Approaches to Narrative and History: The Case of the Donation of September 7, 1789 and its Images

Approaches to Narrative and History:zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba The Case of the Donation of September 7, 1789 and its Images* VIVIAN P. CAMERONNMLKJIHGFEDCBA W hen several wives and daughters of artists, dressed in white gowns, their hair beribboned with the tricolor, presented a patriotic donation of their jewels to the National Assembly of France on 7 September 1789, the event received extensive coverage in the newspapers and even attracted the attention of printmakers.1 For a twentieth-century audience, the fas­ cination with a story which today would probably be relegated to the women’s pages appears perplexing, but the event had profound meanings for eighteenth-century audiences reading those written and visual accounts. An investigation of selected images in relation to established theories about the portrayal of historical events, various issues of picto­ rial narrative, and the ideology conveyed by the images may help us to understand the attention this particular donation received. In reviewing the evidence, we find conflicting interpretations about the narration of history in the eighteenth century. History, we are informed by the Encyclopedie, is “le recit des faits donnees pour vrai; au contraire de la fable, qui est le recit des faits donnes pour faux.” Voltaire continued: Les premiers fondemens de toute Histoire sont les recits des peres aux enfans, transmis ensuite d’une generation a une autre; ils ne sont que probables dans leur origine, & perdent un degre de probability a chaque generation. Avec le terns, la fable se grossit, & la verite se perd. . . .2 413 414 / KJIHGFEDCBA C A M E R O N The effects of time on memory, we are informed, alter truth and trans­ form it into something else, a story or a fable rather than history. After a lengthy discussion of what is known about history from antiquity to the eighteenth century, Voltaire testified that “toute certitude qui n’est pas demonstration mathematique, n’est qu’une extreme probabilite. Il n’y a pas d’autre certitude historique.” He added that . les terns historiques auroient du etre distingues eux-memes en verites & en fables.”3 Thus, history is, at best, an imprecise science, where facts can be —if this is not a contradiction in terms —only probable. Art theorists of the eighteenth century, however, had no such uncer­ tainty about history. Writing in 1757, Abbe Batteux affirmed that: L’Histoire peint ce qui a ete fait. La Poesie, ce qui a pu etre fait. L’une est liee au vrai, elle ne cree ni actions, ni acteurs. L’autre n’est tenue qu’au vraisemblable: elle invente: elle imagine a son gre: elle peint de tete. L’Historien donne des exemples tels qu’ils sont, souvent imparfaits. Le Poete les donne tels qu’ils doivent etre. Et c’est pour cela que ... la Poesie est une le^on bien plus instructive que l’Histoire.4 Believing his arguments equally valid for painting as for poetry, Batteux advocated painting an historical event appropriately revised to convey its moral message with great effect. The circumstances, the disposition of the figures, their attitudes, their expressions, the contrasts, and the like, could all be invented. In agreement with Batteux’s ideas about history, the amateur, Charles H. Watelet, later theorized: Le devoir du peintre fedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA tfhistoire est d’elever Fame par la noblesse du sujet. . . . Ainsi point de tableaux tfhistoire sans poesie. . . . Ainsi bien loin d’astreindre le peintre tfhistoire a la fidelite d’un biographe ou d’un historien, on doit exiger qu’il traite les sujets a la maniere d’Homere, ou d’Euripide.5 The opposition between painter and historian was repeatedly emphasized by Watelet: “Les faits que cet art represente, ne sont pas sous nos yeux, iis ne sont transmis a notre pensee que par le recit des historiens; c’est notre imagination seule qui s’en forme des tableaux, et c’est aussi l’imagination que l’art doit satisfaire.”6 Thus, for such art theorists, historians dealt with certainty and facts, which, through the invention and imagina­ tion of the artist, could and should be transformed into history paint­ ings. The reality of history is translated through visual means into another language, that of art with its own conventions and rules...