Giuseppe De Nittis - The Place des Pyramides

Giuseppe De Nittis was a hugely popular artist in his day but his work is sometimes dismissed somewhat sniffily by critics today - art historians are often more excited by those avant-garde contemporaries of his who pushed at the boundaries of what they thought art should be. Degas was an early admirer and lobbied for his inclusion at The First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, but even he became a little more waspishly disparaging of the Italian’s later success, describing him as ‘someone who knows how to please’. It is true that De Nittis made some paintings which are very technically accomplished, often showing a high degree of ‘finish’, a well-drafted realism that is now considered low-brow in the context of late nineteenth century aesthetics; commercially appealing but thought kitsch compared to more progressive art that was deliberately unfinished or which depicted subjects in unconventional ways. But the notion that only experimental art can have merit is as blinkered as the opposing philistine view that only well-crafted representational art is worthwhile. De Nittis often made art which appealed to the bourgeois market but which had more to say than first meets the eye.

Giuseppe De Nittis, The Place des Pyramides, Paris (1875), oïl on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Place des Pyriamides for example is about renewal and modernity, the dawning of a new age after a period of conflict and bloodshed. We see a large husk of a building, seemingly ensnared by wooden scaffolding forming around it a ghostly exoskeleton . The viewpoint is from low down, at street level, so that the edifice looms over us, the foremost structure of the hoist occupying the centre of the work, jutting toweringly into a grey-clouded sky. The building is the Pavillon de Marsan, part of the Tuileries Palace which had been burned down during the Paris Commune. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 had been a humiliating defeat for the French and its ending entailed not only the ceding of territory, Alsace-Lorraine,  but the payment of a massive indemnity. These concessions were seen by many as a betrayal of the country by pusillanimous politicians. During its seige, Paris had witmnessed the abject misery of starvation and disease, conditions which led directly to its seizure by the revolutionary Communards. As these iconoclasts retreated from the overwhelming troop numbers sent by the government to re-take the city, executions on both sides followed, the carnage also entailing the torching of major landmark buildings.

So, the restoration of the Marsan Pavilion represented not only the forces of urban regeneration but constituted a steadfast declaration of pride on the part of its leaders in the city’s spirit and cultural prestige. The Italian-born De Nittis was alive to the patrimony of his adoptive country and its capital city, and was also aware of the pride that the French took in their history, their resistance to tyranny, their willingness to take up arms when threatened (is there anything more stirring than the French National Anthem with its revolutionary call ‘aux armes, citoyens’?), sentiments which the Prussians had seemingly crushed but which the Communards had restored through their heroic failure.

The statue in the middle of the square depicts Joan of Arc, and was made by the sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet. Commissioned by the government just a year before, the monument represents French courage. It is situated near the site where Joan was wounded during her own failed attempt to capture the city. Joan occupies a special place in France’s history and its people’s sense of themselves and De Nittis’ inclusion of the statue figure in his composition is not accidental. We see a mounted Joan holding aloft her standard, silhouetted against a brightening sky, as if leading her people to fight on in another, more promising day. Claiming to be the embodiment of the prophesy that a warrior-virgin would be France’s saviour, she symbolised the notion that the country benefits from divine protection and that inevitably, a way can always be found through to a more enlightened future. As a heroine and martyr of The Hundred Years’ War, she enjoys a universal appeal to this day. To those on the right she represents resistance to foreign incursion, a Catholic royalist beloved by traditionalists, and to those on the left she is an anti-elitist proto feminist and revolutionary. Some of these sentiments were given voice in the 1870s and without taking sides, De Nittis in his painting cleverly juxtaposes demonstrably real and practical reconstruction beside a more visionary emblem of leadership and inspired fortitude. The square’s paving shines after a cleansing, petrichor-generative shower of rain, and the depression of rain clouds has given way to a sunnier prospect ahead.

Despite his apparent non-partisanship in his work, we can guess at De Nittis’ political outlook. As a member of the liberal bourgeoisie and fraternising with artistic progressives such as Manet, and as a known sympathiser with is own country’s Risorgimento (the unification of Italy), he would have had less truck with conservatives than with free thinkers. But in this painting, he privileges (or does nothing to disguise) commerciality above anything more noble. The building site’s hoardings are coloured by so many advertising posters that they create a sense of lively activity that contrasts with the drear and moribund edifice behind them. The 1870s were the time when sombre black and white information and news notices had given way to colour lithography, allowing business, theatres and cabarets to grab the passing public’s attention. A sense of colour in movement is also caught by the red-sided horse-drawn omnibus passing the hoardings and in the middle ground at the foot of the statue, an orange seller stands behind her fully-laden cart. This above all else, stands for fecundity and abundance and signals that the privations of the Commune  are done with and commerce has re-established its primacy.

If class distinctions were supressed during the Commune with the conscious dismantling of some traditional hierarchies, this painting speaks of, even celebrates, their re-establishment. In the foreground, we see a  well-to-do young mother dressed in black, raising her skirts above the puddles on the street and away from the horse droppings nearby. She reveals a white petticoat as if gesturing at a desired emancipation from prevailing codes of dress and behaviour but her two children, identically dressed a la mode in matching raincoats, millinery and carrying umbrellas confirm her and their conformance with the bourgeois social proprieties of the new Belle Époque. Nearby, a top-hatted and fashionably bearded gentleman, possibly her husband or just an admirer, looks directly out towards us, as if daring us to challenge his sense of entitlement. Meanwhile, about to cross their path, two working-class women are seen striding purposefully, one looking over her shoulder watching out for the hansom cab approaching behind her, both carrying laundry baskets, at the service of those above them.

One figure, capturing the attention of the two little girls, and occupying the centre foreground, is shown detached from the hustle bustle of Paris’ chic metropolitan streets. A small black terrier, his lower teeth jutting jauntily, strides his own way, independent, and self-sufficient. It does not appear to belong to the family, and the traditional notion of fidelity that dogs often symbolise in art is here undermined. His is an untethered soul, and his presence suggests that the new, modern city is not only full of activity and pell-mell life, but it has its little dark shadows too. His alterity tells us that melancholy solitude can be the paradoxical price to pay when the streets seem so full of company.