Paul Albert Laurens (1870-1934) was a French painter and illustrator; he was the eldest son of distinguished painter Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921), who taught at the Institut de France, the Academy in Toulouse and the Academie Julian in Paris. Paul Albert was born in Paris, although the family soon afterwards moved away from the city, seeking safety during the Franco-Prussian war. Laurens’ younger brother, Jean-Pierre, was born five years later and was also a painter. Paul-Albert went to school in Paris, where he became friendly with André Gide; he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and then, in 1890, worked at the Académie Julian alongside his brother. The next year, the young Laurens won second prize in the prestigious Prix de Rome and began exhibiting his work at the Salon des Artistes Francais during the same year. Further awards and prizes followed and Laurens became a teacher at the École Polytechniquein 1898.
Laurens and André Gide remained friends into adulthood, and they went to live for a time in Algeria. On 18th October 1893 the pair sailed from Marseille bound for Tunis, and from there travelled on to Sousse in Tunisia. In January 1894 Laurens and Gide travelled to and settled in the Algerian city of Biskra, in the former home of the White Fathers (Missionaries of Africa). Various paintings of Algerian street scenes by Laurens obviously date to this period. Through Gide, it seems almost certain that there would have been some direct contact or familiarity between Laurens and Pierre Louys, who was also a friend of the young author. The two writers had met as teenagers in 1888 and remained close until 1895, when there was a falling out. Some resemblance of acquaintance was sustained for another year until the pair severed all communication in 1896. It’s probable that all three were, to some degree, sex tourists in Algeria; Louys got some of his inspiration for Bilitis there, although for Gide the journey led to the discovery of his homosexuality. Laurens was present when Gide’s first gay experience took place, an event that made the two men close, even though Laurens (like Louys) was straight and went on to marry in 1900.
Two Nymphs
Around 1912, with his father and one of his students, Laurens helped to decorate the walls and ceilings of the Capitole in Toulouse with allegorical scenes. During the First World War, he worked with several other artists on designing camouflage schemes for the armed forces and their work served as a model for the Allied armies (the British army, for example, used the painter Solomon J Solomon to work on tank camouflage). After the war, Laurens was promoted to Professor of Drawing at the École Polytechnique, where he continued to teach until his death in 1934. His professional standing was recognised when he was appointed member of the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1933.
A study for ‘Dido’
Laurens is known for his portraiture (for example, of Gide) and for his illustrative work. He also designed posters for theatres and, as a painter, his output appears extremely eclectic: he doesn’t seem to have had any really settled style or subject matter. Doubtless he painted what he was commissioned to produce or what would sell. Hence we have the neo-classical bathing scene, Les Baigneuses, which looks very like work by Alma Tadema, Lord Leighton and many others, a mythical Feast of Flora, and an imitation of the eighteenth century galant painting of Watteau in Le Jardin de l’amour (The Garden of Love).
Les Baigneuses
The Feast of Flora
Le Jardin de l’amour
Neo-classical nymphs and nudes are rather common, as might be anticipated if one is familiar with Laurens’ work on Pierre Louys retelling of Leda. These female figures draw on the artist’s skills as learned in the life drawing classes at the Academy, and are more or less conventional, reflecting the types developed by Bouguereau or Chabanel, but we can see as well that Laurens liked to depict pairs of nubile figures, leaving the viewer a little unsure as to whether he is seeing friends, sisters, mother and daughter or lovers.
Catching Waves
Nymphes de la mer
Amongst his other sources of income, Laurens illustrated books. He provided plates for editions of Daudet and Gautier, but also worked on editions of three books by Pierre Louys- in 1897 he produced six etchings depicting scenes from the recently published Aphrodite and, in the following year, he illustrated editions of the novel Bilitisand the short story Leda, as I have described previously.
Aphrodite, Book 3, c.4- the bacchanalia at Bacchis’ home
Aphrodite, Book 4, c.5: the burial of Chrysis by Rhodis & Myrtocleia
An illuminated capital from Leda
For me, Laurens’ work on the three books by Louys seems to rise above his other designs: there’s an energy and creativeness in them which I don’t find in some of his more generic pieces. Perhaps the subject matter was especially conducive to his imagination- as we might judge from his life study titled Adolescence (below), a figure who could as easily be a nereid, dryad or character from one of Louys’ Hellenic fantasies. Viewed from this perspective of this work, Laurens’ young nymphs may be understood as being clearly symbolic of the fertility of Nature, of perpetual renewal and regrowth. Nevertheless, aside from any mythological connotations, Lauren’s interest in this transitional state from youth to maturity was by no means unique to him: it was an aspect of life that fascinated very many artists of this period, from famous figures such as Edvard Munch (Puberty, 1894-95) and Oskar Kokoschka to relatively less well-known painters like Eleni Luksch-Makovsky (Adolescentia, 1903), Oskar Heller, Paul Hermann Wagner and Richard Muller. More particularly, a range of artists of the same period were drawn to create studies of the sleeping adolescent: examples include Marie Madeleine Rignot-Dubaux (1857-87), Oskar Heller (1870-1938), Hugh Ramsay (1877-1906), Gustave Brisgand (1867-1944) and, especially, Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967), a Russian artist who settled in France in 1924 and who, between 1923 and 1935, painted a number of portraits of her daughter, Katyusha, asleep in poses very similar to that chosen by Laurens.
Mike Cockrill has also pointed out something I had initially missed- the resemblance of Laurens’ model’s pose to that of numerous paintings by Balthus. The reclining female figure was one to which he returned throughout his career: it began with Therese Blanchard with one leg raised in Girl with Cat (1938) and evolved from there. Variations upon the theme of the slumbering girl include The Victim (1939-46), Reclining Nude (1945), The Week with Four Thursdays (1949), Nude with Cat (or Basin) (1948-50), The Room (1952-54), Large Composition with Raven and Nude with Guitar (both 1983-86) and Expectation (1995). All of these postdate Laurens’ death; although I have been unable so far to date Adolescence, Balthus may have been inspired by it- or will certainly have been responding to the general popularity of the subject within French painting of the era.
V jabloňovém sadu– In the Orchard (or Spring) 1904
Oskar Heller was a Jewish painter born in 1870 in what is now the Czech city of Olomouc- which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was known by the German form of the name, Olmutz. Heller was one of seven children, born to a prosperous grain merchant who could afford to send him to study fine art at the Berlin Academy. After his studies, Heller returned to his home town to work and remained there for the rest of his life, never marrying but playing a very active role in the social and cultural life of the city.
From January 1922, Heller presented his works at the German section of the Association Metznerbund, which developed from a former ‘Society of the Friends of Art.’ The Metznerbund was founded in March 1920 in Teplitz as a federation of German-speaking visual artists (painters, sculptors and architects) working within the newly-formed state of Czechoslovakia, in order to be able to better promote their artistic, social and socio-economic interests. It was named after the sculptor Franz Metzner (1870–1919). The concept of these regional associations was based on nationality and territorial affiliation, not on the orientation of their members, who represented a wide variety of artistic approaches and styles. Heller was active as the group’s president and vice-president, whilst the paintings he displayed at its exhibitions were always highly regarded by contemporaries.
Heller died of cancer and pneumonia in 1938. Sadly, it appears that other members of his family may have perished during the Holocaust.
The Shepherd (1909)
Heller’s favourite subjects were landscapes and still-life studies, but he also painted portraits, genre and mythical scenes and nudes. Josef Maliva, in the introduction to his Figural Paintings of the Artists of the Olomouc Region (Figurální tvorba umělců Olomouckého kraje, 2010), said of Heller’s earlier work that, “Out of the works of a wide community of German-speaking Olomouc artists who were engaged in painting, graphics or illustration work before the First World War, the work of Oskar Heller… received the widest popular response…. The colours of his early work were impressively fresh and some of his works transcended local realist conventions.” However, Maliva also recognised that Heller’s later work “fell into the conventional artistic plane,” when he was criticised for adhering to the academic style he had learned as a student. Hence, the entry on Heller in Prokop Toman’s New Dictionary of Czechoslovak Visual Artists (Novém slovníku československých výtvarných umělců) of 1936 contained this rather terse and dismissive summary of his work: “Landscape and still life painter. He paints views and still lifes.” A similar assessment was made much more recently by Alena Schulzová in Artistic Life in Olomouc in the Twenties of the Twentieth Century (Výtvarný život v Olomouci ve dvacátých letech dvacátého století, Ph D thesis, 1993) who wrote that: “Among the Olomouc painters, German critics positively evaluated Oskar Heller for his portraits and still lifes; [he was] a traditionalist of conservative inclination, whose work gained a strong local following.” Heller’s later work was marked by the pursuit of popularity, apparently for commercial reasons- and it’s fair to observe that the canvases he exhibited in the regular group exhibitions were often amongst the most expensive on display.
