Before recent scholarly revisions of the history of art in terms of forgotten artists, French artist Jean Béraud (1849-1935) was considered to be an elegant yet limited painter of modern Parisian life and thus ignored as insignificant in the canon of great artists. In the early 20th century, a new generation of painters, such as the Fauves, Cubists, Dadaists, Surrealists, and abstract artists, was emerging, and after the World War I, Béraud was rapidly forgotten. As a result, Béraud is little known today, as he has received little attention from scholars. In particular, I have become captivated by Béraud’s religious painting “St. Mary Magdalene in the House of Simon the Pharisee,” which was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1891. The reason I became interested in this particular canvas is that I would like to focus on a work of art that is not widely discussed in popular or scholarly literature, and, in this case, to see beyond the demands or limitations of modernism, in which the avant-garde work is usually preferred to the Salon picture.
Jean Béraud was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a sculptor and after his death in 1853, the family returned to Paris, where Béraud studied and then practiced law until the Franco-Prussian War. In1871, however, Béraud enrolled in painting classes in the studio of Léon Bonnat, one of the leading artists at the time. Béraud began his career as a portrait painter, but by the end of the 1870s, he became interested in the daily life of the Parisian boulevards. Surprisingly, painting a city like Paris, which was in a constant state of commotion, was no easy task. This means that, in order to be truthful, you have to capture scenes from everyday life on the spot and forget about the conventions of the studio. As a result, Béraud had the strangest life imaginable, because he spent all his time in carriages. Almost all the cab drivers in the city knew him, and he was one of their favorite passengers, because he at least did not wear their horses out. The artist was just sitting in a cab parked at the corner of a street for hours, while making rapid sketches. Béraud is best recognized for his pictures of active, unescorted women on the boulevards of modern Paris representing the theme of La Parisienne.
In general, many painters of the period did what was expected of them in terms of religious painting by representing Christian imagery as more solemn and pious or modernizing the Biblical theme without social implications. Béraud, however, often used religious iconography for intense social comment and thus stepped outside the mainstream representation of religious themes. In fact, the artist interpreted the religious stories, by deriding contemporary society and thus making a powerful effect on the public that visited the Paris Salon.
Béraud’s religious painting “St. Mary Magdalene in the House of Simon the Pharisee” created a public outrage when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1891. Critics found this picture odd and disturbing and accused Béraud of being contemptuous of God. French journalist and art critic Octave Mirbeau, for instance, described Béraud as “the one and only Christograph for drawing rooms and clubs, who allows himself the privilege of fitting out the son of God according to the fashions of the day.” Others commented on the sinister, aggressive and even lecherous expressions of male subjects, producing a comic effect in the religious scene. In general, many periodicals of the time dismissed Béraud’s canvas and condemned it as tasteless, yet it had a profound impact on the consciousness of the public.
This work caused much controversy, because the artist depicted religious characters as famous contemporary figures of the 19th century:
The socialist journalist Albert Duc-Quercy as Christ,
The rationalist philosopher Ernest Renan as Simon the Pharisee, and
The dramatist Alexandre Dumas fils among the Pharisees.
The model for Mary Magdalene was widely rumored to have been posed by the notorious courtesan Liane de Pougy (1869 - 1950), who was famous for her extravagance and tumultuous love life.
The figure of Mary Magdalene became extremely popular in spirituality and the visual, literary, and musical arts of the nineteenth century, due to renewed interest in this female biblical character. At the Paris Salons, for example, many French painters depicted their Magdalenes with the emphasis on the strongly illuminated female nudity, meant to evoke an erotic response from a male viewer. In contrast to the passive pornography found in the visual arts of the period, Béraud turned to a truer version of the female experience different from that of his contemporaries, by depicting his Magdalene as a new type of courtesan known as the demi-mondaine.
Scholars have interpreted Béraud’s St. Mary Magdalene, but none has concentrated exclusively on the female subject, nor considered it in relation to other characters in the scene. One art historian (Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum), in particular, argues that Béraud presumably meant his viewers to identify with the Pharisees, for no nineteenth-century male or respectable female could possibly identify with the sinful woman.
What is peculiar about the female image is that, contrary to generally accepted morality, a nineteenth-century respectable woman did seek to identify with the sinful Magdalene represented as the demi-mondaine at the Paris Salon of 1891. As an artist conscious of the female condition, Béraud portrayed the Magdalene as the modern courtesan who became an inspiration for young bourgeois women. In so doing, the artist commented on the rapidly changing feminine moral values in the face of social, economic, and political shifts in power during the second half of the nineteenth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century, women became highly visible to the public due to the increasing opportunities outside the domestic sphere, involving work, leisure or political activities.
