Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting

Tinterow, Gary, and Geneviève Lacambre, with Deborah L. Roldán, Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Jeannine Baticle, Marcus B. Burke, Ignacio Cano Rivero, Mitchell A. Codding, Trevor Fairbrother, María de los Santos García Felguera, Stéphane Guégan, Ilse Hempel Lipschutz, Dominique Lobstein, Javier Portús Pérez, H. Barbara Weinberg, and Matthias Weniger (2003)

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Description

This sumptuously illustrated book accompanies a groundbreaking exhibition—the first of such scale and depth to be organized around the subject—that traces the roots of Modernism in mid-nineteenth-century French Realism. In 1804, at the dawn of the French Empire, there were not more than a handful of Spanish paintings in public collections in France. During the course of the nineteenth century, however, French collectors and museums assembled substantial holdings of works by such Spanish masters as El Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Murillo, and Goya, while French writers and artists—among them Hugo and Baudelaire, Géricault, Delacroix, Millet, Courbet, Degas, and especially Manet—came to understand, appreciate, and even emulate Spanish painting of the Golden Age. Here approximately tow hundred works by French and Spanish artists chart the development of this cultural influence and map a fascinating shift in the paradigm of painting, from Idealism to Realism, from Italy to Spain, from Renaissance to Baroque. Above all, these images demonstrate how direct contact with Spanish painting fired the imagination of nineteenth-century French artists and brought about the triumph of Realism in the 1860s, and with it the foundation for modern art.

American painting between the Civil War and World War I reflected a keen appreciation of contemporary French styles, and as there was a great deal of Spain in the art of Paris, Spain appeared in American art as well. Four major artists—James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, William Merritt Chase, and John Singer Sargetn—epitomize the American enthusiasm for and appropriation of Spanish styles, largely under French influence, between 1860 and 1915. A number of American artists traveled to Spain for firsthand exposure to the country, its people, and its artistic heritage and contributed to the intense Hispanisme—or fascination with Spain—that engaged international artists and writers during the period. A broad selection of American works, exhibited only in New York, reveals the pervasive influence not only of French painting but also of the French taste for Spanish art as well.

The nineteenth century also witnessed the formation of two great cultural institutions, the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The interwoven histories of these renowned depositories, including the political upheavals and vicissitudes of collections that were assembled and disassembled, which so influenced their growth, are explored alongside the cultural phenomenon of Spanish influence.

Table of contents

Curators of the Exhibition
Director's Foreword
Sponsor's Statement
Acknowledgments
List of Lenders
Contributors to the Catalogue

Raphael Replaced: The Triumph of Spanish Painting in France
Gary Tinterow

The Discovery of the Spanish School in France
Geneviève Lacambre

Seville's Artistic Heritage during the French Occupation
Ignacio Cano Rivero

The Origins of the Museo del Prado
María de los Santos García Felguera and Javier Portús Pérez

Goya and France
Juliet Wilson-Bareau

Goya and the French Romantics
Ilse Hempel Lipschutz

The Galerie Espagnole of Louis-Philippe
Jeannine Baticle

From Ziegler to Courbet: Painting, Art Criticism, and the Spanish Trope under Louis-Philippe
Stéphane Guégan

Manet and Spain
Juliet Wilson-Bareau

American Artists' Taste for Spanish Painting
H. Barbara Weinberg

A Legacy of Spanish Art for America: Archer M. Huntington and the Hispanic Society of America
Mitchell A. Codding

Appendix 1: Nineteenth-Century French Copies after Spanish Old Masters
Dominique Lobstein

Appendix 2: The Dresden Remains of the Galerie Espagnole: A Fresh Look (at the) Back
Matthias Weniger

Chronology
Deborah L. Roldán

Catalogue

Spanish Artists

French Artists

American Artists

Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Geneviève Lacambre is Conservateur Général, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Gary Tinterow is Engelhard Curator of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Deborah L. Roldán is Research Associate, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Press reviews

Choice Reviews Online

"... exceptional ... Superb reproductions pair with scholarly chronology, catalog, appendixes, and bibliography ... a volume that should stimulate new thinking about concepts as varied as artistic influence and the spoils of war. Required reading for all students of the art of Spain, France, and the US from the 17th century through the 20th."

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Geneviève Lacambre

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Related Content

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (17)

Essays (13)

Édouard Manet (1832–1883)

American Impressionism

Edgar Degas (1843–1917): Painting and Drawing

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (1541–1614)

Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment

French Decorative Arts during the Reign of Louis XIV (1654–1715)

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Romanticism

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916): Painting

Velázquez (1599–1660)

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916)

Timelines (4)

France, 1600–1800 A.D.

France, 1800–1900 A.D.

Iberian Peninsula, 1600–1800 A.D.

The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.

Exhibition

Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting

This exhibition examines the impact of Spanish painting on French artists, presenting some 150 paintings by masters of Spain's Golden Age—Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, El Greco, and Zurbarán—as well as masterpieces by the nineteenth-century French artists they influenced, among them Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Degas, and, most notably, Manet.

Napoleon's Spanish campaigns (1808–14) marked a turning point in the French perception of Spanish painting, which, up to that time, had been virtually ignored and poorly represented in the French royal collections. Yet, only two decades later, in 1838, King Louis Philippe inaugurated the Galerie Espagnole at the Louvre, placing on view his extraordinary collection of hundreds of Spanish paintings. Although this collection was sold in 1853, these paintings left an indelible impression in France and by the 1860s, the French taste for Spanish painting was perceptible at each Paris Salon. The exhibition also includes works by American artists such as Sargent, Eakins, Whistler, and Cassatt, who studied in France but learned to paint like Spaniards. At the core of the exhibition is the "Spanish" work of Édouard Manet, whose career thoroughly reveals the importance of Spanish painting by the middle of the nineteenth century.

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