THE LANDSCAPE AND HISTORICAL PAINTINGS OF CHARLES MERYON (1821-1868)

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 October 1975, Page 4

THE LANDSCAPE AND HISTORICAL PAINTINGS OF CHARLES MERYON (1821 - 1868)

Roger Collins

Charles Meryon’s career as an etcher has understandably overshadowed the early years of his artistic activity, yet the series of trials and errors which can be followed through the 1840 s contains some pointers to the future. Admittedly the traces of his interest in sculpture are too few to lead the art historian very far, but the drawings of this decade are linked to some of the etchings of the 1850 s and 60s, and the evidence of his ambitions as an historical and landscape painter is sufficiently extensive to merit a closer look. After leaving the Rhin at Toulon in September 1846, at the end of the 4-year voyage to the Pacific, Meryon returned to Paris and there decided to embark on a career as an artist, as he explained in a letter to his father on November 5, 1846.

I have just taken a great decision, at least a decision of the greatest importance for me; weary of the profession I have followed up to now, still young enough to take up another, I am preparing to devote myself entirely to the study of Art, to devote all I have to it. I do not know what awaits me; perhaps Poverty, but I can assure you that I would regret it all my life, not to have tried my luck in this direction. If, two, three or four years from now, I can have a talent which will give me enough to live on, I swear that I will find there rather than anywhere else that inner satisfaction which alone can give a few moments of happiness. 1

His partial colour-blindness, of which he was already aware—as another letter to his father written late in December of the same year indicates 2 —did not daunt him, and it is conceivable that he could have made a successful career as a painter despite this disability, as some of his pastels suggest. He studied for a time under Philippe, a former pupil of David, who set him drawing from casts of classical sculpture, but he soon turned to the fund of experiences his years in the Pacific had given him. 3 On August 10, 1847, he wrote to his friend and former fellow-officer, Antoine-Edouard Foley, asking for the return of some of the sketches he had done during the cruise, and by mid-January of the following year he was well advanced on a large composition inspired by his New Zealand recollections. As for the subject of my work, it’s a large drawing, a New Zealand scene for which I am drawing on my sketches, notes, souvenirs, etc. —A good half of it is done;

with luck, courage, and perseverance, I’ll perhaps finish it. I won’t talk more about it for now; but if I’m lucky enough to succeed, you can be assured that I won’t spare you a single detail: I’ll probably wear you out. 4 By the end of April 1848, the work was completed. On the 29th, he wrote thus to Foley: ‘My completed drawing has been mounted, framed, carried to the Louvre, not without running a few risks. It is now hanging on the wall down there and from time to time I have the satisfaction of seeing an interested person stop by it.’ 5

In referring to the Louvre, Meryon is not of course talking primarily of the art museum we know today, but of the Salon, the annual governmentsponsored art exhibition which then offered virtually the only way for artists to make themselves known to the public. Over the preceding years antagonism to this institution, with its restrictive rules and selection committees of questionable ability and partiality, had been building up. The Revolution of February 1848 cleared the way for a radical revision of the Salon’s organization, and the selection committee was abolished. All works submitted were exhibited. The result was predictable. The critic of the Revue des Deux-mondes referred to ‘The acceptance of everything which has been submitted to the Salon this year’ in writing of the difficulty of his task, 6 another critic wrote of the ‘tom-foolery of the present Salon’, 7 and cartoonists added their satirical comments. 8 In this context, the exhibition of Meryon’s first major work appears to have attracted no comment from the critics, but it did attract the attention of the etcher Eugene Blery, with profound consequences for the future.

The letter of April 1848 to Foley from which I have already quoted, contains the following long description of the work, precious not only because it allows us to see Meryon at work, but also because it situates the composition firmly in the centuries-old tradition of narrative painting. The subject is the assassination of Marion in the Bay of Islands. While he is peacefully seated in the middle of the natives, and a young girl treacherously offers him a parrot, the murderer raises with fury the weapon which will shatter his skull. Although plotted, arranged in advance, the crime has an instantaneous effect on the characters present. —Of two women in the group, one stands up suddenly, the other cannot restrain a nervous movement which I have tried to show in the arm and the hand. Three chiefs in the circle, placed in front of Marion, are influenced in different fashions. One, the oldest, appears struck with compassion; another readies himself to rise and assist in the crime; the third remains cold and impassive.

