“JE CROIS QU’IL N’Y AURA RIEN DE PLUS TRISTE À
RACONTER DANS L’HISTOIRE DE L’ART, QUE LA LONGUE
PERSÉCUTION INFLIGÉE AUX ARTISTES VRAIMENT ORIGINAUX
ET CRÉATEURS DE CE SIÈCLE”
_THÉODORE
DURET_
THE artists who accepted originally the title of Impressionists numbered
about fifty in all, and a complete list of their names can be found in
the catalogues of the eight exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886.
There were never more than a dozen active members. Twenty-six (including
Boudin and Signac) exhibited but once, and ten were represented in two
collections only. Pissarro was the single painter who contributed to the
whole series, Degas and Berthe Morisot forwarding examples during seven
years. Of the remainder, Rouart and Guillaumin were catalogued in six
exhibitions; Caillebotte, Monet, and Tillot, in five; Cals, Mary
Cassatt, Forain, Gauguin, Renoir, Sisley, and Zandomeneghi, in four.
These artists were the original members of the group until it dispersed
about 1886.
It will be noted that Camille Pissarro exhibited eight times, and the
fact is characteristic of an artist who was famous for his large output.
On the eve of the publication of this volume comes the sad intelligence
of the death of one of the most gifted members of the early
Impressionist group in France. The loss of Camille Pissarro is a severe
blow to the art he loved so well, and it has formed the subject of
general regret. Born in 1830 at St. Thomas, in the Antilles, son of a
well-to-do trader of Jewish descent, Pissarro at an early age showed
signs of artistic promise. In 1837 his parents moved to Europe, and his
precocious talent was noticed by the Danish painter Melbye, who took the
boy into his atelier as a pupil. In 1859 Pissarro exhibited for the
first time at the Salon, and, by all accounts, his picture was
successfully received. After passing through several varying phases of
artistic evolution the young painter became an avowed Impressionist.
Camille Pissarro’s career can be divided into no less than four
different periods, his temperament being curiously influenced at times
by novel technical ideas.
At first he was a victim to Corot’s magic art, and Pissarro worked by
the side of that master in the woods of Ville d’Avray. The young
painter’s methods were those fashionable amongst such men as Courbet,
Manet, and Sisley. He worked upon immense canvases, and some of the
productions of this period are almost classic in style and quality of
technique. Then he came under the influence of another great master,
Jean-François Millet, whose methods he copied most faithfully. Following
the example of Millet, Pissarro went to live in the solitude of plains
and woods, painting the peasant life and landscape around him, and
gradually gaining a considerable reputation. He sought to reproduce
nature in art in much the same spirit as Virgil reproduced nature in
poetry. His point of view was more that of an idealist than a realist,
and his sympathies were clearly with the Fontainebleau school. Had there
been no Monet we may feel sure that Pissarro would have ranked in
history as one of the leaders of the Barbizon men.
Then blossomed the Impressionist Idea, and Pissarro’s volatile
imagination was fired. The great war of 1870 intervening, Pissarro fled
from the terrors of the invasion, visited London in company with Monet,
and studied on the spot the masterpieces of Turner, Constable, the
Norwich painters, Watts, and the great English portraitists. He lodged
in Lower Norwood, and painted, also with his friend Monet, in the parks
and suburbs of the metropolis, along the riverside, and in the crowded
picturesque streets of the City. Twelve years later, after much
brilliant practice of Impressionism, Pissarro came under a new
influence, the effects of which were but momentary. The hotly discussed
idea known as Pointillism, originated by Seurat and Signac, attracted
Pissarro, and, for a short time, he joined the group of such restless
innovators as Angrand, Maurice Denis, and Van Rysselberghe.
[Illustration:
CAMILLE PISSARRO
]
During a sketching tour in Normandy in the summer of 1903, the writer
unexpectedly discovered some of the latest work produced by Pissarro.
These pictures had been painted in Havre a few weeks previously, and had
been immediately acquired by the Havre City Council, and placed on
exhibition in the same gallery which contained the important collection
of sketches by Eugene Boudin, as well as a score of works by other
artists of the Impressionist group. Pissarro had represented the port of
Havre as seen from various “coigns de vantage” offered by neighbouring
balconies. The canvases are charged with life, and are painted with a
most unsuspected brilliance of colour and freshness of tone pitched in
the highest possible key, an effect to be found only in the pure
sea-washed sunlit atmosphere of the morning. In this work of his
seventy-third year, the veteran artist had never arrived at stronger,
happier, and more distinguished results.
