HIRSCH Alphonse (EN)

Biographical Article

Alphonse Hirsch, born in Paris on May 2, 1843, was the youngest of four siblings: Gaston Hirsch (1830-1918), Émile Hirsch (1832-1904), glass painter, and Jenny Hirsch (1835-1914). His father Salomon Hirsch died early in 1853 and his mother Élisabeth Bella Philippe (1803-1882) looked after the household alone (AD 92, E_NUM_VAN_D1884, no 86).

On April 23, 1879, Alphonse Hirsch married Henriette Perugia (1855-1923). They had two daughters: Nina Bella Pauline Louise Hirsch (1880-1946) and Marie Jeanne Hirsch (1883-1963) (AP, V4E 3440, no 274).

Years of Training and Military Engagement

Despite an early interest in art, Alphonse Hirsch first became involved in finance andworked for a stockbroker. It was at the age of twenty-four that he decided to leave the stock exchange to devote himself entirely to painting (Frank C., 1884, p. 474). He then assiduously frequented the Louvre where he practiced copying, entered the Beaux-Arts de Paris, learned engraving from François Flameng (1865-1923) and painting from Léon Bonnat (1883-1922) and Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891). Wishing to work under the latter's direction, Hirsch left Paris to settle in Poissy, where Meissonier had his studio (Béraldi H., 1889, p. 124).

When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, Hirsch returned to Paris to enlist in the army. In the garrison at Vincennes, he rose through the ranks and became an attaché to the ammunition service at the Hôtel de Ville, then lieutenant in the staff of the National Guard. Once the siege was over, Hirsch had only just returned to his workshop in Poissy, devastated by the occupiers, when he was again mobilised by the events of the Commune, during the bloody week of May 1871 (Frank C., 1884, p. 474).

A Worldly Artist

During the 1870s, Alphonse Hirsch befriended several avant-garde painters, such as Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Marcellin Desboutin (1823-1902), and Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884), whom he vigorously defended to critics, as testified by Albert Wolff (1825-1891): "he had made many most powerful enemies, by his ardor in defending what seemed fair and beautiful to him and by openly demolishing false and triumphant art” (Wolff A., 1884, p. 1).

Wolff also underlines the socialite personality of Hirsch, renowned in the capital for his interpersonal skills: “No Parisian had more connections than this one; he was in all salons and all worlds; one met him everywhere, in the meetings of painters and in the ministries; yesterday he was seen at all the opening nights, in the summer on the beaches of Normandy; he knew politicians and writers, the premier artists of his time and the ignored ones of the new wave” (Wolff A., 1884, p. 1). Apart from painters, his circle extended indeed to the authors Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) and Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896), the composers Charles Gounod (1818-1893) and Jules Massenet (1842-1912), and even to the Camondo family (Frank C., 1884, p. 474).

Hirsch was also a founding member of one of the first informal associations of enthusiasts of Japanese art, the "Society of Jing-Lar", which brought together a group of Republican friends and Far-Eastern art lovers including Zacharie Astruc (1833-1907), Philippe Burty (1830-1890), Jules Jacquemart (1837-1880), Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), Félix Bracquemond (1833-1914), and Marc-Louis Solon (1835-1913), then director of the Sèvres factory, over convivial dinners one Sunday a month between 1868 and 1869 (Bouillon J-P., 1978, p. 107-118).

From Etching to Painted Portrait

Alphonse Hirsch's first appearance at the Paris Salon dates back to 1869; subsequently his participation would be regular until 1884.

In 1869, Hirsch offered three interpretive etchings: L’amour et la mort after Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), Une religieuse after François Bonvin (1817-1887), and Tête de jeune fille after Théodule Ribot (1823-1891). He also exhibited a drawing after the Portrait de Giovanni et Gentile Bellini (anonymous, musée du Louvre) (Béraldi H., 1889, p. 124).

