Prostitutes, Drunkards and Drug-Addicts in Fin de Siecle Art

“Shamelessness is really a virtue, like the lack of respect for many respectable things.”

(Kees van Dongen)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sofa, 1894-96, Oil on cardboard

The idea for this post came to me spontaneously. I just happen to have noticed a few recurring motives in the art of the late nineteenth century; the motif of prostitutes, people drinking or being drunk, and drug-addicts. The fact that these motives are recurring motives is a reflection of the spirit of the times but it also shows that the artists had gained freedom from the restrictions of society. Fin de siecle or “end of century” in English is a term which simply describes a time period, that is, the end of the nineteenth century, but in a deeper, cultural, literary and artistic sense, it implies a certain mood, a spirit of the times. Fin de siecle is a strong scented nocturnal flower that is quickly rotting. The spirit of the era is a spirit of ennui, pessimism, cynicism, decadence and also, especially connected to the topic of this post, it is seen as an era of degeneracy.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Woman Pulling up her Stockings, 1893, oil on cardboard

The themes of prostitution, alcoholism, drug usage that the fin de siecle painters explored so readily and with such inspiration, have all existed before, but for some reason in fin de siecle they took the centre stage. Perhaps, in some sense, there is a parallel between the degeneracy of the fin de siecle and our times; I mean, just take a look at the pink or green haired gender non-conforming weirdos on Tik Tok and such stuff. And if Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec wanted to paint female body today, he would not need to visit the brothel and hang out with the prostitutes, he could just hop on Instagram to feast his eyes on bosoms and behinds. But I digress. Point is that the element of social degeneracy in relation to fin de siecle is an important element for this post. The question is; did the artists suddenly a surge of bravery when they decided to capture these themes, or were these phenomenons such as alcoholism and prostitutions, just so pervading that it was impossible to ignore them?

Edgar Degas, Waiting for a Client, 1879, charcoal and pastel over monotype on paper

Courtesans and female nudes have been present throughout the art history but never was the ugliness of flesh and ugliness of desire captured so vividly than in the artworks of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted between 1892 and 1896. The pioneer of the motif was Edgar Degas in his wonderful but little less known charcoal and pastel drawings of brothel scenes such as the pastel here called “Waiting for a Client.” Women, naked save for their garish stockings and perhaps a ribbon in their hair, occupy the canvases of Degas and Lautrec, lounging on sofas, chatting with one another or just relaxing in between the visit of the clients. Thick thighs, saggin breast and stomach, morbidly pale complexions, tired eyes and faces ladden with disappointment or apathy, these are Odalisques stripped of the aura of Romantic glamour of the past eras. What you see is what you get with these women. There are no carefully thought-of poses, coy looks over the shoulder while the derriere is being shown in full view, as was the case with nudes from the previous eras. These women don’t look like they are posing. Even though Lautrec often painted them in his studio rather than in the real brothel where the light was bad, the appearance is that of spontaneity and honesty.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Prostitutes, 1895

Drunkards

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Hangover (Portrait de Suzanne Valadon), 1888

In both of these portraits by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec he paints his sitters in the setting of a pub and seen from the profile. It is fascinating to imagine Lautrec sitting in the cafe or wherever with these people, such as Van Gogh himself, and just casually capturing them. Just wow. Painting “The Hangover” is actually a portrait of Suzanne Valadon and it brings to mind Edgar Degas’ painting “The Absinthe Drinkers” painted in 1876. Both paintings ooze a sense of desperation and halloweness, the true hangover mood. In the portrait of Vincent van Gogh, shown bellow, the mood is a that of fun, vibrancy and frenzy. The colours are exciting and warm; red, yellow, orange, electric blue. This is the excitement of the night one, the excitement of absinthe coloured Parisian nights when everything can happen. But after the excitement, hangover follows, as the previous painting shows.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1887

James Ensor, The Drunkards, 1883

Now, we have two interesting examples of drunkards in fin de siecle art, James Ensor’s “The Drunkards” from 1883 and Kees van Dongen’s “Absinthe Drinker in the Street” from 1901. The latter is a year too late for the end of the century and the former a tad too early, but time periods are not as strict and it is the spirit of the times that matters. In Ensor’s painting two men are sitting at the table. One is looking at us with a crazy-eyed expression while the other burried his head on his hands. One bottle of alcohol on the table. Empty glasses. Crazy eyes and a drab interior. This place reeks of desperation.

Kees van Dongen, Absinthe Drinker on the Street, 1902

I have always loved Kees van Dongen’s painting “Absinthe Drinker in the Street”. There is just something so playful about the lady falling down in the street and a skull with a black top hat. I mean, what a combination!? Skeletons and skulls are a recurring motif in Kees van Dongen’s art, and there is always something a bit comical about it, at least to me. The crimson colour of the woman’s hat and dress are a gorgeous pop of colour in the otherwise drab, grey setting. What is the skull really? A product of the woman’s drunken imagination? Or is it a real living and talking skull whose main goal is to be a devil on the woman’s shoulder and force her to drink? This really makes my imagination go wild.

