|
by Mary Slavkin The salons of the Rose + Croix were founded by the novelist, playwright, and critic Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918). The series of six exhibitions, held between 1892 and 1897, included works by hundreds of artists.[1] While some of them, like Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921), are well-known today, many others have been largely forgotten, and a few have yet to be identified. Although most exhibitors were male (female participation was officially forbidden), there were a few women among them.[2] The salons attracted artists working in different styles and featured artworks with a wide range of mystical, idealized, and literary themes and subjects—as well as a few decorative works, landscapes, and portraits. Finally, a number of works shown at the salon were by artists from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance; they had been lent by collectors sympathetic to Péladan’s initiative.[3] In scholarly accounts of the Rose + Croix salons, opinions differ dramatically as to who were the artists that set the tone for the exhibitions. Robert Pincus-Witten considers Alexandre Séon (1855–1917), Alphonse Osbert (1857–1939), and Armand Point (1861–1932) the most representative artists.[4] Another important scholar of the Rose + Croix salons, Jean da Silva, argues for a slightly different core group, as he focuses on Point, Séon, and Edmond Aman-Jean.[5] Michelle Facos also refers to Aman-Jean and Point as the artists who were most prominent in the Rose + Croix salons—even though Aman-Jean only participated in the first two exhibitions.[6] In an important biography of Péladan, Christophe Beaufils identifies the regular exhibitors as Aman-Jean, Maurice Chabas (1862–1947), Pierre-Émile Cornillier (1863-?), Osbert, Séon, Point, and Khnopff.[7] Geneviève Lacambre, while listing many artists who participated in the salons, refers to only a few as staying “faithful,” including specifically, Chabas, Séon, and Osbert.[8] Thus, most scholars consider Point, Séon, and Osbert the core exhibitors at the Rose + Croix salons, while they disagree about the prominence of Khnopff, Chabas, Aman-Jean, and Cornillier. These scholars either do not explain at all or do not clearly lay out their reasons for identifying specific artists as core exhibitors. They often argue for the importance of specific artists by focusing on how often they exhibited or how many works they showed—but they only apply this method to a few preselected figures and not to all of the exhibitors.[9] In other words, some use statistical methods selectively to support their choice of representative figures, but not comprehensively for the entire group. Applying statistics more methodically and comprehensively to all the Rose + Croix salon catalogues and to a sample of fifty contemporary reviews, I have found that there were ten artists who played key roles at the Rose + Croix salons based on: the number of salons in which they participated, the number of works they exhibited, and the number of times they were referenced in reviews.[10] I refer to these artists as the central exhibitors, as seen in Table 1. Table 1
Note.—These tables are based only on the published catalogues. According to contemporary reviews and recent scholars, several other artists reportedly exhibited works and several exhibiting artists apparently showed works which were not noted in the catalogues, but this data remains incomplete since the number of artworks, titles, and even exact names of these exhibitors are not always known. These ten: Chabas, Cornillier, Jean Delville (1867–1953), André des Gachons (1871–1951), Khnopff, Pinckney Marcius-Simons (1865–1909), Osbert, Point, Séon, and Ville Vallgren (Carl Wilhelm Wallgren; 1855–1940)[11] were the only artists who exhibited at at least half of the salons, showed a minimum of ten total works, and were referred to in at least fifteen of fifty contemporary reviews of the salon. Among these ten, some artists were especially committed to the group—exhibiting more works over a longer period of time—while others were more well-known and were especially often reviewed. Thus, the group of ten artists does not constitute a homogenously committed center. Nevertheless, it does reveal the strong commitments of lesser-known artists beyond the three that scholars most often associate with the Rose + Croix (Osbert, Point, and Séon). Some of these lesser-known artists—such as Chabas, Vallgren, Cornillier, Gachons, and Marcius-Simons—are barely ever mentioned in scholarship on the group.[12] This omission creates a distorted, or, at least, incomplete image of the salons, hampering our understanding of the nature of these exhibitions and the extent to which they reflected the ideas of their organizer.[13] Using a simple statistical method, I measured three factual observations—number of works exhibited, number of salons attended, and number of reviews that mention the artist. While none of these numbers alone provides a complete picture of the artists’ association with the Rose + Croix, the three together give a sense of the extent to which their works were visible in the exhibitions and how often they were discussed by contemporaries and presumably considered as representative of Rose + Croix principles. Table 2 shows how these three calculations together provide a picture of the important role played by these ten central exhibitors. Table 2
