The French Impressionists (1860 1900) written by Camille Mauclair
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Camille Mauclair >> The French Impressionists (1860 1900)
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[Footnote 1: _Procede de la tache._]
[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET
THE BRIDGE AT ARGENTEUIL]
VI
AUGUSTE RENOIR AND HIS WORK
The work of Auguste Renoir extends without interruption over a period of
forty years. It appears to sum up the ideas and methods of Impressionist
art so completely that, should it alone be saved from a general
destruction, it would suffice to bear witness to this entire art
movement. It has unfolded itself from 1865 to our days with a happy
magnificence, and it allows us to distinguish several periods, in the
technique at least, since the variety of its subjects is infinite. Like
Manet, and like all truly great and powerful painters, M. Renoir has
treated almost everything, nudes, portraits, subject pictures, seascapes
and still-life, all with equal beauty.
His first manner shows him to be a very direct descendant of Boucher.
His female nudes are altogether in eighteenth century taste and he uses
the same technique as Boucher: fat and sleek paint of soft brilliancy,
laid on with the palette knife, with precise strokes round the principal
values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues similar to those
of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and almost excluding the
opposition of the shadows; and, finally, vivacious attitudes and an
effort towards decorative convention. Nevertheless, his _Bathers_, of
which he has painted a large series, are in many ways thoroughly modern
and personal. Renoir's nude is neither that of Monet, nor of Degas,
whose main concern was truth, the last-named even trying to define in
the undressed being such psychologic observations as are generally
looked for in the features of the clothed being. Nor is Renoir's nude
that of the academicians, that poetised nude arranged according to a
pseudo-Greek ideal, which has nothing in common with contemporary women.
What Renoir sees in the nude is less the line, than the brilliancy of
the epidermis, the luminous, nacreous substance of the flesh: it is the
"ideal clay"; and in this he shows the vision of a poet; he transfigures
reality, but in a very different sense from that of the School.
Renoir's woman comes from a primitive dream-land; she is an artless,
wild creature, blooming in perfumed scrub. He sets her in backgrounds of
foliage or of blue, foam-fringed torrents. She is a luxuriant, firm,
healthy and naive woman with a powerful body, a small head, her eyes
wide open, thoughtless, brilliant and ignorant, her lips blood-red and
her nostrils dilated; she is a gentle being, like the women of Tahiti,
born in a tropical clime where vice is as unknown as shame, and where
entire ingenuousness is a guarantee against all indecency. One cannot
but be astonished at this mixture of "Japanism," savagism and eighteenth
century taste, which constitutes inimitably the nude of Renoir.
[Illustration: RENOIR
DEJEUNER]
[Illustration: RENOIR
IN THE BOX]
M. Renoir's second manner is more directly related to the Impressionist
methods: it is that of his landscapes, his flowers and his portraits.
Here one can feel his relationship with Manet and with Claude Monet.
These pictures are hatchings of colours accumulated to render less the
objects than their transparency across the atmosphere. The portraits are
frankly presented and broadly executed. The artist occupies himself in
the first place with getting correct values and an exact suggestion of
depth. He understands the illogicality of a false perfection which is as
interested in a trinket as in an eye, and he knows how to proportion the
interest of the picture which should guide the beholder's look to the
essential point, though every part should be correctly executed. He
knows how to interpret nature in a certain sense; how to stop in time;
how to suggest by leaving a part apparently unfinished; how to indicate,
behind a figure, the sea or some landscape with just a few broad touches
which suffice to suggest it without usurping the principal part. It is
now, that Renoir paints his greatest works, the _Dejeuner des
Canotiers_, the _Bal au Moulin de la Galette_, the _Box_, the _Terrace_,
the _First Step_, the _Sleeping Woman with a Cat_, and his most
beautiful landscapes; but his nature is too capricious to be satisfied
with a single technique. There are some landscapes that are reminiscent
of Corot or of Anton Mauve; the _Woman with the broken neck_ is related
to Manet; the portrait of _Sisley_ invents pointillism fifteen years
before the pointillists; _La Pensee_, this masterpiece, evokes
Hoppner. But in everything reappears the invincible French instinct: the
_Jeune Fille au panier_ is a Greuze painted by an Impressionist; the
delightful _Jeune Fille a la promenade_ is connected with Fragonard; the
_Box_, a perfect marvel of elegance and knowledge, condenses the whole
worldliness of 1875. The portrait of _Jeanne Samary_ is an evocation of
the most beautiful portraits of the eighteenth century, a poem of white
satin and golden hair.
