Pissarro's Portrait of Czanne

Author(s): Theodore Reff

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, No. 776 (Nov., 1967), pp. 626-631+633
Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/875435 .
Accessed: 14/01/2013 15:34
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Burlington Magazine.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MANET

S NYMPH

time, in response to invitations placed by the Imperial

Academy in the newspapers of major cities in Western
Europe, he decided, with two other friends,19to send canvases to Russia for exhibition and sale. The NymphSurprisedwas an ambitious work in terms of size and degree of
finish, but the subversive nature of its content would have
made it impossible to sell on the conservative Russian art
market.20The transformationof the work into a palatable
salon object was effected by giving the painting a classical
title, and, more importantly, by inserting into it a male
participant, thus restoring the picture to the orbit of traditional presentation. That this was done as an afterthought
is clear from the technical report on the painting. But that
it was done at all indicates Manet's clear knowledge of the
work's initial impact. It indicates that as early as 1861 he
19 Gauthier and Monginot, see BARSKAYA,
p.63.
Barskaya suggests that Manet's desire to sell a painting stemmed from his
wish for financial independence from his parents in order to wed Suzanne
Leenhoff.

20

Pissarro's

SURPRISED

was already aware that disquieting content could place consciousness itself between the viewer and the work of art and
that, once this was accomplished, the painting would be distanced by the viewer, rendered into a mute object, a 'mere'
painting, in a moment of self-defence that was also one of
self-knowledge. Since none of the accounts of the painting
by Manet's Parisian contemporaries mentions the male
figure, one can only conclude that after the painting was returned from Russia and some time before its exhibition in
1867 the satyr was removed and the picture's name changed.
Several months after the work's exhibition in Russia, in an
etching called La Toilette, Manet again used the voyeurist
idea to disrupt the spectator-object relationship. A servant,
attending a nude woman, looks up and out of the picture with
surprise, indicating to the viewer the sense of intrusion he is
to feel. This is the role that the hissing cat will play one year
later in the Olympia, a painting which remains during the
186o's the most complete statement of the ideas introduced by
the Nymph Surprised.

THEODORE

REFF

Portrait

of

THAT Pissarro's impressive portrait of C6zanne (Fig.2 1) has

been reproduced almost exclusively as an image of the
younger man, and has rarely been discussed as an artistic
conception even in the literature on the older one,1 is no
doubt a result of our greater interest in C6zanne as an
historical personality. It is indeed one of the few pictures of
C6zanne by another artist and also the earliest; painted at
the beginning of 1874, it predates Renoir's delicate pastel by
six years and the banal oil sketches of Maurice Denis, Emile
Bernard, and Hermann-Paul by some thirty years.2 And
unlike these, it shows C6zanne's appearance at a decisive
moment in his development, when, inspired by the example
of Pissarro himself, of whom he later said, 'Cefdt unparepour
moi . . . et quelquechosecommele bon Dieu', he was transforming
the rebellious Romantic he had previously been into the
more sober Impressionist he was fundamentally to remain.
Hence perhaps the vestiges of passionateness and Bohemian
non-conformity in this portrait, the intensity of expression
and roughness of appearance, traits which also impressed
Lucien Pissarro at the time: 'His portrait painted by father
1 The only exception, the discussion in G.
JEDLICKA: Pissarro, Berne [i950],

deals exclusively with Cezanne's influence on the work. For the basic
pp.9-xo,
bibliography see L. R. PISSARROand L. VENTURI: Camille Pissarro,son art, son
euvre, Paris [I939], No.293.
2 The Renoir is
reproduced in j. REWALD: Paul Cezanne,New York [1948],
Fig.84; the others, in L'Amour de l'Art, xvII [1936], Figs. x4-16. Pissarro's
portrait is undated, but is generally ascribed to early 1874.

