CABANEL, Alexandre

(b. 1823 Montpellier, d. 1889 Paris)

French painter of portraits and historical subjects in the academic style. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of seventeen. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1844, and won the Prix de Rome in 1845. His painting The Birth of Venus was shown at the Salon in 1863, and was bought by Napoleon III for his own personal collection. That same year he was made a professor of the École des Beaux-Arts.

Cabanel’s erotic imagery, cloaked in historicism, appealed to the propriety of the higher levels of society. He was a determined opponent of the Impressionists, especially Manet, although the refusal of the academic establishment to realize the importance of new ideas and sources of inspiration would eventually prove to be the undoing of the Academy.

Portrait of the Comtesse de Keller

Cabanel is inseparably associated with ‘art pompier’ - late French academicism that got its name from one or more of three sources: the similarity between the ancient helmets shown in its exponents’ canvases and those worn by Parisian firemen (pompiers); its servile devotion to antiquity, one of whose symbols was Pompeii; or simply its tendency to treat any subject pompously. In this portrait of a Russian aristocrat, Comtesse de Keller (n�e Maria Ivanovna Riznich), the dramatic use of light and shade stresses the paleness of the model’s skin and heightens her facial features, giving her the look of an actress strongly lit on stage.

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The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus was exhibited at the Salon of 1863. It is one of the best-known examples of 19th-century academic painting. The picture was bought by the emperor Napoleon III; there is also a smaller replica (painted in 1875 for a banker, John Wolf) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Edward Manet painted his Olympia in 1863 but had apparently not dared submit it in 1864. When exhibited at the 1865 Salon, it was vociferously decried. Its subject is identical to Cabanel’s painting: a reclining nude. But the calm assurance with which Manet’s subject stares back at the viewer seems much more provocative than the languid pose of Cabanel’s Venus. The Birth of Venus illustrates the kind of technique that was popular at the time: polished, smooth, and meticulous - quite unlike the vigorous work of Manet. It was Cabanel who reaped every honour, including election to the Institut de France and appointment to a professorship at the �cole des Beaux-Arts.

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