt’s prints in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “l’une des plus grandes et des plus belles compositions de Rembrandt.” J. Duchesne, Notice des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale (Paris, 1819), p. xviii, cat.59 and Ibid, 657. (total 161 prints exhibited) Cornelius Visscher, Nicolas Berghem, Gerard Endlinck, and Marcantonio Raimondi were better represented than Rembrandt in the installation of 1819 with, respectively, five, six, six, and eight prints. By restoration standards today this was clearly an inappropriate practice and many of the prints that hung in direct sunlight throughout the century were destroyed or irreparably damaged. For information concerning subsequent restoration see Gisèle Lambert and Roger Séveno “La restauration du fonds Rembrandt de la Bibliothèque nationale de France”, Nouvelles de L’Estampe no.151 (March 1997), pp. 3741, and no.154-5 (October 1997), pp. 25-31. “Excepté quatre ou cinq pièces qui, à la rareté joignent le mérite de la beauté, les autres gravures les plus rares sont des études ou des griffonis presque sans mérite, et dont la planche a été brisée par Rembrandt mécontent de son travail.” Duchesne (Paris, 1819), pp. 30-1. J. Duchesne, Notice des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale (Paris, 1823) (total 207 prints exhibited). The exhibition also included seven Berchems,

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nine Dürers (one and then two of his prints were in earlier exhibitions), nine Piranesis (there were two previously), and nineteen Raimondis. Prints after Raphael’s paintings still dominated the display, with sixty images. J. Duschene, Notice des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Royale (Paris, 1837), cats.100-17 (total 364 prints exhibited). J. Duchesne, Description des estampes exposées à la Bibliothèque Impériale (Paris, 1855) (total 413 prints). There were also twenty-three prints by Raimondi, seven by Bercham and nine by Piranesi, five prints after Rubens and sixty-two prints after Raphael’s paintings. No prints by Dürer figured in the exposition that year. Callot was first included in the exhibition of 1837, with one print, and in 1855 with two prints. Henri Delaborde, La Département des Estampes à la Bibliothèque Nationale, notice historique suivie d’un catalogue des estampes (Paris, 1875). The Bibliothèque nationale’s example had been retouched by Antoine de Peters, who was painter for Christian IV, king of Denmark, and Prince Charles of Lorraine. Peters reworked many of the prints in his collection and he handled the retouching so well that specialists believed for a long time that Rembrandt himself had reworked the prints. This Christ Preaching was believed to be a unique state until it was scrutinized closely for an exhibition held at the Bibliothèque nationale in 1908. See Gisèle Lambert, “L’Œuvre de Rembrandt dans la collection du Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale”, in Jacqueline and Maurice Guillaud, Rembrandt: La figuration humaine (Paris, 1986), pp. 651-8. Two collections of manuscripts on reserve in the Cabinet des estampes preserve a large number of the requests submitted in the second half of the nineteenth century: Estampes: Autorisations 1852-85 and Autographes, demandes de cartes 1835-1870 2 vols. “Nous avions projeté, avec Daumier, d’aller voir ensemble, à la Bibliothèque, l’Œuvre réservée de Rembrandt, que Daumier ne connaissait pas. Arrivés aux salles, le garçon à qui nous nous adressions nous mena droit au conservateur en chef qui, ayant mis son binocle

(d’or, je crois), nous demanda nos noms, que je lui déclinai. Il les écrivit. ‘Avez-vous,’ me dit-il, ‘une lettre de quelqu’un de connu? de quelqu’un qui vous recommande?’ — ‘Mais, Monsieur,’ lui dis-je, ‘moi, je n’en ai pas; mais mon ami, qui est là monsieur Daumier, est ma garantie, puisque je suis avec lui.’ — ‘Je ne vous dis pas,’ fit-il d’un air embarrassé, ‘mais je ne connais pas Monsieur.’ Tableau! — ‘Comment! mais Monsieur est le célèbre caricaturiste Daumier dont vous devez avoir à la Bibliothèque l’Œuvre, composé de plusieurs milliers de sujets!’ Voyant l’air ahuri de mon conservateur en chef, je me donnai l’agrément de lui jeter ceci à la tête: — ‘Et moi, Monsieur, sans être célèbre comme mon ami, je n’en ai pas moins un Œuvre composé de plus de trois cents eaux-fortes qu’on m’a dit être ici!’ Le conservateur en chef finit par dire à l’employé qui venait de nous guider: ‘Enfin, communiquez à ces Messieurs!’ Je suppose que, pendant que, sous l’œil de deux gardiens, nous visitions le Rembrandt réservé, on s’informa s’il existait un Honoré Daumier et un Charles Jacque, car, en sortant, personne ne nous mit le grappin sur le collet.” Excerpts from this letter were published in Jacque’s posthumous sales catalogue. Catalogue des tableaux, études peintes, aquarelles, dessins, gravures, objets d’art et d’ameublement... composant l’atelier Charles Jacque, (Paris, 12-15 November 1894), pp. 5-6. 373 Jean-François Raffaëlli, “Un musée des estampes au Louvre.” L’Événement (18 November 1884), p. 2 and Auguste Daligny, “Un musée d’estampes au Louvre, lettre de M. Félix Buhot à M.J.F. Raffaëlli.” Journal des Arts (21 November 1884), p. 1. 374 “Il faut d’abord adresser une demande écrite au conservateur. Puis cette demande, il la faut faire appuyer ensuite par quelque personnage connu, de préférence par un membre de l’administration des Beaux-Arts. Lorsque enfin votre demande, dûment appuyée, est accueillie, vous êtes tenu de vous présenter à jour dit, vousmême, en personne, au conservateur, lequel conservateur, après examen de votre individu, juge en dernier ressort s’il doit ou non vous octroyer cette permission et cette faveur. Auquel cas vous n’aurez plus qu’à signer sur un

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registre, à signer sur votre carte, et enfin à attendre les deux jours par semaine pendant lesquels vous serez autorisé à consulter, à des heures spéciales, les estampes originales que voudra bien vous confier le sous-conservateur, avec lequel vous serrez tout particulièrement poli. Vraiment la porte du cabinet des affaires étrangères est plus facile à forcer.” “Certes je comprends les difficultés et je sais la valeur artistique et autre de certaines épreuves. Je sais nombre de pièces de Rembrandt qui valent une fortune; mais tel tableau au Louvre, payé 100,000 fr. et dont on n’en peut retrouver une seconde épreuve, n’offre pas que je sache, plus de résistance à un malfaiteur, et cependant on ne le cache pas!” See the following sales: Blanc 20 March 1860, Firmin-Didot 16 April-12 May 1877, Danlos and Delisle 26-29 May 1874, Clément 17 January 1870, Delessert 14-17 April 1869, His de la Salle 21 April 1856 and 10-12 January 1881, Desperet 7-10, 12-13 June 1865, Gigoux 3-8, 10 March 1873, Rousseau 27-30 April 1868, Vollon 20-23 May 1901, Thiers 7-10 March 1864, Thibaudeau 18-23 May 1857 and Galichon 10 May 1876. Bonnat’s purchases are listed on microfilm 14, cabinet des dessins, Musée du Louvre, and are now at the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne. See also Petit Palais, Dutuit Collection Rembrandt, eaux-fortes (Paris, 1986) and Suzanne Coblentz, “La collection d’estampes Edmond de Rothschild” Ph.D. Dissertation, Paris, 1947. “Il faut dire que l’entrée de plusieurs de ces galeries est assez difficile, ou, du moins, qu’elle exige des lettres, des références, comme disent les Anglais, des démarches contournées, et presque des intrigues diplomatiques: relations personnelles, recommandations indirectes, de l’obstination et beaucoup de temps.” Thoré-Bürger, “Les Collections particulières” in Paris Guide, par les principaux écrivains et artistes de la France, première partie la Science, l’Art vol. 1 (Paris, 1868), p. 536. None of Rembrandt’s extant copper plates were in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale until 1993 when it acquired two plates from a London sale, Baptism of the Eunuch and Female

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Nude with Feet in Water. For the early history of Rembrandt’s copper plates and their dispersal in the twentieth century see Erik Hinterding, The Fortunes of Rembrandt’s copper plates Trans. Patricia Wardle. Amsterdam: Lakerveld, 1993. See also Hinterding, The History of Rembrandt’s copperplates with a catalogue of those that survive Zwolle, Waanders Uitgevers, 1995; originally published in Simiolus vol. 22, 4 (1993-4), pp. 253-315. See also Carolyn W. MacHardy, “The Rembrandt Plates and Donald Shaw MacLaughlan”, Print Quarterly (March 1993): 4753, Karen F. Jones, “An Album of Rembrandt Restrikes”, The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress vol. 24 (1967), pp. 27-30, and Walter L. Strauss “The Puzzle of Rembrandt’s Plates”, in A.M. Logan (Ed.), Essays in Northern Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begeman on his Sixtieth Birthday (Doornspijk, 1983), pp. 261-7. For additional information on the fate of the Hundred Guilder Print plate see Nicholas Stogdon, “Captain Baillie and The Hundred Guilder Print”, Print Quarterly vol. 13 no.1 (March 1996):53-6. Rymbranesques, ou Essais de gravures par C.H. Watelet, de l’Académie Française et honoraire amateur de l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris, 1785). Hinterding persuasively argues that this plate should no longer be attributed to Watelet. Hinterding, Simiolus (1993-94), p. 266, fn. 68. Pierre-François Basan, Recueil de quatre-vingtcinq Estampes originales, Têtes, Paysages et différens sujets, dessinées et gravées par Rembrandt... (Paris, 1789-97). “En 1861, il [Clément] débuta à l’hôtel Drouot par la vente Arosarena. Ce fut un véritable événement. Quelques estampes de Rembrandt s’élevèrent à des prix inconnus jusque-là: les Trois croix furent achetées 1,860 fr. par M. Firmin Didot (qui les revendit plus tard 11,000 fr. à M. Edmond de Rothschild) et un superbe épreuve de la Pièce aux cent florins atteignit 3,120 fr., somme bien dépassé six ans après à la vente Harrach... où Théodore Rousseau n’hésita pas à aller jusqu’à 8,000 francs pour le premier état décrit par Bartsch.” Anonymous, “La vie artistique et la curiosité, Charles

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Clément, marchand d’estampes de la Bibliothèque nationale.” Le Temps (27 January 1886), p. 2. Eugène Dutuit, Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes: école flamande et hollandaise vol. 5 (Paris, 188185), p. 565. Dutuit vol. 5 (Paris, 1881-85), p. 566. Dutuit vol. 5 (Paris, 1881-85), p. 566. Dutuit vol. 5 (Paris, 1881-85), p. 568. Dutuit vol. 5 (Paris, 1881-85), p. 566. “L’eau-forte est un croquis spirituel et fin, qui exprime d’autant mieux l’esprit du peintre, que la pointe, par son jeu extrêmement libre, peut en badinant, c’est à dire sans efforts et sans labeur, représenter sur métal l’idée capricieuse qui vient s’offrir à son génie.” Pierre Deleschamps, Des mordans, des vernis et des planches dans l’art du graveur, ou traité complet de la gravure (Paris, 1836), pp. 98-9. Jules Renouvier, Des types et des manières des maîtres graveurs pour servir à l’histoire de la gravure, en Italie, en Allemagne, dans les Pays-Bas et en France. (Montpellier, 1853), p. 81. “Mûre pour un art qui n’eut rien à emprunter au dépôt classique de la vieille Italie.” Renouvier p.36 “Ni un idéaliste, ni un éclectique, c’est un artiste fantasque et vrai, dont l’œil de lynx voit l’humanité dans sa plus saisissante réalité à Amsterdam.” Renouvier (Montpellier, 1853), p. 38. “N’a rendu que la vérité et la vivacité de la vie” Renouvier (Montpellier, 1853), p. 41. “Une liberté toute féconde. Il réagit contre les théories et les exemples venus de Rome... Inspiré de son temps et retrempé dans la nature, à l’égal des plus grands artistes, il eut un don unique: il fait sublime dans l’ignoble.” Renouvier (Montpellier, 1853), p. 42. “Principaux peintres-graveurs de diverses écoles qui ont illustré l’art de la gravure à l’eau-forte.” Maxime Lalanne, Traité de la gravure à l’eauforte (Paris, 1866), p. 99. “Il comprendra que l’eau-forte a cela d’essentiellement vital, c’est là la force de son passé et la garantie de son avenir, que, plus que tout autre genre de gravure sur le métal, elle porte l’empreinte du caractère de l’artiste. Elle le personifie et le représente si bien, elle s’identifie

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tellement avec son idée, qu’elle semble souvent amenée à s’annihiler comme procédé en faveur de cette idée même. Rembrandt en a donné une preuve frappante.” Lalanne, (Paris, 1866), pp. 9-10. “Rembrandt a souvent procédé de la sorte; en suivant les états successifs de ses planches, on se rend compte des reprises de ses travaux; on voit qu’il s’attachait à travailler extrêmement une partie quelconque de son sujet sans toucher aux autres; il en tirait une épreuve; puis il revenait sur cette même partie avec des travaux plus fins, et passait à d’autres plans qu’il travaillait suivant l’effet qui le préoccupait.” Lalanne (Paris, 1866), p. 68. “Il serait très avantageux que chaque artiste pût tirer ses épreuves lui-même. Rembrandt en est le plus illustre exemple, puisque de sa main sont sorties bien des notions que l’on utilise aujourd’hui.” Lalanne (Paris, 1866), p. 85. A.P. Martial, Nouveau traité de la gravure à l’eau-forte (Paris, 1873). Théophile Gautier, “Un mot sur l’eau-forte” Pref. to Martial’s Nouveau traité de la gravure à l’eau-forte. “Et bien! la conquête est faite! L’eau-forte, presque abandonnée depuis le dix-huitième siècle, est redevenue une des expressions de l’art français... Et savez-vous ce qui avait fait délaisser l’eau-forte? C’était le noble esthétique, censée grecque et romaine, qui recommandait – commandait – le ‘grand style et le grand art.’ L’art facile, comme la littérature facile, étaient proscrits, en ce temps-là. L’inspiration n’était rien, à côté de la patience. Les trois cent soixante eaux-fortes de Rembrandt ne comtaient pas à côté d’une gravure de quelque académicien. ‘Les eaux-fortes dit le Dictionnaire Bescherelle, sont pour les collections d’estampes ce que sont les ébauches pour les collections de tableaux.’ Mais peut-être qu’il n’y a point de ‘grand art’ et de petit art. Peut-être que la Pièce aux cent florins de Rembrandt est de l’art au même titre qu’une superbe gravure de MarcAntoine d’après Raphaël. Le musée d’Amsterdam a refusé mille guinées de son épreuve du portrait de Jan Six par Rembrandt; quelle épreuve de gravure a jamais atteint ce prix-là?”

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Thoré-Bürger, “Un mot sur l’eau-forte” Preface to Martial’s Nouveau traité de la gravure à l’eau-forte. “On ne saurait enfermer dans une seule époque un homme né après la première efflorescence du XVIe siècle, appartenant par la date (16061674) au XVIIe, et se rattachant par son influence à notre époque même qui le comprend, l’interprète, et lui empruntera une conception nouvelle de l’art.” Saint-Arroman (Paris, 1876), p. 29. “On étudie, on pénètre, on sent l’œuvre de Rembrandt avec tant de puissance que c’est lui-même en quelque sorte qui dirige le combat actuel.” Saint-Arroman (Paris, 1876), p. 44. “Quelle différence pour eux entre l’ouvrier graveur qui copie, et qui se heurte immédiatement à la sécheresse du cuivre, – et l’homme qui esquisse, d’un coup direct et définitif, sur une substance obéissante et souple, la figure qu’il veut créer!” Raoul de Saint-Arroman, La gravure à l’eau-forte (Paris, 1876), p. 15. “Si l’art que nous étudions avait à ce moment ses lettres de noblesse, il n’avait pas toute sa valeur réelle. Il n’avait pas encore atteint cette suprême allure que lui donne la liberté. Mais on était sur la route... Ce fut Rembrandt qui lui donna sa splendeur au XVIIe siècle. Il la para de tous ses charmes, il la colora mystérieusement, et en l’inondant de poésie, il la fit entrer dans une nouvelle vie. Rembrandt lui apporte l’ombre et la lumière.” Raoul de Saint-Arroman (1876), pp. 27-8. Frédéric Villot, “De la gravure à l’eau-forte” L’Artiste (1834), p. 302. Charles Blanc, “Janus Lutma” L’Artiste (1839), p. 179. Edme François Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pièces qui forment l’œuvre de Rembrandt. Updated and Augmented by Helle & Glomy (Paris, 1751). Although the subject groups are broader, Gersaint’s format remains the standard and can be seen in Christopher White’s authoritative Rembrandt as an Etcher: A Study of the Artist at Work (New Haven, 1999 2nd ed.). Pierre Yver published a supplement to Gersaint’s catalogue in 1756 and it was republished again by J.J. Claussin in 1824, with another

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supplement following in 1828. Pierre Yver, Supplément au catalogue raisonné de M.M. Gersaint, Helle & Glomy de toutes les pièces qui forment l’œuvre de Rembrandt. (Amsterdam, 1756). There were a few catalogues published in other countries, including Yver’s supplement and studies by Amadé de Burgy, published in the Hague in 1755, and another by Bartsch, published in Vienna in 1797. Amadé de Burgy Catalogue de l’incomparable et la seule complete collection des estampes de Rembrandt. (The Hague, 1755). Adam von Bartsch, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’œuvre de Rembrandt et ceux de ses principaux imitateurs composé par les sieurs Gersaint, Helle, Glomy et P. Yver. 2 vol. in 1 (Vienna, 1797). In 1824, Ignace-Joseph de Claussin wrote a catalogue of Rembrandt’s prints which was an unacknowledged variation of Bartsch’s work. Thomas Wilson also published a catalogue of his own collection, which included many of Rembrandt’s prints, in 1835. Thomas Wilson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the prints of Rembrandt, by an amateur (London, 1835). In his significant study of French printmaking, Michel Melot suggested that the notion of a painter-printmaker came into being in France in the 1870s and developed in the 1880s. See Michel Melot, The Impressionist Print (New Haven, 1996), p. 118. Christopher White noted that Bartsch described Rembrandt’s dual activity as “peintres-graveurs” in his catalogue of 1797. See Christopher White “Rembrandt as an Etcher”, in Albert Blankert et al, Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact. (Zwolle, 1997), p. 382. It is certainly possible to trace the currency of the concept of the painter-printmaker in France to as early as the 1840s and artists from the Barbizon school. It was a widespread practice by the time the Société des Aquafortistes was founded in 1862. Charles Blanc, “Janus Lutma” L’Artiste (1839), pp. 179-81. Blanc said he had to limit the scope of his study because he estimated it would cost over 300,000 francs to reproduce all the etchings. Gersaint had divided his catalogue into twelve parts: 1) Self-portraits, 2) Old Testament

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subjects, 3) New Testament subjects, 4) other religious subjects, 5) allegorical, historical or fantasy subjects, 6) beggars, 7) academic figures, 8) landscapes, 9) male portraits, 10) fantastic heads of men, 11) female portraits, 12) studies of heads and scribbles. Blanc shuffled these into six categories: 1) the Bible: Old and New Testament, religious subjects, 2) allegories, subjects taken from poetry, studies of morals, caprices, 3) beggars, 4) “les sujets libres”, nudes, and academic figures, 5) portraits, 6) landscapes and animals. Unlike Gersaint, Blanc put what he called etched “scribbles”, meaning incomplete studies, into their appropriate subject category. Blanc vol. 1 (1873), p. vi. Blanc (1870), pp. 682-3. Blanc summarized the contents of the inventory in an article in a daily newspaper in 1876. See “Lettres de hollande, visite à Rubens et à Rembrandt, Amsterdam, septembre 1876” Le Temps (11 October 1876), p. 3. Blanc L’Artiste (1834), 180. “Auguste Delâtre, qui fut formé par Charles Jacque et qui, le premier, étudia les impressions de Rembrandt: il fut le rénovateur de l’impression.” Henri Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, guide de l’amateur d’estampes modernes vol. 5 (Paris, 1885-92), p. 173. The text was available both through the July edition of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and as an individual publication. Henry Middleton held the same views as Blanc and two catalogues were produced for the 1877 exhibition. Dutuit vol. 1 (1883-86), p. 9. The chronological approach was more popular in England and was used again in 1896 in an exhibition at the British Museum. Although Dutuit returned to Blanc’s classification by subject, he looked back to Gersaint’s twelve-part structure. “Mais ce nom de Rembrandt suffit. Nous avons essayé de donner une idée d’un pareil homme dans la notice de sa vie, nous n’avons rien à y ajouter.” Eugène Dutuit, Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes: école flamande et hollandaise (Paris, 1881-85), p. i.

