Some artists fade in memory with their epoch, beyond which they have not outgrown. Nobody remembers their names when they are quoted in books about more famous colleagues, or makes a note in front of a statue in the park, where they are named on a plaque smeared with leaves on the base. Even if they were once important accomplices in an art-historical upheaval, 100 years later many artists are only suitable as a master’s topic out of embarrassment, because everything has already been said about the really famous people with brush and chisel.
Astruc was part of the galley that set course for the horizon of self-determined art – but not on deck
If these choir figures of a change of style are female, then they emerged increasingly to the surface in the museum campaigns to rediscover women in art history. Are they male, more likely not. There are just too many of them like Zacharie Astruc, the art critic of early Parisian modernism. As a journalist who, from 1860, defended the new realists around Édouard Manet against public opinion, then wrote poetry, painted watercolors and created sculptures, Astruc was part of the galley that set course for the horizon of self-determined art – but not on deck.
Édouard Manet’s “The Music Lesson” from 1870.
(Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
And the large exhibition “Manet and Astruc. Artist Friends” in the Bremen Kunsthalle does not want to correct this position at all. Nothing in this show with around 120 exhibits proclaims to have discovered a new genius behind the screen of art history. The aesthetic discrepancy between the pale portraits of women and knickknacks still lifes in the crammed living rooms of the upper class, which Astruc painted accurately with watercolors, and the atmospheric oil portraits of the same situation that Manet created is too clear. A Manet painting was therefore the impetus for this exhibition: the portrait owned by the Bremen Kunsthalle, which he painted in 1866 for his friend Astruc.
Zacharie Astruc painted “Young woman in the costume of a torero (young dancer)” around 1880/83.
(Photo: private property)
Curator Dorothee Hansen took the symbolically charged picture as an opportunity to draw an original sketch of the era in which a loose group of Parisian dandies who are now world famous created new criteria for culture, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Baudelaire, Degas and Zola. The “Portrait of Zacharie Astruc” is ideal for this for several reasons. It brings together numerous references to dominant cultural aspects of those years for which not only the publicist of modern art views Astruc stood, but the whole scene on the move to modernity.
Édouard Manet’s “The Spanish Ballet” from 1862.
(Photo: The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC)
Elements such as a red belly scarf in the style of a torero and a peeled lemon illustrate the strong longing for Spain in France, which the painters also showed in their admiration for Velázquez, Goya and El Greco. The peeled fruit next to a wine glass, as a suggestive element, also evokes strong olfactory memories that refer to the concrete sensuality with which Manet contradicted the stylized affectation of that era. A Japanese album marks the emerging Japonism, which Astruc had promoted with several scripts. In addition, around the actual portrait of the critic, who was portrayed with his hand in his waistcoat like Napoleon, there are confessions to Dutch genre painting, to Titian and to the allegorical content of still life and symbolism.
The progressive cultural scene in Paris in anticipation of a park concert, captured by Édouard Manet in “Music in the Tuileries Garden” from 1862.
(Photo: The National Gallery, London.)
From these clues, the curator develops a large panorama with many examples of virulent cultural influences as well as the establishment of a male clique that wanted to reproduce “real” life in opposition to the official salon for almost two decades until Manet’s untimely death in 1883. Manet showed the Circle of Friends for the first time in 1862 in the dense assembly picture “Music in the Tuileries Garden”, where the progressive cultural scene of Paris is shown in anticipation of a park concert: including Zacharie Astruc, but also Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Jacques Offenbach, Henri Fantin-Latour and various critics and art buyers.
Astruc consistently defended his close artist friends in his articles
According to today’s journalistic standards of unbiased reporting, this amicable amalgamation of artists and critics may seem like a fall from grace for mutual benefit. But in the disparaging climate towards the emerging impressionism, the buddy economy was obviously the only adequate form of promoting change in culture. Astruc in particular consistently defended his close artist friends in his articles before he began to become one himself – which, however, never got beyond sophisticated practical art.
The image of an inspired cultural bohemian in the headwind of staged art scandals that this exhibition offers lives at its core from a number of prominent loans, including Manet’s portrait of Emil Zola from the Musée d’Orsay, which, similar to the image of Astruc, the author in a composition of many cultural ones References shows. Numerous examples from Manet’s work, which show his fascination for Spanish painters, musicians, bullfighters and dancers, form another chapter, which is followed by a large room of self-expression through friendship services, including Manet as seen by Alphonse Legros and Henri Fantin-Latours . The central work, however, is a studio meeting at Manet, as he is currently painting the portrait of Astrucs.
In the end, Astruc remained more an admirer than a producer of great art
Fantin-Latour’s “Atelier in the Batignolles Quarter” from 1870 brings together Renoir, Zola and Monet among their seated central star. Nevertheless, the strange composition of absent-minded gentlemen who look silently in different directions denies direct evidence of the clique character of this community. But the group soul of the early Impressionists in this exhibition can still be understood very nicely from a detective point of view through mutual picture quotations and common preferences for Japanese and Spanish motifs.
Why Astruc ultimately remained more an admirer than a producer of great art is shown by his most famous work, the sculpture “Mask Seller” from 1886, which is in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. A half-naked boy offers the likeness of French cultural celebrities for sale, including Balzac, Berlioz, Dumas, Hugo, Delacroix and Baudelaire. Here, too, Astruc serves more to the glory of others, in which he has shown the greatest originality. But as a sympathetic critic, whether verbally or in bronze, in the long term only the role of the stirrup holder remains. And nobody remembers them later. Except for this beautiful cultural and historical exhibition in Bremen.
Manet and Astruc. Artist friends in the Kunsthalle Bremenuntil February 27, 2022; the catalog costs 54 euros.