Barthélemy Menn
Encyclopedia
Barthélemy Menn was a Swiss painter and draughtsman who introduced the principles of plein-air painting and the paysage intime into Swiss art.
as the youngest son of four to Not (Rhaeto-Romance language form for Louis) Menn, a confectioner from Scuol
in the canton of Grisons, and Charlotte-Madeleine-Marguerite Bodmer, the daughter of a wealthy farmer from Coinsins in the Canton de Vaud
. Already at the age of twelve, Menn took drawing lessons from the little known Jean Duboi (1789–1849), and later, he entered the drawing school of the Geneva Arts Society. The repeated claim that he was also a pupil of the famous enameller Abraham Constantin
(1785–1855) appears to be erroneous. In 1831, Menn was second in the annual drawing competition of the Geneva Art Society. The following year, he entered the studio of the Swiss history painter Jean-Léonard Lugardon (1801–1884), who was a pupil of Baron Gros(1771–1835) and acquainted with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867). There, Menn was educated in figure drawing and composition before heading for Paris, where, in fall 1833, he entered the studio of Ingres. He was, therefore, no beginner when meeting the master, but needed some polishing and refinement in his art. In a letter to his friend Jules Hébert, Menn reported on the new situation: ‘Everybody, even the eldest in the studio tremble before Mr. Ingres. One fears him a lot in such a way that his corrections have a great impact. He is of an extreme sensibility,’ while the education in Ingres’ studio has been described by Théophile Silvestre, as follows: 'The students spend half of their time studying nature and half studying the masters among which they are especially attached to Phidias
, the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon
, classical sculpture in general.’ This explains why among Menn's early works there are many copies after the Parthenon frieze that was accessible in Paris in a set of plaster casts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
since 1816. (Fig. 2). Menn also copied several works by Raffael, Titian
(Fig. 3), Veronese
and Rubens
in the Louvre
, and works by Ingres.
When the latter decided to give up his studio to take the post as director of the French Academy in the Villa Medici
in Rome, Menn returned to his grandparents in Coinsins
before following his master in fall 1834. His journey led him first via Milan
to Venice
, where he met briefly his compatriot Louis-Léopold Robert (1798–1835), and where he would copy works by Titian
and Tintoretto
. He then travelled via Padua
and Bologna
to Florence
, where he met old classmates from Ingres’ studio, and arrived finally in Rome in spring 1835. There, Menn copied works by Raphael
and Michelangelo
, but he also started to produce extraordinary fresh small landscape paintings in the open air. In summer 1836, he visited the Campagna
, Capri
and Naples
, where too he drew and painted landscapes directly from nature, and copied classical antiquities from Pompeii
as well as Giovanni Bellini
's Transfiguration in the Museo Borbonico. When back in Rome, he produced history - and genre paintings, of which in 1837, he sent 'Solomon presented to Wisdom by his Parents' (Salomon présenté à la sagesse par son père et sa mère; Fig.N) to the annual Salon in Geneva. Menn returned via Florence, Siena
and Viterbo
to Paris in late 1838, where he exhibited at the Salon from 1839 to 1843, and where he became the drawing master of Maurice Dudevant, the son of George Sand
. In her circle, he became acquainted with Eugène Delacroix
(1798–1863) who wanted to employ him as an assistant while working on the decoration of the cupola of the library in the Palais du Luxembourg. At the same time, Menn got to know the painters of the Barbizon School
, and especially Charles Daubigny (1817–1878). Most importantly, however, Menn became friends with Camille Corot
(1796–1875), who, from 1842 onwards, visited Switzerland frequently. It was also in Paris that he became acquainted with members of the Genevan Bovy family who followed the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier
.