On Marion’s right, a robust man, holding a club which he has hidden behind himself, draws back to give free passage to the blow which brushes past him. —On his left, a short distance away, a cabin-boy with Marion, and a small girl with whom he has been playing just before; the small girl sees the arm raised, moved by fear and curiosity, moves forward suddenly —Simultaneously, the cabin-boy alerted, makes with his still-crouching body a movement as if to flee. Almost in the middle-distance, turning his back to the scene, a crazy black, thin (like I am) danses in a grotesque and ferocious manner.

In the middle distance, at the left of the picture (which is oblong, 2m x 1) you can see fleeing with a young native girl who drags him away, one of the two officers who accompanied Marion. All the other sailors, apart from those you can see in the distance cooking on the beach, are supposed to have gone off into the neighbouring huts, taking into consideration the facility of the women.— Several natives, on the point of throwing themselves on Marion, and on the officer and cabin-boy, the only friends present at the scene, are hiding under a storehouse with four pillars, which takes up a rather large part of the picture. In the foreground, a group of primitive objects, which have been given as gifts to the French captain, all the more numerous since they will be recuperated presently. In this group can also be seen Marion’s sword and cloak, which he placed down in all confidence. The scene takes place in the evening, after a fishing expedition, of which the results, and the gear can be seen in the right corner. It is on a rise, about 20 feet above the sea. The beach is half a mile away; the ship’s boat can be seen moored a short distance from the shore. On the left, in opposition to the storehouse, a cabbage tree; beneath, some ferns and a large clump of flax. That’s all; I’ve no need to tell you your criticisms have hit the nail on the head; that’s to say that this drawing fails chiefly in the anatomical forms. But that’s enough on this subject; let’s move on.—

(As the final statement makes it obvious that Foley had seen the drawing, one wonders why Meryon described it in such detail and at such length.) The melodrama which is apparent in Meryon’s description, is also part of the composition. The diagonal construction, with its marked contrast between the moment of violence in the right foreground, and the tranquility of the pastoral idyll and the group on the shore, to the

left, is emphasized by the slanting light, coming from the left and throwing patches of shadow across the immediate foreground. Further implications of the work are expressed or hinted at, in another passage from the letter.

. . . you are right when you tell me that a New Zealand subject is out of place in Paris; that it would have been far better to handle any other subject, more in keeping with what one knows and understands here. In fact I believe that my picture is full of historical truth—who would appreciate it? Who would give me credit for the accuracy of facial features, and of costumes? No-one, obviously, since of necessity there are many people who know virtually nothing about New Zealand. No; don’t think I can’t accept such criticisms. Can you realise that you would have great difficulty in convincing me that you are right when you claim to see in the life and manners of the New Zealanders close analogies, precious documents for scenes on the earliest inhabitants of Gaul? Although I have never thought seriously of using recollections of our former posting [i.e. New Zealand] for such a vast subject, I see with very great pleasure your ideas on this subject, all the more since, when reading a few passages of Homer, I had once seen real parallels between the present-day Maoris and the ancient Greeks—lf ever I paint enough to tackle great historical subjects, I will profit from your illuminating ideas.

Meryon here betrays still more clearly his indebtedness to contemporary taste and preconceptions. His confidence in the factual accuracy of his composition (a judgement with which one has difficulty in agreeing) is symptomatic of the ambitions of many French painters of his time. Foley’s suggestion that Meryon take inspiration from his antipodean recollections to paint historical subjects with a national flavour, surely as misguided as Meryon’s desire to produce an anthropological document charged with high emotion, is akin to the vogue of medievalism which marked so strongly French art, letters and scholarship in the 19th century. Meryon’s parallel between New Zealand and ancient Greece takes up similar ideas expressed by Dumont d’Urville in the published account of his 1827 voyage. Several of the points made in the January and April letters to Foley—the subject, its relation to Meryon’s travels, the work’s exhibition at the Salon and its factual accuracy which few could appreciate —were touched on again in a letter Meryon wrote to his father on June 16,

1848, but this later letter also contributes some different and additional information of great interest. I sent it to this year’s exhibition where it has stayed two and a half months—lt earned me the compliments of the few people who know me.—l can say that I treated it with a scrupulous attention to accuracy which only those who know these distant peoples can appreciate.—l will soon collect it again, and will keep it as my first work. It cost me five months of work, and not a little money for the models I was forced to take. —I met a talented man Monsieur Blery who does charming landscape etchings, and who has persuaded me to devote myself wholly to this sort of work, for figures. I have already made a first trial.— In my next letters I hope to be able to tell you that I am hard at work. 9 In this way Meryon himself describes the crucial encounter of 1848, and his first contact with the medium to which he was to devote the rest of his working life.

