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Title: French Painting of the 19th Century in the National Gallery of Art
Author: Grose Evans (1928-2000)
Release Date: April 16, 2019 [EBook #59288]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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_Cover illustration (see description on page 42)_:
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
_A Girl with a Watering Can_
Canvas. 39½ × 28¾ inches. Dated 1876
_Chester Dale Collection_
French Painting
of the 19th Century
in the
National Gallery of Art
by
Grose Evans
_Curator of Extension Services_
Washington, D. C.
_Copyright 1959_
Publications Fund
National Gallery of Art
_Washington, D. C.
Revised 1967_
_Designed, Engraved, and Printed
in the United States of America by
The Beck Engraving Company_
French Painting: 19th Century
The story of French painters during the nineteenth century is an
exciting one, colored by personal rivalries and revolutions in taste. In
the face of an indifferent or jeering public, artists often had to make
great sacrifices to achieve the sincere expression of their ideals.
Firmly established academic painters bitterly opposed all young artists
who tried to create new styles, and the inertia of popular taste lent
such authority to the Academy that artists could only be original at
their own peril.
The academic style grew out of the classical idealism of Jacques-Louis
David (page 13). He rose to fame during the French Revolution (1789-95)
by producing pictures with propaganda content and attained great
prominence as “the painter of the people.” Son of a Paris tradesman,
David had been fortunate enough to study painting in the French Royal
Academy. After four failures and an attempted suicide, he won the _Prix
de Rome_ and in 1774 was able to go to Italy, which was then considered
the fountainhead of art. There, during a ten-year stay, he reacted
violently against the gay, trivial style of painting that French
aristocrats had loved. Idolizing the ancient statues he saw in Rome, he
introduced a powerful Neo-Classical style and, after his return to
France, he reorganized the Academy to sanction only a sober and
“elevating” imitation of classical art. When Napoleon became emperor, in
1804, he appointed David his court painter and commissioned a series of
huge pictures illustrating imperial ceremonies. However, soon after the
Bourbon monarchy was restored, in 1814, David was exiled to Brussels,
where he spent his last years.
David’s style was continued and refined by his pupil J.-A.-Dominique
Ingres (page 15), whose father was a painter at Montauban. Ingres’
apprenticeship with David and eighteen years spent in Italy led Ingres
to paint with precise, sculpturesque draftsmanship and coldly calculated
color. To sustain the classical tradition, his subjects were usually
drawn from mythology and ancient history. After he returned to Paris, in
1824, Ingres’ ideal of perfectionism came to dominate academic art.
Behind it the Academy had the weight of traditionally accepted theory
and the splendid accomplishments of the Old Masters. The theory, growing
from ancient classical concepts of art, seemed infallible and, on such a
theoretical basis, the five hundred years preceding the nineteenth
century had produced an extremely impressive art. Imitation of idealized
figures was the chief aim of the academic painter. By showing nature “as
it ought to be,” the artist served philosophical and ethical ends; he
could educate mankind by painting morally improving illustrations of
heroic deeds. On this premise art had been raised during the Renaissance
from a handicraft to rank with the liberal arts. Academies had arisen to
prove the merits of art, and why should such august institutions be
challenged?
But even in the early years of the century artists revolted against the
academic limitations. Eugène Delacroix (page 17) was the central figure
in the opposing Romantic movement. Son of a prefect of Marseilles,
Delacroix began painting in 1813 as an amateur in a Parisian academic
studio. Soon new sensuous richness of coloring and a feeling of lively
movement entered Delacroix’s pictures to express strong emotions. His
art reveals new psychological penetration; as he said, addressing his
fellow artists, “Anything can be a subject. The real subject is
yourself; it is your impressions, your emotions before nature. You must
search within yourself, not look about you.” Delacroix’s life was
embittered by the jealous rivalry of Ingres, who called him “the apostle
of ugliness” and prevented him from teaching in the Academy, but his
daring use of color was to influence many later painters.
In the Romantic era, nature, which had been neglected as long as the
classical tradition prevailed, was extolled by poets and painted by
outstanding masters. Camille Corot (page 19), son of a Parisian
milliner, became a leading landscapist. Although his teachers were
academicians, admirers of Poussin and Ingres, Corot turned to his own
fresh experiences of nature. As a Romantic, he saw the world about him
passionately. “While imitating conscientiously,” he said, “I never for a
moment lose the emotion which first caught my interest.” At times Corot
painted with the group of artists who worked at Barbizon near the Forest
of Fontainebleau, or sometimes he traveled in Italy, Switzerland,
Holland, and England, but usually he was content to stay with his
parents in Paris or at their summer home in Ville d’Avray. Versatile in
his art, he combined elements of classical composition with romantic
feeling and realistic vision.
