A Colorful Hue and Cry

Fashions come and fashions go, nowhere more than in the world of art. Hue and Cry, French Printmaking and the Debate over Colors, a new exhibit unveiled at the Clark Institute of Art this past weekend, explores one of these changes in esthetic direction, tracing the surprising but steady opposition to colored prints in 19th-century France through to their re-emergence in the late 1800s.

The works on display are extremely light-sensitive and are rarely displayed. They feature prints by the likes of Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Jules Chéret, Maurice Denis, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edouard Vuillard.

The exhibit was curated by Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs for the museum. Leonard, who came to the Clark in 2018, knew early on that she wanted to organize an exhibition of the museum’s French color prints.

“Many beloved artists of the 19th-century did their most creative work in the print medium and the element of color endows these works with a visual appeal that still speaks powerfully to us today," she said in an earlier interview.

Brightly colored prints and posters, synonymous with Belle Époque Paris, are popular with modern audiences, but that appeal masks the fact that colored prints were long an outlier phenomena. During most of the 19th-century, prints were considered to be a black-and-white art form—if a print had color, it failed to qualify as fine art.

A century before the “color revolution” of the 1890s, however, color prints had reached a zenith of technical perfection in France. Extremely costly, they were available only to the wealthy and became associated in the popular imagination with the decadence of the aristocracy—a clientele that disappeared violently in the course of the French Revolution. Popular taste turned away from the lighthearted subjects of rococo and artists increasingly sought noble themes of public virtue, pursuing the austere clarity of the neoclassical style.

The old print techniques, expensive and difficult to achieve, were frowned upon aesthetically in post-Revolutionary France. Color prints were described as “garish,” “cheap,” and “commercial,” discouraging their production even after technical advances made them more feasible and affordable.

“Comparing the color prints made in the late 1700s against those made 100 years later, we can appreciate not just the remarkable technical leaps forward at the level of color print processes, but also the amazing degree of visual inventiveness and experimentation,” Leonard said.

At the same time, a changing world eased the re-entry of color into the world of French printmaking. Japanese ukiyo-e prints, which translates as "picture(s) of the floating world,” came into vogue, with their new emphasis on travel scenes and pictures of nature, especially birds and flowers.

The impact of Japanese aesthetics diffused throughout the visual and material culture of Europe, affecting architecture, fashion, ceramic, landscaping and captivating artists such as American Mary Cassatt (1844–1926).

Cassatt, who is represented in the exhibit by her tender print, Mother’s Kiss, moved to Paris in 1866 to continue her training as a private pupil of instructors from the École des Beaux-Arts. A major 1890 exhibition of ukiyo-e prints cemented Cassatt’s interest in color printmaking and prompted her 1891 portfolio of 10 intaglio prints, of which Mother’s Kiss is one.

The artist packed up her small etching press and retired to a chateau she rented outside of Paris. She hired a professional printer to operate the press but even with his assistance the pair produced only 8 to 10 impressions a day. This may have been why she restricted the edition to only 25 sets but the resulting rarity helped market the works to collectors seeking exclusivity.

Printmakers, seduced by the lure of color, were spurred to achieve technically and aesthetically audacious feats. Among them was Jules Chéret (1836–1932), whose early use of design, imagery and psychology continue to influence the field of advertising until today. Eschewing the text-dominated posters of an earlier era, he transformed lithography to produce bright and breezy images, often without any writing, and in the process elevated the poster to an art form.

Vin Mariani, created in 1894–95, is a prime example of his innovations: a dynamic, cheerful woman in a flowing yellow dress raises a glass filled with a potent mixture of wine and cocaine in an invitation to join her in experiencing the exhilaration of the moment.

Ironically, color lithography posed the greatest affront to sensitivities around printed color in part because lithography itself had never enjoyed fine-art status. Color lithography was, however, an ideal medium for advertising posters, which emerged as a new language of the modern city.

Posters by Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others—publicizing everything from the night spots of the Montmartre entertainment district to skating rinks and cough drops—rose from an “art of the street” to become the most distinctive feature of 1890s visual culture.

Still, color remained a problematic category: contested, controversial and even forbidden at the Paris Salon until 1899. Ironically, the whiff of transgression may have fueled innovation: the great flowering of color printmaking waned once its fine-art status gained official acceptance.

Hue and Cry continues at The Clark through March 6. The Clark is located at 225 South Sreet in Williamstown. Galleries are open 10 AM to 5 PM Tuesday through Sunday. Advance timed tickets are required. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, all visitors age 21 and under and students with a valid student ID.

Visitors age 5 and older are required to wear face masks at all times while indoors, and outdoors when social distancing is not possible.