REFF, T. Pissarro's Portrait of Cézanne, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, n.776, Nov. 1967

8/10/2019 REFF, T. Pissarro's Portrait of Czanne, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, n.776, Nov. 1967

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Pissarro's Portrait of CzanneAuthor(s): Theodore ReffReviewed work(s):Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, No. 776 (Nov., 1967), pp. 626-631+633Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/875435 .Accessed: 14/01/2013 15:34

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2/8

MANET S NYMPH SURPRISED

time, in response to invitations placed by the ImperialAcademy in the newspapers of major cities in WesternEurope, he decided, with two other friends,19 o send can-vases to Russia for exhibition and sale. The Nymph Sur-prised was an ambitious work in terms of size and degree offinish, but the subversive nature of its content would havemade it impossible to sell on the conservative Russian artmarket.20 The transformation of the work into a palatablesalon object was effected by giving the painting a classicaltitle, and, more importantly, by inserting into it a maleparticipant, thus restoring the picture to the orbit of tradi-tional presentation. That this was done as an afterthoughtis clear from the technical report on the painting. But thatit was done at all indicates Manet's clear knowledge of thework's initial impact. It indicates that as early as 1861 he

was already aware that disquieting content could place con-sciousness itself between the viewer and the work of art andthat, once this was accomplished, the painting would be dis-tanced by the viewer, rendered into a mute object, a 'mere'painting, in a moment of self-defence that was also one ofself-knowledge. Since none of the accounts of the paintingby Manet's Parisian contemporaries mentions the malefigure, one can only conclude that after the painting was re-turned from Russia and some time before its exhibition in1867 the satyr was removed and the picture's name changed.

Several months after the work's exhibition in Russia, in anetching called La Toilette, Manet again used the voyeuristidea to disrupt the spectator-object relationship. A servant,attending a nude woman, looks up and out of the picture withsurprise, indicating to the viewer the sense of intrusion he isto feel. This is the role that the hissing cat will play one yearlater in the Olympia, a painting which remains during the

186o's the most complete statement of the ideas introduced bythe Nymph Surprised.

19 Gauthier and Monginot, see BARSKAYA, p.63.20 Barskaya suggests that Manet's desire to sell a painting stemmed from hiswish for financial independence from his parents in order to wed SuzanneLeenhoff.

THEODORE REFF

Pissarro s Portrait o f Cezanne

THAT Pissarro's impressive portrait of C6zanne (Fig.2 1) hasbeen reproduced almost exclusively as an image of theyounger man, and has rarely been discussed as an artisticconception even in the literature on the older one,1 is nodoubt a result of our greater interest in C6zanne as anhistorical personality. It is indeed one of the few pictures ofC6zanne by another artist and also the earliest; painted atthe beginning of 1874, it predates Renoir's delicate pastel bysix years and the banal oil sketches of Maurice Denis, EmileBernard, and Hermann-Paul by some thirty years.2 Andunlike these, it shows C6zanne's appearance at a decisivemoment in his development, when, inspired by the exampleof Pissarro

himself,of whom he later

said,'Ce

dtun

pare pourmoi . . . et quelque hose comme e bon Dieu', he was transformingthe rebellious Romantic he had previously been into themore sober Impressionist he was fundamentally to remain.Hence perhaps the vestiges of passionateness and Bohemiannon-conformity in this portrait, the intensity of expressionand roughness of appearance, traits which also impressedLucien Pissarro at the time: 'His portrait painted by father

resembles him. He wore a cap, his long black hair was beg-inning to recede from a high forehead, he had large blackeyes which rolled in their orbits when he was excited.'3

There are of course other records of the close associationbetween C6zanne and Pissarro around 1872-4, among thema fine etching of the younger man by his mentor and theirpencil sketches of each other; but none possesses the monu-mentality and depth of feeling of this large portrait in oil.4And none has its degree of complexity in characterizing thesitter, who appears here at once 'humble and colossal', touse his own later epithet of Pissarro: 'colossal' in his com-pactness and immobility, his mass filling most of the picture

surface, yet'humble' in his coarse outdoor

clothing andunkempt beard and in the unpretentiousness of the works ofart surrounding him - a small rural landscape and twosatirical newspaper prints, all of them unframed and simplytacked to the wall. That they reveal a taste for the popularand the rustic which would have been congenial to thegroup of artists around Pissarro, working outside Paris inthe villages of Pontoise and Auvers,5 becomes more apparent

