# The Netsuke Survived



## MULTIZ321 (Sep 5, 2011)

The Netsuke Survived - by Roger Cohen/Sunday Review/OP-Ed Columnist/New York Times.com

The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal - Reviewed by Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of the London Times

After reading Roger Cohen's review I downloaded the Hare with Amber Eyes onto our Nook Color.


Richard


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## stmartinfan (Sep 5, 2011)

I recently read The Hare with the Amber Eyes.  It was a little slow at the start but once I got into it the book was fascinating.


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## sun&fun (Sep 5, 2011)

*The Hare with the Amber Eyes*

I, too, read this several months ago and enjoyed it on many levels.  Highly recommended.


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## MULTIZ321 (Oct 10, 2011)

This past May, I had to go to a conference in Washington, D.C. (actually, Alexandria, VA). My wife came also and we took a couple of extra days for sightseeing.

We visited The Phillips Collection off of Dupont Circle (http://www.phillipscollection.org/homepage.aspx). I wasn't aware that they had an original Renoir painting that has always been one of my favorite Impressionist paintings.  When we went upstairs to the second floor, and walked into a small gallery room, my knees literally buckled.  There against the far wall was Renoir's 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' (1881, Le déjeuner des canotiers). The colors were so vibrant, it seemed like I was right there at the luncheon. I had seen reproductions of this painting, and was thrilled to be able to view it in person.  Pictures were allowed as long as flash wasn't used.
















When I got home, I was so dissappointed because I had the camera set incorrectly and the images did not come out.  I told myself, next time I return to Washington, D.C., I'll go back to the Phillips and take my pictures of the Boating Party.  Luckily, I did not have to wait long because I returned to Washington, DC in July for a training.  When I had some free time, off the the Phillips I went on the subway and took my pictures, this time ensuring that camera settings were properly set.

So what does all this have to do with 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'?   I'm surprised to learn that the man in the Top Hat towards the rear of the 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' picture, is Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of the Author's (Edmund de Waal) great-grandfather. The woman in the foreground, playing with the small dog is
Aline Charigot, Renoir's future wife.

Charles is a wealthy amateur art historian, collector, and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. He is a patron and friend of Renoir.  In 1870, he purchases the 264 Netsuke in Paris and at the turn of the century Charles gave the Netsuke to Edmund's great-grandfather, Viktor von Ephrussi as a wedding present.   To learn more, you have to read the book.

So it's come full-circle for me this year, not only to get to see Renoir's 'Luncheon of the Boating Party'  in person but to then to learn that an important character in 'The Hare with Amber Eyes' is depicted in the painting.


Richard


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## Patri (Oct 11, 2011)

Richard, I think all 3 of your photos are outstanding. Thanks.


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## MULTIZ321 (Oct 11, 2011)

Patri said:


> Richard, I think all 3 of your photos are outstanding. Thanks.



Thanks Patri.   I wish I could take credit for the photos but I can't. I copied links from the Phillips Collection.

If you get to Washington, D.C. and haven't been to the Phillips collection, I recommend it.  Also, the Corcoran Gallery of Art which isn't too far from the White House - http://www.corcoran.org/

Richard


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## glypnirsgirl (Oct 11, 2011)

That painting has always been one of my favorites. So much so that I have a reproduction of a piece of it - the woman playing with the dog - in my bedroom.

I am thinking about taking my son and daughter in law to DC for a weekend in February. Nice to be reminded of the Phillips collection which had fallen off of my radar.

elaine


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## MULTIZ321 (Oct 16, 2011)

Edmund De Waal, the author reconnected me to another piece of history and art that has special meaning to me - The Potemkin Steps.

Charles Ephrussi, the man in the top hat in the Renoir painting, was born and raised in Odessa. He transformed his father's small grain-trading business into a huge enterprise by cornering the market in buying wheat. Charles bought the grain from middlemen who transported it into the port of Odessa. Here the grain was stored in his warehouses before being exported across the Black Sea, up the Danube, and across the Mediterranean.

By 1860, the family had become the greatest grain exporters in the world. In Paris, where Charles moved in the early 1870's, the Ephrussi were known as 'les Rois de Ble' (the Kings of Grain).

