“SÛREMENT CET HOMME A VÉCU, ET LE DÉMON DE L’ART
HABITE EN LUI”
_GUSTAVE
GEFFROY_
CLAUDE MONET is one of the few fortunate painters whose fame is not
posthumous, and whose material recompense runs parallel with the merit
of their production. He, above all others, has lifted the School of
Impressionism in France from the derision and disrepute which greeted
its inception some thirty years ago, and to him is due the honour of
making it one of the most prominent of latter-day art movements.
The present generation witnesses the triumph of a remarkable revolution,
and the success of a group of painters, of which Monet was head, after
years of acrimonious struggle against a world of prejudice and disdain.
Claiming a right to exercise their art as they thought fit, aided by a
mere handful of far-sighted critics and patrons, for thirty years they
patiently endured public obloquy. Now the Luxembourg Gallery enlarges
its space to receive their works, and before long they will be
represented side by side with the masters of the Louvre. Appreciation is
the order of the day, and millionaires compete for their canvases.
The life-history of Claude Monet is inseparably connected with the story
of Impressionism in France. As a leader of the little group any record
of the subject must largely consider his part in the result. It is
remarkable that a man of such talent should remain comparatively unknown
in England, considering that another portion of the Anglo-Saxon world
has always generously encouraged him. For the past twenty years a large
proportion of his works has gone to the United States. The English
nation will have to pay dearly in the future for its present neglect of
modern French art. At the present moment there is not a single specimen
of the work of Monet on exhibition in any English public art gallery.
Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840. Son of a wealthy
merchant of Havre, his inclinations towards art were soon shown, and
these tendencies, as usual, discouraged at home. No member of the family
had any artistic gifts, and, as in the case of Edouard Manet, the youth
was sent on a foreign tour. His school work was spasmodic and irregular,
and he devoted much of his time at Havre to caricature and the company
of Boudin the painter. When remonstrated with his reply was the
historic, “I would like to paint as a bird sings.”
After two years of military service with the Chasseurs d’Afrique in
Algeria, Monet caught fever, and returned home. He then entered the
Atélier Gleyre, and remained in Paris. Of personal history there is
little to relate. He is a man of high purpose, greatly talented,
excessively active and self-reliant, who has not faltered once from the
path of his ideals. His adventures have been those usual to the
profession of a landscape-painter. He has suffered from fever and
rheumatism, the results of working near mosquito-haunted marshes, in
drenching rain, or in damp grass. The occupation is peaceful enough, the
diseases named are of everyday occurrence, yet they exert a powerful
influence upon the life of a man for ever engaged with brain and eye,
with nerves strung to the most intense pitch.
His early struggles were the ordinary struggles of nine-tenths of those
votaries who worship at the shrines of Art. Claude Monet has drunk
deeply of the bitterness of life. He has endured privations and
disappointments which have brought him almost to the depths of despair.
He has survived only through his indomitable pluck.
“One must have the strength for such a fight,” says Monet, with the
assurance born of experience, when recounting the history of those
troublous days. He is fortunately most generously endowed with the
attributes peculiar to the true artistic temperament—those exquisite
dreams and reveries which are at once a solace, a pleasure, and a
sustaining impetus. Truly was Baudelaire justified in writing: “Nations
have great men in spite of themselves, and so have families. They do
their best not to have any, so that the great man, in order to exist,
must needs possess a power of attack greater than the force of
resistance developed by millions of individuals.”
It has long been granted, even by the bitterest of his opponents, that
Monet possesses a few at least of the attributes of genius—the capacity
for turning out large quantities of work, an almost unparalleled
fertility of invention, imagination, and originality, and above all that
priceless gift to the artist—the supreme power of creation. Moreover, he
is ever keen and restless in search of the new and unexplored, for ever
mistrusting the value of his own productions.
[Illustration:
CLAUDE MONET
]
[Illustration:
A STUDY · CLAUDE MONET
]
Never has he been influenced strongly enough to waver in the pursuit of
his ideals, either through the gibes of the critics or the lack of
appreciation on the part of the public.
