In my recent post on the work of painter and illustrator Paul Albert Laurens, I mentioned his painting The Garden of Eros, which is imitative of the eighteenth century galante style of art made popular and fashionable by Watteau, Fragonard, Greuze, Boucher and others.
Having just completed my book on this period, Voyage to the Isle of Venus, and being in the process of completing the editing and expansion of my book on early twentieth century art, I decided to borrow and adapt the title of the painting as the title of the book (which, in any case, features a discussion of the work of Laurens). Now published, In the Garden of Eros is my updated survey of the interactions and interconnections between book illustration and fine art during the first half of the last century. It focusses upon the art of Franz von Bayros, the many illustrators of the numerous editions of works by Pierre Louys and key figures in early twentieth century art, such as the German expressionist group Die Brucke, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Balthus, Egon Schiele, Hans Bellmer, surrealists Dorothea Tanning and Leonor Fini, Marc Gertler and many, many others. In its second part, the text examines the persistent ‘orientalist’ trend in twentieth century painting and literature, identifying how one influenced the other and how many illustrators were also orientalist painters.
The book clearly ties in with my many posts on the illustrated editions of Pierre Louys’ novels and poetry collections; in a very real sense, this blog provides the illustrations to the text of the new book. In addition it is complemented by my numerous essays about the writing of Louys that may be found on my Academia page. See, as well, my Louys bibliography and my books page for additional information.
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.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic-looking paintings, he often used mythological themes, giving modern interpretations to classical subjects, with an notable emphasis on the female human body. As one of the principal Salon painters of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde so that, by the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art had fallen out of favour with the public, although he has been rediscovered since the 1980s.
The Birth of Venus (1879)
Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle to a family of wine and olive oil merchants. In 1839, he was sent to study for the priesthood at a Catholic college in Pons, where he learned to draw and paint from Louis Sage, who had studied under Ingres. Bouguereau then reluctantly left his studies to return to live with his family in Bordeaux, where he met a local artist, Charles Marionneau, and commenced formal training at the Municipal School of Drawing and Painting in November 1841. He was the best pupil in his class and decided to become an artist in Paris. To fund the move, he sold portraits, finishing 33 in three months- early evidence of his formidable commitment and work rate.
Before the Bath (1900)
Bouguereau became a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1846. To supplement his formal training in drawing, he attended anatomical dissections and studied historical costumes and archaeology. He was admitted to the studio of François-Édouard Picot, where he studied painting in the academic style, an approach that placed the highest status on historical and mythological subjects. Absorbing these attitudes, Bouguereau determined to win the Prix de Rome, which would gain him a three-year residence in Rome, where, in addition taking formal lessons, he could study Renaissance art at first hand, as well as Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities.
Sewing (1898)
After three attempts, the young student won the Prix in 1850 and was able to move to Rome in January the following year. Over the next three years, Bouguereau explored the city and country, making sketches and watercolours as he went. He also studied classical literature, which influenced his subject choices for the rest of his career. He particularly revered Greek sculpture, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian. He also admired Rubens and Delacroix. An early reviewer observed how the artist had absorbed the lessons of the Italian masters: “Bouguereau has a natural instinct and knowledge of contour. The rhythms of the human body preoccupy him, and in recalling the happy results which, in this genre, the ancients and the artists of the sixteenth century arrived at, one can only congratulate [him] in attempting to follow in their footsteps … Raphael was inspired by the ancients … and no one accused him of not being original.” Raphael was a favourite of Bouguereau and he took this review as a high compliment. One of the requirements of the Prix de Rome was to complete a copy of Raphael’s The Triumph of Galatea. In many of his own works, he was to follow the same classical approach to composition, form, and subject matter whilst most of his religious paintings, crucifixions and Madonnas, are high sheen imitations of Renaissance originals.
The Little Marauder (1900)
Bouguereau’s career flourished after his trip to Rome. He received contracts to paint murals and other decorations in expensive homes, was commissioned to paint Emperor Napoleon III in 1856 and undertook decorations for the chapel of the newly constructed Saint-Clotilde in Paris. He was awarded the Legion of Honour in July 1859- the first of several honours. After this recognition, Bouguereau continued to receive prestigious commissions for portraits, decorations to private homes, public buildings, churches and from European royalty and his work was held in high regard (twelve of his paintings featured in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 for example).
The Broken Pitcher (1891)
Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist in both technique, style and content. His genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a focus on nude females. The idealised world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, nymphs, bathers, shepherdesses, and Madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era. He also used some of the religious and erotic symbolism of the ‘old masters,’ such as Greuze‘s symbol of the “broken pitcher” connoting lost innocence (see above).
Au bord de la mere
I first came across Bouguereau through his extravagant paintings of cupids, nymphs and satyrs, fantasies that are full of swarms of luscious flesh, but I then discovered that he also worked on more personal paintings, with realistic and rustic themes. There is a huge contrast between the vast, classical canvases with their writhing naked nymphs, and his more intimate studies of peasant girls working or at play in the countryside. These are clearly firmly positioned within the ‘Romantic’ child genre of image, symbolising the prevailing idea of childhood innocence to such an extent that the realist elements in the pictures- the need for children from poor families to labour alongside their parents- are very much diluted or glossed over (on the formulation and meanings of the ‘Romantic’ view of childhood, see Anne Higonnet, Pictures of Innocence, 1998). The result of Bouguereau’s approach was that representations of leisure time (especially swimming) superseded the harsh realities of essential economic activity. The same activities are repeated endlessly, too: sewing, fetching water, even -in La tricoteuse (The Knitter) of 1884, working with thread at the same time as being by a well…
Girl by Stream (1888)
Bouguereau’s country maids can look winsome whatever they’re doing: whether that’s stealing fruit from neighbours’ orchards or looking guilty having been caught in the act (see The Marauder earlier, Petites Maraudeuses, The Mischievous One or En penitence). Their poverty is always picturesque, so that girls eating frugal meals in the fields, comprising just a hunk of bread, can be viewed affectionately. Bouguereau manages to render everything sweet and sentimental. His beggars (La Mendicante or Loin de pays ‘Far from Home’) aren’t in rags or dirty, for instance. The same is true of his gypsy girls, such as Gypsy Girl with a Basque Drum (i.e. a tambourine) of 1867, Gypsy Girls (1879) or The Bohemian (1890) who introduce an exotic, orientalist element to his catalogue of young females. These figures are barefoot and/ or carry musical instruments; their way of earning a living is precarious but they are again picturesquely poor.
