Читать книгу Impressionism - Nathalia Brodskaya - Страница 4

As said before, the group of young artists – the future Impressionists – was formed in the early 1860s. Claude Monet, the son of a store owner from Le Havre, Frédéric Bazille, the son of wealthy parents from Montpellier, Alfred Sisley, a young Englishman born in France, and Auguste Renoir, the son of a Parisian tailor, all came to study painting in the free studio of professor Charles Gleyre in 1862.

Mouth of the Seine River in Honfleur

Claude Monet, 1865

Oil on canvas, 89.5 × 150.5 cm

The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (California)

For them, Gleyre was the embodiment of the classical school of art. At the time he met the future Impressionists, Charles Gleyre was sixty years old. Born in Switzerland, on the shore of Lake Lean, he had lived in France since his childhood. Having graduated from the School of Fine Arts, Gleyre spent six years in Italy.

Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud

Alfred Sisley, 1865

Oil on canvas, 129.5 × 208 cm

Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

His success in the Paris Salon made him famous. Gleyre taught in the studio organized by the famous salon artist Hippolyte Delaroche. The professor painted huge pieces based on themes from the Holy Scriptures and ancient mythology built with classical clarity. The modeling of his feminine nudes could only be compared to works of the great Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Women in the Garden

Claude Monet, 1866

Oil on canvas, 256 × 208 cm

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Auguste Renoir, in his conversations with his son, the great movie director Jean Renoir, said that the best part of his education took place in the studio. He described his professor as “a powerful Swiss, bearded and short-sighted” (Jean Renoir, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, my father, Paris, Gallimard, 1981, p.114).

Boats in the Port of Honfleur

Claude Monet, 1866

Oil on canvas, 49 × 65 cm

Private collection

According to Renoir, the studio that was located in the Latin Quarter on the left bank of the Seine was “a big bare room, filled with young people leaning on their easels. To the north, a bay window enabled grey light to pour in over the objects under observation” (op. cit. and loc. cit.). The students were all very different.

Beach at Sainte-Adresse

Claude Monet, 1908

Oil on canvas, 75.8 × 102.5 cm

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Young men from rich families who “played artists” came to the studio in black velvet jackets and berets. Claude Monet called this bourgeois group of students – ‘the spices’. A white painter’s blouse worn by Renoir fuelled their mockery, but Renoir, just like his new friends, ignored them.

Lady in the Garden (Sainte-Adresse)

Claude Monet, 1867

Oil on canvas, 80 × 99 cm

The Hermitage, Saint-Petersburg

Jean Renoir wrote, “he was there to learn how to draw figures. He quickly covered his paper with charcoal lines and, the drawing of a calf or the curve of a hand completely absorbed him” (op. cit., p.114). For Renoir and his friends, these lessons were not a game, although Gleyre was bewildered by the amazing skill with which Renoir worked.

The Railway Bridge, Argenteuil

Claude Monet, 1873

Oil on canvas, 54 × 71 cm

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Renoir imitated his professor’s reproaches with that amusing Swiss accent which made students laugh, “young man, you are very skillful, very talented, but one says you come for fun – It is evident, my father responds” Jean Renoir wrote, “if it did not amuse me, I would not paint!” (Jean Renoir, op. cit., p.119).

The Cliff at Dieppe

Claude Monet, 1882

Oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm

Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich

In this studio, the students learned traditional classical education freed from the form requirements of the French Academy of Fine Arts. The four future Impressionists were seriously inclined to learn the basics of painting and the classical technique. They tediously studied the nudes and took all the mandatory courses winning awards for drawing, perspective, anatomy, and precision.

Portrait of Madame Gaudibert

Claude Monet, 1868

Oil on canvas, 217 × 138 cm

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

They acquired the essential knowledge of technique and technology of painting, the mastery of the classical composition, precision of the drawing and the beauty of the line, although later the critics frequently mocked the Impressionists for what they regarded as the lack of these very skills. All of the future Impressionists would receive praise from their teacher from time to time.

Snowy Landscape

Auguste Renoir, 1868

Oil on canvas, 51 × 66 cm

Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris

One day, to please the professor, Renoir painted a nude model following all the rules, as he would say, “a caramel-coloured flesh emerges from asphalt, black like the night, a caressing backlight which highlights the shoulder, the tortured expression that accompanies the stomach cramps” (J. Renoir, op. cit., p.119).

