Eugène Carrière - Madame Eugène Carrière

Eugène Carrière created Madame Eugène Carrière in 1893, just a few years after he began to develop his signature monochromatic style. He is a lesser-known artist of the fin-de-siècle period but was very well received by his contemporaries and was a great force within the symbolist movement. A contemporary of Auguste Rodin and Paul Gauguin, Carrière was a thriving member of the Paris cultural and arts scene. He created many portraits during his career, and he often used his family members as subjects of his works.

Carrière was an influential contributor to the symbolist movement. Following upon the heels of impressionism, realism, and naturalism, symbolism used allegory to express human emotion. In his book on symbolism, Robert Goldwater made the distinction between the movement in the 1880s and those that came before it. According to Goldwater, symbolism is meant to move past realism by emphasizing, “the importance of the representation the artist has undertaken.”¹ By moving away from literal representations, symbolists aimed to bring to light mysterious, intangible elements in their work. Goldwater furthered this definition through an attachment to human emotion: “This desire to make emotion meaningful, by connecting it with humanity at large and by seeing nature as its reflection, is the common element in a diversity of styles in the [eighteen-] eighties”.² Symbolists strove to bring meaning to emotion through connections to the intangible theme of humanity and its reflections in nature.³ Carrière’s work certainly adheres to this definition of symbolism, as his works strongly portray emotion connected to a wider human experience.

Another hallmark of symbolism is the use of a monochromatic palette. By focusing less on color variation, both artist and viewer could have space to think more deeply about other abstract elements of the work.⁴ Additionally, working in monochrome removed art from likeness to nature and altered the subject. The goal of this was to ultimately create a separation from a specific time or place and to imbue symbolist works with timelessness and mystery.⁵

In addition to drawing inspiration from the monochromatic palettes of his symbolist contemporaries, Carrière saw and drew inspiration from sepia tones in many contemporary sources. J.M.W. Turner used subdued, misty colors in his works, and when Carrière spent a year in London, it is likely that he saw Turner’s work. Additionally, Carrière was heavily drawn to the work of Raphael. In 1870, he enlisted in the Franco-Prussian War and became a prisoner of war in Dresden. It was there that Carrière first saw the Sistine Madonna.⁶ When Carrière was in Dresden, he convinced the director of the museum to give him a reproduction of one section of the piece, and he received a sepia-toned images of the Madonna and Child.⁷

Through its palette and subject matter, Madame Eugène Carrière reflects themes that are present in many of Carrière’s works, which stress familial relationships and motherhood. Done in Carrière’s distinct style, the print encapsulates key symbolist elements of emotion drawn both from monochromatic color schemes and subject matter. Carrière’s use of line, shadow, color and technique work together to create a mysterious impression. This mystery arises from the emphasis on Madame Carrière’s gaze, and a facial expression that is hard to read due to the interplay between line, color and shadow. The soft lines in Madame Carrière’s face express a sense of calm. The thick, dark lines around her eyes and hairline act in stark contrast with these soft lines. These different lines are further exemplified by the shadows, which contribute to uncertainty about the expression of the subject, which Carrière ultimately uses to shroud his wife in an air of mystery.⁸

Carrière used his wife and children as subjects in many of his works. Over time, his family began to symbolically represent “the family of all mankind.”⁹ To return to Goldwater’s definition of symbolism, Carrière’s desire to find meaning in emotion is validated by his connections to “humanity at large and by seeing nature as its reflection.”¹⁰ Carrière chose to connect to humanity at large through the emotions associated with motherhood and family life. In a letter to Madame Séverine in 1904, Carrière said, “Their [women’s] heroism at every moment can only be compared to the force of nature itself… Time doesn’t change the nature of beings, and the modern Woman always appears to us as the symbol of creation.”¹¹ Carrière made a connection between the emotions surrounding motherhood, his subject, and nature, in much of his work.

The fact that Carrière drew inspiration from the subject matter of the Sistine Madonna is no surprise. Raphael’s depiction of the Virgin Mary is a powerful one. Similar to Carrière, Raphael had strong feelings about motherhood; he had a close relationship with his stepmother and depicted the Madonna with strong maternal attributions.¹² The fact that Sistine Madonna represents Mary and Jesus in the heavens further accentuates the otherworldly qualities of a female figure that is typically represented on earth.¹³ The Madonna looks straight on at the viewer with a serene look on her face, similar to the expression of Madame Carrière. Just as Raphael idolized mother figures and portrayed the Madonna as a powerful, otherworldly figure, Carrière imbued his wife, the most frequent representation of a mother figure in his works, with an otherworldly quality.