Charming as Bouguereau’s country girls are, it has to be recognised that they all start to look the same. This may be because he made use of just a handful of models and because of the rapidity with which he turned out canvases, but there is also an impression of a clear, preferred ‘type’ comparable to John Waterhouse’s ‘ideal’ girl that you see time and again in his paintings- and even replicated side by side in the picture Hylas and the Nymphs. The work (such as it is) that these girls do is often contrived simply to make them look better. Gathering in harvest sheaves, gleaning, collecting berries, nuts or grapes, churning milk, picking flowers- these all locate the subjects in a natural setting and suggest purity, simplicity and freshness on the part of the model. This is frequently reinforced by their white blouses and dresses, which are always clean, despite their outdoor, labouring lifestyles. This highlights the true nature of Bouguereau’s naturalism and realism: it is frequently quite artificial- as demonstrated by the frequency with which there is a large cube of stone perfectly positioned for his subject to sit or lean upon…
La Gue (The Ford)
Bouguereau also perpetuated the ‘girl on a rock by water’ trope that Thomas Couture seems to have invented. In his hands, the Edenic elements are very clear, although he varies between reflective self-absorption and his preferred pose for most of his models- a direct awareness of our gaze as viewers. This can have the effect of making the observer feel like an intruder upon a private moment (understandably- the subject wished to bathe alone and we have trespassed upon her solitude). Then again, the artist partook of a common trend in art of the period, in that he sometimes made the young country women pictured a little too aware of the viewer. Overall, though, his figures are very saccharine and feel as if they may have been contrived to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
La priere (The Prayer)
La Frillleuse (The Chilly Girl)
Enfant tenant des fleurs Child Holding Flowers
From the mid-1870s, Bouguereau taught at the Académie Julian. Many of his pupils followed his academic style, but others went on to reject it- for instance Henri Matisse. We shall discuss other artists who faithfully perpetuated the look and themes of Bouguereau’s work in later posts. This made sense, certainly, for during his lifetime, he was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world by the academic art community (and the buying public)- yet he was simultaneously loathed and condemned by the avant-garde, who viewed him as a competent technician who was hopelessly stuck in the past in terms of both style and content. Degas invented the term “Bouguereauté” to describe the “slick and artificial surfaces” that characterised his work. It is undeniably glossy and highly finished and even at the time some critics attacked his “feeble mawkishness” as being representative of the terminal decline of the old style of painting. convention.” Bouguereau himself that his work was driven by the demands of the marketplace: “What do you expect? You have to follow public taste, and the public only buys what it likes.”
Historians are divided as to whether Bouguereau simply pandered to the market with his genre paintings, or whether it was his aim to elevate the status of the French peasantry because of his admiration for their nobility and humility. The art historian John House has described Bouguereau’s genre scenes as “broadly idealist… treating his peasant women as if they were Raphael Madonnas.” As I mentioned before, there is rarely any suggestion of tiredness, want or ill-health. Generally his approach to the Naturalist style was highly commercial and there is no suggestion from the pictures that Bouguereau had strong moral or sociological opinions about the position of the rural poor.
For more information on Victorian era art, see details of my bookCherry Ripe on my publications page.
At the Foot of the Cliffs (1886)
Bouguereau was a dedicated painter, often completing twenty or more easel paintings in a single year. He claimed his time was worth one hundred francs a minute- and churned out the genre scenes at a rate that proved this. Even during the last years of his life, he would rise at dawn to paint six days a week and would continue in his studio until nightfall. Throughout the course of his lifetime, he is known to have painted at least 822 paintings, although many have been lost. This very productivity possibly didn’t assist the artist’s reputation, either during his life or after his death in 1905. It suggested mass-produced and uninspired works and with the rise of modernism he fell quickly out of fashion, although his work has been reappraised in more recent decades.
I have posted before on the painting genre known as Orientalism. I return to it now to examine more closely its roots in sexism and racism. As an artistic genre, Orientalism arose initially out of the encounter between Europe and the Near East- Turkey and the Levant. At that time, from the early nineteenth century onwards, this area was in the control of the Ottoman Empire and white Christian visitors were very much tourists and explorers in unfamiliar lands. The art created at this stage conveyed these exotic new worlds to eager audiences. The British artists John Frederick Lewis (1804-76) and Charles Robertson (1844-91) are typical of this kind of reportage or travelogue painting, depicting street scenes and unfamiliar environments such as mosques and bazaars. There is excitement and fascination about these citizens of a major empire and members of a major faith.
However, as the century passed, the European presence and interest changed. Conquest and colonisation took over, placing the white male painters in a different relationship to their artistic subjects. We might contrast Robinson’s charming scenes of souks and street vendors to Jean-Louis Gerome’s studies of street prostitutes in Cairo. The male artists were now members of a new ruling class and their interactions with the populace shifted quite radically. There was a new balance of power and the painters, like all their compatriots, viewed the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East as more of a subject population. This wasn’t universally the case of course; some visitors found the local culture more attractive than their own, such as Frenchman Alphonse Etienne Dinet (1861-1929), who converted to Islam and changed his name to Nasredine.
Adam Styka, Amorous Couple
Nonetheless, a lot of Orientalist art has a distinct sexist and racist tone. The Pole Adam Styka (1850-1959) seems to typify this attitude: his canvases feature smiling Moroccan couples and single confident females, the women generally being endowed with remarkably large, firm and thrusting breasts (for instance, Zohra, A Moroccan Dancer or A Scene in Marrakesh- In the Moroccan Sun). Dinet’s pictures from around Bou Sa’ad in Northern Algeria also regularly depicted naked young women, their healthy natural beauty further adorned with heavy jewellery and tattoos- for instance, Bather by Moonlight (1901), Femme Kabyle (1916) or Raoucha (1901). They are often seen in pairs, bathing or doing their washing, sometimes lying in repose side by side and holding hands (Bathers Under the Pink Laurels, 1910) or, even, wrestling together naked (Bathers Wrestling, 1909)- both of which activities are clearly charged with suggestions of same-sex intimacy, especially in the latter painting, in which the girls’ hands interlinked and their glossy bodies clasped together.
