The French Impressionists (1860 1900) written by Camille Mauclair
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Camille Mauclair >> The French Impressionists (1860 1900)
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[Illustration: DEGAS
CARRIAGES AT THE RACES]
The Impressionist ideas may be summed up in the following manner:--
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
envelopes all things, and reveals them, according to the hours, with
infinite modifications. The mystery of matter escapes us; we do not know
the exact moment when reality separates itself from unreality. All we
know is, that our vision has formed the habit of discerning in the
universe two notions: form and colour; but these two notions are
inseparable. Only artificially can we distinguish between outline and
colour: in nature the distinction does not exist. Light reveals the
forms, and, playing upon the different states of matter, the substance
of leaves, the grain of stones, the fluidity of air in deep layers,
gives them dissimilar colouring. If the light disappears, forms and
colours vanish together. We only see colours; everything has a colour,
and it is by the perception of the different colour surfaces striking
our eyes, that we conceive the forms, _i.e._ the outlines of these
colours.
The idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given us by darker or
lighter colours: this idea is what is called in painting the sense of
values. 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. And as painting is not and cannot be the _imitation_ of nature,
but merely her artificial interpretation, since it only has at its
disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only means that
remain for expressing depth on a flat surface.
Colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. Or, 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. It is
known, that these seven tones appear different owing to the unequal
speed of the waves of light. The tones of nature appear to us therefore
different, like those of the spectrum, and for the same reason. 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.
The colours of the spectrum are thus recomposed in everything we see. It
is their relative proportion which makes new tones out of the seven
spectral tones. This leads immediately to some practical conclusions,
the first of which is, that what has formerly been called _local colour_
is an error: a leaf is not green, a tree-trunk is not brown, and,
according to the time of day, _i.e._ according to the greater or smaller
inclination of the rays (scientifically called the angle of incidence),
the green of the leaf and the brown of the tree are modified. 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.
[Illustration: DEGAS
THE GREEK DANCE--PASTEL.]
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 subordinated to a light which appears to us more intense. In
the shadow the rays of the spectrum vibrate with different speed.
Painting should therefore try to discover here, as in the light parts,
the play of the atoms of solar light, instead of representing shadows
with ready-made tones composed of bitumen and black.
The third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are
modified by _refraction_. That means, _f.i._ in a picture representing
an interior, the source of light (window) may not be indicated: the
light circling round the picture will then be composed of the
_reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects,
acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence
each other. Their colours will affect each other, even if the surfaces
be dull. A red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very
subtle, but mathematically exact, interchange between this blue and this
red, and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two
colours a tone of reflections composed of both. These composite
reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two
principal colours. The science of optics can work out these
complementary colours with mathematical exactness. If _f.i._ a head
receives the orange rays of daylight from one side and the bluish light
of an interior from the other, green reflections will necessarily appear
on the nose and in the middle region of the face. The painter Besnard,
who has specially devoted himself to this minute study of complementary
colours, has given us some famous examples of it.
The last consequence of these propositions is that the blending of the
spectral tones is accomplished by a _parallel_ and _distinct_ projection
of the colours. They are artificially reunited on the crystalline: a
lens interposed between the light and the eye, and opposing the
crystalline, which is a living lens, dissociates again these united
rays, and shows us again the seven distinct colours of the atmosphere.
It is no less artificial if a painter mixes upon his palette different
colours to compose a tone; it is again artificial that paints have been
invented which represent some of the combinations of the spectrum, just
to save the artist the trouble of constantly mixing the seven solar
tones. Such mixtures are false, and they have the disadvantage of
creating heavy tonalities, since the coarse mixture of powders and oils
cannot accomplish the action of light which reunites the luminous waves
into an intense white of unimpaired transparency. The colours mixed on
the palette compose a dirty grey. What, then, is the painter to do, who
is anxious to approach, as near as our poor human means will allow, that
divine fairyland of nature? Here we touch upon 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 white and black. He will,
furthermore, instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon
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.
[Illustration: DEGAS
WAITING]
This, then, is the theory of the _dissociation of tones_, which is the
main point of Impressionist technique. It has the immense advantage of
suppressing all mixtures, of leaving to each colour its proper strength,
and consequently its freshness and brilliancy. At the same time the
difficulties are extreme. The painter's eye must be admirably subtle.
Light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the
object upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived becomes
a purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem,
quite distinct from expression, style and design, which were the
principal aims of former painting. It is almost necessary to invent
another name for this special art which, clearly pictorial though it be,
comes as near to music, as it gets far away from literature and
psychology. It is only natural that, fascinated by this study, the
Impressionists have almost remained strangers to the painting of
expression, and altogether hostile to historical and symbolist painting.
