19th century AD

Art in America, Feb, 1995 by Robert L. Herbert

Minuscule images of laundresses at work can be seen in the works discussed here--two Courbet paintings, a Lartigue photograph and a Boldini oil--all depicting the Normandy fishing village of Etretat. For the author, these usually overlooked figures document the region's traditional activities but

The fascination with the natural sciences in the 19th century extended far into middle-class homes, where bell glasses enclosed terraria that displayed nature in miniature. Wealthier families had greenhouses well stuffed with domestic flora, and library tables often bore large volumes devoted to prints of insects and flowers. Among the many kinds of mid-century lithographs and engravings that appealed to the botanically inclined was one which reproduced the natural world in miniature. Called "Miracle Drops" or "Life in a Droplet," these purported to represent what one saw looking through a microscope at pond water. If we recover this fascination for the minuscule, we can draw closer to 19th-century painting, which often expressed the same awareness of nature in small portions.[1] This essay uses tiny figures, easily overlooked, to rename and properly identify the subject of a painting by Courbet and a photograph by Lartigue, as well as to improve upon the descriptions of another picture by Courbet and a small oil by Boldini.[2]

I begin this archeology of nature by lifting up the historical bell glass from the beachfront of Etretat, the popular resort on the Norman coast about 16 miles northeast of Le Havre. This small fishing village was put on the map of tourism in the 1830s. In one generation its chief income turned from fish to vacationers, hooked by the fame of its three pierced cliffs. By the 1860s, when resort activity was thoroughly established, many fisherfolk had sold out to entrepreneurs who remodeled their houses and erected hotels, inns and villas. A central casino was installed, new roads built, and, to accommodate bathers, three concessions were established on the beachfront. Some fishermen became bathing attendants, their wives and daughters, laundresses and servants to vacationers. Town fathers encouraged the retention of local costume and rituals; these constituted performances for visitors.

Among the traditional rituals was the activity of laundresses at work on the beach at low tide. This was possible because a subterranean freshwater stream flowed underneath the adjacent cliff and surfaced among the pebbles that formed the beach, which was exposed at low tide. A laundress had only to scoop out a hollow among the loose stones, and she had a bowl of fresh water as well as rocks on which to pound and then to dry the clothing. A postcard on which this activity is represented (one of several such cards) can be read two ways. It documents the women's labor in an apparently objective fashion, but it also reveals that onlookers were interested in that ritual. By plucking such a card from a rack in one of the souvenir shops in Etretat, the vacationer confessed her or his distance from these quaint locals whose attraction lay in the pre-modern labor they performed in nature, not in an urban laundry or bateau lavoir.

In Lartigue's photograph of 1908 we see both worlds: in the foreground, vacationers are ascending the cliff, and down below, wash is spread out to dry on the sloping pebble beach. It is the laundry that gave me the clue to the correct title of the photograph, which is erroneously listed by Lartigue himself as The Beach at Pourville.[3] It should be renamed Etretat from the Cliff of the Aval. Etretat is unique, for no other port is known to have fresh water so conveniently accessible on its foreshore. Moreover, the fame of Etretat, and especially of the spectacular climb up its cuffs, led to the production of many photographs and postcards that positively identify Lartigue's buildings with the village. These include the Hotel Blanquet (acutely foreshortened, just to the left of the pole) from whose windows Monet later made a number of pictures.

When we turn back nearly 40 years to one of Courbet's most famous paintings, The Cliff at Etretat after a Storm (1870), knowledge of the washerwomen will explain two of its features. First, I should give a brief account of the picture's setting. Courbet's letters of 1869 tell us that he had been commissioned to go to Etretat, which apparently means that one or more of his dealers or clients specified pictures of the resort, hoping to obtain the depiction of a famous place by a famous artist.[4] He began a substantial number of canvases, finishing many later in his studio. He showed two large compositions in the Salon of 1870, The Wave (Musee d'Orsay) and the view of the cliff. Their size was commensurate with their importance, since from the outset Courbet destined them for the Salon. He rented the beachfront studio-villa of Eugene Le Poittevin (1806-70), a local painter whose windows and terrace gave onto this portion of the bay. (From the vantage point of Lartigue's photograph the studio would have been out of sight, just below the brow of the hill.) Le Poittevin was one of those artists whose activity had contributed to the fame of the resort, which was known particularly for the pierced cliff that dominates Courbet's canvas, the Porte d'Aval ("downstream portal," as distinct from the "upstream" Porte d'Amont on the other side of the bay).