Ward-Impressionist Exhibitions-1991

Impressionist Installations and Private Exhibitions

Author(s): Martha Ward

Source: The Art Bulletin , Dec., 1991, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp. 599-622
Published by: CAA
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3045832

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Impressionist Installations and Private Exhibitions
Martha Ward
The expansion of the art market and the liberal government Among the social expectations that affected the presenta-
policies of the early Third Republic encouraged a remark- tion and reception of art in nineteenth-century France, the
able proliferation of "independent" exhibitions in Paris, delimitation of the boundaries between the public and the
shows that were mounted separately from the huge State-private was especially crucial, although deeply problematic.
sponsored jamboree, the annual Salon.' Dealers, art societ- This distinction depended in the art world on the separation
ies, enterprising painters, and groups like the Impressionists between the Salon and the independently sponsored shows,
sought out new venues and experimented with installations or, more precisely, on the perception that the latter drew
so as to present their works in the best circumstances. In audiences that were not only much smaller but more artisti-
selecting sites and decor, exhibition organizers did not have cally cultivated. (Hence the separation was both real and
recourse to anything like today's specialized techniques ofideological.) As art was shown and viewed in diverse places-
display; they began to develop only toward the end of the the Salon, the gallery, the club, the bookstore, the studio, the
century and then primarily for shop merchandise. Instead, apartment, the home-the distinction between public and
the practices and innovations in this period seem to have private served to create finely gradated nuances of refine-
been prompted by more intuitive judgments about the social ment, and the ideal private exhibition came to be repre-
connotations of a variety of spaces and audiences and about sented as a haven for aesthetic appreciation that was re-
the appropriate place and role of art in relation to these. By moved from the crass commerce of the art market, the
considering a range of shows and focusing on the Impression- divisive polemics of criticism, and the sensationalized tastes
ists, this essay examines how installations and venues corre- of the "public." Regardless of the fact that the purpose of
sponded to or affected understandings of contemporaryshows was to sell works or to introduce artists to patrons,
painting in late nineteenth-century Paris. creating a non-commercial ambiance was important, and
In contrast to the diversity of the sites that I have just this seems often to have required that the decor and
remarked, Rosalind Krauss has argued that nineteenth- installations of exhibitions be clearly distinguishable from
century aesthetic discourse increasingly developed around a the large rooms stacked with paintings in the Salon or the
generalized exhibition space, characterized by the exclusivity halls glutted with commodities in Universal Expositions and
of a wall reserved for showing art and nothing else. Modern- other late nineteenth-century spectacles. In addition to size
ist works internalized this medium of display and exchange, and scale, the character of the actual place of exhibition and
Krauss suggests, as landscapes flattened, expanded laterally, the composition of the audience suggested what would be an
and came thus to resemble the exhibition wall itself.2 My appropriate installation in the private show and, accord-
paper investigates this generalized "exhibitionality," butingly, what modes of viewing would be encouraged. But
tracks its elaborations across culturally differentiated spheres. there was no certainty in these matters, for during this period
Rather than stress how the proliferation and variation ofvenues and their social connotations changed quickly. While
exhibition walls essentially served to provide an increasingly the "dealer and critic system" expanded rapidly, artists also
uniform medium of exchange, I emphasize the social and increasingly took the initiative for their own promotion, and
aesthetic distinctions that contemporaries experienced as Salon organizers began to adopt practices from the private
significant and held to be definitive.3 domain. The distinction between public and private proved
My thanks go to Hollis Clayson for her comments on a version of this 3 Another important account showing that structures of exclusion
article, and to all those who have helped with the research for this exclusivity were essential to the production and exhibition of 1
project, including Ruth Berson, Filiz Burhan, Karen Carter, Mlle France century modernism is Y.-A. Bois, "Exposition: Esth6tique de la dist
Daguet, Katherine Haskins, John House, Patricia Mainardi, and Bart tion, espace de demonstration," Les Cahiers du Musee Natzonal d
Schultz. All translations are the author's. Moderne, no. 29, fall 1989, 57-79. Bois compares Courbet's motivat
'This expansion has been well analyzed by Garb, 63-70; and by P. for withdrawing his art from the Universal Exposition of 1855 in P
and mounting a separate exhibition, where his paintings could be show
Vaisse, "Salons, expositions et soci6t6s d'artistes en France 1871-1914,"
in Salons, gallerie, musei e loro znfluenza sullo sviluppo dell'arte det secolz XIXtogether,
e with Marx's nearly contemporaneous insights into the fetis
XX (Attz del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell'Arte, vii), ed. F. tic nature of the commodity at the International Exhibition of 185
Haskell, Bologna, 1981, 141-155. In this same volume, there is London, a where industrial products were enshrined apart from t
production or use. The artist's desire to preserve the special status of
detailed survey of art venues in previous periods: J. Whiteley, "Exhibi-
tions of Contemporary Painting in London and Paris 1760-1860," and not let it be transformed by capitalism into a fetish or commo
69-87. was, according to Bois, what constituted the appeal of the museum
site for modernist art.
2 R. Krauss, "Photography's Discursive Spaces," in her The Originality of
the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Mass., 1985, 133.

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600 THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1991 VOLUME LXXIII NUMBER 4
to be chronically unstable and required constant renegotia-early shows of the Soci6t6 des Ind6pendants, already well
tion with the actual conditions of artistic production and documented as events, but not systematically considered as
consumption.4 installations.
Exhibition decor and installation provided organizers with I have adopted a roughly chronological approach, but not
an interface between their conceptions of the special quali- because there is a story of development to tell. Rather, by
ties of the art on view and their projections of the expecta- moving between descriptions of Impressionist practices and
tions of audiences and collectors. Most important, artists or analyses of other exhibitions-the Salon of the Second
dealers had to determine how a single work should best be Empire, artistic circles and societies, dealers' shows and
contextualized, that is, how it should be positioned in publications-I want the juxtapositions to demonstrate that
relation to other works and the environment. Installations for contemporaries, sustaining the separation of public and
often had to balance the increasing importance of the private spheres in the face of the unprecedented expansion
individual artist and the integrity of his or her production, onof the art market proved to be not only difficult but crucial.
the one hand, against the explanatory or polemical potential
afforded by installation according to school, genre, or style,Criticism of the Salon and Practices of the Early
on the other. Similarly, organizers had to define implicitly Impressionist Shows, 1874-77
the status of the small easel painting, which was the type ofIf the history of Impressionist installations has a beginning, it
work most frequently exhibited: was it to be evaluated as an is not with actual practices but with published complaints. In
autonomous object addressing the public or as a potentially a letter of 1870 that appeared in the newspaper Paris-
decorative complement to a domestic space? Journal, Edgar Degas described what was wrong with the
Despite the articulation of such problems of definition,Salon and advised how to fix it. His complaints warrant
many of the key decisions in arranging shows-the selection review here, for they concern many of the problems that
of site, the choice of wall color, the ordering of picture other commentators thought marred the State-sponsored
frames, the hanging ofworks-were often treated by organiz-forum for presenting new works to the public.
ers as simply practical matters and left to the last minute, not Rather than crowd works up, down, and across the walls
to be dictated by elaborate artistic principles or subjected to (Fig. 1), the Salon should install only two rows, Degas
close critical scrutiny. That such decisions remained rela-recommended. Paintings should be separated by at least
tively untheorized in the day-to-day practice of presenting twenty to thirty centimeters and positioned according to
works-so that changes were not seen to be the result oftheir own demands instead of those preordained by tradi-
newly articulated "definitions of art" so much as they seemedtional patterns of symmetry. Because not all paintings were
to be responses to different material circumstances-makesmade to be viewed from the same vantage point, Degas
the history of these exhibition presentations particularlycontinued, the artist should specify upon submitting a piece
valuable as a register of the variety of assumptions that con-for consideration where it should be displayed, on either the
ditioned production and consumption during this period. higher or lower level. Furthermore, rather than divide works
My purpose in this study is to explore the vicissitudes of by medium, the Salon should mix drawings and paintings
late nineteenth-century installations in relation to understand-and should include large and small screens to provide
ings of contemporary art, and to describe the appearances ofadditional space, like those the British had employed in their
some of the shows. In the absence of many visual records orFine Arts section at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867.5
sustained discussions, my project has mainly entailed piecing Degas aimed his modest reforms at adapting the public
together off-hand remarks in critical commentaries andforum of the Salon to the needs of exhibitors, and he
artists' letters. I make no effort to survey all of the types of assumed that the primary concept determining installation
shows of the early Third Republic or even to treat ashould be the integrity of the individual artist and the
representative sample, a project beyond the scope of a singleindividual work. Just as authorship should override distinc-
article and one whose unfeasibility as a research endeavor tions in medium, so the autonomy of the work-the particu-
points up the pressing need for a synthetic study of dealers lar requirements of a single piece (here as assessed by the
and art institutions of this period. Instead, I concentrate on artist)-should override the desires of the installer for
the presentations at the Impressionist exhibitions and thedecorative ensembles. The Salon should not interfere with
the right of each individual to determine his or her own best
place on the wall.
Degas's privileging of the individual actually conformed to
' I have used "public" and "private" in the way that these appeared in
the
contemporary art criticism to describe exhibitions. For an analysis of art logic of recent Salon reforms, which had essentially
production in terms similar to these, but emphasizing the gendered reordered the relative importance of the competing concep-
character of the spaces, see A. Higonnet, "Secluded Vision: Images of
tions of how a work should be presented in an exhibition for
Feminine Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe," Radical History
the public. Starting in 1861, Salon installations had in most
Review, no. 38, 1987, 16-36. The basic text on the development of the
"dealer-critic" system and the role of exhibitions within it remains H.C.cases abandoned allegiance to the central academic concept
and C.A. White, Canvases and Careers: Instztutional Change zn the French of the hierarchy of genres (history painting had heretofore
Painting World, New York, 1965. The most important recent work on the
operations of the late 19th-century art market is Nicholas Green,
"Dealing in Temperaments: Economic Transformation of the Artistic
Field in France during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century," Art
' Degas, "A Propos du Salon," Parts-Journal, 12 Apr. 1870, as quoted by
History, x, 1, 1987, 59-78. See also his "Circuits of Production, Circuits
T. Reff, "Some Unpublished Letters of Degas," Art Bulletzn, L, 1968,
of Consumption: The Case of Mid-Nineteenth-Century French Art
87-93.
Dealing," ArtJournal, XLVIII, 1, 1989, 29-34.

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IMPRESSIONIST INSTALLATIONS AND PRIVATE EXHIBITIONS 601
AIR,-
oil~n~ '
:?.r ILI
Al"
1 Gustave Dore, "Palais de

l'industrie; Salon de 1868." Paris,
Bibliothbque Nationale, Departe-
ment des Estampes
often assumed pride of place in the public showgenerous for its spacing of watercolors on neutrally tinted s
didactic and inspirational possibilities). Except forthe gentleness of the indirect lighting and the pre
several
rooms given over to official and patriotic paintings,neutrallythecolored carpets. By contrast, the color of t
alphabet and the artist's name determined where oils inhung.
the French exhibition reddened everything an
The sense that different media required different ambient
viewing dust all but obscured the works, which were
from above by harsh, raking light and from bel
conditions prevailed, however, so that while most paintings
were displayed in heavily trafficked areas of thereflections
Palais de scattering off whitely waxed floors. The
were
l'Industrie, works on paper appeared in the more dimly better
lit painters than the English, the comm
concluded,
and secluded galleries, which were aptly called "the desert." but their art shows were too crowded a
Even though the Salon continued to weigh alternative looked like industrial fairs.
conceptions of how a single work should properly be This final complaint, the most commonly made accusation
viewed
of all against
and understood, the propriety of the individual author had, the Salon, corresponded to fears that the
State-sponsored
by the time of Degas's complaints, triumphed over two exhibition was principally a marketplace
potentially competing notions: the desire for publicrather than a forum of public enlightenment, fears that each
instruc-
tion and the aesthetics of decorative integration.' nineteenth-century generation seems to have rekindled anew.
As artist,
In addition to the rights or needs of the individual Patricia Mainardi has shown, the distinction between art
exhibition
other points in Degas's letter had also been rehearsed many and industrial fair was considerably lessened after
1855 by the location of the Salon in the vast spaces of the
times in the preceding decade (if not before), including
Palais who
admiration for the spacious installations of the English, de l'Industrie, whose calendar of events was booked
had abolished "skying" at the Royal Academy in with marketable goods. Depending on the month, the visitor
the 1860s
might encounter cows, plants, or paintings (compare Figs. 2
and who were generally held in France to be commercially
and aesthetically more advanced in the arrangement and 3).7 of
La Vie parisienne demanded special treatment for art,
dealers' galleries and other exhibition spaces. Typicaland
of its
thecommentator concluded his report in 1867, as was
typical, by recommending that exhibitors take over the
attitude of much of the French art press was the anonymous
shows and
commentary of 1867 in La Vie parisienne that praised thefind suitably dignified places and appropriate
conditions
English display at the Universal Exposition and noted withfor displaying works of art.8
By 1874,
approval and envy the finer points of the presentation: the for Degas and the other artists who mounted the
6 A discussion of the alphabetical arrangement (concentrating mainly on 7 On the changes that accompanied the moving of the Salon from the
Louvre to the Palais de l'Industrie, as well as an extremely useful history
its disadvantages) can be found in R. de Mergy, "Quelques Observations
of Salon practices, see P. Mainardi, "The Eviction of the Salon from the
a propos des expositions officielles," Le Courrier artistique, 15 Feb. 1863,
Louvre," Gazette des beaux-arts, ser. 6, cxII, July-Aug. 1988, 31-40. For
65-66. The Marquis de Chennevibres's recollections of the origins of the
artists' organization of their own installations during the Second
alphabetical system are in "Le Salon de 1880," Gazette des beaux-arts, per.
Empire, see idem, Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal
2, XXII, May 1880, 393-407, 399-401. A brief history and an analysis of
Expositions of 1855 and 1867, New Haven, 1987, esp. 49-61.
issues regarding Salon installations are provided by M. Vachon, "Etudes
administratives, I: Le Salon," Gazette des beaux-arts, per. 2, xxIII, Feb. 8 Anon., "A l'Exposition anglaise," La Vie parisienne, 20 Apr. 1867,
1881, 121-134. 276-277.

