All posts tagged Edgar Degas

Impressionists by Antonia Cunningham (2001)

This is a small (4½” x 6″) but dense (256 high-gloss pages), handily pocket-sized little overview of the Impressionist movement.

The ten-page introduction  by Karen Hurrell is marred by some spectacular errors. In the second paragraph she tells us that Paris was ‘in the throes of the belle epoque‘ when the 19-year-old Monet arrived in town in 1859 – whereas the Belle Époque period is generally dated 1871 to 1914. She tells us that Napoleon Bonaparte had commissioned the extensive redesign of the city – when she means Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the great man’s nephew and heir, more commonly known as Napoleon III, who reigned as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870.

Thus cautioned to take any other facts in the introduction or the picture captions with a touch of scepticism, nonetheless we learn some basic background facts about the Impressionists:

  • Monet was inspired by the French landscape painter Eugène Boudin (1824-98)
  • Success in the art world was defined as acceptance of your work into the biannual exhibition of the Paris Salon
  • Reputable artists were expected to train at the Académie des Beaux-Arts which was dominated by the classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), who insisted on training in draughtsmanship, copying the Old Masters, using a clear defined line.
  • Edgar Degas (1834-1917) enrolled in the Beaux-Arts as did Pissarro.
  • Monet attended the Académie Suisse where he met Pissarro, then entered the studio of Charles Gleyre: here he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). Alfred Sisley (1839-99) and Frédéric Bazille (1841-70).
  • Older than the others and really from a different generation was their inspiration, Édouard Manet (1832-83). He sought academic success in the traditional style, attaining Salon success in 1861.
  • In 1863 the Salon refused so many contemporary painters that Napoleon III was asked to create a separate show for them, the Salon des Refusés. Manet stole the show with his The lunch on the grass showing a naked woman in the company of two fully dressed contemporary men.
  • The 1865 Salon show included works by Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, Berthe Morisot (1841-95).
  • From 1866 Manet began to frequent the Café Guerbois, and was soon joined by Renoir, Sisley, Caillebotte and Monet, with Degas, Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Pissarro also dropping by, when in town. They became known as the Batignolles Group after the area of Paris the cafe was in.
  • Paris life of all kinds was disrupted by the catastrophic Franco-Prussian War and then the disastrous rising of communists during the Paris Commune, which was only put down by the official government with great bloodshed and destruction (July 1870-May 1871). All the artists who could afford to fled the city, many to England and London – an event which was the basis of the Tate Britain exhibition, Impressionists in London.
  • From April to May 1874 this group held an independent art exhibition in the gallery of the photographer Nadar. The critic Louis Leroy took exception to Monet’s painting Impression: Sunrise (1872), satirising the group’s focus on capturing fleeting impressions of light instead of painting what was there, but the name was taken up by more sympathetic critics and soon became a catch-phrase the artists found themselves lumbered with.
  • It’s interesting to note that Degas was a driving force behind this and the subsequent Impressionist shows, single-handedly persuading artists to take part. He himself was not really an impressionist, much of his subject matter, for example, being indoors instead of painting out of doors, en plein air, as Impressionist doctrine demanded. Similarly, whereas the other experimented with creating form through colour i.e. using colour alone to suggest shape and form, Degas was to the end of his life a believer in extremely strong, clear, defining lines to create shape and form and texture.
  • In 1876 the group exhibited again, at the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel. The role played by Durand-Ruel in sponsoring and financing the Impressionists was chronicled in the national Gallery exhibition, Inventing Impressionism.
  • There were eight Impressionist exhibitions in total: in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1886. The eight Impressionist exhibitions

From this point on we begin to follow the differing fortunes and styles of the group. Monet developed his mature style in the first half of the 1870s, letting go of any attempt to document reality, instead developing ‘a new vocabulary of painting’ in blobs and dashes of often unmixed primary colours in order to capture the essence of the scene. In 1880 Monet organised a solo show and submitted two works to the Salon. Degas called him a sell-out, but he was trying to distance himself from the group.

Renoir developed a unique style of portraying the gaiety of contemporary Parisian life in realistic depictions of people dancing and drinking at outdoor cafés, with broad smiles, the whole scene dappled with light. He was to become the most financially successful of the group and you can see why: his uplifting works are popular to this day. In the 1880s he took to nudes and portraits rather than landscapes. He was always interested in people.

Degas resisted being called an Impressionist – he painted mostly indoor scenes and never abandoned his hard outlines – but certainly was influenced by the Impressionist emphasis on the effect of light captured in loose brushstrokes. During the 1870s he began to produce the hundreds of oil paintings and pastels of ballet dancers which were to be a key subject.

The American artist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) saw a Degas in a dealer’s window and realised these were her people. She lightened her palette, adopted the modern attitude towards light and exhibited at the successive Impressionist exhibitions.

Sisley became dependent on Durand-Ruel. When the latter fell on hard times, Sisley and his family led a tough, hard-up, peripatetic life. Arguably he is the only one who never developed but carried on working in the same, pure Impressionist way.

Pissarro and Cézanne became firm friends, painting the same scenes side by side.

Even at the time commentators could see the difference with Cézanne applying paint in broad, heavy brushstrokes, and becoming ever more interested, less by light than by the geometric forms buried in nature, increasingly seeing the world as made of blocks and chunks and rectangles and rhomboids of pure colour – paving the way for Cubism and much modern art. His style diverged from the group just as Impressionism was becoming more accepted, by critics and public. He resigned from the group in 1887.

Neo-impressionism is the name given to the post-impressionist work of Georges Seurat (1859-91), Paul Signac (1863-1935) and their followers who used contemporary optical theory to try to take Impressionism to the next level. Seurat developed a theory called Divisionism (which he called chromoluminarism) the notion of creating a painting not from fluid brush strokes but from thousands of individual dots of colour. Seurat used contemporary colour theory and detailed colour wheels to work out how to place dots of contrasting colour next to each other in order to create the maximum clarity and luminosity. The better-known technique of pointillism refers just to the use of dots to build up a picture, without the accompanying theory dictating how the dots should be of carefully contrasting colours.

