Читать книгу Claude Monet - Nina Kalitina - Страница 4

Oscar Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840, but all his impressions as a child and adolescent were linked with Le Havre, the town to which his family moved about 1845. The surroundings in which the boy grew up were not conducive to artistic studies: Monet’s father ran a grocery business and turned a deaf ear to his son’s desire to become an artist. Le Havre boasted no museum collections of significance, no exhibitions and no school of art. The gifted boy had to be content with the advice of his aunt, who painted merely for personal pleasure, and with the directions of his school-teacher.

Yet the little boy began by drawing caricatures. He copied them from newspapers and magazines – caricature playing a central role in France’s political life during the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to his caricatures, the young Monet drew portraits for which his neighbours paid him. From the outset what is striking about his 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 Jacques-Louis 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.

The Luncheon (decorative panel), 1868.

Oil on canvas, 160 × 201 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868.

Oil on canvas, 81 × 100 cm.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

During this period, 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’s seascapes seemed baffling and repellent to Monet, as they did to many others. All the same, this odd painter took note of the drawings done by Monet, who was practically still a child at the time. One day, as Monet recalled it, Boudin told him that he always enjoyed looking at his caricatures, that they were funny, and that they had been drawn with intelligence and fluency. Boudin believed Monet’s talent was obvious even from the first glance, but that he should not let it rest there. In addition to the natural talent displayed in his cartoons, Monet still needed to learn to see, to paint, and to draw. Boudin advised Monet to stop doing caricatures and to take up landscape painting instead. The sea, the sky, animals, people, and trees are beautiful in the exact state in which nature created them – surrounded by air and light. For Boudin himself, painting meant landscapes alone. He felt a warm attachment and a great sense of responsibility for Monet’s education and progress as an artist. He explained to his young colleague that the Romantics had seen their day and that now one had to work in a different way. The charm of Boudin’s own canvases came from their spontaneity. When he endeavoured to complete a landscape successfully it lost that sincerity which, in his small studies, could make the viewer feel the cool gusts of the ocean breeze and the gentle rustling of shingles on the beach.

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 wasn’t yet able to digest Boudin’s strange, unusual work. Nevertheless, as Monet said himself, he liked this man. He had conviction, and he was sincere. During the summer Monet was relatively free and had run out of good excuses for declining Boudin’s offer to work alongside him. The latter, in spite of everything, set about to oversee Monet’s apprenticeship, and together they would paint studies along the seashore. “Eventually my eyes were opened,” admitted Monet, “and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time” (D. Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Paris, 1974, p. 13). Boudin’s own talent had developed in the same way, through direct contact with nature. He had previously been the owner of that same frame shop where Monet was exhibiting his caricatures. Boudin showed his own landscapes, painted on site in Normandy, in the display windows of the shop. He also sold paints, brushes and canvas to artists. One day Jean François Millet, one of the founders of the Barbizon School, came into his shop. With Millet’s encouragement Boudin gave up his business and went to Paris.

Bougival Bridge, 1870.

Oil on canvas, 65 × 91.5 cm.

The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire.

The Luncheon, 1868.

Oil on canvas, 232 × 151 cm.

Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main.

Woman in a Green Dress (Camille), 1866.

Oil on canvas, 231 × 151 cm.

Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen.

Portrait of Madame Gaudibert, 1868.

Oil on canvas, 216 × 138.5 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

He copied from paintings at the Louvre and benefited from the advice of the Barbizon School painter Constant Troyon, as well as from Édouard Manet’s teacher Thomas Couture. All the same he received no systematic education and disappointed his benefactors with his steadfast attachment to landscapes, and his revulsion at painting in the traditional genres adopted by the schools. He returned to Le Havre to work in direct contact with nature. He was the decisive factor for Monet’s future. Indeed, it was Boudin who passed on his conviction of the importance of working in the open air to Monet, a practice which Monet would in turn transmit to his Impressionist friends.

Monet’s further development took place in Paris, and then again in Normandy, but this time in the company of artists. His artistic formation was in many ways identical to that of other painters of his generation, and yet at the same time his development as an artist had profoundly distinctive individual features. Almost every young artist to arrive in the capital from the provinces was dazzled by the magnificence of the Louvre’s collection of paintings. It was the Louvre that had subdued Jean-François Millet’s desire to head back to Normandy from the city that was so alien to him. Gustave Courbet, arriving in Paris from Franche-Comté in Burgundy, ostentatiously rejected the idea of being influenced by museums, but was himself strongly affected by the Louvre’s collection of Spanish painting. And although Manet and Degas, both born in Paris, knew the Louvre from an early age, they never tired of making studies of the Old Masters and always displayed great reverence towards the classics; indeed, during their travels abroad, their first priority was always to visit museums, not as tourists, but as attentive students eager to encounter the creations of great teachers. Monet, however, preferred current exhibitions and meetings with contemporary artists to visiting museums. A study of his letters provides convincing evidence that contact with the Old Masters excited him far less than the life around him and the beauties of nature.

What was it that struck Monet during his first trip to Paris in 1859? An exhaustive reply is given by his letters from Paris to Boudin after his first visit to the Salon. The young provincial passed indifferently by the historical and religious paintings of Gustave Boulanger, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry and Jean Francois Gigoux; the battle-scenes depicting the Crimean campaign attract him not at all; even Delacroix, represented by such works as The Ascent to Calvary, St. Sebastian, Ovid, The Abduction of Rebecca and other similar historical paintings, seems to him unworthy of interest. Camille Corot’s work on the other hand is “nice”, Theodore Rousseau’s is “very good”, Charles-François Daubigny’s is “truly beautiful”, and Troyon is simply “superb”. In Paris, Monet called on Troyon, an animal and landscape painter whose advice Boudin had earlier found valuable. Troyon made recommendations which Monet relayed in his letters to Boudin – he should learn to draw figures, make copies in the Louvre, and should enter a reputable studio, for instance that of Thomas Couture.

