Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the lovely original illustrations.
See 14056-h.htm or 14056-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/5/14056/14056-h/14056-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/5/14056/14056-h.zip)
THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS (1860-1900)
by
CAMILLE MAUCLAIR
Author of _L'art en Silence_, _Les Mères Sociales_, etc.
Translated from the French text of Camille Mauclair, by P. G. Konody
London: Duckworth & Co.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh
1903
[Illustration: RENOIR
AT THE PIANO]
To
AUGUSTE BRÉAL
TO THE ARTIST AND TO THE FRIEND
AS A MARK OF GRATEFUL AFFECTION
C.M.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
It should be stated here that, with the exception of one reproduction
after the Neo-Impressionist Van Rysselberghe, the other forty-nine
engravings illustrating this volume I owe to the courtesy of M.
Durand-Ruel, from the first the friend of the Impressionist painters,
and later the most important collector of their works, a friend who has
been good enough to place at our disposal the photographs from which our
illustrations have been reproduced. Chosen from a considerable
collection which has been formed for thirty years past, these
photographs, none of which are for sale, form a veritable and unique
museum of documents on Impressionist art, which is made even more
valuable through the dispersal of the principal masterpieces of this art
among the private collections of Europe and America. We render our
thanks to M. Durand-Ruel no less in the name of the public interested in
art, than in our own.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I. THE PRECURSORS OF IMPRESSIONISM--THE
BEGINNING OF THIS MOVEMENT, THE
ORIGIN OF ITS NAME
II. THE THEORY OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS--THE
DIVISION OF TONES, COMPLEMENTARY COLOURS,
THE STUDY OF ATMOSPHERE--THE IDEAS OF THE
IMPRESSIONISTS ON SUBJECT-PICTURES, ON
THE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER, ON MODERNITY,
AND ON STYLE
III. EDOUARD MANET: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
IV. EDGAR DEGAS: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
V. CLAUDE MONET: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
VI. AUGUSTE RENOIR: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
VII. PISSARRO, SISLEY, CAILLEBOTTE,
CÉZANNE, BERTHE MORISOT, MARY CASSATT;
THE SECONDARY ARTISTS OF
IMPRESSIONISM--JONGKIND, BOUDIN
VIII. THE MODERN ILLUSTRATORS CONNECTED WITH
IMPRESSIONISM: RAFFAËLLI, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC,
FORAIN, CHÉRET, ETC.
IX. NEO-IMPRESSIONISM: GAUGUIN, DENIS,
THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE--THE THEORY OF
POINTILLISM--SEURAT, SIGNAC AND THE
THEORIES OF SCIENTIFIC CHROMATISM--FAULTS
AND QUALITIES OF THE
IMPRESSIONIST MOVEMENT, WHAT WE OWE
TO IT, ITS PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THE
FRENCH SCHOOL--SOME WORDS ON ITS
INFLUENCE ABROAD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
RENOIR. At the Piano (Frontispiece)
MANET. Rest
MANET. In the Square
MANET. Young Man in Costume of Majo
MANET. The Reader
DEGAS. The Dancer at the Photographer's
DEGAS. Carriages at the Races
DEGAS. The Greek Dance--Pastel
DEGAS. Waiting
CLAUDE MONET. The Pines
CLAUDE MONET. Church at Vernon
RENOIR. Portrait of Madame Maitre
MANET. The Dead Toreador
MANET. Olympia
MANET. The Woman with the Parrot
MANET. The Bar at the Folies Bergère
MANET. Déjeuner
MANET. Portrait of Madame M. L.
MANET. The Hothouse
DEGAS. The Beggar Woman
DEGAS. The Lesson in the Foyer
DEGAS. The Dancing Lesson--Pastel
DEGAS. The Dancers
DEGAS. Horses in the Meadows
CLAUDE MONET. An Interior after Dinner
CLAUDE MONET. The Harbour, Honfleur
CLAUDE MONET. The Church at Varengeville
CLAUDE MONET. Poplars on the Epte in Autumn
CLAUDE MONET. The Bridge at Argenteuil
RENOIR. Déjeuner
RENOIR. In the Box
RENOIR. Young Girl Promenading
RENOIR. Woman's Bust
RENOIR. Young Woman in Empire Costume
RENOIR. On the Terrace
PISSARRO. Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen
PISSARRO. Boulevard Montmartre
PISSARRO. The Boildieaux Bridge at Rouen
PISSARRO. The Avenue de l'Opéra
SISLEY. Snow Effect
SISLEY. Bougival, at the Water's Edge
SISLEY. Bridge at Moret
CÉZANNE. Dessert
BERTHE MORISOT. Melancholy
BERTHE MORISOT. Young Woman Seated
MARY CASSATT. Getting up Baby
MARY CASSATT. Women and Child
JONGKIND. In Holland
JONGKIND. View of the Hague
THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE. Portraits of Madame van Rysselberghe and her
Daughter
NOTE TO LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The illustrations contained in this volume have been taken from
different epochs of the Impressionist movement. They will give but a
feeble idea of the extreme abundance of its production.