Drug Addicts

Eugène Grasset, La Morphinomane [The Morphine Addict], 1897, color lithograph

When it comes to the topic of drug addiction in the late nineteenth century art, Eugene Grasset’s painting “The Morphine Addict”, painted in 1897, is the first that comes to mind. I have indeed already written a longer post devoted to that painting alone, here. There are so many things that I love about that painting but let me name a few; firstly the Japanese influence which can be seen in the woman’s face expression, the grimace which accurately captures the pain that she is experiencing, the intimate setting of a bedroom further emphasised by the fact that she is dressed in a nightgown and also the closely cropped composition. Soon the pain will turn into a sweet state and this transition is beautifully captured by the Spanish painter Santiago Rusinol in his two paintings, “Before the Morphine” (1890) and “La Morphinomane” (1894) painted, interestingly, fours years apart even though the theme is the same. Both paintings shows a bedroom interior with a black haired woman in her nightgown; in the first paintings she is about to take morphine while in the second painting she is lying as though lifeless, enjoying the sweet ecstasies of the state.

Santiago Rusinol, Before the Morphine, 1890

Santiago Rusiñol, La Morphinomane, 1894

Eugène Grasset – La Morphinomane (The Morphine Addict)

“Well it just goes to show
Things are not what they seem
Please, Sister Morphine, turn my nightmares into dreams
Oh, can’t you see I’m fading fast?
And that this shot will be my last…”

(The Rolling Stones, Sister Morphine)

Eugène Grasset, La Morphinomane (The Morphine Addict), 1897, color lithograph

In one of my previous posts I wrote about Eugene Grasset’s lovely watercolour “Young Girl in the Garden”, but today I am presenting a very different work of the same artist. The heroine of the artwork is again a woman, but not a dreamy, romantic young woman standing in her garden, surrounded by flowers and birds in the sunset of the day, oh no, the heroine of this colour litograph is a morphine addict. The figure of the addict woman is portrayed from the head to the knees and this closely cropped composition makes the mood more intimate, more immediate. The fact that she is dressed in her undergarments contributes to the intimate, secretive mood. After all, injecting morphine is a private thing to do so the bedroom setting and the clothes she is wearing are both more than appropriate. We hold our breath as we watch the woman inject the morphine into her thigh. The transient pain of the needle will soon melt into sweet nothingness that the Sister Morphine offers…

“Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don’t care anymore
About all the Jim-Jim’s in this town
And all the politicians makin’ crazy sounds
And everybody puttin’ everybody else down….
Then thank God that I’m good as dead
Then thank your God that I’m not aware
And thank God that I just don’t care
And I guess I just don’t know
And I guess I just don’t know.“

(Velvet Underground, Heroin)

All details are eliminated; we can partly see the green chair behind the woman and the table on the left is cut off from the space of the artwork because neither are necessarry. Even the colour scheme is simplified; yellow, white, black and green, and thus all our focus goes straight to the woman and in particular to her face which is definitely the most interesting aspect of this litograph. The painful grimace on her face, with its teeth showing and eyebrows clenched is animalistic, primal, without contraints, and how different in that regard to the reserved aloofness and coldness of the elegant upper class ladies with their stiff corsets and fixed smiles.

The injection of morphine brings a rush of pleasure, followed by a drowsiness, sleepiness and dreaminess. We are witnessing this very journey; from the initial almost orgasmic pleasure to the realm of dreams where reality can’t hurt her anymore. Pleasure and dreams as means to forget it all. The flat surface and the woman’s grimace both show the Japanese influence on Western artists.

Paul Albert Besnard, Morphine Addicts or The Plume, 1887, etching, drypoint and aquatint

Grasset was just one of the fin de siecle artists who peeked behind the velvet curtains of the supposedly respectable society and painted the garish and ugly reality that was hiding there; alcoholism, prostitution, debauchery, drug use. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Kees van Dongen, Paul Albert Besnard and many others portrayed scenes of the seedy Parisian underbelly; the world of bohemians, outcasts and degenerates. The woman in this litograph -a prostitute and a morphine addict – is a stark contrast to the elegant upper class ladies seeping tea or strolling around which can be found in the art of Mary Cassatt. Paintings by Cassatt portray the visible reality, but Grasset is the voyeur who is peeking at the hidden, forbidden aspects of the late nineteenth French society.

