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 I, nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the penultimate monarch of France, and the last French monarch to bear the title "King." He abdicated from his throne during the French Revolution of 1848, which led to the foundation of the French Second Republic.
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics between the Revolution of 1830 and the Revolution of 1848.
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, officially the French Republic, was the second republican government of France. It existed from 1848 until its dissolution in 1852.
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 French Empire in 1870. He earned a living producing caricatures and cartoons in newspapers and periodicals such as La Caricature and Le Charivari, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still remembered today. He was a republican democrat, who satirized and lampooned the monarchy, politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the bourgeoisie, as well as his countrymen and human nature in general.
Louis-Mathieu, comte Molé was a French statesman and a close friend and associate of Louis Philippe I, King of the French during the July Monarchy (1830–1848).
The July Monarchy, officially the Kingdom of France, was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under Louis Philippe I, starting on 26 July 1830, with the revolutionary victory after 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 main line House of Bourbon.
During the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848), the Doctrinals were a 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. The Doctrinaires were a centrist, as well as a conservative-liberal group, but at that time, liberal was considered to be the mainstream political left, so the group was considered a centre-left group.
Charles Philipon was a French lithographer, caricaturist and journalist. He was the founder and director of the satirical political journals La Caricature and of Le Charivari.
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 Rebellion, or the Paris Uprising of 1832, was an anti-monarchist insurrection of Parisian republicans on 5 and 6 June 1832.
The French Revolution of 1848, also known as the February Revolution, was a period of civil unrest in France, in February 1848, that led to the collapse of the July Monarchy and the foundation of the French Second Republic. It sparked the wave of revolutions of 1848.
Jean Lacave-Laplagne was a French magistrate and politician.
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 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.
The Resistance Party was a centre-right conservative Orléanist political group during the July Monarchy.
The Republic, known in French as La République, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Honoré Daumier, created in 1848. It is a sketch made for a contest that would decide an official painting destined to represent the French Second Republic. It is held at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Louis-Philippe and His Sons Riding Out from Versailles is an 1846 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Horace Vernet.
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