Banished from the salons, exhibited in private galleries and sold direct
to art lovers, the Impressionist works have been but little seen. The
series left by Caillebotte to the Luxembourg Gallery is very badly shown
and is composed of interesting works which, however, date back to the
early period, and are very inferior to the beautiful productions which
followed later. Renoir is best represented. The private galleries in
Paris, where the best Impressionist works are to be found, are those of
MM. Durand-Ruel, Rouart, de Bellis, de Camondo, and Manzi, to which must
be added the one sold by MM. Théodore Duret and Faure, and the one of
Mme. Ernest Rouart, daughter of Mme. Morisot, the sister-in-law of
Manet. The public galleries of M. Durand-Ruel's show-rooms are the place
where it is easiest to find numerous Impressionist pictures.
In spite of the firm opposition of the official juries, a place of
honour was reserved at the Exposition of 1889 for Manet, and at that of
1900 a fine collection of Impressionists occupied two rooms and caused a
considerable stir.
Amongst the critics who have most faithfully assisted this group of
artists, I must mention, besides the early friends previously referred
to, Castagnary, Burty, Edouard de Goncourt, Roger Marx, Geffroy, Arsène
Alexandre, Octave Mirbeau, L. de Fourcaud, Clemenceau, Mallarmé,
Huysmans, Jules Laforgue, and nearly all the critics of the Symbolist
reviews. A book on "Impressionist Art" by M. Georges Lecomte has been
published by the firm of Durand-Ruel as an _edition-de-luxe_. But the
bibliography of this art consists as yet almost exclusively of articles
in journals and reviews and of some isolated biographical pamphlets.
Manet is, amongst many, the one who has excited most criticism of all
kinds; the articles, caricatures and pamphlets relating to his work
would form a considerable collection. It should be added that, with the
exception of Manet two years before his death, and Renoir last year at
the age of sixty-eight, no Impressionist has been decorated by the
French government. In England such a distinction has even less
importance in itself than elsewhere. But if I insist upon it, it is only
to draw attention to the fact that, through the sheer force of their
talent, men like Degas, Monet and Pissarro have achieved great fame and
fortune, without gaining access to the Salons, without official
encouragement, decoration, subvention or purchases for the national
museums. This is a very significant instance and serves well to complete
the physiognomy of this group of independents.
I
THE PRECURSORS OF IMPRESSIONISM--THE BEGINNING OF THIS MOVEMENT AND THE
ORIGIN OF ITS NAME
It will be beyond the scope of this volume to give a complete history of
French Impressionism, and to include all the attractive details to which
it might lead, as regards the movement itself and the very curious epoch
during which its evolution has taken place. The proportions of this book
confine its aim to the clearest possible summing up for the British
reader of the ideas, the personalities and the works of a considerable
group of artists who, for various reasons, have remained but little
known and who have only too frequently been gravely misjudged. These
reasons are very obvious: first, the Impressionists have been unable to
make a show at the Salons, partly because the jury refused them
admission, partly because they held aloof of their own free will. They
have, with very rare exceptions, exhibited at special minor galleries,
where they become known to a very restricted public. Ever attacked, and
poor until the last few years, they enjoyed none of the benefits of
publicity and sham glory. It is only quite recently that the admission
of the incomplete and badly arranged Caillebotte collection to the
Luxembourg Gallery has enabled the public to form a summary idea of
Impressionism. To conclude the enumeration of the obstacles, it must be
added that there are hardly any photographs of Impressionist works in
the market. As it is, photography is but a poor translation of these
canvases devoted to the study of the play of light; but even this very
feeble means of distribution has been withheld from them! Exhibited at
some galleries, gathered principally by Durand-Ruel, sold directly to
art-lovers--foreigners mostly--these large series of works have
practically remained unknown to the French public. All the public heard
was the reproaches and sarcastic comments of the opponents, and they
never became aware that in the midst of modern life the greatest, the
richest movement was in progress, which the French school had known
since the days of Romanticism. Impressionism has been made known to them
principally by the controversies and by the fruitful consequences of
this movement for the illustration and study of contemporary life.
[Illustration: MANET
REST]
I do not profess to give here a detailed and complete history of
Impressionism, for which several volumes like the present one would be
required. I shall only try to compile an _ensemble_ of concise and very
precise notions and statements bearing upon this vast subject. It will
be my special object to try and prove that Impressionism is neither an
isolated manifestation, nor a violent denial of the French traditions,
but nothing more or less than a logical return to the very spirit of
these traditions, contrary to the theories upheld by its detractors. It
is for this reason that I have made use of the first chapter to say a
few words on the precursors of this movement.
