By Ben Antao

On his trip to France, the writer learnt about Impressionist painters.

ON THE way to Aix-de-Provence, the birthplace of Paul Cézanne, our guide used the opportunity to give us a brief introduction to Impressionism, the art movement that flourished in France from 1848 to 1914. Until the 1850s, he said, the school of fine arts (École des Beaux-Artes) taught three kinds of painting — religious, historical, and portraits of the rich and famous. The young would-be impressionist painters said they didn’t care for such traditional forms of art but instead went to Montmartre to paint what they saw outside in the country, not in the studio. However, when they displayed their work for exhibition, they didn’t elicit a favourable response from the juries. There were no details in their canvases from close up. One painter put an impression of a sunset on the canvas and called it art. “The Impressionists were called arrogant,” Filipe said.

ORIGIN

THE painter whose Impression, Sunrise was exhibited in 1874 is Claude Monet (1840-1926). A journalist named Louis Leroy looked at this painting and asked, “What does this painting represent? Since I am impressed there must be some impression in it. And what freedom, what looseness in his technique! Even wallpaper in its embryonic state is more developed than that seascape!”

As it turned out, Leroy unwittingly put his finger on the meaning of the title, and the artists seeing that the critic had ironically and in spite of himself understood their intentions began to call themselves “Impressionists.”

Finally, the artists whose works had been refused by the juries organised themselves and displayed their work, calling it “the exhibition of the refused.” The Russians were the first to discover the Impressionists, said Filipe, and France became a centre of modern art.

Today the French impressionists are honoured and given a pride of place in a separate museum called Musée d’Orsay, which houses their works representing styles and forms ranging from pre-impressionism, impressionism and post-impressionism. Some of these artists are Bazille, Corot, Degas, Delacroix, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne Rousseau, Gauguin, Monet, Pissarro, Redon, Signac, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh.

Monet settled in Argenteuil and was soon joined by his friends, Renoir, Sisley and Manet. The year 1874 when Monet painted Argenteuil Bridge (oil on canvas, 60.5 x 80 cm) on the bank of the Seine is said to mark the official birth of Impressionism. There are several water paintings by Monet that hold the visitor in wonder when viewed from the right distance or perspective. It seems the reflections in the water, ever moving, ever changing, could only be captured by the technique adopted by the impressionists, with their fragmented, quivering brushstrokes, giving a sense of blurredness to their palettes.

“He is one of the only painters who know how to paint water, without simple transparency, without false reflections,” wrote the novelist Emile Zola in an article in his Salon of 1868. “With him, the water is alive, deep and, above all, true. It laps around the boats with small greenish waves, broken with white glimmering light; it stretches out in dull blue-green ponds suddenly rippled by the breeze; it lengthens the masts which it reflects breaking their image, its pale, dull tones become enlivened with bright light.”

MONET’S WORK

IN addition to water paintings, Monet also enjoyed painting snow that constantly changed its appearance with the light and cold air. Here are a few of his “impressions” of the snow:

The Cart. Snow-Covered Road in Honfleur (circa 1867, oil on canvas, 65 x 92.5 cm) shows patterns of snow-laden branches silhouetted against the sky, blocking the vanishing point and drawing the eye into deep space.

The Magpie (1869, oil on canvas, 89 x 130 cm), painted on the coast of Normandy five years before the term “Impressionism” was conceived, is an attempt to capture bitter cold outdoor landscape and winter sunlight on canvas.

Church at Vétheuil, Snow (1878-1879, oil on canvas, 52 x 71 cm) is a snow-clad landscape, painted using a broken brush stroke to suggest the glimmer of low winter light on the frozen surface. Dashes of red — on the gate of the tower and the riverbank — enliven the muted palette.

Cracking on the Seine: Blocks of Ice (circa 1880, oil on canvas, 60 x 100 cm) is one of several ice thawing scenes painted by Monet, a dreamy landscape at early sunrise.

