their atmospheric materiality, the Impressionists were impelled by a
force stronger than a mere desire for superficial accuracy: they felt
the need for complete and minute organisation in a work of art. In
landscape, where the many accidentals appeared to lack cohesion, the
Impressionists achieved co-ordination by a unity of light which welded
all the objects into an interdependent group. Plasticity of form had
resulted from the efforts of preceding painters, but here for the first
time was a plasticity of method which moulded itself like putty with the
slightest change of illumination. Preoccupation in this new
compositional element made its users forget, for the time being, the
older precepts for obtaining composition. This forgetfulness however was
not due entirely to exuberance over a novel procedure. The painters
antecedent to Delacroix had used landscape as unimportant backgrounds
for figures, and there was no precedent for its adaptation to
organisation. Courbet had composed landscape by the linear balance of
black and white volumes. The Barbizon artists had brought out-of-door
painting into more general notice; but their greys were insufficient to
give it more than a factitious and purely conventional unity. The
Impressionists, feeling the urgency for a more virile expression in
landscape work, saw a solution to their problem in the depiction of
light through colour. Thus their conceptions took birth.
Their technique, like Manet's, was wholly consistent with their
objective. To the Impressionists this objective seemed possessed of the
merit of finality. Since Corot had carried painting out of doors and
Manet had portrayed studio light from every vantage point, what indeed
was left for this new group of men? They might have organised Manet or
Corot, but even the most competent of such modifications would have
presented an appearance like that of a Rubens or a Tiepolo. They were
too avid for genuine novelty to content themselves with slight
innovation; and they were too modern to derive satisfaction from the
stereotyped teachings of an antiquity whose tones were unemotional and
whose themes were hackneyed. The spirit of servility which is willing to
learn second-hand lessons and adopt indoor conceptions spelled decadence
to them. Their attitude was a healthy and correct one, for the cup of
linear tone-composition had been drained. They were wrong in that they
threw aside the cup: they should have filled it with more powerful
concepts. Their attitude was indicative of immaturity. The
Impressionists in truth were the adolescents of the modern art which was
born with Delacroix and Turner, and which only recently has become a
concrete engine for the projection of inspiration into an infinity of
possibilities.
Impressionism was more important than any preceding departure, for it
turned the thoughts of artists from mere results to motivating forces,
from the ripples on the surface to the power which causes the tides. It
foreshadowed the philosophical idea in art which concerns itself with
causes rather than effects, and thereby brought about a fundamental
reform which made of painting, not a mere vision, but an idea. The
Impressionists, it is true, worked from the surface down, but they had
the depths ever in mind; and the posing of their problem set in motion
in all serious painters that intellectual process which eventually would
begin with foundations and build upward. Impressionism was the
undeniable implication that the possibilities of the older art methods
had been exhausted, and that a substitution of a new method, however
fragmentary, was of greater importance than the sycophantic imitations
of an unapproachable past. Beneath this attitude we feel the broadness
of mind which, when a mistake has been made, does not ignore causes but
attaches to them different interpretations in an effort to arrive at the
truth. The Impressionists kept their palette intact; but they employed
its parts in a way that made new combinations possible. By doing this
they unconsciously reacted against the mere dexterity of brushing with
which so many painters, like Hals, Velazquez and Raeburn, became
obsessed and, as a consequence, failed to heed the deeper demands of
aesthetic research. By thus facilitating technique they not only reduced
the difficulties attached to the production of a picture, but made the
thing expressed of greater relative significance.
Pissarro, Monet, Sisley and Guillaumin who, with Bazille, composed the
original group of Impressionists, had all been influenced in youth by
the revolutionary doctrines of Corot and Courbet, and to a great extent
had adopted the palette of these two men. Landscape painting at that
time was almost a new development, and these four readily succumbed to
its inspiration. There is little of the strictly picturesque and still
less of the grandiose in the French landscape. Consequently a school
which worked along the line of old conventions could not have existed in
France. But when Rousseau and Diaz, striking out in a new direction,
poetised the charm of the hills and forests about Fontainebleau, the
painting of the out-of-doors was liberated both as to purpose and to
freedom of arrangement. The object of Turner's work had been to
astonish and charm the spectator with nature's vastness and complexity.