While collecting material for his Book, Edmund decides to travel to Odessa where the Ephrussi family started. An iconic symbol of Odessa, is the Potemkin stairs which were made famous in Sergei Eisenstein's classic, black and white silent film 'The Battleship Potemkin'.  There are 192 steps with ten landings, designed to create an optical illusion that when you looked down you see only landings, and when you look up you see only steps.






  Potemkin Steps looking up.






 Potemkin Steps from a higher perspective which allows the viewer to see the stairs and landings






 - Potemkin Steps from the top down






 - The Potemkin Steps from a 1905 Postcard.  Just to the right of the building at the top of the stairs is where Charles lived.

Here's the classic Potemkin Steps scenes from 'The Battleship Potemkin' on YouTube


Richard


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## stmartinfan (Oct 16, 2011)

Thank you for continuing to add to this thread. De Waal's book really touched me with its story so I have been enjoying your follow ups about The Boaters and this last one.


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## MULTIZ321 (Dec 1, 2011)

For Art Lovers, here's  some additional background information about the Renoir painting 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' (French: Le déjeuner des canotiers) from Susan Vreeland's book: 'Luncheon of the Boating Party'

The painting depicts the summer of 1880, an exhuberant postwar time when social constraints were loosening, Paris was healing, and Parisians were bursting with a desire for pleasure.

After the crippling Siege of Paris of 1870 culminating the Prussian War, and France's humiliating defeat, Parisian insurgents, the Communards, angry with their government's incompetence, took control of the city in 1871 and declared the end of the Empire. The popular uprising was put down with draconian cruelty, and the psychological trauma was felt for decades afterward. To atone for the 20,000 Communards killed in street fighting or executions, a magnificent church, Le Sacre Coeur, would rise from the Butte of Montmartre, once the stronghold of the rebellion. 

Stiff war reparations were paid in record time, and after six years of economic depression, by 1880, Paris was exploding with creative energy and optimism. Cafés, café-concerts, cabarets, dance halls, theaters, hotels, department stores all flourished. 

The setting was ripe for a new society. La vie moderne was born, made possible by the shortening of the work week. The workers were given their Sundays. 

With the building of railroad lines to the countryside just beyond the suburbs, Parisians could enjoy their Sundays in a number of riverside villages to the west of Paris. 

The possibility to rent a boat (un canot) for an hour or an afternoon and row where one pleased, to stop to picnic on the lawns of former private châteaux, gave people a sense of freedom. In this new age, anyone could become un canotier. Boating costumes could be had inexpensively. Songs and vaudeville extolled the birth of recreation, and the new painting portrayed it. 

Asnières, Argenteuil, Bezons, Chatou, Bougival--all river towns, attracted Parisian day-trippers and painters by the droves.

The railroad line to the west of Paris crossed the Seine some hundred yards south, downstream, of Ile de Chatou, the narrow island in a string of connected islands separating the river into a commercial channel and a pleasure boating channel. There, La Maison Fournaise was situated. It was one of many guinguettes, riverside restaurants offering music, sometimes dancing, and in the case of La Maison Fournaise, the rental of various types of rowing craft. 

The painting's epicenter is the terrace of La Maison Fournaise, twenty-minutes by train west of Paris which attracts a mix of Parisians, especially on Sundays. A popular song of the time extols Sundays when one feels wonderful and has nothing to do but to enjoy life. 

The characters on the terrace overlooking the Seine enjoying this moment of la vie moderne are Renoir's friends.






 - Gustave Caillebotte, in the flat-topped straw hat and sleeveless maillot: Wealthy painter, collector of Impressionist paintings, yachtsman, racer, close friend of Renoir. 






 - Charles Ephrussi, in a top hat: Russian-born art collector, writer and director of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts who championed the Impressionists. 






 - Jules Laforgue, in a cap, holding a pipe: Symbolist poet whose work influenced Yeats, Pound and T.S. Eliot; journalist for La Vie Moderne; secretary to Charles Ephrussi. 






 -  The seamstress Aline Charigot, holding a dog, sits near the bottom left of the composition. Renoir later married her.






 - Alphonsine Fournaise, leaning on the railing: Daughter of the owners of the Maison Fournaise; war widow. 