, where, in 1844, he applied in vain for a teaching position at the local art school. In the following year, he exhibited a large alpine landscape, "Wetterhorn
from Hasliberg
", which caused a minor scandal as it did not meet the public's and critics’ expectations of smooth, highly finished, heroic alpine views. This incident did not help much in getting him a public job as professor of painting or drawing. Hence, he started to accept private pupils in his studio. In these years, Menn also experimented together with Jules Darier, another of Corot
's friends in Geneva, in producing daguerreotype
s, though none of them have been traced by now. He also travelled again extensively, this time along the Rhone Valley and to the South of France. It was in these years that he turned completely to the paysage intime and achieved similar solutions to Corot without attaining the latter's impressive achievements. In 1850, Menn was appointed director of the Geneva art school and from then on was teaching figure drawing – not landscape – for 42 years. In this position, he trained two generations of Swiss painters, among them Eugène Burnand
, Pierre Pignolat, Edouard Vallet and Ferdinand Hodler
, who reputedly said: ‘It is to him [Menn] that I owe everything’. Menn made a second voyage to Rome in 1852, and subsequently, decorated together with Corot, Henry Baron (1816–1885), Armand Leleux (1818–1885) and François-Louis Français (1814–1897) the large salon in the castle of Gruyère that then belonged to the Bovy-family. Menn also organized three exhibitions with contemporary French painting in Geneva in 1857, 1859 and 1861 that showed works by Corot, Courbet, Daubigny and Delacroix. Yet, the critics in Calvin
's hometown were harsh and hostile towards contemporary art, which annoyed Menn so much as that he resolved never to exhibit in public again. He became even reluctant to sell his works privately and finally destroyed many of his paintings in the 1880s. In 1865, at the age of fifty, Menn married the widow of his cousin Jean Bodmer, Louise Bodmer-Gauthier (1818–1887), who brought with her a beautiful estate at Coinsins
. It is here that Menn found peace and painted most of his last landscapes.
and the somewhat older François Diday dominated Swiss alpine painting with romantic, wild and fantastic mountain sceneries that have carefully composed foregrounds against which distant but highlighted mountain peaks are set under a pleasantly blue sky – or in a frightening storm. Menn, however, when exhibiting his Wetterhorn from Hasliberg at the annual art exhibition in Geneva, had not only ventured into the highly protected domain of his competitor Calame, but he had done so by applying the principles of plein-air-painting to an alpine landscape. The ‘photographic’ view point, the structure of the rock formations and the handling of light and colour make this picture the earliest modern landscape in Swiss art history. As the painting did not go down well with the critics, Menn turned to more modest landscapes that he painted outdoors, and with which he introduced the principles of the modern French paysage-intime into Switzerland. ‘In a bush I see everything’, Menn used to say, capturing in his self-contained landscapes atmospheric changes of evening and morning hours, quiet harmonies of an unspoilt riverbank, a swampy plain or of an orchard in midday, casting them in sensitive tonal values and poetic tenderness. His approach derived entirely from contemporary French landscape painting, in particular from his friend Corot whom Menn called the ‘master of the right values’. It was these new values combined with his quest for natural beauty that Menn would promote as a teacher to generations of Swiss artists.
Early life
Menn was born in GenevaGeneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
as the youngest son of four to Not (Rhaeto-Romance language form for Louis) Menn, a confectioner from Scuol
Scuol
Scuol is a municipality in the district of Inn in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. The official language in Scuol is Romansh.-Name:The official name has undergone several changes in the 20th century:...
in the canton of Grisons, and Charlotte-Madeleine-Marguerite Bodmer, the daughter of a wealthy farmer from Coinsins in the Canton de Vaud
Vaud
Vaud is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland and is located in Romandy, the French-speaking southwestern part of the country. The capital is Lausanne. The name of the Canton in Switzerland's other languages are Vaud in Italian , Waadt in German , and Vad in Romansh.-History:Along the lakes,...
. Already at the age of twelve, Menn took drawing lessons from the little known Jean Duboi (1789–1849), and later, he entered the drawing school of the Geneva Arts Society. The repeated claim that he was also a pupil of the famous enameller Abraham Constantin
Abraham Constantin
Abraham Constantin, a Swiss enamel painter, was born at Geneva in 1785. He became a pupil of Gérard, after whom he executed many works in enamel and on porcelain, among which may be mentioned, 'Belisarius,' 'Cupid and Psyche,' 'The Entry of Henry IV. into Paris,' and portraits of the King of Rome,...