Interior

Edgar Degas, ca. 1868–69

Oil on canvas, 81 × 116 cm

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Gleyre considered this to be mockery. His surprise and outrage were not accidental, for the student proved that he could wonderfully paint according to the teacher’s requirements while at the same time all these young people tried to paint their models “in their day-to-day state” (J. Renoir, op. cit., p.120).

Pouting

Edgar Degas, ca. 1869–71

Oil on canvas, 32.4 × 46.4 cm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York. H. O. Havemeyer collection

Monet recalled Gleyre’s reaction to his sketch of a nude model: “not bad,” he wrote himself, “not bad at all. But it is too much in the character of the models. You have a stocky man. He has enormous feet, you draw them as they are. All that is very ugly. Remember young man that when one executes a figure one should always think of the ancient style. Nature, my friend, is very beautiful to study, but it does not offer originality” (François Daulte, Frédéric Bazille, Pierre Cailler, Geneva, 1952, p.30). But for the future Impressionists, it was precisely nature which offered originality.

La Grenouillère

Claude Monet, 1869

Oil on canvas, 74.6 × 99.7 cm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

La Grenouillère

Auguste Renoir, 1869

Oil on canvas, 66 × 81 cm

Statens Konstmuseert, Stockholm

Renoir reported that in their first meeting, Frédéric Bazille told him, “the big, classical compositions are finished. The depiction of daily life is more fascinating” (J. Renoir, op. cit., p.115). They all gave preference to live nature and were outraged by Gleyre’s disdain to landscapes.

Lady’s Cove

Alfred Sisley, 1897

Oil on canvas, 65.5 × 81.2 cm

Private collection

It nevertheless was difficult to complain about any kind of constraint in Gleyre’s studio. This education included the study of ancient sculpture, paintings by Raphael and Ingres in the Louvre. In fact, Gleyre’s pupils were completely free. Still, Monet, Bazille, Renoir and Sisley left their instructor very early, in 1863. The rumor was that the studio was closing down because of a lack of money and the state of Gleyre’s health.

Flowers in a Vase

Auguste Renoir, 1866

Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 65.1 cm

National Gallery of Art, Washington

In the spring of 1863 Bazille wrote to his father, “Mr. Gleyre is quite sick, it appears that he is threatened by the loss of sight. All the students are strongly afflicted by this because he is strongly liked by those who approach him” (F. Daulte, op. cit., p. 29). But this was not the only reason why they completed their formal education. Perhaps they felt that over the time they had spent in the studio, they had acquired from their instructor everything possible.

The Bougival Bridge

Claude Monet, 1870

Oil on canvas, 56.41 × 92.39 cm

The Currier Gallery of Art

Manchester, New Hampshire

They were young and passionate. A new aesthetical idea attracted them and encouraged them to get out of the studio into the midst of actual modern life. One day, coming back from Gleyre’s, Bazille, Monet, Sisley and Renoir stopped by the café ‘La Closerie des Lilas’, at the corner of Boulevard du Montparnasse and Avenue de l’Observatoire where they had long discussions about further ways of painting. Bazille brought a new friend of his, Camille Pissarro.

Barges

Alfred Sisley, ca. 1870

Oil on canvas, 69 × 100 cm

Musée de Dieppe, Dieppe

The members of this small group called themselves the “Intransigeants”. Together they dreamt of a new Renaissance. Natural objects presented professional interest for the future Impressionists. Most likely a certain part in their instantaneous turn to nature was played by the appearance to the public, in the same year of 1863, of the work of Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

Orchestral Musicians

Edgar Degas, 1870–71

Oil on canvas, 62 × 49 cm

Städtisches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

This painting impressed the young artists to the same extent as it impressed the public and the critics. Manet, who had taken the first steps away from the classical school, had already started doing what they had dreamt of. He had already turned to a more modern approach of painting. Many years later, Renoir told his son about this with excitement.

Bordeaux Harbour

Edouard Manet, 1871

Oil on canvas, 65 × 100 cm

Foundation E. G. Bührle, Zürich

Jean Renoir wrote, “the ‘Intransigeants’ aspired to fix the canvases with their direct perceptions without any transposition (…). The official school, imitation of imitations of the schoolmasters, is dead. Renoir and his companions are alive. (…). The reunions of the “Intransigeants” are passionate because of their burning desires to communicate with the public, and of their will to discover the truth. The ideas burst (…). The one idea that they proposed very seriously was to burn the Louvre” (J. Renoir, op. cit., pp. 120–121).

The Flood at Port-Marly

Alfred Sisley, 1872