No art manifestation is really isolated. However new it may seem, it is
always based upon the previous epochs. The true masters do not give
lessons, because art cannot be taught, but they set the example. To
admire them does not mean to imitate them: it means the recognition in
them of the principles of originality and the comprehension of their
source, so that this eternal source may be called to life in oneself,
this source which springs from a sincere and sympathetic vision of the
aspects of life. The Impressionists have not escaped this beautiful law.
I shall speak of them impartially, without excessive enthusiasm; and it
will be my special endeavour to demonstrate in each of them the cult of
a predecessor, for there have been few artistic movements where the love
for, and one might say the hereditary link with, the preceding masters
has been more tenacious.
The Academy has struggled violently against Impressionism, accusing it
of madness, of systematic negation of the "laws of beauty," which it
pretended to defend and of which it claimed to be the official priest.
The Academy has shown itself hostile to a degree in this quarrel. It has
excluded the Impressionists from the Salons, from awards, from official
purchases. Only quite recently the acceptance of the Caillebotte
bequest to the Luxembourg Gallery gave rise to a storm of indignation
among the official painters. I shall, in the course of this book, enter
upon the value of these attacks. Meanwhile I can only say how
regrettable this obstinacy appears to me and will appear to every free
spirit. It is unworthy even of an ardent conviction to condemn a whole
group of artists _en bloc_ as fools, enemies of beauty, or as tricksters
anxious to degrade the art of their nation, when these artists worked
during forty years towards the same goal, without getting any reward for
their effort, but poverty and derision. It is now about ten years since
Impressionism has taken root, since its followers can sell their
canvases, and since they are admired and praised by a solid and
ever-growing section of the public. The hour has therefore arrived,
calmly to consider a movement which has imposed itself upon the history
of French art from 1860 to 1900 with extreme energy, to leave
dithyrambics as well as polemics, and to speak of it with a view to
exactness. The Academy, in continuing the propagation of an ideal of
beauty fixed by canons derived from Greek, Latin and Renaissance art,
and neglecting the Gothic, the Primitives and the Realists, looks upon
itself as the guardian of the national tradition, because it exercises
an hierarchic authority over the _Ecole de Rome_, the _Salons_, and the
_Ecole des Beaux Arts_. All the same, its ideals are of very mixed
origin and very little French. Its principles are the same by which the
academic art of nearly all the official schools of Europe is governed.
This mythological and allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas
which are imposed upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is
far more international than national. To an impartial critic this
statement will show in an even more curious light the excommunication
jealously issued by the academic painters against French artists, who,
far from revolting in an absurd spirit of _parti-pris_ against the
genius of their race, are perhaps more sincerely attached to it than
their persecutors. Why should a group of men deliberately choose to
paint mad, illogical, bad pictures, and reap a harvest of public
derision, poverty and sterility? It would be uncritical to believe
merely in a general mystification which makes its authors the worst
sufferers. Simple common sense will find in these men a conviction, a
sincerity, a sustained effort, and this alone should, in the name of the
sacred solidarity of those who by various means try to express their
love of the beautiful, suppress the annoying accusations hurled too
light-heartedly against Manet and his friends.
[Illustration: MANET
IN THE SQUARE]
I shall define later on the ideas of the Impressionists on technique,
composition and style in painting. Meanwhile it will be necessary to
indicate their principal precursors.
Their movement may be styled thus: a reaction against the Greco-Latin
spirit and the scholastic organisation of painting after the second
Renaissance and the Italo-French school of Fontainebleau, by the century
of Louis XIV., the school of Rome, and the consular and imperial taste.
In this sense Impressionism is a protest analogous to that of
Romanticism, exclaiming, to quote the old verse: "_Qui nous délivrera
des Grecs et des Romains?_"[1] From this point of view Impressionism has
also great affinities with the ideas of the English Pre-Raphaelites,
who stepped across the second and even the first Renaissance back to the
Primitives.
[Footnote 1: Who will deliver us from the Greeks and the Romans.]
This reaction is superimposed by another: the reaction of Impressionism,
not only against classic subjects, but against the black painting of the
degenerate Romanticists. And these two reactions are counterbalanced by
a return to the French ideal, to the realistic and characteristic
tradition which commences with Jean Foucquet and Clouet, and is
continued by Chardin, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, Watteau, La Tour,
Fragonard, and the admirable engravers of the eighteenth century down to
the final triumph of the allegorical taste of the Roman revolution. Here
can be found a whole chain of truly national artists who have either
been misjudged, like Chardin, or considered as "small masters" and
excluded from the first rank for the benefit of the pompous Allegorists
descended from the Italian school.
Impressionism being beyond all a technical reaction, its predecessors
should first be looked for from this material point of view. Watteau is
the most striking of all. _L'Embarquement pour Cythère_ is, in its
technique, an Impressionist canvas. It embodies the most significant
of all the principles exposed by Claude Monet: the division of tones by
juxtaposed touches of colour which, at a certain distance, produce upon
the eye of the beholder the effect of the actual colouring of the things
painted, with a variety, a freshness and a delicacy of analysis
unobtainable by a single tone prepared and mixed upon the palette.