Pierre Bonnard – Street Scene

Pierre Bonnard, Street Scene, 1899, four panel screen, colour litograph

Pierre Bonnard was fascinated by the liveliness and vibrancy of Parisian streets and parks where nannies, dogs and children play in sunny spring days and he painted many such vibrant street scenes, but this “Street Scene” (also known as “Nannies Promenade, Frieze of Carriages”) is a special street scene because the common Impressionist and Post-Impressionist motif of a street scene is inspired by the Japanese art and it also exhibits the philosophy of the Nabis group that art should be present in everyday life, in everyday objects such as tapestries, fans, posters and decorative folding screens. A century and a half before Bonnard, the art of Rococo had already shown a fondness for folding screens which were painted in the spirit of chinoserie, but the artists who painted the screens were always anonymous and unimportant, but in the late nineteenth century the artists of Post-Impressionism and Nabis found a tremendous source of inspiration in Japanese art and works such as this street scene by Bonnard are a delightful mix of Post-Impressionist European art and the influence of Japan.

Bonnard, a young artist at the time, first painted the screen in distemper (pigment in glue) on canvas with carved wood frame in 1895. In 1894 in a letter to his mother he spoke about the idea for the painting: “I am working on a screen […]. It is of the Place de la Concorde with a young mother walking with her children, with nannies and dogs, and on top, as a border, a carriage rank, and all on a light beige background which is very like the Place de la Concorde when it’s dusty and looks like a miniature Sahara.” And in 1895-96 around a hundred and ten colour lithographs were made and the one you see here is one of them. Half of those lithographs were destroyed in a flood in Paris in 1940. They were sold either individually or in a set and could either be mounted on the screen and served as a decoration in the room, or they could have been framed and placed on the wall as a panting. It is beautiful to see it flat like a painting and also beautifully folded in zig zag way, each vertically enlongated screen is an artwork for itself and yet it created a scene for itself. This narrow vertical canvas is called “kakemono” in Japanese art, and the action in the painting is suppose to be read in Japanese way, from right to left.

Bonnard showed a great interest in the folding screens and the first one he created was “Women in the Garden” in 1891 but in that folding screen every part of the canvas was filled with pattern and colour. In contrast, “Street Scene” is beautifully empty and there is an intricate visual play between groups of figures and the empty space. The figures are flat and simple. The placement of figures seems spontaneous but is actually carefully planned and it looks beautiful when the screen is opened or flat. The group of figures in the foreground are a fashionably dressed mother with her two children who are playing with sticks and hoops, a game seen often in the art of the Impressionists. A little black dog is here too. In the background three almost identically dressed nannies, and a row of carriages with horses behind them.

 

Reneé Vivien: I am drunk from so many roses redder than wine

These days I am swooning over the sensuous, dreamy and languid poetry by a French poetess born in England, a lesbian in love with death and flowers, a turn of the century Sappho: Reneé Vivien (1877-1909).

Maurice Denis, Portrait of Mlle Yvonne Lerolle in three poses, 1897

She was born on 11th June 1877 in Paddington, England, in a prosperous family. Her childhood was laced with coldness from her mother’s side and an inexplicable longing. Sensitive and introspective, as a teen she was introduced in the world of poetry through a correspondence with an older poet who was her father’s friend. At one point she ran away from home, but she quickly ran out of money on that quest and she was just about to throw herself in the Thames when she was caught and returned home. Still, by that point, she had made up her mind to be a poetess and as soon as she could she moved to Paris and changed her name to Reneé Vivien. Always a hopeless romantic, always bitterly disappointed by poly-amorous attitudes of her lovers. After many love affairs, loneliness and sadness remained, and her withered soul, yearning for raptures and delights, found relief in alcohol, deliberate fasting and a drug she was addicted to since she was a teen.

Her entire life she dreamed of death as a romantic escape from the dreariness and misery of this earthly existence. She particularly daydreamed of drowning just like the melancholy heroine Ophelia. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt by laudanum in 1908, when she stretched herself on a divan clutching a little bouquet of violets in her hand, she was weakened and pneumonia took her on the 18th November 1909. Violets were her favourite flower, and purple her favourite colour. Rich in visual imagery, rich in sounds, laced with longing and desire at once, intense and nocturnal, her verses make one imagine a lady from a Symbolist painting, strolling slowly in a garden, at night, dressed in a long loose white gown, her hair left down, caressed by the moonlight, inhaling the fragrance of midnight roses and white jasmine as her bosom invitingly rises and descends… Here are two of her poems that I particularly loved; “Undine” and “Chanson”:

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Undine

Your laughter is light, your caress deep,

Your cold kisses love the harm they do;

Your eyes-blue lotus waves

And the water lilies are less pure than your face..

 

You flee, a fluid parting,

Your hair falls in gentle tangles;

Your voice-a treacherous tide;

Your arms-supple reeds.

 

Long river reeds, their embrace

Enlaces, chokes, strangles savagely,

Deep in the waves, an agony

Extinguished in a night drift.

Reneé Vivien, born under the name Pauline Mary Tarn, below with her lover and muse Natalie Clifford Barney:

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Chanson

The flight of the fluttering bat

Is tortuous, anguished, bizarre.

Then, beating her bruised wings thereat,

She turns, and looks back from afar.

 

Have you never felt, just one time,

How, drunken with painful defeat,

My soul, in a mad flight sublime,

Soared to your lips, distant but sweet?