But, with the men of 1830, landscape art took on softness,
introspection, stillness, solemnity. In fine, it became more intimate.
Each tree and stone hid a nymph; each stream and hill, a mystery. With
the Impressionists all this was changed. They had seen and admired the
work of Manet. They applauded his reactions against studio lighting, and
later became his personal friends. Manet was then the cynosure of all
eyes in the art world of Paris, and it was only natural that he should
have been the dominating figure in a sort of _cenacle_ held in the Cafe
Guerbois in the quarter of the Batignolles. Here the revolutionists of
the day forgathered, and, by their uncompromising spirit, inspired one
another to practical protestations against the routine of the academies.
Manet's eloquence argued away the older idea of lighting as a type; and
the younger men, using this negotiation as a starting point, gave birth
to the methods which congealed into Impressionism.
Although Monet and Pissarro were the first to profit by Manet's
teachings, there is no definite history to tell who was the first of the
group to blossom into colour. However, there is little doubt that
Pissarro was the man. He was a Jew with a philosophic turn of mind, and
possessed more genuine intelligence than his confreres. Monet was the
cleverest and the most enthusiastic, and when the new process was
outlined it was he who first developed it to its ultimate consequences.
Pissarro, compared with Monet, was conservative, and his practicality
did not permit him so great an _elan_. His canvases beside those of
Monet's appear almost tentative, and the greys he had adopted from Corot
never entirely forsook him. Both these painters went to London during
the Franco-Prussian War, and we may take it for granted that the works
of Turner had an enormous influence on them. They had already seen
Jongkind who, despite his adherence to the sombre greys of the older
men, had, five years previous, more than foreshadowed the later
divisionistic technique. But in Turner they discovered not only all that
Jongkind had to offer, but the additional quality of joyous and dazzling
colour. After their return their palettes became rapidly cleaner.
In 1874, in an effort to bestir the public, the Impressionists held an
exhibition. The excitement was all they could have desired, but it led
rather to obloquy than to sales. Again and again they exposed in the
hope of obtaining recognition, but not until 1888 were they successful.
The average spectator did not recognise nature in their canvases. The
vision was an unusual one, and bore but slight resemblance to what had
gone before. But gradually things underwent a change. Friends of the
Impressionists launched a campaign of proselytising. Now and then a
picture was sold to a collector; formerly restaurant keepers and
bricklayers had been the only buyers of their work. The popular press
softened its criticisms and in many instances went so far as to defend
their pictures. As a result of these numerous indications of a growing
approval among connoisseurs, the public, that almost immovable mass of
reactionary impulses, began to look with favour on the new works it had
so recently ridiculed. The great majority of people had cared only for
such canvases as those in which the intellect might jump from one
familiar object to another, recognising it wholly, comprehending its
uses, but without giving thought to its meaning. Being thus interested
primarily in a picture's conventionally painted details, they were
opposed to any innovations which tended to obscure the actualities of
delineation. Later their attitude, influenced by acts of authoritative
sanction, relaxed. Instead of seeing, as formerly, only a series of
raucously coloured spots in these new pictures, the public began to
sense the deep reverence for nature that emanated from them. Thus has it
always been the case with art: appreciation for anything newly vital
lags far behind the achievement.