There follow 120 very small, full colour reproductions of key paintings by the main members of the movement (and some more peripheral figures). Each picture is on the right hand page, with text about the title, date, painter and a one-page analysis on the page opposite. Supremely practical and useful to flick through. Here’s a list of the painters and the one or two most striking things I learned:

  • Eugène Boudin (1) The landscape painter Monet credited with inspiring him to paint landscapes.
  • Manet (15) I love Manet for his striking use of black, for his use of varying shades of white but he is not a totally convincing painter. His two or three masterpieces are exceptions. I struggle with the perspective or placing of figures in Dejeuner sur l’herbe, particularly the woman in the lake who seems bigger and closer than the figures in the foreground and is a giant compared to the rowing boat, and the way the lake water is tilting over to the left. He was awful at painting faces – Inside the cafe, Blonde woman with bare breasts. The body of the Olympia is sensational but her badly modelled head looks stuck on. In 1874 he began experimenting with the Impressionists’ technique i.e. lighter tones and out of doors, not that convincingly (The barge).
  • Frederic Bazille (2) studied with Monet, Renoir and Sisley but on this showing never quit a highly realistic style – Family reunion.
  • Monet (16) without a doubt the god of the movement and the core practitioner of Impressionism, produced hundreds of masterpieces while slowly fascinatingly changing and evolving his technique. The big surprise was an early work, Women in the garden (1867) which shows what a staggeringly good realistic artist he could have been: look at the detail on the dresses! Of all the impressionist works here I was most struck by the modest brilliance of the water and reflections in The bridge at Argenteuil (1874).
  • Alfred Sisley (6) was the English Impressionist. Always hard up, he persisted in the core Impressionist style. I was struck by Misty morning (1874) and Snow at Louveciennes (1878).
  • Camille Pissarro (14) Ten years older than Monet, he quickly took to the Impressionist style (an open-mindedness which led him, in the 1880s, to adopt Seurat’s new invention of pointillism). Pissarro is the only one of the group who exhibited at all 8 Impressionist exhibitions. I was bowled over by Hoar frost (1873). I too have walked muddy country lanes in winter where the ridges of churned up mud are coated with frost and the puddles are iced over, while a weak bright winter sun illuminates the landscape.
  • Renoir (15) Everyone knows the depictions of happy Parisians dancing at outdoor cafés under a dappled summer light. Set next to the landscapes of Monet, Sisley and Pissarro you can see straightaway that Renoir was fascinated by the human figure and was an enthusiastic portrayer of faces. I like Dance in the country (1883) for the extremely strong depiction of the man, an amazing depiction of all the shades of black to be found in a man’s black suit and shoes. I was startled to learn that, in the mid-1880s, dissatisfied with Impressionism, he took trips abroad and returned from Italy determined to paint in a more austere classical style. The plait (1884) anticipates 20th century neo-classicism, and is not at all what you associate with Renoir.
  • Armand Guillaumin (2) from a working class background, he met the others at art school, exhibited in the Salon des Refusés show, but never had a large output.
  • Edgar Degas (17) Having visited and revisited the Degas exhibition at the National Gallery, I am convinced Degas was a god of draughtsmanship. It’s interesting that he lobbied hard for the Impressionists and organised the critical first exhibition, but always denied he was one. Skipping over the obvious masterpieces I was struck by the faces, especially the far left face, of The orchestra at the opera (1868). It shows his characteristic bunching up of objects. And the quite fabulous Blue dancers (1897).
  • Gustave Caillebotte (3) a naval engineer turned artist. The only link with the Impressionist style I can make out is his frank depiction of contemporary life. But the dabs and rough brushwork, leaving blank canvas, obsession with sunlight and creating form out of colour alone – none of that seems on show here. Street in Paris in the rain (1877). Very striking and distinctive but I’m surprised to find him in the same pages as Sisley or Pissarro.
  • Berthe Morisot (6) on the evidence here, painted lots of women in quiet domestic poses. Young girl at the ball (1875)
  • Mary Cassatt (5) More scenes of quiet domestic life, some of which eerily prefigure the same kind of rather bland domestic style of the early 20th century. Young mother sewing (1900)
  • Paul Cézanne (16) Yesterday I visited the exhibition of Cézanne Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, so those 50 or so portraits are ringing in my memory, along with knowledge of how he painted subjects in series, the style he developed of painting in kinds of blocks or slabs of colours, which bring out the geometric implications of his subjects, and his playing with perspective i.e. the three or four components of even a simple portrait will be depicted as if from different points of view, subtly upsetting the composition – The smoker (1890). Among the brown portraits and orangey still lifes, a dazzling riot of green stood out – Bridge over the pond (1896) though it, too, is made out of his characteristic blocks of (generally) diagonal brushstrokes, clustered into groups which suggest blocks or ‘chunks’, giving all his mature works that odd ‘monumental’ look, almost as if they’ve been sculpted out of colour more than painted smoothly.
  • Seurat (2) 19 years younger than Monet (born in 1859 to Monet’s 1840), Seurat was not an Impressionist, but exhibited with them in 1886. His highly intellectual theory of Divisionism divided the group, causing big arguments. Seurat produced some highly distinctive and classic images before dying tragically young, aged 31.

This is a very handy survey, a useful overview of 120 works which remind the reader a) how varied the Impressionists were b) who were the core flag-wavers (Monet, Sisley, Pissarro) c) who were the outriders (Manet, Degas) and above all, d) what scores and scores of wonderful, enduring masterpieces they created.

Related links

1 Comment
by Simon on December 11, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Art, Biography, Books, European History
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on December 11, 2017

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/impressionists-antonia-cunningham/

Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck @ the National Gallery

The germ of the idea came following Lucien Freud’s death in 2011 when heirs and curators had to deal with the collection of other artists’ works which Freud had accumulated over a long life. His collection prompted the question, What did he collect and why? And how, if at all, did the items in his collection influence his own practice? Which in turn gave rise to thinking about the personal collections of other eminent painters throughout history: How have painters drawn inspiration from the examples of their predecessors’ subject matter, treatment and style, which they happened to own?

Hence this exhibition selects eight famous artist-collectors and, as far as possible, not only explains why they collected, but gives us examples of works from their collections, along with their thoughts and writings on the act of collecting.

The eight artists chosen are, in reverse chronological order: Lucien Freud, Matisse, Edgar Degas, Sir Frederick Leighton, George Frederick Watts, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Anthony van Dyck.

Thus the ten or so rooms of the show bring together, according to the National Gallery website, ‘more than eighty works spanning over five hundred years of art history, from Freud’s 2002 Self Portrait: Reflection to Bellini’s Agony in the Garden of about 1465′.

English

The first thing to notice is that only two of the list aren’t English (van Dyck becoming a sort of naturalised Englishman and Freud, though born in Berlin, taking British citizenship).

