On the Balconies: 
Another Pictorial Impressionism

On the Balconies: Another Pictorial Impressionism

With a few variants, there are two versions of the painting Majas on a Balcony, respectively by the Spanish Francisco Goya and reliably ascribed to him: in a private collection in Switzerland, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see above, on the left; 1808-12). Presumably, besides of a romantic Andalusian folklore, the portrayed scene is an allegorical expression of critical pessimism, with two courtesans seated in the lighted foreground and the standing shadows of their panders in the dark background. These young, seductive and somehow elegant women are gazing and smiling at us, from their balcony which may symbolize some ambiguity of reality: not seldom everyday reality, like history after all, isn't what appears at first sight.

And that – the Napoleonic age, at the beginning of the 19th century – was a high equivocal moment in the history of Europe, especially dramatic in Spain. So many, who had hoped that the revolutionary ideas coming from France could contribute to a modernization and democratization of their country, were now facing nothing but a foreign invasion and occupation. Most probably, Goya was among those who underwent such a contradictory disillusion, and began to think that history is doomed to repeat itself even when its forms seem to change for the better. In other words, that there isn't a coincidence between what we call modernity and political or social progress, not necessarily at least.

Much later, in 1868, one of the versions of the masterwork by Goya will work as a formal model for the French Impressionist édouard Manet, in his pictorial masterpiece The Balcony (Musée d'Orsay, Paris; above, on the right). This time the scene is similar, but it looks thoroughly transfigurated. The exhibition on the balcony becomes a chosen, collective self-representation. The four figures, emerging from a shady interior to the daylight on the balcony, are those of a few protagonists in a cultural and peaceful revolution, which the generation of Impressionists will well impersonate in the field of figurative arts. Self-representation grows self-consciousness, at once. The pensive young maja sitting in the foreground is the painter and model Berthe Morisot, an example of female emancipation.

The French Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzales, and the North American expat Mary Cassatt, were the most important female painters in French Impressionism. Above, on the left: B. Morisot, Woman and Child on the Balcony (Art Institute of Chicago; 1872); on the right: M. Cassatt, The Flirtation: A Balcony in Seville (Philadelphia Museum of Art; 1872). Balconies were also symbolic of a gradual return of artists to work in open air, after a long season during which their activity had been mostly confined to their studios, but of a new gaze at an evolving reality too. Whereas the painting by Cassatt is still traditionally and somewhat exotically romantic, after Goya anyway, Morisot's gaze roves over the modern city of Paris and surroundings.

Mother and daughter, relatives of the author, the young lady and the little girl there portrayed are representative of a generational change. The child is gazing through the railings of the balcony. This might have been an inspiring model, for another of the best known works by the Impressionist master édouard Manet: The Railway or Gare Saint-Lazare, which has occurred to be defined one of the symbols of modernity itself (National Gallery of Art, Washington; 1873). In that composition, the railway doesn't appear nearly at all. Its presence and the transit of an old locomotive are rather suggested by a white cloud of steam, beyond a dark iron grating. A little girl stands with her back to the viewer, watching through it what we can't discern. On her left, a young woman – identified as the model and painter Victorine Meurent – sits on a low seat staring at us, with a book in her hands.

B. Morisot, E. Gonzales, M. Cassatt, V. Meurent, played a not trifling role at the dawn of the Impressionist movement and later, either as inspiring Muses or as operating artists, though they are remembered especially in the first guise. What we have noticed about some concidence in the choice of the subject matters of their paintings, between Morisot and Manet, may be extended to Eva Gonzales and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Let's look below, at The Window by the former, on the left (private collection; ca. 1865-70); and at The Two Sisters, on the Terrace by the latter, on the right (Art Institute of Chicago; 1881). Neither Renoir was a pupil to Eva, like Eva of Manet, nor did he model surely for her, like Berthe and Eva for Manet and other Impressionists. Nonetheless, in these artworks at least, one inspiration deriving from the former to the latter looks more than probable.

Related to the same subject matter, a comparison may be made also between Degas and Cassatt. Below, on the left: Edgar Degas, Woman Seated on a Balcony, in New Orleans (Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen; ca. 1872-75); on the right, Mary Cassatt, Susan on a Balcony, Holding a Dog (portrait of Susan E. Meyer: National Gallery of Art, Washington; 1883-84). In these paintings, like in those by Gonzales and Renoir we have seen above, balconies or window-balconies work like a setting or frame for single or multiple portrayals – of children, women, even domestic animals –, rather than as intermediate spaces between an inner and an outer reality, a private and a public sphere. Nevertheless, we can observe a development particularly in an artist as Cassatt, from an early folkloric production to a more realistic manner, from scenes of genre to individual portraits.

