The French Impressionists (1860-1900) | Page 3

vast subject. It will be
my special object to try and prove that Impressionism is neither an
isolated manifestation, nor a violent denial of the French traditions, but
nothing more or less than a logical return to the very spirit of these
traditions, contrary to the theories upheld by its detractors. It is for this
reason that I have made use of the first chapter to say a few words on
the precursors of this movement.
No art manifestation is really isolated. However new it may seem, it is
always based upon the previous epochs. The true masters do not give
lessons, because art cannot be taught, but they set the example. To
admire them does not mean to imitate them: it means the recognition in

them of the principles of originality and the comprehension of their
source, so that this eternal source may be called to life in oneself, this
source which springs from a sincere and sympathetic vision of the
aspects of life. The Impressionists have not escaped this beautiful law. I
shall speak of them impartially, without excessive enthusiasm; and it
will be my special endeavour to demonstrate in each of them the cult of
a predecessor, for there have been few artistic movements where the
love for, and one might say the hereditary link with, the preceding
masters has been more tenacious.
The Academy has struggled violently against Impressionism, accusing
it of madness, of systematic negation of the "laws of beauty," which it
pretended to defend and of which it claimed to be the official priest.
The Academy has shown itself hostile to a degree in this quarrel. It has
excluded the Impressionists from the Salons, from awards, from
official purchases. Only quite recently the acceptance of the Caillebotte
bequest to the Luxembourg Gallery gave rise to a storm of indignation
among the official painters. I shall, in the course of this book, enter
upon the value of these attacks. Meanwhile I can only say how
regrettable this obstinacy appears to me and will appear to every free
spirit. It is unworthy even of an ardent conviction to condemn a whole
group of artists en bloc as fools, enemies of beauty, or as tricksters
anxious to degrade the art of their nation, when these artists worked
during forty years towards the same goal, without getting any reward
for their effort, but poverty and derision. It is now about ten years since
Impressionism has taken root, since its followers can sell their canvases,
and since they are admired and praised by a solid and ever-growing
section of the public. The hour has therefore arrived, calmly to consider
a movement which has imposed itself upon the history of French art
from 1860 to 1900 with extreme energy, to leave dithyrambics as well
as polemics, and to speak of it with a view to exactness. The Academy,
in continuing the propagation of an ideal of beauty fixed by canons
derived from Greek, Latin and Renaissance art, and neglecting the
Gothic, the Primitives and the Realists, looks upon itself as the
guardian of the national tradition, because it exercises an hierarchic
authority over the Ecole de Rome, the Salons, and the Ecole des Beaux
Arts. All the same, its ideals are of very mixed origin and very little

French. Its principles are the same by which the academic art of nearly
all the official schools of Europe is governed. This mythological and
allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas which are imposed
upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is far more
international than national. To an impartial critic this statement will
show in an even more curious light the excommunication jealously
issued by the academic painters against French artists, who, far from
revolting in an absurd spirit of parti-pris against the genius of their race,
are perhaps more sincerely attached to it than their persecutors. Why
should a group of men deliberately choose to paint mad, illogical, bad
pictures, and reap a harvest of public derision, poverty and sterility? It
would be uncritical to believe merely in a general mystification which
makes its authors the worst sufferers. Simple common sense will find
in these men a conviction, a sincerity, a sustained effort, and this alone
should, in the name of the sacred solidarity of those who by various
means try to express their love of the beautiful, suppress the annoying
accusations hurled too light-heartedly against Manet and his friends.
[Illustration: MANET
IN THE SQUARE]
I shall define later on the ideas of the Impressionists on technique,
composition and style in painting. Meanwhile it will be necessary to
indicate their principal precursors.
Their movement may be styled thus: a reaction against the Greco-Latin
spirit and the scholastic organisation of painting after the second
Renaissance and the Italo-French school of Fontainebleau, by the