Throughout his life, Biard strived to paint with accuracy and fidelity the slightest detail that he could bring back from his travels. This meticulous quasi-ethnological and ethological observation work sometimes had difficulty in convincing his contemporaries, despite various accounts that could attest to his images. Indeed, some critics cannot believe in the veracity of its compositions, its colors, its shapes or its lights. One of them, an anonymous person from the Parisian Salons, even notes that “these paintings may be true, but they are not beautiful”. This is particularly the case for his views of Spitsbergen and the Far North, which fueled skepticism among viewers of his time. Nowadays, globalization and photography help us to prove his sincerity and this disbelief turns into a kind of fascination for a fantasized elsewhere. His works then become the perfect witnesses of a bygone past and we can - for example - observe the consequences of chronic global warming.
In general, Biard paints what he knows and what he has seen, but he sometimes happens to make a few deviations in order to always captivate his audience a little more. One of his most famous canvases during his lifetime is, without a doubt, his / Embarcation attaquée par des ours blancs dans la mer du Nord (see below). When he began to paint it in 1838, Biard had not yet sailed the waters of the Arctic Ocean. He therefore had to imagine this scene inspired by engravings and texts published in a few works such as the magazines Le Tour du Monde or Le Musée des Familles. If the decor is invented from scratch, the bears are real. To do so, Biard had no choice but to take the animals of the capital as models.
" Biard has traveled everywhere ; he wanted to see everything and know everything ; also his paintings have a real truth that is not always found elsewhere. However, although his main painting is a boat attacked by polar bears, he admits with charming gaiety that he has never seen polar bears except at the Jardin des Plantes. […] But he recounts an adventure that always gives him a little retrospective shudder.
Biard had obtained permission to go down into the lodge of the white bear to draw his portrait at his ease; to do this, the bear was first brought out of the yard, then an enormous iron gate was lowered between the painter and his model. Then the bear, furious to see that his home had been invaded, rushed against this iron door and tried to break it with his teeth and claws.
Now, by a providential chance, Biard had just come out of the bear lodge earlier than usual, when a new guard, walking in the garden and seeing this gate lowered at an hour when it was not accustomed to being, thought they had made a mistake and was quietly raising the gate when one of his comrades rushed towards him, showing signs of deep fright, while exclaiming:
- But ! there is a man in the lodge !
The guard quickly let the gate fall ; but it would have been too late, the bear had already entered it and was grinding all around him.
- Fortunately, my studies on the beast were completed, Biard told us, because the devil take me if I would have wanted to go back to visit him. " (1)
The onlookers who came to the menagerie to take a walk and give bread to the wild animals witnessed this disturbing scene and the press recounted the misadventure - a misadventure which earned him a very beautiful caricature in an issue of Le Charivari. Seeing a man sitting in the cage in the midst of ferocious bears, " some saw in him a criminal condemned to death who was being subjected to some dangerous experiment; others asserted that the stranger had let himself slip into the pit to pick up a coin and he couldn't come up again ". Between worry and curiosity, Parisians only talk about this affair. What a brilliant publicity stunt for this " young man of good manners, of a witty figure, in yellow gloves, decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, came out of the box, an album under his arm and not without smiling looks astonished who clung to him. This young man was Biard, who had just studied for a painting sketched the day before [...] " (2)
Left : François-Auguste Biard, Boat attacked by polar bears in the North Sea / Embarcation attaquée par des ours blancs dans la mer du Nord, oil on canvas, 1882, collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Tromsø, Norway
Right : Benjamin Roubaud, If Biard is painted in class, it's for the beautiful page / Si Biard est peint en ours c’est pour la belle page, engraving in the newspaper Le Charivari, Paris, 11 september 1840
In the generality of his work, the landscape alone does not exist and is constantly inhabited by a human presence - however anecdotal it may be. His compositions are animated and dramatized in order to tell a living or imaginary story. Here again, Biard pays particular attention to the representation of his congeners. He makes it a point of honor to transcribe their clothes as faithfully as possible, so much so that it is now possible to recognize them, locate them and study them.
During his stay in Lapland, Biard drew and painted many portraits of Samis. If these natives have long been discriminated against and caricatured (cf. Daumier to cite only him), they see themselves, under the brushes of Biard, represented in all their frankness. If he happens to pass quickly over the faces, the clothes and accessories are always rich in detail.
The enigmatic painting of the Necromancer gives us a first glimpse of it. In the center of the composition, a standing young woman seems to communicate with the beyond. The latter is very clearly dressed in a Sami costume: the traditional gákti. It is possible to compare this outfit with those still worn in northern Norway. If some elements differ, it is nevertheless possible to locate this dress in the county of Troms, in the heart of Finnmark - region crossed by Léonie and Biard.
Other peculiarities attest to this location: the colorful patterns sewn in a cross on the leather of his belt, as well as the large knife attached to it. Both are reminiscent of Scandinavian crafts and are still used today by Sami reindeer herders - objects that can also be found quite easily in many tourist shops.
Left : François-Auguste Biard, The Necromancer / La Nécromancienne, detail, oil on canvas, ca. 1840-50, private collection
Center left : gákti from Troms County, Finnmark, North Norway
Center right : old puukko, traditional Finnish knife " with a wooden handle "
Right : Reindeer harness, collection of the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden
It is also interesting to study the different headgear “ collected ” by Biard. Some of them provide us with rich information on the Samis he meets, as demonstrated by the very recognizable Ládjogahpir, the " horned cap " originally worn by women from the middle of the 18th century. We find it more particularly in the coastal regions of the Kola Peninsula ; in Finland at Utsjoki, Inari and Enontekiö ; but also in Northern Norway, in the provinces of Finnmark and Kautokeino. Long considered an attribute of the devil by Christian preachers, this hat is visible today (in slightly different forms) in our French and European media thanks to the singer Tiina Sanila-Aikio, also president of the Sami parliament of Finland since 2015 ; but also thanks to artists like Outi Pieski who uses it as an object of education and memory in various works and installations.
Left : François-Auguste Biard, Sami seated under a lavvu / Sami assise sous une lavvu, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 1839, collection of the Fridtjof Nansens Institutt, Lysaker, Norway
Middle : Photographic portrait of a Sami woman and her child by Jörgen Wickström, ca. 1870, collection of the Pitt Rivers museum, University of Oxford
Right : View of an installation at the Norsk Billedhoggerforening and " ládjogahpir " hats kept at the Norsk Folkemuseet, Oslo, Norway
Still in Norway, but this time a little further south, women wear a traditional outfit called “bunad”. This costume, which symbolizes the national and cultural identity of the country, varies according to the cities and each region has one with its own particularities. Thus, the bunad of Ålesund differs from that of Bergen or Trondheim. There are therefore dozens of variants and, again, it is possible to find several examples in Biard's painting. On the detail reproduced below, this woman seems to be a servant of the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné (1707-1778). Although the canvas was destroyed during the Second World War, a colorized photograph has come down to us and we can compare this green dress with floral motifs to those worn in the Oslo area. As we know, Léonie and Biard stopped for some time in Christiania (former name of Oslo) on their way to Spitsbergen. Biard certainly took the opportunity to sketch the habits, customs and costumes of this people he was discovering for the very first time.
Left : François-Auguste Biard, Linné making his first discoveries with his master, the doctor Johann Rothmann, in Wexiö in Sweden / Linné faisant ses premières découvertes auprès de son maître, le médecin Johann Rothmann, à Wexiö en Suède, oil on canvas, 1847, formerly in the collection of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin then destroyed during the Second World War
Middle : François-Auguste Biard, Costumes of Norwegian women, engraving after a drawing by Biard
Right : Early 20th century Oslo Bunad in silk with embroidered floral motifs, collection of Norsk Folkemuseet, Oslo, Norway
Back in his studio, Biard collects his drawings and sketches in order to create his large formats. This precious material collected during his travels is certainly truthful in its detail and in its individuality, but, once it is all mixed together, the general compositions give more of well-orchestrated fictional scenes. The final result, once everything is assembled, may therefore seem homogeneous to the eyes of the amateur but is, in truth, a kind of fantasized half-truth. This is why we can see Sami from several regions (in winter and summer costumes also mixed) rubbing shoulders under the same tent alongside the Duke of Orléans.
Biard is therefore, in his practice, an ethnographer painter concerned with the smallest detail that he represents. Nevertheless, certain approximations and certain shortcuts make him lose a little credit, in favor of a beautiful arrangement. But can we really blame him?
Left : François-Auguste Biard, The Duke of Orléans Receiving Hospitality in a Lappish Tent - August 1795 / Le Duc d'Orléans recevant l'hospitalité sous une tente de Lapon - août 1795, oil on canvas, 1841, collection of the National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles
Middle : François-Auguste Biard, Sami standing with his stick / Sami en pied avec son bâton, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 1839, not located
Right : François-Auguste Biard, Young Laplander contemplating a jewel found in a grave / Jeune Lapone contemplant un bijou trouvé dans une bière, watercolor on paper, 1839, Finnish collection
(1) Les salons d’autrefois, souvenirs intimes de Mme la Comtesse de Bassanville - Fourth series, Paris, 1866
(2) Henry Berthoud - Nouvelles artistiques et théâtrales - Musée des familles, fifth volume, 1838