It is therefore principally in landscape painting that they have
achieved the greatness that is theirs.
Through the application of these principles which I have set forth very
summarily, Claude Monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely
varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the
tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the
arabesque of their vibrations. A landscape thus conceived becomes a kind
of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point, _f.i._),
and developing all over the canvas the variations of this theme. This
investigation is added to the habitual preoccupations of the landscapist
study of the character peculiar to the scene, style of the trees or
houses, accentuation of the decorative side--and to the habitual
preoccupations of the figure painter in the portrait. The canvases of
Monet, Renoir and Pissarro have, in consequence of this research, an
absolutely original aspect: their shadows are striped with blue,
rose-madder and green; nothing is opaque or sooty; a light vibration
strikes the eye. Finally, blue and orange predominate, simply because in
these studies--which are more often than not full sunlight
effects--blue is the complementary colour of the orange light of the
sun, and is profusely distributed in the shadows. In these canvases can
be found a vast amount of exact grades of tone, which seem to have been
entirely ignored by the older painters, whose principal concern was
style, and who reduced a landscape to three or four broad tones,
endeavouring only to explain the sentiment inspired by it.
And now I shall have to pass on to the Impressionists' ideas on the
style itself of painting, on Realism.
From the outset it must not be forgotten that Impressionism has been
propagated by men who had all been Realists; that means by a reactionary
movement against classic and romantic painting. This movement, of which
Courbet will always remain the most famous representative, has been
_anti-intellectual_. It has protested against every literary,
psychologic or symbolical element in painting. It has reacted at the
same time against the historical painting of Delaroche and the
mythological painting of the _Ecole de Rome_, with an extreme violence
which appears to us excessive now, but which found its explanation in
the intolerable tediousness or emphasis at which the official painters
had arrived. Courbet was a magnificent worker, with rudimentary ideas,
and he endeavoured to exclude even those which he possessed. This
exaggeration which diminishes our admiration for his work and prevents
us from finding in it any emotion but that which results from technical
mastery, was salutary for the development of the art of his successors.
It caused the young painters to turn resolutely towards the aspects of
contemporary life, and to draw style and emotion from their own epoch;
and this intention was right. An artistic tradition is not continued by
imitating the style of the past, but by extracting the immediate
impression of each epoch. That is what the really great masters have
done, and it is the succession of their sincere and profound
observations which constitutes the style of the races.
[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET
THE PINES]
Manet and his friends drew all their strength from this idea. Much finer
and more learned than a man like Courbet, they saw an aspect of
modernity far more complex, and less limited to immediate and grossly
superficial realism. Nor must it be forgotten that they were
contemporaries of the realistic, anti-romantic literary movement, a
movement which gave them nothing but friends. Flaubert and the Goncourts
proved that Realism is not the enemy of refined form and of delicate
psychology. The influence of these ideas created first of all Manet and
his friends: the technical evolution (of which we have traced the chief
traits) came only much later to oppose itself to their conceptions.
Impressionism can therefore be defined as a _revolution of pictorial
technique together with an attempt at expressing modernity_. The
reaction against Symbolism and Romanticism happened to coincide with the
reaction against muddy technique.
The Impressionists, whilst occupying themselves with cleansing the
palette of the bitumen of which the Academy made exaggerated use, whilst
also observing nature with a greater love of light, made it their object
to escape in the representation of human beings the laws of _beauty_,
such as were taught by the School. And on this point one might apply to
them all that one knows of the ideas of the Goncourts and Flaubert, and
later of Zola, in the domain of the novel. They were moved by the same
ideas; to speak of the one group is to speak of the other. The longing
for truth, the horror of emphasis and of false idealism which paralysed
the novelist as well as the painter, led the Impressionists to
substitute for _beauty_ a novel notion, that of _character_. To search
for, and to express, the true character of a being or of a site, seemed
to them more significant, more moving, than to search for an exclusive
beauty, based upon rules, and inspired by the Greco-Latin ideal. Like
the Flemings, the Germans, the Spaniards, and in opposition to the
Italians whose influence had conquered all the European academies, the
French Realist-Impressionists, relying upon the qualities of lightness,
sincerity and expressive clearness which are the real merits of their
race, detached themselves from the oppressive and narrow preoccupation
with the beautiful and with all the metaphysics and abstractions
following in its train.
[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET
CHURCH AT VERNON]
This fact of the substitution of _character_ for _beauty_ is the
essential feature of the movement. What is called Impressionism is--let
it not be forgotten--a technique which can be applied to any subject.
