Dixon's largest exhibit surveys work of French artist Forain

Jean-Louis Forain, "The Entrance to the Theater," 1884

If you were an habitué of Parisian nightlife in the 1870s and '80s, in the sordid round of circuses, cabarets and music halls, ballet theaters, cafés and brothels, you might have seen an artist lurking unobtrusively, quickly sketching the giddy interchange of human amusement, seduction and weary melancholy luridly illuminated by the flaring gaslights.

No, not Toulouse-Lautrec but another artist, Toulouse-Lautrec's mentor, Jean-Louis Forain, whose prints and paintings individualize and satirize many of the foibles and frailties of human nature, with particular emphasis on lust, desire, greed and ennui.

The full extent of the artist's widely varied career will be displayed at Dixon Gallery and Gardens beginning Sunday in "Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne." At 130 works, it is the largest exhibition in the museum's history and is a significant collaboration with another institution, the Petit Palais Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. The show will be on view through Oct. 9.

Jean-Louis Forain, "Café Interior," ca. 1879

"The Tight Rope Walker," ca. 1885

"In Front of the Set," ca. 1895-1900

"The Buffet," 1884

"We trimmed judiciously," said Dixon director Kevin Sharp. "The Petit Palais probably had 75 more pictures than we have here."

The museum staff has been busy for weeks preparing for the exhibition. Extensive repainting has occurred throughout the museum, with the galleries dedicated to Forain now sporting a rich medium chocolate-brown called Mink, and a deep red dubbed Vintage Claret. Sharp said the Dixon "borrowed the palette from the Petit Palais, though it's a very different space."

Jean-Louis Forain was born in 1852 in the cathedral town of Reims, northeast of Paris; the family moved to Paris when he was 11. By the time he was 17, the fledgling artist was immersed in the bohemian life of the capital. It was an exciting time to be young in Paris, to study art, particularly the work of Goya and Rembrandt, to develop a reputation as a witty caricaturist for satiric journals, to be absorbed into a circle of writers that included the poets Rimbaud and Verlaine, to be brought under the influential wing of the older Degas, and, perhaps above all, to experience firsthand the rush of patriotism and anarchy precipitated by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Siege of Paris.

"Forain had a quick hand," said Sharp, "amazing draftsmanship and a great sense of observation." Even from the beginning, his eye and sensibility were drawn to what Sharp called "the sexual politics of adult transactions, the backstage affairs of the Parisian demimonde."

Art historian Florence Valdes-Forain, the artist's great-granddaughter and the organizer of the exhibition and its catalog, called Forain "a very incisive artist, and this temperament distinguishes him from the other Impressionists. His paintings show the light and the dark sides of society. For instance, at the opera, it is not the dancers on stage that interest him. It is what is happening behind the scenes, with the subscribers who proposition the dancers in the wings."

The Dixon's involvement in "Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne" began when the museum was asked to lend 10 pieces to the exhibition. "That was the germ," Sharp said. "Our reply was, 'Sure, and why not send the show to us.' And we ended up sending 18 works."

The show is appropriate for the Dixon -- its only venue in the United States -- because the museum owns a collection of 55 pieces by Forain, purchased for about $2 million in 1993, when John Buchanan was the director. Though the museum's permanent collection was founded on a bequest of French Impressionist works and a house and land from Memphis businessman Hugo Dixon and his wife, Margaret, continued acquisition of such major figures as Monet, Degas and Pissarro proved impossible because of escalating prices in the 1970s and 1980s. So Buchanan and his board made a realistic decision to collect paintings and works on paper by artists who worked at the same time as these important figures, who knew them and often exhibited with them at the Impressionist exhibitions of the early 1880s.

Forain fit this scheme perfectly. He was intimately associated with the Impressionist painters, though the scope of his work and its tone were different; from 1879 to 1886, he participated in four of their independent exhibitions; Cezanne and Gauguin owned works by him. And the $2 million that this 55-piece collection cost would not have purchased a single painting by Monet or Renoir.

For those who think of Forain primarily as a social caricaturist, "Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne" will be a revelation that will deepen their regard and appreciation for his concerns and the versatility that came from what Valdes-Forain called the artist's "special vision and the fact that he had two careers at the same time: a career as a painter, and a career as a cartoonist."

"The exhibition cycles through a career that saw surprising transformations," said Sharp. "For example, we don't think of Forain as an artist who ever goes outdoors" -- except to the racetrack -- "yet here are these lovely landscape paintings. In the 1890s, he turned more to polemics against social injustice and the court system, somewhat in the style of Daumier. He also got religion and was involved with the shrine at Lourdes. When World War I started, he joined up, at the age of 62, to work in the camouflage section, and he painted battlefield scenes. This is a body of work I didn't even know existed."

Forain's spiritual pieces are among the weakest in the exhibition, though he treats the story of the Prodigal Son, a favorite theme, with sensitivity. His courtroom scenes, however, are devastating indictments in which sardonic, bored or nearly faceless officials either harass or brush off poor and hapless victims of an establishment they clearly do not comprehend.

The artist turned out his share of propaganda pictures, but his battlefield paintings, surprisingly modern in technique and cinematic feeling, are searing depictions of men in the grip of horror and fear.

Forain, who died from complications of emphysema and asthma in 1931, continued to produce work throughout the 1920s, and rather than deal in nostalgia, he embraced as a worthy subject the frantic, frenetic life of the Jazz Age. In a sense, nothing had changed since he was in his late teens and early 20s and caught up in the splendor of Parisian nightlife.

Now, however, a 50-year perspective produced a vision as severe and unforgiving as an Old Testament prophet, and the decadence of the era of the Charleston looks like a Circle of Hell. The large painting "Tango at the Cabernet," from 1926, with which the exhibition appropriately concludes, is a disturbing masterpiece.

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"Jean-Louis Forain: La Comedie parisienne"

The exhibit will be displayed at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 4339 Park, from Sunday through Oct. 9. There will be an opening day tour and lecture at 4 p.m., presented by Florence Valdès-Forain, the artist's great-granddaughter and principal author of the exhibition catalog. Free with regular museum admission.

Throughout the run of the exhibition, Café Forain will serve salads, sandwiches and beverages during museum hours.

Call 761-5250 or visit Dixon.org for hours and admission prices.

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