The true significance of Impressionism, however--like the true
significance of all emotion-provoking art--remained undiscovered to the
general. When the mean intelligence of mankind brings itself to bear on
a work of art, it applies itself through the channels of literature,
archaeology, photography, botany, mineralogy and physiology. To be a
popular artist a painter must be something of a professor in all these
sciences. With all other considerations--such as psychology and
aesthetics--he need not trouble himself. The public, even after centuries
of rigorous training and constant association with art, is no nearer a
comprehension of rhythmic ensembles--perfectly synthesised form in three
dimensions--than it was during the Renaissance. The two major requisites
to an understanding of the formal relations in momentous art are a
highly developed sensitivity and an active intelligence. An eye and a
nervous system are not enough. Society as a whole may, after a long
course of training and sedulous study, reach that perceptive point where
it can grasp the simple aesthetic hypothesis founded on two dimensions.
But such a hypothesis is but a beginning. It embraces only the
rudimentary aesthetic organisations that are found in Japanese art, the
works of the Byzantine masters, the primitives of France and the
pictures of Botticelli, Manet and Gauguin. The form in art of this kind
is, strictly speaking, not form at all. It is balance, harmonious
rhythm, linear adjustment, parallelism, co-ordinated silhouette,
sensitive arrangement, outline melody--in fact, whatever is possible in
two dimensions. Significant form must move in depth--backward and
forward, as well as from side to side. Furthermore it must imply an
infinity of depth. This third (and sometimes fourth) dimension informs
all truly great art.
While the Impressionists did not attain to depth in the aesthetic
connotation of the word, they nevertheless went beyond mere linear
balance, for by the means of a higher emotional element--light--they
organised, in a superficial manner, all the objects in their canvases.
There were no dissevered objects, unrelated backgrounds, no concessions
to the hagiographa or other literature. What chance, therefore, had they
of being understood? Their subject-matter was too abstract; their
effects were too general. No line was accentuated above another. There
were no modifications to achieve vastness or splendour. Impressionism
was the unadulterated reproduction of atmosphere, the smile or frown of
a mood in nature. It is small wonder that the unaesthetic found it
obscure: in it there was too much rapture, too much frankness, too much
exultation in mere living, and too little restraint. It was the false
dawn in the great modern Renaissance of colour--the most ecstatically
joyful style of painting the world has ever seen. It was feminine in
that it was a reflection, and its hysteria may also be attributed to
this fact. The Impressionists seated themselves, free from all trammels,
before the face of nature. Nature dictated: they transcribed. Nature
smiled; and they, completely blent with it, smiled also. This very
enthusiasm is what kept them young and held them to their initial path.
To paint as they did was an intoxication, subtler and stronger than a
drug and more elating than young love.
The vital history of the individual men who formed this group reduces
itself to a record of their temperamental tastes in subject selection
and to a statement of the degree to which each developed the new method.
The individualities of the units of an experimental school are always
unimportant. Temperament can dictate to the artist only two phases of
variation: what he is to use in his composition, and those
transcendental qualities, such as joy and sorrow, drama and comedy,
which reflect the timbre of his predispositions. Rhythm, form, balance,
organisation, drawing--all these aesthetic considerations spring from
deeper matrices in a man's nature than do his temperamental
predilections. Whether one man is intrigued by sunlight or another by
mist, mankind is, after all, so similar in externals, that one
individual's slight departure from a predecessor, or his trifling
deviation from a contemporary, is of little moment. The true key to a
man's genius lies in his ability to organise as well as, or better than,
others. The compositional figure on which he builds will alone give us
the substance of his character. We are all capable of receiving
sensations: we have our personal likes and dislikes for subjects, even
for actions and smells. But these choices are the outgrowths of our
instincts, mere habits of association. In nowise are they fundamental.
They are the physiological recognition of pleasant or unpleasant
impressions. Their importance is limited to the individual who
experiences them. Being the results of receptivity, they have no more to
do basically with the aesthetic expression of an artist whose work is
pure creation, than phonograph disks with the sounds they receive. By
the intelligence alone can a man be judged. Here there is order,
extensive in artists like Michelangelo, partially restricted in such
painters as El Greco and Giorgione, and severely limited as in the case
of the Impressionists. However, it must not be implied that the
intelligence alone can create. Such a contention would be preposterous;
but it is true that impressions must first be consciously organised
before they can be given concrete expression.