422 Louis Gonse, “L’Œuvre de Rembrandt, 2e et dernier article” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (December 1885), pp. 507-8. 423 “Un seul homme aurait pu tout trancher, et, possédant toutes les connaissances générales et particulières désirable, ainsi que l’expérience consommée de l’eau-forte, nous donner le catalogue définitif de l’œuvre gravé de Rembrandt. Malheureusement cet homme est mort. C’était Rembrandt.” Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle vol. 8 (Paris, 1885-92), pp. 22-3, fn1. 424 Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle vol. 6 (Paris, 1885-92), p. 113. 425 Paris, 20 March 1860. 426 Sir Francis Seymour Haden, The Etched Work of Rembrandt: True and False (London, 1895), pp. 6-7. 427 “C’est là le secret, je n’en doute pas, de la liberté qui distingue les traits de Rembrandt.” Philippe Burty, Études à l’eau-forte, par Francis Seymour Haden (Paris, 1866), p. 14. 428 Burty (Paris, 1866), cat.32. 429 Richard Schneiderman, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints of Sir Seymour Haden (London, 1983), p. 121. He also noted a further precedent for Haden’s iconography in the final plate of Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione. 430 Quoted by S.R. Koehler in “The Works of American Etchers”, American Art Review (November 1879), p. 5. See also Rosemarie L. Tovell, A New Class of Art: The Artist’s Print in Canadian Art, 1877-1920. (Ottawa, 1996), p. 26-7. 431 Blanc (Paris, 1853), p. 3. 432 “Qui donc lui a appris à graver?” ThoréBürger, “Généalogie de Rembrandt” L’Artiste (18 July 1858), p. 163. 433 Jules Claretie, L’Eau-forte en 1880 (Paris, 1880), p. 6 and Abraham Bosse, Traité des manières de graver en taille douce (Tours, 1645). 434 Émile Michel, “La Jeunesse de Rembrandt, 2e article” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (May 1890), p. 435. 435 Blanc Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1861), p. 194. 436 Claretie (1880), p. 6. 437 “L’eau-forte est le caprice, la fantaisie, le moyen le plus prompt de rendre sa pensée.” Alfred Cadart (1862) Archives nationales F21/123.

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438 Burty (November 1873), p. 331. “L’Eau-forte, libre et spontanée, échappant à l’enseignement administratif, maintient bien plus qu’on peut croire la sincérité d’une Ecole. 439 See also Pierre-Oliva Fanica, Charles Jacque 1813-1894, Graveur original et peintre animalier (Paris, 1995), pp. 132-3. 440 The pamphlet Cadart published advertising the Société des Aquafortistes’ publication in the mid-1860s stated “Depuis quelques années un groupe de jeunes artistes s’était tourné vers l’eau-forte, comme offrant le moyen le plus vif et le plus spontané de rendre la pensée... Sans être une école, non plus qu’une académie, la Société des Aquafortiste, qui s’est constituée sans président ni patronage, montrant par là son amour pour l’indépendance, n’en relève pas moins de status particuliers, dont un article seul a besoin d’être connu du public.” Archives nationales F21/123. 441 Cadart wrote in a letter to Comte Walewski, minister of the Fine Arts, 3 September 1862: “Elle (la société) a fait appel à tous ceux qui se livrent à la pratique de la gravure à l’eau-forte, et a déjà autour d’elle des talents qui cherchent la vérité dans l’art par des moyens très différents. Elle tient avant tout à donner au même titre qu’une exposition officielle d’œuvres d’art, le résumé sincère de la peinture contemporaine.” Archives nationales F21/123. 442 Letters from Cadart to the department of the ministry of Fine Arts in the 1860s demonstrate that he successfully convinced the ministry to order between 50 and 100 examples of the annual publication. Archives nationales F21/123. 443 “Cette Société n’a d’autre code que l’individualisme. Chacun doit inventer et graver lui-même le sujet qu’il apporte à l’œuvre collective. Aucun genre ne prévaut, aucune manière n’est recommandée; on est libre de montrer toute l’originalité qu’on a, et personne ne s’en fait faute.” Théophile Gautier, “Un Mot sur l’eau-forte”, in Bailly-Herzberg, L’eau-forte de peintre au dix-neuvième siècle, la Société des Aquafortistes 1862-67 2 vols. (Paris, 1972), p. 267. 444 “Avec ses ressources, en apparence si bornées, elle a su fournir à Rembrandt les lumières tremblotantes, les pénombres mystérieuses et les

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noirs profonds dont il avait besoin pour ses philosophes et ses alchimistes cherchant le microcosme; pour ses synagogues d’architecture salomonique, ses Christs ressuscitant des morts, ses paysages traversés d’ombres et de rayons, et toutes les fantasmagories de son imagination songeuse, puissante et bizarre. Sa palette, si riche pourtant, ne lui a pas donné une gamme d’effets plus étendue.” Théophile Gautier, “Un Mot sur l’eau-forte” Société des Aquafortistes, Preface to first year (Paris, August 1863). “Pourtant Rembrandt en a tiré des effets magiques et prestigieux, et les moindres bavochures, dont il a égratigné le cuivre, se vendent à prix d’or.” Théophile Gautier, “Revue dramatique” Moniteur (27 October 1862). See also BaillyHerzberg (Paris, 1972), p. 89. “On admirait bien dans les ateliers les chefsd’œuvre du plus étonnant des aquafortistes — de Rembrandt. On y accrochait contre les murs quelques pièces d’Ostade et P. Potter ou de Van Dyck et de Fyt, ou de Claude et de Callot, ou même de Goya.” Thoré-Bürger, Société des Aquafortistes, Preface to third year (Paris, 1865). “la Société [d’]aquafortiste s’est instituée... pour continuer la tradition illustre de Rembrandt, d’Albert Durer, de Canaletto, de Rubens, de van Dyck, de Watteau, de Ribera, de Boucher, de Fragonard, de Goya, d’Ingres, de Delacroix, qui tous ont confié à l’eau-forte leurs caprices les plus délicats et leurs plus intimes aspirations.” Théodore de Banville, “Société des Aquafortistes” L’Union des Arts (1 October 1864). See also Bailly-Herzberg (Paris, 1972), p. 129. “De là cette vibration de la vie, ce heurt des lumières et des ombres, cette magie des reflets, cette gradation des lointains, qui font des eauxfortes de Rembrandt — pour prendre celui dont le génie et la main résument tout dans cet art — des tableaux si émouvants, si infiniment changeants.” Philippe Burty, “L’Eau-forte moderne en France” in L’Eau-forte en 1874 (Paris, 1874), pp. 5-13. First published in La Renaissance littéraire et artistique (November 1873), pp. 321-3, and 330-1. See p. 322. For information on Burty’s personal art collection and the impact of his writings on

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Impressionism and Japonisme see Gabriel P. Weisberg, The Independent Critic: Philippe Burty and the Visual Arts of Mid-Nineteenth Century France (New York, 1993). Weisberg notes that Léon Gambetta chose Burty as editor of La République Française because of his stand on individuality and liberty (p. 145). Aspects of this study appeared earlier in Weisberg’s article “Philippe Burty: A Notable Critic of the Nineteenth Century” Apollo (April 1970): 296-300. See also Ségolène Le Men, “Printmaking as metaphor for translation: Philippe Burty and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in the Second Empire” in Michael R. Orwicz (Ed.), Art Criticism and its Institutions in NineteenthCentury France (New York, 1994), pp. 88-108. 450 Philippe Burty, “La Belle épreuve” L’Eau-forte en 1875 (Paris, 1875), pp. 7-13. Burty wrote this article in November 1874 and excerpts were first published in Paris à l’eau-forte (20 December 1874), pp. 9-11. 451 “Il est le temps de donner au public la raison, non pas de la valeur accordée à un ensemble d’œuvres que le mérite d’un maître rend toujours intéressantes, mais du prix bien plus élevé attaché parfois à certaines de ces œuvres. Lorsque la rareté ne détermine pas cette hausse de prix, la raison en est dans ‘la belle épreuve’. La beauté de l’épreuve, due à un ensemble de circonstances que nous allons expliquer, classe à part le sentiment de l’artiste qui l’a conçue, l’habileté de l’imprimeur qui l’a fait naître, le goût de l’amateur qui la distingue et la choisi.” Burty (20 September 1874), pp. 7-8. 452 “Singulier dans tout, Rembrandt, le seul ou à bien peu près parmi les Hollandais, a employé ce papier du Japon, qui est épais comme le velours, miroitant comme le satin, du ton ambré d’un fragment du Paros antique, et qui fait paraître l’épreuve comme perpétuellement caressée et réchauffée par un rayon de soleil. Rembrandt tenait ces feuilles de quelque capitaine ou de quelque négociant hollandais, revenus de Désima ou de Kioto. Il en était chiche. Il les réservait pour les portraits d’amis, pour ces grands pièces qui exigent des noirs soutenus et nuancés, en opposition avec des lumières larges et des détails francs. C’est sur ce

papier qu’est tirée la superbe épreuve du Jésus guérissant les malades, qui a été récemment si fidèlement copiée.” Burty (20 September 1874), p. 10. Gersaint was the first French writer to mention that most of the first proofs of Rembrandt’s prints were executed on Asian paper, identified as Chinese by Gersaint. Gersaint (Paris, 1751), p. xxxi. 453 “Rembrandt imprimait lui-même. Nous n’en saurions douter depuis que le docteur Scheltema, le savant archiviste d’Amsterdam, a retrouvé dans les archives de cette ville et a publié l’inventaire de tout ce qui fut constaté dans la maison de Rembrandt, lorsqu’elle fut saisie, en 1656, pour être vendue par la Chambre des Insolvables. On y rencontre semé ça et là tout l’attirail de graveur-imprimeur. ‘Dans le cabinet, derrière l’antichambre: une petite table en bois de chêne, quatre abat-jours; une presse en bois de chêne. Dans la chambre de derrière ou le salon: une presse en bois jaune marbré; une petite armoire en bois jaune marbré.’... Et ce style d’huissier priseur suffit seul encore à nous faire voir le maître, courbé dans le demi-jour de ‘la chambre de derrière.’ Encrant son cuivre avec les soins attentifs d’un bon ouvrier, choisissant une feuille ‘du plus grand format’ et tournant le moulinet de sa ‘presse en bois jaune marbré’.” Burty (Paris, 1875), pp. 9-10. 454 “Dès cette époque [speaking of 16 years ago when he first started prints], j’avais été frappé de ce qu’il y avait de faux dans la gravure moderne et de la double cause qui menaçait de la faire dévier dans ses progrès mêmes, en la poussant dans une route mauvaise: — d’une part, elle devenait d’autant plus sèche qu’elle était plus finie; de l’autre, elle rejetait ou répudiait, avec une légèreté extraordinaire, l’art même des maîtres, l’art de Rembrandt, chez qui l’on trouve de si puissants effets; elle les répudiait, dis-je, en refusant d’employer l’encre d’imprimerie, qui permet seule de les obtenir.” Comte Lepic, “Comment je devins graveur à l’eauforte” in Raoul de Saint-Arroman, La Gravure à l’eau-forte (Paris, 1876), p. 91. 455 “Mais le véritable créateur du genre de l’eauforte, celui-qui en a fait un art égal à la peinture ce fut Rembrandt. Que ce maître prodigieux

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emploie la pointe, l’eau-forte ou le burin, c’est le genie même de la gravure qui conduit sa main. Rembrandt a montré une création nouvelle dans chacune de ses gravures. Il faudrait les examiner une à une, pour les étudier comme elles le méritent. La poursuite de la perfection n’est pas interrompue chez le maître lorsque sa planche est terminée. Il imprime lui-même, et par ce moyen il ajoute à l’effet qu’il avait d’abord réalisé par la gravure. L’imprimeur chez Rembrandt est encore le peintre.” Félix Bracquemond, “Exposition Universelle: La Gravure, I, II” Le Rappel (16 September 1878), p. 3. 456 “Avant de terminer, il me paraît utile d’insister sur une point qui est devenu d’assez haute importance dans la gravure. La plupart des graveurs à l’eau-forte s’en remettent trop ouvertement à l’habileté des imprimeurs en estampes pour ajouter à l’effet, et aussi pour corriger ou dissimuler les imperfections de leurs planches. Les expédients du tirage de l’épreuve viennent ainsi en aide à l’insuffisance des travaux de l’artiste; mais ces ressources, naturellement limitées, ne supléent pas aux négligences du gravure. Les imprimeurs en estampes ne donnent à ces travaux comme complément de la coloration qui leur manque, que des tons sombres, une espèce de manière noire générale. Qu’on ne me cite pas — je l’ai cité moi-même — l’exemple de Rembrandt, qui imprimait ses planches lui-même. Le graveur qui imprime les estampes sorties de sa main continue son œuvre. Il est le maître du choix des procédés. Tout autre est le cas du graveur qui, selon l’usage et d’après la règle générale, remet sa planche à l’imprimeur pour en tirer des épreuves. L’artiste ne doit pas compter sur d’autres que lui-même. Tous les tons du tableau gravé doivent être sur le métal, et il y a défaillance à réclamer de l’imprimeur cet achèvement que l’artiste sait, peut et doit leur donner.” Félix Bracquemond, “Exposition Universelle: La Gravure, IV” Le Rappel (12 October 1878), p. 3. 457 “Avec la collaboration d’Auguste Delâtre, l’incomparable imprimeur d’épreuves d’essait, Bracquemond avait donné à la belle épreuve moderne son caractère spéciale. La morsure savamment graduée et presque toujours pro-

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fonde de ses tailles devait déposer des épaisseurs d’encre puissantes et des gris riches. Mais le premier chez nous (Rembrandt à peu près seul dans le passé l’a eu aussi) il avait eu le goût des papiers parfaits, savoureux pour les yeux comme un fruit mur à point pour le palais.” Philippe Burty, “Silhouette d’Artistes contemporains, le peintre et graveur Félix Bracquemond” L’Art (1878). “A Delâtre. S’il eut vécu dans le temps de Rembrandt, celui-ci certainement l’eut employé à tirer ses eaux-fortes.” Haden wrote this dedicatory inscription to Delâtre in a copy of his L’Œuvre gravé de Rembrandt, which Burty published in France (Paris, 1880). Delâtre recounted this story in an autobiographical letter he wrote at the end of his life. I thank Janine Bailly-Herzberg who gave the original letter to me; I subsequently donated it to the Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes. See also Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle vol. 5 (Paris, 1885-92), p. 169. In Katherine Lochnan’s important study The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler, she assigns this role to Delâtre. See Lochnan (1984), p. 55. Three editions of Hamerton’s book were published in London in 1868, 1876, and 1880. “J’en suis fâché, fait Guérard en entrant, mais je ne vous apporte pas les plaques que je vous ai promises... Parce que j’ai lu l’article de P. Burty sur ‘la Belle Épreuve,’ et que je ne veux pas qu’on me fasse de passe-droit.” “Les procédés de Guérard” Paris à l’eau-forte vol. 6 (27 Dec 1874), pp. 19-20. “La Belle épreuve est d’abord celle que tire l’artiste lui-même et qui satisfait à l’impression qu’il a voulu produire, et ensuite celle qui fait partie des premiers tirages soignés d’une plaque terminée. Les épreuves antérieures des différentes états par lesquels passe un cuivre, pendant sa gravure, ne sont que des essais, des tâtonnements, et n’ont qu’un intérêt d’étude et de rareté. Quelle que soit l’habileté d’un imprimeur, il faut donc établir en fait qu’il n’arrivera jamais aux résultats qu’obtiendra l’auteur d’une graveur. Tous deux se serviront des mêmes agents, mais l’artiste aura de plus le sentiment créateur qui a dirigé sa main et sa

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pensée... Rembrandt ne procédait pas autrement: il tirait ses Eaux-fortes lui-même, et je crois qu’on ne peut que gagner à suivre l’exemple d’un tel maître. La moindre de ses épreuves me paraît préférable aux meilleures épreuves des imprimeurs les plus renommés.” Henri Guérard, “Notes relatives à la question de la Belle épreuve” Paris à l’eau-forte vol. 6 (3 January 1875), pp. 25-6. 463 “On peut blâmer que les graveurs subalternes, qui comptent sur la dextérité, l’expérience et le goût de l’imprimeur pour tirer quelque chose de planches médiocres, et qui partent de ce principe que Rembrandt ayant cuisinés ses épreuves, en cuisinant on est Rembrandt.” Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle vol. 5 (Paris, 1885-92), p. 174. 464 “Le Victor Hugo n’est pas encore mordu. J’y travaille en ce moment et cela me semble marcher, mais c’est précisement cette heure mystèrieuse de la morsure que je redoute. Si j’avais une image de Rembrandt dans mon chambre je lui allumerais un cierge.” Undated letter from Félix Buhot to Philippe Burty, Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie, Fondation Jacques Doucet, manuscripts, microfilm BIII, pp. 1956-7. 465 “Qui poussa Rembrandt à se livrer à l’eau-forte, à faire établir plusieurs presses dans sa maison, à recueillir ces feuilles de papier ancien qui font les épreuves argentées, et les feuilles de papier japonais qui font les épreuves dorées? Pourquoi, à tous les emportements, les inquiétudes, les sciences, les bonhomies du génie, joignait-il tous les raffinements du dilettante? Pourquoi confia-t-il toujours au cuivre une idée inédite ou un portrait nouveau? C’est que l’Eau-forte est la confidente la plus fidèle des heures où le coloriste sent son cerveau brûlant et sa main prête. Le burin est un instrument positif, scientifique en quelque sorte. Il vous montre les objets l’un après l’autre... dans leur essence constitutive et non dans leurs relations avec le monde ambiant, non tels que nos yeux les perçoivent librement, mais tels qu’ils leur arrivent par les verres d’une jumelle. Il y a dans l’œuvre d’Albert Durer tout un côté embarrassé, gauche à force d’application... Rien de cela chez Rembrandt, quoique lorsque la fan-

taisie lui prend de faire rutiler des chevelures rousses, ou de préciser l’éclat des rixdales neuves chez un Peseur d’or, il soit d’une précision prestigieuse. Nul enfantillage, mais une compréhension toute humaine des phénomènes naturels, une science profonde de l’orgueil humain qui aime à dominer sur les choses, un art incomparable de dire au imagination nerveuse: ‘Fouillons ensemble ces ténèbres, suivons ensemble ce jeu des demi-teintes fuyantes et des reflets mobiles, clignons ensemble devant cet éclair qui jaillit de la vitre du docteur Faustus, devant cette pluie de rayons qui tombe sur les bergers éperdus et leur annonce que le ciel est en liesse de se réconcilier avec la terre.’” Philippe Burty, “Qu’est-ce que la gravure?” L’Eau-forte en 1878 (Paris, 1878), pp. 11-12. 466 “Quel est ce personnage au regard profond, à la figure cavalière, qui a l’air de suivre dans le vague de sa pensée quelque vision fugitive? Est-ce un soldat, est-ce un savant, est-ce un penseur? C’est Rembrandt!... M. Maso Gilli qui a essayé de rendre à notre admiration les traits de ce dieu de l’art, à outrepassé la mesure. Tout en louant d’excellentes qualités de facture, nous pouvons bien dire que nous trouvons le portrait trop arrangé. Ce n’est pas ainsi que nous nous représentons l’auteur de tant de merveilles.” Eugène Montrosier, “L’Expression de la gravure à l’eau-forte” in L’Eau-forte en 1876 (Paris, 1875), p. 10. 467 “Rembrandt, dont Léopold Flameng a deviné le secret en exécutant ses belles copies de la Pièce aux cent florins, et de la Ronde de Nuit, a laissé des œuvres superbes dans lesquelles tous les sentiments sont marqués d’une façon magistrale. Les planches qu’on connaît de lui sont à la fois concises et libres. Du même bond, elles touchent au réalisme le plus profond et à l’idéalisme le plus subtil. Après être redescendues jusqu’à terre, elles remontent d’un élan vertigineux aux régions pacifiques où s’épanouit l’inspiration religieuse. Rembrandt a, pour ainsi parler, inventé des ‘manières’ perdues depuis, pour dompter la lumière, ce docile collaborateur de son génie! Nul mieux que lui n’a possédé et employé la science du ‘clair obscur.’