His work is large and simple in character; his colour vigorous to the
utmost capacity of the prismatic tints, bearing the impress of a
passionate, violent, and highly sensitive artistic individuality.
Monet is a lyrical poet, singing the joy of life and nature. The
decadence of modern France in literary circles finds no reflection on
his canvas. Strongly opposed by personal temperament to the ugly and
morbid, he allows his brush to touch no subject at all allied to such
themes. In every picture he paints we seem to hear Pippa singing:
“The year’s at the Spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in His heaven
All’s right with the world!”
A happy serenity is his great charm, and it has been arrived at by
temperament, not by training.
At the beginning of the Impressionist movement the nightly meetings at
the Café Guerbois became the centre of a small band of innovators and
iconoclasts, attracted by the sympathy of a common aim, the necessity of
mutual encouragement, and the prescience of the evolution of a new idea.
The first public exhibition of the works of these painters was held in
the spring of 1874 at Nadar’s, in the Boulevard des Capucines. It
created an uproar in the art world, which culminated in several scenes
of personal violence between over-excited critics. Other exhibitions,
chiefly devoted to the works of Claude Monet, may be roughly summarised
as follows: one in 1876; at the galleries of M. Durand-Ruel in 1877; in
1880 at the offices of “La Vie Moderne,” Boulevard des Italiens; in 1889
in conjunction with Rodin at the gallery of M. Georges Petit.
Monet exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865. The two marine
pieces drew from Edouard Manet the remark, “Who is this Monet, who looks
as if he had taken my name, and happens thus to profit by the noise I
make?” He exhibited for the last time in 1880. In 1882 he forwarded
_Glaçons sur la Seine_, a remarkably beautiful conception of an illusory
effect, the rejection of which finally ended all relations between the
artist and a too conservative body.
With the exception of a semi-private show at Dowdeswell’s of Bond Street
in 1883, Monet made his début in England at the Winter Exhibition of
1888 of the Royal Society of British Artists, then under the presidency
of Mr. Whistler. That careful critic, Mr. H. M. Spielman, of the
“Magazine of Art,” wrote the following lines in his journal: “He who
contemplates these distinctive pieces of arch-impressionism, without
prejudice, without ‘arrière pensée,’ must own that for strength and
brilliancy of general tone and for decorative effect, they have few, if
any, equals.”
Monet has never been seen at his best in England; indeed, the same may
be said of all the members of the Impressionist group. Owing to the
ready market for their work in France and America, it is rarely that the
dealers are able to attract across the Channel any but second-rate
canvases. Isolated works have been shown at the Boussod Vallodon
galleries, the New English Art Club, the International Society’s
Exhibition at Knightsbridge, and a miscellaneous collection on view at
the Hanover Gallery, Bond Street, in 1901. The standard of the latter
was not high, and the result disappointing to all parties. A
representative exhibition remains to be held.
No other country but France can boast of landscape so varied, so
picturesque, and so atmospherically suited to the Impressionist. The
principal scenes of Monet’s labours have been Havre, Belle-Isle-en-Mer,
the Riviera, La Creuse, La Manche, with Giverny and the Seine valley in
particular. Short visits have been devoted to England, Norway, and
Holland; but the first-named localities have seen the production of the
famous series known under the titles of _Les Meules_, _Peupliers au bord
de l’Epté_, _Glaçons sur la Seine_, _Matins sur la Seine_, _A
Argenteuil_, _Belle Isle_, _Bordighera_, _Antibes_, _Champs des
Tulipes_, and _Les Cathédrales._ There is also a series of paintings of
the artist’s Japanese water-garden at Giverny, and yet another series
dealing with London under different atmospheric aspects.
Claude Monet is enthusiastically in love with London from the painter’s
point of view. From the balconies of the Savoy Hotel the French master
has watched the tidal ebb and flow of the great grey river, with its
squalid southern banks shrouded day by day in white mist and brown
smoke, the warehouses and chimneys coated in a veil of soot, the legacy
of ages. The autumnal fogs, which harmonise discordant tones, round off
harsh outlines, cloak the ugly and create the beautiful, are to the
foreigner London’s greatest charm, although to the inhabitant they are a
deadly infliction.
[Illustration:
LA GRENOUILLÈRE · CLAUDE MONET
]
No writer ever expressed this fascination more eloquently than the
“Wizard of the Butterfly Mark,” who wrote: “And when the evening mist
clothes the riverside world with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor
buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become
campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole
city hangs in the heavens and fairyland is before us—then the wayfarer
hastens home; the working man and the cultured one, the wise man and the
one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see; and
Nature, who, for once has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the
artist alone, her son and her master—her son in that he loves her, her
master in that he knows her.”
With these thoughts Claude Monet is in perfect agreement. He is amazed
at the apathy and indifference of British artists, blinded no doubt by
familiarity, in allowing so fertile a field of labour to remain
comparatively unexplored, not only with regard to the river scenes, but
to the Metropolis as a whole. Whistler was fascinated, so was
Bastien-Lepage, so is Claude Monet; but the Englishman remains unmoved.
A chapter could be written upon the artist possibilities of the city,
and the fringe of the subject would have been then but touched. Where,
asks Monet, can more soul-inspiring subjects for the brush be found than
in the Strand from morning to night, in the movement of Piccadilly, in
the evening colour of Leicester Square, the classic sweep and brilliancy
of Regent Street, the bustle of the great railway termini, the dignity
of Pall Mall and the sylvan glades of Kensington? They offer themes in
such variety that the devotion of a lifetime would not give adequate
realisation.
It was during his visit to London with Pissarro and other painters in
1870 that Monet carried an introduction from Daubigny which led to his
acquaintance with M. Durand-Ruel, expert connoisseur and most celebrated
of all the Parisian art dealers. It proved to be the commencement of a
life-long friendship, and established business relations which meant the
actual necessities of existence, bread and butter itself, to the
struggling Impressionists. During this visit, which had such auspicious
results, Monet studied with profound admiration the canvases of Turner
in the National Gallery, and he was also able to increase very largely
his knowledge of the art of Japan.
In surveying as a whole the work of the last thirty years we can arrive
at but a single conclusion—Claude Monet will rank as one of the world’s
greatest landscapists, the one who, above all others, has revealed the
transcendent beauty of atmospheric effect in its rarest moods, in its
most varied manifestations, in rocks, skies, trees, seas, architecture,
fogs, snows, even in crowded streets and moving trains. And Monet is not
pre-eminent as a painter of easel-pictures alone. In the unique
decorations of M. Durand-Ruel’s private apartment, rooms which
constitute the most admirable museum of contemporary painting to be
found in France, are realistic paintings of different forms of
still-life, which fully vindicate his supreme mastership.
Little space can be devoted in these pages to an extended notice of
individual canvases, for the output (to use a somewhat commercial term)
of Claude Monet has been exceptionally large. Where the whole is of such
excellence it is difficult to select the masterpiece upon which can be
staked not only the artist’s reputation but the verdict of the future
upon the entire movement.
Personally one may say that the Giverny work is the most triumphant
exposition of the methods of Impressionism. If the series known as _Les
Cathédrales_ be added, one may safely challenge the most critical. It is
natural that Giverny should inspire the finest harvest, for, after years
of experimental residence, it is here that Monet finally settled in
1883. The dominant note in the Giverny paintings is one of joy in the
beauty of life and nature. They are the works of an inspired genius, who
never forgets that Beauty is the mission of Art.
_Les Meules_ or _The Haystacks_, exhibited for the first time at the
Durand-Ruel galleries in May 1891, are impressions of a simple and
homely subject—two haystacks in a neighbour’s field, standing out in
relief against the distant hillside. These twenty canvases, the fruits
of a year’s labour, are as novel in conception as unapproachable in
style. The artist watched and painted the haystacks in the making,
followed and noted the atmospheric effects upon them at every different
hour of the day, at every changing season. He portrays them covered with
the pearls of dew, baked by the sun, lost in the fog, rimed with early
frosts, and covered in snow. Each picture is a masterpiece of beauty,
truth and form.
The influence of such creations is world-wide. The annual Salon in Paris
demonstrates what a power Monet has become in the land. Almost to a man
the younger painters are Impressionistic, whilst not a few of the old
generation have revised their methods.