Paradoxically and in general, at the same time the pictorial “impression” evolves toward expression. Gradually, colourism starts prevailing over linearity of the drawing. Somehow, late Impressionism announces a next Expressionism, in the European history of art. Painting ceases to be influenced by an adolescent photography – still in black and white –, searching for better autonomous ways, at the risk of a dissolution of images. Here, we feel more interested in iconography, that's the figural contents of representation. From an iconological point of view, the Impressionist school remains one of the best attempts to catch the cultural essence of historical evolution, beyond a mere depiction of its details.

However, in both portraits, respectively by Degas and Cassatt, the more or less explicit cityscape in the background becomes just a sketch. What mainly matters is the expression of the young ladies, and a consequent visibility of their faces. The transition to a full modernity means also an increasing attention to personal existences, against a danger of lonely anonymity, which the mass society of an an urban and industrial economy can imply. Thus, the gazes of the two women are no longer directed outward, but rather inward. They may betray a sentiment of nostalgia, for a more intimate way of life. Perhaps, a female one?

Often balconies and window-sills worked like border interfaces, where a feminine life could be observed by artists, from inside or from outside. In art history, we might mention several images of women intent on various occupations or resting amid plants and flowers, on terraces or by window-balconies. They belonged to different social categories, from housewives to noble ladies, even prostitutes. Now, it's time for a romantic and learned type, such as perceived by the Venetian Federico Zandomeneghi (1841-1917). In both paintings below, the young subjects portrayed belong to a bourgeois middle class. This Woman on a Balcony is gazing outward, waiting for someone who is late to come (auctioned by Sotheby's at Milan, on June 8, 2004). The other, Reading by a Window, instead is absorbed in reading: perhaps, a romance; or, else, maybe not... (in a private collection).

Zandomeneghi was a trait d'union between the Italian “Macchiaioli” and the French Impressionists. In 1874 he migrated to Paris, where he lived until his death. There, he made his acquaintance with the Impressionists, who had held their first group exhibition. Nay, Zandomeneghi's pictorial fashion was so akin to theirs, that he participated in four of their exhibitions: in 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886. Like his friend Edgar Degas, he was primarily a figure painter, even if had started his artistic activity in Italy as a landscapist. He admired the production of his colleagues Cassatt and Renoir, as well. So much, that reliably his frequent paintings of women depicted in their domestic routines followed their example.

In Italy during the 19th century, mostly the art of painting reflected a traditional way of life, also for its economy was still largely agricultural; the society, mainly provincial. This doesn't mean that there weren't novelties, concerning a modernity of the representation: in particular, the realistic movement of the “Macchiaioli”, so called for they used to paint by means of spots of colour: in Italian, macchie. What Zandomeneghi inherited from his experience with them was a naturalistic propension, in the setting of his artworks. In these at least, his sense of nature was stronger than any urban attraction. If his ladies on balconies weren't popular, no wonder, they were in keeping with a country atmosphere though.

Below, on the left: The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, a famous canvas by the German Caspar David Friedrich (Hamburg Kunsthalle; 1818); on the right: Gustave Caillebotte, French painter, Young Man at his Window (the occasional model was René, brother to the author: private collection; 1875). If we confront them, in these examples a transition from Romantic art to pictorial Impressionism is evident enough. The human figure depicted from behind at the centre of the scene is nearly identical in both paintings; the scenery in the background changes a lot: a natural mountain panorama in the former, a modern city foreshortening in the latter case. In either artwork as well, the male subject portrayed has no visible face, because he is but a projection of the artist himself.

Caillebotte had studied law, before painting. He was also an engineer, interested in photography and sensitive to social topics. He was a full modern intellectual, in other words. If an artist as Zandomeneghi may be considered representative of a rural nostalgia in Impressionism, on the other hand Caillebotte can represent its urbanized and industrialized soul. He made his debut in the Impressionist exhibition of 1876, showing a problematic and provocative painting: Les raboteurs de parquet (“The Floor Scrapers”, today at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris). The depiction of labourers preparing a wooden floor is its subject matter, then disliked by certain critics. At that time, the academic art milieu deemed only rustic peasants or farmers acceptable subjects from the working class.

Not seldom, Caillebotte's realism is emblematic at once. Another, enigmatic, painting by him is Le pont de l'Europe (“The Bridge of Europe”: Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva; ca. 1876). Far later, the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte will revisit the same scene, in his canvas Le mal du pays (“Homesickness”: private collection; 1940 or 1941). In that period, the author was a refugee abroad, for his country was occupied by the Nazis during the World War II. In both artworks a guy is leaning on the edge of a bridge, looking down at a railroad in the first case, at the water of a river in the second case. Whereas in the former a stray dog is passing behind him, in the latter such an animal is a lying lion; the man himself has odd black wings, like melancholy had been often allegorized and pictured.