Following from this is the quick realisation, from just considering the first room, that a number of these paintings already hang in the National Gallery. A lot of these works you could see any day of the week for free. In other words, this is a canny way of displaying a lot of the NG’s collection but in a new and interesting context. On the other hand, nearly half the eighty works are on loan from elsewhere: Paris galleries for the Impressionists, from private collections and from HM Queen for some of the earlier paintings. Seen from this angle, the exhibition is a genuine opportunity to see works rarely if ever displayed in England.

In fact, the section on Lawrence goes further to make the point that Lawrence acted as advisor to several notable collectors, including Sir George Beaumont and John Julius Angerstein. Both of these men donated their collections at death to the British government, collections which formed the kernel of the National Gallery collection. So there is a side strand about the artist-collector Lawrence, who advised the aristocratic collectors, whose collections formed the basis of the collection of the gallery we’re standing in.

Chronology

In a familiar curator’s conceit the rooms and artists are arranged in reverse chronological order, starting with Freud (d.2011) and ending with van Dyck (d.1641). But, being old-fashioned or unafraid of curators’ fancies as well as knowing that I prefer older paintings, I simply began at the end – with the ‘last’ room, the van Dyck Room – and proceeded to ‘do’ the exhibition in reverse i.e. correct, chronological order.

Van Dyck (1599 to 1641)

Tate and the National Gallery have a lot of van Dyck’s because, although born in Antwerp (modern Belgium) van Dyck was invited to London by King Charles I in 1632 and stayed there until his death in 1641, making a living as a very successful portrait painter of the Royal Court and aristocracy.

The curators show how Titian’s use of stone steps allowed him to create a dynamic positioning of the bodies in The Vendramin Family, venerating a Relic of the True Cross (1550?) and this lesson was well learned by Van Dyck as can be seen by his use of stone steps for similar purpose of posing the figures in Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart (1632).

A rarely seen van Dyck is on loan from the Queen’s collection, which again shows the importance of classical architecture/references in this kind of painting. Here the broken column between the two men symbolises the death of the wife of Thomas Killigrew (on the left) after just a few years of marriage. He is wearing her wedding ring on a black bracelet around his wrist and a silver cross of mourning hangs on his chest.

Thomas Killigrew and William, Lord Crofts (?), 1638 by Anthony van Dyck. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016

Thomas Killigrew and William, Lord Crofts (?) (1638) by Anthony van Dyck © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016

On a more intimate scale the show compares one of van Dyck’s self portraits with Titian’s Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo (about 1510), comparing the similar positioning of body (away from the watcher) with head turned back. Note the way van Dyck is turning his back and lowering his cloak, in a way which would be flirtatious in a female nude, but in this painting the gesture a) reveals his skill at catching the play of light on the folds of black silk of his shirt and b) the great big golden chain around his neck: I am a brilliant artist and I am rich.

Self Portrait by Anthony van Dyck (about 1629) Lent Anonymously © Photo courtesy of the owner

Self Portrait by Anthony van Dyck (about 1629) Lent Anonymously © Photo courtesy of the owner

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723 to 1792)

Self Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (about 1780) © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond

Self Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (about 1780) © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond

Reynolds took himself immensely seriously (as you can tell from this self-portrait, posing with a bust supposedly by Michelangelo) making himself into the most successful portraitist of his day, dedicated to studying the European masters in order to raise the standards of British painting, helping to found and acting as first president of the Royal Academy. No surprise, then, that he amassed a large collection of European Old Masters to act as models and inspiration.

What comes over strongest in this section is the widespread misattribution of paintings in the past. The painting of Leda and the Swan which Reynolds thought was by Michelangelo is not now attributed to him at all. Reynolds thought a Bellini Agony in the Garden was by Mantegna; he thought van Dyck’s portrait of George Gage was a portrait of Rubens. Wrong in each case. Apparently, after his death, when his huge collection was assessed for sale, a contemporary described it as ‘swarming’ with fakes.

In a shock aside, the commentary also casually mentions that Reynolds routinely touched up paintings in his collection ‘to improve them’! That must be a risk very specifically related to falling into the hands of an artist who thinks he is qualified to ‘retouch’ a Renaissance masterpiece.

Reynolds didn’t collect many contemporaries but made an exception for his only equal, Thomas Gainsborough. A specific example shown here is the striking Girl with Pigs of 1782. Apparently, it’s a good example of the late trend of Gainsborough to paint landscapes with figures which Reynolds called his ‘fancy pictures’.

Fancy picture refers to a type of eighteenth century painting that depict scenes of everyday life but with elements of imagination, invention or storytelling. The name fancy pictures was given by Sir Joshua Reynolds to the supreme examples of the genre produced by Thomas Gainsborough in the decade before his death in 1788, particularly those that featured peasant or beggar children in particular. (‘Fancy picture’ on the Tate website)

So it’s the presence of the peasant girl, not the pigs, that makes it ‘fancy.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769 to 1830)

I was blown away by the big exhibition of Lawrence’s portraits at the National Portrait Gallery back in 2010. Now I learn that he was a compulsive collector, amassing some 5,000 works of which 4,300 were drawings. It helped a lot that the European art market was awash with art following the disruptions of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. War > plunder. ‘Twas ever thus.

The exhibition contrasted an enormous Renaissance cartoon he owned with the composition of the three figures in his portrait of the Barings.

Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, John Baring, and Charles Wall by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1806-1807) Private collection © Photo courtesy of the owner

Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, John Baring, and Charles Wallby Sir Thomas Lawrence (1806 to 1807) Private collection © Photo courtesy of the owner

To paraphrase the critic Richard Dorment, art historians love this triple portrait because it so cleverly incorporates references to group portraits by Titian and Reynolds. No doubt.

Going beyond the poses of the figures – which actually appeared a little clumsy to me – I was struck by the way classical pillars are included in this style of painting to add grandeur and authority – and to act as a doorway onto a distant landscape representing ‘the world’ which the rich people in the portrait are planning and controlling.

I much preferred his august and amused self-portrait, which I can’t find anywhere on Google images 😦

George Frederick Watts (1817 to 1904)

Watts is always touted as a giant of late Victorian painting but I think he’s by far the worst painter from the period. I once went on a pilgrimage to the Watts Gallery in Compton, a village near Guildford, and was desperately disappointed. His vaguely allegorical figures are mostly dark, brown and gloomy. He had a big collection and the show compares four tall slender paintings by the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot depicting four stages of the day – Morning, Noon, Evening and Night – with Watt’s own Autumn from 1903.

