American painters in Paris, 1860-1900: urban encounters and rural retreats

Late nineteenth-century American painters were drawn to Paris by its modern spirit and rich multifaceted art life. Beginning in 1853, Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann, Emperor Napoleon III's chief architect, transformed it from a jumbled, unhealthful, overgrown medieval town into a handsome capital that boasted new boulevards, bridges, squares, and parks. Only a rare individual could resist the temptation to join the fashionable throngs on the city's thoroughfares, even to become a flaneur, the archetypal urban observer described by Charles Baudelaire as a "passionate spectator" for whom "it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement." (1) Venues for entertainment also flourished during the Second Empire (1852-1870) and the early Third Republic (1870-1940), tempting citizens and visitors to amuse themselves in various theaters, music halls, and cafes. And during the same period, painting, sculpture, and architecture began to prosper in Paris as never before. Curriculum reforms at the government sponsored Ecole des beaux-arts in 1863, the founding of private academies and teaching studios, the creation of more numerous and significant exhibition facilities, and the growth of an increasingly sophisticated critical press made the city the world's headquarters for art and taste. From October, when the schools and studios opened, until June, when the excitement of the late spring Salon exhibitions subsided, American painters--like their French and other foreign colleagues--applied themselves to their studies and feasted at the artistic banquet offered by museums, galleries, and expositions, where an amazing assortment of works was on display.

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During the summers, however, the Americans in late nineteenth-century Paris sought respite from the city's hurly burly and its stimulating art scene. Again like their international counterparts, they settled temporarily in quiet communities populated by simple folk who preserved traditional values. "In May, with the appearance of balmy weather, the American colony begin talking of dispersing for the summer.... 'Where shall we go?' and 'Where are we going,' are the overruling questions and topics of conversation," the expatriate American painter Henry Bacon (1839-1912) reported from Paris in 1882. The exodus to "quaint little watering-places or picturesque villages" began in earnest in June, Bacon noted; by July, few artists remained in Paris. (2) "After passing a winter in a city, even the smallest moss-covered rock seems in itself a picture," Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919), Jean Leon Gerome's pupil at the Ecole des beaux-arts, enthused from Barbizon, a long-established art colony about forty miles southeast of Paris, during a visit in early April 1877. (3)

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Differences among the many alluring country retreats notwithstanding, they were principally in the northwest quadrant of France, either in the Paris suburbs or in Normandy and Brittany. They were all easily accessible, first by railroad to a larger nearby town and then by horse-drawn vehicle or on foot, journeys that in themselves signified beguiling transitions from the present to the past. (4) They all afforded diversion from academic strictures; crowded and noisy studios; stressful deadlines and competitions; and judgmental professors, juries, and critics. Instead, they permitted artists to enjoy "Old World" charm, to live for a while in pastoral calm as bohemians, even to don wooden clogs and straw hats as practical--and symbolic--accessories. Key attractions were modest living costs and cheap accommodations--often in simple small hotels and pensions (some of which catered to English-speaking guests)--and local types who were increasingly accustomed to the presence of artists and were willing to pose for a few sous. (5)

American painters in Paris and in the countryside responded to the distinctive subjects that they found in each milieu. They also used compositions and techniques that expressed the inherent character of either the bustling city or the quiet rustic environment. Works by four American impressionists exemplify the contrasts between their urban and rural scenes. (6)

Mary Cassatt's In the Loge of 1878 (Fig. 1), which she began about the time Edgar Degas (1834-1917) invited her to exhibit with the impressionists, depicts a modish woman at a matinee. The Theatre Francais, where this scene is set, and other Parisian theaters enticed modern urbanites to see and to be seen. Even unescorted women could attend performances and take pleasure in both the productions on stage and the ornate interiors filled with luxurious fabrics, bright lights, and gleaming reflections. Cassatt's self-possessed model, wearing the hat and discreet garments required for an afternoon excursion, peers through her opera glasses across the auditorium, engaging with and enjoying her surroundings. She is indifferent to the gaze of a man who leans out of another loge box to scrutinize her through his own glasses. Echoing the practices of Degas and other members of the impressionist circle, especially Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Cassatt chose an asymmetrical composition, defined major foreground elements as broad planes of pigment, and rendered distant forms stenographically. The compressed picture space and dusky palette evoke urban confinement. Cassatt's treatment of the woman as a type, rather than as an individual, hints that a city dweller may remain anonymous, alone in a crowd.