Monday 18 January 2021

Vivant Denon: Revolutionary "heads"


Vivant Denon produced a number of quirky and disturbing "heads" of well-known Revolutionaries, purportedly drawn from life before the Tribunal or on their way to execution. 

In the later 19th century these portraits were known mainly through the series of engravings by Jules Porreau, created during the July Monarchy, for the publisher and dealer Jean-Eugène Vignères.  The Revolutionaries represented are listed as: Danton, Gobel, Hébert, Fouquier-Tinville, Chaumette, Carrier and finally the Chouan leader Georges Cadoudal.  The first six were all condemned and guillotined in 1794 or 1795; the seventh, Cadoudal, was executed much later, in 1804. 

In modern times, many of Denon's original drawings have been rediscovered.  The most important set was sold in 1961 by Christie's in London as part of the collection of Lady Eleanor Shelley-Rolls (whose mother Lady Llangattock owned many of Nelson's letters.)   Some of the pictures from this auction were purchased at the time by the Metropolitan Museum; others have been acquired by the Louvre as recently as 2003. A second, hitherto uncatalogued, group of drawings was sold at auction in 2013.


 According to Christie's expert  Alan Wintermute, Denon acted as "a kind of court reporter", though it should be noted that sketching in the Revolutionary Tribunal was formally forbidden.  In any case, Denon's predilection for caricature undermines any pretensions to strict realism: the meanness and cruelty of these former revolutionaries is made evident through their physionomy.

Denon's attitude to his subjects seems curiously ambivalent. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the portraits is the sense of sheer human misery they convey.  Mary Tavener Holmes has the following comment on the sketches in the Met:

  The expression that springs to mind when one sees these drawings, Denon's mementos of the Terror, is the phrase "the Revolution eats its children".  All the men pictured here were instrumental in the implementation of a system that ultimately claimed their lives, and these drawings, when viewed as a group, provide a sort of grisly before-during-and-after view of this process." Eighteenth-century French drawings in New York collections, 1999)


ADDITIONAL NOTES
  • According to Christie's, the Shelley-Rolls sale of 5th December 1961 included twenty drawings by Denon on seven mounts; lots 68-71 and 73-74.  These comprised not only the  Revolutionary "heads", but  various additional  sketches from 1794 and 1795. The Metropolitan Museum acquired Lots 69, 73 and 74:  Lot 74 is described as a "triptych" of  Couthon, Robespierre and Gobel/Chaumette.  A second study of Couthon was included in Lot 73.
  • "Another collection was sold by the galerie Arnoldi-Livie in Munich in 1997".  This is mentioned in the catalogue for the 2013 auction, but I can't find any other details. 
  • "Futher drawings on the same theme" were included in the Denon exhibition in the Louvre in 1999.  The curator U. van de Sandt considered that they had been drawn from life [ref. to Pierre Rosenberg, Dominique-Vivant Denon: l'oeil de Napoleon. Paris: Louvre 1999-2000, no.58-60]. 
  • In 2002 the Louvre acquired from the Galerie Artemis a assemblage of drawings showing eight revolutionaries at their trial or on their way to the guillotine:
 
This set was Lot 70 of the Shelley-Rolls sale. The whole ensemble is quite small - about the size of a sheet of A3 paper.  It is thought that the drawings were mounted and framed by Denon himself. Each portrait is  carefully numbered (1 to 8) and annotated on the back.  The catalogue entry notes that the Shelley-Rolls collection included eight other Revolutionary portraits, four of which were acquired by the Met. in 1962. (? not quite sure how that relates to Christie's "twenty drawings on seven mounts", but never mind.) 
The  pictures are variously finished in pen-and-ink, grey wash and sanguine.

  •  A further set of five sketches were sold by the Auction House Boisgirard-Antonini in 2013:



Boisgirard-Antonini, Auction House,  Paris.  Sale of 18th December 2013. Lot 237.  Set of five drawings by Dominique-Vivant Denon.
https://www.boisgirard-antonini.com/lot/17196/3549564

Sale catalogue (pdf):  

Four of these studies duplicate (seemingly exactly)  pictures from the Shelley-Rolls collection. The unique portrait is Georges Cadoudal.  Since the set corresponds to the engravings by Jules Porreau,  perhaps they were the sketches he used?  
 
It is not at all clear to me how there come to be identical versions of the same image. The auction notes say only that Denon worked or reworked the series for publication. One suggestion is that these sheets might represent preliminary lithographs rather than entirely original drawings. The additional shading, particularly the strange white highlighting, certainly suggests that the images were being prepared for printing in some form.  

I see that the estimate on the pictures auctioned in 2013 was 2,000 to 3,000 EUR and they made 39,000 EUR!  Someone was obviously keen to own them.