Whether the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with
divided tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist Henri
Martin, who has almost the ideas of a Pre-Raphaelite, have proved it by
employing this technique for the rendering of religious or philosophic
subjects. But one can only understand the effort and the faults of the
painters grouped around Manet, by constantly recalling to one's mind
their predeliction for _character_. Before Manet a distinction was made
between _noble_ subjects, and others which were relegated to the domain
of _genre_ in which no great artist was admitted to exist by the School,
the familiarity of their subjects barring from them this rank. By the
suppression of the _nobleness_ inherent to the treated subject, the
painter's technical merit is one of the first things to be considered in
giving him rank. The Realist-Impressionists painted scenes in the
ball-room, on the river, in the field, the street, the foundry, modern
interiors, and found in the life of the humble immense scope for
studying the gestures, the costumes, the expressions of the nineteenth
century.
Their effort had its bearing upon the way of representing persons, upon
what is called, in the studio language, the "_mise en cadre_." There,
too, they overthrew the principles admitted by the School. Manet, and
especially Degas, have created in this respect a new style from which
the whole art of realistic contemporary illustration is derived. This
style had been hitherto totally ignored, or the artists had shrunk from
applying it. It is a style which is founded upon the small painters of
the eighteenth century, upon Saint-Aubin, Debucourt, Moreau, and,
further back, upon Pater and the Dutchmen. But this time, instead of
confining this style to vignettes and very small dimensions, the
Impressionists have boldly given it the dimensions and importance of big
canvases. They have no longer based the laws of composition, and
consequently of style, upon the ideas relative to the subjects, but upon
values and harmonies. To take a summary example: if the School composed
a picture representing the death of Agamemnon, it did not fail to
subordinate the whole composition to Agamemnon, then to Clytemnestra,
then to the witnesses of the murder, graduating the moral and literary
interest according to the different persons, and sacrificing to this
interest the colouring and the realistic qualities of the scene. The
Realists composed by picking out first the strongest "value" of the
picture, say a red dress, and then distributing the other values
according to a harmonious progression of their tonalities. "The
principal person in a picture," said Manet, "is the light." With Manet
and his friends we find, then, that the concern for expression and for
the sentiments evoked by the subject, was always subordinated to a
purely pictorial and decorative preoccupation. This has frequently led
the Impressionists to grave errors, which they have, however, generally
avoided by confining themselves to very simple subjects, for which the
daily life supplied the grouping.
[Illustration: RENOIR
PORTRAIT OF MADAME MAITRE]
One of the reforms due to their conception has been the suppression of
the professional model, and the substitution for it of the natural
model, seen in the exercise of his occupation. This is one of the most
useful conquests for the benefit of modern painting. It marks a just
return to nature and simplicity. Nearly all their figures are real
portraits; and in everything that concerns the labourer and the
peasant, they have found the proper style and character, because they
have observed these beings in the true medium of their occupations,
instead of forcing them into a sham pose and painting them in disguise.
The basis of all their pictures has been first of all a series of
landscape and figure studies made in the open air, far from the studio,
and afterwards co-ordinated. One may wish pictorial art to have higher
ambitions; and one may find in the Primitives an example of a curious
mysticism, an expression of the abstract and of dreams. But one should
not underrate the power of naive and realistic observation, which the
Primitives carried into the execution of their works, subordinating it,
however, to religious expression, and it must also be admitted that the
Realist-Impressionists served at least their conception of art logically
and homogeneously. The criticism which may be levelled against them is
that which Realism itself carries in its train, and we shall see that
esthetics could never create classifications capable of defining and
containing the infinite gradations of creative temperaments.
In art, classifications have rarely any value, and are rather damaging.
Realism and Idealism are abstract terms which cannot suffice to
characterise beings who obey their sensibility. It is therefore
necessary to invent as many words as there are remarkable men. If
Leonardo was a great painter, are Turner and Monet not painters at all?
There is no connection between them; their methods of thought and
expression are antithetical. Perhaps it will be most simple, to admire
them all, and to renounce any further definition of the painter,
adopting this word to mark the man who uses the palette as his means of
expression.
Thus preoccupation with contemporary emotions, substitution of character
for classic beauty (or of emotional beauty for formal beauty), admission
of the _genre_-painter into the first rank, composition based upon the
reciprocal reaction of values, subordination of the subject to the
interest of execution, the effort to isolate the art of painting from
the ideas inherent to that of literature, and particularly the
instinctive move towards the "symphonisation" of colours, and
consequently towards music,--these are the principal features of the
aesthetic code of the Realist-Impressionists, if this term may be
applied to a group of men hostile towards esthetics such as they are
generally taught.