Edvard Munch – Maiden and the Heart

And “love” is just a miserable lie
You have destroyed my flower-like life
Not once – twice
You have corrupt my innocent mind
Not once – twice.

(The Smiths, Miserable Lie)

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944), Maiden and the Heart, 1896

Edvard Munch’s etching shows a nude girl sitting outdoors, on the grass, surrounded by a few scarce flowers. She turned her back on us, showing off the beautiful line of her arching back. We cannot meet her gaze, but seen from the profile her furrowed brow allows us to assume that the feelings mounting in her soul are that of sadness or pain. Our attention immediately leads somewhere else. In her stretched hands she is holding a heart; live, bleeding, crimson red (we can imagine), pulsating, aching, painful heart. From about 1894, Munch was getting more and more interested in woodcuts and etchings, and he was skilful in those art forms as well as in standard oil on canvas.

Paintings of Edvard Munch nearly always explore deep, profound themes and states of the soul; anxiety and alienation, loneliness, death and despair, love and pain, and the crown of his themes is love as a source of anguish and pain. The sorrowful Maiden who is holding the bleeding heart in her hands is a visually simple etching, without too much detail, but the longer you gaze at it the more feelings it evokes, the more depth you see in it. Often used, and overused phrases such as “heart ache” or “broken heart” suddenly get a new exciting flair when I gaze at Munch’s interpretation of the subject. The idea of portraying pain so literally and so directly has so much of childlike straightforwardness and honesty in it. A broken heart is presented as a real bleeding thing that the Maiden can hold in her hand just as she would hold a book or a flower, and her hands and her feet are coloured with the crimson blood which drips, sweet and sticky as honey, on the grass, while the flowers listen, their petals full of worry. The trees in the background, silent and sketch-like, are mute to her pain.

Frida Kahlo, Memory (The Heart), 1937

I simply adore the idea of expressing pain so directly! In her painting “Memory (The Heart)”, Frida Kahlo did a similar thing. The oversized bleeding heart is meant to portray the pain inflicted by Diego Rivera’s affair with her younger sister.

Vincent van Gogh, Sorrow, 1882

Simple lines, expressiveness and pain of Munch’s etching reminded me of a famous drawing called “Sorrow” that Vincent van Gogh made in 1882. It shows Vincent’s friend Sien, at the time a sad, destitute pregnant woman prone to drinking, mostly likely working as a prostitute. Such simplicity of lines and depth of emotions in both works. I usually love Van Gogh’s rapturous mad yellows and Munch’s strong whirling, almost psychedelic brushstrokes but here the black line on white background is all I need. Perhaps the colour is an excess when the subject is such an intense emotion?

Egon Schiele – Melancholy of Suburbs and Small Towns

Suburbs and small towns of Middle Europe held a particular charm for Egon Schiele who often yearned to escape the ‘dark and dreadful’ city of Vienna, and venture to provinces and nature around the Czech town of Krumau.

Egon Schiele, Edge of Town (Krumau Town Crescent), 1918

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Schiele’s paintings of Krumau from early 1910s offer a decaying vision of this peaceful town situated in the South Bohemia. Unlike the Impressionists who simply couldn’t resist capturing the moment and the play of sunlight on bridges or cathedrals, Schiele captured his inner turmoil while simultaneously portraying the colourful facades and narrow streets of Krumau. From the pictures I’ve seen, Krumau seems like an interesting town and its beauty reveals itself in many aspects; from the mischievous river Vltava and the illustrious Medieval castle overlooking the town, to cobble streets and classic Central European architecture. However, on Schiele’s paintings, the town holds a different appeal. Look at the painting ‘Edge of Town’; crowded houses and intermingled roofs, radiant colours and simplified brushstrokes – like a kaleidoscop of colours and shapes. Schiele himself was never a disciple of accuracy in portrayal of landscapes. And thank God for that, because the very sight of ‘normal’ veduta makes my skin crawl! In Schiele’s paintings there’s intensity, emotions and chaos.

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Egon Schiele, House with Shingles, 1915

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Town of Krumau first caught Schiele’s attention in May 1910 when he, a month shy from his twentieth birthday, visited the place with two comrades and fellow painters; Anton Peschka and Ervin Osen. The town must have seemed like an interesting place for him because it was the birthplace of his mother, and he must have heard about the beautiful nature that surrounds it. On the whole, he settled there, in a ‘little house with a garden on the Moldau (Vltava) River’*, in May 1911, along with Wally Neuzil, his lover and model.

When painting suburbs and small town scenes, Schiele placed his focus not on details and photographic precision, but rather on the mood of the place. To understand why he liked small towns and suburbs you need to know his opinion of big towns and cities. It wasn’t just Schiele, but his whole generation, the artists and the poets, who deliberately continued in their work the fin de siecle vision of cities as places of decay and loss of humanity. For them, modern life and its reflection – the cities, along with the horrors of the First World War, were seen as the products of ‘materialistic tendencies of our civilisation’.

