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Title: Impressionist painting: its genesis and development
Author: Dewhurst, Wynford
Language: English
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GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT ***
IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING:
ITS GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
A STUDY · MAX LIEBERMANN
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING
ITS GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT
BY WYNFORD DEWHURST
[Illustration]
LONDON PUBLISHED BY
GEORGE NEWNES LIMITED
SOUTHAMPTON ST. STRAND
MDCCCCIV
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Á
MONSIEUR CLAUDE MONET
EN TÉMOIGNAGE D’ESTIME
ET D’ADMIRATION
WYNFORD DEWHURST
CHELMSCOTE
LEIGHTON BUZZARD
_Mar. 1904_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
IT may perhaps be interesting to the readers of this book to give a
short account of its origin. From the earliest days of my pupilage to
art I had been instinctively drawn towards the paintings of Turner,
Corot, Constable, Bonington, and Watts, with an intense admiration for
their manner in viewing, and methods of recreating, nature upon their
canvases; and in later years I had been fascinated by the works of more
modern artists, such as La Thangue, George Clausen, Edward Stott, and
Robert Meyerheim. In 1891, a student in Paris, I found myself face to
face with a beautiful development of landscape painting, which was quite
new to me. “Impressionism,” together with its numerous progeny of
eccentric offshoots, was at the time causing a great furore in the
schools. Curiously enough I had been charged with copying Monet’s style
long before I had seen his actual work, so that my conversion into an
enthusiastic Impressionist was short, in fact, an instantaneous process.
Since then I have endeavoured, by precept and by example, to preach the
doctrine of Impressionism, particularly in England, where it is so
little known and appreciated. It has always seemed to me astonishing
that an art which has shown such magnificent proofs of virility, which
has long been accepted at its true value on the Continent and in
America, should be comparatively neglected in my own country. A
stimulating propaganda being needed, I invaded for a short time the
domain of the writer on art, a sphere of activity for which I feel
myself none too well equipped. For years, as a hobby, I had collected
all manner of documents bearing upon the subject of Impressionism, and
the mass of material which thus accumulated formed the basis for several
articles which have appeared under my name in the English magazines. To
the Editors of the _Pall Mall Magazine_, the _Artist_, and the _Studio_,
I must tender my best thanks for the leave, so courteously given, to
incorporate the substance of the respective articles in this volume.
Many of the pictures which illustrate these pages are unique, having
been reproduced for the first time, the photographs not being for public
sale. I have to acknowledge my sincere obligations to Miss Mary Cassatt,
Messieurs Durand-Ruel (who have given me much personal assistance),
George Petit, Bernheim jeune, Maxime Maufra, Alexander Harrison, Paul
Chevallier, Lucien Sauphar, Emile Claus, Max Liebermann, and, indeed, to
all the artists illustrated, for permission to use the photographs of
their works. To Miss Mary Cassatt, and Messieurs Claude Monet, Emile
Claus, and Max Liebermann I am also indebted for the loan of valuable
pictures, and also for permission to reproduce them in colours. Without
such aid it would have been impossible to produce satisfactorily any
account of Impressionism. I trust that this volume may be of real
service in the cause of art education, and that it may introduce to an
extended circle of art-lovers the masterpieces of the great artists who
founded and are continuing Impressionist Painting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
DEDICATION v
PREFACE vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
LIST OF PORTRAITS xv
CHAP.
I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE IMPRESSIONISTIC IDEA 1
II. JONGKIND, BOUDIN, AND CÉZANNE 9
III. EDOUARD MANET (1832-1883) 17
IV. THE IMPRESSIONIST GROUP, 1870-1886 31
V. CLAUDE MONET 37
VI. PISSARRO, RENOIR, SISLEY 49
VII. SOME YOUNGER IMPRESSIONISTS: CARRIÈRE, POINTELIN, 57
MAUFRA
VIII. “REALISTS”: RAFFAËLLI, DEGAS, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 65
IX. THE “WOMEN-PAINTERS”: BERTHE MORISOT, MARY 75
CASSATT, MARIE BRACQUEMOND, EVA GONZALÈS
X. “LA PEINTURE CLAIRE”: CLAUS, LE SIDANER, BESNARD, 79
DIDIER-POUGET
XI. AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTS: WHISTLER, HARRISON, 89
HASSAM
XII. A GERMAN IMPRESSIONIST, MAX LIEBERMANN 95
XIII. INFLUENCES AND TENDENCIES 101
APPENDIX 107
BIBLIOGRAPHY 113
INDEX 121
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
MAX LIEBERMANN
A STUDY (_Frontispiece_)
J. M. W. TURNER
MODERN ITALY
PETWORTH PARK
JOHN CONSTABLE
THE CORN FIELD
A STUDY
THOMAS GIRTIN
VIEW ON THE THAMES
R. P. BONINGTON
HENRI IV. AND THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR
A COAST SCENE
G. F. WATTS
TIME, DEATH, AND JUDGMENT
RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE
J. B. JONGKIND
VIEW OF HONFLEUR
MOONRISE
EUGÈNE BOUDIN
RETURN OF THE FISHING SMACKS
THE REPAIRING DOCKS AT DUNKIRK
PAUL CÉZANNE
LA ROUTE
EDOUARD MANET
THE BULLFIGHT
THE GARDEN
PORTRAIT OF BERTHE MORISOT
PORTRAIT OF M. P——, THE LION-HUNTER
A GARDEN IN RUEIL
FISHING
GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
THE WHITE RABBITS
A SUMMER AFTERNOON
FAIR ANGLERS
LEPINE
FISHING NEAR PARIS
CLAUDE MONET
THE PICNIC
A STUDY (_in Colour_)
LA GRENOUILLÈRE
THE BEACH AT ÉTRETAT
POPLARS ON THE BANK OF THE EPTE: AUTUMN
MORNING ON THE SEINE
ARGENTEUIL
A RIVER SCENE
A LADY IN HER GARDEN
INTERIOR—AFTER DINNER
CAMILLE PISSARRO
CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, DIEPPE
PLACE DU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS
THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE: A WINTER IMPRESSION
AUGUSTE RENOIR
PASTEL PORTRAIT OF CÉZANNE
AT THE PIANO
ALFRED SISLEY
A SUNNY MORNING IN AUTUMN
OUTSKIRTS OF THE FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU
ON THE BANKS OF THE LOING
OUTSKIRTS OF A WOOD
EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
CHILD AND DOG
THE FAMILY
MOTHERHOOD
AUGUSTE POINTELIN
A GLADE IN THE WOOD
MOUNTAIN AND TREES
MAXIME MAUFRA
A ROCKY COAST
AN ETCHING
ARRIVAL OF THE FISHING BOATS AT CAMARET
SHIPWRECK
J. F. RAFFAËLLI
A GLASS OF GOOD RED WINE
NOTRE DAME
EDGAR DEGAS
DANCING GIRL FASTENING HER SHOE
DANCING GIRL
CAFÉ SCENE ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE
MARY CASSATT
BABY’S TOILET (_in Colour_)
BERTHE MORISOT
LE LEVER
EMILE CLAUS
THE LAST RAYS (_in Colour_)
THE VILLAGE STREET
RETURNING FROM MARKET
GOLDEN AUTUMN
APPLE GATHERING
A SUNLIT HOUSE
THE QUAY AT VEERE
THE BARRIER
HENRI LE SIDANER
AN ALLEY
THE TABLE
ALBERT BESNARD
A STUDY
THE DEATH BED
DIDIER POUGET
MORNING MISTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE CREUSE
MORNING IN THE VALLEY OF THE CORRÈZE
THE VALLEY OF THE CREUSE
J. A. McN WHISTLER
PORTRAIT OF HIS MOTHER
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE
PRINCESS OF THE PORCELAIN COUNTRY
ALEXANDER HARRISON
IN ARCADY
THE WAVE
SEASCAPE
CHILDE HASSAM
SUNLIGHT ON THE LAKE
CHILDREN
POMONA
MAX LIEBERMANN
A COUNTRY BEER-HOUSE, BAVARIA
THE COBBLERS
ASYLUM FOR OLD MEN, AMSTERDAM
WOMAN WITH GOATS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF PORTRAITS
EDOUARD MANET
GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
CLAUDE MONET
CAMILLE PISSARRO
AUGUSTE RENOIR
ALFRED SISLEY
J. F. RAFFAËLLI
AUGUSTE POINTELIN
MAXIME MAUFRA
EMILE CLAUS
ALEXANDER HARRISON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
MODERN ITALY · J. M. W. TURNER
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I · THE EVOLUTION OF THE IMPRESSIONISTIC IDEA
“L’IMPRESSIONISME, ELLE EST DIGNE DE NOTRE
ADMIRATIVE ATTENTION, ET NOUS POUVONS
RATIONNELLEMENT CROIRE QUE, AUX YEUX DES GÉNÉRATIONS
FUTURES, ELLE JUSTIFIERA CETTE FIN DE SIÈCLE DANS
L’HISTOIRE GÉNÉRALE DE L’ART”
_GEORGES
LECOMTE_
ALTHOUGH the great revolution of 1793 changed the whole face of France
both politically and socially, it failed to emancipate the twin arts of
painting and literature. In each case one tradition was succeeded by
another, and nearly forty years elapsed before the new spirit completely
broke through the barriers set up by a past generation.
In literature the victory was complete. The reason is easy to discover.
The smart dramatist and the young novelist are always more likely to
catch the fickle taste of the uneducated public than the budding
painter, who depends to a great extent for his appreciation upon the
trained and generally prejudiced eye of a connoisseur. There is another
reason for the success of the Romantic School in literature. The
majority of its leaders lived to extreme old age, and were themselves
able to correct their youthful extravagances. Hugo, Dumas, Gautier (to
mention but three) went down to their graves in honour. They had
outlived the antagonisms of their early days, and no man dared to raise
his voice in protest against poets who had added fresh laurels to the
glory of France.
The world of art was less fortunate. Many of the younger men barely
lived through the first flush of youth. Destroying Death is the worst
enemy to the arts. It is idle to imagine the changes which must have
ensued had Géricault and Bonington reached the Psalmist’s allotted span.
The unnatural union of Classical traditions with the yeast of
Romanticism might not have taken place. Such artists as Delaroche and
Couture would have dropped into the background, and there would have
been less reason for the revolt of Edouard Manet. It is possible that
Claude Monet might have been forestalled. Surely, Impressionism would
have come to us in another shape from different easels. In any event it
was bound to arrive, for a French artist had already struck the note
nearly a century and a half before.
The schools of painting which flourished under the last three Capet
kings lacked many of the essentials of truly great art. But they
possessed qualities, which the Classicalists despised, and the
Romanticists never reached in exactly the same way. They possessed a
strong sense of colour. Watteau, in particular, was the first to catch
the sunlight. The painters of “les fêtes galantes” are artificial,
unreal, dominated by mannerisms. But the cold inanities of David,
Girodet, Gérard, and Gros are no more to be compared with them than the
bituminous melodramatics of the lesser Romantic artists.
Watteau’s successors never entirely lost their master’s sense of light
and colour. In a mild way Chardin attempted realism. Boucher, and,
later, Fragonard were influenced by that Japanese art which was to take
such a prominent place in the movement of a hundred years later. But the
world altered. The stern, hard ideals of Rome and Greece were too severe
for these poor triflers with the Orient. David reigned supreme. The
_Journal de l’Empire_ considered Boucher ridiculous. Unhappy, forgotten
Fragonard, surely one of the most pathetic of figures, died in poverty
whilst the drums of Austerlitz were still reverberating through the air.
Ingres, a pupil of David, taught his students that draughtsmanship was
of more importance than colour. “A thing well drawn,” he said, “is
always well enough painted.” Such teaching was bound to provoke dissent,
and the germs of the coming revolution were to cross from England. Byron
and Scott were the sources of the literary revolution which swept across
Europe. British artists showed the way in the fight against tradition
and form, which resulted in the School of Barbizon, and its great
successor, the School of Impressionism.
Excluding the miniaturists, and such foreign masters as Holbein,
Vandyck, Kneller, and Lely, English art could hardly boast one hundred
consecutive years of history when its landscape artists first exhibited
in the Paris Salon. The French School could not forget Italy and its own
past. Even to this day the entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts is
guarded by two colossal busts of Poujet and Poussin, and the supreme
prize in its gift is the Prix de Rome. But English art has never been
trammelled excessively by its own past, simply because it did not
possess one, and, with insular pride, refused to accept that of the
Continent.
[Illustration:
_Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co._
PETWORTH PARK · J. M. W. TURNER
]
[Illustration:
_Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co._
THE CORN FIELD · J. CONSTABLE
]
Hogarth is a case in point. His education was slight and desultory; he
did not indulge in the Grand Tour; he professed a truly British scorn
for foreigners, uttering “blasphemous expressions against the divinity
even of Raphael, Correggio, and Michelangelo.” He took his subjects from
the life which daily surged under his windows in Leicester Square, and
when he attempted a classical composition he utterly failed, and was
promptly told so by his numerous enemies. His canvases form historical
records of the men and women of the early Georgian era, in much the same
manner as Edouard Manet represents the “noceurs” and “cocottes” who
wrecked the Second Empire and reappeared during the first decade of the
Third Republic.
Hogarth was a colourist, and the early English School was always one of
colour and animation, attempting to follow Nature as closely as
possible. Some of the slighter portrait studies of Sir Joshua Reynolds
have a strong affinity to the work of the French Impressionists. Richard
Wilson was not altogether blind to the beautiful world around him,
although he considered an English landscape always improved by a Grecian
temple. Gainsborough was decidedly no formalist, and whilst the lifeless
group, comprising Barry, West, Fuseli, and Northcote, was endeavouring
to inculcate the classical idea, the English Water-colour School began
to appear, the Norwich School was in the distance, Turner’s wonderful
career had commenced, and Constable, the handsome boy from Suffolk, was
studying atmospheric effects and the play of sunlight from the windows
of his father’s mill at Bergholt. In 1819 Géricault, one of the leaders
of the reaction in France against Classicalism, paid a visit to England.
He does not seem to have been greatly influenced by English work, owing
no doubt to his lamentably early death. But his visit resulted in
Constable and Bonington becoming known in France.
For years English painters exhibited regularly at the Salon. In 1822,
the year when Delacroix hung _Dante’s Bark_, Bonington exhibited the
_View of Lillebonne_ and a _View of Havre_, whilst other Englishmen
exhibiting were Copley Fielding, John Varley, and Robson. In 1824 the
Englishmen were still more prominent. John Constable received the Gold
Medal from Charles X. for the _Hay Wain_ (now in the London National
Gallery), and exhibited in company with Bonington, Copley Fielding,
Harding, Samuel Prout, and Varley. In 1827 Constable exhibited for the
last time, and, curious omen for the future, between the frames of
Constable and Bonington was hung a canvas by a young painter who had
never been accepted by the Salon before. His name was Corot, and he was
quite unknown.
The influence of these Englishmen upon French painting during the
nineteenth century is one of the most striking episodes in the history
of art. They were animated by a new spirit, the spirit of sincerity and
truth. The French landscape group of 1830, which embraced such giants as
Corot, Rousseau, and Daubigny, was the direct result of Constable’s
power. The path was made ready for Manet, who, though not a
“paysagiste,” became the head of the group which included Monet, Sisley,
and Pissarro. Forty years later the younger men sought fresh inspiration
in the works of an Englishman. Indirectly, Impressionism owes its birth
to Constable; and its ultimate glory, the works of Claude Monet, is
profoundly inspired by the genius of Turner.
When the principles which animated these epoch-making English artists
are contrasted with those which ruled the Impressionists, their
resemblance is found to be strong. “There is room enough for a natural
painter,” wrote Constable to a friend after visiting an exhibition which
had bored him. “Come and see sincere works,” wrote Manet in his
catalogue. “Tone is the most seductive and inviting quality a picture
can possess,” said Constable. It cannot be too clearly understood that
the Impressionistic idea is of English birth. Originated by Constable,
Turner, Bonington, and some members of the Norwich School, like most
innovators they found their practice to be in advance of the age.
British artists did not fully grasp the significance of their work, and
failed to profit by their valuable discoveries.
It was not the first brilliant idea which, evolved in England, has had
to cross the Channel for due appreciation, for appreciated it certainly
was not in the country of its origin. As the genius of the dying Turner
flickered out, English art reached its deepest degradation. The official
art of the Great Exhibition of 1851 has become a byword and a reproach.
In English minds it stands for everything that is insincere, unreal,
tawdry, and trivial.
The group of pre-Raphaelites, brilliantly gifted as they undoubtedly
were, worked upon a foundation of retrograde mediævalism. And, as the
years followed each other, English art failed as a whole to recover its
lost vitality. Domestic anecdote, according to the formulæ of Augustus
Egg, Poole, or, slightly higher in the scale, Mulready and Maclise,
formed the product of nearly every studio. The false Greco-Roman
convention of Lord Leighton luckily had no following. Rejuvenescence
came from France in the shape of Impressionism, and English art received
back an idea she had, as it proved, but lent.
[Illustration:
A STUDY · J. CONSTABLE
]
[Illustration:
VIEW OF THE THAMES · THOMAS GIRTIN
]
[Illustration:
_Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co._
HENRI IV. AND THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR · R. P. BONINGTON
]
Those Englishmen who are taunted with following the methods of the
French Impressionists, sneered at for imitating a foreign style, are in
reality but practising their own, for the French artists simply
developed a style which was British in its conception. Many things had
assisted this development, some accidental, some natural. All the
Englishmen had worked to a large extent in the open. Now the atmosphere
of France lends itself admirably to Impressionistic painting “en plein
air.” All landscapists notice that the light is purer, stronger, and
less variable in France than in England.
By thus working in the open both Constable and Turner, together with
their French followers, were able to realise upon canvas a closer
verisimilitude to the varying moods of nature than had been attempted
before. By avoiding artificially darkened studios they were able to
study the problems of light with an actuality impossible under a glass
roof. They were in fact children of the sun, and through its worship
they evolved an entirely new school of picture-making. The Modern
Impressionist, too, is a worshipper of light, and is never happier than
when attempting to fix upon his canvas some beautiful effect of
sunshine, some exquisite gradation of atmosphere. Who better than Turner
can teach the use and practice of value and tone? In triumph he fixed
those fleeting mists upon his immortal canvases, immortal unhappily only
so long as bitumen, mummy, and other pigment abominations will allow.
The technical methods of the French Impressionists and of the early
English group vary but little. The modern method of placing side by side
upon the canvas spots, streaks, or dabs of more or less pure colour,
following certain defined scientific principles, was made habitual use
of by Turner. Both Constable and Turner worked pure white in impasto
throughout their canvases, high light and shadow equally, long before
the advent of the Frenchmen.
An example of this was to be seen in a large painting by Constable hung
in the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition of 1903. _The Opening of Waterloo
Bridge_, exhibited in 1832, was declared by the artist’s enemies to have
been painted with his palette-knife. Almost the whole of the canvas,
especially the foreground, is dragged over by a full charged brush of
pure white, which, catching the uneven surface of the underlying dry
impasto work, produces a simple but successful illusion of brilliant
vibrating light.
This work was not well received by the contemporary press and public. It
was regarded as a bad joke, became celebrated as a snowstorm, compared
with Berlin wool-work (a favourite simile which Mr. Henley has recently
applied to Burne-Jones), and was derided as the product of a disordered
brain. Seventy years have barely sufficed for its full appreciation.
By a curious coincidence Bonington’s _Boulogne Fishmarket_ was hung
almost exactly opposite in the same Winter Exhibition. This canvas must
have had an enormous influence with Manet, its blond harmony and rich
flat values within a distinct general tone being a distinguishing
feature of the great Frenchman’s style.
The Impressionists, therefore, continued the methods of the English
masters. But they added a strange and exotic ingredient. To the art of
Corot and Constable they added the art of Japan, an art which had
profoundly influenced French design one hundred years before. The
opening of the Treaty ports flooded Europe with craft work from the
islands. From Japanese colour-prints, and the gossamer sketches on silk
and rice-paper, the Impressionists learnt the manner of painting scenes
as observed from an altitude, with the curious perspective which
results. They awoke to the multiplied gradation of values and to the use
of pure colour in flat masses. This art was the source of the evolution
to a system of simpler lines.
In colour they ultimately departed from the practice of the English and
Barbizon Schools. The Impressionists purified the palette, discarding
blacks, browns, ochres, and muddy colours generally, together with all
bitumens and siccatives. These they replaced by new and brilliant
combinations, the result of modern chemical research. Cadmium Pale,
Violet de Cobalt, Garance rose doré, enabled them to attain a higher
degree of luminosity than was before possible. Special care was given to
the study and rendering of colour, and also to the reflections to be
found in shadows.
So far as the term implies the position of teacher and pupils, the
Impressionists did not form themselves into a school. On the contrary,
they were independent co-workers, banded together by friendship, moved
by the same sentiments, each one striving to solve the same æsthetic
problem. At the same time it is possible to separate them into distinct
personalities and groups.
[Illustration:
_Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co._
A COAST SCENE · R. P. BONINGTON
]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Fredk. Hollyer_
TIME, DEATH, AND JUDGMENT · G. F. WATTS
]
Edouard Manet occupies a position alone. His work can be separated into
two periods, divided by the year 1870. His earlier work deeply
influenced Claude Monet, who was a prominent member of the group which
gathered round Manet at the Café Guerbois. After 1870 the position was
slightly changed, for, although he retained the nominal leadership of
the group which was now known under the title of Impressionists, Manet
was influenced by the technique of Claude Monet. The question has yet to
be decided whether Manet or Monet was the founder of the new school.
Monsieur Camille Mauclair declares for the latter, stating that Manet’s
pre-eminence was due to the attention he attracted by his excessive
realism, and that Claude Monet was the true initiator. It may be
admitted that Impressionism, as the phrase is now understood, did not
really gather force until 1867. Claude Monet was greatly attracted by
Manet’s work as early as 1863, and upon these new methods he seems to
have based his own, widened though after his visit to London with
Pissarro in 1870.
During his lifetime Manet was the recognised head, and around him was
formed the famous circle of the Café Guerbois, which became known as the
School of Batignolles. This included Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne,
Renoir, and Degas. If there is one man greater than the others it is
Claude Monet. Only during comparatively recent years have his
originality and strength been generally recognised. He now occupies the
position held by Manet, although he cannot be said to be Manet’s
successor. Manet painted the figure, seldom attempting landscape, a
_genre_ which is primarily Monet’s. Claude Monet is doubly indebted to
English art. Profoundly moved by Turner, whose works he studied at first
hand in England, he also traces an artistic descent through Jongkind and
Boudin from Corot, who caught the methods of Constable and Bonington.
Jongkind and Boudin are two little masters not to be forgotten. Not
altogether Impressionists themselves, they were in close affinity to the
school upon which they had much influence. Men of uncommon character and
earnestness of purpose, their art was sincere. In themselves they were
interesting, for, richly endowed with natural talents, they were for the
most part poor beyond belief in material wealth. Inspired by a genuine
love for Nature in all her aspects they never reached the high technique
of their English predecessors, and were far surpassed by Claude Monet
and his group. Forerunners in the evolution of the school of “plein air”
painting, a reference is necessary to them in order to follow the
development of the school as a whole.
For the first time in the history of art women have taken an active part
in founding a new school. Madame Berthe Morisot, Miss Mary Cassatt, and
Madame Eva Gonzalès must be included amongst the early Impressionists.
Various movements based upon the Impressionistic idea have taken place
in France and on the Continent generally. There are the _Pointillistes_
for instance, and the Neo-Impressionists. Amongst foreign artists
Whistler must be mentioned; a student at Gleyre’s he attended at the
Café Guerbois, and embraced many of Manet’s ideas.
The history of the early battles over Impressionism centres for the most
part round one personality. In following the story of the failures and
successes of Edouard Manet we follow the gradual rise of the entire
school, for no man fought more bravely in defence of its principles.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
_Photo by Fredk. Hollyer_
RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE · G. F. WATTS
]
[Illustration:
VIEW OF HONFLEUR · J. B. JONGKIND
]
CHAPTER II · “THE FORERUNNERS.” JONGKIND, BOUDIN, AND CEZANNE
“ILS PRENNENT LA NATURE ET ILS LA RENDENT, ILS
LA RENDENT VUE À TRAVERS LEURS TEMPÉRAMENTS
PARTICULIERS. CHAQUE ARTISTE VA NOUS DONNER AINSI UN
MONDE DIFFÉRENT, ET J’ACCEPTERAI VOLONTIERS TOUS CES
DIVERS MONDES”
_ZOLA_
JONGKIND and Boudin are the links which connect the Barbizon men of 1830
to the Impressionist group of 1870. Although little public fame came to
them during their lifetime, they had considerable influence upon the
younger landscape-painters of their generation. Both were artists of
great ability as well as of enormous industry; both suffered from
continued misfortune and neglect. Yet no collection illustrating the
history of Impressionism can exclude examples of the Dutch Jongkind, or
of Boudin, a follower of Corot and master of Monet. Jongkind’s pictures
are doubling, nay trebling, in value, and the records of the public
sale-rooms are astounding evidences of the increasing appreciation of
Boudin by modern collectors.
The biographies of Jongkind and Boudin form excellent texts over which
one may moralise upon the uncertainties of art as a career. It is not
often that the Fates compel two men to struggle for so long against such
hopeless and wretched surroundings. The life of Jongkind was a life of
continued misery. Towards its end he utterly gave way, and died a
dipsomaniac. Boudin possessed a little more grit, although his
surroundings were not more propitious. He lived almost unnoticed until a
beneficent Minister awarded him the greatest prize a Frenchman can
receive on this earth, the Cross of the Legion of Honour.
Johann Barthold Jongkind was born at Lathrop, near Rotterdam, in 1819.
Dutch by birth, many years’ residence in France, together with a strong
sympathy with Gallic ways, made him almost a citizen of his adopted
country, and certainly a member of the French School of Painting. At
first he was a pupil of Scheffont, and afterwards he worked under
Isabey. At the Salon of 1852 he obtained a medal of the first class, and
then for years in succession was rejected by the juries. Almost at the
end of his life he was offered the long-coveted decoration, but he was
never a popular artist, nor even well known amongst the art public. A
few amateurs bought his works, his water-colours were lost in old
portfolios, and the exhibition of his pictures previous to the sale
after his death was a revelation alike to painters and critics. His life
was a sad history of neglect, terrible privation, and want. All that we
know of him is that he gave way to alcoholism, dying in Isère in 1891,
alone, friendless, and forgotten.
Jongkind was one of the very first men in France to occupy himself with
the enormous difficulties surrounding the study of atmospheric effects,
the decomposition of luminous rays, the play of reflections, and the
unceasing change crossing over the same natural form during the
different hours of the day. His influence over several of the more
prominent men of the Impressionist group was great. Edouard Manet was
strongly impressed by his methods, and Claude Monet refers to him as a
man of profound genius and originality of character, “le grand peintre.”
In the sale-rooms Jongkind’s water-colours and etchings are now reaching
very high prices, although one cannot agree that they are his most
remarkable creations. Works the artist was content to sell for £4 to £8
now change hands under the hammer at sums ranging from £160 to £800. The
best canvases were painted towards the end of his life, especially those
depicting the luminous atmosphere of the beautiful Dauphiné countryside.
His large landscapes are extremely unequal, somewhat hard and dry in
technique, and more or less stereotyped in the choice of subject. His
pictures do not always convey the true feeling for atmospheric effect,
and many are simply experiments which lack the great quality of charm.
Without a doubt he possessed extraordinary ability, but he lacked the
illuminating spark of genius. He pointed out a way he was not himself
strong enough to follow.
[Illustration:
MOONRISE · J. B. JONGKIND
]
Louis-Eugène Boudin, an old comrade and life-long friend of Jongkind, is
the head of the group of “little masters” who reigned during the
transitional period in French landscape art between 1830 and 1870. He
was born in the Rue Bourdet, Honfleur, on July 12, 1824, and died within
a few miles of his birthplace in 1898. He leaves a magnificent record of
work accomplished, and the memory of a noble life devoted to a beautiful
ideal. Pissarro, in a letter addressed to the writer, says that Boudin
had much influence upon the advancement of the Impressionist idea,
particularly through his studies direct from Nature. His father was a
pilot on board the steamboat _François_ of Havre, a bluff and hearty
sailor, typical of the coast nearly a century ago. A good specimen is to
be found in the burly guardian of the Musée Normand at Honfleur, who, by
a coincidence not altogether strange in this world of coincidences,
travelled round the world with old Boudin, and knew intimately “le petit
Eugène.”
The boy’s mother was stewardess on board the boat her husband piloted,
and the artist commenced life in the humble and not altogether enviable
capacity of cabin-boy. In that position he remained until his fourteenth
year, travelling from French and English ports as far as the Antilles.
At that age an irresistible desire came over his soul. He wished to quit
seafaring life and devote himself to the brush. He had already made many
sketches in bitumen, some having attracted attention from passengers.
Those which have been preserved display wonderful proficiency,
considering the many difficulties the boy had to labour under. Chance
helped the youth; for his father, tiring of his endless struggle with
the elements, retired from his post and opened a little stationery shop
on the Grand Quai at Havre. The cabin-boy became shop-boy.
This new mode of life gave him far greater time to follow his
inclinations. All untaught he applied himself assiduously to
draughtsmanship, painting on the quays, in the streets, devoting Sundays
and fête-days to long excursions amongst the hills round about Havre.
One day Troyon brought a canvas for framing to the elder Boudin’s shop.
In the corner he noticed some curious little pastels of the shipping and
harbour. Eugène made his first artistic friendship. Troyon, who was
living in great poverty, only too pleased to sell a picture for
twenty-five francs, was of great assistance to the lad. Another customer
helped young Boudin. Norman by birth, son of a seaman, Jean-François
Millet met the boy in Havre and was attracted by his evident skill.
Millet was in the same quandary as Troyon; stranded in semi-starvation,
he was executing portraits at thirty francs per head, diligently
canvassing the retired ebony merchants, the harbour officials, the
sailors and their sweethearts. Alphonse Karr and Courbet, whilst
wandering through Normandy, became acquainted with Boudin’s sketches,
and sought out the young artist.
Eugène Boudin’s career was now determined. The advice of friends was
vain. They pointed out that if Corot with his immense talent was unable
to earn an independence at the age of fifty, an untrained shop-boy had
still less chance. No man could tell a more bitter story of the artist’s
life than Millet, and he attempted to persuade the boy to keep to the
shop. All efforts were fruitless. Couture and a few other associates
obtained a small student’s allowance from the Havre Town Council, and
Boudin set out for Paris. The bursary of one pound weekly soon came to
an end, and left the artist without resources or friends. He paid for
his washing with a picture valued at the sum of forty francs. The
laundress immediately sold the work to cover her bill, and the canvas
has recently changed hands for four thousand francs. His “marchand de
vin” exchanged wine for pictures which have lately passed through the
sale-rooms at forty times their original agreed values. By these means,
together with a few portrait commissions, Boudin managed to eke out a
most precarious existence.
From 1856 dates the foundation of the “Ecole Saint Simeon,” (so called
from the rustic inn and farmhouse on the road from Honfleur to
Villerville, halfway up the hill overlooking Havre and the mouth of the
Seine), in which Boudin took a prominent part. In 1857 the artist
exhibited ten pictures at the local Havre exhibition, which he followed
with a sale by auction, his idea being to raise enough money to pay his
expenses back to Paris. Claude Monet had been sending several pressing
letters of invitation, holding out fair prospects of business with
several art dealers. The sale was a complete failure, producing a net
sum of £20. Boudin gave up his hopes of Paris and returned to the
farmhouse of Saint Simeon saddened and discouraged. Roused by “la mère
Toutain,” he opened an academy of painting, and the old inn of Saint
Simeon may be called the cradle of French Impressionism.
For twenty-five years it formed the resting-place, from time to time, of
all the most celebrated men of the group. The list is a long one—Millet,
Troyon, Courbet, Lepine, Diaz, Harpignies, Jongkind, Cals, Isabye,
Daubigny, Monet, and many others. Boudin always regretted that there was
no history written of the place, no record of the scenes which took
place there. One has the same regret over many other famous sketching
grounds and artistic inns in France. What stories can be told of the
joyous life, of the good fellowship, the games and escapades, the
brilliant jokes of many a world-renowned genius in playful mood, happy
little bands of men with the spirit and souls of children!
[Illustration:
RETURN OF THE FISHING SMACKS · EUGENE BOUDIN
]
The hostesses are of a type apart, and no other country but France
produces them in such numbers. “Mères des artistes,” they are full of
pride with their anecdotes of celebrated lodgers. Peasants of the best
class, admired and respected by all who come into contact with them,
they are remembered with affection. The peaceful holidays spent in these
lovely villages represent much of the brighter side of the art-student’s
career, and memories mix with regrets as one recalls a youth spent in
that beloved country of art—la belle France.
Boudin’s academy of painting at the inn was no great success, and he
changed his habitat to Trouville, twenty miles down the coast, at the
invitation of Isabey and the Duc de Morny. They suggested that he should
paint “scènes de plage” of that gay and fashionable watering-place, the
bathers, the frequenters of the Casino and the racecourse, the regattas,
the “landscapes of the sea” as Courbet called them. “It is prodigious,
my dear fellow; truly you are one of the seraphim, for you alone
understand the heavens,” cried Courbet one day in excitement as he
watched Boudin at work. Boudin was at last becoming famous. Alexandre
Dumas addressed him as, “You who are master of the skies, ‘par
excellence,’” and above all came the testimony of Corot, who described
him as “le roi des ciels.”
Unfortunately, the public did not buy Boudin’s pictures, and he remained
in poverty. In 1864 he married, his wife receiving a “dot” of 2000
francs, and a home was made up four flights of rickety stairs in a mean
street in Honfleur, the rental of the garret being thirty-five shillings
per annum. Amongst their visitors the saddest was Jongkind, the man of
failure, a reproach to the blindness of his generation, and a warning to
those who seek fortune by the brush. It was only by the combination of
courage, energy, and robust health that Boudin was able to fight his way
through actual periods of starvation in order to live to see his work
justified by public appreciation.
Four years later the little household was moved to Havre. Boudin was
reduced to such absolute poverty that he was not able to provide himself
with sufficient decent clothing to visit a rich tradesman of the town,
who had commissioned some decorative panels. The commission was lost,
and the fight for bread was keener than before. During the winter
furniture was converted into firewood, and the artist worked as an
ordinary labourer. Boudin hated Paris, but at the urgent solicitation of
artists, who promised him work, he left Havre for the metropolis. Ill
luck still dogged his steps. No sooner had he settled with his wife in
the new quarters than the war broke out with all the unendurable
misfortunes of “l’année terrible” in its train.
Hopes of commissions were at an end, the art colony being scattered far
and wide. Boudin fled first to Deauville, then to Brussels. Crowded with
French refugees, the struggle for life entered its bitterest stage. For
the second time Boudin became a day-labourer. At last, by a most
trifling chance, his wretched position was altered for the better. By
hazard Madame Boudin met a picture-dealer whilst marketing, and his
appreciation and encouragement enabled the artist to return to his
easel. The artist’s progress was, however, extremely slow. Nine years
later he held an auction sale of his pictures, at which four paintings
realised £21. A friend who had joined in the sale was more unfortunate,
for he sold nothing. “You see,” he wrote to Boudin, “that nothing
succeeds with me. I don’t know how it will all finish. What upsets me
most in the midst of all this worry is the fear that I should lose all
love for painting.” This phrase must have represented Boudin’s thoughts
during the long years of disheartening struggle.
In 1881, after twenty-three years of almost annual exhibition in the
Paris Salons, Boudin obtained a medal in the third class. Nowadays this
award is usually made to the young man who exhibits for the first time.
Three years later Boudin received a medal of the second class, which
exempted his work from judgment by the jury, and places its recipient
“hors concours.” He commenced, at the age of fifty, to sell his pictures
more regularly, but at prices extremely low and out of proportion to
their present value. At the Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in 1888, one hundred
canvases by Boudin fetched the grand total of £280. It is difficult to
estimate what sum such a lot would reach at the present day.
The tide had changed, for the Government bought a large painting, _Une
Corvette Russe dans le Bassin de l’Eure au Havre_ for the Luxembourg. In
1889, public honour was marred by the most mournful blow. To his
inconsolable grief his wife died, after twenty-five years of the
happiest companionship. Amongst the letters of sympathy were many
acknowledgments of the artist’s genius, notably from Claude Monet, “in
recognition of the advice which has made me what I am”—a striking and
flattering phrase from the head of the Impressionist group. In this same
year Boudin was awarded the gold medal at the Salon. In 1896 the
Government purchased his _Rade de Villefranche_ for the Luxembourg, and
the old artist received from the hands of Puvis de Chavannes, at the
recommendation of the Minister Léon Bourgeois, the ribbon and cross of
the Legion of Honour.
[Illustration:
THE REPAIRING DOCKS AT DUNKIRK · EUGENE BOUDIN
]
Boudin’s health, weakened by the long privations, had at last broken up.
After several futile journeys he returned to his native Normandy, and,
whilst working at his easel in his châlet near Deauville in 1898, died
almost without warning. By his will he left a rich legacy of pictures to
the gallery of his native town, Honfleur. Over one hundred of Boudin’s
sketches can now be seen in the public gallery of Havre. Boudin’s
connection with modern Impressionism is chiefly the influence generated
by a strong enthusiasm for working “en plein air” and a deep love of
Nature. His dominant colour, almost to the end of his life, was grey—a
grey beautiful in its range and truthful in its effect. Personally
Boudin had the head of an old pilot, with healthy ruddy complexion,
white beard, and keen blue eyes. He spoke slowly in low monotonous
tones, was doggedly tenacious of an idea, had strong artistic
convictions. He was modest to a degree, and when he sought honours they
were for brother artists, never for himself. His highest ambition was
reached when the Town Council of Honfleur named a street “Rue
Eugène-Boudin.” This street, long, narrow, hilly, with many rough places
and occasional pitfalls, typifies the artist’s own life. After his death
the town went further. Aided by M. Gustave Cahen, president of the
“Société des Amis des Arts,” Honfleur erected a fine statue of its
talented son by the jetty, where he had so often painted his favourite
scenes of sea and shipping.
Boudin has left a name which will be honoured in the annals of French
art. He lived a long life, produced many works of which not one falls
below his own high standard. His position, midway between two great
schools, is perhaps one reason why he has not loomed more strongly in
the public appreciation. Upon their merits his pictures cannot easily be
forgotten. When it is remembered that he links Corot to Monet, was in
fact the true master of the latter, it will be seen what an important
niche he occupies in any history devoted to Modern French Impressionism.
From Boudin is an easy step to Cézanne, one of the pioneers of the
movement before 1870. Paul Cézanne and Zola were schoolboys together in
Aix. They left Provence to conquer Paris, and whilst Zola was a clerk in
Hachette’s publishing office Cézanne was working out in his studio the
early theories of Manet, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. Both
men frequented the Café Guerbois, and there is little doubt that in the
remarkable series of articles contributed to De Villemessant’s paper
“L’Événement,” Zola was assisted by Cézanne, who had introduced the
journalist to the artists he had championed. When the criticisms were
republished in 1866, in a volume entitled “Mes Haines,” Zola dedicated
the book in affectionate terms, “A mon ami Paul Cézanne,” recalling ten
years of friendship. The writer went still further, for the character of
Claude Lantier, hero of “L’Œuvre,” a novel dealing largely with artistic
life and Impressionism, is generally supposed to have been suggested by
the personality of Paul Cézanne.
For years Cézanne seldom exhibited, and his pictures are not known
amongst the public. As to their merits, opinion is curiously divided. He
has painted landscapes, figure compositions, and studies of still-life.
His landscapes are crude and hazy, weak in colour, and many admirers of
Impressionism find them entirely uninteresting. His figure compositions
have been called “clumsy and brutal.” Probably his best work is to be
found in his studies of still-life, yet even in this direction one
cannot help noting that his draughtsmanship is defective. It is probable
that the incorrect drawing of Cézanne is responsible for a reproach
often directed against Impressionists as a body—a general charge of
carelessness in one of the first essentials of artistic technique. Apart
from this defect, Cézanne’s paintings of still-life have a brilliancy of
colour not to be found in his landscapes.
In his student-days this artist had a great admiration for Veronese,
Rubens, and Delacroix, three masters who had some influence upon Manet.
Some of his latter methods showed a strong sympathy with the Primitives.
The modern symbolists are his descendants, and Van Gogh, Emile Bernard,
and Gauguin owe much to his example. Personally he unites a curiously
shy nature with a temperament half-savage, half-cynical. Cézanne’s work
is remarkable for its evident sincerity, and the painter’s aim has been
to attain an absolute truth to nature. These ambitions are the keynotes
of Impressionist art.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
LA ROUTE · PAUL CÉZANNE
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
THE BULLFIGHT · EDOUARD MANET
]
CHAPTER III · EDOUARD MANET (1832-1883)
“CE QUI ME FRAPPE D’ABORD DANS CES TABLEAUX, C’EST
UNE JUSTESSE TRÈS DÉLICATE DANS LES RAPPORTS DES
TOUS ENTRE EUX.
“TOUTE LA PERSONNALITÉ DE L’ARTISTE CONSISTE DANS LA
MANIÈRE DONT SON ŒIL EST ORGANISÉ: IL VOIT BLOND, ET
IL VOIT PAR MASSES”
_ZOLA_
FOR over twenty years the technique and methods of Edouard Manet were a
subject for the most virulent debate. His art, in fact, became the scene
of a battle in which every painter in Europe had a hand. Officialdom
found no place for him in its heart, no matter whether the State was
Imperial or Republican. The Empress Eugénie once asked that his pictures
might be removed from public exhibition; President Grévy demurred when
the artist’s name was placed on the list for the Legion of Honour.
Clearly this man was no supporter of the established order of things.
Refused recognition as an artist by the school of tradition, disowned by
his own teacher, a source of hilarity to the public, Edouard Manet
caught but a glimpse of the long-wished-for land of success which he was
fated never to enjoy fully.
The battle is not quite finished, and the rout of the old school
continues to the present day. One result remains. Manet has had a
greater influence upon the art of the last forty years than any other
master during that period, and the standard which he raised has become a
rallying-point for the greatest painters of the present age.
Edouard Manet was born in Paris on January 23, 1832, at No. 5, Rue des
Petits Augustins. Thirty-six years previously Corot was born round the
corner, in the Rue du Bac. To-day the Rue des Petits Augustins is a long
street running through the Latin Quarter, southwards from the Seine and
the Louvre, known as the Rue Bonaparte. It has become the chief mart for
commerce in artists’ materials, photographs, pictures, and all the odds
and ends which fill up a studio. With a quaint appropriateness, the
birthplace of Manet faces the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
The boy was the eldest of three brothers. His father was a judge
attached to the tribunal of the Seine, and the family had been connected
with the magistrature for generations. First a pupil at Vaugirard, under
the Abbé Poiloup, Manet then entered the Collège Rollin, took his
baccalaureate in letters, and grew into an elegant man of the world. But
his inclinations clashed with his duties, and his uncle, amateur artist
and colonel in the artillery, taught him how to sketch in pen and ink.
M. Antonin Proust describes the result in a recent magazine article.
“From earliest years,” he writes, “Manet drew by instinct, with a
firmness of touch and vigour unexcelled even in his latest works. His
family was intensely proud of the boy’s uncommon gift, and his
artistically-inclined uncle, Colonel Fournier, supported him against his
father, who—despite his admiration—had other views as to his son’s
career.”
“One should never thwart a child in the choice of his career,” said
Colonel Fournier.
“If,” replied the father, “the boy is not inclined towards the ‘Palais,’
let him follow your example and become a soldier; but go in for
painting—never!”
A studio-stool tempted the boy far more than a probable seat on the
Bench. If he had to waste time, it should not be in the Salle des Pas
Perdus.
His parents sent him, towards the close of his school-days, upon a
voyage to Rio de Janeiro, hoping that travel might distract his mind
from thoughts of an artistic life. It is said that they contemplated a
naval career. Charles Méryon, it may be remembered, made the voyage
round the world in a French corvette before he took up the etcher’s
needle. Like Méryon, Manet improved his draughtsmanship, although a
sailor. He sketched incessantly. One day the captain asked him to get
out his paints and touch up a cargo of Dutch cheeses, which had become
discoloured by the sea. “Conscientiously, with a brush,” says Manet, “I
freshened up these _têtes de mort_, which reappeared in their beautiful
tints of violet and red. It was my first piece of painting.”
His voyage in the _Guadeloupe_ ended, he returned home with unaltered
determination. After some protest his father relented, and in 1850 Manet
entered the studio of Thomas Couture.
[Illustration:
THE GARDEN · EDOUARD MANET
]
Couture occupied a leading position in that group sometimes called the
“juste milieu.” Between the Romanticists and the Classicalists his
preferences perhaps were for the latter. Of extreme irritability in
temper, with a deep contempt for those in authority, he combined a keen
desire for success both popular and financial. His picture, _The Romans
of the Decadence_, in the Salon of 1847, brought both, and for a few
years he remained one of the most celebrated artists in France. Then he
criticised Delaroche, with the usual result when one painter puts
another right: he offended King Louis-Philippe, he insulted the Emperor
Napoleon III. Kings must be taken at their own valuation, if one wishes
to enjoy their good graces. It was not surprising that Couture
ultimately became a disappointed and forgotten man.
He has been called an Apostle of Classicalism. Taught first by Baron
Gros, who vacillated from one school to the other, and afterwards by
Delaroche, who endeavoured to reconcile the opposing parties, Couture
could hardly have taken any other position in the art world of the
’forties. “He was apart among the painters of the day, as far removed
from the cold academic school as from the new art just then making its
way, with Delacroix at its head. The famous quarrel between the
Classical and Romantic camps left him indifferent. He was of too
independent a nature to follow any chief, however great.” This is the
testimony of an American artist, Mr. P. A. Healy, who studied under
Couture about the time Manet was in the atelier, and shows that the
future Impressionist worked under a man by no means curbed by tradition.
According to his pupil, Couture’s great precept was, “Look at Nature;
copy Nature.” Manet’s doctrine was couched in almost the same words, “Do
nothing without consulting Nature.”
We know that during the time Manet remained in Couture’s studio, master
and pupil quarrelled incessantly. The reason usually given is that Manet
would not respect tradition. But neither would Couture. “That in the
captain’s but a choleric word, which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.”
One was there to teach, the other to be taught. The temperaments of the
two men were fundamentally different. The thick-set, scowling Couture,
of shoemaker descent, would naturally rub against the grain of the
rather dandified young scion of the magistrature. Couture hated the
middle classes, and Manet belonged to the “haute bourgeoisie.” Manet’s
family was legal to the bone, and Couture detested lawyers even more
than he disliked doctors. With all these drawbacks Couture was
admittedly the best teacher in Paris. Manet evidently recognised the
advantage, for he remained in the studio for six years, until he was
twenty-five years of age, although quite able to sever the connection
had he wished.
Then came the “wanderjahre,” which commenced in 1856. Manet visited
Germany, Holland, and Italy. In the Low Countries, Franz Hals exerted a
great and permanent influence over the student; Rembrandt was copied in
Germany; in Italy, Titian and Tintoretto received his homage. Dresden,
Prague, Vienna, Munich, Venice and Florence were visited. Upon his
return to Paris he copied assiduously in the Louvre, and it was in this
wonderful gallery that he so thoroughly mastered all that a young
painter could learn from the Spanish School. He did not visit Madrid
until 1865. His Spanish subjects before that date were the result of a
careful study of Velazquez and Goya in the National Collection and the
visit of an Iberian troupe of players to Paris. In the Louvre he copied
paintings by Velazquez, Titian, and Tintoretto.
Of living artists Courbet considerably influenced the first period of
Manet’s activity. Ever on the fringe of Impressionism, although never in
the group, Courbet was a romantically inclined realist who taught the
younger men to turn to everyday life for their subjects. His canvases
were full of colour; although they have sadly toned down in the course
of time, owing to the curious and unsuccessful experiments he made in
trying to combine his practice with his theories.
In 1859 Manet sent his work for the first time to the Salon. The
_Absinthe Drinker_, strong, but reminiscent of Courbet, was rejected.
The Salon was held every two years, and in 1861 both his contributions
were accepted, one being a double portrait of his father and mother, the
other a Spanish study called the _Guitarero_. For this Manet was awarded
Honourable Mention, his first and almost his final official distinction,
for he received no other until the year before his death, twenty-one
years later. Working with tremendous energy in his studio in the Rue
Lavoisier, Manet became the centre of a circle of friends which included
Legros, Bracquemond, Jongkind, Monet, Degas, Fantin-Latour, Harpignies,
and Whistler. The Guitar-player was an undoubted success. “_Caramba_,”
writes genial Theo. Gautier, “Velazquez would greet this fellow with a
friendly little wink, and Goya would hand him a pipe for his papelito.”
Upon the jury it is said that Ingres himself was flattering, and the
_mention honorable_ was ascribed to the lead of Delacroix. Couture’s
sneer that Manet would become merely the Daumier of 1860 did not seem
likely to be justified.
Manet was now engaged upon several pictures which must not be ignored.
_Music at the Tuileries_ (1861), refused at the Salon, was, as its name
implies, an open-air study of the fashionable crowds gathered round the
bandstand in the lovely gardens by the palace. The _Street Singer_ is
the earliest of the almost realistic renderings of everyday life which
the Impressionists delighted in. A sad-faced girl (a well-known
character of the day) standing with a guitar at a street corner; the
type is the same to this hour both in London and Paris, one of the
thousand wretched beings superfluous to a great city, at once its
pleasure and its sport.
_The Boy with a Sword_, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, also
belongs to this period. The picture is masterly. Inspired from Spain, it
is, like most great paintings, full of simplicity, full of strength.
_The Old Musician_ is also extremely Spanish, with a haunting
reminiscence of _Los Borrachos_ by Velazquez (although Manet had not yet
directly seen this canvas). A small group watches an old man about to
play his fiddle. Some boys, a little girl with a doll (a figure very
dear to Manet), a man drinking, a native of the Orient in a turban and a
long robe, these form a straggling composition. The picture is a fantasy
of a nation the painter loved but had never yet seen.
Two personal matters affected the life of Manet about this time. His
father died, leaving him a considerable private fortune, thus making the
artist financially independent of dealers and the ups and downs of
public exhibition. In 1863 he married Mlle. Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch
lady of great musical talent. From one point of view 1863 was
disastrous, from another triumphant. Hitherto a man of promise, Manet
now developed into a man of notoriety.
The little “one-man show” at the gallery of M. Martinet, Boulevard des
Italiens, presaged the coming storm. Manet exhibited the _Spanish
Ballet_, _Music at the Tuileries_, _Lola de Valence_, and nearly the
whole of his other work up to that date. Baudelaire was enthusiastic.
Verses on _Lola de Valence_ are enshrined in “Fleurs de Mal.” Other
critics were not so kind. M. Paul Mantz did not restrain his pen and
referred to “a struggle between noisy, plastery tones, and black,” with
a result “hard, sinister, and deadly,” the whole summed up as “a
caricature of colour.”
The Salon of 1863, which followed, has become famous not through what it
accepted, but by reason of what it refused. In a contemporary chronicle
the most notable pictures of the exhibition are _La Prière au Désert_ by
Gustave Guillaumet, a _Sainte Famille_ by Bouguereau, _La Déroute_ by
Gustave Boulanger, _La Bataille de Solférino_ by Meissonier, and the
_Chasse au Renard_ by Courbet. With the exception of Courbet it is an
academical list, although it is extraordinary how Courbet crept in.
The list of rejected artists is amazing. Like Herod’s soldiers, the jury
seems to have been chiefly occupied in stamping out youth. Bracquemond,
Cals, Cazin, Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J. P. Laurens, Legros,
Manet, Pissarro, Vallon, Whistler, these and many others were thrown
out. The work was too vigorously performed, and Napoleon III. authorised
the opening of another gallery in the same building as the old Salon,
known as the Salon des Refusés. The most striking canvas in this room
was Manet’s first great work, the _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_ (_Breakfast on
the Grass_), sometimes called _Le Bain_.
The painting challenged opposition on two separate grounds. The first
was its subject; the second its technique. Between two young men
stretched on the grass, wearing the black frock-coats of a latter-day
civilisation, sits a nude woman drying her legs with a towel. In the
background another woman “en chemise” is paddling in the stream. In
defence of such a subject it is usual to refer to the painters of the
Renaissance, who, without exciting angry comment, mixed draped and
undraped figures in their compositions. There is a celebrated Giorgione
at the Louvre to which none objected. Other times, other manners.
Infanticide is not encouraged in England although it is the practice in
China. Many social practices of the Renaissance, innocent enough in the
eyes of that golden age, are distinctly discouraged by the criminal code
of to-day. Forty years have elapsed since the _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_ was
first exhibited, and Mrs. Grundy is not the power she was. But if any
English painter hung a representation of two dressmaker’s assistants
bathing in the Serpentine under exactly the same conditions as Manet
depicted the little party at Saint-Ouen, there would be some sharp
criticism.
It is far more pleasing to discuss Manet’s manner of painting. In a
period when work was sombre in tone and Nature rapidly losing her place
in art, Manet with his _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_, _Olympia_, and _Le Fifre
de la Garde_, changed the current with startling directness.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF BERTHE MORISOT · EDOUARD MANET
]
In these and other canvases there was not a shadow, the surface being
from end to end clear and highly coloured. Where a Classicalist would
have rendered a shadow in the usual burnt umber, Manet made his tones a
little less clear, but always coloured and always in value. His method
of working was to discard all blacks and preparations of blacks. This
was directly antagonistic to the teaching of Couture, who painted on a
black canvas. Manet drew straight away on a white canvas with the end of
his brush. Then, after having endeavoured to render with a single tone
all the pale parts, he carried the lights right into the shadows, of
which he studied the slightest nuance. The result was novel to the
vision, and strange to the public. The _Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_ was a
masterly rendering of white flesh against black clothes, which was not
appreciated because it was so foreign to the eye.
“Be not the first by whom the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,”
is an excellent motto for painters who wish to achieve popular renown,
but it was never the motto of Manet and the Impressionists.
To a certain extent the Salon des Refusés was successful. The jury of
the old Salon had received a fright, and in 1865 they opened their doors
very widely. Making a virtue of necessity, they reversed their policy
and welcomed the whole artistic world, in order to obviate the necessity
of a second Salon des Refusés.
_Olympia_ was far in advance of anything the artist had yet attempted.
In composition it recalls Velazquez, Goya, and Titian. A girl, anæmic
and decidedly unprepossessing, quite nude, is stretched upon a couch
covered with an Indian shawl of yellowish tint. Behind is a negress,
with a bouquet of flowers. At the foot of the bed a black cat strikes a
sharp note of colour against the white linen.
Gautier and Barbey D’Aurevilly—both men of exotic genius—received the
painting with great favour. They found themselves alone in their
opinions. Again the subject displeased the crowd, whilst the
extraordinary technique exasperated the art world. Even Courbet,
reformer as he was, repudiated it. “It is flat and lacks modelling. It
looks like the queen of spades coming out of a bath.” Manet retorted:
“He bores us with his modelling. Courbet’s idea of rotundity is a
billiard-ball.” The general verdict, however, was one in which ridicule
and mockery were equally mixed. A religious picture, _Christ reviled by
the Soldiers_, received no greater encouragement, and in the next Salon
Manet was rejected without mercy. _Le Fifre de la Garde_ and _The Tragic
Actor_ were both refused. He had provoked such fierce animosity that he
was even excluded from the representative exhibition of French art
included in the Universal Exhibition of 1867.
Luckily, no longer dependent for money on his art, Manet was able to
exhibit under more favourable circumstances. Like Rodin a few years ago,
Manet opened a large gallery in the Avenue de l’Alma, which he shared
with Courbet. Here he collected fifty works, including the _Boy with the
Sword_, several Spanish subjects, seascapes, portraits, studies of still
life, aquafortes, even copies. A catalogue was issued containing a short
introduction. “The artist does not say to you to-day, Come and see
flawless works, but, Come and see sincere works.” Another sentence
shares with a title of Claude Monet’s the origin of the generic phrase,
“Impressionism.” “It is the effect of sincerity to give to a painter’s
works a character that makes them resemble a protest, whereas the
painter has only thought of rendering his impression.” Manet never
considered himself as a man in revolt.
The artist had now a considerable following, and was supported by
several vigorous pens in the press, notably that wielded by Emile Zola,
who had been introduced to Manet by an old school friend become artist,
Cézanne. Zola’s campaign in 1866, following upon the rejection by the
Salon of the _Fifre de la Garde_, saw some hard fights. Zola saluted
Manet as the greatest artist of the age, and incidentally overturned a
few pedestals in the Academy. Animosity directed against the artist was
transferred to the journalist, and Zola was soon ejected from his
position under M. de Villemessant as art critic to the _Figaro_ (then
famous as _l’Événement_). Artists of the old school used to buy copies
of this journal containing the offending articles, seek out Zola or
Manet on the boulevards, and then destroy the paper under their eyes
with every manifestation of scorn.
About this time the gatherings in the Café Guerbois, in the Rue Guyot,
behind the Parc Monceau, were held twice a week regularly, and the
School of Batignolles became an established fact. The group was mixed,
and held together more through comradeship than through identical aims.
It included Whistler, Legros, Fantin-Latour, Monet, Degas (a young man
fresh from the Ecole des Beaux Arts), Duranty, Zola, Vignaux, sometimes
Proust, Henner, and Alfred Stevens. To these names should be added
Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Bazille, and Cézanne. Monet had been attracted
by Manet since the little exhibition at Monsieur Martinet’s in 1863,
although they did not meet until 1866, the year that Camille Pissarro
joined the camp. Fantin-Latour was an old chum, the friendship
commencing in 1857, and he commemorated these gatherings in a picture of
the members of the group, which attracted much attention in the Salon of
1870.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF M. P——, THE LION-HUNTER · EDOUARD MANET
]
The home life of Edouard Manet was strangely different from what one
would expect of such an artist, so notorious in the Paris of the Empire
that when he entered a café its frequenters turned to stare at the
incomer. Manet lived with his wife and his mother in the Rue St.
Pétersbourg. The old lady, faithful to her remembrance of the age of
Charles X. and the Citizen King, lived amidst souvenirs of the past.
Modernity was entirely absent from the little household, and those who
anticipated evidences of the spirit of revolution which characterised
Manet in the world of the boulevards here discovered the atmosphere,
even the decoration and furniture, of the Louis-Philippe period. Romance
had also entered into the hitherto prosaic Manet family. Mlle. Berthe
Morisot, a clever young artist from Bourges, had married Manet’s brother
Eugène, and became an ardent follower of her brother-in-law’s artistic
doctrines, whom she aided frequently.
A famous work of this period is _The Execution of the Emperor
Maximilian_, the subject representing a file of dark-hued Mexicans
shooting the unfortunate monarch. It is a vast canvas, slightly
inconsistent with many of the artist’s theories. Not lacking in
actuality (it was commenced within a few months of the event), it was of
historical _genre_ and painted in a studio from models, the face of the
Emperor being copied from a photograph. Rarely, if ever before, seen in
London, this magnificent painting was received enthusiastically when
exhibited at the first collection made by the International Society in
1898.
In France the authorities forbade the public exhibition of the
_Execution_, the tragedy having had too intimate a relation with French
politics; but at the Salon of 1869 Manet was represented by _The
Balcony_, which provoked considerable derision from critics and public.
The famous duel with Duranty took place early in the following year.
Duranty, an old friend and journalistic supporter of the movement, of
great literary reputation in the ’sixties and ’seventies, but quite
forgotten now, suddenly published a newspaper article in which the
artist was violently attacked. There was no palpable reason for such a
strange outbreak, and at the next gathering at the Café Guerbois, Manet
requested explanations. In his anger the artist struck the writer across
the face. Manet had for seconds Zola and Vigniaux, and his adversary was
slightly wounded in the breast. Within a few years Manet stretched out
his hand in friendship, and the quarrel was made up and forgotten by
both parties.
The tremendous upheaval of the year 1870 had its effect upon Manet’s
art, as it had upon the whole national and intellectual life of France.
It marks the end of his first period, for after the war Manet paid more
attention to the question of lighting, and gathered closer to the little
group of “Luminarists” of which Claude Monet was the most significant
figure. Early in 1870 the artist, when painting near Paris, in the park
of his friend De Nittis, for the first time woke up to the prime
importance of working “en plein air.” The war intervened, and Manet
served with the colours. After the campaign he returned to his easel,
but no longer an exclusive follower of the Spanish School and the
Romanticists of the type of Courbet.
At the call of their country, artists and authors alike followed the
flag. One can still remember how short-sighted Alphonse Daudet kept
sentry-go during the first awful winter, and how, almost at the end of
the siege of Paris, the brilliant Henri Regnault was shot down in a
sortie. Bastien-Lepage was in the field, and one of the group of the
Café Guerbois, Bazille, was killed in action. Manet enlisted in the
Garde Nationale, and, for some reason which is not obvious, was at once
promoted to the Staff. Unfortunately, Meissonier was nominated Colonel
of the same regiment, which shows that the État-Major was quite ignorant
of the state of contemporary art. Meissonier, a man of strong opinions,
the recognised head of his profession, member of the Institute, was
covered with official honour. Manet, with equally forcible convictions,
the hero of the Salon des Refusés, was pariah to the Academy. It was not
likely that two such men could get on well together.
Some years afterwards Manet displayed his feelings. He was gazing in a
public gallery at a _Charge of Cuirassiers_, recently painted by
Meissonier. A crowd gathered round. His criticism was short. “It’s good,
really good. Everything is in steel except the cuirasses.” The _mot_
travelled round the town, and duly reached the ears of the venerable
artist at Passy. Manet saw active service. He was under fire at the
Battle of Champigny, and also took part in the suppression of the
Commune. A vivid little sketch by Manet shows a Parisian street, after
some sharp fighting with the insurgents. It may be found reproduced in
Duret’s monograph. Broken down in health, Manet joined his mother and
sister at their retreat in the Pyrenees, and at Oléron painted the
_Battle of the “Kearsage” and “Alabama,”_ a wonderful piece of
sea-painting, although executed far from the actual scene of the
engagement.
[Illustration:
EDOUARD MANET
]
Manet had exhausted the paternal inheritance and was living on the
fruits of his labour. The Impressionist School, as we now know it, was
at the height of its activity, but by no means at the summit of its
success. It assumed as its title the designation which had been applied
to it as a nickname. The origin of this title is obscure. As already
mentioned, Manet used the term in his introduction to the catalogue of
1867. Claude Monet named one of his pictures, a sunset, exhibited in the
Salon des Refusés, “Impressions.” Ruskin though had used the same term
years before in describing a canvas by Turner. Many of the members of
the group were in the most abject poverty until the celebrated dealer,
M. Durand-Ruel, came to their assistance. Manet had better sales than
the rest of his brethren, for several collectors began to buy from his
easel, viz. Gérard, Faure (of the Opera), Hecht, Ephrussi, Bernstein,
May, and De Bellis. It is characteristic of the man that in his own
studio he exhibited the works of his friends in order that the wealthy
buyers he was beginning to attract should also invest in the productions
of the less fortunate Impressionists.
In 1873 Manet contributed to the Salon a portrait of the engraver Belot
seated in the Café Guerbois. Known as _Le Bon Bock_, it was his most
popular success both with public and critics. Over eighty sittings were
given before the canvas was completed. Manet had departed far from the
technique of the Dutch portrait-painters, but _Le Bon Bock_ strongly
suggests the manner of Hals, although ranking on its own merits as an
independent triumph. To the year of _Le Bon Bock_ succeeded a long
period of public indifference and artistic warfare. The Impressionists
held their first collective exhibition, which was bitterly disappointing
in its results. The public had changed but little. _The Opera Ball_ and
_The Lady with Fans_ (about 1873), the _Railway_, painted wholly in the
open air, and _Polichinelle_ (exhibited at the Salon of 1874), _The
Artist_ and _L’Argenteuil_ of 1875, all were received with disfavour.
It is extremely curious to note how canvases which appear to-day
perfectly normal in their methods and aims positively outraged the
feelings of critics thirty years ago. _L’Artiste_, a magnificent
portrait of the engraver Desboutins, was refused by the Salon together
with _Le Linge_. _L’Argenteuil_, a simple representation of two
life-sized figures by the borders of the Seine, would be received with
acclamation instead of disdain. Manet and his group were undoubtedly
educating the public, but progress was very slow. There was an outburst
of opinion in favour of the artist when the Salon refused _L’Artiste_
and _Le Linge_. One sentence of criticism summed up the general feeling
of those who were not entirely prejudiced against the new spirit. “The
jury is at liberty to say that it does not like Manet. But it is not at
liberty to cry ‘Down with Manet! To the doors with Manet!’”
Reaction on the part of the jury followed, exactly as it had followed in
previous years. After the success of the Salon des Refusés Manet was
accepted. Then, being rejected, he opened the gallery of the Avenue
d’Alma, and was hung by the jury at the ensuing Salon. Rejected in 1876,
the outcry in the press surprised the jury, who accepted his works in
1877. These extraordinary ups and downs culminated in 1878, when the
jury of the Exposition Universelle, held in that year, definitely
refused to hang any of his canvases. In the opinion of this jury the
painter of _Le Bon Bock_ was not a representative French artist. Ten
years had changed the official art world but little, for the same thing
had happened in 1867. This was almost the last insult Manet had to
endure. In 1881 he received a second medal at the Salon. The discussion
in the Committee had been acrimonious, but seventeen members of the jury
were found to support the award. Amongst the names of the majority are
those of Carolus-Duran, Cazin, Henner, Lalanne, de Neuville, and Roll.
One cannot deny that Manet’s work greatly varied. The portrait of M.
Faure, in the character of Hamlet, was to a certain extent conventional
studio-painting, and could offend nobody. The subject would not provoke
the most susceptible. M. Faure was celebrated on the stage of the Grand
Opera, possessed considerable wealth, and was one of Manet’s most
devoted friends. _Nana_, sent to the Salon together with the portrait of
M. Faure, was rejected. The technique was brilliant, but the subject,
although harmless enough, suggested Zola’s heroine. Zola’s book was not
published until 1879, but the name designated a class apart.
In 1880 Manet exhibited a wonderful portrait of M. Antonin Proust, and
in the December of the following year his old friend, now Directeur des
Beaux-Arts, was able to give to his life-long companion the Cross of the
Legion of Honour. Had Manet no friends at Court, he would certainly not
have received this coveted decoration. President Grévy objected when he
saw the painter’s name, and would have struck out Manet from the list
had not Gambetta exerted some little pressure.
But the struggle was nearly ended. Manet was dying. “This war to the
knife has done me much harm,” he is reported to have told Antonin
Proust. “I have suffered from it greatly, but it has whipped me up.... I
would not wish that any artist should be praised and covered with
adulation at the outset, for that means the annihilation of his
personality.”
On New Year’s Day, 1882, he received the Cross, and at the Salon
exhibited _Un Bar aux Folies-Bergères_, a barmaid enshrined amidst her
glasses at a Paris music-hall, and a portrait, _Jeanne_. Since 1879
paralysis had been slowly sapping his powers. Edouard Manet died near
Paris on April 30, 1883, at the early age of fifty-one. Disappointment,
injured pride, lack of appreciation, continued and strong hostility,
each had had its effect upon a physique always sensitive and never too
strong. The artist had died for his art.
[Illustration:
A GARDEN IN RUEIL · EDOUARD MANET
]
[Illustration:
FISHING · EDOUARD MANET
]
The secret of Manet’s power is sincerity and individuality; his main
effort was a rendering of fact; his deepest interest the truthful
juxtaposition of values, the broad and simple treatment of planes,
combined with a constant search for the character of the person or
object portrayed.
The influences which guided Manet during the earlier portion of his
career have been noticed at length. He travelled extensively, and his
works bear many souvenirs of foreign masters. But sufficient stress is
not always laid upon the influences at work around Manet in Paris,
namely, the influences of Delacroix, Corot, and the men of 1830, who
carried but one stage farther the methods and tradition of the English
masters, Constable, Bonington, Girtin and Turner.
Apart from sources of inspiration Manet was personally gifted. He
possessed (as M. Duret so well points out) the faculty of sight, a gift
from Nature which cannot be acquired by will or work. Technique he had
obtained after six years’ hard study in the most severe atelier in
Paris. But technique is a subsidiary equipment, for a complete command
over one’s materials does not always imply the possession of genius.
“The fools!” said Manet with bitterness to Proust. “They were for ever
telling me my work was unequal. That was the highest praise they could
bestow. Yet it was always my ambition to rise—not to remain on a certain
level, not to remake one day what I had made the day before, but to be
inspired again and again by a new aspect of things, to strike frequently
a fresh note.”
“Ah! I’m before my time. A hundred years hence people will be happier,
for their sight will be clearer than ours to-day.”
Ambition to rise, never to remain on the same level! That is the whole
doctrine of art, and the supreme epitaph for Edouard Manet, pioneer and
master.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
]
CHAPTER IV · THE IMPRESSIONIST GROUP, 1870-1886
“L’ADMIRATION DE LA FOULE EST TOUJOURS EN RAISON
INDIRECTE DU GÉNIE INDIVIDUEL. VOUS ÊTES D’AUTANT
PLUS ADMIRÉ ET COMPRIS, QUE VOUS ÊTES PLUS
ORDINAIRE”
_ZOLA_
THE outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1870 scattered far and wide the
little group that congregated at the Café Guerbois, and had a curious
effect upon the evolution of their methods of painting. Several of the
leading members of the circle crossed to England, and the studies they
pursued in London formed the basis for the unconventional departures
which have produced the masterpieces of Modern Impressionism.
Practically all the later developments of their art date from the
above-named year, and if a place of genesis be sought for it will be
found in the London National Gallery.
As related in a previous chapter, Edouard Manet, the acknowledged head
at the Café Guerbois gatherings, became a captain in the Garde
Nationale, with Meissonier as his colonel. Boudin and Jongkind fled to
Belgium, and became labourers. Monet, Pissarro, Bonvin, Daubigny, and
some friends, braved the horrors of “La Manche” and settled in London.
They arrived almost penniless, thoroughly disheartened by the terrible
events which were threatening their motherland with disaster. The
journey, momentous to the unhappy passengers, was the opening of a new
epoch in art.
The following letter from Pissarro, to the author, written in November
1902, gives an interesting account of their doings in London. He says:
“In 1870 I found myself in London with Monet, and we met Daubigny and
Bonvin. Monet and I were very enthusiastic over the London landscapes.
Monet worked in the parks, whilst I, living at Lower Norwood, at that
time a charming suburb, studied the effects of fog, snow, and
springtime. We worked from Nature, and later on Monet painted in London
some superb studies of mist. We also visited the museums. The
water-colours and paintings of Turner and of Constable, the canvases of
Old Crome, have certainly had influence upon us. We admired
Gainsborough, Lawrence, Reynolds, &c., but we were struck chiefly by the
landscape-painters, who shared more in our aim with regard to “plein
air,” light, and fugitive effects. Watts, Rossetti, strongly interested
us amongst the modern men. About this time we had the idea of sending
our studies to the exhibition of the Royal Academy. Naturally we were
rejected.”
“Naturally we were rejected!” These poor exiles were offering to the
conservative Academy canvases painted in a method that Constable could
not get accepted forty years before.
Their admiration of Turner and Constable was a repetition of the
experiences of another great Frenchman nearly fifty years earlier. In
his published journal, Delacroix has written: “Constable and Turner are
true reformers.” At the Salon of 1824 the pictures of Constable so
profoundly impressed him that he completely repainted his large canvas,
the _Massacre of Scio_, then hanging in the same exhibition. The next
year he visited London in order that he might more closely study
Constable’s work. He returned to Paris marvelling at the hitherto
unsuspected splendour of Turner, Wilkie, Lawrence, and Constable.
Immediately he began to profit by their examples. Delacroix chronicles
that he noticed that Constable, instead of painting in the usual flat
tones, composed his picture of innumerable touches of different colours
juxtaposed, and, at a certain distance, recomposing in a more powerful
and more atmospheric natural effect. He adds that he considers this new
method far superior to the old-fashioned one.
The group of 1870 made this discovery afresh. It is pleasant to imagine
that these artistic explorations somewhat dulled the misery of their
exile. They worked and copied in the public and private galleries, they
painted by the riverside, and in the streets and parks. With enthusiasm
they absorbed the technique of Turner and Constable, perhaps of Watts,
and the result is to be seen in Claude Monet’s _Haystacks_, in
Pissarro’s street scenes, in Sisley’s landscapes, in the luminous work
of Guillaumin and d’Espagnat, in the canvases of Vuillard, Maufra, and
many followers. Their style was revolutionised, their ideals changed.
The dull greys and the russet browns which reigned supreme before 1870
were banished for ever.
[Illustration:
THE WHITE RABBITS · GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
]
They returned to France the preachers of a new crusade. The “Café de la
Nouvelle Athénée” became the centre of the group. Reunited under Manet,
whose style commenced to show signs of much influence from Claude Monet,
the reformers gathered many recruits, and gained more enemies. They were
not without friends on the press: Emile Zola, who had written so
eloquently in “Mes Haines,” Théodore Duret, friend and literary executor
of Manet, Gustave Geffroy of “La Vie Artistique,” in Monet’s opinion the
most slashing of the lot, Arsène Alexandre of “Le Figaro,” Gustave
Cahen, Roger Marx, and many others.
[Illustration:
A SUMMER AFTERNOON · GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
]
But the financial position of the whole group was exceedingly
precarious. They could not sell their pictures. It was admitted that the
canvases of such men as Monet and Pissarro were the works of men of
genius, but the buying public (and they are numerous in France) did not
understand the new movement, and so failed to support it adequately. As
a whole, it may be said that the art public were in open hostility to
Impressionism. With a few exceptions, the critics of the established art
journals condemned the movement. Even comic singers ridiculed the
painters in the music-halls of Paris. The Salon was closed against them,
and the dealers refused to look at their canvases.
Meanwhile the artists starved. These were the evil days of evictions, of
visits from the sheriff, of the forced sale of household furniture to
pay insignificant debts. It is a sordid story of a struggle to obtain
the barest necessities of existence. These wretched years proved a
bitter chastening of the spirit to proud and refined natures. Tragedy
and comedy were intermixed. Glimpses of hope and comfort appeared from
time to time as some fresh buyer appeared on the scene. But these
welcome callers were not frequent, and the rifts of sunshine through the
grey clouds were, as a rule, transitory.
The artists did not over-value their works. They were able to live in
tranquillity if their pictures fetched prices ranging from £2 to £4. To
sell a canvas at £8 was an event, and £20 was a figure absolutely
unheard of. A letter from Manet, a comparatively rich man with an
independent income, to Théodore Duret, the critic, gives a vivid insight
into the situation in 1875. Manet had recently visited Claude Monet at
Argenteuil. “Dear Duret,” he writes, “I went to see Monet yesterday. I
found him altogether ‘hard up.’ He asked me if I knew of a purchaser for
ten or twenty of his pictures at £4 each. Shall we take it on? I thought
of a dealer, or of an amateur, but there I foresee the possibility of
refusals. It is unfortunate that it is only connoisseurs, like
ourselves, who can at the same time—in spite of all the repugnance we
may feel over it—make an excellent bargain and help a man of such
talent. Answer as quickly as possible or make an appointment with me.
Amitiés, Edouard Manet.”
This is good proof, if proof were needed, of the straits to which one of
the leaders of the group was reduced. It is also odd to note that Manet
was afraid of a refusal, from both dealers and collectors, to the offer
of such a bargain as a score of works by Claude Monet at £4 apiece. The
letter also proves that those professional dealers who had hitherto
supported the Impressionists were at the end of their resources, notably
M. Durand-Ruel.
This celebrated dealer and collector had brought himself to the verge of
bankruptcy through a too generous investment in Impressionist work. He
was gradually ostracised by brother dealers, buyers, and art critics. He
was regarded in much the same light as the artists themselves,
considered to have lost his mental balance and also his acumen as a man
of business. Certainly he speculated upon a large scale. In January
1872, having previously bought two studies, M. Durand-Ruel called upon
Manet at his studio and bought on the spot twenty-eight canvases for the
sum of 38,600 francs (£1544). The whole Impressionist camp went wild
with joy under the mistaken idea that their millennium had arrived. They
had many years to wait. Both the pictures and the capital were locked up
for a considerable time. The public had yet to be educated, and the few
amateurs who bought Impressionist work could select examples in
abundance from the artists’ easels.
It is to the credit of the group that they followed their ideals and
refused many temptations. Several of them, Monet in particular, were
admirable portraitists, and could easily have gained a very respectable
living from that branch of art. A writer in one of the French art
reviews asserts that Claude Monet’s _Femme à la Robe Verte_ was the
finest painting in the Salon of 1866. Only men who have passed through
such experiences can appreciate at its true value the heroic courage,
faith, and self-confidence required during such a trial.
[Illustration:
FAIR ANGLERS · GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT
]
The ordeal was long and severe. It included public disdain and private
poverty. The movement did not, however, remain stationary. In 1874 a
small exhibition was organised, and held, from April 15 to May 15, at
the galleries of M. Nadar, 35 Boulevard des Capucines. This little
salon, entitled “L’Exposition des Impressionistes,” has become historic.
The list of exhibitors included the following: Astruc, Attendu, Béliard,
Boudin, Bracquemond, Brandon, Bureau, Cals, Cézanne, Gustave Colin,
Debras, Degas, Guillaumin, Latouche, Lepic, Lépine, Levert, Meyer, de
Molins, Monet, Berthe Morisot, Mulot-Durivage, de Nittis, Auguste Ottin,
Léon Ottin, Pissarro, Renoir, Rouart, Robert, Sisley. From every point
of view, except that of art, the exhibition was a failure. The press
attacked it with exceptional virulence, the public kept away. The
artists were lampooned in idiotic cartoons, and branded as traitors who
were disloyal to the artistic traditions of their country. The public
sales at the Hôtel Drouot were disastrous. In March 1875, excellent
examples of Claude Monet were sold at prices varying between £6 and £13.
Pictures by Mlle. Berthe Morisot fetched from £3 to £19, and by Sisley
from £2 to £12. Renoir was the most unfortunate. Out of twenty
paintings, ten did not reach £4 each. Not one sold for more than £12.
[Illustration:
FISHING NEAR PARIS · LEPINE
]
The particulars of the following exhibitions and sales are fully
detailed by M. Gustave Geffroy in his “Vie Artistique.” The second
exhibition was held at the house of M. Durand-Ruel in April 1876. The
participators were Béliard, Legros, Pissarro, Bureau, Lepic, Renoir,
Caillebotte, Levert, Rouart, Cals, J.-B. Millet, Sisley, Degas, Claude
Monet, Tillot, Desboutin, Berthe Morisot, Jacques François, and the
younger Ottin.
In 1877 a sale was held, but prices showed little improvement. An
exhibition had been held a month previously, the exhibitors being
Caillebotte, Cals, Cézanne, Cordey, Degas, Guillaumin, François, Lamy,
Levert, Maureau, Monet, Berthe Morisot, Piette, Pissarro, Renoir,
Rouart, Sisley, and Tillot.
These lists are exceedingly interesting, as they show year by year the
composition of the group. In succeeding years fresh names appeared. In
1879, at the Spring Exhibition in the Avenue de l’Opéra, the catalogue
included Bracquemond, Marie Bracquemond, Caillebotte, Cals, Mary
Cassatt, Degas, Forain, Lebourg, Monet, Pissarro, Rouart, Somm, Tillot,
and Zandomeneghi. In 1880, at the gallery in the Rue des Pyramides, the
same names appeared, together with J. F. Raffaëlli, J. M. Raffaëlli,
Vidal, and Vignon. Claude Monet does not appear to have sent any works,
probably because of his “one-man show” at “La Vie Moderne” gallery. In
April 1881, the annual collection began to decline in numbers, canvases
being sent by Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Degas, Forain, Gauguin,
Guillaumin, Pissarro, Raffaëlli, Rouart, Tillot, Vidal, Vignon, and
Zandomeneghi. In the following year (at the Rue Saint-Honoré) the number
was still less, Caillebotte, Gauguin, Guillaumin, Monet, Berthe Morisot,
Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, and Vignon. Practically the last collective
exhibition was held in 1886, the catalogue consisting of works by Degas,
Berthe Morisot, Gauguin, Guillaumin, Zandomeneghi, Forain, Mary Cassatt,
Odilon Redon, Camille Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, and Lucien Pissarro.
M. Geffroy refers to these exhibitions as battle-fields. Campaigns
cannot last for ever, and victory had at last crowned the
Impressionists. To-day these artists are honoured and decorated, their
works hang in public galleries over the whole world. It may be said that
we are all Impressionists now. Certainly of the students it is true, for
ninety per cent. of those who take up landscape painting follow with
admiration the paths of the Impressionists. A glance through the annual
salons, either in Europe or America, fully proves the assertion. Before
many years have elapsed, even in England, one will find this the case.
The difficulty of Hanging Committees will be, not to hide away
Impressionist work to the least damage of its surroundings, but to hang
the anecdotal, moral, and all canvases of like _genre_, in such obscure
corners as will give the least offence to their moribund and
conservative creators.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
THE PICNIC · CLAUDE MONET
]
CHAPTER V · CLAUDE MONET
“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
]
CHAPTER VI · PISSARRO, RENOIR, SISLEY
“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
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
CHILD AND DOG · EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII · SOME YOUNGER IMPRESSIONISTS: CARRIÈRE, POINTELIN, MAUFRA
“WHENEVER MEN ARE NOBLE THEY LOVE BRIGHT COLOUR, AND
WHEREVER THEY CAN LIVE HEALTHILY, BRIGHT COLOUR
IS GIVEN THEM IN SKY, SEA, FLOWERS, AND LIVING
CREATURES”
_RUSKIN_
EUGÈNE Carrière is one of those great artists so prolific in France who
alone would make the fame of any ordinary country. For his work the
writer has always had deep sympathy, and this feeling has strengthened
since the days when he copied the works of the master now in the
Luxembourg. There can be no better method of studying any artist, and
specially is it needed in the case of such a painter as Carrière. It is
only during the long patient hours spent in trying to reproduce in
facsimile these strange elusive pictures that one can grasp their
technical qualities, their poetic intention, their thoughtful nature,
and can fully recognise the fine achievement of the artist. As the
copyist stands and works for hours, thinking, reasoning, reproducing,
the whole history of the man and his art slowly reveals itself.
It has been said of Carrière that he has “le génie de l’œil,” and it is
exactly this “genius of the eye” which constitutes the bond of sympathy
between all Impressionists. There exists between Carrière, Pointelin,
and Whistler, the greatest similitude. Their outlook upon nature is
identical, and their method of expression most characteristic. They have
found their chief inspiration in rendering misty veiled effects,
sometimes the result of natural means, haze, moonlight, river mist,
early sunrise; sometimes purposely arranged by means of darkened
interiors, and the skilful control and exclusion of strong lights. In
each case the result sought after is the same.
Carrière possesses, in almost the highest possible degree, the power of
visualisation (one is nearly writing the power of second sight) which
Claude Monet also has, though in a different degree. The first has
caught in an entrancing style the infinitely varied degrees of luminous
light in the evening twilight. He has painted the shadows of shades. The
second, in an equally fascinating manner, has rendered the shadows of
sunlight. In the works of both artists all exact contours are lost; in
Carrière by reason of the semi-obscurity of night, in Monet because of
the blinding equalising glare of noon-day sun. The one is as apparently
colourless as the other is apparently exaggerated. Yet both are right,
true to nature and to their own individual temperaments, in fact true
Impressionists.
As a portraitist Eugène Carrière has no rival at the present moment. His
marvellous powers of vision have placed him in a position unassailable.
The ordinary portraitist, the painter “à la mode” (probably “à la mode”
for this very reason), depicts the superficial aspect of his sitter,
together with a photographic delineation of the features. Whilst the
onlooker wonders at the dexterous skill, the clever schooling and
frequent harmonies of colour, he generally passes on unmoved. With
Carrière the effect is different; one cannot easily leave such triumphs.
On the contrary, we stay to admire, not the technical gymnastics of the
artist, but the subtle superhuman manner in which the soul of the sitter
has been transferred to the canvas by the brush of a man of rare genius.
His lithographs too are marvellous. Should any reader carp at the use of
such word let him carefully examine the portrait-studies of Anatole
France, Rodin, Verlaine, Daudet, Geffroy, Madame Carrière, and the
artist himself, also the _Christ at the Tomb_, the _Théâtre de
Belleville_, _Maternité_, and many others. The more these great works
are studied the more real they become. Daudet lives again in a drawing
recreating the great novelist in a peaceful atmosphere of dreams which
seems to remain the peculiar secret of the artist. Eugène Carrière
becomes a clairvoyant when he commences a portrait.
His paintings of the intimate life of the family, the circle round the
fireside or the little gatherings in the common room during a winter
evening, have a quiet charm which his contemporaries rarely attain. Such
groups, it may be said, find little favour from those who issue
commissions for family heirlooms, and Carrière has no chance of becoming
a fashionable painter of human mediocrity. One remembers though that Mr.
Sargent has proved recently that even with mediocrity a genius can do a
great deal. Carrière, however, is never likely to wish to rival Bonnat
or Carolus-Duran. His scenes are not so much represented as suggested.
His drawing is a reproduction of the play of light upon the different
planes of the subject, the whole picture becoming a symphonic
development of light. His brush manipulates colour much as a sculptor
manipulates clay, and the results are real Impressions.
[Illustration:
AUGUSTE POINTELIN
]
[Illustration:
THE FAMILY · EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
]
Eugène Carrière has been inspired by no particular school, and has no
special theories to regulate his methods. Yet, in spite of himself, a
group, animated by his ideals, has gathered and formulated rules. This
group and its system will have but a short duration, for an art so
personal and distinguished as is that of Carrière cannot in any possible
way be transmitted to pupils or followers. Carrière occupies in painting
much the same position as his friend Rodin occupies in sculpture. Such
art is not to be copied, much as it may be admired. If there could be
any analogy in literature one would cite Edgar Allan Poe. The poet of
the shadows has had an enormous influence upon French art and
literature, and Carrière has undoubtedly come under his strange spell.
[Illustration:
MOTHERHOOD · EUGÈNE CARRIÈRE
]
Much has been written concerning the exhibited works of this artist, and
a bibliography would contain the names of the most celebrated art
critics in Paris. The universal opinion is that in Carrière France
possesses an artist of exceptional endowments. His gift is a peculiar
one, which has not appeared before in exactly the same manner, and,
within his own limitations, the painter’s equal will probably never be
seen again. A well-known writer upon art subjects has penned an
appreciation which conveys a clear insight into the methods of the
master. Carrière, he says, is not an inductive painter, he does not
construct his whole from parts. He does not work on, wisely, cautiously,
from the forehead to the eyes, continuing by way of the cheekbones. In
the manner of a sculptor, he builds up his picture as a complete whole,
he balances his masses, he constructs. Insensibly the face lights up on
the background, the successive veils which enveloped it are torn away
and hide his thoughts no longer. This simultaneous process never leaves
him quite satisfied, and he constantly reviews his original plans. He
lives for the creation to which he gives life. His work is an effort, an
attempt, the result of a mysterious genius whose secret is never all
told. What he knows before is the impression he expects to obtain, what
it will tell, what it will reveal of the character and will express of
the invisible reality. And it is thus he approaches those faces which
speak to us of an intense inner life. His plans settled, he paints
astonishing faces, mobile and quivering as they smile and speak.
A few personal particulars may be added. Eugène Carrière passed his life
up to the age of eighteen in Strasbourg, and displayed no special
inclination toward the artistic career. But a visit to some galleries
awoke the latent fire, and his ambitions were roused. He then entered
the atelier of Cabanel. During the war he was captured by the Germans,
and sent as prisoner to Dresden, where he studied with diligence in the
museums. Upon his return to France in 1872 he worked for five years at
the École des Beaux-Arts (he had been there for a short time before the
war) and then, none too well equipped for the battle, set up in his own
studio. He attempted to gain the Prix de Rome, but failed. Shortly after
followed his marriage, together with a semi-retreat to the Vaugirard,
where he toiled for five years, turning his family to artistic account
as models. These days of unremitting labour proved to be the foundations
of his fame, for, when he returned to Paris, he reaped almost
immediately the fruits of success and appreciation. As we write, the
news comes that the authorities of the Luxembourg have purchased
Carrière’s _Dead Christ_ for £1000.
Auguste Pointelin is a passionate Impressionist in the best sense of the
word. He paints in low tones (almost monotones) the twilight, moonrise,
the sombre and melancholy notes in Nature. He is the poet-painter of
those evening hours when—
The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep;
And evening’s breath, wandering here and there
Over the quivering surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.
The artist’s character can be read at a glance from these canvases. We
see at once that he is a strong man, of nervous and romantic
temperament, somewhat a pessimist, perhaps a writer of verse, probably a
fine musician, fond of solitude and reverie, yet of good heart and noble
mind.
Monet is of the lowlands. He worships the plains and paints the sun hot
and keen, and all that it reveals. He revels in depicting great trees,
the lustrous brilliancy of corn and poppies, the bubble and iridescence
of quick-flowing trout-streams, the flash of white cliffs, the luminous
shadows of haycocks, every varying phase of the play of brilliant light
upon the face of responsive nature. Pointelin is a man of the hills,
delighting to work amidst deep wooded glens or lonely tracks of mountain
scenery, trying to reproduce the glints of moonlight upon black
bottomless pools. He loves to depict the tranquillity of the long silent
valleys, through which roll heavy mists, whilst the rising sun tints
with a rosy glow the tips of the neighbouring peaks. Our admiration of
Monet does not blind us to the beauty of Pointelin. In a sense the two
artists are complementary to each other. The art of Pointelin may be
compared to a “Reverie” by Schumann, that of Monet to a “Rhapsody” by
Brahms.
[Illustration:
A GLADE IN THE WOOD · AUGUSTE POINTELIN
]
[Illustration:
MOUNTAIN AND TREES · AUGUSTE POINTELIN
]
[Illustration:
A ROCKY COAST · MAXIME MAUFRA
]
Auguste Emmanuel Pointelin was born at Arbois, June 23, 1839, and the
first art teaching he received was from the hands of M. Victor Maire.
Success was long in coming, and for a livelihood he had to turn to
several other professions, the chief being that of a mathematical
professor.
Pointelin has received the usual honours France awards to her most
distinguished citizens. He has been decorated with the Legion of Honour,
is “Hors Concours” at the Salon, and received (amongst many other like
trophies) the Gold Medals at the Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. His work
is to be found in many of the public galleries of the country, including
the Luxembourg. The note of his art is a certain refinement and
aloofness which is rarely found in contemporary Salons. Of him it may be
said: “Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is distilled the
refined essence of that thought which began with the gods, and which
they left him to carry out.”
Some time ago the writer was painting by the edge of the Seine in
company with Maxime Maufra, and the artist recounted the origins of his
Impressionist tendencies. “I am directly influenced by Turner and
Constable,” he said. “I admired and studied their works whenever it was
possible during the time I spent as a commercial man in Liverpool twenty
years ago. There is no doubt that Monet, Pissarro, and the others of
that group, owe the greater part of their art to the genius of the great
Englishmen, just as Delacroix and Manet were indebted in a previous
generation.”
This testimony is interesting, as it comes from one of the leaders of
the modern school of “La peinture claire,” the school of light, of life,
and of movement. It is valuable in view of the fact that some of the
artists who have profited most by the valuable example of our men of
genius seem least inclined to acknowledge their debt. For instance,
Pissarro writes: “I have read with great interest your article. I do not
think, as you say, that the Impressionists are connected with the
English school, for many reasons too long to develop here. It is true
that Turner and Constable have been useful to us, as all painters of
great talent have; but the base of our art is evidently of French
tradition, our masters are Clouet, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, the
eighteenth century with Chardin, and 1830 with Corot.” This statement is
somewhat at variance with facts as we know them, and does not agree with
several letters from Pissarro in the writer’s possession previously
quoted.
To attempt to record bright open-air effects, to struggle with all the
thousand nuances of the atmosphere, the division of tones, the
juxtaposition of colour, the general principles and technical practice
adopted by the Impressionists, is to come under a ban. There is an old
and well-beloved professor at the Beaux-Arts who taught the writer, a
member of the Institute and Officer of the Legion of Honour, a man of
much official influence, who, in a single phrase, has summed up the
feeling of a large body in France with reference to the Impressionists.
“They are a disgrace to French art,” he said bitterly. Such an
irreconcilable attitude has compelled a section of the younger artists
in France to adopt a style altogether opposite to that discussed in
these pages, a reactionary manner in many cases opposed to their natural
temperaments. They seek in Nature for the slightest cause which will
give them reason for the use of black paint, forgetting that in a world
charged with sun and iridescence the only absolute black that can be
found is in the heart of a bean blossom, which is black only by the
exclusion of the atmosphere. The slightest shadow they paint black, any
dark piece of clothing is rendered in black. They have evolved a
lugubrious funereal style and choice of subject which is sad, dull,
inartistic, dyspeptic. This section of the art community has been named
the “Nubians.”
Maxime Maufra is an adversary fighting this group of reactionaries, and
perhaps his successful example may bring some of these erring ones back
to the fold. He has the courage to paint in a light key, because he sees
all nature in such a value, and by following the dictates of his
artistic temperament he has become the exponent of a beautiful and
personal art. He does not aspire to the position of a little Monet, but
attempts to carry the master’s methods forward. Maufra maintains that
Monet has by no means said the last word in Impressionism. Maufra and
his friends are not content with the first illuminated corner presented
by Nature, which, save for the sense of illumination, is probably
uninteresting and ill-composed. They are equally attracted by beautiful
rhythmic line, balance of form, by composition as well as by colour. The
ethereal tints in nature which the pioneers were happy to reproduce,
does not satisfy the younger men now that the fundamental laws of the
Impressionists have been agreed upon.
[Illustration:
AN ETCHING · MAXIME MAUFRA
]
[Illustration:
ARRIVAL OF THE FISHING BOATS AT CAMARET · MAXIME MAUFRA
]
[Illustration:
MAXIME MAUFRA
]
Born at Nantes in 1861, the only regular art education Maxime Maufra
received was from M. Le Roux, a local professor. His father, a man of
business, decided that the son should follow the same vocation, much to
the son’s disgust. After a few years of preliminary training Maufra was
sent to Liverpool in order that he might acquire the language and
further the commercial interests of his father’s house. Maufra studied
English, more or less, and practised art, copying in the museums and
private collections, and sketching in the neighbourhoods of New
Brighton, Seacombe, and amongst the docks and shipping of the great
port. Business was not neglected, but having effected a lucky “deal”
which placed him in the possession of a little capital, he cut the cable
which joined his life to commerce and sailed into the open sea of art.
His family protested, his friends implored him not to take such a rash
step. Maxime Maufra became a professional artist. For five years he
toiled with his brush, working hard at every different method of
technical expression, trying oils, water-colours, and the etching
needle. Dealers did not come forward, buyers were never seen. At last,
at the very end of his financial resources, he organised a tiny
“one-man” show in Paris.
In the “Echo de Paris” M. Octave Mirbeau published a short criticism,
which voiced the general opinion of Maufra’s talent. “Yesterday,” writes
Mirbeau, “I entered the galleries of de Boutheville, where are exhibited
about sixty works by Maufra. I was immediately conquered, for I found
myself in the presence of an artist in full control of himself, who,
after the necessary indecisions, the usual educational troubles, has
realised that style is the most important thing—in fact, the joy of
art.”
A few of the paintings were sold, enough to cover the expenses of the
exhibition. A better luck awaited Maufra. M. Durand-Ruel casually
glanced into the rooms before the close of the modest collection. He
asked to see the artist. Maufra was in Brittany, and a telegram called
him back to Paris. An interview followed in the Rue Lafitte between
artist and dealer, and never since that day has Maufra known the
anxieties of living on hope, for M. Durand-Ruel, with characteristic
acumen, had arranged for his future.
In the spring of 1901, at the galleries of M. Durand-Ruel, Maxime Maufra
organised his last and most successful exhibition, about fifty canvases
executed in various mediums being shown. From the admirable preface
written by M. Arsène Alexandre, one of the most perspicacious of French
critics, the following lines may be quoted: “Maufra continues in the
school of the Impressionists in this manner, that the _point de départ_
in each of his pictures is in reality a quick and profound impression.
He detaches himself from the school inasmuch as the realisation is a
calculated and skilful art; and this is complete Impressionism.” A final
quotation from the pen of M. Gabriel Mourey in “Le Grand Journal” aptly
sums up the talent of this artist: “One could accuse Maufra at the time
of his first exhibition at the de Boutheville galleries of submitting
himself to the influence of Claude Monet. Already, however, he reveals
his strong personality. Here he is to-day a free man and master of
himself, capable of realising whatever his thoughts impel him to. He has
his own conception of Nature, and he realises it with a liberty and
independence which is veritably masterful. The diversity of his talent
is proved in the most striking fashion. Scotland, Brittany, Normandy are
evoked with an extraordinary facility, the different characteristics of
these three countrysides, their special conditions, their peculiar
atmosphere. They are like portraits in which a soul breathes, in which
the blood runs beneath the skin, where the mystery of being is declared.
The words of Flaubert’s St. Anthony come involuntarily to the lips
before these pictures of Nature, sometimes savage, sometimes in a more
tender mood: ‘There are some spots on earth so beautiful that one wishes
to press Nature against one’s heart.’”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
SHIPWRECK · MAXIME MAUFRA
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
_Photo by Braun, Clement & Co._
A GLASS OF GOOD RED WINE · J. F. RAFFAËLLI
]
CHAPTER VIII · “REALISTS”: RAFFAËLLI, DEGAS, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC
“IL Y A SELON MOI, DEUX ÉLÉMENTS DANS UNE ŒUVRE:
L’ÉLÉMENT RÉEL, QUI EST LA NATURE, ET L’ÉLÉMENT
INDIVIDUEL, QUI EST L’HOMME”
_ZOLA_
JEAN FRANÇOIS RAFFAËLLI joined the Impressionist movement late, and did
not commence to exhibit with the other members of the group until 1880,
when he sent a canvas to the gallery in the Rue des Pyramides. He had
clearly grasped the trend and scope of the idea, but cannot be classed
altogether with the other members of the group as a “Luminarist.” This
may be due to many causes apparent in his work. He is not a painter for
the love of painting itself, and does not revel in colour for colour’s
sake. He is no analyst of the shimmering effects of a summer’s sun. That
side of Impressionism has never appealed to him. Yet his right to be
numbered amongst them is assured, for, in spirit, he is one of the first
of the school.
Raffaëlli is the historian of the “banlieue” of Paris. His street scenes
are typical, life-like, and modern, and they will be treasured in future
years as veritable documents of the daily existence of the great city.
He wanders through the dreary “no man’s land” outside the
fortifications, and transfers to his block the most vivid portraits of
the nondescript characters who swarm through that gaunt wilderness. He
is a man of much mental refinement, who has had to struggle for every
inch of the artistic success which now surrounds him. Richly endowed by
nature, he had no resources to fall back upon save his determination to
conquer. In a few words M. Geffroy sums up the opening of this curious
career.
Raffaëlli has had many employments, has been engaged in many trades, has
searched the town for work. He has been in an office, has sung bass at
the Théâtre Lyrique, has chanted psalms in a church choir, and at the
same time painted under the tuition of Gérôme at the École des
Beaux-Arts. He travelled through Europe, penetrating even so far as
Algeria, working in each town as he stopped. Returning to Paris he
exhibited landscapes founded upon the studies he had accumulated in his
portfolio, some pictures of the Louis XIII. style, some portraits, a
view of the Opera. Suddenly he opened his eyes to a sight nobody had
seen before, disdained by the whole world, subjects which had never
reached the dignity of an entrance in art circles. He became the
recorder of the suburbs of Paris and their wandering inhabitants.
For years he experimented endeavouring to produce a medium best suited
to his temperament. In the solid paint crayons we have an addition to
the working tools of the artist which is of notable importance. This is
not his only gift to France, for it is he who practically resuscitated
the beautiful but dying art of etching in colours. In this work he was
ably seconded by Miss Mary Cassatt. He is not only an artist but an
actor, a musician, an orator, a sculptor, an etcher, a pastellist, an
illustrator, and a man of letters. He is a fine example of the pioneer
temperament. No sooner is success achieved in one branch of energy than
he is in chase of another idea. One day he is trying to invent a perfect
oil-crayon; the next, and colour etching is his sole ambition. He draws
the elegant “mondaine” of the Boulevards, and then sallies out to study
the frowsy denizens of the “banlieue.” In this quarter he found
congenial subjects for a series of little masterpieces.
Amidst these wretched surroundings, warehouses, factories, wooden sheds
ruinous and dilapidated, refuse heaps, brick-kilns, homes of the
outcasts and cut-throats of the metropolis, Raffaëlli discovered a rich
mine of material hitherto entirely unworked. The district is peculiar to
Paris, and owes its existence to the clear half-mile of view required
around the useless fortifications. This territory has, in mining phrase,
been “jumped” by the penniless. Upon it squat the failures, the
drunkards, the thieves, all the vicious under-life of the city. The
artist revealed this world to the unsuspecting citizens. He lived in it,
studied it day by day, and is a greater authority than the “sergots”
upon the manners and customs of a neighbourhood which even the police
shun. Such a blot upon the fair page of so magnificent a capital is
rapidly being wiped away, but Raffaëlli has immortalised in his etchings
and drawings some of the poetic atmosphere which enveloped these legions
of the damned.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Braun, Clement & Co._
NOTRE DAME · J. F. RAFFAËLLI
]
[Illustration:
J. F. RAFFAËLLI
]
During the course of a long and strenuous career, Raffaëlli has received
many decorations. He is of the Legion of Honour, besides having received
numerous medals and awards from foreign exhibitions. He is represented
adequately in the Luxembourg, and many continental galleries. He enjoys
the admiration and friendship of a host of connoisseurs throughout the
world. His studio is most pleasant. Facing the broad green sweeps of the
boulevard by the fortifications, in the Rue de Courcelles, it occupies a
large area on the ground floor, having been built over a spacious
courtyard surrounded by banks of foliage and flowers. The predominant
note is that of cheerfulness. The decoration is bright and restful, the
ruling colours being delicate shades of yellow and blue. The usual
theatrical adornments of a French studio are absent; there are no
oriental carpets and rugs, no armour, no antique furniture, so dear to
the heart of the Gallic painter. In this atelier the master holds
periodical conferences, exhibitions, and friendly gatherings. Upon these
occasions one will meet the cleverest men in Paris, for Raffaëlli is a
celebrated conversationalist as well as a famous artist.
Degas has a temperament strangely different from that of Raffaëlli, and,
although always classed with the Impressionists, he stands apart from
the recognised group. He has never endeavoured to transmit the
impression of atmosphere, and work “en plein air” does not attract him.
He has, however, profited much by the teaching of the Impressionists,
particularly in relation to the use of radiant colour, for at one time
he painted in greys which were closely allied to black. He exhibited
continually with the other men in the early days of the movement, and
proved a genius both in suggestion and organisation.
Hilaire Germain Edgard Degas was born in Paris, July 19, 1834. He
entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1855, studying under Lamothe and
also having Ingres for a master. He made his first appearance at the
Salon of 1865 with a pastel entitled _War in the Middle Ages_. In 1866
he contributed the _Steeplechase_, the first of his series devoted to
scenes of modern life. In 1867 he exhibited _Family Portraits_, in 1868
the portrait of a ballet-dancer, and during 1869 and 1870 some further
portraits which closed his connection with official art, for he never
sent contributions to the Salon again. In his early work he did not
confine his brush to subjects of daily actuality, such compositions as
_Semiramis Building the Walls of Babylon_ and _Spartan Youths Wrestling_
being far removed both in style and _genre_ from later work. During the
sixties his canvases were classical in spirit as well as in subject. He
had a strong feeling for the Primitives together with Fra Angelico, and
much of his work conveyed a reminiscence of Holbein. A Realist from the
beginning, the _Interior of an American Cotton-Broker’s Office_, painted
in 1860, shows that his temperament has never radically changed. This
canvas, now in the museum at Pau, is minutely exact in all its details.
It is Realism but emotionless, without atmosphere and lacking all
feeling. It shows too that forty-three years ago the artist was
acquiring that facility of hand which has placed him at the head of
modern draughtsmen.
Degas exhibited in company with Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists
generally, at five exhibitions, namely 1874, 1876, 1878, 1879 and 1880.
In the last-named year he exhibited a series of portraits of criminals,
and commenced to model figures of dancers in wax. In December 1884 he
showed some racecourse scenes, and at the last exhibition of the
Impressionists in 1886 exhibited studies of the nude, jockeys,
washerwomen, and other characters of modern life. He has worked with the
etcher’s needle, and also in lithography, his subjects being generally
confined to theatrical life and incidents noticeable on the Parisian
boulevards.
The characteristic of Degas personally is mystery. He now refuses to
exhibit his works, he shuts his door to all visitors. Like most artists
he detests writers, and there is a legend that he successfully grappled
with one enterprising but unwelcome interviewer and dropped the
unfortunate critic down a flight of stairs. This proves how thoroughly
his principles are carried out in practice. “I think that literature has
only done harm to art,” he said once to George Moore. “You puff out the
artist with vanity, you inculcate the taste for notoriety, and that is
all; you do not advance public taste by one jot. Notwithstanding all
your scribbling it never was in a worse state than it is at present. You
do not even help us to sell our pictures. A man buys a picture, not
because he read an article in a newspaper, but because a friend, who he
thinks knows something about pictures, told him it would be worth twice
as much ten years hence as it is worth to-day.”
With these strong views one can understand the attitude of Degas to the
art world in general. It was a very different attitude from that of
Manet who gloried in the fight. “Do you remember,” Degas said once to
George Moore (who quotes the conversation in his “Impressions and
Opinions”), “how Manet used to turn on me when I wouldn’t send my
pictures to the Salon? He would say, ‘You, Degas, you are above the
level of the sea, but for my part, if I get into an omnibus and some one
doesn’t say, “M. Manet, how are you, where are you going?” I am
disappointed, for I know then that I am not famous.’” This conversation
reveals in a curious manner the differing characters of the two men;
Manet with that attractive vanity so often to be found in the artistic
temperament, Degas, a satiric misanthrope analysing the degraded types
which make up the gay life of Paris.
[Illustration:
DANCING GIRL FASTENING HER SHOE · EDGAR DEGAS
]
The work of Degas may be sorted into four main groups—the racing series,
the theatrical studies, the drawings of the nude, and a few landscapes.
From many points of view the scenes of the _coulisses_ come first.
Superb in draughtsmanship, they represent the life of the theatre in a
way it has never been represented before. In one we see shivering girls
rehearsing upon a cold cheerless stage lit by a few gas jets; in another
the _première danseuse_ quivering upon tiptoe amidst the frenzied
plaudits of an excited audience. Degas reproduces the atmosphere with a
marvellous precision, which only those engaged in the busy turmoil
behind the curtain can fully judge. Upon these _scènes de théâtre_ will
rest his fame, for humankind is never likely to tire of such vivid
renderings of a life always fascinating to the outside world.
Degas is not a countryman, and cannot be classed amongst sportsmen, or
lovers of horseflesh. His jockeys and racehorses are highly extolled,
but with animals he has not always succeeded. It is not sufficient to be
a great artist in order to convey convincing impressions of sporting
scenes. An artist must have the whole spirit of sport thoroughly
engrained in his nature before he can properly represent it. Apart from
the city, Degas is out of his element, and this is very apparent in the
landscapes he has painted during the last eight years. The glamour of
the fields and hedges does not touch his soul. Rural life he finds dull,
and naturally his essays in landscape painting are somewhat painful. He
has not the temperament which can faithfully interpret the poetry of the
countryside, and is more at home in the purlieus of the opera or upon
the asphalte of the boulevards.
Degas is a realist, and his subjects are for the most part exceedingly
trivial in selection. After racehorses and ballet-dancers, he loves to
depict buxom ladies of the lower classes engaged in personal ablution.
It is extraordinary that the pupil of Ingres, the painter of _La
source_, should create such appalling creatures. The most plausible
apology comes from Mr. George Moore. The nude, he writes, has become
well-nigh incapable of artistic treatment. Even the more naïve are
beginning to see that the well-known nymph exhibiting her beauty by the
borders of a stream can be endured no longer. Let the artist strive as
he will, he will not escape the conventional; he is running an
impossible race. Broad harmonies of colour are hardly to be thought of;
the gracious mystery of human emotion is out of all question—he must
rely on whatever measure of elegant drawing he can include in his
delineation of arms, neck, and thigh; and who in sheer beauty has a new
word to say? Since Gainsborough and Ingres, all have failed to infuse
new life into the worn-out theme. But cynicism was the great means of
eloquence of the Middle Ages; and with cynicism Degas has again rendered
the nude an artistic possibility. The critic then describes these works
in most sympathetic phrases. Three coarse women, middle-aged and
deformed by toil, are perhaps the most wonderful. One sponges herself in
a tin bath; another passes a rough nightdress over her lumpy shoulders,
and the touching ugliness of this poor human creature goes straight to
the heart. Then follows a long series conceived in the same spirit.
“Hitherto,” says Degas, “the nude has always been represented in poses
which presuppose an audience, but these women of mine are honest, simple
folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their
physical condition.” In another phrase he gives you his point of view,
“it is as if you looked through a keyhole.”
Descendant of Poussin and Ingres (when Ingres fell down in the fit from
which he never recovered, it was his pupil who carried him out of his
studio), Degas worships drawing, and line is with him a cult. Japanese
art has helped to mould his style, as it influenced many of the
Impressionists. His oil-paintings, though for the most part correct in
draughtsmanship, are frequently wiry and academic in technique. Colour
was never his strong point, and it is in his pastels that we find the
achievement of his life. In a masterly essay on this artist, Thèodore
Duret writes: “Degas has proved once more that, with genius, subject is
a secondary matter, merely its opportunity, one may say. It is out of
itself, out of its inner consciousness, that the poetry and the beauty
discovered in its production are drawn. His work will thus remain one of
the most powerful, the most complete, and the most instinct with
vitality amongst that of the masters of the nineteenth century.”
Of Degas personally little is known. He comes of an old bourgeoise
family, and at one time it is said that he possessed considerable
financial means, which he sacrificed in order to save a brother from
financial disaster. Although seventy years of age he still works with
excessive labour at the art over which he has gained such a mastery.
Scorning wealth, publicity, and popularity, he lives a life of complete
isolation, dispensing with friends, able to more than hold his own
against enemies.
[Illustration:
DANCING GIRL · E. DEGAS
]
He has had two pupils whose names stand out prominently in the art of
to-day, the American artist Miss Mary Cassatt (referred to elsewhere in
this volume) and the caricaturist Forain. Degas has always had a bitter
wit, the dread of his contemporaries, and many of his sayings have
passed into history. During the height of the battle which raged around
the Impressionists during the seventies, he remarked concerning the
academic painters and critics: “On nous fusille, mais on fouille nos
poches,” or, in other words, “They cover us with injuries, yet they make
use of our ideas.” In him Whistler met his match. “My dear friend,” he
said once to that great artist, “you conduct yourself in life just as if
you had no talent at all.” Upon another occasion, speaking of Whistler
when the latter was having a number of photographic portraits taken, he
observed sarcastically, “You cannot talk to him; he throws his cloak
around him—and goes off to the photographer.” It was not likely that two
such spirits would appreciate each other.
Degas is a pessimist. He has always been a realist, and the realist in
this troubled world cannot look through rosy spectacles; acute pessimism
becomes the natural result, especially when a great city is the venue.
He is the analyst and ironist of the Impressionist group, with whom he
has a sympathy of temperament rather than a sympathy of technique. At
the present moment there are few artists better known in Paris, yet few
who have received so small an amount of official acknowledgment. He has
never received an official commission, has refused all decorations, his
chief works are to be found in foreign countries. Yet an enthusiastic
French critic has summed up the opinion of the art world of France in
the striking phrase, “Degas is one of the greatest draughtsmen who have
ever lived.”
Ten years ago, when the writer was a student in Paris, the name of
Toulouse-Lautrec was known only in connection with various daring and
flamboyant posters advertising the exotic attractions of the “Moulin
Rouge” and the “Divan Japonais,” and also through extraordinary sketches
which appeared from time to time in Aristide Bruant’s feuilleton “Le
Mirliton.” Now and again one found a sketch, with his signature, pinned
up in an artistic cabaret of the Batignolles quarter. Few had seen him,
nobody seemed to have any wish to discover his whereabouts. In the
studios he was almost invariably spoken of with contempt as half a fool.
He was celebrated in a way, and yet unknown.
He was by no means a fool, for few men have possessed a brighter
intellect. His semi-retirance and evident reluctance to appear amidst
the crowd were partly owing to a temperament of ultra-refinement, and
still more directly the result of a terrible personal misfortune. The
story of his life is romantic.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born in 1864 at Albi, a scion of an
ancient and illustrious family. His father, the Count de
Toulouse-Lautrec, was a wealthy country gentleman, of sporting tastes, a
splendid horseman, a crack shot, a sculptor, and a person of most
violent and impulsive temper. The son inherited many of his father’s
qualities. Generations of ancestors accustomed to the beauties and
refinements of such a life in the country had developed at last an
artist of peculiar sensibilities. These natural gifts were carefully
cultivated, and the boy became a professional artist, who, although he
possessed gifts of the most extreme refinement, became through the irony
of fate primarily famous amongst his countrymen as a designer of street
posters and comic sketches. Those who knew him superficially could not
comprehend how his delicate and extraordinary exterior could cover such
excellent qualities of heart, such delicacy of spirit. He met with scant
respect and few patrons. Happily he was not dependent upon his brush for
the means of existence, and his works, when they sold, fetched but
little. After his sad and untimely death, the most insignificant
sketches were eagerly disputed for and changed hands at large prices.
Physically Toulouse-Lautrec was a weak man, of a highly-developed
nervous temperament, with a brain too active for its frail tenement. To
such a nature all excess proves fatal, although it is generally such
natures that seek excess. In his infancy the artist had the unlucky
mischance to break both his legs, and these, badly set, left him
malformed for life, a dwarf. Thoroughly embittered, his proud and
sensitive soul could not endure the inquisitive stares of the curious
with which he was invariably greeted, and for the most part he lived a
very solitary life. “Je suis une demi-bouteille,” he would often say to
his friends in sarcastic reference to his own unhappy condition.
[Illustration:
CAFÉ SCENE ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE · E. DEGAS
]
He drowned his griefs, as many have done before, keeping in his studio
huge stocks of the most fiery spirits and liqueurs, from which he
compounded wonderful “cocktails” for the benefit of himself and his
friends. It is not surprising that first came the madhouse and then
premature death completed this tragedy. Of an excitable temperament he
found much pleasure in resorts such as the “Moulin Rouge.” Taverns,
theatres, and the circus, found in him a constant patron. These were his
schools; and hundreds, one may say thousands of sketches are the result
of such teaching. He loved horses as his ancestors had done before him,
and he studied their attitudes at the circus, sketching them in barbaric
trappings and in eccentric poses. The smell of the sawdust always
inspired him. The sketches here reproduced illustrate this phase of his
career.
M. Princeteau, the designer of sporting scenes, influenced Lautrec’s
style, and became his intimate friend. Forain also counts for something
in his development, whilst Pissarro and Renoir were frequent visitors to
and critics of the young Impressionist. Perhaps of all men Degas
inspired him most, and at times he undoubtedly copied the methods of
that master. With serious study he had little to do. He worked in the
atelier-Bonnat in 1883, and later on in the atelier-Cormont, where he
continued the study of the nude; yet it was only after he had complete
liberty and was entirely free from scholastic influence that his style
began to form. Then his strong individuality displayed itself, and he
became Toulouse-Lautrec as we know him.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
BABY’S TOILET · MARY CASSATT
]
CHAPTER IX · THE “WOMEN-PAINTERS”: BERTHE MORISOT, MARY CASSATT, MARIE
RACQUEMOND, EVA GONZALÈS
“TOUTE TOILE QUI NE CONTIENT PAS UN TEMPÉRAMENT, EST
UNE TOILE MORTE”
_ZOLA_
AMONGST the artists who contributed paintings to the eight exhibitions
of the Impressionist group are four women, who were influenced by the
new methods: Mdlle. Berthe Morisot, Madame Marie Bracquemond, Miss Mary
Cassatt, and Mdlle. Eva Gonzalès.
The story of Berthe Morisot is romantic. She was the great
grand-daughter of Fragonard, a famous beauty, a pupil of Manet, then the
wife of his brother Eugène. Her position in the art world of France was
unique, and her death at the early age of fifty in 1895 cut short a
career devoted to a most charming and delicate style. She excelled above
all in two branches of her art—an exquisite draughtsmanship and a most
luminous and poetic sense of colour. Technical difficulties never
discouraged her. She was one of those rare and fortunate individuals who
can intuitively surmount any problem and consequently hardly require a
teacher. Madame Eugène Manet was an artist to her finger-tips. Her work
is charged with a feminine charm sympathetic to the temperament of any
painter. Her canvases are iridescent poems in paint, and she possessed
many qualities in common with her illustrious ancestor. “Only one woman
created a style,” wrote the novelist George Moore (who, it may be
remembered, had a close acquaintanceship with many of the
Impressionists), “and that woman is Madame Morisot. Her pictures are the
only pictures painted by a woman that could not be destroyed without
creating a blank, a hiatus in the history of art.” She was a woman of
great personality and charm, and took an active part in the furtherance
of the movement which was initiated by her brother-in-law. “My
sister-in-law would not have existed without me,” said Manet one day in
the Rue d’Amsterdam to George Moore, and the latter adds, “True, indeed,
that she would not have existed without him; and yet she has something
that he has not—the charm of an exquisite feminine fancy, the charm of
her sex. Madame Morisot is the eighteenth century quick with the
nineteenth; she is in the nineteenth turning her eyes regretfully
looking back on the eighteenth.”
Miss Mary Cassatt is an American subject. She was born at Pittsburg,
studied at the Philadelphia Academy, and then, after some work with
Degas, became an accomplished painter of children and the varied scenes
of maternity. A pastellist of note, with Raffaëlli she succeeded in
resuscitating the moribund art of etching in colour. Miss Cassatt’s work
shows evidence upon every side of unwearying years of effort. Its
dominant character is strength, and, with the single exception of Berthe
Morisot, the artist is probably one of the most virile woman painters
the world has seen. Strength is decidedly not the keynote of any of the
works of Angelica Kauffmann, Madame Lebrun, or even of the many women
who exhibit to-day, although they display other qualities worthy of
praise. Miss Cassatt has experimented in numerous directions, has often
tried to express herself in a fresh way. She has succeeded. Her
draughtsmanship is exceptionally firm, and her colour bright, pure, and
harmonious. She has worked in oil, charcoal, water-colour, pastel, and
etching, and has remained faithful to the inspiration of her master
Degas, and through him to the art of Japan.
The pastel drawing here reproduced is one of an extensive series devoted
to scenes from maternal life. Although from the nature of things all
such reproductions fall far short of the original, still a good idea is
conveyed of technique and composition. Miss Mary Cassatt, it may be
added, has travelled a great deal in search of subject inspiration, and
is the friend of the older members of the original group of French
Impressionists, to which she is allied by sympathy and the work of a
lifetime.
Madame Marie Bracquemond was also an “Impressioniste,” and joined
ardently in the movement. At first following the example of Ingres, her
first teacher, she received the most valuable help from her husband, an
engraver of the rarest talent. The field of her art ranges from a
colossal decorative panel (those exhibited in the Paris Exhibition of
1878 were about twenty-one feet by nine feet in size) to a most delicate
little etching. It may be understood that mere physical labour did not
appal her, for the Exhibition panels required assiduous and heavy toil.
[Illustration:
LE LEVER · BERTHE MORISOT
]
Of Eva Gonzalès there is, unfortunately, little to be said. At first
taught by Chaplin, she became the favourite pupil of Edouard Manet, and
commenced to display much talent as a pastellist. She married Henri
Guérard, the engraver, but death ended at an untimely age a career of
great promise. In the Luxembourg gallery she is represented by a pastel
drawing.
It has been often said that in art women cannot create: they can only
assimilate and reproduce. In one sense this is true both of Berthe
Morisot and Mary Cassatt, the two principal figures in this tiny
feminine group. The first was profoundly influenced by her
brother-in-law Manet, the second by her teacher Degas. Marie Bracquemond
and Eva Gonzalès married husbands in the practice of their art.
But these women introduced into the stern methods of the early
Impressionists a feminine gaiety and charm which were reflected upon the
canvases of their “confrères,” and produced a certain change of
attitude. There was little light-heartedness in the work of Manet before
these women-painters joined the group, and it is not altogether
improbable that some of the change is due to their example. In any body
of men feminine influence always makes for the good, and these women, of
strong but charming personality, must (it is idle to write any less
emphatic word) have had a strong influence upon the whole group. Their
industry was great, for they exhibited almost without intermission from
1874 to 1886. At times their talent touches genius, and for future
historians they will prove an interesting study. Modernity is the note
of Impressionism, and that movement was the very first artistic revolt
in which women took a prominent part.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
THE LAST RAYS · EMILE CLAUS
]
CHAPTER X · “LA PEINTURE CLAIRE”: CLAUS, LE SIDANER, BESNARD,
DIDIER-POUGET
“TOUT HOMME QUI NE RESSEMBLE PAS AUX AUTRES, DEVIENT
PAR LA MÊME UN OBJET DE DÉFIANCE. DÈS QUE LA FOULE
NE COMPREND PLUS, ELLE RIT. IL FAUT TOUTE UNE
ÉDUCATION POUR FAIRE ACCEPTER LE GÉNIE”
_ZOLA_
THE work of Emile Claus is a manifestation in quite another direction of
the Impressionist idea. Born in Western Flanders in 1849, he was the
sixteenth child of parents in very humble circumstances. Their business
in life was to supply with provisions the boatmen who passed along on
the river Lys. By various means the boy, who had very early displayed a
yearning for the painter’s career, managed to evade all attempts to
harness him in the drudgery of the home life. A pastrycook, a railway
watchman, a linendraper’s assistant, these were a few of the vocations
he was condemned to try, yet from which he escaped. At last he set out
for Antwerp, with £7 in his pocket, and the warning that he need not
expect a penny more. In the city of Rubens he became a free pupil of
Professor de Keyser. All day long he studied in the Academy. When night
came he earned a livelihood by giving drawing-lessons, acting as a
sculptor’s “devil,” and colouring pictures of the Stations of the Cross.
At last, after many struggles, he became a popular portrait-painter in
the city, particularly of children in fancy costume. In 1879 he
travelled through Spain and Morocco, painting the conventional
compositions of an Iberian tour, and much influenced by the style of
Charles Verlat. Despite his great success in Antwerp, in 1883 Emile
Claus changed his manner entirely. He shook off the dust of the city for
ever, renounced portrait-painting, and became “paysagiste.” Impelled by
an intense love of nature he returned to his native village on the banks
of the Lys, and recommenced his life as a landscape painter “en plein
air.” He has never returned to the distracting turmoil of town, and, in
his quaint white and green shuttered house at Astene between Ghent and
Courtrai, has buried himself in the heart of the country. Although some
distance from the larger cities of Belgium, Emile Claus does not
vegetate in his obscurity. On wheel or a-foot he is equally active,
visiting his friends and working on his canvases, of which he has always
some six or eight in progress. It may be noted that he works entirely in
the open air, and finishes in front of nature. One might judge of this
from the strength and completeness of his pictures.
It is years since the writer first saw a landscape by Claus, and he
remembers vividly the pleasure it gave. The painting was in the
well-known collection of Mr. John Maddocks, of Bradford. Upon a huge
canvas the artist had depicted a cornfield ripe for the sickle, and in
the midst of the wheat red poppies grew. Across the foreground, emerging
from the wheat, wandered a few white ducks. Over the whole was the
fierce glare of a noon-day sun. The work was convincing, naturalistic,
yet poetic, inasmuch as it seemed to chant the universal hymn of nature.
It was a revelation to those artists who found themselves in Bradford at
that period. Unknown and a stranger, Claus received in spirit silent
congratulations for his splendid achievement, which aroused in several
breasts a keen feeling of emulation. The artist writes: “Mr. Maddocks
has always strongly encouraged me, and had the courage to buy my work at
a time when everybody in Belgium found me by far too audacious, because,
as you may know, the leaders, the standard-bearers as it were, of the
young Belgian school of painting are not at all in sympathy with the
beautiful art of Monet and his school.” Since that day Emile Claus has
greatly increased his following throughout the world, being least
appreciated in his own country.
Emile Claus is a painter whose brush is charged with the sweetness of
life, courageous, healthful, and buoyant. His pictures breathe of
sunlight and fresh air, and it is easy to see with what sheer delight he
throws himself into his work. When one seeks for the reason which so
suddenly changed this prosaic painter of the Antwerp bourgeois into an
Impressionist of the most modern school, one discovers the usual cause,
the Englishmen of the commencement of the last century. In a recent
letter to the writer, Emile Claus says that in England, above all other
countries, were born light and life in painting. “I have all too quickly
glanced at the Turners and Constables of London, nevertheless it was a
revelation to me, and those great artists Monet, Sisley, and Pissarro
continue simply what that giant Turner discovered; just as the grand
epoch of Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and Corot, passed over Belgium to find
their inspiration in the marvellous works of the Dutch school.”
[Illustration:
EMILE CLAUS
]
[Illustration:
THE VILLAGE STREET · EMILE CLAUS
]
In the country of the Lys the artist continues to work, producing a
series of pictures as beautiful as they are uncommon. One may mention
his magnificent _Flemish Farm_ of 1883, the _Old Gardener_ of 1887 now
in the Liége gallery, the canvas in the Antwerp gallery, and the fine
work by which he is represented in the Luxembourg. Charming in colour,
they will be found broad in manner, and perfectly original in sentiment.
[Illustration:
RETURNING FROM MARKET · EMILE CLAUS
]
[Illustration:
GOLDEN AUTUMN · EMILE CLAUS
]
In 1891, Claus exhibited for the first time in the Champ de Mars, and
has contributed each year from that date. His technical skill grows
steadily. M. Gabriel Mourey, staunch supporter of “La peinture claire,”
contributed a most sympathetic article to the “Studio,” in which he
wrote, “In the old days, Claus was accused of being an ‘Impressionist,’
and such he is to a certain degree just as any one may be without
disrespect to the glorious traditions of the painter’s art. He is an
Impressionist to this extent—that he possesses the gift of _feeling_
with the utmost keenness the true meaning of Nature in all her
manifestations; while he is bound by no rule, subject to no formula, in
his endeavour to interpret that meaning on his canvas. But, unlike most
Impressionists, he has the rare capacity to know how to choose his
impressions, to test them to the uttermost, and never to rest until he
has translated them to his full satisfaction, disdaining the haphazard
attempts which are sufficient for the majority of modern landscapists.
Impressionist! One need feel no surprise that the superficial observer
dubs him thus; for nowadays every painter whose work is luminous and
bright, and devoid of bitumen, earns and deserves the title! The truth
is that Claus, without adapting his style to any special method, is
mainly concerned that his works shall be as full of atmosphere as
possible, that his touch shall be as free and his colour as pure as he
can make them. Thus he achieves that remarkable freshness of tint, that
brightness of colouring, which constitute one of the chief charms of his
art.”
The little house near Astene is called in Flemish
“Zonnenschyn”—“Sunshine,” and it is indeed sunshine which is predominant
in the work of Emile Claus.
Le Sidaner is an artist, who, after having passed through several
antagonistic stages, has developed a style entirely his own. He may be
described as a mystic who views the world with an air of detachment,
standing aloof from the distractions of its inhabitants. He prefers an
environment breathing some vague and undefined sorrow. The joy of life
does not course through his veins. The subjects which appeal most to
him suggest renunciation and world-weariness, the solemn peace of a
Flemish _béguinage_, a cobbled street in Bruges recalling dead
glories, a deserted canal with a solitary swan. When he designs a
figure-composition the subject belongs to the same _genre_, a priest
administering extreme unction to a dying girl, orphans under the care
of a nun, old women waiting with the patience of extreme old age for
Death to release them from their suffering senility. He instils into
his canvases the very essence of Keats’ line, “Sorrow more beautiful
than beauty’s self.”
The only biographical account of Le Sidaner is to be found in one of M.
Gabriel Mourey’s penetrating articles in the “Studio.” Le Sidaner was
the son of fisherfolk from St. Malo and the Ile Bréhat. He was born in
1862, and spent the first ten years of his life in his native place, the
Ile Maurice. “While quite young,” says the writer of the preface to the
catalogue of an exhibition held in 1897, “he came to live in Dunkirk,
beside the murmuring North Sea, with its melancholy mists. The shock he
felt at the change made him absolutely pensive. It was as though, half
alarmed, he was taking refuge within himself the better to express the
flame of Creole tenderness which burned within him.” His father, who
practised painting and sculpture as an amateur, gave the boy every
encouragement. At fifteen he was taken away from school, and sent to the
local École des Beaux-Arts. Here he studied under a master who was slave
to the doctrines of the Antwerp school.
The artist, when telling his early experiences, deplored these evil
influences. He admits that they were not worse than those forced upon
him in Paris, where, at the École des Beaux-Arts, he studied under
Cabanel. Five years he spent under that master, making sketches of the
animals at the Jardin des Plantes, and copying Delacroix and Jordaens at
the Louvre. Then he passed under the influence of Impressionism. He
says: “It was in this year (1881) that Manet displayed his portraits of
_Pertuiset, le tueur de lions_, and of _Rochefort_. The first of these
pleased me infinitely, but the second gradually filled me with alarm; it
was so different from that which I had hitherto seen. Nevertheless, I
remember well that the famous _Bar des Folies-Bergère_ by this same
Manet made the profoundest impression on me. Yet the rules of the school
forbade me to consider all this as beautiful as I could have wished to
consider it. When I look back on those days it really seems as though I
was poisoned. Etaples, that is to say Nature, revived me, and drove the
drug from my system.”
[Illustration:
APPLE GATHERING · EMILE CLAUS
]
Le Sidaner goes on to tell how by chance he spent a holiday at Etaples
in 1881. He settled there, and remained in the little coast town from
1884 to 1893, where he made friendships with Eugène Vail, Thaulow, Henri
Duhem, Alexander Harrison, and others. He refers to a visit to Holland,
where Rembrandt, Peter de Hoogh, and Vermeer enchanted him. Having
gained a third medal at the Salon des Champs-Élysées he was able to
travel to Italy. “Italy simply turned my head, particularly Florence.
Oh! the delicious hours I spent in the Convent of San Marco copying the
face of the Virgin in Fra Angelico’s _Annunciation_. How much I
preferred the simple grace of Fra Angelico and Giotto to the cleverness
and skill of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto.” It was hardly necessary
to have avowed these influences, they are so evident in the work of Le
Sidaner.
[Illustration:
A SUNLIT HOUSE · EMILE CLAUS
]
He is a man who avoids crowds and the distracting clamour of humanity,
loving to work in such dead cities as Bruges, or the peaceful
countryside in the neighbourhood of Beauvais. No modern artist has
better expressed on canvas the words of the great Millet. “When you
paint a picture, whether the subject be a house, a plain, the ocean, or
the sky, remember always the presence of man. Think how his joys and
sorrows have been intermixed in these landscapes. An inner voice speaks
of his inquietude and turmoils. Humanity’s whole existence is conjured
up. In painting a landscape think of man.”
Le Sidaner has many affinities to Pointelin, Carrière, and Whistler.
They each have sought harmonies of line and colour, and though distinct
in personality and unlike in methods, they have produced wonderfully
similar effects. One of the most impressive of Le Sidaner’s works is _La
Table_ in the Luxembourg. Here is the unmistakable Impressionist
technique. In the courtyard of a country house is spread a table, white
with napery, upon which stands a glowing opalescent lamp. A calm summer
moon diffuses a gentle light over the whole scene. No human figures
disturb the peaceful atmosphere, yet the sentiment of their presence
pervades the place. The painting is a little masterpiece of its kind.
The first canvas exhibited at the Champs-Élysées in 1887 was entitled
_After Church_. Since that time he has exhibited year after year, the
subjects of his pictures being well explained by their French titles:
_La Promenade des Orphelines_, _Communion in Extremis_, _Benediction de
la Mer_ (1891), _Jeune fille Hollandaise_ (1892), _L’autel des
Orphelines_ (1893), _Départ de Tobie_ (1894), _Les Promis_, and _Les
Vieilles_ (1895). In 1900 he exhibited a notable collection of pictures
of Bruges.
Le Sidaner paints a world of dreams. No better description of his work
can be found than in the words of Moore:
One of those passing rainbow dreams,
Half light, half shade, which fancy’s beams
Paint on the fleeting mists that roll,
In trance or slumber, round the soul.
English readers and artists have hardly yet made the acquaintance of
Besnard. To continental art-lovers he has long been known as the
strongest and most audacious of the young men in the movement, and is
thoroughly Impressionist in his ideas and methods. Few living artists
have had the good fortune to be so much discussed as M. Besnard. Each
Salon brings its chorus of admiration, its storm of disapprobation. The
height of the argument was reached a few years ago, when, at the New
Salon, the artist exhibited his _Ponies worried by Flies_. A startling
piece of colour, it created a strong impression upon those who saw it.
At that moment the existence of the violet tints in nature, which had
been so beautifully demonstrated by Monet in his series of _Les
Cathédrales_ and by Sisley in his charming river studies, was much under
discussion in the studios. In some of the works of Monet and Sisley the
whole picture is saturated in a glow of violet, which is frequently to
be found in nature, particularly in northern France. Those who had not
seen this natural effect disbelieved in its existence and charged the
artists with painting “de chic.” Those who had seen it and essayed the
difficult task of reproducing it upon canvas, loudly proclaimed its
truths. Then came the _Ponies worried by Flies_. Besnard had heard of
the heated discussion raging round the violet tints, and, having
observed the truth of the effect, determined to demonstrate it in paint.
Never had been seen in any Salon such a blaze of colour as this. The
composition seemed to be but a peg upon which to hang a sermon in
technique. Violet, violent in colour, pure hot impasto as shadow,
juxtaposed directly to its natural complement of light in the shape of
orange and citron colours, brilliantly loud and unadulterated. A
sensation was created, and disbelief in the existence of violet tints in
nature for ever silenced. M. Besnard has followed this success with many
other surprising themes, for it is his pleasure to amaze. He seeks
incessantly the new and incongruous.
[Illustration:
THE QUAY AT VEERE · EMILE CLAUS
]
[Illustration:
THE BARRIER · EMILE CLAUS
]
Besnard’s talent has been, and continues to be, publicly recognised. The
municipality of Paris yearly expends large sums of money in securing the
best available skill for decorating the public buildings in its charge.
In this laudable custom it is followed by every town of any importance
throughout the country. Lavishly patronised by the Government, the
municipalities, wealthy private collectors, and the sentiment of the
people generally, artists thrive in France and multiply. In whatever
respect—if any—in which France may be found lagging behind the nations,
in Art she must by the very reason of things remain supreme, for Art is
a part of her daily life. Besnard has been lucky with his commissions.
He was called upon to assist in the decoration of the magnificent Hôtel
de Ville of Paris, in the Town Hall of the First Arrondissement, in the
lecture hall of the Sorbonne, and with the frescoes in the School of
Pharmacy. In all these decorations one finds colour and composition as
original as bizarre, harmonious yet forcible. All students of modern
painting should not fail to see these works, the most striking in
execution of the last few years. The artist’s atelier is also always
open to connoisseurs, and it will be found to be crowded with sketches
and pictures in progress, each one unmistakably the handiwork of a
master craftsman.
[Illustration:
AN ALLEY · HENRI LE SIDANER
]
[Illustration:
THE TABLE · HENRI LE SIDANER
]
Five of Besnard’s canvases have been bought by the Government, and all
are now to be found in the Luxembourg, an honour few artists can boast
of. A list is given for reference. The first of the series is a portrait
of the artist, the others being entitled _Femme qui se chauffe_, _La
Morte_, _Port d’Alger au Crépuscule_, and _Entre deux Rayons_. The
second and third are excellent examples of a branch of art in which
Besnard is supreme. His nudes and portraits are wonderfully fine in
drawing, and bewitching in colour. They will form his greatest claim to
future immortality.
Besnard is a particularly sympathetic lover of horses, and no one can
more naturally reproduce them in paint than he. His chief recreation is
driving, and he is often to be seen “tooling” along the roads of the
Bois de Boulogne and other suburbs of Paris. There is little to add
personally about Albert Paul Besnard. He was born in Paris, married
Mdlle. Dubray, a sculptor of much talent, and resides in the Rue
Guillaume Tell. His career has been a continued series of success upon
success, and at the present moment he is one of the shining stars of
contemporary art in France.
Allied to the later phase of the Impressionist movement, although not
actually identified with the group of artists known as the typical
Impressionists, is Didier-Pouget. His habitual manner of regarding
Nature, his pure and cheerful colours, and his natural temperament,
include him in this survey of workers in “la peinture claire.” He has a
special gift of composition, “mise en plan,” as the French say, a strong
feeling for balance and form. He is at his best when depicting morning
and sunset effects. His scenes of heather bathed in sunshine or
glistening with the dew of an autumnal sunrise are rendered with an
exceptional verisimilitude, strength, and truth.
Didier-Pouget was born at Toulouse in 1864, the son of the editor of one
of the local journals. His father, a great lover of Nature, gave the boy
every encouragement in his ambition to become an artist. It was the
custom of father and son to take long country walks, and the elder would
point out natural beauties and discuss the methods of their pictorial
representation, relating at the same time biographical details of the
great artists, and in every way endeavouring to train the child and
sustain his ideals. After Didier-Pouget had passed through a plain
schooling, professors were engaged, notably MM. Auguin and Baudit. For
the latter (a local artist of genius, who, had he forsaken the quieter
life of the provinces for the glare of Parisian publicity, should have
attained to the highest honours an artist can reach) his old pupil has
still much admiration. Then Didier-Pouget passed into the studio of
Lalanne, the celebrated etcher and illustrator. Under these influences
many profitable years were spent, the seed-time of a most fruitful
career.
Locally the youth was regarded as a prodigy of talent, and great things
were expected of him. Pictures were exhibited in the provinces which
attracted much appreciation, and found many purchasers. Thus encouraged,
the artist sought a wider audience, and went to Paris. It was a wise
step, and Fortune smiled on him from the first. From 1886 he has
exhibited year by year at the Salon, each fresh season showing a marked
advance in his art, bringing to the world of Paris new and delightful
colour-schemes and vivid compositions.
Didier-Pouget achieved his “Mention Honorable” in 1890, won the
“Concours Troyon” the following year, and was awarded the gold medal at
the Salon in 1896 upon the recommendation of Gérôme, hitherto a strong
opponent to the new style. He is now a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour, his medals, diplomas, and awards from foreign exhibitions and
Governments being almost innumerable. Such a measure of success is
rarely achieved nowadays by a man under forty in the arduous profession
of art. The State and the municipality of Paris are amongst his most
regular patrons. Besides the pictures reserved for Paris, he is
represented in the museums of Lyons, Macon, Toulouse, Tunis, the Embassy
at St. Petersburg, the galleries of Boston, U.S.A., and Leipsic, and the
private collections of the Kings of Italy and Greece.
[Illustration:
A STUDY · ALBERT BESNARD
]
[Illustration:
THE DEATH-BED · ALBERT BESNARD
]
Personally Didier-Pouget is more Spanish than French. Of medium height,
tanned complexion, black hair, dark eyes which tell unmistakably of the
artist, very reserved in manner, and modest to a degree—these are his
characteristics. He leads a solitary life in the Boulevard de Clichy. In
his large studio will probably be found the canvas he is working upon,
about ten feet by six, his favourite size. Innumerable studies are
scattered around, rapid sketches of form and colour, line-drawings,
careful black-and-white work full of detail, in fact every trifle which
will aid him in completing the whole.
[Illustration:
MORNING MISTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE CREUSE · DIDIER POUGET
]
[Illustration:
MORNING IN THE VALLEY OF THE CORRÈZE · DIDIER POUGET
]
If the greatest art is to represent an impression of Nature at her best,
then the work of Didier-Pouget is great. “It is truly worth while being
a painter to have produced any one of these,” writes the critic of “Le
Temps.” The artist loves best to represent Nature in her peaceful moods,
and generally seeks the solitudes of the exquisite hills, valleys, and
rivers of the Tarbes countryside, or the rich watershed of La Creuse.
Here, in the fresh early-morn, charged with dew and mist, he finds his
subjects, overlooking magnificent panoramas of river, hillsides covered
with heather, across valleys and plains from which loom out
sculpturesque masses of foliage, dark and strong against the blue mist
and distant mountain ridge. The painter prefers Nature serene and
undisturbed, and introduces but little incident.
It need hardly be said that his palette is free from all blacks, browns,
ochres, or earth-colours generally, and that his strongest “effects” are
gained by the juxtaposition of pure tints in harmonious contrast. His
favourite colour-scheme seems to be the composition of subtle
arrangements in yellow and blue, or pink and green. He contributes
regularly to the Salon, yearly producing from two to four canvases of
the size mentioned, and in these days of a limited market and unlimited
talent, he invariably finds purchasers. So fortunate has he been that
his numerous friends have but one fear for his future, that his enormous
success may hasten a tendency to stereotype his compositions.
Didier-Pouget is doubtless aware of this danger, and will probably
follow his present aims in a manner which will not disfigure or flaw a
most brilliant career.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
THE VALLEY OF THE CREUSE · DIDIER POUGET
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF HIS MOTHER · J. A. McN. WHISTLER
]
CHAPTER XI · AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTS: WHISTLER, HARRISON, HASSAM
“THROUGH HIS BRAIN, AS THROUGH THE LAST ALEMBIC, IS
DISTILLED THE REFINED ESSENCE OF THAT THOUGHT WHICH
BEGAN WITH THE GODS, AND WHICH THEY LEFT HIM TO
CARRY OUT”
_WHISTLER’S
TEN O’CLOCK_
MR. WHISTLER’S personality was one of the most striking in the art world
of the last forty years, and his death was an irreparable loss. That he
will rank as one of the greatest masters of the nineteenth century there
can be no doubt. As an Impressionist with a strong individuality his
work requires attention in this volume.
The Whistler family came originally from England, chiefly from the
neighbourhoods of Whitchurch and Goring-on-Thames. A notable ancestor
was Daniel Whistler, President of the Royal College of Physicians of
England in the reign of Charles II. Several references to this “quaint
gentleman of rare humour” are to be found in the pages of ‘Pepys’
Diary,’ and the family trait reappeared (with emphasis) in the character
of the famous artist. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born at Lowell,
Massachusetts, in 1834, his father being Major George Washington
Whistler, for some time consulting engineer to the St. Petersburg and
Moscow Railway. The son was destined for a military career, and received
a considerable amount of tuition at the Government College at West
Point. Work as a cadet, and also on the coast survey, does not seem to
have interested him. In the fifties he migrated to Paris and became a
student in the atelier of Gleyre, two of his fellow pupils being Sir
Edward Poynter and George du Maurier. Whistler cannot have had much
sympathy with the art in vogue at that time, a degenerated style based
upon a sentimental classicalism. He found his best friends amongst young
Frenchmen with extremely different ideas, men such as Fantin-Latour,
Bracquemond, Degas, Manet, Duret, Claude Monet, and many others.
Whistler first acquired fame as an etcher, and his first set of plates,
known as the “little French set,” amply justifies the welcome with which
it was received. From that early date until his death he has been
acknowledged pre-eminent in the etcher’s delicate and graceful art.
At the Salon de Refusés (to which frequent reference has already been
made) Whistler exhibited his first important painting, the _Little White
Girl, Symphony in White No. 2_. It created his reputation as a painter,
and remains one of the most charming of his canvases. An early
contribution to the Royal Academy was entitled _At the Piano_, and
clearly showed that the artist was then dominated by the subtle
influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This influence was quickly
discarded, for Rossetti’s talent was inferior to that of the gifted
American.
It has often been said that Whistler was never welcomed at the Royal
Academy. This point remains debatable; the fact remains that the artist
was constantly in evidence during the early part of his career. In 1859
he exhibited _two etchings from nature_ (the title given in the
catalogue to one frame); in 1860 the celebrated _At the Piano_ (which
was bought by an Academician) and five other works, namely, _Monsieur
Astruc, Rédacteur du Journal l’Artiste_ (Drypoint); _Thames—Black Lion
Wharf_; _Portrait_ (Drypoint); _W. Jones, Lime Burner, Thames Street_
(Etching); and _The Thames, from the Tunnel Pier_. In 1861 he was
represented by one canvas, _La Mère Gérard_, together with _Thames from
New Crane Wharf_ (Etching); _Monsieur Oxenfeld, Littérateur, Paris_
(Drypoint); _The Thames, near Limehouse_ (Etching). In 1862 he sent two
paintings, _The Twenty-Fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames, Alone
with the Tide_; and _Rotherhithe_ (Etching). The next year, 1863, was
prolific. The catalogue contains the following titles: _The Last of Old
Westminster_; _Weary_ (Drypoint); _Old Westminster Bridge_; _Hungerford
Bridge_ (Etching); _The Forge_ (Drypoint); _Monsieur Becgis_ (Etching);
_The Pool_ (Drypoint). Two works were on view in 1864: _Wapping_ and
_Die Lange Lizen—of the Six Marks_. In 1865 he exhibited _The Golden
Screen_; _Old Battersea Bridge_; _The Little White Girl_ (with a
quotation in the catalogue of fourteen lines from Swinburne); and _The
Scarf_. Whistler was not represented in 1866, but in 1867 exhibited the
_Symphony in White No. 3_; _Battersea_; and _Sea and Rain_. After a
break of two years came _The Balcony_ in the Academy of 1870. The next
year’s catalogue does not contain his name, but in 1872 the Academy
accepted that exquisite example of his art, now in the Luxembourg,
_Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother_. For
six years Whistler was an absentee, being represented for the last time
on the walls of Burlington House, in 1879, by _Old Putney Bridge_
(Etching).
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE · J. A. McN. WHISTLER
]
[Illustration:
PRINCESS OF THE PORCELAIN COUNTRY · J. A. McN. WHISTLER
]
The majority of Whistler’s masterpieces were exhibited at the Grosvenor
Gallery in the days when Sir Coutts Lindsay was at the head of the
direction. The walls of the rooms in Bond Street were repeatedly adorned
by those charming creations known as _Nocturnes_ and _Symphonies_, by
the remarkable _Valparaiso_, by many of the portraits, notably _Lady
Archibald Campbell_, _Carlyle_, and the delightful _Miss Alexander_.
Twenty years ago Whistler’s life in London and Paris was exceptionally
active. In him Society discovered a wit of Gallic alertness, and he
speedily became one of the most prominent characters of the day. Readers
will remember the oft-told tale of how Whistler sacrificed (with a true
Whistlerian light-heartedness) much costly Cordovan leather, in order
that he might create a masterpiece of decoration in the celebrated
Leyland mansion. Another historic story is the _cause célèbre_ of
Whistler _v._ Ruskin, based upon the criticism of a Grosvenor Gallery
nocturne as “a pot of paint flung in the public face,” with the
resultant farthing damages. The canvas which called forth this elegant
banter was that entitled _Nocturne in Black and Gold; the Fire Wheel_,
the theme being a display of fireworks in the gardens at Cremorne. From
a literary point of view, as a writer of biting sarcasm the artist
scarcely had a peer. One admires that lively _jeu d’esprit_ “Ten
o’clock,” and the strange mixture of correspondence entitled “The Gentle
Art of Making Enemies” will not be out of date until all the shining
lights of the present generation have been forgotten.
After two years of probationship as an ordinary member, in 1886 Whistler
became President of the Royal Society of British Artists, an
old-established and hitherto staid and conservative institution. His
term of office was brilliant and exciting; he himself exhibited such
wonderful pictures as the _Sarasate_, and his reputation attracted the
most talented of the younger artists of the day. The correspondence
which ensued when Whistler vacated the presidential chair must be sought
for in “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.”
In Whistler’s work there is a curious yet indefinable influence of
Japanese painting. In company with most of the Impressionists, he was
influenced by those Impressionists of another race. This influence is to
be observed in all modern painting since 1870, when artists first
commenced to collect examples of the Japanese methods.
In his later years Whistler preferred the atmosphere of Paris to that of
London, although he continued to visit occasionally the country he
described as “humourless and dull.” The artist was thoroughly
cosmopolitan, and was equally at home in New York, Paris, or London. His
influence upon the art of to-day has been unmistakable, and one has
little doubt as to its permanency. Whistler helped to purge art of the
vice of subject, and the belief that the mission of the artist is to
copy nature.
[Illustration:
ALEXANDER HARRISON
]
Mr. Alexander Harrison is one of those numerous American artists who
have settled in France, a natural result of French training and French
sympathies. Inspired by Manet, influenced by Besnard, he has painted
some of the most successful Impressionist work of the last fifteen
years. One cannot agree always with Dr. Muther in his learned and not
altogether satisfactory tomes, but his appreciation of Mr. Harrison is
so delicate and just that it is worth reproducing. “_In Arcady_,” he
writes, “was one of the finest studies of light which have been painted
since Manet. The manner in which the sunlight fell upon the high grass
and slender trees, its rays gliding over branch and shrub, touching the
green blades like shining gold, and glancing over the nude bodies of
fair women—here over a hand, here over a shoulder, and here again over
the bosom—was painted with such virtuosity, felt with such poetry, and
so free from all the heaviness of earth, that one hardly had the sense
of looking at a picture at all.” The luminous painting of Besnard had
here reached its final expression, and the summit of classic finish was
surmounted. His third picture was called _The Wave_. To seize such
phenomena of Nature in their completeness—things so fickle and so hard
to arrest in their mutability—had been the chief study of French
painters since Manet. When Harrison exhibited his _Wave_, sea-pieces by
Duez, Roll, and Victor Binet were also in existence; but Harrison’s
_Wave_ was the best of them all.
[Illustration:
IN ARCADY · ALEXANDER HARRISON
]
[Illustration:
THE WAVE · ALEXANDER HARRISON
]
Harrison’s vast studio in Paris breathes of the sea. The painter is an
ardent yachtsman, and traces of his recreation are numerous. Here are to
be found dozens of canvases, rolled up, piled in bundles, hung haphazard
against the walls, each one telling some different story of the waters.
These studies, probably worked upon in the neighbourhoods of Pould’hu or
Begmiel, are often actually salted and sanded by contact with the
elements which dash against the wild but lovely Breton shores. No modern
man paints seascapes like Harrison. He produces effects which are
evidently the results of patient vigil and watching, as well as a
vigorous power of brushwork. They are transcripts of the ocean, which
can only be seen as the sun rises out of the east over the waters, pale
lilac tints, softly fading into citron, or gaining added strength in
vermilion or deep orange reflected from the passing clouds, whilst
sweeping ripples (one can almost hear their rhythmic cadence) are gently
lost across the expanse of ethereal, glistening sand.
[Illustration:
SUNLIGHT ON THE LAKE · CHILDE HASSAM
]
In other pictures we see the tide at full flood; nature is in a fairer
mood, and the universe glows with an exquisite green. The waves, of a
glassy transparency, are for the moment held in check by a supreme
power. Such passing phases of Nature Mr. Harrison seizes with unerring
touch. Another branch of his work, already referred to in speaking of
the picture _In Arcady_, are the paintings of the nude amidst the actual
surrounding of the fields. Part of their success may be ascribed to the
fact that they have been painted in each case in the open air. From the
photographs, which Mr. Harrison has allowed us to reproduce, both sides
of his beautiful talent may be judged. Like most Impressionists, his art
breathes of a love and joy with Nature as seen by a temperament refined,
distinguished, one may add—aristocratic.
In the days when Florida was a primæval wilderness Mr. Harrison as a
very young man entered the United States Coast Survey. Whistler, it may
be remembered, commenced his career under the auspices of the same
department. Florida was just the place for an adventurous youth, and
Harrison was interested in his work. His enthusiasm, coupled with his
ability, resulted in being intrusted with most of the difficult and
sometimes dangerous “reconnaissance” engineering scout work that called
for lonely jaunts and camping out amongst the swamps and lagoons.
After four years on the Florida coast the party moved on to Puget Sound.
The young men connected with the survey had been dabbling for some time
in the use of water-colours, and Harrison found that the artist in him
was winning ascendency over the surveyor. An argument with the head of
the survey settled the matter. Mr. Harrison went to San Francisco, and
then travelled to Paris, and studied under Gérôme. He was in his
twenty-sixth year, and conscious that his career was midway between
success and failure. He exhibited at the Salon a picture _Châteaux en
Espagne_, a boy stretched on his back in the sand of a warm, dry beach,
wrapt in the spell of a day-dream. “It was rather symbolic,” said the
artist once as he gazed at the photograph, “of my own state of mind at
that time.”
During the next ten years he was engaged in painting nudes in the open
air. His chief source of inspiration was his friend Bastien-Lepage, with
whom he travelled to Brittany. Harrison’s first success was _In Arcady_,
now in the Luxembourg. A recent journalistic interview elicited many
interesting facts about Mr. Harrison’s method of work. The writer
concludes: “Mr. Harrison’s usual haunt in Brittany is Begmiel. Here
there is a sandy peninsula jutting into the sea, whence you can watch
the sun go down on the one horizon, and the moon come up from the other.
He does not carry his paint-box about with him taking notes. Memory and
imagination, knowledge and power of visualisation, take psychic
photographs. It is not to be gathered from this that Mr. Harrison is
unerring. He has scraped out as many yards of painted canvas as any man.
But where his strength undeniably exists is in this subjective, rather
than objective, genius for instantaneous notation. When he comes to put
the picture on the canvas—now mark the importance of early influences—he
becomes the young surveyor again engaged in reconnaissance. He takes his
embryonic map (a small canvas) and puts down his known points. He knows
just what spot of colour was here, what broken line there. The more he
puts down the more he sees, and presently the little map is finished.
The first map finished a larger size is made, and, if all goes well,
perhaps one larger still, and we have a great picture like any one of
those exhibited by the artist at the Salon of the Société Nationale.”
It is hardly necessary to add that this artist is an officer of the
Legion of Honour, and has received numerous medals and other awards. Of
the Franco-American school of painting he is one of the recognised
heads, and this has been acknowledged by his election to the chief art
societies of Paris, New York, Berlin, and Munich, whilst he is
represented in the permanent collections of the Luxembourg, the Royal
Gallery, Dresden, the Museum at Quimper, and the American galleries of
Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco.
[Illustration:
CHILDREN · CHILDE HASSAM
]
[Illustration:
POMONA · CHILDE HASSAM
]
[Illustration:
A COUNTRY BEER-HOUSE, BAVARIA · MAX LIEBERMANN
]
Childe Hassam is a young American artist who has been strongly
influenced by Impressionism. Originally from Boston, he worked for
several years in Paris, and when he returned to the States had already
some reputation. In New York he has “rendered the street life in fresh
and fleeting sketches; snow, smoke, and flaring gaslight pouring through
the shop-windows, quivering out into the night, and reflected in an
intense blaze upon the faces of men and women.” A typical example of his
work in this _genre_ is _Seventh Avenue, New York_. Childe Hassam is an
associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a member of the
Secession of Munich, the American Water Colour Society, and numerous
clubs and societies throughout the States. He has received medals at
many of the recent International Exhibitions, including that of Paris in
1889, whilst he is represented in several of the continental and
transatlantic galleries. Being still young and enthusiastic, much may be
expected of Mr. Hassam in the future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII · A GERMAN IMPRESSIONIST, MAX LIEBERMANN
“CE QUE JE CHERCHE AVANT TOUT DANS UN TABLEAU, C’EST
UN HOMME ET NON PAS UN TABLEAU”
_ZOLA_
GERMANY has been strongly affected by the French movement, as in fact
has been the whole of the Continent. Any person who can remember the
state of art in the Fatherland twenty years ago will notice the great
change now taking place. He need only revisit the country and wander
through the great annual exhibitions held in the larger cities, such as
Berlin, Munich, and Dresden. In 1878 the “Gazette des Beaux-Arts,”
referring to the German school of painting, said: “There are one or two
artists of the first rank, and many men of talent, but in other respects
German painting is still upon the level of the schools which had their
day amongst us thirty years ago; this is the solitary school of painting
which does not seem to perceive that the age of railways and World
Exhibitions needs an art different from that of the age of philosophy
and provincial isolation.” Since that date, in the manner of viewing
nature, in the choice of subject, in the style, composition, technique,
and colour of pictures, the main trend of German art has been completely
altered. Until quite recently Teutonic artists delighted in the
allegorical. The output of fabulous monsters, fauns, unicorns, satyrs,
was enormous. Every young painter turned his hand to the production of
these fantastic mythological subjects. Happily a saner view of the
mission of art has come over the land, and the fauns and satyrs are
being gradually relegated to oblivion. From an absurd pseudo-classical
style (the effect of teaching from men like Couture and Munkacsy),
together with unlimited use of bitumen and black, a national school of
painting has been evolved which follows “la peinture claire,” giving
promise that in time it will travel, as regards purity of colour and
brilliance of effect, far beyond the bounds Monet has restricted himself
to. Work “en plein air” is the vogue, and no longer the exception,
whilst the sun is recognised at his true worth in the universal scheme
of nature. Hitherto King Sol has been disregarded, and his presence but
rarely indicated in some low-toned sunrise, or a sunset effect—the
conventional chrome-yellow band across a deep Prussian-blue hill
distance. Following the lead of the artists, both critics and public are
being gradually weaned from the love of black shadows, although it
cannot be said that they are wholly converted. Still their education is
in rapid progress, and the German people will soon be abreast of the
times in matters artistic.
One man, Max Liebermann, has brought about this healthy state of things
almost single-handed. A consideration of his lifework is of the highest
importance and interest to all concerned either with the progress of
German art or the movement of French impressionism, for Liebermann is a
master, head and shoulders above all his colleagues. His artistic
history is easy to trace. The greatest painters are always primarily
attracted by the work of other great men. They copy the models of their
choice, and, missing some of the peculiar qualities enshrined therein,
gradually replace them in their own works with something equally fine.
These fresh qualities will in their turn find admirers, and, fanning the
zeal of newcomers, keep alight throughout the ages the sacred flame of
art. If Delacroix borrowed from Constable, Manet borrowed from
Delacroix, and Liebermann from Manet. In his turn, Liebermann has
influenced a large and increasing number of young German and Dutch
artists.
With his pre-eminent position as a representative German painter, Max
Liebermann combines a commanding and active personality. More than any
other man of his time, his work has provoked discussion and attracted
attention from the commencement. During the last thirty years he has
fought strenuously the battle of light in painting. Strongly influenced
by Manet, Monet, together with Millet and the Barbizon school, he has
succeeded in inculcating amongst his brother artists a love of actuality
in subject, a desire to work direct from nature (contrary to that old
method of painting in the semi-gloom of the studio from incongruous
models in more or less correct costume), together with the
simplification and purification of the palette. Liebermann has taught
German artists to look at nature as it is, and not to represent it as
seen through the veil of a deadening academic tradition; he has taught
them that art does not consist in a minute finish, that there is no
finality in nature, and that the last impression which a true work of
art should convey is that of excessive industry.
[Illustration:
THE COBBLERS · MAX LIEBERMANN
]
Max Liebermann was born in Berlin, July 29, 1849, the son of a wealthy
merchant. At an early age he decided to become an artist, but the
fulfilment of his wish was opposed by his father, who suggested a course
of philosophy at the University of Berlin as an antidote. Young
Liebermann joined the faculty of philosophy, but at the same time worked
in Steffeck’s studio where he made quick progress. He assisted his
master, we are told, in the battle picture _Sadowa_, painting guns,
sabres, uniforms, and hands, with much approbation from Steffeck. He
frequented the galleries and museums in preference to the class-rooms,
and preferred to sketch in the streets and parks of Berlin rather than
sit at the feet of a professor at the University. In 1869, with parental
authority, he deserted philosophy altogether, and joined the Academy at
Weimar, then in high repute as a school of art producing the regulation
painters of orthodox pattern. Here he worked for three years under
Thumann and Pauwels, beginning pictures in their style which were left
unfinished. The petrified classicalism which reigned in Weimar was
little acceptable to a youth who had keenly studied the life around him,
and who had developed a strong love for natural effects as well as
modernity in technique. These heretical tendencies were sternly
repressed by his respectable and erudite teachers. At last Liebermann
threw aside artificiality, and, quitting the circles of the conservative
Academy, occupied himself in painting in the open air.
In 1873 he finished his first great picture, _Women plucking Geese_, now
in the National Gallery, Berlin. It was more or less academic as to
technique, and black tones predominated throughout in accordance with
the fashion of the period. The subject brought the canvas into immediate
notoriety, the picture was condemned as a gross vulgarity, and
Liebermann was described as “the apostle of ugliness.” This hostile
reception was entirely unexpected by the sensitive artist, who was much
affected by it, and determined to leave Berlin for Paris.
Thirty years ago the bituminous method of Munkacsy was the most popular
art in Germany, and influenced many of the younger painters, Liebermann
included. Upon his arrival in Paris the artist sought out the great
Hungarian, and asked for advice. The result of the interview was that
Liebermann quitted Paris for Holland. Munkacsy was at that time, as Dr.
Muther remarks, under the influence of Ribot, and confirmed Liebermann
in his preference for heavy Bolognese shadows. It was not until he came
to know the works of Troyon, Daubigny, and Corot, that he liberated
himself from the influence of the school of Courbet. As subsequent
events proved, the advice given by Munkacsy was good and to the point,
and Liebermann acknowledges his great obligation to the painter of
_Christ before Pilate_.
The first motive of importance which Liebermann found in the Low
Countries resulted in the picture _Women preserving Vegetables_,
completed at Weimar in 1873, and exhibited at the Salon of the same
year. The subject represents a group of women in a dimly lit barn busily
engaged in preserving cabbages and other vegetables. The canvas,
although a great advance upon its predecessors, was ungraciously
received in Germany. So little appreciation did Liebermann receive that
he definitely removed to Paris, where he knew a welcome awaited him. In
“la ville lumière” he worked in the schools and museums, studied Troyon,
Daubigny, and Millet, whilst the influence of Manet, Monet, and the
other Impressionists, was an important factor in the development of his
art.
[Illustration:
ASYLUM FOR OLD MEN, AMSTERDAM · MAX LIEBERMANN
]
[Illustration:
WOMAN WITH GOATS · MAX LIEBERMANN
]
So strong was his admiration for Millet that he went down to Barbizon,
where he arrived shortly before the death of that great artist. Under
the influence of Millet he painted _Labourers in the Turnip Field_, and
_Brother and Sister_, which appeared in the Paris Salon of 1876. He now
reached the turning-point of his career, for he had made up his mind
that at all costs he must perfect his own individual style. A great
unrest, useless to battle against, disorganised his movements. He
travelled through Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy, studying and
searching for the inspiration which should place him in the right path.
During these travels he met at Venice Lenbach, the portrait-painter, who
told him to study in Munich. Tired of wandering he acted upon the
suggestion, and passed six years in the Bavarian capital. For a period
his art assumed a religious character, and he painted many biblical
compositions. These works were coldly received, and in Munich they were
strongly and adversely criticised. The clergy objected to them as
profane, and a debate on the subject followed in the Bavarian Assembly.
The life of the artist becoming exceedingly uncomfortable, Liebermann
settled in Amsterdam, where he found a freer artistic atmosphere more
congenial to his temperament. Disdaining the critical capacity of his
native city, Liebermann forwarded all his finest works to Paris, and in
the Salon of 1881 exhibited _An Asylum for Old Men_, which gained a
medal in the third class, the first honour awarded to German art since
the war. Having received the official imprimatur of Paris, his
countrymen began to realise that an artist had grown up amongst them
they could no longer afford to neglect. Liebermann’s works found
purchasers throughout the Continent, and his future was assured. He was
elected a member of the “Cercle des Quinze,” of which Alfred Stevens and
Bastien-Lepage were prominent supporters, and he exhibited annually at
the Salon Petit and other French collections. Since 1884 he has divided
his time between Berlin and the little village of Zandvoort, near
Hilversum, in Holland. Perhaps his early experiences account for the
fact that when in the German capital he mixes little with its artistic
society.
Liebermann has practised with success and ability every variety of
artistic expression. His portraits alone would class him amongst the
masters, taking as examples the _Burgomeister Petersen_, the _Professor
Virchow_, and the _Gerhart Hauptmann_. He is equally facile with the
burin, the needle, the pastel, or with water-colours. His activity is
ceaseless, and his production, in consequence, enormous; he possesses
robust health, uncommon strength, enormous fertility, traits common to
the great artists of all ages.
In his fine canvas of the _Courtyard of the Orphanage, Amsterdam_,
painted in 1881, Liebermann shows for the first time complete
emancipation from the thrall of Munkacsy’s influence. The picture was
exhibited in the Salon of 1882, and in it appears that peculiar note of
red, now one of the distinguishing features of the artist’s work. Of
this canvas Hochédé, the Parisian art critic, said that Liebermann must
surely have been stealing sunbeams to paint with. Then commenced a long
series of pictures such as the _Ropeyard_, the _Netmenders_, now one of
the most valued pictures in the modern section of the Gallery at
Hamburg, in which the Impressionist spirit is clearly manifested. The
unimportant has been omitted, and the pith of the subject only is given.
The point of view is focused, the inconsequent suppressed, and the “mise
en scène” proves the artist to be an irreproachable draughtsman, as well
as a colourist of the first rank. Liebermann’s pictures of “sous bois”
are particularly pleasing, strikingly painted and original; they were
the first of their kind in Germany, and disconcerted the whole artistic
community.
In following the progress of Liebermann’s art, one notes that he is
attracted unceasingly by problems of light. If Manet is the great
apostle of “plein air” painting, surely no one has yet surpassed the
marvellous style in which Liebermann succeeds in rendering the
attenuated scheme of interior lighting in conjunction with extraordinary
powers of sunlight painting. His gradual emancipation from tradition may
be easily traced from the days of _Women plucking Geese_, when he was
with justice called a “son of darkness”; through the “sous bois”
pictures, to the present period of vivid sunlight and violet shadows
across open country, sea, and the human figure.
Liebermann headed the party which revolted from the National Salon, and
of the Secessionists he is the president. Similar cleavages of the young
and progressive from the old and reactionary have taken place in most
countries with equally important results. In Max Liebermann Germany has
an artist of most exceptional gifts. “I do not seek for what is called
the pictorial,” he writes, “but I would grasp nature in her simplicity
and grandeur—the simplest thing and the hardest.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII · INFLUENCES AND TENDENCIES
“C’EST L’AFFIRMATION GRANDIOSE DE L’EFFORT VERS LE
BEAU QUE CERTAINS ARTISTES INDÉPENDANTS TRAITÈRENT À
UN MOMENT DONNÉ EN DEHORS DE LA TRADITION ET DES
FORMULES ACQUISES”
_GEORGES
LECOMTE_
IT is the fashion nowadays amongst a certain class of art-critics to
adopt the pessimistic note. They laud the past, deplore the present, and
display sympathetic alarm for the future of art and artists. Should a
modern manifestation of art be under discussion, some phase undeniably
good and universally accepted by those best qualified to form an
opinion, these critics recognise it with a guarded qualification and a
prophecy of its speedy decadence in the immediate future; and these
depreciatory remarks are extended to all those artists who have been
attracted by the new movement and have ranged themselves under its
banner. It has always been so. In the art literature of the past we read
of Delacroix and the decadence, of Corot and the downfall, of Monet and
the abyss. There are still living in France aged and honoured
professors, members of the Institute and of the Salon juries, who
believe that the teaching of Claude Monet has been a national calamity.
They hold that art no longer exists, having been destroyed by these
dreadful innovations. Is it not strange that the birth of new methods,
rather than the death of old ones, should be heralded with melancholy
head-shakings, with frequent and wrathful imprecations upon the impious
intruders! Time rights all things. The new to-day is old to-morrow, the
exotic becomes classic, and one more page is added to the history of the
evolution of art.
Nothing is more amazing than to read in the daily and weekly press of
the “pernicious influence” and decadence of modern French art,
criticisms the more astonishing as the present age is one of universal
travel and liberal ideas. French art is in no such parlous state, and
never, at any period of its history, displayed stronger signs of
vitality. Never was its activity greater, nor its influence, poetry, and
gaiety better for the general good of the nation. Such wild accusations
are unjustifiable, hypocritical, and themselves pernicious. French
influence dominates the work of the most successful painters and
sculptors throughout the world. The art of such men as La Thangue,
Edward Stott, Alfred East, Peppercorn, Bertram Priestman, Arnesby Brown,
Fred Footet, John Lavery, Macaulay Stevenson, Edwin Abbey, John S.
Sargent, George Clausen, and the men of the Glasgow school, is
unquestionably derived from Paris, a city we are asked to believe is
decadent in art matters. Of these artists it may be said that the
majority were educated in Paris. It is well to acknowledge candidly
that, although in the days of Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, and the
other members of that brilliant band, English art led the world, to-day
we must look to “la ville lumière” for instruction and inspiration. The
fact is proved by the enormous preponderance of students of all
nationalities who flock to Paris for the completion of their art
education. In other words, French art is the leading art of the day, and
will remain so for many years to come.
Let any unbiased observer compare the two magnificent Salons of Painting
and Sculpture held annually in Paris with the English Royal Academy, New
Gallery, and British Artists’ Exhibitions. Note that France houses her
artists in some of the most beautiful palaces in the world, then think
of London. Observe the high average quality of the exhibits, their
astounding technical excellence, the courage of the artists, and their
bold experiments in untrodden paths, their extraordinary originality and
diversity of temperament. They are not content with an ephemeral
success, or the stereotyped reproduction of popular playthings. The
contributors are cosmopolitan in nationality, for, provided the
necessary passport of talent, Paris welcomes the stranger. Where in
Great Britain can the foreigner, even if he possess acknowledged genius,
be sure of meeting with a sympathetic reception and fair play from a
Hanging Committee? He is fortunate if he escapes public ridicule. The
Continental artist has learnt this lesson and troubles us no more, to
the blight of our national education and the detriment of our taste.
This blot upon our reputation for common sense has been to some extent
redeemed of recent years by the International Society of Painters,
Sculptors, and Gravers. Perhaps its intermittent exhibitions will
rehabilitate our name abroad, and incidentally aid in revivifying our
national taste.
Recall haphazard the names of a few artists who are at the present
moment exhibiting in France. Aman-Jean, Barillot, Binet, Besnard,
Billotte, Bracquemond, Cottet, Chèret, Carrière, Cassatt, Cazin,
Dagnan-Bouveret, Daillon, Dameron, Didier-Pouget, Degas, d’Espagnat,
Forain, Fantin-Latour, Geffroy, Gosselin, Gaston la Touche, Gagliardini,
Guillaumin, Harpignies, Henner, Lhermitte, Le Sidaner, Meunier, Marais,
Monet, Menard, Maufra, Montenard, Pointelin, Ribot, Rigolot, Raffaëlli,
Rodin, Renoir, Roybet, Ziem. This list can be extended indefinitely by
the addition of the names of artists of the rarest temperaments. The art
of the whole of the rest of the world cannot surpass the productions of
these men.
The state of the plastic arts in England is deplorable. If it be not
soon remedied, we shall be compelled to go abroad for any statues
needed. The little sculpture we have is frequently excellent, but its
output is so insignificant that it cannot possibly be compared with the
sculpture of France. The art cannot flourish in England whilst there are
so few public commissions, or wealthy patrons. Financially the painter’s
career is bad enough, but, as a remunerative profession, sculpture does
not exist. Look around the galleries in London during the height of the
season, and note the quite insignificant amount of sculpture exhibited.
Many of the London galleries exclude it altogether, and in the
provincial collections it is practically non-existent. If there is any
it is systematically overlooked by visitors, and as for sales—! one
never hears of such a thing. Then remember Paris with its immense annual
production of excellent sculpture, and the admirable manner in which the
State fosters this great art.
If we take monuments and statues in public places as the fittest
expression of national gratitude, we are sadly lacking. Where in England
can we find monuments in perpetuation of the memory of such mighty
painters as Turner, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable, Romney, and a
score besides. If we possess such monuments, they are certainly hidden
away from the sight of both native and stranger, and the latter
frequently remarks upon their absence. In France the birthplaces of
these artists would have raised some remembrance, whilst the capital
city in which they laboured would surely have had its statues and
collegiate endowments to perpetuate their spirit. An example can be
quoted from the little country town in which these lines are being
written. Here in Les Andelys, in the most prominent position, are two
statues. One of them is as fine a memorial as can be seen in any capital
city of Europe. The men so honoured in imperishable bronze are not
kings, generals, statesmen, or even local benefactors. They are merely
artists, and one of them (the son of an Englishwoman) is but distantly
allied to the countryside. Chaplin and Poussin, two artists of
thoughtful, gentle lives, of obscure birth, without fortune or
influence, yet possessors, in some degree, of the ennobling fire of
genius. Of these men the simple townspeople are exceedingly proud, and
in such pride we see the whole spirit of the nation. France delights to
honour genius, and the intelligent foreigner, noting these things, will
pay little heed to stories that decadence and pernicious influences are
the outcome of such a feeling.
Following the lead of Paris, American painters may be said to have
adopted “la peinture claire” almost to a man. Germany also has revolted,
and the Secessionist movement, with Liebermann at its head, has gathered
together the most vigorous talent in modern German art. Clean painting
in a pure and healthy atmosphere now reigns supreme. Spain and Italy
have also been deeply affected, and in both of these countries there is
a marked recrudescence of that fine talent which in times past
distinguished the two peninsulas. Together with this increasing activity
is happily to be noted a commensurate degree of financial encouragement.
Enormous sums yearly change hands in Germany alone for the products of
the new school, irrespective of nationality. The sales recorded at the
annual exhibitions in Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and Dusseldorf average
about twenty times the amounts received at the Royal Academy, and it is
clear that Germany intends to take as leading a position in the arts as
she is doing in commerce.
The tendency in England appears to be retrograde. Modern Dutch art
reigns as the present fashion, its propagation admirably engineered, its
influence widespread. The pictures _à-la-mode_ are those with foggy,
sombre grey skies in heavy unatmospheric paint. They give us damp
discoloured tenements, shipping the colour of coal-tar, clumsy barges,
malodorous canals, ugly toil-broken humanity, the whole as unromantic,
depressing, and dyspeptic as can be imagined. The seal of official
approbation has been secured for this kind of thing, and the Mansion
House requisitioned for its display. This poetry of the prosaic has been
generally accepted, and never have times been better for the sturdy,
plodding producer of Dutch pictures. As it is the dark and sordid side
of Nature that appeals most forcibly to these men, we shall, within a
given time, develop a whole race of “Nubians” of our own. Finally we
shall deny the very existence of the sun and all he represents in our
limited share of life.
The cult of sun-worship, of joy in sparkling colour, of pure
health-bringing open-air art must, sooner or later, predominate in
England as it already predominates throughout the world. The mission of
Impressionism is to depict beauty that elevates, light that cheers. In
their struggle for this mastery of light, Impressionist painters have
often in the past sacrificed many of the qualities which go towards the
making of a picture, and have thus incurred public displeasure. Their
subjects have been chosen at random, and they have gained their effects
often regardless of composition. The artists were far too much occupied
by technical difficulties to care about picture-making, and the results,
mere studies, were not intended as pictures. They were the necessary
experiments incidental to the invention of “Impressionism.” Yet how
preferable are these “studies” to the ordinary canvases of commerce, and
how treasured they are at the present day. Now that the material
difficulties have been overcome, and settled methods achieved, this
reproach will disappear, and we may confidently look to the
Impressionist picture for all those qualities which go to the making of
a perfect work of art.
In the canvases of Vincent Van Gogh, Gauguin, Claus, Maufra, d’Espagnat,
Liebermann, Harrison, Besnard, Le Sidaner, and many others of the later
school, will be found not only colour, rich light, and subtly strong
harmonies, but a feeling for beauty of line, composition, rhythm of
movement. Our admiration for the great men of 1870 must not blind us to
the fact that there are others; the road is not barred, and many of the
followers are of great strength. The pioneers having opened up the new
territory, the gift is free and all are welcome.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX
(_a_) THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF IMPRESSIONISM
The clearest explanation of the scientific theory of colouring is to be
found in the treatise written by Chevreul. First published in France in
1838, it met with great success, and was translated into English in 1854
by Charles Martel. Chevreul remains the standard authority, although he
has been followed by Helmholtz, Church, Rood, and others.
Given the necessary competence for accuracy in draughtsmanship, and
considerable practice in the manipulation of colour, the art-student may
take the field, and not before; for Impressionist painting demands the
highest artistic capability. Firstly, he will discover that
Impressionists worship light, using the trees, rocks, rivers, &c. of
landscape, as so many vehicles for the conveyance of luminous
impressions to the eye. This quality of atmosphere distinguishes
Impressionist pictures from all others; here will be found what
Brownell, Chevreul, MacColl, and Mauclair, have to say upon the subject.
Secondly, the art-student will perceive the vital necessity of correct
values within a general tone, a subject also enlarged upon by the above
writers. Thirdly, some reference is given to the modern study of shadows
and reflections, with regard to their influence and treatment.
The following lines, extracted from “The French Impressionists,” by
Camille Mauclair, sum up definitely the Impressionist Idea.
“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 envelops all things, and reveals them,
according to the hours, with infinite modifications.... Only
artificially can we distinguish between outline and colour; in
nature the distinction does not exist.... 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.... The values
are the only means that remain for expressing depth on a flat
surface. Colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. 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.... 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.... 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.
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 subordinate to a light which
appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays of the
spectrum vibrate with different speed. The third conclusion
resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are modified by
_refraction_.... The colours mixed on the palette compose a
dirty grey.... Here we touch on 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 black
and white. He will, furthermore, instead of composing mixtures
on his palette, place on 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.”
CAMILLE MAUCLAIR.
(“The French
Impressionists.”)
“Take a landscape with a cloudy sky, which means diffused light
in the old sense of the term, and observe the effect upon it of
a sudden burst of sunlight. What is the effect when considerable
portions of the scene are suddenly thrown into marked shadow, as
well as others illuminated with intense light? Is the absolute
value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised? Raised, of
course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrast
between sunlight and shadow in proper scales, the painter would
have painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun
appeared. Relatively they are darker, since their value, though
heightened, is raised infinitely less than the value of the
parts in sunlight. Absolutely their value is raised
considerably. If therefore they are painted lighter than they
were before the sun appeared, they in themselves seem true. The
part of Monet’s picture that is in shadow is measurably true,
far truer than it would have been if painted under the old
theory of correspondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to
express the relations of contrast between shadow and sunlight.
Scale has been lost. What has been gained? Simply truth of
impressionistic effect. Why? Because we know and judge and
appreciate and feel the measure of truth with which objects in
shadow are represented; we are insensibly more familiar with
them in nature than with objects directly sun-illuminated, the
value as well as the definition of which are far vaguer to us on
account of their blending and infinite heightening by a
luminosity absolutely overpowering. In a word, in sunlit
landscapes objects in shadow are what customarily and
unconsciously we see and note and know, and the illusion is
greater if the relation between them and the objects in
sunlight, whose value habitually we do not note, be neglected or
falsified. Add to this source of illusion the success of Monet
in giving a juster value to the sunlit half of his picture than
has ever been systematically attempted before his time, and his
astonishing ‘trompe d’œil’ is, I think, explained. Each part is
truer than ever before, and unless one have a specially
developed sense of ‘ensemble’ in this very special matter of
values in and affected by sunlight, one gets from Monet an
impression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got
before, that one may be pardoned for feeling, and even for
enthusiastically proclaiming, that in Monet realism finds its
apogee. Monet paints absolute values in a very wide range, plus
sunlight, as nearly as pigments can be got to represent it.”
W. C. BROWNELL.
(“Realistic Painting.”)
“Impressionism is the art that surveys the field and determines
which of the shapes and tones are of chief importance to the
interested eye, enforces these, and sacrifices the rest.
“If three objects, A, B, and C, stand at different depths before
the eye, we can at will fix A, whereupon B and C must fall out
of focus, or B, whereupon A and C must be blurred, or C,
sacrificing the clearness of A and B. All this apparatus makes
it impossible to see everything at once with equal clearness,
enables us, and forces us for the uses of real life, to frame
and limit our picture, according to the immediate interest of
the eye, whatever it may be.
“The painter instinctively uses these means to arrive at the
emphasis and neglect that his choice requires. If he is engaged
on a face he will screw his attention to a part and now relax
it, distributing the attention over the whole so as to restore
the bigger relations of aspect.
“Sir J. Reynolds describes this process as seeing the whole
‘with the dilated eye;’ the commoner precept of the studios is,
‘to look with the eyes half closed.’ In any case the result is
the minor planes are swamped in bigger, that smaller patches of
colour are swept up into broader, that markings are blurred.
“The Impressionist painter does not allot so much detail to a
face in a full-length portrait as to a head alone, nor to twenty
figures on a canvas as to one.”
D. S. MACCOLL.
(“Encyclopædia
Britannica.”)
“The discovery of these Impressionists consists in having
thoroughly understood the fact that strong light discolours
tones, and that sunlight reflected by the various objects in
nature, tends from its very strength of light to bring them all
up to one uniform degree of luminosity, which dissolves the
seven prismatic rays in one single colourless lustre, which is
the light.... Impressionism, in those works which represent it
at its best, is a kind of painting which tends towards
phenomenism, towards the visibility and the signification of
things in space, and which wishes to grasp the synthesis of
things as seen in a momentary glimpse.... One has now the right
to say, without provoking an outcry, that it has been given to
the people of the present time to witness a magnificent and
phenomenal artistic evolution by this succession of canvases
painted by Claude Monet during the past twenty years.”
GEFFROY.
“Two coloured surfaces in juxtaposition will exhibit the
modification to the eye viewing them simultaneously, the one
relative to the height of tone of their respective colours, the
other relative to the physical composition of these same
colours.... We must not overlook the fact, that whenever we mix
pigments to represent primitive colours, we are not mixing the
colours of the solar spectrum, but mixing substances which
painters and dyers employ as Red, Yellow, and Blue colours....
All the primary colours gain in brilliancy and purity by the
proximity of Grey.... Grey in association with sombre colours,
such as Blue and Violet, and with broken tints of luminous
colours, produces harmonies of analogy which have not the vigour
of those with Black; if the colours do not combine well
together, it has the advantage of separating them from each
other.... Distant bodies are rendered sensible to the eye, only
in proportion as they radiate, or reflect, or transmit the light
which acts upon the retina.”
CHEVREUL.
“The object of landscape painting is the imitation of light in
the regions of the air and on the surface of the earth and of
water.... One must seek above all else in a picture for some
manifestation of the artist’s spiritual state, for a portion of
his reverie.... In the career of an artist, one must have
conscience, self-confidence and perseverance. Thus armed the two
things in my eyes of the first importance are the severe study
of drawing and of values.”
COROT.
(_b_) SALES AND PRICES
For future comparison it will be interesting to note some results
reached at recent sales of Impressionist paintings. Pictures which, in
the early seventies, were unsaleable for five pounds, now average from
£500 to £800 apiece, with a tendency to go much higher. A sale at New
York, in December 1902, of seventeen pictures by members of the
Impressionist and Barbizon schools, produced nearly £40,000, an average
of £2300 for each canvas. The last great public sale by auction was “La
Vente Chocquet” at the Petit Galerie, Paris, July 1, 1899. A few days
previous to the sale the writer had a long conversation with Claude
Monet at Giverny. Discussing the coming event, which was already
exciting much press comment, Monet told how the late Père Chocquet, as
he was affectionately called, a “chef du bureau” in the Department of
Finance, had been a tower of strength to the early Impressionists. He
encouraged them, foretold ultimate triumph, invested every franc of his
savings in the purchase of their works, at prices ranging from £2 to
£10. Late in life M. Chocquet inherited, quite unexpectedly, a large
fortune. The Impressionists anticipated much, and the studios were
jubilant. Long cherished plans were rediscussed; the Chocquet legacy was
to be the source of a golden stream. But a great disappointment was to
come. With the increase of M. Chocquet’s riches came the decrease and
final extinction of M. Chocquet’s taste. He never bought another
picture!
Throughout the three days’ sale, the gorgeous rooms of M. Georges Petit
were crowded, although many well-known and wealthy buyers were absent
owing to the lateness of the season. Amongst the distinguished
collectors and dealers, from all parts of Europe and America, were the
Counts de Camondo, Gallimard, de Castellane, the Marquis de Charnacé,
the Barons Oberkampff and de Saint-Joachim, and Messieurs Degas,
Cheramy, de St. Léon, de la Brunière, de Léclanché, Clerq, Muhlbacher,
Ligneau, André Sinet, Antonin Proust, Escudier, Natanson, de Laivargott,
Bigot, Ferrier, Marcel, Cognet, Durey, Zacharian, Moreau-Latour,
Mittmann, Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, Allard, Montagnac, Vollard, Boussod,
Rosemberg, and Camemtron, Monet’s _La Prairie_ realised 6400 francs,
_Les Meules_ 9000 francs, _Falaise à Varengeville_ 9500 francs, and _La
Seine à Argenteuil_ was knocked down to M. d’Hauterive for 11,500
francs. Renoir’s works fetched between ten and twenty thousand francs.
Manet’s _Portrait of Claude Monet in his Studio_, which was sold after
Manet’s death for 150 francs, changed hands at 10,000 francs.
At the Vever sale in 1897, Monet’s _Le Pont d’Argenteuil_ realised
21,500 francs.
(_c_) SOME COLLECTORS OF IMPRESSIONIST PICTURES
The following list contains the names of the chief private collectors of
Impressionist pictures. Though incomplete it will be noted that almost
every country is represented:
ALEXANDRE, M. ARSÈNE
ASTOR, JOHN JACOB
BATHMONT, MADAME
BÉARN, COMTESSE DE
BERNHEIM, FILS, M.
BLANQUET, BARON
CAHEN, M. GUSTAVE
CAMONDO, COMTE ISAAC DE
CHAUVEAU, FRÉDÉRIC
COCHIN, M. DENIS
COQUELIN FRÈRES
CUREL, M. DE
DECUP, M.
DUPEAUX, M.
DUPUX, DR.
DURAND-RUEL ET FILS
DURET, M. THEODORE
EPHRUSSI, M. CHAS.
FEYDEAU, M. M.
FORWARD, M.
GACHET, DR.
GONJON, M. S.
HAVINIMANN, MADAME
HAVEMEYER, M.
HERSCH, M.
HETE, M. DE
HOHENTSCHEL
JOUBERT, M.
KAKOREFF
LEHRMANN
MADDOCKS, J.
MARCHANT, W. S.
MARKER
MARSDEN, S.
MESDAG
MONNIER, M.
MOROSOFF, IVAN
MURER, M.
PAQUIN, M.
PAWSON, T.
PELERIN, M. AUGUSTE
PETIT, M. GEORGES
PRIESTLEY, W. E. B.
PRIPPER
RONNELL, MAX
ROTHSCHILD, BARONNE GUSTAVE DE
ROTHSCHILD, BARON HENRI DE
RUEL, M.
ROUS, M.
SAMUEL, M.
SCHLESINGER, M.
SCHMITZ, M.
SCHULTE, HERR
SCHUMANN, M.
SMITH, J. W.
SOTA, SIGNOR DE LA
STRAUSS, GUIDO
STRAUSS, JACQUES
STRAUSS, JULES
TESIGMANN, M.
TSCHUDI, HERR VON
VANDERBILT
VAN DER VELDE, M.
VANIER, M.
VIAU, M. GEORGES
VLIEYERE, M. DE
WALDECK-ROUSSEAU, M.
WILLS, SIR W. H.
ZYGOMALCO, M.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARSÈNE ALEXANDRE:
Préface du catalogue de
l’exposition des œuvres de Camille Pissarro. Paris, April
1891.
Claude Monet, _L’Éclair_. Paris,
26 May 1895.
· An article with portrait.
Préface du catalogue de
l’exposition des œuvres de Renoir. Paris, May 1893.
Préface du catalogue des Tableaux
Modernes, collection de M. Jules Strauss, MM. Paul Chevallier
et Bernheim jeune. Paris.
· A magnificently
illustrated record of a collection belonging to wealthy
connoisseurs; much sought after by collectors.
Histoire populaire de la peinture,
École Française. H. Laurens, Paris.
· A concise history of
French art, with 250 illustrations, by the art critic of the
_Figaro_.
Le “Balzac” de Rodin. H. Floury,
Paris.
· A witty defence of
Rodin’s statue, together with a scathing attack upon public
taste generally.
Préface du catalogue de
l’exposition des œuvres d’Armand Guillaumin. Durand-Ruel,
Paris.
· A sympathetic essay upon
the artist’s career.
Préface du catalogue de
l’exposition des œuvres de Zandomeneghi. Paris, 1893.
A. M.:
Les artistes à l’atelier—Camille
Pissarro et A. Renoir. “L’Art dans les Deux Mondes.” Paris,
6th and 31st Jan. 1891.
“ART JOURNAL”:
Some remarks upon Impressionism;
with.
G. ALBERT AURIER:
Le Néo-Impressionisme (Camille
Pissarro). _Mercure de France_, Paris, 1895.
Le Syncholisme en peinture (Paul
Gauguin). _Mercure de France_, Paris, March 1891.
L’Impressionisme (Monet et Renoir).
_Mercure de France_, Paris, 1893.
FRANCIS BATE:
The Naturalistic School of Painting.
_The Artist_, London, 1887.
EDMOND BAZIRE:
Manet. Paris, 1884.
EMILE BERNARD:
Les hommes d’aujourd’hui—Paul Cézanne,
avec dessin de Pissarro. Vannier, Paris.
F. A. BRIDGMANN:
L’anarchie dans l’art,
Impressionisme—Symbolisme. L. H. May, Paris.
W. C. BROWNELL:
French art, Realistic painting.
_Scribner’s Magazine_, Nov. 1892.
· A lengthy illustrated article
written with knowledge, although some of the conclusions
arrived at by the author cannot be admitted.
French art. London, 1892. · The collected
articles first published in _Scribner’s_, but without the
illustrations.
GUSTAVE CAHEN:
Eugène Boudin, sa vie et son œuvre
(Preface by Arsène Alexandre). H. Floury, Paris, 1900.
· Fully illustrated, with dry point
by Paul Helleu. It contains special references to the early
days of Impressionism.
Préface du catalogue des Tableaux
Modernes. Collection de Monsieur L. B. Chevallier et Bernheim
jeune, Paris. · Numerous photogravures of Impressionist works,
particularly of those by Boudin.
M. CHEVREUL:
The principles of harmony and contrast of
colours, and their application to the arts. Tr. C. Martel.
Longmans, London, 1854.
· This book, the standard work
upon the subject, should be in the hands of every person who
desires to study Impressionism thoroughly. This is the best
English translation.
A. H. CHURCH:
The Laws of Contrast of Colour. Tr. J.
Spanton. London, 1858.
Colour, an Elementary Manual for Students.
Cassells, London, 1901.
Chemistry of Paints and Painting. London,
1890.
· These excellent books deal with all the
problems of light and colour.
G. CLÉMENCEAU:
Exposition des Cathédrales de Rouen. _La
Justice_, May 20, 1895.
· An important article by a writer of
ability.
E. DELACROIX:
Mon Journal, 1823-63 (notes par Flat et
Riot). Paris, 1893. Three volumes.
DENOINVILLE:
Sensations d’art. Girard, Paris.
· A collection of short essays dealing
with such subjects as Corot, Eugène Carrière, the Simplists,
l’Art nouveau, &c.
WYNFORD DEWHURST:
Claude Monet, Impressionist; _Pall Mall
Magazine_, London, June 1900.
A great French Landscapist. _Artist_,
London, October 1900.
· These articles are notable for their
reproductions of Monet’s works.
Impressionist Painting; its Genesis and
Development. _Studio_, London, June and September, 1903.
DURANTY:
La nouvelle peinture. Paris, 1876.
· A rare and interesting _brochure_.
THÉODORE DURET:
Histoire d’Édouard Manet. H. Floury, Paris,
1902.
· The official biography of Manet, by his
life-long friend and executor, with many illustrations, and a
complete catalogue of works.
Les Peintures Impressionistes. Paris,
1878.
· A short treatise on Impressionism,
explanatory and defensive, with biographical notes of Monet,
Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, Morisot.
L’art Japonais. Quantin, Paris.
Critique d’avant garde. Charpentier,
Paris, 1885.
Degas. _The Art Journal_, London, 1894.
· A critical illustrated article.
FÉLICIEN FAGUS:
Petite gazette d’art Cézanne. _Revue
Blanche_, Paris, December 1899.
Petite gazette d’art, Camille Pissarro.
_Revue Blanche._ Paris, April 1899.
FELIX FÉNÉLON:
Les Impressionistes en 1886. Paris, 1886.
ANDRÉ FONTAINAS:
Art Moderne, Zandomeneghi. _Mercure de
France_, April 1898.
Art Moderne, Camille Pissarro. _Mercure de
France_, July 1898, May 1899.
Art Moderne, Exposition Cézanne. _Mercure
de France_, June 1898.
Art Moderne, Renoir. _Mercure de France_,
July 1898, May 1899.
ANDRÉ FONTAINAS:
Art Moderne, Claude Monet. _Mercure de
France_, July 1898, May 1899.
PASCAL FORTHUNY:
Catalogue des Tableaux Modernes. Preface by
Roger Marx. Durand-Ruel, Paris.
· Richly illustrated.
PASCAL FORTHUNY:
Catalogue de Tableaux. Préface by H.
Fourquier. Bernheim et Chevallier, Paris.
· A handsome volume illustrated by
many engravings and photographs.
W. H. FULLER:
Claude Monet and his Paintings.
_Evening Sun_, New York, January 26, 1899.
GUSTAVE GEFFROY:
Sisley, Préface pour la Vente. May 1, 1899.
Notice de l’Exposition d’Œuvres de Camille
Pissarro. Paris, February 1890.
La Vie artistique. E. Dentu, Paris,
1892-1900.
· These volumes of art criticism cover
the whole field of Impressionism, and include a lengthy
history of the movement. To the student and historian of
modern French art they are invaluable.
and Arsène Alexandre. Corot and Millet,
Winter Number of the _Studio_, London, 1902.
(Préface). Catalogue de Tableaux,
collection de M. E. Blot. Paris, Bernheim jeune.
· Contains essays upon Carrière,
Cézanne, Fantin-Latour, Guillaumin, Jongkind, Monet, Morisot,
Pissarro, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas.
MAURICE GUILLEMOT:
Claude Monet. _Revue Illustrée_, Paris,
March 1898.
J. K. HUYSMANS:
Certains. Paris, 1896. L’Art Moderne.
Paris, 1883.
FRANZ JOURDAIN:
Renoir et Renouard. _Les Décorés_, 1895.
Claude Monet. _Les Décorés_, 1895.
Hommes du Jour, Renoir. _L’Éclair_, Paris,
May 1899.
Hommes du Jour, Pissarro. _L’Éclair_,
Paris, June 1898.
MISS R. G. KINGSLEY:
A History of French Art. Longmans, London,
1899.
GEORGES LECOMTE:
L’Art Impressionniste. Paris, 1892.
· Contains 36 etchings of
Impressionist pictures in the collection of M. Durand Ruel.
GEORGES LECOMTE:
Camille Pissarro, Préface pour
l’Exposition. Paris, February 1892.
Pissarro, Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui, No.
366. Paris.
Pissarro. “Revue populaire des
Beaux-Arts.” Paris, June 1898.
Alfred Sisley. “Revue populaire des
Beaux-Arts.” February 1899.
Alfred Sisley. “L’Art dans les Deux
Mondes.” Paris, February 1891.
D. S. MACCOLL:
Nineteenth Century Art. Maclehose, Glasgow,
1903.
_The Albemarle Review_, London, Sept.
1892.
_Fortnightly Review_, London, June 1894.
_The Artist_, London, March and July 1896.
Impressionism. “Encyclopædia Britannica”
Supplement, 1903.
Mr. Whistler’s Paintings in Oil. _Art
Journal_, London, March 1893.
CAMILLE MAUCLAIR:
The French Impressionists. Duckworth,
London, 1903.
The Néo-Impressionists. _Artist_, London,
May 1902.
The Great French Painters. Duckworth,
London, 1903.
CHARLES MAURICE:
Rodin. Floury, Paris, 1900.
ANDRÉ MELLERIO:
L’Art Moderne, Exposition de Paul Cézanne.
La _Revue Artistique_, February 1896.
Mary Cassatt, Préface de l’Exposition de
1897.
L’Exposition de 1900, L’Impressionisme. H.
Floury, Paris, 1900.
· Contains short essays upon pictures
exhibited at the Exhibition, with particular reference to
Impressionist works, together with a useful bibliography.
Le Mouvement Idéaliste en Peinture. H.
Floury, Paris.
· A biographical sketch of the artists
who associated themselves with this movement, 1885-95; Puvis
de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne,
Vincent van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, &c.
F. H. MEISSNER:
A German Revolutionary—Max Liebermann. _Art
Journal_, London, August 1893.
ANDRÉ MICHEL:
Notes sur l’Art Moderne. Colin, Paris,
1896.
· Essays on Corot, Millet, Delacroix,
Monet, Puvis de Chavannes.
O. MIRBEAU:
Claude Monet. “L’Art dans les Deux Mondes.”
Paris, March 1891.
Camille Pissarro. “L’Art dans les Deux
Mondes.” Paris, January 1891. _Le Figaro_, Paris, February 1,
1892.
O. MIRBEAU:
Together with Bouyer, Tailhade, Maus
Mellerio, Dan, Mauclair, Geffroy, Marx, Mourey. J. F.
Raffaëlli. Paris.
· A collection of illustrated
appreciations of the artists.
MATTHIAS MORHARDT:
Eugène Carrière. _Magazine of Art_, London,
August 1898.
GEORGE MOORE:
Modern Painting. Scott, London, 1898.
· Impressions and Opinions. Nutt, London,
1890. These two books contain interesting essays upon
Whistler, Manet, Corot, &c.
RICHARD MUTHER:
The History of Modern Painting (3 volumes).
Henry, London, 1896.
THADÉE NATANSON:
Claude Monet et Paul Cézanne. _La Revue
Blanche_, Paris 1900.
De M. Renoir et de la Beauté. _La Revue
Blanche_, Paris, 1900.
MAX OSBORN:
Claude Monet. _Das Magazin für Literatur_, Dec.
1896.
MILES L. ROGER:
Les Artistes Célèbres. Corot, Paris.
Catalogue de Tableaux, Collection du
Docteur D. Chevallier et Petit, Paris.
· Many illustrations, chiefly from
works by Boudin.
Catalogue de Tableaux, Succession of Mme.
Veuve Chocquet. Petit et Mannheim, Paris.
Sisley, Préface pour l’Exposition 1897.
Catalogue de Tableaux, Collection of Louis Schœngrun.
Chevallier et Petit, Paris.
· Many fine illustrations from the
works of Lépine, Lebourg, Thaulow, Bonvin, Lhermitte, &c.
OGDEN ROOD:
Colour; International Scientific Series,
1879-81.
JOHN RUSKIN:
Modern Painters, Vol. II. Allen.
GABRIEL SÉAILLES:
L’Impressionisme (Almanach du Bibliophile
pour l’Année 1898). Pelletan, Paris.
PAUL SIGNAC:
D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionisme.
Edition de _La Revue Blanche_, Paris, 1899.
· Explains how the Impressionist idea
and technical method is almost entirely derived from Turner
and Constable.
THIEBALT SISSON:
Sur l’Impressionisme. _Le Temps_, Paris,
April 1899.
R. A. M. STEVENSON:
The Art of Velazquez. Bell, London, 1895.
HUGO VON TSCHUDI:
Manet. Cassirer, Berlin 1902.
· A short illustrated essay upon Manet’s
art by the Director of the National Gallery of Berlin.
C. WAERN:
Notes on French Impressionism. _Atlantic
Monthly_, April 1892.
FREDERICK WEDMORE:
The Impressionists. _Fortnightly Review_,
London, January 1883.
T. DE WYZEVA:
Renoir. “L’Art dans les Deux Mondes.”
Paris, December 1890.
Y. R. B.:
Miss Cassatt. “L’Art dans les Deux Mondes.”
November 1890.
ÉMILE ZOLA:
Mes Haines. Paris.
· Essays on Manet, Cézanne, the Salons
and the Impressionists.
[Illustration]
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INDEX
_A Argenteuil_ (Monet), 40, 111
Abbey, E. A., 102
_Absinthe drinker_, the (Manet), 20
“Académie Suisse,” 54
_After church_ (Le Sidaner), 83
Alexandre, Arsène, 33, 63
_Alone with the tide_ (Whistler), 90
Aman-Jean, 102
Angrand, 50, 56
Anguin, 86
_Antibes_ (Monet), 40
Antwerp, 79, 80
_Argenteuil_, _l’_ (Manet), 27
_Arrangement in grey and black_ (Whistler), 90
_Artiste_, _l’_ (Manet), 27
Astruc, 34
_Asylum for old men, an_ (Liebermann), 98
Attendu, 34
_At the piano_ (Whistler), 90
_Autel des orphelines, l’_ (Le Sidaner), 83
_Bain, le_ (Manet), 22
_Bal au Moulin de la Galette_ (Renoir), 52
_Balcony, the_ (Manet), 25
_Balcony, the_ (Whistler), 90
Balzac, 45
Barbey d’Aurevilly, 23
Barbizon, School of, 2, 6, 9, 45, 50, 98, 110
Barillot, 102
Barry, 3
Barye, 45
Bastien-Lepage, 26, 41, 93, 98
Batignolles, School of, 7, 24
_Bataille de Solférino_ (Meissonier), 21
_Battle of the “Kearsage” and “Alabama”_ (Manet), 26
Baudelaire, 21
Baudit, 86
Bazille, 24, 26
Beauvais, 83
Béliard, 34, 35
Belle Isle (Monet), 40
Belot, 27
_Bénédiction de la mer_ (Le Sidaner), 83
Bérard, 47
Bernard, Emile, 16, 55
Bernstein, 27
Besnard, Albert Paul, 84-85, 91, 102, 105
_Entre deux Rayons_, 85
_Femme qui se chauffe_, 85
_La Morte_, 85
_Ponies worried by flies_, 84
_Porte d’Alger au Crépuscule_, 85
_Portrait of the artist_, 85
Billotte, 102
Binet, Victor, 92, 102
_Bon Bock, le_ (Manet), 27, 28
Bonington, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 29
_Boulogne Fishmarket_, 5
_View of Havre_, 3
_View of Lillebonne_, 3
Bonnat, 52, 58, 73
Bonvin, 31
_Bordighera_ (Monet), 40
Boucher, 2, 52
Boudin, Eugène, 7, 9-15, 31, 34, 38, 49, 50
_Corvette Russe au Havre_, 14
_Rade de Villefranche_, 14
Bouguereau, 21
Boulanger, 21
_Boulogne Fishmarket_ (Bonington), 5
Bourgeois, Léon, 14
Boussod Vallodon, 40
_Boy with a sword_ (Manet), 21, 23
Bracquemond, Marie, 35, 76
Bracquemond, 20, 21, 34, 89, 102
Brandon, 34
_Breakfast on the grass_ (Manet), 22
_Brother and sister_ (Liebermann), 98
Brown, Arnesby, 102
Brownell, W. C., 107
Bruant, Aristide, 71
Bruges, 83
Bureau, 34, 35
_Burgomeister Petersen_ (Liebermann), 99
Burne-Jones, 5
Bussy, Simon, 55
Byron, 2
Cabanel, 59, 82
Café Guerbois, 6, 7, 15, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 39
Café de la Nouvelle Athénée, 32
Cahen, Gustave, 15, 33
Caillebotte, 35, 49
Cals, 12, 21, 34, 35, 49
_Carlyle_ (Whistler), 91
Carolus-Duran, 28, 52, 58
Carpeaux, 45
Carrière, Eugène, 57-60, 83, 102
_Christ at the Tomb_, 58, 60
_Maternité_, 58
_Portraits_, 58
_Théâtre de Belleville_, 58
Cassatt, Mary, 7, 35, 49, 66, 70, 76, 102
_Cathédrales, les_ (Monet), 40, 42, 44, 84
Cazin, 21, 28, 102
“Cercle des Quinze,” 98
Cézanne, 7, 15, 16, 24, 34, 35, 54, 55
_Champs des Tulipes_ (Monet), 40
Chaplin, 76, 103
Chardin, 2, 61
_Charge of Cuirassiers_ (Meissonier), 26
Charles X., 3, 24
_Chasse au renard_ (Courbet), 21
_Châteaux en Espagne_ (Harrison), 93
Chéret, 102
Chevallier, Paul, 43
Chevreul, 107, 110
Chocquet, 47, 110
_Christ at the Tomb_ (Carrière), 58, 60
_Christ before Pilate_ (Liebermann), 97
_Christ reviled by the Soldiers_ (Manet), 23
Church, 107
Claude, 61
Claus, Emile, 79-81, 105
_Flemish Farm_, 81
_Old Gardener_, 81
Clausen, George, 102
Clouet, 61
Colin, Gustave, 34
Collectors of Impressionist Paintings, 111, 112
_Communion in extremis_ (Le Sidaner), 83
Comondo, Count, 47
Constable, John, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 29, 31, 32, 61, 80, 102, 103
_Hay Wain_, 3
_Opening of Waterloo Bridge_, 5
Cordey, 35
Cormont, 73
Corot, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 29, 49, 53, 54, 59, 61, 80, 97,
101, 110
Correggio, 2
_Corvette Russe_ (Boudin), 14
_Côte St. Catherine à Rouen_ (Pissarro), 51
Cottet, 55, 102
_Cotton-Broker’s Office_ (Degas), 67
Courbet, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, 23, 26, 49, 50, 53, 54, 97
_Courtyard of the orphanage_ (Liebermann), 99
Couture, 1, 11, 18, 19, 20, 22
_Romans of the Decadence_, 18
Cross, H. E., 56
Dagnan-Bouveret, 102
Daillon, 102
Dameron, 102
_Dante’s Bark_ (Delacroix), 3
Daubigny, 4, 12, 31, 41, 54, 97, 98
Daudet, 26, 58
Daumier, 20
David, 2
Dearp, 47
De Bellis, 27
Debras, 34
Degas, 7, 20, 24, 34, 35, 49, 52, 67-71, 73, 76, 89, 102
_Family Portraits_, 67
_Interior of a Cotton-Broker’s Office_, 67
_Semiramis_, 67
_Spartan Youths Wrestling_, 67
_Steeplechase_, 67
_War in the Middle Ages_, 67
_Déjeuner sur l’herbe_ (Manet), 22
Delacroix, 3, 16, 19, 20, 29, 32, 45, 61, 82, 101
_Massacre of Scio_, 32
_Dante’s Bark_, 3
Delaroche, 1, 19
Denis, Maurice, 50, 56
_Départ de Tobie_ (Le Sidaner), 83
Depeam, 47
_Déroute, la_ (Boulanger), 21
Desboutins, 27, 35
D’Espagnat, 32, 102, 105
Diaz, 12
Didier-Pouget, 85-87, 102
_Die Lange Lizen_ (Whistler), 90
Doré, Gustave, 55
Dowdeswell Gallery, 40
Duhem, H., 82
Dumas père, 1, 13
Dupré, 80
Durand-Ruel, 27, 34, 35, 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 54, 63
Duranty, 24, 25
Duret, T., 26, 29, 32, 33, 70, 89
Dutch School, 80
East, Alfred, 102
“Echo de Paris,” 63
Egg, R.A., Augustus, 4
English School of Painting, 2, 6
English School of Water-Colours, 3
_Entre deux Rayons_ (Besnard), 85
Ephrussi, 27
_Etchings_ (Whistler), 89, 90
“L’Événement,” 15, 24
Eugénie, Empress, 17
_Execution of Emperor Maximilian_ (Manet), 25.
Exhibitions (_see also_ Salons)
Exhibitions Martinet, 21, 24
Exhibitions Great, 1851, 4
Exhibitions Great Paris, 1867, 23
Exhibitions Universal Paris 1878, 27, 28, 76
Exhibitions Universal Paris 1889 and 1900, 61
Exhibitions Impressionist, 34, 35, 39, 49, 54, 68
_Falaise_ (Monet), 111
Fantin-Latour, 20, 21, 24, 89, 102
Faure, 27, 28, 47
_Femme à la Robe Verte_ (Monet), 34
_Femme qui se chauffe_ (Besnard), 85
Fielding, Copley, 3
_Fifre de la Garde_ (Manet), 22, 23, 24
“Figaro, Le,” 24, 33, 44
Flaubert, 64
_Flemish Farm_ (Claus), 81
“Fleurs de Mal,” 21
Footet, F., 102
Forain, 35, 49, 70, 73, 102
Fra Angelico, 67, 83
Fragonard, 2, 52, 75
France, Anatole, 58
French painting, 2, 4, 9
Fuseli, 3
Gagliardini, 103
Gainsborough, 3, 31, 70, 102, 103
Gallimard, 47
Gambetta, 28
Gauguin, 16, 35, 49, 55, 105
Gautier, 1, 20, 23
Geffroy, Gustave, 33, 35, 58, 65, 109
Geffroy, 102
Gérard (artist), 2
Gérard (collector), 27
Géricault, 1, 3
Gérôme, 65, 93
Ghent, 79
Giorgione, 22
Giotto, 82
Girodet, 2
Girtin, 29
Giverny, 46, 51
_Glaçons sur la Seine_ (Monet), 40
Glasgow School of Painting, 90, 102
Gleyre, 7, 38, 89
_Golden Screen_ (Whistler), 90
Gonzalès, 7, 76-77
Goya, 20, 23
“Grand Journal, Le,” 63
_Green Bridges_ (Monet), 47
Greuze, 52
Grévy, President, 17, 28
Gros, 2, 19
Grosvenor Gallery, 69
Guérard, 76
Guillaumet, 21
Guillaumin, 32, 34, 35, 49, 54-55, 103
_Guitarero_ (Manet), 20
Harding, 3
Hals, 19, 27
Hanover Gallery, 40
Harpignies, 12, 20, 21, 103
Harrison, Alexander, 82, 91-94, 105
_In Arcady_, 92
_The Wave_, 92
_Châteaux en Espagne_, 93
Hassam, Childe, 94
_Seventh Avenue_, 94
_Hauptmann_ (Liebermann), 99
Havemeyer, H. O., 47
_Havre_ (Bonington), 3
_Haystacks_ (Monet), 32, 42
_Hay Wain_ (Constable), 3
Hecht, 27
Helmholtz, 107
Henley, W. E., 5
Henner, 24, 28, 103
Hochédé, 99
Hogarth, 2, 3
Holbein, 2, 67
Hoogh, 82
Hoppner, 52
Hugo, 1
Ibels, 56
“Idealists,” 55
_In Arcady_ (Harrison), 92
Ingres, 2, 69, 70
International Society of Painters, &c. 25, 40, 102
“Intimists,” 55
Isabey, 9, 12, 13
Japanese Art, 2, 6, 41, 70, 76, 91
_Jeanne_ (Manet), 28
_Jeune fille Hollandaise_ (Le Sidaner), 83
Jongkind, 7, 9-13, 20, 21, 31
Jordaens, 82
Karr, Alphonse, 11
Kauffmann, 76
Keyser, 79
Kneller, 2
_Labourers in the turnip field_ (Liebermann), 98
_Lady Archibald Campbell_ (Whistler), 91
_Lady with fan_ (Manet), 27
Lalanne, 28
_La mère Gérard_ (Whistler), 90
Lamy, 35
“Lantier, Claude,” 15
_Last of Old Westminster_ (Whistler), 90
_La table_ (Le Sidaner) 83
La Thangue, 102
Latouche, 34
Laurens, J. P., 22
Lavery, 102
Lawrence, 31, 32
Lebrun, 76
Lebourg, 35
Leenhoff, Mdlle., 21
Legros, 20, 22, 24, 35
Lely, 2
Leighton, 4
Lenbach, 98
Lepic, 34, 35
Lépine, 12, 34
Le Roux, 62
Le Sidaner, 55, 81-83, 103, 105
_After church_, 83
_Benediction de la mer_, 83
_Communion in extremis_, 83
_Départ de Tobie_, 83
_Jeune fille Hollandaise_, 83
_L’autel des orphelines_, 83
_La promenade des orphelines_, 83
_La table_, 83
_Les promis_, 83
_Les vieilles_, 83
Levert, 34, 35
Lhermitte, 103
Liebermann, 95-100, 105
_An asylum for old men_, 98
_Brother and sister_, 98
_Burgomeister Petersen_, 99
_Christ before Pilate_, 97
_Courtyard of the orphanage, Amsterdam_, 99
_Gerhart Hauptmann_, 99
_Labourers in the turnip field_, 98
_Netmenders_, 99
_Professor Virchow_, 99
_Ropeyard_, 99
_Women plucking geese_, 97, 99
_Women preserving vegetables_, 97
_Lillebonne_ (Bonington), 3
Lindsay, Sir Coutts, 90
_Linge_, _le_ (Manet), 27
_Little white girl_ (Whistler), 90
_Loge_, _la_ (Renoir), 52
_Lola de Valence_ (Manet), 21
_Los Borrachos_ (Velasquez), 21
Louis-Philippe, 19, 24
“Luminarists,” 25, 65
MacColl, 107, 109
Maclise, 4
Maddocks, John, 80
Maire, Victor, 61
Mallarmé, 45
Manet, Edouard, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 16, 17-29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38,
39, 45, 50, 61, 68, 75, 76, 82, 89, 98
_Absinthe drinker_, 20
_Argenteuil_, 27
_L’Artiste_, 27
_Le Bain_, 22
_Le Balcon_, 25
_Battle of “Kearsage” and “Alabama,”_ 26
_Le Bon Bock_, 27, 28
_Boy with a sword_, 21, 23
_Christ reviled by the soldiers_, 23
_Déjeuner sur l’herbe_, 22
_Execution of the Emperor Maximilian_, 25
_Le fifre de la Garde_, 22, 23, 24
_Guitarero_, 20
_Jeanne_, 28
_Lady with fan_, 27
_Le Linge_, 27
_Lola de Valence_, 21
_Music at the Tuileries_, 20, 21
_Nana_, 28
_Old Musician_, 21
_Olympia_, 22, 23
_Opera Ball_, 27
_Pertuiset_, 82
_Polichinelle_, 27
_Portraits_, 111
_The Railway_, 27
_Rochefort_, 82
_Spanish Ballet_, 21
_Street Singer_, 20
_Tragic Actor_, 23, 28
_Un Bar des Folies-Bergères_, 28, 82
Manet, Eugène, 25, 75
Mantz, Paul, 21
Marais, 103
Martel, Charles, 107
Martinet, 21, 24
Marx, Roger, 33
_Massacre of Scio_ (Delacroix), 32
_Maternité_ (Carrière), 58
_Matins sur la Seine_ (Monet), 40, 43
Mauclair, C., 6, 53, 107
Maufra, Maxime, 32, 61-64, 103, 105
Maureau, 35
Maurier, G. du, 89
May, 27
Meissonier, 21, 26, 31
Melbye, 49
Mellino, André, 55
Ménard, 103
Méryon, 18
“Mes Haines,” 32
Metropolitan Museum, New York, 21
_Meules, les_ (Monet), 40, 42, 111
Meunier, 103
Meyer, 34
Michelangelo, 2
Millet, J. B., 35
Millet, J. F., 11, 12, 45, 50, 80, 83, 98
Mirbeau, Octave, 63
“Mirliton, Le,” 71
_Miss Alexander_ (Whistler), 91
Molins, de, 34
Monet, Claude, 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 20, 24, 25, 26, 31, 32,
33, 34, 35, 37, 49, 50, 54, 57, 60, 61, 64, 68, 80, 84, 98, 101,
108, 109, 110, 111
_A Argenteuil_, 40, 111
_Antibes_, 40
_Belle Isle_, 40
_Bordighera_, 40
_Les Cathédrales_, 40, 44, 84
_Champs des Tulipes_, 40
_Falaise à Varenqeville_, 111
_Femme à la Robe Verte_, 34
_Glaçons sur la Seine_, 39, 40
_Green Bridges_, 47
_The Haystacks_, 32
_Matins sur la Seine_, 40, 43
_Les Meules_, 40, 42, 111
_Peupliers au bord de l’Epté_, 40, 42, 46
_Pont d’Argenteuil_, 111
_La Prairie_, 111
_Water Lilies_, 47
Montenard, 103
Moore, George, 68, 69, 83
Moret, 53
Morisot, Berthe, 7, 25, 34, 35, 49, 75, 76
Morny, de, 13
_Morte, La_ (Besnard), 85
Mourey, G., 63, 81, 82
Mulot-Durivage, 34
Mulready, 4
Munich, 98
Munkacsy, 97, 99
_Music at the Tuileries_ (Manet), 20, 21
Muther, 97
Nadar, 34, 39
_Nana_ (Manet), 28
Napoleon III., 19, 22
National Gallery, London, 3, 41
National Salon, Paris, 99
_Netmenders_ (Liebermann), 99
New English Art Club, 40
New Gallery, 102
Neuville, de, 28
Nittis, de, 25, 34
_Nocturne_ (Whistler), 91
Northcote, 3
Norwich School of Painting, 3, 4, 50
“Nubians,” 62, 104
“L’Œuvre,” 15
_Old Battersea Bridge_ (Whistler), 90
Old Crome, 31
_Old Gardener_ (Claus), 81
_Old Musician_ (Manet), 21
Oleron, 26
_Olympia_ (Manet), 22, 23
_On the Terrace_ (Renoir), 52
_Opening of Waterloo Bridge_ (Constable), 5
_Opera Ball_ (Manet), 27
Ottin, Auguste, 34
Ottin, Léon, 34, 35
Palmer, Potter, 47
Pape, A. A., 47
Paterson, C. Lambert, 47
Pauvels, 97
Pellerin, 47
Peppercorn, 102
_Pertuiset_ (Manet), 82
Petit, Georges, 39, 43, 98, 111
_Peupliers au bord de l’Epté_ (Monet), 40, 42, 46
Philadelphia Academy, 76
Piette, 35
Pissarro, Camille, 4, 7, 10, 22, 24, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 41, 49-51, 54,
61, 73, 80, 103
_La Côte St. Catherine à Rouen_, 51
Pissarro, Lucien, 35
Poe, E. A., 59
Poiloup, Abbé, 18
Pointelin, 57, 60-61, 83, 103
“Pointillism,” 7, 50, 55, 56
_Polichinelle_ (Manet), 27
_Ponies worried by flies_ (Besnard), 85
Poole, 4
_Porte d’Alger au Crépuscule_ (Besnard), 85
_Portrait of the artist_ (Besnard), 85
Pouget, 2
Poussin, 2, 55, 61, 70, 103
Poynter, 89
_Prairie, la_ (Monet), 111
“Pre-Raphaelites,” 4
Priestman, B., 102
“Primitives,” 16
Princeteau, M., 73
_Promenade des Orphelines_ (Le Sidaner), 83
_Promis, les_ (Le Sidaner), 83
Proust, Antonin, 18, 24, 28, 29
Prout, Samuel, 3
Puvis de Chavannes, 14, 45
_Rade de Villefranche_ (Boudin), 14
Raffaëlli, J. F., 35, 65-67, 76, 103
Raffaëlli, J. M., 35
_Railway, the_ (Manet), 27
Raphael, 2
“Realists,” 65, 73
Redon, Odilon, 35
Regnault, 26
Rembrandt, 19, 72
Renoir, 7, 24, 34, 35, 49, 51-53, 55, 73, 103, 111
_Bal au Moulin de la Galette_, 52
_La loge_, 52
_On the Terrace_, 52
Reynolds, 3, 31, 52, 103, 109
Ribot, 97, 103
Rigolet, 103
Robert, 34
Robson, 3
Rodin, 23, 45, 58, 103
_Rochefort_ (Manet), 82
Roll, 28, 92
Rollinat, 46
_Romans of the Decadence_ (Couture), 18
Romney, 103
Rood, 107
_Ropeyard_ (Liebermann) 99
“Rose + Croix?” 55
Rossetti, 32, 90
Rouart, 34, 35, 49
Rousseau, 4, 80
Royal Academy, 5, 32, 90, 102
Royal Society of British Artists, 40, 91
Roybet, 103
Rubens, 16
Rude, 45
Ruskin, 26, 90
Sale Prices, 33, 35, 47, 51, 110, 111
Salon, 3, 9, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 49, 86, 98
Salon des Refusés, 22, 26, 27, 90
_Sarasate_ (Whistler), 91
Sargent, J. S., 58, 102
Sar Peladan, 55
_Scarf_, _the_ (Whistler), 90
Scheffont, 9
Schumann, 60
Scott, 2
“Secession,” 99, 104
_Semiramis_ (Degas), 67
Seurat, 35, 50, 56
Signac, 35, 49, 50, 56
Sisley, 4, 7, 24, 32, 34, 35, 49, 50, 53-54, 80, 84
Société des Artistes Indépendants, 56
Somm, 35
_Spanish Ballet_ (Manet), 21
_Spartan youths wrestling_ (Degas), 67
Spielman, M. H., 40
_Steeplechase_ (Degas), 67
Steffeck, 97
Stevens, Alfred, 24, 98
Stevenson, Macaulay, 102
Stott, Edward, 102
_Street Singer_ (Manet), 20
“Studio,” 81, 82
“Symbolists,” 16
Tarbes, 87
Tavernier, 53
“Temps, Le,” 87
Thaulow, 82
_Théâtre de Belleville_ (Carrière), 58
Thumann, 97
Tillot, 35, 49
Tintoretto, 19, 20, 83,
Titian, 19, 20, 23, 83
Toulouse-Lautrec, 71-72
_Tragic Actor_ (Manet), 23, 28
Troyon, 11, 12, 97, 98
Turner, 3, 4, 5, 7, 26, 29, 31, 32, 41, 50, 57, 61, 80, 102, 103
_Un Bar aux Folies-Bergères_ (Manet), 28
Vail, Eugène, 82
Vallon, 22
_Valparaiso_ (Whistler), 91
Vandyck, 2
Van Gogh, 16, 55
Van Rysselberghe, 50, 56
Varley, John, 3
Velazquez, 20, 21, 23
Verlaine, 58
Verlat, Charles, 79
Vermeer, 83
Veronese, 16, 83
Vidal, 35
“Vie Artistique,” 33, 35
_Vieilles, les_ (Le Sidaner), 83
“Vie Moderne,” 35, 39
Vignaux, 24, 25
Vignon, 35
Villemessant, 15, 24
_Virchow_ (Liebermann), 99
Virgil, 50
Vuillard, 32
_Wapping_ (Whistler), 90
_War in the Middle Ages_ (Degas), 67
_Water Lilies_ (Monet), 47
_Waterloo Bridge_ (Constable), 5
Watteau, 2
Watts, G. F., 32, 50
_Wave, the_ (Harrison), 92
Weimar, 97
West, Benjamin, 3
Whistler, J. A. McNeill, 7, 20, 22, 24, 40, 41, 57, 71, 83, 89, 92
_Alone with the tide_, 90
_Arrangement in grey and black_, 90
_At the piano_, 90
_Balcony, the_, 90
_Carlyle_, 91
_Die Lange Lizen_, 90
_Etchings_, 89, 90
_Golden Screen_, 90
_Lady Archibald Campbell_, 91
_La mère Gérard_, 90
_Last of Old Westminster_, 90
_Little white girl_, 90
_Miss Alexander_, 91
_Nocturne_, 91
_Old Battersea Bridge_, 90
_Sarasate_, 91
_Scarf, the_, 90
_Valparaiso_, 91
_Wapping_, 90
Wilkie, 32
Wilson, Richard, 3
_Women plucking geese_ (Liebermann), 97, 99
_Women preserving vegetables_ (Liebermann), 97
Zandomeneghi, 35, 49
Ziem, 103
Zola, 15, 24, 25, 28, 32, 55
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
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