Cezanne

resembles him. He wore a cap, his long black hair was beginning to recede from a high forehead, he had large black
eyes which rolled in their orbits when he was excited.'3
There are of course other records of the close association
between C6zanne and Pissarro around 1872-4, among them
a fine etching of the younger man by his mentor and their
pencil sketches of each other; but none possesses the monumentality and depth of feeling of this large portrait in oil.4
And none has its degree of complexity in characterizing the
sitter, who appears here at once 'humble and colossal', to
use his own later epithet of Pissarro: 'colossal' in his compactness and immobility, his mass filling most of the picture
surface, yet 'humble' in his coarse outdoor clothing and
unkempt beard and in the unpretentiousness of the works of
art surrounding him - a small rural landscape and two
satirical newspaper prints, all of them unframed and simply
tacked to the wall. That they reveal a taste for the popular
and the rustic which would have been congenial to the
group of artists around Pissarro, working outside Paris in
the villages of Pontoise and Auvers,5 becomes more apparent
3 Letter to his brother Paul, undated;
quoted in w. s. MEADMORE: Lucien Pissarro,
un CceurSimple, London [1962], pp.25-6.
4 It is on
canvas, 72 by 59 cm. The other portraits are reproduced in REWALD:

Paul Cizanne, Figs.44-6.

5 For the historical background see
New York [1961], ch.VIII.

j.

REWALD:

The History of Impressionism,

627

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PISSARRO

'S

PORTRAIT

when they are compared with the objects in the backgrounds of such typically Parisian images of the creative
man as Degas's portrait of James Tissot and Manet's of
Zola (Fig.22), both painted about eight years earlier.6 The
latter, particularly relevant since Zola was C6zanne's closest
friend at this time, expresses perfectly the contemporary
ideal of the artist as a dandy, whose elegant attire and casual
posture are consistent with the cultivated taste revealed by
the objects around him, among them a Japanese screen and
colour woodcut, an etching of Velizquez's Borrachos,and a
photograph of Olympia.
Valuable as a souvenir of his friendship with C6zanne,
Pissarro's portrait is no less fascinating as an artistic conception in its own right. It was in fact one of his favourites and
could still be seen hanging in his studio at Eragny towards
the end of his life.7 In his auvre, which consists almost entirely of landscapes and genre scenes, it occupies a place
apart, not only as one of the relatively few portraits, but as
the only one (excluding the two commissioned by his friend
Murer) of someone outside Pissarro's immediate family. And
even when compared with those of his wife and children, it
is unique in its calculated treatment of the background. For
they normally show a broadly rendered interior and focus
so exclusively on the sitter that the pictures which occasionally appear are unidentifiable; and the same is true of his
only self-portrait of this period;8 whereas here the wall has
been brought forward and the images on it have obviously
been chosen and arranged in relation to C6zanne. Spaced at
equal intervals around his figure but very close to it, with
some of their contours paralleling his, they serve both to
enclose it on the surface and, through their diminutive scale,
to enhance its appearance of massiveness. Yet they are also
so distinctly characterized, even to the legibility of the title
at the upper left, as to invite speculation about their symbolic meaning in relation to C6zanne. It is this intellectual
conception of the portrait, at once humorous and serious,
that we shall attempt to elucidate.
The print at the upper left, as Lucien Pissarro recalled,
is a caricature by Andre Gill which had appeared in the
newspaper L'lclipse shortly before the portrait was painted,9
more specifically, in the issue of 4th August 1872 (Fig.25).
Its topical subject is the extraordinarily generous public
response to the Government's request for a loan to pay the
indemnity demanded by Germany after the Franco-Prussian
War, a response in which over forty billion francs were
pledged within twenty-four hours.'0 Gill shows Adolph
Thiers, who was then acting as head of the provisional
government, as a doctor proudly holding up the pledged
money in the form of a new-born infant which he has just
delivered from the figure of France at the left; hence the
6 See P.-A. LEMOISNE: Degas et son
Paris [1946 ff.], No.I75; and P. JAMOT
,uvre,
and G. WILDENSTEIN:Manet, Paris [1932], No.146. On the latter, which was
exhibited in the Salon of 1868, see s. L. FAISON,JNR: 'Manet's Portrait of Zola',

Magazine of Art, XLII [1949], pp.I62-8.

7 See the photograph of his studio reproduced in J. REWALD: CamillePissarro,
New York [1963], p.41.
8 PISSARROand VENTURI:CamillePissarro, No.200; dated I873; it shows three
paintings on the wall behind him, but none is identifiable. For typical portraits
of members of his family see ibid., Nos.I93, 197, and 232.
9 See Lucien's souvenirs, cited above, n.3; he mentions seeing this print hanging on the wall of his father's studio around 1874.
10 It was the last in a series of three caricatures by Gill on this topic; see c.
AndrdGill, n, Paris [I927], pp.2o0-2. It was
FONTANE: Un Maitre de la caricature,
accompanied by LUonBienvenu's article, attacking the Bonapartist newspapers.

