Ernest-Ange Duez
French, 1843-1896

Woman in Grey on Board Ship, Gazing at the Sea, 1873
oil on canvas mounted on wood
47 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.

SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the Suzette and Eugene Davidson Fund
1994.21



Portrait of Ernest-Ange Duez by John Singer Sargent, c. 1884, oil on canvas, Montclair Art Museum.

RESEARCH PAPER

Woman in Grey on Board Ship, Gazing at the Sea, by Ernest Duez, signed and dated 1873 in the bottom left corner, is an oil painting on canvas in the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The full figure of a female is rendered in great detail. She is standing at the rail of a sailing ship, in profile, slightly leaning on the rail with her right arm. Her gesture is leaning forward braced by her right knee on a deck stool. Her head is tilted to the right.

The palette is subdued with a soft grey atmosphere. The female figure is in the center of the painting. There is balance in the composition as the negative and positive areas compliment each other. There are strong diagonals creating an "X" shape, the figure being one line of the X and the rigging line through the figure to the leg of the deck stool finishing the other angle to the X. Color is used to create distance. The color of the water and sky are tinged with blue and highlighted to give the viewer a sense of depth. There is no land showing on the horizon, only a few small boats on the right between the two ropes of the rigging and the distant smoke of a steam ship. In the foreground, are possessions of the woman passenger. A finely detailed book, silky scarf, parasol and woolen shawl in their composition lead your eye back to the delicate profile of the subject.

Duez was born in Paris in 1843 and became interested in art at an early age. His family insisted however that he enter a silk house for business experience. After three years, he decided that his interest in art was stronger than his family's ambitions and entered art training under the tutelage of Isidore Pils, a professor of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Pils was a talented military and religious painter. His early works earned him one of the highest honors, the Grand Prix de Rome. He was awarded many other accolades during his career and was a popular figure in the art world of the time. Duez learned to work with the colors of the instructor Pils and the fineness of detail through the instruction of Carolus-Duran. The emphasis of his training was in developing the techniques that were popular at the time. Although he exhibits the ability to work in exquisite detail, he worked his way through several stages. His work consists of landscapes, historical themes, portraits, religious subjects and genre paintings.

Portrait photography was becoming very popular and inexpensive; a threat to portrait artists. As early as 1859, a black and white portrait of Sarah Bernhardt showing lavish draping of fabric around her in a dramatic pose was cause for the artist to become competitive with their ability to create lavish draping techniques of their own. Duez had the ability to create flowing draped gowns as well as delicate features with the techniques he learned.

The influence of his two prominent instructors was strong, however Duez had a leaning toward the work of Manet. He was a friend whom he admired and was impressed with his techniques and principals. His greatest success came when he adapted "plein-aire" painting from Manet's influence. He worked outdoors at his Villerville studio, near Manet's on the English Channel, in the foulest weather. His models were not too happy to sit for him, however the results are in the beautiful, almost stormy scenes. The authenticity of the colors, the mood he creates, and the dreamy quality of his work testify to his ability to recreate the misty, cold seaside. His work at this time was gaining notoriety and success being rewarded with several medals at the Salons, the highest being the Legion of Honor in 1880. He prospered in his Paris studio on the Boulevard Berthier. His most famous neighbor, John Singer Sargent, was a friend and influence, as both Duez and Sargent studied under the flamboyant guidance of Carolus-Duran. Duez' style changed with the evidence of more pronounced brush strokes. In 1883 Sargent painted a portrait of Duez with the inscription "a mon ami Duez".

Duez was commissioned to paint works for commercial spaces such as fine hotels and restaurants. These works are very large, the smaller pieces were done for private collections in homes. Several paintings were done of beautiful women in fine clothing. Of four that are mentioned in research materials, all the women are wearing yellow ocher gloves, including "Woman in Grey... ". Since Duez painted outdoors in severe conditions, perhaps the models wore these gloves to protect their hands or these gloves are a subtle trademark of the artist.

Woman in Grey...is a fine example of the changing role of women in the late 19th century. By 1869 in the United States, Susan B. Anthony had begun her movement to allow women the right to vote. In Paris after the Franco-Prussian War, French artists used women subjects symbolically as the "New France", dignified, elegant and strong. This new era was prosperous with the emergence of an affluent middle class and gentlemen were anxious to display their success through the appearance of their wives. These women were encouraged to dress in their finest apparel and be seen in the most fashionable Salons. Artists too participated in this climate through their art work that captured the beauty and elegance of the moment. "Woman in Grey..." exhibits the changing role of women. Her attire bespeaks her station, while she travels alone. Who is she looking at through her field glasses? Is she departing or returning home? The contrast of the steam ship in the distance while she is on a sailing vessel, indicates changes and advancements in technology. Her costume shows a very proper lady yet she is alone. Is it proper for a refined lady to travel alone ? Does she cling to the past turning away from the world changing around her?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stranahan, Clara C. A History of French Painting From It's Earliest To It's Latest Practice. (No Publishing Information Available)

Champlin, John Denison, Jr. 'Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913.

