Voyeurs and ghosts

To be an art historian is to a certain extent to be a voyeur. At the moment I am spending my time reading letters written by nineteenth-century artists. By reading them I learn about their daily lives, the (in)ability to finish a painting, the manner in which they keep in contact with their art dealer - often a hate love relationship -, with their friends and family. I read about their tiredness, illness and joys. At times I am ashamed to go through someone's love letters, be witness to someone's grief, It is as if I were reading one of those awful magazines. However, mostly artists correspondence is very mundane, dealing with appointments, money problems, actually the things that keep us - in our twentyfirst-century lives - busy as well, and I forget my embarrasment.

Letter by Felicien Rops to Anon., 24 October 1896, coll. Fondation Custodia, Paris

The letters make the artists human, Often more so than the books, articles and exhibitions have done. Writers, art dealers, curators, and the artists themselves did their best to create a lot of mirrors and smoke, which turned the artist into a superhero, whether tragic or successful. By combining both, the image of the artist becomes more nuanced.

And I, I am the treasure hunter, the detective, trying to find scraps of information on which I can build my story on nineteenth-century Dutch artists in Paris. I am searching for the artist's reactions to the city of Paris, how his views on art might have changed thanks to his stay in the capital of France, how his location in the city could have influenced his manner of thinking and many other things that I think might be important to my understanding the motivation of these artists.

While I ride through Paris on my bike (indeed my Dutch bike, which I brought with me) I am starting to recognize streetnames where Dutch artists lived: the Rue du Dragon where Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer lived, the Rue Marcadet where Jacob and Matthijs Maris and for a short while David Artz rented a house (In 1867 it was the countryside, nowadays it is filled with modern appartments, although if you look closely enough you can still find nineteenth-century traces), the Rue Lepic where Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo lived. Some houses are still standing, and are even museums which can be visited nowadays such as Ary Scheffers studio and house on the Rue Chaptal.

I am following in the footsteps of these nineteenth-century ghosts, reading their letters, walking through streets, to see if I can't conjure them up in the here and now. At the same time I realize more and more that I might be the ghost, shifting in and out of focus in nineteenth-century Parisian streets, reading letters over artists' shoulders while they sit at their breakfast tables opening their morning post. It is as if time and space are becoming permeable and Paris is slowly turning into one of those children's toys in which two images are laid over one another and by moving the picture one or the other shifts into focus. The difficulty, of course, is to see both images at the same time so that they become a different way in which we see ourselves as well as these nineteenth-century artists.

Je suis Paris

In the past days, I was working on something art historically justified for this blog about the adaptability of Dutch artists arriving in Paris in comparison to my own experiences, but after Friday night this seems completely futile. In a theatre in the center of Paris dozens and dozens of people were killed. At the same time near the Place de la République several café's and restaurants were targeted, as well two locations near the Stade de France where France was playing a friendly match against Germany. All hell had broken lose not 10 minutes from where we live. 129 people were killed.

We were asleep. We had had a hectic week and an early night seemed a good idea. We were woken by our phones bleeping madly. Many of our family and friends were worried.
In our neighbourhood, however, everything was quiet. And the silence remained for the whole weekend. We live on the groundfloor and we can usually hear the sound of cars and people talking, laughing, shouting outside our window in French and in many different other languages as we live in a neighbourhood with many nationalities. This weekend Paris seemed muted.

It was not that people stayed inside, on the contrary, there were long queues in the supermarket, the parks were full of people picknicking, the tables on the café terraces were all taken and the streets were as busy as always. It was just the absence of loud noises, except for the sirens that could be heard where ever we were.

I was and still am incredibly impressed by the fact that the Parisians are carrying on with their lives, refusing to give in to fear. They are trying to get on with their lives as best they can. It is chaotic and all kinds of measures are taken: if we're late for school that's it, we're not allowed in. You can understand that our children like that measure a lot. The library of the Institut National de l'Histoire de l'art is closed this morning without notice and I expect it will stay this way for the coming period.

