The First Lesson of Carolus-Duran

Lessons to My Pupils: First Lesson

Is Painting simply an imitative art? No; it is, above all, an art of expression. There is not one of the great masters of whom this is not true. Even the masters who were most absorbed by outward beauty, being influenced by it according to the sensitiveness of their natures, understood that they neither could not ought to reproduce anything but the spirit of nature either in form or color. Thus it happens that these masters have interpreted nature, and not given a literal translation. This interpretation is precisely what makes the personality of each of them. Without this individual point of view there can be no really original work.

This shows how dangerous are those schools that, restricting the artists to the same methods, do not permit them to develop their individual feeling. These schools, however, make use of a very respectable motto: “Tradition.” But what are we all but the result of tradition? — only we ought to be free to choose in the direction that agrees with our aspirations, and not have imposed upon those of another man, however great he may be.

In the French school, since Ingres, the tradition comes from Raphael. That was very well for Ingres, who freely chose the master from whom he really descended; but we who have other needs, who desire reality — less beautiful, without doubt, but more passionate, more living, more intimate, we should search a guide amongst the masters who responds most fully to our temperament.

Imagine the painters of the seventeenth century in Spain, Flanders, or Holland obliged to follow in the footsteps of Raphael instead of the inspiration of their individual genius! What would have become of their reproductions? Instead of Velasquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Teniers, Ostade, and Brauwer, we should have a lot of would-be Raphaels, counterfeited, stunted, and grotesque, a commonplace and disheartening plagiarism substituted for their sincerely and extremely varied chefs-d’oeuvre.

 

The example that I have just given you in the past has a singular application at present, when the same causes are producing the same disastrous results. It is as absurd to attempt to impose on artists one and the same mold in which all — powerful or weak, impassioned or timid — must form their thought, as it would be to constrain them to modify their physical natures until all should resemble a given model. Art lives only by individual expression. Where would we be if the great masters of all times had only looked to the past — they who not only prepared, but made the future? 

Works of art can only be produced by the recalling of our aspirations and experiences. To live one’s work is the condition, the sine qua non, of its power and of its truth. 

 These principles apply not only to “compositions,” but also to the painting of portraits, which many wrongly believe to be another art, because the greater part of portrait painters have only represented the visible form of their subject. If we study the masters that are looked upon as first in this order, we shall see that they have not been contented with the material appearance, but that, putting themselves aside, they have sought the particular characteristics of the model — his mind and his temperament as well as his manner. To place all one’s models on the same background is like serving all kinds of fish with the same sauce.

We will review some of those who, right or wrong, have come down to us as types: Holbein, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Raphael, Van Dyck. Which if these painters best agrees with the ideas I have just expressed? Among the persons painted by Holbein, Velasquez, and Rembrandt, there is not one that does not seem to be known to you intimately. You exclaim, in spite of yourself: “I feel as it I knew him — what a good likeness it must be! Each has his own individuality apart from the habits and plastic tendencies of the painter.

"Portrait of a Man" by Velazquez

"Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette,"
by Holbein the Younger

Titian, in spite of his admirable works in this art, is a transition between these first and those less close in their portrayal of the individuality of their subjects.

"Portrait of a Man with a Quilted Sleeve" by Titian

Raphael, in his love for beauty and harmony, only heeded the model posing before him as far as it coincided with his ideal. In all his portraits we see Raphael; but it is impossible to disengage the precise individuality of the person portrayed.*

"Baldasarre Castiglione" by Raphael

In Van Dyck it is yet more noticeable. He has painted commoners and nobles, giving them all the same style, the same elegance, that sprang from his own taste and graceful personality.

"Martin Ryckaert" by Sir Anthony Van Dyck

This necessity of self-abnegation, indispensable to the portraitist, is the only thing that separates the portrait from composition. 

I will leave to Ingres, who did wonders in this direction, and to Delacroix, who really was unable to make a portrait, the task of saying to which of these two genres supremacy belongs — if supremacy there be. Ingres said that only the greatest masters had made true portraits. Delacroix wrote, with a sadness that one feels between the lines, that 

"Portraiture is the most difficult thing in art. I myself believe that each offers different but equivalent difficulties, the placing on view of one person being as complex as that of ten. In a picture you must draw all from your own soul, your remembrance of the phenomena of nature and your feeling toward nature, your past joys and griefs."

"Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville" by Ingres

*M. Duran, we think, will not find many to agree with him in so sweeping a condemnation of Raphael’s portraits. Editor.

In the Atelier of Carolus-Duran

(from Will H. Low's book "A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900)

The Beginning

Carolus-Duran by his student, John Singer Sargent

From the enthusiasm of a youth from Boston, Robert C. Hinckley, now a successful portrait painter in Washington, the atelier Duran had its birth. Mr. Hinckley, arriving in Paris with the intention of studying art, had been greatly impressed by Duran's work and sought his instruction as a private pupil. M. Duran declined to admit a pupil into his private studio, but offered, if Hinckley would find a room nearby and work from life, to visit him and correct his work occasionally.

This he did, and before long a second applicant for the privilege of study was referred to Hinckley by the master, soon followed by others. When I joined the atelier there were eight or ten pupils, perhaps half being French, and in the years following the number rose to forty, the majority then being English or American.

The official language of the school remained French, however, a placard announcing a fine of ten centimes for each word of a foreign tongue.


A Radically Different Method of Instruction

Carolus-Duran in His Studio

The ordinary methods of instruction in art divide drawing from painting, and further subdivide drawing into drawing from the plaster cast and from life. The evident reason for thus attacking the problems of artistic production is not to confuse the student with form and colour at the same time.

The disadvantage of such a method lies in the danger in after work of continuing this subdivision and producing tinted drawings instead of the fully coloured, freely drawn products of the brush, which is the final instrument of the painter.

It is equally evident that by giving the neophyte the task of reproducing in colour and form the ever-changing living model his difficulties are multiplied manifold. But this is more or less unknown to the unpracticed beginner, and the charm of arriving at once at the point held in reserve during long years of study in other schools overbalances any feeling of timidity which he may have.

The struggles of one who cannot swim and who is thrown into deep water are nothing, however, compared with the floundering in colour and shapeless form which characterize the first studies according to this method.

Hence there were frequent departures from our ranks, and many a defeated painter found it expedient to become an humble darughtsman int he ahlls of anitque scupture of the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

The grave M. Bouguereau was quoted as asking one of our comrades, "Does M. Duran ever make you draw?" and Ingres's axiom that drawing is the probity of art was repeated to us on all occasions by students of rival ateliers solicitous of our welfare.

However, this method of study has its advantages. It keeps ever present in the student's mind the final end to be attained, and the incessant use of the brush, with its implied rendition of form and colour by masses and planes which exist before his eyes, rather than by the point and masses of black and white tones which are the necessary conventions of the usual method, gives him a mastery of his tools which is superior, and is absolutely logical.

Joined to a sincere and stimulating enthusiasm as a teacher, our master showed great perception and consideration for the individual temperament of his pupils; and I have known him to recommend diametrically opposite courses to different men, as he judged might be useful to one or the other.

Few of the ateliers of the time have turned out men of more renown today in the various branches of art.

Organization of the Atelier

The atelier was organized on a democratic basis, all students paying a certain amount each month, which went for the expenses of rent, heating, and the hire of models; our master giving gratuitously, in the service of art and in gratitude for similar gratuitous instruction received in his youth, his services two mornings of every week.

This was no light sacrifice of the time of a busy portrait painter, and later the service given was increased by visits to our own studios when we were preparing pictures for the Salon, when he was ever willing to counsel and help us.

The internal government of the studio was vested in our massier, one of our now well-known painters in New York occupying that monitory position, and ruling us with an energy on a par with our openly expressed disregard for all rule.

Our Models
The models were chosen by vote, and I can remember a long succession of these faithful servitors of art coming week after week, taking their positions on the platform for our judgment in the intervals of repose of the model from whom we were working.

We had a model of long experience who had posed for this or that picture or statue in the Louvre, who criticised our inexperience in posing a model or deplored our modern distaste for the conventional pose, "which was given me, Messieurs, by no less a person than Monsieur Ingres in 1856!"