The immediate fate of the Assassinat du Capitaine Marion du Frene a la Nouvelle-Zelande, le 12 aout 1772 (Murder of Captain Marion du Fresne in New Zealand, 12 August 1772) 10 is vague, although it is clear from a letter written by Meryon in July 1857 that it was by then in Foley’s possession. (At different times Meryon sold or gave him many of his works, and Foley seems to have been one of his chief sources of income.) A coarse and simplified heliogravure reproduction, touched up with etching by V. Focillon, appeared in Aglaiis Bouvenne’s Notes et souvenirs sur Charles Meryon of 1883: a proof of this reproduction before the caption was added to the plate has been sighted. In 1926, when Gustave Geffroy reproduced it in his book on Meryon, it belonged to Charles Foley, son of Antoine-Edouard, and it was eventually acquired (along with other Meryon drawings in the Foley collection) by the New Zealand-born collector, Rex Nan Kivell. It was reproduced again in 1951 in Leslie G. Kelly’s Marion du Fresne at the Bay of Islands, and was seen in Wellington in 1953-4, when early New Zealand material in the Nan Kivell Collection, at that time on loan to the Australian Government, crossed the Tasman in a touring exhibition. In 1959 the entire collection was purchased by the Australian Federal Government, and the Assassinat du Capitaine Marion . . . was presented to the nascent National Library of New Zealand in 1967, on the occasion of an official visit by the Australian Prime Minister. It is on periodic display in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

In December 1920, the ninth sale of the A. Beurdeley Collection contained a coloured drawing by Meryon, La Peche a la baleine (Whaling). 11 According to Jean Ducros, it was bought by Hector Brame, who had written the preface for the auction catalogue; the price was 1350 francs. 12 Its present location is unknown. It was undated, and perhaps the nearest we can come to situating it within Meryon’s work is through a passage in a letter to Foley of 2 December 1848. 13 ‘Whaling, which you recommend to me, is an excellent subject which is not without nobility; but to do it well it would have to be painted.’

This drawing is also a large work, 51cm x lm 23cm, and could readily inspire a narrative description, shorter and less complex than that Meryon wrote for the Assassinat . . . , but in the same spirit. The auction catalogue does in fact quote a lengthy caption: ‘Even into the vast solitudes of the Ocean, adventurous men, thirsting for action and profit pursue relentlessly the giants of the wave which they kill and strip, finally to abandon gigantic carcasses to the waves.’ The rather inflated language of this text is perhaps an attempt to capture the nobility of the subject. This caption does in fact anticipate, and also generalize, the action, for the work shows two whale-boats, each crewed by six men, moving from the right foreground towards a whale spouting on the horizon at the extreme left. This physical movement from right to left recalls the movement the eye is led to make in UAssassinat . . . , from the essential action in the right, to the left background. The horizon is just below the centre of each work. Whaling is also possibly the subject of the drawing Surprise et Capture (sic), shown in the Burlington Fine Arts Club’s exhibition of Meryon’s work in 1879. This drawing has not been located.

Whales and whalers were frequently encountered by the Rhin during its cruise. On May 19, 1844, the American whaler Gideon took a whale in Akaroa Harbour, and the Rhin’s journal notes the arrivals and departures of many whaling vessels, of many nationalities. Moreover, it is recorded that while at Akaroa Meryon made a scale model in plaster-of-paris, of a whale which was washed up in the bay. 14 Two years after La Peche a la baleine disappeared from view, a major pastel, also coloured, appeared at auction. Ducros says it is unsigned; Paul Jamot writing in 1923 says it is signed C.M. 15 Named variously as Le Vaisseau fantome (The Ghost Ship) by Geffroy, Marine (Seascape) by Benezit, and Voilier sur une mer houleuse (Sailing ship on a surging sea) by Ducros, 16 it was purchased by the Louvre for 1,500 francs at the third sale of the Ch. Haviland collection on December 7, 1922. Jean Ducros tentatively dates it to 1857, basing this on a letter by Meryon in the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre. This places the work very distant in time from the other major works we are discussing, and—-

