ABSTRACT
French writers in the 19th century were keenly aware that through the representation of the artist they could comment on the status of representation itself, including literary representation. This was one of the reasons why many of them chose to depict painters in their works. Other, sometimes related, reasons included: the creation of the romantic hero of art in the early decades of the century, a mythical figure that was compelling to writers of all literary schools; the many mutations in the evolution of French art from Romanticism to Realism and Symbolism, which provided subject matter for writers who aimed to summarize the significant cultural events of their time; the rise in the number of artists and the sheer saturation of 19th-century French society with art exhibits, sales, salons, and critiques; and the related commercialization of art, which paralleled the rise of publishing as a business. In their depictions of artists, writers could not and did not ignore gender. A feminine presence - literary models were almost without exception female - was often inscribed in these texts through the depiction of the female model as either loving companion of the artist, foil to the artist's success, or both. Novels and short stories commented, therefore, not only on the relationship between painterly and literary realism but also on the convergence of the public sphere of the art world and the private (domestic) sphere of the atelier in the 19th century.
