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Couleur locale — a pictorial term gone astray?

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666280801976118

1943-2178

Vladimir Kapor,

Historical and Scientific Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. – Eugène Delacroix, Journal (1822–1863) (Paris: Union générale d’éditeurs, 1963), pp. 165–7. 2. – Although significant differences can be noted between the use of the term in the French‐ and the English‐speaking realm, namely its American variant, where the term takes on decidedly regionalist connotations, the limited dimensions and the text–image orientation of this essay invite me to focus on the term's migration between the discourse on painting and the discourse on literature, thus leaving the transatlantic leg of its terminological journey for a separate enquiry. 3. – Edward W. Said, ‘Travelling theory’, in The World, the Text, and the Critic (New York: Vintage, 1978), 226. 4. – Ibid., 226–7. 5. – Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française (Paris: A. Colin, n.d.), Vol. I, p. 1. 6. – H.W. Hovenkamp, Prosper Mérimée et la couleur locale. Contribution à l’étude de la couleur locale (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1928); Jan Kamerbeek, Tenants et aboutissants de la notion ‘couleur locale’ (Utrecht: Instituut verglijkend literaturonderzoek, 1962). 7. – Bernard Teyssèdre, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV, Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 1957; Thomas Puttfarken, Roger de Piles' Theory of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); Jaqueline Lichtenstein, La Couleur éloquente (Paris: Flammarion, 1989). 8. – Bol’šaya Sovietskaya enciklop’ediya, 3rd edn (Moskva: Izdayat’el’stvo Sovietskoy Enciklopediyi, 1973), p. XIV. 9. – The bulk of contemporary definitions of local colour, as found across reference books on art and painting, explain local colour within the framework of aerial perspective. The terminological data gathered indicate, however, that this terminological tradition is chronologically posterior to de Piles's works. 10. – Roger de Piles. L’idée du Peintre parfait (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), p. 18. 11. – Cours de peinture par principes (Paris: Jaques Etiennes, 1708), p. 303. 12. – Thomas Puttfarken, Roger de Piles’ Theory of Art (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 67. 13. – Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, op. cit., p. 303. 14. – The distinction between colour and colouring can be traced to his first published work Dialogue sur le coloris [1673] and is subsequently reproduced in his following books. 15. – For a detailed account of this debate see Bernard Teyssèdre, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: Bibliothèque des arts, 1964) and Jacqueline Lichtenstein, La Couleur éloquente (Paris: Flammarion, 1989 [English translation: The Eloquence of Color (trans. Emily McVarish, University of California Press, 1993]). 16. – Not least of the factors which brought De Piles fame across Europe were his value judgements on various painting schools and masters. He was particularly reputed for his influential (but also disputed) ‘Balance des peintres’ included as an appendix to his Cours de peinture par principes, an assessment table which not only decomposes painting into four fundamental characteristics (composition, drawing, colour and expression), but also grades these parameters on a numeric scale, thus establishing a sound hierarchy among masters. 17. – These translations contain the earliest mention of the English variant of the term local colours recorded. It can subsequently be found in Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary of 1721 and in both second and third editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1778 and 1797 respectively, in entries on painting. Other standard English reference books and painting manuals of the time do not mention this term. Cf. John Kersey, Dictionarium Anglo‐Britannicum, 1708; Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English language [1755]; Thomas Sheridan, A General dictionary of the English Language [1780]. For painting treatises cf. Jonathan Richardson, The Theory of Painting, 1715; William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, 1753; Joshua Raynolds, Discourses on Art (1769–1790). 18. – Cf. Gita May, ‘Diderot et Roger de Piles’, PMLA, 85/3 (May, 1970), pp. 444–55. In his posthumously published Réflexions détachées sur la peinture, Diderot mentions ‘couleur locale’ as one of the terms necessary for making progress in the understanding of painting technique: ‘Voulez‐vous faire des progrès sÛrs dans la connaissance si difficile du technique de l’art ? Promenez‐vous dans une galerie avec un artiste, et faites‐vous expliquer et montrer sur la toile l’exemple des mots techniques; sans cela, vous n’aurez jamais que des notions confuses de contours coulants, de belles couleurs locales, de teintes vierges, de touche franche, de pinceau libre (facile, hardi, moelleux; faits avec amour, de ces laissés ou négligences heureuses. Il faut voir et revoir la qualité à côté du défaut; un coup d’œil supplée à cent pages de discours’, in Œuvres esthétiques, édition augmentée d’une chronologie, Denis Diderot (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1965), pp. 812–13. 19. – Bernard Teyssèdre, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: La Bibliothèque des arts, 1957), p. 112. Teyssèdre's statement does not imply, however, that de Piles was unaware of the colour degradation phenomena relating to aerial perspective; de Piles's theoretical choices may be better interpreted as will for reconceptualization. The rejection of the traditional terminological apparatus and conceptual framework may indicate a type of discursive positioning, typical and crucial to aesthetic debates, which clearly sets de Piles apart from the adversary camp. 20. – As no English translation of this work is available, the passage is quoted after the French period translation, with the original spelling preserved throughout. Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, Réflexion sur la peinture, trad. Huber (Leipzig: Gaspar Fritsch, 1775), pp. 139–40. 21. – Locus was commonly used in Latin to designate parts of the body. 22. – As for de Piles, Local colour is for Diderot, the Salon critic, a desirable quality for a painter. In the 1781 Salon, he notes perfunctorily, ‘La couleur est locale’ on La Conversion de St Paul by La Grenée le jeune, ‘La couleur est locale, mais faible’ on the Portrait d’une femme arrangeant des fleurs dans un vase by Mlle Vallayer‐Coster or ‘La couleur est fausse, mais locale’ with regard to Apollon ordonne au Sommeil et à la Mort de porter le corps de Sarpédon en Lydie by Berthellemy. Denis Diderot, Salons (Oxford: Claredon Press, IV), pp. 359, 365 and 370. 23. – Enyclopaedia Britannica, 2nd edn, 1778–93, Vol. II, p. 5813; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edn, 1797, p. 599. 24. – Obras de D. Antonio Rafael Mengs, primer pintor de Camara del Rey (Madrid: Imprenta real de la Gazeta, 1780), pp. 213–14). [Translated as: Sketches on the Art of painting; with a description of the most capital pictures in the King of Spain's palace at Madrid. In a letter from Sir Anthony Raphael Mengs to Don Antonion Pnz. Translated from the original Spanish by John Talbot Dillon (London: R. Baldwin, 1782), p. 40]. 25. – Opere di Antonio Rafaello Mengs (Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1780). 26. – Edmond Malakis, ‘The First use of couleur locale in French literary criticism (?)’, Modern Language Notes, LX (1945), pp. 98–9. 27. – Jean Racine, Œuvres complettes de Jean Racine avec le commentaire de M. de La Harpe (Paris: Agasse, 1807), Vol. I, pp. 255–6. 28. – Louis Sébastien Mercier, Mon bonnet de nuit (Neuchâtel: l’Imprimerie de la Société Typographique, 1784), Vol. II, pp. 240–1. 29. – Madame de Staël, Anne‐Louise‐Germaine Necker, De l’Allemagne (Paris: Hachette, 1958), pp. 187–8. 30. – Le Journal des Débats, le 21 avril 1822. 31. – Histoire de la Conquête de l’Angleterre [1825] (nouvelle édition) (Paris: M. Lévy, 1867), Vol. I, p. 12. 32. – Dix ans d’études historiques [1835] 5th edn (Paris: Furne, 1846), p. XIX. 33. – Victor Hugo, La Préface de ‘Cromwell’ (Paris: Larousse, 1972), p. 84. 34. – Cours de peinture par principes, p. 373. 35. – Benjamin Constant, Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade’, 1957), pp. 923–4. 36. – Basil Munteano, ‘Convenance et couleur locale en littérature comparée’, Actes du Second congrès de la Société française de littérature comparée (Paris, 1958), pp. 5–21. 37. – Tenants et aboutissants de la notion ‘couleur locale’, op. cit. 38. – Prosper Mérimée, La Guzla (Paris: Editions Kimé, 1994), p. 19. 39. – Cf. R.M. de Toreinx, Histoire du Romantisme (Paris: L. Dureil, 1829), p. 43. 40. – Adolphe Julien, Histoire du costume en théâtre, quoted by Hovenkamp, Mérimée et la couleur locale, p. 27. 41. – Victor Hugo, Ruy Blas (Paris: Hachette, 1976), p. 45. 42. – Félix Gaffiot, Dictionnaire Latin–Français (Paris:Hachette, 1934). 43. – Georges‐Louis Leclerc Buffon, Discours sur le style: prononcé à l’Académie française/par M. de Buffon le jour de sa réception (25 aoÛt 1753) (Paris: INALF, 1961), p. 18. 44. – Georges Matoré, La Méthode en lexicologie — domaine français (Paris: Librairie Marcel Didier, 1953), p. 107. 45. – Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, 6th edn. 46. – Eugène Fromentin, ‘Un Eté dans le Sahara’, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 57. 47. – Wendy Steiner, The Colors of Rhetoric (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1982), p. 5. 48. – ‘Avvertite per altro che per derivare diletto dalla lettura della Sacontala, qualunque sia la traduzione di cui vi serviate, vi bisogna formarvi un’idea de clima, della storia naturale, de’ costumi, della religione degli Indiani; perchè in gran parte le bellezze di questo componimento derivano dall’affluente freschezza delle tinte locali. Intendo per tinte locali quella tale modificazione d’immagini, di pensieri, di sentimenti, di stile che e propria esclusivamente di quello stato di natura umana i di quel momento di società civile che il poeta piglia ad imitare’, Giovanni Berchet, ‘Sulla Sacontala ossia l’anello fatale, dramma Indiano di Calidasa. Dialogo interamente immaginario ed inverosimile affatto tra Fisostomo e tutti i lettori’, Scritti scelti di critica e di polemica (Milano: Mursia, 1977), p. 156 [emphasis added]. 49. – See for instance, the sub‐entry ‘colour’ in the latest edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.