The French Impressionists (1860-1900) | Page 9

all the metaphysics and
abstractions following in its train.
[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET
CHURCH AT VERNON]
This fact of the substitution of character for beauty is the essential
feature of the movement. What is called Impressionism is--let it not be
forgotten--a technique which can be applied to any subject. Whether
the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with divided
tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist Henri Martin, who

has almost the ideas of a Pre-Raphaelite, have proved it by employing
this technique for the rendering of religious or philosophic subjects.
But one can only understand the effort and the faults of the painters
grouped around Manet, by constantly recalling to one's mind their
predeliction for character. Before Manet a distinction was made
between noble subjects, and others which were relegated to the domain
of genre in which no great artist was admitted to exist by the School,
the familiarity of their subjects barring from them this rank. By the
suppression of the nobleness inherent to the treated subject, the
painter's technical merit is one of the first things to be considered in
giving him rank. The Realist-Impressionists painted scenes in the
ball-room, on the river, in the field, the street, the foundry, modern
interiors, and found in the life of the humble immense scope for
studying the gestures, the costumes, the expressions of the nineteenth
century.
Their effort had its bearing upon the way of representing persons, upon
what is called, in the studio language, the "mise en cadre." There, too,
they overthrew the principles admitted by the School. Manet, and
especially Degas, have created in this respect a new style from which
the whole art of realistic contemporary illustration is derived. This style
had been hitherto totally ignored, or the artists had shrunk from
applying it. It is a style which is founded upon the small painters of the
eighteenth century, upon Saint-Aubin, Debucourt, Moreau, and, further
back, upon Pater and the Dutchmen. But this time, instead of confining
this style to vignettes and very small dimensions, the Impressionists
have boldly given it the dimensions and importance of big canvases.
They have no longer based the laws of composition, and consequently
of style, upon the ideas relative to the subjects, but upon values and
harmonies. To take a summary example: if the School composed a
picture representing the death of Agamemnon, it did not fail to
subordinate the whole composition to Agamemnon, then to
Clytemnestra, then to the witnesses of the murder, graduating the moral
and literary interest according to the different persons, and sacrificing
to this interest the colouring and the realistic qualities of the scene. The
Realists composed by picking out first the strongest "value" of the
picture, say a red dress, and then distributing the other values according

to a harmonious progression of their tonalities. "The principal person in
a picture," said Manet, "is the light." With Manet and his friends we
find, then, that the concern for expression and for the sentiments
evoked by the subject, was always subordinated to a purely pictorial
and decorative preoccupation. This has frequently led the
Impressionists to grave errors, which they have, however, generally
avoided by confining themselves to very simple subjects, for which the
daily life supplied the grouping.
[Illustration: RENOIR
PORTRAIT OF MADAME MAITRE]
One of the reforms due to their conception has been the suppression of
the professional model, and the substitution for it of the natural model,
seen in the exercise of his occupation. This is one of the most useful
conquests for the benefit of modern painting. It marks a just return to
nature and simplicity. Nearly all their figures are real portraits; and in
everything that concerns the labourer and the peasant, they have found
the proper style and character, because they have observed these beings
in the true medium of their occupations, instead of forcing them into a
sham pose and painting them in disguise. The basis of all their pictures
has been first of all a series of landscape and figure studies made in the
open air, far from the studio, and afterwards co-ordinated. One may
wish pictorial art to have higher ambitions; and one may find in the
Primitives an example of a curious mysticism, an expression of the
abstract and of dreams. But one should not underrate the power of
naïve and realistic observation, which the Primitives carried into the
execution of their works, subordinating it, however, to religious
expression, and it must also be admitted that the Realist-Impressionists
served at least their conception of art logically and homogeneously.
The criticism which may be levelled against them is that which
Realism itself carries in its train, and we shall see that esthetics could
never create classifications capable of defining and containing the
infinite gradations of