1 The only exception, the discussion in G. JEDLICKA: Pissarro, Berne [i950],

pp.9-xo,deals exclusively with Cezanne's influence on the work. For the basic

bibliography see L. R. PISSARRO and L. VENTURI: Camille Pissarro, son art, soneuvre, Paris [I939], No.293.2 The Renoir is reproduced in j. REWALD: Paul Cezanne, New York [1948],Fig.84; the others, in L'Amour de l'Art, xvII [1936], Figs. x -16. Pissarro'sportrait is undated, but is generally ascribed to early 1874.

3 Letter to his brother Paul, undated; quoted in w. s. MEADMORE: Lucien Pissarro,un Cceur Simple, London [1962], pp.25-6.4 It is on canvas, 72 by 59 cm. The other portraits are reproduced in REWALD:Paul Cizanne, Figs.44-6.5 For the historical background see j. REWALD: The History of Impressionism,New York [1961], ch.VIII.

627

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PISSARRO 'S PORTRAIT OF COZANNE

when they are compared with the objects in the back-

grounds of such typically Parisian images of the creativeman as Degas's portrait of James Tissot and Manet's ofZola (Fig.22), both painted about eight years earlier.6 The

latter, particularly relevant since Zola was C6zanne's closestfriend at this time, expresses perfectly the contemporaryideal of the artist as a dandy, whose elegant attire and casual

postureare consistent with the cultivated taste revealed by

the objects around him, among them a Japanese screen andcolour woodcut, an etching of Velizquez's Borrachos, and a

photograph of Olympia.Valuable as a souvenir of his friendship with C6zanne,

Pissarro's portrait is no less fascinating as an artistic concep-tion in its own right. It was in fact one of his favourites andcould still be seen hanging in his studio at Eragny towardsthe end of his life.7 In his auvre, which consists almost en-

tirely of landscapes and genre scenes, it occupies a placeapart, not only as one of the relatively few portraits, but asthe only one (excluding the two commissioned by his friend

Murer) of someone outside Pissarro's immediate family. Andeven when compared with those of his wife and children, it

is unique in its calculated treatment of the background. Forthey normally show a broadly rendered interior and focusso exclusively on the sitter that the pictures which occas-

ionally appear are unidentifiable; and the same is true of his

only self-portrait of this period;8 whereas here the wall hasbeen brought forward and the images on it have obviouslybeen chosen and arranged in relation to C6zanne. Spaced at

equal intervals around his figure but very close to it, withsome of their contours paralleling his, they serve both toenclose it on the surface and, through their diminutive scale,to enhance its appearance of massiveness. Yet they are alsoso distinctly characterized, even to the legibility of the titleat the upper left, as to invite speculation about their sym-

bolic meaningin relation to C6zanne. It is this intellectual

conception of the portrait, at once humorous and serious,that we shall attempt to elucidate.

The print at the upper left, as Lucien Pissarro recalled,is a caricature by Andre Gill which had appeared in the

newspaper L'lclipse shortly before the portrait was painted,9more specifically, in the issue of 4th August 1872 (Fig.25).Its topical subject is the extraordinarily generous publicresponse to the Government's request for a loan to pay the

indemnity demanded by Germany after the Franco-PrussianWar, a response in which over forty billion francs were

pledged within twenty-four hours.'0 Gill shows AdolphThiers, who was then acting as head of the provisionalgovernment, as a doctor proudly holding up the pledgedmoney in the form of a new-born infant which he has justdelivered from the figure of France at the left; hence the

title, 'La Dilivrance', which means both 'delivery' and 'sal-vation'. The magnitude of the oversubscription was indeeda stirring proof not only of the country's vast wealth, unim-

paired by the recent war, but of its confidence in the newrepublican government. In an earlier version of this print,published in a de luxe edition of L'b8clipse, Gill had shownthe reactionary opponents of Thiers's party - the Ducd'Aumale, the Comte de Chambord, and Napoleon IIIhimself, clutching a dead eagle - as disgruntled witnesses ofthe miraculous delivery;" obliged by the censor to removethem, he superimposed the clouds that appear in the fore-

ground of the popular version (the one Pissarro copied), thustransforming the delivery into a vaguely defined apotheosis.

At the upper right in the portrait of C6zanne is another

popular print, a caricature of Courbet by Leonce Petit(Fig.24), which appeared in the newspaper Le Hanneton on

I3th June 1867, on the occasion of Courbet's retrospectiveexhibition outside the grounds of the World's Fair.12 Hencethe many recognizable pictures by him on the wall behindhim and the triumphant toast he seems to propose with hisglass of beer, which, like the clay pipe in his mouth, was a

familiar symbol of his proletarian habits. Hence, too, theegalitarian message in his own handwriting printed belowthe drawing: 'J'ai toujours rouvi souverainement idicule qu'onme demande 'autorisation epublier monportrait, de quelquefafon uece fft. Mon masque appartient d tous; c'est pourquoi 'autorise leHanneton d le publier - d condition cependant u'il n'oublie bas del'encadrer d'une belle auriole.'13 This sympathetic picture ofCourbet was accompanied by an article written by EugeneVermersch, the radically outspoken director of Le Hanneton,who with obvious pride declared the painter a martyr of allthe reactionary tendencies in France and a champion of the

independent and progressive ones.The third picture in the background of his portrait of

C6zanne is one of Pissarro's ownlandscapes,

the Route deGisors, Maison du Pdre Galien, which is inscribed 1873 (Fig.26).14It shows one of the principal streets of Pontoise, wherePissarro was living at the time, and thus represents in effectan exterior view of that small rural world of which we see a

glimpse of the interior in this very portrait. It was evidentlyone of Pissarro's favourites and perhaps also one of Cezanne's,for it appears in the background of the latter's Nature Morted la Soupiere Fig.23), which he painted at the same spot inhis friend's studio shortly thereafter, probably in i1875.15Incidentally, the landscape is not accompanied here by the

print that would have been visible in this view, which con-firms the conclusion that Pissarro introduced it quite deli-

berately into the portrait.

6 See P.-A. LEMOISNE: Degas et son ,uvre,Paris [1946 ff.], No.I75; and P. JAMOT

and G. WILDENSTEIN: Manet, Paris [1932], No.146. On the latter, which wasexhibited in the Salon of 1868, see s. L. FAISON, NR: 'Manet's Portrait of Zola',Magazine of Art, XLII [1949], pp.I62-8.7 See the photograph of his studio reproduced in J. REWALD: Camille Pissarro,New York [1963], p.41.8 PISSARRO nd VENTURI: Camille Pissarro, No.200; dated I873; it shows three

paintings on the wall behind him, but none is identifiable. For typical portraitsof members of his family see ibid., Nos.I93, 197, and 232.9 See Lucien's souvenirs, cited above, n.3; he mentions seeing this print hang-ing on the wall of his father's studio around 1874.10 It was the last in a series of three caricatures by Gill on this topic; see c.FONTANE: Un Maitre de la caricature, ndrd Gill, n, Paris [I927], pp.2o0-2. It was

accompanied by LUon Bienvenu's article, attacking the Bonapartist newspapers.

11 This version is reproduced in FONTANE: Andre Gill, Ii, p.22.12 See c. LAGER: Courbet elon les caricatures t les images, Paris [1920], p.20. Itwas first identified in the portrait of Czanne by A. ChAtelet, in Orangerie desTuileries: Van Gogh t les peintres 'Auvers-sur-Oise, aris [1954], No.91.13 In Pissarro's copy, this part of the print is omitted, apparently because hislandscape overlaps it.14 PISSARRO and VENTURI: Camille Pissarro, No.206. First identified in theportrait of CUzanne by ChAtelet; see above, n. 12. I am grateful to Dr JohnRewald for information about this picture.15 See L. VENTURI: Cizanne, on art, son cuvre, aris [1936], No.494; there dated1883-5. For the earlier dating see D. COOPER: 'Two Czanne Exhibitions -

I', THE BURLINGTON AGAZINE, CVI 1954], P-346. Lucien Pissarro's souvenirs,often cited in support of an 1877 date, state only that it was painted in his

parents' house; see J. REWALD: 'A propos du catalogue raisonn6 de l'ceuvrede Paul C6zanne et de la chronologie de cette oeuvre', La Renaissance, x, Nos.

