The French Impressionists (1860-1900) | Page 4

century of Louis XIV., the school of Rome, and the consular and
imperial taste. In this sense Impressionism is a protest analogous to that
of Romanticism, exclaiming, to quote the old verse: "_Qui nous
délivrera des Grecs et des Romains?_"[1] From this point of view
Impressionism has also great affinities with the ideas of the English
Pre-Raphaelites, who stepped across the second and even the first
Renaissance back to the Primitives.
[Footnote 1: Who will deliver us from the Greeks and the Romans.]

This reaction is superimposed by another: the reaction of
Impressionism, not only against classic subjects, but against the black
painting of the degenerate Romanticists. And these two reactions are
counterbalanced by a return to the French ideal, to the realistic and
characteristic tradition which commences with Jean Foucquet and
Clouet, and is continued by Chardin, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, Watteau,
La Tour, Fragonard, and the admirable engravers of the eighteenth
century down to the final triumph of the allegorical taste of the Roman
revolution. Here can be found a whole chain of truly national artists
who have either been misjudged, like Chardin, or considered as "small
masters" and excluded from the first rank for the benefit of the
pompous Allegorists descended from the Italian school.
Impressionism being beyond all a technical reaction, its predecessors
should first be looked for from this material point of view. Watteau is
the most striking of all. L'Embarquement pour Cythère is, in its
technique, an Impressionist canvas. It embodies the most significant of
all the principles exposed by Claude Monet: the division of tones by
juxtaposed touches of colour which, at a certain distance, produce upon
the eye of the beholder the effect of the actual colouring of the things
painted, with a variety, a freshness and a delicacy of analysis
unobtainable by a single tone prepared and mixed upon the palette.
[Illustration: MANET
YOUNG MAN IN COSTUME OF MAJO]
Claude Lorrain, and after him Carle Vernet, are claimed by the
Impressionists as precursors from the point of view of decorative
landscape arrangement, and particularly of the predominance of light in
which all objects are bathed. Ruysdael and Poussin are, in their eyes,
for the same reasons precursors, especially Ruysdael, who observed so
frankly the blue colouring of the horizon and the influence of blue upon
the landscape. It is known that Turner worshipped Claude for the very
same reasons. The Impressionists in their turn, consider Turner as one
of their masters; they have the greatest admiration for this mighty
genius, this sumptuous visionary. They have it equally for Bonington,
whose technique is inspired by the same observations as their own.

They find, finally, in Delacroix the frequent and very apparent
application of their ideas. Notably in the famous _Entry of the
Crusaders into Constantinople_, the fair woman kneeling in the
foreground is painted in accordance with the principles of the division
of tones: the nude back is furrowed with blue, green and yellow touches,
the juxtaposition of which produces, at a certain distance, an admirable
flesh-tone.
And now I must speak at some length of a painter who, together with
the luminous and sparkling landscapist Félix Ziem, was the most direct
initiator of Impressionist technique. Monticelli is one of those singular
men of genius who are not connected with any school, and whose work
is an inexhaustible source of applications. He lived at Marseilles, where
he was born, made a short appearance at the Salons, and then returned
to his native town, where he died poor, ignored, paralysed and mad. In
order to live he sold his small pictures at the cafés, where they fetched
ten or twenty francs at the most. To-day they sell for considerable
prices, although the government has not yet acquired any work by
Monticelli for the public galleries. The mysterious power alone of these
paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous. Many
Monticellis have been sold by dealers as Diaz's; now they are more
eagerly looked for than Diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with
these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression
which is here only too literally true, "for a piece of bread."
Monticelli painted landscapes, romantic scenes, "fêtes galantes" in the
spirit of Watteau, and still-life pictures: one could not imagine a more
inspired sense of colour than shown by these works which seem to be
painted with crushed jewels, with powerful harmony, and beyond all
with an unheard-of delicacy in the perception of fine shades. There are
tones which nobody had ever invented yet, a richness, a profusion, a
subtlety which almost vie with the resources of music. The fairyland
atmosphere of these works surrounds a very firm design of charming
style, but, to use the words of the artist himself, "in these canvases the
objects are the decoration, the touches