The Salon of 1859 included no paintings by the leading Realist Courbet, and the jury rejected Millet’s Death and the Woodcutter. Monet saw this latter work in 1860 and estimated it as “fine”, while at the same time viewing several canvases by Courbet which he considered to be “brilliant”. In this same year he discovered the seascapes of the Dutchman Johan Barthold Jongkind and declared him to be “the only good painter of marines.”

The Café “La Grenouillère”, 1869.

Oil on canvas, 74.6 × 99.7 cm.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Entrance to the Port of Trouville, 1870.

Oil on canvas, 54 × 65.7 cm.

Magyar Szépmuvészeti Mùseum, Budapest.

Seascape: Storm, c. 1866–1867.

Oil on canvas, 48.7 × 64.7 cm.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The Wooden Bridge, 1872.

Oil on canvas, 54 × 73 cm.

Dr. Rau Collection, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio.

Mill in Zaandaam, 1871.

Oil on canvas, 48 × 73.5 cm.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

Monet thus immediately identified the figures who would provide the artistic framework with which he would aspire to innovate. These were the landscapists of the Barbizon School, who had pointed French landscape painting towards its own native countryside; Millet and Courbet, who had turned to depicting the work and way of life of simple people; and, finally, Boudin and Jongkind, who had brought to landscape a freshness and immediacy lacking in works by the older generation of Barbizon painters. Monet was to paint alongside several of these masters – Boudin, Jongkind, Courbet (and Whistler, too) – and by watching them at work would receive much practical instruction.

Although Monet did not regard his immediate teacher Charles Gleyre, whose studio he joined in 1862, with great favour, his stay there was by no means wasted, for he acquired valuable professional skills during this time. Charles Gleyre was the only teacher who, in Monet’s eyes, truly personified neoclassical painting. Gleyre had just turned sixty when he met the future Impressionists. Born in Switzerland on the banks of Lake Geneva, he had lived in France since childhood. After graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts, Gleyre spent six years in Italy. Success in the Paris Salon made him famous and he taught in the studio established by the celebrated Salon painter, Hippolyte Delaroche.

The Thames and the Houses of Parliament, 1871.

Oil on canvas, 47 × 73 cm.

The National Gallery, London.

Taking themes from the Bible and antique mythology, Gleyre painted large-scale canvases composed with the clarity and clean lines commonly associated with classical art. The formal qualities of his female nudes can only be compared to the work of the great Dominique Ingres. In Gleyre’s independent studio, pupils received traditional training in neoclassical painting, but were free from the official requirements of the École des Beaux-Arts.

Moreover Gleyre, although an advocate of the academic system of teaching, nonetheless allowed his pupils a certain amount of freedom and did not attempt to dampen any enthusiasm they might have for landscape painting. Most important to Monet in Gleyre’s studio, however, were his incipient friendships with Frédéric Bazille, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. We know that he had already become acquainted with Pissarro, and thus it can be said that from the earliest stage of his career fate brought Monet together with those who were to be his colleagues and allies for many years to come.

Lilacs in Dull Weather, 1872–1873.

Oil on canvas, 50 × 65.5 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Lilacs in the Sun, 1873.

Oil on canvas, 50 × 65 cm,

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Monet considered it very important that Boudin be introduced to his new friends. He wrote Boudin from Paris that a little group of young landscape artists had formed at the studio, and that they would be happy to meet with him. He also told his friends of another painter he had found in Normandy. This was the remarkable Dutchman Jongkind. His landscapes were saturated with colour, and their sincerity, at times even their naiveté, was combined with subtle observation of the Normandy shore’s variable nature. Monet remembered that Jongkind explained to him all the “whys and wherefores” of his style, rounding out the education he had received from Boudin. “From that moment on he was my true master,” said Monet. “I owe the final education of my eye to him” (D. Wildenstein, op. cit., p. 14). The Normandy landscape painters Boudin and Johan Jongkind rank among the Impressionists’ direct influences.

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. These future Impressionists shared the same objectives and ideas, and together they developed their method of painting. Their contemporaries perceived their painting as a single whole. In 1873, before the first Impressionists’ exhibition, the critic Arman Sylvestre wrote about the exhibition at the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery: “At first glance one has trouble distinguishing the paintings of M. Monet from M. Sisley, and the latter’s style from that of M. Pissarro. After a bit of study one learns that M. Monet is the most skilful and the most daring, M. Sisley is the most harmonious and most timid, and M. Pissarro is the most authentic and the most naïve” (L. Venturi, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 284).

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. It was a cozy hotel, decorated with the canvases left behind by other painters who had stayed there in years before. The friends set to work with enthusiasm. “The forest is really superb in certain parts,” Bazille wrote his parents. “We’ve got nothing like these oak trees in Montpellier. The rocks are not as beautiful, despite their fine reputation” (F. Daulte, op. cit., p. 35). Monet painted broad forest paths, lined with trees and bathed in sunlight. In these landscapes one senses the solid instruction Gleyre had managed to give them, though it may have been against their will. Monet’s landscapes of this period inevitably bring the clarity, logic, and order of Nicolas Poussin’s paintings to mind. Constructed using the golden ratio, they are harmonious, balanced, and impeccably composed. As in Poussin, there are amply rounded mountain peaks, dense with lush, green 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.