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Egon Schiele, Summer Landscape, Krumau, 1917

Egon Schiele, Houses with Laundry, Seeburg, 1914

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We could say that Schiele liked small towns because they were stark contrasts to his everyday life in Vienna – a city he experienced as ‘dark and full of shadows’.

He said: “I want to be alone. I want to go to the Bohemian Forest. May, June, July, August, September, October. I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences, I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour…”

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Egon Schiele, House with Drying Laundry, 1917

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Paintings such as ‘House with Shingles’ and ‘House with Drying Laundry’ best evoke Schiele’s love for simplicity and peacefulness of provincial life. In them, he portrayed pell-mell built houses with drab facades, small windows, some broken some not, old roof that’s probably leaking, old chimneys, and then the colourful clothes on the washing line. I just love seeing clothes on washing line! These scenes evoke so many questions: who lived in those houses, how did they live and where are they now? Again we see the typical Egon Schiele colour palette; earthy colours of wood, sand and mud, grays and dark greens. Schiele’s houses are heavy and brown, like they grew from the earth itself, or like they descend into it.

This poem by Russian poet Alexander Blok reminds me of Schiele’s apocalyptic vision of cities:

“The night. The street. Street-lamp. Drugstore.

A meaningless dull light about.

You may live twenty-five years more;

All will still be there. No way out.

 

You die. You start again and all

Will be repeated as before:

The cold rippling of a canal.

The night. The street. Street-lamp. Drugstore.”

(Alexander Blok, written on 10 October 1912, translated by Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks*)

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Egon Schiele, Houses on the Moldau, Krumau, 1910

Egon Schiele was born on 12th June 1890, which means I recently celebrated his birthday by fully engulfing myself into his art. Rereading about artists is the best thing ever because there’s always a new aspect of their art that I love. Schiele first lured me with his nudes, then I was crazy about his sunflowers, and now, well, you see that I’m enchanted with his Krumau scenes.

Reveries of Fin de Siecle

When boredom strikes the best thing to do is to immerse oneself into a completely different mood, place or time period. It is what I always do, and this time I chose fin de siecle.

Charles Hoffbauer, At the Ball, 1900s

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In the late 19th century, artists on both sides of the Channel began to question the social norms, and used art to display their radical, often perverse, opinions. They attacked capitalism and European imperialism, questioned the Victorian view on sexuality, promoted pure aestheticism, deemed Western society as hypocritical, delved into vampirism or simply longed for death. Creme de la creme of this new wave of literature includes novels such as A Rebours or Against Nature (1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans, Oscar Wilde’s notorious The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1892) by Thomas Hardy, The Triumph of Death (1894) by Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), and finally, the beautiful, bleak and disturbing Torture Garden (1899) by Octave Mirbeau.

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A scene from the film L’Apollonide or The House of Tolerance (2011); it’s set in a high-class brothel in Paris at the turn of the century

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In visual arts, the decadent, pessimistic and cynical spirit of ‘fin de siecle’ was demonstrated in a more exciting and vibrant manner and painters such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Felicien Rops, Childe Hassam, Edvard Munch, Jean-Louis Forain and many others produced paintings which satirised the state of society, at the same time giving it a certain dose of glamour which continues to fascinate people even today. Welcome to fin de siecle; the age of un-innocence, where darkness and sins lure from every corner, nightclubs offer nothing but loneliness, pessimism is the meal of the day, seedy salon lights conceal the gritty reality…

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1890

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The glamour and vividness of fin de siecle is perhaps best captured in paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – the painter of cabarets, dancers, singers, circuses, and prostitutes. With miraculous ability to capture the moment, incredibly good memory, and proneness for sharp observation that spares nobody, Toulouse-Lautrec, sketched dancers, dandies and common folk at places such as Moulin Rouge; the Studio 54 of La Belle Epoque. Imagine him sitting by the small round table, dressed in a black suit, bowler hat and a pair of spectacles, perhaps in the company of the dancer Jane Avril, drinking absinthe and voraciously sketching. Moulin Rouge, the place where silk dresses rustle, glasses cling, and conversations go on through the night, reminds me of the place Morrissey sang about in the song There is a Light That Never Goes Out:

“Take me out tonight
Where there’s music and there’s people
Who are young and alive…“*

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Jean-Louis Forain (French 1852 –1931), At the Masked Ball, 1885

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I have always wanted to attend a masquerade ball; to be someone else for a night and talk to strangers without having to reveal my true identity, with each mask I could be a different person. Jean-Louis Forain painted a lavishing ‘masked ball scene’ where the lady in a purple-white dress, black opera gloves, a mask and a lace veil stands beside an unmasked gentleman, possibly her love interest for the night. The colour palette for the background, rich wine, sangria and crimson shades, is perfectly suitable for the spirit of the era. The scene itself evokes mystery. What are they talking about? Probably some tittle-tattle with a fin de siecle twist.

The grin on her face and her eyes, barely visible through the mask, suggest she’s gazing at something interesting in the background, while her ‘hunched-back, moustache, hand-in-his-pocket’ companion clutches her arm tightly. Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes is the music for the background of this scene. Roses on her dress remind me of the introduction of The Picture of Dorian Gray: “The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. ”

Giovanni Boldini, The Divine in Blue, early 1900s

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Blue blue, electric blue, dynamic brushstrokes, femme fatale – it must be a work of the Italian painter Giovanni Boldini, famous for his turn of the century portraits of aristocratic ladies. This gorgeous, protruding shade of blue, and the lady’s half-hidden gaze make this portrait a perfect representative for the fin the siecle. Boldini’s portraits, along with some female figures in the novels I’ve mentioned above, all show that a new type of woman fascinated artists and society in fin de siecle. A lady who faints and screams like a virgin in Gothic novels simply wasn’t in tune with the times. ‘A New Woman’ stepped on the scene, and Boldini quickly resorted to his brush and a clear white canvas, to capture her charms and seductiveness.

A good example of a fin de siecle goddess is Clara from Torture Garden – a sadistic, intense, hysteric and beautiful redhead who gets pleasure from seeing tortures. She’s a bit extreme, but I like Mirbeau’s description of her gaze because I think Boldini’s ‘Divine in Blue’ has a gaze similarly pierced on the viewers:

“While I was speaking and weeping, Miss Clara was looking fixedly at me. Oh, that look! Never, no, never should I forget the look that adorable woman fixed me with, an extraordinary look in which amazement was mingled with joy, pity and love – yes, love – as well as malice and irony.. And everything.. A look which pierced me through, penetrating into me and overwhelming me body and soul.”

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A scene from the film L’Apollonide or The House of Tolerance (2011); it’s set in a high-class brothel in Paris at the turn of the century

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Another quote from Mirbeau’s Torture Garden, which is just as relevant today:

“You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.”

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Childe Hassam, Rainy Night, 1895

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This gorgeous painting by Childe Hassam, Rainy Night, reminds me of a dialogue in Woody Allen’s marvellous film Midnight in Paris (2011), starring Owen Wilson as Gil and Rachel McAdams as Inez:

“Gil: I don’t get here often enough, that’s the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the ’20s. Paris in the ’20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!

Inez: Why does every city have to be in the rain? What’s wonderful about getting wet?” (Midnight in Paris, 2011, Woody Allen)

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the title of Hassam’s painting – Rainy Night – now, is there a better moment? I always feel such rapture and manic energy when it rains, and this painting evokes the same feelings. The scene shows people bustling in front of a nightclub, opening their umbrellas, ladies pulling up their skirts so they don’t get wet, while the golden lights and warmth and pleasure awaits them just behind the doors. What a contrast; a nightclub with all its vibrancy is a place were one can forget oneself by dancing or drinking to oblivion, and, on the outside, a dreamy velvety night over the big city. I’d forget the nightclub for a night as beautiful as this.

Hassam, as an Impressionist, tended to capture the moment, and he did it beautifully in this watercolour. He captured both the excitement and the tenderness of the night, the evening lights and gentle shades of blue that endlessly flickers and overflows into alluring yellow-golds and dark midnight blue that exceeds in onyx black.

***

Jane Asher in the play ‘Charley’s Aunt’ (2012)

When I started writing this post I was bored beyond pain, but the decadent world of fin de siecle with all its paintings, film costumes, music and books strangely pulled me in. Cure for boredom became my current obsession.

Materialism vs Idealism in Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and The Rose

Oscar Wilde, author of ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, was ‘a flamboyant and sparklingly witty Anglo-Irish playwright, poet and critic’ (1) whose ideas and behaviour were often in stark contrast with the stale and conventional society he lived in. A dandy and an aesthete, Wilde was naturally drawn towards noble themes of beauty, sincerity and love, and his stories can be viewed as reflections of the decadent and pessimistic social landscape of fin de siècle. In ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, Wilde combined his typical eloquence with fairytale elements, interesting plot and lavishing symbolism.

One could argue that the fairytale, first published in May 1888 as a part of collection of children’s stories ‘The Happy Prince and Other Tales’, is a true product of its time. In this fairytale, Wilde confronted two ideas or, rather, mindsets that sparked discussions amongst intellectuals in fashionable salons, and are present throughout entire art history – materialism and idealism; the Student represents the former, while the Nightingale represents the latter.

Auguste Toulmouche, A Girl and Roses, 1879

*MATERIALISM

The Student, the main character of ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, is a thinker who pursues knowledge and places logic and reason above all. In the very beginning he proclaims: ‘I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine…’ This excessively confident and rather naive remark indicates the Student’s true character, and instantly connects him to realist art movement whose key features are the emphasis on modern world and belief in the power of science. He is briefly distracted from his studies by a beautiful daughter of his Professor who promised to dance with him if he brought her red roses.

