When I began my studies, I knew nothing about Paul Cézanne. The three books which formed the foundation of my knowledge of his life and works were the biographies by Gerstle Mack (1942) and John Rewald (1948), along with Sir Lawrence Gowing's Cézanne: The Early Years 1859-1872, which was recently published in 1988.
Both Rewald and Mack's books included the story of an important lost painting, and thanks to the reporting of art critic Théodore Véron, there was a description of the painting exhibited by Cézanne in the Salon of 1882 published in the Dictionnaire Véron.
John Rewald included a translation of that description in his comments on Portrait de M. L. A..., and my painting fit that description.
I have based my research in support of my attribution on historical and biographical information, as well as my analysis of the artist's paintings and drawings. The fact that my painting matched the description of Portrait de M. L. A... added another facet to my studies.
I have since titled my painting The Fisherman.
Gowing's catalog for the traveling exhibition featured some excellent color plates, and Sir Lawrence's biographical essay on the early works, written from an artist's perspective, was notably more descriptive compared to Rewald and Mack.
Among the early works, the series of portraits of the artist's Uncle Dominique quickly rendered with the palette knife clearly reflect an evolutionary process which I believe culminated with The Fisherman.
In addition to Gowing, there were five other contributors including John Rewald, yet the lost painting was not mentioned. However, there was a chronological entry for the year 1882 (p.216): "Admitted to the Salon as 'pupil' of Guillemet; exhibits a portrait of a man (? a Self-Portrait)".
This information had been a longstanding chronological entry for 1882 from Rewald's various biographies (the self-portrait revision was first added in 1968).
While it offered no new information, it seemed to indicate that the question of the identity of Portrait de M. L. A... remained open.
John Rewald wrote the introduction for Sir Lawrence's catalogue, and there was one passage which seized my attention just as forcefully as the story of Portrait de M. L. A... :
"Nevertheless, Gowing's minute scrutiny of Cezanne's early work has enabled him to establish a certain succession, to detect elements of continuity that reduce what would otherwise appear to be capriciousness. He allows us to follow the young master in the conquest of his own personality, in, one might say, the harnessing of his unruly temper. But there still remains a factor of uncertainty that even Sir Lawrence's gifted insights cannot elucidate, namely, the unquestionably numerous works- major as well as minor that were destroyed by the artist himself (or possibly even his father) or have simply been lost. With them has disappeared many a link that might otherwise have completed the chain of Cezanne's evolution. To mention this does not minimise Lawrence Gowing's achievements. It serves rather to illustrate some of the insurmountable problems he encountered in the pursuit of his heroic task."
It felt like Rewald was evoking the mystery surrounding the Salon of 1882, a tale he had incorporated into every edition of his biography of Cézanne.
Rewald's words provided me a point to focus on; if The Fisherman represented a missing link, it should provide a filter to identify the evolutionary process it was part of. Studies which had meant nothing to others without the context of the lost work should become apparent as the pieces of the puzzle are revealed.
In my search for the pieces of the evolutionary puzzle, studying the artist's drawings became a top priority. Back in the pre-Internet late 1980s, tracking down color plates of the artist's paintings, exploring the artist's drawings, and gathering information about the Salon of 1882 was only possible through books. Even if I knew which books I was looking for, finding them was often a challenge.
My fourth purchase was a second-hand set of The Drawings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné by Adrien Chappuis. I scrutinized the plates volume countless times, cover to cover, from all angles for associated studies.
Over the decades, as more books were digitized and made accessible online, my Portrait de M. L. A... database expanded, but the Salon of 1882 continued to remain a mystery with every new comment I discovered.
Cezanne's nineteen-year struggle to be exhibited in the Paris Salon spanned a remarkable evolution in his art, transitioning from the dark and somber tones of the 1860s to the vibrant sunshine and colors of the 1870s. By the spring of 1882, regardless of the provocative nature of some of his earlier submissions, he knew that even if the jury rejected his work, his friend and jury member Antoine Guillemet would ensure it was displayed.
Explication Des Ouvrages De Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture, Gravure Et Lithographie Des Vivants Exposés Au Palais Des Champs-Elysées Le 1 mai 1882 - Charles De Mourgues Fréres - Paris, 1882
The Salon archives website boasts detailed records going back centuries and features a "Submit an Archive Request" form. However, after several requests in which I included the information for #520 from the 1882 Salon catalogue, I was informed that they had not retained any documentation for Cezanne's Portrait de M. L. A... beyond the information available in the catalogue.
If it had been retained, the registration form for the submission would have included the full title and the size of the work, the latter of which would at least clarify everything it wasn't.
Without the Salon registration form, the complete title of Portrait de M. L. A... may never be known, a fate shared by many other portraits the titles of which had been abbreviated. There appears to have been some level of favoritism involved, because some portraits show the full names, while many are abbreviated. The abbreviated titles appear to be limited to the names of portrait subjects.
The other uncertainty of the abbreviations were the "..." ("trois petits points", "three little dots" in French or "points de suspension") following the final initial, and whether the final initial represented a limit to a lengthy title, or the portrait subject's surname.
(Some forenames or surnames may be hyphenated, so it is possible to have more than two initials for either the forename or surname, but there would be no spaces between hyphenated initials)
I thought it would be an easy thing to verify the full names of the abbreviated titles by searching the various artist's works online. It was in-fact a laborious forty-four pages later before I found an artist famous enough to locate the full titles of his works exhibited in the Salon of 1882, and I was able to verify from their respective museum exhibition lists the full titles, and that both of Henri Fantin-Latour's portraits were the ones exhibited in the Salon. I found that in both cases the final initials represented the surnames:
Henri Fantin-Latour
#1007 Portrait de Mme H. L.... (Portrait de Madame Henri Lerolle - Cleveland Museum of Art)
#1008 Portrait de Mme L. M.... (Portrait de Madame Léon Maître - Brooklyn Museum)
In our case, the intials in "Portrait de M. L. A..." should represent "M" for Monsieur, a single forename beginning with "L", and a surname beginning with "A".
Among the important resources I eventually located online was a copy of the only known first-hand contemporary description of Portrait de M. L. A... written by Théodore Véron, reporting on the Salon of 1882 for the Dictionnaire Véron.
I had hoped it might offer more information than what was reported in English by Rewald et al, it did not. However it did preserve the original French text:
"CEZANNE (Paul) "M. L. A." est assez largement brossé dans la pâte . L'ombre de l'orbite et celle de la joue droite promettent, avec la qualité de ton des lumiéres, un coloriste dans l'avenir".
(Dictionnaire Véron - Chez M. Bazin - Paris, 1882 p. 113)
So...from the year 1882 we have the abbreviated title from the 1882 Salon catalogue listing, and we have a basic description from the Dictionnaire Véron. It is important to keep in mind that the abbreviated title as shown in the Salon catalogue was 'Portrait de M. L. A...' and according to French typography rules the spaces between the initials must be maintained.
That said, many writers have rearranged the initials in various ways, which is only problematic if they try to theorize the full names based on the rearranged initials.
While the focus of this page is to compile every published comment I can locate on the subject of Portrait de M. L. A..., in full transparency I intend to establish the plausibility of my painting as that lost portrait. That said, I will keep my comments on The Fisherman to a minimum while presenting the list and discussing the published comments based on historical and biographical facts.
I invite the reader to consider these historical comments regarding Portrait de M. L. A..., and I offer the reminder that whichever work it had been, it was not just a painting to be exhibited, it carried a message.
I hope we can all agree that on the day that Cézanne submitted it to the Salon of 1882, Portrait de M. L. A... would have represented what the artist considered to be his most important painting.
Following the comments published in the Dictionnaire Véron in 1882, it would be twenty four years later before Theodore Duret would become the next writer to comment on Cézanne and the Salon of 1882, although he had done so without mentioning Portrait de M. L. A... by name.
"Cézanne philosophically accepted the contempt he was subjected to. The idea never occurred to him for a single instant to modify his style in any way, to come closer to common taste. Once removed from public contact by renouncing his participation in exhibitions, he painted without worrying about what might be happening around him. When we say that he renounced participating in exhibitions, this indeed strictly applies to the Impressionist exhibitions, which he missed after 1877, but there is, however, one exception. Having rekindled his desire to enter the Salons in 1882, he sent a portrait of a man to the Salon that year. Guillemet, one of his friends from his apprenticeship in Paris, then a member of the jury, had it accepted. The 1882 Salon was thus the only one that, by chance, saw a work by Cézanne."
"Cézanne prit philosophiquement son parti du mépris dont il était l’objet. L’idée ne lui vint pas un seul instant de modifier en quoi que ce soit sa manière, pour se rapprocher du goût commun. Une fois retiré du contact public par la renonciation de participer aux expositions, il peint sans s’in quiéter de ce qui peut se passer autour de lui. Quand nous disons qu’il a renoncé à participer aux expositions, cela s’applique en effet rigoureusement aux expositions des Impressionnistes auxquelles il manque après 1877, mais il existe cependant une exception. Repris en 1882 de son désir de pénétrer aux Salons, il envoya un portrait d'homme au Salon de cette année. Guillemet, un de ses amis des temps d'apprentissage à Paris, alors membre du jury, le fit rece voir. Le Salon de 1882 a été ainsi le seul qui, par aventure, ait vu une oeuvre de Cézanne."
(Histoire des Peintres Impressionnistes - H. Floury Paris 1906 pp 184-85)
("a man's portrait")
Several years later in 1910, Duret revisited the subject of the Salon of 1882;
“Cezanne regarded the scorn of which he was the object with much philosophy. The idea of modifying his style in any particular, in order to accommodate himself to the average taste, never occurred to him for a single moment. When once he had withdrawn from contact with the public and ceased to take part in exhibitions, he painted without any preoccupation as to what was going on round about him. When we say that he ceased to take part in exhibitions, the statement is strictly true of the exhibitions of the Impressionists, from which he was always absent after 1877, but otherwise there was one exception. In 1882, the desire to force his way into the official exhibition again took hold of him, and accordingly he sent a man's portrait to the Salon of that year. Guillemet, one of the friends of his student days in Paris, was then a member of the jury, and secured its acceptance. By this chance the Salon of 1882 was the only one to which a work of Cezanne's was ever admitted.”
(Manet and the French Impressionists – J.B. Lippincott Company 1910 pp. 184-185)
("a man's portrait")"
In 1910 James Huneker also mentioned the Salon of 1882:
"The amazing part of it all is that he produced for more than thirty years and seldom sold a canvas, seldom exhibited. His solitary appearance at an official salon was in 1882, and he would not have succeeded then if it had not been for his friend Guillaumin[sic], a member of the selecting jury, who claimed his rights and passed in, amid execrations, both mock and real, a portrait by Cezanne."
(Promenades of An Impressionist - Charles Scribner's Sons - New York, 1910 p. 8)
("a portrait")
Charles Louis Borgmeyer knew the story in 1913:
"It was perhaps he who among the impressionists was most criticised. He was so badly treated, so misunderstood, that he gave up in despair after exhibiting a few times with them, and withdrew from all public exhibitions, with one exception. In 1882 he sent a portrait to the Salon, and for the first and only time was accepted, probably through his friendship with Guillaudin[sic], who was on the jury.
(The Master Impressionists - The Fine Arts Press - Chicago, 1913 p. 134)
("a portrait")
Writer André Leclerc added another small clue in 1914:
“The Salon continued to ignore Cézanne until 1882, when the influence of a friend he had in the jury, the painter Guillemet, allowed him to obtain entry for a small portrait”.
“Le Salon continue à ignorer Cézanne jusqu'en 1882, lorsque l'influence d'un ami qu'il a dans le jury, le peintre Guillemet, lui permet d'obtenir l'entrée pour un petit portrait”.
(Cézanne - Editions Hyperion - English text, 1914 - p. 11)
("a small portrait")
Gustave Coquiot also joined the conversation in 1914:
"But, despite these tributes, Cézanne would have liked to be received at the official Salon, at Bouguereau's salon, as he called it. To "impress Aix" and also to "em... Bouguereau," M. Vollard tells us. Refused all the time; (the dry guillotine, Cézanne said), he nevertheless had the pleasure, in 1882, of thus annoying Bouguereau, by appearing at the official Salon with a portrait of a man, thanks, it is true, to his friend Guillemet, who, as a member of the jury, imposed Cézanne's canvas as being the work of one of his students".
"Mais, malgré ces hommages, Cézanne eût voulu être reçu au Salon officiel, au salon de Bouguereau, comme il disait. Pour "épater Aix" et aussi pour " em.... Bouguereau" nous dit M. Vollard. Refusé tout le temps ; (la guillotine sèche, disait Cézanne), il eut tout de même le plaisir, en 1882, d'emm.... donc Bouguereau, en figurant au Salon officiel, avec un Portrait d'homme, grâce, il est vrai, à son ami Guillemet, qui, faisant partie du jury, imposa la toile de Cézanne comme étant l'œuvre d'un de ses élèves".
(Paul Cézanne - Librairie Paul Ollendorff - Paris 1914-19 pp. 87-88)
("a portrait of a Man")
The "Vollard" mentioned by Coquiot was Ambroise Vollard, and of all the authors who have written about the Salon of 1882 or Portrait de M. L. A..., Vollard not only knew Cézanne personally in his final years, but had also endured over one hundred sittings with Cézanne for his own portrait.
Vollard was also the first Paris art dealer to organize a one man exhibition of Cézanne's paintings in 1895. Yet what I believe truly made Vollard's comments on Portrait de M. L. A... different from all the others was his close working relationship with the painter and his son Paul Jr., as well as the fact that he had personally handled a large number of the artist's paintings, most of them acquired either directly from the artist, or from his estate.
In 1914 Ambroise Vollard wrote:
"Undeterred, Cézanne sent two paintings to the Salon each year, always rejected, when suddenly, in 1882, he had the joy of learning that one of his submissions, a portrait, had just been accepted! But it must be added that he entered the Salon through the back door. His friend Guillemet, who was a member of the jury and had tried in vain to save him in the second round, had taken him "for his charity": any member of the jury then had the privilege of admitting the painting of one of his students to the Salon, without any examination.