[Illustration: RENOIR
YOUNG GIRL PROMENADING]
Renoir's realism bears in spite of all, the imprint of the lyric spirit
and of sweetness. It has neither the nervous veracity of Manet, nor the
bitterness of Degas, who both love their epoch and find it interesting
without idealising it and who have the vision of psychologist novelists.
Before everything else he is a painter. What he sees in the _Bal au
Moulin de la Galette_, are not the stigmata of vice and impudence, the
ridiculous and the sad sides of the doubtful types of this low resort.
He sees the gaiety of Sundays, the flashes of the sun, the oddity of a
crowd carried away by the rhythm of the valses, the laughter, the
clinking of glasses, the vibrating and hot atmosphere; and he applies
to this spectacle of joyous vulgarity his gifts as a sumptuous
colourist, the arabesque of the lines, the gracefulness of his bathers,
and the happy eurythmy of his soul. The straw hats are changed into
gold, the blue jackets are sapphires, and out of a still exact realism
is born a poem of light. The _Dejeuner des Canotiers_ is a subject which
has been painted a hundred times, either for the purpose of studying
popular types, or of painting white table-cloths amidst sunny foliage.
Yet Renoir is the only painter who has raised this small subject to the
proportions and the style of a large canvas, through the pictorial charm
and the masterly richness of the arrangement. The _Box_, conceived in a
low harmony, in a golden twilight, is a work worthy of Reynolds. The
pale and attentive face of the lady makes one think of the great English
master's best works; the necklace, the flesh, the flounce of lace and
the hands are marvels of skill and of taste, which the greatest modern
virtuosos, Sargent and Besnard, have not surpassed, and, as far as the
man in the background is concerned, his white waistcoat, his
dress-coat, his gloved hand would suffice to secure the fame of a
painter. The _Sleeping Woman_, the _First Step_, the _Terrace_, and the
decorative _Dance_ panels reveal Renoir as an _intimiste_ and as an
admirable painter of children. His strange colouring and his gifts of
grasping nature and of ingenuity--strangers to all decadent
complexity--have allowed him to rank among the best of those who have
expressed childhood in its true aspect, without overloading it with
over-precocious thoughts. Finally, Renoir is a painter of flowers of
dazzling variety and exquisite splendour. They supply him with
inexhaustible pretexts for suave and subtle harmonies.
[Illustration: RENOIR
WOMAN'S BUST]
His third manner has surprised and deceived certain admirers of his. It
seems to mix his two first techniques, combining the painting with the
palette knife and the painting in touches of divided tones. He searches
for certain accords and contrasts almost analogous to the musical
dissonances. He realises incredible "false impressions." He seems to
take as themes oriental carpets: he abandons realism and style and
conceives symphonies. He pleases himself in assembling those tones
which one is generally afraid of using: Turkish pink, lemon, crushed
strawberry and viridian. Sometimes he amuses himself with amassing faded
colours which would be disheartening with others, but out of which he
can extract a harmony. Sometimes he plays with the crudest colours. One
feels disturbed, charmed, disconcerted, as one would before an Indian
shawl, a barbaric piece of pottery or a Persian miniature, and one
refrains from forcing into the limits of a definition this exceptional
virtuoso whose passionate love of colour overcomes every difficulty. It
is in this most recent part of his evolution, that Renoir appears the
most capricious and the most poetical of all the painters of his
generation. The flowers find themselves treated in various techniques
according to their own character: the gladioles and roses in pasty
paint, the poor flowers of the field are defined by a cross-hatching of
little touches. Influenced by the purple shadow of the large
flower-decked hats, the heads of young girls are painted on coarse
canvas, sketched in broad strokes, with the hair in one colour only.
Some little study appears like wool, some other has the air of agate,
or is marbled and veined according to his inexplicable whim. We have
here an incessant confusion of methods, a complete emancipation of the
virtuoso who listens only to his fancy. Now and then the harmonies are
false and the drawing incorrect, but these weaknesses do at least no
harm to the values, the character and the general movement of the work,
which are rather accentuated by them.