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Les autres peintres hollandais, ses devanciers, ses contemporains ou ses successeurs, n’ont pas eu des visées aussi larges. Plus naïfs dans leur culte pour les beautés qui s’épanouissaient sous leurs regards, ils esquissèrent, simplement, sur le cuivre, sans autre mobile que de donner un nouveau cours à leur impression intime.” Montrosier (Paris, 1875), pp. 8-9. “Jamais le burin n’aurait pu, comme un de ses Eaux-Fortes, nous donner une idée du talent de Rembrant: à défaut de l’œuvre qui a disparu ou que le maître n’a point parfait sur la toile, nous en avons au moins la sensation.” Émile Cardon, “L’Eau-forte des peintres” L’Eau-forte en 1879 (Paris, 1879), p. 9. The offices of Paris à l’eau-forte were based in the Hôtel du Petit-Journal at rue Lafayette 61, Paris. See Anonymous, Les Masques, after Callot (23 November 1873), Paul Nanteuil’s Eros, (12 April 1874), and Portrait, and Les Lavandières after Célestin Nanteuil (19 April 1874), Gery’s Danse champêtre, Une Fête galante, and Gilles à la Guitare, after Watteau (26 April 1874); Courtry’s Trois Têtes, after Watteau (10 May 1874), Pilet’s Le Brebis Hollandaise, after Van de Velde (16 August 1874), Oudart’s Paysage de Ruysdaël (13 December 1874), Champollion’s Le Vielleux, after Van Ostade (16 May 1875), L’Homme à la Cruche, after Teniers (7 June 1874), Un Buveur, after Teniers (31 January 1876) and Les Fumeurs, after Teniers (16 April 1876). “Enfin, les figures que M. Protche emprunte à Rembrandt sont bien dans le style de ce maître et rappellent l’allure hardi et les tons accusés de ses dessins.” Paris à l’eau-forte (17 May 1874), p. 44. “Tout en conservant l’accent du maître, la jeune artiste a donné à son travail cette impression personnelle, dont Guérard parlait à propos de ‘la belle épreuve’.” Paris à l’eau-forte (10 January 1875), p. 38. “L’aqua-fortiste qui se cache sous un voile impénétrable nous a donné, cette semaine, une merveilleuse copie d’Un Gueux, de Rembrandt. Il nous écrit même que si quelqu’un de nos amis désire avoir une épreuve originale de la même gravure, sur papier du dix-septième siècle, avec toutes sortes de garanties d’authenticité, il nous

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en fournira autant que nous pourrons en désirer — Il y a quelque apparence qu’il les fabrique lui-même.” Paris à l’eau-forte (30 April 1876), p. 129. One of these posters can be seen in the Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes and both were illustrated in the journal (20 April 1873). Cats were frequently illustrated in the journal in 1873. “Où Rembrandt, au milieu de ces ténèbres rousses, Faire luire quelque Faust en son costume ancien.” Théophile Gautier, Albertus ou l’âme et le péché, légende théologique (Paris, 1831), stanza three. Hugo (Paris, 1966 ed.), pp. 343-4. Anonymous, “Le Docteur Faustus” Magasin Pittoresque (December 1847), pp. 393-4. This article is also cited in “Quelques ouvrages français sur Rembrandt” in Jean Vallery-Radot, Rembrandt graveur (Paris, 1956). “Un vieux magicien dans son atelier de sorcellerie.” “Le Microcosme, de Rembrandt, reproduit par Guérard, marque d’autant mieux notre étape, qu’il a servi de modèle à notre ami Frédéric Regamey pour dessiner notre dernière affiche, dont on a pu voir le merveilleux effet sur les murs de Paris. Peut-être est-il un peu hardi d’avoir remplacé les caractères mystérieux qui apparaissent au vieux Faust par une simple annonce, mais on sait que nous n’abusons pas du charlatanisme, et nous nous excusons de toute intention irrespectueuse envers le maître de l’Eau-forte. L’excellente reproduction de Guérard prouve, du reste, que nous avons pour lui toute la déférence voulue, – et malgré la vive insistance de notre chat, co-fondateur et co-propriétaire de ce journal, nous l’avons absolument banni de notre gravure, bien qu’il fut parvenu à glisser dans notre affiche sa tête effrontée.” Paris à l’eau-forte (14 March 1875), p. 112. “Rembrandt dit Eau-forte” and “Pendant que Rembrandt dit Eau-forte, Henry Somm dit Paris, et personnifie l’actualité moderne dans la Parisienne la plus féminine qu’on puisse imaginer.” Paris à l’eau-forte (14 March 1875), p. 112.

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481 “Je lis dans le dernier numéro du ‘Journal des arts’ que vous êtes favorable à la création des Cabinets d’Estampes en province, idée présentée à la suite de mon projet d’un Musée d’Estampes, au Louvre, par Buhot. Je persiste à croire, ce que j’avais dit à Buhot avant qu’il me présente cette idée, que l’ouverture d’un Musée des Estampes à Paris entrainerait fatalement des créations du même ordre, en province, et que c’était à Paris qu’il fallait réussir d’abord.” Bibliothèque nationale manuscript naf 14676, p. 275, Undated letter to Bracquemond (probably November 1884). 482 “Mais la rue ne suffit point. Ce n’est certes pas là que le public trouvera souvent l’occasion d’admirer les chefs-d’œuvre qu’il faudrait lui montrer d’abord. Ce n’est pas dans les cartons à dix centimes qu’il aura beaucoup de chance de trouver le Jésus guérissant les malades de Rembrandt dont naguère un amateur bien connu payait 28.000 fr. une épreuve; ni l’Annonciation aux Bergers, ni le Portrait du bourgmestre Six du maître hollandais; ni les burins originaux d’Albert Dürer... ni les admirables eaux-fortes de Claude Lorrain, ni les gravures en couleur de Bartolozzi, ni les chatoyant mezzo-tintes de Reynolds et de Watson, etc.” Félix Buhot, “Les Salles d’estampes dans les musées de province” Journal des Arts (25 November 1884), p. 1. 483 Félix Buhot, “Les Salles d’estampes dans les musées de province” Journal des Arts (28 November 1884), pp. 1-2. 484 “De Rembrandt surtout, ce maître de maîtres, dont huit œuvres ici gravées suffiraient à nous captiver long-temps, notamment ce prodigieux tableau du Louvre, Le ménage du menuisier, que vient visiter chaque jour le soleil doux et chaud, le soleil au ton d’or moulu de la peinture hollandaise.” Félix Buhot, “Les Salles d’estampes dans les musées de province” Journal des Arts (5 December 1884), pp. 2-3. 485 “L’esprit, la chaleur et la vie, et qui tous ou presque tous cultivaient eux-mêmes l’art de Rembrandt.” Ibid. 486 Félix Buhot, “Les Salles d’estampes dans les musées de province” Journal des Arts (9 December 1884), pp. 2-3.

487 Félix Buhot, “Les Salles d’estampes dans les musées de province” Journal des Arts (19 December 1884), p. 2. 488 Félix Buhot, “A MM. les Graveurs” Journal des Arts (6 March 1885), p. 1. 489 Félix Buhot, “Première liste des dons envoyés au ‘Journal des arts’ pour le Cabinet des Estampes de la ville de Rouen” Journal des Arts (27 March 1885): 1 and “Liste générale des dons envoyés au ‘Journal des art’ pour le Cabinet des Estampes de la ville de Rouen” Journal des Arts (7 August 1885), p. 1. 490 Although this drawing was attributed to Rembrandt in Buhot’s period it figures in neither Otto Benesch’s The Drawings of Rembrandt 6 vols. (London, 1954) nor in Seymour Slive’s Drawings of Rembrandt 2 vols. (New York, 1965). 491 Buhot used a photograph as the basis of a print in at least one other instance, Un vieux chantier à Rochester. See Jay McKean Fischer and Colles Baxter, Félix Buhot peintre-graveur: Prints, drawings, and Paintings (Baltimore, 1983) p. 21. See also Jean-Luc Dufresne’s “Félix Buhot 18471898: Étude et catalogue raisonné des peintures, pastels, aquarelles et gouaches.” Third Cycle Dissertation, Paris, 1981, p. 398. 492 There has been some examination of the Brussels society, see for example Catherine Meneux, “France-Belgique. Les échanges entres graveurs à l’eau-forte, 1860-90” Nouvelles de l’Estampe (March 1997), pp. 5-24. The rapport between France and the international societies of printmakers established in Belgium, England, and the United States is an important subject which has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive study. For the etching revival in Canada, see Rosemarie L. Tovell’s in-depth study A New Class of Art: The Artist’s Print in Canadian Art 1877-1920 (Ottawa, 1996). 493 See for example The Owl, A Few for the Few (1883) and Frontispiece for Zigzags of a Curious Man, by Octave Uzanne (1888). 494 Fisher et al., p. 113. 495 “Ceci tuera cela. La manie de l’eau-forte à tout propos et failli tuer l’Edition à Vignettes. Les procédés d’Héliogravure et de Photogravure les ferons revivre mais ne lui rendrons jamais ce charme, ce brio quelles avaient de 1830 à 1840.”

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496 The chapter entitled “Ceci tuera cela” (book 5, chapter 2) was added to the novel in 1832, two years after it was first published. 497 Philippe Burty, “La gravure et la lithographie au Salon de 1863” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (August 1863), p. 147. 498 “Les Collections de Mariette. Les épreuves de Rembrandt. Rembrandt Imprimeur. Impression à la Téré-benthine.” 499 For a view of Buhot’s studio c.1886-89 see Dufresne (Paris, 1981) cat.69 Coin d’atelier au Boulevard de Clichy 71 (Alpes-Maritimes, Priv. coll). 500 See also Fisher et al. (1983), p. 115. 501 His margins are typically referred to as “episodic margins” or “symphonic margins.” See James Goodfriend’s “Introduction” in Félix Buhot catalogue descriptif de son œuvre gravé by Gustave Bourcard [first published 1899] (New York 1979), introduction and Jan Cathleen Cavanaugh. “The ‘Marges Symphoniques’ of Félix Buhot.” Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1980. 502 Examples include La fête nationale au boulevard Clichy, and L’hiver à Paris ou la neige à Paris. 503 The exhibitions were held at the Durand-Ruel Galleries until 1922. Six exhibitions were held before the turn of the century: 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1897. See also Michel Melot The Impressionist Print (New Haven, 1996), pp. 200-2. For an in-depth study of this society see Lindsay Leard. “The Société des Peintres-Graveurs: Printmaking 1889-1987”, Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1992. Leard published a summary of her conclusions in “The Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français in 1889-97”. Print Quarterly vol. 14 no. 4 (December 1997): 355-63. 504 Philippe Burty “Preface” Société des peintres-graveurs, première exposition (Paris, 1889), pp. 5-8. 505 When the society was renamed the Société des peintres-graveurs français for its third exhibition in 1891 prominent printmakers including Mary Cassatt and Camille Pissarro regarded the change as offensive and highly discriminatory. 506 The only exception was the surprisingly few prints after Rembrandt exhibited in 1898, the year of a retrospective exhibition in Amsterdam. This may have occured because the artists were

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busy publishing their prints in the numerous publications that came out at the time of the exhibition. 507 Prints after artists works were exhibited as follows: 1849 – 5 Raphael and Rembrandt, 3 Van Dyck, 1 Teniers. 1850 – 8 Raphael, 3 Correggio and Van Dyck, 2 Titian, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, 1 Leonardo, Murillo, Maes, Poussin, and Rubens. 1852 – 9 Raphael, 1 Potter. 1853 – 5 Raphael, 2 Rubens, 1 Ruisdael. 1855 (Exposition Universelle) – 27 Raphael, 5 Leonardo, 3 Van Dyck, 2 Corregio, Titian, and Velázquez, 1 Hobbema, Murillo, Poussin, Rembrandt, Rubens, Veronese, and Zurbaran. 1857 – 7 Raphael, 3 Rubens and Ruysdael, 2 Velázquez and De Keyser, 1 Leonardo. 1859 – 8 Raphael, 2 Van Leyden, Murillo, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Veronese, 1 Van Dyck, Rubens, Terborch, Titian, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Poussin, Roman, Corregio, Perugino, Fra Bartolomeo, Lorrain, Del Sarto. 1861 – 6 Raphael, 3 Murillo and Rubens, 2 Ribera and Velázquez, 1 Ruysdael, Leonardo, Van Dyck and Veronese. 1863 – 4 Raphael, 2 Ribera, Van Dyck, Veronese, 1 Lebrun, Leonardo, Van der Neer, Van Loo, Ribera, Del Sarto, Jordaens, Rembrandt, and Rubens. 1864 – 4 Raphael, 3 Rembrandt, 1 Rubens, De Keyser, Van Dyck, Berchem, Murillo, Titian, and Veronese. 1865 – 3 Raphael, 2 Murillo and Van Dyck, 1 Leonardo, Rubens, Hals, Titian, and Le Nain. 1866 – 3 Raphael, 2 Murillo, 1 Michelangelo, Holbein, Van Dyck, Hobbema, Veronese, Leonardo, Titian, Ribera, Ruysdael. 1867 – 2 Rembrandt and Ruysdael, 1 Rubens, Titian, Holbein, Van Ostade, Potter, and Lorrain. 1867 (Exposition Universelle) – 1 Rembrandt. 1868 – 6 Raphael, 3 Titian, 2 Hals and Rembrandt, 1 Leonardo, Michelangelo, Murillo, Veronese, and Ruysdael. 1869 – 6 Raphael, 2 Hals, Veronese,

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Van Dyck, Velázquez, Poussin, Hobbema, Leonardo and Rembrandt. 1870 – 4 Raphael, 3 Rembrandt, 1 Van Dyck, Corregio, Ruysdael. 1873 – 6 Rembrandt, 2 Velázquez, 1 Raphael, Hals, Wouwermans, Ruisdael, Ruysdael, Pynacker, Van Goyen, Rubens, Leonardo, Van Ostade, and Cuyp. 1874 – 8 Rembrandt, 3 De Hooch, 2 Raphael, Terburch, Van de Velde, Van Ostade, Rubens, 1 Cuyp, Van Goyen, Potter, Bol, Murillo, Ruysdael, Hals, and Michelangelo. 1875 – 3 Raphael, 2 Rubens, Hobbema, Titian, and Rembrandt, 1 Leonardo, Van Dyck, Cuyp, S.Ruysdael, J. Ruisdael, Terborch, Van Ostade, Ribera, and Metsu. 1876 – 4 Michelangelo, 3 Rembrandt, 2 Van Goyen, Raphael, Hobbema, 1 Titian, De Hooch, Teniers, Velázquez, Van de Velde, Ruysdael, and Ribera. 1877 – 9 Rembrandt, 2 Michelangelo and Rubens, 1 Raphael, Giogione, Titian, Ruysdael, Koninck, Goyen, Velázquez, and Poussin. 1878 – 8 Rembrandt, 3 Michelangelo, 2 Raphael, Murillo, Hals, and Rubens, 1 Ruysdael, Ribera, Potter, Teniers, Ostade, Veronese, Giorgione, and Jordaens. 1879 – 4 Rembrandt and Rubens, 2 Raphael, Ribera, and Velázquez, 1 Coypel, Koninck, Van Marcke, Murillo, Champagne, Veronese, Leonardo, Steen, Berchem, and Hobbema. 1880 – 3 Murillo and Rembrandt, 2 Raphael, and Teniers, 1 Leonardo, Terburg, Hals, Titian, Ribera, Velázquez, Van Dyck, and Rubens. 1881 – 3 Van Dyck, 2 Rubens and Teniers, 1 Raphael, Champagne, Netscher, Corregio, Jordaens, Ruysdael, Ribera, de Hooch, Titian, and Rembrandt. 1882 – 8 Raphael, 5 Rembrandt, 4 Rubens, 2 Murillo and Van Dyck, 1 Michelangelo, Velázquez, Terburg, Potter, and Hals. 1883 – 5 Raphael, 2 Rembrandt and Titian, 1 Teniers, Leonardo, Hobbema, Terburg, Poussin, Pieter de Hooch, Velázquez. 1884 – 5 Rembrandt, 4 Van Dyck, 3 Hals and Raphael, 2 Murillo, Velázquez, and Titian, 1 Leonardo, Terburg, Ribera, Rubens, Vermeer. 1885 – 4 Rembrandt, 3 Rubens, 2 Raphael,

Velázquez, and Titian, 1 Ribera, Terburg, Van Dyck, Hals, and Michelangelo. 1886 – 7 Rembrandt, 3 Hals and Ribera, 2 Rubens, Teniers, and Titian, 1 Raphael, Mieris, Berchem, Velázquez, Fra Bartolomeo, Murillo, Ruisdael, Netscher, Leonardo. 1887 – 8 Rembrandt, 4 Hals, 2 Raphael and Van Dyck, 1 Raphael, Flinck, De Hooch, Ruysdael, Van Eyck, Terburg, Murillo, Rubens, Corregio, Maes, Leonardo, Velázquez, and Champagne. 1888 – 10 Rembrandt, 5 Rubens, 4 Hals, 1 Raphael, Van Dyck, Ruysdael, Champagne, Dou, Teniers, Mantegna, Del Sarto, Leonardo, and Titian. 1889 – 12 Rembrandt, 8 Hals, 2 Andrea del Sarto, Van Dyck, 1 Raphael, Maes, Rubens, Hobbema, Corregio, Dürer, Champagne, Ruysdael, Ribera, and Velázquez. 1890 – 7 Rembrandt, 5 Hals, 2 Raphael and Rubens, 1 Champagne, Velázquez, Dou, Van Dyck, and Murillo. 1891 – 11 Rembrandt, 7 Hals, 3 Velázquez, 2 Murillo and Raphael, 1 Cranach, Cuyp, Ruysdael, Rubens, and Dou. 1892 – 13 Rembrandt, 5 Rubens, 3 Velázquez, 2 Cuyp and Teniers, 1 Raphael, Van Ostade, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Ribera, Van Eyck, Ruysdael, and Brouwer. 1893 – 9 Rembrandt, 7 Hals, 6 Van Dyck, 4 Holbein, 3 Reni and Rubens, 2 Velázquez, 1 Murillo, Leonardo, van der Meer, Dou, De Hooch, Terborch, T. de Keyser, Ribera, and Van de Helst. 1894 – 10 Rembrandt, 5 Hals, 4 Rubens, 3 Steen, Van Dyck, Velázquez, and Raphael, 2 Maes, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Ribera, Teniers, and Leonardo, 1 Van Eyck, Memling, Ostade, Ruysdael, Cuyp, Corregio, Leonardo, Reni, Titian, and Terburg. 1895 – 11 Rembrandt, 7 Hals and Rubens, 4 Velázquez, 3 Van Dyck, 2 Raphael, Holbein, and Ribera, 1 Rosa, Giorgione, Ghirlandaio, Fra Filippo Lippi, Veronese, Tintoretto, Bellini, Van de Helst, Massys, Flinck, Dou, Jordaens, Vermeer, Mantegna, Van Eyck, Dürer, Massacio, Ruysdael, Titian, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Teniers.

