Carolus-Duran

Who he was

Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran, was born at Lille on 4 July 1837 and died in Paris in February 1917 (English Wikipedia gives the 17th, French Wikipedia the 18th). The son of an innkeeper, he studied at the Lille academy and under François Souchon, a pupil of David, came to Paris in 1853 and took the name Carolus-Duran. He exhibited at the Salon from 1859, attended the Académie Suisse (1859-1861), and was first influenced by Courbet. A scholarship from his home town took him to Rome and Spain (1862-1866), where he fell under the spell of Velázquez; L'Assassiné won him a medal in 1866. In 1868 he married the pastellist Pauline Croizette, who posed for La Dame au gant (1869, Musée d'Orsay); their daughter Marie-Anne later married Georges Feydeau. From about 1870 he painted almost only portraits and became the favourite portraitist of the Third Republic's high society, and he opened a teaching studio in Montparnasse where his pupils included John Singer Sargent and numerous Americans.

He was made chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1872, officer in 1878, commander in 1889 and grand officer in 1900; he sat on the juries of the 1889 and 1900 Expositions Universelles, was a co-founder in 1890 of the second Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1904, and directed the French Academy in Rome from 1905 to 1913. Critics from Pissarro to Zola charged him with turning Manet's discoveries into something the bourgeois could swallow (French Wikipedia). He was also a musician: Marie's account of him with a guitar, singing Spanish and Arabic songs, is one of her most consistent images of him.

Marie and Carolus-Duran

The visit of November 1877. Two months after enrolling at Julian's, Marie went with young Zurlo to see Carolus-Duran at his studio, on 28 and 29 November 1877 (076.0275, 076.0281). He receives at nine to eleven and she and Zurlo had missed the private audience. She found a man "qui se croit le plus grand peintre du monde et qui méprise tous ceux qui peignent", forgiven because he is "original, beau, intéressant et tout ce qu'il faut pour être à la mode" (076.0283). He sang to them, playing the guitar "pas de voix mais du charme", and spoke well of Italy (076.0283). When she mentioned Robert-Fleury, "En un tour de main l'aimable Carolus me l'a démoli ainsi que tout le reste de la création excepté lui" (076.0285). Back home she reasoned that his effects "ne peuvent pas s'apprendre" and that a solid classical education matters more (076.0287); she nevertheless decided to take up the guitar herself "en honneur de Carolus-Duran" (076.0315). He found her colour "merveilleuse" like all the painters (076.0288).

A model to admire from afar (1878-1881). In May 1878 she wrote, after the Salon: "C'est Carolus-Duran que j'aime le mieux comme vie et Bonnat comme savoir" (080.0012). On 14 December 1879 she and Berthe, with Bojidar, spotted him in a restaurant, "prenant du sirop" (086.0659). In 1880 her mother compared her to Bonnat and Carolus-Duran, which enraged the Mouzay ladies (088.0012) and in March 1880 she noted that Tony's "beaucoup de talent", unlike her mother's, meant "c'est Bonnat, c'est Carolus, c'est Bastien" (087.0702). On 7 February 1881, at the Mirlitons exhibition, she was dazzled by two of his portraits, the woman seated with the little girl in red and the woman alone, "vieille et fardée": "Moi qui n'aimais pas Carolus, son enfant rouge du dernier Salon et sa femme bleue m'ont dégoûtée. Mais les deux portraits d'aujourd'hui sont les plus beaux qu'on puisse voir" (091.0088); "Oh ! si je pouvais peindre comme Carolus Duran !" (091.0093). At the 1881 Salon he gave her a look "à la Carolus", and she described him as "très fat" and oily, like a high priest, a charlatan in the vein of Cassagnac (091.0549). In Madrid, on 4 October 1881, she saw that a hand in a Velázquez portrait of an unknown sculptor was "la clef de toute l'exécution de Carolus-Duran qui comme on sait veut rééditer Vélasquez" (093.0179).

Acquaintance (1882). On 30 April 1882 at the Salon he came to speak to her, "très aimable. Cet homme est un charmeur" (095.0002), and on 1 May accompanied her to her carriage (095.0009). On 25 May she went to his studio ("ce matin nous [avons été] chez Carolus", 095.0097), and her portrait of him is in the diary: "Il s'appelait Charles Durand et il s'appelle Carolus-Duran et se croit Espagnol et Vélasquez", with a "physique très séduisant", "un grand contentement de soi-même"; he shoots well, rides, dances, plays piano, organ and guitar and sings (095.0097, 095.0098). "Il est de la famille des Cassagnac enfin !" (095.0099). On 3 June he visited her studio and gave, to her surprise, "un excellent conseil", and he admired Dina's large pastel (095.0129). In the entry of 8 June 1882 she describes a party at the Bashkirtseffs' at which he was "charmant, adorable, ravissant", singing and playing among the cushions and bearskins in Marie's studio and recalling at dinner that they had met at the Foyot restaurant three years earlier (095.0142). Marie made a drawing of him with his guitar "entouré de rayons" (095.0174) and ended the night half in love and half in doubt: "Heureux Carolus qui est célèbre et qui se croit le plus sublime artiste de tous les temps" (095.0149). "Ô Carolus, maître en fatuité viens à mon secours. Je m'aime. Donc je travaille" (095.0266).

Dinners and studios (1882-1883). On 19 December 1882 she talked with Carolus, Bastien-Lepage and Saint-Marceaux at the Exposition (097.0268). On 2 February 1883 Carolus dined at the Bashkirtseffs', "toujours adorable" (098.0265), sat next to her, and said that he found her again "comme la première fois il y a cinq ans, cette enfant altière, volontaire, éclatante avec plus de souplesse et plus de bienveillance" (098.0264, 098.0267); after dinner he sang with Odette and played the guitar in Marie's studio. On 15 February 1883 she called at his studio with Adeline: "Cet homme est vraiment un artiste. Il vous transporte au XVIème siècle, la Renaissance" (098.0339). In April she wrote to him, to Tony and to Julian to get Alice Brisbane's drawing rescued from the jury (099.0022). At the Salon of 1883 she judged him "ramolli" (099.0308), "un déguisement" (099.0375), and Sargent "du faux Vélasquez, du faux Carolus, mieux que Carolus, moins que Vélasquez et tout de même bien" (099.0375).

Last year (1884). On 27 January 1884 she mocked his portrait of his mother, shown some years before: "Air d'une concierge de maison peu chic. Bastien aurait dû lui mettre un bonnet" (103.0151). At the Salon on 30 April, when Un meeting was hung on the cimaise, Carolus told her "très gracieusement que je n'ai pas à le remercier, que je me dois à moi seule la cimaise" (104.0055). On 1 May at Mme Hochon's the evening was saved by "l'aimable et toujours charmé et charmant Carolus" singing after Massenet (104.0078). On 20 May she named him, with Gervex and Cabanel, among the few jurors she knew, "pour les rencontrer une fois par an" (104.0277). On 22 May she finally paid the promised call at his studio: "Ce charmant homme est en pourpoint de velours grenat" and danced a Spanish step while a friend played the guitar; she played the organ (104.0298, 104.0299). On 23 May she wrote "Carolus toujours charmant, j'espère bien qu'il votera pour moi" (104.0305).

Marie's judgement of his art

She admired his "vie" and colour but distrusted the showman: his effects could not be taught (076.0287), his Velázquez was a borrowed mannerism (093.0179), the later Salons showed him past his best (099.0308). Nothing in the diary suggests she ever studied with him. The strength of her attraction is clearest in the 1881 Mirlitons passage (091.0088, 091.0093).

Related entries

Sources