FRENCH PAINTING AT THE TIME OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS BY RAYMOND COGNIAT HYPERION I9-50 ONE HUNDRED AND ONE COLOR PLATES FRENCH PAINTING AT THE TIME OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS by Raymond Cooniat. This is a new, and more elaborate, edition of a Hyperion Press book which first appeared in 1943. That book was so deservedly popular that the first printing was sold even before publication. The book was not reprinted owing to wartime restric- tions. Much enhanced by the addi- tion of new pictures from European collections, this famous book now becomes the greatest collection of French Impressionist art available. No pains have been spared.. In fact, to make it one of the outstanding works ever Issued by the Hyperion Press. Every one of the hundred plates is magnificently printed In gorgeous color. In addition there is a helpful interpretive and critical text by Ray- mond Cogniat, together with biogra- phical sketches of each of the artist represented. Mr. Cogniat is chief editor of Beaux Arts, the oldest art review of France, and president of the French Art Critics. Here are the exciting works of such artists as Jongkind, Latour, Badlle. Corot, Daumler, Manet» Pis- sarro, Monticelli, Guillaumin, Monet, Redon, Cassatt. Boudln, Degas, Renoir, Morisot, Slsley. Toulouse-Lau- trec, Seurat, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard and Vuillard. The feeling of the whole period Is admirably captured In this kaleidoscope of art, as well as the individual quality of each artist. To see these works to- gether leaves an unforgettable impres- sion of poetry, animation, vigour and freshness of inspiration. Art lovers will readily understand why the paintings of the Impressionists are still the most popular canvases on the art market today. ONE HUNDRED AND ONE COLOR PLATES Published by THE HYPERION PRESS NEW YORK - PARIS • LONDON Property of Distributed by The Hilla von Rebay Foundation THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK Property of Foundation The Hilla von Rebay Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2012 with funding from IVIetropolitan New York Library Council - METRO http://archive.org/details/frenchpaintOOcogn THE IMPRESSIONISTS FRENCH PAINTING AT THE TIME OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS BY RAYMOND COGNIAT Translated from the French by LUCY NORTON JHE HILLA VON RBBAY FOUNDATION 77 MORNINOSIDE DRIVK 0REENS FARMS. CONNfiCnCVr 0«4|« Published by THE HYPERION PRESS NEW YORK • PARIS • LONDON Distributed bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK THIS VOLUME, EDITED BY ANDRE GLOECKNEK, WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE BY THE HYPERION PRESS. PARIS. PRINTING OF THE TEXT AND COLOR PLATES, AND BINDING BY IMPRIMERIE CRETE, CORBEIL. FRANCE CONTENTS HISTORY OF IMPRESSIONISM Pages. Prelude 9 Heroic days ^^ Success. The group is scattered 43 The successors : Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard. SIGNIFICANCE 7° IMPRESSIONISM : ITS SOCIAL Freedom of the individual and Society versus the A individual. - The period of techniques. - the work change in the significance and aim of of art. .ESTHETIC SIGNIFICANCE 95 IMPRESSIONISM : ITS expression. — A new vision and a new mode of Comparison with the past impossible. - Inde- of the pendence of works of art and abolition reality, scien- subject. -Justification: search after rediscovered. tific justification, tradition HISTORY OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS Pages Pages Morisot 140 Corot. 129 Renoir H^ Daumier . 130 142 Jongkind. Bazille Cassatt H3 Boudin. 131 Gauguin .... i44 Pissarro . 131 Van Gogh ... H^ Manet . 132 Seurat H^ Degas . 134 Lautrec Cezanne 13^^ H9 150 138 Bonnard .... Sisley • Vuillard 15^ Monet . 139 153 BIBLIOGRAPHY ^ V Printed in France. All rights reserved. HYPERION, Paris. HENRI FANTIN-LATOUR THE STUDIO AT THE BATIGNOLLES Paris, Louvre HISTORY OF IMPRESSIONISM PRELUDE begins and ends life-history of an idea, or of a movement, both its prelude and THEwherever the historian decides, for event itself and cannot outcome are part and parcel of the making an arbitrary decision. Nothing be separated from it without have been con- What is born must still either begins or ends. influences. die still survives in its ceived- what appears to . " LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MONET, Claude. BAZILLE. Jean-Frederic. page Spring at Giverny P^g^ ^l Family Gathering 14 "3 Regatta at Argenteuil ' — BONNARD, Pierre. L'Hotel de la Plage 05 ^^5 darden 7° The Luncli P=^g^ Women in the ^^^ Holland ^4 The Riviera " Tulips from BOUDIN. Eugene. MORISOT, Berthe. Sea Port P'^g^ ^3 In the Dining Room P^g^ 41 The Cherry Tree — 44 CASSATT. Mary. After the Hath V^S^ 74 PISSARRO. Camille. 