as Ducros observes —we might be in a better position to date this pastel by comparing it with Midi a Cap Horn (Noon at Gape Horn), a charcoal drawing which de Salicis, another of Meryon’s friends, lent to the Burlington Club’s exhibition in 1879: it was dated 1847 in the catalogue. This is however another of Meryon’s works which has disappeared. The coloured reproduction in Geffroy’s book shows a ship, sails filled, moving towards the viewer’s left. The sky, partly blue but mostly covered with clouds (white, but some are tinged with pink) fills a little over half the picture. Sea birds fly low over the dark blue sea, lightened by patches of foam and spray. The Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Nationale owns a photograph of Meryon’s only known oil painting, 17 painted in 1858 during the mental breakdown which led to the artist’s first internment at the Charenton asylum. Five years later he wrote of it in these terms to his father:

One of my former friends, a printer with whom I had become very friendly, reasonably well-informed about art, having had the good idea of bringing me a few paints and a small wooden panel, half by chance, half deliberately I used them, yielding to a recollection of regretted dreams, to show, in a very rapid sketch, two skiffs, rigged in a rather strange way, racing on the back of a rough sea. First of all, I used no other instrument than the end of my finger, modelling however the forms of these canoes with sufficient finesse. I have since seen this singular impromptu work; although I do not like going back to that time which was for me one of such a cruel affliction, I was still astonished by this result, —I will say carried out almost in the darkness which surrounded me . . , 18

The work was sold as no. 35 in the sale of paintings from the Giacomelli Collection, April 13-15, 1905. What is presumably the same picture, catalogued as Bateaux de peche sous le vent (Fishing boats before the wind), fetched 4,050 francs at the George Haviland sale on June 2, 1932. More in keeping with Meryon’s own description, Ducros calls it Course de deux esquifs (Race between two skiffs). Its present whereabouts is unknown. 19 Each of the six works already discussed or referred to has a nautical theme; each dwells on seascape or coastal landscape; when human activity appears it can be readily interpreted in dramatic and heroic terms; to a lesser extent, exoticism inspires UAssassinat .. . , Midi a Cap Horn and La Peche a la baleine; the light of the setting sun brings added drama to du Fresne’s murder, and perhaps to La Peche ala

baleine and Le Vaisseau fantome; the narrative approach to his great historical composition is manifest. All of these factors help to situate Meryon’s ‘paintings’ firmly in the manner and taste of the first half of the 19th century, be they those of romanticism or of the more venerable tradition of ‘histories’. They reveal no fundamental originality, and this impression is confirmed to my mind by a fascinating and apparently little-known manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale. 20

It is a small, hand-sewn booklet of seven leaves, entitled Projets (Plans), with an indication of having been written ca. 1847-48. Although not wholly legible (certain passages have been vigorously crossed out by Meryon himself, others are illegible by virtue of the difficulty of the artist’s handwriting), the manuscript contains a list of sixteen titles for projected paintings, some of them accompanied by an outline description of the work envisaged. They are:

I —La peche ala baleine (Whaling) 21 (2) Un combat de pirogues Mahouries (A fight between Maori canoes) (2b) Jeanne d’Arc au milieu de ses bourreaux (Joan of Arc surrounded by her executioners) (2c) Le Chatiment de la [word illegible] (The punishment of the . . .) 111 — Albatros sur un cadavre de baleine (Albatross on a whale’s carcass) IV — Naufrage d’un des deux baleiniers Frangais le Perseverant (Shipwreck of one of the two French whalers, the Perseverant ) V — Providentia, a Deo missa (Providence, sent by God) (6) La Terre avant Vhomme (The Earth before Man) (7) La Mis ere (Poverty) (8) La baie des naufrages (Shipwreck bay) (9) illegible] (The . . .) (10) Les Algues marines (Seaweed) (11) Naufrage de Lapeyrouse a Vanikoro (Shipwreck of La Perouse at Vanikoro) [this title is crossed out.] (12) [crossed out, but it appears to have something to do with the voyages of Captain Cook.] (13) [crossed out] (14) [crossed out]

Outline descriptions are given only for numbers I, (2), IV, V, (6), (7) and for the now indecipherable (14). Numbers (2c), (9), (13) and (14) may be dismissed immediately, as being totally or effectively illegible.