Corot’s breadth of taste allowed him to see the importance of paintings
by Daumier, whom he saved from neglect and poverty. Honoré Daumier (page
21), after serving as a bailiff’s clerk and a librarian, was trained as
a lithographer and turned to political and social caricature. In the
Paris journals, his lithographs, lampooning prominent figures, exposing
graft, and making fun of the _bourgeoisie_, were intensely popular.
Politics had been uppermost in French minds after the Revolution and
times were very unsettled. Two civil revolutions in 1830 and 1848 were
followed by invasion during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. During this
time the government swerved precariously from monarchy to republic, to
empire, and back to republic. The turbulence of these years together
with daily human follies was the material of Daumier’s striking
cartoons. His paintings, largely made for personal satisfaction, dwelt
on the hardships of life in the growing industrial city or, in a lighter
vein, on artists, connoisseurs, and circus performers. With his interest
in the life about him, Daumier was drawn from Romanticism to Realism.
Among artists, dissatisfaction was growing ever stronger against the
implausible gods and heroes painted by academicians and also against the
escapist tendency of the Romantics, who loved to paint exotic scenes,
removed from ordinary experience. The increasing materialism and
scientific objectivity of the nineteenth century demanded a realistic
style. The role of leader in the Realist school was taken by Gustave
Courbet (page 23). This big, boisterous son of a wealthy farmer in
Ornans came to Paris in 1842. After a few lessons, Courbet taught
himself to paint, chiefly by copying in the Louvre galleries. His large,
coarsely executed pictures of common people shocked most of his
contemporaries. When his work was refused at the International
Exhibition of 1855, he opened his own pavilion, boldly titling it “_Le
Pavillon du Réalisme_.” Among his best-known sayings are, “Painting
should consist only in the depiction of things visible and tangible to
the artist,” and, “Show me an angel, and _then_ I’ll paint it.” His
outspoken nature led him to embroil himself in politics after the
Franco-Prussian War. Finally, to escape imprisonment he fled to
Switzerland, where he spent his last years in exile.
Both Daumier’s and Courbet’s realism depended upon their acceptance of
everyday subjects as worthy of being painted. But realism could be
manifest, too, in meticulous attention to details. Henri Fantin-Latour
(page 25), a friend of our American painter Whistler, exhibits this
exacting realism in portraits and still-life pictures. Strongly
influenced by the early developments in photography, he produced works
which, because they were pleasant and unassuming, were often shown at
the annual _Salon_ beside the conservative paintings of approved
academicians. In 1863, however, he found himself with the young “rebels”
who were allowed to exhibit only at the _Salon des Refusés_, and he
began then to associate with the more advanced artists.
Édouard Manet (page 27) was probably more influential as a realist than
even Courbet. His father, a Paris magistrate, offered him a choice
between studying law and joining the merchant marine. After a try at the
latter, in 1857 he was allowed to take up painting. Ironically he was
warned by his academic teacher that unless he gave up his common
subjects, he “would be only the Daumier of painting.” His boldly
painted, unorthodox canvases stirred great controversy, were defended by
Emile Zola, the realistic novelist, and brought new courage to other
artists who sought to escape from academic dullness.
Manet associated with a number of young artists who became known as
Impressionists after a group exhibition in 1874. One of them, Claude
Monet (page 29), displayed a picture called _Impression, Sunrise_, and a
newspaper critic, vastly amused at its sketchy style and at the similar
sketchiness of the other pictures in the exhibit, jeered that these
artists were not painters at all, but “impressionists.” The name stuck
to the group because it so aptly characterized their intentions. Their
aim was to catch a fresh impression of nature in their pictures. Monet
was the leading figure in Impressionism, which developed in the 1870’s
and ’80’s. Son of a grocer in Le Havre, he was doing clever caricatures
at the age of fifteen. He began to paint landscapes with a fellow
artist, Boudin, who taught him to be aware of special effects of outdoor
lighting. Going to Paris in 1863, he attended academic classes but
usually stayed only long enough to answer roll call. Then he would be
off to the city’s outskirts to paint nature instead of ancient heroes.