[Illustration:
PLACE DU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS · CAMILLE PISSARRO
]
[Illustration:
THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE: A WINTER IMPRESSION · CAMILLE PISSARRO
]
These canvases were extremely different in technique and effect from the
drab landscapes Pissarro painted with such a niggling touch during that
period of his career prior to 1886. The Havre works prove that he
possessed an acute colour sense, and, in conjunction with his inimitable
Parisian street scenes, place him second only to Manet and Monet in the
history of modern French art. It is the opinion of many connoisseurs
that Pissarro’s best work is comprised in the series of views (painted
from elevated points of view) of the streets, squares, and railway
stations, of Paris and Rouen. These vivid transcripts of modern town
life form a remarkable monument of a long career of high resolve and
incessant industry.
Like that of Monet and other Impressionist artists, Pissarro’s work now
commands high prices, which are steadily advancing. Shortly after his
death a landscape entitled _La Coté Sainte Catherine à Rouen_ was sold
by public auction for 11,000 francs, an average present value for his
canvases, although not a record figure.
With the etching needle Pissarro has done some particularly interesting
work little known in England. Students of this fascinating medium should
look through the Rouen etchings, a masterly little set.
Camille Pissarro was a man of commanding personality, and his handsome
features and long white beard gave him a patriarchal appearance. Of
charming disposition, with a mind of simple nobility, an excellent
raconteur of droll stories chiefly drawn from his own interesting
experiences, he will long be remembered as one of the most attractive of
the great French artists of the nineteenth century. He lived and worked,
as befitted a “paysagist,” in the midst of a beautiful stretch of
country at Eragny, outside Gisors, not far from Monet’s residence at
Giverny. Pissarro left a considerable amount of work behind, paintings
in oil and water-colour, drawings in every medium, etchings, and
lithographs. His art may be summed up as powerful. It possessed a
healthy vitality and sentiment, and these will assure a lasting respect
and admiration for his name.
Many of the foregoing remarks apply equally to Pissarro’s close comrade
and friend, Renoir. Auguste Renoir was born in 1841, and has always
taken an important place in the Impressionist movement. His work forms
an epitome of the whole school, and perhaps it is for that very reason
that the artist has not attained a higher popular appreciation. During
his forty years of continual labour he has produced landscapes,
seascapes, large subject compositions, studies of still-life, portraits,
and exquisite nudes. Critics, charged with enthusiasm, have found in his
canvases the finest traits of Boucher, Fragonard, Greuze, Reynolds, and
Hoppner.
Renoir is above all the painter of women and children, and his creations
in this _genre_ glow with the sure fire of genius. He renders in a
marvellous fashion the subtle play of light upon flesh. His portraits
are charming and typically French, graceful in line and rich in colour,
drawn with extraordinary skill, and with great truth to nature. In the
portraits of Bonnat and Duran, writes a German critic, there are people
who have “sat,” but here are people from whom the painter has had the
power of stealing and holding fast the secret of their being at a moment
when they were not “sitting.” Here are dreamy blond girls gazing out of
their great blue eyes, ethereal fragrant flowers, like lilies leaning
against a rose-bush through which the rays of the setting sun are
shining. Here are coquettish young girls, now laughing, now pouting, now
blythe and gay, and now angry once more, now faltering between both
moods in a charming passion. And there are women of the world, of
consummate elegance, slender and lightly built figures, with small hands
and feet, an even pallor, almond-shaped eyes catching every light, moist
shining lips of a tender grace, bearing witness to a love of pleasure
refined by artifice. And children especially there are, children of
sensitive and flexuous race; some as yet unconscious, dreamy and free
from thought; others already animated, correct in pose, graceful, and
wise. Good examples of this artist as portraitist are to be found in the
pictures _Le loge_, and _On the Terrace_, the latter a most delightful
composition.
Another famous canvas by Renoir is the _Bal au Moulin de la Galette_, a
most trying theme in which the master has triumphed over every
difficulty. Degas would have conceived the composition in a very
different spirit, throwing stress upon the sordidness of this scene from
low life, adding a bitterness which is quite foreign to the temperament
of Renoir, whose dominant note is one of sunlight and noisy
dust-enveloped pleasure.