OF

COZANNE

title, 'La Dilivrance', which means both 'delivery' and 'salvation'. The magnitude of the oversubscription was indeed
a stirring proof not only of the country's vast wealth, unimpaired by the recent war, but of its confidence in the new
republican government. In an earlier version of this print,
published in a de luxe edition of L'b8clipse,Gill had shown
the reactionary opponents of Thiers's party - the Duc
d'Aumale, the Comte de Chambord, and Napoleon III
himself, clutching a dead eagle - as disgruntled witnesses of
the miraculous delivery;" obliged by the censor to remove
them, he superimposed the clouds that appear in the foreground of the popular version (the one Pissarro copied), thus
transforming the delivery into a vaguely defined apotheosis.
At the upper right in the portrait of C6zanne is another
popular print, a caricature of Courbet by Leonce Petit
(Fig.24), which appeared in the newspaper Le Hannetonon
I3th June 1867, on the occasion of Courbet's retrospective
exhibition outside the grounds of the World's Fair.12 Hence
the many recognizable pictures by him on the wall behind
him and the triumphant toast he seems to propose with his
glass of beer, which, like the clay pipe in his mouth, was a
familiar symbol of his proletarian habits. Hence, too, the
egalitarian message in his own handwriting printed below
ridicule qu'on
the drawing: 'J'ai toujourstrouvi souverainement
medemandel'autorisationdepubliermonportrait,dequelquefafonque
ce fft. Mon masqueappartientd tous; c'est pourquoij'autorise le
Hannetond le publier - d conditioncependantqu'il n'oubliebas de
l'encadrerd'une belle auriole.'13This sympathetic picture of
Courbet was accompanied by an article written by Eugene
Vermersch, the radically outspoken director of Le Hanneton,
who with obvious pride declared the painter a martyr of all
the reactionary tendencies in France and a champion of the
independent and progressive ones.
The third picture in the background of his portrait of
C6zanne is one of Pissarro's own landscapes, the Route de
Gisors,Maison duPdreGalien,which is inscribed 1873 (Fig.26).14
It shows one of the principal streets of Pontoise, where
Pissarro was living at the time, and thus represents in effect
an exterior view of that small rural world of which we see a
glimpse of the interior in this very portrait. It was evidently
one of Pissarro's favourites and perhaps also one of Cezanne's,
for it appears in the background of the latter's Nature Morte
d la Soupiere(Fig.23), which he painted at the same spot in
his friend's studio shortly thereafter, probably in i1875.15
Incidentally, the landscape is not accompanied here by the
print that would have been visible in this view, which confirms the conclusion that Pissarro introduced it quite deliberately into the portrait.
11 This version is reproduced in FONTANE:AndreGill, Ii, p.22.

12 See c. LAGER:Courbetselon les caricatureset les images, Paris [1920], p.20. It

was first identified in the portrait of Czanne by A. ChAtelet, in Orangerie des
Paris [1954], No.91.
Tuileries: VanGoghet lespeintresd'Auvers-sur-Oise,
13 In Pissarro's copy, this part of the print is omitted, apparently because his
landscape overlaps it.
14 PISSARROand VENTURI: Camille Pissarro, No.206. First identified in the
portrait of CUzanne by ChAtelet; see above, n. 12. I am grateful to Dr John
Rewald for information about this picture.
15 See L. VENTURI: Cizanne,son art, son cuvre,
Paris [1936], No.494; there dated
1883-5. For the earlier dating see D. COOPER: 'Two Czanne Exhibitions
Pissarro's
Lucien
XCVI
THE
BURLINGTON
souvenirs,
MAGAZINE,
P-346.
I',
1954],
often cited in support of an 1877 date, state only that it was painted in his
'A
propos du catalogue raisonn6 de l'ceuvre
parents' house; see J. REWALD:
de Paul C6zanne et de la chronologie de cette oeuvre', La Renaissance,
xx, Nos.
3-4 [March-April 1937], P.54-