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2 Anon., "Concours agricole uni-

versel de 1856: Exposition de la
societe d'horticulture.... Exposi-
tion de l'espbce bovine dans les gal-
eries laterales du Palais de
l'industrie." Paris, Bibliothbque Na-
tionale, Departement des Estampes
3 Anon., Salon de 1861. Paris, Bib-

liothbque Nationale, Departement
des Estampes
Impressionist exhibitions, finding appropriate conditions tion continued to govern most practical decisions regarding
meant withdrawing from the principal public forum, with its the installations of these ventures: the individual oeuvre
continual debates over the commercial or didactic connota- became a standard feature of the exhibition wall, almost
tions of exhibitions, and exploring the possibilities of more regardless of domain in the late nineteenth century. How-
intimate and in that sense more private areas. Their shows ever, some reviewers, responsive to the connotations of the
were situated in the midst of Haussmann's newly constructedsites as well as the appearance of the art, thought that the
city blocks: in 1874, they mounted an exhibition in theshows suggested a new and different understanding of the
photographer Nadar's recently vacated studios, and in 1876, relation between viewer, painting, and exhibition space.
in the art dealer Durand-Ruel's gallery; in 1877, they rented Aspects of the exhibition in 1874 must have been reassur-
and adapted a domestic apartment for the show. In suchingly familiar to Paris collectors, audiences, and critics. The
spaces, the artists had the opportunity to cultivate conditions brownish-red linen, favored by Nadar, was left on the walls as
appropriate to the appreciation of small easel paintings.a ground against which the paintings were hung. It marked a
Still, the concept of the integrity of the individual's produc-departure from the red of the official walls of the Salon and
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4 Anon., "Salle d'exposition du

cercle des Arts-Unis" (Alphonse
Jame), 1861. Paris, Bibliothbque
Nationale, Departement des Es- lk
tampes
Universa
lished by draw."12 Different media were exhibited but no
made it
mention was made of their location, a fact that suggests that
in art
the entire show was probably rigorously governed by the s
mounte
progression of artists' names. Little effort seems to have been
made to fashion decorative ensembles.
Alphons
In contrast to the fair treatment of the individual on the
distincti
gold,
exhibition wall, we get a different senseno
of the effect of the
artists who was most
installation from the comments of the reviewer h
critic Ph
sensitive to the intimacy of the setting and its implications for
the app
the understanding of the paintings: Degas's friend, Philippe
Burty, who was a well-known figure on the
night of Paris and London
lateart scenes, anhou
ardent Republican, Japonist, and Anglophile,
in Engla
and a major print collector and critic. In a review that Burty
French
composed for the English audience of The Academy, he
memory
offered an analogy for the exhibition space of the first
innovation). Impressionist exhibition:
How works were arranged at the exhibition in 1874
The chief object of these gentlemen, whose views, temper-
remains somewhat unclear, even though such matters were
ament, and education are very dissimilar, was to present
of sufficient concern that they were mentioned in critical
their paintings almost under the same conditions as in a
reviews and the catalogue itself carried as a sort of epithet a
studio, that is, in a good light, isolated from one another,
single line of installation policy: "Once arranged by size,
in smaller numbers than in official exhibitions, which are
draw determined their placement."11 The display was spa-
like docks of painting and sculpture, without the neigh-
cious, with works hung in two horizontal rows and with larger
bourhood of other works either too bright or too dull.'"
works placed on the upper level. Jules Castagnary said that
the works were arranged by artist and hung in alphabetical For the French audience of La Ripublique franfaise, Burty
order, with the beginning letter of the arrangement estab- evoked another comparison: the paintings were "lit rather as
9 On Alphonse Jame, see Gazette des beaux-arts, ix, 1861, 189-192. On 12J. Castagnary, "L'Exposition du boulevard des Capucines," Le Sizcle,
Martinet, see "Inauguration de la nouvelle galerie de la Societe 29 Apr. 1874; repr. in Centenaire, 264-265. In contrast, Burty said the
nationale des beaux-arts," Le Courrier artistique, 19 Feb. 1865. privilege of the picture rail (cimaise) on each panel had been decided by
lot; Centenaire, 261.
10 P. Burty, "Exposition de la Societe anonyme des artistes," La Rdpub-
liquefranpaise, 25 Apr. 1874; repr. in Centenaire, 261-262. 13 P. Burty, "The Paris Exhibitions: Les Impressionnistes-Chintreuil,"
" "Une fois les ouvrages ranges par grandeur, le sort decidera de leur The Academy, 30 May 1874, 616-617.
placement." For reprints of the Impressionist exhibition catalogues and
essays on the shows, see New Painting.
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in an average apartment, isolated, not too numerous."'4 The provide the spaces for the most decorative of the Impression-
favorable connotations of personalized space that informed ist installations, that is, those in which works were most
Burty's descriptions of the proper lighting and viewing thoroughly integrated with and subordinated to the environ-
conditions pointed toward values that he confirmed by ment. In 1877, the five rooms of the centrally located
praising the painters for coming in person to the show to apartment on the rue Le Peletier were subdivided by panels,
greet visitors and to meet amateurs. And these were values a common practice, which created both more intimate areas
that clearly complemented or advanced his assessment of the and more hanging surfaces. Once again, to judge from
nature of the painting of the nascent Impressionist group, reviews, the individual functioned as the primary motif of the
which must be understood in relation to the artists' with- installation, although the desire to distribute the largest
drawal from the spaces and trappings of "officialdom": works ceremonially among rooms and to create harmonious
and thematic juxtapositions also affected the arrangement."7
They renounce success, medals, decorations, and even theOver and against the individual artist or the autonomous
esteem of their fellows to pursue a purely artistic end.
work, however, Burty insisted in his reviews on the decorative
They depend upon elements of interest strictly aesthetic,
aspects of both shows, perceiving a relation between the
and not social or human-lightness of colouring, bold- character of the paintings on view and the manner in which
ness of masses, blunt naturalness of impression. ... [B]ased
they were presented: "The dominant interest of this group
on the swiftest possible rendering of physical sensation,being
it the effects of light and open air, irisation and color,
[their art] considerably narrows the domain of painting.this
It painting will benefit from being enframed in the vast
scarcely leaves room for any but decorative motives; it of a high gallery," he wrote in one article of 1877.18
panels
forbids itself the stirring representation of those complex For his English public, Burty offered similar observations in a
situations in which the mind collects its forces and takes
later review: "The rooms are very spacious and well lighted,
possession by analysis of places, situations, sentiments.'5 both important requisites for the kind of paintings now
exhibited there, which is characterized by a kind of decora-
Indirectly, Burty found in the general aspects of much of
tive freedom and demands blank spaces between the respec-
the painting on display-in its distance from history paint-
tive frames."'" Burty was once again concerned in 1877 with
ing and from the intellectual and analytical complexity of
certain implications of seeing works in relation to their
adequately representing the external world-a link with
setting, finding the paintings effective only when considered
what he termed the decorative, which he in turn associated
as dicors rather than as completely independent or autono-
with the privately sponsored exhibition. Such a loose but
mous works of art (tableaux): "They offend as paintings
suggestive counterplay between definitions of public and
[tableaux] because of their sketchy appearance and indica-
private, autonomous and decorative, intellectual and sen-
tions of scumbling. Seen in place and as dicors, they have a
sual, was indicative to Burty of the nature of the aesthetic
brightness and frankness which are undeniable."" Viewed in
experience in the intimate interior and would continue to be
relation to the surroundings and from a certain distance, the
seen, in his reviews, as part of Impressionist shows.
paintings were effective in creating a sense of light; the
The installations of the next two Impressionist exhibitions
otherwise incomplete works possessed expansive qualities of
did not substantially deviate from that of the first. In 1876,
"decorative freedom," which demanded a spacious and
the show was mounted in Durand-Ruel's gallery on the rue
well-lit setting. Here lack of autonomy or self-sufficiency and
Le Peletier and contained 248 works, a number approaching
apparent intellectual complexity became a virtue, allowing
the upper limit for most independently sponsored shows in
the successful integration into the interior of a work that
Paris of the 1870s, although critics still praised exhibitions of
appeared decorative without becoming (mere) decoration.
this size for being manageable in a visit of an hour or so! With
Notions of the decorative and of completeness were
more works by each artist (Monet was typical in advancing
frequently employed critical concepts in the discussion of
from nine entries in 1874 to eighteen in 1876), the installa-
Impressionist painting in the 1870s.21 In deploying these,
tion practice seems once again to have deemed the individ-however, Burty was the reviewer who was most attentive to
ual the most significant category, although the alphabetical
the installations of the early Impressionist exhibitions and
rigor and fair play of the first show gave way in the second to
modification by other concerns. Medium played a role, with
the first room containing primarily works on paper (an 17 See R. Brettell's elaborate reconstruction and discussion in "The 'First'
inversion of the Salon practice of putting oils in introductoryExhibition of Impressionist Painters," New Pazntzng, 189-198.
public spaces), and, as Hollis Clayson has observed, it is 18 "La donn&e qui domine dans ce groupe 6tant la recherche de la
possible that the most objectionable works, pieces by Degas lumibre et des effets du plein air, de l'irisation, de la couleur, cette
peinture gagne a etre encadr&e dans les vastes panneaux d'une haute
and Pissarro, were intentionally located in the last of thegalerie"; P. Burty, "Exposition des impressionnistes," La Ripublzque
three rooms. '6 frangazse, 1 Apr. 1876.
The show of 1877 was the first to be mounted by the group19 P. Burty, "The Exhibition of the 'Intransigeants,' " The Academy, 15
in a bourgeois apartment, the type of site that would later Apr. 1876, 363.
20 "Elles heurtent comme tableaux, par leur aspect d'ebauches, par leurs
indications de frottis. Elles ont, en place et comme decors, une valeur de
clarte, de franchise d'effet qui ne sont pas niables"; P. Burty, "Exposition
des impressionnistes," La Ripubliquefrangazse, 25 Apr. 1877.
14 "lclair'es a peu pres comme dans un appartement moyen, isolees,
21 For an analysis of these conceptions in the criticism and practice of
pas trop nombreuses"; Centenazre, 261.
Monet, see S.Z. Levine, "Decor/Decorative/Decoration in Monet's Art,"
15 Burty (as in n. 13), 616. Arts Magazzne, LI, Feb. 1977, 136-139; see also his Monet and Hzs Crztics,
16 H. Clayson, "A Failed Attempt," New Paznting, 146. New York, 1976.
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the most concerned with the implications that the privacy of