During the harsh winter of 1879-1880, the Seine was completely frozen and then melted slowly. In January 1880, Monet wrote to one of his clients, “The ice has been cracking terribly here and, naturally, I tried to do something with it. Everything is sparkling…this thaw is turning everything into a mirage: you can no longer tell whether it is the ice or the sun, and all the pieces of ice are shattering and carrying the reflection of the sky.”

His friend Édouard Manet (1832-1883), who called Monet “Raphael of the water,” aspired to be the St. Francis of the still-life. “A painter can express anything with fruit, flowers or cloud alone…I would like to be the Saint Francis of the still-life,” Manet confided in a dealer.

Carnations and Clematis in a Crystal Vase (circa 1882, oil on canvas, 56 x 35 cm) brings out the essence of simplicity with a few deft brush strokes on his palette.

Lemon (1880-1881, oil on canvas, 14 x 21 cm) gives texture and meaning to an otherwise simple fruit.

OF MANET…

MANET also painted portraits to make a living as the bourgeoisie paid rather well for these portraits. His Lola of Valence (1862, oil on canvas, 123 x 92 cm) draws on his study of Spanish painters. In this canvas his broken and free brushstrokes create a sumptuous effect on the dancer’s heavily trimmed skirt, with daubs of yellow, red and green.

Alfred Sisley (1939-1899), although of British nationality, was born in Paris and lived for the most part of his life in France. His landscapes in the snow, The Coeur-Volant Coast at Marly in the Snow (1877-1878, oil on canvas, 46 x 55.5 cm) and Snow at Louveciennes (1878), oil on canvas (61 x 50.5 cm), are beautiful illustrations of impressionism of Nature painted through the filter of visual sensation.

His water landscapes, Flooding at Port-Marly (1876, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 81 cm) and The Boat during the Flood (1876, oil on canvas, 60 x 61 cm), have soft textures conveying a mood of peacefulness in the country.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), known as the “Father of Impressionism”, painted rural and urban French life as well as scenes from Montmartre. His mature work displays empathy for peasants and labourers. He was a mentor to Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin.

His Country Girl Making a Fire, White Frost (1887-1888, oil on canvas 92.8 x 92.5 cm), is a dream-like country scene with a woman and a girl appearing joyous before a cloud of smoke while in the background cattle are shown grazing, a fetching idealised pastoral. The pale colours of pink, blue and yellow enhance this impression of rural life.

The Shepherdess, also known as Young Girl with Stick; Country Girl Sitting (1881, oil on canvas 81 x 64.7 cm), is a lush palette of greens and yellows with a girl approaching puberty sitting on a hillside in contemplation. Her stylish shoes and cloche invest her with a status above and beyond that of a shepherdess. Apart from painting pleasing pictures, Pissarro was obviously interested in conveying more than mere impressions.

Woman in a Field, Spring Sun in the Meadow at Éragny (1887, oil on canvas 54.5 x 65 cm), is another deft rendering of country life at springtime. Brushstrokes of deep green combined with pale greens and pale yellows suggest a spirit of awakening, with romantic anticipation.

In Red Roofs, Corner of the Village, Effects of Winter (1877, oil on canvas, 54.5 x 65.6 cm), Pissarro moved away from landscapes showing changes in light and sky to a geometrical structure of the landscapes. In this picture, horizontal lines marked by the roofs of the houses and the hill are intersected by the diagonals of the gables, making for an unusually pleasing effect.

The Road to Louveciennes (1872, oil on canvas, 60 x 73.5 cm) has depth and proportion, with fragmented brushstrokes to highlight the effects of light. The two silhouettes of the trees are contrasted to the sky and clouds with soft blues and whites.

REFLECTING LIGHT

FRÉDÉRIC Bazille (1841-1870) was also opposed to academic painting, like Monet, Renoir and Sisley. His paintings reflect the intense Mediterranean sunlight as he grew up in Montpellier, south of France. This can be observed in his Family Gathering (1867), oil on canvas (152 x 230 cm), in which the artist portrays with bright colours the members of his family on the terrace of his estate. The figures on this canvas are positioned to reflect their individual relationships.

The Pink Dress or View of Castelnau-le-Lez (1864) is a striking example of strong light seen by a woman in a pink striped dress sitting on the low parapet.