Autumn by George Frederic Watts (1901-1903) © Watts Gallery

Autumn by George Frederic Watts (1901 to 1903) © Watts Gallery

Sir Frederic Leighton (1830 to 1896)

Leighton and Watts are made to share quite a small room, which features a small self portrait by Leighton, as well as some works from his collection. In my opinion, Leighton deserves a room to himself featuring more of his work. The National Gallery has plenty as does Tate. Maybe it was too big to squeeze in.

Edgar Degas (1834 to 1917)

Odd that the two Victorians were squeezed together in one pokey room, whereas the collection of French Impressionist Edgar Degas sprawls over two large rooms, the biggest space dedicated to one painter-collector.

Degas was notorious for his addiction to buying art. He beggared himself in a compulsive need to acquire works by his famous contemporaries, often snapping up Impressionist works as soon as they were finished. And so one room was devoted to the Impressionists in Degas’s collection, including the usual suspects such Sisley, Pissarro and Gauguin, as well as the enormous work The Execution of Emperor Maximilian by Édouard Manet (1867 to 1869) which, after it was (inexplicably) cut up into sections by Manet’s wife’s son, Degas tracked down to various Parisian art dealer’s premises and partly reassembled.

The Execution of Maximilian by Edouard Manet (1867-8) © The National Gallery, London

The Execution of Maximilian by Edouard Manet (1867 to 1868) © The National Gallery, London

In the second Degas room were mainly works by the two 19th century painters he reverenced, Delacroix for his use of colour, and Ingres for line. Apparently the young Degas met the old Ingres who told him, ‘Draw lines, young man, draw lines’. A man after my own heart.

In the welter of works in these two rooms the one that stood out for me was a portrait of Francis Poictevin by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1887). I very much like the solid line drawing, the draughtsmanship and the character which is captured of this aesthete and Symbolist writer.

Francis Poictevin by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1887) © Tate, London. Photo The National Gallery, London

Francis Poictevin by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1887) © Tate, London. Photo: The National Gallery, London

Henri Matisse (1869 to 1954)

Matisse also collected works by older masters and contemporaries. Dominating his room is the famous Combing the Hair (‘La Coiffure) by Degas, which Matisse owned for 16 years or so before selling it onto the National Gallery (which is why it’s here). La Coiffure manages to be a masterpiece of both line and colour, the dark outline of the figures masterfully suggesting their corporeality and motion, but the deliberate use of shades of red and orange creating a sumptuous and dynamic image.

Away from this super-dominating image were two smaller works, which I liked. A small Gauguin, Young Man with a Flower behind his Ear (1891).

Young Man with a Flower behind his Ear by Paul Gauguin (1891) Property from a distinguished Private Collection, courtesy of Christie's. Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images

Young Man with a Flower behind his Ear by Paul Gauguin (1891) Property from a distinguished Private Collection, courtesy of Christie’s. Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images

And it’s well known that Matisse and Picasso kept up a fierce rivalry throughout their lives. Thus the room contains a powerful Picasso, Portrait of Dora Maar from 1942.

Portrait of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso (1942) Courtesy The Elkon Gallery, New York City © Succession Picasso/DACS 2016. Photo courtesy of the owner

Portrait of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso (1942) Courtesy The Elkon Gallery, New York City © Succession Picasso/DACS 2016. Photo courtesy of the owner

Lucien Freud (1922 to 2011)

And so, feeling rather exhausted by this embarras de richesses, the visitor arrives at what the curators intend to be the first room and which contains half a dozen works owned by the émigré German painter, Lucien Freud. Pride of place is given to Italian Woman, or Woman with Yellow Sleeve (L’Italienne) by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (about 1870), which I didn’t particularly like, finding the whole effect misjudged and drab.

And, although it’s on the main poster outside and all over the Tube, the gallery doesn’t provide for press use a copy of Freud’s self-portrait from 2002, striking, with the paint over his nose and veined hands looking as if it has bubbled with smallpox.

Having supped full of these horrors I strolled back through to the ‘end’ room to cleanse my palate with the smooth and lofty images of Sir Anthony van Dyke – though they themselves are not untainted by war and destruction. They just don’t know it yet…

Related links

Reviews of other National Gallery exhibitions

Leave a comment
by Simon on August 27, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Art, Exhibition, Sculpture
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on August 27, 2016

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/08/27/painters-paintings-from-freud-to-van-dyck-the-national-gallery/

Inventing Impressionism @ The National Gallery

Popular

This is the biggest exhibition of Impressionist art in London for 20 years. It was packed. There was a long queue well before it opened at 10am and by 11am it was difficult to see the paintings without people in the way.

The commentary, booklet, audioguide and wall panels all emphasised how revolutionary Impressionism was and what a complete break it represented with official French Salon art (all true enough – there was some dull pre-Impressionist art here to compare it with). But nothing really addressed the more obvious point: why is Impressionist art so incredibly popular today? Why are paintings, once ridiculed as the inept daubs of idiots and incompetents, now sold for tens of millions and plastered over countless chocolate box lids, calendars, posters etc?

Is it because: Impressionist art is colourful and naive, it doesn’t require a knowledge of classical myth or history, it doesn’t depict the intimidatingly rich and powerful, and it is mostly set in a generalised rural idyll – sunshine on fields of poppies and ponds full of lilies? Because it is an escape from anything solid, defined, intellectual or demanding?

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Two Sisters (On the Terrace), 1881 Oil on canvas 100.4 x 80.9 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection 1933.455 © The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

Two Sisters (On the Terrace) (1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir © The Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Durand-Ruel

The show isn’t actually about Impressionism the art movement: it is about one man – the Paris art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. A pretty convincing case is made for him being the inventor or godfather of Impressionism, the man who bought up the early works of all the major Impressionists, as well as organising one-man shows for the artists, opening galleries in Paris and later, America, to showcase their works, paying the poorer ones salaries to allow them to work, whose efforts pretty much single-handedly enabled many of the painters to survive and flourish, who helped to create the narrative that Impressionism is the founding movement of Modern Art and who, along the way, invented many of the methods which underpin the modern art market. A really impressive achievement.

Thus the first room features large wall-size photos of Durand-Ruel’s living room in Paris, liberally hung with the great paintings he owned, and the curators have tried to reunite as many of these paintings as possible in order to recreate the scene. Similarly, the last room contains photos of the key 1905 Grafton exhibition in London and, again, the curators have tried to hang a lot of paintings from that exhibition in the same space.