5° C£ZANNE. Paul. Peasant Woman P^g^— a Wand 52 . page Girl with Portriiit of Madame Cezanne 64 Cowherd 53 Madame Cezanne in the Green- The — ^ The Orchard 54 house — Glade at Pontoise 50 • — 7^ The Three Bathers ; — °-^ Red Roofs The Village of Cergv near Pontoise. — 73 The -" 75 Still-Life Auguste. " /" RENOIR. The Barns ^2 Bathers ••• P^g*^ ' — 3° COROT. Jean-Baptiste. At the Moulin de la Galette . P^S^ Pond — jO Agostina ^^l The Duck ^^ seated 4^ The Tree ~ Bather, _^ Odalisque . DAUMIER. Honore. Washerwomen "9 ^o The — The Reader P^g*^ Garden at Cagnes 7^ Collector — 21 77 The Print Oranges and Lemons — Dancing in the Town ^2 DEGAS, Edgar. " — "^3 " Le Bal a Bougival Cadet's Uniform, page 28 Achille De Gas in — Le Ravin de la Femme Sau- • 3© the Bath • -.- - ^ After ~ vage " ~ gg Portrait of Mademoiselle Dobigny. 35 Chrysanthemums ^" Dancing Girl Thanking her Au- ^ ^ ^ Vase of Roses ^,7 dience ^ By the Seashore Girls in Blue 37 I^ Dancing — Portrait of Lucie Berard Girls in the Wmgs 42 Dancing — Gabriclle with a Rose — 9^ Chrvsanthemums . 47 Woman with Portrait of Sisley — 92 Bath — 49 After the Rowers at Luncheon ~ 93 FANTIN-LATOUR. Henri. In the Meadow 95 page The Studio at the Batignolles. .. 9 SEURAT. Georges. Gra- GAUGUIN, Paul. Study for " the Channel of page gb P^g^ ^°° Mount Calvary, Brittany velines" Breton with a Goose — .97 Little SIGN AC. Paul. • Ferme au Pouldu " 9' Papes " page loi Landscape at Aries, near the ^ Le Chateau des Alyscamps 99 SISLEY, Alfred. Self-Portrait in Caricature .. — 102 page 24 Two Tahitian Women on the The Banks of the Seine — - Floods at Port-Marly • - 57 Beach J^4 " Road to the Skirt of the Otahi : Alone ^°l The ^°7 — 59 la Orana Maria Woods ......... — 00 " Aita Parari " Annah, the Ja- The Village of Voisins ^ ^°" Loing.. — »o vanese Woman Moret. The Banks of the GUILLAUMIN, Armand. TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. Henri de. ^^ P^g^ Dog-Cart -..•• P^g^^ Landscape The — n?]f^ Countess A. de Toulouse-Lautrec. Johann-Barthold. — 119 JONGKIND, The Inmate of the Brothel Holland, page 12 — ^^o The Village of Overschie, Miss May Belfort Laundress The — ^^^ MANET, fidouard. with Two Women ^^'^ " page u Interior La Belle Andalouse Dethomas ^23 " Maxime Ballet Espagnol "" J5 The Balcony ;7 VAN GOGH. Vincent. — 1° Portrait of Emile Zola " L'Arlesienne " P^^ ^^9 — ^3 "° The Old Musician Portrait of a Boy " Le Bon Bock " " ^° — Madame Self-Portrait tt Portrait of Monsieur and Starry Night — ^7 The ^J^ Auguste Manet Night Cafe - ^^3 Campineanu — 29 Portrait of Lina Self-Portrait " I'herbe " — 33 :^;J Le Dejeuner sur Roulin the Postman — ^^3 Olympia ^3 __ ' Argcnteuil " ' " ' fidouard. : 7^ VUILLARD, a uaraen.X V 4D 128 Portrait of a Woman m Reading P^^e Nude Study of a Blonde — 5^ EDOUARD MANET LA BELLE ANDALOUSE New York, Private Collection i I give to the word, was Impressionism, whatever significance we ostensibly sudden revolutions, no exception to this rule. Like all departure. an inevitable result as a point of it was quite as much against movement, the assertion of the individual Was it a liberating of landscape rule? Was it the triumph the trammels of academic literary subjects that had predomm- over the historical, religious and realism in painting it an expansion ot ated for centuries past? Was of the same trend in literature? How- to match the development questions, the ideas themselves ever we choose to answer such and although 1874 is the oth- had been in the air for many years, of Impressionism, because the move- cial date given for the birth exhibition and received its name m ment held its first collective spontaneous that it was a freak of that year we must not imagine which were exceedingly generation, or neglect its antecedents, important and occasionally stormy. alone, if we con- For example, to take the technical question place given to landscape, and sider the paramount, even exclusive, which was directly inspired by stress the invention of the light key, beginnings with Valenciennes, nature, we must not ignore its early century. This Hubert Robert, and Fragonard, in the eighteenth considered to be a period marks the end of what is generally romantic as the nineteenth classical era, but it was, in fact, as triviality contained all the century, and its surface elegance and century had already seeds of the coming storm. The eighteenth paved the way for revived a taste for clear colours and sunlight which his poetic execution. the shimmering light in Monet's pictures and century, it is But, without going back as far as the previous Harpignies, Theodore obvious that the Barbizon painters: Daubigny, Impressionism. Rousseau, and later, Corot, opened the door to Turner, did Enghsh painters such as Constable, Bonington and models of style and more than herald its coming, they served as generally technique. As for Boudin and Jongkind, they are considerably older, ranked as Impressionist painters, even though Impres- because their art and conception of nature is so clearly Finally, sionistic that they cannot be separated from the movement. of Constanfin Guys to those of it is only logical to add the name and also the last two painters, although this is not usually done, 10 eug£ne boudin SEA PORT Paris, Private Collection criticism and the public were bored and ironical.