The Art of the Shoe. Marie-Josèphe Bossan
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until 1829 that news of its astonishing reappearance was published in the fashion periodical Le Petit Courrier de Dames: “We dare risk reporting shoes with a high heel positioned mid-sole, raising the in-step and thereby lending grace to walking. At least if our heels are constructed this way, they will not be ridiculous like our grandmother’s heels.”
Another fashion publication, Les Modes Parisiennes, in 1850 reported: “Some women are wearing heeled shoes according to their whim; this shows a desire to succumb to fashion, because they are very uncomfortable for dancing; ankle-boots have also begun to have little heels; these can only be suitable for women who do not have to wear rubber overshoes.” The Second Empire preferred luxury and had an appetite for parties.
70. Louis Boilly. Portrait of a Man, 1805. Museum of Fine Arts, Lille.
71. Boots of Imperial Prince Jean-Joseph-Eugene-Louis Napoleon, only son of Napoleon III and Eugenie de Montijo. International Shoe Museum, Romans.
72. Woman’s shoe in bronze kidskin, double attachment. Charles IX. Buttoned on the side, embroidery with gilded metal beads, leather sole, reel heel. 19th century. International Shoe Museum, Romans.
73. Pair of men’s shoes in black leather and openworked black silk. Around 1830. Galliera Museum, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris. Photo by Pierrain, PMVP.
74. Bride’s shoe, bead design in heart shape. Marriage the 10th of November 1896. International Shoe Museum, Romans.
75. Bride’s shoe, detail, bead design in heart shape. Marriage the 10th of November 1896. International Shoe Museum, Romans.
In contrast to the bourgeois court of Louis-Philippe, that of Napoleon III (1808–1873) proved to be extremely brilliant. Its salons and boulevards became a theater of society life, while the operettas of Jacques Offenbach, in particular La Vie Parisienne, mirrored the period’s joie de vivre with a sense of humor. The passion for crinoline born around 1850 led to a revitalization of couture. The Empress Eugenie (1826–1920) brought fame to her couturier, Charles-Frederic Worth, who opened his salon in 1858, clothing the actresses and courtesans of the period, in addition to his imperial client. The bourgeoisie meanwhile accelerated their rise and pursued financial gain. The ankle boot reigned supreme, made of leather or cloth and very narrowly shaped. Decorated with embroidery and braids, it was either laced up or buttoned via a row of little buttons, whence the invention of the tire-bouton or buttonhook. The Second Empire also marks a decisive stage in the history of footwear, characterized by advances in mechanization and large-scale industry. Traditional shoemaking, which changed in 1809 when a machine for tacking soles appeared in England, was transformed by the industrial revolution. In 1819, another new machine made wooden pegs for tacking soles. But the biggest change came from Thimonnier’s invention of the sewing machine, patented in 1830. A perfect invention, the sewing machine made it possible to stitch uppers of soft materials and began to spread among shoemakers in 1860. The technique improved their production yields, as machines positioned the heel, stitched the upper, and attached the upper to the sole. After 1870, it became common to use a form for each foot, which enabled shoes to correspond to anatomy. Industrial development began to overtake hand-made shoes as factories were established and expanded, in particular the Rousset Company in Blois in 1851. François Pinet’s career is a classic example.
76. Adolph Menzel. Rolling Mill, 1872–1875. Oil on canvas. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
77. Jules Breton. The Return of the Gleaners, 1859. Oil on canvas. 90 x 176 cm. Orsay Museum, Paris.
78. Gustave Courbet, The Sifters, 1854–1855, oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.
Shoes and Poverty
In the wake of the Second Empire’s Fête Impériale or Imperial Celebration, the taste for magnificent clothing was matched with opulence in the art of the shoe. Examples of these styles, worn by the aristocracy and the increasingly wealthy bourgeoisie, can be seen today in public and private collections. Evidence of the fashions of their times, they are proof of the traditional expertise handed down from one generation to the next, revealing the individuality and the craftsmanship of their creators, whether famous or anonymous. On the other hand, the less well-dressed lower classes wore their shoes until thoroughly deteriorated; so common was this reality, these shoes are rarely preserved today. Nevertheless, images of these shoes survive, thanks to the art of painting. The writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), a friend of Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), taught that art should serve society and extol social demands. Although Napoleon III cared about improving the workers’ hard lot, social conflicts remained and shook the traditional value system despite his efforts. Artists responded to what was going on around them by depicting in their painting the economic and social transformation brought on by the machine and industrialization. German painter Adolph Menzel (1815–1905) first visited Paris in 1855. At the World Fair he discovered the pavilion devoted to Courbet’s realism. Menzel was a court painter who commemorated ceremonies and celebrations, but he was also interested in factory labour, and looked at people with sincere and honest interest. This was important because an artist first had to consider the worker a worthy subject before the worker could become the painting’s focal point. In The Rolling Mill (Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museum zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz), dated 1872–1875, labourers are depicted busy at work dressed in crude, old shoes with worn-down heels, worn without stockings. The writer and art critic Champfleury, author of a book on popular imagery and contributor to the socialist journal The People’s Voice, inspired the painter Gustave Courbet. Courbet depicted the modest shoes worn by the working classes in his socialist paintings, such as The Stone Breakers, which disappeared from the Dresden Museum during the Second World War, and The Burial at Ornans. The Stone Breakers features a pair of clogs worn by the worker in right foreground, of which the left one is cracked inside. The worker moving rocks in the left foreground better protects his feet with rustic laced shoes of crude leather. The Burial at Ornans depicts poor and prominent villagers gathered for an indigent’s burial in a communal plot. The sharp contrast between the different social classes is echoed by their shoes: the grave digger’s simple laced shoes are worn out, whereas the elegant black shoes worn by the society figures look like new.
The son of a peasant, Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) painted scenes of rural life, each one a testament to the peasant’s humble labour and the nobility of man on earth. Farm hands, who were day workers, are usually depicted in simple clogs, as seen in The Angelus (1857–1859), The Wood Splitter, and The Gleaners (Salon of 1857).
The painter Jules Breton was also interested in peasant life and painted lively scenes. In the Call of the Gleaners (Salon of 1859), he depicts young women in clogs or bare feet. A lack of shoes was a sign of abject poverty, symbolized by the French expression “va-nu-pieds,” which literally means, “who goes barefoot.” As Jean-Paul Roux explains: “During the middle ages wearing shoes became one of the primary indicators a person was well born. It was of such importance that for a long time the feudal lord sometimes carried peasant shoes alongside leather ones! This is but a survival. The man with shoes was everything, the shoeless person was nothing. Va-nu-pieds! This expression, now a fixed label, has no real meaning today and we rarely use it. Yet quite recently, hundreds of years or more, in the unequivocal testimony of nineteenth-century novelists, the phrase carried its full weight as a synonym of the word beggar, and signified a man so poor he could not even pay for a pair of shoes.”
79. Jean Beraud. Parisian, place de