In late January, Paris surrendered. On 12 February, Manet left to join his family in the south of France and he did not learn that the revolution had broken out in Paris and that the Commune had been declared until he got to Arcachon. In April, a manifesto announcing the creation of a federation of artists to which he had been elected during his absence, along with twenty-five other painters and ten sculptors, appeared in the Commune’s official publication, Le Journal Officiel de la Commune. Manet only returned to Paris around the end of June, 1871, after the semaine sanglante, or “bloody week” was over. His return to work after such a long interruption was difficult. He no longer had the financial means to support his art. Fortunately, the art dealer Durand-Ruel purchased twenty-four paintings from him that he proceeded to show in various exhibitions.
38. Édouard Manet,
Reading, between 1848 and 1883.
Oil on canvas, 60.5 x 73.5 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The future Impressionists were grouped around Manet, although they had yet to become known as a group before the first Impressionist exhibit. At that time people were calling them “Manet’s bunch.” And although Manet refused to exhibit with them, contemporaries associated his name with Impressionism.
Castagnary spoke of Manet’s influence on the Impressionists, Mallarmé considered Manet a key figure in their artistic movement, and Silvestre mentioned “the little school of the intransigents, of which he [Manet] is considered the leader.” (A. Tabarant, op. cit., p. 285). In reality, Manet did not have the same artistic goals as the Impressionists, and there was no Manet school. Yet Manet played a significant role in the birth of Impressionism and his contemporaries understood it. If the characteristic traits of Impressionism appeared in the work of Manet, it was specifically during a brief period after the war, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition.
39. Édouard Manet, In the Garden, c.1870.
Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 54 cm.
The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne.
Manet spent the summer 1874 at his family property in Gennevilliers, near Paris. Claude Monet, whom Manet had helped to find a house after the war in 1871, was staying at Argenteuil. For Manet, visiting the Monet family was as simple as crossing the bridge over the Seine. Manet’s first Impressionist painting, Boating, depicts Suzanne Manet’s brother, Rodolphe Leenhoff, with a lady. From a lower perspective, the sky and the opposite river bank of the Seine are out of range. Japanese artists, well known by Manet and whose work he had studied through prints, constructed perspective by the same method. The background of the painting is made up of the surface of water. The contrast on the one hand between the white bathing suit, the yellow boater, and the pink body and on the other hand, the cold tone of the water, evokes the sunlight that the Impressionists learned to capture so well. The shimmering white brushstrokes and the woman’s light blue dress are reminiscent of the coloured shadows and reflections in the painting of Monet and Renoir.
Manet’s second Impressionist painting was Argenteuil. The same characters, Rodolphe Leenhoff and his partner are seated on the riverbank in the midst of boats, which bob up and down around them. Their striped clothing creates such a shimmering effect of colour on the canvas that this alone gives the painting an Impressionist appearance. Here, the landscape is rightfully part of the composition and becomes immediately impressionistic. The water is painted with broken brushwork and reflects the blue sky, the green trees, and the buildings of Argenteuil on the other bank.
In 1875, he visited Venice with his wife and the painter James Tissot. From this trip, we only have two views of the Grand Canal, painted during the final days. Manet believed that by working en plein-air, he managed to achieve the effect of nature’s constant movement, just as the Impressionists had done.
During this period in Paris, train stations were appearing one after the other. Much use was being made of superior new steel frames in the construction of train stations. They later caught the attention of Monet, in whose painting of Saint-Lazare station the openwork of the steel frame plays a significant aesthetic role. But Manet paid little attention to steel frames, even if they occupied an increasingly important place in the city’s architecture.
Nevertheless, Manet and the Impressionists felt completely at ease in the Paris of their era. Manet’s Paris was the right bank, the quarter of grand boulevards, new train stations, and the hills of Montmartre. That was where he lived and rented a studio.
In 1872, with Paris recovering from the war, Manet’s group relocated to a café called La Nouvelle Athènes, on place Pigalle. Not all the regulars from the café Guerbois made the transition. Bazille had been killed in the war; Monet and Sisley were living in the suburbs; and Pissarro only stopped by when he found himself in Paris. Cézanne’s rare appearances were seen as theatre. Manet also depicted Ellen Andrée at a small table at La Nouvelle Athènes in the painting entitled The Plum Brandy (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art). Friends said that the artist painted his model in the studio where he had a small marble table, but is obviously painted from life.
Painted in 1873-1874, the small canvas known as the Masked Ball at the Opera marks and symbolises the end of Manet’s plein-air Impressionist period and his return to urban motifs. Every year in late March a costume ball was organised at the Opera, which was followed several days later by a masked ball for the artistic public. Just as in Music in the Tuileries Gardens, Manet assembles the people who formed his entourage in Parisian society. There is no longer any trace of a minutely constructed composition. The viewer gets the impression that the painter is depicting a fragment of life glimpsed by chance. The figures are cut off by the borders of the canvas and above, the coquettish leg of a woman is visible, straddling the balcony balustrade.
