I have had a fascination for this artist (original name Louis Carrogis) ever since I visited several years ago an exhibition at Seaux near Paris dedicated to his life and work with the focus on the amazing “transparents”, which can be described as a precursor of motion pictures, more than a century before their invention (just like 18th century prints were the precursor of photography – see Engraving and Photography: continuity or disruption?, which was itself a step towards motion pictures).
Moving images
This involved painting, in colour, images on a long roll of transparent material (paper, fabric, glass), which were literally put in motion within a special device, a kind of projector, moving from one picture to the next and illuminated from behind, hence the name “transparent”. This allowed the spectators to view the scenes very much like on a cinema screen with the difference that the images themselves were static but they were rolled manually. One step short of animated cartoons, except that the latter were invented even later than movies. The demonstration was usually accompanied by live music, much like the early mute movies.
The exceptional interest of that exhibition at Seaux was that very few of those fragile objects have survived until our time and one of those, beautifully and meticulously restored, was on display. It was called the Four Seasons (Les Quatres Saisons) as it illustrated different seasons in beautiful places around Paris.
While Carmontelle was not the only artist of the time who experimented with this kind of visual material, only his works have apparently survived.
Among his cotemporaries who experimented with this model, more famous for different and largely irrelevant reasons (such as having been the husband of notorious Emma and having been willingly cuckolded by admiral Horatio Nelson), was Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to the kingdom of Naples and passionate collector of antiques.
He was so enthralled by the eruption of Vesuvius nearby that he invented a fascinating machine capable of recreating a truly immersive experience of observing it, involving not only moving images but also sounds and even smells (burning sulphur). Unfortunately, this extraordinary contraption did not survive but detailed descriptions were left behind by the lucky witnesses.
Profiling the aristocracy and celebrities
Transparents were not the only thing for which Carmontelle was known at his time, although they stood out as something rather exceptional. Much of his long career (he died aged 89 in 1806) he was closely associated with a club of French high aristocracy and was at the service of the Dukes of Orléan, the junior branch of the French royal family. As such he was in a position to meet and socialize with a large number of the celebrities of that time, including (in addition to the cream of French aristocracy) Benjamin Franklin, Mozart, Rameau, David Garrick, Buffon, Holbach, Cassini.
He drew portraits of many of them, in his easily recognizable style, usually in profile, leaving behind a considerable body of reliable visual records of his famous contemporaries.
Chateau de Saint Cloud, the residence of the Dukes of Orléan near Paris by Jacques Rigaud (Lateral view of Chateau de St Cloud).
He was also very good at designing and creating gardens and stage decorations for theatre, as well as at interior design, which makes him all the more interesting for me.
Mme de Genlis, who was also employed by the Orléans as a governess of their children (one of who would go on to become king Louis-Philippe in 1830) and was romantically involved with Philippe d’Orléan for some time (who in turn would become known as Philippe-Egalité and would be executed under the Terror), spared more space in her incredibly long memoirs to talk about Carmontelle than on telling the story of her own affair with the duke (of which she says absolutely nothing, at least directly).
While Carmontelle did not specialize in engraving, he did engrave some of his portraits at the request of Catherine II, the insatiable and culturally voracious Russian empress.
Madame du Deffand and Walpole
I have in my collection just one print based on a drawing by Carmontelle, although engraved by a different artist. It is a portrait of marquise du Deffand, the notorious socialite of the 18th century, who was famously beautiful in her youth (reportedly having been one of the mistresses of the regent Philippe d’Orléan) but lost her sight in later years. This portrait of Mme du Deffand was made by Carmontelle when she was already blind in her apartment of the Convent of St Joseph in St Germain, Paris.
It adorns the frontispiece of the four-volume collection of her letters to Horatio Walpole (yes, another Horatio in our story!), the youngest and most famous of the sons of Robert Walpole, the first British prime minister. These letters were kept in Walpole’s house at Strawberry Hill and were first published in London after her death, in 1810. The French edition was published two years later in 1812. It is the one that I have in my collection. Both contained only her letters to him, not his letters to her (in his respect this collection is not unlike the numerous editions of the letters of Mme de Sevigné to her daughter the countess de Grignan that did not contain the letters of the latter).
Mr. Walpole met marquise du Deffand in 1765 in Paris and they became close friends for the rest of her life, so much so that when she died in 1780 she left him in her will her favourite dog, the dearest being in the late part of her life, except of course for Mr. Walpole himself. They met a few times when Walpole visited Paris (Mme du Deffand never made it to Britain) and kept regular correspondence for almost 15 years until her death. Their letters reveal a very close and intimate relationship between the two that led some historians to describe it as a true romance, despite the fact that Deffand was about 20 years older than Walpole and was about 70 and blind by the time they met. Apparently, such was the mutual attraction and fascination of these very strong, colourful and cultured personalities of their time.
Background stories
Of course, both of them were famous for many other reasons unrelated to their relationship. Among other things, Horatio Walpole was effectively the inventor of neogothic style in literature and architecture that would become so popular in England in the following 19th century (for my benefit too, as I happen to live in a converted neogothic convent), having designed in this style his spectacular Strawberry Hill residence near London.
As for Mme du Deffand, she was not only famous for her brilliant salon in Paris and her friendship with many celebrities of her time, including Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, d’Alembert, Rousseau (although her relationship with the latter can hardly be described as friendship), Duke de Choiseul, the long-time first minister to king Louis XV before being disgraced and dismissed for his animosity towards the king’s last mistress Mme du Barry (which was duly reciprocated), and many others.
She was also famous for her spectacular falling out with another famous socialite of the time Julie de Lespinasse, her long-time companion, who she never forgave for what she viewed as betrayal, namely having created a rival salon right under Mme du Deffand’s roof and luring there her most famous guests, including d’Alembert (in fact, part of the blame was on Mme du Deffand herself as she had a habit of going to bed in the morning and waking up in the evening, leaving to Mlle de Lespinasse the care of her guests wating for her to make her appearance). After Mme du Deffand banned the “traitor” from her house, many of her regulars defected to her rival, only exacerbating her resentment. Whatever substance there was behind this resentment, it did not prevent Mlle de Lespinasse from becoming a celebrity in her own right, not least for the many letters she wrote to her own sweetheart that are considered a masterpiece of the genre.
Sources used: 1) Les Quatre Saison de Cormontelle; Diverissement et illusions au siècle des Lumières, Somogy éditions d’art, Paris, 2008; 2) Salons du XVIIIe siècle, Margueritte Glotz et Madelaine Maire, Nouvelles éditions latines, Paris, 1949, 3) Mme du Deffand et son monde, Benedetta Craveri, Editions Seuil, Paris, 1987. 4) DU DEFFAND (Marie de Vichy-Champrond, marquise). Lettres à Horace Walpole, depuis comte d’Orford, écrites dans les années 1766 à 1780, Publiées d’après les originaux déposés à Strawberry-Hill. A Paris, Chez Treuttel et Würtz, 1812, 4 vol. 5) GENLIS (Caroline-Stéphanie-Félicité Du Crest de Saint-Aubin, comtesse de). Mémoires inédits sur le XVIIIe siècle et la Révolution française, depuis 1756 jusqu’à nos jours. À Paris, chez Ladvocat, 1825, 10 vol.