Often he lured others with him, and Impressionism was born in the
friendly competition of Monet, Renoir, Bazille, and Sisley. Soon they
were joined by others, among them Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.
For many years they sought understanding for their works. Monet, who
alone pursued Impressionism to its ultimate possibilities by painting
vivid sensations of light, suffered abject poverty. Only in his last
years was his art recognized and internationally imitated.
Few of the other Impressionists analyzed light as Monet did; they
contented themselves with sketchy brush strokes which seemed to dissolve
their forms in light. Berthe Morisot (page 31), for example, followed
Manet rather than Monet. After six years of study with Corot, she met
Manet while they were both copying pictures in the Louvre. A strong
friendship developed between Manet and the Morisot family. Berthe became
his pupil and soon afterward married his brother. Her crisp, delicate
brushwork is a feminine version of Manet’s bold style.
Auguste Renoir (cover illustration and page 42), whose glowing colors
rivaled Monet’s, was among the first to outgrow Impressionism. This son
of a Limoges tailor was earning his living at thirteen in Paris by
painting flowers on china. He saved enough money to attend an academy
and met Monet, with whom he often painted along the banks of the Seine.
But by about 1883 he found he “had wrung Impressionism dry.” He
regretted the loss of form, composition, and human values in the
shimmering Impressionist pictures. Setting himself again to paint forms
solidly in space, he nevertheless retained the brilliant colors of
Impressionism.
Sometimes exhibiting with the Impressionists, Edgar Degas (page 33) was
strongly influenced by their coloring and used it in realistic scenes of
Paris life, the race track, and the opera ballet. Degas, son of a
wealthy banker, received a thorough classical education and learned
painting from a pupil of Ingres. In his compositions, he preserved a
classical sense of order which was quite foreign to Impressionist aims.
As he said, “No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I
accomplish is the result of reflection upon and study of the old
masters....” Yet he reshaped conventional ideas of composition by
drawing his subjects from life and refining his outlines after the
example of Japanese prints. These Oriental colored woodcuts, which also
influenced Manet, Whistler, and many others, came to Paris first as
wrapping in boxes of china; they were discovered by painters, who found
inspiration in their simple lines and decorative flat areas of color.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (page 35), like Degas, saw his pictures as
both realistic and decorative. As a delicate boy of fourteen he injured
both his legs so that they failed to grow. His father, Count Alphonse de
Toulouse, had no patience with his weakling heir, but his mother
encouraged him to paint. In 1885 he turned his back upon the academic
style and, taking hints from the free brushwork of the Impressionists
and from Japanese designs, Lautrec began to paint his pictures of
Parisian night life, circus performers, and cabaret entertainers. Degas,
at first hostile toward him, eventually declared, “Well, Lautrec, I can
see you are one of our trade.”
Vincent van Gogh (page 37) was a Dutchman who came to Paris in 1886 and
met the Impressionists. He possessed a deep sincerity, but also had a
difficult, flaring temper which alienated many people. After working
unsuccessfully as a picture dealer, a tutor, and a lay preacher, he
turned to art as a means of expressing his passionate emotions. At first
he used dark, somber colors like those of his countryman Rembrandt; then
seeing the Impressionists’ canvases, he adopted their brilliant colors.
But their painting of merely optical impressions could not satisfy his
urge for emotional expression. While he borrowed their bright palette,
he used colors for emotional effects, and in his hands the broken
brushwork became a nervous, intensely expressive agent to record his
inner feelings. His whole remarkable career as an artist fell within the
ten years before 1890, when he shot himself to escape insanity.
His friend Paul Gauguin (page 39) shared similar artistic aims. A
wealthy Parisian stockbroker, Gauguin gave up his business and deserted
his family because he felt compelled to paint. After living for a time
in Brittany, he went to Tahiti and broke entirely with Impressionism. He
formed a style in which his experiences and feelings were symbolized by
intense colors and sweeping outlines. His art, which anticipates
twentieth-century trends, was incomprehensible to his contemporaries,
and he died impoverished in the Marquesas.
