Claude Monet

“ In the art literature of the past we read of Delacroix and the decadence, of Corot and the downfall, of Monet and the abyss. There are still living in France aged and honoured professors, members of the Institute and of the Salon juries, who believe that the teaching of Claude Monet has been a national calamity. They hold that art no longer exists, having been destroyed by these dreadful innovations. ”

“ This included Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Renoir, and Degas. If there is one man greater than the others it is Claude Monet. Only during comparatively recent years have his originality and strength been generally recognised. He now occupies the position held by Manet, although he cannot be said to be Manet’s successor. Manet painted the figure, seldom attempting landscape, a genre which is primarily Monet’s. Claude Monet is doubly indebted to English art. ”

“ Look about you at the high keys of color that greet you in every modern picture exhibition. Claude Monet, whom people smiled at a dozen years ago, but are now calling a genius, is responsible for this high scale of color and light. He has transformed the whole decorative aspect of landscape painting, by studying the intermixture and play of pigments. We are now seeing colors in art that approximate, at least, the colors of nature; and they are just as beautiful decoratively as the old ones, only we are not yet accustomed to them. ”

“ At the same time he became acquainted with Boudin, a clever sea-painter, under whose guidance he learned to love and to understand nature. At the age of twenty he became a soldier, and spent two years of his military time with the regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique in the desert. Falling ill with fever, he was sent home, and entered the studio of Gleyre. This classical painter tried in vain to keep him to conventional art and away from truth and nature, and Monet left his studio, where he had become acquainted with two other “impressionistic” painters—Sisley and Renoir. ”

“ It is pleasant to imagine that these artistic explorations somewhat dulled the misery of their exile. They worked and copied in the public and private galleries, they painted by the riverside, and in the streets and parks. With enthusiasm they absorbed the technique of Turner and Constable, perhaps of Watts, and the result is to be seen in Claude Monet’s Haystacks, in Pissarro’s street scenes, in Sisley’s landscapes, in the luminous work of Guillaumin and d’Espagnat, in the canvases of Vuillard, Maufra, and many followers. Their style was revolutionised, their ideals changed. ”

“ Claude Monet has taught us the "innocence of the eye," has shown us how to paint air that circulates, water that sparkles. The sun was the centre of the impressionistic attack, the "splendid, silent sun." ”

“ These visions of colour are taking the place of obscurity and gloom, for the great impressionists, Claude Monet, Manet, the Barbizon school also and its disciples, have abjured the old dark shadows and substituted violet washes, seeming to share the privilege with the saints and sages of “seeing blue everywhere.” ”

“ Claude Monet, the artistic descendant of Claude Lorrain, Turner, and Monticelli, has had the merit and the originality of opening a new road to landscape painting by deducing scientific statements from the study of the laws of light. His work is a magnificent verification of the optical discoveries made by Helmholtz and Chevreul. It is born spontaneously from the artist's vision, and happens to be a rigorous demonstration of principles which the painter has probably never cared to know. ”

“ He has not adopted Claude Monet's technique; but I have already said that the vague and inexact term "Impressionism" must be understood to comprise a group of painters showing originality in the study of light and getting away from the academic spirit. As to this, Eugène Boudin deserves to be placed in the first rank. His canvases will be the pride of the best arranged galleries. He is an admirable seascape painter. He has known how to render with unfailing mastery, the grey waters of the Channel, the stormy skies, the heavy clouds, the effects of sunlight feebly piercing the prevailing grey. ”

“ Little space can be devoted in these pages to an extended notice of individual canvases, for the output (to use a somewhat commercial term) of Claude Monet has been exceptionally large. Where the whole is of such excellence it is difficult to select the masterpiece upon which can be staked not only the artist’s reputation but the verdict of the future upon the entire movement. ”

“ The colours mixed on the palette compose a dirty grey. What, then, is the painter to do, who is anxious to approach, as near as our poor human means will allow, that divine fairyland of nature? Here we touch upon the very foundations of Impressionism. The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the spectrum, and discard all the others: that is what Claude Monet has done boldly, adding to them only white and black. ”

“ Whistler didn't start Corot—apart from the chronological difficulties in the way—any more than Courbet and Manet started Whistler; yet both these painters played important rôles in the American master's art. So let us accept Mauclair's dictum as to Claude Monet's priority in the field of impressionism. Certainly he attained his marked style before he met Manet. Later he modified his own paint to show his sympathy with the new school. Monet went to Watteau, Constable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London, about 1870, he studied Turner with an interest that finally bordered on worship. ”

“ Through the application of these principles which I have set forth very summarily, Claude Monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the arabesque of their vibrations. A landscape thus conceived becomes a kind of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point, f.i.) ”

“ He is intuitive to an exceptional degree in the intimate composition of matter, water, earth, stone or air, and this intuition serves him in place of intellectuality in his art. He is a painter par excellence, a man born for painting, and this power of penetrating the secrets of matter and of light helps him to attain a kind of grand, unconsciously lyrical poetry. He transposes the immediate truth of our vision and elevates it to decorative grandeur. If Manet is the realist-romanticist of Impressionism, if Degas is its psychologist, Claude Monet is its lyrical pantheist. ”

“ Impressionism, in those works which represent it at its best, is a kind of painting which tends towards phenomenism, towards the visibility and the signification of things in space, and which wishes to grasp the synthesis of things as seen in a momentary glimpse.... One has now the right to say, without provoking an outcry, that it has been given to the people of the present time to witness a magnificent and phenomenal artistic evolution by this succession of canvases painted by Claude Monet during the past twenty years. ”

“ Claiming a right to exercise their art as they thought fit, aided by a mere handful of far-sighted critics and patrons, for thirty years they patiently endured public obloquy. Now the Luxembourg Gallery enlarges its space to receive their works, and before long they will be represented side by side with the masters of the Louvre. Appreciation is the order of the day, and millionaires compete for their canvases.
The life-history of Claude Monet is inseparably connected with the story of Impressionism in France. ”

“ HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE
As I have said, Edouard Manet has not been entirely the originator of the Impressionist technique. It is the work of Claude Monet which presents the most complete example of it, and which also came first as regards date. But it is very difficult to determine such cases of priority, and it is, after all, rather useless. A technique cannot be invented in a day. ”

“ In calculating the juxtaposition of color, the artist placed pale blue-green shadows on the child’s face to heighten her rosy complexion. In addition, the blurred impressionist brushstrokes create the effect of shimmering sunlight dissolving form and detail. Once in response to criticism about his work, Renoir said, “There are enough things to bore us in life without our making more of them.”
GALLERY 86: Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral, West Facade, dated 1894
Monet, a founder of impressionism, became obsessed with the variations with natural light. ”

“ The main features are an intenser study of illumination, a greater variety of illuminations, and a revolution in facture with a view to pressing closer to a high pitch of light. Manet plays his part in this development, but we shall not be wrong probably in giving to Claude Monet (b. 1840) the chief rôle as the instinctive artist of the period, and to Camille Pissarro (b. 1830) a very large part as a painter, curious in theory and experiment. Monet at the early date of 1866 had painted a picture as daring in its naïve brutality of out-of-door illumination as the “Déjeuner sur l’herbe.” ”

“ Claude Lorrain, Watteau, Turner and Monticelli constitute really the descent of a landscapist like Claude Monet. In all matters concerning technique, they form the direct chain of Impressionism. As regards design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of beauty and the portrait, the Impressionist movement is based upon the old French masters, principally upon Chardin, Watteau, Latour, Largillière, Fragonard, Debucourt, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, and Eisen. ”

“ Amongst the letters of sympathy were many acknowledgments of the artist’s genius, notably from Claude Monet, “in recognition of the advice which has made me what I am”—a striking and flattering phrase from the head of the Impressionist group. In this same year Boudin was awarded the gold medal at the Salon. In 1896 the Government purchased his Rade de Villefranche for the Luxembourg, and the old artist received from the hands of Puvis de Chavannes, at the recommendation of the Minister Léon Bourgeois, the ribbon and cross of the Legion of Honour. ”

“ Masters of tone, like Whistler, preserve this oneness of quality very carefully in their work, relying chiefly on the grain of a rough canvas to give the necessary variety and prevent a deadness in the quality of the tones.
But when more force and brilliancy are wanted, some use of your paint in a crumbling, broken manner is necessary, as it catches more light, thus increasing the force of the impression. Claude Monet and his followers in their search for brilliancy used this quality throughout many of their paintings, with new and striking results. ”

“ One could accuse Maufra 64at the time of his first exhibition at the de Boutheville galleries of submitting himself to the influence of Claude Monet. Already, however, he reveals his strong personality. Here he is to-day a free man and master of himself, capable of realising whatever his thoughts impel him to. He has his own conception of Nature, and he realises it with a liberty and independence which is veritably masterful. The diversity of his talent is proved in the most striking fashion. ”

“ His work connects easel painting with mural painting. No Minister of Fine Arts has been found, who would surmount the systematic opposition of the official painters, and give Manet a commission for grand mural compositions, for which his method is admirably suited. It has taken long years before such works were entrusted to Besnard, who, with Puvis de Chavannes, has given Paris her most beautiful modern decorations, but Besnard's work is the direct outcome of Claude Monet's harmonies. ”

“ Any figure that I paint is generally dreadful even in my own eyes, how much more hideous it must be therefore in other people’s! And yet one derives most experience from the study of the figure, when one sets about it in a manner that is different from that which M. Benjamin Constant used to teach us, for instance. I say, do you remember Puvis de Chavannes’ “John the Baptist”? I think it is simply wonderful and just as magic as Eugène Delacroix’ work.
My brother-in-law is at present holding an exhibition of Claude Monet’s work—ten pictures painted at Antibes between February and May. ”

“ A catalogue was issued containing a short introduction. “The artist does not say to you to-day, Come and see flawless works, but, Come and see 24sincere works.” Another sentence shares with a title of Claude Monet’s the origin of the generic phrase, “Impressionism.” “It is the effect of sincerity to give to a painter’s works a character that makes them resemble a protest, whereas the painter has only thought of rendering his impression.” Manet never considered himself as a man in revolt. ”

“ Including these mistakes and the real sales they realized not much more than $2,000. In this sale of 1875, Renoir’s “Avant le bain” brought $28; “La Source,” $22 (afterwards sold for $14,000) ; “Une vue du Pont neuf” brought all of $60; Claude Monet’s twenty pictures averaged from $40 to $60 each.
The writer was offered “Avant le bain” in 1894 for $1,200; it has since sold for $25,000. In a recent letter from M. George Durand-Ruel he says:
All the fine works of the Masters of the Modern French School have advanced very much in value. ”

“ It is unfortunate that it is only connoisseurs, like ourselves, who can at the same time—in spite of all the repugnance we may feel over it—make an excellent bargain and help a man of such talent. Answer as quickly as possible or make an appointment with me. Amitiés, Edouard Manet.”
This is good proof, if proof were needed, of the straits to which one of the leaders of the group was reduced. It is also odd 34to note that Manet was afraid of a refusal, from both dealers and collectors, to the offer of such a bargain as a score of works by Claude Monet at £4 apiece. ”