Le Bal de l’Opera (1886)

Henri Gervex: Le Bal de l’Opera

Henry Gervex made his name during the 1880s as one of the boldest of the young artists who took Parisian social life and fin-de-siècle manners for their focus. In Le Bal de l'Opéra, painted in 1886, Gervex combined an immediately recognizable venue, the luxuriously grand foyer of Garnier's new Paris Opéra House, with an even more distinctly French social event, the masked balls that enlivened the winter season and fascinated French and foreign audiences alike. With his dramatic cropping of the foreground figures (which brings the viewer right onto the famous Opéra staircase amid the departing revellers) and his strategic emphasis on the pervasive black suits, top hats and walking sticks of his stylish male figures, Gervex deftly acknowledged the Impressionist example of his close friends Manet and Degas. At the same time, his complex staging of intriguing story lines and careful attention to architectural details kept Gervex and the risqué subject matter of Le Bal de l'Opéra within the expectations of the still powerful academic establishment. [Galerie Heim]

Une Séance du Jury de Peinture (ca. 1883)

Henri Gervex: Une Séance du Jury de Peinture au Salon des Artistes Français

Since the Salon of 1880, the artists themselves elected the colleagues whom they wished to pass judgment on the admission or the refusal of artworks to the Salon. The thirty-one jurors whom Gervex represented in a hall of the Palais des Champs-Elysees, gesticulating before the pictures to be examined, were never actually all present at the same time. So what we have here, rather, is an artistic homage with a strong realistic connotation rather than a scene of stormy kind. Portraitists such as Bonnat or Carolus-Duran, lovers of mythology and history like Bouguereau, Cabanel or Jean-Paul Laurens, can also be seen as supporters of the renewal of the landscape, like Français, Harpignies or Cazin, and some strong personalities that will soon shake this system of exposition. With his self-portrait and the portraits of Puvis de Chavannes or Roll, in the group of seven people represented to the left of the door, Gervex introduced the representation of a number of future dissidents.

Despite the reform of the status of the exhibitions and although the artists now decided among themselves who was entitled to judge works, the protests of those excluded did not cease. For example, in the spring of the previous year, a number of rejected artists, including a number of proponents of neo-impressionism (Cross, Seurat, Signac, etc.), formed themselves into an independent group and then, in the winter, into an artistic society under the name of Society of Independent Artists. Clarifying its motto, "An exhibition without a jury or a reward", this group of artists began the work of undermining which would soon succumb to the oldest French artistic institution. In 1890, led by Meissonier and Puvis de Chavannes, a split resulted in the creation of the National Society of Fine Arts, followed soon by the creation of a host of other new specialized or generalist fairs. The Salon had lived. [L'Histoire par L'image]

Rolla (1878)

Henri Gervex: Rolla

In the Spring of 1878, a month before the inauguration of the Salon, Rolla was brutally excluded from the event by the Beaux-Arts administration. Yet, Henri Gervex was a renowned painter. Aged only 26, he had already been awarded a medal at the Salon, which in theory made him an "outsider" in terms of competition and therefore dispensed from the deliberations of the jury in charge of choosing the artworks exhibited. This time, the authorities decided otherwise as they judged the scene to be "immoral".

Gervex found his inspiration in a long poem by Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), published in 1833. The text recounts the destiny of a young bourgeois, Jacques Rolla, falling into a life of idleness and debauchery. He meets with Marie, a teenager who found in prostitution an escape from misery. Rolla is seen here ruined, standing by the window, his eyes turned to the girl sleeping. He is about to commit suicide by poison.

If the scene was judged indecent, it was not because of Marie's nudity, which in no way differs from the canonic nudes of the time. The attention of contemporaries rather turned to the still life constituted by a gown, a garter, and a hastily undone corset covered with a top hat. Gervex might have been advised by Degas to put "a corset on the floor" so that the spectator may know this woman "is not a model". Indeed, this disposition and the nature of the clothes clearly indicate Marie's consent and her status as a prostitute. Moreover, the walking stick emerging from the garments acts as a metaphor for sexual intercourse.

After its exclusion from the Salon, Rolla was exhibited for three months in the gallery of a Parisian art dealer. The scandal, largely echoed by newspapers, attracted large crowds. Many years later, in interviews published in 1924, Gervex recalled the pleasure he had in seeing the "uninterrupted procession of visitors", although it is unknown whether he had anticipated the reaction of the authorities and willingly provoked the scandal. [Musée d’Orsay]

La Toilette (1878)

Henri Gervex: La Toilette

Zola’s Nana was one of the most widely read naturalist novels from the moment of its appearance in book form. Here, Zola chronicled the rise, adulation and eventual fall and decay of a contemporary sex goddess. The press response to his novel was overwhelming; cartoons continually appeared in the daily Parisian press extolling Zola for having touched upon a societal nerve. The response to Nana was immediate and profound. Edouard Manet created his version of Nana (in 1877) before the extensive text of the novel was published, demonstrating that the literary character, who had been introduced in earlier Zola novels, was already an icon among the public inaugurating and aura of anticipation. By 1880, in a painting that has not been located, Gervex created his first version of Nana. The beautiful young woman is dressing before a large mirror in the company of an elderly maid and a young gentleman. The latter eyes her admiringly, while twirling his moustache in an attitude of ownership. Since Gervex was much taken with the theme of sexuality, and with the significance of Nana as both an emblem and as a figure both used and abused in spite of her beauty, he clearly wanted to create other versions of the same sex goddess. La Toilette follows in this tradition.

In this painting, Gervex focuses on the actions of the young courtesan as she is looking at her reflection in a small mirror on a chest of drawers. Her dress cast aside at the left, her hat thrown on a small table in the rear create an ambiance of disarray; the atmosphere speaks of a sexual encounter -- a moment made more intense by the pensive look of the young woman. What connects the scene to Zola’s novel, and to Nana in particular, is the fact that this interior suggests a fashionable decor where plush draperies and rich carpeting reveal the type of environment in which Nana must have lived. At the right, a small series of stained glass panels, hanging in front of a large French window from which the light that illuminates the scene enters the room, further heightens the richness of the setting and reveals the current taste for stained glass in interiors. The use of these details suggests contemporaneity. The work is painted with a very broadly brushed surface and with an understanding of the color tonalities of Impressionism. In this canvas, Gervex demonstrates that he has understood the innovations of the Impressionist painters. The work is also treated with the same lively brushed style and tonality as Gervex's Rolla, which would date it in the late 1870s or very early 1880s. [Schiller & Bodo]

Café Scene in Paris (1877)

Henri Gervex: Café Scene in Paris

The Salon Jury (1855)

Henri Gervex: The Salon Jury