But the Parisian resilience is enourmous. Everything is done with courtesy without impatience or anger. I saw myself as a stranger here, a visitor for just a few months and my feelings about the events of Friday night were horror, pity and an overwhelming helplessness. The director of the Petit Palais just emailed me, writing that he was worried, because, after all, I am a Parisienne as well. I can tell you, judging from the past days, I am proud to be a Parisienne.

Why are we organizing a beautiful exhibition on Dutch 19th century artists travelling to Paris?

The later famous Hague School artist Jozef Israëls and his friend Jacobus van Koningsveld had just returned to Amsterdam after a long sojourn in Paris between 1845 and 1847. They needed the support of their teacher Jan Adam Kruseman for the exhibition and sale of one their paintings (they painted it together) as it had the semblance of having been tainted with French influence. Kruseman wrote to the organizers of the exhibition: 'I take the freedom of introducing them both as being well-behaved, laudable, and real Dutch young men. They left from here on their own merit and have, for the love of art, suffered and sacrificed a great deal' (letter by J.A. Kruseman to J.B. Weenink 9 June 1847). Being Dutch and painting in the Dutch manner of the times was a big deal in nineteenth century Netherlands. 
Nevertheless it is remarkable that Kruseman had to stress that fact with such emphasis when one realizes that almost 25% of Dutch artists travelled abroad for a longer period of time for either study or career possibilities. And I am not even talking about shorter trips, visits to the Paris Salon des Beaux Arts for instance. A yearly exhibition where French and also foreign artists exhibited their latest paintings in the hope of winning a medal, being noticed by the newspapers and, ultimately, finding a buyer. Many Dutch artists made a trip of several weeks to see the art works on display and meet old and new friends and business acquaintances. 
However, until quite recently the focus within art history has been on the issue of nationality, ignoring the fact that the art world was - and still is - an amalgam of national and international elements. With this research we aim to tell the story of international artistic exchange focusing on The Netherlands and France. Which form did staying and working in Paris take for Dutch artists between 1800 and 1900? Where did they stay, whom did they meet, with which ideas did they return and what did that mean for Dutch art?
Answers to these questions will be presented from Autumn 2017 onwards in the form of an exhibition which can be seen in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and then in the Petit Palais Museum in Paris. The show will be accompanied by an extensive catalogue and a wealth of information that we shall find during our research: all the source material, the art works, biographical information, the letters and other ego documents will be published online via www.rkd.nl.

Artists such as Gerard van Spaendonck - around 1800 - and Ary Scheffer - around 1830 - had both played important roles within the French academic art world as court painters. Claude Monet  gave the Dutch artist Johan Barthold Jongkind the honorary title 'father' of the impressionists. Many artists of the Hague School with their so-called typical Dutch style and subject matter, were actually inspired by their French Barbizon predecessors, who in turn had looked closely at the realistic paintings of the Dutch 17th century artists. Jacob Maris, who was widely succesful with his mighty Dutch landscape depictions, wouldn't have been able to paint this beautifully had he not stayed in Paris to finish his education. Vincent van Gogh's first ambition was to become a peasant painter in the style of Jean François Millet, but he radically changed his mind after arriving in Paris and seeing the latest developments in the art scene: from then on he was set on capturing colour in all it's forms.
George Hendrik Breitner and Isaac Israels were impressed by Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet, who, by the way, was married to a Dutch woman. And how about Kees van Dongen and Jan Sluijters who, together with Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, provoked the crowds with their wild, expressionistic style and sensual depictions of women? Piet Mondriaan, Conrad Kickert and Lodewijk Schelfhout also found themselves in avantgarde company: together with Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger they developed Cubism which they introduced in Holland just before the first world war. These are just a few examples of which there are many.  


This blog will give an account of the work in progress, of our experiences in doing art historical research and compiling an exhibition.  I shall also post stories that are not relevant for the big picture but are so interesting it would be a pity not to have written them down somewhere. Expect posts about the food and the traffic in 19^th century Paris, the fascination with elephant Marguerite or Parky, originally owned by the Dutch stadholder Willem V, who lived in the Jardin des Plantes from 1798 onwards, and the service entrance of Musée d’Orsay, to name just a few.