628

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PISSARROS

PORTRAIT

What attitude or thought guided him in doing so? On the

purely visual level, the satirical prints flanking C6zanne
show small figures whose lively, informal actions, like the
grotesque proportionsof the 'Courbet', introduce a marginal
humour entirely appropriate to the spirit of camaraderie in
which the work was conceived, and at the same time enhance C6zanne'sown air of meditativenessand immobility.16
The actions of these figures are equally significant, however;
for they appear to be paying homage to the gigantic creature
seated between them, the one at the left holding up a baby
towards him in the time-honoured manner of politicians,
the one at the right raising his glass in a toast which is also
directed towards him. Indeed, in comparing Pissarro'scopy
with the print on which it was based, we discover that he has
altered slightly the direction of Courbet's gaze, so that it
now focuses on Cezanne rather than on his glass of beer.17In
this playful use of a marginal element, a device without
parallel in his euvre,Pissarro may have been inspired by
Manet's famous portrait of Zola (Fig.22), which had been
exhibited a few years earlier. For it too shows a miniature
reproduction of another picture (his own Olympia)in the
upper right hand corner, modified in such a way that the
figure looks towards the sitter and thus appears to pay him a
subtle homage (no doubt for having recently defended
Olympiain the press).18But if this visual wit seems characteristic of a sophisticated artist like Manet, it is unexpected
in the work of Pissarro, and only reinforces the singularity
and personal significance of his portrait of Cezanne.
Thus far, only one attempt has been made to define this
significance in terms of the choice and arrangement of the
background images. It has been observed that the caricature
of Courbet and Pissarro's landscape are 'symbols of dominating influences on Cezanne's youthful development'.19
They are that, of course, but not the only or even the most
important ones, since examples of Spanish and Venetian art,
and especially of Delacroix's, have been omitted; nor does it
seem likely that Pissarro's selection was determined by so
self-consciouslyart-historicala point of view. What the two
brightly coloured and boldly simplified caricatures and the
small rural landscape, spontaneous and sketchy in execution,
do reflect is a taste for certain types of art, one which
Pissarrowould have shared with Cezanne, who had copied
popular prints in the 186o's, and with Courbet himself,
whose interest in folk art is well known.20However, the presence in one of these caricatures of Thiers, a purely political
figure who had played no role in Cezanne's or Pissarro's
artistic development, cannot be understood in terms of
taste or influence alone, and suggests another level of meaning in the work.
16 Compare the more aloof and formal conception in Pissarro's etched portrait,
also done in I874; reproduced in REWALD: Paul Cizanne, Fig.45.
17 The figures of C6zanne and Courbet are further linked through their olive
drab coats, the only areas of this colour in the composition; see the colour reproduction in JEDLICKA: Pissarro, pl.g.
18 See T. REFF: 'The
Meaning of Manet's Olympia',GazettedesBeaux-Arts,ser. 6,
LXIII[1964], pp.I I
Not
but her Negro maid, the wrestler
I-13.and twoonly Olympia,
in the Japanese print,
figures in the reproduction of Los Borrachosalso
seem to look towards Zola.
19 D. COOPER:
'The Painters of Auvers-sur-Oise', THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE,
xcvnII [1955],
p.o104. On Courbet's influence see VENTURI:C6zanne,I, p.-1, and
Nos.83, 87, II6, etc.

20 See M. SCHAPIRO: 'Courbet and Popular Imagery',

and Courtauld Institutes, IV [1940-i],
pp.164-91.