Ratchff, Carter. John Singer Sargent. New York: Abbeville Press, 1982.

Olson. Stanley. John Singer Sargent: His Portrait. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Clayson, Hollis. "Prostitution and the Art of Later Nineteenth-Century France: On Some Differences Between The Work of Degas and Duez," Arts Magazine, Vol. 60, no. 1. December 1985; pp 10-45.

Juraen Schultze. "Art of Nineteenth-Century Europe". Harry . Abrams. Inc. New York, 1970

John Miller. "The Studios of Paris: The Capitol of Art in the Late Nineteenth Century". Yale University Press. New Haven, 1988

Carol Strickland. Ph.D. and John Boswell. "The Annotated Mona Lisa". Universal Press Syndicate Company, Kansas City, 1992

Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Helene Strobel, March, 1996

POSTSCRIPT

The painter Duez began his exhibition career at the Salon of 1868 but only achieved recognition in 1879 with a medal-winning religious painting. Throughout his career, he produced portraits, landscapes, religious and genre pictures that reveal his solid academic training as well as excellent powers of observation and superb sense of color. He had studied with Isidore Pils, whose paintings also combine an academic skill at drawing and composition with, in his later career, an interest in realistic subjects and great skill in the rendering of carefully observed detail. During the 1880s, Duez associated with John Singer Sargent and shared with him a strong interest in supporting the work of Manet (whose memorial exhibition took place in 1884).

Our painting belongs to the well-established tradition of full­length female subjects familiar to the 19th-century public through the works of Whistler, Tissot, Sargent and other artists. It contains an indication of several influences: the subtle color values of Whistler, Tissot's suggestion of hidden meanings beneath the obvious subject matter, the dramatic pose and facial profile of Sargents of the same period. Along with the exquisitely rendered detail, there is a suggestion that this is more than a traditional portrayal of a woman of the leisure class; as a solitary traveler, she is suggestive of the changing role of women in society, capable of independent action and not defined by typical female activities of home and children. Her pose -- gazing toward an unknown destin­ation, aboard a sailing vessel but with a steamship in the distance -- is fraught with significance.

Suggestive of modernity but rooted in tradition, this painting is the first full-length figure painting to enter our 19th-century European collection. It joins a collection rich in landscape subjects and represents an important aspect of the great changes that take place in French art of the late-19th century, combining some of the best qualities of the traditional past with intimations of the future. In addition, it contains significant qualities of the work of more famous artists of the era, whom we can not afford. Our collection of painting, sculpture, drawings and graphics of the 1850-1900 period has become one of the most important and represen­tative concentrations of work in our entire holdings. A painting such as this, with its appeal and its various levels of meaning, is an important addition to that constellation of work.

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

The technical polish of an artist like Duez was something that the young Van Gogh came to know through the reproductive prints that he sold as a clerk working for the art dealer, Goupil. In a letter to his friend, the artist Anthon van Rappard on September 19, 1882, Van Gogh fondly recollected his early admiration for the artistic facility of the likes of Duez, who today is considered one of the so-called ‘juste-milieu’ (literally, middle-of-the-road) artists who found favor with the State and were awarded commissions to decorate the interiors of public buildings. While he could still recommend to Van Rappard the “beauty” of Duez’s art even a dozen years after first encountering it as a clerk at Goupil Gallery, Vincent firmly endorsed paintings of “a few rag pickers eating their soup while it’s snowing and raining outside,” rather “than the dazzling peacock’s feathers of the Italians [far worse, according to Vincent, than Duez], who seem to multiply daily, while the more sober artists are no less rare than they always were.”

Duez also painted in a more fluid manner, akin to his good friends, the American Impressionists John Singer Sargent
and James Whistler. However, this is an example of the kind of luxurious detail that he lavished on such depictions of fashionably attired women—a talent that he shared with the likes of James Tissot and the Belgian, Alfred Stevens—two other artists whose gifts of observation impressed Vincent as a young shop clerk.

- Through Vincent's Eyes, 2022


Among his contemporaries, Duez was well-known for his captivating beach scenes and seascapes, many of which were painted on the Normandy coast in Villerville where he vacationed. This painting combines Duez's skill in capturing the tempestuous marine environment with his talent in figure painting, resulting in a novelistic genre scene. Though the exquisitely rendered textures of the young woman's attire and the softly modeled facial features are typical of gilded age imagery and society portraiture, the lack of identifying characteristics or concrete narrative details - is she alone? where is she going? from where is she departing? - leave the story to the viewer's imagination.

- Van Gogh to Munch, 2013