Audio Introduction to 'Americans in Paris 1860-1900'

Part 2: Making Their Mark Transcript

Narrator:

If Paris was the place to train it was also, as centre stage of the art-world, the most prestigious place to exhibit. Chief among the highlights of the artistic calendar was the annual state-run exhibition called the Salon. Up to ten thousand visitors a day flocked to see this vast gathering of work that could include more than seven thousand pictures. Works were selected by a jury and rejections were frequent. Even those artists who did gain entry might find their work almost invisible among the crammed displays - either hung high up by the ceiling or in a dark corner. But for those lucky enough to catch the jury's eye there was the chance of being prominently displayed - of possibly winning a medal - and coming to the attention of the critics. And as reviews appeared in most American newspapers and magazines, the rewards of success at the Salon almost guaranteed American artists favour from patrons back home.

Americans in Paris has a whole room devoted to the large-scale Salon pictures. Among them is James Abbott McNeil Whistler's infamous full-length portrait of a young woman called 'The White Girl'. It's unlikely to strike viewers as outrageous today, but in 1863 Whistler's rough technique, his setting of a figure dressed in white against a white background and his glorification of a woman who wears no corset and her hair loose was too much for the Salon jury. They rejected it. But because they rejected so many pictures that year 'The White Girl' got the chance to be seen at a specially organised 'Salon des Refusés' - or Salon of refused artists. It was there that Whistler caught the outraged attention of the press, along with his friends and fellow painters Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet. It was one of the great defining moments in the birth of Modernist art and for Whistler it established him as a daring and controversial painter.

While rejection from the Salon brought Whistler notoriety, for another brilliant American painter - John Singer Sargent - acceptance at the Salon actually brought disaster. In 1884 Sargent submitted a grand portrait now known as 'Madame X'. It's an exceptionally glamorous depiction of a society beauty called Madame Gautreau. But in it she wears a very revealing black dress. Sargent hoped this picture would help launch his career as a portraitist in Paris, but Madame X struck the wrong note. The picture, one commentator noted, was 'surrounded by shoals of astonished and jibing women.' The critics hated it too and Sargent's career in France was effectively brought to an end. Two years later, in 1886, he settled in London for good.

For Americans the sheer scale and ambition of the Salon was just one of hundreds of instances where Paris outstripped anything to be experienced back home. Today we're used to thinking of American cities like New York as the epitome of urban sophistication. But we need to remember that in the late nineteenth century, the situation was very different. Paris was the modern city par excellence and one room of the exhibition is given over to pictures depicting city life that celebrate the sheer excitement Americans felt at experiencing this great metropolis first-hand.

To paint what they saw, many American artists adopted a style that recorded daily life in a way that looked as if it had been captured on the spot. Their technique is often sketchy, suggesting a rapid setting down of paint, and their colours are deliberately luminous to best capture effects such as the glowing artificial light of theatres and cafes or the dappled sunshine of parks and gardens. From these views, we might assume that Americans felt entirely at ease in their beloved Paris. But as Kathleen Adler explains, they didn't for one specific reason.

Kathleen Adler:

Many of the hundreds of American art students and artists who came to Paris had little or no ... knowledge of French at all. ... Some of them spoke no French whatsoever, and they felt quite humiliated by having to point to items on the menu, or eventually speaking at the level of six-year-old child. .... Many of them were certainly not able to communicate with their French peers, and what that meant was that they turned towards other Americans.

Narrator:

So Americans tended to stick together - studying at the same studios, sharing rooms and becoming part of what, by the 1890s, was a well-established ex-pat community. Known as 'The Colony', this community had its own meeting places, newspapers and even its own exhibiting societies, all of which provided support and familiarity for American artists far from home. For some, however, like the unconventional Elizabeth Jane Gardner, this distance wasn't nearly far enough. As she put it: 'It is difficult to sneeze in the American Colony without being heard on the other side of the Atlantic.'

