Gustave Boulanger

Ulysse reconnu par Euryclée, 1849, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris

Boulanger was born in Paris in 1824. He never knew his father, and when his mother's death left him orphaned at the age of fourteen, he became the ward of his uncle, Constant Desbrosses,[1] who in 1840 sent him to study first under the history painter Pierre-Jules Jollivet and then at the atelier of Paul Delaroche, where Boulanger met and befriended his fellow student Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Boulanger and Gérome would become leading lights of the Néo-Grec movement in French art, which revisited the fascination of previous generations for the Classical world, but brought to its austere subject matter subversive touches of whimsy, sensuality, and eroticism. "When they appear on the contemporary art scene, the Néo-Grecs will be defended as rejuvenators of the Classical tradition by some, condemned as gravediggers of history painting by others…they rarely give an orthodox image of Antiquity, some, like Gérôme, Boulanger and Hamon, not hesitating to choose licentious subjects, to parody mythological characters, or to invent very personal allegories of Antiquity."[2]

Phryné, 1850, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

In 1845, Boulanger was sent by his uncle to Algeria to tend to Desbrosses's business interests there. Boulanger was fascinated by all he saw, and what was planned as a two-month stay turned to eight, until Desbrosses threatened to cut off his funds. Boulanger brought back a large number of sketches which he used for his first Orientalist paintings.[3] (This was the first of at least three trips to North Africa, including one in 1872 with Gérôme.[4])

In 1848 and 1849, he shared communal living and working quarters with other artists of the Néo-Grec movement at the Chalet, 27 rue de Fleurus. The group also gathered at the atelier of Gérôme on rue de Sevres.[5] Boulanger turned his efforts to winning the Prix de Rome, and with it, a scholarship to the Académie de France à Rome. In 1848, he obtained second place with Saint Pierre chez Marie, and the next year he won the Grand Prix with Ulysse reconnu par Euryclée and departed for Rome, where he would remain until 1855. His education and research included study at the excavations of Pompeii.[6] He also traveled to Greece.[7]

Each year, the students at Rome sent back to the Academy in Paris a painting to demonstrate their progress, and for public exhibition; Boulanger's works repeatedly disappointed the Academy and scandalized critics, beginning with the first, Phryné, in 1850. Wrote one reviewer:

M. Boulanger, a first year pensionnaire, spent a lot of patience to paint with great finesse…a fat naked woman with red hair and slanted blue eyes, seated on rags of all colors and a scrap of cushion on which is engraved in Greek letters her name: Phryné. To take on this marvelous beauty who inspired Praxiteles' masterpiece and the famous Venus of Apelles, an artist must impose on himself the most severe purity of design, the utmost simplicity of line, the calm splendor of beauty. M. Boulanger's Phryné is far from responding to this program.[8]

In 1856, when his studies at Rome were complete, Boulanger took a second trip to North Africa,[9] and then returned to Paris. Boulanger moved into his own atelier at rue de La Rochefoucauld, 64, but continued to meet and socialize with the other Néo-Grecs. He became one of Jean-Léon Gérôme's closest friends; after 1863, Gérôme regularly entrusted him with the management of his studio at the École des Beaux-Arts during his travels in the East.[10]

Répétition du "Joueur de flûte" et de la "Femme de Diomède" chez le prince Napoléon, 1861, Musée d'Orsay

In 1855, Prince Napoléon, cousin of Napoleon III, decided to build a palace inspired by the villas of Pompeii, in particular by the Villa of Diomedes. The palace had rooms around an atrium open to the sky with a shallow pool below. Busts of the Bonaparte family surrounded the atrium, with a white marble statue of Napoleon I presiding in the guise of a deified Caesar. Gérôme took part in the project by making three paintings that he considered "perhaps the most beautiful things he ever signed."[11]

Répétition théâtrale dans la maison d’un poète romain, 1855, Hermitage Museum

The Pompeiian palace was inaugurated on 14 February 1860, in the presence of the Emperor and Empress. Théophile Gautier was present to hear the recitation of his poem written for the occasion, La Femme de Diomède: Prologue. Then famous actors of the Théâtre-Français and the Comedie-Française performed The Flute Player, a play by Emile Augier, a friend of Gautier and the Néo-Grecs.[12]