[Illustration: MANET
YOUNG MAN IN COSTUME OF MAJO]
Claude Lorrain, and after him Carle Vernet, are claimed by the
Impressionists as precursors from the point of view of decorative
landscape arrangement, and particularly of the predominance of light in
which all objects are bathed. Ruysdael and Poussin are, in their eyes,
for the same reasons precursors, especially Ruysdael, who observed so
frankly the blue colouring of the horizon and the influence of blue upon
the landscape. It is known that Turner worshipped Claude for the very
same reasons. The Impressionists in their turn, consider Turner as one
of their masters; they have the greatest admiration for this mighty
genius, this sumptuous visionary. They have it equally for Bonington,
whose technique is inspired by the same observations as their own. They
find, finally, in Delacroix the frequent and very apparent application
of their ideas. Notably in the famous _Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople_, the fair woman kneeling in the foreground is painted in
accordance with the principles of the division of tones: the nude back
is furrowed with blue, green and yellow touches, the juxtaposition of
which produces, at a certain distance, an admirable flesh-tone.
And now I must speak at some length of a painter who, together with the
luminous and sparkling landscapist Félix Ziem, was the most direct
initiator of Impressionist technique. Monticelli is one of those
singular men of genius who are not connected with any school, and whose
work is an inexhaustible source of applications. He lived at Marseilles,
where he was born, made a short appearance at the Salons, and then
returned to his native town, where he died poor, ignored, paralysed and
mad. In order to live he sold his small pictures at the cafés, where
they fetched ten or twenty francs at the most. To-day they sell for
considerable prices, although the government has not yet acquired any
work by Monticelli for the public galleries. The mysterious power alone
of these paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous. Many
Monticellis have been sold by dealers as Diaz's; now they are more
eagerly looked for than Diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with
these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression
which is here only too literally true, "for a piece of bread."
Monticelli painted landscapes, romantic scenes, "fêtes galantes" in the
spirit of Watteau, and still-life pictures: one could not imagine a more
inspired sense of colour than shown by these works which seem to be
painted with crushed jewels, with powerful harmony, and beyond all with
an unheard-of delicacy in the perception of fine shades. There are tones
which nobody had ever invented yet, a richness, a profusion, a subtlety
which almost vie with the resources of music. The fairyland atmosphere
of these works surrounds a very firm design of charming style, but, to
use the words of the artist himself, "in these canvases the objects are
the decoration, the touches are the scales, and the light is the tenor."
Monticelli has created for himself an entirely personal technique which
can only be compared with that of Turner; he painted with a brush so
full, fat and rich, that some of the details are often truly modelled in
relief, in a substance as precious as enamels, jewels, ceramics--a
substance which is a delight in itself. Every picture by Monticelli
provokes astonishment; constructed upon one colour as upon a musical
theme, it rises to intensities which one would have thought impossible.
His pictures are magnificent bouquets, bursts of joy and colour, where
nothing is ever crude, and where everything is ruled by a supreme sense
of harmony.
[Illustration: MANET
THE READER]
Claude Lorrain, Watteau, Turner and Monticelli constitute really the
descent of a landscapist like Claude Monet. In all matters concerning
technique, they form the direct chain of Impressionism. As regards
design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of
beauty and the portrait, the Impressionist movement is based upon the
old French masters, principally upon Chardin, Watteau, Latour,
Largillière, Fragonard, Debucourt, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen. It
has resolutely held aloof from mythology, academic allegory, historical
painting, and from the neo-Greek elements of Classicism as well as from
the German and Spanish elements of Romanticism. This reactionary
movement is therefore entirely French, and surely if it deserves
reproach, the one least deserved is that levelled upon it by the
official painters: disobedience to the national spirit. Impressionism is
an art which does not give much scope to intellectuality, an art whose
followers admit scarcely anything but immediate vision, rejecting
philosophy and symbols and occupying themselves only with the
consideration of light, picturesqueness, keen and clever observation,
and antipathy to abstraction, as the innate qualities of French art. We
shall see later on, when considering separately its principal masters,
that each of them has based his art upon some masters of pure French
blood.
Impressionism has, then, hitherto been very badly judged. It is
contained in two chief points: search after a new technique, and
expression of modern reality. Its birth has not been a spontaneous
phenomenon. Manet, who, by his spirit and by the chance of his
friendships, grouped around him the principal members, commenced by
being classed in the ranks of the Realists of the second Romanticism by
the side of Courbet; and during the whole first period of his work he
only endeavoured to describe contemporary scenes, at a time when the
laws of the new technique were already dawning upon Claude Monet.