Journal of the Warburg

OF

CiZANNE

This meaning becomes more evident when the figures in

the background prints are considered not only as popular
types or as bearers of a playful homage to Cezanne, but as
images of Courbet and Thiers, two of the most prominent
personalitiesof the day21- the one a radical artist notorious
for his rejection of official acclaim and his participation in
the Commune, the other a bourgeoisstatesmanrenowned for
his leadership of the conservative forces which had suppressed the Commune. Appropriately, Courbet salutes
C6zanne with a glass of beer, while Thiers holds up towards
him a sack of money inscribed '41i milliards'. Although
Pissarro reproduces both figures in a rather broad, simplified manner,22 he can hardly have failed to appreciate their
contrasting characters, especially in looking at the vividly
descriptive caricatures themselves. What, then, would these
figures have meant to him when he chose and copied pictures of them early in 1874?
Ironically, neither one was of immediate interest at that
time; for Thiers was no longer in power, having resigned as
Presidentof the new Republic on 24th May 1873, and Courbet was no longer in France, having fled to Switzerland on
23rdJuly of the same year to avoid being imprisoned for the
part he had supposedly had in overthrowing the Vend6me
Column.23His flight into exile was in fact a direct result of
Thiers's resignation, since the latter's government had protected him from further reprisalsfor his activities during the
Commune, despite their extreme differences of opinion.
Thus Pissarro's choice of prints reflects not so much the
current importance of the two men as their leading roles in
the recent events of the Franco-PrussianWar and the Commune, when indeed they had been conspicuously opposed
- Courbet as leader of the Conf6deration des Artistes in
Paris, and Thiers as head of the legal government in Versailles.24Even earlier, of course, they had represented irreconcilable social and political views; as Courbet declared
with characteristic brusqueness during a meeting with
Thiers in 1870; 'Nos temperaments
sonttoutdfait opposis.Toute
ma solicitudedansla vie est pour les pauvres,tandis que toutela
solicitudedans votrevie est pour les riches. Viold en quoi nous
diffirons.'25In their conceptions of art, the two men were
equally far apart; for Courbet believed in a radically empirical art based on the individual's own experience, while
Thiers collected all forms of traditional and often very
costly art and even commissioned copies of Renaissance
masterpieces. He had in fact reacted quite unfavourably to
Courbet's own works when he saw them in the retrospective
exhibition of 1867, as the critic Castagnary, who met him
there, later reported.26 It is true, however, that Courbet
rescued much of Thiers's valuable collection from destruction during the Commune, and that he in turn was
21

Both men were frequently caricatured at the time and would have been
readily identified, even without accompanying texts; see, for example, j.
DUCHE : Deux sicles d'histoirede Francepar la caricature,Paris [1961e], ch.XI.
22 This is consistent with the execution throughout, which is exceptionally
vigorous and, at the bottom, sketchy and unfinished.
23 See G. MACK:GustaveCourbet,New York
[1951], ch.XXX.
24 On their roles during the Civil War see ibid., chs.XXIV and
XXV; and
H. MALO: Thiers, Paris [1932], ch.XXVII.
25 'Une Entrevue de Thiers et de Courbet en
1870', Archiveshistoriques,artistiques et littiraires, II, Paris [189o-i], pp.279-81; reprinted in P. COURTHION:
Courbetracontipar lui-mimeet par ses amis, n, Geneva [195o], pp.4o-3.
26 CASTAGNARY:'Fragments d'un livre sur Courbet', Gazette des
Beaux-Arts,
ser. 4, VII [1912], p.24. On the copies commissioned by Thiers see Collection
d'objetsd'art de M. ThierslIgudeau Musie du Louvre,Paris [1884], pp.79-I I I.

629

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PISSARRO'S

protected from excessive reprisals while the latter was in

office.
Pissarro would, of course, have been far more sympathetic to Courbet than to Thiers. He must already have held
at this time, although less overtly perhaps, the anarchist
convictions which later led him to collaborate with Jean
Grave, the leader of the anarchist movement in France;
Lucien even maintained that his father fled to England in
1870 because he feared 'his known anarchist sympathies
would implicate him'.27 And in 1882 Renoir refused to
participate in one of the Impressionistgroup exhibitions on

the grounds that 'exposeravec Pissarro, Gauguin, Guillaumin,

c'est commesi j'exposais avec une sociale quelconque.Un peu plus,
Thus
Pissarro inviteraitle Russe Lavrof ou autrerFvolutionnaire.'28

the prominence which Pissarrogave to the figure of Courbet

in the backgroundof his portrait of Cezanne, its greater size
and clarity compared with that of Thiers, was undoubtedly
motivated by political as well as artistic considerations.
The former may even have been the more important,
since by this time Courbet was out of touch with, and largely
out of favour among, the advanced artists and writers, who
preferred the cooler, more consciously aesthetic realism of
Manet. As early as 1867 the Goncourts had noted in their
journal, apropos Courbet's exhibition: 'Le laid, toujoursle
laid, le laid bourgeois,et le laid sans songrandcaractere,le laid sans la
beauti du laid',29 although they themselves were often at-

