Acknowledgements

Crow, Thomas E.

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Acknowledgements

Thomas E. Crow

Emulation: David, Drouais, and Girodet in the Art of Revolutionary France

Acknowledgements

Author

Thomas E. Crow

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23062

Acknowledgements

The writing of this book, which takes as its subject learning shared with colleagues, has incurred debts to others in keeping with its theme and created for me a renewed sense of intellectual community. Philippe Bordes read the manuscript with extraordinary care and generosity, contributing his exceptional knowledge and deep sense of the history of the period. His contribution as a scholar was always fundamental, as a survey of my endnotes will reveal, and everyone in the field has reason to be grateful for the resources he assembled as director of the Musée de la Révolution française, Château de Vizille. With Philippe, Régis Michel has been an ideal colleague in both personal terms and in the acumen and foresight of his scholarly writing, the unique style of which conveys his incisive ability as a critic and interpreter. I share with many others the stimulus that came from his tireless leadership in organizing the remarkable colloquium David contre David, held at the Musée du Louvre in 1989, along with its accompanying publication. And my work on Géricault would never have happened without the colloquium that accompanied the comprehensive exhibition at the Grand Palais, Géricault 1791—1824, both of which he organized in i99i.The catalogue for that show, with its contributions from Bruno Chenique and Sylvain Laveissière, by itself marked a new, enlightened epoch in the literature on that artist, to which my account is indebted at many points.

The conception of this book was probably the result of a single painting, the partly finished studio replica of David’s Death of Socrates discussed above in chapter 4, which Allen Rosenbaum, as director of the Princeton Museum of Art, had the insight and determination to acquire in 1982. With the encouragement of my colleague Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, we began discussing an exhibition, built around that painting and the other known replicas of David’s work in the 1780s, which would bring to light the kinds of collective practice that went on in his studio. Though that event, regrettably, could never take place, my early research gave rise to the idea of the book.

A fellowship for senior scholars from the National Endowment for the Humanities then allowed the project to begin in earnest. I want to thank Michael Baxandall, T.J. Clark, and Linda Nochlin for lending it their support at that juncture. A Rackham fellowship, research leave, and other funds from the University of Michigan provided essential time and travel. The work began to take shape thanks to kind invitations to give series of lectures, first as visiting Baldwin Professor at Oberlin College, then as Ida Beam lecturer at the University of Iowa, and finally as Durning-Lawrence lecturer at the University of London. I am indebted to all those who arranged the events and provided such productive responses to the talks, including William Hood, Richard Spear, Patricia Marthews, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Dorothy Johnson, Wallace Tornasini, Stephen Foster, Alan Spitzer, David Bindman, Helen Weston, John White, Alex Potts, Lisa Tickner, David Solkin, and Katie Scott. At Robert Darnton’s invitation, I was able to present further material during a short residency in the European Cultural Studies program at Princeton University, and I am grateful for his interest and encouragement over many years. Early days teaching in that program with David Bromwich began a continuing dialogue that has complicated and enriched my approach to the art of this period.

In the conduct of my research I received help from people in many collections and libraries in France, among whom I want to thank for special consideration M. Patrick Ramade, conservateur of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes; Mme Chasserant, conservateur of the Musée de Tessé, Le Mans; Mlle Catherine Leclerc, librarian of the Bibliothèque Durzy in Montargis; and the staffs of the Département des Arts Graphiques and the Service de Documentation, Département des Peintures, Musée du Louvre. In Russia, Mme Yrina Novasselsvaya of the Hermitage Museum was exceedingly generous with her time and opened up a virtually unknown episode in the life of David’s studio. I also want to express my deep gratitude to Joseph Baillio and Sylvain Bellenger, who both stepped in with crucial help when it was most needed. Francis Haskell, Phyllis Hattis, and Nigel Llewellyn were likewise quick to respond to requests for assistance. David O’Brien selflessly gave me access to key unpublished documents he had found in the course of his own research, while Mark Ledbury and Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby signaled others.

I am grateful to Bernadette Fort and Ann Bermingham for their editorial comments on published extracts from the book’s earlier stages. Working with editor Stephen Eisenman on my contribution to Nineteenth-Century Art: A Critical History was a great help in clarifying my sense of the narrative. Research leave from the University of Sussex assisted its completion, at which point I came to depend on the interest and helpful energy of a number of friends and colleagues. Neville Crompton Phillips read the final text with care and precision. I also had the advantage of sharp, informed readings by Mark Ledbury and John Goodman. At Yale University Press, Gillian Malpass and John Nicoll have once again given a book of mine the benefit of their enthusiasm and expertise. I have relied upon Gillian’s understanding of the project, combined with her talent and experience as a designer, to convey the visual narrative alongside the written one. Sheila Lee brought a reassuring efficiency to the increasingly difficult business of acquiring photographs, while the manuscript and proofs benefited from the close attentions of Celia Jones, Fiona Screen, and, for the new edition, Emily Lees.

The new edition of the book has benefited from the support of a number of colleagues and friends. I cannot overstate the importance of my longstanding dialogues with Mark Ledbury, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, David O’Brien, Sylvain Bellenger, and Bruno Chenique, whose prodigious research leading to the Girodet biochronologie was in part carried out with Getty Research Institute support (I hasten to say that none of them is responsible for the particular uses to which I have put their work in the new Afterword). Sylvain’s great retrospective exhibition devoted to Girodet made this new edition timely and nourished the effort that went into it. Discussions with Charles Salas and the Getty Scholars of our “Biography” theme year all made an impact on my thinking. The French edition of the book (L’Atelier de David: Emulation et Révolution, Gallimard, 1997) overseen by Jean-Loup Champion and translated by Roger Stuveras, gave me a welcome second opportunity to refine a number of its details. Carolyn Miner, going far beyond the usual definition of a research assistant, brought her informed and imaginative intelligence to searching out lapses in the original, while providing a host of sound suggestions for improvements. Gail Feigenbaum and Julia Bloomfield, who together oversee the publications of the Getty Research Institute, made possible this co-publication.

The spirit of the work that went into this book owes most, I hope, to two people. The late David Huntington of the University of Michigan offered me an exceptional example of generous and humane professionalism in the discipline of art history. And from the earliest drafts to the last revisions, Catherine Phillips kept me from losing sight of my fundamental responsibility to the realities of the creative life.

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