The Deaths of Henri Regnault 9780226298856

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The Deaths of Henri Regnault

The Deaths of Henri Regnault Marc Gotlieb

U n i v er si t y of Ch ic ag o Pr e ss

Chicago and London

M a rc G o t l i e b is the Class of 1955 Professor of Art at Williams College and director of the Williams College / Clark Art Institute graduate program in the history of art. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in China 25  24  23  22  21  20  19  18  17  16   1  2  3  4  5 ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­27604-­5  (cloth) ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­29885-­6  (e-­book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226298856.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gotlieb, Marc, author. The deaths of Henri Regnault / Marc Gotlieb. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-226-27604-5 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-29885-6 (e-book) 1. Regnault, Henri, 1843–1871. 2. Painters—France—Biography. I. Title. ND553.R4G68 2016 759.4—dc23 [B] 2015035766 ∞  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper). Frontispiece: Joseph Blanc, Henri Regnault, frontispiece to Gustave Larroumet, Henri Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Quantin, 1889), etching, private collection.

F or L au r en

Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments  xiii

Introduction  Ja n ua ry 9, 1871   1 1 Esc a pe from t he E t er na l Ci t y   11 2 T he Or ien ta list Su bli me  39 3 a rt a n d desir e   68 4 How t o Pa i n t Bl o od  104 5 Buz en va l   126 6 Pa i n t er t o Legen d  170 7 C a non ici t y  216 Notes  251 Index  289

Illustrations

Frontispiece. Joseph Blanc, Henri Regnault, frontispiece to Gustave Larroumet, Henri Regnault, 1843–­1871

1. 2. 3. 4.



5.



6.



7. 8. 9.



10. 11.



12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Georges Clairin, Woods at Buzenval, 1871  2 Hippolyte Blancard, War of 1870–­71, Farm Buildings at Buzenval  3 M. Lix, Battlefield at Buzenval, January 19, 1872  3 Anonymous photographer, Henri Regnault, in Galerie contemporaine, littéraire, artistique  6 Anonymous photographer, Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus with the Head of Medusa  12 Henri Regnault, Thetis Brings the Arms Forged by Vulcan to Achilles, École nationale supérieure des beaux-­arts  13 Anonymous photographer, Villa Medici, Rome  14 Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1868  19 Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, Le Journal illustré, April 14, 1872  20 Henri Regnault, sketch for Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1867  21 Henri Regnault, Horse from the Stables of Napoleon III at St. Cloud, 1856  22 Horace Vernet, Raphael at the Vatican, 1832  31 Ernest Hébert, Malaria, 1850  31 Henri Regnault, Roman Carnival, 1867  32 Henri Regnault, Juan Prim, October 8, 1868  33 Henri Regnault, Spanish Muleteer, 1868–­69  35 Henri Regnault, Patio in Tangier, 1869  38 Horace Vernet, Abraham Sends Hagar Away, 1837  44 Alexandre-­Gabriel Decamps, Turkish Children near a Fountain, 1846  45 Jules Didier, Jules Laurens Sketching the Euphrates, 1857  47 Eugène Fromentin, A Street at Laghouat, 1859  49 Prosper Marilhat, Ezbekiah Square, Cairo, 1833  51

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27.



28.



29.



30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.



57.



58. 59.

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Gustave Guillaumet, The Desert, 1867  54 Gustave Guillaumet, Laghouat, Sahara, Algeria, 1879  55 Gustave Guillaumet, La Séguia, Biskra, 1884  56 Henri Regnault and Friends at the Alhambra, Granada, 1869  60 Henri Regnault, Interior of Watchtower of the Two Towers at the Alhambra in Granada, 1869  62 Henri Regnault, Entry to the Room of the Two Turns at the Alhambra in Granada, 1869  63 Henri Regnault, The Court of Ambassadors in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, 1869  64 Eugène Delacroix, Courtyard in Tangier, 1832  65 Henri Regnault, Salome, 1870  68 Promenade au Salon de 1870, Le Journal amusant, May 14, 1870  70 Caricature of Salome, Le Voleur illustré, July 1, 1870  70 Henri Regnault, Portrait de Madame Fouques-­Duparc, 1867  71 Alfred Stevens, In the Studio, 1888  74 Georges Clairin, Sarah Bernhardt, 1876  75 Jean-­Joseph Benjamin Constant, Judith, 1886  76 Gustave Ricard, The Marquise de Landalfo-­Carcano, 1868  81 Prosper d’Épinay, The Golden Belt  82 Mariano Fortuny, The Vicarage, 1870  83 Portrait of Maria Latini, ca. 1869  89 Jules Renaudot, Naiade, 1872  90 Mariano Fortuny, The Masquerade  93 Henri Regnault, detail of Salome  94 Henri Regnault, detail of Salome  96 Henri Regnault, detail of Salome  99 Édouard Manet, Mlle Victorine in the Costume of an Espada, 1862  100 Henri Regnault, detail of Salome  101 Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1875  102 Panorama of Tangier, Taken from the Casbah, ca. 1890  106 Eugène Delacroix, The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero, 1826  111 Richard Parkes Bonington, The Siesta, 1826  112 Eugène Delacroix, study for The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero  113 Eugène Delacroix, The Bride of Lammermoor, 1826  114 Gustave Moreau, The Apparition, 1876  116 Henri Regnault, Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, 1870  117 Henri Regnault, detail of Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, 1870  118 Henri Regnault, Hassan and Namouna, 1870  126 Clément-­Auguste Andrieux, French Soldiers Departing for Buzenval, January 18, 1871  130 L i s t o f Ill u s t r a t i o n s





60. Georges Clairin, Henri Regnault and Georges Clairin  131 61. Map of Battle of Buzenval  133 62. Defense of Paris, January 19, 1871  135 63. Battle of Buzenval, January 19, 1871  135 64. Raoul Arus, National Guardsman at Buzenval  136 65. Eugène Médard, Buzenval, ca. 1886  141 66. Charles-­Auguste-­Émile Durand, Body of Henri Regnault, 1871–­72  145 67. Édouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, 1868  147 68. Eugène Disdéri, Bodies of National Guardsmen, 1871  152 69. Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Death Mask of Henri Regnault, 1871  154 70. Death Mask of Théodore Géricault, after 1824  156 71. Félix Lucas, Mask of Henri Regnault, La Vie moderne, January 17, 1880  160 72. “Salome at Buzenval,” in Album des artistes contemporains, 1876  161 73. Anonymous photographer, Church of Saint-Augustin  163 74. Daniel Vierge, Farm at Buzenval near Where Henri Regnault Fell, La Vie moderne, January 17, 1880  171 75. Jules Jacquemart, The Room Where Henri Regnault’s Body Lay, ca. 1871  173 76. Édouard Detaille, The Dream, 1888  174 77. Memorial to Henri Regnault at Buzenval  175 78. Postcards of monument to Henri Regnault, Buzenval  177 79. Prosper d’Épinay, Henri Regnault  177 80. Paul Langlois, Henri Regnault, frontispiece to Auguste Angellier, Étude sur Henri Regnault  178 81. Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts, 1876  179 82. Inauguration of the Monument at the École des beaux-­arts to Henri Regnault and Other French Students Who Fell for Their Country, L’Univers illustré, August 19, 1876  180 83. M. Martinez, after Charles Degeorge, Henri Regnault, 1876  181 84. Charles Degeorge, Medallion of Henri Regnault, ca. 1881  182 85. After Henri Chapu, Youth, in L’Illustration, August 19, 1876  183 86. Eugène Abot, after Henri Chapu, Youth, 1876  185 87. Auguste Baussan, Monument to Frédéric Bazille  185 88. Horace Castelli, Death of Henri Regnault, 1872  186 89. Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Monument to the Defense of Paris in 1870  187 90. Gloria Victis, in La Galerie contemporaine, littéraire, artistique  188 91. Antonin Mercié, reduction of Gloria Victis, 1885  189 92. Ernest Meissonier, Sketch for the Siege of Paris, 1871  191 93. Frédéric Levé, Death of Henri Regnault, 1910  191 94. Domenico Jollo, Death of Henri Regnault  192 95. Théophile Poilpot and Stephen Jacob, Fragment of Panorama of Buzenval  193 96. Card advertising panorama of the Battle of Buzenval  193 97. Postcard of Avenue Henri ­Regnault, Sèvres  193 L i s t o f Ill u s t r a t i o n s

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98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.



104. 105.



106. 107.



108.



109.



110.



111.



112. 113. 114. 115. 116.



117.



118.



119.



120.



121.



122. 123. 124.

Jules-­Clément Chaplain, Henri Regnault  194 Joseph Blanc, exterior frieze at the Grand Palais, Paris  195 After Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Death Mask of Henri Regnault, 1890  197 Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Henri Regnault  198 Roger Marx, Les Artistes célèbres: Henri Regnault, 1843–­1871  198 Alphone Mucha, Henri Regnault at Buzenval, Le Petit Français illustré, January 23, 1892  199 After Pierre-­Lucien Sergeant, Death of Henri Regnault, 1888  199 Death of Henri Regnault, in Eugène Muller, La Morale en action par l’histoire  201 Alphonse Dubois, medal for the Société de tir, ca. 1885  204 Karl Fichot, Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts, Le Journal illustré, March 8, 1891  208 Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts, Le Petit Parisien, March 8, 1891  208 Death of Henri Regnault—­French Artists Won’t Be Going to Berlin, L’Intransigeant illustré, March 5, 1891  209 To the Memory of Henri Regnault, Inauguration of Bust at Buzenval, Le Monde illustré, February 1, 1913  212 Fernand Cormon, Paul Déroulède at the Monument for Henri Regnault, Buzenval, 1913  214 Henri Regnault, Les Peintres illustres (Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1913)  217 Charles Waltner, after Henri Regnault, Hassan and Namouna  219 Henri-­Victor Regnault, Sèvres, the Seine at Meudon  221 Exposition l’Union du cercle, L’Univers illustré, February 24, 1872  223 Entrance to the École des beaux-­arts during the Henri Regnault Exhibition, Le Monde illustré  225 Crowds at the Henri Regnault Exhibition at the École des beaux-­arts, Le Monde illustré  225 Henry Regnault, The Madrilena, Comtesse de Barck, Seen from Behind, 1869  228 After Henri Regnault, Departure of the Pacha, in Roger Marx, Henri Regnault (1843–­1871)  230 Albert Duvivier, after Henri Regnault, Departure for the Fantasia, 1876  231 Gustave Mercier, after Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1882  237 William Merritt Chase, detail of A Friendly Call, 1895  238 Salome, Le Gaulois du dimanche, June 23, 1913  243 Two caricatures pertaining to sale of Henri Regnault, Salome  249

L i s t o f Ill u s t r a t i o n s

Acknowledgments

This book has been long in the making, in part owing to the pleasure I took in seeking out traces of Henri Regnault’s now almost vanished memorability. I take greater pleasure still in being able to acknowledge friends, colleagues, and other associates for their unflagging interest and support. Sincere thanks to Marc Simpson for his valuable comments on several chapters of the manuscript, to Michael Fried for reading the whole thing, and to Paul Park for his insightful feedback. Larry Joseph kindly read the whole manuscript and readily shared with me un­published materials on Henri Cazalis and Regnault. And thanks to Holly Clayson for her comments and support of the project in general. I’ve also profited from conversations about Regnault with Stephen Bann, the late Josué Harari, Michael Ann Holly, Michael Cole, Sarah McPhee, Mark Bauerlein, James Meyer, June Hargrove, Margaret MacNamidhe, and Jim Elkins, along with many other friends and colleagues at Williams College, the Clark Art Institute, the University of Toronto, and elsewhere. I’m grateful to Susan Bielstein at the University of Chicago Press for her support of this project, as well as to James Whitman Toftness for his assistance with rights and permissions and to Ruth Goring for her thorough work as manuscript editor. And thanks to Fronia W. Simpson for her work as proofreader. Two anonymous readers enlisted by the Press read the manuscript with care, offering valuable suggestions for revision. For facilitating archival visits, photography, library assistance, and additional research, I am grateful to Magnus von Wistinghausen, Karen Bucky, Étienne Bréton, Caterina Pierre, Veerle Thielemans, Natalie Smith, Melody Edwards, Lauren Cannady, Margaret Samu, Allan Doyle, Minna Lee, Nicole Desrosiers, Viktorya Vilk, Jacobé Huet, Sandy Parkerson, and Laurie Glover, along with the staff at numerous archives and libraries in Paris and elsewhere. Melissa Horn provided invaluable assistance

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in assembling the photographs for publication, and Karen Kowitz and George Ferger provided additional support. And to so many students, friends, colleagues who spent time with me in Paris and elsewhere before Regnault’s pictures, a heartfelt thanks. For financial support I’m grateful to the dean of the faculty at Williams College, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The National Gallery of Art gave me the opportunity to develop this research in two public forums and attendant conference publications (“Legends of the Painter Hero,” in Nationalism and French Visual Culture, 1870–­1914, ed. June Hargrove and Neil McWilliam [Washington, 2005], as well as “Figures of Sublimity in Orientalist Painting,” in Dialogues in Art History, from Mesopotamian to Modern, ed. Elizabeth Cropper, Studies in the History of Art [Washington, 2009], 317–­41). I’m grateful to the organizers of these conferences and to the participants for their interest in the project. A generous grant from Williams College allowed me to introduce a large number of color illustrations—­Regnault’s unbridled colorism demands no less. But as I argue across the pages of this book, his legend is also measured in ephemera and reproductions that circulated in a wide range of formats. Many of the illustrations in this book were selected to highlight these circuits—­etchings and other reproductions of Regnault’s work, for example; a photograph of Mercié’s Gloria Victis from the Galerie contemporaine, rather than the large bronze now at the Musée du Petit Palais; Édouard Manet’s aquatint after his Dead Toreador rather than the painting itself. These and many other examples helped assure ­Regnault’s astonishing memorability in France and abroad, a statement not without irony since how that memorability would fade, and his legend disappear, is in part what this book is about. Lauren and our children, Sally, Rose, and Louis, as well as my parents and my sister Rachel, have all patiently shouldered these efforts in countless ways, and to them above all I owe a debt of gratitude.

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Ack now ledgmen ts

Introduction: January 19, 1871 A charcoal drawing by Georges Clairin, Henri Regnault’s travel companion and closest friend, tells how the story would end. The setting: a forest in winter, thick with shrubs and trees. A road angles up from the foreground, its snow-­covered surface marked by muddy tracks. To the right lies a dead tree, its trunk split down the middle and its branches trailing on the ground. In the distance, barely visible through the dense layer of branches, a low stone wall extends across the landscape, its length unbroken except for two small holes near where it meets the road. This is not just any wall but the “damned wall” of Buzenval, part of an old network of fortifications that twisted like an “immense gray serpent” across a formerly royal domain six miles west of Paris near the town of St. Cloud.1 The domain included a chateau, outbuildings, parkland, and a substantial forest, bordered by crenellated walls that traveled through the woods before opening onto an elevated plain. These were the walls that divided French and Prussian lines on the morning of January 19, 1871, when the Government of National Defense sent ninety thousand Paris-­based troops on a long-­awaited offensive designed to break the siege that had held the capital in its grip for 131 days. And these were the walls French troops failed to breach in a contest that finally broke the city’s will and forced its capitulation. The drawing bears an inscription, in Clairin’s hand: “Buzenval 19 janvier 1871.” Certainly Clairin, fighting on the front lines, did not put pencil to paper that day. Rather, the inscription establishes a place, a date, and a setting—­a setting not for something he saw but for something he did not see. All that day he and Regnault had fought at each other’s side, following an overnight march through freezing rain and fog. And all day they had remained unharmed as they fired at an in­visible enemy nested in the woods behind stone walls or barriers made of felled trees. But late in the afternoon they were separated, and Clairin never saw Regnault fall. He

[ 1 ]

1. Georges Clairin, Woods at Buzenval, 1871, charcoal on paper, present location unknown, reproduced in Henri Regnault (1843–­1871) (St. Cloud: Musée municipale de St. Cloud, 1991).

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would spend the rest of his life puzzling over the enigma of Regnault’s conduct when they parted for the last time. It is this enigma that haunts his drawing of the woods into which Regnault disappeared, and which would forever keep secret the mystery of his death. On March 9, six weeks following the fatal sortie, Regnault’s fiancée Geneviève Bréton, Bréton’s father, and Clairin, as well as other family and friends, set out for the woods at Buzenval. Two days had elapsed since Bréton’s twenty-­second birthday, when she and Regnault were to be married. But today, making her way under “contemptuous sunshine,” she traveled “two roads of death.” Earlier that morning Regnault’s body had been transferred from the crypt at the Church of Saint-­Augustin to the family plot at Montparnasse Cemetery. After watching as ropes lowered the casket to its final resting place, the party set out by train for St. Cloud, and from there by carriage and eventually by foot across the battlefields nearby. Buffeted by an “evil wind” and guided by the medic who had found Regnault’s body, they moved “gingerly over broken ground,” pausing before stakes stuck in the earth topped by scraps of cloth marking the spot where “barely buried bodies lay.”2 In the chaotic aftermath of the retreat, many of the dead had been hastily buried on the plains of La Fouilleuse, an agricultural complex located within the precincts of the chateau. A photograph by Hippolyte Blancard taken in the weeks following the battle gives some sense of the landscape, including terrain trampled by troops and artillery, and farm buildings damaged by artillery fire. The illustrated press, one year later, offered a view onto the sad pilgrimages associated with the battlegrounds, as mothers mourned sons, wives mourned husbands, and children mourned fathers. Bréton’s group had a more precise destination and pressed on. Ascend­ing a ridge to the chateau and its outbuildings, they made their way into the “fatal wood” behind, finally stopping at a bend in the road, In troduction

2. Hippolyte Blancard, War of 1870–­71, Farm Buildings at Buzenval, detail of stereoscopic view, © BHVP/Roger-­ Viollet. 3. M. Lix, Battlefield at Buzenval, January 19, 1872, hand-­colored wood engraving, private collection.

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yards from the notorious wall. Evoking the scene that Clairin, too, felt so compelled to trace, Bréton interposed on the landscape a ghostly ­vision of her lover’s fall: “There, at the foot of a large blasted tree, split in half, he had found it filled with dead leaves! A wall stands opposite, just fifty paces away, a dark gray wall with two cowardly holes that looked at me like two leering, horribly staring eyes. He had fallen here! The dead leaves are now scattered. The buds are beginning to break, catkins are growing. The mockery of it.”3 We recognize the setting—­the “blasted tree,” the “dark grey wall,” even the “cowardly holes” in the wall that allowed a sniper to cut Regnault down. Clairin probably began drawing there and then, although whether he worked directly on the large sheet or took notes in a sketchbook is uncertain. Bréton, for her part, recorded the scene in her diary that evening. Each used their chosen medium in an effort to preserve the memory of this place where Regnault left the world, even as Clairin pulled back from the hallucinatory character of Bréton’s inconsolable vision. A year later family and friends returned to these woods to unveil a memorial to the fallen artist, a modest obelisk topped by a bust by his friend Louis-­Ernest Barrias. There is more to say about the memorial, which survives off the fourteenth hole of a golf course developed over the battlefield around 1913. But the pilgrimage made by Bréton and Clairin that March morning arose from a more intimate impulse than the commemorative practices put in place in years to come. The journey speaks to the mourners’ urgent need to seek out the site of their loved one’s death, as if the setting bore witness to the calamity and perhaps retained its trace. Bréton knew, of course, that before long the setting would be transformed. For with March came catkins, “buds beginning to break,” and other signs that an impervious nature would reclaim the site as its own. Perhaps that is why she returned home with a small branch, trimmed in all likelihood from the tree where “he had fallen.” Just a handful of twigs, a memento not made but found, and yet bound to this setting in place and time and resonant with Regnault’s presence. And to the rest of her days Bréton could call up the moment when he left the world by opening her diary to the place where the twigs had been pressed and preserved, and where they remain to this day, desiccated and nearly turned to dust.4 Returning to Paris by train, Bréton remained in the attachment’s grip. As she and her party sat “perched” in the upper deck of the last car, suddenly it seemed as if she might share Regnault’s fate. She alone watched in silence as a train on another track hurtled toward them. For a brief moment, the terror was gone: “it was coming nearer, nearer. I said nothing. I knew it meant death! For a moment I was delighted. My heart pounded. And I understood what it was like to die.” But the train veered In troduction

onto another track, only to collide with another train a short distance away. The casualties, Bréton imagined, must surely have numbered several hundred, “all of whom probably loved life.” But she felt robbed—­ “I’m left alive. I’m enraged, bitter, pained, full of revulsion, anguish, regret. Oh, the end. God Almighty, the end.”5 Reports in the press indicate there was an accident on the rails that evening, although not as catastrophic as Bréton imagined. The fatalities numbered one, following a collision in Puteaux, not far from Buzenval, between a freight train and a transport carrying wounded German soldiers. Whether this was the incident Bréton witnessed—­whether she witnessed anything—­is impossible to say. But for all its apparent unreality, her description is no less felt. As she traveled that day “two roads of death,” Bréton’s journey seemed inexorably to conclude with her own obliteration. And she alone, for a brief instant, hailed in silence that sublime prospect. Fate had offered her the opportunity to face what Regnault had faced, to feel what he had felt, to bridge the gulf dividing them—­“I understood what it was like to die.”

* When Henri-­Alexandre-­Georges Regnault fell at Buzenval, the twenty-­ seven-­year-­old painter had established himself as among the most promising French artists of his generation. Born and raised in Paris, he was the second son of Henri-­Victor Regnault (1810–­78), a leading chemist, professor at the Collège de France, and since 1852 director of the Sèvres porcelain works (and also a pioneer of wet-­plate photography). Entering the École des beaux-­arts in 1861, Regnault worked first under the direction of Louis Lamothe, an austere disciple of Jean-­Auguste-­ Dominique Ingres and Hippolyte Flandrin and notoriously hostile to effects of color. Regnault labored nearly three years under Lamothe before transferring to the more worldly studio of Alexandre Cabanel. In 1866 he won the Grand Prix de Rome, a highly prestigious fellowship that sent him to the French Academy in Rome for what should have been four years of uninterrupted study. Regnault took the opportunity to travel extensively, and though he died before completing his term at the academy, a suite of bold paintings sent up from Rome, Madrid, and Tangier captured the attention of an international public. The sensational reception of his Salome at the Salon of 1870 tagged Regnault as a talented non­conformist, heir as it seemed to the coloristic tradition of Eugène Delacroix. This is a misleading characterization, but it conveys something of Regnault’s maverick character, with critics pro and con predicting that this young painter of super-­sized ambition might one day reshape the French school. January 9, 1871

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4. Anonymous photographer, Henri Regnault, in Galerie contemporaine, littéraire, artistique, photo publisher Goupil & Cie, book publisher Baschet, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

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Buzenval cut short an artistic career that was already the stuff of legend. But it launched a patriotic legend in turn, and if we are to take the measure of Regnault’s art we must somehow pull these two stories apart. Let it be said, what remains after that process is complete might seem open to question. For some, the work that survives is striking, even enthralling. But only superficially enthralling, others might reply. By virtue of his training, credentials, and exhibiting practices, Regnault made what we now call an “academic,” “salon,” or “official” art, overlapping

In troduction

terms that refer to a teaching curriculum, and larger artistic system, left in ruin by the impressionist revolution and its modernist aftermath. No account of Regnault can avoid addressing this historic reset, which to this day informs accounts of his painting and career, just as it informs our accounts of other artists from this era tarred with the academic brush. What to make of Regnault’s painting is the principal concern of the first half of this book. Across four thematically organized chapters, I examine the structure and trajectory of Regnault’s career from his arrival in Rome in the spring of 1867 to his months in Tangier in the fall of 1869 through the summer of 1870. Most of his major paintings fall within my compass, but my analysis is essentially issue-­based, and I do not present a complete picture of his truncated biography. Only briefly do I consider his training in the studios of Lamothe and Cabanel. Only in passing do I touch on his musical and literary associations (he was a gifted tenor), his immersion in the turbulent Spanish political scene in the summer of 1868, or his months in the National Guard following his return to Paris in the fall of 1870, all topics well covered in the existing literature. And while my argument develops chronologically, biographical concerns remain largely in the background in favor of the core pressures that shaped Regnault’s career. Pressures, indeed, is just the point. Upon arriving in Rome, Regnault was overtaken by a profound sense of artistic crisis. What manner of predicament remains to be seen, and surely the outcomes he forged were provisional, given that he died so young. But the basic argument of this book is that we owe to this crisis some of the most arresting and challenging features of his art. What is more, Regnault’s experience was broadly exemplary. The career of this traditionally formed figure painter, at first sight, might seem to resemble only little those of his avant-­garde counterparts, not to mention those of others who rebuffed the École curriculum and the expectations it put in place. Nevertheless, Regnault’s crisis was the product of shared historical conditions, even as the directions taken by Regnault and peers substantially diverged. All of this is to say that Regnault offers new insight into the art world at a rare moment of historical twilight. His example opens a revealing rear-­view window onto a momentous renewal that saw the practices and institutions that shaped his formation fall into disrepute, just as so many artists formed by that system fell into oblivion in turn. Besides applying the epithet academic, we number Regnault among the Orientalists, that is to say Western artists whose practices were shaped by travel—­sometimes real, sometimes imagined—­to North ­Africa and the Middle East. Needless to say, Orientalist painting has

January 9, 1871

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a­ ttracted substantial scholarly attention in recent decades, following an enormous wave of interest across the humanities in the cultural effects of imperial expansion. The present pages in some measure attend to this literature, which as it happens helped give modern complaints about academic painting new force and vigor. By and large, however, I consider Regnault’s career less from the perspective of its geopolitics than from its poetics, terrain sited within the rich corpus of nineteenth-­century Orientalist art criticism and biography. Travel to North Africa catalyzed in Regnault a renewed sense of artistic purpose. We may plot that sense of renewal along the axis of the sublime, a broadly psychological account of aesthetic experience keyed to effects of incommensurability, transcendence, and other forms of limit experience. Most of Regnault’s major figure paintings unite sumptuous colorism and explicit or suggested violence—­antimonies that scream Orientalism and that the discourse of the sublime can help to unpack. But let me add that this is not a book about art theory, and only in passing do I call on specific historical or theoretical iterations of an aesthetic doctrine that has emerged as a renewed source of interest in the visual arts and in the humanities at large.

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In the first half of this book I treat the painter as he lived. But the legend, too, demands investigation, and in the second half I explore what was made of him after he was dead. Word that Regnault had fallen left Paris stunned—­a coup de grâce, in the words of one observer, eradicating what was left of its “bellicose mood.” The besieged city, recalled another, seemed veritably to weaken at the news, which she bore as the “last of her misfortunes,” although great misfortunes were still to come.6 Of course Paris was not just a city but a symbolic community formed around the idea of one. And not a single, undifferentiated entity but a set of overlapping and conflicting communities traumatized by a calamitous war and continuing civil unrest, and divided by competing visions of the future. Not only Paris mourned Regnault, however, but all of France. Truly a “national disaster”—­a blow to “Painting itself”—­was how journalist Elie Sorin spoke of Regnault’s death in his Martyrs of the Siege of Paris, one of many texts from this era to bring a sacrificial aura to the painter’s memory. There is more to say about this exalted messaging, including the uses to which it was put on the national stage. But right away let me make the point that Regnault was more than a symbol onto which prior conceptions of community were projected or inscribed. In the aftermath of his disappearance, a vocation whose job it was to make representations embraced one of its own. Those efforts gave the legend

In troduction

unusual currency and feeling, although this vast chorus of recollection was certainly not always harmonious. We are witness, rather, to a mythology in the making. From the mournful rituals of Bréton and Clairin (to whom we shall return) to adolescent patriotic fantasy, from improvised sites of memory to action on the political stage, Regnault’s passage from memory into history was not top down but bottom up. Set in motion by an overlapping community of artists, writers, and musicians, the legend was launched across a thousand ships before it was taken up by the state and its agents.7 Crucial to the spell Regnault cast was the resonant example of his voice. His letters, published in 1872 by his friend Arthur Duparc and widely excerpted in the press, found readers at home and abroad—­Henry James, for example, who in a review for The Nation predicted for Regnault a “legendary hue.”8 Successive editions brought the letters to a wider audience still, but artists in particular made them their own. Of course they were de rigueur among students at the École des beaux-­arts, just as they circulated among expatriate artists who made Paris their home. John Singer Sargent owned Duparc’s volume and presented another to a friend.9 The Russian maverick Ilya Repin, recently arrived in Paris, pored over Regnault’s letters as he struggled to learn French.10 Most remarkable of all was the simple fact of their existence: the first occasion in France when the correspondence of a contemporary artist was gathered in a single volume for public circulation. These letters give us Regnault speaking about his art through the intimacy of epistolary discourse in a volume owned, shared, offered, quoted, and most of all read.11 The Regnault legend was not the Van Gogh legend. Not by any measure, given the scale, longevity, and global reach of the hagiographic monument built around the Dutchman a century ago and still going strong. At first sight their cases seem utterly to differ: Regnault did not take his own life, sold plenty of paintings during his lifetime, was anything but unknown, and was never mythologized as tortured and misunderstood. And yet we might usefully speak of their posthumous currency in the same breath. Both artists seemed to die a martyr’s death. In both cases their legends were sustained by new technologies of re­production and mass-­market publications on an international scale. Both spawned sacred topographies comprising the sites where the artist lived, painted, and died. And for both, too, accounts of the man seemed invariably to shape readings of his art, thanks to published correspondence that raised the curtain on their dramas of interiority (Van Gogh’s letters to Theo van Gogh and Émile Bernard featured in the Mercure de France beginning in 1893, three years after his death).12 All this allows us to think of Regnault’s legend as precedent or prehistory for another that

January 9, 1871

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would vastly exceed it. By contrast, where they differed most of all is that the Regnault myth essentially disappeared. Perhaps this should come as no surprise. The incalculably vast losses of the Great War generated new rituals of remembrance that swept away the particularizing culture of heroic exemplarity that once gave Regnault’s story such resonance. Not that this was enough finally to put him in the ground. The artistic, cultural, and political forces that once rallied around the fallen painter did not just desert him but tore him apart.

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In troduction

Escape from the Eternal City In retrospect it seemed obvious: Henri Regnault was ill suited to the Prix de Rome he won in August 1866, despite having entered the competition twice before, first in 1862 and again in 1864, as he apprenticed in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel, a leading specialist in historical and mythological subjects. The prize entitled Regnault to a four-­year residency at the French Academy in Rome, strategically located in the former Medici Palace on the slopes of Mount Pincio. And yet even as he made his way to from Paris to Rome in March 1867 to take up the award, Regnault would undermine the imitative principles that constituted its raison d’être. Stopping in Florence, he spoke enthusiastically about Masaccio, the Italian “primitives,” and the masterpieces of the Uffizi. But what struck him most was the “savagery” and “strange beauty” of Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus, the famously gory beheading located since 1554 on the Piazza della Signoria. Already, as it seemed, Regnault was drawn to the abnormal and the bizarre. Or so argued Roger Marx, whose 1886 monograph on Regnault set the tone for many readings to follow. Here “in germ” was Regnault’s predilection for the exotic and the “superficially picturesque.” Already he had confused “the original with the strange.”1 Rigorously scripted and ostensibly meritocratic, the famously draining competition for the Rome prize annually drew up to one hundred painters enrolled at the École des beaux-­arts, with only ten contestants admitted to the final stage (prizes were also awarded in sculpture, engraving, architecture, and music). Assigned the same subject and forbidden from viewing each other’s progress, finalists set to work for another seven weeks in a small studio or loge at the École. In 1866 the theme was Homeric and was generally regarded as promising: Thetis Presenting Achilles Armor Forged by Vulcan, an episode from the Trojan War in which the goddess implores her son to stop grieving over Patroclus and take up arms in revenge.

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5. Anonymous photographer, Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus with the Head of Medusa, photo credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

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The circumstances for Regnault were scarcely auspicious. The ninth of ten to qualify, he threw his hat in the ring only following parental pressure and with the understanding that this attempt would be his last. He quickly settled on a basic mise-­en-­scène and meanwhile took on the deferred procedures that formed part and parcel of the project, including life drawings and drapery studies. He also completed a painted study of the entire figure group, which he in turn submitted to judges for review. But eventually Regnault stalled, and for weeks he seemed almost to stop working. With the deadline approaching, he spoke of putting an end to the charade and withdrawing. Regnault’s friends rehearsed the story again and again: how he passed the hours singing instead of painting, his trills and arias reverberating across the cubicles as his fellow contestants worked; how the crucial figure of Thetis continued to elude him, until a chance encounter with Augusta Holmès, a young pianist and composer, struck him like a revelation—­“she is a Goddess! A Valkyrie!”2 How his depiction of Thetis bare-­chested set off chatter that he and Holmès were lovers (he only borrowed her profile); how the body of Patroclus lying on a tiger pelt foreshadowed the union of luxury and violence that so marked his exotic subjects in the years ahead; how he risked being disqualified thanks to having modified the picture’s format; and finally how Regnault finished his entry in less than ten days, confounding judges with the audaciousness of his invention and the vigor of his touch. Ch ap ter One

What did Regnault feel, bound for Rome and at last free of the cycle of competitions that had dominated his apprenticeship? At the outset, exactly as he was supposed to feel—­grateful, serene, and filled with an elevated sense of purpose: “I am very happy indeed of my success, which will deliver me from the tedious labors of the competition. Now I am finally free to work for myself, to study at my leisure, and to try and elevate myself through contact with the old masters.”3 Noble sentiments, but it did not take long to shatter the illusion. By all accounts a gregarious and charismatic figure, Regnault threw himself into the Villa’s fraternal culture. A large historical painting, sent up from Rome to Paris the following spring, drew widespread praise, as did other work that followed. But external measures of success could not alleviate Regnault’s growing suspicion that he had walked into a trap. In fact his Roman residency stands out chiefly for his efforts to foil the curricular demands imposed on him. The city itself, in the end, fell victim to his revisionist impulse. Escape from the Eternal City

6. Henri Regnault, Thetis Brings the Arms Forged by Vulcan to Achilles, École nationale supérieure des beaux-­arts, © Beaux-­arts de Paris, dist. RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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7. Anonymous photographer, Villa Medici, Rome, photo credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

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Far from elevating him, the Villa, Rome, and all its treasures left him feeling entombed. Painters awarded the Rome prize found their career essentially made. The confidence placed in them would be ratified and reaffirmed through a lifetime of public and church commissions. Prizewinners were not insensitive, however, to complaints lodged against the Villa and its curriculum, and Regnault was scarcely the first to question the relevance of his residency or to struggle with its requirements. On the contrary, his experience recapitulates and extends concerns already well established among residents of the Villa, and no wonder. For decades liberal critics had made the case that young artists had more to lose than to gain by immersing themselves in the riches of Italian galleries and archaeological sites. Forbidden from visiting Paris and discouraged from preparing work for the marketplace, the Villa’s residents were held to be overly sheltered from modern life, spoiled by the prestige of their residency, and overexposed to the art of the past. The “genius of the place,” complained Paul de Saint-­Victor, a close follower of Regnault’s career, cultivated in laureates a disastrous combination of pride and servility. France’s “budding talents” seemed to dry up in Rome, “as if felled by a spiritual malaria.” Cloistered in their villa, these “cenobites of the Pincio” were “cut off from the living art world.” The Figaro’s Albert Wolff, another Regnault fan, termed the Villa less a “school” than a “monument.” It should be led not by a “director” but by an “invalid.”4 Regnault took up his award on the heels of a turbulent era of institutional foment that saw a sustained effort to modernize the École curricuCh ap ter One

lum, including rules governing the Rome prize and the Villa règlement. But as far as the latter was concerned, and beyond reducing the terms of residents from five years to four, change was modest. Again and again, reform fell hostage to a complex and disabling quarrel over governance that pitted the Académie des beaux-­arts in Paris against successive government administrations determined to exercise greater control over the École and its Roman satellite. Bottom line: debates over such issues as the number of years in residence, the age of laureates, their marital status, the travel restrictions imposed on them, their domestic arrangements, and most of all the requirements associated with their annual envois betrayed the persistent legacy of an infantilizing regulatory apparatus that sought to manage the imitative practices of an elite and ambitious cohort at a granular level of specificity.5 The turmoil of the 1860s has been an object of considerable study and for present purposes will remain chiefly in the background. Instead, the present pages explore the crisis from within, from the perspective of those agents who were at once the system’s beneficiaries and its victims. Regnault offers a view onto the Villa curriculum as lived experience, as painting by painting he adapted to constraints at once outside his control and yet not immune to his improvisations. He was not the first to push back against the requirements of his award or to question its utility. And his resistance was not always thematized as such, particularly following his death, when his patriotic legend worked to efface his pedagogical exceptionalism. Nevertheless, from his diagnosis of the disease to the treatments he adduced, he offers an exemplary case. His experience distills concerns already well established among laureates before him, many of whom sought to evade or foil the requirements imposed on them. Exemplary but also radical: setting out to fulfill the terms of his award, Regnault cycled through a suite of strategies before fleeing Rome altogether.

Equine Emulation The Villa curriculum centered on the system of envois, works of art submitted annually to the Institut in Paris for review. From the first year to the last, the requirements became progressively more ambitious. In year one the règlement called for an académie, in other words a single nude figure, normally male; in year two, two figures, nude or partly draped; in year three, a copy after an old master picture as well as a study for a single-figure subject; and finally in year four, a multi-figure subject that would serve as a closing demonstration of the laureate’s progress during his residency (laureates were male—­women were not permitted to compete for the prize until 1903). In every instance painters were expected Escape from the Eternal City

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to treat sacred, antique, or mythological themes. And beyond mastery of the nude and draped figure, they were asked to demonstrate facility in depicting landscape and architecture, principally in support of the antique vernacular traditionally associated with ambitious historical painting. Regnault ran into trouble from the outset. A few months after his arrival, an outbreak of cholera in Rome closed the Villa for five months. Regnault went back to Paris, visiting the Exposition Universelle and setting to work on a Judith and Holofernes. Returning to Rome in December, he resolved to have this work serve as his first envoi. The règlement, however, called for an académie, a single nude figure, normally male. The idea left him cold, but the director Ernest Hébert, with his mandate to reestablish the Institut’s authority, pressed him to conform: “He begged me to hold back my Judith for next year, and to send, for this year, a nude, very finished. After resisting some, I gave in.” All Regnault needed was that his nude take a pose: “I don’t know yet what name or pose to give it. . . . Since these gentlemen wish a morceau d’exécution, I shall endeavor to satisfy them.”6 Regnault yielded, but it was more than inconvenience that led him to complain. The narrow parameters attached to the project were meant to lighten the burden—­to relieve him of the pressures associated with a fully realized picture. And yet thanks to its limited character the exercise seemed demonically designed to fail, an understanding worth interrogating in detail. Nearly a century earlier, Jacques-­Louis David and his followers turned to the male nude as revisionist terrain. Their “passionate imagination of antiquity,” in Thomas Crow’s felicitous phrase, saw them forcefully remake their classical models, helping to fuel artistic revolution.7 But antiquity for Regnault was barren terrain, and the idea of an académie filled him with disdain. Writing to Hébert from abroad, Regnault mocked the règlement, which by this time he had violated three years running. Could he only turn back the clock, he assured the director, he would conform: for year one he would submit a “young shepherd, aged twelve and a half, with two flutes” and set off on blue paper; in year two, “two young shepherds (antique),” now aged thirteen and a half and still on blue paper; in year three (the règlement called for a copy after the old masters), something after Sassoferrato—­“ young shepherds (antique)”; and finally in year four, “young shepherds, (antiqued) find the carcass of a young goat (antique) in a wheat-­field, same blue paper.”8 Regnault’s complaint, let us be clear, was not that he felt immobilized by the prestige of tradition’s example (which he was—­more below). Rather, the règlement enforced an empty show of obeisance toward a tired vernacular, endlessly rehearsed and without modern currency.

Ch ap ter One

Given that his sarcasm was addressed to Hébert, we may surmise that such attitudes were commonplace. In fact the history of the Villa is littered with tales of artists who resisted the règlement or who for other violations found their stipends frozen or reduced, the academy’s chief mechanism of enforcement. Regnault would have known of the tumultuous residency of Jean-­Baptiste Carpeaux, who competed nine times before taking the prize in 1854. Carpeaux fought bitterly to qualify his Ugolino and His Sons as his last envoi, the project exceeding the règlement thanks to its size and number of figures. Perhaps more relevant is the example of Paul Baudry, who in 1865 received a highly prestigious commission to decorate the foyer ceiling of the new Paris Opera. Prix de Rome in 1850, Baudry like Regnault found himself trawling through antiquity in search of the right subject for his first envoi: “You wouldn’t believe the efforts I’ve made to find a subject in naturalibus: this one with a toga; that one with a coat; another with a skullcap.” Out of “desperation,” he nearly fell back on a “sleeping shepherd” or “wounded soldier”—­as Baudry put it, “clichés of the genre.” Finally he landed upon Theseus in the Labyrinth, at least ensuring that his envoi would stand out—­“I don’t resemble the others, I believe, and that really stands for something, in a school like ours.”9 The obligation to provide an académie assured that the envois would resemble each other as student exercises often did. But pensionnaires had to show their work not only to judges at the Institut but also to audiences less attentive to the requirements of the exercise. Baudry under­stood this perfectly: “It’s Paris! Paris that judges, that has the verve, the instinct, the taste. That’s where one gets the kick in the pants, or the accolades.”10 All this is to say that the burden of a public exhibition compelled laureates to make a mark on their audiences even as the terms of their participation deprived them of the means to do just that. Baudry, for his part, thought he found a way out of this double bind—­“I don’t resemble the others, I believe, and that really stands for something.” But he was wrong. The judges at the Institut and Salon critics were equally severe, leaving him frustrated and defensive: “I’m told I’m being killed in the press. Wonderful. I know perfectly well I did not make a masterpiece!” In fact there is more to this story of Baudry’s failure to launch than failure in the court of Paris. Consider that his envoi marked a youthful enthusiasm for Caravaggio, a controversial figure thanks to what seemed like the vulgar character of his naturalism. The full story cannot be told, however, as Baudry apparently destroyed his Theseus in an effort to rewrite his artistic biography. With his rise to fame, his first envoi came to seem like a youthful indiscretion, all the more awkward given complaints by Baudry himself about Caravaggio’s “rude and violent” manner.11

Escape from the Eternal City

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As his first envoi made its way to Paris in the spring of 1867, Regnault looked forward to its reception with a sense of gloomy foreboding: “We shall see what they say; probably the same thing they say every year: that it’s bad, that the Academy should be abolished; that there is no need to send painters to Italy; that Manet never went, and yet he draws like ­Michelangelo and his color is like that of Velázquez.”12 These remarks are telling, and not only because of the compliment to Manet. They show Regnault to be thoroughly conscious of grievances against the Villa—­ grievances he treats as tired, although it was not long before he felt roughly the same. His fears as to his painting’s reception, however, were unfounded. Eclipsing work by more advanced pensionnaires, Regnault’s Automedon with the Horses of Achilles drew crowds to an installation that typically attracted limited interest, and it publicly established him as a talent to watch. The Homeric subject depicts the charioteer of Achilles retrieving the warrior’s horses so he may rejoin Greek forces in the Trojan War. The horses resist, however. Thanks to their divine origin, they know as the groom does not that Achilles will be going to his death. The barren, turbulent landscape behind intensifies the sense of looming disaster—­“I wanted to give the picture a foretaste of something sinister.”13 Judges at the Institut praised Regnault’s “zeal.” But they also pushed back, citing the red cloak as “false” and singling out faults in his drawing. Horses this large “needed more serious study.” Regnault, they advised, should contain his enthusiasm and apply himself with greater discipline: “We know he is capable of much more, especially if he will allow himself some restraint.”14 The court of Paris, on the other hand, hailed the arrival of a major new talent. There was not “one painter” in the French school then, asserted Marius Chaumelin, capable of a work of such “power” and “ardor.” Even Émile Zola threw Regnault a backhanded compliment, noting that his envoi was merely bad and not awful, Rome not yet having ruined him.15 For years the picture was widely reproduced in the French press, always with a tinge of regret, as it had left the country. Purchased in Regnault’s lifetime by an expatriate collector, Automedon was soon sent to the United States, where it eventually found a permanent home at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Regnault feared taking on an instrumental project with no object—­a study rather than a fully realized picture: Hébert “wants me to follow the règlement, which calls for just a nude figure, a study, and not a tableau.” He achieved the reverse—­Automedon, as one critic observed, could indeed “be called un tableau.”16 Of course others had tried to do the same; witness Baudry’s trawl through mythology in search of a story to Ch ap ter One

8. Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1868, oil on canvas, museum purchase with funds donated by contribution, 90.152, photograph © 2016 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

9. Henri Regnault, Autome­don with the Horses of Achilles, Le Journal illustré, April 14, 1872, private collection.

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motivate his nude. But success for Regnault lay in more than choice of subject. Consider his picture’s size. Measuring more than ten by ten feet (315 × 329 cm), its dimensions substantially exceeded those associated with a single-­figure envoi. (With the project under way, Regnault added a further 60 cm in height; the completed picture was nearly ruined when the winch gave way as it was lowered from his studio window onto the ground.) What is more, from preparatory study to completed picture Regnault subtly manipulated his mise-­en-­scène, bringing the main figure group closer to the picture plane. The group seems ready to vault out of the painting toward the beholder, Regnault himself describing the groom as running “toward the spectator, a horse in each hand.”17 All this hints at Regnault’s determination not only to command the viewer’s attention but to overwhelm him, a determination that grew more urgent in the years ahead. Central to the picture’s action were the horses struggling to escape Automedon’s grip. Hard to imagine, but the horses broke the rules, and Regnault found himself keeping Hébert at bay until the project was well under way: “What the Director does not know is that this nude will be set against two life-­size horses. This goes against the règlement, but I reserve the right to depict mastodons, if that is what I feel like.”18 Such open disregard cemented Regnault’s maverick aura, but there was more Ch ap ter One

to these horses than an impetuous exercise of will. They and not the groom bear the intellectual weight of the subject, since they and not the groom know that Achilles is going to his death. Further, by virtue of their resistance the horses motivate the groom’s pose—­precisely so that the groom does not, in the manner of an académie, seem merely to hold a pose.19 Finally—­and this point will take some explanation—­the horses flagged the naturalist, even contemporary character of Regnault’s commitments, just as they also called up the legitimating example of his revisionist predecessors. Paul Mantz spoke of Regnault enlarging the horses “more than necessary,” as if to give them “something of his fire.” He also cited in this regard a passion for riding that dominated the artist to the point of recklessness, “frightening his colleagues.”20 Regnault’s supporters cited his childhood as evidence for such concerns. Gustave Larroumet, 10. Henri Regnault, sketch for Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1867, oil on canvas, Grant Walker Fund, 1998, photograph © 2016 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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lecturing at Regnault’s old school, spoke of the artist as drawing horses and other figures on the margins of his textbooks. His friend Henri Baillière claimed that as a child, Regnault passed his time “drawing from memory” horses he had seen in the street, all of which, in his view, helped give a feeling of authenticity to Marshal Juan Prim, which won Regnault favorable notice at the Salon of 1869.21 A youthful sculpture offered yet more evidence of such concerns. Duparc reports that the clay figurine originated at Sèvres, the boy shaping the emperor’s horse from memory despite having visited the stables on only a few occasions. Cast in bronze and widely reproduced after Regnault’s death, the sculpture spoke of a native passion for horses that was said to have preceded his formal education.22 Regnault absorbed these tropes as his own. As if signing on to a homo­logical reading between painting and biography, he was said to have learned to ride for the sake of his envoi, a determination that nearly got him killed: “To better understand the horses of Achilles, Regnault thought it advisable to ride. He did not know how, but never doubted himself. He leased horses and explored the Roman countryside until he had a terrible fall and cracked his skull.”23 Writing to his father, Regnault spoke of being drawn to a “damn nice Arab” with a “lively and dark eye,” known to have thrown two embassy attachés and an officer of the Zouaves.24 To paint a horse he must ride one, Regnault tells us. A naturalist cliché, we might reply, and to be sure he was scarcely the first artist to attract such claims. But the more relevant point is that he sites this naturalist desideratum on limit terrain. Seizing on a horse that could 11. Henri Regnault, Horse from the Stables of Napoleon III at St. Cloud, 1856, plaster, courtesy Étienne Breton / St. Honoré Art Consulting.

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Ch ap ter One

not be tamed, Regnault learned to ride less despite than because of the risks—­to anticipate the argument of the chapters to come. Tropes around Regnault’s equine naturalism did still more strategic work. Specifically, they aligned him with the legitimating examples of prior artists held to have resisted the pedagogical routines of the Davidian school. The name Delacroix surfaced frequently in such contexts, particularly following Regnault’s journey to Morocco. But as far as ­Automedon is concerned, it was Théodore Géricault who was most often installed as Regnault’s ancestor—­Géricault, who never won the Rome prize, who railed against academic instruction, who was passionate for horses, including the Barberi horse race, a famous ritual of Rome sport, and who died following injuries sustained from a fall off a horse. A devotion to all things equine emerged as a central theme of the historiographical edifice built around the artist after his death, and was cemented by Charles Clément’s biography of Géricault published in 1867. Regnault’s biographers followed suit. “Even as a child,” Larroumet observed, Regnault “loved to portray animals,” which he seized “with a penetrating eye, like Géricault.”25 For Auguste Angellier it was a test of will, Géricault and Regnault both pushing themselves to the limit: “Like Géricault he had a love of horses. He liked to use this exercise to strengthen his will.” Marx, too, spoke of “a passion for horses that Regnault possessed no less than Géricault.”26 The point was not that Regnault borrowed from Géricault but that his biography was fashioned in part from tropes around equine naturalism that formed part of Géricault’s critical legacy. For Regnault as for his predecessor, devotion to all things equine was held to inoculate him against school routines. From the margins of his schoolbooks to clay shaped by his youthful hands, Regnault’s horses stood as the direct expression of his primordial impulses as an artist. In this liberal narrative of education as nature’s way, the un­mediated contact between self and world prevailed over academic work and other proxies for tradition’s authority. Hence Baillière, who claimed that ­Regnault “went rarely to the École” and turned up mainly for the competitions: “Between himself and nature, he wanted no intermediary.”27 Regnault, too, drank from this well, and we should let him have the last word. By 1868 he was in Madrid, on the first of two trips to Spain. Marshal Juan Prim, a portrait commission from the Spanish general and strongman who ruled briefly as prime minister before being assassi­ nated in 1870, offered him further opportunity to mobilize his picture’s action around the corporeal power and intensity of a rearing horse. Because of his bare head, the crowds gathered around him, and his horse seeming ready to bolt, Prim himself rejected the portrait on the grounds that he was not portrayed with sufficient dignity (more on Prim

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shortly). But just those qualities helped assure that Parisians would give Regnault’s picture an enthusiastic reception. Critics traced its massive black horse to his study of Velázquez and the Spanish school—­in other words, legitimat­ing naturalists drawn from among the ranks of the old masters. In fact Regnault himself, speaking of the Spanish school, took the occasion to improvise a canon of his own. No French painter, he insists, could hold his own against Rubens, Ribera, Tintoretto, or Velázquez—­not even Poussin, the iconic master so cherished by French academic discourse. The real French school “was born with Gros, and all the Poussins in the world would never add up to Géricault’s petit cuirassier or Delacroix’s Giaour.”28 For all their casual character, these remarks are telling. A generation of painters shaped by romanticism and its aftermath looked back on their neoclassical heritage as the strained product of an imported discourse. Never mind Poussin: Regnault does not even mention David, whom he drops in favor of David’s pupil Antoine-­Jean Gros. What Regnault calls the true French school is modern, coloristic, violent, and equine. Not by accident does he cite Gros’s Battle of Aboukir of 1806, an orientalizing crush of brightly dressed soldiers, charging horses, and exotic figure types, both alive and dead. And not by accident does he cite Géricault’s Charging Chasseur and Delacroix’s Combat of the Giaour and Hassan, both of which feature horses in violent action. Regnault’s attitudes speak volumes about a generalized retreat from the icy immobility of the Davidian school—­as if icy immobility in retrospect were all David offered. With Automedon and Marshal Juan Prim both, Regnault embraced a conception of painting that was violent, equine, coloristic, and, thanks to the native, primordial character of his naturalism, by definition contemporary. Let me merely add that it was only when he arrived in Tangier that Regnault could finally dispense with the equine themes held to safeguard his “fire.” For in the Orient, as it seemed, nature itself allowed that fire to run wild and unchecked.

Influence

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Beyond the inconveniences of the règlement, Regnault found his progress blocked by a still more formidable obstacle: the art of the past. The idea that tradition should emerge as a problem for Regnault might seem perverse. Was not his residency meant to nourish a deep and sustained encounter with the art of the past?—­“now I am finally free to work for myself, to study at my leisure, and to try and elevate myself through contact with the old masters.” Had he not been formed by a school with highly developed practices of imitation? Had he not thrown himself into the competition for the Rome prize not once but three times? All Ch ap ter One

true, and yet his Roman residency unexpectedly and definitively put the question of tradition on the table. Beyond having to submit to the règlement, beyond the obeisance to an antique vernacular, Regnault found the atmosphere in Rome wholly dissimilar to the modernizing culture of Haussmannian Paris. To be sure, artists from Europe, the United States, and beyond sought out Rome in large numbers. But for all the cosmopolitan character of its artistic community, there was no Roman equivalent to the Salon—­no public and international venue for showing contemporary art on a large scale. What is more, foreign artists sought Rome for its past, regardless of whether they were short-­term visitors or expatriates with practices in the city. For these reasons and more, a disabling and incapacitating sense of tradition’s authority overtook Regnault with new, unexpected, and crushing urgency. In part the encounter was simply deflating. To his friend Henri ­Cazalis, author of an 1872 book on Regnault and in later years a leading symbolist poet, Regnault confessed his surprise at the small scale of Roman monuments. The dome of St. Peter’s, although imposing from a distance, seemed insufficiently grandiose. Antiquity fared worse: “The Arch of Titus seems like a toy compared to the Arch of Titus that one has imagined.” The Forum was unworthy of imperial capital. Surely, added Regnault, the true “power of antiquity” was better expressed in the “immense” avenues and granite temples of ancient Egypt and Assyria. Only the Roman Coliseum, in Regnault’s phrase, “answers our need for the colossal.”29 As these complaints suggest, what Regnault wanted from Rome—­from antiquity more generally—­was scale. An empire that conquered “half the globe” must have a Forum worthy of such reach. This was a naive conception of the ancient world to be sure, but no less revealing. Regnault’s conviction that “true power” required vast scale belongs on the same psychological page as his commitment to over-­ the-­top equine action: in Automedon, Regnault explained to ­Cazalis, his main goal was to reinforce the colossal impact of horseflesh—­he took care to underline the word.30 No wonder he yielded to fantasies of Oriental despotism. From the streets of Rome to the Alhambra Palace, those fantasies were born of an emerging crisis of self-­actualization that called for something colossal in return. Far from offering him, as horses did and antiquity might, a sublime object with which to identify, the puny character of Roman monuments left him dispirited and starved: “I am so hungry here, and there is nothing to eat.”31 Like most artists visiting Rome, residents of the Villa set to work making copies. The expectations for Regnault were no different, but he spent his first months as a tourist, copying almost nothing. “De­racinated” before the “eternal masterpieces” of the past, in Baillière’s phrase, ­Regnault developed no consistent plan of study.32 Not only antiquity Escape from the Eternal City

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but the Italian old masters left him indifferent. Besides Raphael’s stanze and the Sistine Chapel, the riches of the Louvre seemed to him to exceed those of Roman museums. Raphael’s Transfiguration—­exhibit A on the Grand Tour—­failed to impress, and nothing by Leonardo equaled the Mona Lisa. Much of the art Regnault did admire fell outside academic norms. In Florence it was Cellini; in Spain it was Velázquez and Ribera; in Rome it was the illusionistic ceilings of Pietro de Cortona, whom ­Regnault praised despite, as Cazalis put it, “his well-­known faults.”33 Only Michelangelo earned Regnault’s full and undisguised admiration. And yet his veneration for the master imposed new obstacles in turn, cementing his resolve to flee. Michelangelo saw a revived interest among nineteenth-­century French artists, and a revival too of the legend of his inimitability. The topic of his reputation in the nineteenth century is of course vast, and beyond the compass of this study. But at the very least we may say that ­Regnault’s predecessors’ own experiences in this regard may have clarified his sense that options were limited. In 1834 the talented romantic painter Xavier Sigalon received a commission to copy Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, only to be felled by cholera in 1837 shortly after its unveiling in the Chapel of the École des beaux-­arts (still in place today). The commission generated controversy at the time, and with the passing decades concerns about Michelangelo’s inimitability would scarcely abate. Baudry, who in 1866 and 1867 spent several months in the Sistine Chapel making copies as he prepared for his ceiling commission at the new Paris Opera, offers another relevant case. This at once humbling and arduous program of study provoked admiration but also skepticism from colleagues and critics alike, concerns that did not dissipate when the murals were finally unveiled. Or consider a straight empirical measure: even in ­Regnault’s day, pensionnaires at the Villa made few drawings after the master, while copies after Raphael survive in large numbers.34 In rare cases the emulation was enabling, perhaps because it was pitched in an anti-academic key. Carpeaux, for example, spoke of having a “vivid sympathy” for the artist, to the point where “all my works are marked by his gigantic stamp.”35 In Ugolino and other work associated with his Roman residency, Carpeaux called on Michelangelo as an old master proxy in a drawn-­out quarrel with the Institut. Letters home speak of the profound impact on ­Regnault of his visits to the high temple of Michelangelo’s canonicity. To Stéphane Mallarmé he explained that beyond the countryside and the Sistine, Rome offered him “nothing else he needed.” Twenty years would not suffice to capture the ceiling’s “marvels,” and its pleasures were found “nowhere else.”36 Of course twenty years was a just figure of speech, but the idea it would take him that long was another way of saying he would not try. To his Ch ap ter One

father ­Regnault made a similar point, in this case at much greater length. A close study of the master was pointless, ­Regnault insisted, resurrecting the legend of Michelangelo’s sublime inimitability. “What could one dare before him,” ­Regnault asks, when “following each visit” to the chapel “one feels crushed under the twin sense of astonishment and admiration”—­a feeling “so strange that it almost seems like fear?” Torqueing up the legend, ­Regnault calls Michelangelo “a God that one not dare touch, lest one not escape the fire.” All of this left him guarded, even fearful: “At least for the moment, I don’t have the courage, I don’t have the desire, to take it on. I sense it will do me more harm than good, and I remain content at adoring him in contemplation only. But to take him on, weapons in hand—­I confess, I don’t feel I am strong enough yet.” The metaphor is revealing. He is simply speaking, after all, of making copies, and a critic, or for that matter his father, might fail to see his point. But ­Regnault recognizes that for an artist there was nothing neutral about any such exercise. Adore Michelangelo, yes. But to pick up a brush—­“weapons in hand”—­destroys the status quo, locking him into a contest on shared terrain that he will surely lose: “Nothing can compete with him: he is a colossus who destroys all who approach him.” Colossal monuments, coliseum, colossal horseflesh, colossal Michel­ angelo—­again and again ­Regnault seizes on the sublimely overscaled. But by virtue of Michelangelo’s status as an artist, this colossus stood in his way, ­Regnault signing on like so many before him to a problematic of inimitability that left him blocked. What concerned ­Regnault was not just Michelangelo’s accomplishment but his disabling priority, an at once temporal and psychological syndrome about which ­Regnault himself was eloquent. In the very same letter to his father, ­Regnault wrestles with this topic at length, shifting his focus from the indomitable Michel­ angelo to the priority of tradition in general. The long screed stands as ­Regnault’s fullest statement on his imitative practices—­a pedagogical manifesto even, or so it might have seemed to generations of students at the École des beaux-­arts who would digest the letter in the years ahead. Born too late, ­Regnault is victim of a temporal misfortune. The old masters, he explains, had already scaled the highest peaks, already mined the richest deposits. Of course this sense of latecoming lived only in ­Regnault’s mind. But for all practical purposes it took the form of law: There is no other way: it’s an immutable and eternal law that one finds in every path of the arts. All the geniuses who have brought this or that branch of art to its summit, who have exhausted, as it were, everything that this vein could yield, lead to a cul-­de-­sac. After them come misshapen students who will smash their heads against the wall of this cul-­de-­sac. They are frogs who want to be as large as a steer: they die Escape from the Eternal City

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trying. They want to go farther than the master, forgetting that they have come too late, and that there is nothing left to try in this particular direction, and they fall into caricature; or else, castrated by their blissful admiration of a genius they barely understand, but before whom they bow, they dare nothing further, and become completely powerless. They know they are nothing before their fetish, and despite the marvelous instruction they have received, they are even less than they would have been if they had arrived on the scene when the artistic road was only halfway traveled, and when each new artist could advance the school out of which he came.37

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Taking a page from Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence, ­Regnault fears his fate as belated. Arriving early on the scene, the old masters wrote the book. Their zealous followers, paralyzed by admiration, believed it was enough to mine their insights, a disastrous conviction that merely fated them for elimination. Condemned to caricature, deluded by borrowed visions of grandeur, “castrated” before their “fetish,” immobilized by their devotion, those followers became even less than they might have been had they had the good fortune to be born earlier, when even mediocre talents could say something new. —­A devastating diagnosis, but not exactly new. A pervasive sense of latecoming haunts the biographies of many nineteenth-­century French artists, thanks in part to the prestige of national educational institutions that claimed France as the legitimate inheritor of the grand tradition but also held up that tradition as a normative ideal. “From now on, the harvest is over,” Paul Delaroche was said to have warned, as he advised his pupils not to compete with the old masters on their own terrain: “the great masters have exploited the field of poetic invention with such success, that there is hardly more to be gleaned in their traces than a few scraps.”38 Delacroix felt similarly afflicted. The old masters, he explained in his unpublished Dictionary of Fine Arts, had the good fortune to be “first on the scene.” Their priority proved devastating for those who followed in their wake. Entire schools of art, Delacroix complained, had been founded on the “misconceptions” of weak imitators. Note that Delacroix seizes on the affective character of this temporal misfortune. Authority is not imposed from above but solicited from below: it is the “weak imitators” who destroy themselves through their own zealous devotion. And note that ­Regnault felt the same, dismissing Vasari and his successors as “castrated by their blissful admiration of a genius they barely understand.” The problem, in short, was the pupil’s compulsion to imitate his master, rather than any force exercised by tradition itself. Nineteenth-­century French artists improvised a range of strategies to evade or sidestep this sense of temporal misfortune. Delaroche, for exCh ap ter One

ample, arriving in Italy in 1833, set out to imitate “less perfect” models—­ not the works of Raphael or Michelangelo, “the last word” in art, but their more modest predecessors, as if by means of such stratagems the art of the past might take on a human, less crushing scale.39 ­Regnault imagined doing the same. Still to his father he speaks of seeking out “masters who make me less frightened.” In Florence he had “made note of a number of pictures able to teach me a great deal, without fear of being sucked in by too strong a force (against which I would be helpless).” By allying himself to their precursors, ­Regnault might expose a dependence the old masters themselves had obscured: “One can read more clearly in them than the old masters, who are more devious, and better at hiding their game.” Anything else and he risked being “sucked in by too strong a force,” leaving him to become “a diminutive Vasari, exaggerating the lessons he draws from his master.”40 Here as in other letters sent up from Rome, ­Regnault rehearses a range of strategies, subterfuges even, designed to outwit tradition on its own terrain. But none took root, and no evidence survives that he considered them seriously. Certainly ­Regnault was not the first laureate afflicted with a sense of latecoming, still less the last. But his account stands out for the clarity of his diagnosis and for the conclusion that subterfuge was not enough. His flight from Rome was born of the conviction that more robust measures were called for than the evasive maneuvers already well established among his predecessors at the Villa and beyond. And make no mistake: these complaints were merely echoes of more vigorous debates on the ground. The crisis was conducted in public, and the stakes were known to all. Writing to Baudry, Hébert spelled out the danger: “The young ­Regnault is head of a band that wants nothing of Italy or its masters. He is very sweet and one can forgive him much, but it’s very bad for the Academy.”41

Nature In the face of tradition’s authority, ­Regnault did exactly as did artists before him: he leveraged the present against the past. Rather than “work at the Sistine Chapel,” as he explained to his father, he would make “studies after nature in the environs of Naples.” He would sketch “the Roman countryside,” whose “grandiose” and “varied” views “never ceased to delight.”42 This notion of the countryside as an escape or safety valve was well established among pensionnaires, and once again ­Regnault had examples close at hand. Horace Vernet, who served as Villa director from 1829 to 1834, spoke of the old masters as instructing modern artists not to follow them. “Far from engaging one in imitating them,” Vernet counseled, the example of the old masters should remind painters “to Escape from the Eternal City

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represent the great actions of all time, as well as all the passions.”43 These views put Vernet in bad odor, and his successor, Jean-­Auguste Dominique Ingres, was sent to Rome with a mandate to rein in such attitudes. Consider Vernet’s Raphael at the Vatican, from the Salon of 1833. Vernet has Raphael discover among a passing group of peasants a figure cluster resembling the Holy Family (among other tales told by this extraordinary picture). In later years other versions of this rationale fell into place, to judge from the former Prix de Rome François-­Léon Benouville’s Poussin Discovering the Composition for His Finding of Moses, painted in 1857. Benouville has Poussin discover key elements of his subject by accident as he walks along the Tiber. These and many similar inventions by nineteenth-­century artists make a common point: the old masters did not just find their compositions in nature, but found them among models uncontaminated by studio routines—­figures who did not pose because they did not know they were being observed. Artists today, in turn, should do the same. Hébert, the Villa’s director, presents a case in point. Awarded the Rome prize in 1839, he made his name at the Salon of 1850 with his ­Malaria, a modern “everyday” subject set in the pestilent marshes outside Rome and widely cited as emblematic of Italy’s troubles and decline.44 For all his subsequent efforts to enforce the règlement, Hébert’s own paintings scarcely exhibit apostolic loyalty to the art of the past. Rather, Hébert was credited with bringing to his classical subjects a refreshing sense of contemporaneity, and as director of the Villa he roamed through ­Abruzzi in search of new figure types as well as models who had not posed. Before him other artists—­Léopold Robert, Jean-Victor Schnetz, and Carpeaux, for example—­had adopted similar naturalist strategies, seeking out the city’s prisons or traveling outside Rome in search of gypsies, bandits, and other picturesque alternatives to the antique figure groups that typically populated academic pictures. Initially, ­Regnault adopted a similar strategy. A commission from the critic and historian Francis Wey, a family friend, to illustrate a travel book on Rome led him to explore the urban landscape with a new eye. The project delighted him, ­Regnault explained, noting that he had “wasted” six months being a tourist rather “rather than actually making notes and drawing.”45 He found this ground well trodden, however: “the ­chauchards and the bourrains, with their pointy hats and ample cloaks, left him cold,” in Charles Bigot’s phrase. ­Regnault had proposed to leverage the richness and diversity of modern life against the disabling prestige of the art of the past. But what counted as modern life, and as naturalist practice in general, was a moving target. As in the case with the unruly horse he was determined to ride in preparation for his Automedon, ­Regnault invariably set the naturalist bar high. And what was Ch ap ter One

12. Horace Vernet, Raphael at the Vatican, 1832, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, copyright RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. 13. Ernest Hébert, Malaria, 1850, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

14. Henri Regnault, ­Roman Carnival, 1867, ink on panel, painted white for engraving, courtesy Étienne Breton / St. Honoré Art Consulting.

true for Italian figure types was true for the country in general. With the exception of the Bay of Naples, all Italy came to disillusion him. Venice seemed “insufficiently luminous” and Florence “too austere.”46

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Travel to Spain presented ­Regnault with another opportunity to improvise measures that might militate against his temporal dilemma, although without success. Pensionnaires had the right if not the resources to travel, an entitlement ­Regnault stretched to the limit. In the summer of 1868 he set out for Madrid, thanks to a fall from a horse that obliged him to escape Rome’s insalubrious climate. He remained in the capital through the autumn, taking extra time to complete his magnificent Marshal Juan Prim and aggravating Hébert, who worried that the commission offered ­Regnault another excuse to delay his return. Writing to ­Regnault’s father, Hébert chastised the laureate for “chasing a medal at the Salon” rather than plunging into more serious pursuits. This feature of Villa life had become all too common, Hébert explained, and was “too unhealthy” for him “not to fight it.”47 Ch ap ter One

15. Henri Regnault, Juan Prim, October 8, 1868, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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Back in Rome for the winter, ­Regnault set to work on his Judith and Holofernes, the latter earmarked as his second envoi (and the least known in a trio of beheading subjects). In his haste to return to Spain, ­Regnault sent the envoi up to Paris unfinished, although it still caught the eye of critics and was purchased by the city of Marseilles. Unfortunately the deteriorated state of his Judith and Holofernes barely hints at the union of plush setting and brooding violence that Théophile Gautier, among others, singled out for special praise, although some critics worried the picture borrowed too heavily from ­Regnault’s Prix de Rome of 1866. Meanwhile ­Regnault set to work on his Salome. More on the picture’s genesis in the chapters ahead; for the moment, suffice it to say that not even his enthusiasm for this project weakened his determination to escape. By summer 1869 ­Regnault was back in Spain, making plans to visit Andalusia, Morocco, Persia, and India. To Hébert he made promises to complete his Spanish obligations and take up residence at the Villa once again. But to his father he spoke of completing his final envoi abroad, lest he “go rotten” under Rome’s “fetid sky.”48 Marshal Juan Prim survives in good condition. Its cool tonalities, loose impasto, and raucous crowds in the background point to Spanish painting’s brief hold on ­Regnault, traceable to his visits to the Prado in the summer of 1868. A future generation of critics shaped by impressionism would cite Marshal Juan Prim as ­Regnault’s best picture, its fresh touch and contemporary subject matter standing in contrast to the exotic, as it seemed theatricalizing violence that overtook his work in Granada and Tangier. Such a reading is too simple, however, for it elides the strategic character behind ­Regnault’s embrace of the Spanish school. Other French artists in the 1860s reached out to Spanish painting, for example Manet, who developed a selective system of quotation designed to help sanction his own realist project.49 ­Regnault, for his, part, was calculating in turn: “The more I see of the Spanish masters, the more I am certain that no other teaching could be more salutary than theirs, for they address nature directly.”50 The Spanish masters “admit you to their circle” rather than “hide their techniques.” They allowed a painter to “stammer” in front of them, without their “crushing you with their disdain.”51 As these remarks suggest, ­Regnault proposed to set one agent of influence against another more incapacitating alternative. Spanish realism served as a mediator; it presented an inventory of realist strategies rather than an immovable obstacle like Michelangelo. And while ­Regnault speaks of Spanish artists revealing their secrets, of course his language is misleading. It is ­Regnault who negotiates between the mute alternatives the old masters present. It is he who ascribes to the Spanish school its mediating function, just as it is he, by virtue of the expectations he has internalized and reproduced, who suffers from the Ch ap ter One

conviction that the Italian old masters will “crush him with disdain.” ­Regnault’s Spanish Muleteer and other native figure types from these months attest to the fertility of his Spanish sojourn, although note that ­Regnault sets the muleteer outdoors against a sun-­bleached stone wall, an orientalizing trope that stands in contrast to the cool gray backgrounds generally associated with Spanish painting, and for that matter ­Regnault’s Prim. In fact his enthusiasm for the Spanish school soon faded, to judge from his efforts to complete a painted copy after an old master picture as required in his third year at the Villa. Making copies of old master pictures was an integral feature of art education, in terms of both training students technically and exposing the public to a more diverse range of art. The Second Empire and early Third Republic saw ramped-­up campaigns in this regard, mainly works from the French and Italian canon but without neglecting the Spanish masters. Nevertheless, the actual utility of such replicas was increasingly questioned. Liberal pedagogy put more emphasis on copies as creative interpretations, a notion that made sense for copyists perhaps but that ran contrary to the idea of an accurate reproduction for the education of others. In 1871 Charles Blanc dusted off a project to open a museum of copies with 16. Henri Regnault, Spanish Muleteer, 1868–­69, courtesy ­Musée d’art et d’histoire de Fribourg.

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this larger educational goal in mind. But the museum closed after only three years in the face of high costs, institutional obstacles, and most of all new technologies of reproduction that undermined the rationale for labor-­intensive copying programs that, in the end, seemed useful mainly for keeping artists employed.52 Amidst this foment the Villa Medici clung to the obligation. Pensionnaires generally regarded the copy as the most monotonous feature of the règlement and frequently sought ways to modify or outwit the burden (up to 1863, when laureates spent five years in Rome, the copy was assigned to their fourth year, earning for this curricular artifact particular opprobrium). ­Regnault, it is no surprise to discover, sought to turn the règlement in his favor. Arriving in Madrid, he made arrangements for a one-­to-­one scale copy of Velázquez’s Surrender at Breda at the Prado, painted in 1634–­35 (in French known as Les Lances) and generally regarded as one of the master’s best pictures.53 The choice was predictably ambitious: at 121 × 144 inches, this vast military subject with a prominent horse seen from behind was larger still than his Automedon. The choice was also transgressive, thanks to a prevailing view of Velázquez as committed to unvarnished naturalism. Certainly ­Regnault was under no illusions. “Art purists,” he put it to Duparc, “will scream when they see Velázquez at the threshold of the sanctuary, the École des beaux-­arts. What profanation.”54 (The painting survives at the École in poor condition.) ­Regnault threw himself into the copy with enthusiasm, only to lose interest as obstacles mounted. Copying spontaneity turned out to be harder than anticipated. “I have made the error of selecting the wrong painting,” he confessed. “Nothing is more difficult to copy than that which seems to be easily done, and executed with such marvelous assurance.” The entire project, as ­Regnault suggests, was an exercise in bad faith. The qualities he singled out in Velázquez—­his color, free handling, and related attributes—­stood in opposition to the deliberative and premeditated character of making a copy.55 Finally ­Regnault came to doubt Velázquez himself: “The more nature I see, the more my admiration, my fetishism for Velázquez diminishes. Ribera is more courageous, he has greater will.” The plebeian, matter-­of-­fact, and typically absorptive character of Ribera’s martyrdoms had cast a spell on French realist painters since the 1850s, although Ribera’s hold on ­Regnault, like that of Velázquez, proved brief. And while what ­Regnault meant by Ribera’s “will” is uncertain, “will” was precisely how some critics thematized the unbridled, combative character of a career that so openly pushed back against the expectations attached to his residency. Leaving Madrid with his copy unfinished, ­Regnault knew Hébert would be displeased: “Hébert will be furious, although I like him very much. It is not my fault if I get caught up in interesting studies that are useful to me. Simply put, Ch ap ter One

I’m not painting just to obey the règlement, but to make painting.56 Nine months later ­Regnault grudgingly resumed work on the copy, leaving a friend to complete some of the details so that he could make his way south: “I am too disgusted with it to get back to work. At any rate, it’s not a copy that will make the reputation of a man.”57 At the very least, submitting to the règlement clarified for ­Regnault how profoundly the principles underwriting his award and his own sense of artistic education had parted ways. “The painter,” he explained to Bréton, writing in the fall of 1869 with the copy still dogging him, “wants to stay in Granada for another six months.” But “the pensionnaire has to return to Madrid to finish the copy of his third envoi, a prospect that bores him to no end, even though it is after Velázquez.” The “painter,” adds ­­Regnault, underlining the word, “wants to spend the spring in ­Morocco, to return to Rome never again, to leave for Egypt, etc. But the pensionnaire must be in Rome by March 15.” Should she run across Hébert in Paris, “don’t show this letter.” Instead, “dissemble in front of him.” Tell him “I love Rome a lot, and will be back soon.”58 One may doubt whether Hébert was under any illusions. “How many times I have thought of poor Henri ­Regnault!” recalled the sculptor ­Prosper d’Épinay, whose Rome studio formed part of an important counternetwork to the Villa and its artistic culture. “He used to sit right here, on this little stool, nearly on the floor. . . . He would speak of his projects,” including “his passion for the sun.” ­Regnault “loathed Rome,” added d’Épinay, with the exception of the Sistine, which left him “crushed and enthralled.”59 D’Épinay nicely glosses a dilemma that saw ­Regnault seek artistic salvation in an exotic dream of brilliant illumination. Arriving in Rome to take up his award, ­Regnault came to feel it more truly left him doomed: doomed because he was expected to work within a exhausted antique vernacular; doomed because the Eternal City had already served as backdrop for countless artists before him and seemed only too ready to serve him as well; and doomed because the only old master who left him truly “enthralled” also left him “crushed.” Finally ­Regnault escaped. In his mind it felt exactly like that, and yet the term does not do justice to the revisionist character of a course of action designed to liquidate his temporal problematic and erase his sense of latecoming. Simply put, ­Regnault displaced that temporal burden in spatial terms. Unable to travel back in time, he might at least travel in space, in this case to terrain seemingly unchanged since antiquity, uncontaminated by the tracks of his predecessors and promising a fresh start. “I can but repeat how thirsty I am for Africa and the Orient,” he confided to Cazalis in the spring of 1869.60 Plotted from Rome, from the “little stool” where he sat, ­Regnault’s fantasy of priority set in motion a program of renewal whose structure and operation we can now explore. Escape from the Eternal City

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17. Henri Regnault, Patio in Tangier, 1869, oil on canvas, Gezireh Museum, Cairo, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

The Orientalist Sublime In the summer of 1869 ­Regnault left Rome for Spain and Morocco, joined by Georges Clairin. The pair traveled south through Andalusia by carriage, by donkey, and on foot before stopping in Granada. This was ­Regnault’s second major trip abroad, and Hébert worried about the bad example set by his truancy. ­Regnault had justified travel to Spain on artistic grounds, a questionable if defensible rationale, thanks to the règlement, which sent him to the Prado to copy Velázquez’s Surrender at Breda. The voyage south, on the other hand, had no academic justification, although in ­Regnault’s mind it more truly advanced his artistic education. Gladly would he trade a view of St. Peter’s for one of the Alhambra, he confided to Bréton.1 Returning briefly to Madrid, ­Regnault made his way south through Andalusia, stopping in Granada for two months to sketch its famous palace and environs. From there he crossed over to Gibraltar, where he paused for several weeks before making the overnight passage to Tangier, la ville blanche. ­Regnault was on a quest for the sun. Truly he was “the painter of light,” it seemed to Cazalis, so consistently did he seek out effects of brilliant illumination. Cazalis pointed in this regard to ­Regnault’s unfinished Patio in Tangier, begun in the spring of 1870 and set in the sunny courtyard next to his studio in Tangier. Two female figures attired in long colorful garments sit at rest on a luxurious carpet. A golden cloth falls from the balcony, draped against a pillar and walls so bleached by the sun they seemed veritably “aflame.”2 The rich array of textiles spoke of ­Regnault’s new enthusiasm for heightened effects of texture and color, catalyzed by his visit to the Exposition Universelle in the summer of 1867 and now nourished at the source. But for Cazalis this painting was all about light—­light that ­Regnault made “shine,” “scintillate, and “shimmer.” Light that recalled the work of “no other master.” Nothing, in short, “but the pure light of the Orient.”