In the studio (c.1910)
The reason for featuring Heller is simply to contrast him to other contemporary painters whose work I’ve featured recently. Heller’s work is characterised, overall, by the simple necessity to earn a living. He seems to have given priority to remaining near his family, rather than living in a large city like Berlin, Munich, Vienna or Paris, where the artistic avant-garde were concentrated. Without a wealthy patron or progressive art market, Heller had to cater to the more conventional tastes of local purchasers. He therefore stuck to a variety of subjects which sold reliably; the staples were local scenes, portraits and paintings of vases of flowers, to which he added certain works reflective of his Academic background. V jabloňovém sadu at the head of the page is an example of this: it’s a vaguely pastoral, classical scene- it could be a shepherd and his girl, it could be Pan and a nymph. It’s cultured, but safe and familiar at the same time. The Shepherd (1909) is a little more daring; close examination reveals that the gambolling babies are actually pink and blue winged putti, definitely transporting the scene from an Arcadian pasture to somewhere mythical. I connect this picture with the Waldnymphe of Paul Hermann Wagner; they’re of broadly the same period, they mix mythical genres (fairy, nymph, cupid) and they appeal to an audience who want something for their home that suggests a familiarity with the classics, but which is also ‘cute’ and charming. There are also echoes of the work of Hans Makart, an artist who- as a leading figure of the Viennese artworld of the preceding generation- must surely have been familiar to Heller.
Girl with Dog, 1905
Lastly, Heller’s nude is, again, aware of wider stylistic developments, with its loosely impressionistic technique and its choice of subject matter (life studies such as this were extremely popular from the late nineteenth century onwards) but it’s not too challenging either. The Girl with Dog seen below is similar- these pictures may be compared with the works of Bouguereau, Emile Munier and Perrault that I’ve featured previously, giving a sense of a much wider, ‘pan-European’ popular taste.
Clara Tice, King Pausole, Princess Aline & Giglio at the Fountain of the Nymphs (Book 4, Epilogue)
I recently made a sort of pilgrimage to the British Library to look at some of their illustrated editions of the books of Pierre Louys; a confession- I’ve written a lot about these but I’ve substantially relied on images found online- other than for the 1932 Collected Works published by the Pierre Louys Society of America. I wanted to experience some of these books in my hands because, as regular readers will know, I have put considerable stress on the significance of the bibiology of Louys- the astonishing number of illustrated editions of his works that people have felt it worthwhile producing. The experience of the book as a physical, tactile object can be every bit bit as valuable as reading the text, in addition to which I wanted to see the various colour plates as they had been designed to be seen- on the page and at the size that the artist had intended. This was the visit I looked at the very rare poem Maddalou as well.
I’ll start with the most outrageous- the 1933 edition of L’Histoire du Roi Gonzalve s et les douze princesses. It was tiny- just 10 by 7.5 cms; perhaps this was to enable something potentially illicit to be smuggled more easily; certainly, the book pretends to have been published in Madrid, which was probably intended to throw the authorities off the scent. This edition (which only totalled 205 copies) is illustrated with a dozen pen and ink drawings by Auguste Brouet. The unfinished story concerns King Gonzalve’s incest with his twelve daughters and Brouet faithfully reproduced these incidents in explicit detail. That said, the pictures were very small indeed, which must rather have detracted from their impact.
Next, a couple of real treasures. I looked first at the 1898 edition of Louys’ version of Leda, generally found now as part of the collection Crepuscule des nymphes (Twilight of the Nymphs in the 1926 Collected Works). As I’ve described before, this original version is illustrated with plates by Paul-Albert Laurens. It is a truly beautiful book, to hold and to look at. It’s printed on thick verge d’Arches paper and the illuminated initial letters and tailpiece illustrations are handpainted in watercolour. In places, I could see where the paint had strayed over the printed outlines and, in one case, over the frame of one of the decorative capital letters. Only 600 copies were printed, of which this was number 183- it was gorgeous, a little jewel.
Clara Tice, King Pausole, Mirabelle & Aline at the inn (Book 2, c.8)
Nearly as lovely was the 1926 edition (for the Pierre Louys Society) of The Adventures of King Pausole, illustrated by Clara Tice. This was copy 586 of 990. The book itself, like my copy of the 1932 Collected Works, was decent but not top quality; the text was the same translation in each. The pages are moderately heavy paper, typical of middle of the range books of the time, but what lifts this edition is the plates- ten of them- by Tice. These are little jewels, printed in bright pinks and greens but, in some cases, with radiant backgrounds of silver or gold. The figures are, predominantly, Tice’s sweet female nudes; her drawing is dynamic and the designs are elegant. It was a joy to turn the pages. There’s a delightful humour in Tice’s work- from the odd phallic sceptre carried by the king to her young females, who always look slightly startled, their mouths in a cute moue.
Clara Tice, King Pausole, Queen Philis arrives in the capital (Book 4, c.5)
Collot, courtesans of the temple of Aphrodite
Next I looked at the 1946 edition of Aphrodite, illustrated by Andre Collot and published by Henri Kaeser in Lausanne. The plates were printed on heavier paper than the text; a total of one thousand copies were printed and this seemed to be reflected in the fact that it felt less special and expensive than the books I’d already inspected. From 1930, I also inspected a copy of Douze douzains de dialogues illustrated by Collot. Although it lacked any bibliographical information from the publisher, the pages were thick, heavy paper, untrimmed (and unnumbered) and there were attractive floral pattern endpapers. The text was reproduced as if it was handwriting and the plates were minimalist pen and ink sketches, but it was notable how well the artist had captured the various facial expressions of the protagonists.
All the same, the next volume, Les Chansons de Bilitis, illustrated by Mariette Lydis in 1934, was number 1550 copies out of a total print-run of 5000- yet it felt more precious than the 1946 Aphrodite. Perhaps this was because it was printed on velin chiffon paper rather than plain old velin blanc– although the marbled endpapers may have helped? Maybe it was just because I esteem Ms Lydis more highly as an artist. She was generous- thirty four images, mainly included as tailpieces to the individual songs. In the copy I saw, these were printed just in black and white, but I have seen online coloured versions which have some differences in the drawing too. As ever with Mariette Lydis, these were delicate and tender evocations of female beauty and women in love.
Lydis, Bilitis, song 76, ‘Evening by the fire’
Also illustrated by Lydis in the same Union Latine d’Editions series was a copy of Les Aventures du Roi Pausole. It was in the same format as Bilitis, with attractive marbled end papers and quality, heavier paper for the illustrations. There was a title page image of a young woman’s head, and eleven ‘tipped in’ plates on separate sheets bound into the text. These were in Lydis’ typical soft pencil drawing style; interestingly, one plate- showing Aline at theatre, catching sight of Mirabelle for the first time- was coloured; the only one on the book. As ever, Lydis produced beautifully modelled female nudes and delicate, expressive pictures of girls in love.
Mariette Lydis, Aline at the theatre, 1934
The rest of the books I examined were from the later 1940s. In 1947 Edition du Grand-Chenes produced an edition of Bilitis illustrated with nine lithographs by Andre Dignimont. One thousand were printed, on velin blanc; the paper was very white and smooth, not as rich feeling as some, but enhanced by red section headings at the top of each page and red page numbers at the foot, plus the drop capital letter at the start of each chapter was printed in red. The book included an introduction on the life and work of Louys written by his friend, Claude Farrère, and the plates reproduced delicate soft pencil drawings with colour shading, all pleasingly simple and attractive.
Dignimont, Bilitis, Book 2, song 76- ‘Soir pres du feu’ (contrast to the Lydis’ plate above)
From the previous year was a curiosity, a version of Pybracwith plates by an unknown artist. It was clearly a reasonably expensive printing, as there were three different qualities of edition: one on papier d’arches that also included a ‘suite’ of the illustrations, provided in a separate folder on unbound sheets and printed on Holland van Gelder Zonen paper (this Dutch firm handmade paper from 1685 to 1982), plus two extra original designs that the editors had decided not to include in the final volume; eight copies of the book were supplied with a single extra original design and a ‘suite’ printed on velin de Renages paper (Renages is a town near Grenoble); lastly, there was the ‘basic’ printing which ran to 42 copies. The eight illustrations were the mystery- again, they spoke of quality, in that they each had a tissue paper cover. The plates were painted, perhaps in gouache, in bright colours, the scenes depicted being very explicit but (technically) rather crude. Some of these scenes also did not reflect any of the quatrains in the collection that I can can identify. The hairstyles and clothes were certainly right for the mid-’40s, but I wonder if at least some of these images were recycled from elsewhere, as if the artist, whoever he was, just decided to paint something rude that was vaguely inspired by the text- which would be odd (then again, there are those two rejected plates). An alternative explanation may be that this selection of 140 quatrains does not draw solely upon the ‘canonical’ collection of three hundred four-line verses. Louys wrote many more than those that are typically included in the available volumes (for example, the translations by Wakefield Press or Black Scat). However, it would have been difficulty to establish this with certainty from the British Library copy as a number of pages were missing. Finally, this edition appears to be so rare I can find no examples of it online- hardly surprising given that there were only ever 51 copies.
