Ernest Meissonier

Who he was

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (21 February 1815, Lyon -- 31 January 1891, Paris) was the most celebrated and best-paid French painter of Marie's time. He was known for small, microscopically exact genre scenes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century costume and for Napoleonic battle pictures (1807, Friedland, 1875, Metropolitan Museum). He was elected to the Académie des beaux-arts in 1861, became grand officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1880 and grand-croix in 1889, lived at Poissy from 1846 (where he was mayor for about a year, 1878--1879) and in 1890 became the first president of the re-founded Société nationale des beaux-arts (Wikipedia fr, "Ernest Meissonier"). His catalogue includes several Antibes subjects, which explains why Marie, a Nice girl, singles out his scenes "sur la route d'Antibes".

Marie and Meissonier

Marie writes about Meissonier only in her last two years, always as the foil of Jules Bastien-Lepage. She never meets him; she judges him from exhibitions and from dinner-table argument.

On 15 June 1883, visiting an exhibition of one hundred masterpieces for charity at the Salle Petit, she notes him as "le seul vivant" among Decamps, Delacroix, Fortuny, Rembrandt, Rousseau and Millet, and apologises to him, because she had known him badly and the works he showed at the recent exhibition of portraits were inferior (100.0161--0162). On 1 October 1883 she gives her fullest verdict: he is "un prestidigitateur", a maker of "tours de force" whose heads are good only when smaller than a centimetre; above that size they turn "dur et ordinaire"; of his work she admires only the Joueurs de boules on the road to Antibes, himself and his father on horseback, the etcher at work and the Louis XIII horseman at a window (101.0474--0479). "Regardez les petits portraits de Bastien", she adds, "ils sont de beaucoup supérieurs à ceux de Meissonier"; on 15 October 1883 she records that a man of the world has finally agreed with her after six months of discussion (101.0626).

In February 1884 she follows the "incident Meissonier-Mackay" (103.0356--0364): the wealthy American Mrs Mackay had commissioned her portrait; Marie (repeating what she is told) writes that he asked seventy thousand francs, twice what he took for the portrait of Baron de Guntsbourg, that the portrait was shown at the Triennale and found mediocre, that Mrs Mackay asked for retouching, was refused, and in the end paid and put the picture in a water closet. Marie's judgment is balanced: Mrs Mackay was indelicate toward a 73-year-old master, but Meissonier "a absolument manqué de dignité" by compelling payment: "il s'est conduit comme un fournisseur". A footnote of the diary edition adds that the sitter later had the portrait destroyed; an American account describes the quarrel and the portrait's end in a fire (James Gurney, "Meissonier's Portrait Fail"). The price of 70,000 francs rests only on Marie's report and was not confirmed elsewhere.

On 11 July 1884 she records that she attacked him in conversation and the other speaker defended him "très mollement": "Meissonier est extraordinairement surfait ... on prend Meissonier et on tape avec" (105.0133). Ten days later he appears with Cabanel and Bouguereau as the "heureux" academicians (105.0266), and on 22 July she and her guests "anéantissons Meissonier au profit du seul, du vrai, de l'unique Bastien" (105.0280).

Related entries

Sources