the types of works selected for display, as will be seen, often
the setting might have for the perception and, in that corresponded to the supposedly shared desires of partici-
respect, the status of the paintings being exhibited. Still, hispants to relate to one another through art-an aesthetic
connections remained vaguely formulated: metaphoricalappropriate to the site.
conjunctions of visual appearances and social spaces. More Creating the right ambiance was essential to the success of
fully developed conceptions of the place of art in the privatethe enterprise of the circles. The standards were set by the
domain, as well as the characteristics of art to be valued in the
first and most famous of the "petits salons," the Cercle de
intimate show, were to be found elsewhere, in responses to l'Union Artistique, familiarly known as the Mirlitons, which
exhibitions other than the Impressionist ventures. Whenbegan in the 1850s and counted among its members in the
compared to these exhibitions where a more or less coherent1870s such artists as Carolus-Duran, Edouard Detaille, and
Ernest
logic of the private show emerged in installations and Meissonier. The Mirlitons held exhibitions in the
publications, it becomes evident that the walls at the early1870s in the elaborate top-floor galleries of the build
Impressionist shows failed to secure convincingly the values owned by the circle in the place Vend6me (Fig. 5). Su
associated with either the public or private space but con-extensive facilities were generally associated with the
structed instead a rather awkward site. circles, although some dealers, such as Denman Tripp, wh
galleries opened in a h6tel in 1883 (Fig. 6), sought to enco
Installations in Art Circles and Societies in the 1870s and age shared activities by providing special rooms for view
1880s
prints, reading about art, and talking and socializing."2
Simultaneously with the Impressionist exhibitions in the Contemporary illustrations and critical reviews reveal t
mid-1870s, other privately sponsored shows were mounted in installing shows in their main room, which also served
by artistic circles and societies, groups that generallyconcerts
in- and theater performances, the Mirlitons general
avoided vast spaces reminiscent of the Louvre or Salon
cluded both artists and amateurs as members. Although their
shows were not exactly comparable to those of the Impression-
favored more intimate settings constructed in part by ea
and screens. Following the common practice at the Sa
ists, being more exclusive socially and more fully accredited
artistically, they provide an illuminating point of comparison
and in dealers' galleries, the room at the place Vend6me w
for measuring the implications of installation practices and
further subdivided by divans and plants, which also served
independent exhibition spaces. Art circles and societies diversify
had a coloration otherwise dominated by the dull re
been organized during earlier periods and they thrivedtapestried in walls and the muted gold of frames. Dayt
the 1870s and 1880s when they afforded increasingly profes- illumination came through an iron and glass skylight and
sionalized artists direct access to collectors and to financial evening sessions (which sometimes ran as late as 11 PM),
backing for shows, while allowing amateurs to buy without room was hung with gaslight chandeliers, carefully dista
the intermediary of a dealer and on occasion to exhibit their from the walls and ceilings to avoid shadowing and equip
own works. As Tamar Garb has recently emphasized, these with cup-shaped reflectors to direct light laterally. W
often entirely male institutions and their elaborate houses were mounted on the walls in several rows, with the larg
served as a non-commercial forum for leisure and business and higher works being rather steeply inclined forward, b
contacts outside the home, establishing a site that extended to accommodate the visitor's position below and to av
well beyond the demands of the art world to service more
direct reflection of the daylight coming from above.
generally the needs of mid-nineteenth-century bourgeoisthough in the event of a sizeable exhibition, installat
society for forms of sociability reliant on gendered and
might depart from the norm of two or three rows to fill
financial exclusivity.22 Here the cultivation of aesthetic appre-
wall, rarely, if ever, were paintings displayed in a single r
ciation relied, in part, upon the assurance that one wasan arrangement that some critics recommended for ad
removed from the competition of the market and shared a tion in the 1870s but that must have seemed to exhibition
space with amateurs and artists of compatible sensibility.
organizers altogether impractical given the general expecta-
Even here, however, the most important concept guiding tion that shows should contain at least one to two hundred
exhibition arrangement remained the individual, althoughworks.24 Similarly revelatory of the mode of viewing in the
22 Garb, 66-67. The emergence and significance of circles and societiesDiego Martelli, on the display of works for the Laurent-Richard sale of
in the history of French forms of sociability are analyzed by M. Agulhon,1878: "The 110 masterpieces were very well arranged in a vast locale,
Le Cercle dans la France bourgeozse 1810-1848, Paris, 1977. A particularly severely hung in red, installed on the same line and at an equal distance
clear explanation of the advantages that art circles offered to both artists from one another. Thus one could look at each one of these paintings
and collectors can be found in the anonymous article, "Le Cercle deseparately, putting oneself at a convenient viewpoint, and it was possible
l'union artistique," La Pazx, 16 Feb. 1883. J.-P. Bouillon has carefully to contemplate them as the unfolding of a magnificent panorama, not as
examined the relationship of art circles and societies to economic the dance of a thousand forms and colors bumping into each other, as in
developments, aesthetic definitions, and representations of the power of the rooms at the Champ de Mars." ("Les cent dix chefs-d'oeuvre 6taient
the state: "Soci6t6s d'artistes et institutions officielles dans la secondetres bien disposes dans un vaste local, tout s6verement tendu de rouge,
moitie du XIXe siecle," Romantisme, no. 54, 1986, 88-113. install6s sur la meme ligne, et a unejuste distance l'un de I'autre. Ainsi
23 On the Denman Tripp gallery, see the description in L'lllustratzon,I'on pouvait regarder chacune de ces toiles s6par6ment, en se mettant
LXXXI, 12 May, 1883, 301; see also J. Sillevis, "Lettres de JosefIsraels ameme a un point de vue convenable, et il 6tait de la sorte loisible de les
Arnold et Tripp, marchands de tableaux a Paris (1881-1892)," Archivescontempler comme le d6roulement sous les yeux d'un magnifique
de l'art franfazs: Correspondances d'artistes des XVIIe, XIXe et XXe szecles,panorama, non comme la danse de mille formes et de mille couleurs qui
appartenant at la Fondation Custodia et conservies a l'Institut Nierlandais dse heurtent entre elles, comme dans les salles du Champ-de-Mars.")
Paris, nouv per., xxix, 1988, 154. Martelli went on to recommend such installations for public exhibitions:
"La Vente Laurent-Richard," in Martelli, Les Impressionnistes et l'art
24 As an indication of how unusual the practice of single-row installationmoderne, Paris, 1979, 78-83.
must have been, consider the comments of Degas's and Pissarro's friend,
132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
IN,
MTN Ilk
AP)~L
179
Iv A',8 EPSTO'1DEP SUSA KOL EU M N101TQE "r Anm e
5 Anon., "Expo
au Cercle de l'U
(Mirlitons), n.d
Nationale, Dep
tampes
IVI
6 Anon., "Nouv
Denman Tripp
NOUVELLES GALERIES DEL M). DENMAN \RI, Ae S SON TEL RDUiE DU 'ROV FNCO xxxv, 10 Mar.
ALERMI N D II LAZ-D-CULuleAUS 1 ENIE A I A
of Chicago, Re
intimate yet sociable spaces of the Mirliton

such engagement see
although skirts beneath dados went
exclusive spaces out
like t
exhibitions in the 1870s, these
Circles rooms retain
provided amat
and bustle
railing that allowed the viewer of the h
to balance S
while closely inspecting a work without
properly, to appreciat
rub
depiction or the execution of the surface.
confronted by unsymT
For the Mirlitons
one's surroundings, carefully was
poised against
nose pressed against unlike
the painting andor
the Salon wi
gling in hand: this is the stock viewing
show, men were like p
santly appears in representations of all sort
their voices. Ernest Ch
exhibitions, public and
the private.
Second Yet condi
Empire, a
132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
supporter of independent shows (including the Impression- their simultaneous circumvention or transgression of that
ist endeavors), felt ill at ease performing his public role at the privacy, reveals that exhibition walls like those at the Mirli-
Mirlitons, where the privacy of the locale made the directness tons could be simultaneously situated in different places-an
of art journalism inappropriate: elite Paris address and the columns of the press-and
subjected to conflicting expectations of art with relative ease.
To tell the truth, the Mirlitons' show presents only one
The Mirlitons had been valorized in opposition to commer-
inconvenience, but it is serious. One is in the midst of
cial vulgarization at the Salon, but the principal publicity
interested parties, invited by them to their dwelling: one is
mechanisms of the market functioned just the same, except
their guest. As a result, it is appropriate to express one's
for reviewers' apologies. Here the separateness of the private
opinion of the exhibited works only with discretion, to domnain and its rermoval from the market were reinforced in
speak only at half voice, sometimes to be altogether silent.
principle even as they were denied in practice.
Only admiration can be shown expansively.25
By the end of the 1870s, such "private" settings as the
The exclusivity of the site did not preclude publicity (the Mirlitons had come to be praised by favorable reviewers for
shows were reviewed) but the milieu did apparently quiet providing a haven where artists could disclose their most
criticism sur place. Criticism was understood here as a "natural" or spontaneous aspects, the personal sides of their
"public" discourse about art that had been painted for the individuality, their incomplete works. This intimacy seems to
"public" and, as such, it was out of place at the circles. This have developed over the course of the decade. The shows,
was the representation that ill-at-ease reviewers provided as which were generally mounted before the opening of the
they wrote about the shows without the justification of Salon in May (hence the name "petits Salons"), were re-
serving the public interest, ajustification readily provided by viewed in the early 1870s as if their primary purpose was to
the Salon, and without the need to fulfill such higher provide a select preview or an elite rehearsal for the main
functions of criticism as assessing the state of art in France, event on the artistic calendar, even though their contents
encouraging unknown talent, educating the tastes of viewers, would scarcely support the comparison, for they invariably
or even presuming to speak for a readership. The art critic contained a large percentage of portraits (often by members)
and historian Henry Houssaye put it well: at the circles, the and decorations." By the end of the decade, when groups
reviewer had nothing to diagnose in the present and nothing such as the newly formed Soci6t6 d'Aquarellistes Frangais
to predict for the future.26 announced that works submitted by member artists to its
These proclamations did not prevent critics from writing shows would not reappear at the Salon, the independence of
about the shows or from employing, when assessing the the exhibitions helped to reshape expectations about the
merits of each individual, the same formats and types of nature of the art that would be shown there. The "petits
evaluations that they used when discussing artists at the Salons" began to be seen by some favorable commentators as
Salon. (They did their job, regardless of decorum.) When the forum where artists could disclose their individuality
reviewers noted that their judgments had been inappropri- through the presentation of the personal side of their work.
ate at the show but then expressed their opinions in newspa- The critic, historian, and supporter of the Rococo revival in
pers, they exploited a perhaps contradictory set of expecta- the decorative arts, Victor Champier, relied on these associa-
tions among their readers. On the one hand, protests against tions in 1879 in assessing the reasons for the success of the
the privacy of the circles bolstered the image of the critic's shows of the Mirlitons and its friendly rival, the Cercle
St.-Arnaud:
allegiance and responsibility to a public readership, and
reinforced the notion that criticism informed and repre-
sented the views of readers, perhaps even transforming them Amateurs, who reject the weariness of the Salon ... , pre-
into audiences for art. On the other hand, the reviewer's fer these intimate exhibitions which seem improvised ...
description of private milieus advanced the chief characteris- Artists freely send here the piece that they have at hand: a
tic of the shows that appealed to amateurs and no doubt to well-turned sketch, a curious daub, an indication of
the social imaginations of many newspaper readers as well: landscape, as well as a painting pushed to perfection. A
namely, that the private space was the preserve of a truly landscapist can show himself with a portrait; a portraitist
experienced aesthetic, a relation between art and viewer that can exhibit a marine. It's delightful and all this happens
was in its very essence noncritical, perhaps even nonverbal. unceremoniously. One adores these lovable caprices, this
Critics' descriptions of the privacy of these shows, and free humor by which an artist shows himself as he is. .. .28
25 "A vrai dire, elle [the show of the Mirlitons] ne presente qu'un 257-263. A characteristic review anticipating the Salon is Chesneau,
inconvenient, mais il est grave. On y est au milieu des int6resses; invite 1873 (as in n. 25).
par eux, chez eux, on est leur h6te; par consequent, il est de stricte
28 "Les amateurs, que rebutent un peu les fatigues du Salon ...
convenance de n'y exprimer qu'avec discretion son sentiment sur les
pr6ferent ces exhibitions intimes qui paraissent improvis6es.... Les
oeuvres expos6es, de n'y parler qu'a demi voix, parfois meme de se taire artistes y envoient librement le morceau qu'ils ont sous la main; une
tout ' fait. Seule l'admiration peut s'y montrer expansive"; E. Chesneau,
esquisse bien venue, une pochade curieuse, une indication de paysage,
"Cercle de l'union artistique: Exposition de 1873," Pans-Journal, 25
aussi bien qu'un tableau pousse A la perfection. Un paysagiste s'y montre
Feb. 1873. Chesneau repeated the same objections nearly a decade later
parfois avec un portrait; un portraitiste y expose un essai de marine.
in "Les Cercles artistes," Pans-Journal, 11-12 Feb. 1882.
C'est A ravir, et tout se passe sans fagon. On aime ces aimables boutades,
26 H. Houssaye, "Les Petites Expositions de peinture," La Revue des deux ces traits de libre humeur par lesquels un artiste se fait voir tel qu'il est
mondes, xxxviii, Mar. 1880, 193-202. ..."; V. Champier, Chronzque de l'annie: L'Annie artzstzque, Paris, 1880,
27 A good description of the types of works shown at the Soci6t6 des 173-174. On Champier, see Silverman, esp. 214-219.
Arts-Unis in the 1860s is to be found in Gazette des beaux-arts, vi, 1860,