Boulanger's Répétition théâtrale dans la maison d’un poète romain at the Salon of 1855 played a part in inspiring both the Pompeiian palace and its inauguration with a play. Boulanger was privileged to immortalize the occasion with a work presented at the Salon of 1861, Répétition du "Joueur de flûte" et de la "Femme de Diomède" chez le prince Napoléon (Rehearsal of "The Flute Player" and "Wife of Diomedes" at the Place of Prince Napoléon).[13] The painting depicts not the performance itself but a rehearsal, with only writers, actors, and a Black slave present.[14]

Gautier wrote that the painting "will preserve the memory of a charming spectacle…[The actors] are ancients and moderns at the same time…M. Boulanger was able to merge, with rare spirit and a perfect fit, two apparently irreconcilable elements: the present and past, Paris and Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius!…rarely has an ancient pastiche been more successful."[15]

With its synthesis of art, architecture, theatricality, re-enactment, wry humor, and royal patronage, Boulanger's Répétition du "Joueur de flûte" may be seen as the apotheosis of the Néo-Grec aesthetic.

When the enemy forces approached Paris in 1870, like many of the artists who stayed in Paris, having neither enlisted in the army nor fled abroad, Boulanger became a member of the National Guard, joining ranks with his friend Charles Garnier, as well as Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Auguste Rodin, and Louis Émile Benassit.[16]

As normal life and all previous projects came to a stop, Boulanger painted a series of works documenting the momentous events. These scenes of fire and carnage, quite unlike anything else in his oeuvre, are in the collection of the Musée Carnavalet.

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  Sarrebruck après la bataille, le 5 août 1870
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  Épisode de la Commune, place de la Concorde, 1871
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  Assaut d'un cimetière par les troupes régulières, mai 1871
• 
  L'Hôtel de Ville incendié, assailli par les troupes de Versailles, 1871
• 
  La tour Saint-Jacques, reprise par les troupes versaillaises, 1871
• 
  Épisode de la Commune, place de la Concorde, 1871
• 
  La Rotonde de la Villette cernée par les troupes versaillaises

Boulanger would continue to evoke the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans throughout his career. Noting his deep research and attention to detail, one critic called him "a scholar at least as much as a virtuoso."[17] Many of these paintings are in private collections, and some are known only from written descriptions or from lithographs or other reproductions of the originals.

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  Galathée et le berger Athis, 1860, private collection
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  Venus Captive, after the painting of 1860 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque
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  Vénus et l'Amour, 1860, private collection
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  Hercules aux pieds d'Omphale, 1861, private collection
• 
  La promenade sure la voie des tombeaux, à Pompei, 1869, private collection
• 
  Une marchande de bijoux a Pompéi, 1868,[18][19] private collection
• 
  Gynaeceum heliogravure after the painting of 1875
• 
  Un repas chez Lucullus; Triclinium d’été, 1877, private collection
• 
  La Via Appia au temps d'Auguste, colored reproduction by George Barrin of the painting of 1874
• 
  La boutique du barbier Licinius, engraving by Gautier, 1885
• 
  Mother of the Gracchi, after the painting of 1885

Like his friend Gérôme, Boulanger would also paint Orientalist subjects throughout his career, drawing inspiration from his travels in North Africa.

…Africa had opened up new horizons for him, had stirred in him unforgettable emotions, but had not thrown him into the great current into which Delacroix was to venture and from which, with his marvelous genius, Delacroix was to emerge unharmed. Gustave Boulanger brought back the brilliance of the Orient in his eye rather than in his thought. He dreamed of a quieter Orient, with broad lines, fine types, gently pleated draperies; an Orient with the sky of Greece.[20]

Because museums preferred to collect his Classical subjects, Boulanger's Orientalist works were for a long time less well known, but in the 21st-century art market they are more sought after and bring higher prices.

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  A Bedouin Musician, 1859, private collection
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  La déroute des Kabyles, 1863, private collection
• 
  Djeid et Rahia, 1865, private collection
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  Catherine I Negotiating the Treaty of Prut, 1866, private collection
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  El Hiasseub, Conteur Arabe, 1868, private collection
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  Title unknown, 1870, private collection
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  La Prière, 1871, private collection
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  Reception Of An Emir, 1871, private collection
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  La quête de l'Aïd-Srir, à Biskra, 1873, private collection
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  A Water Carrier, 1883, private collection
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  Porteur d'eau Juif, Alger, 1884; engraving by Thiriat, original painting lost

Though less known for his portraiture, Boulanger painted and drew portraits throughout his career.