The cover of the Serres edition, 1948
From 1948, I inspected a copy of the edition of the Manuel de civilite illustrated by Raoul Serres and ostensibly published in London. Once again, this was a ‘fine art’ edition with several levels of quality. There was just one single copy printed on luxury Vieux Japon paper with six original watercolours, six original designs by the artist and a ‘suite.’ Six were printed on handmade Auvergne paper with the watercolours and the suite; another six were on Auvergne and also included an original design as well as the suite; fifteen were on Auvergne with only the suite added and all the rest were on the velin rives paper (with a very clear watermark) but without any extras. All copies except the top quality version were initialled by the artist. Serres’ twelve watercolours are rude but very funny. The young females have little dot eyes (rather like figures by Clara Tice) and regularly sport a coloured ribbon or bow in their straw yellow hair. The older men they encounter are made to seem more ghastly and unappealing by giving them pale blue skin.
I’ve kept the (second) best for last: Suzanne Ballivet‘s 1948 edition of Roi Pausole, printed in Monte Carlo by Editions du Livre. Three levels of quality were offered: eight copies on Old Japan; forty on pur fil Johannot, a heavy paper made from 100% linen, and the remaining 925 on Grand Velin Renage (which was clearly watermarked Renage). It was a big, heavy book (29 x 23 cms) and, even though the British Library version (as always) was from the least expensive of the sets, it still felt sumptuous. It came in a hard case with card covers and a heavy paper dustjacket. There was a separate ‘suite’ of twelve of the illustrations. The book itself was illustrated by 37 lithographs incorporated into the text plus another twenty ‘tipped-in’ full page plates. Ballivet’s fine pencil illustrations were gorgeous- especially the detail of the woods and meadows in which she placed her figures, with flowers and blades of grass individually delineated. The quantity of illustrations meant there was an image every seven to ten pages, making the book feel very special indeed.
Ballivet, Mirabelle dressing
To conclude, the feel of a book- its size, the quality of the paper, the number and nature of the illustrations- all contribute to the reader’s sense that they are looking at something precious and significant. As for the plates themselves, there was unquestionably something special about seeing the luminosity of Clara Tice’s pastel colours, and the sheen of her silver and gold background, or Laurens’ jewel-like watercolours in Leda.
I wrote recently about the legacy and importance of the work of Pierre Louys: that surely can be appreciated when you handle lavish and expensive books like these and realise how much money, effort and respect publishers, artists and purchasers have been prepared to continue to put into his writings since his death a century ago. These books were unquestionably created as investments: their limited print runs and range of ‘extras’ all confirm that they were planned as highly collectible from the outset, a tribute to the high regard in which their author was held.
For more on the work of Pierre Louys, see my bibliography page. For more on my own writing on the author, see my books page with its links to my Academia page where a range of essays on Louys and his illustrators are posted.
The illustrated novels of Pierre Louys are instructive in many ways. Primarily, of course, they reveal evolving artistic responses to the author’s prose and verse, thereby not just illustrating his personal vision but demonstrating- indirectly- what book purchasers were understood to want, and what publishers and their commissioned artists believed they could offer them, within the parameters of law and public decency. In other words, the nature of illustrations can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women.
Louys’ first books appeared in the last decade of the nineteenth century, notably Les Chansons de Bilitisin 1894 and Aphrodite in 1896. The earliest illustrated editions are distinctly reflective of their era, tacitly articulating contemporary attitudes towards the female gender and the position of women in society. Librairie Borel‘s 1899 edition of Aphrodite, illustrated by Antoine Calbet, is a case in point: his depictions of Chrysis reflect the Academic tradition of life studies, derived from the classical artistic tradition since the Renaissance, and the young Galilean courtesan is depicted very much in the style of Greek statues of Aphrodite and paintings of Venus by Botticelli, Tiziano Vecelli and others thereafter.
The title pages of the Calbet edition
Likewise, when Georges Rochegrosse provided plates for an edition of Ariadne in 1904, what he supplied was a very revealing reflection of the period’s conceptions of bacchantes- frenzied women. In the plate illustrated below, they are seen wreathed in ivy and flowers and leopard skin, about to tear apart the helpless Ariadne. Elsewhere in the same volume, Greek ladies were presented as sedate, respectable, elegant, graceful and beautiful- as in the illustration that accompanied the preamble to The House on the Nile by Paul Gervais, which is seen at the head of this post.
As I have described in other posts, numerous further illustrated editions of the various books written by Louys were to follow, both before and after his decease in 1925. A constant feature of these was women in greater or lesser states of undress, plates that faithfully responded to the text but also very consciously appealed to the primarily male collectors of fine art limited editions of books. Amongst these many examples, the most interesting are probably those designed by women. Those volumes worked on by Suzanne Ballivet, Mariette Lydis and Clara Tice are notable for the quality of their work and for the fact that the latter two were lesbian and brought their own sense of eroticism to their reactions to the texts. So, for example, in her plates for the 1934 edition of Les Chansons de Bilitis, Lydis’ vision of female lovers was far more intimate and subtly sensual than most of the works produced by male contemporaries- such as J A Bresval (see below). Other women who worked on the various titles by Louys included Renee Ringel (Aphrodite, 1944), Yna Majeska (Psyche, 1928), Guily Joffrin (Psyche, 1972) and editions of Bilitis illustrated by Jeanne Mammen, Genia Minache (1950), Carola Andries (1962) and Monique Rouver (1967). The frequency with which female illustrators were employed as the century passed is noticeable, although I hesitate to identify a distinctly feminine style.
Maritte Lydis, plate for Bilitis, 1934
Post-war, new editions of Louys introduced us to new conceptions of his female characters. J. A. Bresval illustrated an edition of Bilitis in 1957, his figures being very much inspired by contemporary film stars like Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot. The women have a dark-haired fulsomeness typical of the period; the eroticism is rather cliched, such as the frontispiece to the book, which shows Bilitis with a lover: the latter kneels before her partner, embracing her waist and kissing her stomach; the standing woman cups her breasts in her hands and throws back her head in a highly stereotypical soft-porn rendering of female ecstasy.
However, by 1961 and Raymond Brenot’s watercolours for a new edition of Sanguines, we see a new aesthetic of the female body beginning to emerge: the bosoms may be just as fantastical, but there is a slenderness and, in some of the clothes, a sense of a more liberated and relaxed mood. Pierre-Laurent (Raymond) Brenot (1913-98) was a painter who was also very much in demand to design record sleeves, advertisements and fashion plates (for such couturiers as Dior, Balenciaga, Ricci and Lanvin). More tellingly, he is known as the ‘father of the French pin-up’- consider, for example, his advert for lingerie manufacturer Jessos- “Comme maman, je porte un Jessos” declares a young teen with pigtails, seated with her blouse unbuttoned to reveal her bra (“just like my mum’s”); I have discussed this style of marketing in another post. Brenot’s poster designs, for consumer goods, holiday destinations and films and theatres, regularly featured glamorous young women and, when this work declined during the later 1960s, he returned to painting, producing many young female nudes.
Brenot, Parrhasius in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ from Sanguines
What has to be observed, though, is that most of the nudity portrayed by Brenot was not justified by the actual stories in Sanguines. There are some naked slaves in The Wearer of Purple (see below), and Callisto in A New Sensation does share a bed with the narrator, but most of the rest of the stories are really quite respectable and sex-free (by the standards of Louys), being more concerned with psychology than sexuality. What we see, therefore, is evidence for the tendency to treat the works of Louys as a platform for erotic illustration. Frequently, this was a distinct element in the author’s stories, but it seems that he had acquired a reputation for sexiness which was then applied more liberally, presumably in the knowledge that the name would sell. The same criticism can, in truth, be made of Georges Rochegrosse’s depiction of the bacchae in the 1904 edition of Ariadne (see earlier): what he depicted might perhaps be implied in the text, but what Louys wrote doesn’t wholly warrant the nudity that we see:
“They wore fox skins tied over their left shoulders. Their hands waved tree branches and shook garlands of ivy. Their hair was so heavy with flowers that their necks bent backwards; the folds of their breasts streamed with sweat, the reflections on their thighs were setting suns, and their howls were speckled with drool.”
Ariadne, c.2
Brenot, Callisto in ‘A New Sensation’ from Sanguines
The men who feature in Brenot’s illustrations often seem hesitant, ill at ease or, even, embarrassed at being discovered with the women in their company- his take on the ‘satyrs’ with nymph in a scene from ‘The Wearer of Purple’ is a case in point. In Louys’ story, this is an incident involving a slave girl being assaulted by two other servants so as to create a titillating composition for the the artist Parrhasius to paint. As we can see in the reproduction below, the satyrs appear afraid of the young woman, having lost all their accustomed priapism, whilst she strikes me as indifferent to their presence and in fully control of the situation. Given Brenot’s later output, it’s almost certainly overstating things to say that these plates reflect shifts in social attitudes.