As many as 230 artists showed works in the six Rose + Croix salons.[14] One hundred and fifty of these artists participated only once.[15] Another thirty-three exhibited at merely two salons. Artists also varied widely in terms of the quantity of artworks they showed. Revealing a lack of intense commitment to the salon on the part of many artists, 157 of them exhibited five or fewer works and of these seventy-six participants showed only a single work. A few artists exhibited a huge number of works at only a single event, while others attended many salons but sent very few works. Thus, only by viewing in concert the total number of exhibited works and the number of salons in which artists participated can we see a complete picture of their levels of commitment.[16] The data on how often artists exhibited and how many works they showed reveals that very few artists maintained a lengthy and intense commitment to the salons—only thirty-four artists exhibited more than ten works, and of these, many participated in only one or two exhibits (Table 3). Removing these artists who only exhibited once or twice leaves only twenty-two artists. Table 3
Contemporary critics saw some artists as more representative of what they perceived to be the ideals and goals of the Rose + Croix salons. It is noteworthy that there is not always a direct correlation between critics’ opinions of an artist’s allegiance to the Rose + Croix principles and the duration and intensity of that artist’s commitment to the salons. However, measuring the number of reviews that mention an artist within a set sample can be used as a rough assessment of the extent to which critics associated each artist with the Rose + Croix. To statistically measure the critical reviews, I compiled results from fifty reviews, spread throughout the six years, in order to determine how much publicity each artist generated in reviews dealing with the salon as a whole. Many of these reviews follow the same general format—briefly addressing the entire event, then considering, describing, or praising two or three specific artists or works, followed by a list of some of the other participants. Other than the two or three in-depth discussions, the reviewers regularly neglected to critique the submissions or even name specific artworks shown by the exhibitors. My analysis of these reviews can serve as a partial measure in gauging a variety of interrelated issues, including: the extent to which these critics considered the artists essential figures who needed to be mentioned; the amount of publicity an artist’s exhibition at the salon generated in newspapers, magazines, and journals; and the extent to which the public reading these reviews would have consequently associated each artist with the Rose + Croix. In this way, the ten artists who meet all three of my requirements to be considered central figures were not just committed to the group personally, but also were the artists who were most often discussed in reviews of the salons. All of the reviews that I analyzed focus on the annual exhibit as a whole, discussing a variety of different artists. Often, the artists who exhibited the most works also received the most press coverage. For example, Séon, Point, and Osbert all exhibited large numbers of works and were widely reviewed in the press (Table 4). It is noteworthy, however, that several artists sent a large number of works over many years—but contemporaneous accounts of the events rarely mention them or discuss them much less often than other exhibitors. This may indicate that the critics did not consider them representative of what they perceived the Rose + Croix salons to stand for. For example, although Edmé Couty exhibited the same number of works as Khnopff and participated in one more salon, he was significantly less well known and his works were discussed in only eight of the fifty reviews. Table 4
Note.—The artists’ names are organized from the highest number of mentions to the lowest. In cases when two artists share the same last name, when the reviewer does not clarify which works he is referencing or include a first name, and when both artists exhibited works that year, I credit both artists. For example, Durand-Tahier notes the presence of “des figures de M. Desboutin” in 1892, when both Marcellin Desboutin and his son André showed works focusing on a human figure. H. Durand-Tahier, “Le Salon de la Rose + Croix,” La Plume 70 (1892): 132. In reviews that address multiple exhibitions, only artists mentioned in the Rose + Croix section of the review are included in this table.
So why are all these numbers significant? For one, they provide a better understanding of the large size of the Rose + Croix exhibitions. They make us realize that any discussion of the nature and impact of the salons that is based only on the works of a few artists cannot adequately express the varied nature of the exhibited works. The size and nature of the group necessitates a statistical consideration, which can help us determine which members were the most committed to the salon and stood out to contemporary critics. Given the fact that the Rose + Croix salons collectively featured over two hundred artists and almost 1,300 works, many of which cannot be traced or are no longer extant, we may never get a complete picture of these exhibitions (Table 5). However, we can begin to gain a fuller understanding of their nature by understanding which artists were the most committed to these exhibitions and were considered the most prominent by contemporary critics. While it is beyond the scope of this article to analyze, in depth, the works shown at the Rose + Croix salons by the ten most prominent artists, the statistical information provided here can serve as a springboard for gaining a fuller picture and a revised understanding of these exhibitions and of the impact they had in their time. Table 5
Note.—This table includes only works listed or illustrated in the catalogues. It excludes works referred to in reviews if those works were not included in the catalogues because I do not have adequate documentation on the titles, artists, or other key details of exhibited artworks if they were not included in the catalogues. I have included numbered works from the written section of the catalogues and works included in the illustrated portions (even when they do not also appear in the written sections). I have counted works listed under a single number as a single work, even though some artists listed several works (often these works were illustrations) grouped under one number. Sometimes the catalogues specified that several works were included in the same frame or formed a specific grouping, such as a diptych or triptych, yet, even when they do, I have maintained the artist’s choice to exhibit these works as one unit under one number and counted them as a single artwork. Additionally, I have counted repeated titles at different salons (the same work—or multiple works with the same title—which were exhibited at multiple events) as separate works, since they constitute separate exhibition entries. My statistical method and this table in particular build on Léonce de Larmandie’s early account of the events as well as Pincus-Witten’s table of the participants. Larmandie published a list of all of the exhibitors in L’entr’acte idéal. However, he added artists who were never listed in the catalogues and omitted some known participants. Larmandie included only 170 artists and added the names Agache, Compton, Duverney, Granier, Lel, Mellerio, and Rignard. Léonce de Larmandie, L’entr’acte idéal: Histoire de la Rose+Croix; Notes de psychologie contemporaine (Paris: Bibliothèque Chacornac, 1903), 173–76. In his dissertation, Pincus-Witten made a major contribution to scholarship on the group by appending a table of all the artists who exhibited at the Salons and the years in which they participated. Yet, he did not analyze this table or include information on the number of exhibited works. Additionally, like Larmandie, he elided some of those who exhibited. For example, Pincus-Witten only listed the female exhibitors under their pseudonyms and did not include Léon-Charles de La Barre Duparcq, whose submission was illustrated but not included in the written catalogue in 1892. Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France, 217–23; and Péladan, Catalogue du Salon de la Rose-Croix, 60. [1] This article is derived from my dissertation and was presented at the Eleventh Annual Graduate Student Symposium in the History of Nineteenth-Century Art, Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA), Dahesh Museum, New York, March 2014. Mary Slavkin, “Dynamics and Divisions at the Salons of The Rose + Croix: Statistics, Aesthetic Theories, Practices, and Subjects” (PhD diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2014). [2] For more on these women and the rule prohibiting their exhibition at the salons, see Slavkin, “Dynamics and Divisions,” 141–202. [3] For more on the artists from the Middle Ages and Renaissance through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries whose artworks were shown by collectors, rather than by the artists themselves, see ibid., 1; and Robert Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France: Joséphin Péladan and the Salons de La Rose-Croix (New York: Garland, 1976), 217–23. [4] Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France, 106. [5] Jean da Silva, Le Salon de la Rose Croix: 1892–1897 (Paris: Syros-Alternatives, 1991), 55. He also notes that Péladan’s choices were tied to the 1891 Champ de Mars Salon, where Péladan also emphasized the works of Osbert and Hodler. Ibid., 56. [6] Ibid, 56; and Michelle Facos, Symbolist Art in Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 175. [7] Christophe Beaufils, Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918): Essai sur une maladie du lyrisme (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1993), 271. [8] Geneviève Lacambre, “Lévy-Dhurmer et le symbolisme,” in Les peintres du rêve en Bretagne: Autour des symbolistes et des Nabis du Musée, ed. Denise Delouche and Françoise Daniel (Brest: Musée des Beaux-arts de Brest, 2006), 36. [9] For example, at one point, while discussing the final salon, Beaufils refers to Séon as the most representative figure, writing that he exhibited at least fifty-three works. However, Beaufils’s accounting method is unclear—this number deviates significantly from both the total number of works Séon exhibited throughout the salons and the number he exhibited at the final salon. This example highlights not only the fact that scholars often use only the number of exhibited works to show a participant’s importance, but also the difficulty of determining exactly how many works each artist exhibited. These numbers often diverge because sometimes the artists exhibited multiple works under one number; works were unnumbered in the catalogue; or, in the first two years, some were included as illustrations in the illustrated portion of the catalogue, but were not listed in the written section. Beaufils, Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918), 313. [10] In choosing the sample of reviews, I sought to avoid skewing the study toward the earlier (most-reviewed years), so I limited each year’s sample by the number of reviews I found for 1896. I removed excess reviews from the earlier years (removing ones that addressed fewer artists since these were usually less focused on the salon as a whole), including eight or nine for each year so as to end up with a sample of 50 reviews. I determined my specific cut-offs (for the number of salons, number of works, and number of references in the reviews) for the central exhibitors since these cut-offs generally exclude many of the same artists. In comparing the artists who exhibited most often, showed the most works, and were included in the most reviews, these three marks tend to include most of the same artists. Forty-two artists meet at least one of these qualifications, but only twenty-three meet two criteria. Of those artists who meet two, but not three of these criteria, Maurin exhibited only seven works at the salons, Aman-Jean exhibited at only two of the events, and the artworks of Adrien Moreau-Neret, Rogelio de Egusquiza, Julien Ricaud, George-Arthur Jacquin, Marquet de Vasselot, Edgar Maxence, Adrien Duthoit, Edmé Couty, Adolphe LaLyre, and Baron Arild Rosencrantz were noted in only between two and ten of fifty contemporary reviews. These artists participated in the salons regularly, but due to the lack of contemporary recognition of their works at the events, they cannot be considered among the most representative exhibitors. [11] Many of these names are often spelled differently in literature on the Rose + Croix—particularly, Vallgren is often spelled as Walgren or Valgren, but in literature on the artist, his full name is spelled Carl Wilhelm Wallgren, although he is most commonly referred to simply as Ville Vallgren. Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse, Ville Vallgren: 1855 - 1940 (Helsinki: Ateneum Art Museum, 2003), 54. Pierre Rambaud complicates this account, since his works were shown at four events, he exhibited a total of fifteen works, and he was often mentioned in reviews. Yet, since the artist died in 1893, the later two exhibitions were posthumous. Joséphin Péladan, Ordre de la Rose + Croix: Geste esthétique, troisième salon, catalogue (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1894), 3, 17. Since Rambaud had died and, therefore, did not personally show his works at these two salons and could not have participated in the group, I only include his first two exhibitions in my account and, thus, do not consider him one of the most representative artists. [12] For example, Cornillier exhibited at every event, but is rarely discussed in literature on the group; Pincus-Witten devotes only two paragraphs to Cornillier, despite the fact that this artist exhibited the third-highest total number of works. Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France, 138–39. While Cornillier is rarely discussed, Edmond Aman-Jean is regularly included in discussions of the group, even though he only exhibited at the first two exhibitions of the Rose + Croix. For example, Michele Facos discuses only Point and Aman-Jean as key figures, and Jean da Silva identifies Point, Séon, and Aman-Jean. Facos, Symbolist Art in Context, 175; and Silva, Le Salon de la Rose Croix, 55. [13] For more on the divergences between Péladan’s published platforms, the exhibited works, and the theories espoused by the participating artists, see Slavkin, “Dynamics and Divisions.” [14] Artworks were exhibited under 228 different names, but in at least one case, an artist used both his own name and his well-known pseudonym (Jean de Caldain/Raymond Marchand). Additionally, three works were exhibited anonymously (it is not clear if the names were omitted intentionally or accidently—these works may have been exhibited by artists whose names appeared elsewhere in the catalogues). If Raymond Marchand was the only artist exhibiting under two names, then the total number of exhibiting artists was 230. This number includes the historical exhibitors (whose works—many of which dated to the Middle Ages or Renaissance— were exhibited after their deaths). For more on this issue, see Slavkin, “Dynamics and Divisions,” 1; and Robert Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France, 217–23. [15] One unfortunate drawback of a statistical analysis of the Rose + Croix is the fact that it must rely upon the salon catalogues. These documents clearly include typographical errors and must also contain omissions and additions, especially since several reviewers refer to artworks being exhibited at the exhibitions although the works did not appear in the catalogues. These artworks are not included here because the reviews never added sufficient detailed information (i.e., the exact names of the artists and their artworks) and generally, I have not found corroborating sources to verify that these works were exhibited. For example, a review from 1892 includes a “Bernulette” and a “de Cooren,” while a review of the salon of 1896 includes a bust after Botticelli by “Bellor.” “Le Salon de la Rose + Croix,” Notes d’Art et d’Archéologie 4 (1892): 92–94; and “Petits Salons,” Le Petit Parisien, March 19, 1896, 1. These names do not appear in the catalogues. These may be significant misspellings, artists who actually exhibited but were not included in the catalogues, or accidental additions by the reviewers. As shown by Sharon Hirsh, Ferdinand Hodler exhibited a drawing of a kneeling child at the salon in 1893 which was not included in the exhibition catalogue. Sharon Hirsh, “Ferdinand Hodler and the Salon de la Rose+Croix,” in Ferdinand Hodler: A Symbolist Vision, ed. Katharina Schmidt (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008), 160. Unfortunately, we do not know if this was his only submission or have additional information about the exhibited piece. Additionally, few of the exhibiting artists have been studied in this depth. In order to avoid overemphasizing the role of well-known artists like Hodler (by including their unlisted submissions and not those of lesser-known artists), I have chosen not to include works like this in my tables. Since these catalogues, despite their inaccuracies, provide the only consistent data on which works were exhibited, they must form the backbone of any study of the participating artists. [16] For example, Osbert did participate in every event, but he only sent a single work to the first salon, a detail that would be missing in accounting only for the duration of an artist’s attachment. Similarly, three anomalous artists reveal the importance of considering both duration and quantity in concert. These artists exhibited many works, but only exhibited at a single event, appearing to have had an extremely strong commitment in terms of quantity, but not duration. The quantity of works belies the short duration of the commitment for several artists: Moreau-Néret sent forty-four artworks to three events, with forty of those at a single salon; thirty-two works were shown by Albert Trachsel at the first salon; and Charles Bérengier sent twenty-seven to the second event. |
Articles
Reviews
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