3-4 [March-April 1937], P.54-

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PISSARROS PORTRAIT OF CiZANNE

What attitude or thought guided him in doing so? On thepurely visual level, the satirical prints flanking C6zanneshow small figures whose lively, informal actions, like thegrotesque proportions of the 'Courbet', introduce a marginalhumour entirely appropriate to the spirit of camaraderie inwhich the work was conceived, and at the same time en-hance C6zanne's own air of meditativeness and immobility.16The actions of these

figuresare

equally significant, however;for they appear to be paying homage to the gigantic creatureseated between them, the one at the left holding up a babytowards him in the time-honoured manner of politicians,the one at the right raising his glass in a toast which is alsodirected towards him. Indeed, in comparing Pissarro's copywith the print on which it was based, we discover that he hasaltered slightly the direction of Courbet's gaze, so that itnow focuses on Cezanne rather than on his glass of beer.17 nthis playful use of a marginal element, a device withoutparallel in his euvre, Pissarro may have been inspired byManet's famous portrait of Zola (Fig.22), which had beenexhibited a few years earlier. For it too shows a miniaturereproduction of another picture (his own Olympia) n theupper right hand corner, modified in such a way that thefigure looks towards the sitter and thus appears to pay him asubtle homage (no doubt for having recently defendedOlympia n the press).18 But if this visual wit seems charac-teristic of a sophisticated artist like Manet, it is unexpectedin the work of Pissarro, and only reinforces the singularityand personal significance of his portrait of Cezanne.

Thus far, only one attempt has been made to define thissignificance in terms of the choice and arrangement of thebackground mages. It has been observed that the caricatureof Courbet and Pissarro's landscape are 'symbols of dom-inating influences on Cezanne's youthful development'.19They are that, of course, but not the only or even the most

important ones, since examples of Spanish and Venetian art,and especially of Delacroix's, have been omitted; nor does itseem likely that Pissarro's selection was determined by soself-consciously art-historical a point of view. What the twobrightly coloured and boldly simplified caricatures and thesmall rural landscape, spontaneous and sketchy in execution,do reflect is a taste for certain types of art, one whichPissarro would have shared with Cezanne, who had copiedpopular prints in the 186o's, and with Courbet himself,whose interest in folk art is well known.20 However, the pre-sence in one of these caricatures of Thiers, a purely politicalfigure who had played no role in Cezanne's or Pissarro'sartistic development, cannot be understood in terms oftaste or influence alone, and suggests another level of mean-ing in the work.

This meaning becomes more evident when the figures inthe background prints are considered not only as populartypes or as bearers of a playful homage to Cezanne, but asimages of Courbet and Thiers, two of the most prominentpersonalities of the day21 the one a radical artist notoriousfor his rejection of official acclaim and his participation inthe Commune, the other a bourgeois statesman renowned forhis

leadershipof the conservative forces which had

sup-pressed the Commune. Appropriately, Courbet salutesC6zanne with a glass of beer, while Thiers holds up towardshim a sack of money inscribed '41i milliards'. AlthoughPissarro reproduces both figures in a rather broad, simpli-fied manner,22 he can hardly have failed to appreciate theircontrasting characters, especially in looking at the vividlydescriptive caricatures themselves. What, then, would thesefigures have meant to him when he chose and copied pic-tures of them early in 1874?

Ironically, neither one was of immediate interest at thattime; for Thiers was no longer in power, having resigned asPresident of the new Republic on 24th May 1873, and Cour-bet was no longer in France, having fled to Switzerland on23rd July of the same year to avoid being imprisoned for thepart he had supposedly had in overthrowing the Vend6meColumn.23 His flight into exile was in fact a direct result ofThiers's resignation, since the latter's government had pro-tected him from further reprisals or his activities during theCommune, despite their extreme differences of opinion.Thus Pissarro's choice of prints reflects not so much thecurrent importance of the two men as their leading roles inthe recent events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Com-mune, when indeed they had been conspicuously opposed- Courbet as leader of the Conf6deration des Artistes inParis, and Thiers as head of the legal government in Ver-sailles.24 Even earlier, of course, they had represented irre-

concilable social and political views; as Courbet declaredwith characteristic brusqueness during a meeting withThiers in 1870; 'Nos temperaments ont out dfait opposis. Toutema solicitude ans a vie est pour les pauvres, andis que toute asolicitude dans votre vie est pour les riches. Viold en quoi nousdiffirons.'25 n their conceptions of art, the two men wereequally far apart; for Courbet believed in a radically em-pirical art based on the individual's own experience, whileThiers collected all forms of traditional and often verycostly art and even commissioned copies of Renaissancemasterpieces. He had in fact reacted quite unfavourably toCourbet's own works when he saw them in the retrospectiveexhibition of 1867, as the critic Castagnary, who met himthere, later reported.26 It is true, however, that Courbetrescued much of Thiers's valuable collection from destruc-tion during the Commune, and that he in turn was