The booklet for the 1882 Salon therefore bears this note on page 46: Cézanne Paul, student of Mr. Guillemet, Portrait of M. L. A.
Later, in a sense of equality, this sovereign right was taken away from the jury, which deprived Cézanne of his only chance of being received a second time at Bouguereau's salon."
"Sans se décourager, Cézanne dirigeait, chaque année, vers le Salon deux toiles, toujours refusées, lorsque soudain, en 1882, il eut la joie d’apprendre qu’un de ses envois, un portrait, venait d’être reçu! Mais il faut ajouter qu’il entrait au Salon par la petite porte. Son ami Guillemet, qui faisait partie du jury, et avait vainement tenté de le repêcher au second tour, l’avait pris "pour sa charité": tout membre du jury ayant alors le privilège de faire entrer au Salon la toile d’un de ses élèves, sans aucun examen. Le livret du Salon de 1882 porte donc cette mention, page 46: Cézanne Paul, élève de M. Guillemet, Portrait de M. L. A."
Plus tard, dans un sentiment d'égalité, on ôta au jury ce droit régalien, ce qui enleva à Cézanne sa seule chance d’etre reçu une seconde fois au salon de Bouguereau.
(Paul Cézanne - Paris: Galerie A. Vollard, 1914. pp. 48,50)
("a portrait" - "Portrait de M. L. A.")
Unlike Duret, Huneker, Borgmeyer, Leclerc, and Coquiot, Vollard's comments included his source; "The booklet for the 1882 Salon", and the title of the painting.
Vollard's narrative overturned what I had understood up to that point with the revelation; "His friend Guillemet, who was serving on the Jury, and who tried in vain to get Cézanne's canvas accepted on the second vote, had put it through "pour sa charité".
I had always thought Guillemet had simply given Cézanne the opportunity to select the painting to be submitted as his pupil, whereas Vollard's comments specify that the painting was one which had been submitted by Cézanne in his own name, and had only been brought in as Guillemet's pupil after having failed the second vote of the jury.
As a businessman, Vollard was inquisitive and resourceful, and in fact, it had been his resourcefulness which had allowed him to track down Cézanne and his paintings in the first place.
Seeing as how there had been no definitive comments on the identity of the painting by friends or family, and many writers had published comments without clearly defining their sources, the fact that Vollard is the first writer to mention both the 1882 Salon catalogue and the title "Portrait de M. L. A..." in thirty-two years is significant. Yet it seems apparent that the description published in the Dictionnaire Véron had not yet been discovered.
Five years later in 1919, Vollard revised his comments on Portrait de M. L. A... by adding a footnote;
"Despite all my efforts, I have been completely unable to discover either the full name of the model of this painting, or, more importantly, what the painting itself was."
"Malgré tous mes efforts, il m’a été absolument impossible de découvrir ni le nom complet du modèle de ce tableau, ni surtout ce qu’était au juste ce tableau lui-même."
(Paul Cezanne - GEORGES GRÈS & Cie - Zurich, 1919 pp. 63, 64)
So it seems that Ambroise Vollard must have learned of Portrait de M. L. A... around 1914 when he first mentioned it, and that he had then spent the next five years trying to identify it. Although Vollard was a shrewd businessman, I doubt his efforts to identify Portrait de M. L. A... were strictly based on the painting's potential to command a premium price.
I believe that it was as Cézanne's former business associate and friend that Vollard would have cherished owning the artist's only painting to enter the Salon. Knowing the artist as he did, knowing how he had struggled for nearly two decades to be exhibited in the Salon, and most of all knowing how difficult a decision it would have been for the painter to make, we can understand Vollard's desire to know which work Cézanne had selected.
Since Vollard had maintained a longstanding business relationship with Paul Cézanne Jr., it seems extraordinary to think that not even the late artist's son could assist Vollard in discovering the identity of Portrait de M. L. A....
However, if Paul Jr. did not know, he is apparently in good company, because with the probable exceptions of Camille Pissarro, Émile Zola and Armand Guillaumin, and the obvious exception of Antoine Guillemet, no one among the artist's friends and family appear to have been aware that a painting of Cézanne's had been exhibited in the Salon of 1882.
Vollard references Antoine Guillemet in his remarks on Portrait de M. L. A..., but he does not indicate whether he had ever consulted Guillemet, the one person who could have definitively solved the mystery. If Vollard had asked Guillemet to identify Portrait de M. L. A... and he had declined to do so, Vollard surely would have related the conversation in his comments.
Ambroise Vollard was apparently acquainted with Guillemet as early as 1897 when he had a chance meeting with Guillemet and the artist in the Luxembourg:
"What Cézanne said about Manet seemed like jokes. One day, however, when chance brought me to meet him in the Luxembourg, in front of the Olympia, I thought he was going to express himself fully about his "colleague." Cézanne was accompanied by Guillemet: "My friend Guillemet," he told me, "wanted to show me the Olympia again...""
(Paul Cezanne - Georges Grés & Cie, Zurich 1919 p. 44)
Antoine Guillemet passed away in 1918, so in the midst of his endeavors "to discover either the full name of the model who posed for this picture, or just which canvas the name is supposed to refer to", Vollard likely had several years to consult with Guillemet.
As for the three probables, Camille Pissarro, Émile Zola and Armand Guillaumin, Zola had passed away in 1902, and Pissarro in 1903, long before Vollard had become aware of Portrait de M. L. A....
Guillaumin lived until 1927, and in his biography of Armand Guillaumin, Christopher Gray wrote:
"In 1896-97 Vollard published two Albums des Peintres-Graveurs, but they were hardly more than a collection of prints by those contemporary artists he could persuade to contribute. Both contained works by Guillaumin as well as Pissarro. Guillaumin had, of course, experimented with graphic techniques in 1873 when he had done a series of etchings with Pissarro, Gachet, and Cézanne. Though he had not continued his graphic work, Vollard persuaded him to try lithography. Guillaumin approached the use of the lithographic crayon in much the same spirit in which he approached pastel, though the limitations of the technique restricted his range of colors."
(Armand Guillaumin - The Pequot Press, Inc. 1972 p. 55)
So, while Vollard was acquainted with both Guillemet and Guillaumin, he does not mention having asked either of them about the identity of Portrait de M. L. A....
There were two early Cézanne writers, Georges Rivière and Lionello Venturi, who believed that the painting exhibited in the Salon of 1882 had been a self-portrait. How they arrived at their theories is uncertain because prior to Rivière in 1923, there had been no mention of a self-portrait.
In 1923 Georges Rivière mentioned the Salon of 1882 twice:
(p. 93) – Twenty Years of Silence
After the 1877 exhibition, the public did not see, for nearly twenty years, any paintings by Paul Cézanne, and no newspaper printed his name. If Guillemet, exercising the right granted to him as a member of the jury, managed to get his friend into the 1882 Salon, no one noticed the portrait, certainly small in size, which, presumably by order, the exhibition commissioners placed in such a way that no one could discover it.
(p. 93) - Vingt Ans De Silence
Après l’exposition de 1877, le public ne revit plus, pendant près de vingt ans, de tableaux de Paul Cézanne et aucun journal n’imprima son nom. Si Guillemet, usant du droit que lui donnait sa qualité de membre du Jury, réussit à faire entrer son ami au Salon de 1882, personne ne remarqua le portrait, de petite dimension certainement, que, par ordre sans doute, les commissaires de l’exposition placérent de telle manière qu’aucun régard ne pouvait le découvrir.
(p. 210) - Chronological Classification Essay of Some Works by Paul Cézanne 1882 - Portrait of Cézanne by himself - Exhibited at the Salon of 1882
(p. 210) - Classification chronologique de quelques œuvres de Paul Cézanne 1882 - Portrait de Cézanne par lui-même - Exposé au Salon de 1882.
(Le Maitre Paul Cézanne 1923 pp. 93, 210)
(Rivière appears to agree with Leclerc that it had been a small portrait, and adds the first reference to a self-portrait: "Portrait de Cézanne par lui-même")
In 1933 Rivière mentioned the Salon of 1882 twice again:
(p. 125) For many years, Cézanne was rarely seen in Paris. When he was there, his social interactions were limited to a small number of friends. He did not exhibit anywhere, because we must not take into account the small canvas - his portrait - which was received at the Salon of 1882 and which no one remembers.
(p. 125) Pendant un grand nombre d'années, on ne vit guère Cézanne à Paris. Quand il y était, ses relations étaient restreintes à un petit nombre d'amis. Il n'exposait nulle part, car il ne faut pas tenir compte de la petite toile - son portrait - qui fut reçue au Salon de 1882 et dont personne n'a gardé le souvenir.
(p. 133) In 1881, he painted his portrait, which was accepted at the 1882 Salon. No one could ever see it in the dark corner where it was maliciously placed.
(p. 133) En 1881, il exécuta son portrait, reçu au Salon de 1882. Personne ne put jamais l'apercevoir dans le coin sombre où il fut malicieusement placé.
(Cezanne: Le Peintre Solitaire – 1933 pp. 125, 133)
(Rivière again refers to "the small canvas", and changes his wording from "Portrait de Cézanne par lui-même", to the more ambiguous description "son portrait," adding it had been executed in 1881.)
** Where this self-portrait theory originated is unclear. The title as published in the Salon catalogue was common knowledge by then, so had Rivière interpreted the "L. A." as "l'Artiste" with the assumption that the "M." had arbitrarily been added to the portrait of a man?
When I posted that question in the French language and typography forum they couldn't comment on the catalogue committee's abbreviation policy in 1882, but they did comment that the correct abbreviation of "l'Artiste" would be "l'A.".
I have made it a point to think outside of the box in my studies, and as far as I can tell, I am the first researcher to examine the abbreviated Salon catalogue listings to determine how to decypher the names in the portrait titles.
Many portraits were by little-known artists, so finding the full titles of those paintings was impossible, yet those I did find were straight forward, they began with abbreviated titles M., Mme, Mlle, followed by various initials which were appropriately spaced, and ended with the surname initial immediately followed by three or more points of suspension "...".
Due to the fact that Cézanne had a history of rejection by the Salon regime, it is entirely possible that the catalogue committee had added the honorific "Monsieur" into the abbreviated title to make it "Portrait de Monsieur l'Artiste" which would in-effect be a parody. But to then mis-abbreviate "l'Artiste", would render the parody unapparent.
That said, as far as I can tell from studying the catalogue abbreviations, they were only used for selected portrait subject's names, so a painting titled "Portrait de l'Artiste" or "Portrait de Monsieur l'Artiste" would have been left unabbreviated.
As for the unexplained theory that it had been a self-portrait dating to 1881, we know from Véron's description that there is no plausible known self-portrait from that period.
Another biographer who wrote about Portrait de M. L. A... was Gerstle Mack, who in 1935 added yet another theory to be pondered regarding the possible identity of the sitter, as well as mentioning the self-portrait theory of Georges Rivière, which he subsequently disagreed with. This was one of the first accounts of the lost portrait I had found when my studies began in 1988, and the most detailed.
Gerstle Mack wrote:
"One of the things that drew Cézanne back to Paris that spring was the assurance that at last his lifelong ambition was about to be realized: he was actually going to have a picture in the Salon! But the admittance of a canvas by Cézanne into the sacred precincts of the “Salon de Bouguereau” did not mean that that conservative institution had suddenly undergone a change of heart. It happened that in 1882 Antoine Guillemet was a member of the jury; and according to the ruling then in force, each member had the privilege of introducing into the Salon one picture which was exempt from challenge by the jury. Such works were said to be accepted pour la charité — an unflattering phrase, but one that expressed quite frankly the contemptuous spirit in which these pictures were admitted. A painting received in this way was supposed to be the work of a pupil of the member of the jury who sponsored it. Of course Cézanne could not by any stretch of the imagination have been considered a pupil of Guillemet; but the rules were not very strictly enforced, and the good-natured Guillemet was able to “wangle” his friend’s canvas into the Salon “pour la charité.”
It might be imagined that Cézanne, sensitive as he was, would have felt deeply humiliated by this undignified subterfuge. But he had had his heart set on seeing one of his pictures in the Salon for so many years that he was not inclined to boggle at such an opportunity to gain admission. He knew that there was no hope of being accepted in the regular way: he had been rejected too many times for him to have any illusions left in that direction. The only possible way to achieve his ambition was to avail himself of Guillemet’s intervention, and he accepted the sop gratefully.
In fact there is good reason to believe that Cézanne himself had suggested the manoeuvre to Guillemet, and that the possibility of entering the Salon by what Vollard aptly calls “‘ the back door ”’ — since the front door was closed to him — had been in his mind for some time. Guillemet had made repeated efforts to induce successive juries to accept one of Cézanne’s pictures officially, but without success. Cézanne knew of these attempts: as early as June 3, 1879 he had written to Zola: "Perhaps you know that I have paid a little insinuative visit to our friend Guillemet, who, they say, has recommended me to the jury —alas, without any response from those hard-hearted judges.”
Why “insinuative,” unless Cézanne, knowing that Guillemet was likely to be awarded a place on the jury within the next year or two, had proposed, or at any rate agreed to, the teacher-and-pupil solution that was finally adopted?
And on August 22, 1880 Zola wrote to Guillemet from Médan:
“Paul . . . is still counting on you for you know what. He has told me about the pleasant morning you spent together. And I am requested to send you his most affectionate greetings.”
Zola’s discreet “ you know what ” might mean almost anything, but there is little doubt that it refers to Guillemet’s promise to facilitate Cézanne’s admission to the Salon.
Cézanne was not an admirer of Guillemet’s facile and mediocre painting, and probably he made no great effort to conceal his opinion, but his lack of enthusiasm for his benefactor’s work seems to have had no effect on the warm personal friendship between the two men.
Guillemet, whose own painting was intentionally modified to suit the popular taste, was nevertheless sincerely happy to be of service to his uncompromising and unappreciated colleague; and Cézanne had no scruples about accepting the patronage of any painter, good, bad, or indifferent, who could get him into the Salon.