Jeanne d’Arc au milieu de ses bourreaux belongs to a widespread fashion for medieval historical subjects in French painting, which appeared in the last decades of the 18th century and survived beyond the middle of the 19th. Delacroix, for example, painted or exhibited Le Roi Jean a la bataille de Poitiers (King John at the Battle of Poitiers) in 1830, the Bataille de Nancy, Mort du due de Bourgogne, Charles le Temeraire, le 5 Janvier 1477 (Battle of Nancy, Death of the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Fearless, 5 January 1477) in 1831, the Bataille de Taillebourg gagnee par Saint Louis (21 Juillet 1242) (Battle of Taillebourg won by Saint Louis, 21 July 1242) in 1837, the first version of the Prise de Constantinople par les Croises. 1204 (Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, 1204) in 1841 and the second in 1852, and L’Assassinat de Jean sans Peur au Pont de Montereau (The Murder of John the Fearless on the Montereau bridge) ca. 1856-60. G. Delaroche’s Les Enfants d’Edouard (known in English as The Princes in the Tower) of 1830 is another well-known work in this same vein.

This interest in the Middle Ages was accompanied by the study of the more recent past as well, and Delacroix painted scenes from the French Revolution, as well as a major work inspired by the Revolution of 1830. In such company, neither Jeanne d’Arc . . . nor UAssassinat du Capitaine Marion du Frene . . . appears an eccentric subject.

La Terre avant Vhomme, although plunging back in time far beyond any contemporary work I have located (for example Couture’s Romans of the Period of the Decline of 1847, perhaps the most popularly successful French painting of the 19th century) can still be linked to this fascination with historical or semi-historical reconstructions. Nor must we forget that Meryon’s correspondence with Foley in mid-1848 did at least touch on the possibility of scenes illustrating the first inhabitants of Gaul, even though Meryon was obviously not impressed by Foley’s suggestion that the Maoris offered a number of useful analogies for handling this subject.

Allegorical subjects are legion in French painting of the 1840 s and earlier. Thus Meryon’s personification of La Misere, and the allegorical scheme for Providentia, a Deo missa, can be seen in relation to La Liberte ou la Mort (Liberty or Death, 1795) and L’homme physique, Vhomme moral et Vhomme intellectuel (Physical, moral and intellectual man, ca. 1810-15) by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Prud’hon’s Crime Pursued by Vengeance and Justice (1808), Delacroix’s Le 28 Juillet (best known as Liberty leading the people, 1830) or Chasseriau’s fresco, Peace (18441848). These two projects also prefigure some of Meryon’s more arcane etchings. Three titles take up the theme of whaling, La Peche a la baleine, Albatros sur un cadavre de baleine and Naufrage d’un des deux baleiniers

Frangais. . . . The description of the first does not correspond to the work from the Beurdeley collection already described. Meryon’s intention in this hypothetical work was to show one boat parallel to the picture-plane, another, further away, arriving at right angles to the first, and a third even more distant, hurrying to join the other two, with the mother ship following them all. The whale was to have part either of its head or tail out of the water, the action was to take place ‘a few moments before sunset’, and albatrosses were to be flying around. The Beurdeley-Brame drawing shows only two whale-boats, parallel to each other and moving away from the picture-plane towards the left. The whale appears to be lying on the surface. The lighting and sea birds do however correspond to those in the envisaged work. The manuscript contains no description of Albatros sur un cadavre de baleine, but it is interesting that the type of bird is again specified. Its fellows reappear in both of Peche a la baleine pictures, in several of the drawings in the British Library, and in the etching Le Pont au Change. 22 Seagulls are specified in the plan for Un combat de pirogues Mahouries, which was also to have been an evening scene. Naufrage d } un des deux baleiniers Frangais . . . , another evening subject, was to show stormy weather and ragged clouds.

This recurrent interest in whales and whaling (further evidence appears in three etchings), is perhaps a nautical equivalent of Delacroix’s lion hunts. Both represent exotic worlds far removed from everyday French experience, both show natural strength and human bravery in fierce conflict, both are capable of stirring the viewer’s emotions. The difference is that Delacroix succeeded, and Meryon did not.