16 Compare the more aloof and formal conception in Pissarro's etched portrait,also done in I874; reproduced in REWALD: Paul Cizanne, Fig.45.17 The figures of C6zanne and Courbet are further linked through their olivedrab coats, the only areas of this colour in the composition; see the colour re-production in JEDLICKA: Pissarro, pl.g.18 See T. REFF: 'The Meaning of Manet's Olympia', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, er. 6,LXIII 1964], pp.I I I-13.

Not only Olympia, but her Negro maid, the wrestlerin the Japanese print, and two figures in the reproduction of Los Borrachos lsoseem to look towards Zola.19 D. COOPER: 'The Painters of Auvers-sur-Oise', THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE,xcvnII [1955], p.o104. On Courbet's influence see VENTURI: C6zanne, , p.-1, andNos.83, 87, II6, etc.20 See M. SCHAPIRO: 'Courbet and Popular Imagery', Journal of the Warburgand Courtauld Institutes, IV [1940-i], pp.164-91.

21 Both men were frequently caricatured at the time and would have beenreadily identified, even without accompanying texts; see, for example, j.DUCHE : Deux sicles d'histoire de France par la caricature, aris [1961e], ch.XI.22 This is consistent with the execution throughout, which is exceptionallyvigorous and, at the bottom, sketchy and unfinished.23 See G. MACK: Gustave Courbet, New York [1951], ch.XXX.24 On their roles during the Civil War see ibid., chs.XXIV and XXV; andH. MALO: Thiers, Paris [1932], ch.XXVII.25 'Une Entrevue de Thiers et de Courbet en 1870', Archives historiques, rtist-iques et littiraires, II, Paris [189o-i], pp.279-81; reprinted in P. COURTHION:Courbet aconti par lui-mime et par ses amis, n, Geneva [195o], pp.4o-3.26 CASTAGNARY: Fragments d'un livre sur Courbet', Gazette des Beaux-Arts,ser. 4, VII [1912], p.24. On the copies commissioned by Thiers see Collectiond'objets d'art de M. Thiers Igude u Musie du Louvre, Paris [1884], pp.79-I I I.

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PISSARRO'S PORTRAIT OF CEZANNE

protected from excessive reprisals while the latter was inoffice.

Pissarro would, of course, have been far more sympa-thetic to Courbet than to Thiers. He must already have heldat this time, although less overtly perhaps, the anarchistconvictions which later led him to collaborate with JeanGrave, the leader of the anarchist movement in France;Lucien even maintained that his father fled to England in1870 because he feared 'his known anarchist sympathieswould implicate him'.27 And in 1882 Renoir refused toparticipate in one of the Impressionist group exhibitions onthe grounds that 'exposer avec Pissarro, Gauguin, Guillaumin,c'est comme i j'exposais avec une sociale quelconque. Un peu plus,Pissarro inviterait e Russe Lavrof ou autre rFvolutionnaire.'28 husthe prominence which Pissarro gave to the figure of Courbetin the background of his portrait of Cezanne, its greater sizeand clarity compared with that of Thiers, was undoubtedlymotivated by political as well as artistic considerations.