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Bold claims, but scarcely unique. The “countries of light,” in Marx’s phrase, called out to ­Regnault “like a new Promised Land.” Victor Fournel termed ­Regnault so “intoxicated” by light as to invalidate his previous representations: “everything that he had seen, everything that he had done to this point now struck him as dark and gray. He dreamed of fixing on canvas the fiery rays of the Oriental sun.” Jules Claretie spoke of ­Regnault as mixing “the sun on his palette.” ­Regnault had no real interest in the “vestiges of Arab civilization,” explained Baillière. Rather, he went to Morocco “to live in full light.”3 Arriving in Tangier, one critic explained, ­Regnault “at last found a studio literally flooded with light.’”4 Sorin described ­Regnault as “dazzled by Spain’s intensity of illumination—­only to discover that it was not enough: “like Goethe, he cried, ‘Still more light!’” Clairin, too, spoke of their commitments in this regard. Spain had “dazzled” them, but Africa promised “a still more stunning illumination—­‘the Orient! The Orient!’” Indeed their devotion, as Clairin put it, was veritably cultic. His witticism speaks volumes about the power of a dream that was nurtured in the studio but plotted to escape its grip: “We had a passion for the sun and its splendors, which in our youthfulness we treated with cultic enthusiasm.”5 Again, bold claims—­and again, not unique. Endlessly rehearsed, evocations of “the sun and its splendors” had formed part and parcel of French writing about the Orient since Montesquieu. Arguably this metaphorics dominated the visual arts most of all, particularly in the broadly naturalist climate of the later nineteenth century, as Western artists traveled to North Africa and the Middle East and the profession of the painter-­traveler took shape. Following in the tracks laid by colonial expansion, painters, sculptors, and photographers established commercially successful practices that highlighted the firsthand observational basis of their exotic representations. Needless to add, artists also mined the classic motifs of the region’s climate and geography—­the desert, the caravan, the oasis. Needless to add, too, motifs seemingly born of observation drew on tropes put in place before painters left France. And although certainly those motifs exceed this casual inventory, arguably “the sun and its splendors” prevailed among them all. In part it was a question of technique. The region’s implacable light was held to exceed the tonal range of painters working under the gray skies of northern Europe. From Tangier, ­Regnault spoke of trying to “escape modeling for its own sake”—­of “fleeing the abuse of black.”6 The filthy studios of Paris had corrupted how artists saw the world, leaving them prone to “ridiculous shadows” and “exaggerated modeling.” Salome and other work from these months offer eloquent testimony of ­Regnault’s concerns in this regard as he pulled back from cast shadow

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and chiaroscuro effects. Patio in Tangier offers a surface mosaic of pure white and unmixed color, while his Alhambra studies deliberately confuse surface and depth. ­Regnault himself confessed to butting up against the limits of his craft, the region’s light and atmospherics exceeding all description—­“it’s too beautiful, impossibly difficult—­our colors seem like mud next to what we have before our eyes.”7 But again, not unique: “The brightest colors of my palette” seemed but “mud without reflection,” complained Eugène Fromentin a decade earlier. Or Claude Monet, from Bordighera: “It is terribly difficult: one needs a palette of diamonds and precious stones.”8 Or simply more white, ­Regnault added in turn, as he begged his father to send him large quantities of “the finest white lead.” Indeed “the most brilliant of all,” for to “render the sun” he needed whites with “terrible force”—­de blanc terrible d’éclat.9 The quest for the sun was not only a problem of technique, however. It was also a problem of experience. Clairin speaks of the pair arriving in Tangier with “souls smitten with light,” a phrase that cannot be assimilated to technical concerns or an empiricist language of observation. Larroumet described ­Regnault as “madly” drawn to light. “Everywhere he chased it, his voluptuous, caressing, fugitive light.” Sensual, as ­Larroumet says, but also threatening—­his “true figure is always the sun, a crushing, dominating, and exclusive figure.” Bonnin credited him with “defying” the sun in order to “fix on canvas” its “brightest rays.” None before ­Regnault, Cazalis claimed, had “dared” gaze at this light “face to face,” still less reproduce it “almost to the level of blindness.”10 This sense of light that not only shimmers but blinds—­that seduces and annihilates—­betrays the affinity of ­Regnault’s painting for the aesthetics of the sublime, an account of artistic experience keyed to effects of transcendence and embracing the antimonies of pleasure and pain. Travel to “the land of the sun” put in place for ­Regnault a profound sense of artistic renewal. Its logic was on the one hand naturalist and on the other sublime, the two narratives intersecting across a fantasy of brilliant illumination even as the work of the first has largely obscured that of the second. The present pages explore the dual character of this fantasy, as it obtained for ­Regnault but also for other painter-­travelers whose careers were shaped by similar concerns. For evidence of those concerns I consider both works of art and the vast corpus of Orientalist art criticism and biography, whose discursive tropes were shared and manipulated by artists and critics alike. Let it be said, this promise of artistic renewal partly hides in plain sight, obscured by a thematics of illumination so ubiquitous as to seem platitudinous and perhaps ideologically suspect. Just consider remarks by Félix Ziem following his return from Constantinople: should “a ray of Oriental light,” Ziem

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­observed, “at some point touch a painter,” then “surely its reflection will be felt in his future work.”11 The elegiac, memory-­laden character of Ziem’s pictures made him a magnet for such pronouncements. For Ziem as for ­Regnault, a well-­trodden metaphorics of light came to utterly saturate Orientalist art criticism, and it may seem hard to imagine that such language would explain anything at all. But the fact that such concerns operated at the level of discourse does not mean they were any less felt. Shaped by expectations born in the studio and by experience on the ground, and reshaped through a process of revision and recollection, the painter’s quest for the sun could seem to renew his enterprise but also trail him to the grave.12

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Right away we should pause before concerns that invariably inform accounts of Orientalist painting, not least because in much of the discussion that follows they lie chiefly in the background. Art historians have come to treat Western representations of North Africa and the Middle East as a form of “imaginative geography,” to borrow a phrase made famous by Edward Said. Neither completely real nor fictional, those geographies operate like ideology, disguising economic and political interests as effects of nature and hence opening the door to the colonizing project. Witness the testimony of Flaubert’s former paramour the poet Louise Colet as she arrived in Alexandria in 1869: “On this land of fire, nature is more powerful than man. She imposes on him her tyrannical influence.”13 In the positivist climate of the mid-­nineteenth century, such deterministic thinking was axiomatic. From Gautier to Maupassant, countless visitors claimed to discover in the region’s climate and geography the key to its social, political, and cultural life. Just as the “land of fire” imposed itself on the region’s inhabitants, so it nurtured a despotic, timeless, and immobile culture. ­Regnault complained about the destructive effects of the European presence; Fromentin and Gustave Guillaumet, in Algeria, pushed south in search of landscape untouched by colonial administration. And yet the practices of Orientalist painters, to rehearse the critique, betray a kind of bad faith. Rarely do their pictures call attention to the political and economic developments that underwrote them in the first place. Working in a putative realist idiom, artists erased their own presence in favor of an Orient presented as timeless and untouched. Recharging the stereotypical figures of the region’s geography, their representations helped legitimate the colonial project through the evidence, as it seemed, of nature itself. The empty desert signaled the land’s inhospi-

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tability but also that it might be surveyed and controlled. Ruins and decaying infrastructure signaled the culture’s ancient prestige but also its decline.14 Preoccupation with light, color, and atmosphere, too, formed part of a “colonizing aesthetic,” as Roger Benjamin has argued in a landmark text. By restricting themselves to narrowly pictorial concerns, artists could “address colonized spaces without referring to the situation of [their] inhabitants.” Benjamin refers to Pierre-­Auguste Renoir, who traveled to Algeria in 1881. But Henri Matisse, too, he argues, set aside “troubling” subject matter as his “supposedly neutral abstraction” took shape.15 Fair enough—­anyone examining such painting in search of editorial commentary on the effects of imperial expansion will go unrewarded. Nevertheless, beyond the effort to demystify this art we may ask what its myths delivered. If artists rehearsed the stereotypes, they inhabited them as their own. A mythology we might wish to dismantle could in the artistic sphere enable. For example, travel to North Africa could seem to transform an artist, hardening him against the capriciousness of a painting career. The painter Alfred Dehodencq, returning to Paris after nearly a decade in Spain and Morocco in the 1850s, was said to evince a “fraternal sympathy” with the subjects of his pictures, expressed in his indifference to success and his failure to properly manage his career. His “Oriental fatalism” led him “to absent himself from his life” and to show little interest in “where the road led.”16 Fromentin, similarly, was described as “fortified by African solitude,” and as bringing back to France “the mutism of the Oriental man.”17 In a similar vein, the region’s seeming timelessness enabled a sense of time travel that artists took as their own. Delacroix described the residents of Tangier as the true inheritors of the Greeks and Romans—­ “the heroes of David and Co., with their rose pink limbs, would cut a sorry figure beside these children of the sun.”18 Of course such thinking essentializes, Delacroix envisioning the population as locked in a climatically imposed stasis. But he also proposes to leverage this data against inherited studio routines, a strategy rehearsed in Orientalist art and criticism again and again. Horace Vernet treated North Africa as a living Jerusalem, adding Semitic figures in local dress and a camel to his Abraham Sends Hagar Away of 1837. Ary Renan hailed Guillaumet’s Algerian figures for their “inalterable grace” and “patriarchal dignity,” attributes that made them ideally suited to the “most heroic” episodes of the Bible.19 Other examples abound, but prevailing over this fantasy of the Orient’s immobility was the sun most of all. Hence the phrase of George Lafenestre, writing for the Salon of 1869: “Africa was the only land in which still lived the resplendent sun of Antiquity.”20

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18. Horace Vernet, Abraham Sends Hagar Away, 1837, oil on canvas, Musée des beaux-­ arts de Nantes, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

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Numerous artists credited the region’s light with helping to free them from inherited studio routines. Those claims, in turn, fed a narrative of naturalist progress that saw each intervention exceeding or invalidating its predecessor. A key figure in this regard was Alexandre-­Gabriel ­Decamps, who earned wide popularity following travel to Asia Minor in the late 1820s. Many of Decamps’s pictures feature encrusted, sun-­ bleached walls set against pockets of deep shade, executed in a signature impasto whose elements were guarded with jealous secrecy. By the later 1850s Decamps’s star began to fade, however, and his famous cuisine came to look forced. In the case of his 1846 Turkish Children near a Fountain, for example, Ernest Chesneau chastised Decamps for exaggerating his chiaroscuro at the expense of the laws of “refraction and reverberation”—­laws “carefully observed,” Chesneau added, by ­Prosper Marilhat and Fromentin.21 The exact laws invoked by Chesneau matter less for present purposes than the idea that they existed and could yield to observation—­in short, their rhetorical enlistment in a program of naturalist rehabilitation. The rise of impressionism gave such narratives an impressionist accent, with Orientalists now credited with pursuing visual research across the medium of their sensations. “Our century has marched resolutely toward the conquest of the air and the sun,” explained the pioneering curator Léonce Bénédite in 1888, collapsing into a single phrase mastery of light and mastery over others. Each painter brought to this “conquest” Chapter T wo

19. Alexandre-­Gabriel Decamps, Turkish ­Children near a Fountain, 1846, Musée Condé, Chantilly, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

unique talent and feeling. Bénédite cited by way of example Léon Belly’s 1861 Pilgrims in the Desert, a landmark of the Orientalist sublime. “So exact” was Belly’s “sensation” that he might have seemed impossible to surpass. But surpassed he was—­only with Guillaumet did the “luminous colony” find its “definitive formulation.” Bathing himself in “implacable and eternal light,” Guillaumet “drunkenly” immersed himself “in the sun.”22 But even Guillaumet would be exceeded as a new generation stepped further into the light. Quite literally, Bénédite insisted, pointing to the work of Étienne Dinet and his peers at the 1890 Salon. With “rigorous logic,” Dinet had at last given up the play of light and shadow in favor of his easel in full sun. Only now was the painter “finally impregnated, completely penetrated, by the milieu he is depicting.”23 In fact the narrative The Orientalist Sublime

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could be turned 180 degrees, travel to the Orient seeming to complete or catalyze the impressionist revolution. Writing in 1902, Camille Mauclair found it “strange” that so few impressionists had traveled to North Africa. Monet “would have done wonders there.”24 Monet, as it happens, drew a similar conclusion. Planting his flag on this canonizing terrain, he credited his teenage experience doing military service in Algeria with helping to promote an artistic revolution: “The impressions of light and color that I received there were not to classify themselves until later; but they contained the germ of my future researches.”25 Other nineteenth-­century painters who traveled to the south of France and elsewhere along the Mediterranean made similar statements, crediting the region’s light and atmospherics with liberating them from studio routines.26 In fact the idea of progress along naturalist lines stands as one of Western painting’s master tropes, its normative status reinscribed in art-­historical discourse by the dynamic of “making and matching” made famous by E. H. Gombrich. The marshaling of Orientalist painting according to this generic, even platitudinous framework is just the point. Such benchmarking helped bring Orientalism into the mainstream, notably as a consensus emerged around the canonical status of impressionism, landscape painting, and the cult of visual research and the painter’s sensations. But the framework is also prejudicial. It assimilates the Orientalist school to a more empirically grounded artistic practice akin to impressionism, and a caricatured version of impressionism at that. And it treats landscape as the most complete expression of the Orientalist school—­another bias inherited from naturalist aesthetics and impressionist-­inflected art criticism. Travel to North Africa offered ­Regnault and his peers more than an opportunity to test their sensations and more than a laboratory for new techniques. The journey to “the land of the sun” was also aspirational. Keyed to a feeling of vocational renewal, it held out the promise of a new beginning. For eloquent testimony of that promise, consider a portrait of painter Jules Laurens, who in 1846 served on a scientific expedition to Turkey and Persia. We owe this rare depiction of an Orientalist artist in the field to Laurens’s pupil Jules Didier, although it is based on a watercolor by Laurens himself. These unusual circumstances, let me interject right away, highlight a discursive fiction common to the Orientalist sublime: an admiring student, Didier, retrospectively stages the young Laurens in blissful solitude, master of his art and free of all ties that bind.27 High on a cliff above the Euphrates, protected by shadow, Laurens leans into the sun as a vast landscape opens before him. His sketchbook is on his knee, but he is not in the grip of his “motif,” to borrow an impressionist-­t ype term. Rather he is enthralled, even euphoric, after traveling so far to find this vista. The rifle at his feet hints at the risks his journey entailed—­ Chapter T wo

another marker of sublime experience. It is this fantasy we need to unpack—­think of Guillaumet at ­Laghouat, “immersed,” “bathed,” and “drunk” with “implacable light,” or Dinet and Leroy, “penetrated” and “impregnated” with light, or finally ­Regnault—­seemingly “the first” truly to stare into the sun, “face to face.”

20. Jules Didier, Jules Laurens Sketching the Euphrates, 1857, oil on canvas, inv. #887.3.30, courtesy Bibliothèque Inguimbertine et musées, Carpentras.

The Zero Degree Spiritual, corporeal, violent, luxurious, narcotic, erotic—­limit experiences designed for body and mind all found a place in “the land of thirst” (title of a painting by Fromentin). But for artists in particular, among these stimulants the sun stands out most of all. Théodore Chassériau, writes Gautier, became “drunk” with the light of Africa. Camille Roqueplan, to cite Gautier again, “bathed himself in the light’s blinding waves”—­language that marries in a single phrase pain and pleasure. The Orientalist Sublime

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The Parnassian poet Théodore Banville spoke of Dehodencq as being in “ecstasy” before “pure light,” his colors seeming to “cry and sing.” Clément credited Decamps with “that marvelous” Levantine light “that one’s eyes drink like a subtle, inebriating fluid.” Guillaumet, returned to Paris from Algeria, could no longer become “drunk with the Sahara sun.”28 Decamps, as the Goncourts described him, chased a light-­filled dream, an exalted paradise embracing body and soul: “To Decamps, the torrid paradise, with its flowers, pearls, brilliant! To Decamps, this Eden aflame! To Decamps, the Orient! To Decamps, wild color! To Decamps, drunken light! To Decamps alone—­the sun!”29 Of course not only artists sought out sensory excess in a solar key. But by virtue of their vocation, they treated that excess as their own. Fromentin, who spent nearly a year in Algeria in 1852–­53, recalled long days in the sun at Laghouat, a recently conquered oasis in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, four hundred kilometers south of Algiers. As he sketched on a ridge that future guidebooks would designate “Fromentin’s Rock,” he was suddenly unable to see. Finally he stumbled home half-­blind, crawling “on all fours” amidst the swirling sand.30 The blindness wore off, replaced by a feeling of sun-­filled rapture that dominated his days and nights alike: When I come inside, after a day spent thus, I feel a certain rapture, caused, I believe, by the amount of light that I absorbed during this solar immersion of more than twelve hours, and I’m in a state that I would like to explain further. It’s a kind of internal brightness that remains, after evening comes, and continues to refract throughout my slumber. I do not stop dreaming light; I close my eyes and I see flames, radiant orbs, or instead vague reverberations that grow, like the approach of dawn; I have, so to speak, no night. This perception of the day, even in the absence of the sun, this transparent respite pierced with flashes of light like summer nights with meteors, this singular nightmare that does not allow me one moment of darkness, all this resembles a fever. Nevertheless, I feel no fatigue; as much as I expected it, and I won’t complain.31

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Fromentin naturalizes the mythology of Orientalist ecstasy, recasting it as an effect of climate and more specifically the sun. He returns from his outings drunk with light. He dreams light, his slumber resembling a hyperilluminated day. The condition causes him no pain, however, nor does he feel fatigued. His senses remain overloaded by this “singular nightmare” as dawn breaks, and yet he craves its return more than he fears its effects.

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21. Eugène Fromentin, A Street at Laghouat, 1859, oil on canvas, Musée de la chartreuse de Douai, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

Fromentin’s Street at Laghouat, exhibited at the Salon of 1859 and a touchstone of Orientalist art criticism, offers eloquent testimony of this ecstatic overload. Laghouat fell in December 1852 after a siege and subsequent massacre that left up to two-­thirds of the city’s five thousand inhabitants dead. When six months later Fromentin traveled to the town under military escort, he was warned about human bones sticking up through the sand, and warned too about the town’s fetid air as wild dogs unearthed bodies from shallow graves. Fromentin himself spoke of stumbling across the severed hand of an Algerian soldier. And yet none

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of this finds a place in his picture, or in studies undertaken in situ near the fort and its environs. Perhaps we should think of these absences as doing ideological work—­as textbook examples of mystification. Do not the sleeping figures in Fromentin’s Street at Laghouat naturalize the recent violence? Does he not assimilate the population’s subjugation to the immobilizing force of the sun?32 Attractive as such a reading might seem, the painting’s work of containment is scarcely stable. The sun casts a spell on its somnolent figures but also on its spectators, who recast that somnolence as pleasure in a disabling key. Alexandre Dumas spoke of wishing “to do as these Arabs, sleeping in the shadows of the walls.”33 Charles Baudelaire, too, was jealous, describing the figures as not simply resting but euphoric: “I catch myself envying the lot of those men who are lying outstretched amid their azure shades, and whose eyes, neither waking nor sleeping, express, if anything at all, only love of repose and the feeling of a blissful happiness inspired by an immensity of light.”34 As Baudelaire tells it, the painting’s figures evince a liminal, ecstatic consciousness. “Immensity of light” might be the source, but the effects of this “intoxicating mist” more truly resembled those of opium, whose sedative properties held pride of place in the Orientalist constellation of addictions. Baudelaire’s experiments with the drug are well known, and no wonder he was envious: in Lhagouat he discovered a natural, as it were legitimate, arena for this euphoria, an effect of climate seeming to govern social life. The Orientalist fantasy of limit experience was naturalized as an effect of the sun. Artists in particular were presumed to have a special affinity for such experience, so much so that it marked their pictures, their bodies, and even their eyes. Marilhat returned from the Orient with his “brilliant eyes” still alive with the “reflection of Egypt’s sun.” Fromentin’s gaze, bright with the “incandescent reflection of the Southern sun,” resembled that of an “African gazelle.” It is pointless to subject such claims to verification, for verification is beside the point. The trope was a commonplace of Orientalist art criticism, rehearsed for example by Banville, who spoke of Dehodencq’s “striking” gaze as betraying the “burning skies of Africa.”35 Count on Gautier for still more hyperbole. “When it does not blind you,” he explained, the Orient “gives you eyes that blind.”36 Gautier cited in this regard his first encounter with Marilhat, recently returned from Egypt, whose gaze retained the “reflection of a luminous sky” and the “flame of a more ardent sun.” Gautier even claimed to find this memorable gaze in the “violent” and “naive originality” of Marilhat’s Ezbekiah Square in Cairo, exhibited at the Salon of 1834. The picture’s authorship, Gautier insisted, was evident to him before he knew anything of

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22. Prosper Marilhat, Ezbekiah Square, Cairo, 1833, oil on canvas, courtesy The State Hermitage Museum, photo­graph © The State Hermitage Museum / photo by Vladimir Terebenin.

­ arilhat’s painting: “The young man with flaming eyes came back to M me, and it seemed to me that only he could have made such a powerfully bizarre work. As it turned out, it was indeed him.”37 Later nineteenth-­century critics discarded such fantasies, but claims regarding an Orientalist painter’s eyesight lived on, only now such claims were given physiological basis. Éugène Mouton spoke of Guillaumet as born with “eagle eyes,” able to “look fixedly at the sun.” The shape of his eyelids gave Guillaumet an “infinite” ability to adapt to changing conditions, allowing him to “verify a thousand times a day” the “play of light and shadow.”38 Of course other leading artists attracted claims about their eyesight, particularly as critics sought to establish a ­physiological

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basis for an artist’s sensations. J. M. W. Turner, Edgar Degas, Ernest Meissonier, and George Inness, among others, were diagnosed with optical syndromes held to shape their representations uniquely. With the impressionists such thinking went wild. Orientalist painters attracted an Orientalist version of this claim, the distinctive character of their eyes qualifying them to gaze directly into the sun. All these metaphors of sun-­drenched excess may prompt skepticism. Indeed, beyond its embellished character, such language may prompt concerns that the Orientalist sublime was politically regressive, as if by embracing naturalized effects of transcendence artists were surrendering their critical faculties and effectively reinforcing the status quo. And yet before dismissing these dreams of solar immersion as empty tropes on the one hand or mystification on the other, let us recognize that artists themselves found in them a powerful framework for vocational renewal. The idea that the sun could help free artists from studio routines, that it could invalidate their prior representations, that not only their paintings but even their bodies submitted to its power, points to such immersion as a decentering act. Its unstable, ecstatic nature, the trace it left on an artist’s eyes, affect, and voyage through life—­all this and more speaks to the ability of the encounter to recalibrate the painter’s enterprise. “Impregnated” by the sun, “crushed” by its heat, “drunk” with light—­ecstatic immobility experienced as both pleasure and pain operated as a radicalizing exercise.39 And out of that process, at once real and imagined, a painter might emerge emancipated and recharged. Consider Fromentin again. Bigot described him as finding “his path” in Algeria, as completing the “education of his eye” through “the drunkenness of light.” Laghouat, reported Gonse in 1881, left the painter “completely emancipated.”40 Emancipated from what? In remarks composed during his journey but omitted from A Summer in the Sahara, Fromentin speaks of returning home from a day in the sun not just drunk but invigorated and renewed:

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I have here, I believe, become a painter again; at least, I live only by my eyes. In this exceptional world into which I have been transported, I established from the first day an existence apart, solitary, astray, difficult, and with nothing in common with the living habits recommended for the climate. While all around me everyone searches for shade and respite, I continue to live under the sun like the lizards. In addition to the emotion produced by the strangeness of the place, the peculiarity of the customs, the extraordinary grandeur of the paintings, I start to feel a kind of drunkenness caused without a doubt by the heat and the amount of light that I absorb during fourteen or fifteen hours of the day, spent outside, without respite.41 Chapter T wo

The themes are familiar—­immersion in the sun, solitude, and visual ecstasy. But note that Fromentin associates these experiences with his vocation as a painter, treating the landscape as a suite of grand “paintings” presented to him alone. Far from protecting himself from the sun, he seeks it out, living only by his eyes. Far from seeking shelter and clustering with others, he leads an “existence apart.” Most of all, he feels reborn. He speaks not of becoming a painter but of becoming one again, as if his enterprise, grown tired, had at last been renewed: “I have here, I believe, become a painter again”—­me voici, je crois, redevenu peintre. The overload is perceptual, but the reward is temporal. The encounter wipes Fromentin’s memory clean, recharges his enterprise, and resets his clock into the present. Immersion erases the disabling network of loyalties and obligations that dominated him, bracketing his belatedness because to “live only” by his eyes meant living in the present, without the operations of memory clouding his vision. Cazalis had described ­Regnault’s light as recalling “nothing” but the light of the Orient. Cazalis was referring to pictures, whereas Fromentin speaks about nature, but the two are on the same mnemonic page. Each attributes to the sun the ability to expel or bleach from the painter’s mind the recollection of anything prior, including the memory of other works of art. Staged as sensory overload in an optical key, the encounter offered the experience of nature at the zero degree—­primordial, unmediated, and operating in a permanent present that belonged to the painter alone.42 For more on this process, look no further than Guillaumet, who following numerous trips to Algeria emerged as the leading interpreter of the colony’s sun and atmospherics before dying suddenly at the age of forty-­seven. His vocation as an Orientalist was unplanned. Upon his failure in 1861 to win the Rome prize for historical landscape, Guillaumet set off for Italy without official sponsorship. Passing through Marseilles, on impulse he joined a friend and voyaged to Algeria instead. Surely this was a lucky break for the artist, his biographer Mouton observed, for Italy would have ruined him: “instead of losing his originality in contemplation of the masterpieces of the past,” Guillaumet embraced “the immensity of virgin nature.”43 The logic is by now familiar: Guillaumet switches out the art of the past for nature, the latter pure, untouched, and populated only by “primitive peoples.” And note the colonizing language. Against the immobilizing character of an Italian journey, the Orient constituted a field for action, “virgin” terrain where creation and conquest went hand in hand. Note, too, the educational theme as Guillaumet submits to the only teacher that mattered: he made the Orient his “studio” and the sun his new “master.”44 The substitution masks a sleight-­of-­hand. Guillaumet found a new master in the sun, but a master severed from tradition and hence without its disabling authority. The Orientalist Sublime

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23. Gustave Guillaumet, The Desert, 1867, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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Today we remember Guillaumet principally for his Desert of 1867, a spectacular allegory that calls on the classic tropes, including the sun, the desert, and a barely visible caravan all set within a panoramic format. But this early picture was not the site of Guillaumet’s breakthrough. His zero degree came nine years later, during his sixth trip to Algeria, as he sought to break free from what, in retrospect, seemed like the forced character of The Desert and other work in which he declined to “attack the sun face to face.”45 Tired of staying near urban centers, he set out for the southern outpost of Laghouat to “bathe” in “implacable light.” The next stage did not come easily, however. Wandering through the town and its environs, he felt confused, “disconcerted,” and “overwhelmed” by its “unknown sun.” Eight days passed in this paralyzed state until suddenly—­breakthrough. The “fiat lux” revealed itself to him. His “eyes saw it at last, this light of the Sahara. Not thick, unchanging, and even gloomy, as it had first seemed, but vibrating, enveloping, and pulsating with life and majesty.”46 Blockage, release, and a rush of empowerment—­the drama of Guillaumet’s days at Laghouat recapitulates a key phase of Kant’s mathematical sublime. As it recovers from an initial feeling of powerlessness and confusion, the mind comes to identify with the blocking agent, exulting in a new and triumphant sense of its own capacity.47 For Guillaumet, the renewal bore rich fruit, starting with his 1879 masterpiece Laghouat, Sahara, Algeria. Gone, in Renan’s phrase, were the artifices of Decamps and Marilhat—­“a block of copper red under a dome of blue

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metal.” Gone was the sun in its “absolute brilliance,” with shadows “cut by a knife.” Instead, Guillaumet’s sun envelops and dematerializes. The distant minaret seems to shimmer and dissolve, and the landsape itself to breathe with a sense of “terrestrial exhalation.”48 In an 1884 travelogue Guillaumet offers a narrative version of this animating conception of the sun’s power. Its opening chapter—­“A Day in the Sun”—­traces the movement of the sun hour by hour as it encircles the land and gradually brings it to life.49 Or consider Guillaumet’s magisterial La Séguia, Biskra, exhibited in 1885. Far from enforcing a struggle for existence, the sun operates as a generative, enveloping force in whose embrace the region’s inhabitants have learned to live. Versions of this sublime reset populate Orientalist artistic biography. Writing home in 1869 during his first trip up the Nile, Charles ­de Tournemine described being overwhelmed by the sight of the river’s flooding: “The sun embraces the [Nile’s] banks with its brilliant and opal gold. . . . One would have thought the gold had fused with this immense river.” The vision was unforgettable, sublime, even divine: “Never have I seen,

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24. Gustave Guillaumet, Laghouat, Sahara, Algeria, 1879, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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25. Gustave Guillaumet, La Séguia, Biskra, 1884, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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felt in my heart, something as inspiring, something as sublime. It is as if God wished to give us his greatest spectacle of his splendor. I will never forget it. And God willing, it will be the first picture I tempt when I return.”50 As Tournemine tells it, sun, water, and ground fused into a unique vision, inconceivable in mortal terms. “Never” could the artist have imagined it. And surely it must be the “first picture” he attempts upon his return. Tournemine’s View of Luxor during the Flooding of the Nile, painted for the Salon of 1870 (which also featured ­Regnault’s Salome), offers testimony of this God-­given sublime. Whether it was truly the “first picture” he completed after returning to Paris can’t be confirmed, but the larger point is the priority and prestige of an encounter whose memory he cherished and that seemed to demand representation. Before even featuring the Salon, let me add in passing, Tournemine’s View of Luxor was already in the collection of Prince Hussein Pacha. The latter’s agency in this regard complicates any ready sense that such imaginative geographies were produced for Western audiences alone.

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“And God willing, it will be the first picture I tempt when I return”—­ even as artists claimed to find the zero degree, we cannot disentangle that experience from its prior promise, still less the recollections and representations that followed. Whether the immersive overload actually took place is perhaps less important than the fact that it was presumed to take place, a presumption artists internalized and reproduced. The Orientalist sublime was not only an experience of transcendence but a staging of its effects. It was less a record of a prior moment than an effort to persuade us that the moment took place. Recall Cazalis’s avowal: no one before ­Regnault had “dared” gaze at this light “face to face,” still less reproduce it “almost to the level of blindness.” Note the poet’s sleight-­ of-­hand. He credits ­Regnault not only with staring into the sun but also with conveying that experience through his pictures. I say sleight-­of-­ hand because the gap between putative experience and its representation was not easily bridged. The frustrations painters experienced in this regard form a leitmotif of Orientalist art criticism: “The brightest colors of my palette” are but “mud without reflection,” Fromentin lamented. The pursuit of elusive effects locked artists into a dynamic of inimitability that helped establish the experience as sublime in the first place. In the face of this dilemma, each painter found his compromise. Each retreated or counseled retreat, as if a stable practice could take shape only on the margins of the immersive encounter. Speaking of his Turkish Children, an admiring critic praised Decamps for encasing burning surfaces in pockets of deep shade, ensuring thus that no damage was done to the viewer’s eyes: far from being “wounded” by “excessive brightness,” beholders would be “charmed” by the “ardent extremes of the Oriental sky.”51 The art of painting lay in the management of such threats, in the transformation of pain into pleasure—­in the sublime’s domestication. Fromentin also pulled back, by and large avoiding extremes of climate and geography and counseling others not to try. The Orient, he famously cautioned, “eludes the conventions, it’s outside any discipline; it transposes, it turns everything on its head; it upsets the harmonies that landscape has lived with for centuries.”52 These warnings left some critics exasperated, Bénédite for example complaining that Fromentin had reserved his best accounts of Algeria for his travel writing, while his painting remained largely conventional (a view that generally obtains to this day).53 Guillaumet, too, was said to retreat before the inimitable. Setting out to depict the immensity of the desert, he settled on its ­oases, illuminated at dusk or dawn rather than full sun.54 Monet, not an Orientalist but committed in the 1880s to sublime motifs, also pulled back, abandoning the wild motifs and deep vistas that had dominated his painting for nearly a decade. Abandoning, too, the perilous journeys

The Orientalist Sublime

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such subjects required, Monet at last forged the serial practice that has largely secured his modernist credentials. Again and again, Orientalist painters would be described as pulling back—­as having to develop a manageable practice in the face of an experience that defied representation. But arguably ­Regnault did not, or at least never had the chance. As if fighting the prospect of the sublime’s domestication, he pushed forward into new terrain, and by that I don’t mean only the enormous studio he set upon building for himself in Tangier, or his dreams of traveling to Persia, India, and beyond. Rivals charged him with painting like a chemist’s son—­needless to say just a metaphor but a simile suggesting that ­Regnault had butted up against the natural limits of his craft. Perhaps the charge does not go far enough. Exploring watercolor, new pigments, unique frames, and frankly disturbing subjects, ­Regnault put all the resources of his art in the service of an immersive dream that only grew stranger as he gave himself over to his quest.

My Divine Mistress Intoxicated fantasies of brilliant illumination dominated ­Regnault as he made his way south through Andalusia, Gibraltar, and finally Morocco in the summer and fall of 1869. And his appetite merely increased with eating, to judge from an ambitious program of travel, hallucinatory in its excess, that he sketched out for the years ahead:

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I believe, God forgive me, that the sun that illuminates you is not the same as ours, and I see from afar, with terror, the moment when [I’ll] have to contemplate again, in Europe, the gloomy nature of its houses and crowds. But before going there, I want to revive the real Moors, lavish and large, simultaneously terrible and voluptuous, those that we now see only in the past. Then Tunis, then Egypt, then India! I will ascend from enthusiasm to enthusiasm, I will get drunk on wonders until, completely hallucinated, I can return to our dreary and banal world, without fearing that my eyes will lose the light that they drank in for two or three years. When, after retuning to Paris, I want to see clearly, I will only have to close my eyes, and the Moorish, Fellah, and Hindu granite giants, white marble elephants, enchanted palaces full of gold, lakes of lapis, cities of diamond, all of the Orient will reappear once again. . . . Oh! Such drunkenness, the light . . .55

Not until ­Regnault is “drunk on wonders” will he return to Paris and its gloomy skies. From marble elephants to enchanted palaces, from cities of diamonds to plains of gold, he will travel to Egypt, India, and Chapter T wo

beyond until he is so saturated with exotic spectacles that he need only close his eyes to bring them forth. The individual destinations matter less than their union, as gilded statues, marble elephants, and lakes of gold and lapis collide in kaleidoscopic overload. But amidst these wonders, it is light that calls out to him most of all. The journey resolves into the sun, his syntax collapsing before a supercharged fantasy of visual inebriation—­“Oh! Such drunkenness, the light . . .” If ­Regnault never embarked on this fantastic voyage, Spain and Morocco at least gave him a taste. But against Fromentin at “Fromentin’s Rock”—­against a naturalist conception keyed to landscape—­­Regnault did not find his zero degree by staring into the sand. He found it at the Alhambra, whose vertiginous decorations seemed to lift him off the ground. Arriving in Granada in October 1869, and joined in later weeks by Lagraine and friends from Rome, ­Regnault and Clairin took lodgings near the palace perimeter. Set nearly two hundred meters above the city, the vast complex built piecemeal between the ninth and fourteenth centuries was already the seat of an incipient tourist industry, travelers armed with texts by Chateaubriand, Washington Irving, and Gautier touring the site and chipping away at its mosaics. The political turmoil that had consumed Spain in recent months had emptied the city of visitors, however, leaving the artists largely alone. Veritable “masters of the Alhambra,” by day they sketched and in the evening lounged outside the palace walls as ­Regnault studied its inscriptions.56 “For us the Alhambra is everything,” ­Regnault wrote home, as he railed against the Christianization undertaken in the sixteenth century by Carlos V, whom he proposed to resuscitate solely to “spit in his face.” Modern artists were mere “savages” and “monsters” next to the makers of the palace—­surely Mohammed was the “one and only” to have inspired them.57 Something of this experience survives in an albumen print featuring ­Regnault and Clairin along with Lagraine and Frederic-­Auguste Laguillermie. The four pose in the Lions’ Court, under the archway that opens onto the Hall of the Abencerrajes, so named because of the knights said to have been beheaded there five centuries earlier. “Nothing is as beautiful, nothing is as intense,” ­Regnault recounted to his friend Ulysse Butin. “We have passed through a lot of marvelous country to get here. But all our past feelings, all our past enthusiasms—­ all have been effaced by this Alhambra!”58 Note the temporal unfolding so common to sublime narratives. Defamiliarization precedes the sublime encounter, the artists first passing through “a lot of marvelous” country and yet still finding themselves unprepared: “nothing is as beautiful, nothing is as intense.” Breakthrough did not come at once, however. The palace’s dazzling interiors left ­Regnault immobilized: “For several days I could not work. I saw nothing but fire. This dizzying light, this The Orientalist Sublime

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26. Henri Regnault and Friends at the Alhambra, Granada, 1869, albumen print, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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Moorish art were completely unknown to me. They left my mind and my left hand paralyzed!” Release, when it came, brought resolve and new life. Now he was “plunging” into watercolors “of fantastic difficulty,” a phrase that nicely conveys the surge of power ­Regnault relishes as the paralysis lets go and he finally identifies with the blocking agent. The surge was far from stable—­at any moment the power exchange could tip into excess, consuming him as victim. For a version of this masochistic outcome, consider ­Regnault’s remarks to Adèle d’Affry, aka Marcello, a Swiss sculptor whom he had befriended in Rome. Day after day, ­Regnault writes, the Alhambra keeps him near until darkness falls. And each morning his “divine mistress” sends the sun, her messenger, commanding him to return: Chapter T wo

Every morning, we walk the short distance from our home to Alcazar, to the divine Alhambra. . . . We stay there until the moon has risen and bathes us in her embrace and sends to sleep the shadows of fairies and genies that chiseled this marvelous palace, we leave with regret, continually glancing back, unable to remove our gaze from those rosy marble columns, who take on, in that moment, the pearly sheen of a goddess’s skin and who are our despair and our happiness at the same time. How does one leave such a place? In these halls, the ceilings are made of entwined and layered stalactites which rear to form domes adorned with stars and intersecting geometric forms, whose moral and physical effect is a sort of vertigo, a height that inflates you and gently lifts you off the ground. My divine mistress Alhambra calls to me; she sent me one of her lovers, the sun, to let me know that she has finished her toilette and is beautiful and ready to receive me. I have no choice but to leave you.59

Gazing up from within the palace halls, ­Regnault yields to a dizzying upward movement. Floating, dematerialized, ecstatic, he is also dis­ empowered: “How does one leave this place?” When his “divine mistress” calls, ­Regnault returns, ignoring his worldly obligations—­“I have no choice but to leave you.” The experience is more Burkean than Kantian: sensorial overload disables his will and depotentiates the self, leaving him euphoric but also helpless in the face of both pleasure and pain, “happiness” and “despair.” No surprise that he thematizes the process as a seduction, given rumors that he and Marcello had formed a liaison. More to the point, just such an emasculating fantasy found a welcome home in his Salome, shipped by Rome to Tangier so ­Regnault could finish it, as one critic put it, “under the rays of a more brilliant sun.”60 ­Regnault’s on-site studies speak eloquently of the palace’s vertiginous pull. Initially he worked in watercolor, at once because his oil paints had not arrived and because watercolor seemed better adapted to the kaleidoscopic brilliance of the palace’s glazes and mosaics. By nature an intransitive medium, watercolor entailed a patchwork juxtaposition of tones, allowing him to avoid graduated transitions between light and dark and similar techniques held to militate against surface immediacy. Typically ­Regnault brings his motifs forward to the framing edge, promoting a destabilizing sense of immersion. In a suite of studies around the Hall of the Two Towers, ­Regnault lays down a dense network of golden lattice designed to highlight the dazzling character of decorated surfaces that cover the architecture, unsettling the sequence of solids and volumes. A watercolor of the Court of Ambassadors is more vertiginous still, while a study of the Hall of the Two Sisters couples an all­over The Orientalist Sublime

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27. Henri Regnault, Interior of Watchtower of the Two Towers at the Alhambra in Grenada, 1869, watercolor and black ink, Musée du Louvre, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

28. Henri Regnault, Entry to the Room of the Two Turns at the Alhambra in Granada, 1869, watercolor and gouache, Musée du Louvre, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

29. Henri Regnault, The Court of Ambassadors in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, 1869, water­ color, gouache, and black ink, Musée du Louvre, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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sense of surface decoration with an interior opening onto another room. Only ­Regnault illuminates the interior, hinting at more brilliant decoration within. Marx hailed these studies as a genuine breakthrough for the French school. ­Regnault, he explained, had renounced the shortcuts favored by his predecessors, for example Decamps-­style shafts of light accompanied by pockets of deep shade. Illuminated by “the brilliance of the sun itself,” ­Regnault’s studies possessed a “blinding” clarity, an effect achieved “without artifice” and “without shadow.”61 We recognize the naturalist logic, Marx crediting ­Regnault with discarding the conventions that had dogged his predecessors. But “blinding” clarity is also sublime, and the studies stimulate in Marx the pleasure of excess, an experience of visual overload at the sensorial limit. Similarly, Cazalis described ­Regnault’s studies as burning as bright as “furnaces,” their “swarming colors” seeming to mix with the light of midday. Exterior and interior, the sun and its proxies, each serves as a token for the other along an Orientalist axis of brilliant illumination.62 Chapter T wo

* The sublime is an aesthetic of solitude, but its tropes were held in common. Whether it was Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, or elsewhere, in one respect Orientalist painters met on shared terrain. By this I mean not a site, place, or region but a motif, at once real, indeed ubiquitous, but also constituting for artists a supreme technical challenge. I refer to the sun-­bleached stone and masonry walls that dominate the region’s built environment. The competition to depict those walls called on artistic resources that might seem perverse. Drained of color, a masonry wall stands in stark contrast to the coloristic excess of ­Regnault’s Alhambra studies. But the white walls of the Orient were understood to mark a physiological boundary in their own right, the colors of the wheel resolving into a brilliant, dry, ­bleached surface whose heat and visual intensity exceed them all. Decamps, Delacroix, Dehodencq, Tournemine, and ­Regnault, among many others, sought to make those walls their own. And critics, accordingly, mustered extravagant metaphors of illumination in their effort to conjure this masonry sublime. Decamps’s walls, “exploding with sun,” served as the signature motif of his mysterious cuisine.63 In his Moroccan watercolor sketchbooks of 1832, Delacroix evokes the glare of reflected sun by leaving walls outlined in pencil or simply blank, as if burning with heat through color’s absence. The blank wall in Delacroix’s Jewish Wedding of 1841 pulsates with energy, operating like a centripetal force around which the narrative revolves. But to stay with ­Regnault, he too was held to excel on this terrain: “He finds these white walls, kneaded with light,” wrote Banville, “that Painting had not yet achieved, and he poses on their tracery and ribs, by some terrifying miracle, the sun’s visible kiss.”64 Critics often cited in this regard ­Regnault’s Departure of the Pasha and Departure for the Fantasia, both unfortunately known today only through inferior period reproductions. But ­Regnault’s Patio in Tangier serves just as well, particularly with Gautier as our guide. Gautier marveled at the sense of torrid dry heat located in the picture’s wide background column. ­Regnault, The Orientalist Sublime

30. Eugène Delacroix, Courtyard in Tangier, 1832, watercolor, Musée Condé, Chantilly, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

he explained, had summoned up its heat without resorting to “dark and bitumous shadows”—­a dig at Decamps, now definitively vanquished: “this marvelous white column—­a brilliant white that Decamps his entire life sought, but could not attain.”65 For the impressionists this was exactly wrong. The whites of Monet’s snow scenes of the 1870s comprise a dozen unmixed colors, from cobalt blue to red lake and viridian. But for ­Regnault, the walls of the Kasbah called for the palette knife and vast quantities of lead white—­whites of “terrible force,”66 to recall his phrase, his own materials now saturated with a Burkean language of terror. The masonry sublime put in place a pictorial logic not of excess but of its inverse: a removal of incident, a distilling or concentrating of effect that stripped away all mediation, leaving painters to struggle with a motif bordering on the inimitable even as it epitomized the overpowering sensorial intensity of the region’s light and climate. ­Regnault’s white column, Gautier explained, offered no story, no violence, no “moral,” no “subject,” no overarching idea—­in short, none of the “puerile” effects designed for those who took no pleasure in pure painting. And from this removal of incident ­Regnault had discovered something new: an “unknown voluptuousness,” a “completely new pleasure” (jouissance toute neuve), at once encapsulating the Orient and located nowhere else.67 As it happens, Gautier used very similar language to describe the feeling of electric shock given off by Salome, ­Regnault once again stripping his painting of incidental content only to reveal “completely new” pleasures in turn. Just what kind of pleasures remains to be seen, but certainly we are far from efforts to legitimate Orientalist painting in a naturalist key. Rather, across this concentration of effect ­Regnault seemed to enter new terrain—­primordial, directed to pleasures until now unknown, reserved for painting alone, and hence the elusive terrain of his artistic rebirth.

The Sun and Death

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From Tangier ­Regnault plotted an ambitious program of exotic travel, its diverse locations collapsing into an intoxicated Orientalist dream—­“Oh! Such drunkenness, the light . . .” But the dream was tinged with regret. Fearing the consequences of reentry, ­Regnault spoke of storing up a mnemonic reservoir of exotic experience designed to nourish him following his return to Paris: “I will only have to close my eyes, and the Moorish, Fellah, and Hindu granite giants, white marble elephants, enchanted palaces full of gold, lakes of lapis, cities of diamond, all of the Orient will reappear once again.” The fantasy, then, was colored by consciousness of its eclipse, and following his death some observers seized on such statements as hinting at his untimely end. Charles Timbal described him as not simply happy at the Alhambra but “melancholic.” He saw Chapter T wo

­ egnault as unable to tear himself away, as if somehow he knew he was R gazing at it “for the last time.”68 Other critics made similar claims. Poring over the details of ­Regnault’s biography, they discovered in the journey south the work of a hidden hand. ­Regnault’s was not an isolated case—­Orientalist artistic biography offers numerous examples of a quest derailed. “Haunted” by his journey to the Middle East, Marilhat was “suffocated by the fogs of the North.”69 Tournemine on his deathbed sought a final journey into the light: “he wanted to forge straight into these lands of the sun that he had so loved.” Guillaumet, too, his biographer recounts, was reunited with the light of the Orient at the moment of his passing.70 But the sun could also disable an artist. Its regenerative power could go awry, consuming the artist from within. Dehodencq, reports his friend Gabriel Séailles, became haunted by the memory of transcendence past: “He could see nothing but what shone inside him. Did his tired eyes lose a feeling for sense of nuance? Were they satisfied with nothing but dazzling light?”71 The Goncourts’ Coriolis also falls victim to the sun, its memory seeming to “deregulate” his vision and promote exaggerated effects of color and illumination.72 Fact or fiction, alternatively redemptive and catastrophic, the sun tracked an Orientalist artist’s career, sometimes derailing it but also illuminating his journey even as he left the world. And ­Regnault? Such purchase had this trope that even this artist who died in the woods outside Paris on a gray January afternoon could seem reunited with his quest at the end: “Light!” exclaimed ­Regnault as he fell, his “last cry” opening the gates of his immersive dream.73 Doubtless it is farfetched to imagine ­Regnault shouting out the word that encapsulated his sublime, not least of all because no one saw him fall. But the tale, told three decades later by a Gabriel Hanotaux, a leading historian and diplomat, speaks to the currency of an Orientalist poetics of illumination that saturated ­Regnault’s memory and allowed his admirers to imagine exactly that. And while ­Regnault was not the only painter-­traveler “touched” by a ray of light at the moment of his death, surely he offers a special case. For if his biography betrayed hints of a quest derailed, so did his paintings—­“there is blood in his color,” in Claretie’s memorable phrase.74 As we expand our account and consider ­Regnault’s last major figure paintings, we must wrestle with this instability, as if the quest could slip, as it did seem to slip, out of his control. [ 67 ]

The Orientalist Sublime

31. Henri Regnault, Salome, 1870, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of George F. Baker, 1916, www.metmuseum.org.

Art and Desire *

In Second Empire Paris it was still possible for a single painting to command the city’s imagination. The star attraction in the spring of 1870 was a portrait: a smiling, scantily clad young woman with jet-­black hair, seated against a gold curtain, dagger in hand and a silver charger on her knees. The painting began life as a study of a model, neck up and set against a red background. But ­Regnault came to resent his canvas’s small dimensions and enlarged it twice. He also changed the background from red to yellow, draped his model in exotic fabrics, and cast around for a title. Fidelity to concept was not on his agenda: “Herodias, the favorite slave, the poetess of Cordoba—­the name does not matter.” Finally he settled on Salome, the biblical princess who danced before Herod and claimed the head of John the Baptist as her prize (Salome is not named in the Bible, and she and her mother Herodias were often confused). ­Regnault knew the title was awkward. But with the figure’s disheveled look, he could make the case that she had been dancing and only just sat down: “this will explain her tousled hair and the transparency of the fabric that, in order to make the dance more voluptuous, allows us to see her thighs.” Or perhaps she was not the dancer at all. “Salome,” ­Regnault worried, was not a “sufficiently bizarre” name—­“I want a name no one can pronounce.”1 ­Regnault was improvising and critics knew it. An “intellectual lie,” charged one. Mere “art for art’s sake,” complained another, ­Regnault seeming to throw himself into the picture’s surface and accessories over the demands of his grave subject. But such complaints could not dampen the great chorus of enthusiasm. “This fantastic Salome,” recalled Saint-Victor, “bewitched all of Paris.” The Goncourts spoke of women donning yellow dresses thanks to ­Regnault, and it was thanks to him, too, that timid collectors introduced yellow-­toned Chinese porcelain into their interiors.2 Caricaturists had a field day with the dancer’s

3 *

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32. Promenade au Salon de 1870, Le Journal amusant, May 14, 1870, copyright Bibliothèque nationale de France. 33. Caricature of Salome, Le Voleur illustré, July 1, 1870, copyright Bibliothèque nationale de France.

black hair, not to mention the picture’s massive black frame. Little did ­ egnault’s adolescent femme fatale resemble a so-­called belle juive, a R sober iconographic type associated with Salome’s past. Rather, she was modern, vulgar, and poor—­a “corrupt youth,” noted Enault, so different from the “severe beauty” of a true “Jewish type.”3 A “dazzling daughter” from “the land of the sun,” carefree, insouciant, a “savage plaything” made for “man’s amusement,” Salome offered a wondrous union of guileless charm and animal ferocity, unstable antimonies with a common point of origin in ­Regnault’s Oriental adventure. Her pearl-­colored flesh, black hair, and exotic jewelry, her transparent garments, the wild animal skin at her feet—­these qualities and more led Gautier to hail her as “the Orient itself.”4 The arena for this outbreak of enthusiasm was the annual state-­ sponsored exhibition of new painting and sculpture, a vast, teeming, and glamorous bazaar known as the Salon. Frequently satirized, by ­Regnault’s day the Salon was the object of both contempt and desire. The last Salon of the Second Empire was no exception, as five thousand works of art jostled for attention in the Palais de l’Industrie off the Champs Élysées. Pensionnaires at the Villa Medici were discouraged from showing in this

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Chapter Three

34. Henri Regnault, Portrait de Madame Fouques-­Duparc, 1867, oil on canvas, Musée national du château de Compiègne, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art ­Resource, NY.

venue, its promise of quick success running contrary to the more elevated commitments that their residency was supposed to nurture. But ­Regnault knew better, honoring the requirement principally in the breach. Marshal Juan Prim had attracted substantial attention at the Salon the previous year, critics tracing its cool tones and fresh, large touch to a pedagogically transgressive encounter with Velázquez. A year earlier ­Regnault’s Portrait of Madame Duparc had also garnered favorable notice, principally for its layering of a purple gown against a purple curtain, an effect in retrospect that foreshadowed Salome’s layering of yellow on yellow. Prior success at the Salon made ­Regnault a talent to watch. Salome made him a star. Consider the recollections of Jacques-­Émile Blanche, in future years a fashionable portrait painter, critic, and collector of impressionism: Art and Desire

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At nine o’clock there was a throng of people at the ticket windows. It was only with difficulty that one ascended to the second floor. . . . Below, amidst the shrubs and bouquets, there were marbles, figures of plaster, terracotta busts, and of course the famous café where future enemies would fraternize over a sandwich and a glass of beer. We all knew: the highest honor this spring would be awarded by unanimous assent to a young, prize-­winning painter endowed with a “violent temperament,” a revolutionary, a prodigy: Mr. Henri ­Regnault. The Salome which he has sent to us from the Villa Medici has already been acquired by a millionaire collector for a fantastic sum. Twenty thousand francs perhaps? It’s unimaginable. This young ­Regnault, as beautiful as Apollo, as strong as Hercules, musician, singer of Venetian arias, expert in athletics, is adored by all the women. It is said that he is engaged to a beautiful girl, very well known in society. The public is agog for this hero covered in glory who paints flesh and cloth with the mastery of Velázquez.5

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From the gossip around ­Regnault’s private life to tales of his “violent temperament,” Blanche figures the young laureate as a veritable celebrity. As it happens, ­Regnault did not receive the year’s “highest honor.” After eleven passes, the jury awarded his painting a medal but declined to assign its top prize to what was essentially a portrait (first prize went to Tony Robert-­Fleury for his immense Last Days of Corinth). Looking back, Blanche had to shake his head. Why the “transports”? Why the “delirium of enthusiasm”? Perhaps it was ­Regnault’s title. At the Salon, Blanche explained, a picture’s subject was “three-­quarters” of its success. And Salome, after all, was the “order of the day.”6 Blanche had a point. ­Regnault’s Salome was but one of many. Gustave Moreau, George Rochegrosse, Henri Lévy, Benjamin Constant, Puvis de Chavannes (at the same Salon), and Jean-­Jacques Henner, among numerous others, included the dancer in their portfolios. So did dramatists, poets, songwriters, and composers, not to mention the actresses and singers who vied to play her role. Enthusiasm for the subject cut across not only media but also national boundaries, and the years ahead saw her image circulate in bloody and salacious versions that make ­Regnault’s treatment look tame. Perhaps the supreme figure in a modern mythology of feminine evil, Salome came to dominate Europe’s cultural horizon so massively that she seems almost to stand for the fin-­de-­siècle tout court—­decadent, transgressive, eroticized, anti-­Semitic, and misogynist.7 For all the subject’s wide currency, ­Regnault’s Salome arrived early in the sequence, setting the tone for many that followed. No French painter in the years ahead could avoid calling up its memory, thanks to qualities intrinsic to the painting and to a broader cultural charge it seemed audaciously to lay bare. As Gautier recognized, ­Regnault “orientalized” Chapter Three

her, the picture’s model, accessories, and setting offering a potent supply of exotic connotation that spoke of North Africa even as the picture was signed “Rome.” No less important, ­Regnault left out the Baptist’s severed head, normally shown resting on a basin or platter, or carried by the princess or by an attendant. The omission prompted suspicions that ­Regnault’s title was an afterthought. But it was also momentous, for it allowed the dancer to step out of the narrow role assigned to her in the biblical story. Now Salome is a person, endowed with her own character, motives, and history. Now she is endowed, too, with her own desire.8 Everything about ­Regnault’s painting seemed to put questions of desire on the table. Perhaps this was overdetermined—­the sight of her thighs, her breathlessness, her disheveled dress and coy smile, not to mention a linked array of fetishes that will command our attention in due course—­all this and more spoke of an effort to distill the biblical tale into a scene of seduction. But the idea of ­Regnault’s picture as wholly delivered to desire was scarcely restricted to the dancer and her accessories. From the circumstances surrounding the picture’s genesis to its tumultuous reception, Salome eroticized everything it touched. ­Regnault himself, for example, famous for his “violent temperament” and “adored by all the women.” Also the picture’s owner, a wealthy courtesan who gave pride of place to works by ­Regnault and his circle. And the artist’s model, her enigmatic features nurturing fantasies around the erotics of studio culture. No less relevant in this regard was ­Regnault’s controversial layering of yellow on gold, or for that matter his choice of frame. Whether we may truly credit to the picture a fashion for yellow dresses is difficult to verify, but the idea that Salome could mark such decorative terrain signaled ­Regnault’s loyalty to a sensuous, feminine, and materialist conception of painting at odds with his prestigious academic formation. The charge was misleading, but it deserves attention, not least because ­Regnault himself spoke of his painting as directed to the senses and having pleasure in mind. Hovering over this discussion is the question of fame and of what I have termed ­Regnault’s celebrity. We trace the rise of celebrity culture in part to fin-­de-­siècle technologies of publicity that helped support an incipient star system on an international scale. Sarah Bernhardt offers a notable example, and it is worth signaling in this regard her friendship with Clairin, whose serpentine depiction of the tragedienne remains his most famous picture.9 I defer to the second half of this book a sustained inquiry into the mechanics underpinning ­Regnault’s reputation, entailing as it does a deeper look at the shifting terms of his canonicity as the modernist revolution took hold. But the present pages at least broach such concerns, chiefly by bringing to bear a diverse evidentiary archive encompassing fiction, memoirs, social chronicles, and art journalism. Art and Desire

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35. Alfred Stevens, In the Studio, 1888, oil on canvas, The Metro­ politan Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1986, www.metmuseum.org.

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Some of this data might look trivial or simply false. Located on the margins of art criticism, it resembles sediment or residue left behind as we extract historical data from a confusing body of rumor and myth. This mythical residue, however, commands attention in its own right, so powerfully did it help inscribe ­Regnault’s Salome on the cultural memory of the fin-­de-­siècle in France and abroad.10 Of course the archive was in part visual. Two years after ­Regnault’s death, a critic attributed the craze for yellow pictures to ­Regnault’s example—­another claim impossible to measure, but certainly many artists tipped their hat to Salome’s gold sheen.11 Alfred Stevens called out to ­Regnault in a studio scene featuring a female painter at work on a Salome, next to a model clothed in yellow. Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s Sorceress, exhibited in Boston following Dewing’s study trip to Paris, features a bold yellow screen as backdrop. Thomas Eakins took notes at the Salon on the painting’s color, observing that ­Regnault’s manipulation of half­tones made “all other pictures around it seem weak.”12 Benjamin Constant paid homage to ­Regnault’s colorism in his spectacular Judith, another tale of seduction and decapitation at a woman’s hands that gained wide popularity in this era. Jean Benner evoked ­Regnault’s play of black and gold in his condensed treatment of the subject, exhibited Chapter Three

36. Georges Clairin, Sarah Bernhardt, 1876, oil on canvas, Musée du petit palais, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

in 1899. Other examples abound, including more sinister adaptations. In 1881 the Viennese Hans Makart portrayed Sarah Bernhardt in a yellow dress against a golden background, as if to distill from ­Regnault’s colorism an anti-­Semitic extract—­an association, post-­Dreyfus, that came to resonate in France as well. Following the close of the Salon, ­Regnault’s Salome entered a private collection. It was exhibited in Paris only twice before its sale in 1912, but reproductions kept the picture in view, for example an etching by Paul-­Adolphe Rajon published in the Gazette des beaux-­arts in January 1872. In some cases we can trace its circulation with granular specificity. The young Kenyon Cox looked up the etching at the Cincinnati Public ­Library in 1876. Sketching ­Regnault’s “panther” in a letter to his father, Cox apologized for failing to convey the “strange ­fascination” Art and Desire

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37. Jean-­Joseph Benjamin Constant, Judith, 1886, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of J. E. Gombos, 1959, www. metmuseum.org.

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she ­exercised on all who saw her. She was an “agile” and “beautiful beast,” Cox explained, and certainly one could “play most charmingly” with her—­but “keep away from the claws.”13 From Cox to Repin and many others, an international cadre of young artists seized on Salome as a marker of vocational solidarity. And as a new generation lined up behind the maverick ­Regnault, a senior cohort pushed back: “Beware the modern,” Fromentin warned a young acolyte at work on a Judith and Holofernes; “think of ­Regnault’s Salome, and do the opposite. Put yourself under the sign of the ancients.”14 ­Regnault’s dancer featured in music, fiction, and the stage, including for example Jacques Offenbach’s adaptation of Jules Verne’s A Fantasy of Doctor Ox, performed at the Théatre de Variétés in 1877. The tale recounts the efforts of a chemist to illuminate a village in Flanders with oxygen gas.

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As the experiment goes awry, the doctor falls in love with a gypsy who sports the hair, costume, and “strange expression” of ­Regnault’s dancer. The diva’s entry onstage “caused a sensation”—­“Can you ­imagine, she was dressed in an exact reproduction of ­Regnault’s Salome!” To “complete the illusion,” she emerged through a golden door, pausing briefly as if to bring ­Regnault’s painting to life.15 (The diva was Anna Judic, whose love affairs Zola chronicled in Nana.) The divine Sarah clothed herself in yellow for the role of Mrs. Clarkson in Dumas-­fils’s L’Étrangère at the Comédie Française in 1876. In the audience were Ernest Meissonier and Charles-­Émile Duran, aka Carolus-­Duran, both of whom, five years earlier, had searched for ­Regnault’s body. A reviewer confessed he did not care for Sarah’s “yellow and black” costume, but he praised the effect of her face: “Those large eyes and pale face, together with the way her dress framed her in yellow—­we all thought of ­Regnault’s Salome.”16 The ready nature of the allusion underscores the elite currency of ­Regnault’s painting long after it disappeared from public view. For years it functioned as a shared marker of community, its memory fueling social solidarity as artistic, theatrical, and patriotic networks intersected and overlapped. And let me add that as far as the stage is concerned, Salome resonated long after memory of ­Regnault himself had faded. Such stars as Pearl White, Sally Blane, and Renée Adorée borrowed the dancer’s black hair, her pose, and still other features of ­Regnault’s picture, to judge from postcards and publicity stills from the 1920s and beyond.17 Salome also found a place in verse and fiction. Théodore de Banville spoke of ­Regnault’s dancer as enthralled by a “naive” desire for “flaming jewels” and “severed heads.” Léon Séché seized on the youthful, discordant character of her sadism: “When one is such a charming girl / With such lovely eyes / One is made to love / Not to kill one’s lovers.”18 Henry James evoked Salome in a story about an American artist who triumphs at the Salon with an exotic portrait of a woman draped in a yellow shawl.19 ­Regnault also served as model for James’s Roderick ­Hudson, published in 1875 and set in Rome following James’s visit to the city. And ­Regnault in the flesh features in Mary Ward’s The History of David Grieve, a coming-­of-­age novel about a Manchester youth who travels to Paris in 1870. Grieve is taken to the Salon specifically to see Salome: “All the worlds have lost their heads over it—­if you go see it at the Salon, you will have to wait your turn. Crowds go every day for nothing else.”20 Eventually Grieve gets to meet the maverick artist, who he finds to be far from an “ordinary Paris type.” Rather, ­Regnault is vigorous, robust, and “tanned by sun and wind,” with only his blue eyes hinting at the “melancholy” and “thinker” within. Later in the novel ­Regnault unexpectedly takes Grieve into his confidence, and the two spend a memorable

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evening walking the streets of Paris: “­Regnault led the English boy up and down along the quays, talking in the frankest openest way to this acquaintance of a night. . . . The joys, the passions, the temptation of the artist, struggling with the life of thought and aspiration”—­all this and more as they wandered until dawn, with Grieve spellbound by ­Regnault’s passionate discourse.21 These examples scarcely exhaust Salome’s rich currency. I defer to the last chapter the painting’s fall from grace in the hands of critics shaped by impressionism and its aftermath. And not until the closing pages of this book do I consider its sale in 1912, which unleashed a fierce and poisonous debate around the exporting of cultural property. But let me be clear, even as I accumulate indices of Salome’s memorability: my point is not that later versions of the theme were simply spokes radiating around ­Regnault’s wheel. Salome offered itself up for appropriation thanks to a converging set of artistic, cultural, and commemorative forces that recast the biblical dancer into a timeless scene of seduction at a woman’s hands—­and converging most of all on ­Regnault, to some extent while he lived but even more after he was dead. For his violent end did not put the antimonies of art and desire to rest. Salome was a story about seduction but also destruction, and the catastrophe she unleashed seemed finally to devour ­Regnault himself.

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Salome was an improvisation, and complaints arose from the suspicion that it was exactly that. Charles Blanc spoke of ­Regnault as leader of a new group of painters interested principally in surface effects. They relegated la pensée (thought, idea, conception) to the rank of an accessory, to be included or excluded “with indifference.”22 In a piece of creative speculation, Blanc spoke of ­Regnault as spotting a young woman on the streets of Tangier—­a “charming girl of singular beauty,” an almée whose “light and fine skin” contrasted with her “violent” and “savage” hair. What began as a portrait head grew to include her figure. Only then did ­Regnault set a basin on her lap and exotic fabrics on the floor, chiefly to study their texture and color. Only then, and in the same spirit, did he reach for a small sword, fabricated in Tangier, hanging on his studio wall. And only then did the picture’s subject strike him—­only then did sword, basin, fabrics, and model make a Salome. Blanc nearly got it right. ­Regnault executed few preparatory studies, more than once changed his mind about the title, and assembled his accessories without a clear purpose. Take for example the inexplicable curtain of yellow Chinese silk that served as backdrop. ­Regnault had

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purchased the cloth at the Exposition Universelle of 1867, whose Far Eastern and North African pavilions had left him “seduced.”23 Returning to Rome, he left the cloth outdoors in the sun so as to vary its sheen—­just the kind of practice that betrayed his enthusiasm for surface effects. Blanc was wrong about the model, however. She was not from Tangier but a Roman girl—­a “graceful” and flirtatious fillette, in Clairin’s phrase, whom ­Regnault met on the Piazza d’Espagna, where artists’ models gathered.24 The painter Charles Emmanuel Jadin claimed that it was he who urged ­Regnault to paint her portrait. It was March 1869, and with Spain on the horizon, ­Regnault was loath to undertake anything new. But he quickly found himself in her grip, and the rest of the narrative unfolded rather the way Blanc imagined. And while ­Regnault took care to write “Rome” next to his signature, he finished it only in Tangier and from there sent it to Paris in a frame of his own design.25 From its genesis in ­Regnault’s studio to such normally dry topics as provenance, tales of seduction accompanied the picture at every step of its journey. Claretie, whose chronicles in Le Temps constitute an invaluable reservoir of gossip and reminiscence, noted that the picture’s sale came out of the blue during a trip to Córdoba in the summer of 1869. As ­Regnault and Clairin sketched the city’s famous mosque, they were approached by the dealer Hector Brame, accompanied by the landscape painter Charles-­François Daubigny. It was Daubigny’s first trip to Spain, and its light and color left him “stupefied.” The ensuing “conversation,” staged by Claretie forty years later, is worth rehearsing intact: Georges Clairin knew Brame. What a surprise! Four Parisians meeting by chance in a mosque in Córdoba! They chat, Daubigny expressing his awe at the sky, colors, and flashing brilliance of Spain. Brame says to Clairin: I was told that Henri ­Regnault was at Córdoba with you. I’ve been looking for him, Do you know which hotel he is staying in? ­Regnault? Why, he’s over there! And Clairin introduced his friend to the delighted art merchant, who shook [the painter’s] hand. Sir, said Brame, I’ve heard a lot about a canvas, a Salome, that you just finished in Rome. I’ll buy it from you. Without having seen it? Without having seen it. Eight thousand francs. Does that work for you? Eight thousand francs! . . . A fortune fell upon him as if in the vaults of the mosque in a Thousand and One Nights!26

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For the hard-­up artist, the money was enough “to make dance the entire country of gypsies.” The deal struck, the foursome sat down to share a meal, toasting Daubigny, “le père Corot,” and Salome, whose title ­Regnault had just changed from “Herodiade” to “The Favorite Slave.” Reminiscence staged as dialogue was common belletristic practice, here tinged with an elegiac sensibility that Claretie mastered to a T. More generally, what we sometimes call collective memory falls in place through a dynamic of writing, reportage, and recollection that sent private reminiscence into the public domain around shared markers of experience, in this case a talismanic picture traveling a legendary path. More on collective memory in the chapters ahead—­for now, suffice it to note that the making of such memory was iterative, with additions and corrections sent in by readers and shared in the press in turn. Claretie’s remarks prompted a reply by Léonce Bénédite, curator at the Luxembourg Museum. Sifting through Brame’s papers, Bénédite learned that the dealer met ­Regnault in Madrid, not Córdoba. Nor was it an accident. Seeking to make a splash for his new gallery, Brame went in search of the artist, allegedly bringing Daubigny with him in the hope of leveraging the influence of a family friend. ­Regnault received not eight thousand but thirteen thousand francs, a sum allowing him to furnish his studio in Tangier. He needed the money. “Don’t leave me to starve to death on African soil,” ­Regnault wrote Brame, pleading for another installment—­“I dare not ask my father, for he is always accusing me of spending money on bibelots. True, if I had not bought so many rugs, guns, fabrics, and etc., during eight days in Tangier, I would not be so broke. But I had to improve my African studio a little!”27 Brame never saw the picture until it arrived in Paris and was lucky to get it at all. ­Regnault had sent Lagraine to Marseilles to pick up the unfinished canvas and return with it by sea to Gibraltar before going on to Tangier. But the ship was lost at sea, and ­Regnault feared he had lost Lagraine and the picture, too (they had taken a later transport).28 In fact relations between artist and dealer were never smooth. We know from unpublished correspondence that Claretie’s tale is part fiction—­ Regnault knew Brame was seeking him out, and he was suspicious of the dealer’s intentions. For his part, Brame quickly sold the painting to his associate Paul Durand-­Ruel, best known for his support of the impressionists. Durand-­Ruel sold it to an unknown purchaser for fifteen thousand francs, only to buy it back for thirty-­five thousand francs and resell it to Adèle Cassin, who insisted on acquiring the picture after seeing at the Salon. Cassin hung Salome in the gallery of her town house on the rue de Tilsitt. Erected in 1868, one of twelve prestigious residences giving on to the place de l’Étoile, the lavish edifice (now the embassy

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38. Gustave Ricard, The Marquise de Landalfo-­ Carcano, 1868, oil on canvas, Musée du petit palais, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

of Qatar) featured murals by several leading fin-­de-­siècle decorators, including Charles Chaplin and Pierre-­Victor Galland.29 Few traces survive of this grande horizontale, famous for serving her guests fresh madeleines shipped daily by train from her native Commercy. An impressive full-­length portrait by Gustave Ricard, painted in 1868, sets Cassin against a lush Venetian-­style background, bringing a sensual accent to her disconcertingly penetrating gaze. André Maurois memorably described Cassin as leading a life “beyond reproach” even as she attracted to her home men of the “highest circles” who “never took their wives.”30 Her intimates included the banker Édouard Delessert, more than one Baron Rothschild, and the leading art dealer Georges Petit, whose gallery furnished the collections of the city’s elites. These associations brought Cassin substantial wealth, allowing her to amass one of the best art collections in Paris. A second marriage in 1889 to the

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Marquis Landalfo-Carcano sealed her elite status. Not surprisingly, the notoriety of this “repentant Madeleine” further colored Salome’s reception. The American Lucy Hooper, writing from Paris in 1875, complained that ­Regnault’s painting was “lost to the public” now that it was in the hands of a “wealthy member of the demimonde.” ­Regnault, for his part, was mainly amused: “My friends will say that I paint art for brothels” and that “my pictures are being fought over by whores.”31 The connections binding ­Regnault to Cassin’s circle were drawn tighter still following his death. On a trip to Rome in 1872, Cassin sought out his friend d’Épinay and begged him for a nude—­“I’ll give you twenty thousand francs!” she added, to help fuel his imagination.32 D’Épinay labored on his Golden Belt for three years, only to break with Cassin after she refused him an advance. But the two eventually patched up their quarrel, and Cassin acquired the Carrara marble for her home. Some worried its lithe sensuality was better suited to an eighteenth-­century 39. Prosper d’Épinay, boudoir, but d’Épinay countered that she was a modern urban type, artiThe Golden Belt, enamficially thin and preening herself for self-­presentation: “I simply essayed eled hard-­paste porto realize my own type of ideal woman; not thin, but slight; elegant, celain, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. but delicate to a fault; a fausse maigre—­in fact, the type of the modern beauty, as our over-­refined civilization has shaped her” (the location of the original is unknown, but a reduction in porcelain adds a domestic accent to her eroticism).33 The same year that Cassin acquired Salome, she purchased Mariano Fortuny’s masterful Vicarage for the enormous sum of seventy thousand francs. Lucy Hooper, “exasperated” by her inability to see either painting, claimed that it had been thanks to his friend Fortuny that ­Regnault turned his study into Salome—­“Take that sketch which you sketched lately, and put a body to it—­nothing could be better.’”34 This report by a resident journalist and spouse of the American vice consul speaks to the appetite for gossip about ­Regnault in the expatriate community, not surprising since his Automedon and the Horses of [ 82 ] Achilles by now was in the United States. Among Cassin’s intimates, let me add, was Gustave Doré, who in 1881 borrowed ­Regnault’s features for an allegory of the defense of Paris.35 And Dumas-­fils, yet Chapter Three

a­ nother ­paramour, possessed a full-­scale replica of Henri Chapu’s Youth, centerpiece of ­Regnault’s memorial at the École des beaux-­arts. Hooper complained that Salome was hidden from public view. But we might better say that the terms of its circulation had now changed, with its home in the gallery of a demimondaine sealing its reputation as an icon of seduction. Only traces of this intimate circulation remain. In March 1872 ­Regnault’s father paid Cassin a visit in an effort to secure the painting for his late son’s retrospective, after its owner had declined to lend it when the organizers had failed to show her sufficient courtesy. Three years later, diva Anna Judic and her illustrator Alfred Grévin went to study the painting as they prepared for Offenbach’s Doctor Ox. When or even whether the “later Mr. Vanderbilt” offered Cassin thirty thousand dollars for Salome we cannot say, but an American dealer floated the rumor two and a half decades before Salome found its way to American shores. Some Americans saw it in situ. Electra Havemeyer, writing in 1900, spoke of visiting the countess in her palatial home: “We went to the house of Madame Cassin, the wealthiest courtesan in France, and I met the lady myself. She owns a tremendous house on the Champs Elysées near the Arc de Triomphe as large as the Astoria hotel. She had this marvelous collection of pictures. She is about 70 years old now. Such luxury you have never seen.”36 Alas, Havemeyer does not identify the Art and Desire

40. Mariano Fortuny, The Vicarage, 1870, oil on canvas, Museu ­nacional d’Art de Catalunya, copyright Album / Art Resource, NY.

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paintings she saw, and her mother Louisine was on the hunt for impressionism. But these traces help animate a lost performative arena for Salome’s reception. We must treat Cassin’s drawing room as a domestic, intimate, but still meaningful sphere for the painting’s circulation, an elite counterpart to the cultural and economic engine represented by the Salon.