Maternité, which Carrière exhibited at the Salon in 1879, is a pivotal piece in his oeuvre and encapsulates many of the same themes as Madame Eugène Carrière. As was true of many other symbolists, Carrière utilized his signature palette and subjects to evoke particular emotions. Much of the artist’s maternités appear to stem from both the sepia palette and the subject matter. Goldwater makes a strong connection between Maternité and symbolism by explaining the fuzzy, otherworldly qualities of the piece. By shrouding his mother subjects in a “mysterious continuum,”¹⁴ Carrière is evoking emotions such as awe and mystery. This mystery allows for a silence in which viewers can read emotions about motherhood in Maternité.

While Madame Eugène Carrière has similarities to Maternité, it also distinguishes itself from the “mysterious continuum” associated with Maternité since it is a portrait. Bantens makes the claim that, “while his familial scenes, particularly his maternités, convey his personal symbolism of the regeneration, development, and the continuity of life’s forces, his portraits are representations of individual spiritual entities.”¹⁵ If Madame Eugène Carrière is in fact a portrait, is it also a representation of his wife’s spiritual entity? Furthermore, if symbolists give physical representations of abstract emotions, what is Carrière expressing through his portrait of his wife?

According to Richard Brilliant, “simply put, portraits are art works, intentionally made of living or once living people by artists, in a variety of media, and for an audience.”¹⁶ Although this definition may be contested by some as too narrow, it clearly defines the three categories for a work to be considered a portrait. As a lithograph owned by museums across the world, Madame Eugène Carrière is indisputably an artwork. Secondly, the title of the piece clearly states who the subject of the portrait is – Carrière’s wife. Several scholars have identified Madame Carrière, née Sophie Desmouceaux, as the subject of a number of his works. Given that Carrière was exhibiting several of his works during the 1890s when Madame Eugène Carrière was made, it is safe to say that this piece was intended for some audience.

What is Carrière expressing through this portrait of his wife? The contemplative look on Madame Carrière’s face, paired with the blurred elements of the lithograph, contribute to the idea that the viewer is examining her inner psyche. Since this is a portrait, Carrière’s emphasis is more explicitly on his wife, rather than his wife acting as an allegory of an emotion. Carrière used his wife and children as models because “only with them could he realize the binding emotion which is his real theme and which the figures only adumbrate, and so be able to generalize these states of feeling, to ‘unveil by veiling’.”¹⁷ This idea of “unveil by veiling” is an interesting tie to the monochromatic, blurry qualities of Madame Eugène Carrière. By veiling Madame Carrière in the monochromatic palette, her portrait is separated from her physical existence. This creates an air of mystery around her because the viewer is not as easily able to make a tangible connection to her.

The fact that Carrière shrouds his wife in mystery may speak to his greater ideological ideals about motherhood and womanhood. On his piece, The Artist’s Mother, which Carrière first debuted at the Salon, he said, “Nature created her rich, and society made her poor; she always lived according to her basic nature…In my hours of incertitude I return to this cradle and I ask for proof of what I am. I always find the necessary answer there.”¹⁸ Carrière spoke of motherhood in a way through which he and the viewer could connect. These ideas are imbued in Madame Eugène Carrière. He is able to turn to his wife, the mother of his child, as a great force of nature. In some ways, Carrière is unable to completely understand this nature, and therefore shrouded it in mystery. This lack of comprehension is translated to the viewer: as he struggles to understand this relationship, we too are left wondering about these connections.

Anna Lynn

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¹Robert Goldwater. Symbolism. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.: New York, N.Y. (1998): 5.

²Goldwater, Symbolism, 6.

³Goldwater, Symbolism, 6.

⁴Goldwater, Symbolism, 2.

⁵Goldwater, Symbolism, 2.

⁶Bantens. Eugène Carrière, 33.

⁷Bantens, Eugène Carrière, 16.

⁸Anna Lynn, Formal analysis of Madame Eugène Carrière.

⁹Bantens, Eugène Carrière, 131.

¹⁰Goldwater, Symbolism, 6.

¹¹Bantens, Eugène Carrière, 71.

¹²Cotting, “The Study of Pictures,” 68.

¹³Licht, “Raphael’s Curtain Rod,” 21.

¹⁴Goldwater, Symbolism, 31.

¹⁵Bantens, Eugène Carrière, 131.

¹⁶Richard Brilliant. Portraiture. London: Reaktion Books: 2002. 8.

¹⁷Goldwater, Symbolism, 159-60.

¹⁸Bantens, Eugène Carrière, 35.