Bazille`s The Studio on Rue La Condamine (1870, oil on canvas, 98 x 128 cm), contains the figures of his artist friends, in addition to the charming look of his studio, of course. Figures represented are Renoir, Bazille himself, Manet, Monet and writer Émile Zola. Young and born into an affluent family, he was generous to his friends.

Camille Corot’s (1796-1875) paintings have a dream-like texture with hazy atmosphere reflecting his artistic credo that “feeling alone be your guide.” He and other painters of his generation shunned the city to find authentic living amidst nature, their preferred village being Barbizon on the edge of the forest of Fontainbleau.

In his two nymph paintings, Morning, Dance of the Nymphs (1850-1851, oil on canvas, 98 x 131 cm), and Dance of the Nymphs (1860-1865, oil on canvas, 47 x 77.5 cm), we see women pirouetting in the forest bathed in mist and haze, in green and brown hues that evoke silvery foliage. He captured these women in nostalgic reverie: averted and distant gazes, melancholic and pensive faces tinged with ineffable sadness, according to critics.

His other landscape, The Clearing, Memory of Ville-d’Avray (circa 1872, oil on canvas, 100 x 134), is a mood piece of romantic anticipation, pale light visible through two tall pillar-like trees, with a woman, face averted, sitting at the bottom.

HISTORY PAINTER

EDGAR Degas (1834-1917) began his career with history paintings and portraits, for example, War scene in the Middle Ages (1865), paint mixed with spirits on paper re-mounted on canvas (81 x 147 cm) and Semiramis Building Babylon (circa 1860-1862, oil on canvas, 150 x 258 cm). For portraits, he was influenced by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), the master of neo-classicism, who is reported to have told him, “Draw lines, young man, lots of lines, either from Memory or from life. That is how you will become a painter.” In Degas’ The Bellelli Family (1858-1867, oil on canvas, 2 x 2.5 m), which shows his aunt and uncle and their two girls, each member seems separate in this family with a heavy, solemn atmosphere.

However, at the Impressionist Exhibition in 1886, Degas showed a series of ten pastels entitled “Series of female nudes bathing, washing, drying themselves, combing their hair or having it combed for them,” which included his famous The Bathtub. All these pastels are sensuous, the women absorbed in their task seen from the back, their faces either hidden or indistinct. They are naked but not provocatively so, as though unaware of being watched. He succeeds in making the viewer forget that a model had nonetheless posed for him.

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), a keen exponent of romanticism, has two paintings in the Musée d’Orsay that are an explosion of colour. They are The Puma, also known as Lioness Watching Her Prey (1859, oil on wood, 41 x 30.5 cm) and The Lion Hunt (1854, oil on canvas, 86 x115 cm). His famous supporter was the writer Baudelaire who wrote in 1846 that “For me, Romanticism is the most recent and most current expression of beauty…and Delacroix is the most evocative of all painters.”

CELEBRATED RENOIR

PIERRE-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), one of the most celebrated of the Impressionists, had a difficult beginning as his few paintings did not attract much attention. One of his paintings, Study. Torso. Effects of Sunlight (1875-1876, oil on canvas, 81 x 65), was exhibited at the 2nd Impressionist Exhibition, 1876. In this painting, Renoir used the shadow and light filtering through the almost absent leaves to show the naked torso of his model whose features become blurred under the effect of the light.

“Please try to explain to M Renoir,” wrote Albert Wolff in Le Figaro, “that the female torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with green and purple blotches denoting a state of complete putrefaction in a cadaver.” The painting does look rather unfinished, but in the context of impressionism the nude passes master.

However, it was through his commissioned portraits that Renoir made a living. The portrait of Mme Georges Charpentier is a tribute to the wife of the publisher of writers Flaubert and Maupassant, who opened her salon and allowed the son of a small Parisian tailor to enter bourgeois circles and a world of potential clients.

Renoir’s experiments with light and shadow resulted in two paintings, The Swing (1876, oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm) and Dancing at the Moulin de la Galette (1876, oil on canvas, 131 x 175 cm), both shown at the Third Impressionist Exhibition, 1877.

