Charles-Caius Renoux (born in Paris, 1795; died in Paris, 14 March 1846) was a French painter, lithographer, and illustrator. He first achieved success with paintings of medieval churches, particularly the ruins of cloisters and monasteries destroyed during the French Revolution, works for which he is still best known. Renoux also painted landscapes, large-scale battle scenes, and historical subjects, works which uniquely prepared him for the final phase of his career, the creation of spectacular dioramas, the "moving pictures" of the era.In the dioramas, it was in fact the audience, standing or seated in a revolving theater, that moved; the images were stationary, though light effects created the illusion of movements and transformations within them. He also taught at the in Paris; his notable students included Narcisse Berchère and Hector Hanoteau.
Early success and patronage of du Sommerard Contemporary scholar Alfred Maury reaccounts Renoux’s early life and beginnings as an artist:
M. Renoux was barely reaching his fifteenth year when he lost his master [teacher], the only one he had ever had; painting had for this very young man a powerful, indefinable attraction, which the violent opposition of his family could not erase. Desperate to overcome the antipathies of his parents, Renoux leaves the paternal roof; he travels through towns, visits monuments rich in masterpieces; from that moment on, his resolution was unshakable, and the day he took the palette to reproduce the interior of the church of Louviers and the casemates of Château Gaillard, that day, Renoux was able to exclaim with Correggio: "Anch io son pittore! And I too am a painter!"Maury, Alfred. "Salon de 1838," Magasin Universel, Dixième Édition, Tome Cinquième, Paris: Edme Picard, 1853, pp. 241-245: "M. Renoux atteignait à peinesa quinziéme année lorsqu'il perdit son maître, le seul qu'il ait jamais eu; la peinture avait pour ce tout jeune homme un attrait puissant, indéfinissable, que ne put effacer l'opposition violente de sa famille. Désespérant de vaincre les antipathies de ses parents, Renoux quitte le toit paternel; il parcourt les villes, visite les monuments riches en chefs-d'œuvre; dès ce moment, sa résolution est inébranlable, et le jour où il prit la palette pour reproduire l'intérieur de l'église de Louviers et les casemates du Château Gaillard, ce jour là, Renoux put s'écrier avec le Corrège: 'anch io son pittore! Et moi aussi je suis peintre!'"
Maury does not name Renoux’s "only" master (teacher). Catalogues of the Paris Salons typically name a painter’s instructor, but never do so with Renoux. A newspaper of 1825 called him the "student and emulator" of Charles Marie Bouton and Louis Daguerre.Le Courrier Français, Paris, 10 juillet 1825, p. 3: "élève et émule de MM. Bouton et Daguerre." Whether or not Renoux took formal instruction from them, these two older artists played an important role in his career.
Whatever his training, by 1822, the year Renoux turned 27, his talents as a painter had attracted the patronage of the antiquarian Alexandre du Sommerard, whose collection of medieval art and artifacts would become the Musée de Cluny. Du Sommerard included lithographs of four works by Renoux in his highly influential Vues de Provins.Vues de Provins, desinées et lithographiées, en 1822, par plusieurs artistes; avec un texte par M.D., Paris: Chez Gide, libraire, rue Saint-Marc-Feydeau, no. 20, 1822. The book, an illustrated tour of medieval churches and abbeys, many of them reduced to ruins in the violence of the French Revolution, was part of an artistic and literary movement, the troubadour style, that romanticized the Middle Ages in France.The so-called "troubadour painters" took particular inspiration from the translated novels of Sir Walter Scott; at the Galerie Lebrun in 1929, Renoux exhibited Frondebeuf menaçant Isaac d'Yorck de la question pour lui faire payer une forte rançon, illustrating a scene from Ivanhoe. See Explication des ouvrages de peinture et sculpture, exposés au profit de la caisse ouverte pour l'extinction de la mendicité, Paris: Galerie Lebrun, 1829, p. 36.
Art historian Pierre Bénard, describing Renoux's Vue du Souterrain de l'Église du Refuge from Vues de Provins, says the image epitomizes the "pleasure of ruins": "Two contemporary figures visit the storied ruin invaded by a great light. And what miracle is it this I see, through the opening from which all these sunbeams fall, the blue sky? In the background, a cheerful half-light swarms behind an archway. Lianas hang gracefully and come together on a blooming scree. This is the…pleasure of ruins where nothing comes to sadden the 'harmony of chaos' praised by Du Sommerard."Bénard, Pierre. "Du Sommerard à Provins: Le Plaisir des Ruines en 1822", Sites et monuments : bulletin de la Société pour la protection des paysages et de l'esthétique générale de la France, July 1988, pp. 10-13: "Deux personnages contemporains visitent la ruine étagée envahie par la grande lumière. Et quel miracle fait que je vois, par l'ouverture d'où tombent tous ces rayons, le ciel bleu? Dans le fond, une pénombre gaie fourmille derrière une arcade. Des lianes pendent gracieusement et viennent se rejoindre sur un éboulis qui fleurit. C'est le deuxième aspect de ce plaisir des ruines où rien ne vient attrister 1'«harmonie du chaos» que Du Sommerard vante en quelques phrases gentilles."
That same year, Renoux debuted at the Paris Salon of 1822 with four paintings that garnered him a Medal of the Second Class. These included the two paintings cited by Maury, Vue prise dans l'église de Louviers and Ruines des casemates du château Gaillard, the latter described in the catalogue: "As a result of the persecutions he was experiencing, Nicolas Poussin, forced to leave his country, comes to take a last look at his birthplace."Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans, exposés au Musée Royal des Arts, le 24 Avril 1822, Paris: E. Pigelet, p. 119: "Par suite des persécutions qu'il éprouvait Nicolas Poussin, obligé de quitter sa patrie, vient jeter un dernier regard sur les lieux qui l’ont vu naître."
Two years later, at the Paris Salon of 1824, Renoux exhibited nine paintings, all of which were purchased before the exhibit closed. L'interieur de l’Église Saint-Etienne-du-Mont à Paris was acquired by the state and installed at the Luxembourg Palace. (It is now in the collection of the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy-en-Velay.) Seven paintings were bought by du Sommerard. One of these was La Confession; figures italiennes, depicting one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church.Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, gravure, lithographie et architecture des artistes vivans, exposés au Musée Royal des Arts, le 25 Aout 1824, Paris: Ballard, 1824, pp. 154-155. By 1827, Renoux had produced paintings depicting each of the seven sacraments; du Sommerard purchased the entire series.
In the Salon of 1827, Renoux displayed L’Antiquaire (The Antiquarian), depicting an elderly collector conferring with a Jewish antiques dealer and surrounded by prized artifacts from his collection. The painting had been begun by another of du Sommerard's protégés, Xavier Leprince, who died before finishing it. To complete the work, du Sommerard commissioned Renoux, who did so "with rare talent."Béraud, Antony. Annales du Musée et de l'école moderne des beaux-arts, Paris: Landon, 1827, pp. 165 and 173. A contemporary reviewer noted that "at the time of Xavier Leprince's death, the two figures alone were made, and the rest was hardly sketched out. It is M. Renoux who was commissioned to complete this interior," consisting of furniture, armor, and numerous objets d'art from the Middle Ages; "finally everything comes together to make this painting a precious piece.""Musée Royal: Exposition de 1827," Journal des artistes, Paris: Société libre des beaux-arts, 6 April 1828, p. 211: "Nous devons déclarer que lors de la mort de Xavier Leprince, les deux figures seules étaient faites, et que le reste était à peine ébauché. C'est M. Renoux qui a été chargé…d'achever cet intérieur qui représente son curieux cabinet…enfin tout se réunit pour faire de ce tableau un morceau précieux." The contemporary critic Auguste Jal declared the painting "a perfect work."Jal, p. 318: "L'Antiquaire est un ouvrage parfait." L’Antiquaire has been cited by modern scholars researching the history of antiquarianism and the invention of the modern museum.See for example Stephen Bann, the chapter "Poetics of the Museum: Lenoir and du Sommeard" in The Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representation of History in Nineteenth Century Britain and France, Cambridge University Press, 1984, which reproduces the painting on p. 80. The painting is also reproduced in Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, editors, Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, Taylor & Francis, 2004, figure 1.4.1. The reproductions are from a lithograph, in black and white; the location of the painting is unknown.
Signature works
In this initial period of his career, Renoux established a signature style with his depictions of Gothic interiors and ruins. The architecture itself serves as a frame, like a proscenium arch in a theater, for an image of repeating columns and arches that recede into the distance, which my terminate in an opening onto blue sky; greater attention is devoted to architectural features, especially the play of light and shadow on weathered stone, than to the human figures, who are dwarfed by their surroundings; and the artist signs his last name and the year at an angle, as if the letters and numbers were painted upon a stone surface within the picture.
A French scholar notes that Renoux "uses the effects of light contrasts and shaded lines of architecture to create games of abstract construction and repetition, in the manner of Nordic painters (one thinks of Hendryck van Steenwick the Younger in particular).": "L’artiste utilise les effets de contrastes lumineux, et les lignes ombrées de l’architecture qui créentdes jeux de construction abstraits, repris de façon répétitive, à la manière des peintres nordiques (on pense à Hendryck van Steenwick le jeune notamment."
The Romanesque and Gothic ruins, underground passages, chapels, convents, vaulted cellars, crypts and galleries depicted by Renoux were inspired by his travels through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. Some paintings are minutely detailed, scrupulously accurate depictions of actual places, but others appear to be fancifully embellished or largely imaginary. The mood evoked is both nostalgic and timeless. "The picturesque and the fabulous encroach on objective representation, and substitute myth…This is how Hugo saw heritage. Mature, vertiginous, dramatic, mysterious, disputed by time and by the great outdoors, haunted by the combat of light and shadows."Bénard, Pierre. "Le Patrimoine tel qu’on l’Aimait en 1822...", Sites et monuments : bulletin de la Société pour la protection des paysages et de l'esthétique générale de la France, Octobre 2011, pp. 38-39: "Le pittoresque et le fabuleux empiètent sur la représentation objective, y substituent le mythe.…C'est ainsi qu'un Hugo voyait le patrimoine. Grandi, vertigineux, dramatique, mystérieux, disputé par le temps, par la grande nature, hanté par le combat des rayons et des ombres."
Landscapes, battles scenes, and history paintings
Renoux also found early success as a painter of interiors (such as Intérieur d'une chambre au XVIe siècle of 1831) and landscapes. The Annuaire Statistique des artistes français of 1836 called him "one of our best landscape artists."De Fére, Guyot, Annuaire Statistique des artistes français, Paris: 1836, p. 108: "Il est au nombre de nos meilleurs paysagistes."