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  Edmond Membrée, c. 1849-1850
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  Alfred de Curzon, 1852, Villa Medici
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  Woman and three children, 1852, Metropolitan Museum
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  study for Tête d'Italienne, 1854, private collection
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  Tête d’Italienne, 1854, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes
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  Camille du Locle, 1854, Musée du Louvre
• 
  Jules Duprato, 1856, Bibliothèque nationale de France
• 
  Casimir Leconte, 1856, etching, Metropolitan Museum
• 
  Daniel Garnier sleeping, c. 1862, Musée du Louvre
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  Charles Garnier, 1884, Aberdeen Art Gallery
• 
  Camille Saint-Saëns, 1884, Bibliothèque nationale de France

The Slave Market, 1886

Boulanger produced one of his most famous paintings near the end of his life, shown at the Paris Salon of 1886: Un Maquignon d’esclaves à Rome (A Slave Dealer in Rome), which has become better known as The Slave Market. A "pendant" painting, Esclaves à vendre (Slaves for Sale), followed in 1888 and was to be Boulanger's last exhibited painting.[21] Though set in the ancient Roman world, these paintings are stylistically closer to Boulanger's Orientalist works. The realism is stark, with none of the playfulness and luxurious fantasy of his previous Classical paintings; The Slave Market seems a world away from Répétition du "Joueur de flûte".

The Slave Market is thought to be in a private collection. The status and location of Esclaves à vendre (known only from a black and white reproduction) is unknown.

Anonymous watercolor, Garnier and Boulanger at a masked ball, Villa Medici, 1851

Boulanger shared a long and fruitful relationship, both personal and professional, with the architect Charles Garnier. Garnier obtained the Grand Prix de Rome in 1848 at age twenty-three, for architecture. Boulanger obtained his Grand Prix de Rome for art the next year at age twenty-five, and the two met as students enjoying their subsequent scholarships at the French Academy at Rome. A portrait of Garnier by Boulanger dated 1854 is in the collection of the Academy at the Villa Medici. Boulanger would execute several more portraits of Garnier over the decades.

Portrait de Garnier, 1854

In 1868, Boulanger spent the month of May traveling in Spain with Garnier and his wife, Louise Bary Garnier. Garnier's travel journal, filled with architectural sketches and character studies, includes a few drawings by Boulanger, and several sketches of Boulanger by Garnier, including one of "pauvre Boulanger" with a scarf binding his jaw with the knot tied atop his head, suffering a toothache. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has made the original manuscript of Garnier's Voyage en Espagne freely available online,[30] and an English translation with facsimile of the original was published in 2012.[31]

The two friends found the opportunity to collaborate when Garnier designed two opulent opera houses and commissioned Boulanger to execute large and elaborate paintings to decorate walls and ceilings. Boulanger's paintings for the Foyer de la Danse in the Opéra Garnier in Paris (1875) and his massive ceiling painting Allegory of Music high above the stage of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo (1879) were judged by some critics to be his most successful work.[32]

The two men came to share a familial intimacy and were in almost daily contact.[33] Boulanger's closeness to the Garniers can be seen in his drawing of their infant son Daniel sleeping, made around 1862; the child died at age two. The poignant memento eventually passed from the Garnier family to the Louvre.

In a letter to Garnier, Boulanger inquired: "How is the earthly envelope of that beautiful soul that is so dear to me? Do you know you are the second person in my life in whom have I found an imagination and a heart after my own fashion?" (The first person was presumably Boulanger's wife, Nathalie.)[34]

Born a year and a half apart, Boulanger and Garnier died within a year of each other.

Mlle. Nathalie, 1867

Boulanger was married to one of the most famous actresses in France, Zaïre-Nathalie Martel, known to one and all as Mademoiselle Nathalie. She remains a legend in the annals of the Comedie-Française,[35] not least for her quarrel with the much younger Sarah Bernhardt. At a ceremony honoring the birthday of Molière on 15 January 1863, Bernhardt's younger sister, Regina, stepped on the train of Mademoiselle Nathalie's gown. Mademoiselle Nathalie shoved Regina off the gown, causing the girl to strike a stone column and gash her forehead. Bernhardt stepped forward and slapped Mademoiselle Nathalie so hard that the older actress fell onto another actor. When Bernhardt refused to apologize, she was forced to leave the Comedie-Française.[36]

Mademoiselle Nathalie died three years before Boulanger, in 1885. He donated his portrait of her, painted in 1867, to the Comedie-Française.

