13. Antoine-Jean Bail, The Cornet

Antoine-Jean Bail undoubtedly encountered this cornet player during summer holidays in Bois-le-Roi, a small town about twenty miles southeast of Paris, near the forest of Fontainebleau.¹ He probably met him through his friend Olivier Métra (1830–1889), a composer who started a local band, or fanfare, in 1879. Known as the Fanfare de Bois-le-Roi, it was mostly a brass band that played outdoor concerts for fellow villagers. The cap worn by this horn player was part of the musicians’ uniform. Bail varied his brushwork here depending on how much specificity he wanted. The horn is described in detail, while the man’s pants are freely rendered in broad, quick strokes. In 1880 this model of cornet was a fairly new, hence somewhat unfamiliar, instrument that had become popular only in the previous decade. This study is painted on a small wooden panel—a format easy to take on vacation and bring back to the studio.

Though provincial France was slow to adopt new fashions in clothing and customs, it was receptive to new instruments and music. Bail used this work as the basis for a larger painting on canvas showing the cornet player full length in a domestic interior (fig. 1).² Though the figure’s scale and contours are virtually unchanged from the study, Bail adjusted the brass horn, making it gleam as if recently polished. He exhibited the canvas in the 1881 Paris Salon.³ It must have been well received, for he went on to create a large painting of the entire band during rehearsal, which he displayed at the 1881 Salon in Lyon (fig. 2). This time the cornet player, at the far left, is at rest and facing away from us.

Bail started showing his work at Paris Salons in 1861. Before that, beginning in 1854, he had exhibited at the Salons in Lyon, near where he grew up. He had taught himself to paint before training more formally at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Lyon, one of the oldest French art schools outside Paris. He enjoyed a long career, showing at the Salons of the Société des Artistes Français until 1898. Along the way, he came to be regarded as the foremost painter of provincial realist themes. He devoted great energy to recording rustic scenes and customs that were fast disappearing from village life.

Two of Bail’s sons became artists of some note. The older, Franck-Antoine Bail (1858–1924), received an honorable mention at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The younger, Claude Joseph Bail (1862–1921) (cat. no. 14), won a gold medal at the 1900 exposition. Together, the family helped keep alive the realist and naturalist traditions of the nineteenth century as originally developed by François Bonvin and Théodule Ribot.

GPW