Giovanni della Rocca, A Wealth of Treasure
The themes of racism and sexism unite powerfully in harem and slave market scenes, both enormously popular clichés of the Orientalist style. Della Rocca’s Wealth of Treasure (above) frankly indicates the cold, calculating equation between enslaved bodies and bullion: they were all assets to be acquired, stored and enjoyed. Depicting harems provided painters with ample chauvinist opportunities to display white women being controlled and sexually exploited- and this by non-European males. This sheds a deeply unflattering light on the artists’ views of both women and non-white men. Even more excitingly for the buyers of these works, the closeted nature of the harem meant the women were enclosed together in intimate proximity, so that titillating hints of same-sex attachment could be offered as well. Pierre Louys did just this in his Adventures of King Pausole, and painters regularly took the opportunity to show women bathing, resting or relaxing together.
Otto Pilny, The Hostage
The Swiss artist Otto Pilny (1866-1936) specialised in catering for an art market that wanted to see white women bound, oppressed and on sale, producing seemingly endless scenes of shrinking, partially naked women displayed as wares, as in The Slave Market (1910) and The Slave Dealer (1919), amongst many others. A few of his images will serve to illustrate his style as well as different aspects of these pervasive tastes. In Slave Trade in the Desert, the buyer seems to have a choice of the girl or a carpet; Un choix difficile obliges the buyer to decide between a white horse and a woman. Another painter just as prolific as Pilny was the Italian Fabio Fabbi (1861-1946), who painted several very similar pictures, amongst them The Slave Market, An Eastern Slave Market, Slave Trade Negotiations and The Slave Auction. The auction house Christies has summarised his output as comprising “flirtatious depictions of odalisques on show in slave markets, orientalist bazaars or dancing on white-washed terraces… [works which] found an eager market during his lifetime.”
Rather like the novels of Pierre Louys which were located in the ancient Mediterranean and Egypt, or in imaginary European kingdoms, Orientalist painting allowed artists to depict, for public consumption, subjects that would have been deemed unsuitable if set in their own times and homelands. Nonetheless, within the more discrete and concealed market for erotic illustration that existed in France from the late nineteenth century onwards, more blatant and direct examples of comparable themes may be found: a few artists produced portfolios featuring scenes in which African men might be depicted molesting French women or African maids would be shown having to provide sexual favours to their employers- female and male. These regrettable images are arguably less varnished manifestations of undercurrents of fantasy, prejudice and exploitation that have yet to be fully escaped.
For more discussion of orientalism in early twentieth century art, see my book In the Garden of Eros, available as a paperback and Kindle e-book from Amazon.
The Swing, an homage to Fragonard’s famous original
Louis Icart (1888-1950) was a French painter, graphic artist, and illustrator. Born in Toulouse, he had shown a talent for drawing from early in his boyhood and his aunt, impressed by his artistic potential, took him to Paris in 1907, when he was nineteen. She was the owner of the upmarket Paris milliner Maison Valmont and was therefore able to introduce him into the circles of fashion press illustration. In the French capital the young man trained in painting, drawing, and printmaking. Icart’s initial commercial venture involved producing frivolous postcards using copies of existing images, but he soon began to create his own designs. As a result, he started to receive commissions to design the title pages for the magazine La Critique Théâtrale and to create fashion sketches for haute-couturiers. This helped to establish his name, as did the opportunity in 1913 to exhibit his work at the Salon des Humoristes.
Kiss of the Motherland, one of Icart’s patriotic images
Icart served in the First World War as a fighter pilot, but continued to produce sketches and etchings with patriotic themes. After the war, he made prints of this work, which sold well in both Europe and America- where he exhibited his work in 1922. In the late 1920s, Icart was prolific and very successful with his many publications and his work for large fashion and design studios. He illustrated works such as Carmen and La Dame aux Camellias (1927), and Casanova, Tosca and Faust (1928). He chronicled changing fashions and city life and is regarded as one of the leading Art Deco artists. During World War II he created a series of works titled L’Exode that documented the German occupation of France.
Icart’s style of painting was based on the French masters of the 18th century, such as Jean-Antoine Watteau, Greuze, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. His drawings were influenced by Edgar Degas and Claude Monet; his rare watercolours bore features of the Symbolists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau.
It will be clear from his regular work with the Parisian fashion houses that Icart appreciated feminine beauty. It was probably for this reason that he was commissioned by Parisian publishers to provide plates for a number of erotic books, beginning with Les amusements du faune (1925)- a fantasy threesome of two women and a satyr; this was followed by Le Sopha (1935)- an Orientalist romp in a harem; Rabelais’ scandalous Gargantua & Pantagruel in 1936; , La vie des seins– ‘The Life of Breasts’ (1945)- by the sexologist Dr Jacobus X; La nuit et le moment (1946), and Félicia, Baudelaire‘s Fleurs du mal (1947).
Icart worked on three books by Pierre Louys: in1940 he designed plates for Chrysis– a version of Aphroditeand Leda, one of the author’s retellings of classical myths that forms part of Le Crepuscule des nymphes (‘Twilight of the Nymphs‘). Lastly, he provided illustrations for Louys’ Chansons de Bilitis in 1949. This last was one of a rush of new editions of the Songs issued after the end of the Second World War which I discuss in another post. The symbolism of Bilitis in the tree is also examined elsewhere. Icart had already created an etchings and aquatint of Leda and a large black swan in 1934; his sixteen plates for Louys’ rendering of the story are all tinged with blue to capture the authentic non-human nature of the helpless nymph that’s brought out the story.
Icart, Leda
The erotic nature of some of Icart’s own books is revealed by titles such as Intimité, 1917 and Venus, 1928. Icart’s depictions of women were always very feminine and highly stylish, mostly sensual, often erotic, but also often teasingly shy or humorous. Even when handling the most erotic of material, his designs were always charming, light and sweet.
Waltz Echoes
For more discussion of the work of Icart and of illustrated editions of the works of Pierre Louys in their wider context, see my book In the Garden of Eros, available as a paperback and Kindle e-book from Amazon. Please also refer to my Pierre Louys bibliography.
What is it about masks that makes them a symbol of a perverse eroticism? Simply putting on a black mask covering half the face, as is so often seen at masked balls in costume dramas, immediately bespeaks seduction, mystery and illicit love. The mere wearing of the mask, without anything else, signals this to us- along with a range of other subtexts.
