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Erring Portraits
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In spite of the invention of photography and the pure painting of the
post-Impressionist avant-garde, the portrait remained exposed to
conventional criticism more than other genres. The person commissioning a
portrait wants to see himself in his likeness as in a mirror. The viewer
looks for the similarity between the sitter and his picture, or at least for
the illusion that the person painted could somehow inhabit the same world.
The painter wants to demonstrate his ability to stay close to nature, and
wants at the same time to emphasise that art is autonomous and cannot be
constrained.
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The portraits that Henri Rousseau exhibited from 1889 in the Salon des
Independants were usually commissioned and they were usually misunderstood -
often, indeed, violently rejected.
The portrait-landscape Boy on the Rocks was labelled by the press the "Dwarf with the Enormous Head" and
established the painter's reputation as a freak. It sometimes happened that
people from his own quarter who freak. It sometimes happened that people
from his own quarter who
asked him to paint themselves or their children rejected the result or
pernaps destroyed it. Even Alrred Jarry destroyed nis likeness mat was
mistakenly exhibited in 1895 as Portrait of Madame A.J.; it showed the poet
clad in black, surrounded by his favourite creatures, owl and
chameleon. Jarry used the picture for target practice, set fire to the
canvas and kept the remaining fragment rolled up in a drawer in order to
shock visitors.
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Boy on the Rocks, 1895-1897 |
Child
with Doll, 1905 |
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This,
at least, is the story told by Andre Salmon and by Guillaume Apollinaire who, as late as 1906, saw the remains of "a most
impressive head". Apollinaire made the acquaintance of the Douanier in 1906
through Jarry, and like him he was confronted with an unusual way of working
when he sat for his spectacular double portrait. Rousseau
is said to have taken the exact measurements of his model's face and body in
order to transfer them, reduced in size but proportionally exact, to the
canvas. Moreover, he allegedly held his tubes of paint up to the sitter's
face in order to find "the precise tone of the flesh". The reports of the
two subversive poets delight in the fame of the ridiculous painter, who in
their eyes was a simpleton with a touching desire to imitate nature but
whose bureaucratic pursuit of detail barred the way to an overall
impression. There is something particularly entertaining in the logic of the
absurd, which all parties had in common. For Rousseau, a human being was a
concrete object that could be reconstructed in the same manner as a piece of
furniture, so
that the surface of the painting becomes a technical designer's projection
screen. For Jarry, the picture that came about in this way was merely
created matter and therefore a fit object of attack.
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The Muse
inspiring the Poet, 1909 |
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The belief that a likeness could be built up from measurements, like the
photo-kit reconstruction of a wanted person, resulted in an unusual style of
portraiture. The basic scheme is provided by the pictures of children. The figure faces the front and is fixed in position by a
precise outline, always sketched in first. Since the face comes at the
beginning and holds most meaning, relatively little room is left beneath the
"Japanesque" head for the body. Details such as hands, accompanying objects,
the pattern of a dress, legs, are compressed. Since Rousseau constructed the
figure additively and without regard to perspective foreshortening, it turns
out in segments like the pieces of a puzzle; the simple fields of colour
cause the flesh tints to hover in front of the black and behind the red.
This deformation arose from deficient technique, yet it is so clearly
defined that in the most astonishing way it anticipates Cubism. The figure
becomes a multi-layered structure, resulting not in likenesses of the known
but in art shapes, precursors of Chirico's articulated dolls which confront
the observer like rigid, iconic masks. The collage-style landscape, too,
"cut and pasted" during the second phase, is fictitious in content. The
meadow full of flowers spreads out behind the girl, the mountains tower up
behind the boy. Perhaps the inventor of the portrait-landscape intended to
convey aspects of childhood, safety and adventure. But unlike the key
picture of 1903, these pictures do not present the world of
childhood as a primeval paradise. The solemn children look like small
adults. Self-contained, immobile, solitary and forlorn, they embody the
constraints and alienation bestowed upon them by the painter. The
dominant contrast between black and white in the picture of the boy has been taken some
to suggest the likeness of a dead child. Perhaps Rousseau's perceptions were coloured by his own experience and feelings. Four of the
children of his first marriage died young. Julia, the only daughter to
survive, was taken to live with relatives in Angers when she was eighteen
years old. Her role in the Douanier's bohemian life was negligible.
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An exemplum:
To fete Baby!
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Rousseau lost four of
his children to tuberculosis. About 1903 he painted To fête Baby!, one of
the loveliest pictures of a child since Philipp Otto Runge. Rounded like a
china doll on a turn-of-the-century greetings card, somewhat in the manner
of Fernando Botero, the putto in its white chemise stands rooted in the
summer meadow with its corn poppies and marguerites. The light half-frame of
branches, the verdant foliage, the reddish path, the poplars in the distance
- all this breathes a stillness that is given an air of fairyland by the
shining leaves and the child's golden hair. The child holds up the front of
its chemise full of flowers, and with the other hand it proudly presents to
the observer a large marionette whose brightly coloured costume takes up the
colours of the flowers. The picture encapsulates the romantic nostalgia of
the nineteenth century. When feudalism ended, a myth took over wkich
stylised childhood as the quintessence of innocence and the
Golden Age. All those who in the wake of Jean-Jacques Rousseau took "back to
nature" as their slogan demanded also a return to childhood.
