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Artist Sargy Mann has been blind for the last 25 years
A chronicle from the 15th Century relates that Jörg Syrlin had completed sculpting his most important work, the
stalls of Blaubeuren Abbey when the monks gouged out his eyes in order that he would not be able to do a superior
work of Art. [KRIS 1979]
Choir stalls with carved bust by Jörg Syrlin
Painters have represented the blind in innumerable works like the famous painting of Peter Breugel and have
also illustrated the story of Tobias or the legends of St Lucia or St Odile. Several artists
have portrayed themselves as blind persons, like the Venetian Antonio Verrio or the English caricaturist, James
Gillray. All of this is evidence of how painters were fascinated by blindness, which is the most dramatic trial that can
afflict an artist whose reason for existing is his vision.
Tobias Heals His Blind Father - Annibale Carracci
The history of
Art informs us that many
artists were effectively blind. On the other
hand, as far as painting
pictures is concerned,
one can speak simply of
“pictorial blindness”,
which means a deficiency of vision
sufficiently advanced
that the painter has to
cease his
artistic activity,
without however being
completely blind.
Therefore,
“pictorial blindness” is
different from complete
loss of vision. “Legal
blindness” is different again as defined by the level of Visual Acuity and certain painters that are reputedly “blind” according to literary sources continue to read and
write albeit with some difficulty.
Blind Painters in Art
History
Exhaustive research of
known painters who had
become blind
was naturally
impossible. That is why
our limited study was
carried
out on the artists
listed in Benezit’s
dictionary [BENEZIT
1999], which
is a French reference
work containing about
150,000 usable entries.
We
have covered two
aspects: ophthalmologic
and psychological. From an ophthalmologic viewpoint, the study necessarily deals with periods of history when the understanding of ocular pathology was still limited.
Consequently, the
ophthalmologic cause of
blindness was rarely
precise, which has given
rise to hypotheses
related to age. From a
psychological point of view,
the reaction of the
artist facing blindness
was
classified as a negative
reaction (depression) or
a positive reaction (
compensatory activity). Fear of blindness was often a cause of severe reactions, even if vision was still preserved, thus providing additional proof of the psychological
consequences of loss of vision.
Ophthalmologic
ConsequencesOur systematic research
in Benezit’s Dictionary
has allowed us
to discover more than
one hundred paintings in
which “blindness” was
mentioned. This number
does not evidently have
any absolute value
and it does not allow
any reliable statistical
estimation. We only mention here those artists for whom a minimum of documentation has been discovered .
1.) Artists who became
blind in consequence of
a known disease
whose progress was
unfavorable have been
studied in the preceding
chapters and it suffices
to recall their names.
There were, first of
all,
those patients whose
cataracts were operated
unsuccessfully or with
complications: Rosalba
Carriera, Honoré
Daumier, Mary Cassatt,
Eugène Laermans, James
Thurber and Jean Hélion.
Age-related macular degeneratyion
(ARMD) was very probable
for Carlo Marrata,
Wilhelm van Mieris,
Sergent Marceau and John
Tenniel; this diagnosis was also confirmed
positively for the
following artists of the
20th
Century: Philip Steer,
Georgia O’Keeffe and
Paul Delvaux. Pathology
of the optic nerve led
to blindness from
glaucoma for two
artists: Jules
Chéret and Louis Valtat. One case of a more uncommon form of optic neuropathy struck the English painter and writer, Wyndham Lewis, who became blind as the result of a
chromophobe adenoma of the pituitary .
2.) Hypothetical
Etiologies for Instances
of Blindness in
Painters
Aside from some definite
etiologies, there exist
a large number
of artists in whom one
could only make more or
less plausible hypotheses. A Hereditary
Disease could be
proposed if blindness
occurred in
several members of the
same family. We have two examples of this happening.
The Netherlands family,
the Knips, has produced
several generations of painters
[HERTOGENBOSCH 1988].
Nicolas-Frederik Knip
(1742-1808), a painter
of flowers and
landscapes, became blind
when
he was almost
fifty-five. His son Joseph-August Knip (1777-1847) lost an eye in 1826 at forty-nine and became blind at fifty-five in 1832 . [TILBURG 1975]
On the other hand, there is no indication of blindness in other members of the family and the best known representative of the family, Henriette
Ronner-Knip (1821-1909), a famous painter of cats (1808-1909), painted up until the day she died at 88.
Furthermore, the French
painter Paul Anastasi
(1780-1850) started a
painting career of
historical portraits,
but was struck by
paralysis at
thirty-two. He was then
admitted to the hospice
at Quinze Vingts,
where he died and where
his son Auguste Anastasi
(1820–1889) was
born. The latter became
a distinguished
landscape painter in the
style
of the Barbizon School,
but, like all the
others, became blind
when he
was fifty. The
hypothesis of a
hereditary etiology is a
possibility, but
research data did not
support this diagnosis.
When he first became
blind, Paul Anastasi
attributed this to
cranial trauma that
occurred
ten years earlier, which
is an improbable
supposition.
Furthermore,
the descriptions that
his son left in regard
to his own visual
difficulties did not allow any
precise conclusion.
[MIQUEL 1985]. The hereditary hypothesis is, of course, a tenuous one and we may, in fact, be dealing with a coincidence.
Early bilateral blindness, i.e. bilateral loss of vision happening before the
individual is fifty, was discovered in four artists. The Milan painter, Giovanni
Lomazzo (1538–1600) lost his vision at thirty-three without any known diagnostic
etiology. [VASARI 1985].
Giovanni Lomazzo - Self-portrait, 1568. Oil on canvas, 56 x 44 Milan, Brera
pinacoteca.
The Belgian painter from
Liège, Gérard de
Lairesse
(1641–1711), who worked
in Amsterdam and was
nicknamed “The
Poussin from the
Holland” became blind at
fifty [ROY 1992]. The
favored diagnosis of his
condition was Syphilis,
by reason of the apparent absence of his nose, which is a classical stigma of
the advanced stages of the disease.
Rembrandt Van Rijn.“ Portrait of Gérard de Lairesse ” 1665. Oil on canvass.
( New York City: Metropolitan Museum of Art) Lehmann collection .
The latter diagnosis, as
one knows, was too often
made not so
long ago, but General
Paralysis of the Insane
seems nevertheless certain in the tragic case
of the symbolist Russian
painter Mikail Wrubel
(1856-1910) who became
paralytic, blind and
demented at the end of
his
life [GUERMAN 1986] . The Belgian painter Hendriks De Smeth (1865 –1940) lost his sight at forty-three and wrote poems from that time onwards.
Late case histories of
blindness occurring in
patients after sixty
suggested first a
diagnosis of Cataract.
This was confirmed by
Vasari
for Piero della
Francesca (1420-1492),
who became blind at
sixty
[VASARI 1985]. The
Ferrara painter,
Benvenuto Tisio, who was
also
known as Garofalo
(1481-1559), was also
very well known, but, at
sixty, according to
Vasari: “He lost his
right eye and was very
much
afraid that he would
lose the other.”
Actually he did retain
his sight
and the historian
continued:
“The works he achieved
at sixty were so well
painted ... that
the Pope (Paul III) was
absolutely amazed that
an old man of this age,
provided with one eye
only had performed his
Art so well as to
produce
works of such beauty.”
However:
“in 1550, his ocular
malady returned and he
remained completely
blind. He lived thus for
nine years putting up
with his illness with
great
steadfastness.” [VASARI]
Giovanni Baglione (1563-1643) was a painter from Rome who was a fervent disciple
of Caravaggio. In 1630, he was turned down for the commission of decorating the
Church of St Louis des Français, by reason of his deficient sight. [SMITH O’NEIL
2002].
The Venetian painter
Antonio Verrio
(1630–1707) pursued a
career as decorator of
churches in England. He was unsuccessfully operated for cataract and benefited from a pension for the blind [TREVOR-ROPER] .
Besides cataract,
age-related macular
degeneration (ARMD)
could be diagnosed in
several famous artists
whose Art historians
inform that they became
very poorly-sighted
after eighty. Thus, the
Baroque Bologna painter,
Giuseppe Maria Crespi
(1655–1747) who
was ninety-two became
blind. Likewise the
Netherlander Wilhelm van
Mieris (1662–1747), who
was a distinguished
artist from a reputed
family of painters from
the Golden Century,
became blind. Hyacinthe
Rigaud (1659–1743), a
famous portraitist of
Louis XIV and John
Tenniel, already
monophthalmic from the
age of twenty, but who
reached ninety-four
(1840–1914), both became
blind. All of the above
suppositions, meantime,
remained just hypotheses
that can be discussed in the absence of
precise medical
documents; and, of
course,
other frequent
pathologies, like
diabetic retinopathy,
could be discussed indefinitely.
Also, in the majority of
cases, it was necessary
just
to resign oneself to the
vague diagnosis of
“blindness in old age”.
Psychological
Consequences
The study of the
psychology of painters
struck by bilateral loss
of vision has produced
evidence of reactions
classified schematically
into negative and
positive. It is appropriate to point out at this stage that these reactions could have been produced before the occurrence of bilateral loss of eyesight, just because of
the fear of that condition.
Negative reactions occur
in varying degrees of
severity. The least negative degree was the
alteration of artistic
technique. Because of
fear
that he would lose the
sight in his right eye
after the detachment of
the retina, George Du
Maurier gave up painting
in favor of drawing, in order to preserve his
vision in the good eye.
Rodolphe Töppfer,
obsessed as he was by
his entoptic phenomena,
gave up painting and
moved into caricature
drawing. On the other
hand, neither the one or
the other actually
became blind. In
striking contrast to the
preceding,
the forced cessation of
their Art in painters
who became blind was an
unpleasant experience
for numerous artists,
e.g. Rosalba Carriera,
who languished in a deep
depression after failure
of her cataract operations [SANI 1988].
However, the worst
aspect was the suicide
of several painters that was
caused by their poor
visual acuity. We have discovered four French artists of the 19th Century who ended their lives by suicide: Marchal, Soumy Tassaert and Chaplet.
Charles Marchal
(1822-1877), a painter
who specialized in
Alpine scenes, had a
certain vogue in France
under the Second
Empire. His sad fate
attracted the attention
of Emile Javal who
quotes
his last letter in his
“Manuel du Strabisme”
[JAVAL]:
“My sight is
deranged... For a
painter that is death... as life was giving up
on me
it was necessary to give
up on my own life.”
He then killed himself
with a pistol bullet.
Joseph Soumy(1831-1863) was struck down by
a severe
irido-choroiditis at
thirty-two; he was
sure he was going blind
so he jumped out of a
window. [AUQUIER 1910]
Octave Tassaert,
(1800–1874) a “disturbed
spirit” or perhaps just
“neurasthenic”, suffered
throughout the whole of
his existence because
he believed that his
painting was not
appreciated.
Octave Tassaert. “Self-portrait”. 1854. Oil on Canvass. 65 x 51, Montpelier,
Museé Fabre.
His vision having
declined after seventy,
(doubtless because of
cataract), he committed
suicide by using a
charcoal stove for that
purpose. This was said to be the preferred method of suicide for the poor.
He also traced the following words on his night table in his unsteady hand: “Mes yeux couverts d’épais brouillards me laissent à tâtons sur la terre.
Adieu tant de chose si
chère
Adieu poesie et beaux
arts!.” [PROUST 1886]
(“My eyes, covered with
thick fogs, leave me
groping my way along
the ground. Farewell to
so much beauty, farewell
to poetry farewell to
Art!”)
Ernest Chaplet
(1835-1909),
miniaturist, ceramist
and inventor of new color
procedures, feeling that
blindness was
approaching,
destroyed all documents
describing his methods
of fabrication and
shot himself with a
pistol bullet. He
missed, shattering only
his jaw
and died only after
several weeks of severe
pain and misery [Paris,
1796]. “Positive
reactions” to blindness
or to the threat of this
in other
artists were more
gratifying. The changes
occurring in the vision
of
these artists was a
stimulus to produce, to
redouble their activity
by
modifying their styles
and techniques as
necessary so they could
adapt
to their reduced visual
acuity. The most
impressive example of
this
behavior was, without a
doubt, that of Edgar
Degas (1834-1917) who
was functionally
monophthalmic from
thirty onwards and whose
vision steadily
deteriorated. Repeating over and over again that he would soon become blind, not in any way less did he continue to produce works of Art until he became almost blind, but
never totally so.
Another positive
attitude was represented
by what one could call
the
“swan song” of an ageing
artist who, threatened
by the possibility of
no longer being able to
see, threw all his
effort into a final work
in
order to leave behind a
pictorial legacy. We
are, of course,
describing
the attitude of Claude
Monet (1840-1926), who
created at seventy-five,
“Les grandes
décorations” that are
currently in the
Orangerie of the
Tuileries Gardens.
Meanwhile cataract had
deprived him of the
sight
of the right eye and had
started to affect his
left. Happily, Monet was operated and did not go blind.
It should be emphasized,
however, that, even when
both eyes
are blind and more or
less completely so, the
attitude of the artists
thus affected could be
positive. Instruction in
painting was for several
artists the means of
inserting themselves
back into active life
despite
their blindness, as is
demonstrated by the
behavior of the various
artists cited above. Piero della Francesca published learned treatises on geometry when his declining vision stopped him from painting.
Giovanni Lomazzo, who
became blind at
thirty-three, wrote
poems
and produced a work on
painting that was filled
with Neoplatonic
Philosophy . This gave
him more fame for
posterity than any of
his
paintings. The drop in
visual acuity
experienced by Giovanni
Baglione
incited him to dedicate
himself to the work
which gave him his reputation as a historian of
the Art of the Baroque
in a text entitled, “La
vita dei pittori,
scultori et architetti”,
(1642).Gérard de
Lairesse, who
became blind at fifty,
gave lectures of
instruction in painting
that were
subsequently compiled in
1707 by his son into a
“Grand livre des peintres”. This was very
successful and was
translated into many
languages in the 18th
Century, including
Japanese. In the same way, Jacques Paillot de Montabert (1771-1849), who was a painter from Troyes and who became blind at sixty-three, published a treatise on painting
in ten volumes, which was rated highly.
The ophthalmologic study
of painters who became
blind has
resulted in limited
conclusions. The small
number of documented
artists did not permit
any statistical
conclusion. Etiologies
were missing in the majority of
individuals afflicted by
bilateral blindness. One
could be particularly
surprised by the rarity
of cataracts that were
operated, but it is very
likely that many
painters were not
operated in
those times because the
operation was an
adventure that often
ended
in complete blindness.
In regard to the greater
problem of decreased
vision in old age, the
only factor available
for orienting the
diagnosis
towards one of the major
causes of blindness
could be the actual age
of
the patient. In this
regard, one accepts that
glaucoma generally comes
before cataract and
cataract precedes
macular degeneration. Such is, however, a very poor indicator for diagnosing the cause of blindness in any individual.
The study of the
psychological effects of
blindness was, in contrast, sufficient to
take account of the
diverse attitudes of the
artists
who were confronted with
blindness. Furthermore, the reactions of the painters was related first and foremost to the individuality of each.
Obsession with
blindness, attested by
so many works of Art,
was not a
theme used by artists
like any other artistic
theme. By painting blind people, every painter paints, more or less consciously, what he or she fears they would one day become.
The end
ϟ
'Blindness of the painters'
Philippe Lanthony
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