Brenot, two satyrs & a nymph in ‘The Wearer of Purple’ in Sanguines
Coming right up to date, the 1999 edition of Aphrodite demonstrates how visions of women may have developed and advanced (or not). The book was issued in three volumes, the first two being illustrated by two male comic book artists, Milo Manara and Georges Bess respectively. Both have distinctly erotic styles and the results strike me as being, in essence, highly accomplished and artistic reproductions of glamour photography and lesbian porn; for example, George Bess’ picture of the reclining woman, which faces the start of Book 2, chapter 1 of the story, seems to me to be drawn in a style very much influenced by Mucha or Georges du Feure: the streaming hair and the encroaching, twisting foliage all have the hallmarks of Art Nouveau (which is of course highly appropriate given the publication date of the original book). In the modern version, Chrysis is regularly depicted in intimate scenes alone, with her maid Djala or with the two girls Rhodis and Myrtocleia. With their tousled hair, pouting lips and pneumatic breasts, these women are very much the late twentieth century ideal. Most of the time, they are presented as being more interested in each other than in any of the male characters in the story, but my response is that there are really rather high-quality examples of fairly standard pornographic obsessions. When we look at them, it’s worth recalling Pierre Louys’ own description of his heroine, when he wrote to the painter Albert Besnard asking to paint her:
“Chrysis, as womanly as possible- tall, not skinny, a very ‘beautiful girl.’ Nothing vague or elusive in the forms. All parts of her body have their own expression, apart from their participation in the beauty of the whole. Hair golden brown, almost Venetian; very lively and eventful, not at all like a river. Of primary importance in the type of Chrysis, the mouth having all the appetites, thick and moist- but interesting […] Painted lips, nipples and nails. Depilated armpits. Twenty years old; but twenty years in Africa.”
Aphrodite, chapter 1, Milo Manara, 1999
Bess, plate for Aphrodite, 1999, Book 2, c.1, ‘The Garden of the Goddess’
A fascinating contrast to the the first two volumes of the 1999 edition is to be found in the third, illustrated by Claire Wendling (born 1967). She is a French author of comic books and her response to the text is interesting because it is so much darker and less obviously ‘sexy’ than that of her male collaborators. The plates are, literally, dark in tone and, although they tend to focus on solo female nudes, rather than lascivious eroticism is there is a mood of mental and physical suffering entirely appropriate to the final section of the book, in which Chrysis is arrested, sentenced to death, executed and buried. Her cover image evokes- for me- thoughts of Gustav Klimt in its decoration, but the twisted, crouched posture of the woman doesn’t look seductive- rather she’s supplicatory or, possibly, predatory.
At the start of this post I proposed that the book illustrations published with successive editions of the works of Pierre Louys can be a record of changes in society- in attitudes to sexuality, gender and the status and rights of women. I think that this is true, but that the evidence does not necessarily reveal huge steps forward in those areas. Far more women are involved now in commercial art, and the works of Louys provide vehicles for the expression of lesbian desire on their own terms: albeit in the service of illustrating books written by a man in which his sympathetic views of same-sex attraction compete with heterosexual masculine eroticism. Art styles have evolved, but the attitudes expressed by what’s depicted have not necessarily developed at the same pace.
In the past I’ve discussed quite a few British neo-classical painters such as Alma-Tadema and John Collier. Here I wish to draw attention to an Austrian artist in the same tradition, the hugely influential Hans Makart (1840-84). Makart was a prolific history painter, designer, and decorator in the ‘academic’ tradition and his work had considerable influence on the development of art in Austria-Hungary, Germany and beyond. The image below is a fairly standard example of late nineteenth century classicism- the school of women in togas on marble terraces, but Makart developed beyond this into something more imaginative and interesting. There was also an orientalist strand to his work, as demonstrated by several portrayals of Cleopatra and other ancient Egyptian women- see the image below; this too very typical of the period. Both ancient Rome and Pharaonic Egypt will have appealed to the artist because, as we shall see, they enabled him to indulge his taste for lavish colours, opulent ornamentation- and naked women.
Summer
Cleopatra’s Nile Hunt
Makart was born in Salzburg, the son of a failed painter, and began his artistic training at a remarkably young age at the Vienna Academy (1850-51). Classicism was the predominant style, with the emphasis on clear and precise drawing and the modelling of the human form in obedience to the principles of Greek sculpture. The young Makart, sadly, was a poor draughtsman and didn’t enjoy the continual drawing from statuary and from life- nor did his instinct for colour and flamboyance fit well with his teachers’ rather austere view of classical art. His teachers considered him to be lacking any talent or promise and he was dismissed from the Academy. Undeterred, the youth travelled to Munich for further training and thence to London, Paris and Rome. He developed a painting style that emphasised colour and drama; his work attracted attention when he began to exhibit and in 1868, when the Austrian emperor bought his version of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, his future was secured. Makart was encouraged to settle in Vienna and was provided with a studio. He’d asked for a suite of rooms but was given an abandoned foundry. This unpromising location had the advantage of size (to accommodate his vast paintings) but it was not initially appealing. Undeterred, Makart furnished and decorated it with artifacts and ornaments in the showy and lavish manner that became synonymous with his work. Those who liked to snipe at this upstart’s success labelled it a Trödelbude (junk room) or Möbel-Magazin (furniture warehouse), but it became a key destination for anyone visiting the imperial capital. The salon was regarded as such a “wonder of decorative beauty” that it became the model for the most tasteful reception rooms in private homes in Vienna. Makart thereby managed to make himself the foremost figure in cultured life in the capital and to develop the old factory into the vibrant social rendezvous for writers, the rich and the nobility- the venue for the best parties in the city.
Triumph of Ariadne, 1874
In the Austrian imperial capital Makart painted portraits but also practiced as a costume, furniture and interior designer (a practitioner of the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk I’ve mentioned before). As well as private clients, his work was commissioned by the royal family and to hang in public buildings and in 1879, doubtless with an irony he relished, he was made a professor at the Vienna Academy. Sadly, though, Makart died just five years later, aged only 44, still at the peak of his celebrity and influence.
Allegory with Sea Nymphs
Hans Makart’s work gave rise to a so-called ‘Makartstil’ (Makart-style) which shaped Viennese culture. He was known popularly as the ‘magician of colours,’ for it was the design and look of his work that was important above all. His paintings tended to be very big and his themes were typically dramatic and allegorical, their subjects being drawn from European history and mythology. As such, he was considered to be the Austrian rival to the French William-Adolphe Bouguereau– and their pictures have much in common in both subject and flamboyant style. In fact, many of Makart’s contemporaries objected to precisely what links him with Bouguereau- his excess of nudes, introduced in historical scenes where they were unjustified. The theatrical scale of his canvasses was another target for professional contempt- although this actually reflects those ‘old masters’ whom he admired, such as Rubens.
Faun & Nymph
Nymph & her Children
It is Makart’s often over-the-top mythological paintings that I prefer. The society portraits and the murals for grand buildings are generally far less inspired or interesting- but his nymphs and goddesses can have a natural energy I enjoy. The artist’s instinct for sensuality, which many contemporary artists liked to sneer at, were ideally suited to this subject matter. I first came across Makart’s work when I was writing my book on The Great God Pan- and I prefer his vision of Arcadia to Bouguereau’s. On the whole, Makart’s renditions of nymphs and satyrs are a good deal less frenetic and a lot more pastoral than the Frenchman’s.
Faun & Nymph (Pan & Flora)
The painting that really launched Makart’s career in 1868 was Modern Cupids, which was exhibited in Munich and attracted considerable attention. This triptych is painted against a striking a gold background that transports the viewer to a mythical twilight. The central, vertical, panel of the three depicts a triumphal procession of nymphs and young satyrs. The main, probably female, figure in this group has a noticeably and disturbingly mature face on a youthful body. In the two side panels, nymphs are shown dancing in flowing gowns. Some of these girls are distinctly juvenile, although in the left-hand panel two of the nymphs are passionately kissing; a third nymph beside this couple wears a looser chiton or toga which reveals to us her bare back and a glimpse of bosom and another in the background cradles a baby. All these details mean that we are left slightly unbalanced by the youthful looks, adult clothes and hair styles, pierced ears and mature behaviour. All the figures, meanwhile, are surrounded by abundant nature, so that the main idea Makart seems to be conveying is that these beings are manifestations of the natural world, vigorous, fertile and ever-renewing. The ambiguity of the nymph as either girl or woman is a traditional aspect of these minor divinities; from a distinctly British perspective, too, the old head on a young body puts me in mind of the changeling child, an elderly faery swapped for a human infant. Due to these elements, the triptych as a whole feels unsettling: nature is depicted, but it is not fully natural.
Hans Makart, Modern Cupids, 1868, left hand panel
Centaurs in the Forest
That said, Makart also captured the violent vigour of the centaurs. As I have described in my book, The Woods are Filled with Gods, they share with the satyrs an irresistible desire for nymphs, but this is combined with huge strength and speed, as well as an irascible temperament, which can make them dangerous adversaries. The Renaissance and old master influences on Makart are often apparent- the battle between the lapiths and centaurs, for example, has a fine pedigree, stretching from the Parthenon’s marble friezes through Piero di Cosimo, Jacob Jordaens and Luca Giordano to the late nineteenth century (and, in fact, beyond- for instance proto-surrealist Giorgio de Chirico in 1909).