[Illustration:
THE BEACH AT ÉTRETAT · CLAUDE MONET
]
Soon after _Les Meules_ came _Les Peupliers_, exhibited in March 1892.
The Haystacks were a recital of history during the four seasons; the
Poplars show us their differing aspects under the changing atmosphere of
a single day. Again the subject is of the simplest. Seven great Normandy
poplars are reflected in the sluggish waters of a rivulet slowly running
through marshy ground. The continuation of the long column of these
graceful trees, ever diminishing, is lost in the distance, marking the
sinuous course of the stream. The gracefulness of the subject gives it a
nobility of effect. The landscapes are poems.
In some of the canvases the master has depicted the dim light of early
morn, through which can be seen nebulous tree-trunks, leaves and grass,
dank and obscure. Upon the water floats a chill blue mist, broken here
and there with the gold rays of the rising sun.
In another canvas the mists have cleared away, morning appears in its
superb glory, each dewdrop is a sparkling diamond, each leaf a
shimmering gem. The stream throws out a sheen of gold and silver, and
the whole picture is flooded with a roseate hue.
Then comes mid-noon. The blue dome of the unclouded sky is reflected in
a deeper tint across the still water. The trees are dusty, lifeless,
almost colourless. The atmosphere vibrates in an intense silent heat.
Nature is taking her siesta,
“For now the mid-day quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass;
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead;
The purple flower droops: the golden bee
Is lily-cradled....”
In the last canvas night is shown falling gently upon the land,
obscuring, with a veil of rich and sombre colour, trees, foliage,
stream. The landscape is lost in sleep.
From the photographs, reproduced by the courtesy of M. Claude Monet, M.
Durand-Ruel, M. Paul Chevallier, and M. Georges Petit, little idea can
be gathered of the extreme beauty of the originals. The colour and
technique of Impressionist pictures seem unfortunately to be insuperable
barriers to their reproduction in monochrome. Upon this account it has
been thought inadvisable to publish reproductions of any of the Haystack
or Cathedral series.
Monet’s marine pictures are marvellous. In them he depicts throbbing,
swelling, sighing sea, the trickling rills of water that follow a
retreating wave, the glass-like hues of the deep ocean, and the violet
transparencies of the shallow inlets over sand. Monet is the greatest
living painter of water. Witness the _Matins sur la Seine_, views
painted from the river bank, from the artist’s houseboat, anchored in
mid-stream, and on the various islands of the backwaters between
Vétheuil and Vernon. The handling is free, loose, and masterly. Never
has art expressed, through the hands of a craftsman, anything finer or
more virile; never were ideas more frankly expressed, more freshly and
more brilliantly executed.
Of the last exhibited group of “effects,” the series known as _Les
Cathédrales_ of Rouen, exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery in the
spring of 1895, Monet writes in a personal note to the author: “I
painted them, in great discomfort, looking out of a shop window opposite
the Cathedral. So there is nothing interesting to tell you except the
immense difficulty of the task, which took me three years to
accomplish.” Despite the immense difficulties involved in their
production, Monet considers them to be his finest works. On the other
hand, they are the works least understood by the public.
The series consists of twenty-five huge canvases, a feat requiring
considerable physical endurance and indomitable perseverance. Each
canvas demonstrates the fact that the painter possesses eyes
marvellously sensitive to the most subtle modulations of light, and
capable of the acutest analysis of luminous phenomena. The façade of the
ancient Norman fane is depicted rather by the varying atmospheric
effects dissolved in their relative values, than by any actual
draughtsmanship of correct architectural lines. It is very regrettable
that the series was not purchased “en bloc” for the French nation. The
opportunity has been lost. The canvases realised enormous prices, and
are now scattered over two continents.
In years to come visitors to Rouen will be shown with pride the little
curiosity shop “Au Caprice” on the south-west side of the “Place,” from
the windows of which Claude Monet evolved these world-famous paintings
of Rouen Cathedral.