Paul Cézanne (page 41), too, is a forerunner of the moderns. Born at
Aix-en-Provence, this banker’s son followed his school friend Zola to
Paris. Although an extremely shy youth he soon married a model and for a
time painted and exhibited with the Impressionists. But, constantly
rebuffed by critics and even scorned by Zola, who failed to see any
promise in his forceful early works, Cézanne withdrew to live in
Provence during the 1880’s and perfected his individual style. His
methods paved the way for the abstract painting of our own day. In his
old age a number of young artists and critics sought him out and he
enjoyed a small degree of recognition within his lifetime. His work,
together with that of Manet, Monet, Degas, Lautrec, van Gogh, and
Gauguin, has become the most popular painting today.
Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)
_Napoleon in His Study_
_Samuel H. Kress Collection_
Remarkably free from the allegorical pomposity of most official
portraits, this picture presents Napoleon I with reserved dignity. The
emperor himself approved it and, upon its completion in 1812,
complimented David. Dressed in his favorite costume, the uniform of the
_chasseur de la garde_ with a general’s epaulettes, Napoleon wears the
Legion of Honor and the Order of the Iron Cross, which commemorates his
earlier coronation as king of Italy. He seems to have just risen from
his desk, on which lies the _Code Napoléon_, the codification of French
law which he promulgated.
David’s style is at its best in portraiture. Combining realism with a
classicist’s respect for human dignity, he shows Napoleon in a
characteristic pose but with an air of grandeur. David’s assured touch
gives authority to the work by its incisive, strong handling of details.
The composition is severely rectilinear; framing the figure, vertical
lines descend through the pilaster and table leg at the left and, again,
from the clock through Napoleon’s arm and the leg of the chair. Against
these, horizontal lines, marked by the book shelves, wall molding, and
desk, lend compositional stability. The diagonal lines of the chair are
countered by the diagonal arrangement of the map and book on the floor.
Before this orderly grid of lines Napoleon’s figure appears subtly
animated.
[Illustration: Canvas. 80¼ × 49¼ inches Dated 1812]
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
_Madame Moitessier_
_Samuel H. Kress Collection_
“Never has beauty more regal, more splendid, more superb, and of a type
more Junoesque yielded its proud contours to the sensitive drawing of an
artist.” So the poet Théophile Gautier described Ingres’ first portrait
of Madame Moitessier. But Ingres destroyed it because the lady’s
daughter, who was included, would not stand still for him. He produced
this second picture in 1851, after six months of careful work. It
perfectly embodies both his exacting perfectionism and French elegance
during the Second Republic.
Ingres was seventy-one years old when he painted this. Evidently he
admired Madame Moitessier, for she was one of the very few people he
consented to paint in his latter years. He dreaded the arduous demands
he imposed upon himself when doing a portrait. “Art is never nearer
perfection,” he said, “than when it resembles nature so closely that it
might be mistaken for nature itself.” Yet for Ingres, nature had to be
refined through the classical tradition of art, and he sought to cast
Madame Moitessier in the form of an ideal figure by Raphael. Despite
astonishing realism in the hair with its flowers, in the lace and the
jewelry, our eyes move over graceful Raphaelesque curving lines, which
dominate the face and figure. By such means Ingres strove to unite the
real and the ideal.
[Illustration: Canvas. 57¾ × 39½ inches Dated 1851]
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)
_Columbus and His Son at La Rábida_
_Chester Dale Collection_
In 1491 Columbus, despairing of Spanish support for his voyage of
exploration, was on his way to seek aid in France when he and his son
Diego stopped at the monastery of La Rábida, near Huelva, in southern
Spain. Delacroix shows them resting here after their exhausting journey.
Columbus gazes thoughtfully at a map, while the prior, Juan Perez,
behind him, is about to welcome him. Perez, who had been Queen
Isabella’s confessor, was able to arrange a royal interview for Columbus
so that ships and men were secured for the adventure.
Delacroix painted this in 1838, after a trip through Spain. Evidently
the air of quiet mystery in a Spanish monastery caught his fancy, and he
recreates it here. Unlike the Neo-Classicists, the Romantic Delacroix
does not attempt to define his subjects exactly. In his painting, vague,
suggestive forms are used to stimulate the imagination. His composition
is not a linear design; it is spatial; and our interest is drawn into
the space of this room to discover the whispered confidences of the
monks, the mystery of dark corridors, and the kind reception of the
weary travelers. Delacroix sought a “silent power which speaks alone to
the eyes and gains and conquers all the faculties of the spirit.”