Battle of the Centaurs & Lapiths
Nessus Abducts Deianira, c.1880
In addition to the direct impact that Makart had on art and culture in Vienna, his position at the Academy and the ubiquity of his work inevitably meant that he influenced younger painters and designers. Many of those, just as inevitably, rejected what he stood for. Gustav Klimt is a prominent example of such an artist; nevertheless, he always maintained his respect for Makart, whose influence is clear in Klimt’s early work. More generally, the decorative and sexual aspects of Austrian Art Nouveau have been traced back to ‘Makartstil.’ This impact notwithstanding, Makart’s reputation faded swiftly, so that an artist who was, in his lifetime, more famous and prestigious than many of the leading figures of French art, is now scarcely known.
For more information on Victorian era art, see details of my bookCherry Ripe on my publications page.
As I have described previously, as well as being an author, Pierre Louys (1875-1925) was something of a visual artist- and a collector and connoisseur of art. He collected classical and modern sculptures, being a friend of Rodin, and wrote on the subject in journals. He was a skilled photographer and took pictures (as well as making drawings) of nude women, a few of which survive.
The author’s knowledge of classical sculpture, as well as of the period’s literature, seems to have fed into his writing. For the ancient Greeks- and their imitators, the Romans- the perfect human body represented an ideal that symbolised the Olympian gods. These ideas, and examples of their work, came to shape Western European concepts of beauty and the highest art from the period of the ‘Renaissance’ in classical art and learning, as a result of which life drawing became a fundamental element of an artistic education in the academies. Louys reflected these principles, but he had other reasons for depicting nude sculptures as well.
An initial, small, example will give some idea of the other messages that Louys may have wished to convey through reference to figurative art. At the conclusion of Les Aventures du Roi Pausole (1900) the two young lovers meet in the Royal Park, under the statue of Felicien Rops (1833-98). It may be surprising that this Mediterranean kingdom has erected a monument to the recently deceased Belgian artist, but his highly erotic paintings and engravings of nude women seem perfectly suited to the relaxed atmosphere of the kingdom, which celebrates sex and sexuality as natural and praiseworthy. It is a small joke, or hint, by the writer, indicating his broader attitudes. Earlier in the book, too, Princess Aline has an assignation with the dancer Mirabelle beneath a statue in the royal gardens. This is a fountain known as the Mirror of the Nymphs, above which are “entwined two marble nymphs;” I suspect that this pair are intended as a symbol or reflection of the fact that the pair are about to elope and become lovers.
Georges Beuville, Aline Meets Mirabelle,1949
Sculpture and statuary play a major role in Pierre Louys’ second novel, Aphrodite(1896). Louys effectively framed this work with two sculptures. The first represents the goddess Astarte/ Aphrodite and has been modelled upon the young queen of Egypt herself, Berenice, by a handsome Greek sculptor, Demetrios. He partakes of some of the characteristics of the historical sculptor Praxiteles, whose statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos is famed and of which Louys wrote “you were born from the senses of Praxiteles” (‘Aphrodite’ in Stanzas).
“The statue of Aphrodite was… the highest realisation of the queen’s beauty; all the idealism it was possible to read into the supple lines of her body, Demetrios had evoked from the marble, and from that day onward he imagined that no other woman on earth would ever attain to the level of his dream. His statue became the object of his passion. He adored it only, and madly divorced from the flesh the supreme idea of the goddess, all the more immaterial because he had attached it to life.”
Aphrodite, Book 1, c.3
Demetrios has become the queen’s lover whilst sculpting her naked, but he now finds her inferior to the ideal beauty he has created: “The arms of the Other were more slender, her breast more finely cut, her hips narrower than those of the Real one. The latter did not possess the three furrows of the groins, thin as lines, that he had graved upon the marble.” He tires of Berenice and takes multiple other lovers, but none can compete with his own work, now set up in the shrine of the goddess at the heart of the city. Like Pygmalion, the mythical sculptor who falls in love with his own statue, Demetrios goes to the temple to commune with his creation: “O divine sister!’ he would say. ‘O flowered one! O transfigured one! You are no longer the little Asiatic woman whom I made your unworthy model. You are her immortal idea, the terrestrial soul of Astarte, the mother of her race. You shone in her blazing eyes, you burned in her sombre lips, you swooned in her soft hands, you gaped in her great breasts, you strained in entwining legs, long ago, before your birth… I have seen you, evolved you, caught you, O marvellous Cytherea! It is not to your image, it is to yourself that I have given your mirror, and yourself that I have covered with pearls, as on the day when you were born of the fiery heaven and the laughing foam of the sea, like the dew-steeped dawn, and escorted with acclamations by blue tritons to the shores of Cyprus.’”
Edouard Zier, Demetrios sculpts Chrysis
Demetrios now dreams of other sculptures he wishes to create: “Beautiful feminine forms took shape in his brain… it was distasteful to his youthful genius to copy conventions… Ah! how beauty had once more taken him for its own! how he was escaping from the clutches of love! how he was separating from the flesh the supreme idea of the goddess! In a word, how free he felt!”
It is at this point that Demetrios first encounters the courtesan Chrysis and is overwhelmed by her beauty and the desire to possess her. She resists, consenting only to succumb to him if he steals three treasures for her, one of them being the pearl necklace worn by his own sculpture of Aphrodite. Demetrios is so intoxicated with her that he forgets his wish to be free of the fleshly reality of real women and consents to do what she wants- even committing murder in the process. His theft from the statue of Aphrodite in the temple proves to be an almost erotic event:
“He saw, in a glory of moonbeams, the dazzling figure of the goddess… Demetrios lost himself in ineffable adoration. He believed in very truth that Aphrodite herself was there. He did not recognise his handiwork, for the abyss between what he had been and what he had become was profound… He fixed his eyes upon it, dreading lest the caress of his glance should cause this frail hallucination to dissolve into thin air. He advanced very softly, touched the pink heel with his finger, as if to make sure of the statue’s existence, and, incapable of resisting the powerful attraction it exercised upon him, mounted to its side, laid his hands upon the white shoulders, and gazed into its eyes.
He trembled, he grew faint, he began to laugh with joy. His hands wandered over the naked arms, pressed the hard, cold bust, descended along the legs, caressed the globe of the belly. He hugged this immortality to his breast with all his might… He kissed the bent hand, the round neck, the wave-like throat, the parted marble lips. Then he stepped back to the edge of the pedestal, and, taking the divine arms in his hands, tenderly gazed at the adorable head. The hair was dressed in the Oriental style, and veiled the forehead slightly. The half-closed eyes prolonged themselves in a smile. The lips were parted, as in the swoon of a kiss… The recollection of Chrysis passed before his memory like a vision of grossness. He enumerated all the flaws in her beauty…”
Despite his impossible conflict between desire for the unattainable love of a marble goddess and a woman who is taking advantage of him, Demetrios carries out the thefts as promised. Triumphant, Chrysis then displays herself, adorned with the stolen treasures, before the people of Alexandria. She is immediately arrested and, for her crimes, is sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. The role of Demetrios in this sacrilege is unknown and he returns to his dreams of sculpting perfect, divine beauty and decides to immortalise Chrysis. He has clay delivered to visit the prison where her body lies:
“Chrysis’ face had little by little become illumined with the expression of eternity that death dispenses to the eyelids and hair of corpses. In the bluish whiteness of the cheeks, the azure veinlets gave the immobile head the appearance of cold marble… Never, in any light, even in his dreams, had Demetrios seen such superhuman beauty and such a brilliancy of fading skin… [He undressed and positioned the body.] He removed the jewellery “in order not to mar by a single dissonance the pure and complete harmony of feminine nudity. Demetrios cast the dark lump of clay upon the table. He pressed it, kneaded it, lengthened it out into human form… The rough figure took life and precision… When night mounted from the earth and darkened the low chamber, Demetrios had finished the statue. He had it carried to his studio by four slaves. That very evening, by lamplight, he had a block of Parian marble rough-hewed, and a year after that day he was still working at the marble.”
Aphrodite, Book 5, c.3.
Georges Villa, Demetrios & Chrysis, 1938 (note how, true to the text, Villa has included the flies around the corpse)
The statutes of Aphrodite and Chrysis are the highest expressions of the sculptor’s art, but they are not the sole functions of images in the ancient world that Louys recreated. Within the precincts of the temple of the goddess in Alexandria, there reside numerous enslaved ‘holy courtesans’ who serve the worshippers. Each woman has a little idol of the goddess that she brought with her from her native country. Some venerate the goddess in symbolic form but most of them have a little statuette, typically a roughly-carved figure that emphasises the breasts and hips. The same kind of little votive effigy is found in Les Chansons de Bilitis. When Bilitis first meets her future wife on Mytilene, she has a terracotta statuette of the goddess around her neck:
“The little guardian Astarte which protects Mnasidika was modelled at Kamiros by a very clever potter. She is as large as your thumb, of fine-ground yellow clay.
Her tresses fall and circle about her narrow shoulders. Her eyes are cut quite widely and her mouth is very small. For she is the All-Beautiful.
Her right hand indicates her delta, which is peppered with tiny holes about her lower belly and along her groins. For she is the All-Lovable.
Her left hand supports her round and heavy breasts. Between her spreading hips swings a large and fertile belly. For she is the Mother-of-All.”
Bilitis, songs 50 & 51
Perhaps it was to such statuettes that Louys referred in his poemAphrodite when he addressed the “goddess in our arms so tender and so small.” These humble little figures, intended for private rather than public devotions, have a direct personal connection with their worshippers and emphasise the sexuality of the goddess far more explicitly than Demetrios’ noble statue.
The depiction of individual desire and carnality is, arguably, much more the proper function of art in Louys’ novels and poems. The short story The Wearer of Purple (L’Homme de pourpre) which is part of the collection of stories titled Sanguines, published in 1903, tells of the Athenian artist Parrhasius and how he created a famed picture of torments of Prometheus. In addition, though, we hear of him painting an image of a ‘Nymph Surprised,’ that is, being raped, by two satyrs. Parrhasius likes to dash off small pictures of sexual subjects as a form of relaxation, as he tells the narrator of the story, a sculptor called Bryaxis (a name taken by Louys from a real Greek sculptor, who worked around 350BCE):
“I am fond of these pictures dealing with intense emotion and I never represent man’s desire except at the moment of its paroxysm and of its fulfilment. Socrates… wished to see me paint the emotion of sexual love in looks and thoughts. It was an absurd criticism. Painting is design and colour; it only speaks the language of gesture, and the most expressive gesture is that from which its triumph proceeds.”
L’Homme de pourpre, Part 4
In accordance with this, Parrhasius has painted Achilles at the moment of slaying a foe and Prometheus being tortured by an eagle eating his liver. Noble as these works may have been, one suspects that they lacked the impact of the two others we are told about. Besides the ‘Nymph Surprised,’ we hear an account of how the painter Klesides took revenge on Queen Stratonice of Ephesus by means of pictures. She had treated him with dismissive contempt when posing for a portrait she had commissioned from him, so he painted two pictures of her in compromising poses with a man, whom he modelled upon a coarse sailor he had met on the dockside. These were then displayed for all to see on the walls of the palace and huge crowds assembled to enjoy them; the queen had to hide her vengeful rage and pretend to admire the images as well.
It is worth also adding that, in this story, Louys indicates some knowledge of Greek painting. In his Lectures Antiques he had translated the poems of Nossis, in which there are several references to portraiture. Moreover, the author seems to have been aware of developments in ancient artistic techniques. Parrhasius is described, in some detail, creating his pictures with hot wax. He uses a method allegedly employed by the renowned Polygnotus which has recently come back into fashion:
“His little wax boxes were placed in a box already stained with use. He carefully dipped the fine wire heated in the stove, removed a droplet of coloured wax, placed it where he wished and mixed it with the others with a certainty of hand which sometimes made me smile with enthusiasm. [As he proceeds, Parrhasius explains how he pigments the wax.]
Towards the end of the day he stood up, shouting to the apprentices: ‘Heat the plate!’ Turning towards me, he said: ‘It’s finished.’
They brought him the red plate which was throwing off sparks. He grabbed it with long pliers and moved it very slowly in front of the horizontal board, where the wax rose to the surface, fixing its multicoloured soul to the dry wood.”
L’Homme de pourpre, Part 4.
Polygnotus was an artist of the mid-fifth century BCE who is known for having painted various frescoed murals; it is probably his fame that made Louys associate him with the technique of ‘encaustic’ painting. However, it was another Greek artist, Pausias, from the mid-fourth century, who is said to have originated the process; Louys seems to have transferred this to the better known Parrhasius, who flourished before 400BCE. He was famous for his skill and the realism of his works and, after his death, some of his drawings on boards and parchment were preserved as models for other artists. The anecdote about relaxing over obscene paintings was told of Parrhasius, as was a story (relayed by Seneca) that he tortured a slave to death to create an authentic image of Prometheus. Nowadays, we are most familiar with encaustic paintings from the portraits created for mummies in Hellenistic Egypt during the first two centuries CE (see top of page) and, later, from Orthodox Greek icons.
Even more expressly sexual than the figures of Aphrodite is the sculpture created in Louys’ utopian country, L’Île aux dames. On ‘Lesbian Island,’ in the middle of the capital city, erotic statues of women making love are displayed on the Bridge of Sappho that leads onto the island. There, the Museum of Lesbos, naturally, displays erotic statutes and paintings for the delectation of its purely lesbian visitors.
Lastly, the Handbook of Good Manners for Young Girls demonstrates unequivocally how fine art may connect with carnal desires. Here is the advice for polite young ladies visiting a museum:
“Do not climb on the bases of ancient statues to use their virile organs. You must not touch the objects on display; neither with your hands, nor with your bum.
Do not pencil black curls on the pubis of naked Venuses. If the artist represented the goddess without hair, it is because Venus shaved her mound.
Don’t ask the room attendant why ‘The Hermaphrodite’ has balls as well as breasts. This question is not within his competence.”
At the Museum
The final reference is to the famous sculpture now known as the Hermaphrodite endormi, which was discovered in the Baths of Diocletian in Rome in 1618. In 1620 Bernini carved the mattress upon which the figure can now be seen reclining in the Louvre Museum. The Handbook’s second warning has to be understood as a prohibition against defacing museum exhibits; in fact, the Greek habit was to paint their statues to make them more lifelike, a fact of which Louys was well aware and had alluded to it in his description of the statute of Aphrodite as being “lightly tinted like a real woman.”
In summary, art in the works of Pierre Louys exists to evoke the human passions, primarily those of lust and desire. Partly this is because the goddess Aphrodite/ Astarte/ Venus/ Ishtar was worshipped through carnal love; partly because sex and sexuality were regarded as such fundamental aspects of humanity by Louys.
A full, annotated version of this essay can be downloaded from my Academiapage.
The composer and First World War poet Ivor Gurney wrote a little lament for Pan as the god of nature that reflects a common sense, at the close of the Great War, that much of the hope and revived interest in the Greek deity that had suffused British culture in late Victorian and Edwardian times had dissipated. In addition, the poem is as likely to reflect Gurney’s own sense of despair and professional frustration and failure in the early 1920s, as the depression that was to hospitalise him for the remainder of his life descended.
“What was dear to Pan is dear to him no more,
He answers prayers never- nor ever appears-
And so sore a loss is this to his lovers
They play never, the sweet reed sounds no more
In the oak coppice- or the Severn poplar shade
Silver hearted… softly wailing at eve,
The silent country folk no more bring gifts
They delighted in- nor the new pipe greenly made.”
Gurney, What was dear to Pan
I think there is an echo too of a common conceit in Gurney’s verse, that the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire, once the site of many Roman villas, still bore traces of those ancient Roman settlers- although plainly in this case the incursions of the modern world were driving them away. Pan himself is affirmed as a beloved deity of farming folk, associated with music and green vegetation. The mood, though, is wistful, evocative of abandonment and loss.
Not all poets were convinced that Christianity and mechanical farming, transport (and warfare) had banished the Great God. The poet Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) wrote the poem Old and New to celebrate that very displacement of the old deities by Jesus, but (in my opinion anyway) he made the older ways sound like a lot more fun…
“Come, Hesper, and ye Gods of mighty waters,
Ye nymphs and Dryades,
Come, all the choir of white Pierian daughters,
And girls of lakes and seas,
Evoe! and Evoe lo! crying,
Fill all the earth and air ; Evoe Io!
And the hanging woods, replying,
Shall shout the echo there!
All day in breathless swoon or heavy slumber.
We lay among the flowers.
But now the stars break forth in countless number
To watch the dewy hours ;
And now lacchus, beautiful and glowing,
Adown the hill-side comes,
With tabrets shaken high, and trumpets blowing,
And resonance of drums.
The leopard-skin is round his smooth white shoulders,
The vine-branch round his hair ;
The eyes that rouse delight in maid-beholders,
Are glittering, glowworm-fair ;
The king of all the provinces of pleasure,
Lord of a wide domain,
He comes and brings delight that knows no measure,
A full Saturnian reign.
O take me, Maenads, to your foxskin-chorus.
Pink-lipped like volute-shells,
For I must follow where your chant sonorous
Roars down the forest-dells ;
The sacred frenzy rends my throat and bosom,
I shout, and whirl where He,
Our vine-god, tosses like some pale blood-blossom,
Borne on a windy sea.
Around the car, with streaming hair and frantic,
The Maenads and wild gods.
And shaggy fauns and wood-girls corybantic
Toss high the ivy-rods ;
Brown limbs with white limbs hotly intertwining
Whirl in a maddening dance.
Till, when at last Orion is declining,
We slip into a trance.
The satyr’s heart is faintly, faintly beating ;
The white-lipped nymph is mute ;
lacchus up the western slope is fleeting,
Uncheered by horn or lute ;
Hushed, hushed are all the shouting and the singing,
The rapture, the delight,
For out into the cold grey air upspringing,
The morning-star shines bright.”
Gosse, Old & New
Gosse’s verse is crammed with classical references. Hesper is Hesperus, the planet Venus in the evening and son of the dawn goddess Eos (or Aurora). The Pierides were the nine royal sisters who competed with the Muses song contest and, when they were defeated, were turned into birds. Iacchus is another name for Dionysos, and those ecstatic, frenzied sea nymphs, dryads and bacchae we’ve also met before. Evoe Io is the traditional cry of the maenads and bacchantes, an exclamation of joy addressed to and naming the divinities Dionysos and Isis. It was also used in poetry by Aleister Crowley, who more seriously desired to invoke Bacchus.
