Министерство образования Российской Федерации
Санкт-Петербургский государственныйинженерно-экономический университет
Институт туризма и гостиничного хозяйства
Курсоваяработа
На тему «The collection of French art in theHermitage»
по дисциплине «ИЭД»
Выполнила
студентка
5014 гр., 2 курса
Измакова Мария
Проверила
Н.А. Лаковская
2002 год
Introduction.
The Hermitage is one of the greatest museums in the world. Puttogether throughout two centuries and a half, the Hermitage collections ofworks of art (over 3,000,000 items) present the development of the worldculture and art from the Stone Age to the 20th century. Today the Museum iscreating its digital self-portrait to be displayed around the world. Thecollection of Western European art is regarded as one of the finest in theworld, and forms the nucleus of the Hermitage display. It occupies 120 rooms inthe four museum buildings, and reflects all the stages in the development ofart from the Middle Ages to the present day. The collection includes numerousworks by outstanding masters from Italy, Spain, Holland, Flanders, France,England, Germany, and other Western European countries.
The collection of French art in the Hermitage is exceptionally richand is the finest outside France among the museums of the world. More thenforty rooms are used to house the displays of painting, sculpture and variousitems of applied art.
French Art: 15th-18thcenturies.
TheHermitage collection of the 15th-18th century French painting is rich andvariable. It enables us to trace the development of different styles andschools of that time.
Rooms 272and 273. 15th-16thcentury art. At the end of the fifteenth century the separate feudal provinceswere united into a single French state governed by the king with in theframework of this national state there developed conditions favourable to thegrowth of culture. In the town of Limoges the production of enamels wasrevived after a long interval of time, not champleve as in the MiddleAges but painted. The very rich collection in the Hermitage allows us to tracethe development of the style of fifteenth and sixteenth century Frenchenamellers. Religious subjects were gradually replaced by mythological ones,medieval convention gave way to a realistic handling of themes, and grisaille(a painting executed entirely in monochrome, in a series of greys)superseded polychrome painting, thus making it possible to convey volume, bothof figures and of space. The Renaissance artists turned from objects connectedwith religious worship to the creation of decorative secular articles, such asdishes, jugs and plates.
Room 273. In a large cabinet thereare some faiences by Bernard Palissy (1510-1589), the inventor of a colored,transparent glazing which gave pottery additional beauty and durability. At onetime his decorative dishes with relief designs of fish, snakes and crayfish weretremendously popular; this was called Palissy’s rustic pottery. In a case bythe window there are exquisite sixteenth century faience vessels made in thesmall French town of Saint-Porchaire. They have been preserved up to thepresent day only as separate items, not as part of a set.
Room 274. Sixteenth century Frenchcourt art; the so-called Fontainebleau school, developed under the significantinfluence of Italian Mannerism (the Italian Mannerists Primaticcio and Rossoworked in France and painted decorative murals in the royal palace atFontainebleau). The Venus and Cupid relief was created by one of theleading representatives of the Fontainebleau school, Jean Goujon (1510-1568). The sculptor has skillfully worked into his composition, carved on an ovalmedallion, the graceful, somewhat elongated figure of the goddess presented ina fanciful pose. The distinctive originality of sixteenth century French artis seen more clearly in portrait painting. Two fine examples of the latter are Portraitof a Man by an unknown painter and Portrait of a Young Man by PierreDumoustier.
Room275-278.Early and mid-17th century art. During the seventeenth century anumber of different trends developed in French art. A painting by Simon Vouet(1590-1649), Portrait of Anne of Austria as Minerva, is a typicalexample of court art at the time of Louis XIII. Of great importance inseventeenth century French art was the work of the Le Nain brothers, whoportrayed peasant life with great sympathy and respect for the common man. The Dairywoman’sFamily was painted by Louis (1593-1648), the most talented of the brothers.The figures of the peasants in it are full of dignity, and the compact group stands out boldly against the greyist-silvery expanse of the masterfullypainted landscape. Also in this room is A Visit to Grandmother,attributed to Mathieu Le Nain.
