Impressions of Art School in Paris

Ecole des Beaux Arts,
Scribner's Magazine (1887)

In the second chapter of Confessions of a Young Man the narrator moves to Paris, where he hopes to train as an artist. This reflects Moore's own experiences in the 1870s and offers some fascinating insights into the period. In fact, whilst tracking down historical sources to write the notes for this chapter I was struck by how frequently Moore's writings (including his fiction) have served as an important primary source for historians of the period.

On arrival in Paris, the narrator enrols at the École des Beaux Arts - the central, state-sponsored artistic establishment. Entrance to the Beaux Arts was determined for French students by a competitive process, but it was possible for foreign students to bypass this by applying directly to one of the artists or professors who maintained studios within the school. It was also necessary for such foreign students to obtain a letter of introduction from their diplomatic legation.* 

Having secured a place in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel (one of the most famous artists teaching there at this time), the narrator finds himself disappointed:

But life in the Beaux Arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast; and to be there by seven o’clock in the morning required so painful an effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the room, that I would return to the Beaux Arts no more.

Two observations here: this seems to reflect what I have been able to find out about student life at the École des Beaux Arts. Masters took little interest in the everyday running of their studios. Instead, students organised themselves as a kind of club, electing a leader or Massier to take charge and voting on the poses of models. The discipline was unruly, as Moore describes. New students were expected to treat the whole studio to drinks when they joined and could be subject to violent initiation rituals, such as being paraded around the studio, strapped to a wooden ladder. Fights were apparently not unusual.

Paris Art Students

The second point I would make is that Moore is very unreliable, even shifty as a narrator. And he seems to make a point of dramatising this. In this passage, for example, he is concerned by the 'rough, coarse and rowdy' character of life at the Beaux Arts, but he is also dismayed (perhaps more so) at having to get up early.  

This leads to important point about Confessions as a whole. Running through the book is a strong sense of  discontent with the conservative methods and aesthetics of the artistic establishment. So, for example, the narrator abandons the Beaux Arts in order to continue his artistic education at a slightly more progressive, private institution, run by Rodolphe Julien.** But Moore's unreliable narrator is also the vessel for the reactionary values that the book seeks to criticise. Julien's studio was not more advanced in its methods and aesthetic values than the Beaux Arts. When the narrator and his fellow students encounter genuine avant-garde paintings at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877, they are astounded:

We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, “What could have induced him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only une blague qu’on nous fait?” Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the “Turkeys,” and seriously we wondered if “it was serious work,” – that chef d’oeuvre! the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. “Just look at the house! why, the turkeys couldn’t walk in at the door. The perspective is all wrong.” Then followed other remarks of an educational kind; [...] Nor did we understand any more Renoir’s rich sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an absence of shadow appeal to us. You see colour and light in his pictures as you do in nature, and the child’s criticism of a portrait – “Why is one side of the face black?” is answered. There was a half length nude figure of a girl. How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light! such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before. But we saw nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing.

Note the curious split in the narrative here. In the present, the narrator appreciates the 'exquisite' light in Claude Monet's work and the 'rich sensualities of tone' in the painting of Auguste Renoir. But he is oblivious to these values in the past moment described. With his fellow students, the narrator falls back on the clichés and staid artistic methods that they were being taught at Art School. At this point in the narrative, the narrator himself is a conservative and reactionary force.

Claude Monet, Turkeys (1877)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

This seems quite a brave and even a risky strategy to me. Whilst it emphasises his development, this approach places the narrator's own failings at the centre of the book's account of the avant grade. We have to trust that we can trust the judgement of the person that he has become!


* Moore skims over this process in the 1889 text of Confessions of a Young, but added more detail in revisions made to the text for publication in 1917.

** More about Julien and his studio in my next post.