William Bouguereau, #05
The painter continues his studies in Italy
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 some remarks about and from the artist are in the present tense.
What follows is an excerpt from my translation (an uncorrected first draft). You can find previous instalments here.
In 1850, Bouguereau came second in the Prix de Rome competition and was made an artist-in-residence at the Villa Medici along with Paul Baudry, who took first place in the contest. In 1848 the Académie des Beaux-Arts had not given out a first in the competition and, as a result, scholarship funds were available; they were awarded to William Bouguereau, the young painter from La Rochelle.
Bouguereau left for Rome at the end of 1850, accompanied by his fellow prize winners Paul Baudry, the sculptor Gumery, the architect Louvet, and the engraver Bertinot. At that time, Jean Alaux was the director of the French Academy in Rome; he was a member of the Institut de France, and the man who had decorated the Salle des États Généraux at Versailles. In the following year, Alaux was replaced by Jean-Victor Schnetz.
In his official lessons “Father Schnetz” adhered to the principles of his former master, Jacques-Louis David, but he made it clear that the artists-in-residence were completely free to do as they wished — provided they submitted everywhere and at all times to established customs. Paul Baudry, writing in praise of the Institut, records what the director told them on the very first day: “The French Academy is the code of conduct, and Rome is freedom. Your wings have grown — spread them, leave the nest. Go as far and as high as your strength permits, but keep the rules in mind; never forget them. Follow the lead of this light rein that I hold in my hand and which serves as a reminder.”
Father Schnetz venerated the great masters of the past. He wittily compared them to the dazzling snow on Monte Soratte: he admired it from a distance, like all great things, but he had no desire to go and see it in person, lest he be left breathless. When he was completely free to follow his own initiative, young Bouguereau’s life was what it had been in Paris: it consisted of study, work, and meditation.
Charles Garnier, a fellow artist who had won the Prix de Rome in a previous year, has described the young painter’s tenacity and energy: “Bouguereau left the Villa Medici, but he never completely escaped the chaffing we had given him Rome; we knew about the work and effort he used to put in, but we hardly thought it possible that it would result in anything, so we nicknamed him Sisyphus. The name stuck, and we grew accustomed to seeing him rolling his rock up the hill in vain. Today Sisyphus has reached the mountain top, and he has planted his rock so solidly that there is no fear of it ever rolling down again.”
Bouguereau was very close to Alfred de Curzon, who had won the Prix de Rome for landscape art. They worked together constantly, and liked to imagine compositions in which the landscape was prominent. The young historical painter grew fond of landscapes, and he devoted himself to their study. His sketchbooks are full of ink drawings and watercolours of the Roman countryside and famous sights in the region.
In accordance with the rules of the French Academy in Rome, Bouguereau was required to make a copy of a Renaissance work. He chose Raphael’s Triumph of Galatea. This copy was to be a technical study of the old masters, whose works he could examine in the museums. Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci seemed too high and too definite to him; he could never hope to approach them by taking inspiration from their ideal, or by employing their methods. As for the painters who came after these great geniuses, they were the beginning of decadence and were not to be studied. The young painter chose his models not according to his own preferences, nor from sentiment, but according to what they were able to offer him in terms of aesthetics and technique. He sought something that could lead to results. And he certainly obtained results — the examples he chose lost none of their individuality but remained accessible to those who made no claim to genius.
It was for this reason that, in his second year in Rome, Bouguereau resolved to make a trip to Tuscany and Umbria: it would give him an opportunity to devote himself to these particular studies. Like his travelling companion Paul Baudry and the architects Lebouteux and Louvet, Bouguereau became infatuated with the artists of the 15th century, who had renewed art with their love of truth. There is no doubt that he was influenced by the conversations he had with Baudry on the subject.