Gradually the grouping of the Impressionists took place. Claude Monet is
really the first initiator: in a parallel line with his ideas and his
works Manet passed into the second period of his artistic life, and with
him Renoir, Degas and Pissarro. But Manet had already during his first
period been the topic of far-echoing polemics, caused by his realism and
by the marked influence of the Spaniards and of Hals upon his style; his
temperament, too, was that of the head of a school; and for these
reasons legend has attached to his name the title of head of the
Impressionist school, but this legend is incorrect.
To conclude, the very name "Impressionism" is due to Claude Monet. There
has been much serious arguing upon this famous word which has given rise
to all sorts of definitions and conclusions. In reality this is its
curious origin which is little known, even in criticism. Ever since
1860 the works of Manet and of his friends caused such a stir, that they
were rejected _en bloc_ by the Salon jury of 1863. The emperor, inspired
by a praiseworthy, liberal thought, demanded that these innovators
should at least have the right to exhibit together in a special room
which was called the _Salon des Refusés_. The public crowded there to
have a good laugh. One of the pictures which caused most derision was a
sunset by Claude Monet, entitled _Impressions_. From this moment the
painters who adopted more or less the same manner were called
_Impressionists_. The word remained in use, and Manet and his friends
thought it a matter of indifference whether this label was attached to
them, or another. At this despised Salon were to be found the names of
Manet, Monet, Whistler, Bracquemont, Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Renoir,
Legros, and many others who have since risen to fame. Universal ridicule
only fortified the friendships and resolutions of this group of men, and
from that time dates the definite foundation of the Impressionist
school. For thirty years it continued to produce without interruption
an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and inexact
denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other dogma
than the passionate observation of nature, without any other assistance
than individual sympathies, in the face of the disciplinary teaching of
the official school.
[Illustration: DEGAS
THE DANCER AT THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S]
II
THE THEORY OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS--THE DIVISION OF TONES, COMPLEMENTARY
COLOURS, THE STUDY OF ATMOSPHERE--THE IDEAS OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS ON
SUBJECT-PICTURES, ON THE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER, ON MODERNITY, AND ON STYLE
It should be stated from the outset that there is nothing dogmatic about
this explanation of the Impressionist theories, and that it is not the
result of a preconceived plan. In art a system is not improvised. A
theory is slowly evolved, nearly always unknown to the author, from the
discoveries of his sincere instinct, and this theory can only be
formulated after years by criticism facing the works. Monet and Manet
have worked for a long time without ever thinking that theories would be
built upon their paintings. Yet a certain number of considerations will
strike the close observer, and I will put these considerations before
the reader, after reminding him that spontaneity and feeling are the
essentials of all art.
[Illustration: DEGAS
CARRIAGES AT THE RACES]
The Impressionist ideas may be summed up in the following manner:--
In nature no colour exists by itself. The colouring of the objects is a
pure illusion: the only creative source of colour is the sunlight which
envelopes all things, and reveals them, according to the hours, with
infinite modifications. The mystery of matter escapes us; we do not know
the exact moment when reality separates itself from unreality. All we
know is, that our vision has formed the habit of discerning in the
universe two notions: form and colour; but these two notions are
inseparable. Only artificially can we distinguish between outline and
colour: in nature the distinction does not exist. Light reveals the
forms, and, playing upon the different states of matter, the substance
of leaves, the grain of stones, the fluidity of air in deep layers,
gives them dissimilar colouring. If the light disappears, forms and
colours vanish together. We only see colours; everything has a colour,
and it is by the perception of the different colour surfaces striking
our eyes, that we conceive the forms, _i.e._ the outlines of these
colours.
The idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given us by darker or
lighter colours: this idea is what is called in painting the sense of
values. A value is the degree of dark or light intensity, which permits
our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer than
another. And as painting is not and cannot be the _imitation_ of nature,
but merely her artificial interpretation, since it only has at its
disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only means that
remain for expressing depth on a flat surface.
Colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. Or, colour being simply
the irradiation of light, it follows that all colour is composed of the
same elements as sunlight, namely the seven tones of the spectrum. It is
known, that these seven tones appear different owing to the unequal
speed of the waves of light. The tones of nature appear to us therefore
different, like those of the spectrum, and for the same reason. The
colours vary with the intensity of light. There is no colour peculiar
to any object, but only more or less rapid vibration of light upon its
surface. The speed depends, as is demonstrated by optics, on the degree
of the inclination of the rays which, according to their vertical or
oblique direction, give different light and colour.
The colours of the spectrum are thus recomposed in everything we see. It
is their relative proportion which makes new tones out of the seven
spectral tones. This leads immediately to some practical conclusions,
the first of which is, that what has formerly been called _local colour_
is an error: a leaf is not green, a tree-trunk is not brown, and,
according to the time of day, _i.e._ according to the greater or smaller
inclination of the rays (scientifically called the angle of incidence),
the green of the leaf and the brown of the tree are modified. What has
to be studied therefore in these objects, if one wishes to recall their
colour to the beholder of a picture, is the composition of the
atmosphere which separates them from the eye. This atmosphere is the
real subject of the picture, and whatever is represented upon it only
exists through its medium.