"If Cézanne was naïve enough to suppose that the mere hanging of one of his pictures in the official Salon would ipso facto bring him the recognition he desired, he was speedily disillusioned. For all the notice taken of his exhibit the wall space it occupied might as well have been left bare. In fact so little attention was paid to this picture, so inconspicuously placed among hundreds of others, that its very identity is uncertain. Rivière says that it was a self-portrait, but this is contradicted by the entry in the official catalogue:
"Cézanne (Paul), né à Aix(Bouches-du_Rhône), élève de M. Guillemet. -- Rue de l'Ouest, 32. 520 --- Portrait de M. L. A—"
Who was Monsieur L. A—? It may have been Louis Aubert, the painter’s godfather and maternal uncle; I have been unable to find any other acquaintance of Cézanne’s whose name begins with those initials. But this is only a plausible suggestion; a positive identification of the sitter appears to be impossible, especially as the fate of the picture itself is unknown.
After this empty victory Cézanne abandoned his long and persistent siege of the Salon. He resigned himself to obscurity; but even if he had wanted to make another attempt to force himself into the Palais des Champs-Flysées, the way was now barred. Shortly after 1882 the privilege accorded to members of the jury of sponsoring pictures pour la charité was withdrawn. Thenceforth all paintings were obliged to pass the jury."
(Paul Cézanne - Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1935 pp. 269-272) (mentions Rivière's self-portrait theory - offers the artist's uncle Louis Aubert as a plausible suggestion)
** Gerstle Mack had been the first writer to interpret the title as "Monsieur L. A—", the first to mention correspondences between Cézanne, Zola, and Guillemet, and the theory that the artist himself had suggested the teacher-student arrangement.
In 1936 Lionello Venturi also added an unusual theory:
21. 1875-77 Portrait De Paul Cézanne
“Brown background. Pink flesh. Beard and brown hair. Following an indication of Mr. Paul Cézanne Jr., it would be a portrait of the painter. The workmanship is absolutely academic. This painting does not, however, belong to the painter's first period, but at his maturity (1875-77); his lack of personal style would come from the fact that the painting was made to be admitted to the Salon. Would we be in the presence of the painting that Guillemet brought into the Salon of 1882? (Vo. 14, p. 63). In the uncertainty we classified this portrait with those of the painter's first style, to which he is similar in style.”
21. 1875-77 Portrait De Paul Cézanne
"Fond brun. Chairs roses. Barbe et cheveux d’un blond châtain. Suivant une indication de M. Paul Cézanne fils, il s’agirait d’un portrait du peintre. La facture en est absolument académique. Ce tableau n’appartiendrait toutefois pas à la premiére époque du peintre, mais à sa maturité (1875-77); son manque de style personnel viendrait du fait que le tableau a été fait pour être admis au Salon. Serions-nous en présence du tableau que Guillemet fit entrer au Salon de 1882? (Vo. 14, p. 63). Dans l'incertitude nous avons classé ce portrait avec ceux de la premiére maniére du peintre, dont il se rapproche par le style."
(Cézanne Son Art — Son Oeuvre, P. Rosenberg 1936 p. 72)
(A self-portrait)
Venturi's suggestion that #21 is a self-portrait from 1875-77 is surprising, not only does it obviously look like a portrait from the dark period of the early 1860s, it looks nothing like the self-portraits of 1875-77, by which time the artist was balding.
The online catalogue lists Venturi's title "Portrait de Paul Cézanne" as an alternate title, and includes his original dating of 1875-77 for Venturi 21, with the online catalogue retitling the portrait FWN 392 "Tête d'homme" and revising the dating to 1862–64 which Venturi eventually settled on.
The online catalogue added the note; "The sitter seems to be the same as in Portrait d'homme, 1862–64 (FWN 391)", but makes no mention of Venturi having theorized the painting (FWN 392) had been the one exhibited in the Salon of 1882.
As a longtime researcher of the painting which had been lost and unidentified for a century except for Venturi's theory, I found this to be a glaring omission, or perhaps indication that an early expert's opinion, right or wrong, was being suppressed.
The online catalogue often lists dozens of published references for paintings, and yet while Venturi's catalogue is listed for FWN 392, his theory referring to the historic painting exhibited in the Salon of 1882, the only specific painting ever mentioned in a published reference to the Salon of 1882 in over a century, didn't even rate a note.
Both Rivière and Venturi mentioned the painting exhibited in the Salon of 1882 with the assistance of Guillemet, but did not, or preferred not to mention the title Portrait de M. L. A..., which at face value necessitates an explanation of the initials to reconcile with their self-portrait theories.
Sources and reasoning for their comments would have been helpful, whether it was it hearsay, etc..
The title from the Salon catalogue notwithstanding, Venturi's choice of this portrait seems to indicate he was unaware of the description from the Dictionnaire Véron, which provided some specific details which don't seem to describe this painting.
With Véron's description in mind, a more appropriate (small) self-portrait choice would seem to be Portrait de l'artiste au fond rose c.1875 (FWN 436), but it is doubtful the artist would submit his self-portrait to the Salon unsigned.
It had been fifty-seven years since Théodore Véron commented on the work of an unknown painter who was listed as the student of Antoine Guillemet in the 1882 Salon catalogue, but in 1939 John Rewald provided the first glimpse of the only known contemporary description of Portrait de M. L. A... published in the Dictionnaire Véron.
John Rewald wrote:
"In 1879, Antoine Guillemet, a member of the jury, tried everything to patronize Cézanne with the jury, "alas! without response from these hard-hearted judges." It was only in 1882 that Guillemet succeeded in having a painting by Cézanne "accepted," using the right of any member of the jury to authoritatively admit a work by one of his students to the Salon; Cézanne, who exhibited a "Portrait of Monsieur L.A.", therefore appears in the catalogue of this Salon as "a student of Antoine Guillemet."
This right was abolished from that same year and Guillemet could no longer take a painting from his friend "for his charity", as they said at the time. In 1884 Cézanne would again recommend his consignment - a portrait - to his friend Guillemet, but, deprived of his privilege, the latter would write to Zola: "Alas, this head has been refused!" However, a few years later, Mr. Chocquet succeeded, through skillful maneuvers, in having a painting by Cézanne 1889 accepted at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 (1).
Moreover, these paintings, exhibited in 1882 and 1889, were not at all noticed by the public or the critics. It was only a critic who noted about the submission of "Antoine Guillemet's student", whom he probably took for a beginner: "M. L. A." is quite broadly brushed in the paste. The shadow of the eye socket and that of the right cheek promise, with the quality of tone of the lights, a colorist in the future (2).
(1) The Cézanne painting exhibited in 1882 was, according to Mr. Conil, a portrait of Uncle Dominique (the catalog states: Portrait of M. L. A...), while the canvas from the Chocquet Collection, exhibited in 1889, was: The House of the Hanged Man. (2) Véron Dictionary, Salon of 1882, p. 113.
En 1879, Antoine Guillemet, membre du jury, tenta tout pour patronner Cézanne auprès du jury, "hélas! sans retour de la part de ces juges au cœur dur". C’est seulement en 1882 que Guillemet réussit à faire "accepter" une toile de Cézanne, usant du droit de tout membre du jury de faire, d'autorité, entrer au Salon une œuvre d'un de ses élèves; Cézanne, qui exposa un "Portrait de Monsieur L.A.", figure donc au catalogue de ce Salon comme "élève d'Antoine Guillemet".
Ce droit fut supprimé à partir de cette méme année et Guillemet ne pourra plus prendre un tableau de son ami "pour sa charité", comme on disait alors. En 1884 Cézanne recommandera de nouveau son envoi — un portrait — a l’ami Guillemet, mais, privé de son privilége, celui-ci écrira à Zola :
"Hélas, cette téte a été refusée!" Cependant quelques années plus tard, M. Chocquet réussira, par d’habiles manceuvres, à faire accepter une toile de Cézanne 1889 à l’Exposition universelle de 1889 (1).
D’ailleurs, ces tableaux, exposés en 1882 et en 1889, ne furent nullement remarqués par le public et la critique. C’est tout juste si un critique constata à propos de l’envoi de "l’éléve d’Antoine Guillemet", qu’il prit sans doute pour un débutant : "M. L. A." est assez largement brossé dans la pate. L’ombre de l'orbite et celle de la joue droite promettent, avec la qualité de ton des lumiéres, un coloriste dans l'avenir (2).
(1) Le tableau de Cézanne exposé en 1882 fut, d’aprés M. Conil, un portrait de l’Oncle Dominique (le catalogue indique : Portrait de M. L. A...), tandis que la toile de la Coll. Chocquet, exposée en 1889, était : La Maison du Pendu. (2) Dictionnaire Véron, Salon de 1882, p. 113.
(Cézanne: Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre, Son Amitie Pour Zola - Albin Michel. - Paris - 1939 pp. 270-271)
(Rewald follows Gerstle Mack's interpretation of the initials as "Monsieur L.A." but this appears to be the first time the space has been removed between the L. & A., and they had both omitted the "trois petits points" after the A. The correctly formatted initials reappear in the footnotes)
John Rewald returned to the subject in 1946:
"Apparently Durand-Ruel had not cared to invite Cezanne to this exhibition (the seventh and final Impressionist exhibition in 1882), not having yet manifested great interest in his work. But Cezanne would probably have refused to join the others, since he had in 1882, for the first time in his life, the satisfaction of being accepted at the Salon. After his works had been once more rejected. Guillemet made use of a prerogative granted all jury members, that of having admitted without discussion the work of one of their students. Consequently Cezanne’s name was accompanied in the catalogue by the note: "pupil of Guillemet.""
1882 "admitted at the Salon as "pupil of Guillemet""
(The History of Impressionism - Museum of Modern Art - New York - 1946 pp. 365, 444)
In later biographies the footnotes had been dropped:
"In 1879 Antoine Guillemet, now a member of the jury, had done his best to have a painting by Cézanne accepted, but ‘alas, without bringing any change in the attitude of those hard-hearted judges’.
It was only in 1882 that Guillemet managed to have a canvas of Cézanne’s “accepted” by using his prerogative as a member of the jury to exhibit the work of one of his students. Cézanne, who had sent in a “Portrait of Monsieur L. A.” is thus listed in the catalogue as a “pupil of Antoine Guillemet.”
But his portrait did not attract public attention, and a critic, taking the “pupil of Antoine Guillemet”’ for a novice, wrote: “Monsieur L. A. is painted with wide brush-strokes. The shadow of the eye-socket and that of the right cheek as well as the quality of the light-tones presage a future colourist.”
However, the prerogative which had opened the back door of the Salon to Cézanne, was remanded that same year, and Guillemet thus was no longer able to use his position on his friend’s behalf."
A Biographical Outline entry for 1882 had been added with the comment; "Is admitted to the Salon as "pupil" of Guillemet; exhibits a portrait of a man".
(Paul Cézanne - Spring Books, 1948 p. 191)
(Paul Cézanne A Biography - Simon and Schuster - New York, 1948 pp. 133, 218)
(The Ordeal of Paul Cezanne - Phoenix House 1950 pp. 106-107, 177)
There had also been a comment by Lawrence Hanson which was unusual by that time, as it does not specifically mention Portrait de M. L. A....
Hanson does go off in his own direction when it came to the translation of the description in the Dictionnaire Véron.
"News came from Paris which sent him hurrying back. He had been accepted at the Salon. This triumph after nineteen years of unsuccessful trial was about as untriumphal as could possibly be. It was the result of pressure on Guillemet, again on the selection committee, by both Zola and Cézanne. "Paul is still counting on you" Zola had reminded his friend more than a year earlier. And it was made possible only by a favor granted by the Salon to the members of the jury, that each should have the privilege of nominating one work without submitting it to the other members. A condition was attached. This work, accepted by the Salon "out of charity" must be painted by a pupil of the nominator.
So, after nineteen years Cézanne was hung (very badly) in the Salon as a pupil of Guillemet, whose work he despised. And the exhibit, *a portrait of his uncle, was noted patronizingly by the only critic to catch sight of it as the work of a promising young man who might in the course of time do quite well: "a colorist in embryo," he remarked."
(Lawrence Hanson – Mortal Victory: A Biography of Paul Cézanne – 1960 pp. 162-163)
(a portrait of his uncle)
*This appears to be a reference to the comment by Gerstle Mack mentioning Louis Aubert, the painter's godfather and maternal uncle.
John Rewald published yet another edition of his biography in 1968. The text pertaining to Portrait de M. L. A... and the Salon of 1882 was unchanged from the earlier versions of 1948 & 1950, and the only revision I found was that the chronological entry for 1882 had been ammended to include a reference to the self-portrait theory:
"Admitted to the Salon as "pupil" of Guillemet; exhibits a portrait of a man""Possibly a Self-Portrait".
(Paul Cézanne, A Biography - Shocken Books - New York 1968 pp 133, 218)
Richard W. Murphy mentioned the Salon of 1882: "He [Cezanne] did achieve one qualified success at the Salon in 1882. The painter Antoine Guillemet had become a member of the official jury and as such was entitled to submit a work by one of his pupils. Claiming Cézanne as one of his pupils, he got an oil accepted under the title Portrait of Monsieur *L.A. This work has since disappeared".
(The World of Cézanne 1839-1906 - Time Life Books, New York, 1968 p. 144)
(*The Salon catalogue has a space between the initials)
Jack Lindsay wrote:
"So his Portrait de M. L. A. [Louie Aubert, his godfather?] was exhibited, and he was described as the pupil of the mediocre Guillemet. The only notice taken of the work was by a journalist of the Dictionnaire Véron, who saw in it a beginners work painted at great expense of colour: the shadow in the eye socket, and on the right cheek may give promise of a future colourist."
(Paul Cézanne, His Life and Art - New York Graphic Society, 1969)
One hundred and one years after the Salon of 1882, the English artist, writer, curator and teacher Sir Lawrence Gowing declared the painting exhibited in the Salon of 1882 "unidentifiable".: "The exclusion of Cezanne, once the very foundation of the Post-Impressionist edifice, does not imply a downgrading of his historical position. He is now in massive isolation; his style from 1880 is as isolated as that of Degas or Monet, who were also erstwhile Impressionists. And historically, the image of Cezanne's exclusion and isolation is a just one. In the 1880s, he withdrew from the Paris art scene: he did not exhibit there between 1877 and 1895 (apart from one painting, ironically now unidentifiable, at the Salon of 1882)".