This exhibition is not a history of the theory or practice of Impressionism. It is about how one man more than any other spotted it, identified it, funded and sustained it, marketed and promoted it, defined and made it what we think it is today.

Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market

To quote the guide, when Durand-Ruel took over his father’s art dealership in 1865 he immediately began applying the techniques of high finance: he found backers and partners for his purchases, sought exclusivity deals, worked to push up prices at auction and brought his product before the public at carefully staged group and one-man shows.

For example, when he was introduced to Manet in his studio, he bought all the available paintings on the spot – 23 paintings in one day – for 35,000 francs (nearly 40 times the pay of the average French worker). By cornering the market (in admittedly unpopular artists) he realised he could leak them onto the market at inflated prices.

I didn’t like any of the Manets on display here – Moonlight at the Port of Bolougne or The Battle of the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama. The audio commentary itself pointed out there is something wrong with the perspective and details of the still life The Salmon. Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862) looks, to me, cramped and badly composed, excessively black and, when you look closely, really badly painted.

Edouard Manet, Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862) The National Gallery, London, Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, 1917 © The National Gallery, London

Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862) by Edouard Manet © The National Gallery, London

The one-man show

In 1883 Durand-Ruel pioneered the idea of the one-man art show, staging a series of month-long, solo exhibitions by Boudin, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley. He ensured they were retrospectives i.e. showed the progression or evolution in the artist’s style, and accompanied the shows with advertising campaigns, provided images for the Press to print and publicise, and hosted lavish private views to encourage wealthy buyers.

Selling the ‘series’

This led naturally to collaboration with Monet on his ‘series’ paintings i.e. when Monet set about painting series of versions of the same subject. One of the first was the Poplar Series, 24 canvases of a set of poplar trees on the bend in the Epte river. In February 1892 Durand-Ruel displayed 15 of them in his gallery, facilitating their critical reception and their sale. Five of Monet’s poplar paintings are brought together here, in one of those recreations beloved of curators.

30 years ago I hitch-hiked to Rouen just to see the facade of the cathedral which Monet had painted in a series of paintings which I worshipped as a schoolboy. The paintings magically capture the imposing Gothic architecture in the differing light of different times of day. But now, all the poplar tree paintings in this exhibition left me cold. Either I’ve changed or this poplar series is just not as good. The reproduction below makes the source painting seem much smoother and more finished than it is in real life. In the flesh all the poplar paintings seemed to me lumpy and bumpy and unconvincing.

Claude Monet, Poplars in the Sun (1891) The National Museum of Western Art, Matsukata Collection, Tokyo P.1959-0152 © National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Poplars in the Sun (1891) by Claude Monet © National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Apart from all the other factors – could the enduring popularity of the Impressionists have something to do with the fact that the reproductions – in posters, calendars, chocolate boxes, biscuit tin lids etc – render small and smooth and seamless images which, when seen in the flesh, and much much larger, are surprisingly pock-marked and blodgy?

Bad paintings

In fact, the show contains an unusually large number of bad paintings. I certainly learned a lot about Durand-Ruel and the birth of art marketing, but an unintended outcome of the show was to make me feel quite a lot of sympathy for the early critics of Impressionism. Quotes from these poor benighted souls are printed large on the walls and included in the wall panels for our derision: what philistines! How could they not recognise the shimmering wonders of Monet’s water lilies?

Well, because a lot of the recognised masterpieces of Impressionism weren’t created for another 10, 20 or 30 years after the critics wrote these words. All the critics could do was react to the paintings put in front of them in 1872, 1874, 1876 – and, as this exhibition conclusively proves, a lot of these were genuinely poor, in terms of composition and technique.

Even the audioguide admitted that at first glance Green Park, London by Claude Monet looks so bad it might have been painted by a child. Hanging Out The Laundry To Dry (1875) by Berthe Morisot: is this not an amaterush ‘daub’? I thought I was an unquestioning fan of Dégas – the show features the fabulous Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando and a number of so-so ballet studies – but this show revealed how many bad and awkward paintings he made, as well: Horses before the stands may be famous but I find it gawky and unappealing; and surely Peasant Girls Bathing In The Sea At Dusk is just really bad.

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Peasant Girls bathing in the Sea at Dusk (1869-75) Private Collection, Ireland © Photo courtesy of the owner

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Peasant Girls bathing in the Sea at Dusk (1869 to 1875) Private Collection, Ireland © Photo courtesy of the owner

The final room is dominated by a full length portrait of Eva Gonzalès, herself an artist, by Manet (1870). I’ve been spoilt by recently visiting exhibitions of portraits by John Singer Sargent and beautiful late-Victorian female portraiture at the Leighton House Museum – in comparison with those artists, I thought this was a poor painting – look at the face, the heart of any portrait, look at those bug eyes.

Nonetheless, Eva Gonzalès starred in a ground-breaking exhibition Durand-Ruel organised at the Grafton Galleries in London in 1905. It was curated with his usual entrepreneurial flair, arranged to tell the story of how the movement evolved from tentative early steps, then burst into maturity with masterpieces by Dégas, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir et al.

The 1905 show had far-reaching influence in this country, helping to popularise the loose sunlit approach to subject matter and style, and establishing Impressionism as the forebear of all Modern Art. I know people who not only loathe Impressionism but hate the way its continuing dominance overshadows far more interesting developments which took place in other European countries, specifically Germany and Scandinavia.

Good paintings

I found a lot of the Impressionist works on display here surprisingly poor. Many of them really did look like the unfinished daubs contemporary critics castigated. But with around 80 paintings on show, there were, of course, plenty of others which are a joy to see.

I think Renoir emerged as the most consistent artist here: he crystallised his vision early on and thereafter poured forth an apparently limitless number of chocolate box people in sunny settings. His Parisians socialising in the open air, his portraits of smiling women and children, his dancing couples, all have an indisputable joie de vivre to them.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Bougival (1883) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Picture Fund © 2014 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Bougival (1883) © 2014 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Impressionism was about taking the train out of Paris to the still-unspoilt suburbs with newly-available tubes of ready-mixed oil paints, and painting in the open air, and so there are a lot of depictions of Paris’s suburbs, maybe touched with slight signs of industrialism, with railway bridges or distant factory chimneys. Not too much, though.

This work by Sisley, daub or not? Does the light airy sunlit feel compensate for the lack of finish and draughtsmanship? Does the blue sky compensate for the bridge looking wonky? I like clear lines and solid draughtsmanship so, for me, No. For other people, who respond to the overall feel and warm impression an image evokes in them, well, Yes.

