The historian Charlotte Guichard brings back the figure of the “ art lover », Essential character in the definition of good taste and the promotion of fine arts to XVIIIe century. Disparaged by the lights for its aristocratic character and the narrowness of his judgments, “ the amateur »Nevertheless bequeathed his elitist conception of taste to French art criticism.
We cannot visit a museum wing dedicated to XVIIIe century and endowed with a French collection worthy of the name without meeting the figure of the amateur. The portrait of Claude-Henri Watelet by Greuze (Louvre) which illustrates the cover of the excellent work by Charlotte Guichard, Art lovers in Paris at XVIIIe centuryis only one example, among the most illustrious, of a genre that could be extended to the live of Jully de Greuze (Washington), the Blondel d’Azincourt de Roslin (private collection) and the Pierre-Jacques Bergeret de Vincent (Besançon), all painted between the years 1740 and the 1770s. In spite of the enthusiasm which has benefited, in the past decades Art in Paris at XVIIIe A century, we have so far lacked a global analysis of this singular figure, both from a social and cultural point of view. Charlotte Guichard’s work fills this gap and at the same time opens many and fruitful research avenues.
Aristocrats of art lovers
Charlotte Guichard is particularly attentive to resisting the temptation to reduce the amateur to the trans-historical figure of the patron (or that, in the same spirit, of the collector). It offers a very historically informed description of this figure that it seeks to show in its specificity rather than as a pure epiphenomenon of a long history of patronage and collectionism. His study allows us to follow the social identity, the environment and the activities specific to the amateur, from the world of the XVIIIe Century until the end of the Old Regime, in order to determine the different ways of which it acted as a sort of linking in the world of art, and also to follow cultural debates, before becoming more and more political, to which this figure of the amateur gave rise.
During the period studied, the marketing of French art was the subject of enormous expansion, but amateurs were like amphibious beings in the art market, to which they belonged only half. They could be economically active, have a positive influence on the art market ; But they were not one of the entrepreneurs in the narrow sense that the economy gives to this term. They collected, but were not one of those collectors motivated by the estimation of values. They bought and sold, but would have been horrified to the idea that such a mercantile activity could define their identity in some way. They flattered themselves to choose the parts of their collections only function of taste and not profit. In addition to their role as patron, some themselves involved in an artistic practice, but their primary functions consisted in ensuring mediation and practicability of the market. And if they generally displayed a real repulsion for mercantile values, they did it as an artocrats, the most plutocrats, moreover, largely from the financial, military elite and the nobility of dress. These aristocrats had not only the leisure and money necessary to cultivate their identity as amateurs, but also of the political power essential for the creation of a niche inside the institutional artistic space, placed under the aegis of the State.
Charlotte Guichard’s account began in 1747, that is to say the year during which the academy of painting and sculpture re-evaluated the post of “ honorary amateur », Previously established in 1663, and which until then served to associate members of the social elite with the activities of the Academy. The Count of Caylus was an important player in this re -evaluation, and the main theorist of this new role. In 1748, he delivered a speech on “ the amateur ». THE “ real amateur “, He said to the Academy, will be” A man that the love of your arts and your choice make amateur (P. 27). Its action was also characterized by its constant desire to relate the notion ofamateur with the academy ; And he had to appear as one of the most representative amateurs in the ranks that developed during the following decades. He was the first to attend the sessions of the academy with diligence, establishing a model of behavior for the following generations, delivering many speeches on such or such aspect of the practice of art and its values, not to mention the many published articles. He financed public lectures in which amateurs theorized the idea of art as a cultural practice, and he sought to encourage other amateurs by establishing the lives of artists as a literary genre in which they could excel. He also financed two Academy awards – one in 1759 rewarding the expression, the other in 1764 for anatomies. He also played an essential role in the show, commanding many works. Finally, he sought to develop active relationships of friendship with artists, thus producing the feeling of a shared design and vision. In many ways, at that time, the amateur world had many points in common with the type of sociability that reigned in Parisian fairs, as Antoine Lilti describes them in his recent work, The world of salons: sociability and worldliness in XVIIIe century (Fayard, 2005), and in which worldly aristocrats rubbed shoulders with philosophers, writers and intellectuals of all kinds. With literary salons, moreover, the feeling developed that such a sociability operated as a kind of polished mechanism, and an engine of civilization, which distinguished the French nation and whose whole of humanity would eventually take advantage of.
Thanks and disgrace of a cultural figure
Until the end of the old regime, the work of amateurs had to be considerable. Guichard excels in highlighting their multiple activities: inventory publications of private collections and sales catalogs, revaluation of artists’ biography, influence on tastes (in particular to make them more favorable to French painting, or for a rehabilitation of antiquity which will play a role in the emergence of neo-classicism). But still: development of new social practices of artistic consumption, new forms of visual education (notably organizing the visit of private collections in redeveloped residences to show these according to the best taste, or giving back to tourist trip to Rome its popularity). In addition, by associating the chandelier of their names with the Academy of Painting, by supporting its institutional claims (in particular against the corporation of rival painters, the Academy of Saint-Luc), and by committing personally in artistic practices at the same level as the artists they supported, they gave the world of Parisian art a credit and a brilliance which he had not been searched.
Almost from the start, however, amateurs, as defined by Caylus, saw the cultural identity they were building attacked by the sphere of the general public, and more particularly by the avant-garde of art criticism. Indeed, as early as 1747, at the very moment when Caylus re-evaluated the status of honorary amateurs of the Academy, the Font de Saint-Yenne published its Reflections on some causes of the present state of paintingtext generally considered to have established the cultural role of art critic, in the name of public interests. Admittedly, Caylus and his amateur friends were anything but in opposition to the public. They regularly exhibited their personal collections, so that the public and the artists have access to it (Caylus’ exhibitions, for example, were of remarkable quality both from an archaeological and artistic point of view). Their publications aimed at equivalent readership. To a certain extent, they helped the public develop and find its own form, and undoubtedly independent criticism. But by denying the identity of amateur to anyone who was not part of an institution, they pushed art criticism and other writers of the public sphere towards other more radical positions.
Guichard affirms that the marketing of art had reached such a level in 1765 that from that moment the status of the amateur according to Caylus lost more and more of his legitimacy in the public sphere and did not find it later. Diderot attacked “ The cursed race (…) of amateurs (1767), and the encyclopedists were nonetheless virulent towards them. The taste advocated by amateurs was denounced as aristocratic and therefore, by definition, contrary to public values, deemed more authentic. The link between amateurs and the state now seemed to be akin to anti-Civic parasitism. Caricatured in public controversies as well as narrow views (they were often drawn with a disproportionate magnifying glass), they were seen as despots that tried to enslave artists and corrupt civic values, and not as individuals full of good intentions, eager to improve the national taste and to extend the district of art. Such a criticism, still amplified under the Revolution, was going to spoil the very idea of an amateur after 1789 – although, as Guichard suggests, the notion of taste understood as a distinctive mark of French art and art criticism was promised to a much longer history.
As the last chapters of Guichard’s book show, the amateur was thus an important figure, both positively and negatively. He played a decisive role in the rise of French art in the last half century of the Ancien Régime, opening art to new social practices and producing new cultural values. But he also provided a negative stereotype of fundamental importance in the construction of the figure of the artist socially and politically engaged. So Art loversvery informed work, with dense argumentation and luminous writing, is not only an exemplary work in economic and social history, but also an important contribution to the broader work on the cultural policies of pre -revolutionary France.
Translation: Marion Naccache