(The Encyclopedia of Visual Art - Groiler Educational Corporation - Danbury, Conn. Vol. Five 1983 p. 804)
Sir Lawrence Gowing "Once, in 1882., his friend Antoine Guillemet used his privilege as a member of the Salon jury to exhibit a single canvas by his "pupil" Cezanne. The "pupil" was then 43, three years older than his "master". The picture went unnoticed."
(The Encyclopedia of Visual Art - Groiler Educational Corporation - Danbury, Conn. Vol. Six 1983 p. 116)
Art Historian Dr. Richard Shiff wrote:
"Cézanne's few public appearances of the period 1877-95 were not of great consequence. Through the intercession of Antoine Guillemet, he showed a portrait in the Salon of 1882 (Rewald, Paul Cézanne, p. 133). There was almost no critical comment, but one comprehensive reviewer briefly noted that his painting indicated "un coloriste dans l'avenir"; Théodore Véron, Dictionnaire Véron, Salon de 1882 (Paris, 1882), p. 113."
(Cézanne and the End of Impressionism - University of Chicago Press, 1984)
("a portrait")
Portrait de M. L. A... may have been unknown and unheard of by Cézanne's family and friends, but it obviously commanded the attention of all of these biographers and historians.
For over twenty years I had gathered what I could find amounting to about two-thirds of the current list. And while there were a few outlier comments such as André Leclerc mentioning it was "a small portrait" and Rivière and Venturi's comments that it had been "a self-portrait", all of the other comments seemed harmonious with the basic story I had learned in the first two biographies by Gerstle Mack and John Rewald.
And with the exception of Lionello Venturi's self-portrait theory, Portrait de M. L. A... was considered unidentifiable and no one else had attempted to attribute it to any known work.
And then out of nowhere, it became apparent that someone in the Cézanne art historical circle had decided to put an end to the speculation on the identity of Portrait de M. L. A....
Around 2010, in a routine online search for information relating to Portrait de M. L. A..., I located a chronology of the artist's career which indicated that the Portrait de M. L. A... exhibited in the Salon of 1882 had been attributed to a portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne!
I had studied the classic biographies of Cézanne written by the likes of Ambroise Vollard, Gerstle Mack, John Rewald, et al, and I could not recall Louis-Auguste being so much as mentioned as a possible sitter for Portrait de M. L. A....
The book mentioned by the online chronology was Sir Lawrence Gowing's Cézanne: The Early Years 1859 - 1872 (Harry N. Abrams 1988).
It did indeed contain the first instance of the Louis-Auguste attribution I had seen so far, where "Paris, Salon des Artistes français, 1882, no 502 ('Portrait de M.L.A....')" was listed at the top of the exhibition history following Gowing's catalogue notes on the painting which had been retitled for the cataloguePortrait of Louis-Auguste Cezanne, Father of the Artist, reading "L'Événement",
(page 110).
Not only was the painting "The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement” 1866" retitled, the title 'Portrait de M. L. A...' from the Salon catalogue had been misrepresented by removing the spaces between the initials.
I was shocked, Gowing's catalogue was one of the first books I had bought on the works of Cézanne, it had just come out, and from it I had received a great introduction to the artist's early paintings, and to some of the names in the Cézanne art historical circle. I purchased the book because it included many large color plates photographed in a manner which showed the brush and palette knife strokes.
I admit it was a while before I got around to reading the foreword, acknowledgements, editorial notes, introductions and essays, because the first two biographies I had read mentioned a lost portrait exhibited in the Salon of 1882, and in that early period of my studies, the first things I was looking for in every book was an index listing for Portrait de M. L. A..., the Salon of 1882, or a chronological entry for 1882.
No such listing is found in Sir Lawrence’s catalogue index for that title, and while the index list for the Salon featured the many years Cézanne was rejected, the Salon of 1882 which received its official attribution debut in this catalogue was not listed.
What Salon listing could have been more important than the Salon of 1882? It seemed as though the party responsible for the attribution was actively mitigating discovery of the subterfuge.
I eventually got around to the essays, and none of the contributors had mentioned either Portrait de M. L. A... or the Salon of 1882.
In Sir Lawrence's extensive biographical comments and catalogue notes for the portrait of the artist's father (pp. 9, 10, 15, 110), he also neglected to mention either the Salon of 1882 or Portrait de M. L. A..., which is not surprising since as recently as 1983 he had proclaimed the painting exhibited in the Salon of 1882 "Unidentifiable".
And yet there it was, listed for the first time ever in fine print just below his catalogue notes.... what could have been more important to include in the catalogue notes than the story of that painting hanging in the Salon of 1882?
I mentioned my appreciation for Gowing's descriptive writing, and one of the most memorable passages in the book that truly made me pause and reflect was right on that very page.
The first time I read reviewed the book was devoted to the index, the chronology, and the catalogue notes and plates.
Since #21, the portrait of Louis-Auguste was one of the paintings I was already familiar with, and it was tucked between the portraits of Uncle Dominique which seemed related to my painting, I stopped to read Sir Lawrence's catalogue notes.
The following comments represent nearly half of Sir Lawrence's catalogue notes for the portrait of the artist's father:
"The banner heading of the newspaper is an integral part of the design of the picture. The thick and thin of the Bodoni-type lettering establishes the authority of reader and writer. In shape, the type descended from the capitals of Cezanne's first assertive signatures (see cat. 15) and it led the way to the emphatic verticals of the stencil lettering which announced the authority of Achille Emperaire (cat. 46) and placed his picture in the great portrait tradition. Otherwise there was a profound difference between the two works. The portrait of Louis-Auguste was the virtual invention of Impressionist intimism. The atmospheric notation of the pattern on the armchair and the counterpoint of angles in the pose were all at opposite extremes to the pattern and the form which were asserted and outlined for their own sake with an almost Byzantine rigidity in the portrayal of the afflicted cripple whom Cezanne admired."
I was reading, and looking back and forth at the painting trying to understand what he was saying, then I finally read the last paragraph and moved-on to more of Uncle Dominique.
The exhibition list in small print, barely a paragraph below those comments, featured the debut of the attribution of Portrait de M. L. A..., and having not mentioned the Salon of 1882 in his catalogue notes or anywhere else, I had no reason to notice the small print containing this apparently meaningless milestone in the artist's career that wasn't worth anyone mentioning. That cost me twenty years. "Counterpoint of angles" indeed.
Both Rewald and Gowing had commented on the Salon of 1882 over the years without mentioning Louis-Auguste, and both had commented on Louis-Auguste without mentioning the Salon of 1882, so it was a mystery as to how these detail oriented connoisseurs would have supported the listing of the Salon of 1882 as historical fact in the exhibition history for the portrait of Louis-Auguste, yet fail to mention it in their comments.
I can only conclude they had no idea the attribution had been added.
Over the years I had failed to notice that in Gowing 1988 the title had been changed to suggest Louis-Auguste's initials might be represented as "L. A.". I knew the story of how the painting was dated so I really didn't pay attention to the title. And since it had never entered any discussion of the Salon of 1882, over the years I never had reason to think about its exhibition list.
From all I had read in various biographies including Sir Lawrence's various biographical notes in his catalogue, the unsigned painting had never been submitted to the Salon, and I had never seen any indication that it had ever been exhibited during the painter's lifetime.
The question is, how could Sir Lawrence have missed, or been deprived of, the opportunity to eloquently describe this supposed Cezanne art historical breakthrough regarding a century-old mystery, apparently being revealed on his watch? It was as though the attribution had been carried out as a matter of bookeeping which no one would ever notice, because after all, as it was presented, who would ever notice?
John Rewald apparently didn't notice either (or was not informed), he would have had the perfect segue to mention it in his introduction when he wrote:
"But there still remains a factor of uncertainty that even Sir Lawrence's gifted insights cannot elucidate, namely, the unquestionably numerous works- major as well as minor that were destroyed by the artist himself (or possibly even his father) or have simply been lost. With them has disappeared many a link that might otherwise have completed the chain of Cezanne's evolution."
Highlighted in yellow is the debut exhibition listing which is otherwise not mentioned anywhere in the book. Highlighted in blue and taking up more space in fine print than Sir Lawrence's catalogue notes on the painting are the fifty-eight references listed in the bibliography, among the dozens of obscure books and articles listed I wondered how many might have linked this work to the Salon of 1882.
Yet in the chronology section of the same book (page 216), listed among the entries for the year 1882 was a familiar comment regarding the Salon; "Admitted to the Salon as "pupil" of Guillemet; exhibits a portrait of a man (? a Self-Portrait)".
This entry seemed at odds with what had been presented as historical fact at the top of the exhibition list for the portrait of Louis-Auguste.
Why doesn't it say;"Admitted to the Salon as "pupil" of Guillemet; exhibits the 1866 portrait of his father reading "L'Événement""?
The 1882 chronology entry in Gowing 1988 was consistent with the comments of other writers I had found over the years who had published comments on Portrait de M. L. A..., including the speculation that it may have been a self-portrait which is attributable to the theory of Georges Rivière (1933), mentioned by Gerstle Mack in 1935.
This seems a good place to revisit André Leclerc's (1914) comment that it had been "a small portrait", The Fisherman measures 29 1/2 in. x 23 5/8 in. The portrait of Louis-Auguste measures 78 11/16 in. x 47 3/16 in.
Faced with the Louis-Auguste theory, which could potentially bring an end to my research of Portrait de M. L. A..., I decided to check the National Gallery of Art Washington D.C. website, to see whether their exhibition history for The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866, also listed the Salon of 1882.
I found that neither Portrait de M. L. A... nor the Salon of 1882 were mentioned in either the exhibition history, the general comments for their portrait of Louis-Auguste, or the biographical essay on the artist.
I sent an email to the N.G.A. asking whether or not they supported the theory that their portrait of the artist's father was the painting hung in the Salon of 1882, and if so, why weren't Portrait de M. L. A... and/or the Salon of 1882 listed in their exhibition records for The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866.
An associate Curator of French Paintings wrote back with the following response:
"I am responding to your query regarding the exhibition history of Paul Cézanne’s painting, The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" (1970.5.1). You inquired as to whether this was the painting Cézanne exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1882. There was a painting exhibited that year under the title “Portrait de M. L. A...” (no. 520) and based on the title alone, the National Gallery’s painting seems the most likely candidate. Unfortunately, due to a lack of supporting documentation, it is difficult to be 100% certain. There is no contemporary criticism or commentary that might have described the painting exhibited that year, nor any known reference to the exhibition in the correspondence of Cézanne or his circle (though there is always the possibility that such a document might one day appear). There are no markings or labels on the back of the painting to indicate it was exhibited at the Salon (the painting was relined long before it came to the National Gallery and I don’t believe that the original stretcher was retained, so any early labels or markings are now lost to us).
That said, the identification of The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement” as the painting shown in the 1882 Salon has been accepted by a number of scholars over the years, most notably John Rewald, the specialist who authored the catalogue raisonné of Cézanne’s paintings published in 1996 (cat. no. 101). Barring compelling evidence to the contrary, I believe the identification of our painting as the work shown in the Salon is credible."
What a thoughtful and concise response! While I wish I had asked a couple of follow-up questions, since I hadn't mentioned why I was researching Portrait de M. L. A..., I chose to do my best to follow-up on what she had written, which changed the course of my studies.
Making the best of new information, I had gained the confirmation that the N.G.A. has no documentation to support the attribution.
At that point I could see that Portrait de M. L. A... had been added to the exhibition list for the portrait of Louis-Auguste in Sir Lawrence's catalogue, without being mentioned by anyone.
And I had been informed by the curator that their portrait of Louis-Auguste had been accepted as Portrait de M. L. A... by "a number of scholars over the years, most notably John Rewald, the specialist who authored the catalogue raisonné of Cézanne’s paintings published in 1996 (cat. no. 101)".
That was a real head-scratcher.
Who were the "number of scholars over the years"? By 2012, after decades of searching I hadn't found any scholars who had published speculation, much less acceptance, that it may have been the portrait of Louis-Auguste.
The catalogue raisonné mentioned by the curator was published two years after Rewald's death, eight years after the attribution in Sir Lawrence Gowing's catalogue. Short of buying the catalogue online just to see if it contains any revised biographical information about the Salon of 1882, it is not available at the libraries in my area. Neither is the 1996 catalogue available in a digital format online. If the 1996 catalogue contained no new biographical information, I really wouldn't have any use for it because it has since been made obsolete by the online catalogue, which mentions only the same exhibition listing as Gowing 1988.
It's not surprising that Sir Lawrence hadn't mentioned the Salon of 1882, which was far beyond the scope of his catalogue. However the portrait of Louis-Auguste was well within the scope of the book. Again, I have to reason that if Sir Lawrence had been aware of the attribution in his book officially solving the century old mystery of Portrait de M. L. A..., he would have mentioned both the lifetime milestone, and how it was part of the history of the portrait of Louis-Auguste, especially since he had spoken of it at length including references to Guillemet's November 2 1866 letter to Zola.
Not long after my inquiry, the N.G.A. updated the exhibition history of The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866, to read:
"1882 - Probably Salon of 1882 "Portrait de M.L.A...."
(*These were the same modified initials without spaces as Gowing 1988, however Gowing 1988 did not say "Probably".)
While there is no documentation to connect Portrait de M. L. A... with the portrait of Louis-Auguste, according to the N.G.A. website, the provenance for The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" names Ambroise Vollard as the first owner of that painting. Yet looking back at Vollard's footnotes for his comments on Portrait de M. L. A..., he had emphatically written:
"In spite of every endeavor, I have been absolutely unable to discover either the full name of the model who posed for this picture, or just which canvas the name is supposed to refer to."
It seems obvious that neither Vollard, nor anyone he had consulted, had considered The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866, which he had owned, to have been plausible.
The response from the curator at the N.G.A. had given me some solid leads to concentrate on in terms of determining how the official attribution came about. She didn't mention the description in the Dictionnaire Véron, but had commented: 'based on the title alone, the National Gallery’s painting seems the most likely candidate'.
The Gowing catalogue where the official attribution first appeared had retitled the painting Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne, Father of the Artist, reading "L'Evénement". Then, without explanation and apparently based on having added Louis-Auguste's name to the title, the exhibition listing "Paris, Salon des Artistes francais, 1882, no 502 ('Portrait de M.L.A....') was born.
The title from the Salon catalogue had been incorrectly listed with no spaces between the initials.
The abbreviated portrait names appear to have included two constant rules;
(1) The first initial or initials represented a title and would be followed by a space, only M for Monsieur and MM for Messieurs would receive a period and a space.
(2) The final initial or initials are followed by three or more points of suspension, and represent the surname of the portrait subject.
The "M." without a space negated its representing the title "Monsieur", therefore "M.L.A..." described a double hyphenated surname, (for example Marston-Louden-Andrews....) which would be incorrect because it would have lacked a title initial.
If it was a typo, and the Gowing 1988 editor meant it to represent "M." = Monsieurspace"L.A...." = Louis-Auguste, it is also incorrect. Although "L.A." is a valid abbreviation of Louis-Auguste, it is the surname which precedes the points of suspension - so they have created a hyphenated surname such as "Louden-Andrews....".
M. = MonsieurspaceL.A... = Louis-Auguste would also be incorrect because it is a misrepresentation of the published title from the Salon catalogue which was "Portrait de M.spaceL.spaceA..." which describes the title initial "M." for Monsieur, the single forename initial "L.", and the single surname initial "A...".
Note: The online catalogue lists the title correctly as 'Portrait de M. L. A...' which could conceivably describe "Monsieur Louis Auguste..." with Auguste as the surname.
The artist's father's name is Louis-Auguste, and if any portrait of him was ever submitted to the Salon it would certainly have been titled Portrait de Monsieur Louis-Auguste Cézanne, and the various abbreviated initials to describe it would have been:
M. L.-A. C..., M. L.A. C..., or M. LA C....
The anonymous editor in Gowing 1988 may have been in a position to rename the title of the painting of Louis-Auguste, but they can't also retitle the published Salon catalogue listing "Portrait de M. L. A..." by rearranging the initials to suit their narrative.
I believe that there had to be reasons why no writer had ever suggested the very obvious L & A in the title might refer to Louis-Auguste, rather than the obvious typograhpical error, I think it was essentially because it made no sense biographically.
While the N.G.A. recognizes the official attribution, the exhibition listing appears with the qualifier of "Probably", and the fact that the N.G.A. did not include the story behind the Salon of 1882 in the biographical essay for the painting appears to indicate a lack of confidence in the "official" attribution.
Logically, the historical account of that portrait of Louis-Auguste having been the artist's only painting hung in the Salon - if substantiated - would have to be a major highlight of the biographical notes for that painting.
This was a period in my life where my Portrait de M. L. A... studies were placed on the back-burner due to uncertainty how to proceed following my interaction with the N.G.A. curator. I would have to find the source of the Louis-Auguste narrative which preceeded the unexplained official attribution in Gowing 1988, and I just didn't have the time to spend travelling to libraries.
My studies in support of The Fisherman continued on full speed ahead as I refined my theories and presentations including the development of a video technique which allowed the viewer to see the painting under magnification at brushstroke level.
In early 2014 I came across an article describing the upcoming Cézanne Online Catalogue Raisonné which included an email contact for researchers interested in early access. The contact was David Nash, one of the co-directors.
This seemed to present an opportunity to jump-start my Portrait de M. L. A... studies, so I began copying and pasting all of my research notes along with my current compilation of published comments on Portrait de M. L. A... into the email to present as my bona-fides along with my request for early access.
I stated that the aim of my research was to ascertain how after over a century of not being mentioned, it had been determined that The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 was the Portrait de M. L. A... which had been exhibited in the Salon of 1882.
I also mentioned my belief that I had discovered the lost portrait, although I didn't include any photos or links to my research pages at that time.
My email was forwarded by Nash to his co-director Jayne Warman, who responded by refusing my request for early access.
Then, without commenting on the research I had provided, her official response to my inquiry was:
"The Portrait of Cézanne's father in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was indeed shown in the 1882 Salon. In fact, it was the ONLY painting of Cézanne's that was accepted into the Salon. The large painting was found rolled up in Cézanne's studio after the painter died."
In addition to her terse response, she had invited me to send her the information and photos for my painting, so I felt uneasy about asking her to substantiate her response.
Later, as I sent her the links to my painting, it occurred to me that she was potentially the anonymous associate of John Rewald and Sir Lawrence who had made the attribution, and I was sending her the information on my painting which I was not only suggesting to be the work of Cézanne, but Portrait de M. L. A... as well. Her short response did provide something new along with a description of the size in her own words: "The large painting was found rolled up in Cézanne's studio after the painter died".
The only comments ever made about the size of Portrait de M. L. A... were André Leclerc's (1914) comment that it had been "a small portrait", and Rivière had once called it "a small canvas"(1933), and at an earlier time wrote "no one noticed the portrait, certainly small in size"(1923).
And FWN 392 Tête d'homme mentioned by Venturi was only 18 1/8 x 14 5/8 in.
The new information was her revelation that the portrait of Louis-Auguste was found rolled-up in the artist's studio. This comment seemed to track with what the curator had said, that the N.G.A. had never had the original stretcher. Although I didn't see how it explained the attribution in any way, at the time I filed it away as something meaningful.
To be clear, just as she had refused my request for early access without any comment on the research I had sent, she later refused my attribution of The Fisherman without commenting on the research and photos I had provided.
My initial inquiry questioning who specifically had made the attribution had been forwarded to her, and if she had been the one responsible for the attribution, shouldn't she have said so and recused herself from judging my painting?
Had her refusal to clarify the attribution in Gowing 1988 afforded her the anonymity to stand in judgement of the painting I claimed to be Portrait de M. L. A...?
If there had been any transparency in the unsubstantiated attribution of such a major historical milestone in the artist's career, I wouldn't have had to ask. I was fairly certain it was not Sir Lawrence Gowing. And I was yet to ascertain how John Rewald was involved, but it was just a matter of time.
Before I go any further, on the subject of Jayne Warman, apart from our differences of opinion on Portrait de M. L. A... and The Fisherman, I hold her and her colleagues in the highest esteem for the miracle of technology they have created with the The Cézanne Online Catalogue Raisonné.
What a World we live in! Whatever thoughts I have on the artist's paintings, drawings, and watercolors can be explored in moments at the online catalogue. Truly, those responsible for bringing this modern wonder to fruition are innovative geniuses!
Literally any portrait, landscape, still-life, or figure composition is available in moments, along with provenance, exhibitions, published references, and high resolution color images. To be able to browse the entire catalogue of drawings and sketchbooks in an afternoon is just amazing. It allows a researcher to broaden their knowledge in ways that were impossible before. I often wander the catalogue for hours without noticing the passage of time.
Another modern technological advance is having digitized versions of nearly all of the reference books in my research library, as well as many other rare books which I don't have physical copies of. To have them all available from my desktop is unimaginable and I regularly take advantage of them to develop any new theories and to check details. I dare say the ability to magnify the text of a .pdf file is much more convenient than wielding a magnifying glass as I attempt to read from a book.
Due to its attribution as the portrait exhibited in the Salon of 1882, The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 is a painting to which I have devoted a great deal of study. With the online catalogue, and the ability to see all of the portraits, there can be no doubt that it was a very important one of a kind work for its era.
Recently Warman's comment about that large rolled-up canvas popped into my mind, and it occurred to me that other than Antoine Guillemet's now famous letter to Zola mentioning a portrait of Louis-Auguste reading his newspaper, the history of the portrait Guillemet described seems to stop right there and begin again the day it was unrolled in the studio after the artist's death.
And hadn't John Rewald said that Louis-Auguste may have been angered to see himself portrayed reading "L'Evénement"? Unless the artist was going to cut up and repurpose the large canvas, rolling it up would make perfect sense in order avoid his father inadvertantly seeing it. And of course with our 20/20 hindsight, we know Cézanne was also protecting the painting from himself.
But wait! Assuming it is the same canvas, the painting found rolled-up after the artist's death was not the painting described by Guillemet!
We can look at it now and understand what the painting had been when it was described by Guillemet (Le Siècle), what had been changed from that description ("L'Evénement"), and why (as a tribute to Zola). Beyond that, an x-ray image might reveal a different painting beneath the finished work with the same elements described by Guillemet, in a completely different pose which may better fit his description "The painting is "blond" which had left many writers baffled.
In his biographical essay for "The Early Years", Gowing wrote (p. 10):
"The picture of the father described by Guillemet on 2 November 1866 is a demonstration piece. Louis-Auguste is reading the paper, "L'Evénement", which had printed Zola's series of articles on the Salon in which he had attacked the jury that had refused (among other things) the portrait of Valabregue." And then further down the page Sir Lawrence seems to contradict himself:"In fact Louis-Auguste did not read "L'Evénement". Guillemet describes him reading Le Siècle, a conservative paper which had always attacked Manet as vigorously as Zola defended him."
So the painting Guillemet described to Zola was The Artist's Father Reading "Le Siècle" 2-11-1866.
The painting found rolled-up in the artist's studio would have been a "Demonstration Piece" if we had proof that anyone had seen it contemporaneously. The history of the painting known as The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 can only begin the first time it was seen and commented on.
How much time had passed before Guillemet's letter to Zola, dated November 2, 1866, was discovered? Is the painting mentioned anywhere else prior to its discovery following the artist's death?
When Vollard purchased it, it was recorded in his stockbook as "Grand portrait d'homme" purchased on February 12, 1907. So at the time, he may not have even known it was a portrait of Louis-Auguste.
So per Guillemet's letter the canvas itself putatively dates to November 2nd 1866, and although it could have been modified at any time in the following forty years, the finished painting was likely executed within several months of that date, and rather than being a "demonstration piece", I believe it was a tribute to the efforts of his childhood friend, a personal memento of the times which he may have never shared with anyone, not even Zola.
Otherwise, it seems logical that rather than rolling the painting up, the artist would have simply presented it to Zola, thereby honoring Zola for his contributions and ensuring his father would not see it.
As for submitting it to the Salon of 1882, yes that would have been a demonstration piece...but why? Who would have even known what he was demonstrating about by then? And why remind those who would remember of Zola's provocative articles in "L'Evénement"? The paper itself ceased to exist shortly after Guillemet's letter, and perhaps that was what led the artist to memorialize it along with the articles Zola had written on behalf of his contemporaries...he himself had not been mentioned in "L'Evénement".
Additionally, the first published reference to "FWN 402 Louis-Auguste Cezanne, père de l'artiste, lisant L'Événement" aka The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 listed at both the online catalogue and Gowing 1988 is Fredrick Lawton "Paul Cézanne." Art Journal, no. 2 (February 1911), p. 60, ill.
If the online catalogue is claiming FWN 402 to be Portrait de M. L. A... at the top of its exhibition list, why have they not included the Salon catalogue of 1882, and the Dictionnaire Véron of 1882 at the top of its extensive published references list?
On the point of the artist's father, following the harrowing financial struggles which began when his father learned about Hortense and Paul Jr., it seems unlikely that in 1882 the artist suddenly thought it would be a good idea to present a sixteen year-old portrait depicting his father reading "L'Evénement" to the Paris Salon.
Perhaps it was indeed kept rolled-up for four decades.
In my humble opinion, if the portrait of Louis-Auguste reading "L'Evénement" had been unrolled and seen at any time in the forty years that had passed, it would have been mentioned, and it would have been snapped-up by a savvy collector as the "demonstration piece" Gowing described.
What history and Guillemet's letter to Zola tell us is that the painting The Artist's Father Reading "Le Siècle" disappeared in 1866, and the painting known as The Artist's Father, Reading "L'Événement" was found rolled-up in the artist's studio after his death in 1906.
As one who had grown up in the antique import business, I have always identified with Cézanne's frugal Provençal nature, we never threw anything away.
So if Cézanne had rolled-up the portrait of his father to keep it out of sight, isn't it likely that he then reused the same stretcher for another painting? I went to the online catalogue to verify the size of the portrait of Louis-Auguste (78 11/16 in. x 47 3/16 in.), with a plan to compare the sizes of subsequent portraits, most were much smaller.
After checking the following twenty portraits in the catalogue which included his striking self-portrait of 1866, the entire Uncle Dominique series, and the artist's famous portrait "The Negro Scipion", I came upon his Portrait du peintre Achille Emperaire 1867-68 which was submitted to the Salon of 1870.
I had noted over the years that Emperaire sat in the same armchair as Louis-Auguste, and had noted it again just before my eyes found the measurements of that canvas, 78 11/16 in. x 48 in. Unlike the unseen portrait of Louis-Auguste, the portrait of Achille Emperaire was infamous for being rejected by the Salon jury and caricatured by Stock in a Paris newspaper, and it then remained in the historical records over the years as one of the paintings acquired by Pere Tanguy by the mid 1880s. I suspect this portrait to be among the impetus for Louis-Auguste's portrait having been rolled-up.
In-effect Cézanne had modified the painting mentioned by Guillemet into a parody of his father, a curious tongue-in-cheek "jackalope" as his own memento of the times which no one would ever see, and he then rolled it up and repurposed the stretcher for his grand submission, and had dramatically brought it to the Salon of 1870 on the last possible day, a painting which everyone would see.
And, we are indeed fortunate that the artist repurposed only the stretcher, and not the canvas!
I believe The Fisherman was another of the artist's "jackalopes", composed as a study tool incorporating his facial/ear studies based on Voltaire's head and ears, the final manifestation of the Uncle Dominique portrait mode, built around his own form taken from a photo. I have often wondered if this was somehow where the self-portrait theory had originated.
Like the portrait of his father, I suggest that The Fisherman may have similarly been kept hidden away both before and after the Salon of 1882, and I theorize that while he had originally painted it as a tribute to Pissarro, following the Salon of 1882 he may have gifted it to Adolphe Monticelli whom he had also venerated. In-effect he may have exiled the important painting out of the fear that he might destroy it. I believe the painting was purchased from Monticelli's estate following his death in 1886, along with the figure composition by Monticelli which arrived in the same container which carried The Fisherman to Southern California.
This open composition with arms and hands and the tilted jug creating depth is found in many future portraits, but it could be said that Cézanne's prototype portrait study in creating depth had been The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866, in which he had gone beyond the depth created with arms or legs, by also including the descript background of the wall and the still-life in the background.
The evolution this portrait represented did not come to fruition until the early 1870s. It can't be just a coincidence that the artist's portrait evolution incorporating descript backgrounds came about with the final manifestation of another familiar subject from the 1860s.
Portrait de Louis-Auguste Cezanne, père de l'artiste c.1870 FWN 430
Alternate titles: Portrait de L. A. Cèzanne, Père de l'artiste; Portrait de M. Cézanne Père; Portrait du père de l'artiste; Portrait of the Artist's Father; The Artist's Father: Louis-Auguste Cézanne.
Rewald (178): c.1870; Venturi revised: c.1872; Venturi (227): 1875–76; Rivière: c.1877; Reff: 1874–75
This portrait of Louis-Auguste seems to have made amends for the earlier version which was removed from circulation. There is nothing provocative in this powerful portrayal of his father, only respect. This painting was likely visible around the Jas de Bouffon over the years as it was refined. This was technical evolution.
This portrait is thought to date to the period of the Franco-Prussian war during the time the artist was hiding in the Jas de Bouffon while avoiding conscription into the military, and as with The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866, I believe this portrait evolved over a period of time during which the background was added, and it also perhaps became the first recipient of the artist's ear studies of the early 1870s.
The reasons for this particular pose seem to be to correct his original portrait of his father, FWN 398 Portrait de Louis-Auguste Cezanne, père de l'artiste c.1865, and this is a very good indication of what I refer to as the early "teacup handle ears" he was correcting with his ear studies based on Voltaire's ears after both Houdon and Pigalle. Comparing the two portraits, it is also quite obvious that his portrait technique had evolved in many other ways.
**Note: The online catalogue lists among the alternate titles for FWN 430, "Portrait de L. A. Cèzanne".
I speculated earlier that Louis-Auguste's name had been added to the title of The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 to insinuate the initials in Portrait de M. L. A..., and the alternate title assigned to FWN 430 seems to be another attempt to substantiate the initials "L. A.".
The forename of the artist's father is "Louis-Auguste", according to French typography rules, on an official document it should be written L.-A., in everyday's life LA and on a simple document, L.A., but the initials of the hyphenated forename Louis-Auguste are never separated by a space.
In describing the father of the artist in any biographic text or title of a portrait, no one would ever spell or abbreviate the name Louis-Auguste as "Louis Auguste", it would be as wrong as spelling it "Louise Auguste".
As I explained earlier, a deep dive into the Salon catalogue rabbit hole revealed that abbreviated titles were only applied to select portrait titles where "Portrait de" was followed by various title initials such as;
M. - Monsieur (Mr./Mister)
Mme - Madame (Mrs.)
Mlle - Mademoiselle (Miss)
The initials which followed titles always end with (space)X...
(X = Surname initial).
Monsieur Jean Bardot - M. J. B...
Monsieur Jean Antoine Bardot - M. J. A. B...
Monsieur Jean-Antoine Bardot - M. J.A. B...
(aka M. JA B..., M. J.-A. B...)
Monsieur Jean-Antoine de Bardot - M. J.A. de B...
(aka M. JA de B..., M. J.-A. de B...)
Portrait de M. L. A... would represent M. for Monsieur - space - a single forename beginning with "L" - space - a single surname beginning with "A".
I have to admit that it is possible that if the portrait was registered at the Salon as "Portrait de Louis Auguste" without the surname Cézanne, the catalogue may have interpreted "Auguste" as the surname, thus M. L. A....
This unlikely theory relies on the artist mis-spelling his own father's name on the registration form, omitting his family surname from the title, and then submitting the portrait of his father without his signature on the only painting he managed to have exhibited in the Salon in nineteen years.
To put that into perspective, out of the twenty works Cézanne exhibited in public with the Impressionists in 1874 and 1877, only three were unsigned.
I invite the reader to study the catalogue of the Salon of 1882 on their own, the two abbreviated portraits by Henri Fantin Latour I referred to are on page 88, but with diligence and the internet you might manage to decipher other abbreviations and verify them through their exhibition records...bonne chance!
Explication Des Ouvrages De Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture, Gravure Et Lithographie Des Vivants Exposés Au Palais Des Champs-Elysées Le 1 mai 1882 - Charles De Mourgues Fréres - Paris, 1882
It was late 2014 that I began circling back to the many books I had found in libraries over the years in a search for justification of the N.G.A. curator's comment that "the identification of The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement” as the painting shown in the 1882 Salon has been accepted by a number of scholars over the years, most notably John Rewald."
I eventually located a later biography by John Rewald (Cézanne; A Biography - Harry N. Abrams - New York, 1986), just one of many books I had brought home at some time over the years. I recall being intrigued by the cover art which featured a jug with circular reflections, and this larger format coffee-table version pre-dated Gowing 1988 by two years.
These many years later I realized I had made a crucial mistake by only glossing over the comments on Portrait de M. L. A... assuming it had contained the same information as the 1948 biography. Such is the life of a part-time art researcher with a day job and a family.
Reviewing it, I found that there had been revisions made to Rewald's standard Portrait de M. L. A... comments dating from 1948.
This book listed Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne Reading L’Evénement (The Artist’s Father), among the portraits in its index, and among the amended text I finally found what appears to be the first comments by John Rewald mentioning Portrait de M. L. A... in relation to the portrait of Louis-Auguste.
The question is whether John Rewald had made the revisions, or someone else had done so in the editing room just as the exhibition listing had been added to the portrait of Louis-Auguste without mention in Gowing 1988.
The 1986 biography text regarding Portrait de M. L. A... was essentially the same text from 1948 but included the ammendments highlighted below:
"In 1879 Antoine Guillemet had done his best to have a painting by Cézanne accepted, but “alas, without bringing any change in the attitude of those hard-hearted judges.”
"Guillemet had left far behind the days in which his bloodthirsty enthusiasm had been eager to wield the dagger of insurrection and to dance on the belly of the terrified bourgeois. By now a comfortable bourgeois himself, he had—through the consistent insignificance of his landscapes—even achieved a certain official status by becoming a member of the Salon jury. But at least he had not forgotten his comrade of earlier battles."
"It was finally in 1882 that he managed to have a canvas of Cézanne’s “accepted” by using the prerogative of jury members to exhibit the work of one of their students. Cézanne, who sent in a Portrait of Monsieur L. A., thus is listed in the catalogue as “pupil of Antoine Guillemet.”
"It is not known which work Cezanne selected; some say it was a self-portrait (which seems unlikely). The initials L.A. could have stood for those of the artist's father, Louis-Auguste, although it appears doubtful that Cezanne would have picked such an early work, except that it was a painting Guillemet had once greatly admired."
In any case, Cézanne’s portrait did not attract public attention, though a critic, taking the “pupil of Antoine Guillemet” for a novice, wrote: “Monsieur L. A. is painted with wide brushstrokes. The shadow of the eye socket and that of the right cheek as well as the quality of the light tones presage a future colorist.”
"The words could very well have been prompted by Cézanne’s Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne Reading L’Evénement."
"However, the prerogative that had opened the back door of the Salon to Cézanne was remanded that same year, and Guillemet thus was no longer able to use his position on his friend’s behalf."
The 1986 revisions to the Portrait de M. L. A... comments published in Rewald's biographies since 1948 are even more ambiguous than the unexplained exhibition listing in Gowing 1988. In this case the only thing we can be sure of is the original text, the revisions clearly seem to be written by someone else. I had mentioned earlier that I liked Rewald's style of writing because it was straight forward and based on history and biographical information.
In this case someone has hijacked the familiar subject to create a narrative, staging this back-and-forth conversation of implausible theories, which if discussed with the same transparency as the self-portrait theory everyone knew was from Rivière would have been fine, then we would know with whom Rewald was disagreeing. Had it not been for the subsequent covert attribution in Gowing 1988, the implausible Portrait de M. L. A... narrative coat-tailed into Rewald 1986 may have also remained unnoticed:
(Rewald) "In 1879 Antoine Guillemet had done his best to have a painting by Cézanne accepted, but “alas, without bringing any change in the attitude of those hard-hearted judges.”
(Edit-1) " Guillemet had left far behind the days in which his bloodthirsty enthusiasm had been eager to wield the dagger of insurrection and to dance on the belly of the terrified bourgeois. By now a comfortable bourgeois himself, he had—through the consistent insignificance of his landscapes—even achieved a certain official status by becoming a member of the Salon jury. But at least he had not forgotten his comrade of earlier battles."
**This passage is written in a way that makes it appear Rewald is describing Guillemet's character and talent, when in fact the comments are drawn from and then improvised upon from a September 1866 letter from Guillemet to Francisco Oller on p.64 of the same book. A more accurate assessment of Guillemet by Rewald can be found on p.45:
"Among Cézanne’s Parisian friends who remained close to Zola as well were Camille Pissarro and Antoine Guillemet. Both Cézanne and Zola seem to have felt a real affection for Pissarro; as to Guillemet, particularly lively and gay, full of amusing ideas and ever good-natured, his company was always appreciated. Cézanne liked him so much that he even accepted his occasional gibes without ill feeling. Guillemet is credited with having supplied many a canvas by Cézanne with more or less fancy titles. Thus he christened one of his paintings: The Wine Grog or Afternoon in Naples, and another: The Woman with the Flea."
**These standard "early" comments on Guillemet date back to Spring Books 1948 p. 36. Unlike the improvisations of Edit-1, Rewald had always spoken kindly of Guillemet, a good friend who had been nothing but a positive force in Cézanne's life and career.
"By now a comfortable bourgeois himself, he had—through the consistent insignificance of his landscapes—even achieved a certain official status by becoming a member of the Salon jury.
This is the segue to Guillemet becoming the hero of the story of the Salon of 1882?
(Rewald)"It was finally in 1882 that he managed to have a canvas of Cézanne’s “accepted” by using the prerogative of jury members to exhibit the work of one of their students. Cézanne, who sent in a Portrait of Monsieur L. A., thus is listed in the catalogue as “pupil of Antoine Guillemet.”
(Edit-2)"It is not known which work Cezanne selected; some say it was a self-portrait (which seems unlikely). The initials L.A. could have stood for those of the artist's father, Louis-Auguste, although it appears doubtful that Cezanne would have picked such an early work, except that it was a painting Guillemet had once greatly admired."
** "It is not known which work Cezanne selected ; some say it was a self-portrait (which seems unlikely)" is historically accurate, full stop.
Like his comments on Antoine Guillemet, John Rewald had used the same comments on Portrait de M. L. A... since 1948, adding only the chronological note "Possibly a Self-Portrait". But Rewald had not previously given any opinion on the longstanding self-portrait theory, why he had chosen to bring up his doubts without an explanation is unusual, and appears timed by the editor to add credibility to the birth of the Louis-Auguste narrative.
"The initials L.A. could have stood for those of the artist's father, Louis-Auguste"
Along with every other writer in this list, Rewald had never previously mentioned the initials of the title in relation to Louis-Auguste. While the self-portrait theory is well-known, Rewald appears to have been offered the unusual Louis-Auguste initials theory by a colleague (perhaps the editor?), Rewald then doubted that Cézanne would have picked such an early work, and was reminded that "it was a painting Guillemet had once greatly admired."
The latter is hardly something Rewald would need to be reminded of, he had written extensively on the subject of that particular portrait of Louis-Auguste over several decades without ever connecting Louis-Auguste, Portrait de M. L. A..., or the Salon of 1882 in any way. If he had reason to revise his comments he would have explained doing so, relating whatever new information he was taking into consideration.
In fact, it wasn’t the painting Guillemet described in his letter to Zola, and there’s no evidence that anyone other than Guillemet and the artist ever saw it in its original form. The earliest known reference to the finished painting, "The Artist's Father, Reading L'Evénement," appeared in 1911, assuming it’s the same canvas Guillemet mentioned, and that the artist had later altered it to its present state.
As for the comment about the initials, note that as regards this debut introduction of Louis-Auguste into the Portrait de M. L. A... story, the editor has removed the space between the initials. Since both of the other references to the initials on this page correctly showed a space between the L. and the A., this indicates to me that the editor probably knew there could be no space between the initials for Louis-Auguste, therefore the Louis-Auguste narrative relied on re-arranging the initials published in the Salon Catalogue to fit the narrative.
(Rewald)"In any case, Cézanne’s portrait did not attract public attention, though a critic, taking the “pupil of Antoine Guillemet” for a novice, wrote: “Monsieur L. A. is painted with wide brushstrokes. The shadow of the eye socket and that of the right cheek as well as the quality of the light tones presage a future colorist.”"
(Edit-3)"The words could very well have been prompted by Cézanne’s Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne Reading L’Evénement."
** John Rewald and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. have historically referred to the portrait of Louis-Auguste as, "The Artist's Father, Reading L'Evénement 1866" and Rewald had never once mused about it being a good match for Véron's description. Yes, there is a shadow on the right eye socket and cheek, yet it is about the least remarkable aspect of this painting, and the remarks about the light tones also seem out of place. Again, if Rewald had reason to change his mind, and in this case solve a century-old mystery, he wouldn't have been debating himself, he would have said so straight up and given the reasons why, that is what the latest version of a biography is for.
(Rewald)"However, the prerogative that had opened the back door of the Salon to Cézanne was remanded that same year, and Guillemet thus was no longer able to use his position on his friend’s behalf."
This doesn't appear to me that John Rewald had any confidence in the Louis-Auguste theory. And if some unspoken art historical breakthrough on the subject of the painting exhibited in the Salon of 1882 had been achieved, it is not reflected in the familiar biographical outline entry for the year 1882 on p. 268: "Is admitted to the Salon as “pupil” of Guillemet; exhibits a portrait of a man, which according to Riviére was a self- portrait."