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
To unofficial affairs, then, the artist sent work that escapedCardon the air of an uncommercial affair because they
professional definitions of genre, medium, or finish but thatoffered works not made to compete noisily for the attention
the amateur, as the acquaintance of the artist, would under-of the crowd at the Salon but to speak softly in the refined
stand and treasure for what it revealed of the private side of sensory register of an elite or personal space. The effect of
the individual. For those who developed the logic of theartists' submissions was compared to that of the corners of
private exhibition to its fullest, the expressions of individual-ateliers, places where one might discover the genesis of
ity among members of the circles and societies did not result ideas."3 In contrast, art on exhibition in the public milieu
in the discord that characterized the Salon, whose competi- brought forth a collision of mixed metaphors, but ones that
tive and democratic forum forced heightened displays of may have been ultimately compatible for the amateur who
self-promotion. Because members had to be voted into read Cardon: machine-like professionalism, Barnum-like
circles, a similarity or compatibility of sentiments-a certainegoism, mob-like hysteria.
level of taste-was assured. Thus, explained the reviewer of The formation of societies based on media, especially
La Paix, the viewer of these shows could pass from one workfollowing the example of the successful Societd d'Aquarellistes
to the next and appreciate the nuances of the person,Frangais in 1879, underscored the nonpublic character of
without experiencing too much of a jolt in moving between the exhibitions.32 To the intimacy of the space was joined the
neighbors on the wall."9 intimacy of the technique and materials. Like pastels or
These expectations soon turned routine in favorableprints, watercolor was treated in specialized journals as an art
critical reviews. Emile Cardon, veteran art critic of more thanof the connoisseur, an art removed from the glaring public
twenty years and author of L'Art au foyer domestique: La pronouncements produced in oil for Salon consumption.
Decoration de l'appartement in 1884, introduced the 1889The space reserved for watercolors and pastels at the Palais
season of "petits salons" to readers of the Moniteur des arts de l'Industrie in the 1870s and 1880s was celebrated by
with praise for aristocratic discretion, noncommercial charac-Raoul dos Santos, then critic of the Moniteur des arts, as a
ter, and individual sensibility, traits mutually reinforcedplace where only artists and true lovers of art ventured, a
through participation in these shows as artist or amateur: place whose intimacy could be measured by the absence of
history or anecdotal painting." Cardon similarly maintained
Artists send to these shows choice works that have often
that "private" light was necessary for the proper apprecia-
not been made for the market or to please from the tion of works on paper: "It's a delicate, intimate, lovable art
viewpoint of the buyer, as is too often done for the annual that one can only appreciate well in a choice, elegant, dis-
Salon. These works are not executed for the crowd but for tinguished milieu; it needs some care and installation; it
an elegant, discreet and delicate milieu, which under- needs a discreet light; the light of the street or the public
stands the soft-spoken and is taken aback at the great place does not suit it at all."34 It was to these associations that
outbursts required to make the crowd hear. the Societe d'Aquarellistes appealed in the reticently deco-
Sometimes in these little Salons, one finds pieces that rated exhibition premises that it maintained on the rue Le
the artist has kept preciously in the corner of the studio. Peletier, in the same building, in fact, as the galleries of
For him, for intimates, the piece responds to a state of Durand-Ruel (Fig. 7).
soul or spirit, to a truly felt impression, something very Organization of exhibition by medium might seem to
moving, lived, still better... something that improves my sacrifice the all-important principle of the individual artist's
sense of the best of what this artist can do. production, but at the shows of the Aquarellistes, each of the
Such pages can only be appreciated in a little Salon; artists (nineteen in 1879) had his or her own panel where
they would be lost in the great hawking fair of the Palais de twenty or so works could be arranged, although most of the
l'Industrie.30 exhibitors made modest and spacious arrangements with
under ten submissions. Presumably the same practice was
Even when art societies held shows in dealers' galleries, as employed here as would later be instituted for the Interna-
was frequently the case by the late 1880s, they retained for tional Expositions at the gallery of Georges Petit: artists
29 "Cercle de l'union artistique" (as in n. 22). " For example, at the Peintres-Graveurs show held at the Durand-Ruel
gallery, artists were encouraged to create the experience of an atelier
30 "Les artistes y envoient des oeuvres de choix, qui, bien souvent, n'ont
visit by including various states of prints on their panels; see Pointe-
point ete faites pour le marche, au point de vue de l'acheteur, comme
seche, "Peintres-Graveurs, "Journal des arts, 25 Jan. 1889.
cela se pratique trop souvent pour le Salon annuel; les oeuvres ne sont
point executees pour la foule qu'il faut raccrocher, mais pour un milieu 32 The founding of numerous societies based on technique, medium,
el1gant, discret, ddlicat, qui comprend a demi-mot et qu'effrayent et genre, or aesthetic allegiance in the 1880s and 1890s and the change
that this orientation marks from the basis for association in the 1860s
choquent les grands &clats de voix qu'il faut pousser pour se faire
entendre de la foule. have been noted by Bouillon, "Societes d'artistes" (as in n. 22), 96-97.
Quelquefois dans ces petits Salons, on trouve de ces morceaux qu'un" R. dos Santos, "Un Coin du Salon: Aquarelles et pastels," Moniteur des
artiste garde precieusement dans un coin d'atelier, pour lui, pour lesarts, 16 May 1884.
intimes, un morceau repondant ' un &tat d'ame ou d'esprit, a une
4 "C'est un art delicat, intime, aimable, qu'on ne peut bien apprsEcier
impression ressentie, quelque chose d'emu, de vecu, encore meilleur-
que dans un milieu de choix, elegant, distingue; il demande quelque
plus bon, dirais-je, ce qui rend mieux ma pensee que ce que I'artiste a fait
de mieux. soin et un peu de mise-en-scene; il lui faut une lumiere discrete; le grand
jour de la rue ou de la place publique ne lui convient pas"; E. Cardon,
Ces pages-lle on ne les gofit que dans un petit Salon; elles seraient
"Aquarellistes chez Petit," Moniteur des arts, 18Jan. 1889.
perdues dans le grand ddballage forain du Palais de l'industrie"; E.
Cardon "Causerie," Moniteurdes arts, 1 Feb. 1889.

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RM 4i
'' ~l~r I A g
. .. .. ...... ..
. . .. . . .. . s o u
rOWT
..........bea~~:r ~ ?
~~:;:.:.- ';I;:::~ .,r. . . . . . . . . . . . .~;
7 Anon., "Exposition des aquarel-

listes, 1879." Paris, Bibliothbque
Nationale, Departement des Es-
tampes
could place works on their upon inown panels

the evaluation aspainting.
of Impressionist they saw
The Impres-
Installation became the decision, and
sionist exhibitions failedthus the
to engender amongexpressio
many reviewers
the individual.35
expectations similar to those shaped by the circles (i.e., that
A principle similar to that governing their installations here was a proper haven for the artist's expression of self and
also informed the publications of the Societ~ d'Aquarellistes. for the viewer's cultivation of aesthetic sensibility, hors Salon).
In the lavish exhibition catalogues for their shows, each artist An explanation may be found in the art displayed at the
illustrated a spread of two pages with drawings, some of them Impressionist shows, to be sure, but the failure must also
mere doodles, and included the titles of exhibited works, have resulted from the nomadic appearances of the group
often in handwritten script. Just as each artist had his or her and their insecure definition in relation to the spaces and
own panel at the show and his or her own set of pages in the practices that structured the private domain, especially when
catalogue, so too, in the most deluxe of the Aquarellistes'
they temporarily renovated apartments for shows open to
ventures-a two-volume limited edition of "critical" studies
the public. Moving from place to place, the Impressionists
published in 1883-each artist appeared in his or her own
clearly lacked the financial solidity, established premises,
chapter. Different critics wrote individual chapters, resulting
and informed amateur membership of other associations. In
in a sequence of personal appreciations.36 The effect pro-
1880, Victor Champier identified the group as "this society
duced by the pairing of writers and authors was quite that doesn't have a place of its own."" Rather than appearing
different from that of a volume of (public) criticism, whereto escape the public domain and to provide a refuge for
even if all were praised, the names of artists might nonethe-
refining the senses, their exhibitions seemed to some com-
less appear to compete for the accolades of a single author.
mentators to be designed for posturing in public: their
In the publications of the Societ~ d'Aquarellistes, the logic ofstylistic experimentation was polemical and factional; their
the aesthetics of the private show was preserved: each expression of individuality, forced; their lack of finish, an
chapter encapsulated the sensitive appreciation of one indi- affront. In accord with the hybrid character of the exhibi-
vidual for another, an intimate understanding. tions, responses varied widely, and favorable critics like Burty
What is revealed when the shows of these circles and found aspects of the shows especially satisfying as a private
societies are juxtaposed with the Impressionist exhibitions isdomain where the senses delighted in decorative ensembles.
that the values that came to shape the contents and organiza- No critic removed his top hat at the Impressionist shows,
tion of the former-the nonprofessional and nonfinished, however, and none deemed the business of criticism inappro-
the informal and personal, the aristocratic and cultivated,
priate. Chez les Mirlitons, intimacy meant one thing; at an
the private and the nondiscursive-were also values calledImpressionist show, quite another.
5 On this aspect of installation, see E. Cardon, "Exposition

37 "Cette soci&et, qui n'a point de local a elle"; V. Champier, Chronique de
internationale," Moniteur des arts, 6 June 1887. l'annee: L'Annie artistique, Paris, 1880, 140.
36 Socidti d'aquarellistes franfais: Ouvrage d'art publih avec le concours
artistique de tous les socidtaires; texte par les principaux critiques d'art, Paris,
1883.

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Decorative Impressionist Installations, 1879 to 1881 the sharpest refinement; and, even though the frame
It was from 1879 to 1881 that the Impressionist exhibitions, can't add anything to the talent of a work, it's still a
all held in apartment-like spaces, assumed an especially necessary complement, an addition that brings out value.
intimate character. Innovations at this time seem to have It's the same thing as the beauty of a woman which
been directed toward exploiting associations with the private
requires certain surroundings."39
domain. In particular, this involved renegotiating through
practice the definition and interrelation of media, decora-
Not surprisingly, the discovery that the theory of comple-
tion, and individuality. Degas seems to have provided the
mentary contrasts had informed Pissarro's choice of tinted
motivation necessary for these endeavors; with his absence
frames led to the further discovery that the gold frame had
from the show in 1882, innovation ceased. been rejected because, it was thought, gold interfered with or
The most overt manifestation of the new tendencies at the
even destroyed perception of certain tones within the paint-
Impressionist shows came with the use of colored frames and
ing. The border of complementary color made evident one
walls. Already at the exhibition of 1877 Pissarro and Degas
new role that the frame was assuming. It was now to be seen
had used white frames, thus marking the first appearance not just as a complement to a painting, or as a zone of
among the Impressionists of what would, after a decade of transition between the worlds of the painting and the viewer.
pervasive use by the group, be called the "ImpressionistWhile serving as a repoussoir, it was also to be perceived as
frame."38 From 1879 to 1881, Pissarro, Degas, and Cassattentering into an expansive, active, and coloristic relation
paid considerable attention to the possibilities of employing with the painted surface.4"
color to redefine the relationship of work and environment, Like colored frames, tinted exhibition rooms served the
to enhance decorative appeal, and to code through colorend of subordinating the autonomy of the work to a decora-
relations the individual character of their work. Degas and tive display and to an identity compatible with or fostered by
Cassatt used colored frames for some of their pieces at the the surroundings. Burty deplored the crowded conditions at
show of 1879, but unfortunately no reviewer mentioned how the 1880 exhibition but nevertheless praised the artists for
the colors may have been cued to the paintings or surround-making the best of their limited circumstances by painting
ings. In his review of the Impressionist exhibition of 1880, the various rooms in those tones that they felt were best
J.-K. Huysmans noted that Pissarro's prints were exhibited suited to the effect (effet) of their works. Just to prove that
with yellow mats and bordered by purple frames. These they were not prejudiced, Burty said, the artists had set one
experiments gave rise at the show in 1881 to a profusion of room aside (labeled the Salon d'Institut) and in homage to
individually designed frames. Although critics of that exhibi-official practice had painted it antique red. The landscapes
tion spoke of other artists' borders in passing, they were mostof Charles Tillot and Henri Rouart, whom Burty called "les
intrigued by Pissarro's, each of which was apparently tinted
with the color complementary to the dominant hue of the
painting it surrounded. Huysmans was again the most
enthusiastic as well as the most descriptive reviewer: 3 "Puis quelle variete dans les encadrements qui revetent tous les tons
varies de l'or, toutes les nuances connues, qui se bordent de liseres
peints avec la couleur complkmentaire des cadres! La serie des Pissarro
What variety in the frames, which carry varied tones of est, cette annae, surtout, surprenante. C'est un barriolage de veronrse et
gold and which are bordered with margins painted with de vert d'eau, de mais et de chair de peche, d'amadou et de lie de vin, et
the color complementary to the frames! The series ofil faut voir avec quel tact le coloriste a assorti toutes ses teintes pour
mieux faire s'&couler ses ciels et saillir ses premiers plans. C'est le
Pissarro is, this year, surprising above all. It's a variety of
raffinement le plus acre6; et, encore que le cadre ne puisse rien ajouter
water- and veronese-green, of corn and peach skin, ofau talent d'une oeuvre, il en est cependant un compl6ment necessaire,
unguent yellow and wine-colored purple, and you have to un adjuvant qui le fait valoir. C'est la meme chose qu'une beaut&e de
see with what tact the colorist has sorted out all his tints to femme qui exige certains atours ..."; J.-K. Huysmans, "L'Exposition
des independants," L'Art moderne / Certazns, repr., Paris, 1975, 251. On
make his skies recede and his foregrounds come forth. It's
Pissarro's frames at these exhibitions and on the principle of complemen-
tary contrasts, see also Lecomte (as in n. 38).
40 The decorative border reversed the rationale of the traditional gilt
frame. The academician, critic, and widely read author Charles Blanc
38 G. Lecomte, who got the information for his short biography of had carefully defined in his work on decorative arts why shiny or mat
Pissarro from conversations with the artist, recorded that Pissarro firstgold was preferred for framing: shiny or mat surfaces "both adapt
used white frames in 1877; "Camille Pissarro," Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui,themselves to the framing of paintings where light, concentrated
viii, n.d. [1890]. A reviewer of the 1877 show noted white frames aroundtowards the center, is stifled at the margins. Gilt has the additional
Degas's series of caf6s-concerts and likened them to "passe-partouts":advantage of casting warm reflections onto the painting and lighting it a
Jacques, "Menus propos," L'Homme libre, 12 Apr. 1877. Another little, if of course the frame is located well in front of the canvas and
reference to white frames during this year occurs in the play La Cigale creates a concavity favorable to casting these reflections." (The shiny or
about the imaginary Impressionist painter Marignon; L. Tannenbaummat surfaces "s'adaptent l'un et l'autre a l'encadrement des tableaux oui
first called attention to this reference in "Degas: Illustrious and
la lumiere, concentr6e vers le milieu, est 6touff6e sur les bords. La
Unknown," Art News, Jan. 1967, 76. For a very informative history of dorure a ici de plus l'avantage dejeter des reflets chauds sur le fond de la
Impressionist and late 19th-century framing experiments, see I. Cahn, peinture et de l'6claircir un peu, a la condition, toutefois, que le cadre
sera bien en avant de la toile, et pr6sentera une concavit6 favorable au
Cadres de pezntres, Paris, 1989. Monet's practices, which differed signifi-
cantly from those of some other Impressionists, are discussed by J. renvoi de ces reflets"); C. Blanc, Grammazre des arts decoratzfs, Paris, 1882,
House, Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven, 1986, esp. 180, 214. 190. Because light values in Impressionist paintings were generally not
Additional documentation concerning the use of white frames byconcentrated at the center but tended to be more evenly distributed
Cassatt, Manet, Morisot, and Gauguin is provided by I. Horowitz, "Theacross the surface, and because in composition the painters often
Picture Frame, 1848-1892: The Pre-Raphaelites, Whistler, Paris," M.A.preferred contrasts of color to those of value, Blanc's rationale for the
thesis, Queens College, City University of New York, 1974, 108-115. use of gold was no longer pertinent.