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Salome staged a seduction that found its way into a seductress’s hands. All the more fitting that it seemed born of a seduction in the first place. Look no further in this regard than the painter’s model, said to have captured not just ­Regnault’s artistic interest but his desire. Since the image was manifestly a portrait and yet the artist had been coy as to the sitter’s origins, the subject’s ambiguity promoted speculation as to the true character of their association. Struggling to assign a stereotype, critics described her as alternately French, Spanish, Moroccan, English, Egyptian, and even Peruvian. Clément termed her a “bohemian” and a “saltimbanque.” For Fouquier she was a “grisette de Paris” or “fille du barrière”—­“corrupt” and “half wild,” but not without “naive grace.” To such established types critics added orientalizing accents: a “daughter of bohemia,” claimed Enault, but also a “gitana” out of a Tunis brothel. A bohemian from the posadas and the sierra, a “little gitana” with a “wild eye,” a “Moroccan street seller,” a “mauricaude,” even a “femme fellah”—­ all terms betraying the misperception that ­Regnault had found his model in Spain or Morocco. Others found her downright fantastic.37 Her “Oriental” hair and white skin, averred Dimpre, made her a “bohemian,” and yet she was no less a “daughter of Egypt.” Chaumelin described her as having the skin of an Englishwoman but the affect of a Moroccan dancer, the eyes of a bohemian but the hair of “a negress or mulatto.” Astruc called her impossibly English—­a gypsy with a capillary disorder. Others prevailed against the evidence of the picture itself: a “strange figure,” Pelletan recalled, with “brown skin.”38 Bohemienne, chaucharde, gitana, grisette, gypsy, saltimbanque, mauri­ cade—­each of these labels has its own history, genealogy, connotations, and cues that we might be tempted to unpack.39 But critics used the terms loosely, in part because the stereotypes had become unstable but also because the painting borrowed freely from this reservoir without settling on one or another. Such mixed signals cemented the conviction that this ostensibly biblical subject was nothing more than a studio game: “Little Salome, don’t you budge in front of your yellow background, and don’t stop seeming to say, ‘Ha, what a good joke.’”40 And needless to add, this game seemed to have been played by ­Regnault far from the Chapter Three

studios of the Villa Medici. The mystery of the model’s origins spoke of his transgressive journey from the Villa to the street—­the streets of Rome but also Spain and Morocco—­and finally into the arms of a model who had captured not only his artistic attention but also his desire. The idea that ­Regnault was in the grip of his sitter rests on a tectonic shift around the status, standing, and visibility of the female model at the scene of representation. Only in the nineteenth century, as Marie Lathers put it in a pioneering study, did the female model emerge as an individual who could “be classified” and “whose history could be written.”41 And only then, we might add, could she possess her own desire. Or rather, what seemed like her desire: nourished from a deep well of cultural mythology, invariably that desire was treated as born in the studio and directed toward the artist, presumed male. Three centuries earlier, humanist artists had envisioned Venus, Galatea, and other nudes as allegories for their own moral progress. The artist’s mastery of his worldly drives recapitulated at the level of personal biography the staging of painting as a liberal art, a shift replayed in the academy’s endless struggles with color and matter, both thematized as feminine and saturated with the language of seduction. Nineteenth-­century artists inherited this baggage, only what had flourished as a rhetorical figure was literalized as studio lifestyle. The painter’s muse was brought to life in the form of his model, who could support his development or derail it. The story was played out in countless variations, but invariably one principle went unchanged: art and desire stood at antipodes. By virtue of her grace and beauty, the artist’s model unblocked his progress, driving his practice forward but in the process capturing his desire. No less invariably their union fell apart as the model unleashed a war for control in an effort to divide the painter from his art. Hence Raphael, as it was told, fell victim to the Fornarina, who catalyzed his art in the privacy of his studio but whose embraces finally killed him. Hence the outcomes shared by three fictional models: Gillette in Balzac’s The Unknown Master­piece, Christine in Zola’s The Masterpiece, and Manette in the Goncourts’ Manette Salomon. At first, each advances the painter’s work. Each becomes his lover, leaving the antimonies of art and desire momentarily suspended in perfect identity. But in the end, each treats his art as her rival. Gillette complains to Poussin that when she models for him, he loses his desire: “If you want me to sit for you as I did the other day . . . I shall never agree to it, for at those moments your eyes no longer speak to me, even though you’re looking at me.”42 Zola, not surprisingly, treats the conflict as dire. By the end of The Masterpiece, Christine is consumed with jealousy, and Claude is rendered artistically and sexually impotent. Manette Salomon offers an anti-­Semitic variation to this quarrel. The mystery Coriolis so cherishes in his model arises Art and Desire

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from the romance of her Jewish origins. At first Manette moves his art forward, modeling for a Turkish Bath that triumphs at the Salon. But as she evolves from model to lover, lover to spouse, and finally spouse to mother, she withdraws from the studio and refuses to pose. In the end she stages her conquest by deploying a hidden reservoir of exotic cultural practices, ensnaring Coriolis in a domestic domain that he neither controls nor understands: “From the bowels of the mother, the Jewess had sprung. And the cold perseverance, the determined stubbornness, the original rapacity of her race, rose up from the germ of her blood, in the dull, ardent greed of a woman who dreams of money on the head of her child.”43 Nothing so virulent would be claimed for ­Regnault’s model, although some critics treated her as Jewish and flagged the Semitic character of her vice. But all this and more furnished his picture with a potent supply of cultural connotation. The edifice of academic aesthetics may have crumbled, but the idea of color as feminine lived on, powered by Orientalist fantasies of sexual plenitude, by new concerns for color and surface effects across French painting of the 1860s and 1870s, and by ­Regnault’s particular enthusiasm for bravura visual effects. His model served as the living agent of his materialism, seemingly diverting him from the sober demands of his art and rewriting his commitments in a sensorial key. Salome, in short, inscribed at the level of studio erotics the triumph of surface over substance, color over line, and body over mind. Salome’s reception at the Salon offers abundant evidence for such concerns, but rather than rehearse more art criticism, let us consider an encounter in which individual feeling and discursive trope were forced to battle it out. Soon to be ­Regnault’s fiancée, Geneviève Bréton spoke in her diary about being queried about his model as she stood before the picture: “And you haven’t heard what they are saying? He wants to marry that ugly and vulgar Salome, a painter’s infatuation. He’s known her since he arrived in Rome and is mad about her.”44 As Bréton’s report makes clear, a union between an artist and model was assumed. Salome flaunted that likelihood, the picture’s eroticism exceeding the conventions of its grave subject and hinting at a studio romance. And note the allusion to the model’s base origins: “that ugly and vulgar Salome” stands as code for her unvarnished sexuality, the attribute of a mysterious ethnicity located on the margins of urban life—­the street, the stage, or even a brothel. Note, finally, that ­Regnault is said to want to “marry” her. ­Regnault trades devotion to art for love, and the model’s conquest culminates in his domestication. As myth drowned out facts, the unfortunate Bréton was obliged to sacrifice her own desire on the altar of ­Regnault’s art. She was joined in this idealizing project by the painter’s father. At least that is how we Chapter Three

might gloss another piece of gossip that Bréton, visiting the Salon, was forced to endure: “You see this slit in the canvas above the hands? It’s because the painting was originally a portrait and he wanted to keep it. But his father forced him to continue the study in order to sell it, so that he wouldn’t have to hang on to it.” “What a charming story,” I said. “That’s very interesting. And then?” “Well that’s all. You know him and can judge for yourself. Do you think he’ll marry her?” “­Regnault marry! No, Madeleine, ­Regnault will not marry either ­Salome or anyone else.”45

Rumor had it the finished painting was the father’s fault. It was Victor who obliged his son to enlarge the study and give it a title, so as to extract it from his studio and rid him of a potentially disastrous union. For her part, Bréton responds by shutting down ­Regnault’s worldly desire. He will never marry. His desire cannot be domesticated—­not by his model or by “anyone else,” which is to say not even by Bréton. As she endures the gossip and doubtless wonders herself about the truth, the anti­monies play out not simply as effects of discourse but in a lover’s anxious reflections, rehearsed in a diary that was sealed for a century.

* “What became of this Maria who would be Salome?” Claretie asked in 1912, when the picture came up for sale. “What kind of life did she have?” Did they still “think of her at the Villa Medici?” All Claretie knew was that she was a “girl from Trastavere” whom ­Regnault had met on the Piazza d’Espagna. Perhaps she could be found even now, in a poor quarter of Rome, “still beautiful” and distantly aware that her youthful image was once again “the toast of Paris.”46 Claretie was wrong, although he was in good company. Sporadic efforts to identify ­Regnault’s model struggled against the weight of a popular mythology that sent out misinformation. The painter J.-­B. Laurens reported encountering her in Montpellier sometime around 1880. ­Regnault, Laurens noted, was not as faithful to her features as he might have wished, but she still possessed the famous shock of black hair. She was a Montpellier native, Laurens added, and if he could get her into his studio, doubtless she would talk—­“once I had her pose, she’d probably tell me her story.”47 ­Regnault’s Moroccan itinerary further muddied the waters. Journalist Gabriel Charmes, writing in 1887, claimed Salome’s model could be found in the kitchens of the French legation in Tangier, with “nothing Art and Desire

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but plates against which to toss her ebony hair, and showing her ivory teeth only to pots and pans.”48 We owe a similar tale to embassy secretary Maurice Paléologue, who spoke of Tangier as “filled with memories of ­Regnault. One trips over them at every step.” ­Regnault, he declared, secured a Jewish model known for her “bizarre grace” and “savage physiognomy.” Even now Paléologue could see her each morning in the kitchens as he rode into the embassy yard. Although she was much older, her features remained “delicate,” her “superb” eyes “forceful,” and she still retained that “savage charm that had seduced the artist,” including hair “black as ink.”49 In fact the mass of black hair belonged to ­Regnault’s model in Rome, and his most famous model in Rome was not a Jew but a Muslim, his laundress Chamma Bent El Arbi Aïcha. As Clairin recounts, her modeling made her persona non grata, and following their departure she was briefly imprisoned. This “Moorish feminist,” in Clairin’s phrase, eventually made her way to Paris, where she modeled as an “Orientale.” By 1888 she was begging on the streets of Montmartre: “a tall girl, terrifyingly thin,” but with “frazzled, abundant hair” and eyes as brilliant as “lanterns in the night fog.” The fate of aging models was an occasional topic of discussion in the art press, and Aïcha, noted for her association with ­Regnault, offered a case in point. Impoverished and deracinated, she had been discarded by the community that had once made use of her: “I don’t understand how artists, so charitable, cannot find a way to send this woman to die in Algeria.”50 Clairin notes that she eventually relocated there, but according to Claretie she died in a hospital in Montmartre, overtaken by melancholy for her native land. ­Regnault himself enjoyed sending misleading signals, to judge by another story originating in Tangier. In 1936 a French traveler knocked on doors in search of anyone who might remember the painter. Eventually he stumbled upon a widow who spoke of visiting ­Regnault in his studio and seeing Salome on the easel. The widow recalled searching for something intelligent to say, only to observe that the dancer’s hands and feet seemed inconsistent with each other. ­Regnault, smiling, agreed. A “girl from the street,” he explained, had posed for the dancer’s feet. But the hands belonged to “a Roman countess.” Falling silent, ­Regnault finally added: “She was very beautiful.”51 This anecdote, too, puts on display the presumed erotics of studio culture, now burnished by an elegiac process of retelling stretching back fifty years. Even from a distance, the widow’s recollection evokes the worldly character of ­Regnault’s enterprise with the hint of studio intimacy embracing rich and poor models alike. These tales and sightings cast almost no light on the case. ­Regnault’s model was not his lover. Victor did not pry Salome out of his son’s hands in an effort to put an end to the infatuation. Aïcha was not his black-­haired faun, nor was it the scullery maid at the French legation. Chapter Three

41. Portrait of Maria Latini, ca. 1869, photograph, © Albert Harlingue / Roger-­Viollet.

­ egnault’s model was not born in Montpellier, she was not a hackneyed R professional, she did not fall into prostitution, she was not from Trastavere, there was no studio game, and ­Regnault did not meet her on the Piazza d’Espagna. Bénédite, following up on Claretie’s 1912 inquiry, reported that ­Regnault met his model through a French sculptor working in Rome, who eventually married her and brought her to Paris.52 Out of delicacy Bénédite declined to name the family, but another voice soon spoke up—­the model’s daughter. The story appeared in L’Illustration, France’s leading illustrated weekly, accompanied by a photograph of the model as ­Regnault knew her. The international press picked up the story, including the New York Times, which alerted readers to the “romance of Salome model,” as told by the “daughter of the Italian girl who inspired ­Regnault.”53 Art and Desire

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42. Jules Renaudot, Naiade, 1872, photo: Marie-­Hélène Cingal.

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Gabrielle Renaudot had initially resisted coming forward, lest readers take the news as “clouding” her mother’s reputation. The latter was more than “simply an artist’s model,” in other words a woman whose conduct “is not always beyond reproach.”54 Renaudot thus rehearses the myth of the model’s sexual availability, but in this case to put it at arm’s length. Her mother, she explains, Maria-­Veronica-­ Concetta Latini, was a Roman girl, raised near Tivoli in the village of Scarpa. Her modeling practice arose from her association with Jules Renaudot, a French sculptor working in Rome who first spotted her at a Christmas Eve service in 1867. Scion of a wealthy family, Renaudot eventually married her and brought her to Paris shortly after the Franco-Prussian War. There was never a studio game, the daughter insisted, and never did Maria Latini attribute to herself even “a small part” of ­Regnault’s success.55 Pious, beautiful, generous, and merciful—­the daughter marshaled an array of traditionally feminine virtues in an effort to counter any suggestion of improper conduct. And Gabrielle had her own position to safeguard, thanks to her status as noted astronomer, assistant to and eventually spouse of Camille ­Flammarion (Jules Renaudot was also father to the painter Paul Renaudot, one of the “intimistes” in the circle of Matisse). Maria Latini’s modeling days ended upon her leaving Italy, and she died in Paris in 1900 at age forty-­six. We recognize her features in a graceful Naiade installed in 1872 in the Luxembourg Gardens (and relocated two years later following neighborhood complaints that the sculpture was insufficiently chaste).56 In Rome she also may have posed for Adèle d’Affry, aka Marcello, whose Pythia of 1870 found a home in the new Paris Opera. To add more gossip to the mix, the aristocratic d’Affry was rumored to have been ­Regnault’s lover, news that further complicated Salome’s reception—­spotting her at the Salon, Bréton grumbled that Marcello had “now compromised herself completely with ­Regnault,” just as she had “done the same for others.”57 Four decades following Salome’s triumph at the Salon, news of his model’s true origins swept away the mass of rumor and speculation that had accrued to the painting from the moment it left ­Regnault’s studio to make its home in the gallery of a wealthy demimondaine. The narrative saw ­Regnault ensnared by his exotic model and delivering himself to a Chapter Three

hedonistic conception of painting seemingly at odds with the solemn burdens attached to a residency at the Villa Medici. It is to that hedonism that we will now turn, from the painting’s brilliant yellow aspect to the carnal pleasures credited to the dancer herself—­but not before pausing before still another tale of desire born in the studio, although in this case in Paris, where artist-­model unions were held to flourish. The tale is all the more extraordinary given that it was apparently not a tale at all, even as it borrowed from a long-­standing mythology of studio erotics that in this case took a tragic turn. On October 13, 1874, readers of the Figaro learned that an unidentified woman had been brought to the Paris morgue, apparently a suicide, according to witnesses who saw her drown. The morgue’s director was so taken by her physical perfection that he made a plaster cast of the victim, although whether just her face only or a body cast is uncertain, as is the purpose of such a cast, since by that date cadavers delivered to the morgue were routinely photographed to facilitate identification. A week later, also in the Figaro, came news that the mystery had been solved: the suicide was a model, Lucrezia Balbi—­information provided by her brother, himself a model. Readers learned, too, that Lucrezia once modeled for ­Regnault and that her death was in fact traceable to their association. As the Figaro details, Lucrezia conceived a love for ­Regnault of which he was utterly unaware, since she would not let that desire show its face. Inconsolable in the aftermath of his death, Lucrezia fought her demons for three years before finally succumbing, in violation of her faith. This astonishing report offers a poignant inversion of a mythic trope that ­Regnault’s career attracted in abundance. Inverted because we learn that ­Regnault did not succumb, any more than did Lucrezia herself, who declined to reveal her desire. ­Regnault’s devotion to his art rendered his studio pure and chaste—­just the outcome we should expect from the fallen hero of Buzenval. But alas, we also learn that in a woman’s case, desire blocked brings calamity in its wake. This passion born in the studio could know only one object, namely the artist for whom Lucrezia served as model and who treated her as merely that. With ­Regnault dead, his model found no destination for her desire, to the point where it consumed and destroyed her. American papers picked up the story in the following months, adding some significant new information: that Lucrezia’s photograph was sent around Paris in an effort to identify her; that her body was exposed for days at the morgue before the leering gazes of tourists until her old laundress finally identified her; that she was beautiful and possessed “large, lustrous black eyes” and olive skin; that ­Regnault in fact “used her as a plaything” and had died before finding an opportunity to cast Art and Desire

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her off; that her story was known to all the art students in Paris; and that for all their kindness to her, this “Fornarina of Henri ­Regnault’s studio found it impossible any longer to struggle with her destiny,” and so “buried her troubles in the Seine.” The fact that the press reverts to the classic tropes should perhaps signal that in all likelihood none of this is true. We find no record of a model’s suicide in the registers of the Paris morgue, no photograph in the police archives, indeed no trace of Lucrezia Balbi in the French press beyond reports in the Figaro. Under what circumstances American newspapers picked up the tale is uncertain, but it was refashioned as it crossed the water, allowing readers in the United States to take away a different picture of Paris studio culture. Differences aside, each iteration of this suicide of the Seine drew upon an inexhaustible popular mythology around the dynamics of studio desire, a mythology to which ­Regnault in death even more than in life gave new currency and feeling.

The Symphony in Yellow Major

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Layering Salome’s pale skin and yellow dress against a stunning but iconographically pointless gold backdrop, ­Regnault massively ramped up his painting’s visual address. To what end? Skeptics charged him with delivering his painting to the senses. The charge borrowed from the classic distinction in academic aesthetics between drawing and color. Drawing, academic doctrine maintained, was an intellectual abstraction and therefore the true and appropriate domain of artistic creation: “You are radiant, Mr. ­Regnault, deign to draw!”58 Color belonged to the fleeting and transient domain of matter. ­Regnault, so the complaint went, discounted not just drawing but ideas, that is to say the intellectual operations to which drawing and subject matter both were historically allied. Color versus drawing, matter versus form, body versus mind—­we should take little stock, perhaps, in long-­standing critical oppositions now casually deployed in hackneyed fashion. Let us say, rather, that art critics fell upon them as shorthand as they struggled to account for a painting that flouted the values associated with a residency at the Villa Medici. In a sense they were correct. ­Regnault’s Salome was generated in a fraternal arena located outside the Villa and its routines. Whether it was truly Fortuny who persuaded him to work up the picture for the Salon is impossible to verify, but friends spoke of the pair as engaged in “amicable competition” as the picture took shape. Certainly Fortuny’s example loomed large. D’Épinay recalled Fortuny’s watercolors hitting ­Regnault “like a thunderbolt”—­this “first visit was the spark that fired a loaded mine, just ready to explode.”59 ­Regnault did not, however,

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43. Mariano Fortuny, The Masquerade, brush and watercolor and gouache over black graphite, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequest of Mary Livingston Willard, 1926, www.metmuseum.org.

simply borrow or adapt Fortuny’s coloristic practices. Fortuny spawned numerous imitators in the 1870s, most of them specializing in delicate, witty genre paintings characterized by unmixed pigment laid down in a dappled mosaic. Critics termed the trend fortunismo, but ­Regnault was not among its adherents. Better to say that Fortuny’s jeweled surfaces clarified ­Regnault’s determination to intensify effects of color and surface. “A loaded mine, just ready to explode”—­the phrase is telling. In Automedon ­Regnault sought to overwhelm the viewer with horses charging into the viewer’s space. Salome recasts that commitment to explosive action into a perceptual desideratum. Where Automedon marshals narrative resources in a perspicuous effort to threaten the spectator, Salome stimulates the senses to the unstable tipping point between pleasure and pain. The story behind a single bravura detail offers a window onto this dynamic. I refer to the serpent-­shaped jeweled bracelet wrapped around the dancer’s right arm. As told by their mutual friend Jadin, ­Regnault and Fortuny threw themselves into a contest designed to showcase their virtuosity: It was ­Regnault who triumphed with Salome’s bracelet. Fortuny was stunned, and could not figure out how he had done it. The jewelry was modeled into the flesh of Salomé’s arm; then, along the length of the serpent, ­Regnault passed his brush and left only a few, well-­calculated strokes, cut off in such a way that the brush stayed firm, especially

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at the center. Then, once this was dry, ­Regnault skillfully ran a hint of red [garance] in the longitudinal wells created by the brush. Once that was done and dried, he removed the red that spilled over with a razor. And then, having mixed a beautiful turquoise blue, he delicately laid it down perpendicular to the wells. . . . So the depths were red, the summits were turquoise blue. The jewelry glimmered marvelously!60

Critics fearful of ­Regnault’s materialism would have found nothing re­ assuring in this ironic riposte to the Villa Medici’s ennobling culture of fraternal emulation (what Fortuny was working on is uncertain). And yet for all its lighthearted character, the story of the bracelet highlights the divided character of ­Regnault’s sublime economy. Dazzling, feminine, 44. Henri Regnault, detail of Salome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of George F. Baker, 1916, www. metmuseum.org.

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serpentine, and deadly, the bracelet enacts in microcosm the fantasy of self-­annihilation inscribed in the legend of the dancer that ­Regnault helped rewrite. This jewel did not require the exercise that ­Regnault staged. It did not demand his virtuosity but the other way around. The choice of object was his, as were the measures he adduced. From the microscopic striations on the dancer’s exotic accessory to the outright splattering of paint in his Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, from Salome’s black frame to ­Regnault’s conviction that to paint an unruly horse he must first ride one—­again and again ­Regnault sought out practices that would challenge the natural limits of his craft, as if only at those limits did authenticity lie. The economy is tragic, and not only because in retrospect it seemed to lead him to the tomb. It is tragic because it was structured by a dynamic of inimitability that defined success precisely on inimitable terrain. With these considerations in mind, let us turn to Salome’s most ­notable feature, its striking yellow aspect. Critics spoke of the painting’s proximate tones as setting off an arms race. “Bright [clair]” but not “luminous,” Ménard stated, a distinction meant to signal the absence of cast shadow. Luminous would have meant areas of shadow balanced next to “sudden bursts of sunlight.” More halftones would allow viewers to focus on some areas of the canvas over others, but ­Regnault set “one brilliant tone off another.” Bonnin termed ­Regnault a lumièriste—­dedicated to effects of light without regard to the objects they described.61 Others shared similar concerns. Efforts to simplify tonal value were a central feature of progressive painting in the 1860s and 1870s, expressed in Manet’s use of light grounds, in the impressionists’ affinity for motifs at midday, and in the mosaiclike brushwork of Fortuny and Giovanni Boldini. Such points of convergence attest to the foment that overtook French painting as historic practices of chiaroscuro came under assault along multiple fronts, although the comparison only extends so far. The impressionist instant of the 1870s aspired to capture fleeting sensations across the subtlest motifs, including mere reflections on water or the flapping of flags. The instant mobilized by Salome was not fleeting but amplified. ­Regnault sought less to analyze sensation across touches of spectral color than to shock, charge, or stimulate his viewers’ senses at the limits of their tolerance.62 Crucial in this regard was Salome’s frame, which ­Regnault had fabricated in Granada. Initially he envisioned a frame covered in Alhambra-­ style faience. But the cost was high and time short, and in the end he settled for dark rosewood bordered with thin strips of steel.63 Few today pay it much notice, but in 1870 the frame seemed like cheating. “Spiritualists,” Mantz said, were enraged by this artifice designed to exaggerate

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45. Henri Regnault, detail of Salome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of George F. Baker, 1916, www. metmuseum.org.

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the picture’s “optical effect.” ­Regnault was “bitterly reproached,” recalled another critic, for employing “undue means” to enhance his painting’s effect.” Critics had a point. On the one hand, the frame set off the layering of yellow on gold. On the other, gold and black were unexpectedly reversed, the painting taking the gold accent normally associated with frames, punctuated by a shock of black at the center. These reversals help animate picture and frame alike, the play of contrast and similarity militating against depth and narrative mise-­en-­scène. “Head, arms, armor, fabrics, carpet,” Ménard observed, seemed mere “accidents,” as if secondary to their prior role of “supporting the rivalry between black and gold.”64 No one was more attuned to such effects than Gautier. He compared the experience of viewing Salome to that of entering a darkened room unexpectedly pierced by sunlight: “Everything is bathed in a slumbering shadow, effacing the forms and dulling the colors.” Then, all of a sud-

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den, “a ray of sunlight manages to glide in through a crack, throwing a piercing beam of light on the picture that hangs on the wall.” The result was “magical.” Salome “sparkles, it glistens, it melts in the light, it dazzles.”65 Of course Gautier exaggerates. Salome did not hang in a darkened room, it did not take viewers by surprise after their senses had been lulled, and viewing the picture did not take place over time but all at once. And yet if we consider the work of its frame, Gautier’s account makes sense. ­Beyond isolating the composition from its surroundings, the frame locates ­Regnault’s picture within its own mysterious black box, mimicking the effect of a ray of light illuminating a darkened room. And Gautier, let us add, even corrected himself as to the source of this sudden illumination. Salome, he declared, “is not illuminated by a fleeting reflection. It is illuminated in its own right.”66 If critics had had ­Regnault’s letters on hand, they could have taken their cue from the artist himself. Speaking of the exotic fabrics he acquired at the Exposition Universelle, ­Regnault wrote of wanting to immerse himself in a visually stimulating environment: “It’s precisely in surrounding oneself with rich and harmonious things . . . assembling them with intelligence and copying them from nature, that one makes things true and seductive.”67 It is hard to imagine a statement less calculated to reassure critics fearful of his materialism. ­Regnault’s representations must be “true” and “seductive,” one seeming to follow from the other. He must assemble the composition with “intelligence” but also surround (s’entourant) himself with “rich” and “harmonious things” (de choses riches et harmonieuses). And while ­Regnault speaks of “copying from nature,” it is nature of his choosing—­rich and exotic fabrics in this instance, and ultimately a sensorially rich environment far from home. Struggling to define this excess, critics reached for the language of pleasure and pain. “Openly aggressive,” avowed Delaborde, thanks to ­Regnault’s “acid” and “violent” tones. Less a painting than “a dazzling array of colors,” noted Ménard, who spoke of his eye as “fascinated” before this “strange and brilliant picture.” Salome “glowed with light,” Hooper recalled, captivating the eye “with an irresistible attraction.” It was made to “ravish” and “fascinate” the eyes, in another’s phrase. Lafenestre felt “sated” before the picture, “unable to ask for anything more.” For ­Enault the charge was electric. He located Salome’s point of maximum intensity at the spot where the dancer’s tunic met her neck. It was exactly here that the picture “flashes before our eye like an electric shock head-­on.” The charge was not unpleasant, however—­one’s “retina took pleasure rather than recoiled from this flash.”68 Captivating, aggressive, acidulated, blinding, retinal, seductive, fas­ cinated—­we might assimilate this appeal to the senses to a fin-­de-­siècle

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metaphorics of stimulus and response, typically associated with such authors as Joris-­Karl Huysmans. But we don’t need to fast-­forward to symbolist aesthetics to find a critic who speaks of his eyes as taking pleasure. Gautier and other followers of l’art pour l’art had long embraced such notions, particularly in their effort to separate out the aesthetic properties of a work of art from the seeming contingencies of its subject. Reaching, in exemplary formalist fashion, for a musical analogy, Gautier hailed Salome as a “symphony in yellow major.” Who cared if its title made sense? Viewers would find no literature, philosophy, or sentiment. Rather, ­Regnault had “ideas of a painter” and confined himself to painting alone: “his effects are effects of painting—­contrasts and ­combinations of colors, the play of shadow and light, effects that surprise and ravish the eyes; he gives you those sensations, those joys and that voluptuousness that are the pure domain of vision, and that no other art can engender.”69 No less than the bleached column that Gautier hailed in ­Regnault’s Moroccan Interior, Salome appealed to the “pure ­domain of vision.” Its properties belonged to “no other art,” for ­Regnault stripped away all extrinsic signification in pursuit of an experience mediated by vision alone. But make no mistake, what Gautier describes is not a rigorous modernist investigation of form, and what was laid bare was not even visual per se. Salome “surprises” and “ravishes” its beholders. Its “voluptuousness” appeals to the eyes, but pure this pleasure is not. Rather, Salome inflames our desire thanks to a licentious, supercharged, perceptual intensity so evocative that it incarnated the Orient. Predictably, such ravishment came in the shape of a woman. Prevailing over the painting’s sensorial overload was a thematics of seduction that treated such stimulation as feminine and fatal. Self-­destruction was already inscribed in ­Regnault’s quest for the sun, the Alhambra, his “divine mistress,” holding him captive dawn to dusk. With Salome the fantasy took a more culturally resonant shape, thanks to an orientalizing rewriting that turned the biblical dancer into a devouring female driven by decapitating lust. ­Regnault’s title may have been an afterthought, but from Gautier’s point of view that was exactly right. The painting’s intensity of visual address led inexorably to the point where pleasure tipped into pain, where seduction wrought destruction, and where the “black panther,” in ­Regnault’s phrase, finally consumed her prey.70 In the closing pages of this chapter, we can at last take full measure of her threat.

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46. Henri Regnault, detail of Salome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of George F. Baker, 1916, www. metmuseum.org.

Salome’s Teeth The “pearls” of Salome’s mouth, recalled Chaumelin, betrayed a “terrifying” and “tranquil ferocity.”71 Few viewers today might discern the thin white line barely visible behind her smile, and yet no detail seemed more to index her sadism. Must we conclude that those teeth betray the terrify­ ing promise of the vagina dentata? The idea seems overdetermined, given the fetishes ­Regnault’s dancer so openly displays: her teeth, the jeweled snake on her upper arm, the dagger on her lap, her wiry black hair—­ everything converges along an emasculating axis that screams castration, above and beyond the fact that decapitation is what this picture is about. From the subliminal to the overt, the threats accumulate, and yet something important is missing. And it’s in light of this absence that we can be more precise about the spell his painting cast. Let us return to the model and the question of her pose. Manet, ­famously, dressed his model for a part but did not disguise her as such, as if to acknowledge her ineluctable place at the scene of representation. Hence the memorable title of his no less memorable painting Mademoiselle V . . . in the Costume of an Espada.72 ­Regnault’s model, too, failed to disguise her studio origins, but more as if playing dress-­up, and smiling in the consciousness of doing just that. Again and again critics singled out the figure’s apparent insincerity, but there was more to this apparent lack of feeling than a studio game.73 Insincerity did not so much militate against her cruelty as serve as its measure. The pleasure Salome took in simply holding a pose spoke to the trivializing, adolescent, and mindless character of her violence. Art and Desire

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47. Édouard Manet, Mlle Victorine in the Costume of an Espada, 1862, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, www.metmuseum.org.

We owe a version of this fantasy to Georges Lafenestre, a leading critic and eventually curator at the Louvre. A sense of sadistic nonchalance, Lafenestre explained, was proper to the figure’s youth, ethnicity, and sex. Precisely this superficiality of feeling made her cruel:

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Never has the brush committed such audacities. Its insanity is admirable! The gypsy, tousled, bare-­chested, lanky, haphazardly dressed in rags and flashy clothes, is nonchalantly seated, legs naked and tucked underneath . . . her Oriental casket inlaid with ivory and gold. The dagger, the plate, are ready to receive the bloody head. Truthfully, neither one seems destined for such a horrible duty. The crazy, thoughtless street entertainer took them because they were shiny, because their sparkle added to that of her jewelry, the splendors of their metal to those of her rosy flesh. . . . Salome’s head is completely modern; the cruelty of her smile, in the sparkling teeth, is the eternal cruelty of the woman enthralled by her body, the indifferent and cold cruelty of mere matter at rest, of a beast licking its lips upon the approach of its prey.74

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As Lafenestre insists, Salome is no princess but an actress, and a bad one at that—­a modern “street entertainer,” or a gypsy playing dress­up. “Crazy” and “thoughtless,” she is incapable of moral reasoning and yields only to the immediate pleasures and needs of her body. In her adolescent stupidity, she grasps at objects that shine, which she desires without thought to their grave purpose. Child, gypsy, animal, woman—­ the images collide as they yield to a primordial, visceral cruelty operating without moral calculation and at the level of instinct alone. Others chimed in with similar fears: “Supple” as a “reptile,” ­Regnault’s dancer has the “savage” charm of a “voluptuous courtesan.” Stupid as an animal, subhuman, simian, bestial, she alternates effortlessly between pleasure and murder: “she laughs as she goes from dancing to crime, pulling at her leash like a demon and like an animal.” Salome, says ­Lemonnier, smells like an animal in “rutting season,” at once “ferocious, lascivious, and without love.”75 Her “simian” face reveals nothing beyond its “bestial” affect, thanks to her “provocative gaze” and her “savage,” 48. Henri Regnault, detail of Salome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of George F. Baker, 1916, www .metmuseum.org.

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Art and Desire

49. Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1875, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of John Wolfe, 1893, www.metmuseum.org.

“lascivious smile.” Others seized on her “superb mouth,” her “cruel jaw,” her “cruel and idiotic grimace,” once again resolving into the regressive animal essence of her sex. This “bestial beauty,” explained Enault, possessed no soul behind her “smiling white teeth,” only “base and vulgar instincts.” For this creature of her drives, home was precisely the Orient, where cruelty ran unchecked and instinct operated at the level of social organization. Salome’s teeth, hair, bracelet, and dagger converged in support of the picture’s sadistic promise, but it was the dancer’s gaze that disconcerted viewers most of all. Once again that gaze was gendered as a natural property of her sex, and once again she was in good company. Manet, famously, conflated beholder and client when he gave Olympia a “prostitute’s stare” (T. J. Clark’s phrase), fundamentally complicating the picture’s sexual politics. Perhaps nothing so groundbreaking could be claimed for the stare fixed by Maria Latini.76 It does not have the directness of Olympia’s gaze, but neither does it betray the coy solicitation associated with Cabanel’s Birth of Venus, to cite the pompier landmark against which Olympia is so often contrasted. Instead, Salome looks out as if to seduce and destroy: “And how she looks at you, this woman! This sinister and superb Almée—­she attracts you, tempts you, absorbs you.” Another critic described her following him around the room, as if hunting for her prize: “She looks at you with cruel and drunken satisfaction. Her eye pursues you to declare her victory.” Or Lemonnier: “Bathed in hate and voluptuousness,” her eyes conveyed both “caress” and “menace.”77

Chapter Three

Does her gaze meet even our own? Despite all those who spoke of being targeted as prey, the jury is out. So many of these accounts are massive overreadings, the sheer number of linked fetishes working to fuel fantasy against the evidence of the picture itself. But those over­readings, let me add, are themselves precisely effects of the picture, thanks to the resonant message sent out by still another fetish, the most important among them being, as it were, negative evidence, but all the more haunting on account of its absence. Here is Gautier: “Those eyes, cruel and tranquil, look straight ahead and seem to wait for a sign of acquiescence.”78 A sign from whom? Presumably Herod, before whom, if we buy ­Regnault’s fiction, Salome has just danced. But recall, too, what is missing—­the Baptist’s head. ­Regnault deployed all the means at his disposal to heighten Salome’s visual address even as he eliminated the traditional object of her gaze. Across an electric feeling of sensorial overload that brought not pain but pleasure, Salome invites us to applaud her performance, to acknowledge our complicity, and to serve as her victim.

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Art and Desire

How to Paint Blood *

4 *

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“Before I die,” wrote ­Regnault to Cazalis from Tangier in May 1870, “[I’d like] to have completed one serious and important work,” something where “I can battle with all the challenges that excite me.”1 He should come see for himself, ­Regnault added, and he would find him immersed in a project at last expressive of his aspirations—­his final envoi, but a project given new life by his reeducation in Spain and North Africa. The Villa règlement called for a life-­sized multifigure subject of the artist’s choosing. This was a sufficiently capacious rubric for ­Regnault to plot a titanically ambitious historical pageant broadly themed on the Muslim conquest of Spain. To be sure, a great contest of civilizations was a regular theme of European historical discourse, often accompanied by a civilizing rhetoric designed to legitimate colonial expansion. But ­Regnault inverts the hierarchy, plotting a crushing victory over Christian forces by the “Moors of old,” bearers as he puts it of the “true blood of Mohammed.” And colossal, to return to that term, is exactly right. Projected to span thirty-­three feet, roughly the size of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana in the Louvre, the work’s oversize dimensions obliged ­Regnault to acquire land outside the city for a custom-­built studio designed to house the immense canvas. Thanks to ­Regnault’s own lengthy description, we have a sense of what the picture would have looked like. Against a palatial backdrop in Moorish style, a victorious general presents his sovereign with the armies of his vanquished foe, accompanied by prisoners, slaves, women, treasure, and his foe’s severed head. Of course all this could have changed. But ­Regnault singled out three overarching themes that viewers should take away: first, the elegance of the Arab civilization (the italics are his), expressed in the culture’s ravishing architecture and in fabrics and armor more splendid than anything in the West (­Regnault speaks admiringly of the Muslim collections in the Madrid armory); second, their hatred

of Christians, expressed in the spoils of war, in enslaved women, but not in coins or other money since the victors had no need for the gold of dogs; and third, the civilization’s cruelty, signaled by a panoply of severed heads—­the head of the vanquished commander set on a gold platter, heads on spikes, heads fixed to the walls of the city behind, and for that matter the trembling affect of the victorious general, who knows his own head might easily fall “should his master not be content with the women brought to him.” The subject was historical, but nothing tied it to an actual event. Certainly its fictional character would not prevent him from getting under way, ­Regnault confided to Cazalis. Should he “find a way to baptize” the painting by citing recorded history, “so much the better.” Barring that, he would send critics to “Chapter 59,999 of an obscure Arab chronicle, destroyed in a fire or siege.”2 At last in command of his powers, ­Regnault is ready to “battle with all the challenges that excite me.” Recall the metaphor: three years earlier he dared not “take up arms” against the indomitable Michelangelo, whose example left him crushed and enthralled. But far from Rome, on terrain he considers his own and with weapons of his choosing, he is ready to fight and win. At the risk of stating the obvious, ­Regnault was an artist, not a historian. His biographers termed the project “The Triumph of Islam,” but we might better term this triumph a screen for a contest whose true arena was less historical than vocational. Indeed it is hard to resist the conclusion that ­Regnault tasks the violent spectacle with special work on his own behalf. Sited on metaphorical terrain, this colossal, excessive, and inverted contest of civilizations functions for ­Regnault as a massively overscaled proxy for his own struggle with tradition’s authority. The “triumph,” in short, was his own, ­Regnault calling on the Arab conquest to power his own emancipation. August saw ­Regnault return to Paris as Prussian forces crossed onto French soil. He appears to have made no further progress on his envoi besides ordering his canvas and materials, and we have been deprived of what surely would have been among the most extraordinary grandes ­machines to emerge from the hands of a Villa pensionnaire. But other work completed in Tangier also lies at this union of violence and decor, and speaks just as eloquently to the artistic, psychological, and vocational forces that powered his renewal. Whether Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco satisfied ­Regnault’s own desire for a “serious and important work” is doubtful, given that the rules attached to his third envoi confined him to a life-­sized figure in historical dress (not to mention his plans to touch up the executioner’s cloak, which critics spoke of as lacking volume). Nevertheless, this brilliant and disturbing scene of judicial execution stands as among the most singular accomplishments of the Orientalist school. How to Paint Blood

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* 50. Anonymous photographer, Panorama of Tangier, Taken from the Casbah, ca. 1890, Adoc-­photos / Art Resource, NY.

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­ egnault made the overnight journey from Gibraltar to Tangier in R ­November 1869, returning several weeks later to retrieve Clairin. Poised just to the west of the Strait of Gibraltar and bordered on three sides by the Sultanate of Morocco, Tangier had long been a center of Western diplomatic rivalry, culminating in its partition between France and Spain shortly before the First World War. In ­Regnault’s day the city had a population of around thirty-­five thousand, half of them Muslims, a quarter of them Jews, and the remainder of European (mainly Spanish) descent. For all its cosmopolitan reputation and significant French commercial presence, few French artists sought out the city, most of them following colonial tracks to Algeria. Delacroix, however, spent several weeks in Tangier in 1832, attached to a diplomatic mission. Dehodencq made multiple trips to the city between 1853 and 1863, sketching, like Delacroix, primarily in its Jewish community. But only toward the end of the century did Tangier emerge as a regular destination for artists, many of them seeking out sites of ­Regnault’s memory. Benjamin Constant had ­Regnault’s letters in hand for his visit in 1877. John Singer Sargent, another ­Regnault fan, stayed with a group of French artists when visiting in 1880. Bréton made the trip in 1872, with local and Parisian papers Ch a p ter Four

­ lerting readers to her “pious pilgrimage.” As late as 1921 the French a consul in Tangier proposed to decorate the reception halls of the consulate with copies of ­Regnault’s paintings.3 Nothing seems to have come of this, but I will have occasion to draw on such lore as I trace the genesis of his third envoi. ­Regnault’s journey was premised on a fantasy of priority. Its arduousness in this regard helped certify its authenticity. Such travel was not, Clairin explained in 1906, what it was now—­an “easy passage” en route to a “comfortable cruise.” Orientalist painters were not then what they were now, namely “legion.”4 The pair’s manner of arrival offers a case in point. Disembarking on the riverbank, they were carried ashore on the backs of “Moroccans” and “negroes”—­veritable conquerors, Clairin wryly adds, “on the back of the Orient itself.” Perhaps we should shudder at this image, but we need undertake no special work to puncture the illusion. Upon coming ashore the two were accosted by a black-­robed, French-­speaking “obliging Jew” who led them to a hotel patronized by other French travelers. Learning they were painters, their guide inquired whether they knew Delacroix, explaining that his niece had posed for him when Delacroix passed through the city thirty-­five years earlier, that she had posed for Dehodencq, and that she could pose for them as well, although she was now older and heavier. He also asked whether they knew Alexandre Dumas, who had neglected to pay for several “bibelots” acquired during his own visit several years earlier. The incident, Clairin conceded, left them “troubled”—­so much for being “far from Europe” and “cut off from Paris and Parisians.”5 ­Regnault leased a small house off the rue de Synagogue. Over the next weeks the pair decorated their rooms in Moorish style, painting the walls blue and the doors turquoise, and decorating the keyholes with gold chocolate wrappers, all in a manner to mimic the Alhambra. They hired domestic staff, purchased horses, and recruited models. By January, ­Regnault was learning Arabic and with Lagraine’s assistance taking pictures in the town for his father.6 Thirteen years later Lizzie Champney and two other “Vassar girls” sneaked into the house, only to flee before penetrating ­Regnault’s rooms.7 Had they persevered, they would have discovered nothing out of the ordinary. Returning to Tangier in 1872 to settle ­Regnault’s affairs, Clairin dismantled the studio and covered up its decorations, lest a future tenant desecrate the setting for their grand adventure. A “dream from the Thousand and One Nights” was how ­Regnault put it to d’Épinay, urging him at all costs to discourage Adèle d’Affry from coming to visit. Surely she would interfere with their “Oriental orgies,” their “Laocoöns where black women are interlaced among whites” and where “Jewish women throw themselves on Europeans.” How much this How to Paint Blood

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was real and how much imagined is hard to say, although the fact that ­ egnault filters his fantasy across the figure of antique sculpture speaks R to the fantastic character of his description. Certainly he understood that such pleasures were fruit of imperial power—­“Europe rides high in this country. We are like demigods. Men fear us, women adore us, and lick us up like dogs.”8 ­Regnault and Clairin both, meanwhile, evoked the religious tensions between the city’s Muslims and Christians, tensions brought home when conflicts erupted among their staff over the use of female models. “You ask when I will be back in Rome?” ­Regnault wrote d’Épinay. “Next year, March—­but only to pack my bags. That’s the simple answer. But hush!—­for you only.”9 With proceeds from the sale of Salome, ­Regnault purchased land outside the city walls and set about erecting the gigantic studio designed to house his final envoi. He also made plans to lease a house nearby, which he and Bréton could retain as a Moroccan pied-­à-­terre. Fifty years later, visitors were still seeking out ­Regnault’s traces. Albert-­Pierre Paluel-­Marmont, writing in 1936, spoke of being received “with courtesy” in the Jewish quarter, and yet “the name of Henri ­Regnault awakened” among its residents “no memory, no knowledge.”10 Eventually he came upon a white-­haired widow who recalled visiting ­Regnault in his studio on the rue du Synagogue. And following his death she and her husband had purchased his lot on the city’s edge, erecting a house they christened Villa ­Regnault. Other reports identified her as a certain Mme Bonnet, dean of European colonists by virtue of her long residency in the city. The recollections of American novelist Thomas Aldrich offer a revealing window onto the braiding of place, biography, and fantasy so crucial to the genesis of ­Regnault’s third envoi. Writing in 1883, Aldrich recalls climbing the steps of the Kasbah in search of a spot associated with ­Regnault’s memory. He comes upon a view that recalls ­Regnault’s Departure of the Pasha, unfortunately now lost.11 Approaching the complex, Aldrich is led by his host into a “Moorish court of justice,” and soon another picture by ­Regnault flashes into his mind. A trial is under way, and Aldrich watches, fascinated, as a “flabby judge,” his chin “buried in his beard,” ruminates before finally assigning a sentence. The guilty party is to be lashed a dozen times, immediately in the courtyard. Aldrich is surprised not to see more: “I expected to see nothing but his head snipped off before we could get out of the place. A vision of that splash of blood on the white marble stairs in ­Regnault’s picture danced in front of my eyes.”12 This disconnect between what Aldrich actually saw and what he expected to see lays bare the mythologized cultural geography that so powerfully informed ­Regnault’s Execution without Judgment. The

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­ merican half-­expects to see the convicted man’s head “snipped off” A there and then—­note the emphasis on speed, the compressed time line between sentencing and execution, in other words a dream of juridical instantaneity largely traceable to ­Regnault’s picture. And note that Aldrich’s fantasy is unleashed across a defamiliarizing journey into the hidden theater of Orientalist justice, culminating in a vision of ­Regnault’s painting and its repulsive reward. Consider, finally, that if Aldrich is in a rush to leave, he cannot resist calling up the brilliant promise he so fears, namely the “splash of blood on the white marble stairs,” even as it “danced” only in his mind. Gautier, too, was amazed by the blood that flowed “in long streamlets” down ­Regnault’s picture, and we can count on him to offer a still more improbable scenario of its origins. So true was Execution without Judgment, Gautier insisted, that ­Regnault must have witnessed something similar firsthand: “The young artist must have seen a beheading with a yagatan in Tangier, and it might even be thought that it was a sight of that sort which suggested to him the idea of this painting.” This is invention—­­Regnault never spoke of encountering such a scene, and even if he had, he would not have been able to study the effect of streaming blood that Gautier so admired. ­Regnault completed several preparatory studies for the picture, but among them we find no morgue studies, no decapitated heads, in short none of the grisly life studies associated with other nineteenth-­ century artists drawn to the scaffold in the service of their art. But for all its fictional character, we may be precise as to its source, and by that I don’t mean its setting in the Alhambra. Staged in the Orient, the picture’s violence was nevertheless scripted in Paris, and for that reason prompted in Gautier as in others a sense of uncanny fascination. Before exploring this proposition, I want to trace an artistic genealogy for ­Regnault’s picture in terms of both its mythologized sense of place and the memorable splash of blood on its steps. I attend (mostly) to the abiding precedent of a single artist—­Delacroix, a painter yet to command an important place in these pages even though Gautier and many others tagged him as ­Regnault’s coloristic ancestor.13 Of course assertions of this kind don’t explain much. They functioned rhetorically to position ­Regnault within competing visions of the French school, particularly in light of a perception that Delacroix left behind no pupils and that his legacy had yet to be realized. But my point in calling on Delacroix is not to make a case for him as ­Regnault’s legitimating ancestor. Rather, ­Regnault’s conception recalls a key moment early in Delacroix’s career when he, too, united violence and decor. His practices in this regard offer an artistic and discursive template of special relevance for ­Regnault, no less than for other Orientalist painters set upon painting blood.

How to Paint Blood

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Death in Venice

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Painted in 1826 and based on a play by Byron published five years earlier, Delacroix’s Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero depicts the beheading in 1355 of a former military hero convicted of conspiring against the Venetian state. The Venetian setting, coupled with the Turkish executioner, gave Delacroix’s picture an Orientalist accent, although this was very much a studio voyage since he was never there. Delacroix stages the final moment of the play: the deed is done, the doors of the palace are thrown open, and the crowd rushes in as the Senate hails the restoration of justice. Despite a description in the Salon livret, many found the picture confusing, the violent action seeming to dissolve in a lustrous layering of flags, banners, and colorful ornament. But the picture remained a favorite of the artist’s, who resented the complaints made against it and resisted efforts to wrest it from him in the years ahead. “The Gory head rolls down the Giants’ Steps,” Byron concludes in his final stage direction. To judge from one of Delacroix’s few drawings for the project, at the outset he planned to show exactly this. The execution takes place at the top of the steps, on the terrace. In the finished painting, however, head, body, and executioner alike lie at the bottom of the steps, even as the doge holds up the executioner’s sword on the terrace above. Whether Delacroix turned to another source or simply ignored Byron’s direction is uncertain.14 But to this day art historians have wrestled with the fragmented character of the painting’s action, minus the pejorative accent. Are we to believe that the executioner ran up the stairs and handed the doge his bloody sword, or that somehow it was sent up? The brilliant white marble of the doge’s palace betrays no trace of the bloody violence, although, let it be noted, this is eventually where we end up. In ­Regnault’s Execution without Judgment, the gory head indeed rolls down the steps, which is to say that it’s here that ­Regnault and Delacroix part ways. Marino Faliero belongs to Delacroix’s so-­called English manner, forged early in his career and partially in dialogue with Richard Parkes Bonington, with whom Delacroix shared a studio. It was a picture that Bonington would never have painted, but its translucent glazing, Byronic subject, and confusing narrative are traceable in part to their association. Léon Rosenthal, writing a century ago in a pioneering account of French romantic art, spoke of Bonington as a painter of “subjectless pictures,” a notion designed to foreground Bonington’s lightness of touch, attention to surface, and apparent disregard for narrative coherence. Bonington’s simplicity in this regard offered an antidote to the “fatigue” and excessive effort betrayed by his French counterparts: “In Bonington’s work

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51. Eugène Delacroix, The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero, 1826, oil on canvas, photo credit: by kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London / Art Resource, NY.

52. Richard Parkes Bonington, The Siesta, 1826, watercolor and bodycolor with gum varnish on paper, photo credit: by kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London / Art Resource, NY.

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there are no large thoughts, no grand sentiments, no great lessons, but he truly paints.”15 Rosenthal’s notion of a subjectless picture might seem anachronistic, but he took his cue from Delacroix himself, who in a letter to Théophile Thoré described Bonington’s watercolors as “diamonds which flatter and ravish the eye, independent of all subject and of what is imitated.”16 So marginal was their subject matter, Delacroix added, that Bonington pastiched the old masters in undisguised fashion: “He borrowed all sorts of details from the old masters and cleverly incorporated them into his pictures.” And yet this habit did not “distract from the merit of his works.”17 (Delacroix does not single out any work in particular, but we might point to Bonington’s La Siesta, completed following his visit to Venice in 1826. Its title was assigned after the fact by the watercolor’s engraver, essentially clinching Delacroix’s point.) What Delacroix’s remarks tell us about Bonington’s imitative practices is less important than what they tell us about Delacroix himself. Attributing to Bonington a kind of “pure painting,” Delacroix found in Marino Faliero an occasion to make his own subject dissolve into decor. Certainly contemporaries saw it that way. Viewing the picture in 1855, Maxime Du Camp reproached Delacroix for giving “equal value to each of the objects, from the actual human figures to tapestries to the coats of arms that emblazon the drapes.”18 Delacroix’s Venetian setting plays a key role in this regard. The pageantry credited to its imperial heritage would be cited as a natural if hazardous venue for Delacroix’s colorism. “Who would dare load his palette and take this on?” asked Ludovic Vitet in 1827.19 Before going further down this road, however, recall that Delacroix had never been there, which means his conception was fashioned discursively through and through. And it was fashioned mainly from other works of art, namely the Venetian old masters whose colorism was credited to Venice’s exotic urban landscape, and leading them as it seemed to sacrifice disegno and the human figure. The ­Venetians, charged E. J. Delécluze, treated the human figure as the mere “epidermis of life.”20 Delacroix, by imitating the Venetian masters, risked doing the same.

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Look no further in this regard than to the executioner, the picture’s most prominent figure. “We quite like the view in profile,” complained Vitet, “but was it necessary to paint him like a gingerbread man?”21 ­Augustin Jal called him “comical,” a mere “pretext” for “brilliant color.”22 As these complaints suggest, Delacroix seemed disinclined to draw on the resources of chiaroscuro to model his figures in three dimensions, as if all that mattered was fabric, costume, and surface—­the mere ­epidermis of life. One of Delacroix’s few figure studies was of the executioner, but in watercolor, a medium traditionally reserved for costume, and a costume study is essentially what Delacroix provides. Across these and other effects Delacroix explores the possibility of a type of “pure painting,” authorized by the prior example of the Venetian old masters, by the setting of Venice itself, and by the example of his friend Bonington. The relevance of this conception to ­Regnault’s Orientalism perhaps need not be stressed—­with the difference that ­Regnault actually settled in the region where his materialism found a seemingly natural home. But something else gives the association still greater force. For all the talk of surface over substance, Marino Faliero is not a subjectless picture by any means. It is a picture with a subject in the strongest possible sense, namely a beheading, featuring blood draining from underneath a cloth and the executed man’s torso in the throes of a “sudden muscular contraction,” as Blanc grimly noted.23 If Delacroix wanted “pure painting,” was not a beheading the last subject to take on? And yet despite the gory subject, something like “decor” indeed prevails: the bloody act seems to vanish or dissolve into its lavish setting. Against Bonington, who apparently could not have cared less what he painted, Delacroix cared a lot. He chose this subject, in fact just this moment when blood has been shed, precisely to motivate heightened effects of surface and texture. The rivulets of blood, for example, are relayed across the surface by a suite of red motifs, notably the executioner’s tights, and cap, red accents in the blue rug, the red of the cloak of the figure on the left and his red sheath. These accents put in place a flickering, pulsating circuit of red echoed

How to Paint Blood

53. Eugène Delacroix, study for The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero, 1827, watercolor and pencil, courtesy Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut.

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54. Eugène Delacroix, The Bride of Lammermoor, 1826, watercolor and gouache over graphite, Art Gallery of Ontario (purchase 1980).

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across the rich decor. Or say the reverse—­the ­brilliant ­setting demanded as its thematic counterpart a violent climax, one extreme calling forth the other along a single Orientalist axis uniting horror and decor. In his Bride of Lammermoor of 1826, another Byronic subject associated with his English manner, Delacroix takes a medium-­specific approach to bloody effects, in this case an impressive watercolor not considered preparatory to any larger project.24 Having consented to marry a man she does not love, Lucy Ashton stabs him to death on their wedding night. As guests rush in, they discover the pair covered in blood and Lucy gone mad.25 For the sake of economy, let us turn at once to the bloodstains on Lucy’s dress, her husband, the knife, and the floor. The blood seems to drip and stain just like blood, deposited in droplets over a moistened support rather than worked with a brush. The droplets hover over the picture’s figurative elements without being bound or contained by them. Consistent with the watercolor medium, those droplets describe blood

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by acting like blood, staining the floor and clothing as watercolor stains its paper support. Other works by Delacroix from the mid-­1820s might usefully be discussed in this context. But it is perhaps enough to note that Delacroix moved on. Turning away from his “English manner,” he threw himself into much larger figure subjects that, for all the complaints made about their fragmented narratives, did not dissolve figure and ground into a lustrous decor. Before we return to Tangier, consider yet another effort to explore the bloody promise of the watercolor medium, in this case shortly following ­Regnault’s rebooting of the Salome theme. Gustave Moreau’s breakthrough Apparition of 1876 launched his own lifelong engagement with the Salome theme. Moreau’s talismanic watercolor saw art critics reaching for musical analogies as they sought to convey its intricate braiding of patterns and exotic motifs against a beige background tinged in lustrous blue. Critics also seized on stranger music still: the blood that drips from the Baptist’s head onto the floor, where it spreads in a slowly expanding stain. Following established technique, Moreau applies thick darks upon lights, allowing him to nearly eliminate highlights and promoting the impression that his medium has not been worked with a brush. Yes, some highlights remain. Nevertheless, the scaled-­down modeling gives this blood increased density, opacity, and materiality. It seems to pool, stick, and crust as if the medium mimicked the action of real blood. We might put the distinction like this: Moreau’s watercolor figures blood as a substance in its own right, more than as an illusionist depiction of a substance. Illusions were the province of oil painting. Its historic identity with techniques of chiaroscuro established oil as a transitive medium through which the painter conveyed his representation. By contrast, watercolor was less adaptable to manipulations of value, to modeling the human figure, and to distinguishing figure from ground. In Apparition, accordingly, the mysterious substance that is more like blood than like paint spreads across the support like an expanding stain, or tache, holding its audience in suspense. Indeed we may speak of the watercolor as staining like moist cloth—­slowly penetrating the surface before our eyes, and without the assistance of human hands. No wonder Moreau’s picture seemed to call out for musical analogies. The blood’s slowly expanding stain offers a mysterious counterpoint to the overarching decor, stimulating our senses even as we shudder.

How to Paint Blood

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55. Gustave Moreau, The Apparition, 1876, watercolor, Musée Gustave Moreau, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. 56. Henri Regnault, Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, 1870, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

Fantasies of the Scaffold 57. Henri Regnault, detail of Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, 1870, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

­ egnault’s third envoi was destined not for the Salon but for his acaR demic masters at the Institut, circumstances that helped assure for the picture an initially limited reception. Exhibited briefly at the École des beaux-­arts in August 1870, shortly after the outbreak of war, the painting arrived late, and only upon ­Regnault’s retrospective eighteen months later was it widely seen. Acquired by the Luxembourg Museum, it remained on display until the mid-­1880s before being sent into storage. Among those relieved to see it go would have been S. G. W. Benjamin, the Williams College graduate and former ambassador to Persia whose survey of French art introduced ­Regnault to American readers. Writing in 1877, Benjamin confessed the gory picture left him torn. He was full Ch a p ter Four

of admiration for the brilliant interior that burned “with the heat of a southern sun,” and surely the dripping blood was “one of the finest bits of coloring in modern art.” And yet it seemed to him the government was “guilty of a grave mistake” in allowing ­Regnault’s picture to be exhibited publicly. Reports of viewers fainting before its “horrible realism” confirmed that such graphic violence probed emotions best left alone. ­Regnault’s spectacle, in Benjamin’s mind, was similar to witnessing a public execution, and with similarly “demoralizing influences.” Its viewing should be restricted on “exactly the same grounds.”26 We don’t know if visitors to the Luxembourg truly fainted before the picture, but if Benjamin’s point was that ­Regnault wanted to elicit some of the fascination associated with the spectacle of judicial punishment, then we must answer a rousing yes. A century earlier Edmund Burke had observed that no stage drama could compete with a public execution in attracting the public’s “sympathy.” Audiences would surely desert the theater midperformance should they learn that an execution was set for a public square nearby. Social reformers across Europe worked to legislate an end to such questionable pleasures, but ­Regnault, at least at the level of representation, sought to bring them to life. Simply put, in Execution without Judgment ­Regnault offered viewers safe haven for their fantasies of the scaffold. Safe because it took the form of a work of art, which allowed them to bracket any ethical concerns about their attraction to the spectacle; safe because that fascination could be assimilated to an Orientalist cultural mythology where such violence was held to legitimately run free; and safe, finally, because standing before ­Regnault’s picture, they could yield to their masochistic identification with the victim to the point of merely fainting rather than dying.

* Loosely derived from the Hall of Two Sisters at the Alhambra, the painting’s rose, yellow, and gold interior serves as man-­made token for the sun. “The whole of the background,” as Gautier tells it, “blazes with a reflected light that tells of brilliant sunshine and great heat outside.” Blanc speaks of the scene as illuminated by “torrents of indifferent sunshine,” and while nothing on this stage in fact opens onto the outdoors, his point about excessive illumination stands. Little is known about the origins of ­Regnault’s narrative. He would have been familiar with the legend of the Abencerrajes, associated with the room nearby, which told of thirty-­six virtuous knights who were invited to a banquet and beheaded on the spot. And he probably searched, as visitors to the palace did, for red markings on the floor and nearby basin, traditionally described as bloodstains. But his painting references no historical or How to Paint Blood

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legendary deed. Gautier wondered if ­Regnault had perhaps witnessed an execution in Tangier, but there is no evidence for this either. Not that the subject would have struck audiences as mysterious or obscure: the luxurious scene of juridical punishment had been a leitmotif of Orientalist political economy since at least Montesquieu. We should think of ­Regnault borrowing freely from this theme for a conception fashioned in his head.27 Here as with Salome, ­Regnault set out to ramp up his painting’s visual address. No longer, to be sure, in the service of seduction. Nevertheless, Execution without Judgment draws viewers near according to a sensorial and psychological dynamic that stimulates and disables them in turn. Where Salome presents variations on a single tone—­a “symphony in ­yellow major,” Execution without Judgment puts in place a coloristic overload of complementary contrasts, for example the victim’s severed head, already turning green, in a pool of crimson blood. Again Delacroix serves as a point of reference, contrasts of red and green figuring regularly in his Orientalist pictures. ­Regnault probably knew, or knew of, Blanc’s Grammaire des arts du dessin of 1867, in which Blanc recounts how Delacroix first became aware of complementary cast shadows as he mounted a carriage en route to the Louvre.28 But there is nothing subtle about ­Regnault’s approach. Indulging in such contrasts with characteristic excess, he has variations of red and green follow each other in a domino of complementaries. Gautier was enthralled:

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This red . . . with its ruby and fire tones, calls out for its complementary. ­ egnault, . . . skillful harmonist, has dressed his victim with a pants R and dolman of Turkish green, so that nuances of the same tone play together. . . . Hence the pants are a somber green, almost black like velvet; hence the vest has the more flat green sheet; hence the inside of the sleeves a lustrous, satiny green-­blond—­and so to exhaust this tonal range scale, a diamond-­shaped ornament [in yet another shade of green]. . . . But one must bring [these greens] in relation to the rose tone of the picture; in fact, a crimson belt encircles the corpse. The Moorish cupola . . . is bathed in a pinkish atmosphere warmed by rose tones. A sheen glimmers off the enamel [screens] . . . and among the irradiations we can just distinguish some jets of blood, recalling the red pool at the center. No amount of artifice could assemble a comparably skilled symphony of colors.29

It is hard to imagine a fuller statement of coloristic formalism, assimilated to the nonrepresentational language of music. Gautier’s phrase—­ “symphony of colors”—­perhaps seems out of place with so grotesque a subject. But of course what he meant by “pure painting” was scarcely Ch a p ter Four

pure, and with sensorial overload came probing psychological work in turn. Gautier’s own further gloss on the picture offers a case in point. Expanding upon ­Regnault’s despotic fantasy, Gautier opens a window onto its troubling power. As Gautier tells it, ­Regnault depicts merely the fourteenth decapitation of the day: “The head that has just fallen was perchance the fourteenth that the Head of the Faithful has the right to cut off every day, without ­assigning any reason for this action; the head of a traitor, of a murderer, or of a sacrilegious person whose crime must not be revealed.” It is doubtful that ­Regnault meant anything so literal, but the question is perhaps moot given how routinely Orientalist discourse seized on the arbitrariness of Muslim juridical process. Victims one through fourteen, Gautier tells us, submit without warning to an invisible hand, a despotic theocrat who exercises such judgment as a right, a veritable obligation, of his office. Execution is indeed summary—­“without judgment” (sans jugement). But what enthralls Gautier, and I believe ­Regnault too, is less the arbitrary character of such judgment than the fact that it is answerable to none. To lay emphasis on arbitrariness of judgment invites a reading of the painting as editorial commentary, as if ­Regnault were mounting a critique of Oriental despotism, its lack of accountability standing in contrast to the apparently deliberative character of Western juridical process. Versions of this reading survive today in the art-­historical literature and form part and parcel of the general conviction that Orientalist painting does ideological work.30 Certainly ­Regnault borrowed a well-­ established despotic trope, but critique is scarcely his point. Even in his day, the routine, unfeeling, and as it seemed amoral character of the executioner’s gesture generated dismay, some critics charging ­Regnault with bringing too much relish to his appalling subject. In fact “relish” is exactly right, but to what end? Gautier’s own fantasy about the picture offers a clue. ­Regnault, I want to suggest, tasked the Orientalist theater of punishment with more intimate work on his own behalf. The summary character of execution, the elimination of process, the sense of action so immediate that the victim has no knowledge of it until it is too late—­these attributes touch on something more than the Orientalist tropes that first enabled them. They evoke a primordial ability to act without constraint, action reserved for the secret heart of Eastern juridical power where the fantasy could run free. One might put it like this: ­Regnault leverages the stereotypes to explore the sublime promise of the despotic everyday. The action is unmediated (no process required); continuing (the fourteenth decapitation that day); accountable to none (invisible except to the mutes who cannot bear witness); and finally unspeakably transgressive (the killing of others). The fantasy is terrifying, except that these dark urges operate in support not of political action but How to Paint Blood

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of painting, and specifically ­Regnault’s own. Like his “Triumph of Islam,” this appalling narrative was put to work recharging the artist himself—­in other words, another angry riposte against his own latecoming. There is no need to recoil from ­Regnault’s free and sadistic outpouring of rage. For as in Salome, the fantasy cuts both ways. Inscribed in this dream of unmediated action lies a limit experience that is normally available to the victim alone but that ­Regnault invites us to share. Consider in this regard the picture’s play of gazes. Not only does the executioner contemplate his victim, but the victim contemplates his executioner. This uncanny play can be hard to see without standing before the picture, but the whites of the victim’s eyes are clearly visible and critics did not fail to invoke them; Gautier, for example, described the victim as “rendering back” to the executioner a gaze filled with “powerless rage.”31 Truth be told, such a proposition is absurd. For eye contact to occur, the severed head would have to bounce off the steps and through a will of its own come to a stop exactly at the point where the executioner and victim could have their gazes lock. Absurd, yes. But that is exactly what ­Regnault required in his effort to explore a famous “secret of the scaffold,” to cite the title of a tale by symbolist author Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-­Adam, himself a schoolfriend of ­Regnault’s. The introduction in 1791 of the guillotine unleashed a torrent of interest in what, if anything, might be sensed by the beheaded victim in the seconds or minutes immediately following execution. ­Charlotte Corday was famously alleged to have blushed when her executioner, standing before a crowd, slapped her severed head—­an indignity that did not form part of her sentence. Numerous variations on this scandal of sentience circulated as popular lore in the decades ahead. Villiers, for example, tells of a surgeon’s effort to persuade a condemned colleague to wink three times following the latter’s beheading, precisely to put the controversy to rest. The satire would have rung true—­for nearly a century medical researchers conducted a range of bizarre experiments on the severed heads of criminals in an effort to certify the existence of such consciousness and describe its character. Artists as well, it is no surprise to discover, explored this mysterious terrain. Moreau and Odilon Redon, among others, rewrote beheadings past and present in the guillotine’s image, inscribing their representations with a terrifying anxiety brought to life with every prisoner’s trip to the scaffold.32 The Orient was the setting, but for ­Regnault this was screen for a mythology closer to home. Operating side by side with its fantasy of unmediated sadism, the picture’s uncanny play of gazes locks in a masochistic counteridentification that leaves the beholder at once riveted and repelled. By virtue of the victim’s position looking up and into the picture, he functions as our surrogate, and through his silent rage comCh a p ter Four

pels us to share this strange consciousness about which none can give testimony. The facial doubling, attributable to the fact that ­Regnault used the same model (a domestic in his household), adds to the masochistic dynamic a still more disturbing accent. The victim does not simply gaze at his executioner but recognizes his own features. He is made not only to witness his own execution but also, thanks to this doubling, to take pleasure in exactly that prospect. So much for an angry riposte against the inhibiting paternal superego embodied in ­Regnault’s academic formation. The picture’s transgressive counterdynamic operates as an unstable by-­product of ­Regnault’s effort to task the picture with doing intimate work, complicating any simple reading of its spell. His sadistic riposte threatens at every moment to collapse and consume him as willing victim, which is to say that once launched on this path, he could scarcely control what direction it might take.33

How to Paint Blood Before putting ­Regnault into the ground, let us turn to a further effort on his part to test the limits of his practice, namely the blood cascading from the victim’s severed head and down the marble steps. The motif (the term seems quite inadequate) offered him what even Salome could not: an opportunity to explore the union of beauty and horror along a single Orientalist axis. In 1933 Mario Praz, perhaps our greatest ­interpreter of romantic exoticism, cited ­Regnault’s painting for just this effect: “­Regnault treated the blood of the victims [sic] in the same spirit in which he had treated the jewels in Salome, like the ‘hail of rubies’ to which a seventeenth-­century poet had compared the blood of a chastised courtesan.”34 As Praz suggests, in the language of exoticism the association between violence and luxury was axiomatic. The blood in ­Regnault’s picture operates like a hail of rubies because the larger decor functions as both token and echo, blood and brilliant decor standing for the other along a single axis of excess. But more than that, this blood seems not simply depicted but performed, which is perhaps what Praz meant when he spoke of it as erupting in a veritable hail. Critics credited ­Regnault with pulling off a spectacular deception. Lafenestre, writing in 1872, complained that “the frightening pool of blood, red and steaming, on the marble white steps” was nothing but “trompe l’oeil.”35 Burty agreed, describing the “blood, imitated to the point of trompe l’oeil,” as a “vulgar artifice.” If ­Regnault “had got what he was after”—­namely “absolute truthfulness,” his painting would have been “repulsive.”36 Saint-­Victor spoke in almost identical terms: out of “some bizarre caprice,” ­Regnault had executed the large pool of blood “in trompe l’oeil,” producing a “frightening illusion.”37 Nothing could How to Paint Blood

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seem so to diminish the painter as artful deception, and the blood in this sense exposed the folly of ­Regnault’s materialism. But if critics were right about his determination to horrify his beholders, they were wrong about his means. Our witness is Clairin: The head of the victim, severed from its trunk, rolls. R ­ egnault needed blood, and lots of it. . . . He tried many times and many times he was unhappy with the results. . . . Here’s how ­Regnault did it. We placed the canvas flat on the ground. We filled a little pot with glossy paint. ­Regnault dipped his palette knife in the pot and then threw the paint in the right spots: the paint fell in distinct drips . . . just like spurting blood. Then he poured from the pot long ribbons of fresh and liquid lacquer right onto the painting’s marble steps. At that point we carefully picked up the canvas, and very slowly tilted it in one direction, letting the paint trickle down. When the paint had reached the point we wanted, we held the painting flat again, letting the paint dry a bit and then repeating the procedure in another direction. And that’s how ­Regnault managed to get that marvelous effect of pouring blood, that drips, that drains.38

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Of course Clairin’s account is exaggerated, as some of the dripping blood contains added highlights or in other ways has been worked with a brush. But plenty of splatter and pouring remains, particularly where the blood pools down the steps and sprays across toward the severed head, all in support of Clairin’s claim that ­Regnault tilted the canvas to let the liquid run and splattered the paint “just like spurting blood.” The charge of trompe l’oeil was thus incorrect. In trompe l’oeil, evidence of the painter’s hand would disappear in the effort to produce a perfect illusion. Such tricks were held to trivialize the painter’s enterprise by transforming a liberal and intellectual enterprise into mere craft. But Clairin tells us it was worse than that. ­Regnault produced his illusion with no craft at all. Nearly giving up on the transitive properties of his medium, he treated the paint as already blood, a fluid that he flung, dripped, and poured onto the canvas. Far from using art to conceal art, ­Regnault used almost no art at all. Paint and blood functioned as ­materialist tokens of each other, working together seemingly to overcome representational divide. Fromentin warned artists not to try: “The Orient is extraordinary. . . . It eludes the conventions, it’s outside any discipline; it transposes, it turns everything on its head; it upsets the harmonies that landscape has lived with for centuries.”39 By and large artists followed suit, pulling back in the face of its inimitability. Partly they retreated out of technical Ch a p ter Four

constraints, partly out of decorum, but most of all in recognition of the effort’s futility—­from the need, in other words, to forge a stable practice in the shadows of the sublime encounter. ­Regnault, too, perhaps would have sought a middle ground; some critics cite, for example, the urban scenes completed in Tangier as evidence of saner times ahead. And yet given the massive machine that was to serve as his final envoi, we might just as easily conclude that this moment was nowhere at hand. “I am far from completing my artistic education,” he declared in May 1869, adding that he planned to remain abroad two more years lest a “premature” return to Paris tempt him on the path of “easy and fleeting success.”40 A permanent studio in Tangier, travel to Egypt, India, Persia, and beyond—­what ­Regnault, at last free from the Villa and its règlement, would have made of these destinations is impossible to say. But at least we may ask how he arrived at this juncture in the first place. Across his brief but meteoric career ­Regnault mined the visionary promise of the Orientalist imaginary for effects his craft seemed nearly helpless to convey. Perhaps that project was doomed as the academic endgame was played out. But it was born out of shared artistic and historical pressures about which ­Regnault himself was eloquent, although the outcomes differed profoundly. The conditions that set the stage for Manet and the impressionist revolution also shaped that revolution’s monstrous double. Its story deserves telling, even as today we still hold the monster at a distance.

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How to Paint Blood

58. Henri Regnault, Hassan and Namouna, 1870, watercolor and gouache, courtesy Étienne Breton / St. Honoré Art Consulting.

Buzenval *

Napoleon III and his army surrendered at Sedan on September 2. With the collapse of the Second Empire two days later, a new Government of National Defense set upon fortifying the capital as the Third Prussian Army marched west toward Paris. ­Regnault had returned only days before, taking up residence with the Orientalist painter Alexandre Bida. Hébert was furious. Holders of the Rome prize were relieved of the obligation of military service, and the director warned Victor ­Regnault that his son risked forfeiting the remaining months of his award. The painter’s friends, for their part, feared the worst: “If ­Regnault enlists, he will be killed,” d’Épinay recalled saying. Victor too, needless to say, feared for his son: “He’ll drop everything, pack his bags, and get himself killed.”1 Dining with ­Regnault and Clairin upon their return to Paris, Victor pleaded with his son to come back with him to Sèvres. The idea of enlisting “was crazy, an unnecessary sacrifice, simply pointless.” The two quarreled as Henri refused, and they never saw each other again.2 Initially ­Regnault enlisted in the franc-­tireurs, a guerrilla-­t ype force whose tactics would be a source of substantial controversy. “If I do something good—­in other words, kill a Prussian,” he wrote to Clairin, “I’ll send you a few pieces, and I don’t mean his ass or his thigh, or shoulder, but a few patches, a saber, or epaulettes.”3 Family pressure, however, and ­Regnault’s own distaste for the unit led him to withdraw. In October he joined the National Guard, a residentially based militia created in 1789 and rearmed by the new government.4 That month he and Bréton were engaged. Her parents resisted, but Victor approved of the match, which he thought might bring his son more stability.5 As ­Regnault trained he also worked. From his chilly studio on the rue Chaptal he completed his splendid Hassan and Namouna, which he offered to Bréton along with two other Orientalist watercolors. “Blood will not show upon the somber purple carpets,” observed Gautier admiringly following their exhibition

5 *

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in 1872, the setting’s dark luxury offering as it seemed a natural home for explosive violence. Parisian audiences seized on the trio as poignant testimony of ­Regnault’s grand Oriental adventure. But for all their beguiling exoticism, these were studio voyages most of all, called up in ­Regnault’s imagination as mounting frustration fueled his fantasy.6 In November he was posted to the fortifications at Asnières, in ­December to Colombes. But in each case he only saw guard duty, and as the weeks passed he yearned for a decisive battle to break the siege. Years later, Claretie sent around a tale from the ramparts called “­Regnault’s Last Christmas.” Dug in behind the French line, ­Regnault sang out ­Adolphe Adam’s “Noël” as midnight struck on Christmas Eve.7 As guns on both sides briefly fell silent, a Prussian soldier across the river sang out in turn. The composer Gabriel Pierné set a choral work around the episode, one of several compositions inspired by the memory of ­Regnault’s voice in song. American readers, for their part, learned that ­Regnault sang that night with a “full clear voice,” defying “the guns of the enemy” and offering an exalted reminder that “there was still love and beauty on this earth.”8 Three weeks later he was dead—­killed at Buzenval on January 19, 1871, his first day of combat and the last major engagement of the war.

*

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In the pages that follow I tell the story of ­Regnault’s death. A rich if scattered archive of remembrance and recollection allows us to reconstruct his movements with some precision, although large gaps remain. Bréton either did not put pen to paper or destroyed the sections of her diary associated with these days. Clairin offers conflicting accounts. Other friends and colleagues claimed to have spotted him, but their sightings can be hard to place if not mistaken or invented outright. Of course such gaps, silences, and contradictions are to be expected. They attest to the limits imposed on the historian who aspires to undertake such a narrowly framed narrative, a perhaps delusory aspiration and yet not one easily shaken. Such gaps and silences, too, speak volumes about the unstable circumstances associated with periods of civil and military conflict, key moments of which may elude us even if their consequences proved momentous. Simply put, missing and conflicting evidence form part and parcel of the situational instability that goes by the name of the fog of war. I tell the story of ­Regnault’s death but also how the story was told. Across a chorus of voices I move back and forth between the facts of the case and a broader performative poetics of recollection that saw ­Regnault’s friends and acquaintances map his itinerary from Buzenval Chapter Five

to the tomb. Some of those memories turn out to be wrong, others self-­ serving, some even false memories in the psychological sense. But in just this diversity they open a window onto the entangled process of testimony and commemoration that made ­Regnault a legend. “We have lost many men. We must remake them, better and stronger. To live for oneself is no longer permitted.”9 These lines by ­Regnault penned only days before his death saw wide circulation in French patriotic literature. But ­Regnault the hero is a topic for another chapter, and in the present pages I attend to more intimate processes of recollection and memorialization. Many of these center on ­Regnault’s movements in these final days, on his possessions, and on his body. From his corpse on the ground to the image of a fiancée setting out in search of him, from his voice in song to a final sighting or conversation, from the hair on his beard to the bullet in his brain, ­Regnault passed from memory into history across countless ephemeral rituals of recollection whose character and feeling we may interrogate and explore.

