El Greco, St. Jerome, c. 1600
Hispanic Society of America

At first glance, El Greco’s work seems bizarre, almost abstract. The elongated figures, turbulent colors, and stretching diagonals of his compositions are quite unlike the more conventionally realistic work of his contemporaries. But the iconography and aim of El Greco’s religious works are, by the standards of the Counter-Reformation, perfectly correct. One might even argue that they are more effective for El Greco’s contemporary viewers to study, because they demand serious contemplation of the religious subject and lead to true meditation on the relationship of the individual viewer to the life of Christ. This fact can be seen particularly well in this devotional painting of St. Jerome, from 1600.

Beginning as a painter of icons, El Greco was born in Crete and trained in the Byzantine style. The basis of his Byzantine style training, whose abstract decoration did not include the study of anatomy or architecture, combined with El Greco’s later move to Italy and subsequent influence of Renaissance masters, allowed for the painter to develop a truly original style. El Greco was most enamored by Titian, the Italian Renaissance artist with whom he was rumored to have studied. Regardless of whether or not this legend is true, the artist and his works had a profound influence on El Greco, and he praised Titian in the margins of his copy of Vasari’s art historical text. Because of the influence of Titian’s work on him, El Greco seems to have formed two ideas that shaped his life and career. First, El Greco adored Titian’s use of rich, saturated color, a technique that he deemed one of the most important aspects of creating art. This belief in the importance of color is clear with only a glance at a few of his paintings. Second, El Greco was greatly impressed by Titian’s status in Italy: that of the gentleman painter, one who not only lived well but was respected by his society. El Greco seems to have believed deeply that the artistic craft should be revered; but unfortunately, the artistic climate in Spain did not yet agree with his conviction.

El Greco moved to Spain after leaving both Crete and Italy to try to find his patronage, hoping for a career as great as Titian’s. Yet he ended up alienating himself from two potentially powerful patrons through his belief. He ardently fought against the tasación, or valuation, of artworks in Spain, a payment system in which both artist and patron would hire appraisers to determine the price of an artwork—after it had already been made. After fighting for two and a half years with the Cathedral of Toledo over his Disrobing of Christ, El Greco was forced to settle for a much lower price than he desired because of the tasación. Then, he annoyed King Philip II himself by giving his commission for The Martyrdom of St. Maurice and the Theban League an unconventional composition, in which the king’s desired subject seems merely an afterthought. Luckily for El Greco, one of his close friends was a young Spanish priest named Luis de Castilla, whose father was quite influential in the Spanish church. With their support, he was still able to secure large-scale commissions, though he never became a true “court painter.”

Perhaps this was for the better, because without a constant patron like the church or the king, El Greco was forced to find a more practical way to make a living. With the decrees of the Council of Trent now at the forefront of religious life in Spain, there was a high demand for devotional paintings among the masses. The ideals of the Counter-Reformation encouraged the public to turn inward, preaching the importance of individual prayer and a personal relationship with Christ to understand their faith. These devotional paintings by El Greco, which scholars agree are exceptionally executed, were meant to provide that individual incentive visually. El Greco’s devotional paintings were extremely popular, and it is said that he had a case of sample paintings in his studio, from which a buyer could pick and choose subject matter and composition.

St. Jerome is a particularly important figure in the iconography of the Counter-Reformation. A cardinal who was depicted both as a penitent and as a scholar, one might say that St. Jerome is the ideal “mascot” for the period. Portraits of Jerome as a scholar remind the viewer of the Counter-Reformation importance of individual study of the Catholic faith. Meanwhile, Jerome as a penitent, seeking forgiveness from God for his sins, reminds the viewer of the importance of the individual relationship between God and man. This twofold interpretation of the saint defines two of the Council of Trent’s primary aims for the religious education of the masses, and as such, it is no wonder that Jerome was a much-utilized subject by the church.

With this information, it is clear that El Greco’s devotional painting of the penitent saint, seen above us, is utterly masterful, and moreover, his unique style lends a religious intensity to the painting that surely would have incited any contemporary viewer into devout study. El Greco places the saint in the ambiguous space of a cave, surrounded by all the conventional attributes of Jerome: his books and papers, a skull, and the hourglass are arranged in a still life across a table, and his cardinal’s hat hangs at the cave’s edge. Beyond the cave, we can glimpse a swirling sky and a hint of foliage, giving us only the most general idea of the setting.
What is most important here is St. Jerome himself. Although an older man, Jerome is still muscular—showing El Greco’s adaptation of Michelangelo’s figures from his study in Italy—but all sinew and nerves, elongated and stretched from nose to beard to chest along the picture plane. The length of his body, modeled by blues and grays among the peach of his skin, is accentuated both by the long, wooden Crucifixion upon which he gazes so intently, and by the diagonals of the composition—the table and the cave’s edge. The velvety blackness of the cave frames Jerome, and the ambiguous light source highlights in frosty white the curves of his muscles and the bright magenta drapery of his cloak. This painting is characteristically and masterfully “El Greco”: from the elongated figure to the bright, confident use of color.

Moreover, El Greco highlights St. Jerome’s importance to the Catholic church and their new Tridentine policies in this devotional painting. His attributes remind us of St. Jerome’s scholarly pursuits, and thus also the importance of individual learning and understanding of faith in the Counter-Reformation. But what is most striking about the painting is the intensity of Jerome’s stare. Many of El Greco’s saints look upwards with huge eyes in spiritual epiphanies. Here, just as, if not more, poignantly, the solid, formidable figure of St. Jerome is completely engrossed by the wooden Crucifixon, gazing tenderly at Christ. The fact that we cannot see Christ’s face on the sculpture—we can barely make out the shadow of his head—only emphasizes the utter devotion of St. Jerome to his faith. Recalling the fact that the Counter-Reformation strongly advocated that the only mediator between the individual and God was Christ Himself, the focus on Jerome’s tender, intent gaze on the Crucifixion sculpture—a symbol for Christ—makes utter and complete sense.

El Greco created these devotional paintings in order to make enough money to live by, but his mastery shines through even in these mass-produced images. Informed by the religious doctrines of his time, the paintings display an image ideal for the purchaser’s individual devotion. But we can also sense El Greco’s own devotion in this painting—not only to the beliefs of the Counter-Reformation-era church, but also to the craft of painting, the art form he loved and revered most, on which he worked so diligently and innovatively, and for which he fought so ardently during his life.

Works Referenced

Brown, Jonathan. Painting in Spain 1500-1700. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

The Hispanic Society of America. El Greco in the Collection of The Hispanic Society of America. New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1927.

Guidol, José. El Greco: 1541-1614. Barcelona: Ediciones Polgrafa, S.A.

Lopera, José Álvarez. El Greco: Identity and Transformation. SILEX: Spain, 1993.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Shepherdess, 1889 (detail)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Shepherdess, 1889

Bouguereau’s Shepherdesses
However, particularly for academic artists, the definition of “every day life” for some of their subjects seems a bit broad. Bouguereau in particular was not the most realistic depictor of the characters in his genre scenes, especially his peasant shepherdesses, above. While his paintings are high in realistic rendering—rendering that is, in fact, even too realistic—the subjects are all highly idealized and perfected. These shepherd girls are beautiful, clean-footed, dressed in unfashionable but intact, clean clothes, and sport noble, solemn expressions.

Many of Bouguereau’s shepherdesses, like the one to the left, confront the viewer with a confident gaze, and this girl is no different. Her pose is strong and dynamic, full of angles, and she meets the viewer’s eyes unapologetically.

The Women Behind the Painting
Artists summered in more rural areas outside of Paris, where they would engage in plein-air painting that would help with the larger canvases they created in the fall. In these areas, artists frequently hired local girls as models, and at a time when noble peasants were in high demand from commercial collectors, what could be better than the real thing? (Except, of course, in Bouguereau’s case, a highly perfected, idealized version of the real thing—which, he might argue, would made the thing more real.)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Donkey Ride, 1884

Bouguereau summered in La Rochelle, where he hired young Italian girls not only as models, but as housekeepers. Paid 300 francs a month by the artist, they would reside with him and do his chores between modeling sessions. He allowed them to bring their children, if they had any, and would sketch them too, often painting them, as in the painting to the right. He brought sketches back in the fall, painted the larger canvases, and would sell them to (usually American) collectors when they were done.

Bouguereau’s Influence: Delobbe and the Peasant
Delobbe was a regular contributor to the Salon and a student of Bouguereau’s, whose work very closely resembles his master’s. Because this Frenchman never moved away from Paris (like many of Bouguereau’s students, particularly the American ones), their style and subject matter remained remarkably similar. So similar, in fact, that one of Delobbe’s paintings—see left—was mistaken for a Bouguereau; someone even signed Bouguereau’s name in the left hand corner.

Francois Alfred Delobbe, Italian Peasant Family, undated (1890s-1900s?)

The painting to the left is one that was inspired by a painting of his master’s, above left, but the two differ greatly. Both clearly show the same scene: a peasant family making their way back from a harvest. But Bouguereau’s is more overtly religious, both Pagan in its depiction of a Bacchanalian dance around the family and its donkey, and also Christian, with the crowned baby boy riding on a donkey, all eyes in the painting on him.

Delobbe’s version, meanwhile, is more domestic and even truer to life, though it is idealized. The brush is looser, rougher, and though there are still Christian overtones, it sheds the tiniest hint of the true life of the peasant—a simple journey on a rough road, blurred into atmospheric perspective; the smaller group of people; the calm feeling of the small painting. Bouguereau’s influence is still present, but the hold of the strict Academic ideals seems to be loosening as time continues on.

The museum where I’m interning this summer currently has a special exhibit about William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a 19th century French painter who was immensely popular in his own time, fell out of favor, and recently has been semi-revived in interest among art historians. Personally, although his work isn’t exactly the ‘deepest’ stuff I’ve ever seen by far, I think his work is just BEAUTIFUL. I’m giving two gallery talks about Bouguereau (pronounced BOH-gheh-roh), and wanted to type up what I’ll likely be saying for my first one, this upcoming Friday the 20th. This will end up being longer than the tour I’m giving, and also longer than the usual size of this blog’s posts, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it anyway. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

TRAINED IN THE ATELIERS OF PARIS

William-Adolphe Bouguereau was considered the best painter in the world during his lifetime, but he also “considered teaching his sacred duty.” In fact, he taught at multiple places during his lifetime, both in his own private atelier (artist’s studio) and in the ateliers of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. He didn’t charge his students a high price for their tutelage; instead, they seemed to have worked off their debt to him by working as his assistants on his monumentous Salon paintings.

The Schools
The Ecole des Beaux-Arts was THE art school in Paris — if you wanted to be a successful artist, you attended the Ecole. There were entrance exams, conducted only in French, which was discouraging to the many foreign students who came to Paris to try their luck at the life of an artist. The school, however, was worth the work: it offered great benefits, what with its fantastic reputation and reputable professors. The Ecole held a famous contest every year called the Prix de Rome, for which the winner received a scholarship trip to study in-the-flesh the works of the great masters in Italy. (As you may have guessed, Bouguereau won the Prix de Rome when he attended the Ecole.)

Because of the tricky French entrance exams, many American students in particular went to the Académie Julian instead, where one only had to pay a fee to be accepted. You might think this would imply that the Académie was not as good as the Ecole, but in fact, the schools’ reputations were both extremely high. The Académie was known to be revolutionary, even, because it accepted both men and women, whereas the more conservative Ecole did not.

The Goal
The ultimate goal for any student, no matter their school or specific atelier, who wanted to become successful was to get their work accepted into the Salon. This was an annual exhibition of artwork screened by a committee that was, well, slightly corrupt. They chose pieces based on bourgeois taste–which tended, at the time, towards the idealized and the classical–and upon the submitting artists’ own connections.

As a result, it was extremely important to have a good mentor in the art world, usually the master of the atelier you attended. Not only did your mentor teach you the fundamental techniques of drafting and painting, but he also ideally had good connections to the Salon higher-ups, and could then put in a good word for you come selection time. Bouguereau was a particularly desirable teacher because he had incredibly good Salon connections and a fantastic reputation. Moreover, the relationship worked both ways — Bouguereau’s reputation helped his students, but the fact that the students’ atelier and master were printed on Salon wall labels publicized Bouguereau’s atelier and status, too.

The Learning Process
No matter which art school or atelier a student worked in, each had to follow the same strict regimen in what they could draw first. They began by meticulously copying lithographs and engravings (prints) of masterworks. Then they moved onto sketching plaster casts of classical and classically-inspired statues. Finally, they could sketch the live nude, and after they mastered that, they could paint it. The live, human nude was considered the highest, most important thing one could depict.

Jefferson D. Chalfant, Bouguereau’s Atelier, 1891

How Bouguereau Taught
Though we might expect Bouguereau’s teaching style to be quite conservative, considering his popularity among the bourgeois and Salon committee, it seems that his teaching style was significantly different than how it was usually done at the time. First, let’s look at the painting to the right, Chalfant’s Bouguereau’s Atelier (1891). Chalfant was an American student of Bouguereau’s, and here we can see a sketchy painting of the very atelier in which he worked. There are two nude models, and many students, who are all seated hierarchically — students who won atelier-sponsored contests (best allegorical painting, etc.) won seats closer to the model. Also hierarchical are the very sketches and paintings on the walls: charcoal sketches at the back, portraits hung higher up, and color figure paintings overtaking the entire back wall.

Bouguereau believed that a person is “born an artist,” but that they learn by doing — in that vein, he never manually corrected a student’s work, attacking their sketch with his own pencil, as many teachers did, but rather critiqued with his words, allowing the student themself to fix their mistakes. One student wrote that he had a “gentle, soothing voice; [he] glided… always gentle, always fair, never saying things he did not really mean” (Edmund H. Wuerpel). Moreover, unlike many masters, he never forced his students to follow his own style, although there were a fair number who chose to — including his student and eventually wife, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, and Pierre-Auguste Cot.

Pierre-Auguste Cot, Springtime, c. 1873

The Academic Style
Cot was a very successful artist who was one of Bouguereau’s few students to have a nearly familial relationship with his master. His works were frequently in the Salon, and he won many awards from the selection committee. One of his most famous paintings is to the left, Springtime (or Spring, c. 1873), which was so beloved it was reproduced in countless ways — from prints to playing cards, even to wallpaper. This work is remembered as the quintessential Academic artwork, although this was not necessarily THE ideal that the Salon insisted on. Nevertheless, its polished, idealized young figures, the allegorical overtones, and the Arcadian setting are not only very Academic indeed, but quite Bouguereau-ian, too. Bouguereau’s influence on his students was quite great, perhaps because of his unconventional, but quite effective, teaching style.

Sources and Further Reading
- James F. Peck, In the Studios of Paris: William Bouguereau and his American Students (Phillbrook Museum of Art: 2006) – Amazon
- Gallery Guide for In the Studios of Paris (Phillbrook Museum of Art)
- Frick Art Museum Press Release for In the Studios of Paris
- See also Wikipedia’s article on and gallery of Bouguereau