THE FIGURE SUBJECT IN LA PROMENADE Figure groups in paintings that appear to show everyday images of con- temporary life need to be viewed from two perspectives, one social, the other artistic. The figures can be studied in relation to the social practices they display and also in their artistic context, as images presented to viewers as fine art, with all the value-laden associations that this implies. Here, La Promenade presents an immediate paradox. The imagery of relaxed entertainments and excursions, and of flirtations between men and women, was widespread in Paris in the i86os, but only in the lower-status media of illustration, graphic journal- ism, and printmaking. In the world of fine art painting, to which Renoir's canvas unequivocally belonged, such subjects were most unusual. Male figures were only very rarely included in fashionable genre paintings of scenes from modern life. Often, in interior views of the Stevens/Toulmouche mode, the idea of a man is hinted at—by a letter a woman is reading, by some keepsake, or by the evident direction of her thoughts [see FIGURES 5, 17, 20]—but it was most unusual for a male to put in an appearance in a woman's space. In two examples where a man does appear, the distinction Figure 33 between masculine and feminine spheres is stressed. In Eugene Feyen's The Eugene Feyen (French, Honeymoon [FIGURE 33], shown at the 1869 Salon, a man working at his desk 1815-1908). The Honeymoon, circa 1869. turns aside briefly to kiss his wife, who sits behind him dutifully sewing, Oil on canvas, size and present whereabouts confined to passivity and domesticity even at the outset of their marriage. unknown. Reproduced from a photograph pub- Toulmouche's semicomic The First Visit [FIGURE 34], from the 1865 Salon, plays lished by Goupil and on the man's evident awkwardness as he, and his remarkable top hat, penetrate Co., circa 1869. London, Witt Library, Courtauld a female domestic space. Institute of Art. Why were male figures normally excluded from such paintings? The Figure 34 fact that they so regularly appeared with female figures in illustrations in maga- Auguste Toulmouche. The First Visit, circa 1865. zines such as La Vie parisienne shows that it was not only a question of moral Oil on canvas, size and present whereabouts propriety but also in part a matter of artistic decorum. What was perfectly unknown. Reproduced from a photograph pub- acceptable in illustration did not belong in the sphere of fine art. For Theodore lished in P. G. Hamerton, Duret in 1870, the answer was simple: male costume was too drab and ugly to Contemporary French Painters (London, 1869). 5i