Le Baiser
The year was 1886. Auguste Toulmouche had only got four years left to live, but he didn’t know that*. What he did know was that his paintings were getting substantially less attention than they used to. This was due to the rise in popularity of French Impressionism, which was devouring a great market share of the public’s already limited interest in art. Who is to blame for this? None other than Toulmouche himself. He had served as a mentor and aide to a young Claude Monet early in the latter’s career and was now being made obsolete by his own handiwork.
This work, Le Baiser, shows a couple wearing garb common to the middle class of late 19th-century Paris**. Obviously I jest. The gentleman is dressed as a Pierrot who is, ironically, absolutely killing it with his Columbine***. There is no Harlequin present, and that’s just as it should be. You might think (as I did) that this couple must have stolen away to some secluded niche while attending a larger costume party, but if you look at the still life on the table between them, you’ll note that this table is set for two. Also, those chairs look as if they’ve just been pushed back. The evidence is overwhelming: these kids are having a private dinner while dressed like clowns.
While Toulmouche didn’t normally paint actual costumes like he does here, he is considered to have belonged to a subset of genre painters known as “costume painters” and most of his paintings focus on beautiful women wearing even more beautiful clothes. Le Baiser, like all of his other paintings, communicates a charming levity of tone balanced somewhere between sincere admiration for and gentle teasing of his subjects.
Some of Toulmouche’s contemporaries**** loved his style, while others felt that his content lacked depth and substance. Such critics complained that Toulmouche’s subjects all seemed to be women of little practical intelligence and purpose. How anyone could think such a thing about a painting such as Toulmouche’s Vanity is quite beyond me.
*And if anybody else knew, they were keeping pretty quiet about it.
**Absolutely false.
***Staple characters of old pantomime representing a cuckold and his unfaithful wife. Apparently we used to find really sad content hilariously funny.
****Such as Napoleon III, a man of dramatic tastes and controversial notions. Hereditary? Perhaps.