The French Impressionists (1860-1900) | Page 5

are the scales, and the light is the
tenor." Monticelli has created for himself an entirely personal technique
which can only be compared with that of Turner; he painted with a

brush so full, fat and rich, that some of the details are often truly
modelled in relief, in a substance as precious as enamels, jewels,
ceramics--a substance which is a delight in itself. Every picture by
Monticelli provokes astonishment; constructed upon one colour as
upon a musical theme, it rises to intensities which one would have
thought impossible. His pictures are magnificent bouquets, bursts of
joy and colour, where nothing is ever crude, and where everything is
ruled by a supreme sense of harmony.
[Illustration: MANET
THE READER]
Claude Lorrain, Watteau, Turner and Monticelli constitute really the
descent of a landscapist like Claude Monet. In all matters concerning
technique, they form the direct chain of Impressionism. As regards
design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of
beauty and the portrait, the Impressionist movement is based upon the
old French masters, principally upon Chardin, Watteau, Latour,
Largillière, Fragonard, Debucourt, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen. It
has resolutely held aloof from mythology, academic allegory, historical
painting, and from the neo-Greek elements of Classicism as well as
from the German and Spanish elements of Romanticism. This
reactionary movement is therefore entirely French, and surely if it
deserves reproach, the one least deserved is that levelled upon it by the
official painters: disobedience to the national spirit. Impressionism is
an art which does not give much scope to intellectuality, an art whose
followers admit scarcely anything but immediate vision, rejecting
philosophy and symbols and occupying themselves only with the
consideration of light, picturesqueness, keen and clever observation,
and antipathy to abstraction, as the innate qualities of French art. We
shall see later on, when considering separately its principal masters,
that each of them has based his art upon some masters of pure French
blood.
Impressionism has, then, hitherto been very badly judged. It is
contained in two chief points: search after a new technique, and
expression of modern reality. Its birth has not been a spontaneous

phenomenon. Manet, who, by his spirit and by the chance of his
friendships, grouped around him the principal members, commenced
by being classed in the ranks of the Realists of the second Romanticism
by the side of Courbet; and during the whole first period of his work he
only endeavoured to describe contemporary scenes, at a time when the
laws of the new technique were already dawning upon Claude Monet.
Gradually the grouping of the Impressionists took place. Claude Monet
is really the first initiator: in a parallel line with his ideas and his works
Manet passed into the second period of his artistic life, and with him
Renoir, Degas and Pissarro. But Manet had already during his first
period been the topic of far-echoing polemics, caused by his realism
and by the marked influence of the Spaniards and of Hals upon his
style; his temperament, too, was that of the head of a school; and for
these reasons legend has attached to his name the title of head of the
Impressionist school, but this legend is incorrect.
To conclude, the very name "Impressionism" is due to Claude Monet.
There has been much serious arguing upon this famous word which has
given rise to all sorts of definitions and conclusions. In reality this is its
curious origin which is little known, even in criticism. Ever since 1860
the works of Manet and of his friends caused such a stir, that they were
rejected en bloc by the Salon jury of 1863. The emperor, inspired by a
praiseworthy, liberal thought, demanded that these innovators should at
least have the right to exhibit together in a special room which was
called the Salon des Refusés. The public crowded there to have a good
laugh. One of the pictures which caused most derision was a sunset by
Claude Monet, entitled Impressions. From this moment the painters
who adopted more or less the same manner were called Impressionists.
The word remained in use, and Manet and his friends thought it a
matter of indifference whether this label was attached to them, or
another. At this despised Salon were to be found the names of Manet,
Monet, Whistler, Bracquemont, Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Renoir,
Legros, and many others who have since risen to fame. Universal
ridicule only fortified the friendships and resolutions of this group of
men, and from that time dates the definite foundation of the
Impressionist school. For thirty years it continued to produce without
interruption an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and

inexact denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other
dogma than the passionate observation of nature, without any other
assistance than individual sympathies, in the face of