Monday, October 10, 2022

François-Marius Granet - "vignette-maker, adorer of the chic"

François-Marius Granet
Versailles - Gate in the Park
1837
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Versailles - l'Orangerie Staircase
1838
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
View from Granet's window at the Institut in Paris
(workers building a house)
1836
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Sculptor fashioning a Bust of Madame Granet
with Monsieur Granet looking on

1842
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Domenichino before Cardinal Aldobrandini
(sketch)
before 1849
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Domenichino before Cardinal Aldobrandini
before 1849
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Nicolas Poussin with others in Rome
viewing paintings by Guido Reni and Domenichino

1843
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Nicolas Poussin in his Studio painting a Landscape
1842
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Andrea Pozzo painting, while fellow Jesuits observe
before 1849
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Queen Victoria with Louis-Philippe
in the Church Crypt at Château d'Eu
ca. 1843
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Dying Father exhorting Sons to protect their Young Brother
before 1849
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Stoning of Stephen
1837
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Chapter Meeting of the Templars in 1147
ca. 1841
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Image of the Virgin
displayed by an Angel to Prisoners

1842
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Baptism of the Duc de Chartres in the Chapel at the Tuileries
1840
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François-Marius Granet
Ash Wednesday in a Church in Rome
1844
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

"The word 'chic' – a dreadful word of modern invention, which I do not even know how to spell correctly (somewhere or other, Balzac spells it 'chique'), but which I am obliged to use, because it has been sanctioned by artists in order to describe a modern monstrosity – the word 'chic' means total neglect of the model and of nature.  The 'chic' is an abuse of the memory; moreover it is a manual, rather than an intellectual, memory that it abuses – for there are artists who are gifted with a profound memory for characters and forms – Delacroix or Daumier, for example – and who have nothing to do with it.  The 'chic' may be compared with the work of those writing-masters who, with an elegant hand and a pen shaped for italic or running script, can shut their eyes and boldly trace a head of Christ or Napoleon's hat, in the form of a flourish.  . . .  MM. Granet and Alfred Dedreux are two more vignette-makers and great adorers of the 'chic'.  But they apply their capacities of improvisation to very different genres – M. Granet to the sphere of religion, and M. Dedreux to that of smart life.  The first does monks, and the second horses; the first is dark in colour, the second is bright and dazzling."

– from The Salon of 1846, published in Art in Paris, 1845-1862: Salons and Exhibitions reviewed by Charles Baudelaire, translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1965)