Tome LIX, 2022
ADRIAN-SILVAN IONESCU
150 ans depuis la mort du peintre George Catlin (1796–1872). D’un tepee indien jusqu’au palais royal
Abstract. From an Indian Tepee to a Royal Palace.
December 23, 2022 marked the 150th commemoration of painter George Catlin’s death. Two days before Christmas of 1872, this artist passed away, a humble, penniless, almost forgotten old man, after having an extraordinary life experience, travelling enormous distances in space and time, from the forms of the primitive village lost in the northern prairies of the New World, to the glittering metropolises and royal palaces of the Old World.
Catlin had an adventurous life, full of satisfactions, glory, unanimous recognition, but also of hardships, of financial entanglements that even led him to the debtors’ prison and to the loss of his valuable works and collections, built up with great sacrifices.
Educated to become a lawyer, he gave up the bar to devote himself to painting, in which he trained as a self-taught artist. He had some success as a miniature and portrait painter in Philadelphia but his great calling was the prairies and the natives who still roamed them in the first half of the 19th century. Catlin realized the imminent absorption and disappearance of these Native Americans into the mass of European-style civilization. He realized also that, through his art, he could preserve the natural, unaltered appearance of these communities, especially those that, being far from the urban area, had not been altered by contact with the whites.
In 1830 he began his great adventure through the still virgin lands of the West. With no financial backing from any institution or wealthy patron, Catlin set out, brave and determined, at his own expense, on this far-reaching venture. For eight years he travelled to remote areas and visited 48 tribes. To make it easier for him to transport his materials, he only bought canvas of a small size (29 × 24 in/74 × 61 cm), which he could wrap in cylinders of waterproof oilskin. Thus, most of his works are of the same size whatever the subject, be they bust or full-length portraits, landscapes or large compositions of buffalo hunters or ceremonies with many figures.
For his uncanny ability to reproduce the features of models, the Indians gave him the name Te-ho-pe-nee Wash-ee which translated to White Medicine Man.
In 1837 he began exhibiting his Indian Gallery, first in New York, then in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston, and in 1839 he crossed the ocean with 600 paintings and 8 tons of ethnographic pieces, including a 25 feet (7.60 m) high Crow tepee, which he exhibited with great success in London, Paris and Brussels. He was received by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and by King Louis Philippe at the Tuileries and St. Cloud. The latter invited him to exhibit at the Louvre and commissioned several copies of works he liked.
A gifted memoirist, Catlin wrote several volumes of memoirs about his travels and the Indian chiefs and European royalty he met. George Sand, Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire devoted enthusiastic lines to his works of art.
George Catlin is one of the most important 19th century documentary painters of America and worldwide. A pioneer of this art form, a dilettante ethnographer, a talented memoirist of his adventures, an ingenious entrepreneur of folkloric shows, and a world celebrity of his time, George Catlin left a work of enduring value in which the faces and daily activities of Native Americans in the last days of glory of their traditional way of life were preserved before they were assimilated into the mainstream of European-style American civilization.
Keywords: documentary art, Native Americans, Catlin’s Indian Gallery, George Sand, Charles Baudelaire, Queen Victoria, King Louis Phillipe, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Alexander von Humboldt.
DANA JENEI
Illustrations from the Historische Cronica (Frankfurt, 1630) painted in the Reussner House in Sibiu/Hermannstadt
Résumé. Le présent article analyse les peintures murales découvertes dans l’ancienne salle des fêtes de la maison de Johannes Reussner, consul à Sibiu, datées du milieu du XVIIe siècle, qui sont le seul exemple connu des illustrations de Matthäus Merian à l’Historische Chronica (Francfort, 1630) transposées dans l’art monumental. L’Histoire de Rome, d’après Titus-Live, est représentée dans le registre supérieur des murs: Romulus et Remus exposés sur les rives du Tibre, Romulus et Remus consultent les Augures, la Mort de Remus, l’Enlèvement des Sabines et le Combat des Horaces et des Curiaces. Le registre inférieur représente des scènes de l’Histoire ancienne: les Jugements de Cambyse et Zaleucus, Philonamus et Callias, ce dernier n’étant connu que par des photographies historiques.
L’ensemble est d’une grande importance pour l’image de la décoration intérieure de l’époque moderne dans les résidences du riche patriciat saxon de Transylvanie.
Keywords: Transylvania, Sibiu, Reussner, wall paintings, mid-seventeenth century, Titus Livius, Historische Chronica.
Mario Meunier, secrétaire de Rodin et hôte de Constantin Brancusi, «médiateur» entre les poétiques des deux maîtres
Résumé. L’auteur se propose d’approfondir la relation d’amitié établie entre le sculpteur Constantin Brancusi et Mario Meunier, helléniste réputé et secrétaire d’Auguste Rodin. Cette étude a pour thème principal l’«enseignement classique» que Meunier a très vraisemblablement prodigué à Brancusi. Selon un témoignage digne de toute confiance, dans l’ambiance de l’atelier du sculpteur on lisait à haute voix les Dialogues de Platon. Sachant que Mario Meunier était le traducteur du Banquet, du Phèdre et du Phédon on peut postuler que la voix du lecteur était bien celle de l’helléniste même. De telles «pressions pédagogiques» ont dû avoir des retombées certaines sur l’œuvre statuaire de Brancusi. Notre étude touche également au problème d’un «enseignement rodinien» prolongé, dont le jeune sculpteur fut l’objet même après avoir quitté Rodin, en avril 1907. Meunier a pu en être le médiateur idéal, vu qu’il était un familier de la poétique et des penchants culturels, ainsi que de la vie quotidienne du maître. Le sculpteur roumain avait bien été réceptif à un tel enseignement, ce qui résulte du «parallélisme» entre Rodin et Brancusi, dont nous tracerons ici les contours. On signalera des thèmes identiques que les deux maîtres ont délégués à un certain nombre de leurs œuvres, ainsi que leur intérêt mutuellement partagé pour la statuaire antique, pour la photographie, pour la danse et pour l’architecture gothique, ou encore pour l’œuvre perçue comme musée personnel ou ensemble autonome, porteur d’une signification élargie, qui surpasse celle des œuvres perçues individuellement.
Keywords: Brancusi’s studio, direct carving, Brancusi’s library, Plato, Mario Meunier, Rodin’s private secretary, pedagogic pressures, Rodin and Brancusi, creative strategies.
CORINA TEACǍ
Le symbolisme et les beaux-arts en Roumanie : thèmes, sources, idées (1896–1918) (II)
Résumé. Cet article tente de présenter les traits principaux de lʼart symboliste roumain et les circonstances dans lesquelles il apparaît et se propage, aussi bien que les sujets mis en circulation.
Keywords: Symbolism in Romania, modern art, art in Eastern Europe.
N O T E S E T D O C U M E N T S
ADRIAN-SILVAN IONESCU
Un portrait inconnu d’Omer Pasha de C. D. Rosenthal
Abstract. I happened to compile a study of General Omer Pasha’s portraits some years ago, as his biography is closely interlinked with the history of the Romanian Principalities. In 1848, during the Ottoman occupation of Bucharest, the general was in command; he would be again involved as a leading commander during the 1853–1854 Danube campaign against the Russians, the prelude of the Crimean War. On a personal note it is worth mentioning he was married to a Romanian lady.
The illustrated magazines of the time and the correspondence among the 1848 revolutionaries reveal that the painter C. D. Rosenthal traveled to Giurgewo to paint a portrait of this important military commander and of the extraordinary envoy of the Sublime Porte, Suleiman Pasha. Die Illustrierte Zeitung and L’Illustration published sketches of this portrait, but than the trail went cold, we know nothing more about the finished painting… until the 2021 auction at the Artmark House – when this presumed lost portrait suddenly surfaced. It is a relatively small oil on cardboard work (26.5 x 21 cm), and represents the brave soldier in a different posture from the ones in the sketches published earlier.
Therefore, Rosenthal’s artworks catalogue enriches with a portrait known to have been painted, but not known to have survived the vicissitude of time.
Keywords: Omer Pasha, the 1848 Wallachian Revolution, The Crimean War, Constantin Daniel Rosenthal.
C H R O N I Q U E E T V I E S C I E N T I F I Q U E
La 24e Assemblée Générale RIHA, Vienne, 13–15 oct. 2022 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 105
Spirituality in Watercolour – Ligia Podorean Ekström, Exhibition, The Romanian Cultural Institute in Sweden, Stockholm, October 6, 2021 – January 20, 2022 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 110
Conférence sur la photographie ethnographique de Roumanie, Prague, 7–10 novembre 2022 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 114
L’exposition rétrospective Tudor Zbârnea. Călătorie spre centrul fiinţei. Ecourile arhetipului (Voyage vers le centre de l’être. Les échos de l’archétype), Musée National d’Art de Roumanie, 19 juin – 4 sept. 2022 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 119
L’exposition Gaudi, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 12 avril – 17 juillet 2022 (Eduard Andrei), p. 125
The 39th Annual Oracle Conference in Bucharest (November 3–5, 2021) (Marian Țuţui), p. 136
Albrecht Dürer. German Engraving in the 16th Century Exhibition, March 4–25, 2022, “Theodor Pallady” Gallery of the Romanian Academy. The Catalogue of the Exhibition, The Romanian Academy Library (Virginia Barbu), p. 143
L’exposition Turnier. Wettkampf und Spiel, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, 7 avril – 6 novembre 2022 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 147
L’exposition Robes impériales. Une garde-robe reconstituée, Médiathèque Jacques-Baumel, Rueil-Malmaison, 1–30 sept. 2022 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 150
M. H. Maxy – From Avant-garde to Socialism Exhibition, National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest, December 28th, 2022 – April 30th, 2023 (Raluca Partenie), p. 155
C O M P T E S R E N D U S
In honorem Adrian-Silvan Ionescu 70. Interrupting the Historical Present (Olivia Niţiș), p. 163
MARY McAULIFFE, Paris. Napoleon al III-lea, baronul Haussmann și crearea unui oraș al visurilor (Paris. Napoléon III, le baron Haussmann et la création d’une ville des rêves), traduit de l’anglais par Adina Ihora, préface par Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Ed. Corint, București, 2022, 366 p. + ill. (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 164
CǍLIN DEMETRESCU, Les ébénistes de la Couronne sous le règne de Louis XIV, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Lausanne, 2021, 438 p., 399 ill. (Ioana Beldiman), p. 170
Spiritual and Cultural Heritage of the Monastery of Studenica. Past, Perseverance, Contemporaneity, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA), Gallery of Visual Arts and Music, Belgrade, December 13, 2019 – March 31, 2020), Exhibition Catalogue by Acad. Miodrag Marković, Belgrade: Donat graf, 2019, 512 p. and color illustrations (Elisabeta Negrău), p. 173
Byzantine Heritage and Serbian Art, eds.-in-chief Ljubomir Maksimović, Jelena Trivan, eds. Danica Popović, Dragan Vojvodić, The Serbian National Committee of Byzantine Studies, Institute for Byzantine Studies – Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, 2016, 3 vols. (vol. 1 – 212 p.; vol. 2 – 636 pp.; vol. 3 – 256 p.) (Elisabeta Negrău), p. 174
DOÏNA LEMNY, Brancusi, la chose vraie, Éditions Gourcuff Gradenigo, Montreuil, 2022 (240 p. avec ill.) (Eduard Andrei), p. 177
Copyright © G. Oprescu Institute of Art History, 2010
Calea Victoriei 196, sector 1, Bucharest, Romania
Phone and fax number: +4021.314.40.70