The attitude of the press and the public in face of this glorious
manifestation of a newly-created art has been, as usual, distinctly and
actively antagonistic. Animosity has been pushed so far as to include
threats of personal violence to the innovator, and of injury to the
offending canvases. It is difficult to believe such stories amidst the
recent pæans of praise and adulation. But the contemporary press of the
period will prove to be a curious study in the hands of some careful
historian of a future age. Readers of the “Figaro,” it may be mentioned,
discontinued their subscriptions and advertisements because the band of
“lunatic visionaries” were so much as mentioned in its orthodox columns.
Dealers required courage in exposing for sale the “aberrations of
disordered imaginations.” History monotonously repeats itself. A genius
generally goes down broken-hearted to his grave before the world awakes
to the value of his creations.
[Illustration:
MORNING ON THE SEINE · CLAUDE MONET
]
[Illustration:
ARGENTEUIL · CLAUDE MONET
]
Paris, “la ville luminaire,” the birthplace of so many revolutions, both
artistic and political, has almost invariably been hostile to any new
spirit in Art. From memory one can cite many instances. In 1833,
Parisians assembled that they might jeer and throw mud at Baryes’s _Le
Lion_, a masterpiece now in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Rude’s great
bas-relief, _Départ des Volontaires de la République_, decorating one of
the pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, met with a similar reception. In
1844, the exquisite paintings of Eugene Delacroix, now in the Louvre,
were greeted with a storm of ridicule. Carpeaux’s group of sculpture _La
Danse_, ornamenting the façade of the Opera, was bombarded nightly with
ink-pots, and the sculptor was broken-hearted when compelled to polish
the figures of his magnificent _Fontaine des Heures_ facing the
Observatory. Millet and the Barbizon group had small thanks to return
for their reception. The frescoes of Puvis de Chavannes in the Panthéon,
the Sorbonne, and the Luxembourg had to be guarded against the risk of
damage from an ignorant and exasperated public. The vituperation which
assailed Rodin upon the completion of his statue of Balzac is quite
recent, and cannot be forgotten.
Claude Monet has passed through like storms. Edouard Manet fell a victim
to the fury of the attack. His physique was not strong enough to resist
the continual warfare. But Monet is of stouter calibre, and has lived to
see the triumph of his principles, although he has learnt to value much
of the praise, nowadays lavished upon him, at its true worth.
Monet is seen in his most genial moods when, with cigar for company, he
strolls through his “propriété” at Giverny, discussing the grafting of
plants and other agricultural mysteries with his numerous blue-bloused
and sabotted gardeners. He settled with his family at Giverny in 1883;
and Stephen Mallarmé, his old friend the poet, has given us the address
for his letters:
“Monsieur Monet, que l’hiver ni
L’été sa vision ne leurre,
Habite en peignant, Giverny,
Sis auprès de Vernon, dans l’Eure.”
He is now sixty-two years of age, in the prime of his powers, active and
dauntless as ever. Each line of his sturdy figure, each flash from his
keen blue eyes, betokens the giant within. He is one of those men who,
through dogged perseverance and strength, would succeed in any branch of
activity. Dressed in a soft khaki felt hat and jacket, lavender-coloured
silk shirt open at the neck, drab trousers tapering to the ankles and
there secured by big horn buttons, a short pair of cowhide boots, his
appearance is at once practical and quaint, with a decided sense of
smartness pervading the whole.
Monet has the reputation of being surly and reserved with strangers. If
true, this manner must have been assumed to repel those unwelcome
visitors who, out of thoughtless curiosity, invade his privacy to the
waste of valuable time and the gradual irritation of a most sensitive
nature.
Determination is the keynote of Monet’s character, as the following
anecdote (told me on the spot by the poet Rollinat) shows. In the spring
of 1892 the artist was busily occupied painting in the neighbourhood of
Fresselines, a wild and picturesque region of precipitous cliffs and
huge boulders in the valleys of the Creuse and Petit Creuse. A huge
oak-tree, standing out in bold relief against the ruddy cliffs, was
occupying Monet’s whole attention. Studies of it were taken at every
possible angle, in every varying atmosphere of the day. Bad weather
intervened, wet and foggy, and operations were suspended for three
weeks. When Monet set up his easel again the tree was in full bud, and
completely metamorphosed. An average painter would have quitted the spot
in disgust. Not so Monet. Without hesitation he called out the whole
village, made the carpenter foreman, and gave imperative orders that not
a single leaf was to be visible by the same hour on the following
morning. The work was accomplished, and next day Monet was able to
continue work upon his canvases. One admires the painter, and feels
sorry for the unhappy tree.
