55.9 × 61 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The Precursors
Gleyre was struck by Renoir’s impertinence and his shock and indignation were not unwarranted: his student had proved that he was perfectly capable of painting as the teacher required, whereas all the other youths were bent on depicting their models “as they are in everyday life”.
Monet remembers the way Gleyre reacted to one of his own nudes: “Not bad,” he exclaimed, “not bad at all, this business here. But it is too much about this particular model. You have a heavyset man. He has huge feet, which you depict as such. It’s all very ugly. So remember young man, when we draw a figure, we must always keep in mind the antique. Nature, my friend, is a very admirable aspect of research, but it provides no interest.” To the future Impressionists, nature was exactly what interested them most. Renoir remembered what Frédéric Bazille had told him when they first met: “Large-scale, classical compositions are over. The spectacle of everyday life is more fascinating.”
All of them preferred living nature and bristled at Gleyre’s disdain for landscape. One of Gleyre’s students recalls:
Landscape to him was a decadent art and the eminent status it had gained in contemporary art was an usurpation; he saw nothing in nature beyond frames and grounds, and in truth he never made use of nature except as an accessory, although his landscapes were always treated with as much care and consideration as the figures he was called upon to include.
Nevertheless, students in Gleyre’s studio would be hard-pressed to find any constraints to complain about. It is true that the programme included the study of antique sculpture and the paintings of Raphael and Ingres at the Louvre.
But in reality the students enjoyed complete freedom. They were acquiring indispensable knowledge of the technique and craft of painting, mastery of classical composition, precision in drawing, and beautiful paint handling, although later critics often rightly noted their lack of such achievements.
Monet, Bazille, Renoir, and Sisley abruptly left their teacher in 1863. Rumour had it that the studio was closing due to lack of funds and to Gleyre’s illness. In the spring of 1863, Bazille wrote to his father: “Mr Gleyre is rather ill. Apparently the poor man’s life is at stake. All his students are devastated, as he is so loved by those around him.”
Gleyre’s illness was not the only reason the formal training of the Impressionists came to an end. In all likelihood they felt that they had learned everything their teacher was capable of teaching them during the time they had already spent in the studio. They were young and full of enthusiasm. Ideas about a new modern art made them want to get out of the studio as soon as possible to immerse themselves in real life and its vitality.
On their way home from Gleyre’s studio, Bazille, Monet, Sisley, and Renoir stopped at the Closerie des Lilas, a café on the corner of Boulevard Montparnasse and Avenue de l’Observatoire, where they had long discussions about the future direction of painting.
Bazille brought along his new friend, Camille Pissarro, who was a few years older than the others. The members of this small group called themselves the ‘intransigents’ and together they dreamt of a new Renaissance. Many years later, the elder Renoir spoke enthusiastically about this period to his son. Jean Renoir writes:
The intransigents wanted to put their immediate impressions on canvas, without any translation. Official painting, imitating imitations of the masters, was dead. Renoir and his companions were bon vivants… Meetings of the intransigents were impassioned. They longed to share their discovery of the truth with the public. Ideas came from all sides and intermingled; opinions came thick and fast. One of them seriously suggested burning down the Louvre.
Mouth of the Seine at Honfleur, 1865. Oil on canvas,
89.5 × 150.5 cm. Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
Gustave Courbet, The Seashore at Palavas, 1854.
Oil on canvas, 37 × 46 cm. Musée Fabre, Montpellier.
Gustave Courbet, The Seashore at Palavas, c. 1854.
Oil on canvas, 60 × 73.5 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux, Le Havre.
Édouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass, 1863.
Oil on canvas, 207 × 265 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Sisley apparently was the first to take his friends landscape painting in Fontainebleau forest. Now, instead of a model skilfully placed upon a pedestal, they had nature before them and the infinite variations of the shimmering foliage of trees constantly changing colour in the sunlight. “Our discovery of nature opened our eyes,” said Renoir.
No doubt an equally important influence on their passion for nature was the public exhibition that same year (1863) of Édouard Manet’s famous painting The Luncheon on the Grass. The painting astonished the future Impressionists, as well as critics and observers. Manet had begun to accomplish what they dreamt of: he had taken the first steps away from Neo-classical painting and moved closer to modern life.
Truth be told, ‘burning down the Louvre’ was little more than a spontaneous expression bandied about in the heat of discussion, not a conviction. When asked if he had got anything out of Gleyre’s Neo-classical studio, the elder Renoir replied to his son: “A lot, in spite of the teachers. Having to copy the same écorché (anatomical study) ten times is excellent. It’s boring, and if you weren’t paying for it, you wouldn’t be doing it. But to really learn, nothing beats the Louvre.”
The intransigents knew how to learn from the Louvre. The museum offered a wealth of old masters from whom they could appropriate the same aspects of painting that they were exploring. Indeed, it was their second school.
From the 16th-century Venetian masters and from Rubens they learned the beauty of pure colour. But the experience of their fellow French painters was perhaps closest to the Impressionists. Antoine Watteau, for example, caught their attention. His broken strokes of bright colour and ability to render nature’s shimmering effects with a delicately nuanced palette made an important contribution to Impressionism, as did the expressive handling of Honoré Fragonard. These two painters had already distanced themselves from a lacquer-smooth paint surface in the 18th century.
An attentive eye saw what an important a role form and brushwork played in their canvasses. They showed that it was not only unnecessary to discreetly conceal brushwork, but that brushwork could be used to render movement and the changing effects of nature. Painters born around 1840 entered the field of art already armed with the notion that they could use subjects from everyday life, but in the early 19th century, France still had the most conservative attitude in Europe towards landscape painting.
The classically composed landscape, although based on a study of details from nature, such as the observation of trees, leaves, and rocks, reigned over the annual Salon. The Dutch masters, however, had started painting the well-observed living nature of their country in the 17th century.
In their small, modest canvasses appeared various aspects of the real Holland: its vast sky, frozen canals, frost-covered trees, windmills, and charming little towns. They knew how to convey their country’s humid atmosphere through nuanced tonalities. Their compositions contained neither classical scenes nor theatrical compositions. A flat river typically ran parallel to the edge of the canvas, creating the impression of a direct view onto nature. Elsewhere, the Venetian landscape painters of the 18th century gave us the specific landscape genre of the veduta.
The works of Francesco Guardi, Antonio Canaletto, and Bernardo Bellotto have a theatrical beauty built upon the rules of the Neo-classical school, but they depict real scenes taken from life; indeed, they were noted for such topographical detail that they have remained in the history of art as