The intelligence of Pissarro was synthetic to a small extent, but not
once did it exhibit signs of extended apperception. He thought clearly
up to a certain point beyond which his art never went. His temperament
was not an uncommon one among Hebrews. He viewed life as a social
reformer who regards the world as a sad place, but one susceptible of
improvement. From this psychological standpoint he painted. His pictures
depict ubiquitous greys, occasionally brightened by a stream of lurid
light; sombre scenes in which the impression is one of late afternoon;
peasants who seem wearied of their unceasing and thankless labours;
gaunt trees which epitomise the decay of the year. His technique is not
dissimilar to that of Jongkind, and his drawing is allied to the
construction found in the Dutch landscapists of the early nineteenth
century rather than in those of his own group. That he was the
transition from Jongkind to Monet is a plausible contention; in him are
found qualities of both these other painters. But he was too
conscientious ever to attain to the technical heights Monet reached. If
one aspires to innovation of means, graphic traits have to be
sacrificed: steps must be taken in the dark. Those who cling with one
hand to the old while groping toward the new can never reach their
desires. Pissarro's lack of constructive genius was too evident, his
timidity too great, his intelligence too literal for him ever to
effectuate new plastic forms. His instincts were those of a teacher, and
he displayed indubitable traits of an exalted doctrinaire. But his art,
with these limitations, was able and complete. Cezanne says he learned
all he knew of colour from him. This is not wholly true; but it is
certain that Guillaumin and Sisley are greatly indebted to his clarity
of reason.
Although Pissarro is the greater artist, Monet is the finer craftsman.
He is widely credited with the invention of divisionistic methods; but
in this conclusion an inaccurate syllogism has played havoc with the
facts. None of the Impressionists invented the _procede de la tache_;
and not having invented it detracts nothing from their achievement.
Liszt did not invent the pianoforte, yet he was its greatest master. The
practice of crediting Frenchmen with the invention and development of
methods has scant authority with which to justify itself. Poussin was an
offshoot, and a weak one, of the great Titian. Watteau and Boucher come
to us direct out of the corners of Rubens's pictures. Daumier and
Courbet, temperamentally unrelated to the French tradition, stem from
the Dutch and the Spaniards. Cezanne emanated from the Dutch and the
Italians _via_ Impressionism. Matisse's procedure is little more than a
modification of that of the Persians and the early Italians. Cubism was
imported from Spain by a Spaniard. Futurism is strictly Italian: there
is not a French name among its originators. Synchromism was brought into
the world by Americans. And Impressionism, which, like all these other
departures, has come to be looked upon as French, is incontrovertibly of
English parentage. True, there is small credit due the inventor. The man
capable of employing new discoveries (as Marconi employed the principles
of wireless telegraphy) is the truly important figure. But we should not
confuse discovery with employment. Since Monet was French, France has a
perfect right to claim the results of colour division. The honours
attaching to its discovery are Turner's and Constable's.
Monet, like many great men, had little schooling. He went direct to
nature, impelled by the new impetus toward landscape. His first pictures
in the Impressionist manner resemble Manet's except for trivial
innovations in the differentiation of shadows; but in this difference we
divine the later Monet. Viewed cursorily these paintings appear to be
conventional figure pieces. But they are more than that. The figures
have no other significance than that which attaches to a vase or a
landscape. "Facial expression," "sympathetic gestures," the "appeal"--all
are absent from them. In these pictures the costume plays the hero's
part. La Japonaise is representative of that treatment of subject
wherein the figure is only an excuse for a pattern of colour. The modern
attitude toward theme which Manet handed down is again in evidence in
Monet. Its _reductio ad absurdum_ was the late epidemic of illustrative
pictures by such men as Whistler, Shannon, Sargent, Zuloaga and
Alexander, the titles of which were derived from the flowers held in the
hands of the principals, a bowl of goldfish in the background, or the
colour of a lace shawl.
