William Bouguereau, #02
The young painter's first jobs, and how he avoided conscription.
Marius Vachon’s biography of William Bouguereau was published in 1899 by Alexis Lahure (1849–1928), a printer with offices close by the Luxembourg Garden in Paris at 9, rue de Fleurus. As far as I know it is the sole contemporary account of the painter's life, which is why remarks about and from the artist are in the present tense. This is an excerpt from my translation (a work-in-progress). The previous instalment is here.
Bouguereau’s stay at Pons College was short-lived. Having only just settled in Bordeaux, his father summoned him to come and work as a young clerk in his new business venture. In his memoirs, the art historian Charles Marionneau describes Bouguereau’s time in commerce:1
In 1830, the old house at 20 Rue Neuve was occupied by a business that specialized in olive oil. The building once belonged to the Avigdor family of Nice, and later to Élisée Robat. A merchant from La Rochelle moved in around 1841, and took over his predecessors’ business. Among the staff was his son, a little blond boy, barely sixteen, who sat perched at one the wooden counters at back of the shop — the kind one can still find in the old Rue Rousselle — and sketched landscapes and figures in the margins of commercial bills. There is no denying that the young man had talent, but these were just crude attempts and, at this stage, it would have been rash to place any serious hope in them. The young clerk’s father, who I am inclined to believe was as good a father as any man, did not wish to thwart his son’s natural inclinations. He did not, however, perceive anything worthy of significant consideration in these youthful displays of artistic talent. He certainly did not see how it could provide his heir with a secure future.
At this point I am reluctantly obliged to appear on stage, as I wish to recall something his father said to me and which was, fortunately, not prophetic. It was when we met by chance in the Rue Neuve, a few steps from the aforementioned store: “My son has an undeniable inclination for drawing and he would like to enter the Municipal School. What would be the necessary steps in this regard? But let me be clear, I do not want to turn him into a painter, because that is a dead end.”
My answer was very simple, given how well I knew the situation. A few days later the young apprentice businessman was taking classes at the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts.
What Marionneau has omitted from his memoirs — out of modesty no doubt — must be added here: Marionneau was already attending the art school, and it was he who urged his young friend from La Rochelle to enroll, and encouraged him to overcome his father’s initial objections.
In the meantime, the young man had changed employers and was working for a wine merchant who paid him twenty-five francs a month. This new line of work pleased him just as little as the first; more and more, he dreamed of painting.
One morning, Marionneau took Bouguereau to visit Jean Alaux’s studio. Alaux was the director of the École des Beaux-Arts at the time, and Marionneau asked him to accept Bouguereau as a student in the same advanced course that he was attending — he made an eloquent case, and declared that the candidate had enough talent to be admitted. After hesitating for several days, Alaux agreed. The little clerk named Bouguereau attended drawing and painting classes from six to eight o’clock in the morning, and then diligently returned to his employer where he kept the company’s commercial books. In the evening in his little room, by the flickering glow of the candle stubs he had carefully collected from the house and the office, he drew furiously, working from nature and memory. To earn a little money in the meantime, Bougereau worked on small coloured lithographs that he sold to the the neighbourhood grocers to decorate boxes of Agen plums, as well as their jars of jam and jelly.
In 1844, after two years of study, Bouguereau entered the figure painting competition and won the first prize. Marionneau came second. The subject of the contest was Saint Roche. Following this success, the young artist decided to devote himself to art entirely. To provide his family with an excuse for quitting, he asked his employer for a raise, which was promptly refused. Having used this example to prove to his father that he could not earn enough in the wine trade, he told him that he wanted to paint, and that his success was assured by the will and the energy he would bring to it. The father replied: “Do what you want, my child, but at your own risk. You know very well that I can not help you.”
Bouguereau had his mother’s support; she was an intimate, discreet, but ardent counsellor. A highly intelligent woman with an energetic and determined temperament, she had ambitions for her only son, whom she adored and whose exceptional artistic abilities she had been the first to recognize. She herself understood and loved art, with an instinctive sense for the beauty of creatures and things. She secretly subsidized the extra costs that Bouguereau incurred in the study of drawing and painting by doing needlework and knitting in her spare time, which she then sold to merchants. When there was a serious decision to make concerning her son’s artistic career, and it was a question of overcoming the anxious father’s concerns for the future, her adroit intercessions were always able to bring him around to her point of view. Her influence on Bouguereau’s life and work was steady and significant. She came to live with him after she was widowed and she was a canny housekeeper and a fierce defender of his time, sending away the importunate and the indiscreet so that the painter need never worry about material life and could completely devote himself to his work. Until her death in 1896 at the age of 91, she remained in the house on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs that her son had built for her with the first money he had saved.
Bouguereau won a great victory when he convinced his father to let him pursue his vocation, even if he did so at his own risk. But now it was a matter of earning a living, and there seemed very little in the way of an immediate solution to the problem. The young artist had an original and ingenious idea. He asked his uncle to inquire if there might be some way to paint some portraits in the area. The good man, who was very fond of his nephew and very proud of his early success, replied that it was quite possible. He invited him to return to Mortagne immediately, assuring him that he would at least provide him with room and board, as he had done before. In fact he introduced his nephew to several wealthy landowners, noting that Bouguereau was a laureate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and a talented portraitist. They, in turn, recommended him to their friends. In three months the young painter worked in Mortagne, Saint-Dizant, Saint-Fort, Saint-Thomas, Saint-Bonnet, Ciers-Lalande and Saint-Jean-d’Angely where he completed thirty-three portraits in oil, which earned him 900 francs. This first artistic campaign was pure profit. His models fed him and, when he was too far away from Mortagne, they even lodged him.
When Bouguereau was called up to serve in the army, one of his mother’s relations, a Mrs. Monlun from La Rochelle, insured him for 900 francs. In the tirage au sort, the draft lottery in which young men were given a number to determine whether or not they would be called up, Bouguereau drew a 12 — a “bad number” that would have had him in barracks for seven years. Thanks to his relative’s insurance, however, he was able to pay someone to serve in his place. If it had not been for this act of generosity, it is likely that he would have been lost to art.2
Using the money he had earned in while staying with his uncle in Saintonge, Bouguereau was able to move from Bordeaux to Paris, where he arrived at the end of March 1846.
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I took a quick look for Marionneau on Gallica and, although I found his monographs about lesser-known painters like Jacques Raymond Brascassat and Jean-Louis Gintrac, I did not see an autobiography. Perhaps there is an unpublished manuscript in the fonds Charles Marionneau.
Introduced in 1832 , the Loi Soult (named after Napoleon’s Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, who was then serving as Minister of War) set the period of service for French military conscripts at 7 years, but it was legal to send someone else in your place. It was politically expedient for the French government to allow a replacement scheme; the bourgeoisie could save their sons, but the army still received their recruits.