We had Pere Gelon, the Pere Lambert (who, dying, left all his little fortune for the benefit of young painters entered in the competition for the Prix du Rome, in order that they might employ models as much as necessary), the brawny Schlumberger, and the Herculean Thullier, and others, whose names were familiar to all students at that time in Paris.

Many were the tales these veterans told of the great men they had served, and eager listeners were we, who strove to follow in their footsteps. But to them all, the precariously paid servants of a precarious trade, a figure painter would be ill inspired if he did not feel a sincere good fellowship and hearty gratitude.

Some of the older models, as I have said, were filled with the traditions of their glorious past, and I call to mind one of our comrades who, having made a study for an ambitious composition representing Alexander ordaining the burning of his palace at the termination of a feast, called upon Pere Gelon as the model for his principal figure.

But after a long and careful inspection of the composition sketch, Gelon nobly refused to take the pose therein indicated. "Not thus," quoth the Pere Gelon, "does a king ordain the burning of his palace, but in this manner," giving a pose inspired by the "Oath of the Horatii" by David.

"The Oath of Horatii" by David

And in no other way would he pose, and the submissive artist was forced to accept the hackneyed attitude; not at all to the advantage of his picture.

Paul Foinet, Supplier of Materials

Paul Foinet

Paul Foinet's Art Store on 94 Rue de Notre Dame, Paris

Another figure which rises from the memory of the old atelier is Paul Foinet, known as "Van Eyck," from his fancied physical resemblance to the early painter of that name. Paul was the colourman who every Monday morning appeared in the ante-room of the atelier with a supply of colours, brushes, and canvas of the required sizes, for our academic studies.

A Norman of the most indefatigable good nature, Paul, in the highest favour of us all, was then in the employ of another, but many of us have lived to see and rejoice in his establishment as a dealer on his own account. He would shoulder his heavy box of colours and trudge to the different studios of his clients, where, with a cheery word, not disdaining a bit of gossip, he was always welcome. Extending credit virtually unlimited, he and his wife  amassed a little fortune with few bad debts, though in many cases they have had to wait long for the settlement of an account.

I have known Madame Foinet to hire a studio, supply materials and pay for models for a young artist of talent, and many our our young girl compatriots have reason for gratitude to this kind woman, who has seen to getting fitting lodgings, and has counselled them wisely in their ignorance of custom, to say nothing of selling them honest colours on long credits. They number, not as clients merely, but as friends, many of the most eminent Fresh artists, and the writer feels justified in this digression to describe two of a class of Old World tradespeople for whose character and position we have no counterpart here.

Studio Shenanigans

Our revolutionary atelier was one of the quietest places of study in Paris. It is certain that work was unrelenting and no one was sufficiently proficient in his task to spare time for play.  But if a little riotous conduct found favour, one of my old comrades must remember that on one occasion after an attempt at modeling in clay in the Atelier Duran, there had remained a large sponge immersed in a bucket of clay-stained water.

One morning, as one of the men had gone into the ante-room for some purpose, my friend took this sponges and, seated on a high stool before the door, announced loudly his intention of "letting him have it" when he entered.

The door opened, and he flung the sponge. But it was not the comrade; it was our master, brave in the blue velvet coat and yellow silk shirt which he then affected. The aim was true, and for a horrid moment no one knew what was about to happen. Then the master withdrew, closing the door after him, and another time of suspense followed, no one speaking, and the unwilling culprit seeking his easel in sheer despair.

Then the door reopened, and the master, his disorder repaired by the aid of our friend who had remained in the anteroom appeared, and by a few sensible words brought the guilty to a stammering apology and an assurance that the unlucky sponge was intended for a fellow student.

Our master, upon occasion the very embodiment of high-strung pride, won our hearts that day by proceeding quietly with the lesson, and left us with an added measure of respect for him.

I remember keenly the helpful and frank criticism we gave each other, and I realize that in the common emulation and effort at the attainment of the same object lies the chief value of atelier work.