Nana, painted in 1877, also echoes naturalist literature: Manet’s Nana was associated with the heroine of the same name in Zola’s novel Nana, although the novel was published a year after Manet completed the painting. If contemporaries suspected Manet’s enigmatic Olympia was a courtesan, his Nana made no effort to hide the fact.
Manet’s extraordinary colour sense is also evident in this painting. The palette is based on a combination of the gold depicted in the models hair and wooden sofa frame and the sky blue of the Japanese fabric that Manet often used in his paintings.
Therefore it is not surprising that on 1 May, 1877, on the opening day of the Salon, Manet exhibited his Nana in the sumptuous window of Giroux, a merchant on the boulevard des Capucines : the painting itself was a natural part of Parisian life in that era.
40. Édouard Manet, Masked Ball at the Opera, 1873.
Oil on canvas, 59.1 x 72.5 cm.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
41. Édouard Manet,
The Execution of Maximilian, about 1867-1868.
Oil on canvas, 193 x 284 cm.
The National Gallery, London.
42. Édouard Manet,
The Execution of Maximilian, 1868-1869.
Oil on canvas, 252 x 305 cm.
Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim.
43. Édouard Manet, Argenteuil, 1874.
Oil on canvas, 148.9 x 115 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai.
44. Édouard Manet, Boating, 1874.
Oil on canvas, 97.2 x 130.2 cm.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Manet was already ill at this time. Physicians were prescribing various treatments for him, sending him to water cures, but his health continued to deteriorate. He kept on working. Some of his paintings appeared in exhibits in Besançon and Marseille, New York and Boston. The publisher Georges Charpentier was organising entertaining exhibitions of colourful drums and painted ostrich eggs in his gallery, La Vie moderne, and Manet was happy to participate. In December 1881, Manet was made chevalier of the Legion of Honour. In 1882, he turned fifty. When the Salon opened that May as usual, Parisians went to see his final painting: A
Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
The beautiful barmaid with the golden fringe and pale pink complexion represented the type of model that Manet loved so: the type of Victorine Meurent and the actress Henriette Hauser, who had posed for Nana. She leans over a marble bar enhanced with an admirable still life. Méry Laurent (Autumn) observes the scene as she leans against a railing; Jeanne Demarsy (Spring) sits behind her. The women’s light coloured outfits stand out against the men’s black clothing. In the upper left corner, one can make out the legs of an acrobat on her trapeze. And it is only after a certain amount of time that the viewer begins to realise that there is no restaurant or any figures on this canvas: the artist has depicted an enormous mirror. The young girl stands facing the dining room, which is reflected in the mirror and which is where the viewer also finds himself. Manet’s painting represents the culmination of his research in the area of composition: real space completely merges with painting space. Reflected in the mirror is the young girl’s back and the silhouette of the young man she is talking to, which also represents the spectator.
45. Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882.
Oil on canvas, 96 x 130 cm.
Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London.
Contemporaries noted the young girl’s sad expression. The painting was probably Manet’s true farewell to gay Parisian society, a farewell to his friends and to all that he had loved. Physicians were unsuccessful in relieving him and his condition was only worsening. Often he had to lay down his paintbrush and rest. Manet spent the summer of 1882 with his family in Rueil. Already nearly immobilised by the illness, he was painting sunny landscapes and floral bouquets in the garden after nature. He stayed optimistic and even asked the painter Francis Defeuille to give him lessons in miniature, an art he had yet to pursue. A medical examination in April 1883 revealed the need to amputate Manet’s left leg due to gangrene. The amputation took place on 20 April and ten days later, on 30 April, the day before the opening of the new Salon, Manet passed away.
Manet was convinced that in one hundred years people would be more intelligent and that they would know how to see and appreciate real art, in other words, his own painting and that of the Impressionists. He never forgot his friends and tried his best to support them: “Perhaps you do not yet like this painting”, he wrote in 1877 to the critic A. Wolff, “but you will like it.” (Manet, op. cit., p. 515).
46. Édouard Manet, Nana, 1877.
Oil on canvas, 154 x 115 cm.
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
47. Claude Monet, The White Water Lilies, 1899.
Oil on canvas, 89 x 93 cm.
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
48. Claude Monet, Water Lily Pond, 1907.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm.
Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo.
CLAUDE MONET
For Claude Monet the designation “Impressionist” always remained a source of pride. He chose a single genre for himself, landscape painting, and in that he achieved a degree of perfection none of his contemporaries managed to attain. Claude Monet loved Normandy passionately, and always considered it his true country. Yet he was born in Paris, on Rue Lafitte, and baptised Claude Oscar on 14 November 1840. In 1845, when Claude was five years old, his father opened a small store in Le Havre. The austere Normandy coastline, its cliffs eroded by the sea, the tiny sails of the boats on the immense ocean, the hospitable bays of Dieppe, Fécamp, and d’Honfleur, and the ceaseless activity of the port at Le Havre – all of this would remain close to Monet’s heart throughout his life, and it is here that the roots of his landscape painting are to be found. Yet the little boy began by drawing caricatures. From the outset what is striking about these caricatures is the maturity and proficiency of the drawing, as well as a degree of experience surprising in a young man of eighteen. It is true that at sixteen years old Monet was already taking drawing classes with Professor François-Charles Ochard, a former student of the famed David. But the way his models are individualised, the accuracy of the drawing, and the clever simplification of the figures’ distinctive traits all testified to the artist’s brilliant individuality and to his talent, which went beyond the modest abilities of a copyist. He signed his drawings “Claude”. There was a frame shop next to his father’s store, and its display window became the site of Monet’s first exhibitions. A local painter by the name of Eugène Boudin also exhibited there.