(1785–1855) appears to be erroneous. In 1831, Menn was second in the annual drawing competition of the Geneva Art Society. The following year, he entered the studio of the Swiss history painter Jean-Léonard Lugardon (1801–1884), who was a pupil of Baron Gros(1771–1835) and acquainted with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867). There, Menn was educated in figure drawing and composition before heading for Paris, where, in fall 1833, he entered the studio of Ingres. He was, therefore, no beginner when meeting the master, but needed some polishing and refinement in his art. In a letter to his friend Jules Hébert, Menn reported on the new situation: ‘Everybody, even the eldest in the studio tremble before Mr. Ingres. One fears him a lot in such a way that his corrections have a great impact. He is of an extreme sensibility,’ while the education in Ingres’ studio has been described by Théophile Silvestre, as follows: 'The students spend half of their time studying nature and half studying the masters among which they are especially attached to Phidias
Phidias
Phidias or the great Pheidias , was a Greek sculptor, painter and architect, who lived in the 5th century BC, and is commonly regarded as one of the greatest of all sculptors of Classical Greece: Phidias' Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World...
, the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon
Parthenon
The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although...
, classical sculpture in general.’ This explains why among Menn's early works there are many copies after the Parthenon frieze that was accessible in Paris in a set of plaster casts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
since 1816. (Fig. 2). Menn also copied several works by Raffael, Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...
(Fig. 3), Veronese
Paolo Veronese
Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...
and Rubens
Rubens
Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...
in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
, and works by Ingres.
When the latter decided to give up his studio to take the post as director of the French Academy in the Villa Medici
Villa Medici
The Villa Medici is a mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French...
in Rome, Menn returned to his grandparents in Coinsins
Coinsins
Coinsins is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.-History:Coinsins is first mentioned in 1212 as Quinsins. In 1296 it was mentioned as Cuynsins.-Geography:...
before following his master in fall 1834. His journey led him first via Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, where he met briefly his compatriot Louis-Léopold Robert (1798–1835), and where he would copy works by Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...
and Tintoretto
Tintoretto
Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...
. He then travelled via Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
and Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
to Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, where he met old classmates from Ingres’ studio, and arrived finally in Rome in spring 1835. There, Menn copied works by Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
and Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, but he also started to produce extraordinary fresh small landscape paintings in the open air. In summer 1836, he visited the Campagna
Campagna
Campagna is a small town and comune of the province of Salerno, in the Campania region of Southern Italy.-History:The town, located in a mountainous district, gradually lost importance in the 20th century...
, Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
and Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, where too he drew and painted landscapes directly from nature, and copied classical antiquities from Pompeii
Pompeii
The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...
as well as Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
's Transfiguration in the Museo Borbonico. When back in Rome, he produced history - and genre paintings, of which in 1837, he sent 'Solomon presented to Wisdom by his Parents' (Salomon présenté à la sagesse par son père et sa mère; Fig.N) to the annual Salon in Geneva. Menn returned via Florence, Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
and Viterbo
Viterbo
See also Viterbo, Texas and Viterbo UniversityViterbo is an ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 80 driving / 80 walking kilometers north of GRA on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and...
to Paris in late 1838, where he exhibited at the Salon from 1839 to 1843, and where he became the drawing master of Maurice Dudevant, the son of George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
. In her circle, he became acquainted with Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
(1798–1863) who wanted to employ him as an assistant while working on the decoration of the cupola of the library in the Palais du Luxembourg. At the same time, Menn got to know the painters of the Barbizon School
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
, and especially Charles Daubigny (1817–1878). Most importantly, however, Menn became friends with Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...
(1796–1875), who, from 1842 onwards, visited Switzerland frequently. It was also in Paris that he became acquainted with members of the Genevan Bovy family who followed the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
.
Later career
Due to lack of commissions, Menn returned to GenevaGeneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, where, in 1844, he applied in vain for a teaching position at the local art school. In the following year, he exhibited a large alpine landscape, "Wetterhorn
Wetterhorn
The Wetterhorn is a mountain in the Swiss Alps close to the village of Grindelwald. First climbed in 1844, the 1854 ascent by Alfred Wills and party is more celebrated and is generally regarded to have marked the beginning of the golden age of alpinism.The mountain is composed of three distinct...
from Hasliberg
Hasliberg
Hasliberg is a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.-History:Hasliberg is first mentioned in 1358 as Hasle an dem berge. After 1834 it was known as Gem Hasleberg. Since 1923 the spelling has been Hasliberg.-Geography:Hasliberg has...