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
sages," were hung there.4" It is very likely that this was theHavard advised the female readers of his work on interior
exhibition that Pissarro and his son Lucien recalled in 1883 decoration, L'Art dans la maison of 1882, "Choose the color
in an exchange of letters about exhibition decoration and
that is yours, morally and physically, and then, to put with
specifically about Whistler's installations. Lucien wrote from give preference to tones and nuances that harmonize."43 Jus
London that Whistler, whose show with yellow interiors and as a domestic space personalized through color harmon
butterfly signatures he had just seen, had stolen the Impres- should provide an area "naturally" coded for the complexion
sionist idea for tinted exhibition rooms. Pissarro lamented in of the owner and her more intimate possessions, so the work
his response that the Impressionists had generally lacked theof a single artist at an exhibition might best be compre
means to realize fully their ideas for decoration, although he hended in the expressive cast of an appropriately tint
had once had a lilac room with a yellow border, albeit sans room.
papillons. The gendered aspects of the model r

Whistler had created his first one-man show in 1874 by most criticism, however, and it was only
reconstructing and recoloring a dealer's gallery to suggest Jules Laforgue evoked the common an
how his works would appear on the walls of patrons' homes. frames and women's toilettes that the im
This and his later installations provided an important prece- lishing personal taste through color pr
dent for the Impressionist experimentation with domestic tended. Writing in 1883, Laforgue marve
spaces and colored rooms and frames, although they were sionist borders and relied upon this analo
not a source Pissarro later remembered or was at any rate description of the highly personalized nat
willing to acknowledge. Still, the similarities are striking: the tive enterprise:
interest in innovative borders, the decorative coordination of
painting and environment through complementary con- A sunny green landscape, a bright
trasts or color pairs, the integration of various media, and interior twinkling with polishes and
(possibly) the mounting of deliberately asymmetrical dis- different frames, which only their resp
plays. However, Pissarro indicated his distrust of totally how to devise, just as a woman knows b
harmonized ensembles in 1883, when he responded to else the nuances of materials and pow
Lucien's descriptions of Whistler's exhibition rooms with an hangings that will bring out her color,
attack on aestheticism. Even though the decorative installa- her face, her manners. We've seen fram
tion might seem to provide a refuge from the anonymity and white, pale pink, green, jonquil yellow,
commodification of art in the public exhibition space, its gated to the extreme with a thousan
thousand manners.44
complete realization-its complete absorption of the work in
the fully unified effect of an aestheticized ensemble-seems
As less than autonomous objects in an exhibition display that
to have struck Pissarro as a promotional gimmick, for in his
evoked the space of domestic decoration, paintings required
letter he associated aestheticism with puffisme.42 To seek to
the intuitive (and apparently feminine) gift for "natural"
deny in this way the "exhibitionality" of the wall was perhaps
color enhancement.
only to cover its commercialism with a layer of sham.
Similarly accentuating the intimacy of the installations
Although much less insistently or successfully than Whis-
tler, the Impressionists who had tinted rooms of their own at
during these years was the artists' inclusion of different
these shows still contextualized art in ways that resonated media and their alteration of the surface appearances of oil
with models for the domestic domain. To enhance the paintings. In his review of the show in 1879, Havard wrote
appearance of their works, the artists exploited in part the

that he felt certain that both Degas's and Cassatt's colored
borders were somehow connected with their interest in
feminine pursuit of expressing personal identity through
gouache, chalk, and distemper.45 Pissarro also shared their
interior arrangement. At the 1881 show, for example, settees
and rocking chairs were put in the crowded mezzanine concern to explore the possibilities of media such as gouache
and
apartment, and Degas's works inhabited the most secluded pastel, whose dry, opaque surfaces were inherently mat.
area of the show, located at the end of the suite of the In fact, critics seem to have felt an irresistible impulse to
five-room apartment, in the cabinet, which he distinguished
as his own by hanging it in yellow. The practice anticipates
the advice to be offered in manuals on how to decorate 43 "Choissions-la de la couleur qui vous convient le mieux moralement et
intimate spaces, the private rooms where one is face to face physiquement, et, pour les marier avec elle, donnons la pref6rence aux
tons et aux nuances qui s'harmonisent"; H. Havard, "L'Art dans la
with oneself. Here one should avoid ostentation in ornamen- maison: La Chambre a coucher," L'lllustratzon, LXXX, 4 Nov. 1882, 307.
tation and banish overly gilt surfaces, and instead, Henry 44 "Un paysage vert soleil, une page blonde d'hiver, un interieur
papillotant de lustres et de toilettes exigent des cadres diff6rents que
leurs auteurs respectifs sauront seuls confectionner, comme une femme
sait mieux que personne quelles nuances d'&toffes et quelles poudres, et
4 P. Burty, "Exposition des oeuvres des artistes independants," La
quelles tentures de boudoir feront valoir son teint, l'expression de son
Ripublzque franfazse, 10 Apr. 1880. visage, ses manieres. Nous avons vu des cadres plats, blancs, rose-pale,
verts, jaune jonquille, d'autres barioles a outrance de mille tons et de
42 On Whistler's show in 1874, see R. Spencer, "Whistler's First One-Man
Exhibition Reconstructed," in The Documented Image: Visions zn Art mille fagons"; "L'Impressionnisme," Jules Laforgue: Textes de critzque
d'art, ed. M. Dottin, Lille, 1988, 174.
History, ed. G.P. Weisberg and L.S. Dixon, Syracuse, 1987, 27-49. For
Pissarro's comments, see letter no. 120, Correspondance de Camille 45 H. Havard, "L'Exposition des artistes independants," Le Sztcle, 27
Pzssarro, ed.J. Bailly-Herzberg, I, Paris, 1983, 177-178. Apr. 1879.

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
compare the effect of Impressionist paintings in general, but

particularly the works of Pissarro, Degas, and Cassatt during
these years, to pastels or frescoes.46 The mat surface was an
appearance that this group associated with a sense of
brightness in the phrase reoccurring in letters by Pissarro
and others as a desideratum, "faire mat et clair," which
involved making a surface seem luminous in its own right,
without the reflection of external light. Given the setting of
the decorative exhibition and the scale of the works, such
techniques must also have suggested a rococo-like confection
and a delicacy of effect far removed from the glaring "public"
surfaces of Salon oils.
The widespread recognition that the Impressionists had

manipulated oils to resemble pastel and gouache was proba-
bly facilitated by the type of frame the artists employed. As
far as we know from contemporary descriptions, the most
common Impressionist frame was a hybrid mat-frame that
was relatively flat, roughly parallel to the wall, and facing the
spectator more than sloping inward toward the painting;
usually it was rather plain with only a few bands of different
woods, colors, or gilt, and little projecting ornamentation
(see, for example, the frame in Fig. 8). It was a border that
nineteenth-century manuals recommended for use with al-
ready matted works (gouaches, distempers, drawings, etc.)
where the frame did not have to encourage the illusion of
depth or to establish an appropriately oblique transition
between the world of the image and that of the viewer.47 8 Paul Gauguin, Portrait ofa Woman, with Still Life by Cizanne,
Also contributing to the intimate mode of viewing sug- ca. 1890. Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago
gested by the evocation of domestic space was the use of glass
for the display of oil paintings. Pissarro was singled out acted to elide material irregularities in the painting, thus
among the exhibitors in 1881 and 1882 for placing sheets of enhancing perception of the luminous, expansive qualities of
glass over oils, an unusual practice in France (it would be a mat surface while simultaneously inviting the precious
forbidden at the Salon in 1888) but more common in inspection of a delicate pastel. The toilette suited well the
England and quickly associated by reviewers with the mode character of the exhibition, both decorative and intimate.
anglaise.48 On separate occasions, the critic F61ix F6neon and These shows went further than any other ventures of the
Pissarro remarked on the advantage in placing glass over a Impressionist group in subordinating the autonomy of the
work, an advantage that reveals the more subtle processes of work and the individuality of the artist to the harmonies of a
perception and association at work: essentially glass served private environment. Still, as comparison with several liter-
as a filter to alter one's sense of the physical nature of the ary enterprises of the period makes plain, the Impressionist
surface which, when viewed "naked," both artist and critic experiments were tentative and certain latent tensions within
considered to be too rough and irregular.49 Apparently glass them suggest a considerable reluctance on the part of the
artists to define their paintings entirely in the terms of the
decorative and nondiscursive modes of the domestic interior.
46 For example, three reviews remarked in 1882 that Pissarro's oil Here, as when they are compared to the exhibitions of circles
paintings resembled pastels: Fichtre, "L'Actualite: L'Exposition des
peintres ind6pendants," Le Reveil, 2 Mar. 1882; A. Sallanches,
"L'Exposition des artistes ind6pendants," Le Journal des arts, 3 Mar.
49 F. F6neon, "L'Impressionnisme aux Tuileries," L'Art moderne, 19 Sept
1882; G. Vassy, "L'Actualite: Les Peintres impressionnistes," Gil Blas, 2
Mar. 1882. 1886; repr. in FIneon: Oeuvres (as in n. 48), I, 55-56. Letter from Pissarr
to Esther Isaacson of 1889, no. 561 in Correspondance de Camille Pissarr
47J. Saulo and de Saint-Victor (sic), Nouveau Manuel complet du fabricant
de cadres, Paris, 1896, 8. ed. J. Bailly-Herzberg, ii, Paris, 1986, 318-319. Degas also commented
on this advantage, while Burty remarked in his review of the exhibitio
48 Huysmans remarked upon the use of glass by the Impressionistsof as 1882
a that Pissarro's oils looked like velvety pastels precisely becau
group at the exhibition of 1882, but for one reason or another, critics
they were seen under glass (Lettres de Degas, ed. M. Guerin, Paris, 1945
consistently noted only Pissarro's paintings in this respect, perhaps
60; P. Burty, "Les Aquarellistes, les ind6pendants et le cercle des art
because more of his paintings were displayed under glass. Pissarro either
liberaux," La Rgpublique franpaise, 8 Mar. 1882). There were, of cours
continued this practice or returned to it in the mid-1880s when he obvious advantages to placing a sheet of glass over an oil: i
other
probably helped to inspire the Neo-Impressionists as well to exhibit
protected the painted surface from dirt without incurring the disadvan
their paintings under glass, which they began in 1886. By 1889, if tages
not of a layer of varnish which might discolor with age. Also, becau
before, however, the practice seems to have been abandoned, as may be
varnish adhered directly to the surface's unevenly painted terrain,
judged from the critic Fel1ix F6neon's comment that year that Seurat's
might result in irregular and distracting reflections of light. This was t
marines needed glass to complete their toilettes at the Independents'
principal explanation Huysmans offered when he saw paintings di
exhibition; "Tableaux," La Vogue, Sept. 1889; repr. in FElix Fgnion:
played under glass in 1882. Glass also allowed the painting's surface
Oeuvres plus que completes, ed. J.U. Halperin, Geneva, 1970, I, 165. be left mat and thus made it seem less like an oil.

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
and societies, the Impressionist shows appear to be awkward definition of art in a private ensemble. The interiors by Duke
or strange assemblages. X were built on the assumption that the domestic installation
It was in literature that the most striking and notorious of one's collection should completely subsume the works to
development of the gendered and classed implications of the quotidian activities and moods of the resident, and vice
male decorative enterprises occurred. In Edmond de versa. What is striking about the decorative Impressionist
Goncourt's La Maison d'un artiste (1881) and Huysmans's A
installations of the early 1880s, in comparison, is how much
the works exhibited in the tinted settings must have dis-
Rebours (1884), these were given a decidedly decadent and
aristocratic allure."5 Here, primary divisions of responsibilityrupted or, in any case, resisted assimilation into the personal-
ized environment or appreciation through analogy with
for the appearances of the bourgeois interior-the roles of
the man as collector and the woman as decorator-were experiences of the interior. I find it frankly difficult to
collapsed as men of leisure inhabited womanless spaces. imagine
The the effect in 1881 of seeing displayed in Degas's
retreat to the interior was, Edmond de Goncourt explained,
small cabinet, suffused with yellow, his portraits of notorious
a response to the problem that "life threatens to become
criminals; or of seeing set against lavender walls, correlated
public."'' to the tints of frames and placed discreetly under glass,
Following these well-known literary models, the linking of Pissarro's stiffly jointed and roughly brushed peasants.53
elite aestheticism and male decoration can also be found in a
Here, the connotations of the depictions and the decorative-
curious newspaper article of the late 1880s in which Maurice ness assumed by the installation must have resulted in a
de Fleury described at length the house of an almost bizarrely contradictory display.
certainly imaginary collector, an aristocrat who expressed Whatever motivated the decorative experiments from
himself and his modernity through decoration with new1879 to 1881, they seem as much an attempt to contextualize
materials and recent art. In his "maison sans femme" (empha-
the exhibition wall in accord with its apartment setting as an
sis mine) Duke X had positioned Impressionist and Symbol- effort to suggest a mode of perception entirely appropriate
ist works in an environment embellished with the architec- for the art. The exhibitors I have discussed drew their
tural materials he advocated for the creation of a style installations from gendered and classed practices of de
troisimme Ripublique (the piece was dedicated to Charles tion, but they stopped far short of enhancing or
endorsing these with the types of works they chos
Garnier, the most vocal opponent of iron and glass construc-
tion). The Duke's quintessentially modernist predilectionsdisplay. Certainly, it was not the case that they were un
determined the bizarre appearance of his main salle: how to translate their art into decoration for the interior: in
the early 1870s Pissarro had painted above-the-door land-