Obituaries of the Boulangers make no mention of children, and Montrosier indicates that the widowed Boulanger had no immediate family when he died in 1888.[37]

Boulanger's self-portrait at age 30 or 31, executed while he was in Rome, depicts an artist with a penetrating gaze and an elegantly waxed mustache. But a later art historian was struck by the contrast between the older Boulanger's personal appearance and the polished perfection of his art. "As for G. Boulanger, his works, all of grace, elegance and charm, do not correspond at all to our picture of him. A round face with a flattened, bald head, a squat nose, a small mouth, half-closed eyes, a shaggy beard—these are the traits of a magician of color and form, the creator of so many exquisite works!...And yet, as with Verlaine, of whom the image of Boulanger makes one think, what delicacy lies beneath this rough bark!"[38]

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  Self-portrait, 1855
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  Caricature by Eugène Giraud, 1867
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  Photo by Ferdinand Mulnier, 1880
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  Photo by Eugène Pirou
• 
  Photo by Ernest Ladrey, published 1888
• 
  Photo by Atelier Pierre Petit et fils, c. 1888

• La Mort de Cyrus (study), 1844, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts.
• Ulysse reconnu par Euryclée, 1849, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts.
• Portrait du poète et librettiste Camille du Commun du Locle, 1854, gouache, watercolor and pencil, Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques.
• Répétition du “Joueur de flûte” et de “La femme de Diomède” chez le prince Napoléon (study), 1860, Comédie-Française.
• Répétition du “Joueur de flûte” et de “La femme de Diomède” chez le prince Napoléon, 1861, Musée d’Orsay.
• Daniel Garnier endormi (drawing of Charles Garnier's infant son, who lived 1862–1864), c. 1862, Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques.
• Portrait de Zaïre-Nathalie Martel, dite Mademoiselle Nathalie, 1867, Comédie-Française.
• Sarrebruck après la bataille, c. 1870, Musée Carnavalet.
• L’Assaut du cimetière par les troupes régulières, 1871, Musée Carnavalet.
• Épisode de la Commune, place de la Concorde, 1871, Musée Carnavalet.
• L’Hôtel de Ville incendié, assailli par les troupes de Versailles, 1871, Musée Carnavalet.
• La Rotonde de la Villette cernée par les troupes Versaillaises, 1871, Musée Carnavalet.
• La tour Saint-Jacques reprise par les troupes Versaillaises, 1871, Musée Carnavalet.
• Les Danses champêtre, bacchique, amoureuse et guerrière (studies), before 1875, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• Vertus civiques: Le Mariage, Le Départ à la guerre, Vie antique, L'Étude, La Famille, Forge, 1878, studies for the Salle des Mariages de la Mairie du 13e arrondissement, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais.
• Portrait de Charles Garnier, n.d., Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• Miscellaneous drawings, sketches and studies, Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques.

• Portrait de Monsieur Sinclair-Desbrosses, 1849, Musée Lambinet.
• Parc de la villa Borghèse à Rome, c. 1847, Musée Hébert, La Tronche.
• Ulysse reconnu par Euryclée (study), 1849, Musée Magnin, Dijon.
• Acis et Galatée, 1848, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne.
• Le Repas des Dieux, after Raphael, 1853, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes.
• Tête d’Italienne, 1854, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes.
• César arrive au Rubicon (study), 1854, Musée de Picardie, Amiens.
• César arrive au Rubicon, 1854, Musée de Picardie.
• Venus Captive, 1860, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque
• Le Mamillare (or Le Bain; Après le bain), 1867, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers.
• Saint Sébastien et l’empereur Maximilien Hercule, 1877, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille.
• Portrait de Madame Lambinet, née Nathalie Sinclair, 1887, Musée Lambinet, Versailles.

• Portraits of Boulanger's fellow pensionnaires at the Académie de France à Rome, Villa Medici: Charles Lecointe, 1849; Jules Duprato and Félix Thomas, 1851; Alfred de Curzon, 1852; Charles Garnier and Jean-Baptiste Gibert, 1854; Adolphe Crauk, Denis Lebouteux, and Boulanger's self-portrait, 1855.

• Phryné, 1850, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

• Répétition théâtrale dans la maison d’un poète romain, 1855, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

• Portrait de Charles Garnier, 1884, Aberdeen Art Gallery.

• Deux Maures, c. 1850, Baltimore Museum of Art.
• Sirène (or Mermaid), n.d., Baltimore Museum of Art.
• L’Automne, 1850, Cleveland Museum of Art.
• Portrait of Woman and Three Children, drawing, 1852, Metropolitan Museum of Art.