The term demi-mondaine was coined by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895) in his popular play Le Demi-Monde of 1855. But the image itself had been vividly constructed in his earlier novel “The Lady of the Camellias,” in which Dumas glamorized a courtesan, as the “whore with the heart of gold,” who dies “young, beautiful and repentant,” thus evoking bourgeois women’s great sympathy and compassion. In general, the demi-monde refers to a class of men and women that emerged during the Second French Empire (1852-1870) and whose members emulated the lifestyles of the aristocracy by using noble manners, drinking fine wine, wearing sophisticated clothes, and attending the same opera spectacles, and yet without truly possessing aristocratic culture. The demi-mondaine was elevated to great power during the exuberant era known as La Belle Époque. La Belle Époque was associated with people who gained from capitalism, prosperity, influence and status by having disposable incomes, acquiring lands, and enjoying themselves to the fullest.
Béraud was on visiting terms with the social elite of Belle Époque Paris, and the artist was a perceptive observer of society. He regularly appeared at premieres, openings, and society receptions, where he might have often encountered demi-mondaines. The artist knew quite well that in this world, enormous fortunes were at the disposal of ladies who displayed great beauty and elegance, even though these women were assigned to the margins of the demi-monde.
The glamorized image of the demi-mondaine had become so fashionable that it greatly affected those from the upper echelons of Parisian society. The alluring courtesan was beginning to serve as a role model even for female aristocrats. As she became visible to high society, there developed the intense rivalry between women of social prestige and female members of the demi-monde. As a result, one could no longer distinguish even the wealthiest grand dame from the ambitious courtesan.
In responding to recent interpretations of the image of the Magdalene that no nineteenth-century respectable female could possibly identify with the sinful woman. Ironically, it was a nineteenth-century reputable woman who strove to identify with the demi-mondaine posing as the sinful Magdalene in Béraud’s picture. Bourgeois women, in particular, fell prey to the enigmatic persona of the demi-mondaine who exalted and enslaved them simultaneously. In their attempts to imitate her extravagant sense of fashion, middle-class women spent more of their budgets than was considered prudent or necessary, thus carelessly dissipating the bourgeois wealth. Also, inspired by the provocative courtesan’s amorous conquests, no longer could a married woman be satisfied with the role of the domestic goddess, when she was able to enjoy extramarital affairs. In a larger sense, this phenomenon was a reflection of bourgeois women’s growing discontent with domestic boredom and isolation from the social world. The demi-mondaine may not have been engaged in the activities planned to achieve the right to vote or to divorce, yet advocates of moral principles perceived her as a threat to the old feminine ideals.
Throughout the nineteenth century, madness had become a focus of scientific preoccupations. Female passion for life, apparent in high spirits and healthy presence, was perceived by the scientists of the period as a manifestation of hysteria, which was considered an essentially female disease. André Brouillet’s “Clinical Lecture at the Salpêtrière,” 1887, shows a female hysteric presented by the famous French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893)to a group of male physicians, thus suggesting that it was probably female madness at the core of their medical research. Compositionally, Béraud’s religious scene is reminiscent of Brouillet’s painting, as both show a woman in psychological distress surrounded by a group of men, who appear lacking in sympathy or feeling and consider her not as an individual but rather as a new case study. It is difficult to establish the identities of all the guests in the scene, but according to recent scholarship, these male individuals were modeled on specific members of the Parisian social and political world. If seen within the context of female existence, the figures of the Pharisees, wearing expressions of hatred, aggression, aloofness, and lust, may become representatives of social institutions and their practices imposed upon femininity in the climate of subdued religion at the turn of the century.
Today, it may seem impractical to concern ourselves with the demi-mondaine, and why should we be interested in the phenomenon of the nineteenth century? What is significant here is that Béraud’s St. Mary Magdalene, with its social criticism, may be regarded as one of the greatest messages not only to the late nineteenth-century viewer, but also to an audience of the new millennium used to considering strong, powerful, and independent women as a signifier of female immorality, madness and corruption.
Thus, Béraud’s religious picture is marked by originality and power. Its essential point is female suffering, caused by a social system. At the same time, it underlies modern self-righteousness that might not be apparent to the Salon audience. What is important here is that Béraud does not deride religion, but rather, poses religious questions within a contemporary context. Behind an aura of blasphemy, Béraud’s painting promotes passion over indifference, compassion over ignorance, and faith over skepticism. —Diana Guber, an excerpt from “Jean Béraud’s St. Mary Magdalene in the House of Simon the Pharisee,” 2009.