Rational philosophy was ana-thema to them, they went back to the
beginning in their search for wholeness. In his defence of
dandyism Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote: "Like the tortoise the poet
carries his house on his back, and this house is the very first
castle of his dreams." It was poets, artists and aesthetes such
as Alfred Jarry, Guillaume Apollinaire, Odilon Redon, Robert
Delaunay, Vassily Kandinsky and Wilhelm Uhde, who, weary of
traditional school models, established the fame of the Douanier.
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For all of them Henri Rousseau was the
"venerable child" of art, the great primitive who lived and worked beyond
the reach of damaging speculation and sophistication,
at one with himself, original, as nature had made him. Conscious, deliberate
action was seen as a negative ingredient of culture, and Rousseau was
quickly acclaimed as the unconscious ar-tist. But was that really the case?
To fete Baby!
seems to be the artist's own testimony with regard to himself. Oneness with
nature, safety, security
are its themes. The marionette, symbol of mechanisation and alienation, is
not yet in control of this unblemished paradise. Perhaps this harlequin with
his huge moustache is really Rousseau? A jolly toy in the hands of the child
that he still is? It would be a plausible statement on the part of the
artist who took refuge throughout his life in a kind of commedia dell'arte,
who disguised himself behind Pierrot's mask as early as 1886 and then
pleaded exonerating naivete on various later occasions. With a good measure
of self-awareness he wrote to the judge on 6.12.1907, in an attempt to plead
innocence in the bank fraud trial: "In all my works people find
a remarkable upright quality, which I
have endeavoured to sustain in all I have
done. It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good..." And on
13th December he drew attention to his fundamental honesty: "If by the way I
had
acted differently I could not have developed the natural intuition which
even
my parents overlooked."
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To fete Baby! 1903 |
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Every
model who sat for Rousseau was disturbed by his preoccupation
with planes and detail. Whether he was painting a leaf, the arch
of a bridge or a human being, he always contradicted intuitively
the reality people knew, and arrived at magic formulas
stylistically modern in spirit. Fundamental to the magic of the
portraits is that the "things" conjured might well have come
from a puppet theatre, and yet they catch the essence of the
subject's world.
The small Portrait of the Artist, which was
painted around 1900, reveals something of his image-conscious
personality. With black lacquered hair, precisely twirled
moustaches and well-cut dinner jacket, he assumes his position
as stalwart man of honour and energy. Although he chooses a
modest format for the picture, yet the smallest detail of his
face and the severe black-and-white of his evening dress express
the full quantum of self-assertion. This is the proud
representative of the Third Estate, the roguish bohemian and
serious artist, who distributes visiting cards with the imprint
"fine art painter", who geves private painting and violin
lessons to the people of his neighbourhood and , from 1902,
teaches for the Association Philotechnique. Not without reason
did the artists of the "Blaue Reiter" attach importance to this
self-portrait. At Christmas, 1911, Franz Marc gave Wassily
Kandinsky a mirror-image replica in verre eglomise, which gave
the "painter with the sacred heart" flower and halo. Not without
reason did Max Beckmann refer to Rousseau in his famous
Self-Portrait in Dinner Jacket of 1927 as the "Homer
in the Porter's Lodge" who could both portray and transcend the
petit bourgeois world.
The
matching Portrait of the Artist's Second Wife Josephine
gives evidence of the poverty and hardship which the painter
liked to conceal. Joséphine, whom he had married in 1899, opened
a small stationery shop in the Rue Gassendi in 1901, hoping to
sell, among other things, her husband's works. In the picture
she appears ill and prematurely aged; she died in 1903.
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Self
Portrait with a Lamp, 1903 |
Portrait
of the Artist's Second Wife with a Lamp, 1903 |
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Other
pictures capture the as yet unshaken world of the worthy,
phlegmatic citizen. The artillerymen, the guests
at The country wedding, those going on a Sunday
excursion in the cart of the neighbourly greengrocer Claude
Juniet, including the dogs and the white mare Rosa - all of
them are motionless under the painter's gaze. Like a
photographer, he arrests all movement and seizes the solemn
moment. Rousseau does everything possible in order to achieve
ceremony. He positions the wedding guests in front of chestnut trees and
acacias which outdo the naturalistic trappings of the photographer's
atelier, and achieves a kind of fantastic reality. By means of simple
outlines and black-and-white contrast he gives the static group close
cohesion. Problems of representation the painter overcomes by imbuing the
figures with a magic quality: the man sitting down seems to become one with
the tree-stump, and the bride defies gravity and hovers in the centre of the
group; the hyperdimensional black dog becomes a kind of totem animal and at
the same time provides the balance that the picture requires.
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Artillerymen, 1893–1895 |
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The
Wedding, 1904-1905 |
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An anecdote concerning the group picture,
The Cart of Pere Juniet, demonstrates Rousseau's characteristic attitude. The American
painter Max Weber, pupil of Henri Matisse, pointed out to the Douanier that
the dog underneath the cart was so large as to be out of all proportion.
Rousseau's answer, "Because it has to be that way", is not in the least
naive. Comparison with the photographs from which he worked show that each
motif was thought out, as a formal element of composition. The tree
appearing behind the group is emphasised as an axis repeated in the proudly
seated figures. An additional person fills the gap behind the owner of the
cart. The piece of -wood blocking the horse in the photo disappears. The dog
with its black silhouette offsets the precariousness of the cart, and even
the disproportionately tiny puppy finds its counterpart in the
crotchet-shaped pedal. Everything, except the black-white-red contrast in
front of green, yellow ochre and blue, has its place in the scheme of
balance. In this incidental picture, which, like Pop Art, constructs
"reality at second hand", one motif is particularly striking: presumably
with the pantograph, Rousseau copies
the wheel with its spokes in "correct" perspective. This hyperrealistic item
disturbs the tapestry-like quality of the picture. It is at this point
that magic takes over, The consistent two-dimensionality of the scene
triumphs over conventional perception, transforms the one remainin
piece of everyday reality into something strange.
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The Cart of Pere Juniet, 1908 |
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In the exotic portraits with which Rousseau bids farewell to the
petit bourgeois world, the form becomes even more radical. The
head-and-shoulders portrait of a man dressed in oriental style, accompanied
by his tabby cat with tiger stripes, sitting before an urban industrial
landscape, was painted about 1905.
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It is not certain whether
this portrays the popular writer and traveller Pierre Loti, or a certain
Edmond Frank, journalist and poet of Montmartre, who in 1952 recognised
himself in the picture. Be that as it may, Rousseau knew how to stage the
eccentricities of the poet. The dandy with his cigarette would not be out of
place beside the "islander" Gauguin or the magician Sar Peladan. Constructed
like a playing-card in black, white, red and yellow ochre, the figure casts
a spell over the melancholy sea of houses; in the spirit of Paul Verlaine he
raises the song of the leaf from the ash of the city. The matching of colour
shapes, the collage-style hand that echoes the chimneys, the ear flattened
two-dimensionally and the face with its almost Cubist facets - all these
features combine to give the work a rigour which is reminiscent of late
Gothic painting, and a modernity not found again before Leger.
The Portrait of Joseph Brummer of 1909 seems conventional by comparison.
The picture suggests that Rousseau had been studying Monsieur Berlin by
Ingres which had been in the Louvre since 1897. Equally compact and
monumental, black and white, complete in itself, the figure of the young
Hungarian-born sculptor sits enthroned before the observer. The painter and
his model were introduced to one another in 1908 by Matisse's pupil Max
Weber. Brummer was also studying with Matisse and acting as assistant to
Rodin and he was one of the increasing number of artists and intellectuals
who gathered round the spectacular Douanier and counted themselves fortunate
to be invited to his private soirees.
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Portrait
Pierre Loti, 1906 |
Portrait
of Joseph Brummer, 1909 |
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Behind the casually elegant figure Rousseau painted a cryptic picture within
the picture. It is the encoded signature of the proud inventor of the jungle
landscapes and at the same time it celebrates the successful connoisseur and
dealer who bought and sold not only Japanese woodcuts and African sculpture
but also the works of the so-called primitive.
The most colourful of all the aggressive young artists of the modern
style was Guillaume Apollinaire, the metaphysical poet and later
theorist of Cubism, who was introduced to the painter by Alfred Jarry in
1906. By mid-1908 Rousseau had conceived his plan for a double portrait
that was to show the poet and his mistress, the painter Marie Laurencin,
in a corner of the Parc de Luxembourg. The couple's dilatory attendance
at sittings and their disregard of Rousseau's financial straits meant
that the work was only just completed in time for the exhibition at the
Salon des Independants in March of the following year. The result is not
entirely free from caricature. The poet's pose is that of a well-behaved
schoolboy with Marie towering at his side. In a second version,
undertaken so that Rousseau might put right his earlier error Of putting gillyflowers instead of carnations in the picture, lie
persisted in his interpretation or the great poet's need for a large muse. This bizarre story gives the lie to Apollinaire's myth of the
Douanier at heaven's gate and innocent Fra Angelico; the naive cult figure
of the artists' banquet portrays the vanity of his subject with mischievous
precision, painting the second time from memory. The "semi-otic error"
confirms the value of the measuring technique Rousseau used for the first
version. Press critics found the picture a poor likeness, but this criticism
in itself confirms the identity of the subject, just as the shots fired by
Alfred Jarry at his own portrait confirm his desire to destroy the Ubu in
himself.
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Henri
Rousseau
(see collection)
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