From the beginning he is presented as a materialist; fixated on the rose and not questioning the worthiness of his love pursuit. His thoughts upon listening to the Nightingale’s song reveal his incapability of experiencing true emotions: ‘…she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.’(2) In a true manner of literary realism, Wilde chose a student for his character, continuing the long line of student characters such as Balzac’s Rastignac or Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov.

Wilhelm Menzler, The Rose Of All Roses, 1889

Professor’s Daughter, a haughty, vain, rude and ungrateful girl, is another character that represents materialism. Dr Jarlath Killeen claims: ‘As daughter of the Professor, the girl in ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is a powerful representation of the desire for knowledge allied with a profound commitment to materialism.” (3) However, the Student kept courting her, without realising her shallowness and class snobbery. When he found the rose, coloured beautifully by the Nightingale’s crimson red blood, he noticed its beauty, but only as a means of dancing with his beloved. He is incapable of appreciating beauty without expecting something material in return. When the Professor’s daughter received the rose, she stated: ‘I am afraid it will not go with my dress, (…) and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.’ She makes it clear that she’s uninterested in love that doesn’t include wealth and social position, adding further ‘… who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s nephew has’.

Although she rejected him cruelly, he is not to be pitied because he got what he deserved. His preoccupation with reason, logic and knowledge, alongside his materialistic worldviews made him a bad judge of character. His feelings are artificial as is his character, and since his love wasn’t deep and sincere he quickly returned to his studies, proclaiming: ‘What a silly thing Love is, (…) It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not true. (…) In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.‘ (4) The Student is doomed never to be happy because he seeks refuge in reason and is incapable of experiencing true emotions. Blinded by his pursuit of knowledge, the Student fails to notice and admire beauties around him; sweet scent of the flowers, song of the birds, fresh air and sunlight.

Adolphe Etienne Piot, Jeune Femme, 1880s

* IDEALISM

The Nightingale stands as a contrast to the Student. She is a true idealist and a dreamer, who ‘night after night’ sung of a true lover and ‘told his story to the stars.’ The Nightingale is a gentle and kind creature, led by intuition and feelings. Consequently she decided to sacrifice her life for love because she places love above all; above material things and social conventions. Ideas of love and beauty typical for fin de siècle, have developed as a response to materialism, rationalism and positivism of the previous era which saw the height of the bourgeois class and realism being developed as a literary genre.

In her eyes, love is something that transcends even death. Wilde described her as singing of the ‘Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.’ (5) Although such sacrifice would seem pathetic in the age of realism, it struck a chord with decadent and disillusioned pessimists and aesthetes of fin de siècle. In this sense, Wilde spiritually takes us back to Romanticism – yet another age of idealism, when poets such as Lord Byron, John Keats and Shelley sang of love, beauty and death.

Gustave Leonard de Jonghe, Girl With a Rose, 1878

Wilde’s choice of the bird nightingale as his character emphasises this symbolism even further; in his sonnets, Shakespeare compared love to the nightingale’s song, Keats compared this bird to a poet itself in ‘Ode to the Nightingale’, and Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his essay that: “A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.” (6)

Dr Jarlath Killeen argues that Wilde presented the Nightingale as a secular Christ-like figure: ‘This Christian transformation of the Philomena myth would explain the clear references to the crucifixion in ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, and Wilde’s association of the Nightingale with Christ who was willing to sacrifice himself for a beautiful idea the world was clearly not ready for.’ (7) Wilde presented the Nightingale as a doomed and sensitive creature rejected by the cruel world, someone who appears to be a loser, but is in truth a deeply noble individual whose sacrifice nobody understands.

In a sense, Wilde portrayed the Nightingale as an artist, and thus continued the long line of noble but lonely misunderstood individuals, ranging from Thomas Chatterton and John Keats all the way to Vincent van Gogh, and modern rock stars such as Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse. Just like those artists, the Nightingale sacrificed her life for her ‘art’ – the creation of a red rose. She gave her life for the idea. Even the Student places the Nightingale in the circle of artists, praising her song but decreeing her selfish: ‘In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that the arts are selfish.’ (8)

Wilde continues with a distinctly artistic imagery in description of the Nightingale’s opinion of love, which is rather different from the Student’s: ‘Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold’. Judging by the way the story ends, Wilde is subtly implying that the gentle ones are always crucified for their sensibility.

Marie Spartali Stillman, The Long Walk At Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, Watercolour, 1880s

* CONCLUSION AND MY VIEW

To summarise, Oscar Wilde’s story ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ can be perceived not only as Wilde’s personal clash between “English materialism and Celtic idealism”, (9) but as a universal historical, artistic and social struggle between materialism and idealism, reason and intuition, classical and romantic, Logos and Eros, Apollonian and Dionysian etc. As every art movement is a reaction to the previous one, so these opposites took turns and shaped the world’s history from the age of Homer to now. Romanticism came as an answer to the overly rational Age of Enlightenment, then the excessive sentimentality of Romanticism had to be neutralised by realism which praised science and logic, and in fin de siècle people, already bored with it all, rebelled against materialism and rationalism, and embraced idealism and emotionalism. ‘Sad Prince’ of the aesthetes, Oscar Wilde, lived in these changing times and expressed these conflicts in his works.

