Museum Management and Curatorship, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 85–92, 2001 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reservedPergamon

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PII:S0260-4779(01)00019-XWorld of Museums

The ‘Infectiousness’ of Art: Chardin, Freud, Specialist

Knowledge and the Reading of Artworks

In 1947, the American artist Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) produced, in bothwords and paint, a most sympathetic portrait of his friend and physician, Dr.George A Russell of Arlington, Vermont. The painting is itself an essay, as is asimilar work from 1946 showing the schoolmistress Mrs. Effie McGuire of OakMountain, Georgia. For those not made uncomfortable by Rockwell’s photo-realism, or by a linking of family and responsibility, or by art with a definitemoral message,1 these are minor masterpieces. They avoid the comic aspects ofhis other better known works, mostly covers for the Saturday Evening Post,which tended to be big on feet and sentiment. But even among these there aresatisfying accomplishments and, for example, Saying Grace (the cover for theSaturday Evening Post issue of November 24th 1951) is a powerfully evocativework, illustrating an incident recounted to him by a correspondent concerningan old Amish woman observed in a diner with her grandson. This contributionadopts an approach to works of art which is not primarily art historical, butrather one suggested by what would have been that of the family physicianbrought to mind in Rockwell’s painting, or, indeed, by a sympathetic medically-informed observer. It has been further stimulated by Tolstoy’s essay What isArt?, and by Lucian Freud’s recent analyses in paint of one of Chardin’s bestknown works. Rockwell’s subject matter and approach, in certain ways compa-rable to that of Chardin, is recalled as showing how such criticism of an oldermaster can lead to a reappraisal and enhanced enjoyment of a more recent artist.

From the 22 August to 15 September in 1740, the French painter Jean-SimeonChardin exhibited five well-received works at the Paris Salon—The Monkey asPainter, The Monkey as Philosopher, The Diligent Mother, Saying Grace, andThe Schoolmistress2—and London was most fortunate in 2000 to be able toenjoy versions of the last three of these paintings, with The Diligent Motherand Saying Grace at the Royal Academy of Arts, and The Schoolmistress at theNational Gallery, in which collection the latter resides.

Chardin customarily executed several versions of a composition, and althoughthere is a rival contender in an Irish collection,3 it is probable that the paintingin the National Gallery, known there as The Young Schoolmistress (Figure 1),is that exhibited in 1740. Last year, this painting was selected by Lucian Freudfor analysis and re-working to be displayed in the exhibition entitled Encounters:New Art from Old (14 June–17 September, 2000). The Diligent Mother, andSaying Grace (Benedicite, Louvre, Paris) were exhibited in London 11 March–29 May, 2000, forming part of the splendid selection of Chardin’s work shown

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1. The Young Schoolmistres, by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699–1779), signed“chardin”, oil on canvas, 61.5×66.5 cm., The National Gallery, London. Possibly the ver-sion exhibited by Chardin in the Salon of 1740, this painting was selected by LucianFreud for analysis and re-working to be displayed in his exhibition Encounters: New Artfrom Old at the National Gallery, London, 2000 (Morphet and Rosenblum et al., 2000).

in the travelling exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts, which then transferredto The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The detailed catalogue pub-lished for that exhibition provides the biographical and other detail used in thiscontribution (Rosenberg, Bailey, Demoris et al., 2000), and it is to be noted thatthe two paintings now in the Louvre were presented to the French King, LouisXV, at Versailles in November 1740. The three works have a common theme,that of education within the family environment, in religion, housewifery, andliteracy, possibly reflecting the Jansenist principles held by Chardin. In Benedic-ite, the son of the house is expected to repeat grace before a simple meal, andin The Diligent Mother the daughter is reproved for losing concentration onher embroidery, while for his paintings Lucian Freud chose La Petite Maitressed’ecole, Chardin’s depiction of a young boy learning his letters.

The artist does not start with a blank sheet. For him, or for her, the preparedcanvas is already occupied, before the first charcoal or pencil marks are made,by the conventions of art and perspective, with the knowledge of the works of

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2. After Chardin (small), by Lucian Freud, 1999, oil on canvas, 15.3×20.4 cm., Acquav-ella Contemporary Art Inc., New York, and exhibited in Encounters: New Art from Old

at the National Gallery, London, 2000.

other artists, and with the previous experiences of the artist’s own compo-sitions. Modern Art in various ways attempts to circumvent this by automaticpainting, assembly, or the presentation of more or less empty canvases, but thisescape from convention does not apply to Chardin. For him there was, as forhis contemporaries, a period of time from premiere pensee to vernisssage whenthe process of creation stayed in the mind and hands of the artist, before beinghanded on to the viewer. Normally, investigation of this period can only beattempted by the later viewer with difficulty, but chance occasionally favoursposterity. Rockwell’s working methods are documented in a critical essay byJohn Updike (1999), and Chardin himself revealed something as he re-workedhis compositions several times, three versions of Benedicite are illustrated inthe catalogue, and two others are mentioned, as well as re-workings of TheDiligent Mother. In addition, Pierre Rosenberg, in the Royal Academy catalogue,draws attention to the existence of a rough sketch by Chardin which has sur-vived to give clues as to his methods, although it is so broadly executed as tolead to uncertainty as to which of the two pictures it was for.4 Finally, thiscontribution, while adopting a medical viewpoint, is equally intended to drawattention to the most unusual circumstance of having a highly perceptive con-temporary artist, Lucian Freud, offering visual analyses of a painting, rather thanthe customary printed critical commentary or analysis.

The value of an artistic reworking is different from the commentary of an artcritic, since it not only scrapes the canvas clean, it takes the creative processfurther back than that, for it was part of Freud’s creative input, out of the wealthof paintings in the National Gallery collection made available to him, to havechosen this Chardin for Encounters. He has then taken us through a reconstruc-

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tion, first concentrating on the faces of his subjects (Figure 2), then nearly thecomplete composition. Chardin’s faces present a challenge in the original: thereis something disturbing in the plainness of the child, who squints and has aprominent chin, and there is also something seemingly unkind in the painting ofpeakiness in the older girl’s profile, the slackness of her jaw, and the apparentlyunfocused gaze. The catalogue published for the Royal Academy exhibitionrefers to Chardin’s reputation as a “great painter of immobility and silence”.Freud’s reworking challenges and dispels the claim of immobility, for his firstvignette is full of only briefly interrupted motion, and this sends the viewer backto the original. Here there is a surprise, for while the movement so apparentin the Freud is not seen, the explanation for the facial oddness of the modelsbecomes apparent. A parent, a speech therapist, a dentist or a paediatrician nolonger sees a child with a squint, but a face of intense concentration, as withjutting lower lip and slightly open mouth the small boy is evidently on the verypoint of vocalising the letter of the alphabet seen on the page in front of him,and we know from the lips, from the age, from the cheeks, and from the chin,that the sound will be formed as a learning child would form that sound. Theartist’s genius is here demonstrated in a canvas which is far from silent. It canbe ‘read’ as clearly as if the child had a cartoon speech bubble, more clearly infact, for human experience, not phonetic notation, conveys the sound the childwill make into the ears of the viewer. And this is not the only sound to beseen at the point of production, for close examination of the lips of the ‘youngschoolmistress’ shows them too to be slightly parted, and her moue shows thatthe instant after the child’s vocalisation, she will give the correct adult sound.The profile looks odd to an English viewer because the sound will be a French

3. After Chardin, by Lucian Freud, 1999, oil on canvas, 52.7×61.0 cm., Acquavella Con-temporary Art Inc., New York, and exhibited in Encounters: New Art from Old at the

National Gallery, London, 2000.

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and not an English one. Her gaze, at first sight unfocussed, in fact hovers halfwaybetween the letter to which she points, and the lips of the child.

Proust in 1895 talked of Chardin’s mastery over light and material, “betweentablecloth and sunlight, between the warmth and the fabrics, between beingsand objects, past and present, light and dark”.5 Freud’s second canvas extendshis coverage and shows how comfortable these two people are with each other(Figure 3). The child is fully engaged with the galleried top of the cupboard,the fingertips of his left hand curl over the top, while his right arm rests fullyover it so that the forearm is comfortably positioned on the polished surface ofthe cupboard. The chubby fingers are under no tension as they lie on the exer-cise book. The ‘schoolmistress’ steadies her right forearm in a nock in the carvedgallery at the side, and her left hand rests just over the gallery where it hasbecome a mere lip at the front.

No other table top or surface included in the extensive Royal Academy exhi-bition displayed the same modelling. Chardin’s props and human models werere-used, and, for example, the cupboard which appears in the foreground ofThe Return from Market of 1738 reappears in the background of Benedicitewith what appears to be the same pewter charger dish propped up on it, but,like all the other desks, shelves etc. the artist uses apart from this one, it is flattopped. Chardin has in this one painting brought the inanimate wood of thecupboard top into intimate engagement with the narrative of the work. Thiswould perhaps have been apparent to any careful student of the painting, butit is Freud’s reworking which highlights the original composition.

Another detail picked up by Freud further illustrates Chardin’s mastery of finemanipulation of the viewer’s eye, for the glimpse of brown inner sleeve betweenthe blue of the surcoat worn by the girl and her generous cuff, has the effectof shaping and articulating her left arm, directing the eye forward to the handand the open book. Once again, and now through the use of a beautifully con-structed piece of domestic furniture, conjoined with the limbs of the models,we can see continuous movement. We can see how the boy and girl arrivedwhere they are, and be equally sure of their next movements. Their intimacyalso sends us back to the title the National Gallery has given the original work.The Royal Academy Chardin exhibition catalogue translates La Petite Maitressed’ecole as The Schoolmistress, which is relatively neutral, whereas the Encoun-ters exhibition instead uses The Young Schoolmistress, which in present-dayEngland tends to suggest a poor relation or someone whose family has fallenon hard times, a reading which the picture does not sustain. Translating Petiteliterally as ‘little’, however, not only fits Chardin’s intimate composition better,but imposes a sentiment more in keeping with the artist and his age, and givesthe girl status as sister, cousin, or childhood friend, which visually seems muchmore the intended meaning. Further information as to the age of the girl mightbe deduced from her having ‘put her hair up’, but this reading would be influ-enced by more recent English custom as recorded, for example, in Max Beer-bohm’s Zuleika Dobson: “And now she was sixteen years old. Her hair, tiedback at the nape of her neck, would very soon be ‘up’” (Beerbohm, 1947). Onlya social historian familiar with 18th century French petit bourgeois etiquettecould draw such a conclusion, and the more obviously very young girls in theother paintings by Chardin have their hair up, so a closer relationship in age

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between pupil and teacher than immediately and subconsciously impresses itselfon the older English viewer is quite possible.

In Benedicite, the boy’s mother and sister are waiting for him to say grace,and in The Little Schoolmistress, we, like the girl, are waiting for a sound. Senti-mentality is close, but avoided only because Chardin was a master of this genre.Leon Tolstoy said (of music):

The slightest deviation of pitch in either direction, the slightest increase or decreasein time, or the slightest strengthening or weakening of the sound beyond what isneeded, destroys the perfection and consequently the infectiousness of the work...It is the same in all arts: a wee bit lighter, a wee bit darker, a wee bit higher,lower, to the right or the left in painting, ...and there is no contagion.6

Freud has captured this precisely, and sent the viewer back in wonder toChardin, that an artist could use the back, side, front, and top of a householdartefact to show what would now be referred to as body language to such effectand turn still life into narrative. Furthermore, there is what Freud has consciouslyleft out or altered in what he has painted, and what he has left un-shown bycropping the original composition. Held in the girl’s right hand in the originalwork by Chardin, the housewife will see in what is painted a knitting needleor meat skewer, easy to pick up with its large disc head, and perfectly balanced.On the other hand, a radiologist will see an analogue of his or her straightenedpaper clip, while the religious will perceive a ‘yad’ to point to the letter or theWord. The child in the painting, however, sees only a cursor resting by a letter,towards which, in a gesture recognisable as absolutely accurate for the age atwhich he is portrayed, a forefinger is extended. The observer does not knowwhat the letters are on the page, for the artist has left them indistinct, with witavoiding the distraction of detail, as does Rockwell on the page in front of hisschoolmistress. This is a positive act, one engaging the viewer in an increasedpsychological involvement with the image.

The front of the cabinet, from which, it may be inferred, the book for thelesson being given has been taken, is not without detail. In addition to the strongvertical beading covering the meeting of the two doors, which leads the eyedirectly up to the tip of the child’s finger, the artist has painted a dense shadowmaking clear the presence of a key in the lock, and there is a matching blankescutcheon on the child’s side. In the real world there would be no visual associ-ation between the girl’s pointer and the shadow of the key, but the painting istwo-dimensional, and the shadow deceives the eye, particularly so when theoriginal painting is viewed, serving also to echo the pointer as well as the key.The child’s finger, the girl’s pointer, the shadow of the key, the gaze of themodels, and now the eye of the observer, form a reinforcement both to themessage of the painting, and to the focus of the painting, which, unseen by theviewer behind the slight curl of the leaf of the book, is at the tip of the pointer.Additional technical mastery, almost showing off by the artist, is to be seen inthe set of the girl’s neck and head, turned and tilted away from us, with thesterno-mastoid depicted in such neutrality that it is does not even contour theskin, which has left the artist painting her dark-shadowed eye as a most difficultchallenge brilliantly achieved. We have just a glimpse and yet we can be sureof her concentration on the lips of the boy, like his on the book, and of theshadow of tiredness, artifice, or illness which is evident also. Sensitive to the

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cold fact that the artist and both models have long since left earthly affairs andconcerns behind them, it is almost indecent to probe further in the presenceof such life as the painting shows, and in the presence of its message of conti-nuity of knowledge.

Nonetheless, if Death is for the undertaker, diagnosis is for the doctor. Chard-in’s young schoolmistress, with her pallor, dark shadowed eyes, blue veinedhand, and more than a hint of flushed cheek adds to this masterpiece of narrativepainting a suggestion of consumptive mortality which takes it into a differentplane of effectiveness. In the experience of contemporaries of Chardin, forwhom the facies of phthisis were encountered daily in the young, the subliminalmessage would have been apparent, whether or not the artist himself was fullyaware of having painted them. The young girl may in fact have been as fit as afiddle, and lived to see her great grand-children, but there is something presentin this portrait which adds an urgency to the narrative aspect for the medicalviewer, and an urgency to Chardin’s message of the centrality of education, ofthe process of passing on knowledge. In this context, it is a fortunate circum-stance that we can not only look at Freud’s reworkings of the painting, but alsoChardin’s other paintings of the same date in order to add body to the analysis,and reassurance that the girl was, notwithstanding her appearance, healthy. Aswas stated earlier, Chardin exhibited The (Young) Schoolmistress, together withThe Diligent Mother and Saying Grace, at the Paris Salon in 1740, and the lattertwo may now be seen in the Louvre. Even if the artist did not use the samemodels in each, as seems very possible, the girls depicted certainly come fromthe same domestic background. A commentator has referred to it as a ‘virtuoushard-working social class’, and an obviously literate one too. The girl and hermother in Benedicite have the same Chardin trademark flushed cheeks, flushedby nature or artifice we can not tell, but without the accompanying pallor ofthe schoolmistress. It is in any case not important whether added pathos wasChardin’s intent, it is the accumulated knowledge of the incalculable numberslost to the ‘white plague’ of tuberculosis until very recently, and the knowledgethat this disease still waits in the wings, which sensitises a medical viewer, notthe search for emotion.

On a lighter note, the gender of the pupil in The Young Schoolmistress isnot immediately apparent to the modern viewer, but the boy in Saying Gracehas the same head-dress and smock or pinafore dress as the boy in The School-mistress where there is no gender ambiguity because his drum and drumstickare by his side. In composition and life the other paintings are interesting, butLa Petite Maitresse d’ecole, is in a different league when the tension of theinstant of painted life is considered. It is a challenging masterpiece whereas theothers are more conventional and perhaps even cosy. A deep debt of gratitudeis owed to Lucian Freud for bringing this masterpiece of narrative painting for-ward as he has, and to the National Gallery for arranging the Encounters exhi-bition. As well as the two oils, Freud has executed an etching. This is appropri-ate, for in his lifetime, Chardin’s work became famous through the widespreadcirculation of reproductive engravings (Chardin, 1970). Rockwell’s work can besaid not to consist in the paintings themselves but to have truly reached theirdefinitive forms in the reproductions which reached and still reach millions.There is another point of importance. To ‘anatomise’ a painting in the wayattempted above has the same result as a dissection. The information gained is

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invaluable in treating the living, or in looking at later works, but there is amarked reluctance to revisit the corpse of the subject. Freud’s approach, andthat of the other artists who have taken part in the Encounters exhibitions,carried no hint of the resurrectionist. The experience was enlightening andthough the exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing closed on 17 September 2000, thewell-illustrated catalogue and other reproductions permit further study, but onemust seize any opportunity to examine the original paintings.

Artists and doctors are privileged to have access to great intimacy with thehuman body, an exercise such as Freud’s demonstrates clearly what art has tooffer to the medical world, Tolstoy’s Infectiousness.

Malcolm Bishop

Footnotes

1. For a critical essay, see Updike (1999, pp. 721-5).2. Mercure de France Nov. 1740, p. 2513. Reference given in Catalogue of the Chardin Exhibition.3. National Gallery, London, personal communication.4. Rosenberg et al., 2000, p. 247.5. Proust quoted in Rosenberg et al., 2000.6. Tolstoy (1898, ch. XII, pp. 200–1).

Bibliography

Beerbohm, M. (1947) Zuleika Dobson. First edn. 1911. Heinemann edn. 1947, p. 149.Chardin (1970) Oxford companion to art 1970. 1991 ed., p. 220.Morphet, R. and Rosenblum, R. et al. (2000) Encounters, new art from old. National Gallery Com-

pany Ltd, London.Rosenberg, P., Bailey, C., Demoris, R. et al. (2000) Chardin. Trans. Caroline Beamish. The Royal

Academy of Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, London and New York.Tolstoy, L. (1898) What is art? and essays on art. Trans. Aylmer Maude, 1930. Oxford University

Press, Oxford.Updike, J. (1999) Acts of seeing in ‘more matter’. Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London.

Photo Credits

1. National Gallery, London.2 & 3. Acquavella Contemporary Art Inc., New York.