Exhibitions 2
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (Grand Palais, Paris, till 12 January 1998, then Metropolitan Museum, New York)
Distinctive power
Martin Gayford
But what will we think of it in 50 years time?' — so a friend of mine likes to conclude discussions on contemporary art. He's quite right, of course, in part. Artistic reputations are written, if not on water, on some extremely mutable substance that magnifies, diminishes or destroys them over a period of time. But he errs in believ- ing a mere half century is enough for such things to settle down. Even after a century, or two, artists can sometimes re-emerge from the shadows — as is shown by the case of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. A hundred and seventy-five years after his death Prud'hon suddenly looks like a much more interesting and exciting painter in the light of the current exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris.
To most of us — certainly to me Prud'hon has been not much more than a name, attached to the huge and celebrated portrait of the Empress Josephine in the Louvre. But, on close examination, he is revealed as one of the most fascinating fig- ures of the French Revolution and Empire. A decade younger than David, considerably older than Ingres and Gericault, he has affinities with all of them, while remaining a unique artistic personality in his own right. As one walks round, it is as if a miss- ing piece of the art-historical puzzle is falling into place.
His work, however, makes the period more complex, not more straightforward. Prud'hon is one of those artists who seem to have lived in order to make the facile classifications of critics look absurd. Neo- Classicism, Rococo, Romanticism — there are works in which each of those labels might seem to fit. There is a soft sensuality about his mythological paintings and book illustrations that leads back to Fragonard (and also shows that he had looked hard at the sweet, misty eroticism of the Renais- sance master Correggio). But at other 'Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, 1808, by Prud'hon (Louvre) moments, he can be as classical as David although in a gentler, less toughly mascu- line mode. Then again there are thunder- ously tragic pictures — the most impressive — that show just why the young Gericault painted copies of Prud'hon. 'Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime', Prud'hon's masterpiece, clearly anticipates the 'Raft of the Medusa' in its ominous darkness and the sprawling, naked corpse at the base of the composition.
There are reasons for the relative neglect of Prud'hon. He was neurotic by nature, suffering from — possibly psychosomatic — ill-health. He started many more paint- ings than he finished, and a number of those that did leave the studio were wholly or partly executed by his mistress and pupil Constance Mayer. Also, some of his work has deteriorated badly because of his addiction to the use of bituminous paint a scourge of the period which ravaged Reynolds's and Gericault's work as badly. Lustrous and velvety when first applied, bitumen ages to the colour of black treacle, contracting and wrinkling as it does so. Nothing can be done to put this right, but for this exhibition restorers have made the worst-affected paintings — 'Justice and Divine Vengeance' is one — easier on the eye.
If not exactly a Romantic — indeed, not exactly anything — Prud'hon certainly had the raw nerves and volatile sensibility that we associate with the Romantics. It is that which gives his work its distinctive power. Unlike G.F. Watts, he was able to give gen- eralised concepts so personal a psychologi- cal charge that they seem like stories, even autobiography. The early 'Union of Love and Friendship', youthful male and female nudes, has an almost cloying eroticism combined with a sense of nostalgia and loss. A series of extraordinarily beautiful life studies, mainly of his favourite models Marguerite and Julien, have something of the same wistful atmosphere.
Dark clouds are seldom far away. The Empress Josephine reclines, pensive and quietly melancholic in a shadowy wood. `Justice and Divine Vengeance' — with moon behind the clouds, fleeing assassin and rush of wings above — has more the feeling of a dreadful crime by night than a clash of allegorical concepts (it was com- missioned for one of the law courts of the Palais de Justice in Napoleonic Paris). Occasional portraits, especially the young mother, Mme Georges Anthony, with her chubby children Fredi and Joseph, sparkle with vitality. Prud'hon's letters, with their eloquent lamentation of his ill-fortune, make com- pelling reading. Rousseau, as the catalogue remarks, is never far from hand. Happiness he wrote, was something of which he had dreamt for his entire life and never had for a moment — indeed 'le reve du bonheur' is the subtitle of this exhibition. 'All my thoughts are carried to melancholy. Noth- ing remains to me, happiness destroyed, except a vain dream, sad memories, and bitter regrets.' It is clear that — again like Gericault — Prud'hon was afflicted inter- mittently with overpowering depression. His life, it is true, genuinely had moments of melodramatic misfortune. He married early, and apparently unhappily despite having six children. In 1803 Mme Prud'hon moved out of their lodgings in the Sorbonne, only to return and make such violent scenes that other artists living there complained. Eventually Prud'hon had her barred from the premises and shut up in an asylum. For the next 18 years her place was taken by Constance Mayer — a talented painter from a bourgeois back- ground — until she committed suicide in 1821. Prud'hon died two years later (the moving letters quoted above were written in the interim). But, the catalogue points out, Prud'hon was not always unhappy, nor was he invari- ably unfortunate. He never made a fortune, partly because of his low production. But, in other ways, his career was a success story. Indeed, it demonstrates how easy it was for a talented individual to rise even in pre-revolutionary France. Prud'hon was the son of a stone-cutter, living in sleepy, Burgundian Cluny, and was talent-spotted by the local priest. He was funded for years by a pension from Bur- gundy eventually winning the Prix du Rome and becoming one of the most prominent artists in Paris. The records show him taking a full part in artistic life during the revolutionary period, executing revolutionary allegories for the govern- ment, including one of 'Wisdom and Truth Descending to Earth' begun at the height of the Terror (not one of his best pieces). Under the restored Bourbons, he turned his hand to religious subjects such as a Cru- cifixion for Strasbourg Cathedral. At his best — and he was an uneven artist — Prud'hon, like Ingres, Delacroix and Gericault, was able to make commis- sioned portraits and public art the vehicle for powerful private emotions — that is What makes 'Justice and Divine Vengeance' and the Empress Josephine so haunting. The whole period is, of course, a turning point not just in art history but in history altogether. Prud'hon turns out to be among its most enigmatic and fascinating representatives.
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