If we look up the year 1882 listed in the index under "Salon, Paris" we are directed to p. 203 which reads:"But in spite of all this, Cézanne was still almost unknown in Paris and the critic Mellerio could write: “Cézanne seems to be a fantastic figure. Although still living, he is spoken of as though he were dead. A few examples of his work are owned by a small number of collectors.” Indeed, Cézanne had not exhibited in Paris since 1877, with the exception of the two canvases that had been forced on the official exhibitions of 1882 and 1889."
Doesn't it seem logical that pp. 146-147 with the "conversation" based on Rewald's traditional historical comments on the Salon of 1882 would be listed under "Salon, Paris"? Again, as with Gowing 1988, it seemed that the editor was mitigating discovery of the subterfuge. Despite Rewald's obvious doubts, the editor added both the theory about Louis-Auguste and a revised title into evidence in Rewald's 1986 biography, and another revised title, along with the 1882 Salon exhibition list entry which appears out of nowhere in Gowing 1988.
What you don't see listed among the fifty-eight bibliographical entries on the catalogue page for "Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cezanne, Father of the Artist reading L'Evénement" in Gowing 1988, is any reference to the pages with the Louis-Auguste narrative in Rewald 1986, it reads only: "Rewald, 1986, p. 23, ill.".....Why not reference pp. 146-147 where the Louis-Auguste narrative leading to the debut exhibition listing began?
One hundred and four years after the Salon of 1882, the Louis-Auguste narrative was added to Rewald's longstanding comments, two years later it is added as a historical fact in Sir Lawrence Gowing's catalogue, and Rewald's comments...the history of Cézanne and the Salon of 1882... had been replaced with the Louis-Auguste narrative, no longer a narrative, but recorded as historical fact.
And who would ever notice this harmless balancing of the books? Unless the actual lost portrait of a man exhibited in the Salon of 1882 was found, recognized, submitted, refused, and swept under the rug of history to avoid throwing the harmless balancing of the books...out of balance. Entries at the online catalogue can be edited as necessary, but these ambiguous entries in Rewald 1986, and Gowing 1988 will remain forever in print.
Incredibly, at the Cézanne online catalogue, each painting which was catalogued by Sir Lawrence bears the exhibition list entry "1988–89a London and traveling Royal Academy of Arts, London, Cézanne: The Early Years 1859–1872, April 22–August 21, 1988, (with its corresponding page numbers in Gowing's catalogue) Traveled to: Musée d'Orsay, Cézanne: les années de jeunesse 1859-1872, Paris, September 19, 1988–January 1, 1989; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., January 29–April 30, 1989", yet Sir Lawrence's name and Catalogue have been omitted from the published references for each work.
Why would the online catalogue snub Sir Lawrence Gowing's important catalogue of the early works? Was the mention of his catalogue, featured in thousands of libraries around the World to this day considered too redundant? The exhibitions ended decades ago, the catalogue is still pertinent.
Surely it was not snubbed in response to my presentation of The Fisherman, which if accepted as authentic would quickly become the most logical choice for Portrait de M. L. A...?
Fortunately in another book by John Rewald, published the same year and by the same publisher, we have comments pertaining to the portrait of Louis-Auguste which appear to bring the matter back into the former historical narrative where there is no mention of Portrait de M. L. A... or the Salon of 1882, along with a comment regarding the lack of a signature which the painting "most likely" would have if it had been submitted to the Salon (of 1866).
"The history of the portrait of Cézanne's father reading L’Evénement (VII) is not so clear. In his letter to Zola of November 2, 1866, Guillemet had implied that Cézanne planned to take this large painting to Paris, yet there is no proof that this intention was carried out. If he had wished to submit it to the jury of the 1867 Salon, Cézanne would most likely have signed it, something he neglected to do.
Moreover, in 1870 he did submit a companion piece of identical size, the portrait of his friend Achille Emperaire, sitting in the same upholstered armchair with the same flowered slipcover (VI).(15) This picture, which is signed, was rejected; it seems most unlikely that the artist would have presented it to the jury had his quite similar portrait of the banker been refused three years earlier. The Emperaire likeness eventually turned up in the shop of pere Tanguy, who had to hide it from the painter because Cézanne had decided to destroy it.(16) Later it found its way into the collection of Auguste Pellerin in Paris whose heirs have donated it to the Louvre.
The Portrait of Cézanne’s Father Reading L’Evénement similarly wound up in the possession of Pellerin. Although Pellerin assembled the most extensive collection of paintings by Cézanne that ever existed (and began to do so while the artist was still alive), no records of his purchases are preserved. He seems to have bought from all of the Paris dealers who - mostly before the First World War - handled Cézanne's works, especially Ambroise Vollard and the Bernheim-Jeunes, but also Jos. Hessel and others.
In the absence of any information, it is impossible to establish whether the artist kept this likeness of his father or whether he disposed of it.(17) From Pellerin, it passed to the latter's daughter, Madame Rene LeCompte, in Paris before it reached the National Gallery in Washington."
15. Painted at the Jas de Bouffan, 1867-68 (Venturi No. 88). See also above 'Achille Emperaire and Cézanne,' pp 57-68.
16. See E. Bernard, Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne (Paris, 1921), pp. 50-51.
17. A photograph of the painting in the Vollard archives shows horizontal cracks, indicating that the picture must have been rolled-up at some time (this was possibly the reason for its subsequent relining). However, the presence of such a photograph in his archives does not necessarily mean that Vollard ever owned this work.
(Studies in Impressionism - H.N. Abrams New York - 1986 p. 99)
Jayne Warman, co-author of John Rewald's 1996 Catalogue Raisonné of Cézanne's works, and co-Director of the Cézanne Online Catalogue Raisonné wrote:
"The second item, grand portrait d'homme, no size, Was valued at 40,000 francs. The painting can be identified as the Portrait of Louis Auguste Cézanne (R101), the artist’s father, at the National Gallery in Washington. Horizontal cracks shown in an old Vollard photograph indicated that the canvas had been rolled up, but it is not known if Vollard found it in that state. Had it been hanging, either pinned to the wall or stretched and leaning against the wall, it would no doubt have been described by Cézanne’s admirers who visited the studio.
But no references were made, thereby indicating that it had been rolled up out of sight.
Indeed, when two young painters, R.P. Rivière and J.P. Schnerb, visited Cézanne in Aix in January 1905, they noticed «in the corner canvases lying about, still on their stretchers or rolled up. The rolls had been left on chairs and had been crushed. His studios were in great disarray, in an unstudied disorder.» The more interesting question, perhaps, is why Cézanne kept this monumental portrait of his father for 40 years, a man with whom he had a very strained relationship and to whom he hid his liaison with Hortense Fiquet for many years. The answer may never be known."
(Societe Paul Cezanne - A.J.F. Millar 2003)
Considering it had been listed as historical fact in Gowing 1988, and Rewald et al 1996, I found it interesting that Jayne Warman did not mention Portrait de M. L. A... and the Salon of 1882 in this account.
One hundred and nineteen years after the artist's death, it is a bit sad to think that Cézanne's iconic portrait of Louis-Auguste, hidden away for forty years, held no sentimental value to his heirs upon its discovery.
But we might recall that in 1878, Louis-Auguste had discovered that his son had both a mistress and a child, and that the elder Cézanne had tried his best to persuade his son to rid himself of the financial burdon by threatening to cut-off the artist's allowance.
For Paul Cézanne, the thought of having to give up his painting to find a job must have amounted to sheer torture. Indeed, there came a point when Cézanne had asked Émile Zola to be prepared to assist him in finding a job, in the event his father should cut him off financially. Although the worst case scenario never came to pass, for a time Louis-Auguste had cut his son's monthly allowance in half, and Cézanne was often forced to borrow money from Zola, who had generously offered to help with financial assistance as necessary.
It was not until 1886 that Louis-Auguste finally consented to Paul's marriage to Hortense Fiquet, and since it was later that same year that Louis-Auguste passed away, I think it can be safely assumed that the only emotion the artist's wife and son had ever felt for Louis-Auguste was fear. Therefore, the thought that they would have had an aversion to keeping the long lost portrait of Louis-Auguste around after the artist's death seems much less callous than at first glance.
We take all of the artist's works for granted now, but I suspect that many of Cézanne's works which were sold by his heirs following his death, perhaps the majority, had never been seen.
Although the flare-up that followed Louis-Auguste's discovery of the artist's secret domestic situation lasted only a year or so, the threat of further conflict seems to have remained just below the surface of the relationship between Cézanne and his father. As an indication of Cézanne's mental state in 1882, the year that he supposedly submitted The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 to the Salon, we must consider the subject of a letter which Cézanne had written to Zola later that same year, as recounted by John Rewald:
"Four years before his marriage, Paul Cézanne had thought of making his will because, being of an anxious disposition, he thought himself destined to die young. But he made fun of his own fears, and wrote to Zola: 'I am thin and can do nothing for you. As I shall be the first to go, I shall arrange with the All-Highest to reserve a good place for you.'
In November 1882 Cézanne wrote to Zola asking his advice concerning his will. His father, who had retired from the bank after the war of 1870, had placed his fortune in the name of his children in order to avoid inheritance taxes. Feared by his children for his authoritarian temper, Louis-Auguste Cézanne knew that he could trust them not to touch the fortune which, though legally theirs, he continued to administer. While not using this money, Paul Cézanne was entitled to bequeath it to whomever he wished, and he decided to leave half of it to his mother, and half to his son. He asked Zola to keep a copy of it for him and sent it to him from L'Estaque in May 1883, after having consulted a lawyer in Marseilles. This will must have been revised after Cézanne's marriage".
This story seems to suggest that the artist had continued to suffer a great deal of stress which was related to his father's threats, almost to the point of being worried to death, so to speak. If as the Louis-Auguste theory suggests, Cézanne had submitted the large unsigned 1866 portrait of his father to the Salon of 1882, the grand gesture appears to have gone unnoticed.
In his biography of Cézanne, Gerstle Mack summed-up Louis-Auguste's feelings as regards his son's choice of profession:
"Louis-Auguste had swallowed his disappointment and had resigned himself to the idea that his son was going to be a painter. The banker's capitulation was never more than passive. He could not bring himself to approve whole-heartedly of Paul's unfortunate choice of career, nor did he ever take the least interest in, or show the least understanding of, the painter's work, theories, and ideals."
(Paul Cézanne - Alfred A. Knopf, 1935 pg 154)
If this were the case, it hardly seems logical that Cézanne would have been willing to honor his father by sweeping aside all that he had achieved over the past decade working with Pissarro, in order to simply forgive and forget the rejection of his work by both the Salon and his father alike.
I think it is much more logical to propose that Cézanne would have submitted a painting to honor the father of his painting, Camille Pissarro.
The only other scenario I can think of to substantiate the Louis-Auguste theory, would be in order to commemorate Émile Zola's articles criticizing the Salon which were published in "L'Evénement" in 1866. (presumably the theme for The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866.)
Yet this scenario seems just as wasteful of Cézanne's golden opportunity as the previous scenario, and perhaps even more so. Zola had published comments in a series of articles following the Salon of 1880, which were to accompany a letter written to the Minister by Renoir and Monet protesting the "skying" of their works which had been grudgingly accepted that year.
Zola's comments in 1880 were far less sympathetic to the painters who had become known as the Impressionists than the 1866 articles in "L'Evénement" had been, and in his conclusion, it seemed as though Zola had wanted to wash his hands of Impressionism.
"The real misfortune is that no artist of this group has achieved powerfully and definitely the new formula which, scattered through their works, they all offer. The formula is there, endlessly diffused; but in no place, among any of them, is it to be found applied by a master. They are all forerunners. The man of genius has not arisen. We can see what they intend and find them right, but we seek in vain the masterpiece that is to lay down the formula and make heads bow before it. That is why the battle of the impressionists has not yet ended; they remain inferior to what they undertake; they stammer without being able to find the word."
(Paul Cézanne - Rewald - Spring Books, 1948, page 109)
Given Zola's comments of 1880, Cézanne could not have had any misconceptions as to whether Zola understood his art, nor the art of his Impressionist friends, and therefore would have had no reason to dredge up the portrait of his father reading "L'Evénement" in order to honor Zola. Besides, after Zola's 1880 abandonment of the Impressionists, what purpose would be served by reminding anyone of what Zola had written in "L'Evénement"?
If one accepts the logical premise that the artist had toned down his overt aggression towards the Salon regime to quietly exhibit the painting of his choice in the Salon of 1882, a portrait of his father reading "L'Evénement" hardly seems appropriate as a peace offering. I don't for one moment believe that Cézanne was not firmly in attack mode when he selected his submission for the Salon of 1882, but that he had changed his tactics from a frontal attack to psychological warfare.
Additionally, we must remember that in 1882 the painting now known as The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866 did not yet historically exist, it was discovered rolled-up following the artist's death.
Other than the initials L. A. (which are not an abbreviation of Louis-Auguste), and the mention of Guillemet discussing a different painting, I have yet to find a discussion of the logic behind the Louis-Auguste theory.
What perplexed me the most was to be informed that John Rewald had ultimately accepted the Louis-Auguste theory (if he had indeed done so), for it had been Rewald's translation from the Dictionnaire Véron, and his comments on Portrait de M. L. A... published in 1948 which had provided me the basic description of the picture in the first place. And, like all of the other authors I have studied including Sir Lawrence, prior to his 1986 biography, Rewald had never made any connection between Portrait de M. L. A... or the Salon of 1882 with The Artist's Father Reading "L'Evénement" 1866.
The Louis-Auguste theory can only be interpreted as the presumption that; given carte blanche to submit a painting of his choice which would be allowed to circumvent the vote of the jury, Cézanne chose to submit a sixteen year-old unsigned portrait of his father, with a title that misspelled his forename and omitted the family surname. As one who has studied the life of Cézanne, it is difficult to imagine the circumstances which would lead John Rewald to that conclusion without compelling evidence, and certainly not on the misrepresented initials alone.