Boudin believed Monet’s talent was obvious at first glance, but that he should not let it rest there. Boudin advised Monet to stop doing caricatures and to take up landscapes instead. Monet said later that Boudin’s exhortations made no impact at first: he hardly paid attention to his words and always found an excuse not to go work with Boudin in the open air. He was the decisive factor for Monet’s future. Indeed, it was Boudin who passed on to Monet his conviction of the importance of working in the open air, which Monet would in turn transmit to his Impressionist friends.
Claude’s parents refused to accept his vocation as a painter, and their son’s relationship with the inexplicable Boudin troubled them. Finally they gave in. Since it was understood that he could not help his son materially, Claude’s father wrote a letter to the municipal council of Le Havre asking that his son be given a scholarship to study in Paris, but he was refused. With his father’s consent Claude went to Paris for two months in 1854, and later extended his stay. The city fascinated him, the Louvre was inexhaustible, and the exhibits by modern painters stimulated his thinking about the future of art. On Boudin’s recommendation he showed his work to Troyon, who reproached Monet for being much too facile. For Troyon this signalled a lack of professionalism. In spite of Troyon’s advice, Monet didn’t want to enrol at the École des beaux-arts. He chose to attend a private school, L’Académie Suisse, established by an ex-model on the Quai des Orfèvres near the Pont Saint-Michel. One could draw and paint from a live model there for a modest fee. This was where Monet met the future Impressionist Camille Pissarro. But the stay in Paris was interrupted; the time for military service had come. Monet’s father promised his son to purchase a draft surrogate if he would give up painting. But Monet remained inflexible and left for Algeria with the African regiment. Monet did not return from Algeria to his cherished Le Havre until 1862. His perseverance with his drawing finally persuaded Claude’s parents of the seriousness of his vocation. Still, even in those early days, his behaviour perplexed them. Nevertheless, Claude’s parents sent him to attend classes with a rather fashionable Parisian painter, Auguste Toulmouche, a Monet family relative. After some time Toulmouche thought it essential that Monet attend the free studio run by his own teacher, Charles Gleyre. It was there in Gleyre’s studio that Monet met Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. Monet considered it very important that Boudin be introduced to his new friends. He wrote Boudin from Paris that a little group of young landscapists had formed at the studio, and that they would be happy to meet with him. From the moment they met at Gleyre’s studio the young painters moved forward together, casting the weight of the classical tradition off their shoulders.
Among the landscape painters Monet’s originality was undoubtedly the deepest. Monet worked tirelessly, with care and perseverance. But it was difficult to appreciate this at the very start, given the young man’s eccentric appearance. “When he first came to the studio the students, jealous of his magnificent appearance, nicknamed him ‘the dandy’,” Renoir told his son. “He didn’t have a dime, and he wore shirts with lace cuffs” (J. Renoir, op. cit., p. 122). It amused Monet to shock his fellow students – and Gleyre himself.
Life was hard for the young painters. Monet had the knack of persuading bourgeois Parisians to commission him and Renoir to do their portraits, and in this way he managed to pay for the group studio, the model, and coal for the heating. At times there would be no commissions for months: fortunately one of their clients, a shopkeeper, paid them in groceries. A bag of beans was enough for about a month. “
I must say,” Renoir added, “that from time to time Monet came up with a dinner invitation, and we stuffed ourselves with turkey basted in fine Chambertin wine !”
Fortunately Frédéric Bazille was among them, and with the money his parents sent him he rented a studio for himself, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley. When Monet and Bazille had an apartment with a studio at Place Furstenburg, where Delacroix was living, Sisley and Renoir would come over at night. Pissarro brought Cézanne along with him. For some time this studio became their meeting place. They had stopped attending Gleyre’s studio, and together they now left to work in the region favoured by the Barbizon School painters, the Fontainebleau forest. Lodgings were only to be had in the small village of Chailly-en-Bière, at the far end of the forest. It had only two hotels: the Cheval Blanc and the Lion d’Or. All four moved into the Cheval Blanc, run by old Paillard. Monet’s landscapes of this period inevitably bring Poussin’s paintings to mind. Constructed using the golden section, they are harmonious, balanced, and impeccably composed. As in Poussin, there are amply rounded mountain peaks, dense with trees. Nevertheless it was at that same time, in the Fontainebleau forest, that Monet first had a revelation of the richness of the colour effects created by the sun filtering through the leaves.
49. Claude Monet, The Chailly Road through
the Forest of Fontainebleau, 1865.
Oil on canvas, 97 x 130.5 cm.
Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen.
Impressionism Page 4