We saw these messages being deployed most recently by Ariana Grande to promote her 2016 album, Dangerous Woman. The implication of the mask is clear: those playful bunny ears belie the fetish, sensual undercurrent. The pvc bra, leather skirt (pulled up to reveal more thigh) and fur stole all suggest sexuality to us, however innocent the expression. There’s a hint of dominatrix, power and control, but somehow, although the outfit is quite revealing, the concealment of the mask preserves the independence of the wearer.
Ariana Grande
Aubrey Beardsley’s use of masks on the cover of the Yellow Book underlines their connection with a sort of decadent sensuality. For both wearer and observer, the partial anonymity gives a sense of liberation- the individual is free to do what s/he wouldn’t dare to do in normal life. It’s a sanctioned act of losing oneself in the crowd, of abandonment to the erotic impulse, as we see with Pierre-Amedee Marcel-Beronneau’s Masked Woman at the top of the page. The woman caresses her own breast and surrenders herself to pleasure, safe in the feeling that she isn’t constrained by the usual social rules that govern her behaviour; she is released from her known, recognisable social persona.
Aubrey Beardsley, cover design for the Yellow Book, 1894
Charles-Antoine Coypel, Young Girl Holding a Mask, 1745
Given the mask’s rather adult and risque associations, perhaps we are right to detect a certain daring attitude in the expression of the adolescent who’s the subject of Charles-Antoine Coypel’s painting, shown above. She knows she is playing with a slightly illicit aspect of adult life and that she’s sending a bold message, the response to which she might yet not fully be able to handle.
Italian painter Romualdo Locatelli took the erotic suggestiveness of the mask a step further in his 1927 painting La Mascherina. Here, I think, the mask only partly conceals the fact that his model is a rather young woman, meaning that he creates a complex of emotions for viewers. Like Coypel’s, the image is slightly illicit; she is revealing her body, yet she’s disguised; it’s playful yet serious. As she bares her breast, it’s jokey, but provocative- a gesture that’s somehow kept in check by the concealment of the mask.
Romualdo Locatelli, La Mascherina, 1927
The American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin (born 1939)- whose use of classical imagery, such as centaurs, I’ve described before- has pursued these ideas to even more challenging conclusions. He is known for working with models whom most would hesitate to depict- the obese, the disabled, amputees, and (even) the dead. Witkin very frequently deploys masks, sometimes in more conventional images, such as Fictional Storefront: Camera Store Window, New Mexico, 2004 (below)- a nude adult woman reclined on a bed, but he has also featured them in much more provocative images.
These include Carrot Cake no.1 (1980), a large corpulent woman apparently masturbating with a root vegetable; Portrait of a Vanite, New Mexico, 1994– a one-armed male nude; Melvin Burkhart- Human Oddity, Florida, 1985, an elderly freak show performer who’s hammering a nail into his nostril; Botticelli’s Venus, NYC, 1982 and The Graces- LA, 1988- both featuring naked she-males; The Whine Maker, NM, 1983– a BDSM mistress with gloves, whip and chains (and a baby) and, lastly, Nude with Mask, LA, 1988. This shows a naked girl of perhaps ten or eleven who is reclined languorously across a large armchair, one leg partly raised. Her face and blonde curly hair are half covered by a black mash with pointed cat ears. The disguise the hood provides goes some way to making the child’s nudity less troubling; even so, her lips are slightly parted and the fingers of one hand rest lightly on her upper chest in a vaguely suggestive way. The mask echoes the tone Grande’s playful yet adult headgear but with a far younger wearer, the image, overall, is both striking and disturbing.
Fictional Storefront: Camera Store Window, New Mexico, 2004
Masks are obviously about anonymity, but the purpose of that concealment seems to be to allow things to which we would not consent if our identities, or those of others, were fully revealed. Hiding behind the mask, or permitting others to hide, we can pretend not to know anything about them except what we would both like to imagine. The mystery is as much in the mind as in the garment. Repeatedly, Joel-Peter Witkin has challenged us with just this moral dilemma.
Lorenzo Lippi, Allegory of Simulation (Woman with mask and pomegranate)
Spanish painter Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-96) is today especially remembered for his faery paintings. He developed a signature style featuring slender young teenage girls equipped with large butterfly wings and labelled as fairies. The Poppy and Lily Fairies– both of 1888, Butterfly, exhibited in 1891 and Sea Nymph (1892), all typify this facet of his work, which derives its continuing appeal from the pretty, harmless and tiny conception of faeries which first prevailed in Victorian times and which he exploited so effectively.
These faeries, besides their rather sugary nudity, are pretty anodyne. The same probably can’t be said for the Nymph of 1878, who may have hazy butterfly wings but wears a much more serious, if not threatening, expression. As for Fairy Under Starry Skies (1885), this is remarkable for its leaping, flame haired girl, who is equipped with dove’s or angel’s pinions rather than the more conventional insect wings of the artist’s other fairy pictures. Feathered wings notwithstanding, she doesn’t look very angelic. Of course, Falero had a double defence that he could mount to any challenge to the propriety of his art: his topless teens were not just unreal (as supernatural beings), they were also of diminutive dimensions, living amongst flowers that were larger than they were (witness the Lily Fairy, no bigger than a fern leaf, yet somehow holding a microscopic lily stem).
A Fairy Under Starry Skies
Falero was a nobleman who chose art as a career after failed ventures in the military, science and engineering. He received his training in Paris from Gabriel Ferrier, a painter whose output was a curious mixture of portraits, orientalist and fantasy scenes and erotic or pornographic prints, amongst which topless young women and nymphs featured quite frequently.
After studying in Paris, Falero moved to London. In the year of his very early death, the painter was successfully sued for maintenance by his former housemaid and artistic model, Maud Harvey, for having seduced her at the age of seventeen and then made her pregnant. She must therefore feature amongst the many fantastical nudes that Falero painted. She could well be the red-head in The Artist’s Model, who also appears in numerous other of his pictures. Maud seems to be the model in the Reclining Nudes of 1879 and 1893, the second being a sumptuous scene in which she stretches out languorously on rich fabrics. The same young woman may be seen in Posing (1879), La Favourite (1880) and A Beauty (1885).