Room 279. The Hermitage has a verylarge and valuable collection of the works of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), thefounder of Neoclassicism in seventeenth century French painting. In the centerof Poussin’s vision stands Man, endowed with reason, will and spiritual beauty.Such are the heroes of his numeous paintings on biblical, mythological andliterary themes the sefless Erminia in Tranced and Erminia, thefearless Esther of Esther before Ahasuerus, and Moses, the wise tribalchief in Moses Striking the Rock. Poussin’s rationalism andphilosophical outlook are revealed in his delightful Landscape withPolyphemus (1649). Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, is sitting on the topof a rock playing a pipe, with nymphs, satyrs and a ploughman tilling the land,all drinking in this song of nature. In his search for an ideal representationof nature Possin does not paint from life, but builds up his from separate detailsobserved in nature.
Room 280. Claude Lorrain(1600-1682) was a leading exponent of the classical landscape. Composedaccording to the rules of Classicism, Claude’s canvases are saturated withlight, which lends them a particular emotional quality. The famous series TheFour Time of the Day (Morning, Noon, Evening and Night) reflects theartist’s interest in light, which was something new for French art.
Room 281. late 17thcentury art. The official art of France during the golden age of the absolutemonarchy served the task of glorifying Louis XIV. Artistic life was regulatedby the Academy, at the head of which was the premier peintre to theking, Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), and after him Pierre Mignard (1612-1695).Mignard’s work is represented by the monumental Magnanimily of Alexander theGreat . After his victory over the Persian emperor Darius, Alexander entershis tent where he encounters the family of the vanquished emperor begging formercy. With a gesture of the hand the victor grants the captives their lives.The choice of subject was not fortuitous; in the figure of Alexander isglorified le roi soleil, Louis XIV. If Mignard extolled the king in thefigure of the great general, the sculptor Francois Girardon (1628-1715)portrayed him as Roman emperor. Girardon’s small bronze model for theunpreserved equestrian statue presents the king in the attire of an ancientRoman soldier and in a wig, such as worn in the seventeenth century.
In room 282there is a unique collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century WesternEuropean silver, for the most part French.
Rooms290-297contain items of French applied art, including furniture, Gobilin tapestries,faience, bronze, and porcelain. This collection is known throughout the worldon account of its exceptional wealth.
Room 283. this exhibitionintroduces the visitor to the French portrait painting of the second half ofthe seventeenth century. The eminent portrait painter Hyacinthe Rigaud(1659-1743) is represented by The Portrait of a Scholar.
The two ebony cupboards,decorated with bronze and tortoise-shell and used for keeping medals in, weremade in the workshop of Andre-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), a well-known furniture-maker.An original Boulle cupboard can be seen in room 293.
Room284-289.18th century art. This room contains several pieces by one ofFrance’s most eminent artists, Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) who, in his searchfor a realist approach, broke with hidebound academic convention. In his smallpaintings The Hardships of War and The Recreations of War Watteau portrayed the everyday life of a soldier rather than ostentatiousbattle scenes as his predecessors had done. The Savoyard with a Marmot(1716), a picture of a simple-hearted young traveling musician, also confirmsWatteau’s interest in the simple phenomena of life. The blue expanse of theclear, fresh sky, the buildings of the small town, and the silhouettes of thebare trees make up a landscape in which the glowing colours of autumn aredominant. Watteau became famous as a painter of so-called fetes galantes. Anexample of this type of painting is theEmbarrassing Proposal, paintedabout 1716. Some member s of fashionable society are amusing themselveschatting in the shade of the gossamery foliage; the casually graceful posturesof the young ladies and their admirers convey subtle, almost imperceptibleshades of emotion. Exquisite colouring and delicate execution distinguish oneof the artist’s masterpieces, a small painting A Capricious Woman, inwhich the spectator encounters the same world of superficial feelings.