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1896 – 12 Rembrandt, 4 Hals, 3 Holbein, 2 Velázquez, Murillo, and Botticelli, 1 Rosa, Metsu, Van Eyck, Ribera, Ruysdael, Brouwer, Tintoretto, Rubens, Champagne, Van Goyen, Terburch, and Van Dyck. 1897 – 12 Rembrandt, 8 Rubens, 6 Hals, 5 Titian, 4 Ribera, 3 Botticelli and Van Dyck, 2 Reni and Velázquez, 1 Holbein, Dürer, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Metsys, Van Eyck, Raphael, Memling, Teniers, Murillo, Champagne, and Rosa. 1898 – 5 Jordaens and Teniers, 4 Rembrandt, Hals, Rubens, and Veronese, 3 Van Dyck, Van Ostade, Ribera, 2 Michelangelo, Velázquez, Mantegna, Raphael, Holbein, and Murillo, 1 Holbein, Cuyp, Terburg, Dou, Champagne, Leonardo, and Reni. 1899 – 10 Rembrandt, 5 Hals, 3 Holbein and Van Dyck, 2 Correggio, Velázquez, Brouwer, Leonardo, and Rubens, 1 Botticelli, Tiepolo, Metsys, Memling, Ribera, Dürer, Caravaggio, Raphael, Hals, Van der Weyden, Titian, and Champagne. 1900 – 3 Rembrandt, Hals, Van Dyck, Champagne, and Leonardo, 2 Teniers, Raphael, 1 Maes, Velázquez, Botticelli, Rubens, Ribera, Jordaens, and Hobbema. Statistics group the print and lithography sections and are compiled from Société des artistes français. Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants. Paris: Paul Dupont, 1849-1900. 508 “Dans la Gazette, l’eau-forte ne saurait avoir les coudées franches, comme elle les a chez notre confrère: elle est, dans la plupart des cas, subordonnée à une autre œuvre d’art qui la prime puisqu’elle reçoit la mission d’en fournir une copie fidèle. C’est affaire à des artistes d’un mérite transcendant, comme Jacquemart, Gaillard ou Flameng, d’élever la copie au rang de l’original et, parfois même, de le surpasser; il n’est pas moins vrai que, chez nous, l’aqua-fortiste n’est qu’un traducteur. Dans les publications de M. Cadart, au contraire, à de très rares exception près, l’art du graveur est tenu pour secondaire et l’on n’admet que les œuvres originales. Ce qu’il aime à recueillir, ce sont les ébauches, les cro-

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quis, les fantaisies, les pensées des artistes.” Alfred de Lostalot, “Les peintres-graveurs en 1878” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1878), p. 344. “Quel est le caractère d’une véritable copie? C’est d’être une chose imitée d’une autre, avec les mêmes moyens et par les mêmes procédés. Quel est celui d’une traduction? C’est d’être l’imitation d’un objet, par un moyen ou dans un idiome différent de celui qui a servi à faire l’original. La gravure n’est donc pas une copie de la peinture. Le but de ces deux arts, à la vérité, est le même, l’imitation de la nature; mais ils y parviennent chacun suivant leurs moyens particuliers, et par des procédés différents. Le graveur a souvent recours à la nature.” A.M. Perot, Manuel de Graveur, ou traité complet de l’art de la gravure en tous genres d’après les renseignements fournis par plusieurs artistes (Paris, 1830), p. 15 and (Paris, 1865 ed.), p. 10. Blanc, Grammaire des arts du dessin: architecture, sculpture, peinture (Paris, 1870), pp. 620 and 658. See, for example, Woman at the Bath (1870), Portrait of a Young Woman (c.1880), and Portrait of a Man (1881). “Vous me demandez le nom de l’éditeur de Rembrandt, l’éditeur de Rembrandt c’est moi. J’ai fait cette planche par amour de la peinture du maître” Letter to M. Giacomelli 9 June 1887, Institut Néerlandais manuscript 1977-A.133. “Non! le Graveur n’est pas un interprète obscur; A l’œuvre qu’il prop. il mèle sa pensée, Et, d’un essor rival, planant au même azur’/ Que le Peintre — il l’égale en force dépensée./ On l’acclame a son tour comme un triomphateur;/ La gloire du premier n’en peut être offensée/ Courtry traduit Rembrandt et reste créateur!” Eric Gillis advanced an analogous argument that Amand Durand’s héliogravures of Rembrandt’s prints from the 1850s to the 1890s should be considered original prints. He defends the originality of Durand’s handling of this combined print and photomechanical technique and reworking of the héliogravure plate with a greasy crayon to achieve the same effects as Rembrandt’s inking. Amand Durand produced his héliogravures after etchings from some of the best collections in France including

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the Bibliothèque nationale, and Rothschild, Dutuit, Galichon, and Firmin-Didot collections. His prints appealed to the growing market of amateurs and artists of limited means, particularly in the late 1860s, who preferred high-quality reproductions over posthumous reprinting. See Eric Gillis, “Des originaux de Rembrandt aux héliogravures: le cas d’AmandDurand” in Nicole Minder (Ed.), Rembrandt: Les collections du Cabinet des Estampes de Vevey (Vevey, 1997), pp. 221-32. The engraving was printed at Salmon and published 1 January 1887 by Boussod, Valadon & Co. The plate was later destroyed. “Longtemps elle eut presque le glorieux monopole de la publication des estampes d’art: c’est elle qui paya cent mille francs à HenriquelDupont L’Hémicycle, et qui, hier encore, payait cent mille francs à Waltner La Ronde de nuit; elle demeure donc un des facteurs les plus importants dans la production de la gravure.” Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle vol. 7 (Paris, 1885-92), p. 178. Bordeaux, Goupil Archives. Commissioned 14 November 1871, for 6,000 francs, Archives nationales F/21/4309. Given the high price Flameng was paid, the state probably purchased the plate rather than a set number of prints. “Cher Monsieur, J’apprends par un de mes élèves que vous prenez la liberté (sans me consulter) de faire imprimer ma gravure la Pièce de Cent florins chez un autre imprimeur que celui que j’ai choisi, lequel est exactement informé de ce qu’est nécessaire pour mener le tirage de cette planche à bien. Cette gravure m’ayant coûté beaucoup de temps et beaucoup de peine a exécuter, je ne puis consentir à ce que vous contrevenie au désir que je vous ai exprimé, celui de voir mon travail imprimé chez Salmon: dans l’intéret de mon œuvre et dans le votre je m’oppose formellement à ce que vous le fassiez imprimer ailleurs. J’espère que votre réponse me fera revenir d’une aussi chaude alarme et que soucieux de vos intérêts vous vous soumettrer a ce que je vous conseille. Agréer cher Monsieur l’expression de mes sentiments dévoués, Léopold Flameng

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N.B. c’est peut-être chez Delâtre que se trouve ma planche,- c’est un massacre! Haarlem 19 September 1873.” Archives nationales F/21/558/II. Flameng had printed plates of both original (Woman Praying at Roadside Crucifix; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and reproductive subject matter (Christ Bessing Little Children and A Rabbi, both after Rembrandt; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) at Delâtre’s atelier. Print studios which received a smaller portion of their business included Drouart, Liénard, and Quantin. “Mon cher M. Sommers, Je viens de l’Exposition et j’ai remarqué que mes cadres (l’un contenant les Rembrandt, et l’autre trois portraits) faisaient un très mauvais effet à cause des passe partouts bleus — Veuillez donc avoir l’obligeance de porter un prompt remède à ces choses en les remplaçant par des passe partouts blanc. Avec mes remerciements recevez mes amitiés. Léopold Flameng” undated letter, Institut Néerlandais, 7243f. Although this letter is undated, Flameng referred to “les Rembrandt” as if he was referring to works exhibited at the Salon of 1876, the only Salon in which Flameng exhibited more than one print after Rembrandt. Attemps to identify the MF and GAF initials as either artists involved with the Société des Acquafortistes or printmakers listed in dictionaries of symbols and monograms has proved unfruitful. Sources consulted include Franz Goldstein, Monogramm Lexicon (Berlin, 1964) and H.H. Caplan, The Classified Directory of Artists’ Signatures Symbols & Monograms (London, 1982). I am also grateful to Janine Bailly-Herzberg and Hubert Prouté for their efforts to help me identify the two remaining artists. “Vous me disiez vous-même que Flameng, dans mon Œuvre de Rembrandt, avait imité ce grand homme de façon à le tromper lui-même s’il revenait au monde.” Charles Blanc, “Introduction” in Maxime Lalanne Traité de la gravure à l’eau-forte (Paris, 1866), p. vii. “L’eau-forte en effet, avec ses ressources infinies et renouvelées par chaque artiste, est la seule gravure qui puisse suivre la peinture actuelle

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dans ses explorations hardies de coloris, de valeur et de plein air. Elle trouve une solution de pratique pour tous les problèmes que cette peinture lui pose. Elle joue sur sa seule corde de blanc et noir tous les carnavals de Venise de l’arc-en-ciel des tons. C’est le traducteur indispensable et unique; car contre un peintre, elle donne un autre peintre, et les autres gravures ne donnent qu’un praticien.” Bergeret (Paris, 1886), p. 4. “Il y a deux palettes pour le coloriste et que l’une commence où l’autre s’arrête. Il faut croire que chez lui le graveur suppléait au peintre entravé.” Bergeret (Paris, 1886), p. 3. “Mais les maîtres qui ont manié le burin ou se sont servis de l’eau-forte n’ont pas seulement été de serviles imitateurs. La plupart d’entre eux ont été d’admirables interprètes, quelquesuns même des créateurs, et tous de véritables artistes dont les noms ne sauraient jamais périr.” Catalogue illustré de l’exposition internationale de blanc et noir (Paris, 1892), p. 134. There were at most four copies after any other “old master”; these included four after Holbein, three after Rubens and Van Dyck, two after Tiepolo and Velázquez, and one after Ruisdael, Veronese, Michelangelo, Pourbus, Ribera, Flinck, Steen, Vermeer, and Hals. The Mercure de France noted the play opened October 16th (September 1898, pp. 891-2). Performances were listed in Le Temps beginning October 2nd, perhaps referring to preview performances. Following the play’s success in Paris it went on tour in Holland. Léo Claretie, “Rembrandt van Rijn” Le Monde illustré (24 September 1898), p. 243. Anonymous, L’Illustration (8 October 1898), p. 240. Anonymous, “Chronique Théâtrale” Le Temps (10 October 1898), p. 1. “Il mourut pauvre. Il dut un cercueil à la charité publique. Son enterrement à été payé 30 francs. Il méritait mieux. Quel génie que cet homme qui n’imita personne, qui a crée sa manière, et a fixé sur la toile tant de portraits... avec la vérité frappante de l’imitation... Quel audacieux que cet esprit indépendant, dédaigneux de toute tradition, oublieux volontairement du passé,

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libre et nouvel interprète de la Bible, dont les héros ne sont plus ces figures emphatiques et majestueusement drapées de l’école italienne, mais des humbles, de petits gens, — ce qu’ils furent, — des ouvriers, des mendiants, des gueux.” Claretie (24 September 1898), p. 243. “Clientèle populaire” and “bon marché.” Léon Morat, “Premières représentation” Le Petit Journal (3 October 1898), p. 3. Pierre Véron, “Théâtres” Le Charivari (5 October 1898), p. 205. Gautier (1846), p. 391, Anonymous (July 1847), p. 218, Houssaye (1847), p. 176, Coquerel (Paris, 1860), pp. 36-7 and 48, Gautier (Paris, 1864), p. 254, and Blanc (3 August 1874), p. 4. “Un incident bien curieux” Le Figaro (16 February 1890), p. 1. The sale was held January 26th, 1890. Mme. Legrand may have inherited this painting after the death of her father who was director of the Lyon museum during the Revolution. “Voici quelques nouveaux détails” Le Figaro (17 February 1890), p. 1. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Petit journal (16 February 1890), p. 1. “Voici quelques nouveaux détails” Le Figaro (17 February 1890), p. 1. Penon was overcome by the high temperature in the auction room and had to leave before the bidding was completed. See also “Un incident bien curieux.” Estimations of Oppenheim’s offer were variously cited as 75,000 francs in “L’administration des domaines” Le Petit journal (15 February 1890), p. 1 and 100,000 francs in “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Petit journal (16 February 1890), p. 1. Le Figaro (16 February 1890), p. 1. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq.” Le Temps (18 February 1890), p. 2 and “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Petit journal (18 February 1890), p. 2. “Tribunaux, Le Rembrandt du Pecq.” Chronique des Arts et de la curiosité. (24 May 1890), p. 166 and “Tribunaux, Le ‘Rembrandt du Pecq’.” Chronique des Arts et de la curiosité. (2 August 1890), p. 213. Another request to rent the painting for six months and exhibit it in several cities in the United States was not fulfilled. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq”. Le Petit journal (18 February 1890), p. 2. Critics com-

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pared the “Rembrandt du Pecq” controversy to the Corot-Trouillebert incident. “Encore le Rembrandt” Le Petit journal (19 February 1890), p. 2 and Albert Wolff “Courrier de Paris: Depuis l’aventure du Pecq” Le Figaro (21 February 1890), p. 1. 544 Legrand’s one surviving daughter who lived in an asylum was represented by her companion Jean Bernard. Bernard had requested the sale of the collection but said he had repeatedly told the expert in charge of the sale that the painting was an original work by Rembrandt and that Mme Legrand had refused to sell the work for considerable sums of money on several occasions. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Petit journal (18 February 1890), p. 2. See also “Tribunaux, Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Chronique des Arts et de la curiosité (24 May 1890), p. 166 and (2 August 1890), p. 213. 545 Daily newspapers cited in this study include Le Temps, Le Figaro, and Le Petit journal. Le Figaro was the most successful daily newspaper of the period with a circulation of 104,924 in 1880. The circulation of Le Petit journal in 1880 was 583,820 daily and Le Temps 22,764. The “Rembrandt du Pecq” was, therefore, front-page news in both the leading Conservative (Le Figaro) and Republican (Le Petit journal) journals. See Claude Bellanger et al., Histoire Generalle de la presse française, 1871-1940 vol. 3 (Paris, 1972), pp. 194-5, 232, and 234. 546 The debate over the attribution of this work to Rembrandt or Aert de Gelder is noted in Albert Blankert et al., Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact (Zwolle, 1997), p. 49. This work is included in the catalogue raisonné on Aert de Gelder under the title Jehovah and Two Angels Visit Abraham Moltke, J.W. von et al., Arent de Gelder: Dordrecht 1645-1727 (Doornspijk, 1994, cat.1, p. 61). In the earliest comprehensive catalogue of Aert de Gelder’s paintings, this work was entited Abraham and the Angels. Karl Lilienfeld, Arent de Gelder, sein leben und seine kunst (The Hague, 1914, cat.1, p. 125). Attribution to Aert de Gelder was first suggested by André Michel in 1890, “A propos du ‘Rembrandt du Pecq’” Journal des débats (22 February 1890), pp. 2-3. See also Louis Gonse, “Le Rembrandt

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du Pecq.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts. vol. 66 (April 1890), pp. 324-6. This article summarizes Gonse’s shorter notices in Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (15 February 1890), p. 51 and (22 February 1890), pp. 58-9. The other frequently cited contemporary reference is A. Thierry, “Le Rembrandt du Pecq.” Revue de Générale. (Brussels vol. 26 1890), pp. 424-40. J. Giltaij noted information on the sale was published in both the French and American press but said incorrectly that the ensuing controversy was only among art historians. J. Giltaij et al., Een Gloeiend palet, Schilderijen van Rembrandt en zijn school/A Glowing Palette, Paintings by Rembrandt and His School (Rotterdam, 1988), cat.9, pp. 41-2. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Temps (19 February 1890), p. 2. See also “L’affaire du Rembrandt” Le Figaro (19 February 1890), p. 1 and A. de L., “Le ‘Rembrandt du Pecq” L’Illustration (22 February 1890), p. 165. Paul Mantz, “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Temps (17 February 1890), p. 2. Vollon had three etchings (Tobias and the Angel, Portrait of Rembrandt, and Descent from the Cross) and one drawing (Two figures) by Rembrandt in his private collection. See Catalogue des tableaux et études peintes par feu Antoine Vollon et sa collection particulière, composée de tableaux ancient et modernes... dessins, aquarelles, eau-fortes..., Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 20-23 May 1901, cats. 82-4 and 99. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq”. Le Temps (19 February 1890), p. 2. Stevens declined to comment since he had not yet seen the work. He added that painters can often have great talent without being themselves experts and with regard to Bonnat, he had studied Rembrandt extensively and knew his work. Alfred Stevens, “Je lis dans les échos du Figaro” Le Figaro (20 February 1890), p. 1. Portrait of a Young Man and Self-Portrait with Easel; Bonnat is referring to the entries in Villot’s catalogue of the Louvre collection, vol. 2, 1852. “Je viens de voir le tableau. C’est un tableau d’école. Il est daté de 1656, m’a-t-on dit. Or, allez au Louvre et regardez les numéros 417 et 415, les plus rapprochés comme date du tableau en question. Il n’y a aucune analogie ni dans le

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dessin ni dans l’exécution. Ça saute aux yeux. Certaines parties sont habiles d’exécution, je le veux bien, mais d’autres, comme les têtes de l’ange et des deux individus de gauche, sont d’une faiblesse extrême. Ça, du Rembrandt? jamais!” Le Temps (19 February 1890), p. 2. Bonnat’s letter was republished in entirety in L’Artiste. See E. DurandGréville, “Le tableau du Pecq”. L’Artiste. (February 1890), pp. 131-2 and in part in Le Figaro (19 February 1890), p. 1 and Le Petit journal (19 February 1890), p. 2. 553 Bonnat received this commission 14 November 1871 and received 10,000 francs for the work. Pierre Angrand Histoire des musées de Province au XIX siècle: Sud-Ouest. vol. 3 (Les Sables d’Olonne, 1985), p. 96. Bonnat’s work was transferred to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1874 and was exhibited on the east wall of the Melpomène room until at least 1924. See Eugène Müntz, Guide de L’École Nationale des Beaux-Arts (Paris, n.d.), p. 231 and Gabriel Rouchès, L’École des Beaux-Arts, aperçu historique et guide à travers les collections (Paris, 1924), p. 44. See also Paul Duro, “Musées des copies de Charles Blanc”. Bulletin Societé d’Histoire d’Art Français, 1985 (Paris, 1987), p. 289. 554 Bonnat owned, in total, 379 paintings, 610 sculptures, and 1,800 drawings. See Vincent Ducourau, Le Musée Bonnat à Bayonne: l’art du dessin et de l’esquisse (Bayonne, 1988), p. 5. Bonnat himself produced a small number of etchings. Scholars today generally regard these prints as reproductions executed to disseminate his paintings but Bonnat printed different states of some plates, including Head of a Man, after Velázquez and Portrait of Renan, and these etchings display a similar emulation of Rembrandt’s printmaking techniques as discussed earlier in this study regarding the case of Gérôme. 555 Old Tobias and his Son is the only drawing in Bonnat’s collection whose provenance definitely includes His de la Salle (Catalogue descriptif des dessins de maîtres anciens exposés à l’Écoles des Beaux-Arts, May-June 1879. Introduction by Charles Ephrussi and Gustave Dreyfus. Paris, 1879, cat.368). Works then in Bonnat’s collection were listed in Eugène Dutuit’s Tableaux

344

et dessins de Rembrandt (Paris, 1885). By 1893, Bonnat owned over ninety of Rembrandt’s drawings. See Émile Michel, Rembrandt, son art et son œuvre Paris, 1893), pp. 587-90. Alisa Luxenberg rightly noted that Bonnat’s collection began in 1858-61 when he exchanged paintings with other artists in Rome. Alisa Luxenberg, “Léon Bonnat (1833-1922)” Ph.D. Dissertation, New York, 1991, p. 273. 556 Bonnat purchased Suzanne from the His de la Salle postuhumous sale in 1880 (27 November 1880, London), Head of a Rabbi in March 1888, and Burgomaster Six in 1890. Louvre, Cabinet des dessins, salle de documentation, microfilm 14, Bonnat’s carnet des achats nº7008, 7009 and 7010, pp. 1-2. 557 Although Bonnat’s travels are not fully documented, there is evidence of at least a second trip to Holland in one of the texts in Bonnat’s library in which Georges Lafenestre inscribed in his and George Richtenberger’s La Hollande (Paris, s.d.) “Léon Bonnat Souvenirs amical de La Haye, Haarlem, Amsterdam et autres lieues (1883) G. Lafenestre.” Bayonne, Archives Municipales, fonds Bonnat. 558 Bonnat first visited Henry d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale’s collection in August 1887. See Bonnat’s memoirs on Henry d’Orléans, Louvre, Cabinet des dessins, salle de documentation, microfilm 14, nº7066. By this time Henry d’Orléans owned at least six drawings by Rembrandt. Dutuit (Paris, 1885), p. 94 and Alfred Mézières, “Le duc d’Aumale” La Revue de l’art ancien et moderne (April-July 1897), pp. 201-3. Bonnat first visited His de la Salle’s collection in 1865. Léon Bonnat “Comment je suis devenu collectioneur”. 20 June 1893, published in La Revue de Paris (15 February 1926), p. 759. As the leading portraitist of the Third Republic, Bonnat received commissions from Adolphe Thiers, Isaac Pereire, and Jean Gigoux and may also have seen their collections, all of which included works by Rembrandt. Certainly Bonnat’s position as a leading juror of the Salon, member of the Institut, and professor at the École des Beaux-Arts made it possible for him to receive privileged access to private collections in Paris.