Sisley, Alfred, The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne (1872) Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr., 1964 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne (1872) by Alfred Sisley © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

And there were plenty of blurry landscapes by Pissarro or Monet, including several old favourites which are part of the National Gallery’s regular collection, a number depicting London during the artists’ exiles here to escape the catastrophic Franco-Prussian War (1870 to 1871). Easy-going nostalgic reminders of what London looked like in the halcyon fantasy-land these artists created and which so many of us hearken back to.

Camille Pissarro, The Avenue, Sydenham (1871) The National Gallery, London, Bought, 1984 © The National Gallery, London

The Avenue, Sydenham (1871) by Camille Pissarro © The National Gallery, London

What I liked

Ezra Pound said that, at the end of the day, all a critic can do is point at something and say ‘I like that’ and then attempt to explain why. I was surprised how many of the paintings on display here I actively disliked. It was a genuine revelation how poor some of the paintings by all these famous names turn out to be.

More or less the only work I really liked – that I could imagine having in my house and seeing every day – was St Paul’s from the Surrey Side by Charles-François Daubigny (1817 to 1878), a predecessor of the Impressionists. Not a blue-skied escapist landscape but the big bad city under no illusions. Below is a dark and rather misleading reproduction of it; in the flesh it felt deeper and more evocative. It looks forward to Whistler‘s later impressions of London.

Though blurry, though painted en plein air, it still has an underlying accuracy of draughtsmanship and confidence of line which is what I enjoy in art and found missing in so many of the other paintings on show here.

Charles-François Daubigny St Paul's from the Surrey Side (1871-3) Oil on canvasThe National Gallery, London Presented by friends of Mr. J.C.J. Drucker, 1912 © The National Gallery, London

St Paul’s from the Surrey Side (1871 to 1873) by Charles-François Daubigny © The National Gallery, London

Could the success of the Impressionists not only be down to the fact that their paintings reproduce very well across the range of products and channels the twentieth century invented – but that their rivals and predecessors, the official Salon artists’ works, reproduce very badly, often looking as dark and dingy as the misleading reproduction above?

Promotional video

Related links

Reviews

Reviews of other National Gallery exhibitions

Leave a comment
by Simon on May 9, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Art, Exhibition, France
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on May 9, 2015

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/inventing-impressionism-the-national-gallery/

Making Colour @ The National Gallery

This is one of the most purely didactic exhibitions I’ve been to. Usually, the curators tell you lots about the movement or biography of whoever’s featured, but you are essentially left to decide whether you enjoy the art by yourself.

Making Colour is more like a lecture, or a short degree course, compressed into half a dozen rooms. It is a fascinating, thorough and rather exhausting explanation of how coloured oil paints were and are made, where the raw ingredients came from in medieval and renaissance Europe, and then how discoveries by chemists throughout the 19th century introduced new shades and tones to the artist’s palette which are still in use today.

There are several strands or themes:

The growth in scientific understanding

Of how the human eye sees colour, how it is detected by the cones and rods in our retinas – there is a short film about perception in a cinema to one side of the gallery, which goes into colour blindness and the dramatic difference the ambient light we see a painting in has on our perception of it: thought-provoking as, for most of their history most of these paintings will have been seen either by partial daylight or candlelight  certainly not by the flat fluorescent light of modern galleries.

Theories of colour

I.e. how colours complement each other. It was only in the late 1600s that Isaac Newton broke white light up into the spectrum, and placed the study of light and colours on a scientific basis. Various art theorists produced lists or descriptions of spectrums, often arranged into colour wheels.

Illustration from 'The Natural System of Colours Wherein is displayed the regular and beautiful Order and Arrangement, Arising from the Three Primitives, Red, Blue and Yellow, The manner in which each colour is formed, and its Composition by Moses Harris (1769 2nd edition 1776)

Illustration from ‘The Natural System of Colours Wherein is displayed the regular and beautiful Order and Arrangement, Arising from the Three Primitives, Red, Blue and Yellow, The manner in which each colour is formed, and its Composition by Moses Harris (1769 2nd edition 1776)

Complementary colours

Apparently, the most influential work on colour was published by the dyer Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1839, not only containing colour wheels but systematically showing how colours opposite each other on the wheel complement or enhance each other. These ideas had a big impact on the Impressionists and post-Impressionists and the show demonstrates how with two very different paintings embodying the theory.

Renoir’s The Skiff (1875) deliberately contrasts blues of sky and river, with the vibrant orange of the boat. You can see from the colour wheel above that these colours are directly opposite each other, and this helps understand why the colours of both seem so bright and vibrant. (The other example is Van Gogh’s Crabs, see below.)

The Skiff by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1875) © The National Gallery, London

The Skiff by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1875) © The National Gallery, London

Chemistry

Chemistry turns out to have played a vital role: during the 19th century industrial chemists in particular were researching ways of generating effective dyes etc for industrial purposes and these discoveries – often complete accidents – were quickly translated into new shades available as paints. Thus Renoir is using two new paints, cobalt blue and chrome orange, which were invented in the 19th century.

Paint availability

Until the mid-1700s painters had to mix powdered pigments with either oil or egg themselves, to create the paint they were going to use. This was a fiddly business and not suited to doing outdoors where paint often dried too quickly and so almost all painting was done inside, in studios or churches etc. In the mid-1700s there was a breakthrough of sorts when ready-mixed paints became available in pig’s bladders, allowing greater outdoor painting. But it was not till the mid-1800s that ready-mixed paints became available in tin tubes which were light and easy to transport anywhere.

This technical breakthrough in paint’s portability and convenience contributed to the movement in France to paint out of doors, the movement which came to be known as Impressionism.

A room per colour

How to tackle such a massive subject? Well, the National Gallery has given a room to each of the major colours and in that room explains the history of how those colours were made, from earliest times. And each of these colour rooms has a selection from the full breadth of the National Gallery’s collection, illustrating the different shades of blue, red, green etc as actually applied by the world’s greatest painters in a wide selection of paintings from the 1400s to around 1900.

A personal selection

Rather than rewrite the entire exhibition catalogue, I’ve made a personal selection of favourite paintings, with what they tell us about the sources and uses of colours in their time.

Purple

This medieval painting is used to demonstrate a few aspects of colour. 1. It was part of an altar piece on public display in a church, therefore the brightness of the colours helps bring out the clarity of the composition, making the image easier to read (almost like a cartoon). 2. The image uses purple, usually associated with royalty, for the executioner’s dress. At this early period purple was made by mixing ultramarine with red ‘lakes’ and white.

The Beheading of Saint Margaret (?) about 1409 by Gherardo di Jacopo Starnina © The National Gallery, London

The Beheading of Saint Margaret (?) about 1409 by Gherardo di Jacopo Starnina © The National Gallery, London

Blue

This is a stunning use of the main source of blue in the early Modern period, ultramarine. As the name indicates this was sourced from lapis lazuli rock mined in what is now Afghanistan and brought to Europe along trade routes. By the time it reached Europe this material was more expensive than gold, and is therefore an indication of the wealth of the sponsor of the painting. Its value led to its association with the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven.

But these raw pigments could only be converted into paint by mixing with a medium of which there were two common ones:

  • mixing pigment with egg creates tempera which gives a flat matt affect
  • mixing pigment with oil produces varieties of glaze

The stunning blue of this painting is testament to Sassoferrato’s mastery of the techniques of mixing as much as to his eye and ability at composition.

History of blue

Early painters who couldn’t afford ultramarine used Azurite, cheaper but with a greenish hue, or smalt, a blue glass pigment, more affordable but unstable. In the early 18th century Prussian blue was discovered and could be manufactured in bulk, but ultramarine remained the gold standard of blues. In the early 1800s a method was developed for creating a synthetic cobalt blue, and then an artificial version of ultramarine was developed: French ultramarine is still used to this day.

The Virgin in Prayer (1640-50) by Sassoferrato © The National Gallery, London

The Virgin in Prayer (1640 to 1650) by Sassoferrato © The National Gallery, London

Yellow

Yellow was sourced either from earth ochres or or from compounds of lead tin and antimony. In this Gainsborough from 1756 the dress of the painter’s daughter on the right is done with a shade called Naples yellow, mixed with lead white to create the lighter areas. The panel tells us Gainsborough mixed it well and it has lasted, but Naples yellow contained impurities that, over time, can turn orange or even pink.

The Painter’s Daughters chasing a Butterfly (about 1756) by Thomas Gainsborough © The National Gallery, London

The Painter’s Daughters chasing a Butterfly (about 1756) by Thomas Gainsborough © The National Gallery, London

The show includes the paintbox of JMW Turner, found in his studio after his death in 1851. It is a fascinating insight into the actual practical tools of the painter’s trade, showing the pigment bottles and the oils he used to mix them with. Incredible to believe Turner created his marvellous, transcendent works with such a small range of pigments available to him.

Paintobx belonging to Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) © Tate, London

Paintobx belonging to Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) © Tate, London

Green

Green was sourced from verdigris, a kind of clay, or from green earth, a tarnishing of copper. It is fascinating to learn that Renaissance painters often used green earth in particular as the underlay for skin, but the whites and pinks painted on top sometimes fade to reveal the underlay and this is why the faces of many renaissance paintings have a greenish tinge. Later artists were able to take advantage of the inventions of emerald green and viridian.

This stunning painting by Van Gogh of two crabs is used to show a) the vibrant greens and ready-made oil paints available to a late Victorian artist and b) the artist’s application of colour theory. As well as the depiction of its subject, it is a study in complementary colours, for the vivid greens of the background lie opposite the reddy oranges on the colour wheel.

It is striking to see how the same colour theory has been applied with radically different results by Renoir (1875) and van Gogh (1889). Figurative though the image is, it’s clear that for van Gogh experimenting with colour has become the prime focus. He is quoted as saying, ‘a painter had better start from the colours on his palette rather than the colours of Nature’, and that sounds.

Two Crabs (1889) by Vincent van Gogh © Private Collection

Two Crabs (1889) by Vincent van Gogh © Private Collection

Right at the end of the 19th century Dégas was experimenting with colour as this fantasia in red demonstrates. It uses bright red vermilion for the dress and curtain, along with red lead and orange-red, with Venetian reds for the background and the brusher’s blouse made from red ‘lakes’ mixed with white.

The painting can be analysed in terms of colour theory, in terms of the way the actual available paints have been mixed by the artist. Also biographically, as towards the end of his life Dégas was losing his sight before going completely blind, and the intensity of the reds is possible over-compensation for his failing sight. And psychologically, for the contrast between the theoretically relaxing atmosphere of a woman having her hair combed, contrasting with the emotional impact the image actually makes on the spectator, of the scene being somehow intense and highly charged.

Combing the Hair (1896) by Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas © The National Gallery, London

Combing the Hair (1896) by Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas © The National Gallery, London

Conclusion

Most people, me included, stroll round a gallery or exhibition deciding whether I like something on the basis of its subject matter, or on its immediate visual impact, its form and design.

The take-home message from this thorough and fascinating exhibition is that there is a huge extra dimension to art appreciation, a whole realm of appreciation based on a real understanding of the physical components of a painting; of the actual paints, the colours and pigments – and the theory of colours – which were available to the artist, which makes the attempt to understand their achievements a lot more complicated and demanding.

Related links

Reviews of other National Gallery exhibitions

1 Comment
by Simon on September 5, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Art, Exhibition
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on September 5, 2014

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/making-colour-the-national-gallery/

French artists during the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune (1870)

I have written elsewhere about:

These combined calamities seared the minds of a generation of Frenchmen and marked a watershed in the lives and careers of many of France’s most famous writers, artists and composers. Considering who and how and why is like taking a snapshot of an artistic generation, an X-ray of a nation’s soul:

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) Best-selling author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862), Hugo had spent the Second Empire period (1852-70) in exile in Jersey. Now he returned to be elected a member of the National Assembly, make impassioned speeches, write windy pamphlets and publish bombastic poems. When the Commune was declared, he wisely went back into exile (in Brussels) where he wrote the moving poem, Sur une barricade, on June 11, 1871.

Honoré Daumier (1808-79) Satirical cartoonist under the Second Empire, Daumier stayed in Paris throughout the siege and continued to publish bitter and highly political images. He was drafted onto Courbet’s Federation of Artists in September 1870, then onto the Commune’s Committee of Artists in April 1871, though never a Communard.

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) An established poet and critic, Gautier made his way back to Paris upon hearing of the Prussian advance on the capital. He remained with his family there throughout the invasion and the aftermath of the Commune.

