Juste milieu (meaning "middle way" or "happy medium") is a term that has been used to describe centrist political philosophies that try to find a balance between extremes, and artistic forms that try to find a middle ground between the traditional and the modern. In the political sense it is most associated with the French July Monarchy (1830–1848), which ostensibly tried to strike a balance between autocracy and anarchy. The term has been used in both a positive and negative sense.
The term has been used at different times in French history. Jacques-François Blondel, in his article in the Encyclopedia of 1762 described the work of the architect Pierre Contant d'Ivry as shown in the Palais-Royal in Paris as the juste milieu between two extremes, the gravity of the former classicist style and the frivolity of the more recent Rococo style. [1] Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, a French engineer who became Minister of the Navy, was elected to the legislature in 1791 during the French Revolution. He was a very moderate revolutionary, and was called the Juste milieu by the extremists, a title he accepted with pride. [2]
During the July Monarchy, in January 1831 Louis-Philippe received an address sent by the city of Gaillac, which said it submitted itself to the king's government "in order to assure the development of the conquests of July". His much-quoted response was that "We will attempt to remain in a juste milieu, in an equal distance from the excesses of popular power and the abuses of royal power." [3]
Vincent E. Starzinger compares the Juste Milieu of the Doctrinaires of France to English Whiggism of the same period, finding similarities in ideas of sovereignty, representation, freedom and history. [4] An article in the Edinburgh Review of January 1833 made this identification, saying the three great parties in France were "its Tory Carlists, its juste milieu Whigs, and its Radical Republicans. The article praised François Guizot and Victor de Broglie as "always the tried and consistent friends of freedom ... the most accomplished scholars ... of constitutional learning." [5] In 1836 Guizot, then prime minister in France under Louis Philippe, described the concept as,
Our policy ... the policy of the juste milieu, is essentially inimical to absolute principles, to consequences carried to the extreme. We ourselves are the living embodiment of this idea; for, allow me to remind you, we have fought for freedom as we have for order ... The policy of the juste milieu must be defined as against all excesses; yes, it rejects absolute principles, extreme principles; it is adaptable to the divers needs of society; it manages to stay abreast of ongoing social changes, and in turn engages in combat whenever necessary. [6]
Caricaturists such as Charles Philipon, Jules David and Honoré Daumier generally belonged to the mouvement party, and wanted to implement the ideals of liberty and the French republic. They attacked the juste milieu as a trick to prevent these ideals being achieved. [7] Charles Philipon caricatured king Louis Philippe with a drawing titled Le juste milieu that depicted him as a pear-shaped dummy with no head, wearing ancien regime clothes, but with a tricolor on his hat. A white Bourbon flag is stuffed into his waistcoat. It suggests that his supposed commitment to republican ideals is superficial, and in fact he is a believer in traditional monarchy. [8]
Eventually the tension between the monarchical principle and republican ideals represented in the Juste milieu proved unsustainable, and the regime was overthrown in the French Revolution of 1848. [9]
The term juste milieu has been applied to art in the July Monarchy (1830-1848) to describe a style of painting that reconciled classicists such as Auguste Couder and romantics such as Eugène Delacroix. Juste milieu artists included Désiré Court, Jean-Baptiste-Auguste Vinchon, Hanna Hirsch-Pauli, Horace Vernet, Charles-Émile-Callande de Champmartin and Ary Scheffer. [10] The art historian Albert Boime extended the term from this common usage to also cover a "compromise movement" that he detected among artists in the 1880s. There does indeed seem to have been a group of artists who were recognized at the time as falling between the Impressionists and such pompier artists as William-Adolphe Bouguereau. [11]
The term as used from the 1830s through to the 1920s characterized artists who created popular works, not as radical as the avant-garde, but modern nevertheless. They would be looked down as less "authentic" than the path breakers of their time, but they were much more commercially successful. [12] The juste milieu in the fin de siècle had a great range of styles. They can perhaps be best characterized as professional insiders who sought official honors, as opposed to radical outsiders. [13]
Some members of the juste milieu around the end of the nineteenth century thought of themselves as heirs of the French impressionists. Members who exhibited in Vienna in 1903 included Max Liebermann, Max Klinger, Paul-Albert Besnard, Charles Cottet, James McNeill Whistler and John Lavery. [14]
Louis Philippe was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the last King and penultimate monarch of France.
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848. A moderate liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, he worked to sustain a constitutional monarchy following the July Revolution of 1830.
Orléanist was a 19th-century French political label originally used by those who supported a constitutional monarchy expressed by the House of Orléans. Due to the radical political changes that occurred during that century in France, three different phases of Orléanism can be identified:
The French Second Republic was a short-lived republican government of France between 1848 and 1851. It began in February 1848, with the Revolution that overthrew the July Monarchy, and ended in December 1852, after the 1851 coup d'état and when president Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte made himself Emperor Napoleon III and initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto of the First Republic, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The Second Republic witnessed the tension between the "Social and Democratic Republic" and a liberal form of republicanism, which exploded during the June Days uprising of 1848.
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, Second French Revolution or Trois Glorieuses in French, led to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would be overthrown in 1848. It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, under the restored House of Bourbon, to another, the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, the House of Orléans; and the replacement of the principle of hereditary right by that of popular sovereignty. Supporters of the Bourbon would be called Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe Orléanists.
Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second Napoleonic Empire in 1870. He earned a living throughout most of his life producing caricatures and cartoons of political figures and satirizing the behavior of his countrymen in newspapers and periodicals, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still known today. He was a republican democrat who attacked the bourgeoisie, the church, lawyers and the judiciary, politicians, and the monarchy. He was jailed for several months in 1832 after the publication of Gargantua, a particularly offensive and discourteous depiction of King Louis-Philippe. Daumier was also a serious painter, loosely associated with realism.
Louis-Mathieu Molé, also 1st Count Molé from 1809 to 1815, was a French statesman, close friend and associate of Louis Philippe I, King of the French during the July Monarchy (1830–1848).
The July Monarchy was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under Louis Philippe I, starting on 26 July 1830, with the July Revolution of 1830, and ending 23 February 1848, with the Revolution of 1848. It marks the end of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830). It began with the overthrow of the conservative government of Charles X, the last king of the House of Bourbon.
Achille Léonce Victor Charles, 3rd Duke of Broglie, fully Victor de Broglie, was a French peer, statesman, and diplomat. He was the third duke of Broglie and served as president of the Council during the July Monarchy, from August 1830 to November 1830 and from March 1835 to February 1836. Victor de Broglie was close to the liberal Doctrinaires who opposed the ultra-royalists and were absorbed, under Louis-Philippe's rule, by the Orléanists.
The Doctrinals was the name given during the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848) to the group of French royalists who hoped to reconcile the monarchy with the French Revolution and power with liberty. Headed by Royer-Collard, these liberal royalists were in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but with a heavily restricted census suffrage—Louis XVIII, who had been restored to the throne, had granted a Charter to the French with a Chamber of Peers and a Chamber of Deputies elected under tight electoral laws.
Charles Philipon. Born in Lyon, he was a French lithographer, caricaturist and journalist. He was the editor of the La Caricature and of Le Charivari, both satirical political journals.
Albert Boime, was an American art historian and author of more than 20 art history books and numerous academic articles. He was a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles for three decades, until his death.
The June 1832 Rebellion or the Paris Uprising of 1832 was an anti-monarchist insurrection of Parisian republicans on 5 and 6 June 1832.
The 1848 Revolution in the History of France, sometimes known as the February Revolution, was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France, the revolutionary events ended the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and led to the creation of the French Second Republic.
Jean Lacave-Laplagne was a French magistrate and politician.
Guillaume-Isidore Baron de Montbel was a French politician who was a mayor of Toulouse, a deputy and a minister in the French government during the last year of the Bourbon Restoration. He was an ardent royalist and opposed to the freedom of press. After the July Revolution of 1830 he was tried in absentia and sentenced to civil death. He was later pardoned and returned to France.
Jean Baptiste Auguste Vinchon was a French painter.
Jean-Baptiste David was a French painter and lithographer. His illustrations appeared in many books and magazines. He was particularly known for his illustrations of contemporary Parisian fashions.
La Caricature was a satirical weekly published French periodical that was distributed in Paris between 1830 and 1843 during the July Monarchy. Its cartoons repeatedly attacked King Louis Philippe, whom it typically depicted as a pear.
Paris during the reign of King Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) was the city described in the novels of Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo. Its population increased from 785,000 in 1831 to 1,053,000 in 1848, as the city grew to the north and west, while the poorest neighborhoods in the center became even more crowded.
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