Lucie Attinger (1859 - 1928)

Mon Atelier

Signed lower left: ATTINGER

Inscribed upper left: A notre très chère… / Encore mille fois merci….Attinger

Oil on canvas

38.1 x 45.4 cm. (15 x 17 ¾ in.)

Provenance:

Anonymous sale, Christie’s London, 24 June 1988, lot 119K.

Literature:

Benezit Dictionary of Artists, vol I, Paris 2006, p. 805.

Exhibited:

Salon of 1889, Paris (no. 58, Attinger (M^lle L.). Mon atelier).

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the reappearance of Lucie Attinger’s Mon Atelier in the emerging study of female artists in Paris during the Belle Époque, for it is one of only two known paintings depicting a women only life class at the Académie Julian, the leading international school for women artists at the time. The other painting is Marie Bashkertseff’s In the Studio (fig. 3), which has been well-known and discussed since its execution in 1881. Like Bashkertseff’s picture, Mon Atelier is therefore a fundamental work in aiding our understanding of the training of women artists at the close of the 19^th century. What’s more, the painting carries a dedication, which though unfortunately not entirely legible, is very likely to a professor at the Académie, as suggested by the parts that can be read: ‘A notre très chère’ and ‘Encore mille fois merci’. This would make it even more significant, displaying as it does the connection and relationship between a female student at the Académie and her professor. Additionally, the painting, which is a rare work by Attinger and which includes a self-portrait of the artist looking out and sketching the viewer, was exhibited in the Salon of 1889, and is thus an example of the type of success the Académie Julian prepared its students for. 

Lucie Attinger

Lucie Charlotte Attinger was born on 1 March 1859 in Neuchâtel, in western Switzerland, to James Attinger, a well-known local book publisher, and Sophie Röthlisberger. Attinger was one of eight children. She studied initially in Neuchâtel with Georges Grisel and Auguste Bachelin (fig. 1), a versatile artist whose oeuvre consists mainly of genre scenes and landscapes, and her work was first exhibited in her hometown in 1880. Attinger subsequently moved to Paris to attend the Académie Julian. In 1893 she married Henri Busquet de Caument (1859-1937), from an old aristocratic family, and they had two daughters. She died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 10 June 1929.[1]

Fig. 1, Auguste Bachelin, Kitchen Interior, oil on canvas,

dimensions unknown, location unknown

Fig. 2, Lucie Attinger, Jean l’Etourdi, 1886, Épinal print,

Musée de l’Image, Ville d’Épinal

As a painter, Attinger, despite her talents, does not seem to have been very prolific, exhibiting only once at the Salon, the present work in 1889. Her works are therefore rare on the market, with this being one of only a small handful of paintings to have appeared publicly over the last three decades. The evidence suggests that she was comfortable across diverse subject matter, painting still life, genre scenes and landscapes, amongst other themes. She was also active as an illustrator throughout her career, commissioned to provide work for several Parisian magazines and children’s books. In terms of the latter, she worked primarily with the Maison Quantin publishing house, illustrating their stories in the tradition of Épinal prints (fig. 2).

The Académie Julian

The Académie Julian[1] was founded in 1868, as a preparatory school for the entrance examination of the École des Beaux-Arts, which excluded women until 1897. As the program and professors at the Académie Julian were similar to those of the École des Beaux-Arts, female art students had access for the first time to the same training as men. In fact, the Académie was the pre-eminent art school for women on an international level, achieving a reputation for excellence in academic figure studies, and therefore attracted students from across the western hemisphere. Another pull was the calibre of professors teaching there, which included leading Salon jury members such as Jules Lefebvre, Joseph-Benjamin Constant, Jean-Paul Laurens and William Adolphe Bouguereau.