 - Alphonse Fournaise, leaning on the railing in sleeveless maillot: Son of the owner of Maison Fournaise, renter and builder of boats, jouster in the Fêtes Nautiques. 

Continued...

Richard


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## MULTIZ321 (Dec 1, 2011)

Luncheon of the Boating Party, continued





- Angèle, in a blue dress and white hat talking to Gustave: Flower seller in outdoor market, model, singer. 





 - leaning over Angèle: Italian journalist. 





- Jeanne Samary, with her black-gloved hands to her ears: Actress at the Comédie-Française. 






 - Paul Lhôte, in a straw hat leaning toward Jeanne: Wild adventurer, journalist, writer of short fiction, a close friend of Renoir. 






 - Pierre Lestringuèz, in a bowler hat looking at Jeanne: Official at the Ministry of the Interior, dabbler in the occult, close friend of Paul. 






 - Baron Raoul Barbier, in a bowler talking to Alphonsine: Former cavalry officer and war hero, former mayor of Saigon, yachtsman, lover of race horses and ladies. 






 - Ellen Andrée, drinking from a glass: Model for Degas as well as Renoir, mime in the Folies-Bergère. 

Some other boating paintings from the period -






 - Gustave Caillebotte, Boatman in a Top Hat, 1877-78. Private Collection. 





- Gustave Caillebotte, Périssoires, 1878. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, France

Continued...

Richard


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## MULTIZ321 (Dec 1, 2011)

Luncheon of the Boating Party, continued

Additional boating paintings from the period  and info about La Maison  Fournaise -





- Renoir, The Seine at Chatou, 1881. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. 





- Renoir, Boating on the Seine, 1875. The Trustees of the National Gallery, London.






- Renoir, Oarsmen at Chatou, 1879 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.






 - La Maison Fournaise et la Seine, Chatou, circa 1890. late 19th century postcard.

Renoir had known the Fournaise family for ten years. The popular restaurant attracted performers, writers, and painters, notably Monet, Degas, and De Nittis. In years following Renoir's stay there, Maurice Réalier-Dumas, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck painted there. Here was ample subject matter among serious as well as Sunday afternoon "canotiers," boaters. And here Renoir set his masterpiece. 





- Postcard, circa 1900. Courtesy Betty van Wijhe, 2006 

Richard


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## glypnirsgirl (Dec 1, 2011)

Fascinating details! And it is very interesting to me that most of the people in the picture are dressed very formally. Only the Fournaises and Caillebotte are dressed casually. It makes me wonder if the people thought of themselves as the _haute monde_.

elaine


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## glypnirsgirl (Dec 1, 2011)

And on a related note, on one tour that I took of the New York Metropolitan that I took, the docent described Manet's painting as the first impressionist painting. 

This is a Manet pre-impressionist painting: 

and this painting is considered one of the earliest impressionist paintings

I wish I knew how to post the actual pictures.

elaine


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## MULTIZ321 (Dec 2, 2011)

glypnirsgirl said:


> And on a related note, on one tour that I took of the New York Metropolitan that I took, the docent described Manet's painting as the first impressionist painting.
> 
> This is a Manet pre-impressionist painting:
> 
> ...



Elaine,

If you right click on a photo - a menu comes up, one of the choices often is "copy image location" - click on that choice, now go back to the Tug Reply box where you are typing your message - look at the icons in the top of the message box, you'll see a yellow postcard icon with mountains - click on that icon - erase the 'http:/' that's in the box by default; do "control V" which will post the picture URL in the box, which now gets pasted into your message and looks something like url string [IMG],
when you post the message - your picture will be in the message

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Manet_-_Musique_aux_Tuileries_rep.jpg

Richard

P.S. I couldn't get your other link to work


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## stmartinfan (Mar 30, 2012)

I just finished reading the book mentioned earlier in this post, Luncheon of the Boating Party, which I happened to find in the lending library of my timeshare Divi Little Bay St. Maarten. (Just to show that almost any post can have a timeshare link!)

I really enjoyed the book, which is a fictional account of how the painting was accomplished, based on the author's extensive research.  It was a good story, but I also learned lots about the era and the lives of the characters. 

Just wanted to post my thanks for the recommendation of the book.  Now if I could just fit in a trip to DC to see the real painting!


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