Goncourt, Jules [-Alfred Huot] de

Date born: 1830

Place born: Paris, France

Date died: 1870

Place died: Auteuil, France

Together with his brother, Edmond, art critic, writer and art historian of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art world. Jules de Goncourt and his older brother, Edmond (q.v.), were born into minor aristocracy. Their father, Marc-Pierre Huot de Goncourt, (1787-1834) and their mother Annette-Cécile Guérin (de Goncourt) (d.1848) both died when the men were young. The family wealth enabled the brothers to become self-indulgent pleasure-seekers, devoting time to writing and art; Jules' etchings were eventually published. The brothers made their initial reputation as journalists. In 1851 the two began their journal, chronicling their art scene, which they continued throughout their lives. After Jules’s death in 1870, the Journal was continued by Edmond alone. The Journal is an important primary source for Parisian literary and artistic life. The Goncourt's ability to combine their knowledge of artistic life with compelling journalism (and publicity) resulted in their considerable influence on French taste in the second half of the 19th century. The brothers were arrested in 1852 for quoting mildly erotic Renaissance verses in one of their articles. Jules acquired art album of Japanese prints in 1852, spurring a national interest in Oriental and particularly Japanese art, known as Japonisme. Their 1855 account of the Exposition Universelle, La peinture a l'Exposition de 1855, suggested that painting was "a daughter of the earth," an art in which color, not line, was the core value. The dark history painting which was the bulk of French official art was a poor subject for painting, they argued. Landscapes and contemporary genre were the acme of modern painting for the Goncourts. Beginning in 1856, the two published their various essays in a collected series, called L’Art du XVIIIe siècle (ultimately 12 fascicles completed in 1875). It remains their most important book. Illustrated by Jules, the book was responsible for the revival (albeit a highly Romantic view) of the rococo as well as the working methods of French 18th-century artists from Watteau to Charles-Nicolas Cochin. The brothers wrote about all French artists of the eighteenth century, not just the famous. Of all their novels, Germinie Lacerteux (1864), was the most lasting. Based on the life of their servant, Rose, the novel follows her thefts from the brothers to pay for after-hours orgies and trysts. It is considered among the early novels of French Realism devoted to working-class life. In 1867, another novel Manette Salomon, about the studio practice of contemporary artists, their model (it was originally to be titled L'atelier Langibout), woven with the psychology and contemporary life, appeared. The prix Goncourt was conceived by the brothers in the same year (1867) as the Académie Goncourt, a literary society of 10 members. The Goncourt's art criticism focused on the Barbizon school. Their chief modern artist was the (now largely forgotten) artist Paul Gavarni about Edmond completed a separate book, after Jules' death, in 1873. Though neither brother married, Jules was the only to show a preference for women. His life--as indicated in the Journal--was a steady stream of encounters. He died of a stroke, preceded by syphilis, at the age of 40. His last review was the Paris Salon of 1852. Edmond continued to write books on art, including Japanese artists, until his death in 1896. The Académie Goncourt was established in 1903 through a bequest of Edmond. After their deaths, their importance waned until the second half of the 20th century when they were recognized as the leaders of much of modernism in French art writing and taste.

In L’Art du XVIIIe siècle, the Goncourt as art historian, critic and artist unite. They were the first art writers to value the sketch (pencil and oil) and the fragment as stand-alone artworks, hallmarks of modern art a century later. They early on sensed the lifeless academic nature of much of the work of Raphael, who was at the time perhaps the most valued artist of the nineteenth century. A major theme of the Goncourts was that of artistic technique, which they often referred to as 'cuisine." The two most important and continually referred to are color and the fragment. Their writing intended to create the sensations of modern life and art through juxtaposed, and rearranged esthetic experiences. Such écriture artiste, which included intentionally inverted grammar and syntax as well as improvised vocabulary, most evident in L’Art du XVIIIe siècle greatly influenced later 19th-century poets and novelists such as Paul Verlaine and Emile Zola. They had a profound impact on French literature (both in the novel and in literary style in general) and particularly on later 19th-century taste.

Home Country: France

Sources: Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l'histoire de l'art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 194; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 148-49; Scott, David. "Goncourt, de." Dictionary of Art; "Goncourt, Edmond and Jules." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Bibliography: and Goncourt, Edmond de. Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle: etudes nouvelles d'après les lettres autographes et les documents inédites. 2 vols. Paris: E. Dentu, 1857-8, [second edition revised and appearing thereafter as] L'art du XVIIIme siècle. 2 vols. Paris: A. Quantin, 1873-74; and Goncourt, Edmond de. Journal des Goncourt: mémoires de la vie littéraire. 9 vols. Paris: Ernest Flammarian, Fasquelle, 1872-1896, partially translated into English as, The Goncourt Journals, 1851-1870. London: Cassell, 1937; and Goncourt, Edmond de. Germinie Lacerteux. Paris: Charpentier, 1864, English, Philadelphia: G. Barrie, 1897; and Goncourt, Edmond de. Manette Salomon. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie internationale, 1867; and Goncourt, Jules de, illustrators. Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe. Watteau: étude contenant quatre dessins gravés à l'eauforte. Paris: E. Dentu, 1860; La peinture a l'Exposition de 1855. Paris: E. Dentu, 1855.