La Favourite
Witches going to their Sabbath (The departure of the witches): 1878
A substantial number of Falero’s canvases even more powerfully erotic than his nudes, depicting writhing naked females. Examples include Witches’ Sabbath (1878) and Faust’s (or Falero’s) Dream (1880), a picture that’s particularly notable for its jumble of entwined youthful flesh. More so than faeries, witches were associated with an uninhibited and ecstatic sensuality, as the cavortings with broom sticks demonstrate.
The witch, painted on a tambourine 1882
Faust’s Dream
Whilst Falero’s witches tend to be full-breasted, energetic women, slim young nudes appear very regularly too- usually in static, solitary poses- such as La Coquette (1878), Moon Nymph and Dawn (1883), Allegory of Art (1892), An Oriental Beauty (1895) and La Favourite (1896). All are full-length studies, focussing our gaze solely on the figure with no distracting narrative. Similar are the twinned young nudes clinging together, amongst which are Balance of the Zodiac, Moonlit Beauties, Twin Stars, Double Star (1881) and Leo and Virgo (1886).
Balance of the Zodiac
Prayer to Isis, 1883 (also called Mystic Blessings)
Alongside these supernatural fantasies, Falero also indulged the Victorian taste for nudity that was presumed to be found amongst ancient and non-European cultures. A canvas like A Prayer to Isis (1883) must derive from his teacher Ferrier’s orientalist interests. We see, in profile, a naked young woman playing the benet or Egyptian harp and, in front of her, a little nude girl holding aloft two sistra. By silhouetting the pair against the twilit sky, Falero has cleverly emphasised their beautifully modelled outlines. The Enchantress of 1878 derives from this same orientalist school that we’ve seen before, in which the ‘east’ (generally Egypt and the Levant for Europeans of the period) was a realm of exotic, liberated sexuality and provocative if impractical clothes (compare Ernest Normand’s Playthings).
The Enchantress
The classical world provided a similar distance in time and space, that allowed artists to justify as much bare flesh as they dared to paint. A Beauty of 1885 is along the same lines as the Egyptian scenes, except that it places the nudity in a Roman bath- something we’ve examined before in several postings. Closely related is the Reclining Nude of 1879. She luxuriates on a some fabric, it seems in an opium dream, but the lined material (to my eyes anyway) is contrived to look rather like an oyster shell, which arguably takes her away from the orgasmic pleasures the boudoir and deposits her on a sandy shore, suggesting instead that we view her as some sort of siren, naiad or sea nymph, or even as Aphrodite, born from the waves. See Gioacchino Pagliei’s nearly contemporary Naiads (1881) in Nottingham City Art Gallery, the picture that for me is immediately evoked by Falero’s image, although we could probably point to Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (1863) as a strong contender for inspiration, as well as plenty of late Renaissance images of Venus on a bed too as possible precedents.
Reclining Nude
Cabanel, Birth of Venus
Pagliei, Gioacchino; The Naiads; Nottingham City Museums and Galleries
Planet Venus
One could probably justly condemn Falero’s work as glamour photography in oils. The Planet Venus of 1889 isa good example of this. It is a very curious image: the central figure, standing before a crescent moon, is a naked young blonde who is, for some reason, pressing her forefinger into her left breast just below the nipple. In the background four plump little naked girls gambol and pirouette amidst swirling draperies along the edge of the lunar sphere. The picture has an unsettling atmosphere of disturbing eroticism. In Falero’s picture Morning Star the nude female subject clasps and squeezes her left breast; exactly the same gesture is seen too in Leo and Virgo. It is an attitude that’s very familiar to us now from soft pornography- the nipple being offered in a manner that is at once both maternal and sexual.
For more information on Victorian art, see details of my bookCherry Ripe on my publications page.
‘Orientalism‘ is a style of art that emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century. Its focus was the ‘orient’ in the sense of the Middle East and Turkey and its popularity rested upon a European perception that the area of the Levant and North Africa, regions that were Muslim and which spoke Turkish or Arabic, were radically ‘other’ from Christian cultures in their social and personal practices and were, as such, mysterious and fascinating. Ingres’ famous painting of a Turkish Bath indulges many key aspects of this idea. We see a steam bath full of naked women, a harem perhaps; they lounge on cushions or in the water, they are served by African slaves, there are strange drinks and unfamiliar music. It is all instantly exotic, but added to this is the frisson of an alien sexuality: all these women are nude and are sprawled close together. We may regard them as essentially captive and kept to serve one man. Even so, just behind the reclining woman at the front with the come-hither look, there is a pair of lovers- they are entwined and one caresses her partner’s breast. The East, above all, was about different sexual practices.
Julius LeBlanc Stewart, L’esclave, 1881
This view of the ‘orient’ seems to be a product of imperial occupation and exploitation. Colonisation created opportunities to learn about other cultures- and it also predisposed Europeans to see them as shocking and strange. Two key texts were transmitted to the West through the actions of one Englishman, Sir Richard Burton. In 1883 he published an edited translation of the ancient Indian Kama Sutra (the Principles of Lust). As well as its detailed heterosexual advice, it dealt with gay and lesbian relations, as well as sadomasochism and group sex. Next, in 1886, Burton translated and published the Persian text, The Perfumed Garden, a comparable sexual manual. These two books in particular cemented the reputation of the ‘east’ as a place of diverse sexualities, unbridled libido, relaxed morals and sexual expertise. Reports from explorers, travellers and other imperial servants only entrenched this view.
Comerre, Leon Francois; Interior with a Lady;
Under the guise of ethnology- or even, perhaps, sexology- a French army doctor identifying himself as Dr Jacobus X produced a string of ‘scientific’ studies of sexual practices around the world. These included Untrodden Fields of Anthropology (1898) and The Ethnology of the Genital Senses (1901). Perhaps a better indication of Dr X’s interests is provided by his Discipline in School and Convent, the title of which alone probably tells us everything we may wish to know- needless to say, it’s about girls and nuns being spanked and caned. Dr X, who may have been either Jacques Sutor or Louis Jacolliot, fed the European obsession with a fantasy of the lust-filled and uninhibited orient. He described incest, masturbation, sodomy and sexual activity between and with juveniles as being perfectly commonplace in North Africa and Egypt. If you wanted to believe that anything and everything was allowable in Middle Eastern cultures, the aptly named Dr X provided the ‘documentary proof.’