[Illustration: Canvas. 35⅝ × 46⅝ inches Dated 1838]
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)
_Ville d’Avray_
_Gift of Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt_
With clean, luminous colors Corot has shown a serene view near his
summer home, at Ville d’Avray. His father had bought a house in this
small village a few miles west of Paris, and Corot often returned to it
throughout his long life. Painted when he was in his seventies, this
picture seems to epitomize the development of Corot’s style. The simple
buff and terra-cotta planes, which emphasize the cubic construction of
the distant buildings, recall his early works, especially those painted
in Italy between 1825 and 1828. After 1850 he evolved his most popular
style, with its predominant silver-gray hues. Gentle, diffuse outdoor
light gives harmony in these pictures to misty greens and watery blues,
and the trees take on a feathery softness. A few touches of reddish hue
complement the cool colors. All of these qualities are apparent in this
late picture.
Corot conceived his paintings broadly in form and value. “I am never in
a hurry to determine details,” he said; “the masses and general
character of a picture concern me above all.” He also sought to preserve
his emotions about nature: “What we feel is indeed real. Before a
subject, we are moved by a certain elegant grace. Never lose sight of
that in looking for exactness and detail.” The mood he suggests is a
romantic reverie upon the subtle colors and serenity of nature.
[Illustration: Canvas. 19⅜ × 25⅝ inches Painted c. 1867-1870]
Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
_Advice to a Young Artist_
_Gift of Duncan Phillips_
Daumier’s broad planes of deep, vibrant color and his roughly applied
highlights struck most of his contemporaries as preposterously crude.
His paintings were astonishingly daring for an era which looked for
meretricious fidelity to nature in its pictures. Few could grasp the
significance of his simple, massive forms or understand how his profound
human sympathy made these forms expressive symbols of emotion. In this
picture a mood, sympathetic and quiet, is established between the young
man and his master as they discuss a sketch selected from the big
portfolio.
For the eye sensitive to color and value, there is a remarkable
satisfaction in Daumier’s choice of hues. How deftly he contrasts the
cool, shadowed paper in the old man’s hands with the warm white of the
sheets below, yet how nicely distinguished the grayish paper is from the
gray smock of the young man! These cool hues reappear, echoed in the
background, to climax in the blue portfolio which rests against the red
couch. The starkly simple, brown-clad old man stands out against the
cool colors about him. On his face a few details, boldly indicated in
dark lines and planes of light, strengthen the picture’s emotional
content. Such a composition has qualities analogous to the majestic
movements of a symphony.
[Illustration: Canvas. 16⅛ × 12⅞ inches Painted probably after 1860]
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
_La Grotte de la Loue_
_Gift of Charles L. Lindemann_
Below a three-hundred-foot perpendicular cliff in the Jura mountains,
the Loue River issues in cascades from a cavernous grotto and flows
through Courbet’s native town, Ornans, to join the Doubs and ultimately
swell the Saône. Courbet, who loved his native scenery, does not choose
to paint the picturesque aspects of this fine scene. Instead he looks
with new intensity at nature and places his unprecedented, forthright
vision almost brutally on canvas. Having little patience with
refinements of draftsmanship, he seems to have used the thick body of
his generously applied paint to counterfeit reality in his picture.
While light and shade are present, Courbet is unconventional in his
modeling of the great rocks. The eye is often uncertain of the surfaces
of these rocks; their directions in space are ill-defined and one form
is not connected with another. But viewing the work broadly, we are
conscious of the painter’s power. How solidly the man spearing a fish
stands before the opening of the spacious cavern and how substantially
the huge masses of rock swell forward from the darkness! With his
powerful, unorthodox style, Courbet broke radically with traditional
modes of painting “to transcribe,” as he said, “the customs, ideas, the
appearances,” of his time, “in a word, to create a living art.”
[Illustration: Canvas. 38¾ × 51⅜ inches Painted c. 1865]
Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)
_Still Life_
_Chester Dale Collection_
A careful rendering of objects selected for their varied colors, shapes,
and textures and neatly arranged on a table top is a perfect vehicle for
the display of Fantin-Latour’s technical facility. A companion of
artists with such diverse tastes as Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet,
and Whistler, he created a delicate art which appealed to all. The
objects in this still life have been skillfully placed on the table to
establish a self-contained pictorial composition. The book is turned at
an angle to lead the eye back towards the vase of flowers, which forms a
climax for the picture. The bald shape of the book is artfully
interrupted by the silhouette of the dainty cup; and the tray,
overlapping the table edge, also relieves the monotony of too straight a
line. For the same reason the fruits overlap the tray and basket.