Women participated in mixed classes with the men for the first few years, though by 1879 separate studios for men and women were established, mainly in response to ‘the needs of bourgeois families who…were fearful of mixed classes.’[2] Indeed, even when it was possible for women to work in studios with men, some preferred not to. Marie Bashkirtseff, whose posthumously published Journal is an important source for the Académie’s early years, ‘elected to enter the women’s atelier not only because the men smoked more but, significantly, because she felt there was no essential differences between the classes, since the woman also drew from the male nude’.[3] The classes, for both sexes, were often overcrowded, though the women benefited from the services of a bonne who ran errands for them. The lessons were almost entirely technical, centred around life classes. Though Julian’s fees were generally considered to be modest, the cost of training female artists was about double the cost of men, ‘as it was generally believed that women would be able to find an outside family member or sponsor who would pay their expenses’[4], and was also a way of weeding out amateurs, who were supposedly more numerous amongst women.[5]

Despite the separation, female artists continued to enjoy opportunities nearly equal to the men, competing directly against them, often winning prizes and awards. Once a month all the students competed together, and the examining professors were not told the name or the sex of the competitors until the results were declared. Julian himself remarked on ‘how often women have the best of it in these trials.’[6] These exams prepared students to compete in the professional world, such as exhibiting at the Salon, which many female alumni of the Académie did successfully.

Mon Atelier

Attinger’s painting depicts a group of female students undertaking a life class at the Académie Julian, in one of the four studios available to women by 1889. The vibrant blocks of colour owe something to Attinger’s knowledge and mastery of Épinal prints (fig. 2), and the busy yet spatially successful composition is somewhat reminiscent the work of her first teacher, Auguste Baschelin (fig. 1).

A bearded model, with a white drape behind him, sits elevated on a platform, surrounded by a group of female students working in oils at easels. Engaged industriously in their task, indicating an atmosphere both collaborative and competitive, and all, bar one, with their attention on the model, the students sit on high-backed chairs, resting their feet on low stools and their pigment boxes on taller ones. Wearing the latest fashions of the day, the women protect their clothes from paint splashes with aprons, and style their hair up. Palettes, canvasses and a clock, whose hands show a time of 3.05, are hung on the walls. At the far left, wearing a red apron and sketching in her book, Attinger looks out at and sketches the viewer, who is presumably the professor, with a half-smile on her face. This intimate detail, demonstrating the connection between Attinger and her professor, gives the work a personal feel, with the viewer taking the place of the professor, who stands at the back of the studio, monitoring the work of the class and sharing a pleasant exchange with the young Swiss artist.

Fig. 3, Marie Bashkertseff, In the Studio, 1881, oil on canvas, 188 x 154 cm, Dnopropetrovsk Museum, Ukraine

Everything conforms with the few known other images of female classes at the Académie, which consist mainly of a handful of photographs and Bashkirtseff’s painting. In the Studio (fig. 3) was painted by the Ukrainian artist in 1881 and, though on a much larger scale, and with a young boy posing as Saint John the Baptist, contains many of the same elements. Bashkertseff’s studio, with the stove clearly visible behind the model, is likely one of the four studios at 5 rue de Berri, as a photograph (fig. 4) of a rue de Berri studio published in the June 1893 issue of Sketch also contains the stove, just along from the model. Attinger’s studio may well be one and the same, with the walls of two-tone grey, though the arrangement does seem different, and the space smaller. Perhaps it is another of the studios at rue de Berri and indeed a photograph of 1889 (fig. 5) shows a smaller studio at the same address, with a bearded model, and it is not impossible that this is both the room and model depicted in Attinger’s painting. Also worth mentioning alongside Attinger’s and Bashkertseff’s depictions is the Swedish artist Mina Carlson-Bredberg’s 1884 painting (fig. 6) of a lunch break in one of the Académie’s female studios.

Fig. 4, Photograph of the Académie Julian, rue de Berri, c.1893

Fig. 5, Photograph of the Académie Julian, rue de Berri, 1889

Finally, the inscription at the upper left of the composition, is an element which makes Attinger’s work unique, for it indicates that the painting was done at Attinger’s volition, as a gift to a professor. This distinguishes it from Bashkertseff’s painting, which Rodolphe Julian ‘ordered to do as an advertisement for the studio’.[1]Taken together with the smiling self-portrait, the dedication is evidence of the warm and positive relations that could exist between the female students at the Académie and their professors.

Fig. 6, Mina Carlson-Bredberg, Académie Julian, Madamoiselle Beson drinking from a glass,

1884, oil on canvas, 74.5 x 53 cm, Dorsia Hotel, Gothenburg, Sweden