He was especially fond of the masters of the Umbrian School. He loved them with all his heart and he still does, because, as Paul Bourget remarked so aptly in his Sensations d’Italie, they do not simply have technical skills but souls. This is why, after so many years, they still seem so new and so young — in spite of the fact that they were created under conditions that have long since disappeared. At the height of summer, Bouguereau settled in Assisi for four weeks. He found lodgings with some local gentry at the price of 35 sous a day. The head of the household had been a soldier in the First Empire, worshipped Napoleon, and he enjoyed talking about the campaigns and the great battles in which he had served; military life had not caused him lose his religious beliefs or pious habits. After every evening meal the whole family, including the servants, gathered in the vast kitchen and prayed together.
One might say that Bouguereau lived in the convent, the church, and the crypt of St. Francis. He copied everything from the cupola, where Giotto allegorized the vows of the Franciscan order — poverty, chastity, and obedience — and where he glorified the mendicant saint. He also copied the paintings of Guido of Siena, Giunta Pisano, Cimabue, as well as those by Giotto’s disciples Cavallini, Taddeo Gaddi, Puccio Capanna, Simone Martini, and Giottino. Since these early artists were so close to primitive naivety, and thanks to their exclusive and ardent love of nature, he believed it was more useful to study them than the leading painters of the age such as Perugino, Fra Angelico, and Francesco Francia — having already reached the highest summits, the latter were less accessible to the unpretentious Bouguereau. He had no interest in Overbeck’s fresco, however. It filled him with a deep contempt for the whole of that terrible modern German school of religious painting. He condemns it wholeheartedly, so banal and so sad in its false simplicity and its conventional sentimentalism.
In the gentle shade of the basilica’s white walls, in the peaceful solitude of the old city that seems to be asleep, smiling under the care of the saint, the young painter developed a passion for St. Francis, that superb figure from the Middle Ages who calls all the serenity and all the beauty of nature to mind. The saint seems to add still more charm and tenderness to the sky and the delightful landscape where light and shadow are delicately portrayed, at once mild and severe, and where vines and olive trees mingle with pines and oaks. The French artist’s soul goes out spontaneously and instinctively the great monk. St. Francis loved France; it was the source of his name, bestowed on him because his father was travelling there at the time of his birth. St. Francis enjoyed speaking French, and read books about chivalry with great interest — they turned this merchant’s son into a prince of the church, and laid the foundation for his own chivalric code. St. Francis was like a knight errant in that he too protected the weak, the poor, and the oppressed. Bouguereau read the Little Flowers of St. Francis in front of the saint’s stone tomb, and he read them in the rose garden in which one can still see the thorny bushes that blossomed when Francis rolled in them to subdue his flesh. It was in this garden that St. Francis sang of sun and light, and where he preached to flowers, fish, birds. A new Orpheus, he softened the hard hearts of men, and tamed fierce wolves. Today, fifty years later, the painter speaks of this artistic pilgrimage with emotion. It brought him such exquisite pleasures, and filled his youthful imagination with so many poetic visions.
The young artist regretted that he had not been able to spend some time in Orvieto, another sanctuary of Umbrian art, to study the cathedral’s chapel. It was here that Luca Signorelli painted the immortal frescoes representing the end of the world, the Antichrist, the resurrection, hell, and paradise — the frescoes that Michelangelo wanted to see before painting his own Last Judgment.
From Assisi, Bouguereau went to Padua. He spent many days in front of Giotto’s frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel, which is one of the most valuable monuments from the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. These works are the best examples of Giotto’s talent for nobility of figure and gesture, of his ingenious search for touching expressions, and no school of painting or prize competition has ever generated this kind of originality and pungency of style. From Padua he travelled to Ravenna and it was there, in San Appolinare, in San Vitale, and at the tomb of Galla Placidia, that he copied some of the ancient mosaics with the intention of returning to the original methods of decorating religious buildings — something for which he felt an instinctive vocation.
In Venice, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto inspired Bouguereau with the same sentiments as Michelangelo and Raphael had done in Florence and Rome. He admired them devoutly, but he did not consider copying their works. In Veronese alone he sought to understand technical secrets of colour, of vividness displayed beneath a layer of delectable softness. These undisclosed mysteries still haunt the painter today, in his vigorous old age, for he remains devoted to the perfection of his craft.