Whether viewed on a personal level based on what is known of Cézanne's often turbulent relationship with his father at that time, or on a technical level based on his studies with Pissarro and his exhibitions with the Impressionists during the 1870's, it is difficult to accept any theory in which Cézanne would have chosen to simply turn his back on over fifteen years of crucial development as a painter when finally presented an opportunity to shine.
Cézanne had fought long and hard, both for his friends and for himself against the Salon regime's stranglehold on which styles of painting were to be considered worthy of public exhibition.
The theory that Cézanne would have arrived at the open gates of "Bouguereau's Salon" with a relic from 1866, implies he had no interest in showing either the public, or the Salon regime what he was capable of as a painter. It would have also implied that his technique had not advanced from that relatively dark, primitive era of his career.
Returning to the ambiguous comments in Rewald 1986: "It is not known which work Cezanne selected; some say it was a self-portrait (which seems unlikely). The initials L.A. could have stood for those of the artist's father, Louis-Auguste, although it appears doubtful that Cézanne would have picked such an early work, except that it was a painting Guillemet had once greatly admired."
Based on Rewald's previous non-committal reference to a self-portrait, by implying Rewald thought it unlikely, the anonymous editor seems to have overlooked the Portrait de l'artiste au fond rose c.1875 (FWN 436), which is a small self-portrait which answers the description from the Dictionnaire Véron as accurately as the portrait of Louis-Auguste does, as well as the size as described by Leclerc and Rivière, and like the portrait of the artist's father, it is unlikely Cézanne would have submitted his self-portrait to the Salon without a signature.
It made perfect sense to say "it appears doubtful that Cézanne would have picked such an early work".
By 1882 Cézanne had exhibited a total of seventeen oil paintings in public with the Impressionists, of that number none were earlier than 1873, and the only portrait of a man was Portrait de Victor Chocquet 1876-77 (FWN 437) which was one of the Impressionist era portraits I had originally found similar to The Fisherman.
If Cézanne submitted a portrait of a man to the Salon of 1882, the odds are good that it was one executed in the mid-1870s, and in the case of The Fisherman, it would have represented the portrait of the same figure highlighted against the sail in the figure composition Scene Fantastique exhibited in the third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877.
As for the theory that he might have chosen the portrait of his father because Guillemet had admired it, he had admired a painting which was described as The Artist's Father Reading "Le Siècle".
As with the unexplained self-portrait theories, writers didn't go too far in trying to guess who the initials "L. A." belonged to, and as one who has spent a great deal of time studying the possibilities, I believe the answer can only be found by thinking like Cézanne.
The decade of the 1870s featured many of Cézanne's pictorial puzzles begging the viewer to find the hidden messages, and I believe that The Fisherman may represent a Rosetta Stone for some of those mysteries, and vice versa.
To attempt to decypher the narrative figure compositions of the 1870s is a deep rabbit hole, the paintings often seem like episodes from the Twilight Zone. Through the filter of The Fisherman, many of the narratives seem linked to the artist's evolution.
Any theory on the initials requires a comprehensive explanation, and mine is based on one of those narrative figure compositions.
I will offer my theory in an excerpt from my studies of Houdon's bust of Voltaire from The Fisherman homepage:
As the years passed, I continued searching for additional images of Voltaire to compare with the artist's drawings and the painting of The Fisherman. I became fascinated by the fact that in almost every image I had found of Voltaire, whether in paintings, etchings, pastels, or statues, he was traditionally depicted with his trademark grin.
It seemed like more than an extraordinary coincidence that the subject of Cézanne's front facing drawing, and the subject of The Fisherman would be among the very few likenesses of Voltaire in which he was not portrayed with a smile. On the part of Cézanne, this was not surprising, for the artist habitually avoided portraying any of his subjects with a smile......right?
I think it goes back to looking at Cézanne's life and works through the filter of The Fisherman, without it the question of Voltaire being carefully depicted without the smile that so defined his personality might never be asked, and even though Chappuis had posted the side by side photos of the bust and the study, he didn't mention the artist's omission of that defining detail.
There was a time that a simple question like "did Cézanne paint people with smiles?" could hardly be considered because it would be too difficult to see enough of his works to get an accurate answer. Fortunately, we now have the Online Cézanne Catalogue Raisonné and I can initiate a search of the images of the artist's portraits and figure paintings and have a definitive answer in less than half an hour. Simply amazing!
Among Cézanne's portraits I found an unfinished study in oil of a smiling Paul Jr c. 1885 (FWN 470) which appears to be Cézanne's only portrait subject painted with a smile.
Among the artist's figure paintings, I noted a few more subjects with facial expressions which might be interpreted as being smiles. From that small group of possibles, I was surprised to find there was one subject who not only seemed to be smiling, but also appeared central to the theme of the painting.
In Cézanne's painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ca 1870 (FWN 610), we find a setting and theme which hardly seems related to Manet's Déjeuner. I had seen smaller plates of this painting many times in books without noticing the details.
Seeing it in a large magnified image, what I found most fascinating about this subject, was his remarkable resemblance to the man whose smiling visage, or lack thereof in Cézanne's drawing and my painting, had inspired the search in the first place..... Voltaire... and dressed as the artist had often depicted fishermen in his figure compositions, in a long sleeved white shirt.
Recognizing this figure as Voltaire is something that jumps out at me through the filter of The Fisherman, along with the fact that this depiction of Voltaire does not appear to be based on Houdon's bust, it is a young Voltaire.
It is also interesting that the figure in the foreground would be posed in such an obvious manner pointing at him with an open thumb suggesting the letter V. This figure seems to be saying "look at Voltaire". In the context of the artist's studies of Voltaire, two aspects of this figure which seem exaggerated to me are this figure's bald, skull-like head, and his large "jug handle" ear. This was the artist's old style "teacup handle" portrait ear on steroids.
These oddities suggest the ongoing ear, head, and skull studies based on Voltaire.
I have studied Voltaire for nearly as long as I have studied Cézanne.
One of the first things I learned about the artist from John Rewald was that: "Cézanne was a diligent student, especially interested in dead languages. For two sous he would turn out a hundred lines of Latin, and during his school years he frequently won prizes for calculus, Greek and Latin, science, and history."
(Paul Cézanne - Spring Books 1948 p. 5)
Among the first things I learned about Voltaire were the various theories of how he came up with the nom de plume Voltaire, and since Cezanne's forte had been Latin, one particular theory had remained a blinking red light in my memory: "Arouet adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille. Its origin is unclear. It is an anagram of AROVET LI, the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, and the initial letters of le jeune ("the young")" (Christopher Thacker - Voltaire - Taylor & Francis. 1971 p. 3)
This took a bit of thought to translate as the initial letters of "le jeune" are obviously "L and J", but apparently it was Voltaire's French accent so to speak, adding "le" to the latin word for young, "iuvenes" to arrive at the initials "L and I". The arrangement appears to have made possible the reversal of the syllables of Airvault, his family's home town in the Poitou region.
The anagram AROVET LI could be expressed "Arouet the young" differentiating father and son, or as LI AROVET "the young Arouet", which was what Cézanne had carefully depicted in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. Just as Voltaire had reversed the syllables of "Airvault", reversing AROVET LI to LI AROVET, Cézanne would have been making a play on the translation which described and identified the Voltaire figure as well. He may have intended this as a clue in one of his pictorial puzzles for Zola to solve.
Just as I had done, the artist must have sought out additional depictions of the philosopher, and for some reason he had uncharacteristically painted a recognizable likeness of him, smile and all, with blond hair in the manner of Maurice Quentin de La Tour.(below) A question which remains open in my mind, is whether the scene takes place in that period of Voltaire's life, the mode of dress for most of the figures could be a clue.
To me this was the same unusual attention to detail as the Voltaire/Pissarro figure highlighted in front of the sail in Scene Fantastique, carefully detailed to be recognizable as the Voltaire/Pissarro figure from its companion portrait The Fisherman, who may represent LI AROVET decades later as The Fisherman, depicted by Cézanne in the same clothing in a trilogy of old age, the skull-like tones of the forehead signifying death, and the bronzed shadows representing a memorial to Pissarro, Voltaire, and to all of the great artists he had been inspired by.
Déjeuner sur l'herbe avec Monsieur Li Arovet?.
In his own discussion of the same painting Sir Lawrence Gowing wrote: "Cézanne's first letters to Zola tell of his fondness for clever word games and charades. He begged his friend to rhyme everything, and he in turn would puzzle over Zola's riddles. He would then reply with a rebus, which would require Zola to divine the mystery of its combination of letters (pronouns) and vignettes (portraits, a scythe, buildings, etc.) It seems likely then, that Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe may be another of Cézanne's games of this sort wherein he has indicated his intention with disparate people and things, but without words. The persons and objects may all serve as keys to the contrived arrangement of the picture." (Cézanne: The Early Years 1859 - 1872 p. 25)
There seems to be some misconception that Cézanne was the country bumpkin from Aix, and that Émile Zola was the intellectual of their youth.
Yet they had grown up with similar tastes in music, art and literature, and they and their friends had shared spirited conversations on many subjects and Cézanne's voice had always served him well.
Anyone could understand the words published in Zola's novels, writers can describe fictional characters in ways that allow the reader to "know" that character, to like or dislike them. Hardly anyone at that time could see Cézanne's paintings to judge them, much less understand the language of his art. It seems clear that Cézanne's intellect allowed him to understand Zola's novels, but Zola's intellect could not grasp the significance of Cézanne's art.
Despite Zola's financial success from writing, it seems that in the end the artist's brush was mightier that the writer's pen in terms of discovery, innovation, and historical significance. Zola's bones reside inside The Pantheon in Paris, yet Cézanne's works reside in great museums around the World.
As for financial success during their lives, Zola wins hands-down. Yet it would be interesting to see a comparison of the value of their combined works. I would conservatively guess that the value of just the paintings which Cézanne had gifted to Zola, would now exceed the value of Zola's income from all of his books combined. Ironically, the most valuable books produced by Zola are likely the one's he gifted to Cézanne.
I think Cézanne had reserved The Fisherman from his Impressionist period specifically to be his message for the Salon. The painting would have provided the greatest contrast to Bouguereau's pink-faced girls, and at the same time it would have showcased his studies of light, atmosphere, color, and portrait composition from the apogee of his Impressionist period.
Above all, as the chosen weapon of his psychological warfare, I believe Portrait de M. L. A... would have been imbued with the symbolism which would convey all that he had wanted to declare to the likes of M. Bouguereau and those who had barred him from the Salon for so long, that is the love of painting outdoors instilled in him by Camille Pissarro, and the hope of growing old working en plein-air, feeling the warmth of the Sun on his face.
Explication Des Ouvrages De Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture, Gravure Et Lithographie Des Artistes Vivants Exposés Au Palais Des Champs-Elysées Le 1 MAI 1882 - Charles De Mourgues Fréres - Paris. 1882 p.46
Théodore Véron (Dictionnaire Véron - Chez M. Bazin - Paris, 1882 p.113)
Théodore Duret (Histoire des Peintres Impressionnistes - H. Floury - Paris, 1906 pp 184-85)
Theodore Duret (Manet and the French Impressionists – J.B. Lippincott Company - Philadelphia, 1910 pp. 184-185)
James Huneker (Promenades of An Impressionist - Charles Scribner's Sons - New York, 1910 p.8)
André Leclerc (Cézanne - Editions Hyperion - Paris, 1914 p. 11)
Gustave Coquiot (Paul Cézanne - Librairie Paul Ollendorrf - Paris 1914-19 pp. 87-88)
Ambroise Vollard (Paul Cézanne - Galerie A. Vollard - Paris, 1914. pp. 48, 50)
Ambroise Vollard (Paul Cezanne - GEORGES GRÈS & Cie - Zurich, 1919 p. 63)
Ambroise Vollard (Paul Cézanne; His Life and Art - Nicholas L. Brown - New York, 1923 pp. 67, 68)
Georges Rivière – (Le Maitre Paul Cézanne - H. Floury - Paris, 1923 pp. 93, 210)
Georges Rivière (Cézanne le Peintre Solitaire - Librarie Floury - Paris, 1933 pp. 125, 133)
Gerstle Mack (Paul Cézanne - Alfred A. Knopf - New York, 1935 pp. 271, 272)
Lionello Venturi (Cézanne Son Art — Son Oeuvre - P. Rosenberg - Paris, 1936 p. 72)
John Rewald (Cézanne - Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre, Son Amitie Pour Zola - Albin Michel - Paris, 1939 pp. 270. 271)
John Rewald (The History of Impressionism - Museum of Modern Art - New York - 1946 p. 365)
John Rewald (Paul Cézanne A Biography - Simon and Schuster - New York, 1948 p. 133)
John Rewald (Paul Cézanne - Spring Books - London, 1948 pp. 115, 116, 191)
John Rewald (The Ordeal of Paul Cezanne - Phoenix House 1950 p. 106, 107)
Lawrence Hanson (Mortal Victory: A Biography of Paul Cézanne – 1960)
John Rewald (The History of Impressionism - Museum of Modern Art - New York, 1961)
Richard W. Murphy (The World of Cézanne - Time-Life Books - New York, 1968 p. 63)
John Rewald (Paul Cézanne, A Biography - Shocken Books - New York 1968)
Jack Lindsay (Paul Cézanne, His Life and Art - New York Graphic Society, 1969)
John Rewald (Cézanne and His Father - Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 4 1971-1972)
Dr. Richard Shiff (Cézanne and the End of Impressionism - University of Chicago Press - Chicago, 1984 p. 281)
John Rewald (Cézanne, a Biography - H.N. Abrams - New York, 1986)
John Rewald (Studies in Impressionism - H.N. Abrams - New York - 1986 p. 99)
Sir Lawrence Gowing (Cézanne: The Early Years 1859 - 1872 - Harry N. Abrams - New York, 1988)
John Rewald (The Paintings of Paul Cezanne; A Catalogue Raisonne London: Thames and Hudson, 1996)
Jayne Warman (Societe Paul Cezanne - A.J.F. Millar 2003)