Similar evidence was produced for the ‘South Seas’ too, creating an impression of sexual licence that drew adventurers and artists such as Paul Gauguin to visit. The ‘orient’ in its broadest sense suggested, therefore, to western European imperialists, places that were ‘primitive’ and- as such- were more in touch with a natural and unrestrained sexuality.
Jean-Louis Gerome, Jeune fille de Caire
As I’ve mentioned before, we can add to these fantasies of sexual freedom suggestions of white slavery and the polygamy of the harem, with the possible result that a professed fascination with the culture and customs of the Near East could really be just have been a cover for a fascination with exotic erotica. The term odalisque originally meant an enslaved woman or a concubine in a harem; it came to imply a nude female study in Western painting.
Plenty of nineteenth century painters satisfied these tastes; Dutch painters were active in the East Indies until the early 1940s and I’ve previously described the work of British artists John Godward, Ernest Normand, William Stephen Coleman and others. The orientalist style was especially popular in France, which had the most extensive North African possessions- see below.
The Belgian author Pierre Louys, to whom I’ve often referred, made his own contribution to this fantasy of the sexualised East. In his 1906 short story collection, Archipel, he included an essay, ‘The Woman in Arabic Poetry.’ He began by explaining that in the Middle East a nubile girl was considered to be one who was between ten and twelve years old: “Nubile for several years, she is a woman in body and beauty; but the transformations of her chest and her hips could not prevent her from remaining, cerebrally, a little girl… in Baghdad, she still plays bones, an hour before following her first lover; there is no transition for her between the games of the bedroom and those of the bed, nothing of what in Europe we call ‘youth,’ which separates childhood from motherhood.” Louys went on to describe the appearance of these girls: he cited the British ethnographer, E. W. Lane, who visited Egypt between 1833 and ’35 and recorded that “I have seen many times in this country, women in all the flower of youth- and others of a more advanced age- with nothing on their bodies but a narrow band of cloth, around the hips.” James Bruce, who visited Yemen in the 1780s, reported that the women went naked, just like men; those who were married mostly (but not always) wore a kind of cloth which encircled their loins; girls of all ages went completely without clothes, displaying no trace of embarrassment- the most they wore was a loose shirt. This sort of information from Louys only confirmed existing prejudices and further excited interest.
Ferenc Eisenhut (1857-1903), Before Punishment
Charles Gleyre (1806-74), The Nubian
Henri-Pierre Picou (1826-89), Conversation Under the Trellis
Prayer to Isis, Luis Ricardo Falero
John Singer Sargent, Life Study of an Egyptian Girl, 1891
These orientalist paintings presumably have some value as depictions of aspects of traditional life, showing furnishings, utensils- and sometimes even clothes- but their main purpose, pretty clearly, was as a sort of refined soft porn. This is why even painters from countries with no direct association with the Middle East, or which held no colonial possessions, might still be drawn to such images. Swede Anders Zorn (1860-1920) was a prolific painter of naked women; in The Slave- shown- below he has stuck a vaguely turban like hat on his model to add a modest extra dimension to the nude study.
Zorn, The Slave, 1908
Nile Flower, Ferdinand Georges Ducatillon
Etienne Dinet, La Source, 1926
It may seem to us surprising that this orientalist taste continued well into the twentieth century, as can be seen in the examples of work by the American Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928), Etienne Dinet (1861-1929), Erich Schutz (1886-1937) and Josef Reusch (1887-1976). However, we must recall that it was only after the Second World War, and often reluctantly and slowly, that European colonies were liberated, so it seems entirely likely that the attitudes inherited from the previous century remained substantially unchallenged until really quite recently (and perhaps they’re not eradicated yet).
Bridgman, An Algerian Prostitute After Her Bath
Bridgman, Sewing
In the above picture, Sewing, Bridgman takes us away from the well worn scenes of harems, whores and slave markets to distant and romantic exoticism of ancient Egypt. There’s still an excuse for some bare breasts (though perhaps the woman is mending her bra), some authentic architectural details, and (my favourite) the pet deer that lives in the house.
Schutz, Harem Scene, c.1920-30
Schutz, one of a pair of Harem Scenes.
Josef Reusch, Oriental Harem Scene
Modern artists may occasionally use some of the imagery common in orientalist works, though I believe that they do it now with the intention to mock or critique the cultural attitudes from which those paintings emerged.
Fred Arendt, Slave Market, 1967
Further Reading
More more information on the orientalist school of painters, see:
Lynne Thornton, Women as Portrayed in Orientalist Painting, 1994; and,
Herbert Gustave Schmalz, The Temple of Eros; Stockport Heritage Services
During the later decades of the Victorian era, paintings that recreated the Greek and Roman past were hugely popular. Perhaps, in the minds of the British public, there was some sense of association between the Roman Empire and the British; perhaps it was just a celebration of what was regarded as the epitome of fine artistic taste. Numerous artists adopted the style of the genre and many of them have sunk into obscurity since. Three here are revived.
The painter Herbert Gustave Schmalz (1856-1935) was, despite his name, a native British painter who was born in Newcastle and who trained at the South Kensington Art School and then the Royal Academy of Arts, where fellow students included Frank Dicksee and Stanhope Forbes (famed now for his paintings of Cornwall as part of the ‘Newlyn School’). In his painting, Schmalz often managed to live up to the meaning his name has acquired in English in recent decades; he favoured inspiringly lofty and noble heroes and heroines and sickly religious scenes, almost all burdened with improving messages. His Temple of Eros, painted in 1883 (above), imagines some ceremony in which the young erote is worshipped and invoked by a fervent crowd. I assume, judging by the sombre expressions of the celebrants, that loves lost and unrequited are the subject of their appeals to the divinity.
In his 1888 picture, Faithful unto Death, Schmalz confounded the doubters and managed to achieve what might- to many- have appeared impossible: he combined a tribute to early Christian martyrs with a depiction of a bevy of naked young women, all of them bound to posts in a sort of holy fetish fantasy. It’s simultaneously high-minded and tacky.
Schmalz, Faithful Unto Death, 1888
Born in Bristol, Arthur Drummond (1871-1951) was the son of the marine painter John Drummond. He received his formal artistic training from Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema at the Royal Academy and later studied under Benjamin Constant and J.P. Laurens in Paris. He exhibited his first work at the RA in 1890 and continued to show there until 1901; he also exhibited works at the Royal Society of Artists in Birmingham and the Royal institute of Oil Painters.