tacked for their preoccupation with the sordid aspects of

modern life. A few years later, moreover, Courbet was
widely criticized for the prominent role he had played in the
Commune by those who, like Manet himself, did not share
Pissarro's radical political opinions; and as a result, his
friend Piette concluded pessimistically,'Of solidarity [among
artists] there is not a shred in France.'30Hence no doubt the
emphasis, in Pissarro's copy of the caricature of Courbet,
on the man as such, on his animated expression, energetic
stance, and plebeian tastes, which are more conspicuous
than the pictures behind him; whereas his opponent Thiers
(on whom Cezanne seems to turn his back) is rendered as a
smaller mass, whose face is without features and whose
formal attire alone is distinguishable.31
If Thiers himself receives rather little attention, the
newspaper in which Gill's caricature of him appeared is
clearly identified through its masthead; it is L'Aclipse, a
satirical weekly which was often outspoken in its criticism
of official policies and personalities; and this choice too
probably reflects Pissarro's own position. One of the founwas
ders and guiding spirits of
Vermersch,
Eugene
L'lclipse
who had formerly directed Le Hanneton, its predecessor,

27

See his memoir, quoted in

MEADMORE:

LucienPissarro,p.23; also

OF

PORTRAIT

B. NICOL-

SON: 'The Anarchism of Camille Pissarro', The Arts, ii [1947], pp.-43-5I.

28 Letter to Durand-Ruel,
26th February 1882; see L. VENTURI: Les Archives de
l'Impressionisme, I, Paris [1939], p.122.
29 Entry of I8th September 1867; E. and J. DE GONCOURT: Journal, viii, ed. R.

Ricatte, Monaco [I956], p.55. See also the entry of 31st December 1867 on
Courbet's Sommeil;ibid., pp.73-4. The account in 0. LARKIN:'Courbet and His
Contemporaries', ScienceandSociety,im [1939], PP-57-63, ignores the favourable
reactions.

30 Letter to Pissarro, summer I873; quoted in REWALD: Camille Pissarro, p.24.

See also Manet's letter to Duret, 20th August 1871, quoted in REWALD: History
p.271; and Degas's letter to Tissot, 3oth September 1871, his
of Impressionism,
Letters, Eng. trans., Oxford [1947], p.I2.

31 Pissarro continued throughout his life to consider Courbet a model of the

independent artist; see his letter of 2nd May 1887, on Millet and Courbet, and
that of 4th December I895, on Alexandre Dumasfils and Courbet; C. PISSARRO:
Lettres&sonfils Lucien,ed. J. Rewald, Paris [1950], pp.142 and 392-3.-

CEZANNE

where his laudatory article on Courbet was published, and

who was later to edit the infamous Pare DuchIne,the most
violent of the ephemeral sheets published by the Communards.32 Moreover, Andre Gill, a regular contributor to
L'lclipse and the author of the caricatureof Thiers printed
there, was a close friend of Courbet'sand shared his democratic views. During the Commune he served as Conservator of the Luxembourg Museum and was one of the most
active members of the Conf6derationdes Artistes, of which
Courbet was President; and characteristically, when the
latter refusedthe crossof the Legion of Honour in 1870, Gill
published a drawing in L'Pclipse to acknowledge the importance of his friend's gesture.33Pissarro too must have
shared this sentiment, for according to Lucien, 'he disdained publicity and despised official recognition. He was
never to accept the red ribbon. When told that someone
had received a medal or that another was selling well, he
would answer: "II n'y a que la peinturequi compte." 34 Thus
his introduction of a caricature by Gill from L'tclipse, like

the one of Courbet opposite it in his portrait of Cezanne,

undoubtedly reflects his own social as well as artistic convictions.
The question now arises, to what extent do they also
reflect Cizanne's? That he admired Pissarro'swork, and
particularly the Route de Gisors, Maison du Ptre Galien, which

appears in the background of his portrait, is evident from

his reproduction of it in the NatureMorted la Soupidre(Fig.23),

painted a year or so later in his friend'sstudio. Indeed, one

of his first acts, after moving to Pontoise in 1872 and learning of the latter's recently developed theory of colour, was
to paint a large, careful replica of another one of his land-

scapes, 'pour qu'il puisse, en la copiant,juger des possibilitis de

cettenouvellethiorie',as Lucien later recalled.35And that he

shared Pissarro's admiration for Courbet, whose powerful
art had profoundly influenced his own development in the
186o's, and would thereforehave approved of the introduction of a caricature of him into the backgroundof his portrait, is also evident enough. Like Pissarro,he would surely
have applauded Courbet's defiant rejection of the cross of
the Legion of Honour; for in a letter to Zola he refersto the

general significance of this gesture: 'Ce n'estpas d moi defaire

l'lloge de ton livre, car tu peux ripondrecommeCourbetque l'artiste
conscients'addresse des 6loges autrementjustes que ceux qui lui
viennentdu dehors.'36

