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JZZ0L1 mpressionists and Impressionism

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Impressionists

and
Impressionism

^dSiJ /ffy
 ;

On the cover:

Claude Monet Impression, Sunrise

: (detail), 1872. Musee Marmottan,
Paris. This painting, shown at the first group exhibition in 1874, was
singled out for ridicule by the journalist Louis Leroy, who ironically
dubbed the group "impressionists " (cf. page 105).

First published 1970

First paperback edition 1980

Published in the United States of America in 1980 by

% ZZOLI INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS, INC.

7 12 Fifth Avenue New York 10019
© 1980 by Editions d'Art Albert Skira S.A., Geneva

All rights reserved.

No parts of this book may be

reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without permission

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80-5471

ISBN: 0-8478-0341-4

All reproduction rights reserved by S.P.A.D.E.M.

(Syndicat de Propriety Artistique), Paris
la
A.D.A.P.G. (Association pour la Defense des Arts Plastiques
et Graphiques), Paris and Cosmopress, Geneva.
;

Printed in Switzerland
 • Main Text

Impressionists MARIA AND GODFREY BLUNDEN

• Documentary Notices

• Synoptic Sequence of Witness Ac-

counts by the Painters, Their Friends,
and the Writers and Critics of the
Impressionist Period

JEAN-LUC DAVAL

and Impressionism

c
Rizzoli
V^jj NEW
YORK
 :

What this book is about

THE "GILDED AND VOLUPTUOUS PROMISES " OF THE

SECOND EMPIRE 10

INGRES 12

COROT 13

DELACROIX 14

MILLET: THE CRY OF THE EARTH 15

THE OFFICIAL GLORIES OF THE SALON 18

THE DRAMATIC REALISM OF COURBET 19

FROM REALISM TO AN OBJECTIVE AND POETIC

NATURALISM 22

MANET, THE FASCINATING MAN OF THE WORLD, AND

DEGAS, THE SARCASTIC MISANTHROPE, WERE AT ONE
IN THEIR SCORN FOR CONVENTIONS 24

DEGAS FOLLOWS MANET IN THE PATH OF MODERNITY 29

IN QUEST OF AN IMMEDIATE EXPRESSION OF THE

SENSES 32

A CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP CEZANNE AND ZOLA : 35

CEZANNE AND ZOLA MAKING THEIR WAY IN PARIS 36

THE ACADEMIE SUISSE 37

LE HAVRE : SEA, SKY AND LIGHT 38

THE YOUNG PISSARRO IN THE ANTILLES 41

THE STUDIO OF BAZILLE 42

"
"THE PAINTERS OF THE NEW PAINTING 45

MANET, AN EXAMPLE RATHER THAN A MASTER 46

WRITERS AND FRIENDS 48

THE SALONS 49

D AUMIER THE PUBLIC AT THE SALON

: 53

THE " OLYMPIA " SCANDAL 57

FONTAINEBLEAU THE FIRST OPEN AIR COMPOSITIONS

: 58

PAINTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHY 62

THE DISCOVERY OF JAPANESE PRINTS AND THEIR

INFLUENCE ON THE IMPRESSIONISTS 65

CEZANNE DIVIDES HIS TIME BETWEEN PARIS AND AIX 66

MANET AND HIS MODELS 68

THE WORLD'S FAIR OF 1867 70

THE CAFE GUERBOIS 74

BOUGIVAL EARLY VENTURES
: IN OPEN AIR PAINTING 75 THE FLASH OF THE SNAPSHOT 144

LE DEJEUNER SUR L'HERBE 81 MANET THE BAR AT THE FOLIES-BERGERE

:

"SOME DAZZLING SEASCAPES" 82 THE CAFES

LA GRENOUILLERE 84 THE CAFE CONCERTS
MONTMARTRE 87 FESTIVAL MAGIC

IN THE STREETS AND BOULEVARDS OF PARIS 89 GLIMPSES OF DAILY LIFE 155

THE WAR OF 1870 92 IN THE STREETS OF PARIS WITH RENOIR 159

COURBET AND THE PARIS COMMUNE 94 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 160

MONET AND PISSARRO IN LONDON 99 FRIENDS, COLLECTORS, AND DEALERS 164

AFTER THE WAR 100 GATHERINGS AT THE CAFE DE LA NOUVELLE ATHENES 169

DEGAS IN NEW ORLEANS 102 MARY CASSATT 172

A MANET SUCCESS AT THE SALON 103 PISSARRO'S INFLUENCE ON THE YOUNGER GENERATION 174

1874 FIRST : GROUP EXHIBITION 105 NEW LINES OF RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENT 178

PAINTING FROM NATURE 115 THE SALON PAINTERS AND THE INDEPENDENTS 180

THE LIGHT OF THE SEASONS 116 CEZANNE THE SOLITARY PATHFINDER

: 181

THE RADIANCE OF SPRING 118 CEZANNE RIGOR OF DESIGN AND VISION

: 184

THE SUMMER SUN 120 PISSARRO AND HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM 193

ALL THE COLORS OF NATURE 123 THE FIRST CEZANNE EXHIBITIONS AT VOLLARD'S 195

THE THEME OF THE STILL LIFE 124 DEGAS AND THE SHATTERING OF FORM 196

FITFUL AND FLEETING REFLECTIONS 126 RENOIR IN THE LIGHT OF THE SOUTH 198

ARGENTEUIL AND THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 133 IMPRESSIONISM ON THE EVE OF SUCCESS 202

SUNDAYS AT THE MOULIN DE LA G ALETTE 134 MONET'S " HOME PORT " AT GI VERNY 204

. . . AND SUNDAY OUTINGS AT BOUGIVAL 135 MONET AND THE GREAT SETS OF PICTURES 205

THE PARIS BOULEVARDS 137 THE POPLARS 205

THE EYE OF DEGAS 138 THE CATHEDRALS . 206

CLAUDE MONET THE GARE SAINT-LAZARE

: 141 LONDON AND VENICE 207

THE SUSPENDED MOMENT 142 THE WATER LILIES OF GIVERNY 209

. . . AND SUSPENDED MOVEMENT 143 "THE MAGNIFICENT POETRY OF THE PASSING MOMENT" 210
 V
(,U„»«J«M**
m
 Impressionists
and Impressionism

Claude Monet: Carriires-Saint-Denis. 1872.

{ -""a--'
 ;

WH LIVE in

power
an age of Insurgency.
seizures
A score of contemporary
have made us familiar with the technique of
the coup d'etat and the ideology of the popular revolution.
From the vantage point of a sophisticated century, therefore, we may
look back on the career of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte with a certain
detachment and even that wry amusement which comes from recog-
nizing familiar patterns of totalitarian behavior.
Louis Bonaparte was a loner, that is, he had no party behind
him. nor any popular movement. He made his bid for power by
means of an alliance with the French bourgeoisie at a time when that

I homai I ruturi Mi. Romans o) ihi I 't-cadenci 1847 formidable class of people was profoundly shaken by the Revolution
of 848. That revolution had written
1
"
finis " to the restored monarchy
the new Republic, the second in France's history, was becoming
There is room today, in painting and threateningly class conscious. The fact that he was a nephew of the

sculpture — not mentioning the rest-

illustrious

and
Napoleon
at a critical
I gave Louis an edge with the popular electorate
hour he had seemed, not without a good deal of
there is room. I don't say for a great maneuvering on his part, a useful compromise leader, a compromise
artist (great artists are welcome at all reflected in his title of Prince-President. It was a contradiction in terms

times), but for a revolution. which he soon resolved in a classic coup d'etat. December 1851, by
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON which means he became Emperor of the French.
Close to two hundred republican workers had been killed on the
barricades while politicians and journalists were being imprisoned. In
the subsequent "cleansing" of public life, ten thousand republicans

were deported to Algeria, some two thousand exiled for life (not

counting those, like Victor Hugo, who went into voluntary exile) and
three hundred sent to Devil's Island, the "dry guillotine " of his late

Uncle's regime. The hardy republican slogan, Liberte, Egalite. Frater-

nite, was erased from the walls of Paris.

The ideology upon which the Emperor planned to base his regime

was one that would reflect national glory, be constantly diverting and
convincingly authoritarian. The career of matchless opulence and
ostentation upon which he now plunged was less a matter of self-

indulgence (though it was that too) than a calculated policy of imperial

grandeur, intended to inspire emulation among the rich and adoration

in the minds of the irretrievably humble.
So the French saw their latest Emperor in his voiture de gala, a huge
vehicle, all red velvet and gilding, from the center of which rose a great

crowned eagle whose outspread wings sheltered the imperial occu-

pant ; or they saw their Emperor as a "man of fashion, " galloping his
curricle through the streets, a faint smile behind the large waxed
moustache; or they saw their Emperor dancing to a barrel organ,
because (popular touch) "an orchestra is so awkward. " dancing the
polka, the mazurka, lancers and quadrilles like everybody else; or if

privileged, they were reassured to see the Emperor in white cashmere

breeches, black stockings and dress sword, the long white shirtfront
barred by the carmine of the Legion, receiving notables in the Salon des
Marechaux. And because he is, above all. a soldier, there are scintillat-

ing military parades: the brilliant new uniforms at Longchamp as the

Emperor reviews the troops (only one in five can read): the Cuirassiers

in their polished steel breastplates going past at the gallop the trotting
;

Lancers a veritable harvest of glittering helmets, fur busbys, shakoes

 Quai dts Granas-Auj;ii>.rmv Paris, m 1858.
and schapkas; the artillery with its new brass cannons (the secret
Photograph
weapons, e.g. the deadly mitrailleuse and the breech-loading chassepol,

are kept out of sight); the Fantassins in their long black tunics, the Franz IVinterhalter:
flu I mperoi NTapoleon III
fezzed Turcos in short pants and the turbaned Zouaves in red panta-
loons, the Chasseurs a pied quickstepping to Rossini's new trumpet
march played by a bugle band, the little canxinieres in colored
petticoats with miniature casks of cognac swinging from their shoul-

ders, finally the husky Sapeurs with bristling chin-beards, fur caps,

white aprons and glittering axes (at the Alcazar, crowds going mad
over Theresa's deep-voiced: Rien n'est sacre pour un Sapeurl); the
Emperor standing in the Champ de Mars presenting eagles to the army,
as his uncle had done, or signing treaties with an eagle's quill (in the

shadow of the Vendome Column, decrepit veterans in the rags of

Waterloo nodding solemn approval).
 ;

"
And because, after all. it tak run a palace, they see the The "Gilded and Voluptuous Promises
Emperor married to tall and beautiful ugenia Maria de Montijo de
I
of the Second Empire
Guzman at Notre Dame de Paris; the vast nave hung with velvet, the
arches banked with flowers and the aisles ablaze with candles and gold
larme, the bride wearing blue velvet with a long, lace-covered train, At the time of the 1855 World's Fair Ingres was 75 years old.
clusters of diamonds in her corsage, on her red-gold hair a long veil of Corot 59, Delacroix 57, Diaz 47. Th iodore Rousseau 4 3, Millet 41,

Alencon lace under crown of orange flowers, the high comb and
a Daubigny 38 and Courbet 36.

As for the generation of the In pressionists, Pissarro was 25.

diadem in magnificent sapphires; Emperor and Empress in their
Manet 23. Degas 21, Cezanne and S sley 16. Monet 1 5. Renoir and
modest little marriage carriage with painted panels and satin cushions Berthe Morisot 14.

embroidered with the large "N "

that was making its reappearance

everywhere, in tapestry, silverware and on stone bridges the Emperor ;

and Empress receiving at the Tuileries Palace, the bedazzled guests

Honors Daumier: An Excusable
slowly climbing the curving stairway between the rigid rows of green- Error. Chickens imaginings they

helmets also bear the Imperial cipher. have rediscovered the cage
and-gold Cent-Gardes whose tall in

which they spent thfir infancy.

They see Emperor and Empress setting the fashion : feminine dress
Lithograph, 1857.
weighed down with tinsel, lace, fal-lals, tulles, ribbons and artificial

flowers, the crinoline which permitted women to glide across polished

floors, but never to sit ; their male companions of wealth and banality
wearing tight trousers and wasp-waisted long-tailed coats, painted
faces and circular moustaches, large watch chains, trinkets and gloves
Emperor and Empress at a grand bal costume, Eugenie's lovely bare

shoulders the magnet of compulsive stares.

Foreign sovereigns come to stare and wonder the Czar of Russia,
:

the King of Prussia, Queen Victoria (thrilled to have heard the Emperor
"
whisper to the Empress, Lomme tu es belle "), the Prince of Wales, the

Sultan of Turkey, gentlemen from Japan. They see Emperor and

Empress dancing to the melodies of Offenbach at the Bal Mabille and
the Valentino, riding together at Fontainebleau. skating on the lake at

Boulogne, at boating parties, drags, shoots, reviews; the Emperor,

engaged on a "Life of Caesar "
while the Empress plays at spiritualism
and the cult of Marie Antoinette Emperor and Empress ; at the Theatre
Franqais to see Sarah Bernhardt in La Dame aux Camelias. at the The'atre

Italien to hear Adelina Patti in M. Gounod's new opera ; the Emperor

alone in his box to see — for the hundredth time — Hortense Schneider
in La Belle Helene, alone at many another voluptuous, but private,
performance. This is the wine of success.

At the moment of taking power, Louis Napoleon had quoted the

old French proverb: Quand le vin est tire, ilfaut le boire — when the wine
is drawn it must be drunk. The little man with the sallow complexion
and dull eyes, the long cruel cheeks and the clotted moustache, had
seized the cup. The opposition had been crushed. He had set the stage,

he thought, for a new and glorious epoch in the history of France.

How could Louis Napoleon have known that France's lasting
glory in the two decades of his rule resided not in himself, his army or
his court, but in the talents of a few young people, only one of them yet
of age. In the year that Napoleon tasted the totalitarian wine Camille
Pissarro was twenty-one; Edouard Manet was nineteen and Edgar
Degas seventeen. Alfred Sisley and Paul Cezanne were both twelve,
Claude Monet eleven, Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Armand
Guillaumin and Fre'deric Bazille ten years old.

"Savage young revolutionaries, " Zola was to call them.

10
 From our vantage point in the twentieth century >
i urned
to recognize the factors contributing to insurgent success and longe-
vity. We note, for example, that no insurrectionary regime has i

to exercise control over the aesthetic and intellectual life within its

range. The question of free expression in the arts is no longer del

except to prove that it does not exist more often explicit than implicit
;

is the revolutionary principle that the control and guidance ol all

forms of expression is essential to the continuing exercise of political

power.
This truth was. of course, understood by the oligarchs of
earlier times, some of whom countered insurrection by this means.
Louis XIV, studying rebellious Paris from the security of Versailles,
enlisted the AcademieFrancaiseand the Royal Academy of Painting and
Sculpture to capture, through the channel of honors and increment,
the original and provocative minds of his long reign. Though the
system was less advantageously employed by his immediate succes-
sors, it is significant that, when it came, the French Revolution, while
broadening the scope of the Academy, maintained a close supervision
over creative expression. Thus the ensuing popular dictatorship was
able to make full use of art for its own ends; indeed, the widescreen
canvases depicting the trials and triumphs of Napoleon I continue to
this day to add luster to his image.

In 1791 the annuai exhibition of the Academie des Beaux Arts (as

it had been renamed) was thrown open, by a decree of the National

Assembly, to non-members of the Academy and foreign painters. Thus

Consrantin Guys. The Champs-Elvse'es. inaugurated, the bourgeois age in art grew and flourished. Installed in
Pen, wash, sepia and watercolor.
the castles and manor houses of the disappropriated aristocracy, or
The Picture Gallery at the Paris World's
building mansions for themselves, the new middle classes proceeded to
Fair of 1855. Wooa'cut.
decorate their status dwellings according to their own taste, leaning
heavily on the Academy for guideposts to their new-found expression.
Beginning with a few hundred paintings the number of exhibits at the

annual exhibitions, or Salons, as they were called, had increased to

thousands when Honore de Balzac complained that "since 1830 the
Salon has become a bazaar. " '

In great demand were the products of an art cult (there is no other

word for it) called anticomania. Originating in the last quarter of the

previous century, after the discovery of Pompeii, it had been intro-

duced to France by the painter David. According to this system the

subjects for paintings were chosen from the myths and legends of
antiquity—as suggested, for example, by the ruins of lava- classical

engulfed Pompeii — and told a story, usually with a moral. A perfect

example of the cult is the painting, Romans of the Decadence, by Thomas
Couture, which was awarded the much-prized gold medal at the Salon
of 847.
1 In this competent painting the presumed reasons for the Fall of
Rome are presented, as in a charade, by a number of toga-wearing
models. The public loved these grandes machines, as they were called,
and the critics who wrote for the influential newspapers described each

Franz Winterhalter; The Empress painting, not as a painting, but as a story. The nude was also painted,
Eugenie and her Ladies in Waiting. but always in some mythological or archeological reconstruction.
Landscapes werealso acceptable, provided they depicted themysterious
Orient or some romantic no-man's-land.

11
 wisdom the "" oj the There were, nevertheless, some very great painters in France.
"Just as in life is loj

the body." A. D. Ingres, born in 1780, was a superlative draftsman, preferring

son!, .so tranquillity is the prime beauty oj J.

Ingres the carefully drawn, sculptural and stable; the pink flesh of his
"Bathers "
was greatly admired. Camille Corot, born in 1796, thought

of himself as a purely classic artist. "What I look for is form; for me.
color comes afterwards, " he once said, adding. "Your feeling should
be your only guide. " His delicate landscapes, always finished indoors,
had a lyricism and freshness which the official art did not possess.
Eugene Delacroix, born in 1798, was a painter of movement, of
animals and colonial soldiers; a great romantic, he found inspiration
in the works of Dante, Shakespeare and Byron, but deviated from the
accepted canon in his free and vigorous use of color. For the rest, the

academic painters, there is little to be said, except that they were

enormously popular. In the age preceding that of the camera and its

reproductive media they satisfied public hunger for imagery.

It was natural, therefore, and not without precedent, that Louis

Napoleon should turn to the Acade'mie des Beaux Arts for the picture

he wished to create of himself and his regime. Having based his appeal
on nostalgic memories of Napoleonic grandeur, he wished to recapture

the atmosphere and style of the more successful period of his Uncle's
reign, that of the Directoire. As the mirror of bourgeois taste the

Academy was superbly equipped, not only to reflect his image, but to
provide him with the technical resources for its propagation. Behind
the Academy, and command, were thousands of painters,
at its

sculptors, engravers, draftsmen, designers, wood and metal workers

and other craftsmen. The arrival of Louis Napoleon provided work for
them all. Not only were they commissioned to prepare the canvases
required for the walls of his palaces, the statuary for his halls and
gardens, but craftsmen and designers were needed for his furniture and
tapestries, his carriages, his coinage, his plate, his (and his army's)

uniforms. Not in living memory had so much canvas been put under
Ingres photographed bv Dolard, \856
paint, so much many frames carved and gilded, so
paint put in pots, so
much gold thread loomed, so much cochineal and indigo dissolved, so

lean Dominiqut Ingres llii large Odalisque, 1814

"Art consists above all in taking

nature as a model and copying
it with scrupulous care, choosing
however its loftiest sides. Ugli-
ness is an accident and not one
"
of the features of nature.
Ingres

12
much marble brought from Carrara, so much bronze and brass forged. "With Carol it is nature herselj who sin^.s and becomes
"
As Clive Bell has said: "In the second half oi the nineteenth century, her own nightingale.
official painting, perhaps tor the first time on record, certainly lor the
"
first time since Roman days, had nothing whatever to do with art.

The effect of all this industry was to make oi art a vested interest.

For the protection and management ot this interest Louis Napoleon

appointed Count Nieuwerkerke to be superintendent ol the Academic
des Beaux Arts and president of the jury of the annual Salon, with full

powers. A page under the Restoration, a sculptor under the July

monarchy, this elegant gentleman with his well-trimmed blond beard
was an intimate friend of Princess Mathilde, the Emperor's cousin.

Save for the influence of Ingres, Count Nieuwerkerke was sole arbiter of
artistic merit in France. He made art fashionable as well as financially
rewarding. The official painters such as Cabanel, Meissonier and
Bouguereau, enjoyed a comfortable affluence. Their magnificently
appointed and spacious studios had a great attraction for bourgeois
society, gentlemen of wealth coming with their wives to see the painter
at work, and perhaps commissioning a portrait.

Of the work of that small and half-starved group of outdoors

painters (contemptuously referred to as the Barbizon school, after the
name of the tiny village they frequented on the outskirts of the forest

of Fontainebleau) Count Nieuwerkerke said: "This is the painting of

democrats, of those who don't change their linen, who think that they
"
can deceive men-of-the-world: this art displeases and disgusts me.
There was a bearded democrat among the day's painters who
could not be so easily ignored. Gustave Courbet was a big gusty man
who joyfully accepted the appellation "realist. " conferred upon him
in contempt also. Born at Ornans, near Besanqon, he had been
instructed in the purest revolutionary principles by his grandfather, a

veteran of the Revolution of 1791. Sent to Paris to study law he had

taught himself to paint by copying the old masters in the Louvre.
Camille Corol Self-Portrait, about 1&35
He was a marvelous craftsman. He chose earthy or sensual subjects,
such as drinkers around a table, stone breakers, winey working girls

dozing on the banks of the Seine. He made notes out-of-doors, but he

did all his finished work in his studio.

Courbet was often to be seen at the Brasserie des Martyrs in

Montmartre which, according to the brothers Goncourt, was "a
tavern of a cavern of all the great men without name: of all the

bohemian little journalists: of the world of the impoverished and the

"
unhappy. Here Courbet would take a bock or a mazagran (lemonade
and absinthe) in the company of his spectacled friend Pierre-Joseph

Proudhon, the theoretician of egalitarian socialism. Out of these

discussions came the ideas, elaborated by Proudhon in his Du Principe

de I'Art, upon which the artistic revolution would be based "To : paint

men in the sincerity of their nature and customs, in their work, in the

accomplishments of their civic and domestic functions, with their

actual physiognomy, above all without pose, to surprise them, so to

Camille Corot: Windmill on the Dunes. Drawing.
speak, in the undressed state of their consciences, not simply for the
pleasure of mockery, but with the aim of general education and as
aesthetic warning: such seems to me (wrote Proudhon) the point
"
of departure of modern art.

13
 In 1855 — four years after his coup d'etat — Louis Napoleon felt that

it was time to boast. A great International Fair was held at the Palais de
['Industrie, built for the occasion. Painting —one of the glories of
France — was represented by five thousand canvases. Ingres topped the
list of exhibitors with forty pictures, Delacroix had thirty-five. When
two of Courbet's pictures were rejected by the selection committee,
Courbet withdrew all his submissions. On a plot of ground not far

from the grandiose Palais de l'lndustrie he had a gallery built at his

own expense, in which he exhibited forty paintings, including The

Painter's Studio and Burial at Ornans, vast canvases today regarded
as masterpieces. He called it the Pavilion du Realisme.
When Delacroix paid a visit to Courbet's Pavilion du Realisme he
was alone there; the public, obedient to the Academy's will, shunned
Courbet. But the works were seen by several very young painters who
were not only profoundly interested by Courbet's "realism, " but were
inspired by the example of his nonconformity.
To his pupils Courbet said: "Imagination in art consists in

knowing how to find the most complete expression of an existing

thing; but never to suppose or create this thing. " Naturalism in
painting was Courbet's contribution to the scientific materialism of his

century; by observing this dictum he believed that the artist would

sidestep the traditional dogmas and recipes of official painting. Thus
"
Courbet himself painted the intense emotion of facts. " Lesser painters,

obeying his injunction, merely became slaves of the model.

"Delacroix alone has grasped

the moral and human aspect
of color therein
; lie his achieve-

ment and his claims on pos-

'

' Odilon Redon

Eugene Delacroix: Arab Dancer. Pen and ink.

Eugene Delacroix: Lion Hunt, 1855.

14
 The Cry of the Earth

Impressionism can be fully understood only in the light of the progr

art immediately preceding it. the art of Delacroix. Millet. Courbet. Their
influence lay not in artistic language, whose autonomy was to be so much
enlarged by the Impressionists, but in their conception of a reality g]

and elaborated by the conscious mind, to the exclusion of any idealizing or

mythological abstractions. Delacroix, in a Journal entry of 1853. severely
criticized both Courbet and Millet, but in spite ol this negati\ t judgment he hit

on the truth when he said that Millet, like the figures he portrayed, "is himself

a peasant.
"
Similarly. Delacroix's most understanding interpreter. Baudelaire,

described Courbet as "a powerful workman. "More and more, painters refused
to withdraw into myths or ancient history, but found their heroes in the

common walks of daily life. This democratic awareness of reality became the
keynote of all modern art; it impinged on style and design, modifying and
renewing them, and increasing their expressiveness. Millet, and Courbet even
more, went beyond the realism of Barbizon, because their espousal of reality

was ideological and not a mere observation of natural scenes or scenery.

Their example in this respect was of fundamental importance for the Impres-
sionists, whose aesthetic and sensibility they foreshadowed in the steady
advance of a now irreversible process.

jenn-Francois Millcl Women man Interior Drawing.

/eon-Francois Millet : Peasants Bringing Home a Calf Born in t/ie Fields.

Gustave Courbet: The Young Stone-Breaker, about 1S65. Chalk.

<? lov^Ut

15
 Jean-Francois Millet:
The Gleaners, 1857.

Peasants in the Fields, about

1865. Stereoscopic View.

Millet. Rousseau. Diaz and Daubigny. the sage. For the legendary exploits ot ancient
leading painters of the Barbizon school, whom heroes they substituted the modest grandeur,
Monet and the Impressionists were to meet in moving presence and age-old gestures ol the
the 1 860's. were the first artists of the nine- peasant at work in the fields Though revolu-
teenth centurywho had no private means, tionaries at heart, they did not destroy the
who depended on their art for a living. Theirs traditional spatial structure of the picture, for
was often a hard life, but they believed too they dared not challenge both the subject and
firmly in their painting to make the least the manner of representing it for fear of being
concession to the taste of the public It was in totally misunderstood: but they did impose
front of their easel that they launched their on painting a new truthfulness and simplicity,
social and moral revolution. As men of the a direct vision of things. A comparison of
people, they turned away instinctively from Millet's Gleaners with those in an old photo-
the classical masters to such artists as Le Nain, graph shows how true to life he was. In
La Tour and Chardin. because in these painters illustrating the work of the fields and seasons,
they found a spirit akin to their own. They the Barbizon painters came to grips again
reiected historical and mythological painting, with the problem of integrating the figure into
the whole intellectual and literary bias of the the landscape.
art of their time, in favor of a direct record- With them nature lost its literary charms
ing of human experience and everyday life. but regained its grandeur and silence. In their
The milieu in which they lived, the poverty figure paintings, idealization of form gave
which they shared with workers and peasants, way to a straightforward rendering of sturdy
imbued their work with a democratic mes- volumes
 Corot had made studies directly from nature,
daily during his stay in Italy, but like the classical
masters he kept these studies secret, while the Barbizon
painters used theirs as sketches for studio composi-
example of Constable whose influence
tions, after the

on French landscapisls remained strong for several

generations after the exhibition of his work in Paris at

the 1824 Salon. As they made studies of Paris and its

environs. Rousseau. Diaz and Daubigny came to real-

ize the importance of light, which constantly changes
the appearance of things. Their romantic temperament
induced them to look in nature for an echo of their
moods. In its underlying rhythms, in the renewal of the
seasons and the novelty of changing light effects, land-

scape was better suited than any other subject to the

expression of their feelings.
Curious observers of all natural phenomena, they
x^-tK"''* ,>-'#**;«
were especially fond of spectacular manifestations, such
3$ as storms and rainbows. Into the rigid framework of
3T- .
— .
'.. .- - iS> classical space they thus introduced forces which tran-
scended man, uncontrollable and inaccessible forces. In

contrast with the linear gap receding toward the hori-

"I plainly see the aureoles of the dandelions and out yonder, far beyond zon line, there is often a violent gust of wind sweeping
lengthwise across the canvas and carrying heavy
the land, the sun flaunting its glory in the clouds. And no less clearly, in clouds which project dramatic shadows onto the
the steaming plain, I see the plow horses at work, then, in a stony place, a ground and modify local tones and the traditional
aspect of things. The grass may turn vermilion or
man hacking away whose grunts have been heard all day long and who lemon yellow, the hill a tender green or violet. And
straightens up for a moment to catch his breath. The drama is cloaked in man is dwarfed by the play of cosmic forces.

splendor. None of it is of my devising, and this expression, the cry of the

"
earth, Was Coined long ago. Jean-Francois Millet

Jean-Francois Millet: A Sower,

about 1848. Drawing.

Theodore Rousseau : View of

Montmartre. Storm Effect,

about 1845-1848.
The Official Glories of the Salon

These four painters numbered amonj; [In- The Renaissance conception of the picture
official glories of the nineteenth century, space remained unchallenged until after the

among those who were awarded gold medals, French Revolution and the resulting moral

the Legion of Honor and the commissions and social upheavals. Normal perspective,

given by the State and by princes. These four marking man's domination over nature, was
pictures represent the official taste against taken for granted as the ideal and absolute

which the genuine creators had to contend. system of representation. Unable to establish
The scandal of the Salon reached its height any new relationships between man and the

under Napoleon III In vain were some re- world around him. academic painters con-
forms made in the selection of the jury : its tented themselves with a slightly personalized

spirit remained the same so long as the major- interpretation of a conventional pattern, and

ity of the jurymen were members of the Insti- this inevitably meant idealizing and sentimen-
tut and the Academy, representatives of offi- talizing. The picture came to be judged by the
cialdom. In their blind conventionalism and story it told, and specific pictorial values were
prejudice they resisted the expression of any lost sight of behind the cultural and senti-
new ideas in art. They were the enemies of mental values of the anecdote.
creative freedom, and things had come to While in science and philosophy the nine- > -^
such a pass that some artists were reduced to teenth century came to grips with the phe-

working
watered
in

down
two manners: one tame and
to suit the Salon

more bold and personal which they dared not

and another
nomena of
to live in a
reality, official artists

make-believe world. As photo-

graphy was popularized, it
continued

confirmed the
nf gk
show. The tyranny of the jury was for many a intuition of the realist painters. The evidence
real hardship, for the Salon was then the only of photography amounted to an outright con- -X^^B^^L-
place where artists could exhibit their work in demnation of official art. but the progressive
public. The painters who triumphed at the painters striving to record their optical dis-

Salon were not necessarily devoid of talent, coveries with the utmost accuracy continued
"* P. !^^^P ^^^™^ ;-- ^^"^55
but they were apt to prefer slickness and to be treated as dangerous and vulgar revo-
conformism to truth, they had to make con- lutionaries.

cessions to the prevailing taste. Charles Gleyre gave a tinge of romantic

To please the jury meant accepting ready- melancholy to the idealism of David. Leopold
made formulas and a conventional way of Robert sentimentalized Poussin. Jules Breton
seeing. The classicists assumed a tinge of idealized Millet, and Cormon re-echoed the
romanticism in order to seem up to date; the sentiment of Victor Hugo in terms verging on
romantics held their hand and palette check the grotesque. But Breton's mawkishness to
in

form.
order to accord the customary primacy to
Painting was reduced to
in

illustration,
could no more compete with Courbet's robust
truthfulness than Cormon's grandiloquence
J! fe Li £
and personality to technical skill. with Daumier's dramatic power. &f*r<f!i
"For a painter to make a point of looking for poetry in the
"
conception of a picture is the surest way for him not to find it.

Baudelaire SMfcSM^aas:..

Charles Gleyre Evening or Lost

:

Illusions, 184}.

Fernand Cormon: Cain.

Leopold Robert . The Return of

the Harvesters from the Pon-
tine Marshes. Rome. 1830.

Jules Breton: Benediction of

the Wheat in Artois, 1857.

 The Dramatic
Realism

of Courbet

Gustave Courbet: A Burial a!

Ornans. 1849.

Honors Daumier: The

Emigrants, 1850-1855.

Courhet and Daumier spurned anything in

"This much must be said for Courbet, that he has con-
the way of conventions or concessions to
prevailing taste The apostle of realism.
tributed not a little to restore the taste for simplicity
Courbet was the first artist who successfully and frankness and the disinterested, absolute love of
resisted the authority of the Salon jury. It was "
an epoch-making event when in 1855. his
painting.
audela
masterpiece The Studio having been rejected
by the jury, he held an exhibition of his own
in a private pavilion outside the fair grounds
where the official exhibition took place. This
was the first retrospective devoted to the work
of a living artist of the younger generation, "The imagination recruits its strength in nature, and
assertion of independence with respect forms which
the first
there it seizes on real it then raises into
to officialdom. In his preface to the catalogue

Courbet wrote: "I have studied the art of the new allegories.
Thore'-Burger
ancients and the art of the moderns without
regard to any spirit of system and without
preconceptions. " What he did in fact was "to
elicit from a thorough knowledge of tradition
the reasoned, independent sense " of his own
individuality. He was the first painter to look
at the present with his own eyes.
Courbet and Daumier were sturdy republi-
cans. Recognizing the individual rights of each
man. they exercised their own to the full and
expressed in painting what they really felt. To
safeguard this creative freedom. Daumier had
to spend most of his time and energy on
caricature and illustration. Self-taught, know-
ing nothing of the classical training of the
academies, he was the first painter to rise from
the ranks of the craftsmen, an individualist
with a personal vision unhampered by the
linear space ot Renaissance art. His portrayal
of human beings is convincing, compassion-
ate, and memorable. His linework. free and
quivering with life, expresses the intensity
of his frank sympathy with people.

19
 Courbet's contemporaries were shocked by
the realism of his vision, and to them it did
not seem odd that the inventor of realism
should paint a landscape in his studio, while a
nude model posed beside him and his friends

looked on. Truthfulness with him was a matter

of frank personal expression, but his composi-
tion continued to owe more to imagination
than to realistic observation.
For Courbet truthfulness was essentially
tactile. Both in his Studio, the last large-scale

painting of the nineteenth century, and in his

Guslavt Courbet: The Painter's Sludio. 1855.

"To be able to express the manners, ideas and aspect of my

"
time ... in a word, to produce living art. Courbet

"
To paint
has got to
a bit

know
of country one
it. 1 know mv
«r^R*
native countryside

That woodland
that river

look ,11
is

them and you

is near
the tout.
and I paint
mv home,
Go and
will sec
it.

j^tjf^^
p Pli-'

-.
my picture. "
Courbet
•
i

•
]

..
'*
1 4.
V""

BMggj fm3fi
•

-
'"
5

.-
'? -
,
'
• s^ *> SgtfTSW

Gustave Courbet: Stream in

^ *.*•

id.' Forest, IS65.

- -.
" '

•
%•*/-
'
-
. - ;
"
 : *$%/
'•V,.* •• !*, *
vAm3% u

. %%«' v
***%T'
I 1

EXHIBITION "'&, \
MiRLEiiunras
\.,< •-#* 'n

M Gustave COURBET

•*
'

.
%^ t|I
Catalogue of Courbet's one-man show oj 1855.
s**m$
Gustave Courbet: Selj-Portrait. detail Jrom
The Painter's Studio. 1855.
r^J
best landscapes, he tried to render with the
utmost authenticity the actual texture of
things; over the local tone he superimposed
the quality of the texture, the sense of touch
prevailed over that of sight. Without cultural
>
prepossessions, he felt that anything that exists
is worth painting, that everything has a beauty
of its own. that acquired tastes are apt to vi

impose fallacious and ephemeral hierarchies

which are best evaded by the direct expression
"\
ot personal feelings. A man of the soil, he liked
good workmanship and dense, full-bodied
pigments, changing his technique to suit the
texture of each new object and not hesitating
to use the palette knife and the thick creamy
paints of the house painter if need be. His fir
gesture was direct and generous, his vision
clear and straightforward. But the best of his
painting is in the parts rather than the whole.
He concentrated on accurate details, while the
Impressionists on the contrary disregarded
detail, the better to record the light that unites
objects. Sure of himself and proud of his
originality, Courbet produced some unforget-
table pieces of painting remarkable for their
forthright truthfulness. He was so much con-
cerned with touch and texture that the play of
light and shade in his pictures is often inaccur-
ate. As a positivist, he believed only in what
he could measure and touch. But he freed his

successors from the stale hierarchy of genres Courbet's preface to his one-man show of 1855:
and subjects and emboldened them to see and REALISM
do everything. His painting is justified not so The name "realist" has been imposed on me just as the name without regard to any spirit of system and without preconceptions. I

much by his culture or talent as by the robust "romantics "

was imposed on the men of 1830. At no time have such have no more tried to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor

authenticity of his human testimony.

names conveyed an accurate idea of things; were it otherwise, our has my intention been rather to aim at the pointless goal of art for art's
works would be superfluous. sake No! I have quite simply tried to elicit from a thorough knowledge
Without going any further into the accuracy or inaccuracy of a of tradition the reasoned, independeni sense of my own individuality.

designation which, it is to be hoped, no one need be expected to Knowledge is power, that was what I had in mind. To be able to
understand. I shall confine myself to a few words of explanation in express the manners, ideas and aspect of my time, according to my own
order to forestall any misunderstandings estimate of them, in a word to produce living art. that is the end I have
I have studied the art ol the ancients and the art of the moderns in view G- C.

21
 ;

Edouard Manet, oneof the younger painters who visited Courbet's

Pavilion, saw this at once. "Too black, " was his comment, which may
have been a reference to Courbet's palette, or to his outlook. Though
only twenty-three at this time Manet was already embarked upon a
From Realism to an Objective and Poetic Naturalism
course which would take him far beyond the confines of naturalism
without obeisance to official painting. Born. January 25, 1832, at no. 5
rue des Petits Augustins and baptized at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, he
"Never have seen so expressive a face; he laughed and looked uneasy.
I

was the eldest of three brothers, sons of an official of the Department

assuring me al the same time that his picture was very had and that it would
he a great success. find him
I quite decidedly a charming man. ever so much of Justice, a family, not rich, but solidly respectable (they owned a 1 50-

to my liking. As always his paintings produce the impression of wild or even acre estate at Gennevilliers). He had been educated first by the Abbe
"
slightly unripe fruit.
Poiloup at Vaugirard, then at the College Rollin. Uncle Fournier, his
Letter from Berthe Morisot lo her sister Edma. May 2. 1869
mother's brother, who had some skill with the pencil, had given the
boy drawing lessons and had several times taken him, with his friend

Antonin Proust, to see the King's famous collection of Spanish art at

the Louvre, five hundred paintings by Goya. Greco, Velazquez and

Zurbaran, alas, withdrawn after Louis Philippe's overthrow.
Auguste Manet wanted his son to enter the Navy and when the
boy failed the entrance examination he sent him to sea as an
apprentice. It was a fine trip out to Rio de Janeiro in the Guadeloupe the :

young man made sketches of the ship's company and his obvious
talent was exploited by the ship's quartermaster in connection with a

consignment of Dutch cheese which had spoiled in the tropical heat.

"Conscientiously with a brush I freshened up these teres de mort which

reappeared in the beautiful tints of violet and red, " Manet said, years

later. "It was my first piece of painting. "

He returned home with the

sailor's inevitable souvenir of foreign ports and some equally lasting

impressions. "I spent night after night, " he told the painter Charles
Toche (as reported by Ambroise Vollard, the art dealer), "watching
the play of light and shade in the wake of the ship. During the day
I watched the line of the horizon. That taught me how to plan out a

sky. " His rare seascapes would surprise by their authority.

After his return to Paris his lather, no doubt consoling himself
with the thought of the medals to be won by a well-born artist, agreed

that Edouard should enter the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1850 Manet
enrolled, with his friend Antonin Proust, at the studio of Thomas
"
Couture (he of the Decadent Romans). "On my first day at Couture's,

he told Toche, "they gave me an antique to draw from. I turned it

about in every direction. It seemed to me more interesting head

downwards. " Couture preferred his models to be thin, because, as he
explained to his students, "you can add as much as you like, whereas
hlllluih, ,

with fat models, the flesh hides everything and you don't know what
Mattel photographed by Nadar.
to take off. "
On the model throne the male models, proud of their

athletic figures, would strike poses with torso blown up and muscles
flexed. One of them, Charles Alix Dubosc, who had modelled for
David, Gros and Ge'ricault, would come down among the students,
clad only in his shoes and a monocle, and pass judgment on their
"An artist has got to move with the times and
studies of himself. Manet detested the posturing of the profes-
"
paint what he sees. Manet sional models. "Can't you be natural!" he would shout. What
does Monsieur Manet want He wants, he says, to paint not what he is
?

supposed to see, but what he sees. He hates so-called "historical

painting. " He despises "mythology. " He would paint real people.

22
 "

One cold morning in December 1851 , hearing gunfire in the streets

of Paris, Manet rushed out to see what was happening. By chance he
found himself on the barricades thrown up by the Parisian workers
who were resisting Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. Men were falling all
'

around him. Without much thought for his own safety the young man
(he was nineteen) pulled out a drawing pad and made lightning
sketches of the scene. He was seeing real people. Nor was it the last
time he would bear witness to the barricades.
In spite of differences with Couture, Manet learned a great deal
Edouard Manet: Portrait of Baudtlairt
*
M
from his master: sharp contrasts, a way of handling pure color. 1862-1868. Etching.

Couture, a shoemaker's son, was in advance of official painting, but

Edouard Manet: The Absinthe Drinker.
could not afford to reveal this, though a feeling for real life escapes in 1859. Refused at the 1859 Salon,

his minor work. One of the first paintings Manet did outside the school Delacroix alone voting for ils admission.

was called The Absinthe Drinker. His model was an old rag-picker
named Collardet who posed in a brown cloak, wearing a high hat, a

glass beside him and a bottle at his feet. The influence of the Spanish

masters is obvious; the real influence was Couture, the technical

execution boldly conforming to Couture's rule. When the painting was
finished Manet invited Couture to view it. His former master said: "My
friend, there is only one absinthe drinker here. It is the painter who
produced this insanity. " It was characteristic of Manet that he was
chagrined by this reaction to his work. As he said later: "I painted a
Parisian character whom I had studied in Paris, and I executed it with
the technical simplicity 1 discovered in Velazquez. No one understands
it. If I had painted a Spanish type it would be more comprehensible.
Manet quit Couture's some months after he had seen Courbet's
Pavilion, having been a steady student —with some breakaways to the
relaxed atmosphere of the Academie Suisse— for years. He had six

already made a brief tour of the Italian galleries; he now travelled

extensively, visiting Vienna, Venice, Florence and Holland.
On his return to Paris Manet took a large airy studio with another

painter. Count Albert de Balleroy, and began painting vigorously. One

of his first original works was modelled by a fifteen-year-old boy
called Alexandre, who hanged himself. According to Zola, Alexandre
was the son of very poor parents and wanted desperately to be a

painter. He had got a job cleaning Manet's palettes and tidying up his
studio. Looking at Manet's painting of himself, he had realized that his
ambition could never be fulfilled. Baudelaire, Manet's friend at this
time, wrote a poem about the boy's suicide, which he called "Rope.

Manet had met Baudelaire in the salon of a family friend.

Commandant Lejosne of the Imperial Guard (nevertheless, an
admirer ot off-beat poetry), one afternoon in 1858. They took to each

other immediately. Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai had been condemned by

the Imperial Tribunal the previous year, six of the poems having been
censored as indecent. His aesthetic ideas were well in advance of the
age; he admired Delacroix and Wagner, both considered "revolution-
ary "
at that time; he had coined the word "modernity. " to describe

the efforts of a few to give expression to the contemporary world. In

his review of the Salon of 1845 he had written: "To the wind which
will blow tomorrow, no one pays any attention; and yet the heroism

of modern life surrounds us and urges us on . . . He will be truly a

23
 "

and Degas, painter, the painter, who will know how to draw out of our daily life its
Manet, the fascinating man oj the world,
epic aspect, and make us see and understand, in color and design, how
the .sarcastic misanthrope, were at one in their scorn
great and poetic we are in our neckties and polished hoots.
for conventions Manet may have been the answer to Baudelaire's prayer, certainly
his boots were polished and he invariably wore a necktie. And he
loved the daily life of the boulevards, lunching often at the Cafe

Tortoni on the corner of the rue Taitbout in the space then existing
between the rue de Richelieu and the Chaussee d' Antin. in the afternoon
a place to which a select society, almost exclusively Parisian, resorted,
meeting friends, promenading. Talleyrand had dined there, Alfred de
Musset, Theophile Gautier, Rossini were regular customers. Zola, who
$ was certainly there, wrote: "Edouard Manet is of average height,
rather small than big. Hair and beard are light brown; the eyes,

narrow and deep, have youthful vivacity and flame; the mouth is

characteristic, thin, mobile, a little mocking at the corners. The whole

face, of a fine and intelligent irregularity, announces resiliency and
audacity, contempt for stupidity and banality . . . We find in Edouard
Manet a man of exquisite politeness and amiability, of distinguished
looks and sympathetic appearance . . . The artist tells us that he adores
the social world and that he finds a secret voluptuousness in the
f
perfumed and luminous delicacy of the soirees ..."

In those days the Louvre was crowded, not with tourists, but with
hundreds of art students, easels spread and palettes loaded, all busy
copying the great masters, in accord with academic rule. Walking
through the Louvre galleries one day, Manet was struck by the
audacity of a young man who was engraving directly on a copper

/ plate his version of a Velazquez.

if you away with it, " he said.
get
"Well, my boy. you'll be lucky

The young man was Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas, the eldest son

of Auguste-Hyacinthe de Gas by his marriage with Mademoiselle
Marie-Celestine Musson of Louisiana. Of French descent the Musson
family had been settled at Santo Domingo before moving to New
Orleans where they had profited by the growing trade with Mexico
and the Mississippi valley (a great house, built of New England granite
Edgar Degas: Portrait of Manet. 1864-1865. Drawing.
on the corner of Canal and Royal streets, was long known as
" Musson's Fort "). Educated in Paris, Marie-Ce'lestine was sixteenwhen
"Degas admires and envies the self-assurance of she married Auguste-Hyacinthe de Gas and barely seventeen when
Manet, whose eye and hand are sure of themselves, Edgar was born. Though banking had long been the occupation of the
who sees infallibly what in the model will give him de Gas family — from Orleans to Naples during the
shifting Revolu-
the opportunity to put forth his full power, to tion —Auguste de Gas was interested money than less in in antique

work at full stretch. There is in Manet a decisive music. It was a family in which art was discussed seriously and a

young man could learn something of the technique of etching from a

resourcefulness, a sort of strategic instinct of picto-
family friend such as Prince Gregoire Soutzo. Born in Paris, July 19,
rial action. In his best canvases he arrives at poetry,
1834, Edgar had been tutored by his Uncle Henri Musson before
that is at the highest point of art, by what I may be
receiving a classical education at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand. The death
"
allowed to call . . . the resonance of the execution. of his mother when he was seventeen —she was just thirty-four — left

Paul Valery, Degas. Danse. Dessin him with a permanent sense of bereavement. Shortly after entering

Law School in 1853 he decided to become a painter. His father warned

him that there was no money in it. "You will have to make painting
"
your career, your existence. he said. "If the artist should be

24
 — " "

enthusiastic about art he should wisely regulate his conduct for fear of

remaining a nonentity. "

In 1855 Edgar Degas (as he was to sign his
paintings many years later) entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts under the **>

tutelage of Louis Lamothe, one of Ingres' pupils. In fact, it was Ingres

who was the young man's inspiration. During a chance meeting he had
i

told Ingres of his ambition to be a painter. "Do lines, many lines, after
nature and from memory, " Ingres had said. "In this way you will
Spartan Bi
"
become a good artist. Degas had done most of his lines from classic 1 <ercising, I860. Pencil.

models in the Louvre, copying Velazquez, Rembrandt, Raphael. Giotto,

Titian, Bellini and Poussin. He had tried, unsuccessfully, for the Prix

de Rome, an advantage of which was several years of study in Rome.

But the de Gas family connections had made it easy for him to travel in
"Their friendship has been jarred by inevitable
Italy where he had copied frescoes and drawings, and was greatly taken
rivalry. 'Degas was painting Semiramis when 1 was
by the sixteenth century Florentine masters. His father's sister had
of Florence and the collective portrait he did of
painting Modern Paris,' says Manet. 'Manet is in
married Baron Belleli

the Belleli family was one of his first important works. despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures
About the time he met Manet in the Louvre Degas was engaged on like Duran, and be feted and decorated; he is an
a series of large-scale historical paintings machines historiques, as artist, not by inclination, but by force. He is as a
Manet undoubtedly called them —and it is interesting that, on comple- galley slave chained to the oar, ' says Degas.
tion, they were distinguished, notably a picture he called Young
George Moore. Confessions of a Young Man
Spartans Exercising, by the fact that, instead of the muscular professional
models normally employed for such paintings. Degas had recruited his

youthful models from among the gamins of Montmartre. thus achieving

a fascinating freshness of vision. It is difficult to assess the influence of
Manet and Degas upon each other, they were so different in tempera-

ment. Manet liked to charm people; Degas was disdainful of notice,

pitiless in his analysis of others. He considered Manet's yearning for
me
!

official honors ridiculous. " The Academy ! You'll never see there
he once said. On one point, however, they were in agreement; both
were obeying Baudelaire's injunction that the great painter must
"
"draw out of our daily life its epic aspect.

At this time Degas was a member of a convivial group which used

to meet backstage at the old Opera House in the rue Le Peletier. "He
finds the dancers charming, " wrote a friend, "treats them as though
they were his own children, makes excuses for anything they do, and
laughs at everything they say. On the other hand they absolutely
venerate him and the most insignificant little rat would give a good deal
to please him. " The self-portraits Degas was painting at this time may
explain what the little rats were raving about he was : a very handsome
young man. Years later Degas summed up his Opera experience in a

couple of felicitous sentences: "There is something artificial about my

heart. The dancers sewed it up in a pink satin bag. a slightly faded pink
"
satin like their ballet slippers.

Another of Degas's worldly interests was horse-racing, though

there is no proof that he ever made a bet. He was fascinated by
movement, on the turf as on the boards. This was a quality, an
illusion, which Delacroix alone among contemporary painters had
captured in paint. "If the leaves of the trees did not move, how sad the Edgar Degas: Self-Portrait, about IS52. Pencil.

trees would be, " Degas once observed. At Longchamp racetrack and
at the racing stables of his friend Paul Valpinc,on in Normandy. Degas
watched horses and jockeys in training, making successive sketches

25
 "

breaking down their continuous combined movement. Degas did not

believe that movement could be suggested by a blurred edge, or in a
fleeting impression. He aimed to express movement in the poise and
balance of solid masses, such as horses and their riders, and he
believed that this could be done only by repeated drawing in the
studio: he was an indefatigable experimenter and very early adopted
certain principles which became his working code. That he was
successful in extracting some mysterious life essence from the banal
reality of leaping horses is shown in his painting Fallen Jockey, in which
the fallen jockey was modelled by his, later, ill-fated brother Rene.
Visiting Degas one day the ubiquitous Vollard found him arranging a
number of little wooden horses on his table. " When come in from
I the
racetrack, " Degas explained, "these are my models. How could one
make real horses turn in the light the way one wants them to ? " Vollard
does not seem to have realized that these model horses were among the
Edgar Degas: Wounded jockey. Study for the Steeplechase, 1866. Charcoal
earliest examples of another side of Degas's genius : his sculpture.

Degas, says one who knew him, was small and thin, with a high,

Was he
broad and domed forehead crowned with silky chestnut hair, with
What, one wonders, was the fate of this steeplechase jockey?
killed in his fall or only wounded? It was not the human drama that quick, shrewd, questioning eyes, deepset under high arched eyebrows
interested Degas but the contrast between his inertness and the movement shaped like a circumflex accent, a slightly turned-up nose with wide
of the horse; for the painter it was only a subject of observation.
nostrils and a delicate mouth half-hidden under a small moustache. He
Repudiating the pompous eloquence of the Salon painters. Degas concen-
trated on an objective analysis of everyday motifs. Manet, who never was an assiduous collector of other men's paintings who, when
betrayed his feelings before the model, who painted his father or a stranger expecting a bourgeois visitor, would turn the paintings to the wall.
with the same expressive objectivity, set Degas the example of an art that

simply recorded visual reality

It is Henri Fantin-Latour who cries: "The Louvre! The Louvre!
"
There is nothing but the Louvre! This is not surprising, since his
father is a drawing master in the classical tradition and the son, born at

Grenoble, January 4, 1836, is enrolled at the Beaux Arts. Fantin also

has a studio in the rue Visconti and works sitting on a little chair

1
before his easel, a skull cap on his head. Degas said: "Fantin's work is

, always good. What a pity it is a little rive gauche. "

Not satisfied with

.
.
- -
his first

developing his
copy of an old master, Fantin copies
own style, his own
it

naturalism, catching the

again and again. He
memorable
is

v^^rm moment, the poise of a head, light diffused through a

Alas, his very fine paintings are destined to become photographic but
window curtain.

1 he will leave better-than-photographic portraits of his more revolu-

tionary friends. Meanwhile he is the catalyst who brings the painters
together. "I am of your opinion," Manet writes to Fantin, "the
Demoiselles Morisot are charming. a pity they are not men.
1I Berthe-Marie-Pauline Morisot was born. January
It is

Bourges, the third daughter of Edme-Tiburce Morisot, then Prefect of

14, 1841, in

the Department of Cher. Prefect Morisot's father had been an architect

w :im and he himself had begun by studying architecture at the Beaux Arts,

r after

Paris
which he had travelled
In

big garden
Edma
on the Trocadero
twelve-and-a-half, Yves fourteen.
in Italy,

hill.
Greece and
1852 Tiburce Morisot became a government functionary
and the family moved to the capital, occupying
Sicily,

Berthe was then eleven years old,

Knowing
studying

a house with

that their father

art.

in

wanted his children to learn to draw. Madame Morisot decided to give

him a birthday surprise by engaging an art teacher for her daughters.
Edgar Degas: Steeplechase. The Fallen jockey. 1866. This was a certain M. Chocarne whose instruction proved to be so sad

26
 "

that the sisters rebelled. The Morisots finally met a real artist, Joseph

Guichard. a former pupil of Ingres, who approved of the sisters' revolt

against the insipid teaching of M. Chocarne. Guichard began by

explaining to the girls what painting was, without touching a brush.

Berthe and Edma were enthusiastic.

A studio was built for the sisters in the grounds of their home at

the Trocadero. but Berthe surprised her teacher by expressing the wish
to paint landscape. Guichard took the girls to see Corot who allowed
them to watch him paint at Ville d'Avray, afterwards lending them
some of his pictures to copy. Soon Corot was coming to dinner every

Tuesday at the Morisots. In the summer of 1863 Corot sent the sisters

to his pupil Oudinot, under whose guidance they went off early every
morning to paint landscape between Pontoise and Auvers. Oudinot Edouard Manet: Portrait
of his Father. 1860.
introduced them to Daubigny, the open air painter, who lived at
Red Chalk.
Auvers, and to Daumier whose house was in a neighboring village.

Thus, very early in her painting life Berthe Morisot was exposed to
what were then radical influences in art. When the Morisot sisters

wrote to Corot, asking him to join them, he wrote back: "Let us

work firmly and with confidence: let us not think too much about
"
Papa Corot; nature is still the best to consult.

But Berthe was not quite ready to stop thinking about Papa Corot.
She was painting, exquisitely, in his manner. Because of this perhaps,
she had no difficulty having landscapes exhibited in the Salons of 1865,
1866 and 1867. In this last Salon her landscape, called View of Paris, a
luminously gray view from the heights of the Trocadero was already
the work of a superior craftsman.

Two of Manet's paintings were accepted for the Salon of 1861.

The first was a portrait of his mother and father. Whereas a

conventional artist might have sentimentalized the parental subject

(especially as Judge Manet was obviously failing —he would die the
following September), Manet treated it as a low-keyed study, predomi-
nantly black and white. The couple looks as if it had been posed
awkwardly, that man and wife are not really together. Madame Manet
carries a basket with some balls of wool, evidently for no other reason
than to provide a note of color. Nothing is idealized: the Manets are
contemporary people in a conventional background. But a friend of
the family who saw the picture said: "It is lamentable for a lady like

Madame Manet to have a son like that. Just look at his portrait of his

parents: one would think that they were a couple of concierges.

In Manet's second painting, called The Guitarrero, he mixed realism
with the picturesque. The model, an authentic Spaniard, is shown
sitting on a bench stringing his guitar. At his feet there are several large

onions and a jar. The treatment is vigorous and bold, the color being
predominantly black and gray against an olive background. In the

Salon The Guitarrero was hung badly, but it attracted so much attention
that it was unhung and placed in a better position. In the official Le

Moniteur. Theophile Gautier. poet and connoisseur of things Spanish,

was enthusiastic Caramba Here is a Guitarrero who has not stepped
:
"
!

out of a comic opera, and who would cut a poor figure in a romantic
lithograph. But Velazquez would have given him a friendly wink, and Edouard Manet I ht Spanish Singe The Guitarrero. 1861 Copper Engraving.

27
 " —

Goya would have asked him for a light for his papelito. . . There is a

great deal of talent in this life-sized figure, broadly painted in true

color with a bold brush ..."

But in the other newspapers the critics were unanimously savage.
"Degas refused facility just as he refused everything
"What poetry is there in the idiotic figure of this mule driver, in this
that was not the sole object of his thoughts. The
blank wall, in the onion and the cigarette, whose combined odors have
only thing he wished for was to satisfy himself, and
just perfumed the room!" So wrote Hector de Callias in L'Artiste.
that meant satisfying the most exacting and incor- About the portrait of Manet's parents, Leon Lagrange wrote in the
ruptible of judges. Gazette des Beaux-Arts: "What a scourge to society is the realist
Paul Valery. Degas. Danse. Dessin
painter! To him nothing is sacred! Manet tramples underfoot even the
most sacred ties. The artist's parents must more than once have cursed
the day when a brush was put into the hands of this merciless por-
traitist. " But Manet received the Salon's "honorable mention" for
his Guitarrero and the general reaction had revealed that there were
critics new trend Astruc, Castagnary, Duranty.
ready to defend the :

Manet plunged into his work with verve and versatility, producing
Concert in the Tuileries. a painting that was more "modern" than
anything he had done up to this moment. The garden of the Tuileries,

adjoining the Imperial Palace, was the afternoon rendezvous of the

elegant society surrounding the Emperor's court. Here the ladies in
their crinolines and the gentlemen in their long jackets and stovepipe
hats sauntered about under the trees, exchanging compliments and
gossip, as they listened, most probably, to the latest melody of Jacques
Offenbach, played by the orchestra in the little music kiosk. Manet had
visited the gardens in the company of Baudelaire and. as a vision of
light and shadow in leisurely motion, the scene (to which his attention

had been drawn by a sketch of Constantin Guys) fascinated him. After

many preliminary studies, including likenesses of Baudelaire, his
brother Eugene Manet, his friend Count Balleroy, his friendly critic, the
poet Theophile Gautier, and Offenbach, he produced a shimmering
canvas, dapplings of color enlivening the whole, but with every
silhouette clearly delineated, an impression of life.

About this time Manet encountered the model he had dreamed of

finding. She had a very pale skin, dark eyes and a good figure, if a trifle

short, but she took a pose with natural ease and the understanding of
what Manet was seeking. Her name was Victorine Meurent and Manet's
first painting of her was as a street singer. Holding a guitar and
eating cherries, she is wearing a long gray dress, gray being (a

characteristic Manet note) the dominant color. But Victorine would

appear in even more controversial pictures.
Manet was still fascinated by the color and liveliness of Spanish
life (though he had not yet been to Spain) and when a troop of Spanish
dancers came to Paris next season he found among them the models
he uses in Spanish Ballet. But the subjects of Manet's paintings
and this was something his contemporaries did not yet under-
stand — were seldom the identity of the sitters or the nature of the
objects, but form and color. This is the sole explanation for a large
painting which Manet did at this time, called Old Musician, which
shows an old man sitting in the street, apparently preparing to play the
violin, surrounded by children, an absinthe drinker and an oriental in

Portrait of Manet, 1864-1866, Pencil and Wash a turban. This heterogeneous collection of objects has no conscious

28
 But above all Degas has caught the spontaneity and intimacy of if

family scene, striking in its naturalness The composition is mor< I

the poses more spontaneous. A dynamic progression runs from the fixity
the girl on the left, by way of the turning heads ol the Baroness and h<

daughter, to the father swinging around in his easychair on the right.

Baroness Belleli was Degas's aunt: she showed him hospitality during his long
stays in Italy, and her nephew painted this family scene as a token of thanks.
Not content with an approximation, Degas made many preparatory studies

for this picture, in which he was one of the first to achieve an effect o\

photographic immediacy.

Edgar Degas: Self-Portrait with a Green Waistcoat, about 1856.

Edgar Degas: Spartan Boys and Girls Exercising, I860.

Edgar Degas: The Belleli Family, about 1859-1862.

Degas follows Manet in the Path of Modernity

Degas was attracted by Ingres, by the elegance and simplicity ot his

draftsmanship. He loved the concision of lines that render reality accurately

but without detriment to the ideal beauty of the Renaissance painters. "Style
is nature. " Ingres liked to say. and Degas endorsed that point of view.
In 1855 Degas entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in Lamothe's class, but the

instruction he received from that master did not answer his expectations. He
preferred to consult life rather than copy feeble imitations of the ancients. His
background and schooling impelled him towards traditional art ; his person-

ality, independent spirit and love of truth towards a new form of expression.
In this early self-portrait he remains strongly under the influence of Ingres.
Brushwork and color are subordinated to accuracy of line; keen and
searching, his eye rests on things with insistent scrutiny.

History painting was then the most highly esteemed art form and Degas B .

|
tried his hand at it. His picture of Spartan Boys and Girls Exe rcising brings out ,;
-
the contradiction between historical fiction and his taste for movement. The I !

example of Manet, whom he was soon to meet, detached him from the
academic routine and the Beaux-Arts tradition, and left him free to paint the
—
life

Belleli
around him. The comparison between the Spartans Exercising and the
Eamily is revealing. The first theme Degas took from his imagination,
«CJ
the second from reality. He was much more of an innovator when it came to
observing than when he had to invent. In the historical subject the composi-
tion is traditional; the groups ot boys and girls form the solidly planted sides
L^bV^ ^ af .*" s% v sE

of a truncated pyramid whose symmetry is all too obvious and the dyna-
mism of the naked bodies is incompatible with this classical rigidity. In the

portrait of the Bellili Family space is much better articulated: a broken line

runs laterally across the picture and avoids the pitfalls of a central vanishing
point: an inverted, asymmetrical pyramid is marked by the mother's head,
m *Jj
the apron of the girl in the center and the upper right corner of the picture.

"^^stf P*~«. I

29
 " . "

Artists have always grappled with the prob-

"To observe amounts for the
lem of rendering the visible world, and though
most part to imagining what reality does not change much from one period

to another they have all given us a highly

one expects to see.
personal view of it. Yet there is a much sharper
Paul Valery. Degas. Danse. Dessin difference between artists of two different per-
temperament than between
iods with a similar
painters of thesame century with opposing
temperaments, for the vision of space is more
determinant than variations of sentiment.
Degas and Manet looked with the same impar-
tiality on appearances and movement. The por-
trait was the first subject which enabled them

to break with idealistic make-believe, to paint

modern life instead of historical subjects.

Manet and Degas, however, were not at all

alike. Jacques-Emile Blanche has judiciously

pointed out the contrast between them.
"Degas's eye was photographic, recording
exactly what he saw; then his brain corrected
the proof. Degas repainted in the way that

certain prose writers rewrite an initial text,

correct the proofs and — by thought and will-

power —confer a noble, difficult style on

phrases that at first were quite banal. Manet,
on the contrary, whether he covered a scrap

of paper with a few touches of Indian ink or a

Edgar Degas: Portrait ofTherese De Gas, Duchess Morbilli, 1863. whether he sug-
few strokes of pen or pastel,

gested by scumbling a light effect on fruit, a

rose, a face, or whether he toiled for months

C. E. A. Carolus-Duran: Lady with a Glove (The Artist's Wife), 1869.
— Manet produced in the sketch or finished
work a peculiar, personal creation.

The Lady with a Glove was

acclaimed at the Salon of 1869 and
opened a brilliant official career for
Carolus-Duran. He at once became
a determined opponent of the
Impressionists. Much later, in

1892, Pissarro rejoiced at the

attacks made on Carolus-Duran in

by Octave Mirbeau: "M.

Le Figaro

Carolus-Duran would make an

excellent upholsterer. Herein lies

perhaps the secret of his success.

He does not paint women, he
upholsters; he does not clothe
women, he drapes them, as one
would drape a door or a bed . .

M. Carolus-Duran does not know

what a human face is. Nor does
he know what painting is. in spite
"
of all the virtuosity he displays.

Edouard Manel

Victorine Meurent in the Costume

of an Espada. 1862.

The Street Singer. 1862.

 "

"A painting is first of all a product of the artist's

imagination, it must never be a copy. If he can

afterwards add two or three accents from nature,
obviously that will do no harm. The air we see in

the pictures of the old masters is not the air we

breathe.
Degas

"Degas found in the race horse an unusual theme

that satisfied the conditions which his nature and
his period imposed on his choice of themes. Where
could he find anything pure in modern reality?
Realism and style, elegance and rigor happened to
come together in the luxuriously pure being of the
"
racing animal.
Paul Valery, Degas. Danse. Dessin

Manet and Degas agreed in according less importance to landscape

than to the human figure and giving priority to line over color. Both
moreover were much less concerned with the study of nature than Monet and
his friends. Horse racing was the first subject that took them out of doors, but
given the speed of the movement it is a motif that the eye is incapable of
recording with anything like photographic instantaneity ; memory, know-
ledge and instinct had to make up for the inadequacy of observation.
Staying with his friends the Valpincons, a family of collectors who had
introduced him to Ingres, Degas began to take an interest in horses. In 1860,
at Menil-Hubert near the racing stables called Haras du Pin in Normandy, he
sketched their movements with increasing precision. Gericault had magiste-
rially introduced the theme of horse racing into French painting in 1821.
From 1862 Degas painted many racing pictures. In the dynamism and color of
the races he found a modern subject. Two years later Manet was attracted to
the Longchamp racecourse, but he was more interested in the general
atmosphere and his expression of movement was less specific. In his very first

racing pictures Degas showed his amazing mastery of line. The jockeys'
colorful jackets and the well-dressed society women gave him the touches
that brightened up his picture, just as flowers brightened up Monet's
landscapes.

Edouard Manet: Races at Longchamp. 1864.

Edouard Manet : The Races. Lithograph.

Edgar Degas: Gentlemen's Race (Before the Start). 1862.

31
 In Quest of an Immediate Expression of the Senses

"The two other pictures, the Spanish Ballet and Concert in the Tuilerics.

were the ones that set the spark to the powder. An exasperated art lover went
so far as to threaten to take violent action if Concert in the Tuileries were
allowed to remain any longer in the exhibition hall. I quite understand his
anger : just imagine, under the trees in the Tuileries. a whole crowd, maybe a

hundred people, moving about in the sun; each person is a simple, barely

defined patch of color in which details become lines or dark points. If I had
been there, I would have requested the art lover to stand at a respectful

distance; he would then have seen that these color patches were alive, that

the crowd talked, and that this canvas was one of the artist's characteristic

works, the one in which the artist has most closely complied with his eyes
"
and temperament.
Emile Zola. Revue du XIXe siede, January 1, 1867.

Edouard Manet. The Old Musician. 1862.

Zola discovered Manet through Cezanne and at once became a valiant

and lucid defender of his work. On January I, 1867, he published a long

article on Manet in the Revue du XIX C siede: "Here is how account for the I

birth of any genuine artist, that of Edouard Manet for example. Feeling that
he was getting nowhere by copying the old masters, by painting nature as
seen through different eyes than his own. he quite naively realized one fine
day that he might as well try to see nature just as it is. without looking at it

through the works and opinions of others. As soon as this thought occurred
to him. he took an object, no matter what, a person or thing, placed it at the

back of his studio work reproducing it on canvas, according to his

and set to

faculties of vision and understanding. He strove to torget everything he had

learned in the museums; he tried to put out of his mind the advice he had
received, the paintings he had seen. All that was now at work was one man's
intelligence, assisted by organs gifted in a certain manner, facing nature and
"
rendering it in his own way.
The public rejected Manet because of his novel themes and the original
vision that justified the originality of his technique. He concentrated on
directness and pattern-like simplifications, eliminated half-tones in the basic
contrasts between black and white, repudiated idealism and make-believe.
Always

Napoleon III
sensitive to the currents
turned to Spanish subjects,
had married a
and fashions
which had become popular
Spanish beauty
ing the masters of the Spanish school, for they were at a loss
explain the novelty of his vision Baudelaire,
Critics
ot modern

who encouraged Manet

life.

in

accused him of plagiariz-

how
Manet often
Paris since

to refute or

in his
a m
modernism, answered these attacks in a letter of 1 864 to Thore'-Burger "
The
word pastiche is inaccurate. M. Manet has never seen Goya; M. Manet has
never seen El Greco; M. Manet has never seen the Pourtales collection. That
may seem unbelievable to you. but it is true. I too have been amazed at these
mysterious coincidences . . . Manet has heard so much about his pastiches of
"
Goya that now he is trying to see some Goyas.

"No, I can do nothing without nature. I don't

know how to invent. As long as I went on painting
as I was taught to paint, I produced nothing of any
value. If I am worth anything today, I owe it to
"
exact interpretation, to accurate analysis.
'
Manet
 . "

significance, except that Manet wanted to paint them. In a sense the

painting is a deliberate attack on the concept of art as a medium for fr-VmL

telling a story or delivering a message, though Manet did not think.

of it in this light; he was always innocent in his role of provocateur.

With Auguste Manet's death 1862 his son inherited a sufficient
income to make him economically
category from the young painters
in

secure and thus he

who admired his
was in a different

unorthodoxy.
I
In the beginning of 1863 the Academie des Beaux-Arts issued a
decree, limiting to three the number of paintings an
might submit to the jury of the Salon for that year. This was a blow to
individual painter

'
•
W ^ '! 4
4
fj:
^
v VV"

Manet who had completed thirty paintings since the last Salon.
Many young artists were similarly disappointed and a deputation,

headed by Manet and Gustave Dore. the illustrator, waited on the

Minister of State, Count Walewski. They were politely received, but

no change was made.

Following the precedent set by Courbet during the World's Fair of
1855, Manet decided to hold his own one-man show, an unexpected
step for so young a painter and one which hinted that a bold non-

conformist spirit was abroad. Shortly before the official Salon was
scheduled to open he exhibited fourteen paintings at the Martinet
"With Manet. " wrote his friend Antonin Proust, "the eye played so great
Gallery in the Boulevard des Italiens. The critics were crushing. Paul a part that Paris has never had a stroller in her streets on whom so little

Mantz, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, wrote of "this Parisian Spaniard's. . was lost ... He noted down in his sketchbook the merest trifle, a profile,

a hat. in a word a fleeting impression, and when the next day a friend,
medley of colors. " Of the Concert in the Tuileries another critic
leafing through his sketchbook, would say. 'You ought to finish this.' he
complained that his "eyes were flayed by its colors as his ears were would burst out laughing. 'Do you take me for a history painter?' he
flayed by the music at public fairs. "
The power of critical rhetoric at would say. In his mouth 'history painter' was the most scathing insult that
could be addressed to an artist. 'And then.' he would add. 'to reconstitute
this time may be judged from the fact that Manet, despite later
historical figures, how ridiculous! Can one paint a man with only his hunting
successes, was never able to sell Concert in the Tuileries, until a friend license to go on? The only true way is to paint straight off what you see.

bought it just before his death. If you've caught it. all right. If not. then try again. All the rest is humbug.'

Edouard Manet:

The Old Musician, about 1861.

Watercolor.

The Spanish Ballet, 1862.

Concert in the Tuileries, 1860.

Wash Drawing.

Concert in the Tuileries, 1862.

33
 " " " "

During the Second Empire the importance attached to official art,

I
and its vast infrastructure of art-crafts and art-teaching, gave
encouragement to thousands of young would-be artists. Emile
Zola, the novelist, has left us descriptions of large groups of art students
marching vociferously through Paris. "It was the usual thing," he
says, "the band was gradually increased by the addition of comrades
on the way. and then came the wild march of a horde on the war-path.
With the bold assurance of their twenty summers, these young fellows
took possession of the sidewalk. The moment they were together

Paul Cezanne: Sf (/-Portrait,

trumpets seemed to sound in advance of them; they seized upon Paris
1865-1866. and quietly dropped her in their pockets.

And so, gathering numbers on the way, they would come

swinging down the Boulevard des Invalides and across the Seine to the

Though the great Revolution of 1793 Champs Elyse'es, singing, shouting, pushing people off the sidewalks.
Zola's artist-hero, Claude Lantier, is in step with the crowd. "Claude
changed the whole face of France,
became excited. Faith in himself revived amidst the glow of mutual
both politically and socially, it failed to hope. His worries of the morning left only a vague numbness
emancipate the twin arts of painting behind... Trembling with excitement he kept saying, 'Ah, Paris! It's

and literature. The Impressionist ours! We have only to take it!' They all grew excited, their eyes
opening wide with desire. Was not Glory herself looking down from
Revolution was thus a delayed part of
the summit of the Avenue on the whole capital? Paris was there and
the Revolution of 1793.
they longed to make her theirs.
WYNFORD DEWHURST The young artists — literally thousands of them — lived in attic

studios or the cellars of the old quarters of the city, most of them in a

state of semi-poverty. The models who posed for Claude, waitresses

and seamstresses, chalked their names and addresses on the walls of

his studio and Claude would write after their names, "big brunette
or "too thin," as the case was. Standing back from one of his
paintings he would say. "Parbleu. it's very black. And I can't get

Delacroix out of my eye. And then the hand, that's in Courbet's

manner. Everyone of us dabs his brush into the romantic sauce now
and again. "
Sometimes, in a fit of frustration, he would dash his

hand through the canvas. Occasionally Papa Malgras. the poor

student's art dealer, would appear, glance indifferently at the new
work on the easel and say, "Well, here's a new machine! " And then,

in his dirty old redingote cape he would go poking his dripping red
nose into the dusty corners of the studio, pull out an old canvas, and
cry. "Twenty francs!" "Are you mad? Twenty francs?" Claude
would say and then, hurriedly, he would accept, embarrassed to have

to defend his work.

Paul Cezannt Apotheosis of Delacroix, about 1894.
Rejected by the jury of the Salon, Claude would rage: "They are
all daubers of penny prints! Not one among them dares to slap the
The figures in this composition (apart from Delacroix himself, carried off

by angels) are supposed to represent, from right to left. Pissarro. Monet and
bourgeoisie. Tiens! Old Father Ingres, you know, he turns my
Cezanne (with a knapsack). One of the two other figures is Victor Chocquet stomach with his slimy paint. Eh bien, just the same, a sacred man.
There is also a watercolor version of the same subject. Cezanne reworked And I find him very courageous, and take off my hat to him, for he
this picture towards the end ot his life; he can be seen retouching it in a

photograph, and on May

doesn't give a damn for anybody, and he used to draw like the
12, 1904, he wrote to Emile Bernard : "I don't know
whether my precarious health will ever permit me to realize my dream of Thunder of God, reducing to the level of idiots those who now
"
doing his [Delacroix's] apotheosis. believe they understand him! After him there are only two worth
talking about, Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are bastards!

Zola's novel. L'CEuvre. is a firsthand account of the art world of

the Second Empire. It falls down in the end because of the author's

34
 " "

attempt to make the facts (and it is closely based on facts) fit the A Childhood Friendship: Cezanne and Zola
thesis — his contribution to the scientific materialism of his time — that
"
"the nature of physiological man is determined by his surroundings.

Zola's realism has other advantages for us. The youthful years of the
chief character in L'CEuvre are so intimately and exactly those of his

boyhood friend Cezanne that, in his notes for the novel, now in the

archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Zola refers to his hero,

not by the name Claude which he later invented for him, but as Paul,
i.e. Paul Cezanne. Most biographers have leaned heavily on these
memoirs for their portrait of the young Cezanne.
Paul Cezanne's father was of Italian origin, the family probably
coming from the town of Cesana by way of Briancon. He was a hat
manufacturer in Aix-en-Provence where local wool production had
made felting a flourishing trade. He had contracted a liaison with one
of his employees, Anne Aubert, the outcome of which was Paul, born
January 19, 1839. and a daughter. Marie, born two years later. The
couple were married five years after Paul's birth and produced another
daughter, Rose, some time later. Meanwhile the hattery. benefiting

from new techniques in steam pressing, had proved profitable enough

»Uw>JUL,
for Louis-Auguste Cezanne to realize his dream of buying the only
bank in Aix-en-Provence, which he ran, in conjunction with a minor
Jul- h~, /u/Cw- ~r-.il /*•» "\
partner, under the name of the Ce'zanne-Cabassol Bank.
At high school Paul had become the close friend of Emile Zola. t^
Then Zola's mother, a widow, decided to go to Paris and her son
accompanied her. After taking his baccalaureat with a "well done,
Cezanne entered Law School at Aix, at his father's urging, but found
law dull and dispiriting. A long correspondence ensued between the
two friends. Cezanne's letters were full of jokes, rhymes, poems,
Latin verse and all manner of literary conceits. On a short visit to Aix
Zola sought Cezanne's collaboration in a play about Henry VIII of
England, but Cezanne did not take his own literary efforts seriously.

For diversion Cezanne joined the drawing classes of Professor Gibert

at the local Ecole des Beaux-Arts where the students made careful
studies of plaster casts of classical statuary. To his own surprise, one
of Ce'zanne's drawings won a prize. In his next letter to Zola he
confessed that he wanted to be a painter, but then followed a whole
series of doubts and difficulties. On hearing of his ambition, his
father said: "Child, think of the future. One dies a genius, but one
eats with money.
Cezanne continued drawing, but wrote to Zola, saying that he

didn't think that he could ever be an artist and that finally he would
be a lawyer. Zola replied: "Be really a painter, or be really a
lawyer, but don't be a being without a name, don't wear a lawyer's
gown soiled with paint. " Cezanne wrote back describing how he had
been painting out of doors and Zola replied that if he had actually sat
on frozen ground in order to paint, then painting was his vocation. At
home, Cezanne became so moody and silent that his father decided
to let him go to Paris, certain that he would return completely cured
of his desire to be a painter. In 1861 Cezanne arrived in Paris and was
joyfully received by Zola. But neither had money. Zola worked as a
Two letters, from Cezanne to Zola with sketches. January 17. 185

municipal clerk and supported his ailing mother. This was the year andfunc JO, 1866.

35
 "

that, down to his last five francs, he spent the money on having some
elegant visiting cards printed, so that he would be admitted to houses
where, at the right hour, there was usually something to eat. Cezanne

Cezanne and
worked on the docks, but this hardly paid for the couple of hours he
spent working from the model at the Academie Suisse, not to
Zola Making
mention food and rent. When he quit the docks in black despair, Zola
Their Way in
tried to help out by having Cezanne paint his portrait; in all, four
Paris
portraits of Zola were painted, all but one found inadequate and
probably destroyed. Finally, the winter coming on hard. Cezanne
went back to Aix and took a job in his father's bank.

Given the staid and costly conditions under which students

prepared themselves for careers as official artists the Atelier Suisse

was inevitable. It was one of several so-called "free studios" which

required no entrance examination and had no distinctions to confer
upon its users; but for a modest fee provided a model from which
any young artist could work: 8.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m. to
10.00 p.m. It was a large grimy room in a rackrent old house on the
Photograph ofEmile Zola
lit tin- Age oj Twenty, in I860. Quai des Orfevres in the He de la Cite. The owner was a venerable old

man called Father Crebassolles who wore a monk's habit and was
reputedly a former professional model of Swiss origin. The room was
'You seem to be discouraged in your last letter: you speak of nothing
furnished with a low-level divan or model throne and a number of
less than tossing your brushes up at the ceiling. You bewail the solitude that four-legged padded stools of varying heights. The students sat or
surrounds you: you are bored. Isn't this what is wrong with us all. this
squatted on the stools with drawing boards resting on their knees. At
terrible boredom, isn't this the plague of our century' And isn't discourage-
ment one of the consequences of this spleen that takes us by the throat? As the back of the room there was a high ledge on which a student could
you say. if I were with you I would try to console and encourage you. recline at full length and often did so, in order to sleep. The
Letter from Zola to Cezanne. Paris. June 25, 860
students talked incessantly, argued and sometimes threw paper pellets
I

at each other. Father Crebassolles would continue placidly reading a

book entitled La Femme dc Feu, which he never seemed to finish.

"Read to us, patron, " the students would cry.

It is not certain that Cezanne ever tried to enter a Beaux Arts

studio; he already had too much contempt for the establishment. At
the Academie Suisse he found the company he liked and the kind of
models that suited him; beats, rummies, sometimes a worker or a

Negro sailor. He took them as they were, as form revealed by the old
studio's dim lighting, and he drew with bold strokes of charcoal. His
gutty realism, masculine and at the same time perceptive and tender,
was something the age abhorred.
Among the other students at the Academie Suisse was a road

laborer named Armand Guillaumin. Born in Paris in 1841, but receiv-

ing his schooling in the provincial town of Moulins, Guillaumin had
been sent back to Paris at the age of fifteen to be apprenticed to his
uncle, a linen draper. He had discovered the Louvre and had spent so
much time there that he had neglected his work and was fired by his

uncle. He began drawing and painting and to keep himself he got a

job with the new Orle'ans Railroad Company ; but he had no mind for

time-tables either and was again fired. Finally he had found work
PaulCezanne A. Reading at Zola's House 1869 1870
with the Paris Highway Department which gave him the time to
paint. His subjects were the Paris suburbs, modest, subdued and
somewhat drab. He soon made the acquaintance of Cezanne; both

were serious artists.

 " .

The free atmosphere of the Academie Suisse brought many

visitors from the great world of art. Among them was Antoine
Guillemet, a painting friend of Manet (he would model the central

figure in Manet's The Balcony) who liked Cezanne's work well enough
The Academie Suisse
to intercede on his behalf with his father, as a result of which M.
Cezanne paid a visit to Paris to arrange his son's affairs, providing
him with a small stipend, but insisting that he enter the Beaux Arts.
Jhuaionoiiue. dun cXtet
At the Academie Suisse Cezanne also met Francisco Oiler, a Spanish
L c> .'.'.(,'.•',,.. twin fiutj a/t..
painter, living and landscaping at Saint Germain. Oiler took Cezanne ar/ti.1 pill < ., < 'IHtJ
'.'

tnJtu/U/- ..w.'c,
i

i/e/a /if,
,faiu f3 ixfiftei- $uujt ei ..
out to paint in the countryside around Paris and it was through Oiler rfotu ..(..v...,/...,.... c.jccj
i

'II
'

''
Jt.'/I ..' '..''.,. ...... ..:..' ., ,,,','. ,, ,,,..,
They had
i i

that Cezanne met Pissarro. a good deal to say to each ./.»'.. M ,' ....!. ; .' .!. • . .1 ,'.,., "' .
'

jitaej iloh ./....'.• mai.i coiiuiiodea . fc.vi-,, '. . < i >

other. .v/.' en 'UKtcouta • • ../</ tti.i.'i t/ej oloffchlejrfi
."'
fcitj (ej e'(a.aC3 jtyuir'utucj -V ta/ta <*.»/. muni, it
f i'uJL pontL at cippitt- 'JiHl ..,..' .',,.. .... ,,...' ,/,
/'.7i nil Of wmineU liant/tul'te e* >.,/.,/.. v .' im/nf ,-,
The estuary of the river Seine is one of the most beautiful i4?„!.^„ cujjt in'.- »/.'. .' .f. / -
' '.... .
(i .,.,,.,. ... .;..,,.:;
f >*> Urffovs- : :-> '.:.;''' ''".'" :
' '
f >"
corners of France. Here mild weather, bearer of soft clouds and gentle >
u . • ....'... f
en /oJC/. jLWJoeae .-...< u/tc t>ue
'I'OUtte j.-i

• . '
. . \.,m tfaac ate/)etmeftte a Coecit/Lht/tL Jc j'efencfcc , j ^'^^a
rains, pushes the green fields to the very edge of the chalky cliffs eL M
fume*- J>a /'/'. en dccSt/fiattl. '• <tmtt.u- JotfU &Jf?io/aiidtuu Tjn
da paxfond notice at ejl r.<xi que ^>oui tc&/~ jui- <v divan <f tuJ , .

..r.;... co hug * ouia oh auxit&ijjite ea/futiz

which, under the chiselling wind, become columns and arches whose
''-' .

. ,
t tit ;.'.<- ' •'' ooteti >/iii co/tyaoje/z/^ (? let/wofitit/ue/U.
ajj ,.....>. C%otJiJjA{ .'/. „(/ai,v/.i oiri /uv layVau. £r
the foaming blue-green sea a friendly landscape, seldom with-
'

plinth is ;
it fan- m,\v.' eciHtfiu* -joio- j 'ui.>futii.c-'-
3

out its pattern of fishing smacks and, at that time, tall sailing vessels. WC ...,;.' aae t&fo twaj e/tf eta/tier AtJA-ua rfi v/ia/t^
i ,.v :.v .;\,mu,1UiiI. ce 8uxjJenu%. *vL*c .w .W*/t^.'
Artists like Courbet, Millet, Couture, Corot, Diaz, Daubigny and
peuituie a. /<» he to
Troyon came from Paris to paint land and sea around Honfleur, on fa
Ja /;».•„''
OtxfiXLtlt .'
;
'^ r/d/oyce cl y e/c uuzix t

>afc
toe, >ctiet ^.x/?/ie/- je paiftarc <'/t (Sett.*....
/tx.
7
the south side of the river's mouth. They stayed at an inn on the hill .'...
,AVc.' ^-Mit/lC -'lis- ,\t ..-..,
/?. .iCC/l?
. .,,//: ... ('ii'L
,^/l/li/il,
;>;... ..
<uu?tue .

ft LVtvai/te / aufte /^iojje/ioec i/cit couti/i

above Honfleur, run by a certain Mother Toutain. over whose Sole Vt e 'i i-nt-J
c oofte rt£t/ttuie ,Ki>ec ceft'c
'
.
'
ceffi ae ocu
•
.

(feLOfju :Vi.i-i.yi'/iuie/- V^od/u. IVef/c/' Cj/,eU- c/i, c/l ne. ,

Normande they told tall tales of sales and, when the Calvados came r>,itU uuxj le cff'ctoie Cia ./c /a /jei/i/uie- *- ixf/o/is
>, ,. i,' foLOCctt-UX ^vi^<\/i.u'iyetcj <o//i//te if'^ L>
<?<nau*£ u/ljuclc Je wi/'t<i. />/,m,?/&>
out, kicked theAcademy around. There were a couple of resident t
iW'i/.c £t*'f.' /taiitiefi'Z
coi/utie.
%?oa\) tyyje/ef
l

vt afe CAacct/iue.7.
}

//on I'piu e/ /iin/c t><?tic o'cote a co.itti'HCJ e/~ cC~-j

artists, who were much more than fair-weather painters.
however, &//£/>(•/.> fa
,

o»«.> n c'/ej o-ue .</.'-' pfiofotfUxpoej

Both were rough, taciturn men whose normal calling would have
been the sea, had they not been so firmly anchored in its image.
johan Barthold Jongkind was the eighth son of a Protestant
pastor, born June 3, 1819, in the province of Overijssel. Holland.
(^Jiaqtie__-^/t . cantfen-ina. 4- iragej <*£_ tejelel p/~ Ji-JJinJ ,

r •id c/eJJtn- fi*e_

£>ZJ /effe- , f/ tts>*L rineiive- cji. cfnoto/i/ine^ .

irtyzodtiiJoii/ T'/i/v deJ fa$c J IjTVl

He had studied briefly at the Hague Academy of Art, where the CJlvtjf JanJ / ^<ki>OrJitio/i_ eJ/T/ifjiefpa/i- yeticvoiJc rffl

landscapist Schelfhout had taught him to paint in watercolors from

nature. He came to Paris, won a medal for a picture hung in the Salon
of 1848 and had a couple of pictures exhibited at the World's Fair of t £,t ii w
Utlt

1855. after which he had drifted out to Le Havre where he could paint S Co,l*J Q$r3,er,e S
marine subjects and at the same time support himself by working
Physiognomy of a Free Studio in Paris, 1879.
around the docks. Melancholy, shy, speaking French with a strong Drawing by Henri He'bert.

Dutch accent, without social grace, a heavy drinker, a tall husky man
with a sailor's awkwardness, he was the despair of his friends, for he
was without ambition. He painted with strong vivid brushstrokes The Academie Suisse was an independent studio where, for a very small

fee, artists could work from the living model, coming and going as thev
and with an engaging freshness of color. "I like this fellow. " Jules
pleased. The school was open from 8 a.m. till late at night. It was the haunt
Castagnary. the critic, wrote Courbet. "he is an artist to his finger-
young students who were preparing the entrance examination
of all the art

tips. With him everything lies in the impression. for the Ecole des Beaux Arts and many other artists who were too poor to
Eugene Boudin was the son of the have a studio and models of their own. There Pissarro and Monet met for the
pilot of the steam packet
first time, and there in 1861 Cezanne met Pissarro and Guillaumin.
Francais. plying the English channel ports from Le Havre. When he grew
a little, he had been the cabin boy. Then his father had retired from the
sea and had opened a small stationery shop on the Grand Quai at Le

Havre and Eugene became shop boy. Eugene, who had made his first

sketches using ship's tar for a crayon, now had pencils and paper at

his disposal. One day Constant Troyon, the landscape painter, noticed
one of Eugene's pictures in the shop and, through Troyon, the

37
 "

estuarial painters got to know young Boudin. Appreciating his natural

talent they persuaded the Municipal Council of Le Havre to send him
to Paris for study. Boudin spent three years in Paris and then

Havre
returned to Le Havre. He had discovered that he had no desire to be
Le : Sea, Sky and Light
an academic painter. So he went back to painting "marines " which,
in lieu of buyers, were exhibited in the framing shop.
Side by side with Boudin's paintings there soon began to appear
Monet's vocation was suddenly revealed to him when Boudin initiated
him into open air painting on the Channel coast in 1858. "I confess that at a number of clever caricatures of local personalities, signed by a
first the idea of doing the kind of painting practiced by Boudin was not much schoolboy named Monet. The Monet family, originally from Lyons,
to my liking. But at his urging I agreed to go out painting with him in the
had opened a grocery store in Paris where Claude Monet had been
open air . . Boudin set up his easel and went to work. I watched him with
some misgivings. watched him more attentively and then, all of a sudden, it
I
born, November 14, 1840. Five years later they had moved to Le
was as if a veil had been torn from my eyes. understood, realized what 1 I Havre, a big thriving port where ships from all over the world
painting could be. Thanks to the example of this artist enamored of his art
"
docked and provisioned. Monet was, as he himself later oberved,
and independence, my destiny as a painter opened up before me.
"
undisciplined from birth —they could never make me bend to a rule.

At school he drew caricatures of his teachers, classmates, neighbors and

friends. Soon his caricatures were so much in demand that he was
able to charge twenty francs per likeness.
Photograph oj ( laude Monet a\ the Age oj Eighteen, in 18
Young Monet was pleased to see his caricatures on exhibition in
a shop window, but he did not much care for Boudin's landscapes.
Inevitably they met, painter and youthful caricaturist. "Why don't
you paint ?
" Boudin asked. On his next painting sortie he took the boy
with him. Watching Boudin work, Monet suddenly understood what
painting was about. Boudin said: "Everything painted directly on the
spot has always a strength, a power, a vividness of touch that one
does not find in the studio. " The words were a revelation.

Yet Boudin was cautious enough to warn the young man that

"one does not invent an art by oneself, in an out-of-the-way place,

without criticism, without the means of comparison. " Obviously the

place to go was Paris. Claude's father wrote to the Municipal Council,
suggesting that they do for his son what they had done for Boudin.
But the Councillors, sensitive to Claude's gift for caricature, declined.
Taking all the money he had earned from caricaturing, which his
Aunt Lecadre had saved for him, Claude set out for Paris in 1859. A
photograph, taken about this time, shows him in his city-going
outfit: he wears dove-gray pants, a striped waistcoat, long-tailed
cravat and a voluminous cape, every inch a dandy. But the eighteen-
year-old face is sympathetic: fine deep-set eyes in dark shining gaze,
a straight nose, a broad forehead from which the dark hair falls back
in a short mane, sensual and —one guesses —mobile lips, ornamented
with the downiest of moustaches and a tiny lip beard, or imperial.

Claude Monet: Caricature of

Rufus Croutinelli. 1856-1858.
Drawing.

Claude Monet: Caricature of

Monet's Teacher, Jacques-Francois
Ochard, 1856-1858. Drawing.
 —

In Paris he went to see Troyon who told him: "Draw, draw

incessantly. " At the free and easy Acade'mie Suisse he met Camille
Pissarro who spoke of Corot and passed on Corot's advice: "Study
values. " Monet admired Corot too, but preferred Daubigny who
painted outdoor scenes out-of-doors. The atmosphere of artistic

Paris, with its thousands of painters with their conflicting loyalties

and wordy ideas, may have been confusing to the provincial youth
from Le Havre. Or perhaps he had just run out of money, for his

father had refused to send him a sou unless he succeeded in enrolling

at the Beaux Arts. At any rate when his draft number came up, his
father, instead of arranging for a substitute (for a round sum a
gentleman could always get some poor peasant to serve in his

place — it was one of the advantages of the Empire), let young Monet
be inducted into the army and sent off to Algeria. The paintings of a^. §ffiC*sri-~ //f/fs~~ ~/^^J £~—J. -,

Delacroix had over-romanticized the midnight razzia and the veiled

johan Barthold fongkind: Le Port Vauban. Le Havre. 1865. Drawing.
odalisque: Monet contracted the statutory diseases and, with the help
of his parents, was invalided out. "Two really charming years, " he
afterwards said. Their principal charm was that they provided Monet
with a small pension which enabled him to pursue art.
± c
Camille Pissarro was a landscape painter, "tranquilly working in
Corot's style, *'
as he himself said. He dropped in at the Atelier Suisse,

to paint from the model: but also for its free and easy atmosphere
and its lively conversation. He showed some of his friends there a

small sketch which Corot had given him, a study full of painstaking
detail. This is what Corot had said to him: "Pissarro, since you are
an artist you don't need advice; above all you must study values. We
don't see in the same way: you see green and I see gray and blond.
But this is no reason for you not to work at values, for this is the

basis of everything, and in whatever way one may feel and express
"
oneself, one cannot do good painting without it.

Pissarro had been born, July 10, 1830, on the little island of
St. Thomas (near Puerto Rico) in the Danish Antilles. His Sephardic

grandfather had married a refugee of the French Revolution, first

settling in Bordeaux, then emigrating to St. Thomas about 1835.

Their son, Abraham Gabriel, born in Bordeaux, had married the

widow of his mother's younger brother, Rachel Manzano-Pomie. Le Havre, the Outer Harbor. Photograph

born in the neighboring island of Santo Domingo. Abraham and

Rachel had four sons, the youngest of whom was Jacob. When he
grew up and began painting Jacob changed his given name to Camille

But for some time he still used the Spanish form of his family name
when signing paintings: PIZARRO.
At the age of eleven Pissarro had been sent to boarding school
at Passy, then a hamlet just outside Paris: his father warned the
>
Principal, Monsieur Savary, of the boy's tendency to waste his time \

drawing. It happened that M. Savary prided himself on being some- - (i

~*i
thing of an artist and had a relative who exhibited at the Salons.
He gave Camille drawing lessons with the result that when his father

recalled his son some six years later young Pissarro was already a -r . > - ...
}

competent draftsman. "Don't forget to draw the coconut palms,"

was Savary's parting advice. Eugene Boudin: Bouts on the Beach Drawing

39
 On his return to St. Thomas Camille worked in his father's

store. It was a well-paid job, but "I couldn't stick it, " he said later.

He spent his spare time sketching the port and the island and soon
fell in with Fritz Melbye, a Danish painter who was doing the same
The Young Pissarro in the Antilles
thing. In 1852 Melbye and Pissarro went off to Caracas where they
worked at their painting until 1854, but in conditions that were very
hard for Pissarro. By this time his father had become reconciled to his
son's ambition to become a painter and sent him off to Paris, where
he had relatives, with a small allowance to cover his needs.
Pissarro arrived just in time to see the great art show at the

Universal Exposition. He was enchanted with the subtlety of Corot's

"Living at St. Thomas in 1852 as a well-paid clerk, I couldn't stick it:
landscapes and went to see the painter, then sixty years of age, in his
without thinking, I dropped everything and made for Caracas, just to snap
studio on the rue Paradis Poissonniere. He also visited Fritz Melbye's the cable holding me to middle-class life. What suffered is unspeakable.
1

brother, Anton, one of the best Danish painters at this time, exhibit- what I'm suffering now is terrible, much more so than when was young, full
I

of spirit and enthusiasm, for feel sure there is no future before me. Yet. if
ing regularly at the Salons. Anton Melbye thought enough of Pissarro's I I

could make a fresh start. I think I should not hesitate to follow the same
talent to let him finish off the skies in some of his own canvases and course
Pissarro. about 1880
taught him some other tricks of the trade. Pissarro was therefore able
to endorse the paintings he now began sending to the biannual
Salons, "pupil of Corot " and "pupil of A. Melbye." One of his

paintings was accepted for the Salon of 1859, but was hung too high
up to be seen. In 1861 his works were refused by the jury. Next year
he contracted a liaison with Julie Vellay, a sturdy peasant girl.
'

Pissarro spent his days quietly painting Seine-et-Oise landscape.

Older than most of the young men around him — ten years older than .
,'
Monet — he was much beloved by them. Several were to leave sketches
of Pissarro in his characteristic garb of slouch hat. painter's haversack,
sensible top boots and stout walking stick. His hawklike nose is set

off by a pair of mild and gentle eyes and a patriarchal beard which
seems to have been always white — if we are to believe the youthful
artists.

Students preparing for the Ecole des Beaux Arts were obliged to
enter certain approved studios, of which Gleyre's in the rue Fleurus on
the Left Bank was by far the most popular. After a long and painful
beginning as a painter. Marc-Gabriel-Charles Gleyre had triumphed 1 I

in the 1843 Salon with his picture. Evening or Lost Illusions, after UV^
which he had decided it was easier to teach painting. He was a stocky
Swiss with a lisp.
%,
His large studio was popular because it was well-equipped,
spacious and Gleyre was not charging more than it cost him to cover
if
v
the rent and the model's fees. He was unimaginative, unpretentious,
hard-working, very regular in his habits. He had his roll and coffee at
•* h
the same cafe every morning and ate nothing else until evening. Most
of Gleyre's students

more likely to
were destined for other things than art

end up, as the brothers Goncourt observed, "in the

chair of the Institut, in the mouth of a crocodile of the Nile, or in the
and were

r
management of a photographic saloon or a chocolate shop.
"
f
According to a friend of James McNeill Whistler, who was there
for a while, thirty or forty students worked from eight in the morning
until noon and then tor a couple of hours in the afternoon, every day
ct
except Sunday, on a living nude model, a man one week, a woman

40
 "

the next. A bay window on the north side shed a grayish light on the
model and the barn-like room was heated by an iron stove in winter.
Gleyre had the male model wear a pair of" short drawers when there
were women students present.
Gleyre did not bother his students very much, but sometimes
there was a canvas he could not pass by.
"Not bad at all. not bad at all, that thing there. But you paint
too much in the character of the model. You have before you a short
thickset man; you paint him short and thickset. He has enormous
feet, you render them as they are. All this is very ugly.
Not bad, but not very gratifying to Claude Monet, whose
painting it was. He had come to Paris from Le Havre in order to work
on the figure. But Gleyre's criticism, with its reiteration of the old
classical formulas, convinced him of the futility of studio work.
There were some student paintings which Gleyre felt to be
beyond the reach of his criticism, and worthy only of his irony.

"Young man, you are very skillful, very gifted, but no doubt it is

to amuse yourself that you paint, "

Gleyre said one day, pausing
before a dazzling canvas.
"Why, of course, and if it did not amuse me, I can tell you that 1

would not do it, " replied Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

A glance at the student's smock might have told Gleyre that the
young man was a porcelain worker. Covered with the white dust of
unglazed clay and the splashes and wipings of the bright colors
which he had been employed to paint on plates, the smock was
Renoir's habit for many a year; he could afford no other. He had
been born in Limoges, the ceramic capital of France, February 25,
1 841 , one of five children of a tailor. The family had moved to Paris,
taking lodgings in the Carrousel, a grievous slum in those days, but
very romantic with its cracked columns and crumbling coats-of-
arms. On Sundays the Renoirs went to mass at Saint-Germain-
l'Auxerrois and afterwards walked along the quais as far as Notre
Dame. Then the family moved to the rue Gravilliers in the Marais
and it was there that Pierre-Auguste became a little Parisian. North-
ward ran the old rue du Temple on the sidewalks of which there was
a continuous fair; on one side was the old Jewish quarter of Paris and
on the other Les Halles markets, dominated by the great mass of the
Eglise Saint-Eustache. Charles Gounod was choirmaster and it was he
who discovered that young Renoir had a very fine voice, brought
him into the choir and wanted him to become a musician. His talent

lay in another direction: after his first communion he began drawing

likenesses of his parents. When the time came for him to support
himself he got a job as an apprentice at M. Levy's porcelain works in
the rue Vieille du Temple. After a turn at the potter's wheel young
Renoir was put to work in the paint shop where he showed great
facility in executing the reiterated decorative motifs, shepherdesses,

Camilla Pissarro: The Big Tree Imperial eagles and the like. When machine-pressed plate suddenly
Caracas, 1854. Pencil cut into the porcelain trade and M. Levy prepared to sell out, young
Renoir proposed that the business be turned into a cooperative and
that they meet competition by offering a wide variety of original
designs, motifs taken from the great masters, etc., which he showed

41
The Studio of Bazille he could copy at incredible speed. The effort was defeated, "by the
public's love for fashionable monotony." he said later. His next
enterprise had been decorating bars and bistros, at which he also
showed great facility, and some pleasure, in the execution of bright
In 1867 Rtnoir made a portrait of Baz\Ue
working at his easel and Sislty. who also broad murals. All this time he had been putting away his spare sous
visited the studio, painted the still Ufc of dead with the intention of entering one of the Ecoles des Beaux Arts. He
birds on which Bazille was working Bazille
had passed the entrance examinations brilliantly, in all sections,
later moved into a studio in thf rut de

la Condaminc. not Jar from thf Cafe Guerbois and, on the advice of his brother-in-law Leray, an engraver, had
A painting he made of this airy well-lighted entered Gleyre's.
room shows, from left to right. Sislev

tor perhaps it is Renoir), Zola on ifif stairs.

He was a gangling young man with a long neck in which his
Monet, Manet, Bazille himself and Adam's apple bobbed, and steady penetrating eyes. The widow's caul
Edmond Maitre at the piano. of his receding hair gave emphasis to his high well-formed brow,
strong nose and hollow cheeks, which were often unshaved. He
sometimes looked as if he needed a good meal, and probably did. His
reply to Gleyre was the truth: he enjoyed painting. He had an
Frederic Bazille: Self-Portrait . Drawing. extraordinary facility, and he liked to experiment with various

Auguste Renoir: Portrait of Bazille. 1867.

techniques, and particularly with color.
"To read what was said of color by Ingres, Gleyre. Ge'rome and
the other great teachers of the nineteenth century, " says Sir Kenneth
Clark, "one would suppose that it was some particularly dangerous
and disreputable form of vice. " Because of a certain red Renoir had
used in his competition canvas for entry to the Beaux Arts, the
instructor Signol had warned him: "Guard yourself against color. Be

careful not to be another Delacroix. "

To please Gleyre, who enter-
tained the same fear, Renoir painted a nude in the manner most
esteemed by his master: caramel-colored flesh set off by bitumen,
backlighting on the shoulders, a tortured expression in the face.
Gleyre was delighted: here was a young man who could paint in the
dramatic manner he had once practiced himself; and then he had
suddenly realized that he was being made fun of. The use of color
was contagious. When Gleyre discovered the young English girl in
Renoir's class adding a touch of vermilion to the nipples of the figure
she was painting, he cried, "Mon Dieu, it's indecent! " "I believe in
free love and Courbet, " said the young girl. (The best stories about
Renoir are told by his motion-picture-making son, Jean, a great artist

in his own right.)

Years later, speaking of his sojourn at Gleyre's, Renoir said:

"While others shouted, broke window panes, teased the models and
disturbed the teacher, I was always quiet in my corner, very attentive,
very docile, studying the model, listening to the teacher . . . And yet it

was I whom they called revolutionary. " just so.

A tall well-dressed young man turned up at Gleyre's one day. At

first glance Renoir classed him as "the sort who gives the impression
of having had his valet break in his shoes for him. " Frederic Bazille

was, in fact, the son of a wealthy Protestant family with large estates
at Montpellier in the south of France. Born December 6, 1841, he had
studied medicine at Montpellier University, but had conceived a
passion for modern painting after having seen the works of Courbet
and Delacroix. His family was of the same class as the Manets with
whom they were distantly acquainted. When Bazille begged his

42
father to be allowed to take up painting, his father had agreed, with
the proviso that he study medicine at the same time. Bazille lost no
time coming to Paris and taking the Beaux Arts examinations.
Bazille took Renoir across to the Closerie des Lilas for a beer and
Renoir soon discovered that his distinguished-looking acquaintance
had the taste for verbal battle and was quite firm in his beliefs. He
wanted to paint people in everyday dress in their habitual environ-
ment. "The big classic compositions are finished, " he said. (He too
had met Baudelaire at a party.) Bazille had a charming half-smile,

blond silky hair and a well-trimmed blond beard. "A very handsome
fellow, " wrote Zola, "of fine stock, haughty, formidable in argument,
but usually good and kind. " He was to be exceptionally kind to the

young men he met at Gleyre's.

Bazille introduced Alfred Sisley to his new friend. With his fair

spade beard, level brows and smooth pink cheeks Sisley passed for
an Englishman, which was only half true. To be sure his Kentish
forebears had been engaged in the smuggling trade, but this had been
converted into legal trading in South American artificial flowers and
other novelties; thus his father lived in Dunkirk and his mother,
Marie Felicia Sell, though born in London, lived the life of a cultivated
Frenchwoman. Alfred, born in Paris, October 30, 1839, had received
a French education and at eighteen had been sent to London for

commercial training. Instead he had devoted himself to the study of

Turner and Constable, the English painters. His parents had made no

Frederic Bazille:

Upper right: Portrait of Renoir, 1867

Lower left: Portrait of Sisley. 1867-1

Right: The Artist's Studio, 1870.

43
 " " "

demur when he had proposed taking up an artistic career. He had

had the notion that he might try for the Prix de Rome, but had let- it

slide when he saw He was a shy, quiet young man.

the competition.
of whom Renoir said later: "Sisley's gift was gentleness. He was a
"I need not plead here the cause of modern sub-
delightful human being. He would be overcome with emotion by the
jects. That cause was won long ago. After such
pressure of a hand or even a grateful look. " Sisley called his new
friends his "chums, " a word which gave them some amusement. One
remarkable works by Manet and Courbet, no one
imagines Sisley blushing. would venture to maintain that the present times

Fantin-Latour sometimes stopped by the Closerie des Lilas. On a are unworthy of the painter's brush. We are, thank
visit to Gleyre's he had singled out Renoir as the pupil whose God, delivered from the Greeks and Romans, we
virtuosity harked back to the Italian Renaissance. Fantin was deeply have even had enough of the Middle Ages which
involved in the teaching of Lecoq de Boisbaudran who had a theory in over a quarter of a century the French Roman-
about pictorial memory. It was not long before Monet joined the
tics never succeeded in resuscitating. We are now
group and his worldly manner astonished them all. They called him
face to face with the only reality, and in spite of
"the dandy "
because he wore a tailor-made suit (for which he had
not paid) and his shirt had lace cuffs. Playing his part Monet once
ourselves we shall encourage our painters to portray
told a girl (it might have been the English lass): "You must forgive us on their canvases, just as we are, with our modern
"
me, but I sleep only with Duchesses, or servant girls. Those in clothes and ways. ,
Emile Zola. L'Evenemeni illustre, May 23. 1868.
between nauseate me. My ideal would be a Duchess's servant. "
It was
Monet who introduced Pissarro whom he had met at the Academic
Suisse. Careless in dress, but not in words, Pissarro impressed them
because he had already exhibited at the Salon. Speaking in a soft

musical voice, he captured them with his gambit. "The Louvre

should be burned ..."
Monet had been only fifteen days at Gleyre's when the master
took a look at one of his studies.

Gleyre: "It's not bad, but the bust is too heavy, the shoulders
too powerful, the feet excessive.
Monet: "But I can only draw what I see.

Gleyre: "Praxiteles borrowed the best elements of a hundred

models to create a great work. When one does something it is

necessary to think of the ancients.

That evening Monet saw Renoir and Bazille.

"Let's get out of here, " he said. "The place is unhealthy. It lacks
"
sincerity.

Monet had been telling his friends about the advantages of

painting in the open air. Corot and Courbet worked outdoors, of
course, but made only sketches: their paintings were completed in
the studio where Corot, for example, felt he could control his
"values." And there was the Fontainebleau school, the so-called
"Barbizons. " some of whom were fine painters. Monet told his friends

about his work with Boudin and Jongkind, in particular, about

natural light and the luminosity of empty skies, qualities which could
only be captured on the run. Instant painting, he might have said. It

sounded wonderfully fresh and new and so the friends, Monet.

Renoir and Sisley, went out to Chailly-en-Biere where they put up at

the White Horse Inn on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. They
set up their easels in the open air. The excursion lasted only a few Auguste Renoir Self-Portrait, about 1876.

days, but its consequences were to be felt for a century.

A few weeks later. Gleyre. who was literally going blind, closed
down his studio.

44
 "
The Painters of the New Painting

Henri Fantin-Latour: Auguste Renoir:

Sclf-Portrait, I860. Drawing. Portrait of Claude Monet. 1875.

The Studio in the Batignolles Quarter. 1870. Portrait of Sisley and his Wife, about 1868.

Fantin-Latour's Studio in the Batignolles "In their early days, when they were still

Quarter pays tribute to Manet's influence over unknown and mere students, the painters who
the generation that followed him and empha- were later to be called the Impressionists were
sizes his role as leader. Progressive painters already independents, by instinct: even then
and critics were united in their ardent respect they telt impelled to break with the traditional
for naturalistic truth, their desire to be in step rules. The formation of the impressionist
with the times, their scorn for academic pre- group is an interesting example of the way in

tensions. Represented from left to right are which, at a given moment, when certain ideas
Scholderer. Manet. Renoir. Astruc. Zola, Mai- are in the air, they may be absorbed by
tre. Bazille and Monet; absent were the more different men, influencing and guiding each
"
"countrified" painters. Pissarro. Sisley and other
Cezanne, who were less often to be seen in Theodore Duret. Les Peintres impressionnistes

Paris. In the next decade Manet's position as

leader was taken over by Monet, who is barely

visible here.The public was not yet ready for
this homage to Manet and certain critics con-

tinued to attack him sharply.

45
 Manet, An Example Rather Than a Master

Exhibited at the Salem of 1868, Manet's Edouard Manet:

Portrait of Zola was praised and analyzed by the
Portrait o/Emile Zola, 1868.
sitter himself in an article in L'F.venement illus-

Ui (May 10. 1868): Se!/-Portrait with Palette, 1878.

Berthe Morisot with a Buneh of Violets, 1872.

'Manet is above all a naturalist. His eye

sees and renders objects with elegant sim-
plicity. I realize that 1 cannot make the
blind like his painting; but true artists will
understand me when I speak of the faintly
acrid charm of his pictures. The portrait he

exhibited this year is one ol his best can-

vases Its coloring is very intense and has a
powerful harmony Vet this picture is by a man
accused ol not know ing how to paint or draw
I defy any other portraitist to place a figure in
an interior with equal energy, without the
surrounding Still lifes detracting from the head.
"Tins portrait is an aggregate ol difficulties

overcome; from the frames background, m the

from the charming |apanese screen on the left.
to the smallest details ol the figure, everything
holds together in a bright and skillful color
scheme, so real that the eve overlooks the
accumulation ol objects and simply sees ,i

:'. Ml'. W hol(

46
 A way of seeing shaped by experience and sensibility, not by tradition; a style whose
keynote was sunlight and broken color, vividly recording the fleeting impression; the

autonomy of painting with respect to reality; a free choice of subjects regardless of the
old claims of "nobility " and "refinement " — these were the essential aspects of the art

revolution called Impressionism. Each of the impressionist painters contributed to the

common achievement.

Paul Cezanne: Paul Alexis Reading to Zola, about 1869.

Edouard Manet: Portrait of Stephane Mallarme. 1876.

Camille Pissarro: Self-Portrait. 187).

Paul Cezanne: Self-Portrait. about 1877.

47
 "

Writers and Friends

"The whole picture was in shades of gray. But when it was painted and I

considered it successfully completed. 1 saw that Manet himself was not satisfied

with it. He wanted to add something to it. One day when came I in. he made me
take the pose he had painted me in and placed a stool beside me . . . On the stool
he then placed a lacquer-ware tray with a decanter, a glass and a knife. All these
objects went to form a still life of varied tones in a corner of the picture, an
addition he had by no means intended and 1 could not have anticipated. But then
he added an even more unexpected object, a lemon on top of the glass on the
little tray.

"I looked on rather surprised as he made these successive additions,

wondering what could be the reason for them, until I realized that what I had in

tront of me were the workings of his instinctive and as it were organic way of
seeing and feeling. Obviously the monochrome, dark-toned picture was not
to his liking. It it the stamp of approval in his
lacked the colors needed to give
eyes, and not having included them at first he added them afterwards in the
shape of a still life.
Theodore Duret. Histoirf d'Edouard Manet

I. Edouard Manet Portrait oj Thiodore Duret, 1868.

'
EdgarDegas Portrait ofEdmond Duranty about 1879. Pencil.

1. Edouard Manet George Moore .it the Cafe de la NouveUc-Athenes, about 1879.

i Edouard M.nui Portrait of Zacharie Astruc, 186)

48
The Gallery of Machines at the Paris World's Fair of 1855. Lithograph

i-i is now What was this Salon d'Art to which all these young painters aspired?

It was, in effect, a great public entertainment, a spectacle which

drew hundreds of thousands of spectators. After the World's Fair of
1a &
1855, the great empty Palace of Industry, in which the Fair had been
held, had seemed a convenient solution to the problem of housing the

sis^sC «

^
_

if 'liJjjKlvi

LJwJ*~-
ever-increasing number of art works chosen for the biannual exhib-
itions of the Academie des Beaux Arts. A huge cast-iron-and-glass

structure, built on the lines of Queen Victoria's Crystal Palace (rather

more fanciful than the building which supplanted it in 1900 and

r-f J-lfi^
^A*-^ !£2S squats somberly on the site today) it had thirty-five galleries on
Honore Daumier: several floors and an open court with a garden. A month before the
On the Way into the World's Fair. 1855. Lithograph. scheduled opening of the Salon the great glasshouse would be
invaded by an army of window-cleaners, floor-polishers and land-
scape gardeners. Then the days would come for the artists to bring

their framed canvases and boxed marbles. Some works — for canvases
of two hundred square feet were no unusual thing — would require a
brigade of blue-bloused workmen to unload them and carry them up
the broad stairways that circled either side of the lofty entrance.

49
 The election of the Jury which would decide which of these
works would be hung was one of the chief events prior to the
opening. Previous exhibitors qualified as voters, but they were
grouped in about thirty different categories, such as those representing
the various Beaux Arts studios, and others calling themselves, for

example, the Uncompromising Young Painters, the Liberals, or the

Ladies Group, etc. Each coterie drew up its list of candidates for the
forty places on the Jury or Hanging Committee, as it was properly
called, nominating, naturally, representatives committed to pushing
the coterie's own works, but also having an eye for deals with other
coteries. On voting day the lists were brought to the vast central
gallery overlooking the Champs Elysees where, since it was usually
early in the year, a huge fire, in which entire trees were consumed,
was burning in a great ornamental fireplace. Here the lists, subject to
last-minute revisions, were brought to a forty-foot-long table to be
counted, re-counted and scrutinized. By four in the afternoon most of
the voting lists would be in hand and while they were being called
out some four or five hundred members of the various coteries and
their friends would stand about, talking and laughing and raising a

general uproar under the lofty ceiling. At six o'clock the assistants
would bring in fuel lamps and. mistrustful of the gloom, some
onlookers would crowd the long table and peer over the scrutineers'
shoulders. At eight o'clock a collation of cold meats and wine would
be served and the excitement would reach a climax. There would be
mocking animal cries and even attempts at yodelling among the
onlookers and the atmosphere would be that of a village fair. The
great fire would be stoked up and its forge-like glow would illuminate
the whole gallery. Then everyone would smoke their caporal and the
lamps would become misty yellow orbs, the floor would be a mess of
torn paper, corks, fragments of bread, empty bottles and some
broken plates. Reserve would be cast aside and inevitably some
The Salon in tht' ?a\act of Industry at the 1855 World's fair. Photograph. sculptor would mount a chair and make a speech in defense of his
work. Then, little by little, the people would drift away, to be
replaced, after midnight, by gentlemen in evening dress and opera
cloaks, coming from theater or soiree to learn the result before it was
published in the morning newspapers whose reporters were to be
seen dodging about the long table. Usually around one o'clock in the
morning the corrections would have been entered, the final count
completed and the names of the forty members of the Hanging
Committee would be read out. The presence of Gustave Courbet on
the Committee was the hope of all non-conformist painters and
usually he was there, for his powerful genius and gentle presence
could not easily be ignored.
The work of the Jury commenced next day and continued for
the following twenty days. Each morning the Salon staff set up a row
of paintings, resting them on the floor and leaning them against the
hand rails, which reached around the entire floor of galleries. At one
o'clock in the afternoon the Jury, led by the President, who carried a

bell, would start off on a promenade that lasted for the rest of the

day and sometimes extended late into the night. The members of the
I
v <"< /hi- Last Day lor sending in Pictures Print bv Del. Jury gave their decisions standing and the work was got through as

50
fast as possible, the worst canvases being rejected without a vote
being taken. At times, however, discussions delayed the party; there
would be a ten-minute quarrel and some picture would be set aside

for the evening session. At these moments two aproned assistants Finding himself virtually barred from exhibiting ,it the Salon

would take a firmer grip on the ten-yard rope which kept the appealed — in vain— to the official in chargt oj thi Salon demanding thai all

artists be allowed to show their work freely to the public:

committeemen from crowding the canvases. Behind the Committee
marched seventy museum-keepers in white blouses, commanded by a Sir.

have recently had the honor of writing to you about two of my car
brigadier who sorted out the unaccepted paintings and had his men 1

which the jury has just rejected.

carry off the rejects in much the same manner as stretcher-bearers on Since you have not yet answered my letter. I feel 1 must insist on the
a battlefield. So the Committee tramped on until late in the evening, motives which led me to apply to you. Moreover, as you have certainly

muffled against the icy drafts in their fur-lined overcoats, without a received my letter. I need not here repeat the arguments that I felt called upon
to lay before you. I shall content myself with saving once more that 1 cannot
single chair to sit upon, without respite except for the three o'clock accept the unfair judgment of colleagues whom I myself have not commis-
buffet. It was usually at this sandwiches-petits fours-chocolate-cognac sioned to appraise my work.

break that the bartering took place. Many members of the Committee I am therefore writing to you to emphasize my request 1 wish to appeal to

the public and be exhibited even though the jury has rejected my pictures My
carried little notebooks which they now consulted to make sure that request does not seem to me exorbitant, an'd if you were to question all the
their commitments had not been overlooked. painters who find themselves in my position, they would all of them tell you
that they disown the jury and that they wish to take part in one way or
Then work would begin again, but more agreeably, for they
the
another in an exhibition open perforce to every serious worker.
would be judging the paintings whose height was less than one-and- Therefore let the Salon des Refuses be re-established. Even were I to figure
a-half yards and could be "passed on the easel, " as the expression in it alone. I ardently desire the public to know at least that I no more wish to

be confused with these gentlemen of the jury than they apparently wish to be
was. There would be chairs here and tables with paper and pens, and
confused with me.
a good many committeemen would grow absent-minded; several 1 take it lor granted. Sir. that you will not choose to remain silent. It seems
would work at their correspondence, so that the President would be to me that any proper letter deserves the courtesy of a reply.
Letter from Cezanne to Count Nieuwerkerke.
obliged to ring his bell in order to obtain a presentable majority vote.
Superintendent of Fine Arts. April 19. 1866
There were moments, however, when a gust of passion swept them
and they would jostle each other and the vote, usually given by
raising the hand, would take place amid such feverish excitement

that hats and walking-sticks would be waved in the air above a

tumult of surging heads.

Such an incident might be caused, for example, by an assistant
pointing out that a painting, judged earlier and consigned to the
stretcher-bearers with unanimous contempt, was. in fact, hors-concours,

that is, outside the competition, being the work of some old classical
painter revered by the Institut. "Well, fish it out, and put it among
the admitted pictures, " the President would say. amid the sneers and
chuckles of the younger committee members. Later, facing a new paint-

ing placed on view, he might exclaim, "Now, who's the pig who
?
painted . . . " But quickly recovering himself, having recognized the
signature for that of one of his friends, he might cry out, "Superb!
Eh, gentlemen? " And the picture would join the ranks of the chosen,
to the chuckles of some and the scornful laughter of others. From
time to time they all made such blunders, and this generally caused
them to cast a furtive glance at the signature before expressing an

opinion. When some dubious canvas was brought forward, and

inspection revealed it to be the work of a member of the Jury, there
would be an exchange of signs and whispers: "Have a care, no
mistake mind, it's his picture. "
Or. on another occasion, when it was
a question of admitting a particularly frightful portrait, a member of Gustave Dure'; Entrance of the Exhibition Hall on March ii, 1861, the last day jot

sending in pictures. Drawing.

the jury would take the President aside and explain that it was a

portrait of a very wealthy patron of the arts. The president might then
make a great show of indignation. "You dishonor the Jury, Mon-
sieur! "
But the chances were that the portrait would get hung.

51
 —

Alter the first selection was over, the [ury rested lor a couple ol ACTUALITES

days while the museum-keepers rearranged the pictures. Then the

work of selecting from among the three thousand rejected paintings

as many canvases as were necessary to make up the regulation total

of 2.500 admitted works would commence. Fighting against fatigue

and striving to keep their vision clear the memhers of the Jury would
thread their way among paintings lying like stagnant pools on the
floor or leaning against endless walls.

Zola, to whose passion for documentation we owe the foregoing

description of a typical Salon d'Art of the Second Empire, tells us that

Varnishing Day, traditionally set aside for the artists to touch up

their suspended works before the exhibition officially opened, had
become a kind of fete, attended by thousands of people who had
obtained free passes. Provoked by months of newspaper gossip, cafe
controversy and ordinary curiosity, they came to the Palais de
l'lndustrie for the great art exhibition as they might have come to a
national carnival. Processions of gentlemen decorated with the ribbon Honori Daumier The Last Day for Receiving Pictures

Lithograph from "

"Le Charivari. February 20, 1846.
of the Legion d'Honneur, smiling and bowing to each other, art

critics pretending to make notes on the margins of their catalogues,

art dealers talking expertise in loud voices, professional models
standing ostentatiously in the vicinity of works for which they had
posed, rival painters execrating each other's works, artists' families

conjecturing on the distribution of medals, elegant ladies in flowered

bonnets and their escorts in long coats and silk hats, even soldiers
and sailors, nursemaids and children, all were there, all guests ot the

"nation of artists. " They entered the gigantic vestibule where the
cold flagstones echoed their footsteps as in a cathedral aisle, they
climbed the monumental staircases to the thirty-five glass-roofed
galleries with their storied paintings of incarnadined battlefields,
ennymphed forest glades, mythological nudity, bemedalled soldiers
and scenes of imperial festivity. Or they strolled about the yellow-
sanded paths of the ice-cold Garden Gallery where leprous marble
statuary was poised against boxed trees and flocks of begging
sparrows came down from their homes among the lofty girders. Or
they rested on the new circular settees beneath sheaves of tropical

foliage or took refreshment at the great bar under the clock. The
omnipresent sound was the tramp of feet, of multitude.
The crisis came with the Salon of 1863. Expectably Cabanel's
Birth 0/ Venus, a recumbent nude enhaloed by cherubs, had won the
Jury's plaudits and was thereupon acquired by the Emperor. But
some two thousand paintings and a thousand sculptures had been
refused. Their owners were in an uproar and many a paint-impregnated
fist was raised in the direction of the Louvre Palace. Louis Napoleon.
who had a pollster's eye for the fluctuations of popularity, decided to
see for himself. Alone, except for an aide de camp, he visited the

Palais a few days before the official opening and. after having viewed
forty refused pictures, decided to let the public decide the issue.
Despite some objections from the Academy he ordered that the relused

works be shown separately, in seven spare rooms of the Palais.

The coming show —the Salon des Refuses, as it was called Maurice Lchnr Varnishing Day at the Salon. May 11. 1879.

52
 Daumier:
The Public at the Salon

Honore Daumier: This Mr. Courbet paints sued coarse people . . . Lithograph /> Honore Daumier: In from of Meissonier's Pictures, lithograph from
"The World's Fair. " 1855. "The Public a\ the Salon. " IS 52.

Honore Daumier: Lovers of classical art convinced thai painting is going to the Jogs Honore' Daumier: Artists Examining a Rival's Picture. Lithograph from
" "
in France. Lithograph from "The Public at the Salon. 1852. "The Public at the Salon. 1852.

53
 "

The Physiology oh i he Rejected Artist promised to be very amusing. When six hundred artists withdrew
For a week we have been running into them everywhere.
their refused works, rather than have themselves exposed to public
There they go, slowly making their wa; up the slopes of Rue Pigalle or

Rue d'Assas. some with a frame under their arm. others trudging behind a ridicule, the held, so tar as the public was concerned, was left to Its

hand-eart on which a large canvas sways and creaks, all ol them look as it
rapins, those perennial hopefuls with burning ambition and not a sou
they were going to a funeral. So one is not surprised to see them invariably
in their pockets who. Salon after Salon, put their works before the
making Montparnasse cemetery or the Montmartre cemetery.
for the
What they are burying, alas, is the whole ol their year's work Not much Jury hoping to eclipse the great Cabanel. It sounded like fun.

of an effort, it may sometimes seem, but how many hopes went into it' In the first hours of the opening of the Salon des Refuses on May
Mediocre beauties, often enough, but what perfect satisfaction they gave
their makers' Such is the life of an artist whose vanity is a source ot joy when
15 —some think it an historic date —seven thousand Parisians stomped
talent is wanting Now is all going to
it its resting place under the uniform through the seven rooms set aside for the rejected paintings at the

epitaph: rejected! A blunt and meager epitaph il ever there was one. an Palais, and thereafter there was never less than a thousand visitors
epitaph that makes one miss the good husbands, the good fathers, the good sons
daily. Never had an art show created so much amusement, provoked
and good citizens which make our cemeteries such goodly populous places.

From the Arts page of [.'Opinion national?. 1874 so much outright hilarity and derision, or so much scandal. Zola tells
us that the rejected paintings were installed in fine style with lofty
hangings of old tapestry at the doors, the "line " set off with green
baize, seats of crimson velvet, white linen screens under the long

skylight of the roof. At first glance the impression is identical with

that of the main salon, the same gilt frames and the same bright
colors, but there is a kind of special cheerfulness which the visitor
does not at first realize. It is hot. a fine dust rises from the floor, there

is a hubbub of conversation, some restrained laughter. The whole

show is a mixture of the best and the worst styles; but from amidst
the incoherent ensemble, and especially from the landscapes, all of
which are painted in a sincere, correct key, and also from the
portraits, there comes, says Zola, the good fresh scent of youth,
bravery and passion. Sufficiently discreet at the entrance to the
galleries, the laughter becomes more boisterous, more unrestrained as

one advances. room women cease concealing their smiles

In the third

behind their handkerchiefs, while men openly hold their sides. It is

the contagious hilarity of people who have come to be amused and

who are growing excited, bursting at mere trifles. Each canvas has its

1 laumier I riumphal March particular success, people hail each other from a distance to point out
j'ii from flu World Fail
s
something funny and witticisms fly from mouth to mouth; in the last

gallery there is a tempest of laughter.

Its object is a painting of four figures in a shady wood, two

gentlemen in the foreground fully dressed, and two women, one
nude, the other standing in a nearby stream clad only in her chemise.

Near the seated figures there is a basket of fruit, some food. The
picture is called Dejeuner sur I'herbe — Picnic on the Grass.
People fight their way into the last gallery to see this picture and
the laughter rises on the air, says Zola, in a swelling clamor, the roar
of a tide near its fall. Eagerly they press in front of the picture, and
Zola, pushing his way out of the gallery, hears their laughter behind
him. "careering through the air, like a tempest beating against a cliff.

the rumbling of an infantry attack.

"The idiots! " is all he can gasp, choking, he says, with grief.

The picture at which they are laughing most is, of course, to

become one of Edouard Manet's most famous. Among other names
signed to paintings in this Salon des Refuse's were: Renoir, Cezanne.
Pissarro, Guillaumin, Monet. Jongkind, Fantin-Latour and Whistler.

vlarch
The big "
R "
stamped on the stretchers of their canvases signalled,

m The World's I an "

IS55 if it did not signify. Revolution.
 "

MANET, says Theodore Duret possessed

everything appeared
full light him
,
"

to
a vivifying vision. In a

to glow with excep-

tional splendor. " Jacques Emile Blanche, the portrait
painter, who saw Dejeuner sur I'herbe when a youth (his father almost
bought it for him), says that "its colors were of a vividness not

easily imaginable to those who know it only in its present (pre-World

War II) condition. "
Or perhaps it only seemed so. For the picture's
initial impact in the somber mid-nineteenth century was that of a

flash of lightning at dusk the world was suddenly revealed

: in another
dimension. This is the painting, more perhaps than any other, which led
The Salon of 1865.
Elie Faure, the art historian, to remark that Manet " was the first man in
Europe to have the audacity to lay on one light color another light

color, to reduce semitones to a murmur, or even to ignore them and

almost always to suppress modelling by juxtaposing or superimposing Impressionism, in effect, has changed
strokes bound by a line which is very firm, but which detaches from a the vision of the world. In spite of all
background purged of shadows that might serve as adjuncts.
the natural and artificial obstacles,
Manet's technical innovations created a furore among the aca-
it has triumphed by its intrinsic value
demicians. But this was not the particular quality which had provoked
the hysterical laughter at the Salon des Refuse's, outraged the because it represents the moral vision
Empress and caused the Emperor to pronounce the painting "an of its epoch. The last of the privileged
affront to modesty. " Nor was it the nudity of the female figure in the classes, the "
notables, "
were about
foreground — Ingres' bathers were more voluptuous. Garnier's cast-
to disappear. From a new stratum in
away more provocative. No, the offending element in Manet's picture
was the men, both wearing the everyday dress of gentlemen of the society the Impressionists brought
period and evidently engaged in a leisurely conversation. By this their force and sincerity and integrity,
naturalistic note Manet had torn away the classical cobwebs that
their tremendous faith in their ideal,
veiled people's identity with art ; today we can say that the hysterical
their elan of
J
liberty.
J
laughter was provoked by the observers' sensation that, at some LIONELLO VENTURI

unguarded moment, they themselves had been under observation.

Art had arrived at self-consciousness.
But the painter found a few loyal defenders among the critics. In

Le Salon Zacharie Astruc wrote: "Manet, one of the greatest person-

alities of our time, is its luster, inspiration, pungent savor and
surprise. The injustice committed in his case is so flagrant it con-
founds. "
And in the Gazette de France there appeared the unattributed
remark, believed to have been uttered by Delacroix: "M. Manet has
the qualities that are necessary to be refused unanimously by all the
juries of the world. " When Delacroix died in August that year.
Manet, following the cortege, was considered by the young painters
to be the new master, one who embodied their as yet diffuse feeling

about what art should be.

The Salon des Refuses had failed in its purpose: in the argot of a

later age it was overkill. In November the Emperor decreed a reform

in the Beaux Arts organization: henceforth it would cease to be

controlled by the Institut de France, nor would the Institut continue

to appoint professors of art. The Salon would be held annually,
instead of biannually only one-fourth of the Jury
; would be nominated
by the administration, the rest would be elected by artists who had
previously won medals.
The new Jury accepted two canvases by Manet for the 1864
Salon: Incident in the Bull Ring, and Dead Christ with Angels. Neither

55
won acclaim: one critic said that the bull was puny, another that it

had been painted "with an ink-well "; yet another referred to Manet
"
mockingly Don Manet y Courbetos y Zurbaran de los Batignolles.
as "

Rebuking another critic who had commented on the Spanish influence

in Manet's work. Baudelaire said: "Manet has never seen the Spanish
masters: he could not imitate them. "
Manet had, of course, seen the LK (MSTITIJTIOiWL, JOURWAL POLITIQUE, LlTTERAIRE, UNIVERSEL.
Goya, Velazquez and Greco collection of the late Monarch, but he
"With the taste for art. with that very special instinct which the artistic
had never been to Spain. The criticism registered: he destroyed his is

faculty par excellence, the keen desire to reproduce and record external
bullfight picture and the following year he visited Madrid.
phenomena, and with a certain preconceived theoretical idea which in spite

At the next Salon, that of 1865, official art appeared to have of some reservations is correct. Manet contrives to provoke the almost
scandalous outbursts of laughter which attract the Salon visitors to this droll
recovered its equilibrium. The highest award went to Cabanel for his
creature whom he calls Olvmpia.
Portrait of Napoleon III in Ceremonial Costume. Other successful pictures "The Baroque construction of this 'august young girl' with her hand
were The Reception of the Siamese Ambassador and The Arrival of the shaped like a toad causes hilarity and in some cases uncontrollable laughter.

Emperor at Genoa. Among the 3.556 other exhibits were two by In this particular instance, the comedy results from the ostentatious pretention
to produce a noble work ('the august young girl.' says the guide bookl. a
Edouard Manet: Christ Insulted by the Soldiers and Olympia. The Christ pretention shown up by the absolute impotence ot the execution: do we not
was a failure and Manet never again attempted a religious subject. smile at the sight of a child assuming the self-important air of a man? In this

Olympia everything that has to do with line thus irremediably condemned.

But Olympia was a public scandal. is

The general color scheme itself is disagreeable. Only in certain parts is it

This picture of a slim nude girl wearing a rose in her hair and a accurate: in the tone of the linen, in the contrasts of sheet, shawl and flowers.
jewel at her throat, placidly receiving a rich bouquet of flowers from But if we take M. Manet's effort seriously, we must tell him that in nature
sooty shadows are rare and that he sees or at least paints no others. He takes
a Negro maid, was another of Manet's scenes from contemporary
no account of reflections and counterreflections: and it is only by studying
life: la demi-mondaine chez elle. as one critic said, the little cocotte
them that he can succeed giving his painting the harmony that nature
in

accepting a lover's tribute. The model was Victorine Meurent (who alwavs possesses.
"
A. -P. Martial. May 16. 1865

EXPLICATION

HH I'HMTUK. SCULPTURE,
tin III BE,

GRAVI 111-" II I ITnOGBAIfBI

III S (III ISTI s VIVtNTS.

runs
mMtiMMikiMifii' nmaHM man.

Catalogue oj tin- 1865 Salon.

I douari Mam t I < / 'ijcuner Mir

I'Herbe, in-"' Refused al th«

Salon W 1863

56
 "
The "Olympia Scandal had also posed for the nude in I Ujtuntr sui I h

had he en inspin-il In- Titian's Wmk\ qj (

r
i

As with Dejeuner, visitors stood before he painting, grinning

and guffawing. On the right side of the picture Manet had pain

black cat which, tor some unaccountable reason bee ame a scandalous
object. The cat provoked uncontrolled laughter people came from
all quarters of the great pavilion to see the cat. At the same time they
were angry about the cat and guards were posted to prevent the
picture trom being damaged.
Wrote Jules Claretie in L'Artiste: "What is this Odalisque with
the yellow stomach? A base model, picked up I don't know where,
who represents Olympia. Olympia? What Olympia? A courtesan no
doubt? Manet cannot be accused of idealizing the foolish virgins, he

who makes them vulgar virgins..." Theophile Gautier. who had

Htmore' Daumicr : In Front W M. Manet's Picture.

When, tired of dreaming, Olympia sleeps ..." Whv is that big red woman in a chemise called

Zacharie Astruc Olympia?

-- Bui my dear, thai may be the name of the black

•yyZtwief ,.>..,
cat.

been carefully watching Manet, now wrote in Le Moniteur: "Manet

has the distinction of having been a danger. But that danger has now
c / - ^ '. i '
passed. Olympia can be understood from no point of view, even if
J*~K ;>-,&-> *<*•• ...^ .
,

,y ->t'S< -^ /-

you take it for what it is. a puny model stretched out on a sheet. The
color of the flesh is dirty, the modelling non-existent ..." Even
Courbet was shocked. "It's flat and lacks modelling." he said, "it

/.«<<...< J — :t . ^* .»- > / ..

looks like the Queen of Spades coming out of a bath. " Retorted
, ; .

"
*—-t~ Sti^ *• !' ~.*i /J'*- '-<-/ <—~ts -. \ Manet: "Courbet's idea of rotundity is a billiard ball.
Edouard Manet: /i^,/ ^. ,.„,_ /•. _V But Olympia brought Manet to the notice of the general public.
, /
tf.j, , ,/ . ,

The Venus of Urbino. ^ 'JL

y a.j^~fa L~ J^. i. 9$*^, "You are as famous as Garibaldi. " said Degas. It was not the kind of

after Titian. 1856.

X notoriety that Manet wanted or relished. He went off to Madrid
Sketch for Olympia. Frenchman; but
where he had not expected to see a single in the

Letter from Manet Hotel d'Europe there was a Frenchman only a few tables distant,
to Baudelaire. 1865.
moreover he was asking the waiter for the very dishes Manet had
« A
declined. confrontation was in order: "You do this because you
know who I am?" Manet accused. The Frenchman was Theodore
Duret. a literary man. who explained that he had never heard of

57
 Manet. He had just come in from Portugal and was intolerably
hungry. They went off to Toledo together to see the El Grecos; Duret
became Manet's defender and biographer.
Manet's relationship with his parents had always been correct,
Fontainebleau: The First Open Air Compositions
but many an observer wondered whether they did not sometimes
think him strange.
When Auguste Manet died in 1862 he left his fortune to be
divided between his three sons. Now financially independent Edouard
opened a one-man show in the Avenue de l'Alma (1867) where he
exhibited fifty paintings, catalogued with an introduction, beginning:

"The artist does not say to you today. 'Come and see flawless
works.' but. 'Come and see sincere works.'" He also took a large
apartment in the rue de Saint-Petersbourg where he installed his mother
and his wife. Although Suzanne Leenhoff had been his mistress since his

student days, he did not marry her until the year after his father's death.
At their new house, solidly furnished in the style of Louis Philippe.
Suzanne, who was an accomplished pianist, entertained their friends

at musical evenings.

Of Pissarro's two pictures in the Salon des Refuses the critic

Castagnary had written: "I take it he is a young man. Corot seems to

be a favorite with him. A good master. Monsieur, but one on no

account to be imitated. "
But Pissarro was already moving beyond
Corot's influence, much to the old master's disapproval. He had
discarded romantic subjects —haunting forest glades, etc. —and was
devoting himself to the pursuit of light, in shadow as in sunshine. He
had eliminated black and bitumen, brown sienna and the ochres from
his palette and was leaning heavily on the new rainbow colors white :

lead, light chrome yellow, Veronese green, ultramarine or cobalt

blue, madder and vermilion. It took him hours to decide on the
smallest details. "1 do not want to make a brushstroke when I do not
feel complete mastery of my subject, " he said. "This is the great

difficulty: without sensation nothing, absolutely nothing, is valid!"

Pissarro, a thinking man. was working towards the concept of
sensory perception in art, a forerunner of the revolutionary doctrine
that painting is a visual impression of a scene casually encountered.
He was to be the theorist of the new group of painters.

During his first years in Paris he had worked briefly at the so-

called "free" studios. Isidore Dagnan's. Lehmann's. Old Picot's and

the Academie Suisse, where he had met Monet and Cezanne. At these
studios he drew briefly trom the model, not because he aspired to be

a figure painter, but tor the discipline it imposed on his drawing.

While painting in the countryside around Paris he had met the
landscape painters Chintreuil. Desbrosses and Ludovic Piette. The
last-named soon became one of his closest friends and helped him
out financially. For some years after leaving St. Thomas Pissarro
had continued to receive an allowance from his father, but this had
View o) Fontainebleau Forest in 1859 Photograph by Charles Hi finally been withdrawn, presumably because of Pissarro's steadfast
refusal to enter the Beaux Arts; but also, no doubt, because Pissarro
was now about thirty-five, old enough for a man to stand on his own
feet. His little family (son Lucien arrived in 1863) was therefore very
 "

poor; but Pissarro never for a moment yielded to the temptation ol

getting a job.

The Salons of '64, '65 and '66 had accepted some of his landscapes.

The titles suggest an agreeable calm (e.g. The Marne at Che nnevieres and
Banks of the Marne), not at all in accord with their non-conformist
< ** v j;
technique. Nor did it help the artist when he ranged himself with
II

Manet's defenders during the climactic disputes over Olympia, though

it won Manet's friendship.
*
f
At the day's end at Gleyre's studio Monet and Renoir sometimes t*& ¥*
picked up the partially flattened tubes discarded by the other students.
way they were able, without cost, to replenish their own
In this

palettes sufficiently to do little

gardens. The zinc tube had only recently been adapted to

flower studies in the Luxembourg
oil paint
~~
:
i
m
and its effect on the development of painting was unprecedented.
Hitherto, painters had mixed their own paints or they had bought
them ready-mixed from dealers. As a result there was a great Camille Corot In the Forest of Fontainebleau. Pencil

variation in quality and shade and, since the paints were carried in
little pots, landscape painting involved the labor of carrying, not ViZs?
only easel and stool, palette and brushes, but a range of paint pots
and solvents. Like Corot, the Barbizon painters who worked in

Fontainebleau forest —Theodore Rousseau, Jean-Francois Millet,

Virgile-Narcisse Diaz de la Pena, called Diaz — painted from nature,

but finished their painting indoors: no one imagined that a painting
could be finished where it had begun. Not only the zinc tube now
made outdoor painting easier and speedier, but the manufacturers
offered, in addition to the standard palette, an exciting range of new
colors, such as, says Wynford Dewhurst. a late impressionist painter,

cadmium pale, violet de cobalt, garance rose dore. The young

painters were soon to discover that the new colors gave a high degree
"
of luminosity to shadows. In his old age Renoir said : Paint in tubes,
being easy to carry, allowed us to work from Nature and Nature
alone. Without paints in tubes there would have been no Cezanne or
Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro. nothing of what the journalists call the
'
Impressionists. ' Thanks to modern chemistry the colors [still] have a
vividness and richness which the old masters never dreamed of.

The young painters' first attempt to exploit the possibilities of

outdoor painting ended in a few days, through lack of resources.
Sisley. who had an adequate allowance from his parents, rented an
apartment in Neuilly and made regular excursions in the He de
France. Renoir returned to Paris where he destroyed La Esmeralda.
which he had exhibited at the 1864 Salon. Once again he took up
decorating pubs. "He's an artist, but he'll die of starvation." his

father said. Monet soon joined him and they shared lodgings and
lived on dried beans. Never in want of ideas or daring Monet
proposed that they paint portraits of the local tradesmen at fifty

francs a picture. After executing several such commissions Monet

Claude Monet e Pave de Chailly m ontainebleau orest, about 1865
ordered a new
I / I

suit from his unpaid tailor. "He was born to be a

Lord. " was Renoir's comment.

In the spring Monet left Paris for Honfleur where he began
looking for "motifs" in the familiar countryside. Meanwhile Bazille

59
 had sat for his medical examinations and. while waiting for the
outcome, joined Monet at Hontleur. "We are staying at the baker's
who has rented us two small rooms, " Bazille wrote his parents. "I

had lunch with the Monets, they are charming people. They have a

delightful place at Sainte-Adresse. . . I get up every morning at five

o'clock and paint the whole day until eight in the evening... I'm

Frederic Barilla
making progress and that's all — it's all I want. " He failed in his

medical examinations and returned to Montpellier. Monet wrote him:

Monti after his Accident
ill the Inn in Chailly, 1866. "Every day I discover more and more beautiful things; it's enough to

make one go mad; I have such a desire to do everything, my head is

bursting with it. " This was the year that the Salon accepted two of
"I have only come to Chailly as a favor to Monet; but for that. I would
have gone to Montpellier long ago and with the greatest pleasure. Unfortu- Monet's marines, views of Honfleur. Monet's family agreed to make
coming here we have had the most awful weather, and have
nately, since I
him a small allowance; Bazille's family agreed that their son might,
only been able to pose for him twice. |ust now the weather is quite fine.
without loss of dignity, make painting his profession.
If he works fast Monet will need me for three or four days; so to my great
"
regret my departure will have to be put off. Early in 1865 Bazille rented a studio in the rue Furstenberg, the
Frederic Bazille. letter to his parents, August 23, 1865 tiny tree-shaded square behind Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and Monet
moved in. They were visited by Pissarro. Cezanne and Courbet.
Through Bazille's relative, Commandant Lejosne, the group came in

contact with Baudelaire (and possibly Constantin Guys, a shy and

gifted artist, now a white-whiskered sixty-three, totally ignored by
the Academicians, but recently championed by Baudelaire), also

Nadar. the photographer, Gambetta, then a young revolutionary,

and Fantin-Latour. In April Monet was back at Chailly and wrote
Bazille asking him to join him there. He had conceived the idea of
making a huge painting in Fontainebleau forest. "I think of nothing
but my picture, " he wrote Bazille. "and if I knew I couldn't bring it

off, I believe I'd go mad. "

Stumping excitedly about the forest Monet
fractured his leg and Bazille, putting his student medical knowledge
to work, had to nurse him back to health, taking advantage of his

situation to make an excellent portrait of Monet in his sick bed, water

dripping on his injured leg from an ingeniously suspended cask. A
little later Renoir and Sisley turned up and they all went to stay at

Mother Anthony's Inn at Marlotte, on the edge of the forest. "Land-

scape is a sport. "

Renoir complained, as he followed Monet about in

his search for the "motif, " though Renoir's younger brother, Edmond,
was carrying most of his equipment. Finally Monet found the place
he was looking for in the high lands of the forest where there was
ample sunshine striking through the high roof of leaves. Here he

made a preliminary study for his picture (now in the Pushkin

Museum. Moscow) which shows six couples preparing to picnic in a
sun-dappled grove, the large white table cloth spread, with its cold
chicken and pate-en-croute, bottles of wine (one counts four), large
loaves of bread and various fresh crudites. The ladies are in the great
flowing dresses of the period, the gentlemen too are pretty well-
dressed after the round-hatted high-waisted style of the time, though
one, a very tall man, has taken off his coat and is reclining against the

bole of a tree. It is a scene of sensuous yet decorous hedonism,

\uguste Renoii At th< Inn of Mother Anthon; l^'-i-
quintessentially French.

Monet set about transferring this scene to a canvas thirty-three

square yards in area, too big to be set up under the trees, but for
which a suitable place was found in one of the outbuildings of

60
Mother Anthony's Inn. He had in mind a painting as large as those ol
Courbet, but one which would overwhelm the coming Salon by its

dazzling brilliance. Bazille and Monet's girl friend, Camille, posed in

turn for each of the six ladies and gentlemen. And his friends

watched with amazement as Monet began laying on great swathes oi

pure cobalt where the sky was to be showing through the trees: and
where the sunlight, spotlighting through the emerald-green leaves,
fell on the picnickers' gay clothes, he painted pools of cadmium
yellow, dark garance and vermilion, using Courbet's method ol

laying on the paint in broad brushstrokes.

"Tiens!" said Courbet, paying Monet a visit. "Here is a young

"
man who paints something which is not angels.
It was the friendly Courbet. however, who put an end to the

experiment with — so soft is the kiss of death — some well-meant

advice which, having helped Monet finance the project, he felt it his

right and duty to give. Monet accepted the advice and made the
suggested alterations: but was then so disappointed with the effect

upon his canvas that he took off the stretchers, rolled it up and.
unable to pay his bill at the inn, left the canvas as surety. Recovered
years later, it was found to have been ruined by damp; portions, cut
out and sold by Monet, still exist.

Monet went to live at Ville d'Avray, to the southwest of Paris,

where he hurriedly painted a picture of Camille wearing a green dress

which was accepted by the Salon of 1866. as a result of which success
his family continued to make him a small allowance. Almost imme-
diately afterwards he set about making another outdoor painting,
albeit somewhat smaller than The Picnic, but still large enough to

require a trench into which to lower the canvas while he was painting
the top portion and a pulley to hoist it out again. Courbet once more
disapproved of the whole business. Camille posed for all four women Claude Monti The Artist's Wife witha Puppy. 1866
in Women in the Garden. The painting was refused by the Salon of '67.

At the beginning of 1868, Monet, once more penniless, wrote a

desperate letter to Bazille. demanding that he pay all his bills. Bazille

wrote a reply in the same insulting vein. but. understanding the

despair that underlay Monet's belligerency, did not post the letter.

That spring Boudin arranged for a number of painters, including

Monet, to exhibit canvases at an International Maritime Exhibition in
Letter written to Bazille bv Monet after lie had \wi to ifijvc Camille in Cans
Le Havre. As a result Monet won a silver medal and sold his Camille in
home Havre:
during her pregnancy etnel return to his parents' in 1 e

a Green Dress for a useful sum. However, when the exhibition closed, "Ah. my dear fellow, ii is a painful situation all the same Camille is such

the rest of his paintings were seized by creditors who sold them to M. a good-natured girl and lias been very reasonable about it \nd on that very

account she grieves me all the more Rv the way, 1 beg you to send me what
Gaudibert, a Le Havre shipping magnate, at eighty francs apiece.
you tan. the more the better; send it to me by the first ol the month, lor here.
Monet was painting at Fecamp and Etretat. fishing villages to the though 1 am on quite good terms with m\ parents, they have let me know
that could stav here as long as like without any cost to mysell as is only
north of Le Havre, and in June he wrote Bazille: "I write these few 1 l

right, but that il 1 need money I'll have to tr\ and ram it So please don t forget
words in haste to ask you to help me quickly. I was certainly horn
Rut I have a request to make ot you On |ul\ 25th Camille will be confined:
under an unlucky star. They have just thrown me out of the inn. I'll be going to Pans and will stay ten ot fifteen days and I'll need money foi

naked as a worm. I've found shelter for Camille and my poor little
a number ol things: so try and send me a hide more, il only ion or 150
tranes. Do keep u in mind, because il I don't have it I 11 be in a mosi aw kward
Jean for a few days in the neighborhood. I'm off to Le Havre this
position
Monet 1867
evening to see if I can get something out of my shipowner. My family |une

won't do anything for me. I don't know where I shall sleep tomorrow
night. "
He added: "P.S. I was so upset yesterday that I did a very
stupid thing and threw myself into the water, happily with no ill

61
effects. " Bazille sent him some money, but his "shipowner. "
M.
Painters
Gaudibert. hearing of his distress, asked him to come out to his
and
chateau and make paintings of Madame Gaudibert and himself. His
problems were solved, moment. Photography
at least for the

Fontainebleau forest, according to the brothers Goncourt, was

"full of impecunious, bearded young painters carrying easels. "
So
impecunious was Renoir that he could get to Fontainebleau only by
walking there from Paris, and back again. The forest was wilder then,

and not without hazard. Painting in the woods one day Renoir.
wearing his multicolored porcelain worker's smock, was attacked by
a gang of young ruffians who might have done him injury, but for
the sudden appearance of a stalwart one-legged man who beat off the Nadar the Great.

attackers with his stick. The man looked at Renoir's canvas and said, Caricature bv Alfred Grevin

"Not bad. but why do you paint so black?" It was the Barbizon
painter, Diaz, himself a former porcelain worker. They became good Three Caricatures by Nadar Photography made its appearance in the

and Diaz opened an account early nineteenth century at a time when

friends for Renoir at his paint dealer's.
scientists, philosophers and artists were
On another occasion Renoir was startled to hear a voice crying from intent on acquiring an objective and posi-
the cover of the trees, "Please help me. Monsieur. I am dying of tive knowledge of reality: chemically and
optically, could have been discovered as
hunger. "
A young man appeared and explained that he was a it

early as the sixteenth century. Now. be-

political fugitive from Paris. Renoir took care of him, dressed him up sides encouraging the pursuit of knowl-
as a painter, and he stayed with the artists for several weeks. His edge, it ministered to the romantic desire to
arrest the flight ol time and to perpetuate
name was Raoul Rigault.
the memory of the past.
One of the happiest paintings made by Renoir at this time was
his portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Sisley. After leaving Gleyre's Alfred The first photograph had been made in

Sisley had moved about the rustic suburbs of Paris — Neuilly, Bati- Photography Asking for just
a Little Place in the Exhibition
1822 by Nicephore Niepce. whose experi-
ments were rendered public in 1839 in a
gnolles — painting out-of-doors, but also working in a small studio in
oj Fine Arts, 18". brilliant paper by the French physicist
the rue de la Paix. Inevitably he was drawn to Fontainebleau, staying FiPOSITION
Arago. who foresaw the great possibilities

at the White Horse Inn and then at Mother Anthony's. His paintings of photography. That same year Daguerre
showed his first metallic plates, soon to
of Marlotte still showed Corot's somber influence. He was startled to
become so popular under the name of
see one of Renoir's canvases, made about the time Monet was daguerrotypes; and Fox Talbot communi-
experimenting with his Picnic. "Are you crazy? " he said. "What an cated the results of his experiments with
light-sensitive paper.
idea to paint trees blue and the ground lilac !
"
Soon afterward he was
doing very nearly this in his own canvases. In 1866 he married Marie An aid to memory and a magic mirror of
Lescouezec. a little brunette from Toul in the Meurthe. Renoir's reality, photography helped to educate the
eye and make it aware of the variety of
painting of Marie, in her candy-striped dress, with both hands
Tin' Ingratitude o\ Painting, appearances. It did not lend itself to ideal-
clutching the proffered arm of Alfred, in his black velveteen jacket Refusing the Smallest Place in ization and came indeed at a time when
and dove-gray pants, captures at its inception the long-lasting marital its Exhibition to Photography painters were interested in rendering reality

to whom it Owes so Much. as it is. Thanks to its low cost and rapidity,
felicity of this couple.
1857. photography gradually deprived the artist
The Fontainebleau painters filled the little forest inns which, say of the bulk of his clientele and obliged him
the Goncourts, were the scene of "noisy joyous meals at the end of to abandon descriptive painting for an anal-
ysis of the phenomena of perception. After
the working day. "
Such was Mother Anthony's at Marlotte which
1852 the wet collodion process replaced
Renoir called a "cabaret " and of which he made a painting showing earlier photographic methods; it reduced

Mother Anthony, his friend Le Coeur and Sisley. At Marlotte or exposure time and permitted an unlimited
number ol prints on paper. But it was not
thereabouts Le Coeur and Renoir met the sisters Clemence and Lise
until about 1880. with the work of Marey
Trehot, daughters of a retired postmaster. Renoir made some sixteen and the use by Eastman Kodak of a dry-
finished pictures, mostly of Lise, the younger sister, in a variety of poses plate process with gelatino-bromide. that
the genuine snapshot appeared.
including the nude. These were bleak years in Renoir's struggle
against poverty and the critical years of his artistic development.
Painting Offering Photo-
When the relationship ended Renoir's style had attained maturity: he graphy a Place in the Exhib-

would be known to posterity as one of the great painters of women. ition of Fine Arts. 1859.

62
 "

Degas's opinion of the young painters whi

spontaneity in the open air of Fontainebleau forest was not ver
different from that oi Count Nieuwerkerke except that il

their linen but their apparent laxity that annoyed Dej

the government. " he said. "I would have a brigade ol gi ndan
keep an eye out for people who do landscape from nature
want to bring about anyone's death; I would insist that they load
"
with birdshot to begin with.
He was against all that was facile. "Instantaneity is nothing but
photography. " he said. Photography had advanced a long way since
1822 when Nicephore Niepce had needed forty hours to make an ex-
posure, or even since the time of Daguerre who had needed an hour.
The invention of the wet collodion plate around 1850 had reduced
exposure time to a few seconds, with the result that the "snapshot
was about to pinion the world. Towards I860 Adolphe Braun had
taken his bulky camera into the country and had begun photographing
landscape. His soft sepia prints of woods and fields —resembling the
paintings of Corot in his later days — were proof of the fact that,

then as now. photography inevitably follows the trend or popular

taste. The young painters were seeking something quite different.

Degas became a passionate photographer; he liked the simplicity

and the economy of the photograph, the unexpected view it some-
times gave of people and places. His analysis of movement, by

The World's Fair of 1855 gave scant notice to

the new art of photography: in 1867 it was one
of the major attractions of the Fair One of the
boldest experimenters was Nadar. a fiiend of
many painters, in whose studios the first impres-
sionist exhibition was to be held. Both portraitist
and landscapist. he also excelled
panoramic views and in scenes
in aerial

of modern
and
u
lite. Photography often confirmed the painters'
intuitions and helped them to break away from
conventional vision with its moral and sentimen-
tal bias. A scientific instrument of knowledge, it

justified Manet's objectivity as against the senti-

mental idealism of the Salon painters and proved
how accurately the "naturalists" rendered their
sensations. Photography freed the painter from
any need to be descriptive or anecdotal. Hence-
forth he found his justification in independent
creation, informed by the power of style, by his
personal manner of seeing and painting.

Honor? Daumier :

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art.

" "
Lithograph published in Le Boulevard, 1862.

Nadar: Aerial View of Paris Taken from a Balloon, 1H59.

Wet Collodion.

63
 "

•f.yf7l J-*
.

>*
IS

Ando Hiroshige: Yabuto/i al Atagoshita.

PrinI (rom "One Huniirt'd Celebrated

Places ofEdo, " 1856-1859.

Hiroshige U: Kiribuiafee ul Afcasafea.

Print /rom "One Hundred Celebrated

Places ofEdo." 1856-1859.

Edouard Manet: Portrait ofEmile Zola

(detail). 1868.

breaking it down into successive frames, was the precursor of cinema "
Admirable, this Japanese exhibition. Hiroshige is a
technique, and certain of his later paintings would make use of marvelous impressionist. Monet, Rodin and I are
optical distortions resembling those obtained in film photography,
enthralled by him. I am glad to have done my snow
the flare of a woman's skirt while dancing, for example. Yet, there is
and flood effects; these Japanese artists are a confir-
nothing less photographic than Degas's paintings.
mation of our way
J
of seeing.
b
Another historical event, the opening of the Japanese Treaty Pissarro, February 3, 1893

Ports by Commodore Perry in 1854, was to have even more interest-

ing consequences on painting. Japanese craft work had made its first

appearance at the Universal Exposition of 1855. A small shop, called

La Porte Chinoise. opened in the rue de Rivoli and its exotic merchan-
dise, called chinoiserie, was suddenly a la mode. Kimonos were worn
and oriental knick-knacks began to make their appearance in the

salons of the well-to-do and, consequently, in contemporary painting.

Whistler began a collection of blue-and-white chinaware and Degas's
friend, James Tissot. collected Japanese art. Felix Bracquemond. a

young artist and engraver, discovered a volume of Hokusai prints

which had been used as packing in a crate from the Orient. About the
same time prints by Hiroshige and others arrived in Paris. The
delicate colors and the fine drawings on silk and ricepaper excited the
young French artists. Manet found inspiration in prints which were
flat, without shadows or modelling. It was Degas, however, who gave
these works the study and analysis they demanded. He noted with
delight their rejection of the picturesque, their use of pure color in flat

masses and yet the multiple gradation oi values. Nothing in Degas's

subsequent painting suggests that he was an admirer of the Orient,
but it is from this date that his pictures sometimes make use of an
audacious foreshortening of perspective, or the subject of the picture
is placed off-center, or he catches the ungainly attitude of an arrested
gesture. From the Japanese prints the young artists learned to treat
Die Japanese Ambassadors in Nadar's Stud
space as a positive element in their pictures. Most interesting of all.

perhaps, was the recovery of the "bird's eye view" of landscape;

Monet. Manet and Pissarro learned to paint scenes looking down
from balconies or rooftops.

64
 "
: .

v
^ ^^^^^H
^^Aik

The Discovery of Japanese Prints and Their Influence on the Impressionists

3Jr ^1
^tV tL»
^Bflk
BJEri.
|l
1 * \*fl^...
Because ot the popularity of things [apanese be Wnli the Meiji restoration in 1868, the emperor
tween 1860 and 1900. there has heen a tendency to regained control of the country . .is a result, many ol Ml
exaggerate the influence of Japanese prints on im- the feudal nobles fled and their collections came into

pressionist painting. Rather than a stylistic influence, the market, many works being bought up by western
they came as a confirmation of vision and design collectors. The Japanese pavilion at the Paris World's
HBi
After the opening up of Japan by Commodore Perry Fair of 1878 was a great success and [apanese art was j^r^'^xv^l
in 1 854. both the artists and the public of the West further popularized Always responsive to aesthetic

were quickly attracted by the decorative quality of currents, Whistler, as early as 1864, began applying

Japanese prints and artefacts. The French engraver

Felix Bracquemond is said to have been the first to
the lessons of Japanese taste
influenced by the spirit than the form,
and design Degas, more
made use ot
*"j2h^
Kra^P^T
discover the beauty of the Japanese art style by way such Japanese effects as off -center design, foreshort-
^Bv~ i
'% SI
of some Hokusai prints which had already reached ened perspective and the form-movement synthesis
Paris by 1855. In 1862 a Madame Desoye opened a while Monet, in his last great figure painting entitled

shopin the Rue de Rivoli. called La Porte Chinoise.

and here Degas. Bracquemond. Whistler. Stevens

and Legros discovered the strong simple design of Far
japonnerie. also

Two French
pressionists,
fell under the
critics, who were
were connoisseurs
spell

friends of the Im-

of Japanese art
~*> £^fl
^^^^H
H^^j^ ^bJJqBP!^ ~^OrA ^^H^
HHr^Lr '^tSjf&j AfJ&K' '

Eastern art. In the prints they admired the unusual Philippe Burty.who began a collection in 186 5. and 9r2sb^s^07 t-v j$ Wi
layouts, the sober and synthetic quality of the form, Theodore Duret. who after a trip around the world iv^L.'JKJ
the wealth and purity of the tones, the clarity of the brought back some important works in 1873. Exhib-

works
tifcRjk£
^|
light, the originality of the pictorial effects and above ited at Durand-Ruels twenty years later, these

all the simplicity of the

Manet. Fantin-Latour. Degas and Monet
means employed. Whistler.
all familiar-
continued
February 2.
to appeal to the
1893. Pissarro wrote to his son:
Impressionists
"1
On
saw
(S&x-Asm,
™*
ssiilgS^?**
m ~l ^
ized themselves with the prints of Hokusai. Utamaro Monet at the Japanese exhibition. By George, these
and above all Hiroshige. A pavilion at the 1867 pictures show how right we were. There are some
World's Fair made Japan fashionable. gray sunsets which are stunningly impressionistic. Claude Monet: japonnerie. 1876.

James McNeill Whistler.

Caprice in Purple and Gold,

No. 2: The Golden Screen.

1864.

65
 " , " "

In Degas. Japanese painting and the photograph combined to

give his work an instantaneity and flatness, "a strangeness of design,
says Clive Bell, "which was the strangeness of fact, " and made him
"a Tenderer of character of a precise and remorseless impartiality
Cezanne Divides his Time between Paris and Aix
hitherto unknown.
In the 1865 Salon Degas exhibited his first picture, a medieval
"Bui. mind you. all the pictures done inside, in the studio, will never be
worth the ones done in the open air. In depicting outdoor scenes, the scene entitled : The Misfortunes of the Town of Orleans. It was one of his
contrasts of the figures against the background are astonishing, and the old machines. He had very little regard for the Salons and. unlike his
landscape is magnificent. I see wonderful things, and I must make up my
impoverished contemporaries, had no need of them as a means of
mind to do only open air things.

"I have already told you about a canvas I am going to tackle; it will self-promotion. It was Zola's idea that Degas's paintings were destined
represent Marion and Valabregue going out to the motif Ithe landscape. I
to be overlooked in the great fairs or the Salons and that, therefore,
mean). The sketch that Guillemet liked, the one I did from nature, makes all
he needed to exhibit with a smaller, more select group of artists,
the rest fall away and seem bad. 1 fancy all the pictures by the old masters
representing things in the open air were actually done without a model, for hence his association with those who were to become the Impression-
they do not seem to me to have the truthful, above all the original look that ists. In fact, Degas takes his place with Manet, Monet and Pissarro as
nature provides. Father Gibert of the museum having urged me to visit the
one of the leading innovators of his time.
Muse'e Bourguignon. I went there with Bailie. Marion and Valabregue. 1 found
everything bad. This is quite consoling. I am rather bored, work alone "Everything in a picture is in the interrelationships, " Degas once
occupies me a little and I pine away less when I'm with somebody. The only said. "
We paint the sun with the yoke of an egg. Go, put your canvas
people I see are Valabregue. Marion and now Guillemet . .

in the sun! "

Only an impressionist could, at that time, have thought
"But I tell you again. am a little depressed, but for no particular
I reason.
As you know. I don't know why this moodiness comes over me. It returns of the sun as a fried egg.
every evening when the sun goes down and then it starts raining. It makes me
so gloomy.
As soon as Zola began writing regularly for the newspapers, he
Letter from Cezanne to Zola,
written at Aix. about October 19, 1866 toured the studios in the company of Cezanne. In this way they saw
Pissarro, Degas. Renoir. Fantin-Latour. Monet and Manet (who painted
a portrait of Zola) at work. Ce'zanne had been greatly moved by
Manet's Dejeuner sur I'herbe. seeing it as a new approach to painting, a

vision at once cool and ardent, a technique both casual and studied.
He was not deceived, as many critics had been, by Manet's apparently
careless brushstrokes, but saw immediately that the accidental element

concealed an unprecedented virtuosity and refinement. He was critical

only of Manet's color which he felt to be "poor in sensation. " His

awe of Manet produced a curious polarity in Cezanne: he scorned the
gentlemanly mask which concealed the consummate artist in Manet
and allowed him. as it were, to ambush his material; at the same time
Cezanne made a profound obeisance to Manet's work by painting
his own Dejeuner sur I'herbe and several Olympias (in which an
hirsute, if balding, gentleman watches the sleeping odalisque being
stripped of her covering by a Negro maid), a compliment as well as a

comment on Manet. Cezanne's painting, previously heavy in impasto,

became lighter, clearer, after he had seen the Manets.
Cezanne had not been overly distressed by public reaction to his

own. or others', painting at the Salon des Refuses, but saw the
Refuses as a means by which unrecognized painters like himself
might continue to exhibit in public, if only, as Zola said, "to put the
"
Academicians in the wrong. For several seasons he continued to
address demands for a regular Salon des Refuses to the Academy, but
without result, obviously because public reaction in '64 had confirmed
public confidence in the Jury. However, in 1865, when the Jury was
Paul ( iiannt A Modern Olympic l$72 187) particularly tolerant, Cezanne's work was still refused. For the next
Salon, that of '66. Cezanne prepared two oil paintings bearing the
wholly irrelevant titles of An Afternoon in Naples or Le Grog au Vin
and Lafemme a la puce ; they too were rejected.

66
 These are dark days for the young artist. He calls painting "the

metier of a dog," but when he paints, he chuckles, "as if I were

tickling myself. "
And he exclaims desperately. "I am never finished,
never, never. "
He is gay in the morning, depressed at evening. A
friend describes him as "terrible, hallucinated, like a beast in a kind
"
of divine frenzy of hard work. Zola wrote to a friend: "Cezanne
works; he affirms himself more and more in the original way of his
nature. I have much hope for him. Besides we reckon that he will be
refused for ten years. He seeks an opportunity of making some painting,
great paintings, oils of four or five meters. "
To all of which Cezanne
made reply: "In following the way of virtue one is always recom-
"
pensed by men, never by painting.
On his allowance of two hundred francs a month Cezanne was
no longer obliged to seek work, but he was often desperately hard
up. On these occasions he would take an armful of his canvases and
make a tour of the various dealers, ready to accept any price for
them. On one of these excursions he chanced to meet his equally
hard-up friend, Jean de Cabannes. called Cabaner, a talented composer
who made a meager living playing piano in the cafes, jobs which he
invariably lost through playing his own advanced compositions.
When Cabaner asked Cezanne to show him his paintings, and imme-
diately expressed admiration of them, Cezanne gave him the paintings,
delighted to have an intelligent admirer.
When his allowance was exhausted Cezanne usually returned to
Aix and lived with his family. Here his life was less disturbed and he
could experiment freely without having his friends looking over his
shoulder, in effect. On these trips he painted portraits of his father
(reading Zola's newspaper), his mother and his sister, portraits also of
his friends. Achille Emperaire, Anthony Valabregue and A, F. Marion.
He borrowed popular magazines from his sister and enlarged the
illustrations, transforming them into Daumier-like paintings, often
employing the palette knife after the manner of Courbet (a method
held in anathema by the Academicians). He also painted some light-

hearted murals on the theme of the Four Seasons which he jokingly

signed in large letters, "Ingres. "
It was not his intention, or belief,

that any of this work, save perhaps the portraits, would survive.
Paul Cezanne: Portrait of Louis-Augustt Cezanne, the Artist's Father, ISt^ 1867
Business had been very good for the Cezanne-Cabassol Bank and in

1859 Louis-Auguste Cezanne had bought a noble, if crumbling old

eighteenth century mansion called jas de Bouffan, about a mile out of
Aix. During its restoration Cezanne took a hand in the interior "His spirits, though often in a ferment, clear up sometimes and Ins

painting, encouraged hy some genuine commissions, promises to reward his

decoration, painting for the walls of the salon several large panels.
efforts; in a word, the sky of the future stems ,u times less dark '

On his
Later designated Repentant Magdalene and Dead Christ in Limbo, they return to Paris you will see some pictures thai will be much to your liking;

were executed in the powerful, if heavy, style of his early allegorical among others a portrait ol Ins father in .1 large armchair which looks very
well. The painting is in a hlond tonality and most attractive; his tat her looks
painting. Discovered many years later they were lifted from the walls,
like a pope on his throne, were it not tor the 'Siecle' which he is reading
framed, and after passing through several hands, were purchased [actually 'L'Evenement,' the paper in which Zola had just published Ins

by an anonymous benefactor of the Louvre for eight million francs. courageous articles on the Salon]. In a word, all's well .\ni.\ you will shortly be
"
seeing some very line things indeed, depend upon it,
They mark an important crisis in Cezanne's development. In

these murals, and in similar paintings, says Roger Fry, "one sees the I eller from Anl< Guillemel to Zola, November 2. 1 866

battle between the baroque tendencies of his visual imagination and

the strong impulses in the other direction, the direction primitive and
"
almost Byzantine of his interpretation of things seen.

67
 " "

Manet's dislike of professional models and his bad luck with

amateurs caused him to enlist his friends in that capacity at every
opportunity. Madame Morisot told a friend :
" 1 le tells you this in a very

Manet and His Models

natural way, that he meets people who avoid him in order not to
discuss his painting with him and that, observing this, he no longer
has the courage to beg anyone to pose for him. " One method of
overcoming the reluctance of friends to pose (or him, was to agree to

teach them something about his technique. In this way he obtained

the services of two very distinguished young women: Eva Gonzales
and Berthe Morisot.
Eva Gonzales was the daughter of Emmanuel Gonzales, a jour-
nalist and novelist of Spanish extraction, who. was Secretary of the
When Manet's Portrait of Eva Gonzales was exhibited at the 1870 Salon, the
e r 1 1 1 l Laurent Pichat could write with an insolence that seems incredible now: Society of Men of Letters. Eva was twenty-one, a bosomy brunette
"The female saints in the desert or handed over to the executioner were no more whose ambition was to be a painter. Manet put on a great act.
courageous than this young lady who has permitted M. Manet to portray her
arranging a still life with flowers and holding forth, a la Corot. on
lull-length in so dingy a white dress. And far from expressing her horror, she
laughs at the ordeal, she smiles in the midst of her squalor as if in the midst of values. Meanwhile Manet painted Eva in a pose in which she sits

an apotheosis "
{Lt Re veil May 1 3, 1870). stiffly back from her framed picture, elegantly coiffured. holding her
palette with little finger extended, looking away from the canvas but
at the same time applying brush to it. One is reminded of a remark
made by R. H. Wilenski about a picture exhibited by Eva some years
later, to the effect that "it is so like Manet's paintings that it is

impossible not to assume that he painted most of it ": in his portrait

of Eva, Manet had already made his comment on Eva's artistry.
Berthe Morisot was something very different. "Manet preaches
at me, " she wrote her sister, "and everlastingly holds up Mademoi-
selle Gonzales as an example; she is so well behaved, so industrious,
she can put a job through — whereas
it seems, am good for nothing. I.

He has begun and re-begun her portrait twenty-five times; she poses
for him every day, and every evening he takes her face out and rubs

it down with soap!" In a later letter she wrote: "All Manet's

admiration is at present concentrated on Mademoiselle Gonzales; but
he cannot get on with her portrait; he is now at the fortieth sitting

and the head has again been taken out.

Manet had no trouble painting Berthe. She is the dark, romantic
woman — he painted her green eyes black —on the left in The Balcony,
a picture inspired by a balcony picture by Goya, which provoked the
customary storm of criticism. "Poor Manet, " Berthe wrote her sister,

"he told me that I had brought him luck and that he had had an offer

for The Balcony. I should like it to be true for his sake, but I am afraid
"
that he will be disappointed.

The painting lessons evidently continued. "To my great surprise,

Berthe wrote her sister, "it seems that what I do is decidedly better
than Eva Gonzales. " What did Berthe learn from Manet? "She was
not his pupil. "
says Theodore Duret. "She adopted the new technique
and the brilliant execution. These her own exceptional gifts enabled
her to appropriate. In her subsequent work the scale of tones and the
qualities of clarity and light were derived from Manet, but the
1

Portrait of 1 vt Gonzales 1870

fundamental element of her work —her feminine individuality and
her personal way of feeling — remained unchanged. After meeting "

Manet Berthe began painting figures. In 1874 she married his younger
brother Eugene.

68
 "

Though the young painters may not yet have found common
ground for their revolt, they soon found a common meeting place.
The Cafe Guerbois, 1 1 Grand-rue des Batignolles. was easy of access
from the studios in Montmartre. The Cafe was decorated in the
contemporary, i.e. Empire, style with gilded mirrors, marble-topped
tables and island hat-stands (very necessary on account of the
popularity of silk toppers). The waiters wore white cheesecloth
aprons and black waistcoats: somewhere back ol the caisse there was
a billiard room. In the first room of the Cafe, on the left side, two
tables were permanently reserved for Manet and his friends. Philippe

Burty and Edmond Duranty wrote novels about the place and Fantin-
Latour borrowed the cast of characters for one of the group paint-
ings, upon which his fame rests: Manet, Monet, Renoir and Bazille,

together with Astruc, Maitre, Scholderer and Zola. All were young,
I Jo -J Manet: La Parisienne Drawing
well-dressed and neatly bearded; Bazille, almost a head taller than
the others, is posed like the mounted officer he was soon to become.
In the spring of 1
86*5 Monet had had an unexpected success: two
of his marines had been accepted by the Salon and were warmly "Edouard [Manet] often used to say that he learned
praised by the critics. Because of the similarity of their names his trade over again with each picture he painted.
Monet's pictures were placed beside those of Manet, with the result It is this sincerity, this impressionability, that gives
that Manet received many of the compliments intended for Monet.
his work so much charm.
Berthe Morisot, Notebooks, 1885
Manet studied the signatures on both seascapes and thought it a joke
in very bad taste. "Who is this Monet who looks as if he had taken
my name and happens thus to profit by the noise I make? "
he asked.
The incident was made to be caricatured, as it was by Andre Gill,

with the caption: "Monet or Manet? Monet. But it is to Manet that

we owe this Monet. Bravo. Monet! Thanks Manet!" At the Cafe

Guerbois Manet soon learned who Monet was.
Zola was a regular visitor. A short, dark, vigorous young man,
he had thrown himself without reserve into the battle against official

art. "You know what effect Manet's canvases produce at the Salon?
he wrote. "They burst the walls open, quite simply. All around is

spread the fashionable, artistic confectioners' sweets, trees in sugar

candy and houses in pastry paste, little men in gingerbread and
women made of vanilla cream. "
The phrases are too colloquial not
to have been uttered (by Zola or another) and, if uttered, where else

but at the Cafe Guerbois! So, on Monet: "I admit that the canvas
which stopped me. . . was M. Monet's Camille. This picture tells me
the whole story of energy and truth." And again, on Pissarro:
"Monsieur P. is an unknown man, of whom no doubt nobody will

speak ... I consider it my duty to shake his hand vigorously. " This year,
1866, an Alsatian artist, Jules Holzapffel, committed suicide after the

Jury of the Salon had rejected his painting, and a Senator, the
Marquis de Boissy, joined a public demonstration in favor of
reviving the Salon des Refuses. Plenty to talk about. Indeed. Zola's
outspokenness was soon to cost him his job at L'Evenement.

In 1867 the Empire staged its last (though it could not know this)

World's Fair. The King of Prussia came to see Mr. Krupp's steel siege
guns on exhibition at the Champ de Mars and the Parisian crowds

went for happy excursions on the new bateaux-mouche. The jury of

the great Art Show turned down the paintings of Manet. Monet. Bdouard Manet: Berthe Morisot with a Fan. 1874

69
The World'sFairofl867

View of the Paris World's Fair

of 1867. Print.

Following a visit to Manet's studio. Renoir. Sisley, Bazille. as well as those of Courbet. Manet, like
Zola voiced his enthusiastic admira-
tion for the painter's work. On May -4
Courbet in 1855. and again this year, held his own one-man show in
(MILl ZOLA
and 7, 1866. he puhlished articles in a wooden shack near the Pont de l'Alma, where he exhibited fifty-
Eve'nement emphasizing the novelty
I
three oil paintings, prefacing the catalogue with the disarming obser-
of Manet's talent and the genuine
contemporaneity of his style. The
ED. MANET vation: "M. Manet has never wished to protest ... He has no preten-
reaction was immediate a Hood of sion either to overthrow an established mode of painting, or to create
letters ol protest and indignation a new one. He has simply tried to be himself and not another ..."
poured into the offices of the paper,
At the last moment Manet put up a huge painting, calculated to
and on May 14 the editor. M. de
Villemessant. announced to his of- incite, at the very least, a major riot. Maximilian, brother of the
*?::=
fended readers thai another critic,
Austrian Emperor, had been installed on the Mexican throne largely
Edouard Pelloquet, had heen com-
missioned to write three articles as .i
by force of French arms: but the Mexicans, fighting a guerrilla war,

"corrective and counterpoise to M. had obliged the French to withdraw and abandon Maximilian who
"
Zola three articles Disgusted by
s
had been captured, condemned to death and, not more than a couple
in . ompromise. Zola resigned from
the stafl ol I Eve'nement and again
of months earlier, shot by a Mexican firing squad in the company of
took up the defense ol Manet in a several high-ranking French officers. Manet painted the scene in his
bool published in May INbh Mes studio, using models, and obtaining a likeness of the late Emperor
Hainci full- page •'! Zola's study ,>( Manet,
Zola S Study ol Manet was publish published In' Dentu, Paris 1867.
from a photograph. "Pure Goya, " said Renoir, "yet Manet was never
ed in its entirety in the Rcvut du XIX' so much himself. "
Manet's inspiration had been Goya's famous paint-
\uili on |anuary I. 1867 under the ing of Murat's troops executing the citizens of Madrid, May 2, 1808.
title "Une nouvelle maniere en pein
mi. M Edouard Manel " Later that
and he had given no thought to the embarrassment the picture might
yrear it w as reissued in the form ol ,i have created for Napoleon III. He was that innocent. Or was he?
brochure by the publishei Dentu Manet was obliged to take the picture down and it is characteristic

of him that he had no turther interest in it. Madame Manet rolled it

up and stowed it away where it was discovered years later, ruined by

damp.
 "

Manet's naivete was a continual source of wonderment at the

Cafe Guerbois whose habitues tended to be politically conscious, if

not downright wary. Pissarro was a socialist, in the pre-Marxian

meaning of that term, and though idealistic, anarchistic and egali-

"Manet's show opens in two days' time He's on tenterhooks. I'll te

tarian, he could never have pretended to Manet's innocence. He was all about it in due course. It will be curiou:

one of the few artists, beside Courbet and Degas, to have read Courbet. he opens a week from today, that is next Monday. With him it h
quite a different matter. Just imagine, he is inviting all the artists in ''

Proudhon's Du Principe de VAri. He would not have agreed with the opening day. He is sending out three thousand invitation". And
Degas's comment on that work, however: "How admirable, " Degas with each one he includes his catalogue. Just to show you the

hear developed and things, he intends to keep his shed where he has already installed a studii
once said, "to take a subject, it in conversation, i fi it

himself on the upper floor, and next year whenever we please he will let it to
then write three hundred pages.
those of us who would like to hold an exhibition there. So let's work hard
Degas was a regular visitor to the Cafe Guerbois and one of the and we'll turn up there with things above reproach.
"

more intransigent in his views. "I was, or I seemed, to be hard with Letter from Monet to Bazille. May 21. 1867

everyone, " he wrote later, "through a sort of passion for brutality,

which came from my uncertainty and my bad humor. 1 felt myself so
badly made, so badly equipped, so weak, whereas it seemed to me
"
that my calculations on art were so right.

Manet and Degas once quarrelled violently at the Cafe Guerbois.

The cause of the quarrel has been forgotten, but history remembers
that each returned a painting which the other had presented to him.

Degas got back his mutilated portrait of Madame Manet playing the
piano; the record is not precise on what painting was returned to
Manet.
Renoir had reservations about much that was said at the Cafe

sessions. "They reproached Corot with reworking his landscapes in

the studio, " he said later. "They vomited on Ingres. I let them talk. I

thought that Corot was right and I had my secret delight in the pretty

little tummy of La Source and the neck and arms of Madame Riviere.

In front of a masterpiece I am content to enjoy myself; it is the

professors who have discovered the defects of the masters. " But on
the topic of music, ex-choir boy Renoir had no reservations: he was
all for Berlioz against Wagner. Courbet's Ont-Man Show at the Rond-Poinl de I'AIma, Paris, in 1867

I douard Mattel View of the

Paris World's Fair 1867.

71
 ,

Catalogue oj Manet's
one-man show in 1X67.

(i Jrtui mtulie par lei uikUu

11 , „ ,>

7 Le ChriM mon<i l <« And"-

H. . - ,» -
Fearing that his work would be rejected at the World's loir exhibition oj
8 PortMj! d
1867 Mane! followed Courbet's example and held .1 one-man show in a - /Iff
Lo GlUn
wooden pavilion erected at his nun expense at the cornet oj Avinin eie I 'Alma
H.'.lZi
and Avenue dt vlontaigne, ivhen h< exhibited fifty pictures In the preface
to Le V.eu« mnldn'.
to the catalogue he \ustified his attitude and explained why he took iliis step:
M. . » »...

1 1 Lc Flirt.

kfti:
,i M"* V ... nco»i U med't»p*d«.
"'" a:-
„.:-.-

REASONS FOR HOLDING A ONI MAN SHOW Edouard Manet:

The fifer. 1866.
Since 1861 M. Manet has been exhibiting or trying to exhibit.
This year he has decided to show the whole of his work directly to

the public.
When he first showed at the Salon. M. Manet obtained an honorable
mention. But afterwards he found himself too often rejected by the jury
not to feel that it ventures into art are a contest, at least the fight must
be fought on equal terms, in other words one must be allowed to show
what one has done.
Otherwise the painter would be too easily locked inside a circle

from which there is no escape. He would be forced to stack his

canvases away or roll them up in a garret
For admission, encouragement and official rewards are. it is said, a

warrant of talent in the eyes of part of the public, which is then

predisposed in favor of works accepted and prejudiced against those
refused But on the other hand the painter is told that it is the
spontaneous reaction of this very public which motivates the cool
welcome given to his canvases by the different nines
Finding himself in this situation, the artist is advised to wait
To wait for what 5 For there to be no more jury?
He has preferred to let the public settle the matter
The artist does not say to you today: "Come and see flawless
works. "
hut "Come and see sincere works
The effect of sincerity is to make these works seem like something
in the nature of a protest, whereas in fact the painter has only tried to
render his impression.
M Manet has never v, ished to protest On the contrary, it is against
him. to his great surprise, that the protesting has been done, because .1

traditional system of teaching has laid down the forms, methods and
aspects 11I painting, and those who have been schooled in such
principles admit no others. From this derives their naive intolerance.
Nothing that departs from their formulas can have any merit, and so
they become not only critical but hostile and actively hostile
Io exhibit is the vital issue, the sine aua non for the artist, for after
several viewings people soon gel used 10 « hat may have surprised and
even shocked them Little by little they understand and accept it.

Time itself acts on pictures with an imperceptible polisher and

smoothes away the original asperities

ITo exhibit is the way to find friends and allies for the light.

M. Manet lias always recognized talent wherever

11 is to be found

and has no pretension either to overthrow an established mode of

painting nor to create a new one He has simply tried Io be himself and
not another
Moreover. M Manet has met with widespread sympathy and he has
come to see the extent to which the judgment ol genuinely talented
men is becoming more favorable to him day by day.
For the painter, then, is only a question now ol winning over this
it

public which is supposed to be mimical to him.

May 1867

72
 " " .

Edouard Manel: The Execution oj the

Emperor Maximilian. 1867. Lithograph.

Some of the Cafe regulars were wonderfully picturesque. Nadar. a The first impressionist exhibition

giant of a man who wrote and drew superbly, had made sensational JUST OPEN! in the

March
United States took place in
1886. organized by Durand-
balloon ascents, but was to be known to posterity for his excellent Ruel and sponsored by the Ameri-
photographs, including portraits of the young painters. Villiers de can Art Association in New York.

l'lsle-Adam, bearer of an aristocratic name, was a writer with a little

EXHIBITION But
French
the first

school
canvas
to be
of the
seen in
new
the
yellow beard, his white hands agitatedly emerging from his shrunken United States was Manet's Execution
sleeves. Stephane Mallarme, a high school teacher of English, who GREAT PAINTING of Maximilian, brought to America
by the French singer Madame Ambre
wrote exquisite and obscure poems was often there. "If you would
only write just once as you would write for your cook, " Berthe •mimmm' (of whom Manet had done a portrait)

and her impresario Gaston de Beau-

Morisot implored him. "But I would not write differently for my plan. For political reasons Manet
was forbidden to exhibit the picture
cook, " said Mallarme. Constantin Guys, an artist of a previous ADMISSION, 25 CENTS.
. .
in France, but it was shown in
generation, was a sometime visitor. In its freshness and lightness his November 1879 at the Clarendon
work was a premonition of the coming age of painting, of which Hotel in New York and the Gallery
Poster of the Manet Exhibition held in Building in Boston. The event was
Baudelaire had warned the academicians: "Modernity, this transi-
New York in 1879. heralded by considerable publicity
tory, fugitive element, metamorphoses of which are so frequent (e.g. But press and public showed little

in Guys), you have no right to treat it with contempt. "

It was interest, and the idea of a further ex-

hibition in Chicago was abandoned.

probably at the Cafe Guerbois that Courbet made the oft-quoted
The attitude of the critics was
remark about his own paintings: "They're so beautiful, it's stupid.
reflected by an article in the New York
"
Cezanne did not often come. "All those people are salauds. he Herald (November 29, 18 7Q >: "Manet

said. "They are as well-dressed as notaries. " He did not like the is the apostle of French naturalism
in painting, as Zola is in literature . .

animated atmosphere of the Cafe and he particularly distrusted work many and
The faults of his are
Manet because of his impeccable dress, his doe-skin gloves, silver- ii is sadly inaccurate ... it will appeal
more to the artist and the art lover
topped cane, silk hat and polished shoes. But one day his friend
than to the general public, as the
Cabaner brought Cezanne along to the Cafe Guerbois. He is wearing
work of an original man who goes
a huge black felt hat deformed by age. and a long overcoat, once against conventions.

73
 black but now weathered to a sickly green, with buttons allthe way
down to his ankles. This he unfastens and with a galvanic movement
of his sturdy shoulders casts it off. He then takes a severe hitch at the

The Cafe Guerbois red belt holding his baggy trousers, a movement which reveals his
blue socks, and then stands black-bearded, a little stooped and
agitated by a tremor of nervous worry habitual to him, his large
"The meetings at the Cafe Guerbois. with painting in light tones and
bright colors represented by Manet, and the technique and procedure of open
laced boots planted firmly on the ground. He squeezes hands all

air painting represented by Claude Monet. Pissarro and Renoir, were to have round, but when Manet extends his firm white hand. Cezanne looks
fruitful results. From those meetings sprang the powerful development of art
"
up and says, "No, I cannot shake hands with you, Monsieur Manet,
which was soon to go by the name of Impressionism.
Theodore Duret. Renoir
for I have not washed for eight days. "
Then Cezanne sits in a corner,
appearing to ignore the general conversation and keeping his opinions
to himself, until some particular remark offends him, and he goes off

without a word of farewell.

In the early months of 1870 Manet and the critic. Edmond
Duranty, quarrelled at the Cafe Guerbois. The cause may have been a
Duranty anecdote about a man, standing before Manet's picture The
Music Lesson, saying with a shudder, "What a debauch!" (A story
Duranty took great pains to explain away in a subsequent issue of
Paris Journal.) Manet demanded an explanation and on not receiving a

satisfactory reply, slapped Duranty. Only a duel could assuage such

an insult and so the two friends soon found themselves face-to-face,
rapiers poised. According to Zola, who was Manet's second, both
antagonists were ignorant of the art of fencing, but attacked each
other with such intrepidity that the rapiers were twisted into the
semblance of corkscrews. Manet, having pricked Duranty's breast,
was considered the winner. They remained the best of friends.

Alas, that national tempers were not so easily assuaged that fatal

year. The Cafe Guerbois outlasted war, occupation, siege and revolu-
tion, but never again boasted so brilliant a company. Remade over
into the Brasserie Muller it succumbed to the demolishers within

living memory and a "One-Price "

store now occupies the site.

The new railroad which brought Saint-Germain to within twenty

minutes of Paris also brought out the Parisians, the young men and
Manet fVn and Ink
f.douard Paris Cafe (Cafe Guerbois?). I<S<>"
women who could not afford carriages and had not yet discovered
the velocipede. Monsieur Fournaise's restaurant, a wooden platform
built out from the river bank at Chatou. where guests, sitting on
"It wasn't until 1869 that I saw Manet again, but we became close friends
backless forms before long plank tables, dined in the open air under a
at once, as soon as we met. He invited me to come and see him each evening
in a cafe in the Batignolles district where he and his friends met when the blue canopy, was called La Grenouillere, not because the place
day's work in the studio was over. There met Fantin-Latour and Cezanne.
I
literally resembled a frog pond, but because, says Jean Renoir, this
Degas who had just returned from a trip to Italy, the art critic Duranty. Emile
Zola who was then making his debut in literature,
was argot for the young women, the little grisettes, who came there
and several others as well.
1 mysell brought along Sisley. Bazille and Renoir Nothing could be more with their athletic young men for summer weekends. Renoir went
interesting than the talks we had. with their perpetual clashes of opinion there because the place was in the popular style and "the frogs " and
Your mind was held in suspense all the time, you spurred the others on to
their sweat-shirted partners often posed for him without recompense.
sincere, disinterested inquiry and were spurred on yourself, you laid in a
stock of enthusiasm that kept you going lor weeks on end until you could Monet and Camille came to live at Bougival, a little further
give final form to the idea you had in mind You always went home downstream, not because Monet needed models, but because the
afterwards better steeled for the fray, with a new sense of purpose and a
clearer head
river at this point was broad enough to support regattas, rowing
Monet races and other colorful marine events. His rejection by the 1869
Salon had been a severe blow, but Shipowner Gaudibert had advanced a
sum sufficient for him to take a cheap summer rental. He tried to

drum up commissions, by writing to an influential friend, saying,

74
 " "

"I'll do anything at all for any price. "

He wrote Bazille. asking for
money with which to buy paints and, on not receiving a prompt
answer, wrote again: "Dear friend, would you like to know how we
lived during the eight days I have been waiting for your letter? Well,
Bougival
ask Renoir, who brought us some of his own bread, so that we
Early Ventures in Open Air Painting
should not die. For eight days, no bread, no wine, no kitchen fire, no
light. It's appalling.

Desperation seems to have liberated their brushes from all

formalistic restraint, for it is in the pictures they made here that the
particular technique of applying paint to canvas in vivid strokes,

commas and dots, which future art historians would define as the

"impressionist style " got its start. In fact, it was the water, the soft

rolling ripples caused by the rowing boats and the deep moving
reflections of sun and tree-shadows which completely absorbed them.
They had to work fast and without much cogitation, but being
now thoroughly versatile painters, accustomed to "instant "
brush-
work, at ease in the open air. they captured the color and gaiety
of the aquatic and gastronomic revels. The oarsmen and the "little

frogs" are there; Lise is there and we catch a glimpse of Camille's

old striped dress. There are probably no more unselfconsciously
hedonistic paintings to be found anywhere since the age of Pompeii.
"In the vicinity of Paris there were also places to be found whose
Monet, finally running out of paint, rages against Bazille: "There's attraction lay not only in the beauty of the site but in the pleasant outings
nothing for me to do except break my head against a wall ... I have that took place there and the merry crowd of pleasure seekers. There was a

indeed a dream, a picture of bathing at Grenouillere for which I have time, beginning about 1848 and ending about 1885, when the banks of the
Seine from Asnieres and Argenteuil to Bougival and Marly were thronged
made some bad sketches, but it's a dream. "
Said Renoir: "We don't with young people from Paris. There they were free to amuse themselves.
eat every day, yet I am happy in spite of it, because, as far as painting They could go boating, swimming, dancing. On Sundays, visitors of all sorts,
even the placid bourgeois, would come out that way to enjoy the fun. There
is concerned, Monet is good company.
was no Parisian at that time who was not familiar with the region, having
As Kenneth Clark has said "The riverside cafe of La Grenouillere is
:

frequented it himself or heard about it from those who did frequent it.
"

"
the birthplace of Impressionism. Theodore Duret. Renoir

Charles-Francois Daubigny: Train and Rive

Boats. Pen and Ink.

View of Bougival. Lithograph.

View of La Grenouillere. Print.

75
 "Here indeed is a good opportunity to draw up a rational and historical
theory of the beautiful, in contradistinction to the theory of a unique and
absolute beauty; and to show that beauty is always and inevitably of dual
composition, although the impression it produces is one: for the difficulty of
detecting the variable elements of beauty in the unity of the impression does
not make any less necessary to include variety in its composition. Beauty is
it

made up of an eternal and invariable element whose quantity is extremely

difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element deriving in

turn, or all at once, from the period, from fashion, morality, passion.
Without this second element, which is like the amusing, titillating, appetizing
envelope of the divine cake, the first element would be indigestible, unap-
"
preciated, ill-adapted and ill-suited to human nature.
Baudelaire. The Painter of Modern Life

Gustave Courbct: The Hammock. 1844.

L.inulle i iimi Lintisiape at Morne.x. Savoie. 1842. Drawing.

•JP*5fe'

uROT 'O
76
 "The painting is attractive in every way: accuracy of effects, a

delicate range of colors, unity and vividness of impression, excellent

distribution of light. This art looks so simple, yet how rare it is,

how rewarding to study ! It would have been impossible to put more

"
candor than this into a theme whose entire charm stems from light.

Zacharie Astruc describing Renoir's Lise m Ins review ol the 1868 Salon

An early work, Courbet's Hammock was one of his first master-

pieces. Here he entered the new field of open-air figure painting,
the theme over which Manet and the Impressionists were to fight
their battle against academicism. Breaking with convention. Courbet
preferred a girl's unsophisticated charms to the artificial allure-
ments of goddesses and muses. An outline quivering with sensuality
chisels the languid figure of the sleeping beauty and sets it off from
the dark landscape which acts as a foil to the subtle transparency of
the clothes. In the Dejeuner sur Vherbe, Manet, on the contrary,
veiled his feelings behind the cool intentness of his scrutiny. The
odd and unexpected group of figures, a female nude and two well-
dressed gentlemen talking by a stream, gave the picture a provoca-
tiveness that made the modernity of his vision pass unnoticed.
It was left for the Impressionists not only to integrate the figure into
its natural setting but to make it share to the full the radiant life of
nature. In this drawing by Pissarro the human presence is swallow-
ed up in the landscape, but already Monet and Renoir had achieved
a new harmony between man and his milieu. Renoir's Use is

sensorially very close to Courbet. but the full, metamorphosing

glow of natural light makes all the difference between him and his

great predecessor.

CamiUe Pissarro: Under the Trees. 1862. Drawing.

Auguste Renoir. Use with a Sunshade. 1867.

77
 Frederic Bazille.' family

Reunion, 1867.

Frederic Bazille. Study for the

Family Reunion, 1867.

Picnic on [he Grass, Women in the Garden. Family Reunion —such themes as "Unable to venture on a large composition. I have done my best to paint
these enabled Monet and his friends to arrive at a new harmony between as simple a subject as possible. Moreover, to my thinking, the subject matters
man and nature. The latter no longer appears as a mute and indifferent little, provided my work is interesting from the painterly point of view. I

setting or a sentimental backdrop re-echoing the moods of romantic heroes: have chosen the modern period, because that is the one which I understand
warm, welcoming, alive, it has become a source of bountiful enjoyments and best, which 1 find most alive for people living now ..."

The country,
relaxation. for Millet a place of unrelieved hard work, became Frederic Bazille. letter to his parents, early 1866
for the Impressionists a wide world for happy outings on fine days.

With his Dejeuner sur I'herbe (Picnic on the Grass) Monet aimed at
producing the first figure composition painted entirely in the open air: but
the canvas proved too big. the subject too complicated and the weather too
unsettled for him to realize his ambition. In 1867. however, he succeeded in

doing so with his Women in the Garden. Here the direct study of nature brought
home to Monet the importance of light, of its elusive shiftings and variability
He accordingly renounced the traditional chiaroscuro treatment of volumes
and successfully integrated figures into landscape by means of unified
lighting By placing his models in the shade of the trees instead of standing
them against a background of leafage, he achieved a new unity ol lighting in

which cast shadows join harmoniously with natural shadows. Already the
sharply impinging light filtering through the trees breaks up surfaces and
alters the color of things. Monet had discovered his true subject : light.

The generous and inseparable friend of Monet and Renoir. Bazille was led
to tackle the same themes as his friends. He joined them on their painting
excursions to Chailly in Fontainebleau forest, and he bought Women in the

Garden, thus helping to tide Monet over a period of desperate poverty

Returning to the family home at Montpellier during the summer of 1867,
Bazille attempted a similar picture. The southern light was warmer and
Steadier than that of the He de France, but he came to the same conclusions
regarding the coldness and transparency of shadows Like Monet, he replaced
gray with blue in the folds of the girls' white dresses. His line is more
I lassical, his respect for volumes greater, but he could not resist breaking up
the vhadows that dapple the foreground

78
"Everything is bright and tender, and each figure is a these vanished figures amidst the masterpieces of art.
living presence, glowing with the beauty of the day and These four women in white so different from each other,
hour, an hour arrested for the future. Henceforth this these flowers, this verdure, this bit of blue sky
"
— this is

moment of life caught unawares will keep its charm, youth and springtime.
these immobilized gestures will testify to the grace of Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet

James McNeill Whistler: In Bright

Sunlight, 1857-1858. Etching.

Claude Monet: Women in the Garden.

1867.

79
 Monet intended his Dqeuncr. which he was preparing for the 1866 Salon, as themanitesto
of open air painting. In order to get the benefit of natural lighting, he planned to paint the
picture as much as possible out ot doors. In the spring of 1865 he chose a suitable clearing

in Fontainebleau Forest and asked Bazille to join him there but a leg accident obliged him to
;

postpone his project until the following year.

Monet's boldness aroused the curiosity of his lriends. and they came out to see this

ambitious attempt to replace studio work by a direct confrontation with nature, studied
idealization by the observation of ephemeral phenomena. Everybody gave him advice.
especially Courbet whom he admired But he was vexed at this interference. Above all.

his work was delayed by unsettled weather and he realized he would not be able to carry
his analysis as far as he had hoped. A few days before the Salon opened, he abandoned the
canvas n was Liter divided into three parts

80
 "

Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe

Monet's Dejeuner sur I'Herbe is one of the key works in the evolution
of painting. For the first time an artist set out to paint a figure composition
in the open air. on the spot, in order to recreate the setting in all its

immediacy. In trying to execute so large a canvas out of doors he met with

many difficulties and setbacks. "At that period he embarked on his big
picture, the Dejeuner sur I'Herbe. now cut up into several pieces, but still so
fine in its figure grouping. The scene is set in Fontainebleau Forest, and Monet
resolutely brought all the power of his youthful art to bear on representing
figures just as they appear out of doors, in their green and leafy setting. Here
was a real revolution in the practice of painting, and one that wholly justifies
the name of Open Air School given to the painters who followed the same
principle of observation as Monet . . . This vast picture is still in his studio on
the day I write these lines, and 1 hope it will only leave his studio for the
Luxembourg and then for the Louvre, its natural home, for it marks an epoch
in the history of painting, as well as being an extraordinarily fine and
energetic affirmation of a talent seeking its way and finding it.
"
wrote the great
friend of the Impressionists, the critic Gustave Geffroy.
A few years after Monet, Cezanne took up the same theme, which he
later treated twice again during his impressionist period. But the version made
in 1869-1870 is particularly interesting since it so clearly reflects Cezanne's
character. Perpetually at odds with himself, dissatisfied and tormented, he
seems almost bewildered by the magnitude of the task he has set himself.

And by a typically southern reflex, he takes refuge in irony. He takes an

ironic view of his own temperament, which he knows to be violent and
impassioned, and of his theme: this picnic on the grass, a sort of Embarka-
tion for Cythera of the bourgeoisie, seems to him to reflect a "joy of life

which he knows a mirage. Many years later, when he painted his Bathers,

mm
is

an incomparable cosmic recreation, he fully and completely achieved his

pictorial conception of the harmony and interfusion of figures and nature.

1. Claude Monti: Fragment of the Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, 1865-1866.

2. Claude Monet: Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe. 1865.

5. Henry Peach Robinson: Women and Children in the Country, I860.

Composite Photograph.

4. Claude Monet: Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe. 1866.

5. Claude Monet: Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe. 1865. Sketch.

6. Paul Cezanne: Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe. 1869-1870.

Comparison between the initial sketch and the painted version of his
Dejeuner sur I'Herbe shows the progress made by Monet. In the drawing the
natural setting remains classical. In the painting the artist replaces the
luminous gap of the woodland path by a clearing: avoiding recession and
cleaving to the surface, he contrives to render light harmoniously and evenly
by filtering it through the dense foliage. Struck by the difference in tone
and value between lights and shadows, he adopts a flickering brushstroke,
not hesitating to break up a plane of shadow by a few touches of sunlight.
It is interesting to compare Monet's Dejeuner with a contemporary
photograph of picnickers. The painter contrives a snapshot, while the
photographer tries to vie with classical art. The long exposure time empha-
sizes the volume of figures and light is above
solidified in a violent contrast;

all, the composition, spiraling up from the three little girls seated on the rock,
keeps to the most elementary recipes of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Monet
handles the subject more freely, catching his figures in relaxed attitudes and
merging details into the dynamic harmony of the light. While one seems to
have photographed a sculptured group, the other captures something of the
very breath of life.

81
 ". . . some Dazzling Seascapes ..."

Summer holidays at the seaside became popular with the affluent classes
under Napoleon III. But neither Corot nor Courbet — in spite of the latter's

success with the fashionable crowd at Trouville and Deauville — allowed any
trace of this society atmosphere to appear in their seaside compositions. Corot
continued to render the poetic, sentimental light which he carried within
himself; Courbet found in the sea a marvelous contrast between majestic
power and bold textural effects. Whistler, for his part, though a professed
follower of Courbet. whom he accompanied to Trouville in 1865. nevertheless

recorded in his seascape an aristocratic vision tinged with aestheticism.

Self-taught and independent-minded. Boudin painted the Channel beaches
as he found them, peopled with elegant strollers. He saw that light continually

changes the color of things he found ; in parasols and summer dresses the spots

of color that brightened up the picture and set the grays vibrating. Monet
introduced Jongkind to him in 1862. The Dutchman was already an experi-
enced seascape painter whose watercolors had an atmospheric delicacy, a
limpid coloring and a sureness of hand unrivaled at that time. The example of
his two elders confirmed Monet in the bold handling which close observation
of the motif gradually prompted him to adopt, and reassured him as to the
accuracy of his sensations.

James McNeill Whistler: Harmony in Blue and Silver Courbet at Trouville. 1865.

Custave Courbft. Calm Sfa, 1 869

Camillf Corot: Rocks on th« Seashore, 1870.

Eugene Boudin Beach at Trouville, 186.3.

Johan Barthold Jongkmd: Beach at Saintc-Adrfsst, 186i Watercolor

82
 "
One is too much preoccupied with what one sees and
hears in Paris, however strong-minded one may be,
and what I do here will at least have the merit of
resembling nobody else because it will simply be the
"
impression
r of what I alone have felt.
Monet, Le Havre 1868

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- -

CLAUDE MONET: ,

Upper lejt: Seaside Terrace near Le Havre. 1866.

Summer visitors enjoying the sunshine on a flowered terrace overlooking

the sea. with its passing ships, while two flags flap in the wind: here Monet
combines an open air theme with a vivid impression of a happy day.

Lower left: Hotel des Roches Noires at Trouville. 1870.

From this time on. in many such open air scenes as this Trouville picture.

Monet concentrated on the problem of rendering the vibration of light and

this became in effect the real theme of his work. As here, he treated the subject

in a less descriptive manner, conjuring it up rather by rapid, allusive touches

Upper right: Jetty <Jt Honfleur. 1864.

First exhibited at the Salon of 1865. this seascape altracled notice and
favorable comment. The critic Paul Mantz, reviewing the Salon in the Gazette
des Beaux Arts, wrote of Monet's "bold manner of seeing things and
"
compelling the spectator to focus his attention on them.

Lower right: Beach at Sainte-Adresse, 1867.

The study of the sea light revealed to the impressionist painters the impor-
tance of the atmosphere, of that evanescent spray ol humidity u ithout which
light would be invisible. Monet returned each year to the Channel coast,
painting the scenes to which he owed his first successes.

83
La Grenouillere

"In despair I sold a still life and could then work on for a while. But as
usual I've had to call a halt for lack of colors. I alone will have nothing to
show for this year. "
Monet wrote these words on the 25th of September 1 869.
only a month after he and Renoir had painted their pictures of the Grenouil-

lere. His poverty was such that he gladly accepted the bread Renoir brought

him whenever he came to see him But there is no trace of despair in his
painting, which glows with the wealth and variety he had discovered in

nature. During this trying summer the ties binding Renoir and Monet were
strengthened and they often worked together out of doors. Monet, with his
incomparable eye. had already arrived at the observations and procedures
which were to crystallize in the impressionist style. He was the leader and
pacemaker, and working with him Renoir freed himself from the ascendancy
Courbet had gained over him. The two friends painted their pictures of the
Grenouillere at the same time, side by side. Monet here stands on the
threshold of Impressionism, about to master the last technical inventions
which would enable him to record his sensations faithfully and freely. The
Impressionists were not in search of any ready-made formula. They were
genuine creators with a fresh perception of the world. From 1865 to 1872 they
made a series of observations which led them step by step towards a new way
of painting, a new mode of expression. lor what they had to say had never
been said before. They groped their way forward into the unknown, guided
not by good taste or studio recipes but by the truth of their own sensations

"Bougival, the landscape studio of the

"
modern French school.
The Goncourt Brothers. Journal

The Bathing Place of La Grenouillere on the Island oj Croissy

Claude Monel: La Ortnouillirt. 1869.

Inauguration of Bougival Bridge on November 7. 1858.

August? Rt-noir The Boat. 1867.

84
 :

It is fascinating to compare these can-

vases by Monet and Renoir. Monet saw
that light is color, that it overlays local
tones with warm gleams, and that its

absence cools down those tones. By dint of

painting directly from nature he had
learned to work fast, and his observation
of light reflected on water had led him to

use an ever freer, more flickering brush-

stroke. He realized now that his "division-

"
ism. this dense pattern of small touches
of color applied in separate strokes, was
the only way of rendering the colors he
saw before him. While it is easy to shade
off any tone towards black or white, it is

impossible to mix certain colors chemically

without altering them. Seeking to convey
with his paints the luminous intensity of
the world, he emphasized complementary
colors with forceful insistence.
Renoir's vision is gentler, more sensitive,

and more poetic. While Monet steps up

contrasts. Renoir softens them down in

an all-pervading harmony ot subdued and

silvery colors.

Auguae Renoir.

Li Grenouillere, about li

Claude Monet
La Grenouillere. 1869.

85
"And there he goes along the roads in the neighborhood completely rural slopes of Montmartre, where there are
of Paris. He is engrossed in the pleasure of painting what trees, hedges, fields and animals . . . Nothing stands be-
he sees, of giving way freely to his emotion, of passion- tween his youthful sensibility and nature. He paints her
"
ately being a painter of truth. He works on the still just as he sees her, in the emotion he receives from her.

Georges Lecomte. Pissarro

Camilk Pissarro: The Versailles

Road at Louveciennes. 1870.

86
 Montmartre

Alfred Sisley: View of Monlmarlre, 1869.

The Heights 0/ Monlmarlre before the

Construction of the Sacre-Caur Basilica.

about 1869. Photograph

Armand Guillaumtn Monlmarlre. 1865.

For Sisley and Pissarro the work of Corot continued to be a living example, but
they gradually moved beyond it. They shared the modesty of their old master, who
"
used to say: "Mine is only a small flute, but with it I try to strike the right note
Both of them consistently aimed in their painting at sound pictorial design and an
overall harmony of form and color.
The technical inventions of Pissarro. Sisley and Guillaumtn are less spectacular
than those of Monet; they are no less effective and authentic Living in the
country —even Montmartre was then still quite rural — they had not been prompted
to develop the bold free brushwork that Monet had arrived at by studying the
reflections of light on water. But they too felt the need to achieve a more accurate
rendering of atmosphere, without any intrusion of the picturesque or anecdotal.

Pissarro was a delicate and skillful recorder of the play of light and the
beauty of even the most ordinary scenes; the full savor of a season, of its light, its

warmth, its odors, is conveyed by every stroke of his brush. In 190 3. shortly before

his death, he confided to a journalist interviewing him at Le Havre: "I see only

patches of color. When I begin a picture, the first thing I try to do is to fix the color

scheme. Between this sky and this ground and this water, there is necessarily a

relation of colors, and therein lies the great difficulty of painting. What interests me
less and less in my art is the material side of painting (lines). The great problem is to

bring everything, even the smallest details of the picture, into agreement with the
whole, in other words to work out the color harmony
Sisley and Guillaumin. the latter especially, worked in a more descriptive

idiom. They had not yet given up values for color. But the pulsing life of nature, its

light, wind and warmth, was already beginning to break up the rigid framework of

traditional vision.

87
 "

palaces in profusion and builds them without

France likes

knowing to what use they will be put, " wrote Eugene Pelletan
in his Nouvelle Babylone. "They have built a palace at the Louvre
and lodged antiquity there; another in the rue de Bourgogne and
there they lodge the Corps Le'gislatif; another at the Bourse and
there they lodge the speculators; another at the Hotel de Ville,
and there they lodge M. Haussmann; another at the Luxembourg
and there they lodge the Senate... Above all the palaces Paris
carries in the sky her innumerable cupolas; a cupola at the Pan-
theon, for sheltering the candidature of dust for immortality; a
cupola at the Invalides, to cover up some wounds another ; at the Val de
Grace, to cover sickness; another at the Institut for covering up
compliments. "
In a cautious way M. Pelletan was saying that a town-
planning upheaval was going on in Paris which neither Baron Hauss-
Sire of a Pitched Bank mann, who was its instrument, nor the Senate, the Legislative Assembly,
between Communards
and Versaillais. 1871.
the Institut de France, the University, nor any other institution dared
acknowledge. The Emperor had quietly ordered a city clean-up of a
special order.

There was some excuse for this : the old gaslit city was jampacked
The very existence of Impressionism
with traffic. Carriages of every conceivable kind, horse-riders and
which transformed nature into a pedestrians crowded its narrow streets, a traffic recently augmented by
private, unformalized field for some hundreds of horse-drawn buses, velocipedes and tricycles, not to

sensitive vision, shifting with the mention the steam locomotives pushing ever closer to the city's heart.

Two million people were living in Paris, yet there were windmills on
spectator, made painting an ideal
Montmartre, fields at the Trocade'ro and rural scenes beyond the Arc de
domain of freedom; it attracted many Triomphe. Under the royal windows at the Louvre palace there was a
who were tied unhappily to middle flea market with benches and stalls, heaps of old iron aviaries of birds,
;

class jobs and moral standards, now guinea pigs on straw, squirrels on wheels and all manner of people and
beasts making a prodigious din. At Haussmann's command it all
increasingly problematic and stultifying
vanished overnight and in a miraculously short time the palace ap-
with the advance of monopoly peared with a curious brood of statues on the balustrade of its portico.
capitalism. The rue de Rivoli was prolonged and the boulevard de Strasbourg
MEYER SCHAPIRO
built over the rubble of old buildings; a road was driven through the
Luxembourg gardens, displacing the Medici Fountain and destroying
the Tree of Liberty, cherished relic of the great Revolution ; suddenly
new roads proliferated in all directions, "shafts to nowhere, " some-
one said. Then it was noticed that all the new roads led to, and from,
the great military barracks that encircled the city, that they were, in
the words of a distinguished historian of the period, "marvelously
accessible to air, light and infantry. " As Eugene Pelletan observed:
"They have demolished Paris because the February (1848) Revolution
has shown that no honest government can subdue in one blow a
million souls, in this roiling skein of streets and lanes, impasses and
galleries wbere a dozen paving stones, one on the other, and behind
the paving stones, some blouses, the first (republican) guards, the first

secret society, can halt for a day, two days, even three days, all the
infantry, all the cavalry, all the artillery, all the gendarmes of Paris.

The replanning of Paris had been carried out without regard for

the people who were displaced. They received a printed notice to quit
and it they had not moved out by the time the wreckers arrived they
were forcibly evicted. Tens of thousands of Parisians were suddenly

88
 "

homeless, many of them already impoverished by sweat-shop condi- In the Streets and Boulevards of Paris
tions; but the clean-up hit everybody, including intellectuals like

Professor Pelletan who could not afford an apartment in one of the

tall new buildings with which Baron Haussmann was lining his new
boulevards and was obliged to move out to the suburbs among
the vegetable plots.
"France contains, according to the Imperial Almanac, thirty-six
millions of subjects, not including subjects of discontent. " wrote
Henri de Rochefort in La Lanterne. A string of similar bons mots,

progressively stronger in tone, brought the crimson-bound La Lanterne a

hundred thousand readers and Rochefort a term in prison and,
finally, exile.

The Goncourt brothers were concerned about the 20.000 cocottes 1

(professionals), cocodettes (amateurs) and grisettes (beginners) who

plied their trade in Paris, some like Anna Desloins and Cora Pearl,
decked out in diamonds, but the vast majority now without a bed to
their backs. "Never has the gangrene been so profound, " wrote the
brothers in their famous journal. "The most elevated arts have been
travestied by ignoble buffooneries. From the Madeleine to the Bastille

there is not a cafe where absinthe is not softening the brain towards
maniacal fury.
Paris seethed with revolt, but the system of police informers,
spies, stool-pigeons, provocateurs —that professionalism which has
ever distinguished the Siirete — kept the Emperor well informed. D.2905

Finally, it was not the internal, but the external, situation which
brought disaster. Edouard Mane! In j Cab- Drawing.

Like most dictators it was in the field of foreign policy that

Napoleon made his fatal mistakes. A posture of bellicose nationalism
leans on glorious feats of arms and the laurels of foreign victories.
Thus, in 1849, the French had invaded Italy, thwarting her desire for
union with Rome, making a friend in the Vatican, but an enemy of the
Italian people. In 1865 Napoleon had annexed Cochin China, a busi-

ness that was not to finish in his century (the same could be said of his

Suez Canal Company). In 1854, by joining Britain and Turkey in the

invasion of the Crimea, he had made an enemy of the Czar and had
offended Britain by leaving her out of the peace settlement. In 1859 he
had invaded Lombardy where, on the basis of a much-publicized

battle, he had made a quick peace which still further offended the
Italians. In 1864 he had taken advantage of America's Civil War
to install a puppet on the Mexican throne, and had then stood by
while his puppet was executed by a Mexican firing squad. Thus, the
Emperor had not a friend in the world when, finally and inevitably,
he had accepted war with an observant Germany.
The Salon ol 1870 had surprised everybody. With the exception
of Monet and Cezanne all the young painters were represented.
Responding perhaps to currents of uncertainty, the Academy had
agreed that every recognized artist had the right to vote for his choice

of jurymen for the selection committee. The Cafe Guerbois had imme-
diately nominated its own panel of jurymen which included Courbet
and Manet. Daumier and Daubigny, Corot and Millet. But only
Daubigny and Corot had been admitted to the Jury. However, the Edouard Manel Queue m Yroni oj the Butcher's Shop, 1871. Etching.

89
choice (it works tor exhibition had showed an extraordinary liberality

towards the young painters, compared with previous years.

Cezanne had waited until the last moment before bringing in his

entries. These were: Reclining Nude, which paid no court to conven-

tional ideas of feminine grace, and a portrait of his paraplegic friend
Achille Emperaire which made no attempt to hide the shrunken legs

beneath the handsome head and powerful torso: and. being painted
in hard and bold colors, was a challenge, not merely to the genteel
Jury, but to the world at large, and perhaps posterity.

On the whole the young painters had occasion to congratulate

themselves despite continuing adverse press criticism their work was

:

being exhibited and seen by thousands of people. The intelligence

that France was at war with Germany was discouraging, but not
overwhelming: France had been at war with half-a-dozen countries
in the last twenty years and the army's battle record was as brilliant

as its uniforms. But the news, six weeks later, that the Prussian

armies had broken the French line at Sedan and that Bonaparte had
surrendered and was a prisoner of war came as a stunning shock.

Hundreds of thousands of Parisians milled about the boulevards.

Tricolors were raised and cockades worn: orators of every stripe
delivered vehement speeches to which people listened in a dazed
manner. The Marseillaise was sung and so was the Chant du depart.

Newspapers were snatched from the hands of vendors and the city

hummed with false rumors. A coalition Government of National

Defense was formed and announced the creation of a National Guard
for the defense of Paris. Both Degas and Manet joined up. their social

status obtaining them commissions. Manet was disappointed to find

that his superior officer was the painter, Ernest Meissonier, one of
the stalwarts of the Academy, as uncongenial in as out of uniform.

A fortnight after the fall of Sedan the Prussians arrived before

Paris, taking up positions opposite the system of forts which encircled
the city. An attempt by the revolutionary parties to seize power was
foiled: the government appointed General Trochu to govern the city

and General Vinoy to command its forces. Leon Gambetta. whose

revolutionary fervor had turned to republican ardor on the fall of

Napoleon, was ballooned out of Paris with the mission of reassembling

the dispersed French forces in the south and the west of France for

the relief of the capital.

About two months after the Germans had closed their iron trap

a gallant effort was made to break out of the besieged city. A large

force under General Ducrot struck out to the east of Paris with the
objective of reaching the Marne. then swinging southward and
effecting a junction with the French army that had been hurriedly
assembled on the Loire. For three days there was heavy fighting in the

region of Champigny where Manet, riding dispatches between Paris

and Ducrot's staff, saw action for the first time. The breakout failed

at great cost to the inexperienced French forces, the battlefield being,

in the words of an English correspondent, "an indescribable bloody
mess with the brave women of Paris administering succor to the
wounded and dying. " Any hope there may have been of effecting a

90
 —

junction with Ducrot's army and that of the Loire, had already been
thwarted by a German army, commanded by the Crown Prin<

Prussia, which had forced the army of the Loire into retreat. It was in

this retreat that Bazille was killed.

While negotiating Napoleon's surrender at Sedan, Bismarck had

accused the French of being "a nation irritable, envious, jealous and
proud to excess. " Pointing out that in the previous two hundred
years French armies had made war on Germany no less than thirty
times, he told a French general: "It seems to you that victory is

properly reserved to you alone. "

On January 18. 1871 , at Versailles

seat of the former kings of France — King William of Prussia was

crowned Emperor of Germany, before a glittering cohort of his
jackbooted generals. At the end of January the armistice went
into effect and a general demobilization was ordered. Manet went to
join his family near Bordeaux and immediately began painting. Degas
remained in Paris, spending much of his time at the Morisot house.

A new government, headed by Adolphe Thiers, was set up at

Versailles and entered into peace negotiations with Bismarck. Mean-

while the citizen —
army in Paris the Federals, as they were called
refused to disband. Towards the end of February the Thiers govern-
ment signed a convention with Germany which provided for an
unprecedented indemnity and a limited occupation of Paris. The
convention was denounced by Gambetta and a few days later the

German troops, goose-stepping down the Champs-Elyse'es in their

spiked helmets and shining breastplates, were received in utter

silence. The effect of this humiliation — as Bismarck may have calcu-

lated —was to cause the Federals to go into active rebellion. By this

time a force of some 300.000 men, they seized the artillery, elected

their own command and ordered the election of a city government

committed to resistance. In the sixty days of its existence the Com-
mune of Paris passed out of the control of simple patriots and into
the hands of revolutionaries whose ideas and aims went beyond the
city's defense. It seemed to these men that the moment had come for

redressing all the evils and injustices of the Bonapartist regime: the
Leveling the Approaches to the Boulevard Malesherbes, 1864. Photograph
political repression, the police system, the crushing poverty and
Hippolvle Bayard: The Roofs of Paris from Montmartrc, 1842. Photograph
prostitution, the uncontrolled commercialism and the irresponsible
military adventures. As the situation progressively got out of hand
power was exercised according to the only precedents within their
As a result of industrial development the population of Paris doubled knowledge, those of the revolutions of 1793 and 1848: that is, by
during the first half of the nineteenth century, and living conditions in the
dispensing death with that insouciance which would attend their own
overcrowded city became alarmingly unsanitary. In 1853 Napoleon 111 accord-
ingly ordered Haussmann. prefect of the Seine, to modernize Paris, whose inevitable destruction. Nothing the Communards did, however, could
present-day aspect is largely of his creation. Haussmann put through new match in scale or ruthlessness their own suppression. All the cruelty,
thoroughfares and widened old ones, enlarged and improved the parks,
malice and chagrin of the class of people accurately described by
provided a new water supply and a gigantic system of sewers, erected new
buildings, bridges, railroad stations and the central markets. These trans- Bismarck was expended on the Communards and the unfortunate
formations, while they met the requirements of modern life, were nevertheless Federals. Manet, who returned to Paris with the Versailles troops,
governed by an absolutist conception of power: the wide new thoroughfares
made several vivid sketches of the summary executions at the
brought light and air into the city, and eased the flow of traffic, but they also
facilitated the intervention of the army in the popular quarters where barricades. They have a curious resemblance to the sketches he made
rebellion smoldered. as a youth, during the 1851 coup d'etat, and also to Goya's famous
painting of the executions carried out by French troops in Madrid,
which had inspired Manet to make his painting of the execution of
Maximilian. Or perhaps the banality lies in the act itself.

91
 " " ;

The War of 1870 After the Prussian breakthrough at Sedan. Monet decided that the

time had come to quit France. Before taking the Portsmouth packet
he left some paintings at Pissarro's house in Louveciennes. Within a
few days, however. Pissarro also decided to leave Paris. Louveciennes,
lying on the main road to Paris from the northwest, was a predictable

German objective. Pissarro stacked away his canvases —some hun-

dreds of them, his life's work —and took his little family to his friend

Ludovic Piette in Mayenne, near Le Mans, but this hardly seemed safer
and so. probably with some financial assistance from Piette, he too
crossed La Manche.
In London Monet visited Daubigny, an expatriate of slightly

longer standing. Moved by Monet's evident distress Daubigny told

him about a young French art dealer named Paul Durand-Ruel who
had fled Paris with his stock of pictures and was now in business in

New Bond street. Durand-Ruel bought several of Monet's paintings

for three hundred francs apiece. "I must sell a lot of your work
".,

here, " he said. Pissarro and Julie, arriving in London shortly before
Erncsl Mcissonitr: Ernest Meisscmier:
the birth of their third child, were received in the house of Phineas
Sketch, 1870. The Siege of Paris, 1870 or early 1871.
Sketch.
Isaacson whose wife was Pissarro's half-sister; here they were soon
married. Pissarro also visited Daubigny and, by the same connection,
sold a picture to Durand-Ruel and contacted Monet. "Monet and I

were very enthusiastic about the London landscapes, " Pissarro later
wrote. "Monet worked in the parks while I, living at Lower Norwood,
at that time a charming suburb, studied the effects of fog, snow and
springtime. We worked from Nature and later Monet painted in London
some superb studies of mist. We also visited the museums, studying

the watercolors and paintings of Turner and Constable.

Monet and Pissarro were represented by two pictures in the
French section of the International Exhibition at South Kensington
in 1871, probably through Durand-Ruel's efforts. The paintings they
entered for the Royal Academy exhibition were "naturally turned
down." The "naturally" was an echo of their habitual treatment

by academies; not Constable or Turner, but Dante Gabriel Rossetti

was the ruling fashion in English art and, quite recently, after a
short visit to Paris, had given it as his opinion that "the new French
"
school is simple putrescence and decomposition.
Pissarro wrote Theodore Duret that he was returning to Paris as

soon as possible. "Yes. my dear Duret. I shall not stay here as it is only
when you are abroad that you realize how beautiful, great and hos-
pitable is France. What a difference here! You only get disdain, indif-

ference, and even rudeness; among one's own confreres jealousy and
the most selfish mistrust. Here there is no such thing as art; every-

thing is treated as a matter of business.

Arriving in Paris a short time after the German withdrawal,
Pissarro had difficulty recognizing his house at Louveciennes. During
his absence it had been taken over by a German supply unit which had
used it as an abattoir. Oxen, sheep and pigs, slaughtered and hung for
I douari Vlanel llu Bai i u.i.l, ,1871 Litl
skinning, had saturated the ground all around the house with their

blood. The German butchers, in order to preserve their feet from this

sanguineous quagmire, had carpeted their pathways with Pissarro's

(and Monet's) canvases.

92
 Bazille had obtained his commission in the 3rd Zouaves through
his friend. Prince Bibesco, ordnance officer on General du Barail's staff.

After a brief sojourn in Algeria for training he had taken the field in that

belated action under Generals Aurelle, Chanzy and Martin de Palliers,

which had had some initial success in the region of Orleans and then s
deteriorated, because, according to a staff report, its forces were "
made
up of men who knew how to get killed, but not of soldiers. " Renoir had
declined Prince Bibesco's help in the
Bazille's suggestion that he enlist in a
same direction, but had accepted
cavalry regiment, despite the fact
A/*.!
that he had never ridden a horse. Sent to Bordeaux for training. Renoir

had painted a portrait of his commander, and one of the commander's - - * _

wife, who, he afterward said, "was soon more revolutionary in

her ideas about art than I was. "

When his commander was transferred
to Tarbes to supervise the training of cavalry remounts, Renoir went
along with him and soon became an accomplished rider. However,
during an epidemic of dysentery, he was taken ill and might have died
like hundreds of other soldiers, had not an uncle brought him to

Bordeaux.
With the armistice and the general demobilization, Renoir
thumbed his way to Paris where he learned of the death of Bazille. "Papa will find Paris in a most surprising state oi excitement, one that is

During the withdrawal the tall, easily-targeted young officer had, it certain to end badly. I was unable to go to Victor Noir's funeral because of
the drenching rain that fell that day. and also because was posing for a
seemed, been the victim of a sniper's bullet on an icy road
I

at Beaune-
picture by Fantin. one of my friends. But on the outer boulevard 1 saw all the
la-Rolande. about twenty miles south of Fontainebleau forest where people pass by who were going to it. There was not .1 single worker left in

they had spent so many happy and expectant days. Paris. Had it not been for Rochefort. two hundred thousand men (at least)

would have been peppered with grapeshot Mark mv words, all this will end
Renoir had entered Paris during the confused period between the
badly, it is no longer a joke, there is a widespread irritation which will set the
peace negotiations and the setting-up of the Commune of Paris. At guns firing at the first opportunity, which will not fail to appear,
"

Louveciennes, where he stayed with his sister and her husband, the Frederic Bazille. letter to his mother, January 1870

A Barricade in the Rut' de la I'aix during the Commune

1871. Photograph.

Edouard Manet: The Civil War. 1871 Etching

93
 "

engraver Leray. there were lively discussions; his sister proposed that Courbet and the Paris Commune
he meet Louise Michel, who had suddenly emerged as the champion of
"
women's rights. "Clemenceau will introduce you, his sister had said.

Instead. Renoir went to see Courbet, who had accepted the post of
Director of Art under the Commune and was busy stowing away the
city's art works, paintings, statuary and books, in places that would
be safe from the shelling; he was far outside the bitter political
struggle which was changing, almost daily, the composition of the
Commune and the command of its army.
Renoir took his paintbox and easel and. ignoring war and
revolution, began painting his old love, the Seine. It was a strange

occupation in a besieged city and he cannot have been overly

surprised when a couple of Federals mistook him for a Versailles spy.
A crowd gathered and someone shouted. "Throw him in the Seine!

The Federals took him to Commune security headquarters at the

Hotel de Ville where, with that facility which distinguishes revolu-
tionary regimes, his fate might have been settled in a matter of
minutes by the red-sashed Chief of Security, had not Renoir suddenly
recognized him. He was the young runaway Renoir had sheltered in

Fontainebleau forest. Reminded of that occasion. Raoul Rigault

embraced Renoir, led him past a double line of guards, with arms at

the present, to a balcony overlooking the Place de Greve where there Edoiiiird Monti /'orir.m of Courbet, 1878. Pen and Ink

was a great concourse of people. "Now. fellow citizens." shouted

Rigault. after having introduced Renoir as a painter and one of
themselves. "Let us sing the /Marseillaise for Citizen Renoir! "
Rigault
gave him a pass which enabled Renoir at any time to enter or leave

the Commune area, warning him. however, not to show it to a

REPUBLIQUE FRAN^AISE
I.IUERTR, EGALITE, KRATERMTE.
Versailles guard or it would cost him his life.

"Good people, the Communards." Renoir told his son. Jean,

many years later. "They had good intentions. But you don't play ele ctions
Robespierre
And why burn
sham than a
all

good
over again. They were eighty years behind the times.
the Tuileries?
deal that
It wasn't much, but
came afterwards.
"
at least it was less A LA COMMUNE
Renoir had spent his earliest youth in the shadow of the old
unreconstructed Tuileries. SCRUTIN DU 10 tVRIL 1871

One of the first acts of the National Defense Government had l.es Meralues tlu l.'oiniti! electoral ilu 6"« arionclisscment, par deference

pour le suffrage ilc leurs coneilovens, recorumuudent & leur choix, pour
been to appoint a commission of artists to take care of the city's art
I'i'lcclion i In Commune, le ritnjen

treasures, museums and public monuments. Elected president of the

Commission Courbet had proposed the destruction of the Vendome
Column. Then surmounted by a statue of Napoleon
laurels of a Roman Emperor, with a spiralling bronze sheath (made
I wearing the
COURBET
•1 1 j a "M. nu le plus grand uoinbre de voix apies les elus du id mars, el
from melted-down Russian and Austrian guns, captured at the Battle
lui adjoianeut le cilojeu
of Austerlitz), on which was engraved, in imitation of Trajan's Column
in Rome, the picture-story of Napoleon Is triumphs, the 150-foot
column was considered an
Though the idea tickled Courbet there were
intolerable reminder of Bonapartism.
more urgent things to
ROGEARD
Le Comitt electoral rcpublicttin du 6 e Arrondii.teinent.
be done, such as storing the Louvre treasures and sandbagging the
.,,. — lj|. r.Mii!" tin, lllir 'I lr, -in ,.,.,!,. I -S-n.l-l.rr, ,,u.n III.
city's monuments, like the Arc de Triomphe, to protect them from
.

Prussian shells. In the meantime the National Defense Government

had been replaced by the Commune, and though Courbet was then Poster/or the Elections to the Commune, 1871.

94
 able to institute one of his favorite reforms, the suppression of the
Academie des Beaux salons and schools
REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE erates of the Commune
Arts, its

like himself were last

mod-

N" 12S I.IIIKRTK — KUUITK — HUTKR1IIK N« 1 2H

bein; I out
(or shot without trial) by the Blanquists, Heb< I
Jacobins.
There is no record that Courbet took a strong stand against the

terrorist acts Commune, but it is certain that he was profoundly

of the

COMMUNE DE PARIS moved by the summary execution of his friend Gustave Chaudcy.
whose brief tenure as Mayor of Paris had not met with Rigault's
approval. On May 11, 1871, Courbet resigned his post. He was
present, however, when, on May 16. the Vendome Column was
La Commune autorise le citoyen G. COURBET, nomme en
brought crashing down amid a flutter of tricolors and the sound of
assemblee generate President de la Society des Peintres, a
retablir, dans le plus bref delai, les Musees de la Ville de the Marseillaise. The next day. belatedly perhaps, Courbet broke
Paris dans leur itat normal, d'ouvrir les galeries au public et completely with the Commune.
d'y favoriser le travail qui s'y fait habituellement.
On May 21 the Versailles troops entered the city, splitting into
La Commune autorisera a cet effel les quarante-six delegues
two main columns, taking the right and the .left banks of the Seine,
qui seront nommes demain Jeudi, 13 avril, en stance publique
a l'Ecole de medecine (grand amphitheatre), a devx
and advancing towards the Hotel de Ville. The Federals fought them
Aeure.t
pricises. street by street, from one cobblestone barricade to the next, receiving
De plus, elle autorise le citoyen COURBET, ainsi que cette and giving no quarter. In the Commune's last hours Rigault shot a
assemblee, a retablir l'Exposition annuelle aux Champs- number of hostages, including Archbishop Darboy, and some of his
ElysSes.
supporters put fire to the symbolic institutions of Napoleon Ill's
Paris, le 12 avril 1871.
reign: his residences, the Tuileries Palace and the Palais Royal, the
La Commusion executive,
AVR1AL, F.COUKNET. C». DELESCl.UZE, F*lix l'Y\T Royal Mint, the House of the Legion of Honor and, finally, to
G. TKIDON, A. VEKMOREL, E. VAILLANT. their own fastness, the Hotel de Ville. In the army's mopping-up
l laiKinmit MTIu.VALt.
operation the survivors of the Federals and the Workers' Battalions
were flushed out of the catacombs of the Left Bank, the cemetery of
Pere Lachaise and the cellars of Belleville, brought to drumhead
courts, tied together in groups of ten. in some cases, and mowed
down by mitrailleuse: the Seine below Lobau barracks literally ran
red for days. Camille Pelletan. who made a careful study of the

matter some years later, says: "The re-entry of the government in

Paris was marked by a massacre of twenty or thirty thousand

Parisians, according to some, of seventeen thousand, according to

others. "
The regular army of more than one hundred thousand men
suffered 873 dead.
Courbet was arrested a week later in the house of a friend and
imprisoned at Versailles. During the next three months he was moved
from one crowded jail to another while the military tribunals went
through thousands of cases. When Courbet's turn came, military
justice had been appeased to some extent and all charges against him
were dropped, except that of complicity in the destruction of monu-
ments. As a result he received a comparatively light sentence of six
months on the routine charge of having assisted in the disaffection of

the troops. His health had broken down; a part of his sentence was
served in hospital and he was afterwards allowed to make several

paintings while under detention. Monet and Boudin paid him a visit,
Poster of [he Commune. 1871. finding him thin, white-haired and looking very old.
Returning to Ornans, his birthplace, Courbet made two paintings
Courbet and the Commune.
Photograph. which he sent in to the next Salon. Both were summarily rejected.
"
"Courbet must be excluded from exhibiting. said Ernest Meissonier.
Courhet's Membership Curd

of the Federation of Artists

the new panjandrum of official art. "It is necessary that henceforth he
created during the Commune- shall be dead to us. "
His pictures were removed from public exhibi-

95
 —

The New Louvre and tin- Tuihries. Photograph by Martens

View of the hires in Paris on the Nights oj May 23 and 25. 187J. Lithograph by Deroy

Daniel Vitrge: The Fall oj the Vendome Column. Drawing.

The Vendomi i olumn Overturned Way 16 !87l

tion. The pronouncement provoked protests from the liberals, but

the official artists were furious over the leniency shown towards
Courbet. Shortly afterwards the National Assembly passed an act
declaring Courbet responsible for the destruction of the Vendome
Column and demanding that he meet the cost of its restoration.

Faked photographs showing Courbet shaking hands with the destroyers

fcif
of the Column were circulated. A bill for 323,09 francs was presented to 1

him and preparations were made to seize his property and personal
effects. Courbet fled to Switzerland where he had some difficulty

finding a place to live — the Swiss were not anxious to have so

notorious a "Communard "
in their midst — but he eventually settled

down at La Tour-de-Peilz, near Vevey. where he found some lesser

Communard exiles already in residence. He continued to paint and
people from all over the world came to visit him, including Rochefort
who had escaped from imprisonment in New Caledonia. In 1877
some
of
paintings which the
its bill — among them
government had seized
his portrait of Proudhon and
in lieu of payment
his family ML
96
 :

"If only 1 can

remember what the
"
sun looks like!

Courbet. on entering his cell

at the Sainte-Pelagie prison.

1871

Gustave Courbet.'
Execution at Samte-PeU
1871. Drawing.

Ruede Rivoli, 1871.

Photograph.

Gustavt Courbet
Courbet at Sainte-Pe'lag
1871. Drawing

were auctioned off at the Hotel Drouot for the sum total of ten
thousand francs. The contemptible bids satisfied Meissonier: the
government case was terminated and Courbet was free to return to

Ornans. Broken in health the old painter could not be moved; a

month later he was dead.
Thus, to be called a "Communard, " as the young non-conformist
painters often were at this time, was not a meaningless pejorative.
After his adventure with the Communards. Renoir went to stay

with the Sisleys who had rented a little house at Louveciennes.

Sisley's father, whose portrait Renoir had painted, had died after a

long illness, leaving Sisley without any further means of support. It

could not be said that Sisley was faced with the decision of looking
for employment: he knew only how to paint. One of the very few

paintings he made that year is a double portrait of his children, Pierre

and Jean, working at their lessons, a work possibly due to Renoir's

influence, for Sisley never again made a serious attempt at figure
painting.
Renoir himself was mainly occupied with obtaining portrait
commissions. Lise posed for a picture which may have been a

wedding present, for she shortly afterwards married Georges Briere

de l'lsle, a young architect, and did not again see Renoir, though she
treasured his letters and other memorabilia, destroying them some
years after his death and before her own demise in 1922. Through his

friend Le Coeur, Renoir got a job decorating the ceilings of Prince

Bibesco's new mansion, but the friendship with the Le Coeurs seems
to have foundered as a result of a compromising billet doux which
Renoir had addressed to sixteen-year-old Marie Le Coeur.

97
 "

Unfit for military service and badly in need of money.

Monet left Camille and his son Jean in Normandy on
the outbreak of war and went to England, a neutral

country where he hoped to be able to work and to sell

his pictures. There he ran into Daubigny, who intro-

duced him to his own dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. who
had opened a gallery in Bond Street. This meeting was
decisive: in Durand-Ruel the Impressionists found a
dealer who believed in them and several times went to
the verge of bankruptcy for their sake.

memoirs Durand-Ruel tells of this first meeting

In his

with Monet: "It was in my London gallery at the

beginning of 1871 that 1 made the acquaintance of
Monet. 1 had already noticed some of his work in the

recent Salons, but had had no opportunity to meet

him. since he was almost never in Paris. He was brought
to me by Daubigny. who thought highly of his talent.

I immediately bought from him the pictures he had just

"
done in London.
Fleeing Louveciennes before the advancing Prussians.
Pissarro too went to London. He submitted some can-
vases to the Royal Academy exhibition, the English
equivalent of the French Salon, but they were rejected.
He then applied to Durand-Ruel, who bought some
pictures from him and gave him Monet's address in
"There he met Pissarro. and during a visit Courbet. This was not an invitation, but simply London. So through Durand-Ruel
— "But for him we
to the National Gallery both were very much another step forward, a decisive one however. would have starved in London, " wrote Pissarro — the
struck by Turner's pictures This bewitching Turner may have been for them what Con- two friends were reunited and went out painting togeth-
artist, at once visionary and naturalistic, seek- stable and Bonington had been for Theodore er, studying rain, snow and fog effects. Years later
ing now the unreal in the real, now the real in Rousseau. Paul Huet. Cabat. Daubigny and to Pissarro confided to the English painter Wynford Dew-
the unreal, could not but incite them to strive some extent Corot himself. All had been sti- hurst, who was book on Impressionist Painting,
writing a
after a more vibrant coloring than the deli- mulated, but not subdued, by these two admi- Its "
The watercolors and paint-
Genesis and Development :

"
cately shaded harmonies in gray of Corot and rable English naturists. ings of Turner and Constable, as well as canvases by
Boudin. than the rich but heavy impastoes of Arsene Alexandre. Claude Mona Old Crome. certainly had some influence on us. We
admired Gainsborough. Lawrence. Reynolds, etc.. but
were most impressed by the English landscapists. who
were nearer to our own experiments in open air work.
in light and fleeting effects ..."

Extracts from Dewhursts book were published in

The Studio early in 1902. Irritated by the excessive

importance attached by Dewhurst to the English influ-

ence on Impressionism. Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien

on May 8. 1902: "This Mr. Dewhurst doesn't under-
stand what Impressionism is all about. He sees it only
as a technical device and mixes up the names he thinks :

[ongkind inferior to Boudin. That can't be helped. He

also says that before going to London Monet and 1 had
no conception of light ; yet we have studies that
demonstrate the contrary. He makes no mention of the
influence of Claude Lorrain. Corot. the whole 18th
century, especially Chardin But what he doesn't realize
is that Turner and Constable, while they taught us
something, showed us in their works that they had no
understanding of the analysis of shadow, which in

Turner's painting is simply used as an effect, a mere

absence of light. As far as tone division is concerned.
Turner proved the value of this method among methods,
although he did not apply it correctly and naturally:
besides we derived from the eighteenth century.

98
Monet and Pissarro in London

Like Monet. Pissarro made several trips to England, in 1871, 1890. 1892,
1897 and 1899. During his very first stay there, he turned, almost instinctively,
to the countrified themes which he had treated so often and so lovingly in

France, scenes with village houses glistening in the cool light that follows a
rainfall. Pissarro "contrives to render the fresh charm of England's aristocratic

landscapes. " wrote Charles Saunier in the Revue independante in 1892.

In London, in June 1871. Pissarro received a letter from Duret describing

the desolation of Paris under the Commune. Pissarro answered a few days
later in an equally despondent vein complaining of the general indifference his

work had met with in England :

"
Here there is no such thing as art ; everything
is treated as a matter of business. As far as sales go. 1 have got nowhere. Apart
from Durand-Ruel, who bought two small pictures from me. my painting does
not catch on. not in the least ; wherever I go it is the same tale . . Perhaps I

shall be back at Louveciennes shortly. I have lost everything there; out of

"
fifteen hundred canvases about forty are left.

Camille Pissarro: Snow at Lower Norwood. 1870.

Claude Monet: Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. 1870.

Camille Pissarro: Dulwich College. 1871.

Under the pressure of events Monet went to England for the first time in

1870. He made a second trip in 1891 and returned to London several times
between 1899 and 1904, when he executed a long series of pictures whose
central theme was the Thames. During his first stay he painted in Hyde Park
and did views of the Thames in a spirit fairly close to certain Whistlers, thus

showing once again the astonishing community of outlook and research that
links the painters of this period.

•< /. M. W. Turner: Burning of the Houses of Parliament. 1834.

-* John Constable: The Bay of Weymouth.

99
 " "

"How do you like painting women?" Renoir was once asked.

"Naked, " was his answer. But this often led to misunderstandings of
the kind which, on another occasion, caused him to say sternly:

War "I've known painters who never did any good work because, instead
After the "
of painting their models, they seduced them.
He was a gaunt, raffish young man, wary and deadly serious, so
"They came back from London more determined than ever to paint only
with the colors of the prism and to juxtapose on their canvases all the tones
thin that the peasants who saw him working in the fields used to say,
"
that their sensitive eye could detect in an impression of nature. One can "He could kiss a goat between the horns.
imagine the enthusiasm and zeal with which, at the Cafe Guerbois and in the

studios where they met each other, they told their friends about their discov-
eries and reflections. And their friends, who themselves were striving by
Monet did not immediately return to Paris after the war, but

trial and error to express their sensation of these color phenomena, were went to Holland, either at Daubigny's call or in his company. Though
delighted to have this confirmation of their perceptions and experiments.
generally classed with the "Barbizons, " Daubigny had close links
Their palette was refined and brightened up even more.
Georges Lecomte. Pissarro
with the marine painters like Jongkind and Boudin. He had built

himself a small studio on a flat-bottomed boat which he poled about

and the Marne, from which he made paintings directly from
the Seine
nature.He was probably very much at home on the broad waters of
the Zaandam, just to the north of Amsterdam, where Monet also
made some paintings, though vastly more colorful: Immediately on
his return to Paris, Monet went back to Argenteuil and began looking
around for a boat with enough beam to provide him with a small

floating studio and possibly living space. In the course of this search

he came in contact with Gustave Caillebotte. a young man of twenty-

four whose father had just left him a large fortune. Caillebotte, who
owned several racing skiffs and was something of a boat buff, helped
Monet find and fit out his floating studio. Monet made a picture of his
boat lying at its moorings, but Manet, who paid him a visit, went one
better and made a picture of the boat with Monet at work in it.

Evidently a shallow craft, propelled by oars, it had a high cabin on its

after part in which we see Camille comfortably seated. Monet in a

white smock and straw hat squats in bows under a striped
the
awning. Before him is a painting, one of those many made in this
boat —did it have a name? —not the least of which are those of the
Claude Monet: The .Studio-Boat, about 1874 new iron bridges which were being thrown across the Seine and the
Oise and which, seeming quaint to our eyes, were then the essence of
that modernity for which the young painters were reaching.
Gustave Caillebotte became so interested in Monet's project that
he himself took up painting. Some ot his pictures seem to have
been made, not only in Monet's boat, but in Monet's manner also.

Pissarro found a new home at no. 22 rue de l'Hermitage at

Pontoise. near the confluence of the Seine and the Oise, where he
remained for the next ten years. Here his little daughter Minette died
and here his second, third and fourth sons, and another daughter
were born. Vollard says that Madame Pissarro had to till the ground

herself to provide for her family. Pissarro's mother and his sister

seem to have been on hand a part of the time. And there were always
Paul Cezanne four People .Sitting in a Park, with a Parasol and Baby Carriage. friends. "Guillaumin has just spent several days at our house,"
1872-1895. Ptncil Pissarro wrote Duret. "He works at painting in the daytime and at

his ditch-digging in the evening. What courage!

It was during this period, says Lionello Venturi, "that Pissarro
developed his exquisite style, the perfection of values of tones,

100
 " " "

steadily reducing the importance of the subject. "

He also experimented
with the figure, introducing shepherdesses and milkmaids into his
paintings, to the consternation of his triends. who were afraid that he
might begin to sentimentalize the bucolic life in the manner of Millet.

"But Millet is biblical. " retorted Pissarro, "and I am only Hebrew.

Nevertheless, he dropped the human figure and continued to concen-
trate on the "sensations " of light in landscape.

Cezanne turned up at Auvers-sur-Oise, not far away. He was in

Aix-en-Provence when France fell. As soon as the National Defense

government had announced its intention of assembling a southern

army for the relief of Paris, Cezanne had gone quietly to the little

fishing village of L'Estaque, near Marseilles, where he had remained

until the end of the war. "I did a lot of painting, " he told Vollard.
who was curious about what he had done there. It seemed a sufficient

explanation. On his return from the South he had been accompanied

by Hortense Fiquet, his sometime model and companion, and they
had lived for a time in a little apartment near the Halle-aux-Vins,
where a son had been born, and named Paul.
Pissarro was a little astonished at the turn Cezanne's painting
had taken since their last meeting. He did not call it biblical (though
he could have done so), but wrote Duret: "When ever you want a
five-footed sheep, Cezanne will be able to supply you, for he has
some very strange studies of things he has seen as no one else ever
"
saw them.
Cezanne's friend. Dr Paul Cachet, whom he had met at the Cafe
Guerbois, had been a surgeon-aide-major in the National Guard
during the War — "Doctor Gachet of the Ambulances. " as he was
called. He had recently bought a fine house on a hillside over-

looking the Oise valley where his wife and children lived while
the Doctor, a homeopathic specialist, attended his practice three
days a week. Cezanne lived at the Gachet house while painting
Pissarro and Cezanne. Photograph.
the Oise landscape. He worked simultaneously on two subjects,

one for the morning and one for the afternoon, going out every

day at regular hours. He also had alternative subjects for gray

and sunshiny days. Madame Gachet often arranged vases of flowers

which Cezanne painted. When Pissarro saw the finished products
of these excursions he was not thinking of five-footed sheep when
he wrote Duret: "Our friend Cezanne raises our expectations,
and I have seen, and have at home, a painting of remarkable
vigor and power. If, as I hope, he stays some time in Auvers
where he is living, he will astonish a lot of artists who were
in too great a hurry to condemn him.
"Cezanne came under my influence at Pontoise and came under his.
I

Duret notes that "it was at Auvers that Cezanne began painting You remember how Zola and Be'liard lashed oul us about this. They
.it

in the open air. . . (He) invented an individual coloration, so harmo- thought that painting was invented out of nothing and that an artist was
original when he resembled no one else. What is curious to note in this
nious in what may be called its violence that the others profited by it.
exhibition of Cezanne's at Vollard's is the kinship between some ol his
At this period Pissarro introduced a brilliant range of color into his
Auvers and Pontoise landscapes and my own. To be sure, we were always
"
landscapes, suggested by Ce'zanne. together.
Pissarro. letter to his son Lucien, November 21. 1895
Dr Gachet bought Cezanne's Olvmpia and a number of other
paintings, including one of Hortense, a dark short-haired girl, lying

asleep, half nude, with the sturdy infant Paul tugging away at her
breast.

101
 " " —

The war had exhausted Degas. He complained of eye trouble,

due. he thought, to exposure while on duty during the icy nights of
the siege. When, late in 1872, his brother Rene returned to France

Degas in New Orleans from New Orleans, he had no difficulty persuading Edgar to pay the
American branch of the family a visit. The four months Edgar spent
in New Orleans were memorable in many ways. He found his Uncle
"1 shall certainly be back in Paris in January. To vary my voyage. 1 intend
Michel Musson, his deceased mother's brother, living with Rene's
to go by way of Havana. The French liners call there. 1 am eager to see you
again at my place and to work in familiar surroundings. Nothing can be done family in a huge mansion on The Esplanade, with all the appurten-
here, it's in the climate; nothing but cotton, people here live for and by cotton. ances of ante-bellum splendor, save that the slaves were now servants.
The light is so strong that I have not yet been able to do anything on the river.

My eves need so much care that 1 dare not expose them to any risk A few
"Nothing pleases me so much, " wrote Degas in a letter, "as the

family portraits will be my sole effort ; I could hardly avoid doing them and Negresses of every shade, holding little white babies — Oh! so white
would certainly not complain about it it it were not so difficult, if the in their arms: Negresses either in white mansions with fluted columns
arrangements did not seem so insipid and the sitters so restless. But never
or in orange-gardens, ladies in muslin in front of their little houses,
mind! shall have had the trip and not much more than that. Manet, more
I

than I. would have seen some fine things here. But he would not have done any steamboats with two funnels as high as factory chimneys, and the
more work. One can love and apply to art only what one is accustomed to. By contrast between the busy, so-well-arranged offices and this immense
novelty one is first captivated, then bored.
Letter trom Degas to Henri Rouart.
black animal force, etc. etc. And the pretty pure-bred women, the

written from New Orleans. December 5. 1872 charming quadroons and the well-built Negresses.
The Musson-De Gas household was full of pretty women and it

was perhaps the only time in his life that Edgar gave a thought to
family on his own account. "It is something to be married, to have
nice children, " he wrote. He was probably thinking of his sister-in-

law, Estelle, whose fourth child. Jeanne, was born shortly after his

arrival and for whom Degas was godfather. Estelle had been married
at the age of eighteen to Captain Lazare David Balfour, heir to the
great Fall Back plantation in Louisiana, who had been killed at the

battle of Corinth. Shortly after having met her cousin, Rene De Gas,
Estelle had gone blind, but, against the opposition of her father, and
after obtaining an episcopal dispensation to do so, Estelle had
married Rene.
His most famous American painting. Cotton Office in New Orleans.

tells the rest of the sad story. The old gentleman teasing a piece of

raw cotton is his Uncle Michel Musson, Estelle's father; the bearded
gentleman reading the Times-Picayune is Edgar's youngest brother.
Rene; the figure leaning against the window on the extreme left is his

brother Achille. When their father Auguste-Hyacinthe De Gas died in

Naples early in 1874, the affairs of his bank were in a disastrous

condition, due in a great measure to the financing of Rene's New
Orleans venture into cotton margins. Achille tried to hold off the
creditors by arranging for Rene to refund principal and interest by
installments; but the post bellum depression had finally hit New
"
Orleans and the "busy, so-well-arranged Cotton Office was close to
bankruptcy. One of Auguste De Gas's creditors, the Bank of Anvers,
sued the De Gas sons for 40.000 francs, which precipitated the total
collapse of Rene's affairs. Edgar and Achille agreed to repay their

father's debts in monthly installments.

Daniel Halevy is correct in saying that it was family financial

misfortunes which suddenly changed Degas's outlook on life and art.

Edgar Degas The onion Office at New Orleans. 187). "He could not endure the stain on the honor of the family, " Halevy
says. He was also suddenly without the private income which had
enabled him to live the life of a man-about-town. He gave up his
pleasant house in the rue Blanche and rented a studio at the foot of

102
 "

an alley off the rue Pigalle. This was the time when the houlevardiers A Manet Success at the Salon
said of him: "Degas would like to see his reflection in a boulevard
window, in order to give himself the satisfaction of breaking the
"
plate glass with his cane.

He had ceased to be an artist wealthy enough to disdain the

dealers. Nor was he any longer wealthy enough to choose his own
models. He gave up painting race horses and turned to his own
neighborhood for models who would pose for very little or nothing.
It is to this circumstance that we owe his laundresses and his working
girls taking a tub in a small room.

After the debacle of 1 870 the French army needed to be reminded of

worthier traditions. That apparently was the reason why ex-Colonel
Meissonier painted the huge canvas depicting Napoleon I coolly
surveying the Battle of Friedland as the breast-plated cavalry, or
cuirassiers, went charging into action. Ex-Captain Manet visited the

exhibition and a little crowd gathered as he stood before the painting.

"It's good! " said Manet. "It's really good! All steel except the breast-
plates. "
(Tout est en acier saufles cuirasses.) The crack went the rounds
of the salons, for Manet was having the success he had always longed
for. He was finally famous and popular.
Shortly after the end of the war Manet and his wife had toured
Holland and on his return he had painted a picture which was not
only accepted by the Salon of 1873, but was given the best place on
the line. It was a portrait of the engraver. Bellot, an habitue of the
Cafe Guerbois. who is shown with jolly rubicund face and long pipe
Edouard Manet: Le Bon Bod. 1873
sitting at a cafe table beside a glass of beer. Le Bon Bock seemed to strike
a chord in the public heart. Copies of it would soon decorate the beer
Exhibited at the 187 3 Salon, this picture represents the engraver E. Bellot,
halls of France; it would be the subject of a popular revue; Bellot a habitue of the Cafe Guerbois. Founder and president of an association
himself would enjoy a vicarious fame. But there were still people who known as Le Bon Bock, he launched, in February 188^. an illustrated weekly
called L'Echo des Brasseries francaises; on the masthead of the paper Manet's
begrudged Manet his success; "Manet has put water in his bock,
picture was reproduced.
said Critic Albert Wolff. "Not water," said Painter Alfred Stevens,
"that's pure Haarlem beer. " He meant that it had been painted in the

manner of Frans Hals.

Manet's success merely underlined the failure of the other young

painters to obtain notice of their work. And "young "
was a relative
term: Pissarro was 43, Degas almost 40, Monet, Renoir and Sisley,
approaching 35. The "painters of the new painting," as Duranty
called them, would soon be middle-aged. Monet proposed that they

hold a joint independent exhibition at their own expense. He had

made the suggestion before and it had been rejected because the

group had not wanted to appear to be running wild; the buyers they
wanted were, of course, moneyed and, by definition, respectable.

This time, however, Monet's suggestion found support from Pissarro

and Degas. Citing his experience with a similar venture twelve years
earlier Pissarro proposed that they form themselves into a cooperative
association such as —and he quoted chapter and paragraph —the
Bakers' Union of Pontoise. His socialistic outlook demanded an
orderly approach to the problem; but Renoir would have none of it.

Nor would Renoir stand for a meaningful, i.e. pretentious, name for
the organization. Thus they called themselves the Socie'te anonyme

103
 "
;

des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. — The Limited Company of

Painters. Sculptors and Engravers. The charter, dated December 27,
5?!£flnU
Le Gaulois
',<

1873. names the following foundation members: Monet. Renoir,

Sisley, Degas. Berthe Morisot. Pissarro.
Twenty-one painters have conceived the idea of forming a company for Pissarro made a strong case for the admission of Guillaumin and
the purpose of organizing free exhibitions, with neither jury nor honorary
Cezanne. The prosaic (today we might say the proletarian) nature of
rewards, where each member can show and sell his works. A committee has
been formed which has at once appealed to painters, sculptors, engravers and Guillaumin's pictures was against him, but it was agreed that he
lithographers, and already the adherents are forty in number. The money should be admitted. None questioned the worth of Cezanne, but his
question has been solved with the help of monthly contributions, and the
strange provocative paintings were certain to be labelled revolutionary.
Company was able yesterday to open its first exhibition in Nadar's former
premises in the Boulevard des Capucines. which are admirably suited to a Degas had his private reasons for seeking a wider and more profitable
show of this kind
Article on the exhibition market for his work and he did not want to be hindered by any
in Le Gaulois. April 18. 1874
" agreeing to Pissarro's nominees, Cezanne and
"revolutionary fuss. In

Guillaumin and one Beliard, Degas proposed his aristocratic friend the

Viscount Lepic and his young friend Rouart. Nor did he stop there, but

PREMIERE

EXPOSITION
JS, %mlnari i*, Ctpamm, JS

CATALOGUE S,

»P
::•

Catalogue of the first ....

impressionist exhibition

I/OPINION NATIONALE
Claude Monet: Impression, Sunrise. 1872.
If you like, we shall speak today of the first exhibition Although it is a
small show as far as the number of canvases goes, it is intended as a protest
and this personal character gives it a very special flavor for these artists
went on enlisting orthodox artists, such as de Nittis, Legros. Bracque-
profess to have no further recourse to the official exhibition and to forestall mond, while his colleagues in the group brought in Boudin, jongkind
he decisions of the jury, decisions which are admittedly taken tor the benefit
i

and yet others for a total of thirty exhibitors.

oi the majority,

whom The problem of a location was settled when Nadar, the photo-
The leaders are three artists of I have occasionally spoken and who
at least have the undeniable merit of pursuing their aims single-mindedly. This grapher, gave them the use of his spacious duplex on the corner of the
very single mindedness imparts to all three oi them a common aspect whose Boulevard des Capucines and the rue Daunou. As a last effort at
initial result is to bring out the procedural side ol their painting. At first sight
camouflage. Degas proposed that they call themselves " the Capucines,
there does not seem to be much difference between M Monet's pictures and
those of M Sislcv. orbetween the latter s manner and that ol M Pissarro i.e. the Nasturtiums but the others
: would have none of it. The catalogue
I ooking a little more closely, you soon learn that M Monet is the most skillful was prepared by Renoir's brother, Edmond, who complained to Monet
and mosi daring. M. Sisley the most harmonious and most timorous \1

who most and most

about the monotony of his titles, in which Monet seemed to take little
PiSSarrO, in fact is the inventor ol this painting, the real

naive But we must not linger over these nuances. What is certain is that the interest. When Edmond asked him for a title to a misty sunrise at Le
vision ol things affected by these three landscapes in no way resembles that
Havre, Monet said, "
Why don't you just call it ' Impression ?
'

" Edmond
ol any previous masters , that it has its plausible sides and asserts itself with a
did just that.
com iction which makes 1 1 impossible to dismiss n
II one had to define t Ins vision ol things, one might say that il is above all The show opened, April 15. 1874. and drew 175 visitors the first day
decorative Its sole aim is to record an impression, leaving the quest of expression (entrance one franc, catalogue
: : fifty centimes) and thereafter averaged
to those concerned with line Complete works oi art are a combination ol

both, and this point in itsell is enough to put ilns interesting but narrowly
a daily attendance of about 1 30 to its month later. The artists
close a

conceived venture in its proper place friends wrote some wise and intelligent comment in obscure journals
Armand Silvestre, review ol the exhibition in I 'Opinion nationals April 22, 1874 the pompous critics either did not come or peppered their reviews with

104
 "

"
phrases such as this laughable collection of absurdities, " or "
the most 1874: First Group Exhibition
absurd daubs, " or '*
Messieurs Monet, Pissarro and Mile Morisot appear
to have declared war on beauty. " Berthe's mother asked Guichard, her
old teacher, to give her a private report. "
One certainly finds here and
there some excellent fragments, " wrote Guichard, "but they all have
"
more or less cross-eyed minds.
The exhibition was a natural for the funny magazines. Charivari
sent along Louis Leroy who spoofed the show in a manner which only
now seems irreverent. His piece pretends to report the reactions of an
Academy medallist on viewing the various exhibits. Before Monet's

Impression. Sunrise, the Medallist says: "Impression — I was certain

of it. I was just telling myself that, since was impressed, there had to be1
In all fairness, it is important to make a dis-

tinction in approaching the exhibition in the

some impression in it . . . and what freedom, what ease of workman-
Boulevard des Capucines: while there is much
ship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that
that is deserving of the heartiest encouragement,
seascape. there is much too that should.be strenuously
Charivari's light-hearted kidding was evidently seen by Jules contested. The first is entitled to all our praise,
the second must be rejected out of hand; the
Castagnary, one of the old Cafe Guerbois set, who put the record
latter contemptible, the former worthy of every
straight a few days later in Le Siecle : "... The common concept ... is
interest.
the determination not to search for a smooth sensation . . . Once the This is not the first time that artists have
impression is captured, they declare their role terminated ... If one banded together in an association in order to
wants to characterize them with a single word that explains their free themselves from administrative tutelage.

efforts, one would have to create the new term of Impressionism. They Some fifteen years ago an initial venture was
made: two hundred artists joined together in the
are impressionists in the sense that they render not a landscape, but
Boulevard des Italiens to exhibit their works and
the sensation produced by a landscape ..." sell them directly to art lovers. Some interesting
It was clever of Castagnary to turn a joking journalistic gag-line exhibitions were held and the public had already

into a meaningful appellation. The trouble is that posterity tends to found its way to the exhibition of the Socie'te

endow the child with the attributes of the name. Nationale des Beaux Arts when the hostility of
those in charge of the fine arts led to the break-
Elie Faure found it appropriate: "For the first and only time in
ing up of this association.
the history of painting the name given to the movement is well Today the new association of artists will only
applied, at least, if one limits it to the works of Monet and Sisley. to meet with sympathy on behalf of the fine arts

the larger part of Pissarro's work and to the first efforts of Cezanne administration, which has officially stated that
from next year on it will no longer take charge
and Renoir. It is the flashing visual sensation of the Instant, which a
of the art exhibitions.
long and patient analysis of the quality of light and the element of
I realize that many people look with terror
color in their infinite changing complexity permitted three or four to the coming of a time when artists, left to
men to seize. " R. H. Wilenski also accepts Charivari's coinage: "The themselves, will have to attend to the organiza-

impressionist painter is always concerned to persuade us that his tion of their annual exhibition, draw up their
own regulations, select their jury, accept or refuse
subject is his visual impression of a scene accidentally encountered
the works to be exhibited, award the prizes or at
and that he has made it a point of honor to accept everything as it
least forward to the administration the list of
chanced to appear at the particular moment when he happened to be artists recognized as the most deserving.
there... " Kenneth Clark thought that they might justly have been The joint-stock company of artist-painters has

called "sensationalist, " and spoke of their "rainbow "

palette. settled these difficult questions in the simplest
way; it has done away with the jury, done away
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a quasi-scientific theory
with prizes. Will this utter absence of regula-
should have emerged concerning impressionist "technique. " This
tions be a good thing? Only the future will give
held that the painters had laid on their brilliant colors in a manner us the answer to this question.

designed to produce a prismatic effect in reverse, namely, that

adjacent colors on the canvas would, at a certain distance, merge in
the observer's eye to produce a different and more luminous tone.

The theory of "retinal fusion, "

as it was called, was exploded some
twenty-five years ago by Professor J.
Carson Webster of Northwestern
University. Professor Webster borrowed a number of paintings by
Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Seurat from the Art Institute of Chicago

105
 —

and subjected them to a series of exhaustive tests w hii I

that
their colors did not merge in the eye oi the observer Prof
Webster's conclusion was that the painters had intended that their
brilliant colors should be seen as such, and close at hand, and n
distant diffusion.

If theword "impressionism " has any precise meaning, applii it

as Faure has said, to only two or three of the painters and then only
to their work at certain periods. Custom alone justifies its use in
regard to the founders of the movement.

When the management committee of the Limited Company of

Painters etc. presented its balance sheet there was a credit of less than
a thousand francs. Berthe Morisot, Degas and Boudin had sold
nothing; the total sales of Sisley. Renoir and some others amounted
to only 3,600 francs.

France was in the depths of an economic depression. The huge

indemnity imposed by the Prussians was being met by foreign loans
and much of the material damage sustained during the siege and
insurrection was being rapidly repaired. But the economy had been
dangerously hurt by the previous two decades of imperial extra-
vagance, peculation and uncontrolled commercial exploitation.
MacMahon, the "hero" of Sedan, had been elected president of the
Republic (France's Third), but the monarchists, many and powerful,
were maneuvering for an Orleanist restoration. Meanwhile there was
inflation, unemployment, and bankruptcy for many small traders,
with, this being France, always the fear of another revolution. The
Commune had frightened all classes of people and the Impressionists
had become identified — no one knew how. unless it was their beards

with the Commune.

This possibly was the reason for the unprecedented scenes of

protest and insult which attended the auction of seventy-three paint-

ings, the residue of the recent exhibition, at the Hotel Drouot, March,
1875. According to Durand-Ruel, who was present in the capacity of
expert, there were howls of scorn and derision as the canvases were
held up and paraded round the floor by the auctioneer's clerk, about
twenty each by Renoir, Monet and Sisley. and a dozen by Berthe
Morisot. When the bidding failed to get beyond the level of 150
francs the artists bought their paintings back. Unable to see his La
Source go for 110 francs, Renoir withheld it from sale. Monet's
epochal Impression went for something less. Berthe Morisot got the
best prices, up to 480 francs for one picture.

But the Impressionists had not been altogether without defenders.

Gustave Caillebotte. Monet's boating friend, helped push up the
bidding and got one or two canvases for himself. And another buyer,
completely unknown to the artists (he had not even visited their

exhibition). Victor Chocquet by name, bought one of Monet's paint-

ings of Argenteuil, and wrote Renoir that very evening, asking him
if he would do a portrait of Madame Chocquet.

Camille Pissarro: Entrance to the Village of Voisins. 1872.

107
 "

Durand-Ruel was already forty years of age when he began

PAUL
dealing with the Impressionists was relationship was ; it a that to
last a further fifty years. He was the son of an art dealer who. at the

time of Louis Philippe's enthronement, had introduced the young

painters Delacroix, Decamps and Corot —the "great school of 1 830. " as

it was called. Born the following year, Paul had been brought up in the

hushed atmosphere of the Restoration; an ardent Catholic, he had

first wanted to be a soldier, then a missionary priest. Succeeding to

his father's business, shortly after the Bonapartist coup. Paul had
championed the works of Delacroix and Corot against those of
Winterhalter. the saccharine German who was the Emperor's favorite.
Ignoring official Bonapartist art, Durand-Ruel had taken up the
Charles-Francois
Barbizon painters, becoming exclusive agent for several of them and
Daubigny:
Frontispiece for almost bankrupting himself by buying the total production of Theo-
the Dumnd'-Rufl dore Rousseau.
catalogue, 1845.
According to Renoir, the streak of nonconformity in Durand-Ruel
had its roots in the family's loyalty to the Bourbon monarchy. Long
afterwards Renoir said "
We need a reactionary to defend our painting
While
:

the Impressionists continued, in

which the Salon crowd said was revolutionary. At any rate Durand-
the face of the blindest and most Ruel was the one person who didn't run the risk of being shot as
commercial resistance, to pursue their a Communard.
conquest of light, the movements Renoir was not speaking lightly. After the War of 1870 and the
Commune of Paris, it was generally expected that France would
preceding or paralleling their own were
adopt a constitutional monarchy on the British pattern. In 1873,
continuing, or hanging on beside them when Napoleon III, following an operation for stone, died in England,
or existing within themselves, without a concerted effort was made by the French monarchists to put the

anyone's perceiving the fact. This was legitimist Count of Chambord on the throne of France. When the
aging Thiers was forced to resign that year the monarchists maneu-
the inevitable consequence of the
vered successfully to install Marshal MacMahon as stand-in president,
social disasso elation which was pending the time it would take to adopt a monarchial constitution.
advancing with them. Between the Their plans were set back, however, by Chambord's obstinate refusal

solid construction who to accept the tricolor as the national flag, in place of the traditional
of the artists
white flag of the kings of France. Seizing upon this quirk as an
came forth from the Revolution and
indication of Chambord's intention of exercising full monarchial
its romantic expression and the powers, the republicans were able to press through the National
fragmentation of the researches
infinite Assembly three vital constitutional laws which effectively reduced

which were now being attempted, the role of the chief executive to that of a conciliator. Supposedly
"pragmatic and temporary," these laws, despite ruthless attack by
there was the same distance which
the monarchist parties, remained on the statutes, progressively
separates the moral idea of the anchoring power in the bicameral National Assembly, leaving the
bourgeois conquest from the needs way open for the later adoption of universal suffrage and other

which it had itself created. Corot. democratic procedures. The Impressionist struggle for public recogni-
tion exactly paralleled this political development, an integral, if
Daumier, Millet, Courbet and
perhaps unconscious, part of the republican ethos.
Puvis de Chavannes though living As Durand-Ruel tells it, his first Impressionist tie-up was with
seemed to have been dead for years. Monet, "a solid and durable man who, it seemed to me. would paint

All that was new, all that was tirelessly for more years than I had given myself to live. " (This was
true: Monet, still painting, would outlive Durand-Ruel by four
unexpected or personal, they called
years.) Two years later Durand-Ruel had become Renoir's dealer and
Impressionism, to express their hate had then "entered into relations" with Pissarro. Degas and Sisley.

or love for it. eliefaure "Ah. a villainous moment for painting. " he said later. "If I had not
 " —

been, in a word, nourished in the trade, I would not have survived

the battle against public taste that 1 had entered into. They looked . .

upon me as a madman, hallucinated! They had given me credit tor

standing up for the beautiful Delacroix's and Corots (against Winter- my father had had some difficuli
"Just as
halter), but to hear me now praising the Monets and Renoirs. that of 1830, thai of Delacroix, Decamps and orol
< so l
too ran
in trying to sell the pictures of Monet and Ri
showed a complete lack of common sense fully deserving of public
Interview with Dui
insult! Yes. in 1875. precisely, when 1 organized at the Hotel Drouot in ! CI l
;: '
[OVI

the first sale of paintings by Monet and Renoir, which I had taken
care to present in superb frames. There, during the sale —that was a

beautiful row. as one says now — ah. how we were sneered at, and
principally Monet and Renoir The public shouted and
! called us shame-
less idiots. Some paintings were sold for fifty francs because of the
frames. I withdrew a great many myself. Afterwards. I was all but
carried off to the insane asylum at Charenton. Happily 1 was on
good terms with my family.
He had come back to France after the War full of optimism.
Stopping by the studio of the popular Alfred Stevens he had seen a
couple of paintings which Manet had left there in the hope of
interesting one of Stevens' buyers. Durand-Ruel had bought them on
the spot and next morning he had gone to Manet's studio where he
had bought his entire stock of paintings —twenty-three canvases
for the sum total of 35,000 francs. Manet had hastily rounded up
paintings which he had loaned to friends; Durand-Ruel bought these
also. (Next day, at the Cafe Guerbois. Manet had sat down at his

table, saying loudly: "Who is the painter who cannot sell fifty

thousand francs worth of pictures in a year? " "It's you! " cried his

friends. "Not true! "

exclaimed Manet triumphantly. That same week
he had taken a large studio in the rue de Saint-Petersbourg.)
Full of confidence in the future, Durand-Ruel had included
fourteen Impressionist paintings (by Degas, Monet, Sisley and Pissarro)
in a lushly illustrated catalogue advertising his stock of three hundred
paintings, which included the Manets. Armand Silvestre, who wrote
an introduction to the catalogue, said of the Impressionists: "What
should hasten the success of these late-comers is the fact that their

pictures are painted in a singularly gay scale. " Of the Manets, he

said: "The moment has come for the public to be convinced,
enthusiastic, or revolted, but not astounded." The catalogue also
listed seven canvases by Courbet. including some he had painted
while in prison. In view of the shattering prejudice against the anti-
Bonapartist Courbet, extending in part to the Impressionists, one can Augu Mademoiselle |earme Durand-Ruel. 1876

only assume that Durand-Ruel felt that France was on the eve of a

royalist renaissance in which a truly refined and detached, i.e.

aristocratic, taste would prevail, or else that he was a very brave

man.
Brave is the only word for the exhibition of modern French
painting which he now held in London: thirteen canvases by Manet.
nine by Pissarro, six by Sisley, four by Monet, three by Degas and
one Renoir (an early Pont des Arts). It must have been a rare and
wonderful exhibition, a beacon shining through the Victorian smog;
but it went unnoticed. Though repeated in succeeding years, the
upper classes were not yet buying Impressionists.

109
 "

- VM The last of the "pragmatic and temporary" constitutional laws

LES iM.i.iii uma had been adopted in July 1875, after a long and difficult passage

GONTEMPORAINS JOURNAL HEBOOMADAIRE

through the
the republicans
legislature.

entered
The struggle between
a new phase,
the monarchists

distinguished by ruthless
and

M .MM-1...I,. n M i.iJ,"F* M.^vrvifiriv l' »ius - I * -s 6'"

EDOUARO MANET political in-fighting.

The Impressionists chose this moment. April 1876, to hold their

second group exhibition. The front pages of the rightist newspapers
had been blazoning republican animus for months past and no doubt
the back-of-the-book editors were delighted to have an opportunity
of affirming their solidarity in the cultural columns. What, they
evidently asked themselves, could be more characteristic of the
"anarchy" and "discord" that was ruining the country than these
"impressionists " who ignored the rules of taste and decorum? And
(it might easily have been said) had not one of their number been
hailed as a comrade by that reddest of all Communards, Raoul
Rigault? Whether the critics thought through their reaction to the
Impressionist exhibition hardly matters: they, in fact, reacted with
all the exacerbation of men whose social position is -threatened, and
in a measure out of all proportion to the numbers and influence of
the Impressionists.

Edmond Duranty published La Nouvelk Pein-

ture on the occasion of the second group exhib-
ition in 1876. It was the first book dealing with

the new movement A novelist and short story NOl'VELLE I'KIMLIHK

Manet, King r>/ the Impressionists. Caricaturt by Alfred Ic Pan writer, previously associated with Courbet,
Duranty had launched a periodical called Le
S OH CIOUPE HUSKS
Re'alisme in 1856. A friend of the Impressionists,
above all of Degas, he took an active part in the

Cafe Guerbois gatherings. In his book he criti-

cized official painting with irony and insight and

Manet Featured on the / ronl Page oj "L'Eclipse ", Al.iv 14, 1876
showed that the "new painting" was firmly
nuiied in the great tradition.

Title Page of "La Nouvelk Pemture

bv Ldmond Duranty

Durand-Ruel's resources had been all but exhausted by his

investment in the Impressionists, but. probably because he had so
many of their paintings already framed, he allowed them to use his
galleries. 1 1 rue Le Peletier, for their second exhibition. With Cezanne
and Guillaumin abstaining (they were not handled by Durand-Ruel).
there were 24 works by Degas, including Cotton Office in New Orleans

and Absinthe; 18 by Monet, including Beach at Sainte-Adresse and

Snow Effects at Epernay; 17 by Berthe Morisot, including The Ball,

Awakening, The Toilette: 15 by Renoir, including Nude in the Sun and

his portrait of Bazille; 12 by Pissarro, mostly Pontoise landscapes; 9

by Sisley. mostly views of Argenteuil and Louveciennes. Among the

fifteen other exhibitors was Monet's boating friend, Gustave Caille-

botte. who showed several competent paintings.

"Here is a new disaster..." wrote Albert Wolff in Le Figaro.

"Five or six lunatics, one of them a woman, a group of unfortunate
creatures seized with the mania of ambition, have met ... to exhibit

their works. Some people burst out laughing in front of these

110
 " —

things —my heart is crushed by them. These so-called artists describe

themselves as the intransigents, the impressionists; they take canvas,

colors and brushes, carelessly throw on some tones and sign the

thing. This is the way madmen at Ville-Evrard [an asylum for the

insane] bring in stones from the road and think they have found
diamonds. A frightful spectacle of human vanity working itself up to
the point of dementia. Try to make M. Pissarro understand that the
trees are not violet, that the sky is not the color of fresh butter, that
in no country does one see such things as he paints and that no
intelligence can accept such lunacies! As well spend time making a
madman, who believes that he is the Pope, understand that he is

living in Batignolles and not the Vatican. Try to make M. Degas see

reason: tell him that in art there are some qualities having a name: LE RAPPEL
drawing, color, execution, control, and he will laugh in your face
and treat you as a reactionary. Try to explain to M. Renoir that the
What is an impressionist painter? No very satisfactory defini-
tion has been given, but it seems to us that the artists joined
torso of a woman is not a mass of decomposing flesh with green and together or brought together under this designation are pursuing,
violet patches denoting the state of complete putrefaction in the by various modes of execution, a similar aim: to render with utter
sincerity, without arrangement or attenuation, by broad and simple
cadaver! There is also a woman in the group, as in all famous bands;
procedures, the impression aroused in them by aspects of reality.
she is called Berthe Morisot and is curious to observe. With her.
Art for them is not a painstaking and fastidious imitation of
feminine grace manages to maintain itself in the midst of the ravings what used to be known as "la belle nature. " They are not concerned
with reproducing people and things more or less slavishly, nor with
of a frenzied mind ..."
laboriously reconstructing, minute detail by minute detail, an all
Berthe Morisot had difficulty restraining her husband. Eugene inclusive view. They do not imitate, they translate, they interpret,
Manet, from challenging Wolff to a duel. they apply themselves to bringing out the resultant of the multiple
and colors instantly perceived by the eye when looks
A few days later Le Figaro added injury to insult: "It seems that lines it at

something
art doesn't always soothe the mind. Yesterday the policeman guard- They are synthesists, not analysts, and on that point we think
ing the gallery was obliged to expel an over-nervous gentleman who, they are right; for while analysis is the scientific method par
in front of the paintings, the color of which offended him, was seized excellence, synthesis is the true procedure of art. They have no
" other laws but the necessary relations of things: like Diderot, they
by an epileptic fit. It was quite a job to bring him back to his senses.
think that the idea of the beautiful is the perception of these
And again, a few days later: "Yesterday, coming out of the exhibi- relations. And since there are probably no two men on earth who

tion, a poor fellow was arrested for biting people. perceive exactly the same relations in the same object, they see no
need to modify their direct personal sensation in accordance with
An anonymous writer in La France said: "The impressionists this or that convention.
have assumed the right to follow no rules whatsoever... without In principle, in theory, we therefore feel able to give them our
whole-hearted approval.
taking into account common sense and truth . . . Their models look as
In practice, it is something else again. One does not always do
if they had been taken out of the Morgue. . . It is unhealthy ..." In
what one wants to do, as i't ought to be done: one does not always
the Constitutiornie! Louis Enault posed the question about Monet: "I hit the target one sees so clearly.

Emile Blemont, The Impressionists, in Le Rappel. April 9, 1876

don't know where he has seen these landscapes he reproduces, but I

"
doubt if he ever found their model in nature. In Le Soir. Bertall, the

cartoonist, wrote: "At the rue Le Peletier there is a branch of the

house of Doctor Blanche [a well known alienist]. They mostly admit
painters here. Their madness is harmless. It consists of copying their

canvases in the most incoherent colors. A series of which paintings

they have framed magnificently and at great cost, for all the patients LE MOMTLTR L'XlVtUSEL
limriuil ofpeiel de I'Empire Francai
of this madhouse are affluent, housing their works in well-lighted

and conveniently disposed rooms . . . These people have a pleasant Let us take this opportunity to tell the "impressionists " that in

aspect, they are dressed with care and sometimes elegantly. They Le Rappel they have found an accommodating judge. The intransi-

gents of art joining hands with the intransigents of politics

are gentle and polite, they are called the Impressionists." In Le Soleil,
nothing in that but what is quite natural.
Emile Porcheron asked: "What is an impressionist-' The matter is
From Le Monitem univcrsel Vpril 11, 1876
delicate and requires some reflection. As far as we are concerned an
impressionist is a man who, without knowing why. feels the need to
devote himself to the cult of the palette and who, having neither
talent nor the necessary study to obtain a serious result, contents

111
 "

himsell with making loud publicity in favor of his school, and giving
yvix : IB Mntlmra. 28 Avril 1877. the public some paintings the value of which is no more than the
frame which surrounds them.
In Le Pays, Georges Maillard pretended to strike a balance:
L'llWPRESSIONNISTE "Basically they are. I believe, discontented people, radicals of paint-
/$^y& JOURNAL DART
ing who, not being able to find a place in the ranks ol the regular
ssant touts les .Teudls
painters, have constituted a society, have flown some sort ol revolu-
doilol-trallon cl Itcdnctlon
tionary flag, and have organized an exhibition. . . For the most part
their canvases would make a cab-horse rear . . . There is here a
brutality of brushwork, a madness of execution and an insanity of
conception which is absolutely revolting: it would make one fall into
"
despair if one were not splitting one's sides laughing.

The boulevards were not all that amused, or interested. Four

issues of The Impressionist, a slender sheet in which Georges Riviere
defended the impressionist approach to painting, went almost entirely
unsold. Dumped at the shop of a former Durand-Ruel employee who
had opened a small importing business, the unsold copies were
finally used to reinforce leaking bags of plaster.
Nor was Manet immune from critical malice at this controversial
moment. His picture of a man and a woman in a boat, painted at
Argenteuil where he had watched Monet at work, exhibited at the
75 Salon, had been attacked for its "scandalous colors. " At the 76
Salon his two pictures were thrown out, Le Bien Public reporting a
member of the Jury saying, "Enough of this. We have given Manet
ten years to turn over a new leaf. He has not done so, on the
contrary he grows worse. Let's reject him. " Manet invited the public
to come and see the rejected pictures at his studio, causing Le
Francais' critic, Bernadille, to ask: "Why didn't he favor the exhibi-
I ronl Page .1/ the An lournal "I lmpressionnistt "
0/ April _><S, 1877.
tion of his brothers and friends, the Impressionists, with his two
paintings? Why does he act the lone wolf? This is ingratitude. With
what luster wouldn't the presence of Manet have endowed that
coterie of artistic rogues ..."

(n [lie first issue 0) L'lmpressionniste f April '>. 1877), an art magazine The critics probably realized that the painters were immune to
published every Thursday, Georges Riviere repliedtothe insulting article Figaro
in I e their shafts. The references to the expensive frames, the well-lighted

To the Editor ol I 1 I igaro

gallery, coupled with the running theme of lunacy, suggested the
When .1 few vcars ago [in 1874] .1 group ol .hum-- sharing the same views target they were aiming at. Durand-Ruel, a businessman, had much
had the idea ol holding an exhibition outside the official Salon, common
it is
to lose from being publicly designated a candidate for Doctor
knowledge thai the newspapers heaped msulis on these revolutionaries who
were seeking in art something that no one had suspected. Ai that time the
Blanche's lunatic asylum, a man hallucinated by bad art, a class

newspapers had the scoffers on their side, this painting was quite different renegade. When the Impressionists, despite all criticism, decided to
from the painting one saw every day and the public ilsell he taken by
let in
hold their third exhibition the following year, Durand-Ruel's fine
the ill natured gibes directed .11 young men who were said to he acting like
fools
rooms were not available.

The second exhibition [in 1X76] was greeted by the same exclamations
from the press M Wollf who pretends 1.. he .1 connoisseur could not find
The durability of the amended constitution was tested towards
abuse enough m his fertile brain lor these .misis courageously struggling
against hard kick The public however, seeing how insistent these painters
the end of 1876 with President MacMahon's choice of Jules Simon as

were in the pursuit ol their experiments, looked at their works more closely, Premier. France waited tensely to see how far Simon, who had a
and the impressionists emerged stronger from this second supported by
trial
reputation for compromise, would yield to MacMahon's intention of
a large number ol remarkable nun
In 1877 the exhibition is having an immense success, on Wednesday
standing down in favor of the Count of Chambord. Meanwhile the
everybody responded eagerly to the invitation of the exhibitors Many Impressionists prepared for their third exhibition, the resourceful
people have taken to their work and so on Thursday morning it was very
Caillebotte finding a large empty apartment in the same street as
sad indeed to read the ridiculous and odious criticisms levelled at the
impressionists Except lor Le Rappcl, I'homme libre and a lew others, the
Durand-Ruel's gallery, for which he advanced a month's rent out of
1

were unanimous in their recriminations his own pocket. This time they adopted their given name: they called

112
 " . .

it the Impressionist Exposition. Degas and Renoir protested ("Impres- LA REPUBLIQUE

sionism —a word I loathe, " Renoir always said), but were overruled;
FRANCA ISK
Degas, however, succeeded in having the group agree not to attempt
to exhibit at the Salon; and if none protested against Cezanne Exhibition ol the Impressionists (signed Ph B i
( Phi-

continuing his old feud (he still campaigned for a regular Salon des lippe Burty), in La Re'publiqui franci i

Refuses) it was because his case was hopeless. There were eighteen
Though generally greeted b jeei and angei hi
exhibitors with a total of 230 works on view, among them Renoir's exhibition nevertheless continues to attract thi <

Swing and his Moulin de la Galette, Cezanne's Bathers and Impression The first impression nearly always produces a mov<
"
ment ol keen surprise The word "
impressionists
after Nature. Monet's White Turkeys and Gare Saint-Lazare, pictures of
. .

fails to characterize them. They are in particular im-

dancers, cafe scenes and women making their toilette by Degas. pressionable people. Without going into a discussion ol

Sisley's Flood at Marly, and other landscapes by Pissarro, Guillaumin method which would certainly weary out readers, we
may say that these artists seek on the whole Co record
and Caillebotte.
the general aspect of things and people, their character
The exhibition opened its doors at the beginning of May. On May disengaged from conventional aspects; and thai in

16. 1877. the Republic had its greatest crisis since the War. Mac- actual practice they aim at bright colors and proclaim
the uselessness of black and opaque tones. Is this
Mahon dismissed the wavering Simon and installed the royalist de
something to laugh at or be'indignant about? Certainly
Broglie as Premier with a cabinet of rightist businessmen, pending not. It is only a peculiar development of what Corot had
general elections later that year. The test of the liberal constitution sought after in abandoning outlines, in constantly
breaking up shadows by more or less emphatic shades
had come and the rightists had prepared for it by a coalition of
of gray.
Legitimist and Bonapartist factions in a Party of Order, whose These works are too thoroughly marked by a set

principal campaign cry was was in danger of falling

that the country purpose for them yet to be accepted by the public for a

long time to come. Yet they have their buyers, and

into the hands of the "Reds." (The contemporary phrase was Le
these are not just anybody. As pictures they offend . .

spectre rouge.)
When in place and as decorations, they have a bright-
Political tension took the sting out of the critics' writings and ness and a frankness of effect which are undeniable.
They will not for a long time yet force the door ol the
many were too busy politicking to comment at all. Theodore Duret
official exhibitions. They will, however, make their way
says that the exhibition "gave rise to outbursts of laughter, contempt, into them as if by infiltration . .

indignation and disgust." Roger Ballu, a Beaux Arts critic, wrote: The genuine impressionist Iandscapists are Messrs.
Claude Monet. Cezanne. Pissarro and Cisley [sic]. Their
"Monet and Cezanne. . . It is necessary to have seen them to imagine
landscapes, which cannot be confused when looked at
what they are... When children amuse themselves with a box of attentively, have for us one unforgivable defect: they
colors and a piece of paper, they do better. reduce the tree to the state ol a bodiless wraith, they
take these trunks, these branches which have a beauty
Predictably sales were few, and the artists decided to hold a
of their own just as the human body and limbs do, and
public sale of their paintings at the Hotel Drouot immediately after give them the unjustifiable stiffness of a telegraph pole
the close of the exhibition. Each picture as it was brought forward by or formless twigs
M. de Gas also paints tor the fastidious, and of course
the auctioneer's helper, was received with groans and passed around,
with more accent and vehement e He has chosen [in
from hand to hand, turned upside down. (This joke, says Duret, had his pastels] some odd corners of Parisian life: the

emanated from Le Charivari which maintained that in the impres- boulevard cafe's, the cafe-concerts on the Champs-
Elysees. the wings and ballet rehearsal rooms at the
sionist landscapes the line of the horizon was indistinguishable,
Opera. He enters them as a man endowed with feeling,
earth, water and sky being equally amorphous, etc. The joke had wit and mocking observation, as a prompt and skillful

found its way into the music halls where an impressionist dauber draftsman. His work is light ami subtle, of salient

originality. The present Salons are too starched and

was represented as being incapable of finding out which was the top
formal to accept his sensitive studies, which correspond
and which the bottom of a canvas he had just smudged with paint.) in literature to neat and pointed short stories.

At one point, during the sale, the painters were all but physically M. Renoir is very impressionistic, but to characterize
him better one would have to call him "a romantic
attacked by groups of people who addressed them as Communards,
impressionist. "
Of an extrasensitive temperament he
Gambettists, Democrats, etc. When one among the mob called Berthe always shrinks from overstating things. With a few
Morisot a gourgandine (harlot), Pissarro promptly punched the man in added touches to emphasize what is stable in a Ball a\

Montmartre [i.e. the Moulin ,1c la Galette], the chairs,

the face. There does not seem to have been any doubt that the
benches, tables, he would give their true action to
painters were the object of an organized political attack. dancing or talking groups, their quivering spots io the
The sale at the Hotel Drouot realized 7,610 francs for a total of rays of sunlight, and on the whole he would set a stamp
of reality which as it is it fails to achu \ e
45 canvases, a considerable number being withdrawn by the painters.
At Durand-Ruel's gallery there was a fifty-years retrospective. Corot.
Delacroix, Rousseau, etc. Durand-Ruel was on the verge of bank-
ruptcy.

113
 c-<-

Paul Cezanne: The House of the Hanged Man.

187?.

Camille Pissarro. Portrait of Paul Cezanne,

about 1874. Pencil

Cezanne Sitting "I Pissarro 's Garden at

Pontoisf in 1877, with Pissarro Standing

on the Rig/it. Photograph.

"We were always together, but what After the war. which he spent working quietly at L'Es- throws light not only on his personality but on the line of
taque on the Riviera, te/anne returned to the neighbor- research which he was following up. "1 begin to find
is certain is that each kept the one
"
hood ol Paris where lie rejoined Pissarro. who had just myself stronger than all those around me and you know
thing that counts, his sensation.
come hack from England With Hortense Fiquet and his that the good opinion I have of myself has been arrived at

I etter from Pissarro to Ins son 1 ucien

-.on I', ml. only a lew months old. Cezanne settled at with my eyes open. I always have to work hard, but not
Pontoise in 1872 near Ins friend, then in the lall ol that io achieve a slick finish, which attracts the admiration of
w.ii moved to Olivers sui Oise where he lived for the next fools And this finish that the vulgar appreciate so much is

two vc.irs There he began a series ol pictures the House only a matter of handiwork and makes any picture result-
oj the Hanged Man is one ol them which remain among ing from it unartistic and common. 1 try to complete what
the most famous ol his impressionist period I begin only for the pleasure of making it truer and more
"
rhe presence ol Pissarro .xi inspiring personality, solid accomplished.
in his affections large hearted and broad-minded, was a Pissarro. tor his part, admired Cezanne's work and
great comfort to Cezanne and a strong catalyst in the some of his own landscapes show the impact of their
evolution ol Ins an Beside Pissarro he felt the need to common preoccupations. His more earthy temperament.
discipline his restless, excitable temperament Discarding however, more attuned to the daily sights and sounds of
the overwrought colors that verged sometimes on a melo- nature, impelled him to study landscape as a means of
dramatic emotionalism, he turned now towards the ren- conveying, by rapid touches, the ever-changing pattern of
d< i ing ol the sensations aroused in him by nature and the light and shadow which, in his hands, becomes a hymn to
working out ol a corresponding pictorial form. lite. "You have a profound and intimate sense of nature,
I lis Inendship with Pissarro was solidly based on mutual and a power over the brush that makes a fine picture by

esteem In a letter to his mother written in 1874 he said you something absolutely sound and four-square. " Duret
Pissarro has been away from Paris tor about a month wrote to him in 187S. Into his art Pissarro projected a

and a hall, he is in Bntt.my . hut I know he has a good moral view of the world, even when the subject was no
opinion ol me who. " he characteristically added, "have a more than the play of light on a wall through the branches
very good opinion ol mvselt "
The rest ol this letter ol a tree.

IN
 Painting from Nature

Camilk Rissarro: Red Roofs. Village Scene. 1877.

I felt that my mind was being emancipated in the very days when my eyes were emancipated.
Camille Pissarro

"Meanwhile come and have a look in the garden of the people here.

You will see an attempt to create from scratch a wholly modern art.

wholly imbued with our surroundings, our feelings and the things

of our time." _, ...

Edmond „
J
. „ „ .
,„,.
Duranty. La Nouvelu Peinlure, 18/6
The Light of the Seasons

"Sisley was wholly wrapped up in his art, in the pride of overcoming

nature in that daily battle engaged in by the artist, and the hope that

he had recorded on his canvases something of the fleeting beauty of

"
eternal things.

Alfred Sisley: Approaches to a Sta-

tion in Winter. Pastel.

Alfred Sisley: Snow at Louveciennes.

1874.

116
 "

"M. Monet is the most skillful and most daring,

M. Sisley the most harmonious and most timo
Pissarro the most real and most naive, " wrote Armand
Silvestre in 1874, And indeed, even at the first gla

what is most striking in a picture by Sisley is the

harmonious, poetic effect conveyed by his delicate,
transparent nuances of gray, pink and light green.
Sisley. probably even more than his friends, endured
great hardships due to the incomprehension of the
public, but endured them with a noble stoicism that
compels admiration. His natural reserve, dignity and
sensitivity inform his approach to nature, and land,
water, reflections and sky, whether blue or overcast,
unfailingly enthrall his painter's eye. Like Monet, Pis-
sarro and Renoir, he liked snow effects, but "probably
none of them ever matched Sisley's rendering of snow
precisely because of the delicacy of the tonal passages,
to which his eye was incomparably sensitive. His Snow
at Louveciennes has pink tones suggestive of optimism,
of sympathy for this white cloak overlaying houses
"
and earth (Lionello Venturi).
" Sinister and beautiful under the clear sky this familiar landscape The terrible poetry
is . . .
of
winter is written in canvases in which Monet has recorded the frozen appearance of air and

water, the cold reverberations pulsing under the hardened surface of the river, the numbness

of vegetable life suspended in this boreal light, ghostly, frost-bitten trees, funereal poplars,
ravaged hills, between the dull sky and the water shining with a metallic light.

Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet

Alfred Sisley: Port-Marly. Weir

under Snow. 1876.

Claude Monet: The Church at

Vitheuil. Snow, about 1878.

117
 "

The Radiance of Spring

Camille Pissarro:
Garden with Trees in Blossom.
Spring, Pontoise, 1877.

"In front of his canvas, his palette in hand, his colors well

arranged to diffuse over his landscape the brightness of the sky,

Pissarro forgot everything except the spectacle which his eye had

chosen and which corresponded to his innermost feelings. He was

a countryman, enamored of the village, the gardens and fields next
to the rustic houses, the valley where the stream went by and the
river wound away, the road bordered by flowering hedges, the

orchard whose apple trees displayed the full-blown grace of pink

and white blossoms, the rich yield of red and yellow fruit.
Gustave Geffroy. Claude Monet

Louveciennes. Pontoise. Auvers-sur-Oise. these names bring to mind at

once the diaphanous light of the He-de-France, trees in bloom or under snow,
bright skies whether blue or gray, water and its reflections, all the seasons

and changing aspects of the countryside which we now see through the eyes
of the Impressionists.
While Monet and Sisley loved the variegated reflections of the sky on
water and fields or filtering through foliage. Pissarro often preferred village
themes. While taking care to embody trees and houses in an organic
Paul i czanne: composition, he succeeded, as in this canvas of Garden with Trees in Blossom.
Pissarro going out to Paint. in conveying the immediate, exuberant impact of spring by a profusion
about 187-4. Pencil. of manifold clustering touches of color laid in with amazing freedom.

118
 ! "

"These landscapes, seascapes, flower pieces and scenes of modern life bri

into the dimness of our homes a wealth of light and freshness. One cannc
say as much for many other works for which high prices have been paid, and
which, sallow and jaded, soulless and tame, bring the sensitive, sincere art
lover nothing but yawning boredom.
Philippe Burty. preface to the Hotel Drouot sale. I,S' S

William Bouguereau: Nymphs and Satyr, 187}.

Augusu Renoir: Path in the Woods. 1874.

William Bouguereau. one of the most suc-

cessful Salon painters under Napoleon III and
a contemporary —a very hostile contempo-
rary —of the Impressionists, saw nature still

peopled with nymphs. This was taken to be a

sign of prodigious culture, of far-ranging
imagination and technical mastery. Anybody,
it was assumed, could paint what he saw
around him every day. How ridiculous to go
out painting trees and sunspots when the
museums were full of the exploits of the gods
Thirty years later, thanks to the Impression-
ists, landscape was established as perhaps the
most admired and highly developed form of
painting.

119
The Summer Sun

"In the matter of coloring they have made a real that sunlight reflected by objects tends, by its very Augusu Renoir: The English Pear Tree, 1885.
discovery for which no precedent is to he found any- brightness, to reduce them to that light-unity which
where, neither in the Dutch masters, nor in the bright merges its seven prismatic rays into a single colorless
tones of fresco painting, nor in the light tonalities of flash, which is light itself. From intuition to intuition,

the eighteenth century. They have not only applied they have gradually been led to break down sunshine
themselves to that free and subtle interplay of colors into its rays and elements, and to recompose its unity
which results from the observation of the most delicate by the overall harmony of the iridescences which they
"
values in contrasting or interpenetrating tones. The spread over their canvases.
peculiar discover) ol these artists consists in having
recognized that tones are discolored by intense light. Edmond Duranty. La Nouvellc Peituure. 1876

120
Claude Monet: Haystacks, about 1890. Pencil

What incensed the public of that day was not so much the landscape

subjects chosen by the Impressionists as their way of painting- Their determi-

nation to catch the passing moment obliged them to work with a speed and
freedom that gave their pictures a sketchy, unfinished look; if the fleeting
impression was to be caught and conveyed, there could be no question of
careful finish.
All the impressionist painters tended, as time passed, to go beyond the
mere delineation of the motif towards a purely pictorial expression of it.

Witness the contrast between the Haystack painted by Pissarro in 1873 and
the series of Haystacks painted twenty years later by Monet. With Pissarro.
light serves to synthesize the various elements. In connection with a picture
of the same period, he wrote to Theodore Duret in 1873: "I shall attempt a
field of ripe wheat this summer. There is nothing colder than bright summer
sunshine; quite unlike the work of the colorists, nature is colored in winter
and cold in summer. " But Pissarro did not hold aloof from what he saw: he
represented the rick of hay, but also the wagon and peasants. In 1890 Monet
began painting a series of haystacks, but with him the subject was "the
instant." On October 7 of that year he wrote to Gustave Geffroy: "I'm
plugging away, toiling doggedly at a series of different effects (of haystacks),
but at this time of year the sun goes down so fast that I can't keep up with it.

:
-v
I'm becoming so slow a worker, it's maddening. But the further I go. the more

&% I realize the amount of work involved in rendering what I'm after: the

'instantaneousness.' the envelope of things, with the same light pouring in

everywhere. More than ever easy canvases tossed off at one go get my back
"
up
In his English Pear Tree of 1885, Renoir in turn gave up the delimitation of

specific forms; the figures fade into the shadow of the trees, the road

disappears in the grass, the leaves melt into the sky. And the sky is no longer
a backdrop but a colored medium infusing everything it envelopes with its

conslant variations.

Camillc Pissurro; The Haystack. Pontoise, 1873.

Augustc Renoir: Path Winding Up Through Tall Crass, about 1876-1878.

Claude Monet: Summer, 1874

121
 Never did the Impressionists venture on bolder color effects than in their summer
landscapes. Between 1873 and 1878 they painted pictures in which an almost
miraculous balance is achieved between sensation and creation. Plying a light and
resourceful brush Monet and Renoir record all the vibrations of light and try to match
on canvas the bloom and vividness of nature.
Each color is directly modified by the one beside it; a given tone appears totally
different when it is placed in a certain context. Two greens or two blues lose in
intensity when they stand side by side; but the juxtaposition of green with red, its

complementary, or blue with orange, steps up their intensity and luminosity. The
flowers of the fields provided the Impressionists with the spots of complementary
color they needed to enliven their meadows and prairies. Corot muted the sonority of
green by surrounding it with ochres and grays, neutral tints with a dimming effect.

Monet brightened his fields with poppies, for red sets off green The theory of
complementary colors had been set forth forty years earlier by the chemist Chevreul.

Claude Monet: Poppies. 1871.

Claude Monet: Field of Oats. 1890.

Claude Monel: Breakfast in the Garden. 1872-1871.

Claude Monet: Gladioli, about 1873.

August? Renoir. Young Woman ivitli a Dog. about 1880.

122
All the Colors of Nature

" It takes immense genius to reproduce simply and sincerely

What yOU See in front Of yOU. "
Edmond Duranty. Le Realisme, 1856

Flowers were a theme which enabled the Impressionists to paint from nature while
working indoors. It was a theme which also gave them the opportunity of studying
the harmonies and contrasts of pure color. Once they had defined their style, the

Impressionists ceased to regard flowers as a still lite, but rather as a living specimen ol
nature herself. A comparison of two flower pieces by Renoir and Cezanne reveals two
opposite poles of pictorial sensibility. Cezanne arranges his flowers symmetrically,
building up his canvas by an almost geometric assemblage of planes and intusing his
flowers with a sense of perenniality ; one feels that they will last. Renoir, on the
contrary, conveys a fleeting impression: the mirror in which his myriad touches of
color are reflected multiplies the lights until they flare up like fireworks.

Auguste Renoir: Arum and Hothouse

Plants, 1864.

Edgar Degas: Woman with Chrysan-

themums (Madame Hertel), 1865.

Auguste Renoir. Bouquet in Front of a

Mirror, 1876.

Paul Cezanne: Bouquet with Delflware

Vase, 1873-1875.

123
 —

The Theme of
the Still Life

Paul Cezanne:

fug and Spirit Stov.

Pencil

The Impressionists naturally treated the theme of the still

life, although at first sight it may seem to have little connec-

tion with their main concerns. This type of picture implies a
studied preparation, a deliberate arrangement on the part of
the painter, but what attracted the Impressionists was the
choice of everyday subjects which it offered. Just as their
landscapes are devoid of nymphs, so their still lifes generally
consist merely of a bird, a fish lying on a kitchen table, an
apple, a pitcher of milk or a bowl on a shelf.
The new interest in still life stemmed not only from the
persistent influence of the Dutch masters but from the revela-
tion of Chardin. twelve of whose still lifes entered the Louvre
in 1869 with the La Caze bequest. Manet carefully built up
his still life in the Salmon of 866, assembling noble elements
1

a fish ready to serve, a chinaware bowl and a fine glass — in a

composition in which recession is traditionally suggested by

a knife laid slantwise Monet chose to paint a dead bird on a
bare white tablecloth; but the bird was a pheasant with
brilliant plumage, therefore a subject still having some pres-
tige. Cezanne, however, was interested only in the geometry
of forms uninteresting in themselves — apples, biscuits, a
bunch of grapes. Such objects became the pretext for a
perfectly autonomous pictorial creation whose overall har-
mony was untroubled by any specific feature or implication

extraneous to the picture itself. The still life entitled Pot of

Flowers on a Table, painted in the 1880s. is a masterly
demonstration of this approach.

Claude Monet: The Pheasant, 1869.

Edouard Manet: Still Life with Salmon. J866.

Paul Cezanne: The Sideboard, 1873-1877.

124
Paul Cezanne: Pot of flowers on a Table. 1882-1887.

"
"To make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums.
Cezanne

125
 " "

Fitful and Fleeting Reflections

Even before 1870 the Impressionists —Monet. Pissarro and Renoir

above all — had begun using separate brushstrokes and pure, unblended
colors, the better to render reflections on water and to accentuate the glow
of light. Zola, speaking of Monet in 1868. pointed out the importance of
this technique: "With him. water is alive, deep, above all real. It laps
against the boats with little greenish ripples cut across by white flashes; it

spreads out in glaucous pools suddenly ruffled by a breeze, it lengthens

the masts reflected on its surface by breaking up their image, it has dull
and lambent tints litup by broken gleams.
After 1870 Monet followed up this experiment and used separate
brushstrokes not only to represent water but for
all his other themes The

complete unity of vision he then attained was made possible by this

deliberate restriction to a single technical device. Sailboat at Argcnuuil is

one of the major examples of that unity : light, in its manifold variations,
is in fact the sole subject of the picture. The vibrations of
the atmosphere,
which modify not only the water but the trees, houses and sails, create a
new pictorial dimension which compels the spectator to look at the
picture with a fresh eye. The symbolist poet Jules Laforgue. writing in
1883. pointed out the novelty of this art: "In a landscape bathed in light,
in which people are modelled like colored grisailles, where the academic
painter sees only white light outspread, the Impressionist sees
it bathing

everything not with a dead whiteness, but with a thousand vibrant

clashings. with rich prismatic decompositions. Where the academic sees
only the outline binding the modelling, he sees the real, living lines, not
taking geometric form but built up with a thousand irregular touches
which, from a distance, convey life. Where the academic sees things fitting
into their regular respective planes according to a framework reducible to
a pure theoretical diagram, he sees perspective established through a
thousand nuances of tone and touch, through the varied conditions of the
out not on a motionless but on a moving plane.
air laid

Claude Monti: Sailboat at Argenttuil. about 1874.

126
Aljrcd Sisley: The Flood at
Porl-Marlv. 1876.

"Treating a subject for its tones and not for its own sake, that is what distinguishes the
"
Impressionists from Other painters. Georges Riviere. 1877

Sky and water and the reflections of one in the problem of the relations between the artist's eye.

other, the vibration of colors in sunlight or in the feelings and imagination.

subdued light of overcast skies, these are among the Floods, in which water, sky and land become one
major themes of the Impressionists, of Sisley and and the same element, were a theme treated by
Monet in particular. Monet never tired of painting Monet. Pissarro and Sisley; they inspired some of
water: "I should like to be always on it or beside it the latter's most famous pictures. Octave Mirbeau,
and. when I die. to he buried in a buoy. " he once in an article in Le Figaro in 1892. analyzed what
said.The paintings made by Monet at Argenteuil seemed to him to distinguish Sisley's early period of

mark a moment of happy equilibrium in his work impressionist plenitude from his later pictures: "His
Troubles and worries disappeared in the full free very sensitive and responsive nature found itself at

exercise of the creative urge, in the conquest of an home among all the scenes of nature: the impres-
autonomous art which can only be judged in terms sions it received from them were not very sharp,
ol its own intentions. Thus began a new era in but they were manifold and vivid There was
. . .

modern painting, which in the exploration ol that more charm than strength in his painting, an innate
conquest found its true purpose. From his first grace, something quick, dainty and loose, a devil-
seascapes at Le Havre to the Waterlilies at Giverny, may-care touch whose appeal was keen and gave to
"
Monet never ceased to investigate the essential the lack of finish a sometimes exquisite poetry. Claude Monet. Argenteuil Bridge. 1874.

128
Claude Monet: Argenleuil Rridgc idetaih. 1874.

"The power, the buoyancy, in a word the life that Renoir puts into figures, Monet puts into things; he has found

out the very soul of them. In his pictures water ripples, locomotives move, the sails of boats belly in the

wind, the very ground and houses, everything in the work of this great artist has an intense personal life
"
that no one before him had discovered or even suspected.
GEORGES RIVIERE

129
 "It was by the focus of light

that he penetrated the secrets of

nature and divined her remotest

charms. He had an admirable

sense of the value of planes.

He never went astray in the

detailing of their mutual relations.

His elegant line comes to vivid

life as it pursues light into the

furthest recesses of his fancy.

For this painter, who is a genuine

virtuoso in the art of melodizing

over the whoie scale of values,

does not allow his invention to

benefit by any improvisation of

more or less happily contrived

color areas. Each color area, so

bright and so accurate, only

acquires its full prestige, its full

luster and ardor, as a result of

superb and dazzling drafts-
"
manship.
Jacques de Brv Manet. 1884
Claude Montr : The Beach at
Trouville. 1870.

I douard Manet

Boating, 1874.

1 igurt Studv In) "Boating,

1874 Pen and Ink

130
 During the summer of 1874 Manet and
Monet saw a good deal of each other at
Argenteuil. a riverside village on the Seine
now famous as one of the high places of
Impressionism. Won over by the discov-
eries of open air painting. Manet had by
now already begun intensifying and vary-
ing his light effects in order to leaven the
plastic form of his figures and better inte-
grate them into their natural surroundings.
Although he held aloof from the impres-
sionist exhibitions —deaf to the urging of

his young friends, he declined to take part

in their firstshow at Nadar's he admired —
the work they were doing, especially that
of Monet and Renoir. At Argenteuil Manet
and Monet began working together in a

real community of endeavor and became

close friends. Manet then chose typically
impressionist themes —sailboats at the
waterside, boaters on the river, etc. But
while Monet, even when placing the figures
in the foreground of his composition (as in

Beach at Trouviilf of 1870). handled his

picture in terms of light and shadow, with
rapid, contrasting touches that caused fig-

ures and atmosphere to merge. Manet on

the contrary clung to a certain emphasis
on form, which he rendered by the height-
ened intensity of composing In
his color. In

A Boat he hit happy and unusual

on a
device (one with which Degas also exper-
imented): the scene appears to continue
out of the picture, the respective positions
of the figures suggesting space even while
keeping them in close-up; we have the
impression that the boat is gliding by be-
fore our eyes.

Edouard Manet. Argenteuil. 1874.

"One enjoyed the day, the fatigue, the speed, the free and vibrant out-of-doors,
the glittering of the water, the sun flashing over the earth, the shimmering flame
of all that dazes and dazzles in these sauntering outings, that almost animal
intoxication with life conveyed by a great steaming river, blinded by light and
"
fine Weather. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. Manette Salomon. 1865

131
 :

Augusu Renoir:
Woman in a Boat. 1877.

Paul Cezanne
Four People in a Boat.

1870-1875. Pencil.

"To my mind a picture should be something pleasant,

cheerful and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many dis-

agreeable things in life as it is for us to contrive still more

"
Of them. Renoir

"Renoir possessed to a rare degree that sense of the modern which is the
mark of original artists of all ages. He had a direct vision of life, of figures
gathered together, of sentimental conversations, scenes of pleasure and
stylish displays, and he was the painter of the free life, passing through it

with his youthful fancies and the apparent whimsy of his studious art, that

harbored so much in the way of scruples and research. This is the Renoir of
suburban enjoyments, of young people embarking for the Cytheras of
Bougival. Chatou and Nogent: of Parisian women whose wistful smiles and
dreaming gaze make them the Mona Lisas of the boating parties ; of outdoor
luncheons in which the radiant atmosphere of the fine days, the color of the
eyes and the pattern of the smiles evaporate delightfully in the cigarette
"
smoke and the mild excitement of the conversation.

Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet

132
 Argenteuil and the Banks of the Seine

Seen side by side, these two pictures ol the same subji

the other by Renoir, reveal at a glance the essence ol on< ol th( pi

moments ol impressionist painting. At Argenteuil Monet surpassed In

there, in the mid seventies, "the freshness ol Ins vision gave .1 mat
almost magical beauty to the new style " (Jean Leymarie). He was conscious
of having mastered the means which enabled him to record on canvas those
elements which by definition are impalpable and fleeting: the transparency
and vibration of
air and water.

The enthusiasm and ascendancy of Monet were such that his friends
followed him in this line of research. Renoir often came to paint with him
and we find them here at the same hour of the day, in front of the same
motif; the riverside with a sailboat about to cast off, while others glide by in

the background and ducks paddle in the shallows. With equal ease the two
painters convey the enchantment they experienced in front of this motif; but
their vision, so similar at first sight, reveals two very different temperaments.
Monet has an eye for what one can only call "immediacy. " He achieves here
an admirable synthesis of light, emphasizing only essential accents, careful
above all to render the movement of light with utmost accuracy. "Monet is

"
only an eye. but what an eye! said Cezanne.
Renoir, on the contrary, surrendered to the charm of the subject and
multiplied details (sailboats, ducks, etc.). such was the pleasure he took in

the beauty of the scene. He paid no particular heed to lines of construction,

but recorded a happy moment with caressing touches of the brush.
Boaters on the Seine at Bougival painted a few years later, confirms
Renoir's marvelous power of turning a picture into a festival of the senses.
With bursts of color he transforms earth, water and men into a bouquet of

spring flowers.

Claude Monet; Sailboats at Argenteuil. 1871-1874.

Auguste Renoir. Sailboats at Argenteuil. 1873-1874.

Augustt Renoir Boaters on the Seine at Bougival, 1881.

"It was Argenteuil that was to sharpen Monet's per-

ceptions and to provide the point of departure for the
most decisive evolution of his art . . . From then on,

whatever the place in which he went to work, whatever

the venture on which he embarked, and he embarked
on some that carried him to the very confines of
nature and fancy, he had laid down the principle of
his artistic language; he went on to enrich its terms,
vary its shapes, extend and volatilize its expression,
"
but that language remained his very own.
Arsene Alexandre. Claude Monti

133
Sundays at the Moulin de la Galettc

"Worries and poverty were left at the entrance to the

ball. Always rilled with a merry crowd of young people
swept up in the dance, the place offered a cheerful scene
"
that Renoir dreamed of representing in a large picture.

Georges Riviere, Renoir

Windmills in Montmartre. about 1855. Stereoscopic View.

Auguste Renoir: Le Moulin de la Galette. 1876.

Entrance to the Gardens of the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre. Photograph.

Auguste Renoir; The Swing. 187b.

On the heights of Montmartre the old

Moulin de la Galette still stands just off
the rue Lepic. With his friends Lamy,
Goeneutte and Georges Riviere. Renoir
was one of the habitues of the Moulin,
and in order to paint this large picture of
it he installed his studio in an old house
in the nearby rue Cortot. He worked on
the canvas in the afternoon on the spot.

where his friends came to pose for him.

while in the morning he painted The
Swing in the garden under his studio
window
Photographs of the period show the
Moulin de la Galette as it was then: a
popular, countrified, open air dance-
hall, charming no doubt in a Paris even
then beginning to be overcrowded, but
without any particular attractions. Thus
Renoir saw it. and it was precisely this
ordinary, unaffected air of the place that
enchanted him. Lightly and freely
handled, the whole picture pulses with
life. Bluish shadows and pinkish lights

crisscross and interfuse, flickering over

faces, leafage, straw hats and the girls'

dresses, and dappling the ground in a

vibrant interplay of color and light,

sun and shadow.

134
. . . and Sunday Outings at Bougival

was the capriciousness of the Paris weather which, hy compelling the

"It

painter to abandon certain open air landscapes, prompted him to begin the
Luncheon of the Boating Party. He was able to carry it through, with the same
good luck as when he undertook the Bull [i.e. the Moulin it la Gillette]. These
two pictures have sometimes been likened to each other, and rightly so. even
though the handling is very different . . . Some of the color harmonies used in the

Biill fail to reappear in the Luncheon 0/ the Boating Party. What the two pictures
do have in common is the spirit in which the artist painted the figures, also the
style. . . The summer of 1880 may be considered an important stage in Renoir's
career, it brings to an end the series of scenes depicting the popular life of the
Parisians. Thereafter he was rarely if ever to be seen again working at the
"
Moulin, at Bougival or in the Place Pigalle.
Georges Riviere. Renoir et ses amis

Auguste Renoir. The Luncheon of the Boating Party. 1881. "Bui lies Canotlcrs" (Boaters' Dance-Hall) at Bougival. Photograph.

August? Renoir. Oarsmen at Chatou 1879 '

F. Lunel: La Grenouillere.

"The boating party has had lunch under the awning of the restaurant. The
picture was executed on the spot, in the open air. The Seine and its banks,
lighted up by the summer sun. give it a glowing background. One finds here the
features of the painting called impressionist, common to Renoir and his painter
friends. But one also finds here certain characteristics which are his alone. The
eye is particularly attracted by the women with whom the boaters have been
lunching.
"The men. while they might have been painted less well by another than
they were by Renoir, might have had the same character that he has given them.
But one cannot imagine these women, as they are here, having been painted by
anybody else. They have the free and easy manners one would expect of young
women who have lunched and are enjoying themselves with a group of young
men. but they also have that graciousness. that roguish charm which Renoir
"
alone could give to women.
Theodore Duret. Renoir. 1924

!35
 *
\
}

?m%L
Quai des Grands-Augustins Seen from the Pont Saint-Michel. 1864. Photograph.

Camille Pissarro: The Outer Boulevards. Snow Effect, 1879.

Edouard Manet: Street Pavers in the Rue Mosnier. 1878.

kugustt Renoir It Pont Neuf. 1872.

Claude Monet. Boulevard des Capucines. 187 i.

136
 The Paris Boulevards

Street scenes, full ol thi modern

life, were a theme tl t attra :d all the im-
pressionist painters, especially Monet, Renoir
and later Pissarro Manel revi al<
:

bilities with his Concert in thi ruili es, the fii

picture ot an open ail social gatherir

early as 1865 Monet and Renoir were painting
townscapes in Paris, but it was not until 187,

that they focused theii eye on the street, with

its movement and light, its passing figures and
traffic. It is difficult to set up one's easel in the
middle of the street or sidewalk, and the
painters often worked from an upper win-
dow, catching the scene below along a plung-

ing line of sight — an angle of vision that lent

itself to dynamic foreshortenings well suited
to the subject. Thirty years later, when ill-

health him indoors. Pissarro painted

kept
many views' and street scenes from his win-
dows, moving regularly in order to renew and
vary his motifs. Renoir and Degas became
masters in the art of catching things from an
unusual point of focus. Renoir's Place Clichy is

one of the boldest close-ups in all modern

painting: the spectator no longer sees the
subject from a distance, but is directly in-
volved with it.

August! Renoir: The Great Boulevards, 1875.

August? Renoir: Place Clichy. about 1880

Boulevard des Capucines with the Grand Hotel, 1890. Photograph.

137
 "

The Eye of Degas Critical attack did not prevent the Impressionists from holding
further exhihitions in 1879, 1880 and 1881, with a final exhihition in

1886. The prime mover in all these exhibitions was Degas. It was not
"No art is less spontaneous than mine. Wh.it 1 do is the result of thought
merely that his delicate paintings would have been lost on the vast
and the study of the great masters; ol inspiration, spontaneity, tempera- walls of the Salons, as Zola suggested; we know now that Degas was
ment. know nothing. The same subject has to he done ten times, a hundred
desperate financial straits and needed buyers. The collapse of his
1

in
times over. Nothing in art, not even movement, must seem accidental
Degas brother Rene's affairs in New Orleans had caused the Bank of Anvers
to call in its loans to the De Gas Bank. Had not Edgar arranged to
meet the indebtedness, disgrace and destitution would have fallen

upon the whole family. In Edgar's case this meant selling pictures

and the impressionist exhibitions were a convenient means of adver-

tising his work during these years.
Pride prevented Degas from talking about his trouble, though it

seems to have been known to the habitues of the Cafe Nouvelle-

Athenes (which had replaced the Cafe Guerbois as the avant-garde
hangout), for George Moore writes: "It is rumoured that he [Degas]

has sacrificed the greater part of his income to save his brother who
J Ll^ has lost everything in an imprudent speculation in America. " But
very few people seem to have understood the amount of time and
energy absorbed by his prodigious output : he was a recluse of
necessity and his defense was misogyny.
Degas had made studies of ballerinas, ballet masters and orches-
tral players in his youth; but it was not until after his return from
America that he began producing pastels and paintings of ballet

subjects in great number. The Opera House was still in the rue Le

Peletier and he was completely at home in its precincts. "Where the

muses meet, they dance, " he was fond of saying. Vollard tells a story
about a ballet girl who posed for him. "I painted her waking up,
Degas said. "There was nothing to be seen but her legs feeling about
through the opening of the bed curtains for her slippers, which had
been thrown on an oriental carpet. I even remember the reds and
yellows. I can see her two green stockings too. I wanted to keep this
painting, but it appeared to please the poor girl so much that I gave
it to her. " He also began modelling ballet girls in wax, working from
Edgar Degas: Dancer Adjusting her Slipper. 1874. Pencil and Charcoal.
drawings made in the nude; but, instead of fashioning their skirts in

wax, he had a seamstress make tiny delicate frou-frous of silk and

satin. He had studied the technique of sculpture and thought it the

Now 1 write to ask your pardon for something that often recurs in your most suitable medium in which to express profound suffering. He
conversation and more often in your thoughts: it is for having been in the continuously remade his little wax models, regarding them always as
course of our long art relations, or having seemed to be. harsh with vou.
inadequate; those few which have survived, and were later cast in
1 have been so to a singular degree with myself; you must remember it

well since you have been led to reproach me for it and to wonder at my bronze, do have about them some unfathomable sadness.
having so little confidence in myself. After the old Opera House burned down in 1873 Degas turned
I was, or 1 seemed to be. hard with everyone, through a sort of passion
to his immediate neighborhood for subjects. In his studio in the rue
tor brutality, which came from my uncertainty and mv bad humor felt 1

mvsell so badly made, so badly equipped, so weak, whereas it seemed to me Victor Masse, says Vollard, there were easels, a tall desk at which he
that my calculations on art were so right I was sullen with everyone and stood to write, a press for pulling lithographs and etchings, tracing
with myself. ask your forgiveness if, under pretext of this confounded
by way of correcting
I

after tracing his drawings, and a bath tub.

art. I wounded your very noble and very intelligent mind, perhaps even your
heart. "Once an object found its way into his studio, it never left it, nor
letter from Degas to the painter A de Valerius, October 26, 1890
changed its position, and gradually became covered with a dust that

no flick of the feather duster came to disturb, " says Vollard. His
servant Zoe dominated his daily life, but had strict orders not to
"
touch anything in the studio. "What an unusual fellow, this Degas,

138
 " " " "

wrote Edmond de Goncourt, "sickly, hypochondriac, with such

delicate eyes that he fears to lose his sight and for this very reason is

especially sensitive and aware of the reverse character of He things.

is the man haveI seen who has best captured, in reproducing modern "Edgar Degas was of middle height, well proportioned, with an
life, the soul of this life. " According to the observant Vollard. Degas distinction. He carried his head high without affectation, and when st

was wont to complain about his eyesight in order to get rid of visitors. and talking with someone he kept his hands clasped behind his back
dress was plain, with no particular refinement, bul withe
Calling on Degas one day Vollard saw that he was painting a slovenliness, and like all the bourgeois ol his time he wore a top :;." I

landscape with his back to the window. "But, Monsieur Degas, " said with flat brims and pushed back a little on his head He usually protected his

ailing eyes against the glare of light by tinted gla or pino

Vollard. "seeing the truth with which you reproduce nature, who si a n

straddling his rather short nose. His face, with hardly any coloi in it was
would suppose that you do it by turning your back to her! framed by dark auburn sidewhiskers trimmed close, like his moustache and
"Oh. Monsieur Vollard." said Degas. "When I am in a train, flat hair. Such was Degas about 1875. looking very much like the drypoint

do now and then put my " portrait which Marcelhn Desboutin made of him about that time.
you know. I head out of the window.
Georges Riviere I

In fact, he had pronounced views on "open air" painting, at

least as it concerned himself. He had come in time to believe firmly

in working from memory, or memory and imagination combined,
rather than nature. He could express himself very well, yet he had
a profound distaste for intellectualizing. "Of what use is my mind? "
he said to Daniel Halevy. "
Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and
pay my fare. But once am inside my studio I of what use is my mind?
I have my model, my pencil, my paper, my paints. My mind doesn't
bother me.
According to Vollard Degas never indulged in private gossip,

though his darts sometimes transfixed people like butterflies on a

cork. "Shy, apparently unsociable, but when nightfall drove him

from the studio and he no longer had to defend himself against those

who were always ready to disturb him in his work, he could be

delightfully genial, " says Vollard, who then tells the story of how he
once invited Degas to dinner. Held regularly in the basement of his

little shop in the rue Lepic, Vollard's dinners were already much
talked about in the art world. Here, crowded together among his

—
paintings his Cezannes, his Renoirs, and many others yet to become
famous — his guests partook of some exotic curry, made according to
a recipe from the island of Reunion, and the conversation was
always lively. Degas had heard about these gatherings and. in

accepting Vollard's invitation, laid down certain conditions: he

would have only a dry roll without butter, there were to be no
flowers on the table, and the dinner must begin punctually at

7.30 p.m. "You lock up your cat. I know, "

said Degas, "but no one
must bring a dog. And if there are women, they must not wear
perfume —how horrible are these odors when there are things that
smell so good, baked bread, for example ..." None more than Degas
believed in the necessity for a kind of discipline in all the acts of life,

says Vollard.
Among the Impressionists, Renoir understood him best, perhaps.

"He found, " said Renoir, "a way of expressing the malady of our
contemporaries: I mean movement. "
Nor was Renoir deceived by
Degas's acerbity, the range of his irony or the profundity of his
Marcellin Desboutin. Portrait of Degas, about 1876. Etching.
prejudices. "Perhaps beneath his porcupine attitude there was a
streak of rare kindness, " says Renoir. "His frock coat, well-starched
collar and top hat concealed the most profoundly revolutionary
artist among the young painters.

139
 No subject could be more characteristically
modern than that of the railroad station,
and Monet painted some eight or ten pictures
of the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris —the first

of his famous series. Turner and Daumier, in

very different ways, had already treated the

theme of trains. With the other impressionists,
attracted by the clouds of steam it threw up,
the train was but one of the elements of the
landscape; Monet, in 1877, made it the sole
theme of his picture.

J. M. W. Turner: Rain, Steam and Speed, 184).

"The year 1878 saw him paint some With his Railroad of 1873. Manet had made a timid forms. Monet felt that a single picture could hardly
approach to this theme, suggesting the presence of a convey an idea of the variety of this shifting pageant,
pictures of a rather special kind, which
locomotive by a cloud of steam. Monet, however, went and he was thus led to paint a whole series of pictures
fell in well, however, with his ana- into the station itself and out onto the platforms, in the Gare Saint-Lazare. from different angles, at

lytical study, now increasingly varied marvelling at what seemed to his contemporaries a different times of day.

noisy, reeking monster devoid of aesthetic qualities A number of these canvases figured in the group
and complex, of color effects: I refer
and. in its novelty and utility, outraging all the rules of exhibition of 1877. where their novelty and accuracy
to the smoke-filled pictures of the good taste. Monet delighted in this continually changing were pointed out by Georges Riviere, one of the most
Gare Saint-Lazare. In these canvases, scene, well lit by the large glass panes overhead and ardent supporters of Impressionism, in the pages of
swept by puffs of smoke or steam which, through the L'lmpressionniste. a small magazine he launched for the
not very numerous but highly char-
play of light and shadow, gave glimpses of unexpected purpose of defending his friends' work.
acteristic, Claude Monet both exerted
and amused himself in recording this

eerie scene unfolding in broad daylight,

these ghostly shapes of iridescent steam

floating and swirling over the machines,

between the high di|fs of surrounding

houses, which overlook the perpetually
"
shaking departure platforms.

Arsene Alexandre. Claude Monet

Iff* ^*fjHh| m A

[I'll luM'
';\V
&l«
'

k
1876-1877

140
Claude Monet: The Gari Saint-Lazare

"Let those who wish to do history painting do

the history of their own time instead of shaking
"
Up the dust of past Centuries. Georges Riviere

f
%F*k
The Lt Havre Train at Medan. Photograph by Zola.

^X-.V 1877

1877

141
 "

The Suspended Moment

"They have tried to render the walk,

motion, hurry and intermingling of

passers-by. just as they have tried to

render the trembling 0/ leaves, the

shimmer of water and the vibration

of air drenched with light, just as

they have managed to catch both

the iridescent play of sunshine and

the soft envelope of cloudy skies.

Edmond Duranty.
La Nouvtllt Peinture. 1876

Edouard Manet: The Rue de Berne Decked with

Flags. 1878.

Edouard Manet: The Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags. 1878.

Claude Monti The Rue Montorgueil Decked with Flags. 1878. On a flag at tht right can be read
tht words: Vivt la France. This scene represents tht Fourtttnth of July alterations in Paris.

142
 and Suspended Movement

Horses and dancers were the two subjects by means ol which Degas
deepened his study of movement. The keenest ol observers, he strove to catch
the sequence of positions which constitutes movement. On the racecourses he
avidly scrutinized the gallop of the horses and the motions of the jockeys,
without trying to record with his pencil what the eye is incapable of
analyzing but seeking rather to convey the impression they aroused in him.
What he perceived was sequence and duration.
All the artists and scientists of this period were keenly interested in the

problems of movement and speed. At the very time when Degas was
sketching at the Longchamp racetrack, the English photographer Eadweard
Muybridge succeeded, after four years of experimentation, in recording on
film with a series of cameras the successive movements of a galloping horse.
But when Muybridge presented his photographs in Paris in 1 88 1 . in Meissonier's
studio, the public was skeptical : to convince it. he had recourse to Reynaud's
praxinoscope. a disk — the forerunner of moving pictures —on which the
snapshots were fixed in sequence and which, when spun around, gave the
exact impression of movement.
The first actual projection of moving pictures on a screen, by means of the

cinematograph invented by the Lumiere brothers, took place in Paris on

December 15, 1895.

Edgar Degas: jockey, 1885-1890. Pencil and Pastel.

Edgar Degas: Four Studies o) a jockey, about 1866. Sepia and Gouache.

Edgar Degas: Horse Races at Longchamp, 1873-1875.

"It is allvery well to copy what you see; it is much better

to draw what you only see in memory. Then you get a
transformation during which imagination collaborates
with memory. You reproduce only what has struck you,
in other words essentials. There your recollections and
"
your fancy are set free from the tyranny exerted by nature.
Degas

^HM^^^HBR
143
 .

The Flash of the Snapshot

"Degas is one of the few painters to have given the ground plane its due

importance. He has done some admirable floorboards . .

"The ground plane is one of the essential factors in the vision of things. On
its nature largely depends the refection of light. As soon as the painter

comes to consider color not as local color acting by itself and by contrast
with neighboring colors, but as the local effect of all the radiations and

reflections which occur in the picture space and which are exchanged by all

the bodies it contains; as soon as he strives to perceive this subtle

repercussion and to avail himself of it in order to give his work a certain

unity altogether different from that of the composition, then his conception
"
of form has changed. If he goes far enough, he arrives at impressionism.

Paul Valery. Degas, Danse, Dessin

TK
"Drawing is not what one sees, but what one must
"
make others see. Degas

Edgar Degas:

Dancers in the Foyer, 1879. Pastel.

Tilt Racecourse. Amateur Jockeys beside a Carriage, about 1877-1880.

Dancers in Yellow, 1878-1880. Pastel on Monotype.

Racehorses. 1883-1885. Pastel.

144
 :

"I speak of former times, for apart from the heart it seems to me tha
everything in me is aging proportionally. And even my heart has something

artificial about it. The dancers sewed it up in a pink satin bag, a rather faded
"
' oil
pink satin, like their dancing slippers.
Letter Irom Degas to the sculptor
Albert Bartholome, January 17. 1886

It was in 1872 that Degas became interested in the theme

of the dance. His friend Desire Dihau. who played the
bassoon in the orchestra at the Paris Opera, took him back-
stage, and he was at once captivated by the blend of the real

and the artificial that he found there. While the racecourse

had made him attentive to speed, the dance revealed to him
all the expressive intricacies of the human figure in move-
ment, constantly maintaining a seemingly precarious equi-
poise through an endless sequence of wavering postures. Even
motionless, the dancer gives the impression of moving, her
limbs retaining the tremulous imprint of her exertions. Degas
multiplied his studies, continually working them up from
accurate observation to the further stage of plastic transposi-
tion. In approaching this new subject, he began by painting
the dancers at rest and gradually progressed in the late 1870's
to the full complexity of their gyrations. But the impression of
movement would not be complete if it were not thrown into
relief by the glare of the footlights and the arresting foreshort-
enings of the composition. Degas obtained an incomparable
range of spatial effects thanks to the boldness and skill with
which he exploited unusual points of view and perspective.
With unerring instinct he abandoned the symmetrical arrange-
ments of classical composition for the dynamic, off-center
layout of modern picture design in which equilibrium is no
longer based on equivalent masses but on the relations and
resulting tensions between voids and solids.

In 1878 Degas began doing sculpture as well, not only to

spare his eyes some of the strain involved in painting, but also
and above all to achieve the ultimate expression of movement
implicit in the fully rounded volumes of a static figure.

Edgar Degas

Ballet Dancer Resting, about It -1882. Pastel.

End oj the Arabesque. 1877.

145
146
 Manet: The Bar at the Folies-Bergere

"And since we embrace nature closely, we no

longer separate the figure from the back-

ground of the apartment or the backdrop of

the street. In actual life the figure never
appears against a vague, empty, neutral

background. But around and behind it are

furniture, fireplaces, hangings, a wall that

suggests a man's means, his class, his pro-

fession . . ..Even his rest will not be a pause,

it will not be an aimless, unmeaning pose in

front of the camera lens; his rest is as

much a part of life as his action is.

Edmond Durantv

"When 1 came back to Paris in January 18X2. the first visit I

paid was to Manet. He was then painting the Bar at the Folies-

Bcrgerc, and the model, a pretty girl, was posing behind a table

loaded with bottles and food. He recognized me at once, shook

my hand and said: 'It's a bore, but you must excuse me: I'm
obliged to keep my seat. Sit down over there.

"I took up a chair behind him and watched him at work.

Though he painted his pictures from a model. Manet did not
copy nature. I realized then how masterly his simplifications
were. He was modelling the girl's head: but his modelling was
not obtained with the means that nature indicated. Everything
was abridged: the tones were brighter, the colors more vivid,

the values nearer to each other. It all went to form an ensemble

of a tender, blond harmony . .

"More people came in. and Manet left off painting to go and
down on the divan,
sit against the righthand wall. I then saw
how sorely he had been tried by illness. He walked leaning on a

cane and seemed to tremble. Yet he remained cheerful and spoke

of soon being well again. I went to see him again during my
stay. He said things like this: 'Concision in art is a matter of
necessity and elegance. The man who is concise makes you
think: the man who is wordy is a bore. Always modify your
work in the direction of concision. . In a figure, seek out the
main light and the main shadow the : come naturally it
rest will :

is often very little. And then, cultivate your memory; for nature
will never give you anything but information to go on. It is like

a railing that keeps you from falling into banality . . . One must
always remain the master and do what is entertaining. Nothing
Edouard Manet: At the Cafe, 1878. ! "
burdensome Ah. no, nothing burdensome
! '

Edouard Manet: The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1882. Georges Jeanniot, La Grande Revue, August 10, 1907

147
 Edouard Manet. The Waitress (La Servante de Bocks), 1878.

148
 The Cafes

"The look of things and people has in real life a thousand ways of being
unexpected. Our point of view is not always in the center of a room with its two side
walls receding towards the back wall; it does not always reduce the lines and angles of
the cornices to regularity and mathematical symmetry; nor can it always overlook the
unfolding stretch of ground or floor in the foreground; it is sometimes located very
high, sometimes very low, losing the ceiling, glimpsing objects from below, cutting
across furniture unexpectedly. Our eye. arresting its gaze sideways at a certain distance

from us, seems to be limited by a frame, and it sees these lateral objects as if they were
cut off by that frame.
Edmond Duranty, La Nouvelle Peinture, 1876

Edouard Manet: Cafe, Place du Thedtre-Francais. 1881.

Edgar Degas: Women on the Terrace of a Cafe. 1877. Pastel on Monotype.

Auguste Renoir: Small Cafe. 1876-1877.

Edgar Degas: Absinthe. 1876.

 — "

"His prodigious skill flashes out every-

The Cafe Concerts
where; his resourcefulness, so attractive and
so peculiarly his own. arranges figures in the
most unexpected and amusing way. at the

"Degas carried into

same time way that is always true and
in a
his studies ot reality the
always normal. What M. Degas hates most, in
concern that makes 'classical' artists \
fact, is romantic rapture, the substitution of
keen desire to elicit the one line which deter-
dreams for life, in a word airs and flourishes.
mines a figure, but that figure as found in life,
He is an observer; he never indulges in over-
in the street, at the opera, at the milliner's, and
statement; the effect is always obtained by
even in other places; but. again, that figure
nature herself, it is never overdone. This is
surprised in its own peculiar habits, at a
what makes him the most valued historian of
particular moment, never without action,
somehow the scenes that he shows us.
always expressive this, for me, or
Georges Riviere in L'lmprfssionniste,
other sums up Degas. He ventured to com-
April 6. 1877
bine, he dared to combine, the snapshot and
the infinite toil in the studio, to enclose the
impression in an elaborate study and the im-
mediacy of things in the continuance of reflec-
"
tive will
Paul Valery. Degas. Danse. Dessin

1 j

zMli '

"**
^ ME

Edgar Degas:

Cafi Singer Wearing a Glove. 1878. Pastel and Tempera.

I m Studies lor a Music Hall Singer. 1878-1880 Pastel and Charcoal.

Cafe Singer in Green. 1884. Pastel

MHj

uM M JSf
150
"A picture is something that calls for as much cunning, trickery and vice

as the perpetration of a crime. Go wrong and add an accent of nature ..."

Degas

Degas was resolutely hostile to open air painting; as early as 1869 he showed a
marked preference for the artificial light of theaters, cafes, music halls, laundresses'

and milliners' shops. The portraitist became a genre painter; he was less interested in

evoking a face than in painting people in characteristic attitudes, in the setting of their
daily life and profession. He caught the "professional" movement of his subjects;

moreover he caught them from an unusual angle or in an unusual pose that arrests
the spectator's attention. Degas was perfectly aware of the importance and novelty of
the pictorial design which he practiced and developed. In his definition of the Ideal
Studio, he wrote: "Raise steps all around the room in order to accustom the student
to draw things from below and from above. Let him paint things only as seen in a mirror

in order to accustom him to hatred of illusionism. In doing portraits, pose the model
on the ground floor and have the student work from the first floor in order to accustom
him to retaining forms and expression and never drawing or painting immediately.
Degas kept number of themes, on which he turned out endless variations.
to a limited

He liked to say: "Let me it well into my mind that

get know nothing at all, that is
I

the only way of progressing. " He had taken up pastels in 1869, when he was getting
interested in rendering the instantaneousness of movement; then in 1878 he worked out

a technique combining tempera and pastels which became a favorite medium of his.
It enabled him to achieve the purest, most marked effects of color, as well as smoothly
blended passages and nervous, spirited linework. Pastels, a quicker technique than
oil painting, were also easier on his eyes, which could no longer bear the strain of

long working sessions.

Paul Vale'ry, who knew Degas well and in whom the artist often confided, has
written: "However amusing and playful he may sometimes have appeared, his pencil,
his pastel crayon and his brush are never employed carelessly. Willpower dominates.

His line is never quite as close as he wants it to be. He attains neither to eloquence

nor to the poetry of painting; he seeks only truth in style and style in truth. His art

may be likened to that of the French moralists: a prose of sharpest outline forcibly
"
enclosing or articulating a new and genuine observation.

Edgar Degas

"
Cafe Concert a! "Les Ambassadeurs. 1876-1877.

At the Theater, 1880. Pastel

Cafe Concert, 1876-1877. Pastel.

151
Festival Magic

The loge is a privileged place from which one can see, and be seen by. the
whole theater. The prosperous bourgeoisie of Paris assiduously frequented the
theater, the balls, the public entertainments, often dividing its evenings between
these and the cafes. Degas painted his first opera pictures in 1867. He began by
portraying the musicians in the orchestra, then progressively raised his eyes to the
stage, on which his whole attention was soon focused. He loved the make-believe
of the theater, where dream and reality were so attractively mingled. He was
entranced by the dancers, in whom he found naturalness paradoxically achieved
by study and willpower, and whose movements continually assumed unusual
patterns as planes were suddenly, violently clipped off against the light and con-
stantly changing perspective effects were opened up. The Ballet from "Robert le

Viable ". of 1872, is the canvas which marks his return to the theme of the theater.
Manet, in his Masked Ball at the Opera, produced a nocturnal pendant to his
Concert in the Tuileries — which Mallarme had recognized as a work of capital
importance — and once again found a glittering subject of characteristic modernity,
the pretext moreover for a symphony of contrasting values. As for Renoir, he was
less interested in the stage than in the public, in the beauty of women decked in all

their finery and basking in the gaze of their admirers and rivals. The Loge was the
first picture in which he succeeded in eliciting from artificial light the sparkling
luminosity of his landscapes, rendered with the same freedom of touch.

"
Edgar Degas: The Ballet from "Robert le Diable, 1872.

Edouard Manet: Masked Ball at the Opera. 1873.

Edgar Degas: Musicians in the Orchestra. 1872.

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152
Augusts Renoir: The Loge, 1874.

153
 "Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot, with her double privilege
as a woman and a highly gifted artist, is marked out to win
over the public and the critics . . . She is a sensitive colorist

who brings everything into a general harmony of whites not

easily attuned without lapsing into affectedness ..."

Philippe Burty, La Republiquc francaise. April 25, 1877

If the critics who singled out Berthe Morisot for special abuse
imagined that they could shame this frail young woman into severing

her connection with the crazy Impressionists they could not have
been more mistaken. Not only did Berthe Morisot contribute paint-
ings to all but one of the eight exhibitions, but she helped finance
them and never again exhibited at the Salon.

On the death of her father in 1873 she had inherited a great deal

of money and, after her marriage to Eugene Manet. Edouard's

brother, a year later, she was a rich woman. She was not, therefore,

inconvenienced when one of her watercolors went for 45 francs at

the Hotel Drouot auction in 1875. That summer she and Eugene
voyaged to England where she made paintings of the Isle of Wight,
Berths Morisot: The Cradle, 1873.
the beach at Ramsgate and other lonely nooks on the Channel coast,

Berthe Morisot: Young Woman Seated on a Chair. Pencil. which she put on the line at the 1877 Impressionist exhibition.
Because she lived the opulent life of her class the run of critics made
the error of thinking that she was a lady dabbling in art; but not the

perceptive Paul Mantz, who wrote in Le Temps: "In all the group
there is only one impressionist. This is Berthe Morisot. Her painting
has all the freshness of improvisation ; it is truly the impression,

registered by a sincere eye, and loyally rendered by a hand which

"
does not cheat.
When she married Eugene Manet she was thirty-three, an intense,
reserved and independent woman. She was approaching forty when
her daughter, Julie, was born, for which event she had skipped the
fourth Impressionist exhibition. The child made of her a different
woman, and a different painter. Eugene rented a house, 4 rue de la

Princesse, at Bougival, where they spent the summers, with Berthe

ceaselessly sketching her daughter among the trees and flowers of the
magnificent garden. Afterwards, when Berthe's niece, Nini, came to
live with them, she painted the two young girls in a series of motifs:
girls gathering cherries, girls playing hide-and-seek, girl with a hat,
girl with a basket, etc. Later there was "Young Woman this ..." and
"Young Woman that . .
., " all luminous and infinitely tender portray-

als of the transiency of youth, indeed of life itself.

In 1883, while Berthe was painting her young girls as they

played in the Bois de Boulogne, Eugene built a large villa at 14 rue de

Villejust in Paris. Here, against Empire panelling encasing the oils of
Edouard Manet, the Eugene Manets were the hosts of a high salon, to

which came Degas, Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes, Caillebotte, the

Rouarts, Renoir, Monet, Paul Valery and Stephane Mallarme (to

154
whom Victor Hugo had recently written a letter, beginning: "My
dear impressionist poet...") and many other celebrities. In Parisian
life the power of the salon could hardly be overestimated: the
Impressionists had won a bridgehead.
Glimpses of Daily Life.
Paul Valery (who married Nini) says that Berthe was "simple,
pure, intimately, passionately laborious, rather withdrawn, but with-
drawn with elegance. " Renoir said: "She was so feminine she would
"
make Titian's 'Virgin with a Rabbit' jealous.

The day was past when thirty windmills spun their broad vanes
on Montmartre hill and the district was the flour and perfume center
of the Paris region. But at the top of the rue Lepic there were two old
mills still standing, one of which the miller, Debray, had converted Edgar Degas: Al xht Milliner's, 1882.

155
"I must work hard at evening effects, lamps, candles, etc. The point
is not always to show the source of light but the effect of light. This
approach has immense possibilities today —how can one fail to see that?
"

Degas

F.dgar Degas: Laundress Seen

Against the Light. 1882.

156
 into a rustic ballroom. It was a great square hangai with a platform
tor the orchestra and a raised circular gallery where the customers
sat at tables between dances. Colored pa] rns hung from
"Degas leaves no room for doubt as to the social rank ol his models Here ceiling and walls; the floor, polished by decades of loose grain
we touch on the main point ot difference between the aesthetic ot Degas ,wui firm and fast, and there was plenty of room for the quadrilles and
that of Renoir. The painter of dancers and laundresses was irritated by the
polkas and the new flonflon. On hot summer evenings the proceed-
charm with which Renoir decked out not only society women but even the
little girls of Montmartre. This, in Degas's eyes, was an offense against ings were moved out to an adjacent garden where the lanterns were
reality: a deception. .
suspended from trees. Dances were held there on Sundays and
"In his amazingly accurate recording of those professional reflexes to
holidays, 3.00p.m. to midnight; entrance was 25 centimes for each
which he has contrived to impart so litelike an appearance. Degas remains a

disdainful observer out of sympathy with his models.

"
man and a further charge of 20 centimes for each dance. "Bring your
Georges Riviere. Degas money!" cried the barker as the orchestra started up. Between
dances customers were served with a delicious tart, sweet wine and
salad. The Debrays were specialists in making these tarts, or galettes,
and so the place was called Moulin de la Galette — the Mill of the

Tarts.

Renoir went there often in the company of friends, including

Degas who at this time was looking for motifs in the cafe dansants.
circuses, music halls and bars. Renoir was inspired to make a picture
of the Moulin de la Galette. He saw it as a huge canvas taking in the
August? Renoir: Laundress. Drawing.
whole sweep of the dance floor, balconies, orchestra and dancers. His
studio in the rue Saint-Georges was far too small for such an
enterprise, so Renoir began looking around Montmartre for a con-
venient working place. In the rue Cortot. in an unfrequented quarter
of La Butte, to give Montmartre hill its local name, he saw on a
ruinous gateway the notice: "Furnished Rooms To Let. "
On entering
the gateway he found himself in a vast garden with lawns and old
trees, all in a state of wild neglect, but with unimpaired views of the
northern purlieus of Paris. The house, dating from 1650, had once
been a farm; it was a painter's dream of solitude and airy light.

Renoir was soon occupying a couple of attic rooms and making use
of a deserted stable as a studio. Here were painted The Swing and
Nude in the Sun. (And here. 12 rue Cortot. succeeding generations of
artists, including Suzanne Valadon. Utrillo and Raoul Dufy. would
also do their best work.) Renoir made several paintings of the Moulin

de la Galette. using his friends as'models and enlisting their help in

carrying the huge stretched canvas to and from the Moulin every
day.
As a local identity he helped organize a fancy dress ball at the

Moulin to raise funds for the care of the hundreds of children who
roamed about the district (the suppression of the Commune had left

its widows and orphans, especially in Montmartre and La Villette).

There were to be amateur numbers and prizes for the best dancers.
Renoir helped make and decorate with velvet ribbons the straw hats

(the little timbaks. as they were called) which were to be given as

prizes. The ball was a dazzling success; the special numbers brought
down the house, the volunteer bands had the real beat. But the
receipts barely covered expenses. At this time, to make the where-

withal to pay for his new quarters, Renoir was painting a society

portrait. Georges Charpentier, the successful publisher, was pleased

with the Renoir he had bought (for 180 francs) at the Impressionist

auction sale in 1875. and had commissioned Renoir to make a portrait

157
 "

of his wife. Every day Renoir was going to the Charpentier mansion
in the rue de Grenelle where Madame Charpentier posed for him in her

latest Worth gown. Naturally, sitter and painter conversed, and when "At that time Renoir seldom left I'.mv While before 1870 he had spent

money for the long periods in the villages in and around Fontainebleau forest, alter the war
Renoir told her about their glorious failure to raise
he scarcely went beyond the immediate suburbs: Bougival. Saint-Cloud.
orphans. Madame Charpentier offered to create a fund for a day Louveciennes where mother
his lived. Usually he stayed in Paris where he
"
nursery in Montmartre. In later years Renoir was prouder of the fund tound models more easily than anywhere else.

Georges Riviere. Renoir et ses amis

than of the portraits he painted of the Charpentiers. The connection
with the Charpentiers led to an introduction to Baron Berard of
Wargemont Chateau, near Dieppe, and more portraits of impeccable
"I remember Renoir at Wargemont. " says
children and elegant ladies.
Jacques-Emile Blanche, "wearing a funny pointed straw hat with a red
band, like oarsmen between La Grenouillere and Bougival, a canvas
coat over a shirt without a tie, as he sat beside the coachman, or per-

haps it was the butler, on the Wargemont wagonette. " Renoir's society

portraits had landed him in the Salon and promised tomake his fortune.
"I believe Renoir is launched. " wrote Pissarro. "So much the better.
"
It is hard, the poverty.
In the rue Saint-Georges, where Renoir had his studio before
moving up to Montmartre, there was a little cremerie where four or
five people could have a good meal very cheaply. Going there often 5*9 V1EVX-PARIS lj>Bult*M

Renoir was soon on familiar terms with the customers, among whom
was Aline Charigot and her mother, both of them dressmakers,
Old Paris: The Hill of Montmartre. with the Cabaret of the Lupin Agile
though working for different houses. They were from Essoyes and (18th arrondissement). Photograph.
rolled their "r's" like Burgundians; Monsieur Charigot, a wine
grower, hadn't been heard from since going off to America some
years before; but the old farmhouse was still theirs. Aline was one of
those blond round girls with very narrow waists; it was not simply August e Renoir: The Dance at Bougival. 1883. Pencil.

that she was pretty, but she was the girl Renoir had always painted.
Auguste Renoir: Dancing Couple. 188). Pen and Ink.
Aline was nineteen, Renoir forty. Renoir became very fond of Aline.
"She was like a cat, " he once said, "you wanted to rub her back.
The banks of the Seine were their favorite strolling place; and they
went often to Fournaise's restaurant at La Grenouillere where Renoir
painted Aline in a blue dress, petting a pekinese dog, in a picture
he called the Luncheon of the Boating Party. They visited Essoyes
and Aline wanted him to stay and paint there. "To be so isolated
one has to be strong, " Renoir said. He made a trip to Algiers my.-
and was fascinated by the color of the place; Aline was waiting
for him at the station when he came back. Aline wanted them
to be married, so she could have a child; but Renoir was afraid
of children. Just the same. Aline had her child. Pierre, born in 1885. -

Renoir went on other trips, to Venice. Madrid, etc. Aline was always
waiting for him at the station. So, in 1890. they set it up; and it

turned out to be one of the most successful marriages any artist ever
enjoyed.
Aline held her own among the brilliant people who came to visit
**?
Renoir by becoming a wonderful cook; she liked to eat. which was a
great help. Her bouillabaisse was talked about everywhere. She had
been taught to play the piano, as a kind of young ladies accomplish-
ment: but. after hearing Chabrier play one evening, she never
touched the piano again. Degas, having seen Aline visit an art show

158
In the Streets of Paris with Renoir crowded with over-dressed socialites, paid Renoir .1
mpli-
ment: "Your wife was a queen visiting a tin u ["his is how Renoir
broke the news to Marie Meunier about the arrival of Jean in

"Chert Mademoiselle. Un gros garcon. Tom le monde hien portant.

Amities. " They were then living at the Chateau des Brouillards in il

rue Girardon in Montmartre where there was a lovely

can still see. What the art writer called Renoii
"
period had ended there.

Commenting on Renoir's re-found sensuality, Theodore Duret

says: "Renoir invested the Parisienne of the second hall oi the

nineteenth century with a certain grace and attractiveness comparable

to the charm with which the painters of the eighteenth century

endowed the women of another world and another class. "

The class
"Renoir's kindliness and good
is noticeable: his paintings of youthful maternity. Aline feeding Jean,
nature ennobled, so to speak, his
pictures of ordinary people In the etc., reintroduce us to people unseen in paint since the early Flemings.
voung girls of Montmartre who "I like women best when they don't know how to read and when
usually sat for him. he saw only llif
they wipe the baby's bottom themselves, " he said. He was reading
grace of youth, the naivete and
ingenuousness of their age. although Rabelais and Villon.
often enough they were neither pretty Theodore Duret called the two decades after the War of 1870.
nor ingenuous and he knew
"the heroic age of Impressionism. " Heroic is probably the word for
they weren't.
Georges Riviere, Renoir et ses amis Monet, Pissarro and Guillaumin who bore penury and public scorn

Auguste Renoir:
Young Woman with a Muff. Pastel.

Cabs in Paris. 1890. Photograph.

159
with fortitude, though not without resort to many stratagems for its

relief. In the case of Sisley, as self-effacing as he was deficient in guile,

the word is exact in its old chivalrous meaning.

At the Hotel Drouot sale in 187 5 he had sold 21 pictures for a
The Constancy of Nature
total of 2,445 francs, a little more than 100 francs a picture. This was
as high as his expectancy, or his amhition, reached: he thought that

if he could get that much regularly for his pictures, he could get by.

Alas, he was obliged to sell his later pictures to friends at 25 to 30

francs each. And yet. he was in his best period, his now famous Flood

at Marly having been painted at this time. In the autumn of 1877 he

settled in Sevres where he painted delicate landscapes, villages under
snow, blue and pink reflections on the snow, sometimes a silhouette
in black; the quality of softness and silence is there.

Whenever he had a few canvases in hand he would come to

Paris and take them to those few dealers who would be willing to
look at them. His greatest pleasure were the "impressionist " dinners
given once a month by Duret, Caillebotte or Dr. de Bellio at the Cafe
Riche. Here, in a convivial atmosphere, he met Pissarro. Renoir,
Alfred Sisley: Barges on the River Loing. Lithograph.

^ O'Mvw tlAN '0

)
r6-v<-v% Wvv ^ Olnv

Alfred Sisley: The Provencher Mill at Moret, 1881. Pencil.

Alfred Sisley Old ["hatched Coxtagi il les Sablons 188) Pencil.

Monet, Stephane Mallarme and, in 1890, Gustave Geffroy. One does

not know how Marie Sisley managed with her two growing children.
In 1880 the Sisleys moved to Moret-sur-Loing. a hamlet dating

from the middle ages, near the forest of Fontainebleau. The rest of
Sisley's life was devoted to painting Moret. its church, its mills, its

street, its bridge and the river Loing flowing placidly below, and
always the sky.
"The sky cannot be just a background." he wrote the critic.

Adolphe Tavernier. "It contributes, on the contrary, not only to give

depth by its planes (the sky has planes like the earth), it also gives
movement by its form, by its arrangement, in relation to the effect or
composition of the picture. Is there one thing more magnificent,
more changing, than that which occurs frequently in summer. mean I

ihuidc Monel Fishermen, about 1882. Pencil.

blue sky with beautiful erring clouds ? What movement, what allure
is not there? It produces the effect ol a wave when one is at sea; it

exalts, it pulls you along. Another sky. later in the evening. Its clouds
lengthen, take often the form of furrows, movements which seem to

160
 be immobilized in the middle of atmosphere, and little by little

disappear, absorbed by the setting sun. This one, more tender, more
melancholic; it has the charm of things which are going away
"
love it particularly.

The charm of things which are going away: one repeats the
phrase like a memorable epitaph.
Of Armand Guillaumin, the road laborer, Dealer Vollard wrote
"Sales dragged even more than Sisley. And yet, what works the
painter of La Creuse has given us [from] his easel in his studio in the
rue Servandoni
!

" When Vollard took one of his pictures, Guillaumin

said: "Look here, 1 hope they're not the sort of people who buy just
"
to cover their walls.

Pissarro, settled in Pontoise, was painting landscapes of match-

less serenity. Money did, at last, seem within grasp when, at an
auction sale in January 1873, five Pissarro landscapes were sold to an
anonymous bidder for a total of 2,570 francs. Excitedly Pissarro
wrote Duret: "The reactions from the public sale are making them-
CamilU /'issurro. Pasture ut Eragny. Print.
selves felt as far as Pontoise. People are very surprised that a picture

could sell for as much as 950 francs; it was even said that this was
astounding for a straight landscape. " Pissarro's friend Ludovic Piette
(who has left us a fine picture of Pissarro at work, his easel protected
by an umbrella) wrote: "Now that you are about to acquire a great

—
name and you certainly deserve it money, which has such good —
legs when it comes to escaping the chase of us other poor runners

always eagerly after its scent, money, I say, will no longer fail you.
Meanwhile, Pissarro had to admit to Duret: "I haven't a penny to
bless myself with. [But] 1 have worked very hard and I hope that this

year 1 shall at last place myself beyond the reach of want, at least

during the dead season. " He was planning "a biggish picture with
people, people out in the open " as soon as he had the money to pay
for models. Guillaumin was working by his side, "a capital fellow, I

"
am very fond of him.
A shadow was cast over the Pissarro family when Minette
(Jeanne-Rachel) died in 1874 at the age of nine. A portrait Pissarro

had made of her a couple of years previously shows her to have been
a very pretty and, possibly, a nervous child, for Pissarro's brush has

Armand Guillaumin Bunks

caught her awe-stricken expression as she holds to the pose her
: o/ffie River freuse. 1900. Charcoal.
father has put her in: to see what has awed her one has only to turn

to the patriarchal portrait Pissarro had made of himself a year

earlier. A fourth child, Felix, was born about three months later; he
was called Titi.

The Impressionists were, first and foremost, painters of color and light,
Earlier painters had looked at landscape like artillery officers: it

and their efforts to render the atmosphere often led them to break up was there, it was cover for God knows what, but it was solid and
contours: yet they were masters of line who daily practiced the art of
Monet changed that: he saw
had to be taken into consideration. all
drawing. Continually on the move, always in search of new subjects, they

filled their notebooks with sketches, lotting down a new motif at their first
landscape as an ever-changing chimera.
sight of it and carefully including the precise topographical indications. Light Duret explains how he went about it: "He begins to paint a
values and accurate linework retained the imprint of their impression.
first
landscape in the morning, when the earth is covered with mist, he-

will note on the canvas the reflected light that the rising sun throws
over the landscape and the mist which enshrouds it. And. since he
only paints any effect just so long as it actually exists before his eyes,

161
 " " "

it he wishes to record the effect of the rising sun. etc., he will be able
to work at his painting for only a brief space of time. He will have to
abandon it as soon as the sun has risen above the horizon ... he will
have to return to it another morning... For him, therefore, the
-

i
- -
% aspect of a landscape has no continuous duration, its color no
permanence. The appearance of nature changes with the seasons, the
Lift. <l*_. • * .' 4P /
days, the hours of the days and the conditions of temperature and
light. His sunshine warms, his snow makes a shadow.
It seems simple enough to us today. But Duret also tells us the
effect a landscape painted to this simple formula had upon the public
^!b2& ^r^-vi Mfi&te -* *
of his day.
"The aversion, the horror — I cannot find a word strong enough
to express the popular feeling — in which his work was held, was
such that, with the exception of half-a-dozen partisans, who had
more taste than wealth, and were regarded as lunatics, nobody
wanted to take the trouble to look at them; and when, by an extra-
"
ordinary chance, they were looked at, they were merely laughed at.

Thus, Manet, after visiting Monet at Argenteuil in 1874, wrote to

Duret: "I found him quite broken down and in despair. He asked me
to find someone who would take ten or twenty of his paintings at
100 francs each, the purchaser to choose. Shall we arrange the matter
between us, say 500 francs each? Of course, nobody, least of all he.

must know.
sr But then, a few months later, Eugene Manet told Berthe: "The
entire clan of painters is in distress. The dealers are overstocked.
Edouard [Manet] speaks of watching his expenses and giving up his
studio. "
And there were many letters, like that of Monet to Zola: "If
Gustave CaiUebotle: Paris Boulevard Seen from Aboi
I have not paid tomorrow night the sum of 600 francs, our furniture
and all I own will be sold and we'll be out in the street. I haven't a
"
single sou.

When a man is desperate he will dare the unthinkable. Shortly

after the disastrous second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, Monet
had put on his jacket with ruffled lace at the wrists, had taken his

gold-headed cane, and had called on the Director of the Western

Railroad. "I have decided to paint your station," he told the
Director. The railroaders were flattered. So far as they were aware
painting was something reserved to woodland sprites and the mytfrs
of ancient Rome. The idea that a painter might wish to depict
"In 8^"> a newcomer. Gustave Caillebotte. himself a painter, offered the
]
something as prosaic as a locomotive was a complete surprise to
Impressionists financial support which, for some of them, arrived in the nick
of time.
them, as it was, indeed, to many others. When Monet set up his easel

"Caillebotte was wealthy, generous, and a man of taste For the painters at the Gare Saint-Lazare they cleared the platforms, shunted the
he joined he was a loyal friend whose effectual help was always proffered in
trains about and halted the locomotive exactly where he wanted it.
so delicate a shape that they seemed rather to be obliging him by accepting it.

"He painted with ardor and not without talent His temperament brought
The result was eight paintings, several of them among Monet's finest,

him close to both Manet and Degas, to the former in general tonality, to the the high lighting of the glass roof, the vapor of the escape valves,
latter in choice of subjects. He underwent the influence of realism, or rather
providing a fresh and, even today, enchanting vision. The result
of literary naturalism, but he expressed it with a certain naivete, so that even
the most commonplace subjects he chose were not unattractive. He was for
evidently so encouraged Monet that he decided to remain in Paris
"
Renoir a staunch friend. and to continue painting the city, its streets and waterways.
Georges Riviere. Renoir amis
el ses
As Georges Riviere said: "It was he [Monet] who kept up the
courage of his friends in difficult times. With his fighting tempera-
ment he was bravely facing attacks like a bull irritated by banderillas,
but not frightened by them.

162
 republican victory in the Senatorial elections of October 877
The had taken the monarchists by surprise. Their hope of establishing
1

a regime similar to that of the late Louis Philippe, with the Count
ofChambord as titular monarch, had received an irrecoverable setback.

In all domains where monarchist sentiment was predominant, notably

that of official art. there was a wave of reaction. Suddenly delaissis

were all those painters whose attitude had been in any way ambi-
guous towards the Empire, such as Delacroix and. of course, Courbet
whose trial in absentia had hardly appeased Bonapartist rancor. The
prejudice extended to Corot, Daubigny, Daumier, Diaz and Millet, all

of whom died between 1875 and 1879, with the result that, when the
collectors boycotted the auction sales of their studio stocks, the art

market was flooded with their works.

"The culminating point of the reaction, " says Professor Lionello
Venturi in Archives of Impressionism, "came in 1878, on the occa-
sion of the Universal Exposition of that year, when the jury of
Paul Cezanne
official artists excluded, not only Manet and the Impressionists, but Dr. Gachel in the Studio, 1873.

also Delacroix, Millet. Rousseau, Decamps, Barye, Ricard and Troyon. Charcoal.

This was too much ... In collaboration with his former clients
Durand-Ruel arranged an exhibition of authentic French painting,
1830-1870. showing the finest works of Corot, Delacroix and Courbet 1 have found it [the exhibition of
which 'opened the eyes' of the collectors.
1876] decidedly interesting. But the
In these circumstances the Impressionists were obliged to fall

back upon their old supporters, none of them overly affluent. effect of it was to make me think
The first dealers who had to do with the Impressionists were the better than ever of all the good old
itinerant salesmen who sold them their supplies and sometimes rules which decree that beauty is
bought their pictures, not necessarily because there was a sale for
beauty and ugliness ugliness, and warn
them, but probably to encourage further purchases of colors, canvas,
etc. Of this order was "Father" Martin, a man of many parts, a
us off from the sophistications of
former stonemason, a onetime choralist, who was buying jongkind's satiety . . . None of its members show
work when Pissarro. Monet, Sisley and Cezanne began dealing with signs of possessing first-rate talent,
him; in return, he sometimes bought their paintings. On one
and indeed the "impressionist" doctrines
occasion he exchanged a small Cezanne and 50 francs against a
Monet, a deal Monet was pleased to make because he liked the little
strike me as incompatible, in an
Cezanne. Martin bought the two pictures by Pissarro which had been artist's mind, with the existence of
hung in the 1870 Salon, but a year or so later refused any longer to first-rate talent. To embrace them you
handle Pissarro, because he disliked "the heavy common style and
must be provided with a plentiful
that muddy palette of his. " Martin's luckiest break appears to have
been his bid of 500 francs for Renoir's The Loge at the auction sale
absence of imagination . . .

HENRY JAMES
following the first Impressionist exhibition.
Of a very different character was "Father" Tanguy, whom
Pissarro, Renoir and Monet had met in Fontainebleau forest. As a
color-grinder, employed at Edouard's, rue Clauzel, his hands were
normally stained black, a circumstance which had caused him to be
summarily arrested Communard musketeer during the
as a suspected

suppression of the Paris Commune. Among those many thousands

herded into the concentration camp at Sartory he had been saved
by the intervention of Henri Rouart. the amateur painter and
engineer who, at the time, was an artillery officer in the same
regiment as Degas. A short thickset little man with dark blue
eyes and a neatly trimmed beard (Van Gogh made a portrait of him

163
Friends, Collectors, and Dealers later) Tanguy was now installed in a clingy little room, 14 rue
Clauzel. where he sold colors and bought an occasional picture. His

views on the new trend were very simple: it was necessary to

eliminate "tobacco juice" and to paint "thick," i.e. to use good

clean colors and plenty of them. He was suspicious of anyone who
asked for a tube of black. "Tell Tanguy to send me some paints,"
Pissarro wrote his son Lucien. "What I need most are ten tubes of
white, two of chrome yellow, one bright red, one brown lac, one
ultramarine, five Veronese green, one cobalt ..." Tanguy and Pissarro

liked to talk politics ; they were both socialists of a sort. Tanguy had an
engaging way of looking closely at a newly acquired painting and
looking up at the painter with an expression that might have been that
of a loving father. Many of the paintings in his shop had been acquired
in lieu of payment of a color bill, which is how he had come to possess

Cezanne's Achille Emperaire. Cezanne left the keys of his studio with
Father Tanguy when he went to Aix in the summer. If a customer
wanted a Cezanne painting Tanguy took him around to the studio
where the canvases were stacked and let him choose what he liked,

payment according to size, forty francs for small canvases, a hundred

for the larger ones. There were even some unstretched canvases on
which Cezanne had painted several little studies. He left it to Tanguy
to cut them up with the scissors for collectors who could not afford
forty francs. Later, when Vollard heard about this, he exclaimed:
"Imagine, paying a louis and marching off with three little Cezanne
apples!" After Tanguy 's death in 1894 his stock was put up for
auction at the Hotel Drouot, where four Cezanne landscapes were
Augusle Renoir Portrait oj Victor Chocqutl, 187
sold for 145. 175, 275 and 170 francs respectively: two others went
for less than 40 francs each. It was on Pissarro's advice that Vollard

began buying Cezannes and eventually cornered the market — when

there was a market.

In a sense Ambroise Vollard replaced Tanguy as the impressionist

dealer, except that, coming much later in their development, he

benefited from their increasing recognition. Born on the island of
Reunion in the Indian Ocean, the son of a minor French colonial
official, he had come to Paris as a young man, frankly seeking his

fortune. For a time he had worked in the shop of a fashionable art

dealer where he had quickly sized up the possibilities of the trade. He

had begun by privately trading art objects among collectors and had
then opened a little shop, 4 rue Laffitte. He had won the confidence of
many artists by bringing them objects or pictures which his acumen
told him would be of particular interest to them. His manner of
approach was deferential, usually phrased in the terms of old-
fashioned courtesy, yet also rough-edged and bold. He was soon on
good terms with Degas, Renoir, Cezanne and Pissarro. whose taste

he respected, and (in the not-so-distant future) would have dealings

with Gauguin, Bonnard, Matisse, Derain, Rouault, Picasso, Chagall,
in greater or lesser degree. An observant recorder of artistic idiosyn-

crasy, his recollections add much to impressionist lore.

It is Vollard who tells us the sequel to the meeting between

Renoir and Victor Chocquet, after the latter had written to Renoir
Paul Cezanne Portrait oj Victor Chocquet, 1876-1877. asking him if he would make a portrait of his wife. Chocquet

164
occupied a minor position, a sinecure, in the Finance Ministry and
lived with his wife in the attic apartment at 204 rue de Rivoli. He had
a small private income and his wife, fifteen years his junior, was in

line to inherit a considerable fortune. A passionate collector, who

wore rags in order to save money with which to buy paintings, he

had managed, by keeping a sharp watch on the auction rooms, to

acquire an exceptional collection of Delacroix watercolors and several

oils. He had asked Delacroix to paint a portrait of his wife, but the

old painter had excused himself on account of eye trouble. Evidently

it was The Loge, seen by Chocquet at the Hotel Drouot auction sale in
1875, that inspired him to commission Renoir. At least three portraits

of Madame Chocquet were painted by Renoir, one in the manner of

The Loge, another airy picture of her standing with her back to the
attic window (lost, alas, in the ruins of Bremen during World War II).

Renoir was not the kind of man to keep a find like Chocquet to

himself and induced Chocquet to buy a little Cezanne from Tanguy.

The tactics for circumventing Madame Chocquet's anticipated horror
at this purchase, were worked out by Renoir. Arriving at the
Chocquet apartment with the Cezanne picture, Renoir shows it to

Chocquet. "Oh! What an odd little picture! " cries Chocquet, raising
his voice to attract his wife's attention. Then, calling her to him:
"Marie, come look at the little painting that Renoir has brought to
Auguste Renoir. Ambroise Vollard Holding a Maillol Statuette. 1908.
show me! " Madame makes some polite remark and Renoir omits to
take the painting home. Vollard tells how. when he took the pose for this portrait.

Cezanne required of him an absolute immobility: "As soon as he

When Madame Chocquet had got to the point of tolerating
had applied the first brushstroke, and to the very end of the sitting,
Cezanne's nude bathers, Chocquet asked Renoir to bring Cezanne on he treated the model as he would a simple still life.
"
After one

a visit. Cezanne arrives in his usual dress, this time wearing an old hundred and fifteen sittings, Cezanne remarked: "I am not dissatis-
"
fied with the shirttront.
cap borrowed from Guillaumin, and launches into his prepared lines.
"
"Renoir tells me that you admire Delacroix?
"I adore him, " says Chocquet. "Let's look over my Delacroix's
"
together. They begin with the pictures on the walls and end sitting on
their knees with Delacroix watercolors spread over the floor and walls.
Thus Chocquet becomes a Cezanne enthusiast. And by the exercise

of similar tactics he is taken to Argenteuil and introduced to Monet.

Renoir and Cezanne made half-a-dozen finished portraits of
Chocquet, all of them flattering when matched beside the sketches
for same. After the Chocquets came into their inheritance in 1882
they saw less of Cezanne and Renoir and their interest in impres-
sionist painting diminished. Chocquet's collecting passion turned to
eighteenth century objets d'art.
From the time of the first group exhibition the Impressionists
had won several valuable patrons who helped them, sometimes
indirectly, in their subsequent struggles. Count Armand Doria, who
had bought Cezanne's House of the Hanged Man after the first
exhibition (he later exchanged it for another Cezanne in the posses-
sion of Chocquet), was related to Madame Charpentier. wife of the
publisher, and it was probably through Doria that Renoir was
introduced to the Charpentiers as a portrait painter. Yet another
patron was the operatic baritone jean-Baptiste Faure, who bought
one of Monet's Snow Effects in 1870 or thereabouts, later became a
firm supporter of Manet and Degas, though having a long-lasting ezanne Portrait oj Ambroise Vollard, 189

165
 difference with the latter, faure, on Degas's behalf, bought back
frpm Durand-Ruel six canvases which Degas wanted to re-work. In

return lor this favor it was formally agreed that Degas would paint

letter from Degas to the singer and co a I <tistt Faur< March 1877
lour large pictures lor Faure. Two ol these were delivered in 1876,

My dear Mr Faure. but Faure had to wait eleven years and to sue Degas for the
have received your letter with greal sadness prefer to write to you
1 I

remaining two; the rise in the value of Degas's work was no doubt at
rather than to see you
Your pictures would have been fini: I
il 1 had not been obliged the bottom of the dispute. At a despairing moment in Sisley's life,

daily to do something to earn money Faure. at his own expense, took the painter to England where Sisley
You have no idea of the troubles ol all kinds that are bearing down on
made a series of pictures of the Thames valley.
me.
Degas was no doubt alluding to thi (ami!) business reverses and debts that There were two doctors among the early patrons of the Impres-
weighed so heavily on him (or man) sionists. Dr Georges de Bellio and Dr Paul-Ferdinand Gachet,
who had a nodding acquaintance with each other, both acquired
important impressionist collections, partly by purchase, but mostly
by gift of the grateful owners. Both doctors prescribed medicines for
numerous ailing Pissarros and Dr Gachet had the honor of attending
Pissarro's mother who lived to be ninety-four. Both were called in by
Renoir when his favorite model. Margot, lay dying (they were unable
to save her). Both attended Camille Monet and both lent Monet small
sums of money. (
"... It is a sad situation to be in at my age. " wrote
Monet —he was thirty-eight — to de Bellio. "always obliged to beg, to
.

solicit buyers . . ") De Bellio was at Caillebotte's bedside and later

attended Seurat; Dr Gachet was Gauguin's doctor and took care of
Van Gogh in his last hours.

Dr de Bellio. a Rumanian, was a gentleman of independent

means and a member of the little group which dined at the Cafe
Riche. Dr Gachet was a defiant non-conformist, flamboyant in his
manner and dress, but very gentle and sensitive in his personal
relationships. He had painted oils in his youth, but had felt the call to
medicine. He was much impressed by the theories of Proudhon and
liked to hear Courbet discoursing on art at the Brasserie des Martyrs;
later he had become an habitue of the Cafe Guerbois and, still later, of
the Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes. He still drew a little and kept an
engraving press at his house in Auvers, quantities of paper and copper
plates which he freely loaned to his artist friends. In 1882 Renoir
might have died of pneumonia but for Dr Gachet's timely attention.
He looked after Hortense Cezanne and her small boy. He also attended
Berthe Morisot.
Vincent van Gogh: Le I'crc Tanguy, 1887.
Armand Guillaumin had known Eugene Murer as a youth in

Moulins. It was an agreeable surprise, therefore, to find him conduct-

"Tanguy, having become the dealer of Pissarro and Cezanne, saw himself
taken up by young unrecognized artists who could find a welcome nowhere
ing a pastry shop on the Boulevard Voltaire; it meant a free meal
else and for whom it was in short a stroke of luck to find themselves under from time to time. When Murer expanded his business to include a
his wing, alongside painters who had already awakened a certain interest -

regular restaurant Guillaumin brought along Renoir, an old hand at

His shop was then visited by art lovers in works which
search of low-priced
were generally despised but in which they divined merit and some promise of shop decoration, who painted garlands of flowers on the ceiling.
future success These art lovers were joined by the artists themselves, anxious When Monet, Pissarro and Sisley began dropping in Murer worked
i" see each other's works, and they were followed by that nondescript crowd
out a system by which he accepted a painting in payment for a
ol young people, men of letters or men calling themselves such who
inevitably gravitate around artists ol any kind Tanguy's shop, frequented by
certain number of free meals. Sisley was particularly grateful: he was
a group of men with common aspirations, was thus raised to the level of an actually starving. It was good business for Murer because the paint-
"
art center Theodore Duret ings, hung in the restaurant, brought a number of literary people to
the restaurant and Murer had literary ambitions. Soon there were
regular Wednesday dinners at Murer's: Georges Riviere, Cezanne,
Father Tanguy, Cabaner, Dr Gachet, even Hoschede', the dime store

166
magnate, came along. The genius of the pastry department was
Murer's half-sister. Marie-Therese Meunier. a woman "of fine pre- Eugene Murer, "worker, literary man
himself), summed up his friends as follows
sence" according to Renoir who. with Pissarro, made portraits of
PISSARRO: "I have his palette .u b I with dried
her. To help Pissarro. who was in great need, Murer organized a and ready tor work. It is heavy, turbid , , isli

lottery in which the prize was a Pissarro painting. The winning ticket just like Pissarro's painting. His uno
rather ponderous independence, was n
was held by the kitchen help who asked if she might take one of
at. like the arl ol his three brothers in ai ii and
Mademoiselle Meunier's big cream-puffs instead. Sisley. He attracted but did not please

Murer and his half-sister moved to Rouen where they took over RENOIR: "Renoir, an elusive, sprightly, changeable artist

much an experimenter, restless foi something else, always tackled

the Hotel du Dauphine et d'Espagne, one of their advertised attrac-
the unexpected because lie found in it new and highei emotions
tions being. "A magnificent collection of Impressionist paintings which make each ol his pictures a genuine creation
which can be seen any day without charge between ten and six. SISLEY: "The most sensitive ol the Impressionists with the soul and
"
brush of a poet.
A late buyer was Ernest Hoschede. the wealthy owner of Au
A
MONET: "A bladder of color. great painter.
Gagne Petit, a cut-price department store on the Avenue de l'Opera.

and the publisher of L'Art et la Mode. Hoschede had begun investing

in Impressionist paintings around 1876. At the third Impressionist
exhibition in 1877 eleven of the Monets were on loan from Hoschede. "Cezanne seemed to take to me. we became friends and he asked me to

The following year Hoschede went bankrupt and the court pose for a portrait, in hopes of exhibiting the canvas at the Salon, the 'Salon

ordered him to sell his collection of paintings. Thus, five Manets, of Bouguereau, ' as he called it, and 'possibly,' he added, 'we may even be
awarded a medal!' So for almost three months he came to me nearly every
twelve Monets, thirteen Sisleys and nine Pissarros came under the day. During this time he produced what is. though unfinished, one of his

hammer at the Hotel Drouot. The bids were contemptible, the finest works. The library, the papers on the table, the little plaster cast by
Rodin, the rose which he brought in at the beginning of the sittings,
Monets averaging 184 francs and the Sisleys 114 francs. One Pissarro artificial

everything is first-rate, and there is of course also a figure in this setting

went for seven francs, another for ten. "The Hoschede sale has
painted with such meticulous care. . . The face, however, he only sketched
finished me off, " said Pissarro. and went off to stay with his friend out, and he would always say: 'I'm keeping that for the end. ' Alas, the end
never came!" Gustave Geffroy. Monel
Ludovic Piette at Montfoucault. So set back were the Impressionists
that they postponed their annual exhibition (their fourth) until the

following year. At the Salon, which coincided with a Universal

Exposition, all the impressionist painters were excluded.
It must have seemed a more than fortuitous break when Madame
Hoschede arranged to rent a house for Monet on the Seine near
Vetheuil where Camille could wait out her new pregnancy. When she
died there, in 1879, shortly after her delivery, Monet wrote a hasty

note to Dr de Bellio, asking him "to retrieve from the pawn shop the

locket for which I am sending you the ticket. It is the only souvenir

that my wife had been able to keep and I should like to tie it around
her neck before she leaves forever. " Next morning, as he put the

locket in place, Monet found himself looking into Camille's still

features, conscious of noting, with a kind of professional interest, the

darkening shades in which death and dissolution were registering

their presence.

Camille had been nursed in her last hours by Alice Hoschede.

who had arrived at Vetheuil with her six children a short time
before. The collapse of the Hoschede enterprises had brought about
her separation from the department store owner. Alice stayed on at

Vetheuil, looking after her own and Monet's children. It was one of
the worst winters in memory, the frozen Seine and the subsequent
floods providing Monet with the motifs for ten paintings. But he no
longer had to worry about where the next meal was coming from,
nor did he ever again write a begging letter. Alice took over and in

1892 they were married.

Yet, though he lived to be doyen of all the painters of his epoch,
Monet never again painted a human face, save his own. Paul Cezanne: Portrait of Gustave Geffroy, 1895

167
 :

1879 President MacMahon had resigned, thus tacitly admitting

Inthat there was no longer any possibility of overthrowing the Third
Republic or of restoring the monarchy by constitutional means.
Jules Grevy, a Liberal, was elected in his place and his personal action
during the next seven or eight years did much to bring about the
lasting effacement of the executive. As President of the Republic,
Grevy contented himself with exercising a "magistrative influence"
-

in bridging successive coalition governments. Thus, while cabinets

came and went, the right of dissolving a government fell into
desuetude and the atmosphere of national crisis vanished from
French government. The function of President no longer attracted
"personalities " and at the same time the power of the Assembly to
destroy a government was reduced, a system which finally gave
France government stability such as she had not had before, or has
had since. In August 1884 two significant sentences were written into
the republican constitution: (1) "The republican form of government
cannot be the subject of a proposal for revision, " and (2) "members
Edouard Manet
of the families which have reigned over France are ineligible to be
Letter to habelle

Lemonnier. probably
' ' presidents of the Republic. " A general amnesty for Communards and
of July \}. 1880. other political offenders was declared; the Marseillaise became the
official national anthem, and Bastille Day, July 14, a national holiday.
In 1881 the government, recognizing the existence of abuses, delivered
the organization of the Salon des Arts into the hands of the artists
Impressionism achieved something
themselves who were empowered to elect their own jury and to
more than a technical advance.
establish their own standards for the admission of works of art.
It expressed a real and valuable The Impressionists had won their battle. They had succeeded
ethical position. As Count Nieuwerkerke because they had paralleled (in fact, were a part of) a social revolu-

tion which, at great cost, but also to the greater glory of France, had
correctly observed, it was the painting
accomplished that most difficult of all transitions, the passage from
of democrats. Impressionism is the
authoritarian dictatorship to democratic republicanism. They had
perfect expression of democratic yet to enjoy the fruits of victory and, if this was to be slow in

humanism, of the good life which was, coming, so was the reform of public taste, deformed by thirty years

of pretension. The trend, however, was already noticeable in the

until recently, thought to be within
accounts at Durand-Ruel's: whereas in 1880 Durand-Ruel had paid
reach of all.
MNNITH ( [ARK out a total of 10.000 francs to Sisley, Pissarro and Degas, in 1881 he
paid out a total of 71.000 francs to the same three artists, plus Renoir

and Monet.
Renoir was already making plans for the reform of the Salon des
Arts. He had abandoned the Impressionist group exhibitions after
1877 when his society portraits had been shown at the Salon. "There
are in Paris, " he had said, "fewer than fifteen collectors capable of
liking a painter outside the Salon. There are eighty thousand who
will not even buy a nose if it is not of the Salon. " Sisley had quit the

group and Monet had weakened; both felt that the group exhibitions
tied them to Durand-Ruel when they might be doing business with
his competitors. The sixth group exhibition in 1881 was held without
the participation of Renoir. Monet, Sisley, Cezanne and Caillebotte,

leaving of the original Impressionists only Degas, Morisot and Guillau-

min. With this in mind Renoir drew up plans for a reorganized

Salon, divided into four sections, each section limited to one thousand
works, each with its own jury. These he reserved for (1) members of

168
the Institute, (2) foreigners, (3) historical and genre painters, (4)

naturalists and impressionists. To his surprise and disappointment no

one was interested. The Salon had ceased to be an issue; as he would
discover within a few years, the whole field of art was about to be
Gatherings at the Cafe de la Nouvelle Athenes
fragmented into a score of new and, even for Renoir, radical
tendencies. The Salon would be left to ossify in obscurity.

"I did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the

Nouvelle-Athenes. What is the Nouvelle-Athenes? ...The Nouvelle-

Athenes is a cafe on the Place Pigalle. Ah! the morning idlenesses and
the long evenings when life was but summer
a illusion, the grey
moonlights on the Place Pigalle where we used to stand on the
pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to separate,
thinking of what we had left unsaid, and how much better we might
have enforced our arguments... How magnetic, intense, and vivid
are these memories of youth! With what strange, almost unnatural
clearness do I see and hear ... I can hear the glass door of the cafe grate In the seventies the Cafe Guerbois was superseded by the Nouvelle
on the sand as I open it. I can recall the smell of every hour. In the Athenes as the artists' meeting place. Situated in the Place Pigalle. it was
familiarly known as the Cafe of the Intransigents, after the Impressionists had
morning that of eggs frizzling in butter, the pungent cigarette, coffee
taken to meeting there at the time of the first group exhibition in 1874. Degas
and bad cognac; at five o'clock the fragrant odour of absinthe; and painted his Absinthe Drinkers at the Nouvelle Athenes. taking as his model the

soon after the steaming soup ascends from the kitchen; and as the engraver Marcellin Desboutin, who was one of its legendary figures. All the

evening advances, the mingled smells of cigarettes, coffee, and weak

Guerbois regulars now betook themselves to Place Pigalle — Manet. Degas,
and the critics Duranty. Duret and Burty. Others joined the group: Georges
beer. A partition, rising a few feet or more over the hats, separates Riviere. Forain. Henri Guerard, Zandomenghi. Jean Richepin. Villiers de

the glass front from the main body of the cafe. The usual marble lisle-Adam. Armand Silvestre, Charles Cros. the musician Cabaner, and also
George Moore who has so well described the Nouvelle Athenes in his
tables are there, and it is there we sat and aestheticized till two Confessions of a Young Man. Renoir dropped in regularly, but Monet. Pissarro.
o'clock in the morning ..." Cezanne and Sisley. all living in the country, only came occasionally.
"The habitues of the Nouvelle Athenes, as they were in 1874 and later,
Thus, George Moore, the Irish novelist, reconstructs the Cafe de
formed the first sympathetic public that the Impressionists had met ; from
la Nouvelle-Athenes which had replaced the Cafe Guerbois as the there was launched the propaganda that was to provide them with a phalanx
favorite haunt of the avant-garde intellectuals and artists in Paris of partisans "
(Georges Riviere).

The Cafe de la Nouvelle Athenes -

in Mcmtmartre, 1906.
Photograph.

G. C. *.. P»H« 794 Montmartre. — l7a rue Pijjalle — Nouvelle Athenes

169
 "

during the late seventies and early eighties of the last century. The Around Manet, Esteem and Admiration,
cafe's other distinction was that it had a picture of a dead rat painted the Smile of Women and Flowers
on its ceiling. Here came Renoir, sometimes Pissarro, and such
people as Duranty, Cabaner, Castagnary, Daudet, Nadar, Gambetta
and, of course, Manet and Degas, as Moore informs us:

"At that moment the glass door of the Cafe grated upon the
sanded floor and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art

essentially a Parisian, there was something in his appearance and

manner of speaking that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it
—
was his dress his clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those
square shoulders that swaggered as he went across a room, and the
thin waist; and that face, the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say?
No, for I would evoke an idea of beauty of line united to that of
intellectual expression — frank words, frank passion in his convic-

tions, loyal and simple phrases, clear as well-water, sometimes a

little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, bitter, but at the
fountain-head sweet and full of light. He sits next to Degas, that
round-shouldered man in suit of pepper-and-salt. There is nothing
very trenchantly French about him either, except the large necktie;

his eyes are small, and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. These
two men are the leaders of the impressionist school.

Manet had become a celebrity, besieged by interviewers, writers,

dealers, fashionable ladies and gentlemen. He welcomed them all to
his new studio on the ground floor of a luxurious building, 4 rue

hiouari Manet : Spring

Ijcanne Demarsy). 1882.

Print.

1 d< hi. i i.l Mane I : Woman's Head.

Red Chalk

Stephanc Mallarme,
\U-rv I aureni and Manet
(seated) photographed in 1872.

170
 Saint-Petersbourg. It had been a salle d'armes

spacious room with a high beamed ceiling am

dominated by the referee's rostrum, with a silk curtain hiding

former armory; tall windows and bakom. overlooked the

Mosnier, on one hand, and, on the other, the Pont de 1'Europe which
crossed the new railroad to the Gare Saint-Lazare. Ever)
locomotive steamed past — a thrilling sound, then —the whole
ing shook. Manet had installed a piano, a Louis XV consoli

Japanese tapestry decorated with flower and bird designs, some

chairs and settees upholstered in green plush. "Otherwise," says
Charles Toche (as reported by Vollard), "everything was of monkish
simplicity, not a useless piece of furniture, not a knick-knack, but

everywhere the most brilliant studies on the walls and easels ... on
the mantelpiece, a plaster cat with a pipe in its mouth.
He had affairs with beautiful and notorious women, such as
Nina de Villard, of whom he made a remarkable portrait he called

The Black Cat, and Mery Laurent, the former mistress of Dr Evans (the
American dentist who had helped smuggle the Empress Eugenie to

England when the Commune broke loose).

Manet had been in bad health for several years. The disease
which he had contracted in his youth, possibly on his trip to Rio de
Janeiro, had been but superficially cured. In the late seventies Manet
had begun to display the symptoms of locomotor ataxia and ulcera-
tion of his left foot, neither of which yielded to treatment.
When he could no longer stand before his easel he took a
villa at Rueil, near Versailles, where there was a flower garden which
he painted from a wheel-chair after the brilliant manner of the

Impressionists. Meanwhile, his childhood friend, Antonin Proust, had

been appointed Minister of Fine Arts in a cabinet formed by Gam-
betta. Proust began by buying for the nation a series of paintings by
- ' & «- '
'*** Courbet and by recommending Manet for the Legion of Honor.
President Grevy objected, but was overruled by Gambetta in accord-

ance with the executive powers of the Assembly. From Capri, where
Ste'phane Mallarme' (standing) and Renoir (seated) photographed by Degas.

In the mirror, Madame Mallarme' and her Daughter.

he was painting, Renoir wrote to Manet: "I... salute you as the
painter beloved by everyone, officially recognized . . . You are the

happy fighter, without hatred for anyone . . . and I like you for that

gaiety maintained even in the midst of injustice.

Exhibited at the Salon of 1882 Bar at the Folics-Bergcre was coldly
"Nothing less resembled Degas's deliberately hard character, direct to the
received by public and critics, including the ferocious Albert Wolff,
point of brutality, than Mallarme's deliberate character... Nothing less

resembled Degas's brilliant intransigence, his judgments rendered with im- to whom Manet wrote, saying: "I shouldn't mind reading while I'm
placable banter, the summary and sarcastic executions which he never still alive the splendid article which you will write about me once I

withheld, his always perceptible bitterness, his terrible variations of mood,

am dead. " Officially nominated Knight of the Legion of Honor when
his outbursts, than Mallarme's smooth, agreeable, delicate, delightfully ironic
manner. the Salon closed, Manet was congratulated by, among others, Count
"I think Mallarme stood in some awe of this character so different from Nieuwerkerke, to whom he tartly replied that had the Count conferred
his own.
the honor he might have made his fortune by this time, whereas now
"As for Degas, he spoke in the kindest terms of Mallarme, of the man
above The work seemed to him the fruit of a mild madness which had
all. it was too late to compensate for twenty years' lack of success.
come over the mind of a marvelously gifted poet. " To his friend Proust, Manet said: "The fools. They were forever
Paul Valery, Degas, Danse, Dessin telling me that my work was unequal. That was the highest praise
they could bestow. Yet it was always my ambition to rise —not to

remain at a certain level, not to remake one day what I had made the
day before, but to be inspired again and again by a new aspect of

171
 "

things, to strike frequently a fresh note. Ah. I'm before my time. A Mary Cassatt

hundred years hence people will be happier, for their sight will be
clearer than ours today.

In April 1883, Manet's left foot was gangrenescent. The surgeons "I cannot bring myself to admit that a woman draws
were of the opinion that amputation was necessary. Dr Gachet, who
SO Well. Degas speaking of Mary Cassatt
was in attendance, protested vigorously and there was an argument
on the merits of homeopathic treatment as against surgery. Manet
agreed to submit to surgery and his leg was amputated. He died on Mary Cassatt came of a wealthy Pittsburgh family and spent much of her
April 30, 1883. childhood in Europe. After some early training at the Pennsylvania Academy
Antonin Proust: "This war to of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, she studied art in Paris shortly before the War
just before dying, Manet had told
of 1870. She copied the masters at the Louvre and took a keen interest in the
the knife has done me much harm. I have suffered from it greatly, new work of Manet and the Impressionists. After her meeting with Degas.
but it has whipped me up ... I would not want that any artist should who came to her studio in 1877. she began taking part in the group exhib-
itions. She bought impressionist pictures herself and encouraged her friends
be praised and covered with adulation at the outset, for that means
"
and relations to do so; in this she rendered a signal service to her new friends.
the annihilation of his personality. Although she was a great admirer of Degas, her own work has an incontest-
When Duret began preparing for a posthumous exhibition of able originality, a highly personal note of feminine intimacy. Her sensitive
pictures of mothers and children, both in oils and etchings, have a charm
Manet's work in 1884, he was refused the use of the galleries of the
to which Degas and the others warmly responded. In a letter to his son Lucien,
Ecole des Beaux Arts by Professor Kaempfen, the director, who told
Pissarro wrote in 1893: "Miss Cassatt is holding a very fine exhibition of
Duret that he was surprised at the request as in his opinion the artist paintings at Durand-Ruel's. Her work is very good indeed !
"
Degas often took
her as model, sketching her as she walked through the galleries of the
was nothing less than a revolutionary. Jules Ferry, minister of public
Louvre with a catalogue in her hand, or at the milliner's trying on hats.
instruction, overruled Kaempfen and the exhibition was a grand Mary Cassatt soon became the Impressionists' most effective agent in the

success. According to the memoirs of Durand-Ruel who, with Georges United States. Durand-Ruel and later Vollard often called upon her services;
knowing the material difficulties of her painter friends, she never refused her
Petit, organized the sale of Manet's studio effects, all the paintings
help. In his Souvenirs d'un marchand ie tableaux, Vollard pays tribute to her
were sold, mostly to new collectors, for a total sum of 116.637 selfless generosity and her repeated exertions in favor of Monet. Pissarro.
francs. At the Universal Exposition, five years later, Manet was ranked Renoir. Cezanne and Sisley.

among the masters of the century. Olympia put on view, attracted

special attention and a fund was started to purchase the painting

for the Nation.

"Do you remember, " Degas said to George Moore one day,
Edgar Degas: Mary Cassatt in the Louvre, about 1879. Pencil.
"how Manet used to turn on me when wouldn't send my paintings I

to the Salon? He would say, 'You, Degas, you are above the level of

the sea, but for my part, if I get into an omnibus and someone there J
doesn't say, "There, Monsieur Manet,how are you, where are you
going? " am disappointed, for then know that am not famous.
I I I

Degas was remembering the incident happily: Manet was now (

famous.
One of Degas's earliest admirers was a young American girl >
who had bought one of his pastels in a little shop in Paris and,
without knowing anything about the artist, had liked it so much that
she had bought others, paying less than a hundred francs for some.
Mary Cassatt had decided that she wanted to be a painter and had set

about realizing her ambition in a thoroughly businesslike manner,

first studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1864 to
1865), then going to Italy where she had copied Correggio and other
masters. Arriving finally in Paris, her painting had been accepted by
the Salons. 1872 to 1876, but on being rejected in 1877, she had
joined the Impressionists.
She had already met Degas, tor whom, says George Biddle. the
American painter, "she had a veneration. What he felt was actually
her law and standard ... I have never seen a great and successful
artist who so ungrudgingly acknowledged the debt to an earlier and
.
9~3*
lifelong influence. . " Born in Allegheny City. Pennsylvania. May 11.

172
 1844, Mary Cassatt was the daughter of a wealthy Pittsburgh banker
and a sister of Alexander J.
Cassatt, President of the Pennsylvania

Railroad. When in 1876 Degas explained to her the difficulties which

had brought Durand-Ruel to the verge of bankruptcy, she had
able to arrange a loan which set the art dealer on his feet again

and enabled him to recommence dealing with the Impressionists.

Mary Cassatt was, it seems, the model for a series of pictures

which Degas made of women trying on hats at the milliner's, which
reveal her fringe of chestnut hair and pert well-cut features, large

competent hands and narrow waist. Pissarro left canvases which she
would try to sell at her tea parties. "It was with a sort of frenzy

that generous Mary Cassatt labored for the success of her comrades,
Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne, Sisley and the rest," says Vollard, "But
what indifference where her own painting was concerned! What
an aversion to 'pushing' her own work in public. One day at an
exhibition, they were arguing for and against the Impressionists.
'But,' said someone, speaking to Mary Cassatt, without knowing
who she was, 'you are forgetting a foreign painter that Degas ranks
Mary Cassatt: Feeding rh<r Ducks, 1895. Color Etching.
very high.'
'Who is that?' she asked in astonishment.
'Mary Cassatt.

'Oh, nonsense!' she exlaimed without false modesty.

She went out painting with Renoir, who noted that "she carried
her easel like a man. " Over a glass of cider, she told Renoir: "There
Mary Cassatt: Woman at her Toilette. 1891. Drypoint and Aquatint.
is one thing against your technique: it is too simple. The public does
not like that. "
Renoir was flattered. She criticized Monet for his lack

of "mentality," but commissioned him to paint her brother, the

railroad magnate (and detested the result). Her friends Louisine and
Henry Havemeyer listened to her advice and the Havemeyer collec-

tion in the New York Metropolitan Museum is the result.

It was largely due to Mary Cassatt's influence and financial

backing that Durand-Ruel decided to hold an exhibition of Impres-

sionist painting in New York. Leaving his gallery in Paris to the
direction of his son Joseph, he left for New York in March 1886,

accompanied by his son Charles, with three hundred canvases by

Millet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas, Whistler, Mori-
sot, Boudin, Guillaumin, Forain, Seurat, Signac, et al. According to
the New York Daily Tribune seven to eight pictures were sold within
two weeks and the critics were disarmed by the number of important
collectors among the buyers. The show lasted two months and was a

success. In his memoirs Durand-Ruel says that the American art

dealers had not opposed the exhibition, taking it for granted that it

would fail. But when Durand-Ruel made arrangements for a second

exhibition to open at the end of 1886 he encountered difficulties with

the U.S. Customs, and was obliged to postpone it until 1887.

"Without America, I was lost, ruined, through having bought so

many Monets and Renoirs, " Durand-Ruel said years later. "Two
expositions there, in 1886-1887, saved me. The American public does
not laugh, it buys —moderately, it is true: but, thanks to it. Monet
and Renoir could continue to live; and since then, as everyone
"
knows, the French public has followed suit.

173
 " "

Pissarro's Influence on the Younger Generation Said Renoir: "We perhaps owe it to the Americans that we did
not die of hunger.

It was through the banker Gustave Arosa. a collector of modern picture'. Each year, 1879 through 1882, there had been an Impressionist
and Gauguin's godfather, that Pissarro met the future painter of the South exhibition, usually in the rooms of empty houses that had just been
Seas. Gauguin at that time, in the late 1870s. was a prosperous stockbroker
built or were being reconditioned in the more frequented streets. In
and an amateur painter. Pissarro took him in hand and guided his efforts,

and the two men often worked together at Pontoise after 1879. From 1879 1883, March through June, there had been an exhibition in the
on. Gauguin took part in all the group exhibitions. After suffering heavy Boulevard de la Madeleine where each month had been devoted to a
losses in the stock market crash of 1882. Gauguin gave up his stockbroking
different artist, first Monet, then Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley. In the
job and in 1883 made up his mind "to paint every day. " He then lived with

Pissarro for a time; the two self-portrait drawings date from this period and liberal atmosphere of the consolidated Republic there were suddenly
mark the culminating point of their friendship and of Pissarro's influence on many more painters using bright colors and unorthodox composition,
Gauguin. Thereafter they drifted apart, and in 1886 Pissarro wrote to his son
who were classed, or classed themselves, as impressionists. Max
Lucien: "Hostilities continue more and more among the romantic Impres-
sionists. They get together quite regularly; Degas himself comes to the Cafe. Liebermann in Germany and Wynford Dewhurst in England were
Gauguin has again become very intimate with Degas and often goes to see painting in the impressionist manner. Paul Signac, a young Parisian
him —curious, isn't it, this reversal of interests! Gauguin has forgotten the
hardly out of his teens, had been making impressionist paintings of
snubs of last year at the seaside, forgotten his sarcasms against the sectarian
Degas, forgotten what he told me often enough about the egoism and common great promise. Apart from its technical innovations, the sheer vigor
side of Guillaumin. And I was naive enough to defend him stoutly against and unorthodoxy of the Impressionist movement had given encour-
them all. " The honest Pissarro looked askance at the pushing and unscru-
agement to a number of young painters of great originality. Paul
pulous ambition of his former friend: and Gauguin, for his part, could not
forgive Pissarro for his conversion to Pointillism. Gauguin had worked with Pissarro in Normandy and, after a number
of experiments in the impressionist manner, had developed his own
powerful style. Georges Seurat had taken impressionist theory a step
further into what was called "pointillism," a deviation which had
captured Pissarro's interest. Odilon Redon had been so far liberated

from convention that he could indulge his own particular fantasy in

painting, in a way that enchanted the prosaic Guillaumin. Where
were these young painters to go, if the Impressionists did not take
them under their wing? The question caused a schism among the
foundation members of the movement. Degas, supported as always
by Berthe Morisot, was prepared to expand the exhibition to include
almost any new painter, causing Monet to mutter, "The little clique

has become a great club which opens its doors to the first-come
dauber. " Pissarro was anxious to take in Signac and Seurat. Sisley
felt that they should maintain their exclusiveness. Gauguin, who
CamiUe Pissarro:

Self-Portrait, 1888.
had exhibited with the Impressionists, 1879 through 1882, was also
Pen and Ink. *-"o Vb against opening the exhibitions to "nullities and pupils of the Ecole.

Gauguin and Pissarro:

Selj-Portraits Side by Side, about 188). Drawings.
 Thus, in 1886. when it was decided to hold the eighth Impres- Camille Pissarro: Crouching Peasant Woman, 1878-1881. Charcoal.

sionist exhibition, Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Caillebotte abstained Vincent van Gogh: Woman Gathering Grass. Drawing.

and there was a heavy representation of Degas proteges, as well Georges Seurat: The Stone Breaker. Drawing.
as Pissarro's young friends Seurat and Signac. In the circum-
stances it was decided to drop the word "impressionist" and the
show was simply advertised as "Eighth Exhibition of Paintings. " It

was their last exhibition; it was the end of an epoch.

By the time Van Gogh arrived in Paris, in March 1886. the impressionist
As it turned out, the sensation of the Eighth Exhibition was
movement had lost its cohesion: each painter had branched off on a distinct
Seurat's pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La path of his own. orienting his expression in accordance with the personal

Grande Jatte. It was a huge canvas and Seurat had had to use a ladder outlook of his maturity. "So it was, " wrote Lionello Venturi. "that in 1885
Renoir marked his return to linear form, Pissarro realized his neo-impres-
to get to its upper part. He had conceived a painting on the scale of
sionism, Monet predetermined the Fauve manner and Sisley approached it.
the old masters, but carried out in a radical technique. The subject All had lostthat perfect balance between the natural impression and the
"
was a stretch of the Seine river bank, with some forty objects in chromatic imagination which Had created the impressionist style.

Pissarro. in subscribing to the Pointillism of Seurat. who was twenty-

view, people, animals, canoes, etc. Form and color were rendered by
nine years his junior, defied the tradition which has it that the elder men
hundreds ot thousands, perhaps millions, of small dots or points of should influence the younger generation. Even in holding that the painter's

different colors. His friend Signac describes Seurat at work: "Con- art should be based on the conquests of science, the Post-Impressionists
faithfully reflected the life and preoccupations of their time, and they sought
fronting his subject, Seurat, before touching his panel with paint,
to renew means of expression by carrying their color discoveries to their
their
scrutinizes, compares, looks with half-shut eyes at the play of light ultimate consquences. By way of a new conception of form, the drawings of

and shadow, observes contrasts, isolated reflections, plays for a long Pissarro. Van Gogh and Seurat reveal the same truthful rendering of the

everyday gestures and attitudes which had so keenly interested Millet thirty
time with the cover of the box which serves as his palette, then,
years before.
fighting against matter as against nature, he slices from his little heap Theo Van Gogh, who had acquainted Vincent with the Impressionists,

of colors, arranged in order of the spectrum, the various elements followed the development of Pissarro's art and that of the other Impres-
sionists, whose pictures he sometimes sold in the gallery where he worked.
from which to form the tint best designed to convey the mystery he
On September 5, 1889. Theo wrote to his brother: "There is old father
has glimpsed. Execution follows on observation, stroke by stroke the Pissarro who after all has done some very fine things lately, and in them one
panel is covered. finds those very qualities of rusticity which show at once that the man is more
at ease in a pair of wooden shoes than in polished boots.
As a youthful student, Seurat had discovered in the library of
the Ecole des Beaux Arts two books which had provided him with
the theoretical basis for a new approach to painting. The first was
Chevreul's The Law of Simultaneously Contrasting Colors (1839), a

175
 "

treatise for tapestry weavers on the optical effects of differently dyed Camille Pissarro: Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1890.

wools when woven side by side. The second was Charles Blanc's
Grammar of the Arts of Design (1867) in which the author held that
"color, which is under fixed laws, can be taught like music. " From
this it was but a step to the theory of vibration and James Clerk
Maxwell's rotating disc of merging colors. In this way Seurat had In 1886, at the eighth and last impressionist exhibition, Pissarro showed
his first pictures in the pointillist style. He was enthusiastic about the
arrived at the concept of "optical painting" or "chromolumi-
art of Seurat, based in part on the scientific observations of the physiologist
narianism. " Already a skillful draftsman Seurat had abandoned line Charles Henry. By 1891 Pissarro had come to realize the dangers of "scientific

as a means of achieving definition and had begun drawing in tone, painting " for a sensibility as keen as his, and he confided to Georges
Lecomte: "One must yield to one's painterly instinct, one must be humble
reaching a point where form was reduced to an abstraction. In 1882
before nature . . . The desire to interpret it must not make one lose the close,
he was painting pictures using separate touches of the brush in direct contact with it . . . Reasoning and science run the risk of blunting our
different colors which fused with an extraordinary luminosity at a sensations ... I am happier and it seems to me that I go further, now that I

express with greater freedom what I see and feel.

certain distance. He divided a color, say orange, into its component
In February 1892 a large Pissarro exhibition was held at the Durand-Ruel
parts, red and yellow, and put these latter colors side by side on the gallery. It was a great success and from now on Pissarro's financial worries

canvas, instead of mixing them. Seurat had, in effect, carried "impres- were over. But eye trouble gradually forced him to give up working out of
" doors and he took to painting town views from windows.
sionism to its logical conclusion.

Georges Seurat was uncommunicative, solitary in his habits and

totally absorbed. It was unfairly said of him that he was afraid that
someone would steal his technique. He wore a long, narrowly

176
 "
M. Seurat. a highly gitted artist, was the
first to take up and apply the scientific

theories, atter making a thorough study of

them. 1 have done no more than follow
him . . . What we are seeking is a modern
synthesis by means based on science, on
the theory of colors discovered by Che-
vreul, and following the experiments of
Maxwell and the measurements of N.O.
Rood. For the mixture of pigments we
substitute the optical mixture. In other
words: the breaking down of tones into
their constituent elements. Because the op-

tical mixture gives rise to much more in-

tense luminosities than the mixture of pig-

ments. As for the execution, we regard it as
of no account, it is quite unimportant. In
our view, it has nothing to do with art,

originality consisting solely in the character

of the design and the vision peculiar to
"
each artist.

Pissarro. letter to Durand-Ruel,

November 6, 1886

Georges Seurat Courbevoie : tiridge. 1886-1887.

Georges Seurat: Bathers at

Asnieres, 1883-1884.

177
 "So do not believe that I would artificially maintain a
feverish state, but know that I am in the middle of
a complicated calculation, resulting in canvases turned
New Lines of Research and Experiment out one after the other at high speed, but calculated
long in advance. And so when they tell you that this has
been done too quickly, you can reply that it is they who
"
have looked too quickly.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo. summer 1888

Vincent van Gogh:

The Fourteenth of July in Paris.

1886-1887.

178
Paul Gauguin. Landscape at Le Pouldu, 1890

Vincent van Gogh: View from his Window

in Rue Lepic. Paris. 1886-1887. Drawine

»
,1
.

"How do you see that tree? It's greenish brown? Well, put on some
green, the finest green on your palette. And that shadow — rather

blue, isn't it? Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.

Gauguin to Se'rusier, 1888

During his stay in Paris, from 1886 to 1888, Van Gogh met Gauguin, through
Emile Bernard, and conceived a great admiration for him. The impressionism of
1874, which had not yet won over the public, was already being left behind by
these eager young men who met together in the cafes of Montmartre and aspired
to go much further than their elders in the handling of color. Seurat was showing
theway towards a certain abstraction in which the artist's purpose was not so
much to interpret light reflections as to recreate them through his knowledge of the
scientific facts of color. By way of Pointillism Van Gogh discovered the possibilities

of pure color, and the practice of divisionism soon led him to adopt a broad,
spontaneous brushstroke better suited to his temperament. In his street scene with
fluttering flags and bunting, he already goes beyond color-light towards that purely
emotional use of color which was to reach its climax in the canvases painted in
Provence, beginning in the fall of 1888. Gauguin too, by the time he joined
Van Gogh at Aries in October of that year, had reached the decisive stage in his

evolution, developing a harmonic palette and creating a poetic, symbolic, indeed

musical color image.

179
 : "

The Salon Painters and the Independents trimmed beard which helped to give the impression that he had, in

the words of one acquaintance, "a Christ-like head. " and of another
that he possessed "the delicate yet massive profile of Assyrian

While the Salon jury continued to be uncompromisingly hostile to the

kings. " He took no part in conversation unless it concerned questions
Impressionists and their followers, the "official glories " nevertheless felt the of art, and then he would speak with an authority that was final. He
need to modernize their style by a few borrowings from the palette of the
lived a monkish life in a small room and studio in the Boulevard de
open air painters, for taste was moving now in the direction of la peiniure

claire. painting in bright colors. Degas sarcastically remarked: "They come to Clichy where, according to Signac, he had a narrow bed facing a
the Impressionists to clean up their palette " Following the massive refusals stack of unsold canvases, while in the studio there was a red divan, a
pronounced by the Salon jury in 1884. the Societe des Artistes Independants
few chairs, a little table heaped with books and magazines, paints, a
was formed under the chairmanship of Odilon Redon, for the purpose of
holding independent exhibitions. This Society took over the name initially
tobacco pouch. On the walls there were little paintings by Guillau-
used by the Impressionists, and for the next twenty years the new trends of min and other friends and, covering almost one entire wall, La Grande
art were revealed annually at the Salon des Independants. The first exhibition
Jatte.
was held in a wooden shed in the Tuileries in 1884: there Seurat showed his

first large composition. Bathers at Asmeres. which gave birth to Pointillism.

It has been reported that Pissarro, on seeing La Grande Jatte for
the first time, was dumbfounded. He was immediately captured by
the pointillist or optical technique; it was so very close to his own,
and it appealed to his intellect, his "logical positivism, " as it were.
He had decided to adopt it and urged his son Lucien, also painting at

this time, to do likewise. The shortcomings of the technique were

dramatically demonstrated a few years later at an exhibition at
which pointillist paintings by Seurat, Signac, Camille Pissarro and
Lucien Pissarro were exhibited together. Observers found it impos-
sible to distinguish one man's work from another's, especially as the
signatures were also in dots. After devoting four years to pointillism,
Pissarro went back to his old manner of painting, leaving the field to
Seurat. "I do not blush for having been conquered by his method,

Fernand Cormon
The Victors at Salamis,

1887. Print.

William Bouguereau
Among his Works.
Photograph.

180
said Pissarro, "I blush for not having sold a certain number of my Cezanne: The Solitary Pathfinder
paintings.

Just how serious this failure to sell paintings, impressionist or

pointillist, was for the Pissarro family at this late stage of Camille's

career, is indicated in a letter Julie Pissarro wrote to her son Lucien

in the autumn of 1887. "Your poor father, " said Julie, "is really an

innocent, he doesn't understand the difficulties of living. He knows

that I owe 3.000 francs and he sends me 300. and tells me to wait

Always the same joke. 1 don't mind waiting, but meanwhile one
must eat. I have no money and nobody will give me credit. I paid off
a little of the debts here and there, but it is so little that they don't

want to give me any more credit. What are we to do? We are eight at
home to be fed every day. When dinner time comes, I cannot say to
them, 'Wait' — this stupid word your father repeats and repeats. I

have used up anything I had put aside. I am at the end of my tether

and. what is worse, have no courage left. I had decided to send the
three boys to Paris and then to take the two little ones for a walk by
the river. You can imagine the rest. Everyone would have thought it

an accident. But when I was ready to go, 1 lacked courage. Why am I

such a coward at the last moment? My poor son. I feared to cause

you all grief, and I was afraid of your remorse. Your dear father
wrote me a letter which is a masterpiece of selfishness. The poor dear
man says that he has reached the top of his profession and doesn't
want to prejudice his reputation by having an auction sale or by
pawning his pictures. Not to prejudice his reputation! Poor dear.
What repentance for him if he should lose his wife and his two little

ones!To uphold his reputation! I think he doesn't know what he is

Cezanne Painting a\ Aix-en-Provence, January 1904. Photograph taken by
saying. My poor Lucien. 1 am terribly unhappy. Goodbye, shall I see
Maurice Denis accompanied by Emile Bernard.
you again, alas?
Cezanne's Studio at Aix-en-Provence Photograph

Up to 1870 Cezanne had obeyed his virile imagination; his

subjects were literary, pathetic or erotic; he painted with a heavy
impasto. Even his friends were critical; of his Afternoon in Naples,

Zola said: "How can you abide such painting?" During the two
years he had spent at Auvers after the war, Cezanne had come under
Pissarro's influence and had changed his fiery execution for a calmer
one, based on the impressionist coloration. Pissarro, who compen-
sated for the lack of visual imagination by an extraordinary percep-
"
tion of nature, had warned Cezanne against his "romanticism.
Cezanne had exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in

1874, but had abstained from the second in 1876 because it was held
at Durand-Ruel's gallery. After the attacks on the third exhibition
and the auction at the Hotel Drouot he did not again exhibit with the
Impressionists. He was not, in fact, an impressionist painter, in the

sense that Pissarro, Monet and Sisley gave to the term. It was his

character and outlook, his iconoclasm and irascible temper, which

brought him among the Impressionists. "He looked like a porcupine,
says Renoir, using one of his favorite literary images. "His move-
ments seemed restricted, as though he was encased in some invisible

shell — his voice too. He articulated words carefully in his strong

Aixois accent, an accent which went with the reserved but exquisitely

181
 According to Lucien Pissarro. it was at his father's house in Pontoise that Cezanne
painted this Still Life with a Tureen. So. though it is usually dated to about 1883-1885.
it may have been begun in the late seventies: the pictures in the background, more-
over, can probably be identified with certain works by Pissarro, one. the landscape
on the left, of 1873. the other, the Chickens in the center, of 1877.
The year 1877 is a key date in the history of Impressionism: it was the year of their
third group exhibition, held in the rue Le Peletier and openly called now. in spite of
Degas's objections, the Exhibition of the Impressionists. For Cezanne, this marks the
moment when he began to break away from Impressionism. After the 1877 exhibition he
took part in no further manifestations of this kind, though he repudiated neither
Impressionism nor. even less, him with his old comrades. But.
the friendship connecting

more clearly than the others, he saw how wide was the range of possible development
implicit in Impressionism and realized that the happy balance of possibilities achieved by
then could not be maintained indefinitely.
The lesson Cezanne had learned from Impressionism was a vital one. and it was
Pissarro more than anyone else who helped him to assimilate it. He had learned to build

with color masses, in terms of intense and luminous volumes, and he had learned to place
objects without reference to the traditional rules of perspective. This was a necessary
preliminary in his quest for the monumental aspect of images. From now on he subjected
images to the corrective control of his mind, going about it with a diligence that testifies

both to his humility and to his perfect awareness of the goal before him. He biightened
his colors and boldly contrasted them: he intensified his brushwork in order to give the
maximum thickness and solidity to objects. From this time on, and to an increasingly
marked degree, he imposed precise geometric forms on objects and arranged them on
multiple, dislocated planes. He still started out from his petite sensation, as he called it:

this, in his impressionist period, had been the focal point of his researches: now he
realized the extent to which it had to be elaborated on in order to reflect it adequately in
his own mind.
Thus did Cezanne lay the foundations of all modern painting.

Paul Cezanne: Still Life with a Tureen, about 1883-1885.

183
 "

Cezanne: Rigor of Design and Vision polite manner of the young provincial. Yet his restraint would give
way sometimes and he would come up with his two famous insults,

'Eunuch' and 'Blockhead.' He was suspicious. He was a lone wolf.

But he shared their [the Impressionists'] ideas and hopes. He had
faith in the 'judgment of the people. ' The whole problem was a way
of getting one's work shown, of forcing the doors of Monsieur
Bouguereau's Salon.
After almost two years in Auvers (living without papers, as Dr
Gachet discovered) Cezanne found lodgings in the rue de Vaugirard
for Hortense and his small son and returned to Aix. He told his

mother of his liaison, but was afraid to tell his father, in case the old

man (he had retired from the bank, very rich) flew into a rage,
stopped his allowance and perhaps disinherited him. Hortense who
spent much of her time reading novels (she had previously been
employed to bind them) did not seem to mind the frequent separa-
tions which were her lot during the next eight or ten years. Cezanne
was very fond of her and his small son and wrote to her almost daily
when absent. She seems to have been a plain sensible woman whose
most treasurable quality may have been her capacity to sit still while
Cezanne painted her. This was no mean feat, for, as Duret says, "His
canvases, which appeared so simple, demanded a large, often an
enormous, number of sittings. " (Vollard, who posed on a chair
precariously perched on a packing-case, counted ninety sittings, after

which Cezanne regarded the portrait as still far from finished, being

satisfied only with "the triangle about the waistcoat. ") Since Cezanne
made at least a dozen portraits of Hortense, it seems fair to say that
she was a woman of a certain patience; not only in her function as

model, but in her whole life. For Cezanne's determination to keep his
father from learning of Hortense's existence created a curious dicho-

tomy in their lives. He had now a fine studio on the top floor of Jas

de Bouffan, his father's mansion near Aix. and liked nothing better
than painting its vineyards, chestnut trees, barns, and bathing pool.
("Painting nudes on the banks of the Arc is all I could wish
Paul Cezanne: Portrait of the Artist's Wife, about 1883-1886
Pencil and Black Chalk.
for, " he said once.) But always he had to tear himself away to return

to Hortense and the boy. At one point he brought them south with
him and put them in lodgings at Marseilles, borrowing funds from
Zola in order to do so, and walking the eighteen miles from Aix to
Marseilles, and back again, to see them. But Hortense did not much
care for provincial life, preferring, during his absences, gay Paris.

They were married finally, in 1886, when young Paul was already
fifteen years of age. Six months later his father died and only then
In 1882 Cezanne returned to Aix and settled there for good. His native
did Cezanne discover that his parent had. many years before, settled
Provence provided him with a purer, steadier light than the lie de France, the
neighborhood of Aix with starker, better defined, more sharply structured
his considerable fortune equally on his three children, as a means of
landscapes. Here he could work longer on the same motifs, his scrutiny avoiding death duties. He had known of his son's liaison with
undisturbed by sudden gusts of wind in the leafage or the continually shifting
Hortense, either through his wife or by opening his son's mail, and
clouds ol northern skies. He dreamed of "doing Poussin over again from
nature. "
by which he meant reconciling the demands of perception with
had not let that matter interfere with his plan. Thus Cezanne had
those <>l order and harmony. Day in. day out. he scrutinized his motifs: with been a rich man for longer than he knew. One is left with the
the same perseverance he sought to give duration to fleeting sensations.
impression that the supposed readiness of Cezanne's father to dis-
inherit his son was largely fictitious or imagined on his son's part,

but had provided him with a reasonable excuse for arranging his

domestic life in a manner suited to his moody temperament. That

184
"My picture of L'Estaque is like a playing card. Red roofs against a blue sea. If the weather is

favorable I may be able to see this through to the end . . . But there are some motifs which
would require three or four months' work, which could be done, for the vegetation doesn't change
It consists of olive trees and pines which keep their leafage. The sun is so tremendous that objects

seem to me to be silhouetted not only in white or black, but in blue, red, brown, violet.
"
1 may be wrong, but this seems to me to be the exact opposite of modelling.

Cezanne, letter to Pissarro. July 21, 1876

Paul Cezanne: Self-Portrait. 1881-1884. Pencil Paul Cezanne: The Sea at L'Estaque. 1882-1885.

185
 "

Paul Cezanne: Boy with a Red Waistcoat, 1894-1895.

"Making out the model, and the realization of it, is sometimes a very
slow process for the artist. Whatever the master you may prefer, this

should be no more than an orientation for you. Otherwise you will only

be an imitator. With any sense of nature at all, and a few happy gifts,

you should be able to make your own way . . . Believe me, once your
feelings are aroused, your own emotion will in the end emerge and win
its place in the sun. Get the upper hand, have confidence. What you must
make yourself master of is a good method of construction. Drawing
is only the configuration of what you see.

Cezanne, letter to Charles Camoin, December 9. 1904

186
 It seems impossible to subordinate so precise whole, but withoul effacing its presence. The
a linear design to so rigorous a composition least movement oi the observer modifies the

and so dense a coloring. Yet Cezanne succeeds point ol view, Cezanne did not feel entitled to

in reconciling contraries: the objective study arrest the movement of the world, to reduce it

of nature and the mathematical laws of har- to the fixity of a "snapshot "
taken at random.
mony, the accidental and the eternal. This He tried to open his forms by repeated pas-
almost miraculous balance is the fruit of hard sages of color applied at different times, and
work doggedly pursued. First of all, the painter so giving rise to contrasts from which he
scrutinized his model, sizing it up in all its elicited that impression ol durability and con-
implications, however provisional; with a fine tinuity which defined his style Each form in
pencil he laid in the contours, following the the motif before him had to be worked out
fully

imperceptible movement of his immobilized and defined, and at the same time to suggest
subject, working repeatedly at the contours in a further range of possible transformations.
"
order to bring out the expression of volumes. Cezanne did not "record the real world but

In the second phase, he subordinated the parti- compelled it to yield up its different possibili-

cular to the general and merged detail into the ties of being and seeming.

"Go to the Louvre. But after you have seen the great masters reposing there, you

must hasten out again and quicken within you, through contact with nature, the
"
instincts and sensations of art that reside within us.

Cezanne, letter to Charles Camoin. September 1 3, 1903

Paul Cezanne: Card Player.

1890-1892. Pencil.

Paul Cezanne Card Pfavi rs,

1890-1905

187
 Paul Cezanne: Les Grandes
Baigneuses, 1898-1905.

Paul Cezanne: Bathers,

1883-1887. Pencil.

One must "marry the curves of

"
women to the shoulders of hills.

Cezanne liked to say to his young

friend loachim Gasquet. This
dream of the plenitude of corres-
pondences had obsessed him for
twenty years. He tackled the
theme in the Grandes Baigneuses
during his impressionist period;
and in his later years he painted
several fully realized versions of
ii I he subject and size of the
composition did not permit him
to work in the open, but in this
studio composition he found the
opportunity to summarize and
complete all the experiments
made from nature, subjecting
them now to the requirements of
pure painting, the language of
forms and colors

188
 "I proceed vi

offers its* II
, and
improvi
model has to be looked and
rightly fell

onesell with di tin* ion an

"Taste is thi bi I
[udgi ll Is rare... The
artist should ignore opinion thai is not
based on the intelligent observation of
character 1

He should keep alool from the

literary spirit, which so often draws the
painter away from path — the con-
his true

crete study of nature — and leads him astray

in intangible speculations

Cezanne, letter to Emile Bernard.

May 12. 1904

Paul Cezanne: Rocks at Bibemus. 1898-1900.

The Cabanon de jourdan is Cezanne's last

landscape; he was working on it when

caught in a rainstorm. Marie, Cezanne's
sister, wrote to his son Paul on October 20.
1906: "Your father has been ill since Mon-
day ... He was left exposed to the rain for
several hours, and brought home on a
laundry cart; two men had to carry him up
to his bed. The next day. early in the
morning, he went into the garden to work
on a portrait of Vallier [his gardener],
under the lime tree, and came in dying.

Paul Cezanne: Le Cabanon de jourdan. 1906.

189
 —

Hortense evidently acquiesced in this tacit arrangement says much

for her good sense and possibly her own need of freedom.
It was Pissarro who urged Vollard to take up Cezanne. Their
first meeting is described thus by Vollard: "Cezanne greeted me with
outstretched hands. 'My son has often spoken of you. Excuse me for
a little while, Monsieur Vollard. I am going to rest a moment before
dinner. I have just come back from my motif. Paul will show you the
studio. ' The first thing that struck me as I set foot in the studio was a
huge picture of a Peasant pierced full of holes with a palette knife.
Cezanne used to fly into a passion for the most absurd reasons
sometimes for no reason at all —and was wont to vent his anger
"
upon his canvases.

Vollard describes Cezanne's studio: "On the floor lay a big box
stuffed full of watercolor tubes: some apples, still 'posing' on a
plate, were in the last stage of decay; near the window hung a

curtain, which always served as a background for figure studies or

still lifes; lastly, there were pinned on the walls engravings and
photographs, both good and bad, chiefly bad, representing The
Shepherds of Arcadia by Poussin, The Living Bearing the Dead by Luca
Cezanne photographed bv Emile Bernard ax Aix in 1905.
Signorelli, several Delacroix's, The Burial at Ornans by Courbet, The
Assumption by Rubens, a Cupid by Puget, some Forains, Psyche by
"
Prud'hon, and even the Roman Orgy of Couture.

Paul Cezanne: La Montagne Sainte-Vicloire, about 1900- Pencil and Water color.

^*
^^ :

190
 As with any active civilization there were moments of grave
i-\ anxiety in the middle years of the Third Republic. The long
JL JLstruggle for secular education had its bad moments and the
threat of a modern-style military dictatorship which seemed to grow
with General Boulanger's popularity (among other things he intro-
duced an order permitting the wearing of full beards in all ranks
of the army) was considerately ended by his own hand. During all

such crises the old prejudice against the Impressionist surfaced.

Such was the situation in 1894 when Gustave Caillebotte died of

cerebral paralysis in his forty-sixth year, bequeathing his incompar-

able collection of impressionist paintings to the Nation: eighteen
Pissarros, sixteen Monets, nine Sisleys, eight Renoirs. seven Degas's,

five Cezannes and four Manets —sixty-seven canvases in all. Twenty

years earlier, when Renoir had praised one of Caillebotte's canvases
French School: View oj a Room in the Luxembourg Museum, Paris,
(depicting a group of house-painters at work) Caillebotte had blushed
about 1880.
and had said: "I try to paint honestly, hoping that some day my
work will be good enough to hang in the antechamber of the great
room where the Renoirs and the Cezannes hang. " Someday it would,
but that day was still far off, even for the Renoirs and the Cezannes.
They [the Impressionists] refused to

The gift was attacked in the press and some political pressure find in what philosophers call
was brought to bear to have it rejected. It was said at the time that "external" reality a means or a
Caillebotte had bought the works which no one else would buy in
symbol; they loved life itself and were
order to help his friends financially, a manifest canard since Caille-
botte's collection included Renoir's Moulin de la Galette, Monet's Gave
rewarded with a copious gift of the
Saint-Lazare and Pissarro's Red Roofs and many other equally distin- very stuff of it. This unpretentious and
guished paintings. In fact, Caillebotte was so ashamed of the low unpremeditated paganism is, unless
prices he had paid for his Renoirs that, just before dying, he had
I mistake, what has endeared and still
invited Renoir to take any picture he liked from his collection by
endears them to so many sensitive
way of compensation (Renoir took a Degas which he later sold).
Some years ago the Louvre administration conducted its own inquiry people who, as a rule, care little for
into the circumstances surrounding the rejection of twenty-nine of painting. CLIVE BELL
the paintings bequeathed by Caillebotte, only to discover that the

records were far from complete. In his account of the shabby

treatment accorded the Caillebotte bequest Germain Bazin. incumbent
Chief Curator of the Louvre, says: "Placed in the foreground of
events curators are too often judged by the public as being respons-
ible for situations over which in fact they have not sole control. An
official, generally speaking, is only responsible to public opinion for
his mistakes. The credit for success always goes to someone higher
up the ladder.
The people "higher up the ladder" in 1894 were politicians.
Consideration of the Caillebotte bequest ran parallel with the court
martial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus on the charge of having delivered
secret military information to the Germans, and his sentence to
degradation and imprisonment for life on Devil's Island. The wave of

anti-Semitism (Dreyfus was an Alsatian Jew) which swept France at

this time did not leave the Impressionists unscathed. Vollard. for
example, reports Degas turning his favorite model out of his studio

with the words: "You're a Protestant! You all go hand in hand with
the jews for Dreyfus. "
On the other hand Monet (with Marcel Proust
and Anatole France) signed the petition against the violation of

191
 ^8»— procedure in the trial of Dreyfus, after Zola had exposed the military
xf
L'AURORE LlttOralro. ArtlAque. Soclate
frame-up

too much
in his famous article )'accuse.

Impressionists were directly affected by the Dreyfus affair: but

to say that the climate of acceptance
Nothing proves that the

was bad for radicalism

is it

of any kind? The fact that a major part of the Caillebotte bequest
were paintings by Camille Pissarro cannot have escaped the attention
LETTRE AU PRESIDENti DE LA REPUBLiQUE of the politicians who, we now have on good authority, sometimes

LETTRE
Par EM I life ZOLA override the judgment of the Curator:
it

how are we to interpret their

rejection of eleven paintings by Pissarro, when all the Degas's are
accepted, other than in terms of exacerbated prejudice?
Coming in the later years of his long struggle for recognition the
Dreyfus Affair, in all its aspects, profoundly disturbed Pissarro. But
"]' Accuse., r Utter from Emile Zola ti Felix Fai it 0/ the French
" 1898.
his reaction was characteristic: "All the sadness, all the bitterness, all
Republic, published in "L'Aurore, January I '.

the unhappiness, I forget them and I even don't know them in the joy
"
7 of work.
S3
*£ ££ -* >- j
A notable omission in the Caillebotte bequest was any represen-
tative work by Berthe Morisot. Caillebotte had not collected her
paintings, which were neither as easily nor as cheaply acquired as
those of the other Impressionists, probably because they were not to
his taste. Berthe Morisot's position in society continually obscured
her reputation as an artist: critics usually ignored her, or treated her
as a dilettante. Yet, after Pissarro, she was the most consistent
exhibitor at the Impressionist exhibitions, taking part in all of them,
save that of 1879 (when she was pregnant). Stephane Mallarme who,
says Theodore Duret, literally worshipped Berthe. exerted himself on

I-
-
her behalf with the result that one of her paintings (Woman at the

&'-a m&to* Ball) was hung in the Luxembourg gallery. It was one of her last

satisfactions. She had never quite recovered from the death of her
husband. Eugene Manet, in 1892: frail and of a delicate constitution,

she died, March 2, 1895, in her fifty-fourth year. The news was a

great blow to Renoir who was working beside Cezanne on a land-

scape when he received the telegram informing him of her death. He

folded his easel and hurried home. Of all the friends and companions
who had been with him in the struggle for recognition Berthe
Morisot was the one with whom he had kept most closely in touch.

FiM "What a
later. "A
curious thing is destiny! " he was
painter of such pronounced temperament, born in the most
moved to say sometime

severely middle-class surroundings which have ever existed, and at a

i^ t
l83<S,^ period when a child who wanted to be a painter was almost
considered the dishonor of the family! And what an anomaly to see

On December 29, 1889, Pissarro sent the dummy of a book entitled Les
the appearance in our age of realism of a painter so impregnated
Turpitudes sociales to his niece Esther Isaacson, who lived in London. It is with the grace and finesse of the eighteenth century; in a word, the
unpublished. contains a cover page and twenty-eight drawings in which
still It
last elegant and 'feminine' artist that we have had since Fragonard,
the artist attacked the social evils of his time. He said of it: "I do not
think that 1 have gone beyond the expression of the truth "
The four drawings with the additional something of the 'virginal' that Madame Morisot
reproduced here were captioned as follows: had to such a high degree in all her painting. " She was, of course, a
(1) The first drawing represents a poor old philosopher. Thinking that had
it
direct descendant of Jean-Honore Fragonard.
really happened, he gazes ironically at the great sleeping city. He sees the sun
rise radiantly and looking intently sees written in luminous letters the word
The "Monarch of the Skies, " as Corot had called Eugene Boudin,
ANARCHY. The Eiffel Tower tries to hide the sun from the philosopher's gaze, died at Deauville, August 8, 1898, at the age of seventy-four.
but not yet high enough and wide enough to screen from view the star
it is
Wynford Dewhurst, who saw him shortly before his death, says that
thai sin iK its light upon us. This philosopher represents time, for he has an
hourglass beside him; the sands will soon run out and he will turn over to
he resembled an old sea pilot, with a healthy ruddy complexion,
it

begin a new era. This, as you see. is symbolism! white beard and keen blue eyes. He bequeathed his paintings to the

192
people of Le Havre where they may now be seen in the municipal Pissarro and Humanitarian Socialism
gallery. Jongkind had predeceased him by seven years, dying in a

condition of mental instability, due to drink and depravation.

Since 1890 Alfred Sisley had been exhibiting with the Societe
Nationale des Beaux-Arts, an anti-Salon group, without having made
a significant sale. In May 1897, Francois Depeaux, a French industrial-

ist, persuaded Sisley to accompany him to London and undertook to

buy whatever landscapes he should paint there. For four months
Sisley painted the English and Welsh countryside, with, however, a

noticeable change in the quality of his painting, which appeared to

have become somewhat metallic. In October 1898, Marie Sisley (2) Misery in a top hat. Poor
old musician, he walks home,
died and Sisley's own life expectancy was running out. That year,
worn out. from a cafe concert
Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien: "Sisley they say is gravely at Grenelle where he earns his
ill. This one is a beautiful, a great artist. I've seen works by him 30 sous, at midnight, in rain,
snow, wind, and old. old!
of a rare amplitude and beauty, among others The Flood, which
What misery! He had believed
is a masterpiece. " Sisley died of cancer of the throat at Moret-sur- in his genius, had dreamed of
Loing, January 29, 1899. He was sixty. Just before dying he had glory!

called on Claude Monet to commend his children to Monet's care.

"Of all the great Impressionists," writes Vollard, "the Master of
Moret never even knew the most modest living ... He endured his

disease with courage, displayed to the end an optimism nothing

could impair. After his last operation he said, I am suffering even

more than before, but I know that it is going to cure me. I am seeing

pink butterflies.

Three months after Sisley's death a sale of his works was held
for the benefit of his children. Dealers and collectors competed for

the twenty-seven canvases, which realized a total of 112,320 francs,

almost as much as Sisley had earned in his life. Shortly afterwards (3) Nothing to eat. This rough
sketch is the first idea of a
the dealers josse and Gaston Bernheim began buying up his work.
drawing 1 wanted to do over
At a public sale, March 1900. fourteen Sisley pictures excited great again. 1 have preferred to put it

interest and The Flood, declared to be a masterpiece, was sold to in as it is ; its tragic brutality, its

churlish execution, is more tell-

Count Isaac de Camondo for 43,000 francs (Sisley had sold it for 180
ing than a polished drawing.
francs). From that date the value of Sisley's works rose steadily.

The people of Moret-sur-Loing raised a monument to Alfred

Sisley: the first Impressionist painter to be so commemorated.

dfJijifE »E M-B0i.c«£fDf nm

Fame came to Pissarro in the twentieth century. But, already in

1890, two pictures brought, for him, very high prices: Entrance to the
Village of Voisins was sold for 2,100 francs and Rocquencourt for
1,400 francs. He was finally being given a place in the important
collections.

"Pissarro was a delightful man, " says his biographer, Adolphe (4)The crust of bread. Have
you never passed in front of
Tabarant, "and so profoundly human that any wrong done to
one of those shady-looking
another man angered him like a personal offense. You could not set houses where bourgeois phi-

eyes on him without being impressed by the simple majesty of his lanthropy, not feeling very
sure of itself, ignominiously
countenance, on which there was never a hint of hardness or disdain.
lurks and doles out to the
His eyes, from which he suffered so much, were magnificent, and starving a crust of bread which

they smiled as his lips smiled, putting at ease whoever came to see it has stolen from them?

him. Certainly a look of sadness would sometimes gather in those

eyes of his, true artist's eyes, so deeply in love with the beauty of
things, but that would be when he was alone and beset, as he often

193
 " — . "

was, by manifold anxieties. . . When we became acquainted in 1890

he was beginning to invest himself with that aureole of serenity
which lent added charm to his gracious senescence. Dressed entirely

"I am sending you the magazine les Arts darts les Deux Monties and a in black velvet, he presented a fine appearance. . . Worthy of being
magazine with an article by Aurier on Gauguin. You will see the extent to painted by Rembrandt in the fur-trimmed cloak with which the
which this litterateur reasons upon the point of a needle. To hear him talk,
Dutch master invests his Rabbis, his learned Doctors and his burgo-
you would think it quite unnecessary to draw or paint in order to produce
art; ideas are enough, indicated by a few signs! It seems to me that art may masters, he looked inexpressibly venerable with his fine regular
indeed be nothing else, only these few signs must be more or
'
'
less drawn. It
features, his big oriental eyes so full of light, his beard in which
is just as necessary to have a little harmony in order to render one's ideas
advancing years were snowing their white flakes, his beautiful
consequently, in order to have ideas, it is just as well to have sensations . .

This gentleman seems to take us for a pack of fools! hands exhibiting the delicacy of a master of the brush ..."
Pissarro. letter to his son Lucien. April 20. 1891 On his way back from Durand-Ruel's gallery Pissarro would
often stop for a chat at Vollard's shop in the rue Laffitte. "The first

thing that struck one was his air of kindness, of sensitiveness and at

the same time serenity, a serenity born of work accomplished with

joy, " says Vollard. "And yet, what a life of vicissitude was his. He
suffered poverty and he had a great many children . . . looking at

those landscapes that exhale the very scent of the fields, those quiet
peasant women bending over their cabbages, those placid goose
girls, who would guess that most of these canvases were painted
during the period of the artist's worst calamities... With what
openness of mind the old man judged his fellows, Cezanne, Renoir,
Monet! He was interested in all the experiments that were now
"
exercising the artists.
Success made Pissarro work harder than ever before. He visited

England, Belgium, the Channel ports. Burgundy, finding new motifs

in all these places. When an eye infection, without impairing his

vision, forced him to give up open air painting he began working

from hotel windows. Muffled up against the cold he painted a series

of Paris street scenes, snow scenes and the bridges of the Seine in
winter. One day he caught a cold and was put to bed. He developed
prostate trouble, lay in pain for a month and died on November 12,
1903, in his seventy-third year.

Five months after his death Durand-Ruel held a comprehensive

exhibition of his works (178 canvases, etchings and engravings)
which sold for prices ranging from ten to twelve thousand francs

each.

The last of the group to enjoy public favor was Paul Cezanne. In
1895 Vollard had bought some two hundred Cezanne canvases for

between eighty and ninety thousand francs, and thereafter became

his principal dealer. The canvases which filled Vollard's little shop in

the rue Laffitte still confused the public. "Tell me. Monsieur Vollard,
said one of his serious customers, " why does good painting have to be
so ugly? " When Chocquet's collection was put up for sale, after his

widow's death in 1899, the Cezannes brought good prices, for the

first time. In 1900 Maurice Denis painted a picture, exhibited at

the Champ de Mars, which he called Homage to Cezanne: Bonnard,

Camillt Pissarro: Market Scene. Print.
Degas, Redon, Roussel, Se'rusier and Vuillard are shown gathered
around one of Cezanne's pictures. The following year Cezanne tactfully
let it be known that, while he would not think of making any
request or of taking any steps himself, he would readily accept

194
any decoration that might be conferred upon him in recognition The First Cezanne Exhibitions at Vollard's

of his merit. Roujon, the then director of the Beaux Arts, was
approached with a view to persuading him to recommend Cezanne
for the Legion of Honor. The request met with a peremptory "At Vollard's there is a very full exhibil illlifesc

refusal. The Director declared himself ready to decorate any other an amazing finish, some things incomplete I

savagery and character. I believe this will be little understi

Impressionist, especially Claude Monet, who, however, was precisely
Pissarro. letter to Esther Isaacson, November 1

the one who refused to be decorated; but to decorate Cezanne he

regarded as tantamount to repudiating the principles of his office.

Although he had suffered from diabetes for some time, Cezanne

stubbornly refused to modify his habit of work and continued to paint
in the open in all weathers. Caught in a storm while working in the

fields he kept on working under a steady downpour for two hours

before starting out for home. He collapsed on the road and a passing

laundry-wagon picked him up and the driver took him home. His old
housekeeper chafed his arms and body to bring back the circulation;
he recovered consciousness and was put to bed, but remained feverish
all night long. On the following day he rose as usual and went into the

garden to work on the portrait of an old sailor. In the midst of the

sitting he fainted and the model called for help he was put to bed and ;

never left it again. After receiving the last sacrament, he died

October 22, 1906. He may be said, says Duret, to have died with Portrait of Cezanne by Pissarro. Repro-

his brush in his hand. He was sixty-seven. duced on the catalogue of the first

Cezanne exhibition at VoUard's in 1895.

A time came when Degas lost touch with modernity, as, for

example, not liking the telephone. "You mean when it rings you Catalogue of the second Cezanne exhibi-
tion at VoUard's 1898.
answer it? " he said. "Like a servant! " He was also bored with talk in

about the "painting of the future." Shown some Seurats at an

exhibition, he turned round abruptly and pointed out a picture
hanging nearby, and said; "Why shouldn't that be the painting of the
future? "
It was a picture by the Douanier Rousseau.
In 1912 his house in the rue Victor Masse, in which he had lived
for twenty years, was sold and the new owner decided to pull it

down. Degas looked for another house, equally old-fashioned, and

found one in the Boulevard des Batignolles. Vollard remembers Degas
saying to him: "A man should marry. You don't know what the
solitude of old age is like, Vollard." "Why, then, have you never
married? " said Vollard. "Oh, with me, it's different. I was too afraid
of hearing my wife say after I had finished a painting, 'That's a
pretty thing you've done there'.

One day in 1916 Daniel Halevy, who had known Degas since

childhood, wrote in his diary: "I hear that Degas is ill — the bronchial
tubes as always. " Halevy went to his bedside. "It is a bare room, new, Maurice Denis. Homage to Cezanne, 1900.

with no past. Degas, immobile in bed, greets me with a kind word or

two ... At a given moment the nurse comes and straightens the pillow.
Her short sleeve is transparent. All of a sudden Degas seizes her arm in "In 1901, as a token of admiration for the painter of the Sainte-Victoire,
Maurice Denis was to paint one of his most moving picture the Homage to
both hands with more strength than one would have believed
Cezanne, which can be seen in the Luxembourg Museum. Represented in the
possible. He places her right arm in the light that shines from the copy of famous piece by Cezanne
center of this canvas is a dish of fruit, a a

window. He looks at it with passionate concentration. How many which belongs to Gauguin. On the left oi the composition is Se'rusier. the

theorist of the group, holding forth before his friends: Denis. Ranson.
women's arms has he looked at like this and, so to speak, spied on in
Vuillard. Bonnard. Roussel. together with Odilon Redon and Mellerio I too
the light of his studio? I had been thinking that his strength had been "
have the honor of figuring in the picture
"
exhausted, but here he was, still working. Ambroise Vollard. Souvenirs d'un marchand it tableaux

195
 Degas died on September 27, 1917. in his eighty-third year. An Degas and the Shattering of Form
American Expeditionary Force had just landed in France, tor the first
In later years Degas's eyesight began to fail him. but he worked on in the
time. oncoming night, intent on striking out .1 lew more flashes of light and
Degas left a fortune of eight million francs which his brother Rene movement. He gave up oils for pastels, a readier technique and one quite as
rich in color possibilities. But he despaired of achieving he had dreamed
Degas, sometime cotton broker of New Orleans, inherited with all his all

of. He had doubts about himself and judged himself with poignant severity.
other effects. When the sale of the studio was being arranged Rene To his old friend Bartholome he wrote: "I am going to go downhill fast and
discovered a series of brothel scenes in the portfolios and. "out of come rolling out somewhere wrapped up in a lot of bad pastels. " To Henri
respect tor the artist's reputation, "
destroyed about seventy ot them, Lerolle he wrote: "I have made too many plans, now I'm in a |am. power-
less. I'm all at sea. I thought I had plenty of time. I never lost hope of
much to the disgust of Vollard. who thought "
these little masterpieces taking up again one fine day. in spite of my eye trouble, what I had failed to
would have served brilliantly to prove how much Toulouse-Lautrec do or was prevented from doing amidst all my worries. I piled up all my
plans in a closet whose key kept by me always, and have key ..."
owed to his old master. " Renoir regretted that the work of Degas's last I I lost that

years was so little known, for better reasons: "If Degas had died at

fifty he would have been remembered as an excellent painter: it is

after his fiftieth year that his work broadens out and that he really Edgar Degas: Dancers in Yellow. 190). Pastel.

196
 A/itrtht Bath, about
Pastel and Wati

Afur the Bath I

Like his old comrades Monet. Renoir and Cezanne. Degas had arrived at the
height of his maturity; his forms opened up. his colors found a new brilliance, his

gestures an unexpected freedom. The truth is that in 1900 the Impressionists

remained as revolutionary as in 1874. Their way of seeing had won out. but the
public was disconcerted by their shift of emphasis now from the delineation of
natural phenomena to pure expression. Their pictures no longer reflected the world
they were identified with its pulsing color and life.

197
"I doubt if any painter has ever interpreted woman women are enchantresses. If you take one home with
so delightfully. Renoir's light and rapid brush gives you, she will be the person you take a last look at on
grace, suppleness, abandon, it makes flesh transparent, going out and the first look on coming in. She will

colors cheeks and lips with the blush of pink. Renoir's take a place in your life.
''
, ,

Theodore Duret. Les Petntres impresswnnislcs

Augusu Renoir: Gabrieile

with Jewelry. 1910.

198
 Impressed by Raphael and the
Renaissance art he discovered during
his trip to Italy in 1881. Renoir turned
back to relearn the lesson of Ingres
he sharpened his line and firmed up
his modelling. It was not so much a
modification of the sensation as a
matter of technical research and
more studied handling. By 1890. and
even before, he was again painting
with free, fluid strokes of the brush,
and the female nude became his fa-

vorite subject. His "classical crisis"

brought him back to certain time-
honored themes, like Bathers. His
renewed study of line and composi-
tion helpedhim forward to a new
harmony between more powerful
forms and more resonant and sen-
suous colors.

Augusle Renoir:
Three Bathers. 1883-1885. Pencil.

Auguste Renoir: Bathers in a Landscape,

about 1915.

199
 becomes Degas." Not all the lithographs oi the "Maisons Closes" Renoir in the Light of the South
disappearedin what Vollard calls "the hecatomb," tor the cunning

dealer appears to have been able to save those which he had used, or
intended to use, as illustrations for his limited editions.
When Rene Degas died a few years later the Degas fortune was
the subject of litigation between the several branches of the Musson-
Degas family for many years, it being finally split among the heirs of

the third generation.

The Renoirs spent a part of the year at Essoyes, Mine's birthplace,

an old peasant house with thick walls, surrounded by a garden
planted with fruit trees. " Why should I go to Paris at all ? " said Renoir.
"1 don't want central heating when 1 have a good wood fire to sit by.

The butter here is perfect and the bread better than any you can get in

Paris. And then there is the good little country wine ..." Gabrielle had
entered his service as model and part-time help; and his third son,
Claude, was born at Essoyes in 1901. Someone at Essoyes had a
bicycle — still a novel vehicle —and Renoir must needs ride it about. He
fell off and broke his right arm.
He had already been treated for rheumatism; and he had
developed partial atrophy of a nerve in the left eye. as a result of
catching cold, so that his face had taken on a fixed expression which
startled people. His arm was a long time healing; he developed
arthritis and from then on it was a constant fight against illness. He
taught himself to paint with his left hand and did not stop working.
Meeting Vollard at the entrance to the hospital one day, Madame
Renoir said: "Excuse me. the operation has been delayed until

tomorrow. I'm very much in a hurry, my husband sends me to buy a

box of colors. He wants to paint the flowers I brought for him this

morning. " Afraid of leaving his family destitute, his output was
enormous, and all of it sold.

He was a famous painter. In 1899 his painting At the Grenouillere

had sold for 20,000 francs and a few years later his portrait of Madame
Charpentier would go for 84.000 francs. But when in 1900 he was
made Knight of the Legion of Honor, he wrote to Monet apologizing
for having accepted the order. Pissarro laughed at him.
His "rheumatism" drove him south during the winters and in

1908 he had a house built at Cagnes, near Nice, which he called "Les
Collettes. " When World War I broke out he went to live there
permanently. His sons Pierre and Jean were both seriously wounded in

the war, Pierre suffering a shattered arm, Jean being shot in the leg and
only just escaping an amputation. Unlike many others, caught up in

its horrors. Jean had no illusion about it being the last great war. In
June 1915. Aline Charigot died at Cagnes. Renoir iil Le Cannet Returning from ii Painting Expedition. Photographs, 1901.

Gabrielle carried on. but Renoir still made his own bed every
morning, lit the fire and swept the studio. "I can't stand having
anybody about me but women. " he was wont to say. He hated corsets
and high heels and had strong ideas about the way society was going.
I le let Claude's red hair grow long because he liked to paint it and also
(according to Claude) because he thought that it would protect his
head il he tell. He kept his palette as clean as a new coin and washed

»oo
 "I haven't a moment's respite, but I mustn't complain. So
many men at my age can work no more, but I can still
"
paint.

"Just as it was. when Renoir finally settled there (about 1907), the pro

Collettes was a pleasant place to live, with its well-lighted house surrounded by greenery,
the great olive trees with their gnarled trunks cracking open and looking like gray stone,
and many orange trees . . . The profusion of plants, running everywhere, with the variety
of their shapes and colors, brightened up the park where for the most part Renoir
preferred to let nature take its course. From the terrace of Les Collettes the view extends
far out to sea. embracing the area between Cap d'Antibes and the Italian frontier In

this marvelous region.' Renoir said to me. 'one seems to be beyond the reach of
misfortune, one lives here in a softly padded atmosphere.
Georges Riviere. Renoir et ses amis

V
^
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B^k»
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Auguste Renoir: Self-Portrait in a White Hat. 1910.

Augusts Renoir: Landscape, about 1910.

View of Cagnes Jrom Renoir's House, "Les Collettes. "

Photograph.

201
 " —

his brushes himself every day. His hands became terribly deformed,
with stiff joints, causing the thumbs to turn inwards and his fingers to
bend towards the wrists. Indoors he wore a cap and a polka-dot
English scarf; he had a long white beard and thick white hair. He
Impressionism on the Eve of Success
received visitors, but was often irritated by their asininities. Eliminat-

word "artist " from

ing the his vocabulary, he called himself a
"workman painter. " He died in his sleep of a ruptured blood vessel,
December 3, 1 9 1 9, in his seventy-eighth year. He had painted up to the
day of his death. A picture of anemones was on his easel.

Thanks largely to Mary Cassatt's financial backing, both of the

Impressionist exhibitions and of Paul Durand-Ruel in his critical
years, there were now rooms exclusively devoted to the works of
Sisley, Renoir, Monet and Pissarro at the Durand-Ruel galleries. In his

old age Paul Durand-Ruel liked to talk about the early days of the
Impressionists. He remembered very clearly the auction sale at the
Hotel Drouot in 1875 when the painters had been publicly abused and
their works knocked down for nominal sums, selling only because of
the handsome frames Durand-Ruel had put around them. "And your
revenge? " asks Gustave Coquiot, interviewing him for L'Excelsior.
" It is
complete
!

" replies the old art dealer. "

A painting that I had
recovered for 110 francs was sold much later for 70,000 francs in a

public sale. Another, bought for 50 francs, was resold I don't know
how many times — all amateur collectors repeatedly lose their heads

and brought 100,000 francs last time.

Renoir said of Durand-Ruel: "He transferred the art business

from the domain of decoration to that of speculation. " Nor was that

the end of it. Many of the canvases he sold at what seemed to him
fabulous prices cannot be bought for millions today. Some, alas, being
worth far more than their weight in gold, spend a great part of their
life in bank vaults.

Paul Durand-Ruel died in 1922 at the age of ninety.

The Large Drawing Room in Paul Durand-Ruel's Apartment at IS, rue it Rome
Paris, seen from the door of the small drawing room.
Armand Guillaumin had inherited Daubigny's old studio on the
Quai d'Anjou in the He Saint-Louis and bought his colors from Donnet
Letter u-riiim by Claude Monet from Giverny. December 1. 188):
on the Quai des Orfevres. He had his own economical method of

Dear Mr Durand-Ruel, preparing and stretching his canvases. In 1868 he had worked beside
I should like to be able to reply that all your panels are finished, but Pissarro painting window blinds. After the war of 1870 he painted in
unfortunately cannot bring off what I'm after, though taking a great deal of
I

the Auvers district for almost ten years. He was Dr Gachet's good
trouble. All the big ones are done, and
is the main part: have even done
that I

two extra ones in case one or two harmonize with the whole. But to get
fail to
friend; Gauguin bought his pictures and wrote Pissarro from Tahiti,

to the end of these six panels, how many of them have had to obliterate! 1 saying that "a place was owed to Guillaumin" in the monthly
Over twenty, perhaps thirty am busy with the small ones now and hope
I I
meetings of the Impressionists. Theo Van Gogh also bought his
go better, although the ones have finished will have to be done over
this will 1

again. As lor the other pictures. 1 shall soon have finished retouching them. pictures and Guillaumin was Vincent's friend in his last days. Eugene
I

long to see all this out of the way. as I haven't done any open air work from Murer, his fellow Auvergnat, expresses a contemporary opinion of
nature for ages. I am glad to hear that what sent you has been successful,
somewhat
Guillaumin: "His work remained always a
I

little violent,
but personally I am finding it harder and harder to satisfy myself and 1 begin
to wonder it I'm going mad or if what do is no better and no worse than
I
shocking and often maladroit [but] his tenacity, his true love of nature
before, but it is simply the fact that I have more trouble now doing what I gave him a certain mastery. "
However, "his use of color was
used to do quite easily. However. 1 think am right in being more particular
suppleness and the charming quality of
1 .

exaggerated and lacking in

Sisley. He was not a pretty painter. He painted the bridges and

"

roads he had worked on; he found subjects in laundry barges on the

Seine, in tanneries and factories and had a fondness for chimney

202
stacks and the effects caused by smoke in the air. He was the first

suburban painter.

He had never pretended that his art placed him above the
ordinary moral obligation to provide for his wife and children he had ;

always worked for his living, but like many workers he sometimes
tried his luck in the State Lottery. In 1891 a ticket he had bought in the

Credit Foncier paid off a hundred thousand francs. A free man from
that moment he spent the rest of his days wandering about the French
countryside painting the landscape he loved as violently as he liked.
He outlived all the other Impressionists, dying in June 1927, at the age
of eighty-six.

Guy de Maupassant has left us a charming picture of Claude

Monet stumping across the grassy fields above the cliffs at Etretat,

followed by a procession of children — his own and Alice's —carrying

his easel, paintbox and various canvases. It was Monet's practice to

work on five or six paintings at once, switching from one canvas to

the other according as the weather changed. Says de Maupassant: "I Fire at fhc Durand-Ruel Gallery. New York. 1898. Photograph.

have seen him thus seize a glittering shower of light on the white cliff

and fix it in a flood of yellow tones which, strangely, rendered the On March 17. 1898. a fire broke out in the premises of the Durand-Ruel
surprising and fugitive effect of that unseizable and dazzling brilliance. Gallery at 389 Fifth Avenue. New York. In the midst of the general panic, the
firemen coolly rescued the pictures, bringing them out through the windows.
On another occasion he took a downpour beating on the sea in his

hands and dashed it on the canvas —and indeed it was the rain that

he had thus painted ..."

In 1883 they had rented a house at Giverny from an old peasant
called Singetot. On the Seine, roughly half-way between Paris and
Rouen, it became their home and studio. In good weather the family,

Alice's six and Monet's two, ate at a trestle table under a large canvas
awning they called "the tent. " Alice saw to it that there was always
plenty to eat and Monet became quite stout, took to smoking cigars
and was something of a bon vivant (he once ate a gross of oysters at

a sitting). He made a garden with bowers and flowering shrubs and

converted a streamlet into a "Japanese water garden, " in which he
planted tubs of water lilies. The walls inside the house, according to

Vollard, were covered with the work of other painters, "paintings

which have been lying about a long while in shop windows, " Monet
explained to Vollard, as he bought a Cezanne to add to the collection.
Dewhurst, who went to Giverny to see Monet, describes him as a

short sturdy figure with a long bushy beard, cropped hair (he was
going bald) and blue eyes. He wore a soft khaki hat, lavender-
colored silk shirt open at the neck, drab trousers tapering to the
ankles and there secured by large horn buttons, a short pair of
cowhide boots, altogether, says Dewhurst, "an appearance at once

practical and quaint. " Dewhurst tells a story about Monet painting a

huge oak tree standing out in bold relief against a ruddy cliff in the

Creuse. After having made a number of studies, his work was

interrupted by three weeks of bad weather, fog and rain. When he Impressionist Exhibition at the Grafton Galler\es. London, in 1905. organized by

Durand-Ruel. Photograph.
returned to the site the tree was in full bloom, completely enveloped
in buds. Monet called on the mayor of the village who organized a
working party which removed every single leaf from the tree, after

which Monet continued his painting where he had left off.

203
 "

Monet's "Home Port " at Giverny When Alice died in 1911 Monet's unhappiness was such that it

was thought that he would never paint again. The following year he
was found to be suffering from a cataract which the surgeons said
could not be removed for many years yet. His spirits were somewhat
revived by the marriage of his son jean to Alice's daughter, Blanche
Hoschede. And then Monet's old friend Georges Clemenceau, who
had been France's wartime Premier, had the idea of commissioning
Monet to make a huge painting for the oval room of the Orangerie in

the Tuileries.
The representation of Nature, as indicated by Dewhurst's story
of the defoliated oak tree, had long ago lost its importance for
Monet. He had reached the point where the subject of his picture, the
Doge's Palace in Venice, the haystacks of Normandy, was a kind of
habitual drill he went through in order to produce a picture whose
interest surpassed these familiar objects. He repeated the experiment

with the facade of Rouen Cathedral, as seen from the window of the

little curiosity shop called "Au Caprice" on the northwest side of

Cathedral Place. The geometrical Gothic of the Cathedral face pro-
vided him with a convenient composition for a series of paintings,
each of which lived within itself. This was in the true line of the great
forward movement which the Impressionist Revolution had released
half a century before. This was Twentieth Century painting.

No sooner had Monet and his friends successfully flouted the

canons of official art. back in the days of the Second Empire,
than a regiment of artists had charged forward to exploit the
breakthrough. The Pointillists and the Post-Impressionists had been
followed by the Fauves, the Nabis and the Dadaists, the Cubists, the
Symbolists, the Realists and the Surrealists, the Futurists and the
Purists, the Expressionists and others, all advancing, overtaking each
other, mingling, mixing, borrowing, quarrelling. One has only to

think of the names of the painters who had taken up the brush after

Monet's famous Impression: Seurat, Signac, Redon, Gauguin, Van

Gogh, Henri Rousseau, Ensor, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Valadon,
Vuillard. Matisse, Rouault. Dufy. Marquet, Villon, Van Dongen,
Vlaminck, Picabia, Derain, Leger, Picasso, Braque, Utrillo, Modigliani,

Delaunay, Gris, Chagall, Ernst, Soutine, Masson, Miro . . . Men had

come from Russia, Spain, Holland, Italy and many other countries to

take part in the French renaissance of painting, the greatest in

modern times, the defiant and original tone of which had been set by
the Impressionists.

Monet's House and Garden at Giverny. Photographs. The paintings which Monet now began for the oval room in the
Orangerie were in the forefront of this movement. Though recog-

nizably water lilies, darkened pools of them, wall flowing into wall,
"After having ranged over the banks of the Seine for twenty-five years, they were as close as art had come at this time to pure abstraction.
from Le Havre to Paris, and again from the embankments in front of the For a man of eighty-six, already suffering from rheumatism and
Louvre down to the estuary. Monet all of a sudden found the chosen spot.
occasional bouts of malaria, the result of working in all weathers in
One might almost say. remembering how often he had been on the move,
that this tireless explorer of places and colors had. till then, yet to find his
wet. and often swampy, places, the effort was enormous. He carried
home port. through to the last great canvas, collapsed, and died, December 5,
Hi- found it at Giverny.
1926. The Nympheas were unveiled to the world six months later.
"There in a rustic house, later enlarged and enriched into a comfortable
villa, he settled down in 1883. Would that other contemporary revolutions were as productive,

Arsene Alexandre, Monet or could be so beautifully commemorated!

204
 Monet and the Great Sets of Pictures

mm
•

. M*> M

Claude Monet: Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise. It

The Poplars

"Between our eye and the appearance of figures, seas, flowers, fields, the

atmosphere in fact interposes. The air visibly bathes each object, shrouds it in

mystery, wraps it in all the colors, bright or muffled, which it has carried along

before meeting that object. n , ,

Octave Mirbeau. preface to the Monet exhibition
at the Georges Petit Gallery. Paris. 1889

After settling at Giverny in 1883. Monet began to look with an even more searching eye
at the familiar motifs that he came upon every day. Light had long played the leading part in
his painting. Now he felt the need to record it in all its variety; he was no longer content with
an instantaneous "shot " taken at random. Observing the same motif at all hours of the day.
he was led by degrees to the idea of doing sets of pictures. His aim was to fix with scientific

accuracy the modifications of reality caused by the chromatic variations of the atmosphere.
light. The Haystacks became his first series of paintings on
For him. the poetry of nature lay in
the same theme: hour by hour, day by day, in canvas after canvas (some thirty of them still 1
1
1
I>
exist), he recorded the subtlest variations of light playing over the field before him.
The Haystacks were exhibited at Durand-Ruel's in May 1891. the series of Poplars in
J
March 1892. "They are studies of the same landscape during the mild weather seasons, at
i

K
different times of day, " wrote Gustave Geffroy. "A stretch of meadowland. a bend in a
m *"
narrow stream, three trees in front, and the continuation behind of the frail sinuous
colonnade of these poplars crowned with their moving capital of green tufts, this is the
1

subject chosen by the landscapist to write a new poem to the glory of the earth and light.
1

One series led to another, method of work was well suited to this period of
and this *t

Monet's life, now that eye trouble kept him more and more at home. He also tried to render tf 3 '
j

i
his sensations on larger canvases, better suited to the broader scope of his motifs. Working

on the same landscape motif in the neighborhood of his studio, he was able to carry out with
him, at each session, several large-size canvases. While remaining as responsive as ever to
light, he also maintained his sense of design and fitness. To Marcel Pays, interviewing him for
^^Lh&2i
"You are not an artist if you haven't got your picture in your
L 'Excelsior in 1920. he said:
head before executing it. and if you aren't sure of your craft and composition Techniques . . .

may vary. Art remains the same: it is at once a volontary and a sensitive transposition

^P^i^P
. .

of nature.
'*«p>.* B-tV

fc^jAV..
* 1

205
 The Cathedrals

"My stay here goes forward, which is not to say that I am anywhere near finishing
my cathedrals. Alas, 1 can only repeat that the further 1 go the harder 1 find it to
render what I feel; and I tell myself that the man who says he has finished a canvas is

arrogant indeed. Finished means complete, perfect, and I work on hard without
advancing, seeking and groping for my way, without achieving very much, except to
"
tire myself out.
"* , ,
Claude Monet, letter to Gustave Geffroy, March 28. 1893

" What speci/icalty should delight us in this many-sided world is the restless vibration

of life that quickens the sky and the earth and the sea, and all nature teeming and all

nature inert. Well, this moving wonder of every hour which meets our eyes in all the

pageantry of this luminous planet, this changing miracle which ceases only to

engender further miracles, this intensity of life which comes at us from man and
beast, but which also comes at us from grass and wood and stone, all this festival the
"
earth lavishes upon
r us unwearyingly.
J oJ Georges Clemenceau. Justice. May 20, 1895

Claude Monet:
Rouen Cathedral: Tour d'Albane. Early Morning, 1894.

"My strong point is knowing when to

stop. No painter can work more than

half an hour on the same motif in the

open air if he wants to remain faithful
to nature. When the motif changes,

"'
* Claude Monet

Claude Monet:

Rouen Cathedral. West Facade. Sunlight. 1894.

Rouen Cathedral. .Sunset, 1894.

206
 London and Venice

"Claude Monet no longer captures light with the joy in conquest

of one who, having seized his prey, holds on to it with clenched

hands. He conveys it as the most intelligent of dancers conveys
an emotion. Movements fuse and combine and we do not know how
to break them down again. They are so smoothly interconnected

that they seem to be but a single movement, and the dance is

"
perfect and complete as a circle.
Octave Mirbeau, preface to the exhibition of
the Venice series, Bernheim Gallery, Paris 1912

iy.1
*J

Claude Monet: London, Effect of Sunlight in Fog, 1904.

"Hard at work, I have not been able to write to you, leaving it to my wife
to give you our news. She must have told you how enthusiastic I am over
Venice. Well, my enthusiasm only grows, as does all the unique light of this
place. I am saddened by it. It is so beautiful! But 1 must make the best of it . .

I console myself with the thought of coming back next year, for as yet 1 have
only been able to make a tentative
start. But what a pity didn't come here I

earlier was young and bold and would stop at nothing! No matter,
when I I

am spending delicious moments here, almost forgetting that am an old I

man. Claude Monet, letter to Gustave Geffroy, December 7, 1908

Claude Monet: The Ducal Palace, Venice, 1908.

The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908.

Palazzo da Mula, Venice. 1908.

207
 "

Water Lilies with the Japanese

Bridge, 1899.

Water Lilies at Giverny. 1905.

Wisteria, 1919.

Monet (right) at Giverny with

Georges Durand-Ruel and

Madame Joseph Durand-Ruel.
Photograph.

Clemenceau (left) and Monet

(right) on the Japanese Bridge

in Monet's Garden at Giverny.

Photograph.

"
At Giverny he created an unusual garden by deflecting the course of a
stream, the Epte. He obtained a small pool whose water was always clear;
he surrounded it with trees, shrubs, flowers, of his own choosing, and he
adorned the surface with water lilies of various colors which blossom in the
spring, amid their broad leaves, and remain in bloom all summer. Over this

flowered water, a light wooden bridge, in the style of Japanese bridges; and
in the water, among the flowers, the whole passing sky, all the air playing

among the trees, all the movement of the wind, all the nuances of the hours,

the still image of surrounding nature.

Gustave GeffrQy ^^ Mmn

208
 mv

"I have taken up again some things

impossible to do: water with grass

waving at the bottom ... It is a

beautiful thing to see. but trying to

paint it is enough to drive you crazy.

Yet I keep tackling things like that.

Claude Monet.
letter to Gustave Geffroy. June 11. 1890

Monet's Water Garden at Giverny. Photograph.

Monet photographed by Sacha Guitry.

Taken up in 1890. the theme of water, of pools August 1 1, 1908. he wrote to Geffroy: "Know that I am
mirroring sky and vegetation, absorbed Monet for the engrossed in my work. These landscapes of water and
rest of his life. These aquatic landscapes span almost reflections have become an obsession. It is beyond the
forty years of his career. To them he devoted what strength of an old man like me. and yet 1 am determined
strength he had left in old age. His knowledge of the to render what 1 feel. I have destroyed some ... I have
subject was so thorough that he ended by identifying begun some afresh... and I hope that something will

himself with it. With a free handling of color and a come of such strenuous efforts "
Each moment and
boldness of design unmatched by any painter until effect which he studied in his water garden and recorded
many years later, he wholly assimilated himself with on canvas is like a cross-section of the teeming life of
what he simultaneously observed and recorded. On the world.

209
 <

"You can produce masterpieces otherwise by memory, prised at a certain point and during a certain state of its

by the science of composition, but you will not produce evolution. Many painters have attempted that syn-
these particular masterpieces, which are quite equal to thesis, but they have left it in the form of a sketch, for

the others and which express something never yet want of the powers of perception which Claude Monet
expressed to this degree: the magnificent poetry of the has, and which have made him realize that the same

passing moment, of continuing life. Impressionism, fleeting minutes recurred almost identically, and that he
wrongly considered to be a hasty study of details, is could extract from them on the spot the resume' and
precisely the reverse. I shall never weary of repeating it: composition which others, with the help of theories,
"
Impressionism is a synthesis of universal being, sur- pursue in the Studio. Gustave Geffroy. Claude Monti

'
Claude Monti Belle-lie.

"
^^tSffc
Brittany
" " '
Pencil

T v^ '
.^r "" '' '
' »* ' ' »" » - .-- — w
^', »

v
><*2r~* "yj'&&c
"
The Magnificent Poetry
oj the Passing Moment

"This juxtaposition ot color spots was

thought to be easy because it seemed
vaguer than a good design carefully laid in.

as taught by the schools. In reality the

impressionist technique is terribly diffi-

cult ... It took the prodigious powers of

Monet and Renoir for it ever to be imagined
that their art was an easy matter! It called

for a refined sensibility and a complete

science of color. A picture painted in this
way does not allow of any retouching . .

The eye recomposes what the brush has

dissociated, and one perceives with amaze-
ment all the science, all the secret order
that has presided over this accumulation of
color spots, which seemed to be thrown on
in a furious shower. It is a veritable piece of

orchestral music in which each color is an

instrument with its own distinct part, and
in which the hours, with their various tints,

represent the successive themes. Monet is

the peer of the greatest landscapists in his

understanding of the character of each par-
ticular place studied; therein lies the
supreme quality of his art.

Camille Mauclair, L'fmpressiormisme, 1 903

CliiuJf Monet: The Water Garden at Gi

"For the rest, what do forms matter? What does the night. It is light that is all-powerful, that magnifies forms,
subject matter ~>
What does the landscape itself matter that brings out their beauty, renews their luster, metamor-
one is trying to paint? What do these elements matter, phoses their appearance, displaces their contours and
these prodigious masses ceaselessly contending? M. Monet quickens them; il is light that peoples the world with its

knows that in fact there is only one real thing, and that is intangible finery, and decks it in a poetry ceaselessly
light. He knows that without it 'everything would be renewed and everlasting
shadow.' everything would remain shrouded in chaotic Georges Grappe. I. Art et le Beau

211
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES

List of Illustrations

ANONYMOUS. Peasants in the Fields, about 1865. Stereo- CASSATT Mary (1844-1926). Feeding the Ducks, 1895. Color
scopic View. Yvan Christ Collection, Paris x 1574 ') The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1

16 etching. (1 1 '7.6
New York.Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. H. O.
Havemeyer Collection. (Photo Courtesy of Metropolitan
Museum) 173
BAYARD Hippolyte (1801-1887). The Roofs of Pans from
Montmartre, 1842. Photograph. Courtesy, Societe Fran- - Woman at her Toilette, 1 891 . Drypoint and aquatint. (Photo
caise de Photographie, Paris 90 Giraudon, Paris) 173

BAZILLE Frederic (1841-1870). Self-Portrait. Black chalk.

CEZANNE Paul (1839-1906). Self-Portrait, 1865-1866. Oil,
(9 'A x 137s) Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris 42 (1774X 167s") Rene Lecomte Collection, Paris 34
- Portrait of Renoir, 1867. Oil. (24 72X20") Musee National - Apotheosis of Delacroix, about 1894. Oil. (107 8 X137..")
des Beaux-Arts, Algiers, (Photo Giraudon, Paris) 43 34
Private Collection, Paris. (Photo Vizzavona, Paris

- Portrait of Sisley, 1867-1868. Oil. (11 x 12 '/*) Private Collec- - Figure Scene, sketch from Cezanne to Zola,
in a letter
tion. (Photo Courtesy of Wildenstein & Co.) 43 January 17, 1859. Private Collection. (Photo Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris) 35
- The Artist's Studio, 1870. Oil. (38 x 507s") Musee du Jeu
de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 43 - Blacksmith, sketch in a letter from Cezanne to Zola,
June 30, 1866. Private Collection. (Photo Bibliotheque
- Monet after his Accident at the Inn in Chailly, 1866. Oil.
Nationale, Paris) 35
(187 2 x24 3 /8") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo
Renee A. Daulte, Lausanne) 60 - A Reading at Zola's House, 1869-1870. Oil. (207 2 x22")
Private Collection, Paris. (Photo Vizzavona, Paris) 36
- Family Reunion, 1867. Oil. (597 8 X90") Musee du Jeu de
Paume, Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 78 - Paul Alexis Reading to Zola, about 1869. Oil. (51 7 8 x63")
- Study
Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo Louis
for the Family Reunion, 1867. Pencil. (11 7s x 7b")
1 1
Laniepce, Paris) 47
Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees
Nationaux, Paris) 78 - Self-Portrait, about 1877. Oil. (24X187 8 ") Phillips Collec-
tion, Washington, D.C. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
Va.) 47
BOUDIN Eugene (1824-1898). Boats on the Beach. Drawing.
- A Modern Olympia, 1872-1873. Oil. (187 8 x217 8 ") Musee
Private Collection 39
du Jeu de Paume. Paris. (Photo Bulloz, Paris) 66
- Beach at Trouville, 1863. Oil. (7x14"). Phillips Collection,
- Portraitof Louis-Auguste Cezanne, the Artist's Father,
Washington, D.C. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
1866-1867. Oil. (7874X47 74") Private Collection, Paris.
Va.) 82
(Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 67

- Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, 1869-1870. Oil. (237 8 x317 B ")

BOUGUEREAU William (1825-1905). Nymphs and Satyr, Private Collection, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) .... 81
1873. Oil. (1027eX707 8 ") and Francine Clark Art
Sterling
Institute, Williamstown, Mass. (Photo Courtesy of Clark Art - Four People Sitting in a Park, with a Parasol and Baby
Institute) 119 Carriage, 1872-1895. Pencil. (5x872 ") Mrs. Enid A. Haupt
Collection, New York (Photo Courtesy of Mrs. Enid A.
- William Bouguereau in his Studio among his Works. Photo- Haupt) 100
graph. Georges Sirot Collection, Paris 180
- The House of the Hanged Man, 1873. Oil. (217 8 x26")
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 114

BRETON Jules (1827-1906). Benediction of the Wheat in - Pissarro Going Out to Paint, about 1874. Pencil.
Artois, 1857. Oil. (51 x1257 2 ") Louvre, Paris. (Photo Bulloz, (7 74X472") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo
Paris) 18 Musees Nationaux, Paris) 118

- Bouquet with Delftware Vase, 1873-1875. Oil.

(1 67s X 107s") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo

CAILLEBOTTE Gustave (1848-1894). Paris Boulevard Seen Louis Laniepce, Paris) 1 23
from Above. Oil. (2574X2174") Private Collection. (Photo
Courtesy of Wildenstein & Co.) 1 62 - Jug and Spirit Stove. Pencil. (872X5") Mrs. Enid A. Haupt
Collection, New York. (Photo Courtesy of Mrs. Enid A.
Haupt) 124

CAROLUS-DURAN C. E. A. (1838-1917). Lady with a Glove - The Sideboard, 1873-1877. Oil. (29 2 x317«") Museum of
(The Artist's Wife), 1869. Oil. (8974X6472") Louvre, Paris. Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary. (Photo Istituto d'Arti
(Photo Bulloz, Paris) 30 Grafiche, Bergamo) 1 24

215
- Pot of Flowers on a Table, 1882-1887. Oil. (23V 8 x28 3 A") - Cezanne's Studio at Aix-en-Provence. Photograph. (Photo
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 125 Giraudon, Paris) 181

- Four People in a Boat, 1870-1875. Pencil. (4x67 8 ") Kupfer- - Cezanne photographed by Emile Bernard at Aix in 1905.
stichkabinett der Offentlichen Kunstsammlung, Basel, (Photo Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, gift of Georges
Switzerland. (Museum Photo) 132 Sirot) 190

- Dr. Gachet in the Studio, 1873. Charcoal. Cabinet des - Catalogue of the Cezanne Exhibition at Vollard's in1898.
Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) .. 163 Courtesy Fondation Doucet, Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Ar-
cheologie, Paris. (Photo Agraci, Paris) 195
- Portrait of Victor Chocquet, 1876-1877. Oil. (1874X14")
Private Collection. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 164

- Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1899. Oil. (4074X32 72") CONSTABLE John (1776-1837). The Bay of Weymouth.
Musee du Petit Palais, Paris. (Photo Maurice Poplin, Undated. Oil. (347aX44") Louvre, Paris. (Photo Maurice
Villemomble) 1 65 Babey, Basel) 98

- Portrait of Gustave Geffroy, 1895. Oil. Private Collection,

Paris. (Photo Vizzavona, Paris) 167

-
CORMON Fernand (1845-1924). Cain Flying before Jehovah's
Still Life with a Tureen, about 1883-1885. Oil. (257 8 x32")
Curse, 1880.Oil. (151 X276") Formerly in the Musee du
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 182-183
Luxembourg, Paris, present whereabouts unknown. (Photo
Giraudon, Paris) 18
- Portrait of the Artist's Wife, about 1883-1886. Pencil and
black chalk. (197sx1278 ") Boymans-van Beuningen
- The Victors at Salamis, 1887. Print. Courtesy Bibliotheque
Museum, Rotterdam, Holland. (Museum Photo) 184
180
Nationale, Paris '

- Self-Portrait, 1881-1884. Pencil. (8 72X5") Private Collec-

tion 185

-The Sea at L'Estaque, 1882-1885. Oil. (257eX317a") COROT Camille (1796-1875). Self-Portrait, about 1835. Oil.
Private Collection. (Photo Skira) 1 85 (137 8 X978 ") Uffizi, Florence, Italy. (Photo John R. Free-
man & Co. Ltd., London) 13
- Boy with a Red Waistcoat, 1894-1895. Oil. (31 7bX257«")
E. G. Buhrle Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo
- Windmill on the Dunes. Drawing. (9X1274") Cabinet des
Maurice Babey, Basel) 186 Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) .. 13

- Card Player, 1890-1892. Pencil and traces of watercolor. - Inthe Forest of Fontainebleau. Pencil. (13 74X1674") Vitale
(2074X1472") Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Bloch Collection, The Hague, Holland. (Photo Courtesy
Design, Providence, Rhode Island. Gift of Mrs. Murray S. Vitale Bloch) 59
Danforth. (Photo Courtesy of Rhode Island School of
Design) 187 - Landscape at Mornex, on the Saleve, Haute-Savoie, June
1842. Pen and pencil. (9x1172") Cabinet des Dessins,
- Card Players, 1890-1905. Oil. (17 74X22 7 2 ") Musee du Jeu Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) 76
de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 187
- Rocks on the Seashore, 1870. Oil. (3274X397a") Mesdag
- Les Grandes Baigneuses, 1898-1905. Oil. (82X98") W. P. Museum, The Hague, Holland. (Photo Skira) 82
Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Photo
Skira) 188

- Bathers, 1883-1887. Pencil. (5x87 2 ") Mrs. Enid A. Haupt COURBET Gustave (1819-1877). The Young Stone-Breaker,
Collection, New York. (Photo Courtesy of Mrs. Enid A. about Black chalk heightened with red chalk.
1865.
Haupt) 188 (127sX97 8 ") Musee Courbet, Ornans (Doubs), France.
(Museum Photo) 15
- Rocks at Bibemus, 1898-1900. Oil. (257eX317 8 ") Folk-
wang Museum, Essen, West Germany. (Photo Carlfred - A Burial at Ornans, 1849. Oil. (12374X261") Louvre, Paris.
Halbach, Ratingen) 189 (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 19

- Le Cabanon de Jourdan, 1906. Oil. (257eX31 7 8 ") Riccardo

- The Painter's Studio, 1855. Oil. (142X236") Louvre, Paris.
Jucker Collection, Milan, Italy. (Photo Skira) 189
(Photo Giraudon, Paris) 20
- La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, about 900. Pencil and water- 1

color. (12 74X1 87a") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris.

- Stream in the Forest, 1865. Oil. (37x537 8 ") Louvre, Paris.
(Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 20
(Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 190

- Cezanne and Pissarro. Photograph. Courtesy Roger-Viollet,

- Self-Portrait, detail from The Painter's Studio, 1855. Louvre,
Paris 101 Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 21

- Cezanne Sitting in Pissarro's Garden at Pontoise in 1877, - The Hammock, 1844. Oil. (27 72X3874") Collection Oskar
with Pissarro Standing on the Right. Photograph 114 Reinhart am Romerholz, Winterthur, Switzerland. (Photo
Skira) 76
- Cezanne Painting at Aix-en-Provence, January 1904. Photo-
graph taken by Maurice Denis accompanied by Emile - Calm Sea, 1869. Oil. (15x1774") Musee des Beaux-Arts,
Bernard. Georges Sirot Collection, Paris 181 Caen, France. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 82

216
 Execution at the Sainte-Pelagie Prison, 1871. Black chalk. Lovers of classical art convinced that painting is going to
(6V2XIOV/') Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo the dogs France. Lithograph. (978X872") Plate 4, second
in

Musees Nationaux, Paris) 97 state, of "Le Public du Salon" published in "Le Charivari,"
May 7, 1852. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque
Courbet in his Cell at the Sainte-Pelagie Prison, 1871 . Black Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.)
chalk. (6V2XIOV2") Cabinet des dessins, Louvre, Paris.
(Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) 97 In Front of Meissonier's Pictures. Lithograph. (974X874")
Plate 3, second state, of " Le Public du Salon" published in
Photograph of Courbet, Georges Sirot Collection, Paris .... 20 "Le Charivari," May 3, 1852. Cabinet des Estampes,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.)
Titlepage of the catalogue of Courbet's one-man show in

1855. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 21 Artists Examining a Rival's Picture. Lithograph. (97 8 x87»")
Plate 9, second state, of "Le Public du Salon" published in
Courbet's one-man show at the Rond-Point de I'Alma, "Le Charivari," May 14, 1852. Cabinet des Estampes,
Paris, in 1867. Photograph 71 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 53

Courbet and the Commune. Photograph. Georges Sirot Triumphal March and Funeral March. Lithographs.
Collection, Paris 95 (77sX974" and 874X97s") Plates Ibis and 2, second
state, of "L'Exposition Universelle" published in "Le
Courbet's membership card of the Federation of Artists Charivari," April-September 1855. Cabinet des Estampes,
created during the Commune. Courtesy Musee Carnavalet, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photos B.N.) 54
Paris 95
In Front of M. Manet's Picture. Lithograph. (9x7 72") Plate 9,
Two Commune Posters concerning Courbet,
Election second state, of "Croquis au Salon" published
pris in " Le
April 10, 1871. Courtesy Musee Courbet, Ornans (Doubs), Charivari," June 19, 1865. Cabinet des Estampes, Biblio-
France. (Photos Andre Chadefaux, Paris) 94-95 theque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 57

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art. Lithograph.

(1074X874") Plate 367 published in "Le Boulevard,"
COUTURE Thomas (1815-1879). The Romans of the Deca- May 25, 1862. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque
dence, 1847. Oil. (1 83 72X30572") Louvre, Paris. (Photo Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 63
Bulloz, Paris)

DEGAS Edgar (1834-1917). Portrait of Manet, 1864-1865.

DAUBIGNY Charles-Francois (1817-1878). Train and River Drawing. (167sX11") Private Collection. (Photo Routhier,
Boats. Pen and ink. (474 x 67s") Cabinet des Dessins, Paris) 24
Louvre, Paris 75
- Compositional Study for Spartan Boys and Girls Exercising,
Frontispiece for "Galerie Durand-Ruel," two volumes of 1860. Pencil. (77 8 x 1 1 74") Private Collection. (Photo Cour-
reproductions of 120 pictures, published by Jean-Marie- tesy of Wildenstein & Co.) 25
Fortune Durand-Ruel, Paris 1845. (Photo Durand-Ruel,
Paris and New York) 108 - Self-Portrait,about 1852. Pencil drawing from a sketch-
book. (97a x 7") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo
Giraudon, Paris) 25

DAUMIER Honore (1808-1879). An Excusable Error. Chickens - Wounded Jockey, study for The Steeplechase, 1866.
imagining they have rediscovered the cage in which they Charcoal. (9X12 74") Baron de Chollet Collection, Fribourg,
spent their infancy. Lithograph. (,8x107s") Plate 21, third Switzerland. (Photo Courtesy Baron de Chollet) 26
state, of "La crinolomalie" published by "Le Charivari,"
1 857. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
- Steeplechase. The Fallen Jockey, 1866. Oil. (71x5972")
(Photo Bibliotheque Nationale) 10
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Collection, Upperville, Virginia
(Photo Courtesy Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon) 26
- The Emigrants, 1850-1855. Oil. (674X1 TA") Musee du
Petit Palais, Paris. (Photo Raymond Laniepce, Paris) 19
- (137sX9")
Portrait ofManet, 1864-1866. Pencil and wash.
Private Collection, Paris. (Photo Routhier, Paris) 28
- On the Way into the World's Fair. Lithograph. (872X97e")
Plate 5, second state, of " L'Exposition Universelle" pub-
- Self-Portrait with a Green Waistcoat, about 1856. Oil.
lished in "Le Charivari," April-September 1855. Cabinet
(Photo
(1574X1274") Private Collection. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
Paris) 29
B.N.) 49

- The Last Day for Receiving Pictures at the Salon. Litho- - Spartan Boys and Girls Exercising, 1860. Oil. (43 74X6074")
graph. (874X1074") Plate 122, second state, published in Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National
Gallery, London. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 29
"Le Charivari" under "Actualites," February 20, 1846.
Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
(Photo B.N.) 52 - The Belleli Family, about 1859-1862. Oil. (7874X977 8 ")
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
- This Mr. Courbet paints such coarse people... Lithograph. Paris) 29
(77sX97o") Plate 12, second state, of "L'Exposition Uni-
verselle" published in "Le Charivari," April-September - Therese De Gas, Duchess
Portrait of Morbilli, 1863. Oil.
1855. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (35x267s") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis
(Photo B.N.) 53 Laniepce, Paris) 30

217
 7x

Gentlemen's Race (Before the Start), 1862. Oil. Two Studies for a Music Hall Singer, 1878-1880. Pastel and
(1978X2474") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo charcoal on gray paper. (2072X25") Mrs. John Winter-
Skira) 31 steen Collection, Philadelphia 150

Portrait of Edmond Duranty, about 1879. Charcoal and Cafe Singer in Green, 1884. Pastel. [23*hXW /*") Stephen
3

white chalk. (1272X1878 ") The Metropolitan Museum of C. Clark Collection, New York. (Photo Frank Lerner, New
Art, New York. Rogers Fund, 1918. (Photo Courtesy of York) 150
Metropolitan Museum) 48
Cafe Concert at "Les Ambassadeurs," 1876-1877.
The Cotton Office at New Orleans, 1873. Oil. (1472X107s") Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyons, France.
(29 7b X 36 8 ") Musee des Beaux-Arts, Pau, France. (Photo (Photo Skira) 151
Giraudon, Paris) 102
At the Theater, 1880. Pastel. (21 7 8 x 1774") Vicomtessede
Woman with Chrysanthemums (Madame Hertel), 1865. Montfort Collection, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) ... 151
Oil. (29x3672") The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. The H. 0. Cafe Concert, 1876-1877. Pastel. (9 74X17") W. A. Clark
Havemeyer Collection. (Photo Skira) 1 23 Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
(Photo Frank Lerner, New York) 151
Dancer Adjusting her 1874. Graphite pencil and
Slipper,
charcoal heightened with white chalk on faded pink paper. The Ballet from "Robert le Diable," 1872. (26x21 7b") The
(127bX978 ") The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O. Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O. Havemeyer
Havemeyer Collection. (Photo Courtesy of Metropolitan Collection. (Photo Henry B. Seville, Alexandria, Va.) 152
Museum) 1 38
Musicians in the Orchestra, 1872. Oil. (277sX 1974") Stad-

Jockey, 1885-1890. Pencil and pastel. 2 7s x 9 72") Baron (1 tische Galerie, Frankfurt, West Germany. (Photo Skira) .... 1 52
de Chollet Collection, Fribourg, Switzerland. (Photo Durand-
Ruel, Paris and New York) 1 43 At the Milliner's, 1882. Pastel. (29 7 2 x33 72") Private Col-
lection. (Photo Skira) 1 55
Four Studies of a Jockey, about 1866. Sepia and gouache
on brown wove paper with Canson freres watermark. Laundress Seen Against the Light, 1882. Oil. (32x257e")
(1774Xl27s")Courtesyof TheArt Instituteof Chicago ... 143 Durand-Ruel Collection, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
Paris) 156
Horse Races at Longchamp, 1873-1875. Oil. (1 1 74 x 1574")
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Purchased, S.A. Mary Cassatt in the Louvre, about 1879. Pencil.
Denio Collection. (Photo Frank Lerner, New York) 1 43 (1174X972") The Joan and Lester Avnet Collection, New
York 172
Dancers the Foyer, 1879. Pastel. (187 8 x257 8 ") Private
in

Collection, Paris and San Francisco. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Dancers in Yellow, 1903. Pastel. (317 2 x3572") Private
Paris) 144 Collection. (Photo Skira) 196

The Racecourse. Amateur Jockeys beside a Carriage, about After the Bath, about 1895. Pastel and watercolor.
1877-1880. Oil. (26x31 7e") Musee du Jeu de Paume, (29 7b x 22 7b") Courtauld Institute Galleries, London.
Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 144 (Photo John R. Freeman & Co. Ltd., London) 197

Dancers in Yellow, 1878-1880. Pastel on monotype. After the Bath. Pastel. (2472X257 8 ") Cabinet des Dessins,
(11 72X107 2 ") Private Collection, Pans. (Photo Louis Louvre, Paris 1 97
Laniepce, Paris) 1 44
Photograph of Mallarme and Renoir taken by Degas.
Racehorses, 1883-1885. Pastel. (15x22") National Gallery Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 171
of Canada, Ottawa. (Photo Skira) 144

Ballet Dancer Resting, about 1880-1882. Pastel on gray

paper. (187eX2472") Courtesy of the John G. Johnson DELACROIX Eugene (1798-1863). Arab Dancer, about 1832.
Collection, Philadelphia. (Photo Philadelphia Museum of Pen and ink. (772X6") Boymans-van Beuningen Museum,
Art) 145 Rotterdam, Holland. (Museum Photo) 14

End of the Arabesque, 1877. Oils thinned with turpentine Lion Hunt, 1855. Oil. (22x2874") Private Collection. (Photo
and pastel. (2672X15") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. Institutet for Fargfoto, Lund) 14
(Photo Raymond Laniepce, Paris) 145

Women on the Terrace of a Cafe, 1877. Pastel on mono-

type. (1 574 237b") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. DENIS Maurice (1870-1943). Homage to Cezanne, 1900. Oil.
(Photo Skira) 1 49 (707bX9472") Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Gift
of Andre Gide, 1928. (Photo Bulloz, Paris) 195
-

Absinthe, 1876. Oil. (3674X2674 ') Musee du Jeu de

Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 149

Cafe Singer Wearing a Glove, 1878. Pastel and tempera. DEROY Isidore-Laurent (1797-1886). Panoramic View of the
(207bX167 8 ") Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Fogg Art Fires in Paris on the Nights of May 23 and 25, 1871.
Museum, Cambridge, Mass. (Photo Frank Lerner, New Lithograph. Vinck Collection, Cabinet des Estampes, Bib-
York) 150 liotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 96

218
DESBOUTIN Marcellin (1823-1902). Portrait of Degas, about FANTIN-LATOUR Henri (1836-1904) Serf-Portrait, April 1860.
1876. Etching. Bibliotheque Nationale, Pans. (Photo B.N.) . 139 Pencil and charcoal heightened with white on yellow laid
paper. (12x9 'A") Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France.
(Photo Studio Gerondal, Lomme-Lille)

DORE Gustave (1833-1 883). Entrance of the Exhibition Hall on - The Studio in the Batignolles Quarter, 1870. Oil
March 31, 1861, the last day for sending in pictures. (807bX10 A") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo
3

Drawing. Private Collection. (Photo Roger-Viollet, Paris) ... 51 Louis Laniepce, Paris)

DURAND-RUEL Paul (1831-1922). The Large Drawing Room FONTAINEBLEAU FOREST. View of Fontainebleau Forest ii

in Paul Durand-Ruel's Apartment at 35, rue de Rome, Paris, 1859. Photograph by Charles Marville. Cabinet des Es-
seen from the door of the small drawing room. Photograph tampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 58
by courtesy of Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York. (Above
the piano can be seen Renoir's Pecheuses de moules a
Berneval, now in the Barnes Foundation, Merion. Pa.;
between the two doors on the right, a Puvis de Chavannes FRENCH SCHOOL. View of a Room in the Luxembourg
and a Boudin seascape above the sofa, Renoir's Girl with a
;
Museum, Paris, about 1880. Oil painting. (31 7 8 x397e")
Cat, now in the Francine and Sterling Clark Art Institute, Louvre, Paris 191
Williamstown, Mass.) 202

- Fire at the Durand-Ruel Gallery, 389 Fifth Avenue, New

York, March17, 1898. Photograph by courtesy of Durand- GAUGUIN Paul (1848-1903). Self-Portrait, about 1883. Pencil
Ruel, Paris and New York. (The firemen can be seen (on same sheet with a Pissarro self-portrait).
the
bringing down Renoir's Portrait of Gabhelle from an upper (127bX19'/2") Cabinet des dessins. Louvre, Paris. (Photo
window.) 203 Musees Nationaux, Paris) 1 74

- Landscape at Le Pouldu, Brittany, 1890. Oil. (2874X367/')

Paul Fierens Collection, Brussels, Belgium. (Photo Skira) .. 179
DURANTY Edmond (1833-1880). Title page of Duranty's "La
Nouvelle Peinture," Dentu, Paris, 1876. (Photo Bibliothe-
que Nationale, Paris) 110
GLEYRE Charles (1808-1874). Evening or Lost Illusions, 1843.
Oil. (6174X9374") Louvre, Paris. (Archives Photographi-
ques, Paris)
EXHIBITIONS, SALONS, WORLD'S FAIRS. The Picture
Gallery at the Paris World's Fair of 1855. Woodcut from
"The Illustrated London News," September 1, 1855.
(Photo Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) 11 GOGH Vincent van (1853-1890). Portrait of Le Pere Tanguy,
1887 Oil. (3674X2874") Musee Rodin, Paris. (La Photo-
- The Gallery of Machines at the Paris World's Fair of 1855 :
theque Europeenne, Paris) 166
The Queen's Visit to France - Her Majesty at the Exposition
des Beaux-Arts. Lithograph by A. Provost from "The - Peasant Woman Gathering Grass. Drawing. Private Collec-
Illustrated London News," September 1, 1855. (Photo tion 175
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) '. . . 49
- The Fourteenth of July in Paris, 1886-1887. Oil.
- The Salon the Palace of Industry at the Paris World's Fair
in (177 8 X157 8 ") Jaggli-Hahnloser Collection, Winterthur,
of 1855. Photograph. (Photo Roger-Viollet, Paris) 50 Switzerland. (Photo Skira) 178

- Varnishing Day at the Salon, May 11, 1879. Print by - View from his Window in Rue Lepic, Paris, 1886-1887.
Maurice Leloir from "La Vie moderne." Bibliotheque Drawing. Private Collection U.S.A. (formerly in the collec-
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 52 tion of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec) 179

- The Salon of 1 865. (Photo Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) ... 55

- Titlepage of the Catalogue of the 1865 Salon. (Photo GRENOUILLERE AND BOUGIVAL. View of Bougival. 19th
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) 56 century lithograph. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo
B.N.) 75
- View of the Paris World's Fair of 1867. Print from "Paris-
Guide par les principaux ecrivains de France," Paris 1867. - View of La Grenouillere. 19th century print. Bibliotheque
(Photo Bulloz, Paris) 70 Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 75

- The Salon of 1869. The Last Day for Sending in Pictures. - The Bathing Place of La Grenouillere on the Island of
Print by Del. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) ... 50 Croissy, the Seine near Bougival. 19th century print.
in
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 84
- Title page the Catalogue of the First Impressionist
of
Exhibition, Paris, April 15-May 15, 1874. Courtesy Fonda- - Inauguration of Bougival Bridge on November 7, 1858.
tion Doucet, Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Paris. Contemporary print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo
(Photo Agraci, Paris) 1 04 B.N.) 84

- Impressionist Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, London, in - " Baldes Canotiers " (Boaters' Dance-Hall) at Bougival. 1 9th
1905, organized by Durand-Ruel. Photograph by Courtesy century photograph. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo
of Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York 203 B.N.) 135

219
 La Grenouillere. 19th century print by Ferdinand Lunel LE PETIT Alfred (1841-1909). Manet, King of the Impression-
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 135 ists. Caricature from the front page of "Les Contempo-
rains," June 16, 1873. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 110

GREVIN Alfred (1827-1892). Nadar the Great. Caricature from

"Le Journal amusant." Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. MALLARME Stephane (1842-1898). Photograph of Mallarme,
(Photo B.N.) 62 Mery Laurent and Manet taken in 1872. Cabinet des
Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 170

- Mallarme and Renoir photographed by Degas. Bibliotheque

GUILLAUMIN Armand (1841-1927). Montmartre, 1865. Oil. Nationale, Paris 171
(21 74X257 8 ") Private Collection, Geneva, Switzerland.
(Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 87
MANET Edouard (1832-1883). Portrait of Baudelaire, 1862-
Banks of the River Creuse, 1900. Charcoal. (1872X24V2") 1868. Etching, second plate, second state. (4 74X3 72")
Private Collection 161 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey,
Basel) 23

- The Absinthe Drinker, 1859. Oil. (70x40 72") Ny Carlsberg

GUYS Constantin (1802-1892). The Champs-Elysees, Paris. Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark. (Museum Photo) 23
Pen, wash, sepia and watercolor. (972X1678") Musee du
Petit Palais, Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 11
- Portrait of Auguste Manet, the Artist's Father, 1860. Red
chalk. Private Collection. (Photo Routhier, Paris) 27

- The Spanish Singer or The Guitarrero, 1861. Copper engrav-

ing. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
HAVRE, LE. The Outer Harbor at the Rise of the Tide, 19th
(Photo B.N.) 27
century photograph. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris . . . 39
- Victorine Meurent in the Costume of an Espada, 1862. Oil.
(657s x 5074") The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O.
HEBERT Henri (1849-1917). Physiognomy of a Free Studio in Havemeyer Collection. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
Paris,1879. Drawing representing art students at the Va.) 30
Academie Suisse, from "Revue illustree du Cercle des
Beaux-Arts," No. 1, Geneva, October 1, 1879 37 - The Street Singer, 1862. (687 8 x427
Oil. Courtesy 2 ")

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Sarah Choate

Sears in memory of her husband Joshua Montgomery
Sears. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 30
HIROSHIGE Ando (1797-1858).
Yabukoji at Atagoshita.
Woodblock print from "One Hundred Celebrated Places of - Races at Longchamp, 1864. Oil. (1774X33 74") Courtesy of
Edo," 1 856-1 859. (15x10") Takahashi Seiichiro Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago. (Photo Richard G. Brittain,
Kanagawa, Japan 64 Chicago) 31

- The Races. Lithograph. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

(Photo B.N.) 31
HIROSHIGE (1826-1894). Kiribatake at Akasaka. Woodblock
II

print from "One Hundred Celebrated Places of Edo," 1856- - The Old Musician, 1862. Oil. (74x9774") Chester Dale
1859. (15x 10") National Museum, Tokyo, Japan 64 Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Photo
Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 32

- The Old Musician, about 1861. Watercolor. (97 2 X127 8 ")

INGRES Jean-Dominique Durand-Ruel Collection, Paris. (Photo Durand-Ruel, Paris

(1780-1867). The Large Odalisque,
and New York) 32
1814. Oil. (357 8 X637 8 ") Louvre, Paris. (Photo Skira) 12
- The Spanish Ballet, 1862. Oil. (24 72X367 2 ") Phillips Collec-
- Photograph of Ingres taken by Dolard, 1856. Bibliotheque
tion, Washington, D.C. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
Nationale, Paris, gift of Georges Sirot 12
Va.) 32

- Concert in the Tuileries, 1860. Ink wash on two sheets

pasted together. (7x87e") Private Collection. (Photo

JONGKIND Johan Barthold (1819-1891). Le Port Vauban, Le
Maurice Babey, Basel) 33
Havre, 1865. Drawing. Private Collection 39
- Concert in the Tuileries, 1862. Oil. (30 x467a") Reproduced
- Beach at Sainte-Adresse, 1863. Watercolor. (11 74X2272") by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London.
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
(Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 33
Paris) 82
- Portrait of Emile Zola, 1868. Oil. (577 8 x447 8 ") Musee du
Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 46

LELOIR Maurice (1853-1940). Varnishing Day at the Salon, - Self-Portrait with Palette, 1 878. Oil. (34 x 28") Mr. and Mrs.
May 11, 1879. Print from "La Vie moderne." Bibliotheque John L. Loeb Collection, New York. (Photo Henry B. Beville,
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 52 Alexandria, Va.) 46

220
Portrait of Berthe Morisot with a Bunch of Violets, 1872. Portrait of Courbet, 1878. Pen and ink (9 XT') Musee
5
Oil. (21 /S X15") Private Collection, Paris. (Photo Louis Courbet, Ornans (Doubs), France. Gift of Paul Gachet.
Laniepce, Paris) 46 (Museum Photo)

Portrait of Stephane Mallarme, 1876. Oil. (10 7s x 14'/.,") Le Bon Bock (The Engraver E. Bellot at the Cafe Guerbois),
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Conzett & Huber, 1873 Oil. (37 x327s") Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Photo
Zurich) 47 Giraudon, Paris) 103

Portrait of Theodore Duret, 1868. Oil. (17X137.") Musee Still Life with Salmon, 1866. Oil. (287 8 x3674") Mrs. J.
du Petit Palais, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 48 Watson Webb Collection, New York. (Photo Henry B.
Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 124
George Moore the Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes, about
at
1879. Oil sketch. (257s x 31 7s") The Metropolitan Museum Boating, Oil. (38 7« x 51 '/V'JThe Metiopolitan Museum
1 874.
of Art, New York. Gift of Mrs. Ralph J. Hines, 1955. (Photo of Art, New
York. Bequest of Mrs. H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929.
Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 48 The H. O. Havemeyer Collection. (Photo Skira) 130

(35x4574") Kunst-
Portrait of Zacharie Astruc, 1863. Oil. Figure Study for "Boating": Bust of a Young Woman in
halle, Bremen, West Germany. (Photo Conzett & Huber, Side View, 1874. Pen and ink. (67 8 x572") A. Strolin
Zurich) 48 Collection, Paris 131

Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, 1863. Oil. (82 x 104 7/') Musee du Argenteuil, 1874. Oil. (57 7s x 44 72") Musee des Beaux-
Arts, Tournai, Belgium. (Photo Skira) 131
Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 56

Street Pavers in the Rue Mosnier, 1878. Oil. (25x3172")

The Venus of Urbino, after Titian, 1856. Oil. OVjXMVe") Collection R. A. Butler, London. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
Private Collection, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) .... 57
Paris) 136

Sketch for Olympia. Print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

The Rue de Berne Decked with Flags, 1878. Oil.
(Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 57
(257 8 x317 8 ") Private Collection. (Photo Maurice Babey,
Basel) 142
Portrait of Emile Zola (detail), 1868. Oil. Musee du Jeu de
Paume, Paris. (Photo Giraudon, Paris) 64 The Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags, 1878. Oil.
(257 X31 7 ") Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Collection, Upper-
2 2

Eva Gonzales, 1870. Oil. (75 74X52

Portrait of 72") Repro- ville, Va. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 142
duced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery,
London. (Museum Photo) 68 - The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1882. Oil. (3774X51 74")
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. (Photo Skira) 146-147 .

La Parisienne. Drawing. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothe-

que Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 69 At the Cafe, 1878. Oil. (187s x 15") The Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore, Md. (Museum Photo) 147
3
Berthe Morisot with a Fan, 1874. Oil. (237bX17 A")
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, The Waitress (La Servante de Bocks), 1878. Oil.
Paris) 69 (3874X3072") Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees,
The National Gallery, London. (Photo Skira) 148
View the Pans World's Fair, 1867. Oil. (42 72X77")
of
National Gallery, Oslo, Norway. (Photo 0. Vaering, Oslo) . . 71 Cafe, Place du Theatre-Francais, Paris, 1881 . Oil and pastel
on (1274X18") The Burrell Collection, Glasgow Art
linen.

The Fifer, 1866. Oil. (637eX3874") Musee du Jeu de Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo Zoltan
Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 72 Wegner, London) ,
149

Masked Ball at the Opera, 1873. Oil. (237s x 2874") Mrs.

The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, 1867. Litho-
graph. (13x17") Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo
Horace Havemeyer Collection, New York. (Photo Henry B.
Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 1 52
B.N.) 73
Spring (Jeanne Demarsy), 1882. Print, (67sX47s") Cabinet
ParisCafe (Cafe Guerbois?), 1869. Quill pen and india ink
des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo
on pale tan paper faded to reddish brown. (117 8 X1572") 170
B.N.)
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs. (Museum Photo) 74 Woman's Head, 1880. Ink wash. (7 /.x4Vt>") Staatliche
3

Graphische Sammlung, Munich, West Germany. (Museum

In a Cab. Drawing. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque 70
Photo) 1

Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 89

Letter from Manet to Baudelaire, 1865. Daniel Sickles
The Siege of Paris. Queue
Front of the Butcher's Shop,
in Collection, Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 57
1871. Etching. (67 8 x574") Courtesy of The Baltimore
Museum of Art, The George A. Lucas Collection on Letter to Isabelle Lemonnier, probably of July 13, 1880,
permanent loan from the Maryland Institute College of Art. with watercolor portrait of her. Cabinet des Dessins,
(Museum Photo) 89 Louvre, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Pans). The text
reads " Je suis sur que vous revez drapeaux et prise de la
:

The Barricade, 1871. Lithograph. (187 8 x137 8 ") Bibliothe- Bastille. Nous sommes, a ce qu'il parait, aux premieres
que Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 92 places pour voir les feux d'artifice." 1 68

The Civil War, 1871. Etching. (147 8 x167 8 ") Bibliotheque Manet photographed by Nadar. (Archives Photographiques,
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 93 Paris) 22

221
 Title page of Zola's study of Manet, published by E. Dentu, Women in the Garden, 1867. Oil. (10072X807/') Musee
Paris 1867. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 79
Paris. (Photo B.N.) 70
Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, surviving lefthand part of the
Catalogue of Manet's one-man show of 1867. Cabinet des picture painted at Chailly in 1865-1866. Oil. (16474X59 7b")
Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Gift of B. Prost. Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux,
(Photo B.N.) 72 Paris) 80

Poster of the Manet exhibition held in New York in 1879. Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, surviving central part of the first
(Photo Andre Chadefaux, Paris) 73 version, 1865. Oil. (977sX857 2 ") Private Collection, Paris.
(Photo Conzett & Huber, Zurich) 80
Manet featured on the front page of "L'Eclipse," May 14,
1876. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 110 Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, replica, 1866. Oil. (52x73")
Pushkin Museum, Moscow, U.S.S.R. (Photo Skira) 81
Caricature of Manet, "King of the Impressionists," by
Alfred Le Petit, on the front page of " Les Contemporains," Le Dejeuner sur
I'Herbe, pencil study, about 1865.
June 16, 1873. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque (127aXl878 ") Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Collection, Upper-
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 110 ville, Va. (Photo Courtesy Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon) 81

Photograph of Manet with Mallarme and Mery Laurent, Seaside Terrace near Le Havre, 1866. Oil. (3872X51") The
taken in 1872. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Contributions from
Nationale, Paris 1 70 various individuals supplemented by Museum Purchase
Funds, 1 967. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 83

Jetty at Honfleur, 1864. Oil. (21 7*x31 7b") Dr. Adolf Johr

MEISSONIER Ernest (1815-1891). Sketch on an album leaf,

Estate, Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo Conzett Huber, &
Zurich) 83
1870. Pen and ink. (7 x47s") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre,
Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) 92
Beach at Sainte-Adresse, 1867. Oil. (2972X3974") Cour-
tesy of The Art Institute of Chicago. (Photo Conzett &
- The Siege 1870 or early 1871. Pen and ink
of Paris, late
Huber, Zurich) 83
sketch on an album leaf. (7x5") Cabinet des Dessins.
Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) 92
Hotel des Roches Noires at Trouville, 1870. Oil.
(3572X2772") Private Collection. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
Paris) 83

MILLET Jean-Francois (1814-1875). Women in an Interior. La Grenouillere, 1869. Oil. (297sX3974") The Metropolitan
Black chalk. (9'/!X67.") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Museum of New
York. Bequest of Mrs. H. O.
Art,
Paris. (Photos Musees Nationaux, Paris) 15 Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O. Havemeyer Collection. (Photo
Frank Lerner, New York) 84
- Peasants bringing home born in the Fields. Drawing,
a Calf
study for the painting exhibited at the 1864 Salon. Private La Grenouillere, 1869. Oil. (297 8 x397e") Private Collec-
Collection 15 tion, Oxford, England. (Photo Zoltan Wegner, London) .... 85
- The Gleaners, 1857. Oil. (327 e x437*") Louvre, Pans.
Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, 1870.
(Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 16
Oil. (1 87s x 2974") Collection of the Rt. Hon. John J. Astor,
London. (Photo Istituto d'Arti Grafiche, Bergamo) 99
- A Sower, about 1 848. Drawing. Private Collection 17

The Studio Boat, about 1874. Oil. (1974X25 74")

Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo, Holland. (Museum
Photo) 100
MONET Claude (1840-1926). Carnere-Saint-Denis, 1872. Oil.
(24x317s") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Impression, Sunrise, 1872. Oil. (187 2 X2574") Musee Mar-
Skira) 6-7
mottan, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 104
- Caricature Rufus Croutinelli,
of 1856-1858. Pencil.
The Church at Vetheuil, Snow, about 1 878. Oil. (20 7a x 28")
(5 7s x 37s") Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago 38
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey,
- Caricature
Basel) 117
of Monet's Teacher, Jacques-Francois Ochard,
1856-1858. (127 8 x97b") Courtesy of The Art
Pencil.
Chicago Haystacks, about 1890. Pencil. (8X1 57a") Private Collec-
Institute of 38
tion. (Photo Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York) 121
- Le Pave de Chailly in Fontainebleau Forest, about 1865. Oil.
(387«x51 3
/e") Ordrupgaard Museum, Copenhagen, Den- Summer, 1874. Oil. (2272X3172") Preussischer Kultur-
mark. (Museum Photo) 59 besitz, Staatliche Museen, Nationalgalerie, Berlin. (Photo
Walter Steinkopf, Berlin) 121
- The Artist's Wife with a Puppy, 1866. Oil. (2874X21 7«")
Emil G. Buhrle Collection, Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo Poppies, 1873. Oil. (197bX257b") Musee du Jeu de
Martin Hesse, Bern) 61 Paume, Paris.(Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 122

- Japonnerie (The Artist's Wife in Japanese Costume), 1876. Field of Oats, 1890. Oil. (2772X357*") Mr. and Mrs. Ogden
Oil. (91x56") Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Phipps Collection, New York. (Photo Henry B. Beville,
(Museum Photo) 65 Alexandria, Va.) 1 22

222
Breakfast in the Garden, 1872-1873. Oil. {63 x79 7s") Rouen Cathedral Tour d'Albane, Early Morning,
:

Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris.(Photo Louis Laniepce, (41x297a") Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts
Paris) 122 Tompkins Collection; Purchased, Arthur Gordon Tompkins
Residuary Fund. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.)
Gladioli, about 1873. Oil. (2372X32") From the collection of
The Detroit Institute of Arts. Purchase, City Appropriation. Rouen Cathedral, West Fagade, Sunlight, 1894. Oil.
(Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 1 22 (417 8 x26") Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, DC. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
The Pheasant, 1869. Oil. (16x31") Private Collection. Virginia)
(Photo Conzett & Huber, Zurich) 1 24
Rouen Cathedral: Sunset, 1894. Oil. (397aX257..") Cour-

Sailboat at Argenteuil, about 1874, Oil. (22x29") Norton tesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Juliana Cheney Ed-
Simon Collection. (Photo Skira) 126-127 wards Collection. Bequest of Hannah Marcy Edwards in
memory of her mother. (Photo Zoltan Wegner, London) . . . 206
Argenteuil Bridge, 1874. Oil. (237 8 x31 V?") Musee du Jeu
de Paume, Paris. (Photo Bulloz, Paris) 128 London, Effect of Sunlight in Fog. 1904. Oil. (31 7 8 x367„")
Durand-Ruel Collection, Paris. (Photo Conzett & Huber,
Argenteuil Bridge (detail), 1874. Oil. Musee du Jeu de Zurich) 207
Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 1 29
The Ducal Palace, Venice,
1908. x 397a") The Oil. (32
Brooklyn Museum, New York. Gift of A. Augustus Healy.
The Beach at Trouville, 1870. Oil. (15x187.") Reproduced
(Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 207
by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London.
(Photo Skira) 1 30 The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908. Oil." (29x3672") Courtesy
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Alexander
Sailboats at Argenteuil, 1874. Oil. (237eX32") Private
Cochrane. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 207
Collection. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 133
Palazzo da Mula, Venice 1908. Oil. (247a X 32 7b") Chester
Boulevard des Capucines, 1873. Oil. (31 72X237 8 ") Collec- Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
tion of Marshall Field III, New York. (Photo Henry B. Beville, (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 207
Alexandria, Va.) 136
Water Lilies at Giverny with the Japanese Bridge, 1 899. Oil.
La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1876-1877. Oil. (207 8 x287 8 ") Col- (3574X36Va") Mrs. Albert D. Lasker Collection, New York.
lection of the Hon. Christopher McLaren, London. (Photo (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 208
Skira) 140
Water Lilies at Giverny, 1905. Oil. (35 74X3974") Deems
La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1878. Oil. (237a x 31 72") Private Taylor Collection, New York. (Photo Henry B. Beville,
Collection, New York. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Alexandria, Va.) 208
Virginia) 141
Wisteria, 1919. Oil. (5972X78 7a") Allen Memorial Art
La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877. Oil. (3274X39 3 //') Collection Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin (Ohio). (Photo Henry B.
of Maurice Wertheim, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Universi- Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 208
ty, Cambridge, Mass. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
Virginia) 141 Belle-lle-en-Mer, Brittany. Pencil. (9x1274") Private Col-
lection. (Photo Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York) 210
La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877. Oil. (237 8 x327 8 ") Mr. and
The Water Garden at Giverny, undated. Oil. (46 x 327a")
Mrs. Minot K. Milliken Collection, New York. (Photo Henry
B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 141 Musee de Peinture et Sculpture, Grenoble, France. (Photo
Conzett & Huber, Zurich) 211
La Gare Saint-Lazare, le Pont de I'Europe, 1877. Oil.
Photograph of Claude Monet at the age of eighteen, in
(257 8 x317 8 ") Musee Marmottan, Paris. (Photo Louis
1 858. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Gift of Georges Sirot . . 38
Laniepce, Paris) 141
Monet's House and Garden at Giverny. Two Photographs
The Rue Montorgueil Decked with Flags, 1878. Oil. taken by Walter Drayer, Zurich 204
(24VsX13") Musee des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France. (Photo
Conzett & Huber, Zurich) 1 42 Monet at Giverny with Georges Durand-Ruel and Madame
Joseph Durand-Ruel. Photograph by courtesy of Durand-
Fishermen, about 1882. Black pencil on white scratch- Ruel, Paris and New York 208
board. (10X1372") Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass. Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs. Clemenceau and Monet on the Japanese Bridge in Monet's
(Museum Photo) 160 garden Giverny.
at Photograph by courtesy of Walter
Drayer, Zurich 208
Poplars at Giverny, Sunrise, 1888. Oil. (297sX3672")
Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Monet's Water Garden at Giverny. Photograph by Walter
Mr. and Mrs. William B. Jaffe. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Drayer, Zurich 209
Alexandria, Va.) 205
Monet photographed by Sacha Guitry. (Photo Roger-Viollet,
Poplars, 1891. Oil. (397s x 28 7.") Private Collection. (Photo Paris) 209
Louis Laniepce, Paris) 205

Poplars, 1891. Oil. (32 74X32 7 8 ") The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Mrs. H. O. MONTMARTRE. The Heights of Montmartre before the
Havemeyer, 1912. The H. O. Havemeyer Collection. (Photo construction of the Sacre-Cceur Basilica, about 1869.
Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 205 Photograph. Yvan Christ Collection, Paris 87

223
 "

- Windmills inMontmartre (Moulin du Radet and Moulin - Corner of Rue Royale and Rue du Faubourg Samt-Honore,
Blute-Fin), about 1855. Stereoscopic view. Yvan Christ site of a pitched battle between Communards and Ver-
Collection, Paris 134 saillais, 1871. Photograph by Disderi, 1871. Yvan Christ
Collection, Paris 88
- Entrance to the Gardens of the Moulin de la Galette in
Montmartre. Photograph. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothe- - The Roofs of Paris from Montmartre.
Photograph by
que Nationale, Paris 1 34 Hippolyte Bayard. Courtesy, Societe frangaise de Photo-
graphie, Paris 90
- Old Paris : TheMontmartre with the Cabaret of the
Hill of
Lapin Agile (18th arrondissement). Photograph. Yvan Christ
- Leveling the Approaches to the Boulevard Malesherbes,
Collection, Paris 1 58 1 864. Photograph taken July 6, 1 864. Georges Sirot Collec-
tion, Paris 90-91
- The Cafe de la Nouvelle Athenes in Montmartre, 1906.
- A Barricade in the Rue de la Paix during the Commune,
Photograph. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque
1871. Photograph 93
Nationale, Paris 1 69
- The New Louvre and the Tuileries. 1 9th century photograph
by Martens. Yvan Christ Collection, Paris 96
MORISOT Berthe (1841-1895). The Cradle, 1873. Oil.
- The Vendome Column Overturned, May 16, 1871. Photo-
(22 x 18 7s") Louvre, Paris. (Photo Giraudon, Paris) 154 graph. Georges Sirot Collection, Paris 96
- Young Woman seated on a Chair. Pencil. (12 x87a") - The Fall of the Vendome Column, 1871 Drawing by Daniel
.

Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees Vierge. Musee Courbet, Ornans (Doubs), France 96
Nationaux, Paris) 154
- Rue de Rivoli after the fighting between Communards and
Photograph. Vinck Collection, Cabinet des
Versaillais, 1871.
Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 97
NADAR (1820-1910). Photograph of Manet. (Archives Photo-
graphiques, Paris) 22 - Quai des Grands-Augustins seen from the Pont Saint-
Michel, 1864. Photograph. Georges Sirot Collection,
- Photography asking for just a little place in the Exhibition of
Paris 136
Fine Arts. Caricature from "Le Petit Journal pour rire,
1855. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Photo B.N.) 62 - Boulevard des Capucines with the Grand Hotel, 1890.
Photograph by Neurdein. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothe-
- The ingratitude of Painting, refusing the smallest place in its
que Nationale, Paris 1 37
exhibition to Photography to whom it owes so much.
Caricature from "Le Journal amusant, " 1857. Bibliotheque - Cabs in Paris, 1890. Photograph. In the middle distance, a
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 62 victoria; in the background, a brougham. Bibiliotheque
Nationale, Paris. Gift of Georges Sirot 1 59
- Painting offering Photography a place in the Exhibition of
Fine Arts. Caricature, 1 859 62

- Aerialview of Paris taken from a balloon, 1859. Photograph

(wet collodion). Gernsheim Collection, London
PISSARRO Camille (1830-1903). The Big Tree, Caracas, 1854.
63
Pencil. (12x16") The Leicester Galleries, London. (Photo
- The Japanese Ambassadors Courtesy of the Leicester Galleries) 40-41
in Nadar's Studio in Paris. Print
after photographs by Nadar. Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris.
(Photo B.N.)
- Man with Pipe, St. Thomas, 1852. Pencil. (1072X9"). The
64
Leicester Galleries, London. (Photo Courtesy of the Leices-
ter Galleries) 41

NEWSPAPERS. "Le Constitutionnel, journal politique,

- Self-Portrait, 1873. Oil. (22xl87 e ") Musee du Jeu de
litteraire, universel, " May 16, 1865. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 47
Paris. (Photo B.N.) 56
- Under the Trees (In the Woods), 1862. Black chalk heigh-

- "Le Gaulois," Saturday, 1874, and "L'Opinion

April 18, tened with white on brown paper. (9 7* x 7 74") The Hyde
nationale," April 22, 1874. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Collection, Glens Falls, New York. (Photo Courtesy of The
(Photos B.N.) 104 Hyde Collection) 77

- "La Presse," Wednesday, April 29, 1874. Bibliotheque - The VersaillesRoad at Louveciennes, 1870. Oil.

Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 105 (3974X32 74") "E. G. Buhrle Collection" Foundation,
Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo Werner Bruggmann, Winter-
- "Le Moniteur universel, Journal off iciel de I'Empire Fran- thur) 86
cais, " April 11, 1876. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo
B.N.) 111
- Snow at Lower Norwood, 1870. Oil. (16x20 7b") Repro-
duced by courtesy of the Trustees, National Gallery,
London. (Photo Istituto d'Arti Grafiche, Bergamo) 99

PARIS. Quai des Grands-Augustins, 1858. Stereoscopic view - Dulwich College, London, 1871. Oil. (1974X24") John A.
under glass. Georges Sirot Collection, Paris 9 Macaulay Collection, Winnipeg, Canada. (Photo Bridgens,
Winnipeg) 99
- view of Paris taken by Nadar from
Aerial a balloon, 1859.
Photograph (wet collodion). Gernsheim Collection, Lon- - Entrance to the Village of Voisins, 1872. Oil. (187aX21 7e")
don 63 Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 106-107

224
- Portrait of Paul Cezanne, about 1874. Pencil. (77aX47 8 ") At the Inn of Mother Anthony, Marlot
Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris (Photo Musees (7674X51 74") National Museum, !

Nationaux, Paris) 114 (Museum Photo) 60

- Red Roofs. Village Scene, Winter Effect, 1877. Oil, Use with a Sunshade, 1867. Oil. (7 U I ") Folkwar
(2172X257 8 ") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Pans. (Photo Museum, Essen, West Germany. (Photo Louis Laniepce
Skira) 115 Paris)

- Garden with Trees in Blossom. Spring, Pontoise, 1877. Oil The Boat, 1867. Oil. (97aX 137 8 ") Private Collection. (Photo
(2574X31 7s") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 84
Maurice Babey, Basel) 118
La Grenouillere, about 1869. Oil. (26x317a") National
- The Haystack, Pontoise, 1873. Oil. (187»x21 7 8 ") Durand- Museum, Stockholm, Sweden. (Photo Skira) .... 85
Ruel Collection. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) 121
Mademoiselle Jeanne Durand-Ruel, 1876. Oil.
- The Outer Boulevards, Paris, Snow Effect, 1879. Oil. (447a x 29 7a") Copyright 1970 by the Barnes Foundation,
(2174X257s") Musee Marmottan, Paris, (Photo Louis Merion, Pa. (Photo Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York) 109
Laniepce, Paris) 136
Path in the Woods, 1874. Oil. (26x21 7a") Private Collec-
- Pasture at Eragny. Print. Cabinet des Estampes, Biblio- tion. (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 119
theque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 161
The English Pear Tree, 1885. Oil. Private Collection. (Photo
- Self-Portrait, 1888. on paper. (67< 6 x57 8 ") S.P.
Pen and ink
Skira) " 120
Avery Collection, Prints Division, The New York Public
Library (Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations). (Photo
Path winding up through Tall Grass, about 1876-1878. Oil.
Courtesy of The New York Public Library) 1 74 (237a x 29 7a") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo
Skira) 121
- Self-Portrait,about 1883. Pencil (on the same sheet with a
Gauguin (127aXl974") Cabinet des Dessins,
self-portrait).
Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) 174
Young Woman with a Dog, about 1880. Oil. (127 8 xl67a")
Durand-Ruel Collection. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) .... 122
- Crouching Peasant Woman, 1878-1881. Charcoal on cream
X1874") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris.
paper. (247 8 Arum and Hothouse Plants, 1864. Oil. (51 74X3774")
(Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) 175 Collection Oskar Reinhart am Romerholz, Winterthur, Swit-
zerland. (Photo Hans Hinz, Basel) 123
- Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1890. Oil. (237 8 x367.<")
New York. (Photo Skira)
Bouquet in front of a Mirror, 1876. Oil. (367a x 287a")
Private Collection, 1 76
Private Collection. (Photo Skira) 123
- "Les Turpitudes sociales," 1890. Unpublished album of
Woman in a Boat, 1877. Oil. (2874X3674") Mrs. Albert D.
pen drawings. Private Collection, Geneva, Switzerland.
Lasker Collection, New York. (Photo Skira) 132
(Photos Paul Boissonnas, Gad Borel, Geneva):
The Old Philosopher. Frontispiece. (9 74X674") 192 Sailboats at Argenteuil, 1873-1874. Oil. (1974X2574")
Misery in a Top Hat. No. 16. (87a X 674") 193 From the collection of the Portland Art Museum, Portland,
Nothing to Eat. No. 14.(872X674") 193 Oregon. (Photo Condit Studio, Portland) 133
TheCrustof Bread. No. 15.(87 8 x674") 193
Boaters on the Seine at Bougival, 1881. Oil. (21 X2572")
- Market Scene. Print. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Private Collection, Paris and San Francisco. (Photo Louis
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 194 Laniepce, Paris) 133

- Portrait ofCezanne, 1874. Print. (107aX87i 6 ") Reproduced Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876. Oil. (517 8 x687 8 ") Musee
on the cover of the catalogue of the first Cezanne exhibition du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 134
at Vollard's in 1895. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 195 The Swing, 1876. Oil. (3674X2874") Musee du Jeu de
Paume, Paris. (Photo Skira) 134
- Pissarro and Cezanne. Photograph. Courtesy Roger-Viollet,
Paris 101 The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881. Oil.

(50 74X68 7a") Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C. (Photo

- Cezanne Sitting in Pissarro's Garden at Pontoise in 1877, Skira) 135
with Pissarro Standing on the Right. Photograph 114
Oarsmen at Chatou, 1879. Oil. (32 7a x 39 7a") National
Gallery of Art. Washington, DC. Gift of Sam A. Lewisohn.
(Photo Frank Lerner, New York) 135
RENOIR Auguste (1841-1919). Portrait of Bazille, 1867. Oil.
(4174X2972") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Le Pont Neuf, Paris, 1872. Oil. (2974X3672") Benziger
Bulloz, Paris) 42 Collection, New York. (Photo Frank Lerner, New York) .... 136

- Self-Portrait, about 1876. Oil. (29x22 74") Maurice Wert- The Great Boulevards, Paris, 1875. Oil. (197»x24") Henry
heim Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass .... 44 P. Mcllhenny Collection, Philadelphia. (Photo Skira) 137

- Claude Monet, 1875. Oil. (337 2 x237e") Musee

Portrait of Place Clichy, Paris, about 1880. Oil. (257*X21 V*") R. A.
du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) .... 45 Butler Collection, London. (Photo Louis Laniepce, Paris) . . . 137

- Portrait of Alfred Sisley and his Wife, about 1868. Oil. Small Cafe, 1876-1877. Oil. (1374X11") Rijksmuseum
(4174X2972") Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, West Kroller-Muller, Otterlo, Holland. (Photo Louis Loose,
Germany. (Photo Skira) 45 Brussels) 149

225
 The Loge, 1874. Oil. (31V2X25V.") Courtauld Institute View of Fontainebleau Forest. India ink and gouache.
Galleries, London. (Photo Zoltan Wegn.er, London) 153 (772X107.") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo
Musees Nationaux, Paris) 59
Laundress.Drawing. (1872X127.") Boymans-van Beu-
nnngen Museum, Rotterdam, Holland. (Museum Photo) ... 157

The Dance at Bougival, 1883. Pencil. (21 7.x 147 8 ") Private
SEURAT Georges (1859-1891). The Stone Breaker. Drawing.
Collection, New York 1 58 Private Collection 175

Dancing Couple, 1883. Pen and ink on white paper.

- Courbevoie Bridge, 1886-1887. Oil. (1872X21 7 8 ") Cour-
(157.x778 ") Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection, Philadelphia.
tauld Institute Galleries, London. (Photo Skira) 177
(Photo Chas. P. Mills & Sons, Philadelphia) 1 58

Young Womanwith a Muff. Pastel. (207.x 147.") The - Bathers at Asnieres, 1883-1884. Oil. (797 8 X 1 187s")
Metropolitan of Art, New York. Bequest of Mrs.
Museum Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National
H O Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O. Havemeyer Collection. Gallery, London. (Photo Zoltan Wegner, London) 177
(Museum Photo) 1 59

Portrait of Victor Chocquet, 1876. Oil. (187 8 x147e") Col-

lection Oskar Reinhart am Romerholz, Winterthur, Switzer- SISLEY Alfred (1839-1899). View of Montmartre, 1869. Oil.
land. (Collection Photo) 164 (27 72X46") Musee de Peinture et Sculpture, Grenoble,
France. (Photo Skira) 87
Ambroise Vollard holding a Maillol Statuette, 1908. Oil.
(317.X2572") Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. - PitSawyers, sketch for the painting of 1876, reproduced on
(Photo Giraudon, Paris) 165
the front page of the art journal " L'lmpressionniste," April
28, 1877. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.)' 112
Gabrielle with Jewelry, 1910. Oil. (327.X257.") Private
Collection, Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo Skira) 198
- Approaches to a Stationin Winter. Pastel. (147.X22")

Three Bathers, 1883-1885. Pencil.(4272X247b") Cabinet Private Collection. (Photo Durand-Ruel, Paris and New
des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. Gift of Jacques Laroche. (Photo York) 116
Giraudon, Paris) 199
- Snow at Louveciennes, 1 874. Oil. (22 x 1 8") Phillips Collec-
Bathers Landscape, about 1915. Oil. (157.x207 8 ")
in a tion, Washington, D.C. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria,
National Museum, Stockholm. (Photo Skira) 199 Va.) 116

Self-Portrait in a White Hat, 1910. Oil. (16 7 x 13") Durand-

2 - Port-Marly, Weir under Snow, 1 876. Oil. Formerly A. Lindon
Ruel Collection. (Photo Durand-Ruel, Paris and New Collection. The picture disappeared during World War II.

York) 201 (Photo Skira) 117

Landscape, about 1910. (87 8 x 13") Cung Bequest, Louvre,

- The Flood at Port-Marly, 1876. Oil. (237 8 x317 8 ") Musee
on deposit in the Musee Municipal, Cagnes, French Riviera.
du Jeu de Paume, Paris. (Photo Maurice Babey, Basel) .... 128
(Photo Loic-Jahan, Chateauneuf-de-Grasse) 201

Renoir and Mallarme photographed by Degas. Bibliotheque - Old Thatched Cottage at Les Sablons, near Moret, 1883.
Nationale, Paris 171 Pencil. (47. x 7 72") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris.
(Photo Musees Nationaux, Paris) 160
Renoir at Le Cannet returning from a painting expedition,
1901. Three photographs, by courtesy of Durand-Ruel, - Barges on the River. Loing. Lithograph. Cabinet des
Paris and New York 200 Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) .... 160

View of Cagnes from Renoir's house, "Les Collettes." - The Provencher Mill at Moret, 1883. Pencil. (47.x7 7 2 ")
Photograph. (Photo Loic-Jahan, Chateauneuf-de-Grasse) . . 201 Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris. (Photo Musees
Nationaux, Paris) 160

ROBERT Leopold (1794-1835). The Return of the Harvesters

from the Pontine Marshes, Rome, 1830. Oil. (557.x 837.")
Louvre, Paris. (Photo Alinari-Giraudon, Paris)
TURNER J.M.W. (1775-1851). Burning of the Houses of
Parliament, 1834. Oil. (3672X487 2 ") Cleveland Museum of
Art, Bequest of John L. Severance, 1936. (Photo Courtesy
of Cleveland Museum) 98
ROBINSON Henry Peach (1830-1910). Group of Women and
Children in the Country, 1860. Combination photograph - Rain, Steam, and Speed. The Great Western Railway, 1 843.
made from several negatives. George Eastman House Oil. (357.X48") Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees,
Collection, Rochester, New York (Photo Eastman The National Gallery, London. (Photo Louis Laniepce,
House) 80 Pans) 140

ROUSSEAU Theodore (1812-1867). View of Montmartre, VIERGE The Fall of the Vendome Column,
Daniel (1851 -1904).
Storm Effect, about 1845-1848 Oil.(97.x 14") Louvre, Paris, 1871. Drawing, engraved by Meaulle. Musee Cour-
Paris. (Photo Skira) 17 bet, Ornans (Doubs), France 96

226
WHISTLER James McNeill (1834-1903). Caprice in Purple and - The Empress Eugenie and her Ladies
Gold, No. 2 The Golden Screen, 864. Oil on wood panel.
: 1 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Phot B.N.)
3
(19 A>x27") The Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
(Photo Skira) ....'. 65

- In Bright Sunlight, 1857-1858, Etching. (4x574") ZOLA Emile (1840-1902). Photograph of Emile Zola at the age
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstich- of twenty, in 1860
kabinett, Berlin. (Photo Walter Steinkopf, Berlin) 79
- Title page of Zola's study of Manet, published by E. Dentu,
Paris 1867. Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale,
- Harmony in Blue and Silver
Courbet at Trouville, 1 865. Oil.
:

Paris. (Photo B.N.)

(1972X2974") The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
Boston. (Photo Henry B. Beville, Alexandria, Va.) 82 - The Le Havre train at Medan. Photograph by Emile Zola . 141

- "J'accusel..." Letter from Emile Zola to Felix Faure,

President of the French Republic, published in the newspaper
WINTERHALTER Franz Xaver (1805-1873). The Emperor " L'Aurore," January 13, 1898. ThiswasZola'sfamous letter
Napoleon III. Print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo denouncing the authorities for framing Captain Dreyfus.
B.N.) Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. (Photo B.N.) 192

227
INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES

Academie Suisse 23,36,37,39, 44, 58. CAILLEBOTTE Gustave (1848-1894) 100, 107, 110, 112, 113, 154, 160, 162,
Aix-en-Provence 35, 36, 66, 67, 101, 164, 181, 184, 190; 166, 168, 175, 191, 192.
Ecole des Beaux-Arts 35. CALLIAS Hector de 28.
ALEXANDRE II Czar of Russia (1855-1881) 10, 89. CAMOIN Charles (1879-1965) 186, 187.
ALEXANDRE, model of Manet 23. CAMONDO Count Isaac de (1851-1911) 193.
ALEXANDRE Arsene 98, 133, 140, 204. Cannet, Le (Riviera) 200.
ALEXIS Paul (1847-1901) 47. CAROLUS-DURAN Emile-Auguste (1838-1917) 25, 30.
Algeria and Algiers 8, 39, 93, 158. CASSATT Alexander J. 173.
Allegheny City (Pa.) 172. CASSATT Mary (1844-1926) 172, 173, 202.
AMBRE Madame, French singer 73. CASTAGNARY Jules (1830-1888) 13, 28, 37, 58, 105, 170.
Amsterdam 100. CEZANNE Louis- Auguste (d. 1886), the artist's father 35, 37, 67, 184;
ARAGO Francois (1786-1853) 62. — Marie (born 1841) and Rose (born 1854), his sisters 35, 67, 189;
Argenteuil (Val-d'Oise) 75, 100, 107, 110, 112, 126-129, 131, 133, 162, 165. — Paul (1872-1948), his son 101, 114, 166, 180, 184, 189, 190.
Aries 179. CEZANNE Paul (1839-1906) 10, 32, 34-37, 45, 51, 54, 58-60, 66, 67, 73, 74,
AROSA Gustave 174. 81, 89, 90, 100, 101, 104, 105, 110, 113, 114, 118, 123-125, 132, 133, 139,
Asnieres (Seine) 75, 177, 180. 163-169, 172, 173, 180-192, 194, 195, 197, 203.
ASTRUC Zacharie (1833-1907) 28, 45, 48, 69, 77. CHABRIER Emmanuel (1841-1894) 158.
AUBERT Anne, Cezanne's mother 35, 67, 114, 184. CHAGALL Marc (1887) 164, 204.
AURELLE DE PALADINES Louis d' (1804-1877) 93. Chailfy-en-Biere (Fontainebleau forest) 44, 59, 60, 78 White Horse Inn 44, 62.
;

AURIER Albert (1865-1892) 194. CHAMBORD Count of (1820-1883) 108, 112, 163.
Auvers-sur-Oise 27, 101, 114, 118, 166, 181, 184, 202. Champigny-sur-Marne 90.
CHANZY Antoine Alfred Eugene (1823-1883) 93.
CHARDIN Jean-Baptiste (1699-1779) 16, 98 124.
BAILLE Baptistin (1841-1918) 66.
CHARIGOT Aline (1859-1915), Renoir's wife 158, 159, 200.
BALFOUR Lazare David 102. CHARPENTIER Georges (1846-1905) 157, 158, 165.
BALLEROY Count Albert de (1828-1873) 23, 28.
CHARPENTIER Madame (d. 1904) 158, 165, 200.
BALLU Roger (1852-1908) 113. Chatou (Yvelines) 74, 132.
BALZAC Honore de (1799-1850) 11. CHAUDEY Gustave (1817-1871) 95.
BARAIL Francois Charles DU (1820-1902) 93. CHEVREUL Eugene (1786-1889) 122, 175, 177.
Barbizon and Barbizon school 13, 15-17, 44, 59, 62, 100. Chicago, Art Institute 105.
BARTHOLOME Albert (1848-1928) 145, 196. CHINTREUIL Antoine (1814-1873) 58.
BARYE Antoine-Louis (1796-1875) 163. CHOCARNE Geoffroy-Alphonse (1797-?) 26, 27.
BAUDELAIRE Charles (1821-1867) 15, 19, 23-25, 28, 32, CHOCQUET Marie (d. 1899) 107, 164, 165, 194.
43, 56, 57, 60, 73, 76.
BAYARD Hippolyte (1801-1887) 90, 91.
CHOCQUET Victor (1821-1898) 34, 107, 164, 165, 194.
CLARETIE Jules (1840-1913) 57.
BAZILLE Frederic (1841-1870) 10, 42-45, 59-62, 69-71, 74,
CLARK Sir Kenneth, now Lord Clark (1903) 42, 75, 105, 168.
75, 78, 80, 91, 93, 110.
BAZIN Germain
CLAUDE LORRAIN (1600-1682) 98.
(1901) 191.
Beaune-la-Rolande (Loiret) 93.
CLEMENCEAU Georges (1841-1929) 94, 204, 206, 208.

BEAUPLAN COLLARDET, model of Manet 23.

Gaston de 73.
Collettes, Les, Renoir's house at Cagnes 200, 201.
BELIARD 101, 104. CONSTABLE John (1776-1837) 17, 43, 92, 98, 99.
BELL Clive (1881-1964) 13, 66, 191.
COQUIOT Gustave (1865-1926) 109, 202.
BELLELI family 25, 29.
BELLINI Giovanni (c. 1430-1516) 25.
CORMON Fernand (1845-1924) 18, 180.
BELLIO Dr Georges de (d. 1894) 160, 166, 167.
COROT Camille (1796-1875) 10, 12, 13, 17, 27, 37, 39, 40, 44, 58, 59, 62, 63,
68, 71, 76, 82, 87, 89, 98, 108, 109, 113, 122, 163, 192.
BELLOT Emile (d. 1886) 103.
CORREGGIO (c. 1489-1534) 172.
BERARD Baron 158.
COURBET Gustave (1819-1877) 10, 13-15, 18-23, 33, 34, 37, 42, 44, 50, 53,
BERLIOZ Hector (1803-1869) 71.
56, 57, 60, 61, 67, 70-73, 76, 77, 80, 82, 84, 89, 94-98,
BERNADILLE 112.
108-110, 163, 171, 190.
BERNARD Emile (1868-1941) 34, 179, 181, 189, 190.
COUTURE Thomas (1815-1879) 8, 11, 22, 23, 37, 190.
BERNHARDT Sarah (1844-1923) 10. CREBASSOLLES Father 36, 37.
BERNHEIM Josse (1870-1941) and Gaston (1870-1953) 193, 207. CROME John, called Old Crome (1768-1821) 98.
BERTALL Charles Albert D'ARNOUX, called (1820-1882) 111.
BIBESCO Prince Gheorghe Dimitne (1804-1873) 93, 97.
CROS Charles (1842-1888) 169.
BIDDLE George (1885-1973) 172. CROUTINELLI Rufus 38.
BIEZ Jacques de 130.
BISMARCK Otto, Prince of (1815-1898) 91.
DAGNAN Isidore (1794-1873) 58.

BLANC Charles (1813-1882) 176. DAGUERRE Louis-Jacques-Mande (1787-1851) 62, 63.

BLANCHE Jacques-Emile (1861-1942) 30, 158.
DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321) 12.
BLEMONT Leon PETITDIDIER, called Emile (1839-1927) 111. DARBOY Georges (1813-1871) 95.
BOISSY D'ANGLAS Francois (1756-1826) 69.
DAUBIGNY Charles-Francois (1817-1878) 10, 16, 17, 27, 37, 39, 75, 89, 92,
BONINGTON Richard Parkes (1801-1828) 98. 98, 100, 108, 163, 202.
BONNARD Pierre (1867-1947) 164, 194, 195, 204. DAUDET Alphonse (1840-1897) 170.
Bordeaux 39, 91, 93. DAUMIER Honore (1808-1879) 10, 18, 19, 27, 49, 52-54, 57, 63, 67, 89, 108,
BOUDIN Eugene (1824-1898) 37-39, 44, 61, 82, 95, 98, 100, 104, 107, 192. 140, 163.
Bougival (Yvelines) 74, 75, 84, 132, 133, 135, 154, 158, 173.
DAVID Jacques-Louis (1748-1825) 11, 18, 22.
Deauville (Channel coast) 82, 192.
BOUGUEREAU William (1825-1905) 13, 119, 167, 180, 183.
BOULANGER General Georges (1837-1891) 191 DEBRAY, owner of the Moulin de la Galette 155, 157.
Bourges 26. DECAMPS Alexandre-Gabriel (1803-1860) 108, 109, 163.
BRACQUEMOND Felix (1833-1914) 64, 65, 104. DE GAS Auguste-Hyacinthe (d. 1874), the artist's father 24, 102;
BRAQUE Georges (1882-1963) 204. — Achille and Rene, his brothers 26, 102, 138, 196, 200;
BRAUN Adolphe, photographer 63. — Estelle, wife of Rene De Gas 102.

BRETON Jules (1827-1906) 18. DEGAS Edgar (1834-1917) 10, 24-26, 28-31, 48, 57, 63-66, 71, 74, 90, 91, 102-
104, 107-111, 113, 123, 131, 137-139, 143-145, 149-152, 154-158, 162-
Briancon (Hautes-Alpes) 35.
BRIERE DE L'ISLE Georges 97. 166, 168-175, 180, 194, 195, 204.
BROGLIE Albert, Duke of (1821-1901) 113. DELACROIX Eugene (1798-1863) 10, 12, 14, 15, 23, 25, 34, 39, 42, 108, 109,
Brouillards, Chateau des (Montmartre) 159. 113, 163, 165, 190.
BURTY Philippe (1830-1890) 65, 69, 113, 119, 154, 169. DELAUNAY Robert (1885-1941) 204.
BYRON Lord (1788-1824) 12. DEMARSY Jeanne 170.
DENIS Maurice (1870-1943) 181, 194, 195.
DENTU Edouard (1830-1884) 70.
CABANEL Alexandre (1823-1889) 13, 52, 54, 56. DEPEAUX Francois 193.
CABANER Jean de CABANNES, called 67, 73, 166, 169, 170. DERAIN Andre (1880-1954) 164, 204.
CABAT Nicolas-Louis (1812-1893) 98. DEROY Isidore-Laurent (1797-1886) 96.
Cagnes (Riviera) 200, 201. DESBOUTIN Marcellin (1823-1902) 139, 169.

228
DESBROSSES Jean-Alfred (1835-1906) 58. GOGH Vincent van (1853-1890) 163, 166, 175, 178
DESLOINS Anna 89. GONCOURT Edmond (1822-1896) and Jules (1830-18
DEWHURST Wynford (1864-1941) 34, 59, 98, 174, 192, 203, 204. 84, 89, 131.
DIAZ DE LA PENA Narcisse-Virgile (1807-1876) 10, 16, 17, 37, 59, 62, 163. GONZALES Emmanuel (1815-1887) 68.
DIHAU Desire 145. GONZALES Eva (1849-1883) 68.
DOLARD, photographer 12. GOUNOD Charles (1818-1893) 10, 41.
DONCIEUX Camille (d. 1879), Monet's first wife 61, 69, 74, GOYA Francisco de (1746-1828) 22, 28, 32, 56, 68, 70, 91.
75, 98, 100, 166, 167. GRAPPE Georges 211.
DONGEN Kees van (1877-1968) 204. GRECO EL (c. 1540-1614) 22, 32, 56, 58.
DORE Gustave (1833-1883) 33, 51. Grenoble 26.
DORIA Count Armand (1824-1896) 165. Grenouillere, La 74, 75, 84, 85, 158, 200.
DREYFUS Alfred (1859-1935) 191, 192. GREVIN Alfred (1827-1892) 62.
Drouot, Hotel 97, 107, 109, 113, 119, 154, 157, 160, 163-165, 167, 181, 202. GREVY Jules (1807-1891) 168, 171.
DUBOSC Charles Alix 22. GRIS Juan (1887-1927) 204.
DUCROT Auguste (1817-1882) 90, 91. GROS Jean-Antoine, Baron (1771-1835) 22.
DUFY Raoul (1877-1953) 157, 204. GUERARD Henri (1846-1897) 169.
Dunkirk 43. Guerbois, Cafe 42, 69, 71, 73, 74, 89, 100, 101, 103, 105, 109, 110,
DURAND-RUEL Jean-Marie-Fortune (1800-1865), Paul's father 108; 138, 166, 169.
— Joseph and Charles, Paul's sons 173; GUICHARD Joseph-Benoit (1806-1880) 27, 105.
— Mademoiselle Jeanne 109; GUILLAUMIN Armand (1841-1927) 10, 36, 37, 54, 87, 100, 104, 110, 113,
— Georges 208 159, 161, 165, 166, 168, 173, 174, 180, 202.
— Madame Joseph Durand-Ruel 208. GUILLEMET Antoine (1843-1918) 37, 66, 67.
DURAND-RUEL Paul (1831-1922) 65, 73, 92, 98, 99, 107-110, 112, 113, 163, GUITRY Sacha (1887-1957) 209.
166, 172, 176, 177, 181, 194, 202, 203, 205. GUYS Constantin (1802-1892) 11, 28, 60, 73.
DURANTY Edmond (1833-1880) 28, 48, 69, 74, 103, 110, 115, 120, 123, 142,
149, 169, 170. Hague, The (Holland), Academy of Art 37.
DURET Theodore (1838-1927) 45, 48, 57, 58, 65, 68, 74, 75, 92, 99-101, 113, HALEVY Daniel (1872-1962) 102, 139, 195.
114, 121, 135, 159-162, 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 184, 192, 195, 198. HALS Frans (c. 1580-1666) 103.
HAUSSMANN Georges Eugene, Baron (1809-1891) 88, 89, 91.
Eastman Kodak (Rochester, N.Y.) 62. Havre, Le (Seine-Maritime) 37-39, 41, 61, 83, 87, 104, 128, 141, 193, 204;
EDWARD VII, King of England (1901-1910)
EMPERAIRE Achille (1829-1898) 67, 90, 164.
10. — International Maritime Exhibition (1868) 61.
HEBERT Henri (1849-1917) 37.
ENAULT Louis 111. HENRY Charles (1859-1926) 176.
ENSOR James (1860-1949) 204. HIROSHIGE Ando (1797-1858) 64, 65.
Eragny (Eure) 161. HIROSHIGE II (1826-1894) 64.
ERNST Max (1891-1976) 204. HOKUSAI Katsushika (1760-1849) 64, 65.
Essoyes (Aube) 158. Holland 23, 100, 103, 204.
Estaque, L' (Riviera) 101, 114, 185. HOLZAPFFEL Jules (1826-1866) 69.
Etretat (Channel coast) 61, 203.
Honfleur (Calvados) 37, 59, 60, 83.
EUGENIE Empress (1826-1920) 10, 11, 32, 171. HOSCHEDE Ernest (1838-1890) 166, 167;
EVANS Dr Thomas, American dentist 171. — Alice (d. 1911), Monet's second wife 167, 203, 204, 207;
Exhibitions, impressionist:
— 1874, at Nadar's, 35, bd des Capucines 63, 104, 105, 107, 110, 112,
— Blanche, Alice's daughter 204.
HUET Paul (1803-1869) 98.
131, 154, 165, 169, 181, 192, 197; HUGO Victor (1802-1885) 8, 18, 155.
— 1876, at Durand-Ruel's, 11, rue Le Peletier 110-112, 154, 162, 163,
181, 192; INGRES Jean-Auguste-Dominique (1780-1867)
— 1877, 6, rue Le Peletier 112, 113, 140, 154, 167, 168, 183, 192;
10, 12-14, 25, 27, 29, 31, 34,

— 1879, 28, avenue de l'Opera 138, 154. 167, 168, 174, 192;
42, 67, 71, 199.

— 1880, 10, rue des Pyramides 138, 154, 168, 174, 192;
Institut
ISAACSON
de France 18, 51, 88, 169.
— 1881, 35, bd des Capucines 138, 154, 168, 174, 192 — Phineas92;
— 1882, 51, rue Saint-Honore 154, 168, 174, 192;
Esther, Pissarro's niece 192, 195.

— 1886, 1, rue Laffitte 138, 154, 168, 174-176, 192.

Italy 17, 25, 26, 29, 74, 89, 172, 199, 204.

JAMES Henry (1843-1916) 163.

FANTIN-LATOUR Henri (1836-1904) 26, 44, 45, 54, 60, 65, 66, 69, 74, 93. Japan 10, 64, 65.
FAURE Elie (1873-1937) 105, 107, 108. Japanese prints, influence on the Impressionists 64-66.
FAURE Felix (1841-1899) 192. Jas de Bouffan, the Cezanne mansion near Aix-en-Provence 67, 184.
FAURE Jean-Baptiste (1830-1914) 165, 166. JEANNIOT Georges (1848-1934) 147.
Fecamp (Channel coast) 61. JONGKIND Johan Barthold (1819-1891) 37, 39, 44, 54, 82, 98, 100,
FERRY Jules (1832-1893) 172. 104, 163, 193.
FIQUET Hortense (born 1850), Cezanne's wife 101, 114, 166, 184, 190.
Florence 23, 25. KAEMPFEN Albert (1826-1907) '172.
Fontainebleau forest 10, 13, 44, 58-60, 62, 63, 78, 80, 81, 93, 94, 158, 160, 163. KRUPP Alfred (1812-1887) 69.
FORAIN Jean-Louis (1852-1931) 169, 173, 190.
FOURNIER Edmond-Edouard 22. LAFORGUE Jules (1860-1887) 126.
FRAGONARD Honore (1732-1806) 192. LAGRANGE Leon 28.
FRANCE Anatole (1844-1924) 191. LAMOTHE Louis (1822-1869) 25, 29.
FRY Roger (1866-1934) 67. LAMY Pierre-Franc (1855-1919) 134.
LA TOUR Georges de (1593-1652) 16.
GABRIELLE, Renoir's model Gabrielle Bernard (1878-1959) 198, 200. LAURENT Mery 170, 171.
GACHET Dr Paul (1828-1909) 101, 163, 166, 172, 184, 202. LAUTREC Henri de TOULOUSE- (1864-1901) 196, 204.
GAINSBOROUGH Thomas (1727-1788) 98. LAWRENCE Sir Thomas (1769-1830) 98.
GAMBETTA Leon (1838-1882) 60, 90, 91, 113, 170, 171. LECADRE Madame, Monet's aunt 38.
GARNIER Jules (1847-1889) 55. LE CCEUR Jules (1833-1882) 62, 97;
GASQUET Joachim (1873-1921) 188. — (bom 1858) 97.
Marie, his niece
GAUDIBERT, Le Havre shipping magnate 61, 62, 74. LECOMTE Georges (1867-1958) 86, 100, 176.
GAUGUIN Paul (1848-1903) 164, 166, 174, 179, 194, 195, 202, 204. LECOQ DE BOISBAUDRAN Horace (1802-1897) 44.
GAUTIER Theophile (1811-1872) 24, 27, 28, 57. LEENHOFF Suzanne, Manet's wife 58, 70, 71, 103.
GEFFROY Gustave (1855-1926) 79, 81, 116-118, 121, 132, 160, 167, 205-210. LEGER Fernand (1881-1955) 204.
Gennevilliers (Hauts-de-Seine) 22. LEGROS Alphonse (1837-1911) 65, 104.
GERICAULT Theodore (1791-1824) 22, 31. LEHMANN Henri (1814-1882) 58.
GEROME Jean-Leon (1824-1904) 42. LEJOSNE Commandant 23, 60.
GIBERT Joseph-Marc (1808-1884) 35, 66. LELOIR Maurice (1853-1940) 52.
GILL Andre (1840-1885) 69. LEMONNIER Isabelle 168.
GIOTTO (1266 7-1337) 25. LE NAIN Louis (1593-1648) 16.
Giverny (Eure) 128, 202-205, 208, 209, 211. LE PETIT Alfred (1841-1909) 110.
GLEYRE Charles (1808-1874) 18, 40-44, 59, 62. LEPIC Vicomte Ludovic Napoleon (1839-1889/90) 104.
GOBILLARD Yves (d. 1893), Berthe Morisot's sister 26; LERAY Lisa, Renoir's sister 93, 94;
— Nini (Jeannie) VALERY, her daughter 154, 155. —Charles, his brother-in-law 42, 94.
GOENEUTTE Norbert (1854-1894) 134. LEROLLE Henri (1848-1929) 196.
GOGH Theo van (1857-1891) 175, 178, 202. LEROY Louis 105.

229
 ; ; ; ; ; ; "
;

LESCOUEZEC Marie (d. 1898), Sisley's wife 45, 62, 160, 193. NADAR, Gaspard-Felix TOURNACHON, called (1820-1910) 22, 60, 62-64, 73,
LEVY, porcelain works (Paris) 41. 104, 131, 170.
LEYMARIE Jean (1919) 133. Naples 24, 102.
LIEBERMANN Max (1847-1935) 174. NAPOLEON I (1769-1821) 8, 9, 11, 12, 94, 103.
Limoges (Haute- Vienne) 41. NAPOLEON III (1808-1873) 8-10, 12-14, 18, 23, 28, 32, 52, 56, 70, 82, 88-91,
London 43, 92, 98-100, 109, 176, 192, 193, 207; 95, 108, 119.
— Grafton Galleries 203 Neuilly-sur-Seine 59, 62.
— National Gallery 98 New Orleans (Louisiana) 24, 102, 138, 196.
— Royal Academy 92, 98; Newspapers and periodicals:
— Hyde Park 99; " L'Art et le Beau " 211 " L'Art et la Mode " 167 " L'Artiste " 28, 57 " Les
—
; ; ;

International Exhibition (South Kensington, 1871) 92. Arts dans les Deux Mondes" 194; "L'Aurore" 192; "Les Beaux-Arts
LOUIS XIV of France (1643-1715) 11. illustres " 110 " Le Bien Public " 112 " Le Boulevard " 63 " Le Charivari
; ; ;

LOUIS-PHILIPPE, King of the French (1830-1848) 22, 58, 108, 163. 52, 105, 113; "Le Constitutionnel" 56, 111; "Les Contemporains" 110;
Louisiana 24, 102. "Daily Tribune" (New York) 173; "L'Eclipse" 110; "L'Evenement" 67,
Louveciennes (Yvelines) 86, 92, 93, 97-99, 110, 116-118, 158. 69, 70; "L'Evenement lllustre" 44-46; "L'Excelsior" 109, 202, 205; "Le
Lower Norwood (London) 92, 99. Figaro" 30, 110-112; "Le Francais" 112 "La France" 111 "Le Gaulois"
; ;

LUMIERE Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis-Jean (1864-1948) 143. 104 " Gazette des Beaux-Arts " 28, 33, 83, 110 ;" La Grande Revue " 147
;

LUNEL Ferdinand 135. "L'Homme libre" 112; "L'Impressionniste" 112, 140, 150, 211; "La
"
Lyons 38. Lanterne " 89 " Le Moniteur universel " 27, 57, 111 " New York Herald
; ;

73 " L'Opinion nationale " 54, 104 " Paris Journal " 74 " La Presse " 105
; ; ;
;

MacMAHON Patrice de (1808-1893) 107, 108, 112, 113, 168. "Le Rappel" 111, 112; "Le Realisme" 110, 123; "La Republique
Madrid 56, 57, 70, 91, 158. francaise" 113, 154; "Le Reveil" 68; "La Revue independante" 99; "La
MAILLARD Georges 112. Revue du XIXe siecle" 32, 70; "Le Siecle" 105; "Le Soir" 111; "Le
MAITRE Edmond (1840-1898) 42, 45, 69. Soleil" 111; "The Studio" (London) 98; "Le Temps" 154; "Times
MALLARME Stephane (1842-1898) 47, 73, 152, 154, 160, 170, 171, 192. Picayune" (New Orleans) 102.
MANET Edouard (1832-1883) 10, 22-33, 37, 42, 44-48, 54, 56-59, 62, 64-66, New York 73, 203
68-74, 77, 89-94, 100, 102, 103, 109, 110, 112, 124, 130, 131, 136, 137, American Art Association 73
140, 142, 146-149, 152, 154, 162, 163, 165, 167-173, 191. Metropolitan Museum of Art 173.
MANET Auguste (d. 1862), the artist's father 22, 26, 27, 33, 58; NIEPCE Joseph-Nicephore (1765-1833) 62, 63.
— Eugene (d. 1892), his brother 28, 68, 111, 154, 162, 192. NIEUWERKERKE Emilien de (1811-1892) 13, 51, 63, 168, 171.
MANTZ Paul 33, 83, 154. NITTIS Giuseppe de (1846-1884) 104.
MANZANO-POMIE Rachel, Pissarro's mother 39, 100. Nogent-sur-Seine 132.
MAREY Etienne-Jules (1830-1904) 62. NOIR Yvan SALMON, called Victor (1848-1870) 93.
MARGOT (d. 1879), Renoir's model 166. Normandy 25, 31, 98, 174, 204.
MARIE-ANTOINETTE (1755-1793) 10. Nouvelle-Athenes, Cafe de la 48, 138, 166, 169, 170.
MARION Antoine Fortune (1846-1900) 66, 67.
Marlotte (Fontainebleau forest) 60, 62 Inn of Mother Anthony 60-62.
MARQUET Albert (1875-1947) 204.
;

OCHARD Jacques-Francois (1800-1870) 38.

MARTENS, photographer 96. OFFENBACH Jacques (1819-1880) 10, 28.
MARTIAL Adolphe Martial POTEMONT, called (1828-1883) 56. OLLER Y CESTERO Francisco (born 1833) 37.
Olympia Affair 56, 57, 66, 69.
MARTIN Father, art dealer 163. Ornans (Doubs) 13, 95, 97.
MARTIN DES PALLIERES Charles Felicite (1823-1876) 93. OUDINOT Achille Francois (1820-1891) 27.
Martinet Gallery (Paris) 33.
Overijssel (Holland) 37.
Martyrs, Brasserie des (Paris) 13, 166.
MARVILLE Charles, photographer 58.
MASSON Andre (1896) 204. Paris 8, 11, 13, 17, 22-24, 26, 28, 32-41, 43, 45, 58, 59, 61-67, 71, 74, 75, 83,
MATHILDE Princess (1820-1904) 13. 86, 88-96, 98-102, 108, 114, 134, 135, 137, 140, 145, 147, 152, 154, 155,
MATISSE Henri (1869-1954) 164, 204. 157-160, 163, 164, 168, 169, 172, 173, 175, 178, 179, 181, 184, 191, 194,
MAUCLAIR Camille (1872-1945) 211. 200, 202-205, 207;
MAUPASSANT Guy de (1850-1893) 203. — Academie des Beaux-Arts 11-14, 18, 33, 37, 39, 49, 52, 66, 89, 90, 95 ;

MAXIMILIAN (1832-1867), Emperor of Mexico 70, 73, 89, 91. Ecole des Beaux-Arts 22, 25, 26, 29, 36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 50, 58, 81, 100,
MAXWELL James Clerk (1831-1879) 176. 113, 172, 175, 195; Lycee Louis-le-Grand 24; College Rollin 22;
MEISSONIER Ernest (1815-1891) 13, 53, 90, 92, 95, 97, 103, 143. — Arc de Triomphe 88, 94; Bastille 89; Vendome Column 9, 94-96;
MELBYE Fritz (1826-1896) 40; — Batignolles Quarter 45, 56, 62, 74, 111; Bois de Boulogne 10, 154;
— Anton (1818-1875) 40. Champ de Mars 9, 69, 194 Montmartre Quarter 13, 17, 25, 69, 86-88,
;

MELLERIO Andre 195. 90, 91, 113, 134, 155, 157-159, 169, 179; Saint-Germain-des-Pres 60;
Menil-Hubert (Normandy) 31. — Champs-Elysees 11, 34, 50, 91, 113; Longchamp 8, 25, 31, 143; Place
MEUNIER Marie-Therese 159, 167. de Greve 94 Quai des Grands-Augustins 9 Trocadero 26, 27, 88
MEURENT Victorine, Manet's model 28, 30, 56. — ;

Louvre Palace 52, 88, 96; Louvre Museum 13, 22, 24-26, 36, 44, 67,
;

MICHEL Louise (1830-1905) 94. 81, 94, 124, 172, 186, 191, 204; Luxembourg Palace and Museum 81,
MILLET Jean-Francois (1814-1875) 10, 15-18, 37, 59, 89, 101, 108, 88, 191, 192; Luxembourg Gardens 59, 88; Palais Royal 95; Tuileries
163, 173, 175. Palace 10, 94, 95; Tuileries Gardens 28, 32, 33, 96;
MIRBEAU Octave (1848-1917) 30, 128, 205, 207. — Bibliotheque Nationale 35; old Opera House (rue Le Peletier) 25, 113,
MIRO Joan (1893) 204. 138, 145; Palais de l'lndustrie 14, 49, 50, 52, 54;
MODIGLIANI Amedeo (1884-1920) 204. — Notre-Dame 10, 41; Sacre-Cceur 87; Saint-Eustache 41; Saint-Ger-
MONET Claude (1840-1926) 6, 7, 10, 16, 31, 34, 37-42, 44, 45, 54, 58-62, main-l'Auxerrois 41; Sainte-Madeleine 89;
64-66, 69, 71, 74, 75, 77-81, 83-85, 87, 89, 92, 95, 98-100, 103-105, — Pere Lachaise cemetery 95;
107-113, 117, 118, 121, 122, 124, 126-131, 133, 136, 137, 140-142, — Theatre Francais 10 Theatre Italien 10 Bal Mabille 10 Cafe Riche
; ; ;

159-163, 165-169, 172-175, 181, 191, 193-195, 197, 200, 202-211. 160, 166; Cafe de la Closerie des Lilas 43, 44; Cafe Tortoni 24; La
MONET Jean (1867-1914), the artist's son 61, 98, 204. Porte Chinoise 64, 65 Valentino 10
Montfoucault (Mayenne) 167. — ;

World's Fairs (1855) 10, 11, 14, 33, 37, 40, 49, 50, 53, 64; (1867) 65,
Montpellier 42, 60, 78. 69, 71; (1878) 65, 163, 167; (1889) 172.
MOORE George (1852-1933) 25, 48, 138, 169, 170, 172. Passy (Paris) 39.
MORBILLI Duchess, Therese De Gas 30. PATTI Adelina (1843-1910) 10.
Moret-sur-Loing (Seine-et-Marne) 160, 193. PAYS Marcel 205.
MORISOT Berthe (1841-1895) 10, 22, 26, 27, 46, 68, 69, 73, 91, 104, 105, 107, PEARL Cora 89.
110, 111, 113, 154, 155, 162, 166, 168, 173, 174, 192. PELLETAN Camille (1846-1915) 95.
MORISOT Edme-Tiburce (d. 1873), the artist's father 26, 27, 91, 154; PELLETAN Eugene (1813-1884) 88, 89.
— Edma and Yves, her sisters 22, 26, 27, 68; PELLOQUET Edouard 70.
— Julie (born 1878), her daughter 154; PERRY Commodore Matthew (1794-1858) 64, 65.
— Nini, her niece, see GOBILLARD. PETIT Georges (d. 1920) 172, 205.
Mornex (Haute-Savoie) 76. Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) 172; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 172.
Moulin de la Galette, Le (Montmartre) 113, 134, 135, 157, 158, 191. PICABIA Francis (1878-1953) 204.
Moulins 36, 166. PICASSO Pablo (1881-1973) 164, 204.
MURAT General Joachim (1767-1815) 70. PICHAT Laurent 68.
MURER Eugene (1845-1906) 166, 167, 202. PICOT Francois Edouard (1786-1868) 58.
MUSSET Alfred de (1810-1857) 24. PIETTE Ludovic (1826-1877) 58, 92, 161, 167.
MUSSON Marie-Celestine (1817-1847), Degas's mother 24, 102; PISSARRO Abraham Gabriel, the artist's father 39, 40, 58;
— Henri and Michel, his uncles 24, 102. — Minette (Jeanne-Rachel, 1865-1874), his daughter 100, 161;
MUYBRIDGE Eadweard (1830-1904) 143. — Felix-Camille (1874-1897), his son 100, 161.

230
PISSARRO Camille (1830-1903) 10, 30, 34, 37, 39-41, 44, 45, 47, 54, 58-60, SEURAT Georges (1859-1891) 105, 166, 173-177
64-66, 69, 71, 74, 77, 86, 87, 92, 98-101, 103-111, 113-115, 117, 118, 121, Sevres (Hauts-de-Seine) 160.
126, 128, 136, 137, 158-161, 163, 164, 166-170, 172-177, 180, 181, 183, SHAKESPEARE William (1564-1616) 12.
185, 190-195, 200, 202. SIGNAC Paul (1863-1935) 173-175, 180, 204.
PISSARRO Lucien (1863-1944) 58, 65, 98, 101, 114, 164, 172, 174, 180, 181, SIGNOL Emile (1804-1892) 42.
183, 193, 194. SILVESTRE Armand (1837-1901) 104, 109, 117, 169.
Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) 172, 173. SIMON Jules (1814-1896) 112.
POILOUP Abbe 22. SINGEOT Louis, called Petit Louis 203.
Pontoise (Val-d'Oise) 27, 100, 101, 103, 110, 114, 118, 121, 161, 174, 183. SISLEY Alfred (1839-1899) 10, 42-45, 59, 60, 62, 70, 74, 87, 97, 103, 105,
PORCHERON Emile 111. 107-110, 113, 116-118, 128, 160, 161, 163, 166-169, 172-175,
POUSSIN Nicolas (1594-1665) 18, 25, 183, 190. 181, 191, 193, 202.
Prix de Rome 25, 44. SISLEY Pierre and Jean, the artist's sons 97.
PROUDHON Pierre-Joseph (1809-1865) 8, 13, 71, 96, 166. SOUTINE Chaim (1894-1943) 204.
PROUST Antonin (1832-1905) 22, 33, 171, 172. SOUTZO Prince Gregoire 24.
PROUST Marcel (1871-1922) 191. STEVENS Alfred (1823-1906) 65, 103, 109.
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES Pierre (1824-1898) 108, 154.
TALBOT William Henry Fox (1800-1877) 62.
RABELAIS Francois (c. 1494-1553) 159. TALLEYRAND (1754-1838) 24.
RANSON Paul (1864-1909) 195. TANGUY Julien (1825-1894) 163-166.
RAPHAEL (1483-1520) 25, 199. Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrenees) 93.
REDON Odilon (1840-1916) 14, 174, 180, 194, 195, 204. TAVERNIER Adolphe 160.
REMBRANDT (1606-1669) 25, 194. THIERS Adolphe (1797-1877) 91, 108.
RENOIR Claude (born 1901), the artist's son 200; THORE-BURGER Theophile (1807-1869) 19, 32.
—Jean (1894-1979), his son 42, 74, 94, 159, 200; TISSOT James (1836-1902) 64.
— Pierre (1885-1952), his son 158, 200; TITIAN (14907-1576) 25, 57, 155.
— Edmond (1849-1944), his brother 60, 104. TOCHE Charles (1851-1916) 22, 171.
RENOIR Pierre-Auguste (1841-1919) 10, 41-45, 54, 59, 60, 62, 66, 69-71, 74, Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle) 62.
75, 77, 78, 84, 85, 93, 94, 97, 100, 103-105, 107-111, 113, 117, 119-123, Tour-de-Peilz (La) (Switzerland) 96.
126, 129, 131-137, 139, 149, 152-155, 157-160, 162-175, 181, 191, 194, TREHOT Clemence (1854-1926) 62;
196-202. — Lise (1848-1922), Renoir's model 62, 75, 77, 97.
REYNAUD Emile (1844-1918) 143. TROCHU General Louis-Jules (1815-1896) 90.
REYNOLDS Sir Joshua (1723-1792) 98. Trouville (Channel coast) 82, 83, 130, 131.
RICARD Gustave (1823-1872) 163. TROYON Constant (1810-1865) 37, 39, 163.
RICHEPIN Jean (1849-1926) 169. TURNER Joseph Mallord William (1775-1851) 43, 92, 98, 99, 140.
RIGAULT Raoul (1846-1871) 62, 94, 95, 110.
Rio de Janeiro 22, 171. UTAMARO Kitagawa (1753-1806) 65.
RIVIERE Georges (1855-1943) 112, 128, 129, 134, 135, 139-141, 150, 157-159, UTRILLO Maurice (1883-1955) 157, 204.
162, 166, 169, 201.
ROBERT Leopold (1794-1835) 18. VALABREGUE Anthony 66, 67.
ROBINSON Henry Peach (1830-1910) 80, 81. VALADON Suzanne (1867-1938) 157, 204.
ROCHEFORT Henri (1830-1913) 89, 93, 96. VALERNES A. de 138.
RODIN Auguste (1840-1917) 64, 167. VALERY Paul (1871-1945) 24, 28, 30, 31, 144, 150, 151, 154, 155, 171.
Rome 11, 25, 89. VALUER, model of Cezanne 189.
ROOD N. O. 177. VALPINCON Paul 25, 31.
ROSSETTI Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) 92. VELAZQUEZ Diego (1599-1660) 22-25, 27, 56.
ROSSINI Gioacchino (1792-1868) 9, 24. VELLAY Julie, Pissarro's wife 40, 92, 100, 181.
ROUART family 154. Venice 23, 158, 204, 207.
ROUART Henri (1833-1912) 102, 104, 163. VENTURI Lionello (1885-1961) 55, 100, 117, 163, 175.
ROUAULT Georges (1871-1958) 164, 204. Versailles (Yvelines) 11, 86, 91, 94, 95.
Rouen (Normandy) 167, 203, 204, 206. Vetheuil (Val-d'Oise) 167.
ROUJON Henry (1853-1914) 195. VICTORIA Queen (1837-1901) 10, 49.
ROUSSEAU Henri, Le Douanier (1844-1910) 195, 204. Vienna 23.
ROUSSEAU Theodore (1812-1867) 10, 16, 17, 59, 98, 108, 113, 163. V1ERGE Daniel (1851-1904) 96.
ROUSSEL Ker-Xavier (1867-1944) 194, 195. VILLARD Nina de 171.
Rueil (Hauts-de- Seine) 171. Ville-d'Avray (Hauts-de-Seine) 27, 61.
VILLEMESSANT Jean Cartier de (1812-1879) 70.
Saint-Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine) 158.
VILLIERS DE LTSLE-ADAM Auguste (1838-1889) 73, 169.
Sainte-Adresse (Channel coast) 60, 82, 83.
VILLON Francois (1431-c. 1465) 159.
Saint-Germain-en-Laye (west suburb of Paris) 74.
VILLON Jacques (1875-1963) 204.
Saint Thomas (Antilles) 39-41, 58.
V1NOY General Joseph (1800-1880) 90.
Salon 11, 13, 18, 19, 26, 27, 34, 40, 44, 49-54, 56, 62, 66, 67, 69, 72, 98, 108,
VLAMINCK Maurice (1876-1958) 204.
112, 113, 119, 138, 154, 167-169, 172, 180, 183, 193; VOLLARD Ambroise (1868-1939) 22, 26,
— (1824) 17; (1843) 40; (1847) 11; (1848) 37; (1852) 53; (1855) 14, 19,
100, 101, 138, 139, 161, 164, 165,
171-173, 184, 190, 191, 193-196, 200, 203.
37, 40, 49, 50, 53, 54, 62 (1857) 62 (1859) 23, 40, 62 (1861) 27, 40,
; ; ;
VUILLARD Edouard (1868-1940) 194, 195, 204.
51 (1862) 33 (1863) 33, 52, 56 (1864) 59, 60, 66 (1865) 27, 55, 56,
; ; ; ;

59, 61, 66, 69, 83; (1866) 27, 59, 61, 66, 69, 80; (1867) 27, 61-63, 69,
72 (1868) 46, 77 (1869) 30, 50, 74 (1870) 68, 89, 90, 163 (1872) 95, WAGNER Richard (1813-1883) 23, 71.
; ; ;

172; (1873) 103, 172; (1874) 172; (1875) 112, 172; (1876) 112, 172;
;

WALEWSKJ Count Alexandre (1810-1868) 33.

(1877) 172; (1878) 167; (1879) 52, 158; (1882) 171. Wargemont (near Dieppe) 158.
Salon des Independants 180. WEBSTER J. Carson 105, 107.
Salon des Refuses (1863) 51, 52, 54, 58, 66, 69. WHISTLER James McNeill (1834-1903) 40, 54, 64, 65, 79, 82, 99, 154, 173.
Santo Domingo 24. Wight, Isle of 154.
SAUNIER Charles 99. WILENSKI R. H. 68, 105.
S A VARY 39. WILLIAM I of Prussia (1861-1888) 10, 69, 91.
SCHAPIRO Meyer (1904) 88. WINTERHALTER Franz Xaver (1805-1873) 9, 11, 108, 109.
SCHELFHOUT Andreas (1787-1870) 37. WOLFF Albert (1835-1891) 103, 110, 112, 171.
SCHNEIDER Hortense (1838-1920) 10.
SCHOLDERER Otto (1834-1902) 45, 69. ZANDOMENEGHI Federigo (1841-1917) 169.
Sedan (Ardennes) 90-92, 107. ZOLA Emile (1840-1902) 10, 23, 24, 32, 34-36, 42-47, 52, 54, 64, 66, 67, 69,
SELL Marie Felicia, Sisley's mother 43. 70, 73, 74, 101, 126, 138, 141, 162, 181, 184, 192.
SERUSIER Paul (1863-1927) 179, 194, 195. ZURBARAN Francisco de (1598-1664) 22, 56.

231
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 PREHISTORIC PAINTING
LASCAUX OR THE BIRTH Of ART
^
by Georges Bataille
IMPRESSIONISTS
AND
EGYPTIAN PAINTING^
by Arpag Mekhitarian
IMPRESSIONISM
Text by Maria and Godfrey Blunden
GREEK PAINTING Notes by Jean-Luc Daval

by Martin Robertson y 174 REPRODUCTIONS IN FULL COLOR

250 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
BYZANTINE PAINTING
by Andre Grabar
By all but a few, the French Impressionists
of the late nineteenth century were initially

denigrated as madmen who "appear to

GOTHIC PAINTING have declared war on beauty." They first
by Jacques Dupont and Cesare Gnudi exhibited as a group in April 1874, in the
Paris studios of the photographer Nadar.
Their exhibition opened two weeks before
RENAISSANCE PAINTING the official Salon, which rigidly upheld
academic standards, and though it was met
From Leonardo to Durer
by abuse and ridicule it confronted the
by Lionello Venturi public boldly with an art of bright pure
colors representing a new approach to the
visual world. The artists themselves-
RENAISSANCE PAINTING among them Monet, Renoir, Pissarro,
From Brueghel to El Greco Sisley, Degas, Cezanne, Berthe Morisot-
thought of it as an exhibition of indepen-
by Lionello Venturi
dent individual talents with a common belief
that art should reflect the conditions of
ordinary life and that light must convey the
realistic impression of form.
Today we see the French Impressionists
CHINESE PAINTING not only as highly talented and revered
artists, but also as an integral part of the
by James Cahill
social upheaval that occurred in France
during the eventful transition from the Sec-
ond Empire to the Third Republic, by way of
JAPANESE PAINTING the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris
by Akiyama Terukazu Commune. Their manifestation of popular
dissent and a yearning for realism was the
start of a widening opportunity for a number
PERSIAN PAINTING of painters whose technical ability was
hardly less revolutionary than their preoccu-
by Basil Gray
pation with subjects drawn from popular
life.

This book is designed to enable the reader,

ARAB PAINTING with the help of faithful reproductions, to
by Richard Ettmghausen look at French Impressionist painting with a
new vision, reinforced by the revolutionary
experience and artistic tolerance and
INDIAN PAINTING curiosity of our own time.

by Douglas Barrett and Basil Gray

CENTRAL ASIAN PAINTING

by Mario Bussagli

These titles were originally published in the

GREAT CENTURIES OF PAINTING

and On the cover
Claude Monet Impression, Sunrise (detail), 1872.
TREASURES OF ASIA Musee Marmottan, Paris.

series created by Albert Skira

PRINTED IN SWITZERLAND ISBN: 0-8478-0341-4