From 1870, Hirsch devoted himself to painting, first illustrating himself in the genre scene: La Jeune femme soulevant un rideau, La corde au cou (exhibited in 1873), Le Premier-né (exhibited in 1874), Un dernier regard (exhibited in 1874), Les Femmes à la vasque, Le Modèle (exhibited in 1875), and Le Premier trouble (exhibited in 1876) (Explication des ouvrages de peinture, 1873-1876).

At the suggestion of his former master Bonnat, Hirsch then turned to portraiture. His first models were chosen from people close to him: Mrs. Hirsch’s mother, Eugène Manuel (his brother-in-law), or even Les enfants Camondo dans le jardin d’hiver de leur hôtel particulier, represented in a Japanese-style setting. Painted in 1875 and exhibited at the 1876 Salon, this work was then sold at Christie's New York on May 24, 1989 (19th Century European Paintings, Christie's, 1989, n^o 39). Subsequently, Hirsch received more official commissions: Le grand Rabbin de France Isidor (exhibited in 1877), Octave Feuillet (1878, Saint-Lô, Musée des Beaux-Arts), and Alfred Naquet, député de Vaucluse (exhibited in 1880) (Explication des ouvrages de peinture, 1877-1880). He also executed many small portraits on panel, a format which became one of his specialties (Frank C., 1884, p. 474): Ernest Daudet, Albert Mérat, LesEnfants de Mme Judie, and Siegfried Bing,exhibited at the Cercle artistique et littéraire en 1878 (Cercle artistique & littéraire, 1878, p. 18).

Half-Hearted Success

Despite his numerous appearances at the Salon and the repeated encouragement of the jury, Hirsch never won a medal. According to Albert Wolff, "Perhaps he was resented for his frankness in always saying what was at the bottom of his convictions" (Wolff A., 1884, p. 1). The same author recounts the disappointments of his career as a painter, emphasising that he would undoubtedly have met with more success as an art critic: "With a literary education, Alphonse Hirsch would have written remarkable works on the fine arts ; he had a passion and a feeling for criticism which he mistook for the creative force of the artist” (Wolff A., 1884, p. 1). According to Charles Frank, this misfortune may even have precipitated the “nervous malady would take him away” on July 15, 1884 at the age of 41 (Frank C., 1884, p. 474). After his early death, the painter quickly fell into oblivion.

The Collection

Alphonse Hirsch's training as an engraver quickly led him to acquire etchings and modern prints. His collection, in which the main French masters of the time were represented - with a predilection for Félix Bracquemond and Charles Meryon (1821-1868) - was sold in its entirety (417 lots) on July 29 and 30, 1875 at Sotheby's London and acquired in block by a certain M. Carlin (Lugt F., 1921, p. 24).

In 1878, Hirsch was mentioned among the exhibitors of the Greek section of the Universal Exhibition in Paris for "a few pieces of high interest", notably a small pyxis (box of make-up) attributed to Megacles and dated to 400-420, an Aphrodite in terracotta as well as "one or two statuettes from Asia Minor" (Rayet O., 1878, p. 105-370).

The Far Eastern Collection

But it is above all the Far Eastern collection of Alphonse Hirsch that captured the attention of his contemporaries: the chroniclers of the time did not hesitate to declare that "the Japanese objects that he was able to bring together are among the most wonderful in Paris” (Frank C., 1884, p. 474).

Precocious amateur — he was part of the first generation of Japanese art collectors alongside Félix Bracquemond, Philippe Burty, Émile Guimet (1836-1918, and the Goncourt brothers — Hirsch regularly frequented the shop of Siegfried Bing (1838-1905), whose portrait he painted in 1878.

His acquisitions had been installed in the small hotel particulier that Hirsch had had built in rue Ampère, where “he was able to display his collection, his paintings, his furniture, his books, his bronzes, his ivories and his lacquers. He catalogueed them with the rapture of a poet and the certainty of an expert” (Frank C., 1884, p. 474). Other pieces were reserved for the studio, as evidenced by an extract from La Maison d'un artiste, where Edmond de Goncourt describes a kakemono that particularly struck him: "In the studio of the painter Hirsch hangs a crane among the reeds of a marsh, at night, under a cloud-veiled moon. In the pearl gray of darkness, stands a masterpiece of a white wading bird […]” (De Goncourt E., 1881, p. 289).

Regularly lending pieces from his collection, in 1869 Hirsch entrusted several objects to the Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie for the opening of its short-lived Musée oriental. In the section "Bronzes: China and Japan" were exhibited a cylindrical bronze tripod Ding vase with two handles and decorated with fretwork and wolf teeth as well as a bronze teapot inlaid with silver and gold decorated fantastic beasts; two cylindrical bottles with elongated necks, decorated with cranes, roosters and bamboos, appear in the section "Sandstone of Satzouma [Satsuma]" (Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie, 1869).

A Set Rented by Louis Gonse

Alphonse Hirsch also participated in the retrospective exhibition of Japanese art organized by Louis Gonse (1846-1921) in April-May 1883 at the Georges Petit gallery. Among the loans, the catalogue lists 176 numbers from the Hirsch collection, including six kakemono, sixteen bronzes, six various metal objects, six weapons, thirty-four sword guards, thirty-eight kozuka, seventeen ceramics, thirty lacquers, eighteen objects in worked and inlaid wood, thirty-six netsuke, and three fukusa (Gonse L., Catalogue de l’exposition rétrospective, 1883, p. 373-395).

In October of the same year, Gonse published L'Art japonais, a richly illustrated two-volume work in which several pieces belonging to Hirsch - some of which had been exhibited a few months earlier - were not only reproduced, but also described and commented on by the author. Within this collection "formed with a very sure taste", Gonse pauses on a kakemono of Sō Shiseki 宋紫 - (1712-1786) with fish and bamboo motifs. Among the bronzes, he highlights a 17th century incense burner that represents a kingfisher resting on two lotus leaves [ill. p. 51], and above all a large carp from the 18th century, a "piece of mastery" which had made a strong impression during the retrospective exhibition, and which he compares to a statue by Verrocchio (1435-1488) or a bas-relief by Cellini (1500-1571). Claiming that "the Paris collections contain the most beautiful foukousas [sic] in the world", Gonse cites three examples from the second half of the 18th century that belong to Hirsch: a large carp swimming up the stream of water [ill. p. 224], peacocks on a tea-pink background, and lobsters embroidered in black on a white satin background [ill. p. 222]. Among the works in metal, the author also mentions several pieces executed by particularly renowned Japanese carvers and rare in French collections: a 17th century kozuka (knife handle) signed Umetada, two sword guards attributed to Tomokata and Tomoyuki (end of the 17th century – beginning of the 18th century), and representing a dragonfly caught in a spider's web and a carp swimming upstream in a waterfall [ill. p. 150], a kozuka by Sōmin (early 18th century), and finally “La grande garde of M. Alph. Hirsch, encrusted on one side with a branch of lilies with silver and gold flowers, and on the other with tufts of irises and water lilies, although unsigned, can be considered a masterpiece of this last artist [Toshinaga]” [ill. pl. XVII]. Among the lacquers, Louis Gonse considers that "the collections of MM. Alpha. Hirsch and S. Bing offer some pieces of the rarest beauty.” He attributes to Shunsho a small box decorated with momiji (Japanese maple) leaves, and describes a large black lacquer box inlaid on the lid with an earthenware crab and gold seaweed signed Ritsuo. Finally, the Hirsch's collection of netsuke — in wood, metal and ivory — is also mentioned twice (Gonse L., L’art japonais, 1883).

Alphonse Hirsch died on July 15, 1884, about a year after the retrospective exhibition of Louis Gonse. In a letter addressed to Edmond de Goncourt on August 4, 1884, the wife of Giuseppe de Nittis wrote, "Here is a beautiful collection which will certainly be sold. But who has the money right now to buy it? Only Israel. We Christians might as well give up already." (Moscatiello M., 2011, p. 323). No public sale was ultimately organised, and the current location of the Hirsch collection remains currently unknown.