In The Swing, a young man seen from the back is talking to a young woman standing on a swing, watched by a little girl and another man, leaning against the trunk of a tree. The young woman is looking away as if embarrassed. The foursome in the foreground are balanced by the group of five figures sketchily brushed in the background. Renoir is trying to catch the effects of sunlight dappled by the foliage as the light falls in coloured patches on the clothes, faces and the ground, thus creating the effect of greasy marks on their clothes.

Like his contemporaries, Renoir did not merely reproduce the physical features and the psychology of his model, but placed the models in their own world, engaged in their occupations, to create a genre scene. While some women in his portraits have been identified, others such as the Young Woman with Veil (1875-1877, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm), whose profile is almost hidden, have retained their anonymity and their secrets.

ROUSSEAU

HENRI Rousseau (1844-1910) began dabbling in his passion for painting after he retired from the civil service. Because he did not go to art school to learn the elements of perspective and variations of light, the Impressionists were unwilling to accept him in their fold. However, at the end of the century he was admitted by some avant-garde artists, including Picasso.

Rousseau’s The Snake Charmer (1907, oil on canvas, 169 x 189.5 cm), shows a black Eve in a disquieting Garden of Eden, charming a snake. It’s a vertical composition with dense green and yellow foliage. The scene set by a lake has silken texture with a full moon and backlit to enhance its almost surrealistic effect.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) acknowledged Pissarro as his master, as illustrated by his landscape The Seine at the Pont d’Iéna (1875, oil on canvas, 65 x 93 cm), a gloomy scene in snowy weather suggesting an urge to escape from the city to a simpler life.

His oil painting Still-Life with Mandolin (1885) has bold brushstrokes fragmented to create an image of what an ideal life in the countryside might look like.

Gauguin, the son of a Peruvian Creole woman, was a restless soul who worked as a stockbroker until the age of 34 when the market crashed. He then moved from the materialistic world of Paris to Britanny, then to Arles to work with Van Gogh, and finally to Tahiti to escape the European chase for money and to be free.

He painted The Meal or The Bananas (1891) in the first months of his arrival in Tahiti, oil on paper re-mounted on canvas (73 x 92 cm), a combo of still-life in the foreground and two boys and a girl sitting in the background. Since it was not customary in Tahiti to eat at a table, Gauguin is said to have put together these familiar items (bananas, guava, oranges) for purely decorative, exotic effect.His Tahitian Women or On the Beach (1891, oil on canvas , 69 x91.5 cm), depicts two Tahitian women busy with simple daily tasks. The faces are rendered as a mask of melancholy. By choosing somewhat rigid poses, he introduces a rhythm into the painting through a mysterious, harmonious geometry, thus producing what looks more like a genre scene than a genuine double portrait. The painting is lightly animated both by the discreet, almost monochrome, still life in the foreground, and by the rollers breaking on the lagoon in the background suggested by a few white highlights.

The paintings of Odilon Redon (1840-1916) appear to be more symbolist than impressionistic in that he seemed to be interested in conveying the mystery and dreams behind the painting. For example, his Closed Eyes (1890, oil on canvas, 44 x 36 cm), a portrait of his wife Camille Falte, suggests an inner world of dream or apparition. The highly diluted paint makes it almost immaterial, letting the grain of the canvas show through. The bust seems to float in an undefined space.Even the pastel painting The Shell (1912), with a soft rosy middle in the shell suggests the presence of life after the eaten flesh, symbolist of the mystery of life.

To be continued

The above essay is from the author’s forthcoming travelogue Tour de France, which he visited in September 2009. Ben Antao, a Canadian Goan living in Toronto, is a journalist and novelist who has published five novels and several short stories and non-fiction. Blood & Nemesis, Penance, The Tailor’s Daughter, Living on the Market and The Priest and His Karma are his novels. His non-fiction includes the memoir, Images of the USA (2009) and travelogues Goa A Rediscovery and The Lands of Sicily. His email: ben.antao@gmail.com