Further variety is given by the careful distinction of various textures.
Like a Dutch Old Master, Fantin-Latour has included a peeled orange to
let him display his cleverness in showing textural variety, and he has
dwelt lovingly on the petals of the flowers. Such a picture
conservatively retains much of the academic style; it was composed on
the table top before it was ever painted, and it should be distinguished
from the work of Fantin-Latour’s more progressive friends.
[Illustration: Canvas. 24⅜ × 29½ inches Dated 1866]
Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
_Gare Saint-Lazare_
_Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother Louisine W. Havemeyer_
As chic as a fashion plate, Manet’s picture shows how he reacted against
the academy and found a fresh style to paint the life of his times. The
fashionable young woman is Victorine Meurend, Manet’s favorite model,
whom he painted in _The Picnic_ and _Olympia_, where his bold treatment
of the nude figure shocked or entertained most of Paris. The little girl
was the daughter of a friend, in whose garden Manet painted the picture.
The child looks through the iron railing, evidently fascinated by a
train that has pulled into the Saint-Lazare station in Paris. Obligingly
the train has left behind it a cloud of white smoke which obliterates
unwanted detail from the background so that Manet can arrange the
figures in a handsome pattern against the regular intervals of the
railing.
Like the Impressionists Manet used light colors and, by suppressing
shadows, he secured the effect of bright, outdoor lighting. While he
satisfies the Realist’s love for an apparently casual composition, with
its figures off-center and “unposed,” actually he has sensitively
composed them according to principles learned from Japanese prints. As
in the Oriental woodcuts, here, too, broad silhouettes of contrasting
colors lend the picture its sparkle, while graceful curving contours in
the figures and costumes form a pleasing design.
[Illustration: Canvas. 36¾ × 45⅛ Dated 1873]
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
_Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Sunlight_
_Chester Dale Collection_
The hot sun of early afternoon blazes down upon the lacy stone façade of
Rouen Cathedral. Painted in 1894, twenty years after the first
Impressionist exhibition, this picture reveals Monet’s ultimate
achievement in capturing sunlight with broken color. The myriad glowing
spots of color almost dissolve the cathedral’s form. Small, separate
touches of paint, prismatic in their brilliance, complement each other
to dazzle the eye and suggest the shimmer of actual light. Monet painted
an extensive series of pictures showing different effects of light
playing across the elaborate Gothic tracery of Rouen Cathedral. He said
that often he could paint on each picture for only two or three minutes
at a time; after that, the light would have changed and, for him, the
subject would become quite different.
Monet created a new kind of pictorial unity. It did not depend upon
lines or patterns, but upon the unity of a single visual sensation, an
impression. He gave up such traditional aims as balancing his
composition or expressing emotions about his subjects. Instead he
painted vivid optical sensations. Through long experience he had
discovered what effects of light might be achieved by juxtaposing
certain bright, pure colors which interplay, one against another, to
simulate the visual experience of light. As Cézanne said, “Monet was
only an eye, but what an eye!”
[Illustration: Canvas. 39½ × 26 inches Dated 1894]
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
_In the Dining Room_
_Chester Dale Collection_
Characteristically feminine in her choice of subject and delicacy of
coloring, Berthe Morisot has painted an interior of the house at
Bougival, near Paris, where she spent her summers in the 1880’s.
Probably it is her housemaid, busy in the dining room, who stands
between the open cupboard and the table. A playful little dog adds a
touch of animation to the domestic scene.
During the middle of her career, Berthe Morisot was strongly influenced
by Impressionism. In this picture particular details of the furniture,
of the girl’s costume, or even of her face, held interest for the
painter only in so far as they reflected light in different ways. Much
as it does in Monet’s art, light seems to fill the scene and blur the
edges of the forms. Yet, as in Manet’s pictures, the colors here have
not the daring brilliance of the spectrum hues Monet used. Berthe
Morisot has sustained a refined color harmony of delicate warm and cool
hues in the blue-grays and creamy highlights. Her composition, too,
shows her allegiance to Manet rather than to Monet; the forms are
broadly seen in silhouette so that light and shadow do not impinge upon
them enough to destroy their character as elements in the design.
