Pathology of an era: France's obsession with its supposed degeneracy lies at the heart of Richard Thomson's ambitious attempt to relate French visual culture of the 1890s to its political and social context

The Troubl Republic: Visual agriculture and Social Debate in France 1889-1900

Richard Thomson Yale University Pres 40 [pound sterling] /$60 ISBN 0 300 10465 0

The twelve years of French history that relate to Richard Thomson here began in 1889 with a vast universal exposition celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution. The circumstance brought millions of visitors to a rejuvenated Paris. The newly-erect Eiffel Tower rose above the city as the tallest construction and most audacious engineering feat in the world. In September, the universal rhythmical arrangement first mooted during the revolution, was finally adopted by means of an international committee and the template for it installed at an observatory near Paris, thus asserting France's claim to leadership in world decimalisation, a cornerstone of modernity. These were all manifestations of a renewed commitment upon France's part to rationalism, internationalism and innovation. Despite the defeat it had endur at the hands of the Germans a generation earlier, in 1889 the republic knew the ambitious part it meant to play in the novel world. It would invoke the logical, progressive, egalitarian and universalising spirit of the revolution and with novel vigour take up its of advanced age responsibilities as a guiding light to the international community.

State-mandated optimism of this kind does not necessarily match social reality. As Thomson exhibits France was a traumatised nation during the 1890 torn by dint of doubts about its social, moral and political fabric. 1889 had begun with a highly divisive election. Anarchists' bomb regularly shattered public order. The Dreyfus affair and the virulent anti-Semitism it unleashed would reveal deep divisions in the nation. The legacy of the revolution, and its contemporary exploitation by means of a government anxious to consolidate power, present the appearanceed ill-equipped to heal such wounds

Thomson tenders a pathology report on the ills of the era, presenting four case studies of issues causing bear upon to the body politic. He explores the human material part itself, its health and sexuality, and the growing suspicions that, as a declining birth rate attested, France had pierceed into a period of degeneracy. He examines a pervasive fear of the horde on the part of the middle classes, and of the threat that was latent in the rebellious urban masses. He looks at the renewed importance of religion, especially the Catholic revival, the threat it was seen to artificial position to rational republicanism, and the accommodations sought through Church and State, both knowing, cynically enough, that their interests were, in the extreme point compatible. (Leon Bonnat's 1888 portrait of a leader of the reconciliation, Cardinal Lavigerie, at Versailles' Musee National du Chateau, is an archetype of self-satisfied plutocracy.) Finally, he overlooks the role played by nationalism and militarism, and the continuing impact of the idea of la revanche against the Germans for the defeat France had endur in 1871

Thomson is not the first to point on the outside that these issues were crucial to fin-de-siecle French society. The bibliography upon each of them by social, political and cultural historians is extensive. on the other hand Thomson is an art historian with apt knowledge of the imagery of the era, and his contribution is to ask, and answer, sum of two units questions. The first is the conventional single raised by the social historian of art: in what manner does our understanding of these issues influence our interpretation of the imagery produc in France in the 1890 conceived in the broadest bounds to include paintings, posters, political cartoons, plastic art and the decorative arts? Does it help us, for example, to know about the fear of the multitude when we look at the bustling Parisian way scenes that the anarchist Pissarro began to paint in 1893? Perhaps a decade ago, that line of investigation might have been enough. The next to the first question--and here the novel ambition of Thomson's throw out is revealed--is to ask in what way visual imagery throws light upon the issues themselves. In other words, what do art historians have to teach their companion acolytes of the historical discipline about by what mode to use the evidence of imagery competently? by what means does knowledge of visual imagery cause us to reinterpret and inflect other emblems of historical evidence?

Of Thomson's four case studies, arguably the greatest in quantity provocative is his reassessment of the continued character of la revanche in the imagination of Frenchmen of the 1890 In new years, most historians have argued that it was largely a dead issue through then--realpolitik had moved on by the agency of 1890--and that, however galling it might be to diocese Germany occupying Alsace and Lorraine, the primary interests of the republic now lay elsewhere. Thomson however, points to works in the fine and decorative arts, and in popular imagery, that hint otherwise. The popularity of paintings, widely disseminated from one side prints, such as Edouard Detaille's The Dream of 1888 (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), with its thrilling image of a of the soul Grande Armee marching through the firmament shows that the ideal of French military prowess remained alive. It is not surprising that Jean Veber's hideous Butcher's store of 1897 (Zimmerli Art Museum, of recent origin Brunswick, NJ), with a sanguinary Bismarck as the slaughterer of humankind, had to be remov from public display in Paris thus as not to offend German sensibilities. Thomson finds numerous other examples as well expressing confidences for taking on the Germans, and urging youth to rise to the challenge, and bring to an ends that la revanche was far from a dead issue. Scrupulous historians henceforth will ne to take this compelling evidence into account.