The French Impressionists (1860 1900) written by Camille Mauclair

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THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS (1860-1900)

by

CAMILLE MAUCLAIR

Author of _L'art en Silence_, _Les Meres Sociales_, etc.

Translated from the French text of Camille Mauclair, by P. G. Konody

London: Duckworth & Co.
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh

1903

[Illustration: RENOIR

AT THE PIANO]

To

AUGUSTE BREAL

TO THE ARTIST AND TO THE FRIEND

AS A MARK OF GRATEFUL AFFECTION

C.M.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

It should be stated here that, with the exception of one reproduction
after the Neo-Impressionist Van Rysselberghe, the other forty-nine
engravings illustrating this volume I owe to the courtesy of M.
Durand-Ruel, from the first the friend of the Impressionist painters,
and later the most important collector of their works, a friend who has
been good enough to place at our disposal the photographs from which our
illustrations have been reproduced. Chosen from a considerable
collection which has been formed for thirty years past, these
photographs, none of which are for sale, form a veritable and unique
museum of documents on Impressionist art, which is made even more
valuable through the dispersal of the principal masterpieces of this art
among the private collections of Europe and America. We render our
thanks to M. Durand-Ruel no less in the name of the public interested in
art, than in our own.

CONTENTS

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I. THE PRECURSORS OF IMPRESSIONISM--THE
BEGINNING OF THIS MOVEMENT, THE
ORIGIN OF ITS NAME

II. THE THEORY OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS--THE
DIVISION OF TONES, COMPLEMENTARY COLOURS,
THE STUDY OF ATMOSPHERE--THE IDEAS OF THE
IMPRESSIONISTS ON SUBJECT-PICTURES, ON
THE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER, ON MODERNITY,
AND ON STYLE

III. EDOUARD MANET: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE

IV. EDGAR DEGAS: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE

V. CLAUDE MONET: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE

VI. AUGUSTE RENOIR: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE

VII. PISSARRO, SISLEY, CAILLEBOTTE,
CEZANNE, BERTHE MORISOT, MARY CASSATT;
THE SECONDARY ARTISTS OF
IMPRESSIONISM--JONGKIND, BOUDIN

VIII. THE MODERN ILLUSTRATORS CONNECTED WITH
IMPRESSIONISM: RAFFAELLI, TOULOUSE-LAUTREC,
FORAIN, CHERET, ETC.

IX. NEO-IMPRESSIONISM: GAUGUIN, DENIS,
THEO VAN RYSSELBERGHE--THE THEORY OF
POINTILLISM--SEURAT, SIGNAC AND THE
THEORIES OF SCIENTIFIC CHROMATISM--FAULTS
AND QUALITIES OF THE
IMPRESSIONIST MOVEMENT, WHAT WE OWE
TO IT, ITS PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THE
FRENCH SCHOOL--SOME WORDS ON ITS
INFLUENCE ABROAD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

RENOIR. At the Piano (Frontispiece)

MANET. Rest

MANET. In the Square

MANET. Young Man in Costume of Majo

MANET. The Reader

DEGAS. The Dancer at the Photographer's

DEGAS. Carriages at the Races

DEGAS. The Greek Dance--Pastel

DEGAS. Waiting

CLAUDE MONET. The Pines

CLAUDE MONET. Church at Vernon

RENOIR. Portrait of Madame Maitre

MANET. The Dead Toreador

MANET. Olympia

MANET. The Woman with the Parrot

MANET. The Bar at the Folies Bergere

MANET. Dejeuner

MANET. Portrait of Madame M. L.

MANET. The Hothouse

DEGAS. The Beggar Woman

DEGAS. The Lesson in the Foyer

DEGAS. The Dancing Lesson--Pastel

DEGAS. The Dancers

DEGAS. Horses in the Meadows

CLAUDE MONET. An Interior after Dinner

CLAUDE MONET. The Harbour, Honfleur

CLAUDE MONET. The Church at Varengeville

CLAUDE MONET. Poplars on the Epte in Autumn

CLAUDE MONET. The Bridge at Argenteuil

RENOIR. Dejeuner

RENOIR. In the Box

RENOIR. Young Girl Promenading

RENOIR. Woman's Bust

RENOIR. Young Woman in Empire Costume

RENOIR. On the Terrace

PISSARRO. Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen

PISSARRO. Boulevard Montmartre

PISSARRO. The Boildieaux Bridge at Rouen

PISSARRO. The Avenue de l'Opera

SISLEY. Snow Effect

SISLEY. Bougival, at the Water's Edge

SISLEY. Bridge at Moret

CEZANNE. Dessert

BERTHE MORISOT. Melancholy

BERTHE MORISOT. Young Woman Seated

MARY CASSATT. Getting up Baby

MARY CASSATT. Women and Child

JONGKIND. In Holland

JONGKIND. View of the Hague

THEO VAN RYSSELBERGHE. Portraits of Madame van Rysselberghe and her
Daughter

NOTE TO LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The illustrations contained in this volume have been taken from
different epochs of the Impressionist movement. They will give but a
feeble idea of the extreme abundance of its production.

Banished from the salons, exhibited in private galleries and sold direct
to art lovers, the Impressionist works have been but little seen. The
series left by Caillebotte to the Luxembourg Gallery is very badly shown
and is composed of interesting works which, however, date back to the
early period, and are very inferior to the beautiful productions which
followed later. Renoir is best represented. The private galleries in
Paris, where the best Impressionist works are to be found, are those of
MM. Durand-Ruel, Rouart, de Bellis, de Camondo, and Manzi, to which must
be added the one sold by MM. Theodore Duret and Faure, and the one of
Mme. Ernest Rouart, daughter of Mme. Morisot, the sister-in-law of
Manet. The public galleries of M. Durand-Ruel's show-rooms are the place
where it is easiest to find numerous Impressionist pictures.

In spite of the firm opposition of the official juries, a place of
honour was reserved at the Exposition of 1889 for Manet, and at that of
1900 a fine collection of Impressionists occupied two rooms and caused a
considerable stir.

Amongst the critics who have most faithfully assisted this group of
artists, I must mention, besides the early friends previously referred
to, Castagnary, Burty, Edouard de Goncourt, Roger Marx, Geffroy, Arsene
Alexandre, Octave Mirbeau, L. de Fourcaud, Clemenceau, Mallarme,
Huysmans, Jules Laforgue, and nearly all the critics of the Symbolist
reviews. A book on "Impressionist Art" by M. Georges Lecomte has been
published by the firm of Durand-Ruel as an _edition-de-luxe_. But the
bibliography of this art consists as yet almost exclusively of articles
in journals and reviews and of some isolated biographical pamphlets.
Manet is, amongst many, the one who has excited most criticism of all
kinds; the articles, caricatures and pamphlets relating to his work
would form a considerable collection. It should be added that, with the
exception of Manet two years before his death, and Renoir last year at
the age of sixty-eight, no Impressionist has been decorated by the
French government. In England such a distinction has even less
importance in itself than elsewhere. But if I insist upon it, it is only
to draw attention to the fact that, through the sheer force of their
talent, men like Degas, Monet and Pissarro have achieved great fame and
fortune, without gaining access to the Salons, without official
encouragement, decoration, subvention or purchases for the national
museums. This is a very significant instance and serves well to complete
the physiognomy of this group of independents.

I

THE PRECURSORS OF IMPRESSIONISM--THE BEGINNING OF THIS MOVEMENT AND THE
ORIGIN OF ITS NAME

It will be beyond the scope of this volume to give a complete history of
French Impressionism, and to include all the attractive details to which
it might lead, as regards the movement itself and the very curious epoch
during which its evolution has taken place. The proportions of this book
confine its aim to the clearest possible summing up for the British
reader of the ideas, the personalities and the works of a considerable
group of artists who, for various reasons, have remained but little
known and who have only too frequently been gravely misjudged. These
reasons are very obvious: first, the Impressionists have been unable to
make a show at the Salons, partly because the jury refused them
admission, partly because they held aloof of their own free will. They
have, with very rare exceptions, exhibited at special minor galleries,
where they become known to a very restricted public. Ever attacked, and
poor until the last few years, they enjoyed none of the benefits of
publicity and sham glory. It is only quite recently that the admission
of the incomplete and badly arranged Caillebotte collection to the
Luxembourg Gallery has enabled the public to form a summary idea of
Impressionism. To conclude the enumeration of the obstacles, it must be
added that there are hardly any photographs of Impressionist works in
the market. As it is, photography is but a poor translation of these
canvases devoted to the study of the play of light; but even this very
feeble means of distribution has been withheld from them! Exhibited at
some galleries, gathered principally by Durand-Ruel, sold directly to
art-lovers--foreigners mostly--these large series of works have
practically remained unknown to the French public. All the public heard
was the reproaches and sarcastic comments of the opponents, and they
never became aware that in the midst of modern life the greatest, the
richest movement was in progress, which the French school had known
since the days of Romanticism. Impressionism has been made known to them
principally by the controversies and by the fruitful consequences of
this movement for the illustration and study of contemporary life.

[Illustration: MANET

REST]

I do not profess to give here a detailed and complete history of
Impressionism, for which several volumes like the present one would be
required. I shall only try to compile an _ensemble_ of concise and very
precise notions and statements bearing upon this vast subject. It will
be my special object to try and prove that Impressionism is neither an
isolated manifestation, nor a violent denial of the French traditions,
but nothing more or less than a logical return to the very spirit of
these traditions, contrary to the theories upheld by its detractors. It
is for this reason that I have made use of the first chapter to say a
few words on the precursors of this movement.

No art manifestation is really isolated. However new it may seem, it is
always based upon the previous epochs. The true masters do not give
lessons, because art cannot be taught, but they set the example. To
admire them does not mean to imitate them: it means the recognition in
them of the principles of originality and the comprehension of their
source, so that this eternal source may be called to life in oneself,
this source which springs from a sincere and sympathetic vision of the
aspects of life. The Impressionists have not escaped this beautiful law.
I shall speak of them impartially, without excessive enthusiasm; and it
will be my special endeavour to demonstrate in each of them the cult of
a predecessor, for there have been few artistic movements where the love
for, and one might say the hereditary link with, the preceding masters
has been more tenacious.

The Academy has struggled violently against Impressionism, accusing it
of madness, of systematic negation of the "laws of beauty," which it
pretended to defend and of which it claimed to be the official priest.
The Academy has shown itself hostile to a degree in this quarrel. It has
excluded the Impressionists from the Salons, from awards, from official
purchases. Only quite recently the acceptance of the Caillebotte
bequest to the Luxembourg Gallery gave rise to a storm of indignation
among the official painters. I shall, in the course of this book, enter
upon the value of these attacks. Meanwhile I can only say how
regrettable this obstinacy appears to me and will appear to every free
spirit. It is unworthy even of an ardent conviction to condemn a whole
group of artists _en bloc_ as fools, enemies of beauty, or as tricksters
anxious to degrade the art of their nation, when these artists worked
during forty years towards the same goal, without getting any reward for
their effort, but poverty and derision. It is now about ten years since
Impressionism has taken root, since its followers can sell their
canvases, and since they are admired and praised by a solid and
ever-growing section of the public. The hour has therefore arrived,
calmly to consider a movement which has imposed itself upon the history
of French art from 1860 to 1900 with extreme energy, to leave
dithyrambics as well as polemics, and to speak of it with a view to
exactness. The Academy, in continuing the propagation of an ideal of
beauty fixed by canons derived from Greek, Latin and Renaissance art,
and neglecting the Gothic, the Primitives and the Realists, looks upon
itself as the guardian of the national tradition, because it exercises
an hierarchic authority over the _Ecole de Rome_, the _Salons_, and the
_Ecole des Beaux Arts_. All the same, its ideals are of very mixed
origin and very little French. Its principles are the same by which the
academic art of nearly all the official schools of Europe is governed.
This mythological and allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas
which are imposed upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is
far more international than national. To an impartial critic this
statement will show in an even more curious light the excommunication
jealously issued by the academic painters against French artists, who,
far from revolting in an absurd spirit of _parti-pris_ against the
genius of their race, are perhaps more sincerely attached to it than
their persecutors. Why should a group of men deliberately choose to
paint mad, illogical, bad pictures, and reap a harvest of public
derision, poverty and sterility? It would be uncritical to believe
merely in a general mystification which makes its authors the worst
sufferers. Simple common sense will find in these men a conviction, a
sincerity, a sustained effort, and this alone should, in the name of the
sacred solidarity of those who by various means try to express their
love of the beautiful, suppress the annoying accusations hurled too
light-heartedly against Manet and his friends.

[Illustration: MANET

IN THE SQUARE]

I shall define later on the ideas of the Impressionists on technique,
composition and style in painting. Meanwhile it will be necessary to
indicate their principal precursors.

Their movement may be styled thus: a reaction against the Greco-Latin
spirit and the scholastic organisation of painting after the second
Renaissance and the Italo-French school of Fontainebleau, by the century
of Louis XIV., the school of Rome, and the consular and imperial taste.
In this sense Impressionism is a protest analogous to that of
Romanticism, exclaiming, to quote the old verse: "_Qui nous delivrera
des Grecs et des Romains?_"[1] From this point of view Impressionism has
also great affinities with the ideas of the English Pre-Raphaelites,
who stepped across the second and even the first Renaissance back to the
Primitives.

[Footnote 1: Who will deliver us from the Greeks and the Romans.]

This reaction is superimposed by another: the reaction of Impressionism,
not only against classic subjects, but against the black painting of the
degenerate Romanticists. And these two reactions are counterbalanced by
a return to the French ideal, to the realistic and characteristic
tradition which commences with Jean Foucquet and Clouet, and is
continued by Chardin, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, Watteau, La Tour,
Fragonard, and the admirable engravers of the eighteenth century down to
the final triumph of the allegorical taste of the Roman revolution. Here
can be found a whole chain of truly national artists who have either
been misjudged, like Chardin, or considered as "small masters" and
excluded from the first rank for the benefit of the pompous Allegorists
descended from the Italian school.

Impressionism being beyond all a technical reaction, its predecessors
should first be looked for from this material point of view. Watteau is
the most striking of all. _L'Embarquement pour Cythere_ is, in its
technique, an Impressionist canvas. It embodies the most significant
of all the principles exposed by Claude Monet: the division of tones by
juxtaposed touches of colour which, at a certain distance, produce upon
the eye of the beholder the effect of the actual colouring of the things
painted, with a variety, a freshness and a delicacy of analysis
unobtainable by a single tone prepared and mixed upon the palette.

[Illustration: MANET

YOUNG MAN IN COSTUME OF MAJO]

Claude Lorrain, and after him Carle Vernet, are claimed by the
Impressionists as precursors from the point of view of decorative
landscape arrangement, and particularly of the predominance of light in
which all objects are bathed. Ruysdael and Poussin are, in their eyes,
for the same reasons precursors, especially Ruysdael, who observed so
frankly the blue colouring of the horizon and the influence of blue upon
the landscape. It is known that Turner worshipped Claude for the very
same reasons. The Impressionists in their turn, consider Turner as one
of their masters; they have the greatest admiration for this mighty
genius, this sumptuous visionary. They have it equally for Bonington,
whose technique is inspired by the same observations as their own. They
find, finally, in Delacroix the frequent and very apparent application
of their ideas. Notably in the famous _Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople_, the fair woman kneeling in the foreground is painted in
accordance with the principles of the division of tones: the nude back
is furrowed with blue, green and yellow touches, the juxtaposition of
which produces, at a certain distance, an admirable flesh-tone.

And now I must speak at some length of a painter who, together with the
luminous and sparkling landscapist Felix Ziem, was the most direct
initiator of Impressionist technique. Monticelli is one of those
singular men of genius who are not connected with any school, and whose
work is an inexhaustible source of applications. He lived at Marseilles,
where he was born, made a short appearance at the Salons, and then
returned to his native town, where he died poor, ignored, paralysed and
mad. In order to live he sold his small pictures at the cafes, where
they fetched ten or twenty francs at the most. To-day they sell for
considerable prices, although the government has not yet acquired any
work by Monticelli for the public galleries. The mysterious power alone
of these paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous. Many
Monticellis have been sold by dealers as Diaz's; now they are more
eagerly looked for than Diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with
these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression
which is here only too literally true, "for a piece of bread."

Monticelli painted landscapes, romantic scenes, "fetes galantes" in the
spirit of Watteau, and still-life pictures: one could not imagine a more
inspired sense of colour than shown by these works which seem to be
painted with crushed jewels, with powerful harmony, and beyond all with
an unheard-of delicacy in the perception of fine shades. There are tones
which nobody had ever invented yet, a richness, a profusion, a subtlety
which almost vie with the resources of music. The fairyland atmosphere
of these works surrounds a very firm design of charming style, but, to
use the words of the artist himself, "in these canvases the objects are
the decoration, the touches are the scales, and the light is the tenor."
Monticelli has created for himself an entirely personal technique which
can only be compared with that of Turner; he painted with a brush so
full, fat and rich, that some of the details are often truly modelled in
relief, in a substance as precious as enamels, jewels, ceramics--a
substance which is a delight in itself. Every picture by Monticelli
provokes astonishment; constructed upon one colour as upon a musical
theme, it rises to intensities which one would have thought impossible.
His pictures are magnificent bouquets, bursts of joy and colour, where
nothing is ever crude, and where everything is ruled by a supreme sense
of harmony.

[Illustration: MANET

THE READER]

Claude Lorrain, Watteau, Turner and Monticelli constitute really the
descent of a landscapist like Claude Monet. In all matters concerning
technique, they form the direct chain of Impressionism. As regards
design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of
beauty and the portrait, the Impressionist movement is based upon the
old French masters, principally upon Chardin, Watteau, Latour,
Largilliere, Fragonard, Debucourt, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen. It
has resolutely held aloof from mythology, academic allegory, historical
painting, and from the neo-Greek elements of Classicism as well as from
the German and Spanish elements of Romanticism. This reactionary
movement is therefore entirely French, and surely if it deserves
reproach, the one least deserved is that levelled upon it by the
official painters: disobedience to the national spirit. Impressionism is
an art which does not give much scope to intellectuality, an art whose
followers admit scarcely anything but immediate vision, rejecting
philosophy and symbols and occupying themselves only with the
consideration of light, picturesqueness, keen and clever observation,
and antipathy to abstraction, as the innate qualities of French art. We
shall see later on, when considering separately its principal masters,
that each of them has based his art upon some masters of pure French
blood.

Impressionism has, then, hitherto been very badly judged. It is
contained in two chief points: search after a new technique, and
expression of modern reality. Its birth has not been a spontaneous
phenomenon. Manet, who, by his spirit and by the chance of his
friendships, grouped around him the principal members, commenced by
being classed in the ranks of the Realists of the second Romanticism by
the side of Courbet; and during the whole first period of his work he
only endeavoured to describe contemporary scenes, at a time when the
laws of the new technique were already dawning upon Claude Monet.
Gradually the grouping of the Impressionists took place. Claude Monet is
really the first initiator: in a parallel line with his ideas and his
works Manet passed into the second period of his artistic life, and with
him Renoir, Degas and Pissarro. But Manet had already during his first
period been the topic of far-echoing polemics, caused by his realism and
by the marked influence of the Spaniards and of Hals upon his style; his
temperament, too, was that of the head of a school; and for these
reasons legend has attached to his name the title of head of the
Impressionist school, but this legend is incorrect.

To conclude, the very name "Impressionism" is due to Claude Monet. There
has been much serious arguing upon this famous word which has given rise
to all sorts of definitions and conclusions. In reality this is its
curious origin which is little known, even in criticism. Ever since
1860 the works of Manet and of his friends caused such a stir, that they
were rejected _en bloc_ by the Salon jury of 1863. The emperor, inspired
by a praiseworthy, liberal thought, demanded that these innovators
should at least have the right to exhibit together in a special room
which was called the _Salon des Refuses_. The public crowded there to
have a good laugh. One of the pictures which caused most derision was a
sunset by Claude Monet, entitled _Impressions_. From this moment the
painters who adopted more or less the same manner were called
_Impressionists_. The word remained in use, and Manet and his friends
thought it a matter of indifference whether this label was attached to
them, or another. At this despised Salon were to be found the names of
Manet, Monet, Whistler, Bracquemont, Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Renoir,
Legros, and many others who have since risen to fame. Universal ridicule
only fortified the friendships and resolutions of this group of men, and
from that time dates the definite foundation of the Impressionist
school. For thirty years it continued to produce without interruption
an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and inexact
denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other dogma
than the passionate observation of nature, without any other assistance
than individual sympathies, in the face of the disciplinary teaching of
the official school.

[Illustration: DEGAS

THE DANCER AT THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S]

II

THE THEORY OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS--THE DIVISION OF TONES, COMPLEMENTARY
COLOURS, THE STUDY OF ATMOSPHERE--THE IDEAS OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS ON
SUBJECT-PICTURES, ON THE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER, ON MODERNITY, AND ON STYLE

It should be stated from the outset that there is nothing dogmatic about
this explanation of the Impressionist theories, and that it is not the
result of a preconceived plan. In art a system is not improvised. A
theory is slowly evolved, nearly always unknown to the author, from the
discoveries of his sincere instinct, and this theory can only be
formulated after years by criticism facing the works. Monet and Manet
have worked for a long time without ever thinking that theories would be
built upon their paintings. Yet a certain number of considerations will
strike the close observer, and I will put these considerations before
the reader, after reminding him that spontaneity and feeling are the
essentials of all art.

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