Pierre Dubreuil and Hans Gött: two pupils of Henri Matisse

While most of Henri Matisse's close relationships with other artists were as friend and colleague, sharing ideas and going on joint painting expeditions (for instance in Collioure with Derain in 1906, in Tangier with Marquet and Camoin in 1912, in La Goulette with Étienne Bouchaud in 1926), he also had various formal and informal master-pupil relationships. Most notably, between 1908 and 1912 he ran the Académie Matisse. Many of the students there were Scandinavian, of whom the stars were Sigrid Hjertén, Isaac Grünewald and Per Krohg, but there were also Americans (Max Weber, Alfred Maurer), Germans (Hans Purrmann) and even Britons (Matthew Smith). At this time Matisse had much more respect internationally than he commanded at home, and there was a notable lack of French students at the Académie Matisse. One young French artist who did attend was Pierre Dubreuil. I'm prompted to write about him because of the almost simultaneous acquisition of his engraving Sarah la baigneuse, and the etching Schlafendes Mädchen by Hans Gött. Two sensuous reclining nudes, both resonating with Matisse's vision of an art of luxe, calme, et volupté. Gött was not a student at the Académie Matisse, but instead benefited from informal lessons in Matisse's atelier in 1919.

Pierre Dubreuil, Sarah la baigneuse

Engraving, 1930

Pierre Dubreuil was born in Quimper, Brittany, in 1891. After initial studies in Vannes, and three months at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Dubreuil entered the Académie Matisse in 1908, and remained there until Matisse dissolved the school in spring 1912. His artistic career was stalled by World War One. First military service and then war mobilization stole seven years from his artistic development. Dubreuil did not exhibit until 1921, after which he was a regular at the Salons des Artistes Indépendants, d'Automne, and des Tuileries. As a printmaker, his preferred medium was the copper engraving, though he also produced drypoints, etchings, and wood engravings. He was president of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français, and a member of the Peintres-Graveurs Indépendants.

Pierre Dubreuil, On n'est pas heureux qu'avec une bonne femme 

Engraving, 1930

As well as painting and printmaking, Pierre Dubreuil painted murals and designed tapestries, and illustrated a number of books, including works by Restif de la Bretonne, Paul Valéry, Hugues Rebell, and Henri de Regnier. Alongside Matisse, he contributed original prints to the two great collaborative livres d'artiste of the 1930s and 40s, Paris 1937 and Alternance.

Pierre Dubreuil, La Double Maîtresse

Wood engraving, 1930

In 1944 Dubreuil illustrated La Nichina, a novel by the dissolute Hugues Rebell about a sixteenth-century Venetian courtisan, with numerous engravings. The book was published in a fairly large edition of 970 copies, of which 930 were on vélin de Rives, and 40 on vergé de Hollande. The 40 on Hollande laid paper also had a supplementary suite of the engravings, printed in sanguine on china paper. The engravings were printed by Paul Haasen.

Pierre Dubreuil, La Nichina (reclining)

Engraving, 1944

Examples in sanguine on chine and in black on vergé de Hollande

Pierre Dubreuil, Venice, Campanile di San Marco

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil, Venice

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil, Au soleil levant

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil, Filles déguisées en page

Engraving, 1944

Pierre Dubreuil died in Paris in 1970. In 1991 J.-P. Zingg published the first monograph on his work, Pierre Dubreuil. Female bathers were one of his most consistent themes, culminating in a series of paintings between 1941 and 1957 of nude bathers discreetly shadowed beneath trees.

Hans Gött, Schlafendes Mädchen

Etching, 1924

Hans Gött (sometimes spelled Hanns Gött) was born in 1883. He is known as a painter of women, especially nudes and intimate portraits in domestic settings. This is not surprising as, after studying at the Munich Academy, Hans Gött went to Paris in 1919 to study in the atelier of Henri Matisse, whose work remained a strong influence on Gött's art.

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria I (Romulus with a Sabine woman)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria II (Pasiphae and the bull)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria IV (Daedalus and Icarus)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Ars Amatoria VII (Lovers)

Lithograph, 1920

Hans Gött, Remedia Amoris II (Phyllis)

Lithograph, 1920

As a printmaker, Hans Gött worked in both etching and lithography. Among his lithographs are ten made for an edition of Ovid's Ars Amatoria published in 1920; on the title page the artist is credited as Hanns Gött. These witty lithographs show the influence of Matisse's line, though in my view they are too much in thrall to line, and make poor use of lithography's tonal effects. It's as if the artist was expecting to illustrate the text in etching. Hans Gött lived and worked in Munich, and died in 1973.