The exhibition in room 285and 286 presents examples of Rococo court art whose only raison d’etre,according to the art remark of a contemporary, was to please. Venuses, cupids,shepherd boys and shepherd girls are the central figures of the many works ofFrancois Boucher (1703-1770), a court painter of Louis XV. Boucher’s PastoralScene, The Triumph of Venus and The Toilet of Venus, confinedin their colours to attractive pinks and blues, are very typical of Rococo art,of which he was a distinguished exponent. In room 285 particular mention should be made of the work ofEtienne-Maurice Falconet (1716-1791), who executed the equestrian statue ofPeter the Great (“Bronze Horseman”) in St Petersburg. His Cupid, Floraand Winter, in which elegance is combined with the true-to-life qualityof the figures, are evidence of the sculptor’s faithful adherence to realisttraditions. In a large cabinet by the window, among some Sevres porcelains, arethe unglazed white porcelain (biscuit) statuettes Cupid, Psyche and WomanBathing, made from models of Falconet.
Room 286containsa number of portraits by Jean-Marc Nattier and Louis Tocque, painters who atone time enjoyed considerable popularity. Falconet’s Winter isdistinguished from his earlier works its greater severity of style; this isrelated to the growing influence of Classicism in French art during the lastthirty years of the eighteenth century.
Room 287. Jean-Baptiste SimeonChardin (1699-1779) was a leading representative of the realist movement. His Washerwomanand Grace before Meat (1744) take the onlooker into the sphere ofactivities and everyday problems and chores of a poor French family. Chardinwas an outstanding painter of still life, which was unknown to Frencharistocratic art as an independent genre. The appeal of the Still Life withthe Attributes of the Arts, lies in the austere conception of thecomposition and the subtle, skilful use of colour.
The center of the room isoccupied by the marble statue of the great man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire(1781), created by the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). Theeighty-four-year-old Voltaire sat for him in 1778, but the May of that year thegreat man was dead. With ruthless veracity the hand of the sculptor portrayedthe aged, weak body, the hands disfigured by sickness, the crooked spine andtoothless mouth. But upon the face of Voltaire, with its high brow, ironic smileand the poignant look of the sharp eyes, is the seal of an immortal intellectand undying energy. The philosopher, seated in an armchair, is dressed in agarment which reminds us of the ancient toga, and upon his head he wears anancient fillet.
Also of interest are theportrait busts of Diderot and Falconet carved in marble by Marie-Anne Collot(1748-1821). Collot came with her teacher Falconet to Russia, where he tookpart in the work on the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. It wsa from hermodel that the head of Peter was made.
Room 288. The paintingParalytic Helped by His Children, one of the most famous canvases byJean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), was considered to be an affirmation ofbourgeois virtue and a protest against the depravity of the aristocracy andthe frivolity of Rococo art. Another example of this type of moralizing sceneis his painting Widow Visiting the Cure. Greuze’s artistic merit is seenfully in such works as The Spoilt Child, Girl with a Doll and YoungMan in a Hat.
Three paintings — TheStolen Kiss, The Farmer’s Children and The Lost Forfeit, or the Captured Kiss — illustrate the work of the fine painter of the second half of the eighteenthcentury Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806). These are also some paintings by thefamous landscape painter Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789).
Room 289. In the White Room(designed by Briullov, 1838) there are paintings, sculptures and items ofapplied art from the last thirty years of the eighteenth century. During theseyears Hubert Robert (1733-1808) enjoyed great popularity; ancient ruins werethe favourite theme of his decorative landscapes.
French Art: 18th-20thcenturies.
French painting of the 19th to early20th century is represented by approximately 850 items. Chronologically, thissection begins with works by artists from the late 18th and early 19th century,whose contributions to the history of art vary enormously, but whose worksembody the artistic aspirations of the age: Lethiere, Lefebre, Caraffe,C.Vernet, Girodet, P.Chauvin, artists who were very popular during the time ofthe Empire such as Guerin, F.Gerard and others.