Gosse wanted to argue that the Dionysian revels had been suppressed and displaced (driven off by the ‘Morning Star,’ by whom he meant Jesus- whom he addressed in the second part of this poem, entitled A.D.). However, as I have demonstrated before, other poets did not want to abandon those dreams of freedom and unrestrained expression, so that- even after several millennia- we’re not yet fully prepared to accept that the Great God Pan and his entourage are truly dead.
In his short story, An Ascent of the Venusberg, written in 1903, the author Pierre Louys explored the possibility of encountering the goddess of love in the contemporary world.
The Venusberg, as I have previously described, is a mountain in Germany near Eisenach in Thuringia, now called the Hörselberg. The peak is the focus of folklore and myth, being immortalised in the story of Tannhäuser by Wagner, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, Swinburne and- even- Aleister Crowley.
In Louys’ version of the story, a Frenchman is visiting Eisenach after attending performances of Wagner at Bayreuth. From his hotel room, he can see the Venusberg, which- due to his “sinful disposition”- looks to him “exactly like the swelling breast of a woman… It quivered; positively seemed to be alive at certain hours of the evening… [giving the impression] that Thuringia, like a goddess reclining… was letting the blood rise, in her passion, to the summit of her bare breast.”
He decides to climb the mountain one day. There is a small hostelry at the summit, where he has a meal; one of the two sisters running the place has an “obliging disposition” and makes it clear that sex is available too on top of the peak. The tourist settles instead for directions to the Venushöhle, the Grotto of Venus. It is only a short walk away, but she warns him of the madman to be found there.
The grotto of the goddess looks exactly as one might anticipate: “it was small, in the form of a vertical ellipse crowned with slender brown brambles.” The madman is also present, warning the visitor not to enter because “Venus dwells there herself in the flesh with her millions of nymphs about her.” This scarcely discourages the Frenchman, so the madman begins to rant. It seems he was once a godly and pure young man; even though he married, he renounced the temptations of the world and he and his wife lived together in a “state of grace” (or so they thought). He has learned, though, that this attempt at austere self-denial was utterly wrongheaded: it was “a lie, each day, to the law of life.” Now it is too late- he is old and still a virgin: “Woe to all virgins! For the love they have rejected all their short lives will justly torture them in the infinity of the wrath to come!”
The man sits on the mountain peak daily to commune with Aphrodite, because every evening “the Goddess sings a sweet song… she calls to me from afar, she draws me to her.” Eventually, he will perish by falling down into the Venushöhle and thence into the furnace in which the chaste are punished.
The pair wait and then “a breath of perfumes bore to our ears the languishing echo of a Voice…”- and the story ends abruptly. We can only assume that, as this is told as a reminiscence, this “sinful” young man met with no punishment from the goddess.
There are many aspects of this little account typical of Louys. He treats the ancient pagan deities as still alive and actively present in the modern world. Secondly, sex and sexuality are to the fore- though for very obvious reasons, given the subject matter. Thirdly, the author took pleasure (as he often did) in inverting and reversing the tenets of Christianity. The Venusberg is the gateway to hell, but punishment here is for the “niggards of the flesh” those who have lived “solitary lives in revolt against the great divine law.” Hell is a place full of “thousands of millions of naked women dancing,” placed there to torment those who denied themselves the pleasures of their bodies during their lives. In the philosophy of Venus (and Louys) carnal delight is good and virtuous and abstinence is unnatural. The writer had said the same six years previously in Aphrodite, when he described how “virginity displeases [the goddess].” Here he expanded on the idea, stating more clearly the principle that underlay so much of his work.
See my Louys bibliography and details of my various publications on the poet, as well as details of my book on the goddess herself.
Between 1893 and 1898, French writer Pierre Louys produced a series of retellings of classical myths- the stories of Leda, Ariadne and Byblis– which were accompanied by The House Upon the Nile, a story set in Hellenic Egypt. These were later grouped together, along with Louys’ version of the story of Danae, as Le Crepuscule des nymphes (The Twilight of the Nymphs). Several illustrated versions of this were published after Louys death in 1925. This post reviews the artworks generated by this pleasant, if minor, collection of stories.
Laurens, Leda
The first illustrated volume in the series was Leda, issued in 1898 with plates provided by Paul Albert Laurens. I have mentioned edition this in other posts. Laurens (1870-1934) was born in Paris, the son of the distinguished painter and sculptor Jean-Paul Laurens. He undertook his artistic training at the Académie Julian and during his artistic career he won a variety of medals and prizes for his work. Laurens undertook a wide variety of commissions, including street scenes, still lifes, figures, murals and book illustration. During the First World War he helped to devise camouflage schemes and from 1898 was teacher and later professor of drawing at the École Polytechnique in Paris. His plates for Ledaare very attractive little vignettes, faithfully portraying the rather alien blueness of the nymph and contrasting her slender nudity with the coarseness of the river gods.
Wagrez, Byblis
The same year as Leda, an edition of Byblis, illustrated by Jacques-Clément Wagrez (1850-1908), appeared. This little known story concerns the nymph Byblis and her brother Caunos, the twin children of the river nymph Cyanis (the naiad Kyane, who is evidently just as blue as Leda). Being continually alone together, the siblings fall in love with each other and their mother determines to terminate their incestuous romance. She therefore has the boy carried off by a centauress. Byblis is heart-broken to lose her twin, sole companion and lover. She sets out in search of him but becomes hopelessly lost. In despair, she breaks down in tears of grief and is turned into a fountain.
Like Laurens, Wagrez was the son of a painter and studied École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before travelling in Italy. He became a painter (especially in watercolours) as well as a decorative arts designer (including tapestries). His compositions were often inspired by the artists of Renaissance Florence and Venice, as well as by classical mythology. In addition to the edition of Byblis, he also illustrated editions of Shakespeare’s plays, Balzac, Wagner and Boccaccio’s Decameron. His illustrations for Louys are conventional and not very exciting (sorry Jacques-Clément).
This last edition of Byblis was far surpassed in 1901 by Henri Caruchet’s art nouveau design, a truly stunning little book, on nearly every page of which the text is framed by beautiful studies of entwined flowers, foliage and nymphs.
Henri Émile Caruchet (1873-1948) was a French painter in oils and watercolours, illustrator and poet. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1892, attending classes with Gustave Moreau amongst others. Subsequently, Caruchet worked in many fields: he was a book illustrator, working on titles by Theophile Gautier and Anatole France, but he was also a press caricaturist, painter, and ceramics designer, in addition to which he was the author of poetry, reviews, stories and magazine articles. The Benezit Dictionary of Artists describes his “extravagantly floral style, typical of Art Nouveau.” The results are strange and beautiful.
Caruchet’s erotic illustrations have been described as symbolist: in 1904 he supplied twenty gorgeous art nouveau designs for an edition of Jean de Villiot’s Parisienne et Peux-Rouges, published by Charles Carrington; it was one in that company’s series La Flagellation à Travers le Monde (Flagellation Across the World). The book was raised above its genre by the plates, which are stunning little works of art, both bizarre and beautiful: amongst them are a naked woman being molested by an octopus against a background of stars and a woman who is wearing only stockings and holds a small puppet of a man dressed in a suit and top hat, whilst apparently floating before a giant cobweb in which are trapped numerous babies. These are uniquely disturbing and yet lovely images.
Abandoning chronology for a moment, in 1929 a rather similar edition of Crepuscule appeared, designed by Sylvain Sauvage. It bore the title Contes Antiques (Ancient Tales) and was decorated with thirty-two colour engravings, as well as ornamental initials and decorative head and tail-pieces in colour. This stunning book is another example of the idea of the illustrated book as gesamtkunstwerk to which I have previously referred.
In 1904, an edition of Ariadne or The Way of Eternal Peace, combined with The House on the Nile or The Appearances of Virtue, was published. The two stories were illustrated by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) and Paul Jean Gervais (1859-1936) respectively. Rochegrosse was the stepson of the author Theodore de Banville and was brought up in a very cultured environment, beginning his artistic education aged just twelve. He painted orientalist scenes in Algeria as well as depictions of Egyptian and Classical culture; later he portrayed scenes from the works of Wagner. Rochegrosse was much in demand for book illustration, working on Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Petronius’ Satyricon, Flaubert’s Salammbo and Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, amongst others. He was extremely popular in his day, but is now largely forgotten. Gervais had studied under Gerome in Paris and became a painter of murals, allegorical and historical paintings and book plates (such as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata). Both artists’ illustrations of Louys are very conventional ‘academic’ and neo-classical images; perhaps the most notable thing about them is how Gervais has departed so much from his text: two young African girls in the House upon the Nile have become two white women under his brush, thereby losing much of the point of the story (contrast this plate to those by Clara Tice and others already reproduced).