Life and rhythm

Émile-Jean Sulpis (1856-1943)
Danseuse
Engraving, 1923

As all the arts spring from the same source and discharge into the same ocean, it’s no surprise that visual artists have been entranced by the fluidity, grace, and energy of the dance. Degas was perhaps the first great artist to make dancers and dancing central to his art, but where he led, others quickly followed. The Swedish Impressionist Anders Zorn remains most famous for his portrait of the dancer Rosita Mauri, who was also painted by Degas.


Anders Zorn (1860-1920)
Rosita Mauri
Etching 1891

Paul Renouard also drew many of the same dancers as Degas, who along with Manet was a formative influence on his work. In turn Renouard influenced Vincent Van Gogh, who collected his etchings and drawings, thinking them “beautiful” and “superb”. Born in Cour-Cheverny, Loir-et-Cher, Charles Paul Renouard went to Paris at the age of 14, and worked as a decorator before entering the atelier of Isidore Pils in 1868; with Pils, Renouard decorated the ceiling of the Paris Opera. Renouard first exhibited at the Salon of 1877. He soon worked out that his talent lay in black-and-white, not colour, and devoted himself to printmaking. I almost wonder, in fact, if Renouard may have been at least partly colour-blind. This would explain why such a talented artist has now sunk into such obscurity. It would also explain why his 1892 portfolio La Danse (of which I have copy 216/295) was created in such an intriguing manner. These enchanting colour lithographs were a collaboration between Renouard and the printer Charles Gillot. Renouard provided drawings for La Danse on specially-prepared lithographic transfer paper, which the printer Gillot transferred to zinc plates, adding colour (in consultation with Renouard). These lithographs (or, to be pedantic, because Gillot patented the process, gillotages) are described on the portfolio as "dessins transposés en harmonies de couleurs" - the word harmonies, of course, acknowleges Renouard's debt to Whistler.



Paul Renouard (1854-1924)
Harmonie en chair et améthyste
Lithograph, 1892


Paul Renouard
Harmonie en agua marine, chair, et violet rosé
Lithograph, 1892


Paul Renouard
Harmonie en vermilion et violet
Lithograph, 1892


Paul Renouard
Harmonie en mauve et jaune
Lithograph, 1892

All my other prints by Paul Renouard are black-and-white etchings, drypoints, or lithographs. A number of them also focus on dancers and music hall performers, the subject that made his name. In the etching À Drury Lane: Avant de paraître, the seated figure seen from the back is not a child, but a performer. I believe it to be the diminutive singer May Belfort, who ten years after being painted by Toulouse-Lautrec was still dressing as a child and lisping her way through such innuendo-laden songs as “Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow”. The same performer is seen from the front in a second etching, Figurante du théatre de Drury Lane.


Paul Renouard
À Drury Lane: Avant de paraître
Etching, 1906


Paul Renouard
Figurante du théatre de Drury Lane, à Londres
Etching, 1905

I have another portfolio of images of ballet dancers, Visions de Danse by Swiss-born Alméry Lobel-Riche (1877-1950), which although not published until 1949 clearly shows the influence of minor Impressionists such as Paul Renouard and Louis Legrand. It is a collection of drypoints (mine is copy 145/210), published alongside an essay by the critic André Billy.


Alméry Lobel-Riche (1877-1950)
Dancer putting on her shoes
Drypoint, 1949

At some point Lobel-Riche will get a full individual treatment on this blog, as his art, with its twin inspirations of Symbolism and Impressionism and its almost classical purity of line, has been undeservedly neglected. What is remarkable in his images of dancers (as in many of his nudes), is the extent to which Lobel-Riche looks beyond the flesh of his figures to reveal the musculature beneath. It is perhaps because of this mastery of anatomy that Lobel-Riche is able to capture such a vivid sense of the energy of dance, and the physical strength of the dancers.


Alméry Lobel-Riche
Female dancer
Drypoint, 1949


Alméry Lobel-Riche
Dancer
Drypoint, 1949


Alméry Lobel-Riche
Pair of dancers
Drypoint, 1949


Alméry Lobel-Riche
Two female dancers
Drypoint, 1949


Alméry Lobel-Riche
Three dancers
Drypoint, 1949

Perhaps the most famous depiction of dance in C20th-century art is Matisse’s La Danse, with its sensuous and exuberant circle of naked dancers. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) painted two versions of this great work, a preliminary study in 1909 that is now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in 1910 the finished version, commissioned by the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin, which is now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. In 1938 Matisse created a lithograph after La Danse for the art revue Verve – a double page that also has two original linocuts of skaters on the reverse.


Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
La Danse
Lithograph, 1938


Henri Matisse
Le Lance
Linocut, 1938


Henri Matisse
Le Retenu
Linocut, 1938

For Matisse, dance was “life and rhythm”.