", which caused a minor scandal as it did not meet the public's and critics’ expectations of smooth, highly finished, heroic alpine views. This incident did not help much in getting him a public job as professor of painting or drawing. Hence, he started to accept private pupils in his studio. In these years, Menn also experimented together with Jules Darier, another of Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...
's friends in Geneva, in producing daguerreotype
Daguerreotype
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....
s, though none of them have been traced by now. He also travelled again extensively, this time along the Rhone Valley and to the South of France. It was in these years that he turned completely to the paysage intime and achieved similar solutions to Corot without attaining the latter's impressive achievements. In 1850, Menn was appointed director of the Geneva art school and from then on was teaching figure drawing – not landscape – for 42 years. In this position, he trained two generations of Swiss painters, among them Eugène Burnand
Eugène Burnand
Eugène Burnand was a Swiss painter. He was born in the municipality of Moudon in the Swiss canton Vaud. Before moving to Paris in 1872 he studied with Barthélemy Menn at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva...
, Pierre Pignolat, Edouard Vallet and Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century.-Life:Hodler was born in Berne, the eldest of six children. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter; his mother, Marguerite , was from a peasant family...
, who reputedly said: ‘It is to him [Menn] that I owe everything’. Menn made a second voyage to Rome in 1852, and subsequently, decorated together with Corot, Henry Baron (1816–1885), Armand Leleux (1818–1885) and François-Louis Français (1814–1897) the large salon in the castle of Gruyère that then belonged to the Bovy-family. Menn also organized three exhibitions with contemporary French painting in Geneva in 1857, 1859 and 1861 that showed works by Corot, Courbet, Daubigny and Delacroix. Yet, the critics in Calvin
John Calvin
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...
's hometown were harsh and hostile towards contemporary art, which annoyed Menn so much as that he resolved never to exhibit in public again. He became even reluctant to sell his works privately and finally destroyed many of his paintings in the 1880s. In 1865, at the age of fifty, Menn married the widow of his cousin Jean Bodmer, Louise Bodmer-Gauthier (1818–1887), who brought with her a beautiful estate at Coinsins
Coinsins
Coinsins is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.-History:Coinsins is first mentioned in 1212 as Quinsins. In 1296 it was mentioned as Cuynsins.-Geography:...
. It is here that Menn found peace and painted most of his last landscapes.
Legacy
Although Menn was trained as a history painter and had, during his last forty years, only taught figure drawing, it was him who challenged the Swiss academic landscape tradition as early as 1845. At the time, internationally successful Alexandre CalameAlexandre Calame
Alexandre Calame was a Swiss painter.He was born in Arabie! at the time belonging to Corsier-sur-Vevey, today a part of Vevey. He was the son of a skillful marble worker in Vevey, but because his father lost the family fortune, Calame could not concentrate on art, but rather he was forced to...
and the somewhat older François Diday dominated Swiss alpine painting with romantic, wild and fantastic mountain sceneries that have carefully composed foregrounds against which distant but highlighted mountain peaks are set under a pleasantly blue sky – or in a frightening storm. Menn, however, when exhibiting his Wetterhorn from Hasliberg at the annual art exhibition in Geneva, had not only ventured into the highly protected domain of his competitor Calame, but he had done so by applying the principles of plein-air-painting to an alpine landscape. The ‘photographic’ view point, the structure of the rock formations and the handling of light and colour make this picture the earliest modern landscape in Swiss art history. As the painting did not go down well with the critics, Menn turned to more modest landscapes that he painted outdoors, and with which he introduced the principles of the modern French paysage-intime into Switzerland. ‘In a bush I see everything’, Menn used to say, capturing in his self-contained landscapes atmospheric changes of evening and morning hours, quiet harmonies of an unspoilt riverbank, a swampy plain or of an orchard in midday, casting them in sensitive tonal values and poetic tenderness. His approach derived entirely from contemporary French landscape painting, in particular from his friend Corot whom Menn called the ‘master of the right values’. It was these new values combined with his quest for natural beauty that Menn would promote as a teacher to generations of Swiss artists.
External links
- http://www.sikart.ch/page.php?pid=8&recnr=4022822&reset=1&mode=abbildungen&nojump=1
- http://www.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/A/Menn,+Barth%C3%A9lemy