Rochegrosse, Ariadne
Then, in the year of the author’s death, 1925, the first consolidated edition of Twilight of the Nymphs was issued, with woodcuts designed by Jean Saint-Paul. Born in Paris in 1897, he was a designer of tapestries, painter and illustrator; he is probably best known for this work on Louys. The images are strong and bold and seem to have been quite influential: an edition of the Collected Works of Louys issued in the USA in 1932, with translations by Mitchell S. Buck, included woodcuts by Harry G. Spanner. His version of Byblis bears marked similarities to Saint-Paul’s.
Byblis by Jean Saint-Paul
Byblis by Harry Spanner, 1932
As with many of Louys’ books, a small flurry of new printings then followed. The major Swiss artist and writer Rodolphe-Theophile Bosshard (1889-1960) worked on another edition in 1926. He had studied at the Geneva School of Fine Arts, before travelling to Paris in 1910 where Expressionism and Cubism had a great impact on his style. After the First World War, Bosshard returned to live in Paris for four years, getting to know Marc Chagall and André Derain amongst other writers and artist. On his return to Switzerland, the artist designed murals and painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes and mystical/ religious scenes, but it was female nudes dominated his output. He depicted their bared bodies in increasingly cubist and abstract manner. Bosshard also undertook book illustrations, leading to his rather austere set of ten lithographs for Le Crepuscule des nymphes the year after Louys died. They have a cool, sculptural quality to them that is in some ways appropriate to these Greek myths.
Bosshard
Clara Tice, Danae
In 1927, the Pierre Louys Society in the USA issued a translation of Le Crepuscule, with gorgeous and lavish illustrations by Clara Tice. The pastel colours, highlighted with gold and combined with Tice’s delicate, naïve style, make for a memorable and highly appealing edition of the book.
Another English translation was published in 1928 (and reissued in 1932) by the Fortune Press in London (it was intended, initially, as a small press specialising in gay erotica). Perhaps this is why the young Cecil Beaton was commissioned to provide the illustrations, even though he was almost unknown at that stage. despite his lack of formal qualifications, there’s no denying the unique flare of his five plates.
In 1940, the designer Louis Icart was commissioned to work on a couple of Louys’ works, including Leda. I have featured some plates from this edition in my post on the career of Icart.
Cecil Beaton, 1928
Lastly, in 1946, the established post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) provided lithographs for a further edition of Le Crepuscule des nymphes. He was a pioneer of Post-Impressionism in his youth, forming the Nabis group along with Gauguin, but over his long career Bonnard constantly stayed alert to and adapted new artistic styles. Nudes were a regular feature of his painting, but he was always interested in the integration of art into popular media, such as posters, magazine covers and book illustrations, as well as into ordinary household objects and decoration, including murals, painted screens, textiles, tapestries, furniture, glassware and ceramics. It was in this context that such a well-known and distinguished figure was commissioned to work on another edition of Louys’ book. His 24 lithographs give quite a detailed account of the events in the text.
Bonnard, Byblis, 1946
There have been several other editions of Louys’ short stories, many unillustrated and in a variety of combinations, often including stories from other collections that the author wrote. An example is the English language Collected Tales, of 1930, which featured illustrations from John Austen.
It seems clear from some of the writings of Pierre Louys that he was aware of ancient practices of hospitality that involved offering a guest a female of the household as a companion for the night. This mark of respect is not the droit de seigneur or jus primae noctis of feudal lordship or certain Middle Eastern societies, but it comes from similar deep roots and is founded in identical systems in which honour, sacrifice and a degree of subservience were fundamental to interpersonal relations. We might borrow the phraseology and term it the jus uni noctis, the right of one night, or- perhaps even better, jus hospitis noctis– the right of a guest for a night.
The clearest manifestation of this is in Louys story The House Upon the Nile, which forms part of the Twilight of the Nymphs (Crepuscule des nymphes) collection of short stories. The House is the odd one out as it is non-mythical, not being concerned with retelling various classical stories of gods and minor divinities like Leda, Byblis or Ariadne. Rather, The House Upon the Nile might be seen as related to the same interests from which the novel Aphrodite– which is set in Ptolemaic Egypt in Alexandria, near the mouth of the Nile- derived. They seem to be of the same time period.
In The House Upon the Nile, a traveller on foot, Bion, comes upon mud hut late one day. There are two girls outside; one is naked because she is still a child, the other is a little older and therefore wears dress. Their father asks the weary Bion to stay overnight and, after they have eaten, he says, “I know the duties of hospitality. Here are my two daughters. The youngest has not yet known a man, but she is of an age to come to you. Go, and take your pleasure in her.”
Bion respects this custom and venerates it “as a tradition of singular virtue. The gods often visited the earth, dressed as travellers, soldiers or shepherds, and who could distinguish a mortal from an Olympian who did not wish to reveal himself? Bion was, perhaps, Hermes. He knew that a refusal on his part would be taken as an insult; thus, he was neither surprised nor troubled when the elder girl bent toward him and uncovered her young breasts so that he might kiss them.”
The younger daughter is upset by her sister’s intervention and runs off into the night, dismaying her father by carrying “away forever the honour of his house.” Bion spends the night with the older sister and leaves early in the morning. Sometime later, he encounters the younger girl, who has been waiting along his route to waylay him. She wants to go with the traveller, thinking herself in love. He tells her to go home to her father, but cannot get her to see sense, nor can he shake her off. The man therefore gets her to carry his burden for the day and, that evening, cynically sells her like a slave.
The story ends tragically, but the duties of ancient hospitality are laid out very clearly. An examination of other works by Louys indicate that he felt that very similar responsibilities still fell upon those offering accommodation or receiving guests, even in the modern world.
Woodcut for the House on the Nile for a 1926 edition, by Jean Saint-Paul
This duty appears most clearly in commercial situations. So, for example, in one verse in Pybracthe poet appears to complain about those occasions when, on being unable to supply overnight ‘company’ for a guest, a hotel manageress will present herself at his room door and offer herself instead. Similar solicitude on the part of hotel staff for guest welfare may be detected in the Handbook for Young Girls, which advises the young lady traveller not to ask the hotel manager if the maid offers other entertainment to single female guests, but to approach directly herself. So too in the Poésies Érotiques, in which one poem depicts a man enquiring from the inn keeper’s daughter the prices for a night’s stay (plus additional services). She seemingly expects this request and promptly offers a scale of charges.
We might even construe the sexual activity in Trois filles de leur mère as an extreme form of hospitality towards a new neighbour. In the story, a young student moves into his new flat and, within the space of barely twelve hours, has been to bed with the mother and all three of her daughters- a gesture of welcome which is then hospitably continued over the ensuing days.
Arguably, in Les Aventures du Roi Pausole (1900), we see the king himself performing a similarly generous act in reverse when he is the guest of Monsieur Lebirbe. When his eldest daughter Galatea absconds overnight, whilst the monarch is sleeping in the house, Pausole resolves to try to comfort his host and hostess by making their younger daughter, Philis, his new queen. As is so often the case with Pierre Louys, the ideas he wished to convey were couched in terms of sex and sexuality, but his idea of a hospitable welcome seems nonetheless clear.
Now, a reasonable criticism of Louys might well be that his concept of hospitality was a highly patriarchal one: the father in the House on the Nile disposes of his daughters like chattels. Of course, the author is portraying the customs of a patriarchal ancient society, albeit one he has imagined and was under no obligation to resurrect. The traveller, Bion, also behaves as if the younger daughter is a piece of property he no longer requires when he wearies of her presence. Yet, the daughters both seem to be willing to comply, presumably because they understand that it is a religious as well as a social duty: I think that Louys liked the idea that the ancient deities were constantly present in the world, and perfectly likely to turn up at your door at any moment. As for the other cases I’ve noted, hospitality is offered primarily because it is friendly, pleasing and, in addition, commercially beneficial.
The House on the Nile is a short story in one of the lesser works of the author and poet Pierre Louys. It might well not be appropriate to construct any great theory about the writer’s thinking or philosophy upon it. Nevertheless, I think it gives us some further indications as to his musings about alternative social structures and customs, a microcosm of the utopias that form such a major element in his fiction. Whether located in the distant past or on some distant island, Louys continually speculated about different forms of community and different rules for conduct. In his writing, he intertwined all kinds of ideas and influences, testing theories and playing with citations and styles from other authors. This wasn’t necessarily worked up into any sort of manifesto; instead, it was an evolving game.
If nothing else, Twilight of the Nymphs and The House Upon the Nile have provided a platform for publishers and artists to create beautiful editions of one of Louys’ most charming books. I’ve discussed the interaction of word and imagery elsewhere, but with at least ten different books by Louys being the subject of multiple editions over the last century and a quarter, readers may appreciate how they have come to constitute a major body of illustrative art, showcases for the work of many dozens of artists. The printed works of Pierre Louys therefore represent a substantial resource for art historians and a little explored gallery of genres and individual styles- as I’ve indicated in my posts on Bilitisand Aphrodite.
For more details of the writings of Pierre Louys, see my bibliography, and for more of my essays on his work, see my separate books page. A full, annotated version of this essay can be downloaded from my Academiapage.
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