The former may even have been the more important,since by this time Courbet was out of touch with, and largelyout of favour among, the advanced artists and writers, who

preferred the cooler, more consciously aesthetic realism ofManet. As early as 1867 the Goncourts had noted in theirjournal, apropos Courbet's exhibition: 'Le laid, toujours elaid, le laid bourgeois, t le laid sans son grand caractere, e laid sans labeauti du laid',29 although they themselves were often at-tacked for their preoccupation with the sordid aspects ofmodern life. A few years later, moreover, Courbet waswidely criticized for the prominent role he had played in theCommune by those who, like Manet himself, did not sharePissarro's radical political opinions; and as a result, hisfriend Piette concluded pessimistically, Of solidarity [amongartists] there is not a shred in France.'30 Hence no doubt theemphasis, in Pissarro's copy of the caricature of Courbet,on the man as

such,on his animated

expression, energeticstance, and plebeian tastes, which are more conspicuousthan the pictures behind him; whereas his opponent Thiers(on whom Cezanne seems to turn his back) is rendered as asmaller mass, whose face is without features and whoseformal attire alone is distinguishable.31

If Thiers himself receives rather little attention, the

newspaper in which Gill's caricature of him appeared isclearly identified through its masthead; it is L'Aclipse, asatirical weekly which was often outspoken in its criticismof official policies and personalities; and this choice too

probably reflects Pissarro's own position. One of the foun-ders and guiding spirits of L'lclipse

wasEugene Vermersch,

who had formerly directed Le Hanneton, its predecessor,

where his laudatory article on Courbet was published, andwho was later to edit the infamous Pare DuchIne, he mostviolent of the ephemeral sheets published by the Commun-ards.32 Moreover, Andre Gill, a regular contributor toL'lclipse and the author of the caricature of Thiers printedthere, was a close friend of Courbet's and shared his demo-cratic views. During the Commune he served as Conser-vator of the Luxembourg Museum and was one of the mostactive members of the Conf6deration des Artistes, of whichCourbet was President; and characteristically, when thelatter refused the cross of the Legion of Honour in 1870, Gillpublished a drawing in L'Pclipse to acknowledge the im-portance of his friend's gesture.33 Pissarro too must haveshared this sentiment, for according to Lucien, 'he dis-dained publicity and despised official recognition. He wasnever to accept the red ribbon. When told that someonehad received a medal or that another was selling well, hewould answer: "II n'y a que la peinture qui compte." 34 Thushis introduction of a caricature by Gill from L'tclipse, likethe one of Courbet opposite it in his portrait of Cezanne,undoubtedly reflects his own social as well as artistic con-

victions.The question now arises, to what extent do they alsoreflect Cizanne's? That he admired Pissarro's work, andparticularly the Route de Gisors, Maison du Ptre Galien, whichappears in the background of his portrait, is evident fromhis reproduction of it in the Nature Morte d a Soupidre Fig.23),painted a year or so later in his friend's studio. Indeed, oneof his first acts, after moving to Pontoise in 1872 and learn-ing of the latter's recently developed theory of colour, wasto paint a large, careful replica of another one of his land-scapes, 'pour qu'il puisse, en la copiant, uger des possibilitis decette nouvelle hiorie', as Lucien later recalled.35 And that heshared Pissarro's admiration for Courbet, whose powerfulart had

profoundlyinfluenced his own

developmentin the

186o's, and would therefore have approved of the introduc-tion of a caricature of him into the background of his port-rait, is also evident enough. Like Pissarro, he would surelyhave applauded Courbet's defiant rejection of the cross ofthe Legion of Honour; for in a letter to Zola he refers o thegeneral significance of this gesture: 'Ce n'est pas d moi defairel'lloge de ton livre, car tu peux ripondre omme Courbet que l'artisteconscient s'addresse des 6loges autrement ustes que ceux qui luiviennent du dehors.'36

There is no evidence, however, that*zanne would haveseen in Courbet the symbol of political radicalism, or inL'Jclipse the instrument of satirical protest, which appealedto Pissarro. For his rebelliousness was entirely personal and

artistic, manifesting itself in an extreme non-conformity ofmanner and dress and a disdain for all authority in mattersof art, perhaps initially as an unconscious rejection of his

27 See his memoir, quoted in MEADMORE: Lucien Pissarro, p.23; also B. NICOL-SON: 'The Anarchism of Camille Pissarro', The Arts, ii [1947], pp.-43-5 I.28 Letter to Durand-Ruel, 26th February 1882; see L. VENTURI: Les Archives de

l'Impressionisme, I, Paris [1939], p.122.29 Entry of I8th September 1867; E. and J. DE GONCOURT: Journal, viii, ed. R.

Ricatte, Monaco [I956], p.55. See also the entry of 31st December 1867 onCourbet's Sommeil; bid., pp.73-4. The account in 0. LARKIN: Courbet and His

Contemporaries', Science nd Society, m [1939], PP-57-63, ignores thefavourable

reactions.30 Letter to Pissarro, summer I873; quoted in REWALD: Camille Pissarro, p.24.See also Manet's letter to Duret, 20th August 1871, quoted in REWALD: History

of Impressionism, .271; and Degas's letter to Tissot, 3oth September 1871, his

Letters, Eng. trans., Oxford [1947], p.I2.31 Pissarro continued throughout his life to consider Courbet a model of the

independent artist; see his letter of 2nd May 1887, on Millet and Courbet, andthat of 4th December I895, on Alexandre Dumasfils and Courbet; C. PISSARRO:Lettres & on ils Lucien, ed. J. Rewald, Paris [1950], pp.142 and 392-3.-

32 See H. AVENEL: Histoire de lapressefranfaise, aris [1900], pp.556-8 and 641-3;and FONTANE: Andrd Gill, i, pp.-31-3 and 235-7.33 It is reproduced in ibid., pp.303-4. See also the memoir of Courbet in A. GILL:Vingt annies de Paris, Paris [1883], pp.I55-70; and MACK: Gustave Courbet,PP.254-5-34 Lucien's souvenirs, quoted in MEADMORE: Lucien Pissarro, p.23.35 Letter to Paul Gachet fils, 4th November 1927; Lettres mpressionistes uDocteur Gachet t &Murer, ed. P. Gachet, Paris [x957], PP.53-4. For the paintingssee VENTURI: Cizanne, No.I53; and PISSARRO and VENTURI: Camille Pissarro,No.123.36 Letter to Zola, undated (c.I878); P. CEZANNE: Correspondance, d. J. Rewald,Paris [1937], p.I36.

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23. Nature Morte a a Soupilre, by Paul Cezanne. Canvas, 65 by 81i 5 cm. (Mus&e du Louvre.)

L HANNETONILLUSTR, SATTRIQUEE T ITT RAIRt

'NM7

24. Gustave Courbet, by Leonce Petit. Caricature pub-lished in Le Hanneton, 3th June 1867.

25. La De'livrance, by Andrd Gill. Caricaturepublished in L'Eclipse, 4th August 1872.

26. Route de Gisors, La Maison du Pire Galien, by Camille Pissarro. Signed and dated 1873. Canvas, 32'7 by42'3 cm. (Collection Mr and Mrs John Warner, Washington D.C.)



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PISSARRO'S PORTRAIT OF CEZANNE

father's conservative values. And if such outspoken anar-chists as Pissarro and the pdre Tanguy, the colour merchantwho had nearly been executed for his participation in theCommune, were among his small circle of friends at thistime, they do not seem to have altered his fundamentallyapolitical position.37 On the contrary, as Cezanne grewolder he became more conventional in his opinions and pub-lic behaviour, resembling increasingly the prosperous bour-geois his father had been, and in his provincial isolationeven supporting the enemies of Dreyfus and reading reac-tionary newspapers like La Croix and Le Plerin - far removedindeed from L'Aclipse and Le Hanneton. During the sameyears Pissarro not only retained his anarchist and socialistconvictions, but expressed them more openly.38

Yet there was one area in which Cizanne, despite hisconservatism, shared Pissarro's radical views and indeedreferred to them explicitly, and this was in affirming hisbelief that an art of personal expression must be created in-dependently of all authority, even that of the greatest worksof the past. Exasperated by the excessive theorizing of EmileBernard, 'un intellectual, congestionne ar les souvenirs des musies

mais qui ne voit pas assez sur nature', he was led to exclaim:'Pissarro ne se trompait donc pas, il allait un peu loin cependant,lorsqu'il disait qu'ilfallait brtler les ndcropoles e l'art.'89 And toBernard himself he wrote in even stronger terms: 'L'itude

modifie notre vision a' un tel point, que l'humble et colossal Pissarrose trouve ustifi6 de ses theories anarchistes', heories which, it isworth recalling here, had also been popular among theRealists around Courbet in the I850o's.40 Pissarro was in turnprofoundly impressed by the authentically personal charac-ter of Cezanne's art, even when he recognized that it had

been created under his own influence, as he did in seeing thelatter's retrospective exhibition at Vollard's gallery in 1895:'II a subi mon influence a' Pontoise et moi la sienne . . . mais cequ'il y a de certain, chacun gardait la seule chose qui compte, sa"sensation".'41 And on another occasion he singled outCzanne and Courbet specifically as models of originality, ina manner which may further explain his introduction of animage of one into the background of a portrait of the other:'J'ai vu des paysages de Courbet dernidrement. C'est autrementmieux [que Legros] et bien da ui, Courbet Et Cizanne, tout en ayantdu caracttre, cela empiche-t-il qu'il soit lui ?' 42

Indeed, so uncompromising was Cezanne in his deter-mination to be entirely himself in his art and, especially atthe beginning of his career, in his behaviour and appearance,that he was looked on askance by some of the other Impres-sionists; so that Pissarro, while painting his portrait early in

I874, was also trying to persuade his colleagues to includeCezanne's work in their first group exhibition, which wasscheduled to open a few months later.43 It is this very inde-pendence, based on enormous inner strength and confidencein his art, which Pissarro emphasizes in portraying his

friend, who moreover was becoming aware of this himselfat the time, and could write, apropos his teacher's confi-dence in him: 'Je sais qu'il a bonne opinion de moi, qui ai tresbonne opinion de moi-mime. Je commence me trouver plus fort quetous ceux qui m'entourent.'44 And as we have seen, Pissarroconveys this quality not only in the figure itself, in its im-posing mass and intense, concentrated expression, but inhis ingenious treatment of the background, whose livelyfigures appear to pay it homage. As a result, his portraitseems the most intimate as well as the most profound of allthose we have of Cezanne.87 On Tanguy and C6zanne see REWALD: History of Impressionism, .30o and

p.307, n.23. Guillaumin, too, was a member of their circle, and Renoir's letter(cited above, n.28) implies that he shared Pissarro's political opinions.38 See R. L. and E. W. HERBERT: 'Artists and Anarchism', THE BURLINGTON

MAGAZINE, CII 1960], PP.477 and 517-19. On Cezanne's attitudes see REWALD:Paul Cdzanne, chs.XXII and XXIV.39 Letter to his son, 26th September Igo6; CEZANNE: Correspondance, .293.40 Letter to Emile Bernard, undated (1905); ibid., p.276. For the Realists'attitude see E. DURANTY: 'Notes sur l'art', Rdalisme, No.I [Ioth July 1856],pp.i-2. Later the Louvre was in fact partly burned by the Communards.

41 Letter to his son, 22nd November I895; PISSARRO: Lettres a son ils Lucien,pp.390-I.42 Letter to his son, 7th March 1898; ibid., pp.450-I. See also his letters of

13th and 21st November 1895 on C6zanne's originality; ibid., pp.386-8.43 See REWALD: History of Impressionism, .313. Cezanne did of course exhibit,but was little appreciated even by sympathetic critics; see ibid., pp.328-30.44 Letter to his mother, 26th September 1874; CEZANNE: Correspondance, p.122-3. On the significance of this passage see T. REFF: 'Cezanne and Hercules',Art Bulletin, XLVIII [1966], pp.42-3.

LEONID TARASSUK

Russian i s t o l s n th seventeenth century

THE question of when pistols were first used in Russia andwhen and where their manufacture was started there hasnot been examined in the literature of arms and armour. Theinvestigation of these problems is greatly complicated, by,first of all, the small number of written sources available thatshed light upon Russian sixteenth-century hand-firearms,and, secondly, by the absence from arms collections of pistols

of this period that can be firmly identified as Russian. Onthe other hand, it should be noted that the documentary andother material relating to the history of late-medieval Rus-sian arms and armour in general have never been adequatelystudied.

In comparison with references to Russian sixteenth-cen-tury firearms, the amount of evidence concerning such arms

633



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2 I. Portrait of PaulC~zanne, by Camille Pissarro. Canvas, 72 by 59 cm. (Collec-tion Baron Robert von Hirsch, Basle.)

22. Portrait of Emile Zola, by Edouard Manet. Canvas. igo by III cm.(Musde du Louvre.)

20. Moses avedfrom he Waters, by Edouard Manet. Canvas. 35 by 46 cm. (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.)

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REFF, T. Pissarro's Portrait of Cézanne, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, n.776, Nov. 1967

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Transcript of REFF, T. Pissarro's Portrait of Cézanne, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, n.776, Nov. 1967