Charles Meryon
The household in Paris was supported financially by both fathers, but more so by Lowther, whose indirect funding remained important throughout Meryon's life; he made very little money from his art.
He gradually and reluctantly realized that his colour-blindness ruled out painting, and by 1848 settled on etching, then out of favour as a medium for fine art, though about to undergo a considerable revival.
[5] Equally, Pierre-Narcisse was rather more generously supported by Lowther, who saw her and Fanny when he was in Paris, but she was keen to keep him unaware of the existence of Charles, although the two fathers were acquaintances in London.
[8] By late in 1826 he had entered the "Pension Savary", one of a number of small boarding schools in the Paris suburb of Passy; Camille Pissarro was a pupil some years later.
[17] After a trip to Algiers carrying troops, the ship left Toulon to join the French Levant squadron in the Aegean Sea in February 1840, allowing Meryon to visit Athens, Corinth, Argos, Melos and Mycenae.
[18] In April 1840 he transferred to the Montebello near modern İzmir (then Smyrna) in Turkey,[19] with which he revisited Greece, then France, before visiting Tunis, then of great political interest to the French, and Carthage.
The French naval "New Zealand station" was to end while the Rhin was returning home, when the replacement ship, the Seine, was wrecked on the coast of New Caledonia.
[22] The outward voyage began on 15 August 1842, heading across the Atlantic, passing Tenerife, but not landing until Bahia in Brazil was reached in October, where they spent nearly two weeks.
They then changed direction, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and arriving at Hobart, Tasmania in late December,[23] staying only a week, before sailing for Akaroa, which they reached on 11 January 1843.
[26] In October they set off for Australia, via Kororareka near the tip of the North Island, today Russell, New Zealand, where they stayed until early November.
[27] In November Meryon was, back in Paris, promoted to ensign, the lowest rank of naval officer, although the news did not reach him on the Rhin until July the next year.
After a brief stop at Ascension Island, they passed into the Mediterranean and spent four days at the French North African port of Mers El-Kebir from 18 August.
[31] Meryon had sketched in Athens, Algiers and other exotic places he had visited, and by late 1840 decided to take lessons in drawing from the Toulon artist Vincent Courdouan, who was then 30.
After a dead whale washed up at Akaroa he made a coloured plaster model of whale nearly two metres long, which was later placed on display in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History) in Paris, before being transferred to the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle de La Rochelle (in La Rochelle) in 1926.
His drawing of full human figures (or animals) shows his lack of training, but these views of areas where very few Western artists had reached by the 1840s are rather conventional.
In particular Le Stryge has the forceful demonic energy which at that date French culture often attributed to exotic cult images from parts of the world where the West was just reaching.
He hoped, and rather expected, to be placed at the end of his leave with the team working on the official scientific publication of the voyage, especially as regards the illustrations; the French Navy had a tradition of taking these books very seriously.
[39] The two had corresponded during the Rhin's voyage, and the day he docked in Toulon he wrote to his father offering to visit him in Nice, not realizing he was no longer there.
[41] 1848 saw rising political tensions in Paris, which overthrew the monarchy in February and culminated in the June Days uprising, when Meryon's immediate neighbourhood saw some intense fighting around the barricades thrown up by the insurgents.
He was a member of the National Guard (probably obligatory for a naval officer on leave), which played a crucial role in resisting the uprising on behalf of the French Second Republic, which Meryon generally supported.
[45] At least two finished pastel drawings survive from this period: a dramatic whaling scene, and the Assassination of Captain Marion du Fresne in New Zealand (by Maoris in 1772, at the Bay of Islands, killing 27 in total).
[51] He started to produce etchings, mostly copying landscape and animal paintings, or other prints, that allowed him to develop his technique, and could also be sold print-dealers, if only for modest sums.
And sometimes, as in L'Arche du Pont Notre Dame, it is their expressive gesture and eager action that give vitality and animation to the scene.
His more defined works he printed on 'Hudelist' paper, from a mill in Hallines in the North of France, which had the uniform, smooth quality ideal for sharp images.
His more gauzy works, by contrast, were printed on a softer, felt-like Morel Lavenere paper produced in Glaignes, which was highly absorbent—and pale green, which Méryon in his colour blindness would not have perceived as the typical viewer.
Ultimately, however, his stated preference was for cleanly-wiped, clear prints of a uniform quality, which determination ironically positioned him against the Etching Revival he helped inspire.
[56] As early as his voyage on the Rhin in his naval period, Meryon had displayed behaviours that were initially interpreted as eccentricity, for which there was considerable tolerance in Parisian artistic circles, but later came to be seen by friends as "the beginnings of a dysfunction".
[60] In 1858 he agreed to admit himself to the leading Charenton asylum,[61] a doctor having certified him as "suffering from a profound disturbance of the mental faculties" on 10 May.
[63] After seven years, during which both his life and his art had shown signs that his condition had remained with him to some degree,[64] he was readmitted to Charenton for the final time on 10 October 1866.
Their records of "regular monthly assessments offer a story of persistent violent outbursts, intense melancholy, recurrent hallucinations and the conviction that even his old friends were conspiring against him".