Criticising the work of Renoir from a purely technical point of view one
finds throughout almost the whole of his work an unpleasant tone of
Prussian blue, which strikes one at times as spotty and crude. The
handling of the large-sized portrait groups seems often unnecessarily
coarse and repellent. Many find it hard to appreciate his landscapes,
considering them to be thin, of a greasy woolly texture, unatmospheric
and lacking many of the qualities one looks for in such representations
of nature.
[Illustration:
PASTEL PORTRAIT OF CÉZANNE · AUGUSTE RENOIR
]
[Illustration:
AT THE PIANO · AUGUSTE RENOIR
]
The work of Auguste Renoir will always remain a battlefield for the
critics. The champions of the group acclaim him as one of its most
brilliant members. Renoir is voluptuous, bright, happy, and learned
without heaviness, says M. Camille Mauclair, adding that the artist is
intoxicated with the beauties of flowers, flesh, and sunlight.
Rare are the artists who distinguish themselves in every branch of art,
lucky the man who excels in one. An example of the latter is Alfred
Sisley, “paysagist” pure and simple, who has left a legacy of some of
the most fascinating landscapes ever painted.
Sisley was born in Paris of English parents in 1839, and remained a
citizen of the country of his birth, although he paid several visits to
England. At first he painted conventional landscapes in russet and grey,
after the type of Courbet. After passing under the influence of Corot he
commenced to evolve a style peculiarly his own, abundantly rich in
colour and agreeable in line, loving especially to paint the violet
tints of a sunlit countryside, generally upon canvases of small and
medium size. In his earlier days canvases of enormous extent alone
seemed to satisfy him. He specialised his efforts almost solely to
transcripts from the riverside. When in England he remained in the
neighbourhood of Hampton Court and the Thames valley generally; in
France he painted on the edge of the Seine, or the Loing, finally
settling at Moret, where he died in 1899. He was less successful in
draughtsmanship than in colour, particularly when he attempted to
achieve with Moret church what Monet had done with Rouen cathedral.
In spite of the production of many little masterpieces, Sisley lived to
the day of his death on the verge of poverty. Never a popular artist,
although he and his wife led a life of the most frugal description, he
was for ever uncertain of finding the barest means of subsistence. This
embittered his existence, and undoubtedly tended to cut short a life of
much activity and talent. “Sisley, be it said, worked always, struggled
long, and suffered much. But he was brave and strong, a man of will,
consecrated to his art, and determined to go forward on the road he had
taken, wherever it might lead. He faced bad fortune with a front of
undaunted energy. His years of _début_ were cruel times. His pictures
sold seldom and poorly. He kept on, however, with the same brave heart,
with that joyous fervour which shines from all his works.” These words
were spoken by an old friend at the graveside of Sisley. M. Tavernier
went on to remark that the success which arrived for several of the
other Impressionists was slower in coming to Sisley. “This never for a
moment disturbed him; no approach to a feeling of jealousy swept the
heart of this honest man, nor darkened this uplifted spirit. He only
rejoiced in the favour which had fallen upon some of his group, saying
with a smile, ‘They are beginning to give us our due: my turn will come
after that of my friends.’... Sisley is gone too soon, and just at the
moment when, in reparation for long injustice, full homage is about to
be rendered those strong and charming qualities which make him a painter
exquisite and original among them all, a magician of light, a poet of
the heavens, of the waters, of the trees—in a word, one of the most
remarkable landscapists of this day.”
A contemporary of Sisley, equally gifted and more fortunate financially,
is Armand Guillaumin, whose art is practically unknown in England. His
style and his subjects are of the simplest, whilst his colour is
vigorous, pure, and rich in tone. Possessing few tastes outside his art
his life has been one of continued and active devotion to its
perfection. Son of a linendraper, like Corot, his youth was passed
behind the counter, and later as a clerk in an office. In the meanwhile
he attended, when possible, the “Académie Suisse,” by the Quai des
Orfèvres, a curious school without professors. Here he worked in company
with Pissarro and Cézanne. This, combined with study in the public
galleries and sketching along the riverside and in the streets and parks
of Paris, constituted his sole education.
In a letter to the writer, Guillaumin says that Courbet, Daubigny, and
Monet are the masters who have influenced his style most, with perhaps
special stress upon the methods of Monet.