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819-77) A notorious radical and freethinker, Courbet was the hugely influential ‘Father of Realism’ in Art in France. He established a Federation of Artists when the Empire fell, and went on to set up a Committee of Artists under the Commune. Although he managed to save Paris’ art museums from looting mobs, Courbet was a moving force behind demolishing the Vendôme Column in the square of the same name. Once the Commune was crushed, Courbet was sentenced in September 1871 to six months in prison and a fine of 500 francs. When it was proposed to recreate the Vendôme Column Courbet was condemned to pay the exorbitant costs. He fled to Switzerland where he continued to paint, and died of liver disease just as the cost of the re-erection was settled as 323,091 francs. Surprisingly, he didn’t leave any paintings or sketches of the war or Commune.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) The most famous literary novelist of his day, during the Franco-Prussian War Flaubert’s home was occupied by Prussian soldiers and he suffered a nervous breakdown.

Maxime du Camp (1822–1894) Literary journalist and travel writer, du Camp was elected a member of the French Academy in 1880 mainly due to his history of the Commune, Les Convulsions de Paris (1878–1880).

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (1822–1890) Organist and composer, Franck and his family suffered during the siege and Commune. Afterwards he was a leader of the movement to create a truly French art, an Ars Gallica which explains the tone of much of his music. In part this was a patriotic reaction against the heaviness of the music of the invader.

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) At the outbreak of war the painter Pissarro moved his family to Norwood, then a village on the southern edge of London. His early impressionist style did not do well but he met the Paris art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in London, who helped sell his art for the rest of his life. Durand-Ruel put him in touch with Monet, who was also in London during this period.

(In the spring of 2015 the National Gallery put on a blockbuster exhibition of Impressionist art as a tribute to Paul Durand-Ruel – the man who invented Impressionism.)

Monet and Pissarro both went to see the work of British landscape artists John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, which confirmed their belief that their style of open air painting gave the truest depiction of light and atmosphere, an effect that couldn’t be achieved in the studio alone.

During his stay Pissarro painted scenes at Sydenham and Norwood at a time when they were semi-rural and had only just been connected to London by railways. Twelve oil paintings date from his stay including The Avenue, Sydenham (now in the London National Gallery), Norwood Under the Snow, and Lordship Lane Station.

Pissarro is often credited with inventing Impressionism – the rough use of paint to capture plein air affects. He had produced some 1,500 paintings over the preceding 20 years, works which amounted to documentary evidence of the birth of Impressionism. But, tragically, when he returned to France after the Commune, Pissarro discovered that out of this huge oeuvre, only 40 had survived! The rest had been damaged or destroyed by the soldiers, who used them, among other things, as door mats or to wipe their boots with.

Back in Paris Pissarro got back in contact with the other artists of his generation – Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir and Degas – and helped establish a collective called the ‘Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs’. In 1874 Pissarro was the driving force behind the group’s first Exhibition, at which the critics ridiculed them for their ‘impressionism’ – and the name stuck.

Edouard Manet (1832-83) Godfather of the Impressionists, the thirty-eight-year-old Manet was in Paris during the Prussian siege and conscripted to be a member of the National Guard. As soon as the siege ended (in January 1871) he left town. In his absence his friends added his name to the ‘Fédération des artistes’ of the Paris Commune but he stayed away from Paris until after the semaine sanglante. He published some harrowing sketches of scenes from the war.

Edgar Dégas (1834–1917) At the outbreak of the War Dégas enlisted in the National Guard, where his duties left him little time for painting.

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) The organist and composer Saint-Saëns was relieved from fighting duty as a favourite of a relative of the Emperor Napoleon III. He fled to London when the Commune took power, as his fame and Society connections made him a possible target. Later that year he co-founded with Romain Bussine the ‘Société Nationale de Musique’ to promote a new and specifically French music. After the fall of the Commune, the Society premiered works by Fauré, César Franck, Édouard Lalo and Saint-Saëns himself, who became a powerful figure in shaping the future of French music.

Émile Zola (1840-92) Father of literary Realism, Zola published his only historical novel, Le Debacle, about the war, in 1892.

François-Auguste-René Rodin (1840–1917) When the war started Rodin was called up for the National Guard but he was soon released due to his near-sightedness. At the time he was working as a decorative sculptor and, as work dwindled due to the war, he took up an offer of work in Belgium where he lived for the next six years. None of his work refers directly to either the war or Commune.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) On the outbreak of the war Monet and his friend Pissarro fled to England. While there he studied the work of Constable and Turner and met the art dealer Durand-Ruel, who was to become one of the great champions of the Impressionists.

After the Commune had been suppressed (May 1871) Monet went to Holland for a spell, and then returned to France at the end of the year, settling in Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris. The next year he painted Impression, Sunrise (depicting Le Havre) which was shown in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. When critics used the title to deride him for his ‘impressionism’, he and his colleagues adopted the term as the name for their movement.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) During the Commune some Communards found Renoir painting on the banks of the River Seine, thought he was a spy and were about to throw him into the river when one of the most bloodthirsty leaders of the Commune, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. Rigault intervened and vouched for him. By this slender thread, Renoir was saved to go on to become one of the giants of Impressionism.

Paul Verlaine (1844-96) At the proclamation of the Third Republic the poet Verlaine joined the 160th battalion of the Garde Nationale, turning Communard on 18 March 1871. He became Head of the Press Bureau of the Central Committee of the Paris Commune. He escaped the deadly street fighting and went into hiding in the Pas-de-Calais. Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871 and, in September, received the first letter from Arthur Rimbaud with whom he was to have his passionate and ill-fated affair.

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845–1924) On the outbreak of war Fauré volunteered for military service and saw action at Le Bourget, Champigny and Créteil, for which he was awarded a Croix de Guerre. During the Commune Fauré escaped to Rambouillet where one of his brothers lived, and then travelled to Switzerland, where he took up a teaching post. Though some of his colleagues – including Saint-Saëns, Gounod and Franck – produced elegies and patriotic odes affected by the events, Fauré’s compositions from this period don’t overtly reflect the conflict. However, according to his biographer, his music does acquire ‘a new sombreness, a dark-hued sense of tragedy…evident mainly in his songs of this period including L’Absent, Seule! and La Chanson du pêcheur.’

Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) On the outbreak of war, 19-year-old Maupassant abandoned his law studies to volunteer for the army. He served first as a private in the field, and was later transferred through his father’s intervention to the quartermaster corps. Many of the short stories he published throughout the 1880s describe brutal or haunting episodes in the war.

1 Comment
by Simon on November 27, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Art, Books, Classical music, European History, French literature, History, War
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on November 27, 2012

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/french-artists-during-the-franco-prussian-war-and-the-commune/

%d bloggers like this: