The French Impressionists (1860-1900) | Page 7

vibrate with different speed. Painting
should therefore try to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of
the atoms of solar light, instead of representing shadows with
ready-made tones composed of bitumen and black.
The third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are
modified by refraction. That means, f.i. in a picture representing an
interior, the source of light (window) may not be indicated: the light
circling round the picture will then be composed of the reflections of
rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects, acting as mirrors for
these reflections, will consequently influence each other. Their colours
will affect each other, even if the surfaces be dull. A red vase placed
upon a blue carpet will lead to a very subtle, but mathematically exact,
interchange between this blue and this red, and this exchange of
luminous waves will create between the two colours a tone of
reflections composed of both. These composite reflections will form a
scale of tones complementary of the two principal colours. The science
of optics can work out these complementary colours with mathematical

exactness. If f.i. a head receives the orange rays of daylight from one
side and the bluish light of an interior from the other, green reflections
will necessarily appear on the nose and in the middle region of the face.
The painter Besnard, who has specially devoted himself to this minute
study of complementary colours, has given us some famous examples
of it.
The last consequence of these propositions is that the blending of the
spectral tones is accomplished by a parallel and distinct projection of
the colours. They are artificially reunited on the crystalline: a lens
interposed between the light and the eye, and opposing the crystalline,
which is a living lens, dissociates again these united rays, and shows us
again the seven distinct colours of the atmosphere. It is no less artificial
if a painter mixes upon his palette different colours to compose a tone;
it is again artificial that paints have been invented which represent
some of the combinations of the spectrum, just to save the artist the
trouble of constantly mixing the seven solar tones. Such mixtures are
false, and they have the disadvantage of creating heavy tonalities, since
the coarse mixture of powders and oils cannot accomplish the action of
light which reunites the luminous waves into an intense white of
unimpaired transparency. The colours mixed on the palette compose a
dirty grey. What, then, is the painter to do, who is anxious to approach,
as near as our poor human means will allow, that divine fairyland of
nature? Here we touch upon the very foundations of Impressionism.
The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the
spectrum, and discard all the others: that is what Claude Monet has
done boldly, adding to them only white and black. He will, furthermore,
instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas
touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed, and leave the
individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so
as to act like sunlight itself upon the eye of the beholder.
[Illustration: DEGAS
WAITING]
This, then, is the theory of the dissociation of tones, which is the main
point of Impressionist technique. It has the immense advantage of

suppressing all mixtures, of leaving to each colour its proper strength,
and consequently its freshness and brilliancy. At the same time the
difficulties are extreme. The painter's eye must be admirably subtle.
Light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the object
upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived becomes a
purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem, quite
distinct from expression, style and design, which were the principal
aims of former painting. It is almost necessary to invent another name
for this special art which, clearly pictorial though it be, comes as near
to music, as it gets far away from literature and psychology. It is only
natural that, fascinated by this study, the Impressionists have almost
remained strangers to the painting of expression, and altogether hostile
to historical and symbolist painting. It is therefore principally in
landscape painting that they have achieved the greatness that is theirs.
Through the application of these principles which I have set forth very
summarily, Claude Monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely
varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the
tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the
arabesque of their vibrations. A landscape thus conceived becomes a
kind of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point,
f.i.), and developing all over the canvas the variations of this theme.
This investigation is added