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The great painter of light

5 December 1926

Judged by the nature and extent of his influence, Claude Oscar Monet, whose death is announced on another page, was the most important artist within living memory. Others, such as Manet and Renoir, may have excelled him in personal achievement and even in the number of their evident followers, but for what may be called infective and pervasive effects upon the body of painting there is nobody to compare with him except Cézanne, whom he long outlived, and Cézanne was not his equal in accomplishment. Monet did not invent a new thing; he would hardly have had such a widespreading influence if he did; but, happening to be born at the right moment with an instinctive bent for that expression of light which both Turner and Constable had attempted, he carried it on to fulfilment and dominated the field of painting until Cézanne, inheriting his gains, recalled the attention of artists to the claims of solid earth. He may be said to have irradiated landscape painting, and the gleams penetrated into quarters where any conscious acceptance of his influence would have been hotly disclaimed.

Though he came to be associated with the North of France, Normandy in particular, Monet was actually born in Paris, in the Rue Laffitte, on November 14, 1840 – the same day as his future friend, Auguste Rodin – his mother being a member of a Lyons family. His childhood was spent at Havre, where caricatures drawn by him and exhibited in a shop window attracted the attention of Eugène Boudin, who initiated him into painting in the open air. As early as 1856 the two were exhibiting together at Rouen, and Monet always spoke of Boudin with gratitude, saying that he had ‘dashed the scales from his eyes and shown him the beauties of land and sea painting’. The following year Monet went to Paris, but without immediate results, and in 1860 he left for Algeria to complete his military service in the Chasseurs d’Afrique. He returned invalided, with his instinct for light further confirmed. Back at Havre he fell in with Jongkind, the Dutch artist, who, like Boudin, may be said to have prepared the way for Impressionism, and the three of them worked together.

In 1863 Monet went again to Paris with the intention of entering the studio of Gleyre, and here he made the acquaintance of Renoir, Sisley, and other painters, who, with differences, were carrying on the tradition of the Barbizon group, Corot in particular. Monet quickly decided to work out his own salvation. He made his first appearance in the Salon of 1865 with two marine subjects – ‘Pointe de la Hève’ and ‘Embouchure de la Seine à Honfleur’. His work at this period showed affinities with both Boudin and Jongkind, and also with Manet – a broadening of the facts under the influence of light into atmospheric values, but without any decided attempt to realize light itself on the canvas. Its characters may be seen in ‘Plage de Trouville’, in the Courtauld collection at the Tate Gallery, though that picture was not painted until 1870.

Monet’s first attempt to paint a large landscape with figures in the open air bore the same title as a famous picture by Manet, ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’. It introduced him to Courbet and the two men became fast friends. An amusing story is told of a visit paid by them to Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who was stopping in Havre. This was in 1866, when Monet’s ‘Camille’, afterwards known as ‘Dame en Vert’, was attracting attention in the Salon. Neither of the artists had met Dumas, but Courbet insisted that they should call. At first they were told that Dumas was not at home, but Courbet said: ‘Tell him that it is Courbet who asks for him; he will be in.’ Dumas came out in shirt and trousers; he and Courbet embraced with tears; and the two painters were invited to lunch, cooked by Dumas himself, who afterwards paraded them through the streets of Havre in his carriage.

The following year Monet’s ‘Women in a Garden’ was rejected by the Salon, and its exhibition in a shop window brought him the acquaintance of Manet and introduced him to the group of writers, including Zola, who were then championing Manet and his friends. It was between this date and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War that the informal association of artists began which, consolidated by the attitude of the Salon, led to the Impressionist school. They included Monet, Camille Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, who was Manet’s sister-in-law, and Mary Cassatt among others. Not all these artists were Impressionists, as the word came to be understood, but they had common sympathies in refusing to be bound by authority.

Visit to England

During the siege of Paris, in 1870–71, Monet and Pissarro paid a visit to England, and there can be little doubt that the acquaintance with Turner and Constable which they made then had considerable influence in confirming their aims – just as the exhibition of Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’ in Paris had profoundly affected an earlier generation of French painters. It was in 1874 that the word ‘Impressionism’ was first coined, and by accident. Under the title of ‘Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs du 15 avril au 15 mai 1874’, the artists already named, with others, arranged a collective exhibition at Nadar’s, in the Boulevard des Capucines. Among the works by Monet there was one entitled ‘Sunrise, an Impression’, merely by way of description. The word ‘Impressionists’ was seized upon as a term of ridicule for the whole group, and though many of them had nothing in common with Monet they cheerfully accepted it as a battle-cry. Financially the exhibition was a disaster, the works being sold by auction the following year at prices averaging about 100 francs. It was at this time that Manet, who was well off, suggested to Duvet a way of helping Monet, then very poor, by buying ten of his pictures between them for 1,000 francs without disclosing the purchasers.

The Impressionists, as they were now called, continued to hold exhibitions, being supported by Durand-Ruel and other dealers with the courage of their convictions, and little by little, with the aid of intelligent criticism, hostility was overcome and the aims of Monet and his associates began to be understood. It was not, however, until 1889, when he shared an exhibition with Rodin at the Georges Petit Gallery, that Monet had a substantial success, his first one-man show in 1880 having been a failure.

With his studies of the Gare Saint Lazare in the third group exhibition of 1877, Monet had already begun the series of the same or similar subjects – railway stations, cathedrals, hay-ricks, river banks, poplars, water-lilies – under different conditions of light which were to establish his fame, and from 1889 onward his artistic reputation steadily increased. In 1883 he had settled at Giverny, in the department of the Eure, Normandy, and he remained there for the rest of his life, with occasional visits abroad, quietly and happily producing his pictures. Monet never received any honour from the State, though a tardy offer was made to him of a seat on the Académie des Beaux Arts, which he declined, and such pictures of his as are to be found in French national collections, at the Luxembourg Museum and elsewhere, are gifts or bequests. He himself presented to the French nation a series of 19 ‘Water-Lily’ paintings, and in 1923, at the age of 83, in the company of his old friend, M. Clemenceau, who was a supporter of the Impressionists in the stormy days of the ’seventies, Monet visited the Tuileries Gardens to inspect the building which was being specially constituted to contain them.

London Views

His work has been frequently shown in London, at the Goupil Gallery, the Leicester Galleries, the Lefèvre Galleries, the French Gallery, the Independent Gallery, and elsewhere, and some years ago an association of English and foreign artists was formed in London called the ‘Monarro Group’, combining the names of Monet and Pissarro as heads of the movement with which they found themselves in sympathy. In connection with Monet’s visits to England his views of the Thames, including ‘Waterloo Bridge’ and ‘The Houses of Parliament’, must not be forgotten. He is represented in the Modern Foreign Section of the Tate Gallery by two pictures only: ‘Plage de Trouville’, painted in 1870, purchased in 1924 by the Trustees of the Courtauld Fund; and ‘Vetheuil: Sunshine and Snow’, painted in 1881, included in the Lane Bequest of 1917.

Monet’s artistic progress may be described as the more and more purely æsthetic organization of his technical conquest of light and atmosphere. He did not follow the so-called neo-Impressionists into the formal dotting which was the logical outcome, or scientific application, of his own system of laying strokes or touches of pure colour side by side, eliminating all browns from the palette, but contented himself with a method which produced the effects he desired; and it was the æsthetic value, the poetry, rather than the mere realization of light that inspired him. Nor, though he was a pioneer in the discovery of ‘colour in shadow’, was he a decorative colourist by intention; he painted colour for the sake of light rather than light for the sake of colour. His work has been called lacking in design, but the charge cannot be supported. It stands to reason that if an artist is designing in atmospheric values, in veils of light, the design will not be so emphatic, so easily grasped, as if he were designing in solid forms, but nobody can look with attention at a picture by Monet and regard it as a mere representation of the facts and conditions. In this respect his work might well be compared to the music of his countryman Claude Debussy, in which, under an atmospheric shimmer, the melodies are not so immediately recognizable as they are in the works of Bach or Beethoven, but are nevertheless present to the attentive ear.

At the same time it must be allowed that the aim and methods of Monet were better adapted to some subjects than others, and with due appreciation of his cathedrals, railway stations, and Venetian scenes, we find his happiest expression in those river subjects in which a leafy garland of poplars reflects the influence of sky and water, such as the beautiful ‘Poplars on the Epte’, in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, or in the arabesques of water lilies. A fair description of the emotional effect of a typical work of Monet at his best would be that of a ‘sunny smile’. It was inevitable that after so much trafficking in airy regions painting should come to earth again, and the concern for plastic volumes and a more emphatic design instituted by Cézanne and other leaders of the movement conveniently known as Post-Impressionism was as natural a sequence to the Impressionism of Monet, as is the desire for physical exercise after loitering in a garden. But, so far as it is humanly possible to judge, Monet left a gleam upon the surface of painting which will never entirely disappear. Monet has been the subject of many writings, including an exhaustive study by M. Camille Mauclair.