[Illustration: DEGAS
THE GREEK DANCE--PASTEL.]
A second consequence of this analysis of light is, that shadow is not
absence of light, but light of _a different quality_ and of different
value. Shadow is not a part of the landscape, where light ceases, but
where it is subordinated to a light which appears to us more intense. In
the shadow the rays of the spectrum vibrate with different speed.
Painting should therefore try to discover here, as in the light parts,
the play of the atoms of solar light, instead of representing shadows
with ready-made tones composed of bitumen and black.
The third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are
modified by _refraction_. That means, _f.i._ in a picture representing
an interior, the source of light (window) may not be indicated: the
light circling round the picture will then be composed of the
_reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects,
acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence
each other. Their colours will affect each other, even if the surfaces
be dull. A red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very
subtle, but mathematically exact, interchange between this blue and this
red, and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two
colours a tone of reflections composed of both. These composite
reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two
principal colours. The science of optics can work out these
complementary colours with mathematical exactness. If _f.i._ a head
receives the orange rays of daylight from one side and the bluish light
of an interior from the other, green reflections will necessarily appear
on the nose and in the middle region of the face. The painter Besnard,
who has specially devoted himself to this minute study of complementary
colours, has given us some famous examples of it.
The last consequence of these propositions is that the blending of the
spectral tones is accomplished by a _parallel_ and _distinct_ projection
of the colours. They are artificially reunited on the crystalline: a
lens interposed between the light and the eye, and opposing the
crystalline, which is a living lens, dissociates again these united
rays, and shows us again the seven distinct colours of the atmosphere.
It is no less artificial if a painter mixes upon his palette different
colours to compose a tone; it is again artificial that paints have been
invented which represent some of the combinations of the spectrum, just
to save the artist the trouble of constantly mixing the seven solar
tones. Such mixtures are false, and they have the disadvantage of
creating heavy tonalities, since the coarse mixture of powders and oils
cannot accomplish the action of light which reunites the luminous waves
into an intense white of unimpaired transparency. The colours mixed on
the palette compose a dirty grey. What, then, is the painter to do, who
is anxious to approach, as near as our poor human means will allow, that
divine fairyland of nature? Here we touch upon the very foundations of
Impressionism. The painter will have to paint with only the seven
colours of the spectrum, and discard all the others: that is what Claude
Monet has done boldly, adding to them only white and black. He will,
furthermore, instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon
his canvas touches of none but the seven colours _juxtaposed_, and leave
the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain
distance, so as to act like sunlight itself upon the eye of the
beholder.
[Illustration: DEGAS
WAITING]
This, then, is the theory of the _dissociation of tones_, which is the
main point of Impressionist technique. It has the immense advantage of
suppressing all mixtures, of leaving to each colour its proper strength,
and consequently its freshness and brilliancy. At the same time the
difficulties are extreme. The painter's eye must be admirably subtle.
Light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the
object upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived becomes
a purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem,
quite distinct from expression, style and design, which were the
principal aims of former painting. It is almost necessary to invent
another name for this special art which, clearly pictorial though it be,
comes as near to music, as it gets far away from literature and
psychology. It is only natural that, fascinated by this study, the
Impressionists have almost remained strangers to the painting of
expression, and altogether hostile to historical and symbolist painting.
It is therefore principally in landscape painting that they have
achieved the greatness that is theirs.
Through the application of these principles which I have set forth very
summarily, Claude Monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely
varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the
tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the
arabesque of their vibrations. A landscape thus conceived becomes a kind
of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point, _f.i._),
and developing all over the canvas the variations of this theme. This
investigation is added to the habitual preoccupations of the landscapist
study of the character peculiar to the scene, style of the trees or
houses, accentuation of the decorative side--and to the habitual
preoccupations of the figure painter in the portrait. The canvases of
Monet, Renoir and Pissarro have, in consequence of this research, an
absolutely original aspect: their shadows are striped with blue,
rose-madder and green; nothing is opaque or sooty; a light vibration
strikes the eye. Finally, blue and orange predominate, simply because in
these studies--which are more often than not full sunlight
effects--blue is the complementary colour of the orange light of the
sun, and is profusely distributed in the shadows. In these canvases can
be found a vast amount of exact grades of tone, which seem to have been
entirely ignored by the older painters, whose principal concern was
style, and who reduced a landscape to three or four broad tones,
endeavouring only to explain the sentiment inspired by it.
And now I shall have to pass on to the Impressionists' ideas on the
style itself of painting, on Realism.