[Illustration: Canvas. 24⅛ × 19¾ inches Painted 1886]
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
_Four Dancers_
_Chester Dale Collection_
Before a colorful stage set, four ballerinas are awaiting their cue to
perform. Dancers were among Degas’ most frequent subjects. Because the
forms of their flaring skirts and bodices were simple, he could arrange
them easily into handsome patterns and make them colorful by the
artificial richness of stage lighting. He sketched the ballet dancers
frequently during their exhausting hours of rehearsal and again in their
spritely performances at the Paris Opera.
Though Degas shared interests with both Realists and Impressionists, he
cannot be classified simply as either. His art synthesized several
trends; he merged the academic and the progressive styles. Firmly
grounded in the academic manner, he used precise outlines, which were
foreign to the Realist or Impressionist. In this picture, his lines
describe the ballerinas’ heads, arms and costumes and also establish an
intricate design of diagonals moving back into depth. While the extreme
off-center balance of the composition gives a realistic “snap-shot”
view, it also heightens our awareness of the design so that the eye
enjoys the variety of shapes and colors. Though the colors are applied
with Impressionistic freedom, they combine into a vibrant harmony
typical of Degas’ late style. Very fond of this picture, Degas kept it
in his studio until his death.
[Illustration: Canvas. 59½ × 71 inches Painted c. 1899]
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
_Quadrille at the Moulin Rouge_
_Chester Dale Collection_
In tones of green and copper Toulouse-Lautrec has captured the tawdry
gaiety of Montmartre’s most colorful night spot in the gay ’nineties.
The Moulin Rouge, despite its name, was never a windmill; it is a dance
hall which uses the sails of a mill for advertising. Lautrec frequented
it because he enjoyed watching the nightly performances of its spirited
dancers. Their specialty, the quadrille, grew out of the high-kicking
cancan; almost as vigorous, it was even more complicated. Dominating the
scene here, Gabrielle, a popular professional dancer, has hoisted her
skirts as she lines up with the others to begin the dance. With telling
outline, Lautrec characterizes her robust physique and hoydenish air.
She is in sharp contrast to the woman facing her, in the foreground,
whom Lautrec has shown as delicately refined.
Admiring Manet, Morisot, and especially Degas, Lautrec produced handsome
compositions similar to theirs. Again, under the influence of Japanese
prints, light and shadow have disappeared, replaced by bold color
patterns and strong lines. But Lautrec was far more concerned with
characterization than were the other painters of his time and, like
Daumier in an earlier generation, he gives a wonderfully vivid picture
of his age.
[Illustration: Gouache on cardboard. 31½ × 23¾ inches Painted 1892]
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
_La Mousmé_
_Chester Dale Collection_
Loving the delicacy of Japanese art and having read about Japan, van
Gogh named this young girl a “mousmé.” The word was taken from a
romantic novel by Pierre Loti, who used it in describing the charm of
the young Japanese tea-house attendants. Actually this subject was a
peasant of Provence, in southern France. Van Gogh went there in 1888
hoping to capture in its bright sunshine some of the beauty he imagined
in Japan.
With a very personal interpretation of Japanese style, he has shown this
figure in a bold pattern of startling, bright colors. Earlier in Paris
he had learned the color theories which Neo-Impressionists were applying
to painting, and here his green, orange red, and intense blue are used
with the purity that characterizes them in the spectrum. The
Neo-Impressionists juxtaposed very small touches of such pure colors in
order to suggest light even brighter than the Impressionists had
achieved. But van Gogh was disinterested in effects of natural lighting.
In this picture the girl is like a figure in an icon. Set against the
plain, intense green background, she seems to be isolated from
commonplace experience, and we are reminded of van Gogh’s stated aim, “I
wish to paint men and women with that quality of the eternal which used
to be suggested by the halo and which we attempt to give by the pure
radiance and vibration of the colors.”
[Illustration: Canvas. 28⅞ × 23¾ inches Painted 1888]
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
_Fatata te Miti_
_Chester Dale Collection_
_Fatata te Miti_ means simply “by the sea,” but what a curious vision
Gauguin’s imagination has created from this scene of two Tahitian girls
on the beach! The artist has found himself in a disquieting, primeval
world where rich tropical colors and exotic forms of life, both human
and vegetable, engender a haunting air of mystery. Gauguin painted this
in 1892, during his second year in Tahiti. He had fled from Western
civilization for he believed its materialistic culture rejected the
artist as a useful citizen. He turned to the Pacific islands because he
felt the need to become a primitive in both life and art. Only by
returning to the primitive’s simple standards might man rediscover
significant meaning in his life and work.