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

559 Bayonne, Archives Municipal, fonds Bonnat 283 and 284, Eugène Dutuit L’Œuvre complet de Rembrandt décrit et commenté 2 vols. (Paris, 188386) and Tableaux et dessins de Rembrandt, supplément à l’œuvre complet de Rembrandt (Paris, 1885). 560 “Quelle est, d’après vous la personne qui passe pour le mieux s’y entendre en Rembrandt? C’est M. Léon Bonnat qui, toute sa vie, a étudié les œuvres du maître et dont l’opinion a un grand poids.” Le Temps (19 February 1890), p. 2. 561 “M. Bonnat. nous-a-t-il dit, est d’une compétence absolute en cette matière: il n’est pas, du reste, le seul qui m’ait dit que le fameux tableau de Rembrandt n’était pas une œuvre remarquable et plusieurs de mes amis m’ont declaré que ce tableau était bien discutable comme Rembrandt.” Le Temps (19 February 1890), p. 2. 562 For Henner’s views on the paintings by Rembrandt he had seen in each collection and his conception of himself as a connoisseur of his paintings see Émile Durand-Gréville, Entretiens de J.J. Henner (1878-88) (Paris, 1915). 563 “Courrier de Paris: Depuis l’aventure du Pecq” Le Figaro (21 February 1890), p. 1. 564 Ce tableau est certainement l’œuvre d’un homme de talent et la tête du Christ a du mérite, comme exécution et comme caractère, mais les autres personnages sont tout à fait inférieurs sous tous les rapports. Les trois têtes des disciples sont mollement peintes, mal construites et ne rappellent en rien la manière vigoureuse et savante de Rembrandt. En somme, cet ouvrage est d’un homme de talent, il est d’un bon effet et d’une bonne tenue générale, mais il n’est pas de Rembrandt.” Le Temps (19 February 1890), p. 2. Gérôme’s letter was republished in entirety in L’Artiste. E. Durand-Gréville, “Le tableau du Pecq.” L’Artiste (February 1890), p. 132) and “L’affaire du Rembrandt” Le Figaro (19 February 1890), p. 1. 565 “Le lendemain matin, dans la petite chambre voisine de l’atelier, devant le portrait de Rembrandt, au pied de la Vérité, un domestique le trouvait inerte, glacé déjà: il avait succombé durant son sommeil.” Ch. Moreau-Vauthier, Gérôme, peintre et scupteur, l’homme et l’artiste d’après sa correspondance, ses notes, les souvenirs de ses élèves et de ses amis (Paris, 1906), p. 287.

566 567

568

569

570

Gérôme’s reverential placement of Rembrandt’s portrait illustrates his wish to achieve what Kris and Kurz described as “effigy magic… the belief that a man’s soul resides in his image, that those who possess this image also hold power over that person.” Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist, A Historical Experiment (New Haven, 1979), p. 73. “Le Rembrandt du Pecq” Le Temps (20 February 1890), p. 2. Waltner exhibited etched copies after the following works: Portrait of a Man (Salon 1874, nº3616), Portrait of Rembrandt and Portrait of a Rabbi (Salon 1882, nº5606, 5607), Portrait of Rembrandt (Salon 1883, nº4937), Le Doreur (Salon 1884, nº4653), An Old Man (Salon 1885, nº5031). For his copy of Rembrandt’s Oath of Claudius Civilus see Clément de Ris, “Le musée de Stockholm”. Gazette des Beaux-Arts (November 1874), pp. 398-409. “De 1648 à 1661... en ces années ou il semble que, dépouillé de tout ce qu’il aimait, ayant perdu sa mère et Saskia après sa mère, puis, quelques années plus tard, tous ses biens, et ses chères collections, il se réfugiai s’isola dans la peinture comme dans son dernier asile, une suprême consolation.” Mantz (17 February 1890), p. 2. “C’est le ‘Rembrandt du Pecq’ dont l’imagination populaire s’est aussitôt emparée, a tel point que hier, au Louvre, devant la Bethsabé de la galerie Lacaze, j’entendais le dialogue suivant: Madame: ‘De qui ce tableau?’ - Monsieur, après avoir consulté l’inscription du cadre: ‘Mais...de Rembrandt! Celui-du Pecq!” André Michel, “A propos du ‘Rembrandt du Pecq’” Journal des Débats (22 February 1890), p. 2. Metz (1: Study of an Old man with a thin beard), Strasbourg (1: Study of an Old Man), Bonnat (6: A Rabbi, Head of Old Man, Portrait of Burgomaster Six, Samplers in a cave, Suppliant before a Biblical Priest, and Susanna), Durand-Ruel (1: David Playing the harp before Saul), Goldschmidt (2: Study of an Old Man, Study of a Woman called Rembrandt’s Cook), Hirsch de Gereuth (1: Portrait of Rembrandt’s Sister), Jacquemart-André (3: Christ at Emmaus,

notes 551-569

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Portrait of Amalia von Solms, and Portrait of Dr. Arnold Tholinx), Kann (Maurice 2: Portrait of a Man [with a red coat], and Small head of Christ; Rodolphe 3: Portrait of an Old Woman cutting her fingernails, Portrait of Titus, and Study of an Old Woman), Lehmann (1: Zacharie receiving the prediction of St. John the Baptist’s birth), Porgès (4: A Rabbi, Study after Rembrandt’s Brother, Old Woman Reading, and The Good Samaritan), Pourtalès Gorgier (1: Portrait of a Young Man getting up from a chair), Schickler (1: Judas returning the price of his treason), Schloss (3: Angel with appearance of Titus, Old Man Meditating, and Portrait of Rembrandt’s Wife), and Wassermann (Melville 1: Study of Rembrandt’s Father, Max 1: Study of an Old Man).

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571 Forty works were loaned from British collections. C. Hofstede de Groot, L’Exposition Rembrandt à Amsterdam, 40 planches sur cuivre avec texte (Amsterdam, 1898). 572 These include the four works loaned by Durand-Ruel, Hirsch de Gereuth, JacquemartAndré, and Portalès-Gorgier. 573 Besides the six works from Bonnat’s collection, these include the twenty-two works loaned by Metz and Strasbourg, Goldschmidt, JacquemartAndré (2), Kann, Lehmann, Porgès, Schickler, Schloss, and Wasserman. 574 Although none of these paintings are assigned to Rembrandt today, the majority of prints and drawings Bonnat collected are still attributed to Rembrandt.

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Appendix

Interpretive Prints after Rembrandt Alasonière, Henri-Fabien (b.1852)* – Portrait of Rembrandt as an Officer, etching, Salon of 1891 nº3494 Aliot, Pierre-Louis-Charles – The Carpenter’s Household (Paris, Louvre), wood engraving, Salon of 1894 nº4041 Andrus, Auguste-Arthur – Portrait of Rembrandt, engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5009 Ansseau, Joseph – The Night Watch, Salon of 1875 nº3605 Ardail, Albert – Portrait of a family (Braunschweig, Museum), engraving, Salon of 1886 nº4929; Gazette des Beaux-Arts October 1886 Baude, Charles (b.1853) – Untitled (Portrait of a man with a fur cap), (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), wood engraving, Salon of 1885 nº4599; Monde Illustré – Rembrandt’s Mother (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), wood engraving, 1885, Monde Illustré – Portrait of a Man/Rembrandt laughing, wood engraving, Salon of 1886 nº4944 – Portrait of a Woman (London, National Gallery) wood engraving, Salon of 1887 nº4865 – Portrait of Rembrandt as an Officer, wood engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5025(1) – Study, wood engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5025(2) – Portrait of Rembrandt in Old Age, 1890; Monde illustré

– Head of a Man/Study, wood engraving, 1890, Salon of 1891 nº3242 – Beeresteyn (Christian-Paul-Van) “Burgomeister of Delft” (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), wood engraving, Monde illustré 1890 [Studio of Baude] – Saskia, wood engraving, Salon of 1891 nº3243 – Presentation in theTemple (The Hague, Museum), wood engraving, 1892, Monde illustré 1892, p.445 [Studio of Baude] – The Pilgrims of Emmaus (Paris, Louvre),wood engraving, Salon of 1893 nº3760 – The Poet/Portrait of Nicolas Bruyningh, wood engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4020; Monde illustré – Man with a Baton (Paris, Louvre), wood engraving, Salon of 1897 nº3865(1) – Portrait of Rembrandt (Paris, Louvre), wood engraving, Salon of 1897 nº3865(2) – Rembrandt in Old Age (London, National Gallery), 1898, Supplement to Annales Politiques et Littéraires nº799, 16 October 1898 – Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery), 1898, La France illustrée 22 October 1898, p.245 – The Adulterous Woman, (London, Duke of Marlborough), wood engraving, 1898, La France illustrée 22 October 1898, p.246 [Studio of Baude] – Portrait of Rembrandt (The Hague, Museum), wood engraving, La France illustrée 15 October 1898, p.1 [Studio of Baude]

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347

– Volkera Nicolai Knobbrrt, Wife of Christian Paul Van Beeresten (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), wood engraving, n.d. [Studio of Baude] – Pontius Pilat..., wood engraving, n.d. [Studio of Baude] Baudran, Auguste-Alexandre (b.1823) – Judas returning the price of his treason (Paris, Galichon Collection), Salon of 1864 nº2842; Gazette des Beaux-Arts – Man Seated/Portrait of Corneille Nicholas Anslo (Paris, Galichon Collection), Salon of 1864 nº2843; Gazette des Beaux-Arts March 1866 Beltrand, Camille (b.1877) – Bather, lithograph, Salon of 1899 nº4418 Berger, Clémentine (d.1891) – Beggars, wood engraving, Salon of 1879 nº5585 Bertrand, Albert – Woman at the Bath, etching, Salon of 1891 nº3250 – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1892 nº3522 Blanc, Charles-Alexandre-Philippe-Auguste (18131882) – Janus Lutma, etching, L’Artiste 1839 – Bust of Rembrandt (Louvre Inv.1744), etching, Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1859, frontispiece for L’œuvre complet de Rembrandt, 1859 Blouet, Georges – Head of a Man, lithograph, Salon of 1889 nº5335 Bocourt, Étienne-Gabriel (b.1821) – Head of an Old Man, etching, Salon of 1890 nº4884 Boetzel, Ernest (1830-1920) – Untitled, Salon of 1867 nº2574; Gazette des BeauxArts Borrel, François-Marius (b.1866) – Rembrandt’s Mother, engraving, Salon of 1884 nº4241 – The Carpenter’s Household (Paris, Louvre), etching, Salon of 1889 nº5341 – Portrait of a Young Rembrandt (The Hague, Museum), Gazette des Beaux-Arts January 1890 Bossert, Lucien – Evangelist St. Matthew, lithograph, Salon of 1899 nº4440 Bouton, Victor-Marie – Portrait of Rembrandt (Florence), wood engraving, Salon of 1892 nº3545

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Bracquemond, Félix (1833-1914) – Portrait of an Old Woman, etching, Catalogue de vingt-trois tableaux des écoles flamande et hollandaise provenant de la célèbre galerie de San Donato, Paris, 18 April 1868; plate 11 – Portrait of a Young Woman, etching, Catalogue de vingt-trois tableaux des écoles flamande et hollandaise provenant de la célèbre galerie de San Donato, Paris, 18 April 1868; plate 12 – Christ with a Rosary, etching, Catalogue de la collection du Comte Koucheleff-Besborodko, Paris, 5 June 1869, cat.29 – Sketch, several small copies of prints on the same plate, Beraldi 229 Brès, Félix – Portrait, lithograph, Salon of 1899 nº4454 Brunet-Debaines, Alfred-Louis (b.1845) – The Mill, etching, Salon of 1892 nº3553 Buisset, Gustave – A Woman Bathing, engraving, Salon of 1899 nº4460 Cailleux, Gustave-Théophile – Study, lithograph, Salon of 1890 nº4910 Camp, Louis – Philosopher Meditating, wood engraving, Salon of 1894 nº4112 Carbonneau, Charles-Jean Baptiste (b.1815) – Descent from the Cross, wood engraving, Salon of 1849 nº2473(1); Charles Blanc École Hollandaise – Burgomeister Six, wood engraving, Salon of 1849 nº2473(2); Charles Blanc École Hollandaise – Portrait of Rembrandt, wood engraving, Salon of 1849 nº2473(3); Charles Blanc École Hollandaise Cazin, Michel (1869-1917) – Portrait of a Magistrate, etching, Salon of 1889 nº5362 – The Anatomy Lesson, engraving, Salon of 1889 nº5363(1) – Portrait of a Man, engraving, Salon of 1889 nº5363(2) – Portrait of a Woman, engraving, Salon of 1889 nº5363(3) Champollion, Eugène-André (1848-1901) – Flemish Portrait, etching, Paris à l’eau-forte 6 September 1874 Chapon, Auguste-Louis – Untitled, wood engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4458

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Chenay, Pierre-Paul (1818-1906) – Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israël (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), engraving, Salon of 1900 nº2410 Chevrier, Georges – Portrait, lithograph, Salon of 1892 nº3576 Cirasse, Louis-Joseph-Félix (1853-1926) – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1891 nº3282 Closson, William Baxter Palmer (American, 18481926) – Rembrandt’s Mother, etching, Salon of 1889 nº5378 Cole, Timothy (English, b.1852) – Untitled, wood engraving, Salon of 1894 nº4142 Coppier, Charles-André (1867-1948) – Angel Raphael leaving Tobias (Paris, Louvre Inv.1736), etching, Salon of 1890 nº4939 – Portrait of Rembrandt (Paris, Louvre Inv.1746), engraving, Salon of 1891 nº3289 – The “Doreur”, etching, Salon of 1892 nº3591(1) – The Night Watch, etching, Salon of 1892 nº3591(2); Salon of 1894 nº4146 – Pilgrims of Emmaus, etching, Salon of 1897 nº3939; Les maîtres du passé – Syndics, etching, Salon of 1897 nº3940; Les maîtres du passé Coudert, Léon – Head of an Old Man (Kassel), lithograph, Salon of 1896 nº4483 Courtry, Charles-Louis (1846-97) – Portrait of a Young Woman, c.1880, (Paris, Hirsch de Gereuth Collection), Beraldi 242 – Portrait of a Man, 1881, Catalogue de tableaux de premier ordre ancient & modernes composant la galerie de M. John W. Wilson, 14-16 March 1881, cat.94, – Portrait (Paris, Louvre, Inv.1745), 1890, Musées et Salons, 1890 – Woman at the Bath (Paris, Louvre) 1870, Gazette des Beaux-Arts May 1870 – The Carpenter’s Household (Paris, Louvre), engraving, Salon of 1887 nº4930 Crauk, Adolphe (b.1865) – Head, engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5119 Crosbie, Émile-Ferdinand – Head of an Apostle (Kassel, Museum), wood engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4121 – Portrait of Rembrandt (The Hague, Museum), wood engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4488

Damour, Charles (1813-60) – The Carptenter’s Household (Paris, Louvre), etching, Exposition Universelle of 1855 nº4637 Danguin, Jean-Baptiste (1823-94) – Portrait of a Young Man, engraving, Salon of 1891 nº3299 Delay, Jeanne – Portrait of a Man, lithograph, Salon of 1894 nº4172 – Head of an Old Man, lithograph, Salon of 1895 nº4135 Delay, Henriette – Portrait of the Wife of Rembrandt, lithograph, Salon of 1896 nº4506 Deloche, Ernest-Pierre (b.1861) – Syndics, wood engraving, Salon of 1897 nº3965; Magasin pittoresque 1 July 1897 Dequesne, Fernand – Syndics, lithograph, Salon of 1894 nº4178 Desboutin, Marcelin (1823-1901) – Portrait of a forty-year old Man, CJ20 – The Night Watch, CJ21(1) – The Night Watch, CJ21(2) – Burgomeister Six, CJ26 – The Wife of Burgomeister Six, CJ27 Droit, Jules-Nicolas-Luc – Pilgrims of Emmaus, lithograph, Salon of 1900 nº2459 Dufflo, Michel-Joseph – Angel Raphael leaving Tobias and his Family (Paris, Louvre Inv.1736), wood engraving, Salon of 1892 nº3644 Dugourd, Henri-Nicolas (b.1863) – Woman at the Bath (Paris, Louvre), lithograph, Salon of 1893 nº3868 Duplessis, Edmond – Rembrandt and Saskia, wood engraving, Salon of 1899 nº4549 Duvivier, Claire (b.1846) – Pilgrims of Emmaus, wood engraving, Salon of 1870 nº5183 – Man laughing, Salon of 1875 nº3671; Monde illustré Faivre, Claude – Portrait, engraving, Salon of 1884 nº4341; Catalogue de cent chefs d’œuvre Faule, Adolphe – Bald Man (Kassel), wood engraving, Salon of 1896 nº4551

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349

Flameng, Léopold (1831-1911) – Forty Etchings,1859, Charles Blanc l’Œuvre complet de Rembrandt, five etchings published in Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1859, two published in May 1859 – Portrait of a Man, The “Doreur” (Paris, Duc de Morny collection), etching, Salon of 1863 nº2626; Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1863; Catalogue des tableaux anciens & modernes, objets d’art & de curiosité composant les collections de feu M. Le Duc de Morny, Paris, Palace of the President of the Legislative Corps, 31 May 1865, cat.68 – Portrait of a Man/Justus Lipsus (Paris, Pereire collection), Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1865 – Christ blessing the Children (Aix-la-Chapelle, Suermondt collection), etching, Salon of 1867 nº2611, Gazette des Beaux-Arts September 1866 – Saskia (Kassel), Gazette des Beaux-Arts October 1869 – Holy Familly (Aix-la-Chapelle, Suermondt collection), etching, Salon of 1869 nº3981; Gazette des Beaux-Arts – The Hundred Guilder Print, 1873 – The Night Watch, etching, Salon of 1874 nº3446 – Rabbi (Aix-la-Chapelle, Suermondt collection), Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1874 – Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Aix-la-Chapelle, Suermondt collection), Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1874 – Anatomy Lesson, etching, Salon of 1876 nº3846 – Syndics, etching, Salon of 1876 nº3847 – Portrait of Martin Daey (Paris, Baron Gustave de Rothschild collection), Gazette des Beaux-Arts January 1879 – Portrait of Mme Daey (Paris, Baron Gustave de Rothschild collection), Gazette des Beaux-Arts February 1879 – Danae, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1879 – A Rabbi (Wilson Collection), 1881,Catalogue de tableaux de premier ordre ancient & modernes composant la galerie de M. John W. Wilson, 14-16 March 1881, cat.93; Gazette des Beaux-Arts September 1873 Fouquet-Dorval, Georges – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1895 nº4204 Gaillard, Claude-Ferdinand (1834-87) – Pilgrims of Emmaus, Salon of 1883 nº4664

350

Gauchard, Félix-Jean (1825-72) – Untitled, wood engraving, Salon of 1857 nº3190 Gaucherel, Léon (1816-86) – Golgotha, 1881, l’Art 1881, Catalogue de tableaux de premier ordre ancient & modernes composant la galerie de M. John W. Wilson, 14-16 March 1881, cat.92 as Christ on the Cross Gérard, J. – Portrait of a Man, Magasin pittoresque July 1869 Gilbert, Achille-Isidore (1828-99) – St. Matthew the Evangelist, lithograph, Salon of 1895 nº4229 – Portrait of a Young Man, lithograph, Salon of 1896 nº4583 Ginisty, Jeanne – Untitled, wood engraving, Salon of 1892 nº3711 Girard, Cléo – The Good Samaritan, wood engraving, Salon of 1887 nº5019 – Angel Raphael leaving Tobias’ Family, wood engraving, Salon of 1887 nº5020 Giroux, Charles (b.1861) – Head of a Young Man, etching, Salon of 1888 nº5223 Greux, Gustave-Marie (1838-1919) – Philosopher, Salon of 1868 nº4047, for the Musée universel Guénée, Henri-Emmanuel – Portrait of a Man, lithograph, Salon of 1895 nº4240 Guérard, Henri-Charles (1846-97) – Docteur Faustus or The Microcosm, etching, c.1875, Paris à l’eau-forte 14 March 1875 – Blind Tobias, c.1875, Beraldi 452-461 – Two Pendant Beggars, Paris à l’eau-forte 30 April 1876 – Two Old Men, etching, c.1875, Beraldi 452-261 – Skater, etching, Bertin 505 – Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, etching, 1875, B.452461, Bertin 506 – Doctor feeling the pulse, c.1875, etching, B.452-41, Bertin 507 – Old Man Meditating, c.1875, etching, Bertin 508 – Two Small Studies, etching, c.1875, Bertin 509 Guerdet, Laurent-François (b.1830) – Self-Portrait, Salon of 1870 nº5205 Gusman, Pierre (b.1862) – Portrait of a Young Man, wood engraving, Salon of 1892 nº3726

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Hanriot, Jules-Armand (b.1853) – Portrait of Saskia, etching, Salon of 1889 nº5513, L’Artiste December 1888 Hermant, Auguste-Louis (b.1904) – Portrait of Rembrandt, lithograph, Salon of 1894 nº4270 Honer, Marie-Edmond – Untitled, lithograph, Salon of 1893 nº3868 Hourriez, Georges – Fragments of the Syndics, wood engraving, Salon of 1894 nº4279 Huvey, Louis (1868-1954) – La Descente de la croix, lithograph, Salon of 1899 nº4624 Huyot, Jean-Marie-Joseph-Jules (1841-1921) – Pilgrims of Emmaus, wood engraving, Salon of 1879 nº5688 – Christ before Pilate, wood engraving, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December 1874 Jaccot, Jean-Jules – Disciples of Emmaus, lithograph, Salon of 1889 nº5532 Jacob, Marguerite-Jeanne (b.1867) – Rembrandt’s Mother, Salon of 1890 nº5064 Jacque, Charles (1813-94) – Head of a Woman, etching, 1830, Guiffrey 1 – Portrait, (Rembrandt drawing), etching, Guiffrey 127 – Rembrandt’s Mill, etching, 1846, L’Artiste 15 January 1849 Jacquemart, Jules (1837-80) – Untitled, Salon of 1878 nº4837 – Portrait of Rembrandt in Old Age (Paris, Double collection), 1869, Gazette des Beaux-Arts May 1870 – Head of an Old Man, Gazette des Beaux-Arts July 1877 – Landscape, Gazette des Beaux-Arts September 1877 Julian-Damazy, William – Portrait of a Man, engraving, Salon of 1886 nº5069 Koepping, Charles (Carl, German, 1848-1914) – Portrait of a Woman, engraving, Salon of 1879 nº5696 – Lucretia, etching, Salon of 1880 nº7048 – Portrait of the Constable of Bourbon, etching, Salon of 1882 nº5387 – Syndics, engraving, Salon of 1887 nº5071 – An Old Man, etching, Salon of 1889 nº5544

Korneff, Vinzeslas Bazil (Russian) – Untitled, wood engraving, Salon of 1897 nº4100 Lefort, Henri-Émile (b.1852) – Rembrandt’s Mother, etching, Salon of 1877 nº4461 Leguay, Eugène (b.1822) – Head of a Man (Paris, Louvre), etching, 1859, iff 10 Leleu, A.-Félix-Alexandre (b.1871) – Rembrandt’s Mother (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), lithograph, Salon of 1895 nº4329 – Study (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), lithograph, Salon of 1896 nº4677 – Slaughtered Ox, lithograph, Salon of 1899 nº4682 Leluc, Juliette-Pauline-Adrienne (b.1864) – Old Man with a Red Hat (Berlin, Museum), wood engraving, Salon of 1900 nº2565 Lemaitre, Marie – Young Soldier, lithograph, Salon of 1896 nº4680 Lenain, Louis (Belgian, b.1851) – Head of a Jewish Man, etching, Salon of 1877 nº4465 Léonard, Jules (Belgian, 1827-97) – Untitled (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), lithograph, Salon of 1893 nº4021 Leray, Auguste-Eugène – Young Girl, wood engraving, Salon of 1889 nº5595 – The Carpenter’s Household (Paris, Louvre Inv.1742), wood engraving, Salon of 1898 nº4810 Leroy, Alphonse (1780-1840) – Untitled, (Paris, Louvre), engraving, Salon 1859 nº3603 – Untitled, engraving, Salon of 1881 nº4761 – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1882 nº5428 – Portrait of a Man (drawing from Norbin collection), c.1880, Louvre Chalography 1880 nº68, F. Reiset et F. Villon Collection de dessins originaux de grands maîtres en facsimile par Alphonse Leroy. Paris: Alphonse Leroy Estampes, n.d., c.1881 – Two Sketches on the same plate: Man seated before a table; Sick Woman Crouching (drawing from Desperet collection), c.1880, Louvre Chalcography 1880 nº69, F. Reiset et F. Villon Collection de dessins originaux de grands maîtres en facsimile par Alphonse Leroy. Paris: Alphonse Leroy Estampes, n.d., c.1881 Leseigneur, Henri-Louis-Maurice – Portrait of Rembrandt, engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4345

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Lévy, Gustave (1819-94) – The Good Minister, engraving, Salon of 1887 nº5127 Lowenstam, Léopold (Dutch, 1842-98) – Portrait, etching, Salon of 1884 nº4493 Malhélin, Léon-Louis – Portrait of an Old Man, lithograph, Salon of 1897 nº4162 Manchon, Gaston-Albert (b.1855) – Portrait of Gerard Dou, engraving, Salon of 1886 nº5243 Manigaud, Jean-Claude (b.1825) – Rembrandt’s Sisters, engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4378 Maréchal, Léopold – Study of an Old Man, etching, Salon of 1899 nº4724 Martinet, Alphonse (1821-61) – Portrait of Rembrandt, Louvre Chalcography 1880 nº2266 Marvy, Louis (1815-50) – Beggars, etching, Magasin pittoresque July 1847 – Doctor Faust, etching, Magasin pittoresque December 1847 – Thatched Cottage, Louvre Chalcography 1860 nº34 – Landscape, etching, 1849 – Portrait of Jan Six – Descent from the Cross – The Night Watch – Christ Chassing the Moneychangers from the Temple – The Good Samaritan – The Resurrection of Lazarus Massalof, Nicolas (Russian) – Untitled (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), six etchings, Salon of 1873 nº2087 – Rembrandt’s Mother Gazette des Beaux-Arts September 1872 – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1874 nº3613 – Banquet of Ahasuerus, etching, Salon of 1874 nº3616 – Rembrandt’s Wife, etching, Salon of 1874 nº3616 – Workers on the Vines, etching, Salon of 1874 nº3616 – The Night Watch, etching, Salon of 1877 nº4475 – Lieven Copol, etching, Salon of 1877 nº4476(1) – Jan VI, etching, Salon of 1877 nº4476(2) – A Mathematician, Salon of 1877 nº4476(3)

352

– A Young Woman, Salon of 1877 nº4476(4) – Jacob blessing Joseph’s Children, Salon of 1877 nº4476(5) – Saskia, etching, Salon of 1877 nº4476(6) – Untitled, six etchings, Salon of 1878 nº4880 Masson, Alphonse-Charles (1814-98) – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1850 nº3816 – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1870 nº5278 – Portrait of a Man, etching, Salon of 1876 nº3919 – Portrait of Rembrandt (Paris, Louvre Inv.1744), engraving, Salon of 1891 nº3521 – Head of an Old Man, Salon of 1892 nº3853 – Portrait of Rembrandt, Louvre Chalocography, 1891 supplement nº5952 Mauduit, Charles (b.1788) – Rest, vignette, Salon of 1849 nº2511(1) – Rest, vignette, Salon of 1849 nº2511(2) Maurand, Charles – Angel Raphael, wood engraving, Salon of 1891 nº3525 Menpes, Mortimer (English, b.1860) – Rembrandt’s Model, drypoint, Salon of 1890 nº5157 Mercadié, Emmanuel-Victor (d.1897) – Portrait of Rembrandt, engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5377 Milius, Félix-Augustin (1843-94) – Queen Artemisia, Salon of 1878 nº4890 Miller, Willy (American, 1850-1923) – Rembrandt’s Mother, wood engraving, Salon of 1884 nº4534 Mirman, Jeanne-Madeleine – The Hundred Guilder Print, wood engraving, Salon of 1886 nº5266 Montefiore, Edward-Lévy (English, 1820-94) – Untitled (after a drawing), etching, Salon of 1880 nº7104(1) – Untitled (after a drawing), etching, Salon of 1880 nº7104(2) Montenez, Georges – Portrait of an Old Burgomeister, etching, Salon of 1894 nº4411 Mordant, Daniel (c.1853-1914) – The “Doreur”, engraving, Salon of 1885 nº4909; Cent chefs-d’œuvre – Portrait of a family, engraving, Salon of 1886 nº5272; L’Art

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Mouilleron, Adolphe (1820-81) – The Night Watch, lithograph, 1854 commission of Musée d’État, Salon of 1860 nº3733 from Musée d’État; Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1860; Exhibited in Troyes August 1860; Exposition Universelle 1867 nº1036 Muller, Louis Jean (b.1864) – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1890 nº5177 Nargeot, Jean-Denis (1795-after 1865) – Untitled, vignette, Salon of 1850 nº3823 Olivier, Marie-Thérèse – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1893 nº4090 Payrau, Angèle – Jupiter in the house of Philemon and Baucis, etching, Salon of 1897 nº4208 Pélicier, Georges-Louis (b.1858) – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1893 nº4098 Pelissier, Jean-Joseph – The Pilgrims of Emmaus (Louvre), lithograph, Salon of 1897 nº4210 Pierruges, Jules – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1891 nº3570 Pilet, Berthe – Reader, etching, Paris à l’eau-forte 10 January 1876 Pinet, Charles (1867-1932) – Slaughtered Ox, etching, Salon of 1891 nº3572 Pingenet, Cléopha Dosithée – Mill, wood engraving, Salon of 1879 nº5788 Pirodon, Louis-Eugène (b.1824) – Anatomy Lesson, lithograph, Salon of 1888 nº5422 – Ruth and Boaz (Aachen, Suermondt collection), wood engraving after drawing by Comte, Gazette des Beaux-Arts April 1874 Poynot, Gabrielle – Philosopher, engraving, Salon of 1885 nº4955; 1885 sent by the artist to Rouen as part of Félix Buhot’s mission to create print rooms in the provinces Privat – The Night Watch, engraving, Magasin pittoresque 1 November 1893 Proffit, Berthe – St. Matthew, wood engraving, Salon of 1896 nº4787 Protche, A – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Paris à l’eau-forte 10 May 1873 Quidor, Gabriel-Pascal (1875-1928) – Study, wood engraving, Salon of 1893 nº4123

Raale, Doris – Portrait, etching, Salon of 1892 nº3921 Ragot, Jean-Baptiste-Abel (d.1904) – Sacrifice of Manoa, etching and engraving, Salon of 1896 nº4793 Rajon, Paul-Adolphe (1842/3-88) – Old Woman (London, National Gallery), etching, Salon of 1874 nº3556, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1874 Regnier, Isidore-Désiré – Adolphe Gelderen showing his fit to his Father, (Vienna, Museum), wood engraving, Salon of 1864 nº2977 Roupini, Venceslas – Self-Portrait, engraving, Salon of 1891 nº3603 Roux, Jean-Marie-Paul – Interior of a Butcher’s Shop, etching, Salon of 1898 nº4946 Salmon, Emile-Frédéric (1840-1913) – Syndics, etching, Salon of 1892 nº3952 Sauvigny, Alfred – Untitled, lithograph, Salon of 1899 nº4843(1) Schultheiss, Albrecht (German, 1823-1909) – Saskia, engraving, Salon of 1886 nº5354 – Woman with a Carnation, engraving, Salon of 1886 nº5355 Sefman, Ferdinand – Untitled, etching, Salon of 1849 nº2533 Serres, Raoul-Jean – Portrait of an Old Man, engraving, Salon of 1899 nº4845 – Portrait of a Young Rembrandt, engraving, Salon of 1898 nº4968 Simon, Clémentine – St. Matthew, wood engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4509 Sivé, Louis – Portrait of an Old Man, wood engraving, Salon of 1892 nº3959 Soderlund, Charles (Swedish, b.1860) – Philosopher Meditating, etching, Salon of 1896 nº4832 Thommès, Henri – Portrait of a Man, lithograph, Salon of 1897 nº4289 Tinayre, Jean-Julien (1859-1923) – St. Matthew the Evangelist, wood engraving, Salon of 1890 nº5278 – Rembrandt’s Father, wood engraving, Salon of 1894 nº4519

appendix

353

Tirpenne, Félix – Self-Portrait, lithograph, Salon of 1896 nº4846 Unger, William (German, 1837-1932) – Portrait of a Man (Vienna, Lissingen collection) Gazette des Beaux-Arts March 1876 Vallotton, Félix-Édouard (Swiss, 1865-1925) – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1889 nº5785 Veyrassat, Jules-Jacques (1828-93) – The Carpenter’s Household (Louvre Inv.1742), etching, Salon of 1857 nº3286, Louvre Chalcography 1860 nº617, L’Artiste 1856 Vigné, Eugène – Syndics, engraving, Salon of 1897 nº4309 Vintraut, Godefroy-Frédéric – Syndics, wood engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5510 Viollat, Eugène Joseph (d.1901) – Portrait of a Man (Venice, Malfrini Palace), Magasin pittoresque May 1866 Vion, Henry (1863-91) – Head of Rembrandt, engraving, Salon of 1888 nº5512 – Portrait of a Man, Man Laughing (Dresden, Museum), Louvre Chalcography, 1891 supplement nº5953 Voisin, Philibert-Alexandre – St. Matthew the Evangelist, lithograph, Salon of 1898 nº5018 Voruz, Élise (1844-1909) – Head of a Man, lithograph, Salon of 1893 nº4198 Vuillon, G. – Portrait of a Man Laughing (Vienna, Belvedere Gallery), Magasin pittoresque January 1887 Waltner, Charles Auguste (1846-1925) – Portrait of a Man, etching, Salon of 1874 nº3616 – Portrait of Rembrandt, etching, Salon of 1882 nº5606

354

– Portrait of a Rabbi, etching, Salon of 1882 nº5607 – Portrait of Rembrandt, Salon of 1883 nº4937; MM. Goupil & Co. – The “Doreur” (Paris, Duc de Morny collection), engraving, Salon of 1884 nº4663, Georges Petit – An Old Man, engraving, Salon of 1885 nº5031 – The Oath of Jan Ziska , Gazette des Beaux-Arts November 1874 – Self-Portrait, (London, National Gallery) – Rembrandt’s Brother – Martin Daey (Paris, Gustave de Rothschild collection), 1884, Goupil & Co. – Mrs. Daey (Paris, Gustave de Rothschild collection), 1884, Goupil & Co. – The Night Watch (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), 1888, Boussod-Valadon – Jacob Blessing (Kassel, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen) – A Rabbi, 1887, Obach & Co., London, 2 February 1887 – Elizabeth Jacob Baas (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), 1887, Boussod, Valadon & Co. Widman, Frédéric-Jacques – Portrait of a Woman, wood engraving, Salon of 1895 nº4560 Zaleski, Bronislaw (Polish, 1819-80) – Landscape (Florence, Offices Gallery), Salon of 1868 nº415 Zilcken, Charles Louis Philippe (1857-1930) – Portrait of an Old Woman, engraving, Salon of 1887 nº5316 – Portrait, etching, Salon of 1888 nº5522

* dates included when known

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

b i b l i o gr a p h y

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i l l u s t r at i o n acknowledgements

color plates plate 1 – Paul Delaroche, Hemicycle des Beaux-Arts (Left Section), wall painting, 1841. Paris, École des Beaux-Arts. plate 2 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Easel, oil on canvas, 1660. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 3 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Angel Raphael Leaving Tobias’ Family, oil on panel, 1637. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 4 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a Woman, oil on canvas, n.d. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 5 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Philosopher in Meditation, oil on panel, 1632. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 6 – School of Rembrandt van Rijn, The Good Samaritan, oil on canvas, n.d. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 7 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Carpenter’s Household/The Holy Family, oil on panel, 1640. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 8 – After Rembrandt van Rijn, Hendrickje Stoffels as Venus/Venus and Amor, oil on canvas, n.d. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Plate 9 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, oil on canvas, 1642. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. plate 10 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, oil on canvas, 1632. The Hague, Mauritshuis.

plate 11 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Woman at the Bath, oil on canvas, 1652. Paris, Musée du Louvre. plate 12 – Alphonse Martinet, Rembrandt’s Studio, hand-colored print, c.1857. Bordeaux, Musée Goupil. plate 13 – Frédéric Regamey, Paris à l’eau-forte. Paraît tous les samedis, lithograph, 1875. Paris, Musée de la publicité. plate 14 – Henri-Patrice Dillon, Nouveau théâtre de la rue Blanche, color lithograph, 1898. Paris, Musée de la publicité. plate 15 – Aert de Gelder, Abraham and the Angels, oil on canvas. Rotterdam, Boymans van Beuningen Museum. plate 16 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Head of a Rabbi, oil on canvas. Bayonne, Musée Bonnat. plate 17 – Copy after Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Burgomeister Six, oil on panel. Bayonne, Musée Bonnat. plate 18 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Suppliant before a Biblical Prince, oil on panel. Bayonne, Musée Bonnat. plate 19 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Samplers in a Cave, oil on panel. Bayonne, Musée Bonnat. plate 20 – Manner of Rembrandt van Rijn, Head of an Old Man, oil on canvas on panel. Bayonne, Musée Bonnat.

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black and white figures fig. 1 – Attributed to Rembrandt 1807-1815, Landscape with Goats. Engraved by Geissler. Reproduced from Antoine-Michel Filhol and Joseph Lavalée Galerie du Musée de France vol. 8 (Paris, 1804-15), plate 508. Paris, Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie Jacques Doucet. fig. 2 – Attributed to Rembrandt 1807-1815, Landscape with Hunters. Engraved by Bovinet. Reproduced from Antoine-Michel Filhol and Joseph Lavalée Galerie du Musée de France vol. 9 (Paris, 1804-15), plate 581. Paris, Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie Jacques Doucet. fig. 3 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Man Urinating, etching, 1631. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 4 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Woman Urinating, etching, 1631. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 5 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Doctor Ephraïm Bonus (“Juif à la rampe”), etching, drypoint, and engraving, 1647. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 6 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Nude Female Seated on a Mound, etching, 1631. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 7 – Hix, Woman at the Bath, caricature after Rembrandt, 1870. (La Vie Parisienne, April 26th, 1870, p. 331). Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale. fig. 8 – Hix, Bathsheba, caricature after Rembrandt, 1870. (La Vie Parisienne, April 26th, 1870, p. 331). Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale. fig. 9 – Pierre Nolasque Bergeret, Rembrandt in his Studio, oil on canvas, 1834. Paris, Musée du Louvre, on deposit at the Assemblée nationale. fig. 10 – Jules-Jean-Baptiste Dehaussy, Last Moments of Rembrandt, He Asks to See his Treasure Once More Before Dying, oil on canvas, c.1838. Location unknown, photograph courtesy of Mrs. Pat Holman. fig. 11 – Fabien-Henri Alasonière, Rembrandt in his Studio, etching after painting by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, 1863 (Georges Petit Galleries 1893, catalogue 48). Paris Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie Jacques Doucet. fig. 12 – Alexandre Joseph Oliva, Rembrandt, bronze, 1853. Besançon, Palais Granvelle.

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fig. 13 – Alberto Masso Gilli, Rembrandt, etching, 1874. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 14 – Honoré Cavaroc, Portrait of Rembrandt, drawing, late 19th century. Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Collection Frits Lugt. fig. 15 – Louis George Brillouin, Rembrandt in his Studio, preparatory drawing for painting exhibited at Salon of 1859. Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Collection Frits Lugt. fig. 16 – Adolphe Mouilleron, Rembrandt painting his Mother, lithograph after painting by Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1845. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 17 – Adolphe Mouilleron, Burgomaster Six in Rembrandt’s Studio, lithograph after painting by Henri Leys, 1853. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 18 – Charles Baude and Studio, Rembrandt and Saskia, wood engraving after painting by Léon Brunin, c.1900. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 19 – Léopold Flameng, Rembrandt’s House, etching, 1859. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 20 – Unknown Artist, Rembrandt Working in his Studio, woodcut after painting by Hendrik Hollander, 1852 (Couprie “A Statue for RembrandtAmsterdam, 1852” p. 95). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 21 – Prosper-Louis Roux, Rembrandt’s Studio, oil on canvas, 1857. St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. fig. 22 – Alphonse Martinet, Rembrandt’s Studio, etching, aquatint and mezzotint after painting by Prosper-Louis Roux, c.1857. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 23 – Galletti, Rembrandt Painting the Anatomy Lesson, caricature after painting by Tony François de Bergue, 1861 (Galletti Album Caricatural, Salon de 1861, plate 37). Paris, Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie Jacques Doucet. fig. 24 – Christoffel Bisschop, Rembrandt going to the Anatomy Lesson, photograph after a painting, c.1866. Bordeaux, Musée Goupil. fig. 25 – Eugène Le Roux, Rembrandt Painting

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Susanna at the Bath, lithograph after painting by Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury, c.1859. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 26 – Paul-Adolphe Rajon, Rembrandt biting an etched plate, etching after painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, c.1861. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 27 – Louis Marvy, Doctor Faust, engraving after Rembrandt, 1840s. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 28 – Louis Marvy, Beggars at the Door of a House, engraving after Rembrandt, 1840s. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 29 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Monk in the Cornfield, etching and drypoint, c.1646. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 30 – Charles Jacque, “Tout les gouts sont dans la nature,” etching, 1840s. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 31 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Three Trees, etching, drypoint, and engraving, 1643. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 32 – Paul Huet, The Marsh/The Voyageur, clichéverre, n.d. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 33 – Théodore Rousseau Site de Bérry, etching, 1842. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 34 – Charles Jacque, Seven Etchings on One Plate, etching, 1844. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 35 – Félix Braquemond, Two Trees with a Sunset, mezzotint, 1856. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 36 – Henri Guérard, The Thatched Cottage, etching, c.1881. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 37 – Alphonse Legros, Sheepfold on the Hillside, etching, n.d. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 38 – Alphonse Legros, The Hovel on the Hill, etching, n.d. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 39 – Ludovic Lepic, Nemi Lake, etching, 1870. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 40 – Francis Seymour Haden, Sketch in Burty’s

fig.

fig. fig. fig. fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

fig.

Garden, etching and drypoint, 1864. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 41 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Male and Female Beggar, etching, 1630. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 42 – Henri Guérard, Frontispiece for Dix Têtes de Vieillards, etching, 1872. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 43 – Henri Guérard, Head of an Old Man, etching, 1872. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 44 – Henri Guérard, Old Sweeper, drypoint, n.d. Paris, Paul Prouté S.A. 45 – Adolphe Hervier, Child with a Basket, etching, 1875. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 46 – Léopold Flameng, Letterhead for Auguste Delâtre, etching, c.1860. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 47 – Ferdinand Roybet, Frontispiece for the Fourth Annual Publication of the Société des Aquafortistes, etching, 1866. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 48 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Descent from the Cross, etching and engraving, 1633. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 49 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Preaching, etching, drypoint and engraving, c.1652. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 50 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Healing the Sick, etching, drypoint and engraving, c.1649. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 51 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Resurrection of Lazarus, etching and engraving, c.1632. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 52 – Rembrandt van Rijn, The Good Samaritan, etching and engraving, 1633. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 53 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Presented to the People, etching, 1635 and 1636. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. 54 – Rembrandt van Rijn, St. Jerome, etching, c.1629. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie.

illustration acknowledgements

377

fig. 55 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with a Sabre and Heron, etching with touches of engraving, 1634. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 56 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Janus Lutma, etching, drypoint, and engraving, 1656. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 57 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Burgomaster Six, etching, drypoint, and engraving, 1647. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 58 – Rembrandt van Rijn, A Shell, etching, drypoint, and engraving, 1650. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 59 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Thatched Cottage with Barn, etching, 1641. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 60 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Thatched Cottage with Large Tree, etching, 1641. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 61 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Doctor Faust, etching, drypoint, and engraving, c.1652. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 62 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill, etching and drypoint, 1639. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 63 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Le Lit à la française, etching, drypoint, and engraving, 1646. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 64 – Francis Seymour Haden, Amstelodamus, etching, 1863. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 65 – Norbert Goeneutte, Portrait of the Printmaker Henri Guérard, drypoint, 1888. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 66 – Rembrandt van Rijn, Pendant Beggar, etching, 1634. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 67 – Félix Buhot, Les salles d’estampes en province, gouache and wash on photograph, 1887. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie.

378

fig. 68 – Félix Buhot, Sketches for les salles d’estampes en province, preparatory drawing, 1887. Paris, Collection of A. and A. Bonafous-Murat. fig. 69 – Félix Buhot, Frontispiece for Volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, preparatory drawing, 1885. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 70 – Félix Buhot, Frontispiece for Volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, etching, 1885. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 71 – Léopold Flameng, Anatomy Lesson, engraving after Rembrandt, 1876. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 72 – Léopold Flameng, Syndics, engraving after Rembrandt, 1876. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 73 – Adolphe Mouilleron, The Night Watch, lithograph after Rembrandt, 1854. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 74 – Albert Duvivier, Portrait of Charles Courtry, engraving, 1887. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 75 – Charles Waltner, The Night Watch, etching, aquatint, and mezzotint after Rembrandt, 1887. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 76 – Charles Waltner, Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother, etching after Rembrandt, first state, n.d. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 77 – Charles Waltner, Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother, etching after Rembrandt, second state, n.d. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 78 – Charles Waltner, The “Doreur”, etching after Rembrandt, 1884. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 79 – Léopold Flameng, Hundred Guilder Print, etching after Rembrandt, 1873. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie. fig. 80 – Léopold Flameng, Charles Blanc and Unknown Artists, Several Prints on a Plate, etchings after Rembrandt, 1859. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, cabinet des estampes et de la photographie.

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

index

Italicized page numbers refer to illustrations

rembrandt’s works by title A Shell 193, 203 The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp 52, 74, 117, 126, 127, 132, 144, 148, 150, 151, 154, 266, 267, 285, 291 Angel Raphael Leaving Tobias’ Family 19, 67, 98, 147 Annunciation to the Shepherds 252 Bathsheba 92-94, 294 Black Woman Lying Down 93 Bust of a Man with a Plumed Hat 21 The Carpenter’s Household/The Holy Family 22, 71, 119, 147 Christ Healing the Sick 164, 193, 194, 195, 203, 205, 213, 220-221, 231, 237, 246, 252, 275, 280 Christ Preaching 193, 194, 194, 203 Christ Presented to the People 193, 198 Descent from the Cross 160, 191, 192, 193 Doctor Ephraïm Bonus (“Juif à la rampe”) 61, 62 Doctor Faust 205, 206, 212, 245, 249-251 Family Portrait 23 Four Subjects for a Spanish book 61 The Goldweigher’s Field 214 The Good Samaritan (etching) 193, 197 The Haybarn 214 House with Three Chimneys 214 The Hundred Guilder Print see Christ Healing the Sick Jupiter and Antiope 93 Kouk Seller 249 Landscape with Canal 214

Le Lit à la française 203, 214 Male and Female Beggar 183, 184 Man Urinating 34, 35 The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq 40, 56, 61, 73, 97, 117, 120, 126, 127, 132, 144, 145, 153, 229, 246, 266, 271, 272, 280, 285, 291, 293 The Monk in the cornfield 161, 163 The Night Watch see The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq Nude Female Seated on a Mound 91, 92 Old Man 21 Old Tobias and his Son 291 Pendant Beggar 249, 249 Philosopher in Meditation 20, 69, 147 Pilgrims of Emmaus 22 Portrait of Jan Six see Portrait of Burgomaster Six Portrait of a Man/Jewish Man with a Fur Hat 22 Portrait of a Man Trimming his Quill 23 Portrait of a Woman 19, 23, 57, 61, 68 Portrait of a Young Man 152, 291 Portrait of Burgomaster Six 129, 160, 202, 205, 213, 221, 252 Portrait of Janus Lutma 201, 213, 224, 228 Portrait of Rembrandt with a Round Hat and Embroidered Coat 121 Portrait of Rembrandt’s Sister with a Veil/Bust of a Young Woman 22 Portrait of Saskia 129 Presentation in the Temple 21 The Resurrection of Lazarus 193, 196, 231 St. Jerome 193, 194, 199, 204

index

379

St. Matthew and the Angel 22 Self-Portrait 21 Self-Portrait at the Age of Thirty-four 8 Self-Portrait before an Architectural Background 20, 228, 248 Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill 137, 205, 207, 245 Self-Portrait with Easel 19, 66, 291 Self-Portrait with a Sabre and Heron 193, 200 Self-Portrait with Bare Head 22 Self-Portrait with Cap and Gold Chain 22 Self-Portrait with Saskia 212 The Slaughtered Ox 98 Supper at Emmaus 19, 249 Susanna at the Bath 21, 75, 92-94, 151-152, 291 Thatched Cottage with Barn 193, 204 Thatched Cottage with Large Tree 193, 204 The Three Trees 164, 165, 166, 166, 170, 193, 205, 213 View of a Canal 193, 194 Winter Landscape 23 Woman Urinating 34, 35

Academic training 26, 84, 88, 90, 219, 264, 270 Academy (French) 16, 21, 26, 27, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 104, 160, 174, 187, 195, 210, 219, 221, 263, 264, 270 Adeline, Jules 247 Alasonière, Fabien-Henri 132 Rembrandt in his Studio (after Meissonier) 131, 132 Aligre collection 296 Amiens 253, 254 Amsterdam 41, 48, 54, 55, 58, 60, 61, 63, 100, 112, 115, 120, 129, 143, 151, 170, 218, 221, 229, 230, 237, 284, 285, 292, 294, 295 Botermark (Butter market) 41 ancien régime 19, 54, 286 Angiviller, Comte d’ 20 Apelles 98 Arozarena collection 213 Arti et Amicitiæ society 41 Augusta 48 authenticity 17, 52, 90, 143, 147, 182, 183, 220, 222, 226, 227, 228, 249, 287, 288 Auvray, Louis 154, 155

380

Baillie, William 170 Baldinucci, Filippo 42-45 Balzac, Honoré de 120 Banville, Théodore de 235 Barbizon school 99 Basan, Henri-Louis 212 Basan, Pierre François 212 Baude, Charles and Studio 141 Rembrandt and Saskia, after Léon Brunin 141, 141 Baudelaire, Charles 95, 96, 140, 174, 256 Baxandall, Michael 19 beauty 34, 36, 51, 84, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 113, 164, 180, 236, 284 Bégassière collection 296 Beistegui collection 296 belle épreuve see Burty, Philippe Beraldi, Henri 227, 228, 243, 261, 271 Bergeret, Émile 278, 278 Bergeret, Pierre Nolasque 125, 128, 129, 130, 138 Honors Bestowed on Raphael after his Death 130 Rembrandt in his Studio 124, 125, 128-9, 138 Bergue, Tony François de 148, 150 Rembrandt painting The Anatomy Lesson 148, 149, 150 Beringhen, Jacques-Louis de 191 Berlin 22 Bernard, Auguste 212 Bertand, Aloysius 179, 180 Besnard, Paul Albert 208 Beurnonville collection 296 Bibliothèque nationale 178, 191, 210, 262 Bibliothèque Royale 191 Bingham, Robert Jefferson 155 Bisschop, Christoffel 151 Rembrandt going to the Anatomy Lesson 149, 151 Bisson, Auguste-Rosalie see Bisson brothers Bisson, Louis-Auguste see Bisson brothers Bisson brothers 176 Blanc, Charles 18, 33-37, 38, 41, 49, 57, 87, 88, 92, 100, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 121, 143, 156, 176, 180, 181, 189, 190, 208, 211, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 232, 237, 265, 277, 278, 291 Director of Fine Arts 110, 111 founder, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 Blanc, Louis 110 Blois 254 Boilly, Louis Léopold 31 Boissière collection 296

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Bonaparte, Charles-Louis-Napoleon (Napoleon III) 38, 89, 177 Bonaparte, Joseph 20 Bonaparte, Louis 20 Bonaparte, Napoleon (Napoleon I) 20, 22, 24, 112 Bonnat, Léon 18, 94, 205, 211, 290-293, 294, 295, 296 The Anatomy Lesson (after Rembrandt) 291 The Night Watch (after Rembrandt) 291 Susanna at the Bath (after Rembrandt) 291 The Syndics (after Rembrandt) 291 Bonvin, François 183 Bosse, Abraham 231 bourgeois 34, 54, 57, 58, 63, 177 Bourgeois, Stéphane 288-289 Boussod-Valadon 271, 272 Braquemond, Félix 169, 256 Two Trees with a Sunset 169, 169 Braun, Adolphe 176 Braun and Company 176 Braunschweig 21, 22, 23 Breton, Jules 247 Brillouin, Louis George 137, 208 Rembrandt in his Studio 136, 137 British Museum 224 Brouwer, Adrian 51 Brunin, Léon 141 Rembrandt and Saskia 141, 141 Buhot, Félix 211, 238, 243, 247, 251-254, 256-258, 261-262 Frontispiece for Volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle (etching) 258, 260, 261 Frontispiece for Volume IV of Henri Béraldi’s Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle (preparatory drawing) 258, 259 Les salles d’estampes en province 254, 255 Sketches for les salles d’estampes en province 256-258, 256 Bürger, William see Thoré-Bürger Burlington Fine Arts Club 226 Burty, Philippe 165, 172, 190, 208, 230, 235-238, 240-244, 248, 254, 257, 261, 262, 279 definition of a “belle épreuve” 236, 241-242, 244, 248, 261 Cabanel, Alexandre 92 Cabinet des estampes 88, 178, 189, 191, 194, 195, 205, 208, 209, 210, 231, 252

Cadart, Alfred 177, 179, 221, 222, 232, 235, 236, 245, 265, 266 Callot, Jacques 178-183, 189, 218, 219, 279 comparisons of Rembrandt and Callot 179-183 Calmatta, Luigi 224 Cambray, Sosthène 119 Camp, Maxime du 154, 155 canon 9, 15, 27, 87, 97, 104, 105, 266 Cardon, Émile 247 Carracci, Annibale 85, 86, 89, 92 Carracci brothers 51 carte album 128, 153 carte de visite 128, 145, 151, 153 Cassatt, Mary 187, 238 Catholic religion 34, 38, 40, 58, 107, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119 Cavaroc, Honoré 137 Portrait of Rembrandt 135, 137 Cavé, Marie-Elisabeth 88 Chalcography 119, 175, 252, 253 Champfleury (Jules-François-Félix Husson) 27, 60, 105, 108, 109, 208, 256 Champollion, E. 248 Portrait flamande 248 Chaptal 24, 25 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Simon 27 Chartres 254 Chennevières-Pointel 27 clair-obscur 36, 44, 86, 108, 126, 148, 155, 160, 165, 169, 189, 193, 246, 265 Claretie, Jules 177, 208, 231, 232 Clément, Charles 178, 189, 205, 211, 213 Clément collection see Clément, Charles cliché-verre 165-166 Coginet, Léon 128 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 191 Commission of Public Instruction 20 Commission of Sciences and Arts 20 Compiègne 22 Comte, Auguste 118 Concordat, 1802 112 contre-jour 160, 165, 166 Coquerel fils., Athanase 98, 112, 113 Correggio 108 Couder, Louis-Charles-Auguste 98, 130 Courbet, Gustave 18, 92, 105 Courtry, Charles 205, 247, 253, 266, 268, 269, 270, 276, 279, 280

index

381

The Carpenter’s Household (after Rembrandt) 266 Coypel, Antoine 84 croquis 87, 160, 165, 169, 265, 271 cult 7, 15, 42, 59, 118, 153, 160, 165, 191, 217, 235, 246, 251, 261, 263, 283, 286, 290, 294 Danlos and Delisle 205, 211 Daubigny, Charles 208, 237 Daumier, Honoré 208-209 David, Jacques-Louis 31 Degas, Edgar 208, 238 Dehaussy, Jules-Jean-Baptiste Last Moments of Rembrandt, He Asks to See his Treasure Once More Before Dying 129-130, 130 De Hooch, Pieter 129, 264 Delaborde, Henri 179 Delacroix, Eugène 18, 88, 95, 102-104, 107-108, 120, 250 Delaroche, Paul 16, 176 Hemicycle des Beaux-Arts 16, 65, 176 Delâtre, Auguste 161, 186-187, 226, 229, 240-241, 275-276 Deleschamps, Pierre 218 Delessert collection 189, 211 Della Bella, Stefano 178, 181 democracy 63, 110, 114, 116, 118, 119, 284 Descamps, Alexandre 18 Descamps, Jean-Baptiste 31-32, 42-46, 84 Desnoyers, Fernand 106 Desperet 211 Dillon, Henri-Patrice Nouveau théâtre de la rue Blanche 77, 286 Dircks, Geertge 57 Dou, Gerard 155 Double collection 296 Dresden 292 Drolling, Michel Martin 31 Drumont, Edouard 59-60 drypoint 165, 170, 226 Duclos collection 296 Dumur, Louis 284 Duplessis, George 56, 88, 191, 231 Durand, Amand 224 Durand-Ruel 266, 294 Duranty, Edmond 106 Dürer, Albrecht 183, 186, 187, 189-191, 244, 252 Saint Jerome 189 Duret, Théodore 208

382

Duseigneur, Georges 183 Dusolier, Alcide 178 Dutch art (seventeenth century) 19, 27, 28, 31, 126, 129, 248, 253 historiography of 31-42 Dutuit, Eugène 156, 211, 213, 223, 227, 228, 230, 256, 292 Duvivier, Albert Portrait of Charles Courtry 266, 268, 269, 270, 279 L’Eau-forte en… 137, 235, 236, 244, 245, 247 ébauches 265 École des Beaux-Arts 16, 26, 84, 89, 90, 176, 270, 271, 280, 289, 290 El Greco 108 engraving 42, 119, 159, 174, 175, 176, 181, 187, 189, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 232, 239, 244, 247, 264, 265, 266, 274 épreuve(s) avant-lettre 253 épreuve(s) d’artiste 253 etching 7, 8, 42, 128, 132, 134, 143, 145, 148, 153, 155, 156, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 172, 179, 181, 183, 186, 187, 189, 204, 218, 219, 220, 221-228, 230-236, 239, 241, 243-246, 251, 257258, 261-264, 271, 273, 275, 278-280 etching as a challenge to engraving and photography 174-178 Etex, Antoine 88 Étienne, C.G. 47 Exposition Internationale de Blanc et Noir 279 Exposition Nationale de l’eau-forte moderne 280 Exposition Universelle, 1855 132, 144, 264, 266 Exposition Universelle, 1867 151, 153 Exposition Universelle, 1878 239 Fantin-Latour, Henri 86, 208, 253 Félibien, André 42, 45 finemaleri 155 Firmin-Didot collection 189, 211, 213, 214 Flameng, Léopold 208, 221, 224, 246, 256, 265, 270, 296 Anatomy Lesson (after Rembrandt) 266, 267 The Hundred GuilderPrint (after Rembrandt) 246, 275, 276, 280 Letterhead for Auguste Dêlatre 186, 186-187 The Night Watch (after Rembrandt) 246, 280 Rembrandt’s House 142, 143-144 Syndics, after Rembrandt 266, 267