Some years ago a lucky speculation in a lottery attached to the Crédit
Foncier brought the artist a “gros lot” of about £4000, which
immediately freed him from further anxieties about money, and gave him
complete liberty to exercise the art he lives for. He contributed to the
original exhibition held by the Impressionists in 1874, where his
pictures, views of Charenton, at once marked him as a painter of special
talent and originality. In 1894, at the Durand-Ruel galleries, were
exhibited about one hundred of his canvases executed in various mediums,
and the effect of this collection upon students has been remarkable.
These pictures were painted for the most part at Agay, Damiette, and
Crozant. In the solitude of these deep valleys, overhung by cliffs down
which rush the limpid Creuse and Sédelle from the mountains of the
Cevenne to the sea, works the artist in hermit-like solitude, two
hundred miles from Paris and far from railways and latter-day
civilisation.
[Illustration:
OUTSKIRTS OF THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU · ALFRED SISLEY
]
[Illustration:
ON THE BANKS OF THE LOING · ALFRED SISLEY
]
Guillaumin is an incredibly prolific worker, and this, although often a
sign of great talent, is much deplored by his admirers, who cannot help
believing that he is wasting in the production of countless sketches and
repetitions a talent which is strong enough to create masterpieces.
Zola’s reproach addressed to Gustave Doré comes to the mind when
speaking of Guillaumin. Such an artist is likely to combine with
business men in manufacturing works purely commercial. There is yet time
for Guillaumin to produce some great masterpiece with which to crown the
glory of his long career.
[Illustration:
AUGUSTE RENOIR
]
[Illustration:
ALFRED SISLEY
]
Other manifestations from the parent stem of Impressionism took the form
of Idealism with André Mellino at its head; the Salon of the Rose +
Croix, with Sar Peladan in command; and the “Intimists,” a body
consisting of Charles Cottet, Simon Bussy, and Henri Le Sidaner, who is
referred to elsewhere. The Salon of the Rose + Croix, held in the early
nineties, was one of the most eccentric art societies of the past
century, a mixture of art, religion, politics, and rules of morality.
Its members were forbidden to exhibit historical, prosaic, patriotic,
and military subjects, portraits, representations of modern life, all
rustic scenes and landscapes (except those in the style of Poussin),
seamen and seascapes, comic subjects, oriental subjects, pictures of
domestic animals, and studies of still-life. The doings of Sar Peladan
and his followers have long since been forgotten, but at the time they
afforded a curious study in artistic eccentricity.
There are several other men who have rendered good service to
Impressionism, although one is not able to mention more than their names
in this chapter. Paul Gauguin, an artist of decided ability, whose death
has only just been chronicled, contributed to several of the exhibitions
in the Durand-Ruel and other galleries. At first a simple painter of
Breton landscapes he inclined towards “Pointillism.” Upon his return
from a long visit to Tahiti his manner became crude and bizarre to an
extreme, not altogether admirable, although leaving an impression of
uncommon strength. Gauguin was a friend of Van Gogh whom, together with
Renoir and Cézanne, he may be said to have influenced. Another of his
pupils is Emile Bernard, the symbolist.
Vincent Van Gogh requires mention as a painter who practised the methods
of Impressionism to their extreme limit. A Dutchman who lived in France,
Van Gogh, a man of great talent, committed suicide after a most unhappy
life. Like his own personality, these canvases are exotic, though at
times displaying a more tender note. Had fortune been less unkind he
would have developed into a great artist, for nature had endowed him
with a rich genius.
In the eighth exhibition organised by the Société des artistes
Indépendants were some ambitious works, interesting but totally
unconvincing, painted in the new and then hotly discussed “Pointillist”
style. Seurat, Signac, Ibels, Maurice Denis, Henri-Edmond Cross, Théo
Van Rysselberghe, and Angrand, were members of this movement initiated
by Seurat and Signac. George Seurat died at an early age in 1890, and
this was doubtless the chief reason for the collapse of the group. The
aim of the “Pointillists” was to resolve the colours of nature back into
six bands of the spectrum, and to represent these on the canvas by spots
of unmixed pigment. At a sufficient distance these spots combine their
hues upon the retina, giving the effect of a mixture of coloured lights
rather than pigments, resulting in an increase instead of a loss of
luminosity. One of the first converts was the veteran Camille Pissarro,
who happily abandoned these extraordinary methods which Théo Van
Rysselberghe and a few others continue to employ.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
OUTSKIRTS OF A WOOD · ALFRED SISLEY
]
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[Illustration:
CHILD AND DOG · EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
]
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