From the outset it must not be forgotten that Impressionism has been
propagated by men who had all been Realists; that means by a reactionary
movement against classic and romantic painting. This movement, of which
Courbet will always remain the most famous representative, has been
_anti-intellectual_. It has protested against every literary,
psychologic or symbolical element in painting. It has reacted at the
same time against the historical painting of Delaroche and the
mythological painting of the _Ecole de Rome_, with an extreme violence
which appears to us excessive now, but which found its explanation in
the intolerable tediousness or emphasis at which the official painters
had arrived. Courbet was a magnificent worker, with rudimentary ideas,
and he endeavoured to exclude even those which he possessed. This
exaggeration which diminishes our admiration for his work and prevents
us from finding in it any emotion but that which results from technical
mastery, was salutary for the development of the art of his successors.
It caused the young painters to turn resolutely towards the aspects of
contemporary life, and to draw style and emotion from their own epoch;
and this intention was right. An artistic tradition is not continued by
imitating the style of the past, but by extracting the immediate
impression of each epoch. That is what the really great masters have
done, and it is the succession of their sincere and profound
observations which constitutes the style of the races.
[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET
THE PINES]
Manet and his friends drew all their strength from this idea. Much finer
and more learned than a man like Courbet, they saw an aspect of
modernity far more complex, and less limited to immediate and grossly
superficial realism. Nor must it be forgotten that they were
contemporaries of the realistic, anti-romantic literary movement, a
movement which gave them nothing but friends. Flaubert and the Goncourts
proved that Realism is not the enemy of refined form and of delicate
psychology. The influence of these ideas created first of all Manet and
his friends: the technical evolution (of which we have traced the chief
traits) came only much later to oppose itself to their conceptions.
Impressionism can therefore be defined as a _revolution of pictorial
technique together with an attempt at expressing modernity_. The
reaction against Symbolism and Romanticism happened to coincide with the
reaction against muddy technique.
The Impressionists, whilst occupying themselves with cleansing the
palette of the bitumen of which the Academy made exaggerated use, whilst
also observing nature with a greater love of light, made it their object
to escape in the representation of human beings the laws of _beauty_,
such as were taught by the School. And on this point one might apply to
them all that one knows of the ideas of the Goncourts and Flaubert, and
later of Zola, in the domain of the novel. They were moved by the same
ideas; to speak of the one group is to speak of the other. The longing
for truth, the horror of emphasis and of false idealism which paralysed
the novelist as well as the painter, led the Impressionists to
substitute for _beauty_ a novel notion, that of _character_. To search
for, and to express, the true character of a being or of a site, seemed
to them more significant, more moving, than to search for an exclusive
beauty, based upon rules, and inspired by the Greco-Latin ideal. Like
the Flemings, the Germans, the Spaniards, and in opposition to the
Italians whose influence had conquered all the European academies, the
French Realist-Impressionists, relying upon the qualities of lightness,
sincerity and expressive clearness which are the real merits of their
race, detached themselves from the oppressive and narrow preoccupation
with the beautiful and with all the metaphysics and abstractions
following in its train.
[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET
CHURCH AT VERNON]
This fact of the substitution of _character_ for _beauty_ is the
essential feature of the movement. What is called Impressionism is--let
it not be forgotten--a technique which can be applied to any subject.
Whether the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with
divided tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist Henri
Martin, who has almost the ideas of a Pre-Raphaelite, have proved it by
employing this technique for the rendering of religious or philosophic
subjects. But one can only understand the effort and the faults of the
painters grouped around Manet, by constantly recalling to one's mind
their predeliction for _character_. Before Manet a distinction was made
between _noble_ subjects, and others which were relegated to the domain
of _genre_ in which no great artist was admitted to exist by the School,
the familiarity of their subjects barring from them this rank. By the
suppression of the _nobleness_ inherent to the treated subject, the
painter's technical merit is one of the first things to be considered in
giving him rank. The Realist-Impressionists painted scenes in the
ball-room, on the river, in the field, the street, the foundry, modern
interiors, and found in the life of the humble immense scope for
studying the gestures, the costumes, the expressions of the nineteenth
century.
Their effort had its bearing upon the way of representing persons, upon
what is called, in the studio language, the "_mise en cadre_." There,
too, they overthrew the principles admitted by the School. Manet, and
especially Degas, have created in this respect a new style from which
the whole art of realistic contemporary illustration is derived. This
style had been hitherto totally ignored, or the artists had shrunk from
applying it. It is a style which is founded upon the small painters of
the eighteenth century, upon Saint-Aubin, Debucourt, Moreau, and,
further back, upon Pater and the Dutchmen. But this time, instead of
confining this style to vignettes and very small dimensions, the
Impressionists have boldly given it the dimensions and importance of big
canvases. They have no longer based the laws of composition, and
consequently of style, upon the ideas relative to the subjects, but upon
values and harmonies. To take a summary example: if the School composed
a picture representing the death of Agamemnon, it did not fail to
subordinate the whole composition to Agamemnon, then to Clytemnestra,
then to the witnesses of the murder, graduating the moral and literary
interest according to the different persons, and sacrificing to this
interest the colouring and the realistic qualities of the scene. The
Realists composed by picking out first the strongest "value" of the
picture, say a red dress, and then distributing the other values
according to a harmonious progression of their tonalities. "The
principal person in a picture," said Manet, "is the light." With Manet
and his friends we find, then, that the concern for expression and for
the sentiments evoked by the subject, was always subordinated to a
purely pictorial and decorative preoccupation. This has frequently led
the Impressionists to grave errors, which they have, however, generally
avoided by confining themselves to very simple subjects, for which the
daily life supplied the grouping.
