[…] V.  ON EROTIC  SUBJECTS  IN ART, AND   ON M.  TASSAERT

Has it ever been your experience, as it has mine, that after spending long hours turning over a collection of bawdy prints, you fall into a great spell of melancholy? And have you ever asked yourself the reason for the charm sometimes to be found in rummaging among these annals of lubricity, which are buried in libraries or lost in dealers' portfolios—and sometimes also for the ill-humour which they cause you? It is a mixture of pleasure and pain, a vinegar for which the lips are always athirst! The pleasure lies in your seeing represented in all its forms that most impor­tant of natural feelings—and the anger in often finding it so badly copied or so stupidly slandered. Whether it has been by the fireside during the endless winter evenings, or in a corner of a dealer's shop, in the dog-days when the hours hang heavy, the sight of such drawings has often put my mind into enormous drifts of reverie, in much the same way as an obscene book sweeps us towards the mystical oceans of the deep. Many times, when faced with these countless samples of the universal feeling, I have found myself wishing that the poet, the connoisseur and the phil­osopher could grant themselves the enjoyment of a Museum of Love, where there would be a place for everything, from St. Teresa's undirected affections down to the serious debaucheries of the ages of ennui. No doubt an immense distance separates Le Départ pour l’île de Cythèrefrom the miserable daubs which hang above a cracked pot and a rickety side-table in a harlot's room; but with a subject of such importance, nothing should be neglected. Besides, all things are sanctified by genius, and if these subjects were treated with the necessary care and reflection, they would in no wise be soiled by that revolting obscenity, which is bravado rather than truth. 

Let not the moralist be too alarmed! I shall know how to keep the proper bounds, and besides, my dream is limited to a wish for this immense poem of love as sketched by only the purest hands—by Ingres, Watteau, Rubens, Delacroix! The playful and elegant princesses of Watteau beside the grave and composed Venuses of M. Ingres, the resplendent pearls of Rubens and Jordaens and the sad beauties of Delacroix, just as one can imagine them—great, pale women, drowned in satin.*

And so, to give complete reassurance to the reader's startled modesty, let me say that I should class among erotic subjects not only all pictures which are especially concerned with love, but also any picture which suggests love, be it only a portrait.**

In this immense museum I envisage the beauty and the love of all climes, expressed by the leading artists—from the mad, scatter-brained merveilleuses which Watteau fils1has bequeathed us in his fashion engrav­ings, down to Rembrandt's Venuses who are having their nails done and their hair combed with great boxwood combs, just like simple mortals.

Subjects of this nature are so important a thing that there is no artist, small or great, who has not devoted himself to them, secretly or in public, from Giulio Romano to Devéria and Gavarni.

In general their great defect is a lack of sincerity and naïveté. I remem­ber, however, a lithograph2 which expresses one of the great truths of wanton love—though unhappily without too much refinement. A young man, disguised as a woman, and his mistress, dressed as a man, are seated side by side on a sofa—the sofa which you know so well, the sofa of the furnished lodgings and the private apartment. The young woman is trying to lift her lover's skirt.*** In the ideal museum of which I was speaking, this lewd sheet would be counterbalanced by many others in which love would only appear in its most refined forms.

These reflections have occurred to me in connection with two pictures by M. Tassaert—Erigone and Le Marchand d'esclaves.

M. Tassaert, of whom I made the grave mistake of not saying enough last year, is a painter of the greatest merit, and one whose talent would be most happily applied to erotic subjects.

Erigone is half recumbent upon a mound overshadowed with vines— in a provocative pose, with one leg almost bent back, the other stretched out, and the body thrust forward; the drawing is fine, and the lines sinuous and expertly organized. Nevertheless I would criticize M. Tassaert, who is a colourist, for having painted this torso in too uniform a tone.

The other picture represents a market of women awaiting buyers. These are true women, civilized women, whose feet have felt the rubbing of shoes; they are a little common, a little too pink perhaps, but a silly, sensual Turk is going to buy them as superfine beauties. The one who is seen from behind, and whose buttocks are enveloped in a transparent gauze, still wears upon her head a milliner's hat, a hat bought in the Rue Vivienne or at the Temple. The poor girl has doubtless been carried off by pirates!

The colour of this picture is remarkable in the extreme for its delicacy and transparency of tone. One would imagine that M. Tassaert has been studying Delacroix's manner; nevertheless he has managed to re­tain a colour of his own.

He is an outstanding artist, whom only the flâneurs appreciate and whom the public does not know well enough; his talent has never ceased growing, and when you think of whence he started, and where he has arrived, there is reason to look forward to ravishing things from him in the future. […]

By Watteau.
* I have been told that many years ago Delacroix made a whole mass of marvelous studies of women in the most voluptuous attitudes, for his Sardanapalus. (c.b.)
**M. Ingres's Grande and Petite Odalisque are two pictures of our times which areessentially concerned with love, and are admirable, moreover, (c.b.) The GrandeOdalisque is in the Louvre (see pi. 29): the Petite Odalisque is presumably the Odalisque with Slave, in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.
1 François Watteau (de Lille) (1758-1823), son of Louis Watteau and nephew of Antoine Watteau.
2 One of the series ‘Les Amants et les Epoux’ by Tassaert.  The lady’s words are ‘Ne fais donc pas la cruelle!’ See pl. 17.
***'Sedebant in fornicibus pueri puellaeve sub titulis et lychnis, illi faemineo comptimundo sub stola, hae parum comptae sub puerorum veste, ore ad puerilem formamcomposito. Alter veniebat sexus sub altero sexu. Corruperat omnis caro viam suam.