I Just Want to Use Up My Last Bullets Marching orders arrived on Tuesday January 17. Bréton gave ­Regnault some bread, a packet of letters, and a silver charm to be worn around his neck alongside a medallion, formerly belonging to her late brother, that she had given him some months earlier—­“I give this to you because I am happy. Return it to me if you want to make me cry.”10 Wartime shortages had left Parisians underfed, and ­Regnault, Bréton recalled, possessed “a sublime and emaciated expression on his face.” But the sublimity was all hers, the intensity of their parting nurturing a fantasy of extinction: “With his lips touching mine, I felt that insatiably passionate desire, that inexpressible trembling, that involuntary and irresistible thirst for death that is for me, at heart, a sheer intoxication.”11 The next morning ­Regnault’s Sixty-­Ninth Battalion gathered on the boulevard Malesherbes. The soldiers’ packs were heavy, but absence of rations told them they were not going far. Only days earlier ­Regnault had been offered an officer’s commission, but he declined the honor, preferring to remain an enlisted man: first to shoulder the “tedium and routines” of a soldier’s life and first at “the line of fire” as well. “You have in me a good soldier,” ­Regnault explained; “[don’t] make me a mediocre officer.”12 These lines, too, echoed across French commemorative culture as the republic born of defeat seized on his exemplary humility. The next hours saw ninety thousand troops converge along the Champs-­Élysées before marching northwest toward the Porte de Neuilly. Roughly half were guardsmen, most of them poorly trained, poorly armed, and disrespected by the regular troops. But spirits were high as they set Buzenval

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out for their sortie torrentielle, and many sang as “wives and sweethearts” carried their muskets or “clung to their arms,” as Labouchère noted in the Daily News. A print made after the fact conveys some sense of the excitement, as women, children, and elderly men hail the departing guardsmen. Or perhaps we should say that this idealized representation evokes the day’s delusions. For Parisians anxious to confront the enemy, this was a revolutionary levée en masse, a people’s army charged with defending the motherland and armed most of all with courage and feeling. It took only a day to learn that a people in arms was nothing more than a beautiful symbol.13 At nightfall troops bivouacked along the peninsula of Gennevilliers. ­Regnault and Clairin took shelter in a wine shop, sharing a meal with a member of Parliament, a store manager, a cheesemaker’s son, and other recruits. This was no drill—­all knew they would see action “on the front lines, with the regular troops.” But ­Regnault, “the liveliest among them,” was unconcerned: “Nothing will happen to me, I’m certain of it.” Could there be any doubt, asked Le Gaulois, recounting details of the evening, that ­Regnault had a “tragic destiny”?14 Clairin, too, spoke of their final evening together. As they slept, ­Regnault stayed warm by stuffing his legs into the sleeves of a big fur coat. Clairin made a drawing of the pair wrapped in their strange bedclothes, although he remembered wrong, as the drawing dates to a night on the ramparts weeks earlier. Widely reproduced, the drawing was featured in the Musée Carnavalet’s ­galleries 59. Clément-­Auguste Andrieux, French Soldiers Departing for Buzenval, January 18, 1871, lithograph, copyright HIP / Art Resource, NY.

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Chapter Five

60. Georges Clairin, Henri Regnault and Georges Clairin, in L’Invasion, le siège, la commune (Paris: Flammarion, 1902), private collection.

devoted to the Siege, unveiled in 1899, allowing countless visitors to reflect on a friendship shortly to be definitively severed.15 Awakened after midnight, ­Regnault’s battalion marched to the fortress of Mont Valérien, located near the German line and seat of the French high command. Frantz Jourdain, future architect of La Samaritaine, recalled spotting ­Regnault at the base of the fortress as they waited before dawn, cocooned in an icy fog. As the view cleared, ­Regnault pointed at a long stone wall in the distance: There was just enough light to view the landscape, and my attention was drawn most of all to the wall of Buzenval Park, which unfurled like an immense gray serpent, as it followed sinuous terrain: “There’s a bad spot,” I said to my friend, as I left him, and pointing to the wall, which at that moment was completely silent, and which seemed to be guarding its prey. “Damn right! And a nasty color too, eh?” It was against these unbreachable stones that the poor artist’s battalion would break, a few hours later.16

Here as elsewhere a thematics of the uncanny haunts sightings and recollections of ­Regnault, the coincidences and accidents attached to his every step giving meaning to the indiscriminate forces that took him as Buzenval

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victim. As the fog lifts, ­Regnault gazes unknowingly at the setting for his own demise, the infamous wall seething with serpentine energy, “guarding its prey,” and sending out a mysterious call. From Rome to Madrid, Tangier to Buzenval, small details of his biography seemed touched by a hidden hand, just as his manner of painting was signed in blood.

*

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Buzenval stands out for the participation of thousands of guardsmen who had never seen a day’s fighting, for the political pressures that underwrote the offensive, for its relative military insignificance, but also for the momentous aftermath of a contest that broke the city’s will and saw fifteen hundred French dead and thirty-­five hundred wounded, six times the Prussian total. The Government of National Defense had yielded to calls within Paris for a show of force, as well as to appeals from Léon Gambetta and political pressure outside the city. The army concurred, thinking that a bloodletting might pacify radical elements of the Guard and tame the city’s bellicose mood. Hastily conceived, the ambitious battle plan called for three columns to storm Prussian defenses stretched across a four-­mile front between Bougival and St. Cloud. To the left, French troops were to ascend the heights of Montretout and pass into the town of St. Cloud. Much of the heavy fighting fell to the center column, whose companies included ­Regnault’s Sixty-­Ninth. Crossing the agricultural plain of La Fouilleuse, the column would climb the ridge to the chateau and stream into the woods behind, abutting the plain of the Bergerie. The right-­hand column, under General Ducrot, who also took overall command, would arrive by train, bringing heavy artillery and additional troops. By the end of the day all three columns were to close on Versailles, headquarters of the Prussian general staff. As dawn broke over Mont Valérien, three guns announced the offensive was under way. Ducrot’s column was not yet in place, its advance slowed by, among other obstacles, French barricades that none had thought to clear in advance. But with troops massed at the base of the fortress exposed to Prussian cannon and Ducrot still two hours away, the high command had no choice but to launch. As Prussian lines retreated from their forward positions, French forces streamed across the four-­mile front. Initial progress was good. To the left, the French took the hills of Montretout and St. Cloud, which the enemy burned as it left. The center column streamed across the plain of La Fouilleuse and stormed up the ridge to the chateau, skirmishing with Prussian troops nested in redoubts around the outbuildings and in the park behind. But within hours the French advance stalled before a cascading set of logistical, tactical, and command obstacles. The relatively narrow front Chapter Five

61. Map of Battle of Buzenval, private collection.

left the center column underequipped in the face of an invisible enemy secreted behind stone walls and felled trees. Mobile artillery, when it arrived, proved too heavy to climb the steep ridge. As their dynamite froze, troops were left without the firepower needed to breach the walls of the park. Meanwhile tensions among French forces ran high: members of the army corps and the Guard traded insults amidst reports of troops falling to friendly fire. Incidents of desertion incurred swift and brutal justice on the field. With Prussian artillery repositioning itself against an exhausted attacker, the French position looked increasingly precarious, and at 5:00 p.m. the order went out to retreat. A chaotic withdrawal that saw numerous units of the Guard effectively disintegrate ruled out a Buzenval

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return engagement the following day. Instead, Paris awoke to an urgent call for food, blankets, and medical assistance. A “useless battle,” judged the military historian Léonce Rousset in 1900, undertaken “without a clear objective, without hope of success, poorly conceived and poorly executed”—even as its outcome “sealed the fate of Paris and indeed that of France.”17 ­Regnault’s movements may be charted with some precision. Waiting at Mont Valérien, he and Clairin were hemmed in by “Turcos,” infantry made up chiefly of indigenous Tunisians and Algerians. It was evident, Clairin recalled, that the command “had little confidence in us.” They listened as a general made an allocution, though it would have been “better had he said nothing.” He spoke as if “each of us, without exception, would be dead within two hours.”18 A terrifying dash across La Fouil­ leuse saw men falling left and right to sniper fire, their fate invisible even to themselves: “Those who were dying didn’t know it: the injury was not something that made them cry out—­I don’t think they even knew they’d been hit. But they collapsed and fell like drunks.” Others fell wounded, and Clairin confessed to ignoring their cries for help in his desperation to get across. Eventually they ascended the steep ridge to the chateau, a chaotic scramble that saw ­Regnault and others ditch their heavy packs. Swarming the outbuildings and sometimes firing in error on other French troops taking shelter in the complex, they finally streamed into the woods behind.19 It was near the chateau that ­Emmanuel de Plaza recalled crossing paths with his friend. Breaking ranks, the two paused to embrace—­“we pressed our hearts against each other, and pumped our hands. The kiss left on our cheeks would be our last. He left me, tears in his eyes—­‘goodbye, I must get back to my post.’”20 De Plaza watched as ­Regnault’s company plunged forward. Taking fire from a nest of twenty “Bavarians,” the guardsmen “returned fire aggressively, without worrying about being outnumbered.” The popular press, imagerie d’Épinal, and other forms of illustration of questionable accuracy stage the action around the chateau: clusters of troops skirmish with the enemy, stream around the chateau and its outbuildings, or throw themselves against the tall gates of the park. These gates in particular dominate the battle’s iconography, but ­Regnault and his company spent the afternoon trying to breach the wall that snaked across overgrown sections of the park behind the chateau. They found their guns “useless against a nearly invisible target,” and as hours passed they saw neither “artillery nor dynamite—­never the famous dynamite,” as Habeneck recalled. “Only the wall, always the wall . . . that neither with our bayonets or our own nails could we tear down.” Clairin spoke of their frustration: “We had no real sense of what we were doing. But we

Chapter Five

62. Defense of Paris, January 19, 1871. Troops under General de Bellemare Marching by the Farm at La Fouilleuse at Buzenval, wood engraving, private collection. 63. Battle of Buzenval, January 19, 1871, color woodcut, private collection.

fired our weapons with conviction, and several times tried to close in on the wall of the park, without ever getting there.”21 In Paris, meanwhile, Bréton waited for news. Not until the next day did she learn that ­Regnault had been spotted, alive, late the previous afternoon—­“Edmond told me that he had seen him yesterday at 4:00 p.m., fighting at the head of his battalion. He was unscathed, at nightfall! So he is safe. I knew that God loves those that love each other.”22 A lost painting by Raoul Arus, retrospective to be sure, gives some sense of the settting for ­Regnault’s final hours, with troops taking fire from an invisible enemy as they filtered through the woods. Arus was among many specialists in military subjects to abandon the top-­down stagings of command and control traditionally associated with battle painting. Doubtless this new anecdotalizing approach to battle painting 64. Raoul Arus, ­National Guardsman at Buzenval, photograph after lost painting, private collection.

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Chapter Five

helped avert a more thoroughgoing national conversation regarding the causes of defeat, as some historians argue.23 But it is also traceable to a democratizing impulse that sought to highlight individual acts of valor, regardless of rank and outcome. New attention fell on ordinary combatants, caught up in action but without a view onto the larger theater of war. Such fragments delivered a sense of combat as precisely fragmentary—­ “We had no real sense of what we were doing. But we fired our weapons with conviction.” These same woods, let me add, occupied a singular place in ­Regnault’s biography. Writing in 1884, the poet André Theuriet spoke of a “strange coincidence” associated with this “sinister forest.” He had first met his friend a short distance away, the same evening ­Regnault was introduced to the Irish-­born composer Augusta Holmès, rumored to have been his lover thanks to her bare-­breasted portrait in his prizewinning Thetis Brings the Arms Forged by Vulcan to Achilles of 1866. It was a warm, moonlit August evening outside Versailles, four years before the fatal sortie. Following dinner the band strolled through the forest as ­Regnault, “filled with youthful verve,” sang “under the light of the stars.”24 Clairin left a several accounts of this “nightmare,” which he could only “half-­remember” (Claretie’s phrase), first in 1889 and at greater length in 1906, when he drafted his memoirs with the help of littérateur André Beaunier. Thirty-­five years had elapsed since the fateful afternoon, and by now he was established as one of the country’s senior painters, noted for his murals at the Paris Opera and for his friendship with Sarah Bernhardt. But still the prospect filled him trepidation: “What I am going to tell you now I have deferred as long as I could. I mean Buzenval, and how my friend was killed.”25 As the order came to retreat, troops streamed back through the woods in the falling darkness. “Tripping over bodies lying in the fallen leaves,” they slogged through the mud toward the lights of the encampment beyond the chateau. Around them they heard shouts of anger, confusion, and “the beginnings of panic” as units disintegrated.26 ­Regnault and Clairin crossed paths with a mounted officer, apparently unaware of the order to withdraw. The officer berated the “thirty-­cents” (an allusion to a guardsman’s daily pay) for their cowardice. “‘What are you standing around for! Are you already tired of fighting, you thirty-­cents?’” Whether this factored into what happened next is impossible to say, but Claretie, telling his own version of the tale years later, was still angry: “The general, whom I once saw at the house of Dumas-­fils, could have been made to see, a few minutes later, how one dies for thirty cents.”27 Finally they reached the chateau and took cover. “So many bullets had been flying around us for hours and hours, that we no longer paid them much attention.” Then ­Regnault, inspecting his pouch, broke free: Buzenval

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“I still have a few cartridges left—­I’m going to fire them . . .” “No, don’t,” I answered. “Stay, it’s over.” But he clung to this notion, and took off—­I never saw him alive again.

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I still have a few cartridges left—­spoken by a Rome laureate, a volunteer, and a Parisian, ­Regnault’s last words would be replayed on countless occasions in the decades ahead.28 Their wrenching power lay not in what ­Regnault accomplished but in the fact he accomplished nothing. It was not a matter of his trying to cover the withdrawal. Rather, so pure was his devotion to patrie that his return to the front exceeded any tactical purpose or calculation of odds. Patriotic homilies in the years ahead called ­Regnault a martyr—­a metaphor, to be sure, and yet the word seemed scarcely too strong. For not even a discourse of valor was adequate to describe the mystery of his conduct in these final minutes, as if he was suddenly in the grip of forces larger than himself. Or so it looked to Le Gaulois as it evoked this moment when ­Regnault plunged back into the woods: “It was as if he had forgotten something. He had forgotten to get himself killed.”29 Initially, Clairin was not worried. “We had escaped so many perils that we felt invulnerable.” But with roll call his anxiety grew: “‘Present, present . . .’ Among these diverse ‘presents’ there were also silences. So many missing. Wounded, killed—­who could say? ‘­Regnault!’ Silence. I trembled.” Clairin queried those around him; perhaps ­Regnault had fallen in with another company, but no. Then Clairin set out in search of his friend, retracing their steps as he tripped over corpses in the darkening woods. “I advanced as I could, sometimes trying to run, sometimes stumbling over trees and bodies.” At length he spotted a cabin from which he could hear screams of pain. “In the dim light of lanterns, they were amputating arms, legs. They were sawing, and blood was spilling amid screams of suffering and pain.” The spectacle left him horrified—­ this “atrocious sight of bodies blown to pieces and quivering limbs.” But still no ­Regnault. Pushing back into the woods, he threw down his gun, now too heavy to carry, all the while calling out “Henri! . . . Henri!” Finally he collapsed, exhausted from lack of sleep and food. As dawn broke he stumbled “like a man drunk” back to Mont Valérien. Again roll call was taken—­and again, “silence.” As the columns of the Guard disintegrated, Clairin returned to Paris on foot, sometimes pausing to rest and losing his way. “Why did he want to go?” Struggling to make sense of it all, Clairin evoked the hidden hand: “the whole day” ­Regnault had remained calm and cautious. “What frenzy overtook him? The battle was over. He was pushed by fate. He had a rendezvous with death. Without knowing, he Chapter Five

went.”30 Clairin, Theuriet, Gautier, Baillière, Cazalis—­again and again those who knew ­Regnault yielded to magical thinking in an effort to assign agency where there was none. But for Clairin in particular, the memory of these final hours was fraught. The social chronicler Adolphe Brisson described their bond as reminiscent of the “tragedies” of old, noting that on their last night together in Tangier, Clairin dreamed that ­Regnault had been shot in an ambush as they fought side by side.31 ­Regnault, upon hearing about the dream, merely laughed, but the story speaks volumes of Clairin’s effort to make sense of the moment that took ­Regnault from him, an effort inscribed in public memory across a tapestry of recollections that frequently evoked the bond that saw Clairin follow ­Regnault to Rome, Madrid, Tangier, and Buzenval. And it’s perhaps to that bond we may credit another mystery that haunts his account of their parting. I refer to the words that ­Regnault left him with, and to the likelihood that Clairin never heard them at all. Duparc, writing in 1872, never specifies that it was Clairin who last spoke to ­Regnault. Baillière, the same year, notes that “friends” went to find the artist as the retreat sounded. But ­Regnault insisted he was “staying”—­“I’m not coming back until I’ve killed a Prussian.” No mention of Clairin or a return to the chateau. Cazalis, also in 1872, recounts that “in the tumult of the engagement, the two friends, who until that moment had remained close to each other, would be separated. The retreat sounded—­Clairin looked for ­Regnault, but did not see him.”32 It was from other members of their company, Cazalis adds, that Clairin learned of ­Regnault’s rash conduct—­“We called out to him, and he yelled, ‘I’ll take my last shot and be right back.’” Indeed one of their number felt sure “it was him he saw fall.” At this point Clairin set off, “going from body to body, calling his name into the sinister wood, as darkness fell.” A detailed report published in 1880 speaks of ­Regnault as returning to the chateau “without a scratch,” only to discover that he still had some ammunition: “Listen, he said, I’m going to go take a few more shots.” But these words are spoken to someone else—­Clairin showed up “five minutes” later, asking, “Where is ­Regnault?” Still another source says that ­Regnault marched back to the front with a friend named Lhomon. This is surely wrong, but the point is that no one places Clairin next to ­Regnault except Clairin himself. And Clairin himself does not put the claim into circulation until 1889, in a letter to Larroumet.33 What are we to make of the discrepancy? Perhaps none of ­Regnault’s biographers thought it worthwhile to identify Clairin as the person to whom ­Regnault spoke, although such a conclusion would be perverse, at once because their friendship was famous and because some note that it was precisely not Clairin. Still less can we say that Clairin simply made a mistake or forgot—­unless by forgetting we mean an unconscious Buzenval

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process tasked with doing psychological work. Clairin, that is, does not so much forget as wish. Bringing his memoirs to a close, he speaks of his fate as intertwined with that of his friend—­“My destiny has been shaped by a tragic adventure—­the death of ­Regnault. I still bear its lasting sorrow.”34 The pages Clairin devotes to their bond constitute one of his many reparative gestures—­with Bréton, for example, whom he would seek to marry, as if they shared memories of ­Regnault shared by no one else, and their union promising to restore a trace of the shattered tie (their relations would eventually strain). But among these gestures perhaps none is more poignant than Clairin’s fantasy of himself at the scene. It was he and not another, the fantasy holds, who was last to hold the thread of ­Regnault’s life. It was he and not another who saw ­Regnault march to his doom. Most of all it was he, in bearing such witness, who might salvage the bond that ­Regnault, mysteriously, had destroyed.

Missing

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News of the defeat left the city stupefied. Nothing seemed more to express the battle’s disastrous outcome than the manner of its conclusion, as the remnants of three broken columns made their way back to Paris in a chaotic retreat that humbled the nation. This demoralizing spectacle would be succeeded by still more disturbing pictures. As bodies washed up on the Seine, caravans of dead returned to the city piled high in butchers’ carriages, an image of dishonor for which the population was ill prepared. “Stacked one on top of the other,” as Claretie recalled, soldiers and officers gone “straight and rigid,” the “muddy boots of one” pressed against “the bloody faces of the other.”35 It was years before artists found in the retreat anything deserving commemoration. Eugène Médard took on the subject for the Salon of 1886, earning a medal for a “grandiose” and “lamentable” work that puts the wounded out front, struggling to cross muddy terrain and without military leadership.36 A brief armistice the day after the battle allowed private ambulances to scour the battlegrounds, but many dead and wounded remained trapped behind enemy lines as overnight Prussian forces retook their forward positions. Others were buried in mass graves on the fields of La Fouilleuse. As the search for casualties continued, the press sent around reports of those missing or killed: Colonel Rochebrunne, chief of the Polish Zouaves; Marquis Coriolis, a volunteer at the age of sixty-­seven; the explorer Gustave Lambert; and ­Regnault: “Missing: Mr. ­Regnault, the young painter already of such high repute, and whose Salome, at the last Salon, attained such visibility.”37 The same paper, a day later, reported that ­Regnault fell as fighting got under way—­an officer and “one of our friends” saw him fall “near him, right at the beginning.” Three days later Chapter Five

the paper sent out a correction, noting that as night fell ­Regnault was heard to shout, “I still have three cartridges,” before turning back into the forest. Diarists, meanwhile, took note: “One hundred-­and-­t wenty-­ fifth day of the Siege. Saturday, January 21st. Mr. ­Regnault, the distinguished painter whose Salome received such attention at the last Salon, has disappeared.”38 Chroniclers of these strange days offered memories of final sightings or conversations, delivered up in the press and shared in turn. ­Claretie recalled last seeing ­Regnault on the steps of the Comédie Française, shortly after the Prussians had destroyed his father’s laboratories at Sèvres.39 Camille Saint-­Saëns spoke of going by ­Regnault’s studio and finding him with a rifle in one hand and a cloth in the other. Hassan and Namouna sat on the easel and Saint-­Saëns watched, enthralled, as ­Regnault put a miraculous finishing touch on a work of art that turned out to be his last: “There was a shapeless spot on the bottom. He held a handkerchief in his free hand. He moistened this from time to time with saliva and kept tapping away on the spot on the picture. To my great astonishment, almost to my fright, I saw roughed out the head of a lion—­a few days afterward came Buzenval!”40 Another friend recalled Buzenval

65. Eugène Médard, Buzenval, ca. 1886, lithograph, private collection.

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seeing him and their compatriot Roujeron in the train station in Madrid, making plans to return to Paris: “‘We will see each other after the war,’ I said to ­Regnault.” Rougeron wondered, “‘Do you think any among us will be missing?”—­little conscious of the “awful truth” of his words.41 ­Regnault on the steps of the Comédie Française, ­Regnault at the station in Madrid, ­Regnault in his improvised Paris studio—­these and other last sightings, sent around and republished, proved central to the making of his public biography. Indeed not only sightings of ­Regnault but recollections of hearing the news. Consider a scene recounted by playwright Gustave Toudouze on the bridge at Neuilly, when his company encountered a guardsman returning to Mont Valérien with a crazed air: Our company ran into a member of the National Guard, missing his beret and with a mad air, running toward Buzenval. “Where is he headed?” said Tournevire, with surprise. “Hey! But it’s Georges Clairin! The painter!” cried Crozon. “Clairin? That’s right! . . . What’s his problem?” Just as our corporal spotted him, Clairin recognized him too and shouted from a distance and without stopping: “­Regnault—­­Regnault, have you seen him?” “No. Not since the 18th.” “Oh! If only! If only!” He was already far away, his arms gesticulating madly, his eyes filled with tears, crushed with grief, setting off at random in search of a friend . . . This unforgettable vision—­the pitiful man running like that—­the corporal would always keep.42

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The exact moment seems hard to determine, but precision matters less than its “unforgettable” character. What psychologists call “flashbulb memories” involve an individual’s recollection of public or newsworthy events. Typically such memories feature distinct spatial and temporal markers—­exactly where someone was or what they were doing when they heard the news. And for all their apparent singularity, because those memories occur in large numbers they help inscribe a larger community within a shared commemorative topography. In ­Regnault’s case we ­encounter such memories in abundance—­not just a last sighting, to repeat, but where and when each person heard the news. A medic, for example, recounting his search for dead and wounded, recalled passing by a brick factory near the base of Montretout: “That’s where I was told ‘Henri ­Regnault has been killed.’” Or Edgar Degas, who spoke of ­Regnault’s death as casting a long shadow on the memory of another. Arriv­ing to pay his respects to Daniel Halévy following the death of Chapter Five

Halévy’s father, Degas evoked ­Regnault’s death four decades earlier—­ not just the news but the room: as Halévy recounts, Degas “stood in our dining room in front of the big window. ‘It is here,’ he said, ‘that I told your grandparents of the death of Henri.’”43 Such mental pictures operate differently from traumatic memory, the dynamics of which have come to occupy center stage across the humanities. Arguably flashbulb memories are not traumatic, and hence not repressed or otherwise managed unconsciously. They are not linked to dissociative disorders and do not exert a disabling burden on their subjects. Their incapacitating effects are not passed on unconsciously across generations. The defining feature of a flashbulb memory is not that it is hard to share but that it is shared so often (interpersonally rehearsed, to use the language of social psychology). Take the case of Jourdain, who recalled learning about ­Regnault’s disappearance along the route de Suresnes: “And ­Regnault?” I cried. I had a scrape on my nose, blood had flowed into my beard, and I must have presented a strange picture, for M . . . stared at me for a minute, without recognizing me. “Oh—­it’s you!” he finally said. “Can you believe it that this son-­of-­a-­b . . . (I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the expression he uttered) got the crazy idea to use up his last bullets, and did not want to retreat without killing a Prussian?” I sensed, through the blind anger, poignant anxiety. “The Devil take him, with his crazy ideas. He never changes. I just hope he’s OK. I will see you later, I’m going to find what’s left of my company.” With that, M. set off, disappearing into the fog.44

Empirically speaking, such mental pictures can be mistaken or unconsciously fabricated. And while holders of such vivid memories treat them as wholly their own, they circulate within overlapping public networks, leaving the question of who owns the memory moot, for in fact they are owned by all. Jourdain, after all, gives us flashbulb memory three times removed: a recollection mediated by an encounter with another, refashioned through the conventions of historical dialogue, and finally absorbed by readers who borrow the scene as ­Regnault’s death came retrospectively to mark the experience of a generation. To speak of “mental pictures” is not quite right, however. Included in this mnemonic archive was the sound of ­Regnault’s voice. To the end of her days, the noted composer Augusta Holmès held on to a bust of the artist, along with drawings and other memorabilia. Days before his Buzenval

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death, ­Regnault and Holmès spent a musical evening together, joined by Catulle Mendès and Villiers de l’Isle-­Adam. Marching orders were imminent—­“We knew what would be waiting for him, the following evening.”45 ­Regnault sang from Saint-­Saëns’s Mélodies Persanes, an Orientalist cycle of poems set to music with ­Regnault partly in mind. As Villiers recalled, as midnight struck ­Regnault sang “Le Cimetière,” the cycle’s mournful last melody, in a voice touched by fate. “Who would have thought” that as he sang Today the roses / Tomorrow the cypress, “the prophecy would be realized so soon!”46 “Profoundly moved,” ­Regnault’s friends returned home in the grip of a strange “intuition.” Of course “they did not know why,” but Villiers and his circle often recalled that uncanny feeling in the years ahead, as if ­Regnault had been unwittingly performing his own elegy.47 Days later Holmès learned of ­Regnault’s death from Clairin’s father: “‘My son is killed!’ was the phrase he cried, loving ­Regnault ‘as dearly as he loved his own son.’” Saint-­Saëns, hearing the news, left his barracks and locked himself in his rooms for three days.

*

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Confusion nurtured hope. “As long as we could retain the illusion,” recalled Emmanuel des Essarts, “we refused to believe in the death of Henri ­Regnault.” With Victor refuged in Geneva following the destruction of his laboratories at Sèvres the previous November, Holmès and other friends scoured the city for news: “It’s believed that Henri ­Regnault is dead or gravely injured. I am trying, by all methods possible, to get some information for his devastated family.”48 Some claimed that Holmès herself found him, and although this was false, she did go in search for him, as did Clairin, who returned to the front several days running, first with his father and then with ­Regnault’s uncle, combing the park walls where overnight the Prussians had deposited the bodies of French soldiers. They also sought out medical tents on the field as well as houses bordering the routes back to Paris.49 Victor’s Institut colleague Charles-­Adolphe Wurtz also went in search of the missing painter. “Pale with emotion,” the Alsatian chemist recounted his search for ­Regnault among the bodies dumped over the Prussian line. But ­Regnault was not among them, nor did it seem that he had been taken prisoner and held at Versailles.50 And Bréton, finally, was also sighted at Buzenval, picking her way through bodies on the field. “We saw out there the young lady who was soon to have married Henri ­Regnault,” recalled a Ralph ­Keeler, an American medic. “She was looking for his body among the dead, and found it during the day.” This, too, was wrong, but no matter—­his memory of that “sweet brave girl” touched him more than all the stories “so lovingly written” about the fallen painter.51 Chapter Five

Some wondered if they had seen ­Regnault’s body without realizing it at the time. Theuriet recalled watching as porters entered a pavilion at La Fouilleuse, “carrying their bloody burden.” Dead guardsmen, wrapped in their long coats, lay stacked up against a wall: “‘These ones here, they don’t need anything else,’ muttered a medic, as he brushed up against me. They were indeed dead. I drew away with a shudder, without suspecting that in this pile lay Henri ­Regnault.” Claretie, rushing to Buzenval the day after the battle, recalled seeing four guardsmen carrying a body, its face covered in blood. “It was poor ­Regnault!” he exclaimed, although it was now 1912 and he had not mentioned this sighting in the past.52 He was probably adapting an incident told by Charles-­Auguste Duran, aka Carolus-­Duran, a sought-­after portraitist who met up with Claretie that day and recalled sighting a body covered with leaves and lying in a shallow ditch—­“I’m sure it was ­Regnault!”53 Exact circumstances aside, what Claretie and Carolus-­Duran thought they saw can’t be separated from what they wished they had seen. That is the conclusion we should draw from the testimony of Eugène Pitou, a journalist who joined the pair as they searched for dead and wounded during a brief armistice. The ground before them lay strewn with “guns, caps, cartridges, bits Buzenval

66. Charles-­Auguste-­ Émile Durand, Body of Henri Regnault, 1871–­72, oil on canvas, Lille, Palais des beaux-­arts, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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of clothing, and open packs,” and out of which “had fallen all sorts of things—­biscuits, wallets, framed portraits, etc.”54 Never would they forget “the unforgettable spectacle that passed before our eyes.” And yet Pitou’s report, certified by Claretie and Carolus-­Duran, makes no mention of ­Regnault. Only later did Claretie and Carolus-­Duran come to believe it was him they saw. The conviction arose not from belated recollection but from desire. They did not retrieve a forgotten memory but rather fashioned one as the ­Regnault legend took shape. A small undated painting by Carolus-­Duran depicting ­Regnault dead on the ground attests to the difficulty in delaminating this work of mourning, recollection, and representation. We recognize the fallen artist thanks to his beard, his short stature, and most of all the head wound—­“the hole through which genius made her escape,” to cite a phrase to which we shall return.55 Carolus-­Duran treated the picture as precious, keeping it in his possession until his death in 1917, after which it passed to his son, who retained it in turn. The painting is more than commemoration, however. It is also a work of art, and hence immersed in traffic that complicates any notion of this scene as simply (false) re­collection. For reasons perhaps too embedded to untangle, this picture of ­Regnault that Carolus so prized recalls the Dead Toreador by his childhood friend Édouard Manet. And let me add that Carolus would have ample opportunity in the years ahead to call up his memory of the fallen artist, notably in his capacity of director of the Villa Medici, where between 1905 and 1910 he could contemplate ­Regnault’s smashed features on a daily basis.56 Some claimed to have seen him dead, others to have seen him die. The sculptor Joseph Carlier, according to a report sent around by the Daily News, saw ­Regnault die as stretcher-­bearers carried him away, shortly after he pointed to a small card inscribed with his fiancée’s address.57 This was wrong, but we owe a more plausible account to Edgar Rodrigues, a chronicler of military life and scout to the high command. Rodrigues described watching as a guardsman strode resolutely up an alley into the forest, not a hundred yards from where the enemy was hidden behind a wall. The guardsman took a shot with his rifle, but it was his last: “barely a moment had passed from when he pulled the trigger, that he himself was struck down.”58 Rodrigues wanted to draw near, but urgent orders sent him elsewhere. “The next day, we learned his name: Henri ­Regnault.” Whether it was actually ­Regnault he saw is impossible to say. But Rodrigues thought he did, taking care in his recollections to cite this resonant incident as “the saddest episode of this horrible day.” Not even the fog of war can account for the tale told by Emmanuel de Plaza, a lieutenant in the dragoons who seems to have ignored all other writing on the artist. It was Plaza, remember, who claimed to Chapter Five

67. Édouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, 1868, etching and aquatint, courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

have embraced ­Regnault as the two ran into each other near the chateau. Plaza then goes on to explain that ­Regnault along with ten other men suddenly came under fire from twenty “Bavarians” nested behind a redoubt. They returned fire fearlessly, but with Prussian artillery now mobilizing against them, Plaza called out for ­Regnault to “hit the ground.” Moments later the painter was back on his feet, leading his men against the redoubt with the cry “Down with the Prussians, my children, long live France!” Men were dying left and right as Plaza gathered sixty men to follow ­Regnault’s charge and join the melee: “The shock was terrible. We had thrown ourselves against a wall of steel.” The Prussians ceded their position, but ­Regnault and his men were surrounded. Taking thirty troops, Plaza cut a hole through the Prussian line, but it was too late—­through the blinding smoke he saw ­Regnault, “with the will of a lion,” throw himself against a “gigantic” member of the Royal Guard. The Prussian’s gun flashed as he uttered a final “Mein Gott” and fell like a tree, his body pierced by ­Regnault’s bayonet. Then ­Regnault, covered in blood from the gun’s “hideous wound,” rose up and fell in turn, “mumbling a name of treasured memory,” and finally “the great painter was no more.”59 [ 147 ]

* The news came Friday around 6:00 p.m. A medic turned up at the ­Bréton residence, whose address had been sewn into ­Regnault’s uniform. Earlier that day, searching the woods at Buzenval for dead and wounded, Buzenval

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he had “sighted the body of a guardsman, face down, covered in leaves, and rolled into a ditch on the side of the road.” Drawing closer, he was struck by the man’s “fine hands,” his “hair,” and his youth. Turning him over, he discovered “a superb head,” marred by “a trail of blood along his cheek” and his nose broken by the weight of the fall. It was ­Regnault, with “a bullet in the head.”60 Removing the label as well as some letters, a gold chain and medallion, and a silver charm in the shape of a tear, the medic resumed his search for casualties, intending to return. But when he came back the body was gone, gathered up by the Prussians or by stretcher-­bearers on the French side. The medic’s identity remains a mystery, unless we take seriously the claim by Lewis Strange Wingfield, a British adventurer, dramatist, and war correspondent, that it was he. That much we learn from Wingfield’s obituary in 1891, which notes that he staffed an ambulance at Buzenval, discovered ­Regnault’s body, and cut the tag from his coat.61 ­Regnault “has been killed,” announced the Gaulois on January 24, ­noting that a medic had found his body; three days later the paper added that ­Regnault had been felled by a bullet to the head and that a medallion had been retrieved from a chain around his neck.62 The Figaro, also on January 24, invoked the scene of the medic turning in ­Regnault’s belongings. “Where did these come from?” the medic was asked. “A body” was his reply.63 As reports flooded in and newspapers borrowed each other’s copy, a legend took hold. What we call collective or sometimes public or social memory can move vast communities, indeed whole nation-­states, even as the question of how it operates or whether we should even call it memory remain subjects of debate. At the very least we may say that for such collective feeling to obtain, it must operate on an individual scale, but in a manner that makes unstable any firm distinction between the origin of the memory and its circulation.64 Of course memory is always being made, but ­Regnault’s example attests to the volatile, accelerated process of mnemonic social formation associated with periods of massive disturbance. From a final sighting to where and when one heard the news, evocations of the fallen painter circulated at the granular level of individual experience. Armand Dumesnil, who may have known ­Regnault slightly, offers an example of this two-­way traffic between public and private spheres. “The death of Henri ­Regnault is now certain,” noted the future educator in his diary on January 23, following reports in the press. Dumesnil records how ­Regnault was seen to fall “ten feet from the crenulated wall of Buzenval,” and that a day later a medic had found him “face down and covered in leaves.”65 Several days later Dumesnil returned to the topic, rehearsing efforts to locate ­Regnault’s body. Diaries composed during the

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Siege typically comprise a jumbled medley of rumor, press reports, dry notations of the wartime everyday, political commentary, and personal reflections. Many of these diaries eventually saw publication, authors taking the occasion to prune their texts, add a dedication, or compose additional thoughts about what, in retrospect, it all meant. Dumesnil was no exception. When in 1872 his diaries were published to wide ­acclaim, he took the opportunity to dedicate the volume to ­Regnault’s memory, a dedication that reviews in the press noted in turn: “You are young, and you would have been happy. You died for your country. More than a few among us envy you.”66 Among those who envied ­Regnault was his friend Victor Giraud. ­Author of a youthful portrait of ­Regnault, Giraud raised cheers at the Salon of 1867 with his Slave Market, only to die in February 1871 after falling ill during guard duty. “In his nights of suffering,” reported Gautier, “when the delirium of fever began to make his thoughts wander, the poor artist would murmur: ‘Lucky fellow, ­Regnault, for he at least was killed by a bullet!’” It is hard to know what to highlight more—­the evocation of ­Regnault in a painter’s dying whisper, or the fact that Gautier recounted the incident in one of the most widely read books on the Siege. “Poor Giraud!” echoed Cazalis, “who on his deathbed could not stop speaking ­Regnault’s name.”67 “Everything in this death was the stuff of legend,” marveled Cazalis, as he shared the story of the medallion and charm retrieved by the medic from ­Regnault’s body. “Everything in this death was the stuff of legend,” repeated the gymnast (and later filmmaker) Georges Demeny in Le Bien public, as he recounted the story of ­Regnault’s broken romance, doubtless with Cazalis’s text in hand.68 Claretie, for his part, rehearsed the tale on several occasions, including in 1912: One evening, as he conversed with his fiancée, she handed him a ­ edallion, and said softly: m “It seems, now, with you, that I have rediscovered my dead brother. Take this medallion. If I am sad or unhappy, I will ask for it back. If you no longer love me, return it to me.” “Which is to say,” said ­Regnault, “that I shall keep it always.” He put her brother’s medallion around her neck, and left. It was thanks to the label sewn in his coat, and to the medallion, that those who retrieved his body were able to identify him.69

The story of the medallion offers a domestic counterpart to the discourse of valor attached to ­Regnault’s conduct on the field. Long-­standing conventions of artistic biography often figured success in art and the

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fulfillment of worldly desire as incompatible, Salome’s ­reception at the Salon offering a case in point. But in the grand narrative of ­Regnault’s death, art, desire, and patriotic service would be recalibrated into perfect if tragic identity. The medallion’s current location is unknown, together with the silver charm. Another keepsake, however, resonant with affective ­presence, speaks to an intimate ritual performed in ­Regnault’s name, in this case a tactile ritual centered on precisely his name and reserved for one mourner alone: “Henri ­Regnault, son of Victor ­Regnault, member of l’Institut—­requests being transported, in the case of injury, to M. Bréton, 22 Bdvd Saint Michel.” Slipped into the pages of Bréton’s diary and next to a lock of his hair, the tag cut from ­Regnault’s coat was Bréton’s to keep, to touch, and never to share. For it was Bréton, we are told, who had sewed the tag to his coat. And it was she alone, by opening her diary to the place where she had preserved it and where it remains to this day, who could trace the letters spelling his name, as if to touch them was to touch their bond, at once bringing it to life and feeling its irrevocable absence.70

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“I wanted to find him among the wounded,” recalled Clairin. “As I came to understand that he was dead, to find him among the dead”—­anything but the “horror” of “having lost even his body.”71 For a loved one’s body to be missing is among the most emotionally challenging aspects of the bereavement process. The temporal indeterminacy associated with this experience is excruciating. Not only is the search open ended, but it includes the possibility that a body might never be found. In the grip of this dread, mourners yield to fears of having abandoned their loved one—­to the “horror” of having “lost even his body”—­and suspend as long as possible all rituals of closure.72 In wars past, to be sure, the bodies of fallen soldiers were often never recovered and identified, certainly not compared to wartime casualties in the present day. World War I is notable for the widespread introduction of such rituals, the formation of large national armies coinciding with the systematic recording of battlefield casualties, including efforts to retrieve, identify, and bury each fallen soldier. The case of ­Regnault—­Parisian, guardsman, and volunteer—­offers an intriguing example of this emerging commitment, with private and public forces improvising a search on his behalf. Half a dozen reports written at first hand allow us to reconstruct the sequence of events that brought the “horror” to an end. Early Saturday evening, a caravan carrying 180 dead guardsmen made its way into Paris, trailed by shaken crowds. A succession of hospitals

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turned the caravan away because of regulations forbidding them from admitting the dead. Alerted to this dismal procession, Ernest Cresson, prefect of the police, thought of having the bodies deposited in the Pantheon, but Prussian bombardment in the vicinity ruled this out. Finally the caravan came to rest at the morgue, a facility erected in 1864 on the île de la Cité. With viewing rooms designed to facilitate identification, the morgue emerged as one of the most notorious spectacles of the ­urban macabre, attracting numerous visitors from at home and abroad. The bodies could not remain there, Cresson knew. Parisians “would be ashamed to learn that this was how we had treated such glorious remains.”73 The best option was the cemetery of Père Lachaise, where they could be cared for and perhaps claimed. Under the supervision of Cresson’s deputy, Gustave Macé, the bodies were consigned to Wafflard & fils, undertakers who worked with the police on a regular basis. The cortege set out for the cemetery that night, crossing paths with a band of protesters headed to the Mazas Prison near the Gare de Lyon to liberate Gustave Flourens, a future leader of the Commune. The attention paid to these “glorious remains” is notable, given the custom of burying soldiers in common graves near where they fell. But the participation in the offensive of conscripted forces comprising ordinary Parisians helped put in place a sacralized cult of patrie, inspiring veneration for its victims. Many of these “martyrs”—­Macé’s term—­had their “eyes open,” as if “surprised to discover themselves in such a place.” After removing their clothing, cleaning the bodies, and organizing such effects as they found, Wafflard’s men wrapped the cadavers in shrouds, weeping “as they placed the young men so cruelly struck upon the humid slabs.”74 Numbers previously sewn on the dead men’s uniforms allowed police to notify officers of the Guard, who in turn contacted the victims’ families. These rituals complete, the bodies were arrayed in horseshoe fashion near the Muslim cemetery, an out-­of-­the-­way location chosen to reduce the likelihood that protesters would “arm themselves with cadavers” and take “to the streets.” As the days passed, with additional casualties delivered to the cemetery and with the danger of putrefaction increasing, most of the guardsmen were buried in a single ceremony. Unidentified victims were photographed and interred separately, in case relatives arrived in search of them.75 For the delicate task of photographing the bodies, police called upon Eugène Disdéri, inventor of the photographic carte de visite. Photographing the cadavers in groups, Disdéri set out four plates for viewing in a nearby pavilion. Among those who saw this solemn installation was Claretie. Wrapped only in a shroud and with “no friend” to “close their eyes,” the dead seemed “to stare straight ahead.” Some appeared to

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68. Eugène Disdéri, Bodies of National Guardsmen, 1871, photo­graph, courtesy Gernsheim ­Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

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­radiate pride, “others almost to smile.” But the anonymity of these “martyrs” was also forbidding: “no names,” only “numbers.” One “looks at them, feels for them, mourns them, and moves on.”76 We don’t need Claretie to visualize the macabre artifact. A surviving print shows seven open coffins, raised at an angle to facilitate being photographed, each containing a naked guardsman, identified by number. Reports speak of twenty victims identified by this means, but ­Regnault would not have been photographed, for he was quickly identified thanks to Macé, who had set upon finding him: amidst a “pile of corpses dressed in National Guard uniform, I searched for, and found, the painter Henri ­Regnault.”77 With Macé’s signature on the certificate of death, the press sent out bulletins and diarists took note: “The body of Henri ­Regnault, found in the park at Buzenval, has been brought to Paris. Funeral tomorrow.”78 The Figaro reports that fifteen thousand “mothers, wives, and sisters” descended on Père Lachaise in search of loved ones, a number

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that seems high but conveys something of the chaos as authorities improvised procedures amidst civic unrest.79 And while Cresson and Macé speak of putting in place an orderly process, Clairin tells us otherwise. Making his way past butchers’ wagons dropping off “their sinister cargo,” Clairin headed toward a structure normally used for storing flowerpots and garden tools but now filled with coffins stacked two meters high (“Shakespeare is eternal,” Claretie could not resist adding, as he glossed Clairin’s account).80 Searching among the cadavers, Clairin pulled at “arms” and “legs,” piling them high like “muddy sacks.” Around him women screamed and acted mad. One wanted “a flannel sweater” for the body of her son, whom she feared “would get cold.”81 But still Clairin could not find ­Regnault’s body, and eventually he prepared to leave. It was then he spotted a hastily made wooden box, set in a corner of the pavilion. “Lifting the cover, I found him—­­Regnault!” Yes, it was he, stark naked. Near the box was a parcel with his trousers, his overcoat, and his kepi. The rest had been stolen. It was he! I recognized him. His face was soiled by dirt. Dead leaves were matted with the blood from his wound. The wound: a hole in the left temple, a hole so small my little finger could not have fit in it. Blood flowed from his mouth. I looked at him. . . . Suddenly, I saw his fiancée coming; and I recall how, with a gesture of modesty, I swiftly shut the cover of the coffin over him, covering his body up to the chin. A little later I went to find water, and I washed his face. He was handsome, tranquil, serene. I had washed him when our friend Barrias the sculptor arrived. . . . He told me that a mold of the features so dear to us must be made. He left and soon came back with plaster. The two of us formed a cast, which today is at the Musée Carnavalet, and which still bears the trace of hair and ­Regnault’s beard.82

Six days following the sortie at Buzenval, the search had come to an end. With Bréton and Clairin looking on, Barrias knelt before ­Regnault’s corpse and made a mold of his face. Barrias spoke of wanting to preserve the features dear to them, but the mask he fashioned from this mold did more than that. Before putting ­Regnault into the ground and bringing this chapter to a close, let us pause before this strange effigy, which once drew viewers near.

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69. Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Death Mask of Henri Regnault, 1871, plaster, © Musée Carnavalet / Roger-­Viollet.

“Works of art from Nature’s workshop” was how Georg Kolbe described death masks in 1927, reflecting on a mode of commemoration practiced for millennia before largely vanishing from the public eye.83 Typically made of wax or plaster, molds were pulled from the subject’s face immediately following death. One should say “subject,” not “sitter.” The mask is not a portrait, mediated by an artist’s hand and eye. Rather, as Kolbe suggests, it seems mediated by nothing at all. Like that of a fossil, its authority was indexical, the mask capturing the features of its subject seemingly without intervention of the human hand. Masks from deceased members of nineteenth-­century bourgeois families were normally kept at home. The awkwardness of having eventually to dispose of them was one reason they succumbed to the new medium of photography, which proved more versatile and less expensive, and whose indexicality was still more prestigious. Masks of prominent individuals circulated more widely, but they had to fight for shelf space with other media, particularly in the Third Republic, when such effigies were at their modern apogee. No fewer than twelve artists, photographers, and sculptors, for example, would be called to Victor Hugo’s deathbed in 1885.84 Beyond a death mask’s apparently unmediated character, its power lay in the story it seemed uniquely able to reveal. The features of the deceased were not just commemorated but read—­searched for evidence of character or genius made visible precisely in death. Among artists, the mask of Théodore Géricault, pulled within hours of his death in 1824, offers a notable precedent. The effigy betrays the haunting ­imprint of a long and painful illness that claimed the painter at the age of thirty-­three. But it also spoke about how Géricault had lived and even said something about his art, or so it seemed as the Géricault myth grew. From ­Michelet forward, artists, critics, and biographers discovered in the mask key traits of Géricault’s personality, including a passion for extremes said to have brought him to an early grave. Such tendentious readings fueled the legend of Géricault as an artiste maudit, with lasting consequences for accounts of his career.85 ­Regnault’s mask emerged as a cult object in its own right. But there was no need to search his features for a hidden tell. Death spoke on the mask not from within but from without—­in the path traced by a bullet to the brain. ­Regnault’s mask once circulated widely, although the obscurity into which he fell makes this traffic hard to uncover. Clairin retained the original plaster until 1899, when he donated it to the Musée Carnavalet. A journalist that same year recalled seeing it in bronze on Clairin’s desk; indeed we can just make it out in an 1885 photograph of the artist in his studio. Claretie in 1910 made note of it in the collection of Édouard Pasteur. Gustave Larroumet was said to have kept a version in his study at Buzenval

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70. Death Mask of Théodore Géricault, after 1824, bronze, Musée des beaux-­arts de Rouen, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource.

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the Institut. His widow sent it to the Musée de l’Armée, which lost track of it (also missing is the gate of the farmhouse at the Bergerie, bestowed in 1913 by the country club that redeveloped the battlefield—­not just any gate, explained the club president, but the one “against which Henri ­Regnault fell,” surely a mistake since no gate was near, but revealing nevertheless).86 The museum at Beauvais acquired the mask in resinated plaster, and a bronze survives at the Musée Lambinet at Versailles. Some of these replicas may be one and the same, as versions circulated in the marketplace without clear provenance. The mask also inspired an etching by Joseph Blanc, commissioned for Larroumet’s 1889 book on ­Regnault (see frontispiece). The former Rome laureate took the occasion to fix ­Regnault’s nose, which broke when he hit the ground, and

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in ­general submitted ­Regnault’s features to a vaguely antique idiom. But Blanc retained the mask’s most famous feature—­the hole in ­Regnault’s temple. The detail is real, but the manner of its representation is pure art. Rotating the bust so that the bullet hole faces the viewer, Blanc foregrounds the instant of ­Regnault’s death, even as he marries it to a rhetoric of timeless canonicity. We bear witness, in short, to that moment in the woods when a bullet to the brain made the man into a legend. In 1899 ­Regnault’s mask featured in a new installation at the Carnavalet devoted to the Siege, located on the museum’s second floor. “One display case draws the viewer most of all,” the Figaro reported in its front-­ page review: ­Regnault’s mask, so “striking” in its “suppressed smile.”87 Other reports indicate that the mask hung next to a drawing by Clairin that flagged the site of ­Regnault’s death. Other ­Regnault-­themed items included Bida’s portrait of the artist and drawings by ­Regnault himself.88 Guidebooks to the Exposition Universelle of 1900 steered visitors to the effigy, as did texts by Hachette and Baedeker in the years ahead. Another enthusiast was Georges Cain, the Carnavalet’s curator. Cain’s Across Paris, a popular guide to the city’s hidden treasures published in 1907, reproduced the mask along with Clairin’s description of the scene at Père Lachaise.89 And guidebooks and catalogues continued to single it out until around 1928; sometime after that year it was sent to storage. The Carnavalet’s mask of ­Regnault bears traces of his blood, hair, and beard, all of which confirm Clairin’s statement that the version he sent over was the first pulled from Barrias’s mold. “A tragic mask,” Claretie noted, the rictus giving ­Regnault an ironic and distant air, leaving “the eyes of the living” to search ­Regnault’s features “for the secret of his agony.” Guidebooks speak of the mask as behind glass, but Claretie claimed to have touched it: I contemplated it; I touched this mask of Henri ­Regnault, a plaster taken directly from his poor body. It is beautiful. The nose, broken by the weight of the fall onto the muddy battlefield, gives to the face of this energetic young man something of the appearance of a Mongol. But the face is handsome. A small hole, barely visible, on the left temple, marks the spot where a stupid bullet found its way—­a hole through which genius made her escape!90

The “hole through which genius made her escape” emerged as a potent emblem of a larger conflict that saw the elite of French youth cut down by a nation of peasants. “What brute’s hand launched the bullet that annihilated such a precious life and gifts?” asked the sculptor Crauk in 1900. “I can almost see a Pomeranian woodcutter,” added Edmond About,

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calmly adjusting the proud head of ­Regnault in his sights and then, as if in target practice, smashing it with a stupid laugh.91 For Claretie the investment seems to have been more personal—­not a surprise given the frequency with which he spoke of ­Regnault, although he knew him only slightly. Under what circumstances he handled the mask is impossible to say, but he seems to have taken away a souvenir. As we learn from the sale of Claretie’s library following his death, slipped into his copy of ­Regnault’s correspondence were the pages of a letter to the artist by ­Emmanuel des Essarts—­along with a small tuft of ­Regnault’s hair, retrieved apparently from the mask itself.92 The currency of this effigy is traceable in part to a modern transfer of sacrality, whereby religious rituals and figures became attached to secular objects. In the aftermath of l’année terrible, a body politic traumatized by military defeat and civil unrest seized on martyrial tropes for a new cult of war dead, their example cementing a redemptive narrative of individual sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds.93 Claretie and Macé, among others, described the dead guardsmen delivered via caravan from Buzenval as “martyrs,” a casual and retrospective phrase that is nonetheless revealing in its informality. The journalist Habeneck singled out ­Regnault in Les Régiments-­martyrs, one of many texts that sought to buttress the patriotic credentials of the Guard, particularly in the wake of the Commune and its bloody suppression. Other examples abound, but for ­Regnault in particular this thematics goes beyond the kind of symbolism attached to a cult of patrie. As the legend took flight, biographers, poets, and illustrators mined his career in search of the hidden hand. “The idea of death, of violent death, frequently traversed his spirit,” observed Cazalis, who helped put the myth into circulation. ­Regnault himself spoke of this “with a smile,” and without attaching to such thoughts “the least importance.” But Cazalis knew better. ­Regnault, he insisted, had been veritably “assassinated by Death,” a conclusion he drew from the circumstances surrounding the fatal day but also from earlier hints of his tragic destiny: his fall from a horse in Rome, for example, or the rumors that went viral that he had been murdered in Trastavere, or the time he poisoned himself in Madrid by eating lunch with a lead-­stained palette knife.94 Others who signed on to this myth included David Grieve, protagonist of Mary Ward’s novel: “It seemed to him that he had always foreseen it; that from the very beginning ­Regnault’s image in his thought had been haloed with a light of tragedy and a light storm—­and of death.”95 But it was Gautier most of all who helped put the myth into orbit. Gautier alluded to ­Regnault’s “melancholy foreshadowing” within days of his funeral, and in Paris Besieged gave the topic still greater play. The way ­Regnault seated his “bold” riders Chapter Five

on their “restive and unruly horses” made one “shudder” and surely foretold “he would die a violent death.” And what about Prim, assassinated shortly after ­Regnault painted him? “The model preceded the painter to a bloody grave, but by a short time.”96 Gautier had met ­Regnault only once. It was a September evening during the Siege, and ­Regnault arrived at his lodgings near the Palais Royal accompanied by Maurice Dreyfous and Emmanuel des Essarts. ­Regnault had not yet lost “the dark complexion acquired abroad” and made “every word tell” as they traded stories about Spain and the Orient—­like “brilliant” watercolors, “done on the spot.” Eventually conversation fell upon Goya. Gautier pulled out a “superb” edition of Disasters of War, which he had borrowed from Philippe Burty and with which ­Regnault was only slightly familiar. Thumbing through the portfolio, ­Regnault paused before a battlefield “strewn with bodies” as a “a father and mother” sought their son “among the dead.” Remaining silent for a moment, he “lightly shook his curly hair” and went on. (Gautier may have been referring to There Is No One to Help Them, the sixtieth plate of the series, featuring two figures standing over a killing field.)97 Was it a sign? “Did ­Regnault have a vague presentiment of his fate?” Dreyfous, for his part, could not shake the memory of ­Regnault’s words to him as they parted: “Good-­bye my friend, and should I not see you again, then I mean Adieu!” And to that memory he added another—­it was only steps away that he ran into Clairin, the afternoon following Buzenval: “‘Henri is missing,’ he told me. ‘I left him for a minute, yesterday, when we stopped firing. We’ve looked everywhere for him.’”98 ­Regnault’s paintings, too, seemed to speak of his fate. “There is blood in his color,” Claretie put it in a widely rehearsed phrase. Baillière made the case that in the eyes of the “ancients,” all the deaths ­Regnault painted were his own. He also tells of a fortune-teller who came to model for ­Regnault in his studio in Tangier. Sighting his Execution without Judgment, she uttered, “You, too, blood.”99 Paul de Saint-­Victor, stunned by the blood pooling at the bottom of ­Regnault’s final envoi, concluded that it must be ­Regnault’s own: “Alas! This stream of blood spurts over his entire oeuvre, and marks it like a kind of tragic signature.”100 ­Regnault was never made into an accursed painter like Van Gogh, to cite the most famous example of a transfer of sacrality onto modern artistic biography. But this notion of a tragic signature haunts his memory, exceeding the boundaries of a patriotic discourse by and large unfriendly to metaphorical play. It fell to artists most of all to explore this uncanny axis, notably two popular illustrations where painter, painting, soldier, and martyr exchange roles. Consider Félix Lucas’s cover of La Vie moderne in January 1880. We see ­Regnault in the form of his death mask, including the rictus Buzenval

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“smile” and notorious entry wound. The mask sits on ­Regnault’s palette, garnished by laurels, his sketchbook and pen. But the palette is also a platter—­none other than the platter on which Salome carries the severed head of the Baptist, a prize that ­Regnault famously omitted from his picture but that turned out to be his own head. A plate published in 1876, the year his monument was unveiled at the École des beaux-­arts, offers yet another version of this strange fantasy that saw ­Regnault devoured by his own picture. A woman dressed in Orientalist costume stands before a line of trees in winter. Her arms upstretched, she holds up a head. It is not the head of the Baptist but ­Regnault’s bust. And she is not in Herod’s palace but at Buzenval, posed next to ­Regnault’s cap and palette and with patriotic verses to the artist at bottom. Salome stands on the battlefield triumphantly displaying her latest victim. 71. Félix Lucas, Mask of Henri Regnault, La Vie moderne, January 17, 1880, private collection.

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72. “Salome at Buzenval,” in Album des artistes contemporains, 1876, private collection.

Saint-­Augustin For two days ­Regnault’s body lay in state at the École de médicine. ‘“I promised to be his wife,” Bréton whispered as she slipped a ring on his finger just as if she was “before the altar, just as if the magistrate was present and the priest, and the spectators and the witnesses.” Among those who came to make their “eternal adieux” was Meissonier, crying “like a child over a child.”101 In the Bréton household, meanwhile, “desolation” reigned as they mourned the man “killed by the last bullet of the Buzenval

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last battle,” as Bida phrased it to Fromentin.102 The Villa Medici would be no less unconsoled. Its pensionnaires had refused to believe the reports in the press until Victor himself wrote to the director to confirm the news. “Who would have thought that the liberty I granted him led to his death,” Hébert lamented. ­Regnault’s truancy had frayed their relationship, but in the aftermath of his death Hébert rebuilt the bond, keeping a small bust of ­Regnault on his desk.103 So many of these rituals betray a sense of severed filiation. The parent who outlives his child suffers a “monstrous” bereavement, to quote Freud’s phrase as he struggled to express himself upon the death of his daughter.104 The communities that rallied around ­Regnault took this crisis of posterity as their own: Paris grieving over its lost son, the French school mourning its future chef-­d’école, and teachers mourning their fallen pupil. For Victor, widowed three years earlier, the crisis was no metaphor. The death of his son eliminated any prospect of posterity for a family plagued by mental illness. He was “cold, calm, very changed,” Clairin recalled, visiting him in Geneva. “He tried too much to hide his grief.”105 Victor did not hide, however, from Adèle d’Affry, who had begged Henri to seek refuge with her in Fribourg. Victor spoke of the hallucinations that overtook him as he slept—­of being tapped on the shoulder and seeing “poor Henri” standing before him, saying “Father, it’s me, I’m here.”106 Weighed down by grief and the destruction of his laboratories, Victor died seven years later on the anniversary of Henri’s death—­not only to the day but allegedly to the very hour. Scarcely any explanation was needed, but Philip Hamerton, editor of the Studio, wanted to make the point: the “sadness of the anniversary had weakened the last poor thread of his worn and weary life.”107 Clairin, for his part, again to d’Affry, spoke of the bond that consumed him. ­Regnault was to him “more than a brother, more than a friend, more than a father.” It was “a loving friendship, if you will. I speak to you like this because you know how great our affection was. We never knew how to part.” Not even ­Regnault’s marriage, Clairin insisted, would have come between them. Rather, Henri’s “wife would have been but one more bond, she was the goddess within our temple of friendship. Instead of being two friends, we would have been three happy hearts.”108

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Towering over the boulevard Malesherbes, the metal-­framed church of Saint-­Augustin had been erected over the previous decade to serve the parish needs of the Eighth Arrondissement. At noon on January 27, uniformed members of ­Regnault’s Sixty-­Ninth Battalion, their drums muffled with black crepe, marched into the church as “a people in tears” Chapter Five

73. Anonymous photographer, Church of Saint-Augustin, ca. 1870–­80, © Neurdein / Roger-­Viollet.

sang words of praise around a casket topped by a soldier’s cap, laurel wreaths, and everlastings.109 “One would have thought it was a public ­funeral,” recalled Duparc, so powerfully did the service seem emblematic of a larger disaster.110 This was no ceremony of power scripted with legitimating ritual, but the symbolism was irresistible as mourners wept not only for ­Regnault but for “the burial of France.” Edmond de ­Goncourt described Bréton, dressed in widow’s habit, trailing the coffin like “a shadow.” The face of a nation “so definitively vanquished,” she seemed like the “statue of France,” weeping for “the loss of Paris.”111 This image of Bréton featured in homilies on ­Regnault for decades to come. In her ghostly presence she emerged in French patriotic literature Buzenval

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as a national symbol, at once a maternal emblem and yet too young for such a solemn burden.112 Among the artists in attendance, the press spotted Meissonier, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta, Léopold Flameng, Bida, Carolus-­Duran, Alfred Stevens, Édouard Detaille, Paul Baudry, Félix Ziem, Henri Lévy, Félix Bracquemond, Émile Bayard, Jean Gigoux, and Pierre Puvis de ­Chavannes, and without doubt there were many more. Puvis, too ill to fight, claimed to have lent ­Regnault his uniform—­“and it was wearing this uniform that he was killed.” (This was very likely wrong: fifteen years later, thanking Roger Marx for sending him his book on ­Regnault, Puvis spoke of meeting him for the first time a few days before his death.)113 Holmès, Jules Massenet, and Charles Lenepveu numbered among the musicians, with Saint-­Saëns at the organ; Wurtz and colleagues of ­Regnault’s father from the Institut; and from the École and the ministry, Eugène Guillaume and Jules Simon. Some of those present may have wondered whether it was ­Regnault in the casket. Readers of the Illustrated London News were told that his body was never found and that “another corpse would be substituted for that of the gifted artist.”114 David Grieve, now back in Manchester, followed reports in the press. “France herself” had gone “down to burial with her son,” thought Grieve, as he absorbed the story of the medallion and charm found on the body, the image of Bréton in “widow’s dress,” and the famous phrase from ­Regnault’s “dying lips”: “We have lost many men. We must remake them—­better! Henceforth, let no one dare live unto himself.”115 And it was thanks to ­Regnault that Grieve finally found his own power to act. At last he felt “that ethical fiber in him” awaken and become “dominant, vibrating and responding.” All this is fantasy, and yet resonant of a message inscribed not only on monuments but in hearts and minds. French reviewers, naturally, took note of the attention to ­Regnault in Mary Ward’s novel, as did Bréton, who was sent translations of relevant passages by Clairin’s sister.116 From his seat at the organ, Saint-­Saëns introduced a “Marche héroique,” composed that fall and later dedicated to ­Regnault’s memory. The march was performed frequently in the following years, reviews invariably citing the dedication (Wagner ridiculed the piece as a “French waltz”), as they did a march by Lenepveu, which Jules Pasdeloup would conduct at his Concerts Populaires in 1872.117 Later in the service, at the elevation of the host, Saint-­Saëns inserted “a sad and doleful air” borrowed from La Cimetière—­apparently the same melody ­Regnault had sung days earlier with such preternatural feeling. Few at the time would have recognized the allusion, but Saint-­Saëns and many others spoke of it in the years following—­yet another second-­order process that brought a private homage into public circulation.118 Octave Mirbeau, writing in Chapter Five

1887, claims that it was a religious march from Wagner’s Lohengrin that Saint-­Saëns introduced in honor of ­Regnault, who was passionate for Wagner and who had sung an aria from Lohengrin to a group of friends only a few days before. No one else tells this tale, and it seems unlikely that Mirbeau had special knowledge of the event. But even as false re­ collection, the story serves as another instance of the iterative character of social memory, ­Regnault’s funeral living in the public imagination across numerous evocations by those who were there and many more who were not.119 Also on Saint-­Saëns’s mind was an incident that years later was related by spiritualist and astronomer Camille Flammarion in a widely read text on the afterlife. It was the afternoon of Buzenval, and Saint-­Saëns was at Cachan, a few miles south. “We had just dined upon an excellent horse, of which we had made a good meat broth, and had gathered a great many dandelions,” a meal that left them “as gay as we could be in such circumstances.” Suddenly “I heard, running through my head, the musical dirge of melancholy chords, which I have since made the beginning of my Requiem. I felt in the depths of my being the presentiment that a misfortune was happening to me.” Only later did he understand why: “It was at that very moment that Henri ­Regnault had been killed.”120 All this and more weighed upon Saint-­Saëns as he played “high up at the organ,” at once “invisible but present” to ­Regnault’s mourners below, in the words of his librettist. Channeling “into his hands the countless souls that make up this sorrow of a nation,” Saint-­Saëns alone “could speak to the doleful fragility of the earth.” He alone could pour the “tears of the infinite” over the “tears of our own sorrows”121 The funeral unleashed a torrent of obituaries, many of them by leading art critics. ­Regnault “did his duty, and beyond,” intoned Le Temps. The legend of Barra, youthful martyr of the revolution, and the “elegiac” journey of Raphael rolled in one, lamented his friend des Essarts. “Martyrdom will complete what his talent had begun,” predicted Saint-­Victor.122 More on this messaging in the chapter ahead, but here again let me make the point that ­Regnault’s legend differs from the commemorative practices associated with other fallen soldiers from the war. Simply put, none like that of ­Regnault was generated within the networks of the “art world,” and none spawned so much creative practice in turn. Of course those networks faded over time, and quarrels split them apart. Bréton and Clairin eventually stopped speaking. The Dreyfus affair took its toll: “Did you know that Clairin has become a fierce Dreyfusard?” complained Holmès to Saint-­Saëns in 1900. “And when one thinks of the hero, to whom he was like a brother, it seems incredible!”123 Nevertheless, what we may term the bottom-­up character of ­Regnault’s legend arose out of its unusual art-­world setting, his death Buzenval

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mobilizing a disparate community comprising agents whose job it was to make representations. And not only visual representations, thanks to the elite character of his artistic formation and his diverse literary and musical associations. By way of example, and by way of bringing this chapter to a close, let us return to Saint-­Augustin and to memories shaped by the poet’s hand. Verses to ­Regnault were penned while he still lived, and many more after he was dead. The belletrist Louise Bader composed lines to him in 1872. Two years later Paul Belleuvre delivered an oration to R ­ egnault for the Académie d’Angers. Joseph Rousse timed his verses to coincide with the unveiling of ­Regnault’s monument at the École.124 Other poems were sent around, but none saw more success than verses by Eugène Manuel, a lion in his day and a servant of republican ideals. Manuel opens his elegy at Buzenval as ­Regnault, as if “absorbed in a dream,” returns to the front as his comrades call him back—­“Let’s go! Come! Leave this place! / The trumpet calls us back / Against this wall what would you have us do.” Manuel then takes us back in time, charting ­Regnault’s triumph at the Salon and his travels from Rome to Tangier. But it was Manuel’s presence at the funeral that gave his verses feeling most of all—­presence he signaled by closing his verses on that “black day” when all of Paris met at Saint-­Augustin for a “grave and somber rendezvous.” Albert Delpit, also among the mourners that afternoon, adopted a similar strategy. But where Manuel is bellicose, Delpit is self-­loathing: “When we hear: ‘­Regnault is dead!’/ Alone, perhaps, upon this news, I envied his un­fortunate fate.” Hovering in the background, “hiding in the shadow,” and jealous of ­Regnault’s readiness to die, Delpit envies the tears shed on his behalf.125 Manuel and Delpit evoke their presence at the funeral not only to certify the sincerity of their lines. That sense of being there allowed readers to fashion second-­order memories, in effect to reperform for themselves the sight of a fiancée in widow’s garb following ­Regnault’s casket to the crypt. When his verses were anthologized in 1872, Manuel added a dedication to Clairin and yet another memory—­the last time they met. It was three days before Buzenval, at a charity event organized by Manuel’s wife. Bréton was there with ­Regnault, who had sent several drawings to the sale. Manuel chastised the painter, twenty years his junior, for taking “too seriously” his role as soldier at the expense of his art. But ­Regnault just “smiled at the reproach and said nothing.”126 To this now familiar theme of the parent mourning the loss of a child, Manuel’s widow offered a variation of her own. It was she who sat across from Bréton. It was she who sought ­Regnault out, with the assistance of her brother, a painter who knew him. And it was she who scolded ­Regnault for taking his gun more seriously than his brush.127 Chapter Five

Manuel’s verses to ­Regnault were intended to be declaimed, not just read. From the elite halls of Paris to a rural inn, the legend fell into place one performance at a time. Following the funeral, the celebrated actor Benoît Constant Coquelin approached Édouard Thierry, manager of the Comédie Française, with a proposal to declaim Manuel’s poem in “public homage” to a “painter and a friend.” The prospect was daunting—­ Coquelin “wants to recite it at the Théatre Français, if he has the courage to do it.”128 Days later, the performance was on. The press described audiences as moved to tears before Manuel’s image of a “chaste fiancée” hovering by ­Regnault’s coffin like a “discreet shadow.” Surely these lines would be remembered as among Manuel’s finest, added Francisque Sarcey—­although not fine enough, as it has been more than a century since the last edition of his verse.129 Other performances were less prestigious but no less felt, to judge from a story told in Le Temps. The setting: a tavern in the Norman village of Barentin in February 1871. A group of travelers are seated next to a Parisian who has just left the city. Opening his suitcase, the Parisian passes around crusts of the notorious Siege bread, fragments of shells, and “five or six” Paris newspapers. The group reads in silence. Suddenly, the Parisian exclaims: Oh! What beautiful verses! Verses? Yes, by Manuel, on the death of Henri ­Regnault. Coquelin just recited them at the Comédie Française. Listen, listen!

The table goes silent as the Parisian recites Manuel’s lines. Suddenly they are interrupted—­“I am making nothing up and I’m telling it exactly as it happened,” adds the paper’s correspondent. A Prussian dragoon enters the saloon with a “heavy step” and is seated close by. “We all had the same thought—­it was perhaps him who killed Henri ­Regnault! And our friend continued to recite Manuel’s elegy, his voice trembling: ‘Damn you, soldier, you, your people and the war, and your old king most of all.’” Pulling at his pipe, the Prussian watches them closely, “listening but understanding nothing” as the Parisian continues to read aloud. Only now his voice is “louder and stronger.” Now his tone is more angry than sad: “It was no longer us he was addressing. It was this Prussian dragoon, this ‘obscure victor’ that chance had placed next to us in this village tavern.”130

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Buzenval

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One poet who missed the funeral and never composed verses to ­Regnault held him still closer to his heart, although their friendship would be severed before the world knew his name. “Our poor Henri—­dead!” Stéphane Mallarmé exclaimed to Cazalis, writing from Avignon in late January 1871. Reports in the press had led Mallarmé to fear that even ­Regnault’s body was lost, “buried under the remains of soldiers.” Alas, nothing was left but for Cazalis and him to “bury him in the folds” of their “finest thoughts.”131 Together they must seek “revenge for our brother,” that his death might seem “less irredeemably accomplished.” Simply by living, could they not “embody him” in their own natures? “And it’s possible! I assure you, I myself, in this moment, which is of such help, quite simply to bring life.”132 Mallarmé imagined that he and Cazalis might collaborate on a text about their friend. Nothing came of the idea, as the two parted ways, but a year later Mallarmé published a eulogy on ­Regnault in Le National.133 Mallarmé spoke of ­Regnault as acting on them from the grave—­“and so he wants, with our lives, to effect our existence, the poor child.” He did not mean this in a practical sense, but that is what happened. Following ­Regnault’s death, Bréton, whose father led the Hachette publishing house, worked to secure for Mallarmé a teaching position in Paris. And she worked to keep Mallarmé in Paris when he was due to be transferred. “It’s to her alone, and in Henri ­Regnault’s memory, that you are indebted,” explained Catulle Mendès.134 Perhaps these were the circumstances that led Mallarmé to send Bréton a drawing by ­Regnault—­a self-­portrait, given to him years earlier, when he had taken a position in Tournon and begged ­Regnault for something to recall him by. Bréton returned the gift, noting that as this “haloed” and “torturing” image had arisen out of the painter’s affection, ­Regnault’s “shadow” must remain in his hands.135 Neither she nor Mallarmé could resist the irony of ­Regnault’s inscription: “Though I cannot follow you, I desire at least that the shadow I project on this page will never leave you.” “Our sacred mission,” Bréton wrote to Mallarmé, was to make ­Regnault “known, admired, and cherished.” His charge was “public” and “glorious.” Hers must unfold in silence, along “the intimate, dark path where I walk, in his immortal shadow.”136 No diarist, however, can be unconscious of the potentially public character of autobiographical discourse, and in the intervening decades Bréton’s gendered distinction between public and private spheres softened. Sometime before 1900 she extracted the sections of her diary devoted to ­Regnault and set upon crafting a publication that would tell the story of their romance. The text begins in 1866 when they first met, and closes six months after ­Regnault’s death, with Bréton still “living with a dead man.” Indeed she vows never to stop. She will bear the pain like a millstone around her neck until “the poor Chapter Five

animal drops from fatigue,” until she “no longer notices the 19ths . . . no more dates, no more anniversaries, no more memories. The realm of suffering will have become eternity. . . . Promising forever at the age of twenty-­t wo!”137 Bréton’s change in attitude, her readiness at last to tell this story, recapitulates the evolving character of mourner’s trauma. She proposes to close the publication with her loss still a living present. But of course she is speaking of the past. Selecting these sections of her diary and offering them for others to read is a deliberate gesture, an exercise in narration contingent on the sense of loss retreating into the past. In this gradual decathexis, the traumatic experience finally becomes past, a memory among others, extracted and sent around for others to view and make their own.138 The process failed or was at any rate incomplete, as Bréton’s pages on ­Regnault remained unpublished upon her death in 1918. Just why she had had a change of heart takes us beyond the compass of this study, notably to her marriage in 1880 to Alfred Vaudoyer, which brought new challenges in turn. But we know that what led her to think of publication was discomfort with the monument ­Regnault had become. His image, she feared, had become too fixed in the public eye. Perhaps it was time for her to be heard: “not to speak of me, but to make known an unrecognized side of Henri ­Regnault.” Everyone knew the “inspired painter and military hero.” But so few knew, as did she, the “tender and sensitive qualities of his soul.”139 Not until 1985 would readers discover the qualities of ­Regnault’s soul that Bréton yearned to share. But by this date they scarcely knew the hero whose image Bréton wished to soften. It is to that image we now turn.

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Buzenval

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­ egnault’s friend Maurice Dreyfous, writing in 1912, confessed that each R time he saw a picture of the artist in uniform he was consumed by a “ferocious desire to destroy it.” Not one offered a true image of his friend. Was it “so special” to have been “killed by the enemy, like so many others?” They had last seen each other in the fall of 1870. ­Regnault had already enlisted, and it was “pointless,” Dreyfous knew, to try to change his mind. But surely he could stay out of trouble: “For the love of God, don’t do anything stupid.” Alas, no casualty from the war seemed more “useless” and “unreasonable.” And no one was more “at fault” than ­­Regnault himself: “Disobeying” the orders of his superiors, he went off and “emptied his cartridge pouch,” only to have an “imbecilic bullet split his head. Poor little Riqui!”1 Dreyfous’s frustration is revealing. Forty years on, he was no longer the steward of ­Regnault’s memory—­an ­exemplar of Bréton’s complaint that the patriot had eclipsed the man. Set in motion by the collegial networks that first mourned him, ­Regnault’s iconicity had come to vastly exceed their reach and control. How did “poor little Riqui” emerge as an emblem of patriotic devotion? How did his image circulate, what monuments were erected in his honor, and what was their place in the revanchist climate of the French fin-­de-­siècle? Ceremonies associated with high-­status public sites are designed as socially integrative processes, but such efforts sometimes backfire, exposing a community’s fault lines in the chaotic effort to regain control. ­Regnault proved no exception, and more than once his public sites of memory emerged as commemorative hot zones, with competing interests calling on his example for political theater. But ­Regnault’s commemorative topography also comprised humbler sites, located outside the official sphere but no less relevant to the legend. In 1873 readers of Le Temps learned that an infant had been christened in Granada with

­ egnault’s name, in the house where he had once lived and where “his R memory remained precious.” Still on the topic of Granada, in 1897 a traveler reported to Le Gaulois that he had stayed in R ­ egnault’s room in the Hotel de Siete Suelos in Granada, and that a plaque bearing his name had been affixed to the building’s exterior. Similar tales abound. Visitors to Tangier discovered that a French family had taken over the studio the artist was building for himself, which they baptized Villa ­Regnault. In 1892 British readers learned that wall drawings by ­Regnault in an officers’ mess in Gibraltar had been carefully preserved behind glass.2 Even the battlefields of Buzenval took on an elegiac, pastoral tranquillity associated with his memory, or so we might conclude from a rural scene published in 1881 in La Vie moderne featuring “the farm at Buzenval near where Henri ­Regnault fell.” The traumatic events of l’année terrible cast a long shadow over the republic born from the ashes of defeat. “Losers in battle, winners in spirit”—­Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s choice phrase describes the purifying character of a commemorative culture forged out of the collapse of

Painter to Legend

74. Daniel Vierge, Farm at Buzenval near Where Henri Regnault Fell, La Vie moderne, January 17, 1880, private collection.

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the Second Empire, the amputation of national territory, huge reparations, and ninety thousand dead, up to a third of the lives lost in the ­Commune’s violent suppression.3 The battlefield martyrs of the Franco-­ Prussian War brought solace in this regard, their sacrifice promising redemption for a body politic that remained divided long after the close of hostilities. Many other fallen soldiers found a place in this culture of remembrance. But more than most, ­Regnault’s story seemed less made than found. Paris born and bred, the elite product of an elite institution, disdainful of the artistic success promised to him, a volunteer fearless in his military service and killed by the last Prussian bullet: he was one whose death nature herself seemed to have orchestrated with commemoration in mind. ­Regnault’s patriotic legend helped cement social cohesion for a new republic of uncertain prospects. Perhaps we should even describe it as doing ideological work. One historian, for example, has cited ­Regnault’s iconicity as part of a larger “occulting” process, his death at Prussian hands serving to expiate French guilt over blood shed in the Commune’s violent conclusion.4 Other broadly mechanistic accounts of cultural practice have been developed in relation to fin-­de-­siècle commemorative politics, but my own concerns lie mostly elsewhere. Here as in the previous chapter, I consider the ­Regnault legend across a more plural, performative sense of wartime remembrance, an approach developed by historians in relation to World War I, as well as other military conflicts on the threshold of the modern age, including the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Franco-­Prussian War, all of which saw the fate of the ordinary soldier emerge as a key concern for a wide array of commemorative practices. My goal is not to comb through the archive in search of what ­Regnault “meant,” as if he was just an occasion for an ontologically prior negotiation around national identity that we must demystify and lay bare. I attend less to the “what” than to the “how”—­ less the spell the legend cast than its experience as it fell into place.5 To be sure, the cult acquired an obligatory character, with consequences that I shall detail. But it was by virtue of the legend’s artistic, material, and performative specificity that it came to matter and obtain. Let it be said, however: the spell ­Regnault cast did not long endure. Born from the trauma of defeat, it was swept way in the immense, unimaginable task of managing another trauma that seemed vastly to exceed it. A full inventory of ­Regnault’s iconicity must elude us, not only because some of this is simply lost but also because its contours are porous. More than a patriotic iconography, the legend was a habit of mind, to the point where works of art that had nothing to do with ­Regnault seemed informed by his memory. Consider The Room Where Henri ­Regnault’s Body

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75. Jules Jacquemart, The Room Where Henri Regnault’s Body Lay, ca. 1871, watercolor, Musée du Louvre, © RMN-­ Garnd Palais / Art Resource, NY.

Lay after His Death, a splendid watercolor by Jules Jacquemart (1837–­80), best known for his prints after decorative objects. ­Regnault’s body is absent, but the room’s furnishings seem subtly to evoke the antimonies of his career, for example the pack and cartridges casually dropped onto the Oriental rug. And does not the light streaming from the open window figure ­Regnault’s sun-­bleached dream of artistic renewal? Something feels wrong, however. ­Regnault dropped his pack climbing the ridge at Buzenval, and his body did not lie in state in a bourgeois apartment. The Chinese urn and mirror were motifs favored by Jacquemart and turn up elsewhere in his work. The watercolor’s provenance only compounds the mystery. Donated to the Louvre in 1910 by the dealer Otto Gutekunst, it arrived at the museum with its title in place, and yet an early catalogue of Jacquemart’s oeuvre is silent on the subject.6 It’s tempting to assign the title to an oral tradition of dubious authenticity, but for present purposes a wrong title is just as revealing. The fact that it so easily stuck points to ­Regnault’s currency across an organic, habitual process of meaning-­ making that embraced creators, collectors, and curators alike. Another example appears in remarks in 1913 by Louis Bernier, director of the École des beaux-­arts. Bernier suggested that the recently deceased Édouard Detaille had ­Regnault in mind as he completed his Dream of 1888, a revanchist fantasy that pictures sleeping conscripts of 1870–­71 dreaming of Napoleonic glory: “Can we not imagine that Detaille was thinking of ­Regnault” when “he portrayed sleeping troops in their great-­coats—­like the volunteer who died at Buzenval?” Nothing supports the claim, but it made sense to Bernier, which is exactly the point. The

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76. Édouard Detaille, The Dream, 1888, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

painter Jules Breton attributed a similar impulse to Alphonse de ­Neuville, another leading specialist in military subjects. De Neuville, Breton conceded, never actually portrayed ­Regnault—­but surely he might have, had he not died young.7 To repeat, ­Regnault’s currency exceeds the inventory of works of art that took him as subject. Mental furniture, habit of mind, passing association—­these and other indices speak to a mnemonic landmark whose presence in fin-­de-­siècle visual culture was incontournable.

Youth

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Within a year of pulling ­Regnault’s death mask at Père Lachaise, Ernest Barrias completed a bust of the artist that he sent around to R ­ egnault’s family and friends in the hopes of offering them “some slim consolation.”8 Versions of the bust gradually passed into the public sphere, tagged with their prestigious provenance. The Copenhagen Glyptotek acquired the plaster from Barrias himself. His widow donated the original bronze to the city of Paris in 1907, and the Carnavalet acquired two. Clairin, who died in 1919 at the summer home of Sarah Bernhardt, left his copy to his sister, who sent it to the Louvre. Hébert kept a smaller version on his desk, and with his house in La Tronche now a museum, it remains there to this day. An 1897 report records a bust of ­Regnault at the Collège de France (where his father Victor had an appointment), although whether by Barrias or someone else we cannot say.9 Or consider the report of a visitor to the studio of Aimé Morot, like ­Regnault a student of Cabanel,

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77. Memorial to Henri Regnault at Buzenval, photo by author.

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Prix de Rome two years after ­Regnault, and eventually husband to one of Jean-­Léon Gérôme’s four daughters. The visitor was struck by the ­“desolate” quality of Morot’s studio, which was apparently devoid of objets d’art, armaments, tapestries, and other studio paraphernalia, with the exception of a handful of studies—­and a small bust of ­Regnault.10 Barrias’s bust also sits atop the broken obelisk unveiled in 1872 in the woods where ­Regnault fell. Friends and family traveled annually to the memorial on the anniversary of his death, after first gathering at the ­Regnault family tomb at Montparnasse Cemetery. The obelisk at Buzenval remained in the public eye as ­Regnault’s mourners fell away. In July 1888, members of the literary society L’Étincelle (The Spark) gathered at the obelisk to recite orations in memory of the artist. Present on this occasion was a painter named Dieudonné, who apparently knew ­Regnault from their days in Cabanel’s studio. And we owe to its president, a certain Gissien, the vow to raise money for its preservation.11 Whether such funds were forthcoming or whether they were even needed is uncertain, but as late as the 1890s tourists continued to seek out the memorial, guidebooks in hand, as they explored the battlefields outside Paris. Surviving postcards speak to the popularity of the excursion, with visitors picturing themselves at its base or scribbling a phrase for readers back home. If Barrias’s bust of ­Regnault saw wide circulation, a bust by Prosper d’Épinay remained among ­Regnault’s circle of friends. ­Regnault probably modeled for the original terracotta sometime during their time together in Rome. Following ­Regnault’s death, d’Épinay had it cast, sending one copy to Bréton and keeping another for himself. Augusta Holmès is reported to have owned it in plaster, although no trace survives. D’Épinay also embellished the original terracotta, adding a four-­sided base with reliefs that celebrated his friend’s accomplishments: Juan Prim, the armor from ­Regnault’s Judith and Holofernes, and finally Salome.12 This was ­Regnault as d’Épinay knew him. Devoid of patriotic messaging, the terracotta stands as a personal posthumous homage, d’Épinay evoking his fallen friend across the chapters of their shared experience. These prestigious effigies were obliged to share shelf space with many other depictions of the artist. A photograph of ­Regnault in evening dress, first released in a portfolio of celebrity portraits, would be repeatedly repurposed, for example as a collectible carte de visite or engraved for the cover of L’Illustration three weeks after ­Regnault’s death. His friend Laguillermie borrowed the photograph for his frontispiece to Duparc’s edition of ­Regnault’s letters. Cazalis, for his part, called on ­Regnault’s friend Édouard Blanchard for still another portrait. An etching by Paul Langlois, destined for Auguste Angellier’s 1878 volume on ­Regnault, constitutes a hybrid. The landscape and accessories are Langlois’s own, but Chapter Six

78. Postcards of monument to Henri Regnault, Buzenval, private collection. 79. Prosper d’Épinay, Henri Regnault, terracotta, in Patricia Roux, Prosper d’Épinay, 1836–­1914, sculpteur (Paris, 1981).

80. Paul Langlois, Henri Regnault, etching, frontispiece to Auguste Angellier, Étude sur Henri Regnault (Paris: Boulanger, 1879), ­private collection.

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for ­Regnault’s features he drew on a bust by Charles-­Jean-­Marie ­Degeorge, unveiled two years earlier at the École des beaux-­arts. The memorial at the École stands as the most important expression of vocational solidarity on ­Regnault’s behalf. Within a day of the funeral, Eugène Guillaume, director of the École, sought permission from Jules Simon, minister of public instruction, “to erect a monument in ­Regnault’s memory.” Simon sent back approval at once, although not without pushback. ­Regnault, he reminded Guillaume, was “not the only student” from the École who had fallen during the war. To ­Regnault’s name should be added the names of all students who had died for the “most saintly of causes.”13 Simon prevailed, and eleven names in total would be inscribed on the monument’s marble columns. But this was always “the monument to ­Regnault,” and not only because it was topped by his bust and generally referred to as exactly that. Angellier, for example, defended the choice of ­Regnault, noting that his exemplarity was impossible to resist. There was in ­Regnault “such precocity,” he reasoned, the story of his death offered “such poignant aspects,” that it was inevitable that he should emerge as a symbol of the future “harvested before its hour.”14 Today few seek out the installation nestled in the northeast corner of the Cour du Mûrier, an intimate courtyard located on the eastern precincts of the École, and decorated in Pompeii-­style polychrome murals put in place in the Second Empire. The project was a collaboration.15 The bust fell to Degeorge, like ­Regnault a Prix de Rome. The architectural piece went to Jean-­Marie Pascal, also from the Villa. The mosaics went to Jean-­Domenica Facchina, who had worked at Charles Garnier’s new opera house. For the central figure the École called on yet another Rome laureate, Henri-­Michel-­Antoine Chapu, who toiled in secret for three years before unveiling his figure at the Salon of 1875, where it was met with “a loud cry of triumph”—­artists themselves, a critic reports, “were proud of this work.”16 Costing was set at fifteen thousand francs, but it was soon apparent that double that would be required, and the tale of the shortfall is not without interest. The monument was funded through subscription, a mechanism that allowed supporters to participate publicly in Chapter Six

this prestigious initiative. But according to an unsigned memorandum still held at the École, a quarrel erupted over who counted as a stakeholder. Initially, subscribers were limited to a small group: Guillaume, Hébert, Baudry, Meissonier, Pils, Garnier, and several other senior artists; among ­Regnault’s friends, Clairin, Barrias, Blanchard, Laguillermie, and Bida; Coquelin from the Comédie Française; and finally, colleagues of ­Regnault’s father. The group’s leaders remain unknown, but thanks to Painter to Legend

81. Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts, 1876, photo, private collection.

82. Inauguration of the Monument at the École des beaux-­arts to Henri Regnault and Other French Students Who Fell for Their Country, L’Univers illustré, August 19, 1876, private collection.

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poor planning, the campaign closed well short of what was required for a monument “appropriate to the artist and patriot.”17 Despite the shortfall, subscribers rejected a proposal to charge admission to ­Regnault’s upcoming retrospective at the École, perhaps because this would have diluted the solidarity their sponsorship expressed. How the impasse was overcome is unclear, but by the fall of 1872, with twelve thousand francs still outstanding, the campaign was reopened. New donors included several government ministers and the prefect of police—­in other words, a wider circle than the friends and relatives who had first Chapter Six

lined up behind the project.18 Meanwhile, Georges-­Ernest Coquart, staff architect of the École, joined the collaboration, bringing new institutional funding. By the fall of 1872 the designs were approved, with Guillaume, the school’s director, managing the collaboration. The monument was unveiled on the morning of Saturday, August 12, 1876, at a ribbon-­cutting ceremony that drew national attention. ­Between William-­Adolphe ­Bouguereau’s receiving the légion d’honneur and other ceremonies that followed back to back in the August heat, it was nearly two hours before École faculty along with Philippe de Chennevières, director of fine arts, marched from the Hémicycle to the Cour de Mûrier and drew back the black curtain covering the monument. The illustrated press captured some of the formality of the occasion, with numerous dignitaries squeezing into the narrow arcade. I will not gloss the speeches here, except to say that ­Regnault’s example was a primary theme. As Chennevières intoned to the students assembled before him, their future accomplishment was the best revenge: “The victory of French art is the genius of this school and this country.” But make no mistake, Chennevières continued, such accomplishment was not always enough. Students must be ready to make the ultimate patriotic sacrifice. “We must be able to emblazon the facade of our school with the following words: It is here that we learn to honor country through one’s works; here, too, we learn to die for her.”19 Following the unveiling, friends and families filed past to honor the artists whose names were inscribed on the monument. Chapu, returning a few days later, was ecstatic—­“my Youth has its feet in flowers, illuminated by a ray of morning sun.”20 Degeorge gives us ­Regnault as soldier and artist: dressed in his guardsman’s coat, hair buffeted by wind, head slightly turned with resolve. The bust, an image of which was published by L’Art, captured what one observer termed ­Regnault’s combativeness. Not a “born colorist,” ­Regnault became one by the sweat of his brow. And the same militancy drove his conduct on the field: “Does it not seem that at Buzenval that Painter to Legend

83. M. Martinez, after Charles Degeorge, Henri Regnault, 1876, etching and aquatint, private collection.

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84. Charles Degeorge, Medallion of Henri Regnault, ca. 1881, bronze, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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evening, in the grip of I don’t know what irresistible passion, ­Regnault threw out a challenge to death, as if it was some new thing whose secret he wished to know?”21 Degeorge’s attachment to the commission amounted to a fixation. Claretie spoke of his studio as filled with ­Regnault memorabilia, from his hat and coat to photographs of the artist as a child, as a student, in Granada, and more. In 1881 Degeorge again turned his hand to ­Regnault’s features, fashioning a large medallion that he showed at the Salon. The size of the edition remains unknown, but the Luxembourg Museum acquired its copy from Jules Renaudot, who had wed Maria Latini, model for Salome.22 If Degeorge’s bust evoked ­Regnault’s career as painter-­soldier, Chapu’s Youth mourned his lost promise, although whether she was actually mourning seemed open to question. Some feared the lithe nude was insufficiently funereal, as Chapu had not fashioned one of the grave females often associated with commemorative monuments. This girl seemed too young to mourn, and if her costume was antique, her features were not, attributes that gave Chapu’s allegory an unexpected sense of contemporaneity.23 Véron called her “posthumous glory” and the “nation’s muse.” She was “youth rending homage to youth,” opined Castagnary. Surely those “who spilled blood for their country,” added Claretie, deserved such “seductive grace.” For Ballu, her absence of funereal affect suggested “hope for the future.” Far from “the spectacle of military disaster,” Chapu’s “white virgin” knew “neither discouragement nor despair.”24 Celebrated by critics at home and abroad, Chapu’s Youth came to be routinely featured in surveys of French art as well as guidebooks to the city for visitors. An “exquisite work, of the purest conception,” raved the Athenaeum, fifteen years after its unveiling. ­Regnault “promised to become the greatest painter of the century,” said Cassel’s Paris in 1884, steering tourists to the site.25 Its cloistered location within a walled school gave such visits a privileged sense of discovery, but there was no need to seek out the École to absorb its impact. A full-­scale bronze featured prominently at the Exposition Universelle of 1889, and a plaster at the Exposition of 1900. In fact, editions in bronze could be ordered from the Barbedienne foundry in five sizes. A table model for domestic use appears in the background of a family self-­portrait by Jean-­Gabriel Domergue, testimony to the sculpture’s currency within the domestic spheres of artists themselves.26 Other technologies circulated versions Chapter Six

85. After Henri Chapu, Youth, in L’Illustration, August 19, 1876, private collection.

of Chapu’s nude and the installation itself at every price point, including an engraving by Eugène Abot published in L’Art, a watercolor by Émile Camut reproduced in architectural publications, a photograph by Eugène Atget, and many more reproductions of inferior quality. These in turn inspired verses to ­Regnault by authors with no connection to the artist. Suffice it to cite lines composed in 1880 by the jurist Albert Huguenin. Bringing his elegy to a close, Huguenin apostrophizes the marble virgin at the sacred site of his memory, which he wrongly terms his tomb: “And you, young statue, who watches over his tomb / Gracious symbol of love and piety / You, last friend of the genius who succumbs / Daughter of the patrie, virginal beauty, raise” to him “your crown of laurel and oak,” along with “our love and your flowers.”27 The image made appearances in fiction as well. For example, a large terracotta edition of Chapu’s Youth holds pride of place in the study of Angelus Vardoz, a wealthy collector and tastemaker featured in a potboiler by Jean-­Louis Dubut de Laforest.28 More than elite social capital, however, was at stake in such fictional evocations. Consider a visit to the École by André Mauvin, protagonist of La Flambée, a coming-­of-­age novel by the symbolist author Henri de Régnier. Entering the Cour du Mûrier, the young Mauvin becomes lost in the contemplation of ­Regnault’s “young Painter to Legend

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and intelligent” features. Stories about the fallen artist flood his mind, most of all the love he lost when he “marched toward the enemy.” Mauvin wonders, is he destined to follow? “And André thought of that terrible day, of the park at Buzenval covered with snow, of the attack, the retreat, and of the stray bullet that struck the painter-­soldier. Perhaps some day, his end would be the same.”29 Régnier, a member of Mallarmé’s circle, knew the history. Staging an adolescent’s solitary meditations at the site, Régnier invites readers from afar to plot their own imagined destinies, like Mauvin, across the story of ­Regnault’s broken romance. For all this wide currency, students at the École most of all embraced the monument as their own. Rome prizewinners were expected to pay a visit to the monument on their final day at the school. The laureate made his good-­byes with an obligatory solitary visit to the Cour du Mûrier, depositing a crown draped in black crepe at the monument’s base. “Bending his victorious laurels” before the “laurels” of the vanquished, the laureate “salutes one final time those who died for the patrie,”30 ­according to an 1889 book on the École that evokes this ritual. Let it be said, this parting ceremony perhaps flew in the face of a career of an artist who so openly struggled with the demands that the prize imposed. ­Regnault’s memorial stands as no small tribute to the École’s ability to normalize his pedagogical exceptionalism. And yet the school as we speak of it was not only an institution riven by quarrels over curriculum and governance. It was also a multigenerational community of agents who found in ­Regnault a ready and renewable source of solidarity. That community comprised friends and colleagues who rallied to put the monument in place, but it no less comprised teachers and pupils who never knew him, and who brought to the monument new investments in turn. Beliefs about Chapu’s virgin offer a case in point. She may have been iconographically imprecise, but in the corridors of the school, the local view was that she was modeled on the features of ­Regnault’s fiancée. No evidence supports the claim, and yet such lore still belongs to the monument’s history: “Who today, even thirty-­seven years later, passing through the Cour du Mûrier—­who is not deeply moved when seeing ­Regnault’s fiancée, in the guise of Youth, offering [him] a victory palm?”31 The monument’s now faded aura, let me finally add, brings into relief one of those historical ironies that ­Regnault’s story seems to attract in abundance. For two decades copies and adaptations of Chapu’s Youth featured on memorials across France. One privately funded project merits special note: a memorial for another painter killed in the war, never a student at the École, little known at the time, and yet whose name today resonates more widely than that of ­Regnault himself. The death of Frédéric Bazille at the age of twenty-­nine went largely unnoticed in the artistic community, except of course by Manet, Monet, and others Chapter Six

among those soon to be called the impressionists. Enlisting in August 1870 in a regiment of Zouaves, Bazille was killed near Orléans at the battle of Beaune-­La-­Rolande in November 1870. It was a week before his father, Gaston Bazille, crossing Prussian lines, was able to retrieve his body, which had been hastily buried in a shallow trench; and it took Gaston just as long to return with it to Montpellier for reburial.32 In the aftermath of Bazille’s death there was no press, no portraits, no flashbulb memories, and no elegies declaimed in provincial academies. But there is a monument, in fact two: the first at his grave in Montpellier and the second marking the site of his death, both erected by the painter’s father. For the battlefield monument, Gaston enlisted a local stonemason for a simple but impressively scaled hybrid pyramid. For the Protestant cemetery in Montpellier, he set upon something more ambitious. The commission fell to Auguste Baussan, a local sculptor who had been one of Bazille’s first teachers. We don’t know what led Baussan to fix a bronze replica of Chapu’s Youth beneath his bust of the fallen painter, but it must have seemed that Bazille would profit from the association. Painter to Legend

86. Eugène Abot, after Henri Chapu, Youth, 1876, etching, private collection. 87. Auguste Baussan, Monument to Frédéric Bazille, Montpellier, courtesy L’Association mémoire protestante Montpelliéraine.

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In retrospect the gesture was unnecessary. In 1900 Bazille featured in a major exhibition at the Exposition Universelle. Ten years later, a retrospective at the Salon d’Automne cemented his key role in the emergence of impressionism. The posthumous roads traveled by ­Regnault and Bazille cross briefly at the tomb, the first’s fall into obscurity paralleling the second’s rise to fame. In the courtyards of the École, Chapu’s Youth held out the promise of renewal. But its seeds were sown outside the walls that contained Chapu and ­Regnault both.

Images of the Painter-­Hero

88. Horace Castelli, Death of Henri Regnault, hand-­colored wood engraving, Le Monde illustré, 1872, private collection.

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­ egnault was found face down, covered in leaves, his nose broken by R the fall. The illustrated press preferred mise-­en-­scènes more amenable to symbolization. An 1872 plate from Le Monde illustré shows him lying face up as Paris weeps at his side and posterity descends to present him a crown. Four years later, L’Illustration pictured ­Regnault lying mortally wounded, gazing up at his “infinite dream,” and watched over by his fiancée, the nation, youth, or perhaps all three, at least as Claretie would have it.33 The leading weekly credits the drawing to Anton Romako, an Austrian portraitist well known in Paris circles. And the original, adds the paper, belonged to Adolphe Thiers, which is to say that readers across France could participate in the same ritual of remembrance that was undertaken at home by the president of the Republic. Images of the artist appeared in more ambitious formats as well, including Barrias’s monumental Defense of Paris, erected at Courbevoie following a competition launched by the Prefecture of the Seine in 1879 and designed in part to help rehabilitate the city’s wartime image.34 A hundred artists answered the call for participation, the jury whittling the number down before settling on Barrias’s maquette of Paris standing guard over an injured garde mobile. The fallen soldier bears only a passing resemblance to ­Regnault, but Claretie among others seized on the association.35 Verification in this regard matters less than the connotative circuits Chapter Six

89. Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Monument to the Defense of Paris in 1870, La Défense, Paris, France, photo credit: Manuel Cohen / The Art Archive at Art ­Resource, NY.

by now firmly in place. Gustave Doré, for his part, failed to win, but the press that mobilized on his behalf left no doubt as to the allusion: “in a stroke of genius,” gushed Le Monde illustré, which featured Doré’s entry on its cover, “the sculptor has given the soldier the features of Henri ­Regnault, the child who fell at Buzenval.”36 The black banner that hung over the Villa’s facade to mark ­Regnault’s death cast a long shadow over its pensionnaires, among them the sculptor Antonin Mercié. From his Prix de Rome in 1868 to a teaching position at Painter to Legend

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the École and a seat at the Institut, Mercié ascended to the pinnacle of his profession. But he is remembered most of all for his Gloria Victis (Glory to the Vanquished), a student project born at the Villa before triumphing at the Salon, in plaster in 1874 and a year later in bronze (and shown here in a photograph published in La Galerie contemporaine). The story would be frequently rehearsed: Initially Mercié had envisioned a patriotic subject—­the figure of Fame, for example, supporting a victorious soldier. But defeat on the field left him deflated, even blocked. ­Claretie was more pointed, recounting that Mercié arrived in Rome uncertain of his direction. His colleagues expected little of this retiring young man, apparently “without a dream.” All that changed with news of ­Regnault’s death. Seized by a “fever,” his hands “running through the clay,” in less than an hour Mercié had shaped in rough a winged figure of posterity 90. Anonymous photographer, Gloria Victis, in La Galerie contemporaine, littéraire, artistique, photo publisher Goupil & Cie, book publisher Ludovic Baschet, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

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carrying the body of a fallen soldier holding a broken sword.37 Doubtless it is unrealistic to imagine Mercié catalyzed in this fashion, but the larger point is that the story was offered as such by Mercié and his biographers. With Gloria Victis emerging from the pall cast by ­Regnault’s death, Mercié’s allegory seems not just borrowed but felt, to the point of renewing the young laureate’s sense of purpose. Purchased by the city and exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1878, four years later the bronze found a place on the Place Montholon, a small Haussmann-­era park off the rue Lafayette. This modest venue would not suffice, however, and in 1884 it was relocated to the central courtyard of Paris’s new town hall (the earlier hall had been burned to the ground during the Commune). Never conceived of as a war memorial as such, the sculpture was adapted for just this purpose at several locations, including at Chartres, just north of the cathedral. Reproductions in different sizes circulated widely, thanks to the foundry Barbedienne, which sold reductions of Chapu’s Youth in no fewer than seven sizes, including a version at the Museé d’Orsay. Mercié’s Gloria Victis became an image favored in revanchist propaganda put out by the League of Patriots (Ligue de Patriotes), a national network of clubs and youth groups formed in 1882 with the Republic’s blessing, and among whose adherents was Mercié himself. The league’s romance with the sculpture dates to the same year, when Gloria Victis appeared on the cover of Le Drapeau to mark the battle of Wissembourg.38 Ernest Meissonier, noted for his meticulous military subjects and tiny genre pictures, gave ­Regnault pride of place in his Siege of Paris, a multifigure allegory begun in 1871. The specter of famine hovers over the city on a cloud of black smoke as guardsmen and regular forces mount a last-­ditch defense. At the center, a middle-­aged figure of Paris stands with resolve before the tricolor, shielding the fallen artist at her side. Other victims lie left and right, including a father searching for his son and a wife mourning her husband. Meissonier brought to the project his famous commitment to authenticity of detail, for example borrowing ­Regnault’s coat and draping it over his model.39 He also brought Painter to Legend

91. Antonin Mercié, reduction of Gloria ­Victis, 1885, bronze, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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unexpected ambition, imagining that an enlarged version of his allegory might one day adorn the walls of the Pantheon. Certainly this was a futile aspiration on the part of an artist who never painted a large picture, let alone a mural for a major public edifice, and Meissonier’s sketch remains unfinished. But his aspirations were well known, and the idea that the image might command an entire wall at the high temple of French canonicity remained associated with the picture in the following years. We don’t know if the illustrator Émile Bayard envisioned a comparably prestigious destination for his own version of Gloria Victis, an ambitious triptych in pencil exhibited in 1874, featuring hundreds of victims sprawled on the ground and in Glory’s care. If Bayard was holding out for a mural commission, no such outcome was forthcoming, but eventually his work was acquired by the state and sent to the Musée d’Oran in Algiers.40 And while the victims depicted are many, ­Regnault, lying face up in the foreground, would have been easily recognized. Yet another project that took an artist outside his comfort zone was France Discovering the Body of Henri ­Regnault at Buzenval, sent to the Salon of 1879 by Meissonier’s follower Adolphe-­Alexandre Lesrel. The painting is lost, but a report in the press states that it featured ­Regnault bathed in blood as a personification of France adorned with everlastings, as smoke rose up from the ruins behind.41 The symbolist Joris-­Karl Huysmans, less enthusiastic, called it a “farce.”42 Frédéric Levé kept more closely to the script in his Death of Henri ­Regnault, exhibited to acclaim in 1910. Approaching the Buzenval wall, ­Regnault is struck by a sniper’s bullet. Road, wall, woods, ­Regnault himself (wrongly wearing a pack)—­we recognize the setting, even the wound. But of course no one saw ­Regnault fall, and invention guided Levé through and through. For Le Figaro this was a work of profound “character” and “drama,” a response attributable in part to details that punched up the symbolism: two dead soldiers lie on either side of the hero, one of them with his arms outstretched in both lamentation and celebration.43 Similarly, broken branches and debris on the path hint at an interrupted life. Purchased by the commune of Suresnes, near Buzenval, Levé’s painting was installed in the local town hall until June 1940, when the building fell to a German bombardment. A sculpture by the Neapolitan Domenico Jollo, exhibited at the Grand Palais in 1905, offers another version of the terrible instant, with ­Regnault buckling at the knees as he reels from the bullet’s impact. This work, too, is lost but, like the Levé, saw wide circulation in illustrated books on the war. Panoramas represented another means to explore the drama of ­Regnault’s last moments. In 1883 Théophile Poilpot and his junior colleague Stephen Jacob unveiled a rotundal Panorama of Buzenval at the new ­Panorama Marigny, designed by Charles Garnier and prominently Chapter Six

92. Ernest Meissonier, Sketch for the Siege of Paris, 1871, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. 93. Frédéric Levé, Death of Henri Regnault, 1910 (destroyed), photograph, private collection.

94. Domenico Jollo, Death of Henri Regnault, present location unknown, photograph, private collection.

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situated on the Champs-Élysées. Pamphlet in hand, visitors could search out key episodes of the battle, including the fate of ­Regnault, who “carried the fatal mark of those destined to die.”44 Poilpot rehearses the legend: “In an effort to use up a last cartridge, he is felled by a bullet to the head.” That is not what we see, however. ­Regnault stands with his arms outstretched in defiance. What is more, he is not alone, nor does he stride back to the front. The discrepancy was deliberate. As Poilpot explained, the battle’s best-­known victims had fallen at different times over the course of the day, and not even a format as capacious as a panorama could be faithful to the sheer variety of incident. And yet those victims were “inseparable” from memory of the battle, meaning visitors would seek them out. Surely it made sense “to group them ­together.” The panorama was a documentary medium par excellence, but ­Poilpot’s arrangement of victims was completely invented. That was also true for Henri Phillipoteaux’s Battle for Paris, a grand cyclorama that traveled to New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere in the 1880s.45 We don’t know if it featured ­Regnault, but in the case of Poilpot’s Buzenval ­Regnault’s memory was cherished above all. That much is suggested by a bit of ephemera that survives the long-­ago-­dismantled installation, namely a small card or ticket that depicts Garnier’s edifice on one side and ­Regnault on the other, in the pose Poilpot made famous. The tiny memento perhaps speaks louder than the panorama itself, although who first preserved it we cannot say. Poilpot, for his part, found still other ways to keep the flame alive. In 1912 the military gallery at Versailles commissioned him for a scene from the calamitous battle. What Versailles wanted was precisely “­Regnault, brandishing his rifle” in defiance. The press approved; Le Figaro, for example, congratulated Poilpot on his “symbolic synthesis.”46 In 1922 the enormous painting was sent over to the Chateau of Saint-­Maixent, near La Rochelle and home of an infantry academy founded in 1881. The Third Republic honored ­Regnault via major public edifices as well as humbler instruments of official recognition—­for example, streets and squares named after the fallen artist. The road leading to the factory at Sèvres took his name, and the site was marked by a postcard. Streets Chapter Six

95. Théophile Poilpot and Stephen Jacob, Fragment of Panorama of Buzenval (destroyed), © Albert Harlingue / Roger-­Viollet. 96. Card advertising panorama of the Battle of Buzenval, private collection. 97. Sèvres, Avenue Henri-­Regnault, postcard, private collection.

bearing ­Regnault’s name stretched as far as Tangier, although it was Paris most of all that embraced its native son. The rue Saint Paul in the Fourteenth Arrondissement would be rebaptized rue Henri ­Regnault in 1875, and guidebooks steered visitors to No. 1 Place de Collège de France, “home of the brilliant genius and devoted patriot, Henri ­Regnault,“ as Wilmot Harrison notes in his Memorable Paris Houses.47 A life-­size ­effigy of ­Regnault stands on the east facade of the Paris town hall, which was rebuilt following its destruction in 1871. The commission fell to yet another Rome laureate, Jules-­Clément Chaplain. Uniformed but with sketchbook in his right hand and charcoal in his left, ­Regnault stands in the grip of the motif, his attention momentarily at the command of his artist’s eye.48 Chaplain’s conception is faithful—­many artists during the Siege brought along sketchbooks while serving on guard duty. But we might better think of Chaplain as staging the identity of art and patrie in a specifically naturalist key, as a union that operated not only as civic ideal but as ­Regnault’s everyday.

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98. Jules-­Clément Chaplain, Henri Regnault, Hôtel de Ville, Paris, courtesy Norbert Pousseur.

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Contrast this strategy with the image of ­Regnault on the exterior frieze of the Grand Palais, erected in 1900 for the Exposition Universelle.49 Designed by Joseph Blanc and executed by many hands, the frieze offers a triumphant progress of the arts from antiquity into the present. From the École des beaux-­arts to the Albert Memorial, such master narratives served as key instruments of canon formation, and Blanc’s designs are no exception. Scenes of Egypt, classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance resolve into panels featuring the great French and European academicians and finally the modern school. ­Regnault appears in the last panel to the south, next to Delacroix, Ingres, and Rude on his left and recently deceased artists to his right, including Puvis de Chavannes and Charles Garnier. Dressed in his blue uniform, ­Regnault walks alone while his colleagues converse or work. But he is not heading back to the front. His uniform is clean and pressed, and he holds both a palette and a sword. He marches toward glory, defined by the twin attributes of

Painter to Legend

99. Joseph Blanc, exterior frieze at the Grand Palais, photo courtesy Lauren Cannady.

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his genius. By far the youngest of these immortals, ­Regnault stands not for a career but for a career interrupted. Where high accomplishment normally served as the criterion of inclusion, ­Regnault is there because he gave it up. (Such master narratives also speak to the process of canon reform: across the street, Maurice Denis traced a history of French art for his cupola at the Petit Palais, unveiled in 1918. Denis took care to include ­Regnault, needless to say in uniform, but among the moderns attention is focused on Manet, the impressionists, and their successors.)

Educating for Revenge

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Exemplarity was not only a politics but a pedagogy. “It is here,” Chen­ nevières reminded students at the École, “that we learn to honor country through [our] works,” and it is “here, too, we learn to die for her.” The revanchist fervor of the 1880s and 1890s prompted numerous efforts to give this message more militant definition, including at the École, the high temple of ­Regnault’s canonicity. Lest the authority of his example seem to slacken, in 1890 the administration commissioned two editions in bronze of ­Regnault’s death mask, probably under the impetus of ­Gustave Larroumet, from his post at the Ministry of Fine Arts. One copy of the mask, mounted on an impressive bronze base and featuring a laurel honoring the artist and an oak branch honoring the patriot, was installed in the École’s Louis XIV galleries, a large hall filled with European painting and sculpture. The other copy went to the Villa Medici. Where the macabre effigy found a place at the Villa is uncertain, and by now many years have passed since both masks were consigned to storage. But in Rome its echo resonated into the twentieth century. It featured, for example, as a vignette in a 1905 commemorative volume on the Villa, which coincided with Carolus-­Duran’s appointment as director of the Villa for a five-­year term.50 Another institution to embrace ­Regnault was his old school, the Lycée Henri IV (previously the Lycée Napoléon). The librettist Jules Barbier, according to an 1873 press report, donated a large medallion of ­Regnault destined for “a place of honor” in the school’s main hall (it has since vanished without a trace).51 Not until the revanche, however, did the school truly plant its flag on ­Regnault’s memory. In an address at the school delivered in 1889, Larroumet renewed a vow to immortalize the fallen artist on the school grounds. Within a year, a bronze version of Barrias’s bust of ­Regnault, sporting his guardsman’s coat and accompanied by a broken palette, was erected in the main courtyard, where it remains today.52 Larroumet went on to publish his lecture, adding notes on ­Regnault’s classes and grades, reminiscences by instructors, and the etching by Blanc picturing the hole “through which genius made Chapter Six

100. After Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Death Mask of Henri Regnault, 1890, bronze, École nationale supérieure des beaux-­ arts, Paris, © Beaux-­ Arts de Paris, dist. RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource NY.

her escape.” Schools unaffiliated with the artist also signed on to his memory. The headmaster of the Lycée Concordet was said to keep a version of Barrias’s bust of ­Regnault in his office. For its part, Degeorge’s bust of ­Regnault was recast in the early 1890s and requested by several provincial academies. More ephemeral indices point to still wider pedagogical use, including a luxurious edition of Marx’s book on ­Regnault, awarded in 1888 to a pupil from the Lycée de Dijon and accompanied by a certificate that survives to this day, preserved as a token of childhood accomplishment. Stories about ­Regnault were passed down from parents to children. For example, one story tells of “a mommy and a daddy” living at the Painter to Legend

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101. Louis-­Ernest Barrias, Henri Regnault, Paris, Lycée Henri IV, photo courtesy Lauren Cannady.

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102. Roger Marx, Les Artistes célèbres: Henri Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Rouam, 1888), private collection.

­Collège de France. The year is 1849, and the ­Regnault family sits by the fire, joined by Montfort, a painter and family friend. Little Henri is six and will not go to bed—­he is too busy drawing: “And what are you drawing?” asks Henri’s mother. He replies, “It’s about the story you told me, you know, about Joseph—­Joseph, that poor little boy who was sold by his brothers, a long long time ago, in a land far away where the sky is always blue, where there are camels and lions—­oh, how I would like to go there!” The child ­Regnault dreams of traveling to Africa, indeed to “draw it with all its colors.” Finally the clock strikes and the child is put to bed. But first “Henri’s mommy went up to the table and examined little Henri’s drawing. She and Montfort looked at each other without saying a word. And then she put her hands to her eyes. She was crying! She wept out of happiness. Poor good mommy!” So opens Henri ­Regnault, enfant, published in 1882 by Victoire Tinayre, a former Communard and now educational reformer.53 This pocket volChapter Six

ume formed part of an uplifting series designed to support children’s moral education, with other titles on such notables as Hugo, Michelet, Lamartine, and Musset. As Tinayre explained, the series offered children a new and modern roster of heroes, written in language borrowed from children themselves. The stories provided “models to follow” and “models to avoid” as parents prepared their children for “the long moral and intellectual journey all men must make.” In ­Regnault’s case, we learn that the child nearly succumbed to illness brought on by too much drawing, and only conquered it by following a vigorous program of exercise and study. But the details of this childhood tale of transgression and redemption concern us less than the picture of the artist it presents. Its opening lines say almost everything about ­Regnault that parents already knew: his native colorism, his reluctance to follow rules, and, in his dream of travel to Africa, the seed of his future Orientalism. Indeed his drawing of Joseph set among camels and lions hints at ­Regnault’s effort to “orientalize” the Bible. Of course something else was fore­shadowed in the opening tears shed by Henri’s maman. ­Regnault was famous for being dead—­for his willingness to give up a career whose elements were already in place in childhood fantasy.

103. Alphone Mucha, Henri Regnault at Buzenval, in Le Petit Français illustré, January 23, 1892, private collection. 104. After Pierre-­Lucien Sergeant, Death of Henri Regnault, 1888, lithograph, private collection.

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Painter to Legend

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Biographers gave special attention to ­Regnault’s childhood, and ­Regnault himself was frequently cited in patriotic texts designed for children and adolescents, particularly as a secular republic threw itself into childhood education and development. Sorin reached out to ­Regnault’s friends and teachers for his Martyrs du siège de Paris.54 Dealers and art magazines gave special attention to ­Regnault’s youthful production, and thanks to Victor, the Louvre possesses a trove of drawings by ­Regnault executed in his teens. Turning to patriotic literature, boys could learn about ­Regnault in illustrated media, including Le Petit Français, with a weekly readership exceeding two hundred thousand. ­Regnault appeared on its cover in 1892, shown calling out to his comrades as he returns to the front line, “taking a road that led right to the crenellated wall behind which the enemy would fire unceasingly—­a fatal trail, strewn with cadavers and raked with bullets.” Other media targeting juveniles show ­Regnault in combat or dead on the ground, for example a color lithograph based on an 1888 painting by Lucien Pierre Sergeant, one of many loose sheets that boys pasted in scrapbooks or similar vehicles of youthful fantasy. In the aftermath of a humbling defeat, an expanded system of patriotic education reached into the ranks of ordinary soldiers for its martyrs, just as military painters traded top-­down narratives of command and control for the exploits of individual officers and enlisted men. ­Regnault’s status as guardsman, at first sight, made him ill suited to chronicles of military valor, which traditionally focused on the regular army. But for just that reason the example was also uniquely appealing, for his status as volunteer, Parisian origins, and Rome Prize all burnished the image of the Guard. In 1872 an instructor in Marseilles included a panegyric to ­Regnault in a manual for girls enrolled in secondary education. In 1883 ­Regnault was cited in a teacher’s guide prepared by the rector at the Academy in Caen. “One must teach one’s sons that to die for one’s country is the greatest glory,” urged General Joachim Ambert in 1884, recounting ­Regnault’s story in his widely read Gauls and Germans. In 1885 Louis Mainard evoked ­Regnault in his Livre d’or de la patrie. In 1891 a teacher named Lods included remarks on ­Regnault in the inaugural issue of an annual teacher’s manual.55 Or consider the patriotic ­vignettes authored by Charles Bigot, who taught literature at the Saint-­Cyr ­military academy. Writing in an ingratiating, paternal style, Bigot holds up ­Regnault as the book’s sole illustration, even though his narrative stretches back twenty centuries—­“ah, child, how many other examples could I also cite!” The educator François Desplantes told ­Regnault’s story in his Martyrs de patriotisme of 1892. For its part, The Book of the Good Soldier cited ­Regnault several times as it married tales of heroic conduct with systematic principles for military education.56 Still another Chapter Six

text featured a grassroots editorial scheme, with heroic tales sent in by educators across the country. Patrie opens with a photograph of Barrias’s Defense of Paris—­and the story of ­Regnault’s disappearance: “When, at roll call that evening, ­Regnault did not respond, all his friends trembled. Knowing him well, they cried: ‘­Regnault missing? No! ­Regnault killed by the enemy!’ Could there be a better eulogy for a hero?”57 The collection’s collaborative character served as a patriotic exercise in its own right, as the final selection fell to a committee of leading educators, chaired by the indefatigable Claretie. ­Regnault features prominently in La ­Morale en action par l’histoire by Eugène Muller, a collection of patriotic tales going back to French antiquity. A prolific educator, Muller like so many others took care to include the words ­Regnault had made famous: “We have lost many men. We must remake them, better and stronger. To live for oneself is no longer permitted.”58 Muller also includes an illustration of ­Regnault ­lying dead in the woods—­never mind that he was found face down; such details were yielding to a legend now borrowed, recycled, and rehearsed across the patriotic literature. Muller’s volume went through a dozen editions in the 1880s, thanks to its adoption by the Ministry of Public Instruction and by libraries across Paris. ­Regnault was also highlighted in a treatise by Eugène Ory on the role of childhood in national renewal. Ory more than once evoked ­Regnault’s famous words as he called for measures to make French youth “better” and “stronger” in the face of challenges ahead.59 Verses to ­Regnault by Manuel, Banville, and Delpit enjoyed wide circulation. But as far as indexing his exemplarity is concerned, the more minor the poet the better. In 1871 Maxime Lorin spoke of ­Regnault as a modern Archimedes, destined to bring to the art of painting “a new law.” Three years later, members of the Académie d’Angers were presented with verses to ­Regnault by their secretary-­general, Paul ­Belleuvre. Charles Pisson closed his patriotic reminiscences by rehearsing “A Flower on His Tomb,” verses to ­Regnault by Léon Séché. Lines by Ernest de Calonne turn on his “pilgrimage” to the Luxembourg, where he took his place among the crowds gathered around ­Regnault’s Marshal Juan Prim: “I did not know him, but struck by his glory / Wished to dedicate Painter to Legend

105. Death of Henri Regnault, in Eugène Muller, La Morale en action par l’histoire (Paris: J. Hetztel, 1881), private collection.

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these verses in his honor.” Borrowing Homeric tropes, the theologian Henri Chantavoine spoke of France weeping for the one whose “brushes were broken” by “blind death.”60 Or consider the bellicose verses by littérateur Adolph Joanne composed shortly after ­Regnault’s death: “Adieu forever, oh magic palette / Whose colors eclipsed the brilliance of the most beautiful day.” Joanne called on the German emperor to get down on his knees in contrition for the crime he had committed. Still more revealing was the rhetoric of intimacy attached to the verses’ publication. The Journal de Paris confessed to having “broken its own rule” never “to publish poetry in its pages.” No rule came “without exceptions,” however, and the approaching anniversary of ­Regnault’s death led the paper to violate its own policy. In fact Joanne’s verses, the paper noted, had never been “destined to be published.” Perhaps it was an indiscretion to “place them before our readers”—­and yet surely they would offer “sorrowful pleasure.” As this editorial sleight-­of-­hand suggests, the paper staged for its public a private performance, highlighting the verses’ sincerity of feeling by repudiating the circulation that allowed readers to experience the “indiscretion” in the first place.61 From pious primers to popular biographies, numerous iterations of ­Regnault’s story put in place a patriotic mythology that operated side by side with monuments on high. Such work was improvised and haphazard, but this was also a measure of its scope, as a diverse, dispersed, and disorganized group of littérateurs, military chroniclers, historians, journalists, and educators took ­Regnault’s legend in hand. Some were agents of the state, but many others came from disparate networks unattached to the École or other institutions at the center. And while no single person can be credited with keeping the flame alive, that does not mean no one tried. On the political stage, one effort stands out in this regard, set in motion at the sites of ­Regnault’s canonicity and keyed to the regenerative message of Chapu’s Youth. In the closing pages of this chapter, I want to explore this unusual if intermittent campaign. First launched at the École des beaux-­arts, it finally drew to a close on the eve of the Great War, at the solitary obelisk marking the spot where ­Regnault died.

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Noted for his eloquent oratory and volatile activism, Paul Déroulède, poet of the revanche, developed an energized, militant populism that united mass association and a mystical faith in patrie. Eventually Déroulède and his League of Patriots distanced themselves from the Third Republic, which initially had thrown its support behind a national network of clubs and associations created in the 1880s by the league in the name of Chapter Six

civic regeneration. Déroulède’s attachment to ­Regnault seems perhaps unexpected, given the image of the humble “soldier-­laborer” that his verses made famous. But sacrifice for the common good was a regular theme of his discourse, and ­Regnault’s biography offered fertile terrain in this regard; further, the two had belonged to the same dinner club and may have crossed paths before the war.62 To be sure, by the time Déroulède stepped onto the national stage ­Regnault was already enshrined in patriotic orthodoxy. But his polemic sharpened the legend’s political thrust, leaving others to defend themselves before ­Regnault’s sacred aura. In late 1881 the league announced the publication of its Livre d’or de la défense nationale, a roll call of patriotic biographies selected “without attention to politics or to period.”63 ­Regnault was the first hero profiled, and when the fascicules were united in 1888 under a new title he was once more at the head of the line, featuring prominently in an opening set of patriotic reflections and preceding the formal rollout of military heroes. All through the 1880s, league propaganda kept a drumbeat of attention on ­Regnault, with texts by Claretie, Manuel, Delpit, About, and Villiers, selections from ­Regnault’s correspondence, and reproductions of his pictures.64 In 1883 it was Departure for the Fantasia. A month later it was his Sentinel, ­Regnault through the vehicle of his painting calling on Frenchmen to stand guard for the patrie. In 1884 the cycle began anew, this time with verses by Calonne: “Damn the fatal bullet . . . / That stopped him so young in the middle of his path.”65 League-­sponsored ceremonies at battlefield memorials made “collective mourning into a patriotic religion,” in the words of historian Robert Gildea. Buzenval is a case in point. A monument unveiled in 1873 often attracted press attention thereafter, including features on the battle’s best-­known victims. But not until the 1880s did annual ceremonies at the memorial assume the character of political rallies.66 Déroulède himself peppered his speeches with allusions to the “immortal Henri ­Regnault,” but we don’t know if he visited, or even knew of, ­Regnault’s obelisk nestled in the woods roughly a mile away.67 In fact it was not at Buzenval but the École des beaux-­arts that Déroulède first embraced ­Regnault’s memory. Le Drapeau recounts a “pilgrimage” to the school in January 1884, apparently at the invitation of its students. Accompanied by the sculptor Alexandre Falguière, Déroulède spoke to an enthusiastic crowd before depositing several wreaths at the memorial, followed by a viewing of ­Regnault’s Thetis. “What a lesson,” reported Le Drapeau—­“if it is true that art has no patrie, has not our French school demonstrated that this artist had one!”68 A year later Dérouléde was back. But now he came alone, and in a changed mood. In what became one of his most famous orations, Painter to Legend

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106. Alphonse Dubois, medal for the Société de tir, ca. 1885, bronze with wood stand, private collection.

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Déroulède speaks of arriving at the school with his heart heavy with worry. France suffered from a profound from a vacuum in leadership, and the colonial enterprise jeopardized the more urgent task of regaining Alsace and Lorraine. Frenchmen knew how to fight—­but what “indecision,” “incoherence,” and ­“errors” on the part of those who led them. “Will France never again become France? . . . Alas, alas!”69 Passing into the Cour du Mûrier, Déroulède found it deserted. “Crystal pearls” dropped from its fountain like “large tears,” echoing his despair. But as he rounded the arcade, “suddenly” he saw it: “a white, kneeling figure,” gracefully raising herself up to offer “the most glorious of her martyrs the palme d’or of sacrifice.” The sight left him shamed: “Oh how ungrateful I was! Oh how blind is he who complains and doubts himself! Does not the Future stand before us?” Déroulède’s epiphany at the École resonated widely, thanks to a pervasive theme of youthful regeneration that took deep root in republican civics. But he also made the theme more combative, spinning the youthful promise of Chapu’s nude into martial cloth: “I saw this whole nation poised for Duty.” Across France, “gymnasts and riflemen” would gather into “numerous phalanxes of young apprentice soldiers.” Only youth knew neither “fear” nor “egotism.” Only youth promised “resurrection,” “victory,” and “deliverance.” Le Drapeau, following up, published Déroulède’s oration and Chapu’s Youth side by side. Déroulède’s image of Chapu’s nude prevailing over phalanxes of young soldiers was not just talk. The founding in 1873 of the Union des Sociétés de gymnastique de France signaled a new commitment to the cause of patriotic fitness, mobilized across a network of athletic and sporting clubs. The rise of the league gave such associations a militant accent, calling for a new patriotic iconography.70 In 1886 the Union des Sociétés de tir de France (a national association of sporting clubs) adapted Mercié’s Gloria Victis for its brochures, medals, and award certificates. And five months following Déroulède’s epiphany at the École, delegates to the Union des Sociétés de gymnastique de France agreed to strike a medal for use in festivals and prizes. The sum of two thousand francs was quickly raised, and a month later the medal appeared on the cover of Le Drapeau.71 On one side the medal sported none other than

Chapter Six

Chapu’s Youth. But no longer does she raise a palm to ­Regnault’s bust at the École. Now she is out of doors, posed near a vaulting horse and other apparatuses in the clearing behind. “Courage,” “morality,” and most of all patrie were the themes of this prize given out to young athletes in large numbers.

­Regnault Comes to Call League rallies typically coincided with dates on the patriotic calendar. But on one occasion ­Regnault’s memory would be leveraged for unscripted political theater on the international stage. Eventually the conflict migrated back into the community of artists, leaving them in the uncomfortable position of seeming to dishonor ­Regnault’s heroic sacrifice. In February 1891, Empress Frederick, eldest child of Queen Victoria and mother of the German kaiser, made an unofficial visit to Paris. The empress proposed to return to some old haunts, including Versailles, which she had encountered as a child. She also wished to make contact with some leading artists. Overcoming their doubts, about fifty French artists had signed on to an international exhibition in Berlin that spring, with Édouard Detaille and several others agreeing to serve on a jury. With artistic exchanges between the two countries now rare, the empress had it in mind to thank them personally. The idea raised alarms among diplomats from both countries, who feared that such an unscripted outing could easily misfire. They were right. Following the empress’s arrival in Paris, unforeseen circumstances unleashed a fast-­ moving controversy that tested an already tense relationship between France and the German Empire. The visit began without incident. As reporters trailed the widowed empress’s movements, she toured the Louvre and several private collections—­“Jewish collections,” it was observed, the empress apparently signaling her dissent from anti-­Semitic currents in the German bourgeois press. At the new Hotel de Ville she encountered the painter Pierre-­Victor Galland at work on a mural commission. She also called on Léon Bonnat, Detaille, Édouard Dubufe, and William Bouguereau, all of whom had signed on to show in Berlin after some arm-­t wisting from the French ambassador.72 The empress, Bouguereau observed to his daughter, evinced “a particular liking for your father’s pictures.”73 These art-­world visits flattered French sensibilities, and evening banquets drew a prestigious crowd. But her excursions to Versailles and to St. Cloud, which had been burned down by the Prussians in January 1871, proved harder to swallow. The presence of the German ambassador gave the lie to the notion that she was traveling incognito, and the nationalist press

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described her as touring the sites like a conqueror. The upcoming exhibition in Berlin also stirred anxiety. Puvis de Chavannes came out against the idea, and Bouguereau complained that the press was taking him to task: “The papers talk of nothing else—­and in such awful terms!”74 Still, concerns about the empress’s visit seemed destined to fade as the day of her departure neared. Then came news that she would visit the École des beaux-­arts. Enter Déroulède. The quarrel erupted not over a matter of substance but over symbolism, although when it comes to commemoration, symbolism is precisely the point. Following the collapse of Boulangism in 1889, gatherings of the League of Patriots, even its name, had been banned under a law forbidding secret societies. But Déroulède remained a force, thanks to support from affiliated groups and the backing in the legislature of a hundred Boulangist deputies. On Saturday February 25, upon learning that the empress planned to visit the École, Déroulède deposited a wreath at the base of ­Regnault’s memorial. Draped in black crepe, the tricolor wreath sported an inscription with the league’s byline: “Au grand peintre Henri ­Regnault / Mort pour sa patrie / L. D. P. Quand même!” The initials spoke loud and clear, succeeded as they were by the league’s famous rallying cry. Following this bellicose gesture Déroulède moved on to the Place de la Concorde, where he was said to have “refreshed” the flags surrounding the statue of Strasbourg, a regular site of irredentist agitation. By Monday the wreath was gone. Déroulède rushed over to see for himself, accompanied by the journalist and deputy Henri Galli, who raised the alarm in L’Intransigeant. The École’s porter spoke of getting an order from “on high,” though he “could not recall” who signed it. Other reports stated that the wreath had been removed by a “subaltern” who was subsequently “severely punished.” Still others blamed the École’s ­director Paul Dubois, which judging from urgent notes from the ministry is probably correct.75 The École’s obeisance infuriated nationalists, and calls went out for a public inquiry.76 What is next, shouted Henri Rochefort—­remove ­Regnault’s Juan Prim from the Louvre? Could a recent effort to put the painting in storage have been driven by fears of offending the empress? As critics charged him with playing with fire, Déroulède arrived at the Palais Bourbon determined to force a foreign policy debate in the chamber, a prospect that threatened to disturb an already fragile peace. Called over by telephone, Léon Bourgeois, minister of fine arts and of public instruction, joined Charles Freycinet, president of the Council (aka prime minister), who sought to mollify Déroulède through a classic strategy of plausible deniability. Le National was on the scene:

Chapter Six

“That’s impossible! That’s outrageous,” [Bourgeois] cried. “No-­one has the authority to remove such a wreath without my authority. Are you certain of what you are saying?” “Yes, absolutely certain. I saw it with my own eyes. And let me warn you, if that wreath is not returned, my friends and I will put a new symbol on this monument. And at the same time, I will force the cabinet to a debate on its foreign policy.” “I have no fear of such an interpellation,” intervened Mr. Freycinet, smiling. “But as for the wreath, it will be replaced at once.” “I will see for myself that it’s been done,” replied Mr. Déroulède hotly. “That will be unnecessary,” interrupted Mr. Bourgeois. “When you give me your word, I am in the habit of believing it. Believe mine, as I can assure you the wreath will be replaced.” It was now seven in the evening. Déroulède inclined his head, and declared that the Minister’s affirmation was sufficient.77

Déroulède withdrew his threat, noting, however, that the wreath was harmless. “L. D. P.,” he explained, stood not for the League’s initials but for Loi, devoir, patrie, a slogan emblazoned on Le Drapeau’s masthead. As for sending over a new wreath, Bourgeois need not have bothered. That afternoon a hundred Boulangist deputies sent a delegation to the Cour du Mûrier, led by François Grisez, whose district of Belfort had escaped annexation by Germany.78 The lawmakers left behind a wreath to ­Regnault decorated with tricolor ribbons, black crepe, and a large “Alsatian knot,” a symbol of irredentist feeling borrowed from the ribbons worn by Alsatian women on their bonnets. Not to be outdone, a delegation of socialist legislators deposited a wreath of their own. Amidst mounting recriminations, the empress cut short her visit, traveling to London on February 27 under French military escort. “All is well that ends well,” opined La Liberté, after chastising Déroulède and his followers for incendiary conduct. The wreath “has been replaced,” and the “memory of Henri ­Regnault” now gathers “still more laurels.”79 Le Figaro claimed that no more visitors than usual were passing through the École’s doors, but others spoke of amused students enjoying the stream of visitors who now came to view the monument. “Even from the tomb Henri ­Regnault continues to serve his country,” observed one journalist, hailing the artist’s silent intervention.80 And where Déroulède was obliged to compromise, the illustrated press was on hand to make the point, including the cover of the Journal illustré, with ­Regnault’s memorial adorned by two wreaths. Le Petit Parisien, for its part, provided more pointed documentation, including a wreath emblazoned with the league’s initials and adorned with crepe ribbon tied in an Alsatian knot.

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107. Karl Fichot, Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts, in Le Journal illustré, March 8, 1891, private collection. 108. Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts, Le Petit Parisien, March 8, 1891, private collection.

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At the top left the plate featured ­Regnault’s brush and palette and, to the right, a vignette of the artist at Buzenval, taking a bullet. One piece of unfinished business remained—­the exhibition in Berlin. Now it was artists who found their conduct under scrutiny. The Boulangist deputy Laisant, editor of the revanchist Petit Parisien, put words in ­Regnault’s mouth: “If only the stone lips of the artist patriot could have spoken, he would vibrantly have cried: ‘Our place is not over there! Let us remain home!’”81 As the complaints gathered steam, law­makers and journalists of all stripes joined the chorus calling on artists to withdraw. The removal of the wreath had been an act of “pure clumsiness,” conceded Le Siècle. But the conduct of French artists could not be dismissed as an accident. Surely they need “gather no laurels” in Berlin. Caricaturists took note, and among their renderings of the controversy we find R ­ egnault falling at Buzenval, topped by a roll call of artists who had come out against the exhibition, including Puvis de Chavannes and Fremiet. Artists began to speak out: “It’s not with a paintbox that one should go to Berlin, but with a gun,” declared Louis Latour.82 “Art must have Chapter Six

109. Death of Henri Regnault—­French ­Artists Won’t Be Going to Berlin, L’Intransigeant illustré, March 5, 1891, private collection.

a country,” added Emmanuel Frémiet.83 Puvis de Chavannes, France’s “modern Giotto,” insisted that “the place of a French artist is in France.” The Germans would never recognize French “superiority in art,” given that they accomplished nothing except through force of arms. Germany, Puvis added, was “good for sausages, not painting.”84 From the pages of L’Intransigeant Rochefort fueled the fire, canvassing artists and even their spouses. Detaille might have signed on, but never Alphonse de Neuville—­or so claimed his widow, the painter himself having died six years earlier. Had the empress visited her, explained the widow Neuville, she would have brought out studies for The Last Cartridges and The Cemetery at Saint Privat, wartime subjects her husband had made famous. The widow Meissonier, too, spoke up, avowing that after the war not a single German had crossed the threshold of their house.85 La Vie parisienne, for its part, proposed to send to Berlin a bellicose checklist: from Chapu, recently deceased, a version of Youth; from Detaille, Long Live the Emperor! Puvis would send Hope! Henner Alsace! and Mercié, of course, Gloria Victis!—­one militant exclamation point succeeding the next in the revanchist installation.86 Painter to Legend

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As members of the jury dropped out, caught in the crossfire was ­ etaille, doubtless mortified by this turn of events. And “it was Mr. D ­Detaille who was in charge of this effort!” How could the author of The Dream not see the cruel irony in sending to Berlin “his little soldiers, riders, and canons!”87 Back-­pedaling in the face of an appeal from Déroulède, Detaille explained that he and his colleagues had imagined that showing in Berlin was in fact “an act of patriotism.” But it was apparent that they had been “mistaken,” and Detaille apologized and withdrew.88 Bouguereau, for his part, held out, denouncing Déroulède for warmongering and pointing out wryly that the nationalist press sold its papers in Berlin without compunction. We don’t know if it was Bouguereau that the École’s students had in mind, but early in March forty of them marched up the rue Bonaparte, shouting “No to Berlin!” and holding up caricatures of eagles. Others held up brooms, perhaps an allusion to the “Pomeranian street sweeper” charged with cutting ­Regnault down.89 This overheated atmosphere was the setting for ­Regnault’s appearance from the grave. For artists still signed up to show in Berlin, the last straw came on February 26 when they found the following calling card in the morning mail: Henri ­Regnault; 69ème battalion de marche, 4ème compagnie, Buzenval. Sources in the empress’s circle reported that the French press declined to speak of this “macabre” carte de visite, but that is not quite correct. Most papers held back, but Le National put the story on its front page, going so far as to reproduce the card and stating that it had been sent by “a friend” of the fallen artist. L’Intransigeant also made hay from the incident: “Will the artists who were sent this card understand its lesson?” The journalist Gaston Routier, a decade later, spoke of the card as having arrived in the post five or six days in a row. “Why must these feelings of hatred and vengeance be made eternal?” And why must they be attributed to a “dead man, to a soul who at last knows the real Truth?”90 Another casualty was the symbolist writer Remy de Gourmont. Writing in the Mercure de France, Gourmont pushed back against the view that Germany had nothing to teach France in the field of art and culture. Any number of passages from his anarchist polemic would have been sufficient to ignite nationalist rancor, but none more than his treatment of ­Regnault: not even his death at Prussian hands, Gourmont sniped, could make ­Regnault a great artist—­“one less mediocre artist, and there are so many!” Publicly chastised, Gourmont was dismissed from the Bibliothèque nationale, as Octave Mirbeau recalled, for “having failed to place at ­Regnault’s tomb the obligatory crown.”91 The text stands as one of Gourmont’s best-­known pieces of anarchist criticism, and certainly he was correct to note that ­Regnault’s artistic star had fallen. Chapter Six

“Surely one has the right to say he has no genius without getting death threats?” ­Mirbeau queried. But the 1890s were the moment of ­Regnault’s maximum patriotic visibility, and Déroulède’s intervention had torqued up the tension. ­Regnault, Mirbeau rued, was a “symbol of the Patrie.” His cult had become “obligatory and national, like taxes and military service.”92

Enter Déroulède, Again Twenty-­t wo years following the incident at the École des beaux-­arts, Déroulède again embraced ­Regnault’s memory on the national stage. By now conditions on the ground had changed profoundly. The historic transformation that saw Salon painters fall into lasting obscurity was well under way. And nearly spent was Déroulède himself. Exiled in 1899 following an ineffective attempt at a coup d’état, he returned to the Hexagon after being pardoned in 1905. An attempt at political comeback met rebuff at the polls, and thereafter he participated only sporadically in public life. This inauspicious context would be the occasion for a last intervention on the artist’s behalf, a lengthy, poignant, and belated ceremony that brought together the aging remnants of ­Regnault’s network. There was also a change in venue. The group gathered not in the Cour du Mûrier but at Buzenval, before the obelisk that marks the spot where ­Regnault was killed. The domain of Buzenval had changed hands in 1896, apparently with the provision that the new owner maintain ­Regnault’s memorial in good order. Creeping development, however, left the site exposed, and in 1910 the bust was knocked off its pedestal, although it was quickly located in the woods nearby. Two years later the domain was sold to a consortium led by Henry Cachard, a New York lawyer of French descent working in Paris. Passionate for golf, Cachard laid in a fairway on the site, tearing down many of the park walls but avoiding any harm to the obelisk. Déroulède, meanwhile, had begun seeking out the obelisk. In January 1910, following a ceremony at the memorial for all combatants, crowds dispersed as Déroulède and several associates traveled by car to ­Regnault’s obelisk about a mile away, where they laid a wreath. The following year he was back, walking through the forest until he encountered the obelisk “as if lost in a forgotten corner.” ­Regnault’s flame, it seemed to him, was nearly extinguished. Placing a bouquet of violets and a victory palm at its base, Déroulède promised to organize events for the site exclusively.93 Whether he returned a year later is unclear. But in July 1912 a caretaker discovered that the bust had disappeared again. The press noted theft, but next steps were uncertain, given that this was a private memorial and no trace of ­Regnault’s family remained. Painter to Legend

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110. To the Memory of Henri Regnault, Inauguration of Bust at Buzenval, Le Monde illustré, February 1, 1913, private collection.

Claretie was puzzled—­what “crooks, rascals, or clowns” would want to take it? Surely ­Regnault’s features “would not be easy to fence.” Perhaps the malefactors planned to melt it. “Poor ­Regnault,” Claretie sighed, to have to endure such “bad luck.” His Salome gone to America. Buzenval now a golf course—­from “war games” to “games with sticks.” And now ­Regnault’s head lopped off like that of a fallen political leader. “We have toppled him, stolen him, hidden him, and exiled him.” Perhaps out of shame the thieves would abandon the bust “in the woods.” The irony was Shakespearean—­­Regnault’s bronze features might well be found “under a mask made by leaves fallen during a recent storm,” just as the man himself had been, his “face covered in a mask of leaves hardened by coagulated blood.”94 Enter Déroulède, again. “It is shameful that ­Regnault’s bust was stolen, but even more shameful that no one has thought to replace it.”95 The League of Patriots sponsored a new cast of Barrias’s bust, supported by a subscription committee that included Claretie, Mercié, Laguillermie, and the painter Fernand Cormon, like ­Regnault a student of Cabanel. Louis Bernier, director of the École, was enlisted for the cause, along with others allied to ­Regnault’s memory. The unveiling was scheduled for January 19, 1913. But bad weather had muddied the wooded path leading to the obelisk, and the unveiling was postponed. One week later a special train carrying members of the committee and guests left Saint-­Lazare for Saint-­Cloud. From the station a fleet of carriages transported them directly to ­Regnault’s obelisk, topped with the new bust and adorned with flowers, wreaths, a golden palm. Following the singing of the “Marseillaise” at 1:30 p.m., a string of dignitaries recounted highlights of ­Regnault’s life, career, and patriotic death.96 The École’s Bernier served as master of ceremonies, Claretie spoke on behalf of veterans, Mercié for the Institut, Cormon for ­Regnault’s student friends, followed by local officials and finally Déroulède himself. Then came verses to ­Regnault declaimed by a roster of stars from the Comédie Française and silent films. Manuel’s elegy fell to Paul Moune. The young Lorraine actress Léo Malraison took on those of Banville, while another tragedienne presented new work by the Alsatian François Casale. The national and photographic press were on hand, sending reports on the ceremony nationwide. Le Drapeau, now under the editorship of Maurice Barrès, was also on the scene, and in the weeks ahead it published a substantial illustrated pamphlet on the ceremony. Consider, too, a painting by Cormon completed later that year depicting Déroulède surrounded by tricolor flags, with Barrias’s bust of ­Regnault in the background. Readers of Le Drapeau learned of Déroulède’s efforts to discover more about the placement of the obelisk. A certain Dr. Raymond, whose father Painter to Legend

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111. Fernand Cormon, Paul Déroulède at the Monument for Henri ­Regnault, Buzenval, 1913, oil on canvas, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art ­Resource, NY.

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had helped install the original memorial, showed Déroulède around the site. Following an account by the physician of the fighting forty-­t wo years earlier, the pair stood in silence as Déroulède, “overtaken with emotion,” took in this scene “at once so simple and grand.” Finally, Déroulède spoke up. “But how, then, was it determined that ­Regnault fell here, rather than elsewhere?” Raymond explained: the monument had been placed on a small rise a hundred meters from the wall, where ­Regnault might have passed or perhaps stopped to rest. “What is more natural,” he added, “than to imagine that Henri ­Regnault knelt down here, to take cover? Only his head, as he fired, would rise above the edge of this natural parapet—­ and it was his head that was struck by the riposte of some Pomeranian rifleman firing at random to the light of gunfire.”97 The explanation satisfied Déroulède, and the two went on to discuss plans to keep the monument safe. For all the wealth of documentation, the most remarkable record of the events that afternoon is the sound of Déroulède’s voice: an audio recording of his oration to ­Regnault, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale and recorded by Déroulède shortly before or following the ceremony.98 As he exhorted his followers to stand firm in the face of the conflict ahead, Déroulède turned to ­Regnault’s letters, rehearsing as had so many before the famous lines penned a few days before he died: “We have lost many men; we must remake them, better and stronger. We must make use of their example. We must not be softened by easy pleasures. To live for oneself is no longer permitted.”99 Forty-­t wo years after Buzenval, ­Regnault spoke from the grave through a voice he never knew. As crowds applauded his call for national regeneration, a bust inspired by the mask of his smashed face gazed into the woods that had claimed him as victim. Less than a year later Déroulède, too, was gone, his funeral in Paris attracting crowds not seen since that of Hugo. And soon nearly to vanish was the singular mythology woven around ­Regnault himself. It’s tempting to describe this transformation as structural or even paradigmatic: All these biographies, anecdotes, sculptures, verses, stories, Chapter Six

pictures, and patriotic tales had fashioned ­Regnault into an exemplary monument whose shoulders bore the redemptive burden of a national calamity. The edifice was subtended as never before by new, internationalized mechanisms of publicity and reproduction, from panoramas to postcards, from Salon pictures and edition sculptures to official monuments and scrapbook ephemera. And yet it is no less true that this edifice feels belated, sited as it was on the cusp of a profound transformation in the character, dynamics, and sheer scale of wartime commemoration. ­Regnault’s pervasive iconicity helped sustain a cultural politics of revenge. But within four decades of his death, his image would fade from public view, although not because another fallen hero had taken its place. ­Regnault’s monument ceded less to another soldier than to another paradigm—­in short, to new rituals of remembrance, fashioned for an era of total war, that essentially liquidated the kind of exemplary discourse that had made him a symbol. Even the manner of his death seems to put his cult definitely in the past. ­Regnault was killed by a bullet—­generally speaking, just like many other combat casualties in the nineteenth century. His body was found whole, not obliterated by artillery or torn apart by machine-­gun fire, to cite the most common causes of death associated with World War I. Of course this conflict was also marked by a massive increase in the number of casualties. The ­Regnault cult was particularizing and heroic, from accounts of his glamorous trajectory to his pictures reproduced in countless number and the story of his romance. Can anything seem more dissimilar to the identical tombs numbering in the thousands that carpet the battlefields of the Great War, each marked with a name and little more? The edifice built in ­Regnault’s name seems utterly foreign to this new “democracy of death”—­and foreign, no less, to the sacred anonymity of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, set under the Arc de Triomphe on Armistice Day in 1920.100 All this and more, it might seem, would have been sufficient to lay ­Regnault’s legend to rest. But in fact it required still more. Its vanishing was underwritten by yet another development, distinct from commemoration as such. By the time Déroulède and his colleagues gathered around the obelisk where ­Regnault fell, the artist once tagged as a future chef d’école looked like nothing of the kind.

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Painter to Legend

Canonicity *

7 *

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In 1909 Henri Cazalis, now a physician and distinguished poet, set about writing a volume of reminiscences in an exemplary key. It seems scarcely surprising that a text provisionally entitled Memories of Artists and Heroes should include remarks on his friend Henri ­Regnault, now dead nearly four decades. But the task, Cazalis feared, would be a melancholy one. ­Regnault seemed to him nearly forgotten. Soon memory of his “luminous soul” would pass “into the night of death,” just as his pictures, growing darker “with each passing hour,” threatened to disappear. It might well take some kind of “affirmation,” Cazalis wondered, for posterity “still to believe in the reality of ­Regnault’s genius.”1 With Cazalis’s death the following year, no such affirmation would be forthcoming. Nor would it have mattered, for forty years on, the reality of ­Regnault’s genius seemed precisely in question, although not because his paintings had darkened with age. What had changed was the world around them. We have learned a great deal in recent years about how canons in the visual arts are made. Impressionism and its aftermath serve as a case in point, as a great wave of contextual studies has laid bare the diverse economic, institutional, cultural, and political interests that converged to put the new canon in place. Of course canons are contested, expanded, and revised. They yield to calls for greater inclusion, to reassessments of artists left out or kept out, and to still other efforts to question or expose embedded investments or even biases. But canons are not just made but unmade; they collapse and lose their authority. The process attracts little attention, however, and perhaps it is no wonder. With our interests and values apparently no longer at stake, exploring how works of art lose their cultural capital may seem to put the question backwards. And yet our disavowals too demand interrogation, especially in the case of art that might seem misguided, mistaken, or even immoral. It is hard, perhaps, to imagine an entire system of art making being the target of

such complaints. But one example lies close at hand: the wreckage our modern canon left behind. Whether we call it “official art,” “academic art,” or “Salon painting”—­ whether we call them academics, Salonniers, pompiers, or something else—­is mainly a question of convention. We know their names and we know what happened: within a few decades a mode of art making built to last in principle forever seemed almost to vanish from the horizon of European artistic accomplishment. We could single out any number of indices in this regard, but since the topic is ­Regnault, the fate of the prize he won in 1866 tells a dismal tale. For two centuries the Prix de Rome had structured the curriculum at Europe’s most prominent art school. And yet to speak only of painters, a mere handful of laureates from the later nineteenth century command attention comparable to that lavished on numerous Paris-­based artists who never or only briefly passed through the École, and who never lived off the diet of public commissions made available to laureates following their return from Rome—­hardly the ­outcome envisioned for an institution that commanded an unparalleled cultural charge and substantial resources. Today only specialists recall the careers of such former giants as Luc-­Olivier Merson, who won the prize in 1868, or Albert Besnard, who won it in 1874. And even specialists would be hard pressed to name a single painting by Gérôme’s son-­in-­ law Aimé Morot (1873), Gérôme’s student Joseph Wencker (1876), or Bouguereau’s pupil Charles-­Amable Lenoir (1890), to cite some of the more successful laureates in this chronology of unknowns.2 If institutions change at a glacial pace, the market-­sensitive practices of art publishers offer a more nimble index of canon reform. Take the case of Les Peintres illustres, a mass-­market series launched in 1909 by Pierre Lafitte under the editorial imprimatur of Henry Roujon, sécrétaire perpetuel of the Academy of Fine Arts. The principal attraction of this “art library in color” was less the brief, anonymously authored texts than the quantity of color plates. Volumes on Courbet, Fantin-­ Latour, Moreau, Whistler, Bastien-­Lepage, Stevens, and Ziem, among others, all hint at a historic reset. ­Regnault also made the cut, along with such Salon and academic luminaries as Meissonier, Hébert, Henner, Baudry, Benjamin-­Constant, Gérôme. An ecumenical selection, at first sight, but in fact the series lay Canonicity

112. Henri Regnault, Les Peintres illustres (Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1913), private collection.

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at the edge of a precipice. We owe to Les Peintres illustres the last of seven books published on ­Regnault, along with the last volumes on Baudry, Henner, Benjamin-­Constant, Hébert, Meissonier, and Gérôme until the scholarly revivals that began in the 1980s. To be sure, some of these artists have returned to the public eye. We value their work as part of our cultural patrimony. We call on it to document late nineteenth-­century social and cultural concerns. But we might better describe the Salonniers as less rehabilitated than recuperated under rigorously controlled conditions, with some still hauled out for scorn—­such as Gérôme, whose Snake Charmer emerged as Exhibit A in a modern critique of academic painting as doing colonizing work. Canons change all the time, but surely there are few precedents for a drastic reversal that saw so many officially credentialized artists fall into opprobrium and disrepute. Simply put, a massively resourced artistic system of unparalleled prestige and authority collapsed at the threshold of the modern world, apparently doomed to expire under the weight of its institutional, pedagogical, and aesthetic contradictions. In the final pages of this book I explore the making and unmaking of ­Regnault’s artistic reputation. I begin with the exhibiting practices that put his posthumous reputation in place, from his retrospective at the École to efforts by museums and collecting elites to acquire his work. I also consider the sale of his pictures to collectors abroad, chiefly the United States. In New York, Boston, and elsewhere, dealers, collectors, art students, and museums rallied around his example, although not without conflict as local interests diverged. ­Regnault also benefited from an impressive critical apparatus, supported by a vast number of reproductions circulated at every price point. Paul Rajon engraved Salome, Lionel Le Couteux undertook Marshal Juan Prim, several hands took on Execution without Judgment, and to Charles Waltner we owe a fine rendition of Hassan and Namouna, to cite some of the more notable efforts to keep ­Regnault’s pictures in the public eye. Exhibitions and other instruments of canonicity left ­Regnault overexposed, however. Indeed the very art-­world networks that made him a legend would eventually supply the most telling indicators of his decline. By the 1890s some of his best-­known pictures had gone into storage. Others simply disappeared. Critics also withdrew their support. A new generation nurtured on impressionism and allied developments drove apart the seeming identity between the French school of painting and the institutions that historically spoke for it, namely the École, the Salon, and the Institut. ­Regnault did not go away quietly, though. The sale of Salome in 1912 unexpectedly thrust painter and legend once again into the international limelight. But far from offering “affirmation” of his genius, the sale saw artists and critics in large number turn against ­Regnault, Chapter Seven

and in particular against the idea that art and patrie could exist in such perfect union. To be sure, with the rise of modernism such a development was perhaps inevitable. But the auction unleashed a conflict that was not just dramatic but unsavory. The antipodes of art and patriotism found themselves partly reversed, and those once charged with protecting ­Regnault’s name now took on the task of destroying it.

113. Charles Waltner, after Henri Regnault, Hassan and Namouna, etching, private ­collection.

Paris Within eighteen months of ­Regnault’s death, a suite of public and private initiatives gave his truncated corpus exceptional visibility. The launch began somberly in November 1871 with the annual exhibition of the envois de Rome. In place of ­Regnault’s envoi, visitors encountered an easel draped in black cloth, topped with a laurel crown.3 Reports in the press called attention to this solemn homage, including a notice by Arthur Duparc, now at work on ­Regnault’s letters. Duparc recalled gazing dolefully at the spot reserved for ­Regnault’s last envoi, although it’s doubtful that it was close in size to what the colossal painting would Canonicity

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have needed. Three years running Duparc had gone to the École’s galleries to follow ­Regnault’s progress. But now his “brush was broken,” and “a funerary monument” took the place of his envoi.4 Victor ­Regnault took his son’s vocation to heart. As executor of his son’s estate, he set upon preserving Henri’s memory according to the index that would have mattered to the painter most of all, the memory of his paintings: “I have just one thought, it dominates everything, at the expense of all others. Something of ‘poor Henri’ must stay in France, and for all to see.” Only “two great pictures” by his son were not already spoken for—Juan Prim and Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco. Might they not go to a museum, even the Luxembourg, France’s preeminent gallery of modern art? Might not their sight at the Luxembourg “inspire in the viewer a moment of regret”? His son had not been pretentiously ambitious, Victor insisted. Never would Henri have presumed for these paintings such an auspicious destination. But now it was different. There might be merit in giving a “place of honor” to a young artist who followed “no tried and true path.”5 Clairin had reassured him that it might be possible, and certainly there would be no financial obstacles. As for the rest, what about an exhibition? Initially Victor envisioned something modest. Durand-­Ruel or another dealer, for example, might gather some of ­Regnault’s recent work, allowing the public to discover “the character and variety of his talent.”6 Surely a selection of his Italian, Spanish, and Moroccan work might constitute “a respectable ensemble.” Victor was adamant, however, about the ultimate destination of ­Regnault’s work. It must circulate: “I don’t want to bury these objects in my tomb.” They must go to “private galleries.” They must “acquire value in the marketplace.” Only then “will the name of Henri not be utterly effaced from the record of painters. That, today, is my only ambition.” Among the historical ironies contained in the ­Regnault legend is that none and all of Victor’s fears were realized. To an extent he never imagined, the memory of his son’s example would echo across French commemorative culture for decades. Three significant paintings by the artist entered the Louvre, not to mention a large body of watercolors, drawings, and smaller works. Elite collectors on both sides of the water competed for opportunities to purchase his work, and countless readers absorbed accounts of his heroic career. Visitors retraced his footsteps in Rome, Granada, and Tangier. And yet forgotten ­Regnault was, swept away not just by the march of time but by an artistic reset against which all the formidable instruments of canonicity delivered on his behalf proved powerless. At the risk of sounding trite, “ironic” does not begin to cover it. For let it be said, not in a million years could anyone, least of all Victor, have imagined that his own posterity in the visual arts might match Chapter Seven

114. Henri-­Victor Regnault, Sèvres, the Seine at Meudon, carbon print, digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

or exceed that of his son. Nor could have the friends and colleagues of the distinguished chemist, physicist, and administrator who composed obituary notices for Victor when in 1878 he passed away on the seventh anniversary of his son’s death. Still less could the academicians at the Institut who assembled on the centenary of his birth in 1910 to celebrate his scientific achievements. How could they, since none mentions except in passing the photographic practice that has established Victor as a pivotal figure in the early history of this definitively modern medium, to the point where from the 1970s to the present collectors and museums have competed to purchase Victor’s carbon prints and calotypes on the rare occasions they surface?7 Established as a public gallery for contemporary art in 1818, by ­Regnault’s day the Luxembourg Palace Museum mostly acquired work from the Salon or directly from artists’ estates. Traditionally, curators allowed ten years to elapse before determining whether something in the Luxembourg should be transferred to the Louvre or consigned to a less prestigious location, typically outside Paris. Thanks to this formidable charge, the Luxembourg had long commanded the ambitions of French artists, who effectively calibrated their practices with a view to joining its collections.8 But the museum was also fatally rigid. A protocol designed to be meritocratic and self-­correcting was harnessed to the Salon and its awards and hence was ill-­suited to tracking artistic developments outside this traditional venue. Notable efforts to expand its collections included the Caillebotte bequest in 1894, which saw the Luxembourg accept forty paintings by Manet, Cézanne, and their peers over the objections of the Académie des beaux-­arts. Efforts to adapt aside, the Luxembourg continued to purchase grandes machines up to 1900 and Canonicity

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beyond, and we may count the gallery as complicitous in Salon painting’s survival into the twentieth century. Whether the Luxembourg even wanted ­Regnault’s pictures seemed uncertain, but Victor’s immediate problem was that he did not have them. ­Regnault had consigned Juan Prim and Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco to Paul Durand-­Ruel, who exhibited them briefly in Paris before sending them to London after the outbreak of war. British critics recalled their memorable effect: “Can we not all of us remember turning in from the murky atmosphere of the London streets to a small dark gallery in Bond Street, and standing astonished opposite the Execution?” Another critic relished the “hot delight” the picture inspired—­a work so outrageous it could have been painted only by “a native of Paris, ‘center of civilization.’”9 ­Regnault’s death, Victor feared, would surely spark buyer interest, although Durand-­Ruel himself recalled that it did not. Clairin proposed that the paintings be sent to an exhibition scheduled to open in South Kensington, but again Victor resisted. Any foreign venue might complicate efforts to have ­Regnault’s work enshrined at the Luxembourg—­“my desire is not to ­allow my poor boy to be forgotten in his country.”10 Philippe de Chennevières, curator of the Luxembourg, took credit for acquiring both pictures.11 By the fall of 1871 they were back in Paris, and arrangements for their transfer to the Luxembourg seem settled. But early the next year Victor learned that they were being sent to Bordeaux to be included in an exhibition of contemporary painting. Word that Jules Simon, minister of public instruction and deputy from Bordeaux, was behind the loan led Victor to fear that a conspiracy was afoot to keep them there permanently. Simon and ministry officials sent assurances this was not the case, but the matter did not rest until Charles Blanc, directeur des beaux-­arts, withdrew the paintings, despite the fact the exhibition livret had already been printed.12 A hybrid network of public and private venues also sent ­Regnault’s work around. In February 1872 three magnificent Orientalist water­colors given by ­Regnault to his fiancée featured at the annual exhibition of the Cercle de l’union de l’art. Founded as a private exhibiting society in 1860, the Cercle occupied a suite of eighteenth-­century rooms overlooking the Place Vendôme—­recently “widowed of its column,” to cite the felicitous phrase of Gautier in his review for L’Illustration.13 Admission was normally reserved for those furnished with a card sent to them by a member of the society, a strategy designed to attract a more exclusive clientele, for example the emperor of Brazil, said to have left with a Gérôme “under his arm.”14 On this occasion, however, the viewing was open to all. Approximately one hundred paintings hung on the red walls of the rococo interior. Nothing on view spoke directly of l’année terrible, but as far as Chapter Seven

Le Temps was concerned the omission was just fine: “Let us take from this odious past only what stands as lessons for the future, and if we must bring our misfortunes to mind, let it be so as to efface their trace.”15 The installation launched a veritable ­Regnault season. “Scarcely having entered the small room on the Place Vendôme, one exclaims ‘hooray for ­Regnault!’”16 Mounted on large mats with generous margins, the watercolors were set against three luxurious red cloths, with a yellow curtain behind to protect them from the sun. Rumor had it a speculator had offered one hundred fifty thousand francs for all three, and although none was for sale, such gossip primed public interest.17 A few critics rehearsed objections first raised in ­Regnault’s lifetime, namely that he 115. Exposition l’Union du cercle, L’Univers illustré, February 24, 1872, private collection.

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Canonicity

had given himself over to rich effects of decoration at the expense of feeling and moral purpose. But with Gautier as guide and Salome still fresh in the public’s memory, the watercolors offered further testimony of ­Regnault’s transgressive education in the land of the sun. “Oil and water­color” intermixed “in ecstasy,” enthused La Vie parisienne, leaving the “fat doctors of art” to lean forward in amazement, “searching from the tips of their beards for the formula to transmit to their followers.”18 And thanks to La Vie parisienne, we have some sense of the excitement of the occasion, with an oversize version of ­Regnault’s watercolor prominently foregrounded in the glamorous installation along with his bust.

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It was a cold, foggy Sunday morning in March when Le Moniteur’s art critic set out for the École’s galleries on the Quai Malaquais, steadying himself for an hour of somber contemplation. As he turned the corner, he discovered five hundred people waiting in line.19 This was dis­ingenuous—­he knew full well that ­Regnault’s retrospective was a runaway success. A brief catalogue featured an inventory of ­Regnault’s work prepared by the color merchant Haro, along with texts by Gautier, recruited at the last minute by Geneviève Bréton. Given the short notice, it was enough, she told Gautier, for him simply to republish his previous writings on the artist. Gautier did just that, adding further remarks after viewing the installation in progress. ­Regnault, he had written earlier that winter, had “the gift.” It was “not about meriting it. One simply has it.”20 Retrospectives of recently deceased artists had been staged at the École since the 1850s, but not under circumstances such as these. A career terminated at the age of twenty-­seven put the lie to any notion of saying something definitive about ­Regnault’s oeuvre. And yet never before, Victor claimed and probably with justice, had so many had to fight their way into the École’s galleries. VIPs were admitted after the doors closed, but until 4:00 p.m. the galleries were impassable. Midway through its run, organizers rushed to extend the exhibition for another week. How the “beautiful ladies” in their fine costumes were able to negotiate the traffic, Victor could not imagine.21 The illustrated press offers some sense of the glamour of the occasion, as crowds gathered along the Quai Malaquais. Another plate depicts the crush inside, including a view of Barrias’s bust, set upon a pedestal draped in velvet and adorned with laurel wreaths, white camellias, and finally violets deposited each day by visitors.22 “It’s not just a visit,” rhapsodized Le Voleur, “it’s a pilgrimage.”23 The installation featured over one hundred fifty works, sent in by friends of the artist from Paris, Rome, and Tangier, many of them framed for the occasion. “Everything shines!” exclaimed Louis Augé. “It’s an enormous ray Chapter Seven

116. Entrance to the École des beaux-­arts during the Henri Regnault Exhibition, Le Monde illustré, private collection.

117. Crowds at the Henri Regnault Exhibition at the École des beaux-­arts, Le Monde illustré, private collection.

of light, leaving the eyes ravished and the spirit enthralled.”24 L’Univers illustré featured pictures by ­Regnault on its covers for two weeks running, and another media outlet displayed a dozen works by ­Regnault radiating from his portrait at the center, while Paris-­artiste devoted most of its March issue to the exhibition. Some critics complained about the large number of sketches and studies: “I must protest against this deplorable tendency, in the case of posthumous exhibitions, to exhibit the most minor sketches, the most insignificant studies of the master or artist they are intended to glorify.”25 But mostly this lens onto ­Regnault’s processes generated enthusiasm, with social elites seizing on such close looking Canonicity

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as cultural currency: the “princess G . . . ,” the “Duchess of M . . . ,” the “Vicountess of D . . . ,” each “goes into ecstasy” before a sketch “whose only purpose” was a “quick notation” done on the spot, its meaning “unintelligible” to anyone but the artist and destined to be “thrown away.”26 Among the celebrities to make the pilgrimage was Sarah Bernhardt, sporting a scarf on which she had gathered “all the treasures of ­Regnault’s palette.”27 Automedon had already embarked for the United States. But in its place was an impressive oval replica, in ­Regnault’s hand, commissioned for the dining room of a Marseilles men’s club. Also sent up from Marseilles was his Execution without Judgment, apparently just returned from an exhibition of its Cercle artistique, where it was draped in black crepe and assigned “a place of honor.” The city of Marseilles, however, found itself in bad odor thanks to its refusal to lend Judith and Holofernes, acquired in ­Regnault’s lifetime following pressure from local elites.28 Gérôme cited the dangers of travel, a fear he thought exaggerated. Others claimed that the request came too late and without the requisite forms—­“and so it is in France, one arrives always too late, thanks to bureaucracy.”29 Still another journalist charged the city with seeking payback for ­Regnault’s bourgeois origins, as ­Regnault had suffered the misfortune of not being a Communard. Left-­wing members of the Marseilles council viewed his battalion as reac and ­Regnault as a reac in turn. And yet was it not ­Regnault who “knew not to flee from the enemy”?—­an allusion to battalions from Belleville charged with deserting the field at Buzenval. The journalist later changed his story, reporting that the city never declined the loan request and that the mayor was conducting an inquiry.30 Salome arrived late and almost did not make it at all. Adèle Cassin had initially refused to lend the picture, despite entreaties by the École’s director. Writing to Montfort, Victor confided that Cassin wanted a guarantee of one hundred thousand francs, which the École refused. On opening day Victor arrived at her house with the color merchant Étienne Haro and several of his men. Against what he had been led to expect, he found Cassin to be a “simple woman,” filled with “goodwill.” The famous grande horizontale objected that two previous requests had come in an “imperious” and “humiliating” manner. To Victor’s entreaties she yielded, however. The painting was wrapped in a tarp forthwith and taken to the École, where it was put under natural light “to splendid effect.”31 Among other misadventures, Le Figaro reported, a painting by ­Regnault had been stolen from a crate sent up by Clairin from Tangier. In fact the missing painting was ­Regnault’s Arab Man with Two Dogs, which Prosper d’Épinay had shipped from Rome, or so clarified Louis Gonse in a note about the lost painting a decade later.32 Artists are not always well served by retrospectives, and such an ambitious installation carried risks. Charles Garnier, writing in La Liberté, Chapter Seven

spoke of a whisper campaign against ­Regnault on the part of peers and teachers grown tired of all the praise bestowed upon the artist thanks to his patriotic death. This skepticism, “at first timid and hesitant,” had in recent months grown more “persistent,” and with ­Regnault’s work now submitted to public review, it threatened to “explode” into the open. But the doubters had been silenced, Garnier assured his readers. The retrospective had definitively “suppressed” concerns about ­Regnault’s merits—­“it’s the work itself that speaks of his power as an artist.” Surely ­Regnault was “a master on the rise.” He had “produced so much,” and “so quickly,” that “one almost forgets that he could have done still more.”33 To be sure, some work left critics puzzled, particularly his Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly traced ­Regnault’s “epilepsy” of color to the “exhausted” and “anemic” character of his century, seemingly so prone to seek out “violent sensations.”34 A flurry of excitement surrounded sharp remarks by Louis Veuillot in the arch-­Catholic flagship L’Univers. The theologian lamented that such brilliant hands should have given themselves over to the impious materialism of his era. But his complaints met with objections in turn, including a rebuttal by Louis Ratisbonne, a Dante scholar and librarian at Fontainebleau, who charged Veuillot with evincing the intolerance of a medieval monk.35 Another theologian, Athanase Coquerel, struck a more positive note. He described ­Regnault as working through the indiscretions of his youthful exoticism before he could realize more truly elevated ideas.36 Saner times lay ahead, others agreed, pointing to ­Regnault’s Departure of the Pacha and other smaller works completed in Spain and Tangier. “Never has a painter of light found such intensity of brightness,” marveled Chesneau, who saw in ­Regnault’s last pictures the prospect of a reformed practice along naturalist lines.37 A week following the retrospective, a sale at the Drouot sent ­Regnault’s oeuvre into the marketplace. Dealers stayed on the sidelines as elite collectors bought everything in sight—­“each wanted his own ­Regnault large or small, drawing or painting.”38 Prices were strong, the auction netting nearly one hundred fifty thousand francs, an impressive sum given that most of the major paintings had been spoken for. The previous February, applause had broken out when ­Regnault’s Moroccan Sentry was sold at twenty-­four thousand francs to the Baron Edmond de Rothschild—­the hammer price exceeding that of Delacroix’s Ophelia, also on the block that day.39 Perhaps it was coincidence that at ­Regnault’s estate sale ­Edmund’s brother, Gustave de Rothschild, bid the same price for a youthful decorative panel. But he was not the only member of the banking dynasty to participate. Arthur de Rothschild also purchased work at the sale, as did the baroness spouse of Nathaniel de Rothschild, who paid six thousand francs for an Alhambra watercolor. Canonicity

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118. Henry Regnault, The Madrilena, Comtesse de Barck, Seen from Behind, 1869, water­color and black ink over pencil, Musée du Louvre, © RMN-­Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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The color merchant Haro took home ­Regnault’s Departure of the Pacha for ten thousand francs. And the Louvre put forty-­five hundred francs toward ­Regnault’s charming portrait of the Countess de Barck seen from behind—­a watercolor, Victor noted with satisfaction, that ­Regnault had completed in a few hours. Three years later the Louvre purchased an oil painting by ­Regnault of the same sitter.40 Chapter Seven

Support levels for ­Regnault remained strong for decades, thanks in part to limited supply. But high prices also spawned forgeries and false attributions. In 1875 the New York Tribune claimed to have exposed as fake a study of Salome that had recently been offered by a New York auctioneer. Other papers sent their congratulations—­“the Tribune has deserved well of the public for the persevering energy with which it has hunted down these rascals and exposed their game.”41 In April 1880, a trove of thirty drawings, sketches, and watercolors by ­Regnault was auctioned at the Cercle from the estate of his friend Édouard-­Théophile Blanchard, dead at the age of thirty-­five.42 The sale in support of Blanchard’s family generated substantial attention, overshadowing Manet’s self-­organized solo exhibition at the Vie moderne. With such stars as Bastien-­Lepage, Guillaumet, and Gérôme sending in work in support, Le Temps predicted that collectors would “go wild.” But the “real battle” would be fought over the ­Regnaults, several of which topped the sale at three thousand francs.43 The Luxembourg also sent ­Regnault’s work around. Both Execution without Judgment and his Marshal Juan Prim appeared in the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873, drawing the attention of local artists and critics.44

* Telling the story of reputational collapse poses a singular challenge. Invisibility is the measure, and yet by definition its process passes unseen. From the critic’s pen to the auction block, the great edifice of academic art was not so much attacked as ignored. As financial, institutional, and art-­historical resources gradually realigned in support of the impressionists and their heirs, countless masters of the Salon fell silently out of sight. Only few records survive to indicate when paintings were taken down or put into storage, and only rarely can we determine when a picture failed to sell or was bought in. By definition we cannot know exactly when a work was lost, only that it has disappeared. Art criticism offers another measure of invisibility. ­Regnault was the subject of hundreds of essays and reviews in the first decades following his death. But after 1900, interest in the artist declined precipitously. The sale of Salome in 1912 brought a resurgence of writing on the artist, but critics mostly used the occasion to clarify their positions against academic art. The years ahead saw almost no writing on the artist. A modest installation at the Louvre in 1921, timed to mark the half-­centenary of his death, attracted brief attention. The centenary of his death passed unnoticed. Sending pictures into storage is not typically a topic of public interest, but ­Regnault’s prestige exposed such activity to scrutiny, perhaps slowing his decline. Sometime following its transfer to the Louvre, Execution Canonicity

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without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco was put in storage. Le Figaro’s Auguste Marcade reported complaints about its disappearance in 1884, apparently to no avail, as two years later Marx confirmed that it was gone.45 In the late summer of 1890 Juan Prim, October 8, 1868 was next to disappear, whether permanently or provisionally we don’t know. With the Louvre in receipt of Jacques-­Louis David’s Sacre de Napoléon and Thomas Couture’s Decadence of the Romans, curators were pressed for space. But after complaints in the press (notably by the painter Georges Tiret-­Bognet), officials denied that a plot to bench the painting was afoot, and by November Prim was back on the wall.46 Prim remained in the Salle des états, reserved for large masterpieces of nineteenth-­century art, until the 1920s. ­Regnault’s copy after Velázquez’s Surrender at Breda saw more attention than ­Regnault himself would have liked. Following his death it was shown in Charles Blanc’s Musée des copies, located in the Palais de l’industrie on the Champs-Élysées. ­Regnault had grown bored with the project and handed it off to a friend to complete, but his death on the field gave the painting new luster. Chroniclers in the press cited ­Regnault’s copy as among the highlights of the new museum, his choice of Velázquez hinting at the maverick, combative character of his academic course of study. With the closing of Blanc’s ill-­fated project, ­Regnault’s painting went to the Salle Melpomène at the École des beaux-­ arts, where it continued to feature in guidebooks until the mid-­1920s, when it finally went to storage.47 Missing paintings serve as another measure of reputational collapse. ­Regnault’s oval replica of the Automedon was traded between several Marseilles clubs before it was acquired by a Paris merchant for thirty 119. After Henri Regnault, Departure of the Pacha, in Roger Marx, Henri Regnault (1843–­1871) (Paris: Rouam, 1886), private collection.

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120. Albert Duvivier after Henri Regnault, Departure for the Fantasia, 1876, colored wood engraving, private collection.

thousand francs and “took the road to America.”48 In 1902 an agent for Cottier purchased it for twelve thousand five hundred dollars from Boussod & Valadon in New York, the highest price paid at Mendelson Hall that day. In 1996 the painting resurfaced after an eighty-­year hiatus, fetching an impressive sum but only a fraction of its original value. Alas, several pictures completed in Tangier saw no such favorable outcomes. As noted earlier, the color merchant Haro purchased ­Regnault’s Departure of the Pacha in 1872. It remained in his family until sold by Sedelmeyer in 1892, where it featured in the catalogue as “­Regnault’s Last Painting,” accompanied by a lengthy description crediting the artist with pushing his brush “to the limit” of legibility.49 The painting featured in London at the Franco-­British exhibition of 1908, but after that the trail runs cold. Departure for the Fantasia, exhibited at the 1884 Exposition Universelle, met a similar fate. ­Regnault seems to have given the painting to Léon

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­ raissinet of Marseilles, who had supported his travel to Tangier. After F passing into another collection, it was purchased in 1886 by Knoedler for export to the United States. The press reports that Knoedler had also offered a “fabulous price” for Millet’s Angelus, apparently in the same collection. The latter’s owner could “not be tempted,” but with this information in hand we can identify Fantasia as belonging to the industrialist Pierre-­Eugène Secrétan, remembered today for having donated the copper used to sheathe the Statue of Liberty. The “hero of Buzenval,” opined the New York Times, had left few masterpieces, and Knoedler’s purchase “of one of the best for America” should be treated as a “genuine artistic event.”50 But from this moment forward, silence. Nothing remains of the picture beyond a trail of engravings, old photographs, and other detritus of forgotten celebrity.51

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“With Henri ­Regnault disappears the possibility of a new future for painting,” intoned Gautier. “Had the young master lived longer, the face of art might have been modified or changed.”52 There is no way to test such a counterfactual claim, but just this tragic prospect assured for ­Regnault a distinguished place in public stagings of the French school. Artist and legend alike, for example, featured prominently at the 1878 Exposition Universelle, located on the Champ des Mars on the current site of the Eiffel Tower. Salome was not present, as Cassin had refused to lend it. But Juan Prim, Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, and several Orientalist genre paintings were included in the installation, although the fact that they were not clustered together led one observer to wonder if curators were fearful of a group hang.53 The legend was also on view, thanks to Mercié’s Gloria Victis, Chapu’s Youth, and a bust of ­Regnault by Barrias. “The last Prussian bullet smashed the head of ­Regnault, like the last fall of the blade during the Terror cut the head off André Chénier,” lamented the journalist Blavet, alluding to the poet sometimes described as the Terror’s last victim. The Prussians, added Dubosc de Pesquidoux, had destroyed an “electrifying artist” who promised to assure the French school’s “invincible majesty” as the century closed.54 All this and more points to the weight of legitimating capital that had accrued to the artist since his death, as museums and exhibiting institutions threw themselves behind an axiomatic union of art and patrie. But among art critics at least that union was never stable, and for all the apparently obligatory character of his cult, his academic formation and exotic trajectory looked increasingly out of place. The quali-

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ties that tagged ­Regnault as a Trojan horse within the walls of the Villa failed to impress a new generation of artists forged outside the École and its system of rewards. Renoir’s friend Georges Rivière, reviewing the impressionist exhibition of 1877, could only shake his head at all the enthusiasm for “the unfortunate Henri ­Regnault,” just “because he copied Fortuny.” And they even “erected a monument for this stroke of genius. For fifty years we have committed the most horrid stupidities.”55 To be sure, Rivière’s characterization of ­Regnault as mere fortunissimo is misleading. But it foreshadows how profoundly French painting would move away from the virtuoso surface effects associated with ­Regnault and Fortuny both, especially as new generations of artists and critics gradually rallied around Manet, the impressionists, and la peinture claire. For all its patriotic messaging, ­Regnault’s mini-retrospective in 1878 was also the tipping point. Zola, for one, noted that painter and patriot had been pulled apart. “Not long ago” we had “inflated the talent of this young hero,” to the point of believing that the “French school had lost a future star.” Alas, no. ­Regnault’s colorism still stood out, but his subjects seemed “insignificant,” his technique “refined” rather than “vigorous,” and his Execution without Judgment merely “theatrical.” This was “Delacroix seen and corrected by Gérôme.”56 Of course Zola had little good to say about academic painting in general, but for a sense of the mainstream, look no further than Claretie. Even ­Regnault’s “most fervent admirers” had been “disabused,” Claretie said glumly. Gone was the “demonic beauty” that had once seduced him. Surely it was un­reasonable to complain in the case of an artist cut down before his prime, and the watercolors still held. But the blood in his Execution without Judgement now struck Claretie as merely “a flashy gimmick.” His Departure of the Pacha, once “a revelation,” now seemed “dark,” and its horse right out of Fromentin. In short, the virtues of the patriot had masked the faults of the artist: “the red smoke of Buzenval created a halo around the young master.”57 The year 1878 was the tipping point, agreed Marx, whose 1886 book on ­Regnault set the tone for many readings to come. A future supporter of art nouveau and post-impressionist artists, Marx was not immune to ­Regnault’s aura. His friend Alexandre Hepp, writing in 1914, spoke of combing Marx’s estate for a “lost relic” before which the two used to “dream.” It was “delicious study” by ­Regnault of Geneviève Bréton, and Hepp could not resist the opportunity to quote a famous phrase from ­Regnault’s correspondence—­“‘I love my country and I love you.’”58 Such sentiments aside, Marx recounts, doubtless with Claretie in hand, how ­Regnault emerged from the 1878 installation “incontestably under­mined.”59 For his own part, Marx simply could not make sense of

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­ egnault’s Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco, from R the beginning a source of critical anxiety. Marx rehearsed complaints about the executioner’s cloak and repeated complaints about the picture’s lack of feeling, with the executioner evincing “neither emotion, nor anguish, nor sympathy, nor pity.”60 If ­Regnault’s point was a coloristic exercise, Marx added, the discrepancy between means and ends was perverse, ­Regnault showing himself “as inflexible as the executioner.” Salome inspired similar reservations. “One spoke of it,” recalled Marx, after first viewing the picture in 1884, “as an assemblage of refined tones, as an adroit page.” Salome was “pleasant to look at” but “scarcely worth remembering” as a landmark.61 Such complaints were not new, but Marx’s larger point was that ­Regnault was not true to himself. Indeed across his text he essentially rewrote ­Regnault as naturalist manqué. In his Departure of the Pacha and other work from Tangier, Marx suggests, ­Regnault had recovered the “fresh” and “frank” character of his earlier work, citing Juan Prim in particular for praise. These final months in Tangier hinted at a “return to nature” following the aberrant exoticism of Salome and Execution without Judgment. Just as he was cut down, ­Regnault had been at last in the “full possession of his powers.” Marx’s reading met with a warm reception, Alfred de Lostalot, for example, echoing Marx’s speculation that ­Regnault’s best work was yet to come.62 (Lostalot offered a more generous assessment in a luxury volume on French painting—­From ­Delacroix to ­Regnault. The discrepancy points to the canonizing pressures still attached to ­Regnault at a broader cultural level, with critics reserving more sober assessments for specialized publications.) Curators at the Louvre would have presumably endorsed Marx’s analysis, given they had already sent Execution without Judgment into storage. Noting the picture’s absence, Marx added that this “served ­Regnault’s memory well”; surely viewers would prize ­Regnault less if they stumbled upon his Execution without Judgment after taking in his Prim. This rereading gathered traction in the years ahead, critics citing Prim as ­Regnault’s best picture. “Vulgarly melodramatic” was Gustave Geffroy’s phrase for ­Regnault’s Execution without Judgment in a guide to masterpieces in the Louvre. Prim, on the other hand, was “expressive,” if “too busy.”63 Camille Mauclair singled out Prim for praise in his Great French Painters of 1903, an influential survey that gave more attention to post-impressionist masters than to academics. Thanks to Prim, Mauclair asserted, one could “forgive” ­Regnault for his “theatrical” and “unpleasant” Execution without Judgment. If ­Regnault had left some “strong pieces,” only Prim was truly “beautiful.”64 Fast-­forward to 1922: even Prim looked more and more out of place. Paul Vitry, curator and professor at the École du Louvre, opines in a guidebook from that year Chapter Seven

that Prim had “no place” in the “evolution of the school,” now embodied by Manet’s Olympia, hanging nearby in the Salle des états.65 Even an account of ­Regnault as naturalist manqué was not enough to save Prim, although just when it went into storage is uncertain. And let it be said, for all the merits of ­Regnault’s Spanish pictures, efforts to downgrade both Salome and Execution without Judgment essentially dial down the most conspicuously ambitious and challenging features of his art. The story does not end with these humbling journeys into storage, however, and recent years have seen yet another reversal in attitudes. Prim and other Spanish works by ­Regnault have received revived scholarly attention, thanks to new interest in French artistic contacts with Spain in the 1860s. Scarcely does Prim push the ­needle in terms of popular memorability, but ­Regnault’s Execution without Judgment is another story. From its narrow perch at the Musée d’Orsay, perhaps no painting by ­Regnault attracts viewers more, and not because the blood stands as “one of the finest bits of coloring in modern art,” to recall S. W . G. Benjamin’s phrase. The painting’s marriage of sensory overload and unmediated despotic power leaves us troubled, anxious, repelled, and enthralled—­it is a safe haven, in short, for a fantasy of the scaffold that, to recall Benjamin once more, allows viewers merely to faint rather than die.

Boston In New York, Boston, St. Louis, and elsewhere in late nineteenth-­century America, an emerging network of speculators, dealers, and art critics nurtured the aspirations of artists, collectors, and civic elites set on accumulating works of art worthy of their city’s ambitions. American enthusiasm for French Salon painting mostly dates to the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, when such lions as Gérôme, Cabanel, and Benjamin-­Constant dominated the American marketplace thanks to their own travel to New York, to the fidelity of their American pupils, and to the efforts of dealers and expatriates who facilitated the transfer of pictures to American shores. These early tracks have largely been effaced by the astounding collections of impressionist and post-impressionist art later assembled by American museums. ­Regnault, however, occupies a singular place in the development of American taste and collections, thanks to the unusual circumstances surrounding the acquisition of two of his most important pictures. Automedon and the Horses of Achilles arrived in New York shortly after ­Regnault’s death or possibly just before. Efforts to ­acquire the picture open a revealing window onto conflicting civic, artistic, and pedagogical interests, particularly in Boston, where the painting now resides. Salome arrived in New York four decades later under much Canonicity

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­different circumstances. Where Boston was divided over the acquisition, New Yorkers watched from afar as Paris tore itself up in a fin-­de-­siècle culture war. Sometime around 1870, Levi Parsons Morton purchased ­Regnault’s Automedon from Paul-­Durand Ruel, probably with the assistance of expatriate collector John Wolfe. By 1872 it was said to be in New York, in Morton’s hands. Although not a distinguished collector, certainly he would become versed in the ­Regnault legend, serving as he did as honorary commissioner to the Exposition Universelle of 1878, and three years later as American minister to France. Morton hung the painting in the dining room of his home in Newport—­a tight squeeze, as it turned out, obliging him to cut it down on each side, according to a report relayed to Mrs. “Clover” Henry Adams.66 By the time Morton was elected twenty-­ second vice president of the United States in 1889, the missing pieces had been reattached (the seams remain visible) and the picture sold. Its sale in New York in 1882 generated substantial interest. Gossiping about the upcoming auction, the New York Times described Automedon as the best painting at the Levett Gallery that day—­an “oasis in a wilderness of poor pictures.” Surely this painting “worthy of Rubens the magnificent,” added The Times, would be snapped up by the Metropolitan Museum, the Historical Society, or another public institution.67 To the dismay of art critics set upon seeing an important modern picture find a home in an American museum, it was let go. A bid by Washington’s Corcoran Gallery, which had opened its doors eight years earlier, was quickly outmatched. In the end, St. Louis merchant S. A. Coale knocked down the painting for fifty-­nine hundred dollars, topping the sale.68 The Met did not bid, although according to the Art Amateur’s “Montezuma,” there would have been “little trouble getting the money.” Lippincott’s agreed, noting that as one of the “finest works” to come to America, surely it should have gone to “one of our public galleries.”69 Now it was headed west for “private keeping”—­did not Americans under­ stand that among Parisians the owner of Salome was “famous for that fact only”? The Art Journal added its concerns as well, stating that ­Regnault’s picture was of “special value to students.”70 The Critic, for its part, went after the museum’s trustees: having “done stupidly,” they now proposed to “blind the public by thrusting their own ostrich heads in the sand.”71 Coale was said to want the painting for his house, only to discover that it could not get through the door. Instead he sent it to the local museum, his munificence earning him the “gratitude of the students of the Art School,” according to Palette Scrapings, newsletter of the St. Louis School of Fine Art.72 The students of St. Louis would be disappointed, however, as Coale subsequently sent Automedon to market. Presumably in an effort to drum up interest in its sale, he also commissioned what Chapter Seven

121. Gustave Mercier, after Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1882, engraving, gift of S. A. Coale Jr., M6702, photograph © 2016 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

the Collector described as a “noble and costly” engraving after Automedon by Gustave Mercier, an associate of Paul-­Adolphe Rajon, who had himself etched ­Regnault’s Salome.73 It was widely reproduced in a range of price points. We can just make out the print in the background of William Merritt Chase’s 1895 A Friendly Call, a painting set in the studio of Chase’s country house on Long Island. At the very least, the allusion highlights ­Regnault’s prestige within American artist networks. The fact Chase was a noted art teacher gives the allusion added force, given the debate in Boston a decade earlier over what aspiring artists should make of ­Regnault’s example. Around 1883 Coale consigned Automedon to the Williams & Everett Gallery in Boston, and the press spoke of efforts up and down the East Coast to acquire it for a museum. “Why should not Philadelphia compete for it?” asked the American, arguing that it was “worth all the foreign pictures now in this city.” 74 But it was in Boston that such efforts gathered real traction. Whether the Advertiser was right to take credit for mobilizing the community behind the purchase is unclear, but the paper certainly gave voice to the effort. In December 1884, forty-­five Boston artists, including such local notables as George Fuller, Thomas Robinson, and Edward Parker, signed a petition calling for the painting’s purchase. By 1885 it was on loan to the museum, hanging in the Allston Canonicity

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122. William Merritt Chase, detail of A Friendly Call, 1895, oil on canvas, courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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Room. Coale himself claimed it had been conditionally purchased for nine thousand dollars, although so far he had seen less than half—­and this for a painting that “in Paris could easily have sold for $25,000.” With the museum apparently dragging its heels, Coale hedged his bets. In 1886 he offered it to James J. Hill, a prominent Minnesota collector, for twenty thousand dollars, noting that the “greatest painting in America” would surely “immortalize any collection.”75 The real push came from students at the Museum School. Within the year they claimed to have raised one thousand dollars, far from the asking price but expressive of a strongly aspirational project that vested students in the museum’s future. Among the unusual features of their campaign was a student-­led fundraiser held at the museum in April 1885. Visitors paid two dollars a head to watch a suite of tableaux vivants staged before a second-­floor alcove draped with a white curtain. “The show was not only beautiful, but then a startling novelty,” reported the school’s historian in 1930. “Thirty or more pretty girls” featured in the program, under the supervision of Fredric Crowninshield, who taught painting. The school director took the role of Zeus, and a blueblood named Holker Abbott, in future years a poet, painter, and art connoisseur, played a Greek soldier.76 What drew students to ­Regnault? Consider the rationale offered by the young Robert Reid, future muralist and member of the Art League. Reid took the lead in advocating for the purchase, citing the campaign as a defining moment for the city: “Are there not enough public-­spirited Chapter Seven

citizens in this great metropolis to place it there, or must we be taught over and over again the humiliating lesson that we neither know nor appreciate a good thing when we see it?”77 Reid also sought to outflank ­Regnault’s critics by conceding some of his faults. Indiscipline, he explained, was the price of talent: “­Regnault was not a perfect artist, but he was a genius, and a genius is an inspiration.” For Reid, and we may presume his student peers, Automedon betrayed a modern, even native feeling despite its antique subject. The picture’s mise-­en-­scène and sheer intensity of action provided a signal contrast to the broadly neoclassical, Winckelmannian diet of “noble simplicity” and “quiet grandeur” on which American art students had been raised. It may seem farfetched to speak of ­Regnault’s picture as American in spirit, but that is exactly how Reid made the case: “Yes, there is a pyrotechnic element and ‘go’ about the Automedon. But why not? Are we not American? Why should we not have one Fourth of July in our art?” Coming out against the sale was Sylvester Rosa Koehler, a leading writer on art education, founder of the American Art Review, and, beginning in 1888, the Museum of Fine Arts’ first curator of prints. In a letter to the Advertiser in February 1884, Koehler dismissed the painting as mere “bravado”—­a “French circus” without “classical spirit.” The ­Advertiser fought back the next day. If Boston did not buy it, Philadelphia would. The enthusiasm of American critics proved helpful, as the paper cited Benjamin’s claim that Automedon was “worth a ton of the ‘faultily faultless,” icily regular, splendidly “null” academic canvases normally put before students.78 Also lining up against the sale, however, was Charles H. Moore, professor of art at Harvard University. A follower of Ruskin and eventually a scholar of Gothic architecture, Moore warned about the threat posed by the painting to impressionable young artists. Automedon was “brilliant” but “abnormal.” Nothing could be more “pernicious” than to set it “before young students of painting.” Worse, the prestige of ­Regnault’s example threatened (note the metaphor) to nourish in students an appetite for what was spicy and unwholesome: “a taste for this kind of work” would lead one to crave “highly seasoned, unhealthful foods,” rendering the palate “insensitive to the milder flavors of what is wholesome.” Look no further, Moore added, than to ­Regnault himself, notably his Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco. ­Regnault, Moore warned, was a “delusive ignis fatuus”—­an alluring swamp light that threatened to attract students with its “morbid charm,” only to lead them “astray.”79 Fifteen years earlier Charles Blanc and other French critics had expressed similar fears, but in Boston they carried new weight, given the city’s Puritan heritage, the prestige of Moore’s bully pulpit, and the sense that the city’s nascent artistic community was not freewheeling and robust. And while Moore’s warnings failed to stop the Canonicity

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sale, his appointment in 1896 as director of the Fogg Art Museum could at least ensure that no Harvard student should be led astray. (In 1943 the Fogg acquired a drawing by ­Regnault through a bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop.) Moore’s complaints drew a response from Crowninshield, his rival at the Museum School. After graduating from Harvard in 1866, the noted figure painter and muralist had spent ten years abroad, including time in Rome and several months in Cabanel’s studio after the Franco-­Prussian War. Writing in the American Architect and Building News, Crowninshield came out strongly in support of the purchase. ­Regnault, he explained, belonged to the tradition of Géricault—­rigorous academic training on the one hand and explosive action on the other.80 In the Advertiser, Crowninshield was more pointed. The picture’s merits, he maintained, were a matter of taste, and as such not open to useful discussion: “The artistic merit of the picture is entirely a matter of feeling, and not to be discussed here.” But its value as a teaching tool seemed to him in­disputable, particularly for a country “with too few figure painters among us”—­surely a dig at the landscape painter across the river. Pushing forward, Crowninshield added that ­Regnault’s painting offered American students a supreme example of the male nude: “I cannot at this moment call to mind any life-­size nude in this part of the country that can be compared with the Automedon in form or color.”81 Surely he was overstating the case, but as Crowninshield explained, jabbing again, “experts alone” could “thoroughly” appreciate it. “None but a machinist can grasp the machine.”82 From New York, the Times took a gleeful swipe at Moore and his allies: “The philistine is abroad in Boston,” the paper noted, citing his concerns that Automedon might lead students astray. Its advice: just buy the picture and let the “Ruskinites and the Philisterhaft professors” prepare an “antidote” to the “morbid charm” of ­Regnault’s ignis fatuus.83 Another retort came from Ralph Wormley Curtis, a Boston expatriate to whom John Singer Sargent would present an edition of ­Regnault’s letters. Writing from Tangier, Curtis could not resist the opportunity to extend Moore’s metaphor: “As to diet, we firmly believe, that juicy (under­done, if you will) porterhouse steak, broiled on red-­hot coals by Henri ­Regnault, is more healthful pabulum than mushy tête de veau boiled in Pre-­Raphaelite tepid water.”84 Not until July 1890 did ­Regnault’s Automedon formally enter the museum’s collections, although the painting was in place well before. Notes in the museum’s files indicate that it committed one thousand dollars of its own funds, including a gift from the French residents of Boston, and the balance from “general subscriptions,” leaving the actual selling price impossible to establish. William Howe Downes, writing in the Chapter Seven

Atlantic in 1888, chuckled over the controversy: “The policy of excluding the picture from the Museum for fear that it might have demoralized the art students would have been mistaken, not to say absurd.”85 Others also spoke of the “gross injustice” contained in the notion that the picture “might prove dangerous to art students,” to quote the words of John Right, writing in the Bostonian in 1896.86 In fact the controversy merely increased the painting’s luster. Walter Gilman Page opened a profile of ­Regnault by hailing Boston’s good fortune in having won the Automedon, guidebooks singled it out as among the city’s treasures, and the Boston Globe highlighted the picture in 1903 in a piece illustrated by Baldwin Coolidge, a leading New England photographer. Meanwhile additional artwork associated with ­Regnault came into the museum, including a study donated in 1896 and the etching by Mercier.87 These measures of Automedon’s faded celebrity add up less, perhaps, than a fictional visit to the museum by a group of adolescents summering in Boston in 1891, as recounted in a story by Edward and Lucy Hale. Many works catch their eye, but they are seized by Automedon most of all: “We had to stop suddenly; for the whole group is so spirited and wonderful, with Automedon standing before the heads and the horses, all so full of life and admiration. You feel as if he was holding back the horses away from you.”88 The young beholders get it exactly right. Their sense that were it not for the groom the horses might trample them rehearses a dynamic described by the artist himself, now corroborated by children worlds away from ­Regnault’s violent and exotic dreams. It was that dynamic, what Reid called the American sense of “go,” that had captured the imagination of Boston’s art students as they rallied around his example. It was also that dynamic that saw the picture fall out of favor as one more Salon coup de théâtre. Just when it lost its purchase is unclear. Installation photographs from the 1920s show Automedon hanging alongside works by Monet, Millet, and other French masters that had recently entered the museum’s collections. By 1940 the painting had been removed from the galleries and installed in the museum’s library. It remained “skied above the bookcases” until shortly after 1970, Whitehall noting the location in his centennial history of the museum published that year, although sometime after that date it finally went into storage.89 The painting’s humbling journey was scarcely unique—­the 1960s and 1970s represented a nadir for academic art as far as American public collections were concerned, with once-­prized works sent into storage or sold off. But ­Regnault’s envoi survived this trial. In 2002 it was reinstalled following a lengthy conservation, allowing visitors to reclaim a forgotten chapter in the museum’s patrimony, the history of its school, and the aspirations of its students. Canonicity

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Paris / New York

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Forty-­t wo years after its sensational appearance at the Salon of 1870, ­Regnault’s Salome again captured the imagination of Paris. The occasion was the sale in May 1912 of the collection of the Marquise Landalpho-­ Carcano, the title acquired by Adèle Cassin following her marriage. A luxurious catalogue published by Georges Petit reproduced works by Rembrandt, Veronese, Rubens, Greuze, and Poussin among the old masters, by Delacroix and Corot among the moderns, and finally ­Salome. From the outset there may have been efforts to send ­Regnault’s picture to the French state in a private sale. A report in the art press states that the government turned down an offer from the seller’s trustees to cede the painting for fifty thousand francs, only a third more than what ­Cassin had paid for it: “The administration was negative—­this now ­famous painting did not seem worth that much.”90 The national press took note. Arthur Meyer, a prominent royalist, anti-­Dreyfusard, and editor of the Gaulois, picked up the torch. “Salome must remain in France,” Meyer insisted, as he announced the formation of a subscription campaign designed to keep the painting at home.91 By auction day the Gaulois had raised nearly two hundred thousand francs, including a lead gift of fifty thousand francs from the Baron de Rothschild, and the Marquise herself committed an amount equivalent to the sum she first paid for the picture.92 Meanwhile, crowds gathered at the galleries to view a picture not seen in public since 1884. Claretie, still writing his weekly chronicles in Le Temps, spoke of ancient painters coming to see if Salome held up—­no longer could detractors dismiss it as the work of a “chemist’s son.”93 The aristocratic and banking elites that formed the backbone of the Gaulois’s readership also put pressure on the government. With the national press and the Louvre’s own patrons calling for action, the museum sent a delegation to the gallery for a viewing and finished by committing an additional two hundred thousand francs. “Everything permits us to suppose that the Salome of Henri ­Regnault will from this moment form part of our national collections.”94 In a packed house on the afternoon of May 30, bidding quickly escalated beyond the Louvre’s combined ceiling. As the museum pulled out, a deputy named Mir, based in l’Aude, joined the fray, apparently with resources of his own, until he too had to withdraw. The dealer Roland Knoedler, who had promised not to bid against the museum and had contributed five thousand francs to the campaign, now threw himself into the bidding. He and another dealer named Jonas dueled for the prize before Knoedler made the winning bid of 485,000 thousand francs, not including a 10 percent commission. At the sound of the gavel the audience booed and whistled—­“it was if they had come only to witness Chapter Seven

123. Salomé, Le Gaulois du dimanche, June 23, 1913, private collection.

the hammer’s sensational fall.”95 Taken aback by the reaction, Knoedler crossed the floor and told Meyer, also in attendance, that he would part with the painting for the price he had just paid for it. If the Gaulois and its supporters could raise the sum in two months, Salome was theirs: “My intentions are clear and I have hidden my actions from no one. Like everyone I want the Salome to stay in France. No country is more appropriate for this enigmatic and moving Moroccan girl, and I’m ready, I repeat, to leave it to the Louvre for the price I paid for it.”96 With four-­fifths of the sum already raised, it seemed reasonable to assume that two months would suffice to obtain the rest.97 Knoedler himself was delighted by the publicity, but he also believed his price would be met.98 The Louvre “ought” to buy it, he wrote to his office in New York, adding that should the museum fail, he already had a “serious client” who was “deeply interested.”99 The following days brought in further contributions, including, from Clairin, a watercolor of the Alhambra that ­Regnault had given him shortly before they left Tangier: “It’s my most precious memento. Today, I offer it to the subscription Canonicity

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campaign to keep the Salome. I don’t have to tell you what sadness I feel in parting with this, but I have the consolation of doing what must be done.” Knoedler himself was consigned the drawing and promised to sell it for ten thousand francs, all in support of the campaign to get the painting out of his hands.100 Meanwhile, Bonnat, Detaille, and other senior artists pressed the Louvre to identify restricted funds that might be put to use, and the press sent around notices of further donations. The former Geneviève Bréton, now married, used her connections at the Institut in an effort to identify still more funds.101 None of these efforts stood a chance. Outbid on Salome, the Louvre at once set its sights on other paintings that were put on the block in the following days, including Delacroix’s Assassination of the Bishop of Liège. Again the museum was outbid, however, and another fifty years elapsed before Delacroix’s picture passed into its collections. But curators succeeded in getting their third choice, Théodore Rousseau’s Avenue of Chestnut Trees, rejected from the Salon of 1841 and, alas, now severely deteriorated. Additional acquisitions at other sales soon left the museum’s coffers empty.102 Curators frankly resented the pressure imposed by public opinion and celebrity patrons, and they fought off attempts to foist ­Regnault’s painting on them. Certainly they had been relieved when their effort to buy Salome failed, for a week before the sale there had been no plans even to place a bid. The press tagged the affair a scandal, and the next weeks saw a ­Regnault revival as papers on both sides of the water recounted stories about the picture and rehearsed details of his patriotic career. As caricaturists toyed with Salome’s platter and black hair, journalists fretted about the escalating prices for works of art and France’s diminished ability to keep its treasures at home. Among the parodies inspired by the controversy was the formation of a ligue antisalomique, dedicated to combating the insatiable French appetite for the dancer in her myriad guises.103 Fears that French art treasures were being shipped abroad led some legislators to ponder the utility of legal measures to prevent the export of cultural property.104 Amidst the outrage, however, came pushback, and not only from the Left. Cede Salome to the “kings of pork” from Chicago, wrote Roger Bontemps in Le Radical.105 L’Intransigeant charged American dealers with manipulating the market: “To pay half a million for the Salome—­is it not to give in to the bluff of the big American dealers who, in demanding from their clients absurd prices, obliterate the true value of works of art and reap, in the end, huge commissions?”106 The provincial press dismissed the affair as Parisian snobisme, a veiled allusion to social-­climbing Jews. La Patrie urged the government to call Knoedler’s bluff: “Leave to the United States, which is rich, the sterile pleasure of encouraging yesterday’s artists.”107 A lead article in Le Figaro Chapter Seven

(probably by Léonce Bénédite) pointedly observed that the Louvre could do without the picture, given it possessed two major works by ­Regnault and that Prim was certainly superior to Salome. Indeed Salome was more “imagery” than “painting,” able to “transport a crowd” perhaps, but these were “qualities of a second order.”108 France was surely “grateful” for the beau geste shown by those who had sent in funds for its purchase. But could they not support more meaningful acquisitions, works by Nattier and Watteau, for example? As the weeks passed, critics began a chant in unison to let the painting go: “Because this figure, this trunk, this rug, this cloth is painted with skill, must we talk about genius?” complained Jacques Daurelle in the Mercure de France. The Louvre would have been “crazy” to purchase the picture—­a “puerile” “error” driven by “sentiment.”109 Geffroy, Monet’s biographer, dismissed the outrage as overblown. Salome was a “scintillating work of virtuosity” but also “banal” and “false.”110 The art historian André Michel added that Salome had scarcely improved since he had first seen it twenty-­eight years earlier (Michel had a poor memory: in 1884 he had praised it extravagantly, noting that the passage of time had not diminished its luster.)111 Louis Vauxcelles, whose claim to fame lies in having coined the terms fauvism and cubism, termed Salome a “Salon medal of honor”—­and yet “how its brio strikes us as insincere and tiresome!”112 The poet André Salmon dismissed the painting as “vulgar” and “theatrical,” saying thank goodness the “fetishism of an American collector [had] saved our national museum from ridicule.”113 Mauclair, whose fascist enthusiasms would shortly flourish in abundance, agreed. “This painting is decidedly not going to the Louvre, and it’s for the better, despite the lamentations of snobisme.” America had “the tact,” added Max Goth in Gil Blas, six months later, to relieve France of this painting that “fallacious publicity had transmuted into a masterpiece.”114 Canonicity

124. Two caricatures pertaining to sale of Henri Regnault, Salome, June 1912, private collection.

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Art critics across the Channel and across the pond warned against a mob effort to foist ­Regnault’s painting on the Louvre. The battle lines resemble a Greenbergian nightmare of mass-­culture despotism, with the crowd championing an anecdotalizing, sensational verisimilitude fed to them by entrenched elites. Robert E. Dell, Paris correspondent for the Burlington Magazine, termed Salome a “Salon picture of the dark ages of the nineteenth century.” It betrayed “faults of drawing,” its color was “unpleasant,” and “the taste of the picture [was] execrable.” Doubtless Dell was exaggerating when he spoke of the Louvre becoming the “laughingstock of Europe” should it succeed in buying the picture, but his complaints signal how far ­Regnault’s star had fallen within a community of artists, critics, curators, and collectors now shaped by an artistic revolution that had witnessed the collapse of the reputations of countless Salon and academic artists. The American artist Guy Pène du Bois, writing in Hearst Magazine, was more cutting still. Salome, he scoffed, was simply a model’s portrait and as such was “without a shade of interpretation.” In short, “it is not a work of art.”115 The quarrel over the sale recapitulates in microcosm the downfall of Salon painting in favor of a broadly modernist canon, colored by an allied anxiety over the export of cultural property in the face of France’s diminishing financial leverage on the international stage. Also shaping this quarrel was a poignant, even wrenching, conversation that saw the union of art and patrie once axiomatic to ­Regnault’s canonicity thoroughly split apart. It is tempting to add that any such union was mystified from the outset, and that its painful dissolution was inevitable given the heavy commemorative burden placed on this young artist whose death had coincided with a profound national crisis. But before signing on to such a conclusion, let us recognize that the quarrel, alas, was not only wrenching but unsavory, as efforts to keep the picture tapped into a larger crisis that had already torn the fabric of French cultural and political life. Fears that the “crowd” was being manipulated raised the question of why and by whom. With the entry of the Action française, principal organ of the nationalist right, the Salome affair crossed into the domain of the bizarre. The militant royalist Louis Dimier, a formidable art historian and polemicist, blended conspiracy and art criticism in a single volley. The Louvre, he complained, was being led by the nose by the vulgar “critique of the boulevard,” not to mention “certain persons” who stood to profit from the affair. Salome was simply bad: “[It] interests no one among art lovers. Its merit is nonexistent.” Certainly it was “not true,” as Le Gaulois had “dared” to suggest, that “young painters demand its admission into the Louvre.” On the contrary, “nothing matters less to the younger generations than all the work of Henri ­Regnault.”116 Harsh words, and Chapter Seven

little surprise that Dimier, his scholarship highly controversial thanks to his antinativist account of French Renaissance art, took a more temperate tone in his monograph on nineteenth-­century painting published two years later. Still, his assessment of ­Regnault was no less cutting. Of course he embraced the “pious memory” of the “glorious soldier.” But ­Regnault’s style was “mediocre,” Dimier insisted, and his color “violent and denuded of truth.”117 Dimier was right—­nothing mattered less to young painters than all the work of Henri ­Regnault. But his aversion to the purchase arose from more than his conviction as to ­Regnault’s mediocrity. Recall the lead signatories to the Gaulois’s campaign: aristocrats like Count Greffuhle and Duchess d’Uzès, but also Baron Henri de Rothschild and Count Moise de Camondo, as well as such banking elites as Stern, Seligmann, Kleinberger, Noetzlin, and the redoubtable Meyer himself, a rabbi’s grandson whose conversion to Catholicism in 1901 did nothing to soften the Action française’s spite. With Meyer established as Salome’s protector, the shape of the contest was set. The logic was as inescapable as it was twisted: Jews were leading the campaign to keep the painting in France. Jews always pursued interests antithetical to those of the nation. Therefore Jewish efforts on behalf of the picture must be resisted. So argued Léon Daudet, editor of the Action française and among the nation’s preeminent anti-­Semites. A few years earlier an adoring biographer had compared Daudet to ­Regnault, pointing out that each had been struck by a thunderbolt by the war, which “enlarged” their “spirit.”118 Such compliments carried little weight in light of the machinations of La France juive. “There is,” Daudet intoned on June 4, “a Salome affair.” Its “roots” lay in the “Jewish world” of “oil-­color financiers.” “General rule—­when you see a Rothschild make what Judas Meyer calls a beau geste . . . beware.”119 Daudet and his followers hammered away at the issue of the sale for weeks. It would be “shameful” for the Louvre “to sacrifice an enormous sum for the acquisition of a turnip—­surrounded by Jewish carrots.”120 Without the efforts of the “Jewish consortium” no one would bid for it. The Parisian art world was a “ghetto in oil” as rich Jews took control of the museums, the art market, and major art collections. Even the Mona Lisa’s theft from the Louvre earlier that year could be laid at the door of Jews: “Unfortunately, a thief who is not stupid and who has been trained by other Jews will always prefer a Leonardo da Vinci to a Henri ­Regnault.”121 The Jews, then, had embarked on a devious strategy of plundering the museums of its treasures so as to sell them back false gems at inflated prices. The situation required vigilance: “As we wait for the day of final deliverance, and none too soon, let us watch over with rigor and tenacity this ‘art patriotism’ of the Jewish people” with “its collection of Dreyfuses and its Meyers of false masterpieces.”122 Never Canonicity

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mind that Meyer was a committed assimilationist, that he had converted to Catholicism, that he was against Dreyfus, or that he was a royalist. “The question is not yet settled,” insisted Pierre du Colombier, writing in La Revue critique as the summer wore on. “Yes or no? Will a coalition of art dealers and Jews compel the Louvre to buy ­Regnault’s Salome?” To be sure, “art lovers don’t want it. But here come the Rothschilds and the Meyers, who represent the honor of France.”123 Needless to add, what surfaced in the press was merely the public face of a culture war that dominated the dinner table, the studio, and other arenas of sociability. Perhaps it is too much to describe the conflict as threatening to reboot the Dreyfus affair, but for a brief moment it looked like exactly that. The spectacle of Jewish interests taking control of the art world spawned fears of “a new Dreyfus affair,” to judge from comments by Marguerite de Saint-­Marceaux, whose soirees attracted a glittering crowd of artists, musicians, and writers. Saint-­Marceau herself had gone to see ­Regnault’s painting a few days before the sale but found it a “big disappointment.” This “facile painting in bad taste,” she lamented in her diary, had enthralled the larger public. “But most artists found it bad.”124 Du Columbier concurred: “There is a Salome affair like there was a Dreyfus affair,” insisted the stage director and future filmmaker. The affair posed a “vital question” for “the future of our museums.” Simply put, “is the crowd going to be in charge of acquisitions?”125 Meyer and his followers may have seized on the sale as a means of certifying their nationalist credentials at a time when their loyalty had come under fierce attack. But the Action française saw conspiracy: Jews claiming to be not just connoisseurs but patriots, even as they pillaged French institutions of their treasures and mobilized the mob on their behalf. As the weeks passed, Daudet and his polemicists launched an unholy crusade to equate Meyer’s efforts with the crimes of the dancer herself. In a grim triumph of anti-­Semitic vernacular, Daudet, Dimier, and their collaborators recast this “Semitic adventure” from the Salome affair into the “salomerie” of Arthur Meyer, of “Judas Meyer,” of Meyer the “Jewish junk dealer,” of Meyer the “old traitor,” of “M. Judarthur,” and of Meyer the “salomard.” The last of these was one of Daudet’s characteristic wordplays. “Salomard” echoed salope and salopard—­dirty whore and perfidious bastard, respectively—­not to mention the fact the latter term had been assigned to French troops pacifying Moroccan insurgents. What is more, Meyer the “salomard” played off another Daudet favorite, salonnard, a term that was normally applied to social climbers but that Daudet reserved for wealthy Jews. And I must not omit the predictable association between the painting’s Jewish villain and the Jew who now wished to save her. Now it was Meyer, not Salome, who danced naked

Chapter Seven

before the authorities in an effort to “obtain the head of the administrators of the Louvre.”126 The sale was finally sealed in early 1913, and the painting shipped out that summer. Across the East Coast and beyond, American papers had followed the controversy closely, hailing the painting’s purchase as a triumph of national collecting might. The citizens of France, the New York Times said soothingly, could console themselves in the knowledge that ­Regnault’s masterpiece would serve in the New World as a “missionary of French genius.”127 In 1916 banker and financier George F. Baker—­ “America’s third richest man”—­bought the picture from Knoedler and presented it to the Metropolitan Museum, although the arrangements had doubtless been orchestrated in advance. The press reported that Baker paid $125,000 for the picture, netting Knoedler a profit, but it was a transaction conducted with the Met in mind.128 Before leaving Knoedler’s hands, Salome was briefly exhibited at the Allied Bazaar in Grand Central Palace, a wartime fundraiser that drew visitors for a peek at the famous picture. Its arrival at the Met in 1916 was met with more promotion and praise, although its fate by this time was nearly sealed. The great rebalancing that saw the Metropolitan Museum definitively embrace the impressionists was not fully accomplished until the massive Havemeyer gift of 1929, but Manet and his successors had featured in its galleries well before that date. Within American avant-­ garde circles the Salome acquisition elicited skepticism, to judge from complaints made in 1928 by Walter Pach. The modernist critic and dealer ridiculed the purchase, citing the satisfaction among French art lovers regarding the Louvre’s failure to keep the picture in the country. “The true Friends of the Louvre,” Pach warned, “gave a great sigh of relief when American dollars outbid French francs for possession of ­Regnault’s Salome.” Elsewhere in his text Pach is dismissive of ­Regnault in general, perhaps out of fear that in America the artistic stakes were by no means settled. Salome, Pach complained, soon became one of the Met’s most copied pictures, a comment that is hard to substantiate but that speaks volumes about a struggle between avant-­garde practice and popular taste now being fought on the gallery floor.129 Salome’s checkered journey within the Metropolitan Museum of Art tells a story in its own right, but perhaps it’s enough simply to note where this story and my own first intersected. In the 1980s, when I first fell under the picture’s spell, ­Regnault’s Salome was hanging in the museum’s Great Hall, hardly out of sight, and yet visible only at a distance, as if its destiny was precisely decoration, to rehearse the charge made a century earlier. Today Salome has reclaimed a place in the museum’s galleries, still in its black frame, although its famous yellow background

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has now darkened with age, and she is hung too high for anyone to feel they are being targeted as prey. The quarrels once inspired by the picture have long lost their polemical force, and the legend of Henri ­Regnault has faded in turn. Nevertheless, the great ruin of academic art that fashioned this fallen star has come to provoke new interest and curiosity. And perhaps his Salome, across its migrations in the museum and beyond, still emits a trace electrical charge, drawing viewers near with an irresistible attraction.

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Chapter Seven

Notes

Introduction









1. For the wall, see Henri Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Didier, 1872), 83; and Paul Mahalin, Montretout: 19 Janvier, 1871 (Paris: G. Decaux, 1877), 3. Clairin’s drawing, incorrectly titled, appears in Sophie de Juvigny and Odile Caule, Henri ­Regnault (1843–­ 1871) (St. Cloud: Musée municipal, 1991), 21; despite its brevity and some questionable attributions, the catalogue constitutes an important resource on the artist. 2. Geneviève Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul”: The Diary of Geneviève Bréton, 1867–­1871, ed. and trans. James Smith Allen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 185–­86. 3. Ibid., 186. 4. Bibliothèque nationale, Département de manuscrits, Fonds Vaudoyer, NAF 28428/129, fol. 256. 5. Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul,” 186. 6. Francis Wey, Chronique du siège de Paris (Paris: Hachette, 1871), 355–­56; Alfred Darcel, “Les Musées, les arts et les artistes pendant le siège de Paris,” Gazette des beaux-­arts, November 1871, 425. 7. Élie Sorin, Les Martyrs du siège de Paris (Paris: Librairie internationale, 1872), 73. For the distinction between “memory” and “history,” see the influential account of Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). In historical studies Pierre Nora’s essay “Between Memory and History” offers a key statement of the problematic, included in the opening chapter of The Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 1:1–­21. For additional discussion and bibliography, see chapters 5 and 6 below. 8. Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, ed. Arthur Duparc (Paris: Charpentier, 1872). This edition is selective, to be sure, and suffers from many omissions and deletions. Additional letters, cited as they arise in the pages below, appeared in the French press on multiple occasions between 1872 and 1912. The originals are scattered: ­Regnault’s letters to Geneviève Bréton are at the Bibliothèque nationale. The Fondation Custodia holds numerous letters by the artist, including a transcript of Duparc’s volume minus its deletions—­of unknown provenance but extremely valuable, as the location of ­Regnault’s original letters to his father is unknown. A special thanks to Larry

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9.



10.



11.



12.

Joseph for sharing with me ­Regnault’s letters to Cazalis, some of them unpublished or including passages omitted from Duparc’s edition. Henry James, “Henri Regnault,” The Nation 16 (January 2, 1873): 13. Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, Figures and Landscapes, 1874–­1882, vol. 4 of John Singer Sargent: Complete Paintings (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 286n20. For brief remarks on Repin and ­Regnault see Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, Ylya Repin and the World of Russian Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 51. The closest French example might be the letters of Delacroix, dead in 1863, and published by Philippe Burty in 1878, six years after those of ­Regnault. But these did not see circulation close to those of ­Regnault, and younger artists and the late Delacroix were by then generations apart. For the Van Gogh legend see the compelling study by Nathalie Heinich, The Glory of Van Gogh: An Anthropology of Admiration, trans. Paul Leduc Browne (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

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1. Roger Marx, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Rouam, 1886), 22. 2. André Theuriet, Le Journal de Tristan (Paris: Charpentier, 1884), 84; for preparatory studies associated with the entry, see Odile Caule and Sophie de Juvigny, Henri ­Regnault (1843–­1871) (St. Cloud: Musée municipal, 1991), 45–­47. 3. ­Regnault to Montfort, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, ed. Arthur Duparc (Paris: Charpentier, 1872), 31. 4. Paul de Saint-Victor, Barbares et bandits: La Prusse et la commune (Paris: Michel Lévy), 213. Albert Wolff, in Le Figaro, November 7, 1872; as cited in Neil McWilliam, “Exercices de style: La critique d’art devant les envois de Rome,” in Maestà di Roma: Da Napoleone all’unità d’Italia; D’Ingres à Degas, les artistes français à Rome, ed. Olivier Bonfait ­(Milan: Electa, 2003), 139–­49. 5. The literature on this topic is substantial, but for new scholarship on the Villa in particular, see the essays gathered in Maestà di Roma; also see Alain Bonnet, L’Enseignement des arts au XIXe siècle: La réforme de l’École des beaux-­arts de 1863 et la fin du modèle académique (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). For the system of envois including discussion of ­Regnault, see France Lechleiter, “Les Envois de Rome des pensionnaires peintres de l’Académie de France à Rome de 1863 à 1914,” doctoral thesis, Université de Paris IV, 2008; for the pressures experienced by sculptors earlier in the century, see Antoinette Le Normand-­Romain, La Tradition classique et l’esprit Romantique: Les sculpteurs de l’Académie de France à Rome de 1824 à 1840 (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1981), and “The Weight of Tradition,” in The French Academy: Classicism and Its Antagonists, ed. June Hargrove (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), 140–­67. 6. Henri ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, January 2, 1868, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 111–­12. 7. Thomas Crow, Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 1. 8. ­Regnault to Hébert, June 23, 1870, in Henry Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome (Paris: Plon, 1924), 2:405. 9. Baudry to his parents, April 14, 1852, Baudry to Renard, October 10, 1852, and Baudry N o t e s t o Page s 1 – 1 6















to Renard, December 23, 1852, in Charles Ephrussi, Paul Baudry: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 1887), 91, 98, 99–­100. 10. Baudry to M. Marquerie, April 24, 1852, in Ephrussi, Paul Baudry, 91. For the problem of multiple audiences, see Anne Middleton Wagner, Jean Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 118; on the reactions of critics, McWilliam, “Exercices de style,” 139. 11. Ephrussi notes the probable destruction of the picture in Paul Baudry, 304. 12. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, June 14, 1868, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 158. 13. ­Regnault to Henri Cazalis, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 169–­70. 14. Archives nationales, AJ 52/205; and AJ 52/495, Rapports de Rome, 1866–­1870. 15. Marius Chaumelin, L’Art contemporain (Paris: Renouard, 1873), 183; Émile Zola, ­“Causeries” (1868), in Écrits sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 241. 16. ­Regnault to Duparc, January 6, 1868, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 116; Pierre Dax, “Envois de Rome,” L’Artiste, September 1868, 435. 17. For studies of the picture see Caule and Juvigny, Henri ­Regnault (1843–­1871), 56–­60. 18. ­Regnault to Duparc, January 6, 1868, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 116; also Henri ­Regnault to Emmanuel Jadin, dated January 1869, in “Lettres inédites d’Henri ­Regnault,” Le Figaro, supplément littéraire, August 31, 1907. 19. For the relevance of such concerns to the antitheatricalizing imperatives in nineteenth-­century art, see Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), Courbet’s Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Manet’s Modernism, or The Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 20. Paul Mantz, “Henri ­Regnault,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 2 (1872): 73–­74. A scene from the race featured among ­Regnault’s illustrations for Francis Wey’s Rome, descriptions et souvenirs (Paris: Hachette, 1875), 527. 21. Henri Baillière, Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Didier, 1872), 5. Gustave Larroumet, Henri Regnault (1843–1871) (Paris: Quantin, 1889), 17. 22. Duparc, Correpondance de Henri ­Regnault, 11–­12; for this work, see Caule and ­Juvigny, Henri ­Regnault, 24–­25; for a contemporary account, see Émile Duhousset, “Une Oeuvre inédite de Henri ­Regnault,” L’Illustration, no. 1613 (January 24 1871): 53–­56. 23. André Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre (Paris: Charpentier, 1906), 23; Henri Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Lemerre, 1872), 40–­41, relates that ­Regnault, resisting the strictures his doctor imposed, suffered a relapse. 24. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 165. 25. Gustave Larroumet, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Quantin, 1889), 17. 26. Auguste Angellier, Étude sur Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Boulanger, 1879), 32; Marx, Henri ­Regnault, 35. 27. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 23. 28. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 185. 29. ­Regnault to Cazalis, March 18, 1867, private collection. 30. ­Regnault to Cazalis, July 1, 1868, private collection. 31. ­Regnault to Romain Bussine, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 258. 32. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 33. 33. Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 37. 34. See Lechleiter, “Les Envois de Rome,” 113C. 35. For Baudry see Ephrussi, Charles Baudry, 199–­204; for the role of the copy at the Villa Medici, with remarks on ­Regnault, see Paul Duro, “The Lure of Rome: The Academic No t e s t o Page s 1 7 – 2 6

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Copy and the Académie de France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Rafael Cardoso Denis and Colin Trodd (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 133–­49. 36. ­Regnault to Stéphane Mallarmé, April 25, 1867, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 86. 37. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, May 29 1867, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 97–­98. 38. Henri Delaborde, “Paul Delaroche,” in Études sur les beaux-­arts on France et Italie (Paris: Renouard, 1864), 2:278, as translated in Stephen Bann, Paul Delaroche: ­History Painted (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 2:72; see Bann’s text for ­Delaroche’s break with an “apostolic” artistic succession; also Marc Gotlieb, The Plight of Emulation: Ernest Meissonier and French Salon Painting (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 1996), 71–­73. Eugène Delacroix, Journal, ed. Michèle Hannoosh (Paris: José Corti, 2009), 2:1291. 39. Delaborde, “Paul Delaroche,” 2:293. 40. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, May 29, 1867, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 97, 99. 41. Ernest Hébert to Paul Baudry, February 5, 1869, quoted in Isabelle Julia and Sylvie ­Gohel de Renaucourt, “Lettres d’Ernest Hébert à Paul Baudry,” Archives de l’art français 29 (1988): 102. Lechleiter explores ­Regnault’s influence among his Villa peers in “Les Envois de Rome,” 174–­89. 42. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, May 29, 1867, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 97. 43. Amédée Durande, Joseph, Carle, et Horace Vernet: Correspondance et biographies (Paris: Hetzel, 1864), 116; for Vernet’s administration in Rome, see Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome, 2:184–­226. 44. For this work, see Richard Wrigley’s discussion in Roman Fever: Influence, Infection, and the Image of Rome, 1700–­1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 164–­65. 45. Quoted in Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 40; the original in Autographe, December 23, 1871, 154. 46. Charles Bigot, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Peintres contemporains (Paris: Hachette, 1876), 110; and Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 33. 47. Ernest Hébert to Victor ­Regnault, November 1868, cited in Henry Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome (Paris: Plon, 1924), 2:392. 48. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, January 19, 1870, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 337. 49. See Fried, Manet’s Modernism, esp. 29–­30, 45. For French taste for Spanish painting, see the essays collected in Manet/Velasquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), with remarks on ­Regnault, esp. 515–­16; and Alisa Luxenberg, “Over the Pyrenees and through the Looking-­Glass: French Culture Reflected in Its Imagery of Spain,” in Spain, Espagne, Spanien: Foreign Artists Discover Spain 1800–­1900 (New York: Equitable Gallery, 1993), 11–­31, 119–­23; for ­Regnault and the Spanish cultural and political scene, see Maria Brey Mariño, Via a España del pintor Henri ­Regnault (1868–­1870) (Valencia: Castalia, 1949). 50. ­Regnault, letter to Hébert, December 1868, reproduced in Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome, 2:393. 51. ­Regnault to Madame de Sainbris, November 27, 1868, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 223. 52. See Paul Duro, “‘Un Livre ouvert à l’instruction’: Study Museums in Paris in the Nineteenth Century,” Oxford Art Journal 10, no. 1 (1987): 44–­58, with further bibliography. 53. For this work and the tradition of academic copies, see Duro, “Lure of Rome,” 132–­49. 54. ­Regnault to Duparc, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 192–­93. No t e s t o Page s 2 7 – 3 6



55. For this point see Duro, “Lure of Rome,” 145. For ­Regnault’s remarks, see ­Regnault to Hébert, March 3, 1870, in Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome, 2:400. 56. ­Regnault to Bréton, Madrid, January 1869, Bibliothèque nationale, Département des manuscripts, fonds Vaudoyer, film 9513, 85. 57. ­Regnault to unknown correspondent, October 1868, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 325–­26. 58. ­Regnault to Bréton, October 26, 1869, fonds Vaudoyer, film 9513, 96. 59. Louis Teste, Notes sur Rome et l’Italie (Paris: Vaton, 1873), 278. 60. ­Regnault to Cazalis, May 31, 1869, private collection.

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1. Henri ­Regnault to Geneviève Bréton, October 26, 1869, Bibliothèque nationale, Département des manuscrits, Fonds Vaudoyer, film 9513, 96. 2. Henri Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Lemerre, 1872), 84–­86. 3. Roger Marx, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Rouam, 1886), 39; Victor Fournel, Les Artistes français contemporains (Tours: A. Mame, 1884), 478; Jules Claretie, Paris assiégé: Tableaux et souvenirs, Septembre 1870–­Janvier 1871 (Paris: Goupil, 1871), 307; Henri Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Didier, 1872), 65. 4. Elie Sorin, Les Martyrs du Siège de Paris (Paris: Le Puy, 1872), 97; Zénon Fière, “Les Artistes de la Drôme au Salon de 1876,” Bulletin d’archéologie et de statistique de la Drôme 10 (1876): 338. 5. André Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre (Paris: Charpentier, 1906), 116. 6. ­Regnault to Montfort, July 15, 1870, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, ed. Arthur Duparc (Paris: Charpentier), 382. 7. Postscript by Henri ­Regnault on letter by George Clairin, October 30, 1869, cited in Vente hôtel Drouot: Lettres autographes de peintres XIXème siècle, June 25 1975 (Paris, 1975). 8. For Fromentin, see François-­Charles du Barail, Mes souvenirs (Paris: Plon, 1895), 2:35–­ 36. Monet’s remarks are cited in Joel Isaacson, The Crisis of Impressionism, 1878–­1882 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1979), 37; as Levine notes, “the sublime experience that Monet seeks to render in paint is precisely that in­tangible quality that eludes material possession and whose eventual figuration would constitute the extinction of desire” (Steven Z. Levine, “Seascapes of the Sublime: Vernet, Monet, and the Oceanic Feeling,” New Literary History 16 [Winter 1985]: 379–­80). 9. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, October 29, 1869, Fondation Custodia, Paris. 10. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 116; Gustave Larroumet, “Exposition des oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault,” L’Illustration 59 (March 30, 1872): 198; Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 84; A. Bonnin, “La Semaine,” Paris-­artiste, March 21, 1872, 1. 11. Félix Ziem, Journal: 1854–­1898, ed. Sophie Biass-­Fabiani and Gérard Fabre (Arles: Actes sud, 1994), 82. 12. For Monet’s sublime see Levine, “Seascapes of the Sublime,” 378–­400. Levine’s thematization of the “oceanic feeling” as a sublime motif has helped shape my reading of the quest for the sun as an immersive experience (absent the regressive Freudian dynamic critical to Levine). My thinking has also been shaped by other writing around the sublime and the visual arts, notably studies informed by Thomas Weiskel’s The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). See Ronald Paulson’s 1978 essay “Turner’s N o t e s t o Page s 3 6 – 4 2

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13.



14.



15.



16.



17.



18.



19.

Graffiti: The Sun and Its Glosses,” reprinted in Literary Landscapes: Turner and Constable (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Bryan Jay Wolf, Romantic Re-­vision: Culture and Consciousness in Nineteenth-­Century American Painting and Literature ­(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), esp. 177–­236, and “A Grammar of the Sublime, or Intertextuality Triumphant in Church, Turner, and Cole,” New Literary History 16, no. 2 (1985): 321–­41; Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), and Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Louise Colet, Les Pays lumineux: Voyage en Orient (Paris: Dentu, 1869), 55–­56. Edward Said’s Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978) has spawned too vast a bibliography to capture here, but for the ideological work of French travel writing in the colonial era, see Peter Dunwoodie, Writing French Algeria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). For art-­historical treatments see notes 14 and 15 below. For this work, see Michael J. Heffernan, “The Desert in French Orientalist Painting during the Nineteenth Century,” Landscape Research 16 (Summer 1991): 37–­42. Where Heffernan stresses the pictures’ escapist imperative, John Zarobell assimilates emptiness to a “lingua franca” of control, which “denudes the colonial landscape of its character and allows for its possession in the metropole” (John Zarobell, “Abstracting Space: Remaking the Landscape of Colonial Algeria in Second-­Empire France,” in Modern Art and the Idea of the Mediterranean, ed. Vojtěch Jirat-­Wasiutyński [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007], 80, and expanded in Zarobell, Empire of Landscape: Space and Ideology in French Colonial Algeria [University Park: Penn State University Press, 2010]). For landscape as doing the “dreamwork” of imperialism, see W. J. T. Mitchell’s influential 1994 essay “Imperial Landscape,” in Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 5–­34. Roger Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880–­ 1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 49, 80. Gabriel Séailles, Alfred Dehodencq: L’homme et l’artiste (Paris: Société de propagation des livres d’art, 1910), 100. Albert Wolff, La Capitale de l’art (Paris: Havard, 1886), 137–­38. Louis Gonse, too, singled out attributes shaped by his travel: if Fromentin was typically taciturn and silent, he was also prone to an “Arab” mode of wild and spontaneous outburst (Eugène Fromentin: Peintre et écrivain [Paris: Quantin, 1881], 33). For additional examples, see Christine Peltre, L’Atelier du voyage (Paris: Le Promeneur, 1995), 38–­39. Eugène Delacroix to Fréderic Villot, February 29, 1832, in Selected Letters (New York: St. Martin’s, 1971), 187. Delacroix’s thinking here has been taken up by numerous art historians from the time of Walter Friedländer (David to Delacroix [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952], 116) to the present day. For a recent analysis in the larger context of Orientalist painting, see Roger Diederen, “Rome n’est plus dans Rome: À la recherche de l’art classique,” in De Delacroix à Kandinsky: L’Orientalisme en Europe (Paris: Hazan, 2010), 75–­84. For Vernet’s biblical Orientalism, see Michael Paul Driskel, Representing Belief: Religion, Art, and Society in Nineteenth-­Century France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1992), 195–­98; Ary Renan, “Gustave Guillaumet,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 35 (May 1887): 416. Accounts of ­Regnault attracted similar statements, Athanase Coquerel, for example, crediting the region’s climate with nurturing in the dress and deportment of its inhabitants “taste,” “tact,” and “harmony” unknown to the West. See “Henri N o t e s t o Page s 4 2 – 4 3



















­ egnault et ses oeuvres,” La Revue politique et littéraire: Revue des cours littéraires 42 R (April 13, 1872): 983. 20. Georges Lafenestre, L’Art vivant: La peinture et la sculpture aux salons de 1868 à 1877 (Paris: Fischbacher 1881), 126. 21.  Ernest Chesneau, La Peinture française au XIXe siècle: Les chefs d’école (Paris: Didier, 1864), 236. Jean Alazard, in 1930, rehearsed the critique—­“Rembrandt était son maître, son Dieu.” See L’Orient et la peinture française au XIXe siècle d’Eugène Delacroix à ­Auguste Renoir (Paris: Plon, 1930), 23–­25. 22. Léonce Bénédite, “La Peinture Orientaliste et Gustave Guillaumet,” La Nouvelle revue 50 (January 1888): 330. For Bénédite see Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics, 58–­100. 23. Léonce Bénédite, “Le Salon de 1890,” La Nouvelle revue 64 (1890): 190. 24. Camille Mauclair, The Great French Painters and the Evolution of French Painting from 1830 to the Present Day (New York: Dutton, 1903), 82; Mauclair hailed Guillaumet as “the first” to paint the desert through the filter of his sensations (81). 25. Claude Monet, interview by François Thiébault-­Sisson, in Monet: A Retrospective, ed. Charles F. Stuckey (New York: Park Lane, 1985), 204; Gustave Geffroy, Monet: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: Cres, 1924), 32. On Renoir see Roger Benjamin, Renoir and Algeria (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 10, and Orientalist Aesthetics, 33–­78. 26. See for example Nicholas Cendo et al., Right under the Sun: Landscape in Provence; From Classicism to Modernism (1750–­1920) (Montreal: Museum of Fine Arts, 2005); and for the voyage south in the context of modernist aesthetics, Kenneth Silver, Making Paradise: Art, Modernity, and the Myth of the French Riviera (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 27. Léon-­Honoré Labande, Jules Laurens (Paris: Champion, 1910), 141; Laurens’s watercolor is reproduced in L. H. Labande, “De Trébizonde à Tauris: Lettres du peintre-­ lithographe Jules Laurens,” L’Art: Revue mensuelle illustrée 68 (1907): 221. 28. Théophile Gautier, Histoire du romantisme (Paris: Charpentier, 1874) 197; Séailles, ­Alfred Dehodencq, 185; Charles Clément, Études sur les beaux-­arts en France (Paris: Levy, 1865), 126; Eugène Mouton, “Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de Guillaumet,” in Gustave Guillaumet, Tableaux Algériens (Paris: Nourrit, 1891), 4. 29. Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, “La Peinture à l’Exposition Universelle de 1855,” in Art et Artistes, ed. Jean-­Paul Bouillon (Paris: Hermann, 1997), 221. 30. Eugène Fromentin, “Un Été dans le Sahara,” in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Guy Sagnes (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 129. On this episode see Barbara Wright, Eugène Fromentin: A Life in Art and Letters (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), 260. 31. Fromentin, “Un Été dans le Sahara,” 128. 32. See for example Vladimir Kapor, “La Couleur anti-­locale d’Eugène Fromentin,” Nineteenth-­Century French Studies 34 (Fall-­Winter 2005–­6): 63–­74. Laghouat’s “idealization” of the exotic, Zarobell notes, its emphasis on light, “can be said to obscure the underlying reality of their colonial expropriation by the French government,” even as the picture and allied work speak to a “voyage of self discovery” and disruption of everyday processes (Empire of Landscape, 76–­77, 96–­101). For this work see also Stéphane Guégan’s analysis in De Delacroix à Renoir: L’Algérie des peintres (Paris: Hazan, 2003), 176–­79, 186. 33. Alexandre Dumas, L’Art et les artistes contemporains au salon de 1859 (Paris: Bourdilliat, 1859), 128. 34. Charles Baudelaire, “Salon of 1859,” in Art in Paris, 1845–­1862, trans. and ed. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1965), 185. No t e s t o Page s 4 3 – 5 0

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35. Hippolyte Gomot, Marilhat et son oeuvre (Clermont-­Ferrand: Mont-­Louis, 1884), 42; Gonse, Eugène Fromentin, 33; Banville cited in Gabriel Séailles, Alfred Dehodencq: Histoire d’un coloriste (Paris: Ollendorff, 1885), 138, 213. 36. Théophile Gautier, Portraits contemporains (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), 238. 37. Ibid., 239. 38. Mouton, “Notice sur Guillaumet,” 12. 39. For French debates about transgression in relation to the sublime, see Suzanne ­Guerlac, Literary Polemics: Bataille, Sartre, Valéry, Breton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). For the philosophical background, see Martin Jay, Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), esp. 361–­401. By contrast, take note of Said’s complaint against the role assigned to the Orient in the development of Chateaubriand’s “imperial ego,” from its disssolution in “the contemplation of the wonders it creates” to its ultimate rebirth, “stronger than ever” (Said, Orientalism, 173). 40. Bigot, Peintres français contemporains (Paris: Hachette, 1888), 86; Gonse, Fromentin, 28. 41. Fromentin, Oeuvres complètes, 1331–­32. 42. For the ability of the sublime’s naturalist imperatives to neutralize inheritance, see Wolf, “Grammar of the Sublime,” 321–­41, and Romantic Re-­vision, 177–­236. 43. Mouton, “Notice sur Guillaumet,” 2. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 3; for the “exaggerated” character of The Desert, see Renan, “Guillaumet,” 406, 408. 46. Mouton, “Notice sur Guillaumet,” 7; also see a similar discussion by Émile Durand-­ Greville in Catalogue des tableaux, dessins, pastels et aquarelles provenant de l’atelier de Gustave Guillaumet (Paris: Librairie de l’art, 1888). 47. For a psychoanalytical reading of Kant’s argument, see Weiskel, Romantic Sublime; for the notion of blockage, in Weiskel and others, see Neil Hertz, “The Notion of Blockage in the Literature of the Sublime,” in The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 40–­60. 48. Renan, “Guillaumet,” 413–­14. 49. Guillaumet, Tableaux Algériens, 46; and see the remarks by Jane Munro in The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse, ed. Mary-­Anne Stevens (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984), 167. 50. See Charles de Tournemine, “Voyage en Egypte—­October/December 1869, Lettres addresées a son épouse,” in Jean Claude-­Lesage, Charles de Tournemine, peintre orientaliste (Aix-­en-­Provence: Edisud, 1986), 159. Although not identified in this text catalogue, Tournemine’s View of Luxor at the Dunkirk Museum is a good candidate for this work. 51. Magasin pittoresque, 1846, cited in Nicole Garnier-­Pelle, Chantilly, musée Condé: Peintures des XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1997), 114. Charles Clément echoed this line of thinking, noting that in Decamps’s picture the viewer’s eye passes from light to dark “without being injured.” See Études sur les beaux-­arts en France, 125. 52. Eugène Fromentin, Between Sea and Sahara: An Algerian Journal, trans. Blake Robinson (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999), 146. 53. Bénédite, “Peintres orientalistes français,” 240; Bigot, Peintres francais contemporains, 90–­91. 54. Renan, “Guillaumet,” 408–­10. N o t e s t o Page s 5 0 – 5 7







55. ­Regnault to Cazalis, February 25, 1870, in Correspondance de Henri R ­ egnault, 341–­42. 56. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, October 1869, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 313. 57. ­Regnault to Ulysse Butin, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 303. 58. Ibid., 302–­4. 59. ­Regnault to Adèle d’Affry, October 22, 1869, in Correspondance de Henri R ­ egnault, 307. 60. Charles Timbal, Notes et causeries sur l’art et sur les artistes (Paris: Plon, 1881), 281. 61. Marx, Henri ­Regnault, 64. 62. Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 71. 63. Wolff, Capitale de l’art, 192–­93. 64. Théodore de Banville, “Henri ­Regnault: Exposition de son oeuvre aux beaux-­arts,” in Critique littéraire, musicale, et artistique choisie, ed. Peter J. Edwards and Peter S. ­Hambly (Paris: Champion, 2003), 1:345. 65. Théophile Gautier, Oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault exposées à l’École des beaux-­arts (Paris: Claye, 1872), 41. 66. For impressionist technique see Anthea Callen, The Art of Impressionism: Painting Technique and the Making of Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 67. Gautier, Oeuvres de Henri R ­ egnault, 41. 68. Timbal, Notes et causeries, 279. 69. G. Dargenty, “Chronique des expositions,” Courrier de l’art 4 (1884): 88. 70. L. Turrel, “Étude sur Charles Tournemine, peintre toulounais,” Bulletin de l’Académie du Var, 1878, 77. I explore these and other Orientalist deathbed scenes at length in “How Orientalist Painters Die,” Nonsite.org, no. 14 (Winter 2014-­2015). 71. Gabriel Séailles, Alfred Dehodencq: L’homme et l’artiste (Paris: Société de propagation des livres d’art, 1910), 173–­74. 72. Edmond Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, Manette Salomon (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993), 427–­28. 73. Gabriel Hanotaux, Contemporary France (London: Constable, 1905), 2:634. 74. Jules Claretie, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1881), 1:24.

Chapter 3





1. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, October 1869; March 3, 1870; and May 8, 1870, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, ed. Arthur Duparc (Paris: Charpentier, 1872), 321, 343, 358; Henri Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Lemerre, 1872), 74–­75; and see the summary in Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger, French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966) 2:201–­4. 2. Zacharie Astruc, “Salon de 1870,” L’Echo des beaux-­arts, May 20, 1870; Louis Enault, “Exposition de 1870,” Le Constitutionnel, May 2, 1870; Paul de Saint-­Victor, Barbares et bandits: La Prusse et la Commune (Paris: Levy frères, 1872), 217; Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, Journal: Mémoires de la vie littéraire, ed. Robert Ricatte (Paris: Fasquelle, 1956), 3:243; and Edmond de Goncourt, Maison d’un artiste (Paris: Charpentier, 1881), 2:238–­39. 3. Enault, “Exposition de 1870.” 4. Dubosc de Pesquidoux, L’Union, May 21, 1870; H. Herman, Paris-­echo, May 4, 1870; Théophile Gautier, Oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault exposées à l’École des beaux-­arts (Paris: Claye, 1872), 25. N o t e s t o P a g e s 5 8 –7 0

[ 259 ]









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5. Jacques-­Émile Blanche, Les Arts plastiques (Paris, 1931), 6. Blanche, only nine at the time, adapted the “recollections” of collector and patron Edmond Maître (1840–­98). 6. Ibid, 7. 7. For ­Regnault and the Salome myth, see Mireille Dottin-­Orsini, “Salomé de Henri ­Regnault, genèse et réception d’un tableau légendaire,” in Textes, images, musique, ed. Andrée Mansau and Jean Louis Cabanès (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail-­Toulouse, 1992), 30–­45—­this seminal essay helped mobilize the present analysis; and Mireille Dottin-­Orsini, Cette femme qu’ils disent fatale: textes et images de la misogynie fin-­de-­siècle (Paris: Grasset, 1993). For the fin-­de-­siècle femme fatale see Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-­de-­Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Charles Bernheimer complicates the classic account of Salome as a castrating female in Decadent Subjects: The Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Culture of the Fin-­de-­Siècle in Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 104–­38. For anti-­Semitic themes in the Salome cult, see Sander Gilman, “Salome, Syphilis, Sarah Bernhardt, and ‘the Modern Jewess’,” in The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity, ed. Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 97–­120. For the intersection of the Salome and the Judith and Holofernes narratives in the art of the fin-­de-­siècle, see Annie Mavrakis, “Où commence le Diable: Judith à la rencontre de Salomé,” Storia dell’arte, no. 71 (January-­April 1991), 120–­35. 8. For this point see Dottin-­Orsini, Cette femme qu’ils disent fatale, 138–­39. 9. For the instruments of her celebrity with attention to visual representations, see the studies collected in Carol Ockman and Kenneth E. Silver, eds., Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). 10. For the distinction between “professional” and “collective” memory, see Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 8–­9, and chaps. 5–­6 for additional discussion and bibliography. 11. “Promenade au Salon,” L’Union médicale: Journal des intérêts scientifiques et pratiques, moraux et professionels du corps medical 15 (1873): 953. 12. Thomas Eakins, “The Spanish Notebook,” in The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins, ed. William Innes Homer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 305. 13. For this letter see Howard Wayne Morgan, Kenyon Cox, 1856–­1919: A Life in American Art (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994), 13–­14. 14. Eugène Fromentin to Ferdinand Humbert, September 6, 1871, in Correspondance d’Eugène Fromentin (Paris: Éditions CNRS, 1995), 1697. 15. Arnold Mortier, Les Soirées parisiennes (1878) (Paris: Dentu, 1885), 51; Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique 3 (1878): 402. For ­Regnault’s Salome as mobilizing musical analogies, see Therese Dolan, “En garde: Manet’s Portrait of Emilie Ambre in the Role of Bizet’s Carmen,” Nineteenth-­Century Art Worldwide 5 (Spring 2006), http://www.19thc -­artworldwide.org. 16. Arnold Mortier, Les Soirées parisiennes de 1876 (Paris: Dentu, 1877), 10, 54. 17. For example, see Historical Zigfield Group, http://historicalzg.piwigo.com/index? /category/290-­henri_­Regnault_s_salome_1870_as_photographer_s_muse_jane_2013. 18. Théodore de Banville, Oeuvres poétiques complètes, ed. Peter. J. Edwards (Paris: Champion, 1998), 5:203, 6:166; Léon Séché, “La Salomé d’Henri ­Regnault,” in La Chanson de la vie (Paris: Perrin, 1886), 164.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 7 1 –7 7













19. Henry James, “The Sweetheart of M. Briseux,” in Complete Stories 1864–­1874 (New York: Library of America, 1999), and Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers, the Prefaces to the New York Edition (New York: Library of America, 1984), 620. On James’s enthusiasm for ­Regnault, see Peter Collister, “A ‘Legendary Hue’: Henri ­Regnault and the Fiction of Henry James and Mrs. Humphry Ward,” Modern Language Review 87 (October 1992): 827–­46. 20. Mary Augusta [Mrs. Humphry] Ward, The History of David Grieve (London: Macmillan, 1892), 2:9; for Ward’s account of ­Regnault, see Collister, “Legendary Hue,” 827–­46. 21. Ward, History of David Grieve, 2:40. 22. Charles Blanc, Les Artistes de mon temps (Paris: Firmin-­Didot, 1876), 361–­62. 23. Henri Baillière, Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Didier, 1872), 37–­38. 24. Prosper d’Épinay, “Comment j’ai connu Henri ­Regnault: Souvenirs inédits,” La Quinzaine, 1912, 12; Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 59; André Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre (Paris: Charpentier, 1906), 101. 25. Charles-­Emmanuel Jadin André Beaunier, “Henri ­Regnault: Souvenirs d’un ami,” Le Figaro: Supplement littéraire, August 17, 1907. 26. Jules Claretie, La Vie à Paris, 1911–­1912–­1913 (Paris: Charpentier, 1914), 226–­27. 27. ­Regnault to Brame, December 21, 1869, in Léonce Bénédite, “Art et curiosité: La Salomé d’Henri ­Regnault,” Le Temps, June 12, 1912. 28. Ibid. 29. ­Regnault to Brame, April 23, 1870, in Bénédite, “Salomé d’Henri ­Regnault.” Paul Durand-­Ruel, Memoirs of the First Impressionist Art Dealer (Paris: Flammarion, 2014), 76. Another report, probably erroneous, tells that Durand-­Ruel offered it to a dealer named Edwards, who then sold it to Cassin for 60,000 francs. See Théodore Child, “Madame de Cassin’s Pictures,” Art Amateur 17, no. 4 (1887): 78. For a fuller picture of ­Regnault’s dealings with Brame, see his letters to his father on October 29, 1869, November 5, 1869, November 18, 1869, as well as undated correspondence, Fondation Custodia, M140-­194. 30. André Maurois, The Titans: A Three-­Generation Biography of the Dumas, trans. Gerard Hopkins (New York: Harper, 1957), 427–­28. 31. For Cassin as a “repentant Madeleine” as well as further gossip, see Le Voleur illustré, October 9, 1884; Lucy Hooper, “From Abroad: Our Paris Letters,” Appleton’s Journal 14 (July 31, 1875), 155; ­Regnault to Prosper d’Épinay, May 24, 1870, in Patricia Roux, “Prosper d’Épinay (1836–­1914): Sculpteurs,” master’s thesis, Université de Paris IV, 1981, 121. 32. Claude Vento (Violette) [pseud.], Les Peintres de la femme (Paris: Dentu, 1888), 235. 33. M. F. Beaugeard-­Duran, “A Sculptor of Royalties,” Ladies’ Realm 14 (May–­October 1902): 17; and see Chapu’s defense in Vento, Les Peintres de la femme, 236. 34. Hooper, “From Abroad,” 155. 35. See J. Valmy-­Baysse, Gustave Doré (Paris: Seheur, 1930), 1:260. 36. Frances Weitzenhoffer, The Havemeyers: Impressionism Comes to America; A Collecting Life (New York: Abrams, 1986), 190; for Vanderbilt’s interest, see correspondance from S. A. Coale to James J. Hill, December 31, 1886, communication from Sheila Folliott, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (curatorial files on Henri R ­ egnault’s Automedon). 37. E. d.’H . . . , “Salon de 1870, croquis rimés,” Paris-­caprice, May 14, 1870; Charles Clément, Journal des débats, May 19, 1870; Henri Fouquier, “Salon de 1870,” Le Français, May 7, 1870; Dubosc de Pesquidous, L’Union, May 21, 1870; Bleu de ciel [B. de Mezin], Salon de

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1870 (Paris, 1870), 22; Victor Fournel, “Salon de 1870,” Gazette de France, May 20, 1870; Marc Pessonneaux, “Le Salon de 1870,” La Semaine des familles, June 4, 1870, 576; Louis Enault, “Exposition de 1870,” Le Constitutionnel, May 2, 1870. 38. Paul Dimpre, Le Monde artiste, June 18, 1870; Marius Chaumelin, “Salon de 1870,” La Presse, 372; Zacharie Astruc, L’Écho des beaux-­arts, May 20, 1870; Camille Pelletan, “Henri ­Regnault à l’Exposition des beaux-­arts,” Le Rappel, March 30, 1872. 39. For the bohemian, gypsy, and related types in French art of this period, see Marilyn Brown, Gypsies and Other Bohemians: The Myth of the Artist in Nineteenth-­Century France (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985). 40. Edmond Duranty, “Salon de 1870,” Paris-­journal, May 5, 1870. 41. Marie Lathers, “The Social Construction and Deconstruction of the Female Model in 19th-­Century France,” Mosaic 29 (June 1996): 24, and Bodies of Art: French Literary Realism and the Artist’s Model (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); also see Susan Waller, The Invention of the Model: Artists and Models in Paris, 1830–­1870 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), and, more recently by the same author, “Jean-­Léon Gérôme’s Nude (Emma Dupont): The Pose as Praxis,” Nineteenth-­Century Art Worldwide 13, no. 1 (Spring 2014), www.19thc-­artworldwide.org. For the gendered character of these tropes also see Lynda Nead, “Seductive Canvases: Visual Mythologies of the Artist and Artistic Creativity,” Oxford Art Journal 18, no. 2 (1995): 59–­69. 42. Honoré de Balzac, Gillette, or The Unknown Masterpiece, trans. Anthony Rudolf (London: Menard, 1988), 22. 43. Manette Salomon, as cited in Marie Lathers, “Posing the ‘Belle Juive’: Jewish Models in 19th-­Century Paris,” Woman’s Art Journal 21 (Spring-­Summer 2000): 27. 44. Geneviève Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul”: The Diary of Geneviève Bréton, 1867–­1871, ed. James Smith Allen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 94. See in this context Hollis Clayson’s discussion of Bréton’s attitudes, notably Bréton’s satisfaction that their engagement had not domesticated ­Regnault’s manner and rendered it bourgeois (Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (1870–­1871) [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002], 258–­59). 45. Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul,” 94–­95. 46. Claretie, Vie à Paris, 1911–­1912–­1913, 229. 47. Anonymous, Une Vie artistique: Jean-­Joseph Bonaventure Laurens, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Carpentras: Brun, 1899), 310. 48. Gabriel Charmes, Une Ambassade au Maroc (Paris: Calmann-­Lévy, 1887), 87–­88. 49. Maurice Paléologue, “Le Maroc: Notes et souvenirs,” Revue des deux mondes 68 (March-­ April 1885): 898–­99. 50. Charles Virmaitre, Paris-­palette (Paris: Savine, 1888), 91–­92, and La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, 1902, 174; and see Lathers, Bodies of Art, 38. For Claretie’s account, see De Syracuse à Tripoli: Une mission en Tunisie (Paris: Librairie Molière, 1901), 363–­64. 51. Albert-Pierre-Hippolyte-Joseph Paluel-­Marmont, Tanger l’unique (Paris: La Nouvelle société d’édition, 1936), 91–­92. 52. Léonce Bénédite, “La Salomé d’Henri ­Regnault,” Le Temps, June 1, 1912. 53. New York Times, June 29, 1912. 54. Gabrielle Renaudot, “Salomé,” L’Illustration, June 29, 1912. 55. Renaudot, “Salomé.” 56. For the controversy in the Luxembourg Gardens, see Revue des débats, March 29, 1874. 57. Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul,” 96. For connections between Marcello and ­Regnault, see Caterina Pierre, “‘A New Formula for High Art’: The Genesis and Reception of N o t e s t o Page s 8 4 – 9 0















Marcello’s Pythia,” Nineteenth-­Century Art Worldwide 2 (Fall 2003), http://www.19thc -­artworldwide.org. For the story about the suicide, see Le Figaro, October 3 and ­October 18, 1874; also see Greensburg Standard, April 28, 1875. 58. Edmond About, “Salon de 1870,” Le Soir, June 19, 1870. 59. Charles Davillier, Life of Fortuny with His Works and Correspondence (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1885), 66. 60. Jadin and Beaunier, “Henri ­Regnault: Souvenirs d’un ami.” 61. René Ménard, “Salon de 1870,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 3 (1870): 504; A. Bonnin, “L’Oeuvre d’Henri ­Regnault,” Paris-­artiste, March 21, 1872, 3. 62. Richard Shiff explores Salome’s modeling in Cézanne and the End of Impressionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 84–­87. For Manet’s efforts to activate the entire surface of his painting, see Michael Fried, Manet’s Modernism, or The Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 262–­364. 63. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 61–­62. 64. Paul Mantz, “Henri ­Regnault,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 2 (1872): 79; Hooper, “Henri ­Regnault,” 378; Ménard, “Salon de 1870,” 503–­4. 65. Gautier, Henri ­Regnault, 17–­18. With so much emphasis on his commitments in the 1840s and 1850s, modern scholars have shown little interest in Gautier’s enthusiasm for ­Regnault. For his art criticism, see James Kearns, Théophile Gautier, Orator to the Artists (London: Legenda, 2007); and Stéphane Guégan and Jean-­Claude Yon, Théophile Gautier: La critique en Liberté (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1997); for Gautier and ­Regnault, see the brief discussion in Émile Bergerat, Théophile Gautier: Entretiens, souvenirs, correspondance (Paris: Charpentier, 1879), 208. 66. Gautier, Henri ­Regnault, 17–­18. 67. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, undated, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 274. “C’est un s’entourant de choses riches et harmonieuses, en les transformant, en les assemblant avec intelligence et en les copiant d’après nature, qu’on fait des choses vraies et séduisantes.” 68. Henri Delaborde, “Le Salon de 1870,” Revue des deux mondes 87 (June 1870): 697; Ménard, “Salon de 1870,” 503; Lucy H. Hooper, “Henri ­Regnault,” Art Journal 1, no. 12 (1875): 378; Saint Victor, “Henri ­Regnault,” 217; Georges Lafenestre, “Exposition des oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault,” L’Illustration 59 (March 30, 1872): 198; Louis Enault, “Exposition de 1870,” Le Constitutionnel, May 2, 1870. 69. Gautier, Henri ­Regnault, 19–­20. 70. ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, May 8, 1870, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 357. 71. Chaumelin, “Salon de 1870,” 371. Also see L. Rigaud, “Le Salon de 1870,” Le Nain jaune, June 19, 1870; Louis Enault, “Salon de 1870,” La Vogue Parisienne, May 6, 1870; Henri Fouquier, “Salon de 1870,” Le Français, May 7, 1870. 72. For the model’s pose, see Fried, Manet’s Modernism. For Manet’s paintings as embodying studio relations, see Carol Armstrong, Manet, Manette (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). Pitman’s account of ­Regnault’s Salome stresses the theatricalizing character of her gaze (Dianne Pitman, Bazille: Purity, Pose, and Painting in the 1860s [University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998], 17–­30); for Pitman the painting dismantles the irony we feel with Manet, the dancer’s trappings “preventing her from confronting the beholder with too powerful or too ironic a presence” (29). 73. Edmond Duranty, “Salon de 1870,” Paris-­journal, May 5, 1870, as cited in Pitman, ­Bazille, 23; Théodore Duret, Critique d’avant-­garde (Paris: École nationale supérieure des beaux-­arts, 1998), 48; M. de Thémines, “Salon de 1870,” La Patrie, May 15, 1870. No t e s t o Page s 9 2 – 9 9

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74. Lafenestre, “Exposition des oeuvres d’Henri ­Regnault,” 198; for the youthful character of Salome across other representations, see Dottin-­Orsini, Cette femme qu’ils disent fatale, 144–­52. 75. Lucien Augè, “­Regnault,” Chronique illustré 25–­31 (March 1872): 2; Camille Lemonnier, Les Peintres de la vie (Paris: Savine, 1888), 95. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 59; Enault, “Exposition de 1870.” Salome was not alone—­in the fin-­de-­siècle, a woman’s teeth functioned as a racialized index of feminine power. Degas’s Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando of 1879 offers an example, notably the teeth used by the acrobat to grip the rope. See Marilyn Brown, “Miss La La’s Teeth: Reflections on Degas and ‘Race,’” Art Bulletin 89 (December 2007): 738–­65; and James Smalls, “‘Race’ as Spectacle in Late-­ Nineteenth-­Century French Art and Popular Culture,” French Historical Studies 26, no. 2 (2003): 351–­82. 76. For Olympia’s gaze, see T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Age of Manet and His Followers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 80, 133; Griselda Pollock, commenting on Clark’s account, notes the “cool lock” between the “seller of a woman’s body and the client/viewer” adds to the effect of “shock” or “transgression” because an invisible part of the public realm has been made visible. See “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity,” in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art (New York: Routledge, 1988), 54n. 77. L. Lauren-­Pichat, “Salon de 1870,” Le Réveil, May 13, 1870; Georges Jauret, “Salon de 1870,” Le Peuple français, May 22, 1870; Lemonnier, Peintres de la vie, 95. 78. Gautier, Henri ­Regnault, 21.

Chapter 4



[ 26 4 ]



1. Henri Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Didier, 1872), 89–­90. 2. See ­Regnault’s letter to Cazalis, May 22, 1870, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, ed. Arthur Duparc (Paris: Charpentier, 1872), 368–­70; and Gautier’s account in Oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault exposées à l’École des beaux-­arts (Paris: Claye, 1872), 44–­46. For the picture in light of R ­ egnault’s “wartime Orientalism,” and in particular the three watercolors executed in the fall of 1870, see Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (1870–­1871) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 240–­43. For additional bibliography see notes 27 and 30 below. 3. Paris-­artiste, May 9, 1872; correspondence from the Ministry of Public Instruction to Jean Guiffrey, curator at the Louvre, Archives du Louvre, Dossier Henri ­Regnault, P30. 4. André Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre (Paris: Charpentier, 2006), 115–­16. 5. Ibid., 118. 6. ­Regnault speaks of Lagraine as now “master” of the technology and promises to send them up to Victor. Henri ­Regnault to Victor ­Regnault, January 7, 1870, Fondation Custodia, M219-­222. On March 8 ­Regnault detailed further efforts in this regard, adding that if he could keep exposure time to only a minute or two, his motifs could include human figures, normally so reluctant to pose, rather than simply houses and land (M255-­56). None is known, although photos of Tangier attributed to ­Regnault have surfaced in the marketplace. 7. Elizabeth Williams Champney, Three Vassar Girls Abroad: Rambles of Three College Girls on a Vacation Trip through France and Spain for Amusement and Instruction (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1883), 223.

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8. ­Regnault to Prosper d’Épinay, February 21, 1870, cited in François Thiébault-­Sisson, “L’Art élegant: Prosper d’Épinay,” La Nouvelle revue 49 (1887): 842. 9. Ibid. 10. For these sites see Henri Rabanit, “Henri ­Regnault à Tanger,” France-­Maroc: Revue mensuelle illustrée, no. 59 (October 1921): 187–­91; and Albert-­Pierre-­Hippolyte-­Joseph Paluel-­Marmont, Tanger l’unique (Paris: La Nouvelle société d’édition, 1936), 88. 11. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, From Ponkapog to Pesth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892), 252. 12. Ibid., 254. For Gautier’s account, see “Henri ­Regnault: Notice,” in Oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault exposées à l’École des beaux-­arts (Paris: Claye, 1872), 29. 13. See Émile Bergerat, Théophile Gautier: Entretiens, souvenirs et correspondance (Paris: Charpentier, 1879), 208. 14. For the drawing and related work, see John Ingamells, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Pictures, vol. 2, French Nineteenth Century (London: Trustees of the Wallace Collection, 1986), 91–­96; Lee Johnson makes the case for Delacroix borrowing from more than just Byron in The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue, 1816–­1831 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 1:99–­102. In a rich analysis, Beth S. Wright considers the staircase critical to Delacroix’s break from academic composition; see Painting and History during the French Restoration: Abandoned by the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 154–­60. And Alexander Potts describes Marino Faliero as looking “a little like a collage,” as if composed of “several distinct, relatively flattened motifs,” in “The Romantic Work of Art,” in Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Beth Hinderliter et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 62. As Potts observes, the painting’s departure from the “integrative logic of the pregnant moment” marks a decisive break with classical pictorial aesthetics. For the cultural politics of its reception, see Marijke Jonker, “Crowned, Discrowned and Decapitated: Delacroix’s The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero and Its Critics,” Nineteenth-­Century Art World-­Wide 9 (Autumn 2010), http://www.19thc-­artworldwide.org. 15. Léon Rosenthal, La Peinture romantique (Paris: Henry May, 1900), 199–­201. 16. Delacroix to Théophile Thoré, November 30, 1861, in Correspondance générale d’Eugène Delacroix, ed. Henri Joubin (Paris: Plon, 1936–­38), 4:286. Lee Johnson aligns the Bonington-­Delacroix exchange to the emergence of “modern color technique” in “Bonington at Nottingham,” Burlington Magazine 107 (June 1965): 318. The fullest accounts of their association are Patrick Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington, “On the Pleasure of Painting” (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), and Malcolm Cormack, Bonington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 69–­105. 17. Joubin, in Correspondance générale d’Eugène Delacroix, 287. For Bonington’s La Siesta, see Patrick Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 417, no. 389. 18. Maxime Du Camp, Les Beaux-­arts à l’Exposition Universelle de 1855 (Paris: Librairie nouvelle, 1855), 114. 19. Ludovic Vitet, Études sur les beaux-­arts et sur la littérature (Paris: Charpentier, 1846), 1:193. 20. E. J. Delécluze, Précis d’un traité de la peinture, cited in Robert Baschet, E. J. Delécluze, témoin de son temps, 1781–­1863 (Paris: Boivin, 1942), 256. 21. Vitet, Études sur les beaux-­arts, 195. 22. Augustin Jal, Esquisses, croquis, pochades, ou tout ce qu’on voudra, sur le Salon de 1827 (Paris: Dupont, 1828), 112.

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23. Charles Blanc, Les Artistes de mon temps (Paris: Firmin-­Didot, 1876), 44–­45. 24. As Frank Anderson Trapp notes in The Attainment of Delacroix (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), Delacroix’s Byronic themes in these years all concerned “death, whether recent or impending,” and were joined by the common thread of “exoticism.” But far from being “literary,” Delacroix was motivated as much by “purely pictorial concerns” (63–­64). 25. On this watercolor see Patrick Noon et al., Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism (London: Tate, 2003), 279. 26. S. G. W. Benjamin, Contemporary Art in Europe (New York: Harper, 1877), 103. 27. Gautier, “Henri ­Regnault,” 27; Charles Blanc, “L’Exposition de ­Regnault,” Le Temps, March 3, 1872. For the European fantasy of “Oriental despotism” the classic analysis is Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East, trans. Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1998); and for ­Regnault’s picture as doing ideological work, see note 30 below. My own account of the picture’s action has profited from Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit’s description of the executioner in Caravaggio’s Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist, in the National Gallery, London, as argued in Caravaggio’s Secrets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 85–­99, as well as from Fried’s discussion of the structure of repulsion and desire in Thomas Eakins’s Gross Clinic, as detailed in Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Let me further signal the relevance of Bryan Jay Wolf’s reading of Thomas’s Cole’s “sublime struggle” against the past. Wolf’s account of Cole’s treating nature as a metaphorical “extended battleground” is particularly relevant, even if Cole was not an Orientalist and ­Regnault not a landscapist. See Romantic Revision: Culture and Consciousness in Nineteenth-­Century American Painting and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), esp. xv–­x vii. For the picture’s unstable gender identifications, see Joseph Allen Boone, The Homo­ erotics of Orientalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 91–­92. 28. Charles Blanc, Grammaire des arts du dessin: Architecture, sculpture, peinture (Paris: Renouard, 1867), 600. 29. Gautier, Henri ­Regnault, 29–­30. 30. Linda Nochlin, for example, cites ­Regnault’s picture in her influential essay “The Imaginary Orient,” where she calls attention to the “frisson” of identification with the victim, adding that Orientalist paintings “like these” make the implicit claim that “their law is irrational violence; our violence, by contrast, is law” (The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-­Century Art and Society [New York: Icon Editions, 1989], 52). ­Regnault’s painting routinely features in more general accounts of Orientalism’s ideological work. I do not propose to signal all this literature, but for an account of the picture as embodying the stereotype of the “violent Muslim male,” and standing as “counterpart” to passive females offered for a “voyeuristic” gaze, see Ziauddin Sardar, Concepts in the Social Sciences: Orientalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999), 47–­48. The broadly emblematic wartime context attached to its cultural imagery is also a theme of Petra Bopp, Fern-­Gesehen: Französische Bildexpeditionen in den Orient 1865–­1893 (Marburg: Jonas, 1995), 13–­31. For more psychologically driven readings centering on the dynamic of repulsion and desire that such pictorial fantasy puts in place, see note 27 above. 31. Gautier, “Henri ­Regnault,” 29. 32. For the eighteenth-­century origins of this debate, see Ludmilla Jordanova, “Medical

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33.



34. 35.



36. 37.



38. 39.



40.

Mediations: Mind, Body, and the Guillotine,” History Workshop Journal 28 (Fall 1989): 39–­52; and Daniel Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror (London: Allen Lane, 1989); also relevant is Regina Janes, Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 67–­96; for beheadings in earlier European art, see Samuel Y. Edgerton Jr., “Maniera and the Mannaia: Decorum and Decapitation in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Meaning of Mannerism, ed. Franklin W. Robinson and Stephen G. Nichols Jr. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1972), 67–­103; I offer an expanded exploration of this problematic in nineteenth-­century art in “The Guillotine Sublime,” in Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?, ed. Hollis Clayson and André Dombrowski (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, in press). It is tempting to associate the painting’s exploration of liminal vestiges of consciousness with Michael Fried’s account of the consequences for truthful representation of the theatricalizing character of the beholder’s gaze. The price paid for sincerity of feeling is high: the refuge from our gaze lies on the other side of a one-­way divide, a moment lasting only an instant and from which none has returned. Let me add that critics often highlighted the automatic, indifferent, and entirely neutral character of the executioner’s action. He calls to mind in this regard the male figure in ­Regnault’s watercolor Hassan and Namouna, whose somnolent pose, as Cazalis put it, betrays “the “passivity of animals vanquished by the sun” (Henri ­Regnault, 98). In short, the sun that blinds also detheatricalizes. The region’s climate could seem to annihilate, or scale down, human subjectivity to a nearly animal level. See Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), Courbet’s Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Manet’s Modernism, or The Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), 392n20. Georges Lafenestre, “Exposition des oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault à l’École des beaux-­ arts,” L’Illustration 30 (March 1872): 198–­99. [Phillipe Burty], “Henry ­Regnault,” La République française, March 24, 1872. Paul de Saint-­Victor, Barbares et bandits: La Prussiens et la Commune (Paris: Levy frères, 1872), 218. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 121. Eugène Fromentin, Between Sea and Sahara: An Algerian Journal, trans. Blake Robinson (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999), 146. Henri ­Regnault to unknown correspondent, May 30, 1870, Fondation Custodia, 1992-­ A1179.

Chapter 5



1. Hébert to Victor ­Regnault, November 12, 1870, cited in Henry Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome (Paris: Plon, 1924), 2:408; Prosper d’Épinay, “Comment j’ai connu Henri ­Regnault: Souvenirs inédits,” La Quinzaine, 1912, 12; Victor ­Regnault to Montfort, August 22, 1870, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. 2. As reported in “La Manufacture de Sèvres pendant l’occupation prussienne (1870); Le père d’Henri ­Regnault,” L’Intermédiaire des chercheurs et des curieux, no. 1132 (December 10, 1906): 888. For ­Regnault’s quarrel with his father, see Henry ­Regnault to Henri Cazalis, undated letter, private collection.

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3. ­Regnault to Georges Clairin, September 27, 1870, Bibliothèque nationale, Département des manuscrits, fonds Vaudoyer, film 9513. 4. For artists’ service in the National Guard see Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (1870–­1871) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), esp. 234–­72; also relevant is John Milner, Art, War, and Revolution in France, 1870–­1871: Myth, Reportage, and Reality (London: Yale University Press, 2000), with sections on ­Regnault, 211–­13. 5. See Victor’s letter to Adèle d’Affry, cited in Ghislain de Diesbach, La Double vie de la duchesse Colonna (Paris: Perrin, 1988), 270–­71. 6. Théophile Gautier, Paris Besieged (London: Jenson Society, 1906), 206; for this trio see Clayson, Paris in Despair, 244–­60, notably her claim that wartime conditions complicate and derail a reading of ­Regnault’s work as “reproducing the typical ideological logic of the obliging solitary odalisque” (250). 7. Jules Claretie, “Le Dernier Noël d’Henri ­Regnault,” Les Annales 1435 (December 25, 1911): 625–­26, for a full version of the episode, although other accounts by Claretie (and others) circulated well before. 8. Davies County Democrat, December 20, 1913. 9. The text is described as having been found on his person, although there is some ambiguity as to its character (a draft of a letter?). See Arthur Duparc, ed., Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Charpentier, 1872), 398; Cazalis cites the text at length, noting that it may have been written early in the winter, as ­Regnault’s frustrations mounted and his mood blackened (Henri Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault: Sa vie et son oeuvre [Paris: Lemerre, 1872], 102). Baillière dates the remarks to January 15 (Henri Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 [Paris: Didier, 1872], 82). 10. Le Gaulois, October 19, 1878. 11. Geneviève Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul”: The Diary of Geneviève Bréton, 1867–­1871, ed. James Smith Allen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois State University Press, 1994), 170. 12. ­Regnault to Captain Steinmetz, January 18, 1871, in Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 399–­400. 13. Henry du Prey Labouchère, Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1971), 334; for “a people in arms,” see Michael Howard, The Franco-­Prussian War: The German Invasion of France (London: Macmillan, 1961), 365. 14. Tout Paris, “Henry ­Regnault,” Le Gaulois, January 20, 1880. 15. Claretie discusses the drawing in “Le Dernier Noël de Henri ­Regnault,” 625, and Le Sang français (Paris: Fasquelle, 1901), 345; also see Clayson, Paris under Siege, 269. 16. Frantz Jourdain, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Au pays du souvenir (Paris: Crès, 1922), 28. 17. Léonce Rousset, Histoire générale de la guerre franco-­allemande 1870–­71 (Paris: Talandier, 1900), 3:389. 18. Tout-­Paris, “Henri ­Regnault.” For a slightly different account, see André Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre (Paris: Charpentier, 1906), 182–­83. 19. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 184. 20. Emmanuel de Plaza, La Dévorante: Chroniques parisiennes, 1870–­1873 (Paris: Barthier, 1873), 51. 21. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 83. Charles Habeneck, Les Régiments martyrs, Sedan-­Paris (Paris: Pagnerre, 1871), 178; Clairin, letter to Gustave Larroumet, in Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Quantin, 1889). 46. 22. Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul,” 172.

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23. On this point see Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Gildea points to the work of Alphonse de Neuville (119–­20), for example, noting that its episodic character helped put in place a myth of the army as succumbing to overwhelming odds. For additional bibliography see note 36 below and also chapter 6. 24. André Theuriet, Souvenirs des vertes saisons (Paris: Ollendorf, 1904), 237–­38; also see Le Journal de Tristan: Impressions et souvenirs (Paris: Charpentier, 1884), 85. 25. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 177; Claretie, “Dernier Noël d’Henri ­Regnault,” 626. 26. Theuriet, Souvenirs des vertes saisons, 323; Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 190. 27. Jules Claretie, “Henri ­Regnault, souvenirs,” Les Annales politiques et littéraires, no. 1544 (January 26, 1913): 68. For Clairin’s version of this incident, see Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 190. Clairin speaks of running into the officer several years later, and the latter responding, “Is it possible? I did that? . . . And you were there—­with ­Regnault? Is it really possible? . . . We were mad, yes, all of us, that’s my excuse!” (Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 190). 28. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 191. To Larroumet, Clairin put it a little differently: waiting by the chateau and still taking fire, ­Regnault grew angry and restless: “I still have a cartridge. I don’t want to go back with a bullet in my pouch. I’m just going over there and will be right back.” Clairin adds, “I never saw him again” (Larroumet, Henri ­Regnault, 47). 29. Le Gaulois, January 20, 1896. 30. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 191. 31. Adolphe Brisson, Portraits intimes (Paris: Colin, 1894), 221. 32. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 83; Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 105–­6. 33. Duparc, Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 2; Tout-­Paris, “Henri ­Regnault”; Charles Sarazin, Récits sur la dernière guerre franco-­allemande (du 17 juillet 1870 au 10 février 1871) (Paris: Berger-­Levrault, 1887), 290. Maurice Dreyfous, by contrast, reiterated Clairin’s account, which he claimed to have heard from Clairin himself on the steps of the Palais Royal. But his recollections were not published until 1913, and by then history had already been rewritten (Ce qu’il me reste à dire: Un demi-­siècle de choses vues et entendues (1848–­1900) [Paris: Ollendorf, 1913], 148). 34. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 306. 35. Claretie, Paris assiégé (Paris: A. Colin, 1992), 183. 36. Jules Claretie, L’Art et les artistes français contemporains: Avec un avant-­propos sur le Salon de 1876, et un index alphabétique (Paris: Charpentier, 1876), 170. For the challenges presented by the defeat to military painting, see François Robichon, “Representing the 1870–­1871 War, or The Impossible Revanche,” in Nationalism and French Visual Culture, 1870–­1914, ed. June Hargrove and Neil McWilliam (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2005), 82–­99. Robichon notes that Médard met with charges of “undermining national morale” in 1879 for a work thematizing surrender (86). 37. Le Rappel, January 23, 1871. 38. “Les On-­dit du rampart,” Le Rappel, January 24, 1871; “Les On-­dit du rampart,” Le ­Rappel, January 27, 1871; Édouard Delalain, Le Siège de Paris (Paris: Lefort, 1887), 222. 39. Claretie, “Dernier Noël de Henri ­Regnault,” 625. 40. Camille Saint-­Saëns, Musical Memories, trans. Edwin Gile Rich (Boston: Small, ­Maynard, 1919), 195–­96.

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41. “Les On-­dit du rempart,” Le Rappel, January 26, 1871, repeated in Sorin, Les Martyrs du Siège de Paris (Paris: Lacroix, 1872), 100. 42. Gustave Toudouze, Le Pompon vert (Paris: Havard, 1887), 382–­83. 43. Daniel Halévy, My Friend Degas, trans. Mina Curtis (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1964), 104. There is now a large literature on flashbulb memories. See in particular Ulric Neisser, Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1982); and further work by Neisser and his colleagues that calls into question the accuracy of vivid memories supposedly burned into consciousness, notably Eugene Winograd and Ulric Neisser, eds., Affect and Accuracy of Recall: Studies of Flashbulb Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For flashbulb memories and allied mnemonic processes in relation to political events, see the studies gathered in James W. Pennebaker et al., Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 1997); for the idea of “rehearsal” as a process of memory formation, see Jay M. Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 14–­15. 44. Jourdain, Au pays du souvenir, 29–­30. 45. Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-­Adam, Chez les passants, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Alan Raitt et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 2:436. 46. Saint-­Saëns, Musical Memories, 280–­81. It’s unclear whether Saint-­Saëns himself was present that evening. 47. Villiers de l’Isle-­Adam, Chez les passants: fantaisies, pamphlets et souvenirs (Paris: Comptoirs d’éditions, 1890), 72–­73. Villiers identifies the verses as by Armand Renaud; “Assis sur cette blanche tombe / Ouvrons notre coeur” was the beginning of Renaud’s poem “Au cimetière,” which Saint-­Saëns would set to music and publish in 1870 as part of his Mélodies Persanes. Also see the account by Villiers in his essay “Augusta Holmès” in his Oeuvres complètes, 2:435–­36; Percy Mitchell, “Augusta Holmès, Her Life and Her Work,” The Delineator, June 1903, 1022. 48. Emmanuel des Essarts, cited in Charles Coligny, “Les Malheurs et les misères de la guerre: Henri ­Regnault,” L’Artiste, July-­August 1871, 238; Augusta Holmès to Armand Gouzien, fragment of a letter sold at auction, copy retained in the Documentation du musée d’Orsay. 49. René Delorme, “Henri ­Regnault en Espagne,” La Vie moderne, January 17, 1880, 34; Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 107; Le Voleur illustré, March 10, 1892. 50. Le Rappel, January 26, 1871. Also see Le Temps, January 26, 1871; Charles Emmanuel, “Mort du fils ­Regnault,” Le Siècle, January 26, 1871; also see excerpts in Coligny, “Les Malheurs et misères de la guerre,” 233–­43; and Comptes rendu des séances de l’Académie des sciences 72 (1871): 96–­97. 51. Ralph Keeler, “With the American Ambulance Corps at Paris,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 11 (1873): 89. 52. Theuriet, Souvenirs des vertes saisons, 323; Sergines, “Les Échos de Paris,” Annales politiques et litéraires, no. 1518 (June 28, 1912): 68. 53. Jules Claretie, L’Art et les artistes français contemporains, 37, and La Vie à Paris 1897 (Paris: Fasquelle, 1898), 455; and see additional details in Alice Meynell, “Henri ­Regnault,” Magazine of Art 4 (1881): 73. 54. Eugène Pitou, “Après Buzenval: L’armistice du 20 Janvier 1871,” in Journal du siège de Paris, ed. Georges d’Heylli (Paris: Librairie générale, 1874), 3:628–­29.

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55. Claretie, La Vie à Paris, 1904 (Paris: Fasquelle, 1905), 349. 56. On this point see chapter 6; for Carolus-­Duran and Manet, see Michael Fried, Manet’s Modernism, or The Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago: Univerity of Chicago Press, 1996), 239–­43; and Sylvie Patrie, “Carolus-­Duran, ‘frère d’art’ de Manet?” in Carolus-­ Duran, 1837–­1917 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003), 27–­36. 57. Henry du Pré Labouchère, Diary of the Besieged Resident of Paris (London: Hurst and Blackwett, 1871), 341. 58. Edgar Rodrigues, Blocus de Paris: Opérations militaires de la 2e armée de Paris et marches de l’escadron Franchetti (Paris: Dentu, 1872), 147. 59. De Plaza, La Dévorante, 53–­55. 60. Clairin to Larroumet, in Larroumet, Henri ­Regnault, 47. 61. The Critic: An Illustrated Monthly Review of Literature, Art, and Life 16 (December 5, 1891): 325. 62. Le Gaulois, January 24, 1871, and January 27, 1871. 63. Le Figaro, January 24, 1871. 64. The literature on collective memory is now large, particularly in the wake of a revival of interest in the work of Maurice Halbwachs and his pioneering text of 1924, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire. For issues raised by Halbwachs’s work for social psychology, see Erika Apfelbaum, “Halbwachs and the Social Properties of Memory,” in Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, ed. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwartz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 77–­92. For “bottom-­up” approaches to collective recollection in the sphere of commemoration, the work of Jay Winter and allied scholars is particularly relevant. For a guide to key issues see Winter and Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” and additional bibliography in chapter 6 below. The critical role of the press in constituting a sense of national community is a theme of Benedict Anderson’s influential text Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 65. Armand Dumesnil, Paris et les Allemands: Journal d’un témoin (Paris: Garnier, 1872), 280. 66. Ibid.; Jean Morel, “Henri ­Regnault,” Journal des beaux-­arts et de la littérature, February 29, 1872, 29–­30. 67. Gautier, Paris Besieged, 94. 68. Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 107; Georges Demeny, “Henri ­Regnault,” Le Bien public, August 8, 1876. 69. Jules Claretie, “Paris il y a quarante ans, notes retrouvées: 1871, Henri ­Regnault,” ­Annales politiques et littéraires, May 5, 1912, 388. 70. Bibliothèque nationale, Département de manuscrits, Fonds Vaudoyer, NAF 28428/129 fol. 254 (a note by Bréton, slipped into her correspondence, speaks of her sewing the tag on ­Regnault’s clothes [BN Manuscrits, fonds Vaudoyer, film 9512]). For the distinction between memento mori and linking objects in the mourning process, see Vamik Volkcan, Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena: A Study of the Forms, Symptoms, Meta-­pscyhology, and Therapy of Complicated Mourning (New York: International Universities Press, 1981). For a social-­cultural approach to the mourning rituals and material practices, see Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory, and Material Culture (New York: Berg, 2001), with further bibliography. 71. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 195. 72. See for example Henry Abramovitch, “Where Are the Dead: Bad Death, the Missing,

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and the Inability to Mourn,” in Death, Bereavement, and Mourning, ed. Samuel Heilman (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2005), 53–­68, along with the studies cited in n. 70. 73. Pierre Dax, “Chronique,” L’Artiste 28 (1872): 62. 74. Ibid. 75. Ernest Cresson, Cent jours du siège à la préfecture du police (Paris: Plon, 1901), 207-­209. Other accounts include Timothée Trim [Napoléon Lespes], “La Photographie des morts inconnus de la garde nationale,” Le Petit moniteur universel, January 30,1871; also see the report in Le Figaro, which includes additional details and a press release by Clément Thomas, commander of the National Guard; and Georges Grison and F. Hogier, Les Hommes de proie: La Police, ce qu’elle était, ce qu’elle est, ce qu’elle doit être (Paris: Lagny, 1887), 59. 76. Jules Claretie, Histoire de la révolution de 1870–­1871 (Paris: Librairie illustrée, 1877), 1:484. It was in the wake of these events that the Paris police established a photography laboratory on a permanent basis. The chronology is worth stressing, for ­Disdéri’s plates predated by four months a famous origin moment in modern juridical surveillance, when he and others were recruited to photograph dead Communards. Indeed Disdéri’s photograph of the guardsmen is often wrongly identified as portraying Communards. But in the latter case, the cadavers had not been carefully washed, numbered, and so neatly arrayed. For Commune photography, including the correct identification of Disdéri’s photograph, see La Commune photographiée (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000), 112. 77. Gustave Macé, Mon musée criminel (Paris: Charpentier, 1890), 118; “Décès de M. ­Regnault, Procès-­verbal dressé l’an 1871, le 25 Janvier,” Archives départementales de la ville de Paris, AD, D2R4-­261, no. 172. 78. Jules de Marthold, Memorandum du siège de Paris, 1870–­1871 (Paris: Charavay, 1884), 287. 79. Le Figaro, January 29, 1871. 80. Claretie, “Dernier Noël de Henri ­Regnault,” 626. 81. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 196; Baillière notes that he was accompanied by Laudin, ­Regnault’s uncle, his closest relative in Paris at the time (Henri ­Regnault, 85). 82. Ibid., 195–­97; also see the description by Clairin’s friend Brisson in Portraits intimes, 221–­22. 83. See Ernst Benkard, ed., Undying Faces: A Collection of Death Masks, trans. Margaret M. Green (London: Hogarth, 1929), 15. 84. For Hugo and additional examples see Emmanuelle Héran, “Le Dernier portrait, ou la belle mort,” in Le Dernier Portrait (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2002), 54–­55; for life casting more generally see Édouard Papet et al., À fleur de peau: Le moulage sur nature au XIXe siècle (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2001); also see Suzanne Glover Lindsay’s discussion of French recumbent tomb effigies, and notably the tomb (and mask) of Godefroy Cavaigniac by François Rude and Ernest Christophe, in Funerary Arts and Tomb Cult: Living with the Dead in France, esp. 177–­209. As noted previously, ­Regnault was buried in a family tomb at Montparnasse, and there is no “tomb of Henri ­Regnault” as such. 85. For Géricault’s mask, see Bruno Chénique, “Le Masque de Géricault, ou la folle mémoire d’un culte sentimental et nauséabond,” in Le Dernier Portrait, 158–­74; also see the catalogue Géricault (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991), 368. 86. V. Gribayedoff, “A French Verestschagin,” Black and White, June 24, 1899, 774. Claretie,

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La Vie à Paris 1910 (Paris: Fasquelle, 1910), 328; the photograph of Clairin in his studio is held at the Archives of American Art, “Photographs of Artists in Their Paris Studios, 1880–­1890.” For the mask at the Musée de l’Armée, see Journal des débats, October 10, 1911; for the door, see Le Temps, May 30, 1913—­probably this was an error, although other parts of the Buzenval wall were donated to the museum under similar circumstances, notably the gate at Longboyau, site of a violent skirmish on October 21, and subject of a painting by de Neuville. 87. Le Figaro, May 14, 1899, and July 19, 1899. 88. See Le Petit parisien, June 25, 1899; for a description of the new galleries, see L’Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux 39 (July 22, 1899): 133. 89. Paris exposition 1900: Guide pratique du visiteur de Paris et de l’exposition (Paris: Hachette, 1900), 66–­67; Karl Baedeker, Paris et ses environs: Manuel du voyageur (Paris: Ollendord, 1903), 193; Georges Cain, À travers Paris (Paris: Flammarion, 1907), 90–­92. 90. Jules Claretie, La Vie à Paris 1899 (Paris: Fasquelle, 1900), 169; also see the version in Le Sang français, 342, and “Henri ­Regnault, souvenirs,” Les Annales politiques et littéraires, no. 1544 (January 26, 1913), 68; Claretie reproduces Blanc’s engraving of the mask in “Le Dernier Noël d’Henri ­Regnault,” 625–­26. 91. Edmond About, “Une Cible allemande: Souvenir du 19 janvier 1870,” Le Drapeau, January 26, 1882, 35; Jourdain, Au pays du souvenir, 30. 92. Catalogue de la bibliothèque de feu m. Jules Claretie (Paris: H. Leclerc, 1918), 3:39. 93. For heroic and martyrial themes in the larger cultural sphere, with particular attention to constructions of gender, see Venita Datta, Heroes and Legends of Fin-­de-­siècle France: Gender, Politics, and National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). The revolutionary origins of transfers of sacrality are taken up in Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Also see studies cited in chapter 6. 94. Cazalis, Henri ­Regnault, 94. 95. Ward, History of David Grieve, 2:202–­3. 96. See Le Figaro, February 3, 1871; Clayson cites Gautier’s remarks and also touches on the legend of ­Regnault’s tragic fate in Paris in Despair, 239–­40; Gautier, Paris Besieged, 187, 199. 97. Gautier, Paris Besieged, 189–­90. 98. Maurice Dreyfous also describes the visit in Ce que je tiens à dire (Paris: Ollendorf, 1912), 230–­32. 99. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 72. 100. Jules Claretie, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, 1:24; Saint-­ Victor, Barbares et bandits, 218. Not even English critics could resist the temptation to find in ­Regnault’s painting hints of cosmic forces at work, in this case seizing on the “charge of sensuality” so frequently brought against him. But it was not ­Regnault’s fault; he was a victim of a crisis in French morals, explains the Temple Bar, for it was his destiny to expatiate his country’s sin: “Was is not the fault of the age in which he lived, and the people for whom he painted? Both the artist and his countrymen required the purifying of the great national sin of materialism in a fire such as no country ever went through. He was destined, alas! to succumb, carrying with him all the unfulfilled promises of his youth” (“Henri ­Regnault,” Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers 58 [1880]: 354). 101. Coligny, “Les Malheurs et les misères de la guerre,” 242–­43.

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102. Alexandre Bida to Eugène Fromentin, February 13, 1871, in Correspondance d’Eugène Fromentin, ed. Barbara Wright (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1995), 2:1644. 103. Hébert to Victor ­Regnault, February 7, 1871, in Lapauze, Histoire de l’Académie de France à Rome, 2:409–­10; in a letter to Charles Gounod, Hébert speaks of ­Regnault as an “incomparable diamond,” as cited in Henry Roujon in “Notice sur la vie et travaux de M. Ernest Hébert,” Le Temps, July 11, 1909. 104. For Freud’s remarks, see The Sigmund Freud–­Ludwig Binswanger Correspondence, 1908–­ 1938, ed. Gerhard Fichtner, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: Other Press, 2003), 150; useful for my readings has been Vamik D. Volkan and Elizabeth Zintl, Life after Loss: The Lessons of Grief (New York: Scribner, 1993), 97–­98. 105. Beaunier, Les Souvenirs d’un peintre, 199. 106. Victor ­Regnault to Adèle d’Affry, in Diesbach, La Double vie de la duchesse Colonna, 272. 107. Philip Hamerton, Modern Frenchmen: Five Biographies (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1878), 422. For Victor’s last years see Laurie Dahlberg, Victor ­Regnault and the Advance of Photography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 187–­88. For the mental illness of Victor’s other son Léon, see the unsigned correspondence included in unpublished biographical notes on the ­Regnault family assembled by Henri’s classmate Roger Portalis, now held at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut national de l’histore de l’art, fonds Roger Portalis, series 28, box 3.2. 108. Cited without date in Diesbach, La Double vie de la duchesse Colonna, 273. The character of male-­male friendships in nineteenth-­century culture has emerged in recent years as an important topic of humanistic inquiry. Clayson, for one, explores the dynamics of the association between Clairin and ­Regnault, with particular reference to Clairin’s drawing of ­Regnault asleep in his overcoat (Paris in Despair, 268–­72). The literature is large, but I have found useful in particular Brian Joseph Martin, Napoleonic Friendship: Military Fraternity, Intimacy, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-­Century France (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2011); and Alison Syme, A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-­de-­Siècle Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2010); also relevant for this era is Bridget Alsdorf, Fellow Men: Fantin-­Latour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth-­Century French Painting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 109. For the funeral notice see “Nécrologie,” Le Temps, January 27, 1871; and see Hubert Lavigne, ed., État civil d’artistes français: Billets d’enterrement ou de décès depuis 1823 jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Baur, 1881), 101. 110. Francis Wey, Chronique du siège de Paris (Paris: Hachette, 1871), 355–­57, and Rome (London: J. S. Virtue, 1887), vii; Duparc, Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, 5; A. Delpit, “Les Obsèques de Henri ­Regnault,” Paris-­journal, January 29, 1871; “H.,” “Les Obsèques de Henri ­Regnault,” Le Siècle, January 28, 1871; “Obsèques de Henri ­Regnault,” L’Électeur libre, January 29, 1871. 111. Alfred Darcel, “Les Musées, les arts et les artistes pendant le siège de Paris, deuxième article,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 4 (November 1871): 425; Paris under Siege 1870–­71: From the Goncourt “Journal,” ed. and trans. George J. Becker (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), 210. 112. Joseph Turquan touched on Bréton’s place in patriotic literature themed feminine in Les Femmes de France pendant l’invasion (Paris: Libraire Militaire Berger-­Levrault, 1893), 403–­6. For the broader gendering of heroines and martyrial tropes in the French fin-­de-­siècle, see Datta, Heroes and Legends of Fin-­de-­Siècle France.

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113. Gygés, “Choses du jour,” Paris-­journal, March 20, 1872; Pierre Puvis de Chavannes to Roger Marx, July 16, 1886, in “Pensées et réflexions: Extraites des lettres de Puvis de Chavannes,” Revue encyclopédique, December 23, 1899, 1082. 114. Henry Vizetelly, Paris in Peril (London: Tinsly Brothers, 1882), 2:221. See also remarks by Johnston Forbes Roberston reporting on a story told to him by Lewis Wingfield: A Player under Three Reigns (Boston: Little, Brown, 1925), 117. Wingfield’s obituary notice in the Critic rehearses the story about the missing body; see Critic: An Illustrated Monthly Review of Literature, Art, and Life 16 (December 5, 1891): 325. 115. Mrs. Humphry [Mary] Ward, The History of David Grieve (London: Macmillan, 1892), 2:206. 116. “Nouvelles de l’étranger,” La Revue politique et littéraire 49 (1892): 159; for the fragment sent to Bréton, see Bibliothèque nationale, Département de manuscripts, fonds Vaudoyer, NAF 28428 (132). 117. République française, January 22, 1872; and Georges Servières, La Musique française moderne: César Franck, Édouard Lalo, Jules Massenet, Ernest Reyer, Camille Saint-­Saëns (Paris: Havard, 1897), 303. 118. Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 87; Jean Bonnerot, C. Saint-­Saëns (1835–­1821), sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Durand et fils, 1922), 60. Cosima Wagner reports being “deeply touched” by ­Regnault’s death—­the artist, she explained, placed himself among the Wagnerians (“Correspondance inédite de Cosima Wagner à sa demi-­soeur la marquise de Charnacé,” Nouveau Drouot, October 27, 1998). 119. Octave Mirbeau, “À propos de Lohengrin,” Gil Blas, April 5, 1887. 120. Camille Flammarion, Death and Its Mystery, trans. Latrobe Carroll (New York: Century, 1923), 3:9. 121. Augé de Lassus, Camille Saint-­Saëns (Paris: Delagrave, 1914), 61–­62. 122. L. M., “Nécrologie,” Le Temps, January 29, 1871; Paris under Siege, 1870–­71: From the Goncourt “Journal,” 205, 210; Emmanuel des Essarts, “Henri ­Regnault,” Le Rappel, January 28, 1871. The theologian Athanase Coquerel reported on the ceremony in La Renaissance, laying responsibility for the tragedy on “despots” on both sides; see “La Mort d’Henri ­Regnault,” first published in La Renaissance and reprinted in Libres paroles d’un assiégé: Écrits et discours d’un républicain protestant pendant le siège de Paris (Paris: Cherbuliez, 1871), 141–­42. 123. Augusta Holmès to Camille Saint-­Saëns, February 8, 1900, in Lettres de compositeurs à Camille Saint-­Saëns, ed. Eurydice Jousse and Yves Gérard (Lyon: Symétrie, 2009), 298. 124. Paul Belleuvre, Henri ­Regnault, élégie, in Mémoires de la Société nationale d’agriculture, sciences, et arts 17 (1874): 18–­22; also see Joseph Rousse, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Poésies bretonnes (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1882), 155. 125. Eugène Manuel, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Pendant la guerre (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1872), 131–­36. Albert Delpit, “H.R.,” in Poésies: Les chants de l’invasion; les dieux qu’on brise (Paris: Ollenforf, 1891), 219–­22. 126. Manuel, Pendant la guerre, 15; also see Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 82. 127. Le Temps, January 9, 1914. Manuel says he knew ­Regnault slightly; his spouse, however, contradicts that. 128. Manuel, Pendant la guerre, 16–­17; Édouard Thierry, La Comédie Française pendant les deux sièges (Paris: Tresse et Stock, 1887), 279, 283, 287, 313. Eugène Manuel, Henri ­Regnault: Poésie récitée à la Comédie-­française par M. Coquelin le 27 Janvier 1871 (Paris: Levy, 1871)—­this date is probably wrong, as it coincides with ­Regnault’s funeral.

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­Thierry speaks of Coquelin reading the verses to him on January 30 and February 3, while Georges d’Heylli notes the verses to ­Regnault as playing on February 3 and 5 only. See Dix mois à la Comédie Française, siège et commune (Paris: Gervais, 1885), 16–­17. 129. “Courrier de Paris,” Le Temps, February 7, 1871; Journal des débats, February 5, 1871. 130. “Variétés,” Le Temps, December 17, 1872. 131. Mallarmé to Cazalis, February 2, 1871, trans. in Rosemary Lloyd, Mallarmé: The Poet and His Circle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 218; for their friendship see 51–­53, 218. Yves Peyré, Mallarmé, 1842–­1898: Un Destin d’écriture (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 90–­92, 164; for the full text see “Correspondance avec Henri Cazalis,” ed. Lawrence A. Joseph, in Documents Stéphane Mallarmé (Paris: Nizet, 1977), 6:448; also see Stéphane Mallarmé, correspondance, ed. Henri Mondor (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 1:337–­38; for the friendship between Cazalis and Mallarmé, see Lawrence A. Joseph, Henri Cazalis: Sa vie, son oeuvre, son amitié avec Mallarmé (Paris: Nizet, 1972), 140–­42. 132. Mallarmé to Cazalis, March 3, 1871, in Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, 6:453. 133. Cazalis to Mallarmé, February 26, 1871; Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, 6:451; and Stéphane Mallarmé, correspondance, 1:338; des Essarts to Mallarmé, May 19, 1872, in Stéphane Mallarmé, correspondance, 4:372n. 134. Catulle Mendès to Mallarmé, February 26, 1871, in Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, 6:453–­54n; and for Bréton, “Lettres d’Henri ­Regnault et de Geneviève Bréton à Mallarmé,” ed. Lawrence A. Joseph, in Documents Mallarmé, 7:401–­48; and Joseph’s introduction to Mallarmé’s and Bréton’s letters, Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, 7:403–­16. 135. Bréton to Mallarmé, June 27, 1871, in Stéphane Mallarmé, correspondance, 4:360n; and Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, 7:436. For the portrait, see Documents Stéphane ­Mallarmé, 6:47; Stéphane Mallarmé, correspondance, 1:43; and Odile Caule and Sophie de Juvigny, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (St. Cloud: Musée municipal de St. Cloud), 25. 136. Bréton to Mallarmé, September 10, 1871, in “Lettres d’Henri ­Regnault et de Geneviève Bréton à Mallarmé,” ed. Joseph, 7:439. 137. Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul,” 224. 138. For a classic statement, see Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992), esp. chap. 9. For the shifting relations between trauma theory and psychoanalytic thought, see Ruth Leys, Trauma: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 139. See Allen, “A Note on the Text,” in Bréton, “In the Solitude of My Soul,” 29; on Bréton generally, see the same author’s Poignant Relations: Three Modern French Women ­(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 80–­115.

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1. Maurice Dreyfous, Ce que je tiens à dire (Paris: Ollendorff, 1912), 156–­57. 2. For the baptism, see Le Temps, April 22, 1873; for the hotel in Granada, see Le Gaulois, September 12, 1897; for the Gibraltar drawings, see London Mid Surrey Times and ­General Advertiser, October 15, 1892. 3. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003), 19, includes a wide-­ranging exploration of the legacy in France of 1870–­71. The cultural history of military defeat—­its politics, rituals, and cultural aftermath—­features in Jenny Macleod, ed., Defeat and Memory: Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era (New York: Palgrave No t e s t o Page s 1 6 7 – 1 7 2









Macmillan, 2008). For the impact of the defeat on French politics, culture, and state institutions, three studies offer a guide to key topics and literature: Karine Varley, Under the Shadow of Defeat: The War of 1870–­71 in French Memory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Rachel Chrastil, Organizing for War: France, 1870–­1914 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010); and for social and medical aspects including changing attitudes to the treatment of casualties and burial, see Bertrand Taithe, Defeated Flesh: Medicine, Welfare, and Warfare in the Making of Modern France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). 4. This is the argument of Bernard Tillier in Le Commune de Paris: Révolution sans ­images? Politique et représentations dans la France républicaine, 1871–­1914 (Seysell: Champ ­Vallon, 2004), 220; Richard Thompson also touches on ­Regnault’s patriotic exemplarity in The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889–­ 1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 201; and John Milner, Art, War, and Revolution in France 1870–­71: Myth, Reportage, and Reality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 211–­213. 5. The commemorative practices associated with World War I have emerged as a subject of massive scholarly interest (no less than memory and history in other conflicts), and some of these studies reach back to the aftermath of the Franco-­Prussian War. For the now ubiquitous notion of sites of memory, developed under the auspices of Pierre Nora and with particular relevance to commemoration, see the useful overview by Jay Winter, “Historians and Sites of Memory,” in Memory in Mind and Culture, ed. Pascal Boyer and James V. Wertsch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 252–­72. Winter makes a case for “bottom-­up” approaches to historical remembrance in civil society in Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and he provides a more theorized account in Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, “Setting the Framework,” in War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 6–­36, along with studies cited in note 3 above. The present analysis is also informed by Avner Ben-­Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), as well as Ben-­Amos’s “Monuments and Memory in French Nationalism,” History and Memory 5, no. 2 (1993): 50–­81. Daniel J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), treats the First World War but sheds light on the preceding era, as do the studies collected in Philippe Rive et al., Monuments de mémoire (Paris: La Documentation française, 1991); and the classic studies by Antoine Prost, now re­published in Republican Identities in War and Peace, trans. Jay Winter (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 1–­72. For the cult of the hero in the formation of French national identity (although treating pre-­nineteenth-­century figures), see Christian Amalvi, De l’art et la manière d’accommoder les héros d’histoire de la France: Essais de mythologie nationale (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988); for the nineteenth century in particular, Paul Gerbod, “L’Éthique héroique en France (1870–­1914),” La Revue historique, no. 268 (1982): 409–­29; and see note 56 below for hero worship in pedagogical contexts. 6. The drawing goes unmentioned in Catalogue des aquarelles, dessins, tableaux, estampes de feu Jules Jacquemart (Paris, 1881). For Jacquemart’s career, see James Ganz, “Jules Jacquemart, Forgotten Printmaker of the Nineteenth Century,” Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 87 (Spring 1991): 3–­24. 7. “Discours de M. Louis Bernier,” Le Drapeau, February 1913, 5; Jules Breton, Nos Peintres de siècle (Paris: Société d’édition artistique, 1899), 209. Paul Connerton reviews N o t e s t o Pag e s 1 7 2 – 1 74

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­debates around habit in the formation of social memory in his influential How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898), 36–­41. 8. Letter from Barrias to unknown correspondent, September 4, 1871, Fondation Custodia, 1973.A.395; also see receipt by Barrias to “Monsieur Laudin [uncle of ­Regnault], architecte la somme de 200 francs pour une réduction en bronze du buste de Henri ­Regnault,” December 6, 1871, Fondation Custodia, 193.A.396. 9. Gil Blas, January 28, 1897. 10. Gil Blas, June 3, 1880. 11. For a report on this gathering see Gil Blas, July 7, 1888. 12. Hugues Imbert, “Augusta Holmès,” Revue d’art dramatique 28 (1892): 156; also see ­Patricia Roux, “Prosper d’Épinay: 1836–­1914,” master’s thesis, Université de Paris IV (1981), 74. 13. Archives nationales, AJ52/28; for the exchange of letters between Guillaume and ­Simon, see AJ52/270. 14. Angellier, Étude sur Henri ­Regnault (Paris: Boulanger, 1879), 7. 15. For the background to the project, see Alexis Lemaistre, L’École des beaux-­arts (Paris: Firmin-­Didot, 1889), 273; and Eugène Müntz, Guide de l’École nationale des beaux-­arts (Paris: Quantin, 1889), 219–­23. 16. Roger Ballu, “Le Monument de Henri ­Regnault à l’École des beaux-­arts,” Les Arts 3 (1876): 181. 17. “Monument élevé à Henri ­Regnault, pensionnaire de l’Académie de France à Rome, et aux élèves de l’École des beaux-­arts morts sur les champs de bataille, 1870–­1871,” unsigned manuscript, library of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-­arts. 18. La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, no. 35 (October 10, 1872): 361–­62. 19. “Concours et exposition: Distributions des prix aux exposants du Salon de 1876 et inauguration du monument d’Henri ­Regnault,” La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité 29 (August 26, 1876): 249–­50; also see the reports in Le Temps, August 13 and 14, 1876; and Philippe de Chennevières, Allocutions prononcées dans diverses solennités intéressant la direction des beaux-­arts (1874–­1878) (Paris: Bellême: 1878), 11–­12. 20. Henry Lapauze, “Lettres inédites du sculpteur Chapu,” Le Gaulois, July 29, 1911. 21. G. Valbert [Victor Cherbuliez], “Le Monument de Henri ­Regnault,” Revue des deux mondes (1876): 215–­16. 22. Mario Proth, Voyage au pays des peintres: Salon de 1876 (Paris: Henri Vaton, 1876), 108; Jules Claretie, L’Art et les artistes français contemporains (Paris: Charpentier, 1876), 74–­75; for the medal, see Archives nationales, F/21/0208B (the directeur des médailles warned in 1889 that there were only ten left and urged that the mold be fixed); a plaster medallion, 21 cm in diameter and dated to 1871, of uncertain origin, survives at Sèvres, drawer R47, h.6; also see Archives de Sèvres, Correspondance générale, series T, vol. 22. 23. Octave Fidière, Chapu: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Plon, 1894), 75–­92; Charles du ­Bousquet, “Chapu: Lettres, pages d’albums, et croquis inédits,” Revue de l’art ancien et moderne 30 (July 1911): 64. For the figure of youth in French funerary sculpture of this epoch, see Antoinette Le Norman-­Romain, Mémoire de marbre: La sculpture funéraire en France (Paris: Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, 1995), 275–­78. 24. Théodore Véron, De l’art et des artistes de mon temps: Le Salon de 1875 (Poitiers: Oudin, 1875), 84; Jules-­Antoine Castagnary, Salons, ed. Eugène Spuller (Paris: Charpentier, 1892), 2:193; Claretie, L’Art et les artistes français contemporains, 373; Ballu, “Monument de Henri ­Regnault,” 181. N o t e s t o Pag e s 1 74 – 1 8 2













25. The Athenaeum, no. 3216 (June 14, 1889): 767; Cassell’s Illustrated Guide to Paris (London: Cassell, 1884), 168. 26. For a visit to the site, see Jean-­Elie David et al., Notes au crayon: Souvenirs d’un arpenteur genevois, 1855–­1898 (Lausanne: Éditions d’en bas, 2004), 132; for reductions, see the Catalogue barbedienne (Paris, 1900), 3. The painting by Domergue is in the Musée de Libourne, inv. 975-­1-­1. 27. Albert Huguenin, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Rêveries, poésies, suivies de Cousin-­cousine (Paris: A. Ghio, 1880), 101–­3. 28. Jean-­Louis Dubut de Laforest, Haute galanterie (Paris: Fayard, 1900), 23–­24. 29. Henri de Régnier, La Flambée (Paris, 1909), 51. 30. Lemaistre, L’École des beaux-­arts, 277–­78. 31. Henry Jaudon, Denys Puech et son oeuvre (Paris, 1908), 60. 32. See François Daulte, Frédéric Bazille et les débuts de l’Impressionisme (Paris: La Bibliothèque des arts, 1992), 89; and Frédéric Bazille: Prophet of Impressionism (New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1992), 166. 33. “Nos Gravures: Henri ­Regnault,” L’Illustration 57 (January 22, 1876). 34. For this competition see Quand Paris dansait avec Marianne, 1879–­1889 (Paris: Éditions Paris-­musées, 1989), 98–­103; Hollis Clayson (Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege, 1870–­1871 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002], 343–­47) notes that the figure of ­Regnault “hovered over the contest.” Also see the La Muse républicaine: Artistes et pouvoir, 1870–­1900 (Ghent: Snoeck, 2010); and for issues around sculptural allegory in this era see Michael Dorsch, French Sculpture Following the Franco-­Prussian War, 1870–­1880: Realist Allegories and the Commemoration of Defeat (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 107–­32; for Franco-­Prussian War monuments in general, see June Hargrove, “‘Qui Vive? France!’ War Monuments from the Defense to the Revanche,” in Nationalism and French Visual Culture, 1870–­1914, ed. June Hargrove and Neil ­McWilliam (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2005), 55–­81; and in the same volume, François Robichon provides an overview of issues around representing the war in “Representing the 1870–­1871 War, or the Impossible Revanche,” 82–­99. 35. Claretie, La Vie à Paris, 1883 (Paris: Havard, 1883), 294. 36. Le Monde illustré, no. 1184 (December 6, 1879): 362. On Doré’s participation see Quand Paris dansait avec Marianne, 139–­43; and Samuel F. Clapp and Nadine Lehni, “Une Introduction à la sculpture de Gustave Doré,” Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de l’art français, 1991, 228–­29. An edition of Doré’s entry is at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. 37. See Claretie’s discussion, L’Art et les artistes français contemporains, 273–­74, and Jules Claretie, Peintres and sculpteurs contemporains (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), 23. 38. See H. W. Janson and Peter Fusco, eds., Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-­Century Sculpture from North American Collections (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980), 304–­6; Ruth Butler et al., European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2000), 292–­97. For editions and versions see Barbedienne, Catalogue des bronzes d’art (Paris, 1886), 49; for Mercié, see Hargrove, “Qui Vive? France,” 55–­81, and Dorsch, French Sculpture Following the Franco-­Prussian War, 81–­106, for the gendered tropes the sculpture inscribes. 39. Constance Cain Hungerford, “Meissonier’s ‘Siege of Paris’ and ‘Ruines des Tuileries,’” Gazette des beaux-­arts 116 (November 1990): 202–­12; Ernest Meissonier: retrospective (Lyon: Musée des beaux-­arts de Lyon, 1993), 184–­85; Octave Gréard, Meissonier, His Life and His Art (New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1897), 94–­94, 260, 319. N o t e s t o Page s 1 8 2 – 1 8 9

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40. A photograph survives in the so-­called Album Michelez, featuring works bought by the state at the Salon, Archives nationales, F21; 7644, no. 28. 41. Philippe Marsal, “Salon de 1879,” Le Devoir: Journal des réformes sociales 3 (1879): 761. 42. Joris-­Karl Huysmans, Écrits sur l’art, ed. Patrice Locmant (Paris: Bartillat, 2006), 122. 43. J. Darthenav, “L’Exposition internationale du palais des beaux-­arts de Monte Carlo,” Le Figaro, February 5, 1911. 44. Compagnie générale des panoramas nationaux, Bataille de Buzenval, 19 Janvier 1871, peintes par MM. Poilpot et Jacob; Historique de la bataille; explication du panorama (Paris, 1883), 13–­16. 45. New York audiences surely searched for ­Regnault when Phillipoteaux’s cyclorama opened at the corner of Fifty-­Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue in September 1882. Critics marveled at its illusionism. Phillipoteaux situated audiences within a farmhouse damaged by shelling and with a view of the engagement below—­“Between the use of real sod, rubble, and other props at the borders of the painted illusion, the sight of thousands of soldiers at battle in the snow, and a vast landscape with Paris in the background, this was not a spectacle that even the educated viewer should ‘pooh pooh.’” At fifty feet high and with a circumference of nearly four hundred feet, it was also one of the grandest painted entertaiments of its age (New York Times, September 17, 1882). 46. Le Figaro, March 19, 1912; Archives nationales, F/21/4258, dossier 55. 47. Wilmot Harrison, Memorable Paris Houses (London: S. Low, Marston, 1893), 170–­71. 48. Reproduced in Georges Veyrat, Les Statues de l’hôtel de ville (Paris: Libraries réunies, 1892); and Courier de l’art, August 23, 1883, 412. 49. For this commission, see Pierre Série, Joseph Blanc (1846–­1904), peintre d’histoire et décorateur (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2008), 186–­95, 260. 50. “Petite chronique,” L’Art moderne, July 20, 1890, 231; also see the notes in The Builder, August 2, 1890, 84, and Le Temps, July 1, 1890. For the chronology of the commissions, Archives nationales, F/21/2112B; for its location, see Gabriel Rouchès, L’École des beaux-­ arts: Aperçu historique et guide à travers les collections (Paris: Morancé, 1924), 90. For the vignette see F. Meaule, René Morin à la villa Médicis (École de Rome) (Paris: Librairie d’éducation nationale, 1905). 51. La Presse, February 13, 1873. 52. Larroumet, Henri ­Regnault, 12 and 58n. 53. V. Tinayre, “Henri ­Regnault, enfant,” bound with Victor Hugo, enfant (Paris: Kéva, 1882), 111–­16. 54. Elie Sorin, Les Martyrs du siège de Paris (Paris: Librairie internationale, 1872), 75–­108. 55. Joachim Ambert, Gaulois et Germains: Récits militaires (Paris: Bloud et Barral, 1884), 4:310–­14; Louis Liard, Morale et enseignement civique à l’usage des écoles primaires (Paris: Cerf, 1883), 107; F. Tamisier, Les Pertes récentes de la France (Marseilles: M. ­Olive, 1872), 10–­11; Louis Mainard, Livre d’or de la patrie (Paris, 1885), 170; Pierre Lods, Annuaire de l’instruction publique dans le département de la Haute-­Saône 1 (1891): 146–­47. 56. Charles Bigot, Le Petit français (Paris: E. Weill, 1894), 155–­56; François Desplantes, Les Martyrs du patriotisme (Paris: Librairie nationale d’éducation et de récréation, 1892), 142, and Au champ d’honneur (Rouen: Mégard, 1892), 156–­58; Jules Maurie and Adrien Basile, Le Livre du bon soldat: Exemples de patriotisme appliqués à la théorie (Paris: L. Baudoin, 1893), 65. The literature on exemplary children’s literature is large, but see Jean Glénisson and Ségolène Le Men, eds., Le Livre d’enfance et de jeunesse en France (Bordeaux: Société des bibliophiles de Guyenne, 1994); and M. Martin Guiney, N o t e s t o Page s 1 9 0 – 2 0 0















“L’Éducation nationale and Salvation through Literature,” in Peripheries of Nineteenth-­ Century French Studies: Views from the Edge, ed. Timothy Raser (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 119–­32; for the idea of the hero in particular see Jean-­François Chanet, “La Fabrique des héros: Pédagogie républicaine et culte des grands hommes de Sedan à Vichy,” Vingtième siècle 65 (January-­March 2000): 13–­34; for broader reflections on the schoolhouse and national identity, see Prost, Republican Identities in War and Peace, 73–­92. 57. A. Bernard, “Le Garde nationale pendant le siège, 1870–­1871,” in Patrie (Paris, 1908), 5. 58. Eugène Muller, La Morale en action par l’histoire (Paris: Hetzel, 1881), 56–­58. 59. Eugène Ory, De la protection de l’enfant et de l’adulte (Saint Etienne: J. Besseyre, 1883). 60. Maxime Lorin, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Mes rêves (Paris: Dupret, 1886), 127–­28; Charles Pisson, Patrie: Souvenirs de 1870–­1873 (Le Cateau: L’Imprimerie de l’Empereur, 1877), 97–­100; Léon Séché, “La Salomé de Henri ­Regnault,” in Amour et patrie (Paris: Lemerre, 1876), 41–­42; Ernest de Calonne, “Henri ­Regnault,” in Hier et demain: Poésies (Paris: Laplace, Sanchez et cie, 1875), 139–­40; Henri Chantavoine, “À la mémoire de Henri ­Regnault,” in Poèmes sincères: Foyer, patrie, évangile (Paris: Levy, 1877), 73–­75. 61. “Henri ­Regnault,” Journal de Paris, January 18, 1872. 62. For members of the “Arche de Noé,” see Gazette anecdotique, littéraire, artistique 2 (July 15, 1884): 14. For Déroulède’s ideas, see Zeev Sternhell, “Paul Déroulède and the Origins of Modern French Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 4 (1971): 46–­70; Peter M. Rutkoff, Revanche and Revision: The Ligue des Patriotes and the Origins of the Radical Right in France, 1882–­1900 (Athens: Ohio State University Press, 1981); Bertrand Joly, Déroulède, l’inventeur du nationalisme français (Paris: Perrin, 1998); and Robert Lynn Fuller, The Origins of the French Nationalist Movement, 1886–­1914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), although none touches on Déroulède and ­Regnault. For the thematics of the peasant-­soldier in art, see Neil McWilliam, Monumental Intolerance: Jean Baffier, a Nationalist Sculptor in Fin-­de-­Siècle France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000), 67–­97. 63. Livre d’or de la jeunesse française: Panthéon patriotique (Limoges: M. Barbou, 1888), 13–­14; Le Drapeau, December 29, 1881. 64. Le Drapeau, January 20, 1883, 80. 65. Ernest de Calonne, “À Henri ­Regnault,” Le Drapeau, January 19, 1884, 30. 66. Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 121; Émile Duhousset, “Une Oeuvre inédite de Henri ­Regnault,” L’Illustration, no. 1613 (January 24, 1874): 53–­54. 67. See his “Discours de Buzenval,” Le Drapeau, January 23, 1886, and included in Paul Déroulède, Le Livre de la Ligue des patriotes (Paris: Bureau de la Ligue de patriotes, 1887). 68. L. Autie, “À l’École des beaux-­arts,” Le Drapeau, February 9, 1884. 69. Paul Déroulède, “La Jeunesse,” in Qui vive? France! “Quand même”: Notes et discours (Paris: Bloud, 1910), 11–­12. See Denis Pernot, La Jeunesse en discours, 1880–­1925: Discours social et création littéraire (Paris: Champion, 2007), 9–­10, for Déroulède and the literature of youthful regeneration. 70. On sporting nationalism see Pierre Arnaud, “Dividing and Uniting: Sports Societies and Nationalism, 1870–­1914,” in Nationhood and Nationalism in France from Boulangism to the Great War, 1889–­1918, ed. Robert Tombs (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 182–­93, and Chrastil, Organizing for War, 112–­26. 71. Le Drapeau, June 13, 1885. N o t e s t o Page s 2 0 1 – 2 0 4

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72. For an account by a follower of Déroulède, see Henri Galli, Dessous diplomatiques: Dix ans de politique étrangère, 1884–­1893 (Paris: Garnier frères, 1894), 148–­51; also see Pierre Albin, “L’Impératrice Frédéric à Paris,” Revue de Paris, April 1, 1913; and Gaston Routier, Un Point d’histoire contemporaine: Le voyage de l’impératrice Frédéric à Paris en 1891 (Paris: Daragon, 1901). Françoise Forster-­Hahn discusses the controversy over the Berlin exhibition in “La Confraternité de l’art: Deutsch-­französische Ausstellungs­ politik von 1871 bis 1914,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48 (1985): 531–­32. 73. William Bouguereau to Henriette Bouguereau, February 26, 1891, cited in William Bouguereau, 1825–­1905 (Montreal: Musée des beaux-­arts, 1984), 54. 74. La République française, February 19, 1891. 75. Moniteur Universel, February 24 and February 26, 1891; Le Bien public, February 27, 1891; Archives nationales, Minute de lettre, directeur des beaux-­arts, February 24, 1891, 52/810.AJ52/810. 76. H. Galli, “Paul Déroulède raconté par lui même,” La Revue hebdomadaire 9 (January 1900): 393. 77. L’Intransigeant, February 28, 1891; Le National, February 26, 1891. 78. Journal des débats, February 21, 1891; Le Temps, February 26 and February 27, 1891; La République française, February 26, 1891. 79. La Liberté, February 26, 1871. 80. Grif, Le Rappel, February 28, 1891; Le Figaro, February 28, 1891. 81. Jean Frollo [Charles-­Ange Laisant], Le Petit Parisien, February 28, 1891. 82. L’Intransigeant, January 27, 1891. 83. “Les Artistes français à Berlin,” Le Siècle, February 24, 1891. 84. Le National, February 26, 1891; Le Temps, February 25, 1891. 85. L’Intransigeant, January 27, 1891. 86. K., “Les Envois des peintres français à Berlin,” La Vie parisienne, February 28, 1891. 87. Le Siècle, February 27, 1891. 88. La République française, February 27, 1891; Le Siècle; February 26, 1891, and Georges Leygues, “Un peu de sang-­froid,” Le Siècle, February 27, 1891. 89. Eugène Clisson, “M. Bouguereau à Berlin,” L’Événement, April 18, 1891, cited in William Bouguereau, 255–­56; for the demonstration, La République française, March 6, 1891, and La Presse, March 6, 1891. 90. L’Intransigeant, February 27, 1891; William Hepworth Dixon, The Empress Frederick: A Memoir (London: Nisbet, 1913), 339–­40; for the empress’s views, Letters of the Empress Frederick, ed. Frederick Ponsoby (London: Macmillan, 1929), 423–­25. Gaston Routier, Un Point d’histoire contemporaine (Paris: Daragon, 1901), 49. 91. Remy de Gourmont, “Le Joujou patriotisme,” Mercure de France, April 1891, 198; and Remy de Gourmont, Le Joujou patriotisme et documents annexes, ed. Thierry Gillybeouf (Paris: Éditions mille et une nuits, 2001). 92. Octave Mirbeau, “Les Beautés du patriotisme,” in Les Écrivains (1884–­1894) (Paris: Flammarion, 1926), 1:234; and Combats littéraires (Paris: L’Âge d’homme, 2006), 339. 93. “La Manifestation de Buzenval,” Le Drapeau, January 17, 1911, 6–­7. 94. Jules Claretie, “La Vie à Paris,” Le Temps, July 27, 1912. 95. See Le Temps, July 26, 1912; Le Journal, July 25, 1912; Le Petit journal, July 25, 1912; L’Exelsior, July 30, 1912; Maurice Barrès, “La Genèse de la cérémonie patriotique du 26 Janvier,” Le Drapeau, February 1913, 3. 96. Le Journal des débats, January 27, 1913; La République française, January 27, 1913, Le Gaulois, January 27, 1913. N o t e s t o Page s 2 0 5 – 2 1 3







97. Louis d’Hurcourt, “En souvenir de Henri ­Regnault,” Le Drapeau, March 1913, 3. For the elder Raymond’s efforts, see Préfecture du département de la Seine, Conseil general: Procès verbaux, session complémentaire de 1872 (Paris: Mourgues frères, 1873), 282. 98. Paul Déroulède, “Discours prononcé à l’inauguration du monument d’Henri ­Regnault à Buzenval,” in Les Archives de la parole, 1911–­1913, digital audio file, Bibliothèque nationale. 99. Correspondance de Henri ­Regnault, ed. Arthur Duparc (Paris: Charpentier, 1872), 398. 100. See in particular Jean-­François Jagielski, Le Soldat inconnu: Invention et posterité d’un symbole (Paris: Imago, 2005), esp. 7–­42; the phrase “democracy of death” belongs to Thomas Laqueur, “Memory and Naming in the Great War,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 150–­67; also see Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France, 100–­103.

Chapter 7



1. For this project see Lawrence Joseph, Henri Cazalis: Sa vie, son oeuvre, son amitié avec Mallarmé (Paris: Nizet, 1972), 253. 2. Without seeking to summarize the literature (much of it generated in reviews associated with scholarly revivals around Gérôme and others), my own account has profited from Pierre Bourdieu, “Manet and the Institutionalization of Anomie,” in The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 238–­73 (a rigorous restatement of the anti-­academic position, but valuable in that regard); also see Stephen Bann, Ways around Modernism (New York: Routledge, 2007); Anna Brzyski, “Measuring Canons: Reflections on Innovation and the Nineteenth-­ Century Canon of European Art,” in Partisan Canons, ed. A. Brzyski (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 27–­54, and in the same volume, Paul Duro, “Imitation and Authority: The Creation of the Academic Canon in French Art, 1648–­1870,” 95–­114; for the currency of such terms into twentieth-­century art, see the studies collected in Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris, eds., Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the Arrière-­garde (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), esp. 1–­29; also see the literature on academies in the nineteenth century, for example the studies collected in Rafael Cardoso Denis and Colin Trodd, eds., Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), notably the essay by Paul Barlow, “Fear and Loathing of the Academic, or Just What Is It That Makes the Avant-­Garde So Different, So Appealing?,” 15–­32. Bruno Foucart offers a defense, of sorts, of the Prix de Rome in the late ­nineteenth century in “La Modernité à l’Académie de France à Rome (1863–­1914),” in L’Académie de France à Rome aux XIXe et XXe siècles: Entre tradition, modernité et création, ed. Claire Chevrolet et al. (Paris: Somogy, 2002), 107–­23; another notable treatment is Claudine Mitchell, “What Is to Be Done with the Salonniers?” Oxford Art Journal 10, no. 1 (1987): 104–­16; and Jacques Thuillier, Peut-­on parler d’une peinture “pompier”? (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984), remains a classic exploration of the problematic. The creation of the Musée d’Orsay has offered multiple opportunities for scholarly and journalistic interventions on this topic. See (along with additional bibliography) Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Creating the Musée d’Orsay: The Politics of Culture in France (University Park: Penn State Press, 1998). 3. See Louis Enault, “Chronique,” La Vogue parisienne, November 25, 1871, 5, and Le Petit journal, November 24, 1871. No t e s t o Page s 2 1 4 – 2 1 9

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4. Arthur Duparc, “Prix et envois de Rome,” Le Correspondant 85 (November 25, 1871): 759. 5. Victor R ­ egnault to Montfort, May 7, 1871, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. 6. Victor ­Regnault to Montfort, February 26, 1871, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. 7. For Victor ­Regnault, see Laurie Dahlberg, Victor ­Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Sébastien Poncet and Laurie Dahlberg, “The Legacy of Henri-­Victor ­Regnault in the Arts and Sciences,” International Journal of Arts and Sciences 4, no. 13 (2011): 377–­400. 8. For the Luxembourg, see Geneviève Lacambre, La Musée du Luxembourg en 1874 (Paris: Éditions du musées nationaux, 1974), and “Les Achats de l’état aux artistes vivants: Les musées du Luxembourg,” in La Jeunesse des musées: Les musées en France au dix-­neuvième siècle, ed. Chantal Georgel (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1994), 269–­77; and Daniel Sherman, Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-­Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 21–­23. 9. Temple Bar 58 (1880): 355; W.B.S., “The Art Season of 1871,” Fraser’s Magazine 4 (August 1871): 183. 10. Victor ­Regnault to Montfort, May 7, 1871, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. Paul Durand-­Ruel, Memoirs of the First Impressionist Art Dealer (Paris: Flammarion, 2015), 76. 11. Philippe de Chennevières, Souvenirs d’un directeur des beaux-­arts (Paris: Bureaux de l’Artiste, 1883), 35. 12. As reported in Paris-­artiste, April 25, 1872, 5. 13. Théophile Gautier, “Cercle de l’union artistique: Exposition de peinture,” L’Illustration, March 2, 1872, 134. 14. De Bolney, “Les Arts,” Paris-­journal, February 9, 1872, and La République française, February 5, 1872. 15. Le Temps, February 17, 1872. 16. Ty, “L’Exposition du Cercle de l’union artistique,” La Vie artistique, February 10, 1872, 93; A. Bonnin, Paris-­artiste, January 25, 1872. 17. M., “Messieurs les peintres, soyez français: À propos de l’exposition du Cercle de l’union artistique,” La Vie parisienne, March 2, 1872. 18. Ty, “L’Exposition du Cercle de l’union artistique,” La Vie parisienne, February 10, 1872, 93; for complaints see Le Temps, February 17, 1872. 19. Moniteur universel, March 19, 1872. 20. Oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault exposées à l’École des beaux-­arts (Paris: Claye, 1872); ­Théophile Gautier, “Henri ­Regnault: Tableaux, esquisses, et dessins,” L’Illustration, February 10, 1872, 90. For Bréton and Gautier, see “Geneviève Bréton à Théophile Gautier,” February 24, 1872, in Théophile Gautier, Correspondance générale: 1872 et compliments, ed. Claudine Lacoste-­Veysseyre (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 12:19, and additional letters following. 21. Victor ­Regnault to Montfort, April 7, 1872, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. 22. H. Bolney, “Henri ­Regnault,” Paris-­journal, March 25, 1872. 23. Le Voleur: Journal pour tous, April 5, 1872. For the emergence of monographic ex­ hibitions see Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-­de-­Siècle Europe (Prince­ ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 107–­37; and Martha Ward, Pissarro, Neo-­ N o t e s t o Page s 2 2 0 – 2 2 4











impressionism, and the Spaces of the Avant-­Garde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 19–­29. 24. “­Regnault,” La Chronique illustrée, March 25–­31, 1872, 2. 25. Ernest Filloneau, “Exposition des oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault,” La Moniteur des arts, March 22, 1872. 26. “Choses et autres,” La Vie parisienne, March 23, 1872. 27. Ibid. 28. Jules Charles-­Roux, Souvenirs du passé: Le Cercle artistique de Marseilles (Paris: Lemerre, 1906), 223, 249; Paris-­artiste, February 1, 1872, 2; for Marseilles’s purchase of the picture, see Sherman, Worthy Monuments, 151–­52. 29. L’Univers illustré, March 23, 1872, 182, 294; Henri Baillière, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Didier, 1872), 58. 30. Chrysale, “Hommes et choses,” La Liberté, March 20, 1872; Chrysale, “Hommes et choses,” La Liberté, April 11, 1872. 31. Victor ­Regnault to Montfort, April 7, 1872, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. 32. Louis Gonse, “Un Tableau disparu de Henri ­Regnault,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 25 (April 1, 1882): 432. 33. Charles Garnier, “Exposition des oeuvres de Henri ­Regnault,” March 14, 1872, Biblothèque nationale, fonds Vaudoyer, NAF 28428/129, Bréton diary clippings. 34. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, “Le Salon de 1872: Un ignorant au salon,” in L’Amour de l’art, ed. Jean François Delaunay (Paris: Séguier, 1993), 182. 35. Louis Ratisbonne, Journal des débats, March 26, 1872. 36. Athanase Coquerel, “Henri ­Regnault et son oeuvre,” Revue bleue 32 (April 13, 1872): 988. 37. Ernest Chesneau, “Henri ­Regnault,” Revue des deux mondes 98 (1872): 736. 38. “Choses et autres,” Le National, April 6, 1872; Roger Marx, Henri ­Regnault, 1843–­1871 (Paris: Rouam, 1886), 86. 39. Le Petit journal, February 14, 1872. 40. See Le Temps, April 7, 1892, and additional notes by Marx, Henri ­Regnault, 87; Victor ­Regnault to Montfort, April 17, 1872, Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, P30. 41. J. J. Gilder, “New York Letter,” Academy 7 (March 13, 1875): 269. 42. For this sale see Victor Champier, L’Année artistique (Paris: Quantin, 1881), 123–­24; and Architect, April 24, 1880. 43. Le Temps, March 4, 1880. 44. See Andrea Meyer, “Paris, l’art français, et son importance pour l’Allemagne,” in Perspectives croisées: La critique d’art franco-­allemande, 1870–­1945, ed. Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Mathilde Arnoux, and Friederike Kitschen (Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 2009), 45. 45. Le Figaro, April 19, 1884. 46. Le Temps, October 6 and 11, 1890, and November 22, 1890; “Les Greniers du Louvre,” Gil Blas, October 13, 1890. 47. Les Modes parisiennes, 1872, 562. Gabriel Rouchès speaks of ­Regnault’s copy as still hanging in the Salle Melpomène in 1924. See L’École des beaux-­arts: Aperçu historique et guide à travers les collections (Paris: Morancé, 1924), 43. 48. Charles-­Roux, Souvenirs du passé, 227. 49. Galerie Sedelmeyer, Vente de tableaux anciens et modernes de premier ordre (Paris: Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1892), 72–­73. N o t e s t o Page s 2 2 5 – 2 3 1

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50. New York Times, September 12, 1886; American, September 18, 1886, 349. 51. Lucy Hooper, “The Pictures at the Paris Exhibition: The French Section,” Art Journal 4 (1878): 251. 52. Théophile Gautier, Paris Besieged (Boston: Little, Brown, 1872), 193. 53. Victor Cherbuliez, “La Peinture à l’Exposition Universelle,” Revue des deux mondes 30 (1878): 620. 54. Émile Blavet, Le Gaulois, May 8, 1878; Dubosc de Pesquidoux, L’Art dans les deux mondes (Paris: Plon, 1881), 1:424. 55. Georges Rivière, “L’Exposition des impressionistes” (1877), in Les Écrivains devant l’impressonisme, ed. Denys Riout (Paris: Macula, 1989), 194. 56. Émile Zola, “Lettres de Paris: L’École française de peinture en 1878,” in Écrits sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 369. 57. Jules Claretie, Les Artistes français à l’Exposition Universelle de 1878 (Paris: J. Decaux, 1878), 19. For the phrase “red smoke of Buzenval,” see a fuller treatment in Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1882), 1:13–­15. 58. Le Gaulois, May 6, 1914. 59. Marx, ­Regnault, 90. 60. Ibid., 70. 61. Ibid., 69. 62. Alfred de Lostalot, “Bibliographie,” La Chronique des art et de la curiosité 27 (July 31 1886), and Les Chef d’oeuvres de l’école française: De Delacroix à ­Regnault (Paris: Librairie illustrée, 1891). 63. Gustave Geffroy, La Peinture au Louvre (Paris: Nilsson, 1902), 64. Geffroy reserved special praise in this regard for ­Regnault’s Comtesse de Barck, another strong picture associated with ­Regnault’s Spanish sojourn and often cited by critics as offering the same freshness and directness of manner. 64. Camille Mauclair, The Great French Painters and the Evolution of French Painting from 1830 to the Present Day (New York: Dutton, 1903), 79. 65. Paul Vitry, The Louvre Museum (Paris: Morancé, 1922), 46. 66. The First of Hearts: Selected Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, ed. Ward Thoron (Bloomington, IN: Willowbanks, 2011), 135; Durand-Ruel, Memoirs of the First Impressionist Art Dealer, 76. 67. New York Times, February 27, 1882. 68. Montezuma [Montague Marks], “My Date Book,” Art Amateur 6 (April 1882): 93. 69. M.G.V.R., “Art Matters: Henri ­Regnault’s Automedon and the Horses of Achilles,” Lippin­ cott’s Magazine 29 (May 1882): 523. 70. “Art Notes,” Art Journal, no. 16 (1882): 127. 71. “­Regnault’s Automedon,” Critic 2 (March 11, 1882): 77. 72. Palette Scrapings 1 (May 27, 1882): 51. 73. Collector 8 (January 15, 1897): 1882. 74. W.R.T., “Art Notes,” American 6 (December 22, 1883): 172. 75. See the report in the American 9 (April 25, 1885): 460; S. A. Coale Jr. to James J. Hill, December 31, 1876, cited by Sheila ffolliott in “James J. Hill as Art Collector,” in Homecoming: The Art Collection of James J. Hill (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991), 33–­34. 76. H. Winthrop Pierce, The History of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1877–­ 1927 (Boston: T. O. Metcalf, 1930), 115–­16; also see Walter Muir Whitehill, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: A Centennial History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1970), 1:55. N o t e s t o Page s 2 3 2 – 2 3 8









77. New York Times, June 2, 1884; Robert Reid in Art Student 1, no. 3 (May 1884). 78. Boston Daily Advertiser, February 15, 1884. 79. Boston Daily Advertiser, clippings file, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Whitehill, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1:79–­81. 80. Frederic Crowninshield, “Automedon and the Horses of Achilles,” American Architect and Building News 16 (December 27, 1884): 305–­6. 81. American 9 (April 25, 1885): 460. 82. Boston Daily Advertiser, February 15, 1884. 83. New York Times, February 24, 1884. 84. Curtis’s remarks cited in Whitehill, Museum of Fine Arts, 1:81. 85. William Howe Downes, “Boston Painters and Paintings,” Atlantic Monthly 62 (October 1888): 510; Walter Gilman Page, “Henri ­Regnault,” New England Magazine 11 (February 1895): 704. 86. John L. Wright, “Famous Boston Paintings,” Bostonian 3 (February 1896): 436. 87. “Famous Works of Art,” Boston Daily Globe, October 11, 1903; “Art and Artists,” Boston Daily Globe, January 29, 1890. 88. Edward E. Hale and Lucretia P. Hale, The New Harry and Lucy: A Story of Boston in the Summer of 1891 (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892), 207. 89. Whitehill, Museum of Fine Arts, 1:81. 90. “Les Arts et la curiosité,” Gazette de France, June 14, 1912. 91. Le Gaulois, May 28, 1912; Raymond Bouyer, “Galeries et collections,” Revue de l’art ancien et moderne, April 1912, 305–­16. 92. New York Times, May 29, 1912. 93. “La Vie à Paris,” Le Temps, May 31, 1912. 94. Georges Clairin, letter published in Gil Blas, May 30, 1912. 95. Valemont, “La Vente de la Salomé d’Henri ­Regnault,” Le Figaro, May 31, 1912. 96. Le Voltaire, June 2, 1912. 97. M.H., “Le Louvre rachètera-­t-­il Salomé? Chez M. Pujalet,” La Patrie, June 1, 1912. 98. C. R. Henschel to Carstairs, May 30, 1912, Knoedler & Co archives. 99. Roland Knoedler to Carstairs, June 3,1912, Knoedler & Co. archives. 100. Gil Blas, June 4 ,1912. 101. Ibid.; Marguerite de Saint-­Marceaux, Journal 1894–­1927, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris: Fayard, 2007), 707. 102. Archives de la Réunion des musées nationaux, “Procès verbaux du comité consultatif,” May 23 and June 13, 1912; and “Procès verbaux du conseil des musées nationaux,” May 29, 1912. And see Léon Bonnat’s letter to Meyer discussing the Louvre’s actions in Les Nouvelles, June 14, 1912; also Gil Blas, June 21, 1912; “La Question Salomé,” La Patrie, June 11 and 14, 1912; and Arthur Meyer, “Le Louvre et la Salomé,” Le Gaulois, June 13, 1912. For documentary traces of this incident, also see Agnes Callu, La Réunion des musées nationaux, 1870–­1940 (Paris: École des Chartes, 1994), 243–­44. 103. For the ligue antisalomique see the satire by Lucien Mélivet, with an illustration by Charles Martin, Fantasio, July 1, 1912. 104. See, for example, “Le Prix des objets d’art,” L’Économiste français, June 22, 1912; ­Yvanhoé Rambosson, “Pas de loi Paca en France,” Paris-­journal, June 18, 1912; “Rome et Paca,” Univers, June 21, 1912; Henry Reverdy, “La Danse des millions,” La Semaine littéraire, June 23, 1912. 105. Roger Bontemps, “Tableaux chers,” Radical, May 31, 1912. 106. L’Intransigeant, June 5, 1912. No t e s t o Page s 2 3 9 – 2 4 4

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Marcel de Bara, “Trop cher!,” Patrie, June 5, 1912. [Léonce Bénédite], “Art et curiosité,” Le Figaro, June 1, 1912. Jacques Daurelle, “Revue de la quinzaine,” Mercure de France, June 16, 1912, 884–­85. Gustave Geffroy, “La Question Salomé,” La Dépêche, June 7, 1912. André Michel, “Promenades aux Salons,” Journal des débats, June 5, 1912; for Michel’s earlier account of Salome, see “À propos d’une collection particulière exposée dans la galerie de M. Georges Petit,” Gazette des beaux-­arts 30 (December 1884): 499–­500. 112. Louis Vauxelles, “Mise au point,” Gil blas, June 1, 1912. 113. Cited by Roger Allard in La Côte, June 18, 1912. 114. Camille Mauclair, Le Progrès, June 28, 1912; Max Goth [Maximilien Gauthier], “Entretien avec le fils de la Salomé de Henri ­Regnault,” Gil blas, January 26, 1913. 115. R.E.D., “Art in France,” Burlington Magazine 21 (April-­September 1912): 234–­35; Guy Pène du Bois, “The Famous $100,000 Salome,” Hearst’s International, October 1912, 129. 116. Louis Dimier, “La Bluff de la Salomé,” Action française, June 1, 1912. On Dimier, see the essays collected in Louis Dimier: Politique et religion, province et art (Moûtiers-­ Tarentaise: Académie de la Val-­d’Isère, 1991); and Louis Dimier, L’Art français, ed. Henri Zerner (Paris: Hermann, 1965). Mireille Dottin-­Orsini notes the anti-­Semitic tenor of the Salome affair in “Salomé de Henri ­Regnault, genèse et description d’un tableau légendaire,” in Textes, images, musique, ed. André Mansau and Jean Louis Cabanès (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail-­Toulouse, 1992), 30–­45, and Cette femme qu’ils disent fatale: Textes et images de la misogynie fin-­de-­siècle (Paris: Grasset, 1993), 328. 117. Louis Dimier, Histoire de la peinture française au dix-­neuvième siècle (Paris: Delagrave, 1914), 223–­24. 118. Pages choisies des grands écrivains: Alphonse Daudet, ed. Georges Toudouze (Paris: A. Colin, 1905), 15–­16. 119. Léon Daudet, “L’Affaire Salomé,” Action française, June 4, 1912. 120. Ibid., and June 7, 1912. For Daudet and the “vulgarity” of nineteenth-­century taste see La Stupide XIXème siècle (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie nationale, 1922), 204–­6. 121. Action française, June 4, 1912. 122. Léon Daudet, “Les Salomeries d’Arthur Meyer: Le Naufrage de la combinaison,” Action française, June 6, 1912. 123. Pierre du Colombier, “Notes d’art,” La Revue critique des idées et des livres 18 (August 25, 1912): 481. 124. Saint-­Marceaux, Journal, 703–­4, 707. 125. “Notes d’Art,” 483. 126. Rivarol, Action française, June 14, 1912. 127. New York Times, January 5, 1913. 128. For the painting’s entry into the Metropolitan Museum, see Henry W. Kent to Charles R. Henschel, July 19, 1916, Archives of the Metropolitan Museum, dossier B173. Also B.B. [Bryson Burroughs], “­Regnault’s Salome,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 11 (August 1916): 164–­66; New York Times, August 11, 1916. Knoedler’s archives show no record of Baker purchasing the painting, only that it arrived in New York in July 1916 with a purchase price of $102,524. 129. Walter Pach, Ananias, or The False Artist (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928), 161, 258–­59, 260–­61. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

N o t e s t o Page s 2 4 4 – 2 4 9

Index The initials “HR” in this index refer to Henri Regnault. Page numbers in italics indicate color prints of Regnault’s major works. Page numbers followed by the letter f indicate a figure.

Abbott, Holker, 238 Abot, Eugène, 183 About, Edmond, 157–­58, 203 academic art and the Salon, 6–­8, 70; ­authority of the old masters in, 24–­30, 35–­ 36; canonicity of art of, 216–­21, 234; declining influence of, 229, 232–­35, 241, 246–­49, 250; on drawing vs. color, 92; HR’s sub­ missions to, 18–­24, 36–­37; impressionist and modernist revolution against, 7–­8, 25; judges at, 17–­18; popularity in America of, 235–­42. See also École des beaux arts; ­Salons Across Paris (Cain), 157 Action française, 246–­49 Adams, Marion “Clover,” 236 Adorée, Renée, 77 Aïcha, Chamma Bent El Arbi, 88 Aldrich, Thomas, 108–­9 Alhambra. See Granada work Ambert, Joachim, 200 André Mauvin (character), 183–­84 Andrieux, Clément-­Auguste, French Soldiers Departing for Buzenval, January 18, 1871 of, 130f Angellier, Auguste, 23; Étude sur Henri ­Regnault of, 176, 178f Angelus Vardoz (character), 183 anti-­Semitism, 247–­49 Anxiety of Influence (Bloom), 28 Armistice Day, 215 Artistes célèbres, Les (Marx), 197, 198f artist-­model relationships, 84–­92 art nouveau, 233 Arus, Raoul, 136–­37; National Guardsman at Buzenal of, 136f Astruc, Zacharie, 84

Atget, Eugène, 183 Augé, Louis, 224–­25 Avenue Henri-­Regnault, Sèvres, 192, 193f Bader, Louise, 166 Baillière, Henri, 22, 23, 25, 40, 139, 159 Baker, George F., 249 Balbi, Lucrezia, 91–­92 Banville, Théodore, 48, 77, 201, 213 Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules, 227 Barbier, Jules, 196–­97 Barrès, Maurice, 213 Barrias, Louis-­Ernest, 4, 179; Death Mask of Henri Regnault of, 153–­60, 196, 197f; Defense of Paris of, 186, 187f, 201; Henri Regnault (bust) of, 174–­76, 198f, 213–­14, 224, 232, 278n8 Bastien-­Lepage, Jules, 217, 229 Battle of Buzenval, Janaury 19, 1871 (color woodcut), 135f Baudelaire, Charles, 50 Baudry, Paul, 17–­18, 26, 29, 164, 179, 217–­18; Theseus in the Labyrinth of, 17 Baussan, Auguste, 185; Monument to Frédéric Bazille of, 185f Bayard, Émile, 164; Gloria Victis of, 190 Bazille, Frédéric, 184–­86 Bazille, Gaston, 185 Beaunier, André, 137 Belleuvre, Paul, 166, 201 Belly, Léon, Pilgrims in the Desert of, 45 Bénédite, Léonce, 44–­46, 57, 80, 89 Benjamin, Roger, 43 Benjamin, S. G. W., 118–­19, 235, 239 Benjamin-­Constant, Jean-­Joseph, 72, 106, 217–­18, 235; Judith of, 74, 76f Benner, Jean, 74–­75

[ 289 ]

[ 290 ]

Benouville, François-­Léon, Poussin Discovering the Composition for His Finding of Moses of, 30 Berlin exhibition and Empress Frederick, 205, 208–­11 Bernhardt, Sarah, 73, 75, 77, 137, 174, 226 Bernier, Louis, 173–­74, 213 Besnard, Albert, 217 Bida, Alexandre, 127, 157, 162, 164, 179 Bigot, Charles, 30, 52, 200 Blanc, Charles, 35–­36, 78, 113, 120, 222, 230 Blanc, Joseph, 156–­57, 195–­97; exterior frieze, Grand Palais, 195f; Henri Regnault, frontispiece Blancard, Hippolyte, 2; War of 1870–­71, Farm Buildings at Buzenval of, 3f Blanchard, Édouard-­Théophile, 176, 179, 229 Blanche, Jacques-­Émile, 71–­72 Blane, Sally, 77 Blavet, Érik, 232 blood, 113–­25, 159 Bloom, Harold, 28 Boldini, Giovanni, 95 Bonington, Richard Parkes, 110–­13, 265n16; The Siesta of, 112f Bonnat, Léon, 205, 244 Bonnin, A., 41, 95 Book of the Good Soldier, The, 200 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 237–­41 Bouguereau, William-­Adolphe, 181, 205–­6, 210 Boulangism, 206–­8 Bourgeois, Léon, 206–­7 Bracquemond, Félix, 164 Brame, Hector, 79–­80 Bréton, Geneviève, 9, 108; Clairin and, 140, 162, 165; engagement of to HR, 127–­29, 149–­50, 161; HR’s death and, 2–­5, 136, 144, 161–­62; at HR’s funeral, 163–­64, 166–­67; HR’s letters to, 37, 251n8; on HR’s model for Salomé, 86–­87, 90, 262n44; HR’s posthumous exhibits and, 222–­24, 244; HR’s study of, 233; HR’s watercolors and, 127, 222–­24; Mallarmé and, 168; patriotic legends of, 163–­64, 184, 186, 274n112; trip to Tangier of, 106–­7; writings on HR by, 168–­69 Breton, Jules, 174 Brisson, Adolphe, 139 Burke, Edmund, 61, 119 Burty, Philippe, 123, 159 Butin, Ulysse, 59 Buzenval, 1–­5, 129–­50; artists’ portrayals of, 135f, 136f, 140, 171f, 186f, 190–­92, 199f, 200, 201f, 269n23, 269n36; battle plan of, 132;

Index

dead and wounded at, 132, 140; disposition of the dead of, 150–­53, 158, 272n76; golf course at, 4, 156, 211–­14, 272n81; HR’s death at, 128–­29, 147–­49, 186, 215, 268n9; map of, 133f; memorials to HR at, 174f, 176, 177f, 202–­3, 211–­15; search for missing at, 140–­50, 153 Byronic themes, 109, 114, 266n24 Cabanel, Alexandre: Birth of Venus of, 102f; popularity of in America, 235; Rome studio of, 5, 7, 11, 176, 240; students of, 174, 213 Cachard, Henry, 211 Cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Les ­(Halbwachs), 271n64 Cain, Georges, 157 Calonne, Ernest de, 201–­2, 203 Camondo, Moise de, 247 Camut, Émile, 183 canons of visual art, 216–­21, 234 Caravaggio, 17 Carlier, Joseph, 146 Carlos V, King of Spain, 59 Carolus-­Duran. See Duran, Charles-­Émile Carpeaux, Jean-­Baptiste, 30; Ugolino and His Sons of, 17, 26 Casale, François, 213 Cassell’s Illustrated Guide to Paris, 182 Cassin, Adèle, 80–­84, 226, 242, 261n29 Castelli, Horace, 186f; Death of Henri ­Regnault of, 186f Cazalis, Henri, 176; on HR’s death, 139, 149, 268n9; on HR’s Granada studies, 64; on HR’s North African period, 39, 41, 53, 57, 267n33; on HR’s patriotic legend, 158; on HR’s posthumous reputation, 216; on HR’s Rome period, 25–­26, 253n23 celebrity culture, 73–­74 Cellini, Benvenuto, 26; Perseus with the Head of Medusa of, 11, 12f Cercle de l’union de l’art, 222–­24 Cézanne, Paul, 221 Chantavoine, Henri, 202 Chaplain, Jules-­Clément, 194; Henri Regnault of, 194f Chaplin, Charles, 81 Chapney, Lizzie, 107 Chapu, Henri-­Michel-­Antoine, 204–­15; Youth of, 83, 178, 179f, 182–­86, 232 Charmes, Gabriel, 87–­88 Chase, William Merritt, A Friendly Call of, 237, 238f Chassériau, Théodore, 47 Chateaubriand, François René de, 59, 258n39 Chaumelin, Marius, 18, 84, 99

Chennevières, Philippe de, 181, 196, 222 Chesneau, Ernest, 44, 227 children’s literature, 196–­202 Christine (character), 85 Church of Saint-­Augustin (anonymous), 163f Cimetière, Le (Saint-­Saëns), 144, 164–­65 Clairin, Georges, 1–­4, 9; Bréton and, 140, 162, 165; on Buzenval, 127–­28, 130–­31, 134–­40, 269n28, 269n33; fame of, 137; friendship with HR of, 139–­40, 162, 274n108; Henri Regnault and Georges Clairin of, 131f; HR’s death mask and, 155, 157–­58; on HR’s painting of blood, 124; on HR’s posthumous exhibits, 222; memoirs of, 137, 140; memorials to HR and, 174, 179; on the model for Salome, 79; Sarah Bernhardt of, 73, 75f; search for missing HR by, 144, 153, 159, 272n81; in Spain, 39, 59, 60f, 79–­80; in Tangier, 39, 41, 106–­7, 108; on viewing Buzenval’s dead guardsmen, 153; Woods at Buzenval of, 2, 157, 251n1 Claretie, Jules, 40, 67, 213; on Buzenval, 140; on Degeorge, 182; on HR’s death, 149–­50, 269n27; on HR’s death mask, 157–­58; on HR’s last days, 128, 141; on HR’s patriotism, 186, 203; on HR’s works, 233; on ­Salome, 79–­80, 87–­88, 242; search for missing HR by, 145–­46, 151–­52, 158 Clayson, Hollis, 268n6, 274n108 Clément, Charles, 23, 48, 258n51 Coale, S. A., 236–­38 Colet, Louise, 42 collective memory, 80, 148–­50, 171–­72, 271n64. See also patriotic legend of ­Regnault colossal, the, 25, 27, 104 Comédie Française, 167 Coolidge, Baldwin, 241 Coquart, Georges-­Ernest, 181 Coquelin, Benoît Constant, 167, 179, 275n128 Coquerel, Athanase, 227, 256n19, 275n122 Corday, Charlotte, 122 Cormon, Fernand, Paul Déroulède at the Monument for Henri Regnault, Buzenval of, 213, 214f Correspondance de Henri Regnault (ed. ­Duparc), 9, 251n8 Cortona, Pietro de, 26 Courbet, Gustave, 217 Cox, Kenyon, 75–­76 Crauk, Gustave, 157 Cresson, Ernest, 151, 153 Crow, Thomas, 16 Crowds at the Henri Regnault Exhibition at the École des beaux-­arts, 225f

Crowninshield, Fredric, 238, 240 Curtis, Ralph Wormley, 240 d’Affry, Adèle (Marcello), 60–­61, 90, 107, 162 Daubigny, Charles-­François, 79–­80 Daudet, Léon, 247–­49 Daurelle, Jacques, 245 David, Jacques-­Louis, 16, 23, 24 David Grieve (character), 77–­78, 158, 164 Death Mask of Théodore Géricault, 155, 156f death masks, 153–­60 Death of Henri Regnault (after Sergeant), 199f, 200 Decamps, Alexandre-­Gabriel, 48, 54; light and deep shade of, 44, 45f, 64, 66; Turkish Children near a Fountain of, 44, 45f, 57; white sundrenched walls of, 65 Defense of Paris, January 19, 1871 (wood engraving), 135f Degas, Edgar, 52, 142–­43 Degeorge, Charles-­Jean-­Marie, 178, 181–­82, 197; Medallion of Henri Regnault of, 182f Dehodencq, Alfred, 43, 48, 50, 65, 67, 106–­7 Delaborde, Henri, 97 Delacroix, Eugène, 5, 195, 244, 252n11; Assassination of the Bishop of Liège, 244; Bride of Lammermoor of, 114–­15; complementary colors of, 120; Courtyard in Tangier of, 65f; English manner (“pure painting”) of, 110–­ 15, 265n16; Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero of, 110–­15; influence of on HR, 23, 109–­15, 233, 266n24; Jewish Wedding of, 65; on the old masters, 28; Ophelia of, 227; Tangier and, 43, 106–­7, 256n18; white sundrenched walls of, 65 Delaroche, Paul, 28–­29 Delécluze, E. J., 112 Delessert, Édouard, 81 Dell, Robert E., 246 Delpit, Albert, 166, 201, 203 Demeny, Georges, 149 Denis, Maurice, 196 d’Épinay, Prosper, 37, 82, 226; bust of HR by, 176, 177f; on enlisting, 127; on Fortuny’s watercolors, 92; Golden Belt of, 82f Déroulède, Paul, 202–­15. See also League of Patriots des Essarts, Emmanuel, 144, 158, 159 Desplantes, François, 200 Detaille, Édouard, 164, 205, 209–­10, 244; The Dream of, 173, 174f, 210 Dewing, Thomas Wilmer, 74; Sorceress of, 74 Dictionary of Fine Arts (Delacroix), 28 Didier, Jules, Jules Laurens Sketching the ­Euphrates of, 46, 47f

Index

[ 29 1 ]

Dimier, Louis, 246–­47, 248 Dimpre, Paul, 84 Dinet, Étienne, 45, 47 Disdéri, Eugène, 151–­52, 272n76; Bodies of ­National Guardsmen of, 152f Doctor Ox, Le (Offenbach), 76–­77, 83 Domergue, Jean-­George, 182 Doré, Gustave, 82, 187 Downes, William Howe, 240–­41 Dreyfous, Maurice, 159, 170, 269n33 Dreyfus affair, 75, 165–­66, 248 Dubois, Paul, 206 Dubufe, Édouard, 205 Dubufe de Laforest, Jean-­Louis, 183 Du Camp, Maxime, 112 du Colombier, Pierre, 248 Ducrot, General, 132 Dumas, Alexandre, 50, 107 Dumas-­fils, Alexandre, 77, 82–­83, 137 Dumesnil, Armand, 148–­49 Duparc, Arthur, 9, 22, 139, 163, 176, 219–­20 Duran, Charles-­Émile, 77, 164, 196; Body of Henri Regnault of, 145f, 146 Durand-­Ruel, Paul, 80, 222, 236, 261n29 Duvivier, Albert, Departure for the Fantasia (after Regnault) of, 231f

[ 292 ]

Eakins, Thomas, 74 École des beaux arts, 5, 7, 9; Chapu’s Youth at, 83, 178, 179f, 182–­86, 189, 204–­5; curricular requirements of, 13–­29, 104, 184, 217; Déroulée’s speeches at, 203–­4; Empress Frederick’s planned visit to, 206–­11; envois de Rome exhibitions at, 219–­20; Louis XIV galleries of, 196; memorials to HR at, 83, 160, 166, 178–­86, 196, 197f, 206–­8; Michelangelo’s Last Judgment at, 26; Prix de Rome competition of, 5, 11–­15; retrospective show of HR’s works at, 83, 118, 127–­28, 180, 218, 224–­29 Enault, Louis, 70, 97 Entrance to the École des beaux-­arts during the Henri Regnault Exhibition, 225f equine naturalism, 18–­25, 32–­36 L’Étrangère (Dumas-­fils), 77 Exposition l’Union du cercle, L’Univers illustré, 223f Exposition Universelle: of 1867, 16, 39, 79, 97; of 1878, 188–­89, 232–­33, 236; of 1884, 231; of 1889, 182; of 1900, 157, 182, 186, 195–­96 Faccina, Jean-­Domenica, 178 Falguière, Alexandre, 203–­4 Fantasy of Doctor Ox, A (Verne), 76–­77 Fantin-­Latour, Henri, 217

Index

Fichot, Karl, Monument to Henri Regnault at the École des beaux-­arts of, 208f Flambée, La (Régnier), 183–­84 Flameng, Léopold, 164 Flammarion, Camille, 90, 165 Flandrin, Hippolyte, 5 flashbulb memories, 141–­44, 270n43 Flourens, Gustave, 151 “Flower on His Tomb, A” (Séché), 201 Fornarina, 85 fortunismo, 93 Fortuny, Mario, 92–­95, 233; Masquerade of, 93f; The Vicarage of, 82, 83f Fraissinet, Léon, 231–­32 Franco-­British exhibition of 1908, 231 Franco-­Prussian War, 8, 127–­50, 205; Bazille’s death in, 184–­86; Buzenval offensive of, 1–­5, 129–­50; commemorative culture of, 171–­72, 186–­96; French revanchism following, 196–­215; HR’s death in, 128–­29, 147–­49, 268n9; HR’s enlistment and service in, 127–­29, 268n9. See also memorials to ­Regnault; patriotic legend of Regnault Frederick, Empress of Germany, 205–­11 Frémiet, Emmanuel, 209f French Academy in Rome, 5, 11; copying of old masters at, 24–­30, 35–­37; curricular requirements of, 13–­29, 104, 184, 217; deferrals from military service at, 127; envois system of, 15; HR’s death and, 162; HR’s nonconformity at, 7–­8, 11, 16, 29, 37, 184, 233; memorials to HR at, 196; Parisian judges of, 17–­18; patriotic works from, 187–­ 89; on showing at the Salon, 70–­71; travel opportunities of, 32. See also Rome period Freud, Sigmund, 162 Freycinet, Charles, 206–­7 From Delacroix to Regnault (Lostalot), 234 Fromentin, Eugène, 41–­44, 233, 255n17; at Laghouat, 48–­50, 257n32; on modernism, 76; on Orientalist painting, 124; Street at Laghouat of, 49–­50; A Summer in the Sahara of, 52–­53; on sunlight and rebirth, 52–­53, 57, 59 Fuller, George, 237 Galland, Pierre-­Victor, 81, 205 Galli, Henri, 206 Gambetta, Léon, 132 Garnier, Charles, 178, 179, 190–­92, 195, 226–­27 Gauls and Germans (Ambert), 200 Gautier, Théophile, 34, 42, 263n65; on Execution without Judgment, 109, 119–­21; on Granada, 59; on Hassan and Namouna, 127–­28; on HR’s death, 139, 149, 232; on

HR’s white sun-drenched walls, 65–­66; on light of the Orient, 47, 50–­51; on the patriotic legend of HR, 158–­59; on posthumous exhibitions of HR’s work, 222–­24; on ­Salome, 69, 72–­73, 96–­97, 98, 103 Geffroy, Gustave, 234, 245, 286n63 Géricault, Théodore, 23–­24, 155, 156f, 240 Gérôme, Jean-­Léon, 176, 222, 226; fame of, 217–­18, 229, 235; influence on HR of, 233; Snake Charmer of, 218 Gigoux, Jean, 164 Gildea, Robert, 203, 269n23 Gillette (character), 85 Giraud, Victor, Slave Market of, 149 Gombrich, E. H., 46 Goncourt brothers (Edmond and Jules), 48, 67, 69, 85, 163 Gonse, Louis, 52, 226, 255n17 Goth, Max, 245 Gourmont, Remy de, 210–­11 Goya, Disasters of War of, 159 Grammaire des arts du dessin (Blanc), 120 Granada work, 39, 41, 59–­66; Court of Ambassadors in, 61, 64; Hall of the Two Sisters in, 119; Hall of the Two Towers in, 61, 62, 63; Lion’s Court in, 59, 60f; watercolor medium in, 61, 64, 243 Grand Palais of the Exposition Universelle of 1900, 195–­96 Grand Prix de Rome. See Prix de Rome Great French Painters (Mauclair), 234 Great War. See World War I commemorative culture Grisez, François, 207 Guillaume, Eugène, 164, 178–­79, 181 Guillaumet, Gustave, 42, 45, 48, 53–­57, 67, 229; The Desert of, 54; Laghouat: Sahara: ­Algeria of, 54–­55; La Séguia, Biskra of, 55, 56f guillotine, the, 122 Gutekunst, Otto, 173 Habeneck, Charles, 134, 158 Halbwachs, Maurice, 271n64 Hale, Edward, 241 Hale, Lucretia, 241 Halévy, Daniel, 142–­43 Hall of the Abencerrajes, Alhambra, 59, 119–­20 Hamerton, Philip, 162 Hanotaux, Gabriel, 67 Haro, Étienne, 224, 226, 228, 231 Harrison, Wilmot, 194 Havemeyer, Electra, 83–­84 Havemeyer, Louisine, 84

Havemeyer family, 249 Hébert, Ernest, 179, 217–­18; bust of HR of, 174; HR in Rome and, 16–­20, 29, 32, 36–­37, 39, 127; on HR’s death, 162, 274n103; ­Malaria of, 30, 31f Heffernan, Michael J., 256n14 Henner, Jean-­Jacques, 72, 209, 217–­18 Henri Regnault (photo) (anonymous), 6f Henri Regnault, enfant (pub. Tinayre), 197–­99 Henri Regnault, Les Paintres illustres series, 217f Hepp, Alexandre, 233 Hill, James J., 238 History of David Grieve, The (Ward), 77–­78, 158, 164 Holmès, Augusta, 12, 137, 143–­44, 164, 165, 176 Hooper, Lucy, 82–­83 Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 194, 205 Hugo, Victor, 155, 199 Huguenin, Albert, 183 Hussein Pacha, 56 Huysmans, Joris-­Karl, 98, 190 impressionism, 7, 78, 216, 218; Bazille’s retrospective and, 186; exhibition of 1877 of, 233; mastery of light in, 44, 46, 52; Orientalist links to, 44–­46, 125; popularity of, 233, 235, 249; snow whites in, 66 Inauguration of the Monument at the École des beaux-­arts, 180f Ingres, Jean-­Auguste-­Dominique, 5, 30, 195 Inness, George, 52 Irving, Washington, 59 Jacob, Stephen: Fragment of Panorama of Buzenval of, 193f; Panorama of Buzenval of, 190–­92 Jacquemart, Jules, The Room Where Henri Regnault’s Body Lay of, 172–­73, 277n6 Jadin, Charles Emmanuel, 79, 93–­94 Jal, Augustin, 113 James, Henry, 9, 77 Joanne, Adolphe, 202 Johnson, Lee, 265n16 Jollo, Domenico, Death of Henri Regnault of, 190, 192f Jourdain, Frantz, 131, 143 Judic, Anna, 77 Kant, Immanuel, 54, 61 Keeler, Ralph, 144 Knoedler, Roland, 232, 242–­44, 249 Koehler, Sylvester Rosa, 239 Kolbe, Georg, 155

Index

[ 293 ]

[ 294 ]

Lafenestre, George, 43, 97, 100–­101, 123 Lafitte, Pierre, 217 Lagraine, M., 59, 60f, 80, 107, 264n6 Laguillermie, Frederic-­Auguste, 59, 60f, 179, 213 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 199 Lamothe, Louis, 5, 7 Landalpho-­Carcano, Marquise de. See ­Cassin, Adèle Langlois, Paul, Henri Regnault of, 176, 178f Larroumet, Gustave, 21–­23, 41, 155–­56, 196–­97 Lathers, Marie, 85 Latini, Maria-­Veronica-­Concetta, 89f, 90–­92, 102, 182 Latour, Louis, 208 Laurens, J.-­B., 87 Laurens, Jules, 46–­47 League of Patriots, 189, 202–­11; on the Berlin exhibition of French works, 208–­11; ­Empress Frederick and, 205–­11; “L. D. P.” slogan of, 207; official banning of, 206 Le Couteux, Lionel, 218 legend of Regnault. See patriotic legend of Regnault Lemonnier, Camille, 101 Lenepveu, Charles, 164 Lenoir, Charles-­Amable, 217 Leonardo da Vinci, 247; Mona Lisa of, 26 Lesrel, Alphonse-­Alexandre, France Discovering the Body of Henri Regnault at Buzenval of, 190 Levé, Frédéric, Death of Henri Regnault of, 190, 191f Levine, Steven, 255n8, 255n12 Lévy, Henri, 72, 164 ligue antisalomique, 244–­49 Livre d’or de la défense nationale (League of Patriots), 203 Livre d’or de la patrie (Mainard), 200 Lix, M., 3f; Battlefield at Buzenval of, 3f Lohengrin (Wagner), 165 Lorin, Maxime, 201 Lostalot, Alfred de, 234 Louvre, 220–­21; HR installation of 1921 at, 229; HR’s drawings and water­ colors at, 200, 220; HR’s major works at, 206, 220, 228–­30, 234–­35; Salome and, 242–­49 Lucas, Félix, Mask of Henri Regnault of, 159–­ 60 Luxembourg Palace Museum exhibition, 182, 201, 220–­22, 229 Lycée Henri IV, 196–­97, 198f

Index

Macé, Gustave, 151–­53, 158 Madrazo y Garreta, Raimundo de, 164 Mainard, Louis, 200 Makart, Hans, 75 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 26, 168, 184 Malraison, Léo, 213 Manet, Édouard: costumed models of, 99, 100f; The Dead Toreador of, 146, 147f; ­exhibition at the Vie moderne of, 229; ­Mademoisele Victorine in the Costume of an Espada of, 99, 100f; Olympia of, 102, 235; reputation and popularity of, 18, 125, 184–­ 85, 221, 233, 249; Spanish school and, 34; use of light by, 95. See also impressionism Manette Salomon (Goncourt brothers), 85–­86 Mantz, Paul, 21 Manuel, Eugène, 166–­67, 201, 203, 213 Map of Battle of Buzenval, 133f Marcade, Auguste, 230 “Marche héroique” (Saint-­Saëns), 77 Marilhat, Prosper, 44, 54, 67; Ezbekiah Square in Cairo of, 50–­51 Martinez, M., Henri Regnault (after Degeorge), 181f Martyrs de patriotisme (Desplantes), 200 Martyrs of the Siege of Paris (Sorin), 8, 200 Marx, Roger, 11, 23, 164, 197, 198f; on countries of light, 40; on HR’s Alhambra studies, 64; on HR’s posthumous reputation, 230, 233–­34 Masaccio, 11 Massenet, Jules, 164 Masterpiece, The (Zola), 85 Matisse, Henri, 43 Mauclair, Camille, 46, 234, 245 Maupassant, Guy de, 42 Maurois, André, 81 Médard, Eugène, 140, 269n36; Buzenval of, 141f Meissonier, Ernest, 179, 209; artistic legacy of, 217–­18; eyesight of, 52; at HR’s funeral, 161, 164; search for missing HR by, 77; Siege of Paris of, 189–­90, 191 Mélodies Persanes (Saint-­Saëns), 144 Memorable Paris Houses (Harrison), 194 memorials to Regnault, 172–­86; in allegorical and panoramic works, 188–­92, 193f, 280n45; of Augusta Holmès, 143–­44, 176; by Bréton, 168–­69; busts and statuary as, 162, 174–­86, 211–­14, 224, 232, 278n8; at Buzenval, 4, 174f, 176, 177f, 211–­14; death masks as, 153–­60, 196–­97; at the École des beaux arts, 83, 160, 166, 178–­86; flashbulb

memories as, 141–­44, 270n43; guidebooks on, 157; at HR’s funeral, 162–­67; in musical works, 128, 164; in names of streets and squares, 192–­94; patriotic discourse on, 170–­74, 181–­82, 184, 186–­96; in personal diaries, 149; portraits and illustrated images as, 176, 186; in portrayals of Buzenval, 135f, 136f, 140, 171f, 186f, 190–­92, 199f, 200, 201f, 269n23, 269n36; postwar revanchism in, 196–­215; in public buildings, 194–­96; at public gatherings and ceremonies, 176, 203, 205–­11; in verse, 166–­68, 183, 201–­2. See also patriotic legend of Regnault; post­humous artistic reputation Memories of Artists and Heroes (Cazalis), 216 Memory of Henri Regnault, Inauguration of Bust at Buzenval, The, 212f, 213 Ménard, René, 95, 97 Mendès, Catulle, 144, 168 Mercié, Antonin, 187–­89; Gloria Victis of, 188–­ 89, 204–­5, 209, 232 Mercier, Gustave, 237; Automedon with the Horses of Achilles (after Regnault) of, 237f Merson, Luc-­Olivier, 217 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), 249–­50 Meyer, Arthur, 242–­43, 247–­49 Michel, André, 245 Michelangelo, 26–­27, 29, 105; Last Judgment of, 26 Michelet, Jules, 199 Millet, Jean-­François, 241; Angelus of, 232 Mirbeau, Octave, 164–­65, 210–­11 model for Salome, the, 79, 84–­92, 182 modernism, 7, 246 Monet, Claude, 46, 57–­58, 184–­85, 241; snow whites of, 66; the sublime and, 41, 255n8 Montesquieu, 40 Monument to Henri Regnault, École des beaux-­arts, 83, 160, 166, 178–­86; Chapu’s Youth at, 178, 179f, 182–­86, 189, 204–­5; ­Degeorge’s bust at, 178, 179f, 181–­82; as ­revanchist symbol, 205–­8 Moore, Charles H., 239–­40 Moreau, Gustave, 72, 115, 116f, 122, 217; Apparition, 115, 116f Morocco. See Tangier period Morot, Aimé, 174–­76, 217 Morton, Levi Parsons, 236 Moune, Paul, 213 Mucha, Alphonse, Henri Regnault at Buzenval of, 199f, 200

Muller, Eugène: Death of Henri Regnault of, 201f; La Morale en action par l’histoire of, 201 Musée Carnavalet: HR’s bronze bust, 174; HR’s death mask at, 130, 131f, 153, 155, 157–­58 Musée de l’Armée, 156, 272n81 Musée Lambinet death mask, 156 Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), 237–­41 Musset, Alfred de, 199 Napoleon III, 127 National Guard, 127, 137, 214 naturalism, 29–­37; HR ’s equine forms of, 18–­24, 32–­36; in Orientalist quest for light, 41–­42, 46, 64; painter-­traveler tradition of, 40; of Velázquez, 36–­37 Neisser, Ulrich, 270n43 Neuville, Alphonse de, 174, 269n23; The Cemetery at Saint Privat of, 209; The Last Cartridges of, 209 No.1 Place de Collège de France, 194 Noetzlin, Édouard, 247 Nora, Pierre, 277n5 North African period. See Tangier period Offenbach, Jacques, 76–­77, 83 opium, 50 Orientalism (Said), 256n13, 258n39 Orientalist painting, 7–­8, 107, 232; artistic ­renewal aspirations and, 46–­47, 52–­53; ­biblical episodes in, 43, 44f, 256n19; European imperialist context of, 42–­43, 49–­50, 257n32, 258n39; as imaginative cultural ­geography, 42, 108–­9, 120, 266n27, 266n30; impressionism and, 44–­46, 52, 125; mythology of violence and luxury in, 105–­25, 266n23, 266n30; naturalism and, 41–­42, 46, 64; painter-­traveler tradition in, 40; pursuit of light and the sublime in, 40–­58, 98; traditional tropes of, 40, 42, 46, 54, 65; white sun-­bleached walls in, 65–­66. See also Tangier period Ory, Eugène, 201 Pach, Walter, 249 Page, Walter Gilmore, 241 Paléologue, Maurice, 88 Paluel-­Marmont, Albert-­Pierre, 108 Panorama of Tangier, 106f Paris Besieged (Gautier), 158–­59 Paris Commune, 151, 158, 172, 189 Parker, Edward, 237 Pascal, Jean-­Marie, 178

[ 295 ]

Index

[ 296 ]

Pasdeloup, Jules, 164 Pasteur, Édouard, 155 Patrie, 201 patriotic legend of Regnault, 6–­10, 148–­50, 158–­59, 170–­215; art-­world origins of, 165–­ 67, 172–­74, 246; collective memory and, 80, 148–­50, 171–­72, 271n64; fading of, 214–­15; on HR’s declining commission as an officer, 129; on HR’s funeral, 162–­67; HR’s posthumous reputation and, 220–­21, 232; on HR’s premonition of death, 144, 158–­ 60, 164–­65, 270n47, 273n100; patriotic discourse of, 138, 147, 150, 158, 170–­74, 181–­82, 184, 186–­96; porous contours of, 172–­74; postwar revanchism and, 196–­215. See also memorials to Regnault Peintres illustres series, Les, 217–­18 Pelletan, Camille, 84 Pène du Bois, Guy, 246 Père Lachaise cemetery, 151–­53, 157 Pesquidoux, Dubosc de, 232 Petit, Georges, 81, 242 Petit Français, Le, 199f, 200 Phillipoteaux, Henri, Battle for Paris of, 192, 280n45 physical fitness, 204–­5 Pierné, Gabriel, 128 Pils, Isidore, 179 Pisson, Charles, 201 Pitman, Dianne, 263n72 Pitou, Eugène, 145–­46 Place Montholon, 189 Plaza, Emmanuel de, 134, 146–­47 Poilpot, Théophile: Fragment of Panorama of Buzenval of, 193f; Panorama of Buzenval of, 190–­92 Pollock, Griselda, 264n76 Portrait of Maria Latini, 89f posthumous artistic reputation, 216–­50; circulation of reproductions and, 218, 237; critical discourse on, 232–­35, 239–­40, 245–­ 48; decline of, 218, 229–­32, 241; exhibitions of works and, 218–­33; ligue antisalomique and, 244–­49; prices of works and, 227–­28, 231; retrospective at the École des beaux arts and, 218, 224–­29; sale of Salome in 1912 and, 78, 213, 218–­19, 229, 242–­49; in the United States, 235–­41, 249–­50 post-­impressionism, 233, 235 Poussin, Nicolas, 24 Praz, Mario, 123 Prix de Rome, 5, 24, 178, 187, 200, 217; ­benefits of, 14–­15; HR’s entry for, 11–­12, 13f; Monument to Henri Regnault and, 184

Index

Promenade au Salon de 1870, Le Journal amusant, 70f public execution, 119, 122 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre, 72, 164, 195, 206, 208–­9 Pythia (d’Affry), 90 Rajon, Paul-­Adolphe, 75, 218, 237 Raphael, 29, 30, 85, 165; Transfiguration of, 26 Ratisbonne, Louis, 227 Raymond, Dr., 213–­14 Redon, Odilon, 122 Régiments-­martyrs, Les (Habeneck), 158 Regnault, Henri: burial at Montparnasse of, 2, 176; career and reputation of, 5–­8, 73–­74; death at Buzenval of, 128–­29, 147–­49, 186, 215, 268n9; flashbulb memories of, 141–­44, 270n43; funeral at Saint-­Augustin of, 162–­ 67; honors and awards of, 5, 11, 72; photos of, 6f, 60f, 176; posthumous artistic legacy of, 210–­11, 216–­50; published letters of, 9, 176, 219–­20, 251n8; self-­portrait of, 168. See also patriotic legend of Regnault Regnault, Henri, works —­Arab Man with Two Dogs, 226 —­Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 18–­ 25, 19, 82; explosive action of, 20–­22, 93, 239–­41; HR’s replica of, 226, 230–­31; reproductions of, 237f; study for, 20, 21f; in the United States, 235–­41 —­Court Ambassadors in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, The, 64f —­Departure for the Fantasia, 65, 203, 231–­32 —­Departure of the Pasha, 65, 108, 227–­28, 230f, 231, 233–­34 —­Entry into the Room of the Two Turns at the Alhambra in Granada, 63 —­Execution without Judgment under the Kings Morocco, 95, 117, 159; artistic genealogy of, 109–­15, 116f; critical discourse on, 233–­35, 239; detail of, 118f; dripping blood of, 119–­ 21, 123–­25, 159; exhibition of, 118–­19, 222–­ 24, 226–­27, 229, 232, 235; mythologized cultural geography of, 108–­9, 120, 266n27, 266n30; placement in storage of, 229–­30, 234; play of gazes in, 122–­23; preparatory studies for, 109; reproductions of, 218; sensory and psychological dynamics of, 109, 120–­23, 235, 267n33 —­Hassan and Namouna, 126, 141, 267n33; exhibition of, 127–­28; reproductions of, 218, 219f —­Horse from the Stables Napoleon III at St. Cloud, 22f —­Interior of Watchtower and of the Two ­Towers at the Alhambra, 62

—­Judith and Holofernes, 34, 226 —­Madrilena, Comtesse de Barck, Seen from Behind, The, 228, 250, 286n63 —­Marshal Juan Prim, 22–­24, 32–­35, 33, 71, 201–­2, 206; critical discourse on, 234–­35; exhibition of, 206, 222–­24, 229, 232; reproductions of, 218 —­Moroccan Interior, 98 —­Moroccan Sentry, 227 —­Patio in Tangier, 38, 39–­41, 65–­66 —­Portrait de Madame Fouques-­Duparc, 71 —­Roman Carnival, 32f —­Salome, 5, 34, 40–­41, 61, 66, 68, 69–­103; anti-­ Semitism and misogyny of, 72, 75, 86; caricatures of, 70f, 244, 245f; critical discourse on, 233, 235; cultural impact of, 72–­78, 82–­ 83; desire and seduction in, 73, 83–­87, 91, 98; exhibition of, 226–­27, 232, 249; fakes of, 229; frame and optical effect of, 95–­96; HR as victim of, 160; HR’s improvisational approach to, 78; ligue antisalomique and, 244; model for, 79, 84–­92, 99–­101, 182; Orientalized portrayal of, 72–­73; purchase and disappearance from public of, 72–­73, 78–­84, 108, 261n29; reproductions of, 75–­76, 218, 237; sale in 1912 of, 78, 213, 218–­19, 229, 242–­ 49; at the Salon of 1870, 69–­74; serpent bracelet of, 93–­95; silk backdrop of, 78–­79; teeth and gaze of, 99–­103, 264n75; in the United States, 83, 235–­36, 249–­50; yellow and gold in, 69, 71, 73–­77, 92–­98 —­Sentinel, The, 203 —­Spanish Muleteer, 35–­36 —­Surrender at the Breda (after Velázquez), 36–­37, 230 —­Thetis Brings the Arms Forged by Vulcan to Achilles, 11–­12, 13f, 137, 203 Regnault, Henri-­Victor, 5, 127, 144; on HR’s death, 162; on HR’s posthumous legacy, 220–­28; as photographer, 221; Sèvres, the Seine at Meudon of, 221f “Regnault’s Last Christmas” (Claretie), 128 Régnier, Henri de, 183–­84 Reid, Robert, 238–­39 Renan, Ary, 43, 54–­55 Renaud, Armand, 270n47 Renaudot, Gabrielle, 90 Renaudot, Jules, 182; Naiade of, 90f Renoir, Pierre-­Auguste, 43 Repin, Ilya, 9, 76 Ribera, José de, 26, 36 Ricard, Gustave, La Marquise de Landalfo-­ Carcano of, 81f Right, John, 241 Rivière, Georges, 233

Robert, Léopold, 30 Robert-­Fleury, Tony, Last Days of Corinth of, 72 Robichon, François, 269n36 Robinson, Thomas, 237 Rochefort, Henri, 206, 209 Rochegrosse, George, 72 Roderick Hudson (James), 77 Rodrigues, Edgar, 146 Romako, Anton, 186 Rome period, 7–­8, 11–­37, 253n23; artistic influences on, 23–­24; the colossal in, 25, 27; equine naturalism of, 18–­24; HR’s non­ conformity in, 7–­8, 11, 16, 29, 37, 184, 233; HR’s response to old masters in, 24–­29; naturalist approach of, 29–­37 Rome Prize. See Prix de Rome Roqueplan, Camille, 47 Rosenthal, Léon, 110–­12 Rothschild, Arthur de, 227 Rothschild, Edmond de, 81, 227 Rothschild, Gustave de, 227 Rothschild, Henri de, 242, 247 Rothschild, Nathaniel de, 227 Roujeron, M., 142 Roujon, Henry, 217 Rousse, Joseph, 166 Rousseau, Théodore, Avenue of Chestnut Trees, 244 Rousset, Léonce, 134 Routier, Gaston, 210 Rude, François, 195 rue Henri Regnault, 194 Ruskin, John, 239 Said, Edward, 42, 256n13, 258n39 Saint-­Augustin, 162–­67 Saint-­Marceaux, Marguerite, 248 Saint-­Saëns, Camille, 77, 141, 144, 164–­65 Saint-­Victor, Paul de, 14, 69, 123, 159 Salmon, André, 245 Salon, the. See academic art and the Salon Salon d’Automne, 186 Salons: of 1841, 244; of 1859, 49; of 1867, 149; of 1868, 71; of 1869, 71; of 1870, 5, 56, 68, 69–­ 74; of 1890, 45; of 1934, 50–­51 Sarcey, Francisque, 167 Sargent, John Singer, 9, 106, 240 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 171–­72 Schnetz, Jean-­Victor, 30 Séailles, Gabriel, 67 Séché, Léon, 77, 201 Secrétan, Pierre-­Eugène, 232 Sergeant, Pierre-­Lucien, 199f, 200 Sigalon, Xavier, 26

Index

[ 297 ]

Simon, Jules, 164, 178, 222 Sistine Chapel, 26–­27, 29, 37 sites of memory, 277n5 Sorin, Elie, 8, 200. See also patriotic legend of Regnault Spanish period, 5, 39, 79–­80; copying Velásquez in, 36–­37, 39; critical discourse on, 234–­35, 286n63; in Granada, 39, 41, 59–­66, 227, 243; naturalism in, 23–­24, 32–­36, 64. See also Regnault, Henri, works: Marshal Juan Prim Spanish school of painting, 24, 34–­36 Stevens, Alfred, 74, 164, 217; In the Studio of, 74f sublime, the, 8, 12; bodily experience of light and ecstasy in, 47–­58; as colossal, 25, 27, 104; common tropes of, 65–­66; in despotic summary judgment, 120–­23, 266n27, 266n30; HR’s use of color and, 92–­98, 109, 120–­23, 126f, 267n33; in Orientalist quest for light in, 40–­47; risk and peril in, 46–­47; solitude in, 65; temporal unfolding in narratives of, 59–­60 Surrender at the Breda (Regnault, after Velázquez), 36–­37, 230

[ 298 ]

Tangier, 106–­15; as artists’ destination, 106–­ 7; HR’s imaginings about, 107–­8; memorials to HR in, 171, 194; recollections of HR in, 107–­9; religious tensions in, 108 Tangier period, 5, 7–­8, 12, 38f, 39–­42, 65–­67, 106–­24; aspirations for artistic renewal of, 46–­47; color and texture in, 39, 40–­41, 92–­ 98, 109, 119–­23, 126f, 267n33; Delacroix’s ­influence in, 109–­15; home and studio of, 107–­8, 171; HR’s future plans for, 125; photography of, 107, 264n6; premonitions of catastrophe in, 66–­67; quest for light and the sublime in, 8, 39–­42, 53, 58; “Triumph of Islam” project of, 104–­5, 108, 122; uniting of violence and decor in, 105, 108–­9, 119–­25; urban scenes of, 125; white sundrenched walls in, 65–­66. See also Regnault, Henri, works: Execution without Judgment under the Kings of Morocco; ­Regnault, Henri, works: Salome Theuriet, André, 137, 139, 145 Thierry, Édouard, 167 Thiers, Adolphe, 186 Timbal, Charles, 65–­67 Tinayre, Victoire, 197–­99 Toudouze, Gustave, 142 Tournemine, Charles de, 55–­56, 65, 67; View of Luxor during the Flooding of the Nile of, 56

Index

Trapp, Frank Anderson, 266n24 Turner, J. M. W., 52 Union des Sociétés de gymnastique de France, 204–­15 Unknown Masterpiece, The (Balzac), 85 Van Gogh, Vincent, 9, 159 Vasari, Giorgio, 28–­29 Vaudoyer, Alfred, 169 Vauxcelles, Louis, 245 Velázquez, Diego, 24, 26; Surrender at the Breda of, 36–­37, 39 Venetian masters, 112–­13 Verne, Jules, 76–­77 Vernet, Horace, 29–­30; Abraham Sends Hagar Away of, 43, 44f; Raphael at the Vatican of, 30, 31f Veronese, Paolo, Wedding at Cana of, 104 Versailles military gallery, 192 Veuillot, Louis, 227 Vie moderne, La, 159, 160f Vienna International Exhibition of 1873, 229 Vierge, Daniel, Farm at Buzenval near Where Henri Regnault Fell of, 171f Villa Medici, 11, 14f, 146, 196. See also French Academy in Rome Villa Regnault, 171 Villiers de l’Isle-­Adam, Auguste, 122, 144, 203, 270n47 Vitet, Ludovic, 112–­13 Vitry, Paul, 234–­35 Wagner, Cosima, 275n118 Wagner, Richard, 165 Walter, Charles, 219f Ward, Mary, 77–­78, 158, 164 watercolor medium, 61, 64, 92, 114–­15 Weiskel, Thomas, 255n12 Wencker, Joseph, 217 Wey, Francis, 30 Whistler, James McNeill, 217 White, Pearl, 77 Whitehill, Walter Muir, 241 Wingfield, Lewis Strange, 148 Winthrop, Grenville L., 240 Wolfe, John, 236 Wolff, Albert, 14 World War I commemorative culture, 10, 150, 158, 172, 215, 277n5, 283n100 Wurtz, Charles Adolphe, 144, 164 Zarobell, John, 256n14, 257n32 Ziem, Félix, 41–­42, 164, 217 Zola, Émile, 18, 233