Date: Fri 27-Feb-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDIR

Quick Words:

Dahesh

Full Text:

Training An Artist

w/3 cuts

NEW YORK CITY -- The Dahesh Museum will present "Training an Artist: Alexandre

Cabanel and the Academic Process in Nineteenth Century France" from March 10

to June 13.

The exhibition traces the development of academic art from sketch to finished

painting by exploring how the Nineteenth Century French academic artist was

created through a rigorous system of training and competition. More than 40

prints and photographs, drawings, oil sketches, plaster casts and finished

paintings show how leading academic artists such as Cabanel were carefully

honed for artistic success by the intensive training process of the Ecole des

Beaux-Arts and competition for the Prix de Rome.

"Training an Artist" follows Cabanel and other renowned academic artists such

as Adolphe-William Bourguereau through their training and competition,

revealing to the viewer how they acquired - and later used - the constituent

elements and techniques of history painting, foremost among them mastering the

nude human figure, theatricalized expression, linear perspective and rigorous

pictorial composition.

Focusing on the process of training rather than simply its finished product,

the exhibition reveals how a rigorous system of instruction shaped artists not

only within the French academy but in the United States as well as Europe.

"Training an Artist" presents loans drawn from the Ecole Nationale Superieure

des Beaux-Arts, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of

Chicago, The Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Art

Students League of New York and the National Academy Museum and School of Fine

Arts.

The exhibition also features academic works from the Dahesh Museum's own

collection, including its recently acquired early Cabanel masterpiece, "The

Death of Moses" (1851), Francois-Leon Benouville's "Portrait of Leconte de

Floris" (1840), a study for "Captive Andromache" (circa 1888) by Frederic Lord

Leighton, J.A.F. Naudin's "Joseph's Coat Brought Back to Jacob" (a submission

to the 1841 Prix de Rome contest) and Theodore Ribot's drawing, "In the

Kitchen."

Cabanel's monumental canvas, "The Death of Moses," is the centerpiece of the

exhibition. This early masterpiece represents the culmination of Ecole des

Beaux Arts training. It was Cabanel's "dernier envoi" - the last painting he

sent to Paris after five years of study at the French Academy in Rome - and it

established his reputation when it won second prize at the Salon of 1852.

Embarking with this work as a summation of Cabanel's early training and as a

paradigm of the successful academic artist's acquisition of requisite

history-painting skills, the exhibition unfolds as a deconstruction of a

finished masterpiece, unwrapping each layer of skill and technique acquired by

Alexandre Cabanel as he traversed the road of a student at the Ecole des

Beaux-Arts to the crowning achievement of an artist of his day, the Prix de

Rome.

Although it focuses on Cabanel as an exemplar of academic success in

Nineteenth Century France, "Training an Artist" also presents comparative

works by other artists of Cabanel's generation that trace their progressive

mastering of the fundamental skills of history painting, particularly the

depiction of the human figure.

Nude studies, including examples from a competition in which students at the

Ecole des Beaux-Arts were required to paint a half-figure composition from a

live model within a specified period of time, are a central focus of the

exhibition, which features successful student entries by the young Leon

Benouville and Adolphe-William Bourguereau. It also presents works in which

artists demonstrate their ability to capture emblematic and expressive human

emotions, from melancholy to disdain, that would later be deployed as central,

dramatic ingredients of history paintings such as Benouville's "Jesus in the

Praetorium" (1845).

The exhibition also pairs works by artists of the same generation - such as

Benouville and Cabanel, respectively first- and second-place winners at the

Prix de Rome contest of 1845 - to demonstrate the atmosphere of competition

that shaped artists-in-training of the day.

A series of public programs that focus on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century

approaches to the training of artists will complement the exhibition. The

Dahesh Museum is located at 601 Fifth Avenue at 48th Street and is open

Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm. Admission is free.