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Several Prints on a Plate (after Rembrandt) 277-278, 277 Flemish art (seventeenth century) 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 39, 40, 89, 101, 106-107 Flers, Camille 165 Florence 21, 22, 87 Fontainebleau 22 Franck, Paul 286 François I 19 Frederick Hendrick, Stadholder, Prince of Orange 49 French Academy see Academy French aristocratic collections 21-22 French Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts 20, 40 Frey, Jan de 193 Fromentin, Eugène 33, 39-40, 41, 54, 61, 92, 97, 108, 143, 286 Galerie du Musée de France 22 Galerie espagnole 26 Galichon, Louis 189, 208, 211 Galichon collection see Galichon, Louis Galletti Rembrandt Painting The Anatomy Lesson (after de Bergue) 148, 149, 150-151 Gaucherel, Léon 247, 253, 256 Gautier, Théophile 33, 94, 98, 119, 220, 233, 234, 235, 250 Gavarni, Paul (Guillaume-Sulpice Chevalier) 104 Gelder, Aert de 290 Abraham and the Angels 76, 288-294 genius 9, 32, 36, 49, 51, 52, 63, 87, 88, 93, 101, 103, 121, 126, 156, 164, 165, 181, 186, 218, 223, 228, 235, 239, 244, 246, 262, 284, 285, 286, 288, 290 Géricault, Théodore 18 Gérôme, Jean-Léon 92, 132, 152, 208, 292-293 Egyptian Smoker 155 Rembrandt biting an etched plate 152, 153-156 Gersaint, François 42, 43, 44, 47, 84, 90, 170, 223, 224, 226 Gervaise collection 178 Gide & Baudry 176 Gigoux collection 189, 211 Gilli, Alberto Masso Rembrandt 134, 134, 137, 245-246 Giorgione 51, 108 Giotto di Bondone 50

Goeneutte, Norbert Portrait of the Printmaker Henri Guérard 242, 242 Goldschmidt collection 294, 296 Goncourts, the 61, 104, 120, 187, 208 Gonse, Louis 208 goupillage 271 Goupil and Company see Goupils Goupils 145, 176, 271 Granet, François Marius 127 Greek art 26, 36, 37, 90, 98, 116, 117, 126, 220 Guérard, Henri 183, 238, 241-242, 247, 248, 262 Frontispiece for Dix Têtes de Vieillards 185 Head of an Old Man 185 The Microcosm 249-251 Old Sweeper 185 The Thatched Cottage 170, 170 Un Gueux 249 Guys, Constantin 96 Haden, Francis Seymour 187, 223, 226-228, 236, 237, 238, 240-241, 262 Amstelodamus 229-230, 229 Sketch in Burty’s Garden 172, 173 Hague, the 20, 21, 291, 292 Hals, Frans 27, 40 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert 241 Harjes collection 296 Havard, Henry 33, 40, 41, 56 Inspector of Fine Arts 40 Henner, Jean Jacques 292 Henriquel-Dupont, Louis-Pierre 176, 232, 271 Hervier, Adolphe 183 Child with a Basket 185 Heugel collection 296 Hirsch de Gereuth collection 294 His de la Salle 211, 291 Hix 92-93 Bathsheba (after Rembrandt) 93 Woman at the Bath (after Rembrandt) 93 Holbein 51 Holford, R.S. 191 Hollander, Hendrick Rembrandt Working in his Studio 144-145, 144 Honfleur 254 Houbraken, Arnold 42, 44-46, 90, 138, 143, 193, 225 Houssaye, Arsène 33-36, 38, 39, 41, 101, 102, 106, 118-119

index

383

Huet, Paul 99-100, 164 The Marsh/The Voyageur 166, 167 Hugo, Victor 119, 186, 243, 250, 257 Hulot collection 178 Huygens, Constantin 49 impasto 42, 45, 287, 294 individuality 38, 47, 52, 63, 105, 107, 109, 114, 160, 174, 219, 233 influence 18-19, 159 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 26, 92, 95, 127 Raphael and the Fornarina 127 Venus anadyomène 176 Institut Français 26, 290 interpretive print 248, 263, 265, 266, 270-273, 275, 278, 280, 281, 284 Israël, Menasseh-ben 61 Israëls, Joseph 179 Italian art 20, 23, 26, 27, 31, 32, 37, 39, 43, 50, 51, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 95, 100, 101, 103, 104, 219, 220, 222, 286 Jacque, Charles 160-161, 203, 208-209 Head of a Woman, after Rembrandt 161 Rembrandt Drawing, after Rembrandt 161 Rembrandt’s Mill, after Rembrandt 161 Seven Etchings on One Plate 168, 169, 183 “Tout les gouts sont dans la nature” 161, 163 Jacquemart, Jules 232, 237, 264 Jacquemart, Nélie 208 Jacquemart-André collection 294 Jean, Auguste 212 Joly, Hugues-Adrien 191 Josz, Virgile 284 Judaism 22, 47, 48, 58-63 July Monarchy 232 Kann collection 294, 296 Kassel 21, 22, 23, 129 Kris, Ernst 16 Kurz, Otto 16 Lacaze collection 92, 151, 294, 296 Lafenestre, George 289 Lagrange, Léon 154-155 Lalanne, Maxime 187, 219-220, 222, 237, 278 landscape 23, 25, 26, 36, 37, 99, 107, 159, 160-161, 164-165, 169

384

Langlois collection 296 Lastman, Pieter 43, 50, 231 Lebrun, Charles 89, 108 Lebrun, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre 31-33, 42, 46, 84, 88 Lecomte, Florent 42, 43-44 Ledru, Alexandre Auguste see Ledru-Rolin, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre Auguste 113-114 Legrand, Mme 288-289 Legros, Alphonse 86, 93-94, 183, 187, 221, 227, 229, 256, 262 Sheepfold on the Hillside 170, 171 The Hovel on the Hill 170, 171 Lehmann collection 294, 296 Le Nain Brothers 27 Lenormant, François 87-88, 92, 101 Leonardo da Vinci 36, 86, 129, 264 Lepic, Ludovic 238 Nemi Lake 172, 172 Lesclide, Richard 247 Lostalot, Alfred de 264-265 Lesueur, Eustache 89 Leys, Henri 137 Burgomaster Six in Rembrandt’s Studio 139, 140-141 liberty 37, 43, 52, 112, 114, 118, 119, 236, 263, 275, 284 lithograph 137, 140, 151, 266 Lorrain, Claude 178, 219, 252 Louis XIV 19, 31, 48, 191 Louis XV 19, 31 Louis XVI 19, 20, 31 Louvre 18, 19-25, 26, 57, 61, 84, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95, 98, 106, 119, 129, 144, 147, 151, 152, 153, 175, 210, 227, 248, 253, 266, 272, 278, 279, 289, 291, 292, 294 Luther, Martin 116, 118-119, 121 Malmaison 22 Manet, Edouard 18, 95, 183, 208 Mantz, Paul 208, 290 Mariette, François Auguste Ferdinand 258 market for Dutch Art 33 Marnix, Philippe de see Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde Marnix de Saint-Aldegonde (Philippe de Marnix, Baron de Sainte-Aldegonde) 111 Marolles, Michel de 191 Martial, Adolphe 179, 187, 220, 222, 235

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Martinet, Alphonse Rembrandt’s Studio, after Prosper-Louis Roux 76, 145, 146 Marvy, Louis 160, 161, 208, 238, 250 Beggars at the Door of a House, after Rembrandt 161, 162 Christ and the Samaritan Woman at a Well, after Rembrandt 161 Christ Chasing the Moneylenders from the Temple, after Rembrandt 161 Descent from the Cross, after Rembrandt 160 Doctor Faust, after Rembrandt 158, 160 The Night Watch, after Rembrandt 160 Portrait of Burgomaster Six, after Rembrandt 160 The Resurrection of Lazarus, after Rembrandt 161 Masaccio (Maso di Ser Giovanni di Monde Cassai) 130 Medici, Marie de’ 106 Meissonier, Jean-Louis Ernest 155 Rembrandt in his Studio 131, 132 Ménageot, François Guillaume 129 Mercuri, Paolo (Paul) 224 Méryon, Charles 187, 221, 236, 237, 238 Metsu, Gabriel 31, 129 Metz 294 mezzotint 145, 169, 170, 177, 271 Michel, André 293-294 Michel, Émile 120, 156, 231, 289 Michelangelo 51, 264 Michelet, Jules 181-182 Michiels, Alfred 33, 34, 38, 40, 41 Mieris, William 154-155 Millet, Jean-François 49-50, 165, 183, 237 Waiting 49 Ministry of Fine Arts 40, 233 Montabert, Paillot de 85-86, 92 Montauban 254 Montrosier, Eugène 190, 245-246 Moras, Picot de 47 Morel 47 Morny collection 273, 296 Mouilleron, Adolphe Burgomeister Six in Rembrandt’s Studio, after Henri Leys 139, 140 The Night Watch, after Rembrandt 266, 268 Rembrandt painting his Mother, after Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury 137, 138 Musée d’estampes 251-262

Musée des copies 18, 291 Musée Napoléon 129 naiveté 52, 90, 106 Napoleon III see Bonaparte, Charles-Louis-Napoleon Napoleonic Museum see Musée Napoléon National Archives, France 21 Nerval, Gérard de 42 Neuville, Alphonse de 208 Nîmes 254 northern art 16, 20, 22, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 51, 101, 106, 107, 109, 117, 127 Notre Dame Cathedral 186 Nouveau Théâtre 284, 286 old master 7-9, 15, 17, 25-28, 41, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55, 63, 83, 93, 94, 95, 121, 125, 126, 140, 145, 155, 156, 165, 170, 208, 213, 214, 223, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232, 234, 241, 248, 251, 253, 254, 261, 263, 279, 280, 283, 284, 286, 287, 288, 292, 295, 296 Oliva, Alexandre Joseph Rembrandt 132, 133, 134, 137 Oppenheim, Baron 289 original print 159, 174-178, 193, 210, 217, 232-233, 235, 241, 261, 262, 263-281 originality 36, 37, 52, 90, 105, 109, 160, 170, 191, 233, 234, 248, 263, 264, 265, 270, 283 Orléans collection, Henry d’ 291 painter-printmaker 15, 47, 86, 129, 148, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 173, 187, 190, 217, 219, 223, 225, 226, 227, 231, 232, 245, 251, 252, 258, 261, 264, 280, 281, 284 Palais de Luxembourg 19, 20, 32, 106 Palais Royale 32 Paris 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 42, 144, 187, 205, 212, 213, 226, 252, 253, 261, 272, 273, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 294 Paris à l’eau-forte 241, 242, 247-251 Pecq 287, 288, 290, 294 Péladan, Joséphin 190 Penon, Henry 289 Périer, Paul 94 Perot, A.M. 265 Perugino (Pietro Vannucci) 102 Peters, Antoine de 191 Petit, George 273 Phidias 36, 101, 103

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photography 160, 174-178, 232, 257, 266, 280 Piles, Roger de 42, 43-44, 45, 51, 84, 140, 143 Pilet, Berthe Le Lecteur 248 pillaging of art 20-22 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 190, 279 Pissarro, Camille 183, 238 Planche, Gustave 86, 99, 105, 106 Plato 101 Porgès collection 294, 296 positivism 118 Potémot see Adolphe Martial Potsdam 22 Potter, Paulus 241 Poulet-Malassis, Auguste 256 Portalès Gorgier collection 294 Poussin, Nicolas 22, 26, 84, 86, 89, 193 Private print collection 32, 89, 189, 191, 211, 253, 294, 295, 296 see also individual collectors Prix de Rome 26, 210 proletariat 54, 143, 286 Protche, A. Portrait of Rembrandt 248 Two Heads after Rembrandt 248 Protestant religion 34, 40, 112, 113 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 104, 113-118 Prussia 21 Public print collections 178, 191-205, 252 see also Cabinet des estampes Pynas 50 Quinet, Edgar 111-112 Raffaëlli, Jean-François 09-211, 252 Raimondi, Marcantonio 90, 221 Rajon, Paul-Adolphe 08, 270 Rembrandt biting an etched plate, after Jean-Léon Gérôme 52, 153 Raphael 5, 16, 22, 34, 51, 85, 86, 88, 89, 116, 127, 130, 193, 194, 195, 221, 264, 270 comparisons of Rembrandt and Raphael 94-106 Rembrandt and Raphael as the Janus of art 103 realism 34, 38, 41, 105, 106, 246 Realists, the 50, 98, 105-6 Regamey, Frédéric 247 Paris à l’eau-forte. Paraît tous les samedis 77, 249-250

386

Rembrandt van Rijn art collection 43, 44, 46, 50, 51, 55, 60, 140, 145, 152, 218 association with the lower classes 43, 45, 46, 53-54, 58, 59, 143, 181 bankruptcy 8, 45, 46, 55, 60, 284, 290 bidding on his prints at auction 44 depictions of beggars 52, 87, 103, 111, 180-181, 182, 183, 203, 249, 286 and drawing 43, 83-90, 92, 102, 248, 254 etching technique 156, 160, 204, 205, 218, 221, 229, 230, 231, 283 exhibition of prints after Rembrandt at the Salons 263-270, 276 growing up in a windmill 43, 45, 53, 54 inventory of his home 55, 148, 225, 237, 290 and Italian Art 43, 51 miser 44, 45, 46, 47, 54-55, 59, 237 nudes 90-94, 203 ownership of printing presses 148, 225, 237, 238, 244, 258 painting technique 23, 25, 44, 46, 84, 132, 154, 155, 287, 294, 295, 296 patrons 47, 126, 127, 140, 148, 248 pet monkey 45, 128, 138, 140, 148, 248 question of trip to Italy 43-44, 51 rapport with Jewish people 47, 48, 58-63 “Rembrandt” play 47-48, 284-288 Rembrandt Research Project 7, 288, 296 reprinting of copper plates 212-215 retrospective exhibition, 1898 284, 287, 294-296 self-trained artist 47, 50, 52, 63, 217, 231 states of his prints 193, 203, 205, 219, 225, 237 wives and marriage 23, 43-44, 45, 54, 56-57, 128, 130, 153, 294 Rembrandt van Rijn, After Hendrickje Stoffels as Venus/Venus and Amor 22, 72, 147 Rembrandt, Attributed to, 1807-1815 Landscape with Goats 23, 24, 25 Landscape with Hunters 23, 25, 25 Rembrandt van Rijn, Copy after Portrait of Burgomaster Six 77, 295 Rembrandt van Rijn, Manner of Christ on the Cross 295 Head of a Rabbi 77, 291, 295 Head of an Old Man 80, 295 Noli me Tangere 295

the rise of the cult of rembrandt

Samplers in a Cave 79, 295 Suppliant before a Biblical Prince 78, 295 Rembrandt van Rijn, School of The Good Samaritan 20, 70, 147 Rembrandt Corpus 21 Renouvier, Jules 100, 101, 218, 220 reproductive print 159, 160, 175, 176, 177, 190, 193, 232, 257, 263-265, 270, 280 republicanism 36, 110, 114, 118, 283 revivals 26-28, 159, 183, 217, 233, 262 Revolution, 1789 20, 31, 118 Revolution, 1848 114, 115 Revolution, 1870 111 Ribot, Théodule 183 Ris, Clément de 256 Robert-Fleury, Joseph-Nicolas 127-128, 137, 141, 145 Rembrandt painting his Mother 137, 138, 140 Rembrandt painting Susanna at the Bath 150, 151, 153 Robert-Fleury, Tony 94, 208, 290 Roberts, Emma 208 Rochelle, La 254 Rococo art 27 Roman art 26, 92, 116, 117, 126, 220 Romano, Giulio 85-86, 92 Rops, Félicien 208 Rosenberg, Martin 95 Roth collection 178, 189 Rothschild, Edmond de 211, 213 Rouen 253, 261 Rousseau, Théodore 164, 187, 211, 213 Site de Bérry 166, 167, 169 Roux, Eugène Le Rembrandt Painting Susanna at the Bath (after J. N. Robert-Fleury) 150, 151 Roux, Prosper-Louis 137, 151, 152 Rembrandt’s Studio 145-148, 146 Roybet, Ferdinand Frontispiece for the Fourth Annual Publication of the Société des Aquafortistes 187, 188, 189 Royer, Louis 41 Rubens, Peter Paul 23, 26, 32, 33, 38, 40, 89, 137, 193, 264 comparisons of Rembrandt and Rubens 106-109 Ruysdael 39, 264 Saint-Arroman, Raoul de 221-222, 225 Saint-Cloud 22

Saint-Simon 118 Salmon, A. 275-276 Salomon, Léonard 288-289 Salon 17, 26, 49, 128, 129, 130, 137, 141, 145, 148, 151, 153, 155, 232, 245, 258, 263, 264, 266, 268, 270, 278, 280, 293 Salon Carré 21, 57 Sandrart, Joachim von 42-44 Saskia (Rembrandt’s wife) see van Uylenburgh, Saskia Scheffer, Arry 250 Scheltema, Pieter 41, 42, 54, 61, 208, 225, 237 Schickler collection 294 Schloss collection 294, 296 Schongauer, Martin 51 Secrétan collection 296 Sedelmeyer, Charles 296 Seghers, Hercules 51 Sensier, Alfred 164 Servières 47 Shakespeare 97, 119-121, 186 Silvestre, Théophile 164 Six, Jan 128, 129, 137, 141, 193, 203, 221, 295 Société des Aquafortistes 159, 161, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 187, 189, 222, 233-247, 251, 264, 278 Société des aquafortistes français 278 Société des peintres-graveurs 262 Société des peintres-graveurs français 262 Société internationale des aquafortistes 256 Somm, Henri 247, 251 Soumy, Joseph 183 southern art 37, 39, 51, 117 Spanish art 26, 39, 89 Spanish Inquisition 34 Stendhal 85 Stevens, Alfred 290, 292 Stoffels, Hendrickje 56-57, 92 Strasbourg 294 Subercaze, Léon 161 Sueur, Eustache Le 22 Swanenburg 50 tableaux vivants 285 Taine, Hippolyte 33, 38, 39, 41, 54, 120, 121, 208, 286 Teniers the Younger, David 31 Thibaudeau, Adolphe 211 Thiers, Adolphe 179, 211 Thiers collection see Thiers, Adolphe

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387

Thoré, Théophile see Thoré-Bürger Thoré-Bürger (Théophile Thoré; William Burger) 27, 33, 37-38, 39, 40, 41, 49-50, 86, 103-104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113-115, 118, 143, 154, 211, 220221, 225, 231, 235, 244 publication of Liberté 38 Tintoretto 108 Titian 95, 108, 264 Titus van Rijn 44, 46, 56-57, 58, 129, 141, 143, 147, 151 tourism, in the Netherlands 33 train travel 33 Troubadour school 127 truth 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 52, 88, 90, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, 113, 218, 233, 234, 265, 293 Tuin, H. van der 21 Twelve-year Truce, 1609 39 Unknown Artist Rembrandt Working in his Studio (after Hollander) 144-145, 144 van Dyck, Anthony 219, 264 van Ostade, Adriaen 161, 219, 241 van Soelen, Jan Gijsbert Verstolk 191 van Uylenburgh, Saskia 45, 55-56, 129, 141, 143, 153, 212, 284, 294 admirer Albertus 284, 286 Vasari, Giorgio 50

388

Vermeer, Jan 27 Versailles 19 Veyrassat, Jules 208 The Carpenter’s Household/The Holy Family (after Rembrandt) 119 Viardot, Louis 33, 37 Villot, Frédéric 88, 222 Vitet, Louis 33, 37 Vollon, Antoine 208, 211, 290 von Siegen, Ludwig Amelia Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel 170 Vosmaer, Carel 54, 97-98 Walewski, Alexandre 179 Waltner, Charles 208, 232, 270, 276 The “Doreur” (after Rembrandt) 273, 274, 275, 280, 293 The Night Watch (after Rembrandt) 271-272, 272 Portrait of Rembrandt’s Brother (after Rembrandt) 272-273, 273 Warneck collection 296 Wassermann collection 294, 296 Watelet, Claude-Henri 212 Whistler, James MacNeill 187, 229, 238 Willem V, Stadholder 20, 21 Willems, A. 56 Wilson collection 296 Wolff, Albert 292 wood engraving 141, 160, 190

the rise of the cult of rembrandt