There is no evidence,
C*zanne
however, that

would have

seen in Courbet the symbol of political radicalism, or in

L'Jclipse the instrument of satirical protest, which appealed
to Pissarro. For his rebelliousness was entirely personal and
artistic, manifesting itself in an extreme non-conformity of
manner and dress and a disdain for all authority in matters
of art, perhaps initially as an unconscious rejection of his
32 See H. AVENEL:

Histoirede lapressefranfaise,Paris [1900], pp.556-8 and 641-3;

Andrd Gill, i, pp.-31-3 and 235-7.
33 It is reproduced in ibid., pp.303-4. See also the memoir of Courbet in A. GILL:
and MACK: Gustave Courbet,
Vingt annies de Paris, Paris [1883], pp.I55-70;
and

FONTANE:

PP.254-5-

34 Lucien's souvenirs, quoted in MEADMORE: LucienPissarro,

p.23.
au
35 Letter to Paul Gachet fils, 4th November 1927; Lettres impressionistes

DocteurGachetet &Murer,ed. P. Gachet, Paris [x957], PP.53-4. For the paintings

see

VENTURI: Cizanne, No.I53;

No.123.

and

PISSARRO

and VENTURI: Camille Pissarro,

36 Letter to Zola, undated

ed. J. Rewald,
(c.I878); P. CEZANNE:Correspondance,
Paris [1937], p.I36.

630

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

LE

HANNETON

ILLUSTR,

SATTRIQUEE T

ITT RAIRt

'NM7

24. GustaveCourbet,by Leonce Petit. Caricature published in Le Hanneton,13th June 1867.

23. NatureMortea la Soupilre, by Paul Cezanne. Canvas, 65 by 81i 5 cm. (Mus&edu Louvre.)

25. La De'livrance,by Andrd Gill. Caricature

published in L'Eclipse,4th August 1872.

26. Route de Gisors, La Maison du Pire Galien, by Camille Pissarro. Signed and dated 1873. Canvas, 32'7 by
42'3 cm. (Collection Mr and Mrs John Warner, Washington D.C.)

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PORTRAIT

PISSARRO'S

father's conservative values. And if such outspoken anarchists as Pissarro and the pdre Tanguy, the colour merchant
who had nearly been executed for his participation in the
Commune, were among his small circle of friends at this
time, they do not seem to have altered his fundamentally
apolitical position.37 On the contrary, as Cezanne grew
older he became more conventional in his opinions and public behaviour, resembling increasingly the prosperous bourgeois his father had been, and in his provincial isolation
even supporting the enemies of Dreyfus and reading reactionary newspapers like La Croixand Le Plerin - far removed
indeed from L'Aclipse and Le Hanneton. During the same
years Pissarro not only retained his anarchist and socialist
convictions, but expressed them more openly.38
Yet there was one area in which Cizanne, despite his
conservatism, shared Pissarro's radical views and indeed
referred to them explicitly, and this was in affirming his
belief that an art of personal expression must be created independently of all authority, even that of the greatest works
of the past. Exasperated by the excessive theorizing of Emile
Bernard, 'un intellectual, congestionnepar les souvenirsdes musies
mais qui ne voit pas assez sur nature', he was led to exclaim:
'Pissarro ne se trompaitdoncpas, il allait un peu loin cependant,
lorsqu'il disait qu'ilfallait brtler les ndcropolesde l'art.'89 And to
Bernard himself he wrote in even stronger terms: 'L'itude
modifienotre vision a' un tel point, que l'humbleet colossal Pissarro
se trouvejustifi6 de ses theoriesanarchistes',theories which, it is
worth recalling here, had also been popular among the
Realists around Courbet in the I850o's.40Pissarro was in turn
profoundly impressed by the authentically personal character of Cezanne's art, even when he recognized that it had
87On Tanguy and C6zanne see

REWALD: History of Impressionism,p.30o and

p.307, n.23. Guillaumin, too, was a member of their circle, and Renoir's letter
(cited above, n.28) implies that he shared Pissarro's political opinions.
38 See R. L. and E. W. HERBERT: 'Artists and Anarchism', THE BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE,CII[1960], PP.477 and 517-19. On Cezanne's attitudes see REWALD:
Paul Cdzanne,chs.XXII and XXIV.
39 Letter to his son, 26th September
p.293.
Igo6; CEZANNE:Correspondance,
40 Letter to Emile Bernard, undated (1905); ibid., p.276. For the Realists'
attitude see E. DURANTY: 'Notes sur l'art', Rdalisme,No.I [Ioth July 1856],
pp.i-2. Later the Louvre was in fact partly burned by the Communards.

LEONID

Russian

Pistols

in

the

THE question of when pistols were first used in Russia and

when and where their manufacture was started there has
not been examined in the literature of arms and armour. The
investigation of these problems is greatly complicated, by,
first of all, the small number of written sources available that
shed light upon Russian sixteenth-century hand-firearms,
and, secondly, by the absence from arms collections of pistols

OF

CEZANNE

been created under his own influence, as he did in seeing the

latter's retrospective exhibition at Vollard's gallery in 1895:
'II a subi mon influencea' Pontoise et moi la sienne . . . mais ce
qu'il y a de certain, chacungardait la seule chose qui compte,sa
"sensation".'41 And on another occasion he singled out
Czanne and Courbet specifically as models of originality, in
a manner which may further explain his introduction of an
image of one into the background of a portrait of the other:
'J'ai vu des paysages de Courbet dernidrement.C'est autrement
mieux [que Legros] et bien dalui, Courbet!Et Cizanne, tout en ayant
du caracttre,cela empiche-t-ilqu'il soit lui ?'42
Indeed, so uncompromising was Cezanne in his determination to be entirely himself in his art and, especially at
the beginning of his career, in his behaviour and appearance,
that he was looked on askance by some of the other Impressionists; so that Pissarro, while painting his portrait early in
I874, was also trying to persuade his colleagues to include
Cezanne's work in their first group exhibition, which was
scheduled to open a few months later.43 It is this very independence, based on enormous inner strength and confidence
in his art, which Pissarro emphasizes in portraying his
friend, who moreover was becoming aware of this himself
at the time, and could write, apropos his teacher's confidence in him: 'Je sais qu'il a bonneopinion de moi, qui ai tres
bonneopinionde moi-mime.Je commencea me trouverplus fort que
tous ceux qui m'entourent.'44And as we have seen, Pissarro
conveys this quality not only in the figure itself, in its imposing mass and intense, concentrated expression, but in
his ingenious treatment of the background, whose lively
figures appear to pay it homage. As a result, his portrait
seems the most intimate as well as the most profound of all
those we have of Cezanne.

41 Letter to his son, 22nd November

I895; PISSARRO:Lettres sonfils Lucien,

pp.390-I.
42 Letter to his son, 7th March 1898; ibid., pp.450-I. See also his letters of
13th and 21st November 1895 on C6zanne's originality; ibid.,
43 See REWALD: History of Impressionism,p.313. Cezanne did ofpp.386-8.
course exhibit,
but was little appreciated even by sympathetic critics; see ibid., pp.328-30.
44 Letter to his mother, 26th September 1874; CEZANNE:Correspondance,
pp.1223. On the significance of this passage see T. REFF: 'Cezanne and Hercules',
Art Bulletin, XLVIII [1966], pp.42-3.

TARASSUK

seventeenth

century-

of this period that can be firmly identified as Russian. On

the other hand, it should be noted that the documentary and
other material relating to the history of late-medieval Russian arms and armour in general have never been adequately
studied.
In comparison with references to Russian sixteenth-century firearms, the amount of evidence concerning such arms
633

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

20. Mosessavedfromthe Waters,by Edouard Manet. Canvas. 35 by 46 cm. (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.)

I. Portraitof PaulC~zanne, by Camille Pissarro. Canvas, 72 by 59 cm. (Collection Baron Robert von Hirsch, Basle.)

22. Portrait of Emile Zola, by Edouard Manet. Canvas. igo by III cm.
(Musde du Louvre.)

This content downloaded on Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:51 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions