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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE PIANO IN THE PARLOR AND ITS ROLE IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF ABSTRACT PAINTING

presented by

Jacqueline C. Shinners

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

MA History of Art

degree in

 

 

 

 

Major professor

Date August 12, 1987

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THE PIANO IN THE PARLOR AND ITS ROLE IN THE

DEVELOPMENT OF ABSTRACT PAINTING

BY

Jacqueline C. Shinners

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History of Art

1987

Copyright by
Jacqueline C. Shinners
1987

ABSTRACT

THE PIANO IN THE PARLOR AND ITS ROLE
IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ABSTRACT PAINTING

BY

Jacqueline C. Shinners

In surveying the forces behind painting in the second
half of the nineteenth century, one finds little reference
to the concept of music and it's relationship to painting.
Historians have explored the connection between musical
structure and visual symbol and have analyzed paintings
through musical titles, but few have dealt with the
depiction of a musical instrument, its role within the
picture and the symbolic relationship of music to pictorial
image.

I have chosen to explore the transformative images of
the piano and women and their place within the bourgeois
parlor. From realism through symbolism to abstraction, these
images have been used to evoke a reverie or a mood akin to
the abstract qualities of music in selected works of Hunt,
Whistler, Dicksee, Manet, Khnopff, Ensor, Vuillard, Klimt,
Klinger and Kupka. A brief history of the piano and the

education of women are included.

This thesis is dedicated to my husband.
Seamus, whose continued love and
support has helped to make this

all possible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To all those people whose concern, time and energy are
a part of this thesis. my very special thanks. First and
foremost is Dr. Eldon Van Liere, my committee chair, who
gave generously of his time and his personal library, guided
me through the maze and remained a source of inspiration
throughout this thesis and my time at MSU.

I also wish to express gratitude to the rest of my
committee, Dr. Linda Stanford for her enthusiastic support
and encouragement, and Dr. Conrad Donakowski for his
willingness to read and offer comments and share his music
sources with me.

I am also grateful to the MSU art library staff for
their untiring efforts in locating material, and granting me
special permission to work with non-circulating books.
Finally I would like to acknowledge all my Traverse City and
East Lansing friends for their genuine interest in my work.

and thank Seamus for being a source of spiritual comfort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF PLATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Notes on Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
CHAPTER

I THE WOMAN'S ROLE AND HER TEMPLE . . . . . . 8

Notes--Chapter I. . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

II ENGLAND: REVELATION AND EVOCATION. . . . . 26

Notes--Chapter II . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

III THE CONTINENT: THE POWERS OF SUGGESTION. . 56

Notes--Chapter III. . . . . . . . . . . . 89

IV KEYS TO THE ABSTRACT. . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Notes-~Chapter IV . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Notes--Conc1usion . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

LIST OF PLATES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PLATES Page
1 Jan Vermeer: A Lady Standing at the Virginals . . 9
2 Title Page of Parthenia, 1611. . . . . . . . . . . 11
3 William Holman Hunt: The AwakeningConscience,

1854 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4 Charles Le Brun: The Repentant Magdalene, 1656-57. 29
5 Marguerite Gerard: L'Heureux Menage, 1795-1800. . 33
6 James McNeill Whistler: Au Piano, 1858-59 . . . . 36
7 Jan Vermeer: The Concert. . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
8 Fantin Latour: Two Sisters, 1859. . . . . . . . . 4o
9 James McNeill Whistler: The Music Room, 1860. . . 42
10 James McNeill Whistler: Nocturne in Blue and

Gregg, 1871. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

11 Sir Frank Dicksee: A Reverie, 1895. . . . . . . . 49

12 Sir Frank Dickee: The Confession, 1896. . . . . . 52

13 Edouard Manet: Madame Manet Au Piano, 1867. . . . 57

14 Edouard Manet: Qrawing_of A Head. . . . . . . . . 65

15 Edouard Manet: La Lecture, 1968-69. . . . . . . . 67

16 Fernand Khnopff: Encoutant en Schumann, 1883. . . 7o

17 Fernand Khnopff: I Lock My Door Upon Myself, 1883 74

18 James Ensor: Russian Music, 1881. . . . . . . . . 77

19 James Ensor: At the Harmonium, 1933 . . . . . . . 81

20 Edouard Vuillard: Au Piano, 1896. . . . . . . . . 84

21 Gustav Klimt: Schubert am Klavier, 1899 . . . . . 93

22 Gustav Klimt: Die Musik II, 1898. . . . . . . . . 94

23 Max Klinger: ggahms Fantasy Evocatigg . . . . . . 100

 

vii

PLATES

24

25

26

27

28

29

Frantisek Kupka:
Frantisek Kupka:
Frantisek Kupka:

Frantisek Kupka:

1912. . . . .

Piano Keys-Lake, 1909.

Nocturne, 1911

The Girl with a Ball, 1908

Amphora, Fugue in Two Colors,

Gustav Klimt: The Kiss, 1907-1908

Frantisek Kupka: Vertical Planes III, 1912.

viii

Page

105
108

110

111
113

114

I NTRODUCTI ON

Central to this thesis is the concept of the home
environment, the social influence of music, the role of
women and the impact of cultural and intellectual currents
on the European bourgeois class as represented in painting
in the second half of the nineteenth century. The artistic
transformations that occur in this period are essentially
that of a shift from a realist vision to the symbolist
fascination with suggestion, but this period also witnesses
a change in the perception of women and the role of music in
paintings.

The association of music and women does not begin in
1850. In fact, the muses of ancient Greece sang at the gods
suppers to the accompaniment of Apollo‘s lyre. It is not the
purpose of this thesis to trace the woman's role as music

maker in history or the depiction thereof throughout western

art. It's ancient roots were evoked in the first half of
the, nineteenth century. With Classicism and History
Painting at its peak, antique instruments such as the lyre,
kithara or aulos were held by those dressed in classical

garb placed in an idyllic setting of blue sky and Greek

temples or vast columned rooms with arched porticoes. Here,

2

the instrument, like the manner of dress and architectural
structures carried no hierarchic value. They were all the
same. Toga, kithara and column were the keys to virtuous
classical times. Mythological stories or allegorical
parallels with all their accoutrements were the impetuses to
painting. Gestural articulation carried the message and the
embodiment of noble virtue was the theme. The instrument
alone is not the focus, on the contrary, it is hardly
noticeable.

Mario Praz defines the two contrasting currents in
portrait painting in the eighteenth century as bourgeois
realism and heroic idealization and attributes the
introduction of classical costume and furnishings to the
influential Madame Vigée Le Brun, most respected painter at
the court of Marie Antoinette. It is to her that he also
attributes the successful launching of what is to become a
nineteenth century hallmark; "the lady with the lyre."1

In Greek mythology, the lyre and kithara were
attributes of Apollo, embodiment of all things ideal and one
who moved in perfect harmony with everything that surrounded
him. he was the personification of the sun, truth, beauty.
morality, justice and goodness. The Greeks bestowed upon
him, the ability to raise the destiny of every person
through music, art and poetry and to reveal to the people
their best qualities so as to create an ideal civilization.

He was worshipped in every city as the God of Music and

Divine Light and as one who would spread beauty, warmth, the

3

gift of music, dance and song as well as knowledge over the
land. Apollo himself also imparted to the Muses, who were
the nine sister goodesses presiding over the activities of
the Arts and Sciences, his most perfect rhythm and
melodies.2

Thus, by simple association the lyre represents all the
noble virtues of the God Apollo and any one of the nine
sister muses. Therefore, to be portrayed dressed in
classical garb holding this sacred instrument was akin to
apotheosis itself, and all women of fashion sought to be
heroically idealized. One had only to display the slightest
musical talent to be cast among the gods.

As time progressed and these portraits multiplied in
the nineteenth century, emphasis shifted from an idyllic,
calm and serene clear blue sky with imposing mountains
peaked by pure and lofty temples to the bourgeois temple,
which was the home with its parlor or music salon where the
player now wore empire gowns and continued to be associated
with the lyre or harp. Still the message was clear,

bourgeois woman achieved noble virtue vicariously through
this association.

It is at mid-century, that a change in attitude becomes
evident in the types of instruments depicted and the
settings in which they occur. Due to the rising middle class
and the desire to step into modernity, the emphasis shifts
from the embodiment of noble virtue through antique

representation to the manifestation of everyday life through

d

realism. Allegorical or mythological ideas of the past are
superceded by the present. The importance of daily life
takes precedence and the instrument changes from lyre to
piano . . . instrument of the century, due to its inherent
dynamic qualities and its ability to depict mood. But, the
interpretation remains. To .be able to play music.
essentially of divine origin is to inherit the qualities of
the gods. But when artists sought to evoke the higher
spheres as is the case at the end of the century with
symbolism and the art of evocation and suggestion, the lyre
returns as is seen in the works of Puvis de Chavannes and
Henri Martin.

Piano manufacture, sheet music production, and the work
of composers such as Liszt and Schubert who elevated the
level of piano playing to virtuosity, were all contributing
factors in bringing the piano into the home. Social and
political concepts and home life are now the mainstream of
painting. The women who sit at their pianos in these
realistically depicted interiors have long since given up

their elegantly simple empire gowns for a more inhibiting

layered garb of corsets, crenolins and bustles covered by
elaborate dresses. These women were wives and mothers and
the keepers of spiritual values who could reside only in the

home. Thus it was here that young artists first experienced

music. The artist's realist eye found the subject
irresistible but as his career progressed and he sought

other worlds that the piano inspired the instrument itself

5

became too plebian for inclusion in his painting. The shift
in musical mood from realism to symbolism is manifested
early through the imager of woman at the piano confined
within the bourgeois interior. By the turn of the century.
the image of woman, has metapmorphosed into a distorted and
sinister figure who has returned to holding a lyre, kithara
or harp hovering in ambiguous worlds far from the parlor.
Crucial to intellectual thinking at this time was the
philosophy of music based on Arthur Schopenhauer's The World
as Will and Representation, Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth
of Tragedy and Richard Wagner's synthesis of the two where
he elevates Beethoven to a level of redeemer of the world
through music. This fascination with music, and the
progressive alterations in the artist's thinking about this
theme results in the embodiment of music as a non-figurative
representation. The "elevation" of the visual image was seen
as the ultimate accomplishment in the desire to achieve the
visual equivalent of musical abstraction through the
pictorial language of color, form and line alone.

In surveying the major painters of the second half of
the nineteenth century, I found that paintings with musical

instruments fall into two general categories; domestic
interiors and the metaphysical. It is not my purpose to
catalogue or survey all of these. Instead I have chosen to
represent these two categories through the most telling

works of William Holman Hunt, James Whistler, Sir Francis

Dicksee, Edouard Manet, Fernand Khnopff, James Ensor,

6.

Edouard Vuillard, Gustav Klimt, Max Klinger and Frantisek

Kupka.

7

NOTES--INTRODUCTION

Mario Praz, "The Lady With the Lyre," Neoclassicism,
(London: Thames of Hudson, 1968), p.258.

2 Pares J . Mavroul ides , The Ancient Musical Culture ,
Literature and Drama of the Ancient Greeks (Athens: Sybilla
Publication), pp. 11-15 and 23.

 

 

CHAPTER I

The Woman's Role and Her Temple

The association of music making by women in the
domestic atmosphere arises in seventeenth century England
when it was seen to be an accomplishment to bring to a

marriage.

A thing nevertheless frequently used and part of a

gentlewomen's bringing up, to sing, to dance and

play on the lute or some such instrument. . .

Tis the way their parents think to get them

husbands, they are compelled to learn.1
One such instrument that young women played was called the
virginal, a small keyboard instrument about five feet long.
sixteen inches wide, and seven inches high which was usually
placed on'a specially made flat surface or table (Plate 1).
It was so named because young women, or virgins, played it
while standing or sitting. The rather sweet, delicate even
fragile sound which was created when the keys were
depressed. forcing upright jacks with crows quills attached
to the ends, to pluck a set of stretched strings from below
seemed a most appropriate sound to be produced at the hands
of such a performer.

The first music for the virginal printed from engraved

plates was in 1611. It was presented to Elizabeth. daughter

 

Plate 1. Jan Vermeer: A Lady Standing at the Virginals,
1673-75. 011 on canvas. 51.7 x 45.2 cm.. National
Gallery. London.

10

of James 15 (n1 her wedding day (Plate 2). The title page
read: "Parthenia or Maydenhead of the first musicke that
ever was printed for the Virginalls, Composed by Three
Famous Masters. . . . ."2 A picture of a young girl at the
virginal, obviously moved by her playing, sits beneath the
lettering and dominates the page. "Parthenia" (Greek for
virgin), "Maydenhead," "Virginalls," and picture of a young
girl, set the stage for the development over the succeeding
three centuries of an inseparable association between women
and music, music and virtue, and virtue and domesticity so
prevalent in the ninteenth century.

Since the ruling class set the standard by which
everyone wanted to be measured, their customs, habits, and
style, all were emulated to the degree one's means allowed.
Music was one of the customs long associated with the
aristocracy. To have music unencumbered by class distinction
in the home, in a small way, equalized nobility. With the
developing merchant class in England, social distinction was

of paramount importance. Pushed to the limits was the term

"gentlemen." How was gentility determined? The major
requirement was "to live idly without mauall labour. . . ."3
and in seventeenth century England. this was the

overwhelming ambition of every man. The farther one could

remove himself from the physical proximity of the workplace.

the greater were his chances of mingling with the gentry.
Possessions also helped pave the way to a higher social

level. Wealthy tradesmen, began to acquire virginals for

PARTHEN IA

THE MAYDENHEAD
of the first musicke that
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Plate 2. Title Page of Parthenig, 1611.

.73
their daughters to play, along with other household

furnishings, thus ensuring their place among the gentle
folk. By the latter half of the seventeenth century, the
virginal was replaced by the harpsicon, a larger wingshaped
instrument, although music still continued to be printed for
both. The smaller instrument (virginal) then became known as
"espinette" (spinet) due to Charles II's ingratiating
attitude toward anything French, while the larger version
changed to clavichord. The term "virginal," however, lasted
until 1700 when all instruments of this genus came to be
called harpsichord, regardless of size or shape.4 No matter
how they might vary, distinctness and separateness of tone
were inherent in the nature of these instruments resulting
in a sharp, bright timbre.

A need for an instrument to be expressive without the
aid of a violin, brought about the development of the
pianoforte, just a short step away from the harpsichord, but
monumental in its element of expression. Only slight
adaptation of existing skill was required to enable one to

play it and its expense served to cause its social

desirability. The major technical difference between
harpsichord and pianoforte was with the replacement of the
plucking quill for a hammer and the ability for the
depression of the key to result in a hammer blow to be given
a string and once struck rebound fully, producing a swelling

sound that would close only upon release of the key. Dull in

sound compared to quilled harpsichord jacks. it was,

1'?

~—

nevertheless, more desirable due to its shading
possibilities. A newspaper advertisement of this new
instrument praised its qualities and read:

A harpsichord of a new invention called

pianoforte, having a round, pithy' harmony,

imitating the harp or lute in the bass, the flute

in the treble as well as the quality of bells.

When the full sound is let out, it is louder and

more pleasing than an ordinary hapsichord. All

changes are made instantly, without being

observed, upon a single keyboard. . . . This
instrument is very easy to play and to maintain.

There are no quills as in other harpsichords.5

Significant improvement upon the pianoforte came with
the addition of sustaining loud and soft pedals and a new
type of action that made possible a more powerful stoke upon
the strings, though it cost a certain loss of speed. By 1800
the pianoforte had reached a six octave range and a separate
bridge for the bass allowed for shorter. stouter strings to
be struck at the most acoustically optimum place, thus
producing a stronger, fuller sound.

The pianoforte made its debut in London concert circles
around 1760, but it wasn't until the 1790's that it was
featured as a solo instrument. Concerts were on the rise, as
well as piano manufacture, instrument refinement. and sheet
music publication. Snob appeal associated with concert going
increased the demand for pianofortes and resulted in the
concept of "pianoforte as furniture." Encased in elaborately
decorated cabinets and concealed within lavish tables, the
pianoforte served as a piece of furniture cum musical

entity, for the very rich, but this exclusivity did not last

long. Essentially, functional furniture is difficult to

14

play, but what this points out is the enormous importance
placed on music and having a keyboard instrument in the
home. The piano in the home, was a measure of one's cultural
attainments and integral part of society life. The woman's
role in this was verified in nineteenth century literature
as well as painting. This will be the focus of this thesis
but it is of value to note the changes that occur to these
instruments in the nineteenth century before this developed.

With the increased popularity of piano concerts, larger
audiences required larger rooms and desired more sound
projection. The search for a greater range of expression
found its solution in heavier hammers. hitting thicker and
tighter strings. Increased tension and weight needed extra
support, and to carry this additional weight iron plates
were introduced. "The strong metal plates . . . gives a
heaviness to the touch, but a fullness and vocal resonance
to the tone" was the comment of a composer who played on the
new piano for the first time in 1822.

Three major innovations in piano development took place

in the 1820's. Metal bracing to accommodate heavier hammers

and thicker strings; double escapement action, a complex
device which allowed the hammer to rebound from the string
and rest at an intermediate point as long as the finger held
the key down, facilitating quick successive notes: and
covering the hammer heads with felt, replacing the tanned

deer hide which eventually dried resulting in a brittle

sound. These refinements produced a piano that could be

15

played louder and faster with more sensitive shadings, thus
creating a deeper, richer textual quality which served the
romantic composer-performer's desire for an instrument that
could evoke the widest range of emotional responses. The
piano became a symbol of the future, a "symbol of liberty.
man's freedom of thought and enterprise."6 To use one to its
capacity was to be admired and elevated to the level of
hero, thus the introduction of the virtuoso in the 1830's
and 1840's.

By this time, Paris had become the dominant cultural
center of Europe, drawing to it the talented from all over
who were guaranteed receptive audiences. From about 1835-48,
the Hungarian Franz Liszt pushed the limits of piano playing
to a level of virtuosity never before achieved. In doing so.
he was not only heroicized, but so was the piano, thus
placing still more social value on the piano itself.

.During the 1850's and 1860's, after the rise of the
virtuoso, who always played his own compositions, performers
began to interpret the music of other composer-performers.

Clara Wiech, an exceptionally gifted musician and composer,
was the first to present a Beethoven interpretation in a

public performance. A woman performing in public was
actually more the exception than the rule. Tradition
dictated that the respectable woman's place was in the home
and musical home entertainment was part and parcel of this

female domain. Manufacturers were quick to find the means to

satisfy more middle class desires, and upright pianos were

16

designed to fit into smaller. narrower apartments. By 1830.
pianos were manufactured and marketed just like any other;
business. Social conditions, interpreted tn! artists, were
manifested through the changing image of woman, which could
be seen as a hallmark of the nineteenth century.

If woman was relegated to the home, except in rare
cases, it was the doing of a male dominated society. Many
works by male painters and authors served to define and
reaffirm the role of woman in European culture in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The didactic limits with
their restrictive moralizing tone placed on the female in
her progress from childhood to adolescence and finally
womanhood created this middle class woman. Education for
females was slow to take root in England, and not until 1870
were girls from the upper and middle classes able to receive
education in a state elementary school system. Until that
time, they were educated at home by their mothers and mostly
in the art of caring and nurturing. Private boarding schools
for the very rich, however, provided an education for
adolescent girls. The primary purpose for their education
was summed up in the words of Jean Jacques Rousseau which
also provided the impetus for their curriculum.

A woman's education must therefore be planned in

relation to a man. To be pleasing in his sight, to

win his respect and love. to train him in

childhood, to tend him in manhood, to counsel and
console to make his life pleasant and happy. these
are the duties of woman for all times and this is

what should be taught when she is young.7

17

An adolescent girl saw her future as an "ornament,
household manager and mother in her husband's domestic
circle."8 Her studies at school reflected this mentality.
First and foremost came the study of music. Piano playing,
singing, and harp lessons were taught two to three times a
week, and required daily supervised practice. After music
came dancing; department; drawing; modern languages; French,
Italian, and German; English: Aarithmetic and finally.
religion, all taught only once a week.

The point of feminine gentility was to become more
marriageable. Having achieved marital status, a woman's
duties and responsibilities were not .easy. Within the
confines of the home, her burden weighed heavily for she was
not just the keeper of the home and family, but the basis
for societal judgement. As Isabella Beeton said of women's
role in 1880:

Her spirit will be seen through the whole

establishment. She ought to remember that she is

the first and the last, the Alpha and Omega in the

government of her establishment; and that it is by

her conduct that its whole internal policy is

regulated. She is, therefore, a person of far more

importance in a community than she usually thinks
she is. On her pattern her daughters model

themselves; by' her counsels they' are directed:

through her virtues all are honored; "Her children
rise up and call her blessed; her husband also,
and he praiseth her."9

Nineteenth century cultural ideology clearly separated
men's and women's daily lives. The doctrine of the "Separate
Spheres" claimed that the personal sphere was to be
maintained by the woman. She was relegated to the keeper of

the spiritual and emotional aspects of her home and family.

18

The man, on the other hand, was an integral part of the
business community which existed outside the home. and this
was known as the public sphere. To balance out this
sometimes harsh and intense business world, the woman was to
provide a peaceful, warm, secure, and stable environment to
which the man could return and seek refuge.

In the "Cult of True Womanhood." a term used so
frequently in the nineteenth century that its meaning was
known. amongst all, women existed ‘within clearly’ defined
parameters.

These attributes . . . by which a woman judged

herself and was judged by her husband. her

neighbors and society couLd be divided into four
cardinal virtures—-piety. purity, submissiveness.

and domesticity. Put them all together and they

spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife--woman.11

Capturing the ideal woman as not only domestic, but
submissive. pious. and pure were literary figures, such as
Tennyson and Patmore. In 1849 Lord Alfred Tennyson's popular
Idylgs of the King polarized the internal female domain and
external male realm in very precise terms in "The Princess":

Man for the field woman for the hearth:

Man for the sword and for the needle she:

Man with the head and woman with the heart:

Man to command and woman to obey;

All else confusion.11
Confusion only if the woman did not play her part. A rising
middle class proved that the economic ordering of society
was based on a man's ability to achieve wealth. His actions.

regardless of integrity, were condoned without judgment. The

woman's role, however, was so assiduously defined and

19

redefined in literature, poetry, and painting that her
actions were judged in terms of angelic idealization.

And still with favor singled out,
Marr'd less than man by mortal fall.
Her disposition is devout,
Her countenance angelical;
The best things that the best believe
Are in her face so kindly writ
The faithless, seeing her conceive,
Not only heaven, but hope of it; . . .12

clearly epitomizes woman as the essence of purity and
holiness. Coventry Patmore's very popular poem, "The Angel
in the House," 1849, emphasizes woman's angelic qualities
and casts her as a selfless, dependent woman who pleased and
fascinated her husband as well as lavished him with total
devotion. It is only through a man's recognition that she

achieves the freedom to live.

The maiden so, from love's free sky

In chaste and prudent counsels caged.
But longing to be loosin'd by

Her suitor's faith declared and gauged .
His clear repute with great and small;

The jealousy his choice will stir:
But, ten times more than ten times all.

She loves him for his love of her.

Through his love, security and reason for being are

realized, and she expresses her gratitude through _total
devotion and submissiveness:

. And oft she views what he admires
Within her glass, and sight of this

Makes all the sum of her desires
To be devotion unto his.

And prizing what she can't prevent.

(Right wisdom, often misdeemed whim.)
Her will's indomitably bent

0n mere submissiveness to him.13

20

Literature, poetry, family, man, social conditions and
even painting demanded that women be nothing less than the
great spiritual mother of God, virgin pure, holier than
mortals resting within her enclosed garden of domesticity.
She was the perfect Madonna perched upon her pedestal.
surrounded by her attributes and idolized for her virtues.
Bram Dijkstra refers to this phenomenon as the "Cult of the
Household Nun," an interpretation of French historian Jules
Michelet's phrase, "She is an altar . . . which places her
higher than man and makes her a religion."14 Revered, held
captive in "her place," purity implied, she is the fantastic
vision of the male ego.

While there are earlier depictions of this apparition
of womanhood, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of 1848 which
was profoundly inspired by John Ruskin's Modern Painters,
and his dictum, "Go to nature in all singleness of heart,
selecting nothing, rejecting nothing,"15 produced intense
beautiful images of her. The three major figures in this
group, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1888), William Holman

Hunt (1827-1910), and John Everett Millais (1829-1896)

developed a style that drew from Italian primitives and
adopted the concept of decoration, intensity of color.
definitive contour, and spiritual magnitude characteristic

of the artists before the venerable Raphael. "To have

genuine ideas to express" was a basic tenet of their
society. From Rossetti's intense involvement with Dante's

poetry and the group's fascination for Elizabeth Siddall who

21

served often as a model, the Pre-Raphaelite prototype
emerges.16 Waves of flowing hair accentuate transparent eyes
that gaze within and touch the spiritual realm. Finely
sculpted cheekbones descend to a strong square jaw that
holds full sensuous lips. The conjunction of medieval
chivalry and womanhood had far reaching ramifications.
Touched by the mysticism of the medieval world, images of
woman gaze upward to heaven or downward in shame. Clothed in
medieval dress or nun's habits, the angelic woman is
symbolically enclosed within a garden of lilies pure or cast
within a shallow, confined space. Cloaked behind the guise
of medieval symbolism, the ideal nineteenth century woman
emerges reflecting a morally confined psychological state of
mind.17

A guide to submissiveness and domesticity put forth in
Sara Stickney Ellis' book, The Women of Eggland: Their
Social Duties and Domesgc Habits (18394 outlined proper
behavior for middle class women and was immediately popular
both in England and the United States. Recognizing the value
of money as a stepping stone to aristocratic dignity, she

encouraged women to understand the harsh pitfalls and

sometimes unconscionable transactions that necessarily take
place in the male public sphere. Rather than change her
husband's business world, she should muster her strength to
be "a kind of second conscience, for mental reference, and

spiritual counsel in moments of trial" as well as "keep a

22

separate soul for his family. his social duty and his
God."18

Respectable Victorian men measured success and
determined their degree of social status and value through
women. Now that she was cast as a paragon of virtue within
the domestic temple, how could she prove her purity, piety,
submissiveness, and domesticity? One avenue was through her
accomplishments. Distantly related to the fine arts and so
well drilled into her while at boarding school, they also
expressed the sum total of her education. The more
"accomplished" a woman, the more virtuous and pure she was
considered. Ranking as one of the most important
accomplishments was music which mainly involved piano
playing, singing, and sometimes harp playing.

As we have seen, a piano in the home and a woman to
play it was the cornerstone out of which a middle class
family carved its social and. spiritual standards. Franz
Liszt through his transcriptions of major orchestral works
was probably the single most important figure to make a wide
variety of music available to a general public through the
piano. His music consisted of transcriptions of fantasies.
Schubert's songs, and Berlioz's and Beethoven's symphonies.
Composers of the Romantic generation, such as Liszt, created
in common basic vocabularies of harmonic progression, rhythm
and form and a shared intention to communicate meaning

exclusively through the musical idiom.19

23

Walter Pater described Romanticism in music as "the
addition of strangeness to beauty." Strangeness then becomes
the point of departure for understanding musical
romanticism. Its concept is rooted in remoteness and
undefined by boundaries. Its purpose is to transcend the
present and passionately“ search for the unattainable. A
haunting presence, intentionally obscured, can only allude
to form.

There are, however, conflicting tendencies; a major one
is the relationship of instrumental music to the spoken
word. The great instrumental composers, such as Beethoven,
Mozart, and Haydn, were considered classical for their works
were based on pure form, while Schubert, Schumann, and
Brahms, who come later combined both word and tone. Partial
resolution came with the onset of program music that
revealed a poem, story or description through instrumental
music alone.

However, the denial of the word was not the only
answer, for instrumental accompaniment to vocal music that
ranged from Schubert's lieder to Wagner's musical dramas
also resolved this apparent conflict. It is this second

resolve that contributed to the informal musical evenings so
prevalent in the nineteenth century family circle.

Music, as well as science, searches to express thoughts
close to nature and something beyond the physical. The
alienation of the artist from society, stemmed in part from

the rapid expansion of status, general population explosion,

24

and the creation of a new society: essentially, a new class
of people to please. Modern life seemed far from nature and
the further away from daily life it became, the more it was
idealized. A kinship and spirituality existed between the
inner life of the artist and the natural world. Essentially.
longing to be spiritual in that it touches the soul of
mankind, musical forms begin to expand to reflect these new
thoughts. Musical expression becomes more flexible than the
eighteenth. century' classical structure and long, lyrical
melodies dominate. Harmonic technique and instrumental color
become the principle vehicle in expressing remoteness.
yearning, and inexpressible, but strongly felt, emotions.
Chromaticism, modulation, suspension of harmonies, long
repetitive rhythmic patterns, tonal ambiguities and absence
of distinct cadences, all work to blur the outline of
totality.20

Piano music entitled "fantasy", "nocturne", "rhapsody".
and "impromptu" contributed to the Romantic suggestion of
mood. Schubert's keyboard works with their lyrical melodies

and harmonies, distinctive in mood became the basis for

subsequent intimate piano pieces which would find a

comfortable place with in the home.

25
NOTES-~CHAPTER I

1 Arthur Loesser, Men,#Women, and Pianos: a Social
History (New York: Simon and Schuester, 1954), p. 190.

2 Donald J. Grout, A History of Western Music (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980), p. 285.

3 Loesser, p. 187.

4 Ibid., p. 197.

 

5 Ibid., p. 315.

6 Ibid.. p. 348.

7 Erna Olafson Hellerstein, Leslie Parker Hume, and
Karen M. Offen, Victorian Women (Standford: Stanford
University Press, 1981), p. 16.

3 Ibid.

9

Barbara Welters. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820—
1860," American Quarterly 18 (March 1966): 152.

1° Ibid.

11 Lord Tennyson, The Literiture~ of England, Third
single volume ed. (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Forseman and
Co.. 1979). p.892.

12 Coventry Patmore. Poems 4th ed. (London, 1890),
pp.88—91.

13 Ibid.

14 Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986), p.13.

15 Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters (London: Barrie and
Rockiliff, The Cresset Press, 1969), p. 124.

15 Ibid.
17 ,

Jane Burden, later wife of William. Morris, who
Rossetti paints in 1858 as Queen Guinevere, is the model
from which the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood develops its type
of woman, known as the "Stunner."

18 As cited in Dijkstra, p.11.

19 Grout, p.550.

20 Grout, p.559.

CHAPTER II
England
"Revelation and Evocation"

An arbitrary chord struck-~she jumps up, startled by
the deep, melancholic resonance in the bass. It continues to
vibrate as long as his hand remains on the piano keys.
taking her back to a far away, but not forgotten place.
Rhythmic in her pause, she is caught for a fleeting moment
in the revelation that she can choose, rather than accept.
what's put before her: control, rather than be controlled.
and leave the path of darkness to cross the threshold toward
redemption. She has only to decide.

In William Holman Hunt's The Awakenggg_Consience, 185;:
1§§§ (Plate 3), the fallen woman, understood by every
nineteenth century person, is not an uncommon theme. One of

the consequences of the Industrial Revolution was the poor

standard of living resulting from low wages. By 1850, single
working women could barely support themselves on their
earnings and were forced to take up other work. Some turned
to sewing and teaching, while others followed the path of

prostitution. These unfortunate women eventually became

recognized as products of social and economic conditions,

and aroused public sympathy. Their plight was depicted in

27

 

Tate

The Awakenin Conscience,

74.3 x 54.9 cm.,

oil on canvas,

William Holman Hunt:

1854.

Plate 3.

London.

Gallery.

28

painting, as well as literiture, and they were viewed as
powerful symbols of innocent suffering.1

While other Victorian. painters depicted the outcast
woman having no where to turn. as a weeping, huddled figure
weighted down by both a mass of costume as well as
conscience, Hunt chose to focus on another aspect of the
fallen woman: the kept woman. He shows her figurative and
literal rise to consciousness through music. This rising
woman motif has been traced back to an engraving after
Charles LeBrun's most famous Repentant Magdalene Renouncing
All the Vanities of the World (1956—57) (Plate 4).2 Hunt
deals with the process of her struggle through elaborate
iconographic symbolism combined with realist aesthetics
which also serve as modern vanities. Of paramount importance
in his presentation is the influence of the Flemish masters,
whose major works he encountered in 1849 on a trip to the
continent.3 But it was not until his profound commitment to
Christianity in 1851 that he adopted prefigured symbolism as
a medium of communication.

Inspired also in part by William Hogarth (1697—1764),
Hunt employs the Hogarthian tradition of depicting a moral
message in narrative form complete with labels, documents,
and inscriptions, in an effort to speak to nineteenth
century social conditions. The forum for this essentially
Victorian subject is the domestic interior, couched in the
language of visual realism and symbolic content. Hunt's

overwhelming desire to speak to contemporary society moved

29

 

Plate 4. Charles Le Brun: The Repentant Magdalene, 1656-57.

30

him to search for a symbolic language that could replace the
then current medievalism.

Hunt's stated propose was his desire "to show how the
still small voice speaks to the human soul in the turmoil of
life."4 The key to a fuller understanding of Hunt's
intentions lies in recognizing the powerful role that music
plays. He utiliizes the elemental sound emanating from the
piano as a vehicle for connecting two worlds, the safe,
secure virtuous past of her childhood, and the discordant,
unhappy circumstances of her present situation. A musical
phrase touches her soul, stirs her inner emotions, and
causes her to reflect upon happier days. Yet, while on her
seducer's lap, she, too, contributes to the musical harmony
until this chance strain touches her in a most powerful way,
jarring her emotions causing her to leap forward--breaking
the harmony. It is through music that she reaches a higher
level of consciousness and instantly realizes her dilemma:
to remain a kept woman or repent. Music then becomes the key
to reaching the spiritual inner realm of salvation. For a

Victorian woman. this may not have been so easy to decide.

Where would she go? What would she do with her life? Hunt's
realist eye and attention to detail tells us that her
wealthy lover has just arrived, for he is still wearing his

left glove, while the right glove, lying on. the floor,

symbolizes her status as a fallen woman. Ruskin's reference
to the "fatal newness" of the furnishings provides social

commentary on the situation. A recently decorated place in

31

which a married man would rendezvous with his lover could
hold no spiritual value. A brand new piano, the parlor's
carpet with no memory of family gatherings, stiff, leather
bound books not yet softened from use, and a picture of
Rembrandt's Woman Taken in Adultery hanging over the piano,
echo her life as a kept mistress. Surrounding the frame are
carved marigolds and bells, symbols of sorrow and warning.
To ensure the seriousness of the subject, appearing
underneath the picture, lettered on the frame are the words,
"As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he
that singeth songs to a heavy heart."

Within the entire typological scheme, the woman's
somewhat starry eyed gaze through the open window is
problematic. Every aspect of the scene is waiting for her to
decide between. salvation. and condemnation. The 'vibrating
tone, controlled by her shallow lover that keeps her in
touch with her past as well as under his spell; the fleeting
moment reinforced by the clock on the piano: the mirror
reflecting the budding spring, itself temporal; and the

nasty cat, toying ‘with a wounded sparrow all serve to
intensify her situation. Her appearance is that of a

momentary haunted dream, rather than resolve. In 1856-57
upon the owner's request, Hunt altered the expression on the
woman's face from anguished pain to the startled look we see
today, thus making it difficult to feel the full impact of

such a momentous decision.5 It was, however, a decision

never to be made. While this painting had a public moral

32

message, it was as well a not so disguised autobiographical
confession for Annie Miller, the woman in the painting, was
one of Hunt's lovers. Initially a prostitute, she remained
one, as well as being kept by Hunt, who provided her with a
house, education, and money.6

What Hunt does here in the 1850's is seen more cearly
if it is set against a late eighteenth century painting.
Marguerite Gerard used similar symbols to idealize domestic
life. To the right of L'Hegreux Menagg, ca. 1795 (Plate 5),
stands a spinet with the artist's signature in place of the
instrument maker's symbolizing her key role as creator of
this domestic interior. Centralized and enthroned, a woman
sits holding a scroll of music, making reference to the
' harmony existing within the family. Here Gerard uses music
to enhance the central theme of connubial bliss. The
virtuous mother who provides for the spiritual and emotional
well being of her family does so through music. Hunt's use
of music, on the other hand, emphasizes the dissonance or
broken harmony created by a man who leaves his family to
entertain a mistress. "0ft in the Stilly Night" sits on the
piano while Edgar Lear's, version of Tennyson's "Tears Idle
Tears" lies, cast off on the floor, still partially encased
in its wrapping, expressing "the yearning that young people
occasionally experience for that which seems to have passed
away forever.“I Expressed symbolically in every detail of
this Victorian cluttered interior, as well as in the

intensity and luminosity of his colors, Hunt reveals her

33

 

Plate 5. Marguerite Gerard: L'Heureux Menage, 1785-1800.

34
painful awareness. She playing her part. he playing his.

together they composed a harmony that struck a chord in her
heart and caused her emotional flight. A lost soul,
searching in the purity of nature, (seen by the viewer only
in a mirror image,) for salvation. A reflection of what she
wishes herself to be--pure. Yet, as the mirror reveals in
the maze of spring freshnes, it is endless and ambiguous
with no clear path to follow.

Her awareness is depicted, but there is no suggestion
that there is any way for her to achieve Gérard's interior
harmony with a faithful dog attached to his master, in this
case, the woman's faithful husband and a cat sprawling
playfully in a submissive position on a cushion next to the
woman's chair. Unlike Hunt's cat which symbolizes
infidelity, this feline refers to woman's sensuality. The
cooing love birds reflect the love between this couple while
the child, the result of their blissful union, points to the
mother, spiritual keeper of the home. Hunt's broken winged
bird lies on the floor and offers a parallel to the fallen
woman, herself unable to fly she remains under the spell of

the cat who will play with her at will. Hunt also tells us
that "The corn and vine (of the wallpaper) are left
unguarded by the slumbering cupid watchers (on the piano)

and the fruit is left to be preyed upon by thievish birds."8

Devoid of interior detail. Gérard's view is not a
realist's version of domestic bliss, but a romantic and

idealized concept of interior harmony. In both cases, music

35

becomes the symbolic means to expressing an interior mood.
Hunt's narrative, as it is read, evokes a feeling of doom
reflected in the stirring low note in the bass, while Gerard
conveys spiritual harmony.

James Whistler who was a contemporary of Hunts presents
still another view of realism in his At the Piano of 1858-59
(Plate 6). This is the first of his musical paintings to
prefigure his affinity for abstract musical concepts
prevalent in the work that he would develop in the 1870's.
While on friendly terms with Hunt, Whistler, in reference to
this painting, sounds the death knell for Hunt's Victorian
realism which is so dependent on a moralizing tone and also
criticizes him for "purposefully copying without thought,
each blade of grass."9 Whistler more fully reflected his
feelings when he said,

Art should be independent of all clap-trap should

stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of

eye and ear, without confounding' with. emotions

entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love,

patriotism and the like. All these had no kind of
concern with it, and that is why I insist on

calling my works "arrangements" and "harmonies."10

It would be some time, however, before Whistler would
synthesize Theophile Gautier's dictum of "Art for Art's

Sake" and develop his work in accordance with this
principle. But it had its beginnings in his first major
painting.

Whistler's At the Piano is the total antithesis of the
Awakening:Conscience for it evokes a quiet mood, revealing a

sense of privacy reserved for the inner realm, and allowing

36

 

Plate 6. James McNeill Whistler: Au Piano, 1858-59. 011 on
canvas, 66 x 90 cm., Taft Museum, Cincinnati,
Ohio.

37

for a feeling of mystery to rise from the silhouetted figure
delicately fingering the keyboard. It, too, is realism, but
it is different from Hunt's, for there is no detailed
collection of symbols. It was Whistler's exposure in France
before he settled in England, where he came under the
influence of Courbet's realism, which emphasized ordinary
ways of ordinary people that led him to what was seen in
England as a radical point of view. Courbet's sense of
representing the commonplace, combined with Velazquez'
emphasis on painterly values, subdued tonality and
psychological expression led Whistler to set his figures
against a neutral background and unify a painting through a
subtle gradation of tones. This produced a purely
Whistlerian style marked by an ethereal quality of
atmosphere and quiet mood. He treats color as a composer
treats sound and reflects the arrangement of harmonies which
please the eye just as a composer arranges melodies to
please the ear.11

He also shared an affinity with seventeenth century

Dutch painting, as well as with Spanish painting. Vermeer
was the master who dealt with real and imaginary space.

Whistler also captured the essence of spiritual light so
common in Vermeer's interiors. Similar in layout, Thg
Concert (Plate 7) which was in London's National Gallery in
1859, may have provided the structure for At the Piano.12

Like Vermeer too one finds pouring into the picture light

from an indiscernible source. It reflects off the glass of

38

 

Plate 7. Jan Vermeer: The Concert, 1662, oil on canvas,
72.5 x 64.7 cm., Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
Boston.

39

the framed pictures on the wall, and cascades down Annie
Haden's white dress as she stands quietly transfixed,
meditating on the sounds mingling in the stillness and casts
a somewhat haunting glow over the shallow interior space.
The cello case beneath the grand piano looms large as this
darkened form echoes the gentle curve of the piano. Deep.
rich mauve carpeting set against a soft green wall rising up
behind the piano bearing two gold framed paintings which
Whistler cuts off by his own frame, all combine to emphasize
the horizontal element. The suggestion of the extension of
the piano and one of the pictures beyond the painting's
right hand limit hints at an openness and psychological
presence beyond what one sees.

Who is she? What is she saying? On one level Whistler
represents a domestic scene which is part of his everyday
life. Accomplished pianist, Deborah Haden, Whistler's half
sister and her daughter Annie, gather in the music room of
their London townhouse, the setting of so many musical
evenings. On another level, his style of painting suggests a

vaguely melancholic mood; a reverie, with each in her
private ‘world and. yet on. a third level, he suggests a

spirituality that reveals itself when the soul is touched
and emotions stirred by the powerful arrangement of
harmonies.

Although his colleague, Fantin Latour, may have arrived
at presenting two women in an intimate domestic setting

first13‘ (Plate 8) with Two Sisters, 1859, Whistler's

 

40

 

Plate 8. Fantin Latour: Two Sisters, 1859, oil on canvas,
98 x 130 cm., The St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri.

41

version, with his strong horizontal format, contrasting
forms and subtle gradation of color presents a stronger,
more evocative composition. He creates a contemplative mood
with soulful faces lost in reverie where visual suggestion
of sound becomes the musical conversation, where the real
duet is between the listener and the player.

"As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the
poetry of sight, and the subject matter has nothing to do
with harmony of sound and color."14 Whistler continues his
development of musical themes in Harmony in Green and Rose:
The Music Roog of 1860 (Plate 9) first titled simply Thg

Music Room, but subsequently elaborated by the addition of

 

"Harmony" are all signs of Whistler's growing concern for a
modern suggestive music-like painting. To do so, he begins
to move away from exact representation toward a musical
quality or the evocation of mood which makes the piano once
essential, no longer necessary. "With music, the listener
responds to the relationship of sounds which except in
occasional instances have In: representational content."15

Devoid of musical instruments. Whistler creates a musical
tension analogous to the formal tension of the verticals,
horizontals and the strong diagonal mantelpiece that quickly

draw the eye into the picture to rest on Annie Haden in her

white dress, illuminated by a source outside the window.
When Whistler saw this painting again in 1892 at the
Goupil Gallery, he commented in a letter to his wife. "quite

primitive—-but such sunshine! None of the Dutchmen to

42

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..

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oil

on canvas, 95.5 x 70.8 cm., Freer Gallery of Art.

Washington, D.C.

1860,

The Music Room,

James McNeill Whistler:

Plate 9.

43

compare with it and such colour!"16 Subtle yellows, creams
and greens lend harmony and unity. Balance is achieved
through Annie's white dress against Miss Boott's black
riding habit. She, like Annie Miller in the Awakening
Conscience, also captures the fleeting moment in her step
toward something beyond the picture frame. Interesting is
the profusion of cream, rose, and green flowered chintz
curtains that enhance the verticality' and frame Deborah
Haden's reflection in the mirror, revealing the only view of
her. Each in her own space within the very shallow picture.
they are worlds apart. Here, the mirror lends a note of
spirituality and replaces the piano in its suggestion of
temporality. Dating back to the seventeenth century Dutch
interiors, a mirror as well as a musical instrument.
reflected the meditation on the soul's ultimate destination.
This had two effects: one could renounce material things for
spiritual things, or indulge in sensual pleasures and
transient joys, for it is not the duration that matters, but
the intensity with which one experiences these joys-17 The
interior itself merges real and illusory space and reflects

the :metaphysical concept of the picture: visual harmony

equivalent to musical harmony, both capable of depicting an
atmosphere that transcends time. This leads one to doubt
one's own perceptions and question the boundaries between
real and imagined existence. Mirrors only add credence to

the temporality of human existence. The Music Room mirror

reflects the passage of time while the mirror in the

44

Awakening Conscience reflects the purity of nature and the
soul's desire for this purity. In Whistler's developing
Symbolist aesthetics , mirror symbolism plays an important

part in his 1864 version of Symphony in White No. 2: The

 

Little White Girl. Simplified forms mingle in the balance
between real and imagined space and the concept is even more
evocative of an interior self-searching spiritual mood.
Whistler's work was later to influence the Belgian Fernand
Khnopff in his purifying form, painterly tonality, and
symbolism.

By 1867, in a letter to Fantin Latour, Whistler
condemned Courbet's brand of realism and lamented his not
having studied with Ingres. Throughout the 1860's, he made a
conscious effort to change his style. His fascination with
Oriental art manifested itself first through simplicity of
form, flat areas of color and overall decorative patterning.
Aware of the correspondences between music and art, Whistler
sought an art as pure as that of music. Endeavoring to
capture the fluidity of movement so characteristic of
Japanese porcelain, he stretched the limits of his medium by
creating a "sauce": pigment thinned with turpentine and
linseed oil to an almost pouring consistency. This allowed
for color variations to be quickly worked up depending on
the amount of pigment used. Sky and water could be laid in
with great sweeping brush strokes on a blue ground for a
night scene, and a grey ground for a misty scene. In

Nocturne Blue and Green: Chelsea, 1871 (Plate 10), Whistler

45

 

 

Plate 10. James McNeill Whistler: Nocturne in Blue and
Green Chelsea, 1871, oil on canvas, 48.2 x 39.8
cm., Tate Gallery, London.

46

first set out to capture a feeling. Attracted to dusk, for
its expressive qualities of suggestion” where forms are
reduced to vague silhouettes, he was able to achieve
atmosphere and mystery and create a veil between the visible
world and that which lies beyond. "And when the evening mist
clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil.
."18were the words Whistler chose to describe his affinity
for the atmosphere which launched the conscious mind into
speculation of love and life, death and dreams where reality
and illusion become one and time is suspended somewhere
between the edge of night and the breah of day. Strong
horizontal sweeps of muted color define the poetic stillness
and the quiet rhythm suggests the essence of form. Orginally
called moonlights, his musician friend, Frederick Leyland,
suggested Nocturne and Whistler said, "it . . . does so
poetically say all I want to say and no more than I wish."19
The nocturne was a title originally given to a musical
composition devised by the romantics for a night piece which
evolved early in the nineteenth century. Although
principally associated with Frederick Chopin, the first
composer to use the title was John Field (1782-1857), an
Irish pianist. This new piano music was mainly comprised of
short single pieces with graceful melodies in the high
registers and sustained arpeggiations in the low registers.
Chopin adapted the single line ornamentation and developed

the nocturne to include repetitive phrases almost lost to

extreme embellishment. Typically, a long, drawn out melody

47

flows over a sustaining tremolo in the bass. A more
expressive mood is achieved through contrasting tempo and
key. Tending toward the introspective, Chopin's work is
stylistically diverse, yet dramatic and moving.20

Walter Pater said that "all art approaches the
condition of music," in its suggestion of feeling, creation
of mood, and tonal harmony. Whistler's work also approaches
the condition of music. By this time, he is painting
"symphonies", "nocturnes" and "harmonies" reflecting the
abstract qualities of music with only color and the
suggestion of form.

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form,

of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the

notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick

and choose, and group with science, these

elements, that the result may be beautiful--as the

musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords.

until he brings forth from chaos glorious

harmony.21
Whistler's Nocturnes, as the titles suggest are night pieces
where specificity is lost and instead a visual poetical
timelessness of space and color is portrayed. "To designate
a thing directly is to suppress three-quarters of the poem's
value which consists in gradually gaining an imitation of
the depths."22 This quoation from the French Symbolist poet,
Mallarmé is appropriate here for Whistler had met him in
1867 and kept in contact with him for many years, even
executing the poet's portrait in a lithograph in 1894. The
writer and painter obviously shared a deep and abiding

concern for the suggestive power of the work of art.

Whistler, for his part, portrayed in visual terms the

Hut

48

poetical timelessness of space and color. Broad, sweeping
tonalities of unified color create the illusion of an
atmosphere where silence reigns. Curiously, if music were
the purest of artistic forms which artistHs of Whistler's
generation and subsequent ones sought to emulate, it led
them to a still more inexplicable ideal which. was the
absence of the depiction of not only musical instruments,
and the suggestion of music, but of all sound--silence.
Whistler's progression from the depiction of the piano
to nocturnes that sought to evoke musical harmonies is
unique. Few artists in England at the end of the nineteenth
century could eliminate the narrative element in painting
even in their search for the spiritual and the evocative.
Sir Frank Dicksee is one such artist and his painting A
Reverie 1895 (Plate 11) serves to illustrate the tenacity of
literalness and the desire to use music as an evocative
element. Musical chords, delicate lilting harmonies and a
sweet, gentle voice combine to produce a melody capable of
stirring an emotional state once laid to rest. An anguished

look searching for peace finds pause in a momentary vision

of the past. Chastised for its sentimentality, Frank
Dicksee's A Reverie provides an unusual description of the
power of music. What is Dicksee offering in this vignette?
An intense glow radiating from a silken lampshade
illuminates a frail woman as she sits at the piano

fulfilling her after-dinner domestic responsibility--that of

providing an intimate musical evening. With his elbow

 

 

49

 

Plate 11. Sir Frank Dicksee: A Reverie, 1895, oil on canvas,
102.9 c 137 cm., Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

SO

resting on the arm of an easy chair and his hand supporting
his head. a man sits shielding himself not only from the
intensity of the light, but also from the woman playing the
piano. Instead of summoning spiritual‘ togetherness, her
choice of music has unwittingly served to separate her from
her husband and immerses each one into a private world of
reverie. Music appears as a powerful testimony to touching
the soul and stirring emotions; so powerful that an
apparition, wispy and vague with long flowing hair hovers
between the tangible and the invisible at the far left and
clearly is the man's private vision for the piano player
remains unaware.

Who is this vision? The accompanying words "In the
years fled/ Lips that are dead/ Sang me that song," might
suggest a lost love or a former wife dead, but ever present.
01d music, left on the piano, now played with new life, but
to no avail. A man stares, longing and searching for the
happiness of a time gone by. Critics of the time were quick
to complete the story. D. H. Dixon suggested that the “music
of a 'calm and complacent' wife conjured up to her husband a
vision of a beautiful woman who passed out of his life
before it became a commonplace, conventional thing it now
is."23

The melodrama of the moment captured in the delicate

rendering of form now in light, now in shadow; saddened eyes
intense with yearning and the sensuously applied paint

revealing a sumptuous interior are not new to Dicksee. A

S 1

similar theme with two women in an intimate interior bathed
in a warm glow cast from an intensely lit lamp, revel in
past memories as sounds arise from the piano in Memories.
1886. "For the touch of the vanished hand, and the sound of
the voice that is still" were the lines Dicksee chose to
accompany the painting.24

A year after A Reverie Dicksee carried the theme of
mystery and melancholy caught up in a dramatic moment to
include all the trappings evocative of a sentimental mood in
The Confession, 1896 (Plate 12). Reduced to the simplest of
form, the frail woman now sits in the easy chair as the man
opposite her, head in hand, gazes steadfastly into her eyes.
What is this darkened figure hiding, or revealing? She wears

the same dress as in A Reverie, but the piano is gone and

 

the shallow space, devoid of any bourgeois accoutrement,
holds no more than these two figures. This time light
streaming in from the window behind him casts him in shadow
and serves to illuminate her, accentuating her delicateness.
An interesting play of light on dark, and dark on light.

sets the mood for The Confession. The Art Journal. 1896,
described this as "A wan and emaciated woman in the last

stage of apparent illness, telling her story to a saddened

man, who is sitting with his face in shadow, and his head

resting in his hand. The picture is in pale colors. greys

and greens, and its curious indefiniteness of effect seems

somehow to add to the hopelessness of the whole subject.25

52

 

Plate 12.'Sir Frank Dickee: The Confession, 1896, oil on
canvas, 114 x 160 cm., Roy Miles Fine Paintings,
London.

53

The obvious connection between A Reverie and The

 

Confession suggests a sequence of events. In the latter work
the man is confessing, his thoughts, feelings, and images of
the past that haunt the present. Plagued by the fusion of
real and imagined images, he lives in an ambiguous space,
neither here nor there.

Frank Dicksee presents still another side of realism
and genre subjects. Like early Whistler and Hunt, he uses
the image of the piano to create mood. Like music, their
paintings express an emotion felt: Whistler's and Dicksee's
shrouded in mystery, Whistler's one of technique and design
and Dicksee's of the spectral while Hunt's Awakening
Conscience uses the piano and music as a part of a rich
iconography that serves a detailed narrative account.
Dicksee's works hover, like his vision, in between the two
and suffers for his moderate stance. Nevertheless, all
comment on the social position of women in the second half
of the nineteenth century and the importance of music, in
reflecting that position as a performer/medium, and in the

case of Whistler, the ultimate submersion of such
associations of an "art for art's sake" philosophy that

suggests liberating woman and the piano.

54
NOTES--CHAPTER II

1 Christopher Wood, Victorian Panorama: Paintings of
Victorian Life (London: Faber and Faber Limited. 1976), pp.
135-141.

2 Linda Nochlin, "Lost and Found: Once More the Fallen
Woman," Art Bulletin 60 (March 1978): 145.

3 In 1849 Hunt travelled with Rossetti to Paris,
Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp. There they encountered
the works of Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memlinc, Rogier van der
Weyden. Gerard David, and Hugo van der Goes. Although not
his first encounter with disguised symbolism, for be
frequently made use of Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini: Wedding
Portrait which was in the National Gallery (London) acquired
in 1842. it was nevertheless significant, as cited in George
P. Landow William Holman Hunt and Typological Symbolism (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). p. 61.

 

 

 

 

 

4 William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphallitism and the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood,2 vols. (London: MacMillan and
Company, Ltd., 1905), p. 347.

5

Walker Art Gallery, William Holman Hunt (Liverpool:
Elliot Brothers & Yeoman ltd., 1969), p. 37.

 

Diana Holman Hunt in her biography, My Grggdfather:
His Wives and_;oves (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, inc.,
1969) reaveals the long and emotionally tormenting
relationship between Annie Miller and William Holman Hunt.

As cited in Major British Writers, Shorter ed., (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967), p. 784.

8 Walker Art Gallery, p. 36.

 

9 James McNeill Whistler, "Ten O'Clock Lecture, 1885,"

in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (New York: Dover
Publication, Inc., 1967), p. 145.

10 Ibid., pp. 127—123.

11 James McNeill Whistler, "The Red Ray," in The Gentle
Art of Making_§memies, (New York: Dover Publication. Inc..
1967) p.126-128.

Francis Spalding, Whistler (Oxford: Phaidon Press
Ltd., 1979). P. 17.

13 Spalding attributes this to a drawing dated 1857 by

Fartin in the Oxford Ashmolean Museum.

14 Whistler, p. 127.

15 Spalding. p. 18.

16 M. MacDonal, R. Spencer, and A. M. Young, The
Paintings of J. M. Whistler (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1980), P. 13.

17 Marcel Brion, Vermeer (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., 1963), pp. 12-13.

18 Whistler. p. 144.

19 Elizabeth Robin and Joseph Pennell, The Life of
James McNeill Whistler 2 vols (London: William Heinemann,
1908). Vol. 1, p. 166.

20 Kathleen Dale, Nineteenth Century Piano Music
(London: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 143-145.

21 Whistler. pp.142-1433.

22 Denys Sutton, James McNeill Whistler (London: Hunt

Barnard & Company, Ltd., 1966). p.41.

23 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, File No. WAG 2280.

 

2‘ Sydney Hodges, "Mr Frank Dicksee," Magazine of Art,
1887. p.220.

25 Art Jougnal, 1896, p. 171.

CHAPTER III
The Continent

The Powers of Suggestion

Like Whistler's At the Piano, Edouard Manet's Madame
Manet Au Piano 1867-1860 (Plate 13), has been reduced to
essential forms, but Manet's approach has none of the
expansiveness to be found in Whistler's. Instead, we are
presented with what appears to be little more than an
intimate glimpse of one of so many musical evenings
presented by Madame Manet who was an accomplished musician
and teacher. The quiet tilt of Madame Manet's head suggests
a rather heartfelt performance as she concentrates on the
music while playing the piano. Manet's close friend Stéphane
Mallarmé (1842-1898) described Manet's curiously cropped
view in these words;

the manner of cutting down the pictures

which gives to the frame all the charm of a merely

fanciful boundary such as that which is embraced

at one glance of a screen framed in by the hands

or at least all of it found worthy to preserve.

This is the picture, and the function of the frame
is to isolate.1

This seemingly typical genre scene cropped as it is holds a

fascination due to its iconography, influences, and sources

of inspiration.

56

57

 

 

Plate 13. Edouard Manet: Madame Manet Au Piano. 1867, oil on
canvas, 38 x 46 cm., Musée du Louvre, Paris.

58

One influential force upon Manet's work was his friend
and poet, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) who made his debut
as an art critic in the review of the Salon of 1845. Through
careful enumeration of his ideas, he sets the stage long
before he begins to speak of the artist' work. Early on he
puts forth his doctrines on beauty, imagination, and heroism
of modern life. In so doing, Baudelaire's theories seemed to
have a major impact on artists relevant to my thesis, in
particular, to Edouard Manet. I wish to address only that
which has a direct effect upon Manet's work. Imagination
played a very crucial role in the development of
Baudelaire's critical thinking—-"The Queen of the Faculties"
as he referred to it.

It is both analysis and synthesis . . . It is

sensitivity . . . and it created analogy’ and

metaphor . . . It decomposes all creation, and it
creates a new world . . . Imagination is the queen

of truth, and the possible is one of the provinces

of truth. It has a positive relationship with the

infinite.3
Baudelaire later goes on to say that the imagination is
creative and can penetrate beneath surface appearances to
detect hidden analogies between different manifestations.
modes, and levels of existence, and that the imagination can
reconcile the eternal with the finite, the natural with the
supernatural and the moral with the metaphysical.4

A natural extension of the imagination is the
application of its faculties to modern life. Just copying

nature without imagination was, to Baudelaire. deplorable.

He called for artists to paint in accordance with what each

59
one saw and felt. but above all, to remain faithful to one's
own nature. To interpret the present age with an
understanding of the parodies that exist within a growing
society where contemporary conditions are devoid of moral
and spiritual worth was to be valued as modern. Set forth
within this doctrine was also a passionate cry for beauty.
He reveals the beautiful relative to Romantic expression as
that which rests neither in the choice of subject nor exact
truth, but in a feeling. He explains that "the great painter
of modern times . . . will give to each one of his
characters an ideal beauty. derived from a temperament which
is constituted to feel the effect of that passion with the
utmost vividness."5 In his discussion, he argues that real
beauty comes not from the classical ideal, but from
individual emotions both static and moving.
All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena
contain an element of the eternal and an element of the
transitory—-of the absolute and of the particular.
Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist or rather it
is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface
of divergent beauties. The particular element in each
manifestation comes from emotions: and just as we have

seen our own particular emotions, so we have seen our
own beauty.6

While Baudelaire was propounding his ideas on ‘what
modern painting should be, painter Gustave Courbet (1819-
1877) was setting forth his theories on art. "To be able to
translate the customs, ideas and appearances of my time as I
see them--in a word to create a living art-~this has been my
aim." He went on to say that "The art of painting can

consist only in the presentation of objects visible and

«SO
tangible to the painter . . ." and that he need apply ”his

personal faculties to the ideas and things of the period in
which he lives. . . ." However, he also expressed that
"painting is an essentially concrete art. and can consist
only of the representation of things both real and existing.
An abstract object, invisible or nonexistent does not
belong to the domain of painting."7 Thus Courbet provided
the essential break from mythological, historical, and
religious subjects of the Romantic tradition and ushered in
a new concept in painting around mid-century. Manet, in a
sense furthered Courbet's realism, but more so championed
Baudelaire's hero of modern urban life. A mutual friend of
both, Baudelaire declared that each had a "decided taste for
reality, modern reality."8
The depiction of modern life as Manet presents it is a
complex: mixture of past and. present. Political unheaval
which brought the new liberal bourgeois to the forefront in
the 1848 Revolution finally clashed with the deprived
working class and paved the way for Napoleon III in 1852 to

reestablish the empire of Napoleon I. Paralleling this

period of political revolution was Manet's artistic
revolution. Plagued by the desire to comply with his strict
father's wishes and enter the field of law or follow his own
need to paint, a duality emerged which set the stage for
opposing forces that were to dominate Manet's art throughout

his career. Recognizing the past as part of the present.

Manet searched for a style that would successfully merge

61

tradition with a freshness reflective of life around him. It
has long been established that Velazquez and other Spanish
as well as Dutch painters were a major source of inspiration
for Manet. Max Friedlander refers to this source as the
Golden Age of Genre, seventeenth century Dutch and Spanish
art. In his description of genre, he tells us, "the
historical picture says: Egg; happened once; the genre
picture says this happened often . . ." The regular
occurrences of these happenings reveal not only the human
condition but all circumstances of that condition and
manifests the ideal type.9 Manet gives us more than the
typical. He reveals himself and his thoughts through his
art. On the subject of genre Hanson notes that Manet not
only treats a common type but that these types are also
illustrated in popular magazines of the time,10 thus
establishing his tendency to reconcile past and present.
Manet once said, "Already many people speak well of me.
But I feel they don't understand me. They don't grasp what
there is in me or at least what I try to show. . . ."11

George Mauner ponders this to be an indirect reference to

Manet's Les Etudiants de Salamanque (1859-1860), and

 

parallels the misunderstanding that takes place within the
narrative of the picture to be the same misunderstanding of
his work that Manet expressed with reference to the general
public. Just as the students missed the point by not

literally digging beneath the surface to discover the moral

message, so too, the public misses the point by not

623

figuratively searching beneath the surface to discover the
truth. Mauner interprets Manet's work of the 1860's to
conceal dual qualities of both man and nature and the fusion
of opposites. He develops the homo duplex idea of Manet the
contemporary man and Manet the traditionalist and further
proves each theme to possess a multi-layered iconography due
to Baudelaire's influence.

"The duality of man's nature and in particular his own.
was the central problem of Baudelaire's troubled life and
finds repeated expression in his poetry and prose.“-2 The
most obvious duality is good and evil as evidenced by gap
Fleurs du Mal. Here the poet views the susceptibility of the
artist, due to his sensitive nature toward sacred as well as
evil forces to be the greatest. Baudelaire was also
attracted to similar themes of other artists--Wagner's
Tannhfluser in particular. The forum for the fusion of
existing polarities is the human heart struggling between
life and death, body and soul, heaven and hell. Mauner shows
that Manet synthesized the universal and timeless tenets of

opposing forces and applied them to his painting clothed in

contemporary garb. So complete is his synthesization that
the duality of his themes are manifested in the art of
painting where illusion and reality become one. In this I
follow Mauner and suggest that Madame Manet Au Piano falls
within this multilayered homo duplex framework.

Rustling softly as her hands move skillfully over the

keyboard, her black dress with organdy sleeves reveals the

63

formality of a musical evening. Madame Manet's darkened form
cast against a light wall fills an undefined shallow space.
Equally curious are two unexplained shadows as well as two
empty chairs. Perhaps Manet is suggesting the presence of
the family unit: Suzanne whom we see and her husband painter
as well as her son Léon. The quickening rhythm of dark—light
contrast creates a strong horizontal movement that leads the
eye to the third wall panel above the piano. Unlike the
other two empty wall panels of varying size, this one is
filled with the reflection of time past and present. The
mirror as vanitas theme is not new to Manet, but the dual
nature of the mirror makes. it difficult to separate
appearance from reality. The clock on the mantle appears to
be a picture on the wall over the piano, yet it is actually
a reflection of what is across the room. The clock itself
serves to suggest the mortality of life. It reflects the
present, yet for Manet, the timepiece represents the past.13
Undoubtedly, it was at his mother's insistence that Manet's
younger brothers be given piano lessons, and Suzanne
Leenhoff (who became Manet's wife) was the teacher. Just
barely visible on either side of the clock stand two

candles, another symbol of the brevity of life.

Man's life can be compared to a Dreame, to smoke,
to vapour, to a shadow, to a puff of wind. to a
shadow, to a bubble of water, to hay to grass, to
an herb to a flower, to a leave to a tale, to a
vanitie, to a weaver's shuttle, to a wind, to
dried stubble, to a post, to nothing (From An
Herbal for the Bible Published, 1857).14

64

Through these everyday objects that serve Manet, he tells us
of the transitory nature of modernity. But what of Madame
Manet, an already ambiguous figure, surrounded in mystery?
Daughter of a Dutch organmaster, Manet married her in 1863,
only one year after his father's death, yet he had lived
with her and her son Léon for more than eleven years. It
would seem likely that the mirror of reality would reveal

more than a reflection. Denis Rouart notes that Madame Manet

 

Au Piano was based on a drawing of a head of a woman (Plate
14). If this is so, then I suggest that this head reveals an
ideal or type of devotional image common to seventeenth
century Spanish painting. With her eyes raised, her head
slightly back and her mouth open singing praises, she
carries within her image the echo of a saint, St. Cecilia.
patron saint of music. A common reference to the past with a
contemporary meaning, Manet has elevated Madame Manet to the
level of sainthood where she reigns as spiritual keeper, and
the~ music suggests musical harmony, family harmony, and
spiritual harmony past and present since the scene is set at
the home) of Manet's mother. It is the same piano that
provided for Manet's childhood musical evenings as well as
bringing about the relationship between Manet and Suzanne.15
The key to bridging the two worlds of the past and present
lies in the music for while it rests both in the real world
on the piano and in the dream world of the mirror, it also
exists in time and has inherent in its very nature, past,

present and future which Manet can only suggest in

65

 

Plate 14. Edouard Manet: Drawing of A Head, red chalk on
grid. 25.5 x 18.5 cm.

66'

painting.16 Manet's fascination with the evocative powers of
music, in particular Suzanne's piano playing manifested
itself in other ways.17 Another domestic interior, Lg
Lecture, 1868-69 (Plate 15) reveals Suzanne sitting on a
sofa with her hands posed as though she were playing the
piano. In the same way that Whistler evolved from musical
symbol to evocation of sound, Manet moves from the piano to
the suggestion of a musical reverie through the visual
symbol of Suzanne's hands, poised and about to take him on a
silent journey.

Manet and Baudelaire were major contributors to the
development of late century symbolism. To define symbolism
as an artistic movement would be far too much to express
within the confines of this paper. Yet, there are aspects of
the Symbolist movement which share a common ideology among
European artists in the last decades of the nineteenth
century that are crucial to the relationship between music
and painting. To define symbolism would be to contradict the
very nature of its essence for its primary purpose is
suggestion.

To pgmg an object is to suppress three quarters

of the pleasure in the poem which stems from the

joy of divining little by little; to suggest,

there is the dream. It is the perfect use of this

mystery which constitutes the symbol: to evoke an
object little by little in order to show a state

of soul. . . .13
were the ‘words of symbolist poet Mallarmé. The idea of

suggestion, evocation, dream state, mystery and soul were

all part of the working language of the symbolists. But what

67

 

Plate 15. Edouard Manet: La Lecture, 1868-69, oil on canvas,
61 x 74 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

6.9

is it that these poets and painters alike were eager to
suggest: If we think of literary symbolism and the symbolism
of painters as a simultaneous and parallel development, we
can easily see how communication among artists would have
influenced one another. By 1890 Café Voltaire became a
melting pot of symbolist ideas that eventually extended to
Mallarme's famous "Les Mardis," weekly gatherings of poets.
painters, critics, and musicians. Of critical importance to
this group were the works of American writer Edgar Allen
Poe, initially translated by Charles Baudelaire and later by
Mallarmé who learned to speak English with the express
purpose of understanding Poe and translating his works.
Poe's poems were not only translated into the French
language, but Manet created a series of lithographs and Paul
Gauguin an etching intrepetating his famous poem, "The
Raven." What Baudelaire and Mallarmé found epitomized in
Poe's work was an emphasis on pure poetic form with an
inherent musical quality, the idea of artist as outcast, and
the poetic structure that produced intentional vagueness and
evocation of feeling. The general nature of Poe's influence
left room for other poets to develop their own personal
ideas and theories. To this Baudelarire added his theory of
pessimism reflected in the dual nature of man who possesses
tendencies toward both good and evil which is explored in
Les Fleures du Mal. In his "Correspondences," Baudelaire
theorizes that external objects share affinities with the

senses, states of mind and character, and further adds that

6'3
by blending word, tone, image, and rhythm, the absolute
nature of each sense would be achieved through symbol which
we have seen already being done visually by Manet.

Mallarmé deems suggestion all important similar to Poe.
Language is to express, not describe, states of mind as does
music. To understand symbolism, one must leave the objective
world behind and explore the vague inner realities of the
spiritual world, almost always heard in silence, and
experience the feeling or other state of consciousness.

In a magic way a sound can evoke an entire life in

endless perspective, a color can become a

concerto, and a visual impression can arouse

terrifying orgies in the depths of the soul.19
How to reach the depths of the soul where silence reigns and
reality and illusion merge is the artist's mission.
Paradoxically, music can lead to the evocation of intangible
and silent reveries. The symbolist's viewed music and the
suggestion of sound as the most "symbolist" in idea because
of its allusive, fleeting quality--the least material and

most abstract.

The» aforementioned poets ‘were to have an insistent
influence on a number of artists in the late nineteenth
century as did the paintings of Manet and Whistler.

The Belgian anglophile Fernand Khnopff's painting
Encoutant en Schumann 1883 (Plate 16) subtly portrays the
correspondences between the spirituality of music and
painting. It depicts Khnopff's mother, seated in an easy
chair, with her hand shielding her face, wrapped in a moment

of reverie. hearing not the individual sounds-rising from

7O

 

Plate 16. Fernand Khnopff: Encountant en Schumann. 1883, oil
on canvas, 101.5 x 116.5 cm., Musées Royeaux des
Beaux—Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

71

the piano, but "the universal music that they (the sounds)
symbolize."20 This early painting by Khnopff does not seek
through abstract form or color to evoke the sound of music.
but instead emphasizes the silence through muted harmonies
alluding to a state of consciousness where one explores the
inner regions of the self. The desire on the part of artists
to evoke music has inherent in the effort a conundrum, for
painting cannot make sound or exist only in time as music
does. A painting is an object unlike the evanescence of
music. Meanings and suggestions it can evoke but its
existence is silent. Khnopff accepts this and exploits the
contradition. Once again music is evoked by a woman in the
bourgeois parlor. It is neither Hunt's cluttered Victorian
parlor nor Whistler's austere evocative music salon, but a
stage set with visual equivalents suggestive of a quiet
mysterious mood. He juxtaposes reality and illusion through
material objects and arrives at the essence of silence.
Symbolist writer Maurice Maeterlinck believed that "the life
that is genuine, and the only one that leaves some trace is
made of silence alone."21 Yet through silence and shutting

out all external appearances a level of consciousness is

reached and in this state one can hear the sounds of the
universe and the primal cry of the inner self . One must
explore that which lay beneath the surface to experience
reality. Khnopff tells us that for him, the music of
Schumann becomes the vehicle to the interior like the body

seeks creature comforts in a bourgeois interior, the soul's

Silt

infl

72

inner life is experienced within. Why Robert Schumann (1810-
1856)? By way of the piano with its infinite capacity to
evoke emotional intensity through harmonic suspension and
dynamic shadings, Schumann carves a musical path to the
unconscious mind analogous to writer E. T. A. Hoffmann's
literary path whose tales reveal a sense of probing and
searching the interior world of the spirit with its own
unique symbols, severed from the conscious world of physical
phenomena and reason. Thus Schumann acknowledges the
existence of the inner self, separate from its external role
and his music becomes the vehicle for reorientation.22
Throughout the 1830's, Schumann developed a series of piano
cycles Fantasiestucke and Intermezzi which reveal
dramatizations of aspects of the self based on Hoffmann's
works.233 Through the symbol of word, Schumann is free to
develop an equivalent musical structure corresponding to the
mood of the story. His fantasies reveal a freer form with
repeated themes that weave the unifying thread from section
to section, each of varying length. Not considered movements
of standard form each part represents an emotional mask
expressing the full range of human experiences.

Cloaked under the guise of the bourgeois parlor.
Khnopff suggests that by listening to Schumann, one can
reach the reality that lay beneath the surface——the spirit
Of the inner self. He reveals the human condition of the

Silent interior through the mirror over the mantle. He was

influenced by Belgian poet Georges Rodenbach who said: "My

7?

\4

soul is alone and nothing influences it. It is like glass
enclosed in silence, completely devoted to its interior
spectacle."24

Dramatically poised in the middle of an almost
impressionistic world of short, delicate strokes, Khnopff's
mother, whose hands and exposed ear are clearly and
meticulously rendered, leans forward in her chair, supported
by her hand shielding herself from her surroundings. Her
bent head rests in a direct path to the mirror's reflection
of a darkened doorway concealing its mysteries within. Her
reverie takes her on that journey that will reveal her inner
self. Cut off from full view, only the right hand of the
pianist floats over* the highest registers of the piano,
perhaps suspending notes that are sustained by the pedal and
doing what only music can do, disorient and reorient.
Khnopff's sister Marguerite, who was to become his favorite
model, may hold the key to the duration of their mother's
dream state where silence reigns and an 'unseen reality
emerges. The source of music analogous to the interior state
lies hidden from view. Yet, one feels the separate notes
rise and crystallize in the dense still atmosphere
surrounding immobile figures. The heavy silence compels one

to listen.

Khnopff's developing symbolist aesthetics leads to the

pure evocation of musical harmony in I Lock My Door upon

 

Myself 1891 (Plate 17). Because his art generally expresses

analogy in natural objects depicted, he was nonetheless

74

 

Plate 17. Fernand Khnopff: I Lock My Door Upon Myself, 1883,
oil on canvas, 72 x 140 cm., Bayerische Staats
des Gemaldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

75

acutely aware of musical correspondences that found meaning
in formal expression. I suggest a musical theme here in
connection with a lecture delivered in Paris by writer
Georges Rodenbach, in 1878 and later in Belgium on
"Pessimism in Schopenhauer and Leopardi" that Khnopff
probably attended.25 Rodenbach exerted a dominant influence
on Khnopff's theory of artistic isolation. In 1888 and in

1891, Rodenbuch published Du Silence and Le Regne Du

 

Silence, respectively. Here Schopenhauer's pessimism
resurfaces deeming solitude as the link with the invisible
or the unknown. Schopenhauer believed that music is an exact
copy of the will, or the essence of reality. He dealt with
the dichotomy between the conscious and the unconscious, and
since music is the direct manifestation of the will or
unconscious, it can only be experienced in a dream state.26
Reinhold Heller's interpretation of this postulate in
relation to art practice states that

an. art work, whether painting or poem, should

discover a vocabulary independent of the

limitations imposed by external forms . . . and

laws of grammatical construction as well as the

illusionism of perspectival rendering could be
discarded in favor of reconstructing a visionary

vocabulary of sounds or colors having no causal
connection.27

In other words, it creates a mood beyond the visual reality
that is perceived as a dream state because of illogical
juxtapositions. Therefore, the viewer would be transmitted
beyond the visual world to the world of ideas. For Khnopff,
a dream state exists in silence and solitude and finds

reiteration in the Bust of Hypnos and the transparent eyes

76

of a woman. The image of the piano is no longer present, but
perhaps this pure untouchable woman of another realm leans
on a draped virginal, symbol of music and sign of purity.
She is the mistress of an ambiguous interior temple obscured
in the maze between past and present. Her reveries are only
reflections. Regularized rhythms and subtle harmonies find
resolve in silence. There is only a suggestion of sound in
this ordered and static vision, yet there is music of an
ethereal quality that allows one to mediate on the soft.
subtlely suspended floating notes of this dense atmosphere
and experience the true self and the world of ideas.

Closely associated in style with Khnopff's Listening to

 

Music is Belgian, James Ensor's Russian Music 1881 (Plate

 

18). Ensor accused Khnopff of plagiarism and paralleled this
incident with the theme of Emile Zola's L'Oeuvre where
Fagarolles (Khnopff) plagiarizes the work of the unhappy
hero Claude Lantier (Ensor).28 Early on Ensor felt at odds
with. himself, fellowr painters and society, and although
these two paintings are similar, they each reveal the two
totally opposite paths that these artists were to follow.
Already we see the importance of light, warm color and music
that is to dominate Ensor's work. Russian Music falls into
Ensor's early preoccupation with domestic interiors. Several
works reveal family members and friends in the home
environment. Not unaffected by mood or drama, each one of

his paintings exudes an intangible as well as visual tension

that at once appears both enigmatic and haunting. It is here

77

 

Plate 18. James Ensor: Russian Music, 1881, oil on canvas,
133 x 110 cm., Collection Musées Royeaux des
Beaux—Arts de Belgique. Brussels.

78

in his early work that tension, mystery, and symbolic
representation so prevalent in his later works first appear.
Ensor exploits the domestic interior not as a genre picture,
but as a means to exploring the self, through the
juxtaposition of illusion and reality. He once said about
the work of this period: "I was guided by a secret instinct.
a feeling for the atmosphere of the seacoast which I had
imbuded with the breeze, included with the pearly mists
soaked up in the waves, heard in the wind"29

Pearly, white ocean light floods the parlor
accentuating the richly' impastoed strokes that delineate
warm tones of the carpet from the dark piano set against the
back wall. A woman with her back to the viewer plays the
piano while her visitor, Ensor's friend and painter Willy
Finch, sits elegantly poised, legs crossed and hands in his
lap in the center of the room. Beside him his hat rests up
side down on the highly polished table which in its
reflective power puts it upright. An atmosphere of stillness
pervades; the player and the listener retreat into separate
worlds. A soft breeze blows gently through an open window
parting the curtains that reveal an opaque light originating
from neither sun nor cloud. The mirror over the piano does
not reflect the barely glimpsed window, but an unseen one
next to it. Never far from his beloved North Sea, Ensor's
hazy light creates a unifying visual harmony akin to the

continuum of waves that reach the unseen shore. Strongly

79
affected by this pearly light, Ensor recalled an incident of
his early youth.

One night when I was asleep in my cradle, in my

illuminated room with windows wide open on the

ocean, a big sea bird, attracted by the light,
came swooping down in front of me and jostled my
cradle. Unforgettable impression, wild fear, I can
still see that horrible vision and I can still
feel the hard shock of that fantastic black bird.
greedy seeker of light.30

In the stillness of this illuminated room, haunting

memories, stirred by the sounds of Russian nocturnes,

pervade. He goes on to say.

I was even more fascinated by our dark and
frightening attic, full of horrible spiders,
curios, sea shells, plants, and animals from
distant seas, beautiful chinaware, rust and blood
colored affects, red and white coral monkeys,
turtle dried mermaids and stuffed chinamen.

Again, appearance and reality are brought to light
through the reflections in the mirror over the mantle that
holds the china vase of the past with its "rust and blood
colored effects."

An avenue to Ensor's happy youth is also recollected
through the stuffed china doll under a glass globe--usually

a position reserved for a clock. Past and present blend in
the tension between familiar objects bathed in a warm glow,

and the odd and often ambiguous perspective in which these
objects are presented. Happy childhood memories struggle in
the midst of atmospheric tension. Out of the parlor's
reality comes not flowing melodies of bourgeois happiness,

but family life threatened by growing tensions.

80

By 1933, Ensor already lived a long and productive
life. His early career was marked by disapproval, rejection,
misunderstanding at the Academic Royale des Beaux Arts to
membership in the avant garde group, Les Vingt. Recognition,
wide acclaim, exaltation, titles of knighthood and baron,
were bestowed upon him and he was proclaimed Prince of
Painters and awarded the Legion of Honor. From the subdued
tones of his early somber period where muted colors and
vagueness are equivalent to sounds emanating from the piano.
he arrives at an explosion of raw and strident color akin to
abundant energy bursting forth the music of Stravinski into-
-a harmony of color. Paul Haesaerts refers to this period as
his "crystalline" period where freedom of color and
luminosity prevails.32 Ensor at the Harmonium 1933 (Plate
19) reveals an autobiographical account expressive of color,
ordered harmony, and regular rhythms.

Insecurities in his life as in the painting are behind

him now. "Christ' Entry Into Brussels which churns with hard

 

and soft creatures that the sea throws up . . ."33 dominates

the wall behind the harmonium at which he sits. A tidal wave

of masked figures surge forward, but this time, Ensor turns
his back to them. The confrontation between self and others
is no longer necessary. Stemming from a time when Ensor was
rejected by the public, Christ and martyred artist were one
and the same--crucified and surrounded by tormentors and
hoping to be understood. To the left, on the table, sits the

feathered hat of Portrait of the Painter in a Flowered Hat

81

':?:\,1\ Wu
1w: u

?n”" Ifegv
. .-.'

,?r;:' .—. 1'
|

 

Plate 19. James Ensor: At the Harmonium, 1933, oil on
canvas, 80 x 100 cm., collection P. Croquez, New
York.

:32

1883, where a saddened Ensor confronts the public without
acceptance. Finally, the harmonium itself represents a
touchstone as well as creative force in Ensor's life. Said
to have dazzled his visitors with improvisations, colorful
and intense, an aged man brings forth with brilliant
luminosity the story of his life. Flat, undefinded space
fuses appearance with reality and primary colors exude a
bold forthright composition. Ensor, the male creator, sits
at the domestic version of the organ rather than the female
interpreter, and hesitancy gives way to security. His life
is summed up in terms of a massive, colorful chord--the
final cadenza, similar to the expressive folk idiom so
prevalent in Russian music. Like Russian music, Ensor's art
reveals a colorful vitality unthwarted by academic
structure. Perhaps the title of his earlier painting
foreshadows the direction his art is to take.

The master of suggestive interior was Edouard Vuillard
(1868-1940) whose silent melody issues forth and weaves its
harmonies round. Midst the profusion of flowers, a sonata of
form and color bursts forth. Almost mysterious in its
darkness, the strong horizontality of the grand piano
juxtaposed against the delicate floral patterns dancing on
the wall, creates a visual as well as psychological tension.
Concealed within this melody, four women blossom and merge
with the decoration, the bouquet of fresh flowers spilling

forth from a vase on top of the piano, and with each other.

Where is the reality, where is the illusion, and where does

83

this floral pulsating space find its resolution? For this we

must look beyond Edouard Vuillard's The Piano 1896 (Plate

 

20). As one of four decorative panels created for the home

of his friend, Dr. Vaquez, it is in part a response to a

general cry for decoration that emerged in the 1880's. "No
more easel pictures. . . give us more walls to decorate
Down with perspective . . . Walls must be kept a surface

and must not be pierced by the representations of distant
horizons . . ."34 It is also, in part, a visual synthesis of
his private world where he gives form to feeling. It is not
unusual that Vuillard would turn to those people and events
closest to him: his mother, her business, and his friends,
for his greatest inspiration. A reverent and mutual respect
coexisted between Vuillard and his mother whom he lived with
all of his life. Devoted to her, she, in turn, championed
his work with genuine enthusiasm. The daughter of a textile
designer-manufacturer, Madame Vuillard, after the death of
her husband in 1883, turned her Paris apartment into a
dressmaking shop in order to support her family. A tradition
of fabric design was Vuillard's heritage and he lived easily
amidst the fascinating world of colorfully patterned bolts
of silk and velvet.

As Andre Chastel points out, the Vaquez panels also
found inspiration among the fifteenth and sixteenth century
French tapestries, especially' the .millefleur or thousand

flowers then in favor.35 A powdering of little white flowers

emerge from a field of blue or mauve revealing a naturalism

84

 

 

 

Plate 20. Edouard Vuillard: Au Piano, 1896, distemper on
canvas, Petite Palais.

85

and harmony of colors which place them among the most
accomplished in French tapestries. Secular themes pervade
and in particular, rural life, amusements and pastimes
dominate.35 Known to have visited the Unicorn tapestry,
Vuillard successfully harmonizes the traditional past with
contemporary life.

The four panels in their entirety, reveal themselves as
a musical metaphor--an intimate piece of chamber music in
four movements. A melody of color introduced in one panel
becomes the unifying thread in the tapestry of Vuillard's
life. He presents us with a musical narrative that through
color, negates real space and evokes an atmosphere and
feeling of mystery akin to the hushed sounds emanating from
the piano. Roger-Marx tells us that these four panels, T_h_e
Piano, The Writing_Table, The Reader and Thegpibrary are the
visual equivalent of a reverie.37 The viewer has only to
look upon hearing the sound like Vuillard so often heard
while listening to his friend and accomplished pianist.
Misia Natanson, to capture a moment as fleeting as the

duration of a musical piece. He carefully balances the
horizontal piano which echos its stability in the rug and

coffered ceiling panel with the intricately complex movement
of wallflowers and patterned dresses to create a
psychological tension equivalent to a sustained bass and
arpeggiated treble. He appropriates the mirror-like quality

of reflection to these panels: not by including a mirror.

but by presenting the essence of his remembrances of daily

86

life, so close to him. By doing this, he invests his
characters with a second, more permanent life, yet they
"retain only a semblance of their original life . . .33 The
paintings become the mirror that reflect not the real world.
but an imaginary world vested with music, silence,
fragrance, a sea of mauves, lilacs, blues and greens, and
the soft velvety texture of a tapestry. Russell interprets
critic Andre Gide's remark made in reference to these panels
as a "well-bred, soft spoken dreamland."39 Gide goes on to
say: "I do not know what I like most here. Perhaps M.
Vuillard himself. I know few works where one is brought more
directly into communion with the painter. It is due to his
speaking in a low tone, suitable to confidences, and to
one's leaning over to listen to him . . ."40 He aptly
expressed the feeling exuding from these decorations, that
of an intimate glimpse into the important parts of
Vuillard's life--interiors, woman, and silence. Already on
close terms with Mallarmé, and his concept of suggestion as
evocation of mood, Vuillard's panels are a re-creation and
enlargement of his intimate interiors so suggestive of a
reflective mood, imbued with a haunting silence that were
done in the 1890's. His set of decorative panels loses none
of this suggestion of interior, personal feeling. In the
merging flowered forms, Vuillard presents the things closest
to him: music, and silence. Woman becomes the spiritual
keeper within the garden enclosed and music is the path to

this dream state.

87

Vuillard ' s artistic development evolves from an

 

intimate quartet of chamber music to a single Symphony in
339, 1898-1900. He moves from the depiction of the piano
which evokes sound that is analagous to a musical state to
color as a musical idiom. From a profusion of flowers, like
notes that weave a harmony to a consistent tonality that
creates a harmonic progression, Vuillard presents yet
another musical interior. The symphony reverberates not from
rhythmic movement but from. a single tonality. The rich
fifteenth century tapestry has given way to nineteenth
century symbol. Where Vuillard initially used a piano to
evoke a reverie, he now 'uses just a musical title to
symbolize an interior state. Color characterizes the
emotional climate.

As a member of the Nabis, Vuillard's style developed in
keeping with Gaugin's symbolist-synthesist theories. That
is, the existence of a visual equivalent to that which can
only be felt. Vuillard also exhibits in his interios, a
distinctly Mallarméan mood of suggestion in a hushed silence
with an air of mystery.

As we have seen, the symbolism of Baudelaire and

Mallarmé has exerted a strong force on painting by the turn
of the twentieth century through its powers of suggestion.
Also influential is the Romantic movement in music which
provided for a musical expression of feeling or mood through
extended harmonic progressions, instrumental color, strong

contrasts. varied rhythms and tonal modulation. Classical

 

88

structure has given way to expressive form that suggests
rather than defines.

Within a traditional framework, Manet plants the seeds
of symbolism that carries through. the ‘works of lKhnopff,
Ensor and Vuillard. Each artist, in his own way evokes,
suggests and reveals a journey’ in to the interior self
through a musical mood. At first all exploit the image of
the piano to suggest music, then evolve to a suggestion of

mood akin to the abstract qualities of music.

89
NOTES--CHAPTER III

Stephane Mallarmé, Documents Mallarme edited by Carl
Paul Barbier, (Paris: Libraire Nizet, 1968), p.79.

 

Baudelaire and Manet maintained a close friendship
between 1860 and Baudelaire's death in 1867. Nascent
theories that Baudelaire put forth in 1845 continued to be
developed throughout his relationship with. Manet. It is
conceivable that an exchange of ideals took place and that
Manet would habe been aware of Baudelairés early theories.
Gegge Mauner; Manet Peintre-Philosophe A Study of the
Painter's Themes (University Park and London: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), p. 39, cites
that Baudelaine and Manet know each other while Manet was a
student with Coutour between 1850 and 1856.

 

3 Charles Baudelaire, The Mirror of Art Critical
Studies. translated by .Johnathan. Mayne, (London: Phaidon
Press, Ltd., 1988), pp. 232-233.

4

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and
Other Essays, (London: Phaidon Prss, Ltd., 1964), XIII.

5 Charles Baudelaire, The Mirror of Art Critical
Studies, p.86.

6

 

Ibid.. p. 126.
7 Gardner's Art Through the Ages, seventh edition (San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1980), p.758.

8
Pierre Schneider, The World of Manet (1832-1883) (New
York: Time, Inc., 1968), p. 37.

9 An Coffin Hanson, Manet and the Modern Tradition (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 58.

1° Ibid.. p. 59.

11 George Mauner, p. 163.

12 Ibid.. p. 16.

3
1 .A gift to his mother from the King of Sweden upon

her marriage to Auguste Manet, she, like Suzanne. was also
an accomplished musician who held musical evenings twice a
week.

14 . . .

Seymore Slive, "Reallsm and Symbolism 1n Seventeenth

Century Duth Painting," Daldalus (summer 1962), p. 491.

15 Suzanne became the piano teacher of the then Manet
teen-age boys in 1850. E. Manet was 18.

90

16 A connection made by Mauner in reference to Manet's
Portrait of Zacharie Astruc 1863-64, in which a book of
Japanese prints rests in the field of the mirror and the
field of Astruc, applies here as well, Mauner, p. 154.

17 In 1865 Manet's friend Edgar Degas captured Manet,
lost in reverie listening' to Suzanne play the piano in
Edouard Manet et Mme Manet. Manet, nowever did not like the
portrait of Suzanne and tore the canvas in two, causing a
slight row between the two friends. Degas took the canvas
back with the intention of repainting it but never completed
this project, probably due to Manet's 1867 version of the
same subject.

18 Les Mardis Stéphane Mallarmé and the Artists of His
Circle, The University of Kansas Museum of Art.

 

 

19 Robert Goldwater, Symbolism, (new York: Harper 6:
Row, Publishers, 1979), p. 227.

2° Ibid.. p.29.

21 Jeffrey Howe, "Mirror Symbolism in the Work of
Ferdinand Khnopff",qggp§, 53 (September 1978), p.112.

22

Morse Peckham, Beyond_3hg_Tragic Vision, (New York:
George Braziller, 1962), pp.205-215.

 

23 Taken by the literary masquerade scenes of Hoffman,
Schumann titled three of these piano cycles, "Papillons."
"Carnaval" and Faschingschwank . . . Masks of the Psyche or
Disguises of the Self. Peckham, p. 210.

24 Jeffrey Howe, "Mirror Symbolism in the Work of
Ferdinand Khnopff", Arts, 53 (September 1978), p.112.

25

Goldwater, p.210.

26 Peckham, p.149-150.

27 Reinhold Heller, "The Art Work As Symbol".

28 The Brooklyn Museum, Beldgian Art 1880-1914, (new
York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1980), p.106.

29

 

John David Farmer, Ensor, (New York, George
Braziller, 1976), p.10.
3° Ibid.. p.9.
31

Ibid.

91

 

32 Paul Halsaertos, Ensor, (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., 1959), p.213.

33 Ibid.. P.178.

34 Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, Edouard Vuillard, (New
York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1954) pp.20—21.

35 John Russell, Vuillard, (London: Thames 6: Hudson,
1971), p.67.

36

Roger-Armand Weigert, French Tapestry, translated by
Donald and Monique King, (Newton, Mass: Charles T. Branford
Company: 1962), pp.76-77.

37 Claude Roger-Marx, Vuillard His Life and Work, (new
York: Editions de la Maison Francaise, 1946), p.126.

38 Russell, p.55.

39 Russell, p.67.

40 Roger-Marx, p.125.

CHAPTER IV

Keys to the Abstract

Nicholas von Dumba, Viennese art patron at the close of
the nineteenth century commissioned Gustav Klimt, leading
artist of the modern movement in Vienna to execute two
sopraporte paintings to hang in the music salon of his

palace, number four on the fashionable Parkring. Schubert am

 

Klavier 1899 (Plate 21)1 filled one sopraporte while Die

Music II (Plate 22) occupied the other. Confronting each

 

other across the abyss of the music salon was the embodiment

of fin de siecle Viennese culture,—-art, music, and

 

philosophy--as well as social and political life. How did
Klimt arrive at this presentation? What were his intentions
and what message if any did he hope to convey? What would

these singing voices say if they were to lay down their

music and speak out and would the silent stone statue
divulge its secrets?

Although novel in their presentations, this inseparable
duet of paintings had their beginnings long before von
Dumba's commission, and Klimt, while an innovator in art was
as much a product of the greater social and political forces
that overwhelmed Vienna as he was a proponent of a new style
of art. He inherited a legacy, a tradition of historicism

92

93

 

Plate 21. Gustav Klimt: Schubert am Klavier, 1899, oil on
canvas, 150 x 200 cm., burned in Schloss
Immendorf. 1945.

94

 

Plate 22. Gustav Klimt: Die Musik II, 1898, oil on canvas,
150 x 200 cm., burned in Schloss Immendorf, 1945.

95

that was also a part of his style, yet he went on to
encapsulate the spirit and anxiety prevalent in modern
society through visual symbols.

The crystallization of an idea that began to germinate
in 1866, is refined when Klimt represents Nietzschean
ideology current in Viennese intellectual circles.
symbolically within each picture as well as integrally
related with one another. In a rather haunting and
unsettling space, Franz Schubert sits in profile view with
his hands on the keys of a barely visible piano playing what
one would assume to be a lied with subtle tonal modualtion

and colorful harmonies in Schubert am Klavier. Behind him

 

stand two women engrossed in their singing as another woman.
in frontal view, stands before a burning candle which sits
on top of the piano. Illuminated from below her facial
features cast deep, dark shadows and enhance her feeling of
distance through a silent hollow stare which is echoed in
the faint figure of a man looming out of the darkness. From
across the room, another candle burns and finds its

reflection in the mirror. A feeling of underlying tension
weaves its way slowly throughout the vibrating glow and

shadow of darkness. This is no ordinary bourgeois parlor.

Who are these figures and what is Klimt trying to tell us? A

glance across the music room to Die Music II will impart

 

some understanding.

Dark wavy hair accentuates a finely sculpted face that

holds pursed lips and clearly defined transparent eyes. The

96

driving rhythmic line descending from her neck to the bottom
of the picture forms her feminine figure. No longer a
fragile victim of nineteenth century female imagery, she
asserts herself, imposes her will and reveals a sensuality
both enigmatic and fascinating as well as freightening. From
the kithara she holds, long langourous tones issue forth
only to crystallize in the stillness of the shallow space.
Close to her the Ionic capital reveals a Dionysian faun's
mask and grapes. Ivy and roses spill forth from the
background uniting antique symbol with decoration. On the
right, a curiously serene sphinx confronts the viewer. The
classically ideal face evokes the god of light and ruler of
the dream world, Apollo. Two symbolist tendencies are
reflected here. The temptress, associated with the sphinx.
half animal, half human--a symbol of pure lust; and femme
fatale, synonymous with evil and destroyer of man. Woman in
the second half of the nineteenth century has gone from a
fragile, vulnerable victim to the cause of death and
destruction through prostitution and subsequent disease.2

On another level, Klimt reveals this picture as a
totally Dionysian concept and Schubert am Klavier as an
Apollonian vision. These two different interpretations are
possible because the Symbolists, like Klimt, raid the past
and juxtapose objects and images already redolent with
meaning and associations. With unexpected combinations he
creates multilevel complexities of meaning that can be

approached in many ways. Part of Arthur Schopenhauer's

. 9 7
metaphysical thinking that fin de siécle intellectuals were

 

drawn to dealt with the dichotomy between the conscious and
the unconscious. If music is the manifestation of the
unconscious or the will, then understanding the nature of
the will is central to understanding music. Schopenhauer
believed that the will manifested itself through dreams as
its only means of communicating with the conscious world.
Wagner argued that music was analagous to the dream because
it provided the link between the subjective realm of the
unconscious to the objective world. He also reasoned that
music in its most elemental form was a cry of terror and an
anguished expression of the unconscious will. Upon hearing
this cry, the hearer experiences it on an emotional level.
Music made up of this elemental sound could then link the
conscious with the unconscious.3 Therefore, music represents
the real nature of the world because it is a copy of the
will itself (or the unconscious). The Dionysian aspect of
music causes one to lose oneself in ecstasy and experience
nature while in an unconscious state.4 Therefore Die Mggic
I; is a representation of the unconscious character of the

real world; anxiety ridden fear of women that existed at the

turn of the century.
Across the Dumba music salon hung the Apollonian dream

aspect, Schubert am Klavier.5 in which short delicate

 

strokes define the forms as they blend softly into one

another. The sillhouetted form of Schubert creates a rather

sensuous line that calls to mind that of the modern maenad

98

across the room. Curiously, the spectrally illuminated woman
at the far left corresponds in shape and position to the
sphinx across the room. She stands enveloped in a dream
state--the essence of Apollonian nature, yet it is in this
dream trance that one loses sight of waking reality and
experiences total joy--the essence of Dionysian nature. The
picture then becomes a reflection of reality across the
room. Dream and reality confront Dionysian eroticisms and
Doric order. "The most beautiful painting ever painted by an
Austrian,"6 said Hermann Bahr. Why? Because according to
Carl Schorske, it captured a Biedermier dream that never
existed.7 Music, especially the music of a composer was seen
as the aesthetic crown to a safe and secure social
heirarchy, yet it was anything but secure and intact.
Gottfried Scholtz refers to this time as "Weltschmer" or
cultural uneasiness due to the realization of unsolvable
national problems, a weakening of religious convictions, and

a "slipping away of the world." Theodor Herzl, fin de siecle

 

contemporary writer, in the cultural section of the press

dealt with feeling, mood, personal interpretation,
subjective response, narcissism, introversion and
sensitivity to psychic states. Aesthetic culture was

beginning to turn inward to discover the unexplored self.
Art and music became the vehicles for reaching within and
touching the soul.8 A great searching began and all aspects
of life became a journey in search of acknowledgement,

understanding and revelation of the instinctual self. This

99

striving drove artists, musicians, poets and novelists alike
to delve into the mirror of self and seek the truth. These
transcendental stirrings became the tour de force behind the
intellectual, artistic and musical circles. Klimt chose to
represent his attitude toward a society that masks reality
through a decorative means. He questioned through pictorial
images existing society and just as ornament and decoration
create a glittering facade for that which lay beneath the
surface, so too does his personal style reflect a reality
that lay beneath the surface. He spoke metaphorically
through pictorial image and used music as the vehicle for
revealing a hidden reality. The function of music for Klimt
then, is the embodiment of an idea. where the symbolic
meaning rests in the instrument itself. The piano is the
avenue to reaching the dream state and the strings of the
kithara produce the music of that reality.

Where Klimt exploited the piano as an evocation of an
impressionistic dream state that never really existed, Max
Klinger (1857-1920) reveals through music a very solid and

tangible dream image in Evocation 1894 (Plate 23). one of

 

forty-one prints executed for the "Brahms Fantasies" cycle.9

No longer is music just a suggestion, but the mystery and
sense of ambiguity inherent in the dream state itself is
experienced through music. Set before a sharply delineated
balustrade, a darkened cloak cradling a mask, is furled to
the front revealing a nude woman whose outstretched arms are

about to begin plucking the strings of the harp before her.

100

 

Plate 23. Max Klinger: Brahms Fantasy Bvocation, acquatint
and mezzotint, 29.2 x 35.7 cm.

101

These strong forms of man, piano, harp and woman emerge
providing a drama that is directly connected to the crashing
waves of the sea behind them and the lightly etched raging
titans in the soft white sky. In his search to reconcile the
dichotomy between realism and fantasy, Klinger initiates a
profoundly original expressive style that remains true to
his draughtsmanship and imaginary visions, yet he produces a
work symbolic of societal concerns. This duality in
Klinger's work was present from the beginning. His academic
training under Karl von Dussow, a realist genre painter, and
his great admiration for Goya which led him to subsequent
study with Charles-Emile Wauters, painter of the macabre,
allowed for a fusion of these two disparate tendencies. Kirk
Varnedoe reconciles this opposition "as owing to his
conscious confrontation of an aesthetic dilemma affecting
numerous European artists of his generation; that of finding
a more expressive naturalism . . ."10

We learn of Klinger's theories on line and color in his
essay Malerei and Zeichnung when he says:

The most prominent characteristic of drawing is
the stark subjectivity of the artist. It is his

world and his way of seeing, his personal
observations about the world around--and within
him that he depicts . . . The difference between
the painter and the draughtsman cannot be more
sharply defined . . . The painter's is not
actually a critical eye—-he prefers to beautify
The draughtsman, however, looks at the

perpetually unfilled holes, the yearned for and
the barely attainable; his can only be a personal
coming to terms with a world of irreconciable
powers. The painter bodies forth his optimism

the draughtsman cannot escape his more nay-
saying vision.11

10?.

Klinger fully exploits the realm of fantasy as well as

utilizing the widest range of print techniques in Evocation.

 

The mezzotint foreground figures possess a deep rich velvety
tone that contrasts with the finely etched titan figures of
the light filled sky and unfolds a drama pregnant with
underlying tensions. The balustrade, with its soft grey tone
of the acquatint provides the compositional as well as
technical division of the picture. He juxtaposes
realistically rendered forms, that in their totality.
present a bizarre and fantastical image. Like Klimt, he
borrows images from the antique past and because of their
jarring juxtapositions appropriates a new and complex
interpretation.

Evocation is the visual manifestation of the power that
music holds in touching an emotion. Wagner's theory of
Gesamkunstwerk reveals Klinger's belief in the totality of
art. The entire Brahms cycle was conceived as a tribute to
his close friend Johannes Brahms. Not meant to illustrate,

these forty-one prints of which Evocation is one, were

 

designed to evoke the feeling of the music. These prints

which display the broadest range of technical virtuousity
accompanied a series of songs and a choral work by Johannes
Brahms. The folio contains the musical score with Klinger's
visual imagery in full-sized scenes as well as smaller
vignettes interspersed throughout. The series, like the
music is presented in two contrasting parts. The first part

contains four songs for solo voice and piano with five

103

etchings and twelve lithographs, and the second part
recounts the legend of Prometheus in six plates followed by
four engravings and eleven lithographs.12

Klinger, in Evocation brings to the visual realm the

 

feeling and musical mood of Brahms' setting for four-part
chorus of mixed voices of Friedrich Holderlin's
"Schicksaslied" (Song of Fate). The text itself is
representative of current pessimism, powerfully grim and

appealing to Brahms. The second part from which Evocation is

 

a synthesization, anxious mood depicts mortal man as a
plaything of destiny that flings him helplessly into the
abyss of the unknown.

To us tis not given to find repose here on earth

They vanish, they falter, our suffering, suffering

brothers.

Blindly, blindly from hour to hour they are driven

Like spray of the cataract recklessly plunging

down, down to doubt and darkness below.
Brahms sets the mood of this section through strong tonal
contrast introduced by a change in tempo and frenzied

chromaticism. Drama is given form through continual

repetition of the opening musical phrase "To us is not given

to find repose here on earth" in a four part unison with
each repetition more pronounced with staccato-like frenzy
that emphasizes its poignancy. Klinger reflects this
underlying anxious tension visually through deep tonal
foreground figures juxtaposed. against lightly' etched
storming background figures, restlessly and endlessly
tossing about, and the continual repetition of the crashing

waves--all represent the eternal flux as a part of the

104

rhythm of life. Woman, as the force of nature personified,
flings off her cloak and mask to reveal her true self. The
man at the piano mesmerized by the vision is uncertain if
not awestruck. The duet between man and nature rages; as
well as the conflict between man the artist creator and
woman the creator for, in Greek mythology the titans are the
children of mother earth who eventually meet their demise.
Fin de siécle social anxieties, fear of women and search for
truth are manifested through classical symbol. Klinger, like
Brahms, works within a classical framework and extends his
medium to create a mood reflective of contemporary
anxieties. The solid reality of these images does not allow
one to float off into suggestion. The fantastic made so real
is unsettling and even jarring.

Bridging the gap between symbolism and abstraction is
the work of Frantisek Kupka. His search for expressive form
led him to a series of musical themes that were reflective
of a state of mind or a feeling made manifest through the
piano keyboard. Thick impastoed strokes of bright Fauve

colors delineate a boat moving toward a background shore in

Piano Keys-Lake 1909 (Plate 24). Small ripples of moving
water distort the reflection of the bouquet of forms as they
merge with the keyboard in the foreground. Through the
water, the keyboard reflects, distorts and moves as the keys
become one with its surroundings. Fingers on the keys

produce the tones that resound in an echo of wave and color.

In its apparent flatness, an ebb and flow surges through the

105

 

1909. oil on

Collection Nerodiné Galerie,

Piano Keys—Lake,

79 x 72 cm.,

Plate 24. Frantisek Kupka:
canvas,
Prague.

106

picture like the swelling fortissimo and gentle piano of a
musical progression. Music as the harmony of life is in
continual rhythm. Here Kupka synthesizes and manifests the
essence of his past studies: that of spirituality and music.
In 1894, while at the home of painter-philosopher Karl
Diefenbach who believed in the analogy between music and
painting, Kupka once said:

I experience magnificent moments bathed by hues

flowing from the titanic keyboard of color. The

principle of harmonized forces is the best answer

to all questions as to enrich and grasp the

picturesqueness of the colorist.14
Not only discussions on music and painting transpired but
they worked to the accompaniment of a pianist or violinist
as well.

A preoccupation with music and spirituality stemmed
from Kupka's formative years when he was employed as a
spiritual medium and showed great admiration for two Czech
painters: Josef Mares who displayed a poetic interpretation
of nature with a strong melodic line, and Mikulas Ales who
illustrated folk songs. Another powerful theoretical
influence on Kupka's work was his professional training at
the Prague Academy under the Nazarene tradition. According
to the Nazarenes two types of art existed: realistic and
speculative. Kupka believed his calling was of the
speculative nature. He said,

the latter wants art to penetrate the substance

with supersensitive insight into the unknown as it
is manifested in poetry or religious art.15

107

This statement is particularly relative to his piano
paintings of 1910-1912 in which he wished to communicate
what he felt upon hearing music. For Kupka, music was a
stirring emotional element. His search to prove music
analogous to painting led to the reordering of time and
space and representational image, yet he retained the

musical title and vestiges of the keyboard. In Nocturne 1911

 

(Plate 25), large slabs of dark blue pigment float
diagonally up the canvas, reminiscent of piano keys.
ascending notes , night , and water . It is not unusual that

this would recall Whistler's Nocturne Blue and Gold for it

 

was exhibited in 1905 at the Whistler retrospective in
Paris, where Kupka was living. Nocturne was originally
conceived as a memory of Kupka's moonlit garden.16 In both
instances he represents piano keys as the musical link
between past and present. He believed that music was
composed of nondescriptive units and visually created these
units as a harmony that relates paint to feeling. In the
early stages of his work, meaning was tied to visual

appearance, then he began to move from these strong
resemblances of objects to the ideal of music through

vertical planes--relative to the keys on the piano. Kupka
needed to create an art that had personal meaning, yet not
representational form, because for him it didn't say enough.
Painting had to strike an emotional chord, like music and he
used a musical symbol-the piano key, to give meaning to

form. The reduction of the piano to black and white keys is

108

 

Plate 25. Frantisek Kupka: Nocturne, 1911, oil on canvas, 66
x 66 cm., Collection Museum des 20. Jarhunderts,
Vienna.

109

to seek in these abstract minimals an evocation akin to
music without clear associations that sully the purity of
the ideal.

Kupka arrived at abstraction naturally through two
separate) forms: the curvilinear' and. the 'rectangular. His
transition to abstraction was long and derived from a
variety of inspirational sources. Rooted in the nineteenth
century where all art had meaning, Kupka had to discover a
new approach for giving meaning to form, because if form had
no meaning, it had no reason for being. He arrived at the
concept of significant form through the images of woman and
the visual equivalents of musical qualities, such as rhythm.
repetition, movement and color as vehicles to abstraction.

His early work is dominated by women, usually nude, set
within a natural land or seascape. It is, however, The Girl
With A Ball, 1908 (Plate 26) that holds the seeds for one
avenue of development toward abstraction. Through the
disarticulation of the circular ball and curvilinear
feminine form, Kupka evolved from a figurative idiom to one

of abstraction in Amphorai Fugue in Two Colors, 1912

 

(Plate 27). In keeping with his search to make painting

analagous to music, it was not until his study of Bach-
fugues, interpreted by his musician friend Morse-Rimmel, did
the idea of visual orchestration of musical form "where the
sounds evolve like veritable physical entities, intertwine.

come and go,"17 crystallize.

110

 

Plate 26. Frantisek Kupka: The Girl With A Ball, 1908, oil
on canvas, 114 x 70 cm., Musée National d'Art
Moderne, Paris.

111

 

Plate 27. Frantisek Kulpka: Amphora, Fugue in Two Colors.
1912, oil on canvas, 211 x 220 cm., Collection
Narodini Galerie, Prague.

112

As we have seen the idea of the female within the
interior diminish with Klimt, Kupka carries this further and
abandons the interior all together. Included in the Viennese
intellectual circles of the early 1890's, Kupka was aware of
Klimt's work and exhibited with the Secessionists four times
in the first decade of the twentieth century, specifically
in 1908 when Klimt exhibited The Kiss 1907-1908, (Plate 28).
An initial viewing of The Kiss, reveals a man and a woman
embracing in a powerful kiss, merging into one form.
confined within a golden niche set upom a flowered earth. An
embrace of life and death. A futher reading reveals the male
figure defined by a decorative pattern of strong rectangular
vertical bars, and the woman formed by colorful circles and
ovals. Long golden threads reach down and become intwined
with the earth, symbolizing her tenacious relationship to
nature. Klimt has already defined man and woman in
symbolical terms of rectangles and ovals. For Kupka,
vertical bars represent piano keys as well as maleness and

there follows a natural progression from his Piano Key_s-—

 

Lake, 1909 (Plate 24) to Noctugp, 1911 (Plate 25)

culminating in Vertical Planes I and III 1912, (Plate 29)

 

anticipating the geometric compositions of Piet Mondrian and
Malevich.

Although Kupka begins with the nineteenth century
realist's image of woman in nature or set within the
interior environment, he abandons this traditional

representation to become very much a part of his time. There

113

 

Plate 28. Gustav Klimt: The Kiss, 1907-08, oil on canvas,
180 x 180 cm., Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna.

114

r.r

i
N
.l

 

Plate 29. Frantisek Kupka: Vertical Planes III, 1912, oil on
canvas, 200 x 118 cm., Collection Narodini,
Prague.

115

is a lessening interest in representational images as
witnessed in the ‘works of Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia and
Robert Delaunay and Picasso and these images are no longer
necessary. In the early decades of the twentieth century, as
the social role of women changes, she is no longer
associated with the interior of the piano, yet Kupka uses

both the woman and the piano to arrive at abstraction.

116
FOOTNOTES--CHAPTER IV

1 A study for this work shows that the man at the piano
is not schubert. Novotny and Dobai maintain that von Dunba
owned. a watercolor, "Schubert and his Friends, 1821 by
Leopold Kupelweiser and that from this, klimt was able to
paint a portrait likeness of Schubert in the final version
of 1899.

Patrick Bade, Jenime Fatale: Image of Evil and
Fascinating Women (New York: Mayflower Books, Inc. 1979);
p.33.

3 William J. Mcgrath, Diouysian Art and Popular
Politics in Austria, (new Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1974), pp.121-2.

Morse Peckham, Beyond the Tragic Vision, (new York:
Geoge Braziller, Inc., 1962), p.146-148.

5 This is the second realization of Apollo and Dionysos
confronting each other across an expanse of space. The first
version appeared in 1866 in the north and south lunettes of
the newly constructed Burgtheatre on the Ringstrasse.
showcase of Viennese culture. A decorative and historical
interpretation of the Altar of Apollo and Dinoysos begin the
cycle of paintings that are to reflect the Nitzschean
interpretation of appearance versus reality through music
that would occupy Klimt's work until 1899.

6 Johannes Dobai and Fritz Novotry, Gustav Klimt,
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1968), p.16.

 

 

7 Carl Schorske, Fin de Siecle Vienna Poltics and
Cultures, (New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random
House, 1961), p.8.

8

The Grath, p. 160.

9 Streicher, Elizabeth and Varnedoe, J. Kirk T.,
Graphic Works of Max Klinger, New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1977), p. 88.

1° Ibid.. xviii.

11 Jan von Adlmann, "Rediscovering Max Klinger," Art
News 70: 52-5+ January 1972. p.52—53.

12 Stricher and Varnedoe. pp.88-89.

13 Brahms, Johannes Schicksalied, text by 1Friedrich
Holderlin, edited by H. Elough-Leighton, (Boston: C. Shimer

Music Company, 1927), pp.8-15.

117
14 Frantisek Kupka 1871-1957 A retrospective (New York:

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1975), p. 26.

15 Ibid., p. 29.
16 Ibid.. p. 70.
17

Ibid.. p. 92.

Conclusion

The depiction of musical instruments in European
painting does not begin in the nineteenth century. What does
begin, is the reflection of a purely nineteenth century
instrument—~thex piano ‘which. delineates the political and
social ideologies of its time. In the wake of the Industrial
Revolution, piano development expressed rising middle class
values. The change from a clearly articulated tone of the
seventeenth century' virginal, then. clavichord” to ‘vague.
mellow, fluid and limitless possibilities for sensitive
shadings and dramatic tonal contrasts inherent in the piano
can be seen as analogous to a change from aristocratic rule
to a democratic rule. Piano manufacture, sheet music
production, and the rise of the virtuoso all helped to bring

the piano into the home. By virtue of its size shape and

mass, it represented the stability and security that a
rapidly expanding world yearned for. From the onset, women
played an important but interpretive part primarily due to
their restrictive educational background. A woman's
education was complete when she could provide for the
spiritual and emotional well being of her family.

Recognizing music as an emotional expression, almost before

118

119

any thing else, women were taught to play the piano as a
calling card to marriage. Within the domestic temple, her
virtuousness was measured in terms of her accomplishments
and music making was ranked as one of the highest.

The development of a middle class focused on the
individual and the importance of daily life. Around mid-
century, painting began to reveal the interior domestic life
and the parlor's activities were made tangible through
musical evenings. The piano became the focal point and woman
as interpreter had the power to create a musical reverie
through "nocturnes," and "rhapsodies." Music can be regarded
in one of two ways; either by seeing it as a part of the
structured order of the universe, or as a phenomenon of
correspondance associated with emotion and expression.1

The paintings I have chosen to analyze from realism
through symbolism to abstraction express the duality of both
approaches in their iconography. From Hunt's realist
narrative to Kupka's abstract keys each one has depicted
music as a tangible and visible order of things as well as

an emotional state of being or mood, and through these
paintings we see reflected the social condition of women

ranging from fragile victim to spiritual keeper of the home
to the fin de siecle femme fatale. On one level, the
paintings are about music, yet they are about basic ideas
that determine the nature of life's experiences. Music as an

elemental sound touches the primitive. The dichotomy of the

modern and the primitive exist in each, for the modern piano

120

produces elemental sounds and each artist felt the need to
express the elemental, the primitive, the inexpressible and
the unseen. To turn inside out and express a "true" reality
led to symbolizing these elemental passions, but like music
they come together in the search for the abstract.

Early twentieth century witnesses a lessening interest
im: the represenational ‘worldu As one moves toward
alstraction, the image of the piano as well as the woman are
no longer necessary. Yet the need to evoke a feeling or
create a mood remains. The abstract qualities of music find
a visual equivalent in color and line upon a flat ourface.

What Whistler had begun with abstract musical titles
and Khnopff's realization of the power of music: Kupka
completed with visual representations of abstracted forms in

nature.

121

NOTES--CONCLUSION

1 J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, p.213.

 

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

BIOGRAPHY

Sir Frank Dicksee (1853-1928)

 

The elder son of Sir Thomas Francis Dicksee, painter
and illustrator, sir Frank received his early art education
from his father. From 1870-1875, he studied at the Royal
Academy and came in contact with John Millais and Lord
Leighton from whom some of his style is derived. Early in
his career, he was occupied as an illustrator for books and
magazines and also under Henry Holiday. By 1877 he received
wide acclaim for Harmony, a semi—romantic, highly
sentimental modern setting of medieval attitudes, and by
1881 he acquired the status of .Royal Associate. He 'was
distinguished for a fine sense of color and melodramatic

subject partly derived from sketches made while at the

Langham Sketching Club. While in demand as a portrait
painter for fashionable ladies, landscape painting also
comprises a small part of his work. His widespread
popularity' stemmed from. etchings of his major paintings

which were exhibited yearly. In 1924 he was elected

president of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1925.

122

123
James Ensor (1860-1949)

 

Born on the coast of the North Seas at Ostend, Belgian
painter James Ensor revealed an early fascination for the
magnitude and mysteries of the sea and life around him.
Powerfully influenced by the exterior world, Ensor drew from
the natural world of forms and color to materialize the
imaginary dream world that exists beyond time and space. The
son of an English gentleman and a Fdemish souvenir-seller.
he remained tied to his city and sea, save for two years at
the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and frequent
brief trips abroad. While at the Académie, Ensor met
painters Willy Finch and Fernand Khnopff and in 1883 became
one of the founding members of Les Vingt. an avant garde
group of artists. Ensor's early work is preoccupied with his
family, friends and interiors which conceal an all pervading
sense of underlying tension and mystery. The evocative power
of his works emphasize the human conditions of individuals.
and society as a whole. From this "Somber Period," Ensor
intensified his sense of intrigue through the dominating
motif of the mask. He utilizes the mask to reveal evil and

stupidity and is closely associated with the works of Edgar

Allen Poe, that took place within a carnival setting. In
1886 Ensor begins to use the print medium to evoke and
emphasize mood, especially in his Christ cycle. Whether he
exploited the thick sensuous application of paint or the
fine line of the etching needle, he always revealed the

essence of truth. Throughout his life, music played an

1124

important part. He kept a piano in his studio and most of
his music came in the form of improvisations. bizarre and

almost violent.

William Holman Hunt (1827-1910)

 

Inspired by John Ruskin's "Return to Nature" cry, Hunt
was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood whose short-lived career as a society
revolutionized English painting and echoed throughout the
nineteenth century art world. Early on, Hunt formulated his
artisitic theories which expressed significant Christian
ideals in a realistic way. Abandoning traditional technique
of underpainting, Hunt built up his canvas on a white wet
ground resulting in translucent, luminous vibrating color.
Integral to the overall effect was natural daylight.

From simple beginnings and self-education. Hunt entered
the Royal Academy as a student in 1845. His continual effort
to present Christian ideas to a modern society led him on a
voyage to the Holy Land in 1854 shortly after his conversion
to Christianity. Upon his return, a studio in London and
exhibits at the Royal Academy allowed for varying degrees of
success. Known as a painter of ideas, Hunt was often
misunderstood by the general public, as well as his critics.
His rigorous attention to detail, subject matter, and a
return trip to the East, led him away from the mainstream of
contemporary art; but it is his preoccupation with fusing

the real with the ideal for which Hunt is most noted.

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921)

 

The son of a magistrate, Fernand Khnopff spent his
early years in the medieval city of Bruges which was to
leave a lasting impression on him and his work. After having
taken a position in Brussels, Khnopff's father moved his
family to their new home and it is there that young Fernand
pursued his education. Following bourgeois tradition.
Khnopff entered law school for one year before he was
reluctantly’ permitted to .study art. Before entering the
Brussels Académie des Beaux Arts in 1876 where he was to
become a fellow student of James Ensor, he studied first
with paintor Xavier Mellery whose style was to anticipate
Khnopff's penchant for silence. Showing great technical
skill at the Académie, Khnopff distingusihed himself from
his fellow classmates by taking second prize in an
historical composition and torso painting competition. In
1880 he began to develop his personal style which can be
perceived in three major periods; descriptive realism,

allegorical symbolism, allegory with increasing classicism.
and finally a period of limited production after World war

I. It was in the first period where he utilized a naturalism

marked by a disturbing suggestiveness of inner states of

being that Khnopff executed Encoutant en Schumann and

 

assured his position among significant Belgian artists.

Influenced by symbolist literature, he moved toward an

equivalent suggestive pictorial style. The Pre-Raphaelite‘s

126

version of the perfect woman attracted his attention and he
turned to his sister Marguerite as his favorite model. His
androgenous interpretation of her facial features dominates
his work adding to the mystery, suggestion and symbolism. A
well-educated private man, he remained true to his bourgeois

background as well as his idea of art.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Innovator and forerunner of the :modern. movement in
Vienna, Gustav Klimt created an art that was intensely
personal yet universally relevant. His public career spanned
three decades and his personal style progressed from
historical realism rooted. in. antiquity' to unconventional
representation through visual symbols. Leader of the Art
Nouveau movement in Austria, Klimt developed a decorative
style that carried profound psychological meaning. A quick
glance at any one of his works will reveal through his
superb line quality which forms the basis of his
compositions his rigorous training as a draftsman. An aspect

of his painting unparalleled in the history of modern art is

his sensitive yet dramatic use of gold that touches the
ethereal realm as well as the earthly realm. With or without
the gold,- his works retains a richly sensual surface
quality. He remains true to his decorative style as a medium
of expression while successfully combining naturalism with

ornamentation to produce a visually coherent and unified

picture. Much of Klimt's aesthetic, social and political

127

ideology is revealed through the image of woman. The
transformation of that image from bourgeois wife and mother
or mistress to femme fatale is current with fin de siecle
European thinking. Klimt shared ideas with other artists.
writers and musicians, and believed in the totality in art

and that a unity existed among all disciplines.

Max Klinger (1857—1920)

A diverse and prolific artist, Max Klinger is most
widely acclaimed for his ability to fuse realism and fantasy
into his graphic works, yet produce a compellingly modern
statement depicting turn of the century anxieties. Imbued
with emotion, his works expresse a deep concern for the
plight of women, urban violence and poverty. Early study at
the Karlsruhe Academy brought him into contact with realist
painter Karl Gussow and his great admiration for Goya led
him to Brussels in 1879 to study with Charles-Emile Wauters.
painter of the fantastic. A year later he began a long
friendship with Johannes Brahms and in 1894 he made an in

depth study of Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra. Also in

 

1894 he produced the Brahms Fantasies, one of fourteen print

cycles, based on the songs and choral works of Johannes
Brahms. In 1897 Klinger was made a corresponding member of
the Vienna Secession and, as a testimony to the power of
music and the strong belief in the interrelationship of the
arts, he executes the Beethoven statue, focal point of the

Vienna Secession's 1902 exhibition. As the author of Malerei

128

and Zeichnung, he puts forth his theory on line and color

 

where he gives free play to line as suggestive of the
bizarre and grotesque. His achievements have exerted a
lasting influence on Kche Kollowitz and surrealists Giorgio
de Chirico and Max Ernst. Born in Leipzig, the son of a soap

manufacturer, he spent most of his life there.

Frantisek Kupka (1971-19571

 

Thoroughly trained in the academic tradition in Prague
and Vienna and guided by' Maurice Denis' dictum that a
picture is esential a flat surface covered with colors and
arranged in a certain order, Frantisek Kupka, czech painter.
paved the way to abstraction in his search for forms that
are as abstract as music. His art was indeliby marked by
Bohemian folk tradition and his early experiences as a
spiritual medium. His professional training in Prague was
steeped in the Nazarene tradition which taught contemplation
and poetical and philosophical thought as suitable subject
matter. Exposure to the Viennese intellectual milieu led to

his later interest in Greek and German philosophers, eastern

religion and occult sciences. Of paramount importance to
Kupka was the harmony of color, form and motion. Kupka's
road to abstraction was long and arduous as he sought to
express meaning through abstract form. In the early stages
meaning relied on visual appearance in his use of figurative
symbolism to express metaphysical thoughts. He eventually

abandoned this in favor of a musical theme which

129

corresponded to a state of mind or feeling. Based on Henri
Bergson's definition of the rhythm of life represented
through the harmony of movement and color, Kupka reached for
an abstract visual pattern analagous to life and music.
Recognizing this impermanent state of being, time and motion
forced him to ultimately reject representation and search
for a new way. He developed what he called a "new reality"
governed only by the harmony of forms and rhythm. He settled
in Paris in 1896 and continued to paint, write, illustrate
and teach. While rejecting Cubism as the dominant art form.
the Futurist Manifesto formed a lasting impression on him in

his development toward non-objective art.

Edouard Manet (1832-18831

 

Edouard Manet, third son of Auguste and Eugenie
Fournier Manet found his first artistic support from his
maternal uncle, a draughtsman. Not willing to follow his
strict father's desires and enter the field of law, after a
brief tour of duty in the navy, he entered the studio of

Coutour in 1850. His frequent trips to the Louvre to copy
Valazquez and the Dutch masters brought him into contact

with Fantin Latour and Edgar Degas who remained his life
long friends. By 1860 Manet had also become a close friend
of critic Charles Baudelaire and subsequent years saw Manet
produce his Olympia, which was accepted at the Salon while
Déjeuner sur l'herb was rejected but dominated a position of

prominance at the Salon des Refusés. Already Manet, a man of

130

means and social class was out cast as a revolutionary among
painters. After the death of his father in 1862, one year
later Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff accomplished pianist
and teacher. In 1852, however, a son Léon was born to
suzanne and Manet set up house for the three of them.
Suzanne's musical accomplishments led to a friendship with
other musicans and Manet counted composer Emanuel Chabrier
among his closest friends. Although misunderstood by the
general public Manet was held in high esteem by his fellow
artists. The Café Guerbois became the meeting place for the
exchange of artistic and intellectual ideas and Manet with
his wit, charm and ability to debate, was at the center. Not
only a painter of modern Parisian life, Manet was a
printermaker as well. Through Baudelaire, he met symbolist
poet Stéphane Mallarmé, and was asked by the poet to
executed a series of etchings and lithographs to accompany a
translation of Edgar Allen Poe's poems. A private, senstive
man who said little of his own work, revealed the transitory

nature of modern life, yet reflected the past.

Edouard Vuillard (1869-1940)
Edouard Vuillard, French painter, originally planned a

profession in the military similiar to his father. "I could

think of nothing else at which I could distinguish myself."

he once said. In fact, his early schooling under strict
Marist Brothers prepared him for a conscientious and

disciplined life. Not until 1894, while attending the Lycée

131

Condorcet did he change his mind and decide to become a
painter. At the Lyceé he formed lifetime friendships with
Ker Xavier Roussel, who would be his future brother-in-law;
Maurice Denis, painter; and Lugne Poe, later to be a driving
force in the French theatre. Already a close friend, it was
Roussel who led Vuillard toward painting. By 1886 he entered
the Ecole des Beaux Arts and after a two ‘year period.
discontented with academic restrictions, he and Roussel left
to join the students under Bouguereau at the Académie
Julian. Here they met Paul Serusier, Pierre Bonnard, Felix
Vallaton, Paul Hanson, and Henri-Georges Abels and together
called themselves The Nabis. Upon his return to Paris in the
fall of 1888, Serusier, with some mystery, imparted the
symbolist-synthesis theories of Paul Gauguin and the Pont

Aven School to the newly formed Nabis. Sympathetic toward

antinatural tendencies, rather than strive to capture
nature, they sought to capture its essence, not its
representation but its feeling, a spiritual feeling.

Expressing the inexpressible and making visible the

invisible served as a point of departure. How to accomplish
this became the question. While rooted in traditional form.

one could not be bound to the actual appearance of these
forms. The Nabis found their solution in altering natural
shapes, flattening form and using color in non naturalistic
ways.

Vuillard felt the influence of Japanese prints and

symbolist poets Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé. From

132

these various sources, he fashioned his own personal world
of mood, decoration and mystery. His oeuvre is comprised of
small interiors, intimate in subject as well as size; three
sets of large decorative schemes, set designs for Lugne—
Poe's theatre, and designs for Tiffany stained glass.

Vuillard was also an accomplished printmaker.

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)

American born, educated in St. Petersburg and London.
Whistler moved to Paris in 1855 to become an artist. One to
quickly and adeptly synthesize contemporary art music and
literature, Whistler fashioned his style based on the
current realism tendencies of Courbet. He was influenced by
17th century Dutch and Spanish painting, as well as the
ideas of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelities in
the early 1860's. After a period of experimentation with
Albert Moore's classicism, search for structure and
fascination with Japanese art, Whistler arrived at
expressing mood through suggestion of space, simplification

of form, and a subdued palette applied in broad, sweeping

brush. strokes. Musical in nature, he produced paintings
equivalent to sound. While possessing an affinity toward
representing abstract ideas, Whistler evolved gradually to
embrace Symbolist aesthetics through contact with Mallarmé
Swinburne, and Burne—Jones. His associations with musicians
also played an important role in the exchange of ideas

between music and painting. His half sister Deborah, an

133

accomplished pianist entertained many musical evenings in
the Haden house, as well as in the Whistler home as a child.
Whistler, himself, studied the violin for a short period of
time. He also befriended other musicians, such as Frederick
Leyland and Claude Debussy. Major works include landscapes,
seascapes, nocturnes, arrangements, harmonies, portraits.
etchings, and lithographs which were exhibited widely in

England and France.

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