The Figure and the Forest
19th century French Photographs and Drawings
Kate Ganz Gallery, New York
December 6 - 22, 2004
Featuring newly discovered works by a mysterious painter/photographer, this exhibition is presented by Jill Newhouse with Charles Isaacs and Howard Greenberg Gallery.
The shadowy depths of the Forest of Fontainebleau and the surrounding agricultural region inspired a generation of artists and photographers—and these two disciplines were more closely connected than previously thought. A group of 25 photographs of peasants at work taken by a mysterious 19th century artist is the focus of a new exhibition The Figure and the Forest:19th century French Photographs and Drawings.
Commissioned of a French painter in the late 1870s by the important Parisian publishing firm Giraudon, these photographs were made to be sold to art students and artists as inspiration for their paintings. Though this practice of painting from photographs was common, it was usually kept secret by the artists, and officially discouraged by the Salon. The photographer, known only as Giraudon’s artist, shielded his identity, and Giraudon complied. The mystery is still unsolved to this day.
The 25 photographs, presented by Jill Newhouse in cooperation with Charles Isaacs and Howard Greenberg Gallery, have never before been exhibited as a group. Other photographs from the series are in collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Cleveland Museum of Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The prints in this exhibition are notable for their extraordinary state of preservation, and unlike other photographic studies of the 19 th century, for their suggestion of snap-shot like spontaneity, of course technically impossible in this period. Most depict women toiling on farms and in fields, gathering faggots, tending sheep and winnowing grain, depicting a way of life which was soon to disappear.
The photographs are exhibited along with 20 landscape drawings of the Fontainebleau Forest by important 19 th century artists including Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Paul Huet, Jean Francois Millet and Theodore Rousseau. Seen together, the photographs and drawings provide an intimate glimpse into the creation of the great paintings of 19th century rural France by artists from Millet and Courbet to Pissarro and the Impressionists. They are the very foundation upon which these paintings were based, as well as beautiful and evocative works of art in themselves.
The fully illustrated exhibition catalogue includes an essay by independent art historian Carol Nigro.
The Mystery of the Photographer
Today, the identity of the anonymous painter/photographer remains a subject of both speculation and research. Alexandra Murphy, a specialist in the Barbizon school and has organized several important exhibitions of the work of Jean Francois Millet, notes, “The photographs were made by someone who is very familiar with traditional art imagery of farmland and what might be useful to painters.” Murphy adds, “We have ruled out Millet because he, like Van Gogh, wrote many letters, and left no mention of making photographs himself. Clearly, the images are very strong and it is very interesting that they were taken by a painter.” French art historian Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, former director of the Giraudon Archives, and also an authority on the work of the Barbizon school painter Leon L’hermitte (1844-1925), is currently writing a book which will explore the artist’s identity.
The Publisher Who Kept the Secret
The publisher Giraudon specialized in photographs of 19th century rural figure studies, called etudes d'aprés nature. His first studio was across the street from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; and students and painters were among his best clients. In the late 1870s, he advertised that he had commissioned a painter, who wished to remain anonymous, to do a series of studies of peasants at work in the forest, for use by artists.
Exhibition Highlights
The photograph French Country Study: Two boys climbing a Tree depicts two boys who may have been bird nesters, robbing a nest of its eggs. The boys appear so intensely busy; it almost seems as if the artist surprised them at their task. Woman Holding a Winnowing Basket offers a popular Barbizon school subject. Two Shepherds (1866), a drawing by Jean Francois Millet, offers a classic pastoral image of two lovers, a theme he often depicted. “Since they worked away from the villages, shepherds were known as symbols of innocent and illicit love,” notes Murphy. Paul Huet’s drawing Four Large Trees shows a magnificent spread of branches in the Fontainebleau Forest, where some of the oldest and largest trees in France can be found. Fontainebleau began as a hunting ground for the aristocrats and during Huet’s lifetime became a national park. This image could celebrate the forest’s new status.
Photography and Pleine-Air Painting
Painters such as Corot began working in the forest of Fontainebleau as early as the 1820s, and photographers arrived in the 1850s. Often the disciplines overlapped: photographers such as Gustave le Gray (1820-1882) and Henri Le Secq (1818-1882) studied with the popular painter Charles Delaroche in the 1840s, and then made photographs in the forest. Painters first used the forest primarily as a place to sketch, but in the 1840s and ‘50s they produced more finished compositions, particularly in the area around Barbizon. The photographers preserved the tradition of the sketch with these photographic etudes d'aprés nature.
Kate Ganz Gallery
25 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
Jill Newhouse Drawings
12 East 86th Street, New York, NY 10028
Open by appointment only
www.jillnewhouse.com
