Books and Art

La Liseuse - Reading Woman. Paris.

A common view in Paris — people read a lot. On terraces, cafés, in the metro, the bus, on the train. Not so many magazines but serious books. The French are a very cultural and educated people.

The book she reads received the “Prix Goncourt” (2005). “Trois jours chez ma mère” written by François Weyergans.

From Paris with Love. Emile Vernon (French, 1890–1920).

“… for anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the Damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, “Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?” “Yes,” said he, “Last summer.” I judge he spent his summer in Paris.” — Mark Twain, in a letter

Jeune Le Cafe de Paris. Jean Béraud (French, Impressionism, 1849–1935). Oil on canvas. 

Béraud had an exceptional eye for detail, enhanced by the advent of photography. This vision imbued his portrayals of daily Parisian life with subtlety and elegance. He remained in his beloved, flamboyant Belle Époque city while his Impressionist contemporaries moved to the country. Béraud would often sequester himself in a taxicab to paint candid images of unsuspecting passersby and mundane, everyday activities.

After the Ball (1874). Alfred Stevens (Belgian, 1823–1906). Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This painting, also known as “Confidence,” is one of several by Stevens to treat the theme of consolation. Here the anecdotal content of a letter containing distressing news asserts itself in a glimpse of the life of fashionable Parisian women in their elegant interiors. Stevens’s subject matter and his meticulous attention to contemporary dress and decor elicited analogies to 17th C. Dutch and Flemish art.

Model at Louvre Metro. Paris, 1957. “A Bright Young Look in Paris”. © 2010 Mark Shaw.

Captured by Shaw for LIFE Magazine in 1957 is a model at Paris Louvre Metro Station wearing a gray Christian Dior dress. This image is an outtake from that assignment and did not appear in the LIFE article.

Portrait of a Parisian Lady. Paul de La Boulaye (French, 1902-1961). Student of Bonnat, he specialized in genre scenes, portraits and history and religious paintings.

“There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.” (Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch painter. Letter, Summer 1886, to an English artist considering a move to Paris.)

Studio of a Lady Artist (1800). Louis-Léopold Boilly (Neoclassical, 1761-1845). Oil on canvas. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Moscow, Russia.

Boilly’s slightly erotic genre scenes were popular among many Parisian patrons. After one of his paintings was condemned as obscenity in 1794 and threatened him with imprisonment, Boilly’s began painting social scenes. He created images of the Parisian Salon lifestyle with great detail of expression, gesture, costuming, and textiles. 

Brigitte Bardot reading a book at her home, Paris, 1955. Gaston Paris Photoshoot.

Bardot (1934-), at 15, was trying a modeling career, and found herself in the French magazine “Elle”. Her incredible beauty readily apparent, Brigitte next tried films. She appeared on screen for the first time as Javotte Lemoine in Le Trou Normand (1952).

“I started out as a lousy actress and have remained one.” - Brigitte Bardot

At the Window (1881). Hans Heyerdahl (1857-1913). Oil on canvas. Musem: Nasjonalgallerie.

Heyerdahl studied in Paris with Leon Bonnat. For Norwegian painters of his generation, the Salon of French artists was the major event. “Happiness was to hang on the walls, paradise was to get a medal.” (Knut Berg). Heyerdahl get two medals in Paris, including a gold in 1889. “Did you see in the newspaper how Heyerdahl was praised for his ‘dying child’ and do you know he sold his painting to a museum in Paris.” (Munch, 1882).

Nude from the Rear, Reading (c.1880-c.1885). Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). 

His paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon beginning in 1865, but they attracted little attention, and his subject matter slowly transitioned from history paintings to more contemporary subjects. 

Although he is considered one of the founders of Impressionism, and he indeed worked with impressionist artists, such as Edouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he rejected the label “Impressionist.” He detested the scandals brought about by their Impressionist Exhibitions, and he mocked them for painting outdoors.

Lesendes Mädchen (Reading Girl), 1905. Albert Anker (1831–1910).

Anker studied at the Ecole Impériale des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1855 until c. 1860, meanwhile selling portraits. Only after his death in 1910 was there a first exposition dedicated to him, held at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Neuchâtel.

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La Belle Liseuse. Léon-François Comerre (1850-1916).

French. Oil on canvas. Mallett Gallery, London.

Comerre was a French academic painter, famous for his portraits of beautiful women. Studied in Paris at the famous École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. There he came under the influence of orientalism.

The Difficult Lesson (1884). William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905). 

Bouguereau, painting entirely within the traditional Academic style, exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the Paris Salon for his entire working life. An early reviewer stated, “M. Bouguereau has a natural instinct and knowledge of contour. The eurythmie of the human body preoccupies him, and in recalling the happy results which, in this genre, the ancients and the artists of the sixteenth century arrived at, one can only congratulate M. Bouguereau in attempting to follow in their footsteps…Raphael was inspired by the ancients…and no one accused him of not being original.”

Interior with a Young Girl (Girl Reading), Paris 1905-06. Oil on canvas. Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954).

Matisse turned this intimate scene of his daughter, Marguerite, reading into a riot of color—her hair is painted in nearly as many colors as the fruit in the foreground. The artist developed this bold palette in the summer of 1905 in the southern port town of Collioure, France. There, painting alongside his friend the artist André Derain, he fulfilled his goal of learning “how to make my colors sing.” Most critics judged his colors less than favorably, deriding Matisse and fellow artists as fauves, or “wild beasts,” but shortly after this painting was made it was purchased by the supportive art critic and dealer Felix Fénéon.

A Moveable Feast (1964). Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961). Scribners (USA). First American Edition. Set of memoirs about his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” (Hemingway)