GALLERY


From the Met:


Georges-Auguste Couthon at the National Convention in 1793.  
Lot 74.
16.5 cm x 10.7 cm
Annotated " No.1"

Despite the arrangement of the pictures into a triptych, this study of Couthon does not really belong with the others.  It is generally presumed to have been drawn from life during a session of the Convention.  However, it may derive from a lost portrait by Isabey: See my earlier post:



Severed head, said to be that of Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre (1758-1794), guillotined July 28, 1794 (10 Thermidor, An II)  Lot 74. 
16.5cm x 11.3cm.

And here is Max;  there is lots to be said about this image, but it is clearly also hors-série.



Portraits of Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel (1727-1794), Bishop of Paris in 1792-93, and Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette (1763-1794), Procurator of the Commune in 1792, sketched on the way to the guillotine, April 12, 1794. Lot 74
16.5cm x 10.8cm

These two images reappear among the sketches sold in 2013.  The Carnavalet has a copy of the Porreau print of Chaumette which specifies  that it was produced for  the Tableaux historiques de la Révolution française  in 1834

The drawings are  annotated on the 2013 versions as showing the men "sur la charette" but  perhaps this should not be taken too literally.  It would doubtless have appealed to Denon's sense of irony that the former bishop and the radical revolutionary were guillotined together and found themselves companions in death.

 



Caricature of Georges-Auguste Couthon ( 756-1794) on the way to the guillotine on July 28, 1794 (10 Thermidor, An II) ca. 1794.
Lot 73. 
13.1 cm x 10.3 cm 
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336797

 

 

From the Louvre (acquired in 2003)


Portrait of Fouquier-Tinville Louvre RF 52598. [No.1 in Denon's set] 
18cm x 15.6 cm    Annotated on the reverse:
"N° 1. Fouquier Tainville au Tribunal Révolutionnaire/ pendan son jugement" 

The print by Porreau in the Carnavalet is described as  "photomechanique" - does that make it a lithograph?
https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/fouquier-tinville-antoine-quentin





Unknown Revolutionary - "Spaniard on the tumbril with Hébert". Louvre RF 52599 [No.2 of Denon's set] 
18cm x 9.3 cm
http://ag.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/2/508971-Portrait-de-revolutionnaire-un-inconnu




Louis-Claude Châtelet and another unknown member of the Revolutionary Tribunal during their trial.  Louvre RF 52600 [No. 3 of a set of 6] 
18cm x 14.2cm
http://ag.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/3/508972-Portraits-de-revolutionnaires-Louis-Claude-Chatelet-et-un-inconnu



Jean-Baptiste Carrier and Jean-Jacques Goullin during the trial of the Nantes terrorists in Year III Louvre RF 525601 [No. 4 and 5 of the set]
11.6cm x 20.8cm 
http://ag.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/4/508973-Portraits-de-revolutionnaires-Jean-Baptiste-Carrier-Jean-Jacques-Goullin

Print:
https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/j-b-carrier-pendant-son-jugement-1794 





Danton. Louvre RF 525602 [No 6]  Lot 70. "Danton at the Revolutionary Tribunal, 10 Thermidor Year II".
Lot 70 9.8 cm x 6.9cm
http://ag.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/5/508974-Portrait-de-revolutionnaire-Georges-Jacques-Danton

Print:





No 7: Hébert and and No 8: unknown Revolutionary on the tumbril.  RF 525603 [No 7]
Lot 70 11.3cm x 20.7cm
http://ag.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/6/508975-Portraits-de-revolutionnaires-Jacques-Rene-Hebert-et-un-inconnu
Print (copperplate etching, dated 1854)


References

Mary Tavener Holmes, "Dominique-Vivant Denon", in Eighteenth-century French drawings in New York collections (Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999) - free ebook. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Eighteenth_century_French_Drawings_in_Ne/1pnGSWQcjfgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA226&printsec=frontcover

Christies, Old Masters and 19th Century Drawings, 8th July 2003:  Lot 86: Drawings by Denon of a "Seated man". Lot Essay
https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-baron-dominique-vivant-denon-chalon-sur-saone-1747-1825-paris-a-4126111/  (It is not clear to me why Christie's think these particular drawings show the Revolutionary Tribunal.)

Post by "Eleanore D" on LiveJournal - for the suggestions concerning lithographs.
https://eleonored.livejournal.com/56414.html


PS.

This  montage of sketches by Denon is the frontispiece to a popular history of the French Revolution by R.M. Johnston published in the States in 1909.  It seems an odd choice of images, especially for a book published in America,  so perhaps there is an earlier original.  It is interesting that the contested portrait of Marie-Antoinette is included. The image of Carrier is not among the "heads" but I am sure I have seen it before.
  


R. M. Johnston, The French Revolution: a short history (New York: Holt & Co, 1909)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19421/19421-h/19421-h.htm

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