SESSION 11 Impressionism (Monday 2nd September & Tuesday 8th October)

1. Camille Pissaro 1.1. Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes 1872 Oil on canvas (45 x 55cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington 2. Claude Monet 2.1. Gare Saint-Lazare 1877, oil on canvas (75 x 104 cm) Musée d’Orsay 2.2. Rouen Cathedral (series) 1892-3 Oil on canvas (approx. 107 x 74cm) – various locations 3. Frederic Bazille 3.1. Thérèse lisant dans le parc de Méric. 1867 Oil on canvas (92 x 59cm) 4. Pierre-Auguste Renoir 4.1. The Swing 1876 Oil on canvas (92 x 73cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris 4.2. The Blonde Bather 1881 (82 x 65cm) Clark Art Institute, Mass. 5. Gustave Caillebotte 5.1. The Floor Scrapers 1875 Oil on canvas (102 x 46cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris 5.2. Paris Street; Rainy Day 1877 (212 x 276 cm) Art Institute of Chicago 6. Berthe Morisot 6.1. The Cradle 1872 Oil on canvas Musée d’Orsay, Paris 6.2. Summer Day (The Lake in the Bois de Boulogne) 1879 (46 X 75cm) National Gallery 7. Edgar Degas 7.1. L’Absinthe 1875-6 Oil on canvas (92 x 68cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris 7.2. After the Bath, Girl Drying Herself c1880-1895 Pastel on wove paper (103 x 98cm) National Gallery 8. Alfred Sisley 8.1. Meadow 1875 Oil on canvas (55 x73cm) National Gallery of Art, Washington

Title screen – Impression Sunrise (Le Havre) Claude Monet 1874

French Impressionism grew out of Realism, and shared a commitment to contemporary subjects, but as the artists tried to capture a realistic depiction of light they were prepared to neglect the form of objects, relying on what we see – not what we know. They frequently painted en plein air, where the light changes quickly, and their modest sized works are characterised by rapid and loose brushstrokes usually in small dabs of bright pigments on light coloured grounds to depict the transitory colours of objects, particularly in daylight. Instead of mixing pigments they were inclined to use complementary colours adjacent to each other, and they tended to avoid using the dark earth colours. These techniques increased the apparent brightness of their works and broke the rules for the careful gradation in colour (modelling) that Academy students spent years being trained to use (with fixed indoor light) so it may not be surprising the works were rejected for exhibition by the Salon; the artists began organising their own exhibitions – and a critical comment on the first of these in 1874 gave the movement its name. In the modern world, artists were making art not for powerful institutions such as the church, governments or academies – but for themselves.

Camille Pissarro’s tutor was Corot and in Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes and the tranquil rural setting with a few small peasant figures is reminiscent of the older artist. Both painted from nature, but Pissarro did not finish his pictures in the studio but, often in one sitting, outdoors. The orchard was painted when the artist returned home after the Franco-Prussian War; many of his paintings had been destroyed by the occupying troops – is the subject a symbol of hope and renewal? He seems to be deliberately refusing to improve upon nature as that would be a betrayal of truth but the light shimmering on the trees gives it a beauty .

Claude Monet followed Baudelaire’s advice and painted modern life, and the large, new Gare St Lazare station would have encapsulated the fresh urban landscapes. To cope with the atmospheric effusions from locomotives the new stations had to be the size of cathedrals, and in portraying the effects of evanescent light on that steam and smoke the solid buildings and locomotives are dissolved. He may have been influenced by Turner’s Rain, Steam & Speed that he knew from his sojourn in London during the Franco- Prussian War. The figures are rendered in a few brushstrokes – they are objects with no more artistic significance than the trains. How we perceive subjects under different lighting conditions is dramatically illustrated by Monet’s series of Rouen Cathedral of 1892-3. There were calls for the state to purchase the entire thirty paintings but today no single museum owns more than three.

We can only speculate how Bazille’s style might have developed after 1870 if he hadn’t died in the war, but I hope my choice of Thérèse lisant dans le parc de Méric at least illustrates how well he adapted the early Impressionist technique of placing his figures en plein air in landscapes, and using a favourite Barbizon device of using trees to frame the figure.

Whether intentional or not, an effect of the Impressionist techniques was to produce extremely pretty pictures – which I believe explains their current popularity. Today, it may be hard to appreciate how outrageous the orange and blue shadows (because of ‘diffuse reflection’) in The Swing would have appeared to a contemporary viewer – familiarity with Impressionist art has changed our perception of the natural world. Renoir frequently focussed on the newly affluent middle class enjoying their leisure , and he was one of the first artists to appreciate how to tap into the pure beauty of Impressionist techniques . He may have claimed that his later paintings, such as The Blonde Bather were an homage to the classical tradition following a trip to Italy – but there were clear commercial advantages to pictures of attractive young women (the model Aline Charigot later became his wife).

The work of Gustave Caillebotte has only become fully appreciated in more recent times, in part because he didn’t sell his painting during his lifetime. In The Floor Scrapers he portrays the labour of urban workers; earlier realist painters had usually focussed on rural workers. Artists have always been drawn to painting the nude, or semi-nude, human figure; there were fewer opportunities to do so for those committed to portraying the modern world. Some art historians have highlighted his homosexuality. Paris Steet ;Rainy Day displays well the new wide streets of Baron Haussmann’s Paris but also the isolation from each other of its citizens. The influence of the snapshots of photography is apparent, including mimicking changes in ‘focus’ between the foreground, middle & background. The figures may appear to have just walked into the painting but the artist spent months arranging the in the pictorial space.

It is probably no accident that the only woman artist including in the first Impressionist exhibition, Berthe Morisot, should have frequently portrayed domestic interiors, as in The Cradle. Her sister, Edma, the mother in the painting had been obliged to give up her own career as an artist when she married. The maternal sentiment, that the painting evokes so well, tapped into a long tradition in French art. Summer Day is deliberately sketchy; the bold brushwork unifies the scene into a mosaic of light as though it is being refracted through prisms, so forms are subsumed into a decorative pattern.

Although Degas exhibited with the Impressionists it might be argued that he didn’t fit the label. He painted L’Absinthe not in the café but in his studio. The downside and loneliness of café life is well portrayed; later Degas had to explain that the models, people he knew, were not actually alcoholics. The off-centre framing, empty spaces and cutting off of the man’s hand and pipe were inspired by Japanese prints; here those aspects enhance the drunken slewing. Degas used a series of photographic snapshots in preparation for his pastel drawing After the Bath and other depictions of women in inelegant poses. He wrote, “Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.”

Alfred Sisley concentrated on landscapes, such as The Meadow. He utilised all the Impressionist techniques – but in a less showy way than Monet. © Patrick Imrie 2019