One artist who didn't feel the need to rely on the Colony was Mary Cassatt. She was unusual among Americans in that she spoke fluent French and lived in the city with both her parents and her sister. The picture that perfectly sums up the idleness forced on well-to-do children is her 'Little Girl in a Blue armchair'. Here a child in her smart but uncomfortable clothes sits sprawled in the chair - fed up at having to keep still and trapped by an overbearing set of expensive furniture.

Cassatt was adamant that her painting be taken seriously and had always submitted her work to the official Salon. But when in 1878 this picture was rejected, she took the daring step of accepting the invitation of her friend and mentor, Edgar Degas, to show at an independent exhibition at a dealer's gallery. So it was that in 1879 Mary Cassatt became the first and only American artist to show with the group we now know as the Impressionists. They gave her an entire room to herself. As an exhibiting experience it was entirely different from the Salon.

Kathleen Adler:

The whole point of the Impressionist exhibitions was that they were smaller so you could actually appreciate everything that was shown, and they were jury-free so that everybody got an equal chance to show what they wanted to, and was not at the mercy of the jurors.

Narrator:

Life for artists in Paris had its seasons. Winter was for hard work in the studio, spring was often for exhibitions. But once the weather began to warm up, as one American painter noted, 'the Colony begins talking of dispersing for the summer. ... "where shall we go?" and "where are we going?" are the overruling topics of conversation.' Leaving Paris for the countryside during the summer was a long established tradition. Food and board were cheaper in the countryside and paintings and sketches could be made to provide inspiration for rest of the year. But while many were convinced that living in the country would put them in touch with a more authentic way of life, the habit for artists to go to the same place year after year meant that their experience wasn't always quite as immediate as they liked to think. For the vast majority of Americans in particular, summer trips meant heading to places where the locals were geared to welcome and accommodate the needs of the Colony.

One of the most popular destinations for Americans was Giverny, a large village just to the north west of Paris. Giverny had many attractions, but chief among them was the fact that since 1883 it had been the home of the Impressionist painter, Claude Monet. Many of the artists who stayed in the village adopted Monet's style of work and were eager to meet him. Unfortunately, the great man was less than pleased by their attentions and felt he was being besieged. That said, Monet and many of his fellow Impressionists benefited from the enthusiasm of American artists for new French painting. Erica Hirshler takes up the story:

Erica Hirshler:

Artists acted as some of the major advisors to collectors in the US during this period, starting really in the mid century with artists like William Morris Hunt who became friends with artists in the Barbizon school and who created a taste for their work in America. This idea of patronage of modern French painting continued throughout the rest of the 19th century and transferred easily from the Barbizon school to the Impressionists, to the point where some of the French artists complained that so much of their work was going to the United States.

Narrator:

The tremendous impact of French painting on American culture at the close of the nineteenth century cannot be underestimated. Even when artists returned to the United States, the influence of Paris remained. By the 1890s the distinct style we now call American Impressionism had emerged. And it's at this point that the exhibition ends. At the turn of the twentieth century, with American collections full of French painting, a new generation of artists didn't even need to cross the Atlantic to experience Paris. As the novelist Henry James so succinctly put it: 'It sounds like a paradox, but it is a simple truth, that when to-day we look for American art, we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at least find a great deal of Paris in it.'

We hope you've enjoyed this download to accompany the National Gallery's 'Americans in Paris: 1860 to 1900'. A full audioguide with detailed explanations of the works on show is available for the duration of the exhibition. The accompanying book and DVD can be purchased from the National Gallery shop both on site and on line. Running concurrently at the Dulwich Picture Gallery is an exhibition focusing on the work of one of the artists in the show, Winslow Homer. 'Winslow Homer, Poet of the Sea' is the first ever one-man show of his work in a European museum. 'Americans In Paris' runs from the 22nd of February to the 21st of May 2006. Thanks for listening.

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