In my opinion, the story perfectly captures the spirit of the times it was written, because its main themes are love, beauty and death – a trio that graced the artistic landscape at the turn of the century, and sparked conversations in opium and absinthe-laced clubs and salons of London, among intellectuals, artists and dandies. The Nightingale’s sacrifice appeals to me immensely because it’s something glamorous and rebellious. In the act of sacrifice I see a clear detachment of the artist from the ‘common people’. Thomas Chatterton committed suicide, Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear, Lord Byron fought in Greece, the Nightingale gave her life for love – everything is better than a life of blessed mediocrity. I think Oscar Wilde took the Nightingale’s side because Aestheticism and dandyism are a stark contrast to materialism and logic, and her sacrifice is very artistic. At the same time, Wilde questions the value of the artist’s life. His quote confirms this: ‘The artistic life is a long lovely suicide’.

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(1) ”Oscar Wilde”, British Library

(2) The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde, Illustrated by Walter Crane, n.d. Web

(3) Dr Jarlath Killeen, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013

(4) The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde, Illustrated by Walter Crane, n.d. Web

(5) The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde, Illustrated by Walter Crane, May 6, 1997, Web

(6) Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Literature Network, n.d. Web

(7) Killeen, Jarlath; The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013

(8) The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde, Illustrated by Walter Crane, May 6, 1997, Web

(9) Killeen, Jarlath; The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – At the Moulin Rouge

Perhaps the most well-known and most detailed of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings, At the Moulin Rouge takes the viewer into a decadent and gaudy nightlife of Montmarte, with the glamour stripped away.

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-95

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted this painting between 1892 and 1895. The scene depicts the infamous cabaret Moulin Rouge, which first opened just a few years earlier, in gloomy and misty October of 1889. Henri was instantly attracted to its vibrant atmosphere and energy. Imagine him, with his top hat and spectacles, sitting at the round table covered with white tablecloth, drinking cognac and drawing with charcoal, capturing movement of the dancers and their lavishing dresses, and people around him. These sketches were merely rudiments for the oil-on-canvas paintings that he later made. Moulin Rouge became his second home, and wellspring of inspiration because night life, dancers and cabaret became his main subject. There was something honest about Moulin Rouge. On one hand it was a bewitching, artificial, glamorous world, but on the other hand, it was more truthful, a straightforward place for the ‘working class heroes’, artists and eccentrics. Toulouse-Lautrec found beauty in places that other artists discarded. In spirit of Zola’s Naturalism, he relished in the aesthetics of ugliness, and meticulously studied faces of people and their individual characteristics. He stripped away the glamour of Moulin Rouge and the nightlife of Montmartre, and, at the same time painted scenes so evocative of La Belle Epoque Paris. His paintings posses a charm today still, and are entrancing for the modern viewers even though more than hundred years had passed since their creation.

(I suggest you to enlarge the painting by clicking on it)

Look at the painting. The first thing you notice is the crowd in the middle. Three men and two women are talking. They appear to be sharing the newest gossip, or discussing something important. The lady with the orange-coloured hair certainly stands out (possibly a can-can dancer Jane Avril). We see a part of her hand in black glove, perhaps she’s talking and gesticulating, but she turned her back on us so we can’t be sure. She’s dressed in a typical flamboyant La Belle Epoque manner, her wide sleeved dress and collar are trimmed with fur, her red hair is adorned with a black hat. There’s a bottle and a half full glass on the table. Across from her sits a man seen from the profile (Edouard Dujardin), clutching a walking stick and whispering something to a lady next to him (dancer La Macarona). She seems dizzy from alcohol, and there’s a sense of irony in her smile. The remaining two figures at the table are the photographer Paul Sescau and the vintner Maurice Guilbert.

Behind the crowd we see the artist himself, a short figure with a hat, walking with his cousin Gabriel Tapie de Celeyran, a tall and equally grotesque figure. In the backdrop, another can-can dancer, La Goulue and her friend are fixing their hairstyles in the mirror. The walls in the background are covered with mirrors which give the appearance of a flickering green surface, mottled with brown. Mirrors reflect the vibrancy that goes on in the scene. Even though this is a crowd scene, each figure is highly individualised. There’s a diagonal orange line in the lower left corner, a hint of Japanese Ukiyo-e style unsymmetrical compositions. The most interesting part of the painting is the lower right corner which shows a woman, an English dancer named May Milton whose face is garishly green from the lights below. Her bright yellow hair enhances the contrast. Again a hint of Ukiyo-e prints; the composition cuts her face and torso, which leaves us with a sense of incompleteness, and fires our imagination.