Men on balconies. Below, on the left: Man on Balcony (private collection; ca. 1880); on the right: Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; 1880). Again, both artworks are by Caillebotte. For sure, among the French Impressionists, in his production a theme like that is mostly recurring. Mainly, his paintings portray the 19th century urban life in Paris, and balconies, window-balconies – sometimes, even bridges – are high, privileged observatories. So much, that early they become an object of observation in itself. Apparently at least, the observers get observed, such as in these cases. Indeed and above all, they are single projections or virtual multiple refractions of the artist himself, thus potentiating his own gaze, which usually was a curious and critical one.

As the title Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann suggests, the random view down from those balconies, or in front of those observers, is that of the city of Paris, with its streets, passers-by and buildings, as it was and in great part still is. Actually, Georges-Eugène Haussmann had recently been the high official and urbanist, responsible executor of that massive renewal program of boulevards, parks and public works in the wide centre of Paris, often referred to as Haussmann's renovation. What today may resemble an old charming town, in reality is the modern outcome of such a transformation, involving the obliteration or remotion of not a few ancient and popular elements, during the French historical period of the so defined Second Empire (that's Napoleonic, long after the original Napoleon).

With different motivations, criticisms weren't lacking, either on a conservative or on a progressive side. This circumstance may let us guess that Caillebotte didn't look so much “at Haussmann's new Paris with a detached, almost forensic gaze”, as it has been written elsewhere. Instead, his observed observers, or painted alter egos, seem to be perplexed and even disoriented. Their gazing downward or in front of them – from their balconies, windows or bridges – looks rather connected with a question, at times still resounding in our minds: what kind of a modernity? Aren't there ways, more respectful of memories, less traumatic with regard to people's traditional life? If Haussmann can be considered the standard-bearer of a French grandeur, Caillebotte is better the type of a Parisian flaneur.

Gazing outward, gazing inward, by a window-balcony. Once more, below on the left, Gustave Caillebotte: Interior with Woman at the Window (private collection; 1880). Indeed, there isn't only the figure of a middle aged lady, depicted from behind while looking outward. Likely her husband, a man is sitting inside and reading his newspaper. Somehow, the scene anticipates a feeling of alienating incommunicability among human beings and between different genders, such as it will be expressed in certain surreal paintings by René Magritte or realistic ones by Edward Hopper. On the right, another French Impressionist, Eva Gonzales: The Woman in Blue (private collection; ca. 1871-72). This time, the portrayed subject is younger, and more coloured. She seems to enjoy in being glanced at from inside, rather than in merely watching the city life outside.

Actually, gazing outward and gazing inward resemble a dialectic core, in the adoption of an iconic theme like that of balconies or windows. The treshold or sill to cross with the gaze is a mental boundary, before being a material or figural one. Sometimes, it may even represent a frontier between consciousness and the unconscious, in a psychological way. Not always, such depictions include the presence of human or animal figures. Albeit rarely, those painted balconies or windows may happen to be empty still lifes. Nor necessarily, we have seen, are they idyllic ones. Then, a possible disquieting question is where an uncanny element might be spotted, whether in the represented interior or in an external world.

Owing to various reasons, probably Eva Gonzales, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Federico Zandomeneghi or Gustave Caillebotte, are less known amid the Impressionists, with respect to recognized masters as Manet, Renoir, Degas and others. Nonetheless, their collaborative contribution to that artistic and cultural movement isn't negligible at all, also for not seldom is an alternative one, concurring to a complexity of late modernity, such as inherited and developed by us. As well, history of art can offer subliminal insights for a knowledge and understanding of our still recent past, which not even political or economic history is able to supply. What requires some effort of critical interpretation, of course...



laila khan - Global Goodwill Ambassador

Partner, Camino Nuevo, SA. GGA - Global Goodwill Ambassador

7 年

Chapeau... indeed so....

Jacob unmask yourself

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Stefania Pinsone

Represented professional artist

7 年

One of the most impressive comment to all of that is in Rene Magritte: "Manet's Balcony" Date: 1950... https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/manet-s-balcony-1950 Three coffins are sitting and staying on the same balcony looking to us, probably from the future...

laila khan - Global Goodwill Ambassador

Partner, Camino Nuevo, SA. GGA - Global Goodwill Ambassador

7 年

What an educating post on various art styles looked at from balconies or bridges.. so full of substance, will have to re-read several times... most enjoyable... I must thank Pino Blasone for pointing me in this direction!!!

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