[Illustration: RENOIR
PORTRAIT OF MADAME MAITRE]
One of the reforms due to their conception has been the suppression of
the professional model, and the substitution for it of the natural
model, seen in the exercise of his occupation. This is one of the most
useful conquests for the benefit of modern painting. It marks a just
return to nature and simplicity. Nearly all their figures are real
portraits; and in everything that concerns the labourer and the
peasant, they have found the proper style and character, because they
have observed these beings in the true medium of their occupations,
instead of forcing them into a sham pose and painting them in disguise.
The basis of all their pictures has been first of all a series of
landscape and figure studies made in the open air, far from the studio,
and afterwards co-ordinated. One may wish pictorial art to have higher
ambitions; and one may find in the Primitives an example of a curious
mysticism, an expression of the abstract and of dreams. But one should
not underrate the power of naïve and realistic observation, which the
Primitives carried into the execution of their works, subordinating it,
however, to religious expression, and it must also be admitted that the
Realist-Impressionists served at least their conception of art logically
and homogeneously. The criticism which may be levelled against them is
that which Realism itself carries in its train, and we shall see that
esthetics could never create classifications capable of defining and
containing the infinite gradations of creative temperaments.
In art, classifications have rarely any value, and are rather damaging.
Realism and Idealism are abstract terms which cannot suffice to
characterise beings who obey their sensibility. It is therefore
necessary to invent as many words as there are remarkable men. If
Leonardo was a great painter, are Turner and Monet not painters at all?
There is no connection between them; their methods of thought and
expression are antithetical. Perhaps it will be most simple, to admire
them all, and to renounce any further definition of the painter,
adopting this word to mark the man who uses the palette as his means of
expression.
Thus preoccupation with contemporary emotions, substitution of character
for classic beauty (or of emotional beauty for formal beauty), admission
of the _genre_-painter into the first rank, composition based upon the
reciprocal reaction of values, subordination of the subject to the
interest of execution, the effort to isolate the art of painting from
the ideas inherent to that of literature, and particularly the
instinctive move towards the "symphonisation" of colours, and
consequently towards music,--these are the principal features of the
aesthetic code of the Realist-Impressionists, if this term may be
applied to a group of men hostile towards esthetics such as they are
generally taught.
III
EDOUARD MANET: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
As I have said, Edouard Manet has not been entirely the originator of
the Impressionist technique. It is the work of Claude Monet which
presents the most complete example of it, and which also came first as
regards date. But it is very difficult to determine such cases of
priority, and it is, after all, rather useless. A technique cannot be
invented in a day. In this case it was the result of long
investigations, in which Manet and Renoir participated, and it is
necessary to unite under the collective name of Impressionists a group
of men, tied by friendship, who made a simultaneous effort towards
originality, all in about the same spirit, though frequently in very
different ways. As in the case of the Pre-Raphaelites, it was first of
all friendship, then unjust derision, which created the solidarity of
the Impressionists. But the Pre-Raphaelites, in aiming at an idealistic
and symbolic art, were better agreed upon the intellectual principles
which permitted them at once to define a programme. The Impressionists
who were only united by their temperaments, and had made it their first
aim to break away from all school programmes, tried simply to do
something new, with frankness and freedom.
Manet was, in their midst, the personality marked out at the same time
by their admiration, and by the attacks of the critics for the post of
standard-bearer. A little older than his friends, he had already, quite
alone, raised heated discussions by the works in his first manner. He
was considered an innovator, and it was by instinctive admiration that
his first friends, Whistler, Legros, and Fantin-Latour, were gradually
joined by Marcelin Desboutin, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro,
Caillebotte, Berthe Morisot, the young painter Bazille, who met his
premature death in 1870, and by the writers Gautier, Banville,
Baudelaire (who was a passionate admirer of Manet's); then later by
Zola, the Goncourts, and Stéphane Mallarmé. This was the first nucleus
of a public which was to increase year by year. Manet had the personal
qualities of a chief; he was a man of spirit, an ardent worker, and an
enthusiastic and generous character.
[Illustration: MANET
THE DEAD TOREADOR]