The Politicians, c. 1912

The Politicians is a study in contrasts. A corpulent man wearing a bowler hat listens, expressionless, to a shorter, animated individual with a moustache. The latter's head is recoiled and tilted back as, with mouth open, he aggressively directs his comments toward his silent, stolid counterpart. On the wall, hovering above the stark shadows cast by the profiles of these middle-aged Tammany Hall types, are sketchy, indistinct markings that suggest election posters. The dark monochromatic palette and heavily brushed technique are typical for Pène du Bois at this early stage of his career. Two similar characters sitting at a table in a café are found in a contemporary drawing [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Guy Pène du Bois, In the Restaurant, 1913, crayon and pencil on paper, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. At the Armory Show in 1913 Pène du Bois exhibited The Politician [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Guy Pène du Bois, The Politician, c. 1912, oil on academy board, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. © 2017 The Barnes Foundation, a closely related work in which a figure stands next to a podium making an oration.[1]  [1]
International Exhibition of Modern Art, at the Armory of the Sixty-Ninth Infantry (New York, 1913), no. 1039. Pène du Bois’s trenchant views of politicians were applicable to artists as well. He later recalled an unpleasant episode with one of the Armory Show’s key organizers, Walt Kuhn (American, 1877 - 1949), remarking that Kuhn shared “the professional politician's innate contempt for humanity.”[2]  [2]
Guy Pène du Bois, Artists Say the Silliest Things (New York, 1940), 166.

The Politicians was painted during Pène du Bois’s final year working as a reporter for William Randolph Hearst’s New York American, for which he covered the more sordid, criminal aspects of the city. These experiences informed his early paintings caricaturing lawyers, policemen, tycoons, and politicians as corrupt, lazy, and incompetent. In his autobiography Pène du Bois did not spare his fellow journalists, noting that they were “as academic as churches,” and, much like academic painters, seemed incapable of grasping the notion that “a fact does not become a reality until it has been given life and meaning.”[3]  [3]
Guy Pène du Bois, Artists Say the Silliest Things (New York, 1940), 138. These attitudes were in keeping with the credo of art for life’s sake espoused by his mentor, Robert Henri (American, 1865 - 1929), who a generation before had convinced his colleagues John Sloan (American, 1871 - 1951) and William Glackens (American, 1870 - 1938) to forgo journalism for painting. Both the subject of The Politicians and its acerbic tone are in the tradition of Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss, 1859 - 1923), with whom Pène du Bois had studied in Paris, and, more profoundly, Honoré Daumier (French, 1808 - 1879). Regarding Daumier, Pène du Bois wrote, “He was much more likely to pity than to censure. When he laughed . . . he did so in generous and understanding sympathy.”[4]  [4]
Guy Pène du Bois, Artists Say the Silliest Things (New York, 1940), 131. Pène du Bois believed his own work conveyed a similar attitude: “It is a travesty of truth that I should . . . have become known as a satirist . . . I portrayed people from pure love of them.”[5]  [5]
Guy Pène du Bois, Artists Say the Silliest Things (New York, 1940), 129.

At this early stage in his career, Pène du Bois was developing the consistent, distinctive treatment of the human figure that was to become the salient characteristic of his signature style. Like the works of his fellow Henri student and exact contemporary Edward Hopper (American, 1882 - 1967), Pène du Bois’s paintings provide just enough detail in his subjects’ physical features and gestures, as well as their locales, to make them familiar and recognizable, but not a sufficient amount of information to allow the viewer to reach any definitive conclusions about exactly who is pictured, what they are doing, or where they are. Unlike journalism, where clear answers are prized, it is these open-ended questions that make works like The Politicians so engaging.

Robert Torchia, Charles Brock

August 17, 2018