III
EDOUARD MANET: HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
As I have said, Edouard Manet has not been entirely the originator of
the Impressionist technique. It is the work of Claude Monet which
presents the most complete example of it, and which also came first as
regards date. But it is very difficult to determine such cases of
priority, and it is, after all, rather useless. A technique cannot be
invented in a day. In this case it was the result of long
investigations, in which Manet and Renoir participated, and it is
necessary to unite under the collective name of Impressionists a group
of men, tied by friendship, who made a simultaneous effort towards
originality, all in about the same spirit, though frequently in very
different ways. As in the case of the Pre-Raphaelites, it was first of
all friendship, then unjust derision, which created the solidarity of
the Impressionists. But the Pre-Raphaelites, in aiming at an idealistic
and symbolic art, were better agreed upon the intellectual principles
which permitted them at once to define a programme. The Impressionists
who were only united by their temperaments, and had made it their first
aim to break away from all school programmes, tried simply to do
something new, with frankness and freedom.
Manet was, in their midst, the personality marked out at the same time
by their admiration, and by the attacks of the critics for the post of
standard-bearer. A little older than his friends, he had already, quite
alone, raised heated discussions by the works in his first manner. He
was considered an innovator, and it was by instinctive admiration that
his first friends, Whistler, Legros, and Fantin-Latour, were gradually
joined by Marcelin Desboutin, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro,
Caillebotte, Berthe Morisot, the young painter Bazille, who met his
premature death in 1870, and by the writers Gautier, Banville,
Baudelaire (who was a passionate admirer of Manet's); then later by
Zola, the Goncourts, and Stephane Mallarme. This was the first nucleus
of a public which was to increase year by year. Manet had the personal
qualities of a chief; he was a man of spirit, an ardent worker, and an
enthusiastic and generous character.
[Illustration: MANET
THE DEAD TOREADOR]
Manet commenced his first studies with Couture. After having travelled a
good deal at sea to obey his parents, his vocation took hold of him
irresistibly. About 1850 the young man entered the studio of the severe
author of the _Romains de la Decadence_. His stay was short. He
displeased the professor by his uncompromising energy. Couture said of
him angrily: "He will become the Daumier of 1860." It is known that
Daumier, lithographer, and painter of genius, was held in meagre esteem
by the academicians. Manet travelled in Germany after the _coup d'etat_,
copied Rembrandt in Munich, then went to Italy, copied Tintoretto in
Venice, and conceived there the idea of several religious pictures. Then
he became enthusiastic about the Spaniards, especially Velasquez and
Goya. The sincere expression of things seen took root from this moment
as the principal rule of art in the brain of this young Frenchman who
was loyal, ardent, and hostile to all subtleties. He painted some fine
works, like the _Buveur d'absinthe_ and the _Vieux musicien_. They show
the influence of Courbet, but already the blacks and the greys have an
original and superb quality; they announce a virtuoso of the first
order.
It was in 1861 that Manet first sent to the Salon the portraits of his
parents and the _Guitarero_, which was hailed by Gautier, and rewarded
by the jury, though it roused surprise and irritation. But after that he
was rejected, whether it was a question of the _Fifre_ or of the
_Dejeuner sur l'herbe._ This canvas, with an admirable feminine nude,
created a scandal, because an undressed woman figured in it amidst
clothed figures, a matter of frequent occurrence with the masters of the
Renaissance. The landscape is not painted in the open air, but in the
studio, and resembles a tapestry, but it shows already the most
brilliant evidence of Manet's talent in the study of the nude and the
still-life of the foreground, which is the work of a powerful master.
From the time of this canvas the artist's personality appeared in all
its maturity. He painted it before he was thirty, and it has the air of
an old master's work; it is based upon Hals and the Spaniards together.
The reputation of Manet became established after 1865. Furious critics
were opposed by enthusiastic admirers. Baudelaire upheld Manet, as he
had upheld Delacroix and Wagner, with his great clairvoyance,
sympathetic to all real originality. The _Olympia_ brought the
discussion to a head. This courtesan lying in bed undressed, with a
negress carrying a bouquet, and a black cat, made a tremendous stir. It
is a powerful work of strong colour, broad design and intense sentiment,
astounding in its _parti-pris_ of reducing the values to the greatest
simplicity. One can feel in it the artist's preoccupation with
rediscovering the rude frankness of Hals and Goya, and his aversion
against the prettiness and false nobility of the school. This famous
_Olympia_ which occasioned so much fury, appears to us to-day as a
transition work. It is neither a masterpiece, nor an emotional work, but
a technical experiment, very significant for the epoch during which it
appeared in French art, and this canvas, which is very inferior to
Manet's fine works, may well be considered as a date of evolution. He
was doubtful about exhibiting it, but Baudelaire decided him and wrote
to him on this occasion these typical remarks: "You complain about
attacks? But are you the first to endure them? Have you more genius than
Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by derision. And, in
order not to make you too proud, I must tell you, that they are models
each in his own way and in a very rich world, whilst you are only the
first in the decrepitude of your art."
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