The criticisms of a master are of great value, but are necessarily general in character. The example of he, who by your side is doing perhaps a little better than you in rendering the task before you, constitutes the little step of progress which you can hope to make. Velasquez shines on a height far above you, unattainable, yet the first round of the ladder has been cleared by Sargent at your side - surely I may use my old comrade's name, even in his present eminence, in this connection - and you may follow.

John Singer Sargent (1880), Fellow Student with Will Low **

Many of our men, before a year after the atelier opened, had made such progress that our master's principles were vindicated, and though, in the four or five years where I was a more or less diligent student, I never made a study that seemed to me worth keeping. I have since realized how much I owe to my studies in the Atelier Duran.

The Annual Dinner
Soon after the first of the year the annual dinner which the atelier tendered our master took place. This year a number of the students of Duran had united to express their enthusiasm for the master by a poem which was sung in his presence at dinner.

Their general theme was the exaggerated comparison of our master to the great painters of the past. Italy had her Titian, Spain her Velasquez, while each verse ended with the antistrope "but France has Carolus-Duran!" The conviction with which three of our comrades lined up at the piano, where a fourth played the accompaniment, sang these laudatory couplets might have touched a heart of stone, but with some of us they merely stirred our sense of humour.

We, too had a song. Of this I can remember but one verse, though I think it had more.

Esquivant les lois de la construction;
Nous mettons dans nos fonds,
des couleurs tres frappantes;
Ne dessinant jamais, jamais nous ne finissons;
Pour nous la nature n'est qu'une tache,
Et Carolus-Duran!

Les eleves de Carolus-lus-lus-lus,
Les eleves de Carolus-lus-lus-lus,
Les eleves de Carolus-lus-lus-lus,
De Carolus-Duran, avec un D!

(translation)
Avoiding with intent the laws of construction;
In our backgrounds we use the most violent colour.
We never draw - much less do we finish;
For us nature is only a spot - and Carolus-Duran!

The pupils of Carolus-lus-lus-lus
The pupils of Carolus-lus-lus-lus
The pupils of Carolus-lus-lus-lus
Of Carolus-Duran, spelt with a D!

(Just a note about the last line of the song, "Of Carolus-Duran, spelt with a D". On the door which opened to the atelier was inscribed "L'Atelier des Eleves de Monsieur Carolus-Duran." Their was some mysterious student who found pleasure in adding a "d" to "Duran" which transformed it into a name which is as common as "Smith" is to us. This was done so regularly, and was something that Carolus-Duran would not have liked, that one of the massier's tasks was to erase it before the master's visit.)

After Years
There were men in Duran's who drew well and have since continued to do so, and despite the heresies of our youthful career in the estimation of academical Paris, few of the ateliers of the time have turned out men of more renown today in the various branches of art.

It was our privilege a few years ago, on the occasion of a visit to this country by M. Duran, to assemble in New York, without going farther afield than Boston, a round dozen of his former pupils at dinner at one of the clubs. Most of us were sufficiently mature, and more or less known, but we were all heartily glad to join in rendering honour to one whom whom we owed so much.

His pupils included John Singer Sargent, Ralph Wormeley Curtis, Kenyon Cox Theodore Robinson, Mariquita Jenny Moberly. Mariette Leslie Cotton, Maximilien Luce, James Carroll Beckwith, Will Hicok Low, Paul Helleu, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson and Ernest Ange Duez. Of his twenty-five most notable students, the majority were English or American.

*In the Studio of Carolus-Duran - an account of Duran's instruction in pdf form
** Thanks to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for the use of this photo.

Jean-Francois Millet

Excerpts from "A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900" by Will H. Low

The Millet house, its gable to the street and its entrance through the garden wall, by which it was joined to the studio, was a structure of a single story, picturesque and cozy enough in appearance. I remember at the time thinking it an ideal home for an artist, but from a modern hygienic standpoint, rheumatism and perhaps graver ills lurked in its recesses. 

Millet's House in Barbizon, France

It was, and has remained, a memorable day when the green gate into the garden was opened to me for the first time by Francois Millet. Entering, I turned to the left toward the studio. The son hurriedly explained to me that his father was suffering from one of the headaches to which he was subject, but had insisted on rising from his bed to receive the young American student.

Jean-Francois Millet

Naturally I drew back and protested against intrusion on his father at such a time; but, as I spoke, the elder man advanced. He was of large frame and tall stature, the eyes of an artist deep set with the frontal bone well developed, a strong and prominent nose and abundant beard, which did not entirely conceal his mouth; firmly drawn yet gravely kind in expression.

Clad in a knitted coat, not unlike the cardigan jacket which was familiar here at one time, closely buttoned to the waist, and well-worn trousers, his appearance was that of the peaceful provincial in France who, secure from the public gaze behind his garden wall, dresses for ease and comfort. The legend of the peasant's sabots worn by him has only this much of truth, that in the heavy dews on the plain, or in bad weather at any time, he wore sabots out of doors, as most country people do in France; as a foot covering that, after a little practice, is not difficult to walk with; which protects from dampness, and is easily slipped off on entering within doors.

Between my timidity, the little French I possessed, and the master's evident suffering, our first interview began badly enough; my chief preoccupation being to find an excuse for withdrawing quickly.

But as it progressed the interest of Millet grew as he would display, from canvases stacked against the wall, pictures in various stages of progress. There were many of these, for it was his habit to begin many things, often as a memory of something he had seen would arise, and lay them aside to be taken up and carried further, then laid aside once again as his interest was given elsewhere.

His method almost invariably was to indicate a composition lightly in charcoal, seldom, at least at that time, having recourse to nature, and never from a model posing; his work from life consisting generally in a strongly accented drawing almost in outline.

When the composition was finally arranged to his satisfaction, he drew in the figures and its principal lines using a thick quill pen with ink. Upon this, with semi-transparent colour, he would prepare the principal tones of his picture. A canvas thus prepared he would set aside to dry, returning to it later with more direct painting in opaque tones, gradually refining its colour and rendering its effect to the point of completion.

The Shepherdess, 1863 by Millet

I remember questioning to myself, although I warmly approved of the result, if the means employed by this great painter were those which were thought consistent with the best modern practice. Slavish adherence to nature was then and after the watchword of the school, and, as many do, I confounded the practice of the school with that of the mature artist, forgetting that in one learned the handling of the tools, and that the other represents the result of such study in the production of the master craftsman.

Some question of this kind I ventured to make, asking how in the studio lighted by a single window he could study the model as the figure would be lit out-of-doors.

For reply he showed me a drawing, a mere quick-sketch, as I fear even other zealous fellowers of Gerome, among whose pupils I was numbered at the time, would not have hesitated to judge; but now, to my better understanding, appearing, as I remember it, to have the indication of all the essential construction of the figure that the master, with his knowledge of form, needed to work from.

The answer to my question appeared to me, however, enigmatic: and Millet, speaking slowly and with much emphasis, explained that a figure arrested in movement and with muscles relaxed demanded at the best on the part of the artist a memory of the appearance of the figure in action; that for him the weary imitation of a posed model seemed less true, less like nature, than to follow a hasty sketch with added truths garnered from a long and close observation, aided by the memory of the relation between a figure and its background under certain effects of light.

The Sower, 1851

Millet said: "You tell me that you are in the Atelier Gerome. There, or wherever you work, think only of rendering the model as truthfully as you can. It is by such practice that you will familiarize your eye to see and your mind to retain the construction and the proportion of the human figure, and later on you will be able, through such knowledge to be the master and not the slave of the chance individual model who serves you, and give to your work the typical rather than the accidental character of nature."

"Spring" at the Musee d'Orsay, Paris

During all this time my glance had rested from time to time on what was evidently a large picture on an easel covered by drapery thrown over it. At length Millet asked me to step back. He removed the drapery, allowing the light from the window to fall directly on the picture, and a surprising thing occurred.

Ever since I have had consciousness of life, I believe that I have been looking at pictures. No picture has produced upon me the exact effect of that which I then saw. I looked out on a plain with apple trees in blossom, on either side of a tortuous road which ran to high woods in the distance. The plain was in mingled light and cloud shadow, and the wooded distance, strongly illumined, showed bright against a clearing storm sky, a portion of which was traversed by a rainbow.

The picture is well known, is now in the Louvre, where on many occasions since I have studied it with continuing admiration, but with no trace of the amazing sensation I experienced on that day. For then I did not realize that it was a painted canvas.

As a picture, it has little of the photographic realism with which many painters have endowed their work. Nor was my feeling exactly that of looking on a real scene, so much as that I was, by the magic of the painter's art, lifted out of myself and made to realize the poignant sensation of the reawakening of nature int he spring. My words probably convey but little meaning, and I can only say that I was so moved, so shaken in my entire being, that I made at the time no effort to describe my feeling to the painter, as, barely able to control my emotion, I left him.

I have since endeavoured to explain to myself this episode, unique in my life's experience, by the plausible reason that throughout the afternoon, in my tense desire to follow from one beautiful work to another the great painter's intention, I had fairly surrendered all my sentient nature to his effort. When at the last this masterwork was shown me, the method of its production faded before my mind, and the evocation of the spirit of the scene alone remained.

Another Visit

"Young Shepherdess" at the MFA in Boston

In the few remaining weeks of my stay that summer, I saw the master twice more - once in his son's studio where there was a large picture, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which was left unfinished at his death. It is a life-sized figure of a young peasant girl with distaff hanging loosely in her hands, her head upthrown, shaded by a large straw hat in dark relief against a luminous sky.

To my exclamation that for a figure of this size he must surely have used a model, the patient artist jestingly assured me that the only direct study of nature was of a tuft of grass int he foreground, "which I plucked in the field, brought into the studio, and copied," with an insistence on the last word.

Before returning to Paris at the end of the summer, I again sought Millet. This time for advice to resolve a question which had an important bearing on my future, and which was presented in so flattering a manner that it was most tempting; though my better reason sought strength to put it aside by confirmation from Millet.

Advice on Studying Art from M. Millet

When Will Low talked about the possibility of abandoning his schooling with Gerome, Jean-Francois Millet observed: "What would you think of a poet arrested in his composition by a question of grammar? The school affords the easiest way of continually studying from nature. The casts from the antique statues stand still for you to learn the structure of the human figure. The models, trained as they are, are almost equally in the same manner at the disposition of the student, who must laboriously acquire this knowledge."

Look at the antique, study the masters in the Louvre to see what these men have done with the knowledge which they have gained by their study - the elements of style, the suppression of detail which is detrimental to the typical character which you must endeavour always to bear in mind when you are trying to make a picture. When you are making a study in the school, copy slavishly all that is individual, even that which you may think ugly and from the accumulation of such information as you gain of the varieties of the human form, you will learn what will best serve you when you wish to express your own individual view of nature." And with a wiser head, though perhaps not altogether a lighter heart, I prepared again to take up my studies.

The Conclusion

I have been thus explicit in relating this incidents in detail, because I believe that it may prove useful. Our habit of arriving at results quickly works no greater havoc in any department of our national intellectual effort than in our art. The many brilliant debuts of American painters in the past generation and the rarer confirmation of their promise is sufficiently marked.

It is not, I believe, the American artist, taken as a type, so much as his environment that is at fault. Parents and influential friends begin with the neophyte in the student stage to demand prompt results, and our public is for the most part indifferent to the slow progress by which a definite expression is achieved. As quickly as an artist has shown, in early and immature work, the possession of talent, he may be extravagantly lauded.

If he is a man of parts, he affronts new endeavour with the laudable desire to deserve his success, and by earnest effort produces work retaining his first qualities and adding other; only to be accused of 'repeating himself.' Baffled - with the knowledge that Raphael, Velasquez, e tutti quanti [and everyone] made no other progress than by repeating themselves with continual added qualities - he is pushed aside, and the fickle public turns to the newcomer with its welcome - and most necessary - encouragement, reserving the right to dethrone him in turn, and so on to the end of the chapter.

Happy the land that knows that art is long, and happy the man who, like Jean Francois Millet, lives his life in full acceptance of this truth, and, with the unceasing industry of the coral-insect, adds day by day the essential quota to his life fabric.


"A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900" by Will Hicok Low, free and online: https://archive.org/details/achroniclefrien01lowgoog