[Illustration: RENOIR
YOUNG WOMAN IN EMPIRE COSTUME]
Surely, it would be false to exclude ideologist painting which has
produced wonders, and not less iniquitous to reproach Impressionism with
not having taken any interest in it! One has to avoid the kind of
criticism which consists in reproaching one movement with not having had
the qualities of the others whilst maintaining its own, and we have
abandoned the idea of Beauty divided into a certain number of clauses
and programmes, towards the sum total of which the efforts of the
eclectic candidates are directed. M. Renoir is probably the most
representative figure of a movement where he seems to have united all
the qualities of his friends. To criticise him means to criticise
Impressionism itself. Having spent half of its strength in proving to
its adversaries that they were wrong, and the other half in inventing
technical methods, it is not surprising to find that Impressionism has
been wanting in intellectual depth and has left to its successors the
care of realising works of great thought. But it has brought us a sunny
smile, a breath of pure air. It is so fascinating, that one cannot but
love its very mistakes which make it more human and more accessible.
Renoir is the most lyrical, the most musical, the most subtle of the
masters of this art. Some of his landscapes are as beautiful as those of
Claude Monet. His nudes are as masterly in painting as Manet's, and more
supple. Not having attained the scientific drawing which one finds in
Degas's, they have a grace and a brilliancy which Degas's nudes have
never known. If his rare portraits of men are inferior to those of his
rivals, his women's portraits have a frequently superior distinction.
His great modern compositions are equal to the most beautiful works by
Manet and Degas. His inequalities are also more striking than theirs.
Being a fantastic, nervous improvisator he is more exposed to radical
mistakes. But he is a profoundly sincere and conscientious artist.
[Illustration: RENOIR
ON THE TERRACE]
The race speaks in him. It is inexplicable that he should not have met
with startling success, since he is voluptuous, bright, happy and
learned without heaviness. One has to attribute his relative isolation
to the violence of the controversies, and particularly to the dignity of
a poet gently disdainful of public opinion and paying attention solely
to painting, his great and only love. Manet has been a fighter whose
works have created scandal. Renoir has neither shown, nor hidden
himself: he has painted according to his dream, spreading his works,
without mixing up his name or his personality with the tumult that raged
around his friends. And now, for that very reason, his work appears
fresher and younger, more primitive and candid, more intoxicated with
flowers, flesh and sunlight.
VII
THE SECONDARY PAINTERS OF IMPRESSIONISM--CAMILLE PISSARRO, ALFRED
SISLEY, PAUL CEZANNE, BERTHE MORISOT, MISS MARY CASSATT, EVA GONZALES,
GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE, BAZILLE, ALBERT LEBOURG, EUGENE BOUDIN.
Manet, Degas, Monet and Renoir will present themselves as a glorious
quartet of masters, in the history of painting. We must now speak of
some personalities who have grown up by their side and who, without
being great, offer nevertheless a rich and beautiful series of works.
Of these personalities the most considerable is certainly that of M.
Camille Pissarro. He painted according to some wise and somewhat timid
formulas, when Manet's example won him over to Impressionism to which he
has remained faithful. M. Pissarro has been enormously productive. His
work is composed of landscapes, rustic scenes, and studies of streets
and markets. His first landscapes are in the manner of Corot, but bathed
in blond colour: vast cornfields, sunny woods, skies with big, flocking
clouds, effects of soft light--these are the motifs of some charming
canvases which have a solid, classic quality. Later the artist adopted
the method of the dissociation of tones, from which he obtained some
happy effects. His harvest and market scenes are luminous and alive. The
figures in these recall those of Millet. They bear witness to high
qualities of sincere observation, and are the work of a man profoundly
enamoured of rustic life. M. Pissarro excels in grouping the figures, in
correctly catching their attitudes and in rendering the medley of a
crowd in the sun. Certain fans in particular will always remain
delightful caprices of fresh colour, but it would be vain to look in
this attractive, animated and clear painting for the psychologic gifts,
the profound feeling for grand silhouettes, and the intuition of the
worn and gloomy soul of the men of the soil, which have made Millet's
noble glory. At the time when, about 1885, the neo-Impressionists whom
we shall study later on invented the Pointillist method, M. Pissarro
tried it and applied it judiciously, with the patient, serious and
slightly anxious talent, by which he is distinguished. Recently, in a
series of pictures representing views of Paris (the boulevards and the
Avenue de l'Opera) M. Pissarro has shewn rare vision and skill and has
perhaps signed his most beautiful and personal paintings. The
perspective, the lighting, the tones of the houses and of the crowds,
the reflections of rain or sunshine are intensely true; they make one
feel the atmosphere, the charm and the soul of Paris. One can say of
Pissarro that he lacks none of the gifts of his profession. He is a
learned, fruitful and upright artist. But he has lacked originality; he
always recalls those whom he admires and whose ideas he applies boldly
and tastefully. It is probable that his conscientious nature has
contributed not little towards keeping him in the second rank.