Drummond, The Harpist, 1890
Drummond specialized in history, like his teacher Alma-Tadema, setting many of his works in ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome. He also painted numerous genre scenes showing everyday English life in town and country. These often feature happy families and children looking beguiling. His neo-classicist work can be more intriguing, with the meaning of scenes not so explicit- albeit, still lacking in any real drama or peril. As much as anything, Drummond was interested in painting pretty girls exposing bare flesh and the setting for that was a pretext rather than the primary subject. In this, he is definitely comparable to William Stephen Coleman.
Drummond, Homage to Bastet
Arthur Drummond, The Garland, 1891
Like very many artists of the time (for instance, Waterhouse, Draper and Coleman), Drummond seems to have used a few models on a repeated basis, as may be seen by comparing The Garland (above) with 1903’s When The World Was Young or the Battle of Flowers (below). Similar clothes are also worn in different scenes, a point which also allows us to note Drummond’s affection for highly transparent fabrics- and slipped garments- that make his art comparable to that of John Godward or William Stephen Coleman.
Drummond, When the World Was Young, 1903.
Drummond, The Battle of Flowers, 19??
As well (and combined with) his recreations of classical and Egyptian life, and his streak of orientalism, there is a pleasing whimsy to Drummond’s art that lifts it above some of the art of the neo-classical genre that was so common in late Victorian and early Edwardian Britain. There were numerous painters, such as George Bulleid, Thomas Ralph Spence, Oliver Rhys, Wright Barker and William Reynolds Stephens who churned out portraits of pretty girls on marble terraces- sometimes alone, sometimes lounging with friends in their togas; Drummond added details which make his pictures just that little more individual and memorable. His Girl with Bubble (below), in its attempt to capture motion, even looks forward to such a radical Modernist picture as Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase of 1912.
Drummond, Girl with Bubble
Drummond, The Pink Flamingo
Drummond, Victorian Fantasy
Arthur Hacker (1858–1919) was another British painter in the neo-classical tradition. He was born in Camden, London, the son of an engraver, and studied at the Royal Academy Schools and then with Léon Bonnat in Paris. Hacker began to exhibit at the Royal Academy at the age of twenty and soon attracted public notice. During the early 1880s he travelled in France, Spain, and North Africa, which provided considerable inspiration, and he was soon established as a serious painter in the French academic manner, though he also had strong symbolist influences, evoking comparisons with some of the more dramatic productions of Schwabe, Bocklin, Delville and Hodler. However, whilst female nudes and intense biblical scenes were popular in France, in Britain these themes made him seem distinctly un-English.
Arthur Hacker, The Sea Maiden, 1897
Hacker’s sensuous nudes were made palatable to the critics by being couched in tasteful, often classical, allegory: for instance Daphne (1895), The Cloud (1901), and Leaf Drift (1903), which shows three naked women inexplicably lying on an autumn forest floor amidst the accumulating leaf litter. To many today, much of Hacker’s work can seem overblown: his Temptation of Sir Percival (1894, in Leeds City Art Galleries) “borders almost on the ridiculous” according to the Dictionary of National Biography. The same might be said of his melodramatic Vae Victis, an example of several orientalist pictures he painted, themes which also offered plentiful chances for exotic nudes (as with his Death of Cleopatra for example). Vae Victis is highly overwrought, with the wailing women and the captive being carried bodily by the soldier; what’s far worse, of course, is the fact that it plays so unashamedly on the worst Orientalist tastes for images of white women being enslaved by African and Arab males, adding chauvinist to racist insult by adding the women to the piled up spoils of war- jewellery and gold.
Hacker, The Cloud
Like many other painters I have reviewed on this blog, Hacker’s career was overtaken by the waning taste of the British public for Olympian fine art and, like many of his contemporaries, he took up society portraiture to make a living. He also changed his style to be more post-impressionist manner. Hacker’s art is symptomatic of the attitudes of its time, and it can verge on the risible in some respects, but this shouldn’t wholly efface his great skill as a painter and colourist.
Hacker, Vae Victis! The Sack of Morocco or Woe to the Vanquished, 1890
Further Reading
For more information on this genre, see:
C. Wood, Olympian Dreamers, 1983;
William Gaunt, Victorian Olympus; and,
Frances Spalding, Magnificent Dreams- Burne Jones & the Late Victorians, 1978.
For more information on Victorian art, see details of my bookCherry Ripe on my publications page.
William Stephen Coleman (1829-1904) was a very popular and prolific Victorian artist whose designs are not widely known today- although his work is held by major galleries (such as the Victoria and Albert), and is avidly collected (witness Pinterest) and sold through auction houses. Despite his current obscurity, Coleman made a very successful career out of painting and drawing children in classical and oriental scenes. Part of the reason for Coleman’s lapse into obscurity may be his preferred format: he illustrated postcards, rather than painted canvases with oils, and this format does not seem to qualify as ‘high art’ in the same way. Nonetheless, amongst collectors of postcards and of rural genre watercolours, his work is still much appreciated and highly valued.
Coleman was born in Horsham in Surrey and initially tried his hand at becoming a surgeon like his father. He found that he was not suited to a medical career, however, and instead turned to natural history illustration (like his younger sister Helen, who was a flower painter), for example providing plates for books on British ferns and moths. In addition, from the early 1860s, he began to paint watercolour landscapes with figures, in a style reminiscent of Myles Birket Foster, and semi-classical subjects, scenes which placed Coleman in the so-called ‘toga and terrace’ or ‘marble’ school of British art at that time, in which he found his greatest success.
A typical Coleman Christmas card design
As we have seen in previous postings, all of the artists in this genre produced work that was full of more or less scantily draped females. Even so, Coleman’s output is notable for the fact that he almost exclusively drew girls and young women: it is almost as if the reduced size of the finished product necessitated the depiction of smaller figures. Like J W Waterhouse or Herbert James Draper, Coleman appears to have had a handful of models whom he used regularly; their names are lost to us now but we see them repeatedly, posed with certain costumes and props which also soon become quite familiar. The widespread popularity of his work at the time, and the fact that his ceramics and cards decorated numerous Victorian homes, remind us how very different ideas of taste and propriety may be across generations.