On the ceilings, still more iron, in small beams, rosettes,
scapes of the seasons and in the mid-1880s Monet created
coffers, casings. On the walls-where it isn't easy to put door panels of flowers for the grand salon of Durand-Ruel's
nails-vast sheets of glass, mounted flat, housing draw- apartment.54 Nor was it the case that the decorative installa-
ings, watercolors, etchings, pastels; while the paintings,tions of the walls at these Impressionist exhibitions compro-
framed in crystal with tints logically juxtaposed to the
mised the more pictorially specific (and less overtly gen-
colors of the paintings themselves, all rest on easels.52
dered) conception of the "decorative" that had led Burty and
others to praise landscapes in the early Impressionist shows,
The house had among its many ensembles a salle de bain lined
for such appreciation continued to greet appropriate works
with pastels of women by Degas, a salle de gymnastique from 1879 to 1881. Instead, the odd assortment of forms and
outfitted with energetic posters by Cheret, and a chambre a
subjects that showed up in the colored frames, tinted walls,
coucher complete with interiors by Caillebotte and Forain, a
and close spaces of the Impressionist expositions of these
Whistler vision, and a Redon nightmare. The "maison d'un
years suggests, I think, that the artists were ultimately unable
moderniste" pastiched for the amusement of the newspaper
to accept the possibility that their own installations evinced:
reader the notoriously decadent behavoir of Huysmans's des
art might be subordinated to or subsumed by an emerging
Esseintes, now rendered less eccentric and more modern,
(feminine) sense of interior decoration.
converted to a taste for glass and Impressionism.
These parodic installations far outdid what the Impression- Dealers' Exhibitions in the 1880s
ist shows might have suggested about the function or
Economic conditions in the French art market changed
the early 1880s. The depression that began in 1882 heig
ened competition for a share of the market in contempor
50 On La Matson d'un artiste and the Goncourts' model home at Auteuil,
see the analysis by Silverman, 17-39. paintings, a market that seemed to be diminishing and w
5 As quoted by M. Perrot, "At Home," in A Hzstory of Private Life, ed. M.
Perrot, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, Iv, 344-345.
52 "Aux plafonds, du fer encore, en poutrelles, en rosaces, en caissons, en
lambris. Aux murs---oii il n'est pas ais6 de planter des clous--de" vastes
For an interpretation of Degas's installations that accounts for the
framing experiments as scientific investigation, see D.W. Druick and P.
sous-verre, plaques A plat, abritent dessins, aquarelles, eaux-fortes,
Zegers, "Scientific Realism 1874-1881," Degas, exh. cat., Paris, Grand
pastels; tandis que les toiles, encadr6es de cristal aux teintes logique-
mentjuxtapos6es aux couleurs memes du tableau, reposent toutes Palais;
surOttawa, National Gallery of Canada; New York, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1988-89, 197-211.
chevalets"; M. de Fleury, "La Maison d'un moderniste," undated
clipping from an unidentified newspaper in the Jules Cheret5 press
L.R. Pissarro and L. Venturi, Pissarro: Son Art-son oeuvre, Paris and
clipping books, D6partement des Estampes, Bibliothbque Nationale,
New York, 1939, I, nos. 183-186; D. Wildenstein, Monet, biographie et
Paris. catalogue raisonne, Lausanne, 1979, II, nos. 937-942.

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LA NOUVELLE SALLE D'EXPOSITION DE M. GEORGES PETIT

8, Rue de S~ze.
ii
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r r
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132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
4 . o ..m . . . . ..
10 Anon., "Exposition de la Soci6t6

d'Aquarellistes, rue de Seze," 1882.
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, De-
partement des Estampes Vt~n lTIO t)R LA OC~r rJE AO A Rl~t~mrit mug ng. lt;- VM L, i
certainly threatened. The Salon, which the State handed

glance at galleries of an earlier generation is needed
over to the artists themselves in 1881, had already to
begun to
establish the difference in milieu. A high vestibu
experiment with modest innovations in decor, arrangement,
with antique busts on marble bases, old tapestries, an
exotic
and hours."55 But it was dealers who took the lead at flowers, gave way to a ceremonially broad and
this time
sloped staircase, stationed with attendants, clad
and gained more control over artists partly by structuring
new possibilities for exhibition while simultaneously
Passing af-
under a thickly draped velvet curtain (red, of
fecting expectations about shows with new sites and the visitor turned right into the grand salle, m
strate-
gies. Many of the same long-term understandings about
sixteen by twenty-six meters. Here works hung i
what had to be negotiated in displays continued to guide
three rows on draped walls of warm chestnut red
dealers' practical decisions about installations. Artists
filtered were
daytime illumination came from the iron an
typically assigned panels on which they themselvesskylight
arrangedthat extended the entire length of the r
their works; the importance of the individual now evening
led to theviewing, the regiment of twenty or so r
more frequent occurrence of one-person shows. As rival
spaced chandeliers, equipped with gas bulbs and
dealers invested in deluxe premises and openedreflectors,
smaller added still more warmth to the salle, eff
branches in Paris, however, they also experimented withfound marvellous. Everywhere the decor wa
reviewers
establishing different types of social spaces: more some orthought
less a bit to excess. Though impressed over
private, more or less permanent, and with more or less
critic for the Gazette des beaux-arts asked only,
appeal to the domestic sphere. everything red, hangings, carpets and furniture?""56
The new stage was set by the opening of Georges Petit'swhat another critic called the "vastitude
Despite
premises on the rue de Seze in February of 1882, "Petit(e)
the samesalle," provisions were made for the de
month as the collapse of the Catholic bank, the Union
intimacy in viewing. An elaborate wooden skirting a
G6nerale. Critics declared the site unprecedented supported
among works propped upon it for close inspec
Paris exhibition spaces for splendor (Figs. 9-10) and only a divans and plants were present, although
predictable
what ineffective as spatial dividers in the salle Petit,
ample supply of portable chairs was provided to help
the officialness
5" The most controversial experiment took place in 1880 when, instead of the room by permitting spon
of the usual hanging by alphabetical order, the administration decided
to install according to "groupes sympathiques." Foreigners were placed
apart from the rest, and French artists were separated into classes
according to honors received. The installation was widely 56
ridiculed in tout est-il rouge, tentures, tapis et meubles?" A. B
"Pourquoi
the press. Whereas the usual crowded conditions prevailed for less-
"Soci6t6 d'aquarellistes frangais," Gazette des beaux-arts, per
honored groups, artists who were "hors concours" had their works
1882, 433.
hungIn addition to the description of the gallery in this
A. Dalligny,
on the picture rail with the vast amounts of space above left empty. It was"L'Exposition de la rue de Seze," Lejournal des ar
thought that the jury itself might have sabotaged the notion
1882, 1; andofJ.-E. Blanche, Les Arts plastiques: La Troisieme R
"sympathetic groups" by hanging three depictions of the Paris, 1931, 111-115. Quotations from Blanche and other inf
assassination
of Marat in the same room. (See P. Burty, "Le Salon de 1880,"
about theLa
gallery are provided by R.T. Dunn, "The Mon
Ripublique franpaise, 1 May 1880.) For innovations in the Exhibition
Salon in the
at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1889," Ph.D. diss., N
period following the one considered here, see Aquilino. ern University, 1978.

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........
I-A
IF
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tt M21M All
471.5
MW
ot',
11 Anon., Galerie Goupil, L'Illus-

tration, xxxv, 10 Mar. 1860, 155.
University of Chicago, Regenstein
Library
conversations and facilitating comfortable observation. Petit new expectations for exhibition decor. For aristocratically
had it both ways: the grandeur of the space could suggest inclined Frenchmen in these depressed (and republican)
Garnier's Opera, but the flexibility of the arrangement could times, the grand conviction suggested by vast opulence could
accommodate a range of shows and purposes. quickly override the delicate predilection for a private
In function the salle needed to be flexible. It was available
interior. In Gil Blas, the commentatorJeanne-Thilda quipped
that the audience who would fail to appreciate the taste at
for regularly scheduled use by artistic societies and for rent
by others wishing to mount one-time shows; it was also
Petit's would be republican, for they tended to see red
intended to supply the commissaire-priseur Petit with a more
differently from the rest.58 Expectations about the possibili-
distinguished environment for auctions than was available ties
at of the site were no doubt also boosted in 1883 when the
greatest intimist of all, Edmond de Goncourt, chose to
the nearby H6tel Drouot. The Soci6t6 d'Aquarellistes inaugu-
rated the space in February 1882, abandoning for good theirexhibit there his collection of eighteenth-century art, the
two-room suite in the Maison Durand-Ruel on the rue works he had described in situ in the Maison d'un artiste. For
Laffitte. Doubts about the wisdom of this move from intimate less elevated sensibilities and for the foreigners who came to
space to great hall, from residing in one's own place to the city to buy, the salle must have been easily negotiable.
competing in a merchant's domain, were expressed byAlthough unique in Paris, it was roughly the same size as the
Henry Havard, who was generally concerned as a critic with main room of the Grosvenor Gallery in London, and it must
the implications of exhibition installation and, as we havehave seemed less imposing if compared to that most modern
seen, an expert on interior decoration: and elaborately outfitted place of merchandizing, to which
Emile Zola among others noted its resemblance, the Paris
Have they gained much? We would not dare to claim it... department store.59
what they've acquired in pomp and solemnity, they've lost
Hurt by the crash of the stock market, Durand-Ruel
in intimate and discreet charm. At the rue Laffitte, they
responded to the palace of his rival (as well as to Petit's bid
were at home, really at home, catalogued under their
name, housed under their roof; they had no competition
seriously to fear. Now that they've lodged themselves
under the sign of a merchant, they have everything toserieusement a craindre. Maintenant qu'ils logent sous une enseigne de
marchand, ils ont tout a redouter d'une entreprise rivale"; H. Havard,
watch out for from a rival enterprise.57 "L'Exposition des aquarellistes," Le Siecle, 15 Feb. 1882.
58Jeanne-Thilda, "La Reception des aquarellistes," Gil Blas, 5 Feb.
Despite such reservations, aesthetic and commercial, the 1883.
salle Petit seems to have been a great success in establishing 59 Zola's description of Petit's gallery as "les magasins du Louvre de
peinture" is quoted in Camille Pissarro: Lettres d son fils Lucien, ed.
Rewald, Paris, 1950, 102, n. 1. It appears in Zola's manuscript for his
57 ,"Y ont-ils beaucoup gagne? Nous n'oserions le pr6tendre ... ce qu'ils 1886 novel about the art world, L'Oeuvre (NAF 10316, p. 354; Depart
acquirerent en pompe et en solennit6, ils le perdent en charme intime et ment des Manuscrits, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris).
discret. Enfin, rue Laffitte, ils &taient chez eux, bien chez eux, catalogues The appropriation of innovations in the display of other sorts o
sous leur nom, abrites sous leur toit; aucune concurrence n'6tait merchandise for the presentation of painting must be also considered; it

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for Impressionist business) not in kind but with a new tack,

one that exploited the already tested virtues of the intimate
.L.~--
space, the individual artist, and the wealthy amateur. In the
spring of 1883 Durand-Ruel transformed a mezzanine apart-
ment at 9 boulevard de la Madeleine into a gallery and
mounted there a series of one-person exhibitions, beginning
with Boudin and followed by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and
Sisley. Each show included various media and works on loan
from notable collectors, but apparently as a result of Durand-
asS
Ruel's experiences in arranging the new space, the size of the
*:::
exhibitions shrunk from over 150 works by Boudin in
February to around seventy or so by Pissarro in May. We
know little about the appearances of the gallery-apartment
on the boulevard de la Madeleine except that it was small
and very lavish: four rooms, hung in garance-colored cloth,
furnished with tables and twelve red-clad chairs.60 "Fort bien
ornee, ma foi!" was one critic's not atypical reaction.6'

Another noted the thick carpets and wall hangings and set
the social register accordingly: "One goes there discreetly
and speaks softly."62 Some critics understood the gallery to
EXP 5IIN E STMESD UTM R E E 0RSHO
be a permanent home for the Impressionists, perhaps a
resolution to questions of stability raised by the roving 7) rm a usw
appearances of the group shows and the need to have a place
of their own.6' A survey of the gallery's records reveals that 9
boulevard de la Madeleine was, in fact, an address reserved
exclusively for Impressionism: except for Boudin, there was
apparently nothing else in the place. Sisley described the
moment to Durand-Ruel as one when the Impressionists had
ceased to be nomads.64
was a field in which the United States was already thought to be

advanced and influential. For example, in Zola's L'Oeuvre, the dealer
Naudet used the new "American trick" of installation, hanging a single
painting in "sacred isolation" to make it seem special and more
expensive. Zola's manuscript notes reveal that this was based 12
on Anon.,
the Galerie Durand-Ruel, rue Laffitte, 1893. Paris
practices of the dealer Sedelmeyer, who had constructed a very chic
lioth'que Nationale, Dlpartement des Estampes
gallery in a h6tel and often "operated" on one painting at a time, as for
instance in 1881 when he displayed a work by the Polish artist Munkacsy,
Le Christ devant Pilate, with phenomenal success. For other American
merchandising tactics, including the invention of the word "display," see
W. Leach, "Strategists of Display and the Production of Desire," in the
The boulevard de la Madeleine was apparently a
very useful collection, Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of
Goods in America, 1880-1920, ed. S.J. Bronner, New York, 1989, 99-132. made at the wrong time; despite the eno
move
expenditure
60 These details are drawn from the "brouillards" and "grand livre" in on its decoration, no shows were mounte
those
the Durand-Ruel gallery: I would like to express my gratitude to the of the inaugural spring season and the galler
gallery for allowing me to consult these materials. The recorded
its doors at the end of the year. Following this ve
expenditures show that the gallery at 9 boulevard de la Madeleine was
an expensive undertaking: during the period from July 1882Durand-Ruel
to Dec. remained content to compete with P
Paris from his premises on the rue Laffitte. And even
1883, Durand-Ruel spent at least 11,615 francs on decoration (including
some minor remodeling) and 18,000 on rent.
he could on occasion mount shows in specially de
61 F. Henriet, "L'Exposition des oeuvres de C. Pissaro [sic]," LeJournal
decors, such as that created in 1893 for the Bing-spon
des arts, 25 May 1883.
show of Japanese art, with exotic pink and green han
62 P. Gilbert, "Exposition de M. P. A. Renoir,"Journal des artistes, 13 Apr.
1883. and spare, asymmetrical designs on the walls (Fig
63 For example, the critic Hustin remarked that the rooms had beenDurand-Ruel seems to have decided that it was best not to be
"affecte specialement depuis quelques temps a l'exhibition des too adventurous in Paris but to subscribe to the norm: red
impressionnistes"; "Exposition d'Eugene Boudin," Moniteur des arts, 9
tapestried surfaces, gilt frames, a spacious arrangement with
Feb. 1883. See also the similar remarks by P. Burty, "Les Paysages de
Eugene Boudin," La Ripubliquefrangaise, 4 Feb. 1883. some easels and a few palms. Installed in one or more of his
64 Sisley made the remark in the context of arguing in favor of a group gallery rooms, an Impressionist show could still appeal here
to an audience's imagination of the preferred milieu for
exhibition, rather than individual exhibitions, for the new site: "Ce n'est
pas il me semble au moment oui nous cessons d'etre des nomades, queexperiencing modern art. In 1891 the critic Emile Bergerat
nous avons un local definitif, bien place, que nous devons songer a
condemned the Salon and its commercialism and recom-
inaugurer un autre genre d'expositions"; Letter of 5 Nov. 1882, in Les
Archives de l'impressionnisme, ed. L. Venturi, Paris, 1939, II, 56. mended instead that his readers go to see Monet's se

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paintings at Durand-Ruel's: a "truly private and intimate sentences across paragraphs and hues from two-dimensional
space."65 surfaces across three. His celebration of the Durand-Ruel
Durand-Ruel extended the decorative tendencies of Im- petit salon ended with a note on the thick draperies, tap
pressionist paintings not so much through the practices tries,
he and carpets that enclosed the room and protected
silent
instituted in his gallery as in the publication he devoted to drama from the harshness of the tumultuous exterior.
the experience of Impressionist painting in his home. HereHe the private domestic space became a pantheistic
produced his own version of the "maison d'un moderniste" microcosm, encompassing nature and artist, painting and
in a deluxe edition of 1892, L'Art impressionniste d'apris resident,
la indeed submerging these merely material qualities
collection privie de M. Durand-Ruel. Skillfully composedinby the dream of a higher unity.
Pissarro's close friend, the gifted young litterateur and critic, Such a vision of wholeness, domestically sheltered, an-
Georges Lecomte, the book describes the possessions of swered the to deeply felt needs to preserve the integrity of the
dealer in a multitude of mini-chapters, curiously bracketed private domain and to secure there the truth and the purity
between an introductory account of the development of
of aesthetic experience. The thick curtains in Durand-Ruel's
Impressionism and a concluding note on the future of house
the seem metaphorically to shut out a host of evils-
movement. Thus framed by a narrative of the historical competitive markets, divisive politics, unsuitable publics,
importance of Impressionism, the titles and contents of critical
the polemics, and perhaps even words themselves-in
middle chapters shift dizzyingly from the names and atti- order to secure at "home" (Lecomte's term) a space where
tudes of individual artists to the titles of individual works to unity can be recovered through the senses. Even a narration
the appearances of the rooms of the maison Durand-Ruel.of the history of Impressionism would only be, to judge from
The apotheosis of decoration and description occurrs in the the ordering of Lecomte's chapters, an intrusion on the
chapter on the petit salon of the dealer's home: sensual immediacy of the petit salon."67
In the end, the maison Durand-Ruel dealt shrewdly with
We enter into the drawing room of M. Durand-Ruel. The competition from the salle Petit.
lowered blinds create delicate shadows and already on the
walls appear reflections, glimmers, mysterious glares. The
lightness of cool tones illuminates. We could say that these Impressionist and Independent Shows of the Late 1880s
radiant colors are being seen in the confusion of a dream, In the late 1880s, some avant-garde circles reacted against
such is the joy of this dawn attenuated by subtle fog. ... the implications of decorative installations and the values of
All the joys of nature are condensed in this small space."66 intimacy that had so contributed to the appeal of privately
sponsored exhibitions."68 While the efforts of the Neo-
Lecomte proceeded to evoke paintings by Monet, Renoir, Impressionists were informed by a more hermetic and
and Pissarro in a dense and reflexive prose which suggested insistent aestheticism than the decorative and more commer-
the decorative possibilities of the art, stretching actions fromcially practical impulses that characterized Impressionist
67 It is important to observe the difference between Lecomte's domestica-

65 E. Bergerat, "Chronique parisien," Gdz blas, 17 May 1891; as quoted bytion of Impressionism and the attitude of the traditional collector, who
Aquilino, 82. It is worth nothing that Durand-Ruel later complained thatwould most likely prize the art in hzs home for its historical value or its
his main gallery on the rue Laffitte, although subdivided into several contribution to his collection. An interesting suggestion of how an ideal
rooms, was too large for good business: "One sees too many things atof the collector and his home could have been translated into installation
once, one hesitates, one listens to the opinions of other visitors and putspractices in this period is suggested by the remarks on Paris museum
off purchases until later. In addition, in large rooms all objects look reform by Charles Saunier, a critic and historian whose enthusiasms at
smaller and as a result the prices that one asks for paintings seem more this time included vanguard art, like the Neo-Impressionists, Japanese
elevated than if one showed the works in a small locale" ("On voit trop artifacts and the patrimony of the French Gothic. Saunier recommended
de choses a la fois, on hesite, on &coute les avis des visiteurs et on remetthat paintings in museums should be grouped with objects and furniture
les achats ia plus tard. En outre, dans les grandes salles tous les objetsof the same period and placed in small rooms, fashioned like domiciles,
paraissent plus petits et par suite les prix que l'on demande des tableaux so that the visitor would sense that a man of taste and discrimination had
semblent plus dleves que si on les montre dans un petit local");collected them there: "Make the visitor forget that he is in a museum,
"Memoires de Paul Durand-Ruel," in Archzves de l'zmpresszonnzsme (as ingive him the illusion that he is at his home, that the objects belong to him
n. 64), II, 174-175. For an early description of the rue Laffitte gallery, and are part of his life, that his fantasy has recently placed them like this;
see J. Raffey, "Galerie de M. Durand-Ruel," Revue znternationale de l'art etteach him to love beauty, to understand it, give him time for reflection"
de la curzositi, II, 15 Dec. 1869. ("Faire oublier au visiteur qu'il se trouve dans un musee, lui donner
66 "Nous entrons dans le petit salon de M. Durand-Ruel. Les stores l'illusion qu'il est chez lui, que les objets lui appartiennent, font partie de
baisses le tiennent en une penombre delicate, et dej~ ce sont, sur les sa vie, que sa fantaisie les place naguere ainsi; lui apprendre a aimer le
beau, A le comprendre, lui laisser le temps de la reflexion"); "La Parure
parois, des chatoiements, des lueurs, de mysterieux eblouissements.
L'allegresse des tons frais s'illumine. On dirait de radieuses couleurs des oeuvres d'art," Ermztage, x, 1895, 257-260. Although Lecomte and
entrevues dans la confusion d'un reve: telle lajoie d'une aurore attenuee Saunier each ultimately appeal to the home as the site of the authentic
experience of art or the exercise of taste, the viewer-resident in Saunier's
par une brume subtile. .... Toutes lesjoies de la nature sont condensees
account is clearly meant to emulate the self-consciousness and historical
en ce court espace"; G. Lecomte, L'Art zmpressionnzste d'apr6s la collectzon
sensibility of the collector and not, as in Lecomte's text, to exclude
prwve de M. Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1892, 117-118. In a graduate seminar,
Katherine Haskins first noted the strange separation of history from history so that self and painting can mingle in a "natural" (achronologi-
cal) interior. For a discussion of the relationship of history and interior
house in Lecomte's text. (The first and last chapters of the book are texts
decoration, to which my remarks here are indebted, see Silverman.
that Lecomte had published elsewhere as separate articles.)
For an analysis of the compatibility of notions of the decorative and 68 For the relationship between the Neo-Impressionists and dealers, see
the natural in the 1880s and 1890s, see R. Herbert, "The Decorative and M. Ward, "The Rhetoric of Independence and Innovation," New Paznt-
the Natural in Monet's Cathedrals," in Aspects of Monet: A Symposzum on ing, 421-428. Complaints about the growing number of private exhibi-
the Artzst's Lzfe and Tzmes, ed. J. Rewald and F. Weitzenhoffer, New York, tions and praise for public shows, accessible to all, appeared in the
1984, 160-179. Socialist paper, Le Parti ouvrzer; see P. Buquet, "Le Salon," 3 May 1889.

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13 Georges Seurat, Le Crotoy, 1889.

Detroit, Institute of Art
installations, because the younger group mainly participated or four horizontal rows. Participants could submit as many
in public shows, their reassertion of the autonomy of easel works as desired and could specify which should be plac
painting possessed the power of critique. Now, walls were to higher or lower, relative to the others in their own submi
be clearly defined for the exhibition upon them. sion. The individual was the primary installation concep
A preliminary manifestation of these tendencies occurredbut rather than follow alphabetical order on the wa
at the last Impressionist exhibition, which was held in the late
organizers sought to situate each artist within a compatible
spring of 1886 in a splendidly situated, five-room apartment. group. Thus, at the show opening in August 1886 and
Each of the seventeen participants had his or her own paneleach exhibition thereafter, the Neo-Impressionists and oth
on which to mount an unlimited number of works in any avant-garde artists appeared together in the final room. Th
manner. However, as a result of what started as personal arrangement encouraged critical polemics.
quarrels and became polemical divides, the Neo-Impression-It was principally in this forum over the course of the lat
1880s that the Neo-Impressionists developed an installati
ist faction installed its work as a group in the last room of the
show. This exhibition lacked the amenities of some of the aesthetic, one that addressed the public nature of the
earlier Impressionist ventures: no hangings, draperies, plants,
exhibition site. The autonomy of the work came foremost:
or Algerian settees. "So much the better," said the militantly
the separation of the painting from its environment and i
avant-garde Belgian critic, Octave Maus: "All attention exclusive
is claim on the viewer's attention were essential to
directed toward the works."69 That insistent focus on the secure. Having endorsed the white frames that the group
works themselves, along with an allegiance to group presen- favored in 1886 and 1887, the politically and artistically
tation, subsequently emerged as the guiding principles of radical critic who was the principal defender of the Neo
Neo-Impressionist installations. Impressionists, F61ix Feneon, introduced the concern for
Many of the Neo-Impressionists adopted as their primary autonomy when he claimed that the artists' experiments in
forum not a privately sponsored venue but a decidedly public 1888 with frames of complementary color were miscon-
one: the Soci6t6 des Artistes Ind6pendants, which had been ceived: had the frame been painted to put the painting en
founded in 1884 and which held its exhibitions from 1887 valeur, he asked, or vice versa?70 This same year in the radica
paper, Le Cri du peuple, Paul Signac defended the Neo-
onward in the Pavillon de la Ville de Paris, supported with
Impressionists' rejection of the red of the walls at the
city funds. Ranging in size at this time from roughly four
hundred to seven hundred works, the shows were jammed Independents and their decision to hang the walls of thei
into four large rooms and entries might be mounted in three
space, the last room, with gray coverings. When works were
69 "Toute l'attention est dirig6e sur les oeuvres"; 0. Maus, "Les Vingtistes
70 F. F6neon, "Le N6o-impressionnisme," L'Art moderne, 15 Apr. 1888
parisiens," L'Art moderne, 27 June 1886, 201. repr. in Findon: Oeuvres (as in n. 48), I, 84.

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displayed here with white or other achromatic frames, he In the late 1880s the white frame was similarly defended by
claimed, the effect was to make the colors of the paintings critics: white guaranteed the autonomy of the work but did
more vibrant." In another piece published in the same not designate the object, as did gold, an article de luxe. Henry
newspaper in 1888, Signac mounted a diatribe against the van de Velde explained that Seurat's framing experiments
viewing conditions created by the deep-red walls and frames had been motivated in part by the desire to "repudiate the
"dripping with gold" at the galerie Durand-Ruel and the salle luxurious riff-raff of pompous gold borders.""74
Petit: it would be up to the Neo-Impressionists to establish These seem now to be minor adjustments to prevailing
the definitively normal (neutral) exhibition environment.72 It conventions: small shifts of definition and acts of resistance.
was in this year that Pissarro expressed his preference for The painters' nearly exclusive reliance on color relations and
gray frames, and the following year that Seurat, too, showed balances to justify their practice (the playful absurdity of
his paintings with gray borders at the Independents' exhibi- Signac's recommendation of a totally monochrome environ-
tion. In subsequent framing experiments Seurat and others ment) all but reduced to a minute optical calculus the issue of
established marked contrasts between frame and painting how socially defined (and correspondingly colored) spaces
(Fig. 13)---contrasts of material, tone, and shape-which might determine an exhibition aesthetic. Still, insofar as the
reinforced a key principle of the Neo-Impressionists' atti- Neo-Impressionist practices and pronouncements stood
tude toward exhibition installation at this time by moving counter to dominant Impressionist tendencies of the day-to
further away from any implied decorative connection of the tendency to interiorize painting as private decor in the
painting, frame, and wall to concentrate instead on the maison Durand-Ruel or to float objets across the aristocratic
emphatic presentation of the painting as a self-sufficient red of the salle Georges Petit-their concerns to establish a
work in an ideally neutral (and I should add, public) space. normative and public mode held open at least the possibility
With definitive pronouncements, the Neo-Impressionist that vanguard painting might occupy different social places
group and its critics posed as experts who determined norms and address broader audiences.75
for public display, norms sometimes justified as simulta-
neously aesthetic and social. In a review of 1890, for
example, Signac complained about the conditions at the realized at the Neo-Impressionist gallery on the rue Laffitte, which
opened in 1893. A reviewer of a show there in 1895 provided a rare
shows mounted by the Belgian group, Les XX. Held in a description of the site and praised the spacing of the works for not
former museum, the exhibitions were plushly installed, speeding the eye through the show: "As soon as one enters the
noted Signac, beginning with the ushers and the vestiary and Neo-Impressionist sanctuary, one is struck by its impeccable attire: dark
blue cloth applied to the wall has happily replaced the sumptuous red
continuing through to the marble bases for sculpture, the fabric, commonly used in galleries or official exhibitions. On this blue
door draperies of red velvet, the green wall hangings, and cloth, bright frames and few of them-just what's needed so that each
the palms. His conclusion about the effects combined con- work is not blocked by those around it: frames placed in a single row, at
picture-rail height" ("De's qu'on p natre dans le sanctuaire n1o-
demnation of the injurious effects of such splendor with impressionniste, l'on est frappe tout d'abord par sa tenue impeccable:
some (deliberately) hyperbolic aestheticism: de l'toffe bleue fonc6 appliqu6e au mur, a heureusement remplac6 le
'somptueux Andrinople' usite d'ordinaire dans les galeries ou exposi-
tions officielles. Sur cette etoffe bleue, des cadres clairs, peu nombreux,
[These objects are] certainly decorative but because of
'juste ce qu'il en faut' pour que chaque toile ne soit point gende par celles
their complementaries [i.e., the color reactions they pro- qui l'entourent: cadres places sur un seul rang, A hauteur de cimaise").
duce] they are destructive of the harmonies of the paint- The reviewer went on to note that most of the frames were brightly
ings, which are the victims of this luxury. The normal tinted or had been painted to harmonize with individual works; three or
more easels, he observed, were included to display drawings and small
exhibition of paintings will be that where, to the exclusion works. Tiph6reth, "Les Recentes Expositions:... N6o-impressionnistes,"
of all colored objects (catalogue, wall hanging, flowers, Le Coeur, no. 8, July 1895, 8-9.
frames, even women's hats), only the colors of the paint- 74 "Repudier le luxe canaille des pompeuses bordures dories"; H. van
ing will sing the triumph of their undisturbed harmo- de Velde, "Georges Seurat," La Wallonie (Belgium), Apr. 1891, 170.
nies.73 75 It might be argued that the type of engagement sought by the
Neo-Impressionists and Feneon was not all that different from the
private ideal for Impressionism as described by Lecomte and situated in
the domestic sphere of the mazson Durand-Ruel: the total absorption of
the viewer in the light and color and rhythm that seemed to emanate
", P. Signac, "Au Minuit," Le Crz du peuple, 29 Mar. 1888.
from or be generated by the painting, a condition of viewing that was
72 "Aux neo-impressionists sera r6serv6e la gloire d'6tablir l'exposition only to be secured by shutting out or darkening the surrounding
normale o t dans un milieu achromatique, les toiles seules viberont dans environment (drawing the heavy draperies in Durand-Ruel's petzt salon;
la splendeur de leurs contrastes." These remarks are from a letter by imposing a thick and somber frame around a thinly painted surface at
Signac that P. Alexis published in his column "Au Minuit" in Le Crz du the Independents show). As much as the friends Lecomte and F6neon
peuple, 29 May 1888. shared an emphasis on the sensual immediacy of painting, however, the
73 These objects are "certainement decoratifs mais destructeurs par leurs differences between their accounts are more important here. As de-
complkmentaires de l'harmonie des toiles victimes de ce faste. scribed by Lecomte, the extension and dissolution of Impressionist
L'exposition normale d'oeuvres peintes sera celle oui, A l'exclusion de painting into the surroundings is a spatially disorienting experience for
tout objet colorant (catalogue, tenture, fleurs, cadres, meme chapeaux the reader and viewer, who is simultaneously surrounded and distracted
de dames), seules les teintes des toile chanteront dans le triomphe de by the flickering action and ambiance created by the works. If we
leurs harmonies invioles"; P.S. [P. Signac], "Catalogue de l'exposition estimate the probable effects of Neo-Impressionist installation, the
des XX," Art et crztique, 1 Feb. 1890, 76-77. Consider also Signac's viewer seems to be distinctly separated from the image, and especially in
similar description of the "normal museum" where he thought there the case of Seurat's landscapes, the depicted scene itself is made to seem
should be a single and well-spaced row of paintings, with works by the remote and otherworldly by virtue of the contrast with the heavy and
same artist hung together, in bright rooms on panels without orna- dark frame. Seurat reportedly wanted to simulate in these experiments
ments; Diary entry of 10 Dec. 1894, in J. Rewald, ed., "Extraits du the effects of lowering the house lights at Wagner's theater at Bayreuth,
journal inedit de Paul Signac, I," Gazette des beaux-arts, per. 6, xxxvi, whereby the spotlit stage became the unique center of attention; E.
July-Sept. 1949, 110. These conditions seem to have been at least partly Verhaeren, "Georges Seurat," Soczdtd nouvelle, vII, Apr. 1891, 433. As a

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Despite obvious points of resemblance, the neutrality and nexus. In that premier age of "exhibitionality," distinctio
autonomy sought by the Neo-Impressionists are historically among walls still mattered to experiences of art, and
quite distinct from late twentieth-century modes of display. historical significance of any particular practice, includin
Our familiar experience of confronting in an exhibition a efforts to secure the autonomy of the tableau, must
wall of paintings, spaciously hung in a single row, each work established in relation to the system of differences at play
positioned to be viewed straight-on and to be approached so the time.
that it might fill the visual field of the beholder and (ideally)
consume his or her attention, has so conditioned us that we I have paid far more attention in this account to the wa
are hard pressed to imagine why, except for lack of space or that sites and installations shaped aesthetics and defined a
than to how they may have been selected to bring out
gross insensitivity, it should have ever been otherwise.76 By
the same token, the pervasiveness of this norm makes it characteristics of particular paintings or movements. It m
difficult to recapture the historical conditions in which also have seemed at times in this essay that nineteen
attempts to establish the neutrality of exhibition spaces or century paintings themselves played no role in structurin
the autonomy of easel paintings might have been as much an appropriate relation with the viewer or in provokin
statements against particularly powerful conjunctions in the critical discourse (an absurd position). My strong emph
art market, of definitions that conjoined aesthetics and has partly resulted from a desire to set right the imbalanc
private spaces, as promotions of absolute (and like our art-historical studies by examining the operations of
spaces, seemingly context-less) norms. Restoring the social context rather than those of the object. But, as the followi
dimensions to installation practices makes clear that the and final example of installation practices is meant
Neo-Impressionist insistence on autonomy in the late 1880s, suggest, such an emphasis may also be in line with t
as distinct from other moments in the history of the tableau in experience of artists during this period. The possibiliti
modernist practice, might have carried with it, or might even polemics, and politics of painting could be subdued (practi
have been generated by, a commitment to establishing a cally ignored) if transplanted into a properly hushed
place for avant-garde painting in a domain that was defined main.
and experienced as public, and to accepting the distractions

In the spring of 1887, Pissarro responded to the pressures
and diversions of such domains as conditions to be faced.
on his finances, which he attributed to his recent adoption of
(Such a commitment is underscored by Seurat's investigation
the Neo-Impressionist style, and accepted an invitation from
in his works of what Meyer Schapiro called the "aesthetic
Monet and Renoir to participate in the Exposition Internatio-
aspects of popular experience"-the spectacles or spectators
nale, an annual spring event on the calendar of the salle Petit.
that Seurat painted, Schapiro noted, on a "public as opposed
Pissarro stipulated that his works should be bordered not in
to a private, intimate scale."") The recent tendency to seebut in white. Petit apparently accepted the paintings
gold,
assertions of the autonomy of art as always and simply
(or the name of Pissarro) but refused the frames. From the
amounting to severances of art from social life-to point
the of view of the dealer and the exhibition committee,
caution was in order. The white frames that Pissarro em-
ensconcement of art within museum-like spaces for aesthetic
appreciation--can obscure or miss the complex history of at an exhibition in Nantes the previous year had been
ployed
artists' and audiences' responses to the variety of social
compared by a critic to the "sides of crude packing cases."78
spaces that constituted the nineteenth-century institutional
And although Pissarro proposed in letters the use of what
became a Neo-Impressionist favorite-a modest white frame
with narrow bands of gold at the external edges-it was
apparently feared that these would disrupt the harmonies of
model of how to create a sense of intimacy with the individual viewer and
the salle Petit.79
to concentrate his or her attention on a work to the exclusion of the
distractions of a public place, Wagner's theater no doubt appealedFor
to Pissarro, the presentation of works was one place
Seurat.
where distinctions could still be drawn in 1887. No doubt, for
The points made here and elsewhere on the relationship of viewerhim,
to it was as much the social definition of a debut at Petit's
painting are fundamentally indebted to the work of Michael Fried: see
as it
especially his Absorptzon and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age was the optical advantage of the white frame that
ofDiderot, Berkeley, 1980, and his Courbet's Realism, Chicago, 1990. provoked the crisis. The recognition that Neo-Impressionist
76 The issue of private and public continues to inform the discussion of
painting might be marketed and desired in such luxurious
modernism, but often with the assumption that the museum space, and
circumstances-quasi-aristocratic,
its various ideologies, are what must ultimately be the bottom line. In an
quasi-grand magasin
interview about installations at the Museum of Modern Art, William must have pushed him to see what it would take to be
Rubin argued that modernist art was unlike art of the past, which
rejected. The radical connotations of painting style, it seems,
belonged in the public spaces of palaces and churches; instead the
highly individualized character of modernist work made it belong ideally
in the private home, whose small spaces the museum should accordingly
attempt to emulate; L. Alloway and A. Coplans, "Talking with Rubin," 78 Anon., "Exposition des beaux-arts," L'Espirance du peuple (Nantes), 21
Artforum, xII, 1974, 51-57. Similarly attempting to situate modernism Dec. 1886. The satirical reviewer also noted the use of glass by Seurat
outside the museum, Gae Aulenti recently installed the collections of and
thePissarro at this show.
Mus6e d'Art Moderne in Paris to re-create a variety of sites such 79 as
For the controversy, see especially Pissarro's letter of 17 Mar. 1887, in
apartments, ateliers, and shop windows. For a critique of these positions
Correspondance (as in n. 49), II, 144-145. The Petit exhibition committee
in relation to whatJ.-M. Poinsot has called the ideology of the "non-lieu"
was not very dictatorial in handling the problems posed in the 1880s by
(no-place) of modernism and the museum, see "Quand l'oeuvre a lieu,"
displays that were increasingly individualized. Consider that the Salon
Parachute, XLVI, 1987, 70-77.
began in 1884 to forbid all but wood, black, or gilt frames and in 1888 to
77 M. Schapiro, "Seurat and 'La Grande Jatte,' " Columbia Revzew, xvII,
prohibit the use of glass over oils. (Regulations are printed in the Salon
Nov. 1935, 13. catalogues.)

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC
were less consequential than the establishment of value by

display.
Frequently Cited Sources
Pissarro succumbed in the end, but made sure that
Aquilino, M.J., "The Decorating Campaigns at the Salon du Champs-de-
critic-friends pushed the point in the press, explaining that
Mars and the Salon des Champs-Elys6es in the 1890s," Art Journal,
XLVIII, 1, 1989, 78-84.
the gold enframing his Neo-Impressionist paintings at the
salle Petit prohibited their proper perception. As a historical
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The New Pazntzng: Impresszonzsm
event, the episode is too minor to count. As a testimony of1874-1886, ed. C.S. Moffett, San Francisco, 1986.
why installation had come so much to matter, it is painfully Garb, T., "Revising the Revisionists: The Formation of the Union des
instructive.
Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs," ArtJournal, XLVIII, 1, 1989, 63-70.
Grand Palais, Centenazre de l'impresszonnisme, Paris, 1974.

Martha Ward received her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins Univer-
Silverman, D., Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Szecle France, Berkeley, 1989.
sity. She taught at the California Institute of Technology untzl
assuming her current position as Assistant Professor at the Univer-
sity of Chicago. Her publications include A Bibliography of Salon
Criticism in Second Empire Paris and an essay on the eighth
Impressionist exhibition in The New Painting: Impressionism
1874-1886. She is now completing a book on the critical reception
of Neo-Impressionism [Universzty ofChicago, Chzcago, Ill. 6063 7].

132.174.254.172 on Thu, 04 Mar 2021 05:33:42 UTC

Ward-Impressionist Exhibitions-1991

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Impressionist Installations and Private Exhibitions

Author(s): Martha Ward

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3045832

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1 Gustave Dore, "Palais de

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2 Anon., "Concours agricole uni-

3 Anon., Salon de 1861. Paris, Bib-

4 Anon., "Salle d'exposition du

the most concerned with the implications that the privacy of

Iv A',8 EPSTO'1DEP SUSA KOL EU M N101TQE "r Anm e

intimate yet sociable spaces of the Mirliton

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~~:;:.:.- ';I;:::~ .,r. . . . . . . . . . . . .~;

7 Anon., "Exposition des aquarel-

could place works on their upon inown panels

5 On this aspect of installation, see E. Cardon, "Exposition

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papillons. The gendered aspects of the model r

appearance of their works, the artists exploited in part the

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compare the effect of Impressionist paintings in general, but

The widespread recognition that the Impressionists had

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the early 1870s Pissarro had painted above-the-door land-

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LA NOUVELLE SALLE D'EXPOSITION DE M. GEORGES PETIT

<aler et:~ aeICI haut vethls ie uts nius er a

i" : ..... ?. " o urseantiques

ri 5t NJ. Georges ':1"le Petit (ue comaznifique

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10 Anon., "Exposition de la Soci6t6

certainly threatened. The Salon, which the State handed

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11 Anon., Galerie Goupil, L'Illus-

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for Impressionist business) not in kind but with a new tack,

ornee, ma foi!" was one critic's not atypical reaction.6'

was a field in which the United States was already thought to be

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67 It is important to observe the difference between Lecomte's domestica-

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13 Georges Seurat, Le Crotoy, 1889.

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and experienced as public, and to accepting the distractions

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were less consequential than the establishment of value by

Grand Palais, Centenazre de l'impresszonnisme, Paris, 1974.

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