Incapable, certainly, of voluntarily imitating, this excellent and
diligent painter has not had the sparks of genius of his friends, but
all that can be given to a man through conscientious study, striving
after truth and love of art, has been acquired by M. Pissarro. The rest
depended on destiny only. There is no character more worthy of respect
and no effort more meritorious than his, and there can be no better
proof of his disinterestedness and his modesty, than the fact that,
although he has thirty years of work behind him, an honoured name and
white hair, M. Pissarro did not hesitate to adopt, quite frankly, the
technique of the young Pointillist painters, his juniors, because it
appeared to him better than his own. He is, if not a great painter, at
least one of the most interesting rustic landscape painters of our
epoch. His visions of the country are quite his own, and are a
harmonious mixture of Classicism and Impressionism which will secure one
of the most honourable places to his work.
[Illustration: PISSARRO
RUE DE L'EPICERIE, ROUEN]
[Illustration: PISSARRO
BOULEVARDE MONTMARTRE]
[Illustration: PISSARRO
THE BOILDIEAUX BRIDGE AT ROUEN]
[Illustration: PISSARO
THE AVENUE DE L'OPERA]
There has, perhaps, been more original individuality in the landscape
painter Alfred Sisley. He possessed in the highest degree the feeling
for light, and if he did not have the power, the masterly passion of
Claude Monet, he will at least deserve to be frequently placed by his
side as regards the expression of certain combinations of light. He did
not have the decorative feeling which makes Monet's landscapes so
imposing; one does not see in his work that surprising lyrical
interpretation which knows how to express the drama of the raging waves,
the heavy slumber of enormous masses of rock, the intense torpor of the
sun on the sea. But in all that concerns the mild aspects of the _Ile de
France_, the sweet and fresh landscapes, Sisley is not unworthy of being
compared with Monet. He equals him in numerous pictures; he has a
similar delicacy of perception, a similar fervour of execution. He is
the painter of great, blue rivers curving towards the horizon; of
blossoming orchards; of bright hills with red-roofed hamlets scattered
about; he is, beyond all, the painter of French skies which he presents
with admirable vivacity and facility. He has the feeling for the
transparency of atmosphere, and if his technique allies him directly
with Impressionism, one can well feel, that he painted spontaneously and
that this technique happened to be adapted to his nature, without his
having attempted to appropriate it for the sake of novelty. Sisley has
painted a notable series of pictures in the quaint village of Moret on
the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he died at a ripe
age, and these canvases will figure among the most charming landscapes
of our epoch. Sisley was a veteran of Impressionism. At the Exhibition
of 1900, in the two rooms reserved for the works of this school, there
were to be seen a dozen of Sisley's canvases. By the side of the finest
Renoirs, Monets and Manets they kept their charm and their brilliancy
with a singular flavour, and this was for many critics a revelation as
to the real place of this artist, whom they had hitherto considered as a
pretty colourist of only relative importance.
[Illustration: SISLEY
SNOW EFFECT]
[Illustration: SISLEY
BOUGIVAL, AT THE WATER'S EDGE]
[Illustration: SISLEY
BRIDGE AT MORET]
Paul Cezanne, unknown to the public, is appreciated by a small group of
art lovers. He is an artist who lives in Provence, away from the world;
he is supposed to have served as model for the Impressionist painter
Claude Lantier, described by Zola in his celebrated novel "L'Oeuvre."
Cezanne has painted landscapes, rustic scenes and still-life pictures.
His figures are clumsy and brutal and inharmonious in colour, but his
landscapes have the merit of a robust simplicity of vision. These
pictures are almost primitive, and they are loved by the young
Impressionists because of their exclusion of all "cleverness." A charm
of rude simplicity and sincerity can be found in these works in which
Cezanne employs only just the means which are indispensable for his end.
His still-life pictures are particularly interesting owing to the
spotless brilliancy of their colours, the straightforwardness of the
tones, and the originality of certain shades analogous to those of old
faience. Cezanne is a conscientious painter without skill, intensely
absorbed in rendering what he sees, and his strong and tenacious
attention has sometimes succeeded in finding beauty. He reminds more of
an ancient Gothic craftsman, than of a modern artist, and he is full of
repose as a contrast to the dazzling virtuosity of so many painters.
[Illustration: CEZANNE
DESSERT]
Berthe Morisot will remain the most fascinating figure of
Impressionism,--the one who has stated most precisely the femineity of
this luminous and iridescent art. Having married Eugene Manet, the
brother of the great painter, she exhibited at various private
galleries, where the works of the first Impressionists were to be
seen, and became as famous for her talent as for her beauty. When Manet
died, she took charge of his memory and of his work, and she helped with
all her energetic intelligence to procure them their just and final
estimation. Mme. Eugene Manet has certainly been one of the most
beautiful types of French women of the end of the nineteenth century.
When she died prematurely at the age of fifty (in 1895), she left a
considerable amount of work: gardens, young girls, water-colours of
refined taste, of surprising energy, and of a colouring as
distinguished, as it is unexpected. As great grand-daughter of
Fragonard, Berthe Morisot (since we ought to leave her the name with
which her respect for Manet's great name made her always sign her works)
seemed to have inherited from her famous ancestor his French
gracefulness, his spirited elegance, and all his other great qualities.
She has also felt the influence of Corot, of Manet and of Renoir. All
her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman's
work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality,
which one would hardly have expected. Her water-colours, particularly,
belong to a superior art: some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky,
sea, or a forest background, and everything shows a sure and masterly
fancy, for which our time can offer no analogy. A series of Berthe
Morisot's works looks like a veritable bouquet whose brilliancy is due
less to the colour-schemes which are comparatively soft, grey and blue,
than to the absolute correctness of the values. A hundred canvases, and
perhaps three hundred water-colours attest this talent of the first
rank. Normandy coast scenes with pearly skies and turquoise horizons,
sparkling Nice gardens, fruit-laden orchards, girls in white dresses
with big flower-decked hats, young women in ball-dress, and flowers are
the favourite themes of this artist who was the friend of Renoir, of
Degas and of Mallarme.
[Illustration: BERTHE MORISOT
MELANCHOLY]
[Illustration: BERTHE MORISOT
YOUNG WOMAN SEATED]
Miss Mary Cassatt will deserve a place by her side. American by birth,
she became French through her assiduous participation in the exhibitions
of the Impressionists. She is one of the very few painters whom Degas
has advised, with Forain and M. Ernest Rouart. (This latter, a painter
himself, a son of the painter and wealthy collector Henri Rouart, has
married Mme. Manet's daughter who is also an artist.) Miss Cassatt has
made a speciality of studying children, and she is, perhaps, the artist
of this period who has understood and expressed them with the greatest
originality. She is a pastellist of note, and some of her pastels are as
good as Manet's and Degas's, so far as broad execution and brilliancy
and delicacy of tones are concerned. Ten years ago Miss Cassatt
exhibited a series of ten etchings in colour, representing scenes of
mothers and children at their toilet. At that time this _genre_ was
almost abandoned, and Miss Cassatt caused astonishment by her boldness
which faced the most serious difficulties. One can relish in this
artist's pictures, besides the great qualities of solid draughtsmanship,
correct values, and skilful interpretation of flesh and stuffs, a
profound sentiment of infantile life, childish gestures, clear and
unconscious looks, and the loving expression of the mothers. Miss
Cassatt is the painter and psychologist of babies and young mothers whom
she likes to depict in the freshness of an orchard, or against
backgrounds of the flowered hangings of dressing-rooms, amidst bright
linen, tubs, and china, in smiling intimacy. To these two remarkable
women another has to be added, Eva Gonzales, the favourite pupil of
Manet who has painted a fine portrait of her. Eva Gonzales became the
wife of the excellent engraver Henri Guerard, and died prematurely, not,
however, before one was able to admire her talent as an exquisitely
delicate pastellist. Having first been a pupil of Chaplin, she soon came
to forget the tricks of technique in order to acquire under Manet's
guidance the qualities of clearness and the strength of the great
painter of _Argenteuil_; and she would certainly have taken one of the
first places in modern art, had not her career been cut short by death.
A small pastel at the Luxembourg Gallery proves her convincing qualities
as a colourist.
[Illustration: MARY CASSATT
GETTING UP BABY]
[Illustration: MARY CASSATT
WOMEN AND CHILD]
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