Meryon’s equally constant interest in evening light also deserves special comment. As well as the works already mentioned, the literal version of Providentia . . . was to be an evening scene: ‘the sun is about to set. All the left of the horizon is ablaze.’ The poetic value of evening was doubtless enriched in Meryon’s mind and eye by the dramatic possibilities of strong, slanting light, the contrasts of light and shade this can give, and by the potentially ominous implications of imminent nightfall.

La baie des naufrages and Les Algues marines are both undescribed. Seaweed seems an unlikely subject for a painter whose preference was for dramatic situations, but certain of Meryon’s etchings are in fact still-life compositions, and looking back in time one can quote Anne Vallayer-Coster’s Nature morte de coquillages (Still-life of shells, 1789) as an example of a different genre which he may have considered exploring. In March 1844, Meryon had written from Akaroa to his father: ‘I intend to study history, to pay some attention to politics and to carry

on with drawing and painting.’ 23 The manuscript of Projets contains the phrase: ‘Look into accounts of voyages, navigators’ narratives etc. etc’. He was perhaps thinking in terms of executing a cycle of historical paintings, embracing du Fresne, La Perouse and Cook. It is logical that, having meditated on du Fresne’s murder, Meryon should have turned to the other major French maritime disaster of Pacific exploration, the disappearance of La Perouse, and it is indeed tempting to go further and wonder whether he might not have had Cook’s death in mind as the subject of another work. Barthelemy Lauvergne (1805-1871), who had participated in the 1826-1829 voyage commanded by d’Urville which solved the mystery of La Perouse’s fate, exhibited Naufrage de la corvette VAstrolabe, commandee par M. de la Perouse, sur les recifs de Vile de Vanikoro (Wreck of the corvette the Astrolabe, commanded by M. de la Perouse, on the reefs of the island of Vanikoro) at the 1842 Salon. In 1838 and 1841 he had exhibited works representing the region of Cape Horn. Lauvergne visited New Zealand in 1827 and in 1831.

Un combat de pirogues Mahouries is the only overtly New Zealand subject in this group. It is also the most markedly exotic of them all, and can legitimately be compared to the host of North African, Middle Eastern and North American paintings which appeared in French exhibitions in this period. Three long canoes, each with about 30 combatants, men and women, are to occupy the centre of the picture. Damaged, a defeated canoe sinks under the weight of its crew: ‘Scenes of carnage on the water and in the canoes’. Meryon reminds himself of ‘the feathers decorating men and boats.’ Seagulls and sharks surround the canoes. In the distance other canoes hasten to join the combat: ‘ln these canoes, you can pick out men standing, waving spears and clubs in their hands —These canoes are decorated with streamers of black and white cock-feathers.—Evening, a few moments before sunset.—Faces are strongly lit by the luminary’s last rays. —There will have to be land in the background, at varying distances— ’ The attention paid to detail appears more marked in this outline than in the others.

The remaining planned work, Providentia, a Deo missa, was obviously a work of considerable importance in Meryon’s mind, for he devised two schemes for handling it: ‘This subject could be treated in two ways: positive manner, allegorical manner’. The second has already been mentioned. A sub-title explains the subject of the work: ‘Encounter between the State ship the Rhin and a lost whale-boat’, although it is apparent that ‘canoe’ would be more appropriate. The ‘positive’ or literal approach was to show a masted canoe, sailing obliquely away from the spectator. Of the six natives (5 men, 1 woman) in the canoe, one man steers, standing up, ‘his eyes fixed on the ship which appears on the horizon.’

Another stands at the prow, signalling to the ship as best he can. At the stern, the woman, almost dead and half out of the canoe, trails her hands in the water. Two other men are lying in the canoe. ‘Landscape.— the sun is about to set. All the left of the horizon is ablaze—the ship is close to the sun, standing out black against the sky— ’ Meryon goes on to give details of the sea and birds, and expresses his wish to emphasize the isolation of the canoe in a deserted ocean.

The works of Delacroix reveal a longstanding interest in scenes similar to this, ranging from La Barque de Dante (Dante’s Barque, 1822) to Naufrage a la cote (Shipwreck on the coast, 1862), with Des Naufrages (People abandoned in a row-boat, 1847 Salon) close not only to the spirit but also to the composition and situation of Meryon’s plan. Of Delacroix, Guy Brett has written that ‘The image of an open boat in a green and evil sea was one he often used to suggest man’s struggle with the elemental forces of destruction—a pessimistic vision often redeemed by the presence of a heroic individual . . ,’ 24 Even more marked similarities with Meryon’s plan are however offered by Gericault’s Radeau de la Meduse (Raft of the Meduse ) exhibited in 1819, and acquired by the Louvre in 1825. In each work, the vessel (canoe or raft) is turned obliquely away from the viewer, upwards and to the right in Gericault’s painting, presumably to the left in Meryon’s plan (the sun is setting to the left of the picture and the ship is near the sun). Gericault’s ship appears, minute, on the horizon. Men on the raft strain upwards to signal to it. On the left, bodies trail in the water, while other survivors lie despondent and exhausted. It is impossible to deduce the time of day and the direction of the sun in Gericault’s painting. Although Meryon’s projected work contained no political intentions as did Gericault’s, the picture of suffering and despair, suddenly stirred by the hope of rescue —each artist has chosen to portray the same moment, from the point of view of the survivors—is fundamentally the same.

It should cause no surprise to realize how fully Meryon shared the preoccupations and the spirit of the progressive art of his day. He was young and adventurous, alert and interested in the world about him. His life was that of a minor romantic hero, and when—seeking his way as an artist, and thinking it lay in painting—he found, or seems to have found, models in the works of his illustrious contemporaries, he was acting in a perfectly logical and comprehensible manner. But the exhibition of U Assassinat du Capitaine Marion du Frene . . .

at the 1848 Salon attracted the attention of the etcher Eugene Blery, into whose home and studio Meryon was soon welcomed. His abortive career as a conventional, minor romantic painter was over, and the projects so carefully devised were never executed; his career as a highly

original romantic etcher was beginning, and it is Meryon the etcher that Fritz Novotny describes as ‘The most original and the most profound Romantic in French landscape painting . . ,’ 25

NOTES 1 British Library, Dept, of Manuscripts, Mss Add 37,015, Meryon Papers, Vol 1 ff 293 r°-v° and 294 r° 2 idem, f 306 r°-v° 3 As early as December 1840, Meryon had begun taking art lessons from a Toulon painter Vincent Cordouan (1810-1893). cf Jean Ducros, Charles Meryon, Paris, 1968 (exhibition catalogue), numbers 342, 427, 513 4 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Cabinet des Estampes, Yb 3 1673 Res. no 3 5 idem, no 5 6 F. de Lagenevais, ‘Le Salon de 1848—La Sculpture, les Pastels, les Dessins’, Revue des Deux-Mondes, t 22, 15 mai 1848, pp 590-606 7 T. Thore, who published annual critical essays on the Salons 8 cf Ducros, op cit no 395 9 British Library, Meryon Papers, Vol 1, ff 325 r°-v° & 326 10 The month was printed in the official catalogue as August. Meryon rightly pointed out in a letter quoted by Ducros (op cit, footnote to no 800) that this event occurred in June 1772 11 The A. Beurdeley collection contained other Meryon drawings, sold in the same sale, and many prints sold earlier in the same month 12 Ducros op cit no 607, and Benezit, Dictionnaire critique . . . , 1956, t 6 13 BN Est Yb 3 1673 Res. no 7 14 This model is mentioned by Philippe Burty, “Charles Meryon”, La Nouvelle Revue, t 2, 1880, p 118 15 Ducros op cit no 781; Paul Jamot, “Charles Meryon; Two Louvre Acquisitions”, The Burlington Magazine, v 43, July-December 1923, p 239 16 Gustave Geffroy, Charles Meryon, Paris, Floury, 1926; Benezit, op cit; Ducros op cit no 781 47 BN Est Ef. 397+ 18 British Library, Meryon Papers, Vol 1, ff 453 v°-454 r° 19 Ducros op cit no 801; Benezit op cit 29 BN Est Yb 3 1673 Res. no 53 21 Roman numerals reproduce Meryon’s own numbering. Titles which are here numbered with Arabic numerals in brackets, are unnumbered in the MS. (2b) and (2c) are on slips of paper pasted on to the MS between (2) and 111 22 Delteil Wright 34, Bth, 9th and 10th states 23 British Library, Meryon Papers, Vol 1, f 275 v° 24 Guy Brett, “Eugene Delacroix”, The Masters, 15, 1965 25 Painting and Sculpture in Europe 1780-1880, Penguin Books, 1960, p 98

Most of the research embodied in this article was carried out when the author was the recipient of a grant from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand.