Monet to Matisse: French Moderns from the Brooklyn Museum, Cliff Notes for Docents

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Cecil White
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1 Monet to Matisse: French Moderns from the Brooklyn Museum, Cliff Notes for Docents The French Impressionists are some of the most admired artists of the modern age. Their works and those of their followers, the Post-Impressionists, have a vitality and freshness appealing to us even today. Nineteenth-century Paris was regarded as the artistic centre of Europe. Unsatisfied with traditional academic training, the Impressionists set out to discover a new way of representing the world. They challenged accepted painting techniques, explored new subject matter, and exhibited their work independently of 'L' Academie des Beaux Arts'. The Impressionists flooded their canvases with brightness, color and texture. They developed a new approach to landscape painting by seeking to capture the atmosphere or 'sensation' of each view. They recorded their everyday surroundings: the cafés, theatres, cityscapes, leisure resorts and working people of Paris and its surroundings. Ultimately, these revolutionary artists found success, supported by a growing circle of patrons and the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. They revolutionised art in the later 19th century and laid the foundations for the Post-Impressionists and later abstract artists. Plein- Air and Advancements in Paint The Impressionists used unconventional painting techniques and experimented with modern materials often with striking results. Their love of painting direct from nature 'en plein air' (outdoors) presented them with great technical and physical challenges, while new art materials and equipment enabled them to continue this practice with great success. A 'boîte de campagne', a complete outdoor painting kit, kept all the materials conveniently packed together as they travelled from one viewpoint to the next. While painting outdoors, they used a parasol to shield themselves and their canvas from sunlight and often wore dull-coloured clothing. This stopped strong colours, bright lights and dark shadows from affecting their paintings. A number of colour merchants in Paris sold painters' materials and their names can often be seen imprinted on the back of Impressionist canvases. These canvases could be purchased already stretched on standard sized frames. Many Impressionist canvases are small because they had to be easily transported. A major advance in the production of art materials was the tube of paint which was sold from These collapsible metal tubes improved storage life, but more importantly for the Impressionists, portability. Prior to 1840 artists had to make their own paints by grinding natural pigments, or buying ground pigment from a color merchant, and then mixing them with oil and keeping in a small pouch of pig s bladder. To use the paint, the artist had to make a small hole in the wall of the bladder and squeeze it out. Technological

2 advances not only meant that paint was produced for sale in metal tubes, but also led to changes in colors. The new pigments were more vivid and used synthetic as well as natural materials. The Impressionists tended to work with a limited colour palette. Earth tones were rarely used and many paintings have no black pigment at all. They used the principle of complementary and contrasting colours to create the vibration of light and colour which is synonymous with the Impressionist style. Apart from the SALON The group of artists who became known as the Impressionists did something ground-breaking in addition to painting their sketchy, light-filled canvases: they established their own exhibition. This may not seem like much in an era like ours, when art galleries are everywhere in major cities, but in Paris at this time, there was one official, state-sponsored exhibition called the Salon and very few art galleries devoted to the work of living artists. For most of the nineteenth century then, the Salon was the only way to exhibit your work (and therefore the only way to establish your reputation and make a living as an artist). The works exhibited at the Salon were chosen by a jury which could often be quite arbitrary. The artists we know today as Impressionists Claude Monet, August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley (and several others) could not afford to wait for France to accept their work. They all had experienced rejection by the Salon jury in recent years and felt that waiting an entire year between exhibitions was too long. They needed to show their work and they wanted to sell it. The artists pooled their money, rented a studio that belonged to the photographer Nadar, and set a date for their first collective exhibition. They called themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers and their first show opened at about the same time as the annual Salon in May The Impressionists held eight exhibitions from 1874 through Light and color In their landscapes and genre scenes, the Impressionist tried to arrest a particular moment in time by pinpointing specific atmospheric conditions light flickering on water, moving clouds, a burst of rain. Their technique tried to capture what they saw. They painted small commas of pure color one next to another. When viewer stood at a reasonable distance their eyes would see a mix of individual marks; colors that had blended optically. This method created more vibrant colors than colors mixed as physical paint on a palette. An important aspect of the Impressionist painting was the appearance of quickly shifting light on the surface of forms and the representation changing atmospheric conditions. The Impressionists wanted to create an art that was modern by capturing the rapid pace of contemporary life and the fleeting conditions of light. They painted outdoors, en plein air, to capture the appearance of the light as it flickered and faded while they worked.

3 Landscape The Impressionists changed the way landscapes were painted. Traditionally it was a studio activity; quick studies were made outdoors at the scene, but the actual painting was done indoors. The Impressionist painters, inspired by earlier artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot ( ), recognized the value of working directly from nature. The Impressionists painted en plein air (outdoors) to study the effects of light, weather and atmosphere on a scene. The development of portable equipment, such as the light-weight easel, ready-made canvases and tubed paints, made this easier. It did have its challenges though; the stories of Claude Monet working in freezing temperatures, wind and rain are now legendary. The Impressionists tended to avoid painting under the harsh midday sun. They were particularly fascinated by diffused light, for example light broken by clouds or dappled shade. They favored scenes with water, fog and snow for their soft light and reflective surfaces. People The Impressionists recorded contemporary life in their work. They moved away from the historical, literary and religious subjects advocated by the academic teaching establishments to depict instead the many aspects of urban life. People at work, in cafes, theatres, city streets, railway stations, riverside resorts, as well as informal studies of family and friends provided the Impressionists with a wealth of stimulating subjects. Just as in their landscape painting, the Impressionists challenged the accepted traditions for painting people and scenes. They created daring compositions with unusual perspective. The influence of Japanese prints is evident in many works where figures are shown with their backs to the viewer or cut off by the picture s edge. Faces were painted in close-up, like intimate photographs. There is an air of informality about many of their paintings; a feel for the randomly captured moment, which sets them apart from the formal work of their conventional contemporaries. Sculpture Degas and Renoir used sculpture in their later careers to study movement and form. Renoir was interested in finding ways of modelling the figure without using color. Degas used sculpture to better understand movement. He often claimed that it was a way of improving his paintings. Auguste Rodin is often considered to be the father of modern sculpture. His work, like that of the Impressionist painters, experimented with new subjects and concentrated on a new realism.

4 Rather than following conventional, classical poses, his sculptures emphasized the individuality, emotion and physical attributes of the figure. He encouraged models to walk around his studio in a natural way so that he could capture in clay a realistic interpretation of their movement. He was the only sculptor to exhibit with the Impressionists. Still Life The French term for still life nature morte, or dead nature conveys the lowly status that the French Academy accorded to paintings of inanimate objects, as opposed to human subjects. Far from being inert, however, still life reflected the rapidly changing world experienced by nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists. Beginning in the 1850s, the genre garnered a newfound popularity that continued through the end of the century. While many artists evoked the familiar comforts of home, others called attention to an increasingly diverse society by depicting precious goods from Egypt and Japan. Still life aims to stimulate all of the viewer s senses through displays of fine cloths, ripe fruits, and warm, sunlit tabletops. Twentieth-century artists harnessed the evocative power of still life in order to induce sensations that transcended physical experience and entered psychological and spiritual realms.

5 TIMELINE 1850s Photography becomes popular in France Pissarro submits a landscape of Montmorency to the Salon, the official art exhibition sponsored by the French government, and it is accepted 1860 Japanese woodblock prints make their way to France and are shown to Impressionist artists by a porcelain dealer; Felix Bracquemond The Salon rejects around 4,000 works, including one by Manet, causing an artistic revolt. The government stages a separate exhibition of the rejected works Plans for an independent exhibition are discussed, but do not go ahead because of a lack of funding The Franco-Prussian war begins on 19 July and ends with a Prussian and German victory on 10 May Monet moves to London. Renoir and Bazille are conscripted; Bazille is killed in action French art critic, Philippe Burty, coins the term 'Japonism' to describe the new influence of Japanese art on French artists 1874 The first exhibition of the 'Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs' (Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers) is organized by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley. The exhibition opened in Paris on April 15, It was held at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, on the top floor and former studio of the photographer, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, better known as Nadar. He was a friend of several of the artists and well-known for his portraits of the Parisian literati. Art critic Louis Leroy coins the term 'Impressionism' after seeing Claude Monet's work called Impression, Sunrise. Leroy wrote a scathing review in which he said that all the paintings were just "impressions." 1878 Degas says that no 'Impressionist' artists should submit work to the Salon Another Impressionist exhibition takes place, but Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Cezanne do not take part. Instead Monet and Renoir submit work to the Salon and are accepted Changes in the Salon mean that every exhibiting artist has a vote on the jury. It is supervised by an artists association rather than government The Impressionist group is reunited for a seventh exhibition. Works by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro and Morisot are exhibition The last Impressionist exhibition is held. Pissarro exhibits his first 'pointilliste' works and insists on including Seurat and Signac. Monet, Renoir and Sisley again refuse to participate.

Edgar Degas ( ) Impressionist

Edgar Degas ( ) Impressionist (1834-1917) Impressionist In the vertical art storage rack, you will find the following: Large Reproductions: Dance Class (1874) Posters: The Art Elements & Principles posters to use in the discussion