Albert ADAM (1833 – vers 1900)

Provenance:
• France, private collection.

Bibliography:
• Christian Vivier, *L’aventure canotière: Du canotage à l’aviron. Histoire de la nautique bisontine (1865-1930)*, [Thesis], Claude-Bernard University of Lyon, Paris: Association Francophone for Research in Physical Activities and Sports, 1994.

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In Paris, the activity known as "canotage" emerged in the 1840s. This term circulated in the press as a leisurely navigation or racing activity in "canots", undecked rowing boats. The success of this new activity led to the development of events organised around it. Gradually, the communes along the banks of the Seine began organising their own events through rowing societies, attracting large crowds of spectators.

The oldest and most famous regattas near Paris are those of the town of Asnières, an example of which is presented here from the late 1850s. The artist, Albert Adam, devoted himself to the precise and meticulous representation of this popular event. On the banks of the Seine, a crowd of spectators flutters near the boats, dressed for the occasion: women wear their finest outfits with hats and crinolines, while the men are either in formal wear with top hats or in crew attire. Some cheer the slender rowers with raised arms, others engage in conversation, while some, gathered around a picnic, smoke their pipes.

Beyond the sporting admiration, regattas became, by the mid-19th century, a key event in the social life around the capital. The event took on an essential social character, referred to as "river balls". Attracted by this wild charm, far from the noise of the city, Parisians flocked to the Seine. The famous *Grenouillère* at Croissy, depicted by many Impressionists and nicknamed the "Trouville on the banks of the Seine", would host Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Eugénie in 1869.

These social and leisure spots were heavily criticised by the Romantics, who saw in them a new kind of hypocrisy. In *La Maison Tellier*, Guy de Maupassant expresses this phenomenon: "Some locals pass by out of curiosity every Sunday; some very young men appear there each year, learning to live. Strollers show up; some naïve people get lost there."

The familiar term "rowing", as we know it today, was imported from England, where racing these narrow boats on rivers and streams became internationally renowned as early as the 1830s. The most famous competition remains the one held on the River Thames between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in 1829. In France, boating took on an international dimension from the mid-19th century.

In 1853, the Société des Régates Parisiennes (S.R.P.) organised the first Seine Championship. In 1859, the year Albert Adam painted our gouache, the Rowing Club of Paris (R.C.P.) introduced the British model: newly trained teams were now organised into "clubs", and the rowers, now professionals, were called "rowing men". The town of Argenteuil hosted races in 1867 for the occasion of the Universal Exhibition.

Passionate about this new sporting development, Albert Adam studied the start of the rowing men at Asnières in 1859 and also created a lithograph of it (ill. 1). Dedicated to his friend Émile Duquesne, our drawing reveals, through a composition divided horizontally into two parts, the two main aspects of these events: a crowd in emulation before the boats, now organised into teams, all just launched onto the Seine.

M.O