Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942) is rarely included in histories of late nineteenth-century French art, despite his prolific career as an artist who produced over 2,000 paintings. A portraitist, Blanche’s upbringing as the son of an eminent psychiatrist provided him with a wealth of sitters connected to his father’s fashionable clinic and, I argue, a distinctive approach to their representation. These relatively unstudied portraits of famous Parisian intellectuals and socialites deserve our attention as works of ‘psychological impressionism’. Combining penetrating observation with painterly execution, Blanche’s methods emphasised the ‘nervous’ disposition of his sitters. Blanche’s practice as a portraitist is one of the reasons for his neglect. His contemporaries were evasive when it came to writing about the genre, uncertain of how to evaluate it – a critical apprehension that has persisted to this day. Art historians are as implicated in what may be thought of as a hesitation around the status and significance of portraiture in late-nineteenth-century French art. The thesis seeks in part to redress this through its examination of Blanche’s portraits as intuitive works of art that not only reflected but also, more actively, produced particular forms of knowledge about the ‘nervous’ condition of Parisian high society. With a focus on Blanche’s depictions of Marcel Proust (1871-1922) and the Comtesse de Castiglione (1837-1899), the thesis considers Blanche’s ‘neurasthenic portraits’ in relation to discourses on modern psychiatry, modernity, and modern art, drawing attention to how they enrich our understanding of the social, cultural and artistic contexts in which Blanche lived and worked. By situating Blanche’s artistic practice within his father’s clinical practice, and by embracing a methodology that draws upon both the histories of art and psychiatry, I argue that the language of Blanche’s portraiture was environmentally connected to the language of nervous disorder. As such this thesis will provide an original contribution to the scholarship on Blanche and offer significant insights into the entanglement of art, culture and nerves in nineteenth-century Paris.

French art in the interwar Czechoslovakia and its influence The Diploma thesis / Šárka Komedová Abstract The aim of the Diploma thesis French art in the interwar Czechoslovakia and its influence is to show a significance of French art for a development of Czechoslovakian art in an interwar period. It will focus on the Czech-French cultural relationships, the French art exhibitions and other French cultural activities in Prague 1918-1938. The main part of the thesis is detailed documentation of French art exhibitions held in interwar Prague. It will also deal with influences of the French art on interwar Czechoslovakian visual art. Keywords Czechoslovakia (1918 - 1939), Prague's exhibitions of French art, French modern art, Czech interwar art, The popularity of French nation

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En 2011, suite à un mouvement de réformation accélérée menant à l'appropriation par les écoles d'art françaises du dispositif LMD, celles-ci rejoignent l'espace européen de l'enseignement supérieur et quittent le ''régime de singularité'' qui les distinguait du système universitaire. Cette adhésion signe l'aboutissement d'une série de mesures dont l'implémentation visait à agir sur deux dimensions constitutives (différentes mais complémentaires) de la réalité des écoles d'art : la dimension académique, dont la mise aux normes des cursus et la restructuration de l'organisation pédagogique permettaient à ces établissements de délivrer des diplômes reconnus au grade de master ; le volet administratif qui, à travers la transformation des écoles d'art en établissements publics de coopération culturelle (EPCC), amorce un processus d'autonomisation vis-à-vis des structures tutélaires locales. C'est par une double opération d'interrogation des déterminants qui sont au fondement de la ''remise à niveau'' de la condition des écoles d'art, et d'examen des outils de gouvernance rendant effectif le déploiement de l'autonomie décrétée, que cette recherche se propose de saisir les nouveaux enjeux dont les écoles d'art font l'objet. / In 2011, following an accelerated reformation movement led by the network of French art schools, they joined the European area of higher education, getting out of the ''regime of singularity '', which distinguished them from the university system. This adherence note the accomplishment of a series of measures, whose implementation was intended to affect two distinct dimensions, constituting the reality of art schools: -the academic dimension, including the ''upgrading'' of curricula and restructuring the pedagogical organization, which allowed to accredit the awarded degree with a recognized diploma; -the administrative dimension, which through the transformation of municipal art schools into Public Cultural Cooperation Establishment (EPCC) aimed to start the empowerment process of local authorities. The aim of this research was to perceive the new issues regarding the art schools, one of them being the factors that stimulated the ''upgrading'' of the art schools condition. The other issue examined the governance tools that made possible and effective the deployment of autonomy decreed.

The luminous, famous and enigmatic The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are timelss objects at the center of heated scholarly discussion. There are six tapestries, created circa 1480-1500 (figures 1 – 6), and were commissioned by the le Viste family of Lyon, whose heraldic arms appear in each tapestry. This paper seeks to connect the tapestries conceptually to contemporary courtly, feminine ideals, the image of woman in late fifteenth-century Paris, and most importantly to Christine de Pizan's writings, particularly City of Ladies and The Treasury of the City of Ladies, both written in 1405. Through her texts, Christine de Pizan (1363 – 1434) created a noble, dignified image of women that may have influenced the way viewers were intended to perceive The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. While recent scholarly studies have connected the tapestries to contemporary texts, there has not been a discussion regarding Christine de Pizan's influential writings, their surrounding discourse, or the image of a woman as the visual embodiment of the le Viste family in connection to the tapestries. Specific passages in Christine's texts resemble motifs, objects, and underlying messages in The Lady and the Unicorn. While Christine's works may not have been the direct inspiration for the tapestries, both are a part of the visual and textual make-up of the abstracted feminine ideals that were circulating in Paris and France at large in the fifteenth century. The Lady and the Unicorn may also have had a didactic purpose similar to Christine's Treasury of the City of Ladies, displaying for the le Viste daughters through a visual medium the attributes of the ideal maiden. Exploring the cultural context in which The Lady and the Unicorn was created, specifically as it relates to women in society, the upper class, expectations for young maidens, visual and written moral messages for women and their artistic manifestations provides a new understanding of these exceptional tapestries.