The almost forgotten religion of the Maori cult stirred Gauguin’s mind
to prodigious creative activity. Lingering superstitions delighted him;
phosphorescent fungi on the trees glowing in the twilight, as he painted
them here, were thought to represent the spirits of long dead ancestors.
In his art he evolved an expressive symbolism. He spoke of “the music of
the picture,” a “magic accord” of the colors and arabesque patterns,
which “addresses itself to the most intimate part of the soul.”
[Illustration: Canvas. 26¾ × 36 inches Dated 1892]
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
_Still Life_
_Chester Dale Collection_
Against rigid horizontal and vertical lines in the background, Cézanne
has juxtaposed the curves of apples, bottles, and folds of drapery in
turbulent, sweeping lines. He delighted in painting still-life subjects,
for here were things that, unlike people, did not want to move but
remained uncomplainingly motionless during the long hours, even days,
that Cézanne needed for his intensive, exacting studies.
Realizing that Impressionists sacrificed the pictorial structure he
admired in the Old Masters’ works, Cézanne took the formless touches of
the Impressionists’ broken color and made each brush stroke a distinct
“little plane.” In an apple, for example, he realized its form and color
by integrating these small modulating planes of color so that the apple
appears solid, round, and glowing with light. Yet Cézanne was aiming
beyond simply reproducing the appearance of an apple. He strove for a
total form in which every brush stroke in his composition is integrated.
Every touch of paint, like a link in a chain, must contribute to the
consistent unity of the picture. He believed a picture should give a
unified sensation in which “every color-touch must contain air, light,
the object, the plane, the character, the drawing, the style.” By
abstracting nature into the painter’s colored planes, Cézanne paved the
way for the abstract styles of the present century.
[Illustration: Canvas. 26 × 32⅜ inches Painted c. 1890]
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
_A Girl with a Watering Can_ (_Illustrated on cover_)
Canvas. 39½ × 28¾ inches. Dated 1876
_Chester Dale Collection_
This picture of a very dressed-up little girl, who has been watering
flowers in her garden, inherits the long tradition of appealing
children’s portraits which have been well loved since the days of Titian
and Van Dyck. Renoir, with his love of the Old Masters, combined this
tradition and his Impressionist style. He created delightful portraits,
which were popular at once and gained wider understanding for the
Impressionists. Their art was still entirely misunderstood in 1876, when
this was painted. They were thought to be incompetent daubers, incapable
of “finishing” a picture properly. But Renoir’s extraordinarily deft
handling of delicate flesh tones, as in the child’s face, and the
radiance of his coloring could silence such criticism.
By nature Renoir was too sympathetic with his fellow man—and too charmed
by the loveliness of women and children—to be content with the strict
limits of Monet’s Impressionism. Merely painting sensations of light in
a landscape did not satisfy the humanist Renoir. Once he showed a friend
a delicately tinted sketch of rose petals and told him it was really a
study for flesh tones. “For me,” he said, “a painting should be a
lovable thing, gay and pretty; yes, pretty. There are enough things to
bore us in life without our making more of them.”
Index of Artists
Illustration pages in _bold-faced italics_.
_Artist_ _Page_
Cézanne, Paul 10-11, 28, 40, _41_
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille 3-4, 8, 18, _19_, 24
Courbet, Gustave 5-6, 22, _23_, 24
Daumier, Honoré 4-5, 6, 20, _21_, 34
David, Jacques-Louis 1-2, 12, _13_
Degas, Edgar 8-9, 11, 32, _33_, 34
Delacroix, Eugène 3, 16, _17_, 24
Fantin-Latour, Henri 6, 24, _25_
Gauguin, Paul 10, 11, 38, _39_
Gogh, Vincent van 9-10, 11, 36, _37_
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 2, 4, 9, 14, _15_, 24
Manet, Édouard 6-7, 8, 9, 11, 26, _27_, 30, 34
Monet, Claude 7-8, 11, 28, _29_, 30, 42
Morisot, Berthe 7, 8, 30, _31_, 34
Renoir, Auguste _cover_, 7, 8, 42
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de 9, 11, 34, _35_
[Illustration: National Gallery of Art ★ U.S.A.]
Transcriber’s Notes
—Silently corrected a few typos.
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.
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