Room 314. A new chapter in Frenchhistory was opened in 1789 when the feudal Bourbon monarchy collapsed. Theartistic movement which expressed the revolutionary aspirations of theprogressive factions of French society was Neoclassicism. The Death of Cotoof Utica by Guillaume Lethiere (1760-1832) gives us some us some idea ofthe distinctive features of this movement. Cato, a confirmed Republican,commits suicide upon hearing of the establishment of Caesar’s dictatorship; thefigure of the hero, who preferred death to the loss of freedom, was consonantwith the aspirations of the time.
During the First Empireartist began to choose idyllic or allegorical themes. Guerin’s paintings Morpheusand Iris and Sapho and two sculptures, Chaudet’s Cypressand Canova’s Dancer, illustrate the fundamental changes in Neoclassicalart.
In the same room is AntoineGros’s (1771-1835) Napoleon upon the Bridge at Arcole. This painting isbased upon the actual event at the time of the Italian campaign of 1797; duringthe battle of Arcole Bonaparte, a young general at that time, was the first torush forward and, leading his men, began the assault on the bridge. In Gros’shandling the figure of Napoleon has lost the rhetorical quality of Lethiere’shero, it contains a greater feeling of vitality, greater energy, thosequalities which later received expression in the paintings of the Romantics.
Room 332. The leading figure inFrench Neoclassicism was Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). From his late canvas Sapphoand Phaon (1809) it is evident that at the time of the Empire no tracesremained of the revolutionary spirit of the former member of the NationalConvention, the creator of the Death of Marat.
Room 332. In the Portrait ofJosephine (Napoleon’s first wife) Francois Gerard (1770-1837) presents anew type of formal portrait, in which he skillfully combines the austerity of aclassical composition with a simple and unaffected rendering of the appearanceof his model. One of the first artists to portray the everyday life of thebourgeois society of his time was Louis Boilly, who painted the small picture AGame of Billiards.
Jean-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), a staunch adherent of Classicismand an ardent admirer of antiquity and Raphael, was among the most subtle andcomplex artists of the mid-nineteenth century. The only painting by him in theHermitage is the portrait of the Russian diplomat Count Guryev, painted in 1821and notable for the austere formal arrangement and the strength and assuranceof line.
Room 329. Eugene Delacroix(1798-1863), the major painter of the Romantic movement, is represented in theHermitage by two late works. Lion Hunt in Morocco (1854) and ArabSaddling His Horse (1855). One glance at these paintings is sufficient foran understanding of the great difference between them and the paintingsproduced by the artists of the Classical school. Painted in bright, freshcolours, Delacroix’s canvases are filled with the ardent breath of life, an asense of the grandeur of nature.
One of the representatives of the Romantic movement in sculpture isthe animalist Antoine Barye (1796-1875), the creator of the bronze groups ALion and a Snake and A Panther and an Antelope. Barye imbues hisworks with great expressiveness, revealing in them the harsh laws of the animalkingdom.
Room 328, 325, 324 and 322. In the 1830s a realist trend appeared in French painting, heraldedby the Barbizon school of landscape painters. This name was given to a group ofartists who had settled in the village of Barbizon near Paris, where theyfaithfully reproduced in their paintings their native countryside. There is a largecollection of landscapes of the Barbizon school in the Hermitage. Its leadingfigure, Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), showed, even in one of his early works, Viewin the Vicinity of Granville, that the simple, visually unprepossessing
Countryside of Normandycould become a source of inspiration. Close to Rousseau in their perception ofnature are Jules Dupre, Charles Francois Daubigny, Diaz de la Pena, CharlesJacque and Constant Troyon.
Room 321. An important place inthe history of French landscape painting belongs to Camille Corot (1796-1875).A profound, subtle understanding of nature connected him with the Barbizonpainters, but unlike them Corot did not strive for an accurate reproduction oflandscape. His poetic landscapes are echoes of the artist’s own experiences.“If you are really moved,” said Corot, “the sincerity of your feelings will befelt by others.”
The work of the leadingpainters of the realist movement, Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) and GustavCourbert (1819-1877), developed in the 1850s and ‘60s. Millet was the first among his contemporaries to depict French village life, with what was thenunusual degree of profundity and veracity. The Hermitage possesses only one ofhis paintings, Peasant Women Carrying Firewood.
Courbert, an active figurein the Paris Commune, was the major representative of the realist movement inpainting and ardently defended the right of the artist to portray contemporarylife. The only Courbert in the Hermitage is the Landscape with a Dead Horse which,because of its poor state of preservation, does not give us any real idea ofhis skill as an artist. The choice of theme in this painting represents achallenge to the “official” art, because Courbert maintains here that theartist should be concerned with life in all its diversity.
Room 320. Towards the1870s Impressionism reached its peak in France, the movement having originatedas a protest against the rigid convention which prevailed in official art. TheImpressionists emerged as heirs to the realist traditions and enriched paintingwith their fresh, joyful colours, their representation of light, and exquisiterendering of atmosphere. They drew only from life capturing the spontaneity andnaturalness of the first visual impression. In conveying the wealth of colourin the real around them Impressionists attempted to catch and to record itsface, forever changing under the play of light.
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) embodies the principles and methods ofImpressionism in portrait painting. Renoir did not attempt to reveal in hisportraits intricate feelings or emotions; he caught the spontaneous movement,the half-smile, the gentle reverie of his model. Unaffected animation andsimplicity characterize his Girl with a Fan and Portrait of the Actress JeanneSamary. Renoir’s colours are notable for their freshness, the richness ofhues, and the extremely delicate transition from one tone to the next.
The work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is represented by some pastels-WomanCombing Her Hair, After the Bath, Dancers and Woman at Her Toilet.
Room 319. One of theleading Impressionist painters was Claude Monet (1840-1926), whose picture Impression:Sunrise, exhibited in Paris in 1874, gave the name to the whole movement.An early work of his, Lady in the Garden (1867), reflects the firstsuccess of the new manner of painting. Abandoning black and subdued tones,Monet painted the shade in color depending on the surrounding milieu. Thewoman’s white dress in the shade of the parasol, for example, acquires a bluishhue against the background of the green foliage and the blue sky. In thelandscape Pond at Montgeron (1876-77) the countryside is filled with the subtle, barely perceptible movement of currents of moist air, in which theoutlines of things melt into nothing. Gradually the rendering of light and airbecomes Monet’s main them and he portrays one and the same subject several timein different lights, stripping things of their of their materiality.
Room 318. Paris streetlife with its characteristic bustle, commotion and endless flow of traffic andpedestrians was captured by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) in his paintings TheBoulevard Montmartre in Paris and La Place du Theatre-Francais inParis.
The eleven paintings by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)make it possible toobserve the main stages in the development of the artist’s work. Unlike theImpressionists Cezanne tried to reveal the materiality and plasticity ofwhaterver he deplicted. Typical in this way is the landscape Banks of theMarne (1888), in which he painted a tranquil scene from nature, as throughtrying to immortalize on canvas her immutable qualities. Still-life paintingwas Cezanne’s favourite genre. His still lifes are simple: a wooden table, twoor three faience vessels, some fruit, all these objects possessing some specialdistinctive corporeity peculiar to Cezanne. To preserve their “eternal”qualities-weight and volume-Cezanne made the form geometric, building it upwith thick strokes of bright green, orange and blue.
Rooms 317 and 316 containexamples of the work of the Post-Impressionist painters Van Gogh and Gauguin.
Room 317. The Hermitagehas four paintings by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890): View of the Arles,Ladies of Arles (Memory of the Garden at Etten), Bushes, and Cottageswith Thached Roofs, painted during the last years of the artist’s life. Cottageswith Thatched Roofs (1890) is imbued with the feeling of anxiety whichovercame him on seeing the poor dwellings, clinging to the slope of the hill.Van Gogh’s characteristic dramatic tension is felt in the vividness of thecolours, the restless rhythm of the thick, energetic brush-strokes, and theexpressiveness of line.
Displayed in the same room are Tropical Forest, The ChopinMemorial in the Luxemburg Gardens and View to the Left of the Gate of Vanves byHenri Rousseau (1844-1910), usually referred to as a Primitive.
Room 316. The fifteenpaintings in the Hermitage by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) belong to his so-calledTahiyian period. In his pictures painted in the tropics Gauguin extols a worlduntouched by “civilization” and full of the exotic, where people live inharmony with nature. Gauguin’s paintings are decorative, the areas of localcolours lie on the canvas in motionless patches, and the contours of thefigures and objects-sometimes smooth and fluid, sometimes exquisitelydelicate-give the picture the semblance of a coloured pattern (TahitianPastorals, Woman Holding a Fruit, Miraculous Source, The Idol, etc.)
Room 343-345. Thethirty-seven pictures by Henry Matisse (1869-1954), painted between 1900 and1913, make it possible to illustrate the special features of the work of oneof the leading twentieth century French artists. The Family Group, Red Roomand other of Matisse’s works are striking in their decorative quality and theirsaturated colours. Rejecting a chiaroscuro treatment, Matisse simplifies andschematizes his figures and objects, building up his composition on thecontrasting juxtaposition of large areas of pure colour. The radiantcolourfulness of Matisse’s canvases produces a feeling of joy and gaiety.
Room 346 and 347. PabloPicasso (1881-1973) was an eminent French progressive, the winner of theInternational Peace Prize and of the International Lenin Prize “for theStrengthening of Peace between Nations”. The development of Picasso as anartist was unusually complex and contradictory. The Hermitage collection,consisting of thirty-seven works, helps illustrate the early stages of thisdevelopment. In one of the best paintings of his early period, WomanDrinking Absinth (1901), Picasso created a type that evokes a deep sense oftragedy. The Portrait of Soler and The Visit (Two Sisters) belongto the so-called Blue Period (1901-1904); his Pink Period (1905-1906) isrepresented by a gouache drawing, Boy with a Dog.
Between 1906 and 1907 Picasso was absorbed with analysis of form andreduced everything to a simplified volume similar to a cube, a sphere or acylinder. He became one of the founder of a new tendency in art, Cubism, typical of which are such works as Woman with a Fan, Three Women, Pitcherand Bowl and others. After this Picasso arrived at a complete break-up ofform; he destroyed volume and created free compositions from planes and lines.
Rooms 348 and 349. Amongthe paintings of early twentieth century artist are works by Andre Derain(1880-1954) –The Grove, The Lake and Harbour in Provence; MauriceVlaminck (1876-1958) – A View of the Seine; Jean-Edouard Vuillard(1868-1940) – A Room and Children; Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) – EarlySpring and A Corner of Paris; Louis Valtat (1869-1952) – Pleasure Partyin the Garden; Maurice Denis (1870-1943) – Spring Landscape with Figures.
Room 350 contains a largecollection of pictures by the fine landscape painter Albert Marquet(1875-1947),whose greatest love was Paris and who painted her streets andsquares, quays and bridges over the Seine. The colours in his landscapes arealways true to life and objects are represented in a very generalized way.
Displayed in the same room are landscapes Leopold Survage(1879-1968) and Andre Fougeron (born 1913). The Bridge was painted bythe latter in 1964. Glowing colours and great vitality distinguish the RedDancer and Lady in a Black Hat by Cornelius Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968).
In room 350 are also shown paintings by Fernand Leger (1881-1955), — Carte postale and Composition.
The Hermitage exhibition of French art also includes marblesculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and bronzes by Aristide Maillol(1861-1944)