Monet, however, soon tired of figure pieces. His true penchant lay
toward landscape. In this field he found an infinity of colour
possibilities, innumerable subtleties of light gradation, and
ready-to-paint arrangements as appealing as the ones he had formerly had
to pose in his interiors. At first his technique was broad and radiant,
much like a dispersed Manet. The large flat planes of unified colour
which later were to disintegrate into a thousand touches, were laid on
silhouetted forms. His boat pieces in the Caillebotte collection in
the Luxembourg gallery, appear, in their simplicity and breadth of
treatment, like the unfinished underpainting of a Turner or a Rembrandt.
Much of the bare canvas is visible; and in them one feels the presence
of the experimenter. At this time the war drove Monet to London, and his
exile proved a salutary one. On his return his pictures bloomed with a
new brilliance, and his flat surfaces became fragmentised. Racial
characteristics no doubt establish a bond between Sisley and the English
landscapists, but nothing less than an active influence could have made
so typical a Frenchman as Monet paint a canvas like L'Eglise a
Varengeville in which Turner is so much in evidence. Turner is also
unmistakably present in Pissarro at times, as witness Sydenham Road, but
never to any great extent.
[Illustration: WATERLOO BRIDGE by MONET]
Despite his great debt to Turner, Manet and Pissarro, Monet owed even
more to the Japanese. They influenced his style and his selection of
subjects. From them he lifted the idea of painting a single object many
times in its varied atmospheric manifestations. But where the Japanese
shifted their vantage-ground with each successive picture, Monet's
observation point remained stationary. His composition too, superficial
as it is, is frankly Japanese. It is generally represented by a straight
line which runs near the lower frame from one side to the other of the
canvas, and which supports the principal objects of the work. This line
slants, now up to the left, now up to the right; but seldom is it curved
as in the more advanced drawings of Hiroshige or Hokusai. His kinship
to the Japanese is, after all, a natural one, for the temperaments of
France and Japan are as similar as is possible between east and west.
The Japanese artists presented atmospheric conditions by means of
gradating large colour planes into white or dark. The consequent effects
of rain, snow, wind and sun are as vivid as Monet's, but they differ
from the Frenchman's in that they are concerned principally with
nature's decorative possibilities. Monet adheres to graphic
transcription for the purpose of presenting the dynamics of a
mood-producing phase of nature. But though differing as to aims, they
both reach very similar visual results. Compare, for instance, Monet's
suite of Les Peupliers with Hiroshige's series of the Tokaido or with
Hokusai's Views of Fuji. Many of the pictures are alike in composition
and choice of subject; but the European has achieved a living light,
while the Oriental has presented a more lucid and intensive vision.
These differences of purposes and similarities of appearance are again
discernible in Monet's Coins de Riviere and Shiubun's Setting Sun. A
further proof of this Impressionist's affinities with the Japanese will
be found by collating Monet's figure pieces with those of Utamaro.
There is one important point of divergence, however, between the arts of
Japan and Monet's canvases. Whereas the Japanese ignored texture, Monet
at all times devoted himself more or less sedulously to its portrayal.
The Falaise a Etretat and The Houses of Parliament--London are examples
of his freedom from a rigid system of scientific application. In both
pictures the sky is drawn with broad intersecting strokes in order to
achieve transparency and vastness. The water, in the former, is painted
with long curved strippings to give the wave effect, as in Courbet's La
Vague; and, in the latter, ripples are formed by minute touches. Monet's
architecture is often built up with colour-spots as a man lays bricks;
and the cliffs in the Falaise a Etretat are corrugated in exactly the
same way the strata lie in nature. Later this preciosity of style
disappeared, except in his treatment of slightly ruffled water. His
brushing became irregular and elongated, and he applied his stroke so
that it would merge into the other innumerable touches of diverse
colour. His eyesight was highly trained, and after years of labour in
the conscious analysis of colour planes, he was able to divide these
planes unconsciously.