A Captive Pair
Coleman’s semi-classical images were designed primarily for the De La Rue and Faulkner publishing companies, illustrating postcards and greetings cards. An idea of the nature and extent of Coleman’s output of designs for the De La Rue company may be gained from the titles of the sets of cards (normally with three designs in each set) that he supplied to the firm between 1878 and 1885. These include Eastern Damsels and Nymphs of the Grove in 1878, Cupid’s Gambols, Youthful Graces and Girlish Beauties in 1879, Harvest of Beauty, By the Pool, Jocund Youth, Playmates and In the Shade during 1880, Girlish Delights, Dancing Girls and The Bathers for 1882 and, finally, Youthful Studies and Swimming Figures. These images appealed year after to year to the buyers of greetings cards and such like ephemera- and they remain highly collectable today.
New Year’s Card: Nymph Playing Pan Pipes (Victoria & Albert Museum)
Given the market for which he worked- mass produced, low cost, high turnover postcards and greetings cards for Christmas and the New Year- Coleman had to know what sold. It is evident, from the many commissions that he received, that he understood contemporary popular taste very well. His illustrations depict either plump little infants, cuddling and dozing, or girls of twelve or thirteen, either at work or leisure. As well as these scenes of delightful childhood innocence, Coleman also clearly appreciated the contemporary taste for all things classical and oriental- and he combined the two styles to great effect. Many of his female figures are posed alone or in pairs, just as with, say, John Godward and his imitators (and many other painters in this genre). The opportunities offered by bathing were not overlooked, nor, for that matter, did Coleman fail to offer his public a variation on the orientalist theme of the captive child.
A Water Nymph
It was not just sets of postcards: Coleman’s festive and celebratory artwork was full of his young nudes. As an illustration of the ubiquity and unremarkable nature of these images, at Christmas 1882 Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) sent Jessie Hull, aged eleven, a Coleman designed card. It showed a girl in early puberty posing naked from the waist up in a lily pond. The message wished that “Joyous and gracious be thy Christmas Day.” This choice of card may well strike modern viewers as curiously inappropriate- both in its design and in its recipient- but, in fact, much of the output of De la Rue and other such companies comprised cards picturing “little girls in their early adolescence who, as a contrast to the equally fashionable Kate Greenaway school of much over-dressed and befrilled children, were partly or altogether naked, but curiously wrapped in the same rather sentimental Victorian atmosphere of innocence.”
A Young Potter Decorating a Vase
As a more detailed illustration of his output, I’ll discuss Coleman’s series ‘Sweet Childhood,’ a set that was issued by publishers Raphael Tuck in 1908. This includes A Water Nymph, in which a pretty girl, her golden-red hair decorated with flowers, wades thigh deep in a pool and plays with goldfish (a regular Coleman theme). Another from the series, Wild Flowers, shows the same nymph lying with a bunch of lily flowers beside a pool. Minor classical divinities could, of course, legitimately be portrayed naked; in other paintings Coleman had to justify the nudity in some other way- for instance by having the girls bathing or on the sea shore, fishing, relaxing in the heat or, in one case, enslaved– a young teen and her younger sister are shown clinging together, naked and apprehensive in a scenario that may evoke our sympathy for their vulnerability or, perhaps, prove mildly titillating. Other illustrative techniques used by Coleman were nudes wearing only rather superfluous items of jewellery (Butterflies or The Fan Girl) or draped in gauzy veils or in garments that have casually slipped down (for example, A Young Potter Decorating a Vase or Girl Arranging Flowers in a Pot). Even so, expert on the art of the period, Lionel Lambourne, has summarised Coleman’s work as “all very innocent.”
Coleman, William Stephen, A Naiad; from the Glasgow Museums collection.
Coleman also worked in a variety of other media, producing etchings, pastels and oils. In 1869 he began to experiment in pottery decoration, working for Copeland’s in the Staffordshire Potteries, before in due course setting up the Minton’s Art Pottery Studio in Kensington Gore, London, in 1871. He designed tiles, plaques and plates for this famous company, rather like Edward Poynter, who later became a knight and president of the Royal Academy. Many of Cloeman’s ceramic designs derived from Japanese inspirations, but the small naked girls were plentifully in evidence too (and, appropriately, the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington now holds an extensive collection of his pottery decoration). Coleman furthermore worked as a designer for Wallpapers Manufacturers Ltd.
Minton charger, 1869, Victoria & Albert Museum
Coleman’s sister Rebecca and artist Robert Dudley also both produced very similar images for publishers De la Rue, Tuck and Goodall. The latter, for example, designed a card entitled ‘The pearl of the mistletoe’ which portrayed a fairy teenager dressed solely in a gauzy skirt, hovering on butterfly wings beneath a bunch of Christmas foliage. The success of Coleman’s style seems to have encouraged several others to paint in a very similar fashion. Highly comparable in theme and technique are Henry Ryland, William Anstey Dolland and, even, Norman Prescott-Davies. They all tackled characteristically sweet single females engaged in mundane activities or play, set in a vaguely classical or Middle Eastern location and produced with finish that closely resembles Coleman’s. None seemed as prolific as he did- not, for that matter, did they focus so noticeably on the nude.
Another Coleman Christmas card design (Victoria & Albert Museum collection)
William Stephen Coleman was clearly not a great artist: his draughtsmanship can sometimes leave a lot to be desired, but his composition and colouring can be pleasing and his output underlines how, for the Victorians and Edwardians, classical scenes were considered almost a part of everyday life- a sign, doubtless- of a certain culture and sophistication. Coleman’s vision of antiquity perhaps reflects the secure and easy self-confidence of the late Victorian middle classes: the world was prosperous and at peace under the British Empire and other cultures, distant in space or time, were exotic and strange, the decorative subjects of mild curiosity. In the artist’s world, everything is gentle and charming; there are no dramas or great figures- just quiet days in the Mediterranean sun, by the sea or on marble terraces, tending the goldfish or watching butterflies.
Girl with a basket of coral
Suggested further reading includes Christopher Wood’s Olympian Dreamers and William Gaunt’s Victorian Olympus. As noted in the post, Coleman’s work is held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and at other galleries and museums around the country. His postcard designs remain highly sought after and several websites are dedicated to his work and that of similar artists.
For more information, see my booksEat Me! When Alice Grew Up, on Carroll, and Cherry Ripe for a history of Victorian art including Coleman.
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