After painting, Monet’s chief recreation is gardening. In his domain at
Giverny, and in his Japanese water-garden across the road and railway
(which to his lasting sorrow cuts his little world in twain), each
season of the year brings its appointed and distinguishing colour
scheme. Nowhere else can be found such a prodigal display of rare and
marvellously beautiful colour effects, arranged from flowering plants
gathered together without regard to expense from every quarter of the
globe.
Like the majority of Impressionists, Monet is most pleased with schemes
of yellow and blue, the gold and sapphire of an artist’s dreams.
[Illustration:
A RIVER SCENE · CLAUDE MONET
]
In the neighbouring fields are hundreds of poplars standing in long
regimental lines. These trees, which inspired _Les Peupliers_, were
bought by Monet to avoid the wholesale destruction which threatened
every tree in the Seine valley a few years ago. The building authorities
of the Paris Exhibition required materials for palisading, and thousands
of trees were ruthlessly felled to make a cosmopolitan holiday.
[Illustration:
A LADY IN HER GARDEN · CLAUDE MONET
]
In the distance are the mills, subjects of the master’s admiration and
reproduction, yearly copied by the scores of students and amateurs who,
year by year, during the summer, journey through this delightful
country.
In the peace of Giverny we leave the great painter. He is one of the few
original members of the Impressionist group who has lived to see the
almost complete reversal of the hostile judgment passed upon his
canvases by an ill-educated public. Now he is able to enjoy not only the
satisfaction of having his principles acknowledged, but also the receipt
of the material fruits of a world-wide renown. Not often do pioneers
succeed so thoroughly.
Success in the sale-room is not always the same thing as artistic
success, but some information as to the prices Monet now commands may
prove of value. The _New York Herald_, referring to the well-known
Chocquet auction, says: “It will be observed that the works by Monet are
sought after and purchased at high prices, which are moreover justified
by collectors as well as by dealers.” At the present moment a small
example (about 26 in. by 32 in.) can be had for any price from four
hundred guineas upwards.
After the Chocquet sale, dealers of all nationalities flocked down to
Giverny. Two series of impressions, entitled _Water Lilies_ and _Green
Bridges_, were carried off, and the art public were deprived of seeing
them exhibited as a whole, their creator’s original intention.
The dealers were ready to buy every canvas Monet had in his studio, even
down to the numerous studies he had condemned. Needless to say that with
regard to the latter they were disappointed, and the destroying fires
will still claim their own. In discussing with the writer this sudden
and extraordinary popularity, Monet remarked: “Yes, my friend, to-day I
cannot paint enough, and make probably fifteen thousand pounds a year;
twenty years ago I was starving.” Only artists can fully appreciate the
philosophy of this short sentence.
The principal private collectors of Monet’s work are, in Paris, M.
Durand-Ruel, Count Camondo, M. Faure, M. Dearp, M. Pellerin, M.
Gallimard, and M. Bérard. In Rouen, M. Depeaux. In the United States,
Messrs. C. Lambert Paterson and Potter Palmer of Chicago, Frank Thompson
of Philadelphia, A. A. Pape of Cleveland, and H. O. Havemeyer of New
York. All these rich collections of modern art are most generously
thrown open to the inspection and enjoyment of students and lovers of
art.
Claude Monet is in the possession of undiminished vigour, and the list
of his works will yet receive the names of many fresh triumphs. A life
of strenuous labour, unflagging perseverance in the pursuit of a high
ideal from which he has never flinched, the production of a long series
of magnificent canvases—these great qualities of true and inspired
genius merit and receive our deepest admiration, our most sincere and
genuine homage.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
INTERIOR—AFTER DINNER · CLAUDE MONET
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, DIEPPE · CAMILLE PISSARRO
]