On the left: Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud

While the Blue Hour might vanish into the black night (or continue, by means of artificial light, into the black night), we are proud to present here our second feature, no, our second capricious essayistic waking dream, a documentation, dedicated exclusively to the cultural history of the Blue Hour in the 19th century.
Who was the first and when, in modern times, to use that term? To speak of the Blue Hour, and, in a way, to name it?
Well, if we are not mistaken, it was, in July of 1872, and in referring to Brussels, poète maudit Arthur Rimbaud. Who did speak, in a poem, of the »heures bleues«. Which is all the more interesting since it is about the time that Claude Monet painted his subsequently famous, notoriously famous Impression, Sunrise at Le Havre (picture above: DS).

Flashback: It had been a German writer in summer of 2014, interpreting a painting by Titian, in passing by (since the Blue Hour was not his actual concern) as a rendering of the Blue Hour. Which did inspire our first essay on the matter (to be found here).
I assume that many art historians, in the meantime, have contradicted the novelist, because art historians tend to describe the time of day or night, or inbetween, that is being represented by Titian in that particular painting as rather being a late afternoon (compare for example what Frederick Hartt says as to this Titian).
But be it as it may. The question, however, does remain: what about the cultural history of the Blue Hour?
We have dealt with the age of the Renaissance in our first feature. And here we ask for the Blue Hour of the 19th century. The 19th century that, by the way, did invent so many things that have been transmitted to us, like for example film, soccer, and yes, also electric light.

And helped by a beautiful doctoral thesis on the color blue in poetry, written by Angelika Overath (Das andere Blau. Zur Poetik einer Farbe im modernen Gedicht, Stuttgart 1987), we are inclined to put a very basic, but still useful and hopefully illuminating chronicle together, dedicated exclusively to the history of the Blue Hour in poetry and painting of the 19th century (and some other day, we might be inclined to ask, if there is also such thing as a Blue Hour in politics).

The perfume by Guerlin, published in 1912, was a 20th century matter, and does not concern us here at all (picture: ecrindesparfums.blogspot.ch)

1870: 15-year-old Arthur Rimbaud, still living at Charleville, which is… in the province, writes of »les soirs bleus d’été« (compare also Flaubert’s Madame Bovary of 1857, chapter two, for an interesting scenario of dawning that is worked out beautifully in Claude Chabrol’s 1991 film).

1872: In July Arthur Rimbaud writes Est-elle almée ?… (published only in 1895; for the meaning of almée see here); Claude Monet paints Impression, Sunrise, being exhibited and much discussed in 1874 (on the right an example of his later (1892-94) – as it were – declining the light).

1879 (c.): And the cultural history intertwines with the history of the light bulb and artificial light in general (interfering with the natural light declining day and night).

1890: Max Klinger, Die blaue Stunde (on the left; with a fire as the artificial light and three poses of musing); at the same time Albert Besnard paints his L’heure bleue (no picture available at the moment).

1899: Stefan George, Blaue Stunde (poem; dedicated to painters Reinhold and Sabine Lepsius, and referring to a Berlin Blue Hour).

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1995: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Arthur Rimbaud in Total Eclipse. And we have come full circle (19th century plus film plus – possibly – Blue Hour).

And yes, also the 20th century does concern us here, with for example Michael Mann’s cinematic Blue